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Man, Exodus 26, we're continuing with a new phase in the book of Exodus going through the buildings of the tabernacle. If you remember earlier in Exodus, they had a lot of laws about how to live their lives, civil and criminal code. Then the new covenant, or excuse me, the old covenant was instituted with the sprinkling of blood. They ate and drank before the Lord in chapter 24. And then now in chapter 25 and onward, we're into the section of that which is more ceremonial, the tabernacle, the clothing for the priests, these different pieces of furniture and accoutrements for the tabernacle. And in this chapter, we're actually reading about how they're going to build the tabernacle itself, the actual dwelling place or tent that served as the house of God at that time. Now one thing I want to start out by saying, and this is something that I emphasized in chapter 25 and I'm going to continue to emphasize, is that when we're reading this, we need to understand that the spiritual significance is paramount, more than just a physical description of, hey, this is what their tent was like. Because not only is it impossible to recreate, because over and over again in this chapter and in the last chapter, he said, you have to make everything according to the pattern that I showed you in the mount. So it's impossible just from chapter 26 alone to recreate the tabernacle. It's impossible from chapter 25 alone to recreate the Ark of the Covenant, because you had to actually see what it looked like. God showed him the heavenly pattern, and that's what he made it based off of. And we don't have that, so it's impossible to duplicate. So what's the purpose? Not only that, but the spiritual definition of these things is always more important than that which is physical or carnal. We should always see the Lord Jesus Christ in everything of the Old Testament. Everything's pointing us to Christ. It has spiritual significance. Now let's start out with verse number one of Exodus chapter 26. It says, moreover thou shalt make the tabernacle with 10 curtains of fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet with cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make them. Now the first thing that I want to talk about are these colors that come up over and over again. Blue, purple, scarlet. If you've ever read the Law of Moses, you know that this is just over and over again. Just blue, purple, scarlet, blue, purple, scarlet, blue, purple, scarlet, fine twined linen. Just over and over and over again. And then of course you have the skins that are dyed red. So these three colors come up over and over again. The blue, the purple, and the red. Now what's the significance? It must matter. God's not just naming these colors over and over again for no reason. He could have used all different colors. Why isn't it green? Why isn't it yellow? Why isn't it orange, right? It could be all manner of colors, but it's consistently hammering these three colors, blue, purple, and scarlet. What do these colors represent? Red, blue, and purple. If you would turn to Proverbs chapter 20. Proverbs chapter 20, I submit to you that these are the colors that will appear when someone is beaten, all right? If someone receives a beating, these are the three colors you're going to see, blue, purple, and scarlet. Okay. Why? Because obviously the blood is red. That's pretty obvious. And we know when someone is beaten, there will also be blueness and obviously the color that's halfway between blue and red is purple. And so there'll be a lot of bruising that's purple, blue, and then the blood red. Look what the Bible says in Proverbs chapter 20 verse 30. It says the blueness of a wound. So catch that about the color blue. The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil, so do stripes, the inward parts of the belly. So there are three meanings here that we need to look at, okay? Three meanings. The first meaning is of the illustration, the blueness of the wound cleanseth away evil. So there's just the surface, just carnal physical meaning that when somebody's wounded and there's blueness there, that's the body healing itself, right? The blueness of the wound cleanseth away evil. That represents blood being there that's going to help the wound heal, okay? So just as the blueness of the wound cleanseth away evil, so do stripes, the inward parts of the belly. So the second meaning is that when someone receives stripes, when someone receives scourging or beating, this will actually cleanse them on the inside, meaning that someone who's punished is going to be reformed. That's the purpose of punishment. This is why we spank our children, right? We spank our children because we want them to learn. We want them to grow. We want them to become a better person. And we know that if children are not disciplined and they aren't spanked, then they're going to be monsters, okay? Because the Bible says foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. So the Bible says withhold not correction from the child, for if thou beatest him with the rod, he'll not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod and shall deliver his soul from hell. The Bible says in the New Testament, it says whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. It said, nope, chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous. Nobody's like, yay, I'm being punished. But he said afterward, it worketh the peaceable fruit of righteousness in them that are exercised thereby. When the Lord punishes us, when he chastens us, that worketh righteousness, right? That creates in us righteousness. It makes us more righteous. That's why God's doing it. The Bible says that God disciplines us for our profit, for our benefit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. So when God disciplines us, what is the desired result? On our end, when we're getting disciplined by God, we need to be righteous, we need to be holy. That's his goal, to create righteousness and holiness in us. When we discipline our kids, what do we want? We want them to know the difference between right and wrong. We want them to know what is okay, what is not okay. We want them to do the right thing. We don't want them to grow up and be a criminal. Children who don't get disciplined, they're just constantly looking for a boundary and eventually they find that boundary with a police officer, shooting them, okay? So we want to show our children a less lethal boundary at a young age, you know. It's better to slap their hand when they're reaching for the cookie jar or reaching for the hot stove than that they reach for the hot stove and touch the hot stove and be burned. You know, it's better to spank them for running into the street after their ball if they disobey when you tell them, hey, stop, don't go in the street and they run in the street anyway. That's better than them getting hit by a car. You know, and disciplining them when they're young, the younger they are, the milder the discipline. And then they don't grow up and do the horrible things that are going to end up getting them huge amounts of discipline, the 20-year prison sentence or, you know, just getting just the snot beat out of them in an alley somewhere from mouthing off to the wrong people or crossing the wrong people or whatever. So we want our children to do right. That's why we discipline them. Throughout history, scourging has been a criminal punishment. We don't have it today in the United States, unfortunately. But throughout history, this has been a punishment that was given to criminals. They would receive a beating. And the idea is to reform them, right? So the stripes, the inward parts of the belly. So those are the first two meanings. But now for the most important meaning, the third meaning, the spiritual meaning is that it's the stripes of the Lord Jesus Christ that cleanse our inward parts from sin. So this is how we read the Bible. You know, you got the surface meaning and then you've got the other truth that God's trying to show us in the second half of the verse and then you've got the spiritual meaning. The blueness of the wound cleansed of the way evil, so do stripes, the inward parts of the belly. But it's really Christ's stripes that cleanse the inward part of our belly. What does the Bible say in Isaiah 53? You don't have to turn there. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised. What was he? He was bruised. The Bible says he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. So when we see these colors over and over again, blue, purple, scarlet, blue, purple, scarlet. Why? Because it's the color of what it is when someone is beaten. And Jesus Christ was beaten and scourged and the stripes that he received are our healing. Now look, the tabernacle is the house of God. The house of God is purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ. That's what the Bible tells us. So when we look at this, we want to understand that what's being pictured by the tabernacle, it's pointing us to the cross. It's pointing us to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It's pointing us to his stripes by which we're healed. The blue is the blueness of that wound. The purple is that he was bruised for our iniquities. The red is the blood. It all has to do with the same thing. Now if you would flip over to Haggai chapter two, Haggai chapter two. This is one of the last little books in the Old Testament, Haggai chapter two. So that's not typically the interpretation that you'd ever hear though about this. You'd typically hear, hey, these are just the colors of royalty. That's kind of the alternative interpretation that you would hear over and over again. And obviously there's truth to the fact that purple and blue are colors that represent royalty because history tells us that those kind of dyes were expensive and hard to come by. But I feel like that aspect has been a little overstated, a little overemphasized. Because if you're going to tell me that purple and blue are the colors of royalty and take me to Bible verses where royalty is wearing blue and purple, I'm going to say, well, you know what? That just reminds me of how precious the blood of Jesus is. Because at the end of the day, it should come back to Christ, it shouldn't come down to money. You think God is actually creating the tabernacle and saying, oh, it's so glorious because look at all the gold. Look at the expensive fabrics. Look at the cunning works of embroidery. At the end of the day, God is not just a God of financial health and wealth, gospel, prosperity and money, money, money and all this kind of stuff. At the end of the day, what does the Bible say? It says we are redeemed not with silver, not with gold, not with corruptible things like silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. It's the blood of Christ that's precious. So you know, I'd rather talk about the blueness of the bruising and stripes of Christ when I'm talking about the tabernacle. And I think that's what God's really ultimately getting at here with these colors. Not just, hey, it's a lot of fancy colors, hey, did I mention the fancy colors we have? Hey, let me mention an eighth time and a ninth time and a tenth time how expensive this fabric is. God's not some kind of interior decorator here, okay? God is showing us spiritual things about the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what it's all coming down to. So we don't want to get too carried away with the interpreting everything to point us toward money or wealth or prosperity, even though, yeah, that aspect is there. But again, I think that aspect is there just to point us to how precious the blood of Christ is, okay? Not carnal wealth. Now, here's a similar verse. Haggai is a great passage where people will try to make this about money instead of making it about the Lord, okay? Look what the Bible says in Haggai chapter 2 verse 6. For thus saith the Lord of hosts, yet once it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all nations, and watch this, and the desire of all nations shall come. And I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts. Now, remember, we're talking about the building of the house of God back in the days of the tabernacle. Now, this is way in the future. This is not the tabernacle in Haggai. This is not even Solomon's temple in Haggai. This is the second temple. This is the temple that they build when they come back from exile, back from Babylon. And if you remember, Ezra and Nehemiah are books where Zechariah and Haggai are preaching. So Haggai, if we were to place him in history, right, we could just pop him right into Ezra chapter 5. He's preaching with Zechariah. And so the book is about building God's house. And so the Lord speaks here, and he says, I will fill this house with glory. You know, they're building the temple, and they're looking for encouragement. Haggai's encouraging them with this preaching from the Bible. And he's saying, look, God's going to fill this house with glory. You know, what you're doing here matters, okay? The desire of all nations shall come. I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts. And in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts. So let me ask you this. You know, this is a passage that's dealing with a similar theme. What's the desire of all nations? What is the desire of all nations? Well, you know, if we go by the Christmas song, it's Jesus, right? And that's been the traditional, you know, Christian interpretation of this passage, right? Some desire of nations come, fixing us, thy humble home. So you know, that song is pointing to Jesus as the desire of nations, right? But it turns out the Jews have a different interpretation here. They think the desire of all nations is money. They think all nations are like them, apparently, because if it meant that, it would just say the desire of the Jews shall come, if it just meant money's coming in. Okay. No, it says the desire of all nations shall come. And I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts, I'm going to prove to you that they're wrong. You say, well, what do we care about, you know, what the Jews think about this? Well, you know why? Because you know what the modern Bible versions are doing? They're Judaizing our Old Testament. What they're doing is they're de-Christianizing the Old Testament. You see, the right way to interpret the Old Testament is to look through the lens of the New Testament, right? The New Testament is the slide projector and the Old Testament is the slide, all right? And so we use the New Testament to tell us what the Old Testament means. We have all this great knowledge in the New Testament of what things meant, where we have all these books like Hebrews and Colossians and Revelation, you know, explaining to us what the Old Testament means. But a lot of Bible teachers today and so-called scholars and theologians, what they want to do is they want to say, no, no, no, we have to understand the Old Testament in its historical context. So it's like they want to just forget about everything that comes after, forget about Jesus, forget about the New Testament, and let's understand it the way that they understood it at that time. What? They say, they're saying, can we please look through a glass darkly? And we're like, no, we want to see face to face. They want to put on the blindfold. They want to be like the Jews where they're blindfolded and they cannot see Christ in Genesis 1, Christ in chapter 2, Christ in chapter 3, right? Jesus, throughout the Old Testament, they don't see it. That's why if you have the ESV Bible, look down at your Bible at the King James there in verse 7, I'll shake all nations and the desire of all nations shall come. In the ESV, it says the treasures of all nations shall come. Looking in the treasures, all right? New Living Translation, the treasures of all the nations shall come. And those are two of the top five most popular Bible versions in America today. And then you got the New American Standard Version, and I will shake all the nations, they will come with the wealth of all nations. So the wealth and the treasures are coming in, okay? That's how the... Now, where did the modern Bibles get this idea? It's because they are de-Christianizing Old Testament passages that are pointing us to Jesus Christ, just like in Daniel 3.25, where it said, the form of the fourth man in the fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is like the son of God, you know, is a son of the gods, a son of the gods, right? De-Christianizing, taking out messianic prophecies and so forth, okay? Now what is it? I'm gonna prove to you that they're wrong. I'm gonna prove to you that the desire of all nations here is Jesus. That which glorifies the house of God is Jesus. And let me prove that to you. First of all, by pointing out that he says in verse 6, it is a little while, and I will shake heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all nations and the desire of all nations shall come. Has this happened in a long time or is this gonna happen in a little while? It's gonna happen in a little while, right? And he says, the glory, verse 9, of this latter house shall be greater than of the former. Now, if this is about money, the desire of all nations shall come, the treasures are coming, the wealth is coming, then you know what? That would mean that this temple would have to have more gold or more costly stones or more precious stones in it than the original temple, and that just simply isn't the case. Solomon's temple had more gold, more jewels, it was more magnificent from a financial perspective. So if you're gonna make it all about money, guess what? This temple's gonna have to play second fiddle to Solomon's temple. That's why when they're building the temple in Ezra, a lot of people are crying about it and saying, this is as good as the old one. The people who'd seen the old one are crying and saying, what is this? That's why they even needed this encouragement from Haggai, don't know the glory of this house is gonna be greater. You say, well, oh, they might have thought more money's coming. I don't care what they thought. We know the truth. We're in the New Testament. We have the New Testament. We have Hebrews chapter 12 to tell us what this means. So it doesn't matter what they might have thought when they heard it. What matters is what did God mean? How did God fulfill this? God fulfilled this in a short amount of time, number one. Shortly after this was written, it happened, number one. Number two, it had to happen in that temple and that temple got destroyed in 70 AD. So it had to have happened back then, am I right? It can't happen in the future. It had to happen back then, okay, before 70 AD. And it had to be a short time after Haggai is written. Flip over to Hebrews chapter 12, if you would. And while you're turning to Hebrews chapter 12, let me show you an instance of this exact same word, desire, here. You know how he said here, the desire of all nations shall come? Listen to this verse using the exact same word, 1 Samuel 9-20. This is speaking to King Saul, the first king of Israel, isn't that interesting, right? Samuel the prophet is talking to the first king of Israel, ask for thine asses which were lost three days ago, set not thy mind on them, for they are found. And on whom is the desire of all Israel? Is it not on thee and on all thy father's house? Who is the desire of Israel on? It's on you, Saul. Same English word, same Hebrew word. Where are they getting this treasure, wealth, business? That's not what it should be translated as. The English King James Version has it right, desire, the desire of all nations shall come. And he said to Saul, hey, the desire of all Israel is on you, Saul, but you know what the difference with Jesus is? It's not just the desire of one nation, the desire of all nations. But do you see how desire is being used about the king of Israel in the case of Saul and it's being used about the king of kings in the case of Jesus? Look at Hebrews chapter 12 and we have this scripture being quoted, verse 25 of chapter 12. See that you refuse not him that speaketh, for if they escape not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven. Whose voice then shook the earth, but now he hath promised saying, yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word yet once more signifies the removing of those things that are shaken as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. So when the Bible talks about how he's going to shake the heaven and the earth and the sea and the dry land, why? The Bible says something's being brought in, a kingdom's being brought in that can't be shaken. That's not money. That's not gold. That's not silver. It's Jesus. Why? It says in verse 28, wherefore we receiving a kingdom, right? Verse 27 said, those things which cannot be shaken may remain, wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved. Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire. So look folks, these new versions are out to lunch. They've done gotten Judaized, okay? Instead of staying with what we know from the New Testament, the Christian interpretation of scripture, the traditional biblical statement about Christ coming, what made the Second Temple more glorious than the First Temple is when Jesus walked into the Second Temple. Jesus walked in, he preached in the Second Temple. He preached and offered the water of life and he preached the word of God and he was the one who went in and whipped the money changers out the door and all that. Look, Jesus Christ is what made the Second Temple more significant, more important and greater. Jesus Christ is the desire of all nations. Well, the desire of all nations, that's just money. Wrong. First of all, people desire more than just money. You know, people would give all the money in the world to have eternal life. You know what I mean? These rich people, they'd give their money to have eternal life, wouldn't they? There's only one way to get eternal life and it's free. You have to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and receive that free gift. So anyway, let's go back to Exodus. I just wanted to show you that because, you know, this passage in Haggai reminded me of Exodus because first of all, the Hebrews 12 passage ties them both together too because it talks about the voice of God and they're trembling and they're scared. They don't want the voice to be spoken to them anymore and he talks about how he's going to again shake the earth and again shake the heavens and so forth. He's tying Exodus and Haggai, they're both about the house of God. And they're both passages where people get a little too into the financial side and they're missing what's really going on spiritually, right? That Haggai is about Jesus. And by the way, all the prophets give witness to Jesus, wouldn't that include Haggai? I mean, shouldn't there be some stuff in Haggai pointing us to Christ according to Acts chapter 10? And there it is, folks. The desire of nations. Well, in a short time, the desire of nations is going to come and bring glory to the house. That's what Jesus did. Isn't it interesting that Malachi, Haggai's contemporary, says the same thing when he talks about Jesus suddenly coming to his temple. So it's not, you know, when you see the purple and blue and scarlet, yes, those are royal colors. I'm not doubting that. But you know what's even more important? What's Jesus' back look like after he got that beating? What are the three colors you're going to see there? You're going to see red, blue, and scarlet, okay? Or blue, purple, and scarlet, sorry. And so that's why those are being so emphasized because it's the blood of Christ that cleanses us from all sin and it's by his stripes that we're healed, amen? So that's just verse one of Exodus 26. This is a great chapter. So I'm just going to blow through a lot of this material quickly. But I want to just point out the most important things spiritually in this passage. First of all, we see the tabernacle is made with fine twined linen, blue, purple, and scarlet. And then look at the latter part of verse one, with cherubims of cunning work, thou shall make them. Now, there are two words that come up a lot in Exodus in regard to the tabernacle. And those two words are cunning and curious, okay? And these words have to do with basically something being very skillfully sewn or embroidered, okay? So when we think of cunning, we think of somebody who's really smart and very subtle, wise, prudent. They have a lot of great ideas. Well, cunning can also have to do with just skill and artistry. So when it says here, cunning work, shalt thou make them, this is talking about like intricate needlework, okay? And you'll see this word cunning a lot in regard to building the tabernacle. And he's basically just explaining that it's going to be very detailed. It's going to be very artistic. So you have these curtains being made for the tabernacle and they're not plain, but they have cherubims sewn into them with a cunning design. You'll also later read in Exodus about the curious girdle of the ephod. And if you look up the word curious in the dictionary, you'll see that it has an archaic meaning. Curious means that actually a lot of work when you do it, it's complicated. It's very well done or whatever. So when you see these words like cunning and curious, they have a little bit maybe different meaning than you're used to when you're reading through this. So he says in verse number two here, let me find my place, the length of one curtain shall be eight and 20 cubits, the breadth of one curtain four cubits. And every one of the curtains shall have one measure. It's basically saying all the curtains are the same size. The five curtains shall be coupled together one to another and other five curtains shall be coupled one to another. So he's making a giant tent basically. Verse number four, and thou shalt make loops of blue upon the edge of the one curtain from the selvage in the coupling. And likewise shalt thou make in the uttermost edge of another curtain in the coupling of the second. And you say, Pastor Anderson, the selvage of the coupling. Now, it's funny. I was reading Exodus several months ago and I was really doing like a deep study on Exodus a couple of months ago. And I came to this word selvage and I was like, I don't know what that means. What is a selvage? And so I did a bunch of research on it. It turned out it's not an obscure or an archaic word because I thought like, man, this is one of those archaic words. They keep warning us about the King James like, oh man, you know, the King James has all these archaic words. So I looked it up and I understood what it meant and I said to my wife in conversation, I said, hey, I learned this new word, you know, studying Exodus, selvage. And she's like, she's like, everybody knows that word. I'm like, what? She's like, that's not even an obscure word. And then, so then I asked like Miriam or Rebecca, I asked some of my daughters, I'm like, you know what the selvage is? They're like, yeah. We know what that is. Of course. I'm like, man, you're making me feel like an idiot here. You know, I thought I had a pretty good vocabulary, but here's the thing, folks. It's a sewing term. Of course my wife's going to know, of course my daughters are going to know. It's a sewing thing. Who knows what selvage means? Put up your hand. See, it's mainly ladies. Some men know, but it's mainly ladies who know. It's a sewing term. What it is, is on the edge of the fabric, you have a seam sewn on the edge of the fabric so it doesn't come undone. That's called the selvage. Oh. All right. So now that makes sense because what are the last four letters of selvage? It's the edge, right? So basically it's a seam on the edge to keep, you know, because fabric would otherwise just kind of fray and go over where it has to have that seam on the edge. So even when you buy that, am I right? Check me if I'm wrong, ladies. But the edge of the fabric, even when you buy the fabric, it has a selvage sometimes. Not always, but sometimes it could have a selvage that's already there for you. All right? So here's my point. Here's why I stop and make a point about that, is that a lot of people are like, oh, the King James is hard to understand. It's too archaic. It's not archaic. It just has a bigger vocabulary than you. Now rarely, am I right? So oh, well, I don't know the word selvage, therefore it's archaic. What are you, God or something? I mean, you don't know everything. I don't know everything, right? So here's the thing. We're reading about making fabric. So why would it shock you that you're not into fabric, you're not into sewing, and you don't know fabric terms? And here's the thing. Other parts of the Bible, you have all these hard words to do with sailing. It's not that they're archaic. It's not that they're too hard. It's that you're not a sailor. That's the problem. I'm not a tailor and you're not a sailor. All right? So that's why we don't know what all these words mean. So when you're, you know, when you're reading about them making the garments for Aaron and you run into some words you don't understand, it's because you don't know anything about sewing clothes. So the Bible is covering a lot of subjects. It's going to use some specialized vocabulary about things. And what's the modern word for this? Sylvage. So a lot of people are just quick to label things in the King James as archaic. Whenever they run into a word they don't know, oh, must be archaic, but archaic, must be archaic, but it's not archaic at all. Now there are a few words in the King James. I will grant there are some words in the King James that are archaic. But 90% of what people accuse of being archaic is just words that they don't know. Because I mean, for example, this bozo, James White was saying that these words are archaic and he brought up angling, angle. Well you know what? Every fisherman knows what that means, don't they? That's a super common word. My son got a fishing license and it said right on there there was a permit for angling. How dare they, you know, use that archaic language like that. So those words are used all the time. He thought the word ado, A-D-O, ado, he thought that was too archaic. He thought choleric was archaic, C-H-O-L-E-R-I-C. Those aren't archaic words, those are just words that maybe aren't in his vocabulary. So different people know different words based on their experiences. And if you've never done anything in the fabric store, if you've never been sailing, you're not going to know those terms and it's not going to hurt you to crack open a dictionary or to just keep reading and just look for the spiritual content, amen? So anyway, I just wanted to point that out. And another word that might throw people for a loop here, no pun intended, in verse six is thou shalt make 50 tatches of gold. But you know, what's attach? Well here's the thing, it's what you use to attach something. You attach with attach, it's just the noun to go with that verb. The verb is attach, the noun is attach, the thing that attaches it, all right? It's a little clasp or whatever, little connector, little connecting piece. This is why we emphasize the spiritual content, friend, then we don't have to know exactly what attach is. But anyway, it's a connector, it attaches things, verse six, thou shalt make 50 tatches of gold and couple the curtains together. Boy, if you didn't know what attach was, the next phrase might help. It's the thing that you use to couple the curtains together. With the tatches, it shall be one tabernacle. And thou shalt make curtains of goat's hair to be a covering upon the tabernacle, 11 curtains thou shalt make. Now let me stop here and explain this because it is easy to get lost in all these different curtains and tatches and loops and rings and everything else. But basically what's going on with this is that the tabernacle is built in layers, okay? So layer one, all right, I just wanna just briefly break this down to you. Layer one is the fine linen, okay? So on the inside, you've got the fine twined linen curtains, the curtains that we talked about back in verse number one, you know, you're gonna make these curtains out of linen. That is the inside layer, okay? Then the next layer, okay, and by the way, that layer you could call the tabernacle proper or the tabernacle layer, okay? The fine twined linen and tabernacle simply means dwelling place. This is the place where God is going to dwell, okay? So the tabernacle is the dwelling place, that's the inner layer. Then there's a covering above that layer, what does the Bible say in verse seven? Thou shalt make the curtains of goat's hair to be a covering upon the tabernacle. So the tabernacle is made out of linen cloth and then there's a covering upon the tabernacle of goat's hair and then jump down if you would to verse 14, it says, thou shalt make a covering for the tent of ram skins dyed red and a covering above of badger's skin. So count the four layers, layer number one, fine twined linen and this could be called the tabernacle. Then the curtains of goat's hair above the tabernacle, that's another layer and this could be called the tent as he calls it there in verse 14 because then he calls the third layer a covering for the tent and that is the ram skins dyed red and then the fourth layer, the final outer layer are the badger's skins. So you have the more delicate material, the more intricate embroidery on the inside with the fine twined linen, then you move to the goat's hair, then you move to the ram skins dyed red and then you move to the outer layer of the badger's skins. So it keeps getting more robust on the outside because obviously this thing has to stand up to the weather and the weather is similar to our weather in Arizona and anybody who's lived here for any length of time knows the things that are outside get destroyed here by the sun and the dryness and the elements, just things left outside here get destroyed quickly. And so this had to have a more robust outer layer and it's in four different layers. One more thing that I want to cover tonight here is the wood of this passage. So we talked about the colors, we talked about the four layered tabernacle with the tent around it and then the last thing I want to talk about is the wood. Verse 15 says, thou shall make boards for the tabernacle of Shittim wood standing up. So we've already encountered this wood in chapter number 25 because the different wood items, they're made out of it. So the poles, the Ark of the Covenant, the wood that's going to basically form the framework or the structure because obviously if you have a tent, you've got to have the tent poles. So the tabernacle has tent poles but it also has boards, it actually has planks of wood that are forming like a skeleton, reinforcement so that all the curtains can connect to that and build the actual structure of the tabernacle. You say, well what kind of wood is this? Well here's the thing about this. This word is used, Shittim wood is used 33 times in the Old Testament and here's the thing. We don't know exactly what this wood is and this is why the Hebrew word is used here. So this is not an English word. Shittim wood is not an English word. Now you might notice on the end of it, the last two letters are I-M and a lot of Hebrew words that's their plural, isn't it? Like you're familiar with like Balaam or you're familiar with the Cherubim or the Seraphim, right? So you'll see that I-M ending that's a plural and this is not an English word. And this is the same thing, by the way, when Noah's building the Ark and he builds it out of gopher wood, what's gopher wood? Nobody knows, okay? So what it is is when the translators, when they're translating the King James Bible and when they come to this gopher wood, they don't know what that is. We don't know what that is. Nobody knows what that is exactly. So that what it is, they took the Hebrew word and instead of translating it in English, they transliterated it into English. So what does it mean to transliterate something? It's when instead of translating it, you just bring it directly over and instead of writing it in Hebrew letters, you just write it in English letters. So gopher wood is not an English word. Gopher is not an English word and shittim is not an English word. These are basically just Hebrew words that have been brought into English because of the fact that, you know, they didn't have an exact species of tree that they could point to and say for sure, this is what this is instead of just guessing and making something up, you know, which you don't want to just make things up when you're translating, right? If you don't know what it is, then basically they just leave it in the original and they just bring it over. What's interesting about this word, okay, so that it's plural, like I alluded to with that ending, shita, shittim, okay, here's what's interesting. It comes from the word that means to scourge or to beat someone. Isn't that interesting? So the scourging, this is the verb, this is a noun from the verb for scourging or beating, okay. And the theory is that the reason why this tree or this kind of wood is, this tree, and you'll see this in place names too. Not only do you see the shittim wood, but you see a place called Beth Shitta, house of the Shitta tree, right, whatever that tree is that we don't know. And then you'll see a place called Shittim and then you'll see the wood. But the theory is that it's called that because it's probably a tree that's known for its thorns, you know, and so it would be like a scourge or something that would be painful or something like that or whatever. But either way, it's a word, whether you want to say, hey, it's about the thorns, well, that reminds me of something about the crucifixion of Christ as well, like a crown of thorns maybe. But scourging, doesn't that kind of remind you of the blue, purple, and scarlet? The scourging, right? And then we see that this type of wood. Now look, I don't think that anything in the Bible is coincidental, incidental, or accidental. I don't think it's an accident that God happens to tell us what kind of wood. He could have just said, hey, make boards, planks of wood. He's not giving this for Moses' benefit. Moses has shown an exact pattern of what to do. He knows exactly what to do. This book is written for our benefit, spiritual benefit, okay. So the point is that he could have just not told us what kind of wood, but instead he chooses to emphasize over and over and over again this specific type of wood, the shittim wood, the shittim wood, and then it's like, okay, what does that mean? It means the wood of basically a tree that's named after scourging, the scourging, right? Why? Because everything's pointing us to what? It's pointing us to Christ, it's pointing us to his suffering. Why? Because the Habernacle is all about a place where man fellowships with God, where man communes with God, and communion with God is only possible through the blood of Christ. A relationship with God, communion with God, meeting with God, dwelling in the presence of God is only made possible by the stripes of Christ. So you see how it all ties together with the colors and then with the wood itself. Even the wood, even the type of wood, because if God wanted to, he could have just used a Hebrew word that everybody knows and then it would have just got translated into English and then everybody would just read an English type of wood and go, okay, cool. But this word is a little more interesting, right? By leaving it in Hebrew because then he's basically pointing us, there's a clue there of what he's pointing to in this passage. So again, it all comes back to Jesus Christ. And so when we're reading the book of Exodus, we don't want to miss the big thing and get this Judaized interpretation. I'm telling you, this is the thing now. This is the trend now that the Bible teachers are saying, hey, we got to understand it back in its proper context. We got to put it in its historical context. We got to go with the culture. What did it mean to them at the time? I don't care what it meant to them at the time. I want to care what God meant when he said it. He told us what he meant in Hebrews. He told us a lot about what he meant with the tabernacle in chapter 9 and 10. So look, the fact that the Old Testament saints were in darkness about a lot of things doesn't mean that those things weren't there. They probably scratched their head more than a couple times at Genesis 1 when they read, let us make man in our image. That doesn't mean we should be scratching our heads about it because we know that's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. We're not scratching our, but it's like, yeah, but they didn't know about that back then. Oh, well, let's just freeze knowledge at what they knew back then and ignore the book of revelation. Let's just put that back in the box and just like, man, I just wish I could just like erase my mind and only know what they knew. Isn't that ridiculous? Folks, it's an agenda. It's a de-Christianizing agenda. It's an agenda to try to divorce the Old Testament from the New Testament. When in reality, the two are both just pointing at Jesus. One's looking forward to Jesus and one's pointing us back to Jesus, but they're both about the same thing. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this great chapter, Lord, and Lord, these chapters, when we read them for the first time, I know when I read this for the first time, it was a little boring. It was a little bit dry reading, and I know a lot of people struggle to get through the second half of Exodus, Lord, but I pray that in the coming weeks and these sermons, we can be excited and love what we read and not be bored by something that on the surface might seem dry once we realize the depth of the treasure, not treasure of silver and gold, but the treasure of the gospel on every page, Lord. Open our eyes, Lord. Open our eyes so that we may behold wondrous things out of thy law. There are teachers out there that are trying to close our eyes, Lord, but please open our eyes in the coming weeks that we behold wondrous things out of your law, and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.