02.01. Chapter One
Chapter One God’s earthly dwelling-places
There are three structures mentioned in the Word of which God was pleased to give patterns and particular instructions:—First, the Tabernacle in the Wilderness; next, the Temple of Solomon, on Mount Moriah; and, thirdly—yet in the future—the Temple spoken of by Ezekiel—the Millennial Temple.
God, in the condescendence of His grace, has caused His Word to be written, so that His children may not be ignorant. He has given His Spirit also to guide them into all the truth. The Word of God is an illustrated Book, full of object-lessons conveying spiritual truths. Of these the chief are the Tabernacle and the Temple. Creation has its voice to man. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork” (Psalms 19:1), so that men are without excuse (Romans 1:20) as to the acknowledgment of His eternal power and Godhead. In the two structures of which He is the designer and the architect, “every whit speaks His glory” (Psalms 29:9). This makes them of eternal interest to us. The Tabernacle in the Wilderness When the children of Israel were brought out from Egypt under shelter of the blood of the paschal lamb, on their way to Canaan, God could speak to them, as a redeemed people, concerning a sanctuary for Himself—God’s dwelling-place with man on earth. He gave Moses a pattern of the Tabernacle; He revealed to him upon Mount Sinai His own thoughts about it, and directed him to make all things according to the pattern shown him (Exodus 25:8-9). The Tabernacle in the wilderness, which was thus made in accordance with God’s command, is an appropriate and expressive type of the Church of God in its present wilderness condition during this dispensation—the dwelling-place of God in His redeemed, according to the Word— “I will dwell in them and walk with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (2 Corinthians 6:16). “But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain Him” (2 Chronicles 6:18). What a vivid idea Solomon gives us of the infinitude of God in that expression! All created things are finite, unlimited as the spaces occupied by them may appear to us—heavens stretching beyond heavens in apparently interminable succession, but, in the nature of things, limited. Not so God; He is infinite. The Apostle John writes of the holy Jerusalem:
“I saw no temple therein: for Jehovah God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it” (Revelation 21:22). When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He was God’s dwelling-place (John 1:14). The redeemed are God’s temple in which He dwells (Ephesians 2:22); but God Himself is the temple in which they worship. Creation cannot contain His fulness; but those who love Him and abide in Him are filled with all the fulness of God (Ephesians 3:19). God says, “Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool. ““I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit” (Isaiah 57:15; Isaiah 66:1-2). Marvellous condescension of Divine and infinite love! God seeking the companionship of men! He desired to renew it with Israel, and, through them, with the rest of mankind. Broken by sin, He longed to renew it. and this He has done through redemption, as is here set forth in type. No sooner was the sanctuary provided, and everything accomplished according to God’s word, than “the glory of Jehovah filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34).
—Our Daily Homily