In the past two messages we have seen the central view of the divine dispensation in the books of Genesis and Exodus. In this message we want to see God’s dispensing through the rest of the books of the Old Testament, from Leviticus to Malachi. If you have a bird’s-eye view of these books you can realize that there are mainly three things: first, the enjoyment of the riches of the good land; second, the building up of the temple; third, the enjoyment of and in the temple.
At the end of Exodus there was a glorious situation. There was a corporate people who were God’s dwelling place. They were overshadowed and filled up with God’s glory. There were a lot of riches in the tabernacle for them to enjoy. But this enjoyment was not in the fullest way, so after Exodus the children of Israel were brought into the good land. Although they wandered for thirty-eight years, eventually, from Mount Sinai, they arrived at Canaan. They entered into the good land.
The produce of the good land was a type of the unsearchable riches of Christ (Deut. 8:7-10; 11:11-12; Eph. 3:8). First of all, in the good land there was a lot of rain and dew (Deut. 11:11, 14; 33:28). There was the early rain in the fall and the latter rain in the spring. Every day there was the dew. The rain is something strong, but the dew is very soft. Sometimes we cannot stand the strong rain. In typology, rain signifies God’s strong and rich grace, and dew signifies God’s soft mercy. Jeremiah told us that the mercy of the Lord is like the dew: every morning it is fresh (Lam. 3:22-23). We all realize that we need the rain; without rain we will die. But when the rain comes, we may not like it. Many times when the rain of grace comes, we are frightened by it. We like the soft dew. In the good land there is both the rain and the dew.
When the good land, due to the failure of the children of Israel, was cursed, the rain stopped and the entire land of Canaan became a scorched and dry land. Today’s situation among the Christians has also become a scorched and dry land, with very little rain and nearly no dew. But in the recovery the rain comes quite often, and every morning the dew comes! We enjoy the dew every morning so fresh and so refreshing.
In the good land there are a lot of hills and valleys (Deut. 8:7b; cf. 2 Cor. 6:8-10). Some of the older generation might prefer a plain rather than hills and valleys. The hills are hard to climb, and the valleys are dangerous to descend, but we need the hills and the valleys. All the time we have to go up, and we have to come down. We shouldn’t live on the plain. Every hill is the Lord Christ. Christ is our high hill, and Christ is also our deep valley. Sometimes we are on the high hill with Christ, and sometimes we are down in the deep valley with Christ. The church life should be full of hills and valleys. We don’t like to go through the valleys, but if there are no valleys, there are no hills. The hills take away the earth from the valleys. If you don’t have the hills, you don’t have the valleys. If you don’t have the valleys there is no place to keep the water. In the valleys there is plenty of water.
After the hills and valleys we have brooks of water, springs, and deep waters (Deut. 8:7a; John 4:14; 7:37-39). These are symbols of the life-giving Spirit. The life-giving Spirit is the spring. When it flows it is a brook; when it stays in a certain place it becomes the deep water. The spring is the source, the brook is the course, and the deep water is like a big lake. These are different aspects of the life-giving Spirit. All these items—rain and dew, hills and valleys, springs, brooks, and deep waters—bring forth the riches of all kinds of produce.
There is the wheat and barley, the plentitude of food, without scarceness, not lacking anything (Deut. 8:8-9). There are also trees—the vine trees for producing wine, the olive trees for producing oil, the fig trees for feeding people, and the pomegranates signifying all the riches of life (Deut. 8:8b). Then there is grass forming the pastures where the cattle live and produce milk and meat (Deut.). Even the bees live on blossoms that produce honey. The good land is a land flowing with milk and honey (Deut. 11:9; 32:13-14). Both milk and honey are the produce of two kinds of lives. Milk is produced by cattle which are living on plants. Honey is produced by bees which are living on blossoms. Both milk and honey are the produce of two kinds of lives—animal life and plant life. Without the animal life plus the plant life you cannot have milk, nor can you have honey. Christ’s life is both the animal life and the plant life. As the Lamb of God (John 1:29), Christ is the animal life. As the grain of wheat Christ is the plant life (John 12:24). The animal life plus the plant life produces the milk and the honey.
From the olive tree is the olive oil, and from the vine there is the wine (Deut. 7:13; 8:8b). The oil is for giving light and for anointing. In the church life we have a lot of oil, a lot of the life-giving Spirit. The life-giving Spirit is enlightening us and also anointing us. In the church life there is also the wine from the vine to cheer us up and to make us happy every day. On the day of Pentecost the disciples were considered drunken by others because they were so happy (Acts 2:13).
Deuteronomy 8:9 says that the land is a land “whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.” The stone and the iron are mixed up together. It is a piece of stone, but it is full of iron. Both the iron and the brass are for building and for fighting. David killed a giant just with a small piece of stone. In the ancient times nearly all the weapons were made either of iron or brass. In the church life we have not only the enjoyment of the wheat and barley, of the olive tree, the vine tree, the fig tree and the pomegranate tree, of the milk and honey, of the oil and wine for our living, but also of stones, iron, and brass for building and fighting. In the church life we need the stones full of iron and the brass for building and fighting. While we are enjoying we are building. While we are building we are fighting. In the book of Nehemiah the children of Israel were building with one hand and holding a weapon for fighting against the enemy with the other (Neh. 4:17). The good land is good for us to enjoy, for us to build, and for us to fight.
Christ is the good land. This is the all-inclusive Christ. After eating Him and being filled with Him we will give blessing to our God (Deut. 8:10). From the enjoyment of such a rich land an issue comes out. It issues in the building of the temple (1 Kings 8:10-11), which is much bigger than the tabernacle. Furthermore, it has a solid foundation. It is a solid building, full of stones, full of iron, full of brass, and full of gold. Once the tabernacle had been erected the glory of God descended upon it (Exo. 40:34-35), and at the completion of the building of the temple the same thing happened. The glory of Jehovah came down and filled the temple.
This was God’s dispensing of Himself into His chosen people. This is the central point of God’s dispensation. The focus of God’s dispensation is just to dispense Himself into His chosen people so that He Himself becomes His chosen people’s life and nature. This is to mingle His people’s being with the divine being. This is humanity saturated with divinity. This is the universal Bethel, a house of God, built up with humanity on this earth.