The Spiritual Community of the Believer – Grand Prairie DCLC #2

The Lord could have walked into the community of believers. Forgive me for using that term; I know it’s not scriptural, but I’m trying to get you to see something. He could have walked into the spiritual community of the believers in Jerusalem and seen all those people meeting in homes, fellowshipping with one another, fellowshipping in here. He would have said, “It’s like coming back home again. This reminds Me of the throne of God. This reminds Me of where I came from. This reminds me of where I spent millions and millions…who knows how long…of years or eternities in my Father.”

Brothers and sisters, when Christ is the center and the experience, the real experience of the body of believers, you have touched the other realm. Here’s the church. She looks back and sees her origins in the Godhead. She sees her sense, her feelings, her experience in the Godhead. She knows that the basic nature and expression of her is back there. She looks forward to the day when she’ll no longer be a colony, and that door will break down, and the two realms will join, and she will no longer be some little colony from heaven. She will be totally and absolutely a part of the real living whole.

Sometime in my past, I don’t know when, I went to a banquet in Houston, Texas. Now I am a country boy, and Houston was almost forbidden territory as a young man, and all my country ways were very conscious to me, and I knew I was somebody who didn’t have any cooth. We were at this big banquet, and the waiters came out in their dinner jackets; I believe this is correct, it was a long time ago, and put a plate down in front of every one of us. Now, do you know what was on that plate? A big plate, and there on it was a little bitty bone about that big. That seemed very strange to me. Have any of you ever had that happen to you? This I was really up in high cotton that day, wasn’t I?

Everybody picked it up and started eating it. A little bitty piece of meat on it. Well, I later found out why they gave us this. Does anybody know? It is to stimulate and prepare your gastric juices ahead of the meal about to be served, to get your appetite whetted and all the right juices flowing. If it had been a tomato, different enzymes would have flowed, vegetable enzymes, but this lets the stomach know to get ready for something really super special. That was called a foretaste. You understand? That was a foretaste. Now that’s the definition of a foretaste. I’m going to tell you another definition of a foretaste. You want to hear it? The church of the living God. That is the definition of a foretaste.

She is shot full of the eternals. In that community, in that spiritual community, when men and women encounter the Lord Jesus Christ, it is a touching of that which has been in the Godhead, and it is a foretaste of what will be for you and for me for all future eternity. Brother, your tongue ought to be hanging out. Give me, Lord, this foretaste of that realm. That is exactly what this spiritual community is, and that’s why she’s never driven by doctrine. She’s never driven by movement. She’s never driven by causes nor enemies, not even by purpose, other than to satisfy Him and to find satisfaction in Him. If you had asked a first-century believer, what is the church? He would have described pretty much what I would have described: a heavenly experience outside the heavens, an unearthly encounter on the earth, a non-material, spiritual encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ, among others of the redeemed here on this earth. That is what the community of the believers really is, and anything else is toothpaste. Now say, “Praise the Lord.” Don’t sit there.

Oh, that God would put this in us and burn it in our being. Will you allow me a moment to commit not heresy, radicalism? Commit radicalism. That’s going to be a brand-new crime. It’s never been done. I’m going to commit radicalism. We Baptists have a saying: anytime you do two things twice in a row, it becomes a New Testament doctrine. Can you follow that? We’re that tradition-prone. Have you ever wondered why we have collars on our shirts? You never have. You never really have. Have you ever wondered why we have heels on our shoes? You’ve never wondered. You never have wondered. You’ve never even questioned why we have sleeves on our shirts, and yet all of it has a history. Why do we put on uncomfortable clothes? The shirt comes unfortunately because of the domination of Northern European fashion, which came from the killing of an animal, and you put on the animal’s clothes. That’s where men get their clothing shape. Too bad, Southern Europe’s fashions didn’t win out; we could wear a nice loose toga and really be cool and comfortable, but we can’t do that.

The heel was put on our shoe. It started with horses, believe it or not, and saddles so that the foot wouldn’t go through the stirrup. Now it is a fashion, and it is the scourge of your back. And if you stop wearing heels, you may get over your backache. In fact, if you go barefoot, you’ll be a lot better off, but you never thought about that. Never occurred to you. Why do we wear a tie? Why are there buttons on the sleeves of a coat? You’ve never wondered why those little buttons were there. Would you like to hear why? Is anybody interested? I’m going to tell you why. Alright. You never thought about why the little buttons are there?” Well, I don’t know where it was; I don’t know if it was in Germany, under the Habsburgs, in Russia, or in Great Britain. All I know is that somewhere there were these uniformed palace guards, and they were standing in detention, and when winter came, and their noses started running, they would go like that, and the queen got tired of that. She said I don’t see that happen anymore. She made them cover their entire sleeves with buttons. It started a fashion, and today, that much of it is still left.

The tie. Why in the world would we wrap a noose around our necks? No man has ever been comfortable in one of those. The tie started as a dinner napkin that covered the whole front of the coat. Have you ever thought about that? Never wondered, never challenged. It’s time we came out against neck ties. Here we are hung with that thing for hundreds of years. Why do we have lapels on coats? I didn’t know this until just recently. You can understand when it’s explained to you because you have sometimes done it yourself on a cold day. Among poor people, there were cold, medium, and warm, but there was only one coat, and they had these huge things over on this side that would button over to this side. Then they take this side and lap it over to that side. Then they could button it back up, and it would be open again. They could even pull it back further as the weather got warmer. Today it’s left as a lapel. I have no idea what this is doing here. I don’t know how it got there, or why it’s still there. Well, you put your pen in it, Gene. Yeah, but I got suspicious about this thing. I bet there’s a story behind it. We could all come into a revolt. We could get rid of our collars, our lapels, our ties, the buttons on our coats. We could have much more practical clothing, and we have never once thought about it.

Now then, I’m going to shift the scenery, and I’m going to do this really quickly. You do so many church things that you think are New Testament. In fact, everything you do in church is a tradition that’s probably not over 500 years old. And if it is, it’s not over 1700 years old. There is virtually no practice in modern-day Christianity within what is called the church…I know of nothing with its roots in the first century. You want to hear them real quick? Alright, you’re just really…you’re just into this. You want me to do that, don’t you, brother? Yeah, but you don’t get the hate mail that I get. I’ll write the book; let’s put your name on it.

I’ve never tried to do this quickly; I don’t know if it’ll even mean anything to you. You ready to go here? Pulpits came from pulpits of pagan temples in Rome. They were called ambos. Ambos, that’s correct. They came over into our faith through pagan temples. Church buildings were given to us by Constantine in the year 323. They had never existed previously. The choir came directly to us from the pagan temples during the days of Constantine. The pews came to us as an Italian invention, when Constantine built these enormous buildings all over the Roman Empire in “praise of the Lord”. There were no chairs in them, and they had been meeting in living rooms, and those Italians brought in benches to sit in. In Constantinople, the Greeks refused to bring in benches, and did you know that today the Eastern Orthodox Church stands throughout its two-hour services? And the Italians, thank goodness for the Italians, they brought in benches. The chair was invented about the time of Martin Luther. I know that sounds incredible, but nobody ever thought about putting anything to lean up against. And so, the Protestants put a back on their benches and gave us the pew, and that’s where we got the pew.

Now, I’m going to give you one you’re not going to believe. Do you believe that the preaching of the word of God has been with us from the beginning? Brothers and sisters, there is a difference between the preaching of the word of God and a Sunday morning sermon. The sermon is not native to the Christian faith. It was given to us by one John Chrysostom in about the latter part of the 300s. He was a great pagan Roman orator who converted, invented Aristotelian oratory, and turned it into an Aristotelian sermon. An introduction, a conclusion with several points, and illustrations. That is a sermon; the very thing that I was taught in the seminary 30 miles over the road here, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was and is the ancient Greek rhetoric and Roman rhetoric style of delivery. The sermon came to us from the Greco-Roman tradition, the great tradition of oratory. They were the toys, the playthings of high Roman Greek society. They literally would fill up amphitheaters, and they would step out to the middle and deliver this magnificent oration, and the crowd would go wild.

Let me tell you something. Let me tell you where we got verses in our Bible. The orator would come out to the middle of the stage and stand on a little box. He would be handed a robe and put it on in front of the people. He would undo a scroll or a book and say, “Tonight, my text is from the great Homer poem, the ‘Iliad.’ Chapter 27, verse 31.” Roll it up. Someone would take it away from him. He would speak this verse out of Homer’s Iliad, and then he’d bring this great oration, and the crowd would go wild. Are you getting uncomfortable? I’m not downing preaching, but I’m telling you there’s a difference between the urgent, emergent, sporadic tradition of first-century prophetic utterance and reporting every Sunday morning at 11:00 a.m. to hear a sermon. As one who has had to do this a good part of my life, you don’t know how bad it is on my side, either. I’m going to chase that rabbit for a minute.