Day 24 --Exodus 24-27

As a kid I was greatly fascinated by the Bible’s description of the tabernacle Moses built, following the explicit instructions of the LORD found in our reading for today. In Sunday School we constructed a cardboard replica of the Tent of Meeting with its surrounding fences and set it in a shallow wooden box filled with sand. I remember everything about the little cardboard tabernacle and its furnishings.
There was the Ark of the Covenant with its golden cherubim described in Exodus 25:10. This was in fact an empty throne on which the invisible God, who would not allow himself to be depicted in any image, was thought to sit in state.
There was a golden table on which “the bread of the Presence” was always displayed before him (25:30). There was a golden seven-branched candlestick that burned day and night to light the holy place in which God dwelled. There was a bronze altar of sacrifice upon which blood offerings were made.`
Every detail of the tabernacle’s furnishings was revealed to Moses by God on the mountain—25:40. And the Tent of Meeting (25:22) had enormous significance for the people of Israel--its material richness testified to that. It was a symbol of God’s presence among them and a place for the LORD to live with them in a very literal sense. “Make me a sanctuary,” God instructs Moses, “that I may dwell among them” (25:8).
The tabernacle brought God into the midst of the people, but also hid him from them. It was composed of concentric circles of curtains which formed barriers between the human world and the divine. The curtain that separated the holy place from the Holy of Holies (26:33) symbolized the distance between God’s perfection and our sinfulness. Anyone who tried to break through that barrier would die.
But the shedding of animal blood that took place on the altar in front of tabernacle was intended to bridge the distance between God and the sinful people.
The shedding of animal blood symbolically brought God and the people together. Blood sealed the covenant Israel made with the LORD. “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient” (2$:7) the people say, and Moses splashes them with sacrificial blood. Blood atoned—the word means made “at one”—for their sins and brought together what would otherwise be opposite and irreconcilable. Blood partially removed the barrier between God and his people, but never removed it far enough so that further sacrifice was unnecessary. Blood must be shed again and again and again. The tabernacle was a sufficient answer to the problem of human sinfulness, but never a final one.