A beautiful illustration of a true relationship within a family is found in the story of Hannah, the mother of Samuel. Hannah made a promise that she would lend Samuel to the Lord as long as he lived (I Samuel 1:11). After the Lord’s claim on Samuel had been established, she was very faithful to come up to the house of the Lord in Shiloh every year, bringing a little ephod for him (I Samuel 2:19). Thus she was establishing the fact that she was not relating to him as a mother only, but as one who was more than a mother—the one who had given her boy to the Lord. She related to him on the basis of his relationship to the Lord, and this became the whole focus of her life.
If we see the principle involved in this way of relating, we will understand what the Lord has been teaching us all. What a tragedy it is that so many in the local New Testament churches have never broken the human-bond level in their thinking, in favor of the spiritual oneness that God is trying to bring. Hence the human element has always entered in, and they have never been able to relate properly with one another in the church.
We need to learn how we are to relate and communicate with one another. They have established, slowly but surely, every phase of this relate-and-communicate principle of the Kingdom. Yet of all the truths preached in the restoration, none has apparently been as difficult—if not almost impossible—to see fulfilled in the lives of the people. They have refused to relate on a spiritual basis, and would rather relate on a human plane, by human bonds.
More guilty than they would ever admit are the pastors who had their little favorite groups around them, as though they were their own kingdom. In many cases, they were trying to build the Kingdom of God, but they were doing it through a very carnal or human means of relating, and this always became an abortive effort that was never fruitful in the Kingdom of God.
We have seen that a wrong relationship is established between a pastor and the women in the church, through a seductive approach and the response to it. The answer is very obvious. The relationship was evidently wrong to begin with: They were relating on a human plane by human bonds; they were relating on a basis of personality instead of relating in the Spirit.
we are no longer to relate to one another after the flesh. Even though we had known Christ after the flesh, we were not to know Him so any longer (II Corinthians 5:16). All of our effort to see the humanity of Christ may be good in itself, but it is not what the Heavenly Father wants us to see.
Jesus wants us to view Him as the Lord of lords and the Kings of kings (Revelation 19:16), who dwells in a glory so wonderful that it cannot even be approached or seen (I Timothy 6:16). That is what He wants you to see in one another too. When you see one another in the Spirit and not after the flesh, then you immediately relate as spiritual beings, and a oneness can be established.
Many people still cannot understand what is taking place at the present time.
People are shocked into realizing that the transference and the oppressions—all of the problems they had—were the result of their relating to one another in a wrong way and draining one another on a human level.
As soon as the bonds are broken on the human level, then we can get on with the oneness that God has been trying to bring ever since this relate and—communicate truth came forth as a basic principle of the Kingdom.
When God challenges us and says, “You are not going to relate anymore with your human bonds; you are going to relate in Me,” it bothers may people? We will never enter into the Kingdom fullness with that kind of relating!
It is true that we still have some unscriptural or unspiritual relationships; however, one day we will realize that there is neither male nor female, bond nor free, Jew nor Greek; but we are all one in Christ (Galatians 3:28).
The same is true in every other realm of comparison. Christ stated it very clearly: “My mother, My brothers, are these who hear the Word of God and do it” (Luke 8:21). Until a true oneness is achieved, we will not get anyplace.
In our relating to the Word of God and to the Lord Himself, it is the spiritual relationship that becomes the basis of everything. No longer can the bloodline dominate relationships. Throughout the Old Testament, we see that the bloodline was necessary so that Christ could come forth as the seed of Abraham (Genesis 12:2–3; 22:18), as a descendant of David with the right to rule on David’s throne (Isaiah 9:6–7; Jeremiah 23:5–6).
But when the New Testament opens up, it does not emphasize bloodline as being of any value at all, except that the Christ had to come through the lines of promise (Galatians 3:29).
John the Baptist told the Jews, “Do not say that you have Abraham as your father. God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham” (Matthew 3:9). Do not boast of any lineage; that day is past. Whether you are a Jew or a Greek, there is no way that you can boast. What a tragedy it is that we still see this.
Jewish Christians go about calling themselves “converted Jews.” They are still trying to hold onto the bloodline, trying to make a distinction. As Gentile Christians, we often do the same thing when we say, “We are the chosen people.” Why the boasting? Christ says that we are all one in Him (Galatians 3:27–29; John 17:21–22). In Christ, we are all accepted. We are accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6).
It is a tragedy when dynasties are established within families and churches until the house of God is passed down, much like the papacy was at one time.
There was a period in history called “The Rule of the Harlots” (circa 900 A.D. to 955 A.D.) in which the harlots of Rome actually succeeded in getting their bastard sons—the bastard sons of popes—established in the papacy. True, this is not a very beautiful chapter in the history of the Catholic church. But do we see anything different in the Protestant churches?
The entire church system is the mother of harlots (Revelation 17:5). Pastors and leaders say, in effect, “We will serve the Lord—for a price. We are willing to prostitute ourselves for the money, for the position, for the preeminent place.”
I thought that concept was supposed to have ended on the day of Pentecost! After that day, never again do we hear the disciples arguing over who was going to be the greatest, or who was going to sit at Christ’s right hand or His left hand (Mark 9:34–35; Matthew 20:21–26).
But that vying for position evidently did not end; the idea still prevails: “If there are any advantages, I will see to it that my family gets them.” What about this good brother whom God has raised up, who has had prophecy and revelation spoken over him? “Well, that’s just too bad; let him go out and build himself something on his own.”
Will you make an Ishmael out of one of God’s holy servants in order that your own family can prevail and be established in blessings that you want to pass down, as though you were saying, “I bequeath this church, this people. It is my possession, my property.”
That attitude is the key of Babylon in the book of Revelation: They bought and sold the “souls of men” (Revelation 18:13b). They looked upon men as property to be owned by the religious leaders. This is a feudal system to be denounced. A man can become so enthroned and entrenched in his “authority” that he feels that the church is his church and the people are his people; the Kingdom businesses are his and the communal homes are his. And so he proceeds to dominate and control the lives of too many families in the church.
Anyone who is still trying to maintain his position and his status and his preeminence does not even know what God is doing.
I wonder how many servants and handmaidens of the Lord have perished throughout the years because of the corrupt, foul attitude of clinging to human bonds instead of forsaking them to come into the oneness in Christ.
Is it any wonder that God is now moving a few humble bond servants to say, “Here, let us stop and look at the human bonds and see what they are doing to hinder the whole Kingdom of God.”
Are some of you saying, “Before God, it does not seem right that we should no longer have the old family loyalties and ties, our little cliques and special groups and special friends in the church.” However, it is not right because it sins against the oneness of Christ. It sins against the oneness of the Body that was the first vision: Christ is Lord, and we are one Body in Him (Romans 12:5).
How can we expect to join into the oneness of the whole Body of Christ everywhere, universally, if we cannot do it within our own family or within our own church?
What place, in our thinking, does the oneness in Christ have? It must be preeminent. We must also sense the extreme wickedness that has come from the “feudal system.” The churches have not wholly been God’s churches. That is why He has not been able to bless them more. That is why there has been confusion in some of the churches.
All God is trying to do is to possess His churches—the ones for whom He shed His precious blood. A pastor may say, “Well, it is my church. I am the one who labored with my hands to build the building. I did all these things.” But Christ gives us the impression all the time that it is His, that He redeemed it unto Himself by His precious blood.
Let God establish a pure work in the lives of the churches and of the people who want to serve Him.
This release from wrong relating and bonding is the most scriptural step we have ever endeavored to take. It is a great door into the Kingdom.
We have finally reached the place where we see the deadliness of human bonds and what they have done to the churches. How many, many churches have been ripped apart and decimated—not because the pastors were not sincere, but because they did not know how to give Christ His Headship over His Church. They did not know how to bring forth something that would not be a submission in relationships on a human level.
The Kingdom of God must be everything to us, or we will lose our own families. Families cannot be maintained, nor can churches be maintained, based on this class distinction that has built up. God has tried to remove position and bring about a oneness. He has tried to bring to us an awareness that we are different from one another only by virtue of a commission from Him—not by virtue of a position, a rank, or a caste system that has evolved through the years (Romans 12:3–6). God move on the spiritual blindness and the stubbornness that is in the hearts of those who refuse to see this truth!
Our oneness with Christ Jesus our Lord must be established. We will not be able to go ahead, nor will we have any unity, until this is established in the earth again. If we are not one with Him, we will find that every one of our relationships will be troubled and confused. Husbands and wives will have difficulty. Are we saying that they are not to relate at all on a human level? No, we are saying that this is not to be the basis of their relationship. Marriages or homes or churches should not be broken up; but that is what will happen if you do not listen to this Word.
A husband and wife should first kneel down together and believe to become one with Christ Jesus the Lord. Then their relationship as husband and wife will not be based on the woman dominating the man, or the man, like a chauvinist male, proclaiming, “I am the head!” and calling that the spiritual fulfillment of Ephesians 5:24, which tells the wife to be submissive to her husband.
We still have a great deal to learn about submission. Submission is not to be defined as suppression. When a pastor says, “I expect you to be submissive to me,” he should not mean, “Unless you allow me to suppress you and rule over you, you are not being submissive.” God must give us shepherds after His own heart (Jeremiah 3:15), not “people collectors” and manipulators.
I am wondering how long pastors will continue to say, “Look at my record.” Is Christ being glorified in all the fruit of your labor? (I Peter 4:11.) Will we see confusion that you have bred into the people because in your mind they never were given over to Christ? Were they your kingdom? Do you refuse to face this? In not facing it, you become the most deceived of all the people in the churh.
How bold does the truth have to be, before we will listen to what God is saying? Are some of you protesting, “But you’re hurting me. You are taking away from me what is mine.” That very attitude could be a basis of your own judgment, because Christ is going to be the Head of His Church whether any of us like it or not.
From the very beginning of the Gospels in the New Testament, it was very evident that in order for a man to be a disciple, he had to leave everything.
On one occasion Peter came to the Lord and said, “We have left everything to follow You. What will there be for us in this?” And the Lord answered, “If you have left everything—all that the world holds dear in the way of possessions, such as houses, lands, and relationships, even families—for My sake and that of the Kingdom, you will receive a hundredfold at this present time, and eternal life in the age to come” (Matthew 19:27–29; Luke 18:28–30).
This promise of the Lord seems especially real and meaningful to a person when he first becomes a Christian. It seems real to him that he belongs to the Lord. He loves the Lord with all his heart, and he wants to give himself wholly and completely to the Lord. He is very willing to serve Christ, and frequently others seem to take advantage of this basic willingness that God has worked in him.
Some of the older saints may view that willingness as a weakness and move in on it, thinking, “Here’s one more willing person. We will add him to the ones we can control and use and exploit for what we want to do.” Sometimes what they do is actually good. They put the new believer to work serving the Lord, and he does it willingly. But after a while, both the leader and the follower will become disillusioned if they are not following the Scripture: And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. Colossians 3:17a. There must be that dedication to the Lord in all of your efforts, whether you are a leader or a follower.
Positions are never established unless the leader is using others for his own purposes, even though he may feel that he has a good motivation in doing it. His motivation must be pure.
We are bond servants of the Lord Jesus Christ—all of us—and our stewardship before the Lord must be our first consideration. We are to serve one another by the will of God, not in some kind complicated perversion of the Kingdom of God in which we use each other and fail to relate properly, and then wonder why there is so much confusion in our walk with God.
We must relate to the Lord correctly, or we will not be able to relate to each other correctly at all. The oneness and dedication must be there.
How much are the leaders really relating to the Lord? Do they see Him as some vague nonentity, and themselves as the only representation of God on this earth? Do they view the sheep as being so naive that they must be exploited and controlled, or do they have the true shepherd’s heart that sees the sheep as belonging to the Lord? Are they careful, above everything else, to feed the sheep and take care of them?
I have noticed many times that people try to relate to the minister and try to evaluate the Word he preaches. There has been quite a conflict over this. Some have a burden to preach only the Living Word. If pastors are preaching a living word, then why aren’t the people growing by it? There may be no love for the sheep in the pastor while he is preaching to them. Instead, he may have the attitude, “You sheep belong to me. How dare you be anything else but submissive to me! If you are not submissive, I will exclude you. And I know how to exclude you from the flock!” We have seen that done.
Consequently, we are all reevaluating the ministry in the “word” that does not feed the sheep that does not reflect the love for the sheep.
Much has been paraded as love that is not love at all. I have seen the sheep being beaten from the pulpit. I have seen them impressed by words that did not feed them, words that were not channels of life. When the living Word is ministered something sustaining comes out of it.’ ” Many times the sermons are quickly forgotten because the minister does not relate properly in his shepherding of the sheep. He is not feeding them. He is preaching at them. And then he wonders why the people are not responding to him. The reason should be very obvious.
This is such an obvious truth, and yet it will be very offensive to some because their ears are deaf. They have not heard, and even now refuse to hear, what God requires of them. They have yet to learn how to respond to the first words Christ spoke to His disciples: “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19); or the command in John 21:15–16: “Feed My sheep, feed My lambs.”
And do not lightly brush aside that admonition with the excuse, “Oh, that was a Word for Peter.” That is true, but consider this: If Peter was such a great apostle that he could open the door to the Gentiles (Acts 11:1–18), and on the day of Pentecost open the door to the Church (Acts 2), then don’t you think that the admonition Christ gave him would be good for us to follow too? Do you love the Lord? Then feed His sheep. The challenge that Christ lays down is very clear.
Listen preacher—your love for the Lord is being challenged by the Lord Himself if you have failed to feed His sheep, or if you have failed to tend His lambs and love them. You have used the flock. You have not honored the work of God in your midst. You have had a sense of possessing it instead of being a faithful steward over it. You have lived and worked in vain if this has been your attitude toward the house of God, the family of the Heavenly Father. God will not bless your efforts.
One of the great principles set before us during the past years has been sonship. In many sermons we have lived in Romans 8. And in those messages, one distinct note always came through: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Verse 14.
Although we are looking for sonship, let us be aware that we will not attain that sonship until a flexibility is found among God’s people to be wholly led by the Spirit of the Lord. This idea of being led by the Spirit of the Lord cannot be minimized. It cannot be distorted or abused by our own ambitions and our own initiative going contrary to God’s leading and His purposes.
Let me give you a good illustration of how this principle of being led by the Spirit worked in New Testament times.
The eighth chapter of Acts tells about Philip going down to Samaria where he did many wonderful things: he preached, he healed, he delivered. Then Peter and John were called down to continue the work, and Philip went on his way to the desert, directed by the Lord. Philip was a flexible and pliable spiritual son. It is very important that we see this. He was a spiritual son coming forth to do the will of the Lord. It did not really make much difference to Philip whether he was preaching to an Ethiopian in a chariot and baptizing him, or whether he was being used to convert an entire city in the greatest evangelistic effort of the early Church. Philip would have been just as willing to sit in the back row or to usher people into a service as he was to sit in the front row. It would not have mattered to him whether he sat on the platform or in the congregation.
There was none of the vying for position in Philip that we have seen happen among us. Has God brought you to the place where it does not matter whether you have a big title or no title? Does it matter to you whether you sit on the platform or you sit in the pew? If by this time you have generated such a pride in position that you cannot relinquish it, God help you. You lack the very elements required of a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ: the flexibility which belongs to sonship, the striving to see that He gets all the glory without wanting any of it yourself, the jealous vigilance to see that He is the One who is glorified and honored, the constant striving to see that the Lordship of Christ becomes a reality in your life and not just a doctrine.
I fear that in the lives of some it has been only a doctrine. The Lordship of Jesus Christ means that He has to be the Lord. This means also that you will not be the Lord. Do not try to disguise yourself as a humble disciple when you are really a lord, when you are really a master and an owner and a possessor of things that belong to Christ.
The stewardship principle must be seen; otherwise the Lordship principle of Christ will never be seen at all.
I want to see a thousand prophets come forth who can out minister me. Some of the brothers have accepted me because of what I could give to them. Sometimes they took the ministry and used it for their own advantage or to accomplish the ends they had in mind for themselves. When the teaching that I bring seems to thwart this selfish ambition, then it is easy for them to turn against me and say, “We don’t want to accept that. It is not the Living Word. Where did it go astray?” It went astray when it crossed them. It is still the Living Word. They are refusing it because it brought them to the work of the cross.
Listen—you cannot use the cross experience that others are going through to establish something contrary to the Kingdom of God. Neither can you preach the Word that God is giving with a personal ulterior motive. It cannot be done. Your motive must be the glorifying of Christ in His many members in the earth (II Thessalonians 1:10–12).
The thinking of the whore Babylon must disappear from every church and from the heart of every one of its ministers. None can prostitute what God is doing for personal advantage. We must serve Him willingly. We must serve Him as His bond servants and lay all at His feet.
Do you still feel that you have to look after your security, your future? I thought that Christ was our security and our future. There is a fearfulness that makes people greedy and grabby, feeling that they never have enough. They will find that they have put it in a bag of holes, while the house of God lies waste (Haggai 1:4–9).
Isn’t it strange that when we try to define Babylon, we always think about the church down the street, or a church in Rome, or some big denomination, or some radio program that is exploiting the people for their money. By theatrics and other means, men have distorted the wonderful Lord and exalted the image of man; all of that is true. But what about looking more closely at ourselves and our motivations? Let us look at our own family. Let us look at our own church where God has set us. Let us look carefully into all of that and see for what purpose, for what reason we are serving.
If our motivation is pure, we are serving because we are one with Him, and we want His life to flow through us. We want to be a blessing. We want to be a channel. We have a pure idealistic love for the Lord, and therefore we serve. Because love enters in, we are not easily offended.
Read again the definition of love in I Corinthians chapter 13. That love is not arrogant, it is not proud, it does not seek its own, it is not puffed up, it does not believe in evil report, it thinks no evil. All of the pure motivations flow out of that love. When you evaluate Babylon and its motivations, and compare that with the motivations of love, you see the difference between the true and the false.
Perhaps it is good that persecution comes against us. It is separating the true from the false, for the false will run. They are hirelings, not shepherds; and when the wolf comes, they flee because they do not have the love for the sheep. The true shepherd will stand and fight off the wolves, as he defends the sheep (John 10:11–15).
What is the situation in the walk? The hirelings are trying to grab all the loot they can. They are selling churches or pulling churches out, buying and selling the souls of men, trying to establish their property rights over a church. Then they run. Watch what God does to these “shepherds.” He gives their sheep into the hands of shepherds after His own heart (Jeremiah 3:15). This must be done. We must see God glorified in His saints (II Thessalonians 1:10–12). We must see the oneness in Christ come forth, instead of an organization or some kind of unity that is based upon human bonds and human personality. That kind of unity must fall apart. God will shake it apart. The Church can be built upon nothing else except oneness in Christ Jesus the Lord.
WHAT IS ONENESS?
A beautiful illustration of a true relationship within a family is found in the story of Hannah, the mother of Samuel. Hannah made a promise that she would lend Samuel to the Lord as long as he lived (I Samuel 1:11). After the Lord’s claim on Samuel had been established, she was very faithful to come up to the house of the Lord in Shiloh every year, bringing a little ephod for him (I Samuel 2:19). Thus she was establishing the fact that she was not relating to him as a mother only, but as one who was more than a mother—the one who had given her boy to the Lord. She related to him on the basis of his relationship to the Lord, and this became the whole focus of her life.
If we see the principle involved in this way of relating, we will understand what the Lord has been teaching us all. What a tragedy it is that so many in the local New Testament churches have never broken the human-bond level in their thinking, in favor of the spiritual oneness that God is trying to bring. Hence the human element has always entered in, and they have never been able to relate properly with one another in the church.
We need to learn how we are to relate and communicate with one another. They have established, slowly but surely, every phase of this relate-and-communicate principle of the Kingdom. Yet of all the truths preached in the restoration, none has apparently been as difficult—if not almost impossible—to see fulfilled in the lives of the people. They have refused to relate on a spiritual basis, and would rather relate on a human plane, by human bonds.
More guilty than they would ever admit are the pastors who had their little favorite groups around them, as though they were their own kingdom. In many cases, they were trying to build the Kingdom of God, but they were doing it through a very carnal or human means of relating, and this always became an abortive effort that was never fruitful in the Kingdom of God.
We have seen that a wrong relationship is established between a pastor and the women in the church, through a seductive approach and the response to it. The answer is very obvious. The relationship was evidently wrong to begin with: They were relating on a human plane by human bonds; they were relating on a basis of personality instead of relating in the Spirit.
we are no longer to relate to one another after the flesh. Even though we had known Christ after the flesh, we were not to know Him so any longer (II Corinthians 5:16). All of our effort to see the humanity of Christ may be good in itself, but it is not what the Heavenly Father wants us to see.
Jesus wants us to view Him as the Lord of lords and the Kings of kings (Revelation 19:16), who dwells in a glory so wonderful that it cannot even be approached or seen (I Timothy 6:16). That is what He wants you to see in one another too. When you see one another in the Spirit and not after the flesh, then you immediately relate as spiritual beings, and a oneness can be established.
Many people still cannot understand what is taking place at the present time.
People are shocked into realizing that the transference and the oppressions—all of the problems they had—were the result of their relating to one another in a wrong way and draining one another on a human level.
As soon as the bonds are broken on the human level, then we can get on with the oneness that God has been trying to bring ever since this relate and—communicate truth came forth as a basic principle of the Kingdom.
When God challenges us and says, “You are not going to relate anymore with your human bonds; you are going to relate in Me,” it bothers may people? We will never enter into the Kingdom fullness with that kind of relating!
It is true that we still have some unscriptural or unspiritual relationships; however, one day we will realize that there is neither male nor female, bond nor free, Jew nor Greek; but we are all one in Christ (Galatians 3:28).
The same is true in every other realm of comparison. Christ stated it very clearly: “My mother, My brothers, are these who hear the Word of God and do it” (Luke 8:21). Until a true oneness is achieved, we will not get anyplace.
In our relating to the Word of God and to the Lord Himself, it is the spiritual relationship that becomes the basis of everything. No longer can the bloodline dominate relationships. Throughout the Old Testament, we see that the bloodline was necessary so that Christ could come forth as the seed of Abraham (Genesis 12:2–3; 22:18), as a descendant of David with the right to rule on David’s throne (Isaiah 9:6–7; Jeremiah 23:5–6).
But when the New Testament opens up, it does not emphasize bloodline as being of any value at all, except that the Christ had to come through the lines of promise (Galatians 3:29).
John the Baptist told the Jews, “Do not say that you have Abraham as your father. God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham” (Matthew 3:9). Do not boast of any lineage; that day is past. Whether you are a Jew or a Greek, there is no way that you can boast. What a tragedy it is that we still see this.
Jewish Christians go about calling themselves “converted Jews.” They are still trying to hold onto the bloodline, trying to make a distinction. As Gentile Christians, we often do the same thing when we say, “We are the chosen people.” Why the boasting? Christ says that we are all one in Him (Galatians 3:27–29; John 17:21–22). In Christ, we are all accepted. We are accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6).
It is a tragedy when dynasties are established within families and churches until the house of God is passed down, much like the papacy was at one time.
There was a period in history called “The Rule of the Harlots” (circa 900 A.D. to 955 A.D.) in which the harlots of Rome actually succeeded in getting their bastard sons—the bastard sons of popes—established in the papacy. True, this is not a very beautiful chapter in the history of the Catholic church. But do we see anything different in the Protestant churches?
The entire church system is the mother of harlots (Revelation 17:5). Pastors and leaders say, in effect, “We will serve the Lord—for a price. We are willing to prostitute ourselves for the money, for the position, for the preeminent place.”
I thought that concept was supposed to have ended on the day of Pentecost! After that day, never again do we hear the disciples arguing over who was going to be the greatest, or who was going to sit at Christ’s right hand or His left hand (Mark 9:34–35; Matthew 20:21–26).
But that vying for position evidently did not end; the idea still prevails: “If there are any advantages, I will see to it that my family gets them.” What about this good brother whom God has raised up, who has had prophecy and revelation spoken over him? “Well, that’s just too bad; let him go out and build himself something on his own.”
Will you make an Ishmael out of one of God’s holy servants in order that your own family can prevail and be established in blessings that you want to pass down, as though you were saying, “I bequeath this church, this people. It is my possession, my property.”
That attitude is the key of Babylon in the book of Revelation: They bought and sold the “souls of men” (Revelation 18:13b). They looked upon men as property to be owned by the religious leaders. This is a feudal system to be denounced. A man can become so enthroned and entrenched in his “authority” that he feels that the church is his church and the people are his people; the Kingdom businesses are his and the communal homes are his. And so he proceeds to dominate and control the lives of too many families in the church.
Anyone who is still trying to maintain his position and his status and his preeminence does not even know what God is doing.
I wonder how many servants and handmaidens of the Lord have perished throughout the years because of the corrupt, foul attitude of clinging to human bonds instead of forsaking them to come into the oneness in Christ.
Is it any wonder that God is now moving a few humble bond servants to say, “Here, let us stop and look at the human bonds and see what they are doing to hinder the whole Kingdom of God.”
Are some of you saying, “Before God, it does not seem right that we should no longer have the old family loyalties and ties, our little cliques and special groups and special friends in the church.” However, it is not right because it sins against the oneness of Christ. It sins against the oneness of the Body that was the first vision: Christ is Lord, and we are one Body in Him (Romans 12:5).
How can we expect to join into the oneness of the whole Body of Christ everywhere, universally, if we cannot do it within our own family or within our own church?
What place, in our thinking, does the oneness in Christ have? It must be preeminent. We must also sense the extreme wickedness that has come from the “feudal system.” The churches have not wholly been God’s churches. That is why He has not been able to bless them more. That is why there has been confusion in some of the churches.
All God is trying to do is to possess His churches—the ones for whom He shed His precious blood. A pastor may say, “Well, it is my church. I am the one who labored with my hands to build the building. I did all these things.” But Christ gives us the impression all the time that it is His, that He redeemed it unto Himself by His precious blood.
Let God establish a pure work in the lives of the churches and of the people who want to serve Him.
This release from wrong relating and bonding is the most scriptural step we have ever endeavored to take. It is a great door into the Kingdom.
We have finally reached the place where we see the deadliness of human bonds and what they have done to the churches. How many, many churches have been ripped apart and decimated—not because the pastors were not sincere, but because they did not know how to give Christ His Headship over His Church. They did not know how to bring forth something that would not be a submission in relationships on a human level.
The Kingdom of God must be everything to us, or we will lose our own families. Families cannot be maintained, nor can churches be maintained, based on this class distinction that has built up. God has tried to remove position and bring about a oneness. He has tried to bring to us an awareness that we are different from one another only by virtue of a commission from Him—not by virtue of a position, a rank, or a caste system that has evolved through the years (Romans 12:3–6). God move on the spiritual blindness and the stubbornness that is in the hearts of those who refuse to see this truth!
Our oneness with Christ Jesus our Lord must be established. We will not be able to go ahead, nor will we have any unity, until this is established in the earth again. If we are not one with Him, we will find that every one of our relationships will be troubled and confused. Husbands and wives will have difficulty. Are we saying that they are not to relate at all on a human level? No, we are saying that this is not to be the basis of their relationship. Marriages or homes or churches should not be broken up; but that is what will happen if you do not listen to this Word.
A husband and wife should first kneel down together and believe to become one with Christ Jesus the Lord. Then their relationship as husband and wife will not be based on the woman dominating the man, or the man, like a chauvinist male, proclaiming, “I am the head!” and calling that the spiritual fulfillment of Ephesians 5:24, which tells the wife to be submissive to her husband.
We still have a great deal to learn about submission. Submission is not to be defined as suppression. When a pastor says, “I expect you to be submissive to me,” he should not mean, “Unless you allow me to suppress you and rule over you, you are not being submissive.” God must give us shepherds after His own heart (Jeremiah 3:15), not “people collectors” and manipulators.
I am wondering how long pastors will continue to say, “Look at my record.” Is Christ being glorified in all the fruit of your labor? (I Peter 4:11.) Will we see confusion that you have bred into the people because in your mind they never were given over to Christ? Were they your kingdom? Do you refuse to face this? In not facing it, you become the most deceived of all the people in the churh.
How bold does the truth have to be, before we will listen to what God is saying? Are some of you protesting, “But you’re hurting me. You are taking away from me what is mine.” That very attitude could be a basis of your own judgment, because Christ is going to be the Head of His Church whether any of us like it or not.
From the very beginning of the Gospels in the New Testament, it was very evident that in order for a man to be a disciple, he had to leave everything.
On one occasion Peter came to the Lord and said, “We have left everything to follow You. What will there be for us in this?” And the Lord answered, “If you have left everything—all that the world holds dear in the way of possessions, such as houses, lands, and relationships, even families—for My sake and that of the Kingdom, you will receive a hundredfold at this present time, and eternal life in the age to come” (Matthew 19:27–29; Luke 18:28–30).
This promise of the Lord seems especially real and meaningful to a person when he first becomes a Christian. It seems real to him that he belongs to the Lord. He loves the Lord with all his heart, and he wants to give himself wholly and completely to the Lord. He is very willing to serve Christ, and frequently others seem to take advantage of this basic willingness that God has worked in him.
Some of the older saints may view that willingness as a weakness and move in on it, thinking, “Here’s one more willing person. We will add him to the ones we can control and use and exploit for what we want to do.” Sometimes what they do is actually good. They put the new believer to work serving the Lord, and he does it willingly. But after a while, both the leader and the follower will become disillusioned if they are not following the Scripture: And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. Colossians 3:17a. There must be that dedication to the Lord in all of your efforts, whether you are a leader or a follower.
Positions are never established unless the leader is using others for his own purposes, even though he may feel that he has a good motivation in doing it. His motivation must be pure.
We are bond servants of the Lord Jesus Christ—all of us—and our stewardship before the Lord must be our first consideration. We are to serve one another by the will of God, not in some kind complicated perversion of the Kingdom of God in which we use each other and fail to relate properly, and then wonder why there is so much confusion in our walk with God.
We must relate to the Lord correctly, or we will not be able to relate to each other correctly at all. The oneness and dedication must be there.
How much are the leaders really relating to the Lord? Do they see Him as some vague nonentity, and themselves as the only representation of God on this earth? Do they view the sheep as being so naive that they must be exploited and controlled, or do they have the true shepherd’s heart that sees the sheep as belonging to the Lord? Are they careful, above everything else, to feed the sheep and take care of them?
I have noticed many times that people try to relate to the minister and try to evaluate the Word he preaches. There has been quite a conflict over this. Some have a burden to preach only the Living Word. If pastors are preaching a living word, then why aren’t the people growing by it? There may be no love for the sheep in the pastor while he is preaching to them. Instead, he may have the attitude, “You sheep belong to me. How dare you be anything else but submissive to me! If you are not submissive, I will exclude you. And I know how to exclude you from the flock!” We have seen that done.
Consequently, we are all reevaluating the ministry in the “word” that does not feed the sheep that does not reflect the love for the sheep.
Much has been paraded as love that is not love at all. I have seen the sheep being beaten from the pulpit. I have seen them impressed by words that did not feed them, words that were not channels of life. When the living Word is ministered something sustaining comes out of it.’ ” Many times the sermons are quickly forgotten because the minister does not relate properly in his shepherding of the sheep. He is not feeding them. He is preaching at them. And then he wonders why the people are not responding to him. The reason should be very obvious.
This is such an obvious truth, and yet it will be very offensive to some because their ears are deaf. They have not heard, and even now refuse to hear, what God requires of them. They have yet to learn how to respond to the first words Christ spoke to His disciples: “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19); or the command in John 21:15–16: “Feed My sheep, feed My lambs.”
And do not lightly brush aside that admonition with the excuse, “Oh, that was a Word for Peter.” That is true, but consider this: If Peter was such a great apostle that he could open the door to the Gentiles (Acts 11:1–18), and on the day of Pentecost open the door to the Church (Acts 2), then don’t you think that the admonition Christ gave him would be good for us to follow too? Do you love the Lord? Then feed His sheep. The challenge that Christ lays down is very clear.
Listen preacher—your love for the Lord is being challenged by the Lord Himself if you have failed to feed His sheep, or if you have failed to tend His lambs and love them. You have used the flock. You have not honored the work of God in your midst. You have had a sense of possessing it instead of being a faithful steward over it. You have lived and worked in vain if this has been your attitude toward the house of God, the family of the Heavenly Father. God will not bless your efforts.
One of the great principles set before us during the past years has been sonship. In many sermons we have lived in Romans 8. And in those messages, one distinct note always came through: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Verse 14.
Although we are looking for sonship, let us be aware that we will not attain that sonship until a flexibility is found among God’s people to be wholly led by the Spirit of the Lord. This idea of being led by the Spirit of the Lord cannot be minimized. It cannot be distorted or abused by our own ambitions and our own initiative going contrary to God’s leading and His purposes.
Let me give you a good illustration of how this principle of being led by the Spirit worked in New Testament times.
The eighth chapter of Acts tells about Philip going down to Samaria where he did many wonderful things: he preached, he healed, he delivered. Then Peter and John were called down to continue the work, and Philip went on his way to the desert, directed by the Lord. Philip was a flexible and pliable spiritual son. It is very important that we see this. He was a spiritual son coming forth to do the will of the Lord. It did not really make much difference to Philip whether he was preaching to an Ethiopian in a chariot and baptizing him, or whether he was being used to convert an entire city in the greatest evangelistic effort of the early Church. Philip would have been just as willing to sit in the back row or to usher people into a service as he was to sit in the front row. It would not have mattered to him whether he sat on the platform or in the congregation.
There was none of the vying for position in Philip that we have seen happen among us. Has God brought you to the place where it does not matter whether you have a big title or no title? Does it matter to you whether you sit on the platform or you sit in the pew? If by this time you have generated such a pride in position that you cannot relinquish it, God help you. You lack the very elements required of a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ: the flexibility which belongs to sonship, the striving to see that He gets all the glory without wanting any of it yourself, the jealous vigilance to see that He is the One who is glorified and honored, the constant striving to see that the Lordship of Christ becomes a reality in your life and not just a doctrine.
I fear that in the lives of some it has been only a doctrine. The Lordship of Jesus Christ means that He has to be the Lord. This means also that you will not be the Lord. Do not try to disguise yourself as a humble disciple when you are really a lord, when you are really a master and an owner and a possessor of things that belong to Christ.
The stewardship principle must be seen; otherwise the Lordship principle of Christ will never be seen at all.
I want to see a thousand prophets come forth who can out minister me. Some of the brothers have accepted me because of what I could give to them. Sometimes they took the ministry and used it for their own advantage or to accomplish the ends they had in mind for themselves. When the teaching that I bring seems to thwart this selfish ambition, then it is easy for them to turn against me and say, “We don’t want to accept that. It is not the Living Word. Where did it go astray?” It went astray when it crossed them. It is still the Living Word. They are refusing it because it brought them to the work of the cross.
Listen—you cannot use the cross experience that others are going through to establish something contrary to the Kingdom of God. Neither can you preach the Word that God is giving with a personal ulterior motive. It cannot be done. Your motive must be the glorifying of Christ in His many members in the earth (II Thessalonians 1:10–12).
The thinking of the whore Babylon must disappear from every church and from the heart of every one of its ministers. None can prostitute what God is doing for personal advantage. We must serve Him willingly. We must serve Him as His bond servants and lay all at His feet.
Do you still feel that you have to look after your security, your future? I thought that Christ was our security and our future. There is a fearfulness that makes people greedy and grabby, feeling that they never have enough. They will find that they have put it in a bag of holes, while the house of God lies waste (Haggai 1:4–9).
Isn’t it strange that when we try to define Babylon, we always think about the church down the street, or a church in Rome, or some big denomination, or some radio program that is exploiting the people for their money. By theatrics and other means, men have distorted the wonderful Lord and exalted the image of man; all of that is true. But what about looking more closely at ourselves and our motivations? Let us look at our own family. Let us look at our own church where God has set us. Let us look carefully into all of that and see for what purpose, for what reason we are serving.
If our motivation is pure, we are serving because we are one with Him, and we want His life to flow through us. We want to be a blessing. We want to be a channel. We have a pure idealistic love for the Lord, and therefore we serve. Because love enters in, we are not easily offended.
Read again the definition of love in I Corinthians chapter 13. That love is not arrogant, it is not proud, it does not seek its own, it is not puffed up, it does not believe in evil report, it thinks no evil. All of the pure motivations flow out of that love. When you evaluate Babylon and its motivations, and compare that with the motivations of love, you see the difference between the true and the false.
Perhaps it is good that persecution comes against us. It is separating the true from the false, for the false will run. They are hirelings, not shepherds; and when the wolf comes, they flee because they do not have the love for the sheep. The true shepherd will stand and fight off the wolves, as he defends the sheep (John 10:11–15).
What is the situation in the walk? The hirelings are trying to grab all the loot they can. They are selling churches or pulling churches out, buying and selling the souls of men, trying to establish their property rights over a church. Then they run. Watch what God does to these “shepherds.” He gives their sheep into the hands of shepherds after His own heart (Jeremiah 3:15). This must be done. We must see God glorified in His saints (II Thessalonians 1:10–12). We must see the oneness in Christ come forth, instead of an organization or some kind of unity that is based upon human bonds and human personality. That kind of unity must fall apart. God will shake it apart. The Church can be built upon nothing else except oneness in Christ Jesus the Lord.