At the Lord’s table, our minds go back to 1727. There was a group of believers meeting together. They were refugees who had come from different backgrounds. They all loved the Lord, but they could not agree with one another.
Then, when they gathered together at the Lord’s table, the love of God came upon them. They embraced one another, wept over one another, and confessed their sins. The Spirit of God came upon that group, and they were joined together in one.
Out of that time came the famous Moravian movement. They maintained twenty-four-hour prayer, and they went to the most difficult places to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Some even sold themselves into slavery in order to be with the slaves and preach the gospel to them.
It all began with the Lord’s table. This is my fervent prayer: that God will fill us with His love, that we may be so joined in one, and that we may go out and proclaim our Lord Jesus.
Ephesians 1:22–23
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.
Colossians 3:11
Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman;
but Christ is all, and in all.
Our hearts are full of gratitude as we see what Thou hast done for us. O dear Lord, how we desire to give ourselves totally and allow Thy purpose to be fulfilled in each and every one of us.
We pray that whatever needs to be done further in our lives will be done this morning. May Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
I believe every brother and sister here knows what I am speaking about. I hope it is not just a theme to us. We really pray that it may be our very life and our testimony.
There is nothing more important than the eternal purpose of God. That purpose governs everything. It not only governs all the works of God throughout the ages, but it also governs our whole life.
Unless we live in the eternal purpose of God, we will not know the true meaning of our Christian life.
Yesterday morning, we shared how, in our individual life, Christ may be all and in all. But we must remember that God is infinite, and the fullness of God cannot be contained by one person. It has to be contained by a body.
That is why, in Ephesians 1, God has made Christ Head over all things to the church. What is the church? The body of Christ—the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
It takes the whole body to contain the fullness of God, and it takes the whole body to express the fullness of God.
Because of sin, we have become individualistic. We consider ourselves the center of everything. Even after we are saved, that self-centeredness is still with us. Our Christian life still seems to revolve around ourselves.
This is in opposition to God’s eternal purpose. That is why the Holy Spirit has to use the cross to work in our lives, to deal with self, and to allow Christ to be all and in all to us.
Brothers and sisters, in the eternal will of God, what He has in His mind is the church—His body.
When we think of the gospel of Jesus Christ, our concept of the gospel is often limited by the Gospel according to Luke. There we find that our Lord Jesus came into this world to seek and to save the lost.
This is indeed the reason for the coming of our Lord to this earth. But why did He seek and save the lost? Is there something deeper within His heart?
If you look into the heart of God, what do you see there? When you look into the heart of our Lord Jesus, you see the church there.
Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself up for it.
—Ephesians 5:25
It is very striking that, when our Lord was on this earth, He mentioned the word church only twice.
The first time was when He was rejected by the Jews and withdrew to the region of Caesarea Philippi. There He asked His disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?”
The disciples gave Him the good reports: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. But our Lord was not satisfied with those answers.
Then He turned to His disciples, those who had been with Him for more than three years, and asked, “But who say ye that I am?”
Thank God, Simon Peter answered:
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
—Matthew 16:16
Our Lord Jesus said to Peter that flesh and blood had not revealed this to him, but His Father in heaven. Simon became Peter—a small stone. A new element had come into his life: he had received the life of the Lord Jesus.
Then the Lord said:
Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church;
and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
—Matthew 16:18
The rock is not Peter. Peter is only a small stone. The rock is the confession of Jesus Christ: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Christ Himself is the Rock of Ages.
When we come to the Lord Jesus, we become living stones. There is a change in us. We are small stones, but we are built upon the massive Rock, which is Christ Himself.
The church becomes the target of the gates of Hades because Christ is building His church. As His church is being built, He defeats all the works of the enemy of God. Thank God, whatever God builds, the enemy cannot overcome.
This is the first mention of the church. The word church is singular. It refers to the universal church—from the first believer to the last believer, all who believe in the Lord Jesus.
The universal church is based upon spiritual principles: the confession of the Lord Jesus, being members one of another, and loving one another.
The second time our Lord mentioned the church was in Matthew 18. He said that if your brother sins against you, you are not to seek revenge. You are to forgive him, love him, and seek to restore him, because your brother is in darkness.
If he will not hear you, take one or two others with you. If he still will not hear, tell it to the church. The purpose is always restoration.
Here, the word church has a different aspect. In Matthew 16, it refers to the universal church. In Matthew 18, it refers to a local expression of the church.
If a brother in China sins against you in the United States, how could that happen unless you knew one another and lived in the same locality? We are limited by time and space. Therefore, the universal church must have its expression in local churches.
In the New Testament, we read of the church in Jerusalem and the churches of Galatia. Galatia was a province, not a city; therefore, there were churches in Galatia.
Our Lord said:
For where two or three are gathered together in My name,
there am I in the midst of them.
—Matthew 18:20
One person alone cannot constitute a local church. There must be at least two or three gathered together in one place. But they must not merely gather together; they must gather into His name, placing themselves under the authority of Christ and taking Christ as Head.
This is the basic definition of a local assembly. All the spiritual principles of the universal church are to be exercised in the local church.
The building of the universal church is through the building of the local churches. In Revelation 2 and 3, we see the local churches; and in Revelation 21 and 22, we see the ultimate fulfillment.
Why did our Lord Jesus come into this world? He came to build His church.
What does it mean for the church to be built? The church is built when it is filled with Christ, for the church is the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
The building of the church is the work of God. Our Lord Jesus said, “My Father worketh even until now, and I work.”
In our minds there are many kinds of work, but to God there is only one work: He is building His own church.
It is very unfortunate that the true meaning of the church has been lost. In the beginning, the church was a living organism—the body of Christ. Gradually, the church changed into a human organization.
People began to think of the church as a building, a religious place where people go to worship. But we have lost the meaning of what the church really is.
The Word of God shows us that the church is the fullness of Christ. The church is where Christ is all and in all.
There is a verse in the New Testament that is very significant. It is found in 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 the Christ.
The body is one, though it has many members. We understand that. In spite of the many members, there is only one body. But the Holy Spirit does not say, “So also is the church.” He says, “So also is the Christ.”
This is what the church is: the body of Christ. From the first believer to the last believer, all believers together are one body. There are not two bodies or three bodies. The body of Christ is one.
If we were writing the Bible, we might say, “So also is the church.” But the Holy Spirit says, “So also is the Christ.” What does this mean?
Let me use a formula to help explain it. Suppose there were only three believers in the world: Peter, James, and John. These would be among the best believers you could imagine.
Would the church be Peter plus James plus John? That may sound good, but that is not the church. Peter would want to be first; James and John would not want to be behind him. Even among the disciples, there were arguments over who would be greatest.
The disciples followed the Lord and learned from Him, but they were still arguing over who would be greatest. Even John and James, through their mother, sought the positions at the Lord’s right hand and left hand.
Even if you have the three best believers, Peter plus James plus John is not the church. This is not the right formula.
The church is Christ in Peter, minus Peter; Christ in James, minus James; Christ in John, minus John.
In other words, it is Christ. As long as we ourselves are there, no matter how good we are, we are the problem in the church. Until Christ is all and in all, we do not truly find the church.
The church is nothing but Christ. The church is the body of Christ, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
When our Lord was on earth, He did all the preparation work. He came as the Son of man, living a life wholly dependent upon His Father.
He said, in effect, “I cannot do anything by Myself.” Whatever He did and whatever He said was according to the Father. He was obedient to His Father, even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.
In His life, He completely overcame the enemy. He lived a life that pleased God. Three times heaven opened and the Father testified of Him.
Our Lord Jesus lived a life of victory. In His life, God was all and in all.
At the Mount of Transfiguration, He was transfigured. He had come into this world—the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us—but He was also going out of the world.
If our Lord had ascended directly from the Mount of Transfiguration, He had every right to do so. But then there would have been no salvation.
Instead, our Lord Jesus descended from the mount and went to the cross. He was crucified.
He did not merely save us from sin. He saved us unto the eternal purpose of God.
For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son.
—Romans 8:29
This is the reason why our Lord Jesus came. God desires a body that expresses the fullness of Christ.
As our physical body rejects a foreign body, so the body of Christ must reject everything that is not Christ. This is God’s purpose for us.
What is our Lord doing now? While He was on earth, He finished His work. Now He is in heaven at the right hand of the Father. Is He doing nothing? No.
When John was on the island of Patmos, on the Lord’s Day, he saw a vision of what our Lord is doing in heaven. The Lord was thinking about His churches.
Our Lord is as busy in heaven as He was on earth. In Revelation, He is walking in the midst of the seven churches. He is ministering to the churches.
He sees their works, their labor, their knowledge, and their riches. But what is He looking for? He is looking for Christ. He is serving the church as a High Priest.
When He was on earth, there was not yet the church in its full expression. He laid the foundation. The church came into being on the Day of Pentecost.
The meaning of Pentecost, the meaning of baptism with the Holy Spirit, is this: in one Spirit we were baptized into one body.
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.
—1 Corinthians 12:13
The moment we receive the Lord Jesus as our Savior, we become members of the body of Christ. There is not only a relationship between us and the Lord; there is also a relationship between us and every other believer.
When you meet another believer, immediately there is a bond between you and that person, because you belong to the same body.
What is the church? In 1 Corinthians 1:9, we read:
God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
In spite of the situation in Corinth, God’s calling remained true. We have been called into a fellowship—the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.
Before time, there was the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They had fellowship among themselves. The Father had fellowship with the Son and the Spirit; the Son had fellowship with the Father and the Spirit.
Through the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus, He has enlarged that fellowship to include us. We too have become members of the family.
How do you join this family? You join it by being born into it. All who are born again of the Spirit are in the family of God.
This fellowship is based upon life. It is not based upon knowledge. Knowledge may increase, and the degree of fellowship may deepen, but the basis of fellowship is life.
It is based upon the unity of the Spirit. In Ephesians 4, we find that the unity of the Spirit is the unity which God has given to us.
Today, however, we find it difficult to keep this unity. Let me use an illustration from my own ministry.
In the 1960s, I went to Peru. I visited a couple who loved the Lord and had gone there to preach the gospel. I traveled with them for three weeks, visiting brothers and sisters along the Amazon River.
Before I left, I went to a place in the jungle where there was no road. I had to fly in. The next day, I was asked to speak at the first meeting.
Another missionary came from a neighboring village. Before the meeting, we had fellowship. I realized that this brother was trying to discover exactly what I believed.
Finally, he asked me about the rapture. I tried to answer in a general way. I said, “I believe the church will be raptured.” He asked, “How many times?”
I knew that he believed the whole church would be raptured before the great tribulation. I thought differently, but I wanted to be honest. So I told him what I believed.
He said, “You do not believe the Bible.” I said, “Brother, I believe in the Bible. We have different interpretations. I am willing to be changed.”
The next morning, I was to speak, and he was working in the neighborhood. I wondered what I should do. Should I tell the brother with whom I was staying that I would not speak? But I did not speak against that brother.
What is the trouble with us? We belong to the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. Fellowship is based upon life.
I am not speaking about fundamental matters of faith. I am speaking about different interpretations and different experiences. We should not break from one another because we have different interpretations.
When you meet another Christian, is the final question merely, “Are you a Christian?” If he says, “I am,” are you satisfied? Too often, we are not satisfied; then we divide from one another.
In Ephesians 4, unity is mentioned twice. First, we are to be diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit.
This unity has already been given to us. We need to keep it diligently because we can lose the practical expression of it very quickly.
Then, later in the chapter, we are told that we are to arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.
The unity of the Spirit is the beginning. It has already been given to us. We all have it, and we must diligently keep it.
We may have different Christian experiences and different interpretations of the Bible, but in God we are one. In Christ we are one. In the Holy Spirit we are one.
As we continue in fellowship with one another, we arrive at the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God.
The word faith here includes all the truths in the Bible. The knowledge of the Son of God speaks of all our experience of Christ.
As we continue to share with one another, without insisting on our own position, gradually we arrive at this unity. We begin to share the same faith, and even the same understanding of the Word of God.
This is not theoretical. I have seen it with my own eyes.
Of course, we know that the church is a gathering.
Not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another.
—Hebrews 10:25
We need to gather and encourage one another. The church is also a holy priesthood. Every member of the body has a gift and has grace to minister.
As every member grows in Christ, all the works of the enemy in our lives are defeated. Then the whole creation will see the testimony of Jesus.
Dear brothers and sisters, this is what I desire to share. May we return to our own places and bear the testimony of Christ.
Lord, we pray that Thou wilt fill us for Thy purpose. May all the brothers and sisters, through Him, bear the testimony of Jesus in this dark world.