The Tabernacle, a Shadow of Christ

Moses builds the tabernacle to God’s own design. It was not to be built from a wish for something splendid; it had to be built exactly as God had laid it down. The basin, the altar of burnt offering, the ark of the covenant: God himself had said where each was to stand.

That tabernacle was a shadow, showing Jesus Christ to the people. As he had promised Abraham, Israel came out of slavery, and to that very moment God had led them, waiting until the appointed time was fulfilled. Yet the people set free from bondage complained again and again, and fell in the wilderness. When grace is received and then taken for granted, it bears no fruit.

Moses, too, first tried to rescue his own people in his own strength and made a ruin of it; only after forty years in the wilderness, when he had laid everything down, was he called. For Jesus as well, leaving the throne and coming to this earth was itself suffering. God’s people must not forget that grace, and must stand as those who live out their lives exactly as God has ordained.