The Grammar of Glory: Held Together by Gold Text: Exodus 26:26-30
Introduction: God's IKEA Instructions
We live in an age that prides itself on being practical. We want the bottom line, the executive summary, the five easy steps. When we come to a passage like this one in Exodus, our eyes can glaze over. We read about bars, boards, rings, and gold overlays, and it can feel like we've stumbled into the assembly instructions for some celestial IKEA furniture. We might be tempted to think, "This is fine for ancient Israel, but what does it have to do with my mortgage, my job, or my rebellious teenager?"
This is a profound mistake. It is a failure to understand how God speaks and how He builds. These chapters in Exodus are not a tedious architectural appendix to the more exciting bits about plagues and parting seas. They are the heart of the matter. God has just rescued a massive company of slaves from the most powerful empire on earth. And what is His first order of business? Not to give them a constitution, not to establish an economic policy, but to give them a blueprint. He commands them to build Him a house, a tent, so that He might dwell in their midst. This is the central purpose of redemption: God dwelling with man.
And the details matter. Every cubit, every hook, every bar of acacia wood is pregnant with meaning. If God, in His infinite wisdom, saw fit to dictate these specifics to Moses, and then saw fit to preserve them in His holy Word for millennia, then we had better pay attention. To skim over these verses is to tell God that we know better than He does what is important. It is to say that His design principles are boring. But God is the ultimate architect, and His blueprints reveal His character, His gospel, and His plan for the cosmos. Here, in the structural details of the tabernacle walls, we find a glorious picture of Christ and His church.
The world thinks that unity is created by political compromise, by sentimental appeals to our common humanity, or by enforcing a bland uniformity. God shows us here that true unity, the kind that can bear the weight of His glory, is constructed according to a divine, inflexible pattern. It is a unity of distinct parts, held together by a strength not their own, and covered in a glory that is entirely alien to their nature. This is the grammar of the church, and we learn it here, among the bars and boards.
The Text
Then you shall make bars of acacia wood, five for the boards of one side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the boards of the other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the boards of the side of the tabernacle for the rear side to the west. The middle bar in the center of the boards shall pass through from end to end. You shall overlay the boards with gold and make their rings of gold as holders for the bars; and you shall overlay the bars with gold. Then you shall erect the tabernacle according to its plan which you have been shown in the mountain.
(Exodus 26:26-30 LSB)
Structural Integrity: The Bars of Acacia (vv. 26-28)
We begin with the structural elements that will hold the entire dwelling together.
"Then you shall make bars of acacia wood, five for the boards of one side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the boards of the other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the boards of the side of the tabernacle for the rear side to the west. The middle bar in the center of the boards shall pass through from end to end." (Exodus 26:26-28)
The tabernacle walls were made of upright boards of acacia wood, standing side by side. But a row of boards is not a wall. It is just a collection of individual planks. To become a unified structure, something must hold them together. That something is these bars. There are to be five bars for each of the three sides. Four of these would likely have been shorter, running across sections of the wall, but one bar, the "middle bar," was unique. It was to "pass through from end to end." This was the central, unifying spine of the entire wall.
Now, what is this a picture of? The boards themselves, made of acacia wood, are a beautiful type of redeemed humanity. Acacia wood grew in the desert; it was a common, earthly material. Yet it was also durable and resistant to decay, pointing to the incorruptible nature that God gives to His people. Each board stands upright, a picture of an individual believer. The church is not an amorphous blob; it is a collection of distinct persons, standing side by side.
But we are not just a collection. We are a building, a temple, fitly framed together (Eph. 2:21). What holds us together? These bars are a picture of the unifying doctrines of the faith, the sinews of truth that bind us into one body. But most importantly, that long, central bar, running from end to end, holding everything in place, can be nothing other than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He is the one who "holds all things together" (Col. 1:17). He is the unifying principle of the church. Without Him, we are just a pile of planks, ready to fall over at the first gust of wind. It is Christ, running through the heart of the church from beginning to end, who gives it structural integrity and makes it a habitation for God.
Notice the number five. Throughout Scripture, five is often associated with grace. We have five fingers on the hand that receives God's gifts, five books of the law, five porches at the pool of Bethesda. These bars are a gift of grace, binding the people of God together in a strength not their own.
Covered in Glory: The Gold Overlay (v. 29)
Next, God specifies how these wooden elements are to be treated.
"You shall overlay the boards with gold and make their rings of gold as holders for the bars; and you shall overlay the bars with gold." (Exodus 26:29)
This is crucial. The acacia wood, representing our humanity, is never to be seen. It is to be completely covered, overlaid with pure gold. Gold, in the Bible, is a consistent symbol of divinity, deity, and the manifest glory of God. This is a profound Christological statement. The tabernacle is a picture of the incarnation. In Jesus Christ, humanity (the wood) and divinity (the gold) are perfectly joined in one person. You cannot see His humanity without also seeing His divinity. As John says, "And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father" (John 1:14).
But this is not just true of Christ; it is also true of His body, the church. We, the wooden boards, are covered in an alien righteousness. Our own nature is hidden, and we are clothed in the glory of Christ. God does not see the raw wood of our sin and frailty. He sees us covered in the perfect, divine righteousness of His Son. "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3). The rings of gold, which hold the bars, are also divine. The very means by which we are held together in Christ are themselves divine gifts, forged in heaven.
From the outside, this structure would have been plain, covered in badger skins. But on the inside, where God dwells, it was all shimmering gold. This is the reality of the church. To the world, we may look unimpressive, like a dusty tent in the wilderness. But from God's perspective, on the inside, we are radiant with the imparted glory of His Son. He has made us a kingdom of priests, a house of gold.
The Divine Blueprint (v. 30)
The section concludes with a command that is repeated like a drumbeat throughout these chapters.
"Then you shall erect the tabernacle according to its plan which you have been shown in the mountain." (Exodus 26:30)
This is the principle of sola Scriptura in architectural form. Moses was not given a suggestion. He was not given a few creative ideas to get him started. He was shown a pattern, a blueprint, on the mountain, and he was commanded to build according to that pattern, down to the last detail. The author of Hebrews picks up on this very point, emphasizing that the earthly tabernacle was a "copy and shadow of the heavenly things" (Hebrews 8:5).
This tells us that worship is not a human invention. We do not get to design the house of God according to our own tastes, our marketing surveys, or what we think will be attractive to the culture. God has given us the pattern. He has told us how He is to be approached. Our job is not to be innovative; our job is to be faithful. Our creativity is to be exercised within the boundaries of His commands, not in rebellion against them.
This is why we care about what the Bible says for our worship services, for church government, for how we order our lives. We have been shown a plan in the mountain of God's Word. The modern church is full of men who think they are cleverer than God. They want to discard the old blueprint and draw up a new one that is more contemporary, more relevant, less offensive. But in doing so, they are not building the tabernacle of God. They are building a monument to themselves, and the glory of God will not dwell there. We are called to be faithful builders, not creative architects. God has already done the designing, and His design is perfect.
Conclusion: Built for Glory
So what do we take from these instructions about bars and boards? We see the gospel in miniature. We are the individual boards, hewn from the common wood of humanity. Left to ourselves, we would just be a scattered pile of lumber.
But God, in His grace, provides the bars of unifying truth, and supremely, the one central bar of Jesus Christ who runs through our entire history, holding us together as one body. He is our cohesion. He is our strength.
And then, He does not just hold us together. He covers us. He overlays our commonness, our weakness, our sinfulness, with the pure gold of His own divine glory. Our humanity is not eradicated, but it is glorified. It is hidden in Christ. We are made beautiful, not with our own beauty, but with His.
All of this is done according to a precise, heavenly plan. God is not making it up as He goes along. The church is not an accident of history. It is the eternal purpose of God, designed in heaven before the foundation of the world, to be the dwelling place of His glory. We are being "built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit" (Eph. 2:22).
Therefore, let us submit to the blueprint. Let us rejoice that we are held together, not by our own strength, but by the grace of Christ. And let us live as what we are: a house of common wood, mysteriously and gloriously covered in divine gold, built for the glory of the Father, according to the plan He revealed in the mountain.