Some aspects of the truth concerning the matter of the meeting of God’s people have been somewhat hidden and missed by Christians for centuries. Most Christian meetings today are mainly either traditional, natural, religious, or just according to people’s taste. If I am a person who likes to be quiet, I would attend a quiet meeting. If I am a person who likes to be excited, I would attend some exciting meetings.
In the previous thirteen messages we have covered three crucial and main points. First of all those messages have opened the veil to show us that in God’s redemption His intention is to have a people on the earth who are meeting as a feast unto Him. According to Exodus 12:14 God ordained His redeemed people to meet together for a feasting unto Him. This means not only before Him, but also with Him.
Feasting, of course, mainly implies two things: meeting and eating. Firstly you need people coming together. You cannot have a feast by yourself or even with your wife. To have a feast you need to have a meeting, and the more people, the better. Also feasting implies eating. If you come together, but with nothing to eat, that is not a feast. That may be a kind of emptiness or vanity. When God’s people came out of Egypt in the ancient time, there were probably two million. When they came together to feast, what a feast that was!
Such a feast was unto the Lord. This means they feasted before God and with God. Today in the church meetings we are feasting before God and also with God. When we are feasting before the Lord, God is happy, and we also are happy.
Secondly, for such a feasting—meeting before God and with God—there is the need of two things: a dwelling place and the offerings. In the record of Exodus they were firstly feasting in the wilderness. There were no houses or lodgings—just wilderness. So there was the need of a dwelling place, the tabernacle. The tabernacle was the dwelling place of God. God dwelt there, and His people also dwelt there.
According to the picture presented in Exodus, while they were in the wilderness, the children of Israel were either traveling or camping. When they camped, it was around God’s tabernacle which was called the tent of meeting. There was the tent of meeting with all the camps. Their camping was also a meeting. While they were camping, God was camping among them.
As they were camping in the wilderness, they spent much time to build a wonderful tabernacle with all its furniture and utensils. That tabernacle signified not only Christ but also God’s people in a collective sense to be a dwelling place for God and for all those who loved Him and served Him.
To enter into that dwelling place, there was the need of the offerings. The offerings were needed because God is God, and man is man. Because of the fall there is a gap between God and man. We need some offerings to bridge the gap, to bring us from the altar into the tabernacle. The main offerings, of course, were the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering. The subordinate offerings were the wave offering, the heave offering, the drink offering, the vows, and the free-will offerings. All these offerings are bridges to bring us to the other side, that is, into the tabernacle.
The third crucial point we have covered is that Christ, the incarnated God, is both the tabernacle and the offerings. One book in the New Testament, the Gospel of John, points out that the incarnated God, Christ, is the tabernacle. John 1:14 reads, “And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, (and we beheld His glory, glory as of an only begotten from a father), full of grace and reality.” In writing his Gospel John used the word tabernacled for dwelling. He used the word tabernacle in the verbal form to denote what the incarnated God intended to do. God incarnated intended to be the tabernacle.
Before the incarnation God was invisible and mysterious, but after the incarnation, there was something solid, visible, and touchable—the tabernacle. As the tabernacle, Christ is enterable! He is not only visible, solid, and touchable, but also enterable. We can walk into God as our tabernacle. I can testify that for so many years I have entered into God and even traveled in God. This is a wonderful fact! “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us” (John 1:1, 14). How marvelous! The mysterious, invisible God became solid, visible, touchable, and enterable. You can dwell in Him as the tabernacle and travel through Him day and night.