EXODUS 25
It has been said that this is the most important chapter in the Pentateuch, and I think its contents justify the statement.
[p. 147] In Exodus 15: 2 Moses and the children of Israel sang of Jehovah, “This is my God, and I will glorify him (or, make him a dwelling)”. The two readings are not inconsistent with each other, for God is glorified in His people making Him a dwelling. Redemption, and the ways of God in grace, bringing His people to Himself and establishing covenant relations, are all in view of this. Jehovah looks now for energetic movements of affection towards Himself on the part of His people. “A heave-offering” (Exodus 25: 2) suggests this. A “wave-offering” is a movement of affection God-ward, but a “heave-offering” is an energetic movement. It suggests that His people have grown up in strength of heart God-ward.
To take up the teaching of this chapter requires spiritual affections to be in energy. All the material for the tabernacle was to be furnished as the fruit of promptings of heart; all was to come, as it were, out of the affections of the people. That is a simple thing to see, but most important. Does it not say plainly that the whole vast scene of God’s glory in Christ is to be made good through active affections? Everything that will go to make up the system of glory is being formed in the affections of saints now, so that each one may bring his bit of divine wealth and beauty to contribute to the perfection and glory of the whole.
A people furnished with divine wealth can bring a heave-offering. The giving has all been on God’s part up to chapter 18, but as brought to God, and brought under divine teaching, the people are enriched so that they have precious things to bring to God. What has become precious substance in the affections of saints is suited material for the sanctuary. It has [p. 148] to be spiritually fashioned so as to fill its appointed place in the divine system, and all put together in blessed unity to form God’s dwelling. It ought to be an exercise with us to have something that will do to form part of the true tabernacle.
The list of things which make up the “heave-offering” begins with “gold” and ends with “stones to be set in the ephod, and in the breast-plate”. God has been pleased in His wisdom to use these symbols in communicating His mind to us, and it is our wisdom to apply ourselves to the understanding of them. It has been said that the language of symbols is as definite as any other. God has been pleased to speak in this language, and it is for us to learn in much dependence and sober exercise the language in which He speaks.
There is, no doubt, a moral order in the way these things are presented. I would suggest that “gold, and silver, and copper” speak of different ways in which the knowledge of God comes to us in Christ. Gold is the most precious metal of which Scripture takes account, and it fittingly represents what is wholly divine. Silver, being given as atonement-money (Exodus 30: 11 - 16), would typify the grace and faithfulness of God as known in redemption. While copper seems to speak of the unsparing judgment of evil (Numbers 16: 36 - 40), and as covering the altar there may be also in it the thought of ability to endure testing of the most severe nature. (cf. Revelation 1: 15).
Then the seven things which follow — “Blue, and purple, and scarlet, and byssus, and goats’ hair, and rams’ skins dyed red, and badgers’ skins” — are, I think, typical of the moral and official glories of Christ — God’s anointed Man. “Blue” speaks of what [p. 149] He is as the heavenly One — the One “out of heaven”, and “the Son of man who is in heaven”. He is the One who is to have supremacy, and to be invested with official glory in God’s system. “Purple” suggests His royal character and glory, His imperial supremacy, “King of kings and Lord of lords”. “Scarlet” would set forth the true glory of man as seen in Christ, in contrast to all the vain-glory which marks man in the flesh; and which will appear full-blown in the beast and the clothing of the great harlot (Revelation 17). “Byssus” — fine Egyptian cotton — seems to speak of the even texture of a life where everything is in perfect adjustment God-ward and man-ward, and that in the minutest detail. This is righteousness in Man, seen in perfection in the Righteous One. The fineness of the fabric is its prominent characteristic. “Goats’ hair” speaks of holy separation. We read of prophets, “neither shall they wear a hairy mantle to deceive” (Zechariah 13: 4). There had been with them a pretence to separation, an attempt to pass off as being more holy then they were. But in the Lord Jesus there was true separation to God.
“Rams’ skins dyed red” would indicate something of a very distinctive character, such as His disciples took knowledge of when they “remembered that it is written, The zeal of thy house devours me” (John 2: 13 - 17). An intensity of devotedness to the will and glory of God, which found indeed its full expression when He went into death. “That the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father has commanded me, thus I do. Rise up, let us go hence” (John 14: 31). He went from the supper table to the garden and the cross, that His devotedness might [p. 150] be seen in all its intensity, and marked, as it were, in an indelible character.
“Badgers’ skins” — the exterior covering of the tabernacle — would suggest, I think, the ability to resist every approach of evil, to withstand every temptation, contradiction, pressure, and persecution. Satan tempted Him, men sought to catch Him in His words, sinners contradicted, but every approach and attack was met with divine vigilance and ability to repel and overcome it.
It is good to meditate on these significant figures. We shall miss great spiritual wealth if we do not pay attention to them, and seek to learn by the Spirit their divine import. These seven things put together give us a wonderful setting forth, as we have said, of the moral character and official glory of Christ.
Then in the “acacia-wood” we have a figure of that holy humanity in which Jesus Christ came in flesh. It is called in the Septuagint Version “incorruptible wood”. The moral qualities that were seen in perfection in the Lord Jesus, and the official glories with which He is invested and in which He will soon be publicly manifested, are such as could only be found attached to holy Manhood. The figure of a tree suggests what He was as growing up here; it is used of Him in different forms: “a tender sapling”, “a root out of dry ground”, “the Branch”. But it is an entirely new kind of humanity, seen in One who did no sin, and who knew no sin, and in whom was no sin. The “acacia-wood” may also, as seen in the boards of the tabernacle, set forth what the saints are as born of incorruptible seed, and as formed in the moral qualities of the new man. There is that in them which corresponds morally with Christ, so that John can say, “which thing is true in him and in you”.
Then we come to types of the Spirit. “Oil for the light”. In relation to the divine system the only Source of light is the Holy Spirit. Christendom is full of human substitutes for the Holy Spirit — trained intellect, impressive ritual, and much even amongst believers that is really an attempt to illustrate or explain truth so that the natural mind may be able to take it in. But “oil for the light” is absolutely essential. If saints do not give place to the Spirit they will not have divine light. We need to realize more the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Lord when here prepared a vessel for the Spirit; then He died to accomplish redemption, and went as a risen and glorified Man to the right hand of God in order that the Spirit might be given at Pentecost to fill the prepared vessel. The Spirit is here to maintain the ministry of Christ through the night of His rejection, and no other source of light has any spiritual value.
“Spices for the anointing oil”. The priests and the whole tabernacle were to be anointed. The whole divine system and its service has to come under the anointing of “the Spirit all pervading”. Everything that comes under the Headship of Christ shares in His anointing, and what we find here is that it is a fragrant anointing. Psalm 45: 8 gives the spices of the anointing: “Myrrh and aloes, cassia, are all thy garments”; everything is fragrant. Where the anointing is there must be the fragrance, for the “spices” are blended in it. Think how fragrant Christ was! But every grace that was fragrant in Christ is really blended in His Spirit, so that it may become characteristic of the priesthood, and of the whole divine system which is “the true tabernacle”. One may say, “I know I have the Spirit”, but what about the “spices”? Is there a fragrance about us that cannot be hid? Are the precious graces of Christ yielding their sweet perfume in us?
“And for the incense of fragrant drugs”. The spices in the anointing oil speak of the graces of Christ whose fragrance can be perceived by the saints with whom we come in contact, but the “incense” is what is expressed of the Spirit of Christ God-ward, and for God’s delight only. Out-breathings of desire, and of holy and intelligent exercise, which answer to God’s thoughts and purposes of love — prayers which have a true sanctuary character, and which go up to God in the fragrance of the Spirit of Christ.
Lastly, the “onyx stones, and stones to be set in the ephod, and in the breastplate” bring the saints before us according to the way in which they are sustained by Christ as Priest, and carried on His heart before God. The saints may be viewed as of divine generation — all alike children in the family of God — or they may be viewed in the diversity which marks them according to divine sovereignty. The stones in the breastplate represent them in the latter character. Each stone is diverse from the others; each carries a different ray of the glory and beauty of Christ. Peter is not like John, and John is not like Matthew; each has his own colour and beauty as derived from Christ, but all are held together in the breastplate in the unity of the testimony. Each saint is ever on the heart of Christ before God in accord with divine thoughts, and the object of His priestly service is that we should be sustained in the blessedness of those thoughts.
[p. 153] God has given us this wonderful summary of all the elements which go to make up the divine system as an introduction to what He would bring before us as to the tabernacle, which is a type of that system. God would have His people enriched, through grace, with the varied apprehensions of Himself and of Christ and of the Spirit that are here suggested. Apprehensions, too, of what the saints are called to be; their places in the divine system; and how they are sustained therein. He would have it all to take form in the affections of His saints so that it might become material in our souls for the true tabernacle. It is thus that His people are able to make Him a sanctuary. It is all to be constructed of spiritual material — the knowledge of God in Christ, and of all that Christ is as Head, learned in the light of the Spirit’s ministry, and of all that the saints are as having come under the anointing, and as reflecting in many-coloured diversity the glory of Christ, and sustained ever by His priestly grace. How much energy in the affections is needed to become possessed of these things so as to be able to bring them as a heave-offering!
The contribution of each one was needed, and all had to be brought together. There was to be no independency, no breach of unity; each individual contribution had to find its place in relation to the whole. The tabernacle was one united whole, and all had eventually to come under the hand of Moses to be put together. The material had first to come from the affections of a devoted people, enriched through grace with that which had value before God, and which was suitable to His dwelling. Then it had to be constructed in the power of the Spirit, answering to [p. 154] spiritual formation. And finally it had to be put together “as Jehovah had commanded Moses”.