Being Built Up Together

In Exodus 25. What is the building for? What is the building for? For God to dwell in. That’s a little. Let’s hear some more. For the priests to dwell in? Fine. Now, you’ve got one plus one. All you need now is the equivalent of what? That God and man might live together as one. Why? Tell me why. Why does he want it? Praise the Lord, that from Thy house He might express his image and have dominion upon the earth. We’ll find out dominion even in other places, but anyway, that He might mingle Himself with man and the two might be one, to express the image of God through man upon the earth by the Life of God in Christ, put into man by the Spirit, to express God upon the earth and to have His authority.

Now, brothers and sisters, for God to have this, he has got to have a corporate building. He has got to have a corporate building together. His children must give themselves to a practical corporate building together; otherwise, you will never know the life of the tent, the life of the house, the life of the tabernacle, the life of the temple. The Lord Jesus Christ came to earth and presented himself as the tabernacle. The tabernacle was the life of man, and God mingled together. And having presented Himself as the tabernacle, He went back to that Old Testament time when the house of God was first mentioned, and he said, you shall see the angels of God ascending and descending upon me, at the gate of heaven, down to the earth. This is the house of God, the gates of heaven to the very earth. God and man mingled together. You are seeing the tabernacle expressed upon the earth, and when they looked at Jesus Christ, they saw God. And when He went out into the midst of the sea, and He said, “be still,” and it shut up. It became like a spring evening on the water. He expressed the dominion of God and the authority of God upon the earth.

Then He said, I must fall into the earth and die, that I might bring first out of this many grains, grains that will become a loaf: one loaf. Now, listen. This is what the Lord said, just as He gave the pattern. “And let them make me a house, that I may dwell among them. Not in them, not mingled and blended yet, but that I might live among them, according to all that I show you, after the pattern of this tabernacle and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall you make it.

Now, will you turn with me to Exodus 26?  Exodus 26:15. And thou shalt make boards for the tabernacle of acacia wood standing up. Ten cubits shall be the length of the board, and a cubit and a half shall be the breadth of one board, and two tenons shall there be in one board, set in order one against the other: thus, thou shalt make for all the boards of the tabernacle.

Now then, here is the fixture of the tabernacle itself. The mingling of God with man. Outside is the boundary line that separates the world from the building of God. God expressing Himself upon this earth and having authority; God in the midst of his creation. Man, in order to enter the tabernacle, must go through totally and completely the altar of judgment to deal with the world. Then he must come and be willing to be exposed, completely, that he might be washed. All that is brass.

Now, then, you come into the tabernacle and see the gold and the silver and the fine twined linen, and this is a picture now of the building itself. God says for the temple to be raised up, man must eat the bread, light the lamp, and offer up the incense that he might work in the gold, that he might work in the pearl, that he might work in the silver and the stone, that he might raise up among his people a building: a building that is God and man mingled together to show their God on this earth. And when he came to picture the tabernacle itself, he came to something so mysterious, I’m not sure the Lord can give me utterance for it.

Brothers and sisters, this is a picture. This is a picture, and the picture grows. The temple… when we see the temple… it grows. When you see the Lord, it’s even more expanded. You see the church, it’s even more expanded. And then there’s the final consummation of the age when it’s all stones. But brothers and sisters, those boards…what will those boards be when the tabernacle comes in and takes the land and the temple is done? What will the board be? What will the boards be? They will be…say it real loud and boldly, Brother Bob. Stones. What stones, brother? Which stones? Any particular stones? Alright, it’s the stones that are the very wall of the building. What those boards are now – those boards will be torn down. The temple will be built, and what is a board now will be the stone then. But that’s still a picture, isn’t it? Is that right? That’s still a picture. Okay, Praise the Lord.

Here’s the tabernacle, and it’s movable. It’s portable, and the tabernacle is surrounded by a wall of curtains that is not the tabernacle. You come to the tabernacle, and above it is the headship of Christ. Then the tabernacle is built of boards all around, all the way around. Forty and forty and six, and we’ll talk about the front later. Now, here are boards and here are boards and here are boards, and the boards are strong acacia wood that had been overlaid with gold. Now then, later we shall come into the city of Jerusalem, and we shall build a temple. The temple will look very, very much like the tabernacle. There will be the ark inside. The ark will stay the same. Then there will be a room built called the Holy of Holies around the ark. Then, in front of that will be the Holy Place. Each one of the things of the tabernacle will be put aside, and something new will be built: solid to stand there. And as you expand the temple, the very temple itself is the same as the boards were for the tabernacle. The tabernacle, the outward, all around the four sides, are gold boards of acacia wood, made of gold, all the way around like this. See? Then, when they build a city, instead of gold boards, they build with stones. Now, you have it. Praise the Lord, brother, and it’s enlarged. That’s correct.

Why was it portable? They were not in the land. They did not have the proper ground upon which to pitch that thing. There was no floor. Brother, there was no floor in the tabernacle. It was a dirt floor. They had not yet the proper ground to put it on. But when they came to build the temple, gold was now represented and pictured by stone. Now, this is still a great mystery. The stones still represent something. What do they represent? What are they? Nobody knows. Gene is going to spiritualize again. What are the stones? This is exactly… you’ll say, oh, I can’t take this. My mind can’t comprehend it. Alright, here we go.

Do you know that in the Old Testament, even those gold boards represented the priest? All these things…the Lord has a little picture here, a little picture there, a little picture there, all of them to picture one thing. He had a priesthood. He said, ” Alright, I shall have people who do nothing but minister to me.” Those priests lived together. Where was their home? Where did they sleep at night? They slept in the tent, the tabernacle. And what did they eat? Their food was the offerings, offered to God. That’s all they lived on. So, they slept in the tabernacle, they drank in the tabernacle, and they lived in the tabernacle, and they were built together under the headship of Christ. They were all hooded. The instructions they got came from where? It came from the ark. God spoke to the priests out of the ark. They even got their direction for themselves and for the whole nation in there…

(Parenthesis) Well, don’t worry. We’ve got a week to spend on the tabernacle, on the priesthood. The Holy of Holies was entered once a year for atonements. It’s not clear… But let me say two things. One of them is that, in times of urgency, they went into the ark’s room to get the instructions from God, and there were times they even brought the ark out to fight battles. So, it wasn’t like that room could only be entered once a year, but I’ll give you a little secret. There was something of the ark borne upon the priest, a symbol of the ark on the priest themselves. Here is how they came to the Lord and learned from Him. There were also times the Lord spoke out of the tabernacle; the tabernacle itself. They got their instructions from within. Deep within. Okay.