WHEN Moses received on mount Sinai the vision of the moral law in the Ten Commandments, there was also revealed to him the necessity of establishing a sanctuary for the worship of the God who had revealed Himself to him as the great "I AM THAT I AM." This understanding of God had to be expressed to the people in a way which they could understand; and we read in Exodus that God said, "Let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them." After Moses had received this divine command as a part of the covenant, and had come down from the mount, he found his people worshiping a golden calf. He again ascended the mount, again renewed his vision of God's covenant; and when he came down once more his face shone with the glory of revelation.
In the strength of this vision, Moses took his next step, which was to build the tabernacle that should go before them and guide them through the wilderness. This tabernacle was built and furnished by the free-will offerings of the people themselves, as a tangible expression of their willingness to be obedient to the one God; for it had been revealed to Moses that the way out of the slavery of material sense was through obedience to divine law. Underlying all the forms and ceremonies of the furnishing of the tabernacle and of the consecration of its priests was the spiritual demand for purity, gratitude, and holiness, the pattern which was shown them on the mount.
At the time Jesus came to give men a higher sense of God as Love and as the Lawgiver, the worship of God and the service of the sanctuary had become largely a question of ritual and dogma, a literal observance of the law, without the spirit. The ceremonies of sacrifice and purification, which Moses had taught his people to use as symbols of true worship, had become practically meaningless. We read that "Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;" and he said to them, "It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves."
