The church is not a building but the body of believers, called to be the pillar and ground of truth. This means actively upholding and proclaiming the entirety of God's Word, not just selected parts, and recognizing that all Scripture is divinely inspired and true. The sermon emphasizes that the church's primary responsibility is to spread the gospel through individual outreach, mirroring the fervent, unorganized efforts of the early Christians who reached the known world without modern conveniences. It critiques modern church practices that prioritize organization and comfort over evangelism and calls believers to personal responsibility in sharing their faith, supporting missions, and demonstrating genuine love and fellowship towards all of God's people, avoiding sectarianism and ingrown attitudes.
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First Timothy chapter three. First Timothy chapter three, I read the last three verses of this chapter. These things write I unto you, hoping to come unto thee shortly, but if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God. Now this building in which you were seated this morning is not the house of God. There was absolutely nothing in Scripture to indicate that any material building on earth is the house of God. In fact, Acts chapter seven plainly states, God does not dwell in temples made with hands.
The house of God as he tells us in other scriptures, especially in the first and second chapters of Ephesians, the house of God is composed of the various stones of the temple, that is, the persons who have been hewn out of nature's quarry and have been fitted into their place in the church, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself is the foundation stone, And you and I are built into that temple. And Peter says in his first epistle in chapter two, you also, that is as well as Peter. Peter was called a stone.
He said, you also are living stones built up in spiritual house. And so we as members of the family of God, as members of the church of God, as members of the bride of Christ, are members of the House of God. Now he said you ought to know how to behave yourself in the House of God. This doesn't mean how to behave yourself when you come here on Sundays or Wednesday nights. Because it's not behaving inside of this building. What difference would that make to God?
If you behave yourself inside of this building and then you can misbehave outside of the building, that would make sense. But since you're always in the house of God, you need to be always behaving yourself. I think this would change our behavior on Mondays. We recognize this simple fact. Now it's called something else, which is the Church of the Living God. You'll know, of course, that this building is not the Church of the Living God. No building is a church. A man was telling a friend of his about their beautiful new church that they had built. And he told him all of the wonderful features that it had, and he said, well, does your church have ears?
He said, ears. Yes, he said, you told me about the steeple and the nave and the organ loft, but does your church have ears? He said, I don't know what you're talking about. Well, he said, in the book of the Acts, it says that these things came to the ears of the church. Of course, since the church is composed of the people, the church does have ears. The house of God and the church of the living God is composed of the believers. Now, what are we called? The end of verse fifteen says the pillar and ground of the truth. If I have a text this morning, this would be it.
The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. And without controversy, and this is the truth, without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. That's the incarnation. Justified in the Spirit, that's his impeccability, his sinless humanity. Scene of angels, that's his demonstration. Preached under the Gentile, That's the evangelism of this world. Believed on in the world, this is the gathering out of believers to make them part of the body of Christ and received up into glory.
This is the glorification of our Lord, which will eventually result in our glorification together with Him. Now probably verse sixteen was originally part of a song used in the first century. Because in the translation of the New Testament, the language in which it was given, in the Greek language, verse sixteen is set in such a way as to indicate that this is a kind of a song, a poem. And undoubtedly the Spirit of God carried this poem of the early Christians over and made it a part of Scripture because it so beautifully states the truth.
Pilot came out before the people to say he found no fault in the Lord Jesus. That was the result of his having asked one question, but never waited for an answer. He said to the Lord Jesus, what is true? But he was in such a hurry that he never waited for an answer. How would you answer that? What is true? The church is the pillar and ground of the truth. Then we've got to know what the truth is. Is the truth simply the little peculiarities that one group of Christians has?
Is the truth some particular section of the Bible that we accept or emphasize? I don't like red letter New Testaments for the simple reason. that a red letter New Testament presupposes that the actual words of the Lord Jesus are more important than any of the rest of the New Testament, which on the very face of it is a mistake. You know, of course, that it's all part of the Word of God. What difference does it make whether it was spoken through the lips of the Lord Jesus or through the lips of the Apostle Paul or some other person? If it's preserved for us as a part of the body of truth, we ought to accept it as the truth because it is part of God's Word.
And John seventeen seventeen is my basis for that statement. The Lord Jesus said, Sanctify them in his prayer to his Father. Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is true. Not part of the word of God, all of the word of God. All of the word of God is true. And it takes all of the word of God to make up the body of truth. And unless you're acquainted with the word of God, You're not going to be familiar with the truth. In the second chapter of Galatians, the Lord wrote through the Apostle Paul to these Galatians to say that he had been most careful to see that the truth of the gospel was preserved to them.
You know, of course, that the Jews of the first century tried to change the gospel and make it a legal kind of thing. They tried to say that you cannot be saved unless you receive the signs of the covenant and keep the law of Moses. And the book of Galatians is written to show that Gentiles never have been under the law and never will be. While the book of Hebrews is written to show that the Jews are no longer under the law, although they once were. The gospel must be kept strictly separate from the law. The law convicts us of our sin. The gospel is the story of how God relieves us from our sin, delivers us from us.
And in that same book of Galatians, the first verse of the third chapter, he tells us that he wants them to be careful, not to be removed away from the truth. Don't let anything take you away from the Word of God. Now, I do not believe that the Church has ever originated any truth. I'm well aware that the Roman Catholic Church teaches this, but I don't believe it. There are other churches now that have adopted it. They're saying that the Church has authority to give out certain things as truth.
If this is true, then of course they can impose upon the people certain traditions of the Church and give them equal status to the Word of God. And you can see right away what a dangerous thing that would be. The church has never originated any truth. The church is responsible to be the pillar and ground of the truth. A church is responsible to do many things. We've seen in our past studies together that the church is responsible to shepherd the young of the flock, look after the babes and cranks. We have seen that the church is responsible to worship the Lord Jesus. It is his church.
And the worship service, the Lord's Supper, is the central meeting of the church. It has been relegated to the background and given a relatively unimportant place in most organizations today. But originally, when the Christians came together on the first day of the week, They came together for one purpose, to break bread. And then while we were there to break bread, they studied the Word, they prayed, they told other people about Christ, and all of the other functions of the church centered around this one central point. Our business is to give our Lord Jesus Christ his rightful first place, that in all things he might have the preeminence, Colossians one said.
But now another function of the church that we want to consider this morning is to be the pillar and ground of the truth. A pillar in the Bible, whenever a man set up a pillar, he set it up as a kind of a witness or a signpost. For instance, Jacob set up a number of pillars. The first time he met the Lord, he took the rock that he'd been using for a pillow and made a pillar out of it. He stood his pillow up and made a pillar. And that pillar he poured oil on and said, This is Bethel, the house of God, because God was here. And everyone who went by that place would recognize this.
Whether he inscribed it or how he did it, we don't know. We do know that later on when the children of Israel came into the land, they piled up a bunch of stones and then they plastered them and then they engraved on the plaster all of the Ten Commandments that had been given by Moses. This was called a pillar. We're told that Jacob, when he met his father-in-law at the place called Mizpah, that's what Jacob named it, that they raised up a heap of stones, and they said, Let this heap of stones be a witness between us. And this pillar that was heaped up on this mountain top was to be a witness between them, but neither one of them would cross this mountain to injure or to hurt the other person.
That, by the way, is the meaning of mispa. And when you say mispa to somebody, you aren't saying anything nice at all. You're saying you stay on your own side of the fence. Don't come over here and bother me. That's really what you're saying. It's been used in many other ways, but that's what it was for. It was a witness. Now, the church is said to be the pillar of the truth. Our job is to witness to the truth. our job is to keep the truth you know what's happening in christening today don't you leaders of the church are giving away something that they never really owned they are dismissing the scriptures themselves as being controversial and now the council of churches has decided that by july fourth nineteen seventy six It's a little over six years from now.
They have decided that there will be an existence in the United States only one church, and this church will be a totally creedless church. That means it will be a church without any truth. Now, the Lord said the church is to be the pillar and ground of the truth. They say we're going to get rid of all truth and just have happy fellowship together. Well, why don't you just go join the Alps or the Moose or the Scouts or something else? What difference does it make? All you want is just a place where you can have happy fellowship. Leave the church out of it. The church has a responsibility for something far more than just a happy place of fellowship.
And this responsibility is to be a pillar of the truth. But not only that, to be a ground of the truth. The word is translated stay in many other places. It means like a foundation, something dependable, something on which you can rest, not simply something to tell others about it, but something that is held solidly where we are right here. We're going to stick to the truth. We're going to hold in the truth of God. And you have many instances of this in the Word of God as well. In First Thessalonians chapter one, for instance, he said, From you sounded out the word of the Lord in all Macedonian Achaia.
Isn't that wonderful? The one little congregation of believers who were definitely said to be inferior to the Bereans, and yet from them sounded out the word of the Lord in the whole country of Greece, which is now called Greece. Now this is our job. First of all, outreach to unbelievers. If you will study the book of the Acts, you will be struck with one thing, the total dissimilarity, the total unlikeness between the first century teachings and the first century practices and what you see in Christendom today.
I have no intention to tear down anybody or anything. I am not against anybody. I'm trying to teach the truth as it is taught in the Word of God. But as you read through the Acts of the Apostles, and as you read through the officials where the doctrines are given, where do you find organizationlessness? Where do you find even a shred of it? Where do you find even a hint of it? It just isn't there. There is absolutely no organizationalism. And we've gone to seed on organization today in the church. We have built up tremendous big machines.
And they take lots of oil. And that's why the church today has become a big business machine. And that's why the government is trying to take out of their hands some of this profit. which benefits nobody except their own particular church. The reason that certain groups of Christians have had to go into the insurance business, into the building business. And I read the other day, one of them bought a string of theaters. I don't know how in the world they would fit this in with the scriptures. But anyway, the reason the churches have gone into big business have accumulated holdings is because they've got so much machinery set up, but they've got to have this big income to keep the thing going.
And the Lord never intended it at all. Now, first century evangelism was, first of all, a man-to-man individual interest. Look at Acts chapter eight, please. I have mentioned to you before that the clergy and laity, heresy, that's all it is, of our day has done untold damage in the church. Here's one of the ways in which it has damaged the work of the Lord. Most people believe that you must be trained to serve God.
that just as you must have a doctorate in order to practice medicine, so you should have a doctorate to practice religion. It's just as important to be a DD as it is to be an MD. And if you don't have a DD or some other indication, or you're having been exposed to theology, Then they feel that in some way you must not be able to really teach the Word of God. And yet the New Testament tells us plainly that every Christian, as a member of the body of Christ, has a function, and every one of us is intended to be doing something for him.
This is one of the things that all of the Christians did. Acts chapter one. Now chapter eight, excuse me, in verse one. Paul was consenting unto his death, Stephen's death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church, which was at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Now the apostles were the preachers. Originally they did all the preachers. They were the ones who were called by the Lord to do the preaching. He called twelve apostles and sent them out, and then he called seventy other men, which are not necessarily called apostles, but they were his emissaries that were sent out by him.
And these people originally did all of the preaching. But when the church began, when the church began in the city of Jerusalem, in the second chapter of the Acts, it was the apostles who stood up to do the preaching. And now, right away, the apostles must be in jail. I don't know where else they'd be. We read several times between the first chapter and between the second chapter and the eighth chapter about different ones being jailed. So we assume that's where they were. With the exception of the apostles, the Christians were all scattered abroad.
Now, look at verse four. therefore they that were scattered abroad now this would be everybody but the preachers remember that now verse one says so they were all scattered abroad except the Apostles verse four therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word now who preached the word everybody but the preachers that isn't what you have in Christendom today and we have gotten away from the simple New Testament pattern that every person is responsible to preach.
The apostles were responsible to preach, but they were in jail, so they couldn't. The rest of the Christians were responsible to preach, and they were scattered everywhere, and so they went everywhere preaching the word. They didn't sit around and feel sorry for themselves. They didn't try to get back into Jerusalem. They said, we are missionaries. God sent us to this town. We had to leave our home. Now, what's our job? Our job is to preach the word. Our job is to tell everybody we can about the Lord Jesus Christ. This was the way they did it in the first century. Now, I'm not confusing this with the special gifts of an evangelist. There were certain men who were called to be evangelists.
The same is true today. The word evangelist comes from the word evangel, which means gospel. So an evangelist preaches the evangel. A gospeler preaches the gospel. A gospeler is not the same as a teacher. Ephesians chapter four plainly distinguishes between evangelists, pastors, and teachers. A pastor is a shepherd. A teacher, as the name implies, is one who teaches the word to those who have already accepted the gospel. So the evangelists were those who had the special gift and the special responsibility to go out and evangelize. And I'm not ignoring this, but I'm saying that it was never left to them alone.
Have you ever thought how that these have-nots of the first century could do so much more than the haves of the twentieth century? Somebody divided our country into the haves and the have-nots, you know. In the first century, they did not have any organization. In the first century, they did not have any rapid means of communication. If they wanted a message sent to somebody, they had to send it by somebody. And if he was in a big hurry, he got on a horse or a dromedary.
If he wasn't in any hurry, he walked or rode a donkey. That's the way they communicated. with each other between distances. No radio, no newspapers, no printing presses, no TVs. They didn't have any telegraph or telephone. They could tell a woman. But got the message out anyway. They got it out. Men and women alike got it out. And they succeeded, the have-nots of the first century, succeeded in doing what the haves of the twentieth century are not getting done. They got the gospel to the whole known world by the end of the first century.
Plainly says that. Plainly says that they preached the gospel in the whole known world. Now the world is smaller than it is now. But they got it out. Paul went as far as the peninsula of Spain. Thomas undoubtedly went into England, and it's quite possible that he also made India. The people of India have some pretty good evidence that Thomas got that far. They got around. Maybe they had to go by sailing ship, but they got there. You're acquainted with Paul's missionary journeys?
He got into the country north of the Mediterranean, what is now Eastern Europe and Western Asia. He reached the people in many of the areas. Some of them went down into Africa. In fact, the Lord sent the treasure of Ethiopia up into Jerusalem to get the gospel. And he was probably the first one who carried it down there. Without organization. Without all of the hullabaloo, without all of the press agent type of thing that we have today, they just quietly spread the gospel and they spread it against the opposition of the government.
It was an underground church. The first century church was an underground church, an unpopular church. It was as good as your life. to admit that you were a Christian. And most of the first century Christians sealed their testimony with their own blood, but they got the job done. That's why we don't have outreach today. When have you ever gone out of your way? When does it ever cost you anything to tell somebody else the gospel? If it's convenient, you ever get a good chance you'll say something to him about it.
How long has it been since you went out on a bad evening, when you'd like to stay home and read and watch TV and just enjoy your home? How long has it been since you bundled up and got the car out and drove somewhere to talk to somebody about the Lord? You call people on the telephone, what do you talk about? How long has it been since you called somebody up just for the purpose of talking to them about the Lord Jesus? We've got marvelous mail service. How many letters did you write this last week just for the purpose of telling somebody the good news, sharing with them what you know about Christ?
Most of you spent a lot of money for posters in the last thirty days. How much of it? went to really exalt the Lord Jesus. I don't mean just send out a card with a verse on it or something like that. I mean, what have you done to really reach so? That's what they did in the first century. Now the church has some definite responsibilities. While we're here in Acts, look at chapter thirteen. I think the first responsibility of the church is to recognize the call that is given to other Christians to spread the gospel. And I do not necessarily mean to go to the foreign mission field.
I wish we could sink that word into the depths of the sea. Foreign missions. And home missions. We have no authority in the Bible to distinguish between the two. And yet we have two magazines set up. for the definite purpose of propagating foreign missions. Do you know that Dorothy Wick, who is our caseworker at the children's home, was listed as a foreign missionary when she came down here from Toronto, Canada. She was listed as a foreign missionary in Canada because she had come here. And then she took out citizenship papers and they dropped her from the list.
doing exactly the same work, and she's now a home missionary instead of a foreign missionary. Being a foreigner is all a matter of viewpoint. A week from today, I expect to be a foreigner. I expect to be preaching a week from today in San Juan in Puerto Rico. Well, I guess Puerto Rico belongs to the United States, but I'll be a foreigner there. I'll have to speak in a foreign town. What is a foreigner anyway? Just a displaced person. And I wish we had just get rid of that connotation, foreign and home missions. God has given us a field. What is the field? The Lord Jesus said in the Thirteenth chapter of Matthew, the field is the world.
And you're just as much a missionary when you cross the streets, you are when you cross an ocean. In fact, if you're not willing to cross the street, the Lord probably wouldn't want you to cross an ocean. This is what I object to in literature crusade. They're making our young people think it would be a marvelous thing if you go to South America or India or some other place. And they've never done a thing in their own neighborhoods, most of them. Never won anybody for the Lord at all. They have no particular interest in reaching the kids in their own neighborhood. This is the way they did in the first century. Look at Acts chapter thirteen. Now there wasn't a church that was at Antioch. Certain prophets and teachers and Barnabas, Simeon that was called Niger, that means a black man, by the way, fully integrated assembly.
And Lucius of Cyrene and Manan, which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. That's Paul. He's called Saul at first. Later he changed his name to Paul. Saul means prince. Paul means little fellow. That's progress. You might be a prince before you're saved. When you get saved, you'll gradually become a little fellow if you're ever going to be any use to the Lord. And as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me, Barnabas and Saul, for the work whereunto I've called in. And when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, Paul later describes this as giving to them the right hand of fellowship.
It wasn't putting their empty hands on somebody's empty head and making a preacher out of them. It was simply the matter of showing that they were in fellowship with what they were doing. They sent them away. So they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed under the solution, from thence the sales of Cyprus, and so on. The Holy Spirit called Barnabas and Saul to preach the gospel in a certain place. At the same time, the Holy Spirit told the local elders of the church at Antioch what he was doing. Young people, listen to me.
The Spirit of God never calls you to do anything without also making it plain to your older brethren that you are fitted for that work. And whenever you have to fight for recognition, there's something wrong with the way you have been living in the past. or there's something wrong with the evidences that you really are called of the Lord. Elder brethren, you have a definite responsibility to be exercised before God to find out what the Spirit of God is doing. If the Spirit of God is calling somebody to carry on a work in another part of Colorado Springs, or in another part of the state of Colorado, or in another part of the United States, or in another part of the North American continent, or on another continent, then you ought to know what it is.
You ought to be concerned about it. You ought to be praying with it. In fact, they fasted and prayed. They were in earnest about this. So the church's responsibility, was to recognize the call of the individual. Now the church doesn't preach the gospel. The church can't preach the gospel. The church might gather in a place while one man got up and preached the gospel. Or as individuals they might go to their neighbors in different places and individually they preach the gospel. But the outreach to unbelievers is and always has been and always will be an individual matter.
The church has fellowship in this, one, by recognizing the call. Two, by assisting them, by sending men to help them. We read together there in the eighth chapter about their preaching the word everywhere. This included Samaria. There was a man living with Philip, one in the Samaria, and he preached the gospel, and quite a few people accepted the Lord. And back there in Jerusalem they heard about it. So what did they do? Meanwhile, they must have sprung Peter and John out of the prison because they sent Peter and John down there. Wasn't Peter and John? I want to be sure now, I'm saying. That's in the eighth chapter of the Acts.
Yes, verse fourteen. Now when the apostles, which were at Jerusalem, heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John. So Peter and John went down to help Philip in the new work that he had started in Samaria. Now, you're all familiar with the work which Richard and Betty Bishop are doing down in the St. Louis Valley. I say what they're doing, which the Spirit of God is doing. This is the way they would want it to be. But they're doing a good work. believe you, me, they're working.
It's costing those kids something. They don't have much money, but they gladly get their car out and drive to Montevista two and three nights a week in order to visit the young Christians over there, where they're now also remembering the Lord. They have people in their home. They don't have a great deal, but they share what they've got. Richard and Betty didn't even have a deep freeze. So he built one out of a pine box and put sawdust in it. And it's cold over there. It stays cold every night in San Luis Valley. And they hide in this box of sawdust, the food that they want to keep frozen.
And all of you have got a nice deep freeze. You might think about this sometime. They go into their deep freeze and they take out the food that they need to provide for students, and Christians who come to visit them on Sunday because their home is the place where the church meets. They have thirty chairs and places for people to sit, and this includes everything they have in their house, the kitchen stool, and the little boudoir seat from the bedroom. When they get all of these in their room, they've got room for thirty people to sit down. The Sunday that I was down there, twenty-nine sat down in their room.
to remember the Lord. Now, some of the Christians here were exercised about this and have gone down there. I don't need to mention names, but there are some from your own assembly and some from the south side that have been concerned about helping those people down there. This is part of our outreach. God keep us from becoming ingrown and forgetting that there is a sandaly valley. and a west slope in Colorado and many other places in the world where the Word of God can go out. Now, the third thing that they did was to send money.
In Second Corinthians chapter ten, Second Corinthians the tenth chapter, and we'll break in at verse fourteen. For we stretch not ourselves beyond our measure as though we reach not unto you. For we are come as far as to you also in preaching the gospel of Christ. Not boasting of things without our measure, that is, of other man's labors, but having hope when your faith is increased. Now look at this.
When your faith is increased. When you grow up, that we shall be enlarged by you. According to our rule, abundantly, to preach the gospel in the regions beyond you. What's he saying? He says, somebody paid to send the gospel to Corinth. And we came to Corinth and preached it faithfully. And you got saved. Now it's about time that you grew up and furnished the money so that we can go on and preach it in the next place. That's what he's saying. And that's exactly God's way.
I don't know how much of the money that comes into your hands goes to carry the gospel on further, but I'm sure it isn't anywhere near as much as goes just to keep your own carcass warm and fed and clothed and decorated and happy. In the United States last year, we spent three times as much for cosmetics as we did for all religious work put together. We spent four times as much for liquor, said we.
I'm speaking of Americans now. I didn't spend any of it. You didn't either. The Americans spent four times as much for liquor as we spent for the entire Christian work. put together and when I say Christian work much of this would be subject to question wouldn't it you couldn't really call it Christian so when you think how much of it was really the spreading of the gospel how small it is now you expect this of the world expect this of unsaved people you've got a right to expect better than this in Christians I challenge you to read second Corinthians Chapters eight and nine.
And mark the superlatives that are used in connection to Christian giving. Don't turn to it now. Put it down in your notes. Read Second Corinthians eight and nine. Eight to ninth chapters. And mark the superlatives, the words that are used to show that they were liberal and enthusiastic in their spending of money in order to get the word out to others. And you'll notice twice in those two chapters, once in each chapter, you'll notice that twice, he says, in your giving, you'll prove how much you love the Lord Jesus. Maybe we have to revise that and say, in our giving, we prove how little we love him.
We're covetous. We want things for ourselves. and we really don't care that souls are going to hell. And if you don't believe that, you prove it by your own mind. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had a group of Christians who were really on fire? I remember reading the other day about a church building that caught on fire in the middle of the night. and the preacher was down there and some of the others were there and they looked over and they saw the town's atheist the man who seemed to have absolutely no use for God's things when he was there the preacher couldn't resist the temptation he walked over to him and he said the first time I ever saw you at church man said it's first time was ever on fire The people in your community couldn't resist coming to learn about a place that's on
fire for God. Or you're afraid of being a fanatic. The word fan, you know, is just short for fanatic. It's all right to be a football fan. You yell your boo head off. It's all right. Or a baseball fan. or a music enthusiast. But keep your dignity. Keep your cool. Don't get too excited about people dying and going to hell. From the time that we started this meeting, until we finished, ten thousand souls will drop into eternity.
most of whom do not know the Lord Jesus Christ. Think that over. I haven't told you anything that you don't believe in, you don't agree with, you even pray for souls. I've been here on prayer meeting night and I've heard several of the brethren pray for the salvation of souls. And I believe in praying for souls. I believe you can win souls by prayer. But I believe that you ought to put some handles on your prayers. A man prayed in his family one night for the widow who lived in the neighborhood, and he said, Lord, you know that it's cold tonight, and she may not have fuel, and she may not have food that she ought to have, and Lord, bless that poor widow.
When he got through his little boy, he says, Daddy, why don't you answer that prayer yourself? We've got lots of coal and potatoes and apples and things. That's practical. Get some hands and feet on your prayers. Pray for souls, sure. But don't ask God to bring them into your little cafeteria to get fed. This is a mistake. And this is one of the things that I feel that buildings have done that is damaging. I'm not against buildings. I'm thankful for the nice little building you have here. I'm glad you built it small enough so you can't enlarge it. because we need to reach outreach to other parts of the city. But I think there's a great danger in feeling that when you have this building open on Sunday morning at eleven o'clock and Sunday night at seven o'clock that you've done the duty, your duty, toward your neighbors.
You opened the doors of the cafeteria and if they wanted, they could come and get it. And the Lord never said that at all. He said to you, go you. to all the world and treats the gospel to every creature. And until you've done that, you haven't really reached out. But I need a little time to say something about outreach to believers. Brothers and sisters, this is one of the places where we first realize that we are in Rome. It's when we begin to think about the word Christian. When we think about who are the Lord's people, I told you about going to Pueblo a few years back and I asked a lady who had lived there if she knew any Christians in Pueblo and she said, no, there are only two left that I know of, one old man and his wife.
I said, well, there's time somebody went to Pueblo. You know what she did? She met people that were in fellowship with her and with her little group. That's all. And our attitude toward the Lord's people is not good. There was a man who was pruning his trees, his orchard, and he was pruning his cherry trees, and somebody said to him, you aren't going to have any trees left. You're lopping off too many branches. No, he said, I'll have far more cherries. I won't have such a beautiful tree. It's such a big tree, but I'll have far more cherries next year than I had this year.
He said, how in the world do you tell what lives to cut off the cherry tree? He said, I always cut off the ones that are pointing inward. You get the lesson, don't you? You know what's the matter with us? We're pointing inward. We love our nice little happy fellowship. I was working in one place, and we got fifty people who profess to be Christians coming to a Bible study from the various churches of that time. And one of the men who had invited me to come there said to the others, you know, I'm a little bit afraid that if John goes on with this business, it's going to spoil our happy fellowship here.
He said, if we get all of these odd people coming in here, now there were Christians, understand. There were real believers. We get all these odd people coming in here, he said, and it's going to kind of disturb things. I see. Well, I told him if you want that kind of peace, you can get it any day you want it out of the cemetery. Didn't make me popular with him, but I got to say it anyway. I'll tell you the same thing. If that's the kind of peace you want, you can find it any time at a cemetery. But if you really care about God's people, you're going to be willing to shepherd the sick and the young and the infirm and the oddballs.
The world's full of Christians that don't seem to fit anyplace and they need help. And if you welcome all of God's people, you'll have reason to call yourselves truly non-sectarian. There is nothing worse than sectarianism. Now, all division, according to First Corinthians chapter three, is karma. Whenever you make a fence between yourself and any other segment of the Church of God, the true church, which is the body of Christ, When you put a fence between any two segments of that church, you are guilty of carnality.
You read it for yourself. First Corinthians three, first three verses of that chapter. Whenever you say, I'm of Paul and I'm of Paulus and I'm of Cephas and I'm of Christ, as much as you say, I'm of Christ and the rest of Mark, right away he said, you are carnal and you act just like man. And this is all wrong. Now we do believe that the way we're meeting here at Northeast is more scriptural than anything that we know of. That's why we meet here, right? Does that give us any license to be self-satisfied, to be conceited about?
Does that give us any reason to be insulting to the rest of the Lord's people? I heard about a certain place where a lady said to people whom she knew were Christians, she said to them, now we want you to come to our meetings because we always try to make the outsiders feel welcome. That'll really make them feel welcome. Call them outsiders. Were they outsiders? Not strictly speaking. She knew they were children of God. They might have been untaught. They might have been sick.
They might have been hungry. They weren't outsiders. I never referred to any of my brothers and sisters as outsiders. I mean in my own family. Why should we refer to our Christian brethren? They're all dear to the Lord Jesus, aren't they? Does the Lord love us more than he loves the folks over at the Baptist Church? Some other places. Does the Lord love us more? Of course not. Aren't we in need of them as well as their being in need of us? If we believe in the interdependency of the body, the answer is yes. If I really believe that every member of my body, not only the visible ones, but the invisible ones, every cell in my body is necessary, if I really believe that, Well, then I'm not only going to take care of my hands, which I see often, but I'm going to take care of my feet, which I only see twice a day.
And I'm going to take care of my viscara, the inner parts of my body, which I have never seen. That's because I believe that I need my liver as well as I need my right thumb. And you believe that? And yet we do not seem to have a real care, a real need for others. I visited in a certain place and I missed a man. And I said, what's happened to so-and-so? And the fellow said, oh, he got missed and left us. Then he added, we didn't need him anyway. And I said, First Corinthians chapter twelve says the head cannot say, and the head is Christ.
The head cannot say to the feet, I have no need of you. The feet are the farthest away from the head. No matter how far away from the Lord, a Christian gets. You can never say, even the Lord himself can never say, I don't need you because we need each other. You'd be surprised how much you would learn from those people that you might try to teach. They've learned some things about God that you don't know. and you'll be mutually helpful if you reach out to them. Now, there's some problems in outreach, and we might as well face them. One is the unwillingness on the part of, quote, outsiders, unquote, to be helped.
They don't feel if they have any particular need, they have their church, and they have their fellowship, and they enjoy listening to their preacher, And they don't know why you're wanting to help them. And if your attitude is, we've got something so much better, you'll never get any place at all. It's alright for you to believe that we've got something so much better. But if you show this attitude toward others, you'll never be able to bring people in. What you've got to do is to show real love for them because they belong to Christ. And you can overcome their unwillingness because love always wins people.
If somebody draws a circle that leaves you out, you just draw a circle that takes him in. And you'll find that nobody can resist real Christian love. Now there are some doctrinal differences. I said doctrinal. I didn't say methodical. Just because you have a different way of doing things than somebody else shouldn't be, shouldn't result in you're having nothing to do with each other. I knew a man who wouldn't remember the Lord with some other Christians because they had a piano and he didn't believe in using the piano.
And so he wouldn't remember the Lord with him. Can you imagine that narrow spirit? The Bible doesn't have anything to say about it at all. The Lord could care less whether you got one piano or no pianos or twelve pianos. I don't know how twelve pianos are sound, but it makes absolutely no difference to the Lord. When I was a young man, I'm ashamed to tell you this, but I visited a small company of Christians, and I was shocked to see them take up a collection in a plate. And as soon as I got opportunity, after that meeting was over, I got up and told them, without reading any scriptures at all, without giving you any reason for it, just a brash young man.
I said, if you want to do the Lord a real service, one of you ladies make a nice little black bag, put it on the table next Sunday, to pass around to put the collection in. Then I sat down and the Lord said to me, Where'd you get the idea of a little black bag? And I said, I got that from a place I used to live in Iowa. And he said, That's what I thought. That's literal. I'm giving that kind of literal. But this got to Is there anything in the Scriptures say that the Christians who use a bag to think of a collection are more spiritual than the ones that use a plate?
Well, I know there is a verse that says, let not your right hand know that your left hand do it, and it's a little hard to keep it secret. And that probably is the reason why you folks use a bag to put your collection in. People say, well, it's because Judas bear the bag, but that's the word for pocketbook. So if you're going to do that, scripture later, You'd have to pass around the pocketbook. Better use the ladies. You're big enough to hold it all. You see what I'm getting at, don't you? Doctrinal differences are a hindrance to our helping others. They don't believe some of the things that we believe are scriptural.
Now, what do you do? Concentrate on that? What do you do when you try to visit with another Christian? Do you try to help him in mutual appreciation of the Lord Jesus, or do you try to probe around until you find something you can disagree on? So, now, why do you believe about church government? Well, our church has Presbyterian form of government. That's what I thought. Now, I'll show you where that's all wrong. There'll be times of straightening them out on church government. First thing to do is to feed him. He may be a hungry Christian. He may have lifted him to somebody, give him a whole basket full of chaff with sixteen grains of wheat in it last Sunday.
That may have been all the food that he's had this week. And you could feed him the crowds, the old corner of the land, instead of that if you talked to him about church government. And then there's the problem of sectarianism. His and yours. This keeps Christians apart. We're brothers and sisters. And that will be enough. In the ninth chapter of Luke, you have the story of the apostles. coming back to the Lord and saying, Lord, there was a man casting out demons in your name, and we told him to stop it because he wasn't going along with us.
The Lord said, you keep your hands out of that because anybody who is for us is not against us. I wouldn't be happy to do things the way some professional evangelists and some sectarian leaders do it. That isn't my responsibility. To his own master, he stands or falls. And I should be thankful that he's getting the gospel out. Even though he may be financing it in a scriptural way, I should be thankful that he's getting the gospel out.
I may not be able to work with him. And in many cases I could not, but I certainly ought not to work against him. Do you know why people have wrong impressions of us? Those who meet here in Northeast, do you know why some of the other Christians of the town have a wrong impression of you? Well, part of it is not your fault at all. Part of it is because you are doing things that condemn them. And you're leaving off things that condemn them. And you can't help this.
The Word of God is going to cause some offense. But part of it is caused by our own foolishness. Part of it is caused by our wrong attitudes toward them. Part of it is caused by our lack of love for them. What could you do to help them? First of all, maintain your own spirituality. If you're not in good shape spiritually, you're not going to be much help to other people. Now, that doesn't mean that you just sit here and wait until you get them in a spiritual condition. It means you do something about it. First of the year is a good time, isn't it? We just had a new year's last week. Isn't this a pretty good time to get started?
Not with resolutions. but getting before God and taking inventory of your life, saying, now, Lord, what is there in my life that might be a hindrance to other Christians? What am I doing or failing to do that might hinder my brothers and sisters in this town? And then, I think the second thing that you could do is to show a prayerful concern about Brotherly Love. We make a great to-do about not smoking cigarettes. I never smoked one in my life, and I am certainly not in favor of smoking cigarettes.
But we make a big to-do about not smoking cigarettes. And we say nothing about not having Brotherly Love. And yet we have a whole book First Epistle of John, a whole book insisting upon brotherly love as one of the proofs that you're a child of God. And you can't prove that you're a child of God if you don't love fellow Christians. Now, we ought to have a real concern about this. We ought to tell the Lord we don't love His people like we are. Our hearts are just big enough to take in the people of Northeast. And some of them are expanded a little so we can take in some of the South Side.
and some expand a little bit more so we can take in a few personal friends that we know are Christians. But none of our hearts are big enough to take in the whole body of Christ, the whole family of God. We could be exercised about that. And then we could make some advances toward fellowship with other Christians. And this involves a fourth thing. We could make some contact. And by advances I mean a friendly attitude. By contacts I mean definitely doing something about it. You've got a good phone. You've got a home.
Home is a great place to help other people. You invite them into your home. You give them a relaxed atmosphere and a good meal. And people are open then to anything that you get to say. You'd be surprised what you could do with your own home. We ought to use our homes more for God than we are. There's a great deal that you could do to contact Christians all about you. Some of you could have Bible classes, and some of you are doing so. Some of you could use tapes and get a few Christians together and play a good tape that would teach them some of the word and have a discussion following.
We used to have more of that than we have now. There are many things that you could do that would reach out to these people. Another thing that you could do would be to avoid a critical spirit of other people. To his own mastery stands or falls. And then you could consider the possibility of a hive off. to reach out to some of the parts of Colorado Springs that we're not reaching. When this group hived off from Southside a number of years back, a dear old man came to me and he said, Brother Walton, couldn't you have stopped that split in the meeting?
I said, man, we split in the meeting. He said, sure we did. We lost seventy-five of our best people. lost them. They're not lost. I know where they are. And they're doing fine. But he said, if we do that, you watch next Sunday. He said, you'll find out we won't have enough people here to carry on our Sunday school. The next Sunday they had twenty-three classes of children and there were twenty-three teachers there to take care of. That's a scriptural way. You have a group of Christians in the east part of town that are concerned about their neighbors.
It may not be the time. Only God can decide when is the right time, but you ought to be exercised about it. You ought to be concerned about even changing your own home, giving up your home, and moving to a neighborhood where you could help with a new work. There are many things that you could do in this field. These are part of the outreach that God expects us as the children of God to do. You can be exercised about the giving of your money. You didn't put nearly enough money into the work of the Lord last year. You know you didn't. And I don't know what you put in. But no matter what you put in, you didn't put in enough.
Because nobody ever gives too much to the Lord. He is so worthy. And souls are so valuable. that if we really can't, we could get the Word of God out. We could have outreach instead of ingrowness. Let's pray. Lord, these are uncomfortable things to think about. We pray that we may not chisp them in order to be more comfortable, but that we may change our ways in order to have thy approval. Thou hast given us tremendous responsibilities as individuals and as accompanying of thy people.
Thou hast made us the pillar and ground of the truth. Thou hast put the word of God into our hands and made us stewards of it. And thou hast put means into our hands that could be used to spread the gospel and to reach out to the needs of thy children. We ask, Lord, that we may really care. We pray for our brothers and sisters who are estranged from us. Part of this is our fault, and we confess as a sin. Part of this is due to their lack of teaching, and we have a responsibility to see that they are taught. Part of it is due to their own carnality, and we can pray about this, and look to thee to bring them back to thyself.
God give us a heart for all the people of God in this city. We ask God blessing now as we separate in the precious name of the Lord Jesus.