Here's an outtake from an old sermon I clicked on tonight and thought was pretty concise:
The way you
meet isn’t the issue. Whether you meet in someone’s home or you meet in a
building, that’s all a matter of a form following a function; you’ve got to
have light to start with. You don’t build a box and say, “Hey, Lord, jump in
the box.”
We used to have a Bible conference in a famous Roman Catholic monastery in Pennsylvania and somebody complained, “You guys are up there among all those idols.”
We met in an auditorium that had all these idols and the “stations of the Cross,”
and some people thought we shouldn’t be there. Brother Darryl Mefford said, “You
know, I remember Paul preaching among the idols.” The building was nothing to
us; it was just a nice place to meet.
How did it
all get to that? Ephesians 3: [2] If ye have heard of the dispensation
of the grace of God which is given me to youward:
You see, the real
problem, the real blunder is a failure to HEAR about Paul being your apostle.
The real failure is the failure to recognize the importance and place of the
ministry and the message committed to the Apostle Paul.
Because when
you don’t understand that, you don’t understand ANYTHING about what God’s doing
today.
[3]
How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in
few words,
[4] Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery
of Christ)
[5] Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it
is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;
Notice, this
is an issue about what’s in the Bible; what you read in the Scripture.
There was a
time in your Bible that the information that Paul’s revealing wasn’t there.
[9]
And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the
beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus
Christ:
From the time
God put man on the earth to the time of the Apostle Paul, there’s information
that God never told anybody and had hid in Himself. Not hid in the Scripture;
hid in Himself.
When Paul
came along, the Lord Jesus Christ revealed to him some information that had not
previously been revealed. That means that where you study in your Bible . . . Listen,
if you’re always back over in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John looking for God’s
will for you, you know what? You can take a flashlight and a blow torch and
never find it! Because it is not located in those books!
By the way,
every one of the 13 books of Paul's begin with his name. Thirteen times the first
word God wants you to read is Paul. Think about that.
I Corinthians
11:1: [1] Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.
Paul says, “If
you want to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, you follow me because I’m His
spokesman.” He’s saying, “Be followers of my doctrine.”
I’m convinced
that I Corinthians 11:1 and Romans 11:13 are not in most preachers’ Bibles. At
least they’re not in their vocabulary.
Romans 11:13:
[13] For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the
Gentiles, I magnify mine office:
We teach you
to ask the crunch question: “Has anybody ever loved you enough to ask you, ‘If
you were to die today do you know where you’d spend eternity?’ ”
Do you know
most people have never been loved enough to be asked that question? If you ask
it that way, you won’t generally get somebody being angry at you because people
aren’t used to people loving them.
I was in an airport once waiting for a delayed airplane and sat next to a man going to Detroit
like I was and after we had a little bit of a conversation, I asked him that question.
He looked at
me for probably 15 seconds and then said, “That is a strange question.” He
said, “Mister, nobody’s ever loved me enough hardly to ever even talk to me
about (anything spiritual), much less ask me that.”
You know, there’s another crunch question to ask people once you know the answer to that one: “Do you have any idea who your apostle is?” That’s probably the second most important question you can ask somebody. “Where do you go to get your instructions from God?”
Israel went to Moses. Jesus told them, "What Moses commanded you." Now, it was God through Moses who commanded. In fact, Jesus Christ was Jehovah who gave the law to Moses.
And when Jesus is here on earth in His human flesh, He says, "What Moses commanded you." Now, Moses never said, "It's me." He said, "God put me in this position and made me the law giver."
Paul says, "It isn't me, but there's something God gave to me and I speak to you Gentiles because I am the apostle of the Gentiles."
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