The Tabernacle, a Shadow of Christ

From the story that the dust from which Adam was formed came from Mount Moriah, to the altars of Cain and Abel, Noah’s sacrifice and the place where Abraham offered up Isaac, everything is bound to this one mountain. David bought a threshing floor and so made the site ready, and his son Solomon built the temple upon it.

Just as Isaac carried the wood up the mountain, Jesus Christ bore the cross up to Calvary; and just as the ram took Isaac’s place, Jesus Christ died and rose again. The worth of a temple is not measured by its splendor or its size. Solomon’s temple, and Herod’s temple, built on a far grander scale, have meaning in the end only when a right meeting with God takes place there.

Uzzah’s death as the ark was being moved came from pressing ahead by human reasoning, without repentance, and David was not permitted to build the temple because of the blood he had shed. Even so, it was because of David’s faith that Solomon was able to raise it. The temple, in the end, is the person themselves; whatever befalls them, they do not fall when they search out their own sin before God and repent.