The “Must” of Spiritual Worship and of the Holy Spirit
Chapter 5
The “Must” of Spiritual Worship and of the Holy Spirit
“God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).
Because of its absolute importance, I repeat what we have already discussed. Whatever was stated in our first chapter is of critical importance to this present one. The soul, which is the center of our personality, can operate in two worlds. From its level we can ascend into union with the Unseen and Eternal through the spirit or may descend into union with the earth through the body.
Let this be deeply pondered. It is the secret of all true thinking. The soul is you, or I, or any other. The reason, affections, emotions, judgment, gift, business-faculty, the love of the beautiful and true, have their home there. But the soul looks out on two spheres. To the invisible sphere it is related by the spirit, with its spiritual organs of touch, hearing, taste, and its quick scent in the fear of the Lord. In the visible sphere it is related to the body, with the corresponding physical organs of sight, touch, hearing, taste and scent. We have the option of ascending by the upward staircase to fellowship with God or descending by the downward staircase of the senses into materialism, self-indulgence and hell. The ladder reaches to heaven, to which, as Jacob saw, angels ascend or descend, or the lure of savory pottage attracts Esau to barter away his birth-right.
According to the apostle’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 2:14, 15, there are multitudes who never rise above the natural or soulish level. Like the first Adam, after the fall, they are living souls, but they know nothing of “the last Adam,” who is a life-giving Spirit. They bear the image of the earthly; and die without having been lifted, through the obedience of faith, into union with the heavenly Man, the Lord Jesus Christ. They are unlit candles. The inner chamber of their nature has never been illuminated by the Shechinah. The throne-room has never been occupied by the King. The windows that look out on the delectable mountains and the City of God have never been unshuttered.
But all this is altered when the soul turns to God in faith and obedience. Then we are born into a new world. Then we become aware of the Unseen and the Eternal, as we used to be of the passing shadows of time and sense. Then the spiritual senses, which we have enumerated above, become as quick to discern good and evil, as our physical senses to distinguish light from dark and sweet from bitter. The Shechinah shines in the Most Holy Place. The King ascends the throne. Our real life is hidden with Christ in God; and through the open windows we look out on the things prepared for those who love God. By faith in Jesus, as we have already seen, we are born into the family of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven. Just as the human hand, when stretched out, has two sides, the one towards heaven, the other towards earth, so the act of entrance into this blessed life has two aspects. The angels describe it as being “born from above”; men call it “trusting Jesus.” Two aspects of the same experience. If you are trusting Jesus, you are born from above. If you are born from above, you will be trusting Jesus (John 1:12, 13).
When the human spirit has been thus vitalized, the soul begins to worship God in spirit and in truth. This was the burden of our Lord’s closing words with the woman at Sychar’s well.
Do We Worship Enough?
Our Saviour tells us that the Father “seeketh” such to worship Him; and the grave question for us all is whether He ever bends over us, as we kneel, receiving as grateful incense the ascriptions of our worshipping love. He hears us voluble in petitions, which we may have uttered for years.
He hears our intercessions for others, which are the expression of human affection. But does He often hear the outburst of worship and praise from hearts which have obeyed the Psalmist’s injunction to join the universal chant arising from the unfallen universe? To this the Psalmist calls us, when he says: “O come, let us sing unto the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.”
Let us kindle our hearts to praise by listening, as Isaiah did to the chant of the seraphim – “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory”; or by listening to the song of Mary: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour”; or by listening as John did to the out-circling song of heaven, beginning with the inner circle of the redeemed, and reaching out to every created thing which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and on the sea. “Unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing and the honor, and the glory, and the dominion. And the four living creatures said Amen! and the elders fell down and worshipped.”
In order to incite our sluggish souls to worship, we may recite aloud the Psalms, or the Te Deum, or any of the great hymns of the Church. But, best of all, it is for the soul to pour out its adoring gratitude and love in its own glad words. “We give Thee thanks for our creation, preservation, and for all the good things in our lives, but above all for the redemption of our world by our Lord Jesus Christ and for our own adoption into eternal union with Thyself.”
In order to have spiritual worship and power, we need the presence and power of the Holy Spirit to quicken our spirit with His life-giving energy.
We need not take time to prove that the Holy Spirit is one with the Father and the Son in the Holy Trinity. His personality is proved by John 16:8, 13, and by Acts 15:28. He has been in the world from the beginning (Gen. 1:2). Through His inspiration, the holy men of old were moved to write the Holy Scriptures (2 Peter 1:21). It was beneath His mighty influence that the mountain-top saints and heroes of the past wrought and spake. They were elect souls, who dwelt apart, breathing the rare air of God’s highlands. The full mystery of Pentecost was not unveiled to the majority of these men, though Joel foresaw the time when the Spirit would be poured out upon all flesh, when sons and daughters would prophesy, when old men would dream dreams, and young men would see visions, and when on servants and handmaids would be poured out the same Spirit. Then the valleys would be exalted. Then the gifts of an Elijah, a Jeremiah, a John the Baptist would be shared by an ever-increasing multitude of happy souls. That was the meaning of Pentecost. To us, also, it has been revealed that the Gentiles may be fellow-partakers in the joy, triumph, and power of the Spirit’s fulness. As the glorious result of our Lord’s ascension, in our nature, to the right hand of God, the full power of the Holy Spirit is within the reach of the simplest, humblest souls, who are joined to Him by a living faith. The farewell discourses prove that it was His clear intention through His ascension to claim for His whole Church – the mystical Body – the same anointing of the Spirit, as He had Himself received at His baptism, when He said “the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, and He hath anointed Me to preach.” The oil that anointed the head of our Great High Priest was intended to fall on us also, who are but as the hem of His garment.
The Pathway of Christ’s Ascension
Linking together Luke 24:50, 51; Acts 1:9, 10; Ephesians 1:19-23; we gather that when the cloud hid our Lord from view, as the veil fell behind the high priest on the day of atonement, He was beset by the concentrated opposition of hosts of evil spirits, as though they resolved to bar His way. It was a vain attempt. His course was no more interrupted than the course of a sunbeam can be arrested by a flimsy veil of mist. He ascended on high, leading captivity captive. As in the triumphal progress of a Roman conqueror, his car was followed by a long train of subdued princes and warriors, whom he had defeated, and who would presently be put to death, so we may picture death, the grave, and principalities and powers of evil attached to our Savior’s return to heaven. “Having put off from Himself the principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in His Cross” (Col. 2:14, 15).
May we not here make use of the magnificent symbolism of the ancient psalm (Psalm 68:17, 18), quoted by the apostle in Ephesians 4:8. The chariots of God came forth to welcome the returning King “even thousands upon thousands”; and they turned to accompany His progress as He approached the celestial city. We hear the challenge of the foremost ranks: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in.” To the inquiry, “Who is the King of Glory?” the entire crowd of rejoicing angels and jubilant saints reply: “The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle!” Then the celestial doors slowly open to receive Him. He bears the semblance of our humanity. He is the man Christ Jesus. But on His vesture and on His thigh, He hath a name written, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. Our Saviour promised “I will pray (or make request of) the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may be with you forever” . . . “even the Spirit of truth,” . . . “which proceeded from the Father” . . . “If I go, I will send Him unto you” (John 14:16, 17; 15:26; 16:7). It is as if, on entering the presence-chamber, the Father asked Him what reward He desired for His obedience to the death of the Cross, He replied, “Father, I ask nothing for myself. But that thou shouldest grant that from my divine-human nature, I should be the channel of communication to my Church and through her, of that same Spirit, which Thou bestowed on me in my earthly ministry, that they all may be one, as we are.”
The Gift of the Ascended Lord
Peter tells us in his Pentecostal sermon that being by the right hand of God exalted, He received from the Father into His divine-human nature that same fulness of the Holy Spirit, which He had shared from all eternity and now poured forth as His wonderful gift on His waiting Church. The apostle was so conscious of this – which probably the Master had promised and explained during the forty days – that he proceeded to announce that this gift was intended, not only for Jews, but also for Gentiles, even as many as the Lord should call to Himself (Acts 2:39).
It pleased the Father that in Him, in His mediatorial and representative capacity, equally as in His deity, all the fulness of the God-head should dwell. To each of us a share in that gift has been apportioned. The Father does not give by meter or measure (John 3:34). Our cup was meant, not only to be filled, but to run over. Whether we have claimed it or not is another matter. Too many are content to claim their share in Calvary, but never go further to claim their portion in the gift of Pentecost. They are content with the brazen altar and the laver, but never enter the holy or the holiest place.
It is when we have claimed and received our share in the gift of Pentecost, that we can most readily realize the ideal of worship which our Saviour presented to this woman. It is only as we live in the Spirit and walk in the Spirit, that we are lifted into that consciousness of adoption, of those heavenly places, and of that power of service, which characterize the sons and daughters, the witnesses and ministers of Christ’s Holy Gospel.
There is a land, a happy land. Not “far, far away,” as we were taught in our childish hymn; nor after death, but here and now. Bunyan called it “The Land of Beulah.” There, God’s glory ever shineth; the waters never become exhausted or stale; and the flowers bloom in a perpetual spring. They who dwell there need no candle, neither light of the sun, nor of the moon, for the Lord God is the everlasting light and the days of mourning are ended. There, to us also, as we look North, South, East, and West, God says: “Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it, for unto thee will I give it.” There we meet the saints of every age. There God wipes all tears from all faces. There we have the foretaste of what is yet to be realized when the earth that is now, and the time-sphere, and the fading phantasms of the present, have passed away as a dream, and have given place to the new heavens and the new earth born out of the travail of the present. We shall have no reason to be disappointed, and God will not be ashamed, when we see that City which He has prepared, beyond the storm-clouds of the last black night of time. But of all this we get foregleams, as John in the Isle of Patmos when he was in the Spirit.
Can we be surprised that the woman forgot her waterpot, and ran at full speed to the city? When we have the Holy Spirit as a spring rising in our hearts, we no longer require our water-pots. No more the letting down of the pitcher, but the music of the spring arising from the depths of divine love. Yes, Paul. You were right when you said that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him, but He has revealed them unto us by His Spirit (1 Cor. 2:9, 12, 14).
Two Closing Cautions
(a) We must carefully avoid making the Holy Spirit the figure-head in any movement, however sincere and well-intentioned its promoters may be. It is surely a profound mistake to make any special experience of the Spirit the objective or aim of a religious movement. In the present dispensation, the one aim of the blessed Paraclete is to glorify our Saviour: and He must surely shrink from any attempt, however well intended, to divert one thought from Him, who must ever be the Alpha and the Omega of our faith.
(b) A recent movement has led to such excesses that it is wisest to avoid it altogether. Too seldom do its promoters observe the following principles laid down in 1 Corinthians 14:27-29:
Whatever rends and divides the Church carries on its front the brand of Satan. Love must rule.