Concerning the items within the tabernacle, we have to start from the Ark. The Ark is sometimes called the Ark of the Testimony, because hidden within it were the tablets of the covenant that God made with the children of Israel. The law that was written on the tablets was on the one hand a covenant and on the other hand a testimony, the testimony of God. Therefore, the Ark is also called the Ark of the Testimony.
What then is the testimony of God? In a simple word, the Ten Commandments are the testimony of God. We may have an inaccurate concept of the Ten Commandments, thinking that the Ten Commandments are not good because they always put demands on us and that since today we are no longer under the law, we can put the law aside. This kind of concept is not completely accurate. We need to see that the Ten Commandments are not only the laws of God and the demands of God but also the explanation and revelation of God. The laws and commandments declare to us God’s nature, intention, procedures, and ways so that we may know what kind of God He is in the universe. Hence, we may say that the Ten Commandments are the embodiment of God. God could not have drawn a picture of Himself for the Israelites, because then they would have worshipped His picture throughout all the generations. Therefore, God used the Ten Commandments to explain Himself and testify of Himself. Hence, the Ten Commandments are the testimony of God. Furthermore, the Ten Commandments as the testimony of God were placed in the Ark, which was made of wood overlaid with gold, and this Ark was called the Ark of the Testimony.
The Ark of the Testimony in the tabernacle was a type of Christ. The gold signifies divinity, and the wood signifies humanity. Hence, the ark made of wood overlaid with gold typifies the Lord Jesus as the One with two natures—the divine nature and the human nature. He was God who became a man, and in Him were the human nature and the divine nature. Divinity and humanity were completely mingled in Him. Therefore, the Lord Jesus was the reality of the Ark of the Testimony. The spiritual meaning of the Ten Commandments being placed in the Ark of the Testimony is that the entire explanation of God is in Christ. Christ is the explanation and embodiment of the invisible God. If you want to know what God is like, you have to come to Christ to find out. This is exactly like the situation in the New Jerusalem. In the New Jerusalem, Christ is the lamp and God is the light, and God as the light shines through Christ as the lamp. Therefore, Christ is the testimony of God, and as such, He is the source of all our experiences in the Holy Place.
Because Christ has become our life, we can experience Him as our bread of life. Therefore, we come to the showbread table, which is the second piece of furniture in the tabernacle. The fact that the showbread table was also made of wood overlaid with gold spiritually means that it comes out from the Ark of the Testimony. The Christ with two natures, divinity and humanity, is the heavenly bread given by God to us that we can live by Him in the presence of God.
The third item of furniture in the tabernacle is the golden lampstand. Whenever we experience Christ as our food and our life supply, inwardly we become bright and shining. In the morning if you do not eat the Lord to the full and once again enjoy the Lord, then you will not only be empty but also dark within. Your condition will be like that of the earth in Genesis 1, which says that there was “waste and emptiness, and darkness was on the surface of the deep” (v. 2). However, in the morning if you properly enjoy the Lord as the bread of life by eating and drinking of Him to the full, and if you are satisfied in this way, then inwardly you will be bright. This is exactly the order of our experience. The satisfaction with the bread of life brings in the shining of the light of life. Therefore, the golden lampstand is a type of the incarnated Lord Jesus entering into us to be our light of life.