Philippians 3:10
That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection,
and the fellowship of His sufferings,
becoming conformed unto His death.
Ephesians 1:15-23
Wherefore I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and the love which ye show toward all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers;
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him;
having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,
and what the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might
which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:
and He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
Beloved Lord, how glad we are that we are found in Your presence. Lord, we want to ask that You will meet us this evening.
Lord, we pray that Your Holy Spirit will be at work throughout this time. Many of us may know the truth, but Lord, we pray that it may come home to us with fresh clarity and power.
Lord, let Your resurrection life and power swallow up everything this evening. Open the eyes of our hearts. Touch the very centre of our being.
It has always pleased You, Lord, to make Your power known in weakness. We are all weak people. Lord, let Your power be manifested this night.
We thank You, Lord. You have said about the ministry of Your Word that it is death in those who minister and life in those to whom the Word is ministered. So let it be, Lord.
We thank You for the anointing, grace, and power which is ours in the Lord Jesus. May the Holy Spirit make it a glorious reality. Into that anointing, grace, and power, we stand by faith—for the speaking of Your Word, the translating of Your Word, and the hearing of Your Word.
We ask all this in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
I think you all know, by the way, this is the first time I can see you all. I think they have turned the lights up. Only the first two rows I cannot see. Now I can see everybody who falls asleep. See, that is why I wanted the lights to come up.
You must all know now that my responsibility in these times has been knowing Christ in His resurrection. I am not going to go over what we have said in the last two evenings, for we will not have time to cover what I believe we need to this evening.
I want to talk about the church. The church is found only in the resurrection life and power of the Lord Jesus.
In that glorious resurrection life of the Lord Jesus, a new man has been born. It is wholly within the life of the Lord Jesus.
It is an amazing fact that everything about the life of the church should be resurrection life and power. Supremely, the church is the witness in the world to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
The church cannot be put together by man, although men have always been trying to put her together. The church cannot be set up by human beings, although even saved human beings are all the time trying to set up churches.
You know that the church can only be born of God. It is planted by the Holy Spirit. It is something alive. It is something beyond the capability of man—even biblically knowledgeable man, even theologically correct man.
The church is something found within the resurrection life and power of the Lord Jesus. Where is He tonight? At this very moment, He is at the right hand of God.
It is the Holy Spirit that makes that resurrection life and power a reality in human beings. Then we discover one another in the Lord. Then we are committed to Christ in one another. That is the way the church is born.
I am very well aware that only the Holy Spirit can open the eyes of our hearts on this matter.
The great mistake of church history—we see it on every page, and we see it today all around us, in every country—is what I call Old Testament Christianity.
Now, do not get me wrong. My Bible consists of an Old Testament and a New Testament. I do not have a Bible that consists of twenty-seven books. My Bible consists of sixty-six books.
Nor do I think the New Testament is superior to the Old Testament. That is humanistic nonsense. I cannot believe that something given to us by the Holy Spirit two thousand years ago is more inspired than what He gave to us four thousand years ago.
If God spoke four thousand years ago, five thousand years ago, six thousand years ago, or two thousand years ago, God spoke. It was essential. It is God’s Word. It must be authoritative, practical, and relevant, in all its parts—from Genesis through Revelation.
But nevertheless, there is a very real difference between the new covenant and the old covenant.
In the old covenant, it was all special places, sacred places, special people, sacred people, special buildings, sacred buildings. That is what I call Old Testament Christianity.
Of course, if we are born again, we have to meet somewhere. We are, of course, meeting in Christ, on the foundation of Christ, in the heavenly places.
We believers are extraordinary people. We are on the earth and, at the same time, in heavenly places—the only people in the world in two places at once. Is that not amazing?
The church is also on earth, but she is in the heavenlies at the same time. Now, is that too much for you to understand? Of course we have to meet together, so there must be a place where we meet. It may be a home. It may be some other building.
The point is this: there is a vast difference between something that is an organization attached to a particular place and building, with particular people running it, and the church.
It is no easy matter to explain, but really, so much of what is called church is in the same area as the synagogue in the old covenant and the temple in the old covenant.
Let me try to explain. Do you remember that before Pentecost, one hundred and twenty born-again believers met in an upper room in Jerusalem? They were all there. The apostles were there. Mary, the mother of our Lord, was there. His brothers were there.
It was amazing. They were all one hundred and twenty born-again believers. They were absolutely sound in doctrine. They believed in the authority of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. There was no New Testament; it was in the making.
They believed in the authority, relevance, and inspiration of those thirty-nine books. They had absolute faith in the Lord Jesus—in His virgin birth, His sinlessness, His Messiahship, His atoning death, His resurrection on the third day, and, of course, His ascension.
They had been witnesses. With their eyes, they had seen much of what had happened. They were clear about the Lord Jesus. They had pure doctrine, absolute faith in the risen, glorified Messiah, and absolute trust in the Word of God—its authority and inspiration.
Even more remarkable, they were absolutely one. That is always an amazing thing when believers are one, even for a few weeks. They were there with one accord—no dissenting voice. This is incredible for Jews.
I do not know about Chinese, but I do know about Jews. It is very hard to ever get Jews to really be together. David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, was once asked, “What is it like to be prime minister of Israel?” He said, “It is like being prime minister of three million prime ministers.”
Here we have one hundred and twenty born-again believers: sound doctrine, absolute trust in the Word of God, and faith in the Lord Jesus. Actually, He Himself had been teaching them and opening their understanding to the things concerning the kingdom of God.
Now here is my question: would you not call that a perfect church? Is that not the kind of church we all long for? I just think there is something more.
They met together with fasting and prayer. Oh, God, I wonder how many assemblies here ever fast and pray. I mean, this is an exceptional congregation. If everything called by the name church in San Francisco were such an assembly, we would be thrilled.
But the Lord Jesus said, “That is not it. You must wait until the Holy Spirit comes upon you.”
It is almost as if the Lord Jesus was afraid that they would get up and start congregations everywhere. They were so full of zeal, so devoted. They would take off and start congregations all over the place. They would all be born-again believers, sound in the Word of God, with faith in the Lord Jesus.
But He said, “Wait. Wait until the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”
On that day of Pentecost, when the Lord Jesus received the promised Holy Spirit and poured Him out, the one hundred and twenty individuals—the perfect congregation—became one hundred and twenty members, one hundred and twenty limbs, of a body.
It is a dimensional difference.
A congregation, however perfect and sound, can be organized. It can be organized like any human or social club. But the body is something that cannot be organized by man.
The organization is within the resurrection life of its risen Head. It is the Holy Spirit that produces the ministry. It is the Holy Spirit who gifts the members. It is the Holy Spirit that enables the members to function, only in relation to a Head who cannot be seen.
Dear brothers and sisters, do you follow me?
A congregation can be put together. A congregation can be set up. To use a peculiarly American term, a church like this can be “got off the ground.” Actually, it never gets off the ground. It is something that belongs to the earth—to this earth.
The body of Christ is in another dimension. You have to break the spiritual sound barrier to be in that dimension. That is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
There was nothing wrong with the temple, even the synagogue. But in the new covenant, it is something beyond man’s capability, beyond his power. It is something only the Holy Spirit can do.
Now someone says to me, “Well, this is ridiculous. Do you mean to tell me that we have all got to sit around until somehow, mystically, God does something?”
No, I am saying this: where there are two or three born-again believers, and they come together on the foundation of the Lord Jesus and refuse to reject any other born-again believer whom Christ has received, you have the beginning.
But until there comes, by the Spirit of God, a commitment to Christ in one another, the church cannot be born by the Holy Spirit. You can only have an Old Testament Christianity.
Has that puzzled you? Has it confused you all?
Let me look at this from another angle. Have you ever noticed a remarkable thing in the Gospel of John? In John 15, I am going to read just a few verses.
John 15:1-5
I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.
Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit, He taketh it away: and every branch that beareth fruit, He cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit.
Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you.
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me.
I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from Me ye can do nothing.
I am neither a scientist nor a mathematician. I hated mathematics. But I do know one thing: nothing is nothing. It does not matter how many times you multiply nought; it equals nought.
Jesus said, “Apart from Me ye can do nothing.” It does not matter how much biblical knowledge you have. It does not even matter how clear you are on church principles. Apart from the Lord Jesus, you can do nothing.
The vine has always been a symbol of the chosen people of God. Josephus tells us that one of the great wonders of the world in his day was to be seen in the temple.
It was a great filigree vine of pure gold. It was worked in pure gold—branches, leaves, tendrils, fruit.
Jesus said, “I am the vine.” How could He say, “I am the people of God?” The Lord Jesus was always saying extraordinary things: “I am the bread of life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the resurrection. I am the door. I am the good shepherd.”
Some of these things are difficult to understand; others are very easy. But it was a puzzle to them. “I am the bread of life. He that eateth Me shall live for ever.” They had never heard anything like this.
When He said, “I am the good shepherd,” it was understandable. If He said, “I am the door,” it was a little puzzling, but understandable. But when He said, “I am the true vine,” and then made it perfectly clear, “Abide in Me, and I in you. I am the vine; ye are the branches,” it opened something deeper.
He is not simply the trunk and we are the branches. He never said that. He said, “I am the vine.” The root, the trunk, the branches, the leaves, the tendrils, the blossom, the fruit—I am everything that the vine is.
And you are in Me. Abide in Me, and I in you. Apart from Me, you can do nothing.
There is one very good thing about the old King James Version: it uses very old language. When it says “thou,” it means an individual. But “you” is plural.
We normally understand this declaration of the Lord Jesus in completely personal terms. He is the vine; I am a branch; I am in Him; and in this way I bear fruit.
But the Lord was talking about the people of God. That is why they put that golden vine on the entrance of the temple. It had something to do with the dwelling place of God, something to do with His home.
Let us put it another way: the Lord Jesus is far too great to be contained in one born-again believer. He is the vine. He says, “Abide in Me.”
Now, the church is the vine. Once again, we discover something tremendous. It is not something impersonal. It is not just a collection of individuals who are born again and sound in doctrine.
It is, in some amazing way, an incorporation of every born-again believer into Christ.
Oh dear, do you find it all too much this evening? I do not see you asleep, and I am glad. I do not know about the two rows in front here; they may be fast asleep.
Let us come back to this. Matthew 18:20—you have heard this, even if you are the youngest believer in this place.
Matthew 18:20
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
What does the Lord mean? First of all, there is one little word at the beginning: “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst.”
The general idea is that regardless of believers gathering in the name of the Lord, the Lord is therefore in the midst of them. We may not understand what “in the name” means, but we are gathering in the name of the Lord. But it means far more than that.
The Greek is a preposition of motion: into the name. That is, those two or three believers are somehow incorporated in such a way that they can speak to the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Let me explain this another way. Do you see me? This is my body. This is my head. Is there another name for this part? There is only one name: Lance Lambert. That is the name of the head, and my whole body shares that name.
Here is Jonathan Pong. He has fingers just like mine, but his fingers cannot speak in the name of Lance Lambert. They can only meet in the name of Jonathan Pong. He has hands, feet, and all the members of his body; they belong to the fellowship of Jonathan Pong.
His fingers live in the name of Jonathan Pong. His hands work in the name of Jonathan Pong. His feet walk in the name of Jonathan Pong. When the members of his body call upon the head, they call upon the head in the name of Jonathan Pong.
Listen carefully.
Matthew 18:19-20
Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father who is in heaven.
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
We do not agree in order to agree. That is a false understanding. It is that we are agreed by the Holy Spirit. The word is symphōneō, from which we get the English word symphony. We are harmonised.
What the Head wants is transmitted by the Holy Spirit to the members of the body, and they act. They fulfil the will of God in the name of the Head. They stand, and withstand, and having done all, stand in the name of the Head.
Does it begin to dawn on you something tonight? I hope so. Oh, what a wonderful thing it is when that is a church—a gathering of born-again believers filled with resurrection life and power.
Beloved brothers and sisters, our assemblies—I am not talking about particular ones—are sometimes the most boring places on earth.
They are like old steam engines trying to get up a mountain. There is no power. There is no life. Sometimes when people pray, you cannot even hear them. What is the point in praying when we cannot hear? “Well, God hears them.” Yes, but then they might as well go home and pray by themselves. How can I say amen to something I cannot even hear?
We feel somehow unworthy. But how tremendous it is when the measure of resurrection life and power of the Lord Jesus courses through the members of the body.
Then we stand against the wiles of the devil. We stand in the evil day. Having done all, we stand.
Let me come again at this from another angle. There is a term used of the church which is only used in the New Testament: head and body.
Ephesians 1:22-23
And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
Colossians 1:18
And He is the head of the body, the church.
The problem is that so many believers look upon Jesus as Head as if He were the head of a university, the head of a hospital, the head of a school, or the head of a government. We are here, and He is there.
That is not how the Holy Spirit has introduced this term in the New Testament. It is as head and body.
Let me say what I have said many times: you have never seen a living headless body. You have never seen a living bodiless head. The whole meaning of this term is that head and body are together.
Of course, it is true that the Lord Jesus exists apart from us. Of course, we will never devalue His divinity. But this picture is to illustrate something: the church is an organic union. The church is a living organism.
It can only function when the Head and the body are together. The moment you alienate the Head, the body is paralysed. The moment you divorce the Head, the body begins to die.
This is an amazing picture. This body was produced by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
Again, there is something remarkable: the emphasis is always on the Head.
Colossians 2:19
And not holding fast the Head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God.
In other words, the body can only really discover itself when it discovers its Lord.
The church only functions when she is in living union with her Head.
Ephesians 4:15-16
But speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him, who is the head, even Christ;
from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.
It is only as you grow up into Christ the Head that you discover the body. What an interesting term: “Grow up into Him in all things.”
This is a corporate thing. I am growing up into Him as Head. You are growing up into Him as Head. He is growing up into Him who is Head. Then we discover one another.
Let me put it yet another way. The church is a living organism. When it is in living union with its Head, nothing is impossible.
It will turn the world upside down. It will have such an impact even upon fallen human society that society can be changed.
When the church is where it ought to be, it does not become a mere organisation, a mere institution, a mere tradition, or a denominational system. When it does, society is not touched, and the world is not touched.
When the Holy Spirit brought the resurrection life and power of the Lord Jesus into that one hundred and twenty, three thousand more were saved, and the whole of Jerusalem was turned upside down.
Then, in the end, the whole Roman world was affected. There were no theological seminaries, no great Bible schools as such, no great organisation. I am not saying such organisations are wrong. What I am saying is that they had nothing of it.
It was one hundred and twenty. It was the risen Head in one hundred and twenty members. It is as simple as that.
Now you can see the satanic strategy: always to move the body from the Head, and even to substitute another head.
Wherever you look in church history, in every great movement of the Spirit of God, it was as if He were realigning the people of God, bringing them back to the original path.
I call them mini-Pentecosts. It always began with the Holy Spirit. Who produced the light that shone into the heart of Martin Luther when he suddenly understood that the just shall live by faith? Who took hold of that simple man, George Fox?
I could go on and on. I could speak of Wesley, of Darby, of Müller, of Newton, of some of the early Pentecostals, of some of the Charismatics. Every time it has been the Lord Jesus.
Let me put it this way: it has been the fact that Jesus is enthroned at the right hand of God that has been recognised.
In every one of these movements, you had certain features:
In that sense, in every one there has been some expression of the body of Christ—until finally man has taken over again.
We must begin to close, but may I say something about the headship of Christ? Whenever this term is used, it has the body, or the church, in view.
The Lord Jesus can be personal, but the headship of Jesus is always corporate.
I believe that the most vital and strategic need is the matter of the headship of the Lord Jesus.
Real leadership is a question of men who hear the Lord. This is true on every level of church life. If we do not recognise Jesus as Head, we are in trouble.
It is not just a question of recognising the Lord Jesus as Head. We need to have an ear that hears what He is saying.
Wherever the church is built and expressed in reality, the fullness of its life is dependent upon whether there are people who are able to get on their knees and seek the Lord.
Oh, how many times I remember when I lived in Britain, when we had some big problem. Of course, we brothers prayed about it. Then we would take it to the Lord, and sometimes we put aside the whole week’s routine and simply got on our knees to seek the Lord.
Every time that happened, a renewing went to the whole assembly, as if the Head were realigning us.
Here is a very funny thing—well, I say funny; I do not want to be irreverent, but only the Lord could do this. We brothers often did not have the answer.
Then, at the end of a prayer time, some dear little old sister would come up, stand there almost trembling, and say, “Do forgive me. I do not think it is my place to say anything, but as we were praying, I think the Lord gave me…”
Then she would turn to a Scripture and read it. As she read that Scripture, I would say, “She has got it.” She hit the nail on the head.
What about all the big brothers? You could say, “Oh, those big brothers, they are no good. How did they not hear?” Do you know what the Lord said to me? “Do not get upset. This is the way I balance the body.”
That is exactly what it says in 1 Corinthians 12. There are parts of the body that are as important as any other part.
The biggest problem with those who represent the headship of the Lord Jesus is that we become turned in on ourselves, and we do not realise it. We become proud.
It is a tremendous thing to have an ear for the Lord. Sometimes the Lord will speak to the simplest, poorest, weakest member of the body.
The power in the church, the livingness in the church, and the renewing of the church are all dependent upon hearing the Head.
When I was first saved, I had never read the Bible. Everything about the Bible was new and, to a certain extent, strange to me. I used to be full of questions—questions that other people did not seem to have.
One of them concerned Moses and Aaron. Everywhere I went in the Scriptures, I found that they were always falling flat on their faces before the Lord. I thought, “These great men are to be the leaders of God’s people. Why are they always falling on their faces before the Lord?”
Every time there was a problem, they fell on their faces before the Lord. But of all the people in the children of Israel, I thought to myself, they were the ones who knew what to do. Since the Lord had given them the law, why did they not do something?
But they fell on their faces before the Lord. That is the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
Knowledge is knowing what the facts are. Many go ahead and apply the facts, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Wisdom is to know from the Lord how to apply the facts.
That is why Moses was called the meekest man on the face of the earth. He was teachable. That is the key.
That is why, again and again and again in the history of the church, the church has died: because knowledge has replaced wisdom. Wisdom comes through dependence upon the Lord.
Just two other things. This living organism, the church, is so designed by God that it can expand and contract. It can go forward, as it were, and then retreat.
The church can go into caves, catacombs, fields, and forests. The other kind of church—destroy the headquarters, take it over, and the church is finished.
It is amazing how the real church, when it is in living union with its Head, can go through the most incredible trials and tribulations and come out the other side with more of the Head than in the beginning.
That is really all I want to say. This last thing is very simple. When Luke came to write the book of Acts, he dedicated it to a man called Theophilus. He spoke about the former things he had written in the Gospel of Luke.
Then he said:
Acts 1:1
The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach.
What does he mean? The book of Acts is the continuation of the Lord Jesus doing and teaching through His body.
The church is not an end in itself. It is to be a ministry to the Lord. It is to be a ministry to the world. It is the house of prayer for all nations. It is to be the place where God reveals Himself, the place where God expresses Himself.
Oh, for such a church—wherever there are believers who simply meet in the Lord Jesus and become the expression of our risen, glorified Lord and Head.
What a tremendous thing it would be.
I do not have much doubt that we are moving into one of the most troubled periods the world has ever seen. This trouble will affect the United States and Canada also.
May the Lord, in some very real way, touch the eyes of our hearts, that we may know Him in His resurrection, both personally and corporately. May the Lord do it.
Dear Lord, we do pray that You will preserve anything said this evening from misinterpretation or misunderstanding.
We need You, Lord. We pray that in every single assembly represented here this evening, You will cause that resurrection life and power of Yours to be manifest.
Help us, Lord. Help us to grow up into the Lord Jesus as Head in all things, to hold fast the Head.
Lord, You can do it. We do not know what lies ahead of us, and Lord, we have this sense of very great trouble.
Beloved Lord, You have always loved us. You are the Good Shepherd. You have laid down Your life for the sheep. Lord, touch our hearts.
Open us up to Yourself in a new way. Lord, will You work in all of us—from those of us with the greatest responsibility to those who are the most simple?
Lord, work in us all. May we discover something of the wonder of being in the body of our Lord Jesus.
We ask it in His name. Amen.