We are struck with the beauty of the Tabernacle; outside it did not look like much, but inside it was glorious. Its beauty and design were inspired by the vision of its heavenly counterpart revealed to Moses. This makes this sanctuary more than a historic artifact of an antiquated culture, but foundational for worship of all ages. Beauty, along with goodness and truth, make up the three “transcendentals” for which the human heart naturally longs. Beauty in and of itself can become idolatrous and even dangerous without goodness and truth. Goodness without beauty and truth is shallow. Truth without beauty and goodness is harsh. All three are represented here in the Book of Exodus: the goodness of YHWH in delivering Israel from Egypt and His covenantal love, the truth of the law, and the beauty of YHWH’s dwelling among His people.
The beauty of this tabernacle demanded something more than human skill and ingenuity. It demanded inspiration from God. We see that He “called” Bezalel and Oholiab for the special purpose of designing and implementing all this beauty, and were filled with the “Spirit of God” to produce something far beyond human ability (31:3). This reference to the Spirit of God” takes us back to creation (Gen. 1:2), and we shall see later all the parallels between creation and the Tabernacle. Here it will suffice to observe how the Sabbath Law is emphatically placed here at the conclusion of the Tabernacle narrative. The Seventh Day “Sabbath,” that is “rest,” is the goal of creation, where God and man dwelt in harmony and blessedness before the Fall. This is what YHWH is recreating with His people here at this moment of redemptive history.
Almost heaven … what we must never forget or slight over is the cost and drama of the ritual of sacrifice. We will go into more detail when we get to Leviticus. Here we must use our imaginations and enter into the experience of Old Testament worship. Worship at its core is an act, a sacrificial act, that demands the death of a victim. It is bloody, terrifying, and dramatic. An innocent creature of God must die for you, the guilty. All this seems absurd and even reprehensible to modern sensitivities. But us moderns are, for the most part, insensitive to sin. Sin destroys relationships, whether our earthly relationships, or with God our creator. YHWH is, first and foremost, a relational God. Sin is our one major problem in life, and this has never changed throughout the ages.
Ultimately, what is of most importance in not so much what the Tabernacle was, but what it pointed to as a type: Christ and His church. A close study of the Tabernacle and the High Priest with his priestly garments and functions takes us close into the heart of Christ. He is our mediator, carrying us into the Most Holy Place on His breastpiece with the twelve gemstones. He is both priest and victim. He alone is “Most Holy,” our king with the holy diadem, who walks before the Menorah, the lamps of His beloved churches. Before Him the holy incense of our prayers ascend to the Father; indeed, the Sacrifice of the Mass draws us, the Church, eastward, ad orientum, and upward to the Father through Him. All this and so much more opens us to Jesus Christ and the golden realities we, as His Kingdom the Church, experience day by day over the last two millennia. St. Gregory of Nyssa profoundly reflects:
… we say that Moses was earlier instructed by a type in the mystery of the tabernacle which encompasses the universe. This tabernacle would be Christ who is the power and wisdom of God, who in his own nature was not made with hands, yet capable of being made when it became necessary for this tabernacle to be erected among us. Thus, the same tabernacle is in a way both unfashioned and fashioned, uncreated in preexistence but created in having received this material composition.
Life of Moses, 174
But we see clouds gathering in the scene before us, other than the stormy theophanic darkness that engulfed the Mountain. Moses has been up in the mountain for forty days and forty nights (Exodus 24:18), receiving all of this instruction for the Tabernacle. Behind the intense drama on Sinai is Moses’ apprehension about the people who failed to stand before YHWH on the mount, but stood at a distance, promising him they would listen to him. Moses had enough experience with them to distrust them; he feared the people would sin.
But this story is for our next section of this grand book of Exodus. Here, YHWH made an end speaking to Moses and hands him the two tablets of the law written in stone by the “finger of God,” bringing this Temple section to a conclusion.
Takeaway: The more we study the Tabernacle and its functions, the deeper our understanding of Jesus Christ becomes.
Questions:
- How would you respond to a Christian, or even some Catholics, who have no appreciation for beauty in the church, and may even think it is detracting from pure worship and/or downright evil?
- Using your imagination, take a look about the Tabernacle as it would have been functioning back then, and describe how it serves as a type of Christ and His Church.