The Door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation

The Tabernacle of the Congregation (Exodus, Chapters 25 through 40) is one of the major types of Scripture. The Tabernacle consisted of the Courtyard, the Holy Place, and the Most Holy Place.

The Courtyard signifies the place of the initial salvation experience—the first area of redemption.

The Holy Place is the second area, that of sanctification. It portrays the church of Christ in its holiness and priestly service to God.

The third area is the Most Holy Place, the location of the throne of almighty God.

There was a hanging of cloth at the entrance of each of the three areas of the Tabernacle. The first hanging was the gate of the Courtyard. The second hanging was the door leading into the Holy Place. The third hanging was the veil that divided between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place.

All three hangings were of the same colors: blue, purple, scarlet, and fine twisted (white) linen. The material was linen and the colors were worked into the linen in a beautiful and detailed manner.

The Courtyard surrounded the Tabernacle building and was fenced in by white linen hung on wooden posts. Located in the Courtyard were the Altar of Burnt Offering, and the Laver in which the priests washed every time they went into the Holy Place.

The Holy Place of the Tabernacle was a rectangular room, ten cubits high, ten cubits wide, and twenty cubits in length. Inside the Holy Place were the Table of Showbread, the Lampstand, and the Altar of Incense.

At the far end of the Holy Place was the veil. Beyond the veil was the Most Holy Place, a cubical room ten cubits on a side. The Most Holy Place was the resting place for the Ark of the Covenant and its lid—the solid gold Mercy Seat overshadowed by the Cherubim of Glory.

The gate that led into the Courtyard of the Tabernacle symbolizes the first death—that of Christ on the cross and our participation with Him in His death. The Courtyard symbolizes the first resurrection—our position of righteousness and our newness of eternal life in Christ.

The door that led into the Holy Place of the Tabernacle building symbolizes the second death—death to the deeds of our body (our fleshly nature). The Holy Place is the area of the second resurrection—our resurrection to holiness and to service in the work of the Gospel.

The veil that led into the Most Holy Place of the Tabernacle building represents the third death—death to our self-centeredness, self-will, self-love. The Most Holy Place is the scene of the third resurrection—our resurrection to the fullness of authority and power in union with Christ.

The door of the Tabernacle, which was located on the east end of the building, was constructed from linen hung on five posts.

And thou shalt make an hanging for the door of the tent, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with needlework. And thou shalt make for the hanging five pillars of Shittim wood, and overlay them with gold, and their hooks shall be of gold: and thou shalt cast five sockets of brass for them. (Exodus 26:36,37)

The linen material of the door was hung on five posts of acacia wood. The wood was covered with gold. The hooks from which the linen was hung were of gold. The posts were set in sockets of bronze. The posts were topped with ornamental gold capitals.

The number five, as we understand the symbolism, depicts our entrance into the Body of Christ through the Holy Spirit, just as we are baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ through water.

The five posts of gold-covered wood portray the members of the Body of Christ, the saints through whom the world must pass if it would come into the Presence of God. The sockets of bronze in which the posts stood signify the judgment of God in which Christ—Head and Body—is established.

Judgment is God's response to good and evil. Christ bore on Himself the judgment of our sins, and every member of the Body of Christ must pass through the fire of God's judgment.

The members of the Body of Christ do not bear on themselves the judgment of other people's sins in the sense that Christ, our sin-offering, did. But each member of the Body of Christ must pass through fiery trials until his senses have been exercised to distinguish between good and evil.

Each member must of his own will choose to love righteousness and hate sin and rebellion.

How many Christians draw back when the Holy Spirit begins to reprove and convict them concerning some lustful practice, some unforgiveness toward another person, some coveted treasure or ambition, some relationship with another person, some desired position, some idolatrous practice?

The Holy Spirit yearns over us with the jealousy of God, desiring to loose us from all the works of Satan.

We must come to realize and have faith that Christ indeed has the authority and power to release us from our bondages and that it is His will, under the new covenant, to destroy every claim that sin makes on us. To maintain that Christ is unable to deliver us from sin's power is to deny the purpose of the new covenant (I John 3:3-9).

Cannot He who is so willing and able to remove the curse of cancer from the physical body also be willing and able to remove the curse of lust? Cannot He who is so willing and able to heal every kind of sickness and affliction also be willing and able to remove hatred, backbiting, gossiping, jealousy, envy, pride, fear, and every other sin and rebellion from the members of the Body of Christ?

The breaking of these bondages comes as death to us. It is a putting to death of the deeds of the body. We have participated for so long in these satanic impulses that they have become part of our personality. To let them all go means a radical change in the way we act, speak, and think.

Such deep change is frightening to us because our desire has been toward these evils for so long. To walk in the world without serving sin may appear to us to be undesirable. What we may not realize is that these bondages are the direct cause of the confusion, remorse, grief, nervousness, fear, dread, and general pain and tragedy that characterize our life in the world.

Our sins of the flesh can destroy our health, our peace of mind, our home, our family, and everything else of value to us. Satan and his forces are enjoying the use of our bodies while dragging our personalities toward the Lake of Fire. The evil spirits please themselves and we suffer the consequences.

We are speaking primarily to Christians. The Holy Spirit deals with the saints concerning their sins but with the unsaved concerning faith in Christ (John 16:9). The unsaved are confronted with the necessity for believing in Christ and receiving God's mercy so they may be preserved in the Day of Wrath.

The issue of the cross is that of Christ's ownership of us versus Satan's ownership of us. When we accept the blood of the cross we accept Christ's ownership of us and we receive God's Passover protection from destruction.

However, our tendencies toward wicked behavior are not, for the most part, healed in initial salvation. What does happen is that we come out of "Egypt," out of the world. The question of salvation has to do, first of all, with the sin of Adam and the state of rebellion and bondage that we inherited from Adam. We were born in sin and formed in sin and rebellion. It is this complete separation from God that begins to be healed when we come to Calvary.

After we believe in Christ and are baptized in water we must come to terms with the sins that we are practicing now. The guilt of the sin of Adam, that is, our inherited guilt, no longer is of concern to us. We now are without condemnation in Christ. The attention of the Holy Spirit from this point onward is directed toward our daily conduct as a Christian.

God has given the Holy Spirit to us so we may grasp the grace of God in Christ to the extent of overcoming the sins that we practice as a Christian. Each day of our pilgrimage we choose anew to follow the Spirit of God in the conquering of the sins of our flesh, or else we choose to serve Satan in the indulging of the appetites of our flesh.

All sin ultimately is obedience to the will of Satan. "He that committeth sin is of the devil." By the same token, all righteousness is of Christ. Holiness is the fruit of the dwelling of Christ in us through the Spirit of God.

Truly, the choice to follow the Holy Spirit into the crucifixion of our fleshly lusts, into the repudiation and rejection of all that Satan desires in us, is death to the desires of our flesh and mind. Deliverance from sinful practices is not pleasant as we begin to experience it. Talking about sanctification is as "honey" in our mouth, but the working out of it in our personality can be "bitter in the stomach."

However, as soon as the Holy Spirit brings us to the place where we can begin to enjoy some of the peace and liberty that follow our release from the desire to sin, we understand that God truly is seeking our good and our happiness. The Lord is not attempting to make us miserable, although that is how our fleshly nature perceives the Lord's working in us. God is seeking our well-being, our peace, our joy, our eternal happiness.

God sees that our sins are keeping us in captivity to misery, striving, fear. Our sins are destroying all that is desirable in our life. He gently and lovingly brings us to the place of the breaking of our chains.

We do not always enjoy the Lord's methods of releasing us and we kick and rebel against people, against circumstances, against all that tests and prunes us. However, the Lord proceeds with the program of sanctification.

As the operation of sanctification takes effect in our personality we begin to realize that God knows what He is doing and that we now are free to receive blessing and contentment. We no longer are compelled by our lusts to keep on grinding at the mills of sin. Sin no longer has dominion over us because we have grasped the grace of God to the point of breaking the yoke of sin.

The breaking of the bondages of sin does not take place all at once. We enter the land of promise one battle at a time. Overcoming the world and our sins is a process, and no one except the Spirit of God understands how to accomplish our liberation.

Even though the breaking of our bondages requires a period of time, sanctification is a distinctly defined program, and each day brings an important step forward in the progress of our redemption from all that is satanic.

We Christians, if we truly are disciples of the Lord Jesus, are not wandering about at random in the wilderness of the world. God systematically is working with each of His elect in the most painstaking, most detailed manner imaginable.

All the resources of Heaven and earth are being applied to the work of perfecting the saints of God. Nothing is being withheld. God has a great interest in bringing each member of the Body of Christ into the image of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Lord keeps on working every day, in your life and mine, perfecting each detail of conduct, each detail of speech, each detail of motive, each detail of imagination. No aspect is left unexamined. Every thought and action is weighed with the greatest care.

Sometimes we feel that God is being too strict with us. If we could see the glory that is ahead we would urge God to even stricter attention to the program concerning us. God's love is the motive behind His work in us. Our task is to have faith in the goodness of God and to endure patiently our daily lessons.

It is not always easy to overcome through Christ the obstacles set before us. Sometimes a certain amount of patience and delayed gratification is required of us before we are able to settle down into the day-to-day learning of the lessons presented to us by the Spirit of God.

The curriculum was designed in the mind of God. Our task is to continue each day with the learning program. We are to give our attention to mastery of the lessons of the moment and to follow the Lord Jesus wherever He may lead us.

If we are willing to follow Him, keeping our complaining to a minimum, not giving up in fear and unbelief, we will wake up one morning to realize that God has finished with us and we now are prepared to reign with Him in glory and joy.

Death to our sinful bondages requires self-discipline. Every death in Christ is redemptive. It is followed by resurrection into a higher plane of life and service than we have experienced. Each time we gain a victory over sin we are lifted into greater liberty in Christ.

Day by day through the Spirit we put to death the deeds of our flesh, the chains of Satan. Day by day we breathe more of the air of Heaven. Day by day we keep our eyes on Jesus. It is a glorious adventure full of surprises and blessings. It is a life and death struggle for mastery over the world and our flesh, but the Lord always brings us to victory if we do not cease looking to Him.

The Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Peace and joy are among the highest, most desired goals of mankind. Peace and joy proceed from only one source—righteousness.

The second resurrection, that which results from death to sin, is resurrection to righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Also it is resurrection to priestly service to God as a member of the Body of Christ, the Servant of the Lord. It is resurrection to bearing witness to the living Lord Jesus Christ with mighty signs and wonders.

The second resurrection is to holiness of spirit, soul, and body. It is resurrection, not only to God's powerful communication with mankind through us but also to our communication with God. Spirit-anointed, holy worship and intercession ascending before God are eternal chains of love that draw God's attention to the needs of mankind on the earth.

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