THE BOARDS OF THE TABERNACLE INVOLVING SONSHIP
[p. 252] THE BOARDS OF THE TABERNACLE INVOLVING SONSHIP
Exodus 26: 15 - 30; Romans 12: 1 - 9
JT Romans corresponds very largely with Exodus. Romans 3 speaks of the mercy-seat. It develops how the christian is brought into accord with that. The ark contained the testimony; it brings one into accord with God’s will, not in a military sense but as supporting what is contained in the ark. The boards in Exodus 26: 15 are standing up. The believer stands up in relation to the ark. The boards as bound together were a support for the curtains. The tabernacle may be taken as a type of Christ, also as a type of the saints. The one bar which runs from end to end typifies the Holy Spirit, binding all together (verse 28); the boards are all bound together. The principle is of sacrifice; our bodies as a living sacrifice.
WA All the material for the tabernacle was found here on the earth, but it is lifted on to another platform by the sockets of silver, which speak of redemption. It is in wilderness conditions that we prove that the will of God is good, acceptable and perfect. What is it to prove the will of God?
JT It is what God may have for you in your circumstances here; you accept them as God’s will and do not seek to alter them. The point is to find out what is God’s will: though it may be adversity, it proves in time to be good and acceptable.
Rem We are said to be “one body in Christ” in verse 5 of Romans 12, not the body of Christ. We have to be the former before we can be the latter.
JT I think that is how we answer to the forty-eight boards of the tabernacle. In 1 Corinthians you see the boards set up according to God. Acacia wood is the wood for the tabernacle; it is the strongest [p. 253] of all woods. The wilderness needs endurance. Cedar wood is for the temple, that is more for dignity. The boards are of the same wood as the ark, but all are covered with gold, speaking of God. If one comes in and hears prophecy he will report that “God is indeed amongst you”, 1 Corinthians 14: 25. The curtains embroidered are made to speak of the Holy Spirit maintained in a principle of fellowship. We must be true to that principle in our everyday life. It is consistency; you cannot eat of the Lord’s table and of the demon’s table. The goatskin and the badger’s skin exclude evil. The goat is an isolated animal, not gregarious like a sheep. You have to be a goat with regard to the world, but a sheep in regard to the saints.
JT-e Fellowship is maintained individually.
JT In 1 Corinthians you exclude all that is contrary to God. It is a matter of partnership and consistency with the articles thereof.
JT-e Is that why discipline comes on those who are not consistent?
JT The Lord can deal with it. “Are we stronger than he?” 1 Corinthians 10: 22. It is a dreadful thing to be linked up with an idolatrous world.
WA The dimensions are fixed.
JT Yes, they are unalterable. Another thing that is necessary is example. The Lord says in Matthew 11: 29, “Learn from me”. Paul sent Timothy so that the saints in Corinth might learn in him the ways of Paul.
WA Is that involved in presenting your body “a living sacrifice”?
JT Yes.
WA The boards are of the same material; they carry out the will of God and prove it. What bearing has the will of God on fellowship?
JT It was in connection with what the boards supported; it is that all should love the will of God [p. 254] and be subject to it. It is not only that you are negative with regard to the world, but there is the positive, being transformed. There is something different.
WA It is a change of form, he is different in being like God. The boards were transformed when taken from the trees and covered with gold.
JT In the functions that follow Paul speaks according to the grace given to him — that is the example.
JT-e Our actions towards one another would be priestly?
JT The thing is to find out our measure and act upon it for the good of all.
G The blood of the covenant and of bulls and goats that Moses used for sprinkling is just a pattern. The Spirit was active then, though not indwelling as He does with us.
JT If we are going to move on in service we must know the basis that enables us to do so without fear. What goes back to God is what is of Himself. It is outside nature; it is the Holy Spirit shed abroad in our hearts.
HMcM It is not natural affection.
JT No, it is what is outside me as a man in flesh. It is what is of God.
WAC God is love.
JT You see that as an objective. It is what God is that is shed abroad in our hearts. It is like the sun, it shines forth into our hearts.
HM In Romans 5, is it a question of condition, that conditions are right in our hearts for the shining in?
JT Quite. It is the condition of those recovered. It is persons who are recovered that He takes up on the line of priesthood. As priests we do not pass in, it is as sons we pass into the house. The first thing is to be conscious that you are in a condition [p. 255] to take up the service of a priest. In Luke 15 the prodigal is a recovered man and at the end of the gospel you get men praising and blessing God. Luke takes up recovered men and they become priests.
HMcM When we come to the ark with nothing in it but the two tables of stone, our priestly service ends. God’s will is done.
JT When that comes in, the scene is filled with glory and with those who are like Christ.
WA It is not that things have disappeared but they have merged.
JT The Old Testament does not take you as far as “sons of your Father”, though you get “sons of Jehovah”. You have the thought of the spirit of sonship in Romans 8; that is that we are now under the hand of the Spirit and are brought into the position which God had for us in His eternal thoughts in purpose. I believe it is that at the mount of Olives. The Lord goes there that this adjustment may be brought about.
JPG Will you name others recovered in Luke’s gospel?
JT The two going to Emmaus and I suppose the whole of the recovered persons would be seen in “the eleven, and those with them” (chapter 24: 33). There is a condition formed in them into which the Lord can come, and He comes and says, “Have ye anything here to eat? And they gave him part of a broiled fish and of a honeycomb”.
JPG You think that the top note is, “in the temple praising and blessing God”?
JT Yes. They were priests then. You start off in Luke in relation to the priest in Luke 1 and 2. In Matthew and Mark the Supper is spoken of as what is to God, not to the Lord; but in Luke it is the other side, the remembrance side. The eating and drinking is testimony; it is a different thought [p. 256] to remembrance. I have to be careful that I do not eat and drink condemnation to myself. Is my course consistent? What can the world say about me?
JPG I deny my own testimony if I am not consistent.
JT You cannot take up the dignity of sonship unless you are in the good of it, so you get the Spirit of adoption. In Romans 8 we get the family setting, it is necessary for us to come into the truth of adoption. Where the parents of a family are awry how can the sons take up the dignity of sonship? We all want to go forward as a great company of sons. Priests come on as a result of men recovered, but God’s thought is that He should have a company of sons. Having been brought into this position consciously by the Spirit, we now have a vista brought before us in connection with the Father, which is greater than the Father’s house. The latter is referred to in John 14 and is future and actual. The house is one thing, but what we can touch as coming under sonship, is the Father’s own presence, which is far greater.
WA It is what is in His mind.
JT It is only those who stand in the nearness of sonship who can enjoy the presence of the Father and it is only as “strengthened with power by his Spirit in the inner man” that we can enjoy it. How long do we find ourselves able, in the presence of the Father, to take a survey? Why is it? We are not being strengthened by the Spirit of the Father in the inner man. That is why. It is that you “may be fully able to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height; and to know the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge; that ye may be filled even to all the fulness of God”.
JPG [p. 257] You might reach a point where you do not know whether you are in the body or not. You would not want to come back.
JT It is possible for us, but, being what we are, we have to come back. You see how divine Persons stand in relation to one another. The scene of glory is made up of that. You get the fourth dimension. I suppose it refers to all the way the Lord went on behalf of God to secure His purpose. That is the depth. Man has never been able to fathom this.
HMcM We are looking at things that are past knowledge and beyond the range of the finite mind.
JT That is why the apostle prays, “that he may give you ... to be strengthened with power by his Spirit in the inner man”.
Pages 258 to 418. From ‘The Early Wilderness Encampments’ and Other Ministry 1921 - 1929 (Volume 203).