God's throne among his people

Exodus 25:1-22

Ok, true confessions. When I was first investigating the faith, I said arrogantly, “I will read the entire Bible and decide if it is true, then….” I had great ambition, I charged through Genesis and Exodus until I came to these last few chapters. When I got to this part about the tabernacle with its incredible detail, I gave up. It seemed completely irrelevant. Why so much detail about church furniture?

This is what I didn’t get. There is no such thing as a free motif. Have you ever watched a movie and noticed a clip that seemed to be a throwaway clip? No such thing! Movie producers spend $1000’s per second of final movie time. Every moment of the movie is carefully chosen--The same thing is true with scripture. God doesn’t just throw in filler to keep even spacing in the books. Each word and each subject is meaningful and is there to reveal God.

So what does this reveal about God? This chapter details the place where God will sit upon his throne among his people. Yahweh will come and sit upon the mercy seat. This was a magnificent moment in the history of the world. God himself, who dwells in heaven, will begin dwelling on earth in the presence of his Spirit at the mercy seat within the tabernacle, within the community of Israel. Here, God would receive sacrifice for sin and be a tangible picture of the truth that declares, “Yahweh is their God, and he is their people.”

Like a ring on the hand of a married person is a sign of the marital covenant, the tabernacle was a sign to Israel and to the world of God’s covenant faithfulness and commitment to be with them and to be their God as they are his people.

Jesus has superseded the tabernacle. “He came and dwelled (literally tabernacle) among us” (John 1:14). In the Old Testament, once a year on the Day of Atonement, the mercy seat would be sprinkled with blood for the atonement for sins of the people of Israel. Those who are united to Christ by faith now have their “hearts sprinkled to cleanse them” (Hebrews 10:22). So, with clean hearts from the blood of Christ, he can send his Spirit into the thrones of our hearts that he may sit there as we together represent his tabernacle and are a sign that Yahweh is God and we are his people.