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| Lecture 30 : [Moses and Jesus 4] The Second National Course to Restore Canaan (Centered on the Tabernacle) | |
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| Date created : 2015-04-01/ Views : 1228 | |
Moses and Jesus in the Providence of Restoration: Part 4
Lecture 30: The Second National Course to Restore Canaan (Centered on the Tabernacle)
Welcome back to the path to happiness. I’m your host, Dr. Tyler Hendricks.
We’re looking at the course to restore a nation, led by Moses. It is a testimony to the living God, who works through our faith, unity and love, centered on the person that God chooses for the age we are in. But who is the Moses of this age? And what is the nation God wants to build?
Let’s continue our summary, as we look at what turned a short trip along the Mediterranean coast into forty years of wandering in the Arabian wilderness.
After defeating the Amalekites, Moses and the Israelites arrived at the wilderness of Sin. (Exod 19:1)
Moses took 70 elders to Mount Sinai, and went forward on his own to meet God.
God called Moses to fast for 40 days, and gave him the Ten Commandments inscribed on two tablets of stone.
However, the Israelites at the base of the mountain weren’t patient and faithful. They gave up on Moses, and made and worshiped a golden calf.
Moses, when he returned and witnessed this, threw down the stone tablets with fury. (Exod 32:19)
So God commanded Moses to fast another forty days, and then gave the Ten Commandments a second time to Moses.
The Israelites now followed Moses and built the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle. In this session, I will talk about the providence of the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle. And, just to remind us, we are in the second course to restore the nation through the foundation of substance.
What did the two tablets of stone signify?
They were God’s Word. God made two tablets—He certainly could have put it all on one—but He wanted to symbolize man and woman, Adam and Eve, and also symbolize Jesus and his would-be Bride, who were to come as male and female, the living substance of of the Word.
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What of the Tabernacle? It was the house of God, and was the image of Jesus.
The Tabernacle was divided into two parts: the most holy place and the holy place. The most holy place symbolized the spirit of Jesus and the holy space symbolized the body of Jesus. They also symbolized the spirit world and the physical world.
In Matthew 27:51, when Jesus was crucified, the curtain between the holy place and the most holy place was torn in two, from top to bottom. This meant that the gate was opened between spirit and flesh, or between heaven and earth.
The Ark of the Covenant was enshrined in the most holy place. It represented the cosmos and was a miniature Tabernacle. The mercy seat, covered with angel wings, was placed on top of the Ark. Inside the Ark, there were the two tablets of stone inscribing with the Ten Commandments—the covenant, a jar containing manna, and Aaron’s staff that budded leaves.
For what purpose did God give the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant? It was to set up an unchanging object of faith.
The Israelites building the Tabernacle signified that the Messiah had come in a symbolic sense.
If the Israelites had entered Canaan in the first national course, Moses’ family would have served in the role of the Tabernacle, Moses himself would have played the role of the tablets of stone and the Ark of the Covenant, and the law of his family would have become the heavenly law.
The tablets of stone symbolized Jesus and his would-be Bride. The nation would have built the Temple, which would have represented Jesus in image until Jesus, the living Temple, came to the world.
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Now, since the Tabernacle symbolized the Messiah, there had to be a foundation to receive it. The Israelites actually took three attempts to make the foundation for the Tabernacle.
The first foundation for the Tabernacle was lost when the Israelites worshipped the golden calf.
They couldn’t be patient at the lack of results when Moses was fasting for forty days, and so they worshiped the idol of the golden calf.
Moses got furious and he melted the calf and then ground it to powder. He scattered it in the water and made the Israelites drink it. (Exod 32:18-29)
For the second foundation for the Tabernacle, Moses obtained the Ten Commandments after fasting for forty days again. It was completed by the first day of the first month of the second year after they left Egypt.
If fact, until they entered Canaan, built the Temple, and received the Messiah, they were supposed to keep the same faith. On the way, they were supposed to honor the Tabernacle more than they valued their own lives.
During the third month after the Exodus, they arrived at the Sinai wilderness and stayed for a year, giving to God, receiving the commandments, building the Tabernacle, and learning the rites and regulations.
On the twentieth day of the second month of the second year, they took a census and then set out from the Sinai wilderness, arrayed in formation around the Tabernacle and led by the pillar of cloud. (Num 10:11-12)
But before long, they asked for better food and began to complain that there was nothing to eat but manna.
“ We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!” they said in Numbers 11.
They were missing the life of slavery in Egypt and lamenting their lives in the wilderness. Therefore, the Israelites failed in the second foundation for the Tabernacle.
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The third foundation for the Tabernacle related to a mission to spy out the land of Canaan. In Kadesh-Barnea, on the edge of Canaan, God had Moses choose a leader from each of the twelve tribes of Israel and send them to spy out the land of Canaan.
When they returned from forty-day mission to spy, ten of the twelve presented faithless reports.
“The people who dwell in the land are men of great stature. We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers.” (Num 13:32-33) Wailing and blaming Moses, they called for another leader who would take them back to Egypt.
The two dissenting voices, Joshua and Caleb, insisted, “The land is the land of milk and honey. The Lord is with us. Do not fear them. We can easily take over the land.” (Num 14:8-9)
The faithless Israelites attempted to stone Joshua and Caleb. At that moment, the glory of the Lord appeared and chastised the people.
Numbers 14:31 and following says, “In this wilderness your bodies will fall—every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me. Not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. . . .
But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years, and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day a year, you shall bear your iniquity, forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.”
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Due to the Israelites’ faithlessness, the first, second, and third providence of restoration centered on the Tabernacle failed. It resulted in miserable wandering in the wilderness for forty years, instead of a twenty-one month journey to Canaan.
Moreover, this also brought the failure of the second national course to restore Canaan. God’s providence was prolonged to a third national course. Sounds endless, doesn’t it? Sounds a long way from the ideal of marriage and family, of living for others, and God’s principle of creation, doesn’t it? But so too does my life and your life probably seem just as far from the ideal of marriage and family, of three generations united as one family under God. Through the course of Moses, we are seeing how God never gives up, but always finds a way to create a foundation to receive the living Messiah. So let’s continue our study knowing that Moses’ course and Jesus’ course are, in many ways, not so different from our own… and that even as we persevere in our own wilderness course, God is with us as He was with them.
Thanks for listening; see you next time.
