There were two main matters related to the worship in the Old Testament. According to Deuteronomy 12 to 16, the first main item was the place appointed by God as the center of worship, which eventually was Jerusalem. All the worshippers of God in the Old Testament time had to go to Jerusalem, to the very spot chosen and appointed by God. This kept the oneness of the people of Israel. No Israelite had any right to set up another place as a center for worship. If they would have had that right, it would have been too easy to have divisions. The unique, central place was the very factor which kept the unity of the people of Israel for all their generations.
Throughout thousands of years on this earth there has always been only one temple; there have never been two. All the people of Israel knew that no one had the right to choose any other place as a ground, a site, to raise up a temple. Even if they built a temple in Babylon exactly the same in size, shape, and material as the one Solomon built in Jerusalem, it would not have been the real temple, because it was not on the right ground. The right ground was the very factor that kept the oneness of the people of God.
According to Deuteronomy 12 to 16, the people had the right to enjoy every kind of produce of the good land of Canaan, but when they were going to enjoy that produce for the worship to God, they had no right to do it in any place other than the unique place, Jerusalem. This is God’s wisdom to keep the oneness. Later on, after the captivity, the Jewish people had many synagogues, but they never dared to have a second temple.
The second main item related to worship was all the types in the Old Testament. We need much time to learn the types. There were many types. The most basic one was the good land of Canaan into which the people of Israel were brought, which typifies Christ into whom the people of God today have been brought. This refers us to Genesis 1:9-10, in which on the third day of creation God brought the dry land out of the water of death. This signifies the resurrection of Christ; Christ as the land buried under the death water was raised on the third day. Out of that land came many different lives—the vegetable life, the animal life, and the human life, which is in the likeness of God. This typifies that all life comes out of the resurrected Christ. Later this land became the good land of Canaan, which God prepared for His people. In this way, the people of Israel being brought into the good land typifies that we today have been brought into Christ, who is our good land.
After being brought into the good land, the people of Israel lived in the land, by the land, and with the land. They walked in it, moved in it, worked in it, and did everything in it. They obtained their food, their clothing, and their dwelling place from this land. They had everything for their living from the land. This also is a type, typifying that Christ is everything to us. We have to walk in Him, do things in Him, move in Him, and live in, live by, and live with Him. We also obtain our food, clothing, and dwelling place from Him. All that we need is in Christ.
There is a saying that a picture is better than a thousand words. For this reason, I like the Old Testament more than the New Testament. Many people say that the New Testament is better, but in a sense the Old Testament is better than the New, because as young children we need a “kindergarten” that teaches with pictures. If we tell a little child about a dog, he may not know what a dog is, but if we show him a picture of a dog, he will right away understand. We need the Old Testament to show us the pictures. We need to spend time to meditate and pray about the good land and how much the good land meant to the people of Israel. Everything they needed came out of the good land. The record of the good land speaks of many things, including vegetables, animals, minerals such as brass and iron, mountains, rivers, and springs. From these unsearchable riches of the good land the people of God received all that they needed.
Whenever the people of God came to worship God, they were commanded not to come with their hands empty. They had to come with their hands full of the surplus of the produce of the good land. We use the word surplus because the people of Israel put aside a certain portion of their produce from the good land for the purpose of God’s worship. We usually think of this portion as a tithe of one-tenth, but if we study Leviticus through Deuteronomy carefully, we find that the people put aside at least three portions of one-tenth (Deut. 16:16). They had to put aside one-tenth, another tenth, and another tenth of the produce they obtained from the good land, not for their own living but for the purpose of worshipping God. In this way, whenever they came together to worship God they brought a surplus of the produce of the good land to God.