What is the true Church of Jesus Christ? We hope after today you’ll have no questions on this matter. I don’t have all the answers, but I have enough to convince you, I think, what I believe to be the Living Church of Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, the gates of hell shall not prevail against My church. He also said that no weapon formed against it should prosper. But you look around now and you see that the gates of hell are prospering. They’re prospering against many churches. The weapons of the enemy are prevailing.
The church by no means is a denomination. Denominations were caused when certain groups of Christians gathered around a pet doctrine. The Baptist gathered around the Calvinistic doctrine of eternal security. The Pentecostals gathered around the doctrine of an infilling of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in tongues. The Seventh Day Adventist gathered around a doctrine about the seventh day Sabbath being Saturday, and on and on and on, until there were divisions because people gathered around not the book, not the person of Jesus Christ as much as the doctrine. So now you have 50 kinds of Baptists, 100 kinds of Pentecostals, all kinds of charismatic and non-denominational churches by the multiplied 1000s and division. This was never God’s idea. Entire denominations now have been overpowered by the weapons of Satan. The gates of hell have prevailed against entire denominations.
Some pastors no longer believe the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God. They no longer believe in the virgin birth. They don’t believe in a heaven or a hell, they call evil good, and good evil. This is being overpowered, what else can you call them, but the gates of hell prevailing when the seminaries of many of these denominations have teachers and professors there who do everything to demean the gospel, everything to discredit the miracles of Jesus Christ to take away his Godhead, and the hell-bent professors that are hell-bent and destroying what little faith that our young people have left? If that is not being overpowered by the enemy. I don’t know what it is.
But you see, God has discounted all that man calls church, it’s never been a part of His church, not been His, it’s been man’s. It’s never been His. He doesn’t acknowledge it. In His eyes it doesn’t even exist. That which is a highly esteemed among men is an abomination to God. Absolutely. God has never acknowledged it as His own church.
But I also believe that many Christians are misinformed about the meaning of the church. They really don’t understand what the Church of Jesus Christ is. And I say that because of the way we measure the success of the church today. We have mega churches. We’ve got super churches, we’ve got fastest growing churches, and we look at these beautiful multimillion dollar buildings. We look at the wonderful 30, 40, 50-acre campuses and we see churches packed with 1000s. We say God must be there, that must be God’s Church, look, their finances, they have money in the bank, they have multitudes coming. That must be a very successful church, Jesus must be at work in that church. But folks, I’m so glad to inform you that that is not God’s measure of success. You can have multiplied 1000s in church, you can have a burgeoning budget. You can have all these things, and Jesus is not in the building. Jesus even acknowledged that which is highly esteemed among men, very successful, popular, is an abomination in the eyes of God.
A minister friend of mine recently told me he was filling out his application to continue his ordination and suddenly it hit him like a sword in his heart. He said, there’s nothing on this application at all that has to do with a spiritual vocation. The questions were like this. How many are attending your Sunday school? How many attend Sunday night? How many do you have in your prayer meeting? How many Boy Scouts do you have in your boys’ program? How many women attend your women’s auxiliary? And give us the percentage of increase in your numbers and in your finances? What’s the per capita giving for each person? There was not one spiritual question in the whole application. He said, you know, I could have been a reprobate who filled out this application and keep my ordination. Because there’s no measure of my spirituality. There wasn’t a question about how he’s doing with the Lord, anything about my burden for the Lord, nothing about my morals, nothing about my family or my vision, nothing at all. And that’s typical of almost every denomination. He said, there was nothing spiritual about it at all. He said, I was suddenly shocked at how far we’ve gone from understanding the true Church of Jesus Christ. It’s an amazing thing.
This is what I believe constitutes His church. There are required features that distinguish His church from every other thing that is called church. We have the pattern in the 20th chapter of John, verse 18. This is the first gathering of the church that Jesus is going to build. The true Church of Jesus Christ did not exist until after His resurrection. You’re going to see the first meeting of the Church of Jesus Christ; you’re going to see all the features that should be in what is called his church. They’re all in this first meeting. Remember, these are living stones. He’s building a church, and this is the foundation. These are the foundation stones in this first meeting. John 20:18, Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord and that He had spoken these things unto her. Then the same evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, Jesus stood in the midst and said unto them, peace unto you. He showed them His hands and His side. The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again, peace be unto you, as my father sent me, even so send out you. When He said this, he breathed on them and sent unto them the Holy Ghost. Jesus said who’s so ever sins you remit; they’re remitted unto them. And whosoever sins you retain they are retained. In this first gathering, you have the making and the birth of the true Church of Jesus Christ.
First, this church is comprised of individual believers who have a special love relationship with Jesus Christ. Every single one of these who are gathered here have their own special revelation of Christ. He’s revealed himself individually to them and every one of them are devoted. They have given up careers. He is not just first in their life, he’s everything in their life. The Church of Jesus Christ is comprised of individuals who are wholly given to Christ, He has become their life. He’s not a part of their life, He’s the focus. He’s the center. Now, that’s where the church begins; individuals wholly given to Him with their own revelation of who He is, with their own hearts burning for the Word of God. They all had revelation of Him, they had seen the empty tomb, there was a revelation of the resurrection power of Jesus Christ, every one of them. The thing that identifies them is that individually, they all had their own experience with Him, they had their own revelation of Jesus. They didn’t get it from somebody else, it was their own. And Mary Magdalene comes knocking on the door, and she said, I’ve seen him. This gathering was not a pastor up there trying to reveal Christ to a congregation. That’s not the church. The first church was made up of people who each had their own revelation of Jesus, their own experience with Christ. They saw and they talked to him, they had the Word burning in their hearts. And so, at this first meeting, it is not Peter standing up, admonishing them about what they had seen of Christ. This was an excited group. They came to church not to hear about Christ, they had heard of Christ, they brought Christ with them. This is the Church of Jesus Christ, individuals who have had their own experience their own revelation of the reality, their own intimacy with Jesus Christ, the Lord.
Know what a wonder that amid apostasy, rejection of Christ, and all offers of His grace, right in the middle of Jerusalem, in the middle of the darkness, in the middle of the rejection of Christ, the Lord had a body totally devoted to him. Even now, in this day of gross darkness, in this day when Christ has been rejected, when they’re trying to throw Him out of our society, and out of our courts, they don’t even want His name mentioned, thank God around the world, even in in the communist countries, all over the world, Jesus has a body, He has a devoted people, individuals, who have their own revelation of Christ. The church is alive and well. It is this devotion, this personal individual devotion of Jesus Christ, which is the bond of the body of Christ.
We hear talk about the church being united, let’s unite the church. Let’s everybody get together. You don’t have to. It’s already together. It’s all in Christ. He’s the head, we’re the body. It has always been together. It’s never been divided. Never!
If Jesus took you on a flying trip around the world, so to speak, and you fly over a church with 5,000 people, and you ask Jesus where is Your church? He would say, you see the woman over here, and see this one over here, and he’ll pick out maybe 10, or 12, and say that’s My church. These are My devoted ones. But Lord, what about those 1000s singing love songs to you? He would say My heart, they don’t have a heart for Me. I am just a word to them. They don’t love the truth. They don’t spend any time with me. That’s not my church. They don’t have the devoted heart. See that sister, see that brother? See there’s one over here, this one over here. Look how hungry they are for Me. I’ve been teaching them, speaking to them. They’re hungry. They give me precious time. They give me quality time. I am not just something laying easy on the back row to their mind. I am the center of their life. I am everything to them. This is my church.
Secondly, His church is comprised of devoted individual believers, whose greatest joy is to assemble with others who share that devotion. It’s called the Body of Christ. There is something in the Holy Spirit that draws every devoted believer to the body. The church is not complete without corporate expression, because God reveals himself, Christ reveals himself in the corporate body in ways he cannot reveal himself individually to you. Or to me. For example, the gifts. How do you operate the gifts on yourself? What about the love of God? What about the joy and excitement of watching your brothers and sisters grow in the Lord and in their growth, you get faith and hope?
There’s a shared revelation in the assembly. Everyone that was gathered in this first meeting had their own private glorious revelation of who Jesus is. They had seen Him, they talked to Him. They’ve been with Him three years. But now they’re gathered and they’re going to experience a special manifestation of Jesus that could not have come individually to them. Oh, keep in mind that just a few days before, these disciples had fled from His presence at the first sign of danger. But now, fearlessly they meet in a clandestine fashion because they are taking literally now something the Holy Spirit has reminded them that Jesus said to them – where two or three are gathered in my name, there Am I in the midst. They did not take this as a promise, but a consequence of meeting in His name. These are people who have departed from iniquity. They’re not living in sin. They are wholly devoted to Jesus Christ. Jesus doesn’t say I will come. He doesn’t say you must fast, or pray, or beg. He says where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I.
That is the consequence of you coming in Divine Order, the consequence of it, the result of it. And they thought, well, if he said it two or three, we better get together, because we want Him to appear, we want to see Him again. So, they assembled, they shut the door. And it was just as they were told, Jesus came and stood in their midst. Unless there is a manifestation of His presence in every service Jesus is not there, it’s not the church. They’re not meeting in His name properly. You say, I believe, can’t I enjoy His presence alone as an individual? Why do I need the church? He does manifest His presence to those that are shut in with Him in the scriptures, that keep His commandments, that loveth Him, Jesus says I will love him and manifest Myself to him. Because you see, sometimes there is an imposed isolation. Look at Paul in prison, he has isolation imposed upon him. John in Patmos, isolation is imposed upon him. Sometimes you’re sick, isolation is imposed upon you. That’s a different thing. In those conditions, when isolation is imposed upon you by conditions, or forces outside your control, then the Lord reveals himself in a unique way. That’s where Paul got his revelation for the church. And same with John and Isle of Patmos, what a revelation of Jesus, when John said, I saw him standing among the candlesticks. It was in an isolation alone with the Lord. That’s only when it’s imposed when it’s beyond your power. But folks, when you just stay at home watching TV, there’s no imposed isolation upon you. You are drawing away from the very source of the glory of the Lord.
But you see, there’s a reason why Jesus manifests Himself to us. Jesus comes to manifest Himself to us that we may have life, his power, his very life, his energy, it is power. But life is given for a purpose. And that’s that we may be useful to Him, useful to the body. If you’re not connected to the body, I don’t care how much revelation you get, I don’t care how much time you spend alone, you are severed from the body. You can only get that in a corporate experience of the assembly, reaching together, worshiping together in Him.