When Jesus walked into Jerusalem as the crowds swelled the city’s population for the Feast of Tabernacles, He was planning on making His greatest offer to Israel in His ministry. To perhaps the largest crowd of all, this happy celebration drew faithful Jews from all over the Land and even the world. And here, at the great feast God had given to Moses to write 1,500 years earlier as a testimony of Christ, Jesus arrives and offers Himself to any and all who would listen.
Have you found Jesus as your light? Last time we studied what it meant to be trusting Jesus. This morning we need to study what it means to be following Jesus. To do so, join me again in the remarkable setting of this great I AM THE LIGHT declaration by Jesus. To do so we must ask the 1st Question. Okay, here we go. WHERE WAS JESUS when He declared He was the Light of the World? The answer? In the Courtyard of the Temple of Herod. What do we need to do? We need to watch Jesus against the backdrop of the Divinely prescribed Worship of Israel, which is the 1st key to walking in the Light.
To understand the magnitude of Christ’s declaration that He was The Light of the World we need to turn back to the second book of the Bible. Remember when we studied Creation a while back? We saw that there are only two chapters in the Bible are devoted to the creation story, whereas some fifty chapters focus on the Tabernacle (see especially Ex. 25-40). Why did God give so many details about the Divinely prescribed worship for Israel? Clearly, the Tabernacle is important and demands attention in our study, because it is a giant portrait of Jesus Christ. Everywhere you look in the Tabernacle you can see Jesus Christ the Lord!
Walk again with me through Exodus 37-38 this morning. The courtyard of the Tabernacle was one hundred fifty feet long and seventy-five feet wide. As we walk around it on a Scriptural Tour we can find every object we see in some waypoints to Christ. And also His great I AM declarations are featured in this sacred place.
1. EXODUS 37:1-9 THERE WAS ONLY ONE WAY TO GOD. Jesus reflected this when He declared I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE. The only object in the Holy of Holies was the ark, which represents Jesus Christ, the true mercy seat. When we meet Jesus Christ as Savior, we are ushered into the presence of God, into the true Holy of Holies. God no longer communes with men between the wings of cherubim on a gold mercy seat. He communes with men in His Son, by whom the veil was torn in two. Jesus Christ is the mercy seat. Only on the basis of the blood of a goat would God have fellowship with Israel, and only on the basis of the blood of Christ will God have fellowship with men. John, in using the term “propitiation,” in 1 John 2:2, relates Jesus to the mercy seat, since that very word is used for mercy seat in the Septuagint translation of Exodus 25:17.
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