02.08. THE COVERINGS

THE COVERINGS THERE were two coverings for the Tabernacle, one of badgers’ skins, the other of rams’ skins dyed red. THE BADGERS’ SKINS

“And thou shalt make a covering for the tent (Tabernacle) of badgers’ skins.” (Exodus 26:14.) These badgers’ skins were of a dull, bluish-grey color.

There was no recorded measure. They had no definite form.

There was neither comeliness nor beauty about them.

There was nothing in appearance that could make anyone desire them. , To one looking at them they seemed common, ordinary, and the tendency would be to despise and reject them. In this covering you have a perfect picture of our Lord Jesus Christ as He passed through the world and as He appeared in the eyes of men. The manner of Him was foretold centuries before He was born.

“He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isaiah 53:2-3.) No one who saw the Tabernacle under the outer covering of badgers’ skins would have dreamed of the wealth, the gold, the form, the color and the exquisite beauty beneath it.

Only when such an one should enter and behold the golden table of shew bread, the golden candlestick, the golden altar of incense, the beautiful vail, the sacred precincts of the Most Holy Place, the ark of the covenant, the golden mercy seat with the two golden angels, the solemn, mysterious shekinal light; only when he should see the inner walls of pure, gleaming gold, the ceiling above in spotless white, byssus linen and on it as a background the spreading wings of the amazing cherubim in blue, purple and scarlet, wrought with the rarest skill of fine needlework and embroidery; only when he should walk in the light, not the light of day, but the sacred light of the sacred and holy oil; only when he should catch the almost blinding flash of splendor meeting him at every turn and breathed in the white, ascending smoke of the fragrant incense; only when he could stand within and say: “I am in the Tabernacle, the dwelling place and enthronement of God,” only then could he know its beauty, wealth and glory. And he only could stand within who should come by way of the brazen altar at the gate of the Court with the blood of sacrifice offered there; he, and he only, could enter the Tabernacle and behold all it revealed of the divine plan and inspired workmanship. No one who saw our Lord garbed in the coarse, seamless robe of the poor, walking over the highways, through the streets and lanes of villages, towns and cities; no one who heard Him testify that birds of the air had nests and foxes had holes, but He, Himself, had not where to lay His head; no one who saw Him seated at a public table in a wayside Kahn or inn, talking, eating and drinking with publicans and sinners; no one who saw Him as He appeared to the general eye, a weary passer-by, a houseless, homeless wanderer, seemingly without occupation, with a face marred as never was face marred before, a man of sorrowful countenance and acquainted with grief, and cheeks grooved with the course of tears, such as He shed in the agony of His soul at the grave of Lazarus and of the kind He wept over Jerusalem, moved with compassion at the vision of sickness and disease, filled with heartache at the every-day demonstrated fact of sin, taking on Himself the very sickness and infirmities of others, despised, treated with contempt, and at last rejected by men as a fool, a fanatic, a weakling or impostor; .none seeing Him in this guise had the slightest, wildest dream of imagination that He was the actual and absolute maker of Heaven and earth; that He had come down from Heaven and the eternal throne to visit His chosen people; that He was the true Tabernacle which God pitched and not man, the dwelling place of the Godhead among men, God manifest in the flesh, Immanuel, God with us, upholding all things by the word of His power, and that in Him was wrought with all the fulness of divine perfection the characteristics and essential qualities of a holy, spotless, sinless and heavenly fragrant humanity; no one looking at Him as He passed could conceive this. Nor can anyone know Him and know all He is till he can say:

“I am in Christ.” And no one can say that till like the priest he shall come by way of the brazen altar of sacrifice, by way of the cross, owning and confessing the blood shed there as the blood of atonement, the blood of redemption, then and then only will he be in Christ.

Then he can see and know the beauty that is in Him; But to those who do not come by way of the brazen altar of the cross, to those who do not enter in and become in Him, one with Him, He is only as the badgers’ skins, so without form and comeliness that none desires Him. THE RAMS’ SKINS DYED RED “And thou shalt make a covering for the tent of rams’ skins dyed red.” (Exodus 26:14.) These were placed immediately under the badgers’ skins. The ram is set before us in Scripture as a substitute. When Abraham in obedience to the command of God, given to test his faith, lifted up his knife and in all sincerity was about to slay his son as a sacrificial offering unto the Lord, but in full confidence, since God had made that son the depository of all the promises of God, that God the Lord would raise him from the dead, his arm was arrested by the voice of the Lord who, satisfied with this display of faith, bade him halt and hold back the stroke, and when at that command he turned away from the altar he beheld a ram caught by its horns in a thicket.

Then we are told: “And Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up-in the stead of his son.” (Genesis 22:23.) The ram was directly provided of God as a-substitute. Our Lord came into the world as the sent of the Father, and yet by His own will, to die as a substitute for guilty men.

He came to take the place of those condemned to die.

He came to die as the holy for the unholy. He came to die as the sinless for the sinful. He came to die as the just for the unjust.

“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” (1 Peter 3:18.)

“He was made sin for us.” (2 Corinthians 5:21.) “His own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” (1 Peter 2:21.) “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:4.)

“Who gave himself for our sins.” (Galatians 1:4.) “Who was delivered for our offences.” (Romans 4:25.) “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8.) “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6.)

If there be one thing more clearly set forth in Scripture than another concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, it is that He came into the world to exchange places with the sinner condemned to death and eternal banishment from God, came to take the place of those who justly should suffer the downpour of the righteous wrath of the righteous God forever. If language be worthwhile, if words mean what they say, then it is beyond dispute that the eternal Son of God divested Himself of His glory, came into this world, took a specially created humanity into union with Himself that He might die the death of, God’s substitute for every believing sinner.

Indeed, when you remove from the Gospels and cast out from the Epistles all the direct and indirect statements about the death of Christ and consider only the life He lived”, the discourses He gave, you have the most incomplete figure in history, the most fragmentary life. Compared to Socrates or the martyrs who died in His name He is unheroic and His death an unqualified defeat.

Recognize Him as a substitute provided of God, then His history from the hour when the Angel announced Him till the moment when He cried, “It is finished,” makes Him instead of a nearby, groping martyr of local circumstance, the revelation of divine genius and His death a disclosure of the heartthrob of God. In John 3:16, we read and all the world reads with us:

“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

There is just one key word to that universally quoted text. That word is—

Gave. And when you go down to its root meaning and think out to its ultimate you are under bonds to read the text in this way:

“God so loved the world, that he devoted his only begotten Son to be a substitute, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” That word “substitute” is the only word that reveals and proves God’s love to the sinner.

He loved us so, as Paul says, that, “He spared not His own Son, but delivered him up for us all.”

Delivered Him up as—Our Substitute.