That understanding the Bible is a gift available to all Christians, not a special talent, and that true spiritual growth comes from diligent study and application of God's Word. It explores the multifaceted nature of Jesus Christ as the cornerstone of the church, highlighting His roles as both a stumbling stone for unbelievers and the sure foundation for believers. The message also delves into the unity and diversity within the body of Christ, urging believers to appreciate each member's unique contribution and to maintain fellowship despite differences, ultimately pointing to Christ as the perfecter of the church.
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and every encouragement. And I've seen many young men or young women who have had a lot of encouragement. In fact, a great deal of discouragement who have gone on very well for God. We can't minimize the great value of a Christian home. And I seek to thank God every day for that. Just the same. We won't have any excuse when we get home to heaven, will we? Because we all have the Holy Spirit of God as a twenty-four hour a day tutor. And some people have the notion that the understanding of the Bible is a special gift. I come and speak somewhere and they say, well, of course, you have a special gift to understand the Bible. Well, the gift of understanding the Bible has been given to every Christian. It's the gift of the revelation of the truth of God.
There is a special gift for explaining Bible truth. But as far as understanding, that's available to all of us. There is, however, one very humbling fact, and it's this. But you see J.B. Nicholson where he is, and J.B. Nicholson knows where he should be. And there's a big gap between those two. And I'm always just a little terrified when I hear that scripture that to whom much is given of them much will be required. And so the Lord knows, and in that day when the hidden things are made plain, there'll be many a man, perhaps many a woman, who have been given a great deal less but have done a great deal more with the little bit that they have than those who have been given much.
So just in singing this, and I hope you... read what to sing. You don't want to sing a lie, do you? Some of our hymnology isn't always good theology, is it? But listen to this now. We just sang this. If here it is so blessed, what will it be up there? You think it's going to be all that wonderful when we get to heaven? Here's what we read about heaven. That his name shall be in their forehead. It will be a place of identification with the Lord Jesus. Are you always happy to be identified with him down here? Do you like everyone to know that you're a Christian? Are you very ready to tell them that you belong to the Lord Jesus? Is it all going to be all that wonderful?
We say that in that place there will be no more crying, no more tears. I mean some Christians, and they're not happy unless they're miserable. If we would only magnify our blessings, the way we magnify our troubles, Isn't it easy when you get together to talk about all the grumpy things? You know, the problems, the failures of God's people. Doesn't it come up quickly? There won't be any of that there. That's our favorite indoor and outdoor sport, isn't it? None of that in heaven. Is it going to be all that wonderful to be in heaven? We'll be with the Christians forever now. Remember that. Forever. Never leave.
And our object will be to worship and glorify the Lord Jesus. Do we take that opportunity here and now? Yes, it is going to be wonderful, isn't it, when we get to heaven. But just the same way, we have to think about those things that are in heaven that are available to us right now. We have been welcomed into the heavenly places now. A foretaste of heaven. What Samuel Rutherford called. As he was speaking of this glorious experience, he said, Christ possessed by faith here is young heaven. and glory in the blood. It's possible for us to enjoy much of heaven here and now.
Whether, as the Apostle Paul said, whether I'm with Christ or he's with me, it really doesn't make too much difference. I can still enjoy fellowship with him. And that's one of the great themes of the Christian church, is fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ here and now. Now I'd like to read some verses together, please, with you in the book of Ephesians and chapter four. Ethesians chapter four. And let's read from verse... Well, let's jump in the deep end.
Let's read from verse... How about from verse one? Is that a good place to start? All right. I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord... Defeat you that you walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, even as you are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all. But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore, he saith, when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.
Now that he ascended, what is it, but he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended, up far above all heavens, and that he might fill all things. And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors, and teachers. for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. Till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive.
But seeking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body tightly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplies, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, makes it increase of the body, of the body, unto the edifying of itself in love. Very briefly, I'd like to look at this yellow sheet, and I'm not going to get caught with the trap that I did last evening and spend too much time on it. I think it's fairly self-explanatory. We're dealing with the foundation of the church. And while it was Paul who spoke in First Corinthians three eleven of the foundation that no man could lay, which was already laid, this is Christ Jesus the Lord, it is Peter who takes up his pen and begins to write specifically about that foundation stone.
You'll notice on the old sheet at the top of the arch, the capstone there, the keystone, Jesus Christ, the chief cornet stone. Before we read in First Peter chapter two seven, that the one whom the builders rejected has now become the headstone of the corner. And then if you'll notice down at the bottom in the middle, Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone, Ephesians two twenty, and First Peter two six. And then over in the corners, the lower corners, you'll see the two words, the statements, the stone of stumbling and the rock of open, both from First Peter two eight.
Now here we have four different pictures concerning the Lord Jesus. The stone of stumbling and the rock of Olten. And I've mentioned here that the stone of stumbling is the oft repeated entreaty. The stone in the past. Someone's going along through life and they're handed a gospel paper. They're confronted with the Lord Jesus. They can throw it away. They don't have to read it. And so they go around the stone of stumbling. They step over him, they move along, thinking little of it, until they hear a radio program and they may listen to it or they may turn it off. And so they go around the stone again. And all the way down the path, Brother Robert McClurkin used to say this, and it's really a classic masterpiece.
He said, If heaven is by grace alone, hell is by works alone, and you will work your way over every obstacle that the love of God can put in your path. You want to write that down? If heaven is by grace alone, hell is by works alone, and you will work your way over every obstacle that the love of God can put in your path. God does not send people to hell. We are born going there. And it's God's intention to keep us from going there. And so constantly men are being confronted with the claims of the gospel and with the reality of eternity. Death is a great preacher, isn't it?
Every funeral we stand in the presence of death. This preacher preaches. To large audiences and small, to wealthy people and to poor, to wise people and to foolish. And wherever he goes, he preaches the same message, that we ought to number our days, that we ought to realize that our life here is short and eternity sure. But men don't have to listen to that message. However, after they have avoided the stone of stumbling all the way down the road, thinking that they have now had done with him, they step out into eternity and they meet the great rock of offense.
Now this is a different word that is used. It's like a great cliff that rises out of the bedrock and they will come to him, those who refuse him, those who reject him, those who scorn him, those who ignore him, every soul will stand at last before the great rock of offense. There will be no avoiding that final assign. And so that unavoidable meeting, it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment. God has appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man. What man? Why, the man, Christ Jesus, who downed through the ages, has pleaded with men, and from the same risk that day to day come to me, from those very lips will come these words.
Go away. It is the same Lord Jesus Christ, who took the judgment of God at Calvary, who will open, who will break the seal that will once again herald the judgment of God against an unbelieving world. As the stone of stumbling, they come face to face with the one who wishes to save them. But if they avoid him, if they seek to go their own way. Eventually they will meet this one who is rockable fence. Now the other two. These two, the stone of stumbling and the rockable fence have to do with the unbeliever. But the other two, the chief corner and cornice stone, have to do with the believers.
The first stone to be laid in an ancient building was the corner stone. Now there were four corner stones obviously weren't there, but there was a chief corner stone. It was the first stone that was laid. And it had to be perfect in its dimensions. Because every other measurement in the building was going to be taken from that stone. And so we have in the Lord Jesus a beautiful picture here. That the one who was the first fruits of them the flesh. The one who was the victor of Calvary Phil. the one who is the head of the body, the one who is the shepherd of the sheep, the one who is the bridegroom of the bride, the one who is the blessed hope of the church, the one who is the morning star, is also spoken of in this type of the building.
He is the chief cornerstone. The first stone to be laid, and from him all the measurements were taken. And this is God's standard, isn't it? Not the Christian. Why the Christians fail miserably. And many a person, an unbeliever, has excused himself by saying, if that's Christianity, I want to have nothing to do with it. Well, we have to be ashamed of ourselves. But that is not Christianity. Christianity is Christ. He is the glory of God. We have all fallen short of that glory, haven't we? But Christ did not. He is the effulgence, the full expression of God's headship and the revelation of his character.
And so the Lord Jesus is placed into the church the first stone from which all measurements will be taken. Now the building rises, and by the Spirit of God conviction through the Word of God, and believing in his name, stone upon living stone is being added to the church. Someday, though, the building will be just about done. There is one last stone that was placed in those ancient buildings that would have their archway, and they would have a dome ceiling, and there'd be one last stone, and it would be different from all the other stones. It would be the capstone, the keystone. And as that keystone would slip into place, it would hold all of the other stones together.
And so it is with the Lord Jesus Christ. He not only is the first stone that's put in, the cornered stone, but he is the headstone of the corner. That is, he is the one who will finalize everything that God has begun. And everything will be brought to its perfection in him. He is the one who is the alpha and the omega, the author and the finisher, the first and the last, the root and the offspring. And he is the one who is the chief cornerstone, the beginner, and he is the completer, the perfecter of the church, which is his body. And so it's not up to us either to begin or to finish, for it's all of God from beginning to end.
I've noted over on the side in the upper left-hand corner the foundation of the Christian. Again it's the picture of the rock in Isaiah, twenty-eight, sixteen. And there we have three characteristics of this rock, tried and precious and sure. It is tried as to the past. the Lord Jesus has proved himself to be a trustworthy foundation for every Christian's life. As to the present, he is precious. Unto you therefore which believe he is precious. He shed his precious blood and purchased us from this world into his own family.
And he welcomes us and he wants us to get to know him. He is not only the rock to be trusted, He is the rock to be appreciated. And I wonder how precious he is to us tonight. And then he is sure as to the future. And I have written here we can be sure that the ridicule of men, the onslaughts of Satan, the ravages of time, the heresy within the church will never incur the slightest damage upon the rock of ages. The Lord Jesus is seen again and again at me. as that rock or that stone, that living stone. We see him as the stone, not few notes by human hands, that grows as large as a mountain, the stone that matches down the image of world dominion, the one who will fill the whole earth.
And that's our word, Jesus Christ. And so he is pride and precious and sure as the foundation of every believer. I have four characteristics here, in the arts way, and many more to be added. But we who were dead in sin have been made alive in him. Now, as if that isn't wonderful enough, we have also been made nigh by the blood of Christ. And as well, in his kindness toward us through Christ, we have been made happy. We have been satisfied with him. Satisfied with thee, Lord Jesus. I am blessed.
Only the Lord Jesus can satisfy the human heart. And He has satisfied us. And then we are made complete in Him. We who are unfulfilled. We who are only partial human beings. Incomplete. We have been made whole people in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's all because, as I have written over that cornice stone, it behold Him to be made like unto His brethren. The only way that we could be made like Him was in a strange way that he would be willing to be made like up for a time that we might be like him. Well, there's a great deal more that we could deal with in this passage, but I want to go on to the other sandy-colored chart and look at the form of the church.
In this particular section here with the ten pictures that are given, I got out of a little... booklet that I have gained great benefit from. And I brought along this to you. I don't have too many there. If you can get them by writing to Gospel Folio Press in Grand Rapids, it's simply called the Church. And it was a period of study that Peter Fleming, a young man who gave him his life on the shores of the Carrari River in Ecuador, along with Jim Elliott and three others, in their selfless devotion to spreading of the Gospel message to the Outer Indians. And just a few years before he died for the Lord Jesus, He had a series of meetings in his home assembly in Seattle, and they were put into a booklet form called the Church.
And in small scope, I think it's probably the best that I have seen. And for the phenomenal price of twenty-five cents, you can go home, the owner of one of these, the booklet. If you don't have the money, I'll close you alone. And I'm glad to sell these to you. And we have to recognize, too, that a book does us absolutely no good sitting on our shelves, does it. We have to read it. Now, it won't take you very long to read it, and I think you'll get great benefit out of it. I was talking to Brother Ed Harlow about people who buy books and don't sell them. He said, thank the Lord for them, because they're the people who make it possible to sell books at a cheaper rate to the people who do read them. If only the people who read books, bought books, would they be terribly expensive.
And so he thanked the Lord for all the people who buy them but they'll read them. Of course, the best thing would be to read them too, wouldn't it? And we could gain a great deal of benefit from them. So let's very briefly go around this circle here and look at some of these word pictures that are used to express something of the character of the church. As with the Lord Jesus, no single type will do. Because of the diversity of God's work, it's impossible to simply say, this is what the church is. We read about the manifold grace of God, don't we? And again, about His manifold wisdom. And it really means many facets. As you would turn a diamond in its light, and you would see all the colors of the rainbow emanating from its faces, so it is with the church of Jesus Christ.
Because it is a work of God, as we turn it in the light of Scripture, we see various aspects of the loveliness that has been built into the church by the hand of God. And if we could just see the church as God sees it, it'd be far better off, wouldn't we? It seems to me that we see the church very often as we think it is and not as God sees it to be. It helped me a great deal in my early ministry when another old brother said to me, if you can't see Christ in your brother, see your brother in Christ. If you can't see Christ in your brother, see your brother in Christ. In other words, if you don't see Christ's likeness in him, at least recognize that Christ loves him.
He is the object of divine attention. He is a member of the royal family of heaven. And someday he's going to be glorified. And you with him. And you're going to spend eternity together. And so we ought to recognize not only that the Lord Jesus loved him, but that the Lord Jesus lived in him. Say, that would change our attitude, wouldn't it? The Lord Jesus said, I will not leave you comfortless. Orphans, I will come to you. And the Lord Jesus said, If you offend one of these, it's just as if you're doing it to me. Imagine if just when you were ready to lamb base one of your brethren or one of your sisters or your wife or your husband, if all of a sudden they were transformed into the image of Christ and your mouth was hanging open, how would you feel?
In that day when we stand before him and he says to some, thank you so much for visiting me in prison. And they say, now, when did we ever see thee in prison? When did we ever come to visit thee? Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of thee, my brethren, ye have done it to me. Now that was a great lesson that the Apostle Paul learned on the road to Damascus. It seemed to me that there were certain great truths that he learned there that he never forgot. And one of them was this. As the Lord Jesus spoke to him, he said, Why are you persecuting? Not them, but me. It's not just that we suffer for the Lord Jesus, but that the Lord Jesus suffers with us now.
He suffered for us, leaving us an example, but he suffers with us now. And every time a Christian is rebuffed or abused, the head in heaven feels it. So as we take our little journey around these ten-word pictures and see just a very little bit about the form of the church, We must recognize that form follows function. Now this is something that I suppose we learned in biology class, but there is a relationship between form and function in all the things that God does. And here we see that each of these emphasizes a different truth about the church. A different way God is using it in this wicked world.
Let's begin with the body. That's at nine o'clock. All right. Not nine o'clock on your watch. Nine o'clock on the dial. The body, Ephesians four, eleven to sixteen. Notice how it's written here. It stresses the truth of interdependence with a view to unity. And we'll be looking more at the body when we deal with the function of the church. That's the hot one tomorrow evening. We look at elders and deacons and head coverings and the silence of women and the ministry of men and all those good things. And I understand someone was going to bring along a box tonight. I don't know if it arrived. But if you'd like a question box, put some questions in. You can either give them to me. Oh, there's the box. Sure enough. Thank you, brother. Gentlemen, lose its reward.
And you can just write your questions out there and put them in the box if you like. I don't pretend to know all the answers, but we have the book that has them. And we'll seek to find something from the Word of God. And if I can't find something in there, I'll let you know. So, we take a look at Ephesians chapter four, and this is what we see. In the first few verses down to verse six, The emphasis there is the unity of the body. When we begin reading in verse seven, we read but unto every one of us, and this introduces the next section on the diversity of the body. But then we read from verse fourteen down to perhaps near the end of the chapter, we have the harmony of the body.
First of all, the unity, that there is an intrinsic oneness in the body in the church. Secondly, that this does not mean that everyone is the same in the body. There is unity, but not union. And in the next section we discover that there is not uniformity, that not all of us have been made the same. But then we learn in the third section that even though we are all different, we ought to be working together in harmony for the blessing of one another and the glory of God. There are seven characteristics of this unity that are given.
There's one body and one spirit. There is one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. The perfection of divine unity. Now you'll notice in verse three it is the unity of the spirit. You cannot make the unity, but you can break the unity. He calls upon us to endeavor to keep the unity. What happens when you meet another Christian, Christian who meets in a different way than you do? You try to find out where the difference in you, first thing off? Rather strategically, do you ask them, and what's your particular heresy?
Or do you seek to go with them as far as you can go in personal fellowship? Now, I would make a distinction between local church fellowship and personal fellowship with other Christians. I believe that we ought to make straight paths for our own peace. That we cannot meet in such a place where we have to discard truths that the Spirit of God is real to our heart. That we cannot meet in a place where our conscience is constantly being offended. because there are things going on that we know are not according to the Word of God. At the same time, though we make straight paths for our own feet, we ought to have a heart big enough for all dog's people wherever we find them. Now, if you're going to make me walk home, and I hope you don't, and I met someone who was walking to Tainted Post, you know, that's the way up there, up beyond the corner.
Well, I could walk with them as far as Tainted Post doesn't know. I wouldn't have to say, where are you going? Oh, you're not going to St. Catharines? Well, you're sure going to miss a lot? You sure you don't want to go to St. Catharines? No, no, they want to go to St. Catharines. Well, I'm sorry, you have to walk on the other side of the road, then. I'm not interested. Well, of course not. I can walk with them all the way to St. Catharines, can I? Now, when I get there, I should not expect them to go on to St. Catharines on the basis of my conviction. It's not that they expect me to stay at St. Catharines. Don't you see, dear Christians, that we ought to be able to go as far as we can go with the people of God wherever we find them on a personal basis. In personal fellowship, we should be able to enjoy the Lord Jesus.
Now, these seven characteristics of unity that we find here cannot be divided. They cannot be broken. There are many things that can be broken. And the personal enjoyment that I have of the unity may be deeply affected. by misbehavior, by sin, by false teaching. But these seven things cannot be broken. It would be ludicrous to think of the one God and Father of us all, being anything but one God and Father of God. It would be exceedingly dangerous to think of the Lord Jesus as anything but one Lord.
Isn't that true? And the same is characteristic of each of these. One faith. That is, one body of truth. One part of the body has not been given. One set of values. One set of truth. And someone over here being taught something entirely contrary to that. Now, you see, we may perceive the Word of God differently. In our own bullheadedness sometimes, we read into the Bible what it doesn't say. We have differing measures of life. But God only gave one body of truth, didn't he? It's called the truth once delivered to the same. And as we seek to learn what that truth is, we must receive the truth whatever source it comes from.
We cannot deny the truth. We ought to receive it gladly. Now this is a change I have seen to a great deal. I think I attributed it to the educational system in which our young people are growing up. There was a generation, you see, that thought everything was set. Everything was stable in the world. And then they started to discover that they were on shaky ground. The reason, of course, was that they had no longer built on the sure foundations. And so when things began to crumble, they became rather dubious about the things that were so sure. My mother is not exactly prehistoric, but if you look in her science text, the atom looks somewhat like a fun pudding. And then you go, not many years down the road, and they say, well, the atom actually looks like the solar ticking, you know.
And you say, well, it's not exactly like that. It's sort of like a cloud, you know, of electrons. And you can't really say at any given time that it's actually there. It's just sort of there, you know. And so it was this... To sell it by the truth and sell it not. And so, we are called upon to recognize that things do not change because of culture, because of man's opinion, because of a change in society, that God has given the truth and it's an absolute truth. There is a tendency among those who meet in other ways other than according to the word of God.
They suggest that, well, you know, God never really intended this to be the last word on the church, you see. Because, well, there were changes coming. And so he said, well, this is just the way it'll start out. And from there on, I guess you could sort of fly by the seat of your penance, as they say. Well... These people who call themselves Bible believing evangelical and all of the nice little catch phrases that we have, they would be horrified if we decided to add something to the doctrine of redemption. They would, you know, of course, accept the blood and everything. People don't understand about the Lamb today. Why don't we change the picture and talk about something else? They would be horrified, wouldn't they? And yet when it comes to the doctrine of the church, it's the only one that they think is elastic. And they can stretch it any way they want.
And they can adjust things and add policies and... and organizations and officials that were never countenanced in the Word of God. We are not dealing with something that is adjustable. The truth is extremely intolerable. And when God spoke in the Old Testament, He intended people simply to obey Him, didn't He? Not to discuss it, not to debate it, but to do it. And He wants us to do the same thing. You know, the people in Israel today have said, well, look, You know, that we really don't need all these coverings. One covering is enough, don't you think? Why do we have covering on top of covering? Let's just put on one covering. That'll be enough. As some people suggest today, don't you know the hair is the covering?
We only need one. That's enough. Do you know what would have happened? The priest, as he entered into the holy place, would have dropped dead right on the spot. That's how seriously the matter was considered in that day. Well, if God was so particular about the tenth, then as long since he passed away, How particular must he be about the church of Jesus Christ, which will last forever? He did not leave it to them. Now, these people had built some of the most glorious edifices in the world, in Egypt. And as they came out, God didn't say to them, Well, you know, make me up something nice, something you think I'll enjoy. No. He said, Moses, here it is, exactly. Everything down to the inch. Do it exactly according to the pattern in the mouth.
The pattern that I gave you. We are not given options. There is one faith. And then we read one baptism. Now some have suggested that that believer's baptism. That is one kind of baptism. Well, obviously that's not held commonly true, is it? Through Christendom, or at least even Christianity today. This one baptism is not one kind of baptism. It's not one kind of Lord and one kind of body and one kind of God. It is one Lord and one God and one baptism. This is the once for all act that occurred at Pentecost. The baptism of the Spirit of God was an historical event whereby every believer was united by the Spirit of God into one body.
Now, we don't believe in infant baptism, but if you baptized an infant, it doesn't matter how big it grows, it was baptized. Now, it wasn't a believer's baptism, and all you did was wet the sinner, but the point is that The church in embryo was baptized into one body. And we do not believe that from that point on Christians are baptized into the body. We read that they're added to it. And in fact the Apostle Paul, in writing to Christians who had not been at Pentecost, speaking about that historic event, said, by one spirit were we all baptized into one body. It was a once for all act. Now I recognize there were two frames out of sync, we might say.
There was the event where Old Testament believers were baptized and where Gentile believers were baptized. But God was telling something very specific there about the unity of the body. And Peter's argument to the Jewish believers was this. The very same thing that happened to us at the beginning happened to them. In other words, they have come in on equal footing with the Jewish believers. There is one baptism. Having spoken of the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, The Apostle goes on to speak about the diversity of the body. I think there's a great deal of grief in the local assembly because we don't understand it, or at least we forget that there is to be diversity.
We sometimes get the feeling, although we'd never voice it this way, that if everybody was doing what I was doing, things would be a lot better, wouldn't they? That's a good question to ask ourselves, isn't it? If every Christian in this assembly was just like me, what kind of an assembly would this be? Not a good question then. But every Christian isn't like me. I'm not talking about spiritually, but God has equipped every believer to do a specific task. And the Apostle, I think, uses a bit perhaps of humor when he paints for us an eyeball. And he says, there it is.
What good is an eyeball? What good is an eyeball without a head? And what good is a head without a body? And what good is a body without hands? And what good are hands without feet? And so on down the line, every part has its use. And because the hand isn't the eye, or because the eye isn't the foot, doesn't mean that the hand is no good or the foot isn't any good. Every part has its use. And there is absolutely no competition in the body, is there? In my physical body there's no competition. When I was in first grade, I did something that was verboten in our family. I suppose it was with most of the children in the school. I used my spelling book. Now, I've spoken about a speller before in the States, and people don't know what it is.
A speller is a book that teaches you how to spell. I realize why you don't know what it is down here. That's when I get some letters from you. No, I shouldn't say that. But a speller made a very good slide, a very good toboggan. So there was a hill just outside the classroom where I used to come out, and when it was snowy, you know, I'd jump on my speller and go zipping down the hill. It did terrible things to the speller, but it sure wasn't good to bogging. Well, as I was whipping down the hill this particular day, a tree jumped out in front of me, and I took my hand out to break my hole and broke my arm. I wasn't about to tell my mother. I'd never had a broken arm, and I didn't know what a broken arm felt like, but I sure felt that one. And so I carried my arm around for a little while until finally I couldn't stand it anymore and I told her what I had done.
Now she took me down to the hospital and they put a cast on my arm and my left hand said, aha, now is my hand. Why? The right hand's been doing everything around here. It does up my button, fixes my glasses, you know, combs my hair, brushes my teeth. Now is my chance to take over the body. I don't need old righty. I can do it myself. And so I began to sprawl with my hands. I got a very bad mark in the henmanship. But, well, you know, I can learn to do it. And so my left hand thought to itself, I'm going to take over the body. Of course not. My left hand, you know, I'm using personification. But my left hand was so glad when that right hand got out of the cast.
That's getting something in your eye. And your hand says, look, eyeball. You think you're so clever because you can read. Well, I can learn to read Braille. Forget it. What have you ever done for me? Of course not. Imagine your two feet having competition to see who could get outside fast enough. See who could beat the other one down the stairs. You'd have a terrible time, wouldn't you? Don't we see that in the body sometimes? And worse. What's called, what used to be called St. Vitus Dance. Where the body didn't pay any attention to the head. And so it is very often in the local assembly. There is one body, and there is one head.
There is one Lord, and ye are all brethren. But to every one of us, he is grace given, according to the measure of the gift of Christ. You'll notice on the side panel, speaking about mysteries, that I look at some of the mysteries of the body of Christ. There are actually five of them. I have three of them down here. The mystery of his physical body. Greg is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in flesh. This certainly is a great mystery, isn't it? How the God who inhabits eternity could pour himself into a human body. And that's a body of a little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, restricting clothes, and lying in a manger.
Oh, what a great mystery that is. The mystery of his physical body, but then there is the mystery of his mystical body. That is, he is the head and the church is the body. What a sense of intimacy there is about this. That we who belong to the Lord Jesus are not simply with him, but we are, in a strange sense, part of him. in such intricate, in such intimate relationship with him, that the picture that is given is of the head and the body. As much as we don't like to think of it, you can get along if you lose an arm, you lose a leg, but you can't get along if you lose your head, Shane.
And while we may be dispensable in the things of God, there is one who is indispensable, and that the Lord Jesus Christ. And then there's his spiritual body. not only his, but we shall have bodies like his. For again the Apostle writes, Perch, Corinthians, fifteen, isn't it? When he speaks about that spiritual body, which we will have, the body of glory, and he says, Behold, I show you a great mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be chained in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we which are alive and remain, we will all be swept up together with our new bodies, glorified bodies, We just couldn't stand it if we didn't get new bodies.
And God has arranged it whereby we will enjoy forever with Him. Those are some of the mysteries that have to do with the body. And so we ought to be very careful in our study of the body in the Word of God to make sure we know which body God is talking about. Because we can certainly end with a real mishmash here, can't we, if we don't discern between the things that differ. Now we've got number one out of ten. Not too bad. It's eight thirty and it's time to close. But I would encourage you in your study to take a look at these, the chaste virgin, shredded expectation for Christ's return. We are to be waiting and to be working and to be watching. My grandfather had a little sister.
Actually, she was his big sister. He never knew her. Her name was Mary. Because in eighteen, eighty-nine or ninety, there was a terrible epidemic of hysteria. and Scarlet fever that swept through the city of Montreal. My great-grandfather had the responsibility, along with a number of other men, of building caskets, and they couldn't build them fast enough. Thousands of children died. And death did not pass by my great-grandparents' homes. They lost four children in one week, and one of them was Mary. But before she died, at the age of eight, very often she would come out, and she would pull back the drapes in the kitchen, as she and her mother began preparation for the meals.
And as she would look out the window, she'd say, Do you think you'll come today, mommy? Oh, I tell you, Christian, sometimes we can get it all down, can't we? Whether we're pre-trib or post-trib or mid-trib or our mill or pre-mill. Does it ever thrill our heart? Do we ever get up in the morning and say, Come, Lord Jesus, even so, come quickly? That's what God wants of us. A yearning after Christ. Some people say, Well, then that would mean that you're, you know, so heavenly minded, you're no earthly good. What rubbish. The only person that, as far as God is concerned, is of any earthly good, is the one who is heavenly-minded. Because we will live every this day in the light of that day, when we will stand before him at last.
And we will seek to be careful and holy and honest in all our dealing, because we know that the next moment we might be in his presence. And we would not want to do anything that would cause the blush to rise on our cheeks, to be ashamed before him at his coming. We look at the temple, stressing holiness for dedication. My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. And again, the local church is spoken of as the temple of the Lord Jesus. And then we read of the universal church as the temple. But when we read of that day, when we get to heaven, there's no temple there. God will not be restricted then. The glory of the Lord will cover, will fill the whole place.
For he is the one who reigns there. the pillar and bulwark of the truth. And oh, how we need honesty and accuracy and the expounding clearly of the Word of God today to keep us from being knocked about by every wind of doctrine, to know what God says. And there are no shortcuts out there. When my father was a young man, he used to go and study with an older man, and that's a good policy to follow, isn't it? And one day as he was putting on his coat, he said to the man, I'd give just about anything to know the Bible the way you do. The old man picked up his Bible and extended it to my dad and said, There it is, boy. Just spend the time. Well, he did.
Just spend the time. Sometimes at five o'clock in the morning, before he went to work, he spent the time. And it pays off, doesn't it? And so there are no shortcuts. There are no easy little gimmicks. If you want to know God, he'll show himself to you. But we have to spend the time. The lampstands, testimony, excuse me. And of course, we see the danger in Revelation. chapter two and three of the Lord coming and removing a lampstand. And here are two great principles in the, if I was drawing the picture now, I wouldn't draw it the way I did. That's an Old Testament symbol, isn't it? The New Testament symbol is very different. It's not one base and seventh lamp. It is every lamp on its own base. And here we have a great principle, the autonomous nature of the local church.
That this assembly is responsible to God alone. And there is only one. moving among the candlesticks, the lampstands, who has the right to cut off a testimony. That is not given to us to do. We have no right to cut off another assembly. That's God's work. That's the work of the Lord of the churches. Now he can remove a testimony. But that's his job, not mine. And we must recognize that we stand before God, responsible for our local assembly, and that's it. Although we seek to inter... not interdependence, but fellowship with every gathering of God's people who seek to follow His word.