THE ASSEMBLY AS THE PLACE OF TRUE EDIFICATION (ADDRESS)
[p. 175] THE ASSEMBLY AS THE PLACE OF TRUE EDIFICATION (ADDRESS)
What is before me tonight, beloved friends, is to say a little, as the Lord may help me, about the assembly as the place where our souls are edified. It is a very blessed thing for us to consider that God has provided us with a home in this world. If we have been brought to know the Lord Jesus as the One who was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification, so that we have peace with God through Him, God would have us to know that there is a place for His saints in this world, and that place is the assembly.
If we look round us in the religious world we see all kinds of sects and parties, and they all profess to be right, and they all have some scripture to allege as proof that they are right. But we do not find in Scripture that it was either God’s mind that His saints should be isolated individuals or that they should be found in sects of their own choosing. What we find in Scripture is that God has an assembly; Paul addressed the Corinthians as the church or assembly of God, and all through his epistle he takes it for granted that they would come together in assembly because they loved one another. Now, beloved friends, we have to recognise the fact that we are called by God’s grace to have a place in God’s assembly, not in any sect but in God’s assembly.
It is important for us to realise the great dignity of this place. James says in Acts 15: 14 that God has “visited to [p. 176] take out of the nations a people for his name”; that is God’s assembly. I should like everyone to see that it is a fact that God has an assembly; He has visited the gentiles to take out of them a people for His name — not for any other name, but for God’s name. The way that Scripture presents the assembly is as the home for all believers and as the place where saints are edified. It is before me to speak a little about the assembly as the place where edification is found — where we get spiritually built up and enlarged, and where we grow by the knowledge of God. It seems pretty plain that at Corinth they had lost the idea of being God’s assembly and therefore they had lost the secret of edification, and that is very much the case at the present time. If believers do not know what it is to belong to God’s assembly they will not know much about true edification. If saints go on for ten, twenty or thirty years and never grow spiritually or get spiritually enlarged, it is evident that they have lost the secret of edification.
It is remarkable that eleven chapters of this epistle pass by before the apostle begins to speak on the subject of spiritual manifestations; that is, before he alludes to those activities of the Spirit in the assembly which work for the edification of the saints. Now what are these eleven chapters taken up with? Well, it seems to me that the apostle lays down the lines on which all true edification must come. If we preach and talk one to another without knowing what we are about, instead of there being edification there will be disorder, and the saints will be diminished instead of enlarged. The apostle first lays down the lines upon which all true edification must proceed. Four things come out in the previous eleven chapters; and it is along the lines of these four things that all true edification proceeds. The first is the grace of God, the second is the faithfulness of God, the third is the [p. 177] presence of the Holy Spirit and the fourth is the love of Christ.
If you turn to chapter 1, verse 4 he says, “I thank my God always about you, in respect of the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus; that in everything ye have been enriched in him” and so on. And in verses 30 and 31, of the same chapter, “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who has been made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness, and redemption; that according as it is written, He that boasts, let him boast in the Lord”. If we do not understand the grace of God, we shall not have our faces in the right direction for edification. The apostle gives thanks that the grace of God had been given to the saints in Christ Jesus; in everything they were enriched in Him. Now that gives the soul an entirely new starting point; God has come out to us according to the grace that is set forth in Christ Jesus. God has enriched us with the grace that is found embodied in a risen and glorified Man. That is God’s starting point. Very often we think of everything from our side, and we think of the death of Christ as the climax, but the death of Christ was God’s way, not God’s end. He sent His Son into this world — “come of woman, come under law” — that He might accomplish redemption, that He might bear our sins, that He might come under death and judgment for us, so that He might close up our history as in the flesh by the sacrifice of Himself.
Beloved Christian, let me assure you that your history according to the flesh, with all the sins and imperfections that attached to it, was closed up sacrificially when Christ died upon the cross.
But then, as I said, that was God’s way, it was not God’s end. God did not stop, if I may say so, at Calvary. His beloved Son was taken down from the cross and put [p. 178] in the grave, and on the morning of the third day He was raised by the glory of the Father, and as a risen, glorified Man He sat down in His Father’s throne. He was set down at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, and God’s glory in supreme grace shines forth in Him. Now that is the starting point of christianity. God comes out to us in all the grace of that glorified Man. God has opened a new volume of grace and glory by setting His beloved Son at His own right hand, and God’s grace is given to us in Him. The knowledge of this gives the believer a good start. Many a person knows his sins are forgiven but his heart is upon the earth still. God wants to lift our souls by the mighty power of His grace up to the level of that blessed glory-crowned Man at His right hand. God has achieved the great thought of His heart and has glorified His grace in the person of His beloved Son, and that is the grace that He gives to His saints. This is a good start. God would start each of us with the sense that our grace and our blessing are in a heavenly Christ “who has been made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness, and redemption; that according as it is written, He that boasts, let him boast in the Lord”, 1 Corinthians 1: 30, 31. God has filled us with material for boasting, because we are enriched in a risen and heavenly Christ. Do you know what it is to be enriched in a heavenly Christ? You may say, ‘I do not understand that; I know that He died for me and I believe He is risen’. But it is in a glorified One that we are enriched.
Then along with the grace of God you get the preaching of the cross. There are two things the apostle speaks of in the first chapter of this epistle. He speaks of the preaching of Christ and he speaks of the preaching of the cross. It is easy to see that God’s grace has come to us in that risen, glorified Man, and it is on the ground of the cross in which is set forth the entire rejection of man after [p. 179] the flesh. The reason why christians do not enter into the true blessing of grace is because they are not prepared to accept the way of the cross; they are not prepared to accept that man in the flesh must be altogether set aside. The flesh must go from before God in the holy judgment of the cross. If we are conscious that we are enriched in the Man that is at God’s right hand we shall be prepared to listen to the word of the cross, which tells how man in the flesh has been set aside in the death of Christ. I am pointing this out to show the line on which souls get edified. I do not think the Corinthians were on that line at all, but the apostle seeks to put them on the true line of the grace of God and the cross. That is the first thing.
Now the second point is the faithfulness of God. Paul says, “God is faithful, by whom ye have been called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord”, 1 Corinthians 1: 9. In chapter 10, verse 13 he says, “No temptation has taken you but such as is according to man’s nature; and God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above what ye are able to bear, but will with the temptation make the issue also, so that ye should be able to bear it”. There you get an explicit statement of the faithfulness of God. It is very wonderful that the apostle should speak of the faithfulness of God to the Corinthians. They had entirely broken down under the grace of God. In the light and blessing of God’s grace they had proved themselves a complete failure. The apostle was going to let the light of God shine in upon them, but before he does so he lays it down as the impregnable rock of blessing that God is faithful. It is an immense thing for us to see this. I suppose we have all felt more or less how we have failed under the grace of God. We have been made to feel how very little we have answered to it, how little we have walked here in the joy and power of grace and in the light [p. 180] of the cross. We have all had to feel that we have broken down under grace. What is going to be the mainstay, pillar and resource of our hearts if it is not the faithfulness of God? It is only God’s faithfulness that keeps us in this day of ruin and departure. In the wilderness the children of Israel broke down under the grace of God and what was the resource? The resource in that day was the faithfulness of God: Joshua and Caleb clung to the faithfulness of God; they said, as it were, ‘We may have broken down, but God has not broken down; God has not given up His thought; God has not forsaken His purpose. If the Lord delight in us He will bring us in’.
The faithfulness of God is an impregnable rock in the midst of man’s breakdown and the confusion of christendom. We have to turn to God. What marks the true saint is that he clings to the faithfulness of God. He is willing to admit his own failure and breakdown and that everything that has been put into man’s hand has come to ruin but he clings to this, that God is faithful.
You remember in 2 Timothy, when the apostle is speaking of all the disorder that has come in, he says, “Yet the firm foundation of God stands”. God is faithful to His own thoughts and purposes; He is faithful to what is in His own mind and He is not going to give up the blessing of His saints; He is not going to be thwarted.
But we do not get the comfort of this unless we are walking in holy separation from the world of evil. God has called us to a holy fellowship. “God is faithful, by whom ye have been called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord”. God is not only faithful to His eternal purposes — but that is only one side of it — but He is faithful to His eternal principles. Immediately after it says that “the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal, The Lord knows those that are his”, we read, “Let [p. 181] every one who names the name of the Lord withdraw from iniquity”. No one has the comfort of God’s faithfulness except as he acts on God’s principles.
This is a very important point, because we should all like to have the comfort of God’s faithfulness. I do not suppose there is any christian but would like this. Well, if we want the comfort of God’s faithfulness we shall have to act on God’s principles. God has called us to the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and if we are true to that fellowship it involves being found in the fellowship of Christ’s death. We get that in chapter 10.
There is a broad line of separation between the christian company and the world. There is nothing more pitiful than to see christians creeping as near to the world as they can get. It has been said that there are many Christians who want as much of the world as they can get with a good conscience. But if our hearts were right it would not be a question of how near we could get to the world, but how far we could get away from it. We have to remember that God called us to be a separate people, and the measure of our separation cannot be anything less than this, that Christ has died here. The cross of Christ has come between the christian and this world.
Now, beloved friends, are we afraid of the cross and death of Christ? Do you know that if God puts the cross, the death of Christ, between us and the world, it is not to deprive us of anything that is good, but it is to preserve us from the contamination of the world? You may depend upon it, beloved young christian, that though the world puts on a pleasant smile for you, and has all kinds of interesting things to put before you, there is great contamination in it, and you cannot touch it without being hindered and damaged. You do not want what is of man if you are in the light and joy of what is of God. God has [p. 182] treasured up His own purpose in Christ and He is not going to be turned aside, but to have the joy and comfort of this we must come out and be separate. If we do not leave those religious associations that carry the stamp of man upon them, we shall not get the full comfort and joy of knowing the faithfulness of God. It is the man who acts on God’s principles who gets the comfort of God’s faithfulness.
I pass on to the third thing, the presence of the Spirit of God. Let us read chapter 3, verse 16, “Do ye not know that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any one corrupt the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, and such are ye”, and in chapter 6, verses 15 - 17 it says, “Do ye not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then, taking the members of the Christ, make them members of a harlot? Far be the thought. Do ye not know that he that is joined to the harlot is one body? for the two, he says, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit”. Now we come to another great fact in christianity. We not only know God in grace and know Him in faithfulness, but we are the temple of God, because the Spirit of God dwells in us. Many a man who has the Spirit has never come to the recognition of that great fact. You will notice how the apostle says three or four times, “Do ye not know?” He did not mean simply, ‘Are you aware of the fact?’ but ‘Have you really recognised the fact?’ We all believe that christians have the Spirit; we hold it as part of our creed, but it is a wonderful moment in the history of a soul when he comes to recognise that he has the Spirit. God’s Spirit dwells in us and in that way we become the temple of God collectively, and our bodies become the members of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit.
There are two very great things in connection with the [p. 183] temple of God: the grace of God and God’s faithfulness — the two things we have seen alluded to in chapter 1. If you refer to 1 Kings 8 you will find in King Solomon’s prayer that these two things characterise the temple. It was the place where God’s name was set up in testimony, so that God’s loving-kindness was available for every nation. That is one great thought of the temple of God and the other is the witness of His faithfulness. Now that is what the saints are in this world. They are the living shrine of God’s testimony, and from them there goes out into this world the testimony of God’s loving-kindness, God’s grace to men. That is one side of it, and then on the other side there is found there the witness that God is faithful. God has brought to pass all His thoughts and all His purposes; He has fulfilled the counsel of His love. He has brought His people into the land. He has established them there and has made them His temple, so that they can be in testimony for Himself. Are we prepared to recognise that we are here for God’s pleasure and for God’s praise?
In chapter 6 he says, “Your bodies are members of Christ”. We are joined to the Lord, we are one Spirit with the Lord at God’s right hand. What kind of sanctification will suit those who are joined to the Lord? Will a man joined to the Lord get as near to the world as he can? Not a bit of it, he will get as far from it as he can. I ask every young christian here: Would you not like to keep a place for Christ in this world? Christ has been rejected, and when He went away He said to His servants, “Occupy till I come”. He said, ‘Keep a place for me till I come back’. Now Christ is away from this world and He has left us here to keep a place for Him, and where is it? It is in these bodies. It says, “Your bodies are members of Christ”. The only place that Christ has in this world is in the bodies of His saints. The only witness for Christ in [p. 184] this world comes out through the bodies of the saints. “Your bodies are members of Christ”. What a privilege to be entrusted to keep something for Christ here in this world! To keep ourselves pure, separate, detached from this world, to hold ourselves so apart from the flesh that Christ can be expressed in these mortal bodies.
I have often thought about those mighty men of David spoken of in 1 Chronicles 11: 13, 14. When the Philistines came there was a little piece of a field with some barley in it, and it is recorded that those men stood up against the Philistines and delivered it. And God said it was a great deliverance — a little piece of a barley field! It was a bit of God’s land and they held it for God, and it was a great deliverance. You have got your little bit of a field — that body that is a member of Christ. It is not your own: you have been bought with a price and you have to hold that bit for Christ. We have to hold ourselves for Christ and for God in this world.
Now there is another thing I want to speak of, and that comes out in chapter 11, verses 23, 24. “For I received from the Lord, that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was delivered up, took bread, and having given thanks broke it, and said, This is my body, which is for you: this do in remembrance of me”. I read that scripture because it seems to me that the great thing that comes out in connection with the Lord’s supper is divine love. And I do not know anything that has power to subdue what is of the flesh like divine love. The Corinthians were going on with the outward act of eating the Lord’s supper, but it is very clear that it had ceased to be to them the voice of divine love, so they were not subdued, they were not lowly in heart. They were eating the Supper in a merely external way, without being really in the presence of divine love.
I suppose all christians have an instinctive feeling that [p. 185] there is something peculiarly blessed and holy about the Lord’s supper. There are three things expressed in the very fact that we come together to eat the Supper, and the first is that the Lord loves His saints. The bread and the cup speak of that in which His love has found its most profound and blessed expression; He loves His saints. And the second thing is that His saints love Him. The Lord’s supper is the most simple thing conceivable; if you look at it from a natural point of view it is a company of people come together to break bread and to drink of the cup; but what makes it so great and blessed is that there is a company here of those who love the One who died. It is by His death that He has put the seal of His love for ever on our hearts. And the third thing is that they love one another. These are the three great things that centre in the Lord’s supper. The Lord loves His saints, and His saints love Him, and they love one another. It is a circle of love.
We do not learn divine love by reading about it, or hearing about it, or even by praying about it. We learn divine love in the circle where it is at home, and when the Lord brings His own together to eat His supper, He binds their hearts to Himself and to one another in the immediate presence of His living love. It is there we learn divine love. And the effect is we are subdued, humbled, and profound self-judgment is brought about. When I think of myself according to the flesh, what am I? I am Judas, I am the man that is not a bit affected by the love of Christ. There was a man who did not care a bit about the love of Christ, and the flesh in you and me does not care any more about the love of Christ than Judas did. He was insensible to the love of Christ. But if we have been born of God and have been brought into the circle of grace and been taught of God, we become very sensitive to the blessed love of Christ, and He brings us to the [p. 186] Supper in order to bring us under the influence of that love. The effect is that we are formed in the blessed character that is spoken of in chapter 13 of this epistle.
Now the apostle can speak about spiritual manifestations, and in chapters 12 and 14 he speaks about the action of the Spirit in the assembly by which souls would be edified. What I wanted to suggest was that the line on which edification proceeds is laid down in the previous part of the epistle. We have to be built up in the knowledge of God’s grace and God’s faithfulness. We have to be brought to recognise the moral consequences of the Spirit of God being here. We have to be built up in the consciousness of divine love, the love that has been expressed in the death of Christ and is continually brought afresh to our hearts in the Lord’s supper. This is the line of edification, and the result would be that we are all bound together and consider one another in love, just as in the natural body every member serves all the other members in unselfish love. There is not a single member of your body that has the least bit of selfishness about it.
If danger threatened your head, every other member of the body would come to the rescue without considering its own safety at all. There is perfect unselfish love in the members of the natural body, and in the same way with the body of Christ. The saints are bound together in the knowledge of the grace of God and His faithfulness, and in all that subsists here in the power of the Spirit and in the knowledge of divine love. If God’s people were bound together in the knowledge of these things they would be delivered from the miserable selfishness that belongs to the flesh. Paul could tell the Corinthians that they were the body of Christ. Well then, if that is the case let it be manifested. The result would be that the whole body bound together would be nourished, ministered to, and would edify itself in love.
[p. 187] God has furnished us with a circle where we can find edification. I would like the youngest believer here to remember that God has called us to have a place in His assembly, and in God’s assembly the things that are prominent are all of God. Everything that is prominent in God’s assembly must be of God — His grace, His faithfulness, His love. We may get into this circle as very little babes, knowing very little about either God’s grace, or His faithfulness, or His love. But we come there to grow and every influence that we find in God’s assembly helps us to understand better His grace, His faithfulness and His love. God’s assembly has not been taken away from this earth and every influence in that assembly tends to help and edify. There are distinctions of gifts, of services and of operations (1 Corinthians 12: 4 - 6), but everything that is in God’s assembly tends to make His grace and His faithfulness and His love greater realities to our hearts. Thus we are built up in the knowledge of God, we serve one another in unselfish love, and in that way the body edifies itself.
I trust each one may consider this subject more fully, that we may all find more [p. 189] the reality of the assembly as the place of true edification.