And He brought us out from there, that He might bring us in… Deuteronomy 6:23

The story of the tabernacle is one of a long and multifaceted process of the Lord taking Israel out and in that, through their own journey, we all might learn the concept.

He took them out of Egypt and the slavery that held them there.  He took them out of the yoke of that bondage.  He took them out of a culture of rampant paganism.  He took them out of the darkness of lives devoid of His presence. 

And He brought them into something altogether new. 

He brought them into freedom, into relationship, into the Light of a union with the One True God. 

Right off the bat, don’t you see why all those Torah verses matter so much?

From the beginnings of their story to the consecration of the temple that followed the journey and into the Holy of Holies made available by the torn veil at Christ’s death, there rings the constant chime of out and in.

In a walk through the tabernacle we see the Gospel truth of the lives God calls us out of and the hope He ushers us into.  At the bronze altar we lay down the old broken life of burden and shame and are welcomed by His perfect offering into new lives that arise from the ashes of a surrendered soul.  We have the opportunity and responsibility at the bronze laver to come out of a mentality of self-aggrandizing conceit and a belief in our own “goodness” and into an understanding and awareness of the depth of our depravity and our eternally profound need for a Savior and Guide.  From the lampstand we are called out of habits that seek enlightenment, wisdom, and answers from the limited span of human intellectual capacity and into a true knowledge of all that is good and true and right under the tutelage of an indwelling, all-knowing Spirit.  Upon the table we find we can walk out of lives of need and emptiness, of constant searching for fullness from the delicacies of this life among the temporal illusions of satisfaction the world has to offer and into an overwhelming overflow of wholeness provided by the filling of the Bread of Life Himself.  Upon the golden altar we find the personal, intimate, and inconceivable offering to leave behind lives of distant longing, intermediaries, go-betweens, and veiled, cloaked, and confusing translations and into a personal and ongoing conversation with the God who always listens. 

Then the mercy seat.  In this beautiful picture of the old creation we are called out of and the new and infinite hope we are called into the primary design and desire is to find ourselves here at His feet.  Out of longing for a seemingly eternally distant and unreachable union and into an intimate and life-giving relationship with an ever-present Father and Friend. 

In the story revealed through others lives long ago and far removed from our own we find a story so intimately near we can feel its heartbeat. 

We have been called out of darkness and into His glorious light.