Reading: John 4:20-24; Matt.
4:8-10; 2 Thess. 2:4; Rev. 13:4,8,15; 19:20; 20:4,5; Eph. 3:21.
We shall be considering certain
features of the church as a functioning Body, and the first of
these, and the all-inclusive one, is worship.
When we come to contemplate the
matter of worship, we find that we are at once both at the centre
and circumference of the universe; for the supreme function of
the creation is worship. Worship is going on throughout this
whole universe now, but it is divided, and much of it is not
called worship, is not recognised to be worship, but nevertheless
it is worship. I mean that the greater part of this world is not
consciously, wittingly, willingly, admittedly worshipping. To use
that word to the majority of men would be to provoke hostility,
to incur some rebuff. But nevertheless it is true that, although
divided and in so large a degree unrecognised, worship is going
on right through this universe, and it is just there that the
universe is divided. It is just on that very point that the
cleavage exists.
Satan’s
Bid for Worship
We have read some passages which
show us that worship is the supreme desire and ambition of Satan.
His heart is set upon being worshipped, and he goes to all
lengths to realise his ambition, even to seeking to ensnare and
trip up the very Son of God Himself, or to bribe Him. This
ambition, this desire of Satan for worship is, as we see, headed
up in the false prophet and the beast, the Antichrist, the son of
perdition, Satan’s false Son of God, Satan’s
incarnation at the end. Let us remember that the word “antichrist”
does not only mean against Christ, it means also in the place of
Christ. There will be something deceptive, some delusion about
Antichrist that will cause multitudes of people to take him for
the Christ. He is going to be found in the temple of God, setting
himself up as God and being worshipped as God: and I ask you
"What temple is that?" Can you find a temple in the New
Testament that answers to that? Careless interpreters have said
it will be the temple which will again be built by the Jews in
Jerusalem. Well, there are facts to be taken account of which
will, I think, very quickly explode that idea. At the time of
Antichrist’s manifestation, the Jews will still be in
apostasy, in rejection of Christ and themselves rejected and
suffering something of their tribulation, and any temple that
might be built in Jerusalem by Zionism, will never be the temple
of God. That is one thing. But the bigger question is as to
whether even that temple will have been built by this particular
time. What is the temple of God? Well, the only answer we have in
the New Testament is the people of God. Among the people of God,
Antichrist will gain a place of power and draw to himself that
which belongs to God, draw away from Christ.
Take rationalism alone, which
has gained so great and so strong a foothold among the people of
God. It has set aside the Christ, and has robbed Him of His
highest values. There you see the very principle of Antichrist at
work. What is the false prophet, if not representative of a false
ministry, a ministry which has become false to Christ in the very
midst of His people? — and there is plenty of that today.
Well, that is only to mention those things, to see that the
drawing of worship to himself is the one final, supreme object of
Satan, and he heads that up in the Antichrist.
Now, in mentioning this, I have
an object, which is to point out that, as in every other matter,
what intensifies on one side toward the end, is meant to
intensify on the other side toward the end. We can take it that
the intensification of Satanic activity on the one side is, on
Satan’s part, but the offset to the intensification of God’s
activity on the other side. We have seen that in other respects,
and here we note it in this matter. The thing which will burst
forth in its fulness and finality on the divine side in the end
will be worship. You see that in Revelation 12. But as we near
that time this other thing is intensified, and so it becomes a
very important matter for the Lord’s people to give
attention to the matter of worship; to recognise that the Lord
would have worship intensified, would lead us to become more and
more a worshipping people, a people whose supreme and
all-inclusive function is worship; that is, that worship
envelopes everything, carries everything along. The Lord would
have His church increasingly a worshipping church. Satan’s
church is going to be that increasingly, and we are surely able
to mark the progress of that in these days. If Antichrist
represents supremely that rendering of worship to Satan which
Satan so covets, then that is set over against the Christ, which
means that Christ supremely represents the worship of God.
The Heart
of Worship — Love of the Will of God
In our previous meditations, we
have thought much about the rights of God, and that the main
issue between Christ and Antichrist is the rights of God. Now
then, it is important for us, in connection with that conflict,
and in connection with worship, to know what those rights are.
Well, all-inclusively we mean, when we speak of God’s
rights, a state of utter abandonment to God, a state in which
everything is for God, where God’s pleasure and God’s
satisfaction is the dominating and captivating consideration;
where the mind and heart and will are governed by the good
pleasure of the Lord. If the Lord Jesus is the full expression of
the worship of God, and if He is the embodiment of all the divine
rights, then we can sense the depth of meaning in certain
familiar phrases, such as, “I do always the things that are
pleasing to him.” That is expressive of a life. That
encompasses His life, bounds His life; His whole life is crowded
into that. What is it that the Father delights in? For Him, that
is the governing law and consideration in all His movements, in
all His ways, in all His desires, in all His actions. Now, that
is worship, and that too is what is meant by the rights of God.
I wonder if it has ever occurred
to you how service and worship are, almost without exception,
brought together in the Word of God. Go through the Book of
Exodus with that thought. The challenge first issued to Pharaoh
was, “Let my people go that they may serve me.” Then
you find that, as that demand and challenge was pressed, it came
to take quite a definite shape. Pharaoh said, You that are men
go, but leave your flocks and your herds. The answer to that was,
We need them to serve the Lord with; and that thought developed
until the service of the Lord came clearly to be seen as a matter
of worship. And the altar was at the centre of things, and all
service was related to the altar, until at length you get the
development of the whole Levitical priesthood and order, which
was the service of the Lord: and yet it was all a matter of
worship. So that Israel, gathered up into the Levites, became a
worshipping people, and their worship was their service, and
their service to God was worship. Paul takes up that fact in his
letter to the Romans, as you know: “I beseech you therefore,
brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living
sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your (literally)
spiritual worship.” Our versions give us the rendering
“your reasonable service”. Spiritual worship —
reasonable service.
We have thought of the service
of God as being something other; indeed many things. But the
heart of service is worship, and worship is the greatest service.
Now this being the case, there are one or two things that we must
at once get hold of. The living creation exists for the worship
of God, that is, for God’s satisfaction, and that is service
to God. Life therefore has to be recognised as a trust, an
investment made by God with a view to getting interest, and that
interest is His glory. God has given life as an investment, to
come back to Him with increase. “Herein is my Father
glorified that ye bear much fruit.” What fruit is that?
Well, taking Christ’s own illustration in connection with
those words, it is the expression and outworking of the life that
we have in Christ; for in the vine and the branches, there is but
the one life, with its fruit growing and increasing unto the
glory of God. That is service. It is the result of the life, the
increase of the life. God has given life as an investment.
Worship
Demands a Certain State
Now, this worship, this service,
demands among other things a certain state. It is based upon a
certain spirit. That state is what is meant by the little phrase
in John 4, “in spirit”. True worshippers must worship
in spirit. “They that worship him must worship in spirit...”
That is a statement. “In the spirit”: that is, in a
phrase, living, spiritual union with God. It is something which
is inward. You see, that is what the Lord was saying. The woman
said, “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say
that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”
The Lord Jesus, in effect, said in reply, That which is just
external, outward, formal, traditional, is not true worship! True
worship is in spirit, and that is something inward. It is not
formal, it is not traditional, it is not external: it will come
out, it will manifest itself, but it begins, it takes its rise
from an inward, living union with God, and that is the result of
a miracle, the result of something having happened. No one who
has not known the miracle of new birth or resurrection union with
the Lord can ever be a true worshipper, but such as have that
knowledge, that experience, ought to be true worshippers. That is
to say, the thing itself ought to be the basis of worship; it
ought to spring up in worship. The very first strain of worship
ought to be because of the wonder of that which has happened in
us to bring about this living union with our God. Therefore our
being joined to the Lord by the initial act of the Holy Spirit
ought ever to be fresh as a matter of worship. It ought always to
be that which leads to spontaneous praise to the Lord; not just
an act of years ago, but that going on in the wonder and glory
and blessedness of an abiding reality. I am the Lord’s! I am
His, He is mine! That is the simple, initial basis of worship, an
inward thing. We have to recognise that it is a state that gives
rise to worship.
But then, alongside of that, we
have to recognise that the enemy of true worship, worship in
truth — not only in spirit, but in truth — is in our
own souls as apart from that spiritual state. Running alongside
that which is “in spirit and in truth”, there is always
that which is in soul and flesh, in untruth, that which is not
true. It is all too easy for the Lord’s people to move from
one to the other almost without recognising they have done so.
You may get a true, spontaneous uprising of worship that is in
spirit and in truth, and then almost imperceptibly move out into
another realm and feel that the bottom has fallen out of
everything; be carried from your spirit by your emotions, from
reality to something that is not real. It is possible among
spiritual people to do that, and that very often happens. You
will find these two strains in any prayer gathering where there
is any number of the Lord’s people. You get a true spiritual
strain, and then that which is ostensibly or intendedly the
worship of the Lord in the same way, but which in reality is
something else, something not in spirit, in truth. It has come in
along some other line, through some feeling, or some activity of
reason. Now I say this not to make things complicated and
difficult, but we are trying to get at the matter of true
worship. Apart from the double strain which we may find in
ourselves or amongst ourselves, you have to recognise that all
that appears to be worship is not worship. There is a great deal
of what is called worship which is soul worship, and not true
worship, not worship in spirit and in truth. It is false. It is
not of life, divine life, and therefore it leads away. Oh how
this antichrist element, this in man which is according to the
spirit of Antichrist, energised and directed by the enemy as it
is, does seek all the time to draw away, to lead off, to stop
that getting into, and maintaining of, a living touch with God,
to interfere with that real hold upon the Lord! It is all very
nice, but it has just the opposite effect: it draws away, it lets
things down. It is there all the time.
Worship
Involves Conflict
Now, by this time we ought to
know enough about the difference between soul and spirit, without
my adding very much more to it, and it is not to that end that I
am saying this. It is to come to this point, that worship enters
into the realm of conflict, or shall I put it in the other way,
conflict enters into the realm of worship. Here you have the two
worships at war with each other, and it is just there that the
church comes in. The church is called to be a worshipping vessel.
What is worship? It is bringing to God His rights. When the
Christ appears on the scene and takes up His supreme business of
securing God’s rights for Him, immediately Satan appears on
the scene, and there is conflict. It is warfare, and warfare
right to the end. The church is brought right into that, into the
very purpose for which Christ came, the embodiment of divine
rights, the manifestation of divine glory, the bringing to God of
that which is His; to be in this universe wholly for the
interests of God. Because that is the calling, the vocation and
the destiny of the church, all the power of this other one who
seeks worship is focussed upon the church, as it was focussed
upon Christ while here in this world. That is the point of
conflict with the world, that is the meaning of worldliness,
namely, anything which draws away from the Lord, anything which
tends to rob God of His rights. To put it the other way, anything
which cedes to the Devil worship, upon which his heart is set,
that is worldliness.
The church, then, comes into
this conflict, and therefore the church has to come in to take up
a position strongly and positively in relation to its glorious
Head, to bring everything to the Lord, to draw everything to Him.
Everything should be drawn toward the Lord when the church is
functioning. It should all be coming back to the Lord. There is a
great counter movement to draw it all away, to drag it away, to
keep it away, and you meet that movement in numerous forms,
especially when the church is assembled, with its one object and
function to bring to the Lord. You find this counter movement
expressed in numerous ways to make that function abortive and
unfruitful and a merely formal thing, cold and lifeless. So the
church has to take up a militant attitude for worship, and that
is why you get priests in the battles of Israel; at Jericho, for
example, and in many other instances. You see, the presence of
the priestly element means that the worship, the glory, has to go
to the Lord: it is all the Lord’s rights; this is for the
Lord. But it is an army, with priests at the head of it —
the militant factor related to worship. Worship can only be
fulfilled through conflict. It is a real battle to secure God’s
rights.
Now, that is presenting truth,
but what is the practical meaning of that for us? It means,
beloved, that at all times, and perhaps especially when we are
found together and our supreme function is worship, we have to
set ourselves with deliberateness and positiveness to resist all
that would draw away, all those workings of the spirit-principle
of Antichrist, and set ourselves so that God shall have His
rights, have all that He should have in every time. It calls us
into a positiveness. I wonder if you will remember this next time
we are together for prayer. I wonder if you remember this every
time we meet; for the ministry of the Word is, after all, only
worship. If it does not lead to things coming to the Lord for His
glory, if it does not mean that the interests of the Lord are
furthered, then it has all missed its object.
The
Secret of True Worship
Before I close, I do want to say
one other thing. Christ Himself is the basis of worship; for, if
it is God’s pleasure, God’s satisfaction, which is in
view with worship, what can we bring which will achieve that end?
Can you and I of ourselves bring anything that will satisfy God?
We know we cannot. Nothing that will satisfy God can be found in
us. There is but One concerning whom the Father is able to say,
“In thee I am well-pleased”. Christ alone answers to
all those holy requirements of God. Christ alone can bring
satisfaction to the Father. Therefore if the church is to
function to that end, the end of God’s good pleasure and
satisfaction, one thing becomes essential in the church —
and when I speak of the church, I speak of the company of
individual believers united in one Spirit and one life; the term
“individual” does not lose its significance in the Body
— if the church is called into that wonderful, heavenly
vocation of bringing satisfaction to God and Christ alone can be
God’s satisfaction, the one essential thing obviously,
manifestly, is that Christ will have to supplant us. We shall
have to be got out of the way to make way for Christ. Now you
see, we come back to our beginning.
If worship is to reach its great
climax at the end, if God is going to come right into all His
own; if we are nearing that time, if that day is drawing nigh,
then it just means this, that God must take pains increasingly to
displace that in us upon which Antichrist fastens. Therefore one
of the deepest things in the dealings of God with His people
toward the end is to make room for Christ, and more room and ever
more room for Christ. He is putting us out progressively. He is
bringing us to such weakness, such impotence, such helplessness,
such inability, such foolishness, that we might well be the
laughing stock of the world. We do not know; we cannot do. Is
that right? Ought the people of God to be like that? Should it be
that of themselves they neither know anything nor can do
anything? Well, painful and humbling as the proposition may be to
our natures, it is just that; and that is what is meant by losing
our souls. But the point at the moment is, What is it for? Just
to make room for Christ, to make more room for Christ. It is by
what He is that God is going to be glorified; by what God sees in
Him, not what man sees in Him. I think that was the thing which
lay behind that utterance of His, “The witness which I
receive is not from man”. “It is another that beareth
witness of me”. Men may come to their conclusions about Him;
they may reach their estimate of Him; they may testify to Him;
they may say this and that about Him, but their judgment of Him,
whether it be good or bad, is purely a natural judgment, and it
is not that that matters. Oh how utter was Christ! You know, it
takes a man with a sinless humanity not to be a little bit
satisfied inwardly when someone is passing a good opinion about
him, saying something nice, bearing testimony to him that he is
something. But He could say, What men think, good or bad, does
not touch Me. I know the value of that; I know that that does not
go very far; I am not going to take that on; it would put Me in
an entirely false position. Today they will cry, Hosanna!
Tomorrow they will cry, Crucify! Suppose I had been elated by
their cries of Hosanna! where should I be tomorrow? I receive not
testimony of men: I live before God.
The great thing is to live
before God. Now the Lord is seeking to conform us to that image,
that is, to make room for that Christ, with the result that, in
Christ having such a large place in us, there is that large
measure of pleasure to the Father; and the bringing of that to
the Father is worship. Beloved, it is not just what we say in
worship; for though our words may be a true and acceptable
offering, yet what the Lord is looking for all the time, and what
we must ask Him to produce in us, is a true measure of His Son. A
life that is an offering acceptable to God is a life in which
Christ has a large place. So that genuineness in worship is not
merely sincerity of utterance, not our purity of motive, not our
intensity of expression, but that which is coming out of a
chastened life, out of a broken, contrite spirit; coming out of
that which has been emptied, poured out, drained, weakened,
bruised, to give place to the Lord, a large measure of Christ.
May the Lord have that from us.
That is the church and that is
what the Lord is seeking to get in us by His dealings with us,
and, strange contradiction as it may seem, it is in that
brokenness, that emptiness, that weakness, that bruisedness, that
Satan is defeated. Oh! Satan triumphs when there is anything
other than that. It is Antichrist providing him with the very
kind of humanity or man that he wants, that which is not empty,
not broken, not poured out, not selfless. That is Satan’s
strength.