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Scripture Reading: Psa. 133
In this chapter we want to continue our fellowship concerning the need to keep the oneness and experience Christ for the practice of the church life. Let us read Psalm 133: “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is / For brothers to dwell in unity! / It is like the fine oil upon the head / That ran down upon the beard, / Upon Aaron’s beard, / That ran down upon the hem of his garments; / Like the dew of Hermon / That came down upon the mountains of Zion. / For there Jehovah commanded the blessing: / Life forever.”
In this short psalm of three verses, there are four important things expressed by four words: first, oneness; second, oil; third, dew; and fourth, life. The way to practice the church is in these four things: the oneness, the oil, the dew, and the life.
This psalm is one of fifteen psalms, from Psalm 120 to 134, that are called Songs of Ascent. These are songs chanted by the children of Israel while they were coming together and going up to Mount Zion to worship God. They did this three times a year at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Tabernacles (Deut. 16:16). Hence, these songs were the songs for their meetings. Even though there was not the church in the Old Testament, the people of Israel are a type of the church. In particular, Psalm 133 is related to the way of the practice of the church life.
In the previous chapter, we saw two things that are crucial to the practice of the church life. One thing is the oneness as the ground of the church life, and the other is Christ as the reality of the church life. We need the ground and the reality as well. If we invite people for dinner, we need a table and also much food. We cannot just serve people a table without the food, nor can we serve people the food without a table. The proper church life is a life of a proper ground, which is the oneness, and of the reality, which is Christ.
Some have advised me not to talk too much about the ground of the church and to just talk about Christ, the reality. They appreciated the Lord’s presence and the reality, but they did not want to speak about the ground of the church. I said to them, “What you appreciate may be likened to tea. You drink the tea, yet you don’t appreciate the teacup. It seems that you are saying, ‘Tea is so nice, but the cup is not good for drinking.’ Yes, I know the cup is not good for drinking, but you need a cup to put the tea in. To serve tea, you need the cup as well as the tea. Likewise, to practice the church, we need the ground as well as the reality of the church.”
I appreciate Psalm 133. Verse 1 says, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is / For brothers to dwell in unity!” The children of Israel kept the oneness by coming to the one place appointed, chosen, ordained, by God. No one had the right to set up another place for their coming together to worship God. Their worship to God was kept as one for generations and generations because they kept the ground of oneness.
We also need the reality, which according to Psalm 133 includes the oil, the dew, and the life. Do we have the oil in our meetings? The anointing oil is nothing less than the all-inclusive Spirit of Christ. Whenever we come together, we must have the all-inclusive Christ as the Spirit moving and working through us and among us. In the meetings of the churches, there must be the flow of the Spirit. There must be the anointing, which is the working, the moving, the flowing, of the Spirit among the saints. This needs our daily practice of experiencing Christ.
Psalm 133 tells us that the anointing oil was on the head of Aaron, the high priest, and that it ran down upon his beard to the hem of his garments. That means the anointing oil flows down to the whole body. This is the stream, the current, the flow, of the Spirit. This signifies simply that whenever we have the expression of the Body of Christ, there must be a flow of the Holy Spirit upon all the members, upon the whole Body.
Many times at the Lord’s table, I had the sense that the flow of the Spirit started from a certain brother and flowed through another brother, but it was not able to pass through a third brother. This is because the third one was not in the spirit. The meetings will expose where you are as a Christian. Suppose that a brother is worldly, carnal, and not loving the Lord, yet he comes to the meeting. There is something within him as a hindrance to the flow of the Spirit. This proves that this member is not much in the spirit. If all the attendants of the meeting are in such a condition, the Spirit cannot get through, and there is no flow, no anointing, in the meeting. Then the meeting becomes very dry.
When we live in Christ throughout our daily living, we come to the meetings with part of Christ, and that part of Christ is a part of the anointing oil. I come with a part of Christ, with some experience of Christ, and this experience of Christ is a part of the anointing oil. If we all come in this way, we will have the flow of the Spirit. This flow proves that we are in the proper practice of the church life. Sometimes a number of brothers and sisters will be convicted by this flow. This flow of the Spirit is the reality of the practice of the church life.
The dew in Psalm 133 is a type of grace. In Proverbs we are told that the king’s favor, or grace, is like dew upon the grass (19:12b). Where you have the morning dew, you have the refreshing and the newness. This is the refreshing grace of God, which in our experience is the presence of God. Whenever the saints come to meet together to practice the church life, there should be the freshness, the newness, and the refreshing of the Lord’s presence. Most of our meetings are held in the evening, yet when we are in the meetings, we feel as if it were morning. We have the newness and sense that the Lord’s presence is so refreshing. That is the dew — the refreshing of the grace of the Lord’s presence.
When we come together, a young sister who was baptized only two weeks ago may give a short prayer. That short prayer is at least a drop of dew that refreshes and brings in the newness. Many times before I went to the meeting, I was really tired. But after a short prayer by a sister, I immediately was refreshed. That is the presence of the Lord as the dew of grace to us.
Sometimes, however, when we come to a meeting, we sense the dryness. There is no anointing, no oil, and no refreshing, no dew. The anointing and the refreshing are the Lord Himself. Therefore, the content of our meeting life depends on the saints’ experience of Christ in their daily life. It does not depend merely on a few responsible brothers but on the whole congregation, on every brother and sister. By this anointing and this dew we have the blessing commanded by the Lord (Psa. 133:3b). This blessing is life — life forever, life eternal.
Brothers and sisters, I would beg you to try your best to forget about the doctrines. The Christian meetings are not for doctrines but for the vision of Christ. Some have asked me, “Brother Lee, if you do not have the doctrines, how could you have the meetings?” This depends on what kind of doctrines you have. If you have some doctrines or teachings ministering Christ, this is right. However, we should never have a meeting for any kind of doctrine other than Christ Himself. If you come to the meeting and bring the doctrine of predestination without ministering Christ to others, this is wrong. We should always keep in mind that the church meetings are not for anything else but for the exhibition of Christ. If you have something of the Spirit and of Christ to minister to others, that is right and you have to do it. But never bring something simply as a doctrine to discuss, argue, or debate about. This will bring death to the meeting. You will not have the anointing, the dew, and the life. I hope that all the meetings of the local churches will be meetings full of Christ, full of the Spirit, full of the flow of the anointing, full of the dew, and full of life.
I say again that all this depends on our daily life, our daily experience of Christ and of the Spirit. When we come to the meetings, we must have our hands full of Christ to share with others, to contribute to others, and to minister to others, while at the same time, we hope to receive some help from others as our food supply in the Spirit.
There are two things that spoil the church life. One is the fact that there are so many different grounds. Today people are liberal to have many different meetings. This kind of liberal attitude spoils and damages the church life. How could you say, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity”? You cannot say this, because the oneness is gone. We are in the same city, and even in the same part of the city, yet we have three or four different groups. There are too many grounds. The unique ground is spoiled, so it is hard to have the real church life.
Then the other thing that spoils the church life is that whenever the saints come together, they always desire to know and pay attention to something other than Christ. Therefore, there is no ground of oneness and no reality of Christ. Consequently, the church life is gone.
If we are going to practice the church life in a proper way, first, we have to clear the ground. Our flesh, our desire, and our taste have to be dealt with by the cross. We have to respect the ground of oneness. In other words, we have to respect the oneness of the Body. We have no right to choose a ground to set up a meeting. We can only take the ground appointed by God.
Furthermore, we cannot have an empty cup, that is, an empty ground. We must be filled with Christ and the Spirit. This depends on our daily experience. We should not expect that whenever we meet together, the Spirit will come down from the heavens and be poured upon us. This is a dream. We must be awakened out of our dreaming. The right way is that each of us has to deal with the Lord, to have fellowship with Him, to be dealt with by Him, to be filled by Him, and to be occupied by Him in our daily life. We experience Christ, we learn the lesson of the cross, and we walk in the spirit with Christ. Then when we come to the meeting, we come with something of Christ. Spontaneously, we have something to share with the saints, something to offer to God to satisfy Him, and something to minister to others.
This is to function in the meetings by ministering Christ to others. You may not be able to give a message, but you can give a short prayer or a short testimony. If you are in the spirit and you have some experience of Christ, whenever you open your mouth, Christ will be offered and manifested by and in your prayer. We all have to experience Christ in this way. Then whenever we come together, something of Christ will be brought together and will be manifested. Eventually, the building up of the Body will be realized, because only the Christ experienced by us is the real material for the building of the church.
We may attend meetings throughout the year, but unless we have the adequate experience of Christ, we still will not be able to have any kind of building. When we experience Christ in a rich way, we have much of Christ to bring to the meetings, to share with one another, to exhibit, to glorify God, and to put the enemy to shame. Then this Christ whom we experienced will be the material for the building up of the church. We believers can never be built up together in ourselves. We can be built up together only in Christ, with Christ, and by Christ.
We mentioned before that the city and the temple in Jerusalem came into existence through the offerings brought by the children of Israel. If they had had nothing to offer, there would have been no material for the building of the city and the temple. The offerings were the produce of the good land. They were the fruit of the labor of the children of Israel. This is a type.
If we are going to have a church built up practically in our area, there is the need for a group of believers who live by taking Christ as everything. They walk in the spirit and practice this kind of life day by day. Hence, they are filled with Christ and have much of Christ in their hands. Whenever they come together, everyone has something of Christ to contribute to the meeting and to offer to God. Furthermore, they keep this one regulation; that is, they keep the oneness and stay away from any kind of division. They concentrate all their experiences of Christ together as material for the building of the church. Eventually, something of Christ will be built up together as a real building to be a practical, living expression of Christ. This is the way to practice the church life.
Let us pray much about this matter so that we may realize the life and the way for the practice of the church life. Let us pray that a real building of the church may be realized in our area and even in the entire United States.
