Christ’s Life Fully Expressed (Part 1) — The Total Experience of Jesus Christ

Dear guests, do not judge us by tonight’s meeting. Do not say you ever visited the church in Isla Vista. You can’t say that until you’ve been here for about six months. Because we’re always different. Don’t judge us by tonight. I do believe you can get something of our heart from what will be said this evening.  Please turn with me to Ephesians 6.

I will begin by saying that I believe there is something basically innately wrong with Christianity. I believe that there is something basically innately wrong with just about everything that everybody has ever tried to do as Christians in the name of Jesus Christ. I would also add that this is enough to make the Lord angry: there is basically something missing, something wrong, something amiss, anywhere and everywhere. It’s at this point I would like very much to get off the subject, and I’m biting my tongue…to keep from getting off the subject. So, I’m going to get off of it just a little bit.

Brothers and sisters, I challenge the whole concept of the Christian expression. I really do. I challenge everything that everybody’s done. And everything that’s being done. You’ll have to excuse me, visitors. We usually give visitors a hard time. And most visitors never come back (laughter). I say this to all of you. I challenge what you grew up in. I don’t care where you were born or where you were re-born. There were certain things you came into, and you never questioned. There are certain things people say that go without challenge. There are ways that we do things today that we assume and accept are correct. We do it because it’s been done, and we assume somebody checked it out.

One real thought comes to my mind. For instance, we believe that men ought to live by faith. There are no scriptural grounds for men living by faith. I’m not talking about living by faith in Christ. I’m talking about living by faith financially. There are absolutely no scriptural grounds for that. I find absolutely no scriptural grounds for what is called the Great Commission, which says, “Go ye therefore and all who will preach the gospel to every creature.” No, that’s not what it says. It says, “You will go, and you will preach the gospel, and you will baptize.” There’s something that those men had in them that was the compunction, and they did it. I find no justification for men being justified in going out to preach the gospel all over the earth when that’s the only thing they’ve got to take.

For one, I don’t think a man has the right to go out and preach the gospel until he can back it up with everything else in the word of God. And I mean everything. And deliver not only salvation but deliver everything else a newborn believer has the right and heritage to expect. I’m not saying that when you save a man, that every man ought to receive that because I’m aware the eunuch did not, but I want you to know that Philip was prepared to give him everything. Or he had, in his past experience, the totality of the Christian experience.

We are not in a day when things are proper. We are in a day when things are absolutely totally wrong. They’re cockeyed, fouled up. I can find nothing to sanction. And that includes the church in Isla Vista. And if it includes the church in Isla Vista, which is closest to my heart, where my prejudice ought to be, then you cannot accuse me of being a prejudiced man. Therefore, I will say this is true of the entire Christian family: we do not need to go out to preach the gospel, but we’re in desperate need of reconsidering the whole Christian concept.

Now I’m not talking about doctrine. I’m not talking about Jesus Christ being the Son of God or the Son of Man. Now that’s been settled for 2,000 years. I’m not talking about doctrines; I’m talking about practice and experience. I believe that most Christians, no matter who they are, don’t know beans about Jesus Christ. And most of the Christian faith today is held together by vocabulary. Most of the Christian experience today is held together by tradition, vocabulary, and… It’s corrupt from the top to the bottom, and things are done without question that are utterly, totally, absolutely, completely unjustifiable in the sight of God. Now, if you want to go around and do that, that’s fine, but for me and my house, we count on the recovery of the experience of Jesus Christ…in totality.

It’s going to be a long, bloody war. And it’s not going to be easily won. It’s going to be a long winter. It’s going to be a long spring. It’s going to be a long summer. It’s going to be a long fall. And speaking of the fall, this time next year, there’ll be those of you who meet with us who don’t meet with us. We’re going to weep when you go, and I’m sorry you’re going to leave here. Some of you are going to make it, and you don’t think you will. I believe I am clear on what it is that the Lord wants. I am also keenly aware that it’s going to take an awful lot of sacrifice and time. I’m glad you’re young.

Four years ago, God sent a revival in this country that has since been called “The Jesus movement,” or “The Jesus People.” Some of you are part of that. It has pretty well dissipated in the south; it’s dissipating in the north. I am grateful you’re young. I’ve heard many, many men talk about what God was going to do. And I watched a lot of young people with young hearts give their hearts totally to things, believing God was going to do it and God was great enough to do it and God was doing a new thing and God was doing a great thing, and many are getting saved and the Lord’s on the move and the Lord’s going to come back. And today, with few exceptions, there is wreckage and carnage in the Christian family everywhere, because there was not enough to go the limit.

I believe in the last 10 years, I have seen or known firsthand of at least 100 groups of people in towns who got together to be the church, saying, “God will raise up His church and His full expression, the expression of the body here. He’ll take care of all the problems, and He’ll get it done.” Over and over and over and over and over, they have all fallen apart, because they were expecting and hoping and believing in a spontaneous expression of the body of Christ. There is no such thing. The Lord’s order can’t be broken. There are those who have survived. Most have survived because of the outward structure applied to them, or because man’s headship steps in to take over. Many have been corrupted. Some are still holding on. Brothers, none of us has gotten anywhere near the mark of the Lord. And that certainly includes the church in Isla Vista.

Even the scantiest reading of church history shows men who have gone deeper. Men who have gone further. And men who have gone higher. And men with greater power. And men who have done greater things, and, if you please, men who have understood more. The question has been asked of me many times about how long it would take for the Lord to raise up a proper expression and a total recovery of all that he wants. I’ve heard men say that it could be done overnight. I’ve heard men say four years. I would like to present the possibility that it may take three generations.