Prayer: Lord, we worship You for Yourself. We worship You for Your Word. Lord, we treasure You in Your Word. Lord, we thank You for this gathering. We believe it is sovereignly of Your mercy. O Lord Jesus! It is all a mercy that we are here. Thank You that we are under Your mercy. We enjoy Your rich anointing. Thank You, Lord that You have opened up Your Word to us. We are looking to You for this message. Be with us in Your Word. Lord, grant us to see a clear vision and have a clear way to carry out Your vision. Give us the way, Lord. Give us the wisdom how to handle the vision of Your New Testament. Lord, do cover us again. We hate Your enemy. We hate that he is still troubling us in our mentality, in our concept, and in our opinion. Lord, we are still so natural in our soul without much transformation. Have mercy upon us. What we need is Your mercy. Amen.
Thus far, I believe we have all been deeply impressed with the need of a vision of God’s New Testament ministry. This training is a training on the ministry. Throughout the twenty centuries of church history, the divisions, confusions, and problems which have taken place among all the Christians were all due to a ministry. Whatever you minister produces something. If you minister the heavens, something heavenly will be produced. If you minister earthly things, surely the issue, the coming out, will be earthly. The many divisions and confusions among the Christians today all come from one source—a ministry. The Presbyterian denomination or division came out of the ministry of the presbytery. The Baptist division came out of the ministry of baptism by immersion. All the different kinds of Christian groups come out of different ministries. A ministry is mainly a teaching. We must realize that the teaching which a Christian teaches ministers something. It may minister something right, something wrong, something high, or something low. A teaching always issues in something. Based upon the issue of your teaching, your teaching may be considered as a ministry. Ministry in the biblical usage means to serve people with something, just as a waiter in a restaurant serves people with the courses of food. To serve others with something is to minister. To minister is not to preach, teach, or speak without serving anyone with anything. We may say that a certain minister who speaks for an hour ministers nothing to people. This means that according to Christ he ministered nothing, but according to the facts that minister did minister something. He ministered something wrong, something bad, or something low to people. I hope we can see that ministry produces problems, ministry produces division, and ministry produces confusion.
This is why Paul wrote 1 Timothy in the midst of a confusing environment and after many years of his work with his co-workers. This Epistle is altogether an inoculation. Poison after poison was injected into the Christian church while the church was going on. At the conclusion of his writing ministry, Paul wrote 1 Timothy to inoculate the church against all these poisons. In the opening word of this Epistle, however, Paul did not write in a way that we would think to be so serious: “Even as I urged you, when I was going into Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus in order that you might charge certain ones not to teach differently” (1:3). This phrase “not to teach differently” seems so simple. If you merely read this phrase, you will not sense the seriousness of different teaching. We may not think that this is serious, but actually it is more than serious. It kills people to teach differently. To teach differently tears down God’s building and annuls God’s entire economy. We all must realize that even a small amount of teaching in a different way destroys the recovery. There is a proverb which says, “One sentence can build up the nation and one sentence can destroy the entire nation.” You do not need to give an entire message. Just by speaking one sentence which conveys your kind of concept tears down everything. We must realize that ministry is “terrible.” Your speaking can build up or destroy. It is possible that your speaking destroys, kills, and annuls.
As we have seen, Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:3 that he left him there in Ephesus to charge certain ones not to teach differently. What then, we may ask, is the unique thing which all the Christian teachers should teach? Christian teachers today teach many things such as the presbytery, baptism by immersion, the episcopalian way, holiness, how to preach the gospel, and the way to teach the Bible. We would all agree that to teach the way of Judaism is surely wrong, but what about teaching how to preach the gospel? What is wrong with preaching the gospel? We must realize that even the teaching to preach the gospel creates division. This is wrong. There is only one ministry which always builds up, edifies, and perfects with no destruction at all. There is only one unique ministry that is justified, promoted, uplifted, and even glorified in the New Testament. In 1 Timothy 1:4 Paul went on to tell Timothy what those ones who were teaching differently should be occupied with—God’s economy. Through my contact with some of you brothers, I became burdened and made a quick decision to call this gathering for this training. I do not like to see the recovery destroyed by different teachings. I realize the real situation. The Lord covers me. You may not know what I am talking about because you do not know all the factors. My contact with some of you impressed me with a terrible factor. I realized that you were going to teach things differently to cause trouble and to create division. There is only one ministry that ever builds up and that never destroys—this is God’s economy.
We must ask ourselves what was wrong with teaching Judaism at the Apostle’s time. This is not Buddhism or Gnosticism. To teach Judaism is to teach according to the holy Word in the Old Testament. Someone could have said to the Apostle Paul, “What is wrong with teaching the law? I am teaching the Bible.” Is there anything wrong with teaching people the Bible, with teaching people theology, or with teaching people how to preach the gospel? There is nothing wrong, but we must realize that this kind of teaching creates division. In 1 Timothy Paul did not indicate that those who taught differently taught heresies or heathen things. If they had taught heathen things, no Christian would have taken them. The reason why their teachings were received is because they were scriptural things from the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. By that time the New Testament had not yet come into existence. The holy Word was only the Old Testament. These ones who taught differently could have thought, “If you don’t allow me to teach the Old Testament, then what am I going to teach? I am quite legitimate and quite scriptural.” Their teaching, however, created division. Is there anything wrong with setting up a mission and sending missionaries to the field? We must realize that this is not a matter of being wrong or right, but it is a matter of “cutting Christ’s Body into pieces.” On the one hand, the bringing of people to Christ through the missionaries is very positive. Unconsciously, however, this kind of work cuts Christ’s Body into pieces. We should be careful because we may do the same thing. We may insist, stress, and emphasize a scriptural item which seemingly is right, yet actually it cuts the Body of Christ. It divides the recovery. We must be careful. I called such a gathering because I read people’s hearts from their attitude and from their spirit in speaking. I am afraid that some different teachings might be on the verge of coming out.