Reading:
Exodus 35
This and the following chapters give us a comprehensive
representation of Christ as tabernacling among His
people; they are a typical setting forth of the body of
Christ, the Church; and they are a most valuable
disclosure of the spiritual principles of the life and
service of the people of God.
But before we deal with the contents of this chapter we
must remind ourselves of the background and setting of
what we have in view, and this can be stated as one of
those breakings into this world by the God of glory which
mark the history of His dealings with men. Reading back
we find God descending from heaven, breaking through to
the mount, and meeting His servant at a place midway
between heaven and earth to disclose His purpose
concerning this world. The glory of the God of Israel so
fell upon Moses that he brought it down out of the divine
presence and had it reflected in his face as he acted as
a mediator between God and man. Then the purpose of the
breaking through of God's glory was seen to be the
setting up of His testimony on the earth. He revealed
that He proposed to have an instrument here for His own
self-manifesting. This was His purpose, to have a vehicle
for displaying His glory here on earth. The tabernacle
was, of course, only a type. The reality is in Christ.
For the moment, however, we seek to get help from the
type, and so consider this mediator of the divine glory,
radiant of countenance, as he makes his first utterances
to the people.
The
Assembly Constituted upon the Sabbath
"And
Moses assembled all the congregation of the children of
Israel, and said unto them, These are the words which
Jehovah hath commanded that ye should do them. Six days
shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be
to you a holy day, a sabbath of solemn rest to the Lord:
whoever doeth any work therein shall be put to death. Ye
shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the
sabbath day." We remember that what is in view is
God's testimony here on earth, to be constructed and
constituted in a tent of meeting, and the first words in
connection with this is that the only ground on which it
can be constructed is the sabbath. That was because the
sabbath represented the end of the works of God and the
entering in by man into His finished work. Only a man of
rest can build the house of God. Later on we find that
Solomon was able to build the temple because he was such
a man of peace whereas his father, David, had been
forbidden to do this work because he had been a man of
war. The vessel of the testimony can only be constituted
on the ground and principle that those who have a part in
it have come definitely and finally to rest in the
perfected works of God. We know that every testimony for
the Lord here on earth has to face a fierce conflict. The
only hope of triumph for all such is that before they
even go into the battle they have perfect rest as to the
full and final victory of Christ, with perfect assurance
that God's end has already been secured.
One of the enemy's most successful activities against the
testimony and those who bear it is to bring about unrest
and a lack of assurance concerning the Lord. He has many
ways of producing such a condition of uncertainty:
introspection, self-occupation, false accusations,
feelings of the soul or doubts in the mind. All manner of
means are used to upset the restful, confident assurance
of faith in relation to the Lord. A principal one is
fear, but there is nothing which will so quickly and
utterly paralyse the servant of God as fear. In this
connection we are told: "And in nothing affrighted
by the adversaries". The great adversary works hard
to get us unsettled and affrighted, which means that we
are not spiritually enjoying God's sabbath. In principle
the sabbath is a state rather than a period of time; it
is a spiritual condition of heart rest in the fact that
God has reached the end of all His works and has nothing
more to do, having secured everything finally in His Son.
We need to apprehend the completeness of Calvary's work,
for without such an assurance we cannot build for God. If
we are fretful and worried about our spiritual life, our
acceptance, our standing or our fellowship with God, then
we are debarred from practical participation in building
for God.
It is noteworthy that only one aspect of the sabbath is
here mentioned. Elsewhere many other things are said
about the prohibitions of the sabbath, but here the only
one specified is: "Ye shall kindle no fire
throughout your habitations on the sabbath day". The
Holy Spirit knows exactly what He means by singling out
this one matter. What is His intention? Well, so far as I
can see, the kindling of fire in the habitations
represents looking after one's own comfort. It is as
though God was saying that those who were going to
constitute His testimony must set aside all personal
interests and self-consideration. "If thou turn away
thy foot from the sabbath, from doing THINE OWN
PLEASURE on my holy day: and call the sabbath a
delight, and the holy of the Lord honourable; and shalt
honour it, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine
own pleasure... I will make thee to ride upon the
high places of the earth" (Isaiah 58:13-14). To know
what spiritual ascendancy is, to be on the uplands with
God, means first of all to have entered into God's rest
in His completed work and then to cease from personal and
selfish interests.
The
Assembly is for God's Pleasure
As we move
on into the chapter we see what a good state of affairs
prevailed among the people. The whole assembly moved in
response to God's pleasure. It is tremendously impressive
to note the recurrence of the word 'willing'. A willing
heart, a willing spirit, everyone whose heart made him
willing, everyone whose spirit stirred him up - all this
represented a glad response to the opportunity to please
the Lord. He did not command, but made His desire known,
and that was enough. In another place the Lord commanded
to bring offerings, for sacrifices were needed when it
was a question of fellowship with God, but here God
simply expressed His intention of establishing a
testimony among them and appealed to their desire to
bring pleasure to Him: "Whosoever is of a willing
heart, let him bring...". It was a beautiful thing
that there was such a spontaneous movement of the
people's hearts to meet this desire of His.
I think that we need to recover this feature in relation
to our testimony for Christ. It is sad that we sometimes
tend to regard the matter as somewhat onerous, a
requirement which is so hard to meet that we almost groan
about it instead of counting it a joyful privilege. In
the New Testament we recognise Paul as a prominent worker
in this matter and as one who paid a very high price in
his work of church-building, yet we get no hint that it
was burdensome to him, but just the reverse. When he was
imprisoned in Rome and superficial observers might have
been inclined to pity him, he was able to exhort the
Philippians to keep on rejoicing all the time. His
experience was that if he was sorrowful yet he was always
rejoicing - "rejoicing in hope; patient in
tribulation; continuing instant in prayer".
Above all we think of our Lord Jesus, who was Himself the
embodiment of God's testimony here on earth. The doing of
the will of God was for Him a matter of intense anguish,
and yet He affirmed: "I delight to do thy will, O my
God". So there were two experiences taking place at
the same time, a consciousness of the costliness of
pleasing God and yet a glad and willing delight in
ministering to the Father's satisfaction. It seems that
although the sufferings were terribly real the sting was
taken out of them by the assurance that a great and
wonderful purpose of God was being achieved by means of
them, so that the sacrifice brought deep pleasure to the
heart of the Father.
We see this principle in the case of the Israelites. They
brought all sorts of precious things, sacrificing their
treasures, because their hearts were moved with love of
God. I can imagine that when all the requirements had
been outlined by Moses, the gold, the silver, the brass,
the precious stones and the costly materials, the people
might well have doubted whether they could spare their
treasures if they had not felt a heart-response to God's
call. They would perhaps not have known what they had got
or, if they had it, they might have forgotten where it
was and decided that it was inconvenient to search it
out. It is surprising what excuses we can find if our
hearts are not in a matter. Happily they were moved by
willing hearts, so that all the material came from their
affectionate gratitude. It is wonderful what we can
discover that we have in the Lord Jesus when our hearts
are aglow for Him and for the Father's satisfaction.
People whose hearts are cold will always feel that they
have nothing to give to the Lord. To the Corinthians the
apostle said: "In everything ye were enriched in
him", but it takes love to discover what those
riches are and to make them available in the assembly of
God's people. In times of worship you will not have to
scour through your Bible in an attempt to discover some
passage of Scripture which will be a suitable
contribution. If your heart is aglow to the Lord you will
always have something spontaneous to offer in the hour of
worship, and with that glowing heart you will discover
that you are richer in spiritual possessions than you had
thought, and so you will always have something precious
to give.
Features
of Christ in the Assembly
If we
consider the numerous and various materials we find that
every one of them is typical of Christ. There can be
nothing satisfying to the heart of God apart from the
Lord Jesus. The gold, silver, brass and fine linen, all
these things represented some aspects of the person and
work of Christ. Find the person who is full of love to
the Lord, one whose heart is burning and throbbing with
love for Him, and you will meet someone who always has
something to convey to you of the preciousness of the
Saviour. Such a one is always seeing the glory of the
Lord from a different angle and so able to present a
different facet of His beauty. This delighting in the
Lord made the testimony grow. Before there was any
outward expression there had to be an inner response of
willing hearts. All outward ministry must be the result
of an inward state of heart towards the Lord.
In this case there was such a generous response that they
brought more than was required and had to be called to
stop giving. How wonderful if that symbolic response of
old could have a spiritual realisation in our day! The
fact is, of course, that every child of God has in Christ
an abundance of resources for ministering to the heart of
God. "In everything... enriched in him" is to
be true of us. We need more love and willingness of heart
to make us discover our riches and then release them for
the building of His Church. The assembly is set up as a
testimony on earth by the bringing together of individual
heart exercise and appreciation of the Lord Jesus. The
assembly really is not just a congregation, not just the
coming together of people for services, meetings,
conventions, etc., but the bringing together of
individual heart exercise in the appreciation of the Lord
Jesus in such a way that the Father can see His Son's
features expressed in human lives. That is the true
nature of assembly life. One can bring the gold and
another the silver, and yet another the brass. Some bring
fine linen, some blue, others scarlet and others purple,
so that as each brings his own apprehension and
appreciation of the Lord Jesus and all are united
together in the assembly, the Father can look down and
see the various features of His Son. That is the
testimony of Jesus on earth: that is Christ tabernacling
among us. As each one follows on to know the Lord in
private, personal life history, so new discoveries are
made of the virtues and values of God's Son, and these
are brought together in assembly life. When we have made
such new discoveries of the grace of Christ we can come
together with other children of God and speak and sing
together of what we have proved experimentally in a
living way and so we become a collective and corporate
representation of the house of God.
I imagine that the Israelites went back to their tents to
search out the materials which were required, eager to
see if they had some of the treasures which their willing
hearts prompted them to offer to the Lord, and that they
then gathered together to cooperate in shaping and
preparing them. This means that they were willing to work
with the materials which others had brought. Not only did
people vary in what they could contribute but they also
had different work to do with the materials after they
had been gathered. They needed one another and they
worked together. Even a Bezaleel, specially called and
anointed for his task, could not have carried it through
without the materials donated by others. And if the women
had not done the spinning and weaving, Bezaleel's work
would have been without purpose. In the assembly, the
Holy Spirit depends upon a spirit of willing and loving
cooperation among God's people.
There seems to be a special lesson in the work of the
women, for their weaving involved the bringing of things
together and binding them into a whole. It is so easy to
tear things apart, to pull things asunder and to shred
apart instead of embroidering together. We can do this by
gossip, by criticism, by letting our tongues run away
with us. I am afraid that we are all guilty of such
behaviour at times, and it brings weakness into the
assembly. There is so much constructive work to be done,
spinning and weaving even what other people have
contributed, so we should give ourselves to this kind of
activity and beware of Satan's temptations to put strains
on our relationships and so weaken our testimony. The
Holy Spirit can only do His work and perfect the
testimony as each one takes personal and individual
responsibility, working together toward the common end of
God which is the manifestation and glorifying of the Lord
Jesus.
From
"Toward The Mark" Sep-Oct 1974, Vol. 3-5.