David’s New Cart (4) - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2024

Bring up the ark of the Lord God of Israel to the place I have prepared for it. For because you did not do it the first time, the Lord our God broke out against us, because we did not consult Him about the proper order.
1 Chronicles 15:12–13 NKJV

David’s New Cart (4)
There is a great deep underlying principle here for our souls today. God has a proper order as to everything down here for His Church, and if we step out of this divine order, there is pretty sure to be a catastrophe. The New Testament contains what David called proper order, very full instructions for God’s Assembly. Our Lord intimated what would be its rallying center when He said, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them” (Mt. 18:20). His Spirit would gather, His Name and His Name only be the center of unity, and His presence was pledged to all so gathered, even though it might be but two or three. The many have departed from the proper order in this respect, and are gathered round special points of doctrine, or ecclesiastical organization as to form and mode of worship. All such would do well to ask themselves, “Is this really the proper order of God’s Word?”

Nowhere in the New Testament can you find the pattern from which many churches are formulated. The idea of an assembly over which a solitary servant is placed—no matter how gifted he might be—is utterly foreign to God’s Word. When the Assembly was formed, Christ, the Head of the Body, gave suited gifts to meet its need. But not one, in any single instance that can be pointed out in Scripture, was appointed as “the minister” of “a church.”

You can count on this, King David’s new cart, suggested by the Philistines, has its complete counterpart today in Christendom. Who will deny it? If what we see all around us were to be found in God’s Word, it would easily be indicated—but it is not there!

-- W. T. P. Wolston