The fourth in a 6-lesson Lent series to guide family conversation
Parents, let your kids build a tent or fort with sheets and blankets in your living room. Everyone crawl inside to read this story together.
What’s the farthest you’ve ever walked? Around the block? A mile or two or more?
The children of Israel had to walk from one country to another! Can you imagine how tired their feet must’ve been?
After they left Egypt, they began the long walk to the Promised Land. On the way, God spoke with Moses, giving the Ten Commandments and very detailed instructions on how to build a tabernacle. A tabernacle was kind of like a church—only it was a huge tent!
Because their journey was all on foot, their tabernacle or church had to be portable so the Israelites could carry it with them when they moved. This long walk ended up being 40 years. Can you imagine?
God gave specific instructions for making a big tabernacle. Do you know why? Because Hebrews tells us it was to be a copy of what was already in Heaven! Did you know that? The huge tent was to be a place where they could gather in God’s presence and celebrate everything God did for them. It was also the place where they made sacrifices for their sins. The tabernacle was where God’s holy presence could live near them.
And in this house, this huge tent, God put more clues about His promised Messiah. Everywhere in this tent were clues to finding Him!
There were two rooms in God’s house: a big room called the “Holy” and a smaller room called the “Most Holy.” Starting with the large room, there were three pieces of furniture: an oil lamp stand, a table with twelve loaves of special bread, and an altar for burning incense.
Those are three clues: lamp, bread, and incense for offering prayers. These all point to Jesus!
- Jesus is the Light of the World.
- Jesus is the Bread of Life.
- Jesus is our Intercessor, continually praying to God on our behalf.
But wait, there are more clues inside the Most Holy Place.
1 Kings describes, “The inner sanctuary [Solomon] prepared in the innermost part of the house, to set there the ark of the covenant of the Lord. And Solomon overlaid the inside of the house with pure gold and he drew chains of gold across, in front of the inner sanctuary, and overlaid it with gold” (6:19,21).
Parents, ask your children these questions to make sure they’re keeping up.
- What kind of person do you think would live in a house covered in gold?
-The tabernacle housed the presence of God.
- Why do you think this verse mentions that the gold is pure? Is this a clue?
– YES! This clue tells us about God. God is pure; He has no flaws, so the gold used in His house had to be pure like He is.
- What is the ark? Was it like Noah’s ark?
-No, this ark is something that protects the precious things inside it from being destroyed, kind of like a bank safe or an elaborate jewelry box. Inside of the ark were the actual stone tablets with the Ten Commandments on them.
- Since nothing is random with God, do you think what’s inside the ark of the covenant is important? Might the stone tablets be a clue?
-The commandments teach us God’s standard and that we can’t reach God on our own without a Messiah.
Because no one can keep the Ten Commandments perfectly every person needs a Savior. Each of us needs our sin covered by the blood of Jesus, just like the Passover story in the last lesson and just like the people who came to God’s tent in this lesson. Only Jesus’ blood makes it so that we can be with God all the time, forever. His sacrifice was once for all.
Parents, if someone in your family has not received Jesus’ sacrifice for his or her sin, this would be a good time to talk about it and say a prayer giving his or her heart to Him.
This is lesson 4 in a 6-lesson Lent series to guide family conversations. Be sure to subscribe below to receive all 6 discussions. If you’d like to go deeper with activities and Bible study, check out The Messiah Mystery, an interactive curriculum to teach your family about Lent.