This page contains transcription of three talks Jabe Nicholson delivered at Fairbluff Bible Chapel of Charlotte, North Carolina, during the 2009 South East Workers Conference.   Date: February 16-18, 2009.   The general theme seems to be Jabe asking why Christians (particularly the open Plymouth brethren assembly Christians, but also the Bible-believing Christians of any stripe and hue) are not currently seeing God bless their work power, fruit, and revival in North America.   He suggests that it is our fault is ours, not God’s.  Jabe begins with an exploration of the impediments many Brethren assemblies may have.

This may not be an absolutley perfect job of transcription.  But I believe it does faithfully communicate what was said.  I have tried to leave my own interpolations as to meaning in brackets. 

The MP3s are available for free download...

http://www.sewc.info/audio/2-16-09-jbn-session1.mp3  (1 hour 20 minutes)
http://www.sewc.info/audio/2-17-09-jbn-session4.mp3
http://www.sewc.info/audio/2-17-09-jbn-session6.mp3

Or you can have them streamed at www.sewc.info.

Some discussion of these talks can be found at http://simplegathering.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3008.

 

Contents of this page:

2-16-09-jbn-session1.mp3 Transcription                                                                   Response to Session 1 by CTHaun [Working on it]

2-17-09-jbn-session4.mp3 Transcription

2-17-09-jbn-session6.mp3 Transcription

 

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2-16-09-jbn-session1.mp3 Transcription

 

It’s wonderful to be here again in the South.  It’s obviously a mark of grace that you would invite two Yankees from Michigan to come and speak to you in the South here.  I’m actually from the south of Ontario—southern Ontario.  I’m not really a Yankee.  I’m a missionary to the Yankees.  You can pray for me.

Well, I was thinking earlier today I’ve been coming down to the South for 35 years now.  Wow!  And seen a lot of changes, a lot of encouragement, a lot of friends down here.  As I thought about this conference and the crisis days that our nation faces and the opportunities that lay before us, I was heavily burdened I must say.  The closer I got to the meeting this evening, the more I felt this concrete block growing in my stomach.  I’m wondering if I was really the man for the job or not.  But I appreciate your prayers tonight as we open the Word of God and think together about this very important subject. 

I suppose one of the questions I like to ask you all if I could personally is what are your expectations for this conference?  What are we hoping would happen in these days of conference?  Because if our expectations are small, we may just easily meet it.  If our expectations are similar to those that we find in the writings of the Apostle Paul, we’re going to need God for that, aren’t we?   Some of the things that I feel I ought to say over these few days of conference not everyone is going to agree about.  Some of you may find them to be not as helpful as you might want them to be.  But I trust you’ll know I’m an old friend.  And these are things I’ve thought about a great deal and hoped that at least some of the things we talk about will be an encouragement to us all.

I suppose one of the great concerns that I have in these days is to what extent there has been unnoticed drift in assembly life.  So that we still feel like we are somehow in direct alignment with apostolic days but in actual fact there have been subtle changes in the last 50, 60, 70 years that have left us in a position where today—if we’re honest—we’re going to have to say that at best we are maintaining—and, in many areas, not even that.  I don’t think we have to work harder. Most of us are working pretty hard at this point already.  I think we do have to work smarter and I think working smarter means reexamining the Scriptures to discover how it was that a group of largely uneducated people with none of the resources we take for granted (like rapid transit and mass communications) were able to accomplish the Great Commission in their day, in their generation, in their world.  The population of the Roman world in the days of the early church was just about the same population of modern Northamerica—including Mexico.  The Apostle Paul—however you understand the verse—states to the Colossians (in Colossians 1) that the gospel has been preached to every creature under heaven.  As we think about this I ask the question WHAT HAS CHANGED in the last 2,000 years?  

·        The power of God—has it changed?

·        The living Word? 

·        The convicting Spirit? 

·        The Head from which every joint is supplied? 

·        The human heart?  The human condition—has it changed?  

·        The glorious gospel? 

·        The gifts given to the Church? 

·        Demonic opposition? 

·        The World and all that it in it?  

·        Or the weakness of the instruments which God uses to accomplish his glorious ends? 

What has changed? 

I would suggest that the only variable in the equation is our willingness to believe and to act on God’s Word.

Now I’d like to read the account of the Great Commission in the gospel by Mark.  We don’t normally use Mark 16 as our Great Commission passage because it has a few speed bumps in it.  Thinks like snake handling and drinking poison and believing and being baptized to be saved.   And so we prefer other gospels or even Acts chapter 1 than this little passage.  But as I read it recently it really shocked me to see the juxtaposition of two verses which the Spirit of God has placed here.  So let’s read at verse 14: 

“Afterwards he appeared to the eleven as they sat at meat and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart because they believed not them that had seen him after he was risen. And he said unto them, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.’” 

I would think that unbelief and hardness of heart would pretty much kick me out of the system.  Heh.  It would seem like pretty big disqualifiers--wouldn’t they?—for going out into all the world and preaching the gospel!  We often have this idea that we’re not seeing much because we aren’t much.  But you know God has been using the ‘we-aren’t-much’ crowd for years.  It is the we-think-we’re-the-People crowd that He has a hard time working with. 

Verse 19: 

“So that after the Lord had spoke to them he was received unto heaven and sat at the right hand of God.  [It’s great to have a friend in high places, isn’t it??  To have connections!]  And they went forth and preached everywhere.  The Lord working with them and confirming the Word with signs following.  Amen.”

So He said “Go do it” and they [went and did it].  They got it done.  And the Lord worked with them.  And there was evidence wherever they went. 

What did the New Testament church look like?   Well, as I say they covered the known world in about forty years.  When we read the book of Acts that it is the history of the early church.  But it’s really not. It’s really just Paul and a few friends, wasn’t it?  What were all the other 5,000 or 8,000 Christians doing? There were all doing the same thing!  They reached people from Herod’s family, and the Jewish Sanhedrin, and Caesar’s household all the way to the bond slaves and everybody in-between.   They saw the salvation of their persecutors, homosexuals, idolaters, many of the Priests.  They were training elders from raw pagans to functioning in the local church in three years.  Seeing people like Saul—a persecutor of the church and murderer of Christians—in three years he was out on the street preaching the gospel.   They methodically covered every city, every town, and every village with the gospel.  They were methodical in territory, in training, in team work.  They worked together.  They took territory and methodically went through it as we read concerning Paul in order from town to town, going from place to place, as the Lord Jesus had done.  He had set the example of preaching in all the towns and villages.  And the job got done. So that’s what it looked like in the days of the early church. 

And the question is:  was this some special short-lived era in the history of the early church?   Was this what we might say was abnormal or unusual?  And that we shouldn’t expect to see this sort of thing happening today?  I would think that if it is unreasonable to expect that kind of blessing that the Holy Spirit of God would have moved the hearts of the Apostles in their senior years to write some warning or some preparation for us to let us know that this is what was going to happen… that things were going to tail off and that we are just going to have to dribble on the way home… get by the best we could.   Well you can read the passages.  You know them.  I don’t have to tell a bunch of preachers that when Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 2nd Corinthians 9:8-11, or when he wrote to the Ephesians in Ephesians 3:14-21, or to the Colossians in Colossians 1:9-11 there is no indication whatsoever that things were going to drop off.  

In fact he [Paul] sang more and more [that he was expecting] God to come in and make you fruitful in every good work.  And I’m expecting that this God who is able to do exceed abundantly above all you ask or think is going to bring down such blessing upon you that you won’t be able to contain it.  He is able to increase the seed sewn and the fruitfulness of your harvest.  And that’s what we’re looking forward to.  That was the spirit of New Testament Christianity and it was in line with what the Lord Jesus had said.  He said I am with you always, even to the end of the age.  I’m going to keep working and the Spirit of God has been sent to the world and he’s not going to give up on this project until the very last moment of opportunity.  He’s going to keep at it.  “My word is living.  It’s as powerful as it ever was.”  The gospel still has the power to save anyone who comes to Christ.  The opposition of the Enemy will be turned to your good.  “The gates of Hell will not prevail.  I will build my church and get the job done!”

As we lift our eyes up and look around the world and see what is happening in China, in India… I was just talking to brother Asa Michael [sp?] who works in Dearborn among the Muslims. He just got back from northern Iraq.  He said you know here are these people who are Muslims who were being attacked by the Turks on one side and almost eradicated by Saddam Hussein on the other side—their Muslim brothers.  They were just about to be annihilated when President Bush established the no-fly zone and he protected them.  And Christian missionaries came through Turkey into that region and he said he just got back and said conservative numbers are 25,000 Muslims saved.  I know you’ve got some tough neighbors.  [chuckles]  But 25,000 muslims getting saved? 

I told some of you the story just before I went to India in October, a brother . . . { paragraph removed }

 

Is God able to save to the uttermost?  We’re going to talk about this a little more, Lord willing.  I simply want to encourage us to ratchet up our expectations to the same level as the Word of God gives us credence for.  Not to say well you know these are tough times and people aren’t interested and all that sort of thing.  That’s walking with the eye of sight, isn’t it?   We need to look back into the word of God and ask what should we expect God to be doing these days?   How can we work with God in his purposes? 

Now I know in the real world situation you’re struggling in a small assembly.  You’ll have to have short term goals.  And those short term goals are maybe little baby steps.  But they move us in the direction of our long term goals.  And what should be our long term goals?   Well, they should exactly match the Lord’s long term goals.  They should match what He has in mind for this world.  You know the Lord Jesus will not be satisfied until every knee bows and every tongue confesses that he is lord.   He wants the whole world.  He loves the whole world and died for the whole world.  He wants everyone to hear that message.  That’s why he told us to go into the world and preach it to every last creature.  When he said it to the eleven men standing on that hillside, he thought he was being quite reasonable.  He thought it was doable.  And so that’s the question we need to ask ourselves.  How is it possible to not just maintain existing assemblies but how is it possible to move forward saying, Lord, you have burdened our hearts to reach our mission fields—every person in every city and town in this country in our generation.  Is that realistic?   In the light of Scripture, I believe it is not only realistic but commanded.  It is something we need to do.

Well, what are the impediments?  What is it that is in the way of this actually happening?  I’ve made a few suggestions on your notes… accessing the barriers to blessing.  I call it the power of negative thinking.  A battery only runs if there is positive and negative connected.  We’re going to be thinking of some very positive things in subsequent sessions.  But this evening I want to speak about the things I think are in the way of really in the way of moving forward in North America. 

I’m going through something like midlife crisis now.  Only mid-life crisis should come around age 35 and I’m well beyond that.  I looked at my father’s life and saw the tremendous drop in energy from 60 to 70.  And I thought to myself, “This is it, Nicholson. It’s time to kick into gear.  If you’re going to do anything of significance for the Lord, you better get to it man!”   And so I want us to think carefully about exactly where we are.

 

[The First Impediment to Blessing – Allowing our own ‘Traditions of Men’ to Preclude Fresh Re-examination of the Scriptures] 

I’ll tell you a little incident… I was talking to two of my children about seminars I have coming up at a vessels of honor conference in Baldwin Kansas.  I said to them what would be some good seminar topics to take up?  We talked about pioneer gospel work.  My daughter said, “One of the great difficulties we face as young people is looking at the New Testament with fresh eyes because we [in the Plymouth Brethren traditions] have been told over and over again that you know we’re the best thing since sliced bread.   We’ve got it all right.  Already.  So why bother looking into the Bible?  We’ve already got it all right.” 

David whispered “We’re not better than sliced bread!  We were before sliced bread.  In fact, we break bread!  We don’t slice it.  Some of the purists actually use unleavened bread and you can’t slice that up.”

Well, they were being a little facetious but I really think this is one of the things gets in our way—the acknowledgement of pride of place and reputation… repudiation of the we-are-of-Christ faction.  It is not that we are right but that God is right. This is His idea.  There is no reason for pride on our part.  We carry on in much weakness and failure in a path that was established by the God of Heaven.   You know when we hear so much church truth being taught it seems to me that it’s always being taught this way:  here is how everybody else does it but here is how We do it.  Instead of saying:  here is how the Word teaches it but this is how we are seeking in much weakness to obey what the Word says.  But this idea like we’ve got it all straight I think gets in our way doesn’t it?  When we turn to the Word of God and say, Show us. This isn’t Acts.  We want Acts!  We want to see that fervor and freshness and vigor and blessing that accompanied the preaching of the gospel in the early days.  And it wasn’t too many years ago in this region of North Carolina that they saw that kind of blessing.  They saw thousands of people saved.  So it’s not simply something that was written off two thousand years ago.  We ought to be seeing it.  And if we’re not seeing it is a cause for humiliation and prayer and seeking the face of God and asking him, “Lord, where have we got it wrong?”

[23:30] Have we been presuming [that the Lord is with us when he is not?]  Remember how Mary and Joseph they wrongly presumed the Lord Jesus was with them when he [still at the Temple] but about his fathers business’s. But he wasn’t there with them, was he? Sometimes we feel that if we do the right things that somehow that is all that’s required.  But I think sometimes as we reexamine the dynamic of the early church--not just the mechanics (this is how you do it) but the dynamics--that drove these early believers we would see some of the areas perhaps that need some serious improvement.  Among the people of God. 

[The Second Impediment –the Idol of Knowledge]

[0.24:10] 

And then secondly it is not in knowing the truth but in doing it that the blessing comes.  The bible says knowledge alone puffs up and bloats us, not builds us up.  So we might have the impression of being big but a little pin will make the difference and show us that it is bloating, not building.  And so I see in my own life this tendency to accumulate information.  If you go into my library and see that most of my books are designed to transfer information out of the book in to my head so I can get up and speak to crowds of people.  And so we go to conferences and people go home and they say “We were really blessed!  We were really encouraged!” 

[0.25:06] 

And I say encouraged to do what?  Well, not really encouraged to do anything.  Encouraged maybe to put our feet up and say, “I guess we got it right!”   As we examine the character of the early church, most of these people had been saved a matter of weeks or months and they were out sharing the gospel and seeing people saved and discipling new Christians after they’d only been saved for a few months.  The senior man among them had been in training three years. But all the others were fairly new believers.  And yet God was using them in a remarkable way.  And God was working among them.  People saw it. People knew that God was among them of the truth.  And so the more information you have, the easier it is to become an expert on theory and not really put things into practice at all. 

[0.26:06]

 I don’t know how many meetings I’ve come to and I sit there and I listen, I may even take notes, I go back, shake the preacher’s hand, “Good word, brother,” I get in my car and I go home as if I hadn’t even been there.  I never ask Lord, what did you want me to do with this?  And so the more this becomes a way of life—a habit of life—and we model this to our children they can ask us bible questions and we can talk about good king Hezekiah but when it comes to actually getting along with one another and sharing our faith with people and doing the practical every day things that marked the early church, sometimes there’s a real disconnect between what we know and what we do.

[0.26:53] 

I was so impressed. I was over in Japan.  There was a great work of God there some years ago [that started with] a high school teacher who was a faithful testimony.  Twenty-five Japanese students came to him and said, “You’re not a Buddhist are you?”

“No.”

“Ohhh. Why not?”

“Well, I asked my parents why they were Buddhists and they said well because their parents were and I asked my grandparents and they said because their parents were.  I didn’t think that was a good enough reason.  So I began to look at all the religions of the world and I picked the best one.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

And they began a research project and a month later these twenty-five students who had all only known Buddhism and Shintoism came to their teacher and said, “It’s Christianity, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Would you teach us the Bible?”

These young people have seen their parents saved, their siblings saved.  I went over to have some teaching sessions with them.  And you know these young people almost entirely skip the interpretation section—I’m not saying that’s good—but they go right to this point and they ask me, “How do you DO this?”  And what they mean is how do YOU do this?  And actually I sometimes had to say I don’t do it but I should do it.  [Laughter.]  How do you do this?  They want to know?  How do you live like this? 

That’s what the world is looking for.  The Barna group put out a book called UnChristian.  They interviewed people who are not Christians and asked them what they thought of Christianity and the almost unanimous response was, “We think Christianity is a great message but we don’t believe it because the Christians don’t believe it.”  

0.28:43…..

 

 

[…….. transcription to be continued as time and motivation permits….]