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[00:00:00] We will read Matthew chapter 18, verses 19 and 20, verses 19 and 20 of the 18th chapter of Matthew's Gospel.
[00:00:18] Again I say unto you that the two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my father who is in heaven.
[00:00:31] For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
[00:00:45] Then acts, acts, and chapter one and verse one. Acts, chapter one and verse one.
[00:01:01] The former treaties I made, o theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach until the day in which he was received up. After that he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit under the apostles whom he had chosen. I want you to note the words concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach. Began both to do and to teach.
[00:01:37] Ephesians, chapter one Ephesians, chapter one, verse 22 and 23.
[00:01:51] 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 fullness of him that filleth all in all. And Colossians, chapter three, verse ten and eleven. Colossians, chapter three, verse ten and eleven. And have put on the new man that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him, where there cannot be greek and jew. Circumcision and uncircumcision. Barbarian, Scythian, one man freeman. But Christ is all and in all.
[00:02:46] Then two Corinthians, chapter three two corinthians, chapter three, verse three.
[00:02:59] Being made manifest that ye are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone, but in tables, that our hearts are flesh, ye are a letter from Christ.
[00:03:33] One Corinthians, chapter 14 verses 24 25. One corinthians 14 verses 24 and 25. But if all prophesy, and there come in one unbelieving or unlearned, he is reproved by all, he is judged by all.
[00:03:55] The secrets of his heart are made manifest, and so he will fall down on his face and worship God, declaring that God is among you indeed.
[00:04:12] Then revelation, chapter one.
[00:04:17] Revelation, chapter one and verse twelve.
[00:04:25] And I turned to see the voice that spake with me.
[00:04:31] And having turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks verse 13. And in the midst of the candlesticks, one like unto a son of man.
[00:04:47] Verse 20.
[00:04:49] The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks or lampstands. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches.
[00:05:03] And the seven candlesticks or lampstands are seven churches.
[00:05:11] Then if you will turn back to Zechariah, to the prophecy of Zechariah, chapter four, verse one. And the angel that talked with me came again and waked me as a man that is wakened out of his sleep. And he said unto me, what seest thou? And he said, I have seen and behold a candlestick, all of gold, with its bowl upon the top of it, and its seven lamps thereof. There are seven pipes to each of the lamps, which are upon the top thereof, and two olive trees, one upon the right side of the bowl and the other upon the left side thereof. And I answered and spake to the angel that talked of me, saying, what are these, my lord? Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, knowest thou not what these are? And I said, no, my lord. Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, this is the word of the Lord unto zerubbabel, saying, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the lord of hosts, who art thou, o great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain. And he shall bring forth the top stone with shoutings of grace, grace unto it. Moreover, the word of the lord came unto me, saying, the hands of surabbable have laid the foundation of this house. His hands shall also finish it. And thou shalt know that the lord of hosts hath sent me unto you. For who hath despised the day of small things. For these seven shall rejoice and shall see the plummet in the hand of the rubber bull. These are the eyes of the lord which run to and fro through the whole earth.
[00:07:07] And then finally, in Exodus chapter 25 and verse 31, Exodus 25 31 and thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold, of beaten work shall the candlestick be made. Even its base and its shaft, its cups, its knots and its flowers shall be of one piece with it. And there shall be six branches going out of the sides. There are three branches of the candlestick out of the one side thereof, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side thereof.
[00:07:52] Then verse 36 their knots and their branches shall be of one piece with it, the whole of it, one beaten work of pure gold. And thou shalt make the lamps thereof seven. They shall light the lamps thereof to give light over against it. And the snuffers thereof and the snuff dishes thereof shall be of pure gold, of a talent of pure gold shall it be made with all these vessels. And see that thou make them after their patterns which hath been showed thee in the mount. Chapter 27, verse 20 and 21.
[00:08:26] And thou shalt command the children of Israel that they bring unto thee pure olive oil, beaten for the light to cause a lamp to burn continually in the tent of meeting without the veil which is before the testimony. Aaron and his son shall keep it in order from evening to morning before the Lord. It shall be a statute forever throughout their generations.
[00:08:53] On behalf of the children of Israel.
[00:09:25] Now, this evening I come to the last point that I want to make in answer to the question, why are you at Halford House? We have actually covered six points, and this is the 7th.
[00:09:45] And this is a point you will. Those of you who were with us some 1011 years ago, we never covered this point then. It was perhaps a point that we didn't see. There are two points we have added to the five that at that time we studied.
[00:10:05] When I come back, the Lord willing, we will take up a number of other matters, all in connection with the answer to this question. Why are you at Halford House?
[00:10:21] I am very glad that we come to this point this evening.
[00:10:27] My 7th point is this.
[00:10:31] The church, his body is the manifested presence of Christ.
[00:10:41] I will repeat that. The church, which is his body, is the manifested presence of Christ.
[00:10:57] Now, having said all that we have said thus far, and we have said quite a lot, we need once more to ask ourselves one simple question.
[00:11:16] Why is the supreme figure used the church in the New Testament? The figure of the body?
[00:11:31] You will find that this figure, the body, is used more than any other symbol or figure of the church. Why?
[00:11:44] We have said quite a lot in these past weeks in touching upon various things about that which is, shall we say, more earthly in its outworking, practical in its content, and so on.
[00:12:05] And if we were to leave it there, I believe we have lost perhaps the most vital point of all in this matter of the recovery of the church.
[00:12:20] Now, what is a body?
[00:12:26] What is a body? It's a good question.
[00:12:30] It is nothing. Surely it is not the means by which the personality of a person expressed.
[00:12:43] What else is a body for?
[00:12:47] A body is the place where your personality is located.
[00:12:52] Your body isn't your personality. Your body is the place where your personality is located. But it's more than located.
[00:13:01] In some cases, it may be only located, but generally speaking, your personality is located in a body as the means by which it expresses itself.
[00:13:17] Your personality is expressed if you are released in some way apart from christian things, in the way you dress, in the way you behave, in your caring, in your behavior, in your reactions, in your gestures, your gesticulations. All these things express the kind of person that give you away.
[00:13:41] And that's why some people, especially british people, are inhibited. They're frightened to death for giving themselves away.
[00:13:51] So they would prefer to keep themselves entirely in.
[00:13:55] But in fact, that itself gives them away.
[00:13:59] And we discover the kind of people that are inside the body.
[00:14:06] Now, the body is the means by which the mind of a person, the heart of a person, the will of a person is manifested.
[00:14:19] My heart is manifest, is expressed through my body. If I have feelings, they come out through the body. If only in the eyes, which are often called the windows of the soul.
[00:14:39] Or maybe your will comes out. You can see it as you get older, in the lines on your face.
[00:14:46] You can't help it.
[00:14:48] No cosmetics in the world, no foundation cream in the world will get rid of those lines which betray the will of a person.
[00:14:57] They come out, in the end, in our body, because we express our will through our bodies in the posture that we take, in the facial expressions that so often we use. Or again, the mind is expressed through the body. Because in the end, everything a man thinks finally determines the way he behaves.
[00:15:29] Therefore, the body is supremely a means of expression.
[00:15:35] A means, if you like, of the manifesting of the inward person. The invisible part of you is expressed and manifested through your body. Now, the church is the body of Christ.
[00:15:56] The church is his manifested presence.
[00:16:04] His mind, his heart, his will is to be expressed, manifested through his body.
[00:16:20] Certainly, I think we can say, and all of us would agree here that that is gloriously true of the church in the future.
[00:16:31] I think everyone agrees that one day the church is going to be the bride, the wife of the lamb. The city in which there is no actual throne, in which there is no actual temple. But the lamb is there, and the glory of God just shines out in a radiance from. It's, as I've often described it, rather like an electric light bulb. You can only see the shape of the bulb when the light is off.
[00:17:04] But if it is transparent and clear when the light is on, you lose all shape of the bulb. In the glory of the light that radiates out of that bulb.
[00:17:16] That's what the city of God will be like in the end. It's very interesting if we're told that it's made of gold, transparent as glass.
[00:17:26] We've never seen gold like that. And from one end of the city to the other end of the city. There is not one single thing that could cast a shadow. It is transparent throughout. It is, of course, symbolic, transparent throughout from end to end.
[00:17:45] And it's the glory of God that lightens it. And the nations walk in the light thereof. Now, if you turn to the scriptures, you find them, for instance, in two Thessalonians and chapter one and verse ten. We read this when he shall come to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at in all them that believe.
[00:18:16] I think that's wonderful. Really. It's a wonderful word. Marveled at. People will just marvel one day. Who are the people who marvel? And that's a point. We won't go into it. For those of you who've been on the course, we've dealt with a little bit of debt.
[00:18:32] Who are those that were going to marvel at one day the glory of the Lord, the character of the Lord, the beauty of the Lord, the power of the Lord, the infinite grace and mercy of the Lord is going to be marveled at in you and me.
[00:18:54] People are going to look at us and say, goodness, is that what came out of that rotten material?
[00:19:03] Is that what God could do with that unworthy, ugly substance?
[00:19:10] Certainly the angels will marvel as they look on.
[00:19:16] And I don't know what the nations are that walk in the light of it, but they're going to marvel, too, at what they see seen in the church of God. You've got it again in revelation, in symbolic form, in revelation, chapter 21 and verse eleven. It's speaking of the bride, the wife of the lamb, the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. And it says, having the glory of God, her light was like unto a stone, most precious, as it were a Jasper stone, clear as crystal. Now, in verse 22, we read this, and I saw no temple therein. For the Lord God the Almighty and the lamb are the temple thereof. And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God did lighten it. And the lamp thereof is the lamb. And the nations shall walk in the light, shall walk amidst the light thereof.
[00:20:28] The nation shall walk amidst the light thereof. Isn't that amazing?
[00:20:35] Now we, I think, can all be absolutely agreed that one day how glorious and wonderful it is. Our hearts can hardly take in one day the church, the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, the bride, the wife of the lamb. The holy city, New Jerusalem, is going to be his manifested presence.
[00:21:02] All his excellencies, all his glory, all his character, all his beauty, all his resources manifested, revealed, shown, known through the church.
[00:21:20] I think we all can agree there.
[00:21:25] But surely, and this is the point, but surely that is as certainly true now as of the church in the future.
[00:21:41] Now, what I mean is this, that although the full glory of all that remains for the future, the principle holds good.
[00:21:53] We are not going to become the body of the Lord. We are the body of the Lord now. And the principle of his manifesting his presence through his body here on earth, the church in its practical expression in time and on earth holds good. For instance, look at the little word in one corinthians, chapter twelve and verse 27.
[00:22:22] Now ye are the body of Christ.
[00:22:27] Now ye are the body of Christ. Not you will be the body of Christ, but you are the body of Christ, right here and now. Now the whole point of a body is that it manifests the life that is within it. It manifests the character that is within it. It manifests the mind and the heart and the will of the person who is resident located in that body.
[00:22:53] Now ye are the body of Christ. That's why in acts chapter one and verse one, we read that little word, the former treatise I made, o Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to preach. Now the one who wrote acts, we generally understand, is generally accepted, was Luke, Doctor Luke.
[00:23:19] And he is referring to his first work, which we now know as the gospel according to Luke.
[00:23:28] And it is often said in the early church, the gospel according to Luke and the book of acts were together.
[00:23:36] You see, they were two parts of one work.
[00:23:40] The gospel according to Luke was what Jesus began both to do and to teach. The act was what Jesus continued to do and to teach. But the gospel according to Luke was what the Lord Jesus began both to do and to teach personally the head of the new man. But acts is what he continued both to do and to teach in and through his body.
[00:24:13] We often overlook that little word began what Jesus began, both doing. Most interesting for the whole inference, the implication is that the Lord Jesus is going on doing and teaching.
[00:24:32] But how? By his Holy Spirit. But where in and through the church we are now on this earth the members of Christ you turn to one corinthians chapter six. In verse 15 we read, know ye not that your bodies, members of Christ? This word members should means, as you know, we use the word dismember something. Dismember a body.
[00:25:08] You're members of Christ means you're parts of Christ. You're parts of him. You are like arms, his arms, his legs, his feet, his hands. You are his members.
[00:25:22] You belong to him in an intimate way.
[00:25:29] You are members of Christ. Again, we have it in the term which we have quoted numbers on the body, because all the members together constitute a body. In Romans, chapter twelve, verse five, we're told, ye are one body in Christ.
[00:25:45] Ye are one body in Christ. Or you can put it another way, we are his complement, his fullness. Now, this would almost seem blessed if the scripture did not say it. But in Ephesians, chapter one and verse 22 and 23, we read of the body which is his fullness, who filleth. Which is the fullness of him, who filleth all in all. He fills everything in everyone.
[00:26:20] And thus the body becomes his fullness, his complement. If you got it, my body is, in a sense, every single member of my body, every single function, every single organ is filled by, as it were, by my head.
[00:26:40] My head fills every single part of my body, fills everything in everyone.
[00:26:46] Without my head, they couldn't work.
[00:26:51] My head is the thing that, as it were, gives them harmony, cohesion, and thus my whole body becomes the fullness, the complement of my head.
[00:27:06] In other words, my head expresses itself through my body. So if I want to sort of.
[00:27:15] Sort of say, come to you, well, my hands say, don't just say, come. They can't see the glint in your eye. Say, come.
[00:27:25] Now, my body, my arms, my hands has become the complement of my head.
[00:27:34] If I were to say, you see the text over on the wall, I'll say this. You see the picture on the left hand wall. Which picture?
[00:27:46] But if I say, you see the picture here on the left hand wall, immediately, you know, my hand, my finger, has become the complement of my head.
[00:27:58] It's been the means by which my head expresses itself, expresses its mind and expresses its will, expresses its feeling.
[00:28:11] Now, in precisely this way, Christ would through us, move and think and will and love. Now, this is the whole point of the church. It's not that we might just have meetings, that we might just have Bible studies, that we might just sort of knock up against one another now and again, as if that does any good in itself.
[00:28:45] That's not the point of the church.
[00:28:48] The real point of the church is that Christ may be able to think through us, act through us, move through us, love through us, will through us. That's the point of the church. And don't think it is anything else or other.
[00:29:06] The rest may be valuable and may have part, but that is the supreme glory of union with Christ.
[00:29:15] And furthermore, it is the thing that the Lord looks for as the goal, the high calling with which you and I have been called.
[00:29:28] We're not just going to drape, sit around heaven, drape draped around heaven, playing harps, sort of singing little songs.
[00:29:43] Lord's got a glorious vocation for the church, a glorious calling for the church. And we don't even really know what it is, except that it is in the most intimate and glorious and eternal union with himself in such a way that he's going to think through us, act through us, move through us, will through us, love through us.
[00:30:08] If there had been no fall, if there had been no sin, no fall, all this would have taken place.
[00:30:20] Now God in his grace, his infinite grace, has brought us back into his eternal purpose and given us back his original goal and objective, which is to get this thing. But unfortunately, the fall, in this parenthesis of sin, of time and sin, has obscured really what the Lord originally was going to do once he had got us into that union.
[00:30:51] We don't know, but it is absolutely glorious and wonderful. And I've said to you before, you have two ways of looking at marriage. Either it's the end or it's the beginning.
[00:31:07] Only two ways of looking at it. The end or the beginning.
[00:31:13] Which way are we going to look at it?
[00:31:16] Is the marriage of the wife of the lamb with the lamb the end, or is it the beginning?
[00:31:25] Is it, as it were, the end of everything?
[00:31:28] Or is it the beginning of everything?
[00:31:33] Well, I think it's both.
[00:31:35] It's the end of one long, glorious story and history of his dealings with us, which have led us finally to the actual marriage. We have only betrothed oppression, by the way.
[00:31:53] We're engaged.
[00:31:56] Only the jewish engagement and. And the eastern engagement was a much more definite thing than our engagement. It really did almost mean that you were wedded, but not completely. Consummation had been taking place.
[00:32:14] And that's just where you and I are betrothed. Wedded, spoke and bespoke, as it were.
[00:32:25] But you see, there's coming a day when we're actually going to be married. Now, that's the end of one long history, one long story of the Lord's ways with us. But it's the beginning of anew, and we don't know anything about it. We don't know what he's going to do for us, what he's going to use us for, what's going to be in the future. We don't know anything about those things. We've got, oh, thousands and thousands of questions.
[00:32:58] Pile one upon the other.
[00:33:01] And it would all be speculation because the Lord has drawn a veil over the whole thing just to stop more schools of interpretation and theology and kept us to this one glorious thing. Now, now he's given us enough to see the panorama, enough of the panorama, as it were, to be lifted out of a rut, out of getting parochial and sort of just tied down to the littleness and pettiness of life down here.
[00:33:46] Well, you see, when you start to look at it like that, it's just tremendous. What is the church.
[00:33:55] The church was never meant to be a mere preaching place, a mere congregation, a mere round of meetings as such, a conference center with glorious ministry or a mere evangelistic agency existing to get people safe, or an exclusive club of the elite with greater knowledge and deeper methods full of measure than others who have severed themselves from the trials and gathered themselves together.
[00:34:48] That's not the church.
[00:34:50] Nor is the church a matter of mere pattern, of mere technique, of mere New Testament order, of mere functions, all ministries, glorious and tremendous as they might be, all gifts, spiritual and useful as they might be. No, the church is the very presence of Christ manifested.
[00:35:25] Now, my dear friend, I'm not talking against gifts or ministries or functions because we've said a lot about it in these previous weeks. I'm not talking about against many of these other things, of preaching, of gatherings for scripture says for sake, not the assembling of yourselves together.
[00:35:47] I understand all that, but do you mean to tell me that that is all the church is?
[00:35:54] A routine of meeting, meeting, a place where messages are preached, a place where prayer is wont to be made? Is that all that the church is?
[00:36:07] And mind you understand that it's a place where hymns are sung and where people now and again get saved and where others are dragged through various trials and difficulties.
[00:36:20] Is that all that the church is? Is that what it consists of? My goodness. I had the greatest sympathy with the man of the street, the man of the world, who says, is that all? Is that all your gospel? I had the greatest sympathy with so many of our generations turned completely away from Christianity as they see it. And I'm talking about evangelical Christianity. I understand it because it seems to them so petty, so small. Nothing to say to us is that all the churches?
[00:37:01] This matter of the church has much, much more to say in the matter of evangelism.
[00:37:10] The 99% of us Christians know these matters we've been talking about have more to say to us on all these aspects of service and transformation, so much else than any of us have hitherto realized.
[00:37:32] What is the church?
[00:37:34] The church is nothing less than the manifested presence of Christ.
[00:37:45] What do I mean? Let me put it this way.
[00:37:49] The church is the place where men and women find God and where God finds men and women. Now, I'm not talking about a building. I'm not talking about an institution. I'm not talking about an organization. You understand that? I'm talking about his body.
[00:38:10] There. God says, I am known just as the temple. And the tabernacle of old symbolized this glorious root. God said, if you want to know me, come, I will meet you here.
[00:38:23] This is my dwelling place. This is my habitation. This is my home. If you wish to make an offering, come within my courts and I will meet with you there. God vouchsafed to meet with men. And men could be sure that they would find God there, as it were.
[00:38:49] Man could touch God and God could touch man. What is the church? The church is where the world can see and hear and touch and handle God.
[00:39:18] In other words, what I am saying is that the church is the continuation of what the Lord Jesus began to do.
[00:39:29] That is what we mean by the testimony of Jesus.
[00:39:35] In other words, then in his day, it was a personal temper.
[00:39:44] But in that temple, the world could find God and God could find the world. Publicans, sinners, harlots, thieves, tax gatherers, traders, they all found God in that human temple.
[00:40:02] And God found them in that human temple.
[00:40:08] It doesn't didn't matter who it was, the religious, the decent, like Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea or others, whoever it was in Christ, they found God. And God found them.
[00:40:28] Let me put it another way. They could see God.
[00:40:33] They could see the color of his eye.
[00:40:37] They could see the tear on his face. They could see the smile on his lip.
[00:40:44] They could see him. They could hear him.
[00:40:48] They could touch him.
[00:40:50] And they often touched.
[00:40:54] They were touching God.
[00:40:57] You remember the story of the little woman which I always love. Because I can't help creeping a little imaginative, visualizing it. That little tiny lady, I often wonder how she got through to the front. She must have had a tap elbow too.
[00:41:15] All the way through she pressed through that great press. I mean, the Peter said, lord, he said, with this great press, crush is the word we would use today. This great crush. You'll see who touched him. But that little tiny woman with an issue of blood. She must have been weak, I would have thought a one weak little wee woman as she elbowed her way through.
[00:41:44] Finally that scraggy, bony arm went under someone else's body.
[00:41:50] The hem of his garment, instantly she was healed.
[00:41:59] Now, my point in telling the story is not that she was healed, glorious as that is, but because everyone was touching him.
[00:42:06] The Lord said, who touched me? And Peter said, lord, the whole lot of crushing around you say, who touched you?
[00:42:16] And he said, someone did touch me. Up.
[00:42:19] Powers come out, but you understand they were touching God. They were actually touching God. They didn't know it, but they were touching God.
[00:42:32] And that's why John mysteriously writes, and I think very few christians realize it. In his first letter, in his first chapter, in his first verses, he says, that which was from the beginning, beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld and our hands handled concerning the word of life.
[00:43:00] And the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and declare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was with the father and which was manifest unto us and manifested unto us that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you.
[00:43:19] In other words, John was telling us that God could be seen and heard in heaven.
[00:43:33] Now, do you know what the Lord Jesus said about that temple of his body?
[00:43:37] He said, destroy this temple, and in three days I will wait it up.
[00:43:47] And he spoke of the temple of his body, and that's precisely what happened.
[00:43:53] And now he not only has his own personal body, but there is a spiritual death where he continues to do and to teach. Where he continues to do and to teach.
[00:44:12] What is the church?
[00:44:15] Do you know?
[00:44:17] The great evangelistic mission of the church is not only to preach, it is to reveal God in its very being.
[00:44:31] And this, I dare to say, is where we have lost out.
[00:44:40] We have considered it to be merely a matter of preaching, and we have lost the other truth, that along with the preaching must be the present presence of the church.
[00:45:01] And I don't just mean that presence of people, but I mean the presence of the body of Christ.
[00:45:15] Never said in Matthew, chapter 18 and verse 20, for where two or three are gathered together into my name, there I will visit them.
[00:45:32] He never said, where two or three are gathered together into my name, there I will bless them.
[00:45:42] He never said, where two or three are gathered together into my name, there I will use them.
[00:45:54] He never said, where two or three are gathered together into my name, there I will rule over them.
[00:46:02] He said, where two or three are gathered together into my name, there am I in the midst of them.
[00:46:18] You can't get away from it.
[00:46:20] There am I in the midst of them, the manifested presence of Christ.
[00:46:34] They are to be the means by which he expresses himself. I want you to note the little preposition in literally, it's into. Into. Gathered into my name. It's a picture of the body. Again, gathered into the name. My members are gathered into the name of Lance Lambert.
[00:46:53] They're all in my body, joined to my one head.
[00:47:01] And I have the name Launce Lambert.
[00:47:04] So they gathered together into my name. And I'm in the midst of them.
[00:47:10] Have you got it?
[00:47:12] I'm in the midst of them. Where else am I? I'm not on the other side of the room. I'm here in the midst of my members. They're gathered together into my body. They share my name. I'm in the midst of them.
[00:47:24] This is what the Lord Jesus meant.
[00:47:27] And if you want to study, you've only got to go back to the Old Testament and see what the Lord means when he says, you shall not offer your offerings anywhere where you shall choose.
[00:47:38] But where I shall choose to cause my name to dwell, there thou shalt make thine offerings. Where was the place where he would cause his name to? Jerusalem. And where was it in Jerusalem? The temple.
[00:47:51] All of which is a picture, again, of this one thing we're talking about.
[00:47:57] I want you also to note the little word. For in Matthew 18.
[00:48:04] Matthew, chapter 18 and verse 20. You will see that it says this for where two or three are gathered together. Now will you please note where the four.
[00:48:16] To what the four is related. Listen. Verse 18. Verily I say unto you, what things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together into my name, there am I in the midst. Or again, listen to this. Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them. Of my father, who is in heaven. For where two or three. You see, the whole point is, the Lord says, what you do is done in him, you bind down, in him, you lose. It's loose in heaven.
[00:49:06] If you are agreed together. You don't just agree to agree, but you are agreed.
[00:49:13] Just as used to be said by Mister Edpart. You are symphonized.
[00:49:22] You're sort of just as it were, somehow or other, gloriously brought into a harmony, then it'll be done. Why? Because where two or three are gathered together, there am I.
[00:49:44] You see, he would express himself.
[00:49:50] That's the point of it. He would express himself. He would reveal himself. Through and in his own he would convey not only by our words and not only by our actions even, but and listen to this, by our being he would convey his love, his truth, his power, his authority, his grace, his faith.
[00:50:33] So we could go on and we could go on and we could go on. His salvation, his life.
[00:50:42] You see, the whole point of the church is not that someone stands up in a pulpit and says Christ is lie and it just sort of hangs on the air, but rather that not only are those words said, but there is in the very being of the church the thing that ratifies it, so that when men and women come in they not only hear the word of God preached, but intuitively they know it is so.
[00:51:10] For it is not only the words or the actions, but the being.
[00:51:15] And this is the thing that's lost.
[00:51:18] Where do we find churches like this? For the most part they're just preaching places. And even there, quite honestly, what? What do they preach?
[00:51:31] If we could only have the word of God preached in all these preaching places from every pulpit, it would be one thing. Even that wouldn't be enough.
[00:51:41] We need the presence of the Lord. We need the manifested presence of Christ through his body.
[00:51:52] Now do just look upon me as some extremist because you've only got to read the book of acts and you will see all this in black and white.
[00:52:06] Now of course you will say to me, yes, but when? Where? What happened when Paul stood up or Paul and Barnabas or Paul and Cyrus or some of the others? There was no church of course. All right, but you just see what happens when the church comes into being.
[00:52:22] Why these great mighty evangelists, they're off.
[00:52:26] Does the work fall to pieces? Oh no, they come back in a little time and they appoint elders in every church. In other words, all these little groups have all blossomed and flourished and fruited and increased so that they can appoint elders in them.
[00:52:49] Isn't that extraordinary? No theological courses, no theological seminaries, no missionary schools, no, not even bio colleges.
[00:53:05] I'm not saying these things have not got value, but what I am saying is they seem to do awfully well without them.
[00:53:16] Really?
[00:53:20] Now why?
[00:53:23] I suggest that it is because it's not only words and actions but being.
[00:53:32] In other words, there was a corporate being as well as a proclamation and an executive action.
[00:53:43] The church therefore is not some spiritual machinery or some spiritual or powerful technique, something cold, hard, correct and inanimate.
[00:54:09] The church is something which lives and breathes, laughs and cries, travails and understands.
[00:54:25] I want to suggest to you very very simple, that when that is missing, everything is missing.
[00:54:37] Everything is missing. It's as simple as that.
[00:54:40] If the church is not breathing, living, feeling, loving thing, you can pack it up, it's over.
[00:54:48] It's just as simple as that. Because the church never was and never will be some spiritual machinery.
[00:54:55] That's why the Lord at the end of the Bible says, a wife, I want not a bit of machinery.
[00:55:03] I don't want just a spiritual technique.
[00:55:07] I do want just a bit of spiritual machinery.
[00:55:12] I want something that lives and breathes and moves and feels love and cry, travail and understand.
[00:55:26] I suggest to you, that is why the Lord is so seemingly harsh in some of his judgment, when everything seems so good and so right and so correct. And we can't understand why the Lord seems to be harsh in his judgment.
[00:55:52] But the Lord has always wanted a bride.
[00:55:59] If he had wanted a bit of machinery, we needn't have had all this mess or all this trouble.
[00:56:09] We could have done away with all the millennia of time.
[00:56:15] It would have been so utterly simple.
[00:56:18] The Lord could have got his machinery so perfectly.
[00:56:23] But the Lord is not interested in machinery. And it seems to me we have an earthbound tendency in all of us to degenerate, to deteriorate to machinery.
[00:56:34] It's so much easier, isn't it?
[00:56:39] And yet it isn't easy, because as soon as we degenerate, we know intuitively that we're not what we are supposed to be, and we know it deep down within us. There's a huge question mark.
[00:57:03] That's why you find so much unhappiness amongst the children of God, even when you get good preaching. There's so much on earth, so much. It's not just the old nature. Of course there is the old nature, plenty of it.
[00:57:18] But it's not just the old nature.
[00:57:20] It's this deep seated intuitive thing that we were never meant to be machine.
[00:57:29] We were never meant to be some technique, some pattern.
[00:57:39] We were meant to be in a relationship together with him and with one another.
[00:57:52] In other words, what I am simply saying is that the church is the new man.
[00:58:00] Now, I do believe that because of the way we theologically understand that phrase, new man, we have missed the point.
[00:58:14] The Lord says, in Colossians 310 eleven, he says, these words ye have put on the new man. And then a bit later he says, wherein Christ is everything in everyone.
[00:58:35] Colossians chapter three, verse ten and eleven. And then again, we had the same thought in Galatians chapter three and verse 28, where it says, there can be neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female. For ye all are one man in Christ Jesus, one new man. Now a man is a head and a body, a head and a body.
[00:59:09] And you will see that this new man is a corporate being because in him there's neither male nor female, jew nor greek, bond nor free.
[00:59:18] In other words, there are many in him. It's a corporate entity, a corporate being. And this new man is head and body, Christ and his own.
[00:59:32] Now why do I say that? I think so many of us have missed the point in this. Well, I do believe that we tend to think of it merely as a kind of teaching of holiness, a teaching of sanctification. You put on the new men. We miss the real point, which is simply this.
[00:59:53] The church cannot be less human than her head and she cannot be more spiritual than her head.
[01:00:09] We are the new man.
[01:00:15] He that is the Lord Jesus is the perfect example of the kind of humanity God wants and we share.
[01:00:28] And that's how we put it off. We share a new humanity. We share a new kind of man. But the accent is on humanity.
[01:00:42] If this message could get over in christian circles, and I'm now not talking about where there's so much superficiality, but rather where there is so much depth, because we have missed the point in this thing. We've become like we're spiritual automatons, like spiritual machines, whereas the Lord wants us to be the new man man, the new humanity.
[01:01:20] If you look at one John, chapter two and verse six, you read this.
[01:01:29] He that saith, he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked.
[01:01:44] Why did I say the church cannot be less human than her lord? I'll tell you why. Because many of us christians are far less human.
[01:02:00] He was never a machine.
[01:02:04] He hungered, he thirsted, he slept, he grew weary, he cried.
[01:02:18] Now some people think it's quite unspilled, literal to cry, and in that they are less human than their law.
[01:02:30] Now isn't that an extraordinary thing?
[01:02:34] Do you think God wants spiritual machine?
[01:02:38] No, he wants something not according to the old, but according to the new man.
[01:02:51] And that perfect example of the new man we see in the Lord Jesus Christ.
[01:03:03] Now when I said we are to be not more spiritual than him, I didn't mean that you can be too spiritual. But what I do mean is that kind of pseudo spirituality which is artificial and which is always machinery, it's technique, it doesn't come from the life within. It is not the product of the holy, it's not the fruit of the spirit.
[01:03:29] Because in my little experience, every person I really found to be full of the law.
[01:03:36] But I see the fruit of the spirit has been so long, they can laugh and they can cry. They're themselves. Now. Some people did. By the way, we're not all meant to be going around weeping.
[01:03:49] Some people just don't cry. All right.
[01:03:53] Some people do cry, all right.
[01:03:56] They don't want that kind of dreadful hankering after melancholy that afflicts some believers.
[01:04:08] As if that's godliness.
[01:04:11] No godliness at all.
[01:04:14] But if you and I are this way or that way, then we have to be just as God wants us to be, human beings.
[01:04:25] Let me say it again. He wants not machinery, but abide human beings. It's so very simple when we see it like that. You know, it says in Luke chapter 19, verse 41, when Jesus saw the city, he wept.
[01:04:45] And I think I might in saying that the word is he wail.
[01:04:56] And then in John eleven and verse 35, the shortest verse in the Bible, it just says, jesus wept.
[01:05:10] Now, I suggest to you that that one little window into the character life of the Lord Jesus Christ reveals his absolute humanity.
[01:05:32] You know as well as I do the fact that he wept at Lazarus grave has been a great point of, well, not controversy, but perplexity.
[01:05:45] Why did he weep when he knew he was going to raise him from the dead?
[01:05:50] And people have come to the most marvelous and most complex solutions to this because somehow they feel, Lord must be a bit of spiritual machinery.
[01:06:01] But he was human.
[01:06:03] He was overcome by the circumstances, by what happened, what was going on. He knew exactly what he was going to do, but it didn't stop him crying.
[01:06:15] That's what I mean.
[01:06:17] Well, now I think we see what I've been saying, and the time's gone now, but I think we see what I've been saying in the extraordinary way in which love is emphasized. In one corinthians 13.
[01:06:33] I've said this before here, but in this particular point, it needs to, to be stressed and underlined. Right in the middle of dealing with practical matters of the local church.
[01:06:48] Ladies taking part, the Lord's table gifts, their function, harmony in the body, the priesthood of all believers. Then later on, the freedom of the spirit in gatherings and this kind of thing, and so on and so on. Right in the middle of it, not after it, but right in the middle of it, we had this most extraordinary emphasis on love.
[01:07:21] Now, if it had been chapter 14 and chapter 14 had been chapter 13, we could have all understood then we would have had a wonderful treatment on love and then we would have gone on to a wonderful treatise on resurrection.
[01:07:38] But why does this whole matter of love come right in the middle of talking about all these practical things of the church? Now, you look at one corinthians twelve and verse 31. You see what it says. One corinthians twelve, verse 31. Moreover, a most excellent way I show unto you. Listen. This is how it's put in a number of the verses.
[01:08:08] And yet I show unto you a more excellent way. That's the authorized version. Something else that is better than any of them that tell the 20th century new Jesse puts it like this. Yet I can still show you a way beyond all comparison. The best.
[01:08:27] Moffat puts it like this. And yet I will go on to show you a still higher path.
[01:08:33] And Phillips puts it like this. But I shall show you a way which surpasses.
[01:08:38] And now look at chapter 14, verse one. Your authorized version says, follow after charity. And this is how the others put it. Keep on persuade. Pursuing love, William. Make love your aim hotly. Pursue this. Love Mumbai. Make love your great quest.
[01:08:59] Seek this love earnest.
[01:09:02] Now, don't you think this is extraordinary, that this comes right there? What does it mean? Isn't it exactly what I'm talking about, that the apostle Paul, in explaining all these practical matters of the church, matters to do with order and pattern and gifts and functions and all these other very important principles. Suddenly he stops and says, now, look here, look here. Unless you miss the whole point, unless you miss the whole point, I'll show you the most excellent way of all. It's not order. Well, that's important. You can't put it into decide. It's not functional. You can't put them aside. It's not gifts. You can't do without them. It's not the freedom of the spirit or the harmony of the body or the priesthood of all believers. He's of all vital things, but the most important and most excellent way of all for the Lord to get what he wants is this divine love.
[01:09:59] In other words, what is he saying? This is how most of us have understood it. I must personally know something of love. Must personally know something, right? But really, what he was trying to say was this. The church has got to become the embodiment of divine love.
[01:10:15] It's got to become the expression of divine love. Not sentimental, not sloshy, not sort of all over the place.
[01:10:24] No. But divine love, the kind of love that we know in God. Firm, true, faithful.
[01:10:33] Don't flinch. Will discipline us when we need it, that kind of love. The church has got to be that, the embodiment of divine love.
[01:10:46] Not the thing that goes head over heels and loses itself, but the thing that is patient and endurance and never fail.
[01:11:02] Divine love.
[01:11:06] That's why John, who was the nearest to our Lord when he came to write his letter, spent over three of the chapters out of the five talking about love.
[01:11:17] And you know it's not the love of God. That's the strange thing in one sense, his whole exit chapter two, chapter three and chapter four of one John, and you will find all he's talking about is, if you don't love your brother, you don't love God.
[01:11:33] How do you know you love God by your love and one another. Why was John on and on and on about this? People say, oh, John was so simple. Yes, he was, but profound.
[01:11:43] What he was really saying was this, you don't know what divine love is, you've lost.
[01:11:55] Make no mistake about it.
[01:11:58] I think it was Brother watchman knee who said that John's great ministry was recovered. Is it not interesting that he talks so much about divine love?
[01:12:12] Just in case we get the idea that it patterns, techniques, gifts, order, you can't get away from it.
[01:12:27] Perhaps the harshest word of all is in revelation two and verse four and five, where the Lord says that, except he says, I have this against thee, thou hast left thy first love. And he speaks to accompanied, which he commends for their work and their labour and their faith and their toil and so on. And then he says, but I had this against thee, thou didst lead thy first love.
[01:12:51] And then he goes on and he says this, remember therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and then listen and repent and do the first works. But they're still doing all the works. They're there, the works. I know thy works and I toil and I patient. But the first one, what was the difference? The first works spun out of love.
[01:13:21] And then he says, repentant with the. Or else I come to thee and remove the lampstand from thee. Now, isn't that harsh thing to do? Couldn't we say, oh, but Lord, this company's on church ground?
[01:13:37] But Lord, this company's got all the principles operating. They've got the freedom of the spirit. They judge those who call themselves apostles. And Arnold, they hate the Nicolaitans with their kind of distinction between the clergy and the laity and all the rest of it.
[01:13:56] But you see, the Lord's hope point was this. If they have lost this love, they've lost it all. It is a matter of time before the whole thing goes. It's only a matter of time.
[01:14:08] The bell is tolling, they're on their way to their birth and they don't know.
[01:14:18] They're going through all the meetings, having the prayer because the Bible studies out in the streets, in people in and all the rest of it, but they don't know it.
[01:14:27] They're irrevocably being taken to their own funeral because they have left their first love. Now, I say that that is a very harsh word if you look at it from one point of view. Why should the Lord go to such a lens as that when everything else was right?
[01:14:50] I tell you why, because it's this very point I'm trying to make that the church is the manifested presence of Christ. Well, we've not nearly dealt with this point and I can't deal with it again for a while.
[01:15:07] But it is this very manifestation of what God in Christ is, love, light and life that makes the impact upon this world. It's when they come in and they touch love. Not a silly thing, but they know it intuitively. No one has to say, we love you. They know it.
[01:15:37] They touch light and they know it.
[01:15:41] And they touch life of another kind and they know it.
[01:15:46] I suggest that that is the impact, the thing that makes this the impact upon this world.
[01:15:53] Was there any New Testament locality that did not feel the impact and influence of the church there in its beginnings?
[01:16:04] They turned the world upside down. Down, these people.
[01:16:08] As I've said, it wasn't just a matter of preaching or a matter of gifts merely, or of knowledge or of method. But it was the manifestation of the presence of Christ, the sovereign presence of God through everything and everyone.
[01:16:23] That's why it says in one corinthians 14, this unsaved man will come in and he will fall on his face and will say, God is among. Not marvelous preaching. It's found me out, but God is a man.
[01:16:41] The manifested presence of God in Christ.
[01:16:49] Well, we could say so much. You'll find it in the notes. What we've said about the church being used to manifest things to the unseen world, let alone the scene.
[01:17:02] Oh, there's such a lot of it speaks of angels desiring to look into these things. You know, there are angels all round, hosts of them.
[01:17:10] And you and I are their object lesson.
[01:17:15] Do you know that? To the intent that now principalities and powers through the church might be made known and manifest not only fallen ones, but the angels who desire to look into these things. They're being educated by what they see happening in us as the church. Do you know that every time we celebrate the Lord's table, we declare his death? Until he comes, we don't just go through a little ceremony. We actually proclaim something in the unseen.
[01:17:52] Now we can go on. Poor apostle Paul says we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against world rulers, against present darkness, against hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenlands. Here they all are. They're being instructed. How are they being instructed? They're being made the footstool of his feet. By the church?
[01:18:11] I won't say by the church, but through the church, because he is hidden over all things to the church. And every time a battle is won, something more becomes the footstool of his fate.
[01:18:24] And don't think a battle is won just by always seeming to be on top.
[01:18:31] The Lord won his greatest battle when he cried out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
[01:18:39] That's when he won the battle.
[01:18:42] And that's sometimes when the church wins the battle, too.
[01:18:47] Well, there we are.
[01:18:51] I read a few verses about the lampstand.
[01:18:56] Now, when I come back, we shall talk about the testimony of Jesus as a separate matter.
[01:19:03] And in the notes you will find something about the lengths. Let me just say this. It's not, I'm sure, odd or stranger coincidence that we come back to the matter of the lampstand.
[01:19:18] That lampstand we know speaks of the church. We know that in Zechariah four, it's immediately connected with the building to the top stone.
[01:19:33] And in revelation, chapter one and verse 20, we're told the seven golden lampstands are the seven churches. We all know that.
[01:19:44] But you see, if you look in Exodus 25, you will see just this golden lamp. What is it? What is it? Is it a thing of costly, valuable beauty own an ornament?
[01:20:03] True, it's a pure gold. True, it is beaten out of one piece of gold.
[01:20:11] True, it's got pure olive oil as fuel for the light within it, within its lamps. All right, but tell me, is it just an ornament?
[01:20:24] Is it a costly ornament wrought at great cost out of pure gold with pure, beaten olive oil within its lamps? We know all those things had significance. The gold speaks to us of the divine character of life, of Christ, out of which the church is formed.
[01:20:48] The beaten work of one piece speaks of his oneness.
[01:20:52] We know that.
[01:20:54] And that we are perfected into one, knit together, fitly brained together. We know that the oil speaks of the life, the pure life of Christ by the Holy Spirit.
[01:21:08] But tell me, what is the point of this golden lampstand?
[01:21:15] Is it an ornament?
[01:21:17] Pure gold, beaten work, oil and lettuce.
[01:21:24] If it is not a light, it's an ornament.
[01:21:31] Now that is the whole point. The church is the manifested presence of Christ.
[01:21:41] She's a light.
[01:21:44] She's on fire, if you like. There's a fire there.
[01:21:49] There's a light there.
[01:21:52] Do you understand what I'm trying to say?
[01:21:57] I'm trying to say that the church holds the testimony of Jesus. That's all.
[01:22:05] And that lamp was to be a light continuous from generation to generation forever.
[01:22:14] And you and I, the church, we are to hold the testimony of Jesus consistently and continually.
[01:22:22] It is the manifested presence of Christ.
[01:22:29] Well, if you look at the book of acts, you and find it everywhere.
[01:22:32] When Ananias and Sapphira came up against it, they lost their lives.
[01:22:39] It discovered things all over the place, within and without the manifested presence of Christ.
[01:22:53] Oh, my dear child of God, that's a hard message this evening. Much easier to keep to technique or pattern or even gives or function or the definition of principles.
[01:23:14] But this that I've spoken about tonight in the ultimate and final analysis is the thing that, and if that's missing, I dare to say the lampstand has begun.
[01:23:37] So simple.
[01:23:41] That's so true.
[01:23:43] Shall we pray now, Lord, we commit ourselves to thee, o Lord.
[01:23:54] This matter finds us all out, it really does. But, Lord, we praise thee and we worship thee for thy grace toward us all and for the shedding abroad in our hearts of that love of thine.
[01:24:09] Now, Lord, we pray that thou wouldst keep us in that relationship with thyself and with one another in love, in life and in light.
[01:24:33] Which means, Lord, that thou couldst manifest thy presence in and throughout you as thy body, o Lord, do that we pray and burn it into our hearts that when this matter of our relationship with thee breaks down, the rest breaks down. And when our relationship with one another breaks down, the rest breaks down.
[01:25:00] Lord, help us to hold fast the head end and find the body.
[01:25:09] And we ask it all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[01:25:17] Amen. Amen.
