THE VITAL GROUPS

MESSAGE FOUR

GOD'S NEW CREATION BECOMING GOD'S ORACLE FOR HIS DISPENSING AND SPREADING

OUTLINE

1. As the constituents of the vital groups, we need to remember and realize that we are God's regenerated new creation, united with Christ in His divine life, joined to Christ as one spirit.
2. Discipled from being a natural man to being a God-man, living the divine life by denying our natural life according to the model of Christ as the first God-man.
3. Becoming the witnesses of Christ to magnify Him by living Him.
4. To be the members of Christ constituting an organism for His increase through His multiplication.
5. To be His brothers participating with Him in the divine sonship with the divine right to express God mainly through speaking for the dispensing of God through His oracle.
6. In God's oracle becoming the prophets of God speaking God, speaking for God, and speaking forth God.
7. For the fruit-bearing of God's multiplication and spreading.
8. Through contacting people by shepherding them:
   1. According to God's love toward the fallen human race.
   2. Following the steps of the processed Triune God in seeking and gaining the fallen people:
      1. The Son as the shepherd seeking the one lost sheep.
      2. The Spirit as the woman seeking the lost coin.
      3. The Father as the father of the prodigal son waiting and looking to receive the prodigal sons returning to his father's house.

In this message we want to see that God's new creation becomes His oracle for His dispensing and spreading. The word oracle refers to God's speaking, to the persons who carry out God's speaking, or to the place of God's speaking. The ones who were used by the Lord to write the Bible were God's oracle. Among them, Moses was great and Paul was even greater. They were persons speaking for God. Also, what they wrote and spoke was God's oracle, God's speaking. In ancient times the cover of the ark was the oracle, the place where God spoke to His people. This cover was called the mercy seat, or the propitiation cover, covering all the defects of God's people (Exo. 25:16-22). God took that place, that center, as His speaking base to speak to His people. In the New Testament the apostle Paul was one who was always in the reality of the Holy of Holies within the ark, signifying Christ. Christ with His judicial redemption has become the very place where God speaks to His people, and this place is the oracle (Rom. 3:24-25). Today in the Lord's recovery there are not only God's speaking and the speaking ones for God but also Christ with His judicial redemption as God's oracle. Since 1922 there has been God's continual speaking, His oracle, in His recovery.

I. GOD'S REGENERATED NEW CREATION

As the constituents of the vital groups, we need to remember and realize that we are God's regenerated new creation, united with Christ in His divine life, joined to Christ as one spirit (2 Cor. 5:17; 1 Cor. 6:17). We are not merely generated persons in the old creation. We have been generated twice. The first time was by our parents to be the old creation. We were generated to be the natural man, but one day we were regenerated. Our birth certificate is an important and official document which records the date of our physical birth. Our second birth certificate of our spiritual birth is seen in Romans 8:16, which says that the Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are the children of God. Our birth certificate is a double spirit, the Spirit with our spirit.