Shadows of Good Things

CHAPTER III

THE TABERNACLE AND ITS FURNITURE

(Exodus 25—27, 30, 35—38, 40)

The Laver
( Exod. 30 :17 21; 38:8 ) [cont]

thing separate from the laver. Some have supposed the foot was a saucerlike basin below the laver in which the feet and hands of the priests were washed and which supported the laver by a shaft rising from its center.

  Typical Leaning.—That the laver had symbolic and typical significance is to be gathered from the importance attached to the washings there. Twice it is stated of the priests who washed there, "That they die not." Moreover the New Testament is quite clear as to its typical meaning. "He saved us, by the washing of regeneration." (Tit. 3:5). The marginal reading of the Revised gives "laver" of regeneration instead of "washing." So it is translated in the Emphatic Diaglott. The same Greek word is used here as is used in the Greek Septuagint in Exod. 30:18 for laver.

  This washing at the laver is not to be understood as typifying water baptism, as some have supposed. Sound principles of symbolic interpretation forbid making a literal thing symbolic of a similar literal thing. Besides, this was essential to entrance into the ancient house of God; but one may enter God's church before water baptism, as was evidently true of the thief on the cross, of Paul, or of Cornelius.

  But the "washing of regeneration" is a cleansing that is necessary to entrance into God's church. Jesus said, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he can not enter into the kingdom of God" (John 3:5). The kingdom and the church are practically identical. Regeneration and the new birth mean the same. As those justified at the altar and entering that ancient house needed this washing at the laver, so we today need, not only Justification from committed sins, but also regeneration of our hearts.

  The laver was typical of this regeneration as the altar was of justification. The water typifies the word of God, which, in conjunction with the Spirit of God, is an agent for effecting the new birth (John 3:5). "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." (John 15:3). "Of his own will begat he us with the word of [36]

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