Derek Prince - You Don't Hear A Lot Of Preachers Talk About This
This is an excerpt from: True And False Church - Part 2
Now, let's turn for the latter part of this session to a picture of the true Church. I'm going to try to pick out those aspects of the picture which particularly distinguish it from the false church. We'll turn to Ephesians, chapter 5. In a way it's a relief to turn to this. I was finding the other a little depressing. But there are times when we have to go through, we have to face the facts. This is primarily teaching on the relationship between husbands and wives as Christians but it's also used by Paul to illustrate the relationship between Christ and His Church. Let me say to married couples who are Christians, you can be prophetic. Have you ever considered that? Because your relationship should show everybody the kind of relationship that Jesus has with His Church. You don't have to preach a sermon, you have to live Christian married life. So there's a challenge. And I'm married so it applies to me, too.
Let's look then at what Paul says about this relationship. First of all in Ephesians 5, verses 23 and 24: Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife as also Christ is head of the Church, and He is the savior of the body. Now, I know male preachers are very fond of that particular verse and I've heard it many times somewhat abused. I'm not going to dwell on that. I'm simply going to point out that Christ is the head of the Church and He has the same relationship to the Church as a husband has to his wife and that it's the responsibility of the Church to relate to Jesus as a good wife relates to her husband. Which is, love, honor, submission, faithfulness, loving service.
So you see, the real point of distinction between the true and the false is the relationship with Jesus. And then Paul goes on to describe the kind of church that will be produced by this relationship. Verses 25 and... Verse 24: Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. The Church is subject to Christ. In submission to Christ. And then he goes on, and again he's talking to husbands. And let me suggest to you husbands that you focus on this verse and not on verse 22. Let the wives focus on verse 22, and you focus on verse 25. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it: that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
So, what is the true Church going to look like? It's going to be very beautiful, isn't it? It's going to be glorious, it's going to be filled with the glory of God. The word glory denotes the presence of God in a form that is perceptible to human senses. So, the true Church is going to be permeated by the perceptible presence of God. It's going to be glorious. It's not going to have spot or wrinkle. A spot I would understand to be unconfessed sin. And a wrinkle is some misformation of the Church. It's going to be without either. It's going to be holy and without blemish. How much preaching do you hear today about holiness? You hear a lot about success, prosperity and healing all of which are wonderful, and power. But the Bible says without holiness no one will see the Lord. So, if you have all the success, and all the health and all the power but you don't have holiness, it's all in vain.
This passage, I believe, indicates one main method by which God will produce holiness in the Church. It's by the washing of the water of His word. And the word for word that's used there, you know there are two words for word in Greek. Logos which means the word, the mind, the revelation. The Greek word logos, if you look it up in a lexicon it has about half a page trying to explain what it means. All of that is the logos. But this word is the other word which you're familiar with, rhema, which means a spoken word. Faith comes by hearing the rhema, the spoken word. And so, what's going to cleanse the Church is the spoken word of God. In other words, the preaching, and the teaching of the word of God. I don't think fifteen minute sermons are going to produce it. I think it's going to demand situations in which people are so hungry for the word that they'll sit for two hours and listen. You can't make people hungry, and if they're not hungry it's a waste of time giving them two hours.
But in many parts of the earth and I know we have some brothers here from Ghana tonight. I've been in Ghana. You preach for three hours, and they say why are you stopping? They tell me in China if a preacher arrives they hide his luggage, so that he can't go again. And they'll keep him preaching for eleven or twelve hours, put him to bed and say we'll be up at 5:00 A.M. for a prayer meeting! We spoke about a church in Hungary that grew out of one of my cassettes. Ruth and I visited that church when it was still struggling and fighting a battle for existence. And they sat in a very small room, shut in, the windows covered, styrofoamed to keep any sound from going out to their neighbors.
First of all, we were there for an hour, and they just worshiped. I mean, they just worshiped for one hour. And my eyes were on a young woman, she never opened her eyes. I thought poor thing, she must be blind. But she just worshiped God with eyes closed for one hour and then she had perfect eyesight when she opened them. They were sitting on narrow benches not as wide as my Bible. Without any backs. And the heat was stifling because they couldn't open any of the windows. I could have preached for three hours and they would have said, why are you stopping?
So, what's it with the church in the west? I believe that we have to have the cleansing, purifying ministry of the taught word of God. I travel widely and I notice that there's a difference in the way groups worship. Charismatics basically are free in worship. But sometimes the freedom is very carnal, it's very fleshly. It doesn't have much anointing. Other times it's pure and anointed and it seems to take you up to the presence of God. I've discovered in most cases churches that have that kind of worship spend a lot of time in the word. It's the word that purifies us, and cleanses us and makes us holy. And that's part of the true Church.