THE WILDERNESS TABERNACLE:

Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.. John 7:24

 

The illustration of Spurgeon below reminds us of the Wilkderness Tabernacle - furnished with gleaming gold, silk, and wool inside. It presented a beautiful site for its interior grandeur, but when viewed from the outside, it appeared as an ugly structure covered in goat’s hair. How like our Lord Jesus Christ who left the Majesty on High and took upon Himself the plain visage of man. “2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. 3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. Isaiah 53:2-4

 

Christ simply appeared as we appear, plain and common in manly appearance; but inwardly full fo beauty and righteousness.

 

THE ORCHARD. — Mr. Spurgeon tells a story of a man who was invited to come into an orchard and eat some of the fruit. He refused, for he said that he had picked up some of the apples by the roadside that fell from those trees, and they were poor and bitter. The owner replied that those trees were placed there on purpose, so that the boys would not be attracted into the orchard to steal. But come inside, and there the apples are delicious. So it is with those who taste only the outside of Christianity, its self-denials, its labors, its restrictions,

but do not experience its real blessings.