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Scripture Reading: Matt. 18:20; 1 Cor. 12:7-8; 14:26
In this chapter we shall see a living in which we meet in the Spirit and by Christ. Our meeting together is a kind of living. To go to work is not a living, and to run a factory is not a living, because these things only bring in frustration, trouble, bondage, and pressure. For you young people, neither is going to school a living. What then is a living? A living is something that brings enjoyment. According to the principle in God’s creation, the human living should be a kind of enjoyment. No one would ever say that eating and drinking are a frustration, because eating and drinking are an enjoyment. The Christian meeting should be a kind of living. As such, it is an enjoyment.
The Christian meeting is not a so-called worship service. The Bible does not teach us to come together to have worship services. First Corinthians 14:26 does not say that when you come together you are attending a worship service. It says, “Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm.” We saw during the last two weeks that psalms are not just for singing; they are also for speaking to one another. This kind of speaking is not a common or light way of speaking; it is a speaking by being filled in spirit, in which everyone speaks to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Eph. 5:19).
Furthermore, Colossians 3:16 says, “Teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” Here we see a teaching with psalms. Not only should we sing to one another with psalms, but we should also speak and even teach one another with psalms. Whenever we come together, everyone should have a psalm to sing, speak, and even teach one another. Thank the Lord that He has given us this hymnal. Some have told me that to sing one of the hymns in this book is better than to listen to a message. For example, Hymns, #863 was first written by me in English. Later, during one of my trips to the Far East I translated it into Chinese. I am not boasting. This hymn is too good. Let us try now to speak to one another with this hymn. I will speak to you all the first line. Then all of you will speak back to me the second line. The hymn reads,
In daily walk and in our meetings too,
Christ is the center, Christ is everything;
’Tis not for form nor doctrine good and true,
But ’tis for Christ alone we’re gathering.
Christ is the way and Christ the light of life,
In Him we walk and by Him we are led;
Christ is the living water and the food;
Of Him we drink and we with Him are fed.
Christ is the truth, ’tis Him we testify,
Christ is the life, ’tis Him we minister;
Christ is the Lord, ’tis Him we magnify,
Christ is the Head, and we exalt Him here.
Christ is the All in all to God and man —
With Him both we and God are satisfied;
Christ, the reality within the Church —
By Him are life and numbers multiplied.
By all the hymns and prayers we offer here,
Christ the reality we would express;
All the activities in fellowship —
Christ thus in operation manifest.
’Tis in His Name we meet, in Spirit act,
With nothing in our mind to formalize;
’Tis by His pow’r we pray, in unction praise,
And with Himself in spirit exercise.
All things forgetting, cleaving unto Christ,
Applying Him until maturity;
Let us count everything but loss for Him,
For Him, our All in all, eternally.
In the small group meetings sometimes we can select a hymn to read or to speak to one another. This will make a good message. For example, you can use the above hymn to proclaim, “Brothers and sisters, in daily walk or in the meetings, Christ should be the center, and He should also be the content. We are not meeting here for forms or doctrines but for Christ alone. He is the center of our meeting, and He is the content of our getting together.” This will become an enlightening message. We should all learn to take the lead in speaking in the meetings. This speaking is not a kind of teaching; it is a mutual enjoyment with others. Never forget that the meetings are a living.
According to the order in God’s creation, every man needs to sleep six to eight hours a day. In addition to this, he must work or go to school. This is God’s arrangement. Do not think that when I say working and running a factory are frustrating that I am urging you not to do anything. If you do not do anything, how are you going to eat? You may say, “The Lord is taking care of my food.” No doubt the Lord is taking care of your food, but not in the way you think.
Let me share with you a testimony of my own. In 1943 I was imprisoned by the Japanese Imperial Army in Chefoo for thirty days. During that time, they used all kinds of methods to try me twice a day. After three weeks of interrogation they realized that I was genuinely a preacher. They considered me a fool, a lunatic for God. One day they attempted to trap me. I knew that the trial was coming to a conclusion. They summoned me before them in the morning, and placed before me a Bible which I gave to them the day I was put into prison. One man began by saying, “We reckon that you don’t know anything except God. To you God is everything, whether this or that. I want to ask you a question today. Which is more important, God or the country?” The “country” he was referring to was the Japanese-controlled puppet government of north China. I fully realized the meaning of his question. So I kept my mouth shut. The more he forced me to speak, the more I shut my mouth. Finally, when he insisted on an answer I said, “I am afraid that you will be angry if I give you my answer.” He pressed me further and assured me, “Speak up. I will not be angry.” To that I replied, “God is more important.” He exclaimed in a mocking way, “Very well, then. God is more important. Go back then to your cell. We will let God take care of you!” When I perceived that his tone had calmed down a bit, I began to preach to him, saying, “It is true that God is more important. And it is true that God takes care of us. But God has a way to care for us. He created the earth, and He made fertile lands for cultivation. But there is still the need for man to plow and sow before there can be a harvest. Even after the harvest, there is still the need for reaping, selling, and buying. You may say that all these are human labor. But without God’s creation of the earth, and without Him supplying the sunshine, the rain, the wind, and the air, the crop cannot grow. So, you see, everything still depends on God. God is the One who supplies our food; He does take care of us that way.” He said, “Fine. You do not know anything except God. We will let God feed you tonight.”
I was put in the same cell as a Greek young man. He was a Greek Orthodox Christian, and he spoke a little English. We began to fellowship with each other. When he found out that I was suffering for the name of Christ, he began to respect me very much. When the guards walked past us, we broke our conversation and were quiet. But once they walked away, we continued with our fellowship. In the prison the Chinese prisoners were apportioned hard dough, while this Greek brother was given white bread and milk. That evening when the guard came around to pass the bread and milk to that young man, the guard smiled at me and pointed his fingers upward, saying, “Yours, there.” He left without any food for me. The Greek man wondered, and he asked, “What is happening? Are they not going to give you food today?” I told him what had happened that day during the trial. He responded by saying, “Mr. Lee, I will let you have my share today. You are suffering for Jesus Christ. It is my honor to give up my food for you.” I insisted that he keep the food. After pushing the food back and forth between him and me for a while, we agreed that we would share the food together. The next morning the guards took me out of my cell again. The minute they walked in, they asked in a mocking way, “Did your God feed you last night?” I said, “Yes, He did.”
We can all testify that God takes care of us. But on our part we need to fulfill our duty. We all must work, but work is not our living; it is our laboring. After man fell, God ordained that man must labor and sweat and that woman must undergo the suffering of childbirth.
Under God’s ordained way every man needs to sleep, work, and eat. In addition, man needs the proper enjoyment. But when sinners go about seeking for enjoyment, they end up in nightclubs and sinful places. As a result, humanity becomes degraded and people’s health is damaged. Their pastimes even force many into bankruptcy.
If you read the Bible carefully you will realize that the proper pastime for man is God. God is our proper pastime, and God is our real entertainment. We do not need to watch TV or go to a ball game. We only need to fellowship with God and to sing to God, and we will be filled with joy and satisfaction. In short, the Christian meeting is the proper entertainment of a proper living.
Our meeting here tonight is a kind of pastime and entertainment. This is our best pastime. The more you pass your time here, the healthier, cleaner, and nobler you will be; you will have a higher morality and a more uplifted humanity. There is no entertainment that can match the Christian meetings. Sometimes I have heard parents say that they dare not let their children come to our meetings, because our meetings exhaust people; we meet every day. A few times I said to the parents, “If you do not allow your children to come to the church, where will they go? If you keep them home and look at them every day, even you will eventually be bored by them, not to mention the fact that they will never be bound by you anyway. Surely they will go to the dance halls and associate themselves with bad friends. What would you do then? But now they are coming to the church meetings, and you should feel happy because the Christian meeting is the best form of entertainment.”
Someone once came to me and said, “Mr. Lee, you are marvelous. I admire your ability to draw people. In Shanghai you attracted a big crowd to your church. When you went to Taiwan, you attracted more people. Now you are in America, and you have even captured the Americans. How did you attract and capture all these people?” I said, “I like your word capture. We Christians are those who are captured by Jesus. Isn’t this much better than being captured by card games or parties?”
When I first came to America in the sixties, I saw groups of “hippies” roaming the streets of Los Angeles. A few came to our meetings and were saved. When they came, they all had long hair, long beards, and bare feet. Some even wore red headbands. It was such a strange sight. But, praise the Lord, they were saved one after another. After a few weeks their headbands were gone, and after a few months their hair was cut. After a while the beards were gone, and they began to wear socks and shoes. They also began to testify in the meetings. When we saw this, our joy was unspeakable. We can never forget those times. Our meetings were full of God and full of entertainment. At that time, half an hour before the meeting time the hall was filled with people. If you came late, you could not find a seat. And when everyone came together, they began to sing psalms about exhibiting Christ. Once you stepped into the meeting, you could not help but be lifted into the heavenlies. Those were truly meetings of the exhibition of Christ.
The meeting is a kind of enjoyment; it is the proper pastime and entertainment of our lives. We must change our concept. When we come to the meetings, we are not here to do something; we are here to have some entertainment. If our daily lives are filled with joy, our meetings will be the same. During the last few days I have loved to sing a hymn. It is Hymns, #717 in our hymnal:
O let us rejoice in the Lord evermore,
Though all things around us be trying,
Though floods of affliction like sea billows roar,
It’s better to sing than be sighing.
Then rejoice evermore, rejoice evermore,
It is better to sing than be sighing:
It is better to live than be dying;
So let us rejoice evermore.
O let us rejoice in the Lord evermore,
When the darts of the tempter are flying,
For Satan still dreads, as he oft did of yore,
Our singing much more than our sighing.
O let us rejoice in the Lord evermore,
When sickness upon us is stealing,
No cordial like gladness our strength can restore,
For joy is the fountain of healing.
When you sing a hymn such as this in the meeting, do you not feel refreshed? And is this not a kind of entertainment? Our meeting is not a work; it is an expression of our daily life. It is because we live this way all day long that we come and express ourselves in such a way in the meetings. This is not a performance nor a theatrical play. This is our living.
If possible, we should meet every day. This is quite scriptural. When the church first came into being, the disciples met daily in one accord in the temple and from house to house (Acts 2:46). Sometimes, to meet every day seems to pose some difficulties. To allow for that, we leave at least three evenings a week when there is no meeting. The other evenings we meet together to have some spiritual pastime and entertainment. This entertainment is not apart from God. It is an entertainment in God, and it is an entertainment in the church. We must have this concept, because once you have this concept, you will not go with the attitude of attending worship services. To attend a worship service is to have one man speaking while everyone listens. The result is the hierarchy of a clergy-laity system. This kills the Body of Christ. This form of worship service is absolutely wrong.
First Corinthians 14:26 says, “Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.” Psalms are for singing, and teachings are for speaking. The proper way to meet is not in the way of Christianity, where one speaks and all listen. It is in the way of every saint speaking. Each has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, and even has an interpretation. Each one of these five items involves speaking. One is even speaking with the words of psalms, that is, with words of praises to God.
Although I am speaking here tonight, I am not satisfied. I hope very much that every one of you sitting here would compete to speak. Moreover, I hope that the speakings would not be long, but would be in the way where I speak a few sentences, you speak a few sentences, and every one stands up and speaks a few sentences. Some may stand up to sing a hymn; another may stand up to read a song. If this is the case, our meeting will become living and enjoyable, and you will see the riches of Christ displayed here. I hope that every one of us would see this.
First Corinthians 12:7-8 says, “To each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable. For to one through the Spirit a word of wisdom is given, and to another a word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit.” First we have the word of wisdom; then we have the word of knowledge. Here we see that in a meeting there should not be only one speaker. Rather, all the brothers and sisters should speak. The Spirit is already operating in us; we cannot say that we have nothing. To each one of us is given the manifestation of the Spirit, and we all have a word of wisdom and a word of knowledge to speak.
Matthew 18:20 says, “Where there are two or three are gathered into My name.” The preposition here should not be in but should be into. We must be gathered together into His name. Every time we meet together, we are gathering together into His name. Wherever two or three gather together, we have a small group meeting, and we are told that we must meet into the name of the Lord. In the Bible, especially in the New Testament, the name denotes the person. Hence, to meet into the name of the Lord is to meet into the person of the Lord. Christ is the center of our meetings. He is also the content of our meetings. We do not gather with any other center or content. Christ is our unique center and content. For this reason when we come together, we have the inner sense that we are gathering together into the Lord.
Many times when we read the Bible or pray at home, we experience a certain measure of enjoyment and sweetness. But this enjoyment is different from that which we enjoy in the meetings. The flavor of our enjoyment at home is not that strong. But when we come to the meeting, the flavor is much stronger. This is because we are gathering together into the Lord. This is what it means to have a living of meeting by Christ.
Today Christ is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). Furthermore, He is living in our spirit. First Corinthians 6:17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit,” and 2 Timothy 4:22 says, “The Lord be with your spirit.” Therefore, we all must exercise in our speaking to release this spirit. If I come to you today and stand before you silently, no matter how much I look at you, my spirit will not be released. How can I release my spirit? I must open my mouth. As soon as I open my mouth, the spirit comes out. I often say that if one does not know what it is to release his spirit, all he has to do is to lose his temper. If you would say, “I just hate you!” right away your spirit will be released. When you talk politely with others, your spirit will not come out. But if you shout in your anger, your spirit will be released. Of course, that release of the spirit is not the proper kind. But the principle is there, and it is very applicable. When you open your mouth to release one or two sentences in the meeting, your spirit must be released. That means you have to utter something from the depths of your being. You must use your mouth, because your spirit is connected to your mouth. When you speak some words, the words will carry the spirit with them. When you shout in your temper, the spirit of anger will come out through the words of anger.
The Christian meeting is a part of our entertainment in our daily life. Moreover, this meeting is one where we meet into the Lord’s name. The Lord is the Spirit; hence, for us to meet into Him is for us to meet into the Spirit. This Spirit is today in our spirit. In order for this Spirit to come out, there is no other way than to open our mouth. Brothers and sisters, if you do not open your mouth, even God has no way. Although you can have a strong wind blowing outside, without opening the windows there is no way to have any air. Today the Triune God has been incarnated, has died, and has risen from the dead to become the Spirit. This Spirit has been breathed into us (John 20:22) and has also been poured out upon us (Acts 2:1-4; 10:44-46; 1 Cor. 12:13). But there is no response on our side. This is our problem.
How did the Pentecostal movement come about? From church history we know that the Pentecostal movement did not exist until two centuries ago. At that time in England, no one was allowed to preach in an unsanctified house; the preaching had to be done in the sanctuaries, that is, in the church buildings. Moreover, ordinary men could not preach; it had to be done by ordained clergymen. At that time everyone going into the sanctuary had to be sober and quiet. They had to realize that they were there to worship God. Hence, no one dared to move or to say anything in a rash way. It was not until John Wesley was raised up by the Lord to speak for Him that he began to preach on the streets. Once he preached to the coal miners while they were on their way home. By the end of the preaching, the crowd was so touched that they began to weep and cry. Tears were rolling down their cheeks, leaving white streaks on their blackened faces. I saw pictures of this. After another century, Christian worship services in England again became so dead that the Pentecostal movement was started. The Pentecostals would shout and cry, thinking that by doing so they would come alive. In the end three types of people appeared. First there were the laughers. Then there were the rollers. Last there were the jumpers. When I first attended a Pentecostal meeting in Shangtung fifty years ago, I saw all these people. Some were jumping, others were rolling, and still others were shouting. No one paid attention even when the pastor went to the platform to speak. Later there was the holy parade; everyone marched excitedly around the meeting hall. By 1932 the Pentecostal movement also came to us. One time in our meeting in Tsinan a co-worker by the name of Yuen began to play act. He was acting like the little donkey that bore Jesus into Jerusalem. Everyone around him shouted Hallelujah! Some even took off their coats and laid them on the floor for him to tread upon.
In 1943 I was recuperating from illness in Chefoo. A brother by the name of Chang came from another city to meet with us in the church in Chefoo. He rebuked the church, saying, “Look, our Brother Lee is bedridden with tuberculosis. How dead you all are!” When he said this, everyone began to pay attention to the Pentecostal movement and to practice speaking in tongues. One sister named Lee who was a nurse spoke in tongues more frequently and vehemently than all the others. At that time I spent most of my time in bed. The elders came to invite me to attend one of their meetings. Because I was a veteran in this matter, I was thoroughly familiar with the matter of speaking in tongues. I told the elders that I did not need to go because I knew the situation already. By that time I already had had over ten years of experience in this matter. But because of their insistence I later complied. The brothers arranged a cot for me to lie on during the meeting. When the meeting began, that Sister Lee knelt down and was getting ready to speak in tongues. But strangely she was not able to utter anything. Right away she said that she would not speak that day.
After this, the winter solstice festival passed, and a sister who loved the Lord very much died of tuberculosis. This Sister Lee then told the husband of the deceased sister that he should not prepare any coffin or gravesite. She told that Brother Wong not to prepare any funeral and that his wife would rise at twelve o’clock noon the next day. There were over a thousand brothers and sisters in the church in Chefoo. All were shocked by the news. Everyone waited for noon the next day. When the time came, nothing happened. The tongue-speaking sister worked hard on the dead sister to try to resurrect her. But in spite of everything she did, the dead person remained dead; nothing could resurrect her. After about three hours of fruitless effort, an older elder told the husband of the dead woman to go ahead and make preparation for her burial. From that time on, no one in the church in Chefoo would believe anything about tongue-speaking anymore. As a result, the church in Chefoo was rescued.
My point is this: the reason all these Pentecostal tongue-speaking things come about is that Christianity is too dead. When Christians would not speak in the meetings, Satan would fabricate some false things to stir people up.
I have studied this matter for over fifty years, and I have seen many tongue-speakers both in the Pentecostal movement as well as among us. For a year I even took the lead to help others to speak in tongues. I tried during all these years through much objective study to find out if those tongues were genuine or not. Now I can tell you that the result of my studying gives me definite proof that these people’s tongues are not genuine. Acts 2 tells us that the tongues were dialects; they were languages. Paul in 1 Corinthians 14:26 also tells us that tongues can be interpreted; it is a language that can be interpreted. I have heard Chinese speaking in tongues, and I have also heard Americans speaking in tongues. Their tongues are not like those in the Bible, which can be interpreted. For this reason I know that my judgment is correct. If you are a linguist and you record the tongues of these people and study them thoroughly, you will find out that they consist of at most a few sounds. How can a few sounds constitute a language? For this reason they come up with the explanation that tongues are not necessarily a language; it can be sounds of the tongue only. When they teach you to speak in tongues, they all tell you to roll your jaw and turn your tongue. As a result you get the tongue-sound.
Some find it hard to roll their jaws or turn their tongues. For these it is difficult to speak that kind of tongue. In China, there are people who can imitate all kinds of sounds by their vocal faculties. This is their skill. They can utter something that sounds like English, or Japanese, or Chinese. Sometimes they can imitate a bird’s singing. Sometimes they can mimic the sound of a woman walking. For these people, surely you do not need to teach them to speak in tongues; they can all speak in tongues fluently.
Moreover, when the Japanese speak in tongues, they speak with a Japanese accent. When the Mexicans speak in tongues, they likewise speak with a Mexican accent. The Chinese speak in tongues with a Chinese accent, and the Americans speak in tongues with an American accent.
The tongue-speaking of the Pentecostal movement is wrong, but the principle of opening our mouth to speak in the meetings is right. We do not need to use that kind of method to open our mouth in the meeting. We have a spirit within, and we have the word of the Bible for us. We can use our mouth and exercise our spirit to speak forth the words of the Bible. This is so much better than speaking in tongues. Call on the name of the Lord. Pray-read His words. The best way is to open your mouth and speak. But here is our problem: we will not open our mouth to speak in the meetings. This is especially true of the Chinese. We are not used to opening our mouth in public. This is unfortunate. For this reason we often quench the Spirit. If you want to start a fire in the stove, you must give it air above and below. If the opening on top is closed and the door underneath the fire is shut, you can never start the fire. You must first open the vent as well as the door. Then the fire will be started. In the same principle, the Holy Spirit will burn within you when you open your mouth. But if you close your mouth, the Spirit will not move. This is the quenching of the Spirit.
The Christian meetings are to us the amusement in our daily life. Here we amuse ourselves in God. For this reason, we must meet in the Spirit and into the Lord’s name when we meet together; that is, we have to meet into the Lord Himself. He is the Spirit abiding in our spirit. For this reason, we must release our spirit. In order to release our spirit, we must open our mouth to speak. We can speak two or three words about our experience of Christ in our daily life. In every circumstance we need to experience Christ. Enjoy Him in everything, great or small. Take Him as your strength, your wisdom, your support, your comfort, your light, and your guidance. Paul said, “I am able to do all things in Him who empowers me” (Phil. 4:13). If we would be like this, then when each one of us comes to the meeting, we will have a few words to say about Christ. This is the exhibition of Christ. In your daily life you live by taking Christ as your life and by experiencing Christ. Then in the meeting you bring your experience, just as the farmers bring in the harvest for an offering. When you present in the meetings the Christ whom you experience and you speak forth this Christ with your mouth and spirit, you are offering up your harvest and you are exhibiting Christ. In this way your living is one which meets in the Spirit and by Christ.
