He appointed a place where He could meet with them, and, blessed fact, He has appointed a place for us where He can meet with us. It is in this same Gospel that His precious words are recorded for us: “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them” (Mt. 18:20). It is not the place that we choose; we may not please ourselves in this matter; the place is His appointment. It is our responsibility as well as our joy to obey His word and keep this appointment with Him.

The place that He appointed them was outside the temple and away from Jerusalem. We must remember that in Matthew’s Gospel He had been presented to Israel as their Messiah, and they had rejected Him, so that the temple, their house, and their city were to be desolated, and the faithful remnant was to be led out of both and gathered to Himself. Instead of the temple and the city, His name was to be their rallying center. And so today, not a sensuous religion, an ornate service, or a massive temple is that which satisfies His heart or the hearts of those who love Him. To meet His own is His wish, and to be in His presence without distraction, or the intrusion of that which pleases nature, is the wish of those who keep His word and do not deny His Name.

“They worshiped Him.” Could they do otherwise, when He stood before them who had died for them, bearing in His risen body the marks of His suffering and death? A sight of Him was all that was needed to prostrate them in holy adoration at His feet. And so it will be with us if without distraction we seek His presence in the place that He has appointed us.