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Scripture Reading: Luke 10:1-6; Matt. 28:18-19; Luke 14:21-23; 2 Tim. 4:2a; Acts 8:4, 29; 16:6-7
In this chapter we shall consider the exercise and practice of the gospel preaching according to God’s ordained way. We praise the Lord that since the Lord’s ordained way was brought into the recovery, most of the saints and the churches have received it and are continuing in it. However, our exercise and practice of the new way is weak. We may accept the Lord’s ordained way, but we do not have much exercise or practice of it. What we need today is not merely to know what the new way is; we need to exercise in the new way.
If we are going to play a certain kind of ball game, we have to practice with the ball again and again. When I was young, I did not know how to ride a bicycle. Bicycle riding was not popular seventy or eighty years ago in the city where I was living. However, when I was living and working in Shanghai, I realized that I needed to learn to ride a bicycle. Some came to me and tried to teach me how to ride. I told them that I did not need teaching; I just needed to practice. First, I had to learn to get on the bicycle. I tried different ways, and sometimes while trying, I fell. Nevertheless, I learned how to get on the bicycle. Then I had to learn how to pedal the bicycle, but I did not learn by being taught. I fell down again and again, but I kept getting back on. Within about two days I was riding the bicycle with no problem. In the same principle, if we have such a spirit to practice the new way, we will be successful. We need to exercise to practice the new way.
The first thing we need to practice in the God-ordained way for the New Testament service is the preaching of the gospel. We preach the gospel to get sinners saved, to bring them to the Lord. However, this is not the goal. The goal of saving sinners is to build up the Body of Christ. We have a burden to save sinners, but it is not only to rescue the perishing. If soul winning is the only goal of our gospel preaching, we are too shortsighted. We must have God’s sight according to His economy. From eternity past God had an economy. In His economy God wants the people created by Him to be saved for the building up of the Body of Christ. What God desires is not a group of saved sinners. God desires the Body of Christ. We must have a high and long-range view. With this view, we should bear the burden to preach the gospel. When we preach the gospel with this view, we are practicing our priesthood. The first aspect of the New Testament priesthood is for us to preach the gospel to make the saved sinners spiritual sacrifices to be offered to God for His acceptance (Rom. 15:16; 1 Pet. 2:5).
The New Testament opens with the preaching of the gospel. Before the Lord Jesus came, John the Baptist’s work was not only to baptize people but also to preach the gospel. He said, “Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near” (Matt. 3:2). John not only baptized people but also preached the gospel that people might be saved and brought to Christ. Following John, the Lord Jesus came. He also preached the gospel (4:17). Luke 8:1 says that the Lord “journeyed from city to city and village to village, preaching and announcing the gospel of the kingdom of God.” Besides the cities on earth, there are many villages, smaller lodging places, that we need to visit. The Lord Jesus also sent out the twelve to do the same thing He did (Matt. 10:5). Even this was not adequate, so He sent out seventy to visit every city and place where He Himself was about to come (Luke 10:1). In our going out for the preaching of the gospel, we should not merely go to visit the cities. We have to visit all places. Even the Lord’s sending of the seventy was not adequate, so after His resurrection, He sent all His disciples, charging them to disciple all the nations (Matt. 28:19).
For the preaching of the gospel in the New Testament, John the Baptist went out and then Jesus Himself. Then He sent the twelve and the seventy, and now He has sent all of us. He has sent all His disciples to visit the cities and every place for the discipling of all the nations (v. 19). Today the gospel has reached all races, all peoples, and all nations. However, the goal of the gospel is not only to save sinners, to win souls, but also to obtain materials for the building up of the Body of Christ. My burden is for us to see the urgent need for all of us to be in the exercise and practice of preaching the gospel in the God-ordained way.
Paul says, “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16). Not preaching the gospel is a woe. The Lord Jesus said that if we, His branches, do not bear fruit, we will be cut off (John 15:2, 6). To be cut off is to lose the enjoyment of the full, rich supply of the vine tree. This is why many Christians are so poor in the enjoyment of the riches of Christ. They have lost the full enjoyment of the riches of Christ due to the fact that they have not borne fruit. If we do not bear fruit, we will be cut off.
Even though we do not bear fruit, we are still in the Lord, but we cannot have the real enjoyment of the rich supply of the life-juice of the vine tree. As long as we do not have the enjoyment of the rich supply of Christ’s life-juice, we have been cut off. Whether or not we have been cut off is determined by whether we have the real enjoyment of the riches of Christ. This is very serious. The main lack of many Christians is that they do not have a life of regular fruit-bearing. We must rise up to practice fruit-bearing.
Many Christians are fighting, debating, and arguing. Without exception, as long as Christians are occupied with fighting and debating, the result will be barrenness. Even though they feel that they are fighting for the Lord and defending the truth, the issue of their fighting is that there is no fruit. Many times I have seen a group of Christians doing quite well until they began debating. Once they began to debate in the name of defending the truth, they began to decline in number.
Whenever debating comes in, the best way to stand against it is to “Go!” We should not care for debating but for getting people saved. We must go to get a number of people saved. Some may say that we are wrong if we care for numbers. However, the Bible cares about numbers. There is even a book of the Bible called Numbers. God told Moses and Aaron to count, to number, the people (1:2). We should number the people in the church in our locality (Acts 2:41; 4:4; 21:20). If we do this, we will be aware of our negligence in bearing fruit. Our urgent need is to go to get people saved. Instead of debating, we should prefer to save at least one person today. When we baptize someone into the Triune God, we feel glorious. The glorious way is to save sinners and count them.
If someone comes to us to debate about the truth, we should simply say that we do not have time for that. Then we may ask him if his parents and relatives have been saved. If they have not been saved, we can pray with him for them. We should not debate concerning what is right and what is wrong. We have not been appointed to be a judge, and we do not have time for debating. We must give our time to save sinners and to feed and nourish the young ones in order to help them grow.
We must go to visit people and preach the gospel to them. The Lord did not tell us to go to the “right” persons and not to go to the “wrong” ones. He simply told us to go. First, we should go to visit the homes (Luke 9:4). Then we should visit every city and place (10:1). Eventually, we must go to the entire world (Matt. 24:14; 28:19; Acts 1:8).
Our first burden in this training is that every trainee would be burdened to go to visit people in order to preach the gospel to them. We must pick up this burden. We have no way to excuse ourselves. The Lord sent Himself first, then He sent the twelve and the seventy, and now He has sent all the disciples. The book of Acts records that a great number were saved in Jerusalem through the preaching of the gospel. On the day of Pentecost three thousand were saved (2:41). Then Acts 4:4 says that “the number of men came to about five thousand.” There were thousands of saved ones in Jerusalem, yet they would not go out. They all had become stuck in that city. Then the persecution came, and this forced them to go out (8:1). Acts 8:4 tells us that those who were scattered went throughout the land announcing the word as the gospel. Because of the persecution, they went out, and the gospel was spread. As a result of their going out, the kingdom was spreading to many places, and the church was being built up (9:31).
We must be the ones going out. If we cannot go out every day, we should go out at least once a week. Everyone can do this. At least one evening or one afternoon each week, we have to go out. We should go first to our “Jerusalem,” which means we have to go to our close relatives — our parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, in-laws, etc. Then we must go to Judea, to Samaria, and eventually to the uttermost part of the earth (1:8).
We do not know who the chosen ones are. The Lord has chosen people “out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9). Only the Lord knows who is chosen. Luke 14 says we should “go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city” (v. 21), and then “go out into the roads and hedges” (v. 23). This means that we should go everywhere. We should not discern who is high or who is low. As long as they are people, we should bring them to the Lord. The Lord said to go out and bring in “the poor and crippled and blind and lame” (v. 21).
Some debating ones may say that we force people to believe and to be baptized, but the Lord charges us in Luke 14 to “compel” people to receive His salvation (v. 23). Before we were saved, we were not willing to seek after the Lord; we had to be compelled, forced, to receive His salvation. If we compel people to receive the Lord, we may wonder whether some of them are genuine believers. But only the Lord knows who the tares and the wheat are (Matt. 13:29-30), and the Lord did not tell us to try to discern the difference between them. The Lord told us to go to disciple the nations and baptize them into the name of the Triune God (28:19). As members of the church, our first responsibility is to rise up and exercise to go out and preach the gospel in the new way.
I would like to say a word to the elders. If you are a gospel-preaching elder, the church in which you bear the responsibility will be a gospel-preaching church. Therefore, the elders must take the lead to exercise in, to practice, and even to promote the preaching of the gospel. Every believer must go out to preach the gospel. I would beg every church to stand up and to rise up in the preaching of the gospel. The gospel preaching needs to be promoted in every locality.
