Life of Christ #5 – The Secret of the Christian Life: Living in Fellowship With God

Now, I’m going to get a little ahead of myself, but I want you all to know about this God who lived in eternity and the pattern established in Him, and this God who lived in time and the pattern established in Him. I want you to watch what He did. He gathered 20 people around Him and said, “Live with me.” I am dumbfounded. Two things dumbfounded me. First, the Lord didn’t start passing out tracts when He was 21 years old. That just shocks me. He didn’t mind wasting His youth. I want to tell you again, the best years for you to serve the Lord are between the ages of 21 and 30, because you got spit, vim, and vigor. You’re great for passing out tracts on the street, buttonholing people, and talking to them about the Lord.

That’s the Baptist experience. That’s the evangelism experience. But your Lord didn’t do this. He went to Nazareth and grew in the fellowship of His Father. I’m overwhelmed. This was the church. If you wanted to find the church on the earth, you had to go to Nazareth, and to Nazareth alone, and watch the Son fellowship with the Father in the Spirit within His being. That’s all the church there was on this earth. If you wanted to watch the Christian life, then you had to go to a carpenter’s shop, and watch a man 20, 25, 28, 29 stand there and work on wood and behold His Father and live in His Father’s presence and hear His Father’s voice and respond to His Father’s voice and feel His Father’s love and love His Father back and obey Him in perfect concert with everything He saw and everything He heard.

That was the only Christian life. The only worker there was a worker in preparation who was doing nothing. He was not serving. He was a young man knowing. He was a young man experiencing. He was a young man getting to know His God, and He was a worker in preparation. In His 20s, He was not a worker; He was letting the world go to hell… so He could learn His Father, fellowship with Him, see Him, hear Him, feel Him, love Him, and be loved by Him. That’s how He spent His 20s, and I’m awed. There was the Christian life. There was the church. And there was the worker in preparation. Praise the Lord. That is wonderful…and that is revolutionary. This is exciting.

Well, now then, see Him. He’s going to gather some men around Him, and He’s going to say to them, Forget all that. I’ve got to lay that aside. We’re going to get under a grove, and I’m going to teach you the Bible. You guys, you’ve got to get out here, and you’ve got to save people and heal people. You’ve got to work hard, and you’ve got to serve, and so forth and so forth and so forth. You check the gospel records, and you will discover that in the three and a half years that those 20 people lived with Him, and specifically the 12 who went out in pairs. And actually, you know, it was probably more than 20. Around 70 by the end. Those 12 spent two weeks serving God during three and a half years. That’s all. One week, the 12 went out and came back. They went out in six pairs. The demons of … They were just so excited. And the Lord was excited that they were excited. Then later, He sent out 70. That’s 35 groups, 35 pairs. Twelve of those had already been out before. He sent them out. And they go out to the villages, and they come back. The demons of … They’re mind-boggled.  Two weeks out of three and a half years. What did they do the rest of the time, Gene? They watched the Father fellowship with the Son. That’s what they did. They watched the Son fellowship with the Father. They lived with God. They lived in the presence of God for three and one-half years; they followed Him, heard Him, and watched Him. That’s what they did.

Now, if you wanted to see the church of Jesus Christ and the Christian life, and a worker in preparation during the Lord’s age between 21 and 30, you had to go to Nazareth. If you could get in a time machine and go back to the first century, and if you wanted to see the church, if you wanted to see the Christian life, and if you wanted to see a worker, during the time the Lord was 30 through 33 and a half…are you following me? Am I being clear? If you went back and you wanted to see the Christian life, you wanted to see the church, and you wanted to see the worker, between the time the Lord was 30 and 33 and a half years old, or 34, then you had to go not to Nazareth; he left there; you had to go to Galilee. And what would you see? Twenty men? Seventy men? Memorizing verses of Scripture? People speaking in tongues? Going to Bible school?

I am asking you to establish a pattern for me. I am asking you to be truthful with Scripture. I am asking you to look at the Word of God and see what’s there. You would have to go to Galilee and find some men sitting out in broad daylight on a dusty road…that was their concept of the Christian life, the church, and a worker and workers’ preparation. What would you see? Aristotle, under the grove of academia, reading his notes, while his students took notes. If you wanted to see the Christian, you would see the Lord Jesus Christ in fellowship with His Father, and now He’s broadened it: He’s fellowshipping with 12 men. God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, and 12 guys who couldn’t read and write. That’s the Christian life. That’s what you’d see.

The church? Mobile. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit…and twelve men watching. Now, you know, I need to really impress upon you what twelve men had the impression that the church was at that time. If we had gotten a clipboard and we said, I’m here from Star News, and I’d like to— Simon Peter, is that right? Yes. And John, James, is that right? James the Zealot? Alright, Simon Peter, what do you consider the assembly of God? The church, that is. The ecclesia. And Simon Peter would look up and say, “Never heard of it.” The Lord mentioned it once. Oh yeah, that’s right. He did say something about the Ecclesia. What is that? Well, here it is. It’s just us sitting around here listening to the Lord, watching Him. Say, you ought to watch Him.

Now, there is something to see. You watch Him. You know what He’s doing? He’s listening to His Father. He told us the other day that He never does anything except what He sees His Father do. That’s all He does. Well, is He a Christian? What’s a Christian? Well, He’s the Christ, right? Are you a follower of His? What would you say Christ is like? What do you mean, what’s He like? Well, what would someone be like Him? If someone were like Him, what would they be like Him? They’d hear voices. They would…if they were like Him, they’d hear voices, and they’d see their Father, and they’d obey Him, and they’d love Him. And it’s incredible. You ought to sit down and watch.

Alright, John? Maybe I can get more sense out of you than I did Simon Peter. John, what do you consider the Ecclesia? The Ecclesia? You mean the assembly? We don’t assemble. I mean, we are assembled now.  Would you like some roasted lamb? We’re sitting here eating roasted lamb and some water. Mary Magdalene has some water over here. She’s a dear little gal. This morning, we got up and sang together. Oh, we had a wonderful time. The Lord sang with us. He was in our midst singing. It was great.

What else do you all know? What’s a Christian worker? What’s a Christian worker? I don’t know what a Christian is, but what do you mean, what is a worker? What is someone who really serves the living God? Well, I don’t know of anybody doing that but Him. How did He prepare to do that? I don’t know that He had any preparation. He’s a carpenter, you know. Do you mean He never went to Jerusalem, to the temple? But He lives with His Father, though. If you wanted to see the church, you had to look at twelve men, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the internal experience He had with an indwelling God.

If you wanted to find the church, you had to find God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit in Christ, fellowshipping with twelve men. And that was their concept of the church. And that’s what their concept of the church was the day they got into that little group until the day they died. It had not changed. And their concept of preparing a Christian worker was what they knew their Lord had gone through and what they went through.

Okay, how did the Lord prepare them to be Christian workers? I’m going to ask again, did He do it the way Aristotle did it? That’s the way we do it. Aristotle and his grove of academia is basically our seminary today. Well, what did the Lord Jesus Christ do? I…get this; this is where I get so steamed up. He got twelve men around Him and showed them how to live by the life of the Father for three and a half years. He showed them by His own personal illustration. That’s how He prepared them to be workers. He prepared them to be workers by three things. He showed them the Christian life, which is what He is. He showed them the church by their fellowshipping together and with Him. And He prepared them to be workers by living with Him, living in His presence, and teaching them what the Christian life was.