THE NEED OF LEVITICUS AND OUR COOPERATION
After Exodus we need the book of Leviticus, because in the tent of meeting God wants to enjoy Christ as the reality. This is all God is doing in the tent of meeting. He just wants to enjoy Christ as the reality in every aspect. This is why after Exodus, there is the need of Leviticus. Leviticus tells us how God enjoys Christ as everything in the tent of meeting.
How can God enjoy Christ? It must be by our cooperation. If God has a tent of meeting on the earth and Christ is everything to God as reality, yet there is no man to offer Christ to God, this means that there is no human cooperation. Let me illustrate it in this way: Suppose there is a kitchen stocked with abundant food. What then do we need? A cook! But God is not the cook—we are! We must cook the food, and eventually God will come to be the co-eater with us. Generally, in the family, only the wives cook. The husbands, then, are the co-eaters with their wives. This is exactly the same situation with God and man in the tent of meeting.
At the tent of meeting there is no arduous labor, but continual cooking and eating. Leviticus is a book of the church life in the meeting, because it covers all the things related to the tent of meeting. We are the tent of meeting, and we are simply meeting people. We must meet all the time, morning and evening. How wonderful it would be if we could do nothing but meet all the time every day! And in the meeting we just cook and eat. We do the cooking, and God eats with us.
And what is the food for all of our cooking and eating with God? It is Christ! We may say that Leviticus is a book of the church meetings, and we may also call Leviticus a book of recipes. All the wives who cook have a recipe book. Leviticus is a recipe book telling us how to cook Christ. It tells us how to feed and satisfy God by cooking Christ. God is hungry! But praise the Lord that God has raised up the local churches as real kitchens. Now God is waiting for all of us to cook Christ in many ways to satisfy Himself and to satisfy ourselves. We need to read Leviticus again and again. All the things mentioned in this book are about Christ. By this book we can learn how to cook Christ to satisfy God.
THE ENLARGED CHRIST
In Exodus, the tent of meeting, the tabernacle, which is just the enlarged Christ, was set up. In the tabernacle, the ark is the center and the content, and the ark is just Christ Himself. The ark is the vessel that contains the Ten Commandments of God, and the Ten Commandments are the very expression and representation of God. This means that the ark contains God as the content to be expressed. The ark is composed of two kinds of materials: wood overlaid with gold. Gold and wood typify the two natures, the divine nature and the human nature. This is Christ. Christ is of both the divine and human natures. He contains God within Himself as the very center and content of the tabernacle.
The tabernacle is a larger vessel, also made of two main materials—wood overlaid with gold. This reveals that the tabernacle is just the enlargement of the ark, the increase of the ark. When the ark is enlarged, it is the tabernacle. This means that when Christ is enlarged, He becomes the church. The church is just the enlargement of Christ. Strictly speaking, the church is also Christ (1 Cor. 12:12). The ark is the individual Christ, and the tabernacle is the corporate Christ. Praise the Lord that we have Christ enlarged on the earth as the tent of meeting, and in this tent of meeting there is the dwelling of God. God dwells in the enlarged Christ, and God speaks out of the enlarged Christ. We need to realize that this enlarged Christ includes all of us. We are the increase of Christ, so we are the tent of meeting. The tent of meeting is just the enlarged Christ in a corporate way.
(Christ as the Reality, Chapter 1, by Witness Lee)
