The Ephesians Story (Part 2) – What the Early Church Was Really Like | The Ekklesia in Colossae

Now, saints, brothers and sisters, saints, y’all, there is one thing that was really missing. If you don’t have it, you have no proof of being the ekklesia. Just getting down and dirty, they really didn’t love one another. They were there for reasons not divine. They were learning the church, but those men did not love one another this side of the cross. They had a friendship. They liked one another, but you know the stories. You know the stories about how they fought over who was going to sit where and all such things as that. That was not that divine love. They didn’t have His life in them yet, even though he often spoke to them as though He did. They did because he knew they would, and He’s not bound by time. He knew they would.

They had to go through a cross, and then they had to go through a resurrection, and they had to go through an indwelling, and they had to go through an immersion in them around them, in and around. He in them, they in Him. These men were changed, and now they have the instinct that their Lord had, and that’s to gather, to get together, and they gathered in Jerusalem in Solomon’s porch.

And now here’s my first question. What could those men have heard and known and seen that they delivered to 5, 10, 15,000 people before it’s over with? What was it they heard, knew, seen? What was it that those new converts heard that electrified their lives? Now, that question is paramount to our own day. And in all of our pursuit of the so-called New Testament church, we do not consider this, or we are fool hearted enough to believe that we have that Gospel. And I’d like to propose that we don’t, and I’m not presenting a new Gospel, because I am simply saying that Simon, Peter, James, and John presented Jesus Christ and nothing but the Lord Jesus Christ, and He was their Gospel.

And brothers and sisters, there’s no plan of salvation. He is salvation, and there is no gospel. There is only the good news. His name is Jesus. There is a discipline; there is determination. There was a commitment among those men to exalt and proclaim nothing but their Lord, and that’s what those people heard. And I’ll tell you, when you get exposed to that, it is revolutionary. Those men had had a revelation, and His name was Jesus Christ, and they proclaimed that revelation, who is their Lord. Now the people went out of those meetings and met in homes.

I’m going to stop there and say that one of these days, probably in the next 10 years, you’re going to start hearing about the home church movement. The reason you haven’t heard of it yet is because it’s not big enough to be a movement, and I am not particularly; in fact, I am underwhelmed by the idea of a movement of going back to a house to meet. Because if we take our garbage into that living room, we’re not going to be any better off. Now we’re going to be a little better off with the chairs that are more comfortable. We’ll be a little better off, and so that’s the reason I would, yeah, I’ll choose the home over anything else to meet in. But just the home is not going to suddenly resolve our situations. It won’t do it.

Now, those people did meet in homes, but they met in homes under the electric message of the Lord and of an indwelling Lord, and in an experience of that Lord. Then, the greatest church planter of all human history arrived in town. Now, the fact that he was not saved did not keep him from being a church planter. He started a persecution, and just in those matters of a year or two or three, there he was responsible for planting more churches than any other man ever did, and he wasn’t even saved, because he scattered those brothers and sisters all over Judea and Galilee, and the apostles went into hiding. And there were no church buildings. And these people met in homes, and I’d like to explain to you now how they met. They had a gentleman who would come in in a golden robe with two choir boys behind him, going (chanting). You know that’s not true. They did it by putting a pulpit up here and a Baptist preacher. I guess that means he was like John the Baptist. And he had somebody else to lead singing. Two songs, a prayer, two more songs, another prayer and offering, maybe a special if we’re lucky. And then he preached a sermon, and they all went home.

Well, I’m afraid that is what you think they did, oh my gosh, this is what I’m afraid you’re going to end up with if you have a New Testament church. You’re going to have a home meeting in which five brothers walk in and sit down in the front row, and they’re all going to look at their songbooks, and they’re going to start announcing songs, and you, sitting in the living room, are going to sing the songs they announce, and maybe, if we’re lucky, one or two other songs will get announced, and then one of these brothers will get up and speak. Next week, another one will. And the next week, another one will. And sometimes during the week, they’re going to meet together, these five men, and they’re going to have a long prayer meeting, probably on their knees, and they are going to determine your destiny for the next week or month. And I’ll tell you, I’d just as well go to a Catholic church as go to one of those things. That’s my personal opinion. You may enjoy that.

I want you to see what confronted those people in Judea. They knew Him. They had lived in an uproarious, wondrous time together in Jerusalem, packed into homes. They’re scattered back into the homes of these villages of their forefathers, Judea and Galilee. They gather in homes. There are no leaders. They don’t have elders. There may be 200 different towns and cities, and they’re just putting it together, spit, glue, scotch tape, and baling wire, and looking forward to the day when Peter and James and John and Matthew and all of those other guys, brothers in Jerusalem, can get out there and help them. And sure enough, eventually those men do, and they circulate around all of those churches, preaching to them and then leaving them.

Now, if that were all I could present to you as the first-century story, you could shoot holes in it. Then, as we can shoot holes in everything when we use the Bible, it doesn’t matter what it is; you can just prove it.  Dear brothers and sisters, that’s what Jesus Christ did when He was on earth. He proclaimed Himself and forthwith departed, leaving them with nothing but an indwelling Lord.

I’d like to stake out a claim. It’s very simple. I happen to be an ordained minister. And in case you’re wondering, I have a master’s degree in theology. I wonder why I got off of this. Let’s come back to…yeah, there are two things I can say of us who are ministers. I’m going to give you a little confession of sin here. One is that we are addicted to ministry; we like you to listen. And number two, we don’t trust you. And boy, we don’t trust you. And boy, we don’t trust you. And boy, we don’t trust you; not on your own. We don’t trust you on your own. We don’t trust you to a living God. We don’t trust you. And we don’t trust you. And friend, we don’t trust you. And if we trusted you, we would walk out the door, and we would leave you without ritual. That ritual is a living, breathing proof we don’t trust you, and those sermons are living, breathing proof we don’t trust you. And I am 60 years old, and I have never yet met a Baptist preacher who trusted a layman. I’m waiting. We don’t trust you. Those people were thrown upon a living Lord, but I may be wrong.

So, let’s continue the story. There were some nuts among those who fled. I have no scriptural grounds for this, but I can prove it by my personal experience. There were about 10, probably five young, dumb, unmarried, single brothers who didn’t stop in Judea or Galilee, nor did they stop in Damascus. They just kept going till they got to Antioch. And they preached to the few Jews who were around there. Maybe some responded, maybe some didn’t. But having no good sense whatsoever, they preached to uncircumcised heathen infidels, sometimes known as Gentiles. And the Gentiles said, This is the greatest thing in the world.

They got the meeting and these guys preaching to them, and one day, one must have come to his senses and said, “Hey, these people are all heathen. Get an apostle up here and let him say grace over this or tell us we’ve done the wrong thing.” And the apostles, having heard about it, could care less. They, after all, had been called to the Jews. And so, they sent in the B team. They sent one lone brother up there to inspect the situation, but I think that one lone brother was getting a little concerned about…by the way, by now they were back in Jerusalem again, and in Jerusalem, things weren’t doing too well, freedom-wise. And that brother looked this situation over and went over and got another Hebrew who had grown up among the Gentiles, who didn’t seem to fit. And those two men, for the next four years, went house to house along with three other men preaching the Gospel to a church that has been estimated, because of second-century facts, that the first-century church in Antioch probably had between two and 10,000 people in it. And they met in homes, and they even know the district name of it. It is a historically recorded fact that in a certain ghetto type part of the city, very poor, that’s where the Christians lived. It was a huge city, the second largest in the world.