In every meeting we have the Bible and the hymnal in our hands. We should not sit in our seats quietly to wait for the meeting to start. Everyone can stand up to declare the Lord’s word or to choose a hymn to speak to one another. The Christian meeting is not a worship “service” where one speaks and all the rest listen. Rather, it is our coming together with an open spirit to speak forth the Christ whom we experience, treasure, and love with the utterance that He gives us. Our speaking in this way is our exhibition of Christ.
Verse one of Hymns, #864 says:
Whene’er we meet with Christ endued,
The surplus of His plenitude
We offer unto God as food,
And thus exhibit Christ.
Let us exhibit Christ,
Let us exhibit Christ;
We’ll bring His surplus to the church
And thus exhibit Christ.
The phrase “exhibit Christ” is unfamiliar not only to our unbelieving friends, but it is also quite new even to those believers who have been saved for many years. This song was first written in English in 1963. Then in 1966 we translated it into Chinese. After this song was written, everyone liked to sing it. The more I sing this hymn, the more I enjoy it.
The Bible gives us a type in the Old Testament to describe the situation of God’s people when they gather together. After the children of Israel entered the land of Canaan, they had to labor and cultivate the land. If they did not do this, there would be no produce. The more they labored, the more they were blessed by God; God sent rain, fresh air, and the proper climate for them to have a rich and abundant harvest. God commanded that three times a year they had to bring the rich produce of their land to offer to God and to satisfy God (Deut. 16:16). There at the feast everyone enjoyed all the riches together with God.
We have all received the all-inclusive Christ as the good land (Col. 1:12). It is a land flowing with milk and honey. In our daily life we should experience this rich Christ all the time. When we come together we should present this Christ whom we have experienced and offer Him to God to be His food. Then we can all enjoy this Christ together as our enjoyment. If you were to enter into Jerusalem during one of the feasts of the children of Israel, you would have seen the temple surrounded by all kinds of produce of the good land. This is truly an exhibition. It is an exhibition before God of all the produce that the children of Israel harvested.
The way of meeting as revealed in the Bible is not like today’s Christian worship services. The way of worship services in Christianity is completely natural and religious. It is a product of habits and traditions. As it takes doctors to handle sickness, and lawyers to handle legal disputes, so some assume that it takes pastors to handle Christian worship. They consider preaching to be the job of the pastors; the rest have nothing to do but listen. The Lord’s way for us is not like this. He wants us to gather together to exhibit Christ.
The Lord Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered together in (lit. into) My name, there I am in their midst” (Matt. 18:20). The preposition here is “into.” We are not merely meeting in the Lord’s name, but we are gathered together into His name. Every time we meet together we are gathered into His name.
A name denotes a person. The name of Jesus denotes the Person of Jesus. When we are gathered together into the Lord’s name, we are actually gathered together into the Lord Himself. The meaning here is very deep. To have two or three gathered together into the Lord means that they are led out of themselves to gather into the Lord. Only when we have such a meeting will the Lord be among us. For example, if two or three are gathered together, yet they all remain in themselves—one disliking another, one being unhappy with another, no one paying any attention to the Lord Jesus, but everyone arguing among themselves—how can the Lord be among them under such circumstances? Although two persons may dislike each other very much, when they come together they may not express this outwardly, but instead they may try to put up a front. They may even do this in their prayers. Such a meeting can never have the Lord’s presence, because neither of the two have come out of themselves.
Whenever we come out of ourselves and into the Lord Jesus, we will be filled with psalms, songs, and praises from within. Under such a circumstance, when we come together, of course the Lord will be among us. As we open our mouths Christ will be exhibited. Today the Lord Jesus is the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17), and the Spirit is in the Word (John 6:63). The Lord Jesus is the Word (John 1:14), and the Lord Jesus is also the Spirit. He is life, He is the real Lord, and He is the real God (John 14:6; 20:28). Furthermore, all these items are in the Word. If you do not speak the Word, the Spirit will not come out, and the Lord cannot be released. To speak in the Spirit is to express the Lord, and this expression is the exhibition of Christ.