Establishes that Christ is the sole head of the church and that the Holy Spirit appoints elders for its governance, emphasizing that true membership is by birth into the body of Christ, not by joining an organization. It details the New Testament pattern for church order, including the reception of believers based on their faith, moral purity, and sound doctrine, and outlines seven types of discipline for maintaining order and restoring offenders. The message also stresses the importance of every member exercising their spiritual gifts for the edification of the church, warns against the clergy-laity heresy and ritualism, and calls for a return to the New Testament pattern for church meetings and worship, particularly highlighting the centrality of the Lord's Supper.
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First Corinthians chapter fourteen. Verse twenty-six. How is it then, brethren? When you come together, every one of you have the psalm, have the doctrine, have the tongue, have the revelation, have an interpretation. Some people think that this is intended to be the the order and he's suggesting that this is what they ought to do this is not the case he's saying how does it happen that you have to do these things and then he adds let all things be done unto edify it's not a matter of every man having an opportunity to say his nickels word It's a matter of the work of the Lord being carried on to edify.
If any man speak in an unknown tongue, unknowns in italics, meaning another language, let it be by two, the most by three, and that by course, and let one interpret. But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church, and let him speak to himself and to God. Let the prophet speak two or three. not every man but two or three and let the other judge let the rest decide whether his ministry is profitable or not you can see that this wouldn't work in the modern organization today can't you this wouldn't work in the church today at all as it is set up in christening but this was the new testament order if anything be revealed to another that sitteth by let the first hold his peace for ye may all prophesy one by one there is room there is opportunity that all may learn and all may be comforted and the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets that is the man is under self-control
It won't do to say, the Spirit of God has given me something to say and I've got to say it. Usually it'll keep. Usually you can wait until a more opportune time to give it. For God is not the author of confusion, that is, tumult or unquietness. Whenever you see tumult or unquietness in the company of God's people, it comes from someplace else besides God. He is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted of them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. What came the word of God out from you, or came it unto you only? That is, are you the authority, or do you bow to the authority of Scripture? If any man think himself to be a prophet or a spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord. This is not optional. This is God's order. But if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant. Wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy and forbid not to speak with tongues.
Let all things be done decently and in order. One of the revised versions says, by free arrangement. My subject today is order in the local church. On the last day, the last Sunday of November, I spoke on the origin of the church. On the seventh of December, on the oversight of the church, the care, the government of the church. On the fourteenth, on the ordinances of the church. Last Sunday, you had your Sunday school program, and today we're taking up the order of the church.
And next Sunday we will conclude this series of studies by speaking about the outreach of the Church, our responsibility not to be ingrown, but to share with others the things that God has given us. I'd like to make Treasury points this morning without having the time really to go into the Scriptures. As I said before, I shall be glad to substantiate anything that I'm saying with Scripture, because I have no other authority. I have no blue book that I look up things to see how they're done in our organization, because I don't belong to any such organization.
I do have the Word of God, and I think I can show you from Scripture why we believe these things. The first thing I'd like to establish is that there is government in the local church. and that Christ himself is the head. This is said very plainly in Ephesians chapters one and two. It's said very plainly in First Corinthians chapter twelve. It's said very distinctly in Ephesians chapter four and in Colossians the first and again in the second chapters. We're told many times in the New Testament that the Lord Jesus himself is the only head of the church.
If you belong to something that has another head, either you belong to a two-headed monstrosity or you belong to something other than that which is headed by the Lord Himself. Don't get mad at me for saying that. That's what the Bible teaches. The Lord Jesus Himself is the head of His church. His church is composed of all true believers. from the day of Pentecost, when the church began, on to the return of Christ, when it will be completed. The church is not in the Old Testament. It will not be in the tribulation. It will not be as a part of things here on this earth during the millennium.
Rather than the church will be reigning with Christ. So the church age is from the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended and the church began, until the rapture when the church is taken up to be forever with the Lord. Christ is the head, then, and those who are born again, not those who join the church, because you can't join God's church. Acts chapter five plainly says that. You cannot join the true church of God. You must be born into it. Now not only does the Lord himself take the place of being the head of the church, but he is arranged in his absence for the care of the church by the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit descended in order to do this very thing, to form the church. And the church is the habitation of God through the Spirit. We're told in First Corinthians chapter twelve and verse thirteen by one spirit are we all baptized into one body. The Spirit of God puts you into the church when you receive Christ as your Savior. It was not necessary for you to join anything. And anything that you did join would have to be extraneous to and superfluous to the true church.
to which you already belonged when you were saved. Now the Holy Spirit of God, according to Acts twenty and verse twenty eight, appoints, raises up men in the local church to be responsible for the order and the government of that church. We're told that the elders of Ephesus came to Miletus and that there Paul told them, take heed to yourselves and to the church, to the flock, over which the Holy Ghost have made you overseers, to feed the flock of God which is among you.
There we see elders in the plural, always. There's never any such thing as one elder in a church. There's never any such thing as one elder over a group of churches. There's never any such thing as a group of elders over a group of churches, but there is always a group of elders over one church. This is the God-given order. In any company of the Lord's people, which is following the New Testament pattern, there will be a group of men who are responsible for the care and the feeding of that particular flock. The Spirit of God puts them in that position. The sheep do not choose their shepherds.
They are not elected. They are there because the Spirit of God has given them that work. And any man knows if the Spirit of God has led him to really care about the flock of God. One of the reasons why I'm so dead set against the ecumenical movements is that it denies the autonomy of the local church. That's only one reason. and give you forty-seven others if you've got the time the ecumenical movement is the foundation of the great harlot church which will go into the great tribulation period it is to be composed of all religious people without christ when the lord jesus comes he's going to take home all who belong to him and those who are left behind there'll be plenty of them will form this great Babylon church.
It's called Babylon the Great in Revelation, seventeen and eighteen, and a curse is pronounced upon the whole wretched midst. The ecumenical movement is not of God. In the first place, it is totally unnecessary because all true Christians are already one, so you don't have to make them one. We are told in Ephesians four that we are two keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. We already have this unity. We're merely told to keep it in the bond of peace. Secondly, it is not aiming for unity of believers at all, but it's aiming for unity of religious organizations.
The Pope has already said that he wants to see it extended so that it takes in Muslims, Buddhists, Confucius, and anything else, just so as to make it big. Get all of the religious organizations of the world together. The National Council of Churches two weeks ago came out with a statement that they now have a six-year plan, which is to be culminated by July the anniversary of the founding of our country.
On that date, they hope to have accomplished the following facts. There will be one and one only religious organization in the United States, and that organization will be entirely responsible for the religious training of all peoples, and there will be no creed at all. Do you get the picture? Now, you and I have to decide whether we're going to go back to the New Testament plan, first century Christianity, and this will mean suffering for what we believe, or whether we're going to be swept along with the crowd.
Any old dead fish can float down the stream. It takes a live one to go against the current. And I would hope that there are present here today enough real, live Christians who are ready by the Lord's help to do what you see in the Word of God, regardless of the approval or disapproval of those about us. Now, part of the order of the local church which is in the hands of elders because they are acting as the shepherds and the overseers of the local church, include two things, reception and discipline.
Reception means the receiving into our fellowship, not the taking into the membership, because the membership is already settled. You either are or you are not a member of the body of Christ. If you are a member of the body of Christ, There isn't anything more that anybody could do for you. If you're not a member of the body of Christ, joining everything under the sun wouldn't make you a member of the body of Christ. So we're not talking about membership, but we're talking about fellowship in the local church. Read in the second chapter of the Acts, Then all that believed were together. Wouldn't that be nice if we could have that in Colorado Springs?
All that believed were together. Not those who believe and those who didn't believe. Not everybody who belongs to certain organizations, but the believers. If you're a believer, you're my brother and sister, because I'm a believer too. And we ought to work together. Now, wherever there is a company of Christians, based upon New Testament teachings, trying to follow the simple pattern that's given to us here, that group of Christians are responsible to receive into their fellowship all other believers who come to them.
There are only three things to keep you from fellowship with other Christians. Let me give them to you. One, the lack of life. If you're not a born again believer, you are welcome at meeting. It's wonderful that you come and hear the word, but you are not part of the body of Christ. I had a dear old friend when I was a boy who had a peg leg, not an artificial limb, just a plain old peg leg. He whittled it out himself and it was fastened to his stump with a strap arrangement.
And you could always tell when he was coming down the street. You could hear this thing pegging along. But every night he told us when he went to bed he took this thing off and put it under the bed. Do you know why? Because it really wasn't any part of his body. Now you have to decide in your own heart whether you really are a part of the body of Christ or whether you're just an imitation. The second thing is there must not be any immorality in the life.
First Corinthians chapter five tells us very plainly that an immoral person, and this may include sexual immorality, it may include drunkenness, it may include covetousness and its attendant evils of all that goes with greed. It includes a great many things that are wicked. And he plainly says that that wicked one should be excluded from the fellowship of God's people. Now this is not the cutting off of a member, but this is the exclusion of a diseased and infected member.
When I was a boy, I was put in isolation because I had diphtheria. I'd probably got more attention from my mother's dad too than all the rest of the family put together, but I was definitely kept isolated from the rest of the family until they were sure that danger of infections passed. And if a real believer falls into sin, then the immorality, that person must be excluded. from the fellowship of the Lord's people. The third thing is, and you find this in Second Timothy chapter two, if a person is holding to a doctrine which is dishonoring to the person of Christ, in that particular case they were teaching that the resurrection was already passed and they were overthrowing the faith of Christians.
In our day we have a strong tendency, a strong movement, in our country today toward denying the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. This came up in the first century and was settled by the early Christians. It has repeatedly come up down through the centuries and always those who believe the Bible have settled it. We do believe in the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. We do worship him as God manifests in the flag. He was not just a baby born in Bethlehem. He was the Son of God come down to visit this planet, to live among men and to die for our sins and to rise again.
We might be forgiven. But this is being denied today. If a person should come to your company and want fellowship with you, and you find out that his background has been connected with something of this type, the denied the person of the Lord Jesus, his deity or his humanity, or held as some doctrine which is dishonoring to the person of Christ, you would have a responsibility to make sure that he was free from this doctrinal error. Moral error is bad. Doctrinal error is even worse. Now when those three things are settled, is he a believer?
Is his life clean? This doesn't mean perfect. Nobody is perfect. But is his life free from open seeing? And third, is he clear in his doctrines concerning Christ? If these things are settled, you have no right to keep away from your fellowship any true child of God. If you make anything else the criterion, if you make anything else requisite So that person's being taken into your fellowship, you immediately become a sect. And you're no better than any other sect. If you take anything else as necessary, so that person's remembering the Lord and working among you.
Now after a person is in company with the Lord's people, is meeting with the Lord's people, there arises the problem. If there is something in his life that is not right, what is to be done about this? Well, there are those who quote such verses as, Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat. They say, Nobody else has any business examining you. Nobody else has any right to question you. Everybody is on his own. Now, that's ridiculous, and anybody who makes that statement shows that he is not acquainted with the New Testament at all. because at least seven different kinds of discipline are taught in the New Testament.
I'm going to name them to you and give you the text of Scripture if you want to put them down. There'll be a help to you if you're willing to study them. The word discipline comes from the same word as disciple, and it has to do with the training. It also has to do with chastisement because when training can't be done one way, it has to be done another way. My father used to say, Johnny, if I can't get this in through your ears, I'll put it in through the seat of your pants. And he had a good way of getting that job done. And there are some people who will not listen to admonition, and therefore they have to be disciplined in some other way.
Now, the different types of discipline are these. Number one, personal trespass. Personal trespass. Matthew eighteen, fifteen to seventeen. And first Corinthians six, verses one to eight. Matthew eighteen, fifteen to seventeen. First Corinthians six, one to eight. If there is personal trespass, if there is difficulty between Christians, The offended one is responsible to go to the other and to get this thing straightened up.
If it isn't done, it will result ultimately in dividing the people of God. It results in disorder. When you have a group of soldiers marching, you don't let them pick out which foot they want to step on first. Any sergeant knows how to get that up, two, three, four in there so that they're in step. As you know, in First Thessalonians chapter five, he plainly tells us that there are some who are disorderly among you. And that word disorderly is a military term which means out of step. Whenever a Christian is disorderly, he is out of step.
And it soon becomes evidence of everybody else that he's out of step. And it won't be long until some will fall in step with him. And then you'll find the whole thing out of step. It must be taken care of. Now the second thing is a disorderly walk. This is not necessarily a trespass against some particular Christian, but it is a disorderly walk in the sense that the individual himself is not going on for God. Second Thessalonians three, verses six and fourteen. Second Thessalonians three, six and fourteen. What are we to do, the man of this case?
Well, he tells us there that he is just to be let alone. Just let him alone. And when he realizes that he is out of touch and out of step, If he's a real child of God, he'll want back. Now, the third thing is one overtaken in the fault. Galatians six, one and two. Galatians six, one and two. Overtaken in the fault means literally surprised by sin. This is not the case of a person deliberately sinning against God.
This is not the case of a person deliberately doing wrong. This is the case of a person who is just caught. He didn't really intend to do it. He was overtaken in the fall. And he says, you who are spiritual ought to restore such a one. The word restore is a medical term which means to set a broken joint, a broken bone. And so the elder brethren are responsible. for the order of the local church to see that this person is readjusted. The fourth thing is a sinful course of action. First Timothy chapter five, verse twenty.
First Timothy five, twenty. This is more than just being overtaken in the fault. This is following a sinful course of action. When this is done, Something has to be done about it. You've got to take the thing up. You cannot allow it to go on. You remember in the case of Miriam in the Old Testament, and this was not in the church, this was in the nation of Israel. When Miriam sinned against the Lord, she was put out of the congregation of the Lord, and the whole nation sat there in the wilderness. for a solid week until she got straightened out and was brought back in among them.
Now you think that over a little bit. You, you may not be very prominent, you may not take a very active part, but you could hinder the progress of the entire company of the Lord's people. My grandmother said that when she was a girl It was considered very unspiritual to have a heating plant in the church building. You were kind of pandering to the flesh if you did that. So they never had any heating plants, but it was somehow or other not unspiritual to bring a hot brick or a jug of hot water. And you put this at your feet and then you put a blanket over your knees and she said you'd be surprised.
how a hundred hot breaks can raise the temperature of a room. I suppose a hundred cakes of ice can lower it considerably. I wonder what you are. You might think that one over when you can't sleep. Now the fifth case of discipline is that of a heretic. The word heretic has been misused a great deal. The word itself really means a lopsided person, a person who has one string on his heart, a person who is riding a hobby to the exclusion of everything else.
He wearies the people of God to tears because that's all he knows. We had a man one time, all he ever preached about was the Jews. Now, there are many things in the Bible that ought to be taught concerning the Jews. But this man didn't believe that you ought to do anything for anybody under the sun. You shouldn't preach the gospel to anybody except for the Jews. Everything that you read in the Scripture was a promise of the Jews. He had a real thing about this. And it was such a hindrance to the Lord's people that he finally had to be admonished to just keep still. You're not helping God's people.
And... He was upset about it, but he bowed to it and it helped you. Titus three, verses ten and eleven. Titus three, ten and eleven tell you about this heretic. A heretical person is a person who gets off the track in his doctrine. Number six, those who divide the people of God. Dividers. of the Christians. Romans sixteen, seventeen and eighteen. That is the sixteenth chapter, seventeenth and eighteen verses. Romans sixteen, seventeen and eighteen.
A man like this is to be a boy. All he's trying to do is to line up people behind himself. And this is disorder. There is intended to be order among God's people. It's a return to our figure of a marching regiment of soldiers or company of soldiers. Now, only one person in that regiment, in that company, can call the cadence. If you get two people doing it, one at the front, one at the back, and they've got different ideas. It's going to be pretty confused. especially for those about in the middle.
They've got to decide which one of these they're going to follow. And a divider among God's people, we're told in the twentieth chapter of the Acts, is simply a man who seeks to draw away disciples after himself. And this is wicked. Why should I want followers? Why should I not want all of God's people to follow the Lord Jesus himself? This is enough. And then last, and it is last, it is a last resort. This never happens if it can be handled in any of these other six ways.
These are the immoral and the evil teachers. They're classed together. You read about them in First Corinthians five, thirteen, and in Second Timothy two, verses sixteen to nineteen. First Corinthians five and thirteen tells us about the immoral. Second Timothy two sixteen to nineteen tells us about those who are doctrinally wrong. Misleading God's people because they are not clear. This is not a matter of understanding things exactly the same. It's a matter of being wrong on fundamentals.
Things that touch the person of Christ. As a last resort, it may be necessary to put away from among yourselves a wicked person. Now, the object of discipline is always for the building up of the church and the restoring of the offender. It's not a matter of getting rid of them. It's not a matter of saying, well, that fellow's been a problem to us ever since we got him. Now's our chance. Let's get him out of here. That's not it at all. You don't do that with a member of your body. In fact, when the member of your body is injured, something is wrong with it.
You give it special care. It can't do its work. It may even have to be wrapped up so that whatever is wrong with it won't infect the other parts, but your idea is to restore it. You're trying to get it back to where it can again be useful. And this should be our idea. And all of this for the glory of God. Now government in the church is dependent on the right attitude, first of all, of the elders, because they are the ones who administer discipline on behalf of the whole church. Secondly, it requires a right attitude on the part of the younger church.
Because if they refuse to abide by the decision of the elders, you can see you've got division again. Sometimes we're carried away with our sympathy. And we say, well, I just don't think they had any right to tell him that he can't remember the Lord. He's a good friend of mine. Now, you're not helping that, Christian. If the elder brethren who have examined this thing carefully feel that this person had to be disciplined in this way, you're not going to help him any if you comfort him and say to him you got a bad deal and i'm on your side if you do this you're going to hinder his restoration in fact you may keep it from ever happening and at the same time you're going to spoil the fellowship among the people of god now breakdown in scriptural pattern I'm trying to give you what is God's order.
Breakdown in the spiritual pattern is no excuse for substituting some other way of doing it. I had a friend here in town who was pastor of a Bible church. He isn't here anymore, and neither is the church that he pastures. But years ago, we were good friends, and we used to talk about these things. And one day he said to me, well, John... What do you got against our church? I said nothing. Well, he said, you don't think we're as good as you are. I said, I never said that. Well, he said, you don't think it anyway. If you thought it, you'd be with us.
Well, I said, I was here first. Forget that. I've been teaching these things since before you got this work started. Well, he said, what do you think we're not doing is right? I said, for one thing, you do not have discipline in your church. She said, we most certainly do. He said, anytime anybody does anything I have no to prove of, he said, I whack it to them. That's discipline. That's dictatorship. There's no room for elders to act. It's purely a matter of that man being in a position where he could force his opinion upon others.
If you only knew the politics that goes on in most organizations today, a few years ago I was giving the spring lectures at Rockmont College in Denver and a man asked to see me after the meeting and I was counseling with the students but I found time to meet with him. And he was so wrought up that he couldn't sit down. We went in the counseling room and he just walked back and forth like a caged lion. He said, Brother Walden, I don't know what we're going to do. He said, our church is facing a real crisis. Well, I said, I don't know if I can help you.
I'll be glad to. If there's something in the Scripture, he said, and then he told me, one of their ministers was openly guilty of immorality. In fact, the woman that he was involved with tried to run over him in one of the city parks there, and the picture was taken and put in the paper, and the thing was so flagrant that nobody had any questions at all about what was going on. I said, I don't know what your problem is. He said, we don't know what to do. I said, you can't mean that. You can't be serious. Have you never read First Corinthians chapter five? Well, he said, no, it's too involved. You don't understand. He said, we've got a lot of ramifications of this.
He said, now, for instance, we've got this and we've got that. He told me something. I said, oh, now, wait a minute. You're talking about the politics of your particular church. I know nothing about it and I care less. If you want to do the scriptural thing, you put this man away as an immoral person. If you're going to handle it by politics, you get somebody else to help you. I shook hands with him and bowed him out. You know what they did? They lost the whole thing over there. And that man is still pastor. There was an automation in that same church. They had to move him to another community.
That's the kind of thing that is happening in the professing church today. And that was a fundamental group of Christians. There is a total breakdown in discipline in the church today because we are not following the scriptural order. Now, the second thing I want to speak to you about this morning is exercise of gift. I said the other day when we talked about oversight in the local church that there is no substitute for the gifts of the Spirit. The Spirit of God has given each member of the body a gift to function. and has given you something to do for the Lord.
And your responsibilities to find out what that is. First by reading the Scriptures, second by prayer, third by consultation with older Christians who can help you to determine what your real job is. Now, if each Christian is functioning, you won't have this kind of thing that you have in Christendom today where one man does everything. He's hired to be the pastor and the rest of us triply pay the bill. You wouldn't have that kind of thing if you followed the New Testament pattern of the gifts being distributed to all the members of the body. I haven't time to go into this. There are some permanent gifts and there are some sign gifts.
Tongues, healings, and things of this kind were given as temporary gifts. They are definitely temporary and they passed away before the New Testament canon was closed. But many of these gifts are permanent. Each of us then should find out what our gift is, develop that particular gift, and each of us participate as the Spirit of God gives room in the church. Now I have two feet to walk on and I need them both. Otherwise I'd be hopping instead of walking. But I don't walk on my hands. My hands have other jobs. Each member of my body has a function.
Many of the members of my body I've never even seen. And as far as I know, I can't even feel them. I suppose if they got disease, that feeling. But I don't know anything about them except what I've read. And yet every member of my body must be functioning. And so every member of the body of Christ and every member of the local congregation, which should be a representation of the body of Christ, should function. as the Lord has given to that particular person his particular gift. If this is the case, we will be doing the things that God wants us to do, but this is not to say that there won't be some inequities, some problems, some unprofitable actions.
Why? That's because they don't always function properly. A child, for instance, can be counted on, I don't know what the percentage, what the average is, but I think it's pretty high, can be counted on a certain number of times knocking his glass over at the table. He can be counted on that. That's because the glass is probably too big for him, because he hasn't learned perfect coordination yet, because his visual acuity isn't exactly what it will be as he gets older, and he just reaches for something and he knocks the glass over. That can get aggravating, but most of the time parents accept that as inevitable and hope that by the time he's out of college, he will have gotten enough coordination that he will be able to eat his dinner without having everybody jump up to keep the milk or water from running down their particular lap.
You have the same thing in the company of the Lord's people. Somebody said to me, I enjoyed going over to Northeast until I found out that I had to listen to some people who really didn't have much to give. Now he said, if I could go there and listen to two or three certain men every time, he said, I would enjoy that. But I don't like to listen to some of these other fellows who don't have much to say. Now, he may not have the best spiritual judgment. He may be simply listening for oratory. Or he may be right.
Because we don't always have it, do we? Any of us. There are times when we fail to give the Lord's people what we ought to give when we're speaking from the platform. There are times when we fail to do our jobs well. We ought to be concerned about this. We ought to try to do the very best we can every time we have an opportunity to serve the Lord in any capacity. Don't you think so? Well, nod your head once in a while so I know you're not asleep anyway. It'll be a very fine thing of each of you. Learn what your gift is and then develop that gift so that you can do the very best job.
One more thing about the exercise of gifts. Women have special gifts. They are not to take a public part. And any church who votes to do this has simply ignored the New Testament. And this has been done in three of the prominent denominations in the last year. God has reasons for this. This is not, he doesn't say this because he's downgrading women. Because Christianity has always upgraded them far more than any of the world's religions. Woman is given a much higher place in Christianity than anywhere else in the world. But the reason that God has given is that there can only be one head to a family, just as there's only one head to the church.
The Lord Jesus is the head of the church and not Dr. Poobaugh in New York. And the husband is the head of the family and not the wife. And most wives are very unhappy when they have to take that place of leadership. Some of you men are totally to blame for the fact that your woman, that your wife is self-asserted. She doesn't want that job at all, but you're failing. Now, when a family is operating as it ought to, the husband will be the head of the family, not the boss, the head. And the wife will not downgrade him in the eyes of the children, nor criticize him when he corrects the children. She'll bite her tongue and then talk to him in private about it later.
There are always ways of getting your job done. One of the ways you do not do it is in public. The same thing is true in the company of the Lord's people. This is why women wear covering on their heads in the company of the Lord's people. They do this in honor to the headship of the man. And this is very plainly taught, First Corinthians chapter eleven. Recently the Roman Catholic Church, after all these centuries, decided that a woman's head covering was not necessary. Apparently they didn't have any scriptural reason for teaching it in the first place, and so now they've changed it for no scriptural reason.
There are very few Christians who are aware of the high honor of a woman wearing a covering on her head in the church as an object lesson to the angels. I don't read anywhere in the Bible that men do anything that the angels take notice of. I don't know anything that we could do that would be an object lesson to the angels, and yet women have that privilege. This is part of God's order. You can ignore it if you want to, but you do so at your own peril. Now, the exercise of these gifts and the recognition of the divine order will leave no place for some of the present-day abuses.
One, the clergy and laity heresy. If you follow the New Testament order, you simply have no room for one man hired to be the pastor of a local congregation. It just won't work for you at it. That's all. You see, if the only muscle that I use is my biceps of my right arm, I'll really have some biceps. But this arm will actify, and I'll have to sit. I can't stand because I'm not using the muscles of my legs. I suppose my head would be a little wobbly. I've developed no muscles at all, except you ought to see that powerful bicep.
That's what you've got in the average organization today, and that powerful bicep is the hired preacher. You know what happens when he breaks down? The whole thing collapses, because it's all built around him. If the Lord Jesus is the head, if every member is functioning as he ought, one member, no matter who that member is, can break down, and it isn't fatal. The second thing that it eliminates, if you believe in divine order, is ritual. Ritual never came in until the church degenerated.
You won't find the slightest hint of it in the New Testament. You won't find anything about it in the history of the first two centuries. But as the church got away from God and got away from the New Testament pattern, they developed ritual to take the place of spirituality. You see, when Christians are functioning as they ought, you don't need the rest of this. But when Christians cease to function as they ought, then you've got to start turning the crank. You've got to get the machinery running. And this takes the place of the work of the Spirit of God in the individual. And by the way, ritual is not simply something that is carried on in the more ritualistic churches only.
I've noticed quite a little ritual among those who meet as you do here. Whenever they get into a pattern of doing things the same every Sunday, that's ritual. It's your own little ritual as you develop. When the same man participates constantly in the prayer meeting or in the worship meeting, this is ritual. When certain men never participate because they expect the others to do it, this is ritual. When you develop a little pattern such as singing a hymn and then having a prayer, and then a hymn and a prayer, and a hymn and a prayer, and a hymn and a prayer, you've developed a ritual.
When you reach the point where everybody feels that he's got to read a little scripture before he prays, you've developed a ritual. All of these things are simply the ritualization of what ought to be the spontaneous leading of the Spirit of God. If you're going to be led to the Spirit of God, you've got to be led by him seven days a week. See? Not just on Sunday morning. And if you're in touch with the Lord, the Lord may lead you to do the unusual, as well as the usual. Now, I'm not the unusual for the sake of being unusual, but I mean by that the Spirit of God may lead you a different way than he has in the past. When the same man gives out the first hymn every Sunday, that's ritual.
Worship, worship is the spontaneous rising of the soul to praise and exalt the Lord Jesus. That's why we don't even use any musical instruments in a worship meeting. Because you don't need anything mechanical. When the Spirit of God is leading His people to exalt the Lord Jesus, you don't need mechanics of an organ or a choir or a human leader or any of these things. This is why entertainment has no real place in a simple New Testament church.
And a great deal that passes for church services today is really religious entertainment. They found out that it gets crowded. And so they put on a kind of a show. Now there are unspiritual people who demand this. They're ill at ease in a meeting that is dependent upon our appreciation of the Lord Jesus. They would rather have a pageant. But there's no reason for this, no room for this, when we follow the scriptural order. I'll tell you another thing it leaves up. That's the exaltation of man.
I was introduced at a meeting one time by a young fellow. It was the most flowery introduction I ever heard. He didn't know me at all. He was making the thing about a whole cloth, but he'd heard somebody else do it. And, you know, I just sat there and marveled. I said, am I really that wonderful? I didn't realize this. When I got up, I said, you know, after hearing that introduction, I'm anxious to hear what I've got to say myself. And I hope that it properly rebuked that young fellow because that was utterly out of place among Christians. Why should one person be exalted?
We're only members of the body. I've got a nice thumb there. Suppose I go around to that thumb and give him a prominent place all the time. People would soon send a man after me with a little white coat and lock me up and flub-blub. That thumb is no better than that thumb. As far as I know, they're no better than those fingers. Why should that thumb be exalted? Why should one individual be given high-sounding titles? the Reverend Dr. So-and-so. God forbid that we should drop to such low levels that we exalt mere human beings rather than the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now as to the order of meetings, if you'll turn to the second chapter of Acts at your leisure, I won't ask you to turn now, but at your leisure, put this down in your notes, turn to the second chapter of Acts beginning at verse forty-one, and read what they did in the early church. We're told that they that gladly received His word were baptized. And then it says they continued steadfastly in the Apostle's doctrine and in fellowship and in breaking of bread, and in prayers, and they gave liberally to the work of the Lord. Now that's divine order. Every child of God should be present at the remembrance of Christ, what is known as the Lord's Supper.
And if you're not there, you'll be like Thomas. In the twentieth chapter of John's Gospel, Thomas was missing. and he failed to see the Lord. And the other said, we've seen the Lord and said, I don't believe it. I'm not going to believe it unless I put my finger into the hole in his hand and thrust my hand into his side. I'm not going to believe it. And that's just what happens when you stay away from the fellowship of God's people. Hebrews chapter ten plainly tells us in verse twenty-five, forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as a manner of some is.
but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching. You need the company of other Christians. It's very conceited of you to think that you can get along without the company of other Christians. You need the teaching of the Apostles' doctrine. Somebody says, well, I'm not very much interested in learning all that because I'm not going to be a preacher. Well, I see. That's like my left hand saying, I'm not interested in getting any circulation of blood through there and getting any nourishment of the food that's carried in the oxygen, because after all, I never intend to do any writing.
You're a part of the body of Christ, and you need what the Lord gives to every member of His body. And if you're not being well-taught, well-fed, You're not going to be much good. In the early church, the Lord's Supper was central. That was the meeting of the week. Now, the Lord's Supper is the only meeting that's entirely for Christ. Teaching, prayer, Sunday school, all the rest of these are meetings for the benefit of people. The Lord's Supper is for him. That's the meeting that's most neglected today.
Once a month, once a quarter, once a year. I met some Christians recently, quite some time ago now, who told me that they hadn't remembered the Lord in almost three years in their congregation because their minister said they were not spiritual enough to do. That's like saying, you don't get anything to eat. all this week because you're weak. Just as much sense to it. When somebody gets weak, he needs to be fed. He needs to be helped. There's a great lack of teaching today.
We have a lot of what we call sharing, and we've got a lot of exhortation, and we don't have much real solid teaching. People need to learn the facts of the New Testament. They need to learn the facts of the Word of God. And you ought to be at meetings where this is done. Now, I'll just have to close by saying this. You and I have a responsibility in maintaining the order in the local congregation of believers. If you're a part of this congregation that meets here regularly to remember the Lord, to study His Word, to pray together, you have some responsibility first of all you have a responsibility to recognize that the Lord Himself is present among His people Matthew eighteen and twenty is not just a little verse to be quoted as though we've got something special where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them this is something to be taken seriously Suppose that it had been
announced in the papers today, this morning, that President Nixon was going to be here this morning at the eleven o'clock service. Do you think we'd have had any empty seats? Do you think we would have gotten the people in the house even? Why? Because we are in our presence. And I would want to be here too. But the Lord Jesus said he'd be here this morning. And some people stayed home because there was a little snow on the ground.
I always put it in the mind of the young fellow who called up his girl and said, I love you more than life itself. I would go through fire and water for you. And if it doesn't rain, I'll be over to see you this evening. That's about the extent of our devotion. You love the Lord Jesus. You recognize His presence. You recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit and His presidency among God's people. The Spirit of God has a right to lead. And you recognize it.
You come to the meetings in spiritual condition so that the Spirit of God can lead you to do your part. Brothers and sisters, I don't know whether you believe what I believe or not, but I want to state again that I believe that we have all we need in the New Testament to guide us as to the pattern for meeting together as believers. I don't believe that we need anything to bring us up to date for the twentieth century.
I'm well aware that this is the space age. I saw the man step on the moon too. But he was just a sinner like the rest of us. There really hasn't been anything drastic happen since the first century. We've only changed our methods of transportation. And most of that's happened in my lifetime. I started out in a horse and buggy. I know that we have superior ways of doing things, but we haven't changed inside.
We have the same problem. We have the same emotional needs. We have the same worries. We have the same distresses. We still can find satisfaction in the Lord and in His words. Psalm twenty three still comforts the hearts of people who are in distress, just as it did two thousand, three thousand years ago. Do you believe that the New Testament is enough? Do you believe that the order that's given in the New Testament is still the right order?
All right, if you do, then I challenge you to get into this and study it. Study the Acts of the Apostles. See if you can find all that there is in Christendom in the Acts of the Apostles or in the New Testament Epistles. And if you don't find it there, have the courage to drop it and drop it now. Let's follow the New Testament pattern. Let's accept the order that's given in the book. And let's not deviate from it. Not even one cares break. Let's pray. Our blessed Lord Jesus, as the head of the church, We look up to thee this morning to tell thee that we thank thee that thou hast redeemed us, brought us to God, that thou hast made us members of thyself.
And we thank thee for sending the Holy Spirit that he might make the word real to us. We thank thee for giving us the whole word of God. And we thank thee for men who have taught it to us and for the privilege of teaching it to others. We thank the Our Father for those who are willing to follow the simple New Testament pattern. We thank the For those who are satisfied with the Word of God. We thank the Our Father for young people who are coming on, who are following in the footsteps of some of us who will soon have to lay down the work of the Lord, turn it over to them.
We thank the that there are those who really believe the Scriptures, who really want to follow this pattern. We ask our Father that thou keep us from traditionalism and superstition and ritual and all of these things that take the place of the leading of the Spirit of God. We pray our Father that thou keep us from laziness, the desire to pass our responsibilities off to somebody else. rather than carrying them and by the help of the Lord doing what they have given us to do. Now we ask it to bless us as we separate.
We pray again for any who have never received the Lord Jesus. Help them to see that they are outside of all this. And God bless thy dear children. We pray for the namesake of Christ our Lord.