 Hi everyone and welcome back. Hope you enjoyed your long break, extended break. Alright, let's continue from where we left. So, when we talk about the Tabernacle, in the last session we spoke about, if you have to start talking about the Tabernacle, we start from Genesis chapter 3 and 2,500 years or approximately later, God has a resting place, a dwelling place here on Earth. And so, for 2,500 years, there was no resting place for Him. And a single man thought about building something or asking God about his dwelling place or his resting place for 2,500 years. Think about it, now today we say Jesus came 2,000 years ago and think of everything that has happened in 2,000 years and add another 500 years to it. And so, for those many years, there was no resting place for God here on Earth. So Tabernacle, as mentioned, was mending a tear that sin had separated us from the spirit of God. And knitting it back together like a meeting place where humanity would meet with divinity. And then we go on to see, once we start talking about the Tabernacle, we usually start talking from the outer courts. The altar and the labor, but we very rarely talk about the gate. We don't start from the gates as well, but that's where I'd like to start. And I want to call this the gate as the place of introduction, a place where we meet the Savior kind of thing. So Psalms 104 was to enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise. And we read about when Pharisees complain to Jesus and say, look at these children, what they are singing. And then Jesus courts Psalm 8. Haven't you read or heard that from the lips of infant, I have ordained praise? And why am I saying that? It says that there were children inside the courts, the temple gates in other words. And so gates was like an entrance to the outer courts. But the gate was made of four colors. It was the thick and some say it was opened, not like a gate would open wide like this, but it had like one of these curtains that you pull, it would go up. That's what they say, but again, I don't know. But it was made of four colors. It was made of blue, purple, scarlet and white. White is fine linen, also known as fine linen. We see in John chapter 14 verse 6, Jesus says that I am the way, the truth and the life. And John chapter 10 verse 9, he says, I am the gate. And whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture. I am the gate, I am the way, the truth and the life. So why is that important? This is where we are being introduced. We are calling this a place of introduction, isn't it? We are meeting, we are encountering a Lord and Savior. We are being introduced to His grace and His mercy and to who He is. And again, we looked at the picture of the tabernacle, where on all the three sides, it was surrounded with white cloth, it's about six feet or so, but there was only one gate. There was no gate for every side. There was no East, South gate, West gate, North gate. There was only one gate. There was one way, right? So I am the way and that way would lead eventually to the presence, to the ultimate presence of God, which is the Ark of the Covenant. And so that's the place of introduction, as we can call it. And very quickly, we mentioned that the gate was made of four colors, isn't it? Blue, purple, scarlet. And each of those colors signify or symbolize something in the scripture. Scripturally, okay? The blue was always used to symbolize everything that is divine. When you read about it in Revelation and you read Ezekiel 1.26, it talks about like the sea of glass, which was like sapphire, like blue in color, right? So everything divine would be symbolized with the color blue, right? And so that symbolizes other portraits. Jesus as the Son of God is the Divine Son of God, right? The only Son of God, the Father. And then we look at, there's the color purple, right? Purple is the color of royalty, right? Things where there was a grain of their robes, right? It would be purple in color. It's the color of royalty. And so as my King, I obey him as the Son of God. I worship him and scarlet the color of blood red, right? Signifies or symbolizes the blood of Jesus, right? Who cleanses us and saves us, heals us and restores us. And then fine linen is his purity, his holiness, his righteousness, right? And so at the gate, we encounter Jesus in all his four offices, so to say, right? We encounter him as the Son of God. We are introduced to him as our King. We are introduced to him as our Savior. We are introduced to him as a spotless lamb, as a perfect man, as a righteous Son of Man. And Jesus is portrayed as all of this very differently in each of the Gospels. So if you read through the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as the King of the Jews, right? Where you see the color purple, right? And then in the book of Luke's, you see Jesus as the friend of sinners, right? Who came to save us, who shed his blood. And then in the Gospel of Mark, we see that he is a perfect Son of Man, righteous and sinless man. And in the Gospel of John, we see him as the Son of God, right? So all of these four Gospels portray Jesus very differently, right? And look, I am not an artist. I am not a painter. I can't draw for nuts and I can't color for... Yeah, like the worst. I can't imagine. But what I learned recently is just like an off note kind of the thing that I want to share is, you see in the book of Revelation and all of heaven, they have only one reason to praise him and worship him is that he is worthy. That's the song of the heaven. They sing that he is worthy, right? The lamb that was slain. He is worthy to open the scrolls, right? And worthiness and the worth was always associated with royalty. And that's why, you know, he's also worthy. Now, what I learned about colors recently is that if you want to buy a color pack, a paint pack, you will never find the color purple in any of the boxes. So you mix the color red, white and blue. So when you mix those three colors, you get the color purple. And so, you know, as Jesus who came as a perfect man and a sinless man, as a son of God, and who died for us on the cross by shedding his blood, all of these three offices made him worthy to be seated on the right hand side of the Father. And we call him as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, right? And so at the gate, it's the gate of introduction where we are introduced to the full. You know, he's the prophet, prophet, priest and king, right? Jesus, as we know it. So he's the gate, you know, and he says it in John 10, 9, I am the gate who enters through me will be saved. So that's a place of introduction. That's the first place you are in the tabernacle of Moses. And then we go on, now we go on to the outer courts, right? So the outer court, as we know, is had two furnitures. One is the brazen altar or the bronze altar, altar of sacrifice also known and the brazen labor. Let's call the brazen altar or the altar of sacrifice as a place of the reconciliation, right? It's a place of sacrifice. It's a place that symbolizes the cross where the ultimate sacrifice was done, right? Where the sinless and the spotless Lamb was sacrificed for us. Are you with me? Right? In John chapter one verse 29, you know, it writes the behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Now, until Jesus came, what was happening on the altar and on the Ark of the Covenant where the blood was poured on the mercy seat was a covering for the sin, right? It was not, what do I say? It was just a patchwork, so to speak, right? Like a temporary fix, but the ultimate fix solution for the problem was paid through Jesus. Our ultimate sacrifice, right? It was a place of surrender. It was a place where you would lay down your will and we learned quite a bit about the altar, isn't it in previous classes where we are not encouraged to just build altars but to be on the altar. And because of what Jesus did, now we are reconciled. This is another image of the cross that we are learning here. What was torn, what we thought was torn, Jesus mended it. And this was again shown in the Pabernacle of Moses as a temporary fix, as the altar of sacrifice also known as the place of reconciliation. Okay? Are you all with me? And so, one of the things that we can learn from this thing is that again, we are encouraged to offer up our bodies as living sacrifice as Paul writes in the Romans chapter 12 verse 1. We looked at that verse before, so not going to go deep into it. Yeah, so the altar of burnt offering, that's the place of reconciliation. And the next place that we are introduced, next thing that we are introduced is the water basin. The brazen laver or the place of sanctification. We're going, okay. So in Exodus chapter 30, I'll just go through and read the scripture that's in the notes. Exodus 30 verse 17 to 21, it says, you shall also make a laver of bronze with its base also of bronze for washing. You shall put it between the tabernacle of meeting and the altar. Okay, you shall put it between the tabernacle, the inner courts and the altar. And you shall put water in it for Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet in water from it. When they go in the tabernacle of meeting or when they come near the altar to minister to burn an offering made by fire to the Lord, they shall wash with water lest they die. So they shall wash their hands and their feet lest they die. And it shall be a statue for ever to them, to him and his descendants throughout their generations. Now, there's a couple more scriptures you can read in Leviticus chapter 8 verse 5 and 6. They had to wash, it was a place of washing and cleansing. And I think there's another passage that I forget where it was, where it talks about it. It mentions that the inside of the laver was made up of mirrors that was used by women. I forget the reference part, if anybody can find it, just share it on the chat section. Okay, so why is this important? It was a place of a sanctification or a purification, right? Because the priests would work with the sacrifices, their hands would be messy, you know, with, say, wood and be black in color, blood in their hands, their feet would be dirty and whatnot. So before they would enter the inner courts or the holy place, they were commanded by God to wash their hands and their feet before they enter. It was a place of sanctification or purification. Now, today, now the hands symbolizes works. It symbolizes work, work, right? But we don't work for our sanctification, we don't work for our salvation. It was given to us freely by God, right? He died for us while we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us, right? So we don't attain salvation by working with any of our doing, so to speak. Okay, but yet we need sanctification and we need purification because we continue to walk this walk of life, of faith. It's an imagery, it's a metaphor, right? We continue to walk, we continue to run this race. So we read that in Ezekiel 36-25, it says, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanliness. And from all your idols, I will cleanse you, right? And John 131, if I'm not, if I'm right, it says, I think John the Baptist, he says, I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water that he might be revealed to Israel. So again, the imagery, the use of water there. And you remember the first miracle of Canna? He turned water to wine. Yes. Now, there were six jars that were used, that were set there, isn't it? And that was filled with water, the stone jars, as we call it now. Now, those six, the six jars of water, huge jars of water, those jars were kept separately for purification. The priests would use that water to again wash their hands, their feet. It was a water used for purification, for cleaning. And so Jesus turns the water that was set apart for priests to clean into wine. Again, that symbolizes blood. You see how he uses imagery, so you can go back and forth, back and forth. Right? And another thing that I want to mention is why I wanted to stress that the internal part of it was made of women's mirror is in James chapter one, verse 22 and 25. Can someone, wait, let me just see if I can find it. Let's go to James chapter one. It talks about how God's word cleanses us, how his word is like a mirror. Right? So James chapter one, verse 22 onwards, it says, But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourself. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. Verse 25, but the one who looks into the perfect law, which is, you know, law means the word of God, the law of liberty, and preserves, I'm sorry, impersive ears, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. And so we see that the place of sanctification, the bronze labor represents all these things. Right? We need to constantly be cleansed, you know, and by the reading of the word, we ask Jesus to wash us. And eventually we read about, you know, where Jesus in chapter 13, verse five, John chapter 13 verse five, where he took a basin, he filled it with water and he started washing the feet of the disciples, not their hands. That's it, right? That means, again, what? It's signified that they have walked long distances and their feet is dirty, so they need to be cleaned. And so we walk this walk of life of faith every day and we need cleansing. We need purification. We need sanctification. Right? All good, right? So far. Okay. We've gone through the place of introduction and we've gone through the place of reconciliation, which is the altar of sacrifice. And we come through the altar of sanctification, which is the bronze labor, where we see the God's word purifies us. He cleanses us. He washes us. Right? And then after which that is the outer courts. And now we enter the inner courts. Right? Again, there was a curtain that separated us. They had to enter through the curtain from the outer court to the inner court. And as soon as you enter the inner court or also known as the holy place, not the most holy place, but the holy place, you are introduced to your right. As you enter to your right, you find the table of shoe bread. We call this the place of satisfaction. Okay. This is the satisfaction. So the bread that was kept on the table was also called as the bread of the face. In other words, the bread was kept before the face or the presence of God. The throne room overall is also known as the room of the face. That means its face represented the presence. That's what the face was used there. When the Bible says that he spoke with Moses face to face, that means the most intimate one is there in the room. And that's what it is. Okay. And why we call this a place of satisfaction? You can read about it. Actually, let's read about it in Exodus, chapter 26. That's 30, 35, 37. It's in the notes. It says, And you shall raise up the tabernacle according to its pattern, which you were shown on the mountain. You shall set the table outside the veil and the lamp stand across the table on the side of the tabernacle towards the south. And you shall put the table on the north side. You shall make a screen for the door of the tabernacle, woven of blue, purple and scarlet thread and fine woven linen. Again, you see those four colors made by a weaver. And you shall make for the screen five pillars of acacia wood and overlay with gold. Their hooks shall be gold. And you shall cast five sockets of bronze for them. Okay. It's a table of showbread. And on this, there would be 12 loaves of bread that would symbolize the tribes of Israel. It's a place of satisfaction. The bread and again, John, chapter six was 35. We see Jesus say that I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger. And he who believes in me shall never thirst. And same chapter in verse 51, he says, I am the living bread which came down from heaven. It's the place of satisfaction. If anybody wants a reference, I just, it was John 633. That is for the bread of God is he who comes from heaven and gives life to the world. And verse 35 goes on to say that I am the bread of life. Okay. And it also represents communion, breaking the bread. So this is the table of showbread is the place of satisfaction. And then opposite to the table of showbread is the golden lamp stand. We're calling this the place of illumination, or in other words, a place of revelation, right? A light. Let's read the scripture. Now, okay, guys, it's just one as a side note. We are not all of these furnitures, pieces of furnitures can be looked and studied in detail, you know, but we are just kind of going through the overview of all of this. You know, I felt like we don't need to go too deep into studying the each pieces of furniture in detail. So just giving us an overview of all these. All right, so let's read. I'm reading from your notes in Exodus 26 was 303537. It goes on to saying you shall raise up the tabernacle to its pattern, which you were shown on the bread. You shall set the same scripture that we read before and the lamp stand across the table in the side of the table towards the south. And you shall put the table on the north side. You shall make a screen friend over one with blue, purple and scarlet thread and with fine woven lead and made by a weaver. Okay. And Exodus 27 2021. And you shall come on the children of Israel that they bring pure oil of pressed olives for the light to cause the lamp to burn continually. The lamp was never to go off. It was the responsibility and the duty of the priest to make sure that the lamp was always burning day and night. Excuse. Are we calling this a place of revelation or illumination? And what does, you know, light brings it helps us see, isn't it? It kind of opens our eyes to, you know, in the natural. See, God always uses the tangible to explain or teaches about the intangibles. Right. He would always use the natural to teach us about the supernatural. Right. So he's using the lamp stand in other words, you know, to teach us something about the ultimate light of the world. Right. That is John chapter eight verse 12. Jesus says, I am the light of the world. Right. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. That means he will walk with the revelation. He will live his life. He will do everything that he has to do. He or she has to do with the revelation that I provide because he is in me and I am in him and I am the light of the world. Right. Are you with me? Okay. So that place is the place of illumination. And as another scripture that I'd like to give us is John chapter one was four and five. John one was four and five. It says in him was life. And the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness and the darkness was not and darkness has not overcome it. I don't know how far this is accurate. I'm not a medical student, but the science say the blood is actually congealed light. So I didn't, I haven't got the time to actually study on that statement. But it says the blood is actually congealed light. So kind of makes sense when you see overall, you know, without blood you die. And then you read scriptures like this says, you know, he is the light of the world. You know, and him was life and that life was the light of men. I'm like, yeah, sure. Okay. I may not understand science, but I understand this. Right. So the golden lamp stand. It was beautiful piece of furniture. It was made up of one piece. It was made with gold from from the branches. And it's signified an almond branch and a branch of an almond tree. Right. I'm not sure if you remember the vision that Jeremiah has in the beginning of the book of Jeremiah. And God asks Jeremiah, what do you see? I see an almond tree, you know, first time I read that, okay, so this is an almond tree. What's the big deal about it? You know, he sees an almond tree and then God goes on to say, I will do a new thing. And so in their culture, in their region geographically, after the winter, the first plant or the tree to spring forth is the tree of the is the almond tree. And so that symbolized the season of new beginning. Right. And so it's something about the almond tree and, you know, their culture and their region. So what God was telling Jeremiah is that I'm getting ready to do a new thing. That's what you're seeing. And the place of revelation or illumination is kind of showing us that, you know, what God is constantly doing in our lives. Right. Guys, am I going fast? Are you all with me? Let's move to the last piece of furniture in the inner courts. That is the golden altar of incense. Golden altar of incense. This is the altar of intercession. Okay. So we'll read. Actually, can someone read that Exodus chapter 30 verse one to nine? Please, if you don't mind. Exodus 30 verse one to nine. If anybody can, because I've been reading quite a lot. 30, right? 30. You shall make an altar to burn incense on. You shall make it of acacia wood. A qubit shall be its length and a qubit its width. It shall be a square and two qubits shall be its height. Its horn shall be of one piece with it. It shall overlay its top, its sides all around and its horns with pure gold. And you shall make for it a molding of gold all around. Two gold rings you shall make for it under the molding on both its sides. You shall place them on its two sides and they will be holders for the poles with which to bear it. You shall make the poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. And you shall put it before the veil, that is before the ark of the testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the testimony where I will meet with you. Aaron shall burn on it sweet incense every morning. When he turns the lamps, he shall burn incense on it. And when Aaron lights a lamp at twilight, he shall burn incense on it. A perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations. You shall not offer strange incense on it or a burnt offering or a grain offering, nor shall you pour a drink offering on it. And Aaron shall make atonement upon his horns once a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonement. Once a year, he shall make atonement upon it throughout your generations. It is most holy to the Lord. Thanks, John. This is the place of intercession, the altar of incense. You can continue reading about it in the same chapter, Exodus 30, verse 34 and 238. You will see that there were four, it was a mixture of four different ingredients, spices that was used. And as when you enter the inner courts, there was no escape for the smoke to go out. So the inner court would be filled with some of the Indian homes. They put these smoke, no, it would have been like that. Yeah, it's called something in Tamil. But yeah, another scripture that I was reminded about is Psalm 141 verse 2. It says, let my prayer be counted as incense before you. And the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. My prayer be counted as incense. That's why we call this as a place of intercession. And revelation, we talk about the bowl of incense where the prayers of the saints was offered as in a bowl of incense. So those are all imagery of intercession. And we see that John in John 17 verse 1, that whole chapter is Jesus is praying. In other words, he's interceding for us. John chapter 17 verse 1 is saying, Father, the hour has come to glorify your son, that the son may glorify you. And then he goes on to make an epic prayer in that chapter. So the altar of incense was the altar of intercession. So the high priest would come, he would intercede for the nation of Israel on behalf. So intercession simply means standing in the gap between you and the nation. I'm coming and standing in the gap interceding what Abraham does, isn't it? Lord, if I finally stand, righteous people, will you leave? Will you overlook the city? If you look, if you find at least one, will you overlook this and not judge these people? So what Abraham was doing was interceding. It was an altar of intercession was very important. It was an altar of prayer, that symbolized prayer. Okay, so there were three pieces of furniture. We're calling this a place of intercession. So in the inner courts or the holy place, there were three pieces of furniture. One is the table of showbread, which is a place of satisfaction, a golden lampstand, a place of the illumination, and the golden altar of incense, which is intercession. And now again, there was a thick curtain that separated the holy place from the most holy place. We enter into the holy of holies. Now here's the thing. In the outer courts, you can praise with a group of people, with the crowd of people. I will enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise. The space was huge. You could, whatever concert hundreds of people could praise. And when you come into the inner courts, there's no enough space, but then there's two responsibilities that needs to be taken care of. So you can praise with the crowd of people. In the inner courts, you could serve with a group of people, 10, 13. But you can only worship him face to face. You could praise him with the crowd of people in the outer courts. You can serve him, do ministry, lead a church, everything, with a group of people, with a team of people. But you could only worship him face to face. It is in the holy of holies where we experience the Psalm 46 verse 10, be still and know that I am God. In the outer courts, there was the natural sunlight. And in the inner courts, there was the light from the golden lampstand. But in the holy of holies, there was divine light, which was the light of the glory of God. And when we started this journey of studying about the tabernacle, we started from the gate, way out in the gates, and then the outer courts and the inner courts, and then finally the holy of holies. But when God tells Moses to build the tabernacle, he starts in Exodus 25, he starts from the inside, from the Ark of the Covenant and then goes outside. That is the progression which is followed. You know it when you read it. From Exodus 25, he starts, gives the commandment on how to build the Ark of the Covenant. And so another way to look at it is that he's always bothered about the inside. He's always looking on the inside. That's what matters to him. What you do on the outside with the crowd of people, with the team of people, all that's great. It's appreciated. It's commended. But it finally comes down to that one-on-one conversation with him. And that is the holy of holies. And once a year, the high priest would go in and pour the blood on the mercy seat. It was an atonement for the nation of Israel. We call this the holy of holies. The most holy place. There's a bunch of scriptures that is mentioned in the notes. You can go through it all. Yeah, so that is the tabernacle of Moses. We see again, see the order in it. Nobody came in doing whatever they felt like doing or dressed up as any way they wanted to. God was very specific in his detail about how this tabernacle had to be built, what needs to be done. And later, when you study more deeper, we know that the tribe of Levites were the priestly tribes. But the tribe of Levites had three different clans. Levite has three different sons. You'll read about it in the book of Numbers. And each of those clans had a different responsibility. And the clan, the Kohathites that the Aaron is from, only they were responsible of carrying the Ark of the Covenant. So all the Levites were priests, but not, you know, but not, excuse me, I want to say all priests were Levites, but not all Levites were high priests. So they had to come from a particular clan called the Kohathites. And every time you read about this in the Old Testament, where the people were carrying the Ark of the Covenant, and specifically it mentions that the Kohathites were carrying the Ark of the Covenant. So the Kohath was one of the sons of the Levite. Okay, so it gets very interesting when you want to go deeper and want to study about the tabernacle of Moses. It's just a wonderful, wonderful, you know, I encourage every Christian to study about it, just to learn because of, you know, things that it has to teach us. All right, any questions so far, guys? I've been going on and on for a while. So any thoughts that you want to share or anything that's one thing that stood out from what you've learned today? Okay, that's fine. So, you know, we'll conclude with this one thought. I just wanted to share is, you know, when Jesus died on the cross, we see that the mountains trembled and the earthquake happened and the curtain in the temple was torn, right? And it also very specifically says it was torn from top to bottom, not from bottom to top. If it mentioned that it would entail that somewhere a man tore it from down, you know, but it was torn from top to bottom. And that means now that the veil is torn, you read about it more in the book of Hebrews, the veil is torn. And then, you know, it signifies John chapter 1 verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. That means he came from his throne, from the Holy of Holies that he came into our place and he broke the bread of communion, the table of sure. But that means he came to fellowship with his people and he dwelt. So the study of the tabernacle of Moses is so much more deeper than just to study about worship. All right? So that's about it for today's session. Nice office, Paul. Okay, so if there's no thoughts or any questions, we can stop here and resume next week. All right? Great. Thank you for joining. God bless you. Take care. Have a good one.