Message Eleven

Discerning the Destroyers of the Divine Building
to Remain in the Lord’s Recovery
of the Divine Building

Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 3:12-17

1. We need to see God’s intention, Satan’s strategy, and the Lord’s recovery:
   1. God’s intention in His economy is to dispense Christ with all His riches into His believers chosen by God for the constitution and building up of the Body of Christ, the church, to consummate the New Jerusalem as God’s ultimate building for the full expression of the processed Triune God—Eph. 3:8-10.
   2. Satan’s strategy to destroy the divine building is versus the Lord’s recovery of the divine building:
      1. Satan’s strategy is to produce many substitutes for Christ; the Lord’s recovery is the recovery of Christ as our center, reality, life, and everything—1 Cor. 1:22-23; Col. 1:18b; Rev. 2:4, 7, 17; 3:20.
      2. Satan’s strategy is to divide the Body of Christ; the Lord’s recovery is the recovery of the oneness of the Body of Christ—1 Cor. 1:10-13; John 17:11b, 21; Eph. 4:3-4a; Rev. 1:11.
      3. Satan’s strategy is to kill the function of all the members of Christ’s Body by the clergy-laity system; the Lord’s recovery is the recovery of the function of all the members of the Body of Christ—2:6; Eph. 4:15-16; 1 Cor. 14:4b, 26, 31.
2. We must discern the destroyers of the divine building, the workers of lawlessness, who are usurped by Satan in his strategy against the Lord’s recovery of Christ as everything for the building up of His Body through the functioning of all His members—Phil. 1:9; 2 Cor. 11:14-15; Matt. 7:23:
   1. To destroy God’s building is to ruin, corrupt, defile, and mar the temple of God; it is to build with the worthless materials of wood (the natural man), grass (the flesh), and stubble (lifelessness)—1 Cor. 3:17, 12b.
   2. Using any doctrine that differs from the fundamental teachings of the apostles (Acts 2:42) or any ways and efforts that contradict God’s nature, Christ’s redemptive work, and the Spirit’s transforming work is to corrupt, ruin, defile, and mar the temple of God, that is, to destroy it.
   3. When the Lord Jesus comes back, our building work will be tested by His holy fire; if our work is done in Christ, with Christ, for Christ, and is even Christ Himself, it will pass the test of fire—1 Cor. 3:12-15.
3. The destroyers of the divine building are those who blow the wind of divisive teachings by stressing things other than the central teaching concerning God’s economy—Eph. 4:14; 1 Tim. 1:3-4:
   1. Teaching different things rather than the unique ministry of God’s economy tears down God’s building and annuls God’s economy—vv. 3-4.
   2. There is only one ministry that ever builds up and never destroys—this is God’s economy; the only way that we can be preserved in the eternal oneness is to teach the same thing in God’s economy—Eph. 4:11-12; 2 Cor. 4:1.
4. The destroyers of the divine building are those who preach and teach heresies—2 Pet. 2:1; 2 John 7-11:
   1. Those who teach heresies concerning the person of Christ are antichrists, denying both the person of the Lord as the Master and His redemption, by which the Lord purchased the believers; to deny that the man Jesus is God is a great heresy—v. 7; 1 John 2:18, 22-23; 4:2-3.
   2. The apostle warned the believers to watch for themselves lest they be influenced by the heresies and lose the things of the truth; we must reject those who deny the conception and deity of Christ, not receiving them into our house nor greeting them—2 John 8-11.
   3. If we would not be led astray by the heresies but would abide faithfully in the truth concerning the wonderful and all-inclusive Christ, who is both God and man, both our Creator and our Redeemer, we will enjoy in Him the Triune God to the fullest extent as our full reward, even today on earth—v. 8.
5. The destroyers of the divine building are those who are factious, sectarian—Titus 3:10:
   1. A factious man is a heretical, sectarian man who causes divisions by forming parties in the church according to his own opinions; in order to maintain good order in the church, a factious, divisive person should be refused, rejected, after a first and second admonition.
   2. Because such divisiveness is contagious, this rejection is for the church’s profit that contact with the divisive one may be stopped—cf. Num. 6:6-7.
6. The destroyers of the divine building are those who make divisions—Rom. 16:17:
   1. In Romans 14 Paul was liberal and gracious regarding the receiving of those who differ in doctrine or practice; however, in Romans 16:17 he was unyielding and resolute in saying that we must “mark those who make divisions and causes of stumbling contrary to the teaching which you have learned, and turn away from them.”
   2. The Lord hates “one who injects discord among brothers”—Prov. 6:16, 19.
7. The destroyers of the divine building are those who are ambitious for position—3 John 9:
   1. The self-exalting and domineering Diotrophes is an evil pattern of someone who is ambitious for position and “loves to be first” among the saints—v. 9.
   2. We should never hunt to be the first in any work for the Lord; this is the insidious work of hidden ambition to compete with others to be the first.
8. The destroyers of the divine building are those who are wolves, not sparing the flock, and those who speak perverted things to draw away the believers after them—Acts 20:29-30:
   1. The intrinsic need in the Lord’s recovery is for a remnant of His people to build up the church as the kingdom of God, to “build up the wall,” to protect the church from the destroyers of God’s building—Neh. 2:4, 10, 17-20.
   2. We must shepherd the flock of God by declaring to them all the counsel of God, all of God’s economy; under the Lord’s shepherding, all the evil persons who disturb God’s people are kept away from them so that they can dwell in peace and safety to be mingled with God and bound together in oneness—Acts 20:26-35; Ezek. 33:1-11; 34:25; cf. Zech. 2:8; 11:7.