Morning, brothers and sisters.
I’d like for us to turn this morning to Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus.
To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ,
and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery, which for ages has been hidden in God, Who created all things;
in order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places.
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.
There are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord.
There are varieties of effects, but the same God Who works all things in all persons.
But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body just as He desired.
From Whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
Let us pray.
Lord, we are so blessed to be in Thy presence today. Lord, we are thankful for the fresh reminder at this table of the sacrifice and the cost that was paid so that we could be together today.
Lord, we are thankful that You have purchased and redeemed each one of us, and Lord, You have called us with a purpose. As we come together today, Lord, we desire that this time would really be in tune with Thy purpose.
Lord, we want to, just as we look off unto You during times of worship, come to Your Word looking off unto You, because You are that living Word. We would partake of the living Word of life this morning, Lord.
Lord, we offer ourselves to You, that we not be dull of hearing, dull of responding, but through the quickening and enabling power of Your Holy Spirit, by faith, we could lay hold of that for which we have been laid hold of. We worship You, Lord, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
For a while, we have been sharing together on this matter of the house of God. Even before that, we were sharing on vision and the necessity of it. As we talk about vision, we see that really within His heart is the house, and how He desires to have a habitation in which He can dwell and really be at home.
We have been talking about this. It is not just a teaching, it is not just a doctrine, but it is a life. It is a way of living because it is a Person. When brought into Christ, we talk about the corporate expression, and because of its vastness, we use different words to try to describe it.
We talk about the house of God, and we see certain characteristics there. We talk about the body of Christ, and we see certain characteristics. We talk about the family of God. All of these are trying to grasp something of the reality of God’s heart: that we, as His people, have been brought into this corporate expression of His life.
As other brothers have shared, I am not going to go back over what they shared, because we have been hearing this. One of the things that has been repeated throughout is that it is very dependent upon our personal relationship with the Lord.
Even as I am sharing today, I might not be using that term, personal relationship, in every other sentence, but that is vital. It is vital.
Today we are going to focus upon some of the challenges of living in the house of God. We know that there is one house. As has been shared, there is one house, and we are living there.
So the question we have is: How are we living in this house? Are we functioning as good members in the house—ones who are adding to the house? Or are we ones who are distracting from what God is trying to do?
There are a lot of challenges that we face in the house. Today, what I would like to look at are two challenges: diversity and order in the house of God.
A lot of times, when we think of these two words, diversity and order, we do not put them together. But God, in His great wisdom, puts them together.
When we stop and think about diversity, oftentimes we are not comfortable with diversity. We are a lot more comfortable with uniformity. We like everything to be alike, and it is defined by who we are and what our thoughts are. We like everything to fit in the way we think and what we are comfortable with.
When something diverse comes in, we are a little bit uncomfortable. The same thing is true with order. Sometimes, when order comes in, we feel too restricted: “I cannot do what I want to do.”
But God, in His wonderful wisdom, to show forth the fullness of Christ—the fullness of His life—brings these two matters of diversity and order right together within the house of God. Through them, we can see the fullness of all He wants.
We can see this even within our own homes. There is a variety of rooms. There are living rooms, where we just all sit and do not do anything. We have the kitchen, which is where all the work is done. We have our resting rooms, and each person has their favorite room.
You can generally walk into a house and tell what is the favorite room of a person, because that room is tailored for them. If they are a living-room person, they have the most comfortable lounge chair there, put in just the right spot where they can enjoy everything.
If you are a kitchen person, you can walk into the kitchen and tell that somebody loves being there, because they have just the right knife sitting over there. They have the right utensil, the right pot, and they know how to use it.
There is diversity within the house, but there is also an order there so that the house can flow together. As we look within God’s house, there is the same diversity within His house.
Now, let me clarify a couple of things. We are not talking about a diversity of flesh; we are talking about a diversity of His life. We are not talking about the diversity of sin and flesh. It is the diversity of His life.
He has made each and every one of us in a unique way. We are fearfully and wonderfully formed. Just look around and see the diversity of faces in this room. He takes the same material and creates diversity. What a wonder that is.
We are not talking about a diversity of truth. There is one truth. There can be different interpretations—we will talk about that later—but there is a foundational truth, because the foundation is the Person and work of Christ.
We are talking about diversity within His life being expressed among the people of God. When we talk about order, really what we are speaking of is that living order under His headship, under His lordship, allowing His life to come out.
We are not talking about rules and regulations and legalism. We are talking about a life that flows out to His glory and His honor.
As we look at this matter of diversity, we have said that we are not comfortable with it. But God has a purpose for it.
As we read in Ephesians 3, we see how He has designed His house in such a way that it would show forth the manifold wisdom of God.
That word manifold is really the only time it gets used in the Scripture. It shows us why He desires to show forth His manifold wisdom: to show forth the beauty of His Son through His people. It is not to show forth our beauty; it is to show forth the beauty of Christ in every brother and sister.
This manifold wisdom is described in different ways by different translations. Darby says, “the all-various wisdom.” One brother, Dean Alford, speaks of it as being like a rainbow, showing forth all the beauty and glory of the Lord. Weymouth speaks of the innumerable aspects of His wisdom.
We read earlier of the unfathomable riches of Christ. Within the church, He has chosen to show forth His all-various wisdom, the multitude of aspects of His wisdom, as a testimony to the seen and the unseen—to proclaim the fullness of all that Jesus is and all that He is to be.
Why do we not see this wisdom, if it is there for us to see? There is really one simple answer: uncrucified flesh.
Jim talked last week about the cross. Christ crucified is foolishness to the natural person, to the natural self; but to those who are being called, it is the power and wisdom of God.
We do not see some things because we have not really presented ourselves to Him, and we are not allowing that cross to work within us. But as we daily deny ourselves, as we daily say no to ourselves and yes to Him, that old self—that old natural nature—is dealt with, and we are conformed to His image.
Our whole perspective changes. We stop seeing things from our own self-centered perspective, and we start to see things from His perspective. We see the way He wants it to be and what He desires it to be.
The more we see the diversity of His life in our brothers and sisters, the more we begin to accept one another and respect one another. It allows us to go on together.
There is nothing more beautiful than a group that, in their own nature, are so different, yet the Lord brings them together in a unique way. He shows forth the oneness that there is in Him, but also the diversity of His life and the way He desires to express it through them.
Praise God for that, because diversity without order is simply chaos. But order without diversity is a cult. It is just monolithic—carbon-copy, little cookie-cutter things. There is nothing there; it is a blank white screen.
But God wants us to see the diversity of His wonderful life.
We read earlier how He wants this diversity to work together. We can see it even in the world. When you have an orchestra, to me it is a beautiful picture, because you have a great variety of instruments: violins, cellos, piano, big drums, and everything.
The orchestra, when it is performed well, is to me a living picture of what Jim described last week as the corporate cross. Everybody in that orchestra has to deny themselves for the good of the music that comes forth.
When they are synchronized together, there is a beauty of diverse sounds coming forth in harmony that shows the fullness of what they are. This is what the Lord desires us to be.
As He shows forth that great diversity of His life through each one, we can sing a glorious song unto Him with our lives. What a glory it is.
We read earlier from 1 Corinthians 12. In these verses, there was a familiar word used in each of the first three verses: varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; varieties of ministries, but the same Lord; varieties of effects, but the same God.
Some translations use the word diversity for variety. Again, this is the only place this word gets used in the New Testament.
To try to grasp what the Lord is saying through this variety, let us look at a couple of words: fair, chair, and hair. Within those three words are two letters, the vowels a and i, which sound as one letter.
But then you have the same letters in the word naïve, and all of a sudden you hear two sounds. Over the i are two little dots. Those two little dots are called a diaeresis—at least that is as close as I can get. That is what my computer said when I pushed the button and it spoke to me.
What that means is distinguishing one part from the other. From two parts that are normally always together, these little dots distinguish them in order to show forth a greater fullness.
That is what the Lord is doing within our lives as we gather together. Instead of us all being one sound, like hair, chair, and fair, He wants to show forth a fuller expression of His life. He brings in this variety, so that we hear a multitude of sounds that show forth the fullness of His life.
Let us be more comfortable with the diversity that we have in Christ. Our flesh is not comfortable with it, but in the Spirit we are. There is more that He desires to express through us in this.
All throughout Scripture, as we think about our Lord upon the earth, we see great variety. We need all four Gospels to see something of His fullness, and as John says at the end, we still do not grasp His fullness.
We see Him in Matthew as the King, in Mark as the Servant, in Luke as the Son of Man, and in John as the Son of God. There is diversity as we look at Christ. How can you describe Him?
We see the manifold wisdom of His life, the glory of His life expressed in many ways. Yet we have such a tendency to put Him in a little box and say, “Oh, He acts this way. He is like this.”
We also see throughout the Book of Acts a great diversity among the assemblies of God, but it is His life being expressed.
In the church in Jerusalem, they were made up mainly of Jews. There were some big names: the apostles, the mother of Jesus, and His brothers and sisters. But then there were many others—what we might call no names, just for illustration.
In Antioch, there were mainly Gentiles, totally different from Jerusalem. Paul visited and helped to encourage them, but the saints in Antioch were unique. In Ephesus, it was Jews and Gentiles together. In Philippi, lo and behold, it was started with women.
The Lord works in so many ways. Many of the gatherings in the New Testament, we do not know how they started. Take Philadelphia: we never hear about it, but then in Revelation there is a great commendation.
There is diversity, and in a great way His life is expressed through the various assemblies. It is not a cookie-cutter mold; He expresses Himself in a marvelous and wonderful way.
Even when we come to Revelation 21 and look at the foundation stones, there are twelve different foundation stones through the twelve apostles. Each one maintains uniqueness, but we see the fullness of Christ coming out through that.
As we look further at the diversity mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12, we see the diversity of gifts. Verse 28 mentions some of those gifts, but there are so many more given.
We need to remember two principles: the manifestation of them is for the common good, and God has placed each one right where He desires. What a wonderful thing to get settled in our hearts.
One of my favorite gifts in that verse is the gifts of helps. What a marvelous gift this is, and I think it is one of the most overlooked things.
We look at apostles, prophets, teachers, speaking in tongues, prophesying, a word of wisdom, and a word of knowledge. But then there is this one: helps.
Oh, how much help is needed among us in this hour, in this day and time, to encourage one another, strengthen each other, and really go on in Him.
When we neglect the personal responsibility for which the Lord has equipped us—when we neglect that personal relationship with Him—we really miss out. We end up not fully expressing Him in the diversity of Him within the house of God.
When we are not being individually responsible, something is left out. The fullness of His life is not coming forth within the house of God, and that is what He desires.
Why are we not comfortable with some of these things? Sometimes it is because we have seen excesses and abuses. But with the abuses, brothers and sisters, the problem was not with the gift. The problem was with the flesh.
The gifts are from Him. How do we handle them? Would we not shy back from all that the Lord desires to do and work in all of our lives in this day and time?
Sometimes we have a tendency just to throw everything out. But there is something within all of Him that we need to keep and learn. That is where the cross does that dividing of soul and spirit.
There can be fleshly zeal, but praise God, I love young people with fleshly zeal, because that is a starting point. They are in the game. They are playing. They are participating.
I remember in high school basketball, we had one guy whose claim to fame was that after four years on the team, he had never fouled out of one game.
Well, the problem was, he never played.
He rode the bench. He might get in a few minutes each game, so he could say, “I never fouled out of a ball game my whole four years of high school.” But he was not in there playing.
When you play the game, you are going to get fouls. Praise God, there is not a limit of five or six in God’s house. How many times can He forgive us? Seven times? Seven times seventy? It is unlimited forgiveness.
That fleshly zeal is where it starts. But then we let the cross work within us to deal with that and bring those gifts under the control of His Spirit and not our flesh. Praise God for that. We can go on and enjoy the fullness of all He has.
We also see great diversity in service. Take the apostles—Peter, Paul, and John. Their backgrounds were all different.
Peter was a fisherman. Paul was a tentmaker. John was a mender of nets. The Lord took each one uniquely. Peter was used for gathering, Paul was used for building, and John was used for restoring.
We can get into trouble sometimes because we think the way God is using us is the way everybody should operate.
If we are serving in a certain area—say we are an evangelist and we are out there sharing the Gospel—we think everybody should share the Gospel. “What are you doing over there building? What are you trying to restore? We need more material in the house.”
Those who want to restore the house the way God wants it to be may say, “What are you doing bringing in more material? We do not even have anywhere for them. Look at our condition. Why would you bring anybody into these ruins?”
But God, through His manifold wisdom, causes all this to work together at times to show forth His glory and to be a testimony of Who He is.
There are so many marvelous ways of service: prayer, worship, hospitality, caring for one another, giving, and practical helps. Praise God for the many ways we serve and minister unto Him.
This morning, we had a wonderful way in which we could gather together and minister unto Him. But our ministering is not limited just to the meetings. It is twenty-four-seven.
Praise God that we have opportunities in the gatherings. They are a vital part of our serving and ministering unto Him, but they are not the totality of it. The Lord would show us how we can daily walk in His presence and daily allow the beauty and glory of His life to be expressed.
One of the great ways that He shows forth His wonderful diversity is simply male and female. Now, in the wisdom of God, today I am not going to touch that. I am going to move on.
Jim has also touched on diversity in maturity: young children, young men, and fathers. There are all these various diversities to show forth the fullness in that working together.
In 1 Corinthians 12:6, it speaks of a diversity of effects and operations. As we respond to the grace of God, there are so many diverse ways that He works.
Think of salvation. If we took time and went around this room asking everybody how they were saved, would we get the exact same story? But in the end, it all comes back to Christ. His life somehow touched each one of us.
The experience was different, at different ages and at different times, but it was all Him. We see the beauty there.
We do the Lord’s Table. As you travel, you see that there are a variety of ways to take the Lord’s Table. There are many practices, but there is one principle: one cup, one loaf, testifying of what He has done as we put Him in remembrance.
We can even think of worship. Throughout the centuries, there have been many forms of worship.
You go to a Quaker worship, and it is normally pretty quiet—unless they start quaking, and then it can get pretty active. Then you go to a charismatic form.
It is not a matter of one being right and another wrong. It is how the Lord is using it. The Lord used the Quakers in a marvelous way when it was necessary to bring back a reality that had been lost. There was so much that was superficial, and there was no inward reality.
The Lord used the Quakers to recover a precious truth in history. Praise God how He used the charismatics to break forth and see the fullness of His life expressed in a more outward way.
Oh, brothers and sisters, this is great diversity. Even as we are looking at the Gospel of Matthew, we can already see, no matter what chapter we are in—we are just in Matthew 13; we are kind of lagging behind—the variety of ways the Lord healed people.
He does not have one little way that He works. But do we have those eyes to see? Have we allowed the cross to work in us in such a way that we are not seeing things from our perspective, but seeing them from His perspective?
Oh, what a great diversity and variety there is then.
When we think of the variety and diversity in the way the Lord has created each one of us, it is amazing: body, soul, and spirit.
Our bodies are all so different. Our souls—our temperaments, minds, wills, and emotions—have great variety. Praise God, in our spirit, after we are saved, we are of that same Spirit. We have that one life living within us.
As we allow the cross to work within us, our lives become more Spirit-controlled and not so much self-controlled, because He expresses Himself uniquely in each and every one of us.
Some say the shape of the soul makes your temperament, so I am using the term diversity of temperament. Think of our own souls: our minds, wills, and emotions.
Within each one of us, one of these areas is normally more dominant. There is a mixture; we all have all three of these. But normally, in a general way, one is more dominant.
You have those who are of the mind. They are very orderly and logical, and they are all accountants and everything. They are the ones who love Bible study, teaching, and accumulating knowledge. That is good, but if we do it in ourselves, it is not.
Then we have those who are strong in their will. They always want to be busy. They want to do something. They are always so active, and they become more works-oriented. We need that.
Then we have those who are controlled by the emotions, more feeling-oriented, wanting that feel-good experience. We all need to have our emotions brought under the control of the Spirit, so that they can come forth and truly show the heart of God.
It is good to remember how each one of us was fearfully and wonderfully made. Each one of us needs to have our temperament brought under the government of the Holy Spirit through the working of the cross.
In general—and this is an oversimplification—you have two categories of people. You have those who are very quiet and inward, the introverts. Then you have those who are a little loud and outgoing, the extroverts.
One of the quiet ones may say about the other group, “They need the cross. They are always talking too much.” They look at the outward, extroverted people and say, “Oh, that is just the flesh. They need the cross to work.”
But what do those loud extroverted people say of the quiet ones? “They need the Holy Spirit. They need a good dose of the baptism of the Spirit to perk them up and wake them up. They just sit around all the time.”
But think of the Apostle John, how quiet he was, and the Apostle Peter. Who needed more work within them to be conformed to the image of Christ?
Most of us would say Peter, because Peter was always getting his foot in his mouth, always causing trouble. But actually, both of them needed the work of the cross just as much in their lives.
Peter was more outward, but John was more inward. At times, his thoughts came out. Remember those who were casting out demons, and John said, “They are not with us.” John was pretty exclusive at the beginning. He said, “They were not following us.”
But the Lord said, “He that is not against us is for us.”
Then they were going through an area where the people were not accepting the Lord. What were James and John, those sons of thunder, going to do? They were going to call down fire from heaven.
The apostle who ended up being the apostle of love was greatly transformed. That is a great transforming work.
Sometimes we get this image based on our temperament. If you are a quiet person, your image is that to be truly spiritual is to be nice and quiet.
Who is the image of a quiet sister? Mary. She sits at the Lord’s feet all the time. She never does anything around the house; she just sits there.
Who is the image for the more extroverted one? Martha. “I need to be serving.” The Lord has them both together to show forth the fullness. It is not a matter of right and wrong within this.
God has made each one of us in a fearful and wonderful way. Those quiet, inward ones love that little phrase, “the still, small voice.” But Proverbs says wisdom shouts in the streets.
There are times when the Lord is shouting. When the Lord cleanses the temple, He is shouting. He stands up and cries out, “Out of your bellies will flow rivers of living water.” He is shouting. There is a great outward display.
There are also times when the Lord is quiet: “Not My will.” I think I got those two in the wrong column, but that is all right. That is just really to see if you are paying attention.
The lesson is this: do not interpret our experience based on our natural temperament. We have such a way of saying, “Oh, this is spiritual because it fits into my little concept.”
Take a characteristic like stubbornness. Some of the most stubborn people are those quiet, introverted ones. You are not going to move them. They are the Rock of Gibraltar.
They are going to sit there with a smile on their face and look so nice, so spiritual, and so peaceful. But you advise them to do something, and they are not going to do it, no matter what you say, because they are stubborn.
Peter’s stubbornness gets displayed one way, and John’s stubbornness gets displayed another way. But it all needs the cross to be working in our lives. Would that the Lord would do that.
We said that we are not speaking of a diversity of truth. There is one truth, but there are a variety of interpretations.
We are studying the Gospel of Matthew right now, and we know that Matthew speaks of the King and the kingdom. What is the truth there? The truth is that He is the King, and His kingdom is coming upon this earth.
But when you get into interpretations, you have many questions: When is it coming? How is it coming? Who is going to go through the rapture? Who gets raptured first? How many raptures are there? When is the Lord coming? Who goes through the tribulation?
It is interesting. Ones who want to prove their interpretation often just talk louder. They talk as though, “This is it.” Anybody who says, “This is it,” in any of these interpretations, is really pretty insecure.
A confident person says, “I do not really know, but God knows, and He will show us the way through. This is what I believe.”
There are many interpretations. But when we talk about diversity, we are not talking about diversity in the foundation. There is no diversity in the Person and work of Christ. That is solid truth. That is settled.
We look at this table and what the Lord has done. There is no diversity in that. He has died for us. He has brought us into Himself. Praise God for that.
When it comes to this matter of diversity, it is critical for us to remember that there is one house. We need to see that He has us in this house and that we can allow Him to work us together.
My desire in talking about diversity is that somehow we can see the diversity in Christ versus the diversity of our flesh, because He is the One Who brings us into His house.
There is great diversity, as we mentioned earlier. But within that diversity, there is also great order.
Within each room in a house, there is a way we are to conduct ourselves. In general, you eat in the kitchen area. You are not supposed to eat in the living room, but we do not want to talk about that.
Each room has a place and a function. To get from one room to another, if you are in the living room and want to go to the bedroom, you go through the door. You do not just go through the wall. You do not knock the wall down.
When you are in the bedroom and want to go outside, you do not climb out the window—unless you are a teenager late at night. You come back and go through the front door.
There is order and reason within the house in how to do things. Our God is a God of order. In the house of God, there is an order there.
We see His order from creation, and we see His order all through the Old Testament: within the house of God, the tabernacle, and the temple. There was an order there that He established.
When we come to the New Testament, within the church, we see that when the church was born, it was born with order. The order is under His headship. As the Head directs and moves, an order comes forth and prevails.
Remember 1 Corinthians 12:18: God has placed each one where He desired. When we look back at Ephesians 4:16, it says:
From Whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
That phrase, “according to the proper working of each individual part,” shows us how God, as Head, directs each one of us. He has put each one of us in a place, and He desires that each one of us would work according to the place in which He has put us, and according to the capacity and measure of His life that He has given to us.
We are to work where we are placed and within the capacity in which He has designed us to operate.
Think about your body. God gave us hands to pick things up. We were not designed to pick things up with our elbows, even though at times we try to balance things on there.
We are designed to use our hands for certain things and our feet for certain things. Within His house, within His body of Christ, there is an order in which He has placed each one of us right where He wants us. He has given each one of us a function and a way to express that function.
This is where we run into problems, because when we come into order, we start to resist. We say, “I do not want to be there. I want to be here. I want to do this. I want to do that.”
Then we start thinking, “Well, I am free. The Lord has saved me, and I am free. I can do whatever I want to do. I do not really want to do this; I want to do that.”
We develop a self-centered freedom mentality that ends up going totally against God’s order.
We go to the Scriptures and find our favorite verses about freedom and liberty. We come to John 8:32 and talk about how the truth has set us free.
“Oh, thank God. The Lord is the truth. He has come. He has set me free. Now I am free. I can do what I want to do.” Really?
Do you remember the two verses before that? John 8:31-32 says:
Jesus therefore said to those Jews that had believed Him, If ye abide in My word, then are ye truly My disciples;
and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
That little phrase, “If ye abide in My word,” means then you are truly disciples of Mine. It is the disciples of Him who have been set free.
What are they set free from? They are set free from themselves in order to serve Him. Their life is not their own.
When you are a disciple, you are under the control and government of the One from Whom you are learning—your Master and your Lord. He is the Head.
You realize you have given up your life and are saying, “Lord, I do not want to live for myself. I want to live for You.” Then we are free in that.
Another favorite verse is 2 Corinthians 3:17:
Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
We love that phrase about liberty, but twice there it speaks of the Spirit of the Lord—the Spirit of our Lord and Master. We are under His government; He is controlling us.
We like to say, “We are free. We are at liberty. We can do what we want to do. We can worship where we want to, worship how we want to, meet where we want to, meet when we want to, serve where we want to serve, and serve when we want to serve, because we are free.”
But have we ever really stopped and looked at our freedom within the New Testament? What do the Scriptures say about our freedom?
Romans 6:18 says:
And having been made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness.
What are we freed from? We are freed from sin. Praise God for that. But why are we freed from sin? So that we become servants of righteousness.
Romans 6:22 says that, having been freed from sin, we are enslaved to God. We are free from ourselves, from the bondage of sin, the world, corruption, and self. We are brought into the place of coming under His government and being a love-slave, a bond-slave, unto Him.
We are free to serve Him. In the past, we were limited. We were not free to serve God because we were serving something else. But now we are free to serve Him, free to do as He wants us to do.
1 Peter 2:16 says:
As free, and not using your freedom for a cloak of wickedness, but as servants of God.
We can misuse the freedom we have. When we misuse freedom and use it for ourselves, we go back under the bondage of self. We make ourselves captive to self while deluding ourselves that we are free.
Those who say they are free to do whatever they want are actually bond-slaves of self. But we want to be those who are bond-slaves of Christ.
Galatians 5:13 says:
For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another.
There is a freedom to serve one another within the house of God—not doing it based on our own strength or our own fleshly way, but as He would have it.
1 Corinthians 8:9 says:
But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock to the weak.
You will notice that in the freedom we have in Christ, as bond-slaves to Him, there is consideration of one another. There is caring for one another, looking out for one another, not causing others to stumble, and not offending one another.
There is an order that He has within His house. We are not set free to do our own thing; we are set free to do His will. We are free to live in His house just as He desires that we live there.
Praise God, brothers and sisters. What a wonderful privilege we have been brought into.
It is tragic today how much we have misunderstood this freedom and misunderstood diversity. We think diversity is for our own flesh, so we can be who we want to be. We misunderstand freedom as freedom to do what we want to do.
But as we come to this matter of the house of God, He has a beautiful way in which He wants us to live together, work together, and show forth through diversity and order the beauty and glory—the manifold wisdom—of all that He desires.
May we seriously consider these two matters as two challenges. If we have trouble with these matters, let us give them to the Holy Spirit and allow the Spirit to search and work within us.
It is so critical for the testimony of Jesus in this hour that His life be seen, because we are being what He has called us to be.
We remember that it is one house into which He has brought us. We have this wonderful opportunity to have this worked out in us as we are built together with the portion of His people with whom we meet.
We see how the Lord has a marvelous thing that He wants us to do. Are we willing to accept this diversity and order within the house of God?
Remember, it is with purpose that His manifold wisdom would be seen. When we shrink back, that manifold wisdom—the fullness of all He wants—is not seen.
When each and every one of us is not really coming in and being who the Lord calls us to be, the fullness of His manifold wisdom is not being seen, and His testimony is further weakened.
How we need to allow the Holy Spirit to work within us so that we see this house of God. It is not a teaching; it is a Person. It is a life to which He has called us.
Would we allow the Holy Spirit to work within us, bringing us to the place of seeing the diversity and the unique way in which He desires to express Himself through each and every brother and sister?
May we allow, through that, the testimony of the Lord to be strengthened and His return to be hastened.
Let us pray.
Lord, we are so thankful for Your goodness and for Your mercy to us.
Lord, at times we end up putting You in a box and saying, “God works this way.” Lord, thank You for how You shattered Peter’s box at the house of Cornelius. Thank You for how You dealt with John.
Lord, we want You to shatter our false concepts. We are thankful for the power of the cross that can come in and do that shattering work.
We do not want to be those who shrink back, but those who are really pressing on in You, Lord, to Your glory and Your honor. In Jesus’ name, amen.