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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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