Last time, the silver foundation showed that everything about the tabernacle rests on redemption — the atoning blood of Christ, purchased at the same price for everyone. Now we move up from the foundation to what actually stood in it: the boards that framed the tabernacle itself. There is more in a board than it first appears.
The cutting of the boards
“Thou shalt make boards for the tabernacle of shittim wood standing up.”Exodus 26:15
Boards come from trees, and the Bible regularly uses trees as a picture of a person — the righteous man is “like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season” (Psalm 1:3), and Isaiah pictures the coming Messiah's humanity the same way: “he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground” (Isaiah 53:2). To become a board, a tree first has to be cut down, stripped, and reshaped — a slow, deliberate, unglamorous process.
That is the picture of what has to happen to anyone who is going to be part of God's dwelling place: cut off from drawing life out of the wilderness of sin and self, laid low, reshaped, and only then stood back up. The times we are being reshaped rarely feel pleasant in the moment — but looking back, most believers would not trade what that reshaping produced.
The covering of the boards
“And thou shalt overlay the boards with gold.”Exodus 26:29
From the outside, no one looking at these boards would guess they had ever been trees standing in the wilderness. To overlay wood with gold is to overlay our humanity with God's own glory — and every believer still wears that ugly, imperfect flesh underneath, even at their most useful. Paul described the tension exactly: “the things that I want to do, those I have a hard time doing, and the things I don't want to do, those are the things I do” (see Romans 7:15–19).
“If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”2 Corinthians 5:17
Isaiah's prophecy captures the purpose of the covering: God appoints “beauty for ashes” so that His people “might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified” (Isaiah 61:3). Not so we look impressive to each other — so God is glorified in what He has done.
The configuration: standing tall, standing equal
“Two sockets under one board for his two tenons, and two sockets under another board for his two tenons.”Exodus 26:19
Every board had two feet, and both feet — not one out of two — were locked into the silver foundation. It is tempting, as believers, to try to keep one foot in the atoning work of Christ and one foot still planted in the world's indulgences. The tabernacle does not model that. Both feet, all the way in.
The boards were also all of equal height. None stood taller, lording it over the others; none were shorter, treated as insignificant. In Christ, that is exactly the picture of the church: all equally sinners, all equally redeemed at the same price, all equally secure and equally valuable — “humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time” (1 Peter 5:6).
The connection: five bars that hold everything together
“And thou shalt make bars of shittim wood; five for the boards of the one side of the tabernacle.”Exodus 26:26
Standing alone, even gold-covered boards locked into silver sockets would sway in the wind. Horizontal bars running through rings tied every board to the ones beside it, keeping the whole structure straight, strong, and unified. That is where the picture becomes a picture of the church.
“Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God… in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”Ephesians 2:19,22
Paul names the unifying gifts directly in Ephesians 4: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers — given “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ… till we all come in the unity of the faith… unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11–13). Every believer has at least one of these gifts, given not to be admired individually but to keep the whole body from being “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine” (Ephesians 4:14).