Today, I just want to share with you a message that the Lord lays on my heart. And this message concerns the mission of the church. What is the mission that the Lord has entrusted to His church upon the earth? And of course, by implication, what is the mission that the Lord has entrusted to this church here in Hong Kong Central? We must have a clear understanding of what the Lord wants us to do, if we are going to do it properly. Indeed, if we are going to do it at all.
Now, what is the mission that God has entrusted to the church? And in this connection then, we want to ask also, how can we fulfill that mission? What is the task that God has given to us? We must learn not to think of being a Christian simply in terms of being saved. That is, to put it rather crudely, to save our own spiritual skins. Because that would make the Christian as selfish in the way he thinks as the non-Christian. And that would be very bad. Because it means that we have not been changed as regards the selfishness of our way of thinking.
To become a Christian, in the biblical sense, is to understand that we are not just saved in order that we can get to heaven. We are saved in order to become a channel of salvation to others. And the question is, how do we become a channel of salvation to others? In other words, our life is given a new direction and a new meaning. A new purpose. And that is what makes the Christian life so meaningful. So purposeful. Because it has a direction.
Now, what then, is the mission of the church? And to ask that question, as I have already indicated, is to ask the question, what is our mission? Because the church is made up of you and of me. And therefore, the mission of the church is your mission and my mission. Your task, my task. And unfortunately, there are a lot of Christians who live today who don't have an idea what their task is. They don't seem to have any idea where they are going. That is a dreadful situation to be in if you are a Christian. That you don't know what the purpose of your ministry really is. What's the purpose of the Christian life? And that is why so many Christians live as though they were non-Christians. The non-Christian couldn't tell the difference if they looked at us. In many cases.
In order to answer the question as to what exactly is the mission of the church, I will turn, of course, to the New Testament. And base today's message on a picture of the church that Paul gives to us. In fact, there are two related pictures. And I will center on the second of these two pictures. But I will mention the first one first.
The first picture that Paul gives of the church is that the church is the temple of God. And the interesting thing about this is that he speaks of every individual Christian as a temple of God. He speaks of the Christian individually as a temple. As in, for example, in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 16. The Christian is individually a temple of God. But the church is also collectively the temple of God. As you read in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 19.
That is to say, each one of you who is a true Christian. And today we have to use the word true Christian because there are a lot of false Christians, unfortunately. And therefore we have to define our terms. But everyone who is a true Christian is a temple of the living God. Because, Paul says, the Spirit of God lives in you. Let this idea sink into your mind. The living God lives in you. And that's what makes you a temple of God. But collectively the church is also the temple of the living God.
Now let me ask you a question. What is the function, the purpose of the temple? In order to know what is our function? What is the church's function? What do you think is the purpose of the temple? What was the purpose of the temple in Jerusalem? The purpose of the temple, of course, was the place that people could meet with God. Meet with God and be reconciled to Him. And fellowship with Him. And it was a place where sacrifices were offered. And what were the purpose of sacrifices? It was in order to be reconciled with God. That sins could be put away.
But as you know, the temple in Jerusalem no longer exists. In the year 70 AD, after some three years of terrible fighting, the Romans captured Jerusalem. They destroyed the temple. The whole temple went up in flames. Went up in fire. In fact, the Roman general Titus, who commanded the final attack on Jerusalem, and who later himself became the emperor in Rome, after his father. The Roman general Titus gave orders to his troops not to burn the temple, not to destroy the temple building. Capture Jerusalem, yes. Destroy the temple, no.
But in the fierceness of the battle, as you know, they fought desperately. The Jews retreated from one wall to the other. In the end, it was hand-to-hand fighting from house to house. Almost like the battle of Stalingrad in the Second World War. They fought bitterly for every house. The Romans had to take almost every room by force. There was no surrender. It was a fight to the death. And you know what happens in the fierceness of such battle. The soldiers, the Roman soldiers, were absolutely furious as they lost man after man, just to take a room, just to take a building.
And so finally, when they got into the temple precincts, they had to fight from one wall of the temple into the inner wall. And finally, there was only the temple building itself, the holy place. And there too, the Jews had retreated right into the holy place, trying to defend the holy place to the last man. The soldiers surrounded the place and they decided they weren't going to lose any more men. They had fought right into the last building, the temple itself. And so the Roman soldiers threw their flaming torches in to burn out the defenders. The whole building caught fire, burned down.
And a picture comes to my mind again, an imagery, as I see, as it were, in my mind's eye, the holy temple in Jerusalem going up in huge flames, lighting up the whole sky. And all the people in Jerusalem, that is what was left of them, who were still alive, mostly women and children, saw their beloved temple burning brightly in flames. All its glory and its beauty was now transformed into fire. And the picture that comes to my mind was this. The temple and the people of God was meant in the first place to be a light to the world, to shine with the glory in the darkness of the world. But what they failed to do spiritually, now the temple did literally in a literal fire. The judgment of God had come upon Israel and upon the holy temple, as the prophets warned.
This was my message last week, as you will remember, in Shatin. The judgment of God had come upon the church, that is upon His holy temple, because it failed to shine. And now He was going to make it shine with literal fire. Some years back, way back in the early 70s, I was pastoring the church in Liverpool. There are at least two people here who were in Liverpool and who will know this story.
It was Christmas. We had a Christmas celebration in our church in Liverpool. And after the celebration, the lovely time of fellowship we had, we had Christmas dinner together. And I was driving back home. It was already quite late, I think 9, 10 o'clock in the evening. And I looked in front of me and the whole sky was bright. The night sky was lit up like a torch. And I thought, what's going on? Why is the sky so bright at this time of the night?
And as I drove nearer and nearer towards the place, it was brighter and brighter. And then when I drove into that street, I saw a huge church on fire. The whole church was going up in flames. A church that could seat, I think, over a thousand people. Everything was burning. The whole thing was just one great torch. The church was empty at the time. The vandals got in and set the whole thing on fire. The whole thing, basically inside, was made of wood.
I wonder if that church lived in a manner that was faithful to God at the time. And I fear not. I fear not. I know something about that church. And like the temple in Jerusalem, God allowed this church to go up in flames. That if it would not shine spiritually, then at least it will shine in the night darkness of Liverpool with a literal fire. We are meant to be the light, the visible light of the world one way or another.
But this is the first image. And I move quickly on to the second image, which is tied. And this picture of the first image is tied to the second image. You and I are the temple of God. And I am saying to you, shine with the glory of God or else I tell you this, brothers and sisters. God will still get His glory from your life if He has to do it through judgment. If He has to turn you either into a spiritual light and if you won't be a spiritual light, He will turn you into a literal blaze by His judgment one of these days. And I have seen this happen to so many Christians. That because of God's judgment coming upon them, finally they are broken. Finally they recognize that God is real. You cannot play games with the living God. And finally, in the end, their light will shine if it has to be through God's judgment.
Take me to my Bible, in Acts chapter 5. Ananias lied to the church. He lied to the apostles together with his wife. He was meant, like all the other Christians, to be a spiritual light. But when he failed to be a spiritual light, you know what? God still got the glory from him because he professed His name. And God cut him down with the fire of His judgment. Ananias dropped dead with his wife for telling a lie to the apostles. And it says in Acts that all the church worshipped and revered and adored the living God when they saw God's judgment on this false Christian, this lying Christian.
You see, God would be glorified. Either we live to His glory or He must bring judgment upon His people. One way or the other, He will do it. He will do it. God is kind. God is also severe.
But now let me get on to my second image, which is the key one that I want to touch upon today. In the Bible, it is in the New Testament, as in Paul's writings, the picture of temple is quickly and easily transferred to the other picture, the picture of the body. Very interesting. The body is the temple.
Let's put it like this. I just mentioned that there was a temple in Jerusalem. Now you can see the temple. You can look at its glory. And every Jew in Israel longed once in his lifetime, no matter where in the world he lived, once in his lifetime to go to Jerusalem and behold the glory of the temple. And to worship God in that temple. It is the ambition of every sincere Jew. But the temple is no more. The temple is destroyed, as I mentioned. And what was going to replace it? Where are people going to be able to see the glory of the Lord manifested in His temple? Where are people going to be able to meet with God and be reconciled with Him?
That is a vital question. If there is no more literal temple, then where is the temple going to be? Paul says, ah, but there is the temple. The temple is still in existence. And you know what? You are the temple. Ah, you say, I don't look like a building. I don't look like a piece of structure, a crystal palace. And if I look around, this room is very beautiful, but I can think of this as a temple? Such? No, no.
In the Bible, the temple is not a building in the New Testament. The building was destroyed. God, the scripture says, does not live in a building made with hands, with man's hands. He lives in another kind of building. He lives in a building made by His own hands. What building? We. We are created by Him. This body of ours is His creation. And He lives in a building not made with our hands, but made by Him. Oh, that's beautiful. That is wonderful.
And that is why in the Bible, we find today that there is a temple. Always remember that. And you are that temple. The church is that temple. And every Christian individually is that temple. And that is why in John chapter 2, an imagery that even the Jews did not grasp at the time. In John chapter 2, verses 19 to 21, the Lord Jesus looking at the temple made with hands that the Jews had built in Jerusalem. He said, destroy this temple or let this temple be destroyed, which was going to happen as He predicted in a few years' time. And in three days, I will raise it up.
Now, was He referring to the physical temple, that building there, or was He referring to something else? In a sense, He was referring to both. Both were the places where God dwelt. But in this case, in John 2, He was referring primarily, of course, as this passage tells us in verse 21, to His own body. His body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. His body is the place where God would be manifested. Therefore, we have that remarkable verse in 1 Timothy. God was manifested in the flesh.
You know what this word manifest means? We use a lot of words in English, the precise meaning of which nobody clearly understands. Manifest is not a word that we use in everyday speech. And that's the problem. There are many words even in our modern translations of the Bible that use words which are not used in everyday speech. I don't normally speak to you in normal conversation and say, I manifested myself today. I mean, that would sound utterly ridiculous, isn't it? But we still use this kind of words in the Bible.
The word manifest simply means to make visible. That's what the Greek word phaneroo means. It means to make visible. That's the basic meaning. To reveal. To show. To make visible. And therefore, the statement in 1 Timothy, God was manifest in the flesh means God was made visible in human flesh. When you look at Jesus, you see God. That's of course what the Lord Jesus says in John. He that has seen me has seen the Father who is invisible. But you look at me, you have seen God.
I'm coming to this important word visible as you've come to realize. Now the Lord Jesus was the visible manifestation through His flesh. God was made visible in the flesh. His character, His beauty, His glory, His power became visible in Jesus. You look at Jesus, He said to Philip, you look at me and you have seen the Father. Now that is the purpose of this presence of God in the body.
But the temple is destroyed. And Jesus was crucified on the cross. He also was physically broken, destroyed for us. And God then raised Him from the dead and we could see Him again or at least the disciples could. But then He went up to the Father. And there was no more visible presence. Or was there? Or was there?
And now comes this astonishing phrase. The body is still present on earth. The body of Jesus is present on earth. And there is this remarkable statement that Paul keeps speaking about the church again and again and again. That is His major picture of the church. That the church is the body of Christ. And scholars have studied this word. There is a book simply called The Body, which is to study the biblical use of body in the New Testament. There are many, many articles written by all kinds of scholars on this subject. Why? Because they want to know what does this picture mean? Why does Paul keep speaking about the church as the body of Christ?
And this is something quite remarkable that Paul does. He moves so easily from one picture to the other. In Colossians chapter 1 for example. In verse 18 He speaks about the body which is the church. The body of Christ which is His church. A few verses later in verse 22 He speaks about the literal physical body of Christ that died for us on Calvary. See He passes from one to the other with such ease. He speaks then a few verses later of Christ's literal physical body as it was on earth. And then two verses later in verse 24 He speaks about the body as the church again.
You see for Him the body of Christ on earth which died, the one who died for us on Calvary, that body is the same as far as Paul is concerned as the church. He can move from one to the other and back to the other just like that with total ease. He doesn't see a sharp distinction between the two at all. That's the remarkable thing.
Now this picture of the body of Christ as the scholars have rightly understood is absolutely crucial for our understanding of the nature and functioning of the church in the New Testament. Now the first thing about a body of course is that it is visible. And Paul wants to say exactly that. When He speaks about the body of Christ we might have thought He is talking about some mystical spiritual entity. Not so. Not so at all.
That's why I showed you in Colossians chapter 1 He moves from the physical body of Christ to the church back and forth without any obvious transition or change of meaning. And in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 especially verse 19 He says this, your body, He says to the Christians, your physical body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. He doesn't just say in some vague sense you are the temple. But He specifically says your body is the temple, your physical body. In fact a few verses before that in chapter 6 verse 15 He said that our bodies, you see again He refers to this physical body, our bodies are the members of Christ. That is the arms, the legs, the eyes, the ears, we are collectively the body of Christ and individually members of it as in the whole of 1 Corinthians chapter 12 He tells us this.
What are we driving at? What is the point we need to see? The point we are driving at is that you and I, and this is a thought that I am trying ever more deeply to savor, to grasp, to appreciate, if we are true Christians, are physically manifesting Christ to the world. Just as the Lord Jesus has said, he that has seen me has seen the Father, the church must be able to say, he that has seen us has seen Christ. Oh, that is a high calling but that is the biblical function of the church.
There is the answer to my question. What is the function of the church? You and I in our physical bodies are to reveal the life of Christ to everyone who looks at us so that somebody who looks at us will say, I have seen Jesus.
Now does that frighten you? Do you say, if that is the calling of being a Christian, that frightens the wits out of me? My family know me, my terrible temper, my irritableness, my selfishness. I don't like to wash dishes. I always find reason that I am too busy to wash dishes. After all, it's not my business. I mean, I work all day. Some people have more time in the family than I have. Keep
# The Mission of the Church: The Beauty of Christ Manifested Through the Spirit (Part 2)
It's just that I'm not good at cooking. And the other person is better. Let him do the cooking all the time, because otherwise you don't enjoy my cooking. So it's not that I'm really willing to cook. But you see, I am not a good cook. That's why I never cook. So if we talk about my witness at home, what witness? We haven't got a witness to talk about. Where are people going to see Jesus in my life?
And of course, you see, Hong Kong is a place very hard to live a life of Jesus. Oh, very hard. I mean, Hong Kong people, you know what they are. We can always excuse ourselves. They are so rude. I mean, anybody who has to fight his way onto a subway in the morning knows all about Hong Kong people. I mean, you don't even have to get into the train. You are carried into the train. I was going to the airport the other day. It was very comfortable. I just stood there and I was carried into the train. I thought this kind of service you cannot get anywhere else. You just stand there and the next moment you are in.
That is, of course, if you are in the front. If you are in the back, that is another story. If you are in the back, you have to play rugby or American football. You lower your head and you charge in. That is probably why I got carried in because somebody else did the charging. And so you see, these people are rude. And of course, being carried in is not so bad. But when you get yourself, your glasses knocked off and your shoes all dirty because somebody stepped into it and somebody elbows you into the stomach and it takes you some time to get your breath back.
You see, I mean, I would be a very good Christian in North America where everybody is more polite. I would be even a better Christian in the United Kingdom because there are even more polite people. I mean, there when you stand on these zebra stripes, the car stops right away. Here you stand on the zebra stripe and you risk your life. I mean, you risk being knocked down any moment. People haven't noticed there are such things as zebra stripes being painted on the ground. But in England, the law-abiding people, they stop. So you can say, in England, it is easy to be a good Christian. In Hong Kong, to live the Christ life, that's another story.
The truth of the matter, brothers and sisters and friends, the truth of the matter is, we can't live the life of Christ anywhere except by the Spirit of God.
In the Bible, a human person is usually distinguished as body and spirit. You see that, for example, in 1 Corinthians 7, verse 34, and many such places in the Bible. There is body and there is spirit. The Bible speaks of a soul sometimes, but the soul, of course, is not another part of a human being. The soul simply refers to the human being as a living person. It is the life in us that keeps body and spirit together, as you say. If you die, your soul, you are no longer a living soul, and the spirit and body are said to separate. Man is constituted as being basically body and spirit.
And the body of Christ is exactly the same as we read in Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 4. There is one body and one Spirit. We are the body. And we are constituted as a body by the Holy Spirit. It is He who baptizes us into Christ. When you are baptized, when you become a Christian, and we only think of the water ceremony, that is not the most important part of baptism. If you have truly entered into a living relationship with God through repentance and faith, then at baptism, the Holy Spirit puts you, baptizes you, the word baptize there simply means places, places you into the body of Christ. We are incorporated into the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit. That's how we become one body. And it is by His power, the power of the Spirit that we live.
The secret of understanding the functioning of the body is the Holy Spirit Himself. So this comes in practical terms. If you say, I am here visibly to show forth the life of Christ, this cannot be done except by the power of the living God. Now that is why, if God is not real, if God is not the living God, you will have a body without a spirit. And you know what that means? James tells us in James chapter 2 what it is. A body without a spirit is dead. Dead. The spirit has departed.
A church is dead if the Spirit of the living God is not functioning in it. And the Christian is dead if the Spirit of the living God is not in control of your life. But when the Spirit of the Lord is living in you, you become a living and dynamic Christian who experiences the reality of the living God. Somewhat like what Andrew was testifying just now about even small things like rain. Many of us have experienced that over and over again. So many times we have experienced this. How God answers the prayer of those who live under His control.
And this means that when you are the temple of the living God and God lives in you, then you are going to experience Him in your everyday life. You become a vital, dynamic, fruitful, and beautiful Christian. The fruit of the Spirit will be manifested in you. And when the fruit of the Spirit is manifested, that fruit of the Spirit is the character of Christ. And therefore, if the fruit of the Spirit is manifested in you, then people who look at you, obviously, will see Jesus in you. Will they not? That is our calling and our function.
And I ask you, have you been living like that? Do you live this kind of Christian life? Manifesting Christ that people who look at you will see Jesus? That's what Paul says in Philippians chapter 1 and verse 20. That whether I live or whether I die, Christ will be exalted in me. Christ will be exalted in me, whether by life or by death.
Have you met this kind of Christians? I want to tell you, brothers and sisters, that if I had not met this kind of Christians, I think it's fair to say, I will not be standing here preaching the gospel today. I would be out in the world making my money or doing my own thing or running my own companies or doing whatever it is I might have been doing instead of preaching the gospel. But when there were these Christians who like Paul, exalted Christ by life and by death, and some of these are dead now, they chose to die for the name of Christ because they chose not to run away from China when the communists came. They showed me in their life the beauty of Jesus. A beauty that I could never forget. I couldn't run away from it.
That whenever I wanted to turn to something else, the beauty of Jesus kept pulling me. I wanted to go into a military life to become some great military commander, to have an army, to do this and that for China. But whenever I wanted to go in that direction, the beauty of Jesus just kept pulling me like a magnet. That is the function of the church.
We always think of the fruit of the Spirit individually. But we should understand that Paul doesn't mean it just to be understood individually. The church is to manifest the fruit of the Spirit as love, joy, peace. When they come into this church, it is my prayer through all these coming weeks and months, people come here and they said, we have met with Jesus. We have come to the temple, not to this building, but the temple which is you. And we have met with Jesus. We were able to become reconciled with God. We were able to know the living God through you.
I was sharing with the Jewish couple who were here during the last week, as you know, Evan and Mala. I was sharing with them something about my visit to Hungary last year. The very thought of some of these saints in Hungary bring tears to my eyes. The thought of the beauty of Christ manifested in these saints in Hungary just brings tears to my eyes. After that sharing with the Jewish couple, I was walking back home with Helen and I said to them that these Hungarian Christians have set such a standard, have given such a manifestation, made so visible to my eyes the person and character of Christ. That I feel that I am not in their class. I am not even in their class. I am looking up to them as a standard of excellence and pray God have mercy upon me that I may reach by the powerful working of the Spirit to something of that beauty and that glory.
I am not in their class. Every time I think of brother Daniel in Hungary, I see his face. And you know, the face of Daniel, this dear brother, just manifested the love, the joy, the peace, the meekness, the kindness, the self-control, all the fruit of the Spirit just manifested in his face. Oh, it is amazing. And not when he was feeling fit and fine and strong and vigorous. Brother Daniel is about 50, I think. Not in the prime of his youth.
And the day he accompanied us to Budapest, I noticed that he hadn't had much sleep. I don't know how he gets much sleep because this brother has no home. He gave his home away to some poor people. And most of the time, he either sleeps in the sofa in the hotel where he works or on the floor of some Christian family that can spare a corner because the apartments in Hungary are very small and overcrowded. And that day when he accompanied us to Budapest, I noticed that he was so tired that he struggled to stay awake.
But the beauty, the beauty of Jesus was manifested in him in his exhaustion and in his tiredness. You know, we do so much better when we had a good night's sleep. We are in a good mood. We feel good. It's easy to be presentable, to be charming, to be charismatic in our behavior. Try it when you are exhausted.
And there was dear Daniel. I said, "Brother Daniel, where did you sleep last night?" And that sweet smile came upon his face. And he looked at me and he said, "In a good place." I said, "Brother Daniel, where was the good place that you slept?" "I had a nice sofa last night in the lounge." I said, "Daniel, you slept on the sofa all night?" "Oh, it's very comfortable on the sofa." A man who has nowhere to lay his head. No home to call his own because the apartment he had, he gave away.
But in the tiredness and the exhaustion, how do you sleep in the lobby when people walk in and out? In a hotel lobby, people come and go till 12 o'clock at night, maybe 1 in the morning. And people are coming and going again at 5, 6 o'clock in the morning. And after a hard day, exactly how do you get enough sleep? And so after a time of sweet fellowship, we were fellowshipping together. I noticed he was tired so I kept quiet. And he leaned back in a moment and the next moment he was falling and he fell asleep. And you know what? That sweet smile was on his face even when he was asleep. That beautiful smile was there on his face when he was asleep. Like a little child in sleep. I thought, whether awake or asleep, he still manifests the beauty of Christ.
Like how do you keep up with a brother like this? As Paul says, he manifests the life of Christ. Whether by life or by death, Paul says to the Corinthians, the life of Christ shall be manifested in me by the Spirit.
Our time is gone. We must close. What is the mission of the church? My dear ones, my beloved brothers and sisters and friends, this is our calling. And let no one here dare to turn away from that calling if you dare to call yourself a Christian. Either do the church and do Christ a favor to stop calling yourself a Christian or you say, Lord, I cannot live this kind of a beautiful life. But by Your grace, by the power of Your Spirit, Your life will be manifested.
Remember the word manifested? The same word as manifested in the flesh. That word manifest makes visible. That is, make Your life visible in me. That where I go to work, where I go to school, where I go home, whether I am here, in Canada, Australia, Singapore, wherever I am, Your life will become visible to everyone around me. That is our high calling. That is our mission. That is the beautiful life to which we have been called.
And you know what will happen? The day will come when you live this kind of life that people will come to you and say, I bless God for the day I met you. I was walking in darkness but you made the light of God visible to me. And that light shone up and drove away the darkness in my life. I thank God for the day I met you.
Has anybody ever told you that? I thank God that time and again people have come to me and said just that. And I know it's not me. I have no light. I have nothing in me. As Paul says, this treasure is in this ordinary earthen vessel. The glory is His alone. We have the privilege to convey that light which is life. The light of life to others.
Let us go forth from today if we haven't done it before and say, Lord, fill me with Your Spirit. I am Your temple. I am Your visible body on earth that people can see Your glory. Let us pray.