We’ve been to Disneyland in Anaheim, California, a few times with our kids (usually because Grandma pitches in for tickets). The last time we went, our two oldest were just tall enough to ride Space Mountain, a space-themed indoor roller coaster. The line to board was long, but the wait helped build anticipation in my daughter, who was four at the time. As we walked through the “space station,” I could see her taking in all the lights and futuristic decorations. When we were finally seated, she grabbed my hand and squeezed as the roller coaster began to click-clack upward toward what looked like a spiral galaxy. Once we made it to the top, we dropped into a large room that was illuminated by thousands of tiny lights that mimicked stars. As we began to zip around the corners, my daughter looked at me wide-eyed and asked, “Are we in space now?” The scenery made her second guess whether she was still on planet Earth! The tapestry of the tabernacle in the Old Testament had a similar effect on the children of God.
Worship in the Old Testament was a journey into holy space. God commanded his servant Moses to build a worship facility that mimicked God’s cosmic heavenly temple. The precious stones that decorated the priests’ attire and place of worship (often referred to as the tent of meeting) recalled the splendor of the heavens. Biblical scholar G. K. Beale writes, “It is likely that part of the reason for so many precious stones and metals in one place is that they were intended to remind one of the luminous splendor of the starry sky.”
The precise blueprints for construction were given to Moses on Mount Sinai: “And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain” (Ex 25:40). The them there refers to all the temple accoutrements, which symbolically transported the worshiper from earth to heaven. When they approached God in worship, they were click-clacking up to God’s throne through the form of worship God had instituted. God was bringing his people up to holy space.
Imagine that you are a priest of God living in the days of the Old Testament and that it’s your duty to go to the tabernacle to perform the divine rites. You enter a large tent, which inside is dimly lit by a golden candelabra, or lampstand. Weighing nearly eighty pounds, it is stylized like a tree, recalling the Edenic tree of life (Ex 25:33–34). The dark walls of the room are made of “fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet yarns” (Ex 26:1), and they have angels known as cherubim embroidered on them. These aren’t the sixteenth-century winged babies popularized by Raphael and other artists; they’re mighty heavenly beings that surround God’s throne (Ex 37:7). You can see them through the flicker of the candles and the clouds of sweet-smelling smoke from the incense burning within the tent, which symbolized the prayers of God’s people ascending to him. Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman III writes, “As one stood in the tabernacle and looked around, he would see a deep blue background with images of cherubim looking as though suspended in midair. . . . As one walked into the tabernacle, he would be symbolically transferred from an earthly location to a (symbolically at least) heavenly one.”
This is why, later in the New Testament, Hebrews 8:5 says that the priests who served under Moses worshiped under a “copy and shadow of the heavenly things.” The tabernacle and temple in Jerusalem were microcosms of the whole creation, meant to serve as replicas of God’s heavenly throne room. Like a tiny model train city, they portrayed in miniature God’s cosmic and heavenly sanctuary. The decorations God had instituted communicated to the worshiper that they were entering another world when they went up to worship the living God. As Schmemann would have put it, they had in fact left some place behind them.
By the way, this also helps to shed some light on the relationship between mountains and encounters with God in Scripture. The ancients often chose hills or mountains for worship because the elevation gave one a sense of nearness to God. For the Hebrews, mountains often served as places of divine encounter and worship (Gen 22:5; Ex 3:12; Is 2:2). Even Eden, as the original dwelling place of God, was said to rest on a mountain, its streams flowing down to water the earth (Ezek 28:13–14; Gen 2:10–14).
The temple mount, which was full of Edenic imagery, was established by God as the high place of worship, and the call to worship was always an ascent into the divine presence.
The pilgrim psalms of ascent (Psalms 120–134) reiterate this truth. As Old Testament worshipers journeyed to the temple on feast days, they probably sang these hymns of rising. Up to the temple they went, climbing toward the heavenly assembly through the smoke of their burned (or ascension) offerings to meet with the God who sat invisibly upon the mercy seat. In fact, this is the main symbolism of the burnt offering spoken about in Leviticus 1. Through it, the worshiper was identified with the sacrificial animal and with it rose up to God in a cloud of smoke. Michael Morales writes, “The transformational burning was for the sake of transferring the animal, and the worshipper vicariously through it, from the ordinary earthly plane to the divine heavenly realm, to the ownership of God.”
The temple decorations, together with the sacred rites of worship instituted under the old covenant, guided the faithful into God’s celestial presence.
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Taken from Why We Worship: Experiencing Heaven on Earth at Church by Adriel Sanchez. ©2026 by Adriel Avram Sanchez. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.
Footnotes
G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, New Studies in Biblical Theology (InterVarsity Press, 2004), 41.
You can read all the instructions given to Moses concerning the building of the tabernacle in Exodus, chapters 25–31.
Tremper Longman III, Immanuel in Our Place: Seeing Christ in Israel’s Worship (P&R, 2001), 29.
L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015), 52.
Benjamin K. Forrest, Walter C. Kaiser Jr., et al., eds., Biblical Worship: Theology for God’s Glory (Kregel Academic, 2021), 53-54; Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, 37, 66-80.
Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?, 136.
