Last Sunday, we started to unpack what it looks like to Encounter God. The good news is that God spares no measure to be known. There is an incredible verse in Revelation 21:3 were Apostle John testifies, “Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: ‘Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God.”
The literal translation of this verse is even more amazing. It doesn’t just say, “Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity…” it says, “God pitches his tent with humanity”… “God camps out with humanity” … “God tabernacles with humanity.” In heaven we will be camping out with God for eternity on the new earth under the new heavens in the new city.
But heaven isn’t the first time God “camps out” or “tabernacles” with his people. He did it in the Garden of Eden, in the Wilderness & Desert, in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. God dwelt or tabernacled among humanity within the person of Jesus Christ. God now dwells and tabernacles among humanity by his Holy Spirit, within His people, the Church, the Body of Christ.
Not this “building.” But we, the people of God, are God’s tent. God’s Spirit dwells within us. Christ Jesus dwells within us. The Father’s glory and love dwells within us. We are God’s people, his tabernacle. Just think of the implications of that! In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 it says, “Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.”
Your very life is a portable sanctuary, a portable tabernacle or tent, in which God dwells, in which God draws, all men unto himself. There isn’t any place on this great earth where God’s presence cannot potentially be felt because God has scattered his Church, billions of micro-tabernacles, to the ends of earth, to every tribe, tongue, and nation!
So last week we learned about the purpose of a Tabernacle. God tells Moses in Exodus 29:42-46 to build a Tabernacle: “There I will {meet you and speak to you. . .}” “43 I will also meet with the Israelites there, and that place will be consecrated by my glory. 44 I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar; I will also consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve me as priests. 45 I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God. 46 And they will know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, so that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God.”
We described how the Tabernacle was a microcosm of heaven. How, as you approached the exterior of the Tabernacle, and ventured into the most interior space of the Tabernacle, you learn ever deeper truths about God, and truth about yourself, and you have an ever-deepening encounter with the grace of God. Your first experience of God would be the “outer court” of the Tabernacle. It’s in the outer court that you would encounter rumors of God’s greatness, and sense the aroma of God’s goodness. It’s in the outer court that your curiosity is aroused, and you’re drawn in.
It’s in the outer court that you first begin, in the words of Psalm 100:3, “Acknowledge that the Lord is God. That he made us, and we are his, his people, the sheep of his pasture.” {Acknowledge his Greatness!} It’s where we learn, in the words of Psalm 100:4, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name. 5 For the Lord is good, and his faithful love endures forever; his faithfulness, through all generations.” {Celebrate his Goodness} The outer courts are a welcoming space, a party-like, joyful atmosphere. If you were an unbeliever and you came to wilderness tabernacle, you would ask, “What is the ruckus about?”
Now, just inside the outer courts of Tabernacle, you would encounter a profoundly strange and foreign spectacle. You would have encountered the cries of a pure, spotless, innocent lamb. You would encounter a “brazen altar” . . . a kind of four-horned, stone, butchers block … upon which you’d see the sight of blood pooling, spilling down its sides, down unto the ground, before being soaked into the earth. You’d smell the stench of death lingering in the air. And you would no doubt be shocked into silence, and wonder, “What could this possibly mean? What association does my Great or even Good God have which such a gruesome spectacle?”
If I might speak frankly, few sights are more sobering than that of blood. I remember once when my brother was out in our family garden, knocking down weeds with a machete. See, I don’t even have to tell you what happened! You are already nauseous! Another time he playing with an electric motor assembly, with a plastic fan, and the fan shattered, sending shards of plastic deep into his wrists. Both times I mopped up blood off our garage floor while dad rushed brother to the ER. Blood is precious, because it represents life itself. This is why the sight of blood is so sobering. What might the sight of blood have to do with encountering God?
One way to understand the Brazen Altar, and yes, the spectacle of blood, is to go backward in time, to the first tabernacle or dwelling place of God, the Garden of Eden. The Garden was the first “tent” God ever pitched. It was there that God’s dwelling was with humanity in its infancy. God lived, dwelt, and walked with Adam and Eve. They were his people, they were his and he was theirs. God breathed into them the breath of life. But it’s in the Garden of Eden, in that Holy Tabernacle, that the first instance of the shedding of any blood, in all of human history, is recorded.
God warned Adam and Eve, that if they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they would surely die. Satan of course accuses God of lying, and deceives Eve, who then deceives her husband, and they partake of the tree. Adam and Eve immediately realize they are naked, and they feel shame. Worse, they feel estranged from God Himself and so they try to cover themselves and hide in the trees. But they cannot cover themselves adequately, nor hide, nor rectify their sin, nor reverse their predicament. They are filled with dread of punishment, they have real terror and fear. How could they ever stand in his holy presence again?
But what does God do? In Genesis 3:21 it says, “The Lord God made clothing from [animal] skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.” Let me say this more clearly. The Lord God took the life of an innocent animal, shed its lifeblood, and took its skin, to cover (to atone) for Adam and Eve’s sin. What’s in view here is not whose blood was shed (that of an innocent animal), but whose blood was not shed (that of guilty man). God provides a substitutionary sacrifice that defers the penalty of death Adam and Eve deserved. A sacrifice that temporarily covers Adam & Eve’s shame until a more permanent covering or atonement could be made.
In every Tabernacle God establishes, even in heaven, blood is present. The holiness, greatness, and justice of God requires sin’s price be paid. “You will surely die.” But the goodness, mercy, and grace of God makes a way by virtue of sacrifice, to appease, and thereby defer judgement or wrath, until a solution could be offered.
From this moment on, not just sacrifice, but a “blood” sacrifice, becomes the central provision by which any man (whether Adam, Eve, or anyone else) could encounter the Living God. The blood was a sober recognition of the gravity of man’s sin, the true cost or penalty of sin (death), the finality of God’s word and judgements (you will surely die). But it’s also a sober recognition of the power of God’s mercy—that God in his love makes a provision to pay the penalty—that it not be our blood that atones for our sins but that of another.
Now in Genesis 3, two brothers, Adam & Eve’s two sons, come before God to worship Him. One of the brothers, Abel, offers a blood sacrifice presumably from a pure, unblemished, choice, innocent, firstborn lamb. But instead, Cain makes a grain offering—an offering easily replenished man’s labor. With Abel’s offering God was well pleased—why? Because Abel’s gift conveyed both the gravity of sin, and the nature of God’s atoning sacrifice, God’s provision for sinful man. But Cain’s gift conveyed ignorance and folly, and God was deeply displeased. Blood was not precious to Cain. He thought nothing of shedding even his own brother’s blood. So instead of blessing, Cain fell under a curse.
It’s early in Genesis that we find the emergence of “clean” and “unclean” animals. The primary distinction of clean and unclean animals is quite simply this—unclean animals tend to be predatorial, they take kill and destroy and take the lifeblood of innocent creatures. Eagles. Wild Boars. Sharks. Whereas the clean animals do not take lifeblood.
But the penalty of sin was life for life, blood for blood. Yet God has the power to determine who or what’s blood atones. When Abraham went up on the mountain to worship God with his son Isaac—his one and only Son Isaac—His beloved Son—the men were prepared to make a sacrifice. On that day God demanded that a Father (Abraham) sacrifice his One and Only Beloved Son (Isaac). And Abraham, supposing God had the power to raise the dead, shockingly, began to follow through on God’s demand. But on that day God wasn’t, nor would he ever, demand a human father to sacrifice his one and only son to atone for sin. No, God was teaching, and foreshadowing… what God himself would one day do. The Father’s ultimate solution to atone for the sins of the world wasn’t the blood of goats—it would be the blood of his One and Only Son Jesus Christ! On that mountain God spared Isaac, and Abraham much grief, and provided a ram!
The shedding of blood “has” always been, “is now,” and “will forever be” central in worship. It was central in the garden (Adam and Eve). It was central outside the garden (Cain and Abel). It was central in Abraham. It was central in Moses (Tabernacle). It was central in life of Israel (Temple). It was central in Christ (the cross displays God’s love while Jesus’ blood atones for man’s sin). It is central in the Christian worship (Bread & Wine symbolizing Christ’s broken flesh and spilled blood that atones for our sin). It is central in heaven (where “blood of the lamb” evokes the praise of all heaven) In view of God’s mercy, the Christian offers his body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. In the outer court we begin to acknowledge God’s greatness, savor God’s goodness. But at the brazen altar were confronted with God’s great holiness and justice, and his good and merciful provision… not of our blood, nor even that of animals… but ultimately of his one, only, beloved Son. [Hebrews 9:1-8, 11-14, 15, 22-28]