“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.” Romans 8:1-5

By now you are probably thinking you are near the end of this journey - wrong! The deeper things are yet to be absorbed. However, in order to absorb everything, at the most optimal rate, every once in a while you must stop and reassess where you have been and where you are in light of the Journey. Often, it is these simple moments of reassessment that opens the deeper mysteries. It is time for you to seize that moment.

GREAT MYSTERY

The Tabernacle was a great mystery for the Hebrew children and it must have been an even stranger sight for those on the outside who knew nothing about it. Just watching the six thousand men it took to break down, move, and set up the tabernacle was intimidating in its self, not to mention the Pillar of Fire that some think reached up three hundred feet into the Sky. God sure knows how to make His presence known. At the same time you have probably wondered, like many of us, why God does not do more signs and wonders like this. It is my suspicion that it is not God that has changed, but us. But, I have digressed from the topic at hand.

When you walk through the interior of the Tabernacle it preserves a certain sense of majesty and Awe. Then, as you enter the Rooms of Mystery, or Sanctuary, that sense of Awe is magnified hundreds of times. The fact is, in the truest sense, the palpable presence of mystery and Awe increases with each step you take. The spiritual wonder that all who enter here experience eclipses words and yet the basics are easily explained. It is the intensifying atmosphere of God’s presence that becomes the inexplicable. One has to experience it to fully understand the difficulty of the finite trying to explain the infinite. Mere words fall light years short of even coming close to expressing this moment.

THE LAW AND THE SPIRIT

The two covered rooms you are in, also represent the Law and Spirit. In the Holy Place, the room you were in just before the Veil that separates it from the Holy of Holies rose, you were expected to follow the letter of the Law. Thus, perseverance, intellect and passion were greatly needed in order to unlock the understanding of the laws, statutes, and ordinances that tell you what you can and cannot do. Therefore, in order to strictly follow the Law, the soul became greatly valued.

MAN GETS HIS DESIRE

Adam and Eve thought they could come close to God and even become god-like through the noesis gained from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Thus, in returning mankind to Himself, God let man start by using the soul they so errantly thought they needed. It was as if God said, “If mankind wants to serve Me through their soul, I’ll let them try it. The result was three hundred and sixty plus laws that it took a genius to figure out, not to mention the ebbs and flows of passion and raw stubbornness that it took to carry out the rigorous demands of the Law.

THE MYSTERY OF THE HEART

However, you are not in the Holy Place, you are now in the Holy of Holies. Here in the Holiest of all the Rooms, where God who is Spirit and Light dwells, the Law is not seen, though it is present. Where is it? It’s inside the heart of the Ark of the Covenant and in a strangely mystical way, it has been making its way into your heart from the moment you entered the Tabernacle. If you step back and study the layout of the Tabernacle, you will see that the Law is encased inside the deepest room of all the rooms, the room inside the Ark. You cannot get inside this room, but it can, and will, get inside you.

Henceforth, as the prophets of old wrote, the law gets written on your heart and not on tablets of stone. The transfer from stone to flesh has been made. Once this occurred, man would no longer need to worship God through their soul, but with their spirit - God longed for this day to come, however, in His justice He could not do so until Jesus - in the fullness of time, justified the transfer. This is what the apostle Paul was expressing in Romans 8 and many other places as he wrote about the Law and the Spirit.

The Journey you have been on through the Tabernacle depicts that transfer or transition and that transition has transformed you. Until you entered this Room of Spirit, it was hard to understand the importance of this Holy Transition. Now you are a little more enlightened, but only a little, as there are volumes of understanding yet to be gleaned.

SPIRITUAL INACCESSABILITY

Thus you find the Holy Place and the Outer Court is about the Stone Tablets of the Law, while the Holy of Holies is concerned with the Spirit of the Law. For a time the two Rooms were separated by a Veil (and you thought we’d never get to this topic - well, we’re closer). By its weighty presence and beauty alone, the Veil kept the Soul in it’s place and sadly, at the same time, it kept the Spirit in its place as well. One might broadly say that with the tearing of the flesh of Jesus, the Holy Spirit could come to write on your heart. Until that tearing took place, the Spirit had little access to our spirit. More on that topic in another posting.

IMAGO DEI

You might remember, if you have been following this blog, that in some of my earliest writings on this topic we discovered the Tabernacle is both a depiction of the construct of Heaven and of God; simultaneously it is also a construct of man made in the “imago dei” or image of God. Therefore, if you continue that line of thought, the dimension of the Tabernacle’s layout and your layout is similar.

Now the shocker - the soul is larger than the spirit - about one third larger, and it loves to use its bulk to rule. In fact, your soul is a “bully” and if it cannot rule by deception, it will rule through compulsion. Thus the Law and the Soul found themselves inextricably twisted together for about fifteen hundred years. The Flesh or Carnal nature formed by this cohesion would only be undone by the tearing of the flesh of the ONE who had not succumbed to the souls rule. So we find, the sacrifice of the Holy in order to change by reversal the bondage of the profane.

Said another way, prior to the giving of the law, man followed God with the flesh, meaning man followed God in various and sundry carnal ways. The result was the Flood of Noah and later the Tower of Babel. Subsequently, with the giving of the Law, man would follow God with his soul - mind, will, and emotions. So man was left to search out the various laws, ordinances, statutes, that were given and intellectually find a way to live within them. However, with the fulfillment or the word of the Prophets, the Law would be written inside you, on the tablets of the flesh of your heart. Until that change took place, the spirit of a man could not rule his soul nor his flesh and the battle raged on.

Then came Jesus.

Blessings,

John Paul Jackson

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The first Ark, the Ark of Noah, was to save man and was made from wood covered by tar or pitch. But, it was inferior in-so-much-as it only saved eight people. It did not make a way to save mankind. A better Ark was coming. The second Ark, the Ark of the Tabernacle of Moses, is also made with wood but instead of being covered with pitch, it is covered with Gold. The wood that it is made from represents humanity or mankind. More specifically it prophetically represents Jesus the Messiah who came in the form of man and in doing so made himself of no Heavenly reputation. Wood is common, and the prophet Isaiah wrote that the beaten and crucified one would be common or uncomely.

COMMON AND UNCOMELY

Yet, as common as Jesus made Himself to be in the view of mankind, He was far from common in the view of Heaven. The wood of the wooden Ark covered with Gold depicts this reality - fully man and simultaneously fully God; two materials, two natures, in one person. It’s representation is prophetically clear - God was manifest in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:15-16) and there was found no sin in Him. The solid Gold Crown around the edge of the top of the Ark is the Crown of the only one worthy of having every knee bow and every tongue confess His lordship over all.

As you continue to gaze at the sight before you, you can still see details of the Ark. Looking through the brilliant white light you are still able to the drops of blood from the Lamb of God, blood Jesus shed. These drops of blood are the only reason you are not consumed as you stand here. It is by the blood of Jesus that your sin is given Mercy. In other words the blood allows the Mercy Seat to extend Mercy to you. Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy starts to take on new meaning and tears of gratitude course down your cheeks as you are touched by this personal reality.

ATMOSPHERE

In this atmosphere and in the presence of the “All Knowing” you remember this blood first prophetically emerged as being significant at the first Passover.  Here, in the confines of slavery, the Angel of Death, judged the ten gods of Egypt, and passed over those Children of Israel who had applied the blood of the Lamb on the four sides of the doorposts of their house. In effect their house became their Ark for that night and it too foretold of the Ark you now stand before. Amazingly enough, the Ark in this tiny room foretells of the plan of God and the salvation of mankind. How intricate are the ways of God - the more we know, it seems we know less than we knew before we knew. Each level of new understanding unveils ten deeper levels we never knew were there.

NEW JERUSALEM

The blood sprinkled on this Ark allows the brightness of the Glory of God to become a visible manifestation above this seventh piece of furniture in the Tabernacle - the Mercy Seat. Because of the blood of the Lamb, God is now justified in making His presence known to man. It is still true today. The Mercy Seat is the only piece of furniture where the Glory of God dwelt in brightness or “self-radiant” light. It sits in this 10 cubit X 10 cubit X 10 cubit (1,000 square cubits) room. You might have noticed that this, the smallest of rooms in the Tabernacle, is “four square” and it prophetically represents the New Jerusalem that is to come where there is no need for the sun, for the Glory of God illuminates it and the Lamb of God is its light.

Thus there is no need for the Sun, nor for a Lampstand in this final Room of Mystery - God illumines it and the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world is there.

Blessings,

John Paul

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