BELIEVERS' MEETINGS AND THE CHURCH OF GOD
BELIEVERS’ MEETINGS AND THE CHURCH OF GOD
A ‘believers’ meeting’ is a company of believers who rejoice in their salvation, and they come together without the intervention of any ordained ministry, praise the Lord for His grace to themselves. They neither expect nor think of the presence of the Lord in their midst; they are not gathered to His name.
Now, while I admit that they are earnest and true yet they do not rise much above the pious in christendom who go to a place of worship to record their thanks to God for their salvation: they do not get beyond their own blessing, and their love for the Lord does not go beyond the knowledge of His work. They are not drawn to Him personally. If they were, nothing could satisfy them but to get near Himself. Hence they are not really as far on in soul as a devoted saint under the old dispensation, before the grace of God that brings salvation had appeared, for in those times we find one saying, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple”, (Psalm 27: 4). How much more should it be so now that we are brought into such nearness as reconciled to God! Nothing could satisfy the heart which knows the love of Christ personally but the sense of His [p. 312] presence. Therefore He says when leaving His own, “I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you”, John 16: 22. This was fulfilled in John 20: “Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord”, and there (verse 20) we get the pattern of the church in its chief characteristics.
Now I turn to the church of God, and I see that what devoted hearts under the law desired, and which could then only be known in the cloud of glory (see Psalm 63: 2; Psalm 132) is now through the Spirit known by the realised presence of a Person - the presence of the Lord Himself, for He says, “I will not leave you orphans, I am coming to you”. (John 14: 18) It is there we learn our full nearness to Christ Himself: “In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you”, John 14: 20.
Now the question is, how do we get to know His presence? In 1 Peter 2 I see that the one who has had a taste of His grace (”If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious”) comes to Him as the living Stone, disallowed of men, and is thus a component part of the structure where He is found. “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ”. 1 Peter 2: 5.
Now in Matthew 14 we find in pattern how the step - coming to Him as the living Stone - is taken. Peter in leaving the ship and walking on the water to go to Jesus is taught the step by which we can reach the Lord at the other side of death; and this is really coming to Him as the living Stone. What we get in John 6 occurred at the same time as that in Matthew 14, showing the power by which this step is taken. To be with Him on the other side of death we must be in His life as we see in John 20, and for this we appropriate His death as in John 6.
[p. 313] In the Hebrews where Christ is presented as the greater than Moses and the greater than Aaron, we are not only drawn away from the earth to Him because of His sympathy with our own infirmities, but we have boldness to enter into the holiest, and to be there in company with Him in all the blessedness of His own perfection in the presence of God. It is there we learn that He is greater than Moses and greater than Aaron, and then He declares the Father, as He says in Hebrews 2: 12: “I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee”, so that we learn that the church is not merely the place to celebrate our own enjoyment, but it is the place where we know His present mind and His interest here on earth, as He is pleased to make them known to hearts delighting in His presence; and we are practically brought into moral correspondence with His mind because of nearness to Himself. This is the greatest favour which love can confer, as well as the proof of His confidence.
Matthew 18: 20 shows how the Lord would vouchsafe His presence with even two or three who belong to the church (He says in verse 19 “If two of you”) if gathered to His name. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst”. (Matthew 18: 20) His presence could not be known without transforming you into His mind. So that we see the truth of the church is not realised in a meeting of believers come together merely to record their own blessings, for the church is the house of God where God’s present mind is to be known: as we see from the days of the tabernacle in the wilderness, where His presence was known in a cloud of glory: but how much more manifestly now by the Holy Spirit who glorifies the Lord.
Scarborough,