Outside the Camp

A friend and I have been dis­cussing King David. I’m find­ing him quite fas­ci­nat­ing. Some writ­ers have made obser­va­tion that he is like the New Tes­ta­ment in Old Tes­ta­ment times. For David and his com­pan­ions there was no bar­rier between them and the holy — it just didn’t exist. David is a for­gleam of the free­dom that we expe­ri­ence in the New Covenant!

Shew­bread — Bread of Presentation

In Ancient times the shew­bread or bread pre­sen­ta­tion was set before Almighty God in the holy com­part­ment of the taber­na­cle or tem­ple. (Exo­dus 25:30; Leviti­cus 24:5,6) Only the priests could enter the holy, only con­se­crated priests could eat the show­bread. To the con­trary in the recorded account in 1 Samuel 21:1–8 David and his men eat the bread of pre­sen­ta­tion. They broke the law — surely they should be condmened! They weren’t. They weren’t con­demmed by the priest­hood then. Jesus didn’t con­demn them either but rathered used this account of David of eat­ing the shew­bread as a favor­able exam­ple in defense of his own action. (Luke 6:1–5)

The exam­ple of the shew­bread pales in com­par­i­son to the “Taber­na­cle of David” and what went on there which is absolutely MIND-BLOWING!

Taber­na­cle of David

Have you heard of the Taber­na­cle of David? The Taber­na­cle of Moses is very famil­iar as is the tem­ple of Solomon but I didn’t really know too much about the oft-overlooked “taber­na­cle of David”. In fact I didn’t even know it existed. When I was recently told about it from another Chris­t­ian it bowled me over. It is so FASCINATING and very impor­tant I would like to share this infor­ma­tion with you.

First why is it important?

Amos prophe­cies, “On that day I will raise up The taber­na­cle of David, which has fallen down, And repair its dam­ages; I will raise up its ruins, And rebuild it as in the days of old;” — Amos 9:11

Then in the early days of the Chris­t­ian con­gre­ga­tion a prob­lem arises over the gen­tiles com­ing into the Church and the prob­lem man­i­fested itself over the issue of cir­cum­cism. This issue was dealt with in Jerusalem and is recorded in Acts 15. In com­ing to a deci­sion James under Holy Spirit ref­er­ences this prophecy of Amos — the restora­tion of the taber­na­cle of David!

Why? The Taber­na­cle of David refers to unfet­tered and com­pletely acce­si­ble wor­ship in the pres­ence of God with­out any bar­ri­ers, bar­ri­cades, block­ades, doors, or divid­ing walls!

To under­stand the Taber­na­cle of David we first have to go back to the Taber­na­cle of Moses in how it was arranged. There were three areas.

1.) The Courtyard

The court­yard con­tained the brazen altar for sac­ri­fices and the lever for the cleans­ing of the priests. Every­one is Israel was per­mit­ted to enter the court­yard. They could wor­ship God freely there.

2.) The Holy Place

Within the courtyad was the Holy Place. This was where we find the altar of incense, the lamp­stand, and the table of the shew­bread. Entrance was restricted to just the priests.

3.) The Most Holy Place

Within the Holy Place was a veiled area called the Most Holy Place. It con­tained only one item. The ark of the covenant which rep­re­sented the throne of God and his Holy pres­ence. Entrance was lim­ited to just one per­son — the High Priest, once a year.

This was how it was down to the days of Eli the High Priest. The trav­el­ing Taber­na­cle of Moses was now sta­tioned in Shiloh. Eli had two good for noth­ing sons named Hophi and Phineas who served with him as priests in the taber­na­cle. These were the guys who were hav­ing sex rela­tions with women at the gates of the taber­na­cle and eat­ing the fatty por­tions of the offer­ings reserved for God. (1 Samuel 2:22–25)

One day Israel gets into a bat­tle with the neigh­bor­ing Phillistines. Israel had always had suc­cess against the Phillistines but on that day they were defeated and lost 4,000 men! So the peo­ple are con­fused. “Why didn’t God fight for us?” they won­der. So they hatch this “bril­liant” idea to go get the ark of the covenant and bring it into bat­tle. They rea­son if God doesn’t want to show up for the bat­tle we will just go get him and bring him to it. So Hophni and Phineas vio­late the Most Holy Place and take the ark of covenant into bat­tle. And sur­prise, sur­prise God still doesn’t show up. Hophni and Phineas die along with 30,000 Israelites! Worst of all the ark of the covenant is taken by the Philistines! When Eli hears the news about the ark he falls over back­ward and dies. (1 Samuel 4)

Now the Phillistines take the ark and sta­tion it in their chief city of Ash­dod, but it brings plagues so they pass it to Gath. The same things hap­pen in Gath so the peo­ple of Gath send it to Ekron. Ekron is ter­ri­fied so they wise up and say, “Enough, let’s send it back to Israel”. So they load up the ark in cart and drive it back to Israel. (1 Samuel 5)

Israel of course is over­joyed to receive the ark back. It was a dark day when it was stolen and “the glory had departed”. The ark is pulled into Besh She­mash and the peo­ple are really, really happy. But they do some­thing incred­i­bly stu­pid. They decide to take off the lid of the ark, the mercy seat, and peek inside. When the mercy seat is removed, the bro­ken law is uncov­ered by the blood of atone­ment and they are con­demned to death and instantly die. So the peo­ple get fright­ened and call for some peo­ple from Kiriath Jearim to come get the ark. (1 Samuel 6)

Inter­est­ingly the ark is not brought back to the taber­na­cle of Moses in Shiloh. Instead it is taken to the house of Abi­nadab in Kiriath Jearim where it is guarded by his son Eleazar (1 Samuel 7:1) And there it stays dur­ing entire the reign of Saul until the days when David reigns as King.

David loves God and wants to bring him back. So he calls upon the peo­ple to go get the ark from Kiriath Jearim and bring it back to Israel. A won­der­ful idea with just one prob­lem — they load up the ark on a cart. Remem­ber that the cart idea was orig­i­nally the brain-child of the hea­then Philistines. As the ark trav­els upon this rick­ety inven­tion of man it hits a bump on a thresh­ing floor (The place where the wheat is seper­ated from the chaff). The ark wob­bles so a man named Uzza reaches out to steady it and is struck dead. So David gets fright­ened and doesn’t bring the ark back to his city but they store it in the house of Obed-Edom the Git­tite. (1 Chron­i­cles 13)

The ark is in the house Obed-Edom, bless­ing his fam­ily for for three months, and dur­ing that time David reads up on the Law and fig­ures out that only the God ordained way to trans­port the ark is car­ried on staves by sanc­ti­fied priests. So all the priests assem­ble and pre­pare to bring the ark to the City of David. And it is the biggest party in all of Israel. There are musi­cians and singers and even David him­self strips down to a linen shift and dances in the pres­ence of God. (1 Chron­i­cles 15)

They bring the ark back, not to the Taber­na­cle of Moses which is now in Gibeon, but to the sim­ple can­vas tent David has erected upon Mt. Zion. David makes burnt offer­ings and then sta­tions peo­ple to sing songs and play music in the pres­ence of the ark of the covenant daily — there was even a night shift! (1 Chon­i­cles 16:1–6)

At this time there was an anom­aly in Israel — there were two taber­na­cles of God in exis­tance simeul­ta­ne­ously. There was the Taber­na­cle of David on Mt. Zion and the Taber­na­cle of Moses in Gibeon. (Some of the Psalms even ref­er­ence “Taber­na­cles” in the plural) David and the singers and musi­cians served on Mt. Zion before the ark in the Taber­na­cle of David. In Gibeon Zadok and the priests served in the prescibed man­ner of the Law with the sac­ri­fices in the Taber­na­cle of Moses. At David’s Taber­na­cle there was only a one time sac­ri­fi­cial offer­ing and then 24/7 sac­ri­fices of the fruit of the lips. At Gibeon there are daily ani­mal sac­ri­fices upon the altar. Mt. Zion is the new wine­skin. Gibeon is the old wine­skin. One had the pres­ence of God, the wine, unfet­tered and acce­si­ble for all to drink. One didn’t have it all. (1 Chron­i­cles 16:37–42)

In the taber­na­cle of Moses only the High Priest could come before the pres­ence of God in the Most Holy place. In the taber­na­cle of David it was com­pletely open and acces­si­ble to all morn­ing, noon, and night. Can you just pic­ture David nes­tled up under the shadow of the wings of the cheru­bim on top of the ark writ­ing, play­ing, and singing songs? Can you pic­ture the peo­ple wor­ship­ping freely and uncon­demned before God?

David was just a sneak pre­view of the joy that we realise today! Today we are free to eat the bread of pre­sen­ta­tion. Today we wor­ship in the very pres­ence of the Lord unre­stricted! Through Jesus we have bold­ness to enter into the holy place, uncon­demned! Jesus destroyed the bar­ri­ers and not just those that existed between Jew and Gen­tile; but also those between priest and non-priest. The taber­na­cle of David is restored and what a sweet free­dom we have!