Assembly truth

I have pasted in the front of my Bible a verse, this is from 2 Peter chapter 1 in verse 12. We're not going to read that, I'd want you to read that, I'm just going to refer to the verse. Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though you know them and be established in the present truth.

So whenever I open my Bible, I'm reminded of that verse. Hebrews chapter 13, and we will read verse 13. Hebrews chapter 13 and verse 13.

Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. I'm going to take you over to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. 1 Corinthians chapter 1, and we'll read verse 1. Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sassanaeus our brother unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours. I just want to notice the expression at the first part of verse 2, unto the church of God which is at Corinth.

And that's all that we're going to read. I would like to remind you of some things that are commonly believed amongst us, but in light of the scriptures I referred to in 2 Peter, you will understand why that is really not a difficulty with me, to remind you of things that you commonly believe. When the apostle Paul went into the city of Corinth and preached the gospel, souls were saved.

There was an assembly planted, gathered, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. When he reached back to the Corinthians, he reminds them now that there were three entities in Corinth. So in chapter 10 and verse 32 of that chapter, he reminds them that there was the Jew, and the Gentile, and the church of God.

And that's all that there was in Corinth. Just the three entities, the Jew, the Gentile, and the church of God. Some of those Jewish people in Corinth, when they listened to the gospel, were saved.

And then they were faced with a difficulty. Because their life centered upon the synagogue in Corinth. That was their culture.

That was their life. That's where their friends were. That's where they associated.

That's where their social life was relative to that synagogue in Corinth. But now they're saved. And the synagogue becomes a difficulty to them.

If you were to go back to chapter 19 of the book of Acts, and probably about verse 7, we would read that Paul separated the disciples from the synagogue. There's no record in the book of Acts from that point on that Paul ever went back to the synagogue. In chapter 9 of the gospel of John, the man who was blind, who had his sight restored, was put out of the synagogue.

There was no room for Christ in the synagogue. And so now these Jewish people who are saved have a difficulty. Where are they going to go? The only alternative for them was the church of God, which was at Corinth.

They had no other alternative. That meant a change in their life. That meant that the man now who covered his head in the synagogue would not cover his head.

And it is likely since we have observed where we live, probably a good number of synagogues not too far from our house, women walking down the street with no covering on their head, but now Paul is telling them they will cover their head. And so as they make their way towards the place where the assembly met, because we are told in this epistle that the assembly met in one place, they would be the subject of scorn, laughter, mockery, rebuke from their fellow Jewish people because they have turned their back upon everything that was supposed to be dear and precious to them. And their only recourse was to go on to him without the cap, bearing his reproach.

They had no other alternative. The Gentile in Corinth who was saved was an idolater before he was saved. There were a number of idolatrous temples in Corinth.

One of them on the height of ground, a little bit of a mountain, not much, called the Acro-Corinth, which was 1,800 feet above sea level. And on the top of the Acro-Corinth, there was a temple. It was an idol's temple.

It was a temple of a paschal type. The remains of that temple are still there. But that was a very wicked place.

That was a place of immorality. You have a word in your dictionary, likely you could find it, called to Corinthianize. To Corinthianize is to practice idolatry, to practice immorality.

And so the Corinthian Gentile that was saved would bow before an idol. They would feast before the idol. They would pray to the idol.

They would worship the idol. That could do nothing for them. After they are saved, they can't go back to that idol's temple.

That's an evil place. So their only alternative was to go forth, therefore, onto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. That would cost them.

They lost their friends. That was their way of life in the idol's temple, but that would be no more. They've turned their back upon that temple.

That applies today. Fully today, as it did in the city of Corinth. Let us go, therefore, onto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.

I read that statement in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 2, the church of God, which is at Corinth. That's not likely I'm going to say a lot that's new to many here. But you know that that word church is a word, ecclesia, made up of two parts, eke out of, and kaleo, calling, a calling out of.

It's a calling out of the world. That's going onto him without the camp, bearing his reproach, in separation from the world. That word church in our Bible, ecclesia, is translated church 112 times.

But three times in Acts chapter, I think, 19, it's translated assembly. I understand that it's a secular assembly, but the word assembly maybe has more significance than the word church. In fact, with the people that I have been working with, the word church is a building, but not in the Bible.

The word church is a gathered out company of believers, gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The origin of the assembly is the heart of God himself. It's come from God, not designed by men, not established by men, but it comes from God.

I think we have been reminded already that it is purchased by the precious blood of Christ, which he has purchased with the blood of his own. And the purpose in a dark, evil world, in the city of Corinth, in the world today, is that an assembly stands as a golden lampstand, not only relative to the gospel, but relative to the truth of God. It is a place that is very unique.

I hope that those of us who are in assembly fellowship understand and grasp the truth that there is no place on this earth like an assembly of God. We do believe that God has one way of salvation, do we not? Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved. And the God who has one way of salvation has one way for his saints to gather.

And that one way is found in the word of God. The assembly of God is a very unique place. And I use the word unique in the sense that there is no other place like an assembly on this earth.

It is an exclusive place relative to every other place that would be found on the earth today. I just want to make a few simple statements. An assembly is not a denomination.

It is not a religious body. It does not bear a distinctive name that is given to it by men. It is not part of a human organization.

It is distinct. It is not a denomination. It is not a sect.

It does not follow the leadership of one particular man who rises up with a certain degree of charisma and then follow him. It is not a sect. It is not a system.

It has no central location upon this earth. The assembly of God is a unique place. And when Paul went into the city of Corinth, he taught them tremendous truth.

He taught them truth that they had never heard before. In chapter 1 of this epistle, in the 14th verse, he taught them the truth of believers' baptism. That was something foreign to them.

That was something new. And one can only think for a moment of what it must have been like when some of those Jewish converts and the sight of other Jewish people who were not saved obeyed the Lord in baptism. And when some of those Gentile converts did the same, and again, they would be laughed at.

And they would be mocked as they followed the Lord in baptism. The apostle Paul taught them the truth of assembly discipline. We have been hearing a little about that already.

But that is chapter 5 of this epistle. He taught them the truth of headship in chapter 11 of the epistle. The long hair of the sister, the covered head of the sister.

He taught them the truth of headship. He taught them the truth of the silence of the sister. And a number of other details in chapter 14 relative to the functioning of the assembly.

The believers in Corinth were very blessed. They were richly taught. They had precious truth that had been given to them.

And that they had sought to practice. I had the privilege of speaking at my grandmother's funeral. I would take my grandmother to have been a saved woman, though she was never in an assembly fellowship.

When I got the phone call to take her funeral, I told my mother, when my mother phoned me about my grandmother's funeral, that she better make sure she had two living sisters, that her sisters were in agreement, which they were. When I got to the funeral home for the funeral, I was ushered into the undertaker's little office. There was a man sitting there.

That man was a Nazarene minister. That's where my grandmother attended. He said to me, I have three questions for you.

Who are you? Apparently he had never been told. Where do you go and what do you believe? I answered the first two questions in probably about 30 seconds. 29 and a half minutes to answer the third question, what do you believe? It does not matter to me who the man is.

I will tell the man what I believe. And so at 29 and a half minutes, I told him about the assembly of God. I told him about being outside the camp, about being in a very unique place, a very special place, a place that is found in the pages of the word of God.

And I went over various details of assembly truth with that man. When I was finished, I'm going to quote what he said. He said to me, I believe what you've said.

But I can't practice that because I would lose my job. I thought, how sad. Thank God for a place where we have the freedom to carry out all of the word of God.

And so we have read, let us go therefore onto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. That would be a very difficult thing for the Jewish people to do who were saved in Corinth or in other places in the New Testament days. Because they would believe, they would have been convinced that that system that they were part of, that that was established by God.

They would have some understanding of the presence of God, the shekinah glory that filled the tabernacle. They would have some understanding of the pillar of fire and the cloud that guided them through the wilderness. They have some understanding of that.

But they would soon have to learn that that system was passed. And twice in writing to the Galatians, Paul calls that the religion of the Jews. But that they generated that there was very little, if anything, of God about it.

And so their only alternative was to go onto him without the camp bearing his reproach. If I was to take you for just a few seconds to the book of the Revelation, through the section from chapter 6 to chapter 11, you have the seals and the trumpets of God's judgment that is going to fall upon the moral system of men and the political system of men and the social system of men after the Lord comes. If you were to go on in that chapter to chapters 15 to 19, you have the vials of judgment.

And I would gather that primarily, perhaps not exclusively, but primarily, the vials of God's judgment will fall upon the religious systems of this world. I want to take you to the book of the Revelation, just for a moment, to chapter 17. And notice verse 3 of that chapter.

So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-collared beast full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple.

You could think of the College of Cardinals for a moment. And scarlet color and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abomination and filthiness of her fornication. And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots, the abomination of the earth.

Babylon, in that verse, is not a city. Saddam Hussein was going to build the city of Babylon. He started it, never got very far with that.

But what I have read is not a city, and I'm going to show that to you in just a moment. What I have read about in the book of the Revelation is a system. That system has its origin in Catholicism.

And the harlots that we have read about are those who have come out of that system, but they will go back. That's referred to as ecumenicalism. Now I want you to notice one more verse in Revelation chapter 17.

Verse 6 And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. That doesn't mean that he admired her, but that he was surprised at what he saw.

That's a system that is guilty of shedding the blood of your brethren and sisters. I was taking up with a group of people that we have been working with, the seven churches of Asia. We've got to Smyrna.

You know that Smyrna is a suffering church. I would have a tendency perhaps to look at them more in a prophetical way than a historical way, but historical as well. And so at the period of time represented by Smyrna, Roman emperors had issued edicts that allowed the officials of the Roman Empire to persecute believers, to put them to death.

That's when many believers fled to the catacombs in Rome. As I was taking up the church at Smyrna, there was an email sent to me that had a song in it. The background of the song was the Colosseum in Rome.

And there was the CD of four men singing, standing on the grounds of the Roman Colosseum. History would tell us that the grounds of the Roman Colosseum were saturated with the blood of martyrs. To such an extent that the officials would remove the sand from the Colosseum because of the decay of flesh and the smell of blood.

And they would bring sand across the Mediterranean to put it on the grounds of the Colosseum again. Believers were forced to run between two rows of Roman soldiers. Those Roman soldiers had scourges in their hand.

They would strike those believers wherever they could to draw blood. Those believers were huddled in the middle of that forum, that Colosseum, with hundreds of people looking on for entertainment. Strange what people seemed to want to be entertained by.

And the lions would be loosed. And those believers would become martyrs, torn to pieces by the lions. In the Colosseum at Rome, it said, guilty of the blood of believers.

That carried on for hundreds of years. Even the Catholic Church. Sir Robert Anderson, in his book, The Coming Prince, will give you an estimate of how many believers were actually martyred, put to death, by the Jesuits and by the Catholic Church.

That CD that I saw, and I played it for the people that I'm working with, after telling them a little of the story that I just told you. Standing on the grounds of the Colosseum, right in the very place where hundreds of believers became martyrs for Christ. There were four men standing, singing.

And singing a hymn that you know well. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. Save a wretch like me, once was lost, now I'm found, was blind, now I see.

But it's the last stanza that they were singing. And they sang it with tears. When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we'll have no less to sing as praise than when we first begun.

As I listened to them sing that beautiful hymn, I thought of the hundreds of believers who went to heaven. From the very ground upon which those men were standing, as they were singing that hymn, Amazing Grace. The call of the ages, recorded here in Revelation chapter 18, is come out of her my people.

That is the entire system. That is from the most liberal aspect of evangelicalism to the most conservative. The call is to come out of her.

My grandmother never heeded that call. Are there believers in that system? Yes there are. But when we meet them, we need to tell them that there is a better place for them.

There is a place where they can gather only around the person and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a place where they can carry out the word of God in its entirety. There is a place.

So I tried to tell that Nazarene minister that there was a place. And it wasn't a place where he was. But it was a place that was outside the camp.

And so let us go therefore on to him without the camp, bearing his reproach. The area of Canada where I was born has been settled by a number of Mennonite people. I've had the privilege of having two series of tent meetings in that area.

Not too far from the house that I was born in. Those people have an ear for the gospel. There have been a good number of them saved.

The assembly that I was first in fellowship in had about 10, 12 people in it when I left to teach school in the city of Toronto. Last time I was there, there were 45 in fellowship and probably that many sitting back on Sunday morning. Most of them Mennonite connections.

I saw three of those couple baptized. I had the privilege of speaking at that baptism. One of those dear sisters, Mennonite woman who had been saved by the grace of God, when she came up out of the waters of baptism, the water was running down her face.

But it wasn't all water. There were tears. Because her father had told her that once she got baptized by immersion, never, never to come back to his house again.

That was a price that she paid. For her, a tremendous price. These Jewish believers paid a price.

The Gentile believers in Corinth paid a price. To leave the system, to leave the idolatry that they were steeped in and to go outside the camp. There are some who have paid a tremendous price.

That woman paid a price and the other five who were baptized that afternoon paid a price. Most of us, speaker included, have parents who prayed for us. Have parents that longed for us to be saved.

Had parents that longed that we would be baptized and be in the assembly. Everything was for us. Others, they didn't have that for them.

I have to confess that I paid very little of a price. It just seemed a natural place to go after I was baptized was to go to that gospel hall. But I think over the course of time I have learned a little of the preciousness and of the value of God's assembly.

And so we are gathered to the Lord Jesus Christ. Not to the brethren. And while the emblems are very precious, and we'll notice a little about that tomorrow morning, but what with eyes defiled and dim, we see the signs, but see not him.

O lift the veil! If veil there be, let every saint thy beauty see. I think I can say with conviction of soul this afternoon that I'm in God's assembly because that's where the Lord Jesus Christ is. Do you remember Ezra and Nehemiah when they were building the walls of Jerusalem? And they had those that were opposing the building of those walls, Tobiah and Samballot, mocked them, scorned them.

And they were building with their weapons in one hand and their tools in the other. And Samballot and Tobiah tried to entice Nehemiah just to come aside a little distance and to converse with them and to meet with them. But I love the words of Nehemiah.

Nehemiah said, I am doing a great work. Every contribution that we can make to the assembly of God for the sustaining of the testimony in a difficult day. And the burden of my soul is that there are some leaving.

And I would just like you to get this into your soul today that there is no better place. There is no other place than the assembly of God. And you need to put your heart and your soul and your whole being into God's assembly because this is a great work.

Whether it's a sister raising a little family. Whether it's a brother takes a little part in the preaching of the gospel sometimes or maybe the ministry of the word of God. Whatever little gift that God has given and you have the opportunity to exercise that little gift in the assembly, this is a great work.

Remember what Moses did? He chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. So I read. Let us go, therefore, on to him without the cab.

The call is as valid. And as true and neutral today. As it was when the words were written, I almost said when Paul wrote them, but that doesn't matter.

As when the words were written, they are as vital and true today. On to him without the cab bearing his reproach.