Colossians 2:17 and Hebrews 10:1 tells us that God established this way to approach Him as shadows of the real Tabernacle, the real sacrifice and the real High Priest who would come later. Then when the “real thing” came along, there would be no more need to bring animals to a building to be offered by a priest, because the ultimate sacrifice will have been made, all believers would be priests, the Temple would be in us and the laws would be written on our hearts.

What God established in the Old Covenant was a temporary, preliminary system pointing the Hebrew in the direction of the New Covenant so that they would recognise that “Seed of Abraham” when He came on the scene. The earthly Tabernacle symbolically represents and points to the real Tabernacle who is Jesus our Lord. God gave the Tabernacle and the details of its construction to portray in a temporal way, what He would one day do permanently through Jesus. The Tabernacle is a visible picture, or model, showing us how we come to God through Jesus. From the foundations of the world, there’s only been one way. Jesus is the way.