MATERIAL FOR WRITING AND FOR BUILDING
[p. 37] MATERIAL FOR WRITING AND FOR BUILDING
Exodus 34: 29 - 32; Exodus 35: 1 - 9; 2 Corinthians 3: 2, 3; Revelation 3: 12
I wish to say a few words about material as it is presented to us in the scriptures we have read. In the beginning when things were made, material necessarily entered into the primary creation. There can be no making without material, and so we have the great creatorial thought in Genesis and the moral redemptive thought in Exodus. Exodus in that way is greater, but it is a question of building, what is said in Hebrews to be figurative representations of the things in the heavens. Alongside of that in Exodus we have writing material, which is what I want particularly to stress as having a direct application to us now. I wish to speak particularly of writing material because the writing refers to Christ. Man according to God is set out figuratively so that he may run who reads, and if God is pleased to take us up for this purpose, it is obvious that we should be wholly available, that there should be something to be read written in us. I dwell for a moment on Exodus, specially to call attention to the setting of the actual supply of material in this book. First of all we have the building material, what is required for the tabernacle. In chapter 25, as we will all remember, the special requirements for the sanctuary are given, God proposing the thought Himself that He should dwell among His people, and that they should supply the means for the dwelling. Nothing could be more appealing to those who love God. Jacob’s first thoughts of Bethel were not very pleasant ones; he said it was a dreadful place, for God was there. Later he came back to it soberly;
[p. 38] indeed the next morning he named it soberly, indicating that he was beginning to value it. Later he could return to it and God talked with him and stood beside him. At first it was on the top of the ladder and Jacob at the bottom, but now He is standing in Bethel showing that a great change had come about.
At best, the actual house in Genesis is abstract. There is no concrete house at all. God went up, we are told, whereas in Exodus we get the concrete thought, and that appeals to love; it appeals to those who love God. Let no one be in any doubt, there are thousands of them, those of whom God speaks at the beginning, the thousands of those that love Him. That is a great thought. It underlies in a certain sense the provision of the material. Whatever I or any of us could be, let us be assured that there are thousands who love God, and to all such the thought that God is simply to be in heaven and man on earth is not good enough. God is in heaven; that is not enough for love. Love wants to be where He is lovers of God want God. They want Him near, and they want Him not in an abstract way but in a concrete way, in suitable surroundings, congenial circumstances. That is what Exodus typically supplies, and hence it is a figurative representation of things in the heavens. That is to say God’s circumstances above are brought down here so that He may be here, so that He may dwell here.
Now it is love that makes the provision. The Lord Jesus says, answering Judas, not Iscariot, “If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him”, John 14: 23. Now that is a very suitable statement; it includes Exodus, for the word is the unfolding of the mind of God in conditions suitable for God, so that He can come and abide with one.
Conditions are suitable. Now that is what we get in Exodus; I will come and dwell with you. The Lord Jesus says to Laodicea, “I will come in unto him and will sup with him, and he with me”, but the tabernacle implies more than that. As loving Him there are conditions so that the Father and the Son come and abide. Well, what I wish to point out in chapter 34 in regard to material for the building is that the actual supply is in the presence of the shining of Moses’ face. There was no supply immediately upon the first giving of the law. Indeed the hearts of the people had been diverted to idolatry, so that the first effected nothing; it is the new covenant that effects what is in the mind of God, and in chapter 34 we have figuratively the new covenant. I want to dwell on this because it has so much to do with the material. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory”. The material lies there. It is a real change; it is not an external change; it is a real substantial change. That is what is meant. Mere application externally is not enough. We need substantial change of material, and so we have this shining. And as Moses came down his face shone, and so the next chapter in view of that stresses the idea of what is to be done on the sabbath. It is in Exodus we get the first mention of the sabbath by name. We get it in relation to the manna, on mount Sinai in chapter 31, and then in relation to the shining of Moses’ face. Now to get the benefit of the shining I have got to read, I have got to keep my sabbath. Beloved brethren, you will understand that I am not legalising laziness amongst us; there is too much of that. People portion out a little time for God and the rest of it they devote to pleasure. There is too much of that. I am not speaking of that at all; I am speaking of sabbath according to God. We are first told to keep it. We read that God rested on the seventh day; He was refreshed. It is very important that the saints should be refreshed, and if I am to be refreshed [p. 40] I am to be acted upon. Refreshment is from another; I am acted upon, and so in regard to the material it is a passive type here. I am to be constituted material by being acted upon, and I am to be used as material. He was refreshed. A meeting like this is refreshing. There are other things, of course, but all are passive, and with us it is a question of being passive and receptive. There is something going on all the time. If we keep sabbath rightly something is proceeding. Our eyes are not closed; our ears are not closed; our sensibilities are all awake, they are not asleep. It is the idea of intelligent restfulness in the presence of the greatest thing, in the presence of shining, in the presence of God as in Christ shining upon us so that there is observation of what is presented to us. That is what is material for God. The sun shines on the land, the dew which God has provided in His goodness comes down and causes the land to be enriched, and so the sabbath, the keeping of the sabbath, implies that we are not to sit lazily but to sit with active hearts and minds to take in what is presented. And what is presented has to be continuous. There are these special occasions, of course, but the shining is constant.
Now I think that Moses gives us the key to all this in Exodus. He is the great feature of Exodus. Now we read that he journeyed to Midian, and arriving there he sat down by a well. What thoughts filled his heart and mind, as he sat in that distant land separated from his parents, from his family, from his nation! He delighted his heart in God. He sat by the well. It is a sort of key to the whole book, both with regard to the ministry of the truth and with regard to what is said, the ability to sit down, and to sit down where there is a means of refreshment, the well, the spring.
The activity is to be in the spring. It is for me to sit in the presence of it and absorb it. Then in the next chapter we find that Moses is on the mountain of God.
What a place to be in! He saw the bush burning and [p. 41] the bush was not consumed. And he says, “I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt”. You can see him there. What a vision it was! A burning bush and fire in it and yet the bush was not consumed. There is material, material which exists in the judgment of God. Fire is active.
What an impression it would make on Moses. “I will now turn aside, and see this great sight”. How God would speak to us in turning aside to see.
And so here it is the shining. Most remarkable thing; so remarkable was it that “when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him. And Moses called unto them”; and they returned to him. The Lord would say, “Come near”. It had already taken place with Joseph. Aaron came near and all Israel came near that the shining might have the full effect upon them. They came near, and then the injunction is as to the sabbath. Work must be done, but it had to be done on the six days, and the seventh must be kept rigidly. Not even a fire must be lighted; that is to say, that you must bask in the light, according to the blessing of Aaron, “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make his face shine upon thee ... and give thee peace”. What a word that is, beloved; it urges upon us the necessity of being passive in the sense of which I am speaking, and let the fight come and let it shine in all its life-giving power, the life-giving power of the rays that shine upon the face of Jesus. These meetings, of course, are for refreshment. They accentuate the thought that the Lord in John 13 laid aside His garments, and took a towel and girded Himself and washed His disciples’ feet. He refreshed them. They were doing nothing; they were lying at table. It is the principle of letting the Lord do things for us, so that He can impart to us His own virtue. Well, that is what He does.
[p. 42] Now I must pass on to the New Testament. The thought of building material is a very common thing in the New Testament. Peter is the great representative of it. He was passive. The Lord says to him, “Flesh and blood has not revealed it to thee, but my Father”. One would urge it upon the brethren to be passive and see what God will do, what God will bring into the soul, so that the material is there; and when it is there, we get “Thou art Peter”. One would challenge each one of us here. It is not a question of your activity, it is a question of God’s activity-letting God act upon you. “Thou art Peter”. As one moves about amongst the brethren one is reminded of the need of this material. “Thou art Peter”. Something that can be used and of a permanent nature. Well, it is the work of God. “Let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon”. I am sure that this material is very scarce amongst the brethren today, the kind of material that is in keeping with the foundation. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ”.
Well now, in regard to the writing-the writing material. Exodus is the first book to bring that out too. The first material was made by God Himself. He made the tables, and He made the writing, but the second tables were made by the mediator; they were made by Moses. God made the writing, but Moses made the tables. That enters into 2 Corinthians, and what comes out as a result of the instruction is that those who were served so well and so lovingly were questioning the great servant by whom they had been served. If we serve we must learn to suffer, as Paul says, “Though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved”. One must learn to be hurt by those whom we serve best. And the beloved apostle could say, “Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men”. A word too for those who minister. Let them take heed that they do not speak [p. 43] ill of the brethren. A critical minister-one who is critical amongst the brethren-leaves a very poor impression. It gives a chilly impression to speak ill against the brethren. We have to be faithful, but that is not speaking ill about them. It is as though Paul would say, ‘You are speaking ill about me, but wherever I go I bring out beautiful things about you. You yourselves are my letter’. There was much that could be said about the Corinthians. The apostle says much to them, but about them is another matter. ‘I have brought out every good thing about you; ye are my letter read of all men, written in my heart’. How he corresponded with the great High Priest in heaven! Now what is written in my heart I am sure to speak about, and that is the idea of the writing; it is what I speak about, “Known and read of all men”. And then he explains, “Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart”. Now he comes down to ourselves as to whether we are material, whether the Holy Spirit can indite something about Christ, can write something of Christ in our hearts. Fleshy means that they are impressionable. The people who go in for polish of this world, beloved, are not such material as is spoken of here. The harder the stone, the better the polish it takes, but the writing is not polished writing. Writing is what God would have to say to us. There is nothing more practical. We send a Bible to the heathen, but the divine thought is living witnesses, living epistles of Christ, as it is said, “known and read of all men”. Oh, that we may receive some reflection of Christ to take it in passively by the power of the Spirit of the living God!
Then I wanted to refer to Revelation to show how this specially works out in our time-which is the time of overcoming. These verses relate to the overcomer [p. 44] in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is overcoming, but the idea is an overcomer. It is a person, the individual that overcomes. The maintenance of what is of God depends upon the overcomer, and the overcomer in this chapter has a peculiar honour conferred. He is to be a pillar in the temple of God, but he is to be written upon. Now there is writing paper and writing paper; paper for documents which are to be held for a long period of time requires to be specially made. It is a question here not only that I can be written upon, but that this particular thing must be written upon me. I am special material; I am a special kind of paper, such writing material that the Lord can write upon me the name of His God. Think of that! Think of the Lord Jesus writing the name of His God and the name of the city of His God! Then He tells us what that is: “New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God”. That is to say, ‘I am using you virtually for the greatest position, to be written upon, for the things relate to Myself, My own matter, the name of My God’. Think of what God was to Jesus and that I am capable of receiving an impression of that in my soul. As He says when praying to His Father, “That the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them”, that the highest form of love may be in my heart and in your heart. “The name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem”-the overcomer of this church understands this thing. He understands the name of Jesus’ God. He understands [p. 45] the name of the city of God. Then He says, “my new name”. Think of being material for that! It is most practical. I think the Lord would appeal to us to take a passive attitude, beloved brethren, so that conditions may come about that I absorb what is needed to be able to take on such impressions as these, and there should be something seen in me, something read in me, the name of Jesus’ God, and the name of the city of God and His new name. How great the thought is! So I leave it, that we might learn something of this blessedness of being in the presence of the great thoughts of God, actively presented to us in the power of the Spirit.