Leviticus 1:1

The Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, "The Lord said to Moses, 'Say to Aaron, set up the seven lamps. They will light up the area in front of the lampstand.'" So Aaron did it. He set up the lamps so that they faced forward on the lampstand. He did just as the Lord had commanded Moses. The lampstand was made out of hammered gold from its base to its blooms. It was made out of hammered gold. The lampstand was made exactly like the pattern the Lord had shown Moses. — Leviticus 1:1, Numbers 8

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Let's pray together. Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight, for you are our rock and our fortress and our redeemer. Amen.

A Warning About This Sermon

So a little warning for today's sermon. Today may feel a little bit like the Maxell audio poster from the 1980s. Remember this one? This was sort of the iconic image from the 1980s. I'm going to use a lot of images this morning because I need it for this sermon. But this one defines sort of what your experience may be like. This is a picture of a guy sitting in front of a speaker—for those of you born recently, that's a speaker on the left hand side that audio comes out of. He's called "Blown Away Guy." He's being blown away, but he's sitting facing fearlessly into the speaker.

Little warning: that's what today's sermon may feel like. If this is what it feels like to you, I'm just going to say, sorry, not sorry. I know. I'm acknowledging that. We're going anyway.

Introduction to Leviticus

If you're just joining us today, we are in our second week in a study of the book of Leviticus, the third book in the Bible—probably one of the most intimidating and easiest books of the Bible to malign. And so we're looking at this today, and today is sort of the second part of the introduction to that series. Part two, and I should say from the very beginning: welcome to rabbi school, to Yeshiva. You need to put on your yarmulke and pull out your Torah this morning. I'm Rabbi Geoff, and I will be guiding you in this process. So strap in for today.

The Tabernacle: Form and Function

Leviticus—we're focusing this morning on the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle is not actually spelled out much in the book of Leviticus. It's sort of the background of it. The Tabernacle is described in Exodus and in Numbers. In Leviticus, it's sort of the background of all the activity and action. In verse one of the passage we just read from Leviticus one, it is called the "tent of meeting." The Tabernacle was the form, the tent, but the place of meeting is the function—what the Tabernacle is for.

Tabernacle means dwelling place, but from the very beginning, God made it plain, and the people understood this: the dwelling place of God could never fully contain God. So in First Kings eight, when Solomon builds the temple to finally replace the Tabernacle—the permanent structure—this is what he says in his understanding of what's happening:

"How will God indeed dwell on earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you. How much less this house that I built?" — 1 Kings 8

See, they understood: this tent, this building, it doesn't contain God. Rather, the focus was verse one of the passage we read. This is the tent of meeting. This is the place where people can meet God.

The Tabernacle was no human invention. God had specifically laid out all the steps for how they were to build it. So if you are having trouble with sleeping, may I highly recommend the last half of the book of Exodus, because God goes into all kinds of detail on the measurements of the Tabernacle, the materials, the furniture, the fabrics. It's spelled out there super precisely by God so that the people would know what to build.

The Lampstand

Inside the Tabernacle were all kinds of furniture. And again, all the furniture has a message to it. We read really briefly from Numbers chapter eight, which focused on one of the pieces of furniture: the lampstand. The lampstand looked like what you might think of as a menorah. Are you familiar with a menorah from the Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah? It's a lampstand that has seven lights, seven candlesticks.

As we read in the passage, Aaron's job, as prescribed by God, was to make sure that when the menorah was set up, the light from the candlesticks, the light from the menorah was directed in such a way that it shone in a precise location in that Tabernacle.

Now, this may sound really kind of random, but it is not random. Every part of this preaches. So, for example, the light. Why is the light focused in a particular area?

Well, it was meant to be focused onto a table that had 12 loaves of bread. This was called the showbread. And on that table, those 12 loaves represented the 12 tribes of Israel. And so the big picture of what's happening in the tabernacle with that image is meant to convey to the people: oh, this is what it's all about. God's people living in the light of his presence shining on them ever in his presence. Life with God in the house of God—and that is the subtext of everything we're going to talk about this morning.

Life with God in the house of God. That's the big purpose from creation all the way through to the end of the Bible. This is where God has been and where He is taking us. Life with God in the house of God.

See, we can go back. If we were doing another sermon series, we'll hit this one day, okay? And we can look at all of the pieces of furniture here. So let's just look at them really briefly. All of them preach to us.

The altar: God saves sinners. The brass sea—called the laver, the place where they wash—God cleanses sinners. The tabernacle itself: God lives among sinners. Here's the lampstand that we talked about: God gives light to sinners. The ark had a place; it was like the throne of God. God reigns over sinners. The curtain: God is separate from sinners. Incense: God hears the prayers of sinners like incense going up. And finally, the showbread, the table—God fellowships with sinners, God eats with sinners.

Each of these things proclaim to us aspects of God's character and his goal of people of God living together with Him in the house of God. This is all where this is headed. See, this is the goal of all of human existence. This is what it's all about. It all preaches to us.

Now, you would be like, okay, that's great—Bible trivia time. And it's fascinating. If you're a fellow Old Testament nerd like me, you're in good company this morning, right? We like to know this stuff. You can beat your family at Bible Trivia Pursuit this year over Thanksgiving knowing all of these things. Okay? So you're good.

Typology: More Than Just History

But look, this isn't just history, and it's true: we don't worship in a temple. You see no giant menorah here. We don't have a big curtain. We don't have all these things that are part of the tabernacle. And these things would just be interesting Bible trivia, but for one thing—it's not history. It's typology. That's a word that I want you to learn. We're going to be talking about typology over and over again as we study through the book of Leviticus. Can you say the word typology with me? Typology. I want you to know this word.

Typology is a special kind of symbolism. It's a special kind of connection between the Old Testament and Jesus. We're going to be talking about this, and the way the word works is we'll be talking about this person, this place, this thing being a type of Christ. Now, that doesn't mean they're different versions of Jesus. What that means is it represents him in what he has accomplished on our behalf in some way. Typology.

Now, there is a wrong way to do this and a right way to do this. If you have spent a lot of time in churches or Bible studies, you may feel like you have been introduced to Where's Waldo with the Bible. Remember Where's Waldo? It's the kids' picture books where you look through these complex scenes, and you're looking for Waldo, the guy with the glasses and the stripy hat. And it feels like you're just sort of trying to find Jesus under every rock and tree and branch in the Old Testament, and that can get weird.

So, for example, let me just give you an example of this. Sometimes you've heard people reading through the book of Joshua, and you come to the conquest of Jericho. And now the spies had made a pact with a woman, a prostitute named Rahab in that city that in exchange for her care of them, they would make sure she is spared. So there's a little detail in that book about how Rahab ties a scarlet cord in her window, and that's the marker so that the soldiers when they take the city wouldn't kill her, that they know that was her house. And people are like, that's Jesus. Really? I mean, it's kind of like, maybe? I mean, scarlet cord, red blood? I mean, you know, it's but that is a stretch. And there's reasons why sometimes when you listen, when you kind of go through the Bible and you're like, does this represent Jesus? I don't know. Sometimes that feels really forced.

Typology tells us that you look at the way the New Testament points backward to the Old Testament and says, "Look, right here—person, place, or thing that Jesus fulfills." And so we're going to look at that this morning with regard to the tabernacle.

So I got another visual for you this morning. Does anybody know what these are? I got a picture of them up here so you can see them in case these are too small. I bought these last week for this sermon. These are called Russian nesting dolls. Okay?

I got six of these. You're not going to be able to see them, so you can watch the screen. Typology in the Bible works like Russian nesting dolls. So this is most obvious. Let's pretend number two here is the tabernacle, okay? And some of you already get this. The temple, number three, replaced the tabernacle, but it was like a super-sized version of the tabernacle. So let's put this one inside this one, right?

For example, when the tabernacle was designed, God tells Moses, "The bronze altar—the altar that you're going to do sacrifices on—it's supposed to be seven and a half feet wide, seven and a half feet long, four and a half feet tall." Well, when they built the temple, Solomon built the temple, and his altar was 30 feet wide, 30 feet long, 15 feet high. See, it's a super-sized version. Same thing with the dimensions of the tabernacle versus the temple. The tabernacle itself, when Moses built it, they built it 45 feet long, 15 feet wide, 15 feet high. The temple, though, was 90 feet long, 30 feet wide, 45 feet high. See? Nests inside.

Now, a lot of people are like, "Okay, I get that. But that's not just—they're not just two of them." I want to show you six of these this morning. And you have a little hint of this if you have been walking along with us as a church doing your city Bible reading. You know, we hand these out in January. We all read the Bible together. This past week, if you were studying through this, you hit Ezekiel chapter 47. It says something really weird in Ezekiel 47.

Out of the temple will flow rivers of water. — Ezekiel 47

Now, has anybody ever seen a picture of the temple in Jerusalem, Temple Mount? It's on top of a rock, on top of a mountain, in an arid desert-like region. There are no rivers flowing out of the temple, and so it hints at you. You've read it this week. It hints at you. There's something else going on here. There's something else happening here.

So let's go. We're going to look at all these little nesting dolls. I'm going to play with dolls this morning. You guys are not going to touch my dolls, okay? So we're going to start. We're going to play with dolls this morning, and I want to show you because wrapped up in this is your purpose, is my purpose, is our purpose as a church, and if we miss this, we miss some of the big picture words that God has to say to us from this book.

Eden: The Smallest Doll

So let's look together. Doll number one—let's look at the baby guy here, right? This is Eden, Garden of Eden, back at the beginning part of the Old Testament. This takes us all the way back to the beginning of your Bible. Eden in Hebrew means delight. It was a place of delight. And what was Eden but people being with God, unmediated, unfiltered, with God in the house of God? Adam and Eve walking in relationship with him.

There are all kinds of ties though between the tabernacle and Eden. So let me show you some of these. In Eden, the man is tasked with working and keeping the garden. That exact same language is used with regard to the tabernacle in Exodus. The Levitical priests were charged with working and keeping the tabernacle.

Second, inside the most holy place of the tabernacle is a lampstand that we spoke of earlier. The lampstand was made in the shape of—did you read this in Numbers?—a tree. It was supposed to look like the tree of life. It's got branches, supposed to symbolize that to the people.

The tabernacle used gold and onyx as stones for decorating the tent, the fabrics, and even the outfits of the priests. Gold and onyx appear in one other place in the first few books of the Bible. Do you know where they are? Right here in Eden. That's in Havilah. That region was known for gold and onyx, and these are an echo of that.

Fourth, the tabernacle is always to be set up facing east. Eden is in the east. And in the Bible, if you read the first few books of the Bible, going east is like going back to Eden. Going west is like going away from the presence of God. That's why Lot goes west. The people of Israel with the patriarchs—they go to Egypt, they go west in order to get away from the famine.

And then after the fall, Adam and Eve were evicted from the garden, and there was this provision made. When they were kicked out after sinning against God, God had established these two giant celestial beings, these two cherubim, who were to guard the way back into the garden. They had a flaming sword. Now here's why. Because God—this was a protection from them.

If they had gone after eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and eaten fruit from the tree of life, they would have lived forever, forever cut off and away from the presence of God. And so these cherubim are set up there to protect Adam and Eve from doing that very thing.

Now where in the Bible do those cherubim appear again? Right here. They appear on the curtains to the Most Holy Place, and there are a warning and a guard, and they say, Do not enter here. It is death to sinners to come unmediated into the presence of God. This is dangerous for you. Here are the cherubim right here on the tabernacle.

So look, we can do this now. Right? We can put Eden inside our little tabernacle. And then, of course, our tabernacle fits inside our temple, and there's some really fascinating details about the temple if you read them. For example, the temple of God after Solomon built it to replace the tabernacle, it's decorated with all these ornate carvings of fruit and pomegranates. What do you think those are symbolic of? This is nerd class. What is that symbolic of? Eden. Eden. Right. It's looking backward to the garden. This is where we came from. This is the purpose that we would be with God in the house of God.

Second, Solomon builds instead of having the cherubim in the curtains, he builds two fifteen-foot-high, 15-foot-wide cherubim. If they'd been back in the tabernacle, they would have filled up the whole space. But they're gigantic statues of cherubim to say, bold print, Don't go in. Don't go into the Holy of Holies. It's a warning about us drawing near to God. So you've got nesting dolls one through three. That's the beginning of the Bible.

The End of the Bible

Now, let's jump forward all the way to the end. This is the whole history of the Bible in fifteen minutes with Rabbi Jeff. We've done the beginning. Now, let's go to the end. Did you know the end of the Bible, the book of Revelation, is not just sort of what happens in life after death. It's the end of what happens in history. It's life after life after death. It's what happens when Jesus comes back, and He brings all of history to a close, and He judges the nations, and then in one moment of creative energy, heaven and earth come together in the holy city, the new Jerusalem.

If you flip over to the back of the book, it's not cheating in the Bible. You can read the ending and what you find in Revelation chapter twenty-one and twenty-two are all about the New Jerusalem, life with God in the house of God. And this is how it's introduced. Listen to this:

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with mankind. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. — Revelation 21:3

That word dwelling place is the word for tabernacle. The tabernacle of God is with mankind. Does that sound familiar? Life with God in the house of God. We read that in the heavenly city, the new heavens, new earth, the new Jerusalem, there's no temple because it's all a temple. There's no sun in the new heavenly city because the Lamb is the lamp. Jesus himself, the light comes from him. There's no sea. This is one of the things those of you who love the ocean have read this and thought, why is there no ocean in the new heavens and new earth? I love the beach. This is why. Because the laver, the washing, we don't need that anymore. We can come near God. We are already cleansed. We come into His presence.

The dimensions of the New Jerusalem—the nesting dolls are a perfect cube, just like the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle were, just like the Holy of Holies in the temple were. This whole city is described to us as a cube, and yet, instead of being 15 feet by 15 feet, this heavenly city is 1,380 miles by 1,380 miles by 1,380 miles. In other words, it's a perfect cube. If you looked at the landmass for 1,380 miles by 1,380 miles, you get 2,250,000 square miles. That is half the size of the Continental United States. But it's not just two-dimensional, it's three-dimensional. Commercial airlines usually travel somewhere around seven to eight miles above the Earth's surface. So the holy city is 1,380 miles tall. This is a gigantic nesting doll, and all of it is meant to show us God dwelling with his people in the house of God.

One of the little details of this is that there's a river flowing through the city, the waters from the temple, and on either side of the river is the tree of life. Remember that?

His fruit is for the healing of the nations. It's an incredible picture. Life with God in the house of God. No tears, no sadness. What this tells us is like, look, all of this is one big story. All of this is one giant story. All of these little dolls are connected to each other, where we've been, where we're going. Now, but Rabbi Jeff, what about the other two nesting dolls? I'm so glad you asked that question. So let's talk about the last two. Let's talk about number five.

Jesus Christ

Number five, Jesus Christ. Here's the crazy thing. If you went back and you reread the Gospel of John, Gospel of John is filled with typology. The Gospel of John chapter one begins this way:

And the word became flesh and tabernacled among us. — John 1:1

And then from every page in the book of John, it's all typology. So in chapter two, Jesus is at the temple. He gets a whip. He's cleansing the temple. He's driving out the money changers, and they say, "Jesus, by whose authority do you do these things?" And Jesus says this:

Destroy this temple, and in three days, I will rebuild it. I will raise it up. — John 2:19

The Jews then said, "It's taken forty six years to build this temple. How will you raise it up in three days?" And then John adds this detail:

But he was speaking of the temple which was his body. — John 2:21

Jesus, the temple, the one who died and was raised again. And Jesus keeps showing us that he is the nesting doll. He is the perfect temple. He replaces temple.

In John four, Jesus has a conversation with a Samaritan woman, and she's going back and forth with him about where we worship. She's like, "You're Jews. You guys love the temple in Jerusalem. We Samaritans, we worship up here." He's like, "No, no, no. I am one greater than the temples here. Those who follow me who know me will worship in spirit and truth." He's saying, look, this is me. You're standing in front of the new and perfect temple.

Keep reading John's gospel. This is on every page. "I am the lamp of the world. I am the showbread of life." Jesus prays on behalf of his people like the incense altar that goes up to God. A pleasing aroma. Jesus is the lamb of God who sacrificed to take away the sins of the world. This is throughout the gospel of John.

You know, pull out your keys. Pull them out. Everybody's got them. I love hearing the jingle, right? You know how a key works. A key's got all these little ridges and bumps on it. And when it's aligned with your front door or your apartment door or your dorm room door, when it's aligned with the correct lock, all the little ridges line up with little pins inside that lock, and they perfectly align so that when that happens, and no other keys will work, it turns and opens. In the same way, Jesus is the key that lines up with every strain of the Old Testament. All the prophecies, all the law, all the Levitical system, all this stuff that Christians today are like, "Oh, it's past. We don't need to know this." All the little pins line up so that he opens the way for us to understand all of this. But not only that, he doesn't just open our understanding of it, he opens a way in. He opens a way in for us.

Let me show you how this works. Remember, there's a difference between the tabernacle as a form and a function. Tabernacle as form is a big tent. Its function, though, is a place to meet with God, a gateway to God. And Jesus Christ comes and shows us this.

Let's talk about those cherubim again. Remember the cherubim? These cherubim were right here and right here, and they guard the way in, and they say, "No admittance for sinners into the presence of God, except once a year." We'll read about this in about a month in Leviticus chapter 16, where one person, the high priest, comes in and is able to come into a holy place but has to enter through what? Has to pass under what? Those cherubim with blood on his hands. He has to come in with blood on his hands to make atonement for sin because God is absolutely holy and people cannot go unmediated into his presence. There's no way back into the presence of God without coming under that sword.

But Jesus deals with the cherubim and the sword for us. Jesus faces the sword for us. In the prophet Isaiah, we read these two strange sayings. Isaiah says that the Messiah, when Messiah comes, will be cut off from the land of the living. And Isaiah also says:

He will be pierced for our transgressions. He will be crushed for our iniquities. — Isaiah 53:5

In Revelation, when John looks at the heavenly city, he says, "In the middle of the heavenly city, he looks and he sees not Jesus the man, not the lion, but a lamb with this detail, looking as if it had been slain, looking as if it had been slaughtered, who had the markings of sacrifice, the markings of cutting." This is what we find. When the sword fell on Jesus, the sword of God for sinners, when the sword held by the cherubim fell on Jesus, it didn't just smite Him, a lamb that was slain. It also smote itself.

It broke death, and death itself began to be undone. As C. S. Lewis writes in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, he says, "When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the table itself would crack, and death itself would start to work backwards."

So when Jesus died, the temple veil was ripped in half. Those images of the cherubim no more. The temple was made obsolete. Thus, that leads me to this: You. Me. People. Sinners. People as the dwelling place of God.

The language of the Bible is really unique in what it means to be a Christian. It says to be a Christian is to be in Christ—it's to be in him so that his righteousness is your righteousness. He covers you in his blood. You are in him.

If you are in Christ, then this is what happens: your life becomes a tabernacle, a temple, a place to meet the living God. This is why 1 Corinthians says this:

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who lives within you? Don't you know you've been bought with a price?

See, you are a tabernacle. You become a dwelling place of God as the Holy Spirit lives in you and you are in him.

Look, I know I've said a lot of complicated things this morning and some of you are spinning. You're like, "Man, this is kind of nuts. Who talks like this? This is weird." And you may not be a Christian. You're here this morning, but this is the very simple thing that I want to say to you: God offers you life with Him in Christ, so that your life can be filled with him and he can flood all the places of your life with his light and his health and his healing and your life can become a tabernacle of the living God. In Christ. And all you must do is lay hold of this by faith. This is offered for you.

Now, some of you are Christians here this morning and you're like, "Yeah, I know this. This is kind of cool." And you may think, "Well, I knew all this. So what?"

Well, I have two applications for you this morning. Two things I want to press upon you.

Form and Function

See, there's a difference between the form and function. Some of you may be able to say, "Hallelujah. Yeah, my life is hidden in Christ. My life is supposed to be a tabernacle unto God." That's the form. But is the function at work in your life?

In other words, are you more and more experiencing the fullness of living your life in the house of God with God? Are you experiencing him? Are you enjoying him? Are all the furniture we talked about—are you experiencing that in your life? Are you saying, "I love to fellowship with Him. I love to be with Him. I love that Jesus prays on my behalf. I love that He died for my sins. I love that He washes me"? Are you experiencing this as a reality?

See, it's one thing to say, "Yeah, I know all this," but it's another thing for this reality to define who you are as a person. It's another thing for you to say, "Man, I know who I am. I know what I am, and I know where I'm going, and I experience this regularly." Is that true of you?

Gateway for the Nations

See, the second thing I want to say by way of application is that when Israel got to experience God in temple and tabernacle, they knew. They were told over and over again, this isn't just for you. Your life was never meant to keep this enjoyment of God and worship, this enjoyment of him in relationship, to yourself. You are meant to be. This temple is meant to be a gateway for the nations.

That's why Jesus was so upset. He said:

My house will be called a house of prayer for all people.

So here's my question for you: If you are a temple of the living God, if you are in Christ, if the fullness of God is in your life, who is experiencing God out of you? Who is finding your life to be a gateway to God? Are there people who have real names and actual cell phone numbers that are friends of yours who don't yet know Jesus, that are beginning to experience Jesus because you're a gateway, you're a tabernacle, you're a temple? Is that happening?

See, the invitations for us to enjoy this and experience this and live this are unbelievable. You know, I wish I could buy you all a set of nesting dolls. These were ten on Amazon. I bought them a week ago. Go buy them because I want to impress upon you three things. I want you to know these three things: that you will remember who you are—that you are in Christ. That you will remember what you are—that you are a temple of the living God and a gateway for the nations. And you will remember where you are going—life with God in the house of God.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Shalom.