Tabernacle: Illustration for NOW: Part 1 (22/03/09)

whoops...forgot to do the blog again...

ok,..well, firstly. the tabernacle was a mobile place of worship set up during the 40 years wandering in the wilderness.
It began with Joseph being sent to Egypt in slavery,.. then Moses comes along and all the Israelites get out of Egypt after a lot of hassle, the plagues etc... and then pretty much as soon as the children of Israel are free out of Egypt, they look back moaning and grumbling about what they had there, such as food. (and the cucumbers, as Debbie said one week) 12 spies are sent into the land for 40 days, and only 2 come back with good reports, and the people continue grumbling. Numbers 14:34 'According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, a year for each day, you shall bear iniquity forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.' Plus, anyone 20 years old and over would never get to the promised land, they would die in the wilderness. Eventually, Joshua takes over.

Israel is roughly the size of Wales, so Sinai where they wandered is not much bigger. They had 40 years to wander round somewhere that is just bigger than Wales... that's a long time to wander. The camp was around 2 million people - that's the population of Dundee, Edinburgh & Glasgow put together so people in cities and places obviously heard about them before they arrived anywhere (like Jericho), that's a pretty big number of people all going round together! The people who were over 20 at the start of the wandering, who would never get to the land, they would spend time teaching their kids how to be better than they had been (we looked at this in the past few weeks, in the Biblical Traditions in Storytelling studies). The tabernacle for them was a look forward, a hope.

When you go to the tabernacle, you go to the front door and the priest on your behalf slaughters the animal and puts it on the altar. the altar had a ramp up to it instead of steps - traditionally, priests couldn't show any of themselves - and if there was steps, you would see their ankles as they climbed, so a ramp was used instead so they could keep walking with their robes to the ground.

Outside was the altar and the washbasin, inside was the table of shewbread, the altar of incense and the golden lampstand. Then there was a big curtain seperating the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place (which if you look at the dimensions, was a perfect cube like Ezekiel's vision of the temple.. maybe we'll look at that this sunday?). Inside the Most Holy Place was the ark of the covenant which was covered in gold and had cherubim on the top, or the mercy seat.
The temple is a big version of the tabernacle. When Jesus was crucified, the curtain in the temple tore from TOP to bottom - man could not have done this! If people were on the ground grabbing the curtain, it would've torn from bottom to top. Jesus had opene the way to the Holy Place for us, it was impossible to get to before.

The tabernacle was surrounded by all the people - there were 3 tribes to the north, 3 tribes to the east and so on. The 12 tribes were the 12 sons of Jacob - except Levi, because they were the priests. That makes it 11. Instead of Joseph (that makes 10), there was the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, his sons (that makes 12) which relates to the double portion. Now, on each of these sides, north east south and west, there was a lead tribe, Dan, Ephraim, Reuben and Judah. The symbols on the flags for each lead tribe were the Ox, Eagle, Lion and Man.
The cherubum in Ezekiel 1 has these 4 heads, and the formation of the heads is in the same position as the lead tribe symbols around the tabernacle! how cool is that!
------- Eagle --------
---- Ox ---- Lion ----
------- Man --------
(so for the tabernacle layout, imagine it in the central box of the 4 words, and thats how it looked on the cherubim in Ezek 1)
An ox stands for labourer, worker, servant.
The eagle is spiritual - it flies very high in the sky but still sees its prey with its brilliant eyes
The lion is typically the King, it has power and strength.
and Man, that's human nature.
Philippians 2:4-9
'Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.'
Jesus was farsighted (Eagle), was in the form of God but did not count equality, took form of a servant - so (Ox) and (Man) will become King soon (Lion).
The picture in the the tabernacle was centuries before Ezekiel!
Tabernacle -- garden of Eden! Holy Place, gates with cherubim guarding, most holy place set apart.

**Homework** Look at Philippians 2:4-11 and write out in some form you understand. Highlight the bits related to the 4 heads. Hope I've not done too much of that already... just write it out in your own words, your understanding.

oh -and here's something jon just sent me...