Our God is a living and true God; He is life, light, holiness, and righteousness, and He is a God that wants to be dispensed into man to make man one with Him for His corporate expression and representation in the universe.
Throughout the Bible, both in the Old and the New Testament, God has called people to be His, to follow Him, fellowship with Him, and fulfill His purpose; but most of the people called by God have failed Him. However, even in these failures of His people, God came in and shined through His speaking, and He gave a clear revelation of His heart’s desire and His present leading.
If you read the prophets in the Old Testament you realize that God’s speaking was a beacon of light shining in the background of the darkness of the people of Israel to give them God’s leading, impart His message to them, and reveal to them what kind of God He is. In the New Testament most of the Epistles were written against a dark background; many of the churches to whom the Apostle Paul wrote had problems, and Paul as a shining one wrote to both expose the darkness and impart many positive things.
The Apostle Paul was so one with the Lord that he could read the negative situation of the churches just as the high priest would read the breastplate of judgement and see the darkened stones, and he spoke God’s judgements and imparted something positive of Christ to the churches. The leading obtained through the breastplate always involves a judgement; the message written through Paul to the different churches exposed the real condition of these churches and imparted many positive things of the all-inclusive Christ and the Body of Christ to them.
In a very real sense in our Christian life God has more of a way to speak to us when we are in darkness or in a negative situation or condition; He speaks through the word, through the saints, and through His Spirit, and we can see God’s judgements, receive a revelation of who He is, and enjoy the riches of Christ as the rich supply from God to His people.
Requirements to Fulfill for the Church to Become the Breastplate of Judgement
God spoke of old in the prophets, in the New Testament He spoke in the Son and through the apostles, and today God speaks not only through His written Word and through the Holy Spirit that indwells His believers but also through the church.
We as the church today must become the breastplate of judgement; the Lord wants a “corporate breastplate of judgement”, the oracle of God on earth in man, and all the local churches should be a breastplate. However, if we as the church would be the breastplate of judgement, we must fulfill certain requirements:
1. We need to be Transformed and Transparent
First, we need to be transformed to be precious stones built up in the divine nature (the setting of gold) with the saints. This means we need to daily cooperate with the transforming Spirit by beholding the Lord, being renewed in our mind, and allowing the Lord to metabolically transform us from natural man into God-men, sons of God who bear the image of God and are transformed from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 12:2).
We need to be transformed and we also need to be transparent. Being transformed requires that we pass through a process in which we are becoming in the image of Christ, and being transparent is required in order for God to have a way to shine through us. It is not enough to be transformed; we need to be transparent precious stones through which Christ can shine. It is good to tell the Lord,
Lord Jesus, transform us and make us transparent! We want to cooperate with You to be renewed in our mind and be inwardly changed by the divine life that grows in us so that we may be conformed to Your image from glory to glory! Lord, transform us into Your image, and make us transparent! Save us from being opaque and not letting You shine through us!
2. We need to be Inscribed with Christ – Christ must be Inscribed into us Clearly and Definitely
Just as God could not speak through the breastplate unless the stones had been inscribed with letters, so today God cannot speak through His redeemed people unless they have been inscribed with Christ (Heb. 8:10). We need to be transformed and transparent, and then Christ as the spiritual alphabet must be inscribed into us clearly and definitely (2 Cor. 3:3, 18; cf. 1 Chron. 28:19). We need to have the Lord imparting His laws into our mind and inscribe them into our heart (Heb. 8:10).
If we don’t have adequate experience and enjoyment of Christ, when it comes to us ministering Christ we will be very short. As those who would shepherd the saints and preach the gospel to the unbelievers, we need to experience Christ, enjoy Christ, and have Christ inscribed into our being.
This is not only about knowing the Bible and understanding the doctrines in the holy word but having Christ inscribed into our being. We need to be under the New Testament ministry so that Christ would be written into us, and we need to allow the word of Christ to dwell in us richly so that we may be filled with the living word of God.
Lord Jesus, impart Your laws into our mind and inscribe them into our heart. Lord, transform us, make us transparent, and inscribe Yourself into us clearly and definitely. May our being be a living letter of Christ, ready to impart to others the living Christ inscribed into our being through our experience and enjoyment of Him!
3. We need to have God’s Shining, His Enlightening
On our side, we need to open to the Lord and cooperate with Him to be transformed, transparent, and inscribed with Christ, and on God’s side, what we need is His shining, His enlightening. Because there is a shortage of transformation, transparency, and enlightening, we all need to pray that we may become more transparent, have more of Christ inscribed into us, and experience more enlightening.
We need to come to the Lord daily in His word to have Him inscribed into us and receive the divine light; the unfolding of God’s words gives light, imparting understanding to the simple (Psa. 119:130). We need to come to the Lord, let Him shine on us and expose our real situation and condition in His presence, and be filled with the divine light; God is light, in Him there’s no darkness at all, and we as children of light should habitually walk in the light as He is in the light (Eph. 5:8-9; Psa. 89:15; 1 John 1:7).
How much we need to be simplified to just come to the word of God with a praying attitude so that our mind would be enlightened with the thoughts of God! It is good to tell the Lord,
Lord Jesus, transform us, make us transparent, inscribe Yourself into us, and shine on us and through us! Lord, open Your word to us as we exercise our spirit to be simple and pray over Your word. Enlighten our mind with Your thoughts and cause us to walk in the light, confessing anything that hinders the light and experiencing the divine enlightening! Lord, cause us to be more transparent, have more of Christ inscribed into us, and experience more enlightening!
4. We need to Gain more of Christ and Enjoy Him as the Completing One
Besides the eighteen letters of the alphabet inscribed on the twelve stones on the breastplate of judgement there was the need for Thummim with the four extra letters; both the 18 letters and the four extra letters typifies Christ as the One inscribed on us and the Completing One. The fact that Christ is the spiritual alphabet for both inscription and completion indicates that He is inexhaustible and we need to gain Him and pursue to enjoy Him more and more.
Although we may enjoy the Lord’s inscription into our being today, there is still something more of Him that we need for completion. No matter how much we have experienced of Christ, there’s still much more of Christ that we need for our completion.
We need to be those like the Apostle Paul, who even after a long period of enjoying and experiencing Christ, would forget the things behind and stretch forward to the Christ before to gain Him, obtain Him, and experience Him more (Phil. 3:10, 13-14).
Our Christian life is a quest to gain Christ more, know Him more, and experience Him more; for this, we should pursue Him toward the goal of the fullest enjoyment and gaining of Christ so that we may receive the prize of the uttermost enjoyment of Christ in the millennium kingdom!
Lord Jesus, we forget the things behind and we stretch forward to gain You more, pursue You more, and know You more. Lord, we want more of You. No matter how much we have enjoyed You in the past, we want to enjoy You more and experience You as the completing One. Lord, keep us going on with You and make our life a quest of knowing and experiencing Christ more!
5. We need to be in the Church Life
The Lord’s speaking through the breastplate of judgement is in the church life, among the people of God. The breastplate is the building up of the Body life and the means for us to know God’s will concerning His people; then, we will receive the Lord’s judgement of what we have to do or what we must not do, we will know the Lord’s way, and the whole church will go according to the judgement given by the Lord.
The Lord today may not speak through a big preacher or a gifted member in the Body as much as He would speak through you and me, the transformed, transparent, inscribed, enlightened, and completed believers in Christ who seek to pursue Christ and remain in the church life where the breastplate is.
We need to remain in the church life in a positive and proactive way by enjoying the Lord and praying that every local church would become a breastplate according to the picture in Exodus 28.
Lord Jesus, keep us in the church life for the building up of the Body of Christ. Lord, we pray that every local church would become a breastplate according to the picture in Exodus 28. May Your speaking and Your shining be prevailing among us, and may any dark situation and condition be exposed, judged, and much supplied through Your speaking and Your shining! Gain the reality of the breastplate, Your building, Your corporate expression!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Ed Marks’ sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Exodus, msg. 128, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Recovery of the Priesthood or God’s Building, week 7 / msg 7, The Central and Ultimate Point of the Priesthood.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
# The members of the Church of Christ / Are all primarily of clay; / They need to be transformed and made / Transparent, precious day by day. / By transformation they are built, / A vessel they to Christ afford; / His all-inclusiveness they hold; / Transparent, they express the Lord. (Hymns #821)
# You are a letter of Christ, / Inscribed with the Spirit; / In the fleshly tablets of the hearts. / We are the ministers / Of a new covenant, / Not the letter which kills, / But the life-giving Spirit. (Song on being inscribed with Christ)
# Though with temporal matters pressed, / Which we fain would bring to Thee, / Rather than Thy care to seek, / We would here Thy channel be. / Here we seek Thy list’ning ear / May Thy living water flow; / When Thy grace does satisfy, / Only then Thy work we’ll know. (Hymns #772)
About aGodMan
With the breastplate and the Urim and the Thummim we see two kinds of alphabets. One kind of alphabet is for inscribing, and the other kind is for completing. If we are not yet full of Christ, what we need is the inscribing. Christ must be inscribed into us until we are full of Him. It is when we are full of Christ that we recognize the need for completion. Thus, if we are not full of Christ, we need Him as the alphabet for inscription. But when we are full of Him, we need Him as the alphabet for our completion. Believers like the apostle Paul, those who are full of Christ, realize that they still need Christ. However, those who are short of Christ may not sense the need for Christ….It is when we have Christ inscribed into us that we realize we are still short of Christ. Then we shall seek Him to be our completion.
Only through experience can we understand what it is to have Christ inscribed into us and to have Him complete us. Therefore, we all need to pray more regarding these things. I hope that every local church will become a breastplate according to the picture in Exodus 28. (Witness Lee, Life-study of Exodus, pp. 1433-1434)