Foundation Stones #4 – What the 3000 Received

You need to see, and if you see something ugly, it’s going to destroy you. If you see a man answering his critics, you see a man getting bitter and angry and shriveled and hurt, it’ll destroy you because you’ll imitate that and you ought not to see that. And those 3,000 people saw 12 men take it and take it well, and you ought to have the privilege of watching that. I sure hope you find somebody. I really hope you find somebody.

If anybody out there would like to volunteer to be that person, please write me a letter and let me know, and we will persecute you and let the young brothers watch how graciously you handle it. I’m so tired of being the witness to this. I am weary to the bone. And I have said again and again and again that the one thing I fear the most – I don’t fear some great crisis, I’ve been through so many of those – I fear being worn down. And that’s, by the way, I’m off the subject, but that’s why a man who serves the Lord should stop serving the Lord from time to time totally and quit for a period of years and rest from the battle because if you don’t, you’re going to get worn down and you’re going to become a pickle puss. You’re going to look exactly like a 12-day-old prune, shriveled, wrinkled up.

It’s just one other thing I want you to notice about these 12 men. I want you to notice how much backbiting they do among themselves, and how they fight for prestige, and preeminence, and for a position of importance, and how often they get in arguments with each other, and they get their feelings hurt, and they’re pushy, and they’re picky, and they’re peevish. Did you notice that? You’ll notice that in the Gospels, you don’t see it in Acts. You really meet some gracious men. Why? Because Jesus Christ knew how to raise up workers. That’s why. Jesus Christ knew how to raise up workers. I hope, if there is a young worker somewhere in this room or out there, I hope you get raised up by the best.

You are so picky, and so sensitive, and so irritable, and so ambitious, and so religious, and at the same time so simple, and so guarding against all of that and trying to hide it so badly. And you need to have the experience of the 12. You need to get in church like life like they did in Galilee, and it’ll fix your fenders. It will iron your wrinkles, and it will burn your toast. It will singe your hair. Those men had lived together for nearly four years, and they were exposed men. Now, it was behind them, and they were doing just fine. Thank you. And there were some young men following them just as religious, just as messed up, just as picky, just as peevish, just as sensitive, who in the next 14 years, count them, 14 years, 10 to 14 years, living in the church under the apostles, learning about Jesus Christ, fellowshipping with Christ within them, and fellowshipping with other Christians who were fellowshipping with Christ within them, and those men got past such immaturity. Now guess what you should do…

Well, ideally, you should find an apostle, and if I’m serious, I’m dead serious. Ideally, you should find an apostle, and if you have been called to serve the Lord, you ought to quit serving the Lord immediately, and if you’ve got a little church somewhere that needs you so desperately, and if you can’t see that it’s more important for you to leave that church, then stay there and help them through their piddly little problems, which somebody else can do just as well as you can. And if you cannot see that you ought to give that up for the purpose of you yourself having the experience of being a brother in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you can’t see that, you can’t see anything. You can’t see anything if you can’t see that.

Don’t be so ambitious that you can’t pull the plug for a few years and sit down under somebody who has been called and sent by the Lord, whose one purpose in life is Christ within the church, and who is being sent and who is going out to do nothing but raising up churches. Then, brother, after a period of time, you go out and do what you want to. If that man is worth his salt, and salt is cheap, if he’s worth his salt, he will let you go; he will not try to turn you into part of his movement. He will set you free. If he is any good at all, go get under him, but go get in the church, and go get with some brothers about your own age, and go get yourself so exposed that it’s absolutely ridiculous. Oh, you’re so high, and you’re so mighty, and you’re so great, and you’re so neat, and you’re so godly, and people think you’re the first thing that ever was. Give yourself four or five years in the church, and you’ll just be another piece of bread and peanut butter. That’s all you’ll be. You’ll just be something as common as dirt is common. And they’ll have a fix on you. And a lot of that fanciness and all that religiousness and all that high tone Christianity you’ve got will be down to normality. And while you’re at it, get a job. You want a job for the simple reason that someday the church of the Lord Jesus Christ may throw you out.

God’s people may get rid of you, and you need a way to make a living. And besides that, if you’re going to raise up the church, you need to know how to earn your own living. You ought not to depend on God’s people; let that money go to other things. Get in the church. Know the Lord. Know the Lord. Get in the church. Sit for a while and it’ll work out eventually that if God calls you, and if the Lord prepares you and if you are willing to do that which sent ones are supposed to do which is to go and nurture the church or raise up the church, someday He’ll send you, if you got a heart that’s pure, or fairly close to pure. But don’t be so self-righteous and don’t be so big and proud that you cannot quit all the glories of the pulpit and come be an ordinary human being with other brothers.

That’s the one other thing I want to say to you is that these 12 men work together. They work together in coordination, and there’s nothing high-toned or highfalutin about them. Hey, listen. I’m speaking to so many southerners here. I’m afraid that other people can’t understand what I’m saying. Do you understand high-toned and highfalutin, and putting on the dog? You know all that stuff, don’t you? Well, those folks out there don’t. They’ve never heard of that. All right.

These men are ordinary. Even though they are apostles, they are ordinary. They’ve got the touch of Christ humanity on them. They’ve got the touch of normality on them, and they work well with one another. Not only do they not fuss and fight with one another, but they are a constant companion with one another, and a strength to one another, and they know one another’s weaknesses, and they all know they have weaknesses, and they know someone else has a strength they don’t have. They don’t mind calling on it.

You know, if there is any witness today or any lack of witness that shames us who are Christian workers, it is this. We can’t work with anybody else. I will ask you to answer this question for me. How many men do you know in the world who grew up together in their Christian life who serve the Lord together, and the ministry is dual or triple or quadruple, it’s four or five or six people or two or three rather than one solo, one Charles Lindbergh? One solo flight.

God hasten the day when young men have their history as having been with one another, and they go out to proclaim the gospel together. I hope God will let me live to see that day, and I don’t want to just see it once, I want to see it about a dozen times, or a dozen different cases of it. In fact, I’ll take eight. I’ll settle for eight right now, men who go out and serve the Lord together and who know one another. What a witness to God’s people. And if the common touch be on them, how much more wonderful. And boy, if both of them work for a living, or at least have, maybe they got in a position where they have to take the Lord’s money; that’s okay, that’s scriptural, but they have the testimony that they’re not professional religious workers. You understand what I mean? That they worked for a living at one time or another, just like everybody else did.

What a wonderful witness. They didn’t backbite, and they were in complete coordination with one another. And I don’t know how to stress this, but those men were not introducing religiousness into the life of God’s people. And that was revolutionary. I want you to see those 3,000 people. And we’re going to stop with this. I want you to see those 3,000 people out there. And all they’ve ever known are Pharisees and long fancy dresses and long solemn faces, long sad faces. All they know are special dress scribes with long grim faces. And all they know are colorfully dressed priests with long grim faces. And that’s the only thing they’ve ever known in the world of religion, and some of them have been turned off by it. Others have accepted it because they love the Lord, and others have never known the Lord because they simply couldn’t stand it from the very outset.