The church is not built with any natural materials, and
it is not even built with Christ directly. Rather, it is built with the Christ
who has become our experience. The church is built not
merely with the Christ prepared by God, but with the Christ possessed, enjoyed,
and experienced by us in resurrection and in the heavenlies. We need a rich experience of Christ’s resurrection and
ascension. We should not be natural or earthly. On the contrary, we should be
in resurrection and in the heavenlies. (Life-study of Exodus, p. 956)
The last verse of Genesis says, “And Joseph died...and he
was put in a coffin in Egypt.” In this
verse we can see death, which is the result of sin, and also the world. This is
the conclusion of Genesis.
How different is the conclusion of the book of Exodus! At the end of Exodus we do not have a coffin containing a
dead body; we have a tabernacle containing the glorious God.
The book of Genesis ends
with a dead person in a coffin in Egypt. Exodus begins with a picture of God’s
people serving as slaves in Egypt. As we consider the situation both at the end
of Genesis and at the beginning of Exodus, we see that we were dead, on the one
hand, and also slaves of Satan, typified by Pharaoh, on the other hand. We all were usurped by Satan and were enslaved to him.
But Christ as our Passover has delivered us, released us, from this slavery.
Christ’s redemption has brought us out of the satanic slavery in Egypt into a
land of freedom (the wilderness). In the wilderness God’s further activity brings
us to a glorified tabernacle. Here there is no death, no sin, no world.
Instead, we have God with His presence and glory. No longer are we dead and in
the world, but now we are part of a living and moving tabernacle for the
accomplishment of God’s purpose on earth. (Life-study of Exodus, pp. 955,
1954-1955)
The physical tabernacle (and later the temple) as
God’s dwelling place in the Old Testament was actually a symbol of a corporate
people, the children of Israel as the house of God (see footnote 1 on Hebrews
3:6). At the beginning of the New Testament age the incarnated Christ as God’s
embodiment was both the tabernacle and the temple of God (John 1:14; 2:19-21). Through His death and resurrection the
individual Christ was enlarged to be the corporate Christ, the church composed
of the New Testament believers as the temple, the house of God, and the Body of
Christ (1 Cor. 3:16-17; 1 Tim. 3:15; Heb. 3:6; 1 Cor. 12:12). Ultimately,
the tabernacle and the temple will consummate in the New Jerusalem—the Triune
God mingled with His redeemed people of both the Old Testament and the New Testament—as
God’s eternal dwelling place (Rev. 21:3, 22). (Exo. 25:9, footnote 2)
No comments:
Post a Comment