“Jesus says to her, Woman, believe Me, the hour comes, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father… But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship Him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:21-24).
Here our Lord indicates a great change in the style and character of worship. In short, He contrasts briefly, but pointedly, the gorgeousness of the Jewish ritual with the simplicity of Christian worship. Doubtless much more than this is in the scripture; indeed, the point we would seek to draw the attention of our readers to is but a minor thought in the passage, though it unfolds an important principle.
No doubt the sanctuary service was instituted by divine command, but it had to pass away and be superseded. It is well to ask ourselves, Do we know the reason why? If we do, I am sure we shall enter intelligently and heartily into true thoughts of Christian worship.
Now in inquiring the reason why the Jewish worship was so elaborate and gorgeous, we shall do well to have before us clearly the teaching of the New Testament on the subject of worship. Not that in the short space of this paper we shall be able to unfold all that is taught upon this great theme. That were a task beyond us at any rate. But we shall seek to press upon you the great and patent fact of the simplicity attending upon Christian worship.
We live in a day when Judaistic forms of worship are rife, not the spiritual and typical teaching of those forms, but the material and sensuous aspect of them. We live in a land where buildings, ornate, costly, and elaborate, are called “places of worship” and “houses of God,” where the priest or minister is given a place of prominence above the congregation, where the singing is often judged to be worthy of God, not because of the words being the unfeigned expression of the heart, but on account of the beautiful rendering of the tune by a well-trained choir, accompanied by the tones of the organ. This, beloved reader, I say with all charity, is the result of the mind of man copying the worship of Judaism in a material way, without catching the spiritual import of it.
You have read through your New Testament. Dismiss from your mind all pre-conceived notions on the subject, and tell me, Do you find aught but what is simple and spiritual in the Christian worship that is taught there?
The few words of our Lord, quoted at the beginning of this paper, show most clearly that A GREAT CHANGE was about to take place, and it is a delightful task to point out in a simple way the reason why.
The Lord Jesus, as we know, placed a character upon the Old Testament writings on which every true believer should lay great stress. He said to the unbelieving Jews, “Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me” (John 5:39), and He made the hearts of the two sorrowing ones, as they travelled weary and dispirited on their way to Emmaus, burn within them, as “He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27). We thus find the great and blessed theme of the Old Testament writings is CHRIST. Dry, and barren, and profitless will our reading of them be if we find Him not in them.
This leads us at once to the secret of the gorgeousness and elaborateness of the Jewish ritual.
The Epistle to the Hebrews, which brings out so clearly and blessedly Whom we worship, where we worship, and how we worship, is one series of contrasts between Jewish and Christian worship.
All the sacrifices that bled on Jewish altars failed to do that which our great Sacrifice has done for us. It is true the different character of them helps to shed light upon the completeness and many-sidedness of the work of Christ upon the cross, but the substance—the Person of Christ—is so rich and glorious that the shadows—the Jewish ritual—wonderful as they are, are too mean to set Him fully forth.
No sitting accommodation was provided for the priests, for the work was never DONE—the priests were standing daily, offering every day the same unavailing sacrifices.
Scripture triumphantly says, “But THIS MAN, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God.”
And, strange to say, from that day to this the unbelieving Jews, who still look forward to the Messiah, and who, from their standpoint, have the same reason to offer the Jewish sacrifices, have ceased to do so.
Dear Christian, rejoice with me that God makes everything of Christ, and do not becloud and belittle your thoughts of the substance by reviving the shadows.
Again, if His work is finished, and our consciences are purged; if He is seated at God’s right hand; if the shadows and typos of a past dispensation, having thus served their purpose, have passed away, see further how much the Spirit of God makes of the greatness and glories of His person.
Indeed the greatness and glories of His person are unfolded in this precious epistle before the greatness of His work is set forth; for does it not require a great person to do so great a work, a divine person to do a work of such a divine character?
Now see how angels, blessed and holy beings as they are—and Moses, the apostle of the Jewish profession, and Aaron, its high priest, and Melchisedec, that strange, mysterious person, the royal priest—all pass in review before us, only to show that Christ is more than they all. So far they form blessed types of the Lord Jesus; but so far short do they necessarily fall, that they become contrasts to the glorious person of the Son of God.
Moses, though so great and blessed, was but a servant over the house of God. Christ is a Son over His own house.
Aaron needed to sacrifice for his own sins first, before he sacrificed for the people. Christ was holy, harmless, undefiled. He united in His own glorious person both the Aaronic and Melchisedecian priesthood, and is called, not our High Priest, but our GREAT PRIEST. Blessed Saviour, Son of God!
He sits where no Aaron ever could sit—“On the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.”
It is as if the moon, and stars, and planets, which lit up the midnight sky of Judaism, pale and disappear before the glorious light of the sun of Christianity. We need now no “dim, religious light”; no appeal to the senses, be it to the eye, or ear. The Spirit alone can give rise to true Christian worship in our hearts. “The natural man” cannot help us here. God and Christ—the Father and the Son—are the worthy objects of our worship.
And the Holy Ghost—the third person of the blessed Trinity, equal with the Father and the Son—has been sent into our hearts that we may apprehend such realities, and worship “in spirit and in truth.”
The blessed Lord instituted His supper, not in a gorgeous temple, but in “a large upper room.” The church (or assembly) in the imperial city of Rome met in the humble dwelling-house of Priscilla and Aquila (Rom. 16:5). The church was not a great edifice of stone or brick, but the believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have been blessed, and blessed wonderfully. Let us not seek our own ease or pleasure, our own ideas of how we should worship, but let it be our ardent desire to worship “in spirit and in truth,” and to make much of Christ.
Once the temple was where God set His name, and to it every faithful one had to repair. Now our rallying point is a Person. Our centre is Christ Himself.
May our hearts be led more and more into the blessedness of the service of worship, and into the simplicity of the Christian faith.