How can you practice this? I believe that you already know that you have to labor on Christ all the day long. And you already know that you need to come to the meeting with Christ filling your hand and filling you inwardly. But now I would like to fellowship with you about this one point: you should have some amount of faith to believe that you do have some portion of Christ. I tell you, Satan is a liar! Satan is tricking us, telling us a lie that we have nothing. Satan has cheated all of us. He always points out that we don’t have a good attitude toward our wife, that we are not victorious in our family living, so how can we dare to shout and to declare or to proclaim something? Accusation from Satan has subdued you.
If Aaron had been altogether victorious, altogether clean and pure, then he would not have needed the sin offering. Don’t forget that when the children of Israel came together, they firstly needed the sin offering and the trespass offering. Even the word offering implies a certain degree of redemption. The blood was shed and poured upon the altar signifying redemption. Every time we come to the meeting we need the blood. Claim the blood, and apply the blood to your situation. Sometimes you may have been a little negligent, not so much on the alert, and you lost your temper. So you got a defeat. Still come to the meeting! Claim the blood! Apply the blood to your situation by faith. Then you have to tell Satan, “Satan, even though I got a defeat, yet I still have some amount of Christ!” Sometimes you have to stand up and tell the saints, “Dear saints, just thirty-five minutes ago I was defeated in a situation with my family. But I have applied Christ as my sin offering! His blood has cleansed me. I would like to tell Satan before you all that I have an amount of Christ!”
I believe if we all would practice in this way, our meetings would be delivered from being formal. The formality in today’s Christian services is due to the deadness of all the attendants. Because every one comes in dead some form is needed. We need someone to do this for us, and we need another one to do that for us. We need someone to sing a solo for us, and we need a group wearing long robes to sing a quartet for us. All these formal things are full of death.
All of us should come with Christ. We should come not only with Christ as our burnt offering, our meal offering, our peace offering, but also as our sin offering and trespass offering. Even we should come with Christ as our wave offering and our heave offering, offering the breast in love. We come with a resurrected Christ offering Him in love and enjoying Him. We bring the ascended Christ of strength and power, and we share Him in the meetings.
Have you noticed of all these different kinds of offerings, even with the sin offering, the priests, all the clean ones, have the right to eat a portion? It was the same with the trespass offering. Of course the burnt offering was burned completely to be food for God. With the meal offering some was burned for God’s food and the rest was for the priests’ food. The priests didn’t eat secular food. They ate the meal offering and the peace offering. The peace offering is so rich: there is a portion for God, a portion for the offering people, a portion for the ministering priests, and a portion for the priests’ family. There is also a portion for others. This is the peace offering because this is the offering that satisfies every party. So we all are satisfied; we all have peace; we all have joy; we all have the enjoyment with satisfaction. This is the real peace! Hallelujah! This is to offer Christ to God for His food and to eat Christ ourselves and to rejoice in what we eat. Don’t forget these three words: offer, eat, and rejoice. This is to meet! Offer Christ! Eat Christ! Rejoice in Christ!