Structure and Life - Dale Heisey | KFW 2021

Nazareth, greet you this morning in Jesus' name. I just would like to say that that beautiful hymn that was sung twice in this assembly, "Lift Your Glad Voices in Triumphant High," probably means something to my wife and I, that it might not mean to all of you.

Probably the most meaningful singing of that hymn happened at our son's funeral several weeks after we were in Costa Rica. That service was in Spanish. We did not know Spanish then. Not one of our family, one of our relatives was at that funeral. Only my wife and I and three of our living children who remained. No relatives there. We knew hardly anybody was at the funeral. There was a very large gathering of people. And so now the body has been put down into the grave, and my two sons and I are shoveling in the soil.

And someone starts to sing in English now instead of in Spanish, "Lift Your Glad Voices in Triumphant High." I looked over with my shovel full of dirt and saw my wife standing there with tears running down her face. Her eyes looked up to heaven.

A great big smile on her face as she was singing at the top of her voice.

So if you would allow me to, I remember that as you're singing.

We have heard that the mystery of life includes more than the biological dimension. Life is a gift from God. Christ is our life. He is known to us as the Logos of life. We find that in 1 John 1:1. So we today, even at this weekend gathering for fellowship, can experience spiritual life. Life and light are perhaps alike in this unique way that both of them happen, both of them are available, both of them take place as they are traveling.

When light does not move, there is no light at all. And life is what it is for us because it's moving. Maybe I should explain that to you just a little bit. We have felt life moving into us even this weekend. Yes, even through us and perhaps from us to others.

Virtue flowed from Christ, and the hymn says He healed them. That spiritual power and vitality move from heart to heart, inspiring and healing and restoring and preparing and anointing all of us. This is life, and it's moving. It has an eternal source, and it flows through and in this assembly and through the ones who are guiding this service and the moderation and the chorus that sings these young people. And we feel this invigoration, and we know this is not something that McDonald's could do for us nor Starbucks.

This is the very purpose and essence of fellowship in the Christian church. I'd like to read two texts from your Bible. We'll start in the next chapter two. This is not only a theme, a touchstone for Kingdom Fellowship weekend. It is also a very important theme in this message this morning.

But this is Luke, this is Acts chapter 2, verse 42.

"And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and in the breaking of bread and in prayers." I'd like you to turn yet to Romans chapter 6, and we'll read here verse 17.

"But God be thanked that ye were the servants of sin; but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you." And then it says, "Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness." The title they gave me this morning was Structure and Life. The title is short. I added just a little definition to that title by including these five words: Structure and Life, Vitality within the Local Assembly.

And so this is one more of those practical messages about life, not dealing with our families this time nor with the issues of death that are throughout our communities, but dealing with our local congregations, bringing this life of our Lord Jesus into the local assembly where you and I are committed to the other brothers and sisters and Christ's life and love are there and light.

Each of these three words is important: Structure and Life. There is structure. There is life. And the uniting conjunction, in this case the word "and," reminds us that these two elements must be found together.

It is quite possible, I realize that, to stress the one at the expense of the other. It seems like it could be very possible to stress structure, the formative elements, and maybe miss the life that's needed there. But it would be equally unwise to expect that we can emphasize life without having a proper biblical structure. That would be an equal mistake. It is possible to have structure with no life at all. I'm sure most of you are aware of that, and we'll prove that shortly. But I am not aware how life can exist anywhere without structure. I don't know where that would be found. I don't know where to locate such a thing as life that is not inside a structure.

And it is possible to overstructure. I want to say that to you. Business corporations know this. Organization becomes top-heavy, cumbersome, expensive, and inefficient.

Perhaps you find yourself this morning, this is now very, very personal, reacting to the strong emphasis placed on the structural elements of your religious past. And God's answer for you is not to tear down the structures. We cannot destroy the foundations of the faith without the danger of losing the faith with it. And have not all of us observed this in the lives of many people around us in congregations also? Haven't we seen what happens when structure was considered non-essential, of no importance? I'd like to give you several natural examples of structure and life before then we move into the biblical side of it and what applies to your local assembly, to the congregation, the church, the body that you're a part of, God trusts, committed to.

I'm going to start with the illustration of a fireplace. Fireplaces have always interested me. My wife's father specialized in building fireplaces. That was his specialty as a bricklayer. So I've been around fireplaces. In the colonial home, it provided at least three things for that house: light in the nighttime, warmth when it was chilly, and a means of preparing the food. There was usually an oven on the one side of the fireplace, the heat in there. Bake that bread. There were kettles that swung out over to the flame, and they could be swung back out where the lady could stir that and cook it, add something to it. That's how the cooking was done at the fireplace.

And so this brick or this stone or this, perhaps at times in more primitive settings, a wooden structure lined with clay did none of those functions that I just talked about with the life that is with the fire within it. And we know what happens with fire that is not contained within a designated structure. You can go to California and talk to Governor Newsom out there and explain to him what takes place when fire rages across the land, and it's not in a contained, structured, prepared place to be burning.

Fire is a beautiful thing and has a lot of life in it in that sense, but it needs a structure. It's interesting you can see places where the Civil War was fought where fires have gone through some of the cities and towns out there in California, Oregon, and these days. And the only thing she left standing is that brick structure that has a fireplace at the bottom of it. The rest is gone. And that structure survived the fire, but it's as dead as can be. The structure remains, but there's no life in it.

So that was one example of structure and life. I'll give you another one. In the same state, if you allow me to go west again, out there let's find at least one large sequoia tree. It's an imposing structure. These trees are so fascinating.

There's a tree out there named Moses. Lightning struck Moses one day, this sequoia tree. The fire started up there in the top because the lightning had burned for nine days. They tried with helicopters, and who knows what else, to put that fire out. They could not extinguish that flame.

That tree burned for nine days. There was a lot of fire up there on top of that tree. They couldn't get it out. That tree is still growing today. Fire damage at that time of that time is pretty well healed over. The tree's just going on as if it didn't happen.

A lot of structure in a sequoia tree.

So much structure, in fact. If you take one of those giants, one of the large ones, and measure how much it grows in one year, how big it is now on the 22nd of August '21, and how big it is on the 21st, 22nd of August '22, you'll find that if you took all the structure that was put together into that tree in one year, it would make another sequoia tree standing beside it in perfect proportion, standing 60 feet tall. That's how much one of those giants grows in one year.

There's a lot of structure there, but you know what? There's life in it. But you won't find any of that life apart from the structure. It's always there.

That's the sequoia tree. The life in that tree is virtually indestructible, but it is found only within that structure. I don't want this to be a carnal example, but it serves such a useful purpose. I'm going to give you a third example of structure and life.

Would you go along with me for a while this morning to a baseball game? Here, the structure becomes very defined. I'm not going to take you into all this language and through all these descriptions. There is the decided mention to the field of which this game is played. There are bases properly located. There are foul lines.

There are specific numbers of players for each team, and they each serve in specific locations across that playing field. They have their own functions. The game has quite an elaborate list of predetermined rules, and they have empires present there to govern those. There are uniforms that designate the teams, and even the balls and bats are subject to the norms of the league. And whether this is in Candlestick Park or a sandlot and an empty field, the structure is there. You never saw a ball game properly played without it.

Yet no one comes to the ballpark to observe, to study, and to photograph the structure. No one brings their tape measures along to see that they're exactly 90 feet between the bases.

I doubt if anyone comes with the National League or American League rulebook stuck in their back pockets to make sure everything goes all right when they're in there.

And although all those structures are in place, that's not why we went to the ballfield. They came to see the game. That's why I came to KFW.

Many of you have expressed to me and to others, to each other this weekend your amazement at the effort expanded to organize a function so well planned and efficiently organized as what we've experienced here this weekend. And you have right to be amazed about that.

Some people have said, "How can they feed this many people?" And though I have worked with these dear brothers for several years, I have no idea what all they do when I'm in Costa Rica, and they're getting ready for this meeting.

The structure of KFW has provided for the blessing survey evident here. Yet not one of you that's here now, inside or outside the tabernacle, has come here in order to film a map that was back here in this corner of this campus that had 35 black pins fastened onto it and 35 red ones.

You didn't even know it was there, many of you. And what purpose is it? But someone put a tremendous amount of work into that, and it needed to be done. Part of the structure, part of the work, and we could talk for a long time about things that people have done to make this weekend what it is, to make it possible for us to enjoy it as we are when we are here.

You came, I trust I'm going to finish this sentence correctly. You came to be part of the game. Did you notice how it changed that? Or weren't you listening? What did I not say? I did not say that you came to see the game.

And I hope I'm right about that. You came to be part of the game.

These organized structures are infused with life. And that life has melted my heart this weekend. It has brought tears to my eyes.

I cried sometimes because you were crying, and the rest of the time because it's what I needed to do. It has inspired my little faith. It has increased my love for you. This is life, and that's what life does in the church.

And so we're talking about structure and life. I hope this has introduced to you what we're wanting to do here this morning.

I need to take you on a journey, and I will try to do this without belaboring any of these points. But I'd like to show you something of the structure that our Lord Jesus has built into His New Testament church. Yes, there is life here, and that life is Himself.

He is our life. When I talk about the Church of Jesus Christ, I'm not talking about the meeting house. I'm not talking about this tabernacle that we're in this morning. And the first time I was in here was over 65 years ago, shortly after it was built.

I'm not talking about a sanctuary. But the Bible refers to the church as a body. It also refers to the church as a building built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, that structure. "And this building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord." That's life. That's found in the same verse, by the way, in Ephesians chapter 3.

"It is the habitation of God by His Spirit." That's life, but it's inside a structure. Can we notice some of those structural elements of the church, some of the structures of a local assembly? I'd like to do that for you just briefly, if you'd allow me to. And though we could spend a lot of time looking at scriptures, and we just cannot do that, I'm going to just let you see these various elements.

And we will look at some scripture maybe, but we'll try to move through this. This particular structure here that we're in right now includes in the many things that help facilitate what happens here, it includes a clock up there in front of me. And maybe you can't see it, but I can see it. But it's part of the structure. We'll see how much life we can get into that structure. So we'll work at that.

We have noted already in this building, the Church of Jesus Christ, the foundation. From Acts chapter 2 until today, there's a foundation there, and we build upon that. The foundation of the apostles and prophets. I read that to you from chapter 2, verse 42. When Roland Allen, who was an Episcopal priest, wrote his book titled Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours, he referred to the body of apostolic tradition that Paul delivered to each church that he established on his missionary journeys.

Tradition here does not mean archaic, legalistic, pharisaical, leftover ideas that somehow didn't evaporate yet. That's not what tradition means here. Tradition is a very beautiful word in scripture. We have this word in our Bibles where you do not in English.

Tradition here is teaching, as in the Didache of the Apostles, the teaching of the apostles. Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians, in those 16 chapters, he mentions five times things that he presents to all the churches wherever he goes.

Now, I have those references written here, and we're not going to look them all up. But it's in chapter 4. It's in chapter 7. It's in chapter 11. It's in chapter 14. It's in chapter 16 where he says that these things I teach everywhere.

That's the tradition of the apostles. That is very, very foundational to the order of a Christian church. And when Roland Allen attempted to make a list of those teachings that Paul took with him and the other apostles to the churches they established, it's very interesting that this Episcopalian included the Christian Woman's Veiling in that list. And it is interesting that in chapter 16, at the end of that discussion, when Brother Paul is finished presenting that teaching to the Corinthian church, he says that what he's doing here, saying here to this Corinthian church, he does in all the churches.

So Roland Allen was right about that.

That'd be along with baptism, the Lord's Supper, and many other things that were taken from church to church, including some thoughts about the gatherings of the saints. These are vital and necessary and purposeful things, full of meaning. And their structure here, yet again, as we've used the phrase, they are infused with life. But that's not the only structure we have.

The congregation has chosen servants, elders, deacons, perhaps evangelists. And there may be other ways to designate these servants of the Lord and His body. So there are ministers and/or pastors. And not all churches use exactly the same organizational structure when it comes to the servant body of the church. And I think there's probably some room for variation there. I just came from a congregation a little over a week ago here in the States where their structure is a little bit different from what we have in Costa Rica.

Their structure might be better than ours. I appreciate what they're doing there. Yet we know that having a bishop in the church, though that is part of designated structure in scripture, does not guarantee life in a church.

You know, diatrophies may still love to have the preeminence.

There is no spiritual life there if that's the way things are. At least the spiritual life is not coming from Him.

And so, though we have this element of structure in the church, it's up to those called to these places and areas of responsibility and function to be sure that they are united with Christ, filled with love, knowing the sheep, filled with life. The structure is important. The life that comes from that servant of the Lord is more important.

We have mentioned some of the brotherhood symbols that the Bible gives to us, that Christ gives to us, that the Holy Spirit inspired to put into and build into the structure of our local assemblies and our church life, as we call it.

The supper.

The basin.

The kiss of peace and love.

The right hand of fellowship. The waters of baptism. And there is much to observe, much to officiate here.

None of us deny that these are very, very distinctive Christian elements, and we have them in our congregations.

They are structures. They're forms, the things that we can do. But they have life in them if there's life in me.

Maybe I'll just pause here to give you a break.

My wife, sister, and of course my wife herself, they did not come from churches that that ever have observed a practice, a physical practice of John 13 in their church services. A lot of congregations do not. And my wife did not have that practice until after we joined a Mennonite congregation in the state of Vermont after we were married.

Suzanne's younger sister, she's seven years younger. It was quite a few years after that when she had her first feet washing experience in the Church of God on Main Street in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania. And her husband had just started going to that congregation. They washed feet in that church.

And Cindy had never seen this practice ever before in her life. And she sat there and saw these ladies washing each other's feet. And she didn't know what to do. It looked so beautiful to her hair. It was something she had never seen. She sat there and cried.

Maybe you never cried when you saw people washing feet.

But I would tell you this, that when she was doing that at that particular moment in her life, there was life going into that basin and life going on with that towel and life going into that feet washing experience.

Maybe the rest of us ought to ask God to put into us as we do it.

Did you follow that? See, there's a structure. You're not going to neglect the basin. You're going to wrap the towel around you. That part will all be taken care of. But the life part, dear brothers and sisters, did you get that?

The Apostolic tradition going on here to more structure in the church. See, we're going down through here. We're adding to this. This church building is growing. This habitation is receiving more elements, more functional and structural elements into this spiritual building.

The Apostolic tradition includes instruction for the gathered assembly.

We saw that even in our texts that we read. 1 Corinthians 14 is very pertinent here. I'm not going to read that chapter to you, but there's specific instruction there for conduct, order in the local assembly.

And there's quite a variation in singing. And in the music that we use from one country to another, from one geographic location to another, from one climate area to another, songs change.

Music is different from one place to another. We are a Latin congregation at home. Latins normally enjoy a kind of music a bit different from what Northern Europeans maybe would have espoused. Although in our congregation at home, there's a very, very deep, a fervent appreciation for the deepest hymns of the faith. And they are probably selected the most often in our congregation.

We have some very, very deep and meaningful and moving hymns in our Spanish language. And they also sing some of those choruses by memory that are a bit more lilting and a bit more repetitive. And maybe Suzanne and I just have to surrender a little bit of preference when we join in with some of that.

There's construction there concerning the lifting of an offering. There's structure there and instruction concerning the participation of those who are present in the service. Some are told to remain quiet and do their speaking elsewhere. Some are told when to remain quiet to allow others to take their turn. There's a lot of instruction there. And this provides order for the service.

Sunday school, as you probably know it in your community, is a relatively new innovation. There were no Bibles at the beginning in those early services back there in the book of Acts. No printing house prepared Sunday school booklets.

There was the weekly agape, perhaps. And I'll just say this, that that interesting word for the place where they met, house of prayer. That term still survives today in Latin America. Many congregations call their place of meeting house of prayer. Others call it house of worship.

But there is more than corporate worship. Moving on here again.

There is a mission purpose. Make disciples of all nations, we heard this weekend. So we have evangelism and church extension, disciping of new believers as in Antioch.

Disciping includes discipline at times. And Matthew 18 speaks of this, as does Galatians chapter 6, verse 1. The only way in which we deal with transgressions or errant behavior or wayward footsteps, and when someone has gone away, someone is disobedient, unfaithful, losing faith, losing their commitment, we seek to restore such a one in the spirit of meekness. What does that mean?

Restore that person. We consider ourselves, let's we be tempted. And when the 1955 Chevy is restored, though it has the same block in there and the same carburetor it had when it was built by GM in '55, it has more horsepower now. It's more fuel efficient. It gets further a mile a gallon than when it did when it was first built because of the improved fuels and oils and rubber on the tires that we have these days.

Restored to full usefulness. This is the goal. And the Bible shows us how to do that. At times one is severed from the body.

And perhaps more important than how this is done is the spirit with which it is done. It is the spirit that giveth life, the Bible tells us. We noticed this weekend that discipleship is maybe a bit weak as an element in our congregations, in our churches, in our understanding of how congregations should function. We need to reexamine the structure here. And maybe the Lord will give us, as a result of this weekend together, an opportunity to grow in this area of discipling, men and women, new believers for Christ Jesus in our church services and in our communities.

And the church is one. United. In one accord. Unanimous, the Bible says in Spanish. Where your Bible says one accord, the word unanimous is there every time in Spanish. And that Greek word from which one accord comes in your language, Greek would say it like this: They take three words and put them together into one. Breathing heavily together. A church that is all with one accord in one place is there breathing heavily together. A church that is with one accord praying is breathing heavily together. We have that in chapter 4 when those two were sent back from the Sanhedrin, the council, and they came to their own company and they breathed heavily together. And something happened there.

That place started to shake before that prayer meeting was over.

And when we get together to pray, that's structure. When the place starts to shake, that's something else.

And the spirit and the presence and the evident worship with Christ in the midst puts life into the structure.

So they were one. And being in agreement, they were able to come to agreements. They well understood the word canon. I'm not going to take a lot of time to describe that word for you. It's a Greek word. It's translated in your King James Version Bible several ways, several times.

With time, that word canon came to include the body of Scriptures that you hold in your hand, the Christian Bible. Someone decided on those 39 books, so there's 27 in the New Testament. There were decisions made there, decisions that we still honor and respect and thank God for today. And I don't think they were carelessly done. And we should honor what was done by other people who went before us in putting that Bible together that we now have bound and in our laps.

But the early Christians and to the early Christians, canon referred to their walk, how they lived, their testimony, the practice of life. And the gentleman that wrote for us Strongman's Concordance tells us in his Greek dictionary at the back, the canon is a standard for faith and practice.

I have my Bible open here. I'll just read this verse to you in Galatians chapter 6 and verse 16. It says, "And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be to them and mercy upon the Israel of God." The word rule there is canon. You walk according to it. There's a way to walk. It affects how we walk. We have that same thought and same word in Philippians chapter 3 and again verse 16 where it says, "Nevertheless, whereunto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing." And that unity there keeps us very, very much alike. There's a canon in the Christian church.

And so if we're not going to walk by that rule, then we are unruly. We certainly wouldn't want to be that. What does unruly mean? Insubordinate. Literally, Greek it means to walk, to march out of step. Now here's the army moving along and they're going towards a destined location and someone is just completely out of sync with what the rest are doing, not marching in step, unruly.

And so there's order in marching in order. There's order there and there's structure there. And the way that marches forward is so it is in the church. It certainly was that way in the early church.

I know there's a lot of controversy these days about the place of brotherhood agreements in a congregation.

I'm going to just say a brief word about that. Too many congregations have a procedure for making decisions but do not know how to come to agreement.

I don't know if you understood that sentence or if you even heard it.

They know how to vote, but they do not know how to come to consensus. And that is why, though they've decided things and they're moving forward with the decisions they made, there's disunity in the congregation and lack of peace because they learned how through parliamentary procedure or some democratic way how to make decisions, but they're not learned how to make agreements.

Still have disagreed people when it's all over.

They have not learned how to follow after the things which make for peace and the things wherewith one may edify another. What our Bible calls ordinances, in one reference your Bible calls that decrease for to keep. Would you go to Acts 15? I want to show you that.

And we just briefly notice a couple of things here.

So we have authority here, decrease for to keep. But there's also life. I'd like you to notice the life, not only the structure that came out of this meeting in Jerusalem in Acts 15. I'd like you to notice the life that came out of it.

Would you allow me to read from verses 25 through 28 in this chapter? "It seemed good unto us." That's more than just a vote. That's more than just a decision. "It seemed good unto us being assembled with one accord. We were assembled breathing heavily together with a difficult thing we had to work on. And our hearts were just like that team of horses breathing heavily together all in the harness hauling that big load up the hill to send chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent therefore Judas and Silas who shall also tell you the same things by mouth.

For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us." And then it gives here this instruction that they had prepared to send out to those Gentile churches. I want to show you the life that was in those decisions, the life that was in those agreements, the life that were in those decrease for to keep. Would you look at verse 29? "So where we're going to stain from meats here, offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication," which is the wise thing to do, of course, "from which if you keep yourselves," look what this says, "ye shall do well."

Very well.

So it seemed good to them. There's certainly life there. And to the Holy Ghost, someone besides just James and brother Jesus is in charge of this meeting. There's a Holy Spirit here giving direction. "Ye shall do well. You will find approval and acceptance. This is the right thing to do. Do it together."

Verse 31 says that when they received this word and had it read to them, they rejoiced for the consolation.

It should be hard for you to imagine the blessing that that would have been for those churches to know that now it was unclear, but now it's clear. It was undefined. Now we know. We didn't know how it was supposed to be, but now we can understand that and we can do it together. They rejoiced for the consolation.

In chapter 16, verse 5, it says, "And so were the churches established in the faith." I'd love to be a place like that. There's power there. There's life there. That's not just structure. Yes, these decisions. Yes, these four or so points that look structural there. And maybe in your time and place where you live, those items would look a bit different from what they looked here. But they met the needs that there were and solved the problem that they faced. But look at the result in verse 5. "They were established in the faith, and that's not all, and increased in number daily." There's life here.

So I don't want you to look disparagingly upon the agreements of a congregation. You sought to face the Lord. You looked at Scripture. You wanted God's will to be done. You realized that there are issues here that you need to address. There are God's newly risen up. You want to maintain peace in the brotherhood. You want to make sure you're honoring the conscience of the assembled body. You want to be sure that you're willing to surrender your thought for that of another and your preference. You can yield it to somebody else. There's life here. And we come to some decisions, but look at these holy consequences, these spiritual results in the church.

And then there is a functioning brotherhood. There's a method for reaching the consensus. There's a method for choosing the servants. There's a method for extending the witness, for solving problems, for receiving new disciples into the body.

There's a method used. There's a way to relate to sister congregations. We so see all of this in the New Testament model, especially in the one in Antioch. And as it's been mentioned several times in this meeting, and I want to refer to it again, and we've read it here in this passage.

In Antioch, the Holy Spirit of God was a vital part of that church. It would never have worked without it. Starting in the very beginning when the apostles of Jerusalem sent Barnabas to Antioch when they heard about these converts among the Gentiles over there. And so these Jewish apostles stayed where they were and they sent Barnabas. He was a Jew too, but they sent him over there. And the Bible says this about Barnabas: He was filled with the Holy Ghost. That would be the right man to send to a church like that. After he was there for a while, brought Paul down there, assembled a church for a year, taught the people from God from what little bit of Scripture they had and their knowledge they had from the apostles of the life of Christ.

And I don't know if Barnabas ever saw Jesus. He meets all the qualifications for a deacon. He was not chosen among those... excuse me. He was not chosen when they looked for another apostle. It might be that he was not there with the other 11 as they ministered and lived with Jesus. He was not chosen either as a deacon when the 7 were chosen, though he met those qualifications.

But we had the Holy Ghost there. And after this work was done, this church became established and the neighbors around looked at this new formed body and they said, "These people are Christians," and they called him that. That's quite a name to be called by your neighbors.

And then the Holy Spirit, through a prophet spoke, stood up and said, "There's going to be a great dearth. There's going to be a problem in Jerusalem. Maybe we should do something about that." And everyone with one mind agreed to do something. It sent some funds over there.

It was the Holy Spirit again in that same church in Antioch that said, "Separate of me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereto I've called them." And then it says they were... they laid hands on them and prayed with them and they were sent forth by the Holy Spirit.

It's from this same church that the idea came from to go to Jerusalem and solve this problem about the Judaizing influence of circumcising the Gentile believers. And when they got to Jerusalem and met with the church, with the elders and with the apostles concerning this matter, then we read these words that you heard this morning: "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us."

That's a vital model right there and you see a lot of structure what we've covered this morning, but there's life there. And I close then with these words.

"There's abundant life in this structure. It is not a valley of dry bones, nor a collection of restored bodies with no breath in them like Ezekiel saw in chapter 37.

Prophesy to the wind. Breathe on me breath of God." Did you hear that already this morning? Did you sing it?

I think of the newly erected tabernacle that we have at the end of the book of Exodus. You may turn to chapter 40.

Moses had received this model up in the mount. He obeyed the Lord, built this with the help of very skilled artisans. The Bible says in verse 33 of the last chapter of Exodus that Moses finished the work. And now I want to read at verse 34.

"Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation. And the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation because the cloud above there, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

And the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle until the visceral went onward on in all their journeys. The cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not to the day that it was taken up. But the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and the fire was on it by night in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys."

A lot of structure to the building of the tabernacle, details beyond imagination.

But it needed to be filled with life as you and I also need to be, and so do our congregations at home. Listen to these words. After Jesus gave four steps to take to restore a brother who was taken in a trespass or a fault, He added these words at the end of that instruction in Matthew 18: "Verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Again I say unto you that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." That brings a lot of life into the structure.

Why is it alive? Why is this just not dead works? Why is this not simply empty tradition? Why are these things that we're doing filled with joy and blessing? Why is it working so well in some congregations? And it's interesting to me to notice that I've observed congregations with a more defined position of structure than what others have, and yet more unity and more souls coming into those congregations from an unconverted background than in places where it seems like, you know, things kind of... things kind of accommodate. And why is that?

Well, there's several reasons, and with these I close. We are volunteers. If any man will come after me. In Costa Rica, none of our people have to do it. The only members we have in our congregation are the ones that wanted to do it.

They wanted to be allowed to do it. They're glad they can do it. They want to be part of it. And whatever it takes to do that, that's what they want to do. The Bible says of the rest: "There's no man joining himself unto them, but the people magnified them. And so there were those who were, and those who were not, and those who were committed, and those who were not, and those who were volunteers, and those who were not."

It was clearly defined and understood there. It still is today. So we were committed. It says they continued steadfastly in the apostle doctrine and fellowship, breaking their bread in their prayers.

They were of one accord in one place. Then Jesus said: "By this shall the men know that you are My disciples, if ye love one another as I have loved you."

This might be one of the most dissipated teachings within the Anabaptist world. I don't know how we can divide from each other, learn to do without each other. Brothers that we needed and loved and worked with and labored with and prayed with and visited with and evangelized with, and now we walk away from them never to get back together again.

How can we do that, brothers, if we love one another as Christ loved us?

He leaves 99 and goes to find that which is lost. How can we do that to each other, brothers?

And we're filled with that same Spirit of God, that same Spirit of life, that same Spirit that's within the Son is now sent forth into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which He has given us. We have that same Spirit of life and love within us. That's why it works, dear brothers. That's where the life comes from.

"We do not love in word, but in deed and in truth. We lay down our lives for our brothers. We are willing to submit, to consider the conscience of another, to weep with those who weep, to bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ.

With one heart and one voice we glorify God. We worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The light shines before men, and they see those works in that life, and they know that we have been with Jesus.

We have fallen into the ground and died, so we don't abide alone, but life comes forth and with it much fruit. And the life of Jesus is evident and manifest in this mortal flesh."

I would just like to invite the Holy Spirit of God to come upon this assembly, to fill this place. That everyone that's here would know that Christ is here, that God is here, the Spirit of God is here.

It's safe to be here.

You can tell the truth here. You can open your life here. Find someone to take care of you here. Have your needs met here because God is here and Christ is in the midst. And there's structure here. This weekend we have found life here. May God bless you.