These men very highly in love for their
work states.
Incidentally, what was the first hymn that we
sang today?
How many remember?
This afternoon I would like to speak to
you about seven principles of the New Testament
church.
For many of you this will be nothing
new at all.
Perhaps for some of the younger people it
might be helpful.
Seven principles of the New Testament church, and
these certainly don't exhaust the principles either.
I'll go over them first of all, and
then we'll just, I'll list them first of
all, and then we'll go over them step
by step.
Principle number one, the truth of the one
body, has been already alluded to in the
ministry.
There is one body.
Principle number two, all believers are members of
that one body.
That also has been alluded to.
Principle number three, the plurality of elders in
the local assembly.
The plurality of elders in the local assembly.
Number four, Christ, the gathering center of his
people.
Am I going too fast for you?
Use your best shorthand.
Christ, the gathering center of his people.
Principle number five, the gifts were given for
the perfecting of the saints unto the work
of the ministry.
A truly revolutionary insight.
The gifts were given, as we'll see in
Ephesians 4, for the perfecting of the saints
unto the work of the ministry.
Principle number six, every local church autonomous.
Responsible directly to the Lord alone.
Every local church autonomous.
And principle number seven, the priesthood of all
believers.
The priesthood of all believers.
It's good to have convictions about the truth
of the word of God.
A lot of us drift through life hanging
on to our parents' convictions.
We've never really made them our own.
We've never hammered them out on our own
anvil.
I'd like to challenge you today.
If you don't have convictions about the New
Testament assembly, go to the word of God.
Ask God to show you personally what the
truth is.
I'll never forget years ago, dear brother Nate
took me aside and he said, Bill, when
you get divine principles, stick to them.
And you know that's a needed word for
the day in which we live.
When you get divine principles, stick to them.
Well, here are some principles that I believe
to be divine.
First of all, the truth of the one
body.
There is one body.
Ephesians chapter four and verse four.
And this is really a marvelous truth.
And it's a precious truth.
Although everything in the religious world seems to
deny it today.
As you look about you in the world
today, it seems that the body is decimated.
But the truth is there just the same.
The truth of God, there is one body
and only one body.
Lord, keep me from sectarianism.
Keep me from a sectarian heart.
You know, I believe sectarianism is native in
the fallen human heart.
I really do.
And you and I have to battle it
all the time.
And we have to stand for this truth
in our actions as well as in our
hearts.
The truth of the one body.
What are you?
People come to me all the time, what
are you?
And I say, I'm a Christian.
They say, of course you're a Christian, you're
saved.
Everyone who's saved is a Christian.
You've got to be something else.
Well, I say, I'm a saint.
Well, they say all true believers are saints.
But what else are you?
Well, I'm a disciple of the Lord.
Well, they say, now quit emphasizing the obvious.
You see, they're trying to get me in
a pigeonhole.
And when I refuse to be pigeonholed, they
say to me, I know you're a brethren.
And there's a look of triumph in their
eyes.
And I say, I'm a brethren in the
same way you're a brethren if you're a
born-again believer.
I utterly and absolutely refuse such a name
as Plymouth Brethren.
In fact, I chuckle every time I hear
it.
Plymouth Brethren.
It's a self-contradictory expression.
It's like Roman Catholic.
Catholic means universal and Roman means not universal.
Roman means Italian.
You can
be anything but a member of Christ today.
It's thrilling.
Now, having said that, let me say something.
You look around in the evangelical world, and
really there's an awful lot that makes my
heart heavy.
I've met some of the promoters.
I've met the gadgeteers.
I've met the men.
And the more you know about it, the
more disappointed.
The sins of the nation, and he made
them his own.
It is the body of Christ.
Gadgeteering.
People say, we had a lovely time on
our vacation.
There were some Baptist Christians there, but it's
so nice to be back.
We're all a part of that same bundle.
To stand here in my everyday life.
I have to give witness to it by
all means that I belong to that body.
I take my place for that.
The second truth is that all true
believers are members of the body of Christ.
We had that this morning, didn't we, in
1 Corinthians 12, verses 12 and 13.
Four by one spirit into one body.
You know, it's a beautiful thing.
I think we gloss over these truths sometimes,
and we say, I think I can see
in some people,
and a Mary Magdalene, and a Charles Coulson,
and an Eldridge Cleaver, and I believe a
Jimmy Carter, and a Bill McDonald, and make
them all members of the body.
Pretty poor raw material.
I have never.
I mean, I agree when they
teach me something.
Fervency in prayer.
And in many of their fellowships, they
reach.
And I think sometimes that we can react.
But all true believers are members of the
body of Christ.
And how wonderful.
We're going to spend eternity with them.
I guess the Lord really first brought this
home to me in a very real and
practical way during the war years.
I tell you, you get out to some
of those places, and you meet somebody about
him, and my, the warm fellowship
you can have just around the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
What a precious.
Well, I see another great principle in the
word of God, and to me a very
important.
In the word of God, that God has
ordained that in the local fellowship, there should
be a group of elders.
Now, there are many verses we could turn
to in this regard.
It's interesting how the Lord used this.
He used this one in my life.
Philippians chapter 1, verse 1.
It says, Paul and Timotheus, the servants of
Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ
Jesus, which are at Philippi with the bishops
and the deacons.
Now, here's Paul, a Christian gentleman, and he's
writing a letter to the fellowship, to the
assembly there in Philippi, and he addresses it
to the saints with the bishops, the elders,
and the deacons.
Now, that's very significant to me.
I see three, I don't want to use
the word classes, three groups there.
The saints, the bishops or elders, and the
deacons.
Now, if there had been a one-man
minister in that church in Philippi, wouldn't you
think that Paul, a Christian gentleman, would have
acknowledged him?
Why didn't he mention him in this first
part of his epistle?
The reason he mentioned him is because such
a man didn't exist.
But I don't have to labor the point
because if you go to the Christian libraries
and say, we don't have to fight that,
I could turn to common sense and say,
look, this one-man ministry doesn't exist in
the primitive church.
They agree with that.
It is an important point that all
over the world, in every land, be
there really in the ship,
the elders, and they were carried today, and
they didn't have a lot, and
then you go, really
work.
And it's beautiful when you see them working.
And this is a very important principle.
When you think of the count, they
share with you today that the
early morning, in their difficulties, elders who, but
that isn't all.
There are other principles that we want to
think of today, and I think one of
the important ones that I'd like to mention
is that the gifts are given of his
people.
Where two or three are gathered together in
my name, there am I in the midst
of them.
Christ, the gathering center of his people.
This means a lot to me, and I'll
tell you how it comes to me.
We don't gather to a man.
We gather to the Lord Jesus.
Unto him shall the gathering of the people
be.
We see so much, especially out where I
live, where you get a gifted man of
God, a good preacher, and he stands there.
Sometimes he is, I
don't think it's exaggerated.
We come to the meetings of the local
assembly.
I'm just a, but I believe when we
come to the meetings of the Lord, and
we wouldn't have missed it.
We meet in the presence in
Illinois.
And nobody who's ever at that meeting will
ever forget it.
If you were to go to Chicago, in
your mind, when
the Lord, special
moving of the Holy Spirit.
A few months later, I got a letter
from a dear young brother whom I had
known very well.
And he said to me, my life has
never been the same.
All the bitter, bitter regrets.
But maybe the Lord can still salvage something
from my life.
He and his family packed.
I say there are times worship
meetings, and once again, the hearts of God,
and I really believe where you get a
group, and who act upon it, you'll have
people who know why they're there.
Chapter four, the fourth chapter of Ephesians, chapter
four.
And I'll begin reading in verse seven.
Ephesians four and seven.
But unto every one of us is given
grace according to the measure of the gift
of Christ.
Wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on
high, he let captivity captive and gave gifts
unto men.
Now that he ascended, what is it but
that he also descended first into the lower
parts of the earth.
He that descended is the same also that
ascended up far above all heavens, that he
might fill all things.
And he gave some apostles and some prophets
and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers
for the perfecting of the faith unto the
work of the ministry.
Unto the edifying of the body of Christ
till we all come in the unity of
the faith of the perfect man unto the
measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ.
That we henceforth be no more children tossed
to and fro, carried about with every wind
of doctrine by the slight of men and
cunning.
May grow up into him in all things
which is the head, even Christ.
How many years ago the Lord had dealings
in my heart and I had to come
to the place where I had evangelists,
pastors, and
it says and our bill says
to me that the apostles, they
are not but
it is built on what they built upon
the ministry.
Once the foundation is laid you go and
build upon it and Paul said that in
1 Corinthians 3.
So the foundation has been laid by the
apostles and prophets.
I don't believe the apostles and prophets are
with us any longer although their ministry is
with us in the pages of the New
Testament.
So we're not the poorer without the apostles
and prophets because we have their ministry preserved
for us in the sacred scriptures.
But that leaves us with three.
Evangelists, pastors, and teachers.
My own personal view is that these men
are itinerant men.
Evangelists, pastors, and teachers.
I don't equate the pastors here with the
elders in an assembly.
I equate them with men like Paul Timothy
and Titus who were sent by Paul to
do temporary work in various assemblies.
Timothy to Ephesus, Titus to Crete, etc.
You have the evangelists first of all.
These men, their sphere, their parish is the
world.
And they go out into the world and
they preach the gospel of redeeming grace and
a crucial
key it says.
Translation is which
means that these gifts are extendable.
These gifts which means that success in this
Christian work is working yourself out of a
job in the quickest possible time and moving
on to new worlds to come.
Now, this isn't working today very well with
the clerical system.
As long as we have a clerical system
in the world, the body of Christ will
never be developed the way God intended it
to be and the world will never be
evangelized the way God intended it to be.
As long as we have that system.
God's way is best.
God's way is for these gifts to seek
to build up the strength for the work
of the ministry and to pass on.
The longest the Apostle Paul ever stayed in
one place was two years in Ephesus.
During his lifetime he spent a total of
three years in Ephesus.
But at any one time the longest he
ever stayed was two years.
Mind you, he did better than that in
Thessalonica, didn't he?
He went in there and he preached to
the Jews for three Sabbath days and left
behind a functioning New Testament church.
I'm amazed every time I read it.
I think that probably was exceptional, don't you?
Probably wasn't the norm, but it worked anyway.
That was success.
That was really success in Christian work.
Paul didn't think that the saints should be
perpetually dependent upon him.
He was just thrilled to see them stand
in their own seats and moving out for
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Some of you here today know T.B.
Gilbert.
Knew him before the Lord took him on.
Really a valuable trooper for the Lord Jesus.
And use of God to see where it's
planted in different parts of the United States.
Some years ago he went to Murfreesboro, Tennessee,
and he got on the radio and he
started blasting a word that saved him a
little.
And he let them know that the saints
were there.
One of these days they were going to
be on their own.
Well, do you know the day came when
those dear brethren in Murfreesboro said, we certainly
appreciate the work you've done here.
We appreciate what you've meant to us.
Now you've been willing to come down.
And they said, now, they said, you know,
there's a little group of exorcised believers in
Huntsville, Alabama.
And we wonder if you'd be interested to
go over there and see if you could
help.
You know, a lot of people would be
crestfallen.
They'd really be hurt and go in the
corner and sulk.
He didn't sulk.
He said, praise the Lord.
And he moved down to Huntsville and there's
a little group of believers there.
And the Lord took him home from Huntsville.
This is beautiful.
And this is the way that God intends
that the work should be spread.
The gifts were given for the perfecting of
the faith unto the work of the ministry,
unto the edifying of the body of Christ.
And this is to go on, this process
is to go on, to spread by multiplication.
You have, of course, the same principle in
another way.
In Paul writing to Timothy, he said, The
things thou hast heard of me among many
witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men
who shall be able to teach others also.
Well, the Lord showed me this from the
word of God and it really had a
tremendous influence in my life.
And I said, Yes, this is ideal.
And I look around and I see brethren
who many churches, evangelical churches, would be thrilled
to have them, thrilled to have them come.
And they could go there and build a
work around themselves.
God forbid.
Far better to the use of God to
build up saints that the saints can move
out with the gospel of grace and with
the teaching of the word of God.
Now, we believe in addition to that, that
every church should be autonomous.
And I must go on so fast.
Now, I believe every church, every local fellowship
should be an autonomous fellowship.
Just one verse to suggest it.
And once again, it's interesting how we're repeating
passages, but in Revelation chapter 1 and verses
12 and 13, Revelation 1 verses 12 and
13, John says, And I turned to see
the voice that spake with me, and being
turned, I saw seven golden lampstands.
And in the midst of the seven lampstands,
one light came forth unto the Son of
Man, clothed with a garment down to the
foot, and girded about the paps with a
golden girl.
Now, we don't have to guess at the
golden lampstands.
The golden lampstands represent the seven churches of
Asia.
The Lord Jesus is standing in the midst
of the seven churches.
What's between him and the churches?
Absolutely nothing.
There's nothing in the way of a denominational
headquarters there.
Those churches stand directly responsible to the Lord
Jesus himself.
Admire the wisdom of God.
What a wonderful thing.
Think of countries today where the Christian church
is being oppressed and persecuted.
If the government can seize a denominational headquarters,
why, it's very easy to control them.
It's not so easy.
It's very easy for those assemblies to go
underground, as they have had to do in
many nations of the world today.
And then also, as we've already heard in
the conference, the autonomy of the local fellowship
hinders the spread of liberalism and modernism in
the church.
If the liberals and the modernists can seize
the headquarters and seize the seminary, from then
on it's just a timeless struggle.
They can eventually control the whole system.
And frankly, they don't care whether there are
a few good gospel preaching evangelical disciples in
some of the works in the meantime.
It's like communism.
It is a timeless struggle.
And they figure, well, in time we'll have
the whole thing as a pathetic denomination.
You've probably never heard of them out here
in enlightened Colorado.
But they're back there anyway, in the New
England area.
And their strategy has been to infiltrate, for
instance, the divinity school at Harvard and the
seminaries back there.
To infiltrate them and to show their insidious
doctrines in those seminaries.
And so they have men today who are
preaching in many different denominational purposes and the
people don't know the difference.
Don't know the difference.
No, no.
God's will is that the local fellowship be
autonomous and be responsible to him alone.
And then just finally, before I close, the
last principle that I see in the word
of God is the priesthood of all believers.
And this, too, is very, very precious to
me.
1 Peter 2, familiar verses to us, 1
Peter 2 verse 4, first of all, 1
Peter 2, verse 4, To whom coming is
unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men,
but chosen of God and precious.
Ye also, as living stones are built up
a spiritual house and holy priesthood to offer
up spiritual sacrifice acceptable to God by Jesus
Christ.
Verse 9, But ye are a chosen generation,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar
people, that ye should show forth the praises
of him who called you out of darkness
into his marvelous light.
We are holy priests.
We are royal priests.
All believers are.
The Old Testament, in order to be a
priest under the Mosaic system, you had to
be of the tribe of Levi and of
the family of Aaron.
That was the way of approach to God.
Praise God, God has changed it all in
our dispensation, and we are all holy priests.
What is our function as holy priests?
Well, it says right here in this verse,
verse 5, to offer up spiritual sacrifice, not
dead animals, spiritual sacrifice acceptable to God by
Jesus Christ.
What are our spiritual sacrifices?
Well, there are quite a few of them.
We offer up the sacrifice of our praise,
the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to
his name.
Our highest privilege here on earth.
Our highest privilege.
I like that statement that somebody shared with
me from a little book on prayer.
It says, God is more interested in our
worship than in our service.
The heavenly bridegroom is wooing a bride, not
hiring a servant.
Isn't that nice?
God is more interested in our worship, in
our love, than in our service.
The heavenly bridegroom is wooing a bride, not
hiring a servant.
And so we offer up the fruit of
our lips, giving thanks to his name, the
sacrifice of our praise.
We offer the sacrifice of our persons to
him.
Once again, not dead bodies, living bodies, wholly
acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
We thank your bodies, a living sacrifice.
And then we offer up the sacrifice of
our pocketbooks too, don't we?
To do good and communicate, forget not.
With such sacrifices God is well praised.
And we offer up the sacrifice of our
service to the Lord as well.
Paul spoke of his ministry among the Gentiles
as being a sacrifice.
And so as holy priests we offer up
these spiritual sacrifices to God as it says,
as a royal priest we go forth to
the world to show forth the excellency of
him who called us out of darkness into
his marvelous light.
We believe that.
We believe in the priesthood of all believers,
a truth that's precious to us.
And so there we have it.
You have the truth of the one body.
Let's stick to it.
Let's be delivered from sectarianism of any kind
and realize the preciousness of the body of
Christ.
All believers are members of that body.
Let's be careful to love all the people
of God because they belong to Christ.
It doesn't mean you can cooperate with them
in everything.
It doesn't mean you can do what they
do.
It doesn't mean you believe all that they
believe.
But you're united with them in Christ, an
indiscriminable link.
The plurality of elders in the assembly, through
the faith, with the bishops and the deacons.
Pray for your elders more perhaps than we
have been doing.
Christ, the gathering center, we go there because
he's there.
He is the attraction, the object of our
affection.
The gifts given for the person who is
a saint under the work of the ministry
under the edifying of the body of Christ.
The gifts are expendable.
The saints are not to become perpetually dependent
upon them.
Every local church, autonomous, standing there, Christ in
the midst, nothing between to control those local
churches.
And finally, the priesthood of all believers, holy
priests, royal priests, offering up spiritual sacrifices, going
forth to speak of his excellency to all
the world.
May the Lord bless these principles to our
hearts today.