THE LAMB AND THE ARK
Exodus 12: 1-3, 6-11, 15; 25: 1, 2, 10-17, 21, 22
I want to say a word as to the way Christ is presented to us, first as the Lamb and then as the Ark, because it is important we should appreciate the Lord Jesus in both lights. The book of Exodus has in view the bringing out of God’s people from Egypt, and their providing Him with dwelling conditions in the wilderness. The book does not carry us further than that, but it is important to bear in mind that the idea of an exodus is a complete going out. When Pharaoh asked Moses who would go, Moses said, “We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds”, Exod 10: 9. He was absolute that they would leave nothing of themselves or their families or their possessions to enrich or adorn the Egypt world; he was determined that they should all come out. He says on another occasion, “There shall not a hoof be left behind”. He was absolute and uncompromising that there would be no link remaining between the people of God and the world as characterised by independence of God and self-reliance, finding its resources in itself and living to itself, shutting God out altogether. One of the Pharaohs says, “My river”, upon which the country depended, “is mine own, and I made it for myself”, Ezek 29: 3. We can hardly conceive more arrogant language than that. He claimed the whole wealth and resources of Egypt as his, and claimed also that he himself had provided them. Now this world is very much characterised by that. There are, of course, other features of the world typified in Sodom and Babylon, but this world in which we have to move is very much characterised by the Egypt features, and its outlook and policy have in view that men should find their resources in themselves and in the State; the last thing in the minds of men is that men should find their resource in God. God has in mind that we should find our resource in Himself. He is very jealous of the affections and the confidence of His people, and I believe He has in mind that we should be completely brought out of the world in every feature of it. We are inclined to think, when we speak of the world and of our being brought out of it, either of the world of pleasure or self-gratification or of the religious features of the world, but we want to see that God intends that we should be entirely relying upon Him for everything, and that we should be ministering to Him in everything. In Revelation 4 God is celebrated as the One who created all things: “For thy will they were, and they have been created”. So God had in mind to bring His people out.
In chapter 11 of Exodus Moses is in great power, and very angry. He went out from Pharaoh’s presence “in a glowing anger”. That was expressive of God’s feelings in regard of the system that held His people in bondage; and it is now equally expressive of the feelings of God in regard to any feature of the world by which His saints are held captive. Moses appears in chapter 11 as a man of great power, and of great feeling, expressing God’s feelings.
In chapter 12 God begins to give instructions, and brings forward three important elements. First of all the assembly: “Speak unto all the assembly of Israel”. It is no chance that this language is used, for if God was speaking of His people in that way as the assembly of Israel, He was undoubtedly pointing on to the assembly as we know it now, Christ’s assembly. The first thing mentioned is the assembly, the second thing is a lamb, the third thing is a father’s house. If God has in mind to deliver us completely from this world in all its features, He has in view that we should understand that we constitute the assembly, and that we are to find our life in the assembly, and that we are not to bring into the assembly any of the features that belong to the world. As we shall see later on, the assembly is to take character from the ark; there is a Man who is to impress His own character upon the assembly of God. But the first thing that God speaks of through Moses is the assembly, the second thing is a lamb, the third thing is a father’s house. He says (v 3), “Speak unto all the assembly of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month let them take themselves each a Iamb, for a father’s house, a lamb for a house”. Now I would urge that what is first in God’s mind is the assembly, and we all belong to it if we have received the Holy Spirit; we belong to it whether we are breaking bread or not, if we have received the Holy Spirit. If we have received the Holy Spirit and are seeking to walk in obedience to the truth, we certainly ought to be breaking bread, but the assembly is God’s great provision for the saints, something to commit ourselves to. If He brings us out of the world He does not intend to leave us aimless without a commanding interest in life, and the commanding interest in life that God has for His saints is the assembly. If we will get to the Lord about it as to how we can fill our part in the assembly, and in what way it is to command our interest, He will help us, for no one will be out of work who really gives himself to the assembly and the interests connected with the assembly. There will be plenty to do, plenty to engage the mind and affections, plenty to be prayed about; there is plenty for all-time occupation if anyone will take up the interests of the assembly. So the assembly was first brought forward, but then he says that they were to take themselves each a lamb, “Let them take themselves each a Iamb, for a father’s house, a lamb for a house”. We know what men in the world are like. The world develops self-reliance, self-importance, bigness. If we get on in business, or get a good job, as we say, it tends, almost without our being aware, to develop that kind of feature which is seen in full expression in the world—self-confidence, self-reliance, and along with it a certain element of bigness and selfimportance. I quite appreciate that the believer who is going on with God will find grace in Christ and in the Spirit to set these things aside in large measure, but I think anyone will admit that the world tends to produce these features. Over against that, Moses is told by God to say to them that each one is to take a lamb. What a contrast to a man of the world, what a contrast to the kind of thing that figures in the world! Each one is to take a lamb. It is not even a sheep, but a lamb, speaking of littleness, meekness, lowliness, gentleness, and a readiness to suffer in silence. When John the baptist took up his ministry, one of the first things he says is, “Behold the Lamb of God”. “Looking at Jesus as he walked, he says, Behold the Lamb of God”, John 1: 36. If we want to understand the kind of man that is delightful to God, that John in his prophetic ministry could call attention to, we must study Christ. So everyone was to take a lamb for a father’s house. The assembly is in view, but that which furnishes material for the assembly, and supports it, is found in the houses of the saints.
The lamb is not immediately slain; it was taken on the tenth day, and kept alive until the fourteenth day. For three complete days, the eleventh day, the twelfth day, and the thirteenth day, the occupants of each house had this lamb before them. They would contemplate the lamb. The death of Christ is all important, and the foundation of everything for God and for us, but first of all we must contemplate the lamb as living, that is, Christ as Man here, as John the baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God”. The importance of it is that we begin to learn to judge every element of independence, of self-confidence, of self-importance that so easily attaches to us. God presents to us the contrast to it all in the Man of His choice. “Behold the Lamb of God”. This lamb was to be before their eyes for three complete days, and then it was to be slain and its blood was to be used. In the instructions given subsequently in the chapter we find that the blood was put into a basin and they were to take a bunch of hyssop. Very small and insignificant is hyssop. They were to use this bunch of hyssop to smear the blood on the doorposts and the lintel. All this is just the very opposite of anything that men would take account of as being grand or anything of that sort; it is a question now of houses that can be recognised as committed to the death of Christ, and the very means used is such as to negate any thought of anything great or important in the eyes of men—just a bunch of hyssop and blood smeared on the doorposts and the lintel. It is as though God is deliberately setting aside anything of man’s greatness, anything that would appeal to us naturally, because it is a question of being committed to the death of Christ, and all that that means, and not only individually but householdly. The houses would be distinguished in that way as publicly committed to the death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Then they were to eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and further they were to eat it with their loins girded and their sandals on their feet and their staff in their hand, and they were to eat it in haste, for it was Jehovah’s passover. The whole passage is emphasising the urgency of the matter, and the need for thoroughness. This is what God has in view in the deliverance of His people, and from time to time we find that exercises are raised amongst us which, if we really consider their import, are seen to have in mind our complete deliverance from every feature of the world in which we are, and our taking on the features of the Man that is approved of God. So they were to eat of the flesh roast with fire, the head with its legs and with its inwards. The head speaks, I suppose, of the dignity of the Person, the legs of His movements, and then His inwards. How pure the inwards of Jesus were! How absolutely pure they were, everything was according to God! If we take a man like Absalom, outwardly no blemish in him, but when we look at his inwards we find a murderer’s heart. The inwards of Absalom were entirely out of keeping with his outward appearance, but when we come to Christ there is dignity in His Person, there are dignity and devotedness in His movements, there is absolute purity in His inwards, and all is to be taken account of by us, because all had to go under the judgment in order that we might be redeemed, and redeemed for the pleasure of God. The judgment had to pass on Him on our account, in order that we might be redeemed. “Thou hast redeemed. to God, by thy blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation”.
Then there is the reference to unleavened bread. “Seven days”, it says—that is the complete period of our life here—“shall ye eat unleavened bread; on the very first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses”. How emphatic the Spirit of God is! “On the very first day”, He says, “for whoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day—that soul shall be cut off from Israel”. Leaven inflates, leaven is impure. “The unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” is the opposite of that, and we need to be constantly on our guard that we do not introduce some element of insincerity or untruth. It is natural to all of us to keep up appearances. That is not “the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”.
We can only take unleavened bread and eat it, and become characterised by it, as we have to do much with God. The presence of God exposes all that is insincere and untrue, and we are to cultivate that. We are to dwell with God eternally, we are to be at home in His presence eternally; He has given us His Holy Spirit so that we might be brought already into complete moral accord with the God with whom we shall dwell.
In Exodus 25 it is a question of understanding that the assembly, while it is still in the wilderness, provides dwelling conditions for God. That is a great advance on coming out of Egypt, which, while a very important exercise, is in a sense negative, that is to say, it is the repudiation and judging of that which constitutes Egypt, judging it according to God, and refusing it, and leaving it. But in Exodus 25 there is a positive line of exercises before us, as God says, “Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring me a heave-offering: of every one whose heart prompteth him, ye shall take my heave-offering”, and then in verse 8, “they shall make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them”. It is a very attractive proposal, that we should be permitted to provide conditions, holy conditions too, for it is a sanctuary, so that God may dwell among us. In Isaiah the question is raised, “Who shall dwell with the consuming fire?” referring to God’s nature, but then it is possible to dwell with God, for He has given us His Holy Spirit for that very purpose that we might be brought into moral accord with Himself, with whom we are to dwell eternally, and He would have us take up the exercise of providing conditions for Himself in the assembly at this present time while we are still surrounded by what is evil.
Now, as making that proposal, God brings forward, as the first thing to be constructed, an ark, and it is called in Exodus, and in nearly every reference to it in Numbers, the ark of the testimony. In other scriptures, especially Joshua and Samuel and Chronicles, it is often spoken of as the ark of the covenant, but the ark of the testimony is what is to be before us in relation to our exercises as to providing conditions suitable for the dwelling place of God while we are here still in an evil scene. Let me remind you of what is said in Psalm 40 prophetically of Christ: “Sacrifice and oblation thou didst not desire: ears hast thou prepared me. Burnt-offering and sin-offering hast thou not demanded; then said I, Behold, I come, to do thy good pleasure, my God, is my delight, and thy law is within my heart”. Think what that must have meant to God, after He had for centuries men under His eye doing their own will, and living in their own will, pursuing their own interests, going on independently of Him. A moment comes when, coming into the world, Jesus says, “to do thy good pleasure, my God, is my delight, and thy law is within my heart”. There is a Man before God who delights in the will of God, who has no will contrary to God’s will. He said on one occasion, when supremely tested, “Not my will, but thine be done”. Not that His will was ever contrary to God’s will, for it was not, but He repudiates the idea of any will that is not God’s will. He says, “Not my will, but thine be done”. Think of the moral glory, after centuries of the earth’s history of men doing their own will, of one Man coming into view whose whole motive in being here was to do God’s will. But now God says, as it were, ‘I have now introduced in Jesus a testimony to what I am going to bring to pass on a wide scale in the assembly, and in all those who are formed after Christ’. But the assembly is to be the testimony, during this present day of the Spirit, to that great principle that a Man has now come in devoted to God’s will, and the saints are to be formed according to it, and Christ as the ark of the testimony is the centre of the system.
The ark was the distinguishing feature of the dwelling place of God, and the book of Numbers shows us that it is to be carried in testimony through the world. There is provision for carrying the ark, for there are staves attached to it. The ark refers to Christ; the staves refer to the saints who carry Christ in their affections, steadily, day in and day out. So there is this testimony to the will of God being secured in men and maintained in men; there is a testimony to it carried through the wilderness. Where that is so, lawlessness is rebuked, and it provides God with a moral justification for bringing in judgment on the world in His own time. How important this testimony is! It is a feature of the dwelling place of God, for the ark is there, the ark of the testimony cherished in the affections of the saints, and carried by them, so that there are staves of acacia wood, overlaid with gold, referring to the saints, and it says, “They shall not come out from it”. That is to say, Christ in this light is presented to us as never separated from the saints, and the saints never separated from Him, but they are carrying Him in testimony all the time. So it says, “Thou shalt put into the ark the testimony that I shall give thee”, and then there is the mercyseat above. What a glory there is in the ark and the mercy-seat, the glory of Christ come in as Man to establish the will of God and make it good by means of His death, so that God might shine out in mercy, and secure a universe of persons saved through the blood of Christ on the principle of mercy!
These things are very great, and we want to get our thoughts enlarged to appreciate Christ as the Ark, One who enshrines in His Person all that God has in mind in His thoughts of blessing towards His people, and carries it all through. It is a most majestic view of Christ in His personal glory as coming in to establish the will of God and carrying everything through in undeniable power wherever He goes. For Him it involved the cross, for the will of God could not be effected without the cross, but at the same time the aspect before us in the ark is power, undeniable power. In that power every thought of God is established, the mercy-seat is established, and then He says, “Thou shalt put the mercy-seat above on the ark, and shalt put in the ark the testimony that I shall give thee. And there will I meet with thee, and will speak with thee from above the mercy-seat, from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony, everything that I will give thee in commandment”. It is a great triumph for God that conditions in accordance with Christ can be secured and maintained among His people in an evil world like this, so that He can dwell amongst us, as He says, “I will dwell among them, and walk among them”, and He will speak to us too, from off the mercy-seat.
BOURNEMOUTH
26th December 1959
From Words of Grace and Comfort
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