Message Title: Meeting to Know and Do the Will of God
It is God's will that this wonderful Christ to be our Head, and our everything. Since God's will is the church, we now need to turn to the meeting of the church.
the definition of the "church" means the assembly. according to the Greek word for "church" is ecclesia, "ecc" means "out", and "lesia" means "called". so the church is the called out ones being together.
when we come to the meetings, we may come to know the will of God, which may not be so clear to us when we are alone by ourselves. Also, the meeting of the church is to do the will of God.
Exodus 5:1 And afterward Moses and Aaron came and said to Pharaoh, Thus says Jehovah the God of Israel, Let My people go that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.
In Exodus, God charged Moses to speak to Pharaoh to let God's people go. while they were in Egypt, they did not have any meetings, but they were slaves to Pharaoh. but now based on the redemption by the passover Lamb, God's people could go and hold a feast to God. the "feast" is not that you eat by yourself. the feast was a gathering of all Israel people, which was a meeting. so God's people were saved, redeemed out of Egypt for the purpose of meeting.
in Leviticus, when they built the tabernacle, the tabernacle was also called the Tent of Meeting. the tabernacle was God's dwelling place. but it was also called Tent of Meeting. so "meeting" and "dwelling place" were inseparable.
after the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea while Pharaoh and his chariots were buried in the sea, in Exodus 15, there is a song of Moses, praising Jehovah. as God's people, the Israel people experienced two marvelous things: the first is salvation, by which they were delivered from Pharaoh and slavery, so that they can have feast, full of singing and rejoicing. in the wilderness, the Tent of Meeting was in the center, surrounded by tents of all Israel people, which indicates that the Tent of Meeting was the center and focus of Israel people. this tells us how important and vital meeting is to believers. the meeting should accompany God's purpose. In the meeting, we come to know what the will of God is. In the meeting, God's will is being done.
I. To meet is to know and do the will of God; our goal, our purpose, on earth is to do the will of the Father, and we do this by coming to the meetings of the church
if we want to know the will of God, if we want to do the will of God, come to the meetings.
II. We need to realize that besides our inner life with the Lord, nothing is as crucial, important, and profitable as the church meetings
in John chapter 20, on the morning of the Lord's resurrection, Mary was crying in the garden tomb, and she got the Lord's appearing to her. Mary wanted to stay there enjoy the Lord, but the Lord told her to go and tell the brothers, which means to go to the meeting. and on that night, while the disciples were having a meeting, the Lord appeared at the meeting and said, "Peace to you."
we, the church, the ekklesia, are called out ones, which means that we no longer belong to the world, that we have been called out by the Lord, into another realm. the church, as indicated by the Greek word ekklesia, is a meeting or an assembly of the called out ones.
III. In the meetings God makes His will known to us
Psalms 73:16 When I considered this in order to understand it, / It was a troublesome task in my sight,
Psalms 73:17 Until I went into the sanctuary of God; / Then I perceived their end.
in this psalm, the psalmist was troubled why the evil unrighteous people were prosperious while the righteous men were suffering. then he went into the sanctuary, where he got the answer. for us today, it is also true. when we go to the meetings of the church, we receive another view, a particular perception, of our situation. God surely has a will, and He also has His way and His timing to carry out His will. when we come to the meetings of the church, we receive the divine revelation and God's way becomes clear to us.
IV. Since the will of God is in Christ, concentrated in Christ, and for Christ, and Christ is everything in the will of God, we do God's will through exhibiting Christ in the meetings
God's will is that in the meetings of the church, we will exhibit the Christ whom we have been experiencing and enjoying.
the will of God for us is that we would experience and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ and live Him as our life.
the concept that we may attend a meeting but are not responsible for the meeting is a fundamental error; it is a ploy of Satan to render the members of the Body of Christ useless so that they do not function. we all have a portion and we all can function in the meetings. we will not let Satan to lie to us and stop our functioning. the meetings are the best opportunities for us to exhibit Christ. Therefore, we need to come to the meetings prepared with some Christ to exhibit. as Christians, we are commissioned to exhibit Christ in the meetings and thus do the will of God.
V. Since the Father's eternal will and the desire of His heart are to build up the church as the Body of Christ, we do His will by functioning in the meetings according to the scriptural way to meet for the building up of the Body.
the meetings of the believers should always be linked to God's New Testament economy; we should be come to the meetings with a vision of the divine economy, and what we speak in the meetings should focus on the economy of God. we need to be governed by the vision, and link our meetings to God's economy. in order to do this, we need o be delivered from the clergy-laity system, which was established by the enemy to annul the function and service of all the members of the Body. we need to advance from just knowing the truth to practicing the scriptural way. the Lord desires the church meetings in mutuality with all functioning for the building up of the Body of Christ. we need to realize that we all have something, and there is no need to compare our portion with someone else. in our human body, we have hands, eyes, and toes, etc. in the same way, in the Body of Christ, we have different members, some may be hands, while some others may be toes, so no need to compare, just be happy with where the Lord has placed us in His Body, and be faithful to the portion the Lord has given us.
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