These books tell us to worship God by first coming to the unique place of unity (Deut. 12:5-8, 14-15). There is no choice. All the people of Israel were destined to worship God by going to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the unique place chosen by God. God’s choice must be our destiny; we have no choice. As long as we are in Los Angeles, we have to worship God in the church in Los Angeles. Wherever we go, we must worship God in the church at that place. The local church and the proper ground of unity are our destiny. If we could have a choice in the place of worship, that would not be real worship. Real worship is on the ground of unique, genuine unity. All the people of Israel had to go to that one unique place chosen by God.
The second point concerning worship in these four books is that everyone must come to Jerusalem with their hands full of the produce of the good land (Deut. 16:16-17). No one was to come with his hands empty. Each had to have something to offer to God, and that offering was the real worship to God. Today, in principle, it is exactly the same. Whenever we come together in the church meetings, the important matter is how much of Christ we bring. In the proper worship meeting, all the saints must bring something of Christ-not Christ in teaching or in doctrine, but Christ in their experiences.
The people of Israel first of all had to labor on the good land. They had to till the land, sow the seed, and reap the harvest. Afterward they had to grind the grains to obtain the flour for the meal offering. Then when they came together to worship God, they had something to bring and present to God as real worship. Today the Lord is going to recover this worship not only in spirit, but also in reality. Reality is just Christ as so many kinds of offerings.
If we come to the Lord with our hands empty and bow down and say, “O Lord, we have come to worship You,” the Lord will say that He does not desire this kind of worship. He prefers that we stay home and work on Christ and then come with something of Christ in our hand. Only Christ constitutes real worship to God. Anything else is just a kind of religion, not worship. God is mainly concerned with how much Christ we bring to the meetings.
When the Samaritan woman spoke with the Lord, she told Him how the Jews insisted to worship in Jerusalem, but her fathers worshipped God in another place. The Lord Jesus then told her that the dispensation had been changed. Real worship to God is not in this place, but in spirit and in reality (John 4:20-24). The reality is Christ as all the offerings typified in the Old Testament. We must have something of Christ experienced by us to bring to the tent of meeting, which are the meetings of the local church.
Now we come to the humanity of Christ as seen in the Gospel of Luke. If we would experience Christ’s humanity, we need to pray-read all these verses in Luke that we have listed. None of them are in any of the other Gospels. These verses are unique to the Gospel of Luke because this Gospel more than any other reveals the humanity of Christ.
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