Tabernacling with Us
God chose to be among us, his people, to commune with us, and showing his love for us, the humanity he created.
One of the hallmarks of the Jewish Church was that God chose to dwell in the midst of His people inviting them into His presence. He was not a distant entity making demands on them from afar. God was with the Jewish nation, right in the middle of them, literally among them with three tribes on each side (north, south, east, and west). Every part of the Jewish community was surrounded and reminded that God was with them everywhere they turned within the camp.
During Advent, I have been working through a Bible study of Charles Spurgeon’s sermons. There is one lesson in particular from John 1:14 that has stuck with me as I have prepared for Christmas.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
In another translation it says:
“The Word was made flesh, and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
The tabernacle was a place where man could go to commune with God. And… God communed with man. It was where the Creator and the creation would meet through the blood sacrifice of the bull or lamb. And the result? The two were reconciled.
Jews went to the tent, and today, we go to Christ, our tabernacle, where God can meet with us. And what happens in that meeting? We, too, are reconciled, just like the Jews of the Old Testament.
The fact that Jesus came and poured his “godness” into the body of a human is in and of itself an unexplainable miracle. But the purpose of Jesus becoming a man goes much deeper. God chose to be among us, his people, to commune with us, and showing his love for us, the humanity he created. He tabernacled with us. The only way to end the blood sacrifice of animals (without defect I might add), was to make a blood sacrifice, once and for all, by the death and resurrection of a perfect human…namely Jesus. Today, the Creator and the creation meet through the sacrifice of Jesus’ blood. He was the sacrificial lamb for the entire human race. It is through Him that we can meet and commune with God.
God doesn’t just want to dwell among us, but in us. He wants to tabernacle with us and to have an effect on every area of our life. He has pitched his tent right in the middle of our heart.