Mills, John Milton: The Worship Of God 01 ~ Exodus 25;1

I want to read several passages, and then I will try to tell you why I'm reading these various passages. In Exodus chapter twenty five verse one: and the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel that they take for me an offering of every man whose heart maketh him willing, ye shall take my offering. Verse eight: And let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. According to all that I show thee, the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all the furniture thereof, even so shall ye make it. And they shall make an ark of acacia wood. Two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof, and so forth, and so forth. Verse forty: And see that thou make them after their pattern, which has been showed thee in the mount. Moreover, thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twine, linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and so forth. And now, chapter thirty seven, Verse one. And Bezalel made the ark of acacia wood. Two cubits and a half was the length of it, and a cubit and a half the breadth of, and a cubit and a half the height of it. Verse one of chapter thirty eight: And he made the altar a burnt offering of acacia wood. five cubits was the length thereof, and five cubits the breadth thereof, four square, and so forth. Chapter forty. Verse one: and the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, on the first day of the first month shalt thou rear up the tabernacle of the tent of meeting. And farther along in the chapter, verse thirty three: and he reared up the court round about the tabernacle and the altar, and set up the screen of the gate of the court. So Moses finished the work. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And now let's turn to Hebrews chapter nine. so in chapter eight, verse five, Who serve that which is a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, even as Moses is warned of God when he is about to make the tabernacle. For see, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern that we showed thee in the night. And now in chapter nine, verse twenty three. It was necessary, therefore, that the copies of the things in the heavens should be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ entered not into a holy place made with hands like in pattern to the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us. Let us speak to the Lord again in prayer. Our Father, we're thankful for this book that was placed in our hands. Let us know that we have walked with it and opened it at times throughout our lives as thy children. We're so thankful for it. Thy son to save us, thy spirit to indwell us, and now Thy Word to guide us and direct us, to illumine our pathways on earth. We thank you, Father, for all the bounty bestowed upon us, and we pray that by Thy Spirit we shall understand the things that we have read tonight. Thou art able to bring them together, thou art able to show orderliness, and so that is what we seek. Prepare the hearts of the listener and the lips of the speaker by empowering and illumining and cleansing, and give us a profitable time together, we pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. The reason that I'm speaking on the portions that I am tonight is because of those words that we read this morning in John chapter four, When the Samaritan woman was talking about worshiping in Mount Gerizim, but the Jews say Jerusalem is where men ought to worship, the Lord Jesus said this, ye worship that which ye know not. He said, we worship that which we know for salvation. He said the Jews. And these words, we worship that which we know, the Lord Jesus is claiming a divine origin of the pathway of worship that the Jews followed in distinction to the Samaritans who set up a rival temple and religion with an imperfect revelation from God. They worshiped that which they knew not, and the Lord Jesus said, we worship that which we know. And I want to impress upon all of you as Christians that what we are doing is nothing vague, nothing abstruse, but it is something that is definite. It is something that is not debatable, but it is something that is divine in its origin, and the Lord Jesus himself has told us that we worship that which we know. Now, I read you more scriptures than I wanted to, but there were so many more that I could have read you had I thought they might have been of help to you. But now let's see the connection of the scriptures that I read. The Lord Jesus said, we worship that which we know. And so I began to read some of the scriptures in the book of Exodus, telling us two things. First of all, God's revealing to Moses that he wanted to be worshipped, and he had to be worshipped in a particular way. And having told him that, he revealed from heaven the way in which Moses and the Israelites were to worship their God. And having given them the pattern that they were to follow in erecting a tabernacle that they might worship in and around that tabernacle, we next have the verses telling us that Bezalel and Aholahab and every wise-hearted man and woman built the tabernacle according to the instructions of God. Now, if you read it without illumination, it will be the most boring thing in the world. You are to make an ark, its dimensions are such and such, its material is such and such, and then you read Dazalel and Aholahab made the ark, its dimensions such and such, its composition such and such. It will bore you to death, but at the same time, if you understand the significance of what you're reading, then you will be thrilled to the heart because you will understand that God is telling Moses exactly how things in heaven are, and he is illustrating them by the tabernacle and by the furniture he's instructing Moses to build. Do you understand what God is saying? If tonight I were able to open the heavens and show you the abode of God, you would find in heaven the spiritual significance of everything that Moses was shown in the mount as to the pattern and the copy that he was to build for the tabernacle. Do you realize that? Then, if this is so, then the tabernacle, however strange its design, its shape, its furniture might be, when you say it's strange, then you are criticizing heaven itself, because I read to you from Hebrews nine to show you why God was so insistent that Moses make it exactly according to the pattern that was shown thee in the mount. Who cares whether the ark is two and a half cubits long or two cubits long? Who could care? And at the same time, what difference is it whether it's made of gold or of silver? Why not make it of oak instead of acacia wood? What difference does it make? It makes every difference in the world because God, with his omniscience, has chosen these articles of furniture and all the materials of which the tabernacle is to be made, and each one has a spiritual significance corresponding to something that actually exists in heaven. Now, I do not read that God told Moses that in Exodus or in the Pentateuch. He simply said, you make everything exactly as I show you in the Mount. Moses did exactly what God told him to. He did not know why. But once we come to the epistle to the Hebrews, then we understand why, because God said, I'm telling you to do exactly what I show you because you are making a copy of the actual things as they exist in heaven. Now, had we known that, then with fear and trembling, we may have made these articles of furniture. But the next point I want to make is this, that having been given divine instruction as to how to make these articles of furniture and how to make the tabernacle, I only read one or two verses, but it said in the first place, and you shall make. And then it says, beginning chapter thirty seven, and Bezalel did make. He made the ark. He made the table. He made the curtains. And if you want to be thrilled rather than bored, read exactly what God tells Moses to build, starting at chapter twenty five, and then beginning with chapter thirty seven, read how Bezalel and Aholaab and every wise-hearted man and woman made these articles of furniture, and you will see that they correspond exactly with the dimensions that were given to Moses in the Mount. Now, that is a marvel, that God would tell man how to do something, and man would do exactly what God told him to do. Have you? And the answer is no. Well, Moses and the Israelites did. No bringing in their own imagination. They relied entirely upon a revelation from God, and then they go with this tabernacle and the furniture for forty years in the wilderness, and then it goes on and on until the time of the temple, and without knowing the significance, as we do today, they still did what God told them to do. And as it says in the epistle to First Peter, it says that the prophets in the Old Testament, they were searching what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them did point to, and it says to whom it was revealed that not unto themselves, but unto us did they minister these things. And here are these Jews for all of these years making so carefully the tabernacle and the furniture and preserving it and its ordinances, its services, its rituals, and they did it all for us because of the spiritual significance behind the meet, the interpretation of this tabernacle. And for that reason, I rejoice. I thank God for these Jews. As often as we criticize them, they did exactly what God told them to do. And just as in the first creation, it says that God looked over all that he had made, and it was very good. And in Exodus chapter forty, after everything had been made, it was made according to the specifications of God. It was reared according to the instructions of God, and I know that God thought it was very good because he was pleased to come and with his glory fill that tabernacle. How remarkable. We have the first creation, and God said it's good, and he was pleased to dwell among the children of Israel. Now, do you see why the Lord Jesus said, we worship that which we know? Why? Because I'm telling you, and the stand that we as Christians must take, is that our religion is not like the other religions of the world. They are religions of man's imagination, but the religion that we follow in the Old Testament into the New Testament, it is that which comes directly from God. There has never been but one religion, and that was the religion that was revealed to Moses and to Israelites. And yet the Lord Jesus said, we worship that which we know. Why? Because God gave him meticulous specifications to follow, a ritual that must be carried out, and they did what God told them to do. We worship that which we know. We may not understand exactly why these things are so, but we worship that which we know. God told us. We obeyed God. We made exactly as God specified. And tonight we, in contrast to the Israelites, enter into the spiritual realities, the significances of all of those material things that they worshipped with when they were on earth. And they were patterns, they were copies, they were shadows of the truth that exists in heaven. Now, the reason that I tell you that we cannot vary a jot or a tittle is not only because the Lord said they would not pass away until all things be accomplished, but if you do alter in the least the tabernacle or the furniture or any instruction that God gives, you are altering the person and work and history of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you realize that what God has done in this tabernacle is to give us, in a tangible way, the person, the work, the history of the Lord Jesus Christ. I could show you, I've been showing you for years now, some of the teachings of it. I can show you from this tabernacle that the Lord Jesus Christ was with God and was God, that he made himself of no reputation, and he came to earth, that he died upon the cross, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, that he went back to heaven, that he ever lives to make intercession for us. All of these things that I just told you, verses from the New Testament, I tell you they are contained in this tabernacle that I've read you about. They are copies in shadows, and God, with his omniscience, has given us the person and work and history of the Lord Jesus Christ in this tabernacle. And if our eyes are anointed with Isaiah, we are able to look at it and see as much in the Old Testament as we are in the New. And many times, when you come to an abstruse passage that is so difficult in the New, you cannot comprehend it, I look at a corresponding Old Testament passage, and the Old Testament explains the New by something as simple as gold and silver and copper and acacia wood and fine twine linen, and God will clear up with this tabernacle words that he writes unto inspiration in the New Testament, and you put them both together and you say, of course. And that is why so many wise men who know the New Testament languages are not able to tell you exactly what is meant, but a Sunday school scholar who is in these things can understand it because he has a tangible, visible picture of what the words are telling him in the New Testament, and it is revealing the Lord Jesus Christ to us. It says in Romans chapter three, and it tells us in Hebrews chapter ten, that two parts of the tabernacle of Christ. In Hebrews chapter nine, it speaks of the mercy seat, and the same word in Romans chapter three is God set forth Christ the mercy seat. It's a propitiation that the same word in the Hebrew is the mercy seat, and God is saying, this is my son, he is the mercy seat. And it says in Hebrews ten that the veil is his flesh. Then the word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and the veil, the flesh, was rent. You see, I'm just mentioning these things because I'm not explaining them tonight. I am showing you how a full revelation of the person, the work, the history of the Lord Jesus Christ are contained in the tabernacle and the specifications given from God, and they are there, and that is why my heart rejoices, because I have this book that I can live with and enjoy and study for the rest of my life. I will never exhaust it, and it's something that is worthy of occupying the mind of any man until the Lord comes again, and you can be thrilled for the rest of your life. If you haven't learned to love this book, then you have missed out on something that God thrills the hearts of many of his people with this book. Study the scriptures, meditate in it day and night. This is what God would have you to do. Now, I want to show you this, the continuity, how God, starting with the tabernacle, goes on, and I did not read in the New Testament, but I'm going to tell you about six buildings, and God will take us from the beginning to the end, and he will reveal his purposes for man and the consummation of the history of man in these buildings and that which corresponds to them throughout the history of man. We have the tabernacle, and let me show you how you follow it. When the tabernacle was completed, it says, the glory of God filled the tabernacle. When Solomon finished his dedicatory prayer at the temple, it says, the glory of God filled the temple. Now here are two buildings. Now we're going to leave building for a moment, and we're going to come to events. I told you that the tabernacle was the Lord Jesus Christ. When he was about thirty years of age and was being baptized, you find the glory of God in the Holy Spirit coming down from heaven and filling the Lord Jesus. It comes and abides upon him. Now, I told you also in time past that this tabernacle is a picture of the church, and on Acts chapter two, the same spirit that came upon Christ at his baptism comes upon the church in that upper room, and the body of Christ is formed. You see how God is taking you step by step from a tabernacle to a temple to the realization of what that tabernacle stood for, the Lord Jesus Christ is the tabernacle, and then the temple. I'll tell you more about that, perhaps in a moment. And then I mentioned six. I've only given you four. There is Ezekiel's millennial temple, and in chapter forty three you will find that the glory of God is going to fill that temple. Now notice, we have two buildings, and then we have two historical events with people, the person of Christ and the actual body of Christ. The Spirit of God fills them. And then you have another building, Ezekiel's millennial temple, and the Spirit of God in Ezekiel forty three fills that temple. And then there is one more occasion when all of these types and shadows are set aside, and that which is representative becomes reality, and that is found in Revelation chapter twenty one. It said, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth. And John said, I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and this is what he heard. Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall tabernacle among them, and they shall be his people, and he shall be their God, and he shall wipe away all tears, for the first things are passed away. And all that God had been telling them in the Old Testament, he said, build a tabernacle that I may dwell in the midst of you, and find that the consummation of all things is realized. And in Revelation chapter twenty one it says, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall, the word dwell is tabernacle among them. He says it twice, the tabernacle, the tabernacle, and he shall be their God, and they shall be his people. And so that, as difficult as it is, take it as the eternal state. And so God has constantly been trying to dwell with man, and he fills with his glory these various buildings and the- this person and these people, and finally God himself eternally comes to dwell with man. And that is why it is so important when you study this tabernacle that you follow everything exactly. For this reason, I told you it's not only the person and work of Christ, but it's the history of Christ as well, because God gives the tabernacle, and that is Christ as we go through life in this pilgrim journey. We take Christ with us. But when you come to the tabernacle, that is stationary. It is no longer our taking Christ with us, but it is that temple being in a certain location, and we gather to that temple. That is Christ in the millennial glory, no longer going through a wilderness journey, but we will have arrived, and it says in Matthew thirteen, then shall the righteous shine in the kingdom of their father. And at that time, it will no longer be a tabernacle moving from here to there, but there will be this permanent abode, the millennial glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he tells us that that is not enough. That is in earnest, as even now the Holy Spirit is in earnest. But finally, not a temple, not a tabernacle, not even that of Ezekiel for the church, but God himself is going to dwell in our midst, and everything that the temple and tabernacle conveyed to us symbolically, typically, it will be actually realized in the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit dwelling in the midst of his blood-bought chosen people, and it shall be realized, and we shall be with him and belong to him forever. And this is what God is trying to tell us, and that is why you and I must do things exactly as the scripture says, even if you say, what difference does it make to me? Because God has said, do it exactly as I showed you in the mount. Why? Because it may not mean anything to you, but eventually, in days to come, when someone's eyes are open, they will say, why, of course, I understand the significance of that. And so we follow the pattern, and when we do, we get the pictures, and this is what God is showing to us. The Lord Jesus, we are told in John chapter one, it says, the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. The Lord is telling us these things, and because of these material things that he made, he is showing us eternal verities, and this is the portion that God has for us. Now, I told you that there was a continuity, and you can follow it by the glory of God filled the tabernacle. The glory of God filled the temple, the glory of God filled Christ, the glory of God filled the church. But there is something else. He says in Exodus twenty five in verse nine and in verse forty. he says in chapter twenty six. he says in chapter twenty seven. he says in Numbers chapter eight. he again and again reiterates, make it according to the pattern. And then, when you come to the temple, you're liable to say, well, why this progress? Why not continue with the tabernacle? Because again, twice in First Chronicles chapter twenty eight, David said, I had the pattern of the things according to the Spirit of God. That is why the temple as well as the tabernacle was given by inspiration, its dimensions, its services, because all of those things are spiritually symbolical as well as the rest, and you have to follow them out. And if you do and get exact specifications and rituals and look at them carefully with the anointed eye, God is showing us before Christ comes upon the scene what he's going to do, and then ultimately how things shall be. And so this is why God tells us in the Old Testament, and now let me tell you about the New. You find it again in Acts chapter seven when Stephen is giving his discourse, he reiterates, make it according to the pattern that you show, that was showed thee in the mount. And then in Hebrews eight and in Hebrews chapter nine, again we get that same reiteration, make it according to the pattern showed thee. That is the importance. And so you and I as Christians must stand for having things exactly as they are in the Word of God. You say a variation, it makes no difference. Oh, but it does. Here is what you'll find, that there was a king, and someday I may speak on it for you, there was a king named Ahaz, and he was of the southern kingdom, but he left his territory, and he went to Damascus, and he saw there another altar, and he said, I like that altar much better than the altar of God. And so he had the specifications and the pattern copied out and sent it to his priest, and he said, make up an altar like that and have it ready for me when I come home. And now, this is what happens if you and I depart from what God has given us in his word. Do you not realize that the Lord has told us, not in building material things, but the spiritual counterpart concerning the person and work and history of Christ? And as God told Moses, and Moses carried out exactly what God told him to do. So the Father tells us things concerning his Son, that he was born of a virgin. We can't relinquish that truth. That when he was thirty years of age, the Spirit of God came upon him. We cannot relinquish that truth. That he died upon the cross, that he was buried, that he was raised the third day. All of these truths are told us by God, and we are to be as Moses receiving these truths, and if we receive them and hold them and believe them exactly as Moses made the furniture and the tabernacle, then we will be carrying through life with us that same Christ that they, in type and symbols, carried through life with them in the wilderness. You see what I'm telling you? That you cannot say it doesn't matter about the virgin birth of Christ, about the divine and the human nature. Of course it does. That's why there was gold and wood. That is why there was fine, fine linen and blue and purple and scarlet, because they were doctrines concerning the person of Christ. And when God tells us these things about his son, do not say they are not important. They are. And just as they traveled through their wilderness journey, and they took Christ with them in the correct manner. So you and I are to have the correct interpretation of the Word of God. Am I not to go through life without a brazen altar, or the golden altar, or the table of showbread, or the incense altar, which is the golden altar, or the candlestick, or the mercy seat? You mean I'm to go through life leaving behind one of these articles of furniture, or to do that would be to leave behind some aspect of the person and work of Christ, and this is what God is telling us. As they carried this tabernacle through life with them, so I am to carry Christ in his exactness and in his fullness with me throughout life. And they did it, and God congratulated them, and I trust that not positionally but practically, God will be pleased to dwell among us. They were given the tabernacle, and they faithfully erected it, and they carried it with them through life, and God has revealed his Son unto us. May we all come to the unity of the knowledge of the faith of the Son of God and carry him through life with us. Let us pray. Now, Father, we are so glad that however little we understand this book, when we do understand it, we rejoice, and we see the finger of God behind it all. We rejoice that we have not followed cunningly devised fables, that we worship that which we know, and we know more than Moses and Aaron, and we know more than the disciples of John, because that has given us the full revelation, thou hast given us the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We pray, Father, that we shall be faithful to that with which thou hast entrusted us. You entrusted them with the oracles of God, and they kept them, and we enjoyed them. And you entrusted them with the tabernacle, and they carried it faithfully forty years in the wilderness, and we have benefited by it. And we pray, Father, that even now we shall take not the material things, but the spiritual significance of them through life with us, and those round about shall benefit from us because we take Christ through life with us. Bless us to this end, we pray, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.