God’s kind of organization. Got two scriptures to read. First one is Proverbs chapter 29 and verse 18.
This one might sound a little bit different to the way you’re used to hearing it, but that’s just because I re-translated it. And I would like to believe that the way I’m translating it is probably a better way of expressing it. The Old King James version says where there’s no vision, the people perish.
And then the second part of the verse is not even connected because it has to do with following the law. You know, I could never understand why Solomon would make two statements together that are totally unrelated. So I have to come to the conclusion that the reason they’re unrelated is because it wasn’t translated right.
That’s not what he was trying to say. And so as I looked at this verse, I saw a different aspect to it. And that’s how I’d like to express it.
Proverbs 29 verse 18. It says without clear direction, the people have no covering. But he that follows instructions is blessed.
Without clear direction, the people have no covering. But he that follows instructions is blessed. Second verse of Judges 17 verse 6. In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did what was right in his own eyes.
Many, many years ago when I was still going to school, the one thing that they always seemed to impress on you was the idea that you were a team. You had to wear school uniform to show that you belonged to that school. You were considered a team member, a part of a group.
And you were supposed to be very proud of your school uniform and display it to the world and say, I belong, I go to that school, I’m part of that school. When it came to activities after school, it was compulsory that you had to do some kind of sporting or extramural activity, they called it. And most of those were team sports.
When I left school and went to work, I found out that my employer had this idea that my most important activity should be to contribute something to the business, to the organization that I was working for. It seemed wherever I went in life, whatever I’ve seen in life, everything that involves more than one person involves working together as a team. I used to love watching team sports, even though I wasn’t terribly good at participating in them, because I usually let the team down.
I did have my few little, very few little opportunities to play team sports. I remember once I played hockey. And every time the referee blew a whistle to say that somebody was offsides or something wrong, I always had the suspicion it was me.
Because I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. I just thought you got to get in there, grab the ball and hit it towards the goal. I really just was never terribly well trained in sports.
And I didn’t know all the rules of the game. I guess I couldn’t have made too many mess ups because nobody wanted to hit me afterwards. Or maybe just nobody noticed that I kept messing up.
Eventually, I just followed the crowd and just watched what everybody else was doing. It was fun, but I just never felt comfortable in it. But the whole of life seems to consist of team.
And when I finally left school and I wanted to, I wanted to get money to go to varsity or to get a job, it seemed people were always asking you, what sports did you play? What activities were you involved in? What groups did you belong to? What clubs did you join? People always seem to want to find out how well you behave in a team before they’d consider you for anything. I used to love watching rugby on TV. In South Africa at that time, we’re one of the top rugby teams in the world.
And I used to love it just to see the guys work together in teamwork, passing the ball, helping one another, flowing together. You see in the scrum when they get together, where they all push together, all unite themselves together as one and push together. And then you’d always get some idiot who thought that he was the star player and could win it all by himself.
And he’d grab that ball and try and make a dash for it. Or try and kick the thing over the posts from about a mile away. Sometimes he got it right and everybody thought he was a hero.
But most of the time, the rest of us would say, stupid idiot, why doesn’t he pass the ball? Why doesn’t he work with the team? He’s trying to do the whole thing by himself. You know the guy I’m talking about. Unmentioned names.
He’s long forgotten, I’m sure. Used to irritate me. Something wonderful about a team.
You know, I had my time when I had to do military service. When I had to learn to march in step with a whole bunch of other guys who were mostly taller than me. And they had big steps like this.
And to try and keep up with them, I had to make big steps like this. It was terrible. You know, why can’t we just walk normally, like we normally walk? Have you tried putting a bunch of people together and telling them all to walk from here to there? You try to the kids sometime.
Just put four or five of them together in a group, in a row and say, okay, now I want you to walk from here to that wall and then watch how each one does it his own way. And then tell them now, now be careful, walk together, walk at the same speed, walk in step. And watch more confusion take place.
Teamwork is not easy. It’s a very difficult thing. But if you’ve got two or three people together, unless they can work as a team, they will accomplish nothing.
And yet if they combine their efforts together to work as a team, they seem to accomplish amazing things. It seems somehow that two people together, working together, doing the same thing seem to accomplish more than two people doing it separately. And as the number increases, it gets stronger.
And the scriptures speak about that about about one setting a thousand to flatten two many times more. I know somebody quoted the wrong numbers before and I don’t want to get caught in the same thing. It’s almost as though when you add an extra person, it multiplies by 10 instead of about two.
There’s an amazing power in teamwork. Why? Because that is the way God created us to be. And so tonight I want to speak a little bit about a team, about the importance of flowing together as a team.
And to flow together as a team, you have to become an organization. What’s an organization? Think about it. If I were to tell you that I work for a very large organization, what’s in your mind? If I were to tell you that our church group is a very large organization, what are you seeing? Well, hopefully you’re seeing something that’s organized.
Or I’d have to say, well, you know, our church ministry is a wonderful disorganization. And for many ministries, that would be true. We’ve got to flow as a team and to flow as a team, we need organization.
Now I’m going to be speaking more than one message on this. Tonight’s just the intro. We start yet another series that I hope I will finish one day with a bit of effort and a lot of nagging.
We’re going to learn. So tonight I want to speak about teams first and the basic concepts and principles that are involved in a team. Firstly, God is a team player.
Now, if anybody has the right or the authority to do it his way, it’s God. If there’s anybody who could get away with saying, I don’t care about the rest of the team, I’m going to score by myself. This is one guy I could get away with.
But God doesn’t work that way. And God looked down upon the earth that he’d created, and he wanted to make a man to put on it. He said, let us make man in our image.
And God appeared to Isaiah, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. He said, whom shall I send and who will go for us? God is a team player. God works with others.
He doesn’t just do it by himself. And as we look at the Godhead and the doctrine of the Trinity, and I’m not trying to preach the doctrine of the Trinity, but I want you to see that God, the Father, and the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit work together as one. Yes, they are one in a far greater sense than just being a team.
But they’re a good picture of a team, isn’t it? They’re a good picture of the Father being the founder of all deity, the originator, the one who sends forth, the one who sent forth his son into the earth, the one who sent forth the Holy Spirit into our hearts, crying, Abba Father. And right back to the beginning of the creation, we see God working there. As God looks down upon the earth being without form and void, a big waste, a mess, a mess.
God said, I need to get hold of this team and get it organized because it’s a mess. You got the earth sitting there, the moon sitting there. You got all these things all over the place.
You got water and it’s chaos. Chaos is the natural result of not doing it God’s way. God’s order is order.
It’s organization. God didn’t look at the earth and say, we’ll give it about 24 hours every now and then. Some days more, some days less, depends what I feel like.
Today we’ll have a 24-hour day. Tomorrow, I don’t feel like such a long day. Let’s make it 20 hours.
Now the earth’s rotation is exact every time and the planets as they circulate around the sun are exact. So exact that scientists can calculate exactly where a planet is going to be years from now because they know it will follow that exact order. So as God looked down and he sent forth his logos word into the earth and the Holy Spirit brooded over the creation and we see God working as a team bringing about the creation of the earth.
God put the earth in order. He got the animals and all the creatures and the plants all working according to a specific structure and an order. And then he did something strange.
He put somebody in charge to keep that order. When he put Adam in, he said, Adam, you’re responsible for this earth. You make sure that everything functions correctly.
It’s in your hands. You know, we think that Adam was just given there to do a bit of gardening. Adam was in control of everything that took place in the earth and it was necessary for that control to be there.
And what happened when Satan came in and got Adam to hand that authority over to him? Chaos. Chaos. Why? Because Satan himself refused to submit to God’s pattern, to God’s authority and to the team that God had set up in heaven.
He was not a team player. He wanted to do it his way. And he rebelled against the team.
He was going to score by himself and get all the glory for it. God kicked him out. And so he came down and decided to come and mess up the earth now.
And he’d been doing a pretty good job ever since. Chaos is a natural result of the curse that came on this earth as a result of the fall of man. When sin entered in and Satan took control of this earth, it resulted in chaos.
And even the weather and the climate is affected. Got to work against it. Why? Because God wants an order and a structure.
He wants a team. God doesn’t do everything by himself. He’s got these millions and millions of angels waiting to obey his word and instruction and to cause, to bring into being everything that he has decided and structured.
Psalm 103 20 says, Bless the Lord, you his angels that excel in strength, that do his commandments, listening to the utterance of his word. Now we’re beginning to see that in a team there has to be a leader and there has to be followers. Otherwise it’s not a team.
You know what our idea of a team is? Well, you know, we’re a team. We all do our own thing without imposing on each other. In that your idea of a team? We work as a team.
We don’t have one guy who’s dominating. We’ve kicked out the pastor idea. No pastors in this ministry.
We all just go as we are led. You know what that sounds to me like? In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did what was right in his own eyes. And you know what? God had to keep sending judges to the people to bring him to order.
And while the judge was there and he brought them to order and told them what to do and organize them, God’s blessing flowed. As soon as the judge died, off they went into chaos again. God’s order has always been for a leader and a team that follows the leader.
Today the watchword is democracy. Democracy. We have a democratically elected government.
Whoop-de-doo. What does that mean? It means that some guy out there impressed more people than the other guy and he got elected and he swayed the crowds. You know what? You can sway a crowd anyway, easily to do exactly what you want them to do.
Democracy crucified the Lamb of God. Those same people that were all stirred up and worshiping him on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem shortly afterwards were shouting, crucify him, crucify him. And the good old Roman leader, Pilate, never had the courage to be a team leader and say what he thought and say, the man’s innocent.
I will not crucify him. Why? Violation of God’s order. Violation of God’s order.
He should have known better. Caesar at least had the idea that he was in charge. Everybody obeyed him.
The whole Roman setup was very well structured. Here we see a weak leader. A weak leader doesn’t have the courage to stand up and be the leader and submits instead to the team.
First recipe for chaos, just like Adam. Instead of being the leader of the team, which at that time was just him and his wife, he submitted to her. Oh, come on, Adam.
There’s nothing wrong with this fruit. Just look, I ate some. I’m fine.
It’s good stuff, man. Have a bite. No, the Lord said we’re not allowed to.
Adam, you don’t bite the fruit. You don’t get any more of me. Oh, I don’t know if she said that, but she could have.
You don’t bite that fruit. You don’t bite this one either. Women have been known to do that, haven’t they? It’s a violation of God’s order and chaos came and resulted.
And so we get to the next element of the team. God is a team player, but the family is also a team. Well, you see, what does it mean that the family is a team? Well, it means that the husband and wife are equal and they’re partners.
And we try to keep the children happy and not put them through too much stress. Otherwise, we will emotionally scar them for life. This is what psychology has taught us.
And what’s the result? Chaos in the home and chaos in the country and chaos in the church. Sure, the family is a team. And like every team, there must be a team leader and there must be members of the team that submit to and obey the leader and work together, all fulfilling one goal and one purpose.
So I have my own way of doing things. I have my own desires. I’m an individual.
I’m not a doormat. You know, doormats fulfill a very good role, a clean feet. Was it that said I’d rather be a doormat for the Lord or something? Was it David? I know he said something like that.
And to dwell in the tents of wickedness. And I said, I’d rather be a gatekeeper. I think that’s what it was.
Well, same thing. The family has to be a team in the same way that God is a team. And when the members of the family each want to do things their way, God’s order is violated.
Now, what happens when we violate God’s order? We get a smack on the hand. Naughty boy. Bible calls it sin.
Violation of God’s order is sin. The first main sin that Adam committed was just that. He violated God’s order by taking the authority that God had given to him and relinquishing it firstly to his wife and then to Satan.
That’s the source of all our problems in life. Think about it. The cause of all the problems that we have in this world were because somebody violated God’s order for team and authority, for submission to leadership and authority.
Hmm. It starts to get quite a serious subject, doesn’t it? The church is a team. And God has set leaders in the church.
Paul says God has set some in the church. First Apostles, Secondary Prophets, Thirdly Teachers. And then he goes on through a whole list that involves all the five-fold ministry.
In Ephesians, he speaks about how Jesus gave gifts to the church. Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers. Why? So they can give the church direction.
So that they can bring structure and order. He said, well, we’ve done fine without the Apostle and the Prophet. All we really needed was the Evangelist to get the people saved and Pastor to take control.
But you know what? That came about for a very simple reason. It’s essential to have a team and it’s essential to have leadership and those who are under leadership. And though the status quo system may have gone all wrong.
And though many men may have abused the authority and the leadership that was given to them. Nevertheless, the church of God has survived through the years by following an order and a structure. And we make jokes about denominations and call them abominations.
But you know, some of those denominations have accomplished more than all these great newbie prophets who’ve got this new revelation. We’re kicking out the pastor, we’re kicking out authority. We’re all going to get revelation and we’re going to all do what God shows.
We don’t need the pastor to tell us what to do. We’re going to get revelation. We’re going to say, thus said the Lord.
And somebody else is going to say, thus said the Lord. Sometimes you think God’s confused. But each one’s saying a different, thus said the Lord.
I can’t God make up his mind. God has always had a chain of command. He’s always had a chain of command.
He said it in the home. He said it in the church and then even said it in the workplace. It’s always got to be somebody who’s the leader who takes the final responsibility.
And there’s got to be a structure and an order where every person knows their place under the authority of leadership. The moment a breakdown takes place in the chain of command, either because a leader fails to maintain the authority and the responsibility that was given to him and submits that leadership to another, or through somebody who’s meant to be under leadership refuses to obey and submit to that leadership and rebels against it. There is chaos and there’s confusion.
There is sin in the camp. There is destruction. Without clear direction, the people have no covering of protection.
King James says the people perish. But he that follows instructions, he who does what is told, the law. There’s got to be a law.
There’s got to be clear instructions. You know, no army could ever survive without a structure of authority and without what they call standing instructions, standing instructions. You see, the general doesn’t get up in the morning and decide how to tell everybody to run the army and change his mind.
Well, yeah, we did it this way yesterday. Today, I think we’ll do it a bit differently. There are standing orders.
They’ve been laid out. Day-by-day operation of every single division of the army has been laid out. And if you violate the standing orders, you are subject to being charged.
Now, the general can come and give a new order. He can add a variation to those orders. And God has done the same.
God has given us standing instructions in his word. Now, when he gives new instructions, he doesn’t violate the standing instructions. He simply adds to them something specific for a particular situation in our lives.
And so a team leader is responsible, firstly, for laying out the standing instructions, for setting everything in order, and then for policing those instructions. See now, when God made man, he laid out the standing instructions. And then he put his general, Adam, in charge and said, there we go.
I’ve laid out the standing instructions. All you need to do is to work within the confines of those instructions, according to the pattern that I’ve given you, and everything will go well. And it did.
There were no problems in the earth until that order was violated. The Bible speaks about the church as being the body of Christ. And I think no better analogy could have been used than the body.
Because here is an organization. See, I don’t walk with my hands all. See, I’m pretty balanced, with arms the same length, feet.
You know what? If my body wasn’t balanced and structured, I wouldn’t be standing here maintaining my balance. I couldn’t even take one step and keep my balance. Ever try to do that with a doll, make it walk? There’s such a symmetry and an order in this body that this body can accomplish amazing things.
Why? Because it has a team leader sitting right in your skull. And somebody at the controls inside there, which is you in the spirit. There’s got to be control.
Now, what happens when the leader loses control? Have you seen what happens when a person has a stroke and their brain can no longer function? Their body starts doing strange things. Their body can’t function. Sometimes you’re facing an artist like this or something.
You’re out of balance. Weird things happen when that control center is affected or removed. And if you take away the ultimate control center of the body, which is the spirit, it dies.
It dies. It cannot survive. It cannot live.
It perishes. Oh, we don’t need strong leaders because the Lord is our leader. We don’t need one brain.
Why don’t we have six? You know, I think somebody did it at one stage, managed to put a second head on an animal. But you know what? Animals like that, you see them in the movies and in the fairy stories, you know, the many headed monster. It’s abnormal.
There can only be one head. There can only be one brain. There can only be one control center for a specific body.
And yeah, there are sub-control centers. There is the nervous system and the endocrine system and every other kind of system if you study the medical. But you got a whole lot of systems and those systems work pretty good.
And if you really want to take the whole analogy down, you have a beautiful picture in the body of how perfectly things will go when the team works the way God intended it to. You got a team leader, you got team members, and then you need a very important element between those two. It’s the C word.
Communication. And communication is a two-way street. You see, if I communicate to you through speech, I have to specifically say something.
But if you’ve got earplugs in your ear, communication is not taking place. I communicated good. Do you know when problems occur in the body is when communication fails to take place between the brain and the body.
I remember looking this up when I started to suffer with a high blood pressure and I wanted to figure out how high blood pressure works and what causes it. And I discovered a very interesting little mechanism. It works this way in many mechanisms in your body, but this was an interesting one.
See, the heart beats away there and as it beats, the pressure begins to increase in the veins. Now, inside your veins, there’s little sensors that can pick up what the pressure is. And when the pressure gets too high, those sensors start sending messages to your brain.
Hey brain, pressure’s too high down here. The brain gets the message and says, okay, pressure’s too great. We better tell the heart to beat a bit softer.
It’s beating too hard. The brain sends a message to the heart and says, hey heart, you’re beating too hard. Cool it.
Slow down. Take it easy. Skip a few beats.
Rest. Don’t pump soft. And the heart probably just sends back and says, thanks boss, I needed a break.
It starts to slow down and then the pressure drops. And then the heart may do like a lot of us. You know, you’re told to take a day off and you take three.
The blood pressure drops too low now. The sensors in the blood vessels pick it up. Blood pressure’s too low.
Send a message to the brain. Hey brain, we don’t want to die. Tell the heart to get back on the job.
It’s simple really. You know that takes place in your body all the time. It takes place when your body regulates its temperature and it gets too hot and all the sweat glands are given instructions to put out sweat to cool you down.
Isn’t that amazing? The body can maintain an exact temperature that we can measure with a thermometer. And unless you’re sick, now there’s a key, unless you’re sick. So what happens if that mechanism goes wrong? You’re sick.
What happens when the high blood pressure goes wrong? You’re sick. Now what causes it? What causes the sickness? Somewhere along the way, the message didn’t get through. The message didn’t get through.
Those sensors sent their message to the brain and said, blood pressure is too high. The brain was too busy with other things. No, somebody cut the telephone line, perhaps.
And there’s where the nervous system comes in. The problem may be in your nerves. Who knows? In fact, they still don’t know why.
But somewhere along the line, either the brain didn’t get the message, the blood pressure was too high, or the brain failed to communicate the message to the heart. The heart didn’t get the message, or somebody disobeyed. The only thing we can do is to stick some drugs in our blood to force the heart to slow down.
That’s what blood pressure medication does. Now you think they’d give a pill that would instruct the brain to give better messages. I don’t know.
Do you ever listen in communication? Maybe really what you need is to treat your nervous system. I don’t know. They don’t know.
But when communication breaks down, you get sick. Why? Because you’re no longer following that order. It’s no longer teamwork.
One of the members is doing its own thing and not listening to the head. It’s such a beautiful picture. You know, most of the sickness disease that we have in our body is caused by exactly that.
See, the body heals itself naturally. The body detects and picks up when something is wrong. When germs get in there, the body all gathers together with the white capuscles and they do their thing.
Okay, I’m not giving you a biology lesson. I just found these things interesting. That’s teamwork, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve seen them try to portray this in movies and it’s so exciting.
You know, you cut your hand. Small little insignificant part of you. Small little cuts and suddenly the whole body comes to life.
The whole body comes to life. We got to cut. We got to cut.
We got to sort it out. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? What are we going to do? What are we going to do? We’re going to cut. Everybody comes running to the brain and says, what are we going to do? The brain says, calm down.
We have an exact procedure to follow here. You, white capuscle, get there now. And you, thing in the blood, okay, you got to start putting little strands across the cut.
So when the strands go across the cut, the blood vessels get caught in it and they’ll form a barrier. It’ll become a scab and it’ll stop the bleeding. I remember a little bit of my biology, even though I didn’t do so good.
Standing orders, what to do in case of a cut. The body knows what to do. It knows what to do.
And the brain is in control at all times so that if something out of the ordinary takes place, the brain can now take further action. Okay. This is not working, guys.
We’re going to have to get a bandaid and put it on. Put some ointment on. Let’s take some extra action.
See, that’s not standing orders. Standing orders are trying to fix it, but it’s not working. You need somebody in charge who has the initiative and the wisdom to say, we’re going to have to go beyond standing orders and we’re going to have to do something here.
You might think your church organization is so nicely organized and structured that if your leader were to leave right now, you could carry on without him. And you probably could if everything went smoothly like it is now. But did one exceptional problem come in? So we can handle that ourselves.
We can fix it. I know as much as he knows. Oh, you can take it down to the family.
I can do what he does. I may be a woman, but women are not inferior. I can take over here.
I can handle it. After all, I’m in charge of the kids all day. I know how to handle him.
He knows nothing. He’s just a man. Goes to work and does it.
It’s a violation of God’s order and it will lead to problems. And that’s where it always begins. Well, the fruit’s okay.
I tasted it. What’s wrong with it? I tried it and nothing went wrong. I’ve got it under control.
I can handle this. What does mom and dad know for goodness sakes? They’re old fuddy daddies. You know what? You know, us kids, we’ve learned the latest stuff on the internet and we know what to do.
Yeah. You know what? Why should I have to do it my dad’s way? You know, he’s so old now, he’s forgotten about real life. And you know what? Things aren’t the same way today they were when he was young.
So I do it my way. You might get away with it for a while. It’s a violation of God’s order.
It’s going to lead to chaos. It’s going to lead to confusion. It’s going to lead to conflict and it’s going to lead to a destruction of the team.
Got to have a team leader. We’ve got to have members. We’re going to have communication and we’ve got to have instruction, standing instruction, standing orders.
In the case of this, do that. In the case of this, do that. If this happens, do that.
We need to have specific things laid out that control our day-to-day operation. We were really taking into account all the what-ifs or at least most of them. And then we need the most important quality of all.
Obedience. Obedience to the standing orders, obedience to the live orders that are given. If we can keep that structure, we’ll function the way God intended.
And so in simple summary, to function together efficiently in a group, there are two important elements that exist. Number one, a leader to give instructions. Number two, followers who obey the instructions.
Take away one of those elements and you’ve got confusion and disorder and the team no longer exists. And then we’re going to have chaos. That’s God’s kind of organization.
We’re going to speak about it more as we go on. We’re going to look at how a leader should function, how things should be set in place, how to set up standing orders, how to bring it all together, how to be a true leader God’s way, how to be a member, how to be a follower. You see, all of us are all of those depending in which team we’re in.
And so you may be in your home and you may be the head. And so you may be the team leader there. But when you come to work, you have a boss who’s over you and he’s the team leader there.
And you come to church and you have somebody over you there. You’re not the team leader there. You now become a follower.
So wherever we are, we all have one of those roles to fulfill. And if we can learn to fulfill those correctly in every area of our lives, then we’ll be back to the paradise that God created originally on this earth.