The Church is the issue of the Enjoyment of the Riches of Christ as the Good Land

The holy temple and the holy city were built on and were the issue of the holy land, showing that the church is the issue of the enjoyment of the riches of Christ. The last two chapters of Ezekiel speak a lot concerning the holy land – not merely of the holy city or the holy temple, but of the recovery of the holy land.

Both the temple and the city are built on the land. After showing Ezekiel the vision of the temple with all its features, God spoke at length concerning the holy land, which is a type of the all-inclusive Christ. Without the holy land, there cannot be the building of the house of God or the city of God.

This week in our morning revival on the crystallization-study of Ezekiel we are enjoying the matter of, The Holy Temple and the Holy City in the Holy Land.

The land is the source with which and the site on which the temple and the city are built. This shows that the all-inclusive Christ allotted to us by God for our enjoyment and experience, issues in the building up of the church.

We need to have the full enjoyment of the riches of Christ so that we may build up the church.

We need to see that the Church is the issue of the Enjoyment of the Riches of Christ

The holy temple and the holy city – both of which typify the church (see Ezek. 47:13; 1 Cor. 3:16-17) are the issue of the Holy Land, which typifies Christ; this shows that the church is the issue of the enjoyment of the riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8).

If we do not enjoy the riches of Christ, we cannot have the church as the temple of God and the city of God. The land touches the central thought of God’s eternal plan; the land is a type of the all-inclusive Christ given to God’s people for their enjoyment and experience.

God’s purpose is always with Christ, the land; He is to be enjoyed and experienced by God’s people in order to be enlarged, expanded, to be the temple and the city. The land has always been the focus of God’s work, from the beginning to the end of the Bible.

After Satan rebelled, the water covered the land as a result of God’s judgment; so God came in to recover the land, and on the third day the land arose from the death waters. This is a type of Christ coming forth in resurrection to be the reality of the good land.

Out of this land come all forms of life – the plant life, the animal life, the human life, and even the tree of life; all forms of life come out of the resurrected Christ.

Soon after God created man, man became fallen, and God judged man with the flood – again, water covered the land; God set apart Noah and saved his family through the ark, sparing them, and He brought them to a new land.

After that, man fell again, and God called Abraham, having a new beginning with man; God promised Abraham a good land, a spacious land, so he left his idolatrous belonging and went to this land which God promised him.

Along the way, God’s people (the descendents of Abraham) settled in Egypt because of Joseph, and they were slaves under Pharaoh for 400 years; but God didn’t forget the land, so He called Moses to bring His people out of Egypt and into a good land flowing with milk and honey.

It is in this land that God’s people can build the temple and the city so that God would have His expression and dominion. Because of man’s unfaithfulness, God allowed the Babylonians to come, invade the land, destroy the temple and the city, and carry God’s people into captivity; then after seventy years God brought some of them back to the land to rebuild the temple and the city.

We need to be impressed with the importance of the land; God’s focus is altogether with the land, for only when the Jewish people returned to the land could Christ have a place to be born and be the Emmanuel, the seed promised to Abraham.

The land is a type of the all-inclusive Christ; God allotted Christ to us that we may enjoy Him with all His riches. Without enjoying Christ with all His riches, it is impossible for us to have the building up of the church as the temple of God and the city of God.

The last two chapters of Ezekiel bring us back to focus on the land – there’s a struggle related to the land, and even today in the Middle East there is much struggle concerning the land of Israel.

In the spiritual realm there’s a real struggle – do we enjoy the all-inclusive Christ as the good land? It is only when we as God’s chosen people partake of and enjoy the riches of Christ that we are constituted with those riches to be the church, through which the multifarious wisdom of God is made known to the angelic rulers and authorities in the heavenlies (Eph. 3:10).

The church is not an assembly or organization but the fullness of Christ, the issue of all the riches of Christ enjoyed by us. For us to be the Body of Christ and the fullness of Christ, we need to be saturated with the riches of Christ; then, the church will be a wise exhibition of all that Christ is.

Christ as the good land is “flowing with milk and honey”; these typify the riches of Christ – milk in abundance and honey in abundance! Milk is produced by cattle that feed on grass (both vegetable and animal life), and honey is made by bees from the nectar of flowers.

Milk and honey signify the riches of Christ which come from the two aspects of His life – His redeeming life for His judicial redemption (typified by the animal life – John 1:29), and His generating life for His organic salvation (typified by the vegetable life – John 12:24).

We need both the judicial redemption to deliver us from all the negative things, and the organic salvation to save us much more in His life.

On the one hand Christ died for us to redeem us by His blood, and on the other, He saves us much more in His life by regenerating us, renewing us, sanctifying us, transforming us, conforming us, and eventually glorifying us. God has promised this good land to us, and He wants us to enjoy the all-inclusive Christ in His judicial redemption and His organic salvation.

It is by our having the full enjoyment of the riches of Christ that we can become and build up the temple of God and the city of God.

Thank You Lord for giving us the all-inclusive Christ as the good land to be our portion for our enjoyment. We want to enter into the full enjoyment of the riches of Christ so that we may become and build up the church as the temple of God and the city of God. May we spend much time with You in Your word to be saturated with the riches of Christ and become part of the fullness of Christ, the Body of Christ. Keep us enjoying Your judicial redemption and Your organic salvation day by day to be both reconciled to God and be saved much more in Christ’s life!

Having the Recovery of the Enjoyment of the All-Inclusive Christ for the Church

What does it really mean to us in our experience that Christ is the good land, the spacious and good land allotted to us for our enjoyment and experience? As human beings, we eat, drink, exercise, read, and do many things, but everything we do is on a piece of land; if there’s no land, we cannot do anything.

Everything we do is on the land, and many times it is even determined on what kind of land we are on.

Christ is not only our food, our drink, and our supply – He is the good land, the all-inclusive good land as a spacious and rich land for us to live in. Here, on the land, all our needs are met. The question is, are we enjoying Christ?

We may appreciate His judicial redemption and enjoy His organic salvation but what about our daily life – do we enjoy Christ as the reality of the good land? Do we enter into the full enjoyment of the riches of Christ so that, when we come together, we have an overflow of this riches to be His fullness?

Or do we have a routine Christian life and church life, and we feed on Christ here and there…without having the sense or experience of Him as the good land.

The history of the children of Israel shows that the land can be lost, and there’s a need for the recovery of the land; Christ Himself cannot be lost, but in our experience Christ can be lost (Gal. 5:2-4).

God doesn’t just give us things, that is, He doesn’t just give us bits and pieces of Christ as our food, drink, air, and supply. Through regeneration we were brought into Christ as the all-inclusive good land to enjoy all the riches of Christ and build up the church as the temple and city of God.

But is Christ our experience and enjoyment daily as the good land? Do we just enjoy Him in the morning, around lunchtime, and sometimes in the evening…but without a thought of Him and without contacting Him during the day?

We may be taking a shower, dressing up, doing the dishes or the laundry, playing with the children, meeting people, being at work, travelling, etc – in all these things, do we live in the good land? Christ should be our reality day by day. As we do this and that, we should experience and enjoy Christ.

Everything should be an opportunity to remind us of Christ as the reality of all the positive things, so that we may enjoy the riches of Christ and become His fullness. Christ is not just the tree of life, the bread of life, and the water of life; He is the good land, and we have been rooted and planted in this land, and we need to be built up in this land.

We may enjoy Christ, but do we enjoy Him as our good land? If we don’t daily enjoy the riches of Christ, how can we build up the church – which is the issue of the enjoyment of Christ? May the Lord have mercy on us to recover us to the enjoyment of Christ as the all-inclusive land.

Once the land has been recovered, the temple and the city can be built on the land; once we enter into the fully enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ – who is the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9) realized as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17) – we can build up the church.

In the case of the children of Israel, it is by enjoying the riches of the land that they were able to build up the temple to be God’s habitation on earth and the city of Jerusalem to establish God’s kingdom on earth.

In our case today, it is by enjoying the unsearchable riches of Christ that we are built up to be Christ’s Body, the church, which is Christ’s fullness, His expression (Eph. 1:22-23), and which also is the habitation of God (2:21-22; 1 Tim. 3:15) and the kingdom of God (Matt. 16:18-19; Rom. 14:17).

Lord, recover us to the enjoyment of Christ as the all-inclusive land. May we not only enjoy Christ as our food and drink here and there, but may we live in Christ as the good land, enjoy His unsearchable riches, experience Him, and become His fullness. May we grasp every opportunity to enjoy Christ with all His riches day by day so that we may be saturated with the riches of Christ and build up the church as the temple of God and the city of God. Amen, Lord, bring us into the full enjoyment of the riches of Christ day by day both personally and together with all the saints in the church!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by James Lee for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Ezekiel, msg. 27 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-study of Ezekiel (2), msg. 11 (week 23 in the HWMR), The Holy Temple and the Holy City in the Holy Land.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Jesus, the all-inclusive land, / Is everything to me: / A Christ of brooks, of depths and streams, / And fountains bubbling free. / Springing from valleys and from hills, / Flowing till every part He fills, / He waters us—how glorious— / By His life! (Hymns #1164)
  # We have seen Christ is reality: / But it’s not sufficient just to see: / He in our experience must be / Everything to us. / We in prayer behold Him face to face, / In the Word and meetings know His grace; / But in daily life, in every place, / What is He to us? (Hymns #1178)
  # Let’s take the land! The land that God has given us; / In all our living, Christ can be so much: / To take this land, we have th’ equipment that we need— / The blood, the Word, the Spirit, and the church. (Hymns #1287)