Our duty and privilege is to draw near to God. The Greek is ‘come’ but the translators have chosen ‘draw near’ to add weight to the term. Access into the heavenly sanctuary has now been secured for us by the offering of Jesus Christ. There is a tendency for some people to stress the abiding closeness of the Christian with his or her Lord and this is true of course: as saved people we are in a sense always in the presence of God, and yet at the same time we must remember that is not true worship. Yes, the Holy Spirit is in our hearts, he is near to his people; we may approach the Lord at any time with emergency prayers when we have no time to prepare to come into his presence, and yet there is the duty of proper approach as we acknowledge the great holiness and majesty of God. Some Christian people get carried away and say, ‘I am always close to God.’ They use imagery like ‘he dwells in my heart’, but we still have the absolute obligation to approach God in a formal way, otherwise we lose our Christian perspective. Privately and in corporate worship, we are to prepare our hearts, acknowledge his great holiness, come into his presence with great reverence, repent of our sins depending upon Christ, and worship and adore his name and his attributes. Now if we do this every day morning and evening then, when we come to God in emergency prayer, when we walk with him through the day, we will not do that irreverently. But if we emphasise the nearness we have, and we never formally approached him, then we lapse into carelessness, superficiality, and formality.
We do it publicly. We begin always with reverence and care. Let us draw near with a true heart, not a divided heart – half your heart in the world, half of it seeking the Lord that disqualifies true worship. Not in pretence obviously, not insincerely, not in a distant manner, but fully and wholly with every part of your being. Not for fun – that is one of the great snares today when the world is brought into the church, and the music styles of the entertainment world prevail. There is little realisation of the immensity of God and his holiness there. It is the catchy tune, it is the rhythm, it is the beat, it is what I want to do, and I am enjoying this. But isn't worship an enjoyment and a pleasure? Yes, but a different type of enjoyment and pleasure: an enjoyment and pleasure which arises as a response of the heart to grasping great things and being in awe of them.
From time to time a young believer will say, ‘Why is it that we are to pray in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? Why can't I be original, and end my prayer in a different way?’ Not only are we specifically commanded by Christ to approach the Father in the name of the Son, but of course we must because we draw near in full assurance of faith. Always we acknowledge that we may approach the living God, only because of Christ because of what he has purchased for us. We must pray consciously in his name because we depend upon him.
The twofold reference to our hearts and our bodies means this: be sure to repent of your sin as you come into the presence of God. You must do it in your private formal prayers, and we must do it when we come together in corporate worship. Be sure you repent, and do it sincerely. At some time when you are alone, and you are quiet, examine your heart, confess your sins to God, those things you should lament and regret, and affirm the shed blood of Christ and ask renewed forgiveness. You must do that, every day: it is vital. What about washing the body? It means be separate from things that contaminate you physically too. Have you got rid of those old discs and records that represented the unsaved life? Do you look at the wrong kind of journals and magazines, things you should have nothing to do with? So it is represented by the washing of the body, getting rid of the defilement of the world. You cannot validly pray to God without that. What an astonishing privilege that the believer we may dispense altogether with the imagery of the sanctuary and the inner sanctuary, and enter into the holy of holies.