17.1 From the Holiest to the Table
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
God’s entire purpose is to possess His own Body, His own House in which to dwell, and through which He can show Himself to His creation as He is. That House is not a group of individual humans, but a many-membered body, a family of people, real human beings, living life together, loving one another with a pure heart fervently.
Through such a Community of Christ alone will Father be seen and known.
David said that Christian Community IS everlasting life. Jesus said that eternal life is knowing the Father. Same thing. Our LIFE and God’s Body are the same thing. And that Body Life is family.
Our Travail. Yet we labor in travail over the fact that our brethren refuse to enter into the Holiest that they might know the Father. And we labor just as much over the fact that we ourselves do not live in or know such a Life.
God Himself, bursting out through the Veil once again, our human frame, to seize His Church for Himself and to spin her around as His Face to the world means one thing and one thing only to me. The establishment of Communities of Christ across this earth.
The Holy Place represents for us the Church, whole and complete, living as all the fulness of Christ, revealing Father to creation, a family of people loving one another.
Building the Foundation. We must be careful to stay in the perimeters of this course, however; that is, we must limit ourselves to the establishment of the Covenant agreement by which we are part of one another’s lives. In so doing we are building the foundation for the House we will see being built around us in Symmorphy V: Life. To be fully honest with you, I cannot comprehend writing Symmorphy V: Life while not yet living in a Christian Community flowing out from this word of Christ I share.
Be that as it may, we have positioned, in this course, the model of Moses assembling the Tabernacle as our model for the Covenant. Thus we see that, after placing the Veil, the first part of the Holy Place set by Moses is the Table of Showbread.
Grounded in Word. My purpose in this lesson is to carefully position everything. The reason we must do that is that the Covenant is the binding expression of the Word, which is Logos, which is “giving a reasonable account.” The Covenant is precise and reasonable, well-ordered and convincing.
Life together is experience; God is all about experience. But our experience in life together MUST BE grounded in Word. In the move of God communities in which I lived for many years, I knew directly of some 1000 + people living in the communities and indirectly of another 1000 + people in communities I did not have the chance to visit.
I Require Word. Now, the reasons why each one of those more than 2000 individuals chose to live for a season in the context of Christian community were varied. Many were caught in the stampede of the group; many saw it as a good idea; many thought God was going to do something great for them in that context; many thought it was the way to escape the horrors coming upon this earth.
Not very many of all those individuals rooted themselves in the New Testament declarations of God’s intentions for Church as His and our end goal. Not many founded their reasons on Word. From the start, I have required clear New Testament Word for all things. I require Covenant.
The Absolute Rule. As I have laid out the ten most important verses in the Bible, the verses that must rule our knowledge of God and of how we interpret every other verse in the Bible, we have applied nine of those ten to ourselves as individuals. Only one, “Love one another,” introduces us to the Body of Christ. Although this individual focus is necessary for God to get us into the Holiest AND turned around, in the end, such a focus leaves us and God fallen short of our goal in the Covenant. Thus we place the eleventh and twelfth most important verses in the Bible as they are, the absolute rule over God’s intentions in the New Testament for His expression, His image.
Fulfilling the Holy Place. Along with “Love one another,” the eleventh and twelfth most important verses are found for us in God’s fulfillment of the Holy Place. Now, I have chosen 1 Corinthians 12:12-14 as the eleventh and twelfth most important verses, calling them as two because Spirit AND Body are fully expressed inside them.
For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many.
The RULE. These “two” verses are the appropriate choice; the depths of meaning found in their close companions, however, are essential.
I am saying all this to assert a fact we must place upon all of our thinking. The reality expressed through the seven verses found in Lesson 16.3 Being Fitted Together must exist as the RULE over how we will know the entire gospel, all the prior ten most important verses, the whole Bible, God, and everything else. If our knowing of anything is not found inside of the expression of the Body of Christ, then it is not what it is.
God is NOT known as He is except through family loving one another, built and knitted together by what every member supplies.
Body and Spirit. Look again at 1 Corinthians 12:12-14. The Body expressed in those verses is the whole reason God created everything AND entered into Covenant with us to obtain for Himself. Drinking of the same Spirit together, is the very LIFE, the whole reason you and I have entered into this Covenant with God, that is, got born again, to obtain for ourselves. Both Body together and Spirit together are found in one place only – together, that is, Christ, that is, Church.
You are not “going to” heaven. Nothing you desire is found for you in “heaven,” as in being dead. Everything in the gospel, everything in Salvation, everything in God for us is found in one place only – Church!
A Pattern of Wholeness. And I tell you what, God and I together are coming out through the Veil, my human flesh, and we are building Communities of Christ across this earth. To do that, we must start with one Community, a model Community, a Pattern of Wholeness, the second witness of Christ.
Over the last few days my eyes have opened, and I have seen how the Age of Tabernacles will begin and how Christian Community will transform this world from darkness to light.
Before we lay a foundation for what I mean by “A Pattern of Wholeness,” we must set forth why God deliberately bypasses the Altar of Incense and goes straight to the Table of Showbread as He establishes Himself IN His Church.
Straight to the Table. The problem with those who remain in the Altar, refusing to enter the Holiest, is the rebellious unbelief of “there are two lives in me.” God’s quietness means, “Well, have fun with that.”
God does not counter such wickedness in His Church, for He does not know it. Rather, in going straight to the Table of Showbread, God sets forth Christ again as our only life, as all that we need, as our righteousness and wisdom, our salvation and our glory.
HOWEVER – this is Christ as BREAD on the TABLE. This is Christ as communion, as breaking bread together. Communion, in the New Testament Church, was not a “ritual,” but the daily reality of the Church sharing meals together.
Sustenance. Now, the bread of Christ is eaten. And as we eat of Him, the bread itself becomes the fuel that is burned by the fire of energeia by which our bodies operate. As that eaten bread is burned, it becomes all that is meant inside this word, “sustenance.”
We must place this sustenance, however, for we are NOT speaking of “strength to endure tribulation.” God certainly gives us strength to endure – that is not this Sustenance of which we speak. You see, tribulation is our way into all the fulness of Church. Sustenance is what comes out from all the fulness of Church. There is no in-part in the Covenant, but only all-fullness.
All Fulness. Thus, as we set forth the Covenant regarding the Church out from the Holy Place, we are speaking of nothing in-part, but rather of the Church as she IS, in all fulness of perfection, in all completion, in all the manifest glory of the Father.
You see, I will be placing the Patterns of Wholeness inside a present expression of Christian Community, yes, but I will set them forth ONLY as completed perfection. Let me define God’s completed perfection. Humans – a family of people, in all the ups and downs, ins and outs that humans are, living life together in joy and sorrow, loving one another with a pure heart fervently. Outward perfection is of the evil one; God’s perfection is real.
Seeing Patterns. Now, I am big on patterns. I see all things by patterns; I require everything to fit into its proper place in the right pattern. My gift to you is the ability to see the patterns of God and to show how every verse in the Bible fits into those patterns in wonderful scintillations of light and glory. God gave me such a gift on good authority – the foundation of this course on Covenant. See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.
I built my first house when I was fifteen. When I walked onto the construction site at age nineteen, I gravitated like a lodestone to the blueprints from which we built.
Home by Design. I love home design. Notice I said “home,” not house. I do like designing houses and buildings of all sorts, certainly, but it is HOME that rules my heart. My season as a builder is both behind me and ahead of me. Right now, through these years, I have immersed myself in the study of what has been called “Home by Design.”
You see, when you walk into a house, you think one of two things. Most of the time, you think, “Oh, this is so-and-so’s house.” But once in awhile, you draw a deep breath on entering and think, “Wow, this is HOME!” What is the difference? What, exactly, turns a house into a home? Can we delineate the characteristics, the patterns of home?
Father at Home. It is critical to us to know the difference between a “house” and a HOME because – My Father will love you, and We will come to you and make Our HOME with you (John 14:23 modified). Father at Home. Patterns of Father at Home. There is nothing more exciting to me.
Yet Community and our human natures require us to expand Home into Village. And not just Village, but all that wholeness of Life is and means. In Symmorphy II: Essence, we established that Salvation is wholeness, everything complete, everything as it is intended, everything that makes our hearts sing.
Life Abundantly. We have learned that we will know our “place,” for there we will shout in billowing waves of joy, “OH, this place was made just for ME! OH, how I was made just for this place.” Wholeness. Life as it was meant to be. Life as it really is.
You see, there is no Life for us without, in the same breath of expression, a Body, a HOME for Father. And there is no Home for Father, without, in the same breath of expression, wholeness of LIFE for us. I have come that you may have life, and that you may have life more abundantly (John 10:10b modified). Bread from the Table is the Bread of Life, that is, wholeness in all things, that is Life more abundantly.
Journey of Desire. After I left move community, frozen and numb inside, riddled with open, bleeding wounds, unable to hear the love of my Father for me, I picked up a book in someone’s home. Here are the first words I read. “There is a secret set within each of our hearts. It often goes unnoticed, we rarely can put words to it, and yet it guides us throughout the days of our lives. This secret remains hidden for the most part in our deepest selves. It is the desire for life as it was meant to be” (John Eldredge – Journey of Desire, 2000).
And in that last sentence the HOOK of overwhelming desire seized hold of me, I ran off with that book and spent the next three years with John Eldredge, in tears before God as Jesus touched and healed every hurting place in my life.
A Pattern Language. “Life as it was meant to be.” A Pattern of Wholeness. What am I talking about? (And I suspect that I will make this session longer than my limit.)
In the 1970’s, a visionary thinker by the name of Christopher Alexander, working together with others, set forth a vision of design in a series of books called A Pattern Language. Now, I do not yet own these books, but I believe they are next on my list. I have had A Pattern Language in hand, however, and, I tell you what, few things have ever made my heart sing like I sang as I read through that book. And by “design” Alexander was addressing the entire spectrum of how houses and villages become places where humans love to live.
The Words of Home. In A Pattern Language, Alexander et al. argue that the patterns of design that make a house a home and that make a town a village come out from a shared language of place. When you have the right words, a pattern language, then the design of “Home” just comes naturally out of those patterns.
I will obtain the several volumes of A Pattern Language before I write Symmorphy V: Life. Yet for my present study, I draw much from several books that, themselves, came out from the wonderful concepts found in A Pattern Language. My favorite is Sarah Suzanka, author of The Not So Big House. Her premise is not “poverty,” but rather increasing the quality of HOME while decreasing the quantity of unnecessary space.
Patterns of Home. I have several of Sarah Suzanka’s books, but my favorite is Home by Design: Transforming Your House into Home (2005). I have approached these books and others like them as I did the Bible over many years, seeking to plant the understanding of these things in my heart, so that, when I get the chance again to design something to be built, I will be able to draw up from my heart – and HOME will just naturally appear in my blueprints.
Another similar home design text was composed by several individuals who had worked with Christopher Alexander in developing the original Pattern Language. That text, Patterns of Home by Max Jacobson, Murray Silverstein, and Barbara Winslow (2005), is the text I will use to set before you what I mean by “A Pattern of Wholeness.”
Being Built Together. Now here is my Covenant justification to use Patterns of Home to set before you a vision of the fulness of Christ expressed through His Church – Christian Community. In Whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in Whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:21-22).
Home design is what Father and I are all about.
How is this the Bread of the Table? Very simply, we are not offering a “quick fix” solution to creation, but rather, everything found for each one inside this phrase – “life as it was meant to be” – a Living Bread.