Therefore, today I want the brothers to learn something here, because there is a basic principle. We have to learn to see that there are two aspects. On the one hand, the Bible clearly shows us that arrangements are needed for practical affairs. There may be brothers among us who misunderstand to the point that they think that practical affairs need no arrangements. They seem to think that things will take care of themselves. There is no such thing. The Bible clearly tells us to distribute to each, as anyone has need. In this there is arrangement, not careless dividing and careless distributing. It is distributing to each, as anyone has need. Therefore, please remember there are arrangements. There are affairs that are carried out in a clear and strict way with clear procedures.
On the other hand, I want the brothers and sisters to take note that God does not emphasize these arrangements. God has arrangements, but God did not record all these arrangements in the Bible. The fact that there are arrangements is spoken of in the Bible, but the method of arrangements is not recorded. God does not recognize that the method of the arrangements is important enough to need to be recorded in the Bible. Perhaps you will ask why. I would like you to know that there is the need of people who have the wisdom and the spiritual way before God to be able to obtain the spiritual wisdom from above. If a person is one who can receive God’s grace, he will receive grace even when he is handling practical affairs. If a person is one who is filled with the Holy Spirit, he will know how to carry out spiritual affairs; he will also be a skillful worker to build up God’s tabernacle. This is also a spiritual work. Therefore, God wants us to pay attention to learning spiritual matters. From the beginning to the end of the Bible you can see spiritual arrangements and spiritual principles, but you do not see the arrangement of practical affairs. It is not that the arrangement of practical affairs does not exist, but very little is said concerning it. The fact is recorded, but not the method.
God knows the temptations and the dangers that are in man. After a period of time what is spiritual is lost, but a whole set of business procedures still remains. There can be such a situation with us that the method of taking care of things is of God, but the person who carries it out may not be a spiritual person. If the rules, the details, and the methods by which the apostles took care of practical affairs were clearly laid before us, the readers of the Bible would love to learn these methods first and would not learn to be spiritual first. Because man is of the flesh, man would rather learn what is of the flesh than learn what is spiritual. When many brothers hear about baptism, they argue whether baptism is by immersion into water or by sprinkling. Only afterwards do they pay attention to what the spiritual significance is. Man does not pay attention to the significance of baptism; he argues first about the outward method and circumstance. This is man’s nature. Therefore, if there were a handbook for carrying out practical matters in the Bible, I am afraid that the twenty-seven books of the New Testament would be cast aside and this handbook would be the book everyone would have to read. This handbook would gain the attention of the church and would have gained the attention of Christians throughout all the centuries. Therefore, in the Bible there is this characteristic: God shows us only His grace but not His methods for doing things.
There are many churches that have published such handbooks. You may have seen in church history that every time God had a revival, He gained many people, and He used one or a few servants to raise up a group of people. After some days they realized that the church needed some arrangement concerning practical affairs. Therefore, they made many arrangements for church affairs. For fear that they might forget about these arrangements, they recorded them, kept the records, and used them as procedures for doing things so that they could have rules to follow. After some time the spiritual blessing leaked out, the living water was lost, and the power was gone. The second generation could not match the first, the third generation could not match the second, and the spiritual blessing almost completely leaked out; however, the procedures for doing things still remained. This has been the situation of Protestantism.
Therefore, in the Bible we see that God does not tell us the methods for doing things; rather, He left the methods for doing things to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to the filling of the Holy Spirit, and to the Holy Spirit Himself giving wisdom. This was to avoid a day when the shell would be present, the methods would be present, the procedures would be present, but the blessing would be gone, the living water would be gone, and the spiritual power would be gone. This is a fundamental problem. In church history a method comes out when a group of people are raised up. Yet only the method remains by the time of the second, third, and fourth generation.
For this reason, we have avoided having a method all these years. We do not want a method among us. If the spiritual power is there, if the spiritual life is there, and if we always have the Lord’s blessing, then maintaining a method is appropriate. If one day all these spiritual things leak out and all that remains is a method, then that will be like the situation that has existed in Protestantism for so many years. All that remains is an empty frame with all of the inward spiritual things having leaked out. Therefore, we never want a method to come out.