Prayer: Lord, thank You for this gathering. How we thank You for all the churches with all the saints in this area. Lord, this gathering is a testimony of Your victory over us, even over the enemy in us. Lord, we trust in You for instant utterance. We have no decision as to what to say. We trust in You for Your living Word. Touch our heart and visit our spirit. Lord, even open up our sober mind that we all may see something on Your heart, that we may see something according to Your plan. In Your precious name we claim, amen.
After the summer training I began to consider the matter of meeting. While I have been considering this, I believe some new light, even new lights, have come to me. As you can see from the title of the message, what we would say is not something so usual concerning the meetings. In this message we would see that the meeting is to exhibit Christ in His victory.
Have you ever asked when the meeting life began in the Bible? Most of you, after thinking a little bit, might say that the meeting life began from Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost. But you have to realize that the meeting life began much earlier than this. The meeting on the day of Pentecost was just a continuation of the meeting which began centuries ago. When did God’s people begin to meet together? Could you find some meeting of God’s people in the book of Genesis? There is no meeting there. At most you may find a kind of family reunion. In all of the fifty chapters of Genesis there is no meeting, no assembly. There was no gathering of God’s people.
But when you come to the second book of the Bible, Exodus, there was the meeting of God’s people. In Exodus when God’s salvation was brought in, right away there was the demand of the assembly of God’s people. There was the request to meet together, and this request goes along with God’s salvation. In a sense God didn’t save any individuals or even a bunch of individuals. God saved an assembly.
Of course, according to the appearance of the wording in Exodus, you couldn’t find a word like assembly. Yet when God called Moses and sent him to deliver the children of Israel out of Egypt, He spoke in this way: “And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness” (5:1). My people is collective; it is not just one person. This is a collective people. Moses was to tell Pharaoh to let God’s people go to hold a feast unto Him. You have to realize that the thought of assembling, the thought of gathering, is implied in this word feast.
I believe we all know that there is no possibility to have a feast if there is only one person. It is difficult to have a feast by yourself. You may buy some chicken and some pie and some other things and try to have a feast by yourself. It is hard to do. Even to have a feast with your wife and children is difficult. Still there is not that much of a feast flavor. The more people you have, the more flavor you have of a feast. A feast is a kind of assembled eating. You have to assemble people together for eating, and this eating implies an assembly. So a feast implies two things: eating and assembling. Both are crucial.
It is hard to say which may be considered first and which second: eating or assembling. But anyhow these are the two factors that constitute a feast. Without eating there is not a feast; without assembling there is not a feast. A feast needs eating and assembling; it needs assembling and eating. “Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.” This means to eat by assembling in front of God and also with God. It is a feast for the people but “unto God.”
Now you can see the requirements of God’s salvation. The first requirement is to meet. According to this principle you cannot receive God’s salvation without joining the assembly. According to the typology in Exodus God did not save any individuals; God saved a people. And this people ate together and assembled together. That was their keeping of a feast unto the Lord. They enjoyed the eating by the assembling, but they did this not only for themselves, but mainly unto the Lord. This was the way of God’s salvation.
Even on the day of Pentecost, it was a people and not individuals who were saved. According to the principle of the first mentioning in the Bible, the first instance of God’s salvation at Pentecost was not a saving of individuals. It was a saving of a people. Right after they were saved, they all assembled together (Acts 2:46-47). If you study the book of Acts carefully you will see that all the people who were saved on the day of Pentecost stuck themselves together. Not only did they stay together, they also stuck themselves one to another. Their sticking together was a testimony of victory. That testimony scared the people. Acts 5:13 tells us that other people dared not to join them. When I was a small child, the first time I saw an army I was scared to death. I dared not go close to that army. That was terrifying! I do believe that on the day of Pentecost, the first meeting of the church was very terrifying. Of course, in those days they met nearly the whole day and every day, and whenever they met that was a testimony of the victory. It was a testimony of Christ’s victory in them over the enemy, over Satan, over the world, over all the demons!
The first point of the new light concerning the meetings is this: the meeting life of God’s people began in Exodus. Don’t think the meeting life of God’s people began in Acts. What transpired in Acts was a continuation of that meeting which began in Exodus centuries ago. Even the meeting place was not changed! The New Testament people of God met in the same temple where the Old Testament people of God had met. The meeting in the temple was a continuation of the assembly of the children of Israel at Mount Sinai. Properly speaking, God’s people began to meet at Mount Sinai.