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In this chapter we want to see the revelation concerning Christ as the offerings for the church meetings. In the tabernacle we see how the building up of the church is realized. In all the offerings we see how the meetings of the church can be carried out. Both the tabernacle and the offerings show that Christ is the content of the church, and the church is the expression of Christ. On the one hand, the church is always in the process of being built up. On the other hand, the church life is a life of meetings. In other words, the church building is one thing, and the church life is another thing. The tabernacle typifies mostly the building aspect, and the offerings typify mostly the life aspect. We always come together to express Christ, who is our content, in many aspects. These aspects are typified clearly by all the offerings. The offerings are for the church life, and the church life is a life of meetings.
In Exodus the tabernacle was built up. Then Leviticus shows us that the service of the Lord’s children is a service of meetings. If you do not have the meetings, you do not have the service. The tabernacle is called the Tent of Meeting (Lev. 1:1). Inwardly, it is a tabernacle, the dwelling place of God. Outwardly, it is a tent of the people’s meetings. In Exodus is the building up of the tabernacle. In Leviticus are the meetings at this tabernacle. The meetings are the most important virtues of the life of God’s people. The life of the people of God is a life of meetings. Thus, the building up of the church is seen in Exodus, and the life of the church, a life of meetings, is seen in Leviticus.
The life of the children of God is a life of meetings, and the most important and central thing in all the meetings is to offer Christ in many different aspects. The different kinds of offerings are types of the different aspects of Christ. Thus, the center of the life of God’s people is the Christ offered to God. The central thing in the meetings is the different aspects of Christ as the offerings, so Christ is the center of our church life.
The people of Israel could have something to offer only by laboring on the good land. The good land is a type of the all-inclusive Christ. The people of Israel had been brought into the good land, and the good land had been allotted to them in lots as their particular portion. God has given Christ in “lots” to us as our portion. Colossians 1:12 says, “Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you for a share of the allotted portion of the saints in the light.” Colossians reveals that Christ is our portion as our inheritance just as the land of Canaan was to the children of Israel. Each of us has a portion of Christ.
Some in the good land were lazy and became so poor that they had to sell their portion of the land to others. But they were not allowed to give up their portion forever. Every fifty years there was a jubilee, in which all the lots were returned to those who had sold them (Lev. 25:8-17). In a certain sense, some brothers who were lazy and did not make their living on Christ “sold” their portion of Christ. God has brought us into Christ and has given Christ to us as our portion. Now we have to labor on the portion of Christ given to us. We need to labor on Christ to enjoy Him day by day. If we do not labor on Him, we cannot have a proper living as the people of God. This is because we have nothing on which to live.
Suppose that we are the Israelites who have been brought into Canaan and have each been allotted a portion of the good land. If we do not labor on our portion of the land, we will suffer poverty as a consequence, even though our portion is very rich. If we do not labor, we will have nothing to eat, nothing on which to live. Then we will become poor. This is not the proper living of the Lord’s children. The proper living of the Lord’s children is one of working on the portion given to us by God in fear and in love of Him. He will send us the adequate rain and sunshine to cause us to have a rich harvest. Then we will have some riches on which to live. Our rich harvest and rich life will give glory to Him.
Out of the produce of this rich harvest, we should keep and separate one-tenth, the best part, with which we can worship God. Thus, ninety percent is for our living, and ten percent is for the service, the worship, the meeting (Deut. 12:17-18). Three times a year the children of Israel all had to go to the Tent of Meeting and bring the top ten percent of their produce to offer to God for His worship (16:16). They had much to live on richly and also had something with which to serve God, to worship God, to meet with the children of God.
All of the children of Israel had the same rich land, sunshine, rain, and air, but those who were lazy and did not work hard would have no harvest, no produce. They would become poor, having nothing on which to live. Furthermore, they would come to the Tent of Meeting with their hands empty. This means that they would go to the meeting in a poor way, with nothing in their hands to offer, to contribute, with which they could worship God. This is the real picture of many Christians today. They have received Christ as their portion of the grace of God, but they do not labor on Christ. They have the sunshine, the rain, and the fresh air with the portion of the land, but they do not work on the land. They have Christ as their grace, but they do not labor on Christ because of their laziness. They rarely pray, contact the Lord, study the Word, or enjoy the Lord by feeding on the Lord through the prayerful reading of the Word. They have very little exercise of the spirit to contact the Lord or to do something for the Lord. There are many poor Christians today. They are not poor in the grace they have received, but poor in the produce of grace. Thus, spiritually speaking, they have nothing on which to live, and they do not have anything of Christ to bring with them to offer to God in the meeting.
If all of us were like this, we would have empty meetings. If all the children of Israel had come to the feast with empty hands, with nothing to offer, that would have been a “feast of empty hands.” They would have had nothing on which to feast. Instead, they would have had emptiness due to their laziness. This is a real picture of today’s Christian meetings. In such meetings there is nothing of Christ as the riches, as the reality, as the rich content, to express. So there is the sense and expression of emptiness. There is an exhibition of emptiness and poverty.
Sometimes we would think that we have to learn to be humble by saying that we have nothing, but this is not humility. This is emptiness. To say that you have something of Christ is not to be proud but to be faithful to speak the truth. When the Israelites came to the priest to offer something, they did not tell him that they did not have anything. In order to worship God, they had to have something.
The life of God’s people is first a life of laboring on Christ. Second, it is a life of having something of Christ to bring to the meetings to offer, to contribute. The proper life of Christians is to labor on Christ all the time. Then they will have the rich surplus of Christ to bring to the meetings for a rich exhibition of Christ. We exhibit Christ to God and to God’s enemy. The children of Israel had to come to Jerusalem three times a year for three feasts: the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Tabernacles. They brought the top surplus to the Tent of Meeting for God’s worship. We also have to bring the top surplus of Christ to the church meetings for our worship to God in spirit and reality (John 4:24).
According to Numbers 18, all the things offered by the people of Israel were referred to as wave offerings and heave offerings. These are not two kinds of offerings but one offering with two aspects: the wave aspect and the heave aspect. The word wave implies a back and forth movement, and the word heave means to lift up. The wave offering signifies the resurrected Christ, and the heave offering signifies the ascended Christ. Christ offered Himself in His death, and He became the resurrected and ascended One. Resurrection and ascension are always related to each other. The resurrected Christ is the ascended Christ.
Everything which we enjoy of Christ is something of resurrection and ascension. Whenever we have something of Christ to bring to the church meeting to express Christ, this is always something of resurrection and ascension. We may testify that Christ is our comfort or wisdom. He is our comfort and wisdom only by His resurrection and ascension. The resurrected and ascended Christ is our comfort and wisdom.
Our experience of Christ can be classified into many items and can be typified by the five basic kinds of offerings: the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering. When we learn to live by Christ, to take Christ as our life, the indwelling Christ will enable us to live a life absolutely for God and not for ourselves. This is the real experience of Christ as the burnt offering (Lev. 1:1-17; Heb. 10:5-7). The indwelling Christ enables us not to live for ourselves in anything but to live for God in everything. Christ then becomes a living burnt offering within us as we live by Him, taking Him as our life.
When we have this experience of Christ, we can offer what we have in the church meeting. We may offer a praise by saying, “Lord, we praise You that You are the One living within us to enable us to live a consecrated and separated life.” Such a praise, giving of thanks, testimony, or message is the offering of Christ as the burnt offering. When we offer Him in such a way, He is exhibited, expressed, and exalted.
We can also experience Christ as the meal offering (Lev. 2:1-16). When we take Christ as our life, we will have a refined daily life in our behavior and conduct. We will be fine and pure in our humanity like the fine flour of the meal offering. This offering is composed of fine flour mingled with oil. It signifies how Christ lives in us so that we may have a proper, refined, and balanced human life. This is pleasant and sweet to God and man.
When we come to the meetings, we can give a testimony, a message, or some praise and thanksgiving that will be an offering of Christ as the meal offering for the enjoyment of God and man. We may say, “Lord, we were rough people, but thank You for becoming our meal offering. We can take You as our refined, even, balanced, and pure life. Thank You that we can be pleasant, not by ourselves but by You as our life.” We can offer this kind of praise if we have the experience, the surplus. If we live by Christ day by day, He will cause us to have a proper human living, to have the fine, sweet, proper human behavior.
Now we come to the experience of Christ as the peace offering (3:1-17; 7:11-21). The peace offering signifies Christ as the fellowship. When we have Christ in our living, this Christ who is practical to us will be our fellowship with God and others. When we can have fellowship with God by Christ, this is the peace with God. When we can have fellowship with man, this is the peace with man. The peace offering is Christ as our fellowship with God and man. When we have peace with a brother, that means we have fellowship with him. The more we experience Christ, the more fellowship we will have, and this fellowship is the peace. Then we can offer this experience of Christ to God in the church meetings through our thanksgiving, praise, testimony, or message. This is not doctrinal but practical. The peace offering is Christ Himself as the mutual enjoyment between us and God and between us and others. Thus, we enjoy Christ as our peace with fellowship.
We also need to enjoy Christ as our sin offering (4:1-35). We should never forget that we still have a sinful nature. Regardless of how much we live by Christ and enjoy Christ, we still have our flesh and our sinful nature, so we need Christ as our sin offering to deal with our sinful nature. Someone may pray, “Lord, we are still in our old nature. Forgive us. We thank You that You have died for us and have been made sin for us. We apply Your blood for our cleansing.” This is the offering of Christ as the sin offering.
After the sin offering, there is the trespass offering (5:1-19), signifying how Christ deals with our sinful deeds. The sin offering deals with the sinful nature within. The trespass offering deals with the sinful deeds without. We need to confess our failures, mistakes, wrongdoings, and shortcomings and apply Christ as our trespass offering. The burnt offering, meal offering, and peace offering are the main items for our experience, whereas the sin offering and trespass offering are subsidiary.
Whenever we come together, regardless of the kind of meeting we have, we should come with the Christ experienced by us. Sometimes we offer Him to God as the burnt offering. At other times we may offer Him as the meal offering. In the Lord’s table meeting, we can offer Him as the peace offering for our fellowship with God and man in peace. At the same time, we cannot forget that we are still in the old, sinful nature and that we are sinful in our deeds. Then we can apply Him as our sin offering and trespass offering. In this way the surplus of Christ is offered to God and exhibited to the whole universe. Then our meetings will be enriched and strengthened because they are full of Christ. Such a church life is an exhibition of Christ, an expression of Christ.
Christ will be expressed through us not only in the building up of the church but also in the church life, in all the meetings of the church. Then we will bear a testimony of being united and built up in Christ to be an expression of Christ. Also, when Christ is offered to God in the church meetings in many aspects, the church meetings will be the expression of Christ.
Thus, with the church there are the building aspect and the life aspect. The life aspect depends on the meetings. In all the meetings we should have something of Christ to offer. This depends on our daily labor on Christ. If we daily labor on Christ, we will have something of Christ to bring to our church meetings to contribute to others and offer to God so that we can enjoy Christ with God for the exhibition and exaltation of Christ. Then Christ will be expressed as the rich content of the church life.
