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Scripture Reading: 1, 4-5, 1 Cor. 14:12, 24, 31, 39a; Acts 5:20
According to the New Testament revelation, four crucial matters are needed to build up the church as the organic Body of Christ. As we have pointed out, these four crucial matters are begetting, nourishing, perfecting, and prophesying.
God’s intention, His heart’s desire, is to have a Body to be the enlargement and expression of Christ. This is God’s good pleasure based upon His plan. In eternity past before the foundation of the world, God had a plan, and this plan is His economy. God’s economy is His arrangement to gain a Body for Christ, built up with human beings mingled with the divinity of the Triune God. God desires to have such a Body. For this purpose He created the heavens and the earth. The heavens are for the earth, and the earth is for man. The plant life and the animal life on the earth are for the human life. We partake of these forms of life to maintain our existence. We need to consider, however, what the purpose of our existence is on the earth. Many philosophers and scholars have not found the purpose of man’s existence.
Three great matters in our human life on this earth are birth, marriage, and death. Without the church, without God, and without Christ, human life is a continuous cycle of birth, marriage, and death from generation to generation. Is man’s purpose merely to be born, to get married, and to die? Many young people study hard and diligently so that they can make a living. After such hard labor they must face the responsibilities of a job and a family life that are full of troubles and problems. In the course of our human life, we eat, drink, and sleep. Is all of this the purpose of human life? Without the purpose of God to have the church, human life is vanity. The purpose of human life is the Body of Christ. This is the purpose for which God created the universe. Today we are in the center of God’s purpose to build up the church as the organic, living Body of Christ.
I am encouraged and happy to see that the churches are grounded in truth, in life, and in the experiences of Christ, but we need the increase. To build up this organic Body, we surely need people—the more the better. The Body of Christ is the fullness of the One who fills all in all. Surely such a Body must be universally vast and great. Consider the size of the universe. We cannot tell how long, how broad, how high, and how deep the universe is, but Christ fills all, and He is in all. This One needs a Body. Now we can see how big, how vast, the Body of Christ should be. To build such a great Body of Christ, there is the need of millions upon millions of persons. In Genesis 1 God blessed man and told him to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth (v. 28). This has been fulfilled today. The earth is full of men. God likes to see the earth full of people. God needs people. He needs you and He needs me. God needs millions and millions of people for His corporate expression. God has chosen these people, but how can God’s chosen ones come to Him? They can come to Him through our going to them to contact them with God and bring God, Christ, the Bible, the gospel, and justification to them. The angels are not blessed to preach the gospel of grace. Only we human beings who have been chosen and regenerated by God have this privilege.
We need to eat Jesus and speak Jesus to people. Whatever we eat is what we will become. If we eat fish every day, we will even smell like fish. We are what we eat. This is why we need to eat Jesus. When we eat Jesus, we live by Jesus. When we eat Jesus, we have the inward feeling that we need to go to reach people. The happiest times of our Christian life are when we go to visit people. When we impart Christ into someone and baptize him into the Triune God, we are excited. Some who baptized three people in one evening were so excited that they had difficulty sleeping that night.
Recently in Orange County, IBM made the decision to send out two thousand of their sales personnel to knock on doors. They were not satisfied with the amount of their sales, so they sent out their sales personnel to visit people in their homes. We need to visit people with the gospel in the same way. It is best to go out in teams of three with at least one sister in each team. To build up the Body of Christ, we first need to have people. We need to “go fishing.” The Lord Jesus used fishing as an illustration of gospel preaching. He told the disciples, “Come after Me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19). Fishermen do not invite the fish to come to them, but this is what we mostly did in the past. We need to go where the fish are.
If we endeavor to preach the gospel by visiting people where they are, the church can be doubled within a year. If a church of two hundred saints doubles every year, there will be over two hundred thousand saints in ten years. What an encouragement that would be! There is the strong possibility that this could happen if we all endeavor. We have to do business for the Lord (Luke 19:13). Big businesses are never satisfied or contented with what they have done. Their ambition for making profit is unlimited. It is easy, however, for us Christians to be contented with what we have done. If we endeavor, each of us can gain two remaining fruit in a year, and the church can double yearly. If we have a will to bear remaining fruit, God will give us the way. To preach the gospel by visiting people where they are is the real and practical preaching of the gospel. It is not practical to invite the fish to come to us.
One day we will all have to stand before the judgment seat of Christ (2 Cor. 5:10), and we will have to give an account to the Lord. The Lord desires that we would be fishers of men, so we must go fishing. We must go to gain people practically in an organic way for the building up of Christ’s Body. We should not go in a light way but with much prayer, even fasting, to have a thorough dealing with the Lord. We have to go in a desperate way to beget people, to bear fruit. If we go in a desperate way, people will be begotten through us with the gospel, with God, with Christ, and with His divine, marvelous salvation.
After baptizing people, we must bear the burden to care for them. If we baptize them, we will be like nursing mothers, loving them and considering them as little babes. We need to go back to them as soon as possible and then continue to go back to them again and again until they are established. These home meetings are for their nourishing and cherishing.
Then we can bring the new ones who live in the same neighborhood together for a small group gathering of perhaps twelve to twenty saints. In that small group we have to do everything to help them and fellowship with them. We can open up ourselves to them and allow them to open up themselves to us. Then we can have some prayer with them. We can ask them to care for us, and tell them that we will care for them. Then we will have the mutual care as Christian brothers and sisters. The small group gathering will be a time for this mutual care. This kind of Christian care is the warm cherishing. When a mother puts her child into her bosom, she is cherishing him. In the small group gatherings we also need to teach the saints, giving them particular instructions concerning their daily life. This will help them to grow in life.
Therefore, in the small group meetings, we can fellowship with the new ones, pray for them, take care of them, teach them, and give them instructions for their growth in life. After half a year these new ones will grow up and can be raised up to bear some burden to do what we are doing. They can be perfected to preach the gospel, to take care of home meetings, and to have small group meetings. Through the begetting, the nourishing, and the perfecting, the church can be multiplied repeatedly.
To carry out these crucial matters, we need to love the Lord. Even if we feel that we do not love the Lord Jesus, His love is within us because we have been saved by Him. The divine love of Jesus is a hidden factor within us. We should sincerely pray, “Lord Jesus, I don’t love You. Forgive me. Have mercy upon me. I want to love You. Make me love You. Constrain me with Your love for me to love You.” Then the Lord will answer this prayer, and we will begin to love Him. When we touch the Lord directly, we get stirred up from within to love Him. Because we love Him, we have to cooperate with Him to accomplish His desire for the organic building up of His Body.
We need to come out of old, traditional Christianity. We need to be up-to-date with the Lord. The means of transportation on the earth has improved tremendously throughout history. Why would we travel by a mule wagon when we can take a 747? We need to pick up the best way to practice the church life, which is the scriptural way. We have to preach the gospel to sinners, have home meetings with them in their homes, and group them together to have small group gatherings where the mutual care and building can take place for them to grow in life and learn the truths. After six months to a year they will be able to repeat our work to do the work of the New Testament ministry, which is to build up the Body of Christ organically.
If we rise up to take care of these three crucial matters— begetting, nourishing, and perfecting—the atmosphere, the situation, the condition, and the environment of the entire church life will be changed and improved in every way. All of us must rise up to do the work of the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers. According to the New Testament, all the believers are priests (1 Pet. 2:5, 9; Rev. 1:6). Paul tells us in Romans 15:16 that he ministered as a laboring priest of the gospel of God, in order that the offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable, having been sanctified in the Holy Spirit. To preach the gospel is to offer the Gentiles as a sacrifice to God for His satisfaction. This is altogether different from the practice of Christianity. We have no clergy or laity because we are all priests. We should all function as apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers so that we can see the reality of the building up of the Body of Christ.
Now we want to go on to see the fourth crucial matter for the organic building up of the Body of Christ—prophesying. First Corinthians 14 is an extraordinary chapter in the Bible because the entire chapter exalts prophesying. Verse 1 says, “Pursue love, and desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.” Verse 39 says, “So then, my brothers, desire earnestly the prophesying.” Verse 12 says, “Since you are zealous of spirits, seek that you may excel for the building up of the church.” The Greek word for excel may also be translated “abound.” Excel is the best translation because it is used in the way of comparison. Paul’s evaluation of speaking in tongues is low because it does not build up the Body of Christ. To prophesy, however, builds up the church as the Body of Christ. It excels all the other spiritual gifts, and it is the particular gift for the organic building up of the church (vv. 4-5). This is why Paul promotes and exalts the gift of prophesying.
The great lack among us is the building up of the Body of Christ. For us to be together is one thing, but to be built up is another thing. Togetherness is like the piling up of the building materials. The materials need to be fitted and built together for the building. The spiritual building up is accomplished by our prophesying. First Corinthians 14 is a unique chapter that talks about the building up of the church (vv. 4-5, 12, 26), and the unique excelling gift for this building is prophesying. Since we love the Lord and love the church, we must learn to prophesy.
First Corinthians 14 reveals the universality of prophesying. The believers can all prophesy that all may learn and all may be encouraged (v. 31). The believers should all prophesy to convict people and to examine people (v. 24). When one person speaks and the rest listen, some general help can be given, but the riches of Christ can come only from a certain individual. If twenty speak in the meeting, the riches of Christ can be displayed in a much fuller way. Spontaneously, all the attendants in this meeting will be instructed and perfected. How rich such a meeting would be! Paul says that if we all prophesy in the church meeting, a new one will be convicted and examined by all, and the secrets of his heart will become manifest (vv. 24-25). He will see who he is and where he is. Then he will repent.
The characteristic of prophesying is to speak for the Lord, to speak forth the Lord, and to speak the Lord into people, to minister Christ for the organic building up of the church, in larger meetings of the church. If our service in the church is only to preach the gospel, have home meetings, and have small group meetings, we have not arrived at the ultimate point for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ. We have to prophesy to build up the Body of Christ. We must seek to excel for the building up of the church. We must gain the skill, the ability, to speak the Lord forth into the listeners. We need to learn how to minister, how to dispense, Christ as everything into others that they may be nourished, strengthened, encouraged, and built up. If we come together every Lord’s Day to prophesy, all the saints will be built up. This is not togetherness, the “piling up of materials,” but it is the fitting, the knitting, and the joining—the building up of the organic Body of Christ.
To prophesy in 1 Corinthians 14 is not to predict. Even the majority of what Old Testament prophets spoke, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, was not prediction. Most of what Isaiah and Jeremiah wrote is a speaking forth of the Lord. The book of Isaiah is full of his rebuking of the children of Israel. This is speaking for the Lord and speaking forth the Lord. In the New Testament to prophesy is to speak for the Lord, to speak forth the Lord, and to speak the Lord into people. This is to minister Christ, to dispense Christ, into people. By our speaking, Christ can be ministered to the listeners, so we all have to learn to prophesy. We need to throw all our excuses into the “trash can.” As long as we can speak, we are able to prophesy.
We all need to have the desire for prophesying. This is why Paul tells us we need to pursue (v. 1a) and desire (vv. 1b, 39a) to prophesy. As we have pointed out, we also need to learn to prophesy. Because others learn something when we prophesy (v. 31), that means that we had to learn it first.
According to our study of the New Testament, there are three constituting elements of prophesying: God’s living word of life (Acts 5:20), the instant moving of the Spirit, and the view through the enlightening of the divine light. First, we need to be acquainted with the living word, so we need to read the Bible every day. Every morning we should spend ten minutes to pray-read two verses, dwell upon them, and enjoy the Lord in them. If we drive to work, we can pray-read these verses again on the way. If we pray-read two verses a day for six days a week, we can be saturated with six hundred twenty-four verses in a year. We will become saturated, soaked, and fully acquainted with these verses. This will give us the knowledge of the Word, and the proper expressions and utterance in our speaking.
The second element we need is the instant inspiration of the Spirit. Because we are persons dwelling in the Word, we will be in the fellowship of the Lord, and our spirit will be exercised and ready to receive the instant inspiration of the Holy Spirit at any time. We need the word of God, and we need the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Third, we need the view through the enlightening of the divine light. Our sky needs to be clear. Under the divine enlightenment we can see the real situation of ourselves, the church, and the saints. Because we have such a view, we can speak when the inspiration comes. We speak what we see with the divine word under the inspiration of the Spirit and with His enlightenment. This is prophesying.
According to our experience, it is good to have the larger church meetings divided into groups of about fifty saints to make it easier for more saints to prophesy. It is best to select a book such as Romans and cover about one chapter a week. This chapter can be divided into six sections for the six days of the week with two key verses in each section to pray-read, dwell on, and dive into for our enjoyment of the Lord. By doing this, we will have some inspiration of the Spirit. Then we can write down a short reminder of the inspiration we receive each morning. On Saturday evening we can put these six inspirations together to compose a prophecy of no more than three minutes to speak in the church meeting on the Lord’s Day. Some of the brothers may even function as coaches, instructors, or tutors to help the saints. After the saints compose a prophecy, they can present it to these brothers to help them improve it. We should practice our prophesying at home and either shorten it or lengthen it so that it is between two and a half to three minutes long. Then when we come to the church meeting, we will be prepared to speak for the Lord.
In the past the elders may have charged the saints to function, but the saints did not know what to speak or how to speak. With the fellowship that I have given in this chapter, we can have something to speak and can develop the skill to speak. This will fulfill 1 Corinthians 14:26—“Whenever you come together, each one has.” When we come to the Lord’s Day meeting, we already have something. We do not read what we have composed, but at the opportune time we speak what we have composed in a living way. Then our speaking will be full of riches. We can now say that we know how to prophesy, and we can have a prophecy for every church meeting. By our prophesying the church in our locality will be built up. We have the scriptural way of begetting people, nourishing the saints, perfecting the saints, and prophesying, speaking for the Lord. If we practice these four crucial matters, the church will be increased in number, and everyone will function to speak.
