Revelation 21:3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them… Here we have first the announcement of a fact, the fact that God has entered into associations of some kind with man, of an especial and intimate character, more intimate apparently than any which exists between Him and the other creatures of His hand. And secondly we have here as expression of wonder — "the tabernacle of God is with men." I. WHAT THE "TABERNACLE OF GOD" IMPLIES. Certainly when we transfer an expression like this from the associations of our finite life to the life of the Divine and illimitable Being we must do so with serious reservations. To the Arab of the desert his tent is his covering, his shelter, his home. When a tabernacle is said to be God's, something more must be meant which corresponds in some way with our human associations with the expression, but something also widely different. To the Omnipresent a tabernacle cannot be a covering, it cannot be a shelter to Him who fills all in all. The expression is of itself startling and parodoxical, and yet it does contain a truth which is not the less worth attention. Reflect, then, on the power which we men have of making our presence emphatic and felt. We know from experience how a man may sit among his fellows, giving little or no token of intelligence and sympathy, watching what passes, hearing what is said, yet making no sign, no intimation even of recognition. And we know how possible is the very reverse of all this, how thought, and feeling, and resolve may flash forth in countenance and in speech, and may profoundly impress, win, subdue all who come within the limits of a striking human personality. This means that we have the power of accentuating our presence among our fellow-men at will. We do not cease to be present in our limited way when we do not thus accentuate it, when we find ourselves in company which throws us back upon our own thoughts as distinct from company which provokes an expression of what we are thinking and feeling. Still, we are made in God's image, and therefore it is not irreverent, making all due allowance for the interval which separates the finite from the infinite, to presume something analogous in Him. He is the Omnipresent. But He may surely, if He wills, emphasise His presence by connecting either its manifestations or its blessings with particular spots, or actions, or persons, or incidents, or edifices, or ordinances. He is the Almighty, and who shall say Him nay? For us His creatures the only reasonable question can be whether there are grounds for thinking that He has done so: and we do not forget the essential conditions of His illimitable being because we attribute to Him the exercise of a power which He has not denied to ourselves. "The tabernacle of God," then, is an expression which implies not that the presence of the Omnipotent can be limited, but that it can be for certain purposes determined or emphasised in a particular direction. What is the deepest desire in human nature? what is the secret of that unappeasable restlessness of the human heart which no created object can permanently allay? It is the implanted longing for God. "Like as a hart desireth the water brooks, so longeth my soul after Thee, O God" — not merely a desire to know God; knowledge of the unattainable may be only torture, not merely a desire to be purified for the sight of God, but a desire to be really united to Him, a hope that we may evermore dwell in Him and He in us. When the soul which the Infinite Being has created for Himself finds itself one with Him, its deepest instinct is perfectly satisfied, and then, and then only, it is at peace. Now the realisation of this implanted hope of the soul of man was first shadowed out, and then it was provided for. God tabernacled among men first intermittently and distantly, and then by actual union with mankind in the incarnation, and lastly in the society which sprang from this union, the holy Church of Christ. II. THE FIRST JEWISH TABERNACLE. "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men." This might have been said of the sacred tent of which we read so much in the books of Moses, and which was the centre of the worship of Israel until the building of the Temple. It is "the tabernacle of the congregation," as our version renders the original words; more accurately it is "the tabernacle of meeting." This solemn phrase implied not a house in which men would meet together to talk or to hear about God, but where God would meet with His people. God would hold His court in it or at it. There He would instruct His chosen servants; there He would meet His people. And the history of Israel abundantly illustrates what was practically meant. With the tabernacle was closely associated a cloud, or pillar of cloud, as the visible symbol of the Divine presence. From it proceeded the guidance, the warning, the judgment which might be needed for Israel. Nor was this cloud by any means the only association of the tabernacle with the sacred Presence. Within the tabernacle was the breastplate of the High Priest, the Urim and Thummim, through which the Divine will was communicated to devout inquirers; and in the holiest recess of the tabernacle was the sacred ark containing the two tables of the law, and covered by the mercy-seat, that symbol of the Divine compassion covering human transgressions of the eternal law; while above were the winged cherubim, representatives these of created life in its highest form, bending to adore the moral revelation of the Self-Existent which the contents of the ark enshrined. We cannot exaggerate the importance of the position of the two tables of the law. It marked off in the eyes of Israel, as sharply as was possible, God's revelation of Himself as righteousness, from the Egyptian and other Eastern conceptions of Him as some form of cosmic force or nature-power, whether productive or otherwise. And this was the central scene of the Presence vouchsafed in the tabernacle, which made it as the Psalmist calls it, "the tent which He had pitched among men." And above this ark was the Shekinah, Divine glory, the centre point of the adoration of primitive Israel. The Presence in the tabernacle was undoubtedly a localised presence, a particular determination of the presence of God, whose Being knows no bounds. But the tabernacle had no necessary or inseparable relations to the Presence which it for a while enshrined. Its relation to the Presence was provisional. It did its work for the people of revelation, and then it passed away. III. A DEEPER MEANING. The sacred manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ, His body and His human soul, became by the incarnation the tabernacle of God. The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, very and eternal God, took man's nature upon Him in the womb of the Blessed Virgin of her substance; so that two whole and perfect natures were joined together in one person, never to be divided. The Son had existed from eternity; and then He wrapped around His eternal person, and indissolubly, a human body and a human soul. His human body and soul were the tabernacle in which He, the Eternal Word and Son, deigned to dwell, not for thirty-three years only, but for ever. And thus whilst men looked on a human form and heard human language, and noted the circumstances of a human life, and asked, "Is not this the carpenter's son? and is not His mother called Mary? as if nothing in the world could possibly be plainer, He on the other hand could say without a trace of exaggeration, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father"; "The Son of Man which is in heaven"; "Before Abraham was (become) I am"; "I and the Father are one." It is this which makes the Gospels unlike any other books, even any other inspired books. They describe a life radically unlike any other life that ever was lived on earth. It is the life of the Divine Being making human nature His tabernacle, dwelling on earth in human form. True, the first three Gospels lay stress chiefly on the human form, and the fourth lays stress chiefly on the Divine nature which it veiled and yet manifested. But they all of them describe One who, living among men, was infinitely more than man, since His manhood was the tabernacle of God. IV. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men." This is true in a somewhat different sense of the Church of Christ, in which Christ has dwelt throughout the Christian ages. He has kept, He is still keeping, His promise, "Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world." He has been with us for more than eighteen centuries. His Church is an outflow of His incarnate life. For this Church of His is an aggregate of Christian lives, and each living Christian is a product and an extension of the life of the Redeemer. "As He is, so are we in this world," "Christ in you the hope of glory." There is more in a Christian's life, as there was more in that of the Lord Jesus Christ, than meets the eye. The Christian's thought is supplied, enriched, controlled by a Book in which human words veil the mind of the Eternal. His intellect is illuminated, his affections are expanded, his will is invigorated, his whole nature is first renewed, and then sustained and developed by a force which Christendom calls grace, and which flows forth from the sinless manhood of the incarnate Christ at the bidding of His Spirit. Still, although Christ is thus with His Church, and she is the tabernacle which He has pitched in the wide field of humanity, she is composed of weak and sinful men, and so far she is out of correspondence with the perfect manhood in which His God-head tabernacled on earth, and in which He still dwells within her. The Bride of the Lamb is not yet prepared for the Bridegroom's welcome. The tabernacle of the Church in which Christ dwells on earth is soiled and torn. It could not be translated in its present condition to the courts above. He who dwells in it must prepare, must glorify, must embellish it. (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. |
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