The goal of God’s eternal economy is the church as the temple of God. We need to be refreshed concerning the greatest truth in the Bible, God’s eternal economy.
The entire Bible is concerning God’s economy – God has a plan, a heart’s desires, a way, and a goal. God’s plan is simply to fill us with Himself so that we may become His corporate expression. God’s way for us to be filled with Him is the precious steps He took in Christ – incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, to become the life-giving Spirit and come into us.
Now God is receivable: He is the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), and we can receive Him, be constituted with Him, and become His enlargement, the building of God with man. Christ is the God-man, and He wants us to be His enlargement – He wants that He would increase in us and we would decrease (John 1:30).
The goal of God’s economy is the church as the enlargement, expansion, increase, and growth of Christ in humanity for the glory of Christ. God’s plan is full of Christ, His way is by Christ with His processes, and His goal is that Christ would be enlarged.
We need to see Christ, appreciate Christ, enjoy Christ, and cooperate with Him for His enlargement in us, giving Him the full ground in our being that He would make His home in us and we would be constituted with Him and built in Him to be the church as the Body of Christ, the one new man, as the Lord’s testimony on earth.
This week we are continuing our enjoyment and review of the intrinsic significance of the materials of the temple and their application to our Christian life and church life.
Our Experience of Christ in All His Riches should be Greatly Enlarged and Increased
When we look at the furnishings and the utensils in the temple versus the ones in the ark, with the exception of the Ark, their dimensions, size, and number was greatly enlarged (see 1 Kings 6:19; 2 Chron. 4:1-8). This indicates that although Christ Himself (who is signified by the Ark) cannot be enlarged (since He’s eternally perfect, complete, and full), in our experience He needs to be enlarged.
Our experience of Christ in all His riches (as signified by the temple and its furnishings and utensils) should be greatly increased and enlarged to match His enlarged expression (cf. 1 Chron 22:14-19; 29:2-4).
Christ promised: I will build My church (Matt. 16:18) – He promised that He would be enlarged and expanded, and now we need to cooperate with Him for His enlargement and enjoy Him, be filled with His riches, and allow Him to expand in our being.
We need to be under the controlling vision of God’s economy and realize that Christ passed through the processes of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection, and today He is the life-giving Spirit who entered into our spirit, from where He wants to spread into every part of our being to make us part of His increase, His enlargement.
We need to be daily strengthened into our inner man with power through the Spirit so that Christ may make His home in our heart through faith, so that we may apprehend with all the saints what the dimensions of Christ are and be filled with all the fulness of God (Eph. 3:8, 14-19).
We need to be found in Christ, counting all other things beside Him as rubbish, garbage, and dung, so that we may gain Him, obtain Him, pursue Him, and lay hold of Him. Our desire and goal should be to be filled and saturated with Christ for His increase, and we should cooperate with the Lord that He would increase in our being through our experience of Him in all His riches (Phil. 3:7-14).
May we be those like Paul, who always exercised himself to forget all other things and stretch forward to gain Christ more, be filled with Christ more, and be constituted with Christ more for the church as the temple of God!
Lord Jesus, thank You for passing through incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection to become a life-giving Spirit to come into our spirit and spread into all our being! Lord, we desire to be filled with You, saturated with You, and constituted with You in all Your riches so that we may become Your fulness, Your enlargement, and Your expansion. Oh Lord, we exercise our spirit to open to You and allow You to spread into all our inner being to fill us with Yourself and make us part of Your enlargement, the church as the Body of Christ!
In the Church All the Gifts, Functions, and Experiences of Christ must be Balanced
God gave David the vision of the temple with the materials and dimensions, and He showed David not only the size of the vessels but also their weight; the size and weight signify that in the church the different aspects of the experience of Christ and the different gifts and functions of the members must be properly proportioned and balanced (2 Chron. 28:14).
When Moses received the pattern of the tabernacle with its furnishings, the Bible mentions only the dimensions of the various furnishings but not their weight; however, David received instructions concerning the weights of the golden lampstands, the golden showbread tables, and the golden incense altar.
In particular, in 1 Chron. 28:14-15 it says,
“And for the gold, by weight of the gold for all the vessels of each kind of service; for all the vessels of silver, by weight for all the vessels for each kind of service; and for the weight of the lampstands of gold and their lamps of gold, by weight for each lampstand and its lamps; and for the weight of the lampstands of silver, by weight for the lampstand and its lamps, according to the service of each kind of lampstand.”
This shows us that the basic principle in the building of the church is that everything must be balanced: nothing in the church must be too heavy or too light, just as there wasn’t a “big lampstand” and “many smaller lampstands” in the temple, but all were of the same weight.
In Eph. 3:18 we see that, as a result of being strengthened into our inner man by the Father through the Spirit so that Christ would make His home in our heart, we apprehend with all the saints the breadth and length and height and depth, that is, the vast dimensions of Christ which are also balanced (like a cube).
If we were to be on our own with our own experience of Christ and function in the Body, we would be a “one liner”, not balanced, but when we come together with our experience of Christ, our gift, and our function, we are balanced, in proper proportion, and with Christ as our weight for the building up of the church.
In His recovery the Lord is bringing us back to a proper proportion, to being balanced and weighty in the church as the temple of God.
We see a good picture of this in Ezekiel 1 where there are four living creatures joined to the wings, and they run to and fro on earth to accomplish God’s purpose; though they don’t face one another, they follow one another when one takes the lead, and God has a way through their wonderful coordination.
There are four main pillars in the Lord’s recovery: truth, life, gospel, and the church; these four aspects need to be emphasized equally and in a balanced way for the church as the temple of God. If we are not properly balanced and coordinated with one another, we may overemphasize a certain truth and cause division and trouble in the Body.
History is full of gifted Christians who ministered to others and made their own “one liner” ministry, dividing the Body of Christ. The needs of the church are multi-faceted, and the Body of Christ has many members with many functions to meet these many needs of the Body (Eph. 4:16; 1 Cor. 12:14-31; 2 Cor. 10:13).
Just as every member of our physical body is vitally necessary and has an indispensable function, so we as members in the Body of Christ are vitally necessary and are indispensable in our function.
We shouldn’t covet others’ function while despising our own function, neither should we despise others’ function thinking we have no need of others; we need one another in the Body! By the grace of God we are what we are and we function in the measure that God allotted to us.
We simply need to keep drinking Christ as the life-giving Spirit, and we will be constituted with the One who can expand in us and through us, the One who can coordinate, and the One who is properly balanced and weighty.
Simply by saying Amen to the Lord in His word and in the fellowship, we are balanced, tempered, and are in a proper proportion, and we function in our measure in the Body.
Lord Jesus, thank You for placing us in the Body as members to function in our measure and in coordination with the other members. Lord, save us from overfunctioning or neglecting our function. We want to be properly balanced by being in coordination with one another, accepting others’ function in the Body, and ministering to others according to our measure. Oh Lord, may the different aspects of the experience of Christ and the different gifts and functions of all the members of the Body be properly proportioned and balanced!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, bro. Dick Taylor’s sharing in the message for this week, and The Vision of the Building of the Church, chs. 6, 9 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Church as the Temple of God – The Goal of God’s Eternal Economy (2015 Thanksgiving Conference), week 3 / msg. 3, The Intrinsic Significance of the Materials of the Temple (2).
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Christ is a genuine man, / The perfect and finest man, / Obedient, serving, no appearance of evil, / The finest personality, / Divinity expressed through humanity. (Song on Christ, the balanced One)
# By our passing through this cycle, / Living creatures we become / To express the life of Jesus; / He with whom we’ve been made one. / We express Him as a human, / As a man so good and fine; / Balanced, normal, never striving; / Fully human, yet divine. (Hymns #1201)
# Deal with me and make me balanced, / As in preaching, so in prayer; / Leading others oft in praying, / As Thy Word I too declare. (Hymns #848)
About aGodMan
Yes. A man made religion! All religions are made made– the All inclusive Triune God said Follow me! Not this religion not that one. Christ hanged on the cross to fulfill the laws of religion in that all man will have life!!! Christ is life! Flowing in us when we touch our spirit through His word! Amen!!! Thank you Lord for Your Life Giving Spirit!!!
Amen! O LordJesus ! fill us with your Spirit and spread into all our beings Please help us to exercise our spirit to open to You and make us part of your enlargement,the church as the body of Christ Amen
In the church we should help the saints to pay attention to the experience of fellowshipping with the Lord and at the same time pay attention to spending time to study the Bible. Furthermore, we should help them not to neglect caring for the inner feeling and to obey the teaching of the anointing. However, we absolutely should not make any one of these matters too great or too important.
Our Lord likes to put those who have different dispositions together in coordination. The quiet ones are matched with the active ones, and the quick ones are paired with the slow ones. We can see this kind of arrangement by the Lord in many couples. It is difficult to find a husband and wife who are exactly alike. I believe that the Lord does this to balance us who are often one-sided. It is so in the family, and it is even more so in the church. The utterance in the Bible is, “By weight for each…according to the service of each kind….” The weights are proper and fitting….The need of the church is multifaceted. Every vessel, great or small, has an indispensable function. (Witness Lee, The Vision of the Building of the Church, pp. 85-89)
Amen Lord Jesus, and to Your word! Fill us O Lord, with Yourself, as “the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel,” (Ephesians 3:8b), that we may pursue You and be found in You (Philippians 3:9,14), “Until we all arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” (Ephesians 4:13), “Which is His Body, the fullness of the One Who fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:23). Amen.
Amen brother! I really enjoyed this point also. The light concerning God’s building is surely more complete and more advanced with the temple than it is with the tabernacle, because the record of the temple mentions not only the dimensions but also the weights of the furnishings. This indicates that the basic principle in the building of the church is that everything must be balanced, that nothing in the church is too heavy or too light. Nothing weights either more or less than the measure of its usefulness. God’s desire is to make all the vessels in the church very balanced, with the proper sizes and the fitting weights. Every vessel, great or small, has an indispensable function. Praise the Lord for His wisdom in building His church!