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Scripture Reading: Lev. 3:1-5; 7:11-15, 28-34; 16:3, 5
Before we get into the details of the enjoyment of Christ as our peace offering, we need to see something concerning the basic divine principles. We who are believers in the Lord Jesus all know that God is our portion. He is not only our Creator; He is also our portion. In order for Him to be our portion, He has to be our life and life supply. He even has to be everything to us. If you spend some time to cover all the sixty-six books of the Bible, you can pick up many wonderful nouns and terms and names ascribed to God. For example, God intends to be our Father, our comfort, and our encouragement. He intends to be our light, our life, our strength, our power, and even our authority.
In the Bible these few words are really troublesome: strength, might, power, and authority. Especially in the New Testament these four words are used. God is our strength. God is our might. God is our power. God is our authority. If you go further, you would see that God is our energy. It is really difficult to define these words. It is difficult to know the difference between energy and strength, between strength and might, between might and power, between power and authority. It is really hard for people to differentiate between these terms, but the Bible has differentiated these things because God is everything to us in a detailed way.
God is everything to us — our clothing, our food, and even our beauty. Sisters, when you are adorning yourself, do not beautify yourself by other things. You have to beautify yourself by God and with God. God has to be your beauty and your glory. He also has to be your virtue. In his second Epistle Peter tells us that God has called us by His own glory and virtue (1:3). The preposition by can also be translated “to.” This word has a double meaning. This means that God has called us by His glory and virtue to His glory and virtue. Although it may be difficult for us to understand the difference between glory and virtue, He is these two items to us. God is so many things to us.
But although God is so many things to us, do you know how to participate in and to enjoy God as your portion? This is a very practical matter, yet through all the generations it has been missed and lost among God’s people. I do not have the assurance that many of you realize the biblical and revealed way to participate in God as our portion. Colossians 1:12 says that the Father has qualified us for a share of the allotted portion of the saints in the light. The word portion actually means “lot.” When the children of Israel entered into the good land, each one was allotted a portion of land. That became his lot, his portion.
God is our portion, but the poor thing is that we do not know how to possess the portion. Even the word possess is not adequate. Actually, we do not know how to enjoy our portion. We may possess our portion and yet still not know how to enjoy it. For example, you may possess a lot of groceries in your refrigerator, yet you do not know how to enjoy them. The Bible reveals to us that the real possessing is the real enjoyment. If you do not know how to enjoy God as your portion, you surely do not know how to possess God as your portion.
We are still fellowshipping concerning the meetings. Why have the Christian meetings all become Christian services? There is a big difference. The Christian meetings are very biblical, but the Christian services are something traditional. Christian service is not such a good term. It is a term of degradation among today’s Christians. When the Christian meetings degraded, they all became a kind of service. This happens because the believers do not know how to enjoy God. When they come together, they come with nothing, because they do not enjoy God within them. They come empty-handed. They have God only in name. They do not have the very God in reality for their enjoyment.
John 1 is a crucial chapter. It tells us that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us” (vv. 1, 14). This means that the flesh is the tabernacle. Now you can see that these four things are one: God, the Word, the flesh, and the tabernacle. These are not four separate things. They are not even four things in four steps or four stages. They are one thing in four different aspects. God is the Word. The Word became flesh. And the flesh is the tabernacle.
Verse 14 goes on to tell us that when God as the Word became flesh to be the tabernacle, grace and reality, or truth, came. Two new aspects were added. Now you may say that grace and reality are the tabernacle. When the tabernacle is here, you enjoy grace, and you touch reality. Some Christians who know these spiritual, biblical terms, grace and truth, would define grace as “unmerited favor,” and they would mainly consider truth to be doctrine.
Have you ever heard that grace is the tabernacle? Have you ever heard that the truth is the tabernacle? If you have never entered into the tabernacle, you do not know what truth is, and you do not know what grace is. When you enter into the tabernacle, you not only know the grace; you enjoy the grace. Grace is more than unmerited favor. Grace is free enjoyment. Grace to us today is the free enjoyment of God. Today we enjoy grace, the processed Triune God as the all-inclusive, life-giving, and indwelling Spirit. This is our portion. We have the enjoyment of such a God who is processed, who is triune, who is all-inclusive, who is indwelling, who is the Spirit. The enjoyment of such a God is grace. Our God is processed, and now He is such a Spirit. He is also indwelling us in our spirit. He has been located. If you are seeking God, you do not need to go anywhere. He is in your spirit. Is this not wonderful?
He is in your spirit, but how shall you enjoy Him? This is a mystery. I have used our physical body many times in the past as an illustration. Our physical being does have a bios, a biological life. Not even doctors who have been working on this body for years can tell us the mystery of the bios in our body. This life is here, but no one can fully understand it. It is too mysterious. We also have a spirit. This is mysterious, but it is not superstitious. Do not forget that even electricity is a mystery. Although it is mysterious, it is still believable.
We must know how to enjoy the processed and even located God. If we do not know how to enjoy God, we could never have the proper meeting. Our meetings would become services. We would need either some bishops or pastors or ministers or preachers or elders or leading ones to take care of the meetings. They would need to take care of the meetings because you come with nothing. You come empty-handed. Whenever you come with nothing and someone else has to function, that is a service. We all have to hate that kind of thing. To have the proper meeting needs the proper enjoyment of the very God whom we have.
This is why we come to the Gospel of John. This Gospel tells us the way to enjoy the very God. In the beginning was God, and this God was the Word. This Word became flesh, and this flesh is the tabernacle. The tabernacle is just the grace we enjoy and the truth we realize. After this comes a seventh aspect, the Lamb of God (1:29). In chapter after chapter there are so many items in the Gospel of John for us to enjoy.
This book also shows us the way to enjoy this wonderful portion, who is our processed, located, and indwelling God. This Gospel has the only verse in the entire Bible that says the Lord Jesus is the way. Many Christians have applied this verse to their situation, saying that the Lord is the way for them to get a job, that the Lord is the way for them to get a wife, and that the Lord is the way for them to discipline and educate and teach their children. Of course, this is not bad, but it is not adequate.
You have to learn to apply Christ as the way to enjoy God. Have you ever prayed this way? You can pray, “O Father, I do not know how to enjoy You, but the Son, Jesus Christ, whom You have given me, is the way.” If you read John 14:6 in its context, you can see that Christ is the way for you to contact God and to enjoy God, not just for you to get a job or to get a wife. If you do not know how to take Christ as your way to enjoy God, you do not really know that He is the way. The Gospel of John shows us that Christ is the way to enter into God and to enjoy Him.
According to the types in the Old Testament, we can see clearly that no one is qualified in himself to enter into the tabernacle. Everyone who wants to enter into the tabernacle needs to pass by the altar where two offerings are needed — the sin offering and the trespass offering. Without these two offerings you are not qualified, and you have no way to enter into the tabernacle. If you enter into the tabernacle without these two offerings, you will die. God as the tabernacle is here and ready for us to enter so that we may enjoy grace and truth. But the problem is that you are a person with sin in your nature and with trespasses in all your behavior. How could such a person enter into this tabernacle? You need the Lamb of God.
Actually, the Gospel of John tells us even more. He is not only the Lamb to take away our sin; He is also the bronze serpent in chapter 3. He was such a bronze serpent lifted up on the tree, that is, on the cross, to nail the old serpent, Satan, to the cross. In chapter 1, as the Lamb of God, He took away our sin. In chapter 3, as the bronze serpent, He nailed Satan, the old serpent, the source of all the problems, on the cross.
It is through Christ as our sin offering and our trespass offering that we enter into the tabernacle. Without the offerings we do not have the qualification to enter into the tabernacle. We come to the altar, to the cross, not just to come to the altar but to enter into the tabernacle. We come to the cross with the intention of entering into the processed, tabernacled God. Our intention is not to enter into God in the third heaven. If He is only in the third heaven, we cannot enter into Him. But He is the tabernacled God in our spirit! You must realize that His tabernacling is His dwelling and even His indwelling.
According to the concept in the New Testament, tabernacling and indwelling are synonyms. When God is indwelling you, that means that He is tabernacling in you. We come to the cross, taking Him as our sin offering and our trespass offering with the intention of entering into the tabernacled God. And this God into whom we enter is not so simple. Even the tabernacle as a type is not so simple. It had an outer court and an inner court. It had so many items of furniture, including the table of the bread of the Presence, the lampstand, the Ark, and the incense altar. God is not so simple. We need to experience Him and to enjoy Him and to participate in Him.
The basic prerequisite to enjoying God is to take the offerings. In the last chapter we saw that there were five main offerings: the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering. But you should not consider that the five offerings are separate offerings, having nothing to do with one another. No, they are offerings related to one another. Actually, they are a group of offerings. You must see that this group of offerings is the way to enjoy our processed Triune God. Christ came as the tabernacle, and as the tabernacle He is all the offerings. These offerings are for us to enter into the tabernacle. We need to see how to participate in all these offerings. In other words, we need to see how to enjoy all these offerings.
The sin offering always directs us to the burnt offering, and the burnt offering is always reflected in the sin offering. Leviticus 16:3 and 5 put these two offerings together. Whenever Aaron as the high priest offered the sin offering, he also needed to offer the burnt offering. This means the burnt offering goes with the sin offering, and the sin offering directs us to the burnt offering.
This kind of light has come not just from the study of the Scriptures but also from experience. From my experience I have realized that there is no way to counter the sin in our nature but by being absolute to God. If we are absolute to God, this kills our sinful nature. Christ could be the sin offering for us because He was altogether absolute. So when we realize that we have sin in our nature, that our being is just sin, then we realize that we need the Lord Jesus as our sin offering. At that time we might pray, “O Father, I am so sinful. I am just the constitution and composition of sin. I am just the totality of sin. How could I be for You? It is impossible. Yet, thank You, Lord Jesus, You are absolutely for God. And You are absolutely for God in my stead and on my behalf.” By this kind of prayer you offer Christ as your sin offering to God, and at the same time you participate in Him as your burnt offering.
The sin offering directs us to the burnt offering, and the burnt offering is always reflected in the sin offering. If you offered Christ as your sin offering this morning, you surely realized that the Lord Jesus is also your burnt offering. When you taste the Lord Jesus as your sin offering, surely you also enjoy Him as your burnt offering. You have a sweet sensation within that you are acceptable to God, not because of what you are but because of Him and because of what He is. This is to enjoy Him as the sin offering that directs you to the burnt offering. And this is to enjoy Christ as your sin offering with the burnt offering reflected in the sin offering. In experience you cannot divide the sin offering from the burnt offering.
We also have seen that the trespass offering directs us to the meal offering and that the meal offering is reflected in the trespass offering. These two offerings also go together as a pair. The more you realize that you have a lot of trespasses, the more you will be directed to the meal offering. The more we contact others, the more opportunity we have to transgress and trespass. Forty-seven years ago in 1935 I went to the Lord in prayer. I just could not get up. The more I confessed, the more I had to confess. I confessed many trespasses against my brothers, against my wife, against the brothers in the church, and against so many others. I saw that I had trespassed in everything. Right away there was such an appreciation of the Lord Jesus. I am so imperfect and full of defects, but the Lord is so perfect. What is this? This is the meal offering reflected in the trespass offering.
If you would offer these two offerings, the sin offering and the trespass offering, again and again and again, eventually you would have all five offerings. You would have the sin offering with the burnt offering. You would have the trespass offering with the meal offering. In addition to these four offerings, you would also have the peace offering as a result of the other four. Eventually, the peace offering is the all-inclusive composition of the other four offerings. It is composed of the sin offering and the trespass offering and the burnt offering and the meal offering. All the elements and substances of these four offerings are composed together in the peace offering.
When you offer the burnt offering, you seldom offer it directly. Mostly you offer the burnt offering when you offer the sin offering. It is the same with the meal offering; you seldom offer it directly. Mostly you offer the meal offering when you offer the trespass offering. This means that within the peace offering you have the sacrifice of the sin offering and the sacrifice of the trespass offering and the sacrifice of the burnt offering and also the present of the meal offering. There is the food supply of the cakes and the wafers, and there is also the blood of the sin offering and the trespass offering. Furthermore, there is the burnt offering with the fat and the inward parts, which had to be burned on the altar as an offering by fire as a sweet savor to God. The burnt offering is an offering by fire, so a part of the peace offering is also a burnt offering.
In the peace offering there are many different kinds of cakes. The cakes must be either mingled with the oil or anointed with the oil. A few even had to be soaked, saturated, and mingled with the oil (Lev. 7:12). To anoint the cakes is to pour the oil upon the cakes. To mingle the oil with the cakes is something deeper. To soak or saturate the cakes is the deepest. As the fine flour, you should not only be anointed with the oil, but you should also be mingled with the oil and even soaked with the oil. You should let the oil enter into every fiber of your being. You must be anointed, you must be mingled, you must be saturated. Some today oppose the teaching of mingling. They consider this to be a kind of heresy. But I would like to declare that there is something even deeper than mingling, that is, saturating. This can be seen with the cakes of the meal offering in Leviticus 7:12. In this one all-inclusive offering, the peace offering, there is the element of the sin offering, the element of the trespass offering, the element of the burnt offering, and the element of the meal offering. This means that the peace offering includes all the other offerings.
The peace offering means that all the problems have been solved. All the requirements have been fulfilled. All the needs have been met. All the parties are satisfied. Furthermore, all the parties are now fellowshipping in the full enjoyment. This is the peace. If there are problems not yet solved, you do not have peace. If any requirement is not yet fulfilled, you do not have peace. If any need is not yet met, you do not have peace. If any party is not yet satisfied, you do not have peace. Even if these four things are taken care of, but you do not have a fellowshipping enjoyment with one another, you are still short of peace. Peace means so much! I do not think even this definition has exhausted the real meaning of the peace offering. The peace offering is the top offering. The peace offering indicates that there is no problem, no shortage, no want. There is a full enjoyment of fellowship with God and man and with man and God. Every meeting should be a peace offering. Christians today do not have the proper meetings, because they have not enjoyed Christ adequately as the peace offering.
Christ came as the tabernacle, and Christ as the tabernacle is all the offerings for us to enjoy Him. But how can you enjoy Him? The opening word of the preaching in the New Testament is repent (Matt. 3:2). This is the opening word for you to enjoy Christ as all the offerings so that you may enter into God as the tabernacle. It all depends upon repenting. After a sinner confesses his sins, right away he receives Christ as his Savior, as his Redeemer. It is more technically accurate to say that he receives Christ as his trespass offering. Our Savior, our Redeemer, is the trespass offering. We lay our hands upon Him as our trespass offering. He was crucified on the cross, bearing all our trespasses.
As we take Him as our trespass offering, at the same time we realize how perfect He is, how fine He is, how balanced He is, how complete He is. This is Christ as the meal offering reflected in our application of Him as our trespass offering. The way to enter into the enjoyment of the Lord Jesus as the offerings is to repent and make confession.
Shortly after you were saved, you probably began to realize that you are not just sinful outwardly in your conduct and in your doings but that you are, even the more, sinful in your nature. You are just sin itself. Then you confessed to the Lord and took Him as your sin offering. You treasured Him more, you appreciated Him more, and you realized that you are not for God at all, even though you may have been doing things for God. You realized that you are not so much for God but that Christ is.
This is why in the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offering, all the inward parts of the sacrifices were burned to God. The inward parts typify what Christ is within Himself before God. He is genuine; He is real; He is absolutely for God. So He is the burnt offering. When you apply Him as your sin offering, you realize and appreciate Him as your burnt offering. At the same time you have all the elements as the constituents and the components for you to have a complete offering, that is, a peace offering. And the way to enter into the enjoyment of the peace offering is to repent.
Every day we have to practice applying the Lord Jesus as our trespass offering and as our sin offering. Early in the morning you need to pray, “Lord, thank You that You have given me another day. Lord, I offer You anew as my sin offering and as my trespass offering for this day. Lord, I realize that I am sinful. I anticipate that from morning to evening I will trespass a lot today. Although by Your mercy and grace I would do my best not to trespass, still I will trespass. So, Lord, I take You as my trespass offering for my daily walk today.” This practice is to apply the Lord Jesus as your sin offering and as your trespass offering for today. By this you will have Him as the burnt offering reflected in your sin offering, and you will have Him as your meal offering reflected in your trespass offering. Believe me, the whole day you will enjoy Him as the burnt offering and as the meal offering. Then you will have the all-inclusive offering, the peace offering.
Some might oppose this kind of practice, saying that it brings people back to the Old Testament. They might argue that in the Old Testament they offered offerings every year and even every day, but that the New Testament tells us Christ’s offering is once for all. So we do not need to offer. That kind of teaching is absolutely scriptural, but it shows only one side, one aspect. It shows only the side of the accomplishment of the sin offering. The accomplishment of the sin offering was once for all, but to apply what the Lord Jesus is and has accomplished is a daily matter. This kind of practice is not a matter of the accomplishment of the sin offering or of the trespass offering. This is a matter of the daily application of these two offerings. Every day we have to offer Christ as our sin offering and our trespass offering. This will usher us into the enjoyment of the burnt offering and the meal offering, and this will consummate in the peace offering.
