If you will, take your Bibles
and turn with me to Hebrews chapter nine. Hebrews chapter nine. These are Paul's, this letter
is unlike any other letter that Paul wrote, the book of Hebrews. He wrote to his kinsmen, and
he being raised in a Jewish religion and being a Pharisee of the Pharisees,
he knew how they thought, how they worshiped, how they looked at God, and all
of these different things. And now, being born of God and
taught of God, Paul writes this letter specifically for his kinsmen,
the Jews, to help them understand the gospel of Christ that was
set forth in that old Jewish religion, in that old tabernacle
and the priesthood, that old Levitical priesthood. And he
plainly declares to them that the coming, doing, and dying
of the Lord Jesus Christ is the manifestation of a new covenant. You'll see that up there in Hebrews
chapter 8 in the last verses. Not new in the sense of its existence,
but new in the sense of its manifestation, or its revelation. And He told
them that the revelation of this new covenant had made the first
old, and that the first covenant, which He which had decayed. This is how he talked about the
priesthood. Now, you keep in mind, he's talking,
I guess the closest thing in our day might be the, perhaps
the Mormons or the Catholics or, you know, with the priest
and the common priest and the high priest and the pope and
all of this kind of stuff. And he's saying that that old
covenant, that old priesthood, those old types have decayed. They're not being used to the
intent that they were given. It's decayed and it's become
altogether a religion of works. And he said this covenant which
had decayed and waxed old was now ready to vanish away. Now
here in Hebrews 9, he writes that the first covenant, this
one that had waxed old, he said this first covenant had ordinance
of divine service and a worldly sanctuary. For there was a tabernacle
made, verse 2. The first or first room or section
in the tabernacle is where the candlestick stood, and the table,
and the showbread, which is called the sanctuary. And after, that
is after this first section, at the end of it hung a heavy
veil. And you couldn't see through
it, you couldn't go beyond it, that was reserved for the high
priest alone. And after the second veil, the
tabernacle, which is called the holiest of all, or sometimes
the holy of holies, which had the golden censer and the Ark
of the Covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was
the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron's rod that budded,
and the tables of the covenant, that is, the commandments written
in stone with the finger of God. And then over top of that was
the cherubims of glory overshadowing the mercy seat of which he says
we cannot now speak particularly. Now when these things were thus
ordained, the priest went always or continuously into the first
tabernacle, the first portion of it, accomplishing the service
of God. But into the second, beyond that
veil, into that holy of holies, into the second went the high
priest alone, once every year, not without blood, which he offered
for himself and for the heirs of the people. Now listen, the
Holy Ghost, this whole book is written by the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, this signifying
that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest
while as the first tabernacle was yet standing, that way into
glory itself. As long as that tabernacle was
still standing, this way had not yet been manifested. And
this old tabernacle was a figure, verse 9. which was a figure for
the time then present, which were offered both gifts and sacrifices
that could never make him that did the service perfect as pertaining
to the conscience, which stood only in meats and drinks and
various washings and carnal ordinances imposed on them until the time
of reformation. Now what's he saying in these
verses? Well, he's saying the whole of the priesthood, the
tabernacle, the ordinances, and the service of the same was a
figure for the time then present. A figure of what? A figure of
Christ. A figure of Christ. This was
where the Jew went to learn about Christ. This is how God set him
forth. He set him forth in time. In
Hebrews 9.23, he again refers to that first covenant. And talking
specifically about its ordinances and especially of the sprinkling
of the blood, he said it was therefore necessary that the
patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these,
but the heavenly things themselves with much better sacrifices than
these. And then in Hebrews 10.1 he writes
for the law, and here again he's talking about that first covenant,
having a shadow of good things to come. Now all of these things
were symbolic of the person and work of Jesus Christ our Savior
and our high priest. In Colossians 2.13 he declares
that we've been quickened together with Christ who has forgiven
all our trespasses and blotting out, now listen, the handwriting
of ordinances that was against us and contrary to us. And he took
it out of the way and nailed it to his cross. His cross was
the fulfillment of everything set forth in that law. And having
spoiled principalities, what's he talking about there? Well,
he's talking about false religion. He's talking about satanic religion,
antichrist religion. They take those things and they
incorporate them into their worship without understanding what they
mean and setting these things forth. And here he says he sets
them forth once for all. And in doing so, he spoiled principalities
and powers, and he made a show of them, openly triumphing over
them in it. Now he said, let no man therefore
judge you in meat. Do you want pork chop? Eat a pork chop. Don't you let
anybody tell you, oh, you can't eat meat today. This is Good
Friday. Ain't nothing good about Friday. That no man judge you therefore
in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or a new moon,
or Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come. Now listen,
but the body is Christ. The body is Christ. Now I wanted to read all of that
to you because what I had to say to you is symbolic. of this
glorious redemption accomplished by our Savior and plainly set
forth before us by God the Holy Spirit in the tabernacle. If
you will, when the common priest, you had to be a priest to even
be in the courtyard, let alone go in the tabernacle. Well, how do we get to be priests? If you're here this morning and
you're a believer, you're a priest. Isn't that what he says over
in the book of Peter? You're a royal priesthood. You have rights. Maybe a better word might be
privilege. You have privileges. But the natural man don't have. All of the rest of the tribe,
everything outside this courtyard, they weren't allowed to come
in. They had to come and go through the priesthood. They had to bring that lamb and
hand it over to the priesthood. The priesthood took care of the
lamb. The people who brought the lamb didn't come in and slay
the lamb and put it on the altar. They gave it to the priest. They
didn't know what to do with the lamb. Now you know what I'm talking
to you in symbolic language this morning. I'm telling you, people
come in here all the time talking about a lamb, but they don't
know what that lamb is. They don't know what to do with
it. They don't know anything about it. And the lamb, they didn't just
take the lamb and throw it on the altar. That lamb had to be
skinned. It had to be cut up. Even so, Christ, he crucified
for us. Crucified for us. Everything
that happened to him was prophesied years before it ever happened.
Even those details on the cross. He received that vinegar. They
put it on hyssop and gall and they stuck it up to his mouth
that the scripture might be fulfilled. It was already foretold. So here's
what I'm getting at this morning. We're going to talk about the
inside of this tabernacle. When the priest, and that's what
you are if you're born of God. The priest, when he went in the
tabernacle, he was going in Christ. Now you get that in your head. In Christ is a declaration often
used in the scriptures to denote a believer and a recipient of
the gift of faith, one called out of darkness into his marvelous
light. Well, what is his marvelous light?
It's not the sun. What is this marvelous light?
It's the light of Christ. And where is that light? It's
in Christ. That's where that candlestick
was. There wasn't any other light in there. There was no daylight
that showed into the tabernacle that had heavy drapery going
over it. There was only one light, that
was the candlestick. If any man, listen to this, if
any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. He's a new creature. Old things
have passed away and behold, all things have become new. In
Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Where
they at? They're in Christ. Well, how's a believer to walk?
As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye, now listen,
in Him. Be rooted and grounded in Him. And to know that in Him dwelleth
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily and you're complete in
Him. And as the believer who's now
made a priest of God, he enters through the door of the tabernacle,
he gets his first view of what is symbolically represented by
being in Christ. And the first thing that meets
the eye as you walk into the tabernacle is those walls of
pure gold. Those boards that were taken,
made from shittom wood, had tenons on them to hold them together,
and they overlaid that incorruptible wood. That's what shittom wood
is. It's an incorruptible wood. And it was overlaid with gold.
It speaks of the body of Christ. He's God, that gold speaks of
God, deity. Here's his deity, here's his
humanity. They see this incorruptible wood
overlaid with gold and held together with wooden poles overlaid with
pure gold and symbolically speaks of our Lord who is the God-man. He's God and man and one glorious
person, sinless, holy, Righteous God over all, blessed forever. And the tabernacle speaks of
God being manifest in the flesh. God said, I'm gonna give you
instructions. I'm gonna set before you a pattern
and you go build this tabernacle, Moses, exactly like I tell you
to build it. And I'm gonna dwell there. And
I'm gonna commune with you. I'm gonna teach you something
about who I am. It speaks of God being manifest
in the flesh. Scripture said great is the mystery
of godliness, godlikeness. It's a mystery. My soul, they
call people who wear long dresses godly. You reckon God wears a long dress? That's not godliness. Great is
the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. justified in the Spirit, seen
of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the
world, and received up into glory. The only information we have
on God is what was manifested in His Son. And that's what's
being represented inside this tabernacle. They walk in there
and they look, and all those walls, pure gold. This is His
body. Jesus Christ, according to Romans
3, 24 and 25, was set forth under the old covenant and specifically
in the tabernacle as the propitiation for our sins through faith in
his blood. Now that's what was going on
inside this tabernacle. And through the tabernacle and
its furnishings is set forth to God is the God-man mediator. set forth in all this that you
see when you walk inside this tabernacle. And the tabernacle
was manifested, it was set before men by God and even so the Son
of God was manifested in the wilderness of sin to teach us
how God saves sinners. It was taught in that tabernacle
which is typical of Him and it was manifested in its accomplishment
and in its reality in Him. And then as your eyes look down,
you walked in the tabernacle, and here's all of this gold.
I can't even imagine what that must have looked like in that
candlelight. But here's these walls of pure
gold, and you're looking around. And you look down, and there's
nothing down there but dirt. It's the only thing in that tabernacle
that wasn't overlaid with gold was the fox. The floor was dirt. It's just sand. They were in
the desert, in the wilderness, there was nothing down there
but sand. Just bare ground. And this tells us that even though
we're in Christ, we're yet in this world. And it's also telling
us that Christ was manifest in this world. God sent his son
into this world. That's what the scriptures say. In 1 John 4, 17, it says, as
he is, so are we in this world. And then our eyes turn upward.
And we look up there and there's this beautiful covering. Now
there was four layers, badger skins and ram skins, dyed red
and in goat's hair, and then on the inside was this intricate
covering of scarlet and blue and purple and fine linen, and
it was embroidered to the max. I mean, it had some of the fanciest
stitchery you ever laid your eyes on. And this work, we're
told, was done by wise-hearted women. They brought the cloth, they
helped weave the cloth, they helped dye the cloth, and they
brought it down, and then a holy ab, whom God gifted, did the
embroidery on this thing. And so when you look up, you're
sitting, now who's the women represent? That represents the
church, doesn't it? And here you are, you're born
again, now you're in the church of God, you're a priest, and
maybe this is your first time in the tabernacle, and you go
in and you see these walls, and now this teaching that Grandpa
did really comes to light. And you look all around, you
look down, and then you look up, and you see all this beautiful
embroidery. Now, I'm gonna tell you what
that means to me. Writers had, there's no end to what they said
this means. So I'm just gonna tell you what it means to me.
And I called Brother Don and he said, be all right. Because
I don't like to say things when I'm the only one who sees them.
That worries me. But he said, well, that's, what
you're saying about it is true. You know what you're looking
at up there? You're looking at the works of the church. And what is that? That's their righteousness. That's
their righteousness. What do you discover in Christ?
You discover that your covering is the righteousness of Christ.
Is that right? Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone who believes. And here's a work. And it's done and contributed by all. And yet it's
the work of one man, a holy man. That name means tent, what it
means. He's our tabernacle, the Lord
tabernacled among us. And we, the first thing we discover
when we walk in Christ, this is the God man. And we look down,
this is God manifest in the flesh, in the world. And we look up
and this is our righteousness up here. I didn't do anything
to it, but that's my righteousness. It's counted as though I did
it myself. He'll say to the believer when
he enters into heaven, well done by good and faithful servant.
You can't look yourself in the mirror and say that. You can't
do it. But that's what he'll say. And that's how much that
works is yours. And that priest looked up, and
he saw that. And to me, this is just a grand
picture of our representative righteousness, which is counted
as ours, yet the work of one man, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a glorious work, and so
it hangs above the priest acting as a portion of his covering. And then he looks over to the
left and he sees this beautiful candlestick. I don't know how
much you know about metallurgy or metal or the making of things,
but I worked in a metal shop for a while and I had a good
friend and he was a tenor. That guy could make it. He could
take a piece of copper and make a coffee cup out of it. Take
that hammer and start beating around on that thing on that
anvil All of a sudden, this thing's done, and it's a coffee cup.
And it has those little round pings. This thing, this candlestick,
was made of hammered gold, all one piece. All one piece. And you think about that. There
was a stem. I hunted the scriptures over, and I'm not saying that
there's not one, but I couldn't find anything to tell you how
high it was. It just don't say. But I can
tell you what it was. It had a single stem extending
up from a base, a hollow base. And this is all solid gold. And
at the top of that stem was a bowl and a wick shaped like an almond. I think they called it a knob. coming out of the side of that
candlestick, out of that stem, was three branches on one side
and three branches on the other side. So in a total, there were
seven lights, if you will, on this candlestick. Maybe a better
word might be candelabra. And this thing was fired by olive
oil, pure, beaten olive oil. And they brought it in, and they
had to trim those wicks and replenish that oil, and they did that every
day. That thing had to burn continuously. Wherever they were, that thing
had to burn continuously. Now. If you want to know what
this means, you can go over to the book of Revelations, or maybe
you can remember in our study of Revelations. But John's given
a beautiful picture of this. Now, John was a Jew. He understood
the tabernacle and the furnishings and the things that was in there.
And he heard a voice speak to him out on the Isle of Patmos.
And he turned to see who it was. He said, and I turned to see
the voice that spake with me, and being turned, I saw seven
golden candlesticks. What's he talking about? He's
talking about those seven candlesticks. Those seven lamps on that candlestick. And in the midst of the seven
candlesticks, one like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment
down to the foot, girt about the paps with a golden girdle,
holding in his right hand seven stars. This is our high priest. And he's about to fulfill the
redemptive will of God. And then in verse 20 of Revelations
1, he said, the mystery of the seven stars, which you saw in
his hand when you turned, those seven stars are the seven, the
seven stars are the seven angels of the churches, the seven pastors
of the churches, seven preachers. Those stars are preachers, he
holds them in his hand. And the seven candlesticks which
thou sawest are the seven churches. Now seven is a number used in
the scripture to denote perfection or sometimes completion. So what's
he talking about here? He said in these seven lights
on this candlestick is represented the whole church of God. That's what it is. These seven
candlesticks are the seven churches. These seven churches, of course,
represent the whole church. He's talking about the whole
of the churches of God, and this candlestick represents the church
which is filled with the Holy Ghost, represented by the olive
oil, and the revelation of Christ, which is typified by the oil
beaten and is the only source of light concerning those things
which are in the tabernacle or in Christ. What is the church? What did
he tell us the church was? It's the pillar and ground of
the truth. He said, you're our light. He said, you don't light a candle
and set it in a hole somewhere, you put it on a hill where it
can be seen. Again, he tells us, where two
or more gather together, there am I in the midst. What's the
one thing needful for the church? Huh? Is shed light. That's what we do. That's what
we do. We don't get involved in politics.
We don't run up and down the street with banners and protesting
and all this kind of nonsense. Our one business is light. It is to preach. It is to set
forth the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. All right, here's
this beautiful, hammered, golden candlestick, and it's the only
light in the tabernacle. If it wasn't for that candlestick,
where would the priest go to learn about what's in Christ? Huh? This is the privilege given
to the church. They're the light. Christ is
the light, but he's been given to them, and they shine forth
this light. This is the light that lights
everything in here. Some of you have been listening
to me now for a while. You were just little kids when
I first came here. And now you begin to see some things. Would
you have learned those out there? Would you have learned those
things over at the First Baptist Church, or down at the First
Christian Church, or down at the Mormon Church, or Seventh
Day Advent? Where would you learn these things?
You're going to learn them right here. And that's the way it is
everywhere God puts a church. They're the pillar and ground
of the truth. You're going to learn about these
things, that's where you're going to go. And then the priest looks to
his right and he sees a beautiful table of pure gold. And it, just like the boards
on the walls and the golden altars, made from an incorruptible wood
and then overlaid with pure gold. But this table, like the altar
of incense, has a crown around the top. I think it was Dr. Gill said
that that crown, and I had no idea how he knows that, but he
said the crown that went around the top of that thing was a handbreadth
wide. So if you can imagine a crown
either like this on that table, that wide out of pure gold going
around, very intricate designs in it and all of these things. And this table, it has a crown
about the top of it. You can read about it in Exodus
25, 25. He tells us it was a handbreadth
wide. And then in Leviticus 24, five
through nine, he tells them to make 12 cakes. To make 12 cakes. And two-tenths
of a deal shall be in one cake. A fine flour, that is sifted
flour, clear of all impurities. And each loaf, according to Dr. Gill, was as much as two men
could eat in a day. It's all two men could do to
eat this in a day. He said about six pounds of flour. So you know what a five pound
bag of flour looks like. You put all the other ingredients
in there, that's a big thing of bread. That's one cake. There was 12 cakes laid upon
this table. That just shows us the abundance
of how Christ is represented as our bread. You're not gonna
run out of bread. You eat this bread, you'll live
forever. This bread is the soul's life,
this bread. Except you eat of my flesh and
drink of my blood, you have no life in you. That's what's represented
in this bread. And somebody said it was five
handbreadths wide. So that'd be, let me start right
here. That's two, three, four, five. That bread would have been that
wide and 10 handbreadths. Long. Six in this stack, six
in this stack. You reckon the priest had plenty
to eat? And then he says this about that bread. It was most
holy. He said, don't you carry that
bread out here. You eat that bread right here.
You eat it in the sanctuary. You eat it in the sanctuary. And these 12 loaves, I believe,
represent the 12 tribes of Israel, or the whole of the Church of
God. So there's bread there, and it's
specifically there for the whole church, for the whole church. And then in Leviticus 24a, he
tells us that this bread was to be sat in order every Sabbath
and to be done before the Lord continually, being taken from
the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant. So this
bread that's represented here has to do with that everlasting
covenant of grace, which Christ is the surety. And
there's no guesswork here needed. This bread is Christ. At the
last supper, our Lord took bread and broke it and said, here,
you take this and eat it. This is my body, which is broken
for you. So there's no guesswork about
the bread. In Leviticus 24.9, he said this
bread is specifically for Aaron and his sons. The high priest
and his sons. Well, what is Christ to us? He's
our high priest. But we're priests too. We're
priests because we're his sons. Read about the priesthood and
see who the priests were. They were sons of Aaron. This
is the Levitical priesthood. And then he said, for it is,
he said, it's beaten by Aaron and his sons and they shall eat
it in the holy place where it is most holy unto him of the
offerings of the Lord made by fire by perpetual statute. So this bread represents the
gospel as it's delivered by doctrine in the word of God and it's set
in order on the table of God. Well, what's going on here? What's
all this talking about? It's talking about what we do
in here every Sunday. Every Sunday. We gather together
in here and I set before you a table with the pure bread of
God, the Son of God. And we eat that bread. Eat that
bread. And those who have an appetite
for it, they never get tired of it. If I had time, I could
go through. You've got to read all of these
books of Moses to really get a clear view on anything that
he's talking about in the tabernacle, because he gives you bits and
pieces all the way through here. But the most information that
I found, the direction of it is in Exodus, and then the details
of it is in Leviticus. And then you can find out bits
and pieces in the rest of the books. But what I found out was
he never changed the recipe. It was the same bread. And they
ate that bread all that week. They had seven days to eat that
bread. And when that bread was, after that seven days, the next
new bread had to be set on the table. And Christ is new every
time we come in here, isn't he? I think some of this is just
God's providence that we meet on Sundays after that seven-day
period, and there seems to be a cycle in there somewhere that
God has overruled in his providence, and this is what we do. We come
in here and eat this bread, and we enjoy it if we're in Christ. Now, we can't eat it outside
of Christ. Ain't no bread out in the courtyard. Ain't no bread
out there in the tent. They bred in the tabernacle,
bred in the sanctuary. And the sanctuary is where the
priests went in and worshiped God. Worshiped God. All right,
thank you.