Ceremony, Communion and the Sabbath
The Old Testament required God's priests to observe many ritual practices. All of these things pointed to the sacrifical work of Jesus. Jesus fulfilled all these symbols of the Law of God.
But within Christianity many symbolic observances are still practiced. Water baptism as an "outward symbolism of an inward reality" is a chief example along with consuming physical communion bread and wine, foot washing, the wearing of special robes and the keeping of special days. Should we be doing such things when Christ came and obtained for us "a new and living way?" And what of the symbols of the Old Testament. Have they just disappeared and become irrelevant or have they been transformed into spiritual realities?
This is important information for anyone who desires the freedom and liberty that Jesus promised us.
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Jan. 03
CEREMONIES: SATAN'S ALTERNATIVE TO LIFE
I dreamed that a high public official (in this case, a lady) was coming to our house and also planned to attend one of our home prayer meetings. My wife was working to get everything ready to make the visitor comfortable in our home. For my part, I was concerned that everyone would have difficulty keeping their minds on God with such a dignitary present.
When we assembled for the prayer meeting, I began by preaching a message designed to calm them down and get their minds on God so that they could minister to the visitor and to each other. I told them that our testimonies are not about us but about Jesus. If all we do when we testify is talk about ourselves, our testimonies are worthless. When we speak, we are to speak of Christ and his work in our lives; we are not to speak of ourselves. We are not that important. There is nothing that we have to offer to believers or to unbelieving men in addition to what the Spirit is doing.
Then, for the sake of the great woman who was visiting, with her bodyguards and attendants surrounding her, I told her that she was in bondage to ceremony. I told her she was a "prisoner of pomp", nothing more than a toy for vain people to admire. She needed abundant life.
I continued in my sermon to explain that there is no ceremony in heaven and that there is no ceremony in God's kingdom on earth. Worship in heaven is both spontaneous and harmonious. The twenty four elders, whom we meet in Revelation 4, did not gather when the Lamb of God was away and practice falling on their faces and throwing their crowns down at his feet. Nor did one of them make the others feel obligated to do so because he did it. They all spontaneously felt such an overwhelming love and thankfulness for Jesus that to each of them, it suddenly seemed to be the only reasonable thing that they should fall off of their thrones and throw their crowns at the feet of the Savior. They repeated this action several times in Revelation, and each time they did it, it was new and unplanned; each time they threw themselves and their crowns at Jesus' feet, it was a new idea, inspired by a consuming desire to give Jesus honor, to the glory of God.
We are told that four marvelously strange creatures with six wings are before God's great throne, continually crying out together, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!" These heavenly beings do not have a choir leader in front of them waving his arms to synchronize their shouts! They feel to do what they do. It consumes them! It is their joy and their rest to praise God with all their souls every moment. It is their reason for living, and the joy of their souls.
The millions of millions of angels who sing around God's throne in heaven do not have a song book from which to sing together their songs of praise. How do the angels to the left know how to sing the same words as the angels on the right?
Let this truth sink into your heart: There are no rehearsals in heaven for anything! In heaven, the worship of God is life.
Ceremony is Satan's alternative to Spirit and life! Satan offers men pomp instead of power. He offers men Christianity instead of Christ. The worshipers in heaven are moved by the holy Ghost, not by memory or by a dead tradition, to do whatever they do whenever they do it. They feel what to do without being told. They are moved by the power of God's Spirit to do what they do before they think about it, and they are able to do so because they understand that life isn't about them; it is about God!
My friend, eternal life isn't about you. It is not about whether you like speaking in tongues or not. It isn't about whether you think "holy rollers" are fanatics. It isn't about whether or not loud praises to God bother you. In one scene in heaven that John recorded, unnumbered multitudes stand before the Lord waving palm branches and unashamedly crying with all their might, "Salvation to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!" Please understand that your opinion of this is irrelevant. It isn't about you.
No one has to train a new born baby to think that life is all about him. He is the center of his entire universe. Nothing else matters to him but that he is fed and cleaned and nurtured. No one has to train a child to feel this way, but someone has to help us to stop thinking this way. The whole world "lieth in wickedness" because the world is populated with individuals who still think that it is about them. They never grew up!
As I lay on my bed this morning, still lost in my thoughts, I saw someone in the meeting raise his hands to praise God. I walked over to him and demanded of him an answer to questions such as these: "How did you know it was time to raise your hands?" "Did anyone give you a signal?" "Did a green light hanging from the ceiling turn on?" He was right to raise his hands and praise God. I knew why he raised his hands; the holy Ghost moved him to do it. But I wanted him to know why he raised his hands. Child of God, do you know why you worship God as you do? If it is for any other reason than that you are moved by the Spirit of God to do what you do, it is unclean and unacceptable with God. Worship that is not sanctified by the holy Ghost is unacceptable to God.
The way the saints on earth know when it is time to shout, or weep, or sing, or dance in the Spirit, or clap hands, or roll across the floor, or anything else, is the same way the citizens of heaven know when it is time to do whatever they do. They feel it. The holy Ghost in them moves them to feel what to do, without the mind of man directing them.
The worship of God is not a matter of proper form but of tenderness of heart toward the Spirit of God. You need the holy Ghost because you need to know how to worship God. Jesus said that his Father was searching for people to worship Him in spirit and in truth. The magnificent temples and dazzling religious spectacles on earth at that time meant nothing to God. And they still don't. He is still searching for someone with the faith to forsake religious forms and be filled with the power of the holy Ghost, for someone courageous enough to be nothing in His presence, to release their flesh's hold on their spirits and let the Spirit of God have its way with their bodies.
These are the people of God, who trust in Christ to guide them into all truth (including how to worship God) and who no longer have confidence in ceremonial form. "For we are the [true people of God]", wrote Paul, "who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh."