Today in the church life, are we bearing fruit? If we don’t bear fruit, the Bible says we will be cut off (John 15:2). But for some reason we are not fearful. We come into the church life and become a group of people who don’t bear fruit. But do you know what it means to be fruitless? Not bearing fruit means our life is lacking and sick. A normal life has propagation; it reproduces. Life, by nature, is fruitful. As long as we remain in the law of life, life will bear fruit and bear abundantly. If today we are living a healthy, vital human life, grafted to the source of life, the spontaneous result will be fruit bearing. But if we violate this law, our churching will not produce fruit, but sickness. For some in the church life today, this condition is familiar — even normal and bearable. We talk about the Bible, but we are truly far away from the Bible. We talk about building up the tabernacle, yet we are caught by so many problems every day. What should we do?
We need to be simple. Why is our life full of problems? Because we are not simple. Why are we not simple? Because we don’t have God. If we have God, everything is simple. But a life without living before the Lord is a sinful life, full of complications like Cain’s life. Our sense of conscience is smothered; we are naked, blind, and uninterested in the matter of life. We are equivocal and easy to say one thing today and do another thing tomorrow. We’d rather do nothing at all than make mistakes. We cannot bear fruit. This sick condition comes from sin. Why is sickness still here? Because our sin has not been dealt with; between us and God there is a barrier. But when we are right with God in simplicity, we find that we are fully equipped to bear fruit and build God’s house. A person who has God is filled with spirit, wisdom, knowledge, and all kinds of workmanship:
And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, / See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. / And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom and with understanding and with knowledge and with all kinds of workmanship, / To fashion skillful designs, to work in gold and in silver and in bronze, / And in the cutting of stones for setting and in the carving of wood, to work in all kinds of workmanship. (Exo. 31:1-4)
God’s thought is very simple: God raises His own children for building up His own household. Exodus 31 describes two skillful builders of the tabernacle: Bezalel, from the kingly line of Judah, and Oholiab, from the lowly tribe of Dan. The first name means “in the shadow of God” or “roof” (Exo. 31:2). And yet Bezalel is not enough; we also need Oholiab as the “assistant architect,” whose name means “Father’s tent” (Exo. 31:6). In these names, we find a key understanding of our own existence and purpose. We see that the Bible only talks about one thing: the building up of God’s household, from erecting the tent of meeting and building the temple in the Old Testament and in the raising up of the early churches in the New Testament until today.
That’s why we have children — that’s why we bear fruit. To bear fruit means to bear many sons (Heb. 2:10). The gospel is about more than being forgiven for our sins; it is about giving birth to the many sons, to the man-child (Rev. 12:5). In the Bible, we are not daughters, but sons — you have to see that the people who stay in the church life are all sons: the church life is about giving birth to overcomers. That is the eternal viewpoint for mankind. We cannot just stay in the church life in a fruitless and barren condition; even living amongst the saints is no guarantee that we will fulfill the purpose of being in His household. We must be God’s sons.
Today, we should pause and think. We are not just talking about parenting our physical children, but all of us brothers and sisters in the church life. If we don’t even have the power to solve the small issues in our life, we are doomed to live life in error. Without maturity, knowledge, depth, and understanding, what can we do? Will we awaken one day, already 40 or 50 years old, and realize we have made a big mistake? Imagine that you want to paint a painting for which you have a great vision for a beautiful landscape. But you do not have colors on your palette. And it doesn’t just require a color or two; one green pasture or a single flowing body of water require many colors, shades, and tones. Life requires something basic; it requires colors, it requires life. We can spend our lives envisioning that painting, or believe that one day it will be complete, but if one day in our later years we realize that we are a blank canvas without color, and find that we have no colors with which to paint, what a shame it would be. But this is not the church life. This is not Bezalel.
Many saints in the church don’t have any color for painting, because they don’t have God. When we start to work together, we are not simple; things that should be easy become very hard to do. We are very hard to work with. When a brother or sister works with other saints, mature serving ones can immediately know if that one is Bezalel — it will be evident whether or not that one is burdened with building God’s household. We often talk about laboring in the church life, or about doing God’s work. For example, we are coworkers in the Lord (1 Thes. 3:2), but what is the work we are coworking on? We like to talk about Paul’s work, but have we thought about what that work is? Many people go through training to become serving ones and coworkers. Everybody knows we have riches. Tens of thousands of saints have all seen this. But do you know why today most believers’ lives are weak and ignorant, empty and twisted? In their homes, they comfort themselves that they are serving the Lord, that they have gone through the training and have given themselves to the Lord. Yet they remain bankrupt in life with no power and reality. This tells us one thing: these people do not have God’s Spirit. If a person does not have God’s Spirit, he does not have God’s speaking. God’s word is life — is Spirit. The greatest matter that many saints are urgently missing is they do not have the experience of God’s speaking.
All the people who build up God’s house have something in common: they have God’s speaking. Today, we want to build God’s house. But do we have His speaking? Is it clear? Where does He speak? When does He speak? Why does He speak? Otherwise, how can God’s house be built? How can the tabernacle be set up? If there is no household of God, how can God speak to man? If God did not speak to man, where does the life come from? God’s speaking is the breath of life. He is a speaking God, the One who created the heavens and the earth and said, “Let there be light” and there was light (Gen. 1). If we are in the church life for many years but cannot hear God’s speaking, that means that we have not breathed the breath of life for a very long time. That is why we are so down, why our skies are clouded, and why we cannot bear fruit.
When God speaks to us, there is a where, when, and why to that conversation — and there will also be a sure result. The conversations between Moses and God throughout the book of Exodus bear fruit, propagate life, and result in building. Here in chapter 31, not just Moses but also Bezalel and Oholiab receive the speaking of Jehovah to build God’s house. This is important because, in a way to speak, these two skillful workmen, Bezalel and Oholiab, are actually extensions of Moses. All the people that build the church must experience God’s speaking. To experience God’s speaking, we have to know that the secret of chapter 31 is where God speaks to you, when God speaks to you, and why God speaks to you. These speakings, these conversations with the Lord — they are the encounters we have with the Lord in our life, a simple life of being raised and of being filled as His sons and workers. The life of God through His word, which is His speaking, is for His household, His building.
Through these conversations, or life encounters with God, God constitutes His people for His work: “I have called, I have filled, you shall do.” Bezalel is a master worker — the chief architect. The Bible gives us his family history, and tells us how this person could become such a one. Like Bezalel, the church life gives us our name, our history, and tells us why we are here. God is revealing His plan, His blueprint to build His house. For this, He filled Bezalel with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. As believers, it is critical that we, too, are constituted. On a practical level, God also filled Bezalel with “all kinds of workmanship.” Building God’s house requires that we labor with our own hands. The characteristics of the sons of God as builders of His house are for the sons to know how to labor with their hands. The result of the skills and craftsmanship is building the church. When we labor, we go through a process to learn and be constituted, ourselves becoming the building materials. If we push away responsibility, never getting our hands dirty, we will miss out on this process. A person who never labors on their own cannot bear fruit. And when we do labor, we need to know what we are building according to and for.
In these times of degradation, our condition of not bearing fruit is the same as the situation in Laodicea. We are complicated and without power in humanity; we aren’t available and we aren’t spiritual; we can’t solve problems. Our parenting in our physical human life might be a failure. But if we don’t know how to parent in our own families, how can we do greater work for the house of God? The issue is not a matter of sin only, but that we don’t have a great resolution and great will. In this condition, we won’t achieve anything, much less overcome. The only reason we don’t have resolution is that we don’t have God. Today, we have to be living according to the life of God and unto the building of His house. If we have the truth, our whole being invested, then our children will not be mediocre. The Lord will not raise mediocre children. Our children don’t need just a physical care, but a real parenting; they need us. If our life is healthy and bright, so, too, will be our children.
Today, we need that building essence — that sense of life for the building. The church life, our true family life, needs brothers and sisters with that building factor. We are the material for building up the church; the material for the tabernacling is us! Isn’t this the best place to be built up? There is a power in such simplicity of life! God’s speaking has life. It has power. We need to daily seek His speaking — that living breath — to gain the constitution for the building.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from gatherings on 6/19/2022 and 6/24/2022, not reviewed by the speaker.)