Exodus 26. I have a message that has been
on my heart, but I believe I'm going to have to give it a little
time before I preach it. So I'm going to try to preach
this morning from Exodus 26. Now, before we get into the text,
you know that the tabernacle in the wilderness was typical
of Christ himself. It was typical of Christ himself.
We're told in Hebrews 9, it says the tabernacle was a figure for
the time then present, and then it says, but Christ being come
a greater and more perfect tabernacle. not made with hands, that is
to say not of this building. So in one sense the tabernacle
typifies Christ. And then also God told Moses
to build this tabernacle so that God might dwell tabernacle among
his people. This is where God's presence
was, was in this tabernacle. And We know from John 1.14 says,
the word was made flesh and dwelled among us. That means he tabernacled
among us. Our body is called a tabernacle. And in this sense, there are
ways in which the tabernacle in the wilderness pictures a
believer, an individual believer. Revelation 21.3 said, I heard
a great voice out of heaven saying, behold, the tabernacle of God
is with men. And he will dwell, he will tabernacle
with them. And they shall be his people
and God himself shall be with them and be their God. And Christ
dwells in his church as a whole. He dwells in individual believers. He dwells in his church as a
whole. Hebrews 8.2 says he's a minister
of the sanctuary. and of the true tabernacle, which
the Lord pitched and not man. His people and his church together
is the tabernacle he pitched, that he redeemed and fitly framed
together and that he dwells in. So in one sense, the tabernacle
pictures Christ himself. In another sense, it pictures
his people and his church in whom he dwells. Now today we're
going to be looking at the innermost covering of the tabernacle. But for context I want to look
at, there were four coverings and I want to look just briefly
here at all four coverings just for context to get a sense of
what these typified. We'll look at them in more detail
some other day. But this inner layer was called
the tabernacle itself. It's called the tabernacle. And
I want you to see it was made of ten fine, fine linen, fine twined linen,
ten big sheets of linen made up this inner tabernacle. And within that, those sheets,
there was these elaborately embroidered cherubim, within that white tabernacle,
you had these cherubim. Let's just read the first verse
here, Exodus 26, 1. Moreover, thou shalt make the
tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue
and purple and scarlet cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make. shalt thou make them. Now this
inner layer, we're going to look at just this today and we'll
read more about it, but this pictures the holiness of Christ,
His righteousness, and Him being the holiness and the righteousness
of His people. That's what we have pictured
here. And then over that linen covering, That linen, that linen,
those linen walls, that linen covering that was called the
tabernacle, over that was a covering of goat's hair. And God calls
it the tent. Not the tabernacle, he calls
it the tent. And it was to be a covering for that tabernacle
made of linen. Look here in verse seven. And
thou shalt make curtains of goat's hair. Black, it was dark, colored
goat's hair, to be a covering upon the tabernacle. The linen
part was the tabernacle. This part was a tent. It covered
that part. You look down, he calls it a
tent when he starts describing the next layer. Look down at
verse 14. Thou shalt make a covering for the tent. There's another
covering that goes over this, but he calls this covering of
goat's hair, he calls it a tent. It's covering that linen part. This layer typifies our humanity. This black goat's hair. Christ
was not sinful, but he was made in the likeness of sinful flesh.
And that sinful flesh is what we have typified by this tint
of goat's hair that covered that linen part. Then at last he was
made sin for his people, and yet he remained inwardly holy. pictured by the linen here. And
this fine twine linen was under, it was under the tint of goat's
hair. And so we have a picture there,
Christ was holy within. He was in a body of flesh and
he was holy within. He's holy God. in human flesh. And that's what
you have pictured here. And when he makes his people
holy, we have sinful flesh outwardly, but inwardly we're holy. We're
holy. You have the outward goat's hair,
the black, and inward you have this fine linen, the holiness
of Christ. Then there was a third covering.
Verse 14 says, and thou shalt make a covering for the tent.
There was a covering that went over the goat's hair, tent. And
it was ram's skins dyed red. And this top typifies Christ
who died as a sacrifice for his people, whose blood has purged
away the sin of his people. This covering covered the black
goat's hair covering, that tint. And Christ died to cover our
sins with his precious blood. These red ram skins covered the
tint of black goat's hair. to cover the sins of his people.
So from the outside, you look at it like this, you have the
black goat's hair covering, and you have the ram's skins dyed
red, picture Christ's blood, Christ's sacrifice for his people.
And that covering is between the black goat's hair and God.
So it covers that covering of black goat's hair. picture of
Christ. And then from, think about this
too, from the inside you couldn't see the black goat's hair. All
you saw was the fine twine linen, that holiness. And so in Christ,
with Christ and his people, and Christ's blood covering his people,
God only sees the holiness within his people and the righteousness
of Christ without. That's what you have pictured.
But then there was a fourth outer covering And it was a very tough
kind of leather. It says here, chapter 26, verse
14, the second part says, and a covering above of badger skins. And when you looked on the tabernacle,
all you saw was these badger skins. There was nothing comely
about it. And that picture's Christ who
made himself of no reputation. There was no comeliness about
him that when we would see him, we would desire him. And this
covering, though, was a tough leather that protected the whole
thing. And Christ is our protector,
he's our shield, he's our defender, that protects this whole, everything
about his people. But now, I just wanted to give
you that by way of introduction to show you all four of these
coverings. But now today we're just gonna
look at the Tabernacle of Fine Twined Linen. The Tabernacle
of Fine Twined Linen. And this inner layer typifies
the holiness of Christ who is the holiness of His people. He
has to be perfect to be accepted of God. If we're going to be
brought into God's presence, we have to be righteous and holy.
And there's no righteousness and holiness anywhere but in
Christ. He's the righteousness and holiness
of His people. That's what we have pictured
in this tabernacle. Now first of all, let's focus
on Christ, our holiness, and our righteousness. Let's just
get right to Christ. Here's verse 1. He says, Moreover
thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined
linen. Now, these ten curtains They
point us to the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord our
righteousness, point us to his holiness and his righteousness.
And when you hear the number 10, what do you think about?
What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the
number 10? You think about the Ten Commandments. First thing
we think about when we hear the number 10. The number in scripture
means responsibility. You and I had a responsibility
to obey the law. but a responsibility doesn't
mean you have the ability. And so we've broken it in Adam,
and we've been unable to keep the law. But Christ came, and
Christ is the righteousness of the law himself. He is the holiness
and righteousness the law demands, and he's the righteousness God
has provided for his people. You know, Romans 10, three says,
Romans 10.2 says the Pharisees, Paul said, they were ignorant
of God's righteousness. But what's God's righteousness?
He said, Romans 10.3, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone that believeth. The only way to have this righteousness
is to believe on Christ. Cease from our works and rest
in Christ. He's the righteousness God's
provided. He's the only righteousness God
will receive. Now this fine twined linen typifies
Christ's holiness, his righteousness. Fine means it was the very best
material that could be used. And Christ is the very best.
He's the only begotten son of God. He's the very best that
God could possibly provide. Twined means the threads were
double. You know when you go by You go
buy sheets and you look at the thread count. If you buy Pima
cotton, you know, it's really soft and feels good because of
the thread count. This was fine twined linen. Really, really good linen. They say it was, some say it
was doubled six times so that it was such fine quality. Some
say it was doubled as much as 24 times. I don't know, but it
was fine twined linen. And the picture here is Christ
fulfilled the law for his people from his perfect holy heart. The only way outwardly he could
obey the law and fulfill it in righteousness That's what has
to do with the outward fulfillment of the law is righteousness.
But the only way he could do that is if inwardly he was holy
and pure in heart. And every motive with which he
served God was pure, with no taint of sin whatsoever. And
it was. That's why he was born of a virgin. So he wouldn't be conceived with
the heart we were. We came forth with a heart. Our
motive's wrong from the beginning. We want to indebt God and serve
from a mercenary spirit from the very beginning. When you
have the earliest recollections of going to this Word and looking
at this Word, I guarantee you did exactly what I did. You went
to this Word to try to find something you could do. What am I supposed
to do? And nobody had to teach me that.
I just thought I'm supposed to go to this Word, find something
I'm supposed to do to please God. We have to be taught and
given a new motive so that we're not trying to indebt God. You
know Adam when he's sending the guard, what's the first thing
Adam did? He went to try to find a covering. But he didn't look
to God for that covering. Where did he look to for it?
He looked to himself. He went and tried to make fig
leaves to cover himself. Christ is the fulfillment. Go
to Revelations 19, 8. He's the holiness, he's the righteousness
we have to have, and that's what's represented by this linen. Let
me show you that right here, Revelation 19, verse 8. He says
here, He's talking about Christ's bride
and he says, and to her was granted that she should be arrayed in
fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the righteousness
of the saints. That's what it represents. And
you see, righteousness and holiness is granted to us. It's given
to us. And it's only from Christ. He's
the righteous and holy one. He's the one that has to give
it to us. Christ is both our righteousness and our sanctification. The world teaches you, if they
teach you Christ is your righteousness, then they teach you that you
have to earn a holiness through a co-effort between you and the
Lord. That's what most teach, but no,
Christ is our righteousness and our holiness. Of God are you
in Christ, who of God is made unto us righteousness and sanctification. He's both to his people. Now
in contrast to this fine linen, clean and white, this righteousness
that Christ gives us by nature, what are we? We are all as an
unclean thing and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. So we have
to have Christ to grant us his righteousness, his holiness,
so that we'll be perfect before the law and perfect in heart.
We have to have it from Christ. Now secondly, back in Exodus
26, we see a picture of what it took
for Christ to unite his people with God. We see what it took
for Christ to unite us with God. This is typified here. It says in verse 1, it says,
not only were they to make this fine twined linen, they were
to take blue and purple and scarlet, and they were to intertwine cherubims. They were to make you know, the
embroidery look of cherubims in this fine twine linen. They
were to do it of blue and purple and scarlet. It was cunning work. That means very skilled work
that they were made from. Now, these threads of blue, purple,
and scarlet that were cunningly intertwined and woven so that,
and it wasn't like a From what I'm reading, it's not that it
was like they had the fine twine linen and then they embroidered
the cherubims on it. They actually wove the cherubims
into the fine twine linen so that it was all, you know, one
piece woven together, intertwined together. And so that took some
cunning work. That took some cunning, skilled
craftsmanship to do that. Now, some say the cherubims represent
the angels which are ministering spirits, but you know, if you
study the scriptures, you'll find out cherubims don't look
like what we typically have pictures of what people call our angels.
That's not what cherubims look like. They had the faces of a
lion and the face of an eagle. They didn't look like these pictures
of little fat babies flying around with wings on their back. That's
not what they look like at all. But Christ's angels are ministering
spirits who minister to his people always. But the picture here
that overall we're looking at is of Christ dwelling in his
people and his people dwelling in Christ, whereby we're made
new, we're made holy and righteous by Christ. That's the picture
here overall. And so how are we made holy and
righteous by Christ? by His cunning work. It's His
cunning work that makes us holy and righteous. He makes us one
with Him and one with the Father. And we see that here in the colors
that are used. Now, when you look these colors
up in the Scriptures, Everywhere you look up these colors, they're
always listed in this order. Blue and purple and scarlet. There's other places that these
colors are used. And when they're used, God always
lists them as blue and purple and scarlet. That's significant.
That means it's significant. The order of this is significant.
Now you think of it, on one side is blue. One side's blue. When you look up in the sky,
when you look up toward the heavens, what do you see? You see blue.
You see blue. You picture you walked into this,
you walked into this holy tabernacle, and you looked up, and there's
this fine linen, white, clean and white, and there's these
cherubims, all in it. And there's blue, and there's
purple, and there's scarlet, but you look up, there's blue.
the heavens. What did it take to make us holy
and righteous? It took the son of God, God himself
coming down from heaven. He had to come down from heaven
to do a work to make his people holy. And then on the other side
is scarlet. You got blue on one side, on
the other side you got scarlet. That's the color of blood. That
means a man shed that. What did it take to make us righteous
and holy? Christ, the son of God, had to
be God and he had to be a man. The God-man, he came down and
he became the God-man. To make us holy and righteous,
he had to be, the son of God had to be made flesh like his
brethren that he came to save. Without the shedding of blood,
there's no remission of sin. And this is, we're talking about
how we're made holy and righteous. Now, in the middle is purple. Purple. That's the color of royalty. That's the color of royalty.
You can read in the scriptures, and it'll show you that when
Christ was crucified, for example, what did they, when they mocked
him, what did they do when they put that crown of thorns on him?
They put a purple robe on him. It symbolizes royalty. Purple
is made by combining the color blue and the color scarlet. Combine those two and you'll
get purple. And by combining the son of God
with the humanity of his people so that he became the God man,
our Lord Jesus Christ accomplished the redemption of His people.
He accomplished purging the sins of His people. He accomplished
making us righteous. And when He accomplished that
work, God exalted Him in His mediatorial, kingly honor and
glory to be both Lord and Christ of His people. To be a Prince
and a Savior. And there you have the royalty
that resulted from this blue and this scarlet together. That
to me is a much better picture and a much better spiritually
edifying than to just say these cherubims were angels. I see in this how Christ made
me righteous and holy. In doing that, he made me one
with the Father. one with the Father. Now lastly,
I want you to see here a type of Christ uniting his people. And we're gonna read the rest
of the text here and learn about this fine linen. He says, verse two, the length
of one curtain shall be eight and 20 cubits. That's 42 feet
long. That's one curtain, 42 feet long. And the breadth of one curtain,
four cubits. That's six feet wide. and every
one of the curtains shall have one measure. That means they're
not gonna be stitched together, they're gonna be one piece. You
know that picture of the garment of Christ, it's not sewn, it
doesn't have any seams in it, it's one piece. That's the picture
here. His holiness is perfect. Verse
three, the five curtains shall be coupled together one to another,
and other five curtains shall be coupled one to another. So
you got, That 42 by 6 foot sheet of fine linen, that's just one
curtain. You got five of those. And they're all coupled together,
five coupled together, and then you have another five coupled
together. And it says, and thou shalt make, verse 4, and thou
shalt make loops of blue loops of blue upon the edge of the
one curtain from the selvedge in the coupling, and likewise
shalt thou make in the uttermost edge of another curtain in the
coupling of the second. Fifty loops shalt thou make in
the one curtain, and fifty loops shalt thou make in the edge of
the curtain that is in the coupling of the second. And here's the
purpose. This is what, here's the important
thing right here. That the loops may take hold
one of another. You got five sheets that are
put together over here, five sheets put together over here,
and you got 50 loops so that they lay hold of one another. Put these loops over one another.
And then it says, and thou shalt make 50 taches of gold, and couple
the curtains together with the taches, and it shall be one tabernacle. one tabernacle. I don't know
exactly what these taches looked like, but the purpose of them
was like when we put the tent together out here or when we
run the little thing through there and wrap it around and
it holds everything together. You had these 50 loops and you
had these 50 gold taches that held everything together. together. Now these curtains, you had five
on one side, five on the other, united by these blue loops with
these gold tatches coupling them together. On one side of the
Ten Commandments, you have the commandments toward God. On the
other side, you have the commandments toward man. And when our Lord
Jesus, none of us could fulfill those obligations. None of us
could fulfill that. We couldn't fulfill it in a positive
way by keeping it, and then even if we could have done that, we'd
still have to die because we've sinned, and we'd have to feel
the negative side of it. We couldn't do it. We couldn't
fulfill the righteousness of the law. But our Lord Jesus Christ
came as the representative of his people, with his people on
his heart, and he served God the Father perfectly for his
people. And at the same time, he served
his people. He loved God and he loved his
people as himself. Remember, he said what the fulfillment
of the law is, is love. He loved the Father as Himself
and He loved His brethren as Himself. What does that look
like when somebody does that? It means they make themselves
so much the least that He was willing to be forsaken by God
the Father in judgment, willing to be forsaken by His people
so that He could make His people righteous and honor God and his
law and justifies people. Nobody's ever done anything remotely
like that and never will. And that's what's required to
keep the law. You know, you go around and you
try not to look at other people's fancy houses and you call that
not being covetous. That ain't it. It's going to
require a man loving God and his neighbor so much he's willing
to be forsaken of God that God might be honored and his people
saved. You know what I'm saying? If
it means saving his people, he's willing for God to pour out wrath
on him instead of on his people. That's how much he loved God
and wanted to honor God and that's how much he loved his people.
That's perfect love. That's the fulfillment of the
law. That's what we have to have to come into God's presence.
And the only way we can have that is through faith in Christ. But by doing this, he coupled
this law together so that it's perfect. It's perfectly fulfilled. And by doing that, he united
God with his people just like the sheets of this tabernacle
were coupled together and united together. He's the gold. He's
the blue loops and the gold patches that couple the law together
so that it's one seamless peace and all his people together with
God so that we're united and inseparably one with one another. Now, it's significant here that
God calls the inner fine linen of this tabernacle, He calls
it the tabernacle, the inner part fine linen, He calls that
the tabernacle, and that covering that was on the outside of that,
He calls it a tent. Look there again, verse 1. Thou
shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twine linen.
blue and purple and scarlet with cherubims of cunning works how
they'll make them. But in verse 14 down there, he
says the covering of goat's hair that covered that fine linen
was a tent. Now, I realize the words tabernacle
and the word tent carry the same meaning in scripture. They mean
temporary dwellings. That's what they mean. But right
here, those are two different words. They're two different
words because they picture two different things. The inner curtain
of that fine twine linen called the tabernacle typifies Christ,
our holy dwelling. He dwells in us who are born
of Him and we dwell in Him. And we have all our holiness
in Christ and it's eternal. It's eternal. It's a firm, eternal
dwelling that will never end. But now, the tent of goat's hair
typifies our sinful flesh, which is a temporary dwelling place.
It's just a tent. It's just a tent. And this tent
of flesh is all of Adam. It's our flesh, which is all
of Adam. And one of these days, we're
gonna lay this tent off. We're gonna go back to the dust,
and everything that's of Adam is gonna be destroyed. But our
lasting dwelling is going to be Christ. He's that house that's
lasting. He's that dwelling that's lasting.
He's that firm, lasting holiness that's eternal that will never
end. Go with me to 2 Corinthians 5.
I'll show you what I'm saying to you. 2 Corinthians 5. The
inward man is created in righteousness and true holiness. The righteousness
and holiness of Christ. So when we lay off this body
of death, we're going to go into God's presence in spirit. Nothing's going to have to be
modified or made better or anything because it's accepted of God
right now in our new man by what Christ has done for us. We're
inseparably united to Christ in spirit in the new man. I don't know how to explain it.
I can't explain it. When Christ said to the Father,
thou in me and I in them that they may be made perfect in one.
But that's how it is. That's our new spirit. It's God
the Father in Christ and Christ in us and we're one with him.
And then this body's going to go to the grave, but then he's
going to make us a new glorified body, and we're going to be with
him in body, soul, and spirit. But listen to what Scripture
says here. Let's begin at the end of verse
of chapter 4. We look not at the things which
are seen, but at the things which are not seen. That's what we
do when we're walking in the Spirit. Now, if we're walking
in the flesh, sometimes we do that. We're not looking at things
right. We're looking at just things
we can see when we walk in the flesh, but when spirits made
us strong and we're walking in the spirit, we look not at things
which are seen, but at things which are not seen. For the things
which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not
seen are eternal. For we know that if our earthly
house, and he uses the word tabernacle here, but our text uses the word
tent for that goat's hair part. If we, if this tent right here
that we're in were dissolved, we have a building of God, a
house not made with hand. Remember Christ is the, He built
the true tabernacle. He pitched it, not man. It's
not made with hands. It's eternal in the heavens.
It's Christ. For in this we groan, earnestly
desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.
If so be that being clothed, we shall not be found naked.
For we that are in this tabernacle, in this tent, we do groan, being
burdened. Not for that we would be unclothed,
but clothed upon. Here's what we're groaning for,
that mortality might be swaddled up of life. Now he that hath
wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto
us the earnest of the Spirit. And therefore, we're always confident,
knowing that while we're at home in this body, we're absent from
the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by
sight. That's what he means when he
says we're absent. He's present with us, but we
can't see him. We walk in by faith, not by sight.
We're confident, I say, and willing, rather, to be absent from the
body and to be present with the Lord. I have a grandmother right
now. She's sick. She just had a heart
attack. And she's had some blood clots in her lungs and things. And she's in the hospital. And
she's doing better now. I talked to her yesterday, and
she sounded real good. But we kind of didn't know what
was going to happen a few days ago. And, but I talked to her
when she was in that shape. And she said, she said, Clay,
I've had a really good life. The Lord's blessed me, been good
to me. And she said, but I'm just ready
to go home. She said, I'm, you know, don't
worry about me. Don't cry for me. I'm ready to
go home. I've got a good hope in the Lord.
And I'm looking forward to the day I can draw my last breath.
That's what Paul's talking about. That's the confidence a believer
has. We know. We, you know, it's okay to be
a little, to tremble, not know. We don't know what death is.
We never done it before. That's fine. But over that, we
have this confidence. We know we're going to be all
right because Christ has made us holy and righteous and we
have a house prepared by him and it's eternal and holy in
the heavens. And we're going to inhabit that
dwelling forever. Alright, I pray that's a blessing.
Let's stand together. Father, we thank you for these
pictures you give us to help us to see what you've done for
us. We pray that you bless it to our hearts. Lord, sanctify
your people. Enter in and by your presence
make us holy and make us see that you've separated us and
made us holy by what you've done for your people. Cause us to
look to you only all the time and make us, Lord, pass through
this life not clinging too tightly to anything that's temporary.
Make us look only to you and know, Lord, that we have a house
that you've prepared not made with temporal hands, not made
with man's hands, the house you prepared. And Lord, clothe us
with that house and give us this confidence in you and in what
you've accomplished. Forgive us our sins, Lord. We
ask it in Christ's name. Amen.