In this lesson we want to continue our fellowship on the practice of the Lord's table meeting. In the previous lessons, we fellowshipped about the practice of remembering the Lord and worshipping the Father. Now we want to see something concerning the worship we need to offer to the Father in the Son as the reality and in our spirit mingled with the Spirit of God. This is a worship in the dispensing of God.
Paul's writings are filled with the concept of the divine dispensing of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not referred to by Paul in a doctrinal way but in an experiential way. Ephesians 2:18 reveals that we have access to the Father through the Son and in the Spirit. Ephesians 3 says that the Father strengthens us through His Spirit into the inner man so that Christ, the Son, can make His home in our hearts (vv. 14-17). To praise the Father through the Son and in the Spirit is in the dispensing of the Triune God. To worship the Father with the Son and in the Spirit is the true worship in the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity.
When we speak of the worship in the dispensing of God, we are still speaking of our worship of the Father. The Jews, according to their view of the Old Testament, have their kind of worship of God. That is not the worship in God's dispensing. It is altogether not involved with the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Basically speaking, the Jews know God only in His creation. They do not know God in His dispensing. They consider God as their Creator and they may even consider God as their Father in the sense of being their source but not in the sense of the Divine Trinity for the divine dispensing of Himself into our being.
In the Gospels there is only one chapter in which the Lord talked about the worship of God. When He talked about the worship of God in John 4, He was referring specifically to the worship of the Father. The Samaritan woman did not use the term Father, but she used the term God. Then the Lord Jesus told her, "But an hour is coming, and it is now, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truthfulness, for the Father also seeks such to worship Him" (v. 23). This meant that the age had changed. Even when the Lord Jesus was talking to her, the age had changed, so the Lord used the term Father, saying that we need to worship the Father. When we use John 4:24, we usually neglect verse 23. The Lord did not say that we worship God but that we worship the Father. The Father seeks after this worship.
In verse 24 the Lord spoke of the nature of God. The nature of God is Spirit. The Lord did not say that we worship God but that we worship the Father, whose nature, as God, is Spirit. The worship here is absolutely different from the Jewish worship. The Jewish worship is altogether the worship of the Creator. But what the Lord spoke of is the worship of the Father in the Son and also in the Spirit. Thus, this is a worship in God's dispensing, the worship by the divine dispensing. When the Jews worship God as the Creator, they do not have the thought of God being dispensed into them. But if we would have the true worship, we need God to be dispensed into our being.