The book of Exodus reveals God’s salvation and the building of His habitation. Yes, the man created by God fell, and the man selected and called by God also fell. But God is God, and He was not disappointed. Nothing can stop Him or annul His purpose. After man had fallen to the uttermost, God came in to rescue fallen man. After redeeming His fallen people, God brought them to a point where He built them together to be His dwelling place on earth. Thus in Exodus we see two main things-God’s redemption and God’s habitation.
The word exodus means “the way out.” What we see in the book of Exodus is the way to get out of man’s fall. Genesis ends with man in a coffin in Egypt, but in Exodus there is the way out of this coffin, the way out of this box of death. This way out involves God’s redemption. God’s redemption is to bring us out of the coffin and back to Himself.
In Exodus those who had been brought back to God were charged to build a tabernacle, a dwelling place, for God. This indicates that God is able not only to bring fallen man out of death but also able to use this man to build a dwelling place for Him on earth. Whereas at the end of Genesis there is a coffin containing a dead body, at the end of Exodus there is a tabernacle containing the living God. What a great advancement this is!
In Genesis we have God’s creation and man’s fall, and in Exodus we have God’s redemption and God’s habitation. We praise the Lord that because of God’s redemption we are no longer in the fall. Through redemption we have been brought into God’s habitation, which for us today is the church. The tabernacle as God’s habitation in Exodus typifies the church. God’s habitation today is the church, and we are in it.
Exodus 40 speaks of the tabernacle, but Leviticus 1:1, which is the continuation of Exodus, speaks of the tent of meeting. These two terms refer to the same thing. The tabernacle is a dwelling place, and the tent of meeting is a meeting place. The tabernacle is for God’s habitation, for. His dwelling, and the tent of meeting is for the meeting of His people. The tabernacle is God’s habitation, yet this habitation is also the center where God’s people meet. Hence, it is called the tent of meeting. The tent of meeting is a place for the meeting of God and His redeemed people. Today the church is the tabernacle and the tent of meeting. God has a dwelling place on earth, and this dwelling place is also a meeting place for us to meet with one another and to meet together with God. What is the church? The church is the meeting of the saved ones with the saving God.
As soon as the tabernacle was built and set up, God came to dwell in it (Exo. 40:2, 33-35). The God who indwells the tabernacle has become the God dwelling among men. God is no longer merely in the heavens. It is impossible for us to go to the heavens to meet with God. But God came to tabernacle among us (John 1:14). This means that God became incarnated to be a man, and this man became God’s tabernacle on earth. God came down from the heavens and took on the form of man, and now God can be touched.
The four Gospels reveal that the God who was in the heavens and who was untouchable one day became a tabernacle, a man on earth. Having come down to earth, He presents Himself to us not in the form of God but in the form of man. Who is this One? Is He man or is He God? He is the God-man. Our God today is not only in the heavens as God, for He, the God-man, came to earth in the form of man to be a tabernacle.
The tabernacle in Exodus was enterable. By being incarnated our God not only became a man; He also became an enterable tabernacle. God destined all the children of Israel to be priests (Exo. 19:6) that all might have the right and the privilege to enter the tabernacle, that is, to enter into God and dwell in God. In the Old Testament the priests could enter the tabernacle, and today we, the believers in Christ, can enter into God and dwell in Him. The New Testament speaks of abiding in God (1 John 4:15, 13; 3:24; 2:6). To abide in God is to dwell in God. The incarnated God has become our dwelling place, our home, as a place of enjoyment.
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