Spirit and Truth Ministries
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MAN’S STRUCTURE VS. GOD’S SPIRIT
Don Hawley
April 20, 2000
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The starry heavens declare that God is a God of order. Man, however, is everlastingly determined to improve on whatever comes from the hand of divinity.
The Bible begins by stating that the Holy Spirit is the architect of God’s grand design.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was empty, a formless mass cloaked in darkness. And the Spirit of God was hovering over its surface. Gen. 1:1, 2.
A wise creator placed Adam and Eve in a stress-free environment.
Then the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he placed the man he had created. Gen. 2:8.
Cain, the world’s first murderer, decided that God’s agrarian plan for mankind was faulty. It wasn’t sufficiently structured. He had a better idea.
So Cain left the LORD’S presence and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Then Cain’s wife became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and they named him Enoch. When Cain founded a city, he named it Enoch after his son. Gen. 4:16, 17.
From the beginning cities were like magnets drawing all kinds of human depravity. Finally God sent a great flood and started over with Noah and his family. It wasn’t long after the deluge, however, before men came up with the most notable and arrogant human structure yet devised.
As the people migrated eastward, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there. They began to talk about construction projects. “Come,” they said, “let’s make great piles of burnt brick and collect natural asphalt to use as mortar. Let’s build a great city with a tower that reaches to the skies—a monument to our greatness!
Gen. 11:1-4.
God wasn’t impressed, at least not favorably. When men come up with their own structuring, it’s usually designed to glorify themselves instead of their Creator. God took a long look at the Tower of Babel and said, “Enough.”
The LORD scattered them all over the earth; and that ended the building of the city. Gen. 11:8.
God isn’t opposed to structure as long as he’s the designer. When the children of Israel came out of Egypt they were an ignorant rabble of slaves. In mercy God gave his people a big “show and tell” to carry with them through their desert sandbox. By observing the order of the Tabernacle and its services, the Israelites began to comprehend God’s plan of salvation for mankind. The Lord gave Moses construction plans covering every little detail.
Be sure that you make everything according to the pattern I have shown you here on the mountain. Ex. 25:40.
Man’s yearning to do his own structuring wasn’t confined to the physical. Even more ardently he wanted to create and control his own culture. The Holy Spirit had, from the beginning, been appointed as the all-sufficient guide for God’s people. However, they decided on another plan.
The leaders of Israel met at Ramah to discuss the matter with Samuel. “Look,” they told him, “you are now old, and your sons are not like you. Give us a king like all the other nations have.”
Samuel was very upset with their request and went to the LORD for advice. “Do as they say,” the LORD replied, “for it is me they are rejecting, not you. They don’t want me to be their king any longer. Ever since I brought them from Egypt they have continually forsaken me and followed other gods. And now they are giving you the same treatment. Do as they ask, but solemnly warn them about how a king will treat them.” 1 Sam. 8:4-9.
The people got their way, and with it a new era of misery. The Old Testament is a sad history of God’s chosen ones turning away from his divine wisdom to conjure up their own structuring.
New Testament Order
In the time of Christ religious leaders were so intent on imposing their own structuring on the people, that they took their manmade activities right into the Temple. Such arrogance made Christ angry.
When they arrived back in Jerusalem, Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the merchants and their customers. He knocked over the tables of the moneychangers and the stalls of those selling doves, and he stopped everyone from bringing in merchandise. He taught them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a place of prayer for all nations,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves.”
Mark 11:15-17.
The next verse tells us that some religious leaders were so determined to have their own way that they even resorted to murder.
When the leading priests and teachers of religious law heard what Jesus had done, they began planning how to kill him. Vs. 18.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Jesus died because he refused to give way to man’s deep-felt need to run his own show, to set up his own structures in place of those devised by God.
Many of the people who were with Mary believed in Jesus when they saw this happen. But some went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the leading priests and Pharisees called the high council together to discuss the situation. “What are we going to do?” they asked each other. “This man certainly performs many miraculous signs. If we leave him alone, the whole nation will follow him, and then the Roman army will come and destroy both our Temple and our nation.”
And one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said, “How can you be so stupid? Why should the whole nation be destroyed? Let this one man die for the people.” John 11:45-50.
For the word “nation” read “apparatus.” The religious leaders had set up a corrupt system that gave them immense power at the expense of the people. They were ready to do whatever it took to protect their vested interests.
One of the most underrated events in history took placed at the moment Jesus died on the cross.
Then Jesus uttered another loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain in the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Mark 15:37, 38.
This dramatic event signaled that history had been torn in two; nothing would ever be the same again. Ever protective of their beloved religious structure, the leaders merely sewed up the veil and carried on as usual. But their actions were meaningless. No longer was it necessary for the people to approach God through the priesthood. Now they could, on their own, come boldly before the throne of grace. Now they themselves were priests, and their bodies temples of the living God.
A careful study of the early church reveals it was largely structure free. The Holy Spirit had come at Pentecost according to Christ’s promise, and that’s what really mattered. The little house churches with their anointed leaders were so empowered that they “turned the world upside down.”
Unfortunately, Christian believers once again yearned after worldly patterns. Steadily they added structure upon structure until they spawned the great Roman Catholic Church, and mankind descended into the Dark Ages. Truth seemed almost eclipsed until a monk named Luther stood against the pomp and ceremony of the church. The Protestant Reformation opened a long, arduous journey from darkness into light.
Sadly the journey has been a slow one. In leaving the monolithic Roman church, Christians fell into another organizational pattern not of God’s design—denominationalism. This new form of structuring kept the Body of Christ fragmented and at war with itself for centuries.
Satan always counterfeits significant moves of God, and as a student of Scripture he knows in advance what to anticipate. Sometimes, then, by taking note of what the devil is up to, we can learn something of what God is about to do.
Perhaps nothing the devil is doing today is more effective for his kingdom than pushing the New Age movement. It’s so clever that it has infiltrated virtually ever aspect of our society. And yet it has no discernable structure! There is no world headquarters, no president, and no human hierarchy. It’s powerful because, instead of being structured, it’s a loose network presided over by Satan himself.
Can we not learn from this pattern? Instead of dreaming up more and more human organizational masterpieces to usher in the Kingdom, let’s see what God prefers. He has clearly stated his intention.
For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth. Rom. 9:28
It is time to move away from constricting human structures, and recognize the Body of Christ. That assembly is not to be an organization, but simply a network under the direction of the Holy Spirit! It’s difficult for many leaders to pull back and allow the Spirit free reign. However, that is precisely what God calls for today. It’s time to meet in the Upper Room of worship and watch for the move of God.
At this moment in time there are two proper, and biblical, church entities. The first is the Body of Christ, consisting of every person in the world who believes in salvation in Christ and desires to walk with him. That constitutes the overall family of God, those who Jesus will take with him at his imminent return.
The other significant entity is the local congregation, the immediate family. God knew that we need to fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ on a regular basis.
And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near. Heb. 10:25.
The arrangement in the local congregation is to be the same one that God ordained for the
newly-born Christian church.
He is the one who gave these gifts to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ, until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ. Eph 4:11-13.
Though neglected by the church in past centuries, many congregations have reinstated these special gifts during the past few decades. Are they appreciated and utilized in your local church family? This has always been God’s New Testament plan for church governance.
Since Pentecost we’ve been living in the dispensation of the Holy Spirit—although most Christians have been unaware of that vital fact. Now God intends to remedy the problem, and few texts are as important for our day as the following:
The time is coming and is already here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship him that way. For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.” John 4:23, 24.
No matter what your worship pattern may have been in the past, this describes what it needs to be today. This is not an option. God says that true worshipers must worship in both truth and spirit. With Christ’s return at hand, dare we be anything but a “true worshiper?”
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