To carry out the New Testament priesthood of the gospel, we first must get sinners saved through our preaching of the gospel by visiting them in their homes (Luke 10:1-6; 19:1-6, 9-10; John 4:3-7). We need to make the New Testament priesthood of the gospel a part of our daily life. To get sinners saved is the work and the life of a priest. We have to save sinners and offer them to God as spiritual sacrifices (1 Pet. 2:5) habitually, regularly, and constantly (2 Tim. 4:2; 1 Cor. 9:22-23). This must be our habit. Just as we take three meals a day regularly, we have to preach the gospel regularly and constantly. As the New Testament priests, we are also the branches of the vine-tree, Christ (John 15:5). The purpose of the branches is to bear fruit. If we are not bearing fruit, this is evidence that we are not abiding in the vine. As branches of the vine, we need to bear fruit for the glorification of the Father (John 15:8), and as priests, we have to gain new ones, offering them to God as spiritual sacrifices.
To have living and spiritual sacrifices to offer to God for His acceptance, we must go to the human “ocean.” The Lord told Peter that He would make him a fisher of men (Matt. 4:18-19). All of us need to go to fish for men. We need to go where the fish are. Instead of going fishing, we may send out invitations, spreading them in the “ocean” and asking the “fish” to come to our gospel preaching meeting. Instead of going to the fish, we invite the fish to come to us. It is not logical for us to labor in this way. We have to go where the fish are.
The Lord Jesus was the first fisherman. He did not sit on the throne in the heavens and ask the fish to come to Him. Instead, He left His throne in the heavens and came to be a man so that He could visit man. He came to be a man according to God’s ordained New Testament principle of incarnation. As the almighty God, He entered into the womb of a human virgin, staying there for nine months. This is the process that He passed through so that He could come to preach the gospel to us. He was born with two natures, divine and human. He became a God-man to live God and to express God. This God-man lived in Nazareth for approximately thirty years, seemingly not doing anything. He passed through such a marvelous human living in order to be completed. At the age of thirty, He began His ministry. He did not build a big meeting hall or a big cathedral and send out invitations inviting people to come to hear Him speak. As a humble Nazarene without a reputation or a degree, He visited village after village. People wondered how He learned so much and how He could speak in the way that He did.
Visiting people for the preaching of the gospel is God’s ordained way, and this is also the way practiced by the Lord Jesus. The Lord came down from heaven to save sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). He went to visit Zaccheus with His dynamic salvation (Luke 19:1-10). He entered the home of Zaccheus and stayed in his house, bringing Zaccheus to salvation. He went to visit the Samaritan woman and bring her the living water (John 4:3-15). He went purposely from Judea to Samaria and sat by a well, waiting for this woman to come to draw water. His visiting this woman was His “knocking on doors.” The essence of knocking on doors is to meet people where they are. Zaccheus was a sinful tax collector, and the Samaritan woman was an immoral woman. The Lord visited both of them to bring salvation to them. This should be our pattern. We have to go to visit people.
The Lord also sent His disciples to people. He sent the twelve to go to the cities and villages to visit the lost sheep of the house of Israel and bring them peace (Matt. 10:5-8, 11-13). Then he sent the seventy to go to every city and seek the sons of peace (Luke 10:1-6), whom God the Father had chosen in eternity past. The Lord Jesus told us that we would be as lambs in the midst of wolves (v. 3). This means that we have to sacrifice ourselves. In order to carry out the priesthood of the gospel, we have to go to the wolves because among the wolves there are some sons of peace. The sons of peace that we gain will one day welcome us into the eternal tabernacles (Luke 16:9). Today it should be easy for us to visit people. We can go to visit our close relatives first, and then we can visit our neighbors, friends, and classmates.
We should always have two or three newly baptized ones under our care year-round. We should not bring forth too many new ones because we will not be able to care for all of them. In a good sense, we have to exercise “birth control.” One brother said that he had a good month in the gospel because he baptized twelve people. However, to have twelve infants to care for will burden a person beyond what he is able to bear. If a mother had twelve deliveries within one month, this would be a misfortune to her. When we get two or three baptized, we need to stop producing more new ones in order to care for these two or three. If we take care of them, they will grow in life properly.
We have to carry out the preaching of the gospel in the new way by controlling the rate of birth. Humanly speaking, we tend to be at one extreme or the other. On the one extreme, we may not go to preach the gospel, saying that it is too difficult to visit people by knocking on their doors. After three months, however, we may get excited and go out to knock on doors to get twelve baptized in one month. We have to be balanced. We need to go out to preach the gospel in a regular way, but we also need to exercise to control the new births. If we get three baptisms in the first week, we should stop and go back to the baptized ones twice a week to nourish and cherish them. We need to go back to them in a sober way with much prayer and fellowship with the Lord to help them by feeding them. Nursing mothers know that they need to feed the babes a little bit at a time. If each one of us brought forth two new ones yearly, the increase in the churches would be very good.
After the delivery of her first child, a mother learns how to feed the newly delivered babe. In the past, we may not have known how to feed a new one properly. We did not know how to talk with the newly baptized ones. We were not trained to talk in a proper way to feed the young ones. I would beg all of us to put our old way aside. After we preach the gospel to some and they get saved, we should pray, “Lord, how should I go to these new ones? In what way can I feed them properly?” We need to pray to the Lord concerning our care for the new ones. We should not exercise our knowledge. We may have been in the church for fifteen years, and we may think that we know nearly everything. However, we must learn to know nothing. The new way is the organic way. We have to learn how to feed the new ones organically.
If you are visiting a new sister whose husband persecutes her, how are you going to feed her? What are you going to say? You must pray and learn. A sister may be burdened to preach the gospel to her grandfather. If she went to her grandfather to tell him doctrinal things, she would fail. If she prays and opens herself to the Lord, she may go to her grandfather with tears and say, “Dear grandfather, I owe you something. I have been saved for many years, but I have never talked to you about the Lord Jesus.” Even without speaking about the Lord yet, this sister’s grandfather would be touched by the Lord. Her speaking would open him up to receive the Lord. We have to learn to pray to the Lord and to seek the very anointing of the Spirit. Then we can go to speak a word of life. This kind of speaking is the organic feeding.
I cannot tell you what to say, but I can tell you that the way is to pray, forgetting about what you know. What you know means nothing. That does not work. You must pray to get the instant feeling of the anointing, to get the instant, new utterances to say something to the ones whom you are going to visit. Then what you say will be organic and living. You do not need to talk too much. Perhaps twenty minutes is enough. Furthermore, do not try to solve their problems. Since you yourself have many problems that have not been solved, how can you solve others’ problems? You may tell a new one, “I cannot solve your problem because I may have more problems than you do.” This new one may ask you what you do. You can tell him, “I can do nothing except pray to the living Lord.” This word is an organic feeding. After you leave, this new one may pray immediately. This is evidence that the new one was fed by you. To feed someone does not mean that you have to give him a lecture, a message, a doctrine, or even a small booklet. We should not depend on all these things. We must learn how to be organic. We ourselves have to be organic.
The way to organically build up the Body of Christ begins with visiting people where they are to get them saved through our preaching of the gospel. Then we need to go back to the new believers and feed them. To feed them, to nourish them, is to cause them to grow, and to cause them to grow is to build them up. After a newborn babe is delivered, the mother continually feeds him, and this feeding causes him to grow. His growth is his organic building up. If we visit the new ones, but do not minister Christ to them, this will cause them to starve, so there will be no growth, no building up. When we go back to visit the newly baptized ones, we need to feed them with the milk of the word. First Peter 2:2 says that the newborn babes should long for the milk of the word that they may grow. If we visit them regularly and feed them with the milk of the word, they will grow, and by their growth they will be built up and established in the Christian faith.
We have to meet with the new ones in their homes regularly until they become established in the faith (Acts 5:42). After six months of continual care, they may be settled in their faith. Until they are settled in their faith, we should not stop going to them. To feed them is to feed the Lord’s lambs (John 21:15). In John 21 the Lord Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him. When Peter said that he did, the Lord charged him to feed His lambs. To feed the lambs is to feed the infants, the little ones. Such a top apostle as Peter was charged by the Lord to be a nursing mother to feed the small lambs.
According to 1 Thessalonians 2:7, we need to nourish and cherish the new ones as nursing mothers. To cherish is to nurture with tender love and foster with tender care. To cherish a new one is to make him comfortable and happy. When a mother cherishes an infant by putting it into her bosom, she makes the infant happy and comfortable. In such a cherishing atmosphere, the little one can be nourished. We must learn how to cherish the new ones to make them happy and comfortable.
We also have to bring them up and lead them to present themselves to God as living sacrifices, according to the Apostle Paul’s charge in Romans 12:1. After a child is nourished for a period of time, he becomes a teenager. Once we have nourished and cherished the new ones for a period of time so that they can grow to become “teenagers,” we need to lead them to present themselves to God as living sacrifices. At the time of their conversion, we offered them to God as spiritual sacrifices. After feeding them for a period of time, we have to lead them, to beg them, and to help them offer themselves to God as living sacrifices. Paul’s speaking in the book of Romans is progressive according to the maturity of life. By the time he comes to chapter twelve, the believers who were babes have become teenagers. Therefore, in Romans 12 there is the Body life in which all the members function. Some prophesy and others teach (vv. 6-7). This Body life can be experienced in the home meetings with the new beginners. We need to bring the new ones into the experience of Romans 12:1.