In Matthew 18:20 the Lord Jesus said, “For where there are two or three gathered into My name, there am I in their midst.” This is very meaningful. Apparently, all our meetings are initiated by us and are out of our own volition. Actually, they are initiated by the Lord and arranged under His sovereignty. It seems that we voluntarily come together because we hear about a meeting and take the initiative to attend it. In reality, we have to admit that our Lord is the sovereign Lord. Our meetings are not initiated by us but arranged by the Lord who is the Lord of lords and who is over all. Without Him as the Lord, we could not come from so many different places to meet together. We have to see that this is all His sovereign arrangement.
Suppose three of us want to meet together. If an earthquake occurs where I live, or if a typhoon arises where you are, or if something happens to the other brother on his way here, then we would be unable to meet together. This is only to mention events that occur outside our personal lives. Concerning matters on a more personal level, I may become sick, or there may be trouble in your family, or the other brother’s company may require him to work overtime. In such cases we would still be unable to come together even though we have the desire to do so.
These examples show us that even the meeting together of only two or three persons is initiated not by us but by the Lord. It is the Lord who assembles us and gathers us together. Matthew 18:20 does not say, “Where two or three gather....” In other words, the verse is not in the active voice. Rather, it says, “Where there are two or three gathered”; it is in the passive voice. Therefore, it is not we who gather ourselves to meet; rather, it is the Lord who gathers us together.
Not only so, we are also gathered into His name. For instance, suppose there is a brother who runs a shop. If his business is very busy, so busy that he cannot get away, he most likely will not come to the meeting. However, the Lord Jesus who is in him may stir in him continually so that finally he comes to the meeting instead of remaining in his store. Who is prompting him to come? Is it he himself or is it someone else? Actually, it is neither; it is the Lord Jesus. The reason that we can come together is altogether because the Lord gathers us together; furthermore, He gathers us into His name.
I hope that from now on we all would see that every time we come together, we do not come on our own. If we still say that we come on our own to meet, then our way of speaking is too traditional and religious. We have to say that we are gathered, we are assembled. We do not take the initiative to come, but we are moved to come. It is the Lord Jesus who initiates, and it is He who stirs in every one of us and thus gathers us together.
Now we would like to look at a topic-God and the word. Concerning God and the word, we need to speak about four matters: God being the word, the way God speaks, God’s desire for us to speak, and the way to speak in the meetings. God’s speaking, the way God speaks, God’s desire that we speak, and our speaking in the meetings are four crucial matters to us. Simply put, these four matters are: God and the word, God being the word, God’s speaking, and the word of God.
We have to spend some time to consider what the meaning of the universe is. Today many people do not know God. However, during the past six thousand years of human history, from ancient times to the present, man has never been able to break away from what is known as religion. What is religion? Religion is related to the worship of God. According to the Chinese language, the word religion means having a certain belief and teaching according to that belief. To teach people what one adheres to or believes in is to practice religion.
In Acts 17 when Paul went to Athens and saw the situation there, he said to the Athenians, “I observe that in every way you very much revere your deities” (v. 22). In the original Greek language, revering your deities means being religious. What Paul meant was: “Men of Athens, you are very religious.” This surprised me because the Greeks are famous for being intellectual, and the Greek philosophy is especially well-known for being very intellectual. Intellectual people are usually not religious or superstitious, yet the ancient Greeks were very intellectual on the one hand and also very religious on the other hand.
All human beings, regardless of whether they are intellectual or emotional, refined or rough, educated or uneducated, have an innate desire to worship God. To illustrate, every one of us has a stomach. Regardless of race or nationality, everyone who is human has a stomach, an organ specifically for containing food. In the same manner, everyone who is human has an inner need to seek after God.
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