Thank you. Thank you.
Will you please turn to Matthew 16, verse 18?
“And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church;
and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
Ephesians 3. We will begin with verses 9 through 11.
“And to enlighten all with the knowledge of what is the administration of the mystery hidden throughout the ages in God, Who has created all things;
in order that now to the principalities and authorities in the heavenlies might be made known through the church the all-various wisdom of God,
according to the purpose of the ages which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
And finally, Isaiah 14, verses 24 and 27.
“The Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely, as I have thought, so shall it come to pass;
and as I have purposed, so shall it stand.For the Lord of hosts hath purposed, and who shall frustrate it?
and His hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?”
Dear Lord, we live in days where Thy words are few and our vision is rare. So we just look to Thy mercy, that Thou wilt show mercy to Thy people, that Thou wilt speak Thy word to us and reveal Thyself to us.
Lord, we need Thee. We need to know Thee more than anything else in these last days. Lord, if we do not have Thy word, if we do not see Thy glory, we will not be able to stand.
So we just come to Thee this morning with hearts of hunger and thirst after Thyself. Do fill us with Thyself. Speak to our hearts and bring us to the place where Thou wantest us to be.
Lord, we just put this time into Thy hands and look to Thy Spirit to do the work for which He is sent. It is all for Thy own glory. We ask in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
One day I was meditating on Matthew 16, verse 18, and the word build caught my attention.
So this time I feel that it is of the Lord that we should consider together this very important word: build. Our Lord Jesus Himself said, “Upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
Now, brothers and sisters, when you hear the word build, what impression does it give you? Of course, it cannot be something done without thought, without consideration—something that you just do without purpose, without idea, and without use.
The very word build is a technical word. It is often used in construction. So it gives you the idea of something well thought out, well planned, and faithfully carried out.
So the thought came to me: when our Lord said, “I will build My church,” perhaps we need to understand what He meant by those words.
I really feel that we live in days when the building of the church is in its final stage. And because it is in the final stage, I think we need to understand what the building of the church really means, so that we may cooperate. We may not, in any way, delay or postpone the work of God, but rather, by the grace of God, speed up, in a sense, His coming.
Now, the word build is first mentioned in the Bible in Genesis 2. In Genesis 2:22, God took something from Adam and built it into the woman, then presented her to Adam.
This is the first mention of the word build in the word of God. Usually, when a word is first mentioned, it gives us the basic and most important thoughts concerning that word.
To me, I feel that there are at least five things here.
Number one, you find purpose. In the same chapter, in Genesis 2:18, God said:
“It is not good that the man should be alone;
I will make him a help meet for him.”
In other words, you find that the idea of building came from God. There was a purpose: to give Adam a helpmeet, his like.
Then you find the second thing: there is a pattern for the building. Where do you find the pattern for Eve?
Strangely, after God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helpmeet for him,” in the intervening verses God brought all the living creatures to Adam, and Adam named every one of them.
Now, why was it so? I feel probably that God led all these animals before Adam, letting Adam see whether he could find his helpmeet in any one of them.
But all these animals passed before Adam. Adam could name them, and that was to define them and show what they really were. But he could not find his like, his helpmeet.
God already knew what He was going to do, but Adam did not know. So God gave Adam the opportunity to see what God already saw.
When Adam could not find his helpmeet in any of these living creatures, God showed Adam that the pattern of the woman was found nowhere but in Adam himself. So Adam was the pattern for Eve.
After that, you find preparation. God began to prepare. God put Adam to sleep, and then, out of his side, God took something of Adam.
With that, there was a process. God began to build, with something taken out of Adam, into a woman. Finally, God presented the woman to Adam.
So in this word build, I feel that at least these five principles are involved:
In the building of the church, I believe that these five things are very clearly demonstrated. So, if the Lord wills, perhaps we will use these mornings to consider these few points together.
This morning, we would like to consider the matter of purpose.
Our God is the supreme will in the universe. He never does anything without exercising His will. He does everything according to the good pleasure of His will.
Before He does anything, He always has an idea. He always sets a purpose. That is the way God does things.
He is not like man. Sometimes we do things by chance, without thinking beforehand. Or sometimes we are pressed by circumstances, and then we act or react without any preconceived idea.
And when we do things, we learn by mistake. After we have made many mistakes, perhaps we finally hit the right thing. That is the way with human beings, but God is never like that.
Before He does anything, He already has a thought, an idea of what He is going to do and why He wants to do it. There is a purpose behind all His actions. That is the way of God.
Of course, we know that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts and God’s ways are higher than our ways. Sometimes we see what He does and wonder, “Why should God do such a thing?” We cannot see the idea behind it. We cannot see the end.
But God knows the end from the beginning. He knows what He is doing. So in Isaiah we find that when God has purposed, He always finishes it. There is no one who can frustrate Him or stop Him from accomplishing what He conceived beforehand.
Now, in this matter of the church, the church, as we see it in the word of God, is not the thought of man. The church is the thought of God.
The Bible tells us that even before the ages—that is, before the foundation of the world, in eternity past—God purposed a purpose in Christ Jesus. You find this in Ephesians 3:11.
God purposed a purpose in Christ Jesus before the ages. It is called a mystery. Why? Because it was something hidden in God throughout the ages, until the fullness of time, when God was able to reveal that secret to man.
You know, our God is love. And because He is love, He wants to express His love.
He has only one Son, His only begotten Son. His whole heart is toward His beloved, begotten Son. He loves His Son so much that He wants to do something for His Son.
Even in the creation of the heavens and the earth, He did it as an expression of His love toward His Son. In Revelation 4, when the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures praise God for His work of creation, they say that it was for His will that all things were created.
The heavens and earth were created with purpose. There was a will behind the creation of the heavens and the earth. It was not something that merely happened.
God created them with a definite will. What was that will? We understand that God created the heavens and the earth for the sake of His beloved Son. He wanted to give everything to His Son. He wanted to express His love to His Son, so He created the heavens and the earth to allow His Son to inherit all these things.
But even after He created the heavens and the earth, He knew that His Son was still not satisfied. His Son could enjoy all things, but there was nothing in heaven and earth, in all the things that had been created, that could really answer to the heart of His beloved Son.
There was nothing really like Him, nothing that could understand Him, nothing that could truly commune with Him and be united as one with Him—not only to enjoy everything with Him, but also to bear responsibility together with Him.
The Father understood. So for this very reason, even before the foundation of the world, God purposed a purpose in His beloved Son.
That purpose was that He wanted to give His Son a helpmeet, His like. That is the desire of the Father toward His Son.
So, dear brothers and sisters, we find that the church, as we know it from the word of God, is the greatest gift of God the Father to His Son.
Put it another way: it is the one gift from the Father that fully satisfies the heart of His Son. That is what the church is in the eternal purpose of God.
In Ephesians 3, we find that this mystery was hidden throughout the ages. God had already conceived this thought before anything was created.
With this thought behind Him, God began to work and began to create. He created the heavens and the earth, but the heavens and the earth were not the primary purpose. They were secondary.
God prepared them, as it were, for the coming of that which would really answer to the heart of His beloved Son.
God moves in a mysterious way. After He created the heavens and the earth in the first creation, we understand that no man had yet been created. The highest created beings were the angels.
But there was rebellion in heaven. Lucifer rebelled against God. He wanted the place of God’s beloved Son. He was not satisfied with what God had made him.
Because of that, Lucifer turned himself into the adversary of God—Satan. Because of the fall of the angels, the territory God had given Lucifer to rule for God entered into judgment.
That is why we find in Genesis 1:1 that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. When God created, it was perfect. It was done. God spoke the word, and it was done. God never does anything incomplete.
So in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, out of nothing into all things. It must have been perfect, because the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork.
But unfortunately, in Genesis 1:2, we find that the earth was in emptiness and ruin, covered with water. Judgment had come upon the earth.
We can only understand that most likely it was because of the rebellion of that fallen angel. But God never gave up His purpose.
So we find that the Spirit of God brooded over the face of the deep. In other words, the love of God and the power of God worked upon this ruined earth and restored it to be habitable.
Why did God restore this ruined earth, this universe, to make it habitable? Because on the sixth day He created man in His own image, after His likeness.
Now, brothers and sisters, when God created the heavens and the earth, He spoke a word and it was done.
But in the creation of man, you find there was a counsel among the Godhead:
“Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.”
Why was man created differently? Why was man created in such a glorious way, even in the image of God? There must be a purpose, a will behind it.
God had already decided that the man He created would be the helpmeet of His beloved Son.
I believe the reason man was created in God’s image and after His likeness is that man has the capacity to receive even the life of God into him. With the life of God coming into man, man would be able to be united with His beloved Son, to be His like.
But unfortunately, again, we find how our forefather fell in the Garden of Eden. Instead of eating the fruit of the tree of life in the center of the garden, man was tempted and ate the forbidden fruit, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Personally, I believe that in the Garden of Eden there was no bad tree. It was a garden of pleasure. God made that garden full of fruit trees for the body of man.
In the midst of the garden was the tree of life. God’s purpose in planting that tree in the midst of the garden was to give His life—eternal life, God’s own life—to man, so that man could fulfill the purpose for which he was created.
But beside the tree of life, we find the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not a bad tree.
As a matter of fact, there is no knowledge in this world higher than the knowledge of good and evil. Scientific knowledge, philosophical knowledge, ethical knowledge—whatever it may be—the knowledge of good and evil is the highest knowledge in this world.
Yet God knew that without the life of God, this knowledge would bring us to death instead of life. That is the reason God forbade man to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Sure enough:
“In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What happened to them? Immediately, they discovered that they were naked. Glory departed from them.
When they heard the voice of God, they hid themselves. Their conscience convicted them. Instead of bringing them into good, it brought them into death.
Physically, they lived hundreds of years, and naturally speaking they begot sons and daughters. But on the day they ate, their spirit was dead.
We have a spirit, a human spirit. Our spirit is for communion with God, Who is Spirit. But their spirit was dead. It was not annihilated; it was there, but it had lost its proper function. It could no longer commune with God the Spirit. That is death.
This death began to work in man until his soul and body—the whole being—entered into eternal death. So, dear brothers and sisters, without the life of God, knowledge is dangerous. Even the best knowledge gives death instead of life.
But not because of that was God’s purpose frustrated, or did God give up His purpose. No. God continued to work.
When His purpose is set, He will see it through to the end. Thank God for that.
So, brothers and sisters, throughout human history God has been working steadily toward that purpose.
People did not know it because it was a mystery hidden in God. But that does not mean that, because it was hidden, God did not drop hints here and there.
In God’s working throughout time, that purpose was behind everything. So somehow it leaked out, as it were, though people had no understanding of it.
For instance, you have Adam and Eve as a type. That purpose was already there. God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helpmeet for him.”
It was God’s will to give Adam Eve, and Eve had to be his like—exactly like him. Only that which was taken out of him could be united with him as one.
So even in the type, at the very beginning of human history, God had already placed His thought there. Adam and Eve are types; the reality is found in Christ and His church.
In Ephesians 5, after Paul speaks of the relationship between husband and wife—“Husbands, love your wives,” and wives submitting to their husbands—he says that the husband represents Christ and the wife represents the church.
He says that the marriage of man and woman is a mystery, but the mystery is great. “I speak not concerning man and woman,” he says, “but concerning Christ and the church.”
So, brothers and sisters, God does drop His hints here and there and everywhere. The whole idea of the church comes from God.
I think this is very important, because today among God’s people we do not see the church as God sees it.
Even for us believers, probably in our spiritual pursuit our whole attention is upon this question: “How can I be spiritual?” It seems as if this is the very end of our spiritual seeking.
There is nothing wrong with seeking to be spiritual. We should, because this is related to the building of the church. The church is built with the spiritual life of God’s people. If our life does not grow, the church cannot grow. That is very true.
But, brothers and sisters, this is not God’s ultimate thought. Somehow there is still self-centeredness there. Why do we seek spirituality? Perhaps we want to be somebody.
But God has no idea of making us monuments, standing here and there for people to admire. God’s purpose is for the church, a helpmeet for His beloved Son.
Among God’s people, there is such a lack of appreciation for the church, as if the church is nothing.
Oftentimes you hear people say, “My Lord and I—I do not care about anybody else. It is only between my Lord and me.” In one sense, that is very, very good.
But in another sense, where are your brothers and sisters? Where is the church? It is so individualistic that we do not care about the church, as if without the church we can live, and with the church we are in trouble.
So many people who have been burned, as it were, by the church try to live all by themselves. But this is not God’s purpose. You are living outside the purpose of God, because God’s purpose is to give the church to His beloved Son.
To God, the church is very, very precious. To our Lord Jesus, it is the treasure of His heart. For the sake of the church, He was willing to give up everything.
You remember the parables in Matthew 13. There is a merchant seeking treasure, and when he finds a treasure, he sells everything in order to get that treasure.
Oftentimes we use this parable and say that the treasure is the Lord Jesus and the merchant is us, the believers. We find the Lord Jesus, and for His sake we sell everything in order to gain Him. Now, that is very beautiful.
But I remember Brother T. Austin-Sparks. Whenever he spoke on this, he always omitted the first verse and started with the second verse. In the first verse, the treasure is the Lord Jesus, but that interpretation is unscriptural.
Brothers and sisters, what the parable is really speaking of is that He is the Merchantman. He knows what the treasure is, and the treasure is the church, hidden. But He found it, and for its sake He sold everything in order to gain it.
So, dear brothers and sisters, the church is very, very precious to our Lord Jesus. It is God’s idea.
Think of that: something conceived even before the foundation of the world; something behind all the working of God throughout time; something that is the best God could give to His beloved Son.
Now, brothers and sisters, if we see this, can we ignore it? Can we say that the church is nothing? Can we say that the church is an idea of man, that man somehow conceived this idea of the church?
Of course not. I deeply feel that there is a lack of appreciation for the church among God’s people. The reason we do not appreciate it is because we do not understand where it comes from.
It originates in God Himself. Why is it so precious? It is God’s best gift to His beloved Son. We should be very thankful that, in His mercy and grace, He has involved us in the church.
Throughout time God has been working toward His purpose. Even after God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt, He called His people out of Egypt.
After He brought them to Mount Sinai, He began to reveal His mind to them. Why did He deliver them out of Egypt? He wanted them to be His peculiar people, His own people. For that reason, He gave them the law.
Then, in Exodus 25:8, God said:
“And let them make Me a sanctuary,
that I may dwell among them.”
So, brothers and sisters, the children of Israel were delivered out of Egypt for what purpose? Not merely that they might enjoy their freedom.
They had been slaves. They had no rights and no freedom. God delivered them out of Egypt and set them free. Surely, they were set free. But were they set free merely so that they could do anything they liked, be their own masters, and exercise their own rights? That is not the purpose of salvation.
God delivered them out in order to bring them to Himself. God wanted them to be His people. He gave them the law to make them His people. But why did God want to make them His people? The purpose was that He might dwell among them.
“Make Me a sanctuary.” So, brothers and sisters, this whole idea of the tabernacle did not come from man. It did not even come from Moses. It came from God Himself.
How God wanted to dwell among His people! In order to dwell among His people, His people had to be suitable for God, because God is holy. Therefore, we need to be holy.
People may say, “Well, when you come to the temple, the idea of the temple seems to come from David.”
You remember David. After he became king, he took Jerusalem and made it the capital of the nation—not because of its strategic position, but because it was the place God chose to put His name.
After he took Jerusalem, his next move was to bring the ark into the city of David, that God might be the center of the nation.
After that, David told Nathan the prophet, “I live in a palace, and God’s ark is in a tent. I cannot stand it anymore. I want to make Him a house, a permanent house.”
Nathan felt that this was God’s will, so Nathan said, “Go ahead and do it.” But God told Nathan to tell David that throughout all the time He traveled and wandered with the children of Israel, and after they settled in Canaan, God had never said to anyone, “Build Me a temple.”
Yet David had the idea of building God a temple, a dwelling place for God. God’s heart was deeply touched. Even though He did not allow David to build it, you can see how God appreciated what David had in his heart.
But did the thought come from David? No. David was a man after God’s own heart because David had a heart for God. He knew God’s heart.
The thought of the temple did not come from David. But because David knew the heart of God, he knew how God wanted to be permanently settled among His people. Sensing God’s heart, he was simply expressing what was in God’s heart.
So, dear brothers and sisters, in the Old Testament types—the church, the tabernacle, and the temple—the thought did not originate with man. It came originally from God Himself.
When our Lord Jesus was on earth, for what purpose did He come?
The Bible says that in the fullness of time He came, born of a woman and under the law, in order to deliver us out from under the law and to receive sonship.
It is true that when our Lord came into this world, He came to seek and to save the lost. But what was really in His heart when He came into this world?
The Gospel of John tells us the hidden things, the secret things of God. When you read Luke, you find that it ends with the commission to preach the gospel for the remission of sins.
That is the gospel we have all received. We believe in the Lord Jesus, we believe in the gospel, and we have the remission of our sins. Thank God for that.
But that is, I would say, the border. What is really the center, the heart, of the coming of the Lord Jesus on earth? You find that only in the Gospel according to John.
There you find that our Lord Jesus came upon this earth as a Bridegroom, coming to earth to find His bride.
But He could not find His bride anywhere. All He met were the blind, the deaf, the crippled, the dead, and the sinful. He could not find His bride anywhere.
Because of this, He had to create His bride.
Throughout His days on earth, you find Him preaching, healing, doing good, working, and calling disciples to Himself. But He never mentioned even the word church.
If we say that He came for the church, why did He not mention it? Surely, if there is something very dear to your heart, you cannot help but speak of it over and over again. We cannot keep such a secret.
But our Lord Jesus did not use the word church until toward the end of His life. He had been rejected by His own people, and He retreated to the border of Caesarea Philippi, a Gentile city.
For the first time, He uttered that word: “church.”
“Upon this rock I will build My church;
and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
Why? Because at that time He had Calvary in view. He was going to the cross, and there on the cross He would accomplish the work of redemption. By that work, the church could be brought forth.
God was not able to reveal the secret hidden in Him from before the foundation of the world until that time. Even then, it was still a mystery to the disciples. They could not understand it.
Our Lord, when He was on earth, used the word church only twice: once in Matthew 16 and the other in Matthew 18.
The disciples could not understand until His work of redemption was finished, until He was risen and ascended. Then, by the Holy Spirit, He revealed it to the apostles and the prophets.
So in Ephesians 3, the apostle Paul says that the mystery of Christ had been hidden throughout the ages, but now it had been revealed to the holy apostles and prophets.
Today, dear brothers and sisters, this is an open secret. And being an open secret, every one of us who belongs to the Lord ought to know it.
Brothers and sisters, the greatest revelation in the whole Bible is the Father’s revelation of His beloved Son.
Our Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “Whom do men say that I am?” Some said, “You are John the Baptist come to life.” Others said, “You are Elijah, the great prophet.” Others said, “You are Jeremiah,” or “the prophet” mentioned by Moses in Deuteronomy.
But our Lord was not satisfied. He said, “But who say ye that I am?” Thank God, Simon Peter said:
“Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God.”
Our Lord said, “Simon, you are blessed, because this is not something flesh and blood can tell you. It is My Father Who is in heaven Who has revealed it to you.”
Brothers and sisters, this is the greatest revelation in the whole universe: the Father reveals the Son.
Without the revelation of the Father, no one can know Him. We may have mental knowledge and biblical knowledge, yet we do not really know the Son until the Father reveals Him in us.
It pleased God to reveal His Son in us. That is the greatest revelation. And this revelation is so great that it will continue into eternity.
Do not think that because you know Jesus as your Savior, you therefore know Him fully. Not at all. We have only begun to know Him. There is so much in Him. He is infinite.
Today we are beginning to know Him, and in eternity we will continue to know Him. Brothers and sisters, this is the thrill of being a Christian: there is no end to it.
“To know Him”—that was the passion of the apostle Paul: to know Him, the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, that we may attain unto the resurrection from among the dead.
On the basis of that greatest revelation, the Son reveals the church.
Without the first revelation, we cannot have the second revelation. No Christ, no church.
You cannot have the church without Christ. You cannot make the church greater than Christ. No Christ, no church.
You have to know Him. The more you know Him, the more you know the church.
But the church is a revelation of the Son to us—a great revelation. Do not think that we can know the church by ourselves.
Some say, “We were brought up in the church.” Now, what do you mean by that? Others say, “I go to church every Sunday.” What do you mean by that?
As our dear brother said, some say, “I forgot my umbrella in the church.” Now, what do you mean by church?
We do not really know what the church is until it pleases the Son to reveal it to us.
So, brothers and sisters, do not think that because we were brought up in the church, we know the church. We may have attended church all our lives, but that is not the church.
The church is something so much more glorious. It has its origin even before time, in God.
Do we know that? Do we know how much the church means to God? How much the church means to Christ? He loved the church and gave Himself for it.
Brothers and sisters, do we have the same feeling when we mention the word church?
The Lord said, “I will build My church.”
So, dear brothers and sisters, this morning this is all that I feel led to share with you. The only burden of my heart is that we do not think that we already know the church.
Oh, that we may humble ourselves before Him, acknowledging that because we know so little of Christ, we know so little of the church.
We have to acknowledge that without revelation, we will not be able to know the Son. Likewise, without revelation, we will not be able to know the church.
If we can be brought to this place—that we really desire to know it, yet depend upon the Spirit of God to reveal it to us—then, brothers and sisters, we are on the way to really entering into the reality of the church.
May the Lord help us. Let us have a word of prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, we worship Thee because Thou art doing something so great, so glorious, and so precious to Thee and to Thy beloved Son—and Thou art doing it even in us.
Oh Lord, we acknowledge that oftentimes we are not conscious of it. Because of this, we play church. How little is being built.
Oh Lord, have mercy upon us.
We come before Thee this day. Our whole desire is, Lord, as we want to know Thee, we also want to know what is dear to Thy heart.
Lord, we want to love Thee and to love that which Thou lovest. We pray that our remaining life on earth will mean something in the building of Thy church.
We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.