Kra-Z Hoarse

In the book of Exodus, after God rescues Israel from Egypt and gives the Ten Commandments at Sinai, something unexpected happens to the story. It slows down. For chapter after chapter, the text gives detailed instructions for building a tent: its curtains, its poles, its furniture, its colors, its measurements down to the cubit. Many readers skim these chapters. But God gives the reason for all of it in one sentence: “Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.” The God who had just shaken the mountain with fire and thunder wanted to live in a tent among His people. And the New Testament says that tent was a picture of something greater. The letter to the Hebrews calls the tabernacle “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things,” built according to a pattern Moses was shown on the mountain. The details mattered because they were pointing to Someone. The clearest link is in John’s Gospel. John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Greek word for “dwelt” is eskēnōsen, from skēnē, the word for tent or tabernacle. Literally, the Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us. And John continues, “We have seen his glory.” In the wilderness, God’s glory filled the tabernacle. In Jesus, God’s glory came and lived in a human body. Now walk through the tabernacle with that in mind. The camp and the courtyard. In Numbers 2, God tells the twelve tribes how to set up camp: three tribes on each side, all facing the tabernacle, which stood in the middle. God was at the center of the life of His people. Around the tabernacle was a courtyard enclosed by white linen curtains, and there was only one way in: a single gate on the east side, woven of blue, purple, and scarlet. Not two entrances. Not many. One. Jesus said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved.” The bronze altar. The first thing you met inside the gate was the altar of sacrifice. Before anyone could go further toward God, blood had to be shed. Every day, animals were offered there, morning and evening. The way into God’s presence started at the place of death. Hebrews says the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins, and those sacrifices were repeated because they could not finish the work. Jesus, it says, offered Himself once for all. The altar in the courtyard was a long rehearsal for the cross. The bronze basin. Next came the laver, a large bronze basin of water where the priests washed their hands and feet before entering the holy place. Exodus adds a remarkable detail: it was made from the bronze mirrors of the women who served at the entrance. The things people used to look at themselves were melted down to make the place where they were cleansed. Paul later writes that Christ cleanses His church “by the washing of water with the word,” and Jesus told Peter, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” After the sacrifice comes the washing. The Holy Place. Inside the tent itself, in the first room, stood three pieces of furniture. On one side was the table of the bread of the Presence, with twelve loaves, one for each tribe, set before God continually. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger.” On the other side stood the golden lampstand, hammered from a single piece of gold, its branches shaped like almond blossoms. It was the only light in the Holy Place, because no daylight came in. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” And in front of the veil stood the golden altar of incense, where incense was burned every morning and evening, rising up before God. Scripture repeatedly links incense to prayer. Hebrews says Jesus “always lives to make intercession” for those who come to God through Him. The smoke of that altar never went out, and neither does His prayer for His people. The veil. Beyond the altar of incense hung the curtain with cherubim woven into it, blocking the way into the Most Holy Place. Only the high priest could pass through it, once a year, with blood. As we saw in the post on the torn veil, Hebrews says the way into God’s presence was opened “through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.” When His body was torn, the veil was torn. The Ark and the mercy seat. Behind the veil was one object: the Ark of the Covenant, a chest of acacia wood overlaid inside and out with gold. Hebrews tells us what was inside it: the stone tablets of the law, a golden jar of manna, and Aaron’s staff that had budded. The law that God’s people had broken. The bread from heaven that had fed them. And a dead stick that came back to life overnight, sprouting buds, blossoms, and almonds. Law, provision, and resurrection, all kept in the presence of God. On top of the Ark was the lid, called the mercy seat, with two golden cherubim facing each other, their wings stretched over it. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest sprinkled blood on the mercy seat, between the law below and the presence of God above. The blood covered the broken law. That is where God said He would meet with His people. In Romans 3:25, Paul says God put Jesus forward as a hilastērion by His blood. That is the same Greek word the Greek Old Testament uses for the mercy seat. Jesus is the place where God’s judgment against sin and God’s mercy toward sinners meet. And then there is one small detail in John’s account of the resurrection that’s easy to miss. When Mary Magdalene looked into the empty tomb, she saw two angels in white, “sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.” Two angels, one at each end of the place where the blood-covered body had lain, looking at the space between them where the sacrifice had been. Anyone who knew the tabernacle would have recognized that picture. The outside. The tabernacle’s outermost covering was made of tough animal skins (the exact animal is debated). From the outside, the tent was plain and unremarkable. All the gold, the colors, the light, and the glory were hidden inside. Isaiah wrote of the Messiah, “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him.” People passing by saw a carpenter from Nazareth. The ones who came in saw the glory of God. The glory. When the tabernacle was finished, Exodus says, the cloud covered the tent and the glory of the LORD filled it, so that even Moses could not enter. By day, a cloud rested over it. By night, fire. When the cloud moved, Israel moved. When it stayed, they stayed. God was not distant. He was in the middle of the camp, visible every day. People say these chapters of Exodus are tedious instructions for an ancient religious tent. But read them with the New Testament in hand, and they are a map. One gate. A sacrifice. A washing. Bread, light, and prayer. A torn veil. Blood on the mercy seat between broken law and holy God. Every step points to the same Person. And the story does not end with a tent. The Bible closes in Revelation 21 with a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people.” The word for dwelling place is skēnē, tabernacle, again. From Eden to the wilderness, from Bethlehem to the new creation, God has been pursuing the same goal: to live with His people. In Jesus, He came close enough to touch. And through Jesus, the way into His presence is open. You don’t need a tent anymore. You need the One it was pointing to. Jesus is the true Tabernacle, God with us.

On the afternoon of the first Easter Sunday, two followers of Jesus left Jerusalem and walked west toward a village called Emmaus, about seven miles away. They had heard that morning that the tomb was empty. Some women had come back saying angels told them He was alive. They did not believe it. They were going home. Luke names one of them, Cleopas. The other is never named. As they walk, they are going over everything that happened, the arrest, the trial, the cross, trying to make sense of it. And Luke says Jesus Himself drew near and walked with them. “But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” Jesus asks them a question: “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” Luke says they stopped, their faces sad. Cleopas answers with something close to disbelief: “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And Jesus, the one person on earth who knew those things better than anyone, asks, “What things?” He lets them tell it. And their account contains one of the saddest sentences in the Gospels. They describe Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet mighty in deed and word, condemned and crucified by their own rulers. Then they say, “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” We had hoped. Past tense. That hope was buried with Him. They even mention the empty tomb and the women’s report of angels, and then they add, “but him they did not see.” They had the evidence of the resurrection in their hands and were still walking away from Jerusalem with their heads down. Then Jesus speaks, and it is not gentle at first: “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Their problem was not a lack of information. It was that they had read their Scriptures and missed the suffering in them. They had wanted a Messiah who would win, not one who would die. So the cross looked like the end of the story, when it was the center of it. Then comes the line that makes every Bible reader wish they had been on that road: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” For seven miles, the risen Christ walked through the Old Testament and showed them where He was in it. Luke doesn’t tell us which passages, but we can guess where He might have started. The promise in Genesis 3 that the offspring of the woman would crush the serpent’s head and have His heel struck. Abraham taking his son up the mountain, with the wood on his back, and saying God would provide the lamb. The Passover lamb, whose blood on the doorposts caused death to pass over, and whose bones were not to be broken. The bronze serpent Moses lifted up in the wilderness, so that anyone who looked at it lived. Psalm 22, which begins, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and describes pierced hands and feet and men casting lots for clothing. Isaiah 53, the servant who was pierced for our transgressions, led like a lamb to the slaughter, numbered with the transgressors, assigned a grave with the rich. All of it had been in the scrolls they had heard read their entire lives. They had simply never seen Him there. By the time they reach Emmaus, the day is ending. Jesus acts as if He is going on farther. He does not force Himself on them. But they urge Him strongly: “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” And He goes in to stay with them. At the table, something strange happens. He is the guest, but He acts as the host. Luke says, “He took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them.” Those are the same four verbs, in the same order, that the Gospels use when Jesus fed the five thousand, and again at the Last Supper when He said, “This is my body.” Took, blessed, broke, gave. Maybe they saw the nail marks on His hands as He broke the bread. Maybe it was simply the way He did it. But at that moment, Luke writes, “their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.” And He vanished from their sight. There is a quiet echo here of the very beginning of the Bible. In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, Scripture says, “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” The first meal in Scripture after sin opened human eyes to shame. This meal, on the evening of the resurrection, opened two people’s eyes to glory. What was broken at the first table was being restored at this one. Their first words after He disappeared were not about the bread or the vanishing. They were about the road: “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” Looking back, they realized something had been happening inside them for miles before they understood it. Then they did something remarkable. That same hour, Luke says, they got up and went back to Jerusalem. It was evening, possibly dark, and they had just walked seven miles. They walked seven more, back to the city they had left in despair. When they found the eleven, before they could even tell their story, the others greeted them with news: “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” Then the two told what had happened on the road, and how He had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread. To the world, the resurrection is something the disciples wanted to believe, a story grieving people invented to comfort themselves. But look at these two. They were not eager believers. They had heard about the empty tomb and walked away anyway. They did not recognize Him when He was right beside them. It took the risen Jesus Himself, opening the Scriptures and breaking the bread, to change their minds. People who are inventing a hope do not have to be argued into it for seven miles. Maybe you are on that road right now, walking away from something you once believed, saying, “I had hoped.” Jesus has not stopped walking with people who are heading the wrong way. He comes alongside, asks what is weighing on you, and lets you say it. Then He opens the Word. He is in all of it, from Moses to the Prophets, and He is waiting for your eyes to be opened. And when they are, you won’t be able to stay where you are. You will turn around and go back. “Stay with us, for it is toward evening.” He will. Jesus is the risen Lord who makes Himself known in the breaking of the bread.

She thought He was the gardener. John 20:15. She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Every sermon you've heard treats this as a mistake. Grief-blind woman, early morning, tears in her eyes, can't recognize the risen Lord standing three feet away. She wasn't wrong. She was early. Go back to where this happens, because John is the only gospel writer who tells you. John 19:41. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. A garden. And where was He arrested? John 18:1. Over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which he entered. Another garden. John bookends the whole thing. Betrayed in a garden. Buried in a garden. Risen in a garden. And John opens his gospel with the first three words of the Bible. In the beginning. He wants you to read his book next to Genesis. So go to Genesis. Genesis 2:15. And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. The first man God ever made was given one job. Gardener. He lost it. Took the fruit, hid in the trees, heard God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and ran from Him. And God drove him out and put an angel with a burning sword at the gate. And the curse that came with it - Genesis 3:18: Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. Thorns. The first fruit of the curse. Four thousand years later, soldiers twisted those same thorns into a crown and pressed it into the head of the Son of God. He wore the curse of the first garden to His death. Then they laid Him in a garden. And on the first day of the week, the first day, the day creation started, He stood up in it. Paul calls Him the last Adam. 1 Corinthians 15:45. The first Adam was a gardener who lost the garden. The last Adam walked out of a tomb into a garden at dawn, and the first person who saw Him took one look and said: that's the gardener. She got His job right before she got His name. Now watch what He says to her. Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou? Whom seekest thou? Those are some of the most important words in John's gospel, and he uses them on purpose. The first words Jesus ever speaks in this book, in chapter 1, are a question to two men following Him: What seek ye? And in the garden on the night of the arrest, He walks up to the soldiers and asks them: Whom seek ye? They were seeking Him to kill Him. Now, in another garden, a woman is seeking Him to bury Him. And He asks the question again. Look at her answer. If thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. She's going to carry the body herself. One woman. A grown man's corpse wrapped in seventy-five pounds of spice. She doesn't care. She just wants to know where He is. This is Mary Magdalene. Luke tells us who she was before she met Him: out of whom went seven devils. A woman the town would have crossed the street to avoid. Seven demons, gone. And she followed Him the rest of the way. She was at the cross when the men had fled. She was at the burial. She was at the tomb before the sun came up. She was looking for a dead man. And He was standing behind her. Now the detail. John 20:14. And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. She turns around. She sees Him. Doesn't know Him. Then. John 20:16. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni. She turned again. She was already facing Him. Why would she turn? Because after the gardener's question, she'd turned back to the tomb. Back to the hole in the rock. Back to the place where the dead are supposed to be. She was staring at the empty grave, crying, with the risen Christ standing behind her. And He didn't argue her out of it. He didn't explain the resurrection. He didn't show her the wounds. He said her name. That's all it took. One word. And she turned away from the tomb. John 10:3. He calleth his own sheep by name... and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. She knew the voice. Not the face. The voice that had said her name before, the day the seven demons left. The voice that had cleaned her out. The first garden ended with a man and a woman driven out through a gate, in shame, with thorns coming up behind them. This garden ends with a woman running out of it with the best news the world has ever heard. Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father. The first witness of the resurrection. Not Peter. Not John. Not a priest. A woman who used to be possessed. In a culture where a woman's testimony carried little weight in court, God chose her mouth to carry the announcement. He always picks the one nobody would have picked. Now you. Some of you are standing in the garden right now. Facing the wrong direction. Staring at the place where something died. The marriage. The child you lost. The version of your faith you had when you were younger. The person you used to be before what happened happened. You keep going back to the tomb because that's where you last saw Him. And you can't find Him there. You're looking for a dead Jesus. He's alive. He's behind you. And He doesn't need you to understand the resurrection to find you. He knows your name. Not your file. Not your history. Not the seven things that used to live in you. Your name. Listen for it. Then turn around.