True Worshipers

[Walter and Deborah]

Monday 11-22-21 Kislev 16, 5782 2nd. day of the weekly cycle, 62nd. Fall Day

John 4:23-24 ²³But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. ²⁴God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

John 4 BSB (biblehub.com)

LOL, Walter and Debbie

[AdHoc]

22 hours ago, Walter and Deborah said:

Monday 11-22-21 Kislev 16, 5782 2nd. day of the weekly cycle, 62nd. Fall Day

John 4:23-24 ²³But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. ²⁴God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

John 4 BSB (biblehub.com)

LOL, Walter and Debbie

Good topic. I'd like to add.

According to the context, our Lord is reporting to the Samaritan woman God's desire to have a new PLACE where men worship Him. The Samaritans, remnant of the Assyrian deportation of the ten northern Tribes of Israel, had, as their religion,  a mixture of heathen myths and the Pentateuch - the first five books of Moses. Not having the full council of God up to then, they decided that they would worship at Mount Gerizim. The Jews have their Temple on Mount Moriah. So the context if the discourse is the right place to worship God.

When God made man, He gave very simple instructions. Man was to eat of the Tree of Life. Romans Chapter 1 tells us that the things of the creature display the things of God. When a man eats something it goes inside him and after a few hours it is absorbed by the system. WE could say that the man is constituted by what he eats, and that the man is what he eats. God's intention was that man take God in, and that a steady diet of God would constitute the man with the divine nature.

Man disobeyed and ate of a Tree that constituted him with the nature of a poisoned serpent. With God's would-be tabernacle defiled and the man turned into breeder of vipers, God, to protect His holiness, must meet with man from behind veil. For this, a place on earth is chosen by God to build His House, and inside this House the veil is place. For 1,500 years God tolerated this dangerous setup - dangerous for man because God's holiness could not be infringed upon. Ask Uzzah of 2nd Samuel Chapter 6. But God is not satisfied with this arrangement, so our Lord Jesus takes an horrific journey through the veil, and God sees the atonement. God is pleased and the veil is torn from top to bottom.

Because God wanted to live INSIDE man from the beginning, His human body was too limiting. So our Lord Jesus becomes the Spirit. In this way He can enter all men. But Spirit begets spirit (Jn.3:6), and the flesh is still polluted. So the Spirit of Christ enters the spirit of man if the man believes Who Jesus is and confesses it. The Temple of old had three sections - (i) the Outer Court, (ii) the Holy Place, and (iii) the Holy of Holies. God dwelt in the Holy of Holies and Aaron, High Priest, was to be a "representative" of Israel on the Day of Atonement by  starting at the Outer Court and shedding blood for Israel. Then he was to pass through the Holy Place and bring the blood of atonement into the Holy of Holies. God would meet Aaron from between the Cherubim over the "Mercy Seat" - the cover of the Ark of the Covenant.

Man too is made of three parts; (i) body, or flesh, (ii) soul, and (iii) spirit (Gen.2:8, 1st Thess.5:23). And what our Lord Jesus has done by atoning for our sin and sins is clear the way judicially for God to come and live in our human spirits, and for us, with the fear of Uzzah, or Aaron, to enter our human spirit to meet God there. It is from here that we hear God's speaking, and it is from here that we speak to God. God has, through Jesus Christ, paved the way for Him to live IN us, and to received instructions from Him in an intimate and private way.

Sorry to say, Christianity at large have adopted the Old Testament way of worship. They go to a building called "the Church", hire a rock-band and claim to be worshiping with a great shew. But all they do is feed the soul, not the spirit, and God, Who has ordained the new way, goes short. Man must know that God has paved the way, at great cost - the sufferings of His Son Jesus - for Him to dwell IN man and have His relationship with man from His throne in the human spirit. It is not that gathering is wrong, but gathering is for another purpose - to be built up by what God supplies through other Christians. But God's new Seat is in the human spirit and it is our job to meet Him there, pray there (Rom.1:9), we instructed there (Rom.8:14) and we are aware of God's promises there (Rom.8:16), we receive help there (Rom.8:26) and receive the wherewithal to be sanctified from there (2nd Co.3:18).

Let not stop gathering. Let us not stop communal prayer, nor stop a song or two. But let us all be aware that the age has changed. God does not dwell in house, or cave or desert place. neither does He dwell in your local meeting hall. He dwells in your spirit. Forget the philosophy of "going to Church on Sunday to worship ... ". It is now, wherever you are, pause ... and turn to your spirit.