Alright brethren, let's turn
in our Bibles to Exodus 26. Exodus chapter 26. Let's begin reading in verse
15. And thou shalt make boards for
the tabernacle of Shittimwood, standing up. Ten cubits shall
be the length of a board, and a cubit and a half shall be the
breadth of one board, two tenons or their feet shall there be
in one board, two feet in one board, two hands set in order
one against another. In other words, there's one on
each side of the underside of the board, just little straight
little feet that come out of the board. And it says Thus shalt
thou make for all the boards of the tabernacle. And thou shalt
make the boards for the tabernacle, 20 boards on the south side southward. And thou shalt make 40 sockets
of silver under the 20 boards. Two sockets under one board for
his two tenants. And two sockets under another
board for his two tenants. You get the picture here. These
two sockets that came down out of each board had had a foundation
of silver, a socket that each tenon went into. So there was
one on each side of the board. So one board was held together
by two sockets of silver. They weighed 100 pounds apiece.
And it says now, verse 20, and for the second
side of the tabernacle on the north side, there should be 20
boards. And there are 40 sockets of silver, two sockets under
one board and two sockets under another And for the sides of
the tabernacle westward thou shalt make six boards. And two
boards shalt thou make for the corners of the tabernacle in
the two sides. And they shall be coupled together
beneath and they shall be coupled together above. Above the head
of it unto one ring. And thus shall it be for them
both. They shall be for the two corners. And they shall be eight
boards in their sockets of silver. 16 sockets, two sockets under
one board, two sockets under another board. And thou shalt
make bars of shittum wood. Now, these are the bars that
run front to back and then across the back of it. This is what's
going to hold it all together, you know. So these are bars. It says, verse 26, thou shalt
make bars of shittum wood, five for the boards of the one side
of the tabernacle. and five bars for the boards
of the other side of the tabernacle and five bars for the boards
of the side of the tabernacle for the two sides westward. So
you had five boards. You had, you know, one, two,
three, four, five running front to back, left to right. All right? So you got five boards
on each side. And then verse 28 says in the
middle bar, in the midst of the boards shall reach from end to
And it says and thou shalt overlay the boards with gold and make
their rings of gold for places for the bars. The bars went through
golden rings. And it says and thou shalt overlay
the bars with gold. And thou shalt rear up the tabernacle
according to the fashion thereof which was showed thee in the
mount. So the sides of the tabernacle, this frame, was comprised of
boards made out of shidom wood overlaid with gold. That was
the frame of this tabernacle. They stood up on a base of silver
sockets. Each board had two sockets underneath
it. And those silver sockets were
made from ransom money, from redemption money. When we get
to Exodus 30, I can't wait until we get there because it's such
a beautiful picture. This whole foundation of this
tabernacle was made from the silver that God collected from
redemption. Every one of them gave Shekel
of the sanctuary to remind them they were redeemed by God. So
this foundation represents redemption. That's what this whole foundation
typifies is redemption. So everything in it is a picture
of Christ. And then to bind the boards together,
five bars were overlaid in gold and they ran the length of the
tabernacle so the whole thing was bound together by these bars
of gold. So you had the foundation holding
it together, you had these corners holding it together, and you
had these bars holding it together. It's estimated, somebody said
that there was over 5 tons of pure silver in these sockets,
this foundation weighed about 5 tons. You can imagine how they
constantly had redemption on their mind every time they moved
that tabernacle. Those sockets weighed 100 pounds
a piece. And that silver reminded them
of redemption. That's where the shekel came
from. And so that would be about 1.8
million dollars today is what that foundation would cost. If
you think about what our foundation costs, think about what the anti-type
costs, what that foundation pictured, think about what it costs, the
precious blood of Christ. So my subject this morning is
Fitly Framed Together. So like this tabernacle was fitly
framed together on one foundation and held together by bars, so
are we fitly framed together on Christ, our one foundation,
and held together by Christ as His holy tabernacle in whom He
dwells. That's the picture here. Now
first of all, let's look at the boards. The boards typify Christ's
people. Christ's people in Him, by what
He's accomplished. These boards were framed together.
They stood upright. They were framed together and
Christ fitly frames His people together into His holy temple. Listen to Ephesians 2 verse 21. It says, In Christ all the building
is fitly framed together and groweth unto a holy temple in
the Lord. He's talking about His people.
He compares us to living stones. There he's talking about the
temple, Solomon's temple, but we're pictured in this tabernacle
as well. We're the boards fitly framed together by Christ and
in Christ, and we grow up into a holy temple. Now you think
about these boards representing you and I who Christ has redeemed.
This Shittim wood was a tree. It grew. It was a tree. It was
rooted in the earth to begin with. Isn't that a good picture
of us? We come forth into this world
and our roots are in this sin-cursed earth. And if we were left there,
we would hold on to this sin-cursed earth and we'd never let it go
until God threw us out in judgment. But thankfully, by God's grace,
the next thing they did, they came in and they cut that tree
down. And you and I, by God's grace, were cut down. He has to cut down our flesh. He has to cut us down. And He
brought us down into repentance from dead works that we were
in. And then at the bottom of each
of these boards, there was these two tenons. They were what you
would call hands. I think the Hebrew word actually
means hands. Or you would call them feet.
But they were just two two pieces that came down so that they could
fit into those two sockets. Well brethren, God gives us faith
so that like these feet on these boards, we stand on one foundation. We stand on one foundation, Christ
in whom our redemption is fully accomplished. He finds us rooted
in the earth, by grace He brings us down just like they brought
that tree down. He gives us faith and He makes
us stand on Christ our foundation. And these boards were overlaid
with pure gold. They were overlaid with pure
gold. And if you looked at them, you didn't see the wood inside. You just saw the pure gold. That's
all you would see if you looked at them. The gold typifies Christ's
righteousness which covers us and adorns us. And when God looks
upon us, brethren, in Christ, He looks upon us in Christ. He's
not looking at the wood of our sinful humanity. He's looking
at the gold of Christ's righteousness. And that's all He sees. That's
all He sees. Now the corner boards, we're
told here, they were coupled together beneath and they were
coupled together above. That was how they were made stable. They were coupled together beneath,
they were coupled together above. And that's Christ's regenerated
church. By the Holy Spirit, by Christ
dwelling in us, we're coupled together here beneath in this
earth. We're united in that bond of
the Spirit. It can't be broken because He
won't let it be broken. And we're coupled together above,
because we're in Christ. And in Christ, we're one, holy,
spotless, unblameable church in Him. Coupled together beneath
in this earth, coupled together above in glory. And another thing
that's interesting is these boards were all equal length. They were all equal in height. All of them were ten cubits high.
You know how God sees His people? There's no weak believers and
strong believers and carnal believers and spiritual believers. We're
all equal. Because we're all accepted in
one. We're accepted in the same righteousness
of Christ. In the same holiness of Christ. And so we're equal. We're equal. And there's nothing that makes
us not to be equal. Because our acceptance is one way. It's not
in what we do. It's in what Christ did. And
so we're equal in Him. We ought never look down on one
another as one being beneath the other. We ought to look at
each other the way God sees us in Christ. One, equal, equal. Now secondly, we see how we're
fitly framed together in Christ. Ephesians 2 said, in Christ,
the whole building is fitly framed together. And we see here how
it's in Christ that we're framed together when we look at the
foundation. Did you see there in verse 18, he began talking
about these boards And he said, verse 19, thou shalt make 40
sockets of silver under the 20 boards, two sockets under one
board for his two tenants, two sockets under another board for
his two tenants. And he keeps repeating that.
He keeps letting us know that each board has two sockets of
silver under it. onto the whole thing. So you
take these sockets of silver, these two sockets of silver,
they were formed, you put them together and they formed one
foundation, one foundation I think I read somewhere where these
sockets were in the shape of triangles so that they fit together,
they interlocked so that when it was together, it was one solid
foundation. Now, this silver foundation,
when we get to Exodus 30, I was so tempted to just preach on
this alone, but when we get to Exodus 30, we're going to see
that God commanded they bring the shekel of the sanctuary.
That meant, it would be like saying, bring me a half dollar
from the U.S. Mint. One that hadn't been in
your pocket, one that hadn't had the edges shaved off of it.
In other words, it's got to be the exact weight of a shekel. A shekel was like a quarter or
a half dollar. It was money is what it was. And he said, it has to be the
shekel of the sanctuary. It has to be a shekel that is
the exact precise weight as God regards a shekel. You know, if
you take your money and it goes in your pocket and you walk around
with it, and over time, little teeny tiny bits get scraped off
of that. And if you had a, if you had
a, a way to measure that, the weight of that and it was so
minute it would show you that it doesn't weigh what it weighed
when it came out of the mint because some has been shaved
off. Now you might say well that's
sort of splitting hairs isn't it that if just that little bit
was shaved off Not with God, because this represents righteousness.
It's got to be the exact perfect righteousness God demands. When
He talks about weights and measures, this is what He's talking about.
He's talking about it being the exact Sheikah of the Sanctuary. And so that foundation pictured
the perfect righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ that He
worked out for His people. God required it. And so it was
called a memorial, it was to remind the people continually
of redemption. Everywhere you looked in this
tabernacle, in front of everything else that you saw, redemption. Redemption. And that's what Christ,
when we stand to preach, What are we preaching? Why did Christ
come? He came to manifest the righteousness of God. The righteousness
of God. I've said this to you before.
I understand people, you know, balking at the doctrine of Christ
made sin because they don't want Christ's glory to be diminished
in any way. We don't either. We're not saying
he was made a sinner. We're not saying he rebelled
against God. What we're saying is it had to
be done in perfect righteousness because, and I don't misunderstand
what I'm saying here, but even more important than Christ's
innocence was the righteousness of God that he was sent to manifest.
You get what I'm saying? What we should be defending is
the righteousness of God that Christ was sent to manifest.
That was the very purpose for which He came. And so, however
God did it, He did it perfectly righteous because that's what
Christ came to manifest, the righteousness of God. being justified
freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus. It's nowhere else but in Christ.
Our foundation is even more sure than these silver sockets. For
as much as you know, you were not redeemed with corruptible
things such as silver and gold from your vain conversation received
by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of
Christ as of a lamb without spot and without blemish." This perfect
spotless lamb of God presented himself and yes, sin was laid
on him and he was made to be so that it was righteous for
God to pour out justice upon him. But I'll tell you what it
was that made it effectual. I'll tell you what it was that
made it accepted of God. Because in Himself, He's the
spotless Lamb. His blood was perfect blood.
His blood was holy blood. His blood was righteous blood
and it accomplished justifying His people from our sin. He purchased
us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us. And
so this solid foundation held up the whole structure. Look
at Isaiah 28, 16. If you want to turn there, I'm
going to read you several scriptures here that shows you that I'm
not just making this up. Christ is our foundation. Look
at Isaiah 28, 16. Therefore thus saith the Lord
God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried
stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. He that believeth
shall not be ashamed. Matthew 16, 18 and you can look
at Acts 4 with me. Go to Acts 4 and let me read
you Matthew 16 while you turn in there. You remember when Christ
was talking to Peter, and he was talking about himself, and
he told Peter, he said, Thou art Peter. Peter's name meant
stone. It meant a rock. That's what
his name meant. But Christ was saying to him,
Peter, your name is a rock, but it's on this foundation. He's
saying it's on me. I'm the foundation on which I'll
build my church. You get what he's saying? It
was right after that that Peter was making his, or right before
that, Peter was making his boast about never forsaking the Lord.
The Lord said, Peter, your name is Rock, but it's on this foundation
I'm building my church. Not on you. I'm building it on
me. On me. Look here at Acts 4.11. This
is the stone This is the foundation which is said of all of you builders,
which is become the head of the corner. He's the head cornerstone.
And neither is there salvation in any other, for there's none
other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be
saved. You see, if we're going to enter
into God's glory, into the presence of a holy God and be accepted
of holy God, You're going to have to have a righteousness
that's equal to God's righteousness. I'm going to have to have a righteousness
equal to God's righteousness. It doesn't matter if you obey
the law a little bit better than your neighbor, because your neighbor
breaks it and so do you. And if we break one law, we've
broken the whole law. We got to have a righteousness
equal to God's righteousness. That's why there's salvation
in none other but Christ. He's that perfect shekel of the
sanctuary. He's that foundation made up
of the exact measurement that God requires. Perfect righteousness. Now go to Matthew 7 with me real
quick. Now you get the picture here.
Now in that desert where they were, everything was sand. All
around them it was sand. And if they had tried to build
that tabernacle and used the foundation of sand, it would
have fallen down. That was called a waste howling
wilderness and there was winds and there was like the winds
of trials that we face. There was strong winds. If they
would have tried to anchor that tabernacle down in that desert,
it would have fallen. It would have fallen. But this
foundation was not sand, it was a rock, it was stone and therefore
it did not fall. Now listen to what Christ said
right here in Matthew 7 verse 24. He says, Whosoever heareth
these sayings of mine, and I'll sum them up for you, believe
on me. That's what he was saying throughout
that whole sermon, believe on me. Whosoever heareth these sayings
of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man which
built his house upon a rock. And the rain descended, and the
floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and
it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that
heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, he shall
be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the
sand. Brethren, whatever offerings,
whatever works that they did in that tabernacle, think about
it now. You've come to Christ, you trust
Christ that He's your righteousness. There's a lot of people in this
world that will teach you now, now that's fine, believe on Christ
for your righteousness, but now when it comes to your holiness,
when it comes to your sanctification, now you've got to do some works
to add to it. It's a co-effort between you
and Christ. That is a foundation of sand. That's not according
to these Scriptures. Paul said, having begun in the
Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh? Having begun hearing
about the works of faith of Christ and His faithfulness, are you
now made perfect by hearing about works you must do? No. Christ is our sanctification.
Christ is the holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.
So if you start trying to build on that foundation something
that you've done to add to it, God said He's going to send trials
and He said the hail and the fire and the rain is going to
sweep it all away because it's nothing but wood, hay and stubble.
But you notice when they went in that tabernacle to sacrifice,
thank offerings to God, on what foundation did they do everything? On the foundation of redemption
finished. They didn't add to that foundation.
They walked in there and their walk and everything they did
in offering those offerings to God, it didn't add to that foundation. It didn't add anything to that
foundation. They did everything on the basis
of that foundation already laid, already finished, already complete. And when you're truly sanctified,
when God has sanctified you, when of God Christ is made unto
us sanctification, then the things we do in this world for Him and
His cause and His people. We don't do it from the heart
motive of trying to add something to Christ. We do it from the
heart motive of knowing the foundation is laid. It's finished. We're
redeemed. We're holy. We're accepted. We're
unblameable. We're unreprovable in God's sight.
That's the motivation for God's people to do what we do. We don't
add to Christ. Other foundation. 1 Corinthians
3.11. Other foundation can no man lay
than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. He's the only
foundation. These boards were 10 cubits in
height, and there were 10 giras of ransom money that was paid. Now, 10 speaks of responsibility. Ten cubits in height. Every board
was ten cubits high. And to have this ransom money,
ten geras were paid. Now you think about this. Ten
is responsibility. The boards represent His people.
The geras represent Christ and His redemption. Ten represents
responsibility. Ten commandments is responsibility.
Christ took full responsibility for His people. He's the ten
Geras that made up the foundation. And you see here, He paid the
redemption price equal to the full demand of God's perfect
law which we had broken. You get that? You see these boards? There's ten in the height of
these boards. There's ten in the foundation. He took responsibility and paid
the exact amount owed to pay for our responsibility, to meet
our responsibility to God. He did that for us. So we rest
in Him. Now thirdly, thirdly, I want
you to see the bars, these boards that were running front to back,
left to right, holding the whole thing together. Verse 26, he
says, you make bars of shidom wood, five boards for one side
of the tabernacle, five boards for the boards of the other side
of the tabernacle, five bars for the boards of the tabernacle
for the two sides westward. And the middle bar in the midst
of the boards shall reach from end to end. In other words, the
middle bar, there was two on the bottom, two on the top, but
in the middle there was a gold bar that went straight through
all the boards. It went through the middle of
the boards, all the way to the end. And it says, verse 29, at
the second part, their rings of gold shall be places for the
bars. So they went through these rings
of gold, and thou shalt overlay the bars with gold. So you got
five bars on all sides, overlaid in gold. This is the stability. You got the foundation holding
it, you got the bars holding it, with one bar running right
through the middle of the boards. Christ is the gold bar that holds
His church together. He's the foundation and He's
the one whose omnipotent mercy and grace is wrapped around His
people, wrapped around His church to keep us fitly framed together,
protected and stable in this world. He keeps us on the foundation. He keeps us pointed up to heaven. He keeps us looking to Him and
Him alone. Listen to Ephesians 4.16. Go
there. Don't you see it? Can I prove
that he's the one that does this for his church? Ephesians 4.16. You got a little different analogy
here. The Lord's comparing it to a body. You could look at
a building as a body. Ephesians 4.16, but this makes
my point. It's all Christ that holds us
together. It's Christ who's working in
us, like that middle bar going through the middle of the boards.
Ephesians 4.16, he's talking about the church, talking about
why he gave preachers for the perfecting of the saints, for
the edifying of the church. Now watch this in verse 16. He just spoke of Christ there
in verse 15. He's the head, Christ. And it's
from Christ the whole body is fitly joined together and compacted
by that which every joint supplies according to the effectual working. According to Christ effectually
working in the measure of every part. And so He makes us to increase,
makes the body increase unto the edifying of itself in love.
Like that gold bar that ran through the middle of the boards, Christ
in you is the hope of glory. Christ in you is the hope of
glory because Christ in you keeps you standing on the foundation. Christ in you keeps you fitly
framed together with your people. Christ in you keeps you looking
to Christ only. That's why Christ in you is the
hope of glory. If you took that middle bar out
of that tabernacle, it wouldn't have stability. That middle bar
going through, along with those other bars, it's holding that
whole thing together. And Christ is represented there.
Peter tells us we've been made partakers of the divine nature. Christ is in His people. He's
in his people. Now each board had three rings. One at the end, one in the middle,
one at the other end, and these bars, not the one in the middle,
but the other four bars hung in these rings. Every row of
bar had three rings, three rings, three rings, three rings, and
the bars ran through those three rings. That's what held it in
place. Each believer has three golden
rings through which we're united by God's grace, by our Savior. This is what unites us to one
another. We have three golden rings that keep us united. Go
to 1 Corinthians 13. I'll show you what it is. We'll
end with this. It's right here. This is what Christ in you produces. This is what He sustains. This
is all of God and not of us. And this is what holds us together.
This is our union in Christ right here. Look at 1 Corinthians 13,
13. Here's the three rings. Who's that faith in? It's in
Christ. Now abideth hope, who's that
hope in? It's in Christ. Now abideth charity,
love. Who's that love from? It's from
Christ. Who's it in? It's in Christ.
We're constrained by His love for us. These three, these are
the three golden rings that keep us together. Faith, hope, and
love. And one day, one day, We're not
going to need faith. We're going to see Him. We're
not going to need hope. Our hope's going to be realized.
But we'll still love. We'll still love. And so He says,
but the greatest of these is charity. I pray God will bless
that, brethren. Let's stand together. We'll be
dismissed. Our gracious Father, we thank
You that Once again, that You give us these plain, clear pictures
in Your Word, that You would use a structure, just a building
to show us Christ so that us dull, sinners can understand
and have some comprehension of your mercy and grace in Christ.
Lord, make us to see that Christ is all. He's our foundation. He's the bars that hold us together.
He's the gold that covers us. He's the coverings that's over
us. He's everything. and keep us looking to Him alone.
In this hour, Lord, bless this word to our hearts and we pray
that in the next hour you'd meet with us and bless the word to
us. Do the same for your people everywhere this morning. Wherever
they are, give your pastors unction to speak clearly and preach Christ
boldly and give your people the faith to behold Him and rest
in Him alone. Lord, I know we suffer trials
of your hand. but help us to understand that
every one of them have this one purpose. They're to make us look
to you. They're to make us trust Christ,
no matter what they are. So, Lord, keep us in the trial
until you accomplish that purpose. Make us look to Christ only.
Forgive us, Lord, now for our unbelief. We ask these things
in Christ's name. Amen.