The New Testament Church was not born of silver-tongued orators. It was not born through the slick preaching of the Gospel such as we have today. It is easy to preach the Gospel today because we no longer have to prove anything. In general, our listeners do not expect signs and wonders following.
All you have to do to be successful now is to be a graduate of a Bible College or Seminary to gather some credentials. You can articulate your first point, your second point, your third point and your conclusion. Interject it with a nice story or two and a little humor and you have it made. If you can talk about your "God-given" gifts and the power of positive thinking and the power of mind over matter, then you are really successful.
I thank God for great preachers and there is no shortage of them. But, slowing and unknowingly the world is going to hell! Why? Because the Church cannot stop the influence of pornogaphy, sin, homosexuality, drugs and other evils.
The demonstration of Power
The New Testament Church was not born through great preaching, nor was it born through the manipulation of people. It was born in a demonstration power.
Jesus said, "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; ..." (Acts 1:8, NKJV).
When the disciples came out of the upper room after they received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, they were staggering under the influence of that power. People said, they, including Peter, were drunk.
Peter stood up and said, "For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: 'And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; ...'" (Acts 2:15 - 17).
When Paul came out of the desert after God overtook him and he was converted on the road to Damascus, he was able to say, ".. I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood" (Gal. 1:16).
He could go into cities and say, "When I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God ..., but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1 Cor 2:1 - 4).
He also said the following:
"... though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless" (Phil. 3:4 - 6).
"But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ" (Phil. 3:7 - 8).
"And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1 Cor. 2:4).
Paul and the other members of the early church shook the political world in which they lived because they had Power. The Church of Jesus Christ was born through a demonstration of apostolic Power.
What do we have today? We have a lot of theory. We have have a lot of theology. We have a lot of doctrine. But we do not have a demonstration of this power.
Jesus Christ is coming back again and the Church will be raptured. And I do not believe that the Church will be raptured in powerless, anemic, compromising, sleeping, unconcerned condition that it is in today.
The raptured Church is the Bride of Christ. It is the Father's reward to His only begotten Son, Jesus, for the great work of redemption accomplished here on earth, for leaving the glories of His abode in heaven and taking on Himself the likeness of sinful flesh, for suffering humilition, rejection and pain in order that He might offer salvation and life to the entire world.
I believe the Church of Jesus Christ will be raptured in an even greater demonstration of power than the tremendous outpouring of God's Spirit and Power in which it was born. The Church was born in Power. There was a mark upon it. There were flames of fire. There were other tongues. There were miracles. there was Power. You can read part, a tiny portion, of the blazing history of the newly born Church in the book of Acts. It is maginficent, tremendous and power packed.
God took a contingent of men and women, ragged, scared, many of them uneducated, unendowed with the treasure of this world and He so ignited their souls with the fire power of heaven that they literally swept their world for Christ.
I believe the final chapter of the Acts of the Holy Spirit and of God's men and women here on this earth has not yet been written! As the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ draws near, the power, the presence, the anointing, the glory, the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the demonstration of power to the world will come forth from the spirit world. It will rest upon, glow within, radiate from, and be manifested through the Body of Christ in an even greater way than the early Church saw it.
This demonstration will become greater and greater, until just before the coming of the Lord a remarkable demonstration of the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ will be spread before the entire world.
The entire world will know that Christ is alive, that He is the Son of God that He came here to this world for a purpose. They will see His power manifested in His people in an irrefutable display of His resurrected might.
Jesus said, "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the word as witness to all the nations, and then the end will come" (Matt. 24:14).
We are in that time of breakthrough, that time of the witness with power.
Reasons why the multitudes followed Jesus
The Bible is very clear; it does not pull any punches. It says openly and honestly exactly why the multitudes followed Jesus.
They followed Him because of the miracles He performed. They followed Him because they saw blind eyes opened, the saw deaf ears unstopped, and they saw the lame walk.
"Then a great multitude followed Him, because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were diseased" (John 6:2).
Jesus knew their thoughts and their desires. He knew why they were following Him. Yet He did not chase them away. He did not rebuke them; He did not send away one person who followed Him for the miracles.
The woman with the issue of blood (Matt. 9:20) ... the blind man who cried out to Him (Luke 18:35 - 43) ... the father with the demon-possed boy whom the disciples could not heal (Mark 9:17 - 29) ... the Syro-Phoenician whoman who put herself in the place of a dog and said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters' table" (Matt. 15:27. ... He never chased one of them away. He healed every one of them. Why? Because Jesus came here for this purpose:
"For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil" (1 Jon 3:8).
Reasons why Jesus came
1. Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost:
Jesus said, ".... for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10).
Jesus come to transform lives - body, soul and spirit.
2. Jesus came to heal the sick and afflicted:
"Wherever He entered, into villages, cities, or the country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged Him that they might just touch the hem of His garment. And as many as touched Him were made well" (Mark 6:56).
He never once told a person it was God's will for him to bear or suffer blindness, deafness, leprosy, lameness, or any other affliction. Jesus had the answer to their problems.
God's healing center - the Church
Ask any Pastor and he will tell you, the Church is the place where you get the right Biblical teaching. You are expected to sit quietly in the pews and listen attentively to what is being taught from the pulpit. Not many Pastors know that God has placed in our hands the keys to effectively witness for Him. It is His desire that every one of His children have a supernatural, Holy Spirit-empowered ministry to the needs of others. One of the needs is healing and health.
What God wants the Church to be and what the Church actually represents often are two very different things. The real purpose often is completely overlooked and many non-essentials are substituted.
The Church too often has become the social center, the recreation center, the supper fellowhip committee center, etc.
These activities may be perfectly well and good in their time and in their place. But it is not God had in mind for the Church. It was not His intended purpose that the Church be a social or recreational center. It is not the task He set for the Body of Christ, which is His Church.
The Church may even be the prayer and Bible study center and still miss God's mark, while deep human needs, sin, sickness, death remain unmet right ouside its door.
The temple Jesus visited had become a trading center, a merchandise center, but Jesus had other plan for it. Even cleansing it, getting rid of the evils that existed there, was only part of that plan. He sent His disciples out with a task to perform.
He said to them: "I will wait here. You go out to the highways and the byways and hedges and everywhere. Bring Me the sick, the lame, the blind, the dumb and the deaf. Go get the needs of the people and bring them into the temple." The temple represents the Church, the Body of Christ. The Church is not a den of thieves. It is a house of prayer, a place of intercession, a place where the people's need must be met by the supernatural power of the living God.
If the Church of Jesus Christ had been true to its task, there would be no need for Bible School or Seminary. There would be no need for gifted evangelists to go into the cities of the world to have healing meetings. Every Church member will work the works of God. But how can the Church go out and heal the world when the majority of the so-called Spirit-filled people sitting in our pews are on pills and medicines and drugs? When so many of them are hospitalized and cannot get deliverance from cancer, blind eyes, deaf ears, sleeping disorder, eating disorder and many other kinds of sickness and afflictions. This is a bad testimony to the lost. They are likely to say, "If these spirit-filled Christians are just like us, sick like us and suffering like us, why should we join their Church?"
Transfomation of Peter
An excellent example of a disciple who caught the vision of working the the works of God was the apostle Peter.
In the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus took Peter with Him and went apart for His times of prayer, what did Peter and the other disciples do while Jesus was praying? They slept (Mark 14:37)!
When Jesus Christ was on trial for His life, what did Peter do? He denied Him three times (Matt. 26:69 - 75)!
Where were Peter and the other disciples when Jesus was hanging on the cross? They were hiding. They would not approach the cross. They were afraid.
Yet in the third chapter of the book of Acts, we find this same Peter, approaching the gate of the temple and encountered a cripple who had been sitting at the gate day after day for many years. He had passed this crippled man on many prior occasions when all he could do was look at him with sympathetic eyes. But this time as Peter and John walked past the crippled man, something seized them and Peter said to this man: "Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk" (Acts 3:6).
He took the crippled man by the hand and lifted him to his feet. Some thing had happen to Peter - he had an experience and he had the keys and the power. The faith that Peter displayed in the healing of the lame man was not tied to some theology he had learned. It was not tied to his understanding or to the words he said. It was tied to reality. He had been to the upper room where he had received something from the touch of God - power and authority. He spoke the Word and the crippled man was healed.
The crippled man and those who were there at the temple did not want further proof that Jesus is a man. They did not want proof that Jesus is not in the grave. They did not want evidence that Jesus Christ lives.
Here is a tremendous example of one man who learned what he must do to work the works of God. I believe, in the Name of Jesus, if it happened to Peter, it can happen to us! Peter had no special man-made qualifications that somehow turned him into a spiritual giant. He was an "ordinary" person, a fisherman. Yet here he was, stepping forth before the Scribes, before the priests and doing the works of God clothed in the authority and power of heaven itself. It can happen to us!
Jesus never sent Peter out without an experience that revolutionized his life and prepared him to meet human needs. In other words, He prepared him to be an actual extension of Christ's life and ministry.
One of the greatest miracles of God is how He can take ordinary, weak, failure-prone, wishy-washy men and women and transform them into powerhouses of dynamic ministry for Himself. He did it with Peter. He did it with James, John and Paul. He did it with other apostles. He can do it with you and me today! He is the same yesterday, today and forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment