Jehovah Mekadesh

The Tabernacle in the Wilderness

For 40 years, Moses led the Israelites through the wilderness. But they had only been there for about 6 months before God gave Moses the instructions for building the Tabernacle.

When you read through the book of Exodus, you discover that God’s instructions were very precise in every detail. The book of Hebrews says that the Tabernacle in the Wilderness was a shadow cast by the true Tabernacle in heaven:

We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens … A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.… See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount. Hebrews 8:1,2,5

God must have been giving Moses plans for a replica of the heavenly Tabernacle

Why a Tabernacle?

For a people who were only going to be temporarily in the desert, and who would soon enter their promised land, why did God find it necessary for them to build the Tabernacle at this place and time? I think one of the reasons was that while they were in Egypt, they were forced into nation-hood by their common enemy and by their proximity to each other. Once they left their bondage, there was no common foe to keep them aligned, and no boundaries to keep them together.

The Tabernacle supplied the critical glue for this new nation. It became the focal point for the Israelites, and while they were uprooted and wandering, it was an anchor for them, giving order to their lives. Life with the Tabernacle included everything from how to arrange their tribes around it to how it was to be transported, and from how to approach and maintain it to how they would interact with God. The Tabernacle became the center of their wilderness existence. 

God’s ultimate desire was to give Himself a place to dwell among His people so that He would be constantly in their midst. It was imperative that they should not forget Him or be drawn to the false gods of their neighbors.

It also gave God a way to instruct them about how to lead blameless lives so that they would know what was necessary in order approach their God. He taught them how to sanctify themselves and their property, and they learned what it meant to be sanctified and holy.

Jehovah Mekadesh

Jehovah Mekadesh means The Lord who makes you holy, or The Lord who sanctifies you. God first gave this description of Himself  in the book of Exodus as He explained things like how to keep the sabbath, and the rituals of the tabernacle.

Although the specific phrase, Jehovah Mekadesh, does not appear often in the Bible, the concept of God sanctifying His people is at the very core of Levitical law. 

The Hebrew word, kadosh, means holy or set apart. Various forms of kadosh can be found throughout the Old Testament, such as kadash, kodesh and kedash. The Name of God, Jehovah Mekadesh, contains the root word, kadesh.

Sanctification and Holiness

Biblically, the word sanctify implies that which is set apart to the Lord, and for the Lord’s use. Sanctification involves both separation from anything that defiles us, and a commitment to everything that makes us holy.

In Leviticus 11:44, we read, 

For I am the Lord your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy …

Peter quoted from this verse in 1 Peter 1 when he urged believers to be holy.

To sanctify can also mean to purify or to cleanse. It can refer to animals, places, items, times and people, all with the goal of setting apart for God’s use.

The Importance of Blood

Throughout both the Old Testament and the New Testament, blood is spoken of over and over again.

In Leviticus 17:11-14 God said that the life is in the blood. The Hebrew word for life is nephesh, and encompasses the total essence of life: the soul which lives inside the body, the brain which is the control panel for everything, and the personality, emotions, will and intellect – all a reflection of Him and all powered by blood.

It is blood which empowers all of life, and it is God who is the engineer and owner of the blood.

The messages in the blood

I worked in a holistic clinic for a number of years and while there, I learned of some of the most amazing technology that I have ever seen. It is called ‘Bio-Resonance Technology’ and has to do with detecting the vibrational frequencies of substances within the body, substances such as bacteria, viruses, parasites, and toxic substances such as drugs and environmental toxins. Even emotional stressors produce molecules with vibrational frequencies.

The theory, without going into too much detail, is that all molecules vibrate, and each different molecule vibrates at a unique frequency. This means that every living and non-living thing has a unique frequency that can be identified by its unique vibrational frequency. For example, in our clinic, we could even detect the frequency of marijuana in a client who had not smoked it for over 3 decades because the frequencies were still in the blood.

Blood speaks to God

That being said, it does not surprise me that our blood speaks to God. After all, He is the creator of it. Every action against the body is stored in the blood. He can read every incident, whether it is intentional or accidental, and He knows of every moral trauma because those also generate unique molecules that take up residence in the blood.

When He said that Abel’s blood cried out to Him, He was speaking literally, not figuratively. When the martyrs under the altar in the book of Revelation spoke of avenging their blood, they were speaking literally. When the book of Hebrews spoke of the blood of Jesus sprinkled on the altar, His blood was literally saying, ‘forgive them.’

God’s yardstick for holiness

Under the Old Covenant, God looked at the blood to determine the purity of a person. Physical impurities, such as eating something that was unclean, diseases, and parasites, all showed up in the blood. Impurities of the soul also appeared there. Anything that anyone did to defile his/her own soul, such as idol worship, bad relationships and any other sin, reflected back on their blood and their blood became tainted.

Is it any wonder, then, that in order to stay clean enough to be in God’s presence, God’s people had to continually make animal sacrifices? This is why the instructions in the book of Leviticus were given as regards animal sacrifices. Let’s look at them briefly.

Leviticus

Have you ever started reading the book of Leviticus only to have your eyes glaze over as you started reading about the seemingly endless bloody sacrifices? Leviticus almost reads like an instruction manual on how to kill animals, which is partially what it is. It was God’s instructions to the Israelites about how to maintain a relationship with Him by becoming and staying Holy, and this demanded animal sacrifices.

God was the One who designated blood to be used to atone for sin. Through the blood sacrifices, the people learned that the consequence of sin is fatal, but God provided the substitution of an animal to atone for, or cover up, the sin.

The five sacrifices of Leviticus

Through these five sacrifices, God provided a structured, grace-based system for sinful man to approach and stay in communion with a holy God. The first five chapters of Leviticus give the basics, then the remainder of the book tells of the specific ways these sacrifices were to be used and how they interacted with each other. For now, let’s just look at the basic offerings.

1. The Burnt Offering (olah)

Leviticus 1

The Burnt Offering was a voluntary offering. It symbolized total surrender and dedication to God. It was offered daily for all of Israel, and it could also be offered on special occasions and by individuals. It required a perfect male bull, sheep or goat. All of the sacrifice was burned on the altar. None of it was eaten by the priest as is seen with some of the other sacrifices.

The Burnt Offering also acted as atonement for general sin, but the blood of the perfect animal prepared in the perfect way only temporarily covered the imperfect blood of man (thus atoning for any sins) and had to be repeated again and again.

This was the sacrifice that Job offered daily, just in case any of his children committed any sins. It had to be offered continually because it did not eliminate the sins of his children, only covered them temporarily.

2. The Meat Offering (minchah) 

Leviticus 2

Meat is an Old English name for food or meal. The Meat Offering did not involve animals at all, but was actually a grain offering. This voluntary sacrifice was an expression of thanksgiving, devotion, and acknowledgement of God as the provider of daily sustenance. It could also be offered by anyone who was too poor to sacrifice an animal.

The Meat Offering could be given in the form fine flour, roasted grain, or bread which could be baked or roasted in an oven, or roasted on a pan or griddle so that it presented a ‘sweet aroma’ to the Lord. Of the total offering, the ‘memorial’ portion,  was burned on the altar. The remainder served as sustenance for the priest.

There were some key requirements for the Meat Offering: It had to include oil, which represented the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and frankincense, which represented prayer and worship. It had to be seasoned with salt, representing the incorruptible, abiding covenant of God.

The offering never contained leaven, which symbolized corruption or sin, and it could not contain honey, which represented worldly pleasures. 

3. The Peace Offering (shelem)

Leviticus 3

The Peace Offering was a voluntary sacrifice of either a male or female animal without blemish. It was unique in that it was shared among three parties: God, the priest, and the worshiper who brought the offering. It symbolized fellowship, thanksgiving, and peace and reconciliation among the three.

All of the fat and several organs were burned on the altar for God, then either a breast or thigh was given to the priest. The worshiper could then take the remainder and invite in his family and friends for a feast. Even if an animal was caught in the wild, it had to be offered as a peace offering before it could be consumed.

4. The Sin Offering (hattat)

Leviticus 4

The Sin Offering was a mandatory sacrifice designed to purify the sacred space of the Tabernacle from pollution caused by the unintentional sin and impurities of the people of Israel. 

The sinner laid his hands on the head of the animal, confessing his sin and symbolically transferring guilt to the animal substitute. The blood of the offering was sprinkled on the altar and within the sanctuary to purify it. Then the animal was taken outside the camp and burned there, signifying removal of sin from the camp and from the holy dwelling place of God.

The Sin Offering purified the place of worship in order to allow God’s continued presence among the people. The kinds of animals needed were based on the status of the transgressor: a priest required a young bull; a leader, a male goat; a common person took a female goat or lamb, and a poor person could offer two turtledoves or two pigeons, or in extreme cases, fine flour. Thus, the ritual, itself, emphasized that the closer one got to the Holy of Holies, the more severe the pollution from sin was. 

5. The Trespass Offering (asham)

Leviticus 5 & 6

The trespass offering (also called guilt offering) covered specific, identifiable sins, emphasizing restitution for damage or loss. It was offered to provide atonement for sins of ignorance, unintentional sins, breaches of trust, and misappropriation of property, both against a person and against God. It required the offender to repay in full plus an additional 20% to the wronged party.

The Trespass Offering was performed in conjunction with the Sin Offering demonstrating that forgiveness involves reconciliation to both God and to one’s neighbors.

All five sacrifices are obsolete

We no longer have to do this!!!

Because of the finished work of Jesus, we no longer need to offer up continual sacrifices. Atonement using animal sacrifices was a temporary solution because it only covered up the sinful human blood with the perfect blood of the perfect animal sacrifice. The animals were not equal to mankind, but just acted as temporary substitutes.

Jesus was the perfect, spotless Lamb of God. He was a man, but also God. His blood was able to purify us from all unrighteousness making further atonement unnecessary. When He said ‘It is finished,’ sin was defeated for all time.

We are now sanctified by the perfect blood of Jesus Christ.

Is sanctification still required today?

God has not changed. A person still needs to be sanctified in order to be in His presence. The emphasis now is on fellowship rather than the law, and on the finished work of Jesus rather than animal sacrifices. 

God described Himself as Jehovah Mekadesh, the God who sanctifies you, and that description has not changed. The difference is that it is now a completed work, awaiting only our acceptance of its terms.

Sanctification, or the process of being made holy and set apart for God, is at work within every born-again believer, working within us to conform us to Christ’s image. We are no longer His servants, but His family.

What about sin today?

Sanctification is a journey that is unique for each person. What may be a strength in one could be a weakness in another. Jehovah Mekadesh meets us where we are and provides guidance and strength for the journey.

Jesus called his disciples to be salt and light to the world in order to impact the world for the Gospel’s sake and for God’s glory. His lesson in Matthew 5 to be the salt of the earth underscores the importance of living out our faith and holiness where all can see them in us. We need to cling to the holy and shun the unholy, reflecting the character of Jehovah Mekadesh. In a culture that denies moral absolutes, we can exemplify the unchanging truth of God.

Coming back into fellowship

We are humans, living in a world filled with good and evil, distractions and temptations. Even though we live in an age of grace and forgiveness, we can still commit sinful acts and have sinful thoughts.

Paul spent the entirety Chapter 6 of Romans arguing about this. If we are no longer under the law of blood sacrifice, can we sin freely?

The bad news is that sin will obstruct fellowship with God.

The good news is that if we do sin, then God has made a way to come back into fellowship with Him. It is found in 1 John.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. … If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:7,9

References
The Holy Bible: King James Version
Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and Hebrew Dictionary

©2026 Chandra Hronchek