In the first message of
this series we laid the Scriptural foundation with John
4:21,23, Matthew 18:20, Matthew 28:19-20 and Acts 15:17.
We concentrated our attention upon the very great
significance of three words spoken by our Lord to the
Samaritan woman in the context of the great transition: "The
hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth... God is a
spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit
and truth." In that context Jesus used these
three words: "Neither" (in Samaria),
"Nor" (at Jerusalem), "But" (in
spirit and truth).
We pointed out that
this indicates, and postulates, first, a change of
dispensations; second, a change of order; and third, a
change of nature. "Neither... nor" dismisses
one dispensation with its form and order. "But"
introduces a new and other order and nature.
Before proceeding to
the new nature of worship inaugurated by the coming of
God's Son, Jesus Christ, we must lay further stress upon
this change. To a very large extent this challenges
Christendom and Christianity as it exists now. The very
words used by Jesus above carry with them such a
challenge: "Spirit and truth". Can we deny that
He implied - at least implied that what had obtained as
represented by the Samaritan temple in Mount Gerizim, and
the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, was not "Spirit and
truth", but, at most, a type, a figure, and a
man-made representation? It was form, not spirit; it was
artificial, not true. An immense amount of the New
Testament opens up when we get this John 4:21,23 key
intelligently into our possession by the Holy Spirit. Our
minds faint in the presence of so much, and we feel
confronted with an impossible task as we contemplate
coping with it. We can do no more than give hints and
indications. May the Holy Spirit do the rest!
In the first place, we
must remind ourselves that Jesus said of Himself that He
is the Truth. He said also: "To this end have I been
born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I
should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of
the truth heareth my voice" (John 18:37). By
implication He said that He was the true Temple (John
2:19). In contrast with the Jewish 'false shepherds' He
said that He was the true Shepherd. In contrast
with the old Israel as the Vine (Psalm 8:8-16, Isaiah
5:1-7, Jeremiah 2:21) He said "I am the true Vine."
This conception of
truth in relation to His own person and work is one of
the major features of His coming into the world. If we
take up this word in its seventeen occurrences in John's
Gospel alone we cannot fail to be immensely impressed.
Then follow it through into John's Letters; and finally
see it in the great consummation in the Revelation -
"The faithful and true". Paul speaks of the
truth - "As truth is in Jesus" (Ephesians
4:21). Jesus, as the Truth, is contrasted with Satan, the
liar. But He is also contrasted with all representations,
types, symbols, outward forms, etc., which were - and are
- not the true, the real. When our Lord spoke of His body
as the Temple, deliberately refraining from the fuller
explanation because of the fixed prejudice of His
hearers, He introduced the great truth of the transition
from one dispensation to another, and the complete change
in the nature of temple and worship. It was because
Stephen saw this and declared it that he was murdered by
these very people. Said he: "The Most High dwelleth
not in houses made with hands" (Acts 7:48). Paul
said the same to the Athenians (Acts 17:24). This does
not mean that God never came into representations when
they wholly corresponded with His thought. Both the
Tabernacle and the Temple were "made with
hands" and God came into them in power and glory,
but not to commit Himself to the thing. The time
came when He forsook both and He was no longer found
there. They were only temporary representations and His
presence was conditional. The "true tabernacle,
which the Lord pitched, not man" (Hebrews 8:2) is
"not of this creation". The whole Letter to the
Hebrews has to do with this change from the earthly and
temporal to the heavenly and spiritual. Hence, He is no
longer in "temples made with hands".
To come right to the
point: the New Testament teaches that the Temple in this
dispensation is a Person, and persons incorporated into
Him through death, burial and resurrection, and 'baptized
into one body by one Spirit' (1 Corinthians 12:13). We
must also remember that Jesus foretold the passing away
of that entire temporal system, with Jerusalem as its
centre and representation. This actually came to pass,
and it has not been recovered so far as Jewry is
concerned. That Letter to the Hebrews takes up the
prophecy of Haggai (Haggai 2:6,21) wherein is predicted a
two-fold shaking of all things with a view to testing
their temporal or eternal nature; and Hebrews 12:27 says
that only the things which cannot be shaken will remain.
This is a kind of summary of the Letter. The things which
can - and will be - shaken are the figures,
representations of heavenly things, the "things made
with hands". The things which cannot be
shaken are the spiritual, the heavenly; which are the true!
May it not be (and we
put it in question form just to draw consideration), may
it not be that we are now really in the universal shaking?
There are large realms in which it is being said, and
believed, that Christianity has failed. In Christendom
there are many who have abandoned faith in the old
teaching and beliefs of Christianity. There is a great
sifting and falling away. There is an intense testing of
all who are in any way connected with Christianity. Yes,
'shaking' is the right word, both as to things earthly
and things heavenly. The issue will be just as to what is
true, and what is otherwise; what is really of the
Spirit, and what is of man, tradition, and outward form.
If this great shaking
is going to head up to what Peter said, with prophetic
illumination as to the nuclear age, "the heavens
shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements
shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and
the works that are therein shall be burned up... these
things are thus all to be dissolved..." (2 Peter
3:10-11) (a thing which we know to be all too possible in
our time) what will remain but what is "spirit and
truth"? This issue is being forcibly pressed in the
nations, in Christendom, in evangelical Christianity, and
in the experience of the Lord's own people.
This is the first and
basic thing as to the fact and nature of the present
dispensation, and of the great transition from the past.
It will be intensified as the next transition of
dispensations get nearer. With His foreknowledge of the
passing of the earthly, temporal and material things;
places, systems, fixed locations, and outward forms, the
Lord Jesus put the whole matter of survival upon Himself
as the constituent of a spiritual structure
against which the very powers of hell would not prevail.
Against fixed localizing and systematizing of Himself and
His presence He was emphatic, and history is evidence of
how right He was. If, according to John 3:16, salvation
is a matter of "whosoever", the Lord's presence
and true worship, according to Matthew 18:20, is
"wheresoever". The Lord is no more sympathetic
toward being bound to this or that location than
He is to making Paul or Apollos, or Cephas a gathering
centre. Over against this very tendency in Corinth Paul
wrote: "...with all that call upon the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their
Lord and ours" (1 Corinthians 1:2). Exclusiveness,
with its tragic entail of endless divisions, can only
result - sooner or later - from a violation of
this fundamental principle! That is all on the negative
side, as warning and admonition; but what blessedness
there is when - all things apart - it is only the
Lord as the definite and consistent gathering object and
delight! "Neither" ... "Nor" ...
"But" in spirit and in truth.
Let it not be thought
that, in dismissing one tight legal system governing His
presence, He was putting nothing definite in its place.
His thought is far from a nebulous generalization, a
nondescript go-as-you-please kind of 'liberty', an
independent free-lance unrelatedness. The law of His
presence is a very definite and positive one; it is government
by the Holy Spirit. This will not allow us to do as
we like or go as we please - the misuse of the
"wheresoever".
This is strictly - the
dispensation of the Holy Spirit, and the measure of
Christ, the measure of life, the measure of power, and of
fruitfulness, depend entirely upon how much we recognize
and move into this essential nature.