Subject 11 : The Tabernacle
[11-4] The Reason Why God Called Moses to the Mountain Sinai (Exodus 19:1-6)
(Exodus 19:1-6)
“In
the third month after the children of Israel had gone out of the land
of Egypt, on the same day, they came to the Wilderness of Sinai. For
they had departed from Rephidim, had come to the Wilderness of Sinai,
and camped in the wilderness. So Israel camped there before the
mountain. And Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the
mountain, saying, ‘Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell
the children of Israel: ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and
how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself. Now
therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then
you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the
earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy
nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of
Israel.’’”
Why Did God Choose the People of Israel?
The
main passage comes from Exodus 19:1-6. Though the passage is not long, I
have much to say about it. From this passage, I would also like to
speak of the truth revealed from chapters 19 to 25 of Exodus. It had
been three months since the people of Israel escaped from Egypt when the
Israelites came to the Wilderness of Sinai. God made them camp in front
of the Mountain Sinai, and called Moses up to the mountain.
Having
thus summoned Moses, God spoke His Word to the Israelites, “‘Now
therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then
you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the
earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy
nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of
Israel.” The reason why God called and raised the people of Israel was
to make them His special treasure and to establish them as the priests
of His kingdom.
This
was the purpose with which God delivered the people of Israel from
Egypt. The method by which God would make the Israelites His special
treasure was giving them His Law and the sacrificial system of the
Tabernacle to save them from their sins, through which He would cleanse
away all their sins, make them His own people, and found them as a
nation of priests. As such, the Israelites must realize this clearly,
and recover the faith that God wants from them. To make their nation a
kingdom of God’s priests, God gave them, on the one hand, His Law
composed of the 613 commandments, and on the other hand, He made them
build the Tabernacle.
Therefore,
if the Israelites do not believe in Jesus Christ who came as their
Messiah, they must repent and believe in Him with their hearts. Jesus,
who is the very substance of the sin offering of the sacrificial system
of the Tabernacle, has cleansed away all their sins with His baptism
received from John and His blood on the Cross. As such, the people of
Israel must unambiguously accept the truth that God has made them His
own people by bringing them, the descendants of Abraham, out of Egypt,
and by washing away all their sins through the offerings of the
Tabernacle. At that time, because the Israelites were unable to keep the
Law of God, they had to be forgiven of their sins by giving sacrificial
offerings to God according to the sacrificial system set by Him. These
sacrificial offerings were the foreshadowing of Jesus Christ, the Savior
who has now saved mankind from its sins.
Even
now, the Israelites hold Moses as the greatest prophet of all. They are
right in this. However, because they do not believe in Jesus Christ as
the Messiah who has saved them from all their sins, they do not
recognize the New Testament as the Word of God, and instead recognize
only the Old Testament as God’s Word. But we must remember that Jesus is
not only a greater prophet than Moses, but He is the High Priest of the
Kingdom of Heaven, the Messiah for whom the Israelites have been
waiting and hoping. By faith, the Israelites must now realize that the
very substance of the Tabernacle’s sacrificial offering was none other
than the Messiah Himself.
God Made the Israelites Hold Moses in Reverence, But…
Why
did God raise Moses so high before the Israelites? It was to make them
accept and believe in all the Word of God spoken through Moses. It was,
in other words, to make Israelites believe that what Moses spoke to them
was all God’s own Word. God called Moses to the Mountain Sinai so that
he would be raised high above before the people of Israel. This made the
Israelites fear Moses and God, and the Israelites, seeing that Moses
spoke with God, came to believe in him, for God talked with Moses as if
he were His friend.
As
such, the Word of God that Moses delivered to the people of Israel was
all firmly believed by the Israelites as the actual Word that God spoke
to them. However, by regarding Moses too highly, the people of Israel
made a huge mistake of not accepting Jesus Christ the Messiah into their
hearts as their own Savior. Ultimately, the Israelites failed to
recognized their Messiah properly, and have thus ended up rejecting His
love of salvation. They now have a great task before them—that is, to
accept Jesus Christ, who was a greater prophet than even Moses, into
their hearts as their own Savior.
God Commanded the People of Israel to Make His Tabernacle and to Give Him the Offerings of Sacrifice
Through
Moses, God gave His Law and commandments to the people of Israel, and
He also told them to build the Tabernacle. In the Tabernacle, God’s love
of mercy that truly blotted out the sins of the Israelites was revealed
through its sacrificial system. Through this sacrificial system of the
Tabernacle, God has also given the remission of sin to the spiritual
descendants of Abraham, and He has washed away all their sins so that
they may lack nothing to become God’s own people.
God
gave the people of Israel two stone tablets with His Ten Commandments
carved into them. The Ten Commandments were composed of the upper four
commandments that must be kept between God and mankind, and the lower
six commandments that must be kept in human relationships. Beside these
Ten Commandments, God also gave the people of Israel hundreds of
commandments that they must keep in their everyday lives.
The
reason why God gave the Israelites so many laws and commandments was to
show in their hearts that God alone is the absolute and perfect divine
Being. To the spiritual people of Israel—that is, to those who believe
in Jesus as their Savior—there can be no other divine being apart from
God. To clearly teach the people of Israel before entering the land of
Canaan the truth that He is Jehovah, God spoke to Moses in the Mountain
Sinai to give them His Law. And He made them, whenever they sinned by
breaking God’s commandments, be forgiven of all their sins by giving
their sacrificial offering in the Tabernacle according to the
sacrificial system He had established.
The People of Israel Received the Law and Commandments from God
Let
us take a look at Exodus 24:3-8: “So Moses came and told the people all
the words of the LORD and all the judgments. And all the people
answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words which the LORD has said
we will do.’ And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD. And he rose
early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain,
and twelve pillars according to the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he
sent young men of the children of Israel, who offered burnt offerings
and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the LORD. And Moses took half
the blood and put it in basins, and half the blood he sprinkled on the
altar. Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read in the hearing of
the people. And they said, ‘All that the LORD has said we will do, and
be obedient.’ And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and
said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with
you according to all these words.’”
God
made the covenant with blood when He gave the Law to the people of
Israel through Moses. This meant, in short, that the Law of God was the
Law of life. God spoke His Law of life to the Israelites, and the people
of Israel had to believe in His Word.
As
such, Moses told the Israelites to bring the blood of the sacrifice of
the burnt offering and the peace offering. God made Moses gather his
people together, read to them the Law and the commandments, God’s
covenant. And then Moses asked them, “Will you obey what God have
commanded you?” The Israelites then answered God in one voice that they
would all indeed obey Him.
“I
will protect you and make you a kingdom of priests,” God then promised
the Israelites through Moses. Moses then sprinkled the blood of the
burnt offering and the peace offering on them. This showed that when a
person sins, he/she must be forgiven through the sacrificial offering.
We must accept what God spoke as the Word of life. Moses took the blood
of the offering, sprinkled it on his people, and said to them, “This is
the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you according to
all these words.” This tells us that because the Word of God is the Word
of life, if we have not kept it, we must then pass our sins onto the
sacrificial offering by putting our hands on its head, kill it, and
offer to God its sacrificial blood for our sins.
What
we must realize is that in this Law of God, there is the punishment for
our sins, but at the same time, there is also the sacrificial system
that washes away our sins. Therefore, when we are dealing with God’s Law
and commandments, we must accept them into our hearts while recognizing
that in these Law and commandments is found the offering that brings us
the remission of our sins. This faith is absolutely necessary. Because
we are blessed when we keep God’s Law and are cursed when we fail to
keep it, we must believe that we have to always wash away our sins with
our sacrificial offering. As such, those who sinned had to receive the
remission of their sins by passing their sins onto the sacrificial
offering with the laying of their hands on its head, and by taking its
blood of sacrifice and offering it to God. We must all realize and
believe that the Law and the sacrificial system are the Law of life,
through which we can receive new life from God.
Therefore,
while the Law of God teaches us of our sins, the gospel of the water
and the Spirit shows us in contrast that all our sins have been remitted
through the baptism that Jesus Christ received from John and His blood
on the Cross—it is, hence, the truth that has saved us from all the sins
of the world.
In
the ancient times, when tribes made promises to each other, they often
brought some kind of sacrificial offerings. They brought sheep, goats,
or bulls, and they marked their agreements with the blood drawn from
their offerings, cutting off their throats. This captured the essential
terms of the agreements, for it meant, “If you do not keep the covenant
that you just made with me, you will then surely die in this manner.”
They established their agreements, in short, with blood.
Like
this, God has also established His Law with blood. He told us, in other
words, that if we fail to keep all His 613 laws and commandments, we
would be killed because of this sin. But at the same time, He has also
told us to receive the remission of our sins by giving Him the sin
offerings with our faith, through the sacrificial system of the
Tabernacle.
If
we were to ever not take God’s Word of the Law seriously, we would
never escape from the wrath coming from God because of our sins. But if
we give to Him the offerings of sacrifice that He has set for us, God
will then receive these sacrificial offerings and forgive us of all our
sins. We must all believe in this Law of life, this Law of salvation
that tells us God would forgive the sins of all the people of Israel
through the sacrificial system of the Tabernacle, and thereby receive
into our hearts the remission of our sins. Whoever ignores the Law of
God is excluded from God’s mercy of love, and as such, we must all
believe in the Law and the sacrificial system as the truth of salvation,
as our very own life.
This
is why Moses read the covenant made with blood, and with this blood
sprinkled on the people of Israel, they made their promise to God with
blood. Therefore, realizing that we are all to die if we do not keep
this Law established with blood, we must all receive the remission of
all our sins by believing, along with the Law, in Jesus Christ, who is
the very sacrifice of our burnt offering and peace offering to God.
All
of us must realize and believe in the truth that we can be forgiven of
all our sins by giving to God our sacrificial offering in accordance to
the sacrificial system of the Tabernacle. Through His blue, purple, and
scarlet thread and fine woven linen, God has clearly taught us the
remission of the sins of all mankind. To be forgiven of their sins, all
their sins had to be passed onto their sacrificial offering by putting
their hands on its head, and then this offering had to shed its blood of
sacrifice to be put on the horns of the altar of burnt offering and the
rest of its blood to be poured on the ground.
This
was the offering of sacrifice absolutely required by the law of sin and
death. Therefore, with our faith, we must all accept the remission of
sin promised by the sacrificial offering that blots out our sins. By
giving us the sacrificial system of the Tabernacle, God has given us the
law of salvation, so that we may believe in God’s Word and be forgiven
of all our sins. We must all receive the blessing of the remission of
sin given by God by accepting into our hearts the two laws that God has
given mankind: the Law itself and the sacrificial system of the
Tabernacle.
How Can We Be Saved from All Our Sins?
Through
the sacrificial system that God gave to Moses, He showed the people of
Israel that their salvation from all their sins is possible only by
their faith in the remission of their sins through their sacrificial
offering.
When
we give to God our faith that believes in the sacrificial offering set
by Him, He will receive our faith and save us from all our sins. Why?
Because God has already saved the entire mankind from their sins, and to
those who believe, He gives His blessing of sanctifying them from all
their sins. Through the sacrificial system set by the One who is
Absolute, God has enabled us to know the law of salvation. If one
neither know nor believes in the truth that Jesus Christ has washed away
his/her sins forever through His baptism and His blood on the Cross,
he/she will surely be condemned. We must all believe in God’s love of
mercy.
God
has saved us through the sacrificial system of the Tabernacle, whose
method of salvation was to pass our sins onto the sacrifice by laying
our hands on its head. As such, we must all believe in the gospel of
mercy that has allowed all who believe in this truth to be washed of
their sins. Those who do not recognize the Law and the sacrificial
system before God cannot ever receive the remission of sin forever, but
those who believe in the gospel of God’s mercy can all receive their
eternal remission of sin.
God
did not just tell us not to sin, but He taught us that we were the
sinful beings who could not but commit sins everyday. So, He told us to
give Him our sacrificial offering to receive the remission of these
sins. This is why God said, when a sinner is to give the offering of
sacrifice, “An altar of earth you shall make for Me, and you shall
sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your
sheep and your oxen. In every place where I record My name I will come
to you, and I will bless you” (Exodus 20:24).
The
sin offering that the Israelites gave to God took the format of putting
their hands on the head of the sacrifice, through which their sins were
passed onto it, drawing its blood and putting it on the horns of the
Altar of Burnt Offering, and putting its flesh on the Altar and burning
it by fire. Believing wholeheartedly in the law of salvation given by
God was essentially needed whenever they had to offer such offering. The
offering that God wanted was not a ritualistic one, but it was an
earnest one that passed all their sins onto the offering of sacrifice in
faith, believing that they are indeed bound to hell were it not for the
grace of God.
Our
Lord was baptized by John and shed His blood on the Cross to make our
sins disappear. He decided to blot out our sins with the same method of
the sin offering. This offering of faith foreshadowed the New
Testament’s offering of salvation fulfilled by Jesus Christ—that is,
Christ came to this earth, took upon the sins of the world with His
baptism received from John, died on the Cross, and has thereby saved the
whole mankind from their sins. It is by believing in this truth with
all our hearts that we become God’s children.
We Must Cast away Doctrinal Faith
Exodus
20:25-26 say, “And if you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not
build it of hewn stone; for if you use your tool on it, you have
profaned it. Nor shall you go up by steps to My altar, that your
nakedness may not be exposed on it.” We must pay particular attention to
what God said in this verse. God told the Israelites that in making an
altar, if they were to build to an altar of stone, they should not build
it of hewn stone, but of stones that are in tact in their original
shape and form. What does this mean? It means God is pleased to accept
our faith in His salvation, which can never be added or altered by human
thoughts.
And
God is warning us, with the phrase, “Nor shall you go up by steps to My
altar, that your nakedness may not be exposed on it,” not to worship
Him with man-made, religionist faith. Every religion of the world is
nothing but a belief system made by human beings. They set up a common
and basic principle in their own religions that tells people into trying
to become holy step by step while they live their faithful religious
lives. Even the Christian religionists claim that they can be sanctified
incrementally while they live virtuous lives according to God’s Law.
But,
is it really true? Absolutely not! People, being born as the
descendants of Adam, cannot follow God’s Law because of their sins, and
they cannot avoid but face their certain death because of these sins.
Therefore, to save all such people from the sins of the world, God
established the sacrificial system of the Tabernacle, and has indeed
saved them all.
Therefore,
we must all accept the gospel of mercy, of the remission of our sins,
of our salvation that God has set for us with the blue, purple, and
scarlet thread and the fine woven linen manifested in the gate of the
court of the Tabernacle. We must believe as it is actually written in
the Word of the Bible, that Jesus Christ came to this earth as the God
of the Word, that He did His works just as foretold by the blue, purple,
and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen manifested in the
Tabernacle, and He has indeed delivered us from all our sins
accordingly.
But
what about the people who have only religious and doctrinal faith? What
are they doing to be forgiven of their daily sins? Such people try to
receive their remission of sin by offering their prayers of repentance,
trying, in the end, to become righteous through the doctrine of
incremental sanctification. This is delusional, doctrinal faith of man’s
own making. Trying to meet God with one’s own efforts is arrogance
itself, and it is none other than the reality of the religious evilness
of one’s own making.
People
must first admit that there is nothing that they themselves can do to
make all their sins disappear before God. When we were born into this
world, we were all born as the kind of beings that could not help but
commit sins of our own, and this is why we are always committing so many
sins. No matter how much God tells us not to sin through His Law, we
are such that we cannot help but break the whole gamut of His Law and
commit sins galore before God. So, we must confess before the Law of God
that we are sinful. And we must believe with our hearts in the truth of
salvation that God has saved us from all our sins through the works of
our Lord Jesus as manifested in His blue, purple, and scarlet thread and
fine woven linen.
There
is no other way but to believe in the Word of God, that to deliver us
from all the sins of the world, the Lord Himself became our own
sacrificial offering through His baptism, and that thereby He has indeed
saved us from the sins of the world. The Bible tells us that there is
no other god apart from Jehovah, and that no one comes to the Father
except through Christ (John 14:6). By recognizing and believing in God’s
Word of the Law, we become sinners, and by believing in the gospel of
the water and the Spirit, we are saved from our sins. This is the truth
and our real faith in God.
As
such, we must all believe in His salvation as it is according to the
law of the remission of sin that our Lord has set for us to save us from
all our sins. Christianity is not just one of the many religions of the
world, but it is the truth of salvation built on the foundation of our
faith that believes in Jesus Christ who appeared in the blue, purple,
and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen.
Through the Main Passage above, We Must All Realize Why God Has Called Us
We
must all realize the fact that God has called you and me to make us His
special treasure. You and I can never become God’s people with our own
deeds and efforts. Rather, you and I have become God’s children because
we have believed in the truth that Jesus Christ came to this earth to
deliver us from the curse of the Law and the punishment and destruction
of hell. By being baptized by John and shedding His blood on the Cross,
He has indeed wholly saved those of us who believe. The Messiah, the Son
of God, came to this earth in the flesh of a man, took upon all the
sins of the mankind with His baptism all at once, carried these sins of
the world to the Cross, sacrificed Himself for our sake to pay the wage
of our sins by being crucified, rose from the dead again, and has
thereby become the Savior to those who truly believe in Him with all
their hearts.
God
is telling us that He has given the mankind the perfect remission of
sin through His blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen.
Our Lord is asking us, “Do you believe in My works, in what I have done
for the remission of your sins, that I came to this earth and was
baptized by John and shed My blood on the Cross?” Before God, all that
we can say is “yes.” For us to be saved, there is no other way to but
believe in the remission of sin that God has given us. Not only the
Israelites of the days of the Old Testament, but you and I of
today—indeed, all the people of the entire world—must know why God had
to call Moses to the Mountain Sinai and speak to Him this Word of the
main passage.
God
had given the Israelites the Ten Commandments, and then told them to
build an altar of earth by faith to receive the remission of their sins
(Exodus 20:24). Likewise, through our faith in the gospel of the water
and the Spirit manifested in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and
the fine woven linen that God has given us, we must also be redeemed
from all our sins.
What
is God’s own name? His name is “Yahweh.” It means, “I AM WHO I AM,”
that is, God is He who exists by Himself. How, then, did He come to us?
He came to us through the water and the Spirit (John 3:5). Our Lord came
to this earth in the flesh of a man, took upon all the sins of the
mankind by being baptized by John, and was sacrificed on our behalf by
being crucified to death. It is because this is all true, and because we
must also believe as such, that God told us to have the faith that was
manifested in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread and the fine woven
linen used for the gate of the Tabernacle’s court. The true faith comes
only when we deny our own thoughts and recognize the remission of sin
given by God. We cannot thank Him enough for giving us such an
unconditional love, for we have nothing that we can be proud of before
God.
We
must lay our foundation of faith on the biblically sound knowledge of
God. God spoke of this foundation of faith to the people of Israel, and
He spoke to us also. Even now, you must all realize and believe in the
truth manifested in the colors of the gate of the Tabernacle’s court,
the colors that constitute this very foundation of faith. We must
believe in the true God. To save you and me from our sins, God Himself
took upon our sins with His baptism and shed His blood on the Cross.
You,
who also want to become the spiritual people of Israel, must believe in
the gospel of the water and the Spirit to be saved from all your sins
by reestablishing the sacrificial system destroyed by the religionized
Christianity. You and I must know this gospel of the water and the
Spirit manifested in the blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and once
again lay the groundwork of our faith of the remission of sin so that it
may stand sound and firm.
We
must thank Jesus with our faith. To save those of us who could not help
but be bound to hell, God the Father sent us Jesus Christ, who came as
the blue, purple, and scarlet thread, through His Word of truth. By
believing wholeheartedly in this truth that our Lord has saved us from
all our sins with His four ministries manifested in the blue, purple,
and scarlet thread and the fine woven linen, and by believing in His
love of mercy, we give all our thanks to God. Only when we know properly
and believe in the reason why God called Moses to the Mountain Sinai
can we be called as the ones who have properly laid out the foundation
of faith on the true remission of sin. You and I must realize the reason
why God called us from Mountain Sinai, and believe in it: it was to
forgive us of all our sins through the sacrificial offering, and to make
us His own children.
From
the truth manifested in the gate of the court of the Tabernacle, you
will be able to encounter even more love of God’s mercy. It is my
sincere hope and prayer that you would all believe in this love of God’s
mercy and accept it into your hearts.
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