again I'm going to try that trick and standing on your toes because I caught a cold yesterday and my voice is getting kind of husky Ephesians chapter five I'd like for us to read those two verses that stand out about the church Ephesians five verse twenty six seven rather verse twenty seven and verse thirty two talking about the church that he might present it to himself a glorious church. Then verse thirty-two. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. I want us to just keep reading those two verses every night, just in hopes that it will impress on us the glory of the church. Shall we look at another verse? Colossians one, verse twenty-four. Colossians one, verse twenty-four. And here we see how glorious the church was to this great servant of God, the apostle Paul. Colossians chapter one, beginning at verse twenty-four. Who now, he's saying, Paul, I Paul, and made a minister, who now rejoice in my sufferings for you. and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church." Now here the apostle is saying that the sufferings of Christ aren't finished yet. Now that we could really get on some dangerous ground there, couldn't we? Certainly he's not talking about the redemptive sufferings of Christ. Only the Lord Jesus could do that. And that's done forever. But he's talking about the sufferings that it takes to bring forth this new revelation that we are considering this week. The revelation of the mystery as he goes on to speak of it. the mystery of the church. That's what he's suffering for. And for the truth of the church, Paul suffered terribly. That's why the Jews hated him. You remember when he gave his defense before them? One day they listened to him until he said that the Lord said to him, I've sent you to the Gentiles. And when he said that, they said, away with such a man, he's not fit to be on the earth. And they were ready to kill him immediately. And he suffered because he was bringing Jew and Gentile together on one level in this new thing, the church. So he says, I rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up or complete that which is behind. of that which is still lacking, is the way it literally reads, of the afflictions of Christ for his body's sake, which is the church. Again, I'd like to make clear that that has nothing to do with the redemptive sufferings of Christ that save us, but he's speaking of the sufferings that were entailed by his declaring the whole counsel of God, this new revelation of the church. So you can see how important the church was to the Apostle Paul. He was given this special dispensation, he says here in these verses of God, to complete the word of God, to fill up or to complete the word of God. And it was by this revelation of this new thing, the church. Well, that gives us a little idea of the glory of the church, doesn't it? But if we really want to see the glory of the church, I believe we see it not through Paul even as wonderfully as he displays it and as much as he suffered to reveal it. But we see it in relation to the Lord Jesus himself. Because we see the church is in a union with the Lord of glory. Again, speaking as we did this morning, contrasting Israel and the church to Israel, the Lord Jesus would be coming as their great king, a king of a nation called Israel. But my that can't compare, can it, with what he is to us. We have a living, a vital union with the Son of God. He's not like some great potentate over us, a great team, though he is that, but we are united with the Lord Jesus, one with him. That union we spoke of this morning, the bride is a loving union. And we read it in Ephesians chapter five, where he shows the pattern for Christian marriage is that the husband should portray Christ toward his church, and the wife should portray the church toward Christ. And you'll never get any higher than that in a pattern for your marriage. And if it ever captures your heart, you'll find a transformed home. You know, too many Christians settle for a poor standard. And that is, they just figure, well, if I treat my wife pretty good and, you know, bring home the bacon and provide and look after things, I've done my bit. But, oh, how much higher is the standard than that? A husband is to set out deliberately to love his wife as Christ loved the church. And my friend, that's not some beautiful platitude. That is the way we are to live. We Christians and we need to put things back in their proper focus scripturally and live in the light of God's words. Husbands love your wives. as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. Notice he didn't just say it, though I know a wife likes to hear it. And so I tell my wife every once in a while that I love her. I know she likes to hear it. But I think she likes it still better when I show it rather than I say it. When I just open the car door for her. When I... just pick up something for her. It says Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. He didn't just say I love you, he gave himself for the church. And oh, a husband's really pleasing God when he gives himself for his wife. You know, Southerners are not too good when it comes to things like that. You know, Southerners and men, a lot of them, wouldn't dare dry dish. They'd think that was beneath their dignity to wash our dry dishes. And so they'd get up, you know, and leave it all for the while. And they'd go off and put their feet up, you know, and look at TV or something. And that's not loving your life, as Christ loved the church. And we need to come back to these little down-to-earth things and display our love. Christ's love for the church, he gave himself for it. This union with Christ is, the Lord tells us, it's like a husband and a wife. They are one. And he says that the Lord and his church are one. A loving union. My, no wonder the church is glorious. the Lord has set his heart upon the church like a bridegroom upon his bride. It's a loving union. But then you have another side of this union with him, and that is that it's a living union. And here we look at the church as the body of Christ. In the loving union we saw the bride of Christ. In this living union we see a body, the church, as the body of Christ. First Corinthians chapter six and verse seventeen says, But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. That word joined is the word that means glued or welded. And so it's saying he that is glued or welded to the Lord is one spirit. One spirit. What does he mean by that? I think that we're perfectly free to add the words one spirit with the Lord. For the same spirit by whom he was conceived in the womb of a virgin Mary, the same spirit who anointed him for his ministry, by whom he did his miracles, the same spirit, the eternal spirit by whom he offered himself without spot to God, the same spirit who raised him from the dead, that same spirit is in you and in me, believer. and we are united in a living union with the Lord Jesus Christ. Romans seven verse four he says you've been made dead to the law through the body of Christ now speaking of his death on the cross they are not the church the body but his body as he hung on the cross you've been made dead to the law through the body of Christ that you should be joined to another And that word another in the Greek there is not another of the same kind. There are two different words in Greek for another. One of them means another of the same kind. But the Greek word there is heteros, which means of a different kind. We were joined to Adam first. We got Adam's nature, Adam's life, and it was a fallen nature. But he says, now you've been made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that is through his death on the cross, that you should be joined to another, one of another kind, even to him that is raised from the dead, so that we should bring forth fruit unto God. You notice Paul was talking to us and he was saying, you, you, You have been made dead to the law. That you should be joined to another. But when it gets to the last part of that verse, he says that we, he just couldn't leave himself out of that last part. That we should bring forth fruit unto God. You see, under the law, they couldn't bring forth fruit. The law spoke to the flesh. And it told us, oh, fallen flesh, don't, don't, don't. Nine out of the ten commandments are don't negatives. And so he knows that under the law we couldn't bring forth fruit. The law was weak. Romans eight says on account of the flesh. There's nothing wrong with the law. And Paul says four things about the law. The law is holy. The law is just. The law is good. And believe it or not, he says the law is spiritual. That shocked me when I read that. I never thought of the law as spiritual. But that's what Paul says in Romans seven. So there's nothing wrong with the law. Where was it weak? What the law could not do in that it was weak on account of the flesh. It depended on need to keep. That's where its weakness was. Not in itself, but in need. It depended on need. So what the law couldn't do, now we find a way of being done. And that is bringing forth fruit to God. How? You've been made dead to the law through the body of Christ that you should be joined to another, to one of a different kinds, even to him that is raised up from the dead, so that we should bring forth fruit unto God. Yes. We have been vitally, livingly, united to the Son of God. We are He that is joined, that is glued, that is welded to the Lord, is one Spirit with the Lord. And I'm adding those words with the Lord because I think that understood. Oh, think of it. We have been really united to the Son of God, the same spirit who is in him is in you and in me. And the result of that spirit coming in has also been that he has put us into this living body, the church. First Corinthians twelve, verse thirteen, for by one spirit were we all baptized into one body. Ephesians five, verse thirty. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. My, that's a close, intimate oneness, isn't it? Members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones, you can't get any closer, can you, than to be united like that. First Corinthians twelve, verse twenty seven. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. Now, what is a member of the church? The other day I saw a sign on the highway as I was traveling through Iowa and and just gaping, you know, right and left at all these tremendous farms back in Georgia, you know, that got these little pocket handkerchief farms. And I get out, you know, and as far as I can see, corn, far as I can see that way, corn. It's just amazing. And as I was riding along, I saw a sign in front of one of the places, and it said a member of the, I think it said FFA. I guess that's Future Farmers of America. Is that what that is? Well, I thought about that. And that's what a lot of people think you're saying when you say I'm a member of the church. They think that means your name is on a roll. And you join this thing and they put your name on the roll. But my friend, the word member in the scriptures never means anything like that. It doesn't even mean my name is on the roll in heaven. Thank God it is. but that is not what a member is. You want to see a member? There's a member. This arm is a member of my body. This eye is a member of my body. It's not written on a roll. It's not registered someplace. It is a living part of a living body. And that's what Scripture is saying when it says, now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular, that is individually. Individually, we are members, a living part of this living body of Christ. When he raised him from the dead, you remember Ephesians, one says he raised him up and seated him at his own right hand in the heavenly and he gave him to be head over all things to the church which is his body this is this living union we are part of this living body of Christ and he is the head in heaven really these things are amazing if we would really just take them in it seems somehow that we let them drift into the background into the periphery even of our minds so that they don't have any real living value or wonder to us. And that's the value of our restudying these things, isn't it? Is to bring them back from the outer edge of our consciousness into the inner consciousness so that we live in the reality of these things. We are living parts of this living body. of the Son of God. The Holy Spirit had linked us, and He has even set us in the body. In First Corinthians twelve, he says, now has God set the members, every one of them, in the body as it has pleased Him. Oh, do we realize this, that God in heaven has set each one of us? in this body of Christ just where He wanted us. We don't shift around and find our place. He has put us there. Now this truth of being a member carries with it the truth of gift. The truth of having a spiritual gift is a corollary to the truth that we are members of this body. Let me show you what I mean. This eye can't hear a thing. Not one sound. Because the eye isn't putting my body to hear. It's putting my body to see. And it's given the power to see. The ear can't see. But it has the power to hear. and God has set you as a living member of this living body, and He's given you a gift, an ability that goes with what you are. An eye, an ear, a finger, a toe. I don't know what your place is in the body, but that's your business to find it out, just as it's my business to find out what my place is, and the gift goes with the member, just like in our physical body. A member has an ability to function in its place in the body. And that is exactly, that's not just me trying to make up a nice little message here, this is just what the Scripture teaches. First Corinthians twelve, it tells us we are members and it takes up the matter of gifts. In fact, every time he mentions being members of the body of Christ, he immediately goes into the question of the gifts. For a gift, a spiritual gift, is simply a God-given ability that we might function according to our place in the body of Christ. It's wonderful, isn't it? It's so simple, and yet it's so thrilling to know that God has said every one of us, man, woman, boy or girl, if you're born again, you're in the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit put you in there, and the head is in heaven, and just like your head tells your fingers what to do, it'll send a command down there, and if you see a truck, hear a truck coming down the road, and you're on the highway, the head sends a message down to your feet and says, take off, and you take off. And so the members obey the head. The head sends the messages to the members by the nervous system. And I would liken the nervous system to the Holy Spirit. He takes from the head the commands to the members. And as long as we are subject to the Lord, He can tell us what He wants us to do. And He can tell us so plainly. You know, when I married my wife, We were both Baptists. My wife was brought up in the Southern Baptist Church, and my father was a Baptist minister, and I had felt led of the Lord to go preach. So I decided to be a Baptist preacher. And I went off and studied in the university, and then went to the cemetery, I mean seminary. I usually say it that way, just deliberately, of course, because they do bury a lot of good preachers. in those places. I've seen it. Well, so then, you know, I came out and was pastor of my first church and, you know, we were doing so fine. And then, lo and behold, I got convicted by the word, by these very truths about the church and about our being members of the body. And the next thing I knew, I had to tell my wife that I couldn't be a Baptist anymore. and that I was going to have to give up my position and get a job and just start all from scratch again. Well, she took it and I was so happy and she saw the truth too and we just went along fine. Well then, some years passed we just started meeting in a home, just two families. We saw the truth from the word and I didn't know what an assembly was. never heard of them but we saw what the word taught and it taught you know that there was not one man as the chief but that we all have our gifts and look to the Lord as the head and and all that thrilled me and and I saw that I was out of my place to be the big cheese you know and do all the preaching and teaching and praying and All that and officiating at the Lord's Supper. So we started on what we thought was scriptural paths. And then lo and behold, we found out we thought we were so spiritual, you know, that we discovered this great truth. And we found out there were just jillions of folks already meeting in this simple way. And that made us all the happier. Well, so my wife was happy about that. After a few years, that little group had grown and grown until there were about three hundred in fellowships. there in Augusta, Georgia. And then I began to have this terrible burden. And oh my, I was so miserable. I enjoyed my work. And I had a Christian boss. But all this burden, oh, it was killing me. And it got worse and worse. And my wife and I prayed about it. And I just felt like there was something out there the Lord had for me to do. And he was trying to tell me, and I couldn't discover it. And we kept praying almost three years. And one night my wife went to prayer meeting, and I stayed home with the children. One of them wasn't too well, and so I stayed home. And I was in the kitchen, and I was doing the dishes, and all of a sudden that burden hit me, and I fell on my knees, and I said, Oh, Father, please show me what you want me to do. or take this burden from me. And I felt a certain relief, but I didn't get the answer, you know. And so I got up and went on and finished those chores. And a little bit, my wife came home from prayer meetings. She said, I wish you'd have been there tonight. I said, oh, really? What happened? She said, well, there was a missionary there. She said, there was a man named Bill Deans. His picture's right back there on the board. And she said, he showed slides of the work in Africa. I said, oh, is that right? She said, yes. He showed one slide. He took a picture of a little mud hut with a grass roof, a chapel out in Africa. And he said that these Africans had built it in a village and had come in and had asked him if he would send them somebody to teach them the words of God. And he said, I had to tell them, that I was sorry, but all the missionaries were just filled up they couldn't add to what they had. My wife kept talking, you know, and I was talking to the Lord. I said, Lord, not Africa. You know, that never crossed my mind. I thought he had something for me to do, but never did I think a cross in the ocean to do it. But I had been burdened so long about it that it wasn't, I guess it wasn't ten seconds before I said, all right, Lord. And then I thought, well, now I've got to tell my poor wife, she thought she'd married a Baptist preacher and he flew the coop. And now he's going to tell her that he's going to Africa of all places. I thought she will really want to throw in the towel. And so I prayed and I prayed and I planned my little speech, you know, how I was going to broach the subject carefully and lay a foundation. But when I got to tell her about it, you know, I did the same thing I did when I asked her if she would marry me. I just blurred it out, you know. I said, sweetheart, do you know where I think the Lord wants us? She said, where? I said, in Africa. Due to my amazement, she said, I think so too. The Lord is the head of the church. And he speaks to his members. If we are subject to him. And he shows us what he wants us to do. If we are just let him be Lord. If we are just lay our lives on the line. And just go on doing what he has for us to do here and now. Day by day. fulfilling his desire for us now, then he can speak to us. And when he speaks, it's so strong that you wouldn't thank an angel to tell you again. You know it. And then you can endure. You can take whatever comes or goes. By the way, you know, we've been back from the mission field. We were over six years from forty-nine to fifty-five. And Since we came home for our children's sake, we had to stay. And then I got to traveling about, ministering. And then I was given the model of the tabernacle. And that opened up doors, you know. And I've just been so thrilled with ministering, especially on the tabernacle, and seeing saints blessed by it. That I just figured, well, that's it. That's what the Lord's got for me to do. But do you know? And I didn't even want to think about Africa anymore. But did you know the Lord had turned the pressure on me again to go back to Africa? And we plan in the will of the Lord to go back to Yankundi, where the deans, we served with the deans years ago, the end of next year. We plan to go back to teach the word. But I just mentioned that as a side thing. The wonder is that when the Lord speaks, when you really are walking with him, he'll show you what you are in the body and he'll show you where he wants you and what he wants you to do. For this is a living union that we have with the Son of God. Our loving union, like the husband and wife, Christ and his church, He loved the church. And as our brother said, tonight I believe it was, he loves the church. He not only loved it, but he keeps on loving it. And a living union, the body of Christ. Ye are the body of Christ and members in particular. There's one other phase of this union with the Lord. And that is, it's a last union. That's why we can't see divorce because marriage is patterned after Christ and his church and this union is a lasting union and we can't see any possibility of breaking that union. What therefore God has joined together let not man put asunder. It is a lasting union. But thinking of this lasting union, let's look at Matthew. Matthew chapter sixteen and verse eighteen. Matthew sixteen verse eighteen. Well, let's read sixteen, seventeen and eighteen. Matthew sixteen, beginning at verse sixteen. And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, And upon this rock I will build my church. And the gates of Hades, as it literally reads, Hades is the Greek word. Geema is the Greek word properly translated. Hell. And Hades is literally Hades. And the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. There's that lasting union. The gates of Hades. shall not prevail against it. It's a lasting union. It's a building, isn't it? He says, I will build my church. You remember this morning we was speaking of God taking from Adam's side a rib, and it says, and God built a woman. It says he built her. And here the Lord said, I will build my church. It's a building. It says, he says, I will, on this rock, I will build my church. You have the word Petra, where he says, upon this rock, I will build my church. And the word rock there means a strata of rock. For instance, it says, the wise man, you remember, built his house upon a rock. Well, you certainly don't think he built his house on a rock like that, do you? but a strata of rock. And that's the word, Petrov. That's what's used there. The wise man built his house on Petrov, a strata of rock, a bedrock. You have it in other scriptures as well, but that shows us what he's speaking of here, a strata of rock. Now, the word Peter, of course, means rock too. And the word Peter is very close to Petrov. It's Petros. Same word, isn't it? Petros is feminine. And Petros is masculine. Now, I read Schofield and others, and I love Schofield's notes. I wouldn't take any of that. That's the kind of Bible I was born on, and I live on. I just love it. But, you know, I can't find in the Scriptures what People say, they say that Petros means a little rock, and Petra means a strata of rock. But we need scripture to say things like that. And I can't find it. I chase the word all the way through. And I find that Petros and Petra are the same word, except one is masculine and one is feminine. Now over in First Peter, where he uses the word stones, He uses a different word, it's Lysos. And it's the same word we read when it says, they took up stones to stone the Lord. It says, Lysos, which means a stone that you pick up. A little stone, a little rock. And he calls us little stones, Lysos, in first Peter two five, unto whom coming is unto a living stone, He also, as living stones, are built up. So he calls us a small rock, Lethos. But here, he doesn't call Peter Lethos. He calls him Petros. He calls him a strata of rock, just the masculine of it. But he does use a different form of a word when he says, On this rock, I will build my church. He doesn't say, on Petros, I will build. That would be on Peter. He doesn't say that. He says, on Petros, feminine, I will build my church. You are a strata of rock, Peter, because you have seen this truth that only the Father could have shown you that I am the Son of God, and you have confessed it. Therefore you are like a strata of rock. And on this strata of rock, not on Peter Petros, but on Petros, feminine, on this strata of rock, I will build my church. It can't be Peter, or he would have said Petros again. He said Petra, this strata of rock. What is it then? Well, obviously, it's this confession of Peter. The Lord has made so much to do over it. When Peter said, out of the blue, he didn't say you're the son of man. He said, you are the Christ, the son of God. And the Lord said, you didn't get that out of your noggin. You got that from the Father. He showed you that. And on this confession, as to who I am, I will build my church. And I believe that is the rock. It's the person of Christ and the confession that he is the Christ, the Son of God, as to who he is, on which the church is founded. In First Corinthians chapter three, verse eleven, he says, that none other foundation can be laid than is laid, which is Jesus Christ. He's the foundation of the church. And he's the cornerstone of the church. I remember when I was just a young fellow that my father, who was the Baptist preacher in Augusta, he was going to build this new church building. And it was going to see a thousand people, which, for Gus at that time, was the biggest auditorium that would be in the city. And it used to be sort of a joke among some of the unbelievers. And downtown, sometimes you'd see a fellow looking up at the sky like that. And they did it deliberately, you know, for some of the members of my father's church, excuse me, the same members like that, put it in quotes. And they would say, what are you looking at? And they'd say, well, we're looking at Sheridan's folly. They thought that big building he was going to lead that church into putting up was just a joke that it would never be filled. But it was filled. It was running over. God did bless. And in fact, my dear father, though he died a Baptist, I owe it to him for where I am today. because he gave me such a love for this book that I just couldn't stop. I had to keep on going. And he brought men to Augusta for Bible conferences, H.A. Ironside, Pettigill, almost every editor of the Schofield Bible listed here, Gableine, he brought them in for conferences, and they wedded our appetite for the word of God. And we just had to keep on going. And we just went right on past the Baptist Church. That's all. Well, I remember the day they were going to put the cornerstone in that building. It was a big day. And the crowd gathered on the street there, the main street in Augusta. And they had this big block of stone. And they were putting a Bible behind it. and they were going to put the church roll in there. My name's on it. They withdrew fellowship from me for departing from the faith when I left the Baptist, but they couldn't get behind that stone and erase it, so it's still there. But anyway, then they put that stone in place. There it gave the significance of that building, Curtis Baptist Church, it said. Well, that gave the significance of the building, the glory of that building. I can think of a lot more glory than that, of course. But the cornerstone is the Lord Jesus Christ. You are building, he says, a holy temple unto the Lord, Jesus Christ himself, being the chief cornerstone. Yes, it's a building. of God, built upon Christ, and built for Christ, and all the glory of it is that we exalt him, that this is the purpose for the very existence of the church. And thank God we are his building, and one day the last stone is going to be put in place. The building will be complete, and the chief cornerstone will take his place, and will be caught up in a week to glory. Oh, how glorious of church.