Thru the Bible

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: I think that many believers are trying to fight the battles down here alone. They're trying to meet the issues of life alone, and friends, you and I are not able to do it. We're not strong enough, we're not capable to do it. We need help today.

Guest (Male): That's Dr. J. Vernon McGee reminding us that we can't fight the battle on our own. And the good news that we're going to hear on Thru the Bible is that we're not alone. God is with us. Dr. J. Vernon McGee explains more in our study of the Tabernacle in Exodus chapter 25. But before we begin, Greg Harris and I have a quick update on our Finnish ministry.

Guest (Male): We do. Now, if you think that you've heard my friend Steve Shwetz get excited, you're going to hear him get excited today. Because this is genuinely exciting, and it's just been very wonderful to see what happened when you and two of our other leaders went to Scandinavia earlier this year. Why don't you talk about what happened and what came out of it?

Guest (Male): It was such an encouragement. Well, first this was kind of a reconnection tour with the Scandinavian countries because it's very expensive, relatively speaking, given the response that we were getting in Scandinavia to go on terrestrial radio. And so we cut our relationship with them and assumed that they would then cut the program. And unbeknownst to us, over several years, they continued to air the program because, in the words of one of the board members in Sweden, this is the only thing that we have that really has proven itself working consistently over time. And so they've continued to air it.

So anyway, focusing on Finland, we started asking some questions trying to understand the way the program went, and we found out that they really weren't doing what we do when you're listening to the program, which is read testimonies not just about people who love the program and love the teaching, but the international focus. What's happening in Africa, what's happening in India, all around the world so that people have a connection with Thru the Bible that they wouldn't normally have if all they do is listen to the program.

So anyway, we refer to that as the intros and outros or the wrapper. So we ended up... originally I was going to go to Finland and spend about a week with them and go through some training. Circumstances changed; I wasn't able to do that. So we ended up doing it through Zoom, which created some challenges because Finland is on the other side of the world, and so when it's dark there, it's light here. Myself and another team member, Denise, and I did two days of training with them.

Guest (Male): Which started at 6:00 AM our time and 4:00 PM there?

Guest (Male): Yeah, 4:00 PM. So it was a little harder on us, or you.

Guest (Male): See, I watch the recording later.

Guest (Male): Yeah. So anyway, they have two hosts that introduce the program, Eliseva and Elena, and they were very interested in learning how we do it in the US with our program. And they were eager to listen, and they're going to be incorporating new things. And there's an ask in all of this, that you would be praying for the Finns in particular because they're the first ones that are going to do this revamp. And they're going to start, I believe it's another five-year cycle, in January. And if it's not the five-year cycle, there are things that are changing in January.

So they're going to revamp the program and start reading letters and testimonies from all around the world, which they've never done before. And then asking people not just to tell us you listen to the program, but specifically, and we do the same thing in the US and Canada by the way, which is tell us what the Lord is teaching you. Tell us what you've learned in this book of the Bible. And when you ask people for specific things, they respond.

And there are believers in that country that love the word of God and are being ministered to as a result of the program. And it really just comes down to we need to ask them to respond back. And we're trusting that the Lord is also going to provide for them financially, because people just think, "Oh well, it's out there for free." So they're making changes to the program not to put a heavy sale on it and say, "If you don't give by the end of the month, we're going off the air." None of that stuff.

But it will be an encouragement to say, "Hey, if you've been blessed by this, if you love God's word and you want to hear other people and their testimonies and how they've been impacted, we'd appreciate you supporting the Bible Bus with a set of tires or a tank of gas." So anyway, I can go on and on about all that the Lord's doing. Just continue to pray for the ministry specifically in Scandinavia. Greg, would you pray for us?

Guest (Male): Father, we are so grateful that You've been working in those Scandinavian countries all these years when we weren't even aware of it. And thank You for the new reconnection, for the refreshment of the program. We pray You would reach more people with Your word. In Jesus' name, amen.

Guest (Male): Here's our study of Exodus 25 on Thru the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now today, friends, we come back to the 25th chapter of the book of Exodus. And here God gives the instructions for the Tabernacle and we have here the blueprint. And I'm just going to read here the blueprint for the building of the Ark. Now I gave last time more or less the floor plan of the Tabernacle. It had three compartments: the Holy of Holies, and it was ten by ten by ten. It was a cube. And in it were two articles of furniture: the Ark here and the Mercy Seat.

And then immediately through the veil in the other compartment of the Tabernacle proper, which was ten by twenty by ten, was the golden lampstand, the table of showbread, and the golden altar or the altar of incense. Then in the outer court, and that was a fence that was actually put around the Tabernacle proper. It was five cubits high, a hundred cubits long by fifty cubits wide. There were two articles of furniture: the brazen altar and the laver.

Now I have the chart that I have with my notes right before me now. I hope many of you have that, and you'll find it extremely helpful. Now you will notice that the first article of furniture that's given is the Ark. That's in the Holy of Holies. That's where God is looking out. But if you went outside and man is on the outside, man would come to the gate of the Tabernacle there on the east, and the article of furniture that would be before him would be the brazen altar.

So that when man comes into God, he'll have to go by the brazen altar and the laver and the holy place, which is the place of worship. And then in the Holy of Holies, he'd never go because into that one went the high priest, and only he went once a year and then only with blood that sprinkled it on the Mercy Seat. Now I want to read the instructions here because we're approaching this from God's viewpoint, from the inside looking out. Now I'm reading verse ten, Exodus 25: "And they shall make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof."

Now let me pause a moment for us to look at this matter of what is a cubit, that is how long is a cubit. Well, I do not know. There are many explanations given, anything from 12 inches up to about 30-some odd inches. Well, I have a notion that they didn't have a yardstick in that day or a tape measure. The way they really measured was from the tip of the middle finger all the way back to the elbow. Now you measure yours and you'll find out it's about 18 inches. Now if you're a short person, it won't be that long. If you're a tall person, it'll be longer than that. But approximately it's 18 inches.

You can well understand that if a man's running a dry goods store in that day and he's going to buy goods, he'd have as a buyer a big tall fellow with a long reach from the elbow back up to that middle finger. But when he was selling the stuff, he'd get little short folk to be his sales people and it wouldn't be so far. You could see how he could work a thing like that. So evidently a cubit varied and that's the reason I think we come up with so many explanations. But it was approximately 18 inches. And I think we can more or less settle on 18 inches and say that it was 18 inches.

Now that would mean that the Tabernacle itself was 30 cubits, which would mean 45 feet. Our ten across would mean 15 feet. So that everything if it is to be put into terms of our measurement today of a foot, then we come up with something else. So that two and a half cubit, well that would be, and I'll almost let you figure that one out because the two cubit you see that would be the yard there and the half would be then about nine inches. So that it would be put on that kind of basis.

But now I'm going to keep it in terms of the cubit and then let you think in terms of the foot for the very simple reason that it'll be easy for me to do that and I'll let you do the figuring, that is if you want to get some conception of exactly what size it was. Now again, may I say that this ark was God's throne. He didn't sit on it. He dwelt between the cherubims, which were right above it. But God didn't touch down in the Tabernacle. It wasn't His dwelling place. It's a place where He could dwell to meet with the children of Israel. In other words, it was a place for them to approach God.

And the Tabernacle speaks of Christ. You and I come through a mediator to God today. And that mediator of course is Christ, and you and I come through him. Now this is the sanctum sanctorum of the Tabernacle, the ark here. And now you're not going to find this very interesting and you'll think I got a lot of nerve reading these instructions, but I'm going to read them and I hope not too many of you will tune out.

Verse 10: "And they shall make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof. And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold round about. And thou shalt cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in the four corners thereof; and two rings shall be in one side of it, and two rings in the other side of it. And thou shalt make staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold. Thou shalt put the staves into the rings by the sides of the ark, that the ark may be borne with them."

Now you see the Tabernacle was for the wilderness march, and it was taken down when they were ready to march. It was put together when they came into camp. And we're going to see when we get in the book of Numbers how orderly that was and it was something that would be quite amazing to see them put it together. Rings were put there to put the staves through and then the staves, a long pole put through, put on the shoulders of the priests, and they would carry these articles of furniture through the wilderness. And that was the purpose for them.

Now together with the ark, there went a Mercy Seat. Now it's a separate article of furniture but it was nothing in the world but a top for the box. "Thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof. And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat. And make one cherub on one end and the other cherub on the other end, even of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubims on the two ends thereof."

Now notice what God says here: "And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be," that is they look down upon the Mercy Seat. "And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark; and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee. And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel."

Now the Mercy Seat actually was just sort of a chest. It was a box and you'll notice it was gold inside and outside. It was made of shittim wood, a wood that was more or less indestructible, very much like our redwood here in California. And it's a perfect symbol of the Lord Jesus Christ in His deity and humanity. You see Christ as the God-man. And we find here that we have both His deity and His humanity. And it was a true symbol of the Lord Jesus Christ setting forth therefore both His deity represented by the gold and His humanity represented by the wood.

It spoke of Him in the hypostatic union. Now that's a big word. The hypostatical union means that He's very God of very God and He's very man of very man. That's what the oldest creed of the church says. Now the ark could not be spoken of as merely a wooden box, for it contained gold. And it could not be called a golden chest, for it contained wood. It required both to maintain the symbolism pointing to Christ as the God-man. And there's no mingling of the two.

To overlook this duality is to entertain a monstrous notion of His person. There is no doctrine, friends, of the scripture so filled with infinite mystery, so far removed from the ken of man's thinking, so foreign to the realm of explanation, than is the hypostatic union in Christ. Yet there is no symbol so simple as the ark. Merely a box made of wood and gold, yet it speaks of things unfathomable. Truly God chooses the simple things to confound the wise.

That simple box tells out the whole story as far as man can take it in of the unsearchable mysteries of the blessed person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the gold was both inside and out, "for in him dwelleth all the fullness of the godhead bodily." That's what Paul said in Colossians 2:9. He's not merely a thaumaturgist, that is a wonder worker. Neither was he a man with an overdeveloped God-consciousness. He was God. He spoke as God. He put himself on the same plane as God.

He says, "Ye believe in God, believe also in me." And again, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." But He was a perfect man. He grew tired. He sat down on a well in Samaria in the cool of the day. He slept, he ate, he drank, he laughed, he wept. And beyond all that, he suffered and he died. And all of these are human characteristics. The gold and the wood in the ark are both required, yet neither was mingled with the other, nor was the identity of one lost in the other.

Christ was both God and man, but these two natures were never fused or merged. He never functioned at the same time as both God and man. What He did was either perfectly human or perfectly divine. Christ was the theanthropic person. And the ark was therefore not merely an empty box, by the way. It contained three items which are enumerated over in Hebrews the ninth chapter, verse four. It says, "which had the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant."

Now let's take them up. Aaron's rod that budded speaks of His resurrection. The manna speaks of the fact that He is the bread of life. And the Ten Commandments speak of the life that He lived down here. He fulfilled the law and He kept it in all of its points, even fulfilling the prophecies or the things that it speaks of. Even this Tabernacle speaks of Him. Now the tables of the covenant speak of the kingship of Christ. He was born a king. He lived a king. He died a king. He rose from the dead as a king, and He's coming again to this earth as the King.

And God's program is moving today, and has been from eternity, to the time when Christ shall rule over this earth, for He will turn and turn until He come whose right it is to rule. Now this earth needs a ruler. Man needs a king and someday He's coming as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The Ten Commandments there, the tables of stone, and the pot of manna speak of Christ as prophet. He spoke for God. When Jesus said unto them, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven, but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven."

And then He not only spoke for God but He was God's message to man. He was the logos, the word of God, the very alphabet of God, the alpha and the omega. He's God's final message to man. He is the first and the last. And since Christ came, heaven has been silent, for God has no addenda to place after Christ. He has no postscript to the letter where Christ is the embodiment of that letter. God has told out His heart in Christ.

And Aaron's rod in the ark speaks of the work of Christ as priest. The prophet spoke for God before God. The priest spoke for man before God. As a priest Christ offered himself. As a priest He passed into heaven and even now sits on God's right hand. And that is the thing that speaks of. And then we have here the work of Christ as priest. We've already been talking about that. And Aaron's rod which budded was in the Holy of Holies. Thus today there is in the heaven at God's right hand the man Christ Jesus who was raised from the dead.

He's the unique example of resurrection up to the present hour. He's there for us. And Easter lilies and eggs don't speak of the resurrection, friends. It just happens that Aaron's rod that budded does, for it was an old dead stick that came alive. And here you have set before us: He is prophet, priest, and king. And the word became flesh and tabernacled here among us. That's what the ark speaks of. Now the Mercy Seat was where... it was just the top to the box when blood was put there by the high priest and we'll go into that in a great deal of detail later.

It made that a Mercy Seat. And it was Christ's death here upon the cross and He ascended into heaven. And I've taken the position the Mercy Seat is the doctrine of propitiation, just as the ark is the doctrine of Christology of the person of Christ. And this is what He did. He took His blood, presented it in heaven. Now I take the position He literally did that. The only criticism I've ever had of my book on the Tabernacle that I've ever read in any of the denominational papers was a Baptist paper back in Ohio.

And the reviewer there, he did recommend the book and he urged the ministers to get it, but the thing that he said was, "You have to watch this fellow; he takes everything literally. He thinks Christ offered His blood in heaven." And he said, "You know that's rather crude." Well, I don't think so. I don't think the blood of Christ is crude at all. I feel like Peter called it precious blood, and that's what it is. And it's more precious than gold and silver.

And that's the most valuable thing up there is the blood He shed down here for us. And He presented that just as a high priest went in. And that's the thing that's made God's throne today a Mercy Seat for us. And we're bidden to come to God today on the basis of the fact that He is our great high priest who's ascended into the heavens. And He's offering His sacrifice for us. This is a wonderful truth. "Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that's passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." Friends, He's there for you and for me today. Let us come with boldness to the throne of grace. It's a Mercy Seat today.