I will dwell among them. Not above them. Not far from them. Among them. The God who descended on Sinai in fire and smoke, the God whose voice made the mountain shake that God wants to move with His people through the wilderness. The Tabernacle is not humanity’s attempt to reach God. It is God’s insistence on being close.
The Ark of the Covenant comes first. A box of acacia wood overlaid with pure gold, inside and out. Two golden cherubim on the lid facing each other, wings spread upward, faces toward each other, toward the atonement cover. And God says: there, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the covenant law, I will meet with you.
The meeting place is above the blood covering. God meets with Moses above the atonement cover, the mercy seat. Not above a throne of power. Above the place where atonement is made. The place of mercy is where God chooses to speak.
God still meets us above the mercy seat. The access we have to His presence is not through our performance or our purity. It is through the blood that covers the law we could not keep. Every time you come to God, you come to the One who meets you above the mercy, not above the record of your failures.
The table for the bread of the Presence twelve loaves, one for each tribe, always before God. The lampstand of pure gold six branches, seven lamps, giving light so the holy space is never in darkness. The curtains of the Tabernacle, blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen, with cherubim worked into them by skilled craftsmen. The frames of acacia wood overlaid with gold. The clasps of gold and bronze.
— The precision is the point. God is not being pedantic. He is showing that He takes seriously the place where He will be present with His people. Every detail says: this matters. I am not dropping in casually. I am coming to stay.
Chapter 26 describes the curtains and the frames and the veil the thick curtain that separates the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, where the Ark sits, where the presence of God rests. No one may enter that inner room except the high priest, once a year, on the Day of Atonement, with blood.
That curtain will hang for fifteen hundred years. And on the afternoon of the first Good Friday, at the moment Jesus breathes His last, it will tear from top to bottom. Not from the bottom up, as a human hand might tear it. From top to bottom. God tore it. The barrier between His presence and His people, torn open by His own hand, is never repaired.
The veil that kept ordinary people out of the presence of God for fifteen hundred years was torn the moment Jesus died. You do not need a high priest to give you access. You do not need to wait for the Day of Atonement. The way into the Holy of Holies has been open since Friday afternoon on a hill called Golgotha. Walk in.
Chapter 27 gives the altar of burnt offering the first thing you encounter when you enter the Tabernacle complex, before you reach the Holy Place, before you reach the Most Holy Place. The altar comes first. Before anything else, a sacrifice. The whole structure is designed around the acknowledgment that drawing near to God requires something to be given, something to be offered, something to stand between the people and the holiness they are approaching.
The altar still stands first. But the sacrifice has already been made once, for all, by the One who was both priest and lamb. You do not offer on the altar. You come through it. The cross is the altar. The way into God’s presence has always run through the place of sacrifice.
