"Our fathers
worshipped in this mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem
is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto
her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when neither in
this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the
Father... But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth:
for such doth the Father seek to be his worshippers. God
is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship in
spirit and truth" (John 4:20,21,23,24).
That is our basic
passage for this time, and we are going to gather some
other passages around it:
"But unto the
place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all
your tribes to put his name there, even unto his
habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come...
then it shall come to pass that the place which the Lord
your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there,
thither shall ye bring all that I command you; ...If the
place which the Lord thy God shall choose to put his name
there be too far from thee, then thou shalt kill of thy
herd and of thy flock, which the Lord hath given thee, as
I have commanded thee, and thou shalt eat within thy
gates, after all the desire of thy soul"
(Deuteronomy 12:5,11,21).
"For where two
or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in
the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20).
"Go ye
therefore, and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit... and lo, I am with you alway,
even unto the end of the age" (Matthew 28:19,20).
"Do not they
blaspheme the honourable name by which ye are
called?" (James 2:7). The marginal - alternative
to the latter phrase is: "the honourable name which
was called upon you".
"That the
residue of men may seek after the Lord, and all the
nations, upon whom my name is called" (Acts 15:17).
Now back to the Gospel
by John: and before we come to the particular matter
which is to occupy us at this time, there are one or two
quite simple, yet I think very helpful things to point
out.
The
Significance of Individuals
This Gospel, as you
know, is very largely a story of individual contacts with
the Lord Jesus. There is quite a series of such personal
and individual contacts with the Lord Jesus, or contacts
of the Lord Jesus with them, recorded in this Gospel. It
is very instructive and very helpful to note the use of
individuals and of individual history which the Lord made
and took up, to provide some of the most significant
things that He ever said. We are not going, of course, to
follow this through, but I want to point it out, because
I feel that it holds something of great value for you and
for me.
You will recall some of
these individuals, the first of whom was Nathanael. That
interview between the Lord and Nathanael produced
something very wonderful. The Lord took up that man's
history and used it for values which continue to this
very time. We will leave that for the moment.
Next was Nicodemus -
and everybody knows about Nicodemus! How the Lord took up
that man's personal history and used it for tremendous
purpose, very great value. Everybody will agree that that
part of the Gospel which is now marked off as chapter 3,
if it were taken out of the Bible, would represent a very
great loss indeed. But you must remember that all that we
have in that wonderful so-called third chapter of John,
so rich, so full, so deep, is the product of the contact
of the Lord with an individual. The Lord is taking hold
of one person's spiritual life and history and using it.
You come next to that
which is going to engage our attention especially at this
time, in what is marked as chapter 4: this woman of
Samaria. What an interview! And what a lot the
Lord made of that woman's history! What a lot came out
when that woman, who might never have become a part of
history on record, came into touch with the Lord Jesus!
And it was all because He came into touch with her. It
was a tremendous thing. A person like that, of so little
worth and account amongst the people of this world. She
would be utterly despised, ignored, set aside. But
because the Lord Jesus came into touch with that life she
is on record for two thousand years, and we don't know
how much longer - certainly for eternity.
We pass from chapter 4
to that poor fellow at the Pool of Bethesda. Indeed, he
was a neglected man. He was not counted of much
significance. Everybody forced their way in front of him
and pushed him into the back, out of sight and out of
account. But when the Lord Jesus touched that man's life
he comes into history.
And so you go on,
coming on to the man born blind - and what a story that
is, occupying this large section covered by the whole of
chapters 8 and 9! There is the man - and you know what
the people of the day thought about him! As the story
unfolds you see that they had not much room for him.
Indeed, they said: "Thou wast altogether born in
sins, and dost thou teach us?" (John 9:34).
'Who are you to have anything to say at all? How dare
you!' Well, that was the value of that man in their eyes.
But the Lord Jesus came into touch with that life, and
here he is - one of the Bible characters. And when the
Bible takes up a person that is no small thing, is it?
The Bible gives eternal values.
And through you go
until you come to Lazarus. Here is another individual -
and what an immense thing that the Lord came into touch
with a man in a little village some five or six miles, or
perhaps less, outside Jerusalem, and in that little home!
It is an immortal story, but is made that because the
Lord Jesus touched that life.
Now, I think you see
the point. There are tremendous values to be taken up and
carried on from any life and any personal history when
the Lord Jesus really gets His hand on that life. It is a
simple thing, but very encouraging. If all these people
were amongst the world's great and recognized and
honourable, well, our hearts would sink and we would say:
'All right - but that does not apply to me.' But when you
take up some of these people, at least (even if you are
not an important Nicodemus), the thing still applies
because it is just what the Lord is doing now. And all I
am wanting to say about this at the outset is that it is
something to note in this Gospel: that when the Lord
Jesus gets His hand upon a life - and it may be an
insignificant life - and when He gets His hand upon a man
or a woman, who may be of no account, humanly speaking,
He makes eternal history out of that life. He lays hold
of their own history and turns it into His history. That
is tremendous! Your history, perhaps, could not be poorer
than that of the woman of Samaria or that man at the Pool
of Bethesda, but He will take hold of it and turn it into
the history of Jesus Christ. That is what it amounts to.
Well, that is something
to begin with. But another thing I would have you note is
what Jesus said to these people. Not only His touch upon
their lives, but what He said. You know, dear friends, we
have not yet fathomed the depths of what Jesus said to
any of these people. That is no exaggeration - it is
quite true.
To Nathanael:
"Ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of
God ascending and descending upon the Son of man" (John
1:51). Have you fathomed that? Have you exhausted that? I
am coming back to that in a moment.
To Nicodemus: Oh, what
shall we say about all these things that the Lord Jesus
said to Nicodemus? About the work of the Holy Spirit in
new birth, the nature of new birth - "That which
is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of
the Spirit is Spirit" (John 3:6) - and
all the other things. And what tremendous things they
were! You and I have not exhausted them. I just wonder
how many sermons have been preached on John 3:16 in the
last two thousand years, and still they are doing
it! And it is very rarely that exactly the same thing is
said over and over again. There is always something new
and something more. Then: "As Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness..." and so
on. Perhaps the profoundest thing that He said to
Nicodemus was: "If I told you earthly things and
ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you
heavenly things?" (John 3:12). Things beyond
the capacity and possibility of the learned man in
Israel! That is what it amounts to. Have you fathomed
that? Have you got to the bottom of that?
Now, my point is that
wealth like that is brought out of a touch with an
individual. The hand of the Lord Jesus upon an individual
can bring all that out.
And what about this
woman of Samaria and the things the Lord Jesus said to
her? We are going to see something of that, because we
shall be focusing upon that particularly.
And so you go on - and
how true it is in the case of Lazarus! For it was out of
this episode of Lazarus that there came that mighty
statement: "I am the resurrection and the
life" (John 11:25). Resurrection and life: not
some thing or some happening, but a Person.
We have never fathomed that yet! The Church has been
drawing upon that for these many centuries, and you and I
should be drawing upon it. Some of us have been doing so
for many years unto living experience - the Resurrection
and the Life as a Person indwelling us, now, here. The
rebuke, you notice, was to the sister of Lazarus. She
said: "I know that he shall rise again in the
resurrection at the last day" (John
11:24). Are you putting it to the future? Are you making
it something remote from the present? "I am".
There may be a great resurrection day, but for spiritual
values resurrection and life are a present experience to
be drawn upon every day.
I say that these are
wonderful things that the Lord Jesus said to these
individuals. I want to make this application because I
feel it is quite right to do so. It is not error, not
false, and not a mistake to say that the Lord Jesus is
making history by His hand being upon us. And if He can
get His hand upon us He will draw out spiritual values
from these lives which will be for the good of His
people. Just as these people were made to produce these
values of light and revelation and truth and power for
the church for all the ages, so, in a measure and in a
sense, the Lord can draw values out of your life and mine
for His people, beyond anything that we could produce -
but for that hand of God upon us. Have you got hold of
that? Is it not helpful? It is encouraging.
Well, when we have said
that - and you can see that it is a good field in which
to work quite profitably - we come to this particular
case of the woman at Samaria to learn something from
these words which we have read in John 4.
The
Great Contrasts
I want to focus your
attention upon these contrasting words: "Neither...
nor... but". "Neither in this mountain, nor
in Jerusalem... but in spirit and truth."
Not this, nor that, but... Not here, nor there, but...
That is the heart of things here. Now let us analyse this
whole statement. "The hour cometh, and now
is." The hour? The hour has arrived.
That word 'hour', as you probably know, is used in
different ways in the New Testament. It is used literally
of the hour of sixty minutes. It is also used in the same
way as the word 'day' is used - of a dispensation: "In
that day" (John 16:23), referring to some longer
period of time than twelve hours. It is a dispensational
day. In the same way as 'day' is used figuratively, so
the Lord was using here the word 'hour'. "The
hour cometh, and now is" - it has arrived. A
new dispensational period has come. It is here. Note
that.
All this is very much
in keeping with the way in which the Lord used this
phrase: "In that day", when He was
speaking about the coming of the Holy Spirit. The 'hour'
and 'day' are identical in the Lord's meaning.
Now, what is this day
that had come with the Lord Jesus but the coming of the
Lord Jesus Himself? He says it quite emphatically: a new
day, or a new hour, has come. We have now entered upon a
new period in this world's history. What is it? Of
course, as to the actual period, it is undoubtedly from
the first advent of the Lord Jesus to His coming again.
That is the dispensational new day, or hour, to which the
Lord Jesus referred. He was saying, in effect: 'My coming
into this world has introduced a new period, a clearly
marked-off period, in the history of this world, and that
period is bounded by My first coming and My last coming.'
That is the day, dispensationally. But that is just a
statement of simple fact.
Dear friends, most of
the errors, the confusions, the contradictions that
abound in Christianity are due largely to the failure to
recognize and accept the essential change which has come
with this particular dispensation. It is not necessary
for me to dwell upon the errors and confusions and
contradictions that abound in Christianity. The state of
things! Sometimes it appalls us, sometimes it perplexes
us, and sometimes it makes us ashamed, this thing called
'Christianity' in general, as we know it. And I repeat: A
very large proportion of all that which is a
contradiction to Christ is due to the failure to
recognize and accept the immense change in dispensation
that has come about with the advent of the Lord Jesus.
That is a statement which we must follow up.
We used the word
'dispensation'. It is a New Testament word, and is, in
itself, illuminating. The Apostle Paul used it four
times. It is a Greek word, 'oikos', which means 'the
house', and 'oikonomia' is the order of the house, that
is, the regime that exists in the house. If yours is a
proper house, home, or establishment, there is an order
about it. That is, you have a time when you get up in the
morning, and, if you are properly ordered, you have a
proper time for getting up. You don't get up at any time:
you have a certain time. And then you have breakfast at a
certain time. That is your order. And then the day in
your house is so ordered. This is the way you do it, and
if some stranger were to come and begin to interfere,
changing your times and ways of doing things, you would,
I think, raise a good deal of trouble! You would say:
'Look here, this is not the way we do it here. Please
don't interfere with our household arrangements.' You may
be more or less jealous about it. Some people, of course,
are just careless, but in a careless establishment there
are all sorts of difficulties and troubles. You know
quite well that it is the well-ordered house, or home,
that makes the best progress, gets on with the least
friction, and gets the most done, saving the most time.
That is the meaning of
this word 'dispensation', or 'oikonomia': the order of
the house. With the coming of the Lord Jesus, and of the
Holy Spirit, which two things are one in effect and
meaning, as we shall see, the order of the house has been
changed. The order in the Old Testament was one order,
and the order in the New Testament is an entirely
different order. The house order, or regime, has been
completely changed. I have said that if somebody comes in
and begins to change the order in your home there is
usually trouble, and that is exactly what happened in the
New Testament. Tremendous battles and troubles arose
because the Old Testament order was being upset and put
aside. Look at it - again and again! Paul's whole life
was a battle on this matter. He was the man who used this
word 'house order', or 'dispensation' and because he was
now recognizing and accepting the setting aside of the
whole Mosaic order, the order of the law, and was
pointing to the new order that had come in with the Holy
Spirit, what a time he had everywhere! His battle for
Galatia, for instance, focused upon this very thing - the
change in the order from the old to the new. That
wonderful Letter to the Hebrews was written on this very
thing. There is an order in the Old Testament of angel
messengers, of priests, of sacrifices, of covenants, and
so on. The writer says: 'That order is finished. A new
order has come in with Christ' - "God... hath at
the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son"
(Hebrews 1:1,2), and this is the new order that has
been introduced. A heavenly order, not an earthly one.
The old one was earthly, but the new is a heavenly one.
May I repeat, at the
risk of tiring you, that it is failure to recognize and
accept that that lies right at the root of most of our
troubles. There are many people who are still living on a
pre-Pentecost basis, trying to live an Old Testament kind
of order in a New Testament day, and it does not fit with
the Holy Spirit. There are many people who are living on
a sub-New Testament basis. altogether below this, and not
coming up to the high standard and level of this new
order that has come in. There are some people who are
trying to combine both, and the result is terrible
confusion.
You can leave that if
you don't understand and cannot follow what I mean, but
it is all an emphasis upon this: the necessity for a
recognizing and accepting of this tremendous change that
has taken place in the dispensation, in the house order,
by the coming of the Lord Jesus and of the Holy Spirit.
The
Nature of the New Order
There is no doubt, to
come back to this fourth chapter of John, that Jesus was
speaking to this woman of Samaria about the day or the
hour of this new order. He spoke to her about the water
which He would give, about the well which would be
opened, and the stream within, about the life which He
would give - but it is always with a forward glance and a
forward look. He is thinking of that hour when the Holy
Spirit would come, and this really did take place. The
well was opened within, was it not? The spring welled up
within when the Holy Spirit came, and the life was within
at that time. He was looking forward to that, just as in
chapter 16 He was saying: 'In that day when the Spirit is
come.' I repeat, there is no doubt that the Lord was
speaking to this woman about what He was calling 'the
hour'. He said: 'This has been inaugurated by My coming,
but now I am going to tell you what it will be like, what
that new hour is like.'
But let us note - and
this, dear friends, is the foundation of it all - that
this new dispensation, this new order of things, is a
spiritual dispensation. That is the thing the Lord has
been trying to emphasize. That is what He meant with
Nathanael. It was a figurative way of speaking: "Hereafter"
- that is, when this hour is come - "ye
shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending
and descending upon the Son of man" (John
1:51). What is meant by that? Are we to take it
literally? We know what it means - that Jesus Christ is
the way of communication between heaven and earth,
between us and God. That it is by Him, through Him and in
Him that heaven and earth are united. We here are united
with heaven, and all the communications of God, by the
Holy Spirit, with us are in Christ. We understand
something of that, don't we? But that requires this new
order.
Nicodemus: Is this a
new spiritual dispensation? Yes, Nicodemus could not
understand it. "How can a man be born when he is
old? ...That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and
that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." That
is the new order. It is a new spiritual regime that is
introduced in this hour, this dispensation. It is the
dispensation of the Spirit, and, therefore, it is a
spiritual dispensation.
And that is what He is
saying to this woman. This hour, this dispensational
hour, lasting all these centuries, is a spiritual order
of things.
You focus, you see,
right down on this: 'The hour... neither... nor...
but'. 'Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and
they have always said that if you want to meet God you
have to come to Mount Gerizim and our Samaritan temple,
for that is where you will meet Him. You Jews say: If you
want to meet God you must come to the temple in Jerusalem
and that is where you will meet Him.' Jesus said:
'Neither... nor' - just wiping out the whole thing. By
one sweep of the hand dismissing the whole old order and
bringing in an entirely new one and telling you what it
is. Yes, it is the new order of the Spirit. And it is not
focused locally at all, in the way that you are going to
be bound by any localization of this thing, but "Where
two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I
in the midst of them". That is the new order. In
John 3:16 it is: "whosoever believeth", wiping
out all racial distinctions, all geographical
limitations, all differences here on this earth, with a
great 'whosoever': throwing that at Nicodemus, who said:
'No. Israel are the chosen people, the elect, the special
people, the spiritual aristocracy. No, no!' ... "Whosoever,
Nicodemus!"
That is what came out
in Acts 15: "All the nations, upon whom my name
is called" - "Go ye therefore, and make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the
name" - "Gathered together in my name". That
is John 3:16 - "Whosoever".
And in Matthew 18:20 it
is 'wheresoever'. This is not a matter of geography, of
certain structures, edifices, places, kinds of
meeting-places, or anything temporal at all. It is
nothing of this earth. 'Neither... nor... but in
the Spirit.' This is a spiritual dispensation, and
everything that belongs to this dispensation is a
spiritual thing.
In the Old Testament it
was the old house order. If you are going to have a
tabernacle it is going to be a temporal, earthly thing,
made with hands. If you are going to have priests with
their vestments, their beautiful garments, and Levites,
and all the system of sacrifices and feasts and orders
down here - well; that has gone for ever with the coming
of the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit. What is the new
house order? Are there going to be people in the Lord's
house who minister, serve? Be very careful of how you use
that word 'office' - 'holding office' - for in this new
order there is nothing official. Everything is spiritual,
and everyone who ministers, everyone who serves and
everyone who has any place and does anything, does so
because they are spiritual men and women, and on no other
ground at all. The measure of their spirituality is the
measure of their usefulness to the Lord, and nothing
else. 'Oh, but in the New Testament' - you say - 'we are
told about elders and others. Are we not to recognize
that?' Here again I would remind you that in the places
where the Apostle Paul speaks most about these things, he
is doing it correctively, not provisionally, because
things at the end of his life were already taking that
ecclesiastical form where they were introducing the kind
of system of priesthood that we know so well today in
Christianity. It was coming in then at the end of Paul's
life. It was not so long after he went from this earth
that you have the Book of the Revelation and the messages
to the churches, and if the Lord lays Himself out to hit
with great force against anything in those letters, it is
against formalism. When Paul begins to speak to Timothy
about elders in the church, he is saying: 'These men must
be spiritual men.' And you see what he calls 'spiritual
men'! He is not saying: 'These must be ecclesiastics, and
important, religious figures in the religious world.' No,
he is saying: 'They must be spiritual men.' He is getting
back to the real essence of this whole new order, the
House of God, and the real nature of it is spiritual.
The
Church and the Churches
That is very important,
dear friends. What is the Church, and what are the
churches? It is just this - nothing less and nothing more
than this: the aggregate of those upon whom the Name has
been called whether it be two, or three, or more...
'Where I put My Name, there will I meet you'... "Where
two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I
in the midst of them". That is the Church:
nothing less than that and nothing more than that.
'Neither... nor... but in the Spirit', and wheresoever
that happens, there the Church is, in essence, in
principle.
There is nothing legal
about this at all. It is a spiritual matter entirely. And
so everything else to do with this new order is
spiritual. That is what the Lord is saying to this woman.
But do you know, dear
friends, that in these things that the Lord said to these
individuals He was only planting a seed? Here is the seed
dropped into the ground. What is the history of that
seed? If it is a normal history it will not come back as
a single seed, but in a multiplication of seeds. From
that one there will be many, it may be a whole host. The
Lord Jesus dropped the seed principle into these
individual lives, and the rest of the New Testament is
the development of that seed. What I mean is this: Here
you have something in germ form, and in the rest of the
New Testament you have all the meaning in that
developing, and you can trace from the later part all the
enlarged teaching and revelation... 'Oh, this is what the
Lord said!'
The
Heavens Opened
I have pointed this out
with Nathanael... "the heaven opened". Oh,
what a wonderful thing it is for you and for me, dear
friends, that through Calvary heaven is opened
to us! I don't mean that we are going to heaven. That is
quite all right and true, but now, here in this place, we
have an open heaven. There is a way through. The
communication is going on in Christ because He is here,
the great Ladder - if I may say so - between heaven and
earth, between God and us, the communication of the
Spirit is going on with us in this very place. We can be
here all night under an opened heaven, with the blessed
communications of the Spirit to our hearts, because
heaven is no longer closed against us. Calvary has rent
the heaven for us. Just as the veil of the temple was
rent from top to bottom when Jesus died, so the way is
opened into the Most Holy for us now.
I repeat: We say these
things, but what an immensity there is in a simple thing
said to Nathanael! Something that you did not quite
understand, but you come into spiritual life and you know
what it means to have an opened heaven... Do you? Do you
know what personal communication from heaven into your
heart means? Do you know what personal communication
direct with heaven from your heart means? Why, that is
the birthright of the child of God! That is why it is the
first thing in the Gospel by John, for an opened heaven
is the first thing that a child of God comes into. And
that heaven, as in Christ, is for us, because of the rent
heaven. But you want all the rest of the New Testament to
explain that, and that is what it does.
It is the same with the
words to Nicodemus, and to this woman, and to all the
others who are here. It was put in a simple, symbolic way
to these people by the Lord Jesus, but though He puts
these things in that way, He never reduces them to
anything less than the eternal measure of value and
meaning. When the Lord Jesus said something, there was
vastly more in what He said than anyone ever recognized
at the time. I give you a simple example. We are perhaps
more familiar with what is called the parable of the
Prodigal Son than with any other story in the Bible. Take
a fragment from that. The Lord Jesus is telling this
story, using this illustration about this son, his father
and his home, and when at last He gets that son to the
point of returning home to the father, what is it that
the Lord Jesus puts into the mouth of that son? Note: it
is only a part of the whole, but it is a very interesting
and significant part... "Father, I have sinned
against heaven, and in thy sight" (Luke 15:21).
What might He have made him say if He had just been
talking in an ordinary man's language? 'Father, I made a
mistake and did wrong. I have suffered for it and have
had a miserable time, and I have lost everything. Have
pity on me!' That is not good enough for God! Sin is sin,
and sin is against heaven, and sin is something before
God. Jesus never confused and confounded these great
principles by just reducing them to a human story. "I
have sinned" - and sin is against heaven, an
affront and an offence to heaven, and sin is against God,
an insult to God. He made the son say that, and do you
see what I mean? When the Lord Jesus says something, it
sounds very simple, but there is the profundity of
eternity in anything that He says.
And so He said to this
woman: "Neither... nor... but" - and in that
'but' there is the whole dispensation in spirit and in
truth, and the whole nature of this new order. The whole
nature of the Church, of all the Church's functions and
service and everything, is - what? It is a spiritual
order, and we will only get into terrible confusion,
spoil everything, and make any amount of trouble if we
try to bring this down to some earthly thing, earthly
system, earthly order, some (as brother Nee used to say)
earth touch. It is death. That is the explanation. Keep
everything in the Spirit and out of touch with this
accursed world, and there is life, there is progress, and
there is growth.