Prayer: Lord, how we thank You for this meeting. We worship You for Your speaking daily and hourly to all of us. Thank You, Lord, for the word, the printed Word and the spoken word. Thank You for the word that You have been speaking to us every day in Your Spirit and to our spirit. Lord, how much we need You. We need You desperately. Without You, we can do nothing. Apart from You, we are empty. Lord, be our health and strengthen us. We want to be strengthened in You. Speak to our heart, to our mind, to our spirit, and to our entire being. Lord, You make the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and send rain on the just and the unjust. You are the merciful God who loves everyone. Lord, we like to learn of You and be one with You in Your love. Thank You that we are one with You. Oh, what a salvation that we are one with the processed Triune God in His divine Trinity! Thank You, Lord Jesus. When we are in this organic union with You, You can be magnified, glorified, and testified. Lord, we thank You that we can speak You to one another. Lord, speak in our speaking, and give us an ear to hear what You are speaking. We cannot forget Your enemy. Lord Jesus, bind him. Lord, we give the commandment to bind Your enemy, Satan, the Devil. Chase him away from this meeting place. Chase away all the darkness and every cloudy situation. Lord, take away all the veils and clear up the entire situation. Speak a clear word to us. Speak a loving and precious word. We love You, Lord. O Lord Jesus! We love Your name. Oh, we love Jesus! We will love Your name for eternity. We love You today, and we love You at this very moment. We believe that You are with us and that You love us. How we worship You! You love us in Your divinity and Your humanity. Hallelujah! Jesus loves us! Amen.
In chapter one we saw that 1 Corinthians 14 is a chapter of encouragement from the Apostle Paul. In the first verse of this chapter Paul says, “Desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but rather that you may prophesy.” Then near the end of the chapter in verse 39 Paul says, “Therefore, my brothers, desire earnestly to prophesy.” The whole chapter encourages us to seek after speaking for the Lord, prophesying. The entire New Testament consummates in this charge, the charge for us to prophesy. We should not forget that the proper meaning of prophesying in the New Testament is not just to predict, to foretell, but to speak for the Lord, to speak forth the Lord, and to speak the Lord into people in a dispensing way. We should daily minister Christ into others by speaking Him. This matter of speaking the Lord is the top consummation of the entire New Testament in our functioning for the building up of the Body of Christ. Thank the Lord that we are under such an enlightenment.
I believe that the sky is clear to us and that the heaven is even opened to us. Lord Jesus, we are here and we open to You. We believe that You are opening Yourself to us. It is so good to be open to the Lord and to one another. When we meet together to enjoy the speaking of God in His oracle, the earth is connected to heaven, and the heaven is open to the earth. There is a heavenly ladder connecting the earth to heaven (John 1:51; Gen. 28:11-22). There is such a heavenly traffic when God speaks in His oracle in the meeting. When we receive His speaking, we are enlightened, nourished, strengthened, established, transformed, and built up. We are under the divine building up, not of a congregation for a facade but of an organism. This universal, unique organism is the Body of Christ. Christ is the Head and all His redeemed ones are the members of this Body. What a mercy that each one of us is a member of Christ! We are not members of organized Christianity, but we are members of Christ. We love Christ, but we hate any kind of “anity.” We love the living Christ, the Christ full of life, the organic Christ. We are His organic Body.
The new light that we are enjoying is that 1 Corinthians 14 is altogether an encouragement, encouraging us to prophesy, to speak the Lord and to speak for the Lord. We should exercise to speak Christ all the time. In our homes we should not speak anything but Christ. The husbands and wives should speak Christ to each other. Instead of exchanging words with each other, the husbands and wives should learn to speak Christ to each other. We should forget everything and cleave to Christ. Then in the church meetings, we should speak only Christ. Christ is everything. When we speak something from Hades, we are in Hades. When we speak something concerning Christ, we are in the heavens. Let us speak Christ again and again, a thousand times a day. It will not tire us to speak Christ. Hallelujah for Christ, and hallelujah even more for speaking Christ! I can never exhaust the speaking of Christ. Thank the Lord for Paul’s encouragement in 1 Corinthians 14 for us to speak Christ.
In such an encouraging chapter, Paul tells us in verse 26 that whenever we come together, we should speak Christ. First, we speak Christ to ourselves, then to one another, then to the angels, and then to the Devil, Satan. We have to say, “Satan, I am going to speak Christ to you to defeat you and to chase you away.” The strong light shining from 1 Corinthians 14 is for us to speak Christ. We must come together to speak nothing but Christ. We must speak Christ, Christ, Christ, and more Christ. I am perfecting the saints to speak Christ. We all need to say, “Amen! I like to be perfected!”
All of 1 Corinthians 14 is a charge for us to desire earnestly to prophesy. We are to pursue not only love but also prophesying. We must seek to excel to the building up of the church by seeking to prophesy. We should not seek after the low gifts, but we must seek the excelling gift of prophesying. We all need to excel by speaking forth Christ. Christ is all and in all. Christ is the very embodiment of the processed Triune God. Your Christ and my Christ, the very Christ who lives in us and who indwells us, is the life-giving Spirit. Is this not excelling? We have so much to speak of Christ.
The best way to preach the gospel to sinners is to speak Christ to them. In our gospel preaching we may say something like this: “Dear friends, I have something excelling to share with you, and this excelling thing is a living person, Jesus Christ. I must tell you that you are empty. Why are you empty? Because you are short of Christ. You need Christ. Christ is the living One. Christ is all and in all. Christ is God. Christ is man. Christ is the Spirit. Christ is love. Christ is light. Christ is righteousness. Christ is sanctification. Christ is redemption. Christ is our salvation. Christ is our today. Christ is our present. Christ is our future. Christ is our eternity. Christ is everything. You need Him, and you can have Him right now. Follow me to pray and call on His name. Just say, ‘O Lord Jesus! Lord Jesus, I love You and I embrace You.’” This is the excelling way to preach the gospel. This is more excelling than telling people that if they do not believe in the Lord, they will go to hell. The excelling preaching is to preach Christ as everything in all His unsearchable riches. We need to be perfected to speak Christ in this way. All of us need such perfecting.
The Lord desires to build up the church as an organism, the Body of Christ. There is not such a thing on this earth today because hardly anyone cares for 1 Corinthians 14:26. Whenever we come together in a church meeting, regardless of how big or how small it is, we must have something to present to the ones in that meeting. What we present must be Christ. Each attendant can present Christ in a different aspect. If everyone in the meeting only speaks concerning one aspect of Christ, the meeting will not be that rich. Jesus is all in all and He has many aspects. One person may say, “Jesus is love.” Another may say, “Jesus is light.” Someone else can say, “Jesus is the embodiment of the Triune God,” and another can add, “Jesus is the very embodiment of the processed Triune God in His divine Trinity.” Then someone can say, “This very Jesus, who is the very embodiment of the processed Triune God, is now the indwelling Spirit.” After that is said, another one can say, “He is the consummation of God as the all-inclusive Spirit of the processed Triune God.”
In our speaking we can exhibit the riches of Christ, all the aspects of His wonderful person. Suppose we had such a meeting in which everyone spoke nothing except Jesus in different aspects. In such a meeting, the heaven is opened. The leavened practice of Christianity is that only the pastor or certain gifted ones can speak. The Scriptures, however, tell us that when we all come together, each one has. What a meeting we could have if all the attendants would speak nothing but Jesus in the many aspects of His person! We could never exhaust speaking about His person in this way. He is the tree of life. The Scriptures also reveal that He is a bird. In His relationship with the nation of Israel, He is likened to an eagle (Exo. 19:4; Deut. 32:11-12). He flew the entire nation of Israel out of Egypt. Actually, it was the Lord who flew me from Taiwan to the United States. My trust is in His wings. I trust in the living, organic wings of this great Jesus! This wonderful eagle is my bird. Christ is also my power. No power is stronger than Jesus. In His person He is everything.
We can never exhaust speaking about Jesus. We do not have time to talk about other things. Jesus is sufficient for us to talk about for eternity. We need to practice speaking Jesus in our meetings. Each of us should speak Christ in different aspects. If one person says that Christ is great, the other one can say that He is also small. If He were only great and not small, He would not be everything. We need to practice speaking Christ in our meetings so that 1 Corinthians 14:26 can be a reality among us.
Some may agree with the truth in 1 Corinthians 14:26, but they may not believe that it can be worked out. Some have advised me not to endeavor to bring in the scriptural way of meeting and serving to the Lord’s recovery. They are concerned that this is too hard a task for me in my old age. The more that people talk to me in this way, however, the more I desire to speak on this subject. Nothing can stop me from telling people that 1 Corinthians 14:26 is workable. With us it may seem impossible, but with the Lord nothing is impossible. First Corinthians 14:26 is His word. His word must be fulfilled. In Matthew 24:35 the Lord said, “The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but My words shall by no means pass away.” I believe that today is the time for us to labor with Him, to cooperate with Him, that He could have a channel to fulfill His word in 1 Corinthians 14:26. It would be good to have the following saying framed on our wall: 1 Corinthians 14:26 to be fulfilled definitely. I am a human being with human feelings, and I am sympathetic to the loving advice from people who say that I should not labor and endeavor so much to see the scriptural way fulfilled. But in addition to my humanity I also have the Lord within me. This wonderful, divine One within me says that He will fulfill His word. I believe that 1 Corinthians 14:26 is the Lord’s word and that it will be fulfilled. In my fellowship with the Lord, I was considering how 1 Corinthians 14:26 could be fulfilled. Then one day the answer came. It will be fulfilled by Ephesians 4:11-16. Ephesians 4:11-16 says that the Lord has given some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers for the perfecting of the saints so that the Body of Christ can be built up.