All knowledge of God must flow from revelation, for man by wisdom knows not God (1 Cor. 1:21). True worship has the same source. Each of these—knowledge of God and worship—is always to be according to such revelation as He has at the time, or in the dispensation, given of Himself.
Understanding this, I might instance shortly a line of true worshipers from the beginning.
Abel was a true worshiper, for he worshiped in faith, or according to revelation (Heb. 11). The firstling of the flock was according to the promise of the bruised Seed of the woman, and according to the coats of skin, with which the Lord God had covered his parents.
Noah followed Abel, and worshiped in the faith of the woman's bruised Seed. He took the new inheritance only in virtue of blood (Gen. 8:20). He was therefore a true worshiper also.
Abraham was a true worshiper, worshiping God as He had revealed Himself to him (Gen. 12:7).
Isaac, precisely in the track of Abraham, worshiped the God who had appeared unto him, not affecting to be wise, but like Abraham raising his altar to the revealed God (Gen. 26:24, 25).
Jacob was a true worshiper. The Lord appears to him in his sorrow and degradation, in the misery to which his own sin had reduced him, revealing Himself as the One in whom "mercy rejoiceth against judgment"; and he at once owns God as thus revealed to him; and this revealed God of Bethel was his God to the end (Gen. 28 and 35). Here was enlarged revelation of God, and worship following such revelation; and that is true worship.
The nation of Israel was a true worshiper; for God had revealed Himself to that nation, and established His memorial in the midst of them. They knew what they worshiped (John 4:22). But in
the midst of this worshiping nation there might still be true worshipers who did not conform to the divinely established order, provided their departure from it was also according to new revelation from God. As for example, Gideon, Manoah, David, who were all true worshipers, though they offered sacrifices on rocks or in threshingfloors, and not in the appointed national place just because, by a new and special revelation, the Lord had consecrated those new altars. (See Judg. 6 and 13; 1 Chron. 22.)
The healed leper, in Luke 17, exactly on this principle, was a true worshiper, though like Gideon, Manoah, and David, he departed from the usual order, just because he apprehended God in a new revelation of Himself. The healing which he had felt in his body had a voice in the ear of faith, it being only God who could heal a leper (2 Kings 5:7).
The Church of God is now, in this dispensation, a true worshiper on exactly the same ground, worshiping according to enlarged revelation, having fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. And this is still, like the other cases, worship "in truth" because according to revelation. But it is "in spirit" also, because the Holy Ghost has now been given as the power to worship, enabling the saints to call God "Father," and Jesus Christ "Lord" (1 Cor. 8:6). There is now communicated power, as well as revelation, for the purpose of worship.
This subject of worship is indeed a blessed one for further meditation for us all. The faith of the Samaritan leper, who turned from the priest at Jerusalem to lay his offering at the feet of Jesus, thus using Him as God's anointed altar, has suggested it. He heard the voice of healing—he owned the God of Israel in the mercy that had met him. This was revelation to him, and he believed it, and was led by it into the sanctuary. And this that had happened to him is the only ground of worship from creatures such as we have been, live we in what age or under what economy we may. He had been healed, and he knew that he had been healed. On what ground can we stand to worship but this? We may cry out in the bitterness of a surprised conscience; but that is not worship. It may be the way of the drawing of the Father, and end in the sanctuary; but it is not worship. The blood of Christ purging the conscience from
dead works alone leads to the service or worship of the living God (Heb. 9:14). As in the very heavens, and so forever, the saints, in their glories, worship while standing on this ground, as the floor of their temple (Rev. 5:9). "Our calling," as one has beautifully said, "is to consecrate our life as a sacrifice of thanksgiving for the mercy of God's redemption; our whole life is to be a continued priesthood, a spiritual serving of God, proceeding from the affections of a faith working by love; and a continued witness of our Redeemer." It is mercy, as the Spirit Himself teaches, that opens the temple doors and leads us in to exercise our priesthood before God (Rom. 12:1). And that mercy is ours, we know, only by the hands of our wounded, stricken Redeemer.
J. G. B.