The Tabernacle and Its Pattern

Imagine a father who calls his grown children together for a family dinner and tells them where it will be: a small kosher Israeli restaurant in his own neighborhood. He has chosen the place, and he has chosen the food.

One son decides he knows better. He books a barbecue place he likes across town and sends everyone the new address. Now half the family is at one restaurant and half at the other. Phones are ringing, someone is hurt, someone is angry, and the father is sitting at the table he chose, waiting.

The son was not trying to skip dinner. He wanted to eat with his father, but he wanted to do it at a place of his own choosing, and that was the whole problem.

Who Chooses the Place?

God cannot be contained by any building. He made the world and everything in it. The heavens are His throne, and the earth is only His footstool. It follows that people do not get to decide where they will meet so great a God. He decides.

It was so from the very first tabernacle:

Exodus 25:8 And they shall make for me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.

The wording is careful. The verse does not say “that I may dwell in the sanctuary,” but “that I may dwell in their midst.” From the beginning, the tabernacle was the place God appointed for meeting His people. That is why it is called “the tent of appointed time,” the ohel אֹהֶל o'-hel moed מוֹעֵד mo-ade':

Exodus 25:22 And I will meet with you there, and I will speak with you from above the cover, from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony (edut עֵדוּת ay-dooth'), all that I will command (tzivvah צָוָה tsaw-vaw') you to the sons of Israel.

Exodus 29:42-43 A continual burnt offering throughout your generations, at the opening of the tent (ohel) of appointed time (moed) before the LORD, where I will meet with you, to speak there to you. And there I will meet with the sons of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by My glory.

What Does “Dwell” Mean?

When God says He will “dwell” there, the Hebrew word is shakan שָׁכַן shaw-kan', and the word for tabernacle, mishkan מִשְׁכָּן mish-kawn', comes from the same root. It does not mean that God needed a room to live in, as a person does. He neither eats nor sleeps:

Psalm 121:4 Behold, He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

For God to dwell in a place means that His glory and His presence rest there, so that it becomes the place where His people meet Him. In the same passage where He says, “there I will meet with the sons of Israel,” He continues:

Exodus 29:45-46 And I will dwell in the midst of the sons of Israel, and I will be to them for God. And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out from the land of Egypt, to dwell in their midst; I am the LORD their God.

Meeting and dwelling stand side by side. On the day the tabernacle was set up, the cloud covered it and the glory of the LORD filled it. That is what His dwelling looked like.

Built from a Pattern

Nor did the design of the tabernacle come from Moses. God showed him the pattern:

Hebrews 8:5 They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was warned when he was about to erect the tent — for He says, "See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain."

Moses was not working out for himself what God might like. He was a builder following a plan shown to him from heaven.

The same was true of Solomon. He did not walk around Jerusalem looking for a hill with a fine view. He built on the place God had already named, the place of which God had said, “My name shall be there.” The Torah had spoken of that place from the start:

Deuteronomy 12:5 But to the place which the LORD your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, to his dwelling shall you seek, and you shall come there;

Why This Is a Gift

At first this may sound like a restriction. It is not, and the reason appears as soon as we watch what happens when people decide.

In many towns you can see it: a church on one corner, another across the road, and a third a block farther on. Scripture warned of this long ago. In the very chapter that speaks of the place God would choose, Moses warned Israel against each man doing “whatever is right in his own eyes.” Centuries later, in Corinth, the believers were dividing behind their leaders, each saying, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Apollos.” It is the son with the barbecue reservation, multiplied a thousand times.

Now picture the opposite. The Father names the place. No one has to win the argument, because the argument is already settled, and no one has to become the leader everyone follows, because everyone is answering the same invitation. When God chooses the place, His people can truly be one, for they are all coming to the same table.

His choosing is not a burden. It is a mercy.

Where This Leads

There is one more place God has chosen to dwell, a place no human hand built. Paul names it in his letter to the Corinthians, in a verse that is printed on posters and coffee mugs: your body is a temple.

The verse is usually quoted to show that the temple belongs to the past. But a few words later Paul says “therefore,” and that word points in exactly the opposite direction.