Come Follow Me · April 27 – May 3
A Walk Through the Tabernacle
Exodus 35–40
The story so far
Three months out of Egypt. Israel is camped at Sinai — and a lot has just happened.
Exodus 19–20
God speaks from Sinai. The Ten Commandments are given.
Exodus 24
The covenant is ratified. "All that the LORD hath spoken we will do."
Exodus 32–34
The Golden Calf. The covenant is broken — and renewed.
Exodus 35–40 · NOW
God commissions a tent. He's coming to dwell.
Open the conversation
Why would the Lord want a tent built right after His people broke their covenant?
Teacher
Let the question sit. Don't answer it — let it frame the lesson. Possible directions: He's not done with them. Mercy. He wants to dwell, not just rule. Save the answer for the close.
Ten Commandments · Discussion
As you've studied the Ten Commandments these past weeks — which one hit different this time?
Teacher
Let the class lead. Listen. Affirm. The next 10 slides hold one commandment each, in numerical order — if someone names one, press O for overview and jump straight to it. If discussion fills the time, skip ahead to the transition.
1st Commandment
1"Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
Notice: not "there are no other gods" — but "no other gods before me."
The question isn't cosmology. It's: what sits in the spot that should belong to God?
What gets your first thought in the morning, the best of your time, the loyalty that decides your other decisions?
2nd Commandment
2"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image."
Notice: the first commandment is about competing gods. The second is about distorted versions of the right God.
You can "worship the Lord" while actually worshiping an image of Him you constructed — a God who agrees with everything you already believe, who never asks you to change.
That's a false image too. And it's harder to spot, because it still uses His name.
3rd Commandment
3"Take not the name of the LORD thy God in vain."
Notice: the Hebrew shav doesn't mean "swear word" — it means empty, false, deceptive. Casual swearing is the smallest piece.
To take His name in vain is to invoke His authority for something He never authorized — claiming His backing for your agenda, your prejudice, your control of someone else.
At baptism we take His name upon us. The commandment then becomes: if you wear my name, don't make it mean nothing.
4th Commandment
4"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy."
Notice: Hebrew shabat means to cease, to stop. God built rest into creation before sin entered the world — rest is not recovery from work, it is a category older than work.
The Sabbath is a weekly assertion that you are not what you produce — and that the world is held together by Someone other than you.
Striking: in Exodus 35, Moses re-emphasizes this commandment right before the tabernacle is built. Even the holiest project in Israel's history still bows to the rest.
5th Commandment
5"Honour thy father and thy mother."
Notice: Hebrew kabed means to give weight to, treat as significant. The opposite means to treat as light, to dismiss.
It's the only commandment with a promise attached, and it sits at the hinge between commandments about God (1–4) and about people (6–10).
Why? Because how we treat the people who gave us life is the training ground for how we treat everyone else.
6th Commandment
6"Thou shalt not kill."
Notice: the Hebrew is ratsach — specifically unlawful killing, private violence against an image-bearer of God. (KJV "kill" is broader than the Hebrew.)
Christ deepened it (Matt. 5:21–22): the seed of murder is contempt.
"Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment."
The commandment isn't only about violence — it's about whether we treat any human being as if they don't matter.
7th Commandment
7"Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Notice: the deeper category is covenant betrayal. Marriage is the closest human analogue to God's covenant with His people — which is why the prophets keep reaching for marital infidelity as the metaphor for idolatry (Hosea; Ezek. 16).
Christ deepens it (Matt. 5:28): the seed is in the look, the imagination, the slow turning of the heart.
The commandment isn't only about what you do. It's about what you cultivate.
8th Commandment
8"Thou shalt not steal."
Notice: the commandment presupposes property — that what someone lawfully has, they're entitled to keep. But beneath the act is a posture: I will get mine, even at your expense.
Modern forms multiply: time at work we're paid for but don't give, wages owed but underpaid, credit taken for someone else's idea, advantage taken of the vulnerable.
Underneath every form: a refusal to trust God to provide what He has not given.
9th Commandment
9"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."
Notice: the courtroom is just the headline. The principle reaches every part of life: don't misrepresent another person.
Modern forms: gossip, half-truths, assuming motives, sharing rumors as fact, group-chat character assassination, silence when someone is mischaracterized.
A useful test before you say something about another person: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?
10th Commandment
10"Thou shalt not covet... any thing that is thy neighbour's."
Notice: this is the only commandment that is purely interior. The other nine can be kept through external behavior alone — but coveting is about the hunger of the heart.
It identifies the root that produces stealing, adultery, false witness, and idolatry. Pull this out and the others wither.
Modern coveting is industrial-strength: Instagram, advertising, comparison, the algorithm. The commandment names the soil the others grow in.
From rules to relationship
The Ten Commandments describe what a person looks like who can dwell with God. Now Exodus shifts: God designs the place where dwelling becomes possible.
The verse that drives Exodus 25–40
"Let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them." Exodus 25:8
The pattern
Outer Court → Holy Place → Holy of Holies. We'll walk it.
Now flip it · north up, east right
Same tabernacle, oriented the way a map reads. The journey itself preaches.
Why this direction? What might the journey itself be teaching?
Teacher · After the discussion
Two threads explain the orientation. Let the class wrestle first — they often land on one or the other on their own.
Slide 19 · Reversing Eden. Adam was driven eastward; cherubim guard the east gate; walking west is the path back.
Slide 20 · A polemic against sun worship. Every other ANE temple faced the rising sun; Israel's deliberately flipped that.
Affirm whatever the class reaches for; show the matching slide; then reveal the other.
The story behind the direction
To walk westward into the Holy of Holies is to retrace a path we were once driven the other way down.
Polemic · two orientations
Israel's was deliberately flipped. The architecture itself argues theology.
Ancient Near Eastern Temples
Israel's Tabernacle
If they haven't connected it · Ezekiel 8:16
God shows Ezekiel a vision of Israelites in His own temple "with their backs toward the temple of the LORD, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east." That's the ultimate apostasy in the prophet's eyes — they have literally reversed the orientation the tabernacle was built to teach. "We don't worship the sun. We worship the One who made it."
Walk it quickly
The architecture preaches one sermon — and Christ is in every line of it.
Outer Court
Holy Place
Holy of Holies
Want to go deeper?
A Scripture Central production. 3D recreations of the tabernacle and temple, expert interviews, Christ-centered scholarship — every piece of the tabernacle gets its own treatment.
youtube.com/@messagesofChrist
Episodes worth starting with:
If today's quick walk piqued your interest, this is where to go. Bring your scriptures.
The shift
Same God. Same fire. A different address.
Sinai
The Tabernacle
Notice the timing
After His people break the covenant, God's response is not distance.
It is a tent.
The expected response to betrayal is withdrawal. God does the opposite. He commissions a structure so He can move closer.
Teacher
This is the heart of the lesson. Pause. Let it land. God's instinct, even after our failure, is to come closer — not further. Save the application for the discussion that follows.
John 1:14 · The pattern keeps going
"And the Word was made flesh,
and dwelt among us."
John 1:14
Translator's Note
The Greek eskēnōsen literally means "tabernacled." John is telling us — in Christ, the tent is back. God is dwelling among His people again, in a body this time. And by His Spirit, He comes to dwell in you (1 Cor. 3:16). The trajectory keeps moving inward.
Discussion · Drawing closer
Where in your life right now does God feel like Sinai —
and where does He feel like the tabernacle?
Teacher
Vulnerable question. Don't fish for answers — let people sit with it. The point isn't problem-solving; it's noticing where we've kept God at a respectful distance, and where we've actually let Him in. Be ready to share your own honest answer if it helps the class start.
Discussion · Drawing closer
What practices, covenants, or moments have actually let God "pitch His tent" in your daily life?
Teacher
Look for specifics: scripture before scrolling, the sacrament really received, a temple visit that lingered, prayer when you didn't know what to say, a covenant kept on a hard day. Let the class testify — not lecture. The tabernacle was a structure; our lives have structures too. These aren't religious busywork; they're the architecture of approach.
Exodus 40:34–35 · The whole point
"Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation,
and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle."
Exodus 40:34
The Answer to the Hook
This is why God commissioned a tent right after the people broke the covenant. He came to dwell. Not to rule from a distance — to live among them.
What we carry away
01
Sinai → tabernacle → Christ → you → the gathered Saints → the New Jerusalem. The trajectory is always closer. He doesn't withdraw when His people fail. He moves in.
02
Sacrifice, then cleansing, then light, then presence. That order is the gospel — and Christ is on every step. The architecture preaches it; our covenants walk it.
03
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (1 Cor. 3:16) What Israel walked through, you carry around. The question now is whether He has the run of the house.
Closing
The God of Sinai — the smoke and the thunder — chose to live in a tent in the middle of His people. The whole Old Testament leans toward that. The whole New Testament announces it: "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." (John 1:14) And by His Spirit, He still comes — into covenants, into ordinances, into the bread on Sunday, into you.
Sources & Further Study
Speaker Notes