THE PLAN OF THE TABERNACLE
As we noted at the beginning of ch. 12 there are four major divisions in the book of Exodus :
I
Chs. 1 - 13
Deliverance or Salvation
Egypt
II
Chs. 14 - 18
Faith
Wilderness
III
Chs. 19 - 24
Covenant
Obedience (Trust & Obey)
Sinai
IV
Chs. 25 - 40
Worship
The Tabernacle
Our coverage of the long final section will be brief, but it will, I trust, cover the essentials. Overall I would like to link it up to the crucial paragraph in Paul's letter to the Romans, 3:21-26, the quintessential statement of the Gospel in that letter and the pivot on which the Apostle's arguments turn.
Romans 3:25 speaks of Christ as "He Whom God put forward as a propitiation in His blood to be received by faith." God did this, says Paul, to show two things:
1. the grounds on which He had passed over former sins,
2. that He is righteous even when He justifies sinners who believe in Jesus.
In other words, the thing God was doing when Christ offered up His life on the Cross reveals the grounds on which in every age God has forgiven sinners. Those grounds are expressed in the single phrase, 'a propitiation in His blood.' It is on the grounds of that propitiation that God can forgive sin, and still maintain righteousness. The word rendered 'propitiation' in the AV, 'means of propitiation' in JBP, 'expiation' in the RSV, 'sacrifice of atonement' in the NIV, and 'the means of expiating sin by His sacrificial death' in the NEB, is, obviously, a headache for Bible translators. Clearly, it is important to get its meaning right, because it is the one word on which the meaning of the whole paragraph vs. 21-26 depends; it is crucial to Paul's argument. The Greek word is 'hilastyrion' (hilastjrion), and unfortunately it occurs only one other time in the New Testament: in Hebrews 9:5, where it refers to an article of furniture in the tent sanctuary (the Tabernacle) which the Hebrews carried about with them in their desert wanderings. It was called the 'Mercy Seat'. The Mercy Seat was the lid on top of the box-shaped 'Ark of the Covenant', the symbol, placed in the innermost sanctuary, the 'Holy of Holies', to suggest God's presence there. In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) the word always bears that meaning.
That is the lead I believe we should follow. (See note below) Any Jewish reader would have understood Paul at once to be referring to the Mercy Seat, and I am sure Paul would have known that. Indeed, the ideas that cluster together in this verse are the same as those that cluster round the Mercy Seat itself in the book of Exodus.
• In the worship of ancient Israel, the Mercy Seat was the place where God manifested His presence. God said of it to Moses, "There will I meet with you and commune with you, from above the Mercy Seat, from between the two cherubim which are upon the Ark of the Covenant." (Exodus 25:22) So the Mercy Seat was where sinful men and women enjoyed fellowship with God. Certainly, that is what Paul is talking about in Romans 3:21-26.
• It was also the place where God manifested His glory. There, the Shekinah cloud of luminous radiance appeared. (40:34-35) That fits too, because the glory of God we have all lost and which we are to regain is in Paul's mind in these verses.
• Upon that Mercy Seat, on the great Day of Atonement in the ritual of Israel's worship, the blood was spilled and sprinkled, and Paul says here that Christ was put forward as a Mercy Seat 'in His own blood.'
• In fact the only consideration that might seem not to fit is the fact that in the Tabernacle the Ark of the Covenant with its Mercy Seat was not on public view, but was hidden behind the heavy veil that hung in front of the inner sanctuary where it stood. But Paul speaks of God 'setting the Mercy Seat forward,' as though to public view, for the word 'put forward' means literally 'to display.' But this makes it all fit together better than ever, because when our Lord yielded up His life, that great heavy veil "was rent in two from top to bottom", exposing what lay behind it to public view. It was as though God Himself, by that dramatic event, was announcing to the world, in the moment that His Son yielded up His life, "Now is fulfilled what this ancient symbol stood for." God opened up for all the world to see what till then had been hidden. He bared His heart.
Indeed, the hiddenness of God's great atoning work and the openness of its outworking at the Cross are suggested by the very architecture of the tent sanctuary as a whole.
THE PLAN OF THE TABERNACLE
If my reading of the text is right, it was planned on the pattern of two equal squares side by side. At the geometrical centre of the first square, the open court which worshippers entered first, was the brazen altar, open to the sky, where the daily sacrifices were offered, whilst at the centre of the second square, covered by the tabernacle roof and concealed behind the great veil, was the Ark of the Covenant. The two foci correspond. The hidden reality in the heart of God, suggested by the ark concealed from view, was reflected in the public action at the brazen altar.
The seven-branched candlestick on one side of the Holy Place suggested that God is the Light of Life as the Table of Shewbread on the other suggested that He is the Bread of Life. At its far end, facing you as you entered, was the Altar of Incense, suggestive of prayer rising continually toward God, backed by the great Veil.
THE VEIL OF THE TEMPLE
The Veil separated the outer sanctuary, the 'Holy Place', from the inner sanctuary, the 'Holy of Holies', where the Ark of the Covenant was housed; whilst it hid the Ark from view, it did suggest its features, as the illustration shows. The colourings in the veil were the blue of deity, the purple of royalty and the red of sacrificial blood. The cherubim were representative of creation and its powers. Past that veil, only one man ever went into the Holy of Holies beyond: the High Priest, acting for God - and then only once a year on the great Day of Atonement. Atonement in the Old Testament was always by sacrifice.
It is important now to picture what happened when sacrifice took place, because in the most remarkable way, it all foreshadowed what was to happen at the Cross.
The action began with the provision of a lamb (or a goat or a bull - but we shall keep it simple).
1. The lamb was God's provision
Depending on which particular sacrifice was being offered, that lamb might be seen as the worshipper's gift to God - as it was in the Thank Offering - or as God's gift to the worshipper - as it was in the Sin and Guilt Offerings.
This is important. In the offerings associated with sin, guilt and forgiveness, the lamb of sacrifice was not regarded as the worshipper's gift to God, but as God's provision to the worshipper. "I will accept no bull from your house, nor he-goat from your fields, for every beast of the field is mine," saith the Lord, "and the cattle on a thousand hills." (Psalm 50:9-10) In fact the firstborn of all animals in the flock or the herd were especially regarded as 'holy to the Lord.' They were His - His therefore to give. And of their blood, released in the sacrifice, God says in Leviticus 17:11, "I have given it for you upon the altar."
So the lamb is representative of God to the worshipper, not the other way round. That is why the lamb had to be "without blemish, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing;" otherwise it was not fit to suggest a provision made by God. What Abraham said to Isaac his son, "God will provide Himself the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son" (Genesis 22:8), was no less true of all subsequent sin offerings.
And this of course is exactly what God did when He gave His Son, the Lamb of God, into the world for us.
2. The Laying on of Hands
Before the lamb was slain, the worshipper - who came confessing his sin - laid his hands on the animal's head. This is often understood to mean that the worshipper thereby identified himself with the animal, so that in all the action that followed the lamb is substituted for the sinner; what now happens to the lamb happens, (symbolically) to the sinner. But that simply cannot be right. I am fully persuaded that it is the other way round - the lamb is representative of God to the sinner, not of the sinner to God. My reasons are given in what follows.
The Hebrew word translated as 'lay hands on' the victim means, not that he just rests an outstretched hand on the animal's head, but that he 'bears down' on the animal's head, leaning his whole weight down upon it. The lamb is made to bear the sinner's weight ... just as Christ, the Lamb of God, bore the whole weight of our sins in His own Person on the Cross. (I Peter 2:24)
3. The Slaying of the Sacrifice
The lamb is then led to the slaughter. Insufficient attention, I believe, is given to what actually happened then. The lamb is slain; but it is the worshipper, not the priest, who does the slaying.
Now if at that point the lamb is to be regarded as the sinner - as his substitute - then what is in fact being represented is a suicide. Symbolically, on this view, the sinner slays himself. But the very idea of a suicide at this point is simply insupportable.
It is surely significant, too, that from the moment of the slaying onwards, the lamb is regarded as 'most holy.' But if the lamb is to be seen in all respects as the sinner (his substitute), embodying his sin and corruption, how can that be? How can the sinner in his sinfulness be regarded as 'most holy'?
What is in fact being represented by the action here is the effect of our sin upon God: it is a foreshadowing of the slaying of the 'Lamb of God' by the hands of sinful men. As the Lamb of God was "killed by the hands of lawless men" (Peter on the day of Pentecost, Acts 2:23), so the lamb of sacrifice was killed by the hand of the man who had sinned against God. The sacrificial action pictured the reality: it indicated what sin does to God. When God receives the sinner to His heart, He must receive with him to His heart the sin that is in him, and it is 'death' to Him. The sin is 'put away' in God's own pain. So when the blood was shed, it was the life of God's representative which was seen as being poured out, not the sinner's. The blood shed represented, not the sinner's life as being forfeit, but the life of God Himself, mauled by sin, and poured out in self-sacrificing love. The Levitical Law is quite clear on this point. Leviticus 17:12 says plainly, "The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you ... (this is God speaking, and the 'I' is emphatic ) ... I have given it you on the altar, to make atonement for your sins."
It is the loss God Himself sustains that atones for sin. The Scriptures elsewhere say quite plainly that no man can atone for his sin by the surrender of his own life; how could that suffice? Psalm 49:7-8: "Truly no man can ransom himself, or give to God the price of his soul, for the ransom of his life is costly, and can never provide that he should live for ever and never see the Pit." Only the shedding of blood in which the life of God resides can atone for sin. It is surely strange to insist, nonetheless, that it is the sinner's own death that is here represented - as though the sinner's own death could atone for his sin. The Scriptures everywhere repudiate the idea. The shedding of the sinner's blood can never atone for his sin - only the shedding of divine blood can do that. Paul was bold to say to the Ephesian elders that God obtained the Church "with His own blood." (Acts 20:28)
Leviticus 17.11 goes on, "It is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life;" and one has to ask, "Whose life?" Not the literal animal's, for as Hebrews 10:4 categorically affirms, "It is impossible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins" ... as it is impossible, one might add, for a sinner's blood to take away sins. The blood referred to is the blood of the victim of the sinner's sin: and who is the victim of the sinner's sin but God, against Whom all sin is committed? David's confession in Psalm 51.4, "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned" must always be the sinner's confession when he stands before God to confess his sin.
I am fully persuaded that two principles of interpretation should inform all our understanding of the ritual of Old Testament sacrifice:
1. The lamb represents God to the sinner.
2. The priest represents the sinner to God.
4. The Impact in Experience of the Sacrificial Slaying
It seems strange that seldom, if ever, when sacrifice is under discussion, is attention given to the effect on the worshipper of the actual experience ... when, as was required of him, he took the knife to the lamb's neck with his own hand. It is a shocking, even a revolting, thing to have to do. Nothing, surely, could have brought home to him more pointedly the effect of his sin upon God.
So by all this action, there was brought home dramatically to the Hebrew worshipper, ever and again, how grim a thing was his sin, how grievous was its effect upon God, and how costly for God is His forgiveness of it.
5. The Witness to this Truth borne by the Mercy Seat
Think what a witness was borne to all this truth by the sight of the Mercy Seat: for on the Day of Atonement, the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled on it - on that symbol of the innermost heart of God. On His heart appeared the dreadful mark of love's suffering by reason of our sin. This is the silent testimony which the Mercy Seat bore to the nature of God in His relations with sinful men.
It accords with the testimony our blessed Lord's death at the hands of sinful men bears to the nature of God. Under the shadow of the Cross itself He said, "The Father, Who dwells in me, does His works" - and so saying, He passed to His passion and to the sacrifice of the Cross. GOD it was, suffering at the hands of sinful men, Who was unveiled in that Cross. There is the Mercy Seat.
That is why Paul describes it as a Mercy Seat "put forward by God in His blood."
If we look more closely at the Ark of the Covenant we shall understand this a little better.
Moses on the mountain had communed with God. Out of that communion, he was led to fashion symbols and a ritual that would give expression to all the truth about God that he had learned in that communion.
How should God's presence and His very self be represented? Here we should bear in mind that Moses, as Stephen reminds us in Acts 7:22, had been "instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." As the first item in this composite symbol to represent the presence of God, therefore, Moses was led to choose a throne - a throne, naturally enough for him, on the Egyptian model - for God is KING.
AN EGYPTIAN THRONE
The Egyptian throne such as Moses had seen the Pharaohs occupy was a gold box without a seat-back; that was its design in the dynasty he knew. That is what the Ark of the Covenant was: a gold box in the shape of a throne, which is why the lid of the Ark was called a 'seat.' The winged creatures on the arm-rests of Pharaoh's throne stood for the effective exercise of the power that went forth from it; but over the Ark of the Covenant, the winged creatures are turned inward, their heads bowed in worship, suggesting that all the powers God built into creation serve Him. Their faces are toward an empty space, which is the only fit symbol of a God 'not made with human hands,' Whose likeness may not be represented by any image.
THE ARK OF THE COVENANT
Within the ark lay ...
• Aaron's rod that budded, for God is the Giver of life;
• a pot of manna, for God is also its Sustainer;
• and the Tables of the Law, for righteousness is the foundation of God's throne.
• But above them appears the Mercy Seat, for "mercy triumphs over judgment." (James 2:13) Love is not subservient to the Law; the Law is subservient to love.
That seat always bore the stains of the blood sprinkled on it from year to year (no provision was made for them ever to be washed off). Upon all of it lies the sprinkled blood, the blood of love's sacrifice.
So is the Cross, the Throne from which our God reigns, stained with blood. God's rule is the rule of suffering but triumphant love. Is not this testimony of the Mercy Seat one testimony with the witness Jesus bears to the truth on His Cross?
Campbell Morgan said it well when he wrote: "In the moment when man sinned against God, God gathered into His own heart all the issue of that sin; and it is not by the death of a man, but by the mystery of the passion of God embodied in the death of the Man Christ Jesus that God is able to keep His face turned in love toward sinning men, and welcome them as they turn back to Him." ("The Bible and the Cross", Oliphants, p. 34 )
There is no compromise with our sin in the atonement God has supplied. His opposition to the sin He forgives is total, His hostility to it implacable. It is 'death' to Him. The wounds God bears, manifest at the Cross, are the evidence of it. The death which is sin's issue must either be suffered by the sinner if his sin is not 'put away', or it is suffered by God Himself when He puts it away from between the sinner and Himself in His own redeeming passion. He will not, for our sake, spare Himself the hurt it does Him.
That is the love that kindles faith in the repentant sinner. The faith Jesus awakens in us is a faith that has its face set against sin, as God's face is set against it. The love in God to which we respond, we must understand, is love which has a death to sin at its heart. (Paul develops this in Romans ch. 6). And because it is God's own disposition toward sin which is reproduced in the sinner's heart, God is able to be both righteous - not compromising with sin, and forgiving - not defeated by it in His hunger for fellowship with us. "He is faithful and just," as John expressed it, "to forgive us our sin, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (I John 1:9)
Sin, in the very means by which it is forgiven, is seen as a thing that violates the essential life of God. When He 'puts away' our sin, He puts it away in His own pain. That God should bear such suffering in order to receive sinners, and in the act of receiving them beget in their hearts a spirit akin to His own, is a miracle of such magnitude and splendour that there is no singing of it. It is grace - sheer, marvellous grace.
"We are justified," says Paul, "by God's grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, Whom God publicly displayed as a Mercy Seat in His own blood, to be received by faith" ... to be received by faith - for when we see the redemption which is in Christ Jesus so set before us, how can we not trust God to mean what He says when He tells us He will forgive us all our sin? And what can we bring to such forgiveness but our faith? We receive it - by faith.
But we must remember that Christ is Himself the Mercy Seat. The propitiation is not the blood; it is Christ in His blood. "Christ is Himself the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world." (I John 2:2) It is HE Whom we receive by faith. It is in Him that all the suffering of God came to its point. His life is the life laid down for us, His blood the price paid to redeem us. It is He Who met the cost of our redemption in His own Person; and when we receive by faith the propitiation for our sins, it is Christ Himself in His living person Whom we receive.
A paragraph from James Denney's book on Reconciliation expresses the controlling influence on the heart and mind of the believing Christian which this unveiling of God's redeeming love in Christ must have upon us. He says:
"The child whom his father pardons through pain, cannot but be good while the sense of such forgiveness rests upon his heart; and it is this simple principle upon which the whole of the New Testament rests. True forgiveness regenerates. Justification is the power that sanctifies. This truth, which we can verify in our experience of forgiveness of one another daily, is the ultimate and fundamental truth of the Gospel." ("The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation", Hodder & Stoughton, p. 137)
To that Gospel the whole book of Exodus bears eloquent testimony.
Note 1:
Behind Paul's highly compressed statement of the Gospel in these
verses lies the preaching of the Cross on which all the apostles were
agreed, of which examples are given in the book of Acts. Behind the
apostolic preaching of the Gospel in Acts there lies the narrative of
our Lord's death and resurrection recorded in the four Gospels. And
behind that there lies the whole of the Old Testament, which prepares
us for the meaning of those events. So it is with the O.T. we have to
begin our search for the meaning of the Cross. When Paul wrote to the
Corinthians, "I delivered to you as of first importance that Christ
died for our sins according to the Scriptures," the only Scriptures
anybody had were the O.T. Scriptures.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|