“And let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” (Ex 25:8, NKJ)
The Old Testament is not just a record of stories, poems, proverbs and prophetic messages. For example: Paul explains the New Testament baptism of believers and baptism with the Holy Spirit on the basis of the Israelites who were submerged in the Red Sea and covered by the cloud (1 Cor 10:1-3). He refers to the rock that Moses struck, from which water flowed, and he makes the unbelievable statement in verse 4: “and the Rock was Christ”! Also, when Peter teaches about the history of Noah, he does so in order to explain New Testament baptism. He calls this method of reading the pursuit of “antitypes” (1 Pet 3:21). An antitype, according to Thayer, “is a thing formed after some pattern; a thing resembling another, its counterpart”.
Paul says “these things became our examples” (1 Cor 10:6), but in verse 11 he explicitly spells it out in the following way: “Now all these things happened to those people as examples, and they were written for our instruction, to whom the ends of the ages have come.” (EMTV).
One such example that is of much value to the New Testament believer is the tabernacle of Moses, an antitype that we will be using with much fruit throughout the study. The tabernacle of Moses was a moveable temple that was housed in a tent (Acts 7:44). The relationship that Paul draws with your body as the temple of God and as a habitation (2 Cor 5:1-4) becomes very important within this perspective. God does not dwell in temples and churches and convents that have been made by human hands (Acts 7:48); He has inhabited your body as His mishkan, His dwelling place, His holy tent. Paul asks you to ponder this in 1 Cor 3:16: Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
When you are born again you become the tabernacle of God. One thus better understands what John 1:14 says: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” In the Literal Translation of the Holy Bible it states: “And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.”
You are the place that God has chosen to dwell.
- Sela: Make sure that you understand the implications of being a tabernacle of God. What does it mean, for example, that you are also called: “the tabernacle of the Testimony”? (Num 1:50)
- Read: Gen 2; Ps 2; John 2
- Memorise: Gen 2:22-23
