As we read in Hebrews 8:1-2, we do have a high priest, who sits in the place of absolute majesty in the Universe, and who serves in the real sanctuary, the most holy place, the true tent set up by the Lord, not by a mere human being. Under the Covenant with Israel long ago, God commanded an earthly, temporary, mobile sanctuary, a tent! a copy of the real sanctuary to be established by Moses with priests appointed under the law of Moses to offer up gifts and sacrifices.
But when Jesus came, he could not even approach the Tent of meeting—he was a layman! He was not even an acclaimed rabbi, let alone a priest (8:4).
Did you get that? He was a layman, not a priest! Yet in that humble form, with no religious or institutional status, he showed perfectly the character, the face, the loving-kindness and compassion of God! And by his life and death in that lowly status, he entered the TRUE sanctuary and forever abolished the whole system of exclusive priestcraft. He smashed for all time the clergy–laity hierarchy divide. So why does it still persist even in evangelical Protestant churches?
Look at Hebrews 8:5: that earthly tent made by Moses was just a copy, a shadow of the real, of what is actually in Heaven. Yet it had to be done kosher, right? So Moses was strictly warned by God:
‘See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’(Exodus 25:40
God gave Moses the pattern, the design plans, for the tent of meeting and the worship to be made by Israel, which was to be visible, not just virtual. These plans could not be compromised in any detail. Understand the seriousness of following the exact plans given by the Lord Architect, even under a temporary covenant. Moses was allowed to see the transcendent, glorious form and then was instructed to materialise what he saw. No additions. No subtractions.
Following God’s instructions, Moses fabricated, erected and furnished the Tent, not a permanent structure like the worldly religions everywhere else. God was on the move with his people! The living God cannot be compromised, cannot be reduced to images or reproduced in buildings.
Now, if it was so important for Moses and Israel, under an inferior and temporary covenant arrangement, to implement exactly the Lord’s design, how much more critical it was that the apostles correctly implement the Lord’s plans for the Body of Christ to be visible on the Earth and be on the move!
And the followers of Jesus, without any Jewish authority, did so, as our letter under review and the rest of the New Testament shows. They obeyed Jesus’ words and in the power of the Holy Spirit their obedience turned the world upside down. The evidence is there in all the New Testament scriptures. We have the Lord of glory on the move in his gathered people. We see Almighty God reproduced in the face of Jesus and visibly in his gathered people: God’s pattern!
Many Christian leaders tell us they cannot see the Lord’s design for gathering of God’s people which he handed down to the apostles, and which was then implemented under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What! The pattern’s on every page of the New Testament. But we are so used to having a D.I.Y. religion based on human thinking, founded on worldly ideas, we just assume that what we have always done is right.
If the Lord is to be honoured and given the ‘worth-ship’ He deserves, a serious, radical and unbiased approach to the New Testament is needed to see God’s pattern for his Body. But we must remove our churchy, religious glasses to see it, and to throw out both the baby and the bathwater.
Even more so, since Jesus’ own ministry is carried out, not in a mere replica of the heavenly, but in the dwelling place of God. His work is astronomically superior to the old Mosaic order. The new arrangement Jesus has made with his people is much superior to the old one as it is established on better promises. And itcalls for even closer attention from you and me, to what God wants and the careful putting into visible form, God’s perfect design for his people.
Notice Jesus’ terrifying answer to the troubled question his politically correct and concerned disciples put to him after he had rebuked the Pharisees over what defiles a person (Mt 15:12-14): Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up!
God is jealous for his plans and designs for his work to be followed by his servants, including us. Look carefully and thoughtfully at what Jude wrote (Jude 3):
Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.
Are you prepared to see how proud arrogance, abysmal ignorance, sheer blindness, rank disobedience and shoulder-shrugging complacency has subjugated God’s perfect design in the totally controlled, commercialised, industrialised, entertainment-based, consumer oriented Churchianity of today? Stay tuned.
Ian Thomson 