II. IN THE TYPES
The types in the Old Testament show us how to enjoy God as our life supply that He may dispense Himself into us. The best way to educate someone is to use types or pictures. A type or a picture is better than a thousand words. For this reason, teachers in elementary schools often use pictures to illustrate their subjects. The things in the Scriptures concerning Christ are all mysterious, divine, spiritual, and invisible. They are too difficult for people to apprehend. As the best Educator, God used types to illustrate these matters, that His people would know His intention to dispense Himself as the nourishing, constituting element into them. God is waiting to dispense Himself into us. If we simply read the New Testament without the Old Testament, these matters will not be clear to us. However, without the New Testament we cannot understand the types in the Old Testament. We need both the Old Testament and the New Testament. When we put both together in our understanding, we enjoy God, and He has more opportunities to dispense Himself into us.
In the previous message we considered God’s dispensing in the children of Israel’s enjoyment of the items of the Passover, mainly by the eating of the flesh of the lamb and the unleavened bread, and in their enjoyment of the heavenly and spiritual supply in the wilderness by eating the manna and drinking the living water from the cleft rock. In this message we come to the second part concerning the matter of eating for the Lord to dispense Himself into us—the enjoyment of all the offerings. Before the decree of the law at Mount Sinai, Abel, Noah, and Abraham made offerings to God. Abraham’s living was to set up a tent and an altar to offer something to God (Gen. 12:7-8; 13:18). The descendants of Abraham, the children of Israel, also practiced something similar, but in an untrained way. At Mount Sinai, however, God trained the children of Israel concerning how to eat Him through the offerings in a regulated way. The regulation concerning the offerings was in two sections. The first section concerned the continual offerings, that is, the daily, weekly, and monthly offerings. The second section concerned the annual offerings at the annual feasts. This shows us that in our daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly living, and even eternally, we need to receive God’s dispensing of Himself into us, not merely by God’s giving but even the more by our eating. God’s part is to dispense; our part is to eat. We must eat what God dispenses.
C. In the Enjoyment of the Continual Offerings
The divine economy and the divine dispensing are shown in the types in the enjoyment of the continual offerings (Lev. 1—7). The enjoyment of the continual offerings typifies our enjoyment of God as our life supply to dispense Himself into us in a continual way. The continual offerings typify the very Christ whom we enjoy daily in a regular way. The times of the offerings were regulated because they are like our meals. Almost everyone on earth eats three meals each day—breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Our eating of meals is regulated by the experience of human kind for the past six thousand years. This regulated eating results in the best dispensing. Every day whatever we have eaten is dispensed into us and is assimilated to become us through the dispensing. In God’s economy the most important matter is His dispensing.
(The Central Line of the Divine Revelation, Chapter 20, by Witness Lee)
