We'll talk about these boards
tonight. Talk about these boards. That's why I gave that to you.
It's very obvious what it looks like. You see the boards. They stand 15 foot high. They're
about, I think they're 20 inches wide. I think I figured that
out. Then you see those bars running
down the side? Those are gold, holding those
down the side, holding them together. And then at the bottom you see
there's two sockets of silver, pinions of silver, that those
boards are setting on. And that's so you can see clearly
what he's talking about. And then how the corners are
joined together with rings at the top and rings at the bottom
so the corner boards are doubled and made strong. So now let's
talk about these boards. The tabernacle stood on the west
side of the court. God had that tabernacle laid
out east to west, east to west. And the tabernacle stood on the
west side, facing the gate. And it was made up of 48 boards.
That's how many boards that they made. These are big boards. I mean, they're 15 foot high,
and there's 20 on the south, 20 on the north, six on the west, in the back,
six in the back. And they were 15 foot high, and
then those bars that went down the side of them, on each side,
there was 15 bars all together, five on one side, five on the
other side, and five in the back, those boards, with the gold,
where they stuck the boards through that to hold them together. And
the middle bar ran the whole length of it, and the quarter
boards were coupled together, bottom by ring, top and bottom,
by rings of gold. They hooked them together, and
a gold thing went in each end of it. And the tenons, the sockets
are silver. It said on that, and I preached
on that last week, the Atonement Month, how the foundation of
this tabernacle was founded and built on the redemptive blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the church foundation is
sure. Not because of anything we've
done. He read to us tonight about Saul of Tarsus and how much he
hated the Lord Jesus Christ and his people. And how he tried
to destroy the church. The church cannot be destroyed.
Nothing can ever destroy it. You know why? Because it's built
on the Lord Jesus Christ and His blood and His righteousness.
It's impossible for the church God's going to have a church
on this earth. When He comes back, there's going
to be a good, strong church. May not be a lot of it, but there'll
be a church still on this earth. And I want you to look, and that's
why it was immovable. It's like we're being on the
Lord Jesus Christ. God took my feet out of the mire
of clay and set them upon a rock and established, established
my goings and put a new song in my mouth. What was it? Praise
unto God. Huh? Now let's look at the material
here. First of all, the wood. We talked
about the wood in verse 15. Sheetum wood. Sheetum wood. And the bars that went through
it were sheetum wood. Now, this sheet of wood we've
talked about before, it's an incorruptible wood. It won't
rot. It's incorruptible. It won't
rot at all. And this talks about our Lord
Jesus Christ and His humanity. Our Lord Jesus was a man. He
was a man. He was a man who had a body.
He was a man who had a soul. And He was made like unto His
brethren. Paul said the man, Christ Jesus,
is the only mediator between us and God. But as a man, just
like this wood was incorruptible, our Lord Jesus Christ was spotless. He had a perfect, sinless humanity. We read it tonight back there
in 1 John. He said He was manifest to take
away our sin and in Him is no sin. I Peter says this, there
was no God found in His mouth and He did no sin. And the scripture
says that that God made him to be sin which knew no sin. So any way you look at our Lord
Jesus Christ, it talks about him being sinless. Without sin,
and I'm going to say this, beloved, it would be impossible for our
Lord Jesus to have sinned. He was, and while He was in the
flesh, He remained the Holy One of God. Let me tell you something. Death, the seeds of death were
never in His body like in our body. We were born with the seed
of death in us. We're all going to die. We're
going to the grave. If God lets us, if He don't come back to
get us. Well, our Lord Jesus Christ wasn't born with that
seed of death in Him. He wasn't born with any corruption
in Him. He was incorruptible. And I tell
you, he didn't die from pain. He didn't die from weakness.
He didn't die from inability to keep himself alive. He died
because he laid down his life. And he offered a sinless, holy,
blameless, spotless life to God Almighty on the behalf of people
who had nothing but spots and blemishes and sin. He offered
himself without spot to God. Now I tell you what, you know
even in his death, God said, I will not let my holy one see
corruption, even in death, he had no corruption in his body.
Why not? Because he didn't have any sin
in it. I've heard some fellows argue
about whether Christ was impeccable or not. You know what it means
to be impeccable? They argue whether Christ could have sinned
or could not have sinned. So they say if He's, by being
impeccable, that means that if He could not have sinned, then
the temptations wouldn't have been real. Well, the Scriptures tells us
that He was tempted in all points, like us, but yet without sin. Huh? He was tried of the devil
forty days and forty nights. God the Father tried him and
said, I find no fault in him. God said he always pleased him.
So our Lord Jesus Christ, I don't even want to talk about
him technically. I'm just telling you that that's what some people
say. But I know every temptation that he had was just like anything
you and I ever went through, but he did it without sinning. And that's our blessed hope.
That's the foundation of the gospel, is the sinlessness and
imperfection of our Lord Jesus Christ. That tells us, though
he was a man that had no sin, so he offered himself to God
as a man on the altar of his divinity, and as God, as a man,
he had no sin, did no sin, knew no sin. And if he could have
sinned, then that means he's still a man and he can still
sin in glory. And that's the most God disarming
thing you can think of. And that's our blessed hope that
we have a man in glory. There was a man. That's why we
can go to Him with our infirmities and our weaknesses and our inabilities
and confess our sins and confess our inabilities, confess our
unbelief and own ourselves to be what we are before Him because
He was a man like us, yet without sin. He cried, Our Lord Jesus Christ
wept twice to show His humanity. He wept twice. He wept at Lazarus
too. Why? Not for himself. Not for
the people around him. Now I'm going to tell you why
he wept. He said, I've got to bring Lazarus back into this
world. I've got to bring him back into this world. And he's
got to go through this too. Would you bring any of your loved
ones back? But that showed us that the Lord
has power over death. Even all the corruptible sin
that's in a body, Christ can reverse that corruption. That's
what He said when we go to glory. He said this corruption shall
put on incorruption. This mortal shall put on immortality. But oh my, if He wasn't sinless, if He wasn't sinless, then we
don't have a Savior. Right? Could bless His holy name. Our
Lord did no sin, knew no sin, had no sin, and He sits now in
glory as the sinless Son of God, sitting at the right hand of
God with all power and authority vested in Him. And He sits there
because He conquered death, He put away sin, he glorified God,
he saved all of his elect, and he sat down and he's standing
there waiting till every one of his enemies shall be made
his footstool one of these days. Huh? And I'm not going to be one of
his enemies. I'm not one of them now, and
I don't want to ever be one of these entities. Oh no, I won't. Oh my. So we see this sheet of
wood talks about the sinless humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then they took these boards,
and they overlaid them with gold. And when they put those rails
through there, these boards through there, you see those golden rings?
It's all gold. And then they took those rails,
those boards that they put across there. Those were covered up
with gold too. So, and under all that board,
that incorruptible wood and all those things that's put together
was covered up with gold. So you didn't see the wood. That talks about the deity of
our Lord Jesus Christ. that He was God. Not only was
He a sinless man, but He was God. Oh, and I'll tell you what
is God. He had to express the image of
God's blessed person. And that's why the Scripture
said, in the beginning was the Word. The Word is with God, the
Word was God, and all things that was made was made by Him.
And without Him was not anything made that was made. So when you
know here's the thing there's so many times that our Lord Jesus
Christ in his life He did things that you know, you could see
his humanity. You could see his body You could
see how weak he had been In fact that day that he went to the
woman on the well says being wearied with eternity That's
his manhood But yet he turned around and told that woman If
you knew the gift of God, you would ask of Him, and He would
have given you living water. Sir, evermore give me this water.
Go call your husband. I ain't got one. You told the
truth. And you know what he said to
her? He said, you've had five. And the one you've got now is
not your husband. She told her she forgot her water and everything
else. That's our Lord Jesus being weary.
And yet she run into town, said, come see a man told me everything
ever I did. That's his Godhead. Huh? Let us sleep. Oh, let us sleep
in the ship. Oh, sleeping like a baby. Tired.
Worn out. A big storm came. Oh, big storm
came. And they're just tossing that
bowl around, tossing it around. And they thought they was going
to die. Peter and John and them, they'd fished all their lives,
but they said, this is going to be the last voyage we'll ever
take. We're going to die. And they run down there and woke
the Lord Jesus up. They had to wake Him up. Storms
don't bother God. Storms don't bother God. They went down there to shake
Him, wake Him up. He walked out on the ship and stood up on that
boat and seen all them big waves and everything. This kid just
said, Peace be still. Now, God don't sleep and He ain't
afraid of storms, but man, man sleeps and tires, but man can't
cause the wind to quit blowing and the waves to feel still. How a man can cry at the tomb
of Lazarus, but only God can give him life. Huh? So that's what I'm talking about.
We see our Lord's humanity and we see His Godliness. And oh,
I tell you, now the dimensions of these boards, what they say
is, is the length of a mother's arm from her elbow to the tips
of her fingers. And they said, about 18 inches
long. And why do I say that? Why do I say that? Because God
set the measure. God set the measure. And He set
the measure for man. He said, this is how wide I want
the board, this is how tall I want the board, and this is how I
want the board put together. He told Moses exactly every measurement
that he was to have. And why does that make any difference?
I tell you what, do you know why God gave the measure? Because
you and I, if we'd have done the measure, we'd have messed
it up sure as the world. Isn't that right? God set the measure. He set the
measure for righteousness. He set the measure for holiness. He set the measure for salvation. He set the measure for everything
that you and I have to have. And beloved, not only did He
set the measure, but then He made us to measure up in Himself. You know the only way we can
measure? You know, when they say, you
know, we come to sin and come straight to the Word of God?
The best way I think of saying that is a fellow shoots an arrow,
and he's shooting at a target out there. And every time he
shoots, That thing just keeps falling way, way short. Well,
that's us. Shoot all you want to, but you'll
never, ever come up to the glory of God. Huh? But I tell you somebody
who did, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's God's measuring stick. And
I tell you, if I've got Him, I'll measure up in Him. Why did
I read this morning with He'll present us blameless, unreprovable,
and spotless in His sight. That's what we are. Oh, my. You know, that's why the Lord
said, I believe it's over in the Sermon on the Mount. He said, when you judge, judge
with righteous judgment. And He said, with whatever measure
you meet, whatever measure you measure out in judgment, and
passing judgment, finding fault, and doing things to one another. Whatever you measure out and
mete out in judgment, He said, same should be meted out to you. So, oh, listen. This don't need
out nothing but the Lord Jesus Christ and His kindness and His
love and His generosity and His compassion to one another. Huh? Oh, my. I want to get back what
I give out. I don't want to give out meanness
because I'll get meanness back. You know, Shirley and I was talking
on the way to Beaton. She said, Todd said this one time, and
it's right. We're talking about measuring
up. You know, it's a person can ruin
your whole day by the way they look at you. You know that? A person can mess
up your whole day. Look at you mean, hard, questionable, quizzical, Ignore you, not say
hi, bye, how you doing? Never comment about anything,
never say anything, never do anything. You know, people can
ruin your hope. They can. And that's why we need the Lord
Jesus Christ to be our major. Because that's just how awful
we are. Huh? Come in here smiling. If you
ought to come in here smiling. If you don't come in here smiling,
please leave smiling because the gospel ought to do that for
you. Right? Oh, boy. Well, let me
go on down here now about the sockets. You know, he said, set
the tenions, the sockets. The sockets. And those tenions,
those tenions were silver sockets. And like I told you before, they
set just like this here. And they'd set one board on two
of those. So there's 48 boards and 98,
96, 96 silver things at those channels. So everything's gold, and then
they have to level that thing up, and they take those tenons
and set a board on each one of those. So those tenons have to
be long, great old big long silver things to set on a 20-inch board. And I tell you what, so here
you got this, and so those silver things have to be awful big.
Two of them, a board was set on two of them. And I tell you,
this formed the foundation of the whole tabernacle, and the
tabernacle rested, those boards all the way to those rested on
that foundation. And I told you last week about
the silver was atonement money. Foundation was based on redemption
and of the doing and dying of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I
tell you, beloved, that's what we need, our Lord Jesus. and the preciousness of redemption,
sockets of silver, sockets of silver. Let me give you a couple
of meanings here if I can. Without the boards, without the
boards, the wood and the gold, without the silver sockets, without
the gold bars, there'd have been no tabernacle. There'd have been
no place for God and man to meet together. There'd have been no
place for the priest to labor and offer sacrifices. There'd
have been no ark that would have kept the law. There'd have been
no mercy seat. There'd have been nothing to
hold up the coverings and the curtains. And I tell you what,
beloved, without our Lord Jesus Christ, like I told you, our
Lord Jesus, that tabernacle pointed to Him in every way, and our
Lord God, our Lord, hung all the weight of the tabernacle
and the governor of that tabernacle upon Himself. And the glory of
God rested upon our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And that gold,
the silver, sustained the weight. And let me tell you what that
tells us. You reckon Christ can sustain us? You reckon he can hold us up
and sustain us, carry our weight? Look in Isaiah 9-6 and then I
want you to look somewhere else. Oh my. Look in Isaiah, I believe
it's 9-6, yeah. You know the government, what
it says here about it. Yeah. You know, our Lord bore
all the weight of the tabernacle. He bore all the weight of God's
government, all the weight of God's glory. And our Lord Jesus
Christ, He sustains all of His own work. All of His own work. Look what He says here now. For
unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. And listen
to this now. The government shall be upon
His shoulders. It don't say governments, it
says government. Who's government? All government,
but especially us. He governs us. Are we left to
ourselves, left to make up our own minds about what we believe
and where we're going to go and how we're going to worship, what
we're going to believe about? He governs us. He governs us. I'm going to just give you an
illustration. He read last night about Saul the dark. Our Lord
Jesus Christ governed him, and I'll tell you what he did. He
put such government stiffness on it that he put him in the
dust. Put him down. That's how he governs. He carries the government on
one shoulder. Just one. He don't need both
of them. He can carry us as easy as he
can carry the world. He upholds the whole world. Well,
do you know how He upholds it? With the word of His power. He
just said, hold up! He said, stay just the way you
are. I will spring, summer, winter,
and fall. And He holds it up. We're just
saying, stay up here, universe. Stay up in the sky. Keep the
sky going. Keep the sun going. Keep the
moon. Just stay up. But He just said, uphold it by
the Word of His power. And if He can do the world like
that, imagine what He can do for me and you, and what He does
do for us. Do you know why you and I are
still believers? Why we're still believers? Because
Christ sustained the work that He started. If He starts it, believe me,
He's going to carry it on. The shepherd's responsible for
the sheep. The sheep ain't responsible for the shepherd. Did you see
sheep trying to tell the shepherd how to guide them, how to lead
them? Listen, I want to go this way. The sheep says, no, you
go this way. No, I'm going this way. No, no. Not if Christ is
the shepherd, you ain't going to do that. No, no. Uh-uh. And so I tell you, let me show
you another way. In Isaiah 22, talking about the government
being on his shoulders. Oh my. I'm glad he's my governor,
ain't you? I'm glad he's the one running
this world. Running knees. Teaching knees.
Showing knees. Isaiah 22 and verse 20. Oh my. Look what he said. Verse 20. And it shall come to
pass in that day that I will call my servant Eliakim, the
son of Zechariah. And I will close him with thy
robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle. And I will commit
thy government into his hands. Now he's talking about Christ
here. And he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem
and to the house of Judah. So there's the government on
him now. Got a robe and clothed with a
robe and a girdle and the government. And look in the key of the house
of David. Now here we go again, while I
lay upon his shoulder. Well, he's got the government
on his shoulder, he's got the key of David on his shoulder. You
know what's on the other shoulder? He said he goes out into the
wilderness and finds that one lost sheep, and when he has found
it, he lays it on his shoulder and carries it all the way home.
So he's got the government over here, the key of David over here,
and us over here. That gives you just a glimpse
to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Huh? And look what it goes on to say.
And He shall open and ain't nobody gonna shut. And He's shut and
ain't nobody gonna open. And I will fashion Him as a nail
in a sure place. And he shall be for a glorious
throne to his father's house. Ah, listen to this now. And they
shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, the offspring
and the issue, all vessels of small quantity from the vessels
of cups even to the vessels of plaguins. In that day, saith
the Lord of hosts, shall the nail that is fastened in the
sure place be removed and cut down. That's when Christ was
taken and crucified, and the burden that was upon it shall
be cut off." And oh my, but I tell you what, the government, everything
is on His blessed shoulders. Now back over here in our text
it says this, it talks about the corner boards. You know the
corner boards, they were hooked at the top and hooked at the
bottom. And they met one another and they overlapped one another.
To make that corner strong, make the corner strong. And I tell
you what, he's strengthened and established the tabernacle. And I tell you what, he's the
one that makes his church strong. He's the only one that's got
the strength to make his church strong. He's the cornerstone
and the crowning stone of the building. And oh my, those couplings. Those boards that went down the
sides, five of them, went down through there, covered with gold
and gold rings stuck out where they could slide in those gold
rings. Those hands, those gold rings held them in place, grasped
them and held the boards in place. And our Lord Jesus Christ, in
His voluntary humiliation, And his voluntary humiliation came into this world when he
laid hold of God and subjected himself to the Father, God's
perfect servant. And because he did that, he now
is the one that holds us in place. Huh? You know why I'm here? God, I'm a little, I'm just a
piece of the board stuck in the, you know, and this is where God
put me. And I tell you what, He's got
a piece of gold around me so I can't get loose. Let me, just
let me get something to think about. How God does things. You know, in March, I'll be here
41 years. 41 years. So that means if you're 10 years
old when I start preaching here, you're 50. Gonna be 51. If you're
20, you're going to be 60 or 61. That's a long time isn't it? And if we're faithful to one
another like that, you know why we're like that? Because He's
faithful there. That's the only reason. Ain't
that right? And we wouldn't do it. That's what I mean, He holds
us together. He clasps us and holds us together.
And ain't you grateful that He puts you, you know, we're all
boards, and we run, you know, and He's got a tabernacle all
over the world, His church is a tabernacle. And I tell you
what, He's got these boards running through it, and every one inside
that, and those boards that run across there, every single one
of them is held by the gold of our Lord Jesus Christ, His God
in Him. Huh? Oh boy, I'm telling you. It just don't get no better now,
huh? And I tell you, those bars united
the boards. Not only that, but they brought
the boards together. Held them together firmly. Fifteen
bars. You see, the bars gave unity,
linking the boards together. And you know what links us to
God? It's our Lord Jesus Christ. There's a perfect union between
God and between the man, Christ Jesus, and in the two natures.
And there's a perfect union between us and Christ. He's called bone
of our bones, flesh of our flesh. And every time you find yourself
identified with Christ, everything He did, He said, we did too.
Isn't that right there? Huh? And let me wind it up with
this. Look over here in Ephesians 4. talking about the unity that
we have in Christ. It's like those boards united,
those bars united those boards and held them together, linking
them together. Well, our Lord Jesus Christ links us together.
The Scripture says by one Spirit we're all baptized into one body
by the same Spirit. Look here in Ephesians 4. Talking
about our unity, our unity here. Our unity is in Christ, it's
not in this flesh. Not in this flesh. Look what
he said, verse 4. You know, just like those boards,
a couple of them made them unified, all them boards, those bars of
it. But Christ unifies us. And our unity is in Christ, not
in the flesh. There is one body, one spirit,
even as you're called in one hope as you're called. One Lord,
one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above
all and through all and in all you are. So that's our unity
is there in Christ. Now look what he says down here
in verse 11. This is how he does this. And he gave some apostles,
some prophets, some advancers, some pastors and teachers. Well,
what did He give them for? For the perfecting of the saints.
That means completion of the saints, perfecting of the saints.
For the work of the ministry, to establish, to edify, build
up the body of Christ. Why did we do in this form? Till
we all come in the unity of faith. What does that mean? Do we all
here believe the same thing? Every one of us believe exactly
the same thing, if we're believers. We have no dissension about who
God is. We have no dissension about who
the Savior is. We have no dissension about how
sinful we are and our inability. We have no dissension. We all
believe that Christ is the only Savior, that God is sovereign,
that man is sinful. If it hadn't been for Christ,
there'd be no hope for anybody. We believe that. We believe that. We believe that we're going to
glory one of these days because not of anything we've done, He
did. We believe in salvation by grace from start to finish,
from the day you believe till the day you go to glory. We all
believe that we cannot contribute one iota to our salvation. Huh? And so that's what the preaching
does. It brings us into the unity of faith. And this is what else
it does. And of the knowledge of the Son
of God. Unto a perfect man. That means a mature man. Oh my. Knowledge. Oh my. Learn something
about the Son of God. That's what we've talked about
this morning. That's what we've talked about
tonight. And more we hear about the knowledge
of the Son of God and we come unto a perfect man. unto the
measure of his passion of the fullness of Christ. We understand
that Christ is all in all. Huh? He's all in all to us. We ain't looking no place else.
Huh? I don't want nobody else. I'm
satisfied with that. Ain't you? It's hard to believe
that all them boards had that much in them, ain't it? But I tell you what, when you
talk about Christ, it's easy. It's easy to find Him, talk about
Him. Our Father, in the precious,
holy, glorious name of the Lord Jesus Christ, We bless you and
praise you for your great and abundant mercy given to us, given
to us in your blessed Son. We thank you that all the governance
on his shoulders, that our Lord Jesus Christ obligated himself to save us,
to keep us safe, and to take us all the way to glory. We thank
you that he taught us that. that He taught us the knowledge
of the Son of God, brought us to believe the same things, rejoice
in the same truth, bow to the same God, all have the same hope,
all have the blessed Savior to whom we live.