What If Your Worship Is Pushing You AWAY From God? Grand Prairie DCLC #1

I’m going to take a very simple verse, and yes, brother, it’s from Acts 2, just as simple as it can be. You all know it; a simpler passage does not exist. Acts 2:48, And day by day continuing with one mind in the temple and breaking bread from house to house. They took their food together with gladness and simplicity of heart. Something rings in this; something resonates. Now I’m going to tell you exactly what the subject is tonight, and then I’m going to tell you why I picked this very unusual title. I’m going to talk to you about the spiritual community of the believer. The spiritual community of the believer.

Now I am doing that for one purpose: to avoid the word “church”. The word church is not a New Testament word. It came to us through German. The word ekklesia is almost untranslatable. It’s not assembly. It’s not an assemblage. Don’t let Greek scholars play with that word with you. Don’t kid yourself. We don’t really know what that meant to a first-century believer. Probably more than anything else, it meant gathering. It meant the reassembling of a body: when all the saints came together, they were the assembled parts of the body of Christ. They were a gathering.

So, we don’t have a good word. If I say church to you, you immediately think of a spiral, a pastor, a pew, a choir, a piano, an organ, a ritual. But something happened in your life and in mine that pressed us beyond that point, and when that happened, you joined a great passing parade, small in number yet a great witness that endures throughout the centuries. You didn’t know you joined that assemblage. You may not know it yet, but you did. They are a particular people.

Now, I’m almost afraid to utter the words I just uttered, because unfortunately, you didn’t get a good break, and I didn’t either, in my lifetime. Now, I’m not speaking to all of you, but there’s one of you out here I’m speaking to. This is the message you ought to have heard when you left the religious system, but instead, boy, forgive me, I have the feeling that most of you, when you stepped up or out or over or around or underneath or whatever you did, when you superannuated somewhere along the line, you got really hurt, probably in a Christian group. Will you raise your hand if that’s true? Oh, come on. Don’t be so timid. Raise your hand. Then the rest of you are amazingly blessed people. You’ve never been in a group that told you that you were it, huh? You were in the IT group. You’ve never been in a movement that told you it was the last movement of this age. You were never in a movement that said the hour is late and we should all be one. The body of Christ needs to come together, so come join us. You never were. Well, you’re lucky.

You were never in a group that told you this is the end of the age, that this is the Laodicean church, that you’re the Philadelphian church, and that you and I are the overcomers? Have you never had that happen to you? Dallas, Texas. You are living in a vacuum. Grand Prairie. Well, that’s wonderful. I’ve never seen this crowd before. Usually, it’s the walking wounded. People who really saw a vision and went out, but they got sold a bill of goods.

I want to come back to the simplicity that we see in this verse and say to you, there is a spiritual community of the believer, and she’s been here in every age. She doesn’t represent a doctrine. She’s not part of a movement. Strangely enough, she represents no great overriding goal. G O A L. She is not pushed by some insistent motivation like evangelizing the world or restoring the gifts. Who else can I insult tonight? Being endowed with power. And you people down here in Fort Worth and Dallas are just really bad about prosperity. Man, I tell you, you’re the most materialistic Christians on this planet right here. Say amen. Dallas, Fort Worth, and Hong Kong. That’s right. I’ve been over a large portion of this earth, and these three places take the cake.

All of these things are transcended by the spiritual community of the believer. I don’t know whether it’s a revelation. I don’t know whether it’s some sort of deep spiritual insight. I don’t know whether it’s a longing God gives. I don’t know if it’s a call. I don’t know if it’s an election. And frankly, I’m not concerned about that. It is not how you got there; it is the quality of what is present.

Go through the ages and listen to the words that have been given to this spiritual community of the believer. The world has given it to them, and they have given it to themselves. Now listen to these words. The body of Christ, the bride of Christ, the community of the believers, brethren, brothers and sisters, spiritual family, family of God, house of God. Can you help me? Do you know some others? I’m not talking about some movement. I am talking about those words that have reappeared again and again and again for the last 1700 years. These are the spontaneous labels given to these people. Oh, they got words like Quakers, Lollards, Huguenots, Moravians, not Mormons, Moravians. Brethren, Paulicians, Albigensians, but within their community, within their fellowship, within this thing Paul kept calling the ekklesia and the koinonia, there were these recurring words of holy ones, brothers, sisters.

Now, you step back from all of that, what do you see? An incredibly deep relationship that you cannot conjure up. Now, right here is where I’m going to depart and say, what kind of relationship? Well, it’s not a relationship of doctrine or teaching. It’s not a relationship of movement, all of those things. I’m going to say something else to you. It’s not a relationship between one another, and if it’s built there, it will fall, and with great pain. It’s not a caring community. I don’t know what it is, but I can tell you this: it’s organic to your “innards.” You crave this. Like the deer pants after the water, so pants your soul after this spiritual community. It comes up out of the soil at every age. It will come in the years and centuries to come. It has come in centuries past, and it will continue until the day the Lord comes. This organic, natural, if you please, this biological urge to be with one another and to know one another. Well, you’re all looking at me really oddly right now. I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m communicating with you or what’s going on here.

It has in the past been likened to a wheel. I think the Quakers started this. Let me illustrate it. I want you to understand where its engine comes from and its origins. Can you imagine a wagon wheel? And here’s a hub. Now the hub of the center is Christ. Then there are these large spokes coming into the center, and the closer they get to the center, the closer they get to one another. Do you understand? Say, “Praise of the Lord.” Alright, that’s better now. Here it is. A fellowship of believers in which Christ is the center. It is not you that’s the center. It is not the brothers and sisters that are the center. You cannot be drawn close to one another except in the common denomination of Jesus Christ, and that’s not adequate. When I say “Jesus Christ,” I don’t know what goes through your mind, because, again, we stand on the edge of a doctrine here. The doctrine of Christ, the belief in Christ, the this of Christ, the that of Christ. That is not what I am speaking to you about. Here again, I am faced with the incredible gimmicks that the church of Jesus Christ has had to deal with over the last 200 years, which have kept Christ from being the center. Even when we are told it’s Christ that is the center.

You and I have a task today, as did this spiritual community in all generations: to come back to Christ as the center. I have watched this happen again and again and again and again, and forgive me, but there’s always a gimmick in there somewhere. Now say amen. I know most of you know that. This gets me right down to you and to me. I’m not speaking to you now, praise. I’m not speaking to you of worship. I’m not speaking to you of miracles. I am not speaking to you of prophecy. I’m not speaking to you about gifts. I am sure not talking to you about prosperity. I am not talking to you about Bible study or intellectual attainment of understanding. I’m not talking to you about archaeology. I’m not talking to you about New Testament understanding or teachings. I’m not talking to you about prayer. I am not bluffing, and I don’t want you to bluff with me. I’m not talking about visions and revelations. I’m talking to you about a personal encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what brings the spokes close together.