WORSHIPPING GOD IN SPIRIT
At this point I would like to remind you of the Lord’s conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4. The Lord Jesus said to her, "Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall by no means thirst forever; but the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water gushing up into eternal life" (v. 14). When she asked Him to give her this water, He told her to go and call her husband (vv. 15-16). His intention was to help her to know her sins. However, she immediately turned the conversation to the matter of worship, saying, "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, yet you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men must worship" (v. 20). The Lord Jesus replied, "An hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father....But an hour is coming, and it is now, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truthfulness...God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness" (vv. 21, 23-24). John 4:24, a wonderful verse, matches Zechariah 12:1 and Isaiah 42:5.
In His word to the Samaritan woman, the Lord Jesus seemed to be saying, "Woman, you do not know what it is to worship God. The real worship of God is not on a mountain or in Jerusalem—it is in your spirit. Only by using your spirit can you touch God. I am your God, and I am here as living water for you to drink of Me. The way to drink this living water is to exercise your spirit. This is what it means to worship the Father." God has given us a spirit that we may worship Him by drinking of Him.
THE LORD BEING WITH OUR SPIRIT
Another crucial verse concerning the human spirit is 2 Timothy 4:22. "The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you." This verse does not say that the Lord is with our mind or soul or heart; it tells us that He is with our spirit. Deep within, in the center of our being, we have a particular organ—the human spirit—created by God for the purpose of receiving Him and containing Him. We all, especially the young people, need to see that today the Lord Jesus Christ is with our spirit.
OUR SPIRIT AND THE SEVENFOLD INTENSIFIED SPIRIT
Our regenerated human spirit matches Christ, who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). Regarding this, Zechariah 3:9 says, "This is the stone that I have set before Joshua: upon one stone are seven eyes. Behold, I will engrave its engraving, declares Jehovah of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day." This stone which has been engraved with God’s engraving to take away the sin of God’s people is Christ. The seven eyes of the stone are "the eyes of Jehovah running to and fro on the whole earth" (4:10). In order to understand the significance of the seven eyes, we need to consider Revelation 5:6. "I saw..a Lamb standing as having just been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth." The Lamb here, who is the stone in Zechariah 3:9, is Christ, and the seven eyes are the sevenfold intensified Spirit. Thus, the Christ who has been engraved by God to take away our sin bears the sevenfold intensified Spirit. Actually, He, the last Adam, has become a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), even the sevenfold intensified Spirit. Christ today is the Spirit, and we have a spirit particularly formed by God to match Christ.
Let us now go on to consider the Christ who is unveiled in the book of Zechariah. In the first part of this book (chs. 1—6), there are five visions concerning Christ, and in the last part (chs. 9—14), many details concerning Christ.
(Life-Study of Zechariah, Chapter 15, by Witness Lee)
