Prayer: Lord, we thank You for Your Word. We believe that You are with us. You are the Word, and You are the Spirit. Whenever we touch Your Word, we touch Your Spirit. Lord, thank You for Your blood, which continually cleanses us. We live not by what we are but by Your blood. We take You as our sin offering and our trespass offering so that we may enter into the enjoyment of You as all the other offerings. Lord, we believe that You are one spirit with us. We desire to practice to be one spirit with You in all that we do. Lord, speak Your word and speak forth Yourself. We need You as our nourishment, our supply. Lord, as we come to the Old Testament, we still have the spirit of the New Testament. We desire to see the details of the riches in the New Testament. Thank You, Lord Jesus. Thank You, God our Father. We trust in You.
We need to see the significance of the sequence of the books of the Bible according to the crucial points in each book. Genesis shows us God’s creation and God’s purpose in creation, which is to gain an expression. God made man in His image for His expression (1:26). Genesis eventually reveals that God desires a house. This revelation came to Jacob while he was fleeing from his brother, Esau, after taking Esau’s birthright and blessing. Jacob had a dream from God, and upon waking from the dream, he prophetically named the place Bethel, which means “the house of God” (28:17-19, 22). This prophecy concerning God’s house was initially fulfilled at the end of Exodus when the tabernacle was built as God’s dwelling place among His people (40:17).
In Genesis and Exodus four basic items are revealed and applied by God: God’s sent One, the tabernacle, the offerings, and the Spirit. As the sent One, God came to His created and chosen people as an angel and as a man. The first time God came to His people as a man was in Genesis 18. Three men appeared to Abraham, and one of them was Jehovah (vv. 13-14, 22). We know that Jehovah came to Abraham as a genuine man because Abraham washed His feet and served Him a meal (vv. 4-8). Jehovah also appeared several times in Genesis as the Angel of Jehovah, the sent One of God (16:7, 13; 22:11-12). This sent One also appeared to Moses in Exodus 3, where the Angel of Jehovah is called Jehovah (vv. 2, 4), the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (v. 6), and I AM WHO I AM (v. 14). After Exodus 3, this Angel appeared quite often. The Angel fought the battle for Israel against Pharaoh’s army (14:19-20, 24-25). He was continually with the children of Israel from the time they left Egypt and crossed the Red Sea.
The Angel of Jehovah appeared several times in Judges. When the Angel appeared to Samson’s parents, He was repeatedly called a man (13:3, 6, 11). Judges 13:20 says, “When the flame went up from the altar to heaven, the Angel of Jehovah went up in the flame of the altar, while Manoah and his wife looked on.” More than a thousand years before Christ ascended in a cloud (Acts 1:9), the Angel of Jehovah, as a man, ascended in the flame of the altar. Actually, the Angel of Jehovah was Christ as a man. The Old Testament reveals that the Angel of Jehovah was Jehovah, and the name Jesus means “Jehovah the Savior.”
The appearing of the Angel in Exodus issued in the children of Israel building the tabernacle, which is a type of Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God. Exodus also mentions the offerings, which are described in detail in Leviticus, and are all types of Christ. John 1, which is an extract of the entire Gospel of John, shows that Christ is the fulfillment of the tabernacle (v. 14), and as the Lamb of God, He is the aggregate and the fulfillment of all the offerings (v. 29).
Exodus also contains several types of the Spirit. The cloud fighting for Israel in 14:19-25 and covering the tabernacle in 40:34 typifies the Spirit (1 Cor. 10:2; cf. 12:13). The water that flowed out of the smitten rock in Exodus 17:6 also typifies the Spirit (John 7:37-39; 1 Cor. 12:13). The compounded anointing ointment in Exodus 30:23-25 typifies the all-inclusive, compound Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45; John 7:39; Phil. 1:19). Thus, by the end of Exodus we have seen the four major items: the Angel of Jehovah, God’s sent One as a man; the tabernacle as the embodiment of the Triune God and His dwelling place among His people; the offerings as the means by which God’s people enter into the enjoyment of the Triune God; and the Spirit. These items are fully revealed and realized in Christ in the New Testament. Thus, we can see that the Old and New Testaments actually speak concerning one thing: God’s economy to work Himself into His chosen people through the Divine Trinity.
The Trinity is crucial for God’s economy. If God were not triune, He would not be able to reach and enter into His creature man. In order to dispense Himself into man, God had to be triune. God needed to become a man as the sent One. This sent One also needed to be the embodiment of God and the reality of the offerings in order to be the means, the sphere, and the entrance for God’s chosen ones to enter into the enjoyment of God. In order for all these accomplishments to reach and be applied to God’s people, the sent One had to be the Spirit. Because God is the Spirit, His people can drink Him, and He can anoint them as ointment. The Triune God as the Spirit is mingled with His elect by entering into them as living water and covering them as the anointing ointment. This is the picture presented by both the Old and New Testaments.
Apparently, the Old Testament contains biographies, history, poetry, and prophecy, and the New Testament contains accounts of the Lord’s earthly ministry and the letters that the apostles wrote to the early churches. However, the Old Testament and the New Testament intrinsically reveal the same thing. While I am speaking, others see my clothing, my face, and my hair, but these things do not represent me. There is something more intrinsic, that is, what I am speaking. The Bible similarly has an intrinsic content. We need to get into this intrinsic content. God’s sent One, God’s embodiment, the offerings, and God the Spirit are the intrinsic content, the innermost essence and elements, of the Holy Scriptures. The entire Bible is constructed with these four items. Primarily through these items, we have seen the Divine Trinity in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Judges.