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Scripture Reading: Psa. 23:6; 36:8-9; 27:4; 84:3, 10; 90:1 S. S. 2:3
From the time that man was created, God presented Himself to man as the tree of life in the form of food. When we partake of food, that food becomes a part of us. This is the very intention God has toward us, that we may take Him as food so that we can be mingled with Him to express Him in this universe. The first mentioning of something in the Scriptures is always a governing principle, a principle which governs all the Lord’s dealings with us. The basic principle of the Lord’s dealings with His people is that they would enjoy Him as their food, their life supply.
The Gospel of John tells us that one day this very God, who in the beginning presented Himself to man as food, was incarnated as a man. God in the form of a man presented Himself to man again as food, as the heavenly bread of life (6:35, 57), that man might partake of Him. In Genesis 2, at the beginning, God presented Himself as the tree of life to man in the form of food. In John 6, after His incarnation, He did the same thing. He presented Himself as the bread of life to man that man might partake of Him. In John 6:57 the Lord Jesus said, “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me.”
Before man partook of the tree of life, Satan came in, causing man to fall. After the fall, God still presented Himself to man, not as the plant life but as the animal life. This is because after the fall the shedding of blood is needed. After the fall we need redemption, so in Genesis 3 a lamb was prepared and provided by God for His fallen people (v. 21). Exodus 12 shows us that with this redeeming lamb there is still the enjoyment of eating. The shed blood of the lamb is for redemption, but the meat of this lamb is for the redeemed ones to feed on (vv. 8-9). The lamb brings us back to the tree of life. If man had not fallen, the plant life would have been good enough for him to enjoy. But after the fall, man needs not only the plant life, which is the nourishing, generating life, but also the animal life, which is the redeeming life. The animal life involves the shedding of blood for redemption, which can bring us back to the enjoyment of the nourishing and generating life.
John tells us that the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world is Christ Himself, who is the very God (1:1, 29). With the eating of the passover lamb there was also the unleavened bread. The bread signifies nourishment. After you have been redeemed, you have to feed on the Lord and be nourished by the Lord. Along with the unleavened bread the children of Israel were to eat bitter herbs. All these aspects of the passover were for the enjoyment of the Lord’s chosen people.
In the wilderness the children of Israel went on to enjoy the heavenly manna, the living water out of the smitten rock, and all the different offerings related to the tabernacle. The book of Leviticus shows us the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering. All these offerings typify different aspects of Christ for our enjoyment, and all of them except the burnt offering were for eating. Christ becomes our enjoyment by and through His redemption. In addition to these offerings there are the wave offering and the heave offering. The wave offering typifies the resurrected Christ. Christ is the “waving One” in resurrection. The heave offering typifies the ascended Christ. He is the One who has been uplifted to the height of the universe. The resurrected and ascended Christ has become our enjoyment in the fullest way.
With all the offerings there is the tabernacle, and with the tabernacle there is the priesthood. Eventually, the consummate item in the Old Testament is the temple. Many do not have a proper concept concerning the temple. We may have thought that the temple is only something for God, that it is merely the dwelling place of God. But we have to realize that the temple of God, the house of God, is not only something for God but also something for us. The temple is the fullest expression of God Himself being our enjoyment. God Himself as the temple becomes our dwelling place. This corresponds with the record of the Gospel of John. In John 15 the Lord told us to abide in Him (v. 5), indicating that He is our dwelling place. In John 14 the Lord Jesus said that in His Father’s house are many abodes and that He was going to prepare a place for us. John 14 and 15 both reveal that we are the Lord’s abodes and that the Lord Himself is our abode. John 15:4a says, “Abide in Me and I in you.” The Lord and we abide in one another mutually; this is a mutual abode.
God’s intention is to make Himself our very enjoyment in many aspects that He may be thoroughly wrought into our being for us to be fully joined to Him and mingled with Him. The types, figures, and shadows of the Old Testament provide a clear picture that God’s intention is to present Himself to us as our enjoyment. We need to learn how to enjoy Him. We need to enjoy Him as our life, our food, our drink, our light, our air, our dwelling place, and our everything. Psalm 90:1 says, “O Lord, You have been our dwelling place / In all generations.” The Lord is not only our life, food, drink, light, and air, but He is also our dwelling place. We have to dwell in Him. Our enjoyment of Him in so many aspects depends upon our realization that the Lord is the tree of life. The house of the Lord is the fullest expression of the tree of life and the fullest enjoyment of what the Lord is to us.
In Psalm 23 there are five steps of the experience of being shepherded by the Lord: the green pastures (v. 2), the paths of righteousness (v. 3), the valley of the shadow of death (v. 4), the battlefield (v. 5), and dwelling in the house of Jehovah for the length of our days (v. 6). Verse 6 describes the fullness of the enjoyment of the Lord Himself—“Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me / All the days of my life, / And I will dwell in the house of Jehovah / For the length of my days.” The fullness of the enjoyment of the Lord is to enjoy Him as the dwelling place.
In the Gospel of John the Lord Jesus reveals Himself first as the tabernacle (1:14) and then as the temple (2:19-21). The Lord Jesus Himself is the temple, the house of Jehovah. To dwell in the house of Jehovah means to enjoy the Lord to the fullest extent. Psalm 23 shows us that we are the sheep under the Lord’s shepherding to enjoy Him in many aspects as the green pastures, the paths of righteousness, and eventually as the dwelling place, the temple of God.
Psalm 36:8 says, “They are saturated with the fatness of Your house, / And You cause them to drink of the river of Your pleasures.” We may say that we are satisfied with the Lord, but do we have some experience of being saturated with the fatness of the Lord’s house? What is the fatness of the Lord’s house? It is the fountain of life, which is the Lord Himself. The fountain of life is in the house of the Lord. Psalm 36:9 says, “With You is the fountain of life; / In Your light we see light.” With this fountain of life there is the light. This absolutely corresponds with John 1:4: “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” The fatness of the Lord’s house is the fountain of life with the source of light. Whenever you enjoy the Lord Jesus as your life, you sense that you are enlightened.
In the Holy Place of the tabernacle the serving priest first went to the table of the bread of the Presence, typifying the Lord as the bread of life, the life supply, to us. Then he would proceed to the lampstand, which signifies Christ as the light of life (8:12). When we enjoy the Lord as life, we enjoy the light of life and sense something within us shining. The more you enjoy the Lord as life, the more you sense that you are filled with light and enlightened within. From the lampstand the priest then proceeded to the incense altar to burn the incense. This typifies our prayer to the Lord ascending as a sweet savor unto Him. This shows us the fatness of the Lord’s house which comes from the experience of the fountain of life and the source of light.
Whenever you experience the Lord in such a way as life and as light and as the sweet savor of incense in your prayer to God, you will immediately sense the need of the building up of the Body, of the Lord’s house, of the corporate church life. The more you enjoy Christ as life, the more you will desire, hunger, and thirst for the church life. The more you enjoy the Lord, the more you will sense the need to fellowship with others. When you get into the church life, into the Lord’s house, the house of the Lord will bring you back to all the many experiences of Christ and will enrich and strengthen these experiences. Then you will be satisfied abundantly with the fatness of the house of the Lord. You will see that the fountain of life and the source of light are in the house of the Lord. If you are not in the house of the Lord, it is possible for you to have a foretaste of the fountain of life and the source of light, and this foretaste will bring you and cause you to get into the church life. When you get into the church life, into the house of the Lord, you will say, “Here is the place where there is the fountain of life and the source of light.” You will have a real sense of the sweetness, the fatness, of the Lord’s house.
In Psalm 27:4 David said, “One thing I have asked from Jehovah; / That do I seek: / To dwell in the house of Jehovah / All the days of my life, / To behold the beauty of Jehovah, / And to inquire in His temple.” The only thing that David was seeking was to dwell in the house of Jehovah for his entire life. In Psalm 84:10 the psalmist said, “A day in Your courts is better than a thousand; / I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God / Than dwell in the tents of the wicked.” The best way to redeem our time is to keep ourselves in the courts of the Lord. One day there is better than a thousand days. Some people may criticize you by saying that you are wasting your time, but actually you are not wasting your time. You are gaining your time one thousandfold by remaining in the Lord’s house in the enjoyment of the Lord.
The Lord’s house in the Old Testament was first the tabernacle and then the temple. In the tabernacle and the temple there were two main materials—acacia wood and gold. The wood was overlaid with gold and united, knit together, by the gold. Forty-eight standing boards of acacia wood formed the main part of the tabernacle. All of these forty-eight boards were overlaid with gold. There were golden rings on each board which served to unite the boards (Exo. 26:24). In addition there were bars made of acacia wood overlaid with gold running through the boards to connect them (26:26-29). The acacia wood signifies the human nature, and the gold signifies the divine nature. The divine nature and the human nature have to be built up together and mingled together as one. Thus, the dwelling place of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, is the mingling of divinity with humanity.
The first mention of the house of God is in Genesis 28 with Jacob. Jacob had a dream of a ladder set up on the earth with the angels of God ascending and descending on it (v. 12). When Jacob awoke, he said, “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (v. 17). Verse 18 says, “And Jacob rose up early in the morning and took the stone that he had put under his head, and he set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it.” Jacob then called this place Bethel, which means “house of God” (v. 19). The stone with oil poured upon it is Bethel, the temple of God, the house of God. We are the stone, and God is the oil. Thus, in this picture we again see the principle of the mingling of God with man. The house of God, the temple of God, is the mingling of divinity with humanity.
When God was incarnated, the divine nature was mingled with the human nature. Jesus, the incarnated God, was the mingling of the divine nature with the human nature, and He told us that He was the temple (John 2:20-22). Through the Lord’s death and resurrection, this temple was enlarged to become the church, the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 3:16). The church as the temple of God is the mingling of God with man in a corporate way. There was not just one board in the tabernacle but forty-eight boards overlaid with gold. This mingling of God with man is the mutual abode, the dwelling place of God and the dwelling place of His seeking ones. God’s seeking ones are His abode, and He is their abode. Through the death and resurrection of Christ, the mingling of God with His chosen and redeemed people to produce the mutual abode has been accomplished.
Today’s religious system has distracted us from the enjoyment of Christ. Religion has teachings, rules, and rituals for people to worship God, to serve God. The teachings in religion deal with how to adjust a person’s character and how to improve his behavior. In today’s Christianity there are many teachings and gifts, but the sad thing is that the central thought of God revealed in the Scriptures has been greatly missed and even lost. The central thought of God is that God wants to be our enjoyment. We have to partake of Him and enjoy Him, not just to know Him with a certain amount of objective knowledge but to know Him in our subjective experience. We have to taste Him as David charged us to do in Psalm 34:8—“Taste and see that Jehovah is good.” In Psalm 36 we are told that we need to be saturated with the fatness of the Lord’s house, enjoying the fountain of life in the Lord’s light. This describes the enjoyment of the Lord and the experience of the Lord Himself. It is not enough to have some objective knowledge about the Lord and to learn many doctrines and teachings concerning the Lord. We must experience the Lord and taste the Lord.
The seeking one in Song of Songs said, “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, / So is my beloved among the sons: / In his shade I delighted and sat down, / And his fruit was sweet to my taste” (2:3). This indicates how precious the Lord is to the seeking one. He is like an apple tree providing the seeking one with shade and rich fruit. We can rest under His shadow and enjoy His fruit, which are all His riches for our enjoyment. The apple tree is not for the scientific study of the seeking one but for her to rest under its shade and enjoy the fruit. We need to experience and enjoy the Lord in such a way.
For many years I have been taught, helped, and even strengthened to enjoy the Lord in such a way. This is why we should not focus on the doctrines, the teachings, and the gifts, but we should focus our entire being on the Lord Himself. We should learn to enjoy Him, to contact Him, to eat Him, to partake of Him. The Lord said, “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (John 6:57). We must learn to know the Lord in such an experiential way, day by day tasting Him and being satisfied with Him. We need to be saturated with the fatness of His house, saturated and permeated with His sweetness.
If we enjoy the Lord in this way, this enjoyment will create a deep hunger within us for the Lord’s heart’s desire, His dwelling place. This enjoyment will stir us up to pray, “Lord, bring me fully into the experience of the church life. Keep me in Your courts and in Your house all the days of my life.” The enjoyment of the Lord will bring you into the church life, and the church life will cause you to enjoy Him even more as the fountain of life and the source of light. Sometimes people asked us where we received all our light from. They wondered what books we studied to get this light from the Word. Actually, the light we have received is from the living Lord Himself in the church. In the church the Bible is an open book. The church is typified by the tabernacle. Within the tabernacle is the table of the bread of the Presence, which is the source, the fountain, of life, and the lampstand, which is the source of light. Life and light are both in the house of the Lord, in the church, God’s building. This life and light are inexhaustible in the church. In the Lord’s house the light even floods in, as the psalmist said, “In Your light we see light” (Psa. 36:9).
The issue of the enjoyment of the tree of life is the tabernacle, the house of the Lord. If we enjoy Him in such a living and real way as the tree of life, we will have the tabernacle, and we will be in the house of the Lord. At that time we will be able to say that we are saturated with the fatness of the house of the Lord. We will enjoy Him as the fountain of life and the source of light. We will only desire to dwell in His house all the days of our life and will have a full realization that a day in His courts is better than a thousand. We will be like the sparrow that has found a house and the swallow that has found a nest for herself where she may lay her young at the two altars of the house (84:3). The church life will be our resting place and a nest to take care of the younger ones whom we have brought to the Lord. Thank and praise the Lord for the fatness of His house.
