Scripture Reading: Acts 8:8; Col.2:17-19; Acts 17:28;
                  Rev.5:10.

Samaria was the city mentioned here in Acts, and there is described the reaction of the people who accepted the Good News of Jesus Christ when it was preached there.

In Acts 8:5, we read: “And Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and proclaimed unto them Christ.”

And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spoke...”, verse 6.

And the result of his preaching is given us in verse 8, “...And there was great joy in the city.”

Because of the brightness of this new Life, it was said of the city, “...there was great joy in the city.”

There is something clear and wonderful that comes through in such strength when that is said of a ‘city’ that is touched by the ministry of Jesus Christ: “...there was much rejoicing in the city.” (N.A.S.V.)

Let me ask you, ‘Is this not what the Church is - people affected in such a way that the testimony of Jesus Christ infuses the whole of its surroundings’?

Proverbs 11:11: “By the blessing of the upright a city is
                exalted,...”

That is, the city has been raised by the blessing of righteousness in which it lives. 

It is blessed by the glory of God.

It is a wondrous phenomenon when beyond redeemed individual souls there is a Christian ‘city’ - a people that is so affected by the one adherent center, Jesus Christ, that flowing out from it there is that dazzling witness of: ‘...great joy in the city’.

The spectacular response of the Good News they received into their hearts announces that a ‘city’, as well as an individual, is capable, and is ordained to be, such a corporate expression of Jesus Christ.
Paul, in Colossians 2:17, designated the Church, the Body, as ‘the Christ’. (the New Berkeley Version)
And, in this Body, it is not the individual who stands out; it is only ‘the Christ’ Who is the Head of the Body, and He is the One Who conspicuously stands out.
He has made the Church more than an aggregate of the experience of the people within it.
The Church is a real new being with qualities and powers of its own.
It has the power of God coursing through the veins of its corporate life that makes up this City of the Living God.
This spiritual makeup of His Body reaches its purpose when this is true of it.
It is very true that the acceptance of the Living Christ is, first, a personal, individual matter.
Every soul in it, redeemed by Christ, will enter into new understandings, higher ways of life, and deeper affection for those who make up His people.
A deeper faith and understanding, righteousness that is pure and is the measure of Christ within, and love that is more bountious - these are the specific areas in which Christ does His work in the individuals in the City.
By a change in these areas, Christ changes the whole man.
Each one becomes Christ’s man, for that man is always being molded and shaped under the Lordship of His hand.
He will understand more deeply, become more and more righteous, and be overrun with more love - real love - than when he was his own selfish servant.
In short, there will be a great, great measure of Christ formed in him.
This is the right beginning - God’s order of things - in the building up of His Church into ‘an holy temple of the Lord’.
It is then that the Church comes into its ordained corporateness, and into the framing together ‘for an habitation of God through the Spirit.’ (Eph 2:21-22)
Through His ministry, the Church in “...holding fast the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together...” is the true expression of the divine thought. (Col.2:19)
And this Headship of Christ and the holding of the Church to Him, the Head, make up the Church in His spiritual fullness.
It all continues under the governing of the Holy Spirit, under His anointing.
And the members of Christ’s Body are the functioning parts of Christ having been joined to Him by one Spirit, having been blessed with an increasing measure of Christ within.
It is a oneness of Spirit - a spiritual phenomenon of souls having been joined as one in Him, with the same mind, the same purpose, the same work as that of Christ Himself.

It is that place:                                             
    - where only Christ Himself is recognized and exalted
    above all
    - where only Christ is corporately expressed
    - where only Christ, according to God’s mind and
    purpose, embodies the heavenly system of things
    - where everything related to this place exists solely
    for the increase of Christ 
    - where the measure of the increase of Christ
    becomes more fully His exact representation upon the
    earth that personifies the divine anointing
    - and where it all converges to Life, ‘the law of the
    Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus’.

This is a critically important truth, on two counts:
    
First, in this age today, Jesus Christ is being more and more attacked as not being Who He said He was.

Increasingly, we are hearing - and it will probably escalate - that He was not the Son of God, that He was a fraud, and that He was simply the same as we are - a human being who made a significant contribution to society by the good life He led.

So, on this first count, this prevailing attitude, even in so-called Christian circles - seems to be gripping many.

So, let me say here, before going on, that unless Jesus Christ is the One Who conspicuously stands high and above all, then the church is not the “Church”.

Hebrews 7:26: emphasizes this great, important truth where it speaks of Christ by saying: “...[Christ], Who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, (or ‘far removed from sinful men’ - Weymouth, or ‘in a different class from sinners’ - Berkeley) and made higher than the heavens; (or, ‘exalted above the highest Heaven’ -Twentieth Century N.T).”

The Church, then, must be the place, I repeat, where:
      - only Christ Himself is recognized and exalted above 
      all
      - only Christ is corporately expressed
      - only Christ, embodies the heavenly system of things                  
      that is according to God’s mind and purpose.

Lord willing, I’ll be saying more about this next time, but let’s go on:

Secondly, this important truth of the process of the Church being framed together starts with the conversion of the individual soul.

And out of it comes the Church.

It is fatal to Christianity to try to reverse that process.

A group of people together, under the name of ‘church’, does not necessarily designate that group as ‘Church’, as the Lord’s determination of what ‘Church’ is.

Only the Lord Himself can institute and build His Church and He does it with individuals He has brought into a living relationship with Himself, which makes ‘the Church’ a spiritual thing.

That is the only basis for ‘Church’.  

The error of all merely ecclesiastical Christianity is that of seeing the Church as a group of people, a community, a fellowship, an organization, a social order, or anything else that we could place under the heading of ‘religion’.

This is certainly not God’s order of things.

The spiritual concepts of God cannot be housed in human understanding and knowledge.

But when the right beginning has been rightly made, when individual souls have been so established in Christ, and the multitude of people have been fused together by the fire and joy of their faith in Him alone, and thus, spiritually united under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, then His Church exists aright.

The Church is a genuine Being, ‘one New Man’ (Eph.2:15), deriving from its Source of divine origin its power and strength.

When this is the actual ground upon which the Church is moving, and is breathing and has its being, it has come to the realization of its true existence as the ‘City of God’ out from Whom the government flows.

Acts 17:28: “for in Him we live and move and exist,...”.

The Church possesses, as a whole, qualities which she gathers from its members, but which are not found in one of its members alone.

She has become more permanent, more wise, more trustworthy than the wisest and most trustworthy of men who make up her membership.

She has become dearer than any one of the citizens who compose it.

That is the elevation of the Church.

The Lord, seeing her in the place of spiritual ascendency, has separated her unto Himself for heavenly purposes.

It is the Church He trusts, it is the Church predominating
in His movement onward.

And the depth to which it has influenced for Christ’s sake, is the witness, the testimony, and the brightness of Light and Life to the world.

In New Testament terms, it advances to the figure of the spiritual corporateness with the brilliant architecture of the New Jerusalem built in the Revelation vision. (Rev. 21)

And, this was the vision of the revelation of God’s plan that was wanting in the time of Eli.

Israel had appeared as a nation that was to be governed by Jehovah with the Messianic idea in it that it was to be the ‘Servant of Jehovah’.

It was to be a ‘corporate personality’ through which Jehovah would continue onward.

But, the people stood still, and Jehovah passed right on by into the New Testament where the Church is now the ‘corporate personality’ of His mind. 

It is the Church that is very near and dear to His heart as it progresses onward under His Son’s administration.

It is now designated as God’s Holy City, the heavenly Jerusalem, Zion.

The Builder has built it with His heavenly materials, through His divine Son, which makes its constitution and construction all heavenly, and its great governing feature heavenly - only heavenly - and the Perfect Temple of the Universe.

So, its design includes the necessity of its citizens to partake of the heavenly in order to be the heavenly City -
to become heavenly through and through as its concentration is strictly upon the Person of His divine Son, Jesus Christ.

It is here, then, that the Church takes up its primary purpose for being.

United in one Spirit, it is the great spiritual force under the anointing of the Holy Spirit that ‘reigns upon the earth’.

Revelation 5:10: “And Thou hast made them to be a Kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.”

This is God’s undying flame of Divine Life in its mighty testimony against the power of the prince of death.

Satan’s object is to destroy this testimony - to keep the Church from ever coming into its rightful place of government in the spiritual realm.

He will do anything to keep this from happening, even to the point of deception about Christ’s rightful place as the exalted Son of God, reigning even now in His Church.

If he could just get into the Church and destroy the testimony of Jesus Christ, it would be the ‘city of death’ rejoicing.

It is not said whether the world ‘saw’ the ‘joy in the city of Samaria’ - we cannot make that determination about it just from the Scripture record in Acts 8:8.

But, we do know - Samaria is rejoicing - the Lordship of Christ has established a foothold in the ‘City’.

There, in that exaltation of the knowledge of Christ, the Church is - and always shall be - the living, tangible evidence of the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 51:11: “Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head:...”

Hebrews 12:22-24: “...ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, 
To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, 
And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things...”.

“Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready.” (Rev 19:7) 

We shall continue next week, Lord willing.