Needed, A New Way to Meet #3: The Body of Christ: A New Way to Experience Church Life

I see an organism; a living body. Now, that may have structure; it may have form; you may call it anything you want to, but I am an instinctive creature. Have you seen the study of identical twins separated at birth? They wear the same kind of clothes. They marry the same kind of wives. They build the same kind of houses. They get the same kind of jobs. They’re going by their genetics. They’re expressing themselves out of the genetic, biological, organic nature that is theirs. Lose that, and you’ve lost everything. The church expresses herself organically, divinely, spontaneously, biologically. And it is not human; it is divine if she is living by her spirit, drawing from His life.

Stay there, would you? Don’t move too far from that. The rest may be all true, but start there. Please, start there. Absolutely. Second Adam genetics. The last Adam genetics. The new man genetics. You will not find much overbearing human authority there. You will find a great deal of love and care. You will find a moving, an organic moving here and there. You will find a great deal of structure in this. You’ll find an awful lot of spontaneity. I realize it drives us all crazy because it never takes the form, and some of us are absolutely determined that it will take some sort of structural form.

Those of you who have been in church life, you were drawn to it by its spontaneity and its almost total lack of direction, and you watched men improve on that. They improved on it and improved on it and improved on it till it ceased to exist. Let me tell you what my number one job is. My number one job is not even to give the church life; my number one job is to keep things out of the church. I have found my number one task as a minister is that when she finally gets to going, it is to keep other things out. The structure and the natural desire to change this, and all the thinkers sit down and start thinking and philosophizing; it’s easier than just keeping things out.

You and I gather to shame fallen angels. That’s why we gather. Satan is our enemy. That word rarely comes out of my mouth. I rarely talk about the devil, but Satan is our enemy. He’s not my enemy. He and I have never had a problem in our lives. I don’t ever remember any problem I’ve ever had with the devil, but he is the enemy of the church. More than that, he is the enemy of God’s purpose. We have to come back to what the purpose of God is, and that takes weeks to understand, and it’s a many-splendored thing, but when the church of Jesus Christ meets without a human head and without structure and form, Satan is put to shame.

Everything he is trying to do on this earth can be defeated when a people can have an indwelling Lord and respond to Him. That’s why, again, I’m pushing off this business of form, structure, move, method, manner, expression, all of that stuff, for you to understand that when you sit in that meeting, you ought to be individually and as a body listening to your Lord direct that meeting. Listening to your Lord direct that meeting.

And yes, I will have to confess again, we will practice. We will literally practice doing that because we seem to have to break away from all our misgivings, but once you break, you will be unsatisfied with anything else for the rest of your life. I could explain to you a meeting that is actually under the headship of Jesus Christ. I would like to, but I have to say one thing here, so I don’t get too idealistic. I am saying that a large part of your life ought to be lived toward, even if you don’t get there often, expressing the visible, physical expression of Christ when you gather.

Every human being in the church ought to know we’re going to have a meeting, and that there is something between Satan and us. This is the one time when the church is truly in warfare. We are here to demonstrate that Christ is alive; He indwells us; He speaks; He lives; He has not left this earth; He is king; He is Lord; He rules the people. He rules the people; we are that people, and we are going to show our enemies our God. When you walk into a meeting, from now to the day you die, yes, gatherings of God’s people are immensely important. Don’t take it lightly. So I would say, let’s put our shoulder to the wheel and revolutionize this from the bottom to the top.

Who is Christ’s head? God the Father. Who is the church’s head? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ demonstrated every day, and spoke constantly, that His Father was His head. It is the church’s responsibility to demonstrate daily and weekly that an invisible creature who cannot be seen, as the Father was to the Son when He was on this earth, that an invisible creature who cannot be seen and cannot be heard with physical words can nonetheless speak internally, as the Father did to a visible Son on this earth, so a living, reigning, ruling invisible Lord can speak inside of us.

We demonstrate that and testify to it, not as individuals, but as a corporate entity. We do it every time we gather. A new believer can look and say, God is among them. An unbeliever will come in and, without an evangelistic message, will fall down in his face and say, God is among them. That is the goal of all meetings: to demonstrate Christ’s headship on this earth, that He will one day rule and reign victorious over the people on this earth today who are under His rule and reign. No man leads them. God leads them when they gather and are assembled as a body, and that body is one united whole demonstrating Him. That is the work and purpose of the church on this earth. Amen.

You will need elders later, and you will need them desperately. You will even need them concerning the meetings. Sometimes they will have to step in. But where were the elders in Corinth when people were getting drunk in the meetings? Where were those guys? I’m not sure they had elders in Corinth, and that church was seven years old when Paul wrote that letter. They might not have had elders yet. Paul might not have even had him that much trouble with those happy drunkards. He never mentions or refers to an elder in First or Second Corinthians. Put that in your pipe and silk, for those of you who are authoritarian. Where were the people who should have been leading when men and women were getting drunk during the Lord’s Supper? It’s a fascinating question.

Well, I’m shifting now. Do you remember the passage in which Paul spoke of the foreigner, the barbarian? I want to talk to you about the standard of the meeting. A meeting has a standard. The standard of a meeting is that anybody within your nation should be comfortable in your meeting, whether he is lost or saved. Now, that is a revolutionary statement. That is revolutionary. Whether he is lost or saved, he should be comfortable, at home, and see only what he can comprehend in that meeting. And boy, that is a standard. That’s taking a standard, putting it in a rocket, and blowing it right up into the stratosphere. That’s actually Pentecostal, isn’t it? Your meetings do not reach that standard. By the way, this is Paul speaking. He said the foreigner should not feel uncomfortable; a man should not come in and feel like he’s in a foreign land. Nothing should be going on there that would make it seem like a foreigner from another land is there. Now just take that.

I’m going to put this word under it. The church should express the culture of that people. Now that is a dangerous statement, and I will have to qualify it. I’m going to have to say, for America, our past culture, not our present culture. Never the present culture, because the present culture is not always culture. Can you appreciate that? I don’t know if I can make that clear to you or not. The hippie movement did not become part of American culture. The hippies are gone. The Jesus movement did not become part of America’s culture. I tell you what it left: informal chorus singing in denomination churches. That’s what it gave. It added a little looser singing to worship. That’s all the Jesus movement did. It did not affect our culture. It did not become part of American culture. I’m sorry it didn’t.