Turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16, and verse 18. These are the words of the Lord Jesus:
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.
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven:
and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven;
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
Turn also to the Ephesian letter, chapter 4, beginning at verse 11:
And He gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ:
till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
that we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error;
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.
Now turn back to the Old Testament, to the prophecy of Zechariah, chapter 4, from verse 1:
And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep.
And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have seen, and behold, a candlestick all of gold, with its bowl upon the top of it, and its seven lamps thereon; and there are seven pipes to each of the lamps, which are upon the top thereof;
and two olive-trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.
And I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, What are these, my lord?
Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, Knowest thou not what these are? And I said, No, my lord.
Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain; and he shall bring forth the top stone with shoutings of, Grace, grace, unto it.
Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent Me unto you.
For who hath despised the day of small things? For these seven shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel. These are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.
There is an old Jewish tradition that, when Zechariah saw the lampstand all of gold and saw it alight, he saw seven Hebrew words. Those seven Hebrew words are many more in English: “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” In Hebrew, it is seven words.
Finally, turn to the book of Revelation, chapter 10 and verse 7:
But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, then is finished the mystery of God, according to the good tidings which He declared to His servants the prophets.
Let us bow together in prayer and really look to God that He will meet us this evening.
Father, we want to thank You, as we are gathered here in Your presence, that You have made specific provision for us for this time. You have made provision of anointing, both for speaker and for hearer. Lord, we would not be so foolish, or so stupid, as to ignore that provision.
Lord, You know very well that I can say many words, but unless You are the ability of what I say—the inspiration, the power, the anointing—then, Lord, it will not be Your voice we hear. Lord, You know very well that we can all hear; very often, we hear what we want to hear.
Lord, we pray together that You will be the ability of our hearing, that we hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. May we receive an implanted word that will take root in us, grow up, and bear much fruit.
To that end, dear Lord, we praise You and worship You that we are found together in Your presence, because it is an exciting thing, Lord, to meet with You. You can take Your Word and make it live to us in such a way that we will not be the same people.
O Father, as we consider this whole matter of Your recovery work in the church, we ask for that kind of illumination and revelation which alone comes from You. Dear Spirit of God, move upon us all this night, we pray, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
We are considering this whole matter that we have entitled The Unfolding of God’s Recovery Work in the Church. I do not think that I ought to go back over what we have already said in the evening sessions on Monday and Tuesday. I think it is all on tape, and, if you want an added horror, it is on video as well.
The fact of the matter is that you can get a tape and listen carefully. But it is very important to understand that what we have to say this evening comes out of what we have already said on Monday and Tuesday evening.
I want to talk this evening about the actual constituents—the essential constituents—in God’s recovery in the church for today. We have looked over what He has done over the last four hundred years: the various aspects of truth which He has livingly recovered.
It is one of the most amazing and exciting things that there is an absolute continuity in all that God has done. You cannot departmentalise this thing. Maybe we have done that historically in the various denominations, their doctrine, teaching, and practice. But the fact remains that, overall, every single truth God has livingly recovered is now part and parcel of the household of faith today.
Nobody argues about such things as the Word of God and the supremacy of the Word of God, if they are real believers. Nobody argues about the whole matter of the finished work of the Lord Jesus. We accept it. We are almost ignorant of the enormous controversy over these things that cost brothers and sisters of ours their lives.
I know that many of you are bored stiff with history. Generally, it goes back to school, when you had some boring old teacher who droned on and on—if you are American, of course, about 1776 and all that.
If you are British, it goes back almost two thousand years. If you are Jewish, it goes back four thousand years at least, which means that the teachers we have in Israel drone on far more, and for a much longer time.
But I understand that people, as soon as they think they need to deal with history, switch off. I think that is a tragedy, because Mark Twain—not exactly one of the great saints of the church, but Mark Twain, as so often, coined a truth in the phrase: “We learn from history that we never learn from history.”
When we do not learn the lessons of history, we are predestined to make the same mistakes again, and again, and again.
I think I may just add something about these times. I think it will transform it for you if you think, not of these biographies in the morning as history, but as the outline and interpretation of relatives.
If you think of it as the biography of some of your relatives, you will instantly become interested. Everybody likes to hear about some great-grandfather or great-uncle, even though they never met them. I know some people who plough into their pedigree and find out all kinds of fascinating things.
Now just start thinking like that. John Wesley is not some strange odd bod that has nothing whatsoever to do with you; he is a relative. You may be sharing a room with him for all eternity.
The same would apply to Count Zinzendorf, or Martin Luther, or any of the others. So you might as well get to know them. Then, at least when you meet together, you will have something to talk about.
Sometimes we feel that history has very little for us, but in actual fact history has a tremendous amount. I have noticed that every single movement that has started off as claiming to be an absolutely new thing, without any relation to what God has done in the past, has always failed.
We are but the latter part of the twentieth-century generation in a continuous recovery work of God that spans four hundred years and is going to go on to the completion of the work of God.
If we see it like that, we shall be preserved from so many imbalances and so many errors. Somehow or other, we will learn to appreciate what God has recovered. We will learn to appreciate what God has done in some of these lives. It will not be distant or far off, but something vitally related to ourselves in this day in which we live.
Now I want this evening to talk about the essential constituents, at least as I see them, in God’s recovery work for today. What are the essential characteristics? They are, of course, essential characteristics in every recovery move in the last four hundred years, but there is a sense in which they are gathered up in a very defined and decisive way in the day and generation in which we live.
The first essential constituent is that we know Christ as our Saviour.
Now, you might look at me quite blankly on that and say, “Oh no, you do not need to tell a conference like this that we need to know Christ as Saviour.” But it is this simple, fundamental, and essential truth that has been recovered in the last four hundred years.
We are not to belong to a church which is some inglorious mixture of unsaved people and saved people, pagan ideas and scriptural ideas, the ways of the world and the ways of God, all mixed up into one. We are to begin where God began: with the salvation of our Lord Jesus.
In other words, those who know Christ as Saviour—and they alone—belong to the body of the Lord Jesus. You can have theologians, you can have pastors, you can have Christian workers, deacons, deaconesses, and elders; but if they are not born of God, they have no part in the body of the Lord Jesus.
If you look at the Word of God, I think it is quite clear. I hope you will not just feel that I am treating you like a kindergarten in underlining this essential constituent. But I do not know: as I look around, I find it almost as if the enemy is psychologically preparing God’s people for apostasy by bringing in all kinds of ideas that do not have their origin in God, in the work of the Lord Jesus, or in the work of the Holy Spirit.
We are being conditioned for a takeover. We are being conditioned for a kind of psychological Christianity. Now, my dear friends, that to me is extremely dangerous. That is why I want to underline this particular essential constituent.
If you look at John 17:2, we read this in the prayer of the Lord Jesus:
Even as Thou gavest Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom Thou hast given Him, He should give eternal life.
You have the same thing again in John 17:6:
I manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to Me; and they have kept Thy word.
Again, in John 17:9:
I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for those whom Thou hast given Me; for they are Thine.
Again, in John 17:24:
Father, I desire that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.
It could not be clearer. Those who have been given to the Lord Jesus by the Father are the members of His body. They are the members of His church.
If we look into church history, every time, by some means or another, unsaved people have been introduced into the church as members, it has been the Trojan horse. From within, they have worked to destroy the testimony of Jesus.
Now, my dear friends, this does not only go back to Constantine and the whole christening of those who had no part in the kingdom of God—who grew up thinking that they were Christians because they had been christened.
I know that in many evangelical churches here in the States, thousands have thought that they have become Christians by just putting up their hand, signing a little form, and getting baptised, yet they are not born of God. The result is that into the church have come all kinds of men who are unregenerate, growing up with unregenerate aims.
This matter is of tremendous importance. Why? Because in John 17:21, Jesus said:
That they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us: that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.
Then He went on to say:
And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as We are one;
I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them, even as Thou lovedst Me.
The boundaries of this unity are those who are born of God. The boundaries of this unity are those who have been given by the Father to the Son. We have no right whatsoever to bring into the house of God those who do not know the Lord.
Again, you may think, “Why does he have to labour on something like this?” But when you look at 2 Corinthians 6:14, we read:
Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers: for what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity?
Or what communion hath light with darkness?
And what concord hath Christ with Belial?
Or what portion hath a believer with an unbeliever?
And what agreement hath a temple of God with idols?
For we are a temple of the living God; even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
Wherefore, come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.
This is repeated again in the book of Revelation, speaking of the harlot, where it says, “Come ye out from her, and be ye separate.”
Now, my dear friends, I believe this is extremely important. When we look at the early church, we find phrases like this. Philippians 1:1 says:
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus that are at Philippi.
Colossians 1:2 says:
To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ that are at Colossae.
And 1 Corinthians 1:2 says:
Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their Lord and ours.
Here you have the simple, categorical, dogmatic formula of the church. It consists of those who are born of God and excludes those who are not born of God. They may have theological degrees, they may have titles, they may have status, but in the sight of God they are not in the church of God.
People sometimes say to me, “But did not Jesus give a parable of a field, of seed that was thrown into the field, and then an enemy came and sowed tares? And they say, ‘Lord Jesus, do not tear up the tares. Now the tares are amongst the good seed; let it all grow together.’”
I am told, “This is the church. We must not try to exclude anyone.” Jesus Himself gave the interpretation of that parable in Matthew 13:38. He said, “The field is the world.”
He never said the field is the church. He said, “The field is the world.” In other words, this is the whole problem of the sun shining on the righteous and the unrighteous, and the storms coming on the righteous and the unrighteous. God says, “Let it all go on together till the end, and then We will sort the whole thing out.”
But this has no bearing on the church. The church is not this field. The church consists of those who are born of God.
I say this is tremendously important because all who are saved, all who are born of God, all who have been given by the Father to the Son—whoever they are, whatever they are—they belong to me, and I belong to them. They may be black or yellow, white or brown, Jew or Gentile, high class or low class, whatever they are. If God has given them to the Lord Jesus, I belong to them and they belong to me.
I cannot adjudicate in this matter. I cannot say, “I like someone; I dislike someone.” He may be very ugly in some things and very difficult in many ways, but I am afraid God has saved him. I belong to him and he belongs to me. I have to serve him. I have to care about him.
If I find a Roman Catholic who is born of God, I cannot shut out a Catholic because he is a Catholic. Have you ever heard such a thing? There are people who are steeped up with all kinds of things, yet they grow in the Lord. Now, do not ask me how.
All I know is that some of the loveliest saints I have met are Catholic, born of God, and walking with the Lord. All I can say is that I am going to share eternity with them, and they with me. They are the elect whom God has given to the Lord.
I know many Protestants who are not born of God. They occupy big positions in the church, but they are definitely not born of God. They speak of Jesus as a homosexual. They speak of an illicit relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. They tell me that the resurrection of Jesus was a cheap conjuring trick with bones.
They are Protestants in the Protestant tradition, but they are not born of God. They do not belong to me, and I do not belong to them. I have to repudiate such. That is the Trojan horse that has got into Christendom.
This simple little thing is so important. Wherever you look, if you go back to the very beginning of any one of these recovery moves, nobody was called anything. In the beginning, nobody was called Lutheran. They were called Lutherans by others as a term of disrespect.
Lutherans never called themselves Lutherans, any more than the Independents called themselves Independents, or the Calvinists called themselves Calvinists. That came in the second, third, and fourth generation. But in the first generation, they were the people of God.
Wesley, in his journal, speaks about travelling from the people of God in Leicester to the people of God in Bradford. He never said, “I travelled from the Methodists in Leicester to the Methodists in Bradford.”
I love some of those old Quaker books which say something like this in the title: “For people commonly, but wrongly, called Quakers.”
This was again the second and third generation beginning to publish the writings of George Fox and other great Quaker leaders. They gave them the title: “For people commonly, but wrongly, called Quakers.”
I remember, when I was in Egypt, asking some of the boys in the services, “Oh, what denomination are you?” Some of them would say, “None.” Then I would say, “Ah, you are a brother.” “No, I am not a brother; I am the Lord’s.” Then I knew they were brethren.
It is all done now. You ask any of them what they are, and they say, “Christian Brethren.” Strange.
All these different people, in the beginning, were just the people of God. They were the redeemed of the Lord; they were the saved of the Lord. They felt a kinship to all others who were born of God. As far as they were concerned, it was Christ as Saviour that was the initial, fundamental matter that determined whether a person was in.
It was not that they excluded those who did not know the Lord; they prayed that they might be saved. It is a very interesting thing that, at least in two or three of these groups—for instance, the Quakers and the Methodists—they had what they called seekers’ meetings.
In these meetings, all the people were mixed up: those who had found and those who were still seeking. It was Oliver Cromwell who said, “The next best thing to a Christian, a believer, is a seeker.” He was reverting to what was happening all over the country.
But everybody knew that until you were saved by the grace of God, you were not in the body of the Lord Jesus. You did not belong to His church.
This is an essential constituent in recovery. It does not matter where you turn, all the way through the last four centuries you find this as an essential constituent. It has to be more so today than ever before.
If you are the Lord’s, you belong to me and I belong to you. It may not thrill you; it may, in fact, horrify you. But you have got me for eternity, and I have got you for eternity. So, my dear friends, if we are in Christ, we might as well start to get to know each other and start to get adjusted to one another.
The second essential constituent is Christ as our oneness. Now, this is important. Do not think this is the same matter; it is not quite the same matter.
Every move in the recovery of God in the last four hundred years has been characterised at the beginning by unity—by amazing unity. Diversity, originality, but unity.
This unity is not that we all agree to agree, dress alike, behave alike, look alike, or use the same phraseology. In every single movement of the Spirit of God in its beginnings, there was no phraseology. It was the second and third generation that created it.
It was absolutely fresh, absolutely alive. There was originality. It is an amazing thing: apart from the Quakers, who had a thing against singing and music, in every one of these moves of the Spirit in the first generation, an enormous number of spiritual songs and hymns were composed.
Right to this day, we are all singing original compositions from amongst the charismatics. Even those who are violently anti-charismatic are singing most of these Bible songs and Scripture songs that came out of this amazing move of the Spirit all over the world. It is quite remarkable.
Now, this oneness is not uniformity. It is not that everyone agreed to say the same thing as Luther. Before very long, Zwingli and Luther did not see eye to eye. Then they had someone called Lambert—nothing to do with me—an Alsatian Christian leader, who tried to help the two of them. Philip Melanchthon got into the whole proceedings as well.
They had quite serious arguments, debates, and discussions amongst themselves. Yet, in the beginnings, there was the manifestation of a remarkable unity. What was the unity? The unity was Christ.
This is an essential constituent in any recovery work of God today. My unity with you, and your unity with me, is not necessarily to do with the colour of our skin.
You may have a different colour to me, so that divides us straight away. You may have a different racial background to me. I am Jewish; you may be Gentile, so then we have another big problem, especially from my side.
Then we may have another problem. I may come from a very poor background, and you may come from a very aristocratic background. Shall we have a third problem?
You may be highly educated, and I might be—not stupid, but very ignorant. We have yet another problem. Then maybe you come from the good Southern Baptists, and I come from the middle. We have another problem.
So how in the world are you and I going to be one? Oh, you say, quite easy: “You join me. You have got to become a Southern Methodist. Furthermore, you have got to do something about the colour of your skin. You have got to look like me, behave like me, and be educated to my standard. Boy, I cannot have fellowship with you; I do not like stupid people.”
My dear friends, this unity will never last. If we try for that kind of unity, we end up with an artificial uniformity that is stifling to any work of the Holy Spirit. It is like a communist police state. Everyone looks to the leader to see what he is saying, because there is a party line.
No, that is not this oneness. This oneness is that the same Lord Jesus in you is the same Lord Jesus in me, and the same Christ God has put you in is the same Christ He has put me in. Therefore, it is the Lord Jesus who is our unity.
Now I can relax. I can happily be myself for the first time. I can have my cultural background, my own degree of education, my own colour of skin, and whatever race I come from. The middle wall of partition has gone, and I can relax.
It is the Lord Jesus who is the unity between you and me. Now I expect you to be different from me, because I expect you to give something that I cannot give. We are both saved by the same Lord, indwelt by the same Lord, and bound together by the same Lord. But you are different to me—thank God for that—and I am different to you—thank God for that.
Now we can have a harmony that we never had before. You might be excitable and volatile, and I might be phlegmatic and cautious.
When you praise the Lord, you clap your hands, and I say, “Oh, if only the Lord would iron out Brother So-and-so. He would stop clapping his hands. What he needs is suffering. Give him a bit of suffering and he will not clap his hands any more.”
Here we are in a prayer meeting, and someone jumps up and says, “Lord, I love You,” and I say, “Oh, why do they not keep that for the bedroom? It is embarrassing—embarrassing—to be so direct with the Lord and let all that emotion out like that. It is not English.”
But it is a terrible surprise to the English that God has saved lots of Spaniards and Portuguese and Italians and Greeks, Chinese and Japanese and Indians, and I do not know what.
We all imagine that if God does a really good work in somebody, they will virtually become sanctified English. But God does not do that. God delights in this diversity and this originality.
What in the world have we done in the church that we have stifled most of the originality of people, so that there cannot be the kind of compositions, participation, and contribution that is truly original, and yet has gone through the cross into the resurrection of Jesus?
Every single recovery move in the history of the church has been an outburst of original new life. In the third and fourth generation, it is put into a straitjacket.
My dear friends, this matter of oneness is so important. Christ is our oneness. It is impossible to be one without Him. Impossible.
It is hard enough, when we have the Lord, to maintain that oneness. I do not care who you are: I guarantee that nobody will stay together in fellowship unless the Lord is the oneness.
When you turn to the Word of God, it is quite clear. Ephesians 4:3 says:
Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
It continues:
There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.
Now, my dear friends, have you noticed something? It does not say, “Give diligence to strive for the unity of the Spirit.” It does not say, “Give diligence to achieve the unity of the Spirit.” It does not say, “Make the unity of the Spirit your goal.” It says, “Give diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit.”
There it is: one body. In other words, you cannot maintain something that you have not got. You understand? I do not want to bring it down to a very poor level, but you cannot keep a dog if you have not got a dog.
If I said to you, “Give diligence to keep the dog,” you would say, “I have not got a dog. How can I keep a dog if I have not got a dog?” But if you have the dog, then you must keep the dog and be diligent in looking after the dog.
In the same way, you cannot maintain a house if you have not got a house. You first have to have the house, then you maintain the house. This unity of the Spirit is something that you and I are saved into. You and I are born into this oneness.
It is something already there. It has been there all the time. When you and I were saved and born of the Spirit of God, we were introduced into this unity of the Spirit. Now maintain it. Keep it. Give diligence to keep it.
It says, “With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love, giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit.” That is how it is maintained.
Now there is another unity in this same passage which is so often overlooked. You find it in Ephesians 4:13:
Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God.
Did you hear that? It is “till we all attain unto the unity of the faith.” The unity of the faith—seeing eye to eye on every detail in the Word of God, seeing eye to eye on everything to do with the knowledge of the Son of God—is something we are arriving at. It is something we are attaining.
What we have done in Christian circles so often is make the unity of the faith the basis of our fellowship and make the unity of the Spirit the goal. Do you get it? It is very important.
People are always trying, one way or another, to help me see some doctrinal point that they see very clearly. They plaster me with tracts, booklets, pamphlets, and letters. Sometimes I feel so psychologically pressurised that it would be the easiest thing in the world just to say, “I agree with you.” But very often, I do not.
Especially on matters to do with prophecy. I have never known any subject upon which people are more dogmatic and categorical than prophecy and the details of prophecy. Yet there is no subject in the whole Bible upon which you can be less categorical and dogmatic, other than the essential things.
The Lord Jesus is coming back. Upon that, we can be dogmatic and categorical. If our Lord Jesus had wanted to clear up some of these problems, why did He not give a supplementary discourse for five minutes and say, “This is exactly the sequence of events: this, this, this, this, and this”? Then we would have no problem.
Are we going to go before the tribulation? Are we going to go after the tribulation? Or are we going to go during the tribulation? How? Only those ready are going to go. Personally, that is what I feel. Now, do not start writing letters to me.
I personally believe that those who are ready will be taken. But, my dear friends, I completely understand that there are others who honestly and sincerely do not see the same as I do. Shall I divide from them? No. I shall love them, and if possible, I shall learn from them.
After all, when we are taken, I shall be able to say to them, “There you are.” Why argue about it now? Why fall out now?
I have known people put out of places over these matters. I remember one assembly in Britain, aptly called the Totterdown Christian Assembly. They put out a brother because he happened to believe that we would go through the tribulation. I cannot believe it.
We must maintain the unity of the Spirit whilst we are coming to the unity of the faith. There will come a day when we shall all see eye to eye.
Some people tell me there is no millennium. They are insistent that there is no millennium. Well, I am quite happy to wait. If there is a millennium, I shall say, “I am ashamedly and unabashedly as premillennial as you are.” If there is not, I do not mind them saying to me, “There you are.”
In that day we shall see eye to eye. In the meantime, we are in the same household of faith, within the same body of the Lord Jesus. We are in the same house of God. We are in the same movement of recovery. Why should we divide?
This matter of oneness is so important. This fellowship of Christ is so rich. It says in 1 Corinthians 1:9:
God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
How sad I am that some modern translations translate this, I think quite wrongly, “God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” That is wonderful—to be called into fellowship with the Lord Jesus—but it is an even bigger thing to be called into the fellowship of the Lord Jesus.
This fellowship of the Lord Jesus is marvellously described in the same letter, in chapter 12. When the apostle by inspiration speaks of this fellowship as a body, he says:
For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of thee,” and so on. Think about it for a moment. You do not have to look at me; look at yourself. Your finger does not look anything like an eye, does it? Nor can your finger do what your eye does. Your eye does something quite specific; so does your finger.
Your big toe does not look at all like your ear—unless you have a very odd big toe. Those two things are so different, and the function of the big toe and the function of the ear are quite different. Yet they are in the same body, and they are essential for the functioning of that body.
This is the fellowship of Christ. We are all so different. Each one of us has something of the Lord to give, quite different from the other. If we could understand this essential constituent, it would be tremendous.
In the end, this originality, diversity, and unity is the thing that attracts the world. It is when the world sees people redeemed, original, and one that they begin to inquire, “What is it?”
The necessity for this unity to be maintained is not duty; it is love. That is why we have, in this Corinthian letter, chapter 12 on the body of Christ and the manifestation of the Spirit, chapter 14 on our meetings and how we act under the direction of the Holy Spirit, and in the midst of it all, the more excellent way: love.
It is the only way that the body will ever truly function. It is the only way that we shall stay together. It is the only way the body will be built up in love. It cannot build itself up in duty. It cannot build itself up only in zeal. It cannot build itself up in knowledge. It builds itself up in love.
And that finds us all out. The oneness of Christ: here is an essential constituent.
Here is a third essential constituent that comes out of this: Christ as foundation. No other foundation.
A foundation is not a work of art. A foundation is not some ornament. A foundation has only one reason for its existence: it is the foundation of a building. You build on a foundation.
When we look at the Word of God, we discover that the whole Bible is about an eternal building programme of God. To put it in childlike language, God wants to build a city. God wants to produce a bride. God wants to build a habitation of Himself in the Spirit.
To do it, He has to build living stones together on a certain foundation. That foundation is the Lord Jesus, and the Lord Jesus alone.
If you look at 1 Corinthians 3:11, it says:
For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Or again, in Ephesians 2:20-22:
Being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief corner stone;
in whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord;
in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
Where is this temple in the Lord built? Where is this habitation of God in the Spirit built? It is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ Himself as the chief cornerstone.
We gather on this foundation alone. This is an essential constituent of the recovery work of God for today.
If we gather on the ground of Christ plus certain experiences, Christ plus certain doctrines—now, I am not talking about essential doctrine concerning the Godhead, the authority and infallibility of God’s Word, or the elementary experience of being born of God—but there are so many other experiences.
Supposing I shut you out because you have not had the same experience of the Holy Spirit that I have had. I say, “You cannot have fellowship until you have had the same experience as I.” What have I done?
I have not only divided the body, but I have damaged you. Why? Because I am insisting that you come to where I am, after I took years to get there.
I say, “I will not have fellowship with you until you have been baptised the way I was baptised, and until you have had the experience that I have had. Until then, you are in the kindergarten. You are outside. You are behind the rope.”
No, my dear friends, there is only one foundation. God the Holy Spirit will commit Himself to no other foundation.
What an interesting thing it was when the children of Israel returned from Babylon and came back to Jerusalem. What was the very first thing they did? They set up the altar. This is Christ as Saviour—the finished work of the Lord Jesus.
What was the second thing they did? They cleared the foundation. That was the second thing. And the third thing: they began to build on the foundation.
This foundation is so tremendously important. Upon what are we gathering together? Now listen very carefully to me: are we gathering together on some revelation concerning the church instead of Christ as the foundation?
The only foundation is the Lord Jesus. If you want to meet with me and you do not understand the first thing about the church, I have got to love you, care for you, and not batter you over the head all the time about church truth. I have just got to love you until you are ready.
Until you are ready. Oh, we do so much damage.
I have seen the most incredible things. When I was young in the Lord, there were dear mothers in Israel in the house of God, and how they used to arrange things. Bill used to smoke.
In those days, it was considered absolutely dreadful for a child of God to smoke. In fact, it was taught in the group I was in when I first started that it was almost impossible to be a child of God and smoke.
I remember how one day they arranged the conversation at dinner especially for Bill. Our hostess started off by saying what a lovely gathering it was that morning, and even better in the evening.
Then, after a few moments, she said, “So-and-so, I believe you once smoked very heavily, and then God delivered you from it. Tell us.” You could see Bill sinking slowly under the table.
In the end, we had a discussion on lung cancer, and how people were saying, “Did you see so-and-so in that advertisement a little while ago? You know, the one who died of lung cancer. Terribly sad. But of course, if you smoke, you see, that is what happens.” Poor Bill.
God had not yet convicted him of smoking, but we were doing what God was not doing. This dear sister had waited for a week or two, but when she saw that the Lord was rather slow, she jumped in. After all, if the Lord did not do it, she was going to do it. It was a very necessary work. Maybe the Lord was busy elsewhere in the earth.
So she had to help Bill to get out of smoking, so that he could be one with us all.
Now, my dear friends, you understand that this is not defending smoking. What I am saying is: what damage we do to one another. We assault one another with tracts, pamphlets, and all kinds of things, trying somehow or other to get people into something.
Why do we not just love one another out of a pure heart fervently? Why can we not just be sensitive to one another and allow the Holy Spirit to work? Of course, there is a time to speak. When the Holy Spirit really burdens you, then it may be the right time to say something, and there is no substitute for a word in season.
But most of our words are not in season; they are out of season. It is not the time of the Lord. We jump the gun. When we do this, we damage our brothers and sisters and impair fellowship.
What a marvellous thing it is when someone is so loved in the Lord that they come themselves to their own revelation, and they themselves say, “God has said something to me. Do you think that is right?” Then you say, “Praise the Lord. It is right.”
Then that person is solidly standing on Christ as their foundation—not on your experience, not on something second-hand, but on their own experience of the Lord.
Like every board of the tabernacle had its own two little feet, you must have your own two little feet. Then there was the bar that bound them all together.
I have used this matter of smoking just as an example, but we can do it in anything. We can talk about all kinds of things in which we badger one another, pressurise one another, and nearly brainwash one another at times, in order to get one another to a place where we think that person ought to be.
Instead, we should love them and wash their feet. If Jesus could wash the feet of Judas, how much more can you and I wash the feet of our brothers and sisters?
I find it very interesting that there are three stones, other than the general foundation, used concerning the Lord Jesus. I will not turn them all up; I will just give you the references.
Christ is the cornerstone; you find that in Isaiah 28:16-17. Christ is the head of the corner; you find that in Psalm 118:22. Christ is the top stone; you find that in Zechariah 4:7.
I find this very interesting because the chief cornerstone was a huge stone. If you were with me in Jerusalem sometime, I could take you now to see some of the latest stones uncovered in the great wall of the temple, which until recently had been hidden by earth.
They are massive cornerstones—twenty or twenty-five feet long, nine or ten feet in depth, and about seven or eight feet in width. These are huge cornerstones.
From this cornerstone, they took a line from which they built the whole building. That was how they did it in those days. The cornerstone was the most important part of the building, because the line of the building was taken from the cornerstone. That is why you hear about the plummet line in the hand of the builder.
But the head of the corner is even more interesting. This is where some of us need to know the Lord Jesus. We can see the building work going on, and all we talk about is the foundation and the chief cornerstone. We do not realise that, when two walls came together in the old days, they had to be bound together by a headstone.
This headstone bound the two walls together. They were not only on the foundation, but at the top they were bonded together. For lack of this understanding, many fellowships have fallen apart.
When we go on with the Lord and have a little more experience with one another—and perhaps get a little tired of one another—we do not know how to take the Lord as the headstone that keeps the two walls from falling outward.
The Lord Jesus is the top stone—that is, the completion of the whole thing. This is another essential constituent.
Let me pass on to a fourth point, which is also an essential constituent: Christ as Head.
This has characterised every recovery move in the last four hundred years. It has been a discovery that Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Head of the church. Jesus is the King. Jesus is the One who is the only and unique authority in the church.
Sadly, within a generation, structures have been built and organisations have been produced which have compromised the headship of the Lord Jesus. But Christ is the only Head of the body.
This is so important. There are no other heads, single or collective, in the body—scriptural or unscriptural. There is only one Head of the body, and that Head of the body is the Lord Jesus.
We find this wherever we turn, really. If you look at Colossians 1:18, we read these well-known words:
And He is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence.
Or look again at 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 the Head, the Head, the Head. Go back to 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.
My dear friends, do you get this thing? This is not just a matter of doctrine. This is not just a matter of some truth that Jesus is the only Head of the church.
If the church is going to be built up, if the church is going to function like a body, if it is going to move, be animated, and be an expression of the Lord Jesus through His body, it needs Him as the Head.
We have to grow up into Him in all things as the Head. We have to hold fast the Head. This is not some objective truth that we can just talk about. “No, we do not want a pope. We do not want a pope. Jesus is our Head.” What do we mean, Jesus is our Head?
My dear friends, I have to tell you this with sorrow in my heart. I go all over the world, and I see everywhere, where there are recovery groups, brethren who have become petty dictators in their own little empires. They never could succeed in anything else, and they have taken over the household of God to establish a kind of totalitarian dictatorship.
They speak of Jesus as the only Head—no other heads—but they are the head. They rule everything. They are the first and the last word.
I remember on one occasion some very dear and godly brethren coming to me and saying, “Do you know what our brother has said to us? ‘If God says anything, it will be through me.’”
This was a group which said that Jesus is the only Head. It was an excuse for wiping out all other leadership so that there could be some kind of dictatorship.
My dear friends, wherever the church is being recovered, Jesus has to be the practical, living, actual Head.
We have to grow up into Him as Head in all things. What does “in all things” mean? In home life, business life, personal life, emotional life, church life—everything.
In the matter of the church, how do we raise money? We must grow up into Christ as Head. How do we train people? We must grow up into Christ as Head. How do we care for and look after the little ones amongst us?
Most of the groups I go to have as many children as they have folk in the fellowship. How do we do it? Do we just make it up? Oh, my dear friends, this matter is so important.
Let me just open my heart for one moment on this matter. When I spoke about Christ as Saviour, as the only Saviour, do you know that there are a whole number of Christian organisations that raise money by bringing in unsaved worldly firms to administer the finances?
Can you believe it? In the house of God, they bring in unsaved fundraising firms to raise money for the house of God and for the work of the Lord. The more you understand what I mean by, “Be not unequally yoked together.”
For lack of understanding of this, what do we do? Christ as Head is so important.
I want to tell you that wherever I go, I find very little understanding of Christ as Head. It seems that we are unable, or have ill competence, in hearing the Lord. We need men who can hear what the Lord is saying. That is the great need.
Sisters, pray for such men. Pray for such men first, and pray until God raises up men amongst us who can hear what the Lord is saying.
We can see a denominational structure, an organised church here and there, and say, “Oh, it is not right.” Yet we ourselves fall into the same trap.
The church needs to hold fast the Head. Jesus wants to direct us. Jesus wants to direct each fellowship and each assembly in its own way, for its own needs, and He alone knows them. He has the solution. He has the pattern.
If we could only hear what the Lord is saying, and could only have that living relationship to Christ as Head. When you look at these recovery moves of God in the last four hundred years, how amazing it is. Lead men, with all their weaknesses, heard the Lord.
They actually heard the Lord. They were directed by the Lord. They sought the Lord with all their hearts.
Whilst Jesus was Head, the whole movement was kept on the track, in the centre of God’s will, alive, functioning, with impact, power, and multiplication. The moment Jesus’ headship was compromised and He was dethroned, death set in.
This is an essential and strategic constituent. When I was before the Lord about this evening, I thought perhaps I should put this first, because really, this matter of Christ as Head is absolutely strategic.
Who hears the Lord? Oh, my dear friends, I am not just saying, “Who hears the Lord?” really. People come to me and say the Lord told them to do this, and the Lord told them to do that. I do not think the Lord knows anything about it.
They are hearing the voice of their own soul. They have never known what it is to have a division between spirit and soul.
But the Lord Jesus wants to speak. If there is leadership in the church, the one essential characteristic of all leadership in the church should be the ability to see the Lord and hear the Lord.
If a man cannot see the Lord with the inward eyes of his heart and cannot hear the Lord with the ear of his spirit, how can he be a leader? He will be a blind leader of the blind, and will all fall into the ditch—again, leader of the dead.
Oh, dear friends, nothing is more essential and more strategic than this matter, because every recovery move began with the Lord getting the ear of some human being.
If I may put it even more crudely, it began with God getting the head of some human being. He decapitated them, if you know what I mean. Then He, in His own way, replaced it, so that they could think the thoughts of Christ.
Sadly, when those men passed, there were not others who could step into their shoes who heard the Lord.
My dear friends, I only want to underline this tremendously important thing. Those of you sisters who are envisioned by God with an understanding of the Lord’s purpose, and perhaps feel useless, pray that God will raise up many in the last days who hear the Lord.
It is so interesting that the Lord Jesus said to every one of the seven churches, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.” Right at the end of the book of Revelation, He again says it: “If any man hath an ear, let him hear.”
Jesus is not some figurehead of the church. He is the actual Head. That is why we need the Holy Spirit: to join us to the Lord, to keep our ears unblocked from spiritual wax, from diseases of our spiritual ears that render us deaf.
My dear friends, this is so important. This is an essential constituent in the recovery work of God.
I will close now. I think I have gone over time. The last point I want to underline is another essential characteristic that has characterised every recovery move of God: Christ as power.
Christ is power. Every one of these moves should have been snuffed out in the first years: so weak, so despised, so small, so insignificant, with the whole world against it, speaking against it, working against it, antagonism on every side, and the powers of darkness out to liquidate it.
It should have been destroyed, but instead there was power. They proved to be invincible. That move of God proved to be irreversible, and in many cases society itself not only knew the impact, but was changed.
The rule and authority of Christ as Head over all things to the church—oh, my dear friends, how we need to know it.
I sometimes wonder whether, if we knew this, some of these moves of the Spirit would have lasted in life longer. We did not know how to use the keys. We did not know how, in union with our Head, to stand against the devices and powers of evil.
But, my dear friends, we need this power, do we not? We need power to do the will of God, even though it costs us everything. We need power to build up the body of Christ, though it is at great sacrifice.
We need power to hold the testimony of Jesus faithfully and devotedly right through to the coming of the Lord. We need power to multiply.
What is this idea that we should be some little holy huddle centred around some deeper truth? Every one of these recovery moves of God burst out on all sides in multiplication, so that thousands upon thousands found the Lord.
Power to multiply. When a plant is weak, it cannot reproduce. When a plant is strong, it reproduces. We need power to multiply. We need Christ as power—not human power, not human ingenuity.
We need Christ as the power to multiply, Christ as the power to do the will of God, Christ as the power to build up the body of Christ, and Christ as the power to hold His testimony.
My friends, do I need to say it? We need power to die.
This house of the Lord can never be built until men and women learn how to die—how to lay down their lives for His sake and the gospel’s, how to sacrifice themselves for the Lord, for His people, and for the world.
Dear friends, that requires power. The deepest instinct in all of us is self-preservation. We cannot fall into the ground and die. Only when the wind of God comes into us and shakes us can we fall into the ground and die, and a harvest come.
All other dying is religion. But this dying I am talking about is not religion. It is the dying that, when we die, we reproduce; when we die, there is a harvest; when we die, the will of God is done; when we die, the glory of God comes down and tabernacles upon us.
Oh, for the glory of God to come upon our little companies of people all over this land and over the world. If the fire of God and the glory of God were to touch our little, insignificant groups of people, would it not be a tremendous thing? Would not the world start to turn aside and say, “What is this?”
But, my dear friends, the power of God never comes where there is flesh. The glory of God never tabernacles upon the flesh. Only when we have the power to die, then the power of God comes; then the glory of God comes.
Friends, we need power to intercede. We will never do that until we have died. It is the most unglamorous of all ministries, but we need power—Christ’s power—to enter into the secret place and intercede.
We need power to love: to love one another, to love the difficult ones amongst us, to love the rebellious, to love the unteachable. We need Christ as power.
Dear friends, it says in the last days the love of many shall wax cold. We need Christ as power to love more and more and more. How can we ever forgive our enemies?
I have to tell you, I am Jewish. I find it very, very hard to forgive. To this day, I find it terribly difficult to go to Germany. I lost fifty-eight members of my family, including my father and my grandmother, at their hand. I find it so hard to go.
I hear Corrie ten Boom, and I hear how she loved them. Then I know that in myself, I can only think of one thing: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Only Christ can be my power to love. I have no other power. I have to be honest. But Christ can be my power to love.
Dear friends, we are going to enter into days when people will do injury to us; when these antichrist forces will rob us, spoil us, dispossess us, take away our rights, and turn our children against us or our parents against us.
If we do not know Christ as the power to love, we shall hate. We shall be filled with bitterness, and the testimony of Jesus will not be with us. Only if we know Christ as power.
Now, my dear friends, you cannot know Christ as power to love, power to do the will of God, or power to die, unless the Holy Spirit comes.
When the Holy Spirit comes to you in His own gracious, beautiful, gentle, but powerful way, then you know Christ’s power. Then, for the first time, the Lord Jesus lives through you.
Then, for the first time, the Lord Jesus enables you to do the will of God, whatever it costs. Then you can lay down your life—not once, but again and again and again.
Dear friends, these are the essential constituents of recovery.
We are surely not known by what we are against. Surely we should be known for Whom we are for.
May the Lord write on your heart and mind these essential constituents of God’s recovery work for today. Shall we pray?
Heavenly Father, we lift up our hearts to You. What can we say, Lord? All we can say is this: Lord, we are very poor and very difficult material. But, Lord, You have saved us. Father, You have given us to our Lord Jesus.