THE ANATOMY OF WORSHIP

THE ANATOMY OF WORSHIP

                “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 1 Cor. 3:16.

                In 1 Thess. 5:23 we are told that we are three part beings made up of spirit, soul and body. But of course the children of Israel have known that for over 3000 years, because the tabernacle of Moses was also a three part sanctuary demonstrating the three part nature of man, and of Christ and even of the heavens and the earth for that matter. Paul was caught up into the third heaven, so the earth is like the body, the second heaven corresponds to the mind or soul and the third heaven is the spirit or heavenly realm in which God dwells.

                David said it best when he said, “Thy way O Lord is in the sanctuary.” Not only man and heaven and earth are triune but God Himself is a triune God made up of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

                Jesus said in John 4:24: “God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

                Like we have discussed many times before, the tabernacle, among other things is a diagram of man. The outer court represents our physical body. We come to the brazen altar in the outer court to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice unto God. Likewise, the Holy Place represents the soul or mind of man. It is the thinking intellectual part of our being… and then the Most Holy Place represents our spirit.

                Now if we put these texts together with our opening text where Paul tells us that our body is a temple of God, then we must ask which part of our anatomy God dwells in. The answer of course is our spirit. After all, God’s Shekinah glory dwelt in the Most Holy Place upon the Ark of the Covenant. God dwells in our spirit because God is spirit.

                So if we are going to worship God in spirit and in truth, we can see then that truth must dwell in our soul, or intellectual part of us, our mind, but God dwells in our spirit, so in a sense we could say that in worship, we submit our minds to God. And God becomes an anchor of the soul, a hope sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil…” Heb. 6:19

                Hebrews 6:19, 20 says: “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. So if Jesus is ministering before the Ark of the Covenant in heaven, then He is also ministering before the Ark of the Covenant in our spirit by His Holy Spirit. Whatever Jesus does in heaven is made omnipresent by His Holy Spirit and so He operates within the born again spirit of every believer. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Whatever Jesus is doing in the heavenly sanctuary, HE is also doing in us by His Holy Spirit. Can we get that?

                What this tells us is that Jesus, upon His resurrection, entered into the Most Holy Place, not only in heaven up there, but in us as well. He entered into our spirit and he continues to enter into the spirit of everyone that invites Him in. He dwells in our Most Holy Place and if we want to worship Him, we must worship Him in our spirit.

                An intellectual relationship with Jesus Christ and His Word may be good for storing lots of information about God, but true worship involves our spirit. We must worship Him in spirit because God is Spirit and He dwells in our spirit.

                Now some people teach that our spirit is nothing more than air or breath but that is a very unbiblical view. When He died on the cross Jesus said, “Father into Thy hands I commit My Spirit.” I hardly think that Jesus was giving the Father His air.

                Ecclesiastes 12:7 says: “Then the dust will return to the earth as it was and the spirit will return to God who gave it.” So are we given back the air in our lungs? Hardly.

                John said,” I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day…” Rev 1:10 and it was in the Spirit that he received the entire revelation of the end times. But what is this spirit in man that can be caught up unto God and receive such revelations? Here Paul give us a little peak beyond the veil in 2 Cor. 12:2, 3 saying:

                “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago, whether in the body I do not know or out of the body I do not know, God knows- such a man was caught up into the third heaven. And I know how such a man- whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know- God knows was caught up into paradise…”

                What Paul is saying here is that, like John, his spirit was caught up to the third heaven and as such, he could see and hear and experience heaven to its fullest in his spirit and he couldn’t tell whether he was in his body or not in his body.

                So putting this all together once again, what does this tell us about our spirit. It tells us that our spirit is conscious, it is the part of us in which God dwells and it can be caught up by God into the third heaven to consciously receive heavenly information.

                This is highly important because when we die, our spirit goes back to God who gave it and we wonder if our spirit, like some would say is merely air and if so, what is the point of returning it to heaven? Or is our spirit the real us, our real consciousness, the essence of who we are?

                To further answer that, we must once again turn to Paul, the great theologian of both the Old Testament under Gamaliel and the New Testament under the Holy Spirit. He explained it like this:

                “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose. But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ for that is very much better, yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.” Philippians 1:21-24

                Getting right down to the nitty- gritty of it, Paul is saying that he would prefer to leave his body and go to be with the Lord and that for him this would be gain. But he was willing to stay on in his body and to minister to those who followed him because they needed him.

                Peter likewise referred to his body as a tent, or earthly dwelling that he was about to lay aside and he was telling his friends to remember the things he had taught them after his departure. 2 Peter 1:12-15. Now was Peter saying that his air would soon escape his lungs and go to God or was he talking about his spirit that dwells in his body?

                Likewise throughout the entire Old Testament we find a consistent teaching. When the patriarchs died, for instance, it always says that they went to join their fathers, while their body was buried in a cave or in the ground and Jesus put the icing on the cake in His story of the rich man and Lazarus. This was not a fable… it was a doctrinal statement about the way things were in Old Testament times… and so it makes it all the more wonderful when in His resurrection He went back to heaven as the first fruits of all who would follow.

                So where are those Old Testament saints since the resurrection of Christ?  Hebrews 12:22-24:

                But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the loving God, the heavenly Jerusalem and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and the church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven and to God, the judge of all and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood which speaks better than the blood of Abel.”

                That’s where they are and they are the great cloud of witnesses surrounding us and cheering us on, “…because God has provided something better for us, so that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” That is to say that the blood of bulls and goats could not make them perfect and so they wait for us, who have the eternal blood of Jesus to finish what they started and to bring it to its fullness through Jesus Christ our Lord.

                So, why is all of this important to worship? Did God give Moses the patterns of the tabernacle in heaven to mislead us about the nature of man? And what does this tell us about the fact that the veil was ripped in two from top to bottom when Jesus died? Did He not in His own body remove the separation between soul and spirit in order that we could worship Him in spirit and in truth?

                An intellectual relationship with God is important simply because all three parts of our spiritual anatomy are important to God. He wants us to treat our bodies with care and respect. He wants us to yield our minds to the truth of His word and to obey it… but when it comes to worship we must worship Him in both spirit and in truth.

                And this is what is so important about Paul’s teaching in Romans 8. “For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. However you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.” Romans 8:10

                When we are born again, we are given a new spirit (the one that Adam lost in the fall) and the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our spirit and we are saved. That is to say our spirit is saved, justified instantly upon new birth, but our soul is being saved or sanctified over time. Why? because our soul is saved by surrendering to the Spirit of God who dwells in us and to the word of God. As we know, Sanctification is the work of a life time and our soul is saved by surrendering our lives to Christ on a daily basis. This is what the tabernacle of Moses teaches us and we can enter within the veil and that is where John was when he said that he was in the spirit on the Lord’s Day… and it was in his spirit that he was caught up into heaven and Paul too.

                This makes more sense out of 1 Cor. 14:15 then where Paul shows the spirit and mind working together in true worship for he says. : “For if I pray in a tongue my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. What is the outcome them? I shall pray with the spirit and I shall pray with the mind also; I shall sing with the spirit and I shall sing with the mind also.” It takes both to worship in spirit and in truth.

                “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.” Romans 8:14 and Jesus said to Nicodemus: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from and where it is going; SO IS EVERY ONE WHO IS BORN OF THE SPIRIT.” John 3:6-8.

                I believe that God is about to pour out His spirit upon all flesh as promised in Joel 2 and Acts 2 and I just happen to believe that we need to believe what the Bible teaches. God works through our spirit. You can never lay hands on the sick and heal them intellectually. It is the presence of God in our spirit that goes forth to heal the sick.

                To do this we must be truly born again. That is to say that the Holy Spirit restores to us the spirit that Adam lost in the fall. This is why Jesus became the last Adam. He restores in us what Adam lost. So read this in 1 Cor. 15:22, 45.

                “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. So also it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”

                Jesus did not come to bring us new air, but a new spirit   and He dwells in that spirit and that new spirit is our real conscious being in which God dwells and our life on this earth is one of learning to surrender our soul to His Spirit and to His Word to the saving of our souls and herein is true worship.

                I see Christians in name only who are like walking dead men. They have a certain level of intellectual agreement with God, but they have never received His Spirit. They have never been animated by the new birth… and since they are merely intellectual Christians, many of them are drifting with the crowd in worship to the beast. They have never learned to be led by the Spirit, or to worship in the Spirit or to pray or sing in the Spirit and they are spiritually dead.

                No matter how well- intentioned we may be, flesh and blood can never save us no matter how hard it tries. Salvation is of the Lord and He does it by placing His Spirit in us and giving us a new spirit to dwell in us so that we might become temples of the Holy Spirit.

                “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves.”1 Cor. 4:7.

                “(But God) also made us adequate as servants of the New Covenant not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” 2 Cor. 3:6.

                We can mentally keep the Law, but that is not salvation. Salvation is when Jesus writes that Law on our hearts by His Spirit and then He manifests through our lives in the fruit of the Spirit.

                “Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Therefore, being always of good courage and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord- for we walk by faith, not by sight- we are of good courage, I say and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.” 2Cor. 5:5-8.

                Why is all of this important? It is because many of us as Christians pray to a God millions of lightyears away in heaven somewhere, when in truth, He is right here in our hearts, dwelling in our spirit. HE is near us, even in our mouths as we speak. Romans 10:6-11.

                Only that which is done in us by the Spirit is eternal. Everything else is temporary. Therefore everything we do as Christians must be done in spirit and in truth… for indeed we are building for eternity.