THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY
Ron Plant
Exodus 26: 15-25; Ephesians 4: 1-7
We referred in the earlier meeting to John’s presentation of the flock of the God, one flock and one Shepherd, and the contrast to Paul’s writings who speaks about the body and the head. The flock seems to particularly refer to the Lord’s care and love for it. It is not presented as organic but presents unity, the flock of God. It is to impress us with the preciousness of what there is for Christ here. The flock is not presented exactly as that which is doing things, or representing God, it is here in his pleasure, here for His care and He loves it. Paul’s presentation of what is collective bears more upon its responsibility and what it is as representative of Himself, and yet it is the same personnel. Scripture is very precious, setting out in different ways how God has to do with us.
We had a remark at recent meetings which has remained with me that what is presented in Romans 12 is the Christian community. You and I might be among the saints and we may appreciate the dignity of being part of the assembly, we may hold the most precious truths and we are thankful for them, thankful for the teaching that we have, we may have a real sense of what the saints are to God and the heavenly inheritance that is theirs, but the practical aspect of all that privilege is that if we believe at all then we form part of the Christian community. I would like to speak about that at this time.
The epistle to Romans is largely individual, but what is presented in Romans 12 is the beginning of the company, the features of the Christian community. Not so much what you get later in the epistles in the way that the assemblies are organised, but the lovely features that come out in what it is to have their sins forgiven, who know what it is to have a real link with the Saviour, persons who know what it is to be so affected by the death of Christ in relation to them that they are moved inwardly, that there must be an answer in them to God’s love that has come out reached them and blessed them where they were. That, I think, is the presentation of the Christian community and, before we talk about the operations and the economy of local assemblies and the way things are to work administratively, I would like to just ask you and myself whether we are conscious of being part of the Christian community, persons who are here, not exactly as their own, not just as members of a congregation, but those who have been affected by the way that God has dealt with them personally. That is my simple impression that we should not – in taking up all the glorious things that we have in the Holy Spirit and all the extent of the truth that is open to us – forget what lies basic to it because if we miss that eventually we will lose the gain of it all. Basic to all that you get in Paul’s teaching the collective side of the truth a company of persons who each have to do with Christ.
Are you one of those? Did you come in that way? Did you start there? Did you begin where Romans begins as conscious of being lost? Lost in trespasses and sin far away from God and given to see how God has come out in Jesus. Has it touched your soul? We need that, it must affect the way I do things. Do not let me be amongst the people of God and certainly not attempting to have anything to do with administration among the people of God unless there is a real sense in my soul of having to do with the Lord Jesus personally and being attracted to Christ, because otherwise I will not represent Him in the sphere where He would have me to operate here at the present time.
So, I think in Romans 12 you get this culmination. What you have in the first five chapters of Romans is God for men, coming out in all His love where there was nothing to call out His love. The gospel in all its fulness, man as a religious creature or as an educated creature, all it says, without exception, have all come short of the glory of God. God has come out freely in Jesus and presented Him as a mercy-seat and there at His throne through the precious work of the Lord Jesus meeting the sinner in grace. Commending His love to all when there was nothing there to merit it, sounding out His gospel that while we were still sinners, Christ has died for us. Romans is presented that way and leads through to a person who is inwardly convicted that they cannot go on as before. God has come out to me in Jesus, who has laid down His life for me, and met all the horror of my sins and my guilty state, given of Himself, justified me, reconciled me, all these wonderful things you get in the teaching of Romans, and there is a moral result in the man. God does not force you to do anything in Romans, God does not make you become a Christian, but the believer says, I cannot go on continuing in the things in which I sinned now that God has come out in me in such a way, I must yield my members and my body as instruments of righteousness to God where before they have been instruments of sin.
Now Romans 12 Paul speaking to believers there does not say I demand you, he says, “I beseech you … by the compassions of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice … which is your intelligent service”. The path of the Christian can no more be the same because His life is totally changed by the way that God has come out to Him in Jesus and His will has now receded and God’s will comes to the fore and he submits himself to the will of God. Then in Romans 12 he finds that he is not alone: that is my point, the Christian community comes to light, he finds that there are others who are there alongside him, and in Romans 12 the company starts to fit together. Are you fitting into the company? Not just as someone who has been brought up in a Christian home and has always known divine things, but as someone who has come the divine way and has appreciated the work of Christ and becomes part of the Christian community which begins to operate in Romans 12. I think what you find is the features that come to light in those who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. They do not do it because they are told to, they do not operate the way they do because that is what is required by others or by the church, they operate that way because God’s love is working in them and they begin to link together. Let us read these things, “Let love be unfeigned; abhorring evil … as to brotherly love, kindly affectioned towards one another; as to honour each taking the lead in paying it to the other; as to diligent zealousness, not slothful; in spirit fervent; serving the Lord. As regards hope, rejoicing: as regard tribulation, enduring: as regards prayer, persevering” and the features that belong to the Christian company start to bind us together. All this lies underneath fellowship. That is the point I am working to, that our fellowship is not based only upon precept and principal, it is based upon affection for Christ and Christ’s affection for me. Beloved brethren do not let that slip ever, because if we do we just develop into what is sectarian.
I have read about the boards of the tabernacle, Romans 12 has been linked with the boards of the tabernacle – God’s dwelling in Exodus. In the scripture we read you get the tabernacle being assembled for God in the wilderness and where we read we have the description of the curtains and the boards. You have the precious things before, chapter 25, the ark, the table and the candlestick, these speak directly of Christ, but when you come to the boards, the curtains and the hangings it may refer to what is of Christ in the saints. The ark of the testimony, the divine dwelling which was to contain the tables of stone, God’s will, had the mercy-seat upon it. Young people I would urge you to look at these things in the scripture, have a look in the tabernacle. The spiritual import is tremendous. It was God’s dwelling in the wilderness and all of it was foreshadowing the coming in of Christ. You get the court of the tabernacle, and in the court of the tabernacle the altar of burnt-offering and the laver and inside in the holy place the table of show bread and the candlestick opposite it and the golden altar and then in the holy of holies was the ark of God and all these things are very suggestive spiritually. Here in Exodus it is being assembled, the divine dwelling, and all speaks of Christ. Then in chapter 26 these precious things were to be protected and the boards were put up and the curtains and the hangings.
The boards of the tabernacle speak of what is of Christ in the saints. Are you interested in these things? All these things that you can find on the computers of this world and all these games and things pale into insignificance with the wonderful detail of what God has arranged and set out in the Holy Scriptures and will let you see, not only in writing, but He will show it to you set out amongst His people. Here is says, “And the boards for the tabernacle thou shalt make of acacia wood, standing up”, they were fifteen feet high, more than twice as high as any of us, two and a half feet wide, these must have been immense structures. They represent Christ in the saints as here as in a position of being surrounding the precious things and providing that which is for its protection and care. Each of the boards was covered in gold and then underneath were the two tenons, the two feet of each board and each of the tenons fitted into the sockets of silver which stood on the desert sand. They are suggestive of the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. Are you a board of the tabernacle? Are you forming part of that which is protective of what is of Christ here, standing in all redemption’s glory? Are you conscious of it? Have you ever tried to put up a structure in the desert? You will find that it is very uneven. What levels things up amongst the saints – the fact that you may be a very intelligent person and I am not, or you have a lot of money and I do not? What levels things up among us is the redemption which is in Christ Jesus so that the basis among the saints is exactly the same everywhere, though the desert sand is uneven, the redemption which is in Christ Jesus puts a level basis to every one of us. The rich, it says, shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less, it is the same price for every one. There were two tenons. Paul says, “he loved me” that is one tenon, and “he gave himself for me”, that is the second tenon, standing there in perfect balance.
Do you, like Paul, have any sense of that? These boards, although they could have stood alone were never intended to stand alone, they stood side by side and you find the second matter that you get here is that there were five bars, five bars to each side connecting them together and one bar which went from one end of the side of the tabernacle to the other and that is a very interesting thing. There were rings in the boards that the bars of the tabernacle were put through and the whole thing was bound together. So what you find is that God has in view that you could stand here alone, but you will not stand here alone because you stand, not only in the sockets of silver, that is redemption, but you stand as bound together with other believers by the bars and the rings in the boards.
It think it has been said that Romans 12 is like putting the rings on the boards, in other words you are lining yourself up to receive the one bar that goes through all of us, the appreciation of the preciousness of Christ that is in us and continually magnified among us by the Spirit of God. These features that are set out Romans 12 are like the rings in the boards of the tabernacle, and suggest how we learn to fit together and how things can be joined together amongst us in the Christian community. It is not only that I have a link with Christ, but I learn to appreciate and make way for others who love Him too. Beloved brethren, I do believe that among the saints with whom we have the privilege to be in fellowship at the present – although difficulties may come from time to time – basically not only do I love the Lord Jesus, but they love Him too. Let us hold to that that the saints want to go on with what is right, they want to move rightly. I want to go along, as it says here, not minding high things but going along with the lowly. It is very fine. You say, I have got to line up myself to connect with my brother. Have you ever thought of twenty boards with a ring and so adjusted that you can feed one bar right the way through? It takes a lot of exercise and a fair bit of work and so it is with fellowship, so it is that we have to work things out. If I am a person who is minding high things I am not going to fit in. It says, “not minding high things but going along with the lowly”.
I would like the brethren to look at this section in Romans 12 where the appeal of the apostle is there towards them all. He says, “I beseech you there, brethren, by the compassions of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice … which is your intelligent service”. All these precious features that come out in these verses that I read is the saints being prepared to receive the bars. Are you like that in your local place? Are you not only prepared to be there individually but prepared to receive the bar that is going to go through that is going to link me to the next believer, and the next and the next, that the whole thing may stand, not only in my links with the Lord Jesus in redemption but stand there held together in the bars that join us all. The Holy Spirit of God would join us together in appreciation for Christ.
I just refer to Ephesians, “keeping the unity of Spirit in the uniting bond of peace”. I think that is a bit like the middle bar that went right the way through. I think the five bars that link the sides of the tabernacle are perhaps like what we are in our local places in our various relations together, but the one bar that goes through I am sure must refer distinctly to the Spirit of God. Here in Ephesians it says, “keeping the unity of the Spirit”, keep it. He says, “with all lowliness and meekness”. I think lowliness is towards God and meekness is towards the saints, keep it that way – “With long suffering, bearing one another in love, using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace”. I would just leave these thoughts with the brethren, you use diligence to keep it. It is a wonderful setting of things in Ephesians. I read about the three circles, the great circle of one God and Father of all who is over all, through all and in us all, that is the greatest circle of all. We all operate there, we are in the centre of that. A wonderful sphere of His dominance, Paul says He is not far from any one of us. Wherever you go in the whole world, whoever you speak to, in whatever situation it may be there is one God and Father of all who is over all, and through all and in us all. That is the wonderful great circle. Within that, we have been taught, you get the circle of one Lord, one faith, one baptism, that really links with Christ and His administration and all that is under His hand, and then you get the circle in the middle, one body and one Spirit and that is where we have our part. We cannot add anything to the great circle of ‘one God and Father of all’, it is there; nor can add anything to the great kingdom side of things that is in Christ, but you and I have a part to play in the Christian community in maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the circle of one body and one Spirit. I would just suggest these things to the saints. Please pardon the frailty of it all, but I am concerned that these basic underlying things might be maintained in affection amongst us, that the great truths that are committed to us might be worked out in their fullness and divine affections might be known flowing and experienced amongst the saints without hindrance. May these things be so, for His Name’s sake.
COLCHESTER
November 2001