LABORING ON THE ALL-INCLUSIVE CHRIST TYPIFIED BY THE GOOD LAND FOR THE BUILDING UP OF THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST, FOR THE REALITY AND THE MANIFESTATION OF THE KINGDOM, AND FOR THE BRIDE TO MAKE HERSELF READY FOR THE LORD'S COMING
Message Eleven
The Surplus of the Produce of the Good Landand the Corporate Worship of God the Father in Truthfulness
Scripture Reading: Deut. 8:7-10; 12:6-7, 11-12, 18; 16:15-17; Eph. 3:8; John 4:23-24
I. We use the word surplus because the people of Israel put aside a certain portion of their produce from the labor on the good land for the purpose of worshipping God—Deut. 12:5-15, 17-18, 20-22, 26-27; 14:22-23; 15:19-20; 16:16-17:
A. The surplus of the produce of the good land typifies Christ—8:7-10.
B. The people of Israel offered Canaan's produce to God and enjoyed it with God.
C. The enjoyment of the surplus of the produce of the good land typifies the corporate enjoyment of Christ as our worship to God—Eph. 3:8.
D. According to the New Testament fulfillment of this type, when we come to worship God in a corporate way, we must bring the Christ whom we have experienced—Eph. 3:17-18; Col. 1:27; 3:3-4, 11.
II. If we faithfully labor on the all-inclusive Christ, we will have the riches of Christ as the produce to exhibit Christ in the church meetings—Eph. 3:8; 1 Cor. 14:26:
A. The proper life of Christians is to labor on Christ every day and thus have the rich surplus of Christ to bring to the meetings for a rich exhibition of Christ— v. 26:
1. We come together in the church meetings to have an exhibition of Christ— Col. 1:18, 27.
2. Through our daily experiences of the riches of Christ, these riches will become an exhibition of the produce of Christ—Eph. 3:8, 17-18; Col. 2:6, 9-10, 17.
3. Our meetings should always be an exhibition to show forth what Christ is, what Christ has, and what Christ does—Heb. 1:3; 2:9, 14; 1 John 3:8; 4:9, 15; Acts 2:24, 32-33; Rev. 1:17b-18.
B. We meet to exhibit not only the Christ given to us by God but also the Christ we have produced, the Christ on whom we have labored and whom we have experienced; this is the Christ whom we come together to exhibit—Col. 1:12-13; Phil. 3:10.
C. If we continually labor on Christ, we will have the rich surplus of Christ to bring to the meetings for a rich exhibition of Christ—1 Cor. 1:24, 30; 10:3-4; 14:26.
D. Whenever we come together, regardless of the kind of meeting we are having, we should come with the Christ experienced by us as the surplus to be offered to God and exhibited to the whole universe and to the enemy, putting him to shame—John 4:23-24; Eph. 3:10, 17; 4:15:
1. Then our meetings will be enriched and strengthened because they are full of Christ—Col. 3:4, 10-11.
2. Such a church life is an exhibition of Christ, an expression of Christ—Eph. 3:21.
3. We need to bring the surplus of Christ to every meeting to exhibit Christ—v. 8.
4. We need to enjoy Christ in our daily life and come together to exhibit Him— 1 Pet. 1:8.
E. To have proper Christian meetings, we need to contact the Lord daily in our personal life and then come to the meetings with the realization and understanding that we are coming to exhibit Christ and share Christ with others— 1 Cor. 14:26.
F. "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"—Hymns, #864, stanza 1 and chorus.
III. We need to labor on the all-inclusive Christ in order to have a surplus of Christ to bring to the church meetings for the corporate worship of God our Father—John 4:23-24; Eph. 3:21:
A. "For more than forty years [spoken in 1982] I have been fighting the battle concerning the genuine worship of God. This battle has not yet been won"—The Fulfillment of the Tabernacle and the Offerings in the Writings of John, p. 142.
B. For our worship of Him, the Father requires that we come to Him with a harvest of Christ; thus, we need to come to the church meetings with the riches of Christ— John 4:23-24; Eph. 3:8.
C. Daily, we should labor on Christ to have a harvest of Christ's riches to bring to the church meetings for the corporate worship of God the Father; Christ will be exalted and glorified, and the Father will be pleased and satisfied—Deut. 12:6; 16:15-17; 1 Cor. 14:26; John 4:23-24.
D. It is crucial that we diligently labor on Christ to have our hands full of Christ and then come to the church meetings to enjoy this rich and glorious Christ with God's children and with God the Father Himself—1 Cor. 10:31; 14:26; John 4:23-24; Rom. 15:6.
E. Whenever we come to the Lord's table meeting to remember the Lord and worship the Father, we must come with the riches of Christ produced by our daily laboring on Christ—Deut. 16:15-17:
1. To worship God with Christ is to worship Him collectively with all the children of God by enjoying Christ with one another and with God—1 Cor. 14:26.
2. We need to produce enough of Christ so that there will be a surplus to share with others and to offer the best part of the produce to God the Father for His joy, delight, and satisfaction—Deut. 15:11; 18:3-4; 12:11.
F. In these last days the Lord will recover the genuine experience of Christ for a surplus of His riches in the meetings for the building of the church as the Body of Christ and for the bride making herself ready for the Bridegroom's coming.
IV. According to John 4:23-24, we need to worship God our Father in spirit and in truthfulness:
A. Truthfulness is the revealed divine reality—the Triune God dispensed into man in the Son, Jesus Christ—becoming our genuineness and sincerity so that we may live a life that corresponds with the divine light (1 John 1:5) and worship God, as God seeks, according to what He is (2 John 1; 3 John 1).
B. Out of the enjoyment of the divine reality issue human truthfulness, sincerity, and genuineness— John 4:23-24; 1 John 3:18; 2 John 1; 3 John 1.
C. Truthfulness is the human genuineness, sincerity, honesty, trustworthiness, and faithfulness as a human virtue and as an issue of the divine reality—John 14:6.
D. Truthfulness in John 4:23-24 denotes the divine reality becoming man's genuineness and sincerity for the true worship of God.
E. The divine reality is Christ as the fountain of living water, the life-giving Spirit, partaken of and drunk by the believers to be the reality within them, which eventually becomes their genuineness and sincerity in which they worship God with the worship He seeks—vv. 10, 14, 23.
F. To worship the Father in truthfulness is to worship Him with the Christ who has saturated our being to become our personal reality through our experience and enjoyment of the Triune God as the divine reality—vv. 23-24.