Okay, saints. Gather back together. Thank you so much.
Okay, let’s have a word of prayer together this morning.
Lord, we are so thankful. You are the Almighty. You are the sovereign God. You are the One who has been faithful to the Father and to His purpose down through the ages, Lord.
Lord, You said:
I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
Lord, we stand with You this morning as we come together, trusting that You indeed will build Your church.
And Lord, we sense that the final stones are being prepared to be put in place. And when that capstone is laid in place, it says, “Grace, grace, unto it.” Lord, we confess unto You this morning: it has been all Your grace—our history together through these years.
Lord, I ask to stand under the anointing of the Holy Spirit this morning as we share, that, Lord, we would not receive a creed or a doctrine to follow, but a life to be lived for You, Lord. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, this morning, I wanted to share a little bit of our history in the early days of the assembly here in Richmond and the vision the Lord gave to us.
Now, by vision, I do not mean that we received a heavenly vision like the apostle Paul did on the Damascus road. But we did receive revelation through the Holy Spirit in those early days.
As we are considering Why Do We Gather? in a couple of weeks, I wanted to share a little of that history to help you see that the vision was not just something to be held onto in an intellectual way, but something to experience—which we certainly did. And I hope that the Holy Spirit can really move today and bring life to what is shared.
I remember the song—one of my favorites:
Precious memories, how they linger,
How they flood my soul;
These precious memories, how they linger,
The sacred past unfolds.
And it is a sacred past because it was a past of the Lord that raised us up. So this morning, we just come to share together.
First of all, I want to say that what He did in those early days was a sovereign act of God. I remember a little history concerning myself, Kenny, and a few others who went along with what happened in those days.
In 1969—do y’all remember the big event of 1969? Apollo, right? It was Apollo 11, the first landing on the moon. You are right, Jack.
I was in Atlanta, Georgia—actually, Marietta, Georgia. I was working for Lockheed Aircraft, and we were developing the cargo airplane, the C-5A, of which I was on the flight team down there.
But in 1969, once the moonshot was over, the bottom kind of dropped out of the aerospace industry. At that time, they had just finished developing the Boeing 727. We were finishing up the C-5A, and we had made it to the moon. So the aircraft industry did not seem to have much of a future at that time.
I was laid off, along with three thousand other engineers at Lockheed Aircraft. At the time, it was pretty difficult for me because we had one son while we were down there in 1967, and my wife was pregnant with our second child. I still had a mortgage, but no job.
Anyway, the sovereignty of God—that was God’s sovereign hand in my life.
Delta Airlines is based in Atlanta, Georgia, so I went to Delta and applied for a job in their maintenance division. I was actually offered the job when I interviewed.
I said to the man—and this was God’s mercy—“You know, I need three days to pray about this.” He had offered me the job, and I did not have one. But I prayed for three days, and nothing seemed to come up.
So I called the man back and said, “You know, I’d like to take the job.” They said, “Well, something happened. The next person we interviewed after you had done this exact job before, and he was better qualified, so we hired him.”
So I said, “Oh.” What could I say? Still a bit at a loss. But anyway, I really felt a strong inclination to come back to Richmond, which is my wife’s hometown.
More than that, I had a real special mother-in-law. She loved the Lord dearly. She knew Marianne Mize, by the way, and had read The Normal Christian Life. She sent that book to me to read, and it altered my life—no doubt about it.
I called and said, “We’re coming back to Richmond. I just need to find a place to stay.” She said they had an apartment with two units in it, and one unit had just become available. “You can stay there.”
I was so grateful. Not only was it rent-free; she also fed us, which was really nice. But for four months, I did not get a job. Finally, I got a job with the City of Richmond. That was very important, and it has a story of its own, but we do not have time for that this morning.
When I came back to Richmond, my dear brother Kenny was not a brother at the time; he was unsaved. My other brother, Michael Woods, was still in Ohio. Sovereignly, the Lord would bring us three brothers together and unite us with these other sisters in Richmond, which I will talk more about.
But I just want to say that God is sovereign. I am thankful that we can have faith in His sovereignty, even when things do not seem to be going our way.
Well, I first met Kenny, my brother, in the summer of 1971. He was an engineering student and was working for the summer with the City of Richmond. He happened to be on the same floor I was—I think it was the fifth floor.
I happened to go around, and I saw Kenny with his long blond hair. It was really interesting in those days. He had been in the charismatic movement, but I began talking to him about the Lord, and he was not very receptive.
I asked him very specifically—I remember this question. I said, “Do you even believe the Bible is the Word of God?”
He said, “No. It was just written by men.”
So I went back to my workplace. The next summer, in 1972, I went around and saw Kenny again. I heard him talking to somebody about the Lord, and I said, “Wow, this guy has had quite a transformation.”
I went up to him and began to talk to him. I said, “By the way, do you believe in the Bible?”
He grabbed me and said, “Every word is God-breathed.” And I said, “Hallelujah. This man has really come to the Lord Jesus.”
Kenny had been caught up in the charismatic movement, and praise the Lord for that movement. Only four months earlier, in February 1972, Kenny had come to the Lord through an Assemblies of God church down in the Fan District.
Brothers and sisters, he was on fire for the Lord. And I have to thank the Lord, in all His grace and mercy, that Kenny is still on fire for the Lord. I am so grateful for that.
At the time, I was in a fundamental Baptist church. For those who are not familiar with fundamental Baptist, I guess the best word to say is that we were legalistic. That was our approach to the Bible—pretty legalistic.
Kenny was a brand-new believer, only four months old in the Lord when I met him, and we began to fellowship together. We had quite different backgrounds, of course.
In the Assemblies of God, they believed in the gifts of the Spirit and practiced them. Y’all may not know this, but Kenny speaks in tongues. That was quite new to me, and it did not fit into my doctrine because I had been taught that the gifts had disappeared along with the apostles.
Of course, that is not true. I was discovering very quickly that it was not true because of my brother Kenny. He was full of the life of the Lord, and that really attracted me to him. We began to share with one another.
We would bring our lunch every day, go across from City Hall to Capitol Park, and share the Lord together. We did not share around doctrines. We shared Christ with one another. We were just fellowshipping together in Christ.
It was a living experience of Ephesians 4:3:
Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
And then, later in the chapter, we read:
Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God.
That became part of the vision the Lord was revealing to us: this matter of keeping the unity of the Spirit. We already have unity. We already have oneness in Christ, and we should gather in that way.
One day, praise the Lord, believe it or not, all the believers in Christ will come to the unity of the faith—the unity of what we believe and what we know to be true in the Word of God.
During that time, I suggested to Kenny that we go through The Normal Christian Life together because it had meant so much to me. We began to read it.
I do not remember how many days or weeks it was, but Kenny came to me and once again laid hold of me. He said, “Jerry, Christianity—it is Christ, isn’t it? It is just Christ. It is not me. It is not I, but it is Christ.”
What he saw was the centrality of Christ in God’s heart. He saw that Christianity was not a bunch of rules to follow, but it was Christ Himself. He was just taken away with his vision of Jesus Christ.
It affected me deeply as well. I began to see things a little differently concerning the Lord, because I had pretty much been one who followed the rules. That was the way I lived the Christian life, which is far from the truth.
We live the Christian life by the life of Christ, and that is the only way we can really live it.
We were beginning to see the centrality of Christ in our lives. Romans 11:36 says:
For of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things. To Him be the glory for ever. Amen.
We were coming into that truth together, and it was a precious time. As I read that book, I began to see something about the church: that it is a living expression of Christ.
I was not very clear at that point, but I began to say, “You know, there is something about the church different from what I have been experiencing.” Really, what it was, was to see that the church is to be the expression of Christ.
Ephesians 1:22-23 is very clear:
The church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
So the Lord was beginning to bring this vision of what the church was as well: Christ the Head and Christ the Body.
All of this was going on at that time. My mother-in-law passed away about a year after I got back to Richmond. She was only fifty years old, and that had a deep impact on my life. She was such a precious sister in the Lord.
She was the one who introduced me to some of the Watchman Nee books, which had actually come from Marianne Mize, who had given them to my mother-in-law.
Marianne had told my mother-in-law about this brother from China who would come to Richmond and speak. My mother-in-law mentioned that to me, and I suggested to Kenny that we go hear him.
I remember saying, in a laughing way, “You know, I wonder if he has a new Watchman Nee.” Of course, y’all all know he does. But at the time, I was thinking, “There are two billion Chinese; could this guy know him?” Thank the Lord, it was true.
At this point in my life, the Lord had begun to deal with me concerning the church. I had a real question in my heart: What is the church? The Lord had put that question in my heart.
It was reinforced by what was going on in that little Baptist church I was among. They had caught one of the teachers smoking, and you could not do that. I mean, there were a lot of things we could not do.
Eventually, they came up with what they called a covenant that all the teachers had to sign. I was teaching Sunday school at the time.
Much of it you would agree with: belief in the virgin birth, belief that Christ was the Son of God, and most of the fundamental things. But you also had to be premillennialist, and there were other things: you could not dance, go to movies, or smoke. It was very legalistic.
They came to me and said, “Jerry, we want you to sign this covenant in order to teach.” I read it, and the Lord had really been working on me. I could not sign it. The Lord would not let me sign it.
They went through the whole list with me: “You believe this? You believe that? Do you do this? Do you do that?”
I said, “I do go to movies occasionally.”
They said, “Well, are they good movies?”
I said, “Yeah.” At that time, we did not even have a rating system, so that was way long ago. They said, “Well, that is okay. Just sign this.”
I said, “You know, I cannot.” And this is what came to me: “We have one covenant as Christians, signed in the blood of Jesus Christ. That is the only covenant that we need as Christians. We do not need any other covenants.”
They looked at me, shook their heads, and said, “Well, Jerry, you will not be able to teach anymore.”
I said, “That is okay. I cannot sign that covenant.”
Eventually, as you will realize, the Lord told me to come out of where I was. But that was what I was dealing with. I was struggling with the question, What is the church?
My view of the church at that time was that it was an organization designed to get the gospel out. That is not a bad thing, but that was all I saw: an organization men had come up with to spread evangelism throughout the world.
We were also big on understanding doctrines and being able to defend the doctrines we believed in from the Bible. That was my background, and I was really churning in my spirit over this matter of what the church is.
On October 1, 1972, we went to hear our brother Stephen Kaung. Do you know what the first message I ever heard him give was? It was from Acts 1: the birth of the church.
Wow, was that a sovereign move of God? The very first ministry dealt with a question that was on my heart.
He shared that the church was living—that it was born on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon one hundred and twenty individual believers and they became one body under the headship of Christ.
Brothers and sisters, that was revolutionary. Then he said this: “It is not an organization, but an organism.”
When he said that, I have to say, the heavens opened. I did not see a physical vision, but the Lord opened my eyes. I said, “Lord, how amazing is the Body of Jesus Christ. How amazing is Your plan and Your sovereign way of working.”
I was just flabbergasted, to use a better word maybe. I was never the same after that. I looked at Christ differently. I looked at the church differently. I was just amazed.
I began to realize that Christ was the Head of the church, not the pastor. We had been taught that He was the Head of the church, but now I knew that the Lord was the Head of His church.
We were not an organization, but the Body of Jesus Christ, directed by Him. We were under the authority and power of the Head of the body, the Lord Jesus Christ—not man.
This was a revolution in my life. Kenny was there with me at that time, and it also opened Kenny’s eyes to see not only Christ the Head, but Christ the Body.
It was an amazing, amazing time, brothers and sisters. It was as joyous as when I first came to the Lord. I came to the Lord when I was twelve years old. Kenny had just come to the Lord when he was twenty. I was twenty-eight when I met Kenny.
What I did not know, with all this stirring in my heart and Kenny’s heart—and in Michael Woods’s heart as well—was that the Lord was going to bring us together.
There was a group of sisters meeting at Llewellyn Miller’s house. I had gone there, and we were meeting in their garage. What I did not realize was that a number of sisters there had been praying for the Lord to raise up something for His own purpose in Richmond.
They had been praying for five years. Travail before birth. The Lord was going to do something, but there had to be travailing prayer for it to happen. These sisters took up that ministry.
I am going to name them: Llewellyn Miller, Elsie Prince, Ray Walker, Marianne Mize, and Jugurtha Woods. There were a few other sisters there too, but these were the main ones who took up this burden.
A number of them had attended a camp at Wabana in Maryland, where Brother T. Austin-Sparks was speaking. I think it was around 1966 or 1967. Stephen Kaung and DeVern Fromke were also speaking.
They came away from that time deeply affected. I remember Llewellyn saying, “You know, I was shattered upon the Rock. I just saw the Lord in a new way. I saw what He wanted.”
They began to pray that the Lord would raise up something in Richmond.
The only way I can describe the spirit of these precious sisters is that they were hungry and thirsty. The Lord said that if you are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, you will be filled. I really think that was their heart. They were so hungry and thirsty for the Lord Himself.
Two things happened while they were praying. One was that they got hold of DeVern Fromke’s book, The Ultimate Intention. If you have ever read that, it kind of opens your eyes to God’s eternal purpose and to what God is trying to do.
One of the main things I remember about the book was this: the redemptive work, this great work of salvation, was really not God’s heart in the beginning. He did not create man to fall and sin. He did not want him to, though He knew it would happen.
So this work of redemption is a remedial work, bringing us back to the place where we can go on with the Lord, be brought on to glory, and serve the Lord’s purpose.
The other thing was a poem by A. B. Simpson called “Himself.” If you will bear with me, I want to read it, because I think it shows the heart that was in these sisters.
You have to remember, they too were fairly charismatic, and they had experienced many things—the gifts of the Spirit and all of that. This is what that poem says:
Once it was the blessing,
Now it is the Lord;
Once it was the feeling,
Now it is His Word.Once His gifts I wanted,
Now the Giver own;
Once I sought for healing,
Now Himself alone.Once it was the painful trying,
Now it is the perfect trust;
Once a half salvation,
Now the uttermost.Once ’twas ceaseless holding,
Now He holds me fast;
Once ’twas constant drifting,
Now my anchor’s cast.Once ’twas busy planning,
Now ’tis trustful prayer;
Once ’twas anxious caring,
Now He has the care.Once ’twas what I wanted,
Now what Jesus says;
Once ’twas constant asking,
Now ’tis ceaseless praise.Once it was my working,
His it hence shall be;
Once I tried to use Him,
Now He uses me.Once the power I wanted,
Now the Mighty One;
Once for self I labored,
Now for Him alone.Once I hoped in Jesus,
Now I know He’s mine;
Once my lamps were dying,
Now they brightly shine.Once for death I waited,
Now His coming hail;
Once my hopes were anchored,
Now they’re anchored safe within the veil.
That deeply affected these sisters. That poem became their passion: to satisfy the Lord’s heart, whatever that meant.
This morning, I would remind us all: I hope we never lose the passion for our Lord Jesus. It was amazing, those sisters and the spirit among them, as we encountered them in those early days.
Stephen Kaung—our dear brother, faithful brother—would come once a month, even during those five years. I think he would share on a Friday night, Sunday afternoon, and Monday morning. He shared with these sisters, and it was almost all sisters at that time.
I once asked Stephen, “Brother, you would fly in from New York to be with these few sisters for five years, and nothing seemed to be happening. Why did you continue to come?”
He looked at me and said, “Jerry, because the Lord told me to.”
I thought, how profound. “The Lord told me to.” My dear brother was so dear and humble before the Lord. To him, that was his way of life: “The Lord told me to.”
The sisters had travailed for five years that the Lord would raise up something just for Himself, for His own pleasure in Richmond.
It reminds me of Samuel’s mother, Hannah—how she prayed and travailed for all those years. She was barren and could not have children. She kept asking for a son.
But if you continue to read the story, you see that Hannah’s prayer changed. It changed from asking for a son to saying, “Lord, if You will give me a son, I will give him to You.”
In other words, her prayer changed to, “Lord, it is not my need, but what You need that matters. You need this child.” So she offered him to the Lord.
She was very faithful. I think Samuel was around three or four years old when she took him up to the temple. That is an amazing thing for a mother who had waited all those years to have a child.
But it was travail. That is the point I want to make. She travailed, and these sisters were travailing. Their prayers were birth pains—birth pains to bring forth the birth of the assembly in Richmond.
Brothers and sisters, this assembly was not organized by the sisters and us brothers. It was birthed by the Holy Spirit. It was a sovereign work: a combination of these sisters praying, Stephen sharing, and eventually us brothers coming in.
We were considering whether or not we should become a testimony for the Lord, rather than just meeting together in the way we were. This Scripture came to Llewellyn Miller from Isaiah 37:3:
The children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth.
That was her prayer, and they began to pray for some brothers to come in. The sisters had been getting together, listening to messages, and meeting on Sunday afternoon at three o’clock for a little time of worship. But they knew the Lord wanted more than that.
They began to pray that the Lord would bring brothers into their midst with the same burden they had. Of course, they were expecting mature men, probably forty or fifty years old. That is not what they got.
In August of 1972, I believe, Michael Woods showed up from Ohio. He came because he was going to attend Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia.
He had a Brethren background and had actually been drummed out of the Brethren. It was a traumatic time for our brother, and he was really seeking the Lord concerning what the Lord wanted.
He went that August of 1972 and heard Brother Stephen speak. He later testified to me, “Jerry, the first time I heard that brother, I knew I was at home.”
That is quite a testimony to the sovereign work of God. Two months later, in October 1972, Kenny and I showed up. Kenny’s background was Assemblies of God, and mine was Baptist—hard-shell Baptist, you might say.
Thank the Lord, we are still here fifty years later. Praise the Lord for His work and mercy.
But we were all in our twenties. I was twenty-eight, I think Kenny was twenty, and Mike was in between. The sisters were expecting very mature brothers, and they did not get very mature brothers. They got us—very young.
We continued to meet together. When Stephen came, we would go out there and listen to him. We also began meeting with them on Sunday afternoons at three o’clock for a time of worship and prayer.
In those months, we began to see more and more the spiritual principles on which the Body of Christ operates and is founded. We began to share together.
I think it was about six months later, in March 1973, that Stephen proposed perhaps we should have a conference. The sisters were quite excited about that. It would help us understand God’s eternal purpose, the functioning of the Body of Christ, and what it meant to be a testimony to Jesus.
We all agreed that it would be good to do. But I have to say, the burden was mostly with these older sisters. They took it up in prayer. We prayed with them, but they were truly the prayer warriors. They also administered the whole thing.
In September 1973, we held the first conference at Roslyn. I think we called it the Christian Fellowship Conference at that time. There were seventy adults there; it was adults only.
We had invited brothers and sisters from other assemblies, mostly from New Jersey and up that way. These were other young assemblies that the Lord was raising up.
Stephen spoke on the testimony of Jesus. That was his heart: the testimony of Jesus. He wanted us to be clear about what that meant. We were much helped at that conference. It was a powerful word on the testimony of Jesus.
At the end of that conference, we decided that we would have another one in June 1974, about nine months later.
I am not absolutely sure of the timing, but I believe it was early spring 1974, after the conference in 1973, that Brother Kaung asked us, “Should we consider becoming a corporate testimony, to function as His Body, to be His house?”
We began to consider that. He said, “It is something you have to be very serious about. We need to pray a lot about it. It is not something to take up lightly.”
The issue was this: Were we satisfied merely listening to his ministry once a month and then having a time of worship in the afternoon? For a while, I still went to the Baptist church, and then I would come on Sunday afternoon. Most people who attended those times were doing that.
Were we just going to be satisfied with that and please ourselves? It was a wonderful time. I had never experienced open worship in my past history, and it was marvelous, brothers and sisters. I appreciate worship because I know what it was like to come together and not really worship.
But were we going to serve His purpose or ours? That is what it boiled down to.
During that time, we learned about being the Body of Christ: being a dwelling place for the Lord, a house in which He was pleased to dwell. It was all part of God’s eternal purpose, which I had never heard about before.
I did not even know that God had an eternal purpose. I thought His purpose was simply to save people and fill up heaven. That is far from the truth, of course, but that was where I was.
We decided that if we were not going to meet to serve God’s purpose, why should we meet at all, other than to please ourselves? There were a lot of good Bible studies out there, and many places where saints loved the Lord and taught the Word.
So what was the purpose? What was the right ground? What is the scriptural ground on which we should meet? We did not want to become another division. The church is so divided today.
We knew that the Lord’s prayer in John 17 was that they might be one even as We are one. We wanted that same spirit in our midst: that we were one with all our brothers and sisters and not divided.
Brothers and sisters, it is going to take a little while, so if anybody has to leave, I will not be offended, okay?
What is His eternal purpose? We have heard a lot about that over the years, but what is it? Ephesians 1:9-10 makes it very clear:
Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him,
Unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth.
The eternal purpose for God’s Son is that He wants His Son to be Head of everything—all things.
Then, in Colossians 1:18:
And He is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence.
Brothers and sisters, that He might have first place. This is God’s heart: first place in every individual, first place in His church.
The second part of God’s eternal purpose concerns His people. What is that? Ephesians 1:22-23 says:
And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
Which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
It does not say, “which is like a body.” It says, “which is His body”—the fullness of Him that fills all in all. In other words, we are to be an expression of Christ, not only individually but corporately as His Body.
God is very clear about His purpose. His Son is to be the administrative Head of everything in all of heaven and earth. But, brothers and sisters, it has to be first accomplished in His church, in His people.
Your Head, my Head, and the Head of the church—the Body—is the Son, and He should have first place.
Brothers and sisters, if we do not want Christ to have first place in our lives, why are we gathering together anyway? We gather to share what we know of Christ with one another. If you are not really interested in Him being first place, how much are you going to learn of Christ?
This is God’s eternal purpose: that He have first place in your life and in the life of His Body.
We were learning what it meant to be a testimony to Jesus. All things must begin with Him, come from Him, and be for Him.
Being a testimony meant that Christ would be all things to us; that He would be Head of all things to the assembly; that He would have first place individually and corporately.
The testimony meant that we were to be His spiritual, organic Body. That was our calling. We were to be a vessel full of the life of Christ, manifesting His life not only among ourselves but even to the world.
We were to be not only a vessel full of life, but an instrument of service for our Lord Jesus in whatever He called us to do—particularly in prayer and in serving Him as a priesthood. That was our calling.
Being a testimony meant that we gathered only unto His name. This was very important for us in those early days. It comes from Matthew 18:20.
This is the Lord’s description of the church—very fundamental, yet very simple:
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
Brothers and sisters, Him being in our midst is what makes us His Body. Two or three gathered together in His name—it does not say two or three hundred, and it does not say two or three thousand. It says two or three gathered in His name.
So gathering unto His name is extremely important.
In the early church, they just met together. There was no division. They came together in the unity of the Spirit. They met in Solomon’s porch, and they met in houses.
They were so in love with the Lord that some of them would meet every day and break bread together. It was an amazing time. There was no division. They were all one in Christ. They met unto Him and Him alone.
But twenty-eight years later, something had happened in the Corinthian church. The Corinthian church was beginning to divide.
Paul said that he heard some were saying they were of Paul, others were of Apollos, some were of Cephas, and others said, “I am of Christ.” Essentially, they were meeting around the spiritual men of their time instead of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is subtle, but that is what they were doing. Even the ones who used the technically correct name—“We are of Christ”—were saying, “We are different from y’all. We are of Christ. We are separate from you.”
Each of those groups was defining itself in a way that separated it from the others and hindered fellowship.
When Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, he was responding to a letter they had sent with questions about the church and its functions. They had not even mentioned this problem. He had heard about it through another brother, and he addressed it first.
It was the most important thing in Paul’s heart: that they not become divided. He asked, “Is Christ divided?” Is Christ divided into different divisions? Of course not. Neither can His Body be divided, because it is Christ. His Body is of Christ. It cannot be divided.
Thank God, the Corinthians responded, and it was corrected. But we know that today the same error has come into the church worldwide: so many different divisions in God’s church.
We did not want to be a division. We wanted to gather in some way that would not divide us or define us in such a way that we were separate from our other brothers and sisters.
Yes, they may be in denominations, but they are brothers and sisters. We belong to them, and they belong to us. If they come into our midst, we will not reject them because they say they are of another denomination. We receive them because we love them, and we are one in Jesus Christ.
As precious as Martin Luther was—and he had some problems too—he never really desired that they would eventually form a church called the Lutherans, centered around Luther and his teachings.
The same is true with Presbyterian. Presbyter means elders functioning. They saw that elders were in the church and needed to function, so they began to define themselves as a church that functions with elders.
Brothers and sisters, we do not gather in the name of Presbyterians. We gather in the name of Christ.
The same thing is true with Baptist. I used to be a Baptist. Holiness, baptism—these are great teachings, correct teachings. But we do not gather as Baptists. We do not define ourselves by saying, “We are the ones who believe in baptism.” Yes, we do, but that is not why we gather.
I hope I am clear, because it is tremendously important. We learned that meeting under other names, defining ourselves in different ways, actually divides the Body of Christ.
Philippians 2:9-10 says:
Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name;
That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth.
That is the only name we have, brothers and sisters. It is above all names. His name has all authority and power. That is why we pray in His name, because we are unto His name. We are unto Him and meet and gather in His name.
There is no other name under heaven or earth in which we should gather.
We welcome all brothers and sisters into our midst. They may have beliefs different from ours. They may not believe everything quite the way we do, but that is no reason to reject them. They are our brothers and sisters.
We do not have a membership roll here. You are enrolled when you accept Jesus Christ; your name is put on the roll in heaven—the Book of Life. That is where your name is, and that is where it really counts, brothers and sisters.
You do not join a church. I want you to know that. You are born into it. When you accept Jesus Christ, you come into the Body of Jesus Christ whether you realize it or not.
I remember Stephen saying something that was so profound to me: “Whom Christ has received, we receive.” We cannot reject other brothers and sisters.
So what is the spiritual ground on which we meet? I have already mentioned it. It is found in Ephesians 4:3:
Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
That is the ground on which we meet, until we all come to the unity of the faith. In other words, you do not get together and agree on which doctrines you believe, say, “Okay, that is our statement of faith,” and then declare that only those who agree with that statement may gather with you.
No, absolutely not. You keep the unity of the Spirit. You are brothers and sisters in Christ. We fellowship with one another.
I had a wonderful time at the gym recently. I do go to the gym occasionally, even though these knees are killing me. I met a brother there while I was wearing that shirt that says, “Normal isn’t coming back. Jesus is.”
He saw the shirt and said, “Man, I like that shirt.” So we started fellowshipping about the Lord.
He is a pastor. I do not know the name of the place where he pastors, but he even sent me some of his sermons, which were very good, by the way. When we get together at the gym, we fellowship around the Lord.
He never really asked me what kind of Christian I was. I think that is marvelous.
Most of the time, particularly in the early days, people would ask that. In fact, it happened to me at Chick-fil-A the other day. I was sitting there with my Bible, and a man—who I think was from India—came up and said, “What kind of Christian are you? I see you have a Bible.”
I said, “Well, I am a Christian.”
He asked again, “What kind of Christian are you?”
I said, “Look, I am just a Christian. I love the Lord, and if you love the Lord, we are brothers in Christ.”
He said, “What denomination are you?”
I said, “Look, I am just a Christian. I do not really belong to a denomination.”
Then he said, “Oh, I have it figured out. You are non-denominational.”
I said, “No, brother, I am not either non-denominational. I am just a Christian. If you want to fellowship about the Lord, we can.”
He said, “Well, I am Catholic.”
I said, “That is okay. We can still fellowship about Christ.”
Finally, he looked a little frustrated, and I had to get up and leave anyway. But that is the way people view this, and we need to be very clear about the basis on which we meet.
Well, those are some of the very fundamental things.
Can y’all give me liberty to go on?
Jerry, can you share another time?
Yeah, I can.
I just asked Jerry if he can share another time. I am not trying to cut you off. I know there is so much you have.
Hey, Jerry, I was supposed to share on the fifteenth. You can share on the fifteenth.
You are so gracious, brother. I am on page eight, and it goes through page fifteen. So I will do that.
You and Kenny can work it out.
Yeah, Ken and I will work it out. I will share on the fifteenth then, Ken. I do not want to get too long.
Okay. All right. Let’s pray over this.
Yeah, well, thank you, brother. I need all the help I can get. I can hardly move my knee right now.
Lord, we do come to You today. You are so marvelous, Lord. I get excited when I remember these early days, Lord, and all the marvelous things You were showing us. Lord, it was like eating honey. It was just so great.
Lord, we thank You. I want to thank You particularly for my dear, precious sisters, who stood faithful, Lord, praying and standing for those five years together, and who continued to stand and pray as we began to meet as an assembly.
Lord, they are so precious to us. I thank You for my dear, precious brother Stephen. Lord, he was just a vessel that You raised up. Lord, I know he would not want the glory, and I will not give it to him, but I will give it to You.
Lord, You raised up this vessel who had such an impact in sharing the Lord’s eternal purpose and sharing Your vision for Your Son and Your church. We are thankful for that vessel, Lord. We pray that the things You have shown us, we can carry on.
Lord, I thank You also for Your sovereign work of bringing brothers and sisters together with a heart that might fulfill Your own heart—a desire simply to please the Lord and not ourselves.
Lord, we thank You for that. I thank You, Lord, for Your faithfulness more than anything, and Your grace—Your amazing grace that has made all of this happen. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Oh, we are grateful that the heart of God has not changed, that the heart of God is still Jesus Christ. You rejoice this morning, and He is never changing.
God, we give thanks that You are working out Your plans among Your people. And we pray, Lord, that we would be—