Good morning.
Will you please turn again to Matthew 16? We will read from Matthew 16:21-27.
From that time Jesus began to show unto His disciples, that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up.
And Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him, saying, God be favorable to Thee, Lord: this shall never be unto Thee.
But He turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto Me: for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men.
Then said Jesus unto His disciples, If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it.
For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his life?
For the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then shall He render unto every man according to his deeds.
Dear Lord, we want to thank Thee again for the privilege of gathering together unto Thy name. We want to thank Thee for Thy presence with us, and we do want to open our hearts to Thee, Lord, and hear what Thou hast to say to us.
Dear Lord, do speak. Thy servants are hearing—not only hearing, but obeying. May Thy name be honored in the midst of Thy people. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
Last time—last night—we began our time together on the corporate side of our Christian life. Thank God, He has saved us. Thank God for giving us His life. Thank God for the promise that He will transform us and conform us even to His own image. For all these privileges, all these things that He has done for us, we are most grateful.
But there is another thing we need to remember: God saved us not just for our enjoyment, not just for our sake. He saved us with a purpose. He saved us that we may not only be like His beloved Son, but that together, as one body, we may fulfill all that He has ordained for us.
That is to say, there is a corporate side of our Christian life that we need to be careful about. Last night we mentioned how, by the revelation of the Father, the Son is known. After we have known the Son, there is transformation in our life—from Simon to Peter, from dust to stone.
Why is it that He transforms us from Simon to Peter, from dust to stone? It is because our Lord Jesus said, “Upon this rock I will build My church.” Otherwise, there would be almost no meaning to our being transformed, to our having a new life, or to having the prospect of being conformed to the image of our Lord Jesus.
God’s purpose is that He may use us as His building material for His church, which is His body, the fullness of Him Who filleth all in all. It is through that body that He wants to express His excellencies. It is through His body that He will accomplish His purpose of defeating His archenemy and bringing everything under His feet.
So, dear brothers and sisters, it is very important for each and every one of us not only to have a revelation of Christ, but also a revelation of the body of Christ. This is what we call the heavenly vision.
You remember when Saul the Pharisee was going to Damascus to persecute the believers of the Lord Jesus. At midday, a light brighter than the sun shone upon him, and under that light he was smitten to the ground.
Then he heard a voice: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goads.”
And Saul asked, “Who art Thou, Lord?” because he had no revelation of Jesus. But on that very day, he received a revelation from the Father. He said, “It was the good pleasure of God to reveal His Son in me.”
In other words, even though under that light his natural eyes were blinded, his inward eyes were opened. He began to see that the Man whom he persecuted, Jesus of Nazareth, was none other than the Son of God, the Lord of everything. With that revelation, he surrendered himself to Him.
But it is strange, in a sense, because Saul was a Pharisee, and the Pharisees were trained in logic. When Jesus said, “Why persecutest thou Me?” a Pharisee could easily have said, “That is impossible. I have never seen You. I have never touched You. Now You are in heaven, and I am on earth. How can I persecute You?” That would be the argument of a Pharisee—reason, logic.
But instead of that, he began to receive another revelation at the same time. He began to see that in touching the members of the body of Christ, he was touching the Head. The Head was complaining when the members of His body were being touched.
So, in other words, you find the apostle Paul, on the road to Damascus, received in that heavenly vision not only a revelation of who Jesus is—and that is basic: He is the Head—but he also received the revelation of the church. Our Lord Jesus said, “I will build My church.”
As we read the Bible, we find that Paul is a person who had a special revelation concerning the church as the body of Christ. In Ephesians 1:22-23, he says that God made Christ Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him Who filleth all in all.
So, dear brothers and sisters, we need both revelations. This is God’s purpose: for us to see Christ as the Head and to see His church as the body.
Now this morning, we would like to go a step further. Our Lord Jesus said, “I will build My church.” How does He build His church?
Very often, we think that we are commissioned to build His church. We are the ones who build His church. Therefore, we find people calling themselves church planters. They will say that they go all over the earth to plant churches.
But what did our Lord Jesus say? “I will build My church.” In other words, the church is so dear to Him, means so much to Him, that He does not delegate its building to anybody. He Himself is responsible for building it.
Now, probably we will say, “Did not the apostle Paul say in 1 Corinthians 3 that he was a master builder, an architect?”
Strictly speaking, the apostle Paul does not say that he is the architect, the one who designs everything, or the chief builder. No. What he really means is that he is a foreman.
He is one under the Architect, the Builder of the house of God. By the grace of God, he understands the blueprints, and he seeks to follow every order that the Architect has designed. He is a foreman.
Not only is he a foreman, but we all are laborers. We are all engaged in this building. But Another is chiefly responsible for the building. We are responsible only to build under His management and under His order.
The psalmist said, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” I think it is extremely important to see this point.
Today, with good intentions, of course, we often feel that we have the responsibility to fulfill the Great Commission—to go into the world and plant churches. But we need to remember that even though it is the commandment of the Lord that we should go and disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them all things that He has commanded us, our Lord Jesus Himself is the Builder.
Now we would like to ask this question: How does the Lord build His house?
As a matter of fact, when our Lord Jesus was on earth, He had not yet started to build it. When you are building anything, first of all you have to gather the materials. How can you build without materials?
That was what our Lord Jesus did while He was on earth for thirty-three and a half years. He was preparing materials for the house of God. He was seeking and saving people. He was discipling those who believed in Him—not only saving them, but discipling them. To disciple them simply means to make them like Him.
These were the materials for the building of the church, the house of God.
The real beginning of the building was after our Lord Jesus ascended into heaven. There He was anointed by His Father as Lord and Christ. When that anointing, poured upon His Head, began to flow down to the body, that was Pentecost.
Before He ascended, our Lord Jesus told His disciples, “Go back to Jerusalem. Wait until you receive power from on high, and then you will be My witnesses.”
In one sense, these disciples should have been ready to go out into the whole world and proclaim the gospel. They had been with Jesus. They had seen Him die, seen Him buried, and seen Him resurrected. He appeared to them, and they were quite ready to go out and preach the gospel as individuals.
But the Lord said, “No. Go back to Jerusalem. Wait there. There is something that needs to be done first before you can be sent into the world.”
So they went back. Unfortunately, we find in the Scripture that five hundred people saw our Lord Jesus ascending, but only one hundred and twenty returned to Jerusalem. They waited in that upper room for ten days, praying, waiting, and preparing themselves.
On the day of Pentecost, they heard a hard breathing. The Bible translates it as a wind blowing through the house, but actually it was a hard breathing. Who was breathing?
You remember when God created man. He used red earth to make a human body, and then He breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and man became a living soul. In like manner, you find that God was breathing, as it were, and the Holy Spirit came.
What did the Holy Spirit do? You know, we are attracted by the sound and the sight. That is Pentecost to us. At Pentecost, we hear the sound of hard breathing. At Pentecost, we see tongues like fire falling upon the heads of the one hundred and twenty. They began to speak in tongues, glorifying the Lord.
That is Pentecost to us. But according to the Scripture, according to the Word of God, what is Pentecost? It is not the sound and the sight, because the sound and sight change.
Pentecost is the beginning of the body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 12:13, we have the explanation of Pentecost:
For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit.
That is Pentecost. The wonder of Pentecost is that, by one Spirit, these one hundred and twenty individual believers—a congregation of one hundred and twenty members—became a body, a living body with one hundred and twenty members.
That is what the Holy Spirit has done. That is the beginning of the body of Christ on earth. What a body it was! On that very same day, three thousand were added.
The Bible tells us that they persevered. All those who believed in the Lord Jesus, all those who were baptized into one body, no longer lived merely as individual believers. They lived as members of the body of Christ.
In Acts 2:42, they all persevered in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.
In other words, they were no longer merely individual believers. They were one body. They continued together in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles.
Now, in Acts 2:42, “teaching” is singular, “apostles” is plural, and “fellowship” is singular. What can that mean?
You have at least twelve apostles. Did these twelve apostles each have their own teaching? No. There is only one teaching, and it is the teaching of our Lord Jesus—the teaching they received from the Lord and passed on to us.
The teaching of the apostles is none other than the teaching of Christ: “What we have received, we pass on to you.”
The same is true of fellowship. The apostles did not have their own fellowships. The Corinthian believers thought that the apostles had their own fellowships. Some said, “I am of Paul”; some, “I am of Apollos”; some, “I am of Cephas”; and some even said, “I am exclusively Christ’s.”
No, Christ is not divided. They are all called into the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. They have fellowship with the Father and the Son, and they share the Father and the Son with us, so that we can have fellowship with them and our joy may be full.
So, brothers and sisters, even though there were twelve apostles, there was only one teaching. Even though there were twelve apostles, there was only one fellowship. That is the teaching we have received, and that is the fellowship in which we are.
We are not in this fellowship or that fellowship. We are in the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. We are one. There is only one body, as there is only one Head.
How did they express their awareness of this? In the breaking of bread.
Oftentimes, we think lightly of the breaking of bread. But the early church, the early believers—if you read Acts 2—you find that even in those days they broke bread every day, at every meal. Whenever they had a meal, they broke bread to remember the Lord.
Later on, you find that on the first day of the week, the day on which our Lord Jesus rose from the dead, they broke bread together. Because of the abuse of feasting, later they separated the love feast from the breaking of bread. But in the early church, they broke bread week after week to remember the Lord and to wait for His return. It was their testimony to the world.
At the same time, you find prayers. This was not the prayer of personal, private prayer. They came together to pray as one. It was corporate prayer; it was the prayer of the church, so that they might be able to accomplish the commission that God had given to them.
These two things are expressions of the body of Christ. They show how they were one, how they not only lived together as one but worked together as one. That was the beginning of the body of Christ on earth.
Thank God, even within thirty-some years, you find that His body grew from Jerusalem, through all Judea, to Samaria, and even to the end of the earth—which was Rome at that time. That is the history of the body of Christ.
But what we want to share this morning is this: How does our Lord Jesus build His church?
You remember that after our Lord revealed the church to His disciples—“I will build My church upon this rock, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it”—He began to tell His disciples, “I am going to Jerusalem. I will be rejected, persecuted, and killed; but on the third day, I will be raised from the dead.”
When Peter heard it, out of his goodwill, he did something. You know, he was a person who reacted very quickly. He took hold of the Lord. Think of that. He took hold of the Lord, laid his hands upon Him, and probably shook Him up. He said, “Lord, be favorable to Yourself. Do not do it. You shall never be killed.”
See the reaction of our Lord Jesus. He turned and said, “Peter, get behind Me, Satan, because you are not mindful of the things of God; you are mindful of the things of men.”
Now, this is really revealing. Why? Because our Lord Jesus saw through what Peter said.
Peter said it out of goodwill, out of his natural love for his Master. But our Lord Jesus could see that Satan was using Peter, trying to dissuade Him from the cross.
He came into this world for that very purpose. He came to die, not to live. He was born to die—not for Himself, because He is the sinless One and should never die—but He came to die for us.
He was made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God. That is salvation. That is what He came for. That is what makes Him Christ.
If He did not go to the cross, He could not accomplish His mission, and He would never be the Christ.
Immediately after this incident, He took three disciples to the mountain, and there He was transfigured. Glory came out of Him. His face shone, and even His clothes shone.
Moses and Elijah came and talked with Him about His departure. In other words, the Word became flesh and came into this world through the womb of Mary the virgin. It was the work of the Holy Spirit.
But now He was going to depart from this world and return to the Father. That was the subject of their conversation: How would Jesus depart from this world?
Suppose our Lord Jesus had departed from that mountain of transfiguration. What would have happened? There would have been only one Man before God—Jesus. He was the only One worthy to be present with God, for righteousness’ sake, because He went to the Father.
In other words, no one else is fit to go to the Father. If we dared to approach the throne, we would be smitten to death. But here was a Man Who could stand before the Father and live because He is the righteous One. He fulfilled all righteousness.
But if He had left from the mountain of transfiguration, we would all have been left behind dead. He could not save us because He had not died for us.
What made Jesus the Christ? The cross. Without the cross, He could not even be Christ. He would not be able to fulfill His mission. That is the Word of God.
Brothers and sisters, Satan is trying all the time to take the cross away from Christ. If he could take the cross away from Jesus, there would be no Christ, no salvation, and no foundation for the building of the church.
“Upon this rock I will build My church.” So far as Christ is concerned, the cross is a must. That is what He came for, and that is what He accomplished for us.
Is it not a pity that today, even among Christianity, people are proclaiming a crossless Christ? They proclaim only Jesus, that perfect Man. They emphasize the Sermon on the Mount as the highest ethic in this world: “Let us try to imitate Him.”
Brothers and sisters, a crossless Christ will only condemn us; He will never save us.
Our Lord Jesus saw through Peter. Peter, with his good flesh, was used by Satan in an attempt to thwart the work of God. It is a terrible thing.
Thank God, our Lord Jesus did not depart from the mountain of transfiguration. He came down from the mountain, went to Jerusalem, went to Calvary, and died for us. Brothers and sisters, this is the way He laid the foundation.
But this was not just for Himself. He began to speak to His disciples: “If any man would follow Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.”
“If you try to save your soul-life, you lose it. If you are willing to lose your soul-life for My sake, you will gain it. What will it profit you if you lose your soul and gain the whole world? There is nothing you can give in exchange for it.”
Brothers and sisters, how is the Lord going to build His house? The same way as He did Himself. In order to build us into His house, we need to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily, and follow Him. That is the only way.
Unfortunately, today we find that even among believers there is teaching going around saying that we do not need any cross. Why? Because we are saved. God will give us everything. He will bless us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.
The cross is not necessary. You hear about the prosperity gospel. Because you believe in the Lord, you are now a child of God, and God will bless you. Instead of a Chevrolet, you will have a Cadillac. Enjoy yourself. You are children of God. There is no such thing as cross or suffering. There is no need for that.
Brothers and sisters, if that is the case, where will the building materials for the house of God be?
Our Lord Jesus said, “In the world ye have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” In other words, Christians, those who are the Lord’s, those who have the life of Christ Jesus, will go through tribulations.
Why? Because they do not belong to the world. If you belong to the world, the world will be favorable to you. But if you do not belong to it, you will be hated, rejected, and persecuted by the world. You have to suffer in this world because you are different.
It is through suffering that our soul is saved.
Now, brothers and sisters, do you believe that your soul needs to be saved?
I think believers today often have a very wrong idea. They think that when they are saved, that is it. There is no more salvation through which they need to go. It is completed.
So far as the Lord’s salvation is concerned, it is completed. On Calvary’s cross, before He died, He said, “It is finished.” The work of salvation accomplished by our Lord Jesus on the cross is finished. It is all done. Nothing can be added to it. That is true.
But so far as our receiving all that He has done for us is concerned, there is much more yet to be done.
What we call being saved refers to our spirit. Our dead spirit—dead in sins and transgressions, cut off from all communication with God—is quickened by the Holy Spirit, renewed by the Holy Spirit, and brought into life by the Holy Spirit.
When we believe in the Lord Jesus, we have a new spirit. With this new spirit, we can communicate with God and cry, “Abba, Father.” His life can live in our spirit to be the life of our spirit, and the Holy Spirit dwells in our spirit to see that this life grows into maturity.
That is what we experience when we believe in the Lord Jesus. But what about your soul? What about your body?
The soul is what we are. The soul represents ourselves, because we are a living soul. We feel, we think, and we decide. That is where our personality is. It represents me.
But sadly, when our forefathers sinned and sin entered into this world, our self-life became a fallen life—contaminated and dominated by sin. The life of our soul, the self, is a fallen self. It is under the law of sin and death.
This soul needs to be saved, and the salvation of the soul is today.
You remember in 2 Corinthians 1:10 that our Lord Jesus has saved us from so great a death, is now saving us, and will yet deliver us.
In other words, our spirit was saved when we believed in the Lord Jesus. Our soul is being saved today. Our body will be saved at the coming of the Lord, when this mortal body becomes an immortal body and this physical body becomes a spiritual body. That is the redemption of our body, when we receive our sonship. That is in the future.
Many brothers and sisters forget that we are being saved every day by the grace of God. What our Lord Jesus accomplished on the cross is becoming our experience day by day.
How is our soul saved? It is not through the annihilation of our soul.
Sometimes people say, “Do not think. Do not feel. Do not make any decisions.” If that were the case, you would no longer be a person. You would have lost your personality.
God gave us all these faculties to be useful. God has no idea of getting rid of our soul, because that would get rid of us. But He is going to put our soul-life into death, so that our self-life will not make use of all the faculties of our soul.
In other words, your thinking, your feeling, and your decisions will be of God and not of yourself. They will express God instead of expressing you. That is the salvation of the soul. That is how we are being transformed and conformed to the image of Christ.
In the process, what do you need to do? You need to deny yourself, just as our Lord Jesus denied Himself. He would not do anything merely to please Himself. He denied Himself completely in order to obey His Father, that His Father’s will might be done.
He allowed Himself to die on Calvary’s cross. That is the way He went, and that is the way He wants us to follow. This is the narrow way, but the narrow way leads to life.
Many Christians today despise the cross. They think it is not necessary. They choose the broad way, and it leads to destruction.
So, brothers and sisters, how does the Lord build His church? Here we are, His materials, and He is going to use us to build His church. But these materials are mixed and impure. They need to be purified and sanctified, that He may be able to use us.
He wants us to go the same way that He did: the way of the cross. Deny yourself. Do not live for yourself. Do not insist on having your own opinion. Do not walk by your own thinking or your own reasoning. Do not express yourself through your own emotions and feelings.
Let all these be covered by our Lord Jesus. Let our self-life be replaced by Christ’s life.
As we are strengthened in our spirit, as you find in Ephesians 3, the Holy Spirit within us strengthens our inner man. When our inner man is strengthened, then Christ comes and dwells in our heart.
In other words, His life is no longer only in our spirit. From our spirit, it comes into our soul and replaces self with Himself. He reigns in our soul. Our feelings are purified, our thinking is sanctified, and our decisions become His will, not our will.
That is the salvation of our soul. The process is going on today, and the end result is that through this He will build His church.
If that is the case, the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. Today we find so-called church gatherings in which the gates of Hades prevail. It is because of the mixture there.
If these mixtures can be purified, then you will find that the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. That is what the church ought to be.
So, brothers and sisters, how does the Lord build His church? He builds His church by first saving our soul and delivering us from ourselves, showing us the way in which we can be sanctified and purified.
Brothers and sisters, do not be afraid of the cross. Do not try to create crosses for other people, nor for yourselves.
Who is going to provide the cross for us to bear daily? The Holy Spirit. He is all-wise. He knows how to purify us. He will arrange our circumstances, the people we meet, and the events that happen in our daily life.
Nothing in our lives is incidental or accidental. Even the very hairs of our head have been numbered.
Now, I often marvel at that. Nobody has ever counted how many hairs you have. It is impossible. You lose hair probably every day, and yet the Bible says that our Lord, our God, has numbered every hair.
This morning, when you combed your hair, not only did He know how many hairs fell down, but He knew how many numbers were involved. The minuteness, the care, of our heavenly Father is beyond our imagination.
If that is the case, why are you worried? “What shall I eat? What shall I drink? What shall I be clothed with?” Your heavenly Father knows these things. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.
Brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit is arranging our circumstances, and He is the strength within us, enabling us to bear our crosses and follow the Lord.
To bear a cross simply means this: we are willing to lay down our own feelings, our own thinking, and our own will, and allow the thinking, the feeling, and the will of our Lord Jesus to come through us. That is it—very simple.
The Lord said, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”
Thank God, this is the way He is building His church. He is refining us, purifying us, and sanctifying us, that we may be built into His house.
As He is doing this, the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. On the contrary, you will find that the enemy will be cast out.
So, dear brothers and sisters, this is the way that the Lord has opened before us.
Recently, I have received letters and had people visit me, telling me of their glorious life. What is it? They say they are now free from everything.
They are not meeting with anybody; they are meeting with everybody. In other words, instead of meeting with certain brothers and sisters day in and day out, now they do not join anybody. They are free to go anywhere they want. They visit different churches every Sunday and fellowship with all God’s people. Oh, they are so free.
Now, what can I say to them? They are like butterflies. They are not like bees. They will not produce any honey.
Not only that, in doing that, where is the cross? If you do not meet with your brothers and sisters closely, you have no cross to bear.
You live at arm’s length, do you not? “Do not touch me, and I will not touch you either. Have a good time.” It is the trick of the enemy.
They think they are glorious; now they are free. My question is: Where is the cross? Where is the building together?
You see how clever the enemy is. Sometimes when we get too close, we step on each other. It is not easy. The best thing, we think, is to keep at a distance. But where is the body?
Brothers and sisters, we need to be together. We need to step around each other. We need to suffer from each other.
That is the way we will be delivered. We will be saved. We will be able to overcome, and we will be able to be built together. That is the way of God.
So may the Lord bless us.
Dear Lord, we marvel at Thy wisdom, because Thou dost do things beyond our reasoning. Marvelous work! Thou hast put us together that Thou mightest deliver us together, purify and sanctify us together, and at the same time build Thy church to the praise of Thy glory. In Thy precious name. Amen.