So, brothers, we now have the opportunity to pray about these things. I would just like to add a little further context to what our dear brother has been saying regarding new covenant ministry.
If you would bear with me and turn to 2 Corinthians 10, we want to look at something as it applies to us, especially in this matter of new covenant ministry.
In 2 Corinthians 10, we find Paul speaking these words.
Well, we can read these words:
Now I Paul myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ,
who in presence am base among you, but being absent am bold toward you:
but I beseech you, that I may not be bold when I am present with that confidence
wherewith I think to be bold against some,
which think of us as if we walked according to the flesh.For though we walk in the flesh,
we do not war after the flesh:
for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal,
but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds;
casting down imaginations, and every high thing
that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God,
and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
and having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience,
when your obedience is fulfilled.Do ye look on things after the outward appearance?
And I am just going to stop there.
In terms specifically of this ministry of the new covenant in our assemblies, the greatest obstacle to this new covenant ministry being achieved is men.
Men whose minds have built up proud strongholds against the Spirit speaking.
Now, when Paul talks about wrestling here with this spiritual warfare, he is not talking about wrestling with spiritual forces over the whole church condition itself. In the context, we know what the problem is. And what is that?
There are some brothers in Corinth who got saved by grace, who received gifts of the Holy Spirit, who were filled with the knowledge of the gospel, and they became leaders and preachers and teachers and prophets.
They grew in knowledge, but were lax in the inward working of the cross. They came into what is very common in all our fellowships: when men get a little knowledge, it is a dangerous thing.
Men come into what we might call spiritual adolescence. Now, not all of you have adolescent children, but it is in adolescence that children know everything. They become omniscient at about sixteen years old.
You can no longer tell your child right from wrong because they know. They know everything. They know the real world because they are on social media all the time, and you are totally out of touch.
The Corinthian men were in adolescence. Among other things, they were saying, “Who is Paul? We despise this guy. He is always acting like a big shot. When he writes letters, he writes big-shot letters; and when he comes around, he is just a little shrimpy guy.”
These men were challenging Paul. If the veil over their eyes could ever be pulled back and they could see this man of God whom they were maligning, they would fall prostrate on the ground and ask forgiveness.
But men are rascals, because the stronger we get in mind and the more knowledge we attain, the more we judge things outwardly.
Do you see how this little section ends? I ended only with a half verse there: “Do ye look on things after the outward appearance?”
And he is talking about himself as they look at him, because look at the next sentence:
If any man trust to himself that he is Christ’s,
let him of himself think this again,
that, as he is Christ’s, even so are we.
So now you think you are Christ’s, and you know everything, and you know how to minister, and you do not need me anymore.
This is where the blockage to new covenant ministry finds its home: among men who see things outwardly.
That is the nature of our professions, most of us, and our vocations. We have to see things outwardly and judge things outwardly, whatever field of service you are in. But when that is applied over into the church, it absolutely stifles the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
As we see from the very beginning, Paul says that the ministry of the new covenant is writing on hearts—not primarily minds, but by the Spirit of God writing on hearts.
And so we see that a new covenant ministry has to initiate and originate from your spirit.
Now, how are you going to minister just by your spirit?
Well, actually, you can minister just by your spirit. And what is that? When you minister something, a person gets a witness of the Spirit that indeed you are a child of God. It comes through.
But really, what God has ordained, and why we get back to this humanness in our ministry, is that He wants our ministry to originate in our spirit, but go through our soul—giving us intelligence and feelings and volition—and then even go through our body as we preach.
Now, that process necessitates a great dealing of God on our souls, where our mind, our will, and our emotions are lodged, in order that that spirit would come through unhindered.
But our souls are strong. We men, you know, have to fake that we are strong people in this world.
What it does in the church, though, is prevent the spirit from going through the soul and out through the body, so that you become a transparent vessel of Christ, able to minister the new covenant ministry.
Once the mode of outward ministry becomes the norm in the church, the church falls into meetings that are devoid of the Spirit of God.
Now, you heard our brother’s story. He cycled back around, and our dear brother writes some things down and shares. He cycled around again and told us about how he got saved, and how before he got saved he was already preaching.
Now, let me tell you—can I tell you this? I am sure I am not surprising anybody.
Within too large a swath of Christianity, there are people preaching, leading, and praying, and they are not even saved.
There are pastors who are absolutely adequate to perform an outward ministry, but there is no inward life.
I remember, of course, years ago, I went to seminary in the sixties. I graduated in 1971, and as a Baptist, I went up and served in churches in New York City that very year after I graduated.
I heard it all through the Baptist circles. They had their newspaper and everything, and they had their own media back in those days. In 1971, I received a report—an astounding report.
The North Carolina Baptist ministers gathered together in North Carolina, almost a thousand of them, I believe. A dear brother named Stephen Olford, a powerful preacher of the gospel and the exchanged life, was asked to speak at this ministerial conference.
Our dear brother Stephen Olford—he is the one who led Billy Graham into full surrender and being filled with the Holy Spirit. A wonderful man from England. Anyway, he preached the gospel there, and over a hundred of those pastors got saved.
Now, I would laugh, except those churches—what had they been ministered? Outward stuff. Stuff of the mind.
Listen, we can fix up messages with illustrations. There are books you can buy: two thousand humorous jokes, each aligned up with the gospel. Just go down to what your subject is, and they have jokes you can tell. Five thousand illustrations for the good minister.
You can find these books and construct messages that are so clever that, even if you have freedom, you are a released person, and you can get emotional, you can cry yourself through a message—and you are not even saved.
So our brother’s experience was very interesting, because he was like one of these outward ministers: preaching, leading prayer meetings, memorizing Scriptures, touting them out, looking for praise. That is the way too much of the church has run.
Now, those who have caught a revelation of the ministry of the new covenant, we have something to pray about. It is our own minds that are strongholds against a Spirit ministry.
Even as Paul is praying in this situation, he is praying about these dear brothers in Corinth who are even denigrating the apostle Paul.
Paul said, “If you could only see on the inside, you would see a whole different landscape than you are seeing right now. You think you are Mr. Smarty Pants.”
Can I tell you? I mean, am I saying something out of school? Some of the biggest problems we have in our church life are with full-time workers and with men who minister the Word of God.
They develop a ministry that becomes recognized, and then their whole goal is to protect that ministry. They become strident and authoritarian. They tear down any—well, they become like, forgive me, our present president.
God forbid anybody say anything against our president. He tears them right down to the ground. He tears into anybody; it does not matter—a male, female, a soldier, a nobody. If they say something against him, right down to the ground.
Because that is all he knows: the outward, right? That is the way the world does business. It is survival of the fittest.
But a lot of times our full-time workers stand in the way of spiritual ministry. They recycle those knowledge things and sermon notes that they have over and over and over again. You can repeat them yourself, and there is little life in them.
Now, I am not trying to get after workers, because the elders and responsible brothers are just as bad. We end up being satisfied with an outward way of doing things.
If the Lord cannot break that up, Paul says, “I know I am meek when I am near you, but I have spiritual forces that I am using to tear down these strongholds, and anything that vaunts itself up against the true knowledge of Christ.”
“We will tear down every proud stronghold in your midst once you yield in obedience and allow your mind to be captured by Christ.”
Our dear brother Kenny mentioned in our afternoon session last time that one of the greatest things that has to happen, and happens with consecration, is a renewing of our mind. This is a battleground. Our minds are battlegrounds.
And even more so when you are clever, when you are smart. One of the things about the Corinthians was that there were smart people. Those guys caught it, you know. They caught the words, they wrote the notes, they had it.
Unfortunately, we have too many here who were awfully good students in college. I wish you were dumber—not really—but it means the Lord has to deal more strongly against our strongholds.
So listen, I am sorry, I have gone to preaching. I really want to make it a point of prayer. Brothers, what is your stronghold? What knowledge have you got that you are touting about? What way of doing things are you sure is the Lord’s way?
Can I tell you the facts of life? When you begin to minister the Word of God as a life, your ministry will tend to be outward at first.
As you minister outwardly, the Lord begins to deal with you and hopefully transform these things inwardly.
I can tell you that our brother, if he went on with his story, could talk about how he joined up with Brother Nee, was associated with these workers, was sent out into the other areas of the Far East, preached and preached and preached and preached, and then began to question the outward things.
“Is this all there is to it?” Preaching the gospel is easy. The first realm of ministry is preaching the gospel, and you can pretty much do that outwardly. You understand what I am saying?
Sometimes a church ends up just preaching the gospel because even carnal people can preach the gospel. Now, actually, to really preach the gospel, there needs to be an inward work as well. But that is a good starting point.
You just preach how you got saved and the basics of the gospel, and people get saved. We say, “Hey, this is cool.”
But at some point, the Lord begins to deal inwardly. Is this all there is? Do we just get people saved and then tell them to get people saved, and we kind of continue on the surface of things?
I know in my brother’s life, or as you have read in Watchman’s life, or as you can see in any worker’s life, you come to a place where, even if you are successful outwardly, you begin to say, “Wow, there is something wrong here. There is something more the Lord is after.”
The Lord begins to break up just an outward view of ministry in order to allow that spirit to begin. Because where is the new covenant ministry? What is the realm of the new covenant ministry for us?
It is to minister the Word of God from the heart.
The heart means your soul—your mind, your emotions, and your intellect—influenced by the spirit.
When you can minister out of your heart, which Paul says there in 2 Corinthians—“My heart is wide open to you”—I hope you can see that.
My ministry is to have a heart wide open to you, so you can see the very bowels of my deepest convictions. Look at it. Does it bear witness with your conscience? Am I flim-flamming you with some kind of outward trickery?
That is what he was being blamed for by those who see only outwardly. But the Lord has to deal with us so that that spirit can communicate with our heart, and we can see, and we can deliver.
But that heart—wow—this is a battleground. May the Lord get victory by giving us hearts that overcome even those minds, those speculations, and those areas of pride.
Oh, listen, we could go on and on. I am so glad when, once in a while, we see this. I just mention this completely out of our context.
I think probably many of you have heard of our dear brother Francis Chan. You know who he is? It does not make any difference. He was a megachurch pastor, and the Lord has really been dealing with him.
He left his megachurch—it is a long story. Now recently, the Lord has spoken to him to leave the whole thing, his money and the whole thing, and take his family and go into interior China to preach the gospel. He has left a multimillion-dollar organization.
But you know what? The Lord speaks to this guy’s heart and is dealing with him. Now, he is completely outside our tradition. He would not even know who we are.
But I know who he is, because I can see the Spirit of God when he writes something. He is honest before God. God is really dealing with him. I appreciate that.
Because the Lord has to deal with all of us. We all start out outward. We have a certain way. The Lord has to lead us deeper.
So could we just spend a few minutes here praying about this matter of our own lives and the position of us men?
Now, I do not want you blaming the full-time workers if you have one in your assembly. That is not going to get you anywhere. The full-time worker is just you grown up.
So if you had the chance, the ambition, and the opportunity, you could become outward too. Let us not be outward.
The Spirit of God—that indwelling Spirit our brother said is the greatest gift we have received as Christians—but if He cannot work on us because our stubborn outward man is like a stronghold in the speculation, then we need the very power of God to break those strongholds.
Would it not be wonderful in our assemblies if there would be writing on hearts by ministry from the heart, and by those who have been dealt with by the Lord in some way? How wonderful that would be. How reviving that would be.
But you know how it is. Many times on Sunday, we play some little game—a word study, you know, six concordances with the same word in them—and that becomes a message. Or we play some kind of trick of how we come back around: it is all Jesus and none of us.
We have these little messages that kind of float around the surface. But the Lord wants us to go deeper.
He does not like us memorizing sermons from somebody else. He does not want us reading somebody’s book and basically mouthing it out.
Something original comes from the bowels of your spirit. If you allow it to come out of your heart, then it comes out as streams of living water.
Our assemblies in this last day really need those streams.
So let us pray about this as brothers. This is our chance for you and me to be so dealt with by God that, when we give a message, it is a message from Him, through our spirit, through our soul, through our body, that truly has come originally from Him and not from this up here.
Okay? Well, let us have several minutes of prayer as the Lord leads, and then our brother Ezra will close things.