Foundation Stones #1 – The Original Pattern

I am asking you to establish for me a pattern. I am asking you to be truthful with scripture. I am asking you to look at the word of God and see what’s there. You would have to go to Galilee and find some men sitting out in broad daylight on a dusty road. That was their concept of the Christian life, the church and a worker and workers preparation. What would you see? Aristotle under the grove of academia reading his notes while his students took notes? If you wanted to see a Christian, you would see the Lord Jesus Christ in fellowship with His Father. And now He’s beholding it, and He’s fellowshipping with 12 men. God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, and 12 guys who couldn’t read and write. That’s the Christian life. That’s what you’d see. The church mobile. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit and 12 men watching.

Now, you know I need to really impress upon you what 12 men had the impression that the church was at that time, and I’d like to Simon Peter is that right? Yes. And John uh son of Zebedee. All right. James, is that right? James the Zealot. All right. Uh Simon Peter, what do you consider the assembly of God? The church. That is the ecclesia. Remember Simon Peter look up and say, “Never heard of it.” Well, you heard the Lord mention it once. Oh, yeah. That’s right. He did say something about the ekklesia of the assembly. What is it? What is that? Well, here it is right here. Uh, it’s just us sitting around here listening to the Lord, watching Him say, “You watch Him.”

Now, there is something to see. You watch Him. You know what He’s doing? He’s listening to His Father. He told us the other day that He never does anything except what He sees His Father do. That’s all He does. Uh, well, is He a Christian? What’s a Christian? Uh well, is He, He’s the Christ, right? And you’re a follower of His? Uh-huh, what would you say, uh, Christ is like? What do you mean what’s He like? Well, what would someone be like if they were like Him? If someone were like Him, what would they be of they were like Him? They’d hear voices. Uh, they would, uh, if they were like Him, they’d hear voices and they’d see their Father and they’d obey Him and they’d love Him. And it’s incredible. You all should sit down and watch?

All right, John. Maybe I can get more sense out of you than I did Simon Peter. Uh, John, what do you consider the ekklesia? The ekklesia? You mean the assembly? The assembly? We don’t assemble. I mean, we assemble now. Would you like to have some roasted lamb? We’re sitting here eating roasted lamb and some wine.

Mary Magdalene has some water over here. You’ll, she’s a dear little gal. Uh this morning we got up and sang together. Oh, we had a wonderful time. The Lord sang with us. He was in our midst singing. It was great. What else you want to know? What’s a worker? What’s a Christian worker? What’s a Christian worker? I don’t know what a Christian is, but what’s a, what do you mean what is a worker? What is someone who really serves the living God? Well, I don’t know of anybody doing that but Him. Well, how did He get prepared doing that? I don’t know that He had any preparation. He’s a carpenter, you know. But you mean He never went to Jerusalem to the temple, but He lives with His Father.

If you wanted to see the church, you had to look at 12 men and the Lord Jesus Christ and an internal experience He was having with an indwelling God. If you were to find the church, then we would have to find God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit in Christ fellowshipping with 12 men. And that was their concept of the church. And that’s what their concept of the church was. The day they got into that little group and the day they died, it had not changed. And their concept of a preparation of a Christian worker was what they knew their Lord had gone through and what they went through.

Okay, how did the Lord prepare them to be Christian workers? I’m going to ask again. Did He do it the way Aristotle did it? That’s the way we do it. Aristotle and his grove of academia is basically our today’s seminary. Well, what did the Lord Jesus Christ do? I just get, this is where I get so steamed up. He got 12 men around Him and He showed them how to live by the life of the Father for three and a half years. He showed them by His own personal illustration. That’s how He prepared them to be workers. He prepared them to be workers by three things. He showed them the Christian life, which is what He is. He showed them the church by their fellowshipping together and with Him. And He prepared them to be workers by living with Him, living in His presence, and teaching them what the Christian life was.

Now my dear brother, I land this now. I am telling you young men, what you ought to do to prepare yourself to be a Christian, you ought to see the same Father He saw. And you ought to see Him seeing the Father. You ought to listen to them fellowship. And you ought to get in the church. That’s the second thing you ought to do. You ought to get in the church where other people are listening and watching and hearing and sharing what they listened to, watched, and heard, and together are living by a life not human, every once in a while, and sharing those moments together when you get assembled. That’s what you ought to do.

Now, I don’t know that there’s anyone in this room. Okay. I don’t know if anybody else in this room has been called to the ministry, you know what you ought to do? You ought to be clear. You ought to get in the church, in a body of believers, who are watching, hearing, living by, and sharing what they live by. You got to do like the apostles. You’ll spend your life, your 20s, watching the Godhead in fellowship with the Godhead in the church.

That’s what preparation for the Christian ministry is. Now then you say to me, can, will the pattern hold? Will the pattern hold, or does it stop with the 12? And this is, I’m telling you, you better believe me. I wouldn’t be standing here. I’m gonna show you the pattern.

From the day the Lord started ministering until the last worker in the New Testament was raised up, the pattern never changed. It remained unbroken. What the Christian life was, what the church was, and the way workers were prepared. And then after they got prepared, what they went out and did is unbroken all the way from the Godhead to the last knowledge we have of workers being raised up. And I would say to you brothers and sisters, that you and I need to return to the fellowship, and we’re going to have to learn how to do that outside of time and outside of space just like the Lord did. And then maybe we can bring a little of it into time and into space.

Gene, you’re either crazy or you’re mad. Which is it? No, it is possible to restore that fellowship. That’s all I can say to you old folks. I can’t help you with the church. For one thing, I’m not a, I don’t live in Ontario. I was about to say I’m not a Canadian. That’s not true. I don’t live in Ontario. I don’t live where you live. But I can tell you this. I can tell you what kind of worker you need if you ever have the church there. And I can tell you what the church is. It’s the fellowship of a group of people around the fellowship of the Father and the Son and the Spirit. Oh, it’s a lot of other things too because we’re fallen. We have no visible Christ with us. But that’s where the church begins there and works out. And the only thing I’d say to you about workers is, if you see any young men who’ve been called to the Lord, tell them what I just told you, would you? They need to find somebody who can show them that fellowship and that church, that Christian life and that church experience and that preparation.