Foundation Stones (Part 4) Called or Sent – God’s Pattern for Christian Ministry and Church Life

Well, now let’s go back to Solomon’s porch. The people wanted to hear about my Lord and yours. Now, let me skip over just a little bit. Roy, what do you figure people really want to hear about today? Really want to hear about? That’s true. You know, that’s absolutely true. What people want to hear today is what will the gospel do to put money in my pockets? You want a Mercedes. We take a list here. Who wants, everybody? Cadillac, Rolls-Royce. That’s true, and we know why they want that, because they have never found out what it is they really want.

What a Christian really wants is the Lord Jesus Christ, whether he knows it or not. He doesn’t always get Him, and sometimes the best fail to get Him, but sometimes the best refuse to receive Him too, but what the Christian really, really wants, whether he knows it or not, is he wants the Lord, and I would like for you to know, there are not many people who proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ.

As you get older, you’ll hear a lot of messages. Listen to how many of them come out of the epistles and listen to how few of them come out of the gospels. It’s so much easier to take a little verse out of an epistle and put you under the pile with it. And you can go to a parable in the Gospels and put yourself under the pile with that, too, but to just saturate a people with the Lord Jesus Christ is a thing that is rarely done in ministry, in any generation.

Now, I’m going to make a point. Tom, if all the Lord Jesus gave those 12 was the fellowship that He had within Him and Himself, and if all that they gave those people was the Lord Jesus Christ, then if you dare stand in that tradition when you get up to speak, what should be the major thrust of your gospel? Jesus Christ. Amen. The Lord Jesus Christ, and that’s what people would like to hear about. Now, unfortunately, that’s not very glamorous. Unfortunately, they’re going to come to you with a lot of other things besides what they want and need. They’re going to come with a lot of their problems, and it’ll tax you, if not kill you out, right? But that’s the centrality of your gospel, brother. It’s got to be the Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, your gospel is basically worthless. It’s the Lord.

Those of you who are out there on the other side of that glass lens, you don’t hear me after the lights go out. These bright lights move; the ordinary lights come on. You don’t see me making this practical. This thing that I’m talking about is the Lord indwelling within us. And you may be saying, well, Gene, why don’t you do that, Gene? Why don’t you put that on tape? And I have a question for you. Why won’t you come get in this room? No, I’m not going to teach you those things. I’ll make you hungry, but I’m not going to give you those things. I give those things out only in the house of God and nowhere else. Because I don’t make a living doing this. I get the same amount of money no matter how much I do or don’t do. In fact, when I do it, I make less money. When I don’t do this, I save money. I do, I can bank a dollar or two when I stop preaching; it starts going out of my pocket.

No, I’m not going to give you the Lord in your isolated little place out there, or your two or three people. If you want Him so much and you want His church so much, sell everything He got and move, call over cut glass and then you’ll find out what it is we do when we turn these big white lights out and turn away ordinary lights and we just sit around here and we make the encounter with Christ a living experience. I’m going to tell you we sit there and watch 10,000 tapes. Hey, you, you have to come here. It’s on tape. It has now been recorded for posterity. I am for the church. It’s on tape. It has now been recorded for posterity.

I am for the church of the living God. I am not for individual Christian living, and neither were these men. They went out and started declaring Christ to these people, but they declared Him in the context in which they had received Him, among a body of people. The Lord neither went to the masses nor did He go to one and that is critical. That’s crucial. He did not go to everybody, nor did He just go to one. He went to a group of men.

Their habit was to know Christ as a group, and their habit was to proclaim Him as a group to a group, to deliver to them the fellowship of God and to contain that within an experience like unto their own, just bigger. Do you know what I’m telling you? We’ve talked about the Christian life this way. I’d like to talk about the church going backwards. The church is in Jerusalem, with 3,000 people. The churches in Galilee, 20 people. The churches in Nazareth, one people, or two invisible and one visible. Then in eternity, three invisible within one. One with one another.

Now let’s go back and look at Galilee. I want you to notice how they experience church life. It’s very simple. They have just been teaching the masses in one city. They go to bed. They get up early, and then the next morning, they’re going to the next village. They’re about halfway there.

It’s Sunday morning. It’s about 11 o’clock. And the Lord stands up and He puts on His big robe, and He gets out His Bible and He says, “You 12 men stand up. We’re going to sing the doxology.” And they all sing the doxology. He puts away His scrolls. He says, Now Peter and John will come forward with the morning offering plates. Everybody, stand, and we’re going to repeat the Apostles Creed. And now will Brother Thomas lead us in prayer. And God bless the offering and the missionaries. And they go sit down. Sit down and everyone be quiet, for God is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silent before Him. Now we are going to sing Amazing Grace. And after that, we’re going to sing I Surrender All, and then we’re going to sing Bringing In the Sheaves, All the children, please be quiet. The Lord delivers a 45-minute message, three points, a poem, a deathbed story, an introduction and a conclusion, and an invitation, and that’s church till next Sunday morning at 11:00 a.m. Y’all noticed that in the Bible, didn’t you? You all saw that in the New Testament. Do you think that was their concept of the church?

My point being, there as they meet that first time in Solomon’s porch, they are free from all concepts of ritual. Their only experience of the ekklesia, the gathering, is free fellowship. We will have two brothers who will speak to us tonight around the fireplace here on the road to Jericho. The rest of you 10, be quiet. They didn’t have anything like that. They just fellowship with one another. I am certain that brother Simon didn’t speak, talk, or share enough; very quiet brother. And I’m sure Peter talked too much, and sometimes maybe one of them said, “Oh, Peter, hush you talk all the time. Let someone else talk.” And Peter kind of laughed and let someone else talk.

Maybe they had things like that happening, but there was no ritual that bound their fellowship in Galilee. None. So now they’re in Jerusalem. Now they’re sharing Christ. And now they’re going to introduce ritual because they’re 3,000 people, and you’ve got to introduce ritual. Either that or you got to divide them up into homes. So, they divided them up into homes and people got together in living rooms and they sat there just like the apostles, when they were disciples, had sat in living rooms and fellowship and there wasn’t a bit of difference except the visible Christ had now become the invisible Christ and the one who sat 10 feet from you was now sitting inside you.