Seeing New-Covenant Leadership — Zac Poonen

The Church as a New-Covenant Body

We've been looking at a number of things in Matthew 16 in relation to building a New Covenant Church. As I said, this is the first time that the word church occurs in the Bible, in the New Testament. It's a New Testament concept.

There was no church in the Old Testament. It's something that Jesus introduced in the New Covenant, and I find that lots and lots of Christians don't have an understanding of it. Now that's not surprising because the devil's main aim is to blind us to as much of God's truth as possible.

I mean, he'll first of all try to blind us to the forgiveness of sins, which he succeeded in blinding millions and billions of people around the world. If they knew that truth, they would be free, just like Jesus said, you shall know the truth.

The truth shall set you free from the guilt of sin. Okay, if he didn't succeed there, that means you somehow broke through and got some light on how your sins can be forgiven. Then that's not all the truth there is in the Bible.

The Bible speaks of the whole counsel of God, and you may have got a small segment of that circle, and then the devil will seek to blind you to as much as possible. You break through to an overcoming life, and a lot of people think that's it.

I've really got everything there is in the Christian life now. I met numerous people who never become a submissive member of any local church, which is an expression of the body of Christ. They flit from church to church to church, like visiting Chinese restaurants, and Telugu restaurants, and different restaurants in search of food.

Now the church is not a restaurant, it's a family, and many people don't want to accept the responsibilities in a family. One of the characteristics of the human race is we like to have privilege without responsibility.

You see that in teenagers, you see that in grown-ups. We want all the privileges, all the blessings that God can give us, but we don't want to take any responsibility until we see how Jesus lived, and then we change.

We take up the cross, and then we realize that responsibility is a major part of the Christian life, and then we shall not flit from church to church. We shall become a committed part of a local church.

But again, like I said, if we don't break through, we'll remain blind. It's not something that I can explain to you or convince you about. I think of Paul writing to the Ephesians, and he says, I pray that God will give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, and that the eyes of your heart will be enlightened.

Now he didn't say just read my episode ten times, meditate on it, study it, go to the root meanings of the Greek words, and you'll understand all this rubbish, and the way in which people try to understand Scripture today.

It's good to read Scripture a hundred times. The Pharisees read it a hundred times and still thought that Jesus was the Prince of Devils. What did they lack? Intelligence? No. Earnest study? No. What they lacked was humility, which would have given them the revelation of the Holy Spirit, because God, in his great wisdom, has hidden these truths from the clever and the intelligent.

Those are Jesus' words in Matthew 11, 25. And reveal them to those who have the heart of a babe. They get revelation. So I've seen through the years that the church is a revelation. God opened Paul's eyes to see it, that the church was a body.

I think he got that light on the road to Damascus. As he was going down that road, and he heard this voice from heaven saying, why are you persecuting me? Who are you Lord? I'm Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

And he began to think, he was a clever man, how in the world can I persecute someone who's living in heaven? And there the seed was sown in his mind of the great truth, that though the head is in heaven, the body is on the earth.

And when Paul persecuted Christians, he was persecuting the head. And that whole truth began to open up in his mind through the Holy Spirit. And for the rest of his life, he preached on the church as a body of Christ.

And wherever he went, he didn't have the passion to save souls like today people have. He had a passion to build the church. Saving souls is like getting a finger and throwing it there, and getting a leg and throwing it there, like the anatomy laboratory in medical colleges.

It's not a body. But I've seen through the years, unless a person's eyes are open, you can speak to them for years, they'll never understand it. I'm not here to judge them, but I know the reason is a lack of humility.

Anyone who's got humility will get revelation on the whole truth of God. The more you humble yourself, the more God opens your eyes. Cleverness will never lead you there. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean upon your own understanding, it says, if you want God to direct all your paths.

The Church That Overcomes Darkness

So we've been looking at that, the church that Jesus spoke about in verse 18, and the mark of that church is that the gates of hell, the powers of spiritual darkness will never be able to triumph over it.

Any church over which the powers of darkness are triumphing, it's not the church of Jesus Christ. And when you see churches today where divorce is accepted, remarriage is accepted, pastorism, remarried and divorced, what is that?

That's not the church of Jesus Christ, that's the church of the devil, which claims to be the church of Jesus Christ, which has completely disregarded the commands of Christ, and which treats sin lightly, and think that in the 21st century we've got more wisdom than Jesus had in the first century about matters like divorce and remarriage.

Well, that'll always be there. Babylon will continue to be big and great. The Bible says that it's going to end as a great institution which will finally collapse. Jerusalem may not be that big in size, but it's going to be pure in quality.

And that's what we want to spend our life building, because that's the only thing that will remain. It's like Noah. Once he knew that the ark was the only thing that would remain after the flood was gone, he devoted all his attention to building the ark.

I mean, he worked to earn his living. There was nobody to support him financially. He worked to earn his living, a great example for Christian workers today, and devoted all his time to build the ark.

It's a great example. Your job must only be a means of earning a living. If you want to be like Noah in the last days and devote yourself to building the church, it's the only thing that'll remain. Noah didn't just bring a lot of planks together and put it there and a whole lot of nails.

That's like saving souls. He built something. He built. What's the use if he had just collected all the planks and the nails and everything else and left it there, like many evangelists do? No, he built an ark.

It was built one with another in unity. That's what Jesus is building today, and he built Adam. He didn't just build a hand and leave it there and a leg and leave it there. He put it together, and that's what he's doing today as well.

Following Christ Through the Way of the Cross

So I want to share a little more today about what Jesus said. You know, we were looking last time at the way of the cross, which was the first time Jesus spoke about the cross, the first time he spoke about the church as well.

We saw that last time, and then, you know, he also, we looked at this too in verse 24. If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. So I want to say a few words about following Christ.

In the Old Testament, nobody, not even the greatest prophet, could say follow me. They all said, hear the word of the Lord. Exactly like most preachers say today, don't look at me, listen to the Word of God.

It sounds very humble and spiritual to say, don't look at me, look at Jesus. There are a lot of ideas we get from our understanding which are totally contrary to Scripture. The human understanding of humility is a million miles away from Christ-like humility.

In a human understanding of humility, Christ should not have gone and whipped the money changers out of the temple. The humble men don't do that, according to human understanding. But Jesus, the humblest man on earth, whipped them, and he didn't just gently ask them to remove their tables.

He turned the tables and sent the coins flying, and he told us Pharisees, you generation of vipers, how will you escape the damnation of hell? This is the humblest man that walked on the earth, don't forget.

So if you get your definition of humility from the dictionary, you'll go completely astray. And you deserve to go astray, because you don't look at Jesus, but you look at the dictionary. The Bible says we run the race looking unto Jesus.

We get our understanding of humility from Christ. We get our understanding of holiness from Christ. We get our understanding of love from Christ. His love for that rich young ruler, it says he looked at him and he loved him, it says in Mark 10.

And when the man was not willing to give up his money and follow Jesus, Jesus did not go after him and say, okay, let's start with 10%, we'll move on to 20%. No, goodbye. That's love. How many people know that type of love today?

Very few, because their understanding rules their life, not the Word of God. They think their understanding is superior to God's Word. Now I'll tell you why I say that. If you really believed, let me be honest with you.

If you really believed that in all the millions and billions of books in the world, there's only one book that God wrote, and you say you're a child of God, I'm amazed that you don't study it. You don't believe it.

That's why. You have more time watching television. How can that be? You say nominally the Bible is the Word of God. I mean, it's like this. If my father was a billionaire and had written a will in my favor, I'd like to know everything written in that will.

Why should all my father's hard labor and all the money he earned go to some crooked lawyer? I want to know what he wrote for me. Much more important than money is what God has written in his book for me.

And I want to encourage you brothers and sisters. If you come to the Word of God, you'll find it's very different from what a lot of preaching that you hear today. For example, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 1, follow me as I follow Christ.

Was that pride? Or was that humility? Paul received a thousand times more grace than you and me. God does not give his grace to the proud. He gives it to the humble. And this humble man who received such fantastic grace from God, proving that he was a very humble man, probably the humblest man in his lifetime on earth, said to people, follow me as I follow Christ.

This is true new covenant leadership. It's not follow me full stop. No. It's follow me as I follow Christ. I don't want to follow a guy who says follow me. A lot of false teachers saying follow me. A lot of false religions leaders say follow me.

But follow me as I follow Christ. This is new covenant leadership. As I said in the old covenant, it was not like this. Nobody, not even Moses or Elijah could say follow me. Moses could say come and hear what God has told me on the mountaintop.

But please don't come and look at my family life, how I fight with my wife and we had a quarrel the other day over our son's circumcision. Don't, that's not a good example. But don't look at me. Look at, hear the word of God.

Preachers who preach like that are old covenant preachers and they will build an old covenant congregation and not a new covenant church. A new covenant leader must be able to say follow me as I follow Christ.

Come and examine every area of my life. Come and look at my family. Come and look at how I live with my wife. Come and look at how I brought up my children. Come and look at all of my children, not one or two.

Come and look at all my financial dealings, every single thing. You can examine all my books. Come into my house and see the books I read. Come and see how I spend my time. There's nothing to hide. You see why churches are not built, new covenant churches?

Because God can find so few who can lead those churches. Jesus once looked around in his day and he said the people were like sheep without shepherd and he had tremendous compassion. What did he do? Did he say who volunteers?

Who will volunteer? Who will come and join a Bible school? We want to raise up more shepherds. All these modern methods produce third-rate, good-for-nothing, useless Christian workers. You know what Jesus said in Matthew 9, 36 to 38?

He said the harvest is plenteous. The shepherds, the laborers, the shepherds are few. It's true today. So what shall we start? More Bible schools? No, no, no, no. That will only produce false prophets.

Pray. Pray that Almighty God the Father will thrust forth shepherds into his harvest. The answer is in prayer. We need to learn that, that humble dependence upon God for everything. And I'll tell you after 50 years of being a Christian and seeing Christianity in many parts of the world, the greatest need today is godly leadership.

Preparation of Young Leaders Through Submission

And the devil will do everything in his power to prevent you as a young man from allowing God to break you and humble you and prepare you to be a leader in God's work one day. Do you know at what age people became leaders in the Bible?

Joseph was the second ruler of Egypt when he was 30 years old, prepared for 13 years before that through trial and difficulty and tested with evil women and tested whether he would complain and grumble and all types of things and says the Lord was with him when he was a slave, the Lord was with him when he was a prisoner.

And he was, he went through the grind and then came out at the age of 30, more mature than a lot of 70, 80 year old people today, prepared to be a leader. David, another young man, probably around 20 years old when he killed Goliath, had to be trained 10 years running around in caves, became the king of Israel, man after God's own heart, age 30.

Daniel, probably 17, 18 years old, determined in his heart, it says in Daniel 1, 8, that he would not defile himself. Boy, I wish we had more young men, 17, 18 years old, who would determine in their heart not to be like the other young men around them, but they will not defile themselves because they have a respect for the Word of God.

Not only the big commandments like don't murder, don't steal, but the small commandments like don't look upon the wine when it is red, when it just stirs itself in the cup like it says in Proverbs. And they were told they heard certain laws in Leviticus concerning clean and unclean animals.

Daniel decided to follow it. So these are the men in the New Testament. Jesus was 30, but he'd been trained for 30 years before he became a leader. Even Jesus, the Son of God, had to be broken in his home by submission to imperfect parents.

How do you like to submit to a boss who knows less than you, who's not upright? I know in my younger days I had to submit to elders whom I couldn't respect as godly men. I'll tell you honestly, I could not respect them as godly men because I saw them lose their temper, I saw carnality in their life, I saw their sermons were the most boring things I ever heard on earth.

How could I respect them? But the Lord said, shut your mouth and submit to them, because I was part of that church. I did. I didn't know why. I mean, it was sort of the best church around, and the best church had leaders like that.

But I tell you, it was good for me. God broke me in so many ways. When the leader would tell me to shut my mouth and sit at the back, and I sat at the back for three years, good. It was very good for me.

There were people who were jealous of my preaching and wouldn't let me, give me a chance to speak. I said, okay. I'd go out into the streets and preach there. Nobody wanted to do that. But I'll tell you this, in your younger days, if God lays a hold of you in your teenage years, I want to tell you in Jesus' name, God wants to do a tremendous work of breaking in you before you're 30.

I see that throughout Scripture. And if he doesn't succeed in that, you'll pretty much miss the bus. What a tragedy. That's the reason why there are so few prophets in India, why there are so few shepherds after God's own heart, because you can't be that just by, even if you're a gifted speaker, that's not good enough to be a shepherd.

God has to do work in your heart. So when Jesus spoke about following him, he wanted examples who could say like, Paul, follow me as I follow Christ, and not people like Moses who say, don't look at my private life, just listen to what I preach.

It's a great requirement of the New Covenant Church. And as we've gone around planning churches, the Lord's Planet churches in India, I've always looked for God-fearing leaders. It's not easy to find them.

We have to make do with whatever is available. Sometimes we have to start with a one-eyed man because he's a king among the blind, but all the others are blind. The one-eyed man is better than the rest, but it's not the best.

We look for two-eyed people, but we don't find them. Then we get a one-eyed man. And some places, I've just closed down the church. I say, listen, I'm not going to be responsible for this. Do what you like, go where you like, but we've tried for years to try and get godly leadership.

It's not there. Forget it. I can't take any responsibility. Because where there's no shepherd, if you gather sheep together, you have just produced food for the wolves. I don't want to do that. I don't want to save souls and keep them like that for the wolves to come and swallow them.

There must be godly shepherds. That's a great need. That's why we seek to encourage young people to study the Word of God, to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Don't let the devil fool you saying you've got to be 50, 60 years old before you start serving the Lord.

No. Start when you're young. Do what you can when you're young and God will work in you. I mean, I started serving the Lord when I was 22, 23. And I had to learn through mistakes and wrong things and be, I had to be broken and humbled and all types of things, brought to a zero point, etc.

It's all part of education. So don't get discouraged if you fall or fail or make a mistake. All the great men of God who've gone ahead of you have all bungled up things and messed up and made mistakes, but through it all God prepared them one day to be shepherds among God's people.

You can be a shepherd by the time you're 30 years old. Many of the shepherds God's raised up in our churches are all young people. I mean, when we started here I was only 35. So don't let the devil tell you that you've got to be a very old person.

I think Paul was around 32 when he started and probably about 40 when he was an apostle. And all the apostles of Jesus Christ whom he chose, he was 30 and no Jewish rabbi would ever select a person who was older than him to be his disciple.

All his disciples were younger than him. Peter may have been the oldest, John may have been around 27, and they were trained and trained and trained for three and a half years so that by the time they came to the day of Pentecost all those leaders who were apostles, the oldest was only 33, the youngest may have been 30.

Can we expect that today? 30 year old apostles, 33 year old apostles. Boy, I look for that day. And so sad, I think God is grieved. I mean, it's a grief to my heart, a million times more a grief to God's heart that so many young people are living for money, living for honor, trying to live a comfortable life, allowing their standards to be dictated by the world around them or by the compromising Babylonian Christendom around them.

Where are the young men and women, because many of these young men need wives, where are the young men and women who will say, Lord, I want to be totally available for you. I don't want to lower my standards.

I want to be upright. I want to be able to say, follow me as I follow Christ. That's why I say to you sisters, the way you dress is so important because little girls in this church are going to look at you.

They'll tell their daddy and mommy, why can't I dress like her? Be an example in modesty and decency. To be able to say to younger ones who are younger than you, all of you got younger ones here, follow me as I follow Christ.

That's the great need to build a new covenant church. And if you were to ask me what is the number one lack in India today, it's people like that who can say, follow me as I follow Christ. In my time in India, in all these years I've grown up in India, I never heard anyone tell me, Zach, follow me as I follow Christ.

I wish I had. I longed in my younger days to have a spiritual father. I didn't have one. I had to sort of struggle through. That's why I made so many blunders and mistakes and bungled up so many things.

You people are so lucky. Many of you got godly leaders. That's a tremendous privilege. And I'll tell you this, Christian history has proved one thing. If you study Christian history, godly leaders are appreciated only after they are dead and gone, when it's too late.

And during the time they're alive and you didn't take the opportunity to learn what you could, what a tragedy. Most godly leaders, if you read Christian history, all the way right from the apostle Paul onwards through Martin Luther, John Wesley, William Booth, anybody, the great Christian leaders were always called heretics and false prophets in their lifetime.

And they were called true prophets and saints after they died and went away. People like Tozer and Watchman Nee, people never knew them when they were alive and ministering. Hardly anybody. It's mostly after they are dead and gone.

They say, oh, that was a great man of God there. So let me show you another verse where Paul says the same thing. He says, it's not only me. He says in Philippians chapter 3, he's not afraid to say this again and again.

Philippians 3 verse 17. Brethren, talking to the Philippian Christians, follow my example. What a word. I want to ask you, my brothers and sisters, can you turn around to people younger than you and say, brothers to the brothers and sisters to the sisters, younger ones, follow my example.

How many of you husbands can say, follow my example as a husband? How many of you wives can say, follow my example as a wife? How many of you fathers can say, follow my example as a father? How many of you got any responsibility in any church?

Say, follow me. The way I conduct myself with those who are my flock. And he says here, it's not just me. Carefully observe those who walk according to the pattern which you have in us. It's not just me.

Paul doesn't say, oh, I'm the only man on the earth. No. He said, there are a few, not many. Once he said earlier in chapter 2, he says, I don't have anyone else, verse 20, other than Timothy, who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare.

They all seek after their own interests. He's not talking about unbelievers. He's talking not even about believers. He's talking about his, the co-workers who were with him at that time. I don't know how many there were at that time.

Not all of his co-workers. Some who were with him at that time. He wanted to send one of them to Philippi to encourage them. He looked around and said, whom shall I send? Boy, Lord, I can't send any of these people.

They're all seeking their own. They'll go there to Philippi and they won't serve them. They'll go there as experts. I've often said to brothers from CFC, when they go to the other churches that have some respect for us, I say, you know, those people respect you because they respect CFC, but please don't go there as an expert.

Go there as a servant. I say, that's how I go. I don't go as an expert anywhere. I go as a servant. And Paul looked around at his co-workers and said, I can't send any of these people except Timothy.

All the others are just seeking their own. Their own honor. They maybe, they want a little money from somebody or some honor from somebody. Or they want to have a ministry. They're not seeking the things of Christ.

You know, even if you're seeking a ministry for yourself, that's seeking your own. We're supposed to seek the glory of God. That's all. I'm not saying we shouldn't be seeking a ministry or honor or money or any such thing.

The glory of God. Building the church. Whether it's done through me or somebody else and if I have to do just a small part of it, that's enough for me. He said, I can't find many. But he says in chapter 3 verse 17, please observe those few who are walking according to the pattern that they have seen in me.

You know, when you find a godly leader, there are a few who get gripped by that and who will follow in his example. And I pray that there'll be many in our land. We look around and see persecution increasing.

Jesus warned us the night is coming when no man can work. For more than 30 years I preached that persecution will come to India. That the church will go through the Great Tribulation of seven years before Christ comes again.

A lot of people don't believe it. They haven't studied the scriptures. They don't believe what Jesus said in Matthew 24. But we've seen persecution coming. It's coming even to this state. The night is coming when no man can work.

Work while it is day. Don't make silly excuses. I said to the Lord, I will never make silly excuses. I will not say it's inconvenient, it's difficult, it's expensive, it's difficult, my health is going, I got a pain here, I got an ache here.

Don't make any silly excuses. Abound in the work of the Lord, it says 1 Corinthians 15 58, knowing that your labor is not in vain. And we've seen through the years, sometimes we sow a seed and years later we see the harvest.

So I want to encourage all of you. Paul said there were people like that and we pray there'll be many, many like that. I pray there'll be many godly men and women who will be able to say follow me as I follow Jesus.

Submission to God-Given Authority

Now I want to show you something else which is a primary mark what Jesus said of those who are going to be his under shepherds. He's the chief shepherd but he has under shepherds. You know, there are some people who are very super spiritual, super spiritual meanings wrongly spiritual like the Pharisees, who will not submit to any earthly leadership.

I can ask many of you the same question I asked those people. Who is your leader? And these spiritual people say Jesus Christ only. Aha, good. How do you obey this verse Hebrews 13 17? This is New Testament, this is not Old Testament.

Hebrews 13 17 says obey your leaders, plural. If Jesus Christ is your only leader, how in the world do you obey this verse? Submit to them because they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.

Who do they give an account to? They got to give an account to Jesus Christ one day. All under shepherds have to give an account to the chief shepherd one day. Let them do this with joy and not with grief.

Who are these leaders? Have you ever in your life obeyed that verse? Obey your leaders and submit to them. You say I'm only submitted to Christ. That's why you've gone astray and that's why the Lord is not able to build a church through you.

He never will, not in another 50 years. You may bring souls to Christ, oh yes, but you won't be able to build the church as a body because you submit to nobody. I've seen through the years one thing. I've seen Christian leadership of all types in many countries and I've seen those are authoritarian, those whom God does not back up, those whom God does not anoint and God does not bear witness to their work in building the church I'm saying.

Building a church as a body of people functioning, working together as a body and why doesn't he do it? Listen to this because God does not give authority to a man who's never submitted to authority. Never.

It's a dangerous thing to give authority to a man who's never in his life been broken by submission to authority. I never knew why God took me through breaking for more than 10 to 15 years in my life.

I didn't know it then. I didn't know God's principles and ways. I was young but now as I look back I understand because I've seen the harm that comes when people take authority who've never submitted to authority.

That's the folly of these young 23 year old fellows who come out of some Bible school being made a pastor. Who is he submitted to in his whole life? What does he know? He gets up and tries to get people to submit to his authority.

It's crazy or for that matter in any other group. If you don't go through a period of being submitted to authority, you know Joseph had to go through that. Submit to a jailer and God said okay now you're ready.

David had to do that. Submit to his parents first. Submit to Saul and never try to grab the throne for himself even though he was anointed as king. Saying no God will give it to me in his own time and all that breaking and humbling as he ran from cave to cave despairing of his life sometimes.

You read the anguish David had in the Psalms. They were all broken. What about Jesus? How did he, how was he trained to be the greatest leader of all? There's one verse which tells us. It's in Luke chapter 2.

In Luke chapter 2 we read when Jesus came back to Nazareth at the age of 12 from the temple. He knew the scriptures more than his parents. He knew the scriptures more than the scholars sitting in the temple.

At the age of 12 he knew the scriptures better than anybody in Israel and let me tell you this. He did not come from heaven as a baby with all that Bible knowledge crammed in his head. If so he was not born like us.

That's blasphemy to believe that Jesus was not born like us. He was a baby just like anybody else. He had to learn as a child and learning as a child and probably I don't know when he started learning, maybe the age of five, but by the time he was 12 he knew the scriptures.

I learned one thing from that. I said Lord in seven years you knew the scriptures without having a Bible at home. You know those days nobody had a Bible at home. Seven years just by going to the synagogue, listening, listening wherever the scriptures were proclaimed.

Joseph and Mary shared the scriptures at home and he went to the Hebrew school. They used scriptures but he listened, he listened, he listened and in seven years he knew the scriptures. Because he was humble he got revelation from his father as well.

It's possible to learn the scriptures in seven years and to get revelation. If you study the scriptures seriously and don't waste your time with a whole lot of unnecessary things that divert you from the scriptures.

That's what I decided when I was 21 to study the scriptures. I discovered that I could do it in seven years. Dear brothers and sisters we can walk in the footsteps of Jesus. You can know the scriptures so thoroughly.

Okay he knew the scriptures and he came back. What does this man with, what is this young boy with such fantastic knowledge of scripture in his mind do? It says in verse 31, he came down to Nazareth with Joseph and Mary and continued in subjection to them.

Continued in subjection to people who didn't know half the scriptures he knew. Why was that? He had to go through a period of being broken and on the, even before that he was broken. In the next 18 years he was broken.

You can know the scriptures so well, you still need to be broken. Broken. I can think of the number of times. I'm using my imagination now, not just imagination, sanctified imagination. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit will take of the things of Christ and show them to us.