The Ephesians Story (Part 2)

For four years, the people met in homes, and every once in a while, somebody came roaring through and preached to them; the rest of the time, they were on their own. What they were hearing was Jesus Christ. Now again, I may not have presented this to you correctly, but brothers and sisters, from here on, it’s downhill. The story is indisputable. Two of those five men got called to the Holy Spirit to go out, and they did. I want you to listen very carefully. They were not pastors, and they were not missionaries, and they were not evangelists.

Two years ago I received an invitation to attend the summit meeting of the world of the Lison Committee’s world evangelization something or other, I’ve forgotten the other word, and the heads and the leaders of evangelism around the world South America, Africa, Europe, and North America would all converge on Budapest Hungary and they would bring together the leaders of Eastern Europe and Russia, Soviet Union at that time, and they would discuss with them how to evangelize Eastern Europe and Russia. And I listened to the leaders of evangelism throughout the world, for six days, standing and proclaiming how to do it. And I listened to them.

Now, I’d like to share something with you that you may never grasp, but let me share it with you anyway. They grew up in America in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. The father of this gospel was Dwight L. Moody and R.A. Torrey. Today, it is called evangelical Christianity. It was, if you speak theologically, I will just speak very theologically. In theological books and in the history of theology, it is called revival evangelism. And it’s probably the only gospel you’ve ever heard. And this is the tenets of that gospel. You are lost and you need to be saved. Point one. Every verse in the New Testament proclaims that. No matter who gets up to speak, that’s what that verse says. Take any verse. That’s what it says. Or it says, “You are a Christian. Get a wiggle on it, buddy, and start winning people to Jesus Christ.” Point two, and that’s all the New Testament says. And as a Baptist, I can tell you that revival evangelism is virtually the only thing we Baptists have ever preached. Every once in a while, we throw in a sermon on comfort. That’s it. Oh, that’s not to mention money, but our basic gospel is you’re lost, get saved. You’re saved; save somebody. And I listened to these men, and every one of them preached a revival theology, and every one of them stood up there and said, “And Paul and Barnabas went out from Antioch to win people to Jesus Christ.” That is not true. They went out to bring forth the ekklesia to this earth, and they won people to Christ to build the church. You don’t build a church to win people to Jesus Christ.

They gathered the people together as believers. And the most incredible thing, how church centered they were, was unbelievable. How much their minds were on the ekklesia. This is really raw. I don’t understand this. I can never comprehend it. They had raised up one or two churches in one area, one province, or even one region larger than a province, and then they would say this region’s evangelized, and they’d take off to raise up the church in another place. They knew that the ekklesia would take care of the rest. It’s astounding.

Those men went out to give the Gentiles the body of Christ. They went out with a love and passion for that which they had lived in the midst of and fell in love with. They lived in the presence of the love of God for them and the love of God for one another, and they went too. Well, I’ll tell you where they went first. They went to Cyprus and found out in every village in town there was a Jewish church, and the Jews would not preach to the heathen, and those little clusters of five or 10 people, they couldn’t break that mold, and they left Cyprus and they took off for parts unknown.

Now, brothers and sisters, comes the most phenomenal thing this world has ever seen. What came forth was a pattern, a way that’s remained unbroken throughout the life of Paul of Tarsus. By the way, I think that Barnabas returned to Cyprus when they got this matter of Jews and Gentiles settled, and he went back there to make sure that those Jewish churches started winning Gentiles to the Lord, but that’s ahead of my story. I want you to listen to this. And if you don’t have a copy of the Modern English New Testament, or it’s called the Berkeley edition, it’s a fascinating version to hold because it has dates written on the side. This happened in March 54 AD, and they’ve taken all the learning of scholars throughout the centuries on these dates, and they’ve written them in, and this stuff is pretty set.

They went to Galatia. They raised four churches, and they spent approximately four months in each town, over a period of four to six months, over a period of two years. The rest of the time, they spent traveling. Now, I want you to try to understand this. This man right here is a blood-drinking heathen. He goes to the temple every week, sacrifices to some god, and drinks some ox blood. He has never heard the name Jesus Christ; he cannot read or write. This is a farmer, F. A. R. M. E. R. Farmer. This is a farmer. I can’t pronounce that word so people can understand it. This is an unemployed person who stands in the streets every week, hoping that he’ll get employed. All these men are illiterate. This is a slave of one of the rich people. This man is a Greek merchant who sells pots and …, but they’re all heathen, and their main religion is superstition. Never forget that. The largest religion in the world is superstition. No matter what name you may fly under, paganism, Shintoism, or Buddhism, you’re mostly superstitious.

Two men walk into a place called Antioch Pisidia. Two men go later to a town called Iconium. Two men go to a place called Lystra. Two men walk into a town called Derbe. And they stay for four months. That’s all – four months. They are not evangelists. They are church planters. They are Apostles. They plant churches. Forget Apostles; they plant churches. That’s what they do. They do it instinctively. They do it by calling. They led these people to the Lord, and then they gathered them in somebody’s house, and the instinct came; it’s the instinct to be together. And the most incredible thing is that at the end of two or three or four months, those people fall in love with one another, and they’d give their life to each other.

Now, you ask about how to meet; I’m going to tell you how to meet. First, you get a church planter, that’s why I said you have to start all over again, because you have to have a new beginning. You need someone who will proclaim only Jesus Christ to you. Just the Lord. Not eyeballs in Daniel or dragon’s tails in Revelation. Not once saved, always saved. Not baptism nor baptism of the Holy Spirit. Not predestination. Not all the things that we have warped the gospel with. Christ.

And something inside sings, and something inside joys, and something inside falls in love with this incredible, glorious, unbelievable, matchless, incomparable Lord. And then I use a secular word; I’m qualifying the word: something magic happens. It’s not magic. Something glorious happens, something wondrous, unbelievable in this interchange of love between an indwelling Lord and that redeemed one. That which is going this way up and down begins going this way, and that’s the love of the brethren. And that’s the closest thing to heaven we’re going to know this side of death.

And I’m going to stop and get off the subject for a minute. And I can tell you, I’m speaking as a Baptist. Forgive me, but I am a Baptist. I have a license. It’s on my desk at home. I have a license to hunt Baptist. I have a license. I have been licensed by Baptists; I can pick on Baptists. I won’t pick on the Methodists or the others.  I was once an evangelist in the modern tradition of that term. I preached all over North America. I doubt that there was a man, as young as I was at that time, doing so many things that took in so many people. Well, there might have been, but I didn’t know of him, and by the way, I was not impressed. You can’t imagine how many platforms I have stood on of every kind of evangelical church there is. I just thought Baptists were in trouble, and then I discovered it was international, worldwide. But there was one thing I never discovered nor found anywhere. And this is not criticism. It’s an observation. And this goes all the way back to my childhood. First Baptist Church, Bay City, Texas. First Baptist Church, Conroe, Texas. First Baptist Church, Commerce, Texas. My home church when I was in seminary, and the church that I was a member of when I moved to Tyler, Texas, as an evangelist. Those are the five churches that I was in the longest, plus the two churches I later pastored. That’s seven churches, not of Asia, but of America.

There was one thing that could not be said. We did not love one another. That’s not a criticism. Saints, we didn’t know one another. We had two or three friends; we might have cared for them. One thing that was obvious was that they were always in trouble. They were always having problems. I thought I had the most cursed friends in the world, and then I got into the body of Christ and found out that that’s also universal.