resurrection

You are the Tabernacle

Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

Image from searchisaiah.org

Did you know that the Tabernacle is a type and shadow of you? Well, of the born again Christian anyway. It sounds crazy, I know, but stick with me.

First, on the off chance that you don’t know about the Tabernacle, it was built by Moses, at God’s command, so that there would be a place for God to come down and meet with His people. Its purpose, or one of its purposes, was to bring God closer to man and man closer to God. That’s putting it extremely simplistically; it’s a topic that is well worth deep study.

Now, back to us…to you. I was recently reminded that when you look inside the human body you see something distinct. There are oxygenated blood vessels that are red, unoxygenated blood vessels that are blue, and vessels carrying mixed blood that are purple; these help make up the fabric of the human body. Inside the Tabernacle, you find fabric woven of red, blue, and purple cords.

Covering the outside of the Tabernacle, you have skin (animal skins, of course). Ditto the human body. Another fascinating parallel.

Now look at John 1. John is talking about God, The Word, who is Jesus, and how Jesus became flesh, or human. In the Old Testament, God came down and settled on the Tabernacle. Here we see that God has come down to dwell with us in the Tabernacle that is Jesus Christ.

Move on to John 2:19 and you find, “‘All right,’ Jesus replied, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.'” Then, in verse 21, “But when Jesus said ‘this temple,’ he meant his own body.” The temple of that day was, of course, the modern version of Moses’ tabernacle.

Which brings us to 1 Corinthians 6:19: “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself,.”

Jesus’ body was the temple of the Holy Spirit. Christian, your body is also the temple of the Holy Spirit. God created this temple for many purposes, but one stands out: To bring God closer to man and man closer to God.

Tomorrow is Resurrection Sunday. Let’s not take lightly the magnitude of what Jesus did for us, what we gained in His resurrection, or the purposes God has set for us to fulfill today.

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

Meditations: Romans 6:5-7

Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

Copyright Clarissa Pardue 2014
Copyright Clarissa Pardue 2014

Romans 6:5-7
NKJV

For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin.

 

This last line is the key. “For he who has died has been freed from sin.” I was born a slave to sin and grew up letting it rule over me; it was the way of life I knew. Then I accepted Jesus – accepted His death as having paid the price required to buy, from sin, the slave that I was. In Him I too died; I died to the sin that had enslaved me. Even so, though freed by death and resurrected into new life, my flesh naturally wanted to go back to being a slave because the life of slavery was familiar, an easy life where sin ordered me around and all I had to do was follow its commands.

But I am free, called to walk in newness of life. I have free will, to follow the mandates of righteousness or to return to the habit patterns of the life I lived before. With every step I must choose and yes, choosing can be challenging. The body is dead to sin, but the memories were not purged. Flesh still ponders, on occasion, that sin brought a form of pleasure – forgetting that the pleasure it brought was to the old man, the man that no longer exists.

The new man is not pleased, but rather is pained by sin. There is no joy to be found in sin; there is only sorrow. The new man is alive to and pleased by righteousness and the freedom that comes from willfully choosing to serve God. I have been freed from sin. Why, then, would I ever choose to return to its chains?

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C