Message Seven

Christ as
the Termination, Fulfillment, Replacement,
and New Testament Reality
of All the Old Testament Offerings

Scripture Reading: Heb. 10:5-10;
John 1:14, 29; 4:23-24; 14:6a

1. The will of God is to have Christ as the replacement for all the offerings in the Old Testament so that we may enjoy Him as everything in living and practicing the Body life for the building up of the Body of Christ as the organism of the Triune God—Eph. 1:5, 9-11; Heb. 10:7-10; Rom. 12:2:
   1. Christ’s replacing of all the Old Testament offerings, taking away all the Old Testament types and establishing Himself as everything to us, is God’s great will:
      1. The Old Testament predicted in Isaiah 53 that Christ would come to be the sacrifice for sin, that is, to replace and terminate the Levitical sacrifices—vv. 6, 11-12.
      2. God prepared a body for Christ so that He could offer Himself to God to replace all the offerings—Heb. 10:5.
      3. Christ took away “the first,” the sacrifices of the old covenant, that He might establish Himself as “the second,” the sacrifice of the new covenant—v. 9:
         1. As “the second” Christ is everything—v. 9.
         2. By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of Christ’s body once for all so that we may enjoy and partake of Him as our everything—v. 10.
   2. The will of God today is simply for us to enjoy Christ so that we may become the corporate reproduction of Himself through His organic salvation—1 Cor. 1:9; 1 Thes. 5:16-18; Rom. 5:10; 8:6.
2. We need to enjoy Christ as the tabernacle, the enterable God, and as the reality of all the offerings of the Old Testament so that He may become our genuineness and sincerity for us to worship God with the worship that He seeks—John 1:14; 4:23-24; 14:17a:
   1. Christ as the fulfillment of the tabernacle and all the offerings is the reality and content of the universe:
      1. Christ, the incarnate God, came as the embodiment of God, as illustrated by the tabernacle, so that man could contact Him and enter into Him to enjoy the riches contained in God.
      2. Christ as the embodiment of God brought God to man to make God contactable, touchable, receivable, experienceable, enterable, and enjoyable.
      3. Christ who was incarnated to be the living tabernacle is also the Lamb of God, the aggregate, the totality, of all the offerings— John 1:14, 29.
      4. As the tabernacle Christ is the enterable God, the mutual abode of God and man, and as the offerings He is the way for us to enter into God—14:6a.
      5. Christ as the tabernacle brings God to man, and Christ as the offerings brings man to God so that man may be united, mingled, and incorporated with God.
      6. The tabernacle is good for us to experience, enter into, and join to God, and the offerings are good for us to enjoy God and mingle with God.
      7. The offerings are presents to God by the appreciators of Christ for their intimate fellowship with Him—Lev. 1:2.
   2. We daily need to practice taking and applying Christ as our sin offering and trespass offering, which will usher us into the enjoyment of Christ as the burnt offering and the meal offering, consummating in our enjoyment of Him as the peace offering plus the wave offering, heave offering, and drink offering:
      1. The sin offering signifies that Christ was made sin for us that through His death on the cross, sin might be condemned—Lev. 4:3; 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 8:3; John 1:29; 3:14.
      2. The trespass offering signifies that Christ bore our sins in His own body and was judged by God on the cross to deal with our sinful deeds that we might be forgiven in our sinful conduct—Lev. 5:6; 1 Pet. 2:24; 3:18; Isa. 53:5-6, 10-11; John 4:15-18.
      3. The burnt offering, which was wholly for God’s satisfaction, signifies Christ as God’s pleasure and satisfaction, as the One whose living on earth was absolutely for God—Lev. 1:3; Num. 28:2-3; John 7:16-18.
      4. The meal offering signifies Christ in His humanity and in His human living, which was proper, even, tender, fine, balanced, pure, and sinless—Lev. 2:1, 4; John 7:46; 18:38; 19:4, 6.
      5. The peace offering signifies Christ as the Peacemaker, the One who became the peace and the fellowship between God and us by shedding His blood and dying for us, enabling us to enjoy Christ with God and to have fellowship with God in Christ for our mutual satisfaction with God—Lev. 3:1; Eph. 2:14-15; John 12:1-3; 20:21; Rev. 21:2.
      6. The wave offering signifies the resurrected Christ in love—Lev. 7:30; 10:15.
      7. The heave offering signifies the powerful Christ in ascension and exaltation—Lev. 7:32; Exo. 29:27; Eph. 1:21.
      8. The drink offering signifies Christ as the enjoyment of the offerer, enabling the offerer to be filled with Christ as the heavenly wine and even to become the wine offered to God for His enjoyment and satisfaction—Exo. 29:40; Num. 28:7-10; Isa. 53:12; Phil. 2:17; 2 Tim. 4:6; Judg. 9:13.
3. We need to live a life according to God’s heart and will by daily enjoying Christ as the reality of all the offerings for the divine goal of the Triune God, which is to bring us all into Himself that we may take Him as our dwelling place and allow Him to take us as His dwelling place for His universal, enlarged, divine-human incorporation—John 14:23; Rev. 21:3, 22.