The Divine Trinity has passed through many processes for His divine dispensing. First, He came from heaven on high to the earth and was conceived in the womb of a virgin. There He remained for nine months according to the law of the human life, and He was born as a God-man. Because of King Herod’s jealousy, He escaped to Egypt and later returned to settle in Galilee, living in the little town of Nazareth. In a hidden way, He lived there for thirty years. No one heard of Him or knew Him. When He was thirty years old, He came out to fulfill His ministry, which was to seek and to save the lost sinners and to dispense God into them.
One day, He was returning from Jerusalem to Galilee. According to His foreknowledge and predestination, He went to save a lost sinner, an immoral Samaritan woman. For this, He purposely went through Samaria and waited for the woman by the well at Secure. He knew that the woman would go to draw water at that hour. When the Lord Jesus met her, He asked her for water in order to point out her real need. He spoke to her about her husband. By this He touched her conscience so that she would repent for her sins. In addition, the Lord showed her that true worship is to drink of God as the living water and to contact in spirit God who is the Spirit. The Chinese way of worship is to kneel down three times with the head touching the ground nine times. The Arab way of worship is to prostrate the whole body. But our God does not want us to worship in either of these ways. He wants us to worship in spirit and in reality, which is to drink of Him as the thirst-quenching living water. If we drink of the water from the well of Jacob, we will be thirsty again. Our thirst can never be satisfied by the earthly water. Only God’s gift of Jesus as our living water can give us satisfaction in life.
Hence, every Lord’s Day our breaking of bread for the remembrance of the Lord is not a form of worship, but an eating, drinking, and enjoyment of God. The symbols on the table-the bread and the cup-signify the Lord’s body that was broken for us and the new covenant that was enacted by the Lord’s blood. They are there for us to eat, drink, and enjoy. We do this in remembrance of the Lord (Matt. 26:26-28; Luke 22:19). Hence, the Lord does want us to remember Him. But He does not want us to kneel down and to think about Him in silence. Rather, He wants us to open ourselves up and to contact Him with our spirit, eating and drinking Him in spirit. This is the true remembrance of Him.
In the past messages we have seen that in eternity past, God had an economy. In order to accomplish this economy, He passed through many processes to dispense Himself to us. From His incarnation to His becoming the life-giving Spirit, every step was for the accomplishment of His dispensing. Take the crucifixion for an example. Man hanged Him on the cross for six hours. In the first three hours, He was persecuted for the carrying out of God’s will. In the last three hours, He was judged by God for the accomplishment of redemption on our behalf. This death was indeed a process which accomplished many works. After this, He entered into death and Hades. Three days later, He resurrected. This was another process. As soon as He entered resurrection, He was transfigured to become the life-giving Spirit. By that time, all the processes that He had to go through were completed.
The whole Gospel of John shows us this matter clearly. At the start of the book, it says that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. The Word became flesh. Later it shows us how the incarnated God-man Jesus lived on the earth for thirty-three and a half years. In the end, He was crucified and entered Hades; then He came out again to enter into resurrection. In resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit, who is the holy breath breathed into the disciples. In this way, they all received the Holy Spirit.
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