The Local Assembly and its Importance

Let's turn together to Psalm 50, Psalm 50, and the Lord helps me, helps me down in 20 minutes. I heard Mr. McLeod say that one time, he says if he doesn't I might be up here all afternoon, but I do intend to allow plenty of time for two other brethren. I don't know if anybody will follow that suggestion or not, but I did say two other brethren in the ministry, I'm not controlling it.

Number Psalm 50, I just want to read one verse primarily, two verses rather. Verse five, gather my saints together unto me those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice and the heaven shall declare his righteousness for God is judge himself. Now there's no doubt that this psalm refers to a future day.

God is going to gather all nations, going to deal with them in righteous judgment. He'll gather his own people together and he'll bring about a great work of repentance and restoration, and I have no doubt in my mind that it is prophetic and looking forward to that glorious day in the future that we all anticipate at least with some measure in our hearts, but I'm exercised by a little, just for a little word here because we've not heard any ministry this weekend on the local assembly. Maybe we have, but I just missed it, I don't know.

I want to speak for these two verses something about a local assembly and its importance. Tremendous thing I believe to be in fellowship in a local assembly. Now I was young once, you know, not so young anymore, but I was young once and I didn't think that quite so much then and maybe you're the same way.

I want to speak to younger people especially this meeting. I'd like to cause in some measure some ability to impress you with the fact that God places great emphasis on gathering his people together in a local assembly capacity. I believe it's the only thing.

Now this is something the older brother used to say when when I was young. I always scratched my head and I said I don't know about that, but oh I shouldn't say oh. Brother Maxwell used to say God only recognizes one gathering place in this day in which we live and that is a local assembly of believers gathered to the Lord's name alone seeking to carry out the principles of his word in a manner consistent with his will.

And you know I've gotten smaller, smarter as I've gotten older. He was right. He was right.

Now if you could just learn that when you're young you'll realize that God places great emphasis on you taking your place, responding to the call of the work of the Spirit of God to find out that the Lord wants you to be in a local assembly gathering and seek to be a part of the fellowship that is honoring to the Lord Jesus Christ. Just take these two verses in a few minutes I intend to speak. He says gather my saints and that's the first thing I want you to notice.

The gathering is a work that God does himself. I don't believe we just come and join a church. I don't believe in joining churches.

People join churches and they get tired of that one so they join another church or they find another preacher somewhere. But the words of God says that God gathers his people. You know we read that there's a day coming when God is going to gather all nations together.

Joel tells us in chapter three gather the nations together, bring them together in judgment. We know that there's a day coming when God is going to gather his people in Israel and bring them back into the land and restore them to himself and deal with them as his own people in a covenant relationship. He's going to gather them too.

We read in Matthew chapter 13 about the Lord speaking about the tares. He's going to gather them out of the field to be burned. And so God is a God of gathering.

He brings people together. He brings people together that have a like nature, that belong together. And you belong in a local assembly if you're saved by the grace of God.

You belong as one who has responded to the power of the Spirit of God that has drawn you to find your place in a local assembly fellowship and to seek to contribute to it the very best that God gives you ability. Gather my saints. I realized one time in my life finally that I was in a local assembly because God put me there.

Do you believe that? Took me a long time. I'm a hard learner, but I finally learned it. God put me there because he wanted me there.

And going on beyond what we've read, gather my saints, he says, first of all, they belong to me. You belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. That means that you have to respond.

You have a responsibility to respond to what his will is. It's not a matter of gathering because that's what I want to do. It's not a matter of being there because I feel it's the best place for me or maybe better than other places.

It's where he wants me to be because I'm his. Gather my saints together unto me. I hope you're saved today.

If you're not, you ought to be. If you're not, you better be because time is getting very short. It's a disaster for you to find yourself not one of his own.

Gather my saints. What a precious thing that is to my heart. He says they're mine.

They belong to me. He says they're my sheep in John chapter 10. He wants to gather his own, my saints.

You ever acknowledge his lordship? You ever come to realize I don't belong to myself? I'm not my own. I've been bought with a price. I'm responsible to glorify God in my body and my spirit, which are his.

You and I have a responsibility to respond to the fact he has purchased us and we belong to him. He says gather my. Secondly, thirdly, rather he says gather my saints.

Who are saints? They're ones who have been identified as being linked with him. They're holy ones. They're separated.

They're set apart. You and I are not part of this wicked world. We're in the world.

We're not of it. We're intended to be those that are identified with the one who is now in the glory, the holy one of God, the savior of sinners, the one who is himself perfectly holy and righteous. Tremendous thing to be called one of my saints.

You know, we may not always behave saintly, but we're saints. We're saints because that's what he has made us. We have a position before God.

We have access into his presence. We have the blessed privilege of being identified with that holy one of God that has saved us. And the great joy of a believer is to be in a place where God wants you to be.

I could tell you that from experience. I had a number of years that I was not in assembly. I was young and foolish like many young people are.

I won't go into details about that. I was actually a member of the Southern Baptist denomination for a few years. That sounds bad, doesn't it? But I can tell you one thing.

When God worked in my life, I knew it was God that was working. He broke that relationship. He ended that association.

I saw there's only one place that God wanted me to be, your local assembly. Not only that, I was in Naples, Italy that time in a service. I'm just telling you more than I intended to, but I was in Naples, Italy and there was no assembly.

And I can tell you one thing. The great desire of my heart was to find a place where I could gather with the Lord's people and enjoy assembly fellowship. I wonder if you ever truly appreciate what a local assembly is to God, how precious it is to Him, and how valuable, important it ought to be to you and me.

He says, gather my saints. Those are the ones that are suitable for assembly fellowship. That's where God wants you, dear child of God.

He wants you to be one who would build up and strengthen the testimony of an assembly. Why? What's the reason? He says, those are the ones that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice. In other words, you and I have entered into a relationship with the one who has offered himself as our own spotless sacrifice on our behalf.

The one who gave himself at Calvary, the one who endured the depths of the cross with all of its suffering. Let me tell you, dear brothers and sisters, the more you appreciate the work of Christ, the price that He paid for your redemption, the more you'll be touched to your heart to want to do everything possible just to obey Him, just to please Him. I'm convinced that the most that you and I can do in response to His will and desire to honor His name falls so far short of what He ought to receive.

He ought to receive far more. He's made an agreement. He's made a relationship with you and me, a covenant relationship on the grounds of sacrifice.

That sacrifice takes us all the way to what one might consider in the depths of his sorrows and sufferings at Calvary. I always think that those that are most fervent in their desire to seek to please the Lord, the ones that have the greatest earnest exercise of heart to give everything to God, are the ones that have come to the place where they realize and had a view of Calvary and the sufferings of the Savior and the price that He paid and the endurance of our sins judgment. And the more we can appreciate the depths of what He went to, the sorrows, the price paid to bring us into a relationship with Himself that gives me a desire.

I want to do everything possible to please Him. I wonder, dear child of God, young person today, do you have that desire in your soul? Do you realize that there's a relationship He's brought you into? You know, God's salvation is not a matter of just delivering you and me from going to hell. That's only a small part of it, really.

In fact, I don't know that I can identify any scripture that tells me that that's why God saved you. He saved you for a purpose. He saved you for a reason.

He has a great thing for you to do, be involved in and re-exercise about in your life. Our brother's been speaking about the kind of life that a believer ought to demonstrate and what should be characteristic of it. But one of those things is that we might become one that's identified with gatherings of believers that are seeking simply in failure and limitations and although we confess that we fail to be, simply to do what the Lord wants us to do, to gather unto the precious name of the Lord Jesus Christ and unto Him alone.

He says, gather my saints together. There's fellowship. You know, brothers and sisters, you'll never find any fellowship on the face of the earth like you find in a local assembly.

The sweetness of fellowship with those of like precious faith. The sweetness of fellowship with those that love the Lord Jesus. The sweetness of fellowship with those that desire to honor His name and obey His word and respond to the truth that He has given us.

There's nothing like that. Gather together. You know, those on the day of Pentecost that responded to the message of Peter were the ones that had all things together.

God brought them together. He brought them out of all the diverse backgrounds in which they were found and He brought them into a fellowship. A fellowship with those who were representing the Lord Jesus and seeking to honor His name.

That's where you and I belong as well. You know, God's purposes have never changed. He still intends for you and me to be in a similar place.

Those that are subject to apostolic doctrine and teaching and to carry out His word, all of you of His coming again. He says, gather my saints, it's you and me, together unto me. That's the person.

That's the reason for an assembly. I appeal to every one of us because some of us have been in the assembly fellowship for years and years. May it never become commonplace.

May it never be something that loses its preciousness. May we never lose sight of the fact that our gathering is unto Him and one day we're going to be gathered unto Him for eternity. But if we lose sight of the person that's in the midst, the reason for our gathering is Him.

You know, the reason for the tabernacle was the presence of God and the holiest of all. The reason for their camping around it was because of the consciousness of the presence of God in their midst. So the glory of the Lord has shown.

The reason for you and me recognizing an assembly is a place where I should be because of Him, because of Him. That all things He may have the preeminence, that He may have the highest place and the honor and the obedience and the responsiveness of our hearts. He says, gather my saints together unto me.

They that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice. Then He says, the heaven shall declare His righteousness. That is, the standard that we receive comes from heaven itself.

It's not the righteousness that is characteristic of the world. It's not that which marks the pathway of acceptability so far as the world is concerned. It's that which is identified with the standard of heaven, the mind of heaven being carried out upon earth.

That's what we read in Matthew chapter 18, isn't it? Whatsoever shall have been bound in heaven shall be bound on earth and whatever is loosed on in heaven shall be loosed on earth. In other words, responsibility to carry out the righteousness of God and the standard of God here in testimony for Him. He says, the heaven shall declare His righteousness.

And brothers and sisters, may we always live in a conscious reality that heaven is looking down upon every gathering of His saints. It's just not a matter of what people around us think. It's not just a matter of testimony to the world.

It's a matter of what does God think? What is His opinion? What is His estimate of such a gathering of believers? He says, that's a place to be. Heaven shall declare His righteousness. We have a standard that is different from the world around us.

We have a characteristic that is expected in your life and testimony as you might honor the Lord Jesus. Then He says, last of all, before I sit down, He says, for God is judge Himself. See, think about it.

He's the one that you and I are responsible to. He's the one that we'll have to answer to. He's the one that I anticipate.

I hope you anticipate it. What is it going to be when I have to meet the Lord Jesus at that judgment seat of Christ and give account for my life? How much has been really done in obedience to His word and desire to honor His name, to carry out His will, and to maintain testimony for God until He comes? May God help us, dear brothers and sisters, to prize the assembly. Apprise the fact that God would like to gather every believer here in local assembly fellowship.

Sometimes we say that in a local area, that if every believer that was once in the assembly was there now, the building would hardly hold them. Sad when you get away. I can tell you it's a great joy when you get back.

It's just like being saved all over again. To know that I'm in a place where God wants me to be, seeking to do what God wants me to do, and honor the one person that God wants me to magnify. May God help us to appreciate in our day, in increasing way, the great value of a local assembly fellowship in the eyes of God.