Primarily as far as I'm concerned, we've got to get down to know what the book says, and then you'll be solidly grounded for all that you do, and then you won't do some things that are thought to be right, and you won't leave out some things that ought to be in your life, and that's why we've got the book, and so for this next hour or so, we'll have our books in our hands, and we'll look into primarily the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians, and it's a glorious truth, you know, that all that God has ever done is based on himself, it's just like all the wickedness, all the sin, all the things that the devil has ever done, they're based on himself, all that is has come from being and personality, all that is, that's why some people can find a lifetime investigating bats' wings and leaves of flowers and all that, because in nature this sort of thing came from God, it's always marvellous, and some people can find their life investigating human people's insides, they're called doctors, and they can sort of find out all there is there, it came from God originally, you see, and some people are called psychologists, and they investigate human minds, that came from God, of course most of them are wildly astray on causes, they're investigating in effects, so that's why they can't really get down to the answer, but nevertheless, the human mind came from God, and so you can go anywhere and in everything, but especially, beloved, are we to take notice of the things that God has put in the word for us, because these are the things that he wants his people to know, it is what God has specially done, and I mean very specifically done for his people in any age that are really the great things for us to know about, therefore this morning I want you and me to look at the great setup of God in the tabernacle, I want that to be the background to our thinking, and investigate in this second Corinthian letter, in fact, in the second Corinthian letter, God not only goes back to Exodus, but to Genesis, and right back to the very beginning, only I just can't touch on that this morning, what I want, and I feel that God has laid on our hearts for us to know, is to look into our present position in relationship to the tabernacle, the Old Testament is valuable to us, beloved, in that because God was dealing in outward things of old, he could take complex personality, he could take being, and analytically set it forth in a masterly way in buildings, and in stones, and in metal, and in cloth, and in colours, and in oils, and in confections, and in all sorts of things, how marvellous God is, and that my soul knows very well, and so then, for this brief hour or so, we'll do this in the Corinthian letter, I want you first of all to, and we'll get our connection in the fifth chapter, if you would turn with me, to chapter five, we're right on our purpose immediately, we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle, there it is, we're right on the tabernacle, if the earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building, you see that passes from the impermanent tent, called the tabernacle, to the solid temple, the building, you see, here then is the great thing that is being brought to us, these great apostles of God, especially this man Paul, in this particular line, they entered into the pattern that was shown to Moses on the mount, in this they were superior to Moses, in that Moses saw the pattern, complied with God's commands, and did what God said, but the secret of it was not revealed as Paul himself says in Ephesians chapter three, he said the mystery that was hid from ages and from generations, these men, by the spirit of God, they saw more than the pattern, they entered into the being, as we were thinking last night, into God, they were godded with God, by his grace, and it was a tremendous thing that these men of old knew, my beloved brothers and sisters, you owe it to God, you owe it to yourself, you owe it to the church, you owe it to your company, you owe it to all mankind to saturate in your new testament, these are the pure writings of men who lived in God, and how in the world do you expect to go on, if you want to go on the tip bits of little words and prophecies and what not, that come forth, they have a ministry, God has ministered to us this morning by these means, where Paul says we are not to despise prophesies, hallelujah, but oh, he wrote that inspired word of God, and that was the greater thing than the local prophesies but don't despise them, he says, do you believe that? if not, God enlighten your eyes, that we may know this grey area in which we are moving, beloved and we dare not get loose from our anchorage, I don't speak in any degree, or any sense of fear, but in a tremendous urge upon my spirit to exhort you brothers and sisters, to know the book, saturate, saturate, saturate, until presently like the authors, in that I believe both the Holy Ghost and Paul or John or whoever it would be, combined, uniquely starting in the spirit, authorised by him and put down plainly by the human author in words, move in these things that have come jointly thus from God it seems that God is bent upon always giving us a double portion, Amen, now then we are going to start on this great truth of the tabernacle, because the tabernacle, beloved, was really the work of a genius in fact, there were several men who were absolutely geniuses, God called them, you can read about them if you go back into the book of Exodus, and they moved with Moses and everybody made their contribution do you see this, the tabernacle had to come utterly from mankind, you got that, it was man, God, it was like saying, oh Lord I'll hand over every fibre of my being to you, everything that I am and have, and there are heaps of this and heaps of that in fact, when the children of Israel began to give everything, somebody went to Moses and said, oh Moses, they are giving too much, stop them, Hallelujah, and this is how it all started, do you remember in Exodus 25, God said, people give willingly with their heart and this is what they did and so, men, they didn't know this, they didn't know the, I don't know how to use this word, perhaps I won't, wizardry of God, alright, that he could take these threads, these colours, this oil, these gifts, these spices, this metal, anything, and he could look upon those as human threads of human personality, metal and substance and stone of things that are, you may wonder how I could use a term like that, well beloved, because you will remember this, that in one Corinthians 10, we are even told of a spiritual rock, from which they all drank water, Amen alright, and this is the way God does it, that these things originally, rock, metal, wood, plants, all came from spirit, originally from God, do you see this, I hope you do, so there they were all laid out, and then God came in his marvellous way, bless the name of the Lord and they wrought and there at last stood the tabernacle, you will find it in the last chapter of the book of Exodus, it's all standing there, and it represented human being, of course, the human being, Jesus, human being, that's what it represented, it was a figure of the true, to use the scriptural term and Paul saw this, hallelujah, whether the Old Testament writers saw it, is not our business at the moment to investigate, but Paul saw it, and you were to see it, and he comes right on it in this Corinthian letter, that you and I are tabernacles alright, you are not lumps of wood and gold and metal, these are only cheap ways of speaking of precious things, did you think I reversed the statement, no I didn't, they are only cheap ways, bits of yellow metal, melted out of some substance in the earth or nothing in gold, nothing in silver, nothing in a bit of thing that shines a bit when it's chipped and polished and called a diamond nothing in that, they are cheap things, precious things are human beings, they are the precious things, beloved, and you beloved are a tabernacle, alright, now then, in the tabernacle of God, you will know God lived he lived in the holiest place of all, which was really a temple, it got translated to temple later and they built a lot of other things around the inner sanctuary, the inner holiest of holies, the real temple, and they called the whole complex of buildings the temple but God lived there, right in the centre, and in that marvellous, marvellous holiest place of all, he was worshipped, so near and yet so far, there but unreachable, untouchable, unapproachable there he lived, isolated in splendid glory, and yet among his people, that's where he was, dwelling on the mercy seat, glory be to the name of the Lord, within the ark, the tables of righteousness, the foundation of his throne, righteousness is the foundation of his throne every time, above him the glory, the cloud, and all so wonderful, he was there, and the only people that ever came into that place were priests, hallelujah, there were articles of furniture attached to the tabernacle there was the altar at the gates, there was the labour of regeneration inside, because this outer veil of the tabernacle was always rolled up, there was the table of incense, the altar of incense, there was the table of showbread, or the bread of faces, or the bread of presentation, or the bread of presence, Newberry will give it to you, I would advise you to buy a Newberry Bible they're almost invaluable to people like you and me that don't know much, and it's called the bread of faces, there was the bread of faces, there was the golden candlestick, inside, beyond the second veil, in exclusion and privacy, lived God, on earth, among men how wonderfully this was a set pattern beloved, a set pattern for us to understand, all so gloriously in our day, now when Paul wrote this second Corinthian letter, he moved on these things as related to human personality, not mere sticks covered over with gold or something like that he moved on them as being basic, firstly beloved, it was about Jesus, but then Jesus was a man, like we are men, and what was true of Jesus, that is, personality, heart, bowels, these are the words that are used in scripture, just the same in him as in us, both in their spiritual sense as well as in their physical sense and Jesus came beloved, to bring us into the glory and the reality of his own inward state, he was man of my manhood, but he'd come to bring me into God of his Godhood, that's what he came for, the blessed Christ, he came to bring me there now, I'm away to the Father, he said, I'm away, it's as simple as that, beloved, may I put in a plea for simplicity, even though you may be thinking there, sitting there, wracking your brain saying, where is this man going to lead us this morning, all complicated, get us all tied up, I hope I've not done anything like that I'm going to come on to the basic furnishings of the tabernacle, as they are revealed in the second Corinthian letter, so that we may see, just that into which God is leading us now, praise God, it's all so glorious, let's go back and sort some of these things out shall we, to get into the tabernacle, the priests had always to start at the altar, the great altar, their business was between the altar and the throne the chief priest, once a year, used to actually go into the throne, but their business was between the altar and the throne, always, and oh it's so glorious, you know that at the altar, sin was dealt with, men that were out of touch with God drew sin women who had fallen into error, doesn't matter what it was, beloved, as soon as it was recognised, it had to be brought to the altar, they lived permanently in a state of being tragically near falling into sin all the time alas, alas, people think that in this loaded sense, it's still the same in the New Testament, but old John said I'm speaking to you because you should sin not, and if you do, well, all right, but it's more regarded that in the new covenant we should be more permanently in a state of not sinning than permanently regarded as being in a state of keeping on sinning that's the permanent position of the New Testament, hallelujah, it's so wonderful, but you see they had to come, and they had to come to the altar, and at the altar something like this happened, let's have a look shall we, I'm in the fifth chapter, we'd better start at the beginning, at the entrance and you know, I always think, because you've heard me say this before, it must be on lots of tapes, on conference tapes, I always say, I'm never so glad when we get the weekend over, when we get the weekend over I always think, now we can really get down to it, you know, we start on Saturday night, and we get through Sunday, and then we've got four, five whole days of really getting down to it, after that, we dispose of the sort of, you know, perimeter things Malcolm gets about three quarters of an hour of announcements off his chest, we all wind up, or wind down, and God blesses us, and we all lose our fear of one another, and it's all so good, and we get integrated, and nobody gets swallowed up by the great big dragon at the front, and we're alright, we're moving in and God, he does sorts of things, but we come to the fifth chapter, and this is what we see, blessed be the name of the Lord Jesus, hallelujah, glory, let's start, where shall we start, if I read too much scripture I won't get through, but then we've got tonight and tomorrow and the next day, so here we are then the love of Christ, verse 14, constrains us, because we thus judge, this is how we judge, says Paul, see if you think these apostles had true grounds for judgement, and forming their opinions, this is how we judge, that if one died for all, then all died, that's really the grammar of it, they all died in that death no wonder I talked about the power of the cross last night, amen, God slew us all at Calvary, hallelujah, so that we could really live, hallelujah, that's right, he had to, he had no alternative, let's go on, and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him which died for them and rose again, now you're on the priesthood, that's what the priest just existed for, they never lived for themselves, they never lived for their farms, they never lived for their families, they never lived for their villages, they never lived for anything, they lived unto him, they started at the altar and it was unto him, glory, everything, hallelujah the priesthood is the most important function in the whole scripture, whether old testament or new, remember that when you hear lots of other things said, that's the most important thing, they lived unto him, glory, they turned their back at the altar on all that was outside and the whole wide world, blood relatives, distant relatives, in -laws, outlaws, anything, I mean outlaws, yeah, I mean that, and there they went, they lived to God, their faces were set with the word, hallelujah, oh we're coming back onto this in a moment or two now let's move, therefore, oh let's, wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh, yea, though we've known Christ after the flesh, for you remember Paul was Jesus contemporary and probably knew him, yet now henceforth know we him, no more therefore, if any man being Christ now is really knowing himself, he's a new creature, glory to God, a priest has got to know himself as a new creature, he's a new creation, and he's in a new creation, outside in Israel, let's get this set, there was the old creation, buttercups and daisies, chickens, trees, cows, sheep, all the old creation potatoes, strawberries, all outside, everything, but inside everything was different, there wasn't a seed growing inside except the seed of God, there was nothing there, no cattle lowing, nothing, nothing, nothing, and we're in a new creation entirely, new one, amen, isn't that right?