Establishes Jesus Christ as the sole foundation of the church, emphasizing his roles as prophet, priest, and king. It explores how Christ's revelation, redemption, and rule provide faith, love, and hope. The message delves into Old Testament types and prophecies foreshadowing Christ, such as the rock smitten for water and Joseph as a picture of Christ, arguing that understanding these typologies enriches the understanding of Christ's work. It also highlights Christ's sinlessness, his role as the Word made flesh, and the divine intent behind his sacrificial death, underscoring that the church is built by Christ alone and is called out of the world to fellowship around Him.
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Well, we begin our study this evening of what I have chosen to call God's Blueprint for Blessing. And we aren't going to be able to spend too much time in any of these sheets. I happen to have seven of them, and we have five sessions. And so two of them we're just going to very briefly skim over, and you can study them on your own. You're receiving two this evening. Basic blue and wild pink, sort of. And the first one is called the founder of the church. And of course we recognize that no line, as I have on this chart, no line could ever adequately express the existence of the great God and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I have at the heading of this chart, Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. And then I have three sections, you'll see them when you get the chart, as a prophet in Revelation, as a priest in redemption, and as a king in rule. These are the three great offices of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now without the revelation of the prophet, there would be no possibility for faith in God. And without the revelation or salvation by the priests, there would be no expression of the love of God.
And without the expectation of the return of the King, there would be no basis for our hope in God. And so in these three offices, he brings before us these three wonderful graces, faith and hope and love. Now perhaps we could turn and read just one verse in Matthew chapter sixteen. Matthew chapter sixteen, please. Matthew sixteen and verse eighteen.
The Lord Jesus is speaking, and he says, I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, of stone, and upon this great rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it now by Peter's own confession we are taught that there is no other foundation that can be laid than that is already laid which is Christ Jesus the Lord so that Peter was very clear if no one else is that the Lord was not speaking about Peter as the foundation of the church the Lord Jesus is the gray rock. That rock is Christ. And I think we should be very clear at the beginning that that's exactly what the Bible teaches.
Now if you look at the blue sheet just for a moment, we'll hit a few of the highlights. Number one, you'll notice up in the top left corner of the chart, you'll see then number one in the A box. All right, I hope it's not too involved for you. No strain on the brain. All right, number one under A there. As a prophet in Revelation, That is, in the past he is seen as the eternal one, first John chapter one, and verse one. He's seen as the one who is the light, isn't he? As the light in creation. He spoke and there was light. As the light in salvation, the light of the glorious gospel has shined into our heart by the glory, the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
And then light in illumination. As we open the word of God, we see the truth of God through the Lord Jesus. It's only as we understand the Lord Jesus that we can know the Father. He that has seen me has seen the Father, He says. And then as the promised one, that's number two. Now I just put an arrow down there to give us the idea that in the Old Testament the Lord Jesus is much spoken of in many different ways. For example, in what we might call Christophany or theophany. That is bodily appearances of the Lord Jesus in the Old Testament, and they are quite clear and mentioned many times where the Lord Jesus reveals a pre-incarnate revelation of the Lord Jesus.
And then secondly, by Messianic prophecies over and over again we have promises concerning the coming of the Lord Jesus. The first one, we are introduced to the Lord Jesus by his teeth, where we read that his heel would bruise the serpent's head. And from that point until the last prophecies in the book of Malachi, until the coming of the Lord Jesus, there are hundreds of prophecies concerning this one who would come. And every one of them was fulfilled to the letter. And so we have these reminders that there was one who was going to come who would save his people from their sins. And then we have typology. Unfortunately this has fallen into hard times, hasn't it?
So the whole range of typology... I suppose for some time, typology was rather badly abused. I heard people preaching on Job's camels and what they stood for and the hundred and fifty-three fish that were caught in the drought and just what they meant, one stance of this and five stance of this and three stance of this. And we ought to be very careful when you take the word of God in hand. Wonderful things in the Bible I see when they're put there by you and by me. We have to be very careful that we're not reading into the Bible what it doesn't say. Just the same, I think we have turned our back on a gray heritage as to typical teaching. Such men as the C.H. Macintosh and others like him, who took the Word of God in hand and opened to us in a consistent and sound way the gray principle of the typology in the Old Testament.
Now, I personally believe, and I find this to be a trend as the breaking of bread in many areas today, that because there has been a minimizing of the typology in the Old Testament, that the crosswork of the Lord Jesus becomes a very shallow thing. Now, it seems to me that if you don't understand the differences between the great offering in the Bible, if you don't understand that there is a difference between the peace offering and the meal offering and the drink offering and the sin offering, the trespass offering, the burnt offering, that when you come to the New Testament, you understand such a small part of the cross work of the Lord Jesus. So the tendency is to say, well, you know, Jesus loved me, he came and he died, and it's really quite a messy thing, you know, and I'd like to get past that and get on with thinking about the resurrection and all the good stuff and forget all of that.
And I don't mean to be crude, but there's a great deal of that kind of thought going around. When we gather together to remember the Lord Jesus, we're to remember him in his death. It is a declaration of his death. Now we remember him and we recognize that he is risen. Of course, the whole point is that we're coming to meet with him, isn't it? That he is alive and he is the one who invites us to remember him. And we'll be dealing with this a little bit later on when we look at the breaking of the bread as one of the great privileges of the Christian church. But let us recognize here that typology, that is recognizing symbols and types in the Old Testament that foreshadow, that fore picture the Lord Jesus, is a very valid form of study.
I happened to be at a particular assembly, a long, long way away from here, and I had spoken on Joseph as a picture of the Lord Jesus. And after the meeting, one of the elders came to me and said, we would rather, brother, that you didn't speak on that here anymore. We think of Joseph just as a spoiled brat. I said, brother, I don't think you'll have a problem with me speaking on that here anymore. Because I really don't think I have the liberty to speak here at all anymore. If you close out from me grave portions of the word of God. I'll preach anywhere. I can preach from sixty-six books. But as soon as you put limitations on the word of God, surely we're in danger of not being able to preach the whole council of God. Now what we have with the Lord Jesus walking down the road to Emmaus, we read that he revealed himself in all the scriptures.
Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he showed to them himself. And we have the Lord Jesus beautifully portrayed again and again. throughout the Old Testament in such beautiful type. He's seen as the rock from which the water flows. And Moses was held responsible to God because he spoiled the type when he smote the rock a second time. The rock had only to be smitten once, this he once did, and sat down. And now when we wish blessing, we only have to ask him, don't we? We only have to speak to the rock. But Moses spoiled the type by smiting the rock a second time. And God said, I'm sorry, Moses, you can't go into the land. So it's a serious business to spoil types of the Lord Jesus in the Old Testament.
And we ought to be careful that we're consistent in our understanding. And you know, the Bible is its own best commentary, isn't it? If we're looking for something and we want to understand what it is, just keep reading and the Word of God will explain itself. Well, then in number three we have the willing one. Here am I, send me. There were certain requirements that had to be met. in one who is to come from heaven and reconcile men to God. God had certain requirements to be met. This one had to be righteous, sinless. And there's a great attack being leveled at the sinlessness of the Lord Jesus. And people say, well, you know, he didn't sin, but he could have sinned.
The Lord Jesus said, the enemy is coming and he has nothing in me. There's nothing within me that will respond to sin. How then do you say is it a valid temptation? Well, Satan didn't know who he was until that point. That was the beginning of his ministry, wasn't it? And Satan was putting him to the test. And any test that would have proved the Lord Jesus to be anything less than he was, any other man less than he was, proved him to be the very Son of God. I like the illustration that Brother James Gunn gave. In the days before he went out preaching, he was a chemist. And he went and purchased his first gold watch. He brought it home. He opened it up.
And in his laboratory, he dropped a little drop of clear liquid on the back of that watch. Now, it had been advertised to be pure gold. He said, if that little drop had turned brown, it would have proved that it wasn't true gold. But it didn't turn brown. It stayed clear. And the very same test that would have proved that watch, that proved that watch to be gold, would have proved any other watch that wasn't gold to be shant. And so the very thing kept that would have proved any other man to be just a man proved to all the watching world that he was who he said he was, sinless, spotless, undefiled, separate from sinners. Then he had to be able to communicate himself to man, and as such he had spoken to us as the Word of God.
Now in John chapter one we have him revealed to us as the Word, and there are certain requirements for the word of God to be manifest to us. First of all, it has to be intelligible, right? It has to be in our language. If I said, unless you can understand Swahili, you wouldn't know what that means, would you? And when the Lord Jesus came, he had to speak in our language, and so he became a man. He robed himself in human flesh. He did not come in the effulgence of his glory, the outreying of the divine, He robed himself. He covered himself in a human body. And he came in our language. And then secondly, a word has to be accurate.
If I said in your language, our language English, if I said banana, and I intended you to see apple, I can't expect you to see a little round red thing, can I? You'll see a long yellow thing, because I said banana, not apple. But when the Lord Jesus came, he had to be accurate. And so it wasn't enough for him to be a man, even a good man. He must be the God's man. And he was the revelation of who God is. And he could say, Have I been so long time with you, and have you not known me? He that has seen me has seen the Father. The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Then we have the incarnate one. Verse four.
The one who came into this world and revealed to us who God was. Lived a perfect life. Number five, and died upon the cross. We have three interesting verses you may wish to study on your own. And by the way, this tends to be my style. I'll leave you lots of little outlines along the way. For any of you who are serious, take them and run with them, study them out on your own, and squeeze the goodness out of them. And I personally believe that public ministry should be like a cooking school, not a cafeteria. If you want to come and have a little munchy, you know, and go home, come back next week, have some more. That's not what the public ministry is for, I don't believe. I think it's to show you how to study and encourage you and give you a little bit of incentive and then go home and cook it up on your own.
You know, you go into a department store sometimes and it's sad. I wonder what the smell is. Your nose leads you over to someone who's cooking something, maybe in a walk or some other newfangled piece of equipment, and they have little bits on a plate. And if you've got any kind of pride at all, you'll only take one because she's glaring at you. And so you take one and taste it. Oh, that's good. Can I have another? No, but you can buy the machine. I'll show you how to use it. You take it home and cook up some more of your own. You can have all you want at home sweet home. That you have to pay the price for it. And the same is true in public ministry. Here's a taste. This is what it tastes like. Now go on home and cook it up yourself. You can have all you want. And it's in this book.
And it sure is tasty. If we'll just spend the time and pay the price. Now here's a little outline for you. Revelation thirteen eighths. This is the intent. We read there concerning the Lord Jesus' death slain from before the foundation of the world. That was the divine intent, the purpose of God. This was no accident. The Lord Jesus was not simply caught up in a maelstrom of circumstances there in Jerusalem and swept out the city gate and crucified, and God stood by in horror. This was the divine intent. Dr. Harry Ironside said this. Never were the Father and the Son. so united in desire and purpose as when the Lord Jesus cried, My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?
That was the purpose, wasn't it? The divine intent slain from before the foundation of the world. And then in Revelation five, twelve, this is the actual event. One slain. Oh, thank God for that. There was one piece of furniture that you'd never find in the tabernacle. You'd never find a chair there. The priest never sat down. But this one, this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin, forever sat down. He was once slain. And one of the great tragedies of the largest church in Christendom is what they call the non-bloody sacrifice of Christ. And every hour somewhere on planet Earth, they are thinking, at least, that they are murdering over and over and over again the blessed Son of God.
He only had to die once. And we reap eternal benefit from that once for all acts. And then in Revelation five, six, we have the extent of that sacrifice. We read there that this land is as it were, freshly slain. It never grows old, does it? The old, old story is ever new, that Christ died for our sin, according to the Scripture. And two thousand years hence, The value of the blood is still the same, and any sinner who comes to Christ may be saved by his grace. Well, we don't have time to look at the rest, but you can study it out on your own as a priest in redemption.
The dying one, the victorious one, the risen one, the glorified one, and the interceding one. That's his holy ministry now. And then the king and rule, the coming one, first Thessalonians four, and the justified, the satisfied one, and the justified, and the reigning one and the everlasting one. And there's so much that we could study in these passages, but we flip over them briefly to get on to the second section. And this is the verse that we read in Matthew chapter sixteen and verse eighteen. Notice on the side of the sheet, if you turn it up sideways, you'll see one line written along the edge concerning the formation of the church.
First of all, the prophecy. concerning the church. In Isaiah forty two, you can read about it in verse one and six and seven, where God speaks about a hope for the Gentiles. Those who sit in darkness have seen a gray light. The gospel has shined as far as the Gentiles. Well, now you'll find in many translations of the Bible that there are statements made all through in the little headings that are made at the top, which are not inspired, but some short commentary on the chapter you'll find very often mentioned made of the church in the Old Testament you know promises given to the church God delivering the church and so on all the way through well we have to be careful not to put the church where God doesn't put them the church is spoken of in the Bible as a mystery that is a divine truth that was withheld from the eyes of men until God's appointed time when he revealed it supernaturally and specifically to the Apostle Paul.
The dispensation of the grace of God in the mystery of the church was given to the Apostle Paul. He writes much about that in the book of Ephesians. But there was a hint here and there, now and again, a little hint dropped that God was going to do something very wonderful for those who were out of covenant relationship with him. God had chosen a man by the name of Abraham. and he had blessed Abraham, and he had promised to care for Abraham's seed down through the years. He renewed that covenant to Isaac and to Jacob, and then he spoke of a covenant to David, that David's seed would reign on the throne forever and ever, of course, in the person of the Lord Jesus.
And so we see again and again that God blessed the people of Israel. But then we read that Israel turned aside from God, and there was a threefold turning away from him. In the book of Ezekiel we read that God the Father who had manifested himself in what's called the Shekinah glory. That God had seen that the people had turned their backs to him. We read their backs were to the temple and their faces to the sun. They didn't care about God anymore. And so reluctantly we see the Shekinah glory leaving and going out to the post of the tabernacle and out to the gate of the city and out to the mount of all of us.
And finally back to heaven. And the tragedy was that no one even noticed. Is that possible in the New Testament church? We read concerning Laodicea. They're so busy. And they don't even notice that one word could be written across the assembly. Ichabod. The glory has departed. The story is told of an Armenian shepherd, and he had the biggest, fattest, fluffiest, juiciest sheep in all of Armenia.
Well, his neighbors got to watching this sheep, and they got a bit jealous. And so one day they decided to steal his sheep. He was sitting there enjoying the sunshine, and his sheep nibbling at the green grass. When he noticed out of the corner of his eye some of his neighbors neeking up the hillside with guns in hand. There was a little shack nearby where he kept some provisions and he picked up his little sheet and he ran into the shed and he slammed the door. Well, they started shooting at him and they had him surrounded. And so in his primitive thinking he thought, well, I'll confuse them a bit. And with his pistol he would run to one window and shoot out the window, run to the other side of the shack, shoot out that window to make them think that there was more than just one in there.
The problem was that every time he ran back and forth across the shack, he tripped over the sheep. It was in the middle. And so finally, in desperation, he opened the door, threw the sheep out, and kept on shooting. Now, unfortunately, the point of the story is not restricted to Armenian fable. The great Lamb of God. in all of our activity is it possible that sometimes he sort of gets in the way and we have him outside sometimes and he's knocking at the door not of Israel we might understand that they didn't recognize him when he came they were looking for the king of glory and he came as the lowly man of stars why the unbelieving Gentiles we would hardly expect them to open the door to him but he is outside the church and in all their busyness They'd hardly missed him.
What a tragedy that was. But that wasn't the only rejection that Israel gave to the Lord. For hundreds of years there was a silence from heaven. Heaven was his wrath. God did not seek him in. Until one day, one night, on the Judean hillside, once again the glory of God came to earth. The glory of the Lord shone round about them. and they were sore afraid. And the declaration was made, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Once again the glory of God had taken up residence on earth, not in the temple in Jerusalem, but in that day, lying in the manger, the glory of God was to be manifest in Christ himself.
And do you know what we did with him? the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He made us feel very badly, you know. Because we were so wicked and sinful and he was so holy, we looked quite good compared to other humans, other mortals, other sinners. But when the Lord Jesus came and revealed to us what God was like, we thought to make him ugly. And so we read that the human race tried to put him into difficult, embarrassing situations, but they couldn't make him ugly that way. And so they took him and physically began to beat that face and spit upon it and plucked the hairs from his cheek and plowed a crown of thorns and drive it into his brow.
Until we read those solemn words in Isaiah fifty-two, But his face didn't look like a man's face anymore. His visage was so mar, more than any man. But they couldn't make him ugly. Even then, from those parts, lips came these words, Father, forgive them. And it's in the continuous then. He kept on saying, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. When they drove the spice through his hands, he said, Father, forgive us. And when they lifted the cross up and dropped it into the socket, and every bone came out of joint, he said, Father, forgive us.
And when they mocked him and laughed at him, and he became the song of the drunkard instead of the song of the angels, he said, Father, forgive us. Oh, we couldn't make him ugly. What beauty there was in the Lord Jesus. And if we could just during this week catch another glimpse of him, It seems to me that what we desperately need today is not new methods, not new schemes, not more organization. What we need is more devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. And if I really loved Him, the way I ought to love Him, no one would have to whip me into shape, no one would have to try and drag me out to the meeting.
No one would have to push me in my nose into this book. No one would have to throw me out on the street and tell me go witnessing. Man, you couldn't keep my mouth shut if I really loved him. And I don't want to get too far away from the central theme of the Word of God. When we are speaking about the church, it is ever only a grace and it's all of Christ. He is the head of the church. His church is his body. He's the one who gave himself for the church. He's the one who builds the church. And when they are being built, when they are being matured, they are growing up into the measure of the stature, of the fullness of Christ.
What is the truth that they learn, these who belong to the church? The apostle says he have not so learned Christ. We learn as the truth is in Jesus. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in him. And so I don't want to get too far away from this wonderful thing. Christ, all and in all. He must have the preeminence in the church. And it is he who fills his body, who reveals himself in all his sufficiency. We have this promise that's given to us in Matthew chapter sixteen. And Matthew chapter sixteen and verse eighteen is the first reference to the church in the word of God.
and I've given you a little outline here we won't spend much time on it I will build my church I the architect man-made structures are doomed to failure and at the very outset we must make a distinction here between what we might call Christianity and Christendom Christendom is visible and divisible but the church which is his body is invisible and indivisible. There is only one body. And the matter what men may do in Christendom, that is not God's work. The unity that comes in the church is not man's doing.
It is the unity of the Spirit. And so we are called to recognize that he's the one who builds the church. I, he says, I will build my church. He is the architect of this glorious church. without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. And then secondly, I will build my church for purpose. The Lord Jesus when he came to earth did not come so much to hire people to work in his company, did he? He came to woo a bride and he's far more interested in my love than he is in my service. Now when he has my love, he'll have my service too. But it's a sad thing.
It's a pathetic thing. this laboring for God without love. You see that in stark contrast between the church at Thessalonica and the church at Ephesus. The Apostle Paul writes of their labor of love and their work of faith and their patience of hope. But when we come to Ephesus, it's just work and labor and endurance. No love, no faith, no hope. And that's what makes the difference. Gotta go out to the meeting again. I was at a camp one time and was asked a question in the question box. We were talking about gifts and the question was, all these jobs that are to be done in the church, someone had written, is it a job just to go to meetings?
I said, well, depending on who's speaking, I suppose sometimes it is a job just to go to meetings. But that's not what God's talking about. Some of us feel we're doing God a real favor by showing up at the meetings. Well, now God has called us to a holy ministry. It's a high calling we've been called to. And this is a privileged land that allows us to meet together in absolute freedom with the Word of God in our own language and the ability to read it and understand it and the Holy Spirit as the divine tutor to teach us His word. You know, there are people who died for the Lord Jesus. There are people who died to give us the Bible in our own language. There are people who went...
and were burned at the stake because they would not acknowledge that when we took the bread and the wine, Lord's day morning, we were taking the body and blood of the Lord Jesus. People who died for that. Do we take the truth of God lightly? I hope not. This is a precious book and it's a precious privilege to come together and to get to know more of what God has for us. I will, this is the divine purpose, and then I will build. And we're going to be dealing a fair bit on another evening with the character of this structure of this church and we'll be looking at the form of the church and ten different word pictures that God gives in his word to describe the church which is his body and then I will build my church there is no other head but the Lord Jesus himself and we ought to hold to the head in all things what does that mean that means that there's no room for my will in the thing is there Not what I think or what you think either.
What does God say? And we discover that the elders, when we'll look at that on another night, looking at the function of the church, we'll discover that the elders are not a decision-making body. If they were to be a decision-making body, God would have said, get all the businessmen together, get all the organizers together. But he didn't say that. He wants spiritual men to be the elders. Because they are not to be a decision-making body. They are to be a discerning body. They are not there to make up their own mind. They are there to discern the Lord's mind because it is his church. Why don't you come out to my church if you hear people say, well, I'm glad you feel like you belong, but it isn't our church, is it?
It's his church. And he gave himself for it. He redeemed it to himself. He paid the price. And so it belongs to him. I will build my church, the blueprint. And maybe we could take the time to define the three words, at least three words, that are used of the Church in the Word of God. We read about the Ecclesia, the called out one. And that's the word that is usually translated Church. We get the word ecclesiastical from that. The called out one, called out of where? Well, called out of the world.
come out from among them and be a separate and touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you says God that calling out is going on today it's the call of the gospel that calls a man not calling him out of sin only but calling him out of the world system entirely and I think we need to hear a little more preaching on separation don't you it's not isolation But I don't think I can find one verse in all of the Bible that encourages me to have social contact with the world one. Now, if you can find one, you let me know. But I don't think I can find it there. I am called out of this world system. This is the world system that crucified the Lord Jesus and would do it again if I had a chance.
And in fact, our daily trampling underfoot the precious blood of Christ. and I'm to have nothing to do with them, and they have nothing to do with me. And if we have time some night when we're looking at the fellowship of the church, we may look at all of those words that the Apostle uses to show us that we ought to have no contact whatsoever with the world system. Now, not with the worldling. And this is the great contrast between the two statements that come from John ten. God so loved the world. Love not the world. And we'll look at that and see how these two words have a the same word in English but have very different meanings. And some people would like to change that and say, well, let's use a different word.
No, God does that for a purpose because the worldlings and the world system are so closely intertwined that it's only the Word of God that can divide between them. That's the first word that is used. Those who are called out. It means, equitia means to summon, to call out. And Peter brings before us the Christian calling. And you may wish to study that on your own sometime. We are called to be holy. We are called into life. We are called to suffer. We are called to inherit a blessing. And we are called unto his eternal glory. Now, you can get some good stuff out of that, can't you?
You can cook it up with your own recipe, if you wish. But that's an enjoyable truth. And it brings before us the high and holy calling of every child of God. The second word that is used is the word that we use for assembly, assembly. Now this is not called out, this is called together. The first one largely has to do with the universal church. That is, every child of God who has been saved or will be saved from Pentecost until the rapture, this period of time called the church age in which everyone who trusts the Lord Jesus as Savior is added to the church.
But when we speak about being called together, we're talking about the local church. Obviously, everyone can't get together until that gray ecumenical movement, the only ecumenical movement that will work, when the trumpet sounds and the dead in Christ rise first and all we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together. But until that time, we can't get together. That is all of us. So in local communities, in local gatherings, we come together, and that's the word for assembly, not just to be called out of the world, but be called together to fellowship with one another and with the Lord Jesus. And then the third word that is used is the word Kiriaki, which is the word from which the Scottish get their word Kirk, and from which we get our word church.
And it really means that which pertains to the Lord, or the Lord's portion. So we are called out of the world, We are called together and we are called unto him. Unto him shall the gathering of the people be. We do not meet to a doctrine. We do not meet to a system. We do not meet to a man. We meet around the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we are called upon to recognize this great principle at the very beginning of a study such as this. Please Christians, gird up the loins of your mind now and listen well. No fellowship. based on people will ever work.
Can I say that again? No fellowship based on people will ever work. If you come here because you like the Christians, you won't last long. Because to tell you quite frankly, I don't know too many of you folks, but more than likely not too many of us are very lovable. Why, we all have faults and failings. You don't have to look far from mine. I got them hanging out of my pocket. And every one of us is a poor, failing sinner, only saved because of his grace, no merit of our own at all. And in fact, very often the ones who are saved were the worst of the bunch, aren't we? Because at least we know that we're far from God. And there are many very good people who do not meet as we do, who do not meet at all, who are in fact not even Christians because they're so enamored with their own goodness.
But if you're thinking that you can have fellowship with one another and that's enough, I'm afraid it will never work. At another camp I was at, there was a young fellow who gave me a very strong hint. It was a book called Don't Bug Me, Preacher. He said it's a fairly strong hint. I took it that way. It was a book that described correspondence between various people and an author who was writing on problems that people had with their particular pastors in the various churches. And this one person had written in and said, Our pastor would like to bring in some people from a rather lower class area of town, and we're not so sure we want that because we don't know what these people would be like. And the author wrote back, very savely, you don't know what those people would be like.
I can tell you that they'd be like people. Now, wherever you have people, you have problems, isn't that true? You have failure, you have loss. And if you're going to build a church on human desire, on human expectations... On one another, the thing's going to fall apart before it gets started. Truly, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. Now, on that basis, we may then have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. So this is the basis, then, of fellowship, one with another. We are called out of the world and are to have nothing to do with it. No concord, no fellowship.
No interest, nothing to do with the world system. But we're not just less orphaned. Out of the world, but nowhere else. We are called together, to meet together, and we're called to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Unto him shall the gathering of the people be. Gather my saints together unto me, those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice. Now, in Hebrews chapter two, the second section, we have the provision that made possible the formation of the church. And we don't have time to look at Hebrews chapter two too much, but we have the sevenfold accomplishment of the Lord Jesus there in Hebrews chapter two, a delightful study and one that would, I think, warm our hearts before coming out to break bread together next Lord's Day morning, if you wanted to spend a little time reading that chapter.
It seems to me sometimes that the breaking of bread, we read Isaiah fifty three and Psalm twenty two. and the crucifixion in Matthew or Mark or Luke or John and maybe a couple of other verses. And as far as we know, the rest of the Bible is a goby desert, isn't it? The book is full of delicious portraits of the Lord Jesus and some that are very appropriate to the breaking of bread. In verse nine of Hebrews two, we learn that he came to take death for every man. And then in verse ten, to bring many sons to glory. I love that statement, don't you? to bring many sons to glory. I think this is Dr. Ironside again. He said, God was so pleased with the one son that he had that he was willing to give him up to the cross and all that that involved, that through that death he might bring many sons to glory that would be like him.
And God is going to people heaven with myriad who are like his son. He was so pleased with the one son that he had, that he wanted to have heaven full of the reflection of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. With Myrius, who are like his son, he was so pleased with the one son that he had, that he wanted to have heaven full of the reflection of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so God wants to make you like his son. How are you made like a son? By looking inside your heart and saying, well, that's you can be there and try to rearrange your life and getting discouraged.
No. Just as surely as the church cannot be based on people, my own transformation into the likeness of Christ cannot be accomplished by myself. How am I saying? By reading self-help books and discovering what kind of a personality I have and mess around with my ego and my id? Not like this. It comes by beholden Christ. We beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image, from glory to glory even, as by the Spirit of the Lord. And then to destroy him that has the power of death, that is the devil, and to deliver us from the fear of death, we who are always subject to that bondage.
and to become a faithful, a merciful and faithful high priest, merciful to men and faithful to God in this holy ministry of his high priesthood and to make reconciliation for our sins. I was out in the city of Hordig La Prairie, Manitoba. I had a very interesting brother there. His name is Roland Mill. He would like to meet him. You will someday when you get to heaven. He'll look a lot different, I suppose, when he gets there. He's a little short fellow right now. And he's a Scotsman. He'll forgive him. His specialty is working with retarded children. And he said to me, he's quite an expert in the field, he said, one thing that we do know, we don't know many things about mentally retarded children, but we do know that the majority of them are not mentally retarded.
He said, there may be other problems, but mentally they are not retarded. He was telling you the story about a boy that he had dealt with. This boy was severely retarded. He had a vocabulary of about ten words. And he would speak in monosyllable, maybe one or two words to a sentence, and that was about it. He used to carry around with him a picture that someone had given him, a representation of the Lord Jesus. He was standing at the door, the famous picture by Holman Hunt, the light of the world. He would carry it around.
And one day he was sitting in his little room. And Brother Roland came in to talk to him. And he said to him, Who is that man? He wouldn't say anything. He just said. Roland said, Who is that man? You know. No, tell me. Now, who is he? You know. After a long time, very patiently. Finally, he said, Now I want to know. You tell me who is that man. And he said, Just as clearly... As I'm speaking to you here tonight, he said to me, That's the man that died for my sin. I was telling that story in the city of Toronto.
And the brother came to me who also works with retired children. He said, It's our responsibility to make up a little window display at the school where I work. And I was doing one for spring. And I had the spring flowers and so on. And over in the corner, I... I drew a picture of a little hill and in the hill he said, if you'll forgive me, I put a little stained glass window to the cross in it. And there was a little girl that came along, her name was Julie, and I put my arm around her and I said, Julie, what is that? And she just smiled and she looked at the flowers and so on. And then he said, I pointed to this little hill with the cross and I said, what's that? Now he said, as far as they know, this girl knows only twenty words.
And they heard they're twenty-first. She said, Jesus. If you've only got twenty words in your vocabulary, that's a good one to have, isn't it? Jesus, oh, how sweet the name. Jesus, every day the same. Jesus, let all saints proclaim the wondrous name of Jesus. He shall save his people from their sins. Thou shalt call his name Jesus. To make reconciliation for our sins and to be able to sympathize with and comfort us. Now that's the basis of a provision that made possible the foundation of the church.
I mentioned on the way in. If you folks aren't too fussy about when you start, I'm not too fussy about when I stop. Is that all right? Is that a good deal? Now we come to the Pentecost. I'm going to be very brief in these last two sections. There were two great historical reversals at Pentecost. There was the negation of Babel and there was the negation of Sinai. I think these are very important. If you recall at Babel, the people said, let us make us a name. Now Babel is a picture of the false counterfeit that is always opposed to God right through the ages until we find Babel and the Great rising up in opposition to God in the last time.
But Babel began with a counterfeit. We read that they used bricks instead of stone and slime they had for mortar. Now this false system is still in existence, obviously. And they said, let us make us a name. And that's this condominium village or whatever they had. They put a sign out the front. It said Bab L. Isn't that a nice name? The gate to God. Wow, it gave a nice religious ring, a nice warm, gushy religious feeling when they saw it. God came down and he squeezed the words together. Babble. Confusion. And he confounded their languages so that they couldn't understand one another. And they had to spread out.
You'll notice, this is just an aside. You'll notice what God said there. He said, if I don't do something, there's nothing that will be impossible to men. Do you know that we have returned to that day when men are all able to speak the same language? It's called computer language. And it may be Fortran or maybe one of the others. But a Japanese man is able to sit down with a computer, a West German. an Englishman, an American, and they're able to punch into that computer and to have it read to their friend in Japan or South Africa or wherever they are. They're able to read that. And so we have once again the knowledge that was segmented by God at Babel.
It's being all brought back together again, isn't it? any man with any knowledge of any language is able to have at his resource all of the knowledge of the world. Theoretical. And so once again we're at that position where God's going to have to do something. Well, at Babel in Genesis chapter eleven we read that they were there to make a name for themselves and God confounded their languages. Now we come to another building, not slime and brick. But living stone and the Holy Spirit of God is the divine mortar who maintains the unity of the body.
And here these men and women who have gathered at Pentecost, they are not interested in making a name for themselves. They are interested in seeking well of Christ. And that ought to be our attitude in this old world too, isn't it? It's not to make people think well of ourselves. I want to tell you, you can't make people think you're clever and Christ is wonderful at the same time. We read that at Babel the languages were confounded. What happened at Hentikos? Well, everyone heard in his own dialect. Not just in his own language, they probably all spoke Greek, but in their own local flavor of dialect. It was a revelation to the Gentiles, and it was a judgment against Israel.
But now God was going out beyond the borders of Israel, and the gospel was to be preached everywhere to every soul. There's also a reversal or a negation of Sinai. At Sinai in Exodus thirty-two, we have the giving of the law. Moses went up into the mountain. God gave him the law. He dilly-dallyed the people thought until they made themselves this golden path and began to offer sacrifices to him. When Moses came down, he saw what had happened. In symbolism he smashed the law on the ground. The people have said, give us the law. We'll do everything you tell us to do. God said, here are ten samples. And before Moses got to the bottom of the mountain they had broken them. Moses said, who was on the Lord's side?
And they girded on their swords and they went out among their brethren. And we read there were about three thousand slaves. That's what happened at the giving of the law. So when we come to Pentecost, we have the giving of a new message, the grace of God in its fullness. And we read the very same words. There are about three thousand saints. What a great change occurred at Pentecost. The gospel of the grace of God was now to go out around this poor old aching globe for that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. You may read this discussion of the Feast of the Pentecost. by yourself in the month of April, the beginning of month, the word of God declares there was to be this feast.
There were seven feasts, the feast of the Passover, the feast of unleavened bread, which was closely associated with it, the feast of first fruit and tentacles of trumpets and tabernacles and the great day of atonement. And here we have the feast of tentacles or fifty days. And the feast of tentacles was a feast that called them to wait. for seven weeks and a day. And on that fiftieth day, there would be something very special. It was the baptism of the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit came down upon them. Individual believers went in and out came one body out of that upper room.
It was much like the holy anointing oil. You remember? They would take their apocrychers bowl and they would put into it little bits of cassia and aloes and myrrh and various spices. And before you added the anointing oil, you could reach in there and pull out a piece and say, there's a piece of cassia, there's a piece of myrrh, there's a piece of aloe. But once the holy anointing oil, the olive oil, was poured in upon it and it was mixed together, it became one entity. And so it was that though every part had its own fragrance, its own flavor, its own ability to glorify, excuse me, to glorify God, yet when the Spirit of God came upon them, they were one body. And this had never been done before.
And so the Spirit of God maintains that unity among his people. We come to Revelation two and three. What I've called the church periods. And there are many people who disagree and who think that this is rather taffet to hold to a three-fold view of Revelation two and three. But we recognize that these seven churches that are spoken of were actual historical churches that were existing in the day of John when these letters were sent to them. And then secondly, there is an amazing correlation between these seven churches and seven periods in which God has been dealing with men in the church age.
And then thirdly, characteristic churches today. Not every church must be a Laodicean church in the Laodicean age. The Word of God shows that these last ones carry on to the end. In fact, we'll see in the chapter heading if we have time on another evening just how distinct these two groups are the first ones which had a period of time and then faded away and then the last ones that continue on to the end time. Ephesus means full of purpose, pardon me, purpose, the pre-persecution church. I have here, they had activity without amity. It's like a pot of boiling water and you take it off the water. And it still boils for a while, doesn't it?
But it left the source of its energies. And so it is with every Christian who may appear to go on well for a while, but if they, not lost, but left their first love, they'll cool off until you come to Laodicea and you'll find that it's lukewarm. And then we have Smyrna, comes from the same word as mer or mara, and it means ditter. And they were the church that went through grave persecution. We read that they were going to suffer ten days, and there were ten Roman rulers, Caesars, from Nero to Diocletian, from AD hundred to about three hundred, who caused the church great grief.
But the blood of the martyrs is the seat of the church, and the church flourished. It was the church in the world. Pergamus is the world in the church. And the illustration is given about a boat. A boat is built to go into the water, isn't it? That's not the problem. The problem is when the water gets into the boat. And so it is in the church. The church has been designed to be preserved in the world. The Lord Jesus said in John chapter seventeen, Lord, don't take, Father, don't take them out of the world, but preserve them in the world. But it's when the world gets into the church and oh how it peaked in that we end up with serious difficulties. We read about the doctrine of Balaam. Now in second Peter two fifteen we read about the way of Balaam.
And in Jude eleven the error of Balaam. And it seems to me that this doctrine of Balaam was trying to appease God and please self at the same time. We have that in Malachi, don't we? At the end of that age, where they wanted to give God a little bit to keep him happy, but not enough to affect their lives. Like that glorious old hymn, Take my life and let it be. That's what the title says, doesn't it? Take my life, Lord. Look after me. Save me. I want that. But then let me be. Just leave me alone. And what a tragedy that is. Very often in the midst, as the children of Israel were, in the wilderness, not enjoying Egypt, but they weren't enjoying the promised land either.
They yearned for the leaps and the onions and the garlic and the cucumber. All that food was a built-in memory system. And on the other side, there was the land flowing with milk and honey, but they were caught in the middle, and they said, We loathe this life bread. In the words of Martin Luther, Many Christians envy the saints their joy and the sinners, their pleasure, because they don't have either one. What a tragedy. Try to get the best out of both worlds and missing out on both. Look, if you're going to go into the world, go ahead. Go ahead and find out that what the Lord Jesus said so long ago is still true, that they are wells without water. There's nothing there. But if you're tired of that, Christians, then come on in to the fullness that God offers us and enjoy all the riches that he wants his people to have.
Well, we could look at Tyre, which means continual sacrifice, the error of repeating the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus over and over again. And here we have the world over the church, the time of Constantine, when he rose to influence and enforce a weak, insipid form of Christendom on the world. And here we see the rise of church dogma, getting away from what Martin Luther called sola scriptura, only the Bible. And then we have sardis, means Jesus' case. The church is freed from the influence of the world.
The time of the Reformation. Although many profess the truth, you practiced it. There were whole countries that turned Protestant overnight, didn't they? And then they flip-flop back in the anti-Reformation, right back to the old quote, mother church. And then Philadelphia, brotherly love, as the church is separated from the world and finally Laodicea. It means the people speak. The voice of the people. Democracy in the church. God never intended autocracy. You can be sure of that. But he didn't intend democracy either. It is to be a theocracy. The Lord over all. Blessed forever. It's the rich, poor church. We begin in Smyrna and Pergama, pardon me, Smyrna, with the poor, rich church.
Poor in this world, goods, and yet rich towards God. We end up with Laodicea, and they say we're rich in increase of goods and have need of nothing. Now the tragedy was not that they were poor and miserable and blind and naked, was it. That wasn't a tragedy, because God says, I've got all the gold you need, and all the raiment you need, and all the eyesight you need. The problem is not that they were poor and miserable and blind and naked, but that they thought they were rich, that they were self-satisfied. Oh, says the Lord, I enjoin you. I counsel thee. To come to me and buy the gold tried in the fire. What does that speak of? We don't have to guess at that. Why, it's the trial of our faith. putting faith to the test and seeing the draught burned away and just was real gold there.
And white raiment, well, that's the righteousnesses of the saints, isn't it? Holy living before God and the great houseliness of living a life of separation in a wicked world. And the eye saw, well, I think that's our occupation with the Lord Jesus, keeping our eyes on Him, being filled with His vision. Satisfied with Him. And as we do, He will bless us indeed. He says, by, of me. Well, when you became a Christian, it was absolutely free, wasn't it? But here's the great difference between becoming a Christian and being a Christian. To become a Christian is absolutely free. But to be a Christian, as God intends to live it, is very expensive.
You have to buy it. Buy the truth and sell it not. And so every truth that we will discover during this study will cost us something if we're going to live it. But oh, it'll be worth it. God tells us it will. And we discover something else in every truth. It seems to be some kind of abstract notion as we discuss it. When we, by the grace of God, take it and apply it to our lives or allow the Spirit to, we discover that it's just another aspect of the loveliness of Christ. That's what it is, isn't it? He is the truth. And as we receive the truth of God, we discover that we are in fact receiving the Lord Jesus. And likewise, if we reject the truth, we are rejecting the one who is the truth, the Lord Jesus himself, as the truth is in Jesus.
I would not encourage you to try and remember everything that we study. We go through a fair bit of material, obviously, in an evening. But I would encourage you to listen for the voice of God as we study these things, and the Spirit of God, I trust, will take up one truth, perhaps, and drive it home to your heart and say, and the preacher doesn't get missed, Nicholson, this is for you. I want you to put this into practice, Lord Willing. Tomorrow morning as we rise, may we apply that truth and live it out and enjoy the benefits of it. So that as we meet together, we are listening for that particular portion of Scripture or that verse, that truth that we need. And the Spirit of God will apply perhaps something different to every heart as he sees we need it.
And we will be encouraged to grow up into him in all things. So thank you very much for this opportunity.