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THE TRUE STATE OF HEART TOWARD THE LORD IN THE ASSEMBLY

As to your question, I do not think it would help you to institute a comparison between the worship in the assembly and the worship in heaven. The only scripture I know of alluding to worship hereafter is the worship of the heavenly company with reference to the Lord on the earth as Redeemer and Creator, not as Head of the Church. If I am right as to this, you would not gain anything from the comparison. I shall try and explain to you as well as I can the true state of heart toward Him in the assembly. You come to meet the Lord. He is Son over God’s house. Properly, your first thought is to remember Him as He left this earth. You are in company with Him risen from the dead as in Hebrews 2: 12. You are in the efficacy of His accomplished work. The more you are in the consciousness of your acceptance, the nearer you are to Him, the more deeply affecting it is to your heart that He died where you are. It is His death which engrosses your heart;

it is not your gain; you are in the gain of His death, and the more you are, the more is your heart affected in recalling His death. It is not His suffering so much as His death ^[p. 159] He died where you are. You live where He lives. The effect is, that you are severed from the place where He died, and correspondingly attached to Him where He is. The Lord’s table and supper is brought before the Corinthians, because they had practically lost all sense that they were in the place where Christ had died. They were reigning as kings. You shew forth the Lord’s death until He come. You are identified here with His death. There is no relief to your heart from the fact of His death here until He comes. He has borne your death here, and has freed you from it; but now, your heart is so attached to Him that like Ruth you can say, “Where thou diest, will I die” (Ruth 1: 17). If you think of your own benefit at such a time I am sure you will weaken your remembrance of Him. If you think of any one near and dear to you among men, it is not their acts, however great, you think of, but of themselves. With regard to the Lord, as His death is before you, you are in heart severed from the place where He is not; but your consolation is to see Him alive from the dead as He is in the assembly, and then you know the peculiar worship which is consequent thereon. He says, “I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you” (John 16: 22).

The pious in Christendom never go beyond the passover in Egypt. We are really over Jordan to remember Him. If we were not in the benefit of His death we could not reach Him. We must be clear of that for which He suffered before we can enjoy His presence, risen from the dead.

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