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Scripture Reading: Heb. 10:24-25; 2 Tim. 2:2; Eph. 4:11-12
In this full-time training we intend to cover the four main steps of the God-ordained way. In the previous chapters we have covered the first two steps: visiting people as the New Testament priests of the gospel and raising up the new believers in the home meetings. In this chapter we will begin to fellowship concerning the third step — the group meeting. The fourth step of prophesying for the organic building up of the church as the Body of Christ will be covered in future chapters.
Paul said that he was a New Testament priest of the gospel (Rom. 15:16). In the book of Acts and in all of Paul’s Epistles, we can see that Paul exercised to practice this New Testament priesthood to the uttermost. He practiced the gospel preaching as a New Testament priest mainly in two ways. First, wherever he went, he visited the synagogues. At that time, especially in Asia Minor, there were Jewish synagogues in all the major cities. There was always a group of people gathered together in these synagogues who had the Scriptures and knew something of God. Paul took advantage of this situation. As a Jew who had been converted to be a Christian and who had also become an apostle and an evangelist, it was very profitable for him to go to visit the Jewish synagogues. In doing this, he was following in the Lord’s steps. When the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He traveled through the cities and also entered into the synagogues (Matt. 4:23; 9:35). Paul followed the Lord’s example and was successful in this way of preaching the gospel.
Paul also practiced preaching the gospel by going out to visit people. In his second journey Paul was first forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia, and then when they tried to go into Bithynia, the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. Therefore, they were forced to take a direct course toward Macedonia through Mysia and Troas (Acts 16:6-8). In his second journey Paul did not know which way to go. He tried one way and then another way; he was “experimenting.” He tried to go to the left (Asia) and was stopped. Then he tried to go to the right (Bithynia) and was also stopped. He did not want to turn back, so he went straight forward until he came to the city of Troas on the Aegean Sea. At this point he did not know where to go.
It seems that when they came to Troas, Paul did not have the thought to cross over to another continent, so God gave him a vision. “A vision appeared to Paul during the night: A certain man, a Macedonian, was standing and entreating him and saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us. And when he had seen the vision, we immediately endeavored to go forth into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to announce the gospel to them” (vv. 9-10). The word concluding in this verse indicates that after seeing the vision from God, there was the need to conclude, that is, to understand by considering what it meant, by exercising the mind, a mind saturated and directed by the spirit (Eph. 4:23), according to the actual situation and environment. After studying the situation and considering the vision, Paul reached a conclusion. Today some people are too spiritual. They think that if you have the leading of the Holy Spirit, you should always know what to do. But Paul was not that spiritual; he was still human.
In the Old Testament, God’s oracle, God’s speaking, always came through the Urim and Thummim, which were on the breastplate of the high priest (Exo. 28:30). That was a miracle. Suddenly light would shine, not on the whole breastplate, but on the Hebrew letters on the breastplate, again and again until the divine speaking was completed. In this way God’s will was made known to His people. God’s administration in the Old Testament was carried out by His speaking in His divine oracle through the Urim and Thummim. This administration, God’s divine government over his people, is called theocracy. At certain times this theocracy was carried out by the wording from the Urim and Thummim, but not all of God’s oracle in the Old Testament was through the priesthood by the Urim and Thummim. This is why, in addition to the priesthood, there were the prophets. The prophets went along with the priesthood to strengthen it. They prophesied and also received visions from God.
In the New Testament theocracy, the Urim and Thummim are replaced by the mingled spirit, the divine Spirit mingled with our regenerated human spirit (Rom. 1:9; 8:16; John 3:6; 4:24; 1 Cor. 6:17). The oracle of God is in our spirit, but sometimes this is not adequate because of our weakness. In the book of Acts there is also something in addition to the New Testament Urim and Thummim. As the prophets were added to the priesthood in the Old Testament, the New Testament priesthood also needs the function of the New Testament prophets. All the New Testament believers are priests. Paul indicates that he was a priest of the New Testament (Rom. 15:16), yet in Acts 16 his priesthood needed the function of the prophets.
In the Old Testament it was common for a vision to come to a prophet. Here in Acts 16 Paul was the priest, but the inner feeling of the mingled spirit was not so clear to him. If it had been clear, he would not have needed to experiment, to try to go to the left and then to the right. It may be that he was worried about this situation and could not sleep well. Then a vision came to him. Even after the vision came, Paul and those with him considered their situation and the vision very much, and concluding that God had called them to bring the gospel to Macedonia, they went to Philippi.
In Philippi Paul did not preach the gospel by going into the synagogue. He went out to visit people. He went to a place of prayer outside the gate beside a river and spoke to the women who had come together. In going to this place, he was going to a “cold door.” He did not know them, and they did not know him, but one of these women, Lydia, received the gospel and opened her home to the apostles (vv. 13-15). This was the first penetration of the gospel preaching into the continent of Europe. Before this time the gospel had not yet spread beyond Asia Minor.
After studying the entire New Testament, we have found that raising up a church is like raising a family. In raising a family, the main thing is that the family has to grow. The church is the house of God, that is, the household of God, God’s family (Eph. 2:19). A local church is God’s “local family.” We have to raise up this family in the same way that we raise up our physical families. First, we must beget children. Second, we must feed these newborn babes in their homes. However, simply to have a family that is feeding babies is not the goal. That is the way, the procedure, to reach the goal. The goal is to raise up these little ones. Raising up children does not mean merely to feed them but also to perfect them. This perfecting is clearly revealed in Ephesians 4. This chapter says that the ascended Head, Christ, has given gifts to men for the perfecting of the saints (vv. 8, 12). These gifts fall into four main categories. He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as shepherds and teachers (v. 11). The Head gave these four kinds of gifts directly to the Body.
According to Ephesians 4, these four kinds of gifts should do the perfecting work on the saints. Parents, after feeding their babes for a few years, have to perfect them. This is mainly by teaching them, by educating them. If a person would only eat but never receive an education, that person would be useless in society. At least a person should learn a trade. In raising up families to form the society of a nation, there is the need of births, then feeding, and then perfecting, educating.
After the perfecting, every saint needs to exercise to prophesy. According to the New Testament, prophesying builds up the Body of Christ directly. This is fully revealed in 1 Corinthians 14. This chapter unveils the direct building up of the church in a complete way. However, we cannot practice 1 Corinthians 14 so easily. We first have to grow and be perfected. To graduate with a bachelor’s degree, one must first pass through kindergarten, elementary school, junior high, high school, and then four years of college. To receive a master’s degree, one has to go to graduate school. To receive a doctorate requires even more study. All these steps — kindergarten, elementary school, junior high, high school, college, and graduate school — are for our perfecting.
In studying the New Testament, I found that there are these same steps of maturity in the spiritual life. First, we must bring sinners to be regenerated to become babes in Christ. Then these babes need to be fed. The Lord Jesus told us in John 15:16 to bear fruit and that our fruit should remain. In John 21 the Lord charged us to feed His lambs (v. 15). To feed the Lord’s lambs is the way to ensure that our fruit remains. Peter learned this from the Lord, so in writing his first Epistle, he charges the newborn babes to long for the pure milk of the word (2:2). However, newborn babes cannot eat or drink by themselves; they need a nursing mother to feed them (1 Thes. 2:7). We suffered in the past because we did not follow our preaching of the gospel with the proper feeding. Without the proper feeding, a newborn babe can die prematurely. This has happened among us many times over the years.
Then after feeding, a young believer needs some teaching, some education. Hebrews 10:24 says, “Let us consider one another so as to incite one another to love and good works.” Verse 24 uses two very positive words — consider and incite. We are to consider one another, we are to incite one another to love, and we are to incite one another to good works. This means that we have to consider others, remember others, and take care of others. We must also incite them, stir them up. They might become cold. If so, we have to fan the fire for them. We need this among us, but how can this be carried out? Verse 24 ends with a comma, and verse 25 continues, “Not abandoning our own assembling together, as the custom with some is.” To not abandon our own assembling is to have our own meeting. This is not to have a general meeting but a group meeting.
The group meeting is your meeting. In a general meeting it is hard for you to consider one another or to incite one another. This can be done only with a small group. If there are too many in a meeting, it is hard to incite one another or consider one another in this way. I have been meeting with most of you in meetings of about two hundred for quite a long time, but I still do not know many of your names. However, if you would come to my home and meet with me in my living room in a group meeting, I would get to know each of you intimately. Many of us have been meeting together for fifteen years, yet we do not even know one another. This is a shame. We all need to have our own group meeting. It is not enough to attend others’ group meetings; each of us needs our own.
The group meeting is not the coming together of the church as mentioned in 1 Corinthians 14. When the whole church comes together, that is not a group meeting. Hebrews 10:24-25 describes a group meeting. In these verses there are three items that characterize the group meeting: considering, inciting, and exhorting. Without a group meeting, how could we exhort one another? When we come together in the group meeting, you can incite me, and I can incite you. We can stir up one another to consider others, to love others, and to take care of others. To consider, incite, and exhort one another, we need the group meeting.
In 2 Timothy 1:14 Paul charged Timothy to “guard the good deposit.” Timothy had a deposit; something had been deposited into him. This deposit was the healthy words repeatedly given to Timothy by Paul. Timothy had received all these healthy words into him as a kind of deposit. In 1 Timothy 6:20 Paul charged Timothy to “guard the deposit,” and in his second Epistle he repeats this charge. Then in 2 Timothy 2:2, Paul refers to “the things which you have heard from me through many witnesses.” These “things” were the healthy teachings and healthy words that Timothy had heard from Paul (1 Tim. 1:10; 6:3; 2 Tim. 1:13). Paul charges that these things, the good deposit in Timothy, be committed to faithful men, who would be “competent to teach others also” (2:2). The word also indicates that Timothy should teach and that there was the need for some others to teach also.
First, Paul was an apostle, a perfecter. He perfected a young man, Timothy. This equipped Timothy with the good deposit and qualified him to perfect others. In 2 Timothy 2:2 the first generation perfecter charges the second generation perfecter to perfect the third generation.
Ephesians 4 says that the Head has given some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as shepherds and teachers for the perfecting of the saints (vv. 11-12). In a family all the young members under the age of eighteen have to be perfected. This perfecting has a goal. In Ephesians 4:12 this goal is indicated by the word unto. This word in Greek means “with a purpose” or “with a view to.” Therefore, the perfecting of the saints is with a purpose, or with a view to, the work of the ministry. The same word translated “unto” is used twice in this verse: “unto” the work of the ministry and “unto” the building up of the Body of Christ. These two phrases are in apposition to each other. The two refer to the same thing. The work of the ministry is the building up of the Body of Christ.
Ephesians 4 is a crucial chapter because it is the only chapter in the Bible which reveals that the Head of the Body does not build the Body directly. Some have used the Lord’s word in Matthew 16:18 — “I will build My church” — to teach that we do not need any persons to build us but that we need only the Lord Jesus to build us. However, the New Testament is not only Matthew 16. There are the four Gospels, Acts, twenty-one Epistles, and Revelation. Among the Epistles, the fourteen that were written by Paul, Romans through Hebrews, are placed first. Among Paul’s Epistles, Ephesians is a book specifically on the church, and chapter 4 is on the building up of the church. Although the Lord said, “I will build My church” in Matthew 16, the entire Bible does not show us that Christ builds up His church directly. Rather, chapter 4 of Ephesians unveils this matter in detail. It is true that Christ is building up His church, but He is doing it as the Head by producing the gifted persons and giving them as gifts to the church. The apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers are all gifts from the Head to His Body.
Ephesians 4 tells us that the Lord came down not only to the earth, but also He descended into the lower parts of the earth, Hades. Then He came out of Hades to the earth in His resurrection, and from the earth He ascended to the height, the third heaven. Therefore, He is the all-inclusive Christ who fills all things (vv. 8-10). As such a Head, He has received gifts from the Father. According to John 17:2 and 6, the Father has given His chosen ones to the Son that the Son may give them eternal life. At the time Christ ascended to the heavens to show His freshness in resurrection to the Father (20:17), the Father gave all of the millions of people whom He had chosen in eternity past as gifts to the Son (Psa. 68:18). Immediately, some of these gifts became apostles.
Although Peter, James, John, and the others were appointed apostles before the Lord’s death and resurrection, they were not constituted apostles yet. The Lord needed to die, be resurrected, and then ascend into heaven to see the Father. Then the Father could give all the chosen ones, including Peter, James, and John, to the Son, and the Son could impart His resurrection life into them. By this they were constituted apostles. Peter was a fisherman with a very impulsive disposition. In his natural condition he could have never been an apostle. Peter was appointed as an apostle, but he was qualified only for fighting (John 18:10). James and John, the sons of thunder, were qualified to fight to be the first among the Lord’s disciples (Matt. 20:21, 24, 27), but they were not qualified to be apostles. Only through Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension can anyone be qualified to be an apostle. In resurrection Christ breathed Himself into His disciples as the Spirit of life, and in His ascension He was poured upon them as the Spirit of power. First, He breathed Himself into them; then He was poured out upon them. As a result, on the day of Pentecost Peter, James, John and the others all stood up as qualified apostles. They were not appointed only; they were qualified. They were qualified by being constituted with the resurrected Christ as the breath of life and with the ascended Christ as the power of authority. The ascended Head constituted the gifts in this way and gave them to His Body. The first ten verses of Ephesians 4 describe the procedure through which the ascended Head constituted the gifts and gave them to His Body. These gifts are for the perfecting of the saints.
There is a different teaching regarding “autonomy,” which originated with some of the Brethren teachers. The teaching of autonomy says that once the apostles establish a church and appoint the elders, the apostles should keep their hands off the church and not touch the saints. If this were the case, how could the apostles perfect the saints? This is altogether a strange teaching, a wind of teaching. How can saints be perfected if the perfecting ones stay away from them? By reading the New Testament you can see that the truth is that the apostles were always with the saints and contacting the churches. Paul established the church in Ephesus and appointed the elders there, but he never abandoned Ephesus. He visited Ephesus again and again; even once he stayed there for three years (Acts 20:31). Surely he did not keep his hands off the church. This teaching of autonomy was published in a book by one Brethren teacher, and we rejected it years ago.
Paul did not stay away from the churches. He not only visited the churches but also wrote many epistles to the churches. After establishing a church with the appointment of the elders, the apostles repeatedly went back to the churches they had established. When they could not go to visit for a period of time, they cared for the churches by writing letters. They never gave up their care for the churches.
In Acts 20 while Paul was going back to Jerusalem the last time, he could not forget about the church in Ephesus, having labored so much on them. He was very concerned about them. Therefore, when he came to Miletus, he sent word to Ephesus and called for the elders of the church (v. 17). He reminded them, saying, “I did not withhold any of those things that are profitable by not declaring them to you and by not teaching you publicly and from house to house” (v. 20). He also said, “I did not shrink from declaring to you all the counsel of God” (v. 27), and “for three years, night and day, I did not cease admonishing each one with tears” (v. 31). Surely the apostle did not take his hands off the church; rather, he continued to perfect them by teaching them, admonishing them, etc., all the time. The teaching of autonomy is a wrong teaching, and we must reject it.
The result of the perfecting work of the apostles and the other gifts is that the perfected ones are able to do the same things that the gifted persons do. We must all be perfected to do the same work as the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers. After a college student learns for four years, he is able to do what his professor can do. The apostle Paul was the first generation “professor.” Then Timothy became the second generation “professor.” Now we must also become “professors.”
We all need to enter into the practice of the God-ordained way to organically build up the church as the Body of Christ. We are short in our practice of the New Testament priesthood of the gospel with the proper preaching of the gospel by going forth to visit people in their homes. We are short in caring for the newborn believers with the proper feeding. Also, through the years we have mostly had general teaching; we have not had much teaching in the way that perfects people. We do not have the real practice that is revealed in Hebrews 10, 2 Timothy 2, and Ephesians 4. We do not have the proper group meetings. Finally, we are short of the proper prophesying in the church meetings as revealed in 1 Corinthians 14. We fall far short in all of these four steps.
The New Testament priesthood of the gospel, the home meetings for feeding the new believers, the perfecting of the saints for the work of the New Testament ministry, and prophesying for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ are the four steps of God’s ordained way as revealed in the Bible. We all have to humble ourselves and ask the Lord to forgive us of our negligence in the past. Through the years we have been influenced by the old traditional Christianity, and we are still under its influence. We have not properly carried out our New Testament priesthood of the gospel. A priest has to offer sacrifices. In the Old Testament the priests offered animal sacrifices. In the New Testament Paul offered the Gentiles as acceptable sacrifices (Rom. 15:16). Then he charged the young believers to grow so that they themselves could be priests to offer themselves as living sacrifices directly to God (12:1). In Colossians 1:28-29 Paul still had the intention to offer every man to God in maturity. As New Testament priests, it is not enough to offer our prayers and our giving of the material things; these are not the main offerings. In the Old Testament there were the main offerings — the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering. These were the main offerings, and all of them are types of Christ. Today we are not offering bulls and goats as types of Christ; we are offering sinners who have become the members of Christ. In the Old Testament Christ was offered in type, but today in the New Testament the members of Christ are offered. Our prayers and material giving in themselves are not adequate. We must offer some saved living persons as Christ’s members.
God’s priests both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament were to offer Christ. The Old Testament priests offered Christ, typified by the animal sacrifices, but today the New Testament priests offer Christ in a corporate way, an enlarged Christ. Therefore, you must go out to get sinners saved to be Christ’s members for your offering (Rom. 15:16). Otherwise, you will not have anything to offer to God as a part of the enlarged Christ.
If we are genuine believers, we must go visit people in their homes to help them believe and be baptized. This is to make sinners into sons of God and members of Christ. Then we must go to these new believers’ homes to feed them for about two to three months. Then we must perfect them, but if we want to perfect others, we first need a deposit. If we do not have any deposit in the bank, how can we write checks? To help others, we need a good deposit. If some are willing, I would like to give them such a deposit. We all need a deposit that we can spend to help others.
In this chapter I have been quite frank, but please understand that my frankness is my faithfulness. I have told you the truth, not only for your sakes but for the Lord’s sake. I am responsible to Him. What I have shared as the new way is the God-ordained way. I have no doubt about this. We have suffered much and are still suffering from our old way. Look at the number of saints attending the prayer meeting. It is very small. Some say, “We do not care for numbers.” Do not say this; the Lord cares for numbers. The Bible says that on the day of Pentecost three thousand were baptized (Acts 2:41), and at another time there were five thousand (4:4). Later, it says that multitudes both of men and women believed (5:14), the number of disciples in Jerusalem multiplied exceedingly, and a large number of the priests obeyed the faith (6:7). This is the biblical record. If we only raised up our children and gained our close relatives, we could have at least a five percent increase yearly. This is a shame to us because we have not even gained this small percentage of increase. Barrenness is a shame. Fruitlessness is a shame. But it is better for us to be ashamed today than in that day when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of our service. If we will receive this warning, we can avoid standing there without any fruit to show Him. We have to go out to get persons saved for the Lord. Otherwise, we have no way to meet Him.
If you cannot go out, you can pray for those who do. But it is altogether wrong for anyone to oppose those going out. If you oppose this, you will surely be condemned by the Lord. Who are you to oppose the Lord’s servants? Not everyone can go out, but everyone can pray. Even when you are sick in bed, you can pray for those who love the Lord and would be willing to sacrifice their faces by knocking on doors to gain people for Him. You should pray for them.
