According to John 4:23-24, we need to worship God our Father in spirit and in truthfulness; to worship God in truthfulness is to worship Him with the Christ we enjoyed and experienced, the Christ who saturates our being to become our personal reality through our experience and enjoyment of the Triune God as the divine reality. Amen!
This week we have been enjoying the matter of having a surplus of the produce of the good land, that is, having a surplus of Christ to bring to the meetings of the church for the exhibition of Christ.
Furthermore, we have been enjoying the matter of offering a corporate worship to God the Father in spirit and in truthfulness.
Regarding the matter of surplus, just as the people of Israel had to put aside a certain portion of their produce from the labour on the good land for the purpose of worshipping God, so we as believers need to have a surplus of Christ.
We may think that we barely touch the Lord a few times during the week, and we barely have something for ourselves to go on with the Lord in our daily life, but we need to come to the Lord and ask Him to give us the experiences we need to have this in our experience.
We need to learn to faithfully labour on the all-inclusive Christ so that we may have the riches of Christ as the produce to exhibit Christ in the church meetings.
This is the proper Christian life, a life of labouring on Christ every day to obtain and gain a rich surplus of Christ to bring to the meetings of the church for a rich exhibition of Christ.
When we meet, we not only exhibit the Christ given to us by God but also the Christ we have enjoyed, the Christ on whom we have laboured and whom we have experienced.
This requires that we continually labour on Christ so that we have a rich surplus of Christ.
Whenever we come together, no matter what kind of meeting we have, we should come with the Christ experienced by us as the surplus to be offered to God and exhibited to the whole universe, even to the enemy, for God to obtain the worship He desires, for Christ to be exhibited, and for the enemy to be put to shame. Amen!
Such a church life expresses God and manifests Christ, and there’s a rich exhibition of Christ in the meetings of the church.
We need to be very much before the Lord concerning our labouring on the all-inclusive Christ so that we may not come empty-handed to the meetings of the church but rather, we would have our hands full of Christ.
There’s a battle with regard to the genuine worship of God, for Satan wants to gain worship for himself.
God is seeking worshippers, those who worship Him in spirit and truthfulness. May we be such ones today!
Worship God our Father in Spirit and in Truthfulness, Offering Him the Worship He Desires
John 4:23-24 is a portion that is not yet fully fulfilled among us today; God the Father is still seeking true worshippers, those who worship Him in spirit and in truthfulness.
We need to worship God our Father in spirit and truthfulness.
First of all, the place where we worship God is not in this or that place but in spirit; our spirit is the place chosen by God for us to worship Him.
We cannot worship God simply by thinking about Him or by loving Him; we worship Him by exercising our spirit and by contacting Him in our spirit.
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit.
In the Old Testament God required of His people two things related to their worship of Him: a particular place, which was the place of His choice (not their choice), and with particular offerings, which satisfy Him.
In the New Testament, the unique place of God’s choice is our spirit; we need to worship God in our spirit.
The offerings that we worship God with are Christ Himself as the reality of all the offerings.
Christ came to be the unique sacrifice, the offering replacing all the offerings, and we need to enjoy, experience, and apply Him as the offerings in our daily Christian life.
As we apply Christ as the offerings, enjoying Him as the reality of all the offerings, there’s a certain reality wrought into us.
Christ is the reality; He is the way, the reality, and the life, and when He is wrought into us, He becomes our reality.
Truthfulness is the revealed divine reality – the Triune God dispensed into man in the Son, Jesus Christ – becoming our genuineness and sincerity so that we may live a life that corresponds with the divine light (1 John 1:5) and worship God, as God seeks, according to what He is (2 John 1; 3 John 1).
God seeks those who worship Him not only in spirit but also in truthfulness.
What is truthfulness? It is not merely sincerity; some believers think that we need to be sincere in our worship of God, and that is our truthfulness.
But truthfulness is much more than that. When we enjoy the divine reality, when we enjoy Christ as the divine reality, we have human truthfulness, sincerity, and genuineness (John 4:23-24; 1 John 3:18; 2 John 1; 3 John 1).
In our daily life, in our Christian life, in our church life, and everywhere we are, we need to enjoy the Lord so that He as the divine reality becomes our reality in our daily life.
Without Christ as the reality, we are not real, we do not have a reality, and we are not genuine.
When we meet people on the street or talk to our workmates at the office we realize that there’s no truthfulness among people in society today.
Truthfulness is the human genuineness, sincerity, honesty, trustworthiness, and faithfulness as a human virtue and as an issue of the divine reality (John 14:6).
When we enjoy Christ as the reality of all the offerings, when we apply Him all the details of our daily life, we will become genuine, honest, sincere, trustworthy, and faithful because the One who is the reality of all these matters is working Himself into us.
We want to be made honest, sincere, and genuine and faithful, but we can’t do it in ourselves and by our own efforts; only by enjoying Christ as the divine reality can we be such a person.
This is why day by day we need to open to the Lord and enjoy His divine dispensing.
We need to receive His dispensing and allow Him to work Himself into us. Out of the enjoyment of Christ as the divine reality of all that God is will issue human truthfulness, sincerity, and genuineness.
Such truthfulness is required by God in our worship of Him.
Lord Jesus, we want to worship God our Father in spirit and in truthfulness. We exercise our spirit to come to worship God in spirit, for God is Spirit and we can worship Him only in spirit. Keep us in our spirit today. Keep us contacting You and enjoying You. Hallelujah, God is Spirit and we can worship Him in our spirit! Amen, Lord, we come to You as we are by exercising our spirit to contact You and receive You. Work Yourself into us a little more today. We want to be and remain under the divine dispensing, having the Triune God dispensed into us to become our genuineness and sincerity. Yes, Lord, may the revealed divine reality become our genuineness and sincerity so that we may live a life that corresponds with the divine light. Amen, we want to worship God according to what He is, the divine reality wrought into us to become our reality, our truthfulness, and our genuineness and honesty. Keep us enjoying You, Lord Jesus, as the reality of all that God is, until we have human truthfulness, sincerity, and genuineness for our worship of God our Father in truthfulness!
Worship God in Truthfulness with the Christ who Saturates our being to be our Reality
We may understand what it means to worship God in spirit, for the only way we can come to God to worship Him is in and by our spirit, not in and by our mind, emotion, will, or physical senses.
But what does it mean to worship God in truthfulness? What is this truthfulness?
In this whole universe only God is reality, and what is of God is real.
Man is here today and gone tomorrow, and man’s accomplishments and best deeds are here today and forgotten tomorrow.
Only God is real, and only by enjoying God in all that He is in Christ in our spirit can we be infused with the divine reality for us to have this reality as our reality.
On the one hand, Christ is reality; on the other hand, by our enjoyment and experience of Christ, we have Christ as our reality.
Truthfulness in John 4:23-24 denotes the divine reality becoming our genuineness and sincerity for our true worship of God in truthfulness.
If we believe in Christ but live our daily life without contacting the Lord and with no experience of Christ, though we believe into the Lord’s name and are ethical and moral, we don’t have anything of Christ to bring to the meetings of the church.
In a real sense, we are not genuine and have no truthfulness, for the divine reality is not wrought into us.
When we come to the meeting, we will merely sit and watch others function, for we don’t have anything to offer to God out of our enjoyment of Christ.
This kind of worship is rejected by God and condemned by Him. God wants us to come to Him and enjoy Him, experience Him, and contact Him in our daily life so that He may work Himself into us and become our genuineness and sincerity for the true worship of God in truthfulness.
Day by day we need to come to the Lord and drink Him, partake of His riches, and be satisfied with Him.
The divine reality is Christ as the fountain of living water partaken of us and drunk by us as believers in Christ to be the reality within us (John 4:10, 14, 23).
As we drink of the Lord as the fountain of living waters by calling on His name and contacting Him in prayer throughout the day, the divine reality becomes our genuineness and sincerity in which we worship God with the worship that He seeks.
We cannot presume that, as long as we come to the meetings and tell God that we worship Him, that is the worship He desires.
We need to come to the meetings with our hands full of Christ; there has to be something of the Christ that we have experienced in our daily living.
Our enjoyment of the Triune God issues in a reality which we may call our personal reality; the divine reality is not only with Christ but becomes ours in our experience.
This personal reality is a matter of having Christ saturating our inner being.
When we have this reality, we have Christ not only in our spirit but also in our heart, our mind, our emotion, and our will.
The Christ we enjoy and experience becomes our reality, and this is our truthfulness for our worship of God in truthfulness.
This is not only the divine reality for our enjoyment but also our human reality, our personal reality, which comes out of our enjoyment of the divine reality.
The apostle John, for example, did not only love the saints but loved them in truthfulness; the divine reality of love, God as love, has saturated his being to such an extent that he loved the saints in truthfulness.
We need to enjoy and experience the Lord little by little, day by day, until the divine reality of all that He is saturates our being and becomes our reality.
In our daily life, we live a normal life doing all kinds of things that are normal and common in our situation and environment, but the divine reality is becoming our reality in our daily living as we enjoy and experience Christ.
To worship God in truthfulness is to worship Him with the Christ who has saturated our being to become our personal reality through our experience and enjoyment of the Triune God as the divine reality. Amen!
We worship the Father in truthfulness by offering Him the Christ who has saturated our being to become our reality as we daily enjoy and experience Him. Wow!
If we consider this before the Lord, we will truly see that there is a battle in this universe for worship, and we will choose to worship God in spirit and in truthfulness.
On one hand, we worship God in our spirit by exercising our spirit and dealing with anything that hinders us.
On the other hand, we worship God in truthfulness, by offering Him the Christ whom we have experienced in our daily life for Him to be satisfied.
Father, we want to worship You in spirit and in truthfulness. Amen, Lord, we come to You in spirit to enjoy You and drink You as the fountain of living water! We exercise our spirit to drink the living water and be filled with Christ as the divine reality! Lord, saturate our being. Fill us. Become our enjoyment and experience day by day. We want to enjoy You and experience You day by day so that You may become our personal reality, our truthfulness. Oh Lord Jesus, may You saturate our whole being and fill us with Yourself as the reality of all that God is. May the divine reality become our human reality as we enjoy Christ as the reality. Amen, Father, we want to worship You with the Christ who has saturated our being to become our personal reality through our experience and enjoyment of the Triune God as the divine reality!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ron Kangas in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of 1 John, pp. 83-85, by Witness Lee (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Laboring on the All-inclusive Christ Typified by the Good land for the Building up of the Church as the Body of Christ, for the Reality and the Manifestation of the Kingdom, and for the Bride to make Herself Ready for the Lord’s Coming (2023 Winter Training), week 11, entitled, The Surplus of the Produce of the Good Land and the Corporate Worship of God the Father in Truthfulness.
- Similar articles on this topic:
– The True Nature of Our Relationship with the Lord Jesus, via, Bibles for America blog.
– Worshipping God in spirit, a portion from, The Fulfillment of the Tabernacle and the Offerings in the Writings of John, Chapter 15, by Witness Lee.
– Avoiding the Influence of Judaism in the Church Today (1) – The Temple, via, Living to Him.
– Worship that satisfies the Father, a portion from, The Fulfillment of the Tabernacle and the Offerings in the Writings of John, Chapter 15, by Witness Lee.
– The Ministry Abounding with Glory (4), via, Shepherding words.
– Recovery Version Translation Notes: “Truthfulness”—John 4:23, 24, via, Having this Ministry.
– The Scientific Way to Drink the Water of Life, via, Holding to Truth in Love.
– We Worship in Spirit, Now and in New Jerusalem, via, New Jerusalem blog. - Hymns on this topic:
– The worship which the Father seeks / Is in the spirit’s strength alone; / His Spirit into man’s would come, / That His and man’s may thus be one. / When Spirit unto spirit calls / The two commingle and are one; / Man’s spirit is the Spirit’s home, / The Spirit doth man’s life become. / Man’s spirit must God’s Spirit touch / If in God’s fulness he would live; / ’Tis only with the spirit thus / That he to God may worship give. (Hymns #611 stanzas 3-5)
– Thank God, He is a Spirit true, / So near, so dear to us; / That we may contact Him in life, / In truth to worship thus. / A spirit God has made for us / That we may worship Him, / Not striving, serving outwardly, / But seeking from within. (Hymns #865 stanzas 2-3)
– O God and Father, we our praises bring, / For who more worthy of our praise could be / Than Thou, who seekest worshipers who sing / In spirit and in truth adoringly! / All worlds Thou hast created by the Son, / All things are held by His unmeasured power; / Yet we approach Thee in that glorious One: / What cause for worship in this holy hour! (Hymns #54 stanzas 1-2)
About aGodMan
Life-study of 1 John, second edition, pp. 83-85, by Witness Lee
The divine reality is Christ as the fountain of living water, the life-giving Spirit, partaken of and drunk by the believers to be the reality within them, which eventually becomes their genuineness and sincerity in which they worship God with the worship He seeks.
Yes, brother, God is Spirit and we need to worship Him in spirit and truthfulness.
This means that the human spirit mingled with the reality of Jesus, the life-giving spirit so that we can offer all kinds of offerings to our God, which we are exercising and enjoining throughout the weekdays just for the satisfaction of Jehovah and for the enjoyment of all saints.
Praise the Lord for His being of God’s reality.
Amen, brother, Lord become our reality.
Truthfulness and sincerity is the reality of how we should worship the Lord through our personal reality.
It is condemned that we sit and watch and don’t bring anything thing of Christ before good from our daily living. Keep us drinking of you Lord
Hallelujah!!! Lord make us genuine worshippers who bring Christ to the meetings
Amen. Yes Lord, we want to come to the Lord’s table filled by you to share a portion
Praise the Lord!
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Today, we see the matter of the corporate worship of the Triune God in truthfulness.
Our daily life should be an experience of the Christ we have received.
We should not come to God empty-handed. God’s desire is that we worship Him with the Christ we experience day by day.
This divine reality becomes our personal human reality and even our virtue, our human truthfulness.
The Christ we experience day by day is all the offerings for God’s satisfaction and for the enjoyment of the Body.
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6/8/24 The Surplus of the Produce of the Good Land and the Corporate Worship of God the Father in Truthfulness (Week 11, Day 6)
According to typology in the Old Testament, God should be worshipped:
a.) in the place chosen by God for His habitation (Deu 12:5, 11, 13-14, 18),
b.) with the offerings (Lev chapter 1—6).
The place chosen by God for His habitation typifies the human spirit, where God’s habitation is today (Eph 2:22). The offerings typify Christ; Christ is the fulfillment and reality of all the offerings with which the people worshipped God.
In the New Testament, when the Lord Jesus said to the Samaritan woman in John 4:24 that “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness,” He meant that:
a.) she should contact God the Spirit in her spirit instead of in a specific physical location, and
b.) through Christ, instead of with the physical offerings. Since Christ, as the reality that issues in the human virtue of truthfulness, has come (John 4:25-26), all the shadows and types in the Old Testament are over.
Therefore, in order for us to have a true corporate worship of God, we must emphasize two important matters:
1.) We must exercise our regenerated human spirit, and
2.) Present Christ as the reality of all the offerings, portrayed in the Old Testament.
On the one hand, we must exercise our regenerated human spirit to pursue the Lord in His Word. We must daily eat, drink, and breathe in the Lord in His Word by our spirit. On the other hand, we must take Christ as the reality of all the offerings portrayed in the Old Testament, then apply Him, and experience Him in our daily living.
Christ is the reality of all the offerings with which the people worshipped God; He is our real sin offering, trespass offering, burnt offering, meal offering, peace offering, wave offering, heave offering, and drink offering.
1.) The sin offering signifies that Christ was made sin for us so that through His death on the cross sin might be condemned (Lev 4:3; 2Cor 5:21; Rom 8:3; John 1:29; 3:14).
2.) The trespass offering signifies that Christ bore our sins in His own body and was judged by God on the cross to deal with our sinful deeds so that we might be forgiven of our sinful conduct (Lev 5:6; 1Pet 2:24; 3:18; Isa 53:5-6, 10-11; John 4:15-18).
3.) The burnt offering, which was wholly for God’s satisfaction, signifies Christ as God’s pleasure and satisfaction, as the One whose living on earth was absolutely for God (Lev 1:3; Num 28:2-3; John 7:16-18).
4.) The meal offering signifies Christ in His humanity and in His human living, which was proper, even, tender, fine, balanced, pure, and sinless (Lev 2:1, 4; John 7:46; 18:38; 19:4, 6).
5.) The peace offering signifies Christ as the Peacemaker, the One who became the peace and the fellowship between God and us by shedding His blood and dying for us, enabling us to enjoy Christ with God and to have fellowship with God in Christ for our mutual satisfaction with God (Lev 3:1; Eph 2:14-15; John 12:1-3; 20:21; Rev 21:2).
6.) The wave offering signifies the Christ who is living and moving in His resurrection (Lev 7:30; 10:15).
7.) The heave offering signifies the powerful Christ who was lifted up in His ascension (Lev 7:32; Exo 29:27; Acts 1:9; Eph 1:21).
8.) The drink offering signifies Christ as the enjoyment of the offerer, enabling the offerer to be filled with Christ as the heavenly wine and even to become the wine offered to God for His enjoyment and satisfaction (Exo 29:40; Num 28:7-10; Isa 53:12; Phil 2:17; 2Tim 4:6; Judg 9:13).
Christ is the reality of all the offerings of the Old Testament in order that He may become our genuineness and sincerity for us to worship God with the worship that He seeks.
In order to worship God in spirit, we need to exercise and care for our spirit, and in order to worship God with Christ as the reality, we need to labor on Him as our good land and offer Him to God. When the children of Israel entered into Canaan, the land was allotted to them in lots as their particular portion. They were to labor on the land, enjoy the rich produce of the land, and set aside the a surplus to be offered to God for His enjoyment (Deu 12:17-18).
Today, the Lord is recovering the true worship of God. The way to worship Him is not to bow down, prostrate ourselves, roll on the floor, or jump excitedly. John 4:23-24 are not detached; they are connected to verse 14. The true worship mentioned in verses 23 and 24 is the drinking in verse 14. This is also related to John 6:51, which concerns on eating the Lord. Therefore, true worship is to drink the Lord and to eat the Lord so that our entire being may be filled with Him.
In our Lord’s Table Meeting, the true remembrance of the Lord is to enjoy Him by eating Him as our spiritual food and drinking Him as our spiritual drink. When everyone is eating and drinking the Lord in the Spirit, we are practically feasting on Him corporately. The more we eat and drink of Him, the more we would outflow our enjoyment of Him in the meeting. This is the meeting that satisfies, not only the believers, but also God.
Our lack of enjoyment and experiences of Christ is due to the lack of our laboring on Christ and not exercising our spirit. Because we do not have the experiences of Christ, we do not have the divine reality within us. Therefore, we do not have the desire to come to the church meetings. And if we force ourselves to go to the meetings, we do not care if we are very late. When it’s time to pray, sing, or prophesying, we do not want to participate because we have come to the meeting empty-handed, without a surplus of Christ in our mingled spirit.
In order for us to reap the reality of Christ being all the offerings to be offered to God, we must endeavor to work diligently on Him, through His Word and by our mingled spirit. Then, in our daily living, we may experience Him in certain situations, and thus, causing us to gain the reality of the truths in His Word that we have enjoyed. This subjective truths will thus be lived out through us and from within us. We thus would have a surplus of Christ to be released in the church meetings. This is the true worship that the Father is seeking today.
[HWMR-Week 11 Day 6]
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John 4:24, footnote 5 on “truthfulness”, Recovery Version Bible
Praise the Lord, brother 🙏
I enjoyed these five words: labouring, produce, surplus, exhibition, and worship!
First, we need to labour constantly on our portion of Christ allotted to us. This is to produce Christ for our spiritual sustenance, through our daily experience and enjoyment of Christ.Not only so, but that we would have something more, as a surplus to bring to the church meetings to share with others and with God. When we do this, we come together corporately to exhibit, to have an exhibition of the riches of Christ. And this results in our true worship to God, offering Christ who has become our genuiness and sincerity as our reality to God for His satisfaction and enjoyment. Hallelujah!