I'm just going to make some general statements
I could offer you.
I believe scriptures to support these.
I said first of all earlier that I
believe the church was never intended to function
without apostles.
I don't believe that Jesus Christ ever planned
to withdraw the apostolic ministry from the church.
First Corinthians 12 28 says God set in
the church first apostles, secondary prophets, after their
teachers.
How many of us believe that God has
set teachers in the church?
Well why have we subtracted apostles and prophets
from the same sentence?
Our way of interpreting scripture is not based
on what God said, it's based on what
we see around us.
I want to suggest to you that we
have no right to reduce the standards of
God revealed in scripture to the level of
our experience.
God's standards have not changed.
I want to speak about the apostolic ministry
because an apostle, the
apostolic ministry should be attested by supernatural science.
The key word in the ministry of the
apostle is one very short sentence, beginning with
g.
And basically when the apostolic ministry dried up,
the missionary outreach of the church dried up.
Let me give you just a few statements.
John chapter 15 and verse 16.
Bear in mind that from John 14 onwards
Jesus was not talking to the multitudes, he
was talking to his own chosen apostles.
And if you read those chapters you'll be
misapplying scripture.
A lot of wonderful promises met by the
men to whom Jesus was speaking.
But he says in John 15 verse 16.
You did not choose me but I chose
you.
I want to suggest to you brothers and
sisters the only persons and ministries that are
effective in the church are those that are
the essence of fruitfulness is not man's appointment.
You did not choose me but I chose
you to be what?
Apostles.
Not for salvation but for apostleship.
And I appointed you that you should do
what?
What's the first word?
Go.
That's right that's the apostolic.
That you should go and bear fruit.
And that your fruit should remain.
Now listen we cannot leave out the word
go and the bearing of fruit is contingent
upon the going.
That you should go and bear fruit and
that your fruit should remain.
That whatever you ask the father in my
name he may give it to you.
Don't quote that as a promise.
If you go and if you bear fruit
and it's fruit that remains then you have
the right to ask the father in the
name of Jesus.
And he will give it to you.
Don't cut that verse up in little strips
and leave the rest.
I'd like to point out something else to
you.
Something that I only saw a few years
ago.
And I've read the same passage in the
bible many many times.
Acts chapter one verses one and two.
We are aware that acts was written also
by Luke.
And Luke is speaking about his gospel.
He says the former account.
That's Luke's gospel.
I made Ophiopolis of all that Jesus began
both to do and teach.
Until the day in which he was taken
up.
Until his ascension.
After he through the Holy Spirit had given
commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen.
I never saw that.
I never saw that the words of Jesus
quoted after his resurrection were not addressed to
the multitudes.
To whom did he give instructions?
To his apostles.
Now you read the closing verses of Matthew
28 and Mark 16.
They make an altogether different sense.
Turn to Matthew 28 verses 18
19.
Then Jesus came and spoke to them.
To whom?
To the apostles.
Saying all authority has been given to me
in heaven and on earth.
Go therefore and make steam.
Verse 14.
Afterward he appeared to the eleven as they
sat at table.
Eleven what?
All right.
And he rebuked them for their unbelief and
hardness of heart.
Because they did not believe those who had
seen him after he'd risen.
And he said to them go.
That's right.
Go into all the world.
Preach the gospel to every creature.
That's the apostolic thrust.
To go.
I believe that if you ever meet a
true apostle.
And you could cut him open.
And read what's printed on his heart.
It would be just one.
The apostle is a man with a passion.
He's a restless man.
He's a man who cannot settle down in
the standard procedures of Christianity.
Because he's got a vision of a world
outside the doors of the church.
Outside the Eden.
And something in him says go.
Go.
People don't understand him.
He gives up privileges.
He gives up positions.
He gives up comforts.
And he's driven by something inside him that
says go.
Go.
Now God has given the church in the
last century some very Taylor.
William Booth.
Others.
I think all of you who have read
their stories would agree.
The key word for them was go.
Wasn't it?
Go.
And people didn't always understand them.
But they had to go.
Go where the need was.
Go to the people who haven't been reached.
I believe that's an apostolic thrust.
I don't believe that necessarily.
But I believe that the breakthrough in the
church.
I believe he wants to give us apostles
with all the signs.
With all the miracles.
And God is doing that today.
I don't believe we've arrived.
But I believe that's our destination.
I thank God for the wonderful pioneers that
have gone before.
Men who've had to sacrifice and give up
so much.
And often in the face of ridicule and
misunderstanding.
I praise God for them.
Brothers and sisters.
I doubt whether we're worthy to wash their
feet.
Now in in closing what I want to
say is this.
That in the whole church there are I
believe two areas of leadership.
What we would call in New Testament language
the local presbytery.
The leaders of the local church and always
in the New Testament was in a city.
Here we have represented here this morning part
of the presbytery of the church in Christchurch.
The function of the presbyters, the pastors, the
leaders is primarily government.
To govern God's people.
It's conservation.
It's to preserve that which has been gathered
in.
It's building up.
To build on a foundation that's already been
laid and add to it.
And in the Bible, in the New Testament,
those people are always referred to in the
Bible.
You will not find any passage in the
New Testament.
Whether that doesn't mean every church has got
to have a lot of.
Every congregation has got to have a lot
of pastors.
It means God sees is
the apostolic.
Not just as individuals but in teams.
The only time you'd find an apostle on
his own was when he was put in
prison basically.
Which was fairly frequently.
What I want to suggest to you is
that the apostolic teams and the local presbyteries.
Between them share the God-given responsibility for
them.
And in my understanding, in the New Testament,
there was no human authority set over those
two kinds of leaders.
They were directly answerable to Jesus, the head
of the church.
They were mutually responsible to one another.
Neither was independent.
But they were sovereign.
This can only function by the grace of
God.
But you see God has never made a
plan that would function without his grace.
Because he doesn't want us to function without
his grace.
How many of you would agree, and you
don't need to put your hand up, that
Christian marriage only functions by the grace of
God.
But that's what God intended.
It's the same with the leadership of God's
people.
It functions by the grace of God.
Between two groups, not between two.
One group is the local presbytery.
Who was the first apostle?
Jesus, that's right.
The apostle and high priest of our profession.
Tell you one thing, if anybody was mobile,
Jesus was.
One point they said to him, stay here
you healed us, now stay.
He said no I have to go on.
I've got to reach the other cities.
And he said for this, let me tell
you something brother.
If you look at Jesus as the It
would change our whole concept of what it
is to be Christians.
If we realize we are not committed to
residing in one place.
We don't go to church, I hardly need
to tell you that.
Where we are, the church is.
We are the church.
God has chosen a mobile residence.
We can walk out of this beautiful building
for which I thank God.
And the church is not here.
The church is where we are.
See as I understand it, what I'm telling
you demands a mental revolution.
And I'm trying to think, if the church
doesn't have a mental revolution.
I think we have the options at this
point.
And I don't.
You know what God said to Israel when
he wanted them back in their own land.
I'll send for many fishers and they'll fish
you.
Then I'll send for hunters and they'll drive
you out of every hole in the road.
You study the history of the Jews in
Europe.
Drawing them with a bait.
Come to.
Then God sent the hunters.
And he did literally what it says in
Jeremiah.
And I believe the time has come for
the church.
And I'll draw you with a bait.
But if you don't accept the fishers, I'll
send the hunters.
Could that happen to the church in New
Zealand?
I'll tell you from the little political sponge.
Two years.
I think we have this question.
Do we want to be what God?
Or are we going to be driven to
it?
The Jews ended up in their land.
The ones that didn't go, perished.
I've meditated much on the holocaust.
Because I live in Israel.
And I'm very much exposed.
I believe God loved the Jewish people.
Loves them with a deep passion.
He'll never totally abandon them.
And yet he permitted six million to perish
in the most horrible circumstances.
Of three million Jews in Poland.
Two million seven hundred pounds.
Why?
Because God had a purpose.
They wouldn't listen to the fishers.
They had no options but to listen to
the hunters.
Now the question I've asked myself many.
Suppose that the church of Jesus Christ was
stubborn and disobedient.
Would God send a holocaust?
Have you ever considered that possibility?
Now I'm not telling you the answer.
But I think it's something we need to
ponder.
Let me read just a few words in
Romans.
Romans chapter 2.
Beginning at verse 6.
God will render to each one according to
his deeds.
Eternal life to those who by patient continue.
And do not obey the truth.
But obey unrighteousness.
Indignation and wrath.
That's God's reaction.
Tribulation and anguish.
That's what comes from God's reaction.
On every soul of man who does evil.
Of the Jew first and also of the
Greek, the Gentile.
That's a tremendously significant statement.
The majority I know of the Christian church
don't have a real intimate understanding of the
Jewish people.
I was born non-Jewish.
I wasn't interested in this.
Forced me to faith.
I think in a certain sense the Holocaust
is a warning.
What came upon the Jews first.
Also come on the Gentile.
Unless.
Are we really prepared to be radically changed?
Are we prepared to give up our so
-called security, comfort, habits, patterns of life, patterns
of church activity.
And align ourselves with the clear requirements of
the new.
I smile.
It always comes to my mind in the
island of Fun and in the city of
Odense.
And two things happened.
While we were talking there was a dear
old lady.
She was a widow.
And while we were discussing what we Pentecost.
We've got it all.
Thank God for Pentecost.
We've got it all.
That's what we
are set in habits.
And I believe.
And I'm going to close with this.
The two key thrusts.
And to give the Levites their rightful place.
Until the ark is on the shoulders of
the Levites.
In other words not to go ahead.
And plans that have never been prayed through.
That have never been birthed in intercession.
And second.
To restore to the church the balance.
But if you read the New Testament with
an open mind.
I think you would probably agree.
That there's considerably greater emphasis on the apostolic.
But let us suppose that.
Let us consider them and say there's a
fit.
What is the emphasis in the present church?
What is the emphasis?
When I first thought and on concept.
Now I would ask you to ask.
Is what I'm saying true?
Does it roughly correspond with?
Am I painting a correct picture of the
church?
I have no desire to be negative or
cynical.
But I have a deep conviction.
That God is saying what Paul said to
the men of Athens.
The times of this ignorance.
God has closed his eyes to.
But he is now commanding all men.
Everywhere.
To repent.
I appreciate you're listening so patiently to me.
I trust I haven't offended you.
I've not intended by any means to misrepresent
any.
Or to be in any way unnecessarily negative.
To face these issues.