Speaker: Zac Poonen
I believe the message we heard last Sunday was one of the most important messages we’ve ever heard in our church. And I’ve been burdened that we in NCCF can take it seriously, keeping the forward vision that the Lord has to be glorified by a faithful, pure and humble church.
I was challenged especially from 2 Timothy 2:2 to see how clearly Paul had this passion - a “4 generational burden” for the Lord’s church - to see Paul had such a burden for the Lord’s church, and to see that the heart that wants to glorify the Lord is looking forward down the road for a long lasting and preserved testimony the Lord can have from His church.
2 Timothy 2:2
- “The things which you have heard from me” = 1st generation (Paul) passing to 2nd generation (Timothy),
- “entrust to faithful men” = 3rd generation
- "who will teach others” = 4th generation
MY TESTIMONY
I just wanted to share a short testimony from my own life about how God opened my eyes to have a burden for the local church (as opposed to a general “universal church” burden) which I didn’t have before.
Many years ago, perhaps when I was a late teenager, I started listening to a Bible teacher who was preaching some of the New Covenant, he was in Southern California. This was before I heard Brother Zac.
The Lord was stirring my heart as he preached on overcoming sin, and many good emphases. I learned that God's emphasis was not just salvation and saving the lost but to build up His people into a mature man, and grow in righteousness and Christlike character (inwardly), to all the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4:13).
But some years later, this preacher passed away, and I was shocked to learn that after he passed away his church disbanded pretty much immediately. The denomination they were a part of took the building and gave it to someone else, and so that church just stopped meeting and everyone went their own ways. This is the usual thing it seems when the church has missed the truth of the functioning and power of God’s Spirit working in a local church body, and I've witnessed this same type of thing happen several times over the years. I may be wrong but as best as I can tell that’s what happened in this case as well.
I started listening to Brother Zac in my early 20s and I felt blessed to have a more complete and practical teaching on this new covenant life I was trying to live: of pressing into Jesus, fighting my sin for an overcoming life, and seeking to live in the power of the Holy Spirit. But there was one other thing which I did not receive before that: the truth of the local church body.
I saw that this previous brother who was preaching, had a powerful calling - but I believe that he missed that, and so the church wasn’t able to stand after he passed away. He preached that we seek the Lord individually to be built up as a mature man in Christ. Which is right, but I saw it loses a lot of the power because an emphasis on only individual life with perhaps a 'Universal church mindset’ really makes it more of an individual-only truth, rather than having all the full function and power of the local church.
Individuals walking alone can never come into the depths of maturity, and strength, and Christ-likeness as when they are walking in a functioning local body of Christ. Eph 4:11-12 says this clearly: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.”
Martin Luther used a phrase, that just as one person can jump around from house to house and have no home:
“The one who dwells everywhere dwells nowhere."
A mind which is “generally” committed to the universal church only is not really committed to Christ’s body on earth at all. "Those who dwell everywhere, and remain in no place, dwell nowhere, and have no home."
Ultimately, experiences and examples do not determine truth, though. So I asked myself one thing: what does the Scripture say?
And of all the mention of the church in the New Testament: the vast, vast majority of it refers to a functioning LOCAL church.
If God's goal is that we would be built up into the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4:13), then one who neglects the local church may end up building up a hundred other people a little bit (and built up a little by each one), but really cannot go deeply into building up a group of people very deeply to all the FULLNESS of Christ, and also will be limited in DEPTH of how much they can grow in Christ through the ministry of others.
Jesus focused on building up just a handful of people over 3 years to build them up. Paul is known as an evangelist, but he didn't roam around all over constantly - he stayed for YEARS in places building up a local group of committed Christians to maturity in Christ until the Lord led him other places (eg Acts 20:31). He admonished the Corinthians that he was jealous not just to see them saved but to present them as a pure virgin to Christ (2 Corinthians 11:2).
I believe the devil has 'abstracted away' the power of the New Covenant local church body by making sincere Christians believe that the "Universal Church" is the only real church they should worry about. And so the Christian can have their eyes moving all over looking for "what should I do next?" For example, looking to missions, or all the lost people around them - all the while neglecting the DEPTH-building ministry of the local church.
Or even if they are committed to one local church - to focus on external works of service rather than building up others to a “mature man” of Christ via the prophetic word (1 Corinthians 14:3-4, 31).
AN ILLUSTRATION
Consider how someone works at their job versus how they live with their family. At a workplace, people can get pretty good relationships. But people are forever in and out, coming and going, looking here and there. They make some friends, and help each other, etc. But it's a family who has the depth of love to care for each other and commit to each other, and know each other deeply, and help build each other up - looking out for each other's long term good; and even the “next generation” of children, grandchildren, etc.
And spiritually - the local church is like a family, but love in Christ goes even further than a natural family: they are committed to building each other up for the mutual eternal spiritual good of each other (this is what real love is); to see each other not just saved but coming to maturity and a strength in Christ that has the power to overcome and defeat Satan, to stand strong following the Lord in faith through all trials in life, and to raise godly families for the glory of God.
The local church is where the gifts of the Spirit function. Evangelists traveling around the world to preach is a good and important ministry. It helps add to the 'universal' body of Christ. But what happens after that?
I saw that a church which has only a shallow appreciation for the local church, will be so limited in how much they can build each other up in Christ’. And it won’t last.
People can call us 'exclusive' or ‘strict’ or 'radical’, but the fruit will be shown after years and decades (and has been shown in the examples we've seen in those local fellowships in CFC who have endured and gone on before us).
I believe the neglect of the local church body is one of the main ways the devil in our generation is trying to limit the progress in Christ of sincere believers, who want to grow deeper into Christ.
THE CULTURE
The culture is part of this influence, which teaches: "You are free to do as you want. So you deserve privacy. Your business is your own. ‘Good fences make good neighbors’. Just choose a church with decent messages where they don’t disturb you too much from how you want to do things, and you can come and go as you please, but let there be some type of fence/boundary there so you keep your own ‘freedom’." But this is not the church, because it's not what the Bible teaches.
A true local church will be persecuted, ridiculed; family or friends or others may look down on it, it may have the honor of bearing some reproach. But it is the Lord’s vessel to bring us to the deepest and most overcoming life we can live in its fullness with the Lord on this earth and bring Him glory with our life and fellowship, and make us truly one in Christ.
CONCLUSION
We’ve been given a treasure which very, very few (even sincere believers) ever have experienced. I’m burdened from what we heard on Sunday that we are faithful with the treasure and calling God has given us. And that we can pass this on to the next generation as well - and have the same “4 generational” burden that Paul had (2 Tim 2:2).
May the Lord help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to do this.