The garments of the High Priest were “of blue, purple and scarlet yarn, and of finely twisted linen — the work of a skilled craftsman” (Exod 28:6, etc.).
The preponderant materials were “gold, blue, purple, scarlet, fine-twined linen”: the materials of the veil and the gate hangings of the tabernacle. The significance of these materials are the same as in the tabernacle itself: tried faith, healing by chastisement (better, heavenliness), royal destiny, sin-nature, and spotless righteousness. The question is, what is there of ‘glory and of beauty’ in these significances? The appropriate answer would be, what is there not of glory and beauty in them? They all involve one transcendent truth, which is to all others as the sun in the heavens — the hallowed supremacy of God as the rule of being. Consider: What is faith but trust in His word? Who so royal as the King of glory, whether in Father or Son, to whom every knee shall bow? What is sin-nature but nature cursed by God because of disobedience? What is righteousness but the doing of His perfect will?
Thus God is in every aspect of the typical garments: and there could be no greater ‘glory and beauty’ than this proclaimed fact that He will and must be worshipped and obeyed as ‘head over all’ before there can be true well-being (in ‘body, mind, and estate’) for man whom He has made. The man chosen as priest had to be covered with garments having all these meanings in a concealed manner. God not only plainly declared, “I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me” (Lev 10:3), but He required such to be arrayed in vestments which were not only glorious and beautiful in an artistic sense, but which typically proclaimed the supremacy of God and the complete subordination of man as the conjoint and indispensable conditions of acceptable fellowship. We may miss all the meanings intended, but some of them are very manifest.
Not man unclothed: not man naked: not man as he is in himself, but man invested or “clothed upon” with super added attributes or conditions, is acceptable. And these superadded conditions must be of divine pattern and prescription: “See thou make all things according to the pattern shown to thee in the mount” (Heb 8:5; Exod 25:40).
This, in the Mosaic shadow, is the condemnation of all human invention in religion; and the confutation of the popular idea that sincere ignorance or ignorant sincerity is eligible in worship: or that man can save himself by his own devices. Man is “condemned already”, and can only escape this position by God’s own provision, of which man can only become aware or avail himself through the enlightenment of revelation. The revelation is abundant and clear, if men would but make themselves acquainted with it. This Mosaic shadow is part, and no inconsiderable part, of the revelation.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One