He saith unto them, But who say ye that I am?
And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father who is in heaven.
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.
God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office:
so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.
And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.
He that loveth his life loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also My servant be: if any man serve Me, him will the Father honour.
And we have committed this time of the ministry of Your Word to You.
Lord, we now just want to confess that without the anointing, grace, and power that the Lord Jesus won at Calvary for us, it will just be words.
We stand by faith in that anointing for the speaking of Your Word, for the translating of it, and for the hearing of it. Meet us, Lord, in Your Word.
And we shall be careful to give You all the praise. We ask in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
On Friday evening, I spoke upon the theme, How can I live the Christian life?
Now this morning I want to speak—I put it in a question—How can I experience the life of the church? How can I experience true church life?
Not just the meeting. Not just the collection of people coming together. Not just a building. But how can I experience what the Lord Jesus called “My church”?
How can I enter into a living experience of the church?
What happened at Pentecost? What really happened?
Some people think that it is just a question of the power of the Holy Spirit. I have no problem with that.
Some people believe that Pentecost is a question of gifts. I have no problem with that.
Some people feel that Pentecost is a question of speaking in tongues. I personally have no problem with that.
But what really happened on the day of Pentecost?
When the Holy Spirit fell upon 120 human beings—120 human beings saved by the grace of God—on that day, those 120 human beings were joined to a Head at the right hand of God.
Never at any time in the history of God’s dealings with mankind had that ever happened.
It was, of course, directly related to what the Lord Jesus did on the cross.
We call it the counting of the Omer. It comes from the second day of Passover, and then we count it one day after the other until it comes to forty-nine days.
Then comes the festival of Shavuot, or Pentecost. Shavuot in Hebrew; Pentecost in Greek. It is the fiftieth day.
On that day, the risen, glorified Lord Jesus received the promise of the Holy Spirit and poured Him out upon 120 saved human beings.
Within hours, 3,000 Jews were saved. Then there were 3,120 joined to a Head in Him.
The mighty wind that accompanied the coming of the Holy Spirit, that divided into 120 flames—one for each of the 120—and even the expression and manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit, were all symptoms of something even more essential and foundational.
For the first time in history, God took human beings, saved by grace, and joined them to Someone at the right hand of God. That is the spiritual organism: that union with the Head, the body.
The body manifests the Head.
If my head says, “I’m thirsty,” I need my body to get some water.
If my head says, “Walk over there,” what do I do? I have not only got my head; I have a body.
Whether you like it or not, your body is the manifestation of your head. It manifests whatever intelligence you may have. That intelligence is expressed through the body.
This is what the Lord Jesus meant by saying, “My church.”
Is it a building? Normally, a place where you leave your Bible, where you leave your umbrella, where you lose your purse—somewhere where you meet other people?
Is the church an organization? It has organization, but it is not an organization. It is an organism.
An organism has complex organization, but the organization of an organism comes from life, not from routine.
I always explain it this way. A car built in 1990 is an organization. It is not a 2008 model. The only way you can do anything with it to change it is to come from without to within.
When the church is merely an organization, it gets stuck at a certain day. It does not change. If it does change, it is from without to within.
My body—forgive me talking about myself—was born in 1931. Of course, I am much older. Here I have a living body. Everything within me came from that little baby in 1931. It is a living organism.
The church is not an organization. It is not an institution. It was instituted on the day of Pentecost; the Lord Jesus began to build His church. But it is not an institution.
It is not even a congregation.
I mean, most of us would think the 120 in the upper room were a perfect congregation. Oh, no! You would say, “One hundred and twenty saved human beings.”
At that time, they only had the Old Covenant. They believed that they were of it. They believed in the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus, His messianic ministry, His atoning death, His bodily resurrection, and the right hand of God.
These 120 were a perfect congregation. It is incredible. Most of us would say, “Thank God, they are pure. No heresy.”
Why did the Lord Jesus say again and again, “Wait. Wait till the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Do not leave Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes upon you”?
It is almost as if the Lord Jesus was afraid the twelve disciples would go everywhere creating congregations.
But we already had congregations. We had synagogues everywhere. I mean, it is not as if there was anything new about a congregation.
The church is not a mere congregation. The church is a living organism.
It stems from being born of God and joined to the Head.
When every member is born of God and joined to the Head, something can happen.
That is what the Holy Spirit produced on the day of Pentecost. It turned Jerusalem upside down.
The whole Jewish establishment—the chief priests, the high priests, and the scribes—could do nothing.
They had no theological seminary, no great evangelistic programme, no fundraising scheme. They were just human beings born of God and joined to the Head.
That one simple principle turned the world upside down: joined to the Lord Jesus and to one another. First Jerusalem, and finally, from Caesarea, the Gentile world.
That is what happened on that day. The Lord Jesus, the Messiah, began to build His church. It began by being joined to Him through the Holy Spirit.
The Lord Jesus has never ceased to build His church.
There have been massacres. There have been times of great tribulation and persecution. There have been times when the church itself has become a human tradition, a social organization, just a system of beliefs.
You look at church history. Here we are, some 1,900 years later from that day of Pentecost, and in the twenty-first century Jesus is still building His church.
In some of the places on this earth where there has been the greatest persecution and tribulation, there is a living church.
It has been that way all through history. If I were to give you all the names of those groups that people have called them, they never called themselves by those names.
Through the history of the church, when things were most dark and most lifeless, by the Holy Spirit—and by the Holy Spirit alone—through the Word of God, came a new move forward.
Take the Reformation. Take the Puritans. Take the Covenanters. Take the Quakers. Take the Moravians. Take the Methodists.
No matter where you look in church history, at the beginning of every move of the Holy Spirit, men and women were joined to the Head at the right hand of God.
It was the secret of the beginning, and it has been the secret of every single advance forward, of every recovery, right down to today.
The Lord Jesus put it simply:
Upon this rock I will build My church.
And He went on to say:
And the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
We can be absolutely clear on this matter: Satan has not got the upper hand.
“Hades” is the literal translation. What is Hades? It is the place of departed spirits. So what does that mean? What did the Lord Jesus mean?
Let me put it this way: He meant the gates of death.
Death is the great weapon of Satan, by which he holds mankind in bondage all their life, and which the Lord Jesus has brought to zero by His death.
Those gates of Hades come against the real church, against the building work of the Lord Jesus, again and again and again. But then the Lord initiates a new move forward.
This is the history of the church to this day. We have the evidence that the gates of Hades have not been able to prevail against the building work of the Lord Jesus.
Well, let me come at this another way. What is the church?
The church is Christ.
No, that is not right. Christ is Christ, and the church is the church. What is the church?
The church is Christ corporate.
Let me put it another way. My poor translator will have to have a week or two off, I think.
I am in Christ by the grace of God, through the finished work of the Lord Jesus.
He is in Christ by the finished work of the Lord Jesus.
That brother sitting there in the front row in the corner—he is in Christ by the grace of God, through the finished work of the Lord Jesus.
Well, I had better take a sister. Do I say, “I have my own Christ”? Does he say, “I have my own Christ”? Do I say, “I have a Jewish Christ,” or, “I have a Chinese Christ,” or, “I have an American Christ”?
Well, are there so many Christs? Are they tailor-made Christs? Do you have your own Christ, and I have another? Has God made each Christ to suit us? I think not.
I am in Christ. He is in the same Christ. What has happened to us? We have a relationship.
How do we have a relationship? Through Christ.
He is Chinese; you are Italian; I am totally American. Look at him—you could not make a mistake! He is in Christ.
Now we find something amazing. Christ is in me. He also dwells in him. He dwells in you.
Now you have the church. Christ is in us. This equals the church.
The term “Head and body” is only found in the New Testament. The other pictures of the church are found in the Old Covenant, but in the New Testament you have a new revelation: He is Head and body.
Unfortunately, most Christians understand this quite wrongly. They think of a head as the head of a hospital, the chancellor of a university, the president of the United States, or a prime minister and a cabinet.
The head is there; the staff is here. We should listen to the head; we are the staff, we are the administration. This is not how the New Testament uses this.
The New Testament uses this as Head and body. You cannot divide the Head and body. Try it.
Try it. You will soon discover that the moment you have severed your head from your body, you are dead.
This is what has happened again and again in the history of the church. The moment the body has been divorced from the Head, spiritual life and power end; then routine takes over.
You have never seen a living headless body. And you have never seen a living bodiless head.
Why? Because the Spirit of God is using this picture as an illustration of something—an essential principle.
The church is nothing unless it is joined to its Head.
What an amazing thing the apostle said when he said in 1 Corinthians 1:9:
God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
This is not fellowship with His Son; this is the fellowship of His Son.
This Greek word simply means to have something in common.
You are called—let me put it this way, listen—you are called into the sharing of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Can you believe that? His destiny, you have been called to share. You have been called to share His life, share the salvation He has wrought, and share the power of the Holy Spirit.
This is the church.
Whenever we are divorced from the Head, we have to make substitutes.
I hope I am making myself clear.
Satan’s strategy all through the years, ever since the Lord Jesus said, “Upon this rock I will build My church,” has been to divorce the body from the Head.
I already mentioned that Calvary, Passover, and Pentecost are linked. It is a wonderful revelation that only the Spirit can get from the Word of God.
When we realize that the church, the true church, is wholly found in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, we see that His death was the foundation.
There would have been no pouring out of the promised Holy Spirit without the death of the Lord Jesus. There would have been no true church.
It is all found in the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus.
When the Holy Spirit came on that day of Pentecost, He joined those human beings to their Saviour, their Head, at the right hand of God. And then He joined them to one another.
Did you notice in Romans 12:5, “one body in Christ”? That is a little more than saying “one body.” One body in Christ.
I remember years ago, when I first came to know Theodore Austin-Sparks. When I was in Egypt, I heard all kinds of rumours about him: “Be careful of him. He teaches heresy.”
But I found him wonderful, and I was just full of life.
I remember that I got a little booklet, and I was reading it. Everything was wonderful in this little booklet until I got to this statement:
The church is Christ.
I thought, “Now I have got the heresy. What is wrong? Every child of God knows that Christ is the Head and the church is the body. How could he say the church is Christ?”
Then I closed the book and put it in my pocket. I have always found that the Lord has enormous humour.
The next morning, believe it or not, in my quiet time I came to read 1 Corinthians 12:12:
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.
By the Spirit, the body and all its members is Christ.
I thought to myself, “Oh, this must be a wrong translation. That is what Mr. Sparks said.” So I looked it up in all the different versions. At that time there were not so many, and they all said the same thing.
Then the Spirit of God said to me, “Now, is your head Glenn?” Yes, I thought, it is. “Is your body something else?”
Then I saw it in a flash: head and body—Christ. You are in Christ; Christ is in you. It is living union.
Everything comes out of this resurrection life of the Lord Jesus.
Now, where there is resurrection, as I said on Friday, there has to be a death. It does not just say, “Life.”
If you look at Ephesians 1:19-23:
And what the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might
which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:
and He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
Where does this matter of Christ being Head over all things to the church—everything in subjection under His feet, His body, the fullness of Him that fills everything and everyone—come from?
It comes from the exceeding greatness of His power toward us: the power that raised Jesus from the dead.
You do not get a church by a collection of miserable people—heavy, legalistic, going by the clock.
You get the church of God in the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus. Out of that resurrection life comes the body.
Go on 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.
It is interesting. Now the apostle, by the Spirit of God, changes the figure. Now, instead of the body, it is a holy temple in the Lord.
It is a holy temple in the Lord, not merely a holy temple of the Lord. Of course, that is right; but “in the Lord” is something more.
In Him, you are fitly framed together and grow into a holy temple in the Lord.
Now you notice something: it is all to do with life. Growing. You are built together for a home of God in the Spirit. It is movement. It is resurrection life.
The same thing again in 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 not just sitting still, gazing at the wall. It is something more: growing up into Him.
Every joint supplies. In the due measure, the working of each part makes the body grow up and build itself up in love.
What a wonderful thing it is when grey-haired old people like me, and some others here, are moving with the Lord—not just waiting for their coffin. It is wonderful.
Now I must finish. This is normally an excuse for another hour, but I must finish.
How can I experience true church life? Well, to me, I think it is in this: you cannot know resurrection life without a death.
That is the key to church life.
Here is the first thing. When this tremendous letter of the apostle Paul has been written—I am talking about the letter to the Romans—he says:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice.
That is death. That means when you are born again, justified in the sight of God, you are spiritually alive. A living sacrifice.
Which is your—let me put it as best I can, for it is very difficult in Greek—spiritually intelligent worship and service.
What is your spiritually intelligent worship and service? It is to be a living sacrifice.
That is the first thing. There is no church life and experience unless we are prepared to be a living sacrifice.
Here is the second thing: the headship of Jesus.
In your Christian life, it is a question of His lordship. In the church, it is a question of His headship.
Most of us have the poison of rebellion in us. We do not find it easy to submit to one another. We do not find it easy to be committed to one another—only to those we feel somehow are like us.
Here is the second thing: it is the headship of Jesus. If you are not prepared to surrender your self-life, you cannot know the headship of Jesus.
You will always be doing your own thing. This is not the church.
This goes to the root of the Fall. When Satan said to Eve, “You shall be as God,” he meant: a little god, determining your own way, determining everything about you.
The headship of Jesus requires the surrender of our lives. It is the living sacrifice.
Look at my body—well, I do not want you to look at me, but look at my body. You can look at your own if it is better.
I can lift my hand. I can walk. I can take up my Bible. Do you realize how much that requires?
A thousand different things in my body have to be related for the simple thing of walking.
It is not that my feet say, “Be done with all the rest between here and your legs. We can do without the rest of the body.”
So here is the third thing: be committed to one another.
Let me put it another way: be committed to Christ.
When we have this attitude, then an amazing thing happens in the most ordinary meeting. It becomes a home instead of a house. It becomes a family instead of just some collection of people.
It is when we commit ourselves to Christ and one another.
“Oh, I wish you had not said that. Do you mean everybody?”
Well, are they born again? Has Christ received them? Then you must receive them.
“I am a young person. I prefer to be with young people.” Maybe some of the old people say, “I am old. Young people are too noisy. I do not like the songs they sing. I do not like those guitars and all that kind of thing.”
To be committed to one another means that we are together. We are a family.
There will be the young, there will be the old, there will be the middle-aged—the most difficult period of all.
That is the family. That is where we need to care for one another. We have to be committed to one another.
This whole matter of the church is tremendous.
When you have a living, young, saved person coming in—who may fall down, get up, worship, come and put down—I will say, “God is here.”
That is the church. It is the testimony of Jesus. It is not just truth; it is love. That is the church.
How can I experience the church? Only when I am prepared to surrender to the Lord as Head.
If He is Head, there are a whole lot of other members in the body. I have to be related.
I have been amazed in some of my travels. You can go sometimes to a group of believers on the right foundation, and you have all kinds of people—juvenile delinquents, alcoholics, and I do not know what else.
But when there is a nucleus who are a living sacrifice, it is as if the Lord commits Himself to the whole.
That is what it means, I believe, to be in the building work of the Lord Jesus.