The Meaning of the Silver in the Tabernacle
Each person, whether you were rich or poor, was required to pay the ransom money of pure silver, every man to pay his half shekel, clearly showing the way of salvation. And this is what’s important; we don’t pay to be saved; Jesus paid for us. But there’s another part of this that shows you clearly each person had to come and bring their own, which means salvation, even for us, is an individual action, not a collective. Now somebody, “My church, my group,” no, even here showing each person had to come and present themselves presenting their portion. We don’t come and present a portion, but we’re not saved by a group; we’re not saved by a priest. It’s individual. You must present yourself. That action of presenting that redemption money keeps that clear and distinct. ♪ ♪ Alright, so we are going to look at something a little bit, we’re still within the tabernacle, but it’s a little bit different.
And this message is almost like a hodgepodge. It falls under one category, but you’re going to see there’s many subsections. So don’t think, oh wow, she went all over the map. There was thought in this, but it’s almost like putting things together, connecting dots, if you will. So I’m starting right now in Exodus 35, if you wish to turn there. “Moses spake unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the LORD commanded, saying, Take ye from among you an offering unto the LORD,” key words here, “whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the LORD: gold, silver, and brass.” Interesting, gold, silver, and brass, those materials, obviously, as I’ve referenced, gold, the color of divinity or a reference to divinity; silver of redemption; and brass, usually of judgment.
And then, of course, the colors, “blue, purple, scarlet, fine linen, goats’ hair.” These are all the things that the people would bring, “rams’ skin dyed red, badgers’ skin, shittim wood,” or acacia wood, “oil for the light, spice, spices for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense.” And if you keep reading, “And every wise hearted among you shall come, and make all that the LORD hath commanded; the tabernacle, his tent, his covering, his taches, his boards, his bars, his pillars, his sockets, the ark, the staves.” You just keep going and you’ll get down to where it talks about even the clothes or the cloths of service; sorry, “and do service in the holy place, holy garments for Aaron the priest, the garments of his son, to minister in the priest’s office.
And all the congregation of Israel departed from the presence of Moses. They came, every one whose heart stirred up in him, every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the LORD’S offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, for all his service and for the holy garments.” And you could go on if you were going to read this in your own time straight through to the twenty-ninth verse, which it’s kind of where I end here, “The children of Israel brought a willing offering unto the LORD, every man and woman, whose heart made them willing to bring for all manner of work, which the LORD commanded to be made by the hand of Moses.” Now there’s something interesting in this chapter I just read and it’s repeated several times.
You’ll find it in the fifth verse where it says, “Whosoever is of a willing heart,” and if you read the Hebrew of these words, lev is “heart,” but the word for “willing,” nâdiyb, Strong’s 5081, if you’re interested you can look it up. But the definition there in the concordance, “free, liberal, noble, prince or princely willing (hearted).” And this word comes from another word. It sounds like nâdab, like one of Nadab and Abihu, the same word, right, from the same root, “to volunteer (as a soldier), to present spontaneously:━to offer freely, to offer, (to make or offer oneself).” So “princely generosity,” if you will, can be found in these passages over and over again. God starts this way. Remember I’ve been referencing this Exodus 25, “Speak to the children of Israel, tell them to bring Me,” and He specifically, God calls it His offering.
He doesn’t say it’s the priest’s or it’s the people. He says it’s His offering, but He says, “Speak to the children of Israel, tell them to,” and fill in the blanks. So I’m going to actually flip this, this narrative for a second and show you something in the New Testament. You don’t have to turn there. I’m just going to talk about it to show you that a lot of times when we read the Old Testament we get locked into, “Yes, but it was the law”” Well, the law had not yet been given. Now by, by this point that I just read out of, yes, we have, we’ll call it the first law had already been given, but in the attempt when God says, “Speak to the children of Israel,” they did not know what the law was. So I think a lot of times when I mention willful giving in the Old Testament, people automatically assume, “Yes, but they were under some form of a prescription.” No, here it’s just basically willful heart, but so that we’re clear on what willful heart looks like, it’s not under coercion, but it can be under an order.
God can say, “I want you to do this,” and the people would still have a choice to not do it. The choice of not doing it probably would result in death, just FYI. But in the New Testament, for example, just don’t turn there because they’re stories we’re familiar with, of what I’d call princely or willful giving. The first one, of course, is probably the most famous one, the woman with the alabaster box, and she pours that gift of the most precious ointment upon Jesus, placed upon Him. And if you think about it, the commentary that goes around this act, “Why this waste?” which is how the world normally perceives giving: “It’s wasteful,” or “Somebody else will do it,” or “Don’t give that much.” And we tend to, we’ll call it minimalize that gift because the, what the contents of that box would have been very costly, probably the most expensive thing that she owned.
And yet it’s poured out upon Jesus, and if you think about it, obviously, as it’s poured out upon Him, the same person that would, by the mocking hands of a mocking crowd, bear a crown of thorns, she was pouring this out on Him basically in preparation for His death, with a vision I’m not quite sure that she fully or completely understood. Nevertheless, what she did is memorialized, and it’s free, willful, I would even put it as princely giving. There was no rhyme or reason to the world looking on, yet. She pours this ointment upon Him and somebody might say, “Well, if He’s going to die anyway, or He’s going to go to die, why would you waste it there?” right? You could do something else with it. That’s the world. So very much misunderstood, when we talk about willful giving, princely giving, generous giving in the church, it’s always grossly mischaracterized or people will put some spin on it, but God sees the heart.
God looked upon that act and she’s memorialized for that act in the New Testament. The other one is a nameless widow who Jesus was observing the people casting their money into the treasury, if you will, and many rich that gave; it’s not as though He memorialized the rich and said, “Look at how much they’ve given. Look at such a great gift they’ve given.” But to her, He memorialized her giving.
She gave the two mites she had basically out of the money she needed. And again, somebody might look at that and say, “Well, you know, that’s not real smart or that’s not real bright,” but somehow a nameless woman is remembered for her sacrificial giving that’s willful; she didn’t do it under duress or coercion. And if you think about it, God who looks on the heart sees there was no reservation on the part of this woman to cast what she needed. Not; she didn’t have excess, she cast what she needed into the pot, if you will. So when we start to look at princely giving, and I use these New Testament examples for a reason there; we’re not applying any law, yet I want you to think of something.
These two individuals I just spoke about, there was also a law in place, right? The law that was the law of the people and the religious law was in place. It, you don’t read that either one of these events is marked by somebody saying, “You must.” And I point that out because when we look at the children of Israel, it’s easy to think, “Well, but all of these events eventually are going to sound mandated.” Even, you’ll hear me talk about this later, even the redemption or ransom money that would have to be paid, the shekel or half shekel; I want you to think carefully about this because we tend to think, “Well, God said, ‘I want every man of a certain age to bring this money.’” Do you read anywhere that anybody showed up and didn’t? Hmm? Right.
So even though, even when God mandated something, we still have free will. There could have been people saying, “Hell no, I ain’t bringing no shekel tax,” right? “And hey, let’s see what happens,” right? So there’s a point there. Even when there may be a prescribed amount, there still may be the willful submission in obedience to bring it. And I’m sure there was consequence━we don’t read that there’s consequences for not, but I’m sure that there was. So with that being said, the big question is asked, these people were slaves in Egypt. And okay, we know that livestock can reproduce very easily, right? That’s not like; it doesn’t take a scientist to figure that out unless you have “they” and “them” problems.
But animals multiply, right? Okay, good. So we’re on the same page there. Never know these days. So the big question is, when it says, “Take silver and gold and brass and all of this stuff,” they were slaves in Egypt. So you have to go, and I’m doing this for the benefit of people who say, “Well, you know, where did they get all this stuff?” It’s; the Bible says where they got it.
You read in Exodus 12 and verse 35, on their way out, “And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they,” the King James says, “borrowed”━“they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, jewels of gold, and raiment.” There you go, silver and gold, “And the LORD gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians.” Now, I, you know, I, I sometimes do criticize the wording of this. I don’t think that they exactly “borrowed,” and I don’t think they exact, exactly “lent,” but probably the word “spoiled” is, is pretty close to what we’d, we’d want to figure.
So if you’re asking, “Where did they get this stuff”” Think about this. If they were slaves in Egypt, they did have some possessions. We’re not talking people who were possession-less, but the possessions they had wouldn’t have been that great. Now they maybe would have had some livestock, and they may, may have had certain things, but not in the volume that we’re going to read required to make the tabernacle. So a couple of things are, there’s the first lesson here that I want to point out. And this one is kind of important because we can read this stuff and never make an application to ourselves, and they want this one to be applied. We always say Egypt and the bondage of Egypt represents sin and the world. So the children of Israel got these riches from, essentially, from the world.
The riches came out of the world to be used for the things of God. And you know, you can read this and you can say, “Well, how does this apply to me?” I just gave you an application. We live in the world. We make money in the world. And if you think about it, you can make money and you can worship money, or you can apply the principle that there are things we do out in the world to be applied to God’s work. And this is exactly the same thing. They basically took what God ordered them to do, basically “Get it from where you came from. You’re going to ‘borrow’ from these people, and it’s going to be used for My work, the tabernacle where I shall dwell, where you shall worship.” So if you can’t make an application right there to Giving 101, because too many people, again, day in and day out, will talk about giving in the church and it always comes back to the same thing, “Well, you know, I don’t know how this all applies.” I just told you, money taken from the world applied to the work of God.
The second thing we come across is, obviously, willing hearted, but it says, “Men and women: bracelets, earrings.” And I’m not going to say all bracelets and all earrings, but a lot of these were symbols of their former life as slaves. So they took from the world and the slavery of the world to become, essentially, whether you think of it or not, they’re under, they will be under the law, but they will become free by God’s liberation. So God says, “I want you to use these things.” Now whether these earrings and bracelets fully all represent, maybe some of them were decorative and some of them were; but I guarantee you a lot of these represented their former life. So just kind of put that in perspective when we start talking about how the work of God is supposed to function.
The next thing we read about, in Exodus 38 there is a reference to; let’s see, 38, 38:8 regarding, you remember I just mentioned to you “gold, silver, brass.” And this is to make the? laver, “And he made the laver of brass, and the foot of it brass, of the lookingglasses of the women assembling, which is assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation”” So a lot of these materials would have been used for the self. So here’s another one of these that I think is very important. If you want to talk about application of spiritual, worldly, and spiritual things, these people had a choice to love self and to look at, or love looking at oneself, or to be looking at the laver of cleansing, which had a much greater significance.
One is flesh and one is spiritual. It still took, still took these women, I don’t think too many men had lookingglasses back then. My, how things have changed. But the women gave up their mirrors, and try again to see there is a concept there of not worshiping self, but worshiping God. So these materials, you know, imagine if you didn’t have a mirror, even the brass that they would have looked in would not have been that great of a mirror, okay? You can kind of see, kind of not. But imagine now you’re not going to see anything, but you might be actually able, think about this, if you could even approach that laver of cleansing to see yourself in the reflection of the water, which represents more of the things of God, the cleansing of God than it does of the admiration of self. So there are concepts even within the tabernacle, the, we’ll call it the elements that are to be brought, to be offered that carry significance, specifically what I’m talking about is giving here.
Then of course, as I was referencing the, the gold, and there’s a passage back there in 35, Exodus 35:22, I believe. It has a very strange wording in the King James; 35:22 says, “And they came, both men and women, as many as were willing hearted,” it’s being repeated over and over again; I don’t know how you could miss that, “and brought bracelets, earrings, rings, tablets,” and now, we’re not talking about computers, “all jewels of gold: every man that offered,” this is what’s worded strangely, “that offered,” in your King James has an italicized “offered an offering of gold unto the LORD”” If you read that in the Hebrew, very interesting because what it says there in the Hebrew is they basically presented their gold as a wave offering.
You don’t read that in the English, but it was a wave offering. And that may not really sound that big of a deal except that there were other things offered and done in wave offering fashion. And I can’t help but think that this would be along the lines of, think of it, what’s the most precious material even back then that a human could hold in their hands? Gold. Waving that before God, showing God the, we’ll call it the value or the greatness of it, and in God’s eyes looking down, it representing the divine nature.
Now maybe these people weren’t informed of that just yet, but the two colliding together, the act of what it says here that “every man that offered offered an offering,” they were offering as a wave offering. The expressly showing it before God, however you want to say that, has a significance which I think if you want to say whether God was looking down to see what was being lifted up to Him. Now if we were talking about the offerings, which I probably will get into eventually, there’s greater significance in detail, and I don’t want to get burdened down here, but just to say it’s important to recognize there are some nuances here we’re not reading in the English that make these just a little bit more special in terms of how they were brought, what was brought and how it was offered. So as I said, gold, divinity; silver, redemption; brass, judgment, and these are instances of the offerings that I’ve just kind of read to you.
Now gold we know, we’re going to find a lot of gold in the tabernacle, a lot of things are overlaid with gold, and there are a couple of items that are pure gold as we discovered going through some of the furniture. Silver is a little bit more interesting and I say a little bit more interesting, there’s a lot more diverse pieces of information to put together, so two instances in the Bible where silver is exchanged for life. One of them is Joseph, right, the 20 pieces of silver, Joseph. And the other one is Judas with his 30 pieces for Jesus. It’s kind of interesting, silver being the color or the metal of redemption, and only two places where we read about exchange for life, and yet it is peppered through the tabernacle.
The silver that was used in the construction of the tabernacle was taken from the atonement money. Now, I know, please don’t go, “Where’d they get the money?” right? I don’t want to deal with that one just yet. But write these down, I’m not going to read them, write down these Scriptures, Exodus 26:18-25, Exodus 36:23-30, Exodus 38:25-28, and in the first chapter of Numbers fills in the details of some of the ways that this temple tax or shekel was━not temple tax, that’s later, that the silver shekel or redemption money was collected.
There would be a census of the people. So the number of men that paid the ransom money, ransom for one soul as the Bible describes it, would have been 603,550 each paying a half shekel, so the total would have been 3,000; sorry, 301, 775; 3,001; 301,775, bleh. All right, most of this silver; you might say, “Well, what’s the issue with the numbers?” I’ll tell you in a minute. Most of this silver would have been used to hold up the boards.
And remember I used in one of the messages back there, I used the word “socket”” or “ankles,” okay? So each board on the exterior wall of the tabernacle would be supported by two ankles, if you want to call them that, of silver. Each ankle would have been the contribution of 6,000 men, making each board supported by 12,000 men’s redemption money. Why is that important? Of course, I’m, I like to mess around with numbers here, so I was looking at that and there, there is something remarkable there.
If you take the number of 48 boards times 12,000 gives you 400-and; 576,000, but more importantly, if you divide that by 4, it gives you 144,000, which is an important scriptural number. We’ll come back to that maybe. A little dangle there and we move on. All right, so there were 100 talents forming 100 sockets and that would be 171,775 shekels. Each socket, as I said, would bear the ransom money of 6,000 men, so 12,000 holding up for each board. And then if you look at the numbers again, this is why I said it’s inescapable, the numbers, the material. So we know 6 being the number of man, 12 if you want the number of divine government, or 6 being the number of man multiplied obviously in the tens, so 1,000, and/or times 2 making 12, adequate witness.
However you want to add it up, I don’t care. What’s important is at the bottom of everything in this structure, the symbol is redemption, the bottom of this complete structure. Remember, God said, “I want you to make Me a house where I’m going to dwell among you.” And that’s awesome. That’s amazing that God would deign to condescend to dwell among men, but the whole premise of the Tabernacle, the whole perimeter is routed in one simple concept: at the foundation, redemption, the whole thing. So it’s inescapable. In other words, underneath it all, God can say, “I’m going to come dwell among men,” but it was necessary for this whole thing to be presented for a purpose. God could have said, “I’m going to dwell among men,” but we are unholy, we’re unclean, we’re━keep adding to the list. So this representation is pretty powerful. And yes, I know in the New Testament we read what Peter says, we’re not redeemed by things like silver and gold, but by the blood of Christ.
And there you go; if you start looking at it, they didn’t have that yet. So you’ve got the concepts of redemption, the vicarious sacrifices that would be offered. And he goes on, by the way, Peter, to say the, the traditions received from your fathers. In other words, they could never redeem, but they were pointing to something. And I don’t know if I can say this enough and it could be understood enough, but what’s sad is that even the New Testament writers, there was no Christianity while all this is being written. Yes, they were followers of Christ, but the faith itself had not yet come to be what we know it today. So the writers, the writers are steeped themselves in Jewish tradition. That these writers could turn around and say, “You’re not redeemed with these things, but rather,” it’s almost like saying, “For the rest of you, can you not hear what was being said?” And I guess not, right? But anyway, that’s a story for another day.
So the whole tent itself, you’ve got the concept of sacrifice, you’ve got the concept of redemption. We see that God was not going to miss any opportunity to teach how our approach would be. Remember I said to you, you’ve got to come to the door, and the door for us is Christ. And from the moment you pass through the door or you’re looking at the door, you’re confronted with the holiness of God and what’s rooted in the ground, which is redemption, silver.
So these lessons, you, you kind of, like I said, everywhere you turn, you’re confronted with them. Each person, whether you were rich or poor, was required to pay the ransom money of pure silver, every man to pay his half shekel, clearly showing the way of salvation. And this is what’s important; we don’t pay to be saved; Jesus paid for us. But there’s another part of this that shows you clearly each person had to come and bring their own, which means salvation, even for us, is an individual action, not a collective. Now somebody, “My church, my group,” no, even here showing each person had to come and present themselves presenting their portion.
We don’t come and present a portion, but we’re not saved by a group; we’re not saved by a priest. It’s individual. You must present yourself. That action of presenting that redemption money keeps that clear and distinct. Now, I mentioned that Hebrew word as I said, nâdiyb, or nâdab, both of those words, “to volunteer as a soldier” is another one of these definitions if you look up the word. And I think this is interesting because these people who paid the redemption money to kind of be encamped around God, God being at the center of everything, I want you to think about this, they also ultimately became part of God’s fighting force.
They became; their payment before God didn’t make them that, but the word carries the connotation of a soldier, someone who signed up for duty. So just by virtue of them participating, if you think about it, how they encamped, they weren’t having a camping trip. Eventually they were going to have to go in as soldiers, as we’ll call it the army of the Lord to get rid of the people out of the land. They were fighting or, or designed to basically fight as they went into the land. So don’t think they were just camped out there. So the Hebrew word carries meaning just way beyond the act of giving the ransom money. And for us, how that would be applied if for them being encamped around and God is at the center dwelling; Christ becomes the center of our life. And we read and pick up in the New Testament how basically we are supposed to by faith, one of the passages talks about being a good soldier.
That is the warfare that we ensue. We’re not here to, I think how some people have depicted Christianity as this, it’s like a caricature of what they did in the wilderness. They all got together and they had a Bud Light; just joking. No, they didn’t do that actually, but just checking to see if you were asleep, by the way. Some of you are sitting there going, but much like when we come to Christ, or Christ finds us and Christ is at the center of our life, like the center of being in the camp, there is a sense if you’re really connected to the word that there’s a battle, an ongoing warfare. And that kind of puts every Christian in the framework of being a soldier. So that word nâdiyb in the Old Testament is very much applicable both ways, both for the giving, the presenting, the willful heart, and also as someone who basically is now enlisted or part of a company of people that belong to the fighting forces of God.
Now one more thing about the ransom money that we find in Exodus 30; in Exodus 30, beginning at verse 11, which is where if you read it says, “A Tax for the Tent,” kind of interesting the way that’s worded. “The LORD spake unto Moses, saying, When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them.” You know what I find remarkable about this? That word where it says “ransom” is a cognate, if you will, or close relative to the word we looked at last week for Kapporeth, “covering” when I talked about the mercy seat.
This is, that word is attached to that. So it’s very interesting that everything that really would pertain to redemption had a connection to this Kapporeth, even in the language. We don’t read it in the English that way, but the Hebrew is very clear. Those words are connected, the Kapporeth, kappor, they’re all connected. So “every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them when thou numberest them. They shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered a half shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:)” or gerahs, “and a half shekel shall be the offering of the LORD. Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old above, shall give an offering unto the LORD. The rich shall not give more, the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the LORD, to make atonement for your souls. And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shall appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation”” I cannot repeat that enough.
See, again, I really didn’t intend for this to be a message on giving. I wanted to talk more about silver, but everywhere you look, you see it clearly. The money collected, there’s a purpose for it: “shall appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the LORD to make an atonement for your souls.” And that money, as I said, would have been used primarily for things within the construction of the tent, specifically, as I just referenced, those sockets or ankles at the bottom. There are other silver items that I will probably reference in a little bit here, but I just think this is pretty amazing, because even here where God says they are to do this, they are to “give an offering unto the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls,” I’m not reading this the way I might have read this 25 or 30 years ago: This was a mandate.
Yes, it definitely is, that’s what they’re supposed to do. But the reason why I say I can’t really look at it as a mandate is if God said, “This is so that you might live,” you’d be pretty dumb to not go, “Okay,” right? It’s kind of a no-brainer. And I think that’s why we’re not reading that somebody said, “No, I’m not bringing my temple tax. I’m not bringing my money,” okay? And this is part of the problem of how we approach the things of God today. There’s too many people; remember what I started with; too many people thinking, “I make money out in the world and that’s my money,” and they use all these phrases.
And yes, that’s the way the flesh speaks. But God gave a pattern that what you do out in the world, there should be a purpose for that. We can’t, we’re not able to live apart from the world. We are, that’s, we’re surrounded by it. And most of us go out into the world and make our living in the world, but you are to make that living and then you come back and you’re looking at the things of God, how to manage your household in a godly way, all the things that can be applied that way.
The same thing is true of things that can be applied to self and the worship of self and self-deification versus those very same things applied to the house of God and the work of God. And again, here, somebody might say, and this is the argument that I, I tell you, I kid you not, if I could just have a recording where I could press and give the answer because it, it seems like every single week there’s somebody who will say, “Well, but, but, but, well, the tithes and offerings, that’s, that’s Old Testament.” And you’re completely missing the point. God said, “I made you.” You know, I love that people say, “Oh, freely give, freely receive,” and everything’s, we’re just a bunch of hippies. Tell me what was free in your salvation, because it costs something somewhere.
It may not cost you, but it costs something somewhere. That’s how God says, “This is My way.” And if you can’t understand that, I don’t even know why you’re even bother. When people say, “Oh, you know, well, God wants to bless you”; He does want to bless you. I believe that there are people that come into the church or they come into some good fortune or whatever it is, but they never come to learn the lesson. God will bless efforts. God will bless your hands. God will bless your heart and your mind to be able to be the best at what you do. But those blessings also come with, do you turn around and recognize God in those things, or is it just about, “I was in Egypt and I got the stuff of Egypt and I left Egypt and while I was on my travels in the desert, you know, I was really blinged out and I had a lot of nice clothes and everybody’s complimented me on the way I looked.” And, or when it came time for the service of God, I recognize that these things were granted to me for that purpose.
That’s always the missing ingredient with modern day giving, people don’t get that; and all the arguments that I’ve talked to you about over the years. So anyway, there’s something very unique about this, this ransom of the soul. And that is something that’s taken up in the New Testament which can be confused to something else. But I want to show you even where something can be slightly confusing how to make these connections. Turn with me, if you will, to Matthew 17.
It’s a passage that people will not understand clearly. And you read it and there’s some stuff in there that bears really looking at closely. So this is right after the experience, if you will, of the Mount of Transfiguration, all right. So, I want you to keep in mind that there’s a fresh revelation in Peter’s mind about who Christ is or what he saw. It says, “When they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter and said, Doth not your master pay tribute?” Now some people think that that’s taxes like Roman taxes, but hold that thought for just a minute.
“He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom did the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers? And Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, cast a hook, take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take and give unto them for me and thee.” So a couple of things to note here, and I’m sorry, there’s a lot of sub-things that I have to point out, but it, you missed the message otherwise.
So the first thing is, don’t think that this is some Roman regular tax. By virtue of Him saying, “Lest they be offended,” two things, “Of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers?” And the answer of Peter, “Peter saith to him, Of strangers.” That tells you kind of cryptically, we’re not talking about some state tax. This goes back to some, something if you want to call it of a religious nature, and I’m sure that the tax probably morphed over time and became something, this would be the temple tax, but I want you to pay attention to a couple of things here. The first thing is, look at, in verse 25, look at how Jesus replies to Peter, “What thinkest thou, Simon?” Every time that Jesus goes back to referring to “Simon,” it’s usually Simon who slipped back into the flesh. Remember we’re talking about his name being Cephas or being known as Peter. So it’s interesting that this, in the, in the verse above it says, “They came to Peter.” But when Jesus replies, He says, “What thinkest thou, Simon?” And there’s, the questions that are asked almost as if to say, “What were you thinking when you answered them? What was your thought process?” Now, it might not be clear abundantly, but there are two things that, that come to my mind when He says, “Go and get the money and take it and give it unto them for me and for thee.” Now, if it, if we were talking about tax taxes, it would have been “Render unto Caesar,” where He says that somewhere else, but He says, “For me and for thee,” that has to be a religious tax.
That’s number one. Number two, as I said, pointing out Jesus addresses him by his old name several times over where he slips back into the, we’ll call it the fleshly dumb, “Uh, why are we here, Boss?” mode, okay. He addresses him in that way. And then there’s something else that I find kind of interesting, because Jesus replies to him “of strangers?” But listen carefully. Then He says, “Then are the children free.” Well, that kind of makes me think of what Jesus said somewhere else when He says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” It means anyone who has seen Him who has seen the Father would make you a child of God and not a stranger anymore. And He says, “You go pay the tax, strangers pay the tax. You go pay the tax for me and for you.” So what makes this kind of crazy, Paul explains this a little bit better, and I know this may be a little bit choppy, but bear with me. Paul says, “If we have known God, or rather we have, or we are known of God, we are no longer aliens or strangers, but children and heirs.” So Jesus was making a point here, “Go on and do what you need to do, lest anybody be offended.” But on top of all that, there’s a message within the message, which is when He says to “Go, cast a hook,” basically the first fish that comes out, up out of the deep.
Poetically in the Bible, poetically, you see, you’ll find it in places like Micah and other place, the depths of the sea is sometimes represented as teeming with life, but also representing death. So out of the depths of the sea, which in this case is being presented as analogous to death, comes the money, the redemption money, or the atonement money, or the temple tax money to redeem. And that’s kind of interesting because think about it, the Lord could have just said, at a wave of a hand, “Here’s the money, go take it and go.” But the exercise in and of itself almost has a picture attached to it. Why? Because the few verses before this happens, Jesus is talking about His death and Resurrection. I don’t think it’s an accident when you step away in a bird’s eye view to see that when He says, “Go get that money,” coming out of the depths of the sea, being brought up, that that money will be used, what would be analogous to ransom money for the soul, even though Jesus did not need to be ransomed; He was our ransom, as a type showing something in a picture way.
So we can paint all of these pictures, but when you go back to look at the redemption money, even where its placement to the ground, something that had to be in the ground to come up, always is painting the same picture over and over again. It’s inescapable that something must be to the depths in the ground, must die, must come up to be redeemed, even in this short, brief picture that Jesus exchanges with Simon Peter. So it’s kind of interesting. I like the, the ideas here, but if you go back to look at the temple; or I’m sorry, the half shekel ransom money, it’s important to understand something. They had to bring this money, and the money would be turned into something else. And no one would say, by the way, you wouldn’t have anybody saying, you know, at the base here, there’s the sacrifice of 12,000 men on one board.
So you think anybody would walk by those boards and say, “What part of my action contributed to the picture of redemption?” You wouldn’t be able to. It’s all put together. It’s all blended together. The same thing, we have no part in that. It’s all Christ. We come. He lets us come, but we have no part in the action. Now, I know people say, “Well, it breaks down. They had to bring the money.” That’s true.
God had to start somewhere teaching the lesson. And He does it very well in the tabernacle. Now, if we go back, I need to talk about one more item of silver. And this one doesn’t have anything to do with giving. It doesn’t have anything to do with a willful heart, but it does have to do with the concept of, we’ll call it soldier or presenting oneself. But it ties into the silver, because I wanted to spend enough time talking about this. So if you want to turn with me, we’re going to look at the silver trumpets, because that’s a thing that’s left out a lot.
Let’s see if we’ll go first to Numbers 10. You remember, I said to you that in Exodus, we have the collection of the shekel, or the half shekel, which undoubtedly would be used for the construction of the tabernacle. Well, we have another census that’s taken up. If you want to read that in your own time, which occurs in the book of Numbers, don’t turn there. I’m just telling you where it is in case you want to look it up later, Numbers 3.
The firstborn males of Israel were counted and numbered. The number of those was 22,273, but something very weird happens. God says, “I’m going to substitute out, minus the 273, instead of it being the total camp, I’m going to put this number towards the Levites,” which is very strange, a very strange substitution, if you will. And God goes on to say that each of these will be redeemed at five shekels each, after the shekel of the sanctuary, which is shekel is twenty gerahs or gerahs; five shekels each. Kind of interesting, I don’t know why there’s this drop or this difference, but I suspect, because it is within the book of Numbers, that this collection was used to make the trumpets. We don’t read of it, we don’t read of them before.
So I, I really believe that this is the connection to these trumpets. Now, this is kind of very interesting. We’re looking at people having to bring things, so again, silver is brought and trumpets will be made. Numbers 10, “The LORD spoke unto Moses saying, Make thee two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece thou shall make them: that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps.” And you stop right there, because He starts out with basically giving the general reason.
There are actually two right there, the calling of the assembly and when it’s time to get up and march; to assemble at the door and to march. And then there’s going to be four categories additional to that broken down. But why is this important? And I have to do this here so it, it, you make the connection with me. First of all, please do not make the mistake that a lot of people have made when I peruse things, books and articles, people homogenize the shophar, the ram’s horn with the silver trumpets. They are two different instruments used for two different purposes, so do not conflate them. For example, we read about the shophar, I think the first time we read about it is in Genesis. This is not a ram’s horn.
I just read to you, it is two trumpets of silver, and they actually have two distinct Hebrew names. In fact, if you really want to be technical, there are three different blowing instruments in the Hebrew Bible that are the most prevalent, and they each serve a particular purpose. So this one is spelt out and the question then is asked, are these trumpets, are these the trumpets when we read about in the New Testament, the trumpets for example in the book of Revelation? And the answer to that is, yes, and most likely, but they tie together in a greater picture. So you’re going to find, for example, the apostle Paul writes things like, “When the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable,” or 1 Thessalonians 4:16, which basically says, “Once the trump is blown, and then first the dead in Christ shall rise.” So let me talk about our application to the trumpets, not to be confused with shophar.
Our application here is anytime the silver trumpets are being referenced, one has to think they are representational here in Numbers. They’re representational for us in a New Testament appropriation to the proclamation of the gospel, a sounding of the horns is a declaration of the word of God. Now I, I’ll explain to you why in a minute, but let me break down the four categories because as you break down the four categories, it becomes clear as to why I would say that. Verses 3 and 4 of that same chapter that we looked at, chapter 10 of Numbers, “And when they shall blow with them, all the assembly shall assemble themselves to thee at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And if they blow but with one trumpet, then the princes, which are heads of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto thee.” So stop right there and recognize one thing. We have here people gathering, that the trumpet, if you will, being the heralder for people to gather at the door before God’s representative. We, someone who’s preaching Christ, is putting out the clarion call of God for people to gather and assemble.
It doesn’t mean that it can only be done through that method, but this application takes you there. So in other words, then God’s representative appears and will speak and that’s the heralding. Now we can say at a future time, the trumpets being sounded and the people who have not yet heard, they will appear at the door. That means they will appear before Christ. There’s all of these applications to be made, make no mistake. Otherwise it sounds like a little bit of a nutty exercise of Doot-doot-da-doo! all right. Even the writer of Hebrews makes clear, “The congregation shall be assembled to this glorious temple not made with hands.” So it’s kind of important to kind of tie all these together.
We read then in verses 5-8 that the, the sounding of the trumpets would also be a call to worship and a call to march. Let’s see what it says: “When you blow an alarm, then the camps that lie on the east part shall go forward. When you blow an alarm the second time, the camps that lie on the south side shall take their journey: they shall blow an alarm for their journeys. But when the congregation is to be gathered together, ye shall blow, but ye shall not sound an alarm. And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow the trumpets; and they shall blow; they shall be to you for an ordinance for ever throughout your generations.” So here we have two things, a call to worship and a call to march. And I can say again, think about this in this initial depiction, the trumpets in the New Testament realm right now, the sounding of people basically to walk according to the word of God and the same thing is true in worship.
Why do we gather if we’re not opening up the word of God? So there’s this constant connectivity, if you will. If you want to go down to the point of where it’s going to talk about going to war, which is in verse 9, “And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, you shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before the LORD your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies.” I want you to think about this for a second.
We don’t operate in the same fashion, but if you think about it, we do. Ephesians 6 says, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers,” the things that are immediately around us, but not necessarily visible, those fighting and opposing forces that, if you want to put it this way, are even able to beguile some of us. We are not fighting the war like these people were. And in fact, very interesting, there are two recorded episodes only, where the trumpet was sounded at the hand of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the priest, as a thousand from each tribe went forth to avenge themselves against the Midianites, that’s the one.
The other one was Abijah and Jeroboam, where the trumpet is blown for war. Abijah was still trying to stay true to the worship of God, and Jeroboam was busy with his idolatry. And the trumpet is sounded, the priest cried out, and the Lord smote Jeroboam. And my, I just wish that God was doing a lot of stuff today like that and I told you, you know, if God would just do one thing for me in my lifetime, He’s done so much, I’ll never asked for another thing because I’ve received so much. But if He’d just open up the earth just for like a millisecond, because there’s some people I’d recommend, “You know, you’ve got to go look at this. That’s a nice vacation spot down there. Go check it out.” Whoosh! Okay, so, you know, what’s interesting is yes, there will be a day, as Paul describes, where the sounding of a trumpet will summon those, and the dead in Christ shall rise first, and there will be a period. You read it in the book of Revelation, I believe starting at the seventh chapter, where you’ve got seven trumpets that will be sounded and they all bring about some other dimension of, we’ll call it tragedy upon the earth, or punishment, or judgment, sounding, warning.
You know, the word of God is twofold. It’s, it is a clarion call to those who will hear, come, receive, and it’s also judgment and warning. You don’t receive it, you don’t hear it, you don’t want to know about it. The same word brings life to them and death to others, and that’s just what the Scripture says. But what I believe in looking at this passage as we’ve looked at it, okay, so the silver will be the call of the redeemed. Those trumpets will call, and the people who have heard, and the people who have yet to hear will be gathered. All of these applications, by the way, you could say, well, you know, some of this is a little bit confusing, because, now today specifically, I kind of mixed a lot of things together, but there’s one thread that goes through this whole message that is inescapable. As I said, if we’re Christians and we are following Christ, or we’re described as little Christs, or Christ followers, and the pattern is set, then I’m looking at all the ways that God has described actions, mindset, activity, from summoning the people to take from the world, to bring it into the church, or to the tabernacle, from people saying, “Quit,” God saying to the people, “You can either look at yourself, or you can have yourself cleansed” and be a part of God’s program.
Right down to the last of the greatest Sacrifice of all times, which is Christ laying down His life that someone like me might live and have eternal life. So what I’m going to tell you is this picture of the tabernacle with all of its silver, gold, brass, all the colors, all the values, keep me coming back to the same essential message: Christ is at the center of it all. He was always at the center of it all. And to the, to brothers and sisters that I know who are, they can’t connect the dots, as I said, I’m praying for you to see the light.
But for those who do, go back and read and parse even verse by verse to see how this applies. Last but not least, if you read that in the tenth chapter, it says, “Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, in the beginning of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt offerings,” those, what’s called a Holocaust offering, fully offered to God, “and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; that they may be to you a memorial before your God: I am the LORD your God.” Even on the occasion of offering, the trumpet was blown, as if to say, these two things have never been anything but tied together, the declaration of the good news of the gospel and people’s memorial, sacrificial, day in and day out, weekly or monthly, whatever you do, giving. It’s right there. So for all those people that like to say, “I don’t see it,” I can’t help you.
But for those who do who can see all the dots connected, and we’ve got a lot more to dig into, but at least today you’ve got another dimension of the tabernacle, specifically focusing on silver, and the concepts attached to it. And I hope that somewhere somebody says, “Yeah, I’m beginning to see the dots being connected,” but I’m going to keep still working on those who can’t just yet quite see it, because I believe once you do, you can’t un-see it. That’s my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center.
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