10. The Table of Showbread
Audio Only10. The Table of Showbread.pdf
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over (Psalm 23:5). [Picture of the Table of Showbread]
The word ‘prepare’ and the word ‘show’ carry a similar meaning. They mean “set forth,” and are referring to that ‘Bread’ sent by God specifically to be our sustaining food.
“See that you make all things according to the Pattern” carries a similar meaning. But from John 17:3, we say it this way – Know Jesus Sent into you.
The Bread of Life. For us to understand this table as God means it on our way into the Holiest, however, we must come at it from our knowledge of the gospel and out from our walk with God.
I am the Bread of Life. – I am the living Bread. – The Spirit is giving life; the flesh [human intellect] benefits nothing. The words that I speak to you are Spirit, and they are life (John 6:35, 50, & 63).
Living indeed is the Word of God, and energeoing, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing through as far as the distribution of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and judging the pondering and purposes of the heart (Hebrews 4:12).
A Living Word. The most important thing you do in your time passing through the Holy Place is to hide every word God speaks in your heart as a LIVING WORD.
You do not control a Living Word, but by your faith in that Word, you accept that it contains inside itself the power to cause you to know Father with you and through you.
Indeed, we are those having had the gospel preached to us just as they; but the word of their hearing did not benefit them, the word not having been mixed together [the fusing of sperm and egg] with the faith of those having heard (Hebrews 4:2 – rough JSV).
The Seed of God. – The [male] seed is the word of God (Luke 8:11). The female seed is faith.
When a Living Seed, every Word God speaks, comes into your faith (God is telling me the truth), there is a flash of light as in the creation of life in the womb, and Christ is formed inside of you, a living Word, a living Jesus. Now, we know this simple reality in full inside the Holiest; our job in the Holy Place was to know this reality in-part.
Yet when outer court preachers speak against the Holy Place, “the word of faith” is one thing they speak against. Human intellect CANNOT comprehend a living Word.
Word of Faith. When I listen to “word of faith” teachers, my spirit sings with joy in full agreement with most of what they teach, but my heart groans over what they leave out.
This is similar to when I read R.C. Sproul. Then, my mind agrees fully with most of what he teaches, but my spirit cries over what he leaves out. Both leave out the only thing that means anything, the only thing I have ever wanted – Father at home with me.
Nonetheless, those who teach “word of faith” in the Holy Place ARE teaching what God intends by the Table of Showbread on our way through. In-part is right in its season.
The Importance of In-Part. It is of great importance that we gain an in-part knowledge of a Living Word entering into Faith to bring forth Life on our way through the Holy Place. It is of even greater importance that we become dissatisfied with the in-part-ness and go on to know what the Word really means inside the Holiest.
But we are not ready for the Holiest until we know the full measure of that which is in-part. And the only way I know to share the meaning of that statement with you is by my own experience. I can share Christ with you only as I share myself.
The Audacity of God. Here is the first baby step of a Living Word entering into your experience.
However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth (John 16:13 – NKJV). “Father, Your Spirit has come to me so that I might know ALL truth.”
Do you see the audacity of God? Those who say to this word some form of “not here, not now, not me,” have closed themselves off from knowing God. You don’t have to know what it means, and you especially don’t need to “work at” such a thing. You simply believe.
Honoring the Word. You have magnified Your word above all Your name (Psalm 138:2). – On this one will I look: on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word (Isaiah 66:2).
Those who honor the Word God speaks by believing that God is telling them the truth are able to hear every next step into the knowledge of God.
But those who seize hold of any form of “You don’t really believe that, do you?” towards this word of “INTO ALL TRUTH,” have shown themselves to be haters of God. Yet Jesus carries even them as they stumble in the darkness.
God Does What He Says. Then this same thing extends to every other word of the gospel. We do not understand what God means by what He says, but we never disdain what He says. Yet what I call the ten ruling verses of the Bible are disregarded by most everyone.
And that brings us to the next step of knowing the Bible as a Living Word inside the Holy Place. There must be inside of you the thought that God does what He says, and this thought must grow.
I was 33 years old when I stood in front of the church at Blueberry and said, “Now I know that God does what He says.” This was personal and a really big deal.
Looking at God – or Not. Nonetheless, I had assumed that reality right from the start. If God says it, then God will do it. If God says, “free from sin,” then God WILL DO “free from sin” in all that it means in our lives.
You see, that seems so apparent, yet few actually believe such a thing. Always, when the word comes, people look at themselves instead of at God and think one of two things. Some think, “I can do that,” but most think, “I can never do that.” Both thoughts are hostile to God.
God wants us to know that He Himself accomplishes all that He speaks in us as we believe His Word.
Famine and Contention. Moreover He called for a famine in the land; He destroyed all the provision of bread. He sent a man before them—Joseph—who was sold as a slave. They hurt his feet with fetters, he was laid in irons. Until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him (Psalm 105:16-19).
Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day… And He said, “Let Me go, for the day breaks.” But he said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!” … And He said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:24-28)
Taking God Seriously. Jacob – I will not let You go until You cause Your Word to be my life (the real meaning of ‘bless me’). Joseph – Until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him.
This season of contending with God concerning His Word is of critical importance inside the Holy Place. No one will live inside the Holiest unless they take the Word God speaks seriously. And God proves to us what He means through the fire and through the famine.
Only as we take God seriously at His word can we begin to comprehend the meaning of Word as a living Seed.
I Will Not Let You Go. This is the same picture, then, given to us through Joseph and Jacob.
[The picture of Jesus knocking on one side of a door and a desperate man knocking on the other side of the door.]
Blueberry Christian Community. It was through my time with the Blueberry Christian Community in northern British Columbia, through the years 1986 to 1996, that God taught me in practical immersion His full purpose for the Holy Place.
It was there that I came to know that the Bible is a Living Seed entering into us to bring forth its life. It was there that I experienced every New Testament quality of the Holy Spirit in the ongoing life of the Church.
And it was there that I came to know the deepest penetration of the Altar of Incense, the removal from me of the one human thing God hates.
The Beginnings of this Word. When I look at my time at Blueberry, during my college years and before Maureen and I were married, I see a dove-tailing of my deliverance from demonic torment on the one hand and the beginnings of this word I now teach on the other hand.
It was at this time that I set Romans 8:29 as my ruling verse. Whatever God might mean by conforming me to the image of His Son, then I would contend with Him, as Jacob did, until He had fulfilled that word in me.
And it was at this same time that I drew out from the things Brother Sam Fife had taught, an understanding of the words of the gospel as the Seed of God bringing forth Life in me.
Fresh Bread. You must trust the Word, that it is filled with the Living DNA of God and fully able to reproduce itself inside of you.
This is why I just love going over the words of the ruling verses of the Bible over and over, for those words are living, and they always generate ever deeper levels of knowing God inside of me, that is, age-unfolding Life.
And this pattern is inside the Table of Showbread, for the task of the priests was to bake fresh bread every day. And the aroma of that fresh bread filled the Holy Place. In the outer court, all you can smell is blood, guts, and poop. No Living Word can be known there.
An In-Between Knowing. Here’s how it works, very simply. And God’s patterns are so clear and easy. We must know word as Living Bread in order that the same words of the Bible might become hidden Manna personal inside of us as we enter into the Holiest.
The words of the Bible cannot become Christ made personal as us if we know them only as intellectual ideas. First, they must be Living Bread. And “bread” means that they sustain us, that the words of the Bible work a strength and a knowing inside of us giving us hope for life.
Then, in the Holiest, we know the same words as our LIFE.