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The Tabernacle: The Holy Place and The Holy of Holies
The tabernacle in Scripture is far more than a historical structure—it is a living picture of God’s eternal purpose to dwell within His people. In this message, Gene Edwards unfolds the meaning of the Tabernacle, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies, revealing how these symbols speak directly to Christ, the church, and God’s corporate expression on the earth.
From the beginning, God created man not merely as an individual, but as a corporate man—a people built together to express His nature and exercise His authority. This teaching traces that purpose from Genesis through the Psalms and into the New Testament reality of the church. The battle on the earth is not simply between God and Satan, but between the old man and the new man—the corporate church rising to take its place as God’s dwelling.
As the message moves inside the tabernacle, special attention is given to the Holy Place and the table of showbread. The table, made of acacia wood overlaid with gold, presents a powerful picture of humanity mingled with divinity. Wood speaks of human nature; gold speaks of God’s unchanging life. God’s intention is not merely to forgive humanity, but to work His own life into man, transforming clay into material fit for His building.
The showbread reveals the way this transformation happens. God’s people must learn to feed on Christ—not merely study Him, analyze Him, or admire Him, but partake of Him as living bread. Through feeding on Christ, believers become partakers of the divine nature, allowing God’s life to be deposited within them as spiritual gold.
This is not an individual pursuit alone. The message emphasizes that God is building something corporate—a living temple made up of believers who are being built together. Redemption, pictured by silver, has a purpose in time, but God’s eternal desire is to produce a dwelling place filled with His life and nature.
This teaching calls believers beyond surface Christianity into a deeper experience of Christ and the church. It invites the listener to move from the outer court into the Holy Place, and ultimately toward the reality of God’s dwelling—where Christ is lived, shared, and expressed together.
Brothers and sisters, this is so significant. I am not talking to you about Bible study. I am talking to you about partaking of the Lord Jesus Christ deep within you. Do you realize that you have only one mouth that can eat Christ and feed on Christ? Do you know that? Sister Laura, do you know that you have a mouth to partake of Christ? To feed on Christ? Well, I’ll tell you what. You come to the brothers in the church here, and you say, ” Brothers, I got in here late, and I don’t know how to partake of Christ. I want to learn, and you brothers have to teach me. Will you do that? Alright. Now you do that. You promise me you’ll do that? Alright. The brothers have got to show you how to partake of Christ.
Sister, you cannot partake of Him with your eye. You cannot partake of Him with your mind. You can’t partake of Him with your ear, and I’m sorry, but it would be so easy. You cannot even partake of Him by eating something with your mouth. Nonetheless, the Lord has given you something of a spiritual mouth to feed on the Lord Jesus Christ. Sister, buried up deep within you, there’s something to feed on Christ. Do you know what that is? Alright, sister, you get the brothers to tell you. There is food of the spirit. It is inside you. You just turn to your spirit.
How do you turn to your spirit? Sister, you come, and you eat the bread. You come to the bread, and you eat it. You don’t think about it. You don’t study about it. You just eat it. Sister, you come to the word of God, and you eat it. You don’t even think about it. If you want to think a little bit, alright, but you’re not going to get very far very quickly. You just come to the Word and feed on it. Just take it and savor it. Eat it, and you will sense something within you. Brothers and sisters, you have got to exercise your spiritual mouth. You have got to learn to feed on Christ as though He were bread. He is!
I am not talking to you about knowing Christ as Life. I am talking to you about a corporate building where the brothers and sisters together must come and feed on the Word. They must come and just eat it and eat it and eat it, and the more you eat it, the more there’s a sense of satisfaction, and the more there’s satisfaction, the more God is inwrought in you as gold. He is building a building of gold. You must eat the bread to be overlaid with the gold of God, and soon, there is a building that really shows forth God’s nature.
It is the bread of life that He is, but the distinction I’m making here is that it is not an individual matter for you to live by Christ. I am speaking of the material now. That God has got to turn this hunk of clay into a piece of gold, that he might put it into a building, and He’s got to take this piece of clay and turn it into and deposit something of the gold of God in it. But God cannot, God cannot turn clay into gold, unless you feed upon His nature, upon His Life. His Life is gold.
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