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Scripture Reading: Matt. 18:20; Acts 2:1; 14:27; 20:7; 1 Cor. 14:19, 23a, 25b-26; 11:17; Heb. 10:25
I. The church being the assembly, the gathering of the called-out ones.
II. To meet being to worship God and to serve Him.
III. To meet being to minister Christ to others.
IV. To meet being to build up the church — 1 Cor. 14:4b, 26.
V. How to meet:
А. Into the Lord’s name.
B. By exercising our spirit — v. 32.
C. With the experience of Christ.
D. Ministering Christ.
E. By prophesying — v. 31.
F. Without division — 11:17-18.
Focus: To meet is to serve, to minister.
We need to teach people that when we use the term service, we are not referring to the so-called Sunday morning service in the denominations. Not only has Christianity spoiled the word service, but even among us this word has been spoiled to some extent. When we use the word service, we may think of our service groups in the church life or the service office. Actually, in the New Testament the Greek word for service really means ministry. To minister is to serve people with something. If I serve you without ministering something to you, that is wrong.
In the New Testament, the service, or the ministry, is the stewardship (1 Cor. 9:17; Eph. 3:2; Col. 1:25). A steward is always serving people with something. The stewardesses on the airplane are a good illustration of this. They serve people on the plane with food, with drinks, with blankets, with pillows, or with things to read. They serve you with something, which means that they minister something to you. A waiter in a restaurant is also a good illustration of one who serves people with something. We have to make this point clear to the saints. To serve is not just to come to clean the meeting hall. Service is ministry.
There is only one ministry in the New Testament (2 Cor. 4:1). As long as we minister Christ according to the apostles’ teaching (Acts 2:42), the teaching of God’s New Testament economy (1 Tim. 1:3-4), we are in the one ministry. The one ministry is the ministry of Christ to people for the producing and the building up of the church, the Body of Christ. When we see this, we can realize that the interpretation or the application among Christians today of the word ministry is not accurate. We have to come back to the pure meaning of this New Testament word to see a clear vision of the New Testament ministry.
The first thing we have to help the saints with concerning the service is how to meet. I do not think that many Christians would consider that to meet is to serve. Meeting is a ministry. Meeting is a service. Immediately after we are saved, the first service we have to render to God is to meet. If you have not come together with the saints to meet, you have never begun your ministry. The first time you attended the church meeting was the beginning of your service. This is because in the meetings we render our worship to God, and this is the service. We worship God and we serve God in our meetings, and in our meetings we offer our praises and our thanks to God.
The crucial thing in the meetings is that we offer Christ to God. At our conversion God gave us His Son as a gift. Immediately after we are saved, we come to worship God in our meetings to render God’s gift, Christ, to the Father. This is our offering to God. When we were saved, we became the sons of God. Now we have to serve God, to come to the meetings to offer Christ to God as the unique gift that God the Father has given to us. Our ministry toward God is to minister Christ to God.
According to the type in the Old Testament, the priests ministered to God with the offerings. They offered their burnt offerings, meal offerings, and peace offerings to God. These were things ministered to God for His satisfaction. This is the top service. It is a shame that we Christians have missed this kind of understanding. We never considered that to come to the meeting to offer Christ to God is our top service.
In ancient times all the Israelites came together three times a year to worship God (Deut. 16:16). The first thing they did was to bring all the rich surplus of the produce of the good land and offer this surplus to God for God’s satisfaction. That was the top service they rendered to God. That type has to be fulfilled today in the New Testament with us. Our salvation was our passover. Now that we have received God’s salvation with Christ as our Passover, we must offer Christ to God. Offering Christ to God is our service. The more that we stress this, the better. Very few would consider that we meet to serve God and that our service is our ministry. To meet is to serve, to minister.
As a basis for realizing the importance of the meetings and how to meet, we need to see that in the most basic sense, the church is the assembly, the gathering of the called-out ones. The term church in Greek (ekklesia) means a kind of called assembly. In ancient times when a city called its people together for a certain purpose, that was always called an ekklesia, which was an assembly, a gathering of the called-out ones. The Bible uses the word ekklesia to indicate the church because it corresponds with the meaning of the church. The church is a gathering of God’s called-out ones. We have been called out of the world, so we gather together. Whenever we gather together, that gathering is the church.
We need to point out that the Lord Jesus mentioned the church twice in the Gospels — once in Matthew 16:18 referring to the universal church and once in Matthew 18:17 referring to the local church. When the Lord Jesus mentioned the church in Matthew 18:17, it was in the local sense, and it indicated the matter of meeting. In verse 20 the Lord said, “Where there are two or three gathered into My name, there am I in their midst.” When the Lord Jesus mentioned the matter of the church in the local sense, He pointed out the need of the gathering, the meeting. If we are going to have the Lord’s presence, surely we need to meet together.
We have already said that to meet is to worship God and to serve Him. But we need to stress again and again that if a believer does not come to meet with the church, that means he does not worship God and serve Him in an adequate way.
To meet is to minister Christ to others. This point is very crucial. Most Christians have the concept that to come to the meeting is to receive personal help. They do not have the sensation, the consideration, or the concept that they need to minister Christ to others. Every believer should have something of Christ. Thus, when we come to the meeting, we come to share Christ with others, to minister Christ to others, either by our prayer, by our testimony, or by our word as a short message. We always have to get ourselves prepared to minister Christ in the meeting. We need to speak more on this point to impress the young ones and the new ones among us. Their wrong concept needs to be corrected.
Even we ourselves have been in the “garlic room” of wrong teachings too long. Because of this, we do not have the sense that it is absolutely a deficiency to come to a meeting without ministering Christ to others. According to the type in the Old Testament, God charged His people not to come to the meeting empty-handed (Deut. 16:16). When you come to the meeting, you must have something to offer. Also, if the priest in the Old Testament did not offer something on the altar, he could never get into the tabernacle. Without anything to offer to God, we can never enter into the tabernacle, so this is a must. If we do not offer something to God, and we try to enter into the presence of God, this is a great deficiency.
We also need to see that to meet is to build up the church (1 Cor. 14:26). First Corinthians 14 says that in a meeting the best thing is to prophesy (v. 31). This is because prophesying builds up the church (v. 4b). This tells us clearly that when we come to the meeting, we build up the church. To meet is a service, and this is the building service, the building ministry.
We need to spend a longer time in our sharing to stress this one thing: that every saint has to build up the church. According to Ephesians 4:16, the Body of Christ is built up not only through every joint of the rich supply but also through the operation in the measure of each one part. This indicates that every saint must participate in the building up of the Body. This is carried out mainly by coming to the meeting. To meet is the way to build up the church.
Every attendant in the meeting must be a builder to do the building work. But we need to consider our situation today. A number of saints in our meetings would not do anything. They just sit there expecting to receive something. But if all the saints would exercise to build the meeting, surely we would have a strong meeting, a rich meeting, and a high meeting. Suppose not even one saint would function in the meeting, and everyone came to the meeting to sit there dumbly. That would be the lowest meeting, the poorest meeting, a meeting with nothing. The more we open our mouth to speak for the Lord, the more the building work will be done. The more we all exercise to speak Christ in the meetings, the richer, the higher, and the more living the meetings will be. We need to encourage all the saints to minister, to serve, for the building up of the church (1 Cor. 14:3-5).
In Matthew 18:20 the Lord said, “Where there are two or three gathered into My name, there am I in their midst.” We need to notice that according to the Greek text, believers are not gathered in the Lord’s name but into His name. Whenever we come to the meeting, we have to come out of our self, out of the world, out of our house, out of our family, out of our job, out of our business, out of our school, and out of everything other than Christ. We have to come into His name. The name of the Lord in the New Testament means His person. When we are gathered into His name, we are gathered into the person of the Lord. We need to come out of many other things and come into the Lord Himself.
When we meet, we should always exercise our spirit. This is indicated in 1 Corinthians 14:32, which says, “The spirits of prophets are subject to prophets.” In the meetings we do not need to exercise our emotion or mind that much. What is really needed is for us to exercise our spirit.
We should come to the church meetings with the experience of Christ. The New Testament does not say much concerning what we should bring to the meeting; instead, the New Testament depends upon the pictures shown in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament every gathering of God’s people that was ordained by God at the place chosen by God was for God’s people to bring their rich surplus of the good land and offer this surplus to God. God charged them not to come empty-handed. They had to bring the rich surplus of the good land, which typifies Christ. The rich produce of the rich surplus typifies our experience and our enjoyment of Christ. Therefore, we must come to the meeting with the experiences of Christ.
How much content the meeting has and how high the meeting is altogether depend upon how much we have experienced Christ. We must come to the meeting not with the objective, doctrinal Christ but with the subjective, experiential Christ. Many Christians do not have any experience of Christ in their daily walk, so when they come together, they do not have anything of Christ to minister to one another. But in the Lord’s recovery it should be absolutely different. Day by day we should have some experience of Christ. Then something will be accumulated in our being, and we will have something of Christ to minister and impart to others. To get into the name of the Lord, to exercise our spirit, and to offer the Christ whom we have experienced are the basic ways that we should come together.
If you come into the person of Christ, exercise your spirit, and have some experience of Christ, when you open up your mouth — whether you call a hymn, pray, praise, give a testimony, read a portion of the Word, or speak a short message — it will be the ministering of Christ. Christ will come out of you. This is the ministry, and this is the top service. You will become a steward serving people with Christ. You will become a divine waiter or waitress, waiting on many attendants and serving them with something of Christ.
First Corinthians 14 says that when we come together, we all can prophesy one by one (v. 31) and that prophesying builds up the church (v. 4b). In Exodus 4 Moses told the Lord that he was not an eloquent speaker (v. 10). Then the Lord gave Aaron to Moses to be his co-worker. He said to Moses concerning Aaron, “You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do” (v. 15). When Moses would speak to his brother Aaron to put some words into his mouth, God would be with Moses’ mouth and with Aaron’s mouth. Then the Lord said to Moses, “He shall speak for you to the people” (v. 16). Aaron was to be Moses’ spokesman. In Exodus 7:1 the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you God to Pharaoh; and Aaron your brother will be your prophet.” That meant that Aaron would speak for Moses. A prophet is a spokesman. The basic meaning of the word prophesy is to speak for someone. To prophesy, in the New Testament sense, is to speak for Christ. We need to use 1 Corinthians 14:31 to impress the saints that in the church meetings we all can prophesy one by one.
In 1 Corinthians 11:17-18 the apostle Paul says, “I give you this charge and do not praise you, because you come together not for the better but for the worse. For first of all, when you come together in the church, I hear that divisions exist among you; and some part of it I believe.” Paul told the Corinthians that they were meeting not for profit but for a loss because they met with divisions. Therefore, we must stay away from any division in the meeting. We should not participate in any divisive meeting.
According to the type in the Old Testament, the children of Israel had to come together to one unique place, and that one unique place kept them all in oneness. Their gathering according to God’s way was in oneness and was also a preservation of oneness. The oneness among the children of Israel in ancient times was preserved by their kind of gathering. The children of Israel appeared before the Lord three times a year in the place chosen by God to be gathered together into one. As long as divisions exist among us, that is not a profit to us but a loss.
The points in this lesson should be sufficient to give the saints a clear view of how to meet. We need to remember the focus of this lesson: to meet is to serve, to minister.
