A New Culture; A Gateway:

The church life (living) actually started in the book of Acts. Jerusalem was chosen as the first local church on the earth in the New Testament age. That’s the first church ever seen as an assembly life. Church life started from Jerusalem in a very strange way -- people considered these people crazy. They broke loose from a very strong culture, which is Jewish culture. Even today it’s probably very hard to break loose from that culture -- they lost their homeland and nation yet never lost their language, their culture, their religion and eventually they came back to Jerusalem after 2600 years. If you come to any perspective in today’s current society, Jewish people are still considered top. Listen to their violinists, watch those artists -- these are the integrity and quality of that culture. We are not promoting Jews -- but the point is that their culture is very powerful. To break loose from a culture like that, something has to be real! Something has to be vital or beyond! What kind of life needs to exist to basically replace what they had been believing for so many centuries?

It is the Life, a True Human life, which is the living that was given to us from the Day one as created man! Not just from the book of Acts, our life was given from the Garden of Eden. God created us, it is unfortunate today that a religious condition has crept into the true meaning of our existence. Even the word “church”, the word “Christ”, are too watered down to a point there is no power. What do you mean by “Holy Spirit”? These things are the challenges not just today, but actually from day one. People ask “Who are you?”, “Where do you meet?” “What church do you go to?” It’s really a challenge today for us to practice “christian life” because people get lost in modern society.

We like to follow how the church is supposed to be. The Bible talks about the church as one new man. One New Man! It’s interesting. We are the house of God! The dwelling place of the Father! It’s already a mouthful. We are the wife! We are the counterpart, the spouse! We are the lover of Jesus Christ! We are the warrior according to the book of Ephesians! All these things are defining what the church is! The first thing you see when coming to the real church, number 1 they live together, they don’t meet together. They live together, they eat everyday together. They eat with a heart of simplicity. They don’t just meet then go home to become a different person. They live together as a family. We are all children of God. We call one another brothers and sisters because we come from the same Father, even though I am yellow and you are white or black. For some reason if you sit down with me for another 3 minutes, you will find out, “ Wow, he is really my brother, no kidding. We have the same understanding, the same reality, the same Father, the same source of life.” And we share in common, not just common by the origin we come out of, we also share in common in how we live on the earth. Everything. When Paul went to Rome, right away there was a couple who opened their everything to receive Paul. For sure, Paul had to be identified by this couple. Paul had to carry a certain kind of, we use the word “ministry”, the proper understanding is constitution or reality of the New Testament covenant. We are bonded by the same thing together. We don’t need to talk theology. We don’t need to debate. We don’t need to talk about the differences. We communion -- the word “communion” comes from the reality of the book of Acts: share in common. We are not just sharing in common in meetings -- we share in life!

When you come to the church life, if you really want to practice the church, that standard was set from day one. Actually that identified them away from any earthen culture. They became heavenly people. If you are earthen, you are not the church. The book of Acts started with His ascension. By nature, we are the church because we are called out of the earthly attractions. Paul urged us to not to be entangled by all these earthen affairs so we enlist ourselves to the real life which is a battle. There is a battle in the universe between God and His adversary. It may be beyond our heads, but we do know one thing: we don’t belong to this earthen world. There was a very strong calling that we don’t belong to the world, not just the sinful part, also the beautiful part. It’s not just, oh we deviate from the sinful world, yet we loop ourselves into the beautiful part. The world is just like “Christmas”, it looks very beautiful on the outside yet there’s not much reality behind it. This is the church from the very beginning -- there was a reality outpoured to a group of people. They were so lost but they were being redeemed. The Bible uses that as jubilee. According to typology, a Jew was born into a Jewish culture as God’s chosen people, yet at a certain point in time you lost everything you should have. But for some reason a totally illogical law was given -- like you don’t have to do anything. When the time is fulfilled, everything will go back to you. The Bible has a very vivid book. The entire book is talking about the reality of Jubilee which is the book of Ruth. A moabites was cursed, ten generations have no relationship, no memorial to this law. Suddenly she was brought back all the way from a very lost, sinful person who became authentic, a person named in the genealogy of the book of Matthew. Without her there is no Christ! Not just her -- at the end of the book of Ruth, there is another woman mentioned called Tamar. Two people, Ruth and Tamar were recognized at the gate of the city of Jerusalem or the gate of the New Jerusalem.

The book of Ruth is actually a miniature of the real church. Not just one single woman or two, we are talking about a corporate entity, being redeemed as a human kind, not just a “christian group.” There is no such thing called “christians.” God created human beings. It doesn’t matter what “tribe” you are, we all need to be sanctified. We all need to see this outpoured Spirit to knock out our own concept, knock out our own nationality, knock out our own ideology, to be one with the Lord first. If I am not one with the Lord, you and me will never be one. No matter how agreeable you are. Even we are Americans, we despise each other. You know what? We are divided by nature. We just don’t agree with each other. So at the end of the day, if you are not one with the Lord, if I am not one with the Lord, there is no oneness, there is no ground of the one new man. The Bible starts with the New Covenant which replaced the old one. That’s good news! Otherwise you and me should be Jews today. This morning we probably need to kill a big cow. We should have a priestly service. Thank you, Lord. We don’t need to have all these troubles.

The new covenant binds you, binds me to the new creation, not the old creation. But for that new creation to come into reality, we need an embodiment. Embodiment is a biblical word. The Word became flesh, full of grace, full of truth or full of reality. So without that embodiment, the Bible called that tabernacling, or dwelling in certain translation, it’s the same word in Greek. The tabernacling itself is the church. The church is the big tent. The word “church” comes from the book of Exodus, meaning we are the people called out of Egypt into the wilderness. We all live in the tabernacle. The church is actually God’s called out ones, entering into a gateway. This gateway has an entrance. If we are friends, you will open your being to me. So when we are together, you will communicate with me not just outwardly. This God, this Person, is the same way. He has to open a door. He was the Word...In the beginning, He was…this is beyond our little brains, but according to the Bible, He was the Word. The Word was with God, the Word was God. What do you mean by “the Word was God”? But for some reason, our God likes to speak, He really likes to talk. When we go to Him, He talks. When we read the Bible, the Word became flesh, washing our sins away, making an unreal person a real person -- it is a mystery! When we sincerely seek for something called God, we get Word! When we seek grace, we get an entrance. The Word became flesh, tabernacling among us.

It’s like this -- when we go camping, you set up a tent, then when you want to enter the tent you grab the zipper and Zzzzzz you open it and go in. The church is that zipper. You want to go into that eternity? You need a gateway. Nobody can go to the Father but through the Son. But only through Him are we able to foretaste the coming New Creation. It sounds very cheesy or lofty, unreal -- it’s beyond our head -- yet we are thankful that today we have this big zipper, this entrance / gateway, into this big tabernacle!

This short article is a partial section from a Lord’s Day table in January, 2019.