Church in This City 1973

I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. Surely we all agree that when the Spirit of God broods over his people on this earth, he does not recognize the barriers and walls that we raise up between this group and that group. He sees his church as one.

So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one member is one of another. And surely we also agree that it's utterly presumptuous for any group of believers to point to itself and say, we are the church, and we alone, that whenever this is claimed by any particular group, or even implied, you know, the inspiration for this is the antichrist. Up to now, however, the only place on earth where you can see what this one universal church is really like, is by looking at the congregation, the local assembly of believers.

Up to now, that's the way it has been. The congregation is the basic unit of the church, and it's like the family into which a child is born, and just as surely as no baby can survive, born into a family and then dumped by itself, away from human comfort and succor and health, and just as surely as no adult, for instance, marooned on a rock in the middle of the ocean, even though he may have all the things of life, can survive out there on that rock, you know, the minute he begins to lose hope that he's going to have contact with other human beings, he goes off his rocker, you know, he's going to jump into the ocean, he's going to kill himself, he's going to do something. In the same fashion, the solitary believer, apart from brothers and sisters who can, you know, talk to him and pray with him and work with him and care about him, apart from that, no solitary believer can possibly survive.

Now, the congregation is the workshop in which the Heavenly Father molds us and forms us and hammers us and bends us into the likeness of his Son Jesus. It's the forming place, and it's the arsenal where we're given the equipment that we need to go out there and do battle with the evil one, and it's the place where we're given what we need to go out there and proclaim the truth that Jesus is Lord. Every single one of us in this gathering right now who's a believer will be or has been sent in some congregation someplace where we carry, you know, our share of the corporate work that we're given, where we pray for each other and we exhort each other and we encourage each other and we comfort each other.

Now, the congregation, the assembly, whatever you want to call it, the community, the body, or whatever, you know, is our home base, and it's the place where we get fed, and we thank God that he has set us in the midst of brothers and sisters, these brothers and sisters. And yet, when God looks down on this city and sees it as a place that needs to hear his word, sees this city, this metropolitan area, we'll take in Monroe and Ann Arbor and the rest of it too, you know, sees it as a Nineveh or a Sodom or a Gomorrah or a Jerusalem, he also sees his church in this city as one. The Lord doesn't see so many congregations with so many members each, but he sees his church in Detroit.

He sees his body in this place. See, and if the metropolitan Detroit is going to hear the gospel, really hear it, see, then the gospel is going to sound forth from the church in Detroit, see, from a body that has really become one in the will of God, from brothers and sisters who have truly become members one of another. It's not going to come from this dynamic congregation over here or that dynamic preacher over there.

There's too many dynamic congregations on dynamic preachers already. It's going to come from the body in Detroit, a body that the spirit has drawn together and unified. And I tell you that until there is such a body and until it has such unity and until all these walls of doctrine, taste, prejudice, bigotry, and all the rest that we raise up have come down and there really is a church, a body in Detroit, this city will not hear a clear witness to the death and resurrection and lordship of Jesus Christ.

All right, now let's look at the situation as it actually exists right now. What do we have? We have hundreds of congregations or whatever they call themselves spread out over the city in its suburbs, you know, and regardless of the lip service that they pay to the universal church, each exists almost always as a church unto itself. And we think of ourselves, you know, each congregation says, yes, we're serving Jesus.

And yet one goes this way and another goes that way. Their paths never come together. Their hands never join in any kind of common work.

They experience no fellowship and they all excuse themselves by saying, well, what do we have in common with those poops over there? They're a bunch of holy rollers, you know, or they say, oh, those heavy super disciples, those gloom and doom disciples. Every time one of those guys walks into the room, it feels like the North Pole. All they ever do over there in that place is try to cast out demons.

And over here, they all the time, they're arguing about eternal security and those people are too institutional. And so it goes. And so the evil one has things pretty much his way.

A whole scattered bunch of congregations, each doing its own thing, often highly suspicious of each other, highly critical of each other, and often competitive as well, competing with each other in their hearts and in their actions. And this doesn't even trouble us. We don't even feel ashamed of it.

Let's forget the crowds we're getting here or the crowds five times larger they're getting somewhere else. And let's just look out over metropolitan Detroit and ask ourselves, you know, is this city really, really aware that that Jesus Christ is walking history? It doesn't have any sense that Christ is alive in this place, this city. God doesn't measure his church in Detroit by how many people are coming to our meetings.

God is measuring his church in Detroit, believe me, by the kind of witness that goes forth. See, and on the basis of the kind of witness that goes forth from the church, the church in Detroit is in bad shape. There's no question about this.

It's in bad shape and it's in bad shape because we're satisfied with things as they are. You say, I am rich. I have prospered.

I need nothing, not knowing that I'm just a wretched, miserable, poor, blind, naked. We're satisfied as long as things in our congregation or our fellowship are going well. Never mind that there are dozens, hundreds of, you know, flocks of believers that are sick and blinded.

This doesn't bother us, but it sure bothers you. We're satisfied to go on our ways if everything's fine in spite of the fact that there is almost no unity between black believers and white believers in this city. Do you think Jesus is satisfied with that? And we're satisfied to go to Bible studies and fellowship ad infinitum in spite of the fact that there is almost no witness to Jesus Christ out on those streets.

And we're satisfied that the signs of the kingdom, healing and other signs, are very, very few and far between. Now look, if it is really the Holy Spirit who is descending upon our assemblies of believers across this town, don't you think that he's going to make us dissatisfied with things as they are? Don't you think he's going to open our eyes to see the church in Detroit the way Jesus sees it? Don't you think he's going to trouble us? Don't you think he's going to make us feel ashamed of ourselves until we begin, in fact, to confess and repent of this hardness of heart and this pride and this self-righteousness and this competitive spirit in us that have been working against the purposes of God in this city? I believe that the time has now come when the Spirit of the living God will not allow us to go on pretending that things are all right. I believe that we have arrived at a time when each assembly of believers across this city and its suburbs will have to decide, including this one, you know, whether we're going to fit in with the rest of the body in this city and get the job done or whether we're going to just go on our way and rot and finally be swallowed up by the church of the antichrist.

And it's not a matter of certain apostles coming in from Los Angeles or New York or Hong Kong to pull the church of Detroit together. This will happen, is happening, and will happen, but that's not what we're talking about. It's rather a matter of believers in every assembly answering the call of the Spirit as he shouts at us and says, wake up, open your eyes, put away childish things, and start doing what is needful at this hour.

And what is needful at this hour? It's very simple. God is giving to his people, I believe in every city on earth right now, a vision of the kind of unity around the cross of Jesus that we must have. And the first thing that we have to do is really see that vision.

See it. Look beyond our own spiritual life and our own fellowship and see the church that the Spirit of God is gathering and unifying in every city on earth. This is what I take this to mean.

You know, and when our Lord prayed this prayer to his Father, he knew it was going to be answered. You know, and the fulfillment of it still waits to be seen, but we have to get the vision of it. I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word that they may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me.

The world will never know that Jesus is God the Son, the Anointed One, the Messiah and the Savior, until it sees unity in his church, unity around the cross, unity in Jesus. Any other kind of unity is a division. If we get unity around a certain doctrine or a certain way of worshipping or a certain gimmick, whatever it may be, this is disunity.

This is not unity. Unity around the cross. We have to picture people leaving their favorite doctrinal position and putting aside their fleshly loyalties and giving up their bigotry and coming together around the cross.

We have to picture people from every part of town and every doctrinal position, every race, every language, every alley, every street, every economic level, everything you can imagine, coming and becoming, being made one at the wounded side of the Lamb of God. Until this comes to pass, this city will not be told with any authority that Jesus is Lord. Picture brothers and sisters weeping in repentance for the hardness of heart that they have had toward each other, you know, and forgiving each other, loving each other, and taking off their masks and laying aside their grudges.

The second thing we have to do, you know, as we talked somewhat last week, is we've got to pray for that vision to be fulfilled and expect to see it happen. Our Lord prayed to the Father that all may be one. See, now we join our prayer to His, knowing that the fulfillment of the vision of a unified church is tied to the prayers of the saints, and there will be no one church, in fact, in action here in this city until the believers are dissatisfied enough with things as they are to pray for this vision to come to pass, until we begin to really say, O Father, make us one.

Break down these walls that we have raised. All spirit gathers together on Calvary and deal with those things in us that we've raised up between one another and against each other. When we start praying and really meaning this, it will happen.

God will answer this prayer. And this brings us to the third thing that we need to do. We have to then begin to apply this vision in our daily life right now, not waiting for some wonderful time when it all happens and we're just joyful, but we begin to apply it specifically in the way we behave and in the way we think right now.

For instance, once we have bought a vision of one church in this city, we will no longer be innocent when we direct all our energy and all our thoughts and all our prayers to our congregation. You know, lots of things that before seemed quite legitimate and right will now be seen for the sin that they are because they disregard other brothers and sisters. See, and then our conversation about those brothers and sisters on the other side of town or our quickness to, you know, to decide what their motives are and our hesitancy to join them in getting the word out will all begin to change as we start to indeed fit in with the vision that God gives us.

And as we fit in, as we all fit in, this city will begin to hear the voice of her shepherd as she's never heard before. The voice of the son of the living God will go forth from his church, his body, his living body, and this will be one more sign to this city that the hour is late and that Jesus is coming soon. Let's pray.

We pray, oh Father, that this day in us and across your church, across this city, and across this part of Michigan, and across the earth, Lord, you'll begin to deliver us from these narrow thoughts and narrow ways that hinder the pre-flowing of your Spirit. We just thank you that you do indeed set the solitary of families and that you give us brothers and sisters in a congregation to work with. But, oh God, we just pray that today you'll begin to show us the church in this city and give us a genuine love for brothers and sisters who are in many ways so different.

And deliver us, oh God, all of us from these attitudes and these suspicions and these jealousies and all these other things in our hearts that have been dividing your body in this place. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.