(Through The Bible) – Exodus (Part 2): Zac Poonen (Transcript)

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That’s what we understand.

I am supposed to be a sanctuary… temple for God to dwell. My home is to be a temple for God to dwell. My church must be a temple for God to dwell. Everything else is secondary. Bible teaching a secondary; evangelism a secondary; good works are secondary; helping the poor is secondary.

Primary reason is GOD MUST DWELL THERE. That’s the first lesson we learned from the tabernacle. And if you lose sight of this, what happens is you get into so many good things: Social work is a good thing, and vandalism is a good thing, Bible teaching is a good thing, special meetings is a good thing. God must dwell.

Does God dwell in your church? Does God dwell in your home? Does God dwell in your life? That’s the main thing. It’s no use saying I live a good life. So please remember that right from the beginning.

And I want you to notice another thing about the tabernacle. And that is, when God gave the instructions for the Tabernacle… now supposing somebody were making a plan for building this compound here, he will not start with this pulpit. No, no architect will start spending a long time, let’s start with the pulpit. No, they will start with the dimensions of the compound, and with the major buildings; that’s how they’d go.

But when God gave the plan for the tabernacle, do you know what He started with? He didn’t tell them first the dimensions of it, or even about the tent. He started with the ark (Exodus 25:10). This is the first thing you need to do is construct an ark.

And the ark was in the most holy place and God dwelt there. In other words, He started from Himself: In the beginning God…

God’s ways are not man’s ways. And in every church, this is where we must begin, not with activity, not with any type of activity, but with God. With the most holy place, the things that are most holy in the Christian life: the ark that’s where we must begin.

You see, and I’ll come to the Tabernacle in a moment. God begins from Himself. And in our dealings with God, like with Adam, we saw that in Genesis: First, spend one day in fellowship with God, then you can go and work in the garden, whether your calling is evangelism, or teaching, or social work, or anything, whatever it is, begin with God. And you see that principle in the Tabernacle too.

See, these are things which are there in Scripture; you read them but sometimes you don’t notice them. ‘It’s the glory of God to conceal a matter; it’s the glory of kings to search it out.’ (Proverbs 25:2)

OK, when Jesus taught us to pray the Lord’s Prayer, what did He teach us to begin with? Not even forgiveness of our sins, which is such an important thing. He said, when you pray, pray: our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. This is the Ark.

In the beginning God…

You know if I could show you one thing, that throughout Scripture: God has always backed the man who will put Him in the beginning, give Him the first place in his life, in his home, in his church. God can do amazing things, that’s what He wants, that’s the place He wants to have in your life.

Tabernacle symbolizes our BODY

This Tabernacle is also a picture of our body. You know, our body is a trinity. The tabernacle has three parts: I’ll just come to that: spirit, soul, and body. That’s what man is: (1 Thessalonians 5:23) and, because man was made in the image of God who’s a Trinity, we are also a trinity; each of us is a trinity: spirit, soul, and body.

In another sense, God is three persons: we are one person but with three parts. The Tabernacle also has three parts, and there’s many spiritual truths we can from that for our body.

God dwells in our spirit, the deepest part. If you think of our human being as three concentric circles, outer circle is the body, inside that is the soul, inside that is the spirit. God dwells in the innermost circle: in the spirit. And that’s why the Tabernacle was divided into three parts.

So here we see the Tabernacle, you see, this thing where you can see the red light is the tent of the Tabernacle, and this is the court of the Tabernacle.

So the Tabernacle had three parts: that’s the outer court, a 150 feet by 75 feet, and that is the tent. And the tent was divided into two parts: one was the holy place which is 45 feet by 15 feet, and the most holy place which was a square 15 feet by 15 feet, and the height of this was also 15 feet. So the most holy place was a cube: same length, same breadth, same height.

And it says in Revelation 21 that Jerusalem was also a cube: same length, same height, same breath. That means Jerusalem is not this whole thing: Jerusalem is the most holy place. You’ve got to get there to be a part of that cube mentioned in Revelation 21. You’ve got to press on to fellowship with God to be a part of the bride of Jesus Christ.

So the Tabernacle was surrounded by the camp of Israel all round. There was a specific place for each tribe, and these three: Merari, Gershon, and Kohath were the sons of Levi who looked after the Tabernacle; they lived closest to the Tabernacle. And the other 12 tribes — you know, when the tribe of Levi was taken away, then Manasseh and Ephraim — the two tribes of the tribe of Joseph was split up into Manasseh and Ephraim, so you still had 12 tribes. And the 13th was Levi.

Now in the outer court, you had a plain — this compound was marked off by a plain white linen sheet. And white linen in Scripture symbolizes simple righteousness and it was a very simple way by which the Tabernacle was separated from the rest of the world. It’s a picture of the righteousness of Christ that separates the church from the rest of the world. And there was only one gate, as you can see here, 30 feet, only one gate by which you could enter. And it was very small compared to the whole camp. And just like the church is a very small place compared to the world.

Now I’ll just show you a picture of the Tabernacle… but I wanted to mention one thing before I go on.

In the outer court there were only two items visible: the brazen altar, and the laver. The laver was like a big tub of water. And the brazen altar was where all the sacrifices were made.

Okay, that’s what the Tabernacle looked like. The other one you saw was a diagram, there’s the brazen altar, and the Lord said you should not make steps up to the altar; you got a sloping thing going up to the altar. And there was the laver like a big tub in which they washed themselves/

And this was the tent covered over, and the back part of this tent was where the veil was; the thick veil that separated the holy place from the most holy place. And which they had in the temple also, which was rent when Jesus died on the cross.

And here we have a picture of how the Tabernacle was actually constructed: with a number of boards, vertical boards, like you see here you see this vertical board, it ended at two legs underneath that rested in a silver socket with two holes in it. And this board had these four little projections through which a board would go through to hold it in place.

Now there are a number of spiritual lessons we can learn from this: it’s a picture of the body of Christ, many people closely held together without any gap between them, close fellowship held together by the bonds of fellowship, and resting on the silver socket. Silver is a picture of redemption throughout the Old Testament. There are examples of that where the Lord said you got to pay silver when you want to redeem some people. And Judas Iscariot took thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus. Silver is a picture of redemption, and this board rested on silver sockets.

And here was the front of the tent which had a little curtain, and at the back you can see the other curtain. And now these two, I would say these two legs into the sockets speak about faith and obedience. Trust and obey, those are the two legs we stand on. God’s Word giving us promises and commandments. If you’ve got faith and obedience, you’re a balanced Christian; you’re stable.

Can you imagine how that board would have been unstable if it had only one leg, like a lot of Christians. There’s to be no gap, there are many many lessons we can learned from this Tabernacle.

And then I want you to see the COVERINGS OF THE TABERNACLE. Now all this is described in, between Exodus chapters 25 to 30; the outer court is described in Exodus 27:9-19; the tent of the tabernacle in Exodus 26:1-37.

And here are the CURTAINS WHICH COVERED THE TABERNACLE. There were four curtains which covered the Tabernacle. The first one is made of fine linen with a lot of very intricate engraving, that was on the inside. You could not see it unless you went inside. There’s a verse in Psalm 45:13 which says: the king’s daughter is all glorious inside.

The outermost covering was a dirty covering of badger skin, full of dust, ugly, and dark brown. And that’s how the Christian and Jesus and the church are in the eyes of the world. It says about Jesus: there was no beauty in Him that we should desire Him. (Isaiah 53:2) There was nothing attractive about the Lord Jesus outwardly: oh He was just a carpenter, not very highly educated; they despised Him. And that’s how God has allowed the church — the true church is always despised, it’s never popular. It’s got this badger skin covering of very simple, and not very attractive.

And a really Godly man is also not always attractive on the outside. The real glory of Jesus was inside His life. This inner curtain which you could only see, if you went inside, with all that intricate work of many many colors and gold could only be seen within. And that teaches us also that in our personal life, there must be more glory inside than outside.

Now a lot of Christians are not like that: there’s more glory on their outside than inside. They got the badger skins inside and all this fancy design work on the outside. You got it wrong, brother. That’s not the way it should be: the glory must be within. In other words, your inner life must be better than what other people see of you. There must be more prayer and fasting in your life that other people don’t know about, than what they know. There must be more sacrifice and giving in your inner life than what other people can see. That is a true tabernacle of God.

But a tabernacle where all the glory is displayed for other people, that’s not a tabernacle of God; that’s the way of Babylon.

There’s a lot of difference between Babylon and Jerusalem. And one of the differences is seen here: where do you put the most glorious covering? On the inside or the outside? Do you try to show that you are a great man of God, or is it enough that God Almighty knows that? Or do you want people to know that? That’s very important.

So here is this first curtain of fine linen symbolizing the righteousness of Christ. It says: the bride of Christ, in Revelation 19, is clothed in fine linen.

And then next to that was a covering made of goats’ hair, probably white like you see here. And a goat, you think of a scapegoat, one of the offerings is a picture of the sin offering offered for my sin, the goat offered for my sin, a picture of Christ.

And then you come to the rams’ skins dyed red… ram skin dyed red, and red speaks of blood, substitution, the blood of Christ. That was the third covering.

And the fourth covering was the badger skins, speaking of the reproach of Christ, the ugliness, the lack of attractiveness to the rest of the world. The church is not attractive. When we don’t try to attract people to the church with music and money, we try to attract people to the church with godliness. Otherwise you can attract the wrong type of people to the church. That’s what I’ve discovered.

Do you attract people to your church with a Godly message and with Godly people and Godly homes or do you attract people to your church with a lot of fancy music and a lot of fantastic building, and a lot of other external things which are great in the eyes of men?

I’m not against music, I’m not against good buildings, I’m saying that’s not the basis of attraction. It should be Godliness, inward righteousness, the church must be known for more glory inside. In other words, when people come to our church, they should be able to say, ‘boy, I didn’t think much of this church when I first came, but after I came in, and I saw the quality of life of these people, the quality of their families, the quality of fellowship, it’s far more glorious than I thought, like the Queen of Sheba said, ‘even the half has not been told me of what I first heard.’

But unfortunately, many churches are the other way around. A lot of people are attracted, when they come, inside they discover is another story: it’s full of politics, and fighting, and quarrelling, and confusion.

It is the same with many Godly men, many preachers rather. I’ve found that in my life as a younger Christian, I would be attracted to a person because his preaching was so wonderful. And then I got close to him, and I found he was very proud, I couldn’t get close to him. I found that he didn’t live properly with his wife. He hadn’t brought up his children properly, and many things like this. You get close and you find so many things; they lose their temper and they lord it over their co-workers. I was very disappointed in my younger days, and I saw this as what God wanted me to do.

I studied this 37 years ago as a Christian, and I found this is what God wanted me to be. And I’m very thankful for what I saw that the glory, the real glory was seen only on the inside.

Now I want to show you about the two pieces of what I call furniture which is in the outer court. You remember the outer court? In the outer court, I said there was a brazen altar and a brazen laver; it was made of bronze or copper.

The brazen altar was a hollow box in which the animals were put in, and sacrificed, and it had a grating perhaps to remove the ashes. And it had four horns in the four corners of the altar. And it was made of wood overlaid with bronze. So we’re talking here about this altar: it was made of wood overlaid with bronze.

And can you imagine with all the fire burning inside there day and night, burning, burning, burning, burning, burning, it doesn’t do anything to the bronze. The bronze still shines. But can you imagine what happened to the wood inside the bronze? If you opened it up, what do you think it looked like? It must have been all charred, and black. And that’s a picture of Jesus Christ dying on the cross and His suffering. The wood speaks of the inner sufferings of Christ: the charred wood inside the bronze which other people couldn’t see.

If you burnt an animal here, of course, you could see all the fire and the bronze getting hot, and getting dirty. That’s the external sufferings of Christ on Calvary. But inside that bronze was acacia wood. And that was burnt much more than the bronze. And I believe that the closer we get to God, we learn more of the inner sufferings of Christ on Calvary’s cross, particularly His being forsaken by the Father on Calvary, to compare that suffering with the nails and the spitting and the crown of thorns and all, that’s nothing. Crown of thorns is absolutely nothing compared to the break of fellowship with the Father.

Now most of us don’t know what break of fellowship with the Father means because our fellowship with the Father is broken so often and we don’t even bother about it. And so we got used to it, it’s like people who live in a slump… you know people who live in a slump, they don’t know what hygienic conditions are. But people who have lived in houses where they’ve never seen a lizard or never seen a cockroach in their life, they sort of shrink back when they come to situations which are dirty.

And there is a little picture of how Jesus from all eternity, He had fellowship with the Father, and then in Gethsemane, He faced the prospect that in a few hours ‘I will hang on the cross’, He was not afraid of that; He was not afraid of any amount of physical suffering, He’d have been willing to go through a hundred physical crucifixions.

But He said, ‘Father, is it true? Isn’t there any other way? Do I have to drink this cup?” What was that cup? That cup was not the physical suffering; the cup was: ‘Does My fellowship with You have to be broken for three hours?’ That’s what He wanted to avoid.

Is there any other way? He prayed and He prayed, He prayed, and the Father said, ‘No, there’s no other way.’

And He said, ‘Okay, Father, I’ll accept it.’

And I tell you, when you get close to God, you discover the love of Jesus Christ there in Gethsemane more than on Calvary. You tell little children about the physical sufferings of Christ, and when we are immature, that’s what we think of most. But the closer we get to God, we’re more taken up with the inner sufferings of Christ which He went through throughout His life. I don’t have time to explain all that. From His childhood, He was considered an illegitimate child. People made Him, pointed at Him and they said, ‘Mary is His mother; we don’t know who the father was.’ Many inner sufferings that He went through throughout His life which finally culminated in the greatest inner suffering which was break of fellowship with the Father.

And there we see the depth of His love for us, that He was willing to even let go of that in order to save us, because there was no other way. So that’s what we see in the acacia wood inside the bronze, which is not visible; nobody could ever see. All those priests could not see the condition of that wood; it was much worse than what you saw on the outside.

And the four horns on the corners of the altar picture — you know there’s a verse in Psalm 118 which says about binding the sacrifice…

Psalm 118:27: ‘Bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar.’ You know when you bring a bullock or something like that, they would tie it to the horns of the altar: bind the sacrifice and that speaks of Jesus being bound to go to Jerusalem to the cross. It says in Luke 9:51: ‘He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.’ Nothing would deter Him, and for us the message is, that if we want to follow Jesus, we also have to steadfastly set our face to take up the cross every day. That’s the only way to walk with God,

We live in a world and in a Christendom where people don’t take up the cross; they don’t understand the way of death to self, of humbling yourself and going down. And I pray that there will be some at least in our midst or many who understand what it is to steadfastly set our face even if other people are not going that way, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got one goal, I’ve got to take up the cross and follow Jesus. That’s what the horns on the altar speak about.

Then the laver which is this brazen laver on top here, that speaks of the Word of God, the washing of water by the word. You know, the priests had to come and wash themselves, their hands and feet before they went into… immediately this was just at the entrance to the tent, and so you wash yourself and then go in. And this was made out of polished brass, so you could see your face in it.

The Bible says in James chapter 1 that God’s Word is like a mirror. And you should not forget what you see there it says. So these people could see whether their face was dirty, when they came to the laver, this polished brass, you could see your face. And in fact, that was, we read what people used in those days as mirrors. The ladies in Israel used this as mirrors, and they contributed that for the making of the laver.

So that’s a picture of the Word of God in Ephesians 5:26 speaks about Jesus washing the church by the water of the word. It speaks of cleansing for service. It could also be taken as a picture of water baptism. If the altar is a picture of where our sins are forgiven, the next step after that is water baptism, which symbolizes the external cleansing from sin. It’s a symbol of external cleansing of our life.

Now we go INSIDE THE TENT. Now you remember I told you that there was this outer court. Let me just revise that.

See here, we have seen the brazen altar and the laver which is in the court of the Tabernacle. And then when you go inside, the laver is the entrance to the gate, you go in through into the tent. There are three things here before you find another curtain which blocks off the most holy place. The three things are here on that side which is the northern side: the table of showbread; and the southern side, the lampstand; and at the entrance to the most holy place is the altar of incense. Those are the three pieces of furniture inside the holy place.

There is just one more thing I wanted to mention here with this diagram. If you see down at the bottom, you see where north, south, east, west is. The Tabernacle entrance was at the eastern end. Every time they set up the tabernacle, it had to be with a gate at the eastern end. And there’s a reason for that. Everywhere around them were people who worshipped the sun. The sun was the god for most people, including Egyptians. And God wanted Israelites to have their back to the sun when they came in to worship God; exactly the opposite of a lot of church buildings that face east, and a lot of people who face east today praying to the sun god even today among Christians.

It’s very interesting to see that how God made the Israelites turn their back to the sun and face west so that they would deny the god of the Egyptians, the sun god and the devil has done such a tremendous work of bringing a lot of so-called Christendom full circle back to worship the god of the Egyptians, that’s the sun god.

And as they came here, they came to these three pieces of furniture, and then in the most holy place there was only one piece of furniture, that’s the art with the mercy seat. So please keep that in mind as we see the next few pictures.

So what you see here is first of all, the lampstand with seven branches and the golden table of showbread, was called a candlestick in the King James Version. But they never had candles those days; it means a lampstand which is lit by oil; there were vessels kept there for oil to be poured into these lamps, and that’s how the lamps burned.

Now the lampstand is a picture of Christ as the Light of the world. And what Jesus said to us, the church, ‘you are the light of the world.’ It’s a picture of our manifesting the life of Christ as a light: ‘in Him was life, and that life was the light of men’ (John 1:4).

The table of showbread where twelve loaves of bread, they had to be renewed regularly by the priests, symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel, and speaks of God’s Word… of Christ as our food, and in the Word we see Christ, everything is Christ… Christ as the light and Christ whom we see in Scriptures as our food. Jesus Christ is our food, it’s not just the printed words in Scripture; it’s Christ that is our food.

Most of these things were all just about three feet high; the brazen altar was about four and a half feet high, but this was little smaller three feet high, small one and a half by one and a half the alter, but this was a little bigger, one and a quarter by two and a quarter so, one and a half by two and a quarter feet.

And there was another piece of furniture which I want to show you here: this was the third bit of furniture inside the holy place that was the golden altar of incense which is different from the bronze altar in the outer court. This was the third item inside the holy place, where no animals were sacrificed, only incense. And there was a sweet perfume of incense, and inside… and this speaks of the high priestly ministry of Jesus Christ in prayer, so there was the bread and the lampstand and the incense speaking of God’s Word and prayer and a witness for Christ for us.

Inside the most holy place, there was only this one item of furniture: the ark and the ark as you see here if you can see on top had the blood, the animals’ blood was put there, once a year on the Day of Atonement, the high priest would go in his white dress with the blood in a vessel, and he would put it on the mercy seat. The mercy seat was just a lid but along with the mercy seat there were these two cherubims, and they speak of holiness.

You know when God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden, He put cherubs (cherubim is the plural of cherub) He put these cherubs to guard the Tree of Life, and those cherubs or cherubim were part of this mercy seat, and speaking of God’s holiness and that was in the most holy place and the high priest could go in there only once a year.

And inside this Ark, there were three items kept. One was: the two tablets of stone on which the Ten Commandments were written; and the other was Aaron’s rod that budded that you read of when there was a question about whether Aaron was the true high priest, his rod budded overnight; a broken rod produced fruit at night. And the third was a pot of manna. This speaks of God’s Word and obedience, and this speaks of resurrection power and this speaks about feeding on Christ as our manna, and on the Word of God. And this speaks about obedience to God’s commandments.

Now there’s one interesting thing I want to tell you about this pot of manna which is kept… these three things were kept inside the Ark.

Now I don’t know whether you remember in one particular place when David brought the Ark back there were certain people who were very curious to find out what’s inside the ark, and they lifted the lid of the Ark and it says: God smote a number of people there for being curious. They had no right to look inside the ark. In fact, the ark could not even be touched by those who were not Levites. Uzzah once tried to touch the ark, that was this ark, and God killed him on the spot. He said, ‘You’re not a Levite; you’ve got no business to touch God’s ark.’ God was very strict about these things.

Now one thing about this pot of manna that I spoke about is that, you know, when people kept the manna in their home, in 24 hours, it began to stink, and not only stink but breed worms. Now if you keep a loaf of bread for one day, it doesn’t get bad so quickly. But manna got bad much quicker than even meat. Even meat may not start breeding worms in 24 hours, but manna which was vegetarian, wasn’t animal food at all, it began to breed worms and began to stink in 24 hours, God was teaching Israel thereby: you need to go every day out and pick it up. You can’t pick up one day’s portion for two days. You’ve got to be in touch with God every day.

But we see that when this manna was put inside the ark, it did not stink; it did not breed worms for 40 years. And more than 40 years, the ark was there even years later four or five hundred years later, in David’s time, the ark was there. And for five hundred years, that manna did not stink.

Now the lesson we learned from that is that even though the manna fell from heaven, it lost its freshness. You can get an anointing from heaven and tomorrow you have lost it. You can get a word from heaven and it blesses you today, and tomorrow when you speak the same word, it’s not fresh.

You see, this is the reason why a lot of preaching of God’s Word today is so boring; it’s not fresh, there’s no life in it.

Here is the answer, if you can understand this, you’ve learnt the secret. Why did the manna stink when it was kept in your home? And why did the manna not stink when it was kept inside the ark?

Reason: because the ark was in the most holy place, and God’s Word and God’s truth and God’s anointing must be kept in God’s presence, then it will always be fresh. In other words, if I am to preach a truth that I understood 35 years ago, I remember taking a study on this 37 years ago, and if I am to teach something in a fresh way year by year I have to live in God’s presence. The truths are in my head, but it won’t be fresh; it won’t be anointed if I don’t live in God’s presence. That’s the thing which we learned from this; otherwise in one day it takes only 24 hours for things to begin to stink, for freshness to go.

The Bible says… Hebrews 3:13 says ‘exhort one another daily, otherwise you’ll be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.’

Now I want to show one other thing; you see here. This is the dress of Aaron when he went on the day of atonement one day in his life, he wore this dress completely white, completely simple when he went into God’s presence. The rest of the time he wore this dress… when he came before the people, he wore this dress. When he went before God, he went in a simple white dress.

Now there are two lessons we learned from that. One is when you come before God, you can’t come with all your worldly pomp and glory and all these things; you got to throw all that out. Come before God in simplicity. God wants you to come just as you are: naked, open.

And the other thing we learned from this is… God said particularly you read in Ezekiel 44 that when you go to the people, the Lord said, don’t go with this holy white dress to the people. When you go for other people, change your clothes and go like this. That’s what Jesus said when you fast, don’t let anyone know about it. Let your holy white dress be before God; when you come before people, anoint your face and appear to men as though you’re not fasting, appear to men as though you’re feasting, appear to men as though you’re grandly dressed.

I remember when I was a young Christian, and I decided to leave my job to serve the Lord full-time, I was encouraged to read something that said: ‘even when you don’t have any money, act as though you got plenty, then nobody will give you money like a beggar.’ You know, a lot of people give money to Christian workers just like they give to beggars out of charity: oh this poor man, I see his torn shirt, I better give him some money. And that really helped me that my need must be known only before God; before men I must anoint my face and appear that I’m feasting. This grand dress before men, and a very simple dress before God.

The number of truths we learned from this: Aaron had a tunic that’s down there, and a robe on top of that, a blue robe with bells and pomegranates underneath, and a thing called an ephod… this is the ephod, a dress on top of that, a turban on top and a shoulder to shoulder plates, you see here one on this shoulder, one on that shoulder; two stones — two precious stones were symbolizing his carrying on his shoulder God’s people, and a breastplate in front which had 12 precious stones, with the names of the 12 tribes of Israel showing that he carried them not only on his shoulder, he carried them on his heart.

God’s servants must carry other people on their shoulders, lifting their burdens like you carry little children on your shoulders. And you also got to carry them on your heart. That means you got to love them; have a concern for them.

I always say that if you want to be a prophet you got to have two things in your heart: you got to have God’s people in your heart, and you have to have God’s Word in your heart. If you have those two, God can make you His mouthpiece.

A lot of people have God’s Word in their heads, not in their hearts, because they’ve not obeyed it. And some people who have God’s Word in their heart, don’t have God’s people in their heart. And then of course they cannot be God’s mouthpieces.

So there are a number of lessons we learn from that also. Just one thing about this turban. In the front part of the turban was a metal plate where it was written: holiness unto the Lord. And if you read Exodus 28:36-38 it says there: ‘this was for Aaron to bear the sin in the holy things that Israel did.’ Now that’s an expression that comes only once in Scripture: ‘the iniquity of the holy things.’

Now we know the iniquity of sinful things, what is the iniquity of the holy things? You need to understand iniquity in the holy things. Jesus carries not only our sins like dirty thoughts, jealousy, anger, bitterness, many many evil things; He also has to carry the sin of our holy things. The sin of our holy things is, for example, when I preach, that’s a good thing, it’s a holy thing. But if I preach to get honor from people, there’s sin there. If I preach to get money from people, there’s sin there. If I go to some place to preach because I know they’ll give me a good offering there, that’s sin, that’s the sin of the Holy things. When I pray, because I want everybody to say, amen, hallelujah, and I’m also excited when they say amen, hallelujah, and I want their appreciation and when I finished praying, I think I hope everybody was impressed by that prayer. That whole prayer was sinful.

These are the sins Jesus has to carry: iniquity in the holy things, good things done for honor; the motive is sinful.

Now the builders of the Tabernacle, we read in I think, it says the builders of the tabernacle were in chapter 31, I think verse first few verses, Bezalel and Aholiab. The interesting thing is they were filled with the Spirit and wisdom. Those who built the tabernacle required to be full of the Holy Spirit and full of wisdom. A lot of so-called people who are baptized in the Holy Spirit, they’re very foolish in the way they behave. And they don’t build a church. You need to be like Stephen about whom it says: he was full of the Spirit and the wisdom.

So those who built the tabernacle we read in Exodus 31 were full of the Spirit and of wisdom.

Now in conclusion I want to show one more thing. These three parts of the Tabernacle speak of three levels at which you can live the Christian life. One is the level of acceptance: God has accepted me; I’m a child of God; I’m going to heaven. That’s the outer court life.

The second is the level of service: you must serve God, people say beyond acceptance. It’s not just that I go to heaven, the priests were always busy serving here. There were many people in the outer court, very few serving here. Service, service, saved to serve, they say.

But there’s something still further: fellowship with God. In the most holy place, there’s only one person: God. That’s the lesson we learned in the Sabbath day for Adam. God said fellowship first, the ark first, then service.

The ark, yes thank God for the one gate; there’s only one way of salvation: thank God for Calvary, thank God for water baptism, thank God we’re accepted; thank God we can serve. But the most important thing is fellowship.

Now in the Old Testament, the veil was not rent. You could not go into the most holy place. Nobody could go there; even the high priest once a year to show that you couldn’t go there.

But when Jesus died, the veil in the temple was rent showing that that which man could not have till now, fellowship here in the most holy place to be alone with God, to worship Him, to give Him the glory due unto His name, to talk with God, and walk with Him.

I say with all of my heart, I would any day walk with God rather than with men. If you can’t say that, you can’t really serve God. You got to walk with God before you walk with men. You got to live before God before you live before men.

If you want what you say before men to be effective, live before God not just in a few minutes before the meeting but all the time, even when I stand here, I minister to God first and then to the people. Always before God: that is the message of the veil that was rent. When Jesus died, it says, Hebrews 10:20 ‘He made a new and living way through the veil.’ His flesh was rent on Calvary’s cross, and He made a way into the most holy place and the veil was rent immediately from top to bottom, showing that God did it and the veil was… and the way was open now for us to go inside to fellowship with God. That fellowship with Jesus valued so much that He never wanted to lose it.

We can say the outer court speaks of those who are born of the Spirit; the Holy Place speaks of those who are baptized in the Holy Spirit and the Most Holy Place speaks that those who are led by the Holy Spirit which is much more than just baptized in the Holy Spirit.

The outer court speaks of a life of Thanksgiving for all that God has done; the Holy Place speaks of a life of praise… praise is more than Thanksgiving; the Most Holy Place speaks of worship. Thanksgiving; praise; worship. Most Christians never go beyond Thanksgiving and praise.

A lot of what we call worship meeting is actually only a Thanksgiving and praise meeting. Worship means much more than that: to worship God in spirit and in truth.

In the outer court you had natural light of the sun; in the holy place you had the light of the lampstand; in the most holy place you had no light except the light of God. A complete dependence on God alone, no dependence on the sun or the lampstand; no dependence on anything human — on God; total dependence on God for everything.

John says: I write unto you babes, I write unto young men, I write unto you fathers. Here are the babes, outer court; here are the young men: holy place; here are the fathers, most holy place.

Jesus said, ‘the seed is sown, some produce 30-fold, outer court; some produce 60-fold, holy place; some produce hundredfold, most holy place.’

Wonderful truths in the Word of God. It’s the glory of God to conceal a matter; glory of kings to search it out.

Let’s pray that God will make us a tabernacle in which He can dwell and be happy. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, help us to be the tabernacle that you want in our lives, in our homes, and in our churches; we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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