Thoughts on the Tabernacle

The reading for this week is Exodus 25-27.  These chapters are a detailed prescription for building the Tabernacle, a portable house of worship.  We may be inclined to skip over this seemingly endless list of measurements and descriptions--this simply doesn't seem very important.  However, even if it isn't important to us, this material is quite important in the Book of Exodus.  The same number of chapters is devoted to the Tabernacle and the priestly garments as was given to the entirety of the Law.  Not only that, all of this material is repeated later on in chapters 35-40, when the Israelites actually build the Tabernacle!  Apparently, this description of the Tabernacle was critically important.  Our question should be: why?  What does this material communicate?  This is what I hope to focus on in my sermon this week.  But for now, a few notes:

Because the Tabernacle is described in so much detail, it is possible to create a pretty accurate reconstruction of what it looked like.  This website contains pictures of a full-size replica.  Also, here is a computer model of it, and here is a floor plan.

The Tabernacle consisted of a courtyard with a tent in the middle (the Holy Place).  One end of the tent was separated from the rest by a curtain and designated the Most Holy Place.  Inside was the Ark of the Covenant, an elaborate box that contained the tablets of the Ten Commandments.  It was there that God promised to meet with His people.

This basic design was replicated in the Temple; it has also influenced Jewish Synagogue construction.

It must have been quite an operation to disassemble, move, and reassemble this elaborate tent.  Couldn't God have instituted a simpler form of worship?  Yet, the emphasis that was placed on the Israelites' house of worship showed that they were God's precious possession--and that God's presence with them was their most precious possession.