Christ's headship over the church is presented as a foundational truth, emphasizing that He is the creator and sustainer of all things, and the preeminent head of His body, the church. The sermon draws from Colossians 1 and 1 Corinthians 12 to explain that believers are incorporated into Christ's body through the Holy Spirit's work of regeneration, not by human effort or ritual. It highlights that Christ, as the head, provides nourishment, protection, and guidance to His members, and that true Christian fellowship and service stem from this vital connection. The message concludes by urging believers to recognize and submit to Christ's headship, ensuring their lives are aligned with His will and purpose, thereby experiencing the full benefits of being part of His body.
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him and we welcome each one here to our gospel and ministry conference at the washington heights chapel this chapel is located twenty six hundred south st mary street and morningside which is one block south of glen avenue and we want to invite all of our radio listening audience this afternoon to come and be with us for the afternoon session the meeting this evening at seven thirty tomorrow the family bible hour at eleven o'clock again from three to five and also at seven thirty tomorrow evening. We hope that you all be able to be with us for some of these good times that we're having together around the Word of God. We have two interesting men with us at this time, Brother John Walden, who is the director of the Christian Home for Children in Colorado Springs.
Brother Walden has been with us in times past, and those who have been listening to KTFC, I've heard his messages on the Book of Romans in the morning at seven thirty every Friday. Our other brothers, our brother Mr. Owen Hoffman, who comes to us from Washington, Georgia, and we'll be hearing from these men. We turn the meeting now over to our brother, Mr. Walden, from Colorado Springs. We've been talking about the Lord Jesus as Lord in the lives of the believers. We recognize that he is rejected in this world in which we live. The world had no use for him when he came here in person, in body, in his incarnation.
He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. They disclaimed him. They put him on a cross and gave him back to God by way of the cross. The world hasn't changed a bit. Somebody said that he thought that perhaps the world and the church were getting a little closer together. And he said, well, if you mean that the world is getting a little more churchy, I guess that's true. And the church is certainly getting a little more worldly. But neither one of them are good. The world hasn't changed a bit. The Lord Jesus is still hated, or at least neglected, by the most of the people who are not saved.
We who have received Christ as our Savior... have also received him as our Lord. As many as received him, John one and twelve. And in receiving him, we're told, that we confess him as Lord. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, Romans ten and nine tells us, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. And each of us who have received Christ have received him as Lord as well as our Savior. Now unless you know the Lordship of Christ in your private life and acknowledge the authority of God in your home life, you're not going to be ready for what I want to read to you this afternoon from Colossians chapter one about acknowledging the headship of Christ in your relationship with other believers.
Let me say that again. You must, first of all, acknowledge the lordship of Christ in your private life. Is Christ really your Lord? And then you must acknowledge what we talked about this morning, Christ as the authority and as being subject to his authority in your own home. Husbands and wives living together as God is ordained and children being in subjection to their parents. and parents being careful not to discourage their children. When your home life is set according to the Word of God, then you may be ready for what I want to read to you now.
Colossians chapter one, verse thirteen tells us that God has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. This is the marginal reading. And this tells us a little bit about the worth of this one. The Lord Jesus is not only the Son of the love of God in the sense that he is the full expression of God's love to it. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, but he is the perfect embodiment of the love of God. When you see the Lord Jesus, you see what God is like. You understand God's concern for people when you watch the Lord Jesus in action here among people.
He is the perfect Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins, who is the image of the invisible God. And the word image here has nothing to do with shape at all, but it has to do with character. The Lord Jesus is the perfect expression of the character of God, because He is God, manifest in the flesh, the firstborn of every creature. That is, he is the head of all creation. The word firstborn in the Bible has nothing to do with precedence of birth. For instance, God says, Israel was my firstborn, and yet God had dealt with many people before he dealt with Israel.
And such people as Moses and Isaac and Jacob and many others were called the firstborn. They were not the first ones born into their family at all, but they were given the special place. And the Lord Jesus had no beginning at all, but he does have this special position. It's a word of position. It tells us his worth. It tells us his greatness. And we read in verse sixteen, for by him or in him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created by him.
or literally through him and for him or unto him. So we're told in this verse that they are in and through and for the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything in God's creation owes its being to him. And the purpose of all this creation is for the honoring and glorifying of the Lord Jesus Christ. That gives you a little idea as to his greatness. Now we don't discredit the very brave journey of the three astronauts who have made an exploration comparable to that of Columbus in going out and around the moon. But those men have merely explored a little piece of the creation which belongs to our blessed Lord Jesus and which was made by him and which ultimately will be entirely for his glory.
It's a great thing for us to be able to do things with his creation. it's much greater that he is the creator. He is the one for whom all these things were made. And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. I have a friend who is a research scientist, and I remember when nuclear fission began to be talked about, and I said to him, I don't think I understand nuclear fission. He said, I don't think anybody understands So don't let that worry at all. But he said, I can tell you this much. The wonderful thing is not that men can split the atom.
The wonderful thing is that all the atoms don't split the part and the whole thing fly to pieces. Then he explained to me a little bit the construction of an atom. And he said, there's only one answer to this. And that answer is found in this verse in the first chapter of Colossians. By him all things hold together. the Lord Jesus holds everything together. That's all that keeps it from flying apart right now. And he is the head of the body. Now this is quite a preamble. We've read some very wonderful things here, but it leads up to this. He is the head of the body.
Who else deserves so much to be the head? Who else but the one who has redeemed us and the one who has made all things and the object of all God's plans? Who else should be the head? He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. Here's that word firstborn again. Well, you say weren't other people raised from the dead? Yes, but then they died again. Lazars was raised from the dead, but he just had a mortal body, and the time came eventually when he had to die again. That isn't the kind of resurrection that our Lord Jesus, with which he was raised at all, because he was raised from among the dead.
He was raised in immortality. The Lord Jesus will never die again. And so he is the firstborn or the leader, the file leader. from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence. This word only occurs twice in the New Testament, here and in one of John's epistles, where he tells us that there was a very wicked man named Diotrephes, and he wanted the preeminence. Now the Lord Jesus has the preeminence, and other people have wanted the preeminence. Eminence means the high place, and preeminence means the highest place. and the Lord Jesus deserves, and it's God's plan that he will have the preeminent place, both now and for all eternity.
Now, if you say amen to that, you may be ready for what I have to say the rest of this session. He must have the preeminence. God has been pleased to give it to him, for it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell. In the third chapter of Hebrews and the sixth verse, we are told that the Lord Jesus Christ is a son over his own house. That's a matter of authority. In the Old Testament, there were some great men. Moses was the greatest of these. And in the same third chapter of Hebrews, we are told that Moses was a servant in God's house.
But in contrast to that, the Lord Jesus is said to be the Son over his own house. The house of God is his own house, for he is God. God the Son. God manifest in the flesh. God exalted at the right hand of the Father. The Lord Jesus Christ is God, and he is the head over his own house. I have a friend who is a member of a certain church, I won't tell you what, because your aunt Fanny might belong to the same one, then you'd get mad at me. But anyway, this friend of mine is a member of a certain church, and I bugged him a little bit about his religious connections, and so I said to him, who's the head of your church?
Well, he said, Dr. Pooba, or whoever it is, back there in New York, and I said, well, what do you do about that verse that says Christ is the head of the church? Well, he said, of course he is, too. Too? Too? What do you got? A two-headed monstrosity? Oh, I said, go on. You're always trying to get me in the corner. Well, I said, that's where you are. It's exactly where you are. Either the Lord Jesus Christ is the head of the church or Dr. Poo Bo is, and you ought to find out. Brothers and sisters, listen to me. It's time that we found out that the Lord Jesus Christ is the head over his church. Anybody who has a head over anything else is a head over something which is not his church.
I have more to say about that, but I want to make this crystal clear that I believe the Lord Jesus Christ is the only one in this universe who has any right to be the head over the church. And I think those of us who love him want it to be this way. Now in this same book of Colossians, we're told in chapter two and verses nine and ten, in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. and ye are complete in him which or who is the head of all principality and power. And then again at verses eighteen and nineteen, let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshiping of angels.
This, of course, had to do with Gnosticism, a philosophy of the first few centuries, especially, but has to do with anybody else who is interested in this kind of religion, intruding into those things which he had not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the head. Now this is failure to recognize the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I charge that professing church with this crime, there is a failure in the world today to recognize the headship of our Lord Jesus Christ. And for all I know, some of you who are sitting here may be guilty of this very thing. I want to find out if we are, and if we are honest about it, we ought to confess it and judge it, and we ought to return to this well-established fact, to this conviction, that our blessed Lord Jesus is indeed the head.
Not holding the head, he said, from which all the body by joints and bands, having nourishment ministered and knit together, increases with the increase of God. He's liking this to a body. Now in Ephesians chapter one, he tells us that Christ is the head over all things to the body which is the church. Let's see if we can understand this. This morning we had a figure from Ephesians chapter five of Christ and the church as bridegroom and bride. Now it's a little hard for us who are men to identify in this.
We have a hard time feeling like we're part of the bride, if you understand what I mean, because I've always been used to being a bridegroom ever since I've been married and the husband. But the scripture says that all of the believers comprise or make up the bride and Christ himself is the bridegroom. Now the reason he uses this figure is so that we will understand how dear we are to him. And I of course can identify with that because I understand my love for my wife and how much she means to me. And if I mean this much to the Lord, if I'm a part of his beloved, this is a wonderful thing. But now we've got another figure.
And the figure here is the human body. And the Lord Jesus is said to be the head of that body. and you and I are said to be the members of that body. The classical passage on this is First Corinthians chapter twelve. You should put this down in your notes and read it when you have some time. Go over the whole thing carefully and note that God tells us in First Corinthians chapter twelve how we got into this body to begin with and how we find our place in this body and how each member of this body functions. We're told in the twelfth and thirteenth verses of first Corinthians twelve that the human body is made up of many members and yet they being many members are one body, so also is the Christ.
For by one spirit are we all baptized into one body. The Holy Spirit puts every believer into the one body. when he receives the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior. This is called the new birth. The Lord Jesus said it is imperative. He said except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. You simply cannot be a Christian without being born again. You can be a member of any church that allows membership, that takes people into membership. You can join that, whether you're a believer or not. You may have to lie about it to get in, but you can get in. You can get into anything that can be joined, but you can't get into the body of Christ except by the new birth.
And the new birth is simply the act of receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. As many as received him, to them gave thee the authority to become the children of God, even to them which believe on his name, which were born. And you and I were born not of blood, nor of the will of man, nor the will of flesh, but of God. We were born of God when we received Christ. as our own personal Savior and Lord. When this happens, you and I became members of his body. As you look at the different members of your own body, you recognize that all of them have been born right there. That's why we're so attached to them. We feel that this is a part of me, you know.
That son was there when I was born. It took me a while to find out what it was for. For a while, I merely chewed on it. And after a while, I found it could be used for other things. And I appreciate the different parts of my body and their usefulness to me. And I have through the head controlled and directed and preserved and looked after as best I could the various members of my body. I lost the end off one finger, but that wasn't any idea of mine. And when that happened, the rest of my body carefully took care of that particular member until it was healed. And he goes on to say in First Corinthians chapter twelve that the members of the body have this mutual care for one another.
Now this has nothing to do with your joining an organization. You may or may not have mutual care for each other there. But in the body of Christ there is this mutual care. You don't have to teach a young Christian to love other young Christians or other Christians. You don't have to teach him this at all. The Holy Spirit of God produces this love. We love because he first loved us. and the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us, he says in Romans five. And so every Christian loves other Christians. In fact, in first John chapter three in verse fourteen he says, we know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the bread.
This is one of the proofs that we are saved, the fact that we love our fellow Christians. And if you don't love other Christians simply because they are believers, then there's something wrong with your profession and you ought to give it some very careful thought. But now back to this business of our being a part of the body of which he is the head. It's a very wonderful thing to be given a place in the body of Christ. May I submit to you that we ought to be satisfied with this and not seek some other kind of place? I would be upset if I found out that my thumb was planning to join another body.
This would bother me terribly. I just couldn't think of anything more distracting than to have this thumb become a part of another body. After I'm done with it, if they want to transplant it somewhere, I have no objection whatever to that, but as long as I'm here, I would like to have it, like to retain its use, and like to keep it as a part of this body. and under the control of this, my own head, you see. But when you join something else, you may put yourself under the control of a head or a headship of some type, which is not holding the head that we're talking about here in Colossians. Now, when you became a part of the body of Christ, the Lord decided where you belong.
And First Corinthians twelve says that twice that he has put us in the body as it pleased him. I have nothing whatever to say about the functions that I am to perform in the body of Christ. God gave to me whatever gift He wanted me to use. God, the Holy Spirit, controls the use of that gift. And Christ the Lord has full power to say where that gift is exercised, because He is the head. Just as I tell the different members of my body, where I want them to be at any given time, So the Lord should be free to do that for each of us. You see how important this is.
Unless you get hold of this fact that we are completely under the control of another and you're just going to have difficulty. This is why so many Christians are constantly in an uproar. It's because they're trying to do things contrary to the leading of the Lord and the head. Our lives are filled with confusion because we want to do this and he wants us to do that. I was talking to a man one time who was very disturbed, and I said, what in the world is the matter with you? And he said, I'm in a hurry and God isn't. Now that's a bad situation to get into. And I suppose we've all been there. We want things done this way, and God wants it done that way. And he may let you have your own way, as he did the children of Israel.
He gave them their heart's desire, and he sent them leanness of soul. And it may take you a while to get back to where he can use you again. Sometimes the members of my body have become useless for the time being through injury or through sickness or through some other thing. Paralysis can do this, you know. Paralysis is simply the interruption of the telephone line between the head and the various members of the body. And there's nothing much more useless than a paralyzed limb or arm of a human body. how many Christians there are who haven't received any communications from the head for so long that they haven't the slightest idea what God wants them to do.
This is a sad condition and it's this paralysis in the body that's causing so much damage today. It won't do any good for us to exhort you to get out and get to work if you're suffering from spiritual paralysis. You've got to get that line of communication re-established so that you are speaking to the Lord and the Lord is speaking to you and so that you are subject to his leading and guiding. And then the Spirit of God will use you, and you will see his will done in your life. You may see soul saved, or you may see the Lord's people edified, or he may just keep you in a quiet place and develop the fruit of the Spirit in your own private life. But he has a perfect right to say whatever he wants you to do.
And if you recognize the headship of Christ, you will be willing for him to guide you in this way. Now there are certain benefits from being a member of the body. I don't know just how much benefit it has been to the various members of my body to be attached to my head, but there certainly are wonderful blessings, wonderful accomplishments and wonderful benefits attached to being a part of the body of which Christ is the head. For instance, the members of my body are always permitted to go wherever my head goes.
We never ride off in different directions, and I don't have any intention of doing such a thing unless I'm caught in an explosion. I expect that wherever I go, I will take the various members of my body with me. So there is that privilege of nearing. Does this mean anything to you, your relationship to Christ? There are two ways of thinking of nearness to the Lord. One is, draw me near. Near, blessed Lord. That's experiential. The other one is, so near, so very near to God that near we cannot be. That's position. That never changes. Thank God we are always near to the Lord Jesus.
Position. But the sad part of it is we're not always enjoying. We're not always conscious of this nearness. There are times when the heavens seem like brass. There are times when our prayers just bounce off the ceiling right back at us. You know what I'm talking about. You haven't lived this long without having the terrible experiences of being out of touch with the Lord. I was preaching in eastern Colorado several years ago, and the lady came to me with a very sad face, and she said, what do you do when you feel that something is wrong between you and the Lord, and you don't know what it is? And I said, well, I think I'd ask him. And she said, I'm surprised I never thought of that myself.
Of course you know. And she left. I said, no more about it. And the next night she came in with a face smiling, you know. And I knew she'd gotten this thing taken care of, all right. And when she got a chance, she said to me, you know, when I got home last night, I got down on my knees as soon as I could get away from the family. And I said, Lord, whatever this is, show it to me and I'll put it away. I don't want anything to sweep. And she said, just like that it came to me. I knew what it was right then. I don't know why I never thought of it before. So she said, I acknowledge it to the Lord. And I said, as soon as I can, tomorrow, and I can get in touch with these people, I'll get this thing straightened out. And she said, I've had perfect peace about it ever since.
Now, if I tell you what it was, which isn't in your business, but if I tell you what it was, you would be surprised that that could spoil fellowship. Why? What does it take to interrupt fellowship? between friends? Not much. What does it take to interrupt communication between one part of the body and the head? Not much. You can't see a microbe, let alone a virus, but can they do some damage when they get into the body? And you think that a sin wouldn't destroy your fellowship with the Lord. Thank God it won't destroy your relationship. That's permanent. But your fellowship with the Lord can be destroyed so easily by such a small thing.
To you it's small. But of course if it's sin it isn't small. Was it a great sin like murder that caused our first parents to be put out of the Garden of Eden? No. It was taking of some fruit that God had forbidden. That's all. All? Well wasn't that sin just the same as any other kind of rebellion? And sin is sin. If we'd start calling it sin, instead of calling it a weakness that we inherited from grandma, we might get rid of some of these things in our lives. If you call these things sin and judge them of sin and ask God to help you to put them away, you'll find that your fellowship can be restored and that you will enjoy a nearness that is wonderful.
Well, then there's something else that the members of the body enjoy, and that is we enjoy protection. I do my best. protect the members of my body. I'm not like the man whose mind was affected, and he complained to the nurse in the hospital that his feet were cold. She said, well, you have him sticking out from under the cover. Just pull him back under the cover. He said, not me. I'm not going to take those cold things in bed with me. But, of course, he was demented. The poor fellow had mental trouble, and you couldn't blame him for that. Why, his feet are entitled to a place underneath the covers. They're entitled to his protection, but he had somehow or other lost the understanding in his responsibility to protect and care for them.
Do you ever stop to think how well the Lord protects us, how well he cares for us, how many things he does for us day by day, and we never thank him. We thank him for food, but we seldom thank him for good water. You better thank you. It may not be much longer you'll have any good water. Pollution keeps on at the rate it is now. And fresh air? How many people ever thank the Lord for a breath of fresh air, except occasionally when they get out into the country? How many things happen to us physically? But then that's only the smallest part of it. Leaving the realm of the physical, think of all the things that the Lord does for us day by day.
Think of the little thoughts that He gives to us. that make our hearts glad. Think of the times that he gives you a song in the night. Think of the various ways that the Lord uses you. Why should he? He wanted it done efficiently. He wouldn't get you to do it. You can be mighty sure of that. Service, why service is merely an opportunity for the Lord to have fellowship with us. So far as our service is concerned, he taught his disciples to say, when you've done the very best that you can, say we are but unprofitable service. That means in common everyday English, you're not worth your salt. That's exactly what it means. When the Lord wanted the Syrian army destroyed, he didn't send the army of Israel against them.
He sent one angel down. And in the morning there were a hundred and eighty-five thousand carcasses lying there on the ground. One angel. That's the way God gets the job done efficiently. And if you wanted to, he could do this with the gospel too. But he has put this in our hands. He has given us the privilege of serving Him. He's given us the privilege of working with Him. These are the little kindnesses that He shows us day by day that we ought to learn to appreciate. And then we're told also that the Lord gives us the guidance which we need. Now, I know that guidance is a difficult subject. Not long ago, my wife said to me, guidance is a little harder when you need it yourself than when you preach about it, isn't it?
I thought there's a little gravel in that remark, but it's true, isn't it? Absolutely true. Guidance is much easier when you preach about it than when you need it. We've all been through this. And yet, the real problem lies in our own willingness. Am I right? You see, when you and I really want to be guided, the Spirit of God doesn't seem to have much trouble doing it. The problem is I want to be guided that way, like the young fellow who prayed that the Lord would lead him to the right girl. And he said, anyone, Lord, who you choose, as long as it's Marianne. That's the kind of guidance we want. I've got it all figured out. I want the Lord to rubber stab it. That isn't the way he guides.
But think how the Lord guides. Think how wonderful it is that the head is able to guide the different parts of the body. Have you ever wondered how it is that you can pass that test where you bring your fingers together like that without watching them. You ever wondered that? Isn't that a marvelous thing? How can the head tell where those fingers are going to meet? And how is it that you can pack your hands together and you can do it nice and easy for the baby or you can pop your hands loud when you want some attention? How does your head know when to slow up on the muscles and when to stop things? This guidance of the body is a marvelous thing. The guidance of the eyes, the coordination of the eyes. The ability to use them together.
The ability of our ears to pick up a sound and tell the direction from which it came. You lose this when you lose the hearing of one ear, as I have. But anyway, how marvelous it is that the body is so under the guidance of the head. How wonderful it is when God can guide you and He can guide me and He can guide us together. And He does this so many times in our lives. We are led to do the right thing. I think it would be all right as Brother Hoffman, if I tell you this, that he and I had no contact with each other before he came to this conference. We haven't corresponded, and I'm sorry to say this, in quite a while. He isn't a very good letter writer, and neither am I.
The last time we were together was what, twenty years ago. We had some wonderful meetings out in Colorado Springs. We had children's meetings in the city auditorium. And the smallest meeting we had was eight hundred and the biggest one was twelve hundred, which are pretty good sized children's meetings. You think you've got problems with three of them at all. Well, we had a wonderful time together and yet Owen was busy and I'm busy and we haven't kept in very close touch with each other and we haven't corresponded because I didn't even know until three days ago that he was going to be here at the conference. And yet when we prayed about this, what do you think we both decided to do? We both decided to talk about the subject of the Lordship of Christ and the headship of Christ. And he very graciously said, well, there wasn't much else he could say.
I preached first this morning. But I mean, he said, well, your exercise about this, I'll follow along with some things related to it. We came here, both of us, concerned about preaching on this topic. How do you account for that? There's only one way, and that is the guidance of the head. Of course, the head works through the Holy Spirit, who is here among us. This is beside the point at the moment. We're simply thinking of how the head has the control of all the members of the body. Do you want this control? If you want it, you can have it. And it's a marvelous thing to see the control of the Lord in our lives. Then there's another thing that we sometimes overlook. We just read in Colossians two in verse nine, nineteen that all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered or served and nipped together increases with the increase of God.
What does this mean? Well, it means that the head controls the nourishment of the various members of the body. We'd be in an awful fix, you know, if the head ever lost control of the nourishment of the body and fed it all into your left ear. You'd be in an awful looking sight by the end of two months. But he doesn't. I mean, it doesn't. The head controls the nourishment of the body to see that each part gets what it needs. And when one part has been injured or ill, special nourishment is fed to that particular part to build it back up again. And this is wonderful. And the Lord knows how much you need. And He knows when you need it. By the way, that verse that says, My God shall supply all your needs, has been very much misapplied.
It means, first of all, that He is offering this to those who have been faithful in what He mentions previous to this. He says that if you are liberal in your giving to others, you can expect God to give back to you what you need. That's the first thing. The second thing that we overlook is that He decides what you really need. Sometimes you need to go hungry. And from the looks of some of you, it wouldn't do you any harm for a few days right now. The Lord knows, I didn't mean that personally, so I have that problem too. The Lord knows what you need. You may need difficulty. I know you don't want it. Nobody wants it. We want patience, but we don't want the tribulation which works with patience.
We want things to go smoothly. We sang that hymn last night. I said afterward, the hymn says, Speak thou in tenderest tones. Speak to me in softest whispers. I said, now if you really want the Lord to speak to you, you'll have to let him choose how he speaks to you. Maybe you don't need to be spoken to in softest whispers. When one of my boys or girls at the home in Colorado Springs is not behaving himself, it wouldn't do him any good to say to me, now dad, speak to me in softest whispers. The Lord knows what you need, and you're going to get what you need, and you're going to get it even if you don't ask for it.
That's a wonderful thing about it. If we only got what we asked for, we wouldn't have much, wouldn't it? The Lord is looking after those who are members of His body. But now there's something else I wanted to say to you about this, and that is the wonderful thing that it means to be associated with the Lord Jesus, who is our head in heaven, and we are here on this earth. Sometimes we think of him as being far off. We say, well, the Lord has gone back to heaven. I wonder if he knows what's going on down here. One fellow said to me, I'm not even sure about that fellow's salvation. It really bothers me. He said, well, the Lord lived here in the first century. But he said, you can't expect him to understand what things are like in the twentieth century.
Well, this is ridiculous. He is God. Of course he understands. Do I believe that this book is sufficient for the twentieth century? Indeed I do. We don't have to have anything new. This is all we need. This book is complete. The principles of this book will work in nineteen sixty-nine, just as they work in the year sixty-nine. The Lord is in heaven, and we are here on this earth. But there is a wonderful connection between us. Mr. A.N. O'Brien, of whom I traveled for eight and a half years, used to say, Our head is in heaven. Brethren, you can't drown a man with his head above water. It looks pretty bad to you some days.
You feel some days that you're going to go under, and you wonder what's going to happen in this world. You wonder what's next. These are fearsome days. I tell you, I'm disturbed at what I see in our country, but I'm not afraid. Men's hearts failing them for fear, for looking upon the things that are coming upon the earth. They have reason to fear. And the people who are most afraid now are not the ignorant people. There was a time when people used to say that fear is an emotion of the ignorant. This is not true anymore. The people who are most afraid now are not the ignorant people, but the people who know the most. The scientists, the philosophers, the statesmen, the politicians, the leaders and heads of states.
These are the men who know the conditions that are in the world today. We're not afraid. When you see these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads. For your redemption draws near. He's our head. He's not going to leave us here. Now how is the headship of Christ administered? This is a very wonderful subject in itself. We won't have time to go into it in detail. In two ways, first of all, through the Holy Spirit, and secondly, through the fellow members. The administration of the headship of Christ is, first of all, through the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit brought us into contact with the Lord Jesus to begin with. The new birth takes place by the Holy Spirit. I heard a man say from the platform one time, I tell you, folks, you've got to be born again through the blood of Jesus. Now, that's pretty shabby thinking. you're not born again through the blood of Jesus at all you are cleansed by the blood of Christ you are made nigh by the blood of Christ but you are born of the Spirit of God by the use of the Word of God being born again by the Word of God which lives and abides forever the Spirit of God takes the Word of God and produces new life in a believer so we were born again by the agency of the Holy Spirit the Spirit of God in cooperation with the Word of God made you a child of God and a member of the body of Christ.
You didn't become a member through your baptism, no matter what your catechism says. You did not become a member through any act of any person or any group. You became a child of God solely by the operation of the Spirit of God. This is wonderful to know, because this gives us a relationship which is absolutely untouchable. Even the devil himself can't touch what the work of the Spirit of God has produced in our lives. But then there's something more than that. In First Corinthians twelve, he tells us that the Spirit has given to us the various gifts. Now don't confuse these with native ability. It's wonderful, for instance, when a man has a good speaking voice. But to assume that I'm to be a preacher because I have a speaking voice is all wrong.
Maybe I'd make a better auctioneer. It means absolutely nothing for you to have native ability except in the measure that you can consecrate that native ability back to God. It's wonderful if you have a good voice that you can give to God and God in turn can use it. But this is not what is meant by the gift in First Corinthians twelve. The gift here has to do with the special work of the Spirit of God in producing in every believer some ability which he did not have when he became a child of God. I knew a man. who never answered in anything but monosyllables. I thought he was a dummy. He just sat there like a bump on a hickory log.
You couldn't carry on the conversation with him. And his wife was quite capable of talking, but he just answered in grunts. And that man became a child of God. And I watched the transformation take place in him as he got something to talk about. You know, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speakers, he just didn't have anything to say before. He wasn't hungry, he wasn't cold, and so he just didn't talk. But after he got the Lord as his Savior, he had a conversation going all the time. And he became a very able teacher of the Word of God. He's gone home to heaven now. I saw that happen. I saw him saved. I mean, I knew him before he was saved.
I saw the transformation when he became a child of God, and I watched the Spirit of God develop in that man's ability to teach the Word. Now, the Spirit of God will do that for every one of us. And don't say that you don't have any gifts. That's like saying I have some members of my body which have absolutely no use. This is not true. When I was a boy, I studied science. I sometimes tell my boys and girls at the home what I learned in science. And they say, well, Daddy, that isn't science. Well, I said it was. When I went to school, that just shows that you can't be too ogre-eyed over science. It's going to change. Give it another thirty years, and the things that you think are all so wonderful are going to be changed too.
For instance, all the information that we have about the moon. You just wait a couple of months, see if it's all true. We're constantly learning. But the knowledge that God has given us here... through his word, the things that he teaches us, the ability that he gives us to know what he wants us to know. The gifts which he places within us are given to every believer. I started to say I was taught in science that the pituitary gland was a totally useless thing. It's smaller than the end of your little finger. It's buried deep in the base of the brain. And it has absolutely no use, they said.
Now they found out it's the engineer of the whole business. That's the thing that controls everything that's going on in your entire metabolism. Good thing I didn't have mine removed. When we first started the children's home, we were told that all children ought to have their consoles taken out. Since they were cheaper by the dozen, we used to gather up about a dozen of them and take them to the hospital and get their tonsils taken out. I didn't have any choice. I was doing what the doctor told us to do. We had the best pediatrician in town. Now they don't do that. They found out now that that's an awful mistake. They found out that the tonsils really are not the residual organ.
They're not something left over from prehistoric days at all. They're very, very useful. God didn't put anything useless in your body. He didn't put anything useless in his body, the body of Christ. If you're a child of God, you have a use. You have a gift. It's your responsibility to find it out. You can find it out in three ways. You can find it by reading the Word of God, by prayer, and by consultation with older Christians. They can detect in you a gift that you won't see yourself. And we who are older ought to be helping to develop the gifts that we see in these young Christians that are coming on. And it's because we have this opportunity in those who meet as we do in the name of the Lord alone, without control from above, except from the Lord Himself.
Here we have the opportunity to develop gifts, and each one can develop that gift. I saw a man who had powerful arms and shoulders, but he didn't have any legs. He was abnormal. I've seen some churches like that. maybe just one arm or one hand, one strong person, everybody else doing nothing, developing no gift at all, no usefulness, whatever. God intends that we should, the Spirit of God has given us these things and he intends to use us. He intends to fill us. He intends to lead us in the usefulness that he intends to use us by the word.
Now one more thing before I sit down, and that is, in Ephesians chapter four, you find this in the sixteenth verse, I believe, he says, By that which every joint supply it. Now this means that the Spirit of God has a way of using each believer to be a help to his fellow believer. Let me read the whole verse. from whom, from Christ, the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supply, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, make an increase of the body under the edifying of itself in love.
The edifying of itself, which we were told a little bit ago that the Lord, through the Holy Spirit, ministers to us what we need. Now he tells us that he does this through every part. You see, for anything to reach the tips of my fingers, it's got to pass through my arm. And so for some things to reach some people, they have to pass through other believers. Well, this doesn't, it doesn't lose its effectiveness. Everybody is benefited as it goes along. Sometimes I am greatly helped by my own preaching. I mean by that, simply that the Lord gives me some thoughts that I haven't had before, right while I'm speaking on the platform. I've seen this in the faces of others. And I said to a man one night, you never saw that till you were preaching tonight.
He said, that's right. How'd you know? I said, I thought, do you some good before it reached me. And the bloodstream that flows through my body carries the nourishment to the farthest points of my body. And it does so to the benefit of every part along the way. Now here he speaks about that with every joint supply. When I was a boy, we used to call that joint water. What it is is really a lubricant. A joint is where two bones come together. Did you ever wonder how it is that a man can run a hundred yard dash in ten seconds and he needs not get hot? Well, that's simply because God has made the body so that it has a complete lubricating system within it. You never have to stop at the filling station and get a new shot at it.
It's wonderful, really. Of course, as you get older, you begin to feel a little creaky. But anyway, we do have this constant lubrication. Now, where two bones come together, you have a perfect setup for friction, haven't you? That's also true wherever two Christians work together. Wherever two Christians come together, maybe it's a husband and wife, maybe it's a parent and child, maybe it's two people working together in Sunday school, maybe it's two elders working together. There's a perfect setup there for friction, but the Spirit of God supplies the love of God in our souls, and this is the lubricant, that enables us to work together and you don't hear a sound. And this is what the Lord says.
He wants us to minister this nourishment and this help to each other. Now, when you need another Christian, you can either say something about the weather or you can say something about the Lord Jesus. I don't object to you talking about the weather, but after all, you're not going to do much about it. And if you've got something from the Lord, think how you could be a help to other Christians. Well, we go along with this further later on, but this much will help you to see how wonderful it is. how necessary it is that we regard the headship of the Lord Jesus.