Acts, the second chapter. And
this morning we'll be looking at the last few verses here in
Acts, chapter 2, beginning with verse 42. The Scripture says,
And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and
fellowship and breaking bread and in prayers. Fear came upon
every soul and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles
and all that believed were together and had all things common and
Sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as
every man hath need And they continuing daily with one accord
in the temple and breaking bread from house to house did eat their
meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having
favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church
daily such as should be saved. The title lesson this morning
is Steadfast Continuance. Steadfast continuance. You get
that in verse 42 where they said they continued steadfastly. They continued steadfastly. Now
just to recap what we've been over so far, the Apostle Peter
had preached the message, Jesus Christ and how God hath made
him both Lord and Christ. And we saw that they were pierced
in their hearts by the Spirit of God and they cried, is there
any hope? And the Apostle Peter said, yes,
there's hope. Repent and be baptized, every
one of you, for the remission of sins, and you shall receive
the Holy Ghost. And last week we saw that they
gladly received. They gladly received. As many
as were pricked by the Spirit of God, as many as were born
of the Spirit, we gladly receive the message. We gladly hear the
message of Jesus Christ. We who are not willing, we who
are unable to be willing, are now made willing by the grace
of God. I cannot stress enough how horrible a doctrine it is
for those who believe that the will of man has anything to do
with this matter of salvation. That salvation rests on the choice
of a man that causes new birth is nothing more than a heresy
and is to be dealt with as such by anyone who believes it. Any man that believes that has
made faith a work. And any that would put a man's
faith as the chief sovereign of salvation has believed a lie
and is under works religion. You see, these men were gladly
received, but something happened to them before they could ever
gladly receive. Something happened to us. Something
changed us. And it was God, an act of God's
free grace that saved us. If God does not quicken a man,
he can make 10,000 decisions for Jesus and it'll do no good.
It'll do no good. I know, I made them. I did it. It doesn't do any good until
God comes. Until the Spirit comes and gives
life, the will cannot make salvation effectual. I believe in Jesus
Christ even before I was saved. I believed in Jesus, didn't you?
Didn't you believe in Jesus before you were saved? Sure we did.
We heard as a little child there was Jesus. We said, oh yes, that
was Jesus. Everybody does. See, I made my decision and I
willed that God save me. I don't know how many times.
You see, I thought I could obligate God to save me. I thought I was
worth saving. I thought I was worth saving.
I thought surely God would save me if I just did this thing. But I found out that it wasn't
until God took all my strength, away from me until God took all
of my worth away from me. It was then that I saw that I
deserved hell and I knew God was right if he sent me there.
I knew God was right if he sent me there. See, this is where
God must bring us before we could ever gladly receive. It is there
in the dust before God that we saw hope and life. It was there that we saw when
we were hopeless and helpless, it was only then that God saw
fit to give us life so that we could gladly see Him. Now then,
to all of us that have, to all of us that have life and faith,
these actions of these early saints of God, the early church,
These actions were taken by them as a result of their salvation. Never because of these actions
are they saved, but because they are saved, these are things that
they gladly will do. Today I want us to look at several
of these. I'm not going to get through
with them. I realized that from the get-go. I'm not going to
get to the end, but we're going to get through as many as we
can this week, and we'll try to pick up for the next week.
First of all, let's look at our text again. And they continued steadfastly
in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship. Let's go back to
verse 41. It says, when they gladly received, what did they
do? Look at this. They were baptized, weren't they?
They that gladly received were baptized. Now, everyone that
comes to faith in Christ, everyone that has been born of the Spirit
of God, we are to follow our Lord's commands. If you have
bowed to the Lord as king, is it not Reasonable. That we know we are to obey the
King's commands. How can we say we are subject
to Christ and not obey His commands? How is that possible? You can't
say that. That's a contradiction. You see, we gladly receive His
Word and we gladly obey His commands. What is His command to us about
baptism? Be baptized. Isn't that simple? Be baptized. Well, what is baptism? Baptism was an ordinance practice
first by John the Baptist. Let's go ahead and go back to
Matthew chapter 3. Philippa, hold your place here. Hold your
place here and go to Matthew chapter 3. Matthew, the third chapter, and
we'll be looking at verse 1. This is the first instance of
baptism here mentioned in Scripture. In those days came John the Baptist,
preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, Repent ye,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that
was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying, The voice of
one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
make his path straight. And this same John, had his raiment
of camel's hair and a leather girdle about his loins, and his
meat was locusts and wild honey. And there went out to him Jerusalem
and all Judea and all the region round about Jordan, and were
baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins." This is the first
instance we hear of baptism. Is this man John? This man John. Now, John was an important figure. We don't want to negate the importance
of John. God had determined that John
be the man, the forerunner of the King, the Messiah. He was
to come and announce that the King was coming. You see, everyone
in that day that looked for the Messiah, everyone that day that
looked for the King to come, they would first hear that there
was a man who would make his path straight, a forerunner,
somebody that would go before the King. And that's what a forerunner
is. You see, when a king would go
someplace, he just wouldn't just show up. He wouldn't show up. He wouldn't surprise visit people.
You see, a king would always send an ambassador, one before
him, to tell the people he was coming, so they can make ready.
You see, kings like that. They like the sound of the trumpet,
and they like the regal fare, and so they would send men to
prepare the way. How much more the king of glory?
God sent his ambassador, but notice how his ambassador, he
was dressed in camel hair and he ate locusts and wild honey.
He wasn't like the people had thought. Surely the forerunner
would be a man of regal royalty and that he would come and announce
to the king that he was to come in some kind of fanfare. No,
no. He came in the wilderness as
a voice crying in the wilderness, make way, the king's coming. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand." How can you have a kingdom without a king? If
the kingdom of heaven is coming, then you know the king is coming,
he said. He said the king is coming. And
then when John baptized in Jordan, he baptized them confessing their
sins. You see, what he was doing was
people were coming and confessing their sins, making themselves
ready for the king. You see, you wouldn't show up
before a king in that day in filthy garments, would you? You
would be executed if you showed up in the king's presence in
that manner. You see, the Lord of glory says, make yourselves
ready, the king is coming. And he did this by the act of
baptism which was a type, a shadow, a picture of something that must
take place on the inside. And then what happened? The king
came. He said he was coming and then
he came. He came and even surprised John
when he came. John said, you want to be baptized
of me? I need to be baptized of you.
I need to confess my sins to you. What are you coming to be
baptized of me for?" You see, in the Lord, He said, "...suffer
to be so now, for we must fulfill all righteousness." In other
words, the Lord Jesus Christ submitted Himself to baptism. He submitted Himself in humility
under the ordinance of baptism. Why? to picture His immersion
in the sufferings for righteousness. He immersed Himself in human
flesh and took all of our pains upon Himself. And yes, He took
all of our sins upon Himself to fulfill our righteousness.
And He humbled Himself to show that He was under the will of
the Father. You see, he became a man and subjected himself to
every ordinance of God. And God said to him, be baptized.
What is he going to do? He must be baptized. And he was. He was baptized to show his humiliation. You see, what did this mean?
It pictured his submersion and immersion into the humility. How low did the Lord himself
go for us? How far did he come down that he suffered himself to be
baptized of John? And this is what we do. When
we come to the waters of baptism, we are immersing ourselves in
the baptism of Christ's death. We immerse ourselves, we stand
at the water and identify with Him and His life. We say, this
is my life. Christ is my life. When we immerse
into the water, we go down and we say, in the death of Christ,
my sins are buried. And when we come up, we come
up in newness of life. It's a picture of what has happened
to us on the inside. And so, when we do this, what
are we doing? Are we not confessing Him? When
we do this in front of witnesses, are we not confessing to everybody
that sees? I identify with Christ. He is my Lord and my King. I love Him. He's all my righteousness
and hope. You see, this idea of walking
down the aisle, turning around and letting everybody see you
and shaking the preacher's hand, that is not confession. That is not a biblical confession. My friend, that is a man-made
ordinance. If you're a believer in Jesus
Christ, the way we confess Him is through baptism. That's how
we confess to all around us, we identify with Him. So if you
are a believer in Christ, we must be baptized. And we have
been. We that have believed, we have been baptized. And therefore,
in our baptism, we identify with Christ. You identified with Him. And you confessed Him. That's
exactly what these believers did in the early church. They
confessed Him. Number two, they were added to
the church. Look at this back in our text.
He said, they were baptized and the same day they were added
unto them 3,000 souls. This matter of church membership
as well as baptism is greatly overlooked by true believers. You see, usually when a heresy
comes in, we overreact. When a heresy comes in, it is
our tendency to jerk so far in the opposite direction that we
ourselves become an error. This idea of baptism and church
membership is so distorted by this religious age that many
true believers go too far to annul it as nothing. Well, we
shouldn't do that. To the Church of Free Will Works
Religion, baptism and church membership are everything, aren't
they? They're everything. I remember hearing of Henry Mahan,
before he was saved, they had that conference. A million more
than 54. They were trying to get people
to join the church. You see, that's the center of
all that they do. You see, they get you pumped
up and they try to get you out there so you can bring more people
in to the building. Sign a card. Put them on the
roll. That's what we're here for. That's
what they think. As soon as you sign them up,
dip them. Get them in there and dunk them
down as fast as you can. You see, to them, church membership
and baptism are everything. They'll do anything to get people
to do it. They'll trick them. Oh, they'll trick you. I mean, they'll
wind down and they'll just tell you, you know, they'll put you
in an academic corner if they have to. Let's say, you know,
Jesus died for sinners. Are you a sinner? Yes, He died
for you, didn't He? You see? They say, well, yeah, I guess
He did. Okay, let me sign up. They try to trick people. Why?
Because that's the sinner hub of what they believe. But we're
not to overreact against it. We know that this is not the
message of the church. that this is not our work to
try to get people to join the church, it's not our mission
to baptize people. Paul said, I came not to baptize,
but to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. He said, that's what
I was sent for. And that's what we're here for.
We're here for the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's our purpose. And our purpose is to love one
another. That's our purpose. That's what
God has commanded us to do, to love one another as He loved
us. This is our mission. We know that these things cannot
save anyone that believes that these are
effectual to salvation. You believe these things are
effectual, you believe you're saved because you're a member
of this church, you believe you're saved because you're baptized,
you're lost. You don't know Christ. These
things have nothing to do with our salvation, and they will
not merit favor with God. God's not impressed because we're
members of Redeemer Baptist Church. God's not impressed. Doesn't
sway Him. But we must not underestimate
these in the service of Christ. When we join ourselves to a local
body, what are we doing? When you join this church, what
does that mean? Other than you got your name
on the roll, what does that mean? What are you saying? You're saying
you identify with this message. You are saying that you know
that God has placed a man here to preach the gospel to you.
That's what you're saying. You identify that there is a
light in the city in which you live. There's a light, and every
time you get in your car, and every time you drive here, and
every time you park in that parking lot, you are manifesting to everybody
that sees you, this is where God is. That's what you're saying.
And that's a very important statement. It's a very important statement. I know there are many people
on the church road at Redeemer Baptist Church that have no love
for the message of the gospel. I know that. There are people
on this role that have no love for the gospel at all. Does being on our role do anything
for them? No. I'm sorry to say it doesn't. I know many on our role of this
church that seem to have no love for the message of God. They
have no love for the gospel. And yet there are some who are
not members of this church who are very more faithful than the
people that are on it. There are people who are not
members that are more faithful than the people on the roll.
But to all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you should
identify with the church. If you believe the message of
this church, you should identify with us. You should support the church
that you identify with and testify to all around you that the gospel
of Christ is preached here. Now, I know this. I can preach
to everyone, but I can't be everyone's pastor. I understand that. I
understand that. There are things inside of our
nature that although we can tell that they're wrong, you just
can't change them. I know of some believers that wouldn't
have me as pastor because of my age. Well, we know that that's
wrong, but you can't do anything about that. I can't change that.
But it doesn't matter. Go wherever the gospel is preached. You don't have to be here. Be
somewhere. Go somewhere where the gospel
is preached. Identify with some local body. This is what we should do. This
is what believers should do. They should join like these men
joined together in a group. They joined together to form
the local church. And that's what believers should
do. I would also note this, that it's not our business to add
to the church. It's not our business to add
to the church. By adding to the church, I don't
mean just signing on the role either. What I'm talking about
is believers. You are part of this local assembly,
but you are part of a larger assembly. There is a church universal. God has a church. And who adds
to that church? Do I? No. God does. God does. And I'll tell you what,
whoever God adds to this assembly, I'll be happy to have them. But
if God doesn't want them here, I'm not going to try to lure
them away from somebody else. It's not my business. My business
is to preach, and God will add to the church as He sees fit.
Whether three or three thousand, it doesn't matter. It doesn't
matter. God adds to the church. And number
three. These continued steadfastly in
doctrine. Look at that in verse 42. They continued steadfastly in
the apostles' doctrine. I have a hard time tolerating
certain fools that say they don't like doctrine,
like we were talking about, Joanne. Certain fools say they do not
tolerate... I don't like doctrine. I don't
like when you start talking about doctrine. I don't like that. I don't like to get involved
in that. I think doctrine is boring. I've
heard that before. I think doctrine is boring. And
the church needs something to pep up the people. They need
to get them riled up and the doctrine just don't do it. These
people manifest their own foolishness by saying such things. They have no idea what that word
means. I had a man tell me the other day
he didn't like to get involved in doctrine. Now as I was talking
to him, he was all the while trying to tell me what his church
taught. I said, are you not trying to
teach me doctrine? Does your church teach anything
at all? If they're teaching anything
at all, they're teaching doctrine. It may be false doctrine, but
it's doctrine nonetheless. True believers, everyone that
is added to the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, that are baptized
and will continue steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine. You
see, we don't continue fastly in our own doctrine, or what
we think about things, or what this man says about things. You
see, I don't hesitate to take the derogatory term Calvinist. I don't hesitate to take that.
But really, do I derive my doctrine from Calvin? Absolutely not. Calvin was a man who had great
error, and he's usually one I read the less. I don't read him very
much at all. Calvin and Luther and all of
these men came down, and they had great baggage when they came
down from the Catholic Church, when they got rid of the Catholic
Church. They had great amounts of error in their teaching. You
see, I don't get my teaching from Calvin. I don't get my teaching
from Don Fortner, and I don't get my teaching from Moose Parks,
I don't get my teaching from David Pledger, I get my teaching
from the Apostles' Doctrine, from the Word of God. And I don't
care, I love those men with all my heart, but if they're not
saying what the Gospel says, I must depart with them. I do
believe that they are preaching the gospel, these men that I
mentioned. But if the gospel says something,
I will not hesitate to part. The gospel takes priority over
everything. We must continue steadfastly
in the apostles' doctrine. Many who will profess with their
lips they love the Lord Jesus, but by their life and by their
action and by their words, they will prove that they don't. Anyone
that does not continue steadfastly in the apostles' doctrines, they
can say they love the Lord all they want to. They may even have
an emotional twitch in their heart every once in a while.
They may have a twinge of conscience that makes them feel guilty every
once in a while. But if we love the Lord, we'll
continue steadfastly in His doctrine. If we love the Lord, we will
continue steadfastly in His Word. As you'll note in your article
in the bulletin, it speaks of James, and it says that, James
says that, knowest thou not, O vain man, that faith without
works is dead? Like a tree with a bunch of leaves
and no fruit on it. What good is an apple tree with
a bunch of leaves, with no apples? Remember the Lord when He came
to that fig tree? The Lord saw that fig tree and He saw it was
full of leaves, but He saw no figs. And what did He do? He
condemned it. And so will He condemn a man
who has all leaves and no fruit. You see, the fruit is to continue
steadfastly in the doctrine. That's how we bear fruit, isn't
it not? It's by hearing the gospel. by hearing the preaching of the
gospel, to be steadfastly in the doctrine of Christ. Believers,
is this not how we grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ?
It is, by continuing in the doctrine of Christ, by hearing of His
death, His burial and His resurrection. I was speaking with a man the
other day and he asked me to send some literature, some books. to his wife and he said, she's
lost and she was asking questions and she needed some books. Well,
you know what? I like books. I read books quite
a bit. Good books are the books that
are most simply understood, not the complicated ones. Those aren't
always the best. I like good books. But I knew
this, that in the city that she lived, there was a man who preached
the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I said, I would rather her
go to hear the gospel. You see, this world thinks we're
so educated that we can do it better than God. We think that
God has somehow changed His mind as to how to save sinners. We
think since the invention of the printing press and the Internet,
God has obviously changed His mind about this preaching thing,
about coming to a building and hearing a man preach. God has
obviously changed His mind or else He wouldn't have invented
the Internet. Think about it. That's what this religious age
has done. They've replaced the preaching
of the gospel for something else. And we wonder why the church
is so deformed. We wonder why people don't have
any love for the gospel anymore. Why they don't have any love
is because they don't hear it. If you don't hear it, how can
you love what you don't hear? You can't. God hasn't changed His means
of saving sinners. It's not by books, it's not by
tracts, it's not by CDs, it is by the preaching of the gospel.
This is why God sends men. We are not to substitute these
things, although good, we are not to substitute the preaching
of the gospel with these things. Never! Never! For the preaching of the cross, is to them that perish foolishness. If this does you no good, what
we're doing here today, if this doesn't do your heart any good,
there's something wrong with your heart. Because this is the
means God has chosen to save His people and to feed them.
This is it. This is the means. This is what
God has chosen. And anyone who thinks this is
foolish, they are perishing. But unto us, all the contrast,
but unto us, it is the power of God. It's the power of God. The wisdom of God is that He
pleases God by the foolishness of preaching to save them which
believe. So I encouraged this man. I said, send her to church.
Send her to hear the man that God has called. Believers, let us steadfastly
continue in the Apostles' doctrine. Let's not sway from it. It's
altogether important. I pray, Lord, to bless these
things. We have some more tomorrow, Lord. Next Sunday, Lord willing.