Principles Pictured by the Tabernacle, Curtains and Coverings

[0:00] Where's that at, somebody? Psalm 40.

[0:13] As the heart panteth after the water brook,! I'll mess it up.

[0:30] Yeah, that's fine. That's fine, but I hope you do have something. I hope the Lord speaks to you from his word. And just using this to emphasize the importance of daily time in the word of God. And when you do that and you take your time through it, there'll be moments when the verse just jumps off the page.

[0:47] It just grips your heart. It just answers something that's needed. Or it just infuses some peace down inside of your soul that you didn't have until you went to the book.

[0:57] And those are the ones that you tend to write down and hold on to because they become important to you because it's a personal relationship that you have with God through his word as he speaks to you and he strengthens you.

[1:09] So take part in that. Don't neglect it. Amen. All right, let's get into the word of God then. Let's find Exodus. As always, we're going to Exodus. And when you get to chapter 26, hold your place there because I want to start with a verse elsewhere that's going to help us out today.

[1:27] And that is in 1 Corinthians chapter 3. So would you find Exodus 26 and then just hold on to that and then flip over to 1 Corinthians chapter 3.

[1:42] I'll give you a minute to find your two places. Exodus 26, 1 Corinthians 3. As we finished last Sunday, we were in Exodus 25. We closed out the chapter studying the second and the third piece of furniture that was instructed by God in the mount to Moses to make and to fashion after the pattern that he showed him in the mount.

[2:02] And we likened the first one, the ark, to your heart or to the innermost being that you are. Your soul might be a better thing to say. And then the last two, we kind of took a unique take on it, likening it to your body and to your spirit because the point we've been studying and focusing on is making your life a tabernacle for God to dwell in.

[2:24] As he told them in chapter 25, make me a sanctuary. And so we're going to transition today. Since we made the point of personal application, and just like I showed you last week where these individual pieces of furniture, they don't just have one representation, but they have multiple typology or representations that we can associate because they're of the divine mind.

[2:47] And they match in different ways a lot of things. I think the same thing can be said about the overall tabernacle. As it's likened to an individual's life, I think it can also be likened to a collection of lives or to a congregation of people.

[3:02] And if I want to be a little more specific, more appropriately, Bible Baptist Church of Silmar. And this will apply to any local assembly of believers that come together, but I have no interest in trying to address anybody else today but you.

[3:17] So let's just consider this thought, how this tabernacle is going to have some truths and some just, what do I want to call it, just something relevant that we can read on, study on.

[3:33] The Word of God is going to speak to us and teach us some things about our church. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 3, and just to make this case from the New Testament, and look at verse number 16.

[3:47] 3.16, it says, Know ye not that ye, that's a plural group, ye, are the temple of God. Ye, a group, are the temple, singular, of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you, which is again a plural word.

[4:06] If any man, singular, come from the outside, this man is identified in the passage as one who's building upon a foundation or as a minister from back in verse 5.

[4:18] If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. Let no man deceive himself.

[4:31] And again, he's going back to these men, whether it's Apollos or Paul, or in verse 22, Cephas, and anybody else who's going to be an apostle or a minister. And they have to take heed how they build on this holy habitation of God.

[4:46] Now, coming back now to Exodus, the point I'm just showing you, this tabernacle, not just likened to a dwelling place for God, you personally, your life, but then the temple of God or the church itself.

[5:00] And to be specific and appropriate this morning, this church. How can we liken this to us? Well, today we're going to look into chapter 26. Which primarily deals with the covering of the tabernacle.

[5:13] It deals with the main support structures of this building. And then shows how it's all put together, including a veil of separation that goes on the inside between the holy place and the most holy place.

[5:27] And then also on the outside, where it would be the doorway or the entrance, a hanging, it's called, for the door. And so it's going to describe the structure and the material built for this tabernacle.

[5:39] Now, I'm going to refrain from reading the entirety of the chapter. It's got a lot of details in it. And it's just things that I think it's too much to absorb as we're just making one pass through.

[5:51] So we're going to break it down and go through it a little bit slower instead of just trying to get you to digest everything so I can refer back to it later on. The chapter begins with some information about curtains.

[6:04] And before we do any of that, let's pray together and just seek the Lord and try to calm our minds and spirits and get us in the right frame of mind to receive the word of God. Lord, it is my request to you from earth to heaven that you would move in this midst this morning, that you would come and be a part of this congregation, that your words would be alive and would be powerful and would be true, that we would have hearts that would receive them, and that our spirits would be in tune with yours, that we'd be completely open to hear and to receive anything that needs to be received.

[6:41] And God, may you strengthen our church. May it be a holy temple and may it not be defiled in any manner, but may this be a place that you're pleased to dwell and to walk among us and to minister and to strengthen lives and to save souls and to do a work and to shine forth from this place.

[7:02] We pray that you'll bring life into this place this morning and that your people could rejoice in Jesus Christ and in this precious, precious thing that we have, this local church.

[7:13] Help us to be grateful for it. Help us to take full advantage of it and not ever take it for granted. And God, it's a dry, dry wilderness out there without this tabernacle.

[7:24] And so we thank you for this and I want to ask that you'll minister to us this morning from your word. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. So we're talking about curtains, the very beginning of the chapter, and I'm going to read the first six verses.

[7:40] Would you just follow that along as I read that? Moreover, thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet.

[7:52] With cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make them. The length of one curtain shall be eight and twenty cubits and the breadth of one curtain, four cubits. And every one of the curtains shall have one measure.

[8:04] So they're all going to be identical, all ten of them. The five curtains shall be coupled together one to another, and other five curtains shall be coupled one to another.

[8:15] And thou shalt make loops of blue upon the edge of the one curtain from the self-edge in the coupling, and likewise shalt thou make in the uttermost edge of another curtain in the coupling of the second.

[8:27] 50 loops shalt thou make in the one curtain, and 50 loops shalt thou make in the edge of the curtain that is in the coupling of the second, that the loops may take hold one of another, and thou shalt make 50 taches of gold, and couple the curtain together with the taches, and it shall be one tabernacle.

[8:45] One tabernacle is what he said. And it shall be one tabernacle. Now this process gets repeated with a second layer that's going to go over top of this layer of curtains, and this one's going to be made of goat's hair, and let's just read the next few verses, and we'll continue for the second layer, verse 7.

[9:04] And thou shalt make curtains of goat's hair, to be a covering upon the tabernacle. Eleven curtains, first was ten curtains, this one's eleven curtains shalt thou make, and the length of one curtain shall be 30 cubits.

[9:16] The previous was 28 cubits, this one a little bit longer. And the breadth of one curtain, four cubits, and eleven curtains shall be all of one measure. And thou shalt couple five curtains up by themselves, and six curtains by themselves, and shalt double the sixth curtain in the forefront of the tabernacle.

[9:33] Thou shalt make fifty loops on the edge of the one curtain that is out most of the coupling, and fifty loops on the edge of the curtain, which coupleth the second. And thou shalt make fifty taches of brass, and put the taches into the loops, and couple the ten together.

[9:48] And look at that phrase again, that it may be one. So these are all individual curtains, and then they're attached together, they're coupled and attached.

[9:59] That word tash, you can see the word attach. You attach the curtains with attach. Probably maybe even where the word came from, I don't know. It sounds very clear there to me.

[10:12] So these come together, and the concept of bringing them together is doubled by the two layers, and so the sentiment of togetherness is doubled in both layers.

[10:25] And I want to just start by saying this illustrates, this temple construction illustrates the importance of togetherness, of togetherness, of oneness.

[10:36] And it shall be one tabernacle. In verse 11, that it may be one. It illustrates the importance of unity.

[10:47] This structure is not a solid, permanent, they did not pour forms, they did not lay a footer. This is something very unique.

[10:59] This thing is designed to be transportable. It will be set up, and it will be torn down. I counted, I think, 30 times. You can read through Numbers chapter 33.

[11:11] And when you read that chapter, you're going to read about, well, they pitched here in this place, and then they removed from thence and pitched in here. And it just, verse after verse, of location after location, if you want to count the count, I think it was 30.

[11:25] I didn't go back and redo that. But once you find them making their way from Egypt up to the wilderness of Sinai, this is where it's first erected, that's where it's built. And from there, you can count one.

[11:37] And then when they remove from there and pitch in the next place, then you can count, there's the second place they pitched, they built the tabernacle, up and down, up and down. And so this thing is made up of separate individual pieces, small and large, all of them coming together to make one dwelling place, one holy dwelling place for God.

[11:59] And isn't that what he called his church? A holy temple. The temple of God is holy. It's a place that God seeks to dwell. We're reading here about individual curtains formed by different hands, coming out of different tribes in Israel, different locations around the camp, but then getting connected and coupled together that it may be one.

[12:25] It reminds me that you look in this place, there's different curtains. There's different individuals that come from different places in the world and then they come together that it may be one.

[12:36] We read about five of them being attached together and another five being put together and then them collectively coupled that it may be one. And it appears that these five are attached by themselves to make one big curtain and the other five together and then that there's 50 tashes.

[12:57] I used to think, and I'm not entirely unsure of this, but I used to imagine that each curtain was attached with 50, but that doesn't quite, then you'd have to make 450 of them and the scripture doesn't mention that at all.

[13:11] And if you think, well, those 50 can be divided, well, you can't divide that by the nine separations amongst them all, so I'm guessing it's just one connection of two larger curtains of five each with the tashes and the loops.

[13:28] The individual curtains are connected and it seems, though, that God's okay with putting five together in a group and five together in a group and then making sure that they all come together to be one.

[13:41] And that reminds me, that shows me something, that it's okay to have groups within a local church. It's okay to have a set of five here and a set of five there.

[13:51] It's okay to do that as long as that set doesn't become its own click unto itself because that set of five is joined together ultimately so that it can come together with the group to make one for the golden tashes to bring them together.

[14:06] It takes the gold to bring us together that we may be one and let that gold represent deity and represent the connections that we have in the divine nature rather than in our own physical connectivity.

[14:23] You know, it's okay to come together and have friends in church to connect with somebody over personalities. They'll birds of a feather flock together. It's okay to connect by age, by vocation, by certain interests.

[14:38] You like to go fishing, you talk to somebody about fishing, you get into technology, you talk to somebody. It's okay to make connections in a local church over personal interest.

[14:49] But what brings the church together, that they may be one, it's not the Los Angeles Dodgers. It's not that I like to go fishing and catch bass.

[15:01] It's not a recreation or a specific brand or a technology. That's not what makes us one. What makes us one are those 50 tashes of gold, are those golden things that come from divine places.

[15:22] For instance, it's the blood of Jesus Christ that takes two separate groups of individuals with interest in line to another. It takes that blood of Jesus Christ to bring us together to make us one in the Lord Jesus Christ.

[15:37] That's a precious one. There's another precious one. It's this holy word of God. I'm talking about this King James Bible where every word of God is pure and I trust every single one of them in there.

[15:50] And you guys, I think this ought to relate to you. You know this. You've come here for a purpose. You didn't just show up here because it's a church close by likely.

[16:04] But this book, man, oh man, you know how rare this book is becoming in our land today? I was even surprised. I should have been surprised, but I grew up with this Bible in my lap and I grew up understanding the issue and understanding the new versions and understanding the changes and the deceit and the lies surrounding all of it.

[16:23] and it was just a little, it caught me off guard a little bit when I came out here and met some people that have been raised in Christianity and in churches, but they were completely ignorant of the issue of the word of God.

[16:37] The only thing they knew was that, oh, there's a crowd of King James only people. They're a cult and they just, they're weird. They think this and this and this. And I thought, wow, like you have a heart, you're saved and you have a heart for God, but you haven't even been exposed to the reality of this issue.

[16:54] You don't even understand the truth, what's behind the scenes with manuscripts. I know not everybody researches this stuff, but it surprised me to realize that there's good people that aren't even exposed to the truth in the Christian circle.

[17:08] Like, wow, are you even studying? Why are you so blind to this? But you know what brings us together to be one? Is that Holy Bible. is that you can come to a place and you know for a fact that you're not going to hear somebody get up and correct the words of your Bible.

[17:24] And you're not going to hear somebody get up in front of you and say, it should read this way. And so when you're at home reading your Bible, you don't know if you're really reading it or can ever understand it because you don't have the knowledge or the training or the seminary and theology that the pastor or the deacons or anybody in a place of authority has.

[17:44] And you're just, who are you? You're a nobody. See, but you can, what Dr. Uckman taught us at Bible school is you leave this school with your authority under your arm. For the rest of your life, it's me and this book.

[17:56] The Word of God. That's something that ought to bring us together. We can agree about which teams we like, but boy, what connects us? What makes us one is some of those golden tashes.

[18:10] One of them being the Word of God and a firm belief in the King James Bible being the pure and preserved words of God for the English-speaking people today. Another thing that brings us together, I believe, is a grateful heart for what God has done in our lives.

[18:27] A grateful heart. I have one. And you know, I may not agree with you about everything in this world, but if you've got a heart of thanksgiving to God for what He's done in your life, oh, we can bond in that one.

[18:39] We can rejoice together over that. These are the divine things that connect us together. You have a desire to see your family saved, to see some soul saved, your neighbor, your co-worker, somebody in your life.

[18:52] You have a desire we can bond in that one to see others come to Christ and to get in on His salvation. These are the things that bond us together. We can share a joy in rejoicing in the Lord Jesus.

[19:05] We can come together and collectively pray for our needs and for the Lord to work in lives. That's a bond that we can share. Men, we're going to do that Saturday at 5 o'clock.

[19:17] Join us. Be part of that bond that we can have, that we may be one. We'll pray together. We'll share in that one. There's other things and there's 50 of them.

[19:30] And I only gave you, what, three or four? There's probably five or six. We could go for a while, couldn't we? And talk about some of those divine things that join us together, that this tabernacle could be one.

[19:44] It's great to have things in common with other people in the church. It's great to connect on a human level. It's okay to come up and it's okay to group up.

[19:55] That's fine. But what holds us together, what attaches the church is the divine work of God. And so how important unity is in a local church.

[20:07] How important it is that there be no separations, no divisions, no holes in the curtains where they're supposed to be connected and attached.

[20:19] No cliques among the people of God. Could we genuinely expect the glory of God to appear in this temple if there's a big opening in the curtain?

[20:32] If things are open and they're not attached together? Can we expect God to fill His house and be present among us? So this tabernacle illustrates right away from the very beginning the importance of togetherness and of unity.

[20:49] You ever buy a shirt or get your shirts back from the dry cleaners and put it on and find out there's a button missing? Did you ever have that happen where the button's missing or maybe you just sat down a little too hard and one of them took a ride?

[21:05] You know, that button's there to hold the shirt together. You shouldn't even notice the buttons. They're not there to notice. But boy, when they're not there, you sure do notice it. When it's not holding it together, when the tashes aren't joining, the couplings together, it becomes noticeable.

[21:24] You shouldn't have to come into a church and say, man, there's something wrong in here. There's a bad spirit in here. I can feel it. I can sense it. What's wrong with these people? That shouldn't be the case.

[21:35] But it's such a divine togetherness. It's illustrated here in this tabernacle how necessary it is. It's important. The importance of togetherness.

[21:46] Now, there's two layers we just read about in verses 1 through 6 and then in 7 through 11. And now come to verse number 14. We can't miss that God designed this tabernacle, not with two layers of curtains, but with a total of four separate coverings.

[22:05] And look at verse 14. It says, And thou shalt make a covering for the tent of ram's skins dyed red and a covering above of badger's skins.

[22:21] So it appears, and it's often believed, that these are four distinct separate layers or coverings, one on top of the other, that God calls for to cover his holy temple, his tabernacle, rather.

[22:37] This is his holy place of dwelling. There's other interpretations of verse 14 to say, and I don't buy it, but I don't, I don't, I've never seen it.

[22:48] But some of them suggest, well, these ram's skins and badger's skins were not two separate things or that they weren't two complete things. And the thinking is that the ram's skins dyed red has to be visible in some way.

[23:01] That's really the thinking. That's what the interpretation is trying to get to. And otherwise, it's, the red is oddly and completely invisible, being sandwiched between the goat's hair curtains and between the badger's skin, which verse 14 says, above, a covering above.

[23:20] Now, I don't think it's, I would assume that they're all four separate distinct layers. And so we'll just go with that. This illustrates something to us, though. not just of the togetherness of how God put these together, but no, but he shows one, then two, then three, then four, and it's oddly specific in the sense of dyeing these ones red and goat's hair has to be here and the badger skins.

[23:44] And I've read some material on this and I don't, I don't think anybody knows anything about it. I truly don't. I read one guy saying, well, the goat's hair, when it gets wet, it, it, it tightens up together to keep everything dry underneath and when it gets warm it opens up and allows air to flow through it.

[24:01] And I thought, well, how's air flowing through or moisture getting through the badger skins and the lamb skins? It's just stupid. They're trying to take something and give an explanation and I can't come up with any explanation for any of it.

[24:15] I made a few phone calls, talked to a few guys, read a few books and then researched online, of course, all the scholars and what they say, the commentaries. I don't see anything that makes sense to me at all.

[24:27] To really tell you why the badgers. One thought is the badger skin supposedly was a darker and uglier look from the outside but on the inside is the beautiful work, is the blue and the scarlet and the purple and the linen that has the cherubim work all through it and so the inner man is where the beauty is or on the inside of the church, on the outside nobody understands but on the inside is where the divine things go on.

[24:57] There's a thought in that but that really doesn't address the goat's hair. It doesn't address the lamb's or the ram's skins or the badger's skins and you're not going to see, I think badger shows up one other time in the Bible in the book of Ezekiel besides referencing this tabernacle has to do with some shoes that God made in a type for Israel.

[25:19] It's just not much to go on to study that out in your Bible and it doesn't matter. I don't need to. One thing I do see illustrated here is the importance of a covering.

[25:30] The importance of a covering. In this case multiple coverings. And when it comes to a group of believers coming together as a habitation for the Lord to dwell, I'd say that some coverings had better be in place.

[25:45] An obvious one or very obvious one is a covering of clothing. That ought to be in place when you come into the house of God. In the Bible in Genesis chapter 3 when the man and his wife sinned, God clothed them with coats of skins.

[26:02] He said it's time for you to be clothed and stay clothed I might add. And when you come together into this place there ought to be a covering of clothing. When the priest came to minister into this holy place he was covered brother.

[26:16] He was covered from top to bottom. Maybe the only thing you saw was his hands and his face and perhaps parts of his feet but he was covered to come into the presence of God and I believe that holds true for this place because I don't need to see your flesh.

[26:31] Nobody needs to see anybody's flesh when they come into this place. This is not a place for you to get somebody else's attention on you. This is a place for all of our attention to be given to the Lord Jesus Christ.

[26:45] Christ. You get your attention pulled all week long when you're in the world when you're living amongst this world and when you just can't get away from it.

[26:57] When you come into this place this place being likened to the tabernacle that God wants to dwell in we don't need to see flesh. We don't need to be distracted.

[27:08] We don't need our attention to be taken off of the holy word of God or the presence and the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. So put on a covering. Put on a good one. And I'm not you people do a good job with this.

[27:20] It's not something I need to hit on and really park on. But I will say this because I think it's worth everybody hearing and understanding. Put on a good one. Like this coming together is not a company picnic.

[27:32] And it's not going to a Lakers game either. This is not AMC movie theater night. This is where we come together to show some reverence and worship to a holy God.

[27:44] I think it ought to show on your face and on your body what you think. I think it does show what you think about it. It does show what you think about it. I appreciate you coming.

[27:55] But if you need to clean up a little bit and level up a little bit then do that for the Lord's sake. Not for man. For the Lord's sake. There was something in my heart.

[28:06] It was God. It wasn't me. But when I was in church kind of half in half out I just showed up with however I felt but when there was a moment when the light switched on and God got a hold of my heart I gave it all to him.

[28:18] I remember getting dressed and just felt like I can't wear that. And I started looking for some nicer clothes. It just was natural to me seeking and loving the Lord to just want to put on something better.

[28:31] And then it made me do some shopping to find a few shirts and ties and just to try to step it up. Not for anybody in the world but because as a single man I wanted to please God.

[28:44] He meant something to me in those days that I decided I'm going to dress up. So there ought to be a covering. A covering of clothing is a good one. I got thinking about coverings and I got thinking about it and just sitting for a while and looked up some verses and I just was really trying to understand these four coverings.

[29:03] I was really trying to make sense of them. The goat's hair does that have anything to do with Jacob deceiving his father and putting the goat I just couldn't come up with anything that really made any sense to me and I wasn't satisfied and I thought of a passage and it has nothing to do with the tabernacle not that I know of who knows but I want to take you to 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and we're finished with Exodus for now so go to 1 Corinthians chapter 11 we started in this book we're going to finish in this book 1 Corinthians 11 I was reminded of this passage and I found something interesting in it in verse number 1 the apostle Paul tells this church he says be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ so there's a doctrinal order if you will call it that a doctrinal order of following the apostle Paul for believers and he follows

[30:18] Christ as Christ revealed doctrine to him from we won't get into it but there's that's our authority that's our guy that we follow we don't follow Moses we follow Paul Paul delivered us the doctrines and the gospel and the body of Christ the mysteries and so be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ he says now there's a there's a doctoral order there and that's that's fine we understand that there's also something else in verse 3 what I'll call a spiritual order look at verse 3 but I would have you to know that the head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is the man and the head of Christ is God and so there's a bit of a spiritual order with God the father and the son Jesus Christ came and he followed and he obeyed and he submitted and he did the work that God called him to do and then the man follows Christ Christ is his head and the woman was the fourth in the picture there in verse number 3 and this is followed by what I see to be an illustration of human beings having a covering on their heads and it talks about a woman having her hair being covered or uncovered and a man the same way and look at verses 14 and 15 of this chapter now verse 14 doth not even nature itself teach you that if a man have long hair it is a shame unto him but if a woman have long hair it is a glory to her for her hair is given her for a covering and so this is he's saying look it's natural for men and women to understand this that men keep it close and keep their hair cut but women it's a glory to her women the revelation describes having the hair of women talking about some of these spiritual beasts there's a hair a covering a glory given to the woman and it does not fit or apply to a man at least by nature you can do something against nature you can rebel against nature you can do whatever you want to do but in this case it's a natural thought it's natural order and the reason being because in the relationship of man and woman this is just an illustration the woman has a head over her the man and so it's natural she has a covering the man is likened to that covering the man though he doesn't wear a covering he doesn't submit under the woman to where he has a head or a covering on his head that's kind of the illustrated picture of what's described back in verse number three now I got to thinking about this and the hair is a natural covering for the head and to ignore that is likened to ignoring the order that God designed for mankind in the realm of authority of who follows whom or who submits to whom and so not only have we seen the importance of a covering but there's order to the coverings just like was mentioned back there in

[33:25] Exodus 26 there's order to the covering and so the importance of a covering also illustrates the importance of the order and the coverings have an order there's an order of four as verse number three showed us God Christ the man and the woman now I'm not trying to make individually these things match the badgers skins and the others I'm not trying to I thought about it for a while the only thing that matches and it matches very clearly is the third one from the inside is Jesus Christ the lambs or the ram's skins that male sheep dyed red that sure does look like Jesus Christ in a type but I'm not going to try to twist anything else to make this make some picture or make sense but there is a four four layers described here in this passage and it describes a covering when you enter this sanctuary there ought to be some coverings in place a covering of your flesh a covering of your of authority and order a covering of our head by submitting one to another in the fear of

[34:40] God it's a shame if you enter this place and you think that you're somebody you're not or you think you could walk in here and say well be followers of me because that's getting out of the divine order look back at chapter one you're in first Corinthians look at chapter number one and you'll see another four here in this case there's four groups that these believers are divided into in first Corinthians one I'll back up a little bit just to show you again the importance of togetherness verse number ten it begins in verse ten now I beseech you brethren by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that ye all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you but that ye be perfectly joined for it has been declared unto me of you my brethren by them which are in the house of

[35:43] Chloe that there are contentions among you now this I say that every one of you say I am of Paul and I of Apollos and I of Cephas and I of Christ four individual separate groups within one church claiming to be following somebody else and this is wrong this is division in a local church and we see this tabernacle illustrates the importance of togetherness but it also illustrates to us the importance of covering and that is in an order we don't want to meet in this place and have a room full of personalities a room full of differing opinions where one thinks they're right and one says no you're wrong but we're right we're going to group up here following this way but they say no that stuff is flesh that is carnality that is strife and divisions among the people of

[36:48] God Paul says are you not carnal for doing those things there's divisions among you you're yet carnal it's just evidence of the sinful people that we are in first Peter chapter five and verse five Peter says all of you be subject one to another and listen to this be clothed with humility there's a covering for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble you must have a covering of humility a covering of submission to authority and to the order that God designed God set those things in order on top of his temple of his tabernacle and he expects all four of them to lay in the place they were given and submitting one to another is his order for the New Testament church he's not giving individuals a place and a platform to be heard because nothing that comes through these doors should in any way take away from the worship of his son the

[38:03] Lord Jesus Christ once somebody starts talking about how they think it is and having people come to them they are pulling people and pulling a little click or fraction I'm not addressing it in this church I don't see it to be in this church just pointing out the reality of it is that once that takes place your attention is on a man you've taken away from the togetherness and now it's not good to come into a place and feel that friction to feel tension in your spirits toward a brother or toward a sister there needs to be a covering of submission one to another in the fear of God there should be nothing that would take away from the glory of God and would distract from the worship of God alone so I want to close here with just a simple thought and this one's maybe even the strongest covering that there ought to be is the covering of the blood of

[39:06] Jesus Christ the covering is so important that you may even tend to overlook it if you're saved you've been saved for a while and you tend to overlook how filthy of a man you really are in your flesh and the things that go and flow through your mind and the things you see and the things that you're bombarded with and the thoughts you have and the selfishness and the pride and to think well I've been saved I'm a Christian and I know the Bible and you lose sight of how vile you are in the sight of God and when you come together in the church there has got and the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanses us from all sin if you don't have the covering of the blood you're not his child and you're still in your sins and you need to get that taken care of but if you're a saved child of

[40:06] God and you live in the flesh and walk in here with that carnal spirit that needs to go because there needs to be before you get to church or even when you get to church and say Lord wash me in the blood cleanse this little place in the blood of Christ when you look down from heaven just just cover this little sanctuary here in Silmar with the blood of your son this place has got filth around it this month represents some some sickening depravity to this nation and this county but may God cover this little place this little sanctuary with his blood may he not see that when we come in here to worship him may he see us pure and white and clean in his sight there's got to be the covering of the blood there's got to be a covering of humility a covering of submission of authority of order like that a covering of clothes all of those need to be present when we come together so that

[41:19] God would walk among us and that his glory would fill this place that his word would be alive and would be true and real to you God help you if you just walk in here and you're bored if it's boring to you I got nothing for you but God help you to come in here with a hunger!

[41:41] and an appetite for righteousness if you want it you'll get full you'll get something from it the word of God has got something for you this tabernacle we're just letting it illustrate some things how it matches the local church this morning the first thought was the importance of togetherness the second the importance of a covering and I've got a few more that we're going to get to next week Lord willing from that chapter I don't want to put it all this week or we'd be here for another 45 minutes probably so I'm going to pause right there with the message and bring you back together next week to conclude it with some illustrations from the tabernacle and its construction and some important things and truths that ought to be present in Bible Baptist church as we come together to worship God so we'll be dismissed with that this morning and Lord willing I'll see you Wednesday night and let's have a word of prayer and then we'll just dismiss here Father it's with thanksgiving and grateful hearts that we bow before you thanking you for this church thank you for this congregation thank you for every single person that attends here that whose heart is here who gives to this work who serves!

[43:00] There newer faces that have a hunger for the word of God and a desire to be among your people here it's our prayer that will grow and that will grow together and that will grow stronger the Lord may those bonds be as mentioned those divine traits having nothing to do with our carnal personalities but everything to do with truth in the word of God God bind our hearts and God help us to be clothed with humility to put our own flesh and our own pride down and lay it aside for the sake of the church and to lay it aside for the sake of worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ alone God we're men we're women we're flesh we have it in us and we need your spirit to overcome that and in the new man to put those things and those thoughts down to the obedience of

[44:02] Christ may this be a holy tabernacle that you'll be pleased to dwell in and to work from and to shine forth and may the covering of your cloud be on this place and the covering of your blood keep us clean and free and God be pleased with us we just submit ourselves to you we submit this church to you holy!

[44:27] for it's in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ we pray Amen