Well, I have the special siesta ministry. Some of you, I hope, finished your naps before coming here. There’s Will—finish it while you’re here.
Before I go any further, I need to make a statement about my hair. So far, I believe a little more than 100 people have made comments on it, so please let me hear from you. I think that makes 700 more who need to make a statement.
No, you see, Stephen has a barber in Queens. It costs six bucks for a haircut. Now, for six bucks, they just clip off a little bit of hair, as you can see. My haircuts in Manhattan cost 20 bucks, and it is a Russian woman. I think she used to cut for the Russian military; I am not sure.
But she has a little trouble with English. So I just the other day said, “You know, a little shorter on the sides.” This is it. I do not think that means the same thing in Russian. So please, no more comments. This is not really a fashion statement. This happens to be my sad luck, but my hair grows out.
And for those of you who continue to chide, I just remind you, brethren, I am thankful I have hair.
Now, that was the good news. The next thing is, you know, I know that John Saunders sometimes may stoop low and actually steal my notes from my room. On occasion, I could see Lance doing that. I do not know how—he has his ways. But Stephen stole my notes. Now, I do not know what to do except blame Dora. I think that is probably the right thing to do.
But I have seen already that the trend in these times of ministry is going to be that there is a lot of overlapping, a lot of restating of things, and it must be in the wisdom of God. So I am very thankful to be here. I hope that you will find refreshment as we share the words of God together and share the Lord’s burden in these last days.
I think what I would like to do, because of course I am sharing on what is the church, or what is being built, is for us to start in Ephesians—only rightly so. I would like for us to start by reading the two prayers that Paul gives.
Obviously, we have a church. It is given among us. We all know the word; indeed, the whole world knows the word church. But if the Lord could make it living to us and bring us again to the wonder of it, the fullness of it, the life of Christ in it, the love of it, and all of these things, then our time indeed would be profitable.
Whenever Paul is talking about deep things, eternal things, somehow Christ and the church are mentioned, as in these two prayers we have in Ephesians.
For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you, and your love for all the saints,
do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers;
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened,
so that you will know what is the hope of His calling,
what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,
and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might
which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead
and seated Him 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 age but also in the one to come.And He put all things in subjection under His feet,
and gave Him as head over all things to the church,
which is His body,
the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
And then again in Ephesians 3, where Paul is talking about the church, his ministry in preaching the gospel, and the mystery of this ministry, he begins another prayer.
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,
from whom the whole family in heaven and earth derives its name,
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory,
to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man;
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
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 surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think,
according to the power which works within us,
to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
to all generations forever and ever. Amen.
Then we want to read that section in Ephesians 5 dealing with Christ and the church, and the husband and the wife.
Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church,
He Himself being the Savior of the body.
But as the church is subject to Christ,
so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.Husbands, love your wives,
just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,
so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory,
having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing;
but that she would be holy and blameless.So husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his own wife loves himself;
for no one ever hated his own flesh,
but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church,
because we are members of His body.For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother
and shall be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.
This mystery is great;
but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.
Lord, we come to You with things so familiar that only You can bring them to us anew. Lord, we thank You for Your precious Holy Spirit, ever zealous to bring us into reality, into the fullness, into the depth of Your love.
We pray today, as we share in this afternoon meeting, that Your refreshing life would be upon us; that we could see and be refreshed in the truth of Christ and the church, and find ourselves moving in line with Your thought in everything we do.
Oh Lord, we ask for the help of Your Holy Spirit in knowing what to say and how to respond to the word of God this day. We give ourselves to You. We give You this time. We give You the hearers—all of us together—in the name of our precious Lord Jesus. Amen.
I like this last verse I read here in Ephesians 5:32, talking about the great mystery: Christ and the church. As we have seen already this morning from our brother, you cannot talk about Christ without talking about the church. Neither can you talk about the church without talking about Christ.
Great is this mystery. “I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.” We are gathered to consider this thing, and yet all of us are part of the church. That is, I am assuming everybody here is born again. You have come to the Lord Jesus. We are already part of it.
It should be familiar to us—indeed, it is familiar to us. And it is one of the very reasons why we are gathered together with this burden: to share things that are familiar in such a way that we might see them afresh, in a new way, in the Lord’s way, according to His mind.
Now, our familiarity with the church necessitates that we strip away some of the outward definitions and understanding.
Just as an example, what do you think the apostles thought the first time the Lord mentioned, in Matthew 16, the word church? Now, we cannot actually say this was the first time He ever mentioned it; it is just the first time we know about. What do you think they thought when He said, “I will build My church”?
You see, actually they had a background. This word, if it was used in Hebrew, had a Hebrew word that in the Septuagint was changed into the word we use for church in Greek. So they knew the Hebrew background. It meant assembly—kind of a vanilla word, you know?
What do you think they thought? “I will build My church.” You see, He did not say, “I will build My temple.” He did not say, “I will build My synagogue.” He just used this word, assembly.
Of course, if He said it in Greek, or if they realized it from their Greek background, there again it was a word used in common language, which also meant assembly—usually sort of like a town meeting, something like that.
The thing about revelation—revelation reality—is that the Lord always has to take the common words of our language and then fill them with a brand-new meaning.
Now, when Jesus said these words in Matthew 16, His apostles must have wondered, “Hmm, I will build My church. So He is building an assembly.” Well, they did not quite know perhaps what that meant.
But later on, by the Holy Spirit, they came to a deeper and deeper understanding of this Greek word ekklesia, this word, “called-out ones.” So we have this word church. It is used all the time. It is used commonly. But now we need to get behind it, and that is what revelation does. It fills commonly used words with a brand-new meaning that only the Holy Spirit can give us.
But I want to start out by us having a quiz. I am going to give you four questions. Any question that you get wrong, you take off 25 points. It is a familiarity-with-the-church test. Are you ready? You have to be honest now.
Question number one: If you have ever said, “I left my Bible in the church,” take off 25 points.
Lance always says, “I left my umbrella in the church,” but he is very English. You know, they always leave their umbrella. Actually, in Queens we have a plastic tub full of umbrellas. Please, if you visit us, take one.
But do you say that? “I left my Bible in the church.” Well, you see, you are using the word church wrong, because the church is in a building. Now you know that. Why do you say that? “Well, I left my umbrella in the church.”
Sometimes, during somebody praying a little too long in a prayer meeting, I thought about taking an umbrella and putting it down somebody’s throat. Then the umbrella would be left in the church.
All right. Some of you have lost 25 points. Do not ever say that again. “I left my umbrella in the meeting place.” How about that? In the house on so-and-so? Fine, no problem.
Question number two: “I am going to church.” Twenty-five points off. Or, “I went to church.” How could you go to church? You are the church.
That is our problem. We have people going to church, and when they get there, they are not church. We need to get the church going. How do you say that? Do not say that. You are the church. Do not say, “I am going to church. I went to church.” No, no, do not say that anymore. It is not the right word.
Church is not cheap. It has a special meaning. Why do we make it cheap? That is what the world says: “Oh yeah, that church.”
Matter of fact, I was playing golf just two days ago. This guy I never met was playing golf. We were on a putting green, and he putted the ball—putting, you know, you hit the ball with a stick. For those of you who do not know golf, golf is a game with two balls: the earth and the little golf ball. The goal is to hit one and not the other. That is basically the game.
Now, this man was putting the ball, and there was the hole, and he hit it much too hard. The ball was rolling, and what did this guy say? “Oh, dear Lord,” he said, “hit a Catholic church!”
All I can figure he meant by that is there has got to be a huge building to stop my ball before it goes off the green. But that is what he thought the church was: just a building. So that guy goes to church. You do not go to church, because you are the church when you are gathered together in the Lord’s name, are you not?
All right, some of you are down to 50 percent, which comes to number three. Take 25 points off if you say, “My church.”
“My church is over there. My church has 200 people going to it.” Or worse: “Pastor so-and-so’s church.” Oh, if you only knew how wrong that is—and you do.
No, it is only the Lord’s church. I know you are going to say this is all splitting hairs, but I do not think so at all. You know, it is the Lord’s church. If we understood the church, we would be much more jealous and zealous about keeping it the Lord’s.
It is not my church, our church—we say, “No, no, no, no, no.” It is the Lord’s church. For better or for worse, it is His church. Let us leave it that way.
All right, we are down to 25. Let us hope you do not get this one. The fourth one is this: when somebody prays and says, “This body, our little body—Lord, this body is praying for that body over in New Jersey. Our little body is praying for that little body in New Jersey”—and by that they mean the body of Christ here and the body of Christ in New Jersey. Do you say that? “Our little body.”
Now listen. You know, in the Bible it says there is only one church, the church of the Lord Jesus. But it does use the word churches to talk about local assemblies, like the churches in Galatia or the churches in the province of Asia. So you find church and churches used in the Bible. You will never find bodies.
You never find them saying, “The body of Christ is the universal single body. There is only one body of Christ. There is not this body and that body.” It almost sounds macabre to say, “How is the body doing in New Jersey?” or to pray for the bodies in New York State.
There is only one body: the body of Christ. Do not ever divide it up into little bodies. I do not know who started this, “our little body.” Oh, no, no, no, no. It is one big body.
When we gather together in Jesus’ name, we are joined into the huge body, which is made up of all the believers—not only on the earth, but those who have gone to heaven. This is a huge, mysterious matter.
Now, those of you who have zero at this point, please leave. No, no. Actually, you need to stay. Anybody with 100, you can sleep.
Let us contrast now. Let us see just a few of the phrases that Paul uses when he is talking about the body in contrast to some of these things. Notice in Ephesians 1:22–23.
And God put all things in subjection under Christ’s feet,
and gave Him as head over all things to the church,
which is His body,
the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
What a tremendous statement. The church is the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Oh, that is a great, mysterious, large, very important, significant phrase. There is a wonderful testimony in that phrase.
Or there, when we read Ephesians 5:32: “I speak of this great mystery, Christ and the church.” Oh, Paul says, it is such a mystery. Every time I think about the church, there is just more to it than I ever realized before.
Or let us look at one in Hebrews 12. I mean, this is the kind of talking we should talk about the church.
But you have come to Mount Zion,
to the city of the living God,
the heavenly Jerusalem,
and to myriads of angels,
to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven,
and to God, the Judge of all,
and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect,
and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant,
and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.
Wow, we are talking about something heavenly here. This is something really wonderful that we have become part of.
So anyway, the point is this: I know, I know, to say, “I go to church,” is the simplest way to say it. It is a cliché that even the world understands. Exactly. Why do we want to define the church like the world defines it?
Even if we have to stumble around with words about gatherings, assemblies, and meeting places—so we have to use a few more words—they might even wonder why. How about our own Christian friends? “Why do you always say it like that?” Ah, it is because I see in the church something very special that the Lord has revealed.
All right, so we need to try to clarify these things. And they are made so difficult by the whole Babylonian myriad setup that is called the church today. My, my, my. It is so confusing today.
Before I was a Christian, I had no idea what a Christian really was. My mom would take me occasionally to the Christian Science Church, which was neither Christian nor science. It is so confusing. There are so many brand names out there.
The last time I went to Myrtle Beach, I went by this church. I believe I got the sign right—it was so long, the sign was bigger than the membership: The Independent Free Will Missionary Baptist Pre-Millennial Full Gospel Church.
Now, that is the reason they only have five or ten members. You have got to agree with every one of those things. Basically, if you do not agree with all of those, you must be sort of out of the will of God or out of God’s favor. I do not know how they stand about postmillennialists, or somebody who is not free will. But oh, there are such names—so many church brands out there. How does somebody ever choose?
You know, I am going to have to tell you this because it is all part of the thing. Thank God I was saved because of Southern Baptists. Now, the one thing they did was witness.
I was witnessed to by some precious brothers and sisters, including my own father-in-law and mother-in-law, who were good Southern Baptists. I got saved through Southern Baptists and their witnessing. Well, praise God for that. They are just wonderful people.
I do not know what it was, but I felt like I was called by God. I went off to Southern Baptist seminary, and when I came out, I became a Southern Baptist missionary. Now, I was only sent to New York, but Southern Baptists have foreign territory, and I was what they called a home missionary.
I went to the Southern Baptist church that was my base of operation on Long Island, up in New York. It was because I was one of those foreigners from New York and had gotten saved down in North Carolina that they sent me back up—like to my own natives, you know?
When I got there, the church had 250 people. The last guy who was there had done a great job. But then the military base closed down. It turned out that 200 of the 250 people were Southerners.
The guy told me his church-growth strategy: he would drive around, and wherever he saw Southern license plates, he would stop those people, pull them over, and invite them to church. They had 200 Southerners living there in New York, usually against their will and mostly because they were in the military. So when they closed the base down, 200 people left.
There were some Southerners who had jobs up there, so they stayed, and then there were a couple of token actual New Yorkers. So now we were strapped. Okay, what are we going to do?
The whole neighborhood we were in was an Italian neighborhood. I said, “Well, let us witness to them.” So I started talking to them. They would say, “Yeah, we would like to come to your church, but we are not allowed to.” I said, “How come?” “Because it is a Baptist church.”
I said, “Well, what if we change the name?” They said, “Okay, what are you going to change it to?” I said, “Well, you know what? It is the Holy Catholic Church.” They said, “We will come.”
But then the deacons got mad, because no Baptist was going to a Holy Catholic Church. So we could not change the name. But the name divided us, you see. And the point of the matter is, it is not the name anyway.
We have created so many divisions based on so many things that it makes the church inglorious. All the names of leaders that are attached to the church—certain denominations are just fixated with naming something after some saints: St. Michael’s So-and-So Church, or names so long you cannot even pronounce them.
Or churches are named after experiences. If you are going to the Pentecostal Fire Church, what can you expect? Or the Baptist Church—you know that you are going to be dunked if you are there very long.
Many times it is a true doctrine or something like that, but it has been made to denominate and to separate the body of Christ and the church. How do you think the Lord feels about that?
We have to deal with that. Well, it is not a question of guessing how He feels about it. It is actually a question of seeing the church in Him that determines our response to these things.
So many names are based on experience or even geography. You know, it is an amazing thing: I live in New York City. I go through the Holland Tunnel, four miles away, and I am in New Jersey—but I am not in New Jersey. I am in China, because I go to a so-and-so Chinese Christian church.
Now, you cannot have a Chinese church. They are just all Christians. I am sorry if I am stepping on toes of people who have Chinese churches. You cannot have a Chinese church. The Lord is not Chinese, and He is part of it. It is just a church.
Now, if it were in China, maybe it would be a little different. But if it is in New Jersey, I have a tough time with that. We put names on because we want to describe ourselves. Listen, if you put your name on with Chinese lettering and just say “the church,” people will know it is Chinese.
But no, no. Even that is just like the Anglican Church. I mean, that means everybody from England belongs to the church, and if you are not from England, you do not. You have to become Episcopalian.
Divisions cause confusion. The world out there that is lost has no idea what the church is. No idea. All they see are all of these divisions.
I remember the first time I went to India. I had the chance to preach the gospel way in the interior of Tamil Nadu province. We had to go by Jeep, and the people were so excited to hear the gospel.
A number of people came to me and said, “Your gospel about Jesus is so wonderful. It is such a powerful gospel. But our only problem is the local church in our town.” That church stood as a stumbling block—completely cold, liberal, dead; no Christians, no born-again Christians that we knew about.
The people were stumbled from accepting Jesus by what they saw over there, what was called the church. It has been made common. But the Lord does not want it to be common. It needs to be something that is mysterious, a mystery in Him.
The Lord keeps it a mystery, you know. One of the things anybody who is a church leader, or who cares about building the church, must be frustrated by is the fact that when you actually go to the Bible, there is no clear-cut plan, methodology, or scheme of things.
Mind you, there are many books, even scholarly books, on the pattern of the New Testament church and all of this kind of thing. But that is an outward form of the church; it does not have the inward reality of the church.
When you look at the Scriptures—and we heard this morning that Jesus only uses the word church twice—the apostles must have thought, “Okay, upon this rock I will build My church, and I give you the keys. Now we are going to be building the church.” Then I am sure one day they must have said, “Wait a minute. How exactly do You build this church?”
It is a good thing they did not get together and discuss it, like our brother Stephen was talking today about Adam settling for a gorilla. I mean, you can imagine. By the way, in New York, some people have settled for gorillas. I do not know. We have some fallen Adams in New York City who are actually marrying gorillas at this point, I think. They have decided dogs are their counterpart and all kinds of strange things. It is a strange place to live, you know.
What if Peter said, “Okay, now how are we going to build a church? You know what? I have always kind of fancied the temple myself. It has a high priest, so there is one head guy. Maybe I could be called Papa.”
John says, “No, no, no, no. We are supposed to love everybody. We have got to have a congregational type of situation.” Maybe Andrew and James felt left out. They said, “No, no, we need an eldership. We want plurality. We do not want it just to be one person.” What if they just tried to decide on a pattern? “We vote on the best pattern.”
When we look in the Bible, we do not see a clear-cut pattern. There are a lot of books written on the book of Acts, especially regarding, “Ah, we have found the pattern. Look at that.”
But what is the real lesson of the book of Acts? The real lesson of the book of Acts is that there is no pattern. There is a life that is poured forth from heaven.
That life was pushing the disciples this way and that, stopping at a town, preaching the gospel, skipping over a town, and going to the next place. God was sovereignly working by His life. It is God’s life that builds the church, just like Jesus said.
Acts is the acts of Jesus. He is building His church, and you can see it. It is such a sovereign work. I know we like to give credit to men, so we say, “Paul, he really built the church.” Well, Paul tried to build it in some places, and the Lord said, “No, I am not letting you go there.”
It was the sovereign moving of God and the obedience of brothers and sisters who moved to a town and immediately began to gossip the gospel. Out of that, a church began to grow. It is an amazing story, and it is so much of the sovereign hand of God.
Do you not see that in the book of Acts? God’s hand sovereignly doing this, sovereignly saving somebody who indeed opened up a whole town to other people being saved.
Now, if you can find a strategy that you just write down—which people do all the time—“What we need in our church is 12 apostles and seven deacons. We know that is in the Bible.” Of course, you only have 19 men in the church.
So you have to appoint a couple of epistles because a couple of the men do not want to be apostles. So you have to have some female apostles—I call them epistles. Now you have ten apostles, two epistles, and seven deacons. But a couple of the guys do not want to be deacons, so you have a couple of deaconesses.
Now that is the pattern. Forget what gifts anybody has, what maturity anybody has, what life anybody has. We have got to stack it up according to the pattern.
If you go beyond and look even in the pastoral epistles, there are things we learn. I thank God for books by Watchman Nee. When I read them in my earlier Christian days, I saw this: pastors are always plural; elders are always plural; bishops are always plural. Now that says something to me. It says it is not right to have one guy.
But still, to set up a pattern exactly—well, the life of the Holy Spirit, as it builds the church, goes through and does things very sovereignly. It is a matter of obedience, not just setting up a pattern.
Of course, the wonderful thing about the Bible, even as we just read in Ephesians, is that there actually is a pattern. There actually is a description of the church. But it is all hidden in Christ.
The pattern of the church is Christ.
As soon as you say that, people’s eyes get a little foggy. They say, “Oh, all right. Now you have gone and gotten too spiritual.” No, but we have now gone just into the Bible and what it is really saying about the church.
Now, the wonderful Scripture that everybody knows—and some of you veterans, of course, you know these things. As a matter of fact, who has been coming to this more than 20 years? Let me just see a raising of hands. See, we have some people there. Now, actually, you should come up and finish this message.
But in 1 Corinthians 12, there is a very wonderful verse which, to me personally, was a great eye-opener in this whole matter.
For even as the body is one and has many members,
and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body,
so also is Christ.
Okay, now. The metaphor is the body—the body has many members. Even though there are many members, there is only one body. This is a metaphor which describes the problem the Corinthians had.
They were saved. They had received gifts of the Spirit. They had received some teaching. But they did not understand how the body functions, so everybody was competing.
Why do we have gifts? To edify one another. What were the Corinthians doing with the gifts? Shooting at one another. Seeing who could out-prophesy the other guy, who could speak in tongues longer, who could interpret, who had the gift of healing.
They wanted to set up some kind of hierarchy. They were competing, and even in their fellowship meetings, one guy would start prophesying while another guy was still prophesying. They just had all kinds of stuff going on.
What is the problem there? They do not see how the body functions. You are all members one of another. You are just part of one body. You should be edifying one another, not competing with one another. That is the metaphor we find there in verse 12.
But what is the mystery that we see there in verse 12? Well, the mystery is the last word.
If you were logically to spell out this verse, it would say, “For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one, so also is the body of Christ, the church.” But he says, “So also is the Christ.”
Now that catches a person when the Holy Spirit wants to reveal something to us regarding the very nature of the church.
It is as if we are looking down on the ground and seeing some members of the body—perhaps some hands and fingers moving—and He is talking about how they should be coordinated. Then He says, “Even as we have many members in one body, so also is…” and then He takes one of those views from the blimp.
Suddenly the camera pans back and you look at the whole thing. But it is not really the body. It is Christ.
The revelation is that the church is more than just the body of Christ. The church is actually Christ. The church is hidden in Christ. It is Christ. The church is a living organism. It is a person: Christ.
The way Paul conveys this often in the New Testament is to use a particular phrase, the Christ, as he does here. Even though your version may not say it, in English or whatever language you are looking at, in the Greek it says, “So also is the Christ.”
Paul uses the phrase the Christ sometimes when he is referring to Christ in His fullness—in other words, Christ and all the believers, Christ and the church. He calls it the Christ. And in its nature, that is the church.
If a person comes to the place that they really see this living organism, it has a great effect upon your life.
Now, even those who have seen this, on a daily basis you tend to see the church as an organization. Indeed, the church is organized, but an organism is organized. I see all kinds of babies around here, and they are all very organized, but they are an organism that is organized and not an organization—meaning something from the outside being built upon.
I have a 2002 Dodge Caravan. Now, I was one of those unlucky ones, because now they have the Dodge Caravan that folds the seats. In 2004, you do not have to pull them out anymore. I got the 2002 version. You still have to pull the seats out.
Boy, I wish I had the 2004 version. My version is already two years old. It is obsolete. I do not even like it. I have to pull out the seats. Of course, I just have to pull on a little cord and they come out, but still.
In the 2004 model, you hide everything. It has 200 compartments in the car. Everything folds down and hides away in those seats. It is a wonderful thing. I wish I had a 2004.
Now, if we build an organization—let us call it the Church of the Dodge—and say we build it in the year 1900. Nineteen hundred is a good year. A lot of good hymns came out in 1900. We like to sing 1900 hymns, you know. We like to wear 1900-year clothes. The turn-of-the-century clothes are very wonderful and everything like that.
The only problem is that in the year 2004, it is 104 years old. You have to blow the dust off our hymnbooks because all the songs are at least 100 years old. The way we do things is 100 years old because it is an organization, and an organization becomes obsolete.
This is what happens when the church has begun many times and then becomes an organization. Martin Luther saw a revelation of justification by faith. He gathered some people. He began to stand on justification, and that is wonderful.
When was Martin Luther alive? Ah, a long time ago. They sang, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” and they dressed for the occasion. They built these big buildings with echoes on the wall, and they had all kinds of things just the way Martin Luther liked it. Of course, unfortunately, he died.
Now today, what do we have? You go into a Lutheran church and you are back in 1520. The songs are there. The words are there. The testimony is there. But it has gotten obsolete. It is not a living organism.
I have a granddaughter. I have six of them. I have a granddaughter named Sydney. She is 2002, just like my Dodge Caravan. Now she is 2004 Sydney. Lots of changes—of diapers, but a lot of other things. Lots of changes.
Sydney is growing. Every year, contemporaries. She is 2004 Sydney, and she is going for 2005. Every year, brand new, expanding, growing organism. Everything necessary for fullness is in Sydney right now, even though she is only two years old. It is amazing.
Some things are not even developed yet, but they are going to be. Some gifts she has, she does not even know. We do not even know. They are going to come out. But it is all there in the life of 2004 Sydney. Oh, what a wonderful girl. Yeah, she is pretty saucy too, but that is another story.
Now, my 2002 Dodge is not going to get any better. It does not have fold-up seats. I am always going to have to pull out the seats.
What about the church? There is a whole ecclesiastical history called the history of waves. They talk about twentieth-century church coming in waves: this wave, that wave, the charismatic wave, the Pentecostal wave, the third wave nowadays, they say.
All of those waves were living at the beginning of the thing, and now they are a wave that is identifiable. Charismatics still drive around in Volkswagen vans with hippie signs on them and so on and so forth, because people lock in. If you are wearing a Hawaiian shirt, I know which one of the waves you are in.
But if the church is a living organism, it has to keep growing. Now, I want to make a little statement: the wise organism learns from the old and also discovers new.
A real living organism never throws out the old hymns, but appreciates the old hymns and also knows how to worship in more contemporary ways. I mean, that is a living organism, you know? You do not just throw out everything and do everything new. Now, that is a whole other problem in itself. That will not last.
If the organism does not have connection to its history, then it soon becomes a calcified organization, and so the life goes.
But how many people really see the church as a living organism—Christ expressed on earth in 2004? What a change it makes in our life.
The apostle Paul, on the road to Damascus, saw Christ in the church. You know what it is like? The church is in Christ. You have to see Christ first, but then you take a second look at Christ and you see the church in Christ.
The analogy I give you is this: in Revelation 4, John looks up into heaven, is carried up there, and sees the throne of God, everything surrounding it, and the worship of the throne of God.
Then he keeps looking, and in Revelation 5 he looks and it says, “In the midst of the throne.” It is as if he is taking a second look. “I saw the throne,” and then, “In the midst of the throne is the Lamb.” The Lamb comes out and takes the scroll, and so the worship grows and mounts even more.
In a sense, the church is seen when you take a second look at Christ. When you see that in Christ, in His heart, out of His very life, there is the church.
Christ is the vision before Paul. But before that great vision—that Paul saw Christ on the road—he saw the church in Christ. How do we know? Because the Lord said to him, “Why are you persecuting Me?”
Of course, Paul knew he was not persecuting Jesus. He was persecuting people. But he connected the dots: if you persecute God’s people, you are persecuting Jesus. It is because the church is Christ—the Christ, the living organism.
Paul saw that right from the start. His whole understanding of how to minister to the brothers and sisters, and how to be part of the building work of God, was based on realizing that the church was a living organism. It had the capacity of life in it to develop fully.
He just felt sometimes he had to protect it from falsehood, and especially protect it from the greatest problem of the church’s development, and that is the self-life of the Christians within it. But we will deal with that another time.
Paul, on the road to Damascus, took a second look, and he saw the church in Christ—a living organism. “How could I ever have beaten on these people? I never realized I was beating on the Son of God.”
I am sure that burned Paul’s fingers and prevented him from ever just beating on the saints. So many people in ministry, even well-intentioned, beat on the saints. They do not realize you cannot do that. You are beating on Christ.
Now, I am glad to be here this year. You know why? Because I met the church hidden in Christ 30 years ago on the road to Richmond. I am one of those guys.
I knew Christ. I was a Christian. I was a pastor down in Raleigh, North Carolina. Somebody down there—there was this brother, Stephen Tong; I did not know who he was—came down to Raleigh. Anyway, they told me about a conference up there, and some of the people in Raleigh said, “Why do not you come up there and see what is going on?”
I was a charismatic Christian, so I had a Volkswagen bus and long hair. I was ready. So I came up the road here to Richmond. This was back in the early days. They were meeting at Randolph-Macon, and things were kind of disorganized.
I got there, and they said, “Hey, would you help out with the young people?” They just knew—I do not know, I guess they had heard of me or something—but they threw me in with the young people, locked the door, and waited to see if I would be eaten by the lions.
Of course, I went in there with all my usual stuff. I played my guitar, told jokes, gave a couple of verses, and had a good time with the young people. But boy, what I did not know was waiting for me in the auditorium. Oh boy.
I heard ministry about this living organism called the church. I had never seen this thing in my life. I had studied in seminary. We knew the body of Christ. There is nobody in the evangelical church today who does not understand the body of Christ on some level—living members functioning in some way. I saw that.
But I never understood that the church was Christ. Lance was ministering. Stephen was ministering. On the road to Richmond, as I say, God opened my eyes by His mercy.
I took a second look at Christ because they were lifting up Christ. They were not really lifting up the church; they were lifting up Christ. But in the midst of Christ, when I saw Him—they painted a picture of Christ so perfect and so beautiful, so full of love and transforming power—in the midst of it, they said, “Ah, here is the church.”
It absolutely zapped me. I was devastated. I do not know when you saw that the church was a living organism, but that is what happened to me 30 years ago.
I was devastated for two reasons. Number one, I was the head of a church. What was wrong with that?
Every pastor calls himself the undershepherd, which I always did. But I was the only guy who had the right to tell what the Shepherd was saying, as the undershepherd. So the buck stopped with me, which made me the head.
I cannot say what other guys need to do about this whole thing of ministry and everything, but when I saw that I was the substitute head, the first thing I saw—almost like in a vision—was this huge body of Christ with this little tiny head on top.
I was pastor of a church down in North Carolina. It was growing; it was doing its thing. But here was this little tiny head on top trying to coordinate everything happening in this huge body. Just a little small head. I do not know, some kind of monster or something like that.
“No, no, no, no, no. You do not do that. No, no, you do that.” The other thing that devastated me was that I was taking the members and manipulating them around to fit into the organization.
Nothing was more dreaded than the nominating committee, where a finger was made a toe because we needed toes.
Everybody in the body of Christ is a member. Everybody has some function. But when you have an organization, you have to fit them into the organization. You see what I am saying?
We tell fingers, “You be toes.” We say to the elbow, “You be the eye,” because the church is an organization like Mr. Potato Head. We move the nose over here, move the eye over here. Now this is what we call the church.
That is what we had back home. We had an organization, and then we were moving all the members around. It looked like Mr. Potato Head, like a church made by a baby sticking things on the potato.
When I saw that, I felt this conviction about it: how could I touch the Lord’s people? I even did stuff like this, because I am such a great Christian. I knew that everybody needed to be just like me.
There were some unspiritual people in the assembly who were quiet. Now you know that is unspiritual. Everybody ought to be like me. As you can guess, I am not quiet. So I was always cajoling the quiet ones to speak up.
“Why do not you speak up?” When I called on prayer, I always picked on the quiet ones, just to get them to function. I figured that is how you make them function: you force them to function.
I did not respect at all how people are made. You would think I had learned that lesson, because I have a quiet wife. But no, not me. My wife always felt a little jammed up too, because I was making everybody be—wouldn’t this be a wonderful church?—everybody would be a mini-Dana.
Listen, I am sorry. That is what you do when you are the head guy. You produce a bunch of little yous—mini-mes all over the place. There is a terror, because they are not being who they are in Christ; they are copying something.
Even if it is something good—which that is not, by the way. To be a mini-me is not a good idea. But this was the only thing we knew how to do: paste things, organize things, put things here, put things there, because that was our plan.
Listen, I was the pastor of a purpose-driven church, but the Lord was not driving the church. I was driving the church.
I remember I went to Halford House. I was there in a witnessing campaign with 15 Southern Baptist men. We went over there, went out on the streets of London, and witnessed. It was a very wonderful time.
The brothers at Halford House, where Lance used to fellowship—it was a very precious time. But it changed my life, because while I was there, they met as a living organism, and I saw something. I saw the living church.
I got up in the last testimony on the Sunday, and I said, “You know, brothers and sisters, I found home.” I knew it was home.
Then I went home, back to Raleigh, and I got sick for three months because I was the pastor of something that was not home. It was not home for the Lord. It was not home for me anymore, because I had seen home, but I did not know how to do home, how to make home.
Basically, what I had to do was resign. I had to repent. I am in the process of being reconstituted according to the new vision I see.
Oh, the beauty of the body of Christ. Every member, very peculiarly creative. Amazing, wonderful gifts. It is surprising to see how God moves in the body. But you do not touch it. You do not manipulate it. You cannot do that, not if you see.
It is the Lord who builds the church. It is the Lord who raises up His people. You can pray, help, encourage, and correct, but you cannot make the church. Only the Lord can make the church.
In this process, every bone in my body wanted to stay on and continue to be a pastor, because that was my career. I lost my retirement fund and all that kind of stuff. I lost “Reverend,” which you can really use sometimes, you know. Lost a lot of things.
But something in my heart at that point—and this is sort of a burden that I would like to share—something in my heart, maybe even despite me, in spite of me, said, “Lord, I realize one thing. There is so much compromise and confusion in the church and in my understanding of the church. But here is my deal: if You will show me where I am compromised, I will not compromise.”
Because the fact of the matter is, brothers and sisters, probably all of us are in some measure of compromise, and to some degree unbeknownst to us, I am sure.
But really, until Christ is the fullness of the church and the church is the fullness of Christ, we have not come to where God wants us.
The Lord has such designs for the church. He has a purpose for the church. I must say, I was so fortunate—and I say this with all sincerity. It was God’s mercy and God’s sovereignty that allowed me to do two things: go to Halford House and see a living organism, and come to the Richmond Conference and hear about this organism.
After that, I got to come here and see the saints, just beginning at that stage, but being a living organism. There are many Christians who really love the Lord. If they could only see that living organism—what a testimony.
But how many situations are like that? So many things are so organized, and everything is squeezed into boxes. You cannot see the church in Christ. It is as if they are two completely separate things.
What if we saw that organism ourselves? That is my question to you. Have you seen the Christ? The Christ. Have you taken the second look? You see that He is the church.
It is only when we see Christ and see the church hidden in Christ that He can begin to deal with us in areas of compromise, or work out this vision in our lives.
As an example, it is God’s sovereign way that there are other people in the body of Christ that annoy us, and we have to put up with them.
I will guarantee you, God is going to work it around where you are not going to go forward until you deal with that, and you forgive them, love them, embrace them, or reconcile with them.
Because when you see the church hidden in Christ, you see that you cannot remain unforgiving toward somebody. How can you do that? You are not forgiving Christ. You realize that.
I cannot imagine being unforgiving toward somebody. Oh, I cannot imagine putting up with people, despising some people: “Oh, that person is driving me crazy.”
But that is another thing the Lord has to deal with. He will make us realize that person is absolutely crucial to our life. We are part of them, and if they are down, if they are going the wrong way, then it is affecting us.
We do not really believe that, do we? Do we believe that back home, in an assembly we are gathered with, some of the folks are struggling and going off to the left and the right? Do we really believe it is affecting us? But it is.
It is affecting our young people. It is affecting our own lives. It is affecting our worship. We are tied together. When we really see that the church is in Christ, then we have to allow the Lord to deal with these things in our lives.
So are the saints—well, look next to you. You know what we have right here? We have some microcosms of the body of Christ. Now, look at the person next to you. If they are asleep, wake them up. You see that person? All right.
Do you see that person in the flesh, or do you see them in Christ?
It is especially difficult for people you know real well to see them in Christ. Of course, when we are here, this is the great thing: we are here with a lot of smiling faces that we do not know. Those are the spiritual people.
I like all smiling people I do not know. I fancy that if I only went to their fellowship, I would have a much better time than I have back home with the sourpusses there.
But if you get to know the people with the smiling faces, and the smile comes off and the makeup comes off—whoa, what are we dealing with here? A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
What an exercise of faith to say, “Wow, they are part of Christ. Oh, they are part of Christ. They are beautiful to Christ. They are one of the members of Christ. I need to help them become more Christlike.”
Usually, we try to chop them down to make them more Christlike. No, no, that does not work.
There is a younger lad right now that I get the chance to fellowship with. He acts like such a goofball. He acts like such a jerk that he actually causes problems in the body of Christ.
But God showed me one day, “This kid has such a heart for the Lord.” So He told me to be patient and keep trying to exercise Christ in him. Pray with him. Exercise Christ in him.
You know what? Some of that insecurity, immaturity, whatever the other stuff is, is just falling off of him. He is growing in Christ, because somebody is finally seeing him in Christ instead of saying, “Ah, no, Dad says hold him down another five years, and then we will check him out again.”
But here is somebody Jesus died for. They are part of Him now, and so they are part of us. So we need to deal with them.
Oh, brothers and sisters, there should be nothing in between us. There cannot be anything between us, because if it is, it is between you and Christ. There is a reality there.
Do we see the assembly as God’s church, or do we see it just as a bunch of problems? You know, it is an organism. If it really is the Lord’s, and God is building His people together, everybody in their lifetime should experience being part of the body of Christ in a local place when everything is going great.
What a great experience. Oh, the members are popping like popcorn at a worship service. People are helping out, and the children’s ministry is being done by anointed and wonderful people. You say, “Oh man, this is heaven on earth.” And it is.
But do you believe that it is the Lord’s church and His organism when it is going through a tough time and you do not sense the presence of the Lord? A lot of people think God has gone, so they are gone.
Sometimes the most precious time is when the Lord’s hand is on something and things are really tough. Now can we see Christ in the body then? The Lord is doing a work, but it involves vision here.
There was a wonderful pastor—I believe he has gone on to the Lord; I am not really sure—whose name was Richard Halverson. He was in Washington, D.C. He was the Senate chaplain for years and the pastor of a Presbyterian church.
He wrote a book. I read the whole book, but I only remember one thing he ever said out of that book. My mind is like a sieve.
He said, “We always have to distinguish between church work and the work of the church.” He said, “Here is what I mean. Whenever you are doing church work—that is, you are ministering together, accomplishing some things, the brothers are meeting, whatever is going on—you are going to have friction. It is inevitable.”
“In the work of the church, I want this, you want that. When that happens, we have to stop and say, ‘Now comes the work of the church’: when we find reconciliation, when we find love for one another, because that is more important than the church work.”
What is more important: accomplishing the church work, or the work of the church, which is loving one another as He has loved us?
When we get going on that old snowball downhill, if we have some programs and plans and things going, sometimes we hurt and step all over people with our plans. Men are particularly insensitive about this kind of thing.
We do not realize that the real work of the church is loving one another, being one together, expressing the oneness of the Lord in every situation. So sometimes we have to stop the church work.
Have you ever stopped the church work to do the work of the church? Ah, good for you. Good for you. You have taken the higher road.
All of these things take, in the end, the revelation of seeing the church in Christ. Once you see the beauty of this church in Christ, once you see that the church is part of Christ, then you see that the church is uncompromised. Then you see that the church is glorious. Then you see that the church is perfected.
Then we cannot compromise anymore. Can we compromise and satisfy the Lord’s heart? Then we do not really see the church, because the church is part of Christ, and Christ is perfect.
Of course, we will talk on another occasion about what to do with the imperfections. But you have got to start with what Christ’s heart is in this matter. He is building an eternal church.
I have got bad news for you: everybody who is born again is part of the church, and you are part with them. So get used to them. You are going to have them forever.
Settle, deal, work out things now. You will have them forever. If they run away from you, they will come back. You are going to have them forever. If they count you out, do not count them out. You will have them forever.
The Lord is doing an eternal work.
Look once again at just a few final comments in Ephesians 1. All of this needs to be seen by revelation of the Lord Jesus Himself.
When Paul prays these three things in Ephesians 1:18 and the beginning of verse 19, in one sense it really has to do with Christ. Then, if you take the second look, it has to do with the church, which is hidden in Christ.
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened,
so that you will know what is the hope of His calling.
That is a very unusual thing about the church, but you know what? Our hope is in His calling. We need to see His calling by revelation—that is, the calling of the Lord Himself.
What are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints?
Now here is something. Think about this. I tell you the truth in Christ, and may the Lord give us eyes to see this: your riches are in your brothers and sisters.
Do you see how we lack fullness when we are just putting up with people? They are the treasure. No holds barred, they are Christ’s treasure. Well, we need to see them as our treasure as well.
The ones causing those problems—they are a treasure to us in the end. We will find that out eventually if we hang in there. Oh, the treasure we have in the body. There is our wealth right there. Wow, what riches we have. Look around you. There they are—your gold, right there: brothers and sisters and people. It is amazing.
And what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe?
He says this power is in accordance with the strength of His might, which He brought about in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places.
Here we need to see a revelation that His power comes through death and resurrection. The great power that we are all wanting, hoping for, desiring—if you are ambitious at all to serve God, you want His power—and it is all through death and resurrection.
It is the same power that Christ experienced through death and resurrection. In church life, that is the power: death and resurrection.
So if we see this vision of the church as an organism, and the Lord by His Holy Spirit begins to work out the implications of it in our lives, it will bring us into the richness of the body of Christ. It will bring us to the cross and to resurrection life.
These are the things that the Lord has put on my heart to share today. The church is hidden in Christ. Have you taken a second look? It is much, much more than an organization.
Now I want you to focus, these last few moments as we pray, on the assembly where you gather. Some of you gather with a small, simple gathering of people. Some of you gather with a large assembly. Some of you go through some larger church organization of some kind. But I want you just to focus for a second.
Have you seen that although we are many members in one body, and each one has a different function, we are all still in one body? So also is the Christ. The church is hidden in Christ.
We cannot see the church unless we see Christ and its members. Oh Lord, give us a revelation.
Lord, we realize when You bring us to this point, it causes us to repent. We realize that the church can only be the church in first love.
That first love is not only vertical toward You, but horizontal toward our brothers and sisters. Help us discover our treasure.
Even as You place in our minds those that we struggle to get along with, those that we may have issues with, those we find difficult to forgive for various—maybe even what we feel are legitimate—reasons, oh Lord, help us find them in Christ.
Help us realize that they are our brother, our sister. May it be that we find forgiveness for Your sake, find reconciliation for Your sake.
Oh God, give us such a vision of the church hidden in Christ that all unforgiveness will melt away.
All divisiveness, Lord—even as I spoke about Baptists and various things today, Lord, I am not intending to be divisive. But a revelation of Your church goes so far beyond names, outward forms, and systems.
Help us begin by seeing life: life coming from heaven, life in the Lord Jesus, the church—a living organism.
Oh Lord, where we have been assembling for You, and perhaps our assemblies have been dated, grant us the life, the living life of the Lord Jesus, to be contemporary organisms growing according to Your will.
Oh Lord, take from our minds this preset that we have of seeing everything in terms of an organization. Help us to see the church as a living being, a given life by the breath of Christ, moved by His direction and impulse.
Oh Lord, I remember when I used to think the church was made up of the body members functioning according to gift, and I had no idea it was the primary issue being under the absolute headship of Christ.
Oh Lord, help us to function under Your headship. Teach us that without Your really being Lord over us, we cannot possibly live as an organism.
Lord, this mystery You clarify for us by Your Spirit. Keep us in this understanding as we go through these days and this week. We give You these thoughts, and we pray, Lord, that You bring us all into the second look: to see the church hidden in Christ.
For this we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.