Present at the Birth (Part 1): The Fellowship of His Purpose

Alright? See, I really realize that I’m not making my point. It’s a book written to a church. Not an individual. And it is not me who is dead. It is not me who is alive to God. It is us: a corporate body of people. And we will go into this, and we will come out of it as a people, not as an individual. We’re going to remember where we got these verse references. This was written to a church. Did I disturb you? Anybody offended? Okay. Brothers, we have literally lost the ability to recognize where these precious promises are aimed at.

Okay, let me just go through this again. Even so, consider yourself dead to sin. By the way, did you notice it says in verse 11, ‘even so, consider you to be dead to sin?’ Did you notice that? That’s not what it says. Consider yourself. Consider yourself dead to sin. Say it. Selves. Selves. That’s plural. That’s to a people who met in Rome. It’s not to you. It’s not to me. I would hate to leave you to be reckoning yourself dead, alone. And I would even give up the idea if I were you, and I’d start reckoning myself alive unto God with the rest of God’s people, and you can enter into that experientially.

Even, let me go, therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lust. Do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those, plural, who are alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. Once more, unto God. We will be a fellowship of believers unto God. Unto God.

What does that mean, Gene? Unto Him in what way? What manner? The answer is, I don’t know what that means. I honestly, literally cannot tell you what it means ‘unto God,’ but I can tell you this. It’s overwhelming that we will be unto God. Not God unto us. But we will turn and take the heavenly view. We will turn and look through His eyes, we will turn and go into the heavenly realms and see from His view, and we will be unto Him first, and if God be merciful, only. Praise the Lord.

I just want you to know that the purpose of these videos, not the purpose of this meeting, but these videos, is for you to really get serious. If you consider coming into the fellowship of the redeemed, there are enough churches in this world to take care of you and your needs. This one is going to take care, not of God’s need, but of His intention. We will be toward Him if He will be merciful to us. If that can grab you by the revelation of His own spirit, then perhaps you want to consider being here, but if that is not at least the willingness of your heart and hopefully, very soon, the revelation in your spirit, I beg you in Christ, don’t come this way. There are 35,000 Southern Baptist churches out there just waiting for you to come join them.

I want to make you all a pledge, and then I’m going to break it to show you that I don’t have to be consistent. I will seek to never preach a gospel to you that picks verses out of the New Testament and presents a concept. I will always seek to go through from Genesis to Revelation, or if it’s the New Testament, through the Gospels, Acts, till you get to Galatians, then Thessalonians, and First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians. I always kind of bogged down after that. Philemon, First Timothy, Second Timothy, and Titus. First Timothy, Titus, and Second Timothy, what did I leave out? First and Second Thessalonians right after Galatians, and oh, after that, Hebrews, after that, probably I jump over to Revelation, or I might stop at John 1. I never had a lot to stop at in the book of James; forgive me, James and I would never have gotten along very well.

But there are three times in the book of Philippians a term, and then it presents itself again in Corinthians, and then one other time in Ephesians, and I’d like to put those words, which are all on the same subject, together, and once more, to lift us out of our self-centeredness. I don’t know how to impress you with how self-centered our orientation is. Those who preach salvation almost always preach about what God has done for me. Those who preach a social gospel almost always speak of what you must do for one another. An evangelist is always discussing what you must do for the lost.

And here’s the living God out here burning with a passion; the thing that caused him to create the very thing we’re standing on. Who will enter into that passion? Forget themselves and leave themselves and enter into that passion. Well, we have this week to find out what that intent is. I want you to look at these verses with me, if you will. You might want to open to Philippians. Philippians 1:5 uses the term ‘fellowship of the gospel’. You see that? Alright, look to Philippians 2:1. The fellowship of what? Please, quickly. Philippians 2.1. The fellowship of the Spirit. Okay? Now then, we’re going to leave Philippians for just a moment. Would one person hold your Philippians? We’ll have one person go over to First Corinthians 1:9 really quickly. Who will do that for me? This brother’s doing it right here; it looks like it. Yes, brother. First Corinthians 1.9.  Okay. Fellowship with Christ. We’ve got three fellowships so far. The fellowship of the gospel. The fellowship of the Spirit. The fellowship of Christ. Are you with me?

Now, those of you who stayed in Philippians, go back, go to Philippians 3:10. The fellowship of what? Fellowship of what? His sufferings. Did Prem talk on this yesterday morning? I mean, this morning. The fellowship of his suffering? Oh, okay. I bet he can. We have four fellowships here. The fellowship of the gospel, the fellowship of the spirit, the fellowship of Christ, the fellowship of suffering. Praise the Lord. I’m going to read one more fellowship. Does anyone have King James? Ephesians 3:9? Would you read it? And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. What fellowship is this? Fellowship of? What is it? It’s a mystery.

How many fellowships did we get? Five fellowships. I put them in this order because they are progressive. Five fellowships. The fellowship of the gospel, hot dog. Isn’t that a wonderful fellowship? You get saved; you run around with your brothers and sisters. But I want to try to remember. I want to try to remember what book this came out of. That’s right, that’s right, this was not written to you. He wrote to a church in Philippi, and they’d gotten saved, and they had wonderful fellowship. Can you imagine they’d only been saved for a few days, and they got to wash the backs of Paul and Silas? Well, they told that story for a hundred years, you know they did, and how the jail opened that thing and how wonderful salvation is. Now, did you ever have a fellowship of the gospel? I had the fellowship of the gospel when I first got saved with a bunch of other kids who had just been saved. And everything was a wonder, a marvel to us. Well, thank God we were able to move on.

The second fellowship is the fellowship of the spirit, and I’ll be clear, brothers and sisters, that’s just number two, and we’re already leaving most of the kingdom of God right here. Is that not true? We leave 99% of the folks behind right here. I’m not trying to be exclusive or anything like that, but what in the world does it mean, the fellowship of the Spirit? And you know, I speak on this to brothers and sisters, and they look at me like, Wow. Gee? Wow. I’m going to face this camera. Wow. The fellowship of the Spirit? I’m going to tell you what the fellowship of the Spirit is. It means that within you, put in you by the Lord, is a realm, another dimension that does not belong to this creation and is not created. It is of the very nature of God, who is not created. There is a life form in you. There is a realm in you. There is a person in you who is a life form and a realm. And He is not physical; He is spiritual, and he is Spirit. And he’s in you, and there is a place in you that is non-dimensional. But it’s in you, and you can go there. Now that’s the part everybody gets lost. And you can go there? Yes, you’ve been invited to walk there. And to live there. And here we see you have even been invited to fellowship there. Is that for you? No. No, brother, you’re catching on, that’s right. Is that for you? No. No! Who’s it for? The church. In Philippi. It’s for the church. That’s a plural you.

Will you please give up your individualism here for a few minutes? Now, I don’t believe most of us are ever going to have the privilege of really knowing a lot of being in our spirit, walking in our spirit, and fellowshipping our spirit out here as a solo Christian. We don’t have that much willpower. And as I’ve said so many times before, I cast a jaundiced eye at those few people who are successful at this, and I wish they’d go away. Because most of us are weak, and we need the body of Christ. We need the body of Christ. We are not made to make it on our own. No, this is for the body. We go from the fellowship of the gospel to the fellowship of the spirit.