It is really helpful when people are sitting up closer, like these young men here. The only problem is they may see my daddy badge on my shoulder here—a Gabriel hug.
I would like to read together in 2 Timothy 2. This is a similar verse to what we read last week: 2 Timothy 2:22.
But flee youthful lusts, and follow after righteousness, faith, love, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
And one more verse, just for reference, is 2 Timothy 2:20.
But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some unto honour, and some unto dishonour.
Let us pray together.
Now, Lord, we really appreciate being able to meet with You this morning and not be blind or be in darkness, but have our eyes opened up. Lord, we thank You that You seek us out and bring us back on the right path.
We want to commit our time right now to You as well. We pray, as we are looking into Your Word, that we can hear the voice of the Lord speaking to our own hearts. Lord, we pray that we can meet You where we are at, and that we can be lifted up beyond our own things, but share some of Your heart together. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Last time, we talked some about how to conduct ourselves in the house of God. We were considering the early days of the church before a major decline happened. At the end, we read a verse in 1 Timothy 6 that was similar to this verse: an encouragement to flee these things and pursue after the Lord—pursue righteousness, pursue godliness, pursue faith, and so on.
This time, I really want to focus on pursuing together. This verse says to pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace together with those who call upon the Lord out of a pure heart. Really, if we do not get into much else, if we can be captured with the pursuit together, I think we have got it.
In the time of 1 Timothy, there was a difference from this time period of 2 Timothy. In between these two letters, all Asia turned away from the apostle Paul, and he mentions it in 2 Timothy. Something happened—a major shift in the churches started to begin.
Before, in the early church, there was first love. There were believers acting as believers in all types of maturity levels. The core of the churches were pursuing after the Lord, and the majority of the saints were at least along the path of following the Lord, maturing in the Lord, trying to be led by the Spirit, seeking the face of God, having Christ as the Head over the church, and diligently sticking together.
So this was the environment: when somebody was very much off, they stood out. When somebody in the church in Corinth was very much carnal, he was asked not to meet with the brethren for a time. He later was restored.
Early on, the bulk of Christians were following the Lord. You were abnormal if you were not following the Lord. It does not mean everybody was mature, because many of them were immature, but they were growing. Even when they were not growing fast enough, they were rebuked, repented, and grew faster. Even when they tried to remain as babes, the Lord would correct them. But they were sticking together and pursuing along together.
Then some changes started to happen. People in the flesh brought in the flesh in a major way.
In 3 John 1:9, he talks about a brother and says, “I wrote something to the assembly, but this one brother loves to have the first place and does not receive us.” This started to happen, where leaders wanted to be the leader. People wanted to be the head of the church.
Also, among the saints, there was not only immaturity, but there was actually a direct going after the world and the flesh. The apostle Paul himself, who had helped so many of the saints, especially in Asia Minor, was turned away from by all these saints.
Some persecution happened. Probably they looked at it and even confronted people: “If you stand with Paul, then you will also be persecuted.” So, saving themselves, they gave up the fast pursuit of the Lord and became worse and worse.
By the end of the apostles’ era, when John the apostle was in his later years, there really was a falling away of the churches. We read some of the letters the Lord wrote to the seven churches in Revelation 2–3. Such corruption had seeped into the churches.
Even those who had a lot of correctness were losing the inward reality. Maybe outwardly they were not showing a bunch of corruption, but inwardly the leaven was working in the loaves and corrupting and corrupting. Like the church in Ephesus, they had lost their first love. They had held some things correctly, but they were losing the reality of the church. So the decline became more and more.
This part in 2 Timothy is an encouragement for what to do in this time. In 1 Timothy, we read about the term God’s house. The apostle Paul was writing to Timothy, hoping he would come there soon, but he said, “I am writing these specifics so you would know how to conduct yourselves in the house of God.”
He was writing to him about how things operate and work in God’s house: What is God’s ordering? What is God’s way? But now, with this falling away of Christians, another term comes into play: the great house—the big house. Some translations call it a mansion.
In the great house, there are different things happening. Some are honorable vessels, and some are dishonorable. There are many things going on in this great house, and the great house is not God’s house. There is a difference.
Sometimes we are confused and think, “Wow, the house got bigger. This is better.” But if you look at the models of God’s house in the Old Testament—the shadows, the temples, or the tabernacle—they are not very big.
Solomon built the house of God, the temple. But Solomon’s house was bigger, and some of his wives’ homes were probably bigger. It is not the size of the house, its greatness, or the extra things that are there.
Actually, in the shadows and pictures of the Old Testament, there are not that many pieces of furniture. But all of them are honorable. All of them are of good material. All of them are valuable and precious to the Lord, and all of them reflect Christ.
So in this great house, this is our circumstance now. Even in the beginning, when the churches began to fall away and bring so many man-made things into their gatherings, this great house became the situation.
At this point, there was still a way of going forward mentioned here: find those others who are calling upon the Lord. Find those others who have that pure heart, and pursue together with them.
You find the other believers. You yourself try to be an honorable vessel. If you find yourself amidst most Christians doing this, he says, “Be the honorable vessel. Be someone serviceable to the Master. Be someone blameless before the Lord.”
Then find these other believers—others who have this pure heart, a heart not seeking after the world but seeking after the Lord. It is not mixed. It is not a heart after the love of money, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or prideful things that puff us up. There is no division in the heart. It is a pure heart pursuing after the Lord.
You find these desperate believers, too, all calling upon the Lord. We are not standing by ourselves saying, “I am a good Christian. These are other bad Christians.” These are Christians who know they have not arrived and are pursuing to gain more of Christ.
This is the normal pursuit of a believer, just as it is mentioned in Philippians 3. The apostle Paul, after going through his history—which to some would look very good—said, “All these things I forsake if I can gain Christ.” Nothing is worth Christ.
He said, “I want to know Him,” and he tells about his pursuit. After he speaks of knowing Him and the power of His resurrection, he says that he is pursuing toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. He is on this path.
He even says that if you have a different mindset, just walk in what you know, and the Lord will lead you into this. That is the thing: even if we do not think of it as, “I am actually pursuing,” ask yourself, “Am I walking in everything the Lord is showing me?”
If that happens, the Lord begins to show us more. The more we respond back and forth with what the Lord has shown us, the more we are drawn into this pursuit. The next thing we know, we are pursuing together with the Lord.
We are pursuing after righteousness, faith, love, and peace, and we find other believers who are doing the same thing.
You will recognize that fellowship is different amongst Christians all around. There is no way to look at somebody and tell; it is only when you talk to them.
You find a Christian and you are talking to them. You may agree on a lot of teachings, or you may both dress the same or act the same in a lot of ways. But then you discover people who are pursuing the Lord. If you are in the good place of pursuing the Lord as well, fellowship ignites.
It is something of joy when you meet another believer who is walking with the Lord right now and you begin to talk with them. You just want to keep on sharing with each other. There is a different feeling.
It is not a matter of sharing my ideas with you and finding that you have similar ideas. It is not questioning each other to see whether you agree with the same teachings: “What do you think about this? What do you think about this?”
Bible talk is not always fellowship. Even good, moral things are not always fellowship. But you can find somebody who is pursuing the Lord.
Inwardly, there is a witness, because the Spirit in you and the Spirit in them just says a big amen. You discover them, and you hear how they are struggling, how the Lord is showing them something, leading them into something, or leading them out of something.
They may be fleeing some youthful lust or some love of money. As you hear it, you are greatly encouraged. Both of you together help each other pursue on in this way.
I think in every gathering, when you come in, you want to find Christians, fellowship, and find believers who are on this pursuit.
The way in this dark time, with churches in decline and a massive mess, has to be this: find others who are pursuing the Lord. The requirement is not that you know a lot. The requirement is not that you know how to conduct yourself in the house of God.
The requirement is that you have that pure heart, you are calling upon the Lord, and you are on the pursuit. Find someone like that. You may see things completely differently, but you can fellowship. Because you are pursuing the Lord, there is humility there.
Let us go through these things briefly that are mentioned. It says to pursue righteousness.
In pursuing righteousness, you want to find the things that are right with God. Just as in 1 John 1:9, when it talks about confessing our sins, it says that God is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
This pursuit of the Lord is like this: I am seeking to know how I can obey the Lord, how I can not sin against my God. So I hear from another believer that the Lord was speaking to them from some verse or from some action they did, showing them that it was not pleasing to God.
If I am on this pursuit, I am always open to the Lord to be corrected and convicted. There are sins that we actually do not know about. We all have to stand before the Lord in humility today and say, “I am probably failing even in things I do not know.”
Hopefully, in our pursuit, we are trying to walk in what we know. But if we pursue together, you find another believer who has discovered more of the righteousness of God—the right standard of God, what things God says are right.
Maybe it is some specific thing that is distracting, something of the world, or something turning my heart. Maybe it is the way you were talking. You find yourself talking loosely, saying something wrong, being rude to somebody, or being too playful or too joking in a way that can offend them.
Someone corrects you. Some other believer pursuing the Lord, hopefully out of love, can say, “That can be damaging. You know, every idle word that you speak—you will have to render an account before the Lord on judgment day.”
If you are not in the pursuit, what do you do? You react. You get upset with that person. You point at them and say, “Do not judge me.” You do not like them anymore, and you do not want to be around them.
But if you are in the pursuit, even if they had a wrong twitch in their eye when they said it, even if their face got red and you think they were not right, you are still pursuing after righteousness.
With that other believer mentioning something, you can take it back to the Lord. Your conscience is open for correction, so you confess your sins and are cleansed from your unrighteousness. In this pursuit together, we are able to grow that way.
If we do not pursue together, we are not going to grow. It does not have to do with our maturity; it has to do with whether we are willing to go on. Are we willing to stick together and go on?
In pursuing righteousness, we want to be open for growing in the Lord and discovering what is right before God. It also has to do with our practice, even in serving the Lord and finding how we conduct ourselves in the house of God.
What things are actually right before God, and what things are wrong before God? As we mentioned last week, all good things are not always God things. To learn that a dead work is sinful work, or that an act of presumption—just doing something—is not good.
There are sins that I commit, and there are sins of neglect, where I did not do what I should have done. There is also sin because I did something and went ahead of the Lord.
Now, if the Lord has not shown us this, do not get upset with me just for mentioning it. If we are pursuing righteousness, we take it before the Lord and ask, “Is it really wrong for me to do every good thing that I can find that is good?” Then see if the Lord speaks to us. Search the Scriptures about it.
There are ways of the Lord, and there is also the leading of the Lord. He wants us to walk together with Him—not just randomly do acts of kindness, but do these things together with the Lord.
If we are pursuing faith, that is another thing. Faith rests on revelation. Faith has to sit on something. Faith is actually trusting in something the Lord has shown us.
In pursuing faith, we are seeking for the Lord to show us more of His ways, more of His purpose, and more of Himself. It is not a matter of mustering up my mustard-seed faith.
Pursuing faith is saying, “Lord, show me something, and then I will trust in that and walk by faith in this way.”
The same thing goes with presumption. The Bible says that if anything is not of faith, it is sin. In pursuing faith together, we are looking for the Lord to reveal more of Himself to us.
As we are fellowshipping with others who are pursuing the Lord, we have a soft heart open for what we call revelation. We are open for a curtain to open and reveal something more of God—something from eternity, something from God’s heart that needs to be shown to us.
This often happens in small ways. As you are reading the Bible, you are open to the Lord, and He shows something to you. You are very much edified. But then there is the obedience of faith: resting on that, standing on that, and walking in what you have been shown.
The dangerous thing with fellowship is that you have to pursue it. You have to go by faith and go forward with it. As you fellowship with somebody, the dangerous thing is that you may see more of Christ.
The hard part is that you may see more of what He actually wants, and there is always a cost to pay. The obedience of faith is real obedience.
As you step out in faith, it is no longer I who live, but Christ living in me. This is the way of faith. The Lord shows me something more. It is exciting. I hear something great in a message, read something in a book, or read something in the Bible. I fellowship with others and say, “That is right. That is what the Bible says.”
But then it becomes a matter of whether I am going to stay in the pursuit or fall back. Am I going to pursue after other things? Am I going to go after youthful lust when the Lord shows me that I am crucified to the world and the world is crucified to me?
Heaven opens up spiritually, and my heart sees that I am crucified with Christ, that I no longer need to live by my own strength. Then today, I have to step out in the obedience of faith. But this is an exciting pursuit.
What encourages us is finding another believer doing the same thing. You discover that it is the life of Christ in you that can live and do this Christian life, and then you find another believer discovering that as well.
As you talk, the joy of the Lord strengthens you and strengthens you. The joy of the Lord is your strength. You fellowship because you are pursuing together.
Pursue by yourself, and you are just going to be depressed. Actually, if you are really pursuing by yourself, the Lord will lead you to pursue together. It always works that way, because we cannot stay by ourselves and just mature.
The more you mature, the more the Lord shares His heart for His house and says, “Pray for these people.” The more you pray for them, the more you care for them. The more you want to gather with them, because you want to bring something of joy to bless them.
If you are actually in the pursuit, you cannot do it by yourself. Do not try to stand on your own two feet. Be a person calling on the name of the Lord with a pure heart, and be a person pursuing together with others.
There is also a pursuit of love. This pursuit of love is based on all of these things being based first on pursuing after Christ.
First, I am in this: I love Him. We love the Lord because He first loved us, and it is the love of Christ that constrains us. Like the apostle Paul said, “I pursue toward the goal for the prize. I want to know Him. I am forsaking all things for this greatness of knowing Christ.”
But in this pursuit, when we are pursuing together, we need to pursue this way of love together.
We discover in 1 Corinthians 12–14 that we are all part of the body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 14, we learn how we should bring our portion and function in the church with the purpose of edifying each other.
In the middle is this chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13. The descriptions of this love are specific to pursuing together. They are specific to loving each other.
It is the love of God, but it is the love that suffers long. When you love God Himself, you do not have to suffer anything or have patience with God, because God has not done anything wrong. You do not have to forget the wrongs that God has done, because He has never done any wrong.
But when you love your brethren, and when you are pursuing together in this way of love, you must be able not to remember the wrongs of others—to forget their wrongs and failures. We have to pursue this way of love and stick together.
In our pursuit of love, because we are in different places in knowledge and in practice, we run into problems with each other. Sometimes you have a bad day and are in the flesh, or another person is just very immature. We can get upset at each other very easily.
This is a major cause of divisions in the churches. It is one reason why there are a lot of different groups out there. It is not always because of teaching or some experience. Many times, it is simply because there was a lack of love—a lack of being able to stick together.
What is needed? Pursuing love together. Forgive each other.
If you find yourself angry at someone, take it before the Lord. Anger at the person is a sign that there is something wrong. You can be angry at what is going on and pray before the Lord with tears and frustration over the circumstance, but our struggle is not against people. Our struggle is not against these souls in this room.
All of us need to pursue on together. Even if you find somebody who is not pursuing, you may think, “Well, I do not have to love them, because they are not in this pursuit.” That is not true.
Those in the pursuit need to have the love of the brethren for all the brethren. The way of the house of God is always this way of love and brotherly love—sticking together, being open to all of God’s people, and actually caring and sharing with each other. It is a selfless love.
Think about conduct in the house of God, where you are not forsaking the assembling together. You are not forsaking gatherings, as it says in Hebrews 10:25. But if you are pursuing the way of love, when you gather together, as 1 Corinthians 14 mentions, you come and bring something edifying for the others.
Have you ever gone to a Bible study or some church meeting and said, “I did not get anything out of that. I would rather do something else”? The question is: Did I go because I love the brethren? Did I go with the motivation for someone else to get something out of it?
That is the big turn that has to happen in our hearts—the turn of pursuit. The same is true with a prayer gathering.
If you are not in the pursuit, even a good prayer meeting will not mean much to you, because you are not with it. You are not there. You are not swept up into the leading of the Holy Spirit and praying with burden.
A prayer meeting takes selflessness, if you are really going to do it. Actually going may take some cost. You may lose your time. You have had a long day, you are tired, or whatever is going on.
But to go to a prayer gathering and pray for things that do not affect your specific circumstance is, by its nature, the Lord’s grace in us to be a little selfless—to pray for things in other countries, things we are not involved with, or somebody you do not even know and only hear their name.
When you go to the prayer gathering, you do not go with the motivation, “What can I get out of the prayer gathering?” You go with the motivation to co-labor with the Lord. The Lord is bringing us together. He wants to do something. I care about what He cares about, so I want to share.
What are you going to get out of it? You will find that you are blessed, because the Lord shares a little of His heart with you. You touch something of God’s care, God’s heart, and His love.
You are filled with encouragement, with some taste of more of Christ, and with some taste of the body of Christ.
Coming to the breaking-bread time that we had this morning, it is our need that the Lord has mercy, brings us together, shows us Himself again and again, brings us to remember Him, and strengthens us through that time.
But our gathering for breaking bread should be that we are coming to His table. In our pursuit, we actually care for the Lord. We want to come back with grateful hearts and express our thankfulness to the Lord.
It is not so much, “Am I going to get something out of this?” It is, “Out of care for the Lord, I come and bring my portion.”
In other church times, where you get together for fellowship—maybe in a small group, or perhaps just with some of the saints on your own—the way of love for each other is always giving and not taking. It is always that you are pouring out, not always drinking.
There is something of not looking at who called me this week or who talked to me today. Instead, love is looking away from myself and looking with care for others.
You show up on Sunday at lunchtime, or whatever is going on, and you actually care for the other brothers and sisters because you are in this pursuit of love. You are not upset because no one commented on your new dress. Instead, you are concerned about somebody over there who looks alone and seems to need fellowship.
The last thing mentioned is peace: to pursue peace together.
It is true that in our pursuit, this is a pursuit of the Lord first. We need to have peace with God. We need the peace of God guarding our hearts and thoughts, and we need the God of peace with us.
But in our togetherness, when we pursue peace, there is something needed: we are not contentious. We are not argumentative.
Right after verse 22, he goes on to talk about not being argumentative and not being contentious with others. A bondservant of the Lord ought not be contentious. Later in Titus, the same phrase about not being contentious is mentioned for all the saints.
He says to still talk to others who disagree, because they may be won. They may still be helped.
In pursuing together in the great house, we are trying to go the way of God’s house. We are pursuing this way of peace together.
What this means is keeping the unity of the Spirit diligently in the uniting bond of peace. This peace amongst each other means that we stick together and do not allow strife or disagreement to pull us apart.
Even if I see a difference in a Scripture verse, and maybe it is something I feel is very important, while you see it differently, we are pursuing together. So both of us have to have a humble heart. Both of us have to be open to the Lord.
It may be that both of us are wrong. As we pursue on and search it out, perhaps talk to some others, we may discover that we were completely wrong. We have to be willing to be wrong and say, “I was wrong,” whether in our interpretation, experience, or whatever else.
Another thing is that you may be right and they may be wrong. But what is your goal? Is your goal to pursue the Lord together, or is your goal to outmatch them in an argument and win?
Is the goal, out of love, that we can continue on? Do not expect that all of us have the same thought on everything. That is not how we experience the house of God.
The way to experience the house of God is that all of us stick together in love and peace, and we slowly grow together.
This can apply to every circumstance and every place in Christianity where Christians find themselves. Sometimes they find themselves in a very big mess, but you can discover believers who are pursuing the Lord.
You can discover others who are open to fellowship and open to correction. If you yourself are open to going on with the Lord, then you can pursue with them.
In this pursuit together, you might find yourself going away to college, moving someplace because of work, or moving for some reason outside your choice. You may not know what to do: “Who do I gather with? How do I find others who are like-minded to pursue after the Lord?”
You can find Christians and simply try to see who wants to fellowship. All over the world right now, there are believers pursuing the Lord—in places you would not even expect.
There are hidden overcomers and those who do not even look like overcomers, but they have something in their heart where they are yearning for more. We discover each other, and that is how we actually go on.
In our gathering here, what we are trying to do is pursue together. In this mess of Christianity, we are trying to discover God’s house, be an expression of God’s house, and testify that God’s house is God’s house and that we are His people.
All the church belongs to God. So we are open to all of God’s people, and we actually stand for all of God’s people.
A question that may come up is, “Where is your pastor?”
In our pursuit together, the Lord is leading us a certain way as we seek after the Scriptures. But we do have a Pastor: the chief Pastor, the chief Shepherd of our souls, whom the Bible mentions. Christ is our Pastor. Christ is the chief Shepherd and Overseer.
In the early church, every church had one Pastor: the Lord Jesus Christ. Every church had one Leader, and that was Christ.
I was reading some Catholic literature about the early beginnings of their leadership structure. They said that before the apostle John passed away, the hierarchy of bishops, pope, and everything else had not yet been established.
They mentioned that there was not one leader in the churches. This was something improved upon later. The neat thing was that it was not even an argument that this was the case in the time of Peter or anything like that.
The early popes that are called popes overlap in their time periods, and some people struggled over that. But they said it was because, rather than there being one bishop of Rome, there was actually a group of bishops of Rome.
A bishop is an overseer; it is the same word. An overseer is an elder—the same thing. There is a group of elders in a local church. That is why there was this group of bishops.
Some were scratching their heads about this and asking, “What was going on? Is there a discrepancy in our timeline?” But after looking into it, they said, “No, they just had multiple overseers in the local gatherings at that time.”
But this was improved upon later by man. Man thought of a better way. As Christianity got bigger, unbelievers came in.
At one point, after Constantine came and said, “We are going to make Christianity our religion,” people were bribed to become Christians and join the Christian church. Some soldiers were offered silver if they would get baptized.
Now, they did not really come into the church, because the church is the body of Christ. They did not come into the house of God. What they came into was the large house—what people look at outwardly and call Christianity.
But there is always God’s house. He is building His church, and this is always pure. This is always His furniture, not other furniture. This is always His way of conduct in His house.
In this large house, so many were brought in, and these people did not know anything because they were not even born again or saved. To stop conflict, there had to be leaders who did everything.
Then the laity, or common people, would come and pay, sit in the pew, and pray. They pay and pray, while you have this clergy and these leaders.
So this structure developed and developed. Not only was there a bishop, or one man leading all these different groups, but eventually they said, “We need somebody over all of those guys.” It got higher: archbishops, and then, hundreds of years later, what they now call the pope, which means father.
The argument has been given to me many times about the pastor issue: “Everyone is doing this right now. How can they be wrong and you be right? How can it be wrong to practice this way of one man leading the church?”
Even after we go over how this damages the practice of Christ being the Head of the church, it makes it hard for the experience of Christ being the Head of the church. When you look in the Scriptures and see groups of leaders seeking the Head, that is a much better way to go on in the house of God. That is God’s way.
But people say, “This does not seem to be anything wrong. Everybody is doing this. What could be wrong with that?” If you place yourself hundreds of years back, perhaps in the Dark Ages, and follow that reasoning, what was everybody doing in Christianity?
Most people were in the Roman Catholic church group. Even if today you believe that you should be baptized after you are born again, that is a truth for which many believers suffered. In pursuing the Lord together, they went a way that not everybody went.
Or if you believe that you can read the Bible by yourself and meet the Lord by yourself, that was something that was not going on. If we are always simply going with the current, we may find ourselves in a current that is completely corrupt.
If you look at Christianity hundreds of years ago, you might say, “I would not do that. I would not fail to confess my sins to the Lord and instead have to confess my sins to a priest. I would not try to pay money to get my grandmother out of purgatory.”
It seems silly. But if you are going with the current of Christianity, you are never questioning. You are never asking, “How should I conduct myself in the house of God?”
If you start to question, you may feel, “I do not want to do anything, because that would be embarrassing. I may be a little different.” But most Christians have gotten to where we are now—knowing some truth, having an unlocked Bible that we can read, knowing that we are saved by grace through faith and not by works—because people questioned.
They asked, “What is it like in the Scriptures? What does the Bible actually say?” They stopped going along with the current of Christianity. They started to pursue the Lord together and found others who were pursuing the Lord as well.
All throughout the ages, there have been Christians on this pursuit. They find each other, go forward, grow together, and learn from each other. This is the pursuit of the way of the house of God right now.
In this time, it is not about whether you have everything correct. The question is whether we are all heading in this way of the house of God, because the Lord is building His church. He is building the house, and He is the One actually doing this.
Find others who are after the Lord. If we grab each other and go on together, then we are in the right path.
It does not mean outwardly that we chop off the pastor’s head and now only have elders, so we are doing it right.
I was gathering with ten or fewer people in Lexington—really small, really wimpy-looking. We had great times at breaking bread, though. Another group there knew about the eldership leadership model in the Bible, and they were talking to us about it.
They asked, “You do not have elders? You are not a church. You are not doing it right.” They were not that big, but they had elders and perhaps deacons or something. They were trying to do everything correctly outwardly.
But we were often just five people. So it was going to be like all five of us were elders, right? Maybe the sisters would have to be deaconesses or something. You come in and say, “Well, I am a deacon.” It did not seem appropriate.
Even in the churches in the New Testament, they did not all have elders in the beginning. The apostle Paul would travel through, preach the gospel, and people would get saved. They would gather together. Maybe on his way back, they would discover that some had risen up, were taking the lead, and were maturing faster, and then recognize those elders.
The point is not, “Let us get this correct, and then, oh, we have got it. We are the house of God in experience.” It is not that.
We can get it all correct but lose our pursuit. We can lose our pursuing together. We can lose this thing where I am after more of Christ, finding others who are after more of Christ, including all of God’s people, seeking the Head, and finding life inside all of this.
We can get the wineskin detailed very correctly, but if there is no wine, it is just a dead wineskin.
At Lance Lambert’s house, on a wall, there is an old wineskin. It is really neat, like one from back in the day, but it is dead, has holes in it, and there is nothing in it.
The wineskin in the Bible that is right is the new wineskin that moves with the wine. Put new wine in the wineskin, and the wine is bubbling, moving, and shifting around. The wineskin conforms to the wine because there is lively wine inside it.
The way is that we are in connection with the Head of the body, sticking together, and able to follow His leading as He leads us on in this pursuit together.
Another big question that is often brought up is, “What is your name? Why do you guys not have a name?”
A few people have really made fun of me on this one. I could cop out and make up something. At our prayer meeting last week, they clearly said that Richmond Christian Fellowship is not the church; it is a company, an organization that owns the building here.
I could cop out pretty easily and say, “Our name is Richmond Christian Fellowship,” and then I blend in and I am okay. But actually, it has been an opportunity many times in this city to talk to people and say, “Our name—we just gather into the Lord’s name.”
A few people, I think the ones with whom I could easily fellowship, say, “Oh, that is cool.” Others say, “That is weird.”
But the church in Jerusalem did not have a name. The church in Ephesus did not have a name. When the saints gathered in Philippi, they did not have a name like “Philippi Love-the-Brethren Church.” It was not like that. They were simply the saints of God gathering.
So it is weird in the Bible as well. If we are going to be weird, let us be weird with those saints in the Bible, because they did not have a different name.
We do have a name: the name is the Lord Jesus Christ. The name we gather unto, when we gather, is His name. We are not nameless; we are simply His people.
If we take another name and name ourselves, then we are cutting off others without that name. But by only having His name, everyone who belongs to Him belongs to us.
Just as Romans 14 teaches, do not ask people questions when you receive them. Ask the question, “Did the Lord receive them?” Receive whoever the Lord has received. If the Lord receives you, we receive you.
If you do not have our name, then you are somebody else. But actually, we do not have a different name other than the Lord’s name. That is the way we can pursue together with all of God’s people.
That is the way we can avoid being merely some addition to the large house, but pursue in the way of God’s house.
When I left the denomination I was in, many pastors said, “You are correct that there should not be denominations and there should not be division in the church. But you cannot do anything about it, because all you can do is make another denomination.”
“If you leave a denomination, you just create a denomination of not being a denomination.” That is not true.
You can stand together with open arms and open hearts toward all of God’s people. You can call yourselves nothing but the Lord’s people and pursue together.
The more we go on, we find believers pursuing in this way, and it is beautiful. I am not saying there are not believers in groups with names who are on the pursuit. That would be incorrect. There are many of them.
There are so many saints pursuing the Lord together. But if the Lord shows us something—if He shows us that a name cuts us off from other believers—then we have to be faithful to what He has shown us, because we are on a pursuit.
In the pursuit, you discover more. Every time you discover, you step out in obedience. If the Lord shows us something like this, we step out in obedience and go on pursuing together.
There is not pride in this. There is obedience and joy in the Lord leading us on in this way of pursuit.
The nice thing about a denomination, I was told, is that there are checks and balances with the pastors. If a pastor goes crazy, then the pastor above that pastor can stop that pastor.
But I asked, because I was still in the pastor system, “Who is going to stop the head pastor of the whole denomination?” They said, “Oh, that is true.”
There are denominational gatherings with leaders, but they do not have control over each other. At some point, there is somebody who can go off.
In the Bible, the connection between churches is spiritual. That is the correct way to know other Christians and other church gatherings. We are not by ourselves, secluded, when there are so many of God’s people from whom we receive fellowship.
We learn how the Lord has led them in their gathering, and we can receive help from them. But as we go on together, the connection is always spiritual, not a paper connection and not a legal connection.
The problem is not just with denominations. You could be a congregation, but a congregation can be too small. A congregation says, “These fifty people are us. This is this church.”
When we gather here, we want to gather not as a congregation but as an expression of the church. We are not the whole church, but we want to experience the house of God. We want to experience the presence of God amongst us.
When we gather together, we want to stand for all of God’s people. When you see that one loaf up here at the breaking of bread, that includes every believer in there. There is one body and one loaf, but we all stand together.
Just because we want to testify of the house of God and testify of Christ when we gather together does not mean that we are merely our congregation.
Does that mean we should all stay at home and not gather? No, because then there is no practice and experience of the house of God. We want to pursue together with all those who are calling upon the Lord’s name.
What if I find myself not pursuing? What should I do? I hear this, and I know that it is good—that I should be doing that—but I do not feel it. I do not have the pursuit.
One thing mentioned before pursue in both 1 Timothy 6 and 2 Timothy 2 is flee. To pursue, you have to flee. You have to run away in order to run toward. They always go together.
We are like Joseph fleeing away from Potiphar’s wife. Our coat may be taken from us. We may even be blamed for things. But we have to flee youthful lust. We have to flee the things of the world and everything that stops us from pursuing the Lord.
If you do not feel the pursuit, seek the Lord and ask, “Is there something holding me back in this pursuit?”
Another thing besides fleeing is calling on the Lord. Those with a pure heart also call upon the Lord.
This is our desperation as believers. Maybe I feel dry. Maybe I feel like I have lost my concern for God’s house. Maybe every time I hear about these grand things beyond my own realm, they no longer touch me or register. They just seem so far away.
If you find this happening, our only hope is to call upon the Lord. In desperation, we cry out to the Lord and say, “I am not where I ought to be. I know it.”
“I have run away from all these other things. Bring me back into the right path.”
Remember what the Lord showed you. Remember when you were excited about gathering with the saints and had this love of the brethren welling up. You called people because you wanted to. You came early to a gathering, not because somebody would be upset if you did not, but because you wanted to.
You had this inward pursuit going on, and the Lord will bring us back. If we call upon the Lord out of a pure heart, fleeing all the other stuff, our only hope is to cast ourselves on the Lord.
He is the Head of the church. He is the One building the church. We are not left alone. Just as we heard this morning, He is pursuing us, so we can pursue Him.
He is coming after you and drawing you. He will work through your circumstances, and He will crush us if He has to. He will crush us because it will conform us to the image of Christ. He will bring us out of our laziness because He wants us to pursue Him.
If you find yourself in this spot, in your quiet room, even in a wimpy prayer, call out to the Lord. Call upon Him. Let us ask the Lord to bring us on in this pursuit.
Committing ourselves to the Lord, we rise up the next day and take our step to pursue the Lord. Flee whatever else, but take each step one by one together.
This is the way in this fallen church era, this time in which we find ourselves in the large house. Let us be desperate for the Lord to meet us and actually bring us on in this pursuit.
Let us pray together.
Oh, we must come to You and confess that we have not been pursuing as You are drawing us, even in this pursuit together.
Lord, we pray that You would cleanse us from our failures. We pray that we would be washed clean from our pride. We just want to come to You and cry out to You.
Lord, pull us on. Let us reach our hands out and grab hold of what You are doing. Lord, we want to go along together.
I pray that where there are differences right now, grudges, unforgiveness, or other things, Lord, You would expose them in our hearts. Bring us to step into the light, be cleansed, and walk in this path of light together.
Lord, I pray for those of us who are even beginning to pull aside, give up, or cast off restraint. Lord, refresh our vision. Bring the sight again to us of Your house and all that You have shown us in the past, but show us more.
Lord, we pray that the thing that keeps stopping us would be repented of and turned from.
Lord, I just want to thank You for not leaving us alone. Thank You for all of us in this room together, and for those we know who are struggling and trying to pursue You together.
Lord, I thank You for this love of the brethren that we have discovered. Thank You for this joy and fellowship that we are all participating in and discovering.
Lord, thank You that we can come and pray together as one people. We can come and remember You together as one people. Even in our fellowship times, we can come and really act as a priesthood of all believers and receive from everybody.
Lord, we thank You for such a privilege, even to be able to experience some taste of Your house. Lord, we cast ourselves upon You. We want to go on in Your direction.
We want to flee from the other directions that we have accidentally been going in according to our own purpose. Lord, we pray that You would open our eyes to see more of Your house and open our hearts to join in this pursuit diligently.
In Jesus’ name, amen.