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Scripture Reading: Deut. 12:5-7, 11-12; 14:22-23; Lev. 2:1-3; 3:9-11; 6:9, 12, 26; 7:5-6, 15, 19b, 29-34
In this chapter we come to this point, that is, when we meet, we meet to enjoy Christ with God. When most people go to a Christian gathering or a Christian meeting, they would not say that they go to offer something to God or even to enjoy something. Usually they say that they go to listen to the preaching or to listen to the Word or to worship. Of course, this is not wrong, but this is altogether from the human point of view concerning a religious meeting.
In the New Testament we have not been charged much to meet together. Of course, it does charge us, but not that much. The first time that the New Testament says something about Christians gathering together is in Matthew 18:20: “Where there are two or three gathered into My name, there am I in their midst.”
In the book of Acts the newly saved ones were not charged to meet together, but they gathered spontaneously every day. In Paul’s writings he did instruct us a little bit in 1 Corinthians 14 concerning how to meet. First Corinthians 14:26 may be considered the unique verse that tells us how to meet. This verse says that when we come together as the church, each one should have something. This one has a psalm. Another one has a teaching, and another one has a revelation. The last two are tongues and interpretation of tongues. This means that you have to come together with something. Using the Old Testament term, do not come empty-handed. You should come with something in your hand. You should be filled in order to come to the meeting to do something. But even in this verse Paul does not mention that you have to offer something and that you have to enjoy something and that you have to rejoice.
Once again you can see how the New Testament with its clear teaching in plain words needs the Old Testament picture to illustrate it. A picture is always better than a thousand words. Some things you just cannot describe by word. Suppose you try to describe my face by writing. You would need so many terms to describe the shape of the nose or the two lips. But if you simply have a photo, you can be so clear about my face. Right away you can see two ears and one nose. You can see two eyes and one mouth, two cheeks, and a forehead. You do not need to exhaust the dictionary. You can simply look at the photo. This is the reason that God teaches us in the Bible in somewhat of a kindergarten way. First, there are the pictures in the Old Testament; then there is the word in the New Testament.
In the Old Testament you do have an excellent and wonderful type of how to meet. In 1959 I had a thorough study of the Pentateuch with the saints in Taiwan. In that year the Lord showed us many marvelous things concerning how His people should meet. It was at that time we saw that God redeemed His people mainly for the purpose of meeting.
The children of Israel were down in Egypt, under the tyranny of Pharaoh and in the slavery of the Egyptians. But then they were redeemed and delivered out of that tyranny and slavery and brought into the wilderness. In Life-study of Exodus we pointed out that the word wilderness here is not a negative term. It is a positive word. The Lord said that He would bring His people into the wilderness to meet. In their meetings what did they do? They feasted with God and with one another. They feasted before God and with one another. God then spent a long time to train them how to meet in the way of feasting. God did not teach them how to sing a solo or a quartet. God did not write a hymn book for them. God did not even teach them to kneel down, to bow down, and to prostrate. He did not teach them how to be quiet, how to meditate, or even how to shout. That was not God’s teaching concerning His people’s meeting. The singings, the solos, the quartets, and being quiet or being noisy are all religious inventions.
I was born into Christianity. My mother’s grandfather was saved and became a Southern Baptist. I was the fourth generation Southern Baptist. Eventually, I turned to the Chinese Presbyterian church. But that disappointed me also. During that time I got saved through a young sister who was an evangelist. After I got saved, I was even more disappointed with the Chinese Presbyterians. Then I turned to the British Brethren, where I stayed for seven and a half years. But neither was I so satisfied with them. Later, I came into the inner life, and I felt it too was not satisfactory to me, so I went to taste something of Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism altogether makes a show. Nothing is hidden; everything is on the surface. There are no mystical things; everything is an exhibit. The Pentecostal meetings are like public shows. Neither was I satisfied with this.
When I was in the Philippines, I purposely went to the Catholic cathedrals a number of times to study the situation. I stayed there for a time to see how the people bought the candles and how they looked for a “saint.” Sometimes a lady would go to “Saint Teresa,” and the next time she would go to “Saint Mary.” I watched how they burned the candles and how they made their prayers to reduce the length of their parents’ time in purgatory.
When I was very young, even though I was born into Christianity, sometimes I was brought into the Buddhist temple, and I saw how the Buddhists worshipped their idols. In 1935 about seven or eight co-workers and I stayed with Brother Watchman Nee at the famous Western Lake. Around the lake on the shore were many temples full of idols. Every morning the worshippers went there to worship the idols, making some funny noises while they did it. I purposely went to watch their worship.
In 1958 I traveled through Europe. I went to Tehran, Persia, which is today’s Iran. I went to Baghdad, Iraq, and I went to Beirut, Lebanon. Wherever I went, I did my best to study how the people worshipped. When I was in Athens, Greece, I went purposely to the Greek Orthodox Church to contact their people and to study and to look at their worship. When I was in Jerusalem, I went to that square with the big denominations at the four corners: the Greek Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, the Protestant, and the Armenian. I saw all their services. I even went to the well in Samaria and paid two dollars to buy a cup of water brought up from that well by an Armenian monk. I have studied all these religious things. When I was in Jerusalem, I went to the second most important mosque of Islam. The first is in Mecca, and the second is in Jerusalem on Mount Zion. Probably it occupies the site of the old temple. The first thing that they ask you to do is to take off your shoes. We all took off our shoes and put on their so-called holy sandals. I noticed how the Muslims, the Arabs, worshipped God. In a big yard in the open air they all prostrated themselves on the ground. They worshipped there, not just for one hour, but nearly for half a day. My point is this: I found out that different religions all invented different ways to have their worship to God. I learned all these things before 1958.
Then in 1959, as I mentioned before, I had another time to study the Pentateuch. It was with the background of the study of all the different kinds of worships invented by all the different religions that the Lord showed me the unique worship that He actually wants.
After God created Adam and Eve, He did not command them to worship Him. The principle in Genesis 2 is the same as in Exodus and Leviticus. After God created man, God brought him not to the matter of worship but to the matter of eating. God did not charge Adam and Eve to worship but to eat. They should eat the right thing and eat rightly. Then they would get life. If they ate the wrong thing and ate wrongly, they would get death. After man’s fall, man saw his own nakedness, and he did something to cover his nakedness. Of course, God came in and did something. He made a covering of skin. However, the main thing mentioned in Genesis 3 is the matter of eating.
Abel was the second generation of mankind. What did he do? Did he worship God? Did he sing a hymn? Did he praise God? There is no record of such a thing. He offered the firstlings of his flock to satisfy God. Abel was the first priest because he offered the proper sacrifice to satisfy God, through which he was accepted by God. He was pleasing to God, and he was acceptable to God.
Do not think that the priests began from Aaron and his sons. Noah also was a priest. Furthermore, in Genesis there was a priest whose name was Melchizedek. What is a priest? Or who is a priest? It is one who offers some food to God, one who serves God, not by singing, not by praising, and not by bowing down but by offering some food for God’s satisfaction. That is a priest. Singing, praising, and bowing down are all natural, human, religious inventions.
What is revealed in the holy Word concerning worship? To worship God is to offer something that pleases God and satisfies God, and this something that we have to offer, according to what is revealed to us in the entire Bible, is just Christ Himself. Abel’s offering to God was a type of Christ.
God’s chosen people, the children of Israel, all fell into Egypt. God came in and redeemed them and delivered them out of tyranny to a meeting place to do the priestly service to God, just to bring what God wanted, to bring what could please God and satisfy God to Him as His food. Then they were to eat together with God and to rejoice in what they ate. Brothers, this is how to meet. God’s redemption and God’s salvation are for such a goal. God redeemed us to meet. God saved us to meet. God brought us out of the tyranny of Satan and the slavery of sin to a meeting place.
He brought us to a meeting in the place designated and chosen by God Himself with two main things: His name should be settled there, and His habitation would be there. The place that God has chosen for us to meet is with His name and His habitation. His name and His habitation both keep His people in oneness. There is only one name into which we should meet (Matt. 18:20). And there is only one center where we should meet, and that center is God’s habitation. Without these two things God’s people will be divided. We will meet according to our tastes. We will come together according to our choice, our preference. But God says, “You have no preference. I don’t let you have your choice. The choice must be uniquely Mine. Only I, your God, have the choice. I will choose a place and designate it with My name and put My habitation there” (cf. Deut. 12:11-18). Eventually, we know that this place was Mount Zion. God put His holy name there, and God built His habitation there. That became the unique and undivided and indivisible center of God’s people where they met together.
So you can see that meeting is not a small thing. The meeting life, even in the Old Testament, was God’s people’s life. God’s people’s life was a meeting life. By reading the Old Testament carefully, you could see that all the males of Israel should come together three times a year: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread; at the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost; and at the Feast of Tabernacles (16:16). According to the Old Testament, any man who would not come was cut off from His people (Num. 9:13). It was so serious because the proper life of God’s redeemed people was a meeting life. For them to meet was to gather together into the name of God and into the habitation of God to offer food to God and to serve God with food. It was not a matter of singing or praising or bowing down or prostrating. In this service the serving ones, the priests, have a share to eat before God, with God, and with one another.
Dear saints, this is to meet. To meet is to offer sacrifices. To meet is to eat what you have offered to God. To meet is to rejoice in what you eat. Have you ever realized that we Christians must meet together to feed God? We are the waiters, and some of us are even the cooks. We cook, and we serve God with food. When we serve Him, we eat with Him and we eat before Him, and we eat with one another. Then we rejoice (Deut. 12:7).
These things concerning the meetings are not so easy to describe, so God gave us a photo. The photo is in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Do not think that those are just Old Testament teachings and that they are just for the old Israel. At least you have one book in the New Testament, Hebrews, that gives us a lot of interpretations of the Old Testament books. Also the writer in Hebrews indicates clearly that he did not have the time to give us the full interpretation of the Pentateuch (Heb. 5:11; 11:32). So this means there are a lot of things in the Pentateuch that have not been touched by the writers of the New Testament. But we should not believe that because they were not touched by the New Testament writers, they mean nothing to us. That is not logical. Logically speaking, they should mean something to us.
Most Christians realize that the passover is a type of Christ. We should not consider that only the passover offering was a type of Christ and that the rest were not. In principle, we cannot say this. In principle, you must say that every offering and every bit of a certain offering must be a type of Christ. Based upon this principle, not only the offering but also the produce of the good land must also be a type of Christ, because the offerings, or the sacrifices, came from the produce of the land. It was around 1959 that the Lord showed us that even the land of Canaan is a rich and all-inclusive type of Christ.
One of the first conferences that I gave in this country was concerning the good land as a type of the all-inclusive Christ. Most of those messages came from a few verses in Deuteronomy 8. No doubt there are sufficient reasons to believe that every aspect of the good land is a type of the riches, the all-inclusiveness, of Christ in certain points. So the good land is a type of Christ, and the produce, no doubt, is also a type of Christ. Out of the produce you have the tithes, and you have the firstborn ones. All these are Christ. All the tithes, all the firstborn ones, and all the firstfruits brought to Mount Zion to present to God are Christ. All these things became the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, the trespass offering, the wave offering, the freewill offering, and the offerings of the vows. All the different offerings are Christ.
What shall you do when you come to the meeting? We all have to learn to say that we come to the meeting first of all to feed God. Second, we come to the meeting to eat before Him, with Him, with one another, and also to rejoice in what we eat. This is not a kind of common feeding, so the Bible calls this a feast, a festival (Deut. 16:16). You cannot have a feast just by yourself. To have a feast you need two kinds of riches. You need to have riches in people. You need a number of people coming together. I surely like to eat with people — the more the better. Feasting is a joy. Yet feasting must be rich in people and also rich in food.
Look at the picture. The children of Israel from the first day of the year to the last day of the year, with the exception of all the Sabbaths, were working on the land. And the land was Christ. No doubt, this is a picture showing us how that we as God’s redeemed people should work all the day on Christ. We sow the seed, we water the crop, then we reap a rich produce. We live on this, and then we keep the top portion, the firstborn, the firstfruits, the top tenth, aside for the time when we come together for the meeting. We gather into the name of our God, and we gather into His habitation. Where He dwells, we meet with Him. Actually, we all are invited by Him to come to His home.
Here is a strange point: usually those who are invited to a feast do not bring food. But to come to a feast with a lot of food is very scriptural. God invited all His people to come together, yet God did not cook. Although God did not cook the food, He had given the food already. He had given them the food by sending the sunshine, the air, and the rain year round. Yet they needed to cooperate with God’s sending. All the things were sent, but they needed to cooperate with God to have the produce. Then the produce became the tithes, and the tithes were brought to answer God’s invitation. Everyone was invited to God’s home. Everybody came home to feed the Father and to satisfy Him. What a happy time this was!
All this must be Christ. When we come together, we should come with Christ in this way. You have to forget about your music. Forget about sopranos and altos. This is not the main thing. The main thing is how much Christ do you bring to the meeting? How much Christ you bring to the meeting depends upon how much Christ you produce, how much Christ you have grown. You have to labor on Christ as the land so that you can produce Christ. Actually, it is not that you produce Christ but that Christ produces Christ Himself through your labor. The poor thing today is that the Christians as God’s redeemed people all come together empty-handed.
I believe that thus far we have presented a clear picture of how we should come together. Meeting is the proper church life. Meeting is the practical church life. Without this kind of meeting, we do not have the practical church life. What we have might be just a kind of organization with certain communal activities. But the proper church life should be a meeting life. Before coming to the meeting we must be laboring on Christ. We must reap Christ. We must have gathered some amount of Christ so that when we come to meet, we come filled with Christ.
In Life-study of Exodus we have seen what a priest is. A priest is one not only washed and clothed and redeemed but also filled without and within. Before we were saved, we were dirty, we were naked, we were sinful in nature, and we were empty without and within, having nothing to satisfy God or ourselves. But one day God sanctified us. He sanctified us by washing away all our dirt, by covering our nakedness, by redeeming us, and by filling us outwardly and inwardly. Now we are full of Christ. The washing water is Christ, the clothing is Christ, the redeeming is Christ, and the filling up is also Christ. Our hands are full of Christ, and our inward being is full of Christ; we do have something to offer to God for His food so that He may be satisfied. Even we have something to satisfy ourselves, to saturate us, and to transform us. This is God’s revelation. To meet is to be filled with Christ and to come together to feed God with Christ and to feed one another with Christ, even to feed yourself with Christ, and to rejoice in this feeding.
How can you practice this? I believe that you already know that you have to labor on Christ all day long, and you already know that you need to come to the meeting with Christ filling your hand and filling you inwardly. But now I would like to fellowship with you about this one point: you should have some amount of faith to believe that you do have some portion of Christ. I tell you, Satan is a liar! Satan is tricking us, telling us a lie that we have nothing. Satan has cheated all of us. He always points out that we do not have a good attitude toward our wife, that we are not victorious in our family living, so how can we dare to shout and to declare or to proclaim something? Accusation from Satan has subdued you.
If Aaron had been altogether victorious, altogether clean and pure, then he would not have needed the sin offering. Do not forget that when the children of Israel came together, they first needed the sin offering and the trespass offering. Even the word offering implies a certain degree of redemption. The blood was shed and poured upon the altar, signifying redemption. Every time we come to the meeting, we need the blood. Claim the blood, and apply the blood to your situation. Sometimes you may have been a little negligent, not so much on the alert, and you lost your temper. So you experienced a defeat — you still must come to the meeting! Claim the blood! Apply the blood to your situation by faith. Then you have to tell Satan, “Satan, even though I experienced a defeat, yet I still have some amount of Christ.” Sometimes you have to stand up and tell the saints, “Dear saints, just thirty-five minutes ago I was defeated in a situation with my family. But I have applied Christ as my sin offering. His blood has cleansed me. I would like to tell Satan before you all that I have an amount of Christ.”
I believe that if we all would practice in this way, our meetings would be delivered from being formal. The formality in today’s Christian services is due to the deadness of all the attendants. Because everyone comes in dead, some form is needed. We need someone to do this for us, and we need another one to do that for us. We need someone to sing a solo for us, and we need a group wearing long robes to sing a quartet for us. All of these formal things are full of death.
All of us should come with Christ. We should come not only with Christ as our burnt offering, our meal offering, and our peace offering but also as our sin offering and trespass offering. Even we should come with Christ as our wave offering and our heave offering, offering the breast in love. We come with a resurrected Christ offering Him in love and enjoying Him. We bring the ascended Christ of strength and power, and we share Him in the meetings.
Have you noticed that with all these different kinds of offerings, even with the sin offering, the priests, all the clean ones, have the right to eat a portion? It was the same with the trespass offering. Of course, the burnt offering was burned completely to be food for God. With the meal offering some was burned for God’s food, and the rest was for the priests’ food. The priests did not eat secular food. They ate the meal offering and the peace offering. The peace offering is so rich: there is a portion for God, a portion for the offering people, a portion for the ministering priests, and a portion for the priests’ family. There is also a portion for others. This is the peace offering, because this is the offering that satisfies every party. So we all are satisfied; we all have peace; we all have joy; we all have the enjoyment with satisfaction. This is the real peace! Hallelujah! This is to offer Christ to God for His food and to eat Christ ourselves and to rejoice in what we eat. Do not forget these three words: offer, eat, and rejoice. This is to meet — offer Christ, eat Christ, and rejoice in Christ.
