02.07. THE COURT FENCE
THE COURT FENCE THE Court was a space about the Tabernacle one hundred and seventy-five feet long and eighty-seven and a half feet wide; that is, half as wide as long.
It was enclosed by a fence made of white linen and hung from sixty pillars, twenty on each side, and ten on each end. The four pillars of the eastern end as already stated formed the gate of entrance. As the Tabernacle was the dwelling place of God, and the camp the allotted dwelling place of man, the Court fence occupied a definite position between them. As the Tabernacle in all its parts, its accessories and detail set forth our Lord Jesus Christ in His personal being, work and glory, and as the linen is particularly the symbol of His humanity, then the fence represents Him as filling the office between God and man. The position and office thus symbolized is that of a Mediator.
Scripture speaks of our Lord Jesus Christ as such.
“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:5; Hebrews 8:6.) “He is the mediator of the new covenant.” (Hebrews 12:24.) A mediator is one who takes an official and accepted position between two parties. He is a go-between. A mediator is under bonds to offer something that will satisfy each of the parties.
It is by satisfying the claims of each he will be able to reconcile them, harmonize their difference, make them friends. In this linen fence there were two things to be noted –the top and the bottom of the pillars. The top was silver, the bottom or base, brass.
Brass is a composition that will stand the test of fire. Fire is, again and again, set forth in Scripture as a symbol of the judgment of God.
“Thou shalt be visited of the LORD of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.” (Isaiah 29:6.) “With the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire.” (Isaiah 30:30.)
“For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.” (Isaiah 66:15.) There is only one thing that can stand the test of the fire of divine judgment and that is-righteousness. The best righteousness of the best man offered to God would be an offence to Him and call for added wrath. The best righteousness of’ the best man offered to God is nothing better in His sight than rags, not merely rags, but the foulest and most unclean of foul and unclean rags; even as it is written:
“All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” (Isaiah 64:6.)
Under the devouring fire of God’s judgment such righteousness would be turned to ashes, the individual offering them would be ruined, consumed, utterly destroyed.
What man needs is a righteousness that will meet the demands of God’s holiness.
Because man has failed, because he is a violator of God’s standard, wholly unrighteous and unclean before Him, the living, holy and righteous God demands atonement, satisfaction from the sinner. That satisfaction is found in the death of the sinner. But once in there is “no discharge in that war.” There is no remedy.
Behold the two facts:
Man needs righteousness before he can be saved and appear in the presence of God.
God demands atonement for man’s lack of it, and demands it unto the uttermost.
If someone can be found who will make atonement for man, and make it on the basis of a satisfaction that will meet all the requirement of God’s righteousness, God will give him the righteousness he needs. He will accept him in this bestowed righteousness, they shall be reconciled, they shall no longer be enemies, but friends. The answer to all this is in the symbol of the Court fence. In the silver tops of the pillars you have-atonement. In the brazen base you have—righteousness. In the linen you have the Man Christ Jesus (for, since linen is flax, and flax comes up out of the earth, it is the symbol of the humanity of Christ); and it is He who has been found of God the Father to offer atonement on behalf of man. By His sacrificial death He provides that atonement. He becomes obedient unto death for man, meets his sentence and expiates his guilt.
He offers this obedience unto death on behalf of the believing sinner.
God the Father accepts that act of obedience as the obedience of the believer, imputes it to him, charges it over to his credit. The believer becomes at once legally righteous in the sight of God; not only so, Christ Himself becomes his righteousness; as it is written:
“The righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe.” (Romans 3:22.) On that basis the risen Son of God gives eternal life to the believer, joins him to Himself. The believer is in Him, joined to Him as one spirit.
“He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” (1 Corinthians 6:17.) Not only so.
He is joined to the Lord’s risen and glorified body; as it is written:
“We are members of his body, of his flesh and bones.” (Ephesians 5:30.)
(The oldest Greek manuscripts lack this reading, but the oldest versions have it and indicate that older codices than the oldest now known had it. Our Lord’s statement when He rose from the dead concerning His body as “flesh and bones,” testifies that union with Him in spirit equally calls for union with His body.) The believer is united to a complete Lord. The Lord becomes to him his essential and organic righteousness, and the believer .in Him becomes the very righteousness of the righteous God; as it is written, and cannot too often be repeated:
“God hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21.) By this mediation God and man have been brought together and are at one in Christ. The linen Court fence with the silver tops and brazen bases-of the pillars set before us the great Mediator between God and man, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS.
It seems fitting here to meet a false concept concerning our Lord’s death.
It is freely stated by those who are the enemies of the Gospel that the doctrine of mediation built upon sacrificial and substitutional death, the innocent suffering for the guilty, is not only revolting in itself, but that it represents God as an angry God anxious to punish. the sinner and make him suffer, requiring all the agony of Christ’s crucifixion, all His moral suffering and the shedding of His blood to make Him relent and show some degree of favor, some measure of unwilling love to the sinner.
Such in fact is a libel on the Gospel and a scandal to the cross. The truth is—God is love as well as law. He has always loved the sinner. But He could not allow His love to violate His law. The love that violates law is lawlessness. It was lawless love at the outset that filled the world with sin and has succeeded in burning the blister of sin and shame and lust upon the forefront of humanity today. For God to violate the law which promises death against sin and for love’s sake set it aside would be to make God the great law violator of the universe, His throne the center of lawlessness and send this same universe upon a course of endless confusion and cataclysmic destruction. God’s love to man could be expressed and given to him only through a righteousness which should condemn sin and yet, save the sinner.
God’s love must have a righteous channel. Where and how should it be found. The cross of Christ is the answer. On that cross the Son of God comes that He may open up a righteous way by which and through which God’s love may come to the sinner and save him.
He goes to that cross voluntarily. He is not an innocent one dragged there against His will. He is God the Son who created a sinless humanity for Himself and for the express purpose that He might die and meet all the righteous demands of God. He is something more than a mere man, He is God, and God the Father Himself is there and in Him, it is God providing the way for His love to flow out. It is love immense. It is not only love on the part of the Son who gives Himself in sacrifice, it is the love of a Father who feels, and must feel, the anguish of love in surrendering His beloved Son to the righteous law wrath He Himself invokes. And the whole transaction is precisely upon the same basis by which one man sinned and made all unrighteous-on that same basis, the one for the many, He offers Himself to glorify the righteousness of God and thus permit the love of God to flow forth. In the light of this, how immense, how full of illumination is that marvellous statement of His:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” As voluntary sacrifice, substitute, mediator, He brings the wrath side of God’s righteousness upon Himself, exhausts it, justifies God in all His righteous ways and thus allows God the Father to stretch out His hand of love to the sinner, to be just and yet the justifier of the sinner. As the Mediator between God and man He did not hold back the smiting of an angry God, exercising anger for mere anger’s sake, but provided the way by which a righteous God might still be righteous and yet pour forth in a righteous way, a way that punished sin and proclaimed to all the universe the exceeding sinfulness of sin and His hatred of it, the infinite and measureless love which from all eternity had been in His heart for a lost and dying world.