The Vision of the Tabernacle |
Ambassadors of Christ |
Embroidery is a slow activity. Little by little, stitch by stitch, the desired pattern is developed. This describes the way God works in us. He works patiently, with much love, stitch by stitch, “embroidering” us in every situation for our good. He is getting us ready. Embroidering the subjective garment involves suffering. We do not know how much our garment has been stitched so we need God’s embroidering daily in order for us to become His righteousness.
After we are saved, we should live in a fully righteous way. For example, our words should express the Lord; they should be useful for building up (Eph. 4:29), not dirty, sinful or vain words. If we lie or speak obscenely, we will be going against God’s righteousness and holiness and surely He will not embroider anything on us. On the other hand, every time we praise the Lord and present His word to others, we are in the process of becoming the righteousness of God, receiving more and more of His needles and stitches.
God arranges all things in our lives in order to hasten the preparation of our subjective garment. As an example, married life is an excellent embroidering. The spouses “embroider each other” mutually all the time. Sometimes the husband does not accept the wife’s “embroidering” and argues with her. When he acts like this he is not being embroidered because he is not gaining more of God. However, when the husband repents of his attitude, he enjoys God’s embroidering and thanks Him for another opportunity to be perfected and matured spiritually. In order to be overcomers and be filled with God’s righteousness, the husband needs the “needles” of his wife and she needs the “needles” of her husband. In this way they are prepared as ambassadors of Christ.
Our daily living is our garment and it should express the position and dignity of an ambassador of Christ. When a secular ambassador is invited to participate in a diplomatic banquet, he must be dressed appropriately. If he is not, no one will believe that he is the representative of a country. In the same way, all of the Christians can be ambassadors of Christ if have been clothed properly.
In Matthew 22:1-14 we find a parable of a king who prepared a wedding feast for his son and sent his servants to call those who were invited, but none of them came. Since those who were invited first were not worthy, the king commanded his servants to seek those who were at the crossroads, good and bad. When the banquet hall was filled with guests, the king came in and saw a man there without a wedding garment and ordered his servants to bind his feet and hands and cast him out into the outer darkness with the weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The king represents God, who is preparing a wedding feast for His Son. He wants the banquet hall to be willed with guests. For this reason the gospel has been preached and the ambassadors of Christ have called the Christians to be fully reconciled to God, to live in the spirit. However, in order to participate in the wedding feast, which will take place during the millennial kingdom, we need to have a wedding garment, which, according to Revelation 19:8, is of fine linen. Only the overcomers, the Christians who are fully mature, the Christians who will allow God to complete His work of embroidering their garment, will be able to participate in the wedding feast. The others will have to pass through a thousand years of discipline in outer darkness where the “embroidering” will be carried out with the weeping and gnashing of teeth.
We have a double responsibility. Firstly, we ourselves need to allow God to embroider us in all situations so that we may be clothed with a wedding garment. Then we have to beseech others to be reconciled to God so that they might also have a garment and be able to take part in the wedding feast of the Lamb. In 1 Corinthians 11:1 Paul tells the Christians to be imitators of him as he was of Christ. If Paul’s garment was not embroidered, how could he ask the saints to imitate him? We should exhort one another to seek the second garment but we must also be patterns to the saints, people who live in the spirit all the time, who accept all of God’s embroidering. We urgently need this embroidered garment because the Lord’s coming is very soon.
God has given us the responsibility of preaching the high gospel in order to reconcile men to God, snatching them out of the world and bringing them to the outer court and from there to the Holy Place. We must care for them and feed them with the truth of the divine economy in the small family group meetings. Furthermore, by living in the Holy of Holies we must attract them to also live in the spirit all the time, that they may become ambassadors of Christ. We must not think that this is the responsibility of a spiritual elite or of a few people who leave their jobs to serve God. This responsibility is for all the people of God. All the Christians need to be reconciled to God, enter the Holy of Holies, receive the light of God’s glory, receive His embroidering, be transformed and minister Christ through a living that is righteous and holy. In the Old Testament the responsibility God gave His people was to His kingdom of priests. Today this is no longer the privilege of one nation or one tribe, but of every son of God. God is only waiting for us to give ourselves wholly to Him. Who is willing?
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