Paul Martin
Exodus 25: 1-11, 23, 24, 31, 40
1 Chronicles 28: 11, 12
Exodus 30: 11-16
Numbers 3: 44-51
I seek the Spirit’s help to say a word as to the pattern, and the shekel of the sanctuary. Both were clearly shown to Moses on the mountain. They bring out, of course, God’s appreciation of Christ. If God speaks to man, He always speaks to man in the light of His appreciation of Christ. The Lord Jesus is the Mediator. That is wonderful for us, but it is very wonderful for God that He should come near to us in the person of a Man.
Both the pattern and the shekel of the sanctuary remind us that God has a standard. We might think that if God had a standard, it would always be far beyond us; and naturally, of course, it is. God has His standard and, because He is God, He never changes it. It is because He is God that He has a standard. We are in a world of changing standards, if there are any. Moral decay is sweeping especially the western world like a tornado. What a world it is - even the church publicly is legalising alarming lower standards that are contrary to God. We might say, “What will God do? Will He change His standard?”. Oh no - He is God. He does not need to change His standard. He showed His pattern to Moses on the mountain. Someone may say, “Where can I see the pattern?”. It was not shown to Moses in Egypt - no, God showed Moses a burning bush before the people came out of in Egypt. What does that mean? It was being burnt and it was not consumed; a thorn bush, dry, prickly, like ourselves I suppose, like Israel was; and dwelt in the bush (Deut 33: 16), and it was not going to be consumed. What wonderful grace. He showed it to Moses.
When they were in the wilderness in this section, God says to Moses, “Come up to me into the mountain, and be there”, chap 24: 12. Dear young soul, you will never get a view of God’s pattern in Egypt. You will find it on the mountain, apart from this world, in all its degradation, in all its corruption. God would draw you apart and show you that He has another order altogether and it is centred in Christ, and there is a standard that governs it which is unchangeable. How wonderful to fix your soul on that! It was going to be brought into expression through the affections of God’s people. They were to bring a heave offering. He brought them out of Egypt, they sang on the banks of the Red Sea, rejoicing in their deliverance, “The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea”, Exod 15: 1. Think of God bringing them out with a powerful hand. What mighty power there was in the deliverance from Egypt. We have proved it, have we not? Set free from our sins and the bondage of them, and from the world in which sin finds its home. We have been set free from it all, but we have been set free for a purpose. The purpose was not only to bring the children of Israel into the land, but it was that God might dwell among them. He says, “they shall make me a sanctuary, that I might dwell among them”. I find that most affecting. A rebellious people, a people that deserved judgment, a people whose bodies were strewn in the wilderness, but God says “make me a sanctuary”. He looked at them, not from the viewpoint of their failings, but he looked at them as His son; He says, “let my son go”, Exod 4: 23. He never ceased to see that in the children of Israel, and He says to Moses here that they were to make the sanctuary, the tabernacle, and the utensils “according to their pattern, which hath been shewn to thee in the mountain”. Oh may God give us today a fresh sight of the pattern that He has, that is unchanged, that is beyond the failure of man; that gives character to the scene of testimony through which the children of Israel were going to pass and through which we are to pass. The tabernacle system was going to give character to it all. How did they go through the wilderness? They followed the ark, Num 10: 33. How did they cross the Jordan? They followed the ark. There was the committal of God to His people: the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, that they might journey by day and by night. Dear brethren, we have known what it is to journey by day and to journey by night. It has not altered God’s commitment to His people - no. You say, ’The night time is coming, how dark it is’; have you seen the pillar of fire? It is there, going before the people that they might have light as to the way in which they were to go. What a God!
Light divine directs thy going
God Himself shall mark thy way
(Hymn 76).
Think of those men who moved in faith, coming out of a broken system and moving in faith, in the light of a heavenly calling. Beloved, that is our calling today - it is a heavenly one. I have said it before, please excuse me for saying it again, we have in our hands the holy Scriptures that have come down to us through the martyrdom of those that have gone before, and those men gave their lives and were burnt at the stake. In Oxford, one said to the other, as they were tied to the stake, and the flames were just beginning to catch light, ‘Be of good comfort ... We shall this day, by God’s grace, light such a candle in England as I trust shall never be put out’. That candle was lit by men who gave their lives at the stake, brother and sister, in order that you might have the Scriptures in your hand and might have the liberty to read about the blessed Saviour and to know the ways of God, and to get a view of the pattern. Those men gave their lives and they put a legacy into the church; and the church, wanting support and protection, put its hand into the hand of the State and lost its power. What a moment! In the 1800s, through divine grace, God moved in the hearts of many men and women and they answered to the call, having a view of the pattern. It is not an earthly one, it is a heavenly one there, centring in Christ: “make an ark”. Christ is the Centre of God’s purpose, the Centre of His ways. I say to you, dear friend, today, and to my own soul, get a view of the One who is there at the Centre of this whole system. He gives character to it all.
If you went into the tabernacle there were the outer courts and the curtains, the boards, and as you went in the first thing that was before you was the brazen altar. As the priest went in, there was the largest piece of furnishing in the tabernacle - the brazen altar, five cubits by five cubits. Think of how it stood there as a reminder that our approach to God must be on the basis of the death of the Lord Jesus. There is no other way - everything else has had to go. Our approach is on the basis of that blessed One.
Then he would move forwards towards the tent and there was the laver, and the priest washed himself in the laver because, if God was to be served, there had to be right conditions in the priest as well. He had the bearing of the death of Christ not only in its judicial character as represented in the altar but in its moral claim as we move through a world of corruption. The bearing of the death of Christ had to be known by the priest, and then he would draw near to the tent and there in the holy place he would enter in. Along one side was the candlestick and it was shining in all its lustre, Christ shining in that scene. Opposite it was the table of shewbread - we have read of these things - and there upon the table were the twelve loaves placed in order upon the table. What a scene. Nothing of man’s mind intruded, nothing disturbed it, the light shone in its glory and there were the loaves standing on the table. They never rested on the sand of the desert. Their place was in Christ before God, a wonderful thing; but, dear brother or sister, have you seen yourself on the table of shewbread along with the saints? Have you seen yourself there? You do not belong to the sand of the wilderness - no, we pass through it in our responsibility but where you belong is on the table, not only chosen in Christ but upheld by Him.
And then after the priest went past the lamp-stand and the table there was the altar of incense. The incense was burning constantly, that which was for the pleasure of God, speaking to Him of the Lord Jesus in all His fragrance and all His preciousness, not so much as the offering for sin, or even the burnt offering, but the incense - it says it was beaten small (Lev 16: 12); the detail that was there in the life of the Lord Jesus is there as a fragrance ascending to God. Moses was shown all this as a pattern upon the mountain.
The high priest once a year would go into the holy of holies and there, standing all on its own, without compare, was the ark and the mercy-seat and the cherubim of glory. It speaks of every right of God maintained, in that blessed Man, and in all that He had done, and there God says, “there will I meet with thee, and will speak with thee”, Exod 25: 22. Think of God, wanting to talk with men, with you, dear friend, and me, but He had to do it on the right basis according to His pattern.
We are told at the end of this chapter that, not only was Moses shown the pattern, but he was shown their pattern, for each detail in that system there was after a pattern. I used to think when I was a boy that God showed him a miniature of the tabernacle and he took down the dimensions and made it, but I have come to see that I was wrong, and what God showed him was a world of which Christ is everything to God. Standing there in all His glorious distinctiveness, the One in whom God could come out to man, and by whom man could go in to God, having nothing to do with the world around, separated by the badger skins and the other coverings that were there, all a protection against the elements of the world. What a scene! And Moses saw it there in its glory upon the mountain, and he saw that God would speak to him of His beloved Son. He saw that there must be an answer in the heart of men; so He says, “bring me a heave-offering”. I ask my soul, and maybe you might ask yours, ’What part have I had in the heave-offering?’. It can only be in the appreciation of what Christ is to God that there could be a heave-offering in relation to the system that God has. Moses came down from the mountain and he had it in his heart. What he carried down were the tables of stone - he did not carry a plan of the tabernacle as well: every detail of that system was in his heart, even down to the snuffers. You say, ‘I cannot do much, I am not much’, but there was a pattern for the snuffers, there was a pattern for the snuff trays, for the light was to be kept burning, as it is in your locality - the light is to be kept burning; and it required daily and constantly the trimming of the lamps and the provision of the oil, and using the snuff trays in order that any dross might be removed. All had to be accounted for, and maybe, dear brother or sister, you might just be such a utensil in the divine system. You say, ‘Why a snuffer?’ - because there was to be nothing of me in the light. I know what it is like; sometimes you have a candle on the table and you try to blow it out; and the wax goes on the cloth and everything becomes a mess. There was nothing like that of man in the tabernacle system. It was all of God, and that is so in the local company; there is to be functioning in the local company and the functioning comes from what is of God, not what is of man. Moses got a view of that and he came down and he built it, according to the pattern that had been shown to him on the mountain.
When we come to David, David wanted to build a house, and Jehovah says to him, “Thou shalt not build a house unto my name, for thou art a man of war, and hast shed blood … Solomon thy son, he shall build my house”, 1 Chron 28: 3, 6. It was built by the beloved, but where did he get the pattern? He got it from David. Where did David get the pattern? He got it by the Spirit. It is a remarkable touch as to David in 1 Chronicles 28; it says, “the pattern of all that he had by the Spirit”, v 12. Where do you get the pattern today? You get it by the Spirit. Someone may say, ‘How can we see the assembly today? We see it in ruins’. Ask the Spirit to show you this wonderful vessel, the assembly; not in ruins, no, but in its glory. Daniel was living in a day like ours and he had his windows open towards Jerusalem. That was characteristic of him. Think about that. What was Jerusalem like? It was a ruin, but not in Daniel’s eye. Is it a ruin in your eye, beloved; is that all one sees? The assembly scattered and torn - we feel these things, and we should feel them more, the departure that has come in and the sorrows that the departure has caused; but the Spirit says that he got the pattern by the Spirit. And I say again, ask the Spirit to show you what the assembly is in its glory. It is there as the bride of Christ, publicly in the scene in which we are it is moving as His wife, but He will show you the bride. He showed John; He caught him up and showed John “the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of the heaven from God”, Rev 21: 10. Have you seen it? How wonderful it is - a city in which everything is vibrant in response Godward answering in its moral features to all that was manifested in Jesus. What a city! The Spirit would show you. You may say that John got it specially. Yes, he was in prison on the island of Patmos (Rev 1: 8); he was not looking at the prison walls; he was looking at “the city that has foundations, of which God is the artificer and constructor”, Heb 11: 10. What a city; “coming down ... having the glory of God. Her shining was like a most precious stone, as a crystal jasper stone”, chap 21, 10-11. What movements of descending dignity and glory, answering to the movements of descending grace that had been seen in Jesus, seen in the vessel that comes down as the bride, adorned as a bride for her husband.
These things are to grip our souls, beloved; God has them and they are unchanged and unchangeable. If what God sets on could be changed by man’s failure, He would cease to be God. God is carrying His thoughts through and He is carrying them through victoriously. Then there is the other side - there is the shekel of the sanctuary. That comes down to our side. The shekel of the sanctuary brings out a divine standard, “according to the shekel of the sanctuary”, Exod 38: 25. As I understand it, the shekel of the sanctuary was a piece of silver. It had a value and it had a weight and it was kept in the sanctuary by the priest. The divine standard was there before God. Was it going to change as time went on? No, it does not need to change. It is still there, the shekel of the sanctuary; it is there before God. The people were to come, and they were going to be numbered, not as David did in pride, but they were to be numbered in order to bring out that each was one of the redeemed. Peter says, “ye have been redeemed, not by corruptible things, as silver or gold … but by precious blood”, 1 Pet 1: 18, 19. Remember that: you go out on Monday, if we are still here, to school and work and other things we may do; remember you have been redeemed by precious blood. The ransom price was according to the shekel of the sanctuary. Paul says “Do ye not know … ye are not your own? For ye have been bought with a price”, 1 Cor 6: 19, 20. And Paul goes on to say, “glorify now then God in your body”. That touches everything I do in my life, does it not? I put my hands to something and I remember, I have been bought with a price. The shekel is there in the sanctuary; the standard remains unchanged. You go out to school, and you might keep company with persons, but suddenly you remember that the shekel is there through God’s grace. It is not making anything of me, but there is a difference. The Lord Jesus shed His precious blood to secure me, not just for eternity but now also, to hold me for God. How wonderful that is. “Glorify now then God in your body”.
So it says, “This shall they give - every one that passeth among them that are numbered - half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary, - twenty gerahs the shekel; a half shekel shall be the heave-offering for Jehovah. Every one that passeth among those that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give the heave-offering of Jehovah. The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less”. You could not add to the work of Christ, could you? You could not add to your redemption however much you have. It stands in its distinctiveness. If I sought to contribute something to the work of Christ it would be the man that had to be removed seeking to add something to the shekel of the sanctuary; but God has His standard. He says, ‘I am satisfied with all that the Lord Jesus has done, and that work is perfect and complete, that blood is still before God in all its intrinsic value because that is sufficient and nothing could add to it’: “The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less”. Why should I live with a lesser appreciation of the work of Christ? Paul has to remind the Corinthians of this; they were going along with all sorts of things. Those epistles to the Corinthians bring out the standards that God has set for the believer’s life in the assembly. It touches on everything: it touches on marriage; there is a standard, a divine standard. In the world it is said, ‘Get married and, if it does not work, you divorce and get someone else’. That is not the shekel of the sanctuary. The divine standard is that marriage takes character from Christ and the assembly. I speak humbly of that; we are tested in our own circumstances but that is the standard for marriage and we should not think that there is an alternative. The shekel of the sanctuary remains in the presence of God.
“Thou shalt take the atonement-money of the children of Israel, and devote it to the service of the tent of meeting; and it shall be a memorial to the children of Israel before Jehovah, to make atonement for your souls”. In Numbers it is the Levites that are numbered. Levites, as we know, consisted of three families; the Kohathites, the Merarites and the Gershonites. They each had their area of responsibility, and each one of them was necessary, and each one of them was important. You say, ‘I am not sitting taking meetings’; you can give thanks for that; but you have your own area of responsibility in service Godward. Each one of us does. In this dispensation, we are each taken up to serve God. The Levites had no inheritance; Jehovah was their inheritance. Is that not the same for us? What a wonderful inheritance. Paul speaks of it; “to know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, if any way I arrive at the resurrection from among the dead”, Phil 3: 10, 11. You think of the inheritance Paul was enjoying and he was pressing on, in order that he might come into it even more. What an inheritance there is for each one of us. “Jehovah, he is their inheritance”, Deut 18: 2. We were speaking in the reading about how we take up our place in responsibility in the testimony; I say for myself, take it up in the light of the fact that Jehovah is your inheritance, and you are here to serve Him. Each one of us is here to serve Him. It says, “and the Levites shall be mine: I am Jehovah”, Num 3: 45. They were here to serve God. As Mr Darby says,
To serve thee here on earth, unknown;
Then share thy heavenly bliss.
(Hymn 411)
That is the portion for the saints today; to be here with God as our object, Christ as our resource, the Spirit as resource and power within the believer. But why? That God might be served. “Let us”, the writer of Hebrews says, “... serve God acceptably with reverence and fear”, chap 12: 28. In what we do in our daily path and in our assembly walk, let us remember that we are here to serve God. We had a young sister who asked for fellowship a little while back and I asked her, ‘Why do you not go back to the church where you were converted?’ She said, ‘I could not do that, for that church has man as its object. I want to take up my place in a company that has God as its object.’ That is a Levite; she already had in view that her path here is to serve God. That is the path for each one of us; it is a worthy one, and the standard of service is in keeping with the shekel of the sanctuary. Christ is the standard. If you think of any service Godward, you find it in Him; what a service, both when He was here, and now serving before God. We have such a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens. What a service; it is going on, even at the present time, supporting those who are passing through circumstances which otherwise would be overwhelming, but the great High Priest is there supporting them. What is He doing it for? In order that they might be liberated and be here in keeping with the shekel of the sanctuary. How wonderful Christ is. Think of Him as the One who is leading the praises as the Minister of the sanctuary. What services the Lord Jesus undertakes! What response Godward He secures and is maintaining, and has maintained, right down through this dispensation! What a Man the Lord Jesus is! There in the presence of God, and yet, alongside the glory and attractiveness of the Man, is the border of gold that was round the altar and round the ark and round the table; a border of gold, speaking from every direction that you looked of the divinity and glory and majesty of the One who alone could uphold everything by the word of His power. What a Person, and we are held if we are in relation to such a One. It may be wrongly said to you, ‘Christianity is dying out’: but there is a living Man upholding all things for God, and He is upholding all according to the pattern, and He is upholding men according to the shekel of the sanctuary.
May we prove it, for His Name’s sake,
Birmingham
10th March 2012