THE WORSHIP OF GOD HIMSELF
THE WORSHIP OF GOD HIMSELF
John 4:21-24; Exodus 3:13-15; Revelation 21:2-4
SMcC It would be readily seen by the brethren that the ultimate goal of all that has come before us in relation to the position of Christ in heaven functioning in the administration, the features of which we have considered together, is that God might be known as He desires to be known in the blessedness of His Being, in so far as He can be known by us as creatures. It is important that we should get an impression as to God and what He is essentially. It says “God is a spirit and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth,” John 4:24. He desires to be known, in so far as in the majesty of His Being He can be known by creature understanding. Not that we ever will know or understand God in the absolute, for as such He is beyond our range; but nevertheless, the God who is presented to us in the scriptures as dwelling in light unapproachable, whom no man hath seen, nor can see, is the God who has drawn near in the working out of this blessed administration that we have considered, and is the Source and End of all. It is not so much before us to consider the attributes of God, with which we are somewhat acquainted, and which it is important that we should be acquainted with; but what is in mind is God Himself as desirous of being known by us in the blessedness of His Being. John 4 says that God is a spirit, which is a reference to what He is essentially. God is not material. God is a spirit and the worship of God is spiritual, and they that worship Him, as the Lord says, must worship Him in spirit and truth, and believers as having the Spirit are thus helped in standing intelligently in relation to God in this light. In Exodus 3 we get in relation to the name Jehovah, the great name “I am” being involved in it, a suggestion of God’s desire to disclose Himself in His secret Being as we have been taught. The name is a mysterious name, it is the personal name of Him who is Elohim, Him who is God, and He desires that that name and what it conveys should have a peculiar place with us, for it is referred to in the Psalms and in the prophets, where the feelings of the saints are peculiarly engaged with God in the blessedness of the way in which we are referring to Him.
Then in Revelation 21, the great end is reached in God Himself, (involving Father, Son and Holy Spirit) being with them, their God. It is as if the Spirit of God would give us a touch in that word, God Himself, that the great end is reached in that God, not so much in the majesty of His attributes, but according to His being with them, their God. It is as if the Spirit of known and enjoyed by creature understanding, in such holy nearness as is suggested in Revelation 21.
SL In John 1:18 we read “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”
SMcC That scripture is very apropos to what we are saying because it brings out just what we wish to dwell upon, that while God dwells in light unapproachable, yet He has drawn near to make Himself known in a way that is intelligible to our way of thinking. “The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him;” the declaration in regard to God is fully out. These passages would have in mind the worship of God in the full light of that declaration.
AES Such knowledge of God must bow our hearts in worship.
SMcC It should, so that you will remember in Exodus when Moses brings the message to the people,
after meeting Aaron, and all that Jehovah had said to him, it is said they worshipped. That is the true end in all ministry, and administration. God as the great End of all should be reached, feelingly, and intelligently too, by us.
LK Would you mind saying something about the difference between declaration and revelation?
SMcC Declaration has a far wider bearing than revelation. When the Lord says in John 17:26 “I have made known unto them thy name and will make it known” He is particularly alluding to the revelation of God as understood and appreciated by a specific family, such as the assembly is. But in declaration the matter is out, and bears publicly upon the whole position into which God in Christ, has come.
CFI What have we to learn in regard to the way the Lord approaches this great matter of worship in John 4? He speaks about worshipping the Father, saying “the Father seeks such as his worshippers,” before He refers to God.
SMcC I think that as the chapter opens stress is laid on the mediatorial operations in relation to the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit, typified in the living water. It is essential if we are to understand the worship of God rightly, that what is mediatorial should have its place. The economy which is formally stated in John 3: 35 brings before us the position that the Lord Jesus has been given, in relation to the working out of divine administration. The Father is supreme in the divine arrangement which is established. So that, as the teaching proceeds, the Lord when He comes to the subject of worship, impresses the woman, as a subject of the work of God, with the thought of the Father, and His supremacy in the divine arrangement. “The Father” is the great name of grace, by and through which God is known in this dispensation. All that seems to be important in leading us on to the fullest and most extended thought as to God involved in the verse, “God is a spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.”
CSK So that the approach to God is in Spirit not through materialism or ceremonialism, which are eliminated. Does that bring in that there are certain limits within which God will be worshipped?
SMcC The truth would regulate us and maintain a balance in relation to the worship of God, so that we do not go beyond what we should. In speaking of God we are to remember who God is, and who and what we are, and so the truth would balance us.
GAA Was Solomon in line with that when he said, very early in his reign, “There is no God like unto thee?”
SMcC We are to know God as He desires to be, in so far as He can be known by us creatures, and this, not only in the exhibition of His power, not only as Creator, wonderful as that is, but according to what He is essentially. The titles Father and Son in John’s gospel are to impress us with those tender relationships into which God has come so that He might be known by us intelligently as we understand these relationships.
TRH David said in Psalm 29, “Give unto Jehovah the glory of his name.” Is that according to what you are suggesting?
SMcC It is. We had the verse in Psalm 48 referred to this morning in the worship of God “according to thy name so is thy praise.” The name, the revelation of God would give character to the praise of God in whatever age it may be.
CFI Have you in mind that in verse 24 God is referred to as God Himself, involving what you have said as to the economy earlier in the chapter, the Father, Son and Spirit operating?
SMcC Yes. It is all operating to the end that we should reach God Himself in this way, involving Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the whole Deity. This means not only God according to His eternal power and divinity but God and what He is essentially, as He may be known by us. God is love, and John’s ministry would help us as to knowing God in His Being in so far as He can be known by us. Hereby we have known love John says; that is, we have come to know love in the way that God has moved out from the realm of unapproachable light, making Himself known through the divine arrangement as He has.
MRJM Does the epistle help - “God is love and he that abides in love abides in God and God in him,” 1 John 4:16.
SMcC Well, exactly. Love has a great place in this matter of the knowledge of God because love is the link between the absolute and the relative.
CAI Would the worship of the Father being referred to by the Lord Jesus first, impress us with the wonderful revelation of God in grace which would enable us to be in perfect restfulness?
SMcC The knowledge of God conveyed in the name Father would have a great bearing in regard to our enjoyment of God in the way in which He has been pleased to make Himself known. The thing is to see that the great object of God’s approach to men in the glad tidings in the working out of the administration that we have been speaking about, is that we should know God Himself, in so far as He can be known by us. We are creatures and limited and we can never go beyond what is relative; but according to the name Jehovah, God desires to be known in His secret Being in so far as He can be known by us with our finite understanding, and He indicates this in the passages that are before us.
EWC Is what is presented in the 24th verse higher than what is in the 21st?
SMcC The Father is supreme in the divine arrangement. The Father remains in the inscrutableness of Deity. It is not so much a higher thought in coming to verse 24. It is a wider and more extended thought, covering the whole thought as to the Deity.
CSK Would it be right to say that the economy has operated so that each of the divine Persons has presented something of God in His operations to the end, as the great objective, that God Himself might be known?
SMcC Well, exactly. Each of the Persons is operating; the Lord Jesus and the Spirit have come into the mediatorial position; the Father has not in that way. The mediatorial position is not linked with the Father, but with the Lord and the Spirit; but nevertheless the Father is operating, and the Lord, and the Spirit, each of the Persons is operating to the great end that God might be known in this full and extended way.
SL Would it do our hearts good to take account of love operating in this economy between divine Persons? At the end of John 3 all things have been committed into the hands of the Son.
SMcC That is all part of the divine arrangement, the divine administration, that we might know God. “God is love” refers to what God is in His essential Being; but then how do we come to know it, and how are we brought to intelligently understand and appreciate it? It is through the economy into which divine Persons have come, where the Father is viewed as loving the Son and the Son is viewed as loving the Father, and where the Son lays down His life as having come into manhood. That is how we come to understand intelligently what God is in that way.
GRD So that as appreciating the service and position that divine Persons have taken we may be impressed with the greatness of the Lord Jesus. Would verse 24 come in in that connection, that whatever Person of the Godhead is before us, the fact is that God is a spirit and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth? Would that govern?
SMcC Yes. The spiritual side in regard to the worship is the important thing there. God is a spirit. It is to stress in our minds the need for spirituality, the need for the Spirit in this great matter. They that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. As having the Spirit we are thus set in intelligent relationship with God who is said to be a spirit. We are not spirits but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit, that is, it partakes of that character; and as having the Spirit, we have the means of being in intelligent relationship with God who is said to be a spirit.
GRD That is what I mean, that that would be necessary and true, whether one of the Persons of the Godhead was before us as God, or whether God, as embracing Father, Son and Spirit.
SMcC Yes.
PB I think some of us need more help in regard to what you stated, “the Father remains in the inscrutability of Deity.” Would you just help us on that?
SMcC I was only referring to what Mr. Taylor has said, that the Father remains in the inscrutableness of Deity. The Father has never, as the Lord Jesus and the Spirit have done, assumed an attitude of subjection or subordination. The Father is viewed in supremacy in the economy, the Lord Jesus saying, “My Father is greater than I.” But of course we always keep in mind that in the abstract relations of Deity the Father, the Son and the Spirit are co-equal and co-eternal.
CSK I would like to ask at this time in relation to the pronouns used here as it is in this verse, “God is a spirit and they who worship him,” and in Colossians 1 of the fulness it speaks of “itself.”
SMcC Well, it is to intensify in our minds that God is one. There are three divine Persons but God is one. There are not three Gods, there is only one God made known in three Persons according to the name in Matthew 28, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
MRJM We used to speak of the unity of the Godhead but that is not right, is it? God is one, would that be right?
SMcC Well, the word unity is not a strong enough word I suppose because there could be no thought of disunity in the Godhead.
WJB The God that we worship is the God that we know. He has made Himself known, and the fact that He has made Himself known involves the economy.
SMcC He has made Himself known in these well-known relationships intelligible to creature understanding. That is an important thing because He wants us to know what He is in His being, and these relationships in the economy intensify that thought in our minds. Of course it involves His power, all that works out in relation to it. All that we had last night in God shining out in the glad tidings, is laying the basis for this that we are referring to, that God desires to be known in so far as He can be known by us in the way in which we are referring to it.
FW Does verse 22 help there or is that another thought, we worship what we know?
SMcC Well, the Lord Jesus there is speaking of a class of persons. “We worship what we know” just as He says in chapter 3 “We speak that which we know and we bear witness of that which we have seen,” He is speaking of a class of persons that are marked by knowledge of the truth.
TRH In addressing God would we always have in our mind what He is as made known to us as Father, “to us there is one God the Father?”
SMcC You asked if we would always have that in mind, did you?
TRH Yes.
SMcC You would never think of setting aside any feature of the revelation of God; but I think it is well to keep in mind that the full revelation of God involves the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
WJB Would it be right to say, in reaching the Father in the service of God we move on from the thought of His being the Father to the wider thought of God as seen in relation to Him, and as we are held in that contemplation it widens out, God as such involving all three divine Persons?
SMcC That is how I understand John 20; “My Father and your Father, my God and your God.” It is progressive in the sense that God is a wider thought than Father. Father is a limited thought, because the Father judges no one. We progress from “my Father and your Father” to “My God and your God” in John 20. Progression does not always mean plurality of persons, it may mean fulness of thought, fulness of the truth, and the Father is the Person that is before us in John 20; but we move progressively on to the thought of what He is as Christ’s God and our God and as such the great full thought widening out as to God involving all three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
EB I find that very helpful, if I understood what you said rightly, as to my Father and your Father, and then my God and your God. We progress if I might reverently say in the knowledge of that Person we know as Father to the thought of Deity as presented in Him, and having arrived at that, are we to understand that the full thought of Deity must include the other two Persons as well?
SMcC The full thought of God includes all three Persons; and even in saying in regard to John 20 that the Father is the Person that is before us, abstractly we cannot exclude the Lord and the Spirit, because abstractly They retain Their part in co-equality with the Father in the Deity in the full thought of God.
MRJM We would not know the Father were it not for the mediatorial service of the Son and the Spirit. Is that right?
SMcC Well, it is through Their service that we draw near to the Father. The Lord Jesus has made known the Father and it is through Him by the one Spirit that we have access to the Father, showing how the mediatorial service operates in regard to drawing near.
WJB There is no Person higher than the Father is there, but the thought of what God is in John 20 is wider and greater. The thought is greater.
SMcC There has been a little bit of cloudiness in some of our minds perhaps, as to that, in thinking that when it says, “My Father and your Father and to my God and your God,” we are going higher and higher; but the Father remaining in the inscrutableness of Deity, it is not so much a question of going higher. We can hardly go higher than that. It is a question of what is more extended, what is unlimited, I mean as to the knowledge Christ has. We must keep in mind that we are limited, but as to Christ. His knowledge is unlimited, He being a divine Person. We shall never be without the mediatorial service and actings of the Lord and the Spirit. We shall never have to do with God apart from it.
CSK “We are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God.”
SMcC He is the power of knowledge within us. He is that divine Person in His uniqueness that is the power of knowledge within us and the power for worship. He did not die for us. The Lord Jesus died for us, that is His unique glory in the divine arrangement; but the Lord Jesus is not the power of knowledge in us, it is the Spirit that is that power and the power for worship. That is His unique glory and distinction.
MRJM “Hereby we know that we abide in him and he in us that he has given to us of his Spirit.”
SMcC Well, exactly.
WHW In regard to what has been said about God being a wider thought, is that seen in the service of God, that we are able to link the thought of men with God?
SMcC Yes. The racial thought comes into view in relation to man. God with men, the tabernacle of God is with men, showing how God has manhood in mind, patterned after Jesus, involving all the families, not only the assembly seen uniquely in it as the tabernacle of God, but embracing all the families in heaven and on earth.
AJC Is it not remarkable, the Lord disclosing this matter to the woman He met by the way?
SMcC Showing the remarkable way in which this exalted subject comes up in relation to a woman with such a history; but when this subject is introduced, she is viewed as a subject of the work of God, because it is quite evident when she says in verse 19, “Sir, I see that thou art a prophet,” that she is to be regarded as a product of the work of God.
GW How does this stand relative to “God of the spirits of all flesh?”
SMcC Well, God is God wherever we view Him and He is the Supreme Arbiter of the universe, in relation not only to men but to everything else. The Father is viewed as the Source of things. That is His distinctive glory in the divine arrangement; the Lord Jesus is the administrator, He is the Lord of glory,
He administers the glory; the Spirit is the power in us for taking in what is administered, especially in the matter of knowledge.
HB Does the expression “Father of glory” suggest His being the Source of it?
SMcC That is what I was referring to, His distinctive glory, that He is the Source of things, whether light, or glory, or spirits, He is viewed as the Source.
DB “For of him and through him and for him are all things.”
SMcC It would involve more than the Father, in Romans 11, the passage you are referring to, and 1 Corinthians 15:28. It would involve God in His supremacy, the extended and wider thought as to God, but in 1 Corinthians 8:6, we have “To us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things and we for him.” That is, He is the Source of things.
WJB It is remarkable that in Romans 11 the apostle rises to such a height, on such a foundation as the contemplation of mercy.
SMcC I think that is what we need to see and you feel that we need to know God in the elements, in the fundamental of the teaching of the gospel. The truth of the gospel as you were referring to it last night comes that way, having in mind that we reach God Himself - what He is in His nature as love and the way that He desires to be known by us. The more we are affected by it the more it will lead us to these exalted thoughts as to Himself.
WJB That would encourage us on Lord’s Day morning. Beginning in simplicity would in no way debar us from the heights to which we may rise subsequently.
SMcC You feel that the knowledge of God Himself would help us as to fluidity, so that our minds are not too rigid. At one time, I suppose, if a brother made reference to mercy at a certain part of the worship,
some would be all upset; but mercy is a glorious attribute of the God who desires to be known, as we are referring to Him, in so far as He can be known by us, in the greatness of His Being.
CSK So that to priestliness there is a vast realm of the knowledge of God that is open in the service.
SMcC What a realm, as it were, filled with glory which enters into the service of God; what scope we have in it. We perhaps, get into ruts in our thoughts and become crystallized along certain lines; we want to make full room for the divine arrangement and all that has come to light in God being declared.
AMcKH Quick settlement in moral matters as in John 4 should produce worshippers.
SMcC One has said, and I believe it is right, that all that we pass through and work out on moral lines should work out in the increase of the yield that there is for God. That seems to be an unchanging principle in the ways of God.
EB Does the end of Revelation 4 bear on this scene of glory, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” verse 8, and then the last verse - “O our Lord and our God?”
SMcC Yes. The God “who is and who was and who is to come,” reminds us of the God of whom we are speaking, the God who is, the “I am,” the ever-existing unchanging One.
CAI Does the recognition of the person of Christ and His part in this wondrous declaration that we have spoken of, have an important place? The Lord Jesus is spoken of as the expression of God’s substance and the effulgence of His glory.
SMcC What a passage that is in Hebrews, reminding us of what we are in the presence of Christ in manhood, which should affect our souls; how near God has come in a manner and way intelligible to creature understanding, yet always reminding us at every turn of what is inscrutable, what is beyond us.
AES Would you say a little as to God wanting to be known?
SMcC Well, that should bring us to Exodus. As we know the name Elohim is not a matter of revelation, but the name Jehovah is. The name Elohim was arrived at in some way by the writer, Moses, but it is not one of the revealed names, whereas Jehovah is. God made Himself known, revealed Himself to Moses in this way. Moses says to God, verse 13, chapter 3, “Behold when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said to Moses, I AM THAT I AM. And he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: I AM hath sent me unto you.” That is God in His essential Being, the ever-existing unchanging One; and then he says, verse 15, “And God said moreover to Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: Jehovah the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you. This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.” Neither “Elohim,” nor “Almighty” are God’s memorial to all generations, but “Jehovah,” that name involving mystery, involving the I AM, God the ever existing One, unchanging One. It shows how God desires to be known by us, in so far as He can be known by us with our creature understanding, according to His secret Being. Not that we can compass it but the Spirit would help us to grasp the thought of it or an impression as to it.
EW Would it be diverting you to ask, whether the Lord’s promise to the overcomer in Revelation in Philadelphia, “I will write upon him the name of my God,” would fit in with what you are saying?
SMcC It would show us that in Philadelphia the overcomer comes in for the best and the greatest thoughts in the divine mind. I think it is affecting to see the background to this revelation of God, the awful bondage that the children of Israel were suffering in Egypt, the anguish of spirit and of soul that they passed through, then the system, the mediatorial system of deliverance beginning to be set up; Moses having such a part in it and God drawing near, emphasizing here not His power and His Almightiness but what He is in His Being as the ever-existing unchanging One. I think it is to strike a note in our spiritual emotions in regard to God and the desire He has to be known by us, in so far as He can be known by us with our creature limitations. We are impressed with the finiteness on our side, finite as we are, but we are in the presence of infinitude, in God Himself, but we cannot comprehend infinitude - only a divine Person could do that.
RGC Would you please say a word on “I am that I am” and not “I am who I am?”
SMcC “I am that I am” perhaps brings the historical side in, but it would emphasize what we are saying, that God wants to be known according to the glory and blessedness of what He is in His Being. God is Love; and the working out of the economy and the divine administration is to intensify before our souls that great thought. So that in John’s gospel where the economy is stressed throughout, the great matter of love is stressed, in the links between divine Persons, in Their links with the saints, and in the links between the saints, one with another.
GB Is it significant in John’s gospel, when they were going to take the Lord He said “I AM, and they went backwards and fell to the ground?”
SMcC Well, there the glory of His person comes before us. John would always remind us, and it is well that we should be reminded that whatever place involving subjection the Lord Jesus, may, of His own voluntary act come into, we are never to forget that on the abstract side He is co-equal with the Father.
ATS You spoke of the mystery that is wrapped up in the name Jehovah. Is the same mystery wrapped up in the name Jesus?
SMcC Exactly; Jehovah the Saviour. Because Matthew would impress us at the beginning as to His Deity.
WHW It is interesting to see in John 18 just referred to, the Lord uses this name when He is just about to make the necessary move to relieve His people from the system of bondage.
SMcC Yes. It is remarkable, as we take account of it.
CSK God surrounds this revelation of His name by active love does He not, the way He speaks here, “I have seen” and “their cry have I heard” and “for I know their sorrows. And I come down to deliver them.” Are all these calculated to draw our affections out to the God who thus reveals Himself. It is not just official?
SMcC That is the whole point in the memorial. The memorial is brought up in the Psalms, where we have the experimental side, the experiences of the saints. It comes up in the prophetic writings where revival is in mind in the midst of declension, for instance in Isaiah 26. This is an interesting passage bearing on what we are saying, Isaiah 26: 7, it is a song that is before us, and it says, “The way of the just is uprightness, thou the Upright” - a beautiful reference to God, as the soul of the remnant expresses itself in this song. “Thou the Upright, dost make the path of the just even. Yea in the way of thy judgments, O Jehovah, have we waited for thee; the desire of our soul is to thy name, and to thy memorial.” This shows how the disclosure of God in this name is affecting the saints, the remnant, drawing out their feelings in the midst of all the judgments, “in the way of thy judgments,
O Jehovah, have we waited for thee; the desire of our soul is to thy name, and to thy memorial.” It is intensifying the feeling side and that is where we need help in the worship of God; we have plenty of light, academically we may be sound in the terms to use, but what God desires is that we should know Him, Himself, in all the blessedness of His Being, as He has been pleased to disclose Himself, so that we are affected in our souls in the matter of the worship of God.
GHR Would Psalm 90 fit in where it says “even from eternity to eternity thou art God” then “For a thousand years in thy sight, are as yesterday.”
SMcC A prayer of Moses, the man of God. What a wonderful insight that prayer gives us to the greatness of that beloved servant. What a man he was, although he did not live in our dispensation you are amazed as you think of the knowledge of God that he had. He did not live in his ministry. He was the greatest minister I suppose of the Old Testament, but he did not live in it, or the reputation that it acquired for him. He lived in the knowledge that he had of God, in so far as he could know God.
ER It is Moses who uses the title “Elohim.”
SMcC It shows us the intelligence of Moses because Elohim is the supreme One; God is supreme, but relative to the creation.
TRH We need “soul” in the service of God.
SMcC I think that is what we need help on. The intelligence balanced with the feelings; and God wants us to be affected by this disclosure of Himself, in so far as He does disclose Himself to creature understanding. In the memorial that is carried through God wants us to be affected by this knowledge of Himself.
LI Calling to mind what the Lord Jesus inaugurated on the first day of the week?
SMcC Yes. Mr. Taylor years ago referred to the fact that we begin with the Passover, in principle that is, we all begin together, we do not begin without one another, the youngest is taken into account, we all begin together on the same level and we proceed together.
AMcKH Regarding the youngest being brought in, in baptising to the name of the Father and the Son, and Holy Spirit, is the full thought in mind there?
SMcC That is interesting because that shows that every believer as baptised initially has that advantage, that he has been brought into that realm characterised by God known in this light. Even the children in their baptism are committed to that realm of light.
EB I was wondering if the expression, the depths of God in 1 Corinthians 2, would give us some impression as to God Himself.
SMcC Well, it would. It is to impress us with the marvellous position that we are brought into as creatures as having the Spirit. The Spirit searches the depths of God, not that we search, the Spirit searches the depths of God. The possibilities are in the realm of creature enjoyment and creature understanding, as having the Spirit. Not that we can compass the depths of God or compass the Deity, far be the thought, or not that, we can enter upon the absolute, that could not be, but we are taken, you might say, as far as we can be taken, both by the Lord Jesus in saying “my God and your God” and by the Spirit in searching the depths of God.
WJB What was in mind in the last scripture?
SMcC I think it should affect our souls that the completing of the ways of God should give us this view of the assembly as the tabernacle of God. No other family will know the nearness that we know. The assembly is so near to Deity, the tabernacle of God. She is in full accord with the whole mediatorial position and all the mediatorial actings, and God is tabernacling there. The tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall tabernacle with them and they shall be His people and God Himself shall be with them, not to them, but with them, their God. As if God has reached the great end that He has had in mind, that He might be near to men in this way, known in this way as God Himself, not exactly by what He has done, by what He has accomplished, but what He is in the outshining of Himself in Christ; God Himself.
CAI Does that involve our knowledge of and intimate relations with each of the blessed Persons?
SMcC Well, it would; because how can we know God without the Spirit or without the Lord Jesus? We are bound up to that. Their service I mean.
EW Do feelings enter into this, “He shall be with them” and “God Himself shall be with them?” Does that show that the feelings you were bringing before us in Exodus enter into this?
SMcC So that the link between the two scriptures is to be noted. “He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall not exist any more, nor grief, nor cry, nor distress shall exist any more, for the former things have passed away.” It is remarkable how the highest features of the knowledge of God are linked with that background which has involved so much pressure for us.
JBT I was going to ask if men will only know God through the tabernacle. It says the tabernacle of God is with men and He shall tabernacle with them.
SMcC The tabernacle, the assembly, will be the great means for the diffusion of spiritual knowledge in the universe of God; although when we say that we must keep in mind that the mediator is Christ, not the assembly. “God is one, and the mediator between God and men, one, the man Christ Jesus.” God will be imaged eternally in Christ.
PB And the men also involves the assembly?
SMcC Exactly. In the assembly the thought of manhood would have a peculiar place. The Lord refers to it in John 17. The men with whom the tabernacle of God is, would involve more than the assembly but include the assembly.
CFI The relationship of sonship will go through, sonship in a special way in the assembly.
SMcC No other family will have the spirit of sonship as the assembly has it.
TRH Is union involved in this, the bride adorned for her husband?
SMcC Union would enter into our relations with Christ, but the tabernacle stands in relation to God, the tabernacle of God is with men.
GRD In that connection would you say something about the assembly as a vessel?
SMcC Well, Ephesians 3 helps us to see that there is glory to God in the assembly. That links on with what we have here “unto all generations of the age of ages;” the great place that the assembly will have at the very centre of all the concentric circles involved in the many families.
PB Would it be right to say that historically the assembly will have been administrating for a thousand years, and this really comes after that historically, so that she is seen as a bride in all her freshness?
SMcC It is an interesting thing to see that in the teaching in Revelation 21 the assembly comes into the millennial position from the eternal viewpoint.
AEP Sonship, is that a greater thought than union?
SMcC Well, it is. Sonship is in relation to God, union in relation to Christ.
CSK Why is the thought of people brought in here?
SMcC “And they shall be his people.” I suppose it would cast us back in our thoughts now, retroactively,
to all that enters into this thought of people, “a people near unto Jehovah” as the Psalm says, the climaxing of the Psalms says “a people near unto Jehovah” that is this great thought here, the blessedness of the creature thus in such intimacy with God as it said “God himself.”
MRJM Is this complete salvation?
SMcC Well, it is. It involves new creation. “I make all things new.” It is touching, the tenderness of God in this passage linked with His supremacy and the fulness of thought in regard to Him, that we should have these references to His tenderness, “He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall not exist any more, nor grief, nor cry,” as if we are reminded of what God is in His feelings, in the working out of His nature in consideration for us.
AES Is this the answer to the beginning, “Let us make man in our image?”