Good morning, brothers and sisters.
A couple of weeks ago, I was before the Lord’s table, speaking about the Lord’s table and discerning the body of Christ. This burden has not left me, so I would like to share some more on this.
Let us turn to John 17:11. The Lord is praying to the Father. We commonly call Matthew 6 the Lord’s Prayer, but this is really the focus of what the Lord is praying. This is really the Lord’s prayer for us.
“I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are.”
—John 17:11
And down to John 17:20:
“I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word;
that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.
The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one;
I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You loved Me.”
—John 17:20-23
Let us turn over to Ephesians 1:18. The Apostle Paul, writing to the church at Ephesus, says:
“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.”
—Ephesians 1:18-19
And down to Ephesians 1:22:
“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.”
—Ephesians 1:22-23
Let us return to the original text we read the other week, 1 Corinthians 11:23, a very familiar passage when we partake of the Lord’s table.
“For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread;
and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’
In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’”
—1 Corinthians 11:23-25
And then, down to 1 Corinthians 11:29:
“For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not discern the body rightly.”
—1 Corinthians 11:29
Let us go to the Lord in prayer.
Lord, as we come before You, we want to be those who see You and understand what Your body is and what Your body does. Lord, we know that You are the life of the body. So, Lord, we ask that You would bless this time, that You would give life to it, that we may know You and may function as we should.
Lord, it is always in Your name and in Your power that we pray. Amen.
Paul wrote these words, and he warned the church at Corinth. He said, “You need to discern the body.” There were some problems in Corinth, as we all know. We have all read the book of 1 Corinthians.
Especially during the Lord’s table, there were problems. People were eating all the bread, and some were drinking all the wine and becoming drunk. Paul, in his heart, said, “You do not understand. You do not discern the body. You do not know what you are doing.”
In actuality, that was the heart of the problem in the church at Corinth: they did not discern the body. They did not understand the body of Christ and what it was to be a member of the body of Christ.
That is the whole root of it, because the Corinthians were full of themselves. They wanted gifts. They wanted power. They did not understand discerning the body of the Lord.
There is none here who eats all the bread or drinks all the wine, but I think it is important that we discern the body. To do so is right: to know what the Lord did and what He accomplished for us, that we may be His body.
In discerning the body of Christ, I want to go back to the Lord’s table and talk about the bread. The Lord said, “This is My body that is given for you.”
We often talk about the blood. We often sing praises about the blood sacrifice. We do not say so much about the body, or the bread that is before us, and what that speaks of.
The blood speaks to us of redemption for sins. It speaks to us individually. The Lord covered us from sin. He redeemed us from who we are and brought us into the kingdom of who He is through His blood.
But what about this bread that is put before us? The bread, as the Lord said, signifies His body that was broken.
On the cross of Calvary, we know that the Lord physically died. He physically suffered. He physically went through torment on that cross for a purpose. It was to shed His blood, to redeem us, but He also had a greater purpose.
The Scripture says that the Lord testified that He was like a grain of wheat. If that grain abided by itself, it was just a grain of wheat. But when that grain was planted into the ground, it brought forth a stalk, and the stalk germinated, and there were many grains of wheat.
On the cross of Calvary, the Lord broke His body so that He might have a fuller expression of His body among His people. He might have a body beyond the scope of the one in which He walked on the face of the earth.
Our brother Jerry shared a couple of weeks ago that the Lord was the fullness of deity, yet He was constrained in His physical body. He could go somewhere, minister, and touch lives, but only in a limited capacity. He could lay hands on the sick, but where He was was the only place He could lay hands on the sick. When He spoke, only the people around Him could hear.
So the Lord desired something else. He desired a fuller expression of His body. He went to the cross of Calvary, and there His body was broken so that He could have that fuller expression of who He is.
We praise the Lord Jesus. He redeemed us. But His body was broken so that we could be His body.
Now let us look at this a little more closely. What does it mean to be the body of Christ? What did the Lord accomplish on that day when His body was broken?
We are told in Scripture that He created one new man. You have to understand that before, there was a people of God—the Jewish people—who were called by His name. Unless you were born Jewish or were proselyted in, which the Jews were not real famous for doing, that was the only way.
There was a very limited expression on the face of the earth of the Lord’s will, and it was found in the Jewish people. But through His death on the cross of Calvary, He broke down the barrier wall and made one new man.
We are told in Ephesians 2 that He broke down the barrier wall. There is no longer Jew or Greek, but there is one new man in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have been accepted in. I do not know; there may be some brothers or sisters here who have Jewish descent. I am pretty sure I do not. I would be left out in the cold if it were not for what the Lord did. I could see what the Jewish people were doing, but I could not be a part of it.
But the Lord Jesus Christ, on the cross of Calvary, through His broken body, opened the way that we can have entrance into His kingdom and be partakers of His body. We have been brought in by His blessed hope, through His shed blood and broken body.
Now, the church primarily is Gentiles, so I want to take a short side trip. We who now see this in the Lord should be praying for those who are Jewish—not merely for the nation of Israel to be redeemed, but for the people to see their Lord.
The Lord wants one new man. He desires one new man to represent Him on the face of the earth.
He inaugurated the way in which we can come together and be something greater than what we are individually. We can be the church—the glorious church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Do we understand what it means to be the body of Christ? Do we understand what He paid and how He sacrificed so that we can be part of it?
The Lord so wants a testimony on the face of the earth that goes beyond the mere expression of what an individual can do. He desired a body, and that body is the church. It is His heart’s desire.
He loves the Father, and the Father loves Him so much. The Lord’s love is for us. He loves you and me individually, but He loves us.
Here is the significance of what I am trying to say. There is an old saying that if I were the only one on the face of the earth, the Lord would go to the cross of Calvary and redeem me. I believe that is true.
But the Lord did not just want one person. He wanted us. He wanted a body. He wanted a manifestation of His very will and purpose on the face of the earth.
He so desired a fuller expression of Himself manifested in us that He gave Himself up on the cross of Calvary so that He would have that. That grain of wheat fell in the ground, germinated on the day of Pentecost, and the church was born.
No longer was it one chosen people, but now it became a living body—a redeemed body. How precious. How wonderful is the work that the Lord is doing among His people, drawing us together to be one body for one purpose: to be the very reflection of Him on the face of the earth.
This is what the body of Christ is. This is what it is about. There are a couple of manifestations of that which I want to discuss. They are not different, just as the one new man is not different from the church. They are the same.
The Lord expresses Himself in the local assembly, in the local body. This is where the Lord’s work is. Pardon the expression, but where the rubber hits the road is in the local assembly.
Sometimes we come together and want to see a real manifestation of the presence of the Lord. Well, look around. The Lord is here. He is in His people. We are functioning together in the local assembly as His body.
I am sharing some objective truth right now. Later, I will get into the practical outworkings of this. But in the local church, He has, if you will, a micro-environment of the church as a whole. We see the church working. We see the body of Christ working. We see brothers and sisters serving, praising the Lord, and serving one another.
I can see the Lord smiling when that functionality works together in harmony, because that is what He wants. That is what He desires.
But there is a fuller expression of the Lord’s work, and it is manifested in what we term the universal church.
Our brother Kenny shared about that a couple of Sundays ago. Yes, it is impossible for brothers and sisters to go out into the universal church and, quote, serve the universal church.
I have been asked in my job a few times to be two places at once. I have not figured that one out yet. I have enough bulk that I probably could be two people, but I have not figured out how to split myself and be in two localities at once.
I can only be in one locality. I can be with you brothers, or I could be halfway around the world serving brothers in China, Brazil, or across this country. But I can only be in one place at one time. That is the local church.
But the Lord desires a full testimony of who He is, and that cannot be contained in just the local church. The full testimony of who He is is the universal church.
Remember that the Lord Jesus Christ came on the face of the earth. The fullness of deity was in Him, but He was constrained because He could not be everywhere at once. He could not be across time anymore. He was constrained.
The Lord revealed this to me: when He shed His blood and broke His body on the cross of Calvary, He brought into existence the body of Christ, which spans time, space, and locality.
No, I can only serve in one place. I have to be here or there. I cannot go out to lunch with Paul. I have tried to call the apostle Paul several times; he does not pick up my call or return it. I do not know why. I tried Peter too. He does not answer either. I do not understand it.
But the truth of the matter is that as I share with you this morning, the book of Ephesians means Paul speaks to us today. Peter speaks to us.
We are part of a body that spans from those who believed the promise that the Son of God would bruise the serpent’s head to the last individual who will stand before the antichrist at the end of time and say, “No.” We are part of that body.
The Lord Jesus Christ has in this universal body what He had in the beginning: a body that spans time and locality. There are brothers and sisters on the face of this earth right now who are meeting and assembling. In some cases, they are giving their very lives so that the Lord may have His testimony.
Yes, we are part of the local assembly. We know one another. We can see one another, and it is easy to discern the working of the body of Christ in the local assembly because we are all together.
But how our hearts need to be broken for those we cannot see and cannot touch—for those brothers and sisters in Christ who have not seen everything that the Lord has, but sense the presence of the Lord. Those who love the Lord are part of His body, and we are one with them.
This is the body of Christ in its universal form. Out of that universal body will come something very precious unto the Lord: His bride.
In Ephesians, Paul gives that wonderful discourse about husbands and wives and their relationship, and he intermingles it with the church and the Lord. He was giving a practical word about the relationship, but he patterned it after the eternal purpose of God: that the Lord would have a bride, bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh, joined with Him in eternity.
This was His pattern from the beginning. Adam was the first prototype, if you will. But unlike Adam’s body, where something was taken out of his side—a rib, some translations say—I believe the Lord Jesus Christ wills that all His body be the bride. The fullness of it will be the bride.
The unfortunate fact, though, is that we are told by the Lord in the parable of the ten virgins that there are some who are satisfied with walking in and being invited to the wedding feast. They are not interested in doing business with the Lord to gain the oil necessary to meet Him in that day.
How our hearts should be broken for the church, for His body, that every saint should come into the fullness of what the Lord has; that His body would be that bride without spot or wrinkle, cleansed by Him; that we could see Him and join with Him on that day in great celebration.
How sad that some of us have decided salvation was enough, and that the full expression of what the Lord was trying to work out in us will not be materialized. How we need to pray for the church and the body. How we need to see the Lord’s desire that the body be one in Him.
How we need to be on our knees that the Lord would have everything in His body. Do you see the body of Christ? Do you understand the Lord’s desire in this?
Well, that is what the body is. Now, what does the body do? Some English teachers are going to get me for my pronunciations, my endings in verbs, and my hanging prepositions. This is the way the Lord gave it to me. I tried to pretty it up, and He said, “No. What does the body do?”
We know what the body is—or at least, in an elementary way, trying to cover a lot of ground, we have tried to lay down what the body is. Now, what does the body do?
Our brother Kenny touched on the first part of what I want to share. The body should be about prayer. One of the focuses of the body of Christ should be prayer.
We are all familiar with Ephesians 6:10-20, speaking about the spiritual armor of God. If you have not heard a discourse on the spiritual armor of God before, some of the brothers and I can meet with you and go over all the pieces of the armor.
But I want to talk about something else: this matter of prayer. Prayer out of that section of Scripture. Years ago, I was looking at these Scriptures and said, “Okay, Lord, You have all these pieces of armor. I understand this. I understand what they are supposed to do. Now, what are they for? What are they about? Why do we have them? What are they used for?”
The Lord flipped on the light switch. He said, “Who was Paul writing about when he was describing the pieces of the armor?” Well, probably the Roman soldier to whom he was chained. That would probably be an accurate description.
Paul was chained to a Roman soldier, and he was sitting there seeing the helmet and the sandals that were the gospel of peace. He laid it out. Unfortunately, we get hung up in the individual pieces and forget what the soldier did.
The problem is that much of the church, when it comes to spiritual warfare or spiritual prayer, has the vision that they take up the spiritual armor, put on the shield, take the sword, helmet, breastplate, and all the pieces, and run out into battle like Conan the Christian.
“I am going to take on the enemy alone. I am going to run into battle. Where is he? I am going to get him. I have a sword. I have a shield. I am ready to go.”
The Lord flipped this light switch and said, “That is not how the Roman soldiers fought, Bill.” How did the Roman soldiers fight?
I am going to bore you with a little military history. The Roman soldiers fought in a pattern called a phalanx. A phalanx was a group of soldiers, usually in a rectangle or a triangle. These soldiers walked into battle with shields interlocked.
The front row held their shields, and the men behind them had their hands against the backs of the men in front, bracing them, with their shields either on top or on the sides. The men in the back had their shields pointed toward the rear to cover the back.
When the phalanx formed on the battlefield and began its advance, it was not a rapid run. It was a slow, steady march forward. The ones who came running were all the barbarians.
They ran up to this phalanx and hit that wall. When they hit that wall, the door opened, the sword went out, and the enemy was no more. The Roman procession walked right over the top of them.
The phalanx, up until modern firearms were invented, was the indispensable force on the battlefield. The phalanx could not be defeated as long as the unit stayed together.
That is what Hannibal did. I do not want to get too much into history, but Hannibal brought elephants against the Roman legions. They got terrified, scattered, and were picked off. Some of them got stepped on.
But as long as the phalanx stayed together, the elephant was not touching that. It was not getting near that. It had bristles, shields, and all kinds of things. The elephant went the other way, no matter what the master said.
When it comes to this matter of prayer, do you see the church in those verses? We are supposed to be together. We are supposed to be that unit which stays together, works together, and protects one another. That is a picture of the local assembly.
What are we supposed to be praying about? Let us take a look at it. What does Ephesians say? First of all, it says we are to stand against the enemy.
What does standing against the enemy mean? What is the enemy trying to do? He is trying to defeat the people of God, right? But what else is he trying to do?
He is trying to defeat the will of God on the face of the earth. So, as we stand firm, as Paul said in Ephesians, what are we doing? We are standing for the will of God on the face of the earth.
Yes, we are standing against the spiritual forces and the powers of darkness. But what we are standing for—or, better terminology, what we are standing in—is the very presence and will of God on the face of the earth.
As we pray for the will of God to be accomplished on the face of the earth, we, as the body, represent the Lord on the face of the earth.
Paul gives all these pieces of armor, and then he begins speaking about prayer in Ephesians 6:18. I did not connect the two, but the Lord said, “This is all one thing.” We stand for the will of God, and then we pray.
Paul said that we should make supplication and prayer at all times before the Lord. Let me give you a little translation. I do not know what your translation says in Ephesians 6:18, but here is what I wrote down when I read these verses:
Let your voice be heard unto God by the power of the Spirit, always before Him.
Let your requests and intercession be made known to Him for yourselves and the local church.
Seeing the need for yourselves to be prayed for, endeavor with all diligent persistence to make requests and intercession for all the saints.
That is the entire body. When we come together in prayer, we are to lay things out before the Lord, intercede for one another, pray for one another, and make our requests known unto the Lord. But we are also to come before the Lord and pray diligently and intercede for others who are not among us.
How wonderful a time it was the other night at prayer meeting. We interceded for two assemblies, and it was a blessed time, because we were in the heavens, setting up a guard around those other assemblies.
We were praying that the Lord would have His will and His purpose in the fullness of His body on the face of the earth. How wonderful it is that we did not just focus inwardly, but looked to someone else and lifted them up.
Brothers and sisters, there is much strength among the brothers here in Richmond. There is much strength among the body here. Let us continue to lift up others as often as the Lord allows.
The last thing covered in this section of Ephesians is prayer for the power of the gospel to go forth and be proclaimed. Paul asked for prayer. He said that he might speak boldly and make known the gospel, proclaiming it boldly even though he was an ambassador in chains.
As the body gathers together, we need to pray that the Lord will send out His gospel. The gospel is more than just the good news that Jesus Christ died on the cross of Calvary. It is the full counsel of God.
It is the full counsel of God. The doorway into the kingdom is the gospel of peace. It is the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ died and set us free.
But we need to pray that the full counsel would be there so that the Lord would have His bride. We need to pray for those who are ministering this word. That is what Paul asked for—not only boldness to speak the gospel, but prayer for the saints who are delivering that word unto the people.
Well, that is prayer. What else does the body do? What else is it invested in? It is invested in the work of building.
There is a building work going on in the body of Christ. In Hebrews 10:23-25, we know the proclamation goes out: do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together, as is the manner of some, but continue all the more as the day draws closer.
There can be no building work among the Lord’s people if the people do not assemble together.
Is our heart’s desire and focus, when we consider our lives, to do what we want to do, or to be a part of something greater? Is our heart’s desire to be among God’s people and to walk with them?
Does the Lord have such a draw in His people and in His assembly that we want to be built together with them, that we want to assemble?
I have to confess, there have been times in my life when I said, “Lord, I do not really feel like going. I really do not feel like going.” Every time I give in to that, I lose something.
Every time the Lord has shown me that I do not feel like it, He whispers in my ear, “Go anyway. Walk anyway.”
Then I receive such a blessing, because there is inevitably something there that I would have missed, something I would not have been a part of, that I needed at that very moment. Or I have been there for a brother or sister who needed my help.
So, in this building work, assembly—coming together as the body of Christ—is crucial.
What else is crucial? There is equipping. Ephesians 4:11-16 says that when the Lord left the face of the earth, He gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastor-teachers.
He gave them for the equipping of the saints, for the work of building up, and unto the full measure of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord has given an equipping work to the body so that we can all come together into the full measure of Him. We can be like Him.
The Lord has gifted the church this way—the body. Heaven help us, there are some assemblies and some denominations that cut short this list.
I will not say who, but I have been ordained in a denominational church. When it came time for my ordination, they said, “Brother, which are you: an evangelist or a pastor?” I said, “Neither.” They looked at me and said, “Well, there are only two gifts left. You have to pick one.”
I went into the pastorate. I am not a pastor. The Lord works through me, but I am not a pastor.
The Lord gave gifts unto His church, not to build up men—that is the problem, and why some bodies shy away from this—but He gave gifted men to the church so that we would be built up into the very likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Thank the Lord for brothers like Watchman Nee. Thank the Lord for apostles, prophets, teachers, and pastors who continue to do the Lord’s work so that we can come into His very likeness.
We are equipped to be the body of Christ. The Lord has provided it. It is not that men decided to be these things; the Lord gave them.
So, equipped, what should we do? We should exercise. Romans 12:4-6 teaches that we should be exercising.
How sad it is that there are certain members, certain parts of the universal body, that shy away from exercising that which the Lord has given them. How sad it is that there are those who abuse that exercise and make it a token of esteem.
Go all the way back to the church at Corinth. Here was their problem: they became so absorbed in themselves that one said, “Hey, I speak in tongues.” Another said, “Hey, I am a prophet.” Another said, “No, I have the gift of healing.” That is not the exercising of the body. That is the exercising of the flesh.
But the Lord has called each and every one of us, together in this local assembly and together in the body of Christ, for a purpose. You are not saved for no purpose. You have a function. You are joints of supply.
You have a specific function that the Lord Jesus Christ has assigned. Paul had to tell Timothy, “Do not shy away from your calling, brother. Do not back away. Exercise it. Walk in it.”
Not in the flesh, but by the power of the Lord Himself, for the purpose of being joints of supply to one another, that the body may be built up into the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
Lastly, I want to look at the example of Jesus. What should the body be? We are supposed to be built up into the full measure of Jesus—for what purpose? So we can say, “I am like Jesus”? No.
What was Jesus’ example on the face of the earth? What did He do? How did He operate?
Let us go back to Ephesians 5. The second part of Ephesians 5:25 says:
“Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”
—Ephesians 5:25
And Ephesians 5:28-30 says:
“So husbands ought also 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.”
—Ephesians 5:28-30
Let us turn to John 15:12:
“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”
—John 15:12-13
And John 15:17:
“This I command you, that you love one another.”
—John 15:17
Then there is this verse which, when I read it, so touched me concerning the Lord’s purpose for His body: 1 John 3:16.
“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”
—1 John 3:16
I was taken aback because I had always thought, “Well, the Lord laid down His life. I ought to lay down my life for Him.” I had an understanding of some kind of recompense. He laid down His life, and I ought to lay down my life for Him and offer it back up to Him.
Then I read these verses. He laid down His life, so we should lay down our lives—not in some vain recompense—but for one another.
We have come full circle. In the body of Christ, the Lord laid down His life that He might have the full measure of what He wanted. What does He want? He wants us to be the full measure of Him and to lay down our lives for one another.
How precious. How precious that the Lord has so equipped us that we could be the very expression of Him on the face of the earth.
How precious that He has equipped us with everything that we need, that we can lay down our lives for one another. It is our reasonable form of worship.
Brothers, I beseech you to perform your reasonable act of worship.
May the Lord have what He wants in us, in the body. It is the full expression of Him that He wants and desires so much.
Until He comes back, may it be that when the world looks at us, they say, “There is Jesus. There is Christ.”
We have everything that we need. He has provided it all. We do not have to strive for anything other than to listen to what He has said to the church and function, laying down our lives as He laid down His life for one another.
That He may be the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
Let us go to the Lord in prayer.
Lord, as we come to the close of this time, my prayer is that we see the preciousness of Your body.
Lord, how You laid Your life down. You made all the provision. You have done all the work necessary for the body to function.
Lord, empower us by Your Spirit, that we may function. Lord, that we may be that fullness of body which has such an expression on the face of the earth that the world cannot deny.
Lord, as You prayed, may they see us and know that You were sent by the Father, and may they glorify the Lord.
Lord, help us. We are so divided. We walk in such frailty, not because You did not provide everything that we need, but because we do not discern correctly the body.
Help us, O Lord. Help us to see the preciousness of what You have done. Help us to walk practically in those things You have laid down, not for our glory, but for Yours.
We ask in Your name. Amen.