Looking to Heaven

Exodus 25:1-27:19, Terumah, “Heave Offering”

As I moved into what I felt the Holy Spirit was giving me on this week’s reading I landed on something that I have been wanting to write about for a long time.  I have been considering what it looks like to “have a contemplative approach to the bible that does not wash away the orthodoxy of our calling”.  I don’t think there is a better place to see and understand this concept than with a discussion around the Tabernacle and the various elements.  Often, we hear that the Tabernacle (which ultimately modeled the construction of the Temple) was designed to point to Yeshua.  I fully agree with this while at the same time, maybe not in the way most people would consider.

Let’s start out by looking at some definitions and make sure we are all on the same page.  The first thing is, what exactly am I talking about when I say “contemplative” and “orthodoxy”?  The word “contemplative” in the simplest form means to contemplate or meditate.  Orthodoxy is associated with the practice of customs, beliefs, rituals, and/or religious disciplines.  In modern years these two concepts have almost been portrayed as being in opposition to one another.  New forms of “Christianity” have sprouted up that claim to be “contemplative” and suggest that through their “deeper” insights, they see the orthodoxy as less than important in what they would argue to be the “bigger picture” of God.  At the same time, there are those on the side of orthodoxy that tend to see meditation and contemplative thought as something non-biblical and out of the scope of “Christian” disciplines.

With the later in mind, I think it is important to look at the biblical support for approaching God, the Torah, and our relationship with Him through meditation and contemplative thought as a biblical truth.  Here are just a few of the many scriptures.

“This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.”  (Joshua 1:8 NASB)

I will meditate on Your precepts, And regard Your ways. (Psalms 119:15 NASB)

And I shall lift up my hands to Your commandments, Which I love; And I will meditate on Your statutes. (Psalms 119:48 NASB)

On the glorious splendor of Your majesty And on Your wonderful works, I will meditate. (Psalms 145:5 NASB)

One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek:  That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the LORD And to meditate in His temple. (Psalms 27:4 NASB)

For me contemplation and/or meditation is a really important aspect of the Judeo-Christian walk.  It is important to note that I do not see this form of contemplation as one of emptying out the mind and seeing where it ultimately goes.  I believe the scriptures are very clear that we are to mediate on the scriptures, on His precepts, on His Word, and on how He says He interacts in this world and in our lives.  I believe this “contemplation” is a form of simply taking what He has said and going to Him and asking questions, to listen to His voice as He speaks to us through the Holy Spirit, and to consider a more thorough understanding of His basic precepts.  The image is that of an inquisitive child seeking a deeper relationship with their father by coming to Him with questions.  Here are some scriptures that support this form of discussion with the Holy Spirit.    

‘Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’ (Jeremiah 33:3 NASB)

“But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.  (Deuteronomy 4:29 NASB)

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  (Matthew 7:7 NASB)

‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.  (Revelation 3:20 NASB)

With all this said, I think it is time to move into the meat of where I believe the Holy Spirit is leading me.  Ultimately, through my time of contemplation and meditating on the Tabernacle, the Word, Yeshua, and all the scriptures written about them, I have come to see the Word in a lot of different ways.  One of the ways that I have come to see it, is that it is a guide that helps us to understand the interaction between the physical world and the spirit world.  Ultimately, we are physical beings living in a physical world. At the same time, we are spirit beings living in a spirit world.  All too often, we forget the second part of this and end up seeing things strictly through our physical eyes.  I believe that through meditating on the Word we are moved back into center in our relationship with Him whereby we are reminded of the spiritual nature of the world around us, our very being, and who we are as His children.

At the same time, it is important to remember that, it is just as easy to get overly focused on our spiritual nature and the fact that we are spiritual beings living in a spirit world.  We must remember that we are physical beings living in a physical world.  If we get overly spiritually minded, we lose connection with others, we move beyond compassion, and lose our sense of empathy.  It is also important to remember that God gave us a way of life that is substantially physical and how we embrace or reject those precepts leads to manifestations in the spirit world.  He calls His ways life and our wisdom.  He says that they are holy, and He calls us to be holy.  Regardless as to what is revealed to us in the spirit, we must always remember what His Word says about the physical too.  Yeshua was fully man and fully divine.  He was nailed to a physical cross, and He bled real blood.  That real blood was shed for us.  We simply can’t lose sight of these physical realities and how important they are to the Judeo-Christian calling.

I believe the fullness of Torah being about where the physical and spiritual worlds intersect, and how they relate to each other, is best portrayed through the Tabernacle and Yeshua Himself. 

In Hebrews 8:1-5 we read: 

Now the main point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister in the sanctuary and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man…….Now if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, since there are those who offer the gifts according to the Law; who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things (NASB)

From this, it is clear that the earthly tabernacle erected by Moses and the subsequent Temples that were built all “serve (as) copies and shadows of heavenly things”.  So, the question then becomes, what heavenly things?  I would argue that when these things were given, Yeshua was still at the right hand of the Father in heaven and these things pointed to Him, His nature, and His grace.  I believe that this is what John was seeing when he wrote 1John1: 1-3.

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also (NASB)

Putting this into my own words, what I hear John saying is, that as they came to know the physical Yeshua, they grew in their understanding of the savior aspect of the trinity that was with God from the beginning.  I believe he is even saying that he came to the place of seeing how all of Torah communicates an understanding of this aspect of the trinity and, from the beginning, was intended to lead us into a relationship with Him.  This is further clarified in Philippians 2:5-7 where we read:

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men. (NASB)

In other words, I would argue that one of the major reasons that God sent Yesha down to earth in the form of a man was so that He could serve as a sense of “copy or shadow” of who He is in the spirit, who He had been as the mediator of the Mosaic Covenant, and who He would be as the mediator of the New Covenant.

From this perspective, we can now start seeing that the physical tabernacle and Yeshua were both pointing to the same thing.  They were both pointing toward that which is and has forever been in heaven.  The spiritual Yeshua who was with God in the beginning.  It is no mistake that the Tabernacle points to the man of Yeshua, and that the man of Yeshua is revealed in the Tabernacle.  This is simply a byproduct of the two of them both being given for the purposes of helping us to see and understand the nature of the trinity and who He is in the heavenly realm.

Herein is where things can get a little sticky if we are not careful. This is the stumbling block that I believe most the contemplatives fall into.  I believe that what I have shared is fully accurate and biblically supported.  I believe it is the heart of what God has been attempting to communicate to us for thousands of years.  At the same time, we must remember that Torah is not strictly about helping us understand that we are spiritual beings living in a spiritual world with a spiritual father who is quick to forgive and full of loving kindness.  We must remember that Torah is about the intersection of the physical and spiritual worlds.  We must remember that during the times of the temple there were animal sacrifices that met the ways of God and through which the spirit of Yeshua manifested.  For the last 2,000 years embracing what Yeshua did on the cross is foundational to doing things God’s way.  This is where the orthodoxy comes in.

We must remember that we are fully physical, living in a physical world, and bondservants to God, bought with the price of the blood of Yeshua, and dedicated to making Him Lord.  In this magnitude, we have agreed to do things His way, allow Him to work through us, and to use us to reveal the truth of His Word.  We must always remember that Torah provides the rules of how the physical and spiritual worlds interact, that He wants the world to see Torah as a gift, and that our side of the covenant is to lead the world not only to Him, but to His ways and His truths.  This is a major part of our faith walk.  To believe that Torah is good, our wisdom, and life reveals that we trust Him in what we do not understand.

I think this is summed up in what I call the first great commission.  It is found in Deuteronomy 4:5-7

See, I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it.  “So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’  “For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as is the LORD our God whenever we call on Him? (NASB)

When I think about the tabernacle and meeting Him there, I am taken back to Revelation 3:20.  ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.  (NASB)

I believe this is a wonderful image of what it is to tabernacle with Him, to invite His Spirit into our being, and to open ourselves up to experience His presence within us.  I pray that this has been a blessing to you and that through something you read here today you have been given an image that will help you find a more balanced walk in your relationship with Him.  I pray that we all continue to grow in our likeness of Him, our relationship with Him, and in and through these things, our relationships with others.