GOD IS GREAT AND WORTH OF OUR PRAISE

GOD IS GREAT AND WORTHY OF OUR WORSHIP

                This is the main theme of our study this week and so we will explore what this means on a personal level as well as on a corporate level. There are many who say, “The church is becoming corrupt and is falling away, so I am just going to stay home and worship God in the way I believe he wants us to worship Him.

                In a certain sense this may be true and indeed there may come a time when, because of persecution and such we may have to meet in small home groups just as the early church did. But in another sense, we forget God’s dealings with His church as a corporate group. Not only that but we forget that we, individually are the temple of the Holy Spirit and as such, we come to church to bring the Holy Spirit to church not to receive Him. That is unless we don’t have the Holy Spirit, which also means that we have not been born again and baptized in the Holy Spirit. In such a case we do need to go to church for corporate study and baptism and the laying on of hands for the gifts of the Spirit as well.

                But if you are born again and Spirit filled, then the Body of Christ needs you there to minister to those who don’t have the Holy Spirit and who have not yet been truly born again. Ae we know the Corporate Body of Christ is made up of many parts, each part has a gift of the Holy Spirit’s choosing. If we don’t come together to worship then the gifts have not assembled to form a complete ministry.

                The church is of course a place for the hurting and the lost to come for healing, but how will that take place unless those who have been made whole do not come to minister to those who have not.

                People who look at the church and decide that it is made up of a bunch of hypocrites and therefore walk away simply don’t understand what Jesus intended the church to be. Its purpose in the community is to minister in Spirit and in Truth. It is to function as Jesus to the world. Not every soldier in the army is in the Special Forces, but every soldier is nevertheless important and we are all growing together until the harvest.

                Now if an entire church is falling away from Spirit and Truth, then the Bible says to come out of it… flee from it. It has become a part of Babylon. Get out and find a church that does minister Spirit and Truth and then pour your heart into it and become a vital part of it by ministering the gift of the Holy Spirit that has been assigned to you by the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the laying on of hands.

                As an aside to this study on God’s greatness as reflected by His Body the church, I want also to revisit a theme that I shared a number of years back. There were three main feasts in Israel that have a great deal to do with the church today, both on a corporate level and on a personal level.

                Passover was celebrated with unleavened bread and came at the time of the Barley harvest. Passover also represents justification.

                Pentecost was celebrated with two loaves of leavened bread and corresponded with the wheat harvest and the giving of the Law on Sinai and is represented by Sanctification as the Holy Spirit takes the leaven of Egypt out of us and teaches us obedience.

                Tabernacles was the very day that God intended for Israel to enter into the Promised Land. It should have been a day of rejoicing and the blowing of trumpets and coming into their inheritance, but because of a lack of faith, they turned back into the wilderness for 40 years. Well the church has been in the wilderness for 40 Jubilees now. Is it time for us to go in and to inherit the land? Do we have the faith that Israel lacked there at Kadesh Barnea? Are we going to be overcomers like Caleb and Joshua or are we going to fall back into the wilderness for an unknown period of time?

                The Feast of Tabernacles represents the receiving of our inheritance, our new body that is eternal and glorified. It represents a time when Jesus will once again tabernacle among men… a time when we will reign with Him as kings and priests. So there you have it… Justification, sanctification and glorification… the three steps or stages of our preparation for eternity. How are we doing? Have we: “Attained to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ? (Ephesians 4:13) or have we lost sight of the goal and slipped back into the wilderness?

                Barley was winnowed by the gentle breeze of the Holy Spirit. Wheat had to be threshed violently to separate the wheat from the chaff, while Grapes                    (harvested at the time of Tabernacles) was made into wine by being crushed and squeezed and then placed in new wineskins. What does all of this mean to us living today?

                We will be thinking about this also this week and so I invite you to study these harvests. The Bible is made up of stories, but they are more than stories. They are patterns revealing God’s plans and purposes in our world. If we understand the implications then we will definitely want to press into the faith of Caleb and Joshua for they were the only ones left alive to go into the Promised Land. The rest of their generation died in the wilderness. Should we not then make our calling and election sure? Should we not allow the winnowing of the Holy Spirit to gently blow the chaff out of our lives rather than clinging stubbornly to the chaff of sin and worldliness that will have to be removed by the violence of threshing?

                As members of the Body of Christ we can help each other and pray for each other and dress each other’s wounds rather than shooting each other. This happens when each member of the Body knows its calling and operates in the gifts it has been given to bless the whole of the Body as well as the world beyond the four walls. We need to take these things seriously if we are to cross over in our life time. Think on these things.