Man’s Traditions and God’s Way (DCLC – July ’86, Part 4)

`You are taught to touch the Lord, to know the Lord, to grow in the Lord, then to pray, read your Bible, go to church, speak in tongues, tithe, witness, chase spiritual gifts such as prophecy, prophesying…(and I dressed up just so y’all could take pictures.) And that’s the first thing you learn. Then we presented to you a better way, and that way is to, first of all, become sensitive to the fact that there’s another realm, and that realm is in you, and that you grow by means of that realm. That the absolutely best way to know the Lord is the way the Lord knew the Father, and that is by fellowshipping with the Father and the Son. I have suggested that the best way to fellowship with the Father and the Son is to watch the Father and the Son fellowship, and we have presented to you a very practical device, method, or help by which you may do that. Whether you do or not will probably depend upon how disciplined you are, how hungry you are, and how much you love the Lord. But I will assure you, you will never improve on what you’ve heard this week. You will not improve on it. Other things may help you as much or more, but you’re not going to improve on this because it is the very essence of the walk of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. I am not commending to you the things of men, but the things of God.

Now you have also heard that you have been a turkey (Turkeys and Eagles, by Peter Lord). That you have been living in personal condemnation, and you have been passing yourself off as a sinner saved by grace when in fact you are a holy one of God. That you are righteous, or you’re in a state of righteousness, and that somebody has sold you a bill of goods by presenting to you such a second-rate gospel, a really cheap gospel. And you’ve heard that.

Since then, you have been made more acquainted with that realm, a sensitivity to that realm, to the spirit that lives within you. I don’t know if you caught the other things we said to you, so I’m going to tell you what we also told you, and that is, that the Christian life is not for an individual. It is for a group of people. And I would like to tell you all that…I would speak with Lance. I heard Lance say this…whatever growth in Christ He knows, whatever growth in Christ I know, I attribute it and owe it to the body of Christ. There are a few people in this world who are self-disciplined and get to know the Lord really well all on their own. People are very rare, and they mess up church history, and they mess up the gospel, and they give us all an inferiority complex. They are 100th of 1% of all believers. 100th of 1%. You’re lazy. You’re undisciplined. You’re sleepy-headed. Thank you very much for nodding heads. You think you’re really neat until you get to be a Christian for about 20 years, and you get a very humble impression of yourself; you really aren’t all that hot. About the only thing that you’re really good at is some of you know a whole lot about the Bible, which only makes you self-righteous. But you’re very weak, and you need the body of Christ. The Lord knew that on the day He rose from the dead and on the day of Pentecost, He gave you that which you needed in order to pursue the Christian life.

Now, some men came along and messed all that up with the traditions of men. Today, we call bricks the church of God, which is kind of like calling your wife an automobile or one of your children a skyscraper. That’s right, it’s just ridiculous. I don’t know how in the world anybody came up with such an idea to call the church a building. It will forever remain with me one of the most humorous, incomprehensible, and scandalous things that ever was perpetrated on the human race. The only other thing I know that was ever perpetrated off on the human race, worse than calling a woman, a bride, a church building, is the guy who invented Sunday morning church service. That was about as close to diabolical as a Christian could get when he thought that up. That thing is the worst possible thing you could do for a Christian. I can’t see how anybody could expect to go out and invite a lost man to come into a place like that and expect him to respond positively. I personally get a lot more fun out of sitting in front of my basement, turning on my dryer, putting all my wet clothes in there, and sitting there in front of it and watching it and getting my thrill when it goes into spin dry. That is a lot more exciting than going to church on Sunday morning. And some of the people said, Amen, though the rest of them aren’t bold enough to be honest with themselves.

You have been given some equipment to walk out of here and fellowship with the Lord about. I’m going to tell you something, I wouldn’t try real hard to explain this week to anybody. I’m dead serious. They will think that you have gone somewhat mad. You know, we tend to try to explain everything in a neat little paragraph, or take a whole week and put it in a paragraph. You come out with that paragraph, and they’re going to…I’d just hold it in my heart for a while, if I were you, and if it goes away, it goes away. And if it becomes real, it becomes real.

I understand that Lance has invited anybody who wants to come to this place under 25 to pack up and come if he’s single. Those who are 30 or under, single or married, you ought to come visit first. And those over 30, you ought to wait till something gets launched, and then you ought to come and visit for a week in the dead of winter. I think Lance got a pretty good idea there. I’m hoping that this time next year, there will be church life as I understand that term in Portland, Maine. Now, I don’t mean that there are no redeemed people here, nor do I mean that there are no churches here. There are brick buildings here, two or three of them made out of stone. But an experience of the fellowship of the body of Christ committed to one another in a living experience free of ritual, free of form, and living together in a civilization with a divine nature in the center of it, without any legalism, and with an absolute minimum of rules…working to get rid of those…in an experience that is not confined to gatherings but is a part of your life 18 hours a day.

Our corporate experience of divine life on an ongoing basis. That’s my definition of church life. If you wrote that down, I’d like to have it back. I have a pretty good definition there. I hope somebody can live up to that someday with a minimum of doctrines and nobody bragging about being it.

Audience: If something gets what?

Launched. And when I get through this meeting tonight, I’m going to walk out of here, so I’m going to go ahead and make my announcements. You’re supposed to meet back here at 11:00 in the morning. I hope to be here by 10:00 and still be able to talk. Let’s hope so. We’re going to have a meeting at 11:00 that ends at 12:00. You’re going to be asked two questions in the morning. Like to hear you answer them. What are you going to take home with you? And what has meant the most to you? And let’s hear from one another.

We’re going to talk about the traditions of men, not because I thought this up, but because it came next. If this had been about the resurrection, I’d have talked about it from the viewpoint of Jesus Christ and an indwelling Father. Okay? Not from my viewpoint and yours, but from His. Do you have any questions before I start? No questions. Wonderful. Lance and Chuck, you and I aren’t needed anymore. These people understand all things. Before I bring the message in which I’m going to try to cast the Lord’s own thoughts, while this was happening, His own experience while this was going on, I would like to distinguish with you between the traditions of men as they relate to religion and traditions of men that are more or less innocent.

Now, in doing so, I want to say to you and make my point, and my point is that there are many traditions around us of which we have no awareness. You do many things as a Christian, you have never questioned that should be questioned because, in my judgment, they are not only not from the Lord but they’re contrary to the Lord’s ways and stumble on the Lord’s work, and we’re never even aware of them. Now, some traditions we have that you have never thought about in your whole life, that you accept all the time. Would you like to hear some have nothing to do with religion but things around you all the time? Will you please observe? Does anybody know what those are doing there? Alright, brother.