Good morning. I’ll tell you what, we could have just worshiped on into eternity, as far as I was concerned.
Let me begin by reading a scripture. It is from Acts 2:42 and 46.
And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship,
in the breaking of bread and the prayers.And day by day, continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple,
and breaking bread at home,
they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart.
They continued and persevered in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, and in the breaking of bread and prayers.
Let us pray. Lord, as we come this morning, I once again would prevail upon the throne that You, Lord Jesus, would anoint the Word of God; that You would anoint us as we speak and hear Your Word today, Lord; that this could be living and real and touch reality, Lord, and not just end up filed away somewhere.
Lord Jesus, we look to Thee, in the name of Jesus Christ, that You would give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, as we share Your Word together. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
Actually, what I am sharing on this morning is the recovery of the life and testimony of the early church—the recovery of the life and testimony of the early church.
Now, I am going to tell you exactly how this developed, because I think we are all a little bit different, all of us brothers that share. Actually, this started in my heart with some thoughts concerning the Lord’s table. It was like I went to this box that said, “Lord’s table,” and when I looked into it, there was another box that said, “Prayer,” and then another box. It just kept going.
Finally, the Lord said, “This is the box, Jerry—the box, the nutshell of it all.” That is the recovery of the life and testimony of the early church. It includes the Lord’s table, which I will probably share on in a week or two. But today we will start out and see where this takes us, and how far we get in the time that we have this morning. May the Holy Spirit really lead us and touch us.
The reason I use the words recovery of the life and testimony of the early church is because I think that is the essence of what the Lord Jesus wants to do today in this earth, among His people all over this world, and here amongst us as we gather together: to recover the Lord’s life and testimony that they experienced in the early church.
You know, in the early church, it was marvelous. They would meet together daily. They would worship the Lord. They would break bread daily from house to house. They would share the Word. They would pray together. This was the life of the early church.
It was all in first love. It was that first love really bubbling out. They just desired to be together and to meet around the Lord Jesus Christ at any time that they possibly could. It was because first love was so strong in their hearts.
But we know that, particularly in the first century, the church began to depart from its first love. Problems began to come in concerning the Word, the meetings, and the way they met. By the end of the first century, we have those churches written of in the book of Revelation, and we see all the various problems there.
At one point, it says there was a prophetess in one of the churches who was basically teaching idol worship to the saints. So we can see how far things had come, even in one century, and how far they had departed from what the Lord originally intended.
This continued until the whole world entered what history calls the Dark Ages. Interestingly enough, you will find that in the Dark Ages, in the religious world—in the Christian world, as it was known then—Jesus Christ was no longer the center of Christianity.
It had evolved into a system of rule, ceremony, and tradition, in which Christ had very little part. Not only that, but in those dark days even the Bible was unknown to the common man. He could not read it, he could not understand it, and he had to go to the clergy in order to get some interpretation of it.
Even the clergy had become corrupted at that time. So the whole world entered into what the world refers to as the Dark Ages. Now, we as Christians need to realize that the reason the world entered into the Dark Ages is because it was rejecting Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was no longer the center, even in the religious world.
So God began to move through the Reformers. We know that somewhere in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, God began to move. Up until that point, there had been declension, declension, and declension—to almost the annihilation of any recognition of Jesus Christ and His work on the cross.
The Word of God had been completely obliterated and withheld from the people who needed it so much. I think it is interesting, the effect that it had on the whole world—all the darkness of those days.
God began to move. It was a recovery of His original intention and purpose that we saw in the early church. He began to recover what had been lost.
At that period in history, salvation was obtained through good works. That was what was taught: you had to have good works. By the way, if you did something wrong and had enough money, you could buy indulgences, and that would placate what had happened. So you see how far the religious world had fallen during that period.
Like I say, there was no salvation by grace. People were lost and had no light. It was a dark, dark time. But the Lord began to recover.
In this recovery, He raised up the Reformers. Martin Luther is the one that we know most about, and there were many others—Wycliffe and others—during that age whom the Lord used and raised up. It is called the Protestant Reformation.
The Lord began to recover His original intent and purpose, and what had been lost down through those centuries: to bring His people back to the foundation; to bring His people back to spiritual reality instead of custom and tradition.
What we need to understand today is that the work of the Reformers is not yet complete. God today is still doing a work of recovery.
Now, down through the ages, there have also been revivals. We think of the Welsh Revival. It is my understanding that the Holy Spirit came in such power in those days that men who were in bars, when the gospel was shared with them, would hang on to the post, fearful that they would be pulled into hell. Conviction was so strong.
That was a move of the Holy Spirit, but it was not recovery; it was a revival. Now, the Lord wants us indeed, and we are thankful for His times of revival in our lives personally and corporately. But what the Lord is really after is to recover the essentials—the fundamentals of what we see in the early church.
This work of recovery is going on today. I would pray that, as we share these messages, the Lord would touch us so that we too would join with the Reformers to recover God’s original intentions and God’s heart—to recover the life and testimony of Christ that we see in the early church. This is what God has called us to: recovery.
Now, just to help clarify this, revival is similar to having dirty windows. I do not know how dirty these are; I cannot tell. But if you have windows in your house, after about a year—at least at my house; we live on a gravel road, so it gets pretty dusty—you can hardly see out those windows.
My wife calls upon me to help do the windows. I do the outside; she does the inside. We clean up those windows, and for at least a day or two, they are perfectly clean, and you can see as you have never seen before.
That is really what revival does. The Holy Spirit works in your heart to bring you back to Christ, to take away the veils between you and the Lord so that you can see Him clearly. We are thankful for that.
But recovery is more like looking at a house and saying, “Whoa, there are no windows in that house. We need to have some windows in the house.” So that is, I hope, a good explanation of the difference between recovery and revival.
If anything else, brothers and sisters, remember this: the Lord has called us today to a recovery work—to recover the life and testimony that we see in the early church.
I have read from Acts 2:42 that they persevered in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, and the breaking of bread and prayers. Continuing daily, meeting daily with one accord in the temple, they were also breaking bread from house to house, eating their meals with gladness of heart.
That verse summarizes the life and testimony of the early church. The whole book of Acts can basically be summarized in that verse: Acts 2:42.
What does it say? It says they persevered in the teaching of the apostles, in the fellowship of the apostles, the breaking of bread, and prayers.
As I started this, like I said, my heart was on this matter of the breaking of bread—that it would become a reality, a living reality, and that we could recover and return to what the Lord’s original intention and heart is for the breaking of bread.
As I went on, I saw that the Lord is really after recovery in all four of these areas. These are the basic elements of the life of the early church described in this scripture:
That is the life of the early church. Those are the four fundamental elements of the life of the early church. It became their way of life because it says they persevered in this. These were the things that remained—the things they continually did and persevered in, that they would not let slack off, so to speak.
This became the early church’s testimony to the world. It was a way of life that the world had never seen. Many came to the Lord Jesus as they looked at the life of these early disciples, how they met, how they loved the Lord, and how He was the center of everything.
They just loved to be together and to share Christ together. Brothers and sisters, it was an amazing, amazing time during those days.
We know that this life was not something that men got together and organized. They did not just get together and say, “Look, we need to form a new religious system, a new way of religious life. We think it should consist of teaching, prayer, breaking of bread, and fellowship.”
It was not done that way. Sometimes people talk of planting churches. That is not really accurate. You do not really plant a church. A church is born.
Brothers and sisters, we need to realize the essence of the church. At Pentecost, the church was born.
Recently, we have been sharing on the book of Acts in our Bible study and fellowship times together. One thing we saw is that, on the day of Pentecost, it says a mighty wind came. When you look in the Greek, you discover that it describes this mighty wind as a heavy breathing, like a woman in travail.
Out of this travail, something came forth. In other words, it was out of the travail of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary, the travail of the Father over His Son, and the Holy Spirit, that the church was born.
If you read in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul gives an explanation of what happened that day when he says they were baptized into one body. The many individuals were made one. So it was like a birth: a spiritual being called the church was born on that day.
I think it is absolutely critical that the Lord reveal deep in our spirits that the church is not a man-made organization or some form that man has developed through the ages. The church was born, and it was born with spiritual life.
That life began to take on an outward form. What was the outward form of that life within the church? It resulted in the teaching of the apostles, the fellowship of the apostles, the breaking of bread, and prayers.
That became the outward expression of the inward life of the church—the spiritual being called the church.
It is interesting to me that we had a new baby introduced this morning. Actually, on the same day that she was born, my grandson was born—my first grandson, which I have already spoken about and probably will many times hereafter.
What is amazing is that, when that child was born, his mother was in travail. I guarantee you, if you talk to her, she can tell you a little bit about what travail is about. But this child was born with life, and he had an outward form.
He had two hands, two arms, two legs, two eyes, and he did have a little hair on his head—just things that are typical of every child that is born.
I got to thinking about this and said, “Well, that is not too good an example, because there are other things that have one head, two arms, two legs, and a body that are not human beings.” But he has human life because he came forth from human beings, of which we all are human beings because our parents were human.
In other words, the church came forth from the life of Christ. It was born of His life.
I mentioned this not too long ago: when the soldier pierced His side, blood and water came out. That became the basis of this birth that we see on Pentecost, because the blood was for the remission of sins and for our continual cleansing, and the body was broken to give us His life.
On Pentecost, all who knew the Lord Jesus Christ were baptized into one body. A birth took place. It was a living spiritual being. That is what the church is. It is a very living thing.
It has spiritual life, and that spiritual life has form. That is what we see in these scriptures in Acts: the form that that life took on. It resulted in these four basic elements: the teaching of the apostles, the fellowship of the apostles, breaking of bread, and prayer.
This morning, I would just like to begin to share on these four things: the teaching of the apostles, the fellowship of the apostles, breaking of bread, and prayer. I will do breaking of bread last, because it is really on my heart to get out the real meaning and essence of what the Lord’s table is and how precious it is to the Lord.
It is the least regarded thing in the life of the early church. It is the thing that today is least regarded, yet it is the thing that is most precious in the Lord’s heart. I do want to spend some time on that. But this morning, we will see how far we get with this.
Let us begin with the teaching of the apostles in the early church.
Interestingly enough, it says the teaching of the apostles, not the teachings of the apostles. It is not plural. What does that mean?
It means Paul did not have a teaching of his own. Peter did not have a teaching of his own. Apollos did not have his own teaching. There were not many teachings out there. There was really one teaching.
Now, each of these brothers who taught the Word of God—all of these apostles—were different. They had different emphases, as you read in the Scriptures. But it was really only one teaching.
I want to emphasize that there was really only one teaching: the teaching of Jesus Christ. What these brothers reported to us was what they had seen and heard from the Lord Himself—even Paul.
Remember, Paul said, “What has been revealed to me, I share with you.” His revelation came from the Lord. He went to great lengths to explain that he had spent only, I think, fifteen days with the apostles, and that the Lord had given him direct revelation of much of what he shared.
What these apostles were sharing was really what they had seen and heard of Jesus Christ. So the teaching of the apostles is really the teaching of Jesus Christ. We need to be absolutely clear that each apostle did not have his own teaching. They were one in what they taught, because they were one in Christ.
The enemy immediately started working against the teaching of the apostles, or the teaching of Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians, Paul responded to the church at Corinth. He said, “You are carnal. You have all of these problems and issues among you.”
The first thing Paul talks about in the Corinthian church is that he heard there were contentions among them. Some said, “I am of Paul,” others said, “I am of Apollos,” others, “I am of Cephas,” and some, “I am of Christ,” as if to exclude the others from their own little group.
In other words, men were beginning to gather around the man whom they were fondest of. Paul quickly addresses this. He says it is all one Spirit; Christ is not divided. You cannot divide Christ. It is one teaching.
You need to be able to receive from all of these men what the Lord is telling you. You cannot just pick and choose. You need to hear what the Spirit is saying through all of these men and receive it as from the Lord.
So immediately we see the adversary beginning to work, even while the apostles were still alive.
In the Galatian church, Paul had gone out on his first trip, and the church in Galatia was raised up. Within ten years, by his third trip, he says in Galatians 1:11-12:
The gospel which was preached by me is not after man.
For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it,
but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ.
Then in Galatians 3:1, he says:
O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you,
before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth crucified?
Immediately, the enemy was at work concerning the Word of God—the teaching of Jesus Christ. What had happened was that some Judaizers had come in. Judaizers were Jews who had accepted Jesus Christ but were clinging tightly to Jewish traditions and ceremonies.
They came in saying, “Yes, you have accepted Christ. But if you are going to get anywhere, if you are going to grow in Christ, if you are going to really grow in this Christian life, you need to follow all the Jewish ceremonies.”
Many of the Jewish ceremonies were not biblical at all, but they felt they needed to follow the tradition of the fathers. Of course, in Acts there was an actual council over this whole issue, and it was decided that Gentiles did not need to be circumcised or brought into Judaism.
But even after that council, much confusion reigned in the church because of what the enemy was doing. These Judaizers even followed Paul. Paul would go into one place, and they would come right behind him and try to discourage the saints and get them away from the Word of God.
The Galatian church just wanted to grow. They wanted to be spiritual. The Judaizers said, “We have the answer for you.” The answer was not Christ; the answer was following all of these ceremonies and traditions. That was the answer to spiritual growth.
In other words, they said, “Yes, you need Christ, but you need something else.” We have called that the religion of Christ plus something. You need something more than Christ.
So we see how the enemy was working in the churches concerning the Word of God. It was an issue of law and grace. We know that salvation is by grace.
The letter to the Galatians was the one Martin Luther used so much in his ministry. It was saying that you cannot come to salvation by following the law, even the law that God had given. You will not be able to obtain salvation that way. So it became a battle between law and grace.
The Colossian church had begun worshiping angels. They had gotten into this study of angels and had put angels in a place they were not intended to be. They began to look at them as something like gods. They were actually getting into angel worship.
Paul’s declaration to the Colossian church was, “Look, you are complete in Christ. You will not find completion in anything else. Why are you worshiping angels? Only Jesus Christ should be worshiped.”
But we see this turmoil going on. In 2 Timothy, Paul speaks of Hymenaeus and Philetus—forgive me for the pronunciations. These two men had begun teaching the churches that Christ had already come back, that the resurrection had already passed, and that they had missed it. There was no hope for them.
Once again, this was not true. The truth was being perverted, even in the early church. In Thyatira, in Revelation, I have already mentioned that Jezebel was actually teaching idol worship.
That was toward the end of the first century. Christianity had been in effect for about sixty years at that point. So you see how quickly things had begun to deteriorate.
As I mentioned in my opening statement, by the time of the Reformation, Christianity had been so Judaized—and by Judaized, I mean it had resulted in form, custom, and tradition—that Christ was out of the picture.
The Bible was no longer known. Even the common people could not understand it, because it was written in a language they did not know. They were told that they had to go to special ones, the clergy, to get any understanding of what was in the Bible.
It resulted in the Dark Ages. Remember that: if you take Christ out of your life, darkness will come in.
That happened in Christianity, brothers and sisters, and it resulted in worldwide darkness. It is amazing to me when you look today at countries that have rejected Jesus Christ and see how dark it is—how tragic.
We in America have been blessed. I think it is because, regardless of how poor the testimony here in America is, there is still something of a testimony to Jesus Christ in America. God is longsuffering, desiring that we would return to Him, that this nation as a nation would return back to its God.
Christians are to be the salt of the earth, brothers and sisters. We here are called to be the salt of this earth, of this world that we are in now. We have to stand for the truth.
We know today that the true Christian faith is under great attack and that men are now calling us evil instead of good. That seems to be the way the world is going at this moment.
I only say that to say that God finally moved, as we determined, I think, in the sixteenth century, to begin to recover what was lost down through the centuries—to get back to the basic elements of what the early church had, possessed, and practiced.
One of those things was simply having the Bible made available to the common man. That occurred during the Reformation. God brought the truth about salvation by grace through Martin Luther.
A man is justified by faith. Justification by faith was the rallying song of the Reformation.
Today, we have heard it so much that I am afraid it has become fairly common to us, and we say, “Oh yeah, a man is justified by faith.” But remember, many of the Reformers died because of their faith.
They believed and saw that a man was justified by faith and by Jesus Christ in Him alone—that all of Christianity consisted because of Jesus Christ and was centered upon Jesus Christ.
As I have said, God began recovery through the Reformers. I believe today God would have us join with the Reformers in recovering, particularly in this area of the Word of God.
God has brought a lot to light through these centuries since the Reformation. Not only has there been justification by faith, but soon after that, I think of Jessie Penn-Lewis and some of the others who realized that what we needed was an exchanged life, not a reformed life.
We do not need a life where you just try to do good and do the best with what you have—to take the old flesh and change it. They saw from the Word of God that there had to be a fundamental change: that we were crucified with Christ on the cross.
That is the truth that sets you free. We have been crucified. Have you entered into the reality that you have been crucified with Christ on the cross? Not only did He take care of your sins on the cross; He did away with you on the cross as well.
Now, the glorious part of that is that you have been raised in Christ into newness of life, and you have His spiritual life within you today. That was recovered. Those great truths were recovered.
In the eighteenth century, the Lord began to move and recovered the truth of the body of Jesus Christ—that indeed it was a living reality. It was something that was born. The church was born, not just an organization of men.
We do not know what else, in the matter of truth, God may still have to recover before He comes back. But we know that we are asked to be before the Lord in His Word, to seek Him in His Word—not that we are looking for new revelation. We are simply discovering what has been there since the early church.
Not only are we to see what the truth is, but we are to enter into that truth, that it becomes real in our lives.
Today we know that we have many, many interpretations of the truth. We need to be clear: there is only one truth. There is only one faith. It says we need to contend for the faith.
That faith is the knowledge and truth about Jesus Christ—Who He is and His work. That is the truth. Christ is the truth. When we discover the truth, we are discovering Who Christ is.
But today we have many interpretations, and we also have some heresies. Heresy is something that is against what the truth says about Jesus Christ and the nature and character of Jesus Christ.
For instance, a heresy today is to say that Jesus Christ is really not God, that He was just a man or merely a prophet. That is heresy because it is against the nature of Jesus Christ.
But there are other things that are not necessarily heresy; they are different interpretations. For example, the parousia of the Lord—the coming back of the Lord. Some believe in premillennialism, some in postmillennialism, and some in amillennialism. These are different interpretations, but we would not necessarily call them heresies.
They are not against the nature and character of Christ. Basically, it is a matter of timing and how things are going to work.
Today we have many interpretations. Unfortunately, in Christianity, the early church simply came and shared Christ. The apostles shared the Word, and what they were sharing was about Christ. It was pure, and they heard it.
But, as we have already seen, different interpretations began to come forth. The Judaizers said, “Yes, you need this, but you need other things as well.”
So today, brothers and sisters, how can we as Christians come together with all our different interpretations and really follow the Lord together and recover what was in the early church?
Ephesians 4:3 and 13 become the keys to our being able to meet together with our different interpretations. In verse 3, we are encouraged to maintain the unity of the Spirit.
Then, in verse 13, we come to the unity of the faith. You have to tie those two together: maintain the unity of the Spirit until you come to the unity of the faith.
What does that mean? We all have one Spirit, and there is just one truth. What the Lord is saying is that when you come together and have a different interpretation, you seek the Lord together. You look at the Word together.
You look to the Holy Spirit to begin to develop and reveal to you what the truth is—what the faith is—because there is only one truth.
One day, this will all be resolved. There will indeed only be one faith. But today we live on earth, and we are to be a testimony—to recover that testimony of oneness in Christ and to be able to come together even with different interpretations.
How do we do that? When we come together, we say, “Okay, brother, you know I do not necessarily agree with you here, but I am open. I will pray. I will share. I will think about it. We will pray together. We will look at the Word. We will share the Word together and see how the Lord moves.”
Probably one of the best examples in this fellowship is Kenny and me. This has been thirty-two years ago, Kenny—something like that; at least thirty years ago. Kenny and I met when we were both working at the city of Richmond.
Forgive me, Kenny, if I use you as an example. He does not mind; if he can handle the copier, he can handle this.
I remember when I first met Kenneth. He was a summer student there; he would work during the summer. Kenny does not remember this, but I do very plainly because he had this long blond hair down to his belt, and he was a hippie.
I went out and tried to share Christ with him. I asked him if he believed in the Bible, and he said, “No. It is just written by man.”
The next summer when he came to work, I happened to overhear Kenny talking to some other men. He was sharing Christ with them and was quite enthusiastic about it.
I remember going up to Kenny and saying, “I see that you know the Lord.” He said, “Oh yeah, I know the Lord.” I said, “Well, do you believe the Bible is the Word of God?” I asked him the same question again. He said, “Every word.”
So Kenny and I began to fellowship together. What was unique is that Kenny’s background was Assemblies of God, Pentecostal, and I was a hard-shell Baptist.
We would not look at the book of Acts. We were scared to go into the book of Acts because it talked about the gifts of the Spirit and the Holy Spirit. We thought all of that went out with the apostles. Therefore, the book of Acts had very little value to us, and we honestly did not know how to deal with it.
But Kenny and I would get together every day at lunch and share together. I think we began to share around The Normal Christian Life, that little book. The Lord just helped us share Christ with one another. It was just a spirit.
I was open to the Lord at that time, and Kenny was too. Kenny even took me to a couple of Pentecostal meetings, where a brother laid hands on us—something I had never experienced before. I thought that was quite interesting.
He did say, though, that we would be together and minister together for many years, which has occurred.
I remember being shocked at one meeting I went to with Kenny. This brother said, “All right, I am going to play Psalm something.” I do not know what it was. I thought he was going to play a psalm, but he was playing a song.
He sat down at the piano, and I finally figured out that he was kind of making it up as he went along to go with the Scriptures in song. But I saw that there was an anointing on this brother. I did not realize it was an anointing at the time, but that is what it was.
As the years went on, Kenny and I began to share more and more. Actually, we have come to some of the faith that we both share, believe is true, and know is one.
That is what God intends, brothers and sisters. We should not reject one another because we have a different interpretation, or gather around different interpretations or men who have special emphases.
That does not mean you cannot hear brothers and sisters who have some kind of special emphasis, because they have something of Christ to share. We need to hear what Christ has to share with us. But it is really one teaching.
Secondly—and I have really gone into it—you have to stand on the ground of the church. Now, do not let that term throw you. The ground of the church is not scriptural; in other words, you will not find that phrase in Scripture.
But it basically means that you come and share with one another, or minister the Word with one another, on the basis that we are all one in Jesus Christ.
That is why I can hear your interpretation, or I can give mine, but I do not have to insist. I can maintain the unity of the Spirit.
In other words, the ground of the church is this: if Christ has received you, how can I refuse you, even if you do not believe the way I do?
Honestly, brothers and sisters, that does not mean you have to accept heresy. Do not get off on that trail. But with all these interpretations that we have, the Lord is working out the faith.
There is the truth, and one day we will come to the faith. What a glorious day that will be. There will be no more arguments and no more dissertations on all these different views. There will be one view.
If you look at it all, all you will see, I guarantee you, is Jesus Christ. That is what you are really going to see. Thank God for that.
That is what the early church had, brothers and sisters. We need to continue to study and fellowship together in the Word. It is important. That is how it is recovered.
I confess for my own self how little study I really do when I think about how much time I have. But anyway, you must let the Holy Spirit lead you when you are studying the Word.
We must let the Holy Spirit touch our hearts. We must let the Holy Spirit enlighten us and begin to give us things and share with us.
Now listen to this. The Word is very clear on how we are to share the Word with one another and how we receive the Word of God. It says in John 16:13—these are the Lord’s words:
When He, the Spirit of truth, is come,
He shall guide you into all the truth.
It is the work of the Holy Spirit to guide you into all truth. It is not my job. It is not your parents’ job. It is the Holy Spirit’s job.
He may use me or you as a vessel, but it is really the work of the Holy Spirit. That is the point I am making. If it is you—if you are having to convince and struggle in the flesh—then it is not Jesus Christ; it is not the Holy Spirit.
But He has promised us that He, the Spirit of truth, which is the Holy Spirit, will guide you into all truth. You have to believe that in faith: that if you really are seeking Him, He will guide you into all truth.
In John 16:14, it says, speaking of the Holy Spirit:
He shall glorify Me:
for He shall take of Mine,
and shall declare it unto you.
So, brothers and sisters, in all our study and listening to the Word, listening to one another, and sharing Christ with one another, we should always be aware: “Lord, I need to hear. I need to be enlightened. I need the Holy Spirit to reveal to me.”
In 1 Corinthians 14:32, Paul is trying to deal with some of the issues in the Corinthian church. They had all kinds of people who said they were prophets and were standing up and prophesying. Paul said, first of all, you have to do it in order, because the life of the Lord Jesus is always orderly.
Then he said:
And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.
The Lord brings in another aspect of our life in Him. We need to look to the Holy Spirit, and when we feel that the Holy Spirit has given us something or enlightened us, we share that with other brothers and sisters.
They may say, “Amen,” or they may say, “Something just does not sound right. I have a check in my heart.” In other words, brothers and sisters, we are part of the body of Christ.
You may like to get revelation on your own, have your own way of thinking and your own doctrines, but it does not work in the church. The church is born of one Spirit. It has one life and one Spirit.
So the spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets. You can say, “Well, look, brother, there is a check in my heart.” You may know what that check is. You may know exactly what the issue is, and the Holy Spirit will reveal it to you. You can share that with your brother and say, “This is why I am not quite in agreement.”
You do not have to stand up and say, “Brother, you are absolutely wrong. You are in heresy,” or anything like that. No, you maintain the unity of the Spirit as you share with one another.
Take, for instance, the Elizabeth Smart abduction. The man who abducted her called himself Emmanuel.
When we heard the story of what he had done, we knew that this man absolutely, with no doubt, believed he was a prophet of God and believed he had the right to do exactly what he did because he had been given revelation that he needed seven wives.
Most of us guys would realize we do not need seven wives. I hope you realize that anyway.
If he had come and shared with me, I might not have been able to resist just telling him he was off his rocker. But still, you would have to say, “Look, brother, there is something wrong here. This does not even agree with the Word of God.”
How can abducting someone and taking someone agree with the Word of God? What you have done is against the Word of God.
In other words, we can never be totally on our own, brothers and sisters. It is always a danger when a brother or sister gets something they feel is from the Lord and clings so tightly to it.
Then we say, “But we have a check.” Now, we may be wrong—do not get me wrong—but there are times when it is pretty clear. When we run into a lot of checks from brothers and sisters, we need to take heed.
What has happened to this man is that the enemy has put a stronghold in his mind. I am not sure, and I say this very cautiously, that he can be delivered from it. He has become so obsessed that I am not sure he can even be saved from that obsession.
But the Lord knows. The Lord knows. I just use that as an example, brothers and sisters, that in coming back and recovering the truth, we need our brothers and sisters. We need to hear. We need to fellowship together.
What does this lead to? This is very interesting. In Ephesians 3:18-19, Paul says:
That ye may be able to comprehend with all the saints
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,
that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.
So, brothers and sisters, if we can maintain the unity of the Spirit, fellowship with one another, share with one another, and have our checks and balances in the Holy Spirit, the Lord will begin to reveal truth to us.
Truth that we already know will become alive to you as it never has before. All of a sudden, you will begin to see that what you have entered into is seeing the depth, the height, the length, and the fullness of Jesus Christ. That knowledge will do something in you.
When we share, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to anoint us as we share the Word, like I am doing today, or as we give an opening. As we prepare for our message or opening, we need to be praying that the Holy Spirit will anoint us and give us from Him what we need to share and emphasize.
We need to ask the Lord to reveal to our hearts what it is He wants to say. As we are sharing, we need to ask that the Holy Spirit would anoint us, that it might be in the power of the Spirit.
We need to ask that the Lord would anoint His Word, that it would actually open our eyes and understanding. Without the Holy Spirit, you will learn nothing—or what you learn will end up being mere knowledge, which will probably be difficult to overcome.
Then we need to meditate on what the Lord has shared with us. You know, in any message, they say that you are lucky to retain three percent of what you hear.
So it is important. Honestly, I do it: we sit there and say, “Okay, whatever kind of bowls me over when this brother is speaking, I will remember that.” Sometimes the Lord says, “No, you need to meditate on what is being shared.”
Let the Holy Spirit work deep in your spirit and bring forth what He wants for you—to show you Christ.
The early church loved the Word of God. I was reminded—I think it is in Acts 20—you remember Eutychus, I think that was the young man’s name. He was up in the third loft, and Paul was preaching.
It says Paul preached until midnight, and they stayed. They loved it. I mean, they were there. But this young man was overcome, fell asleep, and fell out of the loft. He died.
But the Holy Spirit was so powerful, so strong in those days. Paul just went and prayed for him and raised him.
The point is that in that first love, there is a tremendous love for the Word of God. May the Lord recover that in His church and in His people in this day and in this hour.
May we recover the love of God’s Word. May we join with those Reformers who were seeking the truth. May we maintain the unity of the Spirit as we share the Word of God together.
May we look to the Holy Spirit to enlighten, to anoint, and to do His work in our hearts. Then we will come to the full knowledge of Jesus Christ. May the Lord help us. We will continue next time.
Lord, we do come to Thee today. I know that the thing on my heart so much is that, Lord, we would rise up and recover the life and testimony that we see in this early church.
First of all, Lord, we look to Thee that You would recover in us and in Your church the love for truth—the love to have Jesus Christ revealed as we look into the Word, the love to receive Jesus Christ.
Lord, return us to first love that we see in this early church. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.