you would turn in your Bibles
to Acts chapter 2. A little different focus today. You've never heard that, have
you? What are y'all laughing about? Acts chapter 2. And just so you know what we're
doing, like I told you a couple of weeks ago, we're doing a little
side series on things that the church ought to know. A piece
of the church the power of the church. Today we're gonna talk about
the presence and the priorities of the church. I ask this question all the time
when we get together. Often, not all the time, that's
an exaggeration. Often, why are we here today? Why have we gathered as a people
this morning? And it never fails. All of us
answer that in our minds. Or either we go, I don't know
the answer. You're supposed to tell us and I forgot what you said.
And then we get upset with our kids because they don't remember
what we tell them. And I don't remember what I say to myself,
much less what somebody says to me. It's the way of human
nature. We forget. That's why there's a constant
reminder in the word of God, a constant repetition that we
see the apostles teaching the same things over and over again
so that we don't lose track, so that we don't forget. But
beloved, we're here today not to do something, though we do
some things, but we're here today to be something. We're here today
to be the people of God, to gather together, not just to listen
to this guy talk. but to be together in spirit,
to be together in prayer, to be together in the hearing of
the word, so that in the hearing of the word we are actually strengthened
and encouraged and equipped to be more united and more intimate
in everything we do. So that God is glorified and
Christ is glorified in our lives outside these walls, So that
as we come together, some of us can be together more than
others in the community and out apart from these gatherings.
But beloved, when we come together, we are necessary for each other.
And it's always been interesting because having been trained in
what we call the church growth movement, that's sort of how
I cut my teeth in ministry. I was taught early on that the
felt needs of the church is what's most important, that we are to,
and not just the church, but the community at large. So if
we've got a community that has a need, then we find a way for
the church to fit that need on Sunday morning so that they come
in. But that's not what the scripture teaches. The scripture teaches
that the church are those and only those who are sealed by
God through the Holy Spirit, through faith alone in Jesus
Christ. And we'll talk about a little bit what that means
this morning. And so as we've talked about the power of the
church, which is the fact that we are indeed born of God and
it is his work and that there is nothing that can separate
us from the love of God because he and his sovereignty and he
isn't he and his affection has given his love to us through
Jesus Christ. Therefore, we can't refuse the
love of God if he loves us. How does that work? How does
God love someone or something like the church? And I use the
church. The church is always plural, by the way. It means
the gathered ones, the called out gathered ones, not the one
that's gathered, but the called out those, the assembly. If God loves the church. And his love is seen in the giving
of the son, Jesus Christ, to propitiate for her, that means
to satisfy God's judgment against her. If God loves the church
and that he gave his son, Jesus Christ, so that he might be the
redeemer of his people, then the people are propitiated. The
people are redeemed. If God loved the church and the
giving of his son so that the people of God might be sanctified,
I mean, set apart for him, then they're sanctified. If Jesus
is the love of God visible for God loved the world so in this
manner that he gave his son, the only one that he had, that
whoever the believing ones are would not perish, but have life
everlasting. That's what John 316 says for
God's love, the world that he gave his only begotten son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting
life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn
the world, but in order that the world might be saved through
him. But. Those who do not believe, those
believing not ones are condemned already for they do not believe
in the Son of God. So God's love is displayed and
God's love is active. God's love is effectual through
Jesus Christ. So beloved, we are the church
of Jesus Christ because God has loved us with an everlasting
love. In Ephesians chapter 2, it tells us you have been separated
and alienated in your sin and trespasses against God. But the
contrast in this is who you are. You once were, you have been,
you were, but now because of God's love for you, because of
his kindness and mercy, you have been made alive in Christ. You
see that actor in all of these things is who? Say it. It's God. God is the subject
who does all the action. We are the object of the action. The church are, and that's the
correct verb for that, the object of God's love. And God's love
is the action of giving Jesus Christ that God might be righteous
in forgiving us. Because if God forgives us without
satisfaction of righteousness, then God is unrighteous in the
very same act. So Jesus Christ, the living God,
who is also the living man, lived holy before God. And we then,
therefore, can be forgiven because Jesus Christ took our sin upon
himself that God might be just in justifying the righteous,
justifying the sinner to be received by faith. What does that mean?
That means that our whole hope And everything that we understand
about how we can have eternal life and be saved from sin and
the judgment of our sin is that our whole hope is in the person
of Jesus Christ and all that he's done to accomplish it. We
hear the term, it's all of Christ. And those of you who have read
reform literature for any season or any church history for any
season, you see that a lot. It's all of Christ. It's all
of Christ. It's all of Christ. We say that it's all of Christ.
But yesterday, a brother here and I were traveling a little
bit, and I was able to hear a survey that was just done. where nearly
half, all the surveys were either like 40% or 60%. So it's, let's
just round it down to 50. Half of all evangelical survey
said that they believe that man has, well I said about 40%, says
that believe that man has to do some particular thing in order
to warrant the grace of God on his behalf. that man in his power
and in his flesh must come to a certain place in life where
God's grace can be effectual. People also said that it's, I
mean, literally it's just about half. If you average all these
things together, it's about half of people in the churches in
America today that they surveyed would say that they believe that
we are justified based on part of our good works. that God loves
us and He provides the opportunity for salvation as a free gift
and we receive that gift and in addition to that gift, we
also then work real hard to keep it. The sad commentary of that is
that's not a new statistic. It's not a new statistic. We've got an epidemic of ignorance
in the body of Christ today. Because people have relegated
the assembly as an opportunity to receive something for themselves
that caters to our flesh, even though we might say that it's
spiritual. Well, I just can't wait to experience God. Well,
how do you experience God, beloved? Through His Word. There's no
other way. If there is another way, then
God Himself is a liar because God said the only way that you
can experience the fullness of His glory is through the Son,
Jesus Christ. And His Word says that the Son, Jesus Christ, who
is the Word that was before all things, that was from the beginning,
now became flesh and tabernacled amongst us. And then Hebrews
chapter 1, as God spoke in many ways and at many times through
the prophets and our forefathers in these last days, He only speaks
through His Son. which is the exact imprint of
his nature, the radiance of his glory. So we want to experience
God this morning. The only way we're going to experience
God's power is to hear the Bible, talk to us, and then it be coupled
with the fact that we have also been reading the Bible throughout
the week. It is one of the most foolish things that anyone could
ever say. How can I be right with God?
How can I be satisfied with Christ? How can God be satisfied with
me and all of my sin? And the answer to that is you've
just got to read God's Word and hear God's Word. And through
the hearing of those words in your language, God will transform
your life. We say Sola Scriptura because
we mean it. God's grace and faith is all
of Christ, is all for his glory, and is only given through the
word of God alone. That's it, through the word of
God alone. Now that's troublesome for us. Why? Because especially
as Americans, man, we live in the land of opportunity. We are
not bound by anything that we can think of. And we believe
that if we can come together and we can create such an environment
and an atmosphere that it might be appealing to some degree,
or it might be encouraging to some degree apart from scripture,
that we might get encourage other people to even give Jesus a chance.
Now, what does that sound like when I say it? Sounds pretty
heretical, doesn't it? Because it is. And when we hear
it spoken, we go, that's just weird. It is weird. Had a brief
mini conversation with someone yesterday evening online about
how revivals and what we call revivals, getting a big tent
and getting out there and just calling out revival. You know, we need
to get back to those things. And my argument is, how can we
say when revival shall be? Well, the father of American,
of modern revival is Charles G. Finney. And Charles G. Feeney refused to go to Princeton,
but on the campuses of Princeton, young men and professors were
teaching God's Word, and through the hearing of God's Word, there
became an awakening there. And I'll just leave it at that,
and you can go read the rest of the history. But in a great anxiety and great
passion, Mr. Finney decided, I don't need
to go study, and I'm not going over here, and I'm not going
on the campuses of Princeton. I want to see revival in the
world again today, like in the days of Jonathan Edwards and
George Whitefield, who came and preached in the open air, and
people would tear their clothes when they'd hear Brother Whitefield
say, you must be born again. And God brought massive revival. Well, Finney says that revival
can come if we just do some basic things. And I can't boil them
all down into us today for you. But he created several things,
all of them of which are man-centered, that if we do these things, God
will bring revival, he must. And the revival is all of man.
Justification is all of man. He says these things. This is
not me saying what I think he says. They're quotes. Justification,
that means we are right before God because man has come to God
and accepted the opportunity of salvation and made himself
right before God. then Jesus' sacrifice could be
worthy. Finney goes on to say in some of his systematic theology
writings, he didn't write a systematic theology, he wrote about systematic
theology. And one of them, I'm serious,
this is what he calls about systematic theology. And in one of those
areas about justification, he said, how is it that Jesus Christ
could impute righteousness to anyone when he had to die for
his own righteousness? But yet that's the father of
modern day revivals. That's the father of modern day
church services. That's the father who created
all of the examples through which D.L. Moody and others began to
follow. And I'm not bringing an indictment
on anybody that follows them. I used to follow them. Because it's what you're taught.
It's what you're taught. You see people put on jackets
a certain way. You see your mother, you ladies, watch your mother,
your grandmother, somebody put on makeup, you put on makeup
the same way. Men usually shave the same way their fathers shaved.
People lace their shoes the way they've been taught by their
parents. And if you know generation from generation, you teach your
children to tie their shoes from the front, the way you tie them
from the back, they'll be cockeyed. and then their children will
do right, and then their children do like this, and their children do like
this. It's crazy. So we do what we're taught to
do sometimes by observation. Friends, I don't want you to
be taught to do church the way you've always thought about church.
We don't do church, we are the church, and we gather together
for the sake of giving glory to God, learning, growing, and
doing all sorts of things, which the Bible is clear on what we
should be engaged in. So that's what I want to talk
about today. What is the presence of the church supposed to look
like? And in doing that, what are the priorities of the church?
Now, I could have broken this up into several months of teaching,
but for today, bear with me. I'm going to just run through
a lot of things. By the Lord's grace, it'll stick. Acts chapter
2, look at verse 41. Those headings in your Bible
are incorrect. They were not put there by the apostles. Verse 41 starts with the word
so and so those who received his word were baptized. Now,
what's this talking about? Well, Peter's preaching the word
of God. The first open public sermon
after the coming or the. I have to be careful after the
massive undoing of Babel and the empowerment of the Holy is
not the coming of the Holy Spirit had been since eternity past. but the empowerment of the Holy
Spirit to correct the division of language, then Peter gets
out there and begins to preach Christ crucified and resurrected
from the dead as atonement and redemption for lost people, not
just to Jews, but to all the world, all peoples of the world. And 3,000 were added to that
number that day. And so those who received his
word, verse 41, were baptized. Why? Because that's one of the
parts of the message of obedience. And there were added that day
about 3,000 souls. When Peter was preaching to these
non-believers and these people who had never heard the gospel
of Jesus Christ, one of the outcomes of that is that they believed. And the other outcome of that
is they begin to want to be seen as those who were part of the
church. That's where the baptism comes in here in Acts chapter
2. And they were added to their number about 3,000 souls. In
verse 42 it says, and, see if I had to go back up just a little
bit, and they, who were they? 3,000 souls plus those who had
already believed. And they, those who gathered
the church, devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and
to the fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to the
prayers. Now let's stop for there for
a second. Here is the first gathering of
the church of Jesus Christ in a public way. The first one. And so if I would like to, as
a Christian, be Christ-like and biblical in the expression of
what we do when we gather, then we must look at the Word of God
and say, okay, if that's what the church did and the amazing
power of the Holy Spirit of God, 3,000 people got saved. And how
did they know that? Because there were 3,000 people
banging on doors the next day looking for opportunities to
grow in their faith. That's why in 2008, I decided
that I would no longer give a public, ever. I stopped doing it a long
time before. I would never give a public altar call again after
2008. That through the preaching of God's word, the call there
to repent, believe in Christ is there continually. And then
what I would do at the end of services, I would say, if any
of you feel as though God has called you to faith and saved
you this day, I would like for you to come see me tomorrow or
Tuesday midday. I'll be in my office. And they wouldn't show up. Because
if God saves you, you'll take off work. If work's more important
than the church, you're not in Christ. I hate those dogmatic statements,
James. Why do you say them? Because the Bible teaches it.
The Bible teaches it by example. I tweeted out this morning early
so that I wouldn't forget it. When we fail to assemble for
reasons that we would not fail to go to work or play, we bring
an indictment against Jesus Christ. because Jesus Christ has given
us his heart. Jesus Christ has filled us and sealed us with
his Holy Spirit so that if our desire is not first and foremost
to assemble with the people of God and to grow and to worship
and to yearn for the intimacy that comes through the Word of
God, then something is extremely wrong with our profession of
faith. It may just be ignorance, but friends, even in ignorance,
I have never met a new believer that was not hungry to grow in
the Word. You don't get hungry if you're
alive. You are hungry. A baby is not
born and then all of a sudden, you know, six or seven days later,
what's this little feeling in my stomach? He does not have
to be taught what hunger is. In the same way, a new child
in God, a new child that is saved through the gospel of Jesus Christ,
does not have to learn to be hungry. He is hungry because
he's alive. And the only food that he will
eat, according to John six and other places, I've got over 17
verses today. That I could show you that it's
all of the word. Is that the word of God is the
only bread, Jesus Christ is the bread, and so I want to challenge
us this morning. I know life gets in the way,
but here's what the devil does. The devil does exactly what he's
always done. God says, don't eat of this.
It will bring death. And the devil says, you know,
you've been looking over here and wondering why in the world
not here, why all these trees look just like these, why not
these? Because God, the devil speaking, is keeping something
from you. And we justify our sin and our
temptation. We justify our apathy because
we're busy. And we even say God understands.
You know what that means? That means it's a violation of
what Paul would teach in Romans 7 and 8. Should we continue to sin that
grace may abound? Absolutely not. It cannot be.
May God forbid it. Because for the... For John in
his first epistle, the word of God and the commands of Christ
are not a burden to the believer, but they are life. And we come
here today to do those things which are a result of the life
that God has given us through Jesus Christ. That's what we're
here for. We can't go home and say, well, I sat in church and
I'm okay right now. I have a Bible, but I haven't
read it, but I'm okay. God understands because I'm so
busy. Who's not? And friends, I've
skipped meals this week because I've been busy, but I've made
them up. I skipped meals this week. Wow,
I forgot to eat lunch today. Oh, wow, I forgot to have breakfast.
Goodness gracious, I've been so tied up in my mind or with
whatever I was doing. It's two o'clock. I need to get
something to eat. I'll wait till supper. I don't wait till supper. Because when we're hungry, even
when we don't realize we're hungry, when we realize we're hungry,
we go. Why is the Word of God not that type of bread to us?
See, this is what's troublesome. Because as someone who's been
counseling his entire adult life, and the first half of it wrongly,
the second half of it by the Lord's grace correctly, I can't
even help people who aren't in the Word of God. I can't help
you. I can't help you. That's not saying, hey, I want
to cook the meal that's going to satisfy my family, and I want to get
the food, I want to have food on the table so that my family
is full, and you don't even have a table, you don't have a stove,
you don't have a refrigerator. You have no pot. So we got to
go to the grocery store. I'm not going to the grocery
store. You got to have food. I don't even need food. That's
absurd, but it's just as absurd to say that I'm filled with the
Spirit of God, yet the Spirit of God who lives through the
Word of God, who has saved me through the Word of God, is not
sufficient enough to move me into the hunger of His Word and
to the affection of His people. Because that's really the first
two commandments in which all 614 of the commandments hinge.
To love the Lord God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
That strength and soul and mind and heart is what God has given
us through His Word. And we love Him, evidenced by
the fact we're in His Word. And then secondly, to love our
neighbor as ourself. And in the strictest context,
we know that that that also means our enemies. But more importantly,
it means the people of God, that our lives are not our own, but
that we might live them for the sake of others. So what is the
presence of the church look like? We saw it. And those that were
added to their number plus the others were devoted, they devoted
themselves to the apostles teaching, to the fellowship and to the
breaking of bread and to the prayers. Look at that. So what
does that think? What do we see there? Well, first
we see very certainly they gather together. There's no such thing
as a long range of Christian. There is no such thing as the
church at home and the church on the Internet and the church
and the church in the car and church on the CD and the church
on the MP3 and the church on YouTube and the church on Google.
There's no such thing as that. There's no such thing as I am
fulfilling the obligations of God through my life when I am
absent from the body of Christ. There's no such thing as that. Now, yes, I give glory to God,
I am doing, I'm being the body of Christ, I am part of the body
of Christ, but we together grow. We apart, ooh. I mean, have any of you ever
been apart from the body of Christ for even a small season and you
feel like you're dying? Good. Because that's a good sign. out
of the Word for a couple of hours and you feel like you're about
to kill your neighbor, much less love them? How am I supposed
to overcome anger? Be in the Word. How am I supposed
to love my wife? Be in the Word. How am I supposed to be patient
with my children? Be in the Word. I mean, I'm edgy when I'm not
full or have not eaten physically. How much more so am I edgy when
I'm not in the Word of God? We do that which the Lord has
shown us that we should do. We gather together. We devote
ourselves to the apostles, teaching the fellowship, the breaking
of bread and prayers. I'm going to change the order of that.
We are together. We pray together. We pray together in this assembly.
Some of you pray during the week. Some of you pray even in your
homes and in other places, opportunities to see what the other needs are.
And you pray for each other. And I think if we could say anything
this year that needs to be rectified, and I'm not necessarily, that's
probably a bad word, but maybe intensify, there's a good word,
is that we need to be praying more as a people, together. And remember I said, as a people.
That's not just me standing here and praying, or Doug standing
up here and praying, and we just sit there and listen to it and
agree with it. That's part of prayer, but sometimes we need
to pray together with each other. By the Lord's grace, hopefully
by the mid-February, I'll have a little preaching series that
I'm borrowing from someone else and we'll put on CD that we might
learn a little bit more about effective prayer. It's good,
good stuff. So we pray together, we reflect
on Christ, we have fellowship together, we take of the Lord's
table, we remember the crucifixion, the resurrection, we remember
the gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ came. That's what
the breaking of bread and the fellowship and the apostles teaching. So if we back it all up, what's
the final and most important thing that really encourages
us in that? In the apostles teaching, that is the New Testament of
the Bible. That is the scriptures that we are supposed to devote
ourselves to. that teach us to be devoted to
each other, that teach us to pray, that teach us to remember
the gospel and remember through the Lord's table the sacrifice
that Jesus has made, to teach us to do all these things that
God has equipped us to do. Why didn't these people have
a desire to do that the day before? Because they weren't born of
God. Why weren't they born of God? Because they had not heard
the gospel. Romans 10, 17, hearing comes by our faith, comes by
hearing and hearing by the words of Christ. How are they going
to know if we don't go and how are we going to hear if somebody
doesn't go, if somebody's not sent that big treatise on how
the precious defeat of those who preach the gospel of peace
are. As the church, are we doing those
things? Are we gathering together around the word for the sake
of each other, praying for each other, remembering Christ, and
are we devoted to the learning of the word of God and to the
fellowship? That word fellowship, koinonia,
means all things in common. But look what happens when the
church gets together and does these things. What does God do?
Look at this. Verse 43. It's good stuff. And all. You know the word awful actually
in its original context does not mean terrible, but terrible
doesn't mean gross and awful. Terminal doesn't mean what it
means in our vernacular. Terminal means the end, it means
ultimate, the end, the point. Awful means it's a way to describe
God. Terrible is a way to describe
God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning
of wisdom. For God, our God, is an all-consuming fire. We tremble before his word. Do we tremble? Are we in awe?
You know what makes me in awe? When dead human beings come to
life in Jesus Christ and their lives are transformed day by
day. And when we as a people can sit
and hear and fellowship together and love each other, and then
it begins to grow and expand and we start having a desire
to be more intimate, to know each other even more, to live
our lives together in a greater way, in a deeper way, with a
deeper understanding of the Word of God. I'm in awe in that. But that all does not come from
just living through osmosis. That all comes through being
together that we might focus on the glory of Jesus Christ,
who is the image of God. That all comes when the word
of God is so paramount in our lives that there is nothing that
separates us from that majesty. Nothing that separates us from
that numbness that sometimes comes. When Peter talks about
the joy that is often inexpressible in 1 Peter 1, I often think,
what's that about? And I've come to realize it this
way, is that I cannot explain to you how gloriously and full
of all I am at the glorious majesty of Jesus Christ. I cannot paint
the picture for you. You have to hear it for yourself
and then you're in awe. I can't explain to you why I
have joy in the depths of my soul in the midst of the hardest
times of my life, when there is hardly any effort to show
a smile on my face and the tears are tears of grief. But I grieve,
as we learned a couple of months ago, as those who have hope,
not in hopelessness. So sometimes that joy that is
inexpressible, we cannot really put our hand on it. Are we in
all this morning? It said, and all came upon every
soul and many wonders and signs are being done through the apostles.
Let me say to you, and some of you are going to throw me out
with the bath, with the baby right now, and then I'm going
to fix it. I believe the signs and wonders of the apostles are
still in effect today. Because when I read the New Testament,
the primary work of the apostles was that through them God gave
eternal life to dead people. And that's still happening. And
I'm in awe of that. I'm in awe that a people who
have nothing in common can gather together for Jesus Christ. for
the name of Christ and for the glory of God. I'm in awe that
we can have a love for each other that is so amazing, but yet cannot
be identified in this world and that the world looks on and goes,
what what is it that attracts you to those people? And all
we can say is that Jesus Christ in them. And that is, according to what
Paul would teach in Ephesians 310, part of the manifold wisdom
of God. that these people who have nothing
but Christ are intimate. Because we're taught in our culture
that there has to be an affinity in the world, an affinity. We've
got to find people who look like us and dress like us and talk
like us and act like us and like what we like. Friends, I'll be
honest with you. If we have affinities like that
and then we come to the centrality of Jesus Christ, all those things
just sort of disappear. They're not important. There's
a lot of many brethren through the years that I met at the firing
range and I'd go and I'd pay my dues for the day and I'd be
out there and I was trying to, you know, I want to get 15 good
shots, 500 yards, 700 yards, just give me a good pattern today.
Let me take a good piece of paper home, feel like I've done something. Somebody walks by and says, is
that a Bible? Yeah. I really want to shoot. Oh, hey,
let's unload this thing and step back across the line. And six
hours later, we're just having Bible study. What are y'all doing? Talking about a Bible. What is
that, an M24? Yeah. Is that a Bible? Yeah. Those things didn't matter anymore
when Christ came up. And then we just stopped wasting
money paying for range days. Just get together at Starbucks.
It's free. Long as you have an iPad, you
can get in. It's a joke. Are we in all? Do we see the
signs and wonders in each other's lives? Brothers and sisters,
we may not recognize them, but they're here. They're here. I gave a survey out, and I'm
going to resubmit it again, even though I wanted to have it before
last week. We'll do it again. I want to hear how the Lord is
working in you. I want to hear needs that you
have as a church. I want to hear what you feel
is most vibrantly important for our future. I want to hear. I
want to hear if you'll use a particular technology before I spend 12
hours programming it. Because I don't want to do a
thing for nothing. But most importantly, I want to hear how the Lord is
at work. All who believe 44 were together.
They were together and they had all things in common. Now, can
we all be together all the time? No, but we can be together sometimes. And then as we grow to know each
other and to know the Lord and to love each other, opportunities
for us to be together intimately outside of these four walls will
be exponentially increased. But it's not going to come apart
from these foundational things of being together under the word,
praying together, remembering the gospel, remembering the cross
and loving each other. We have all things in common
in Christ, no matter what we have in common. But go ahead
and continue to look at what happened there. And they were
selling. What does that mean to have fellowship? Look at this.
And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing
the proceeds to all. Why would they do that? That's
weird. That sounds like a cult. The 3,000 people, some of them
had to quit their jobs because their job was a wicked thing. The people of Ephesus, most of
the economy there was what? Idol worship. Artemis. And I don't know the numbers,
but, you know, Ben Witherington and some of these guys say that
probably 65 to 70% of every job there was centered on the worship
of Artemis, the goddess. So if I'm running an idol shop
and I come to Christ, I'm not going back to work. So people had need and now what
do we do? We're following Christ and now
we've got nothing. So those who had distributed out to those
who did it, so they would have their basic needs taken care
of. Why would they do that? Because they had a love for each
other that was supernatural. It didn't matter anymore. They
weren't living for themselves, they weren't living for their
job, they weren't living for the glory that comes from men,
they were living for the glory that comes from God. Day by day, attending the temple
together, and breaking bread in their homes, and they received
their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God, verse 47,
and having favor with all people, and the Lord added to their number
day by day those who were being saved. You see that. You know
what you don't see there is more important than what you do see
there. You know what you don't see there? You don't see them
doing anything in an organized way to draw people to Jesus Christ
apart from living as the church. But you did see an intentional,
continual effort of day by day as they lived together, as they
connected together, as they went about. Some of them did have
their jobs. And as they worked their job, they realized what
Paul would later teach to the Corinthians that are Yes, later
teachers of the Corinthians, they didn't work for their boss,
they worked for Christ. Yet what they were doing was
not because they couldn't get into ministry, it was their ministry,
that as they went and where they went, they were to be giving
honor and glory to Jesus Christ and preaching the gospel and
sharing the faith and praying for people. And people were added to their
number day by day. But none of them, we don't ever see the record
of where anybody but the Apostles were really going out and preaching
the Gospel like that. And the Gospel was preached by
the Apostles and is still preached by the Apostles. When we take
the Bible and we go out into the world and we share the Scriptures,
the Apostles are still preaching. And through the Apostles' preaching,
the signs and wonders of God are manifest in the hearts of
men through whom God, as He wills, makes people His own. through
the hearing of the word. So now what? I hear what you're
saying, I see what the scripture is saying. Well, beloved, the
first thing I want us to say is, are we being the church? And I can't say that we are,
but I can surely say that it's what we want. And by the Lord's grace, we will
continue to strive to be that which the Lord has put in us.
And it's difficult, is it not? Is it easy for you? No. It's not easy for me. It's not
easy for any of us. It's not easy because it's counterintuitive
to the world that we live. It's counterintuitive to our
own flesh. It's counterintuitive to our way of life. What is the way of life? I love
the Lord, me, myself and I. That's the culture in which we
live. And like some of my country cousins would say, me and mine's
on. You don't know what that means, that
means all of our people. I don't even know what the word
is, but it's there, O-W-N, I think is what they're trying to say,
mine's on. That's not what the Bible teaches
about the church. Because some of my people, who share my blood,
who share my DNA, they're not my people. My people are not those who look
like me, who have the lack of melanin like me. My people are
not those who enjoy the things I do. My people are those who
are sealed in Jesus Christ. And that's your people, if indeed
you are in the faith. And there's a lot of things that
we need to understand. And by the Lord's grace, over
the next 10 minutes, I want to just rip through a whole lot of them.
And I don't want to make light of them, but there's a lot. But
I want us to get the essence that Friends, two things. One,
we are doing that which God has called us to do, and I'm thankful.
But two, we are so close every moment of our lives to just letting
go of that. You hear that? We're so close. Each of us in
our lives are so close of losing sight of that. Because there's
always temptation. There's always struggle. There's
always discernment. There's always a burden. There's
always something that's going on in our lives that can cause
us to lose sight of Christ and to lose sight of the church and
to lose sight of that which is most vital in our lives. And
it's just like I said earlier, it's amazing to me that people
who are passionately professing Christ who has saved them supernaturally,
will forsake the gathering of the church for things that they
would never be late for work, much less miss work for. And
I can't say that in a way to bring conviction because it's
not my place to convict. I say that in a way of concern
because I would be the opposite. I remember early on when I got
reprimanded and written up because my, as they called it, religion
was getting in the way of my job. And it wasn't. They just hated it. Hated it. You know, you don't need to bring
a Bible to the office anymore. Well, I can't work here. That sounds
good to me. I think it would be the opposite. What is it that the church should
be doing? Well, ultimately what we see here in Acts chapter 2
is we see the planting of the church. And we see that as they
continued, and we know what Paul taught in 1 Corinthians, that
that foundation of the gospel in Jesus Christ and the people
of God would continue to be built upon itself with the same material
so that it would not perish. And then the next question would
be, then what are our priorities then? What should we be engaging? What should we look forward to?
What are some things that we should be doing? And before I
can even answer that, let's ask ourselves, are we really in one
faith? Because I believe that the church
ought to be like we see here, gather, pray, reflect on the
gospel, love each other, live and learn the word, have fellowship
together. But I believe that the church
is very clear that we ought to have what Paul would teach in
Ephesians. We ought to have one faith. We ought to be one body,
intimate with Jesus Christ, one Lord, one God, one baptism. We
are one people. And you've heard me talk over
the last three weeks that the body of Christ is manifold and
that it is everyone who is saved in Jesus Christ, everyone who
is sealed by God, everyone who is born again. This is the church. But congregations in themselves
function because we can't all function under a universal worldwide
church. That just doesn't make sense.
What elder do we submit to? What person is going to bring
us under discipline? Who are we going to lean on in
our time of need? And who are we going to serve
specifically in their time of need? How are we going to share
the Lord's table with just an ambiguous number of people? That's
how Romanism got so strong. They developed the essence of
having the one church in that central Vatican. And everybody could just preach
the same thing. And here's your missiles and
here's your prayers. And here's your here's your homilies. And
everybody's under the same stuff. And everybody takes mass at the
exact same time. And everything's done through Rome. But we're a royal priesthood.
Everything's done through Christ. So we have to do it together
in order to fulfill the very commandments and instructions
we find in the New Testament letters. And one of those is
that we as a church must be passionate about the truth. Who is Jesus
Christ? What is it that we believe about
the gospel of Jesus Christ? What is it that we believe about
the lostness of man? Do we believe like the father
of revivalism in this country, that man is just good enough
to come to God and God must accept him as he is when he comes to
the right place? No, we don't believe that. As a church, we
believe that all men are depraved. All men are sinful because they're
sinners. All men have inherited the guilt
and the sinful nature from Adam and that the only hope we have
is Jesus Christ, the righteous. Nothing man can do can make himself
right with God. No exercise of the will, no exercise
of the mind, no exercise of the body, no exercise of the soul,
no expression of a word can make one right with God. But God alone
through Jesus Christ has justified us before him. And the faith
that is given to us is not of our own doing, but as a gift
of God through the hearing of the word of God, so that we might
be the righteousness of God because Christ took on our sin. Friends,
it is the work of God. And that is good news. Do we
believe that? Do we stand in one accord about
the holiness of God? One of the things that we learned
yesterday in that survey, it's interesting that this come about
at this time for this sermon, is that there are people who
believe that small sins are not warranted, that do not warrant
judgment. lying, aggravation, doubt, frustration, a little
bit of anger. No, no, no, no, no, no. God's
not going to judge these. This is 60 percent of evangelicals
in North America. Sixty percent. So that would
mean that if we're the average church, that six out of 10 people
in this room believe that not all sins are worthy of justice.
Talking back to your parents. Isn't that funny that Paul actually
uses that very thing as a sin in the same sentence with murder? There will come a time when people
will not endure sound teaching, he says to Timothy. But they
will gather themselves up, teachers, to scratch their itching ears
And they will love themselves rather than truth. They will
love their bodies rather than truth. They will love this world
rather than truth. And they will be seen in this way. There will
be gossips and murderers and thieves. They will be disobedient
to parents, disrespectful, indignant. Do we believe that every sin
is worthy? That when our children go, no,
and disobey and run around and slam the door in our face when
they're three years old, do we believe that the wrath of God
is worthy justice upon their heads? Oh, how I wish it wasn't
so, but it is. What do we believe about the
holiness of God? We must be unified in that. But the beauty of it
is that it doesn't stand in the holiness of God. Things don't
rest continually there because God, in addition to his holy
justice, his righteousness, has exhibited a different, a new
character of himself, a new, what is the word I'm looking
for? A new portion of his mind, if you will. Romans 3 says that
God has shown mercy. In the midst of justice. but
that God's mercy has never nullified or voided His justice because
Jesus, the righteous, holy one of God, the life of Jesus Christ,
is called the righteousness of God. As a human being, Jesus
lived and showed us the righteousness of God. Get that. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord
God Almighty. It is seen in the life of the
infant, toddler, child, teen, young adult and 33 year old man
named Jesus. We don't think about that enough,
y'all. The righteousness of God was struck down guilty of sin
that was not his so that God could be the just and the justifier
of all who have faith in Jesus Christ. Are you hearing me, beloved?
I pray that God would give you ears to hear the truth of the
gospel of Jesus Christ this day. If he does not have you to hear
it, you will not hear. What do we believe about the
grace of God? What do we believe about the people of God? So we
should do that which the church is to do, as seen in Acts chapter
2 there. We should believe in the things
that the church should believe. And real quickly, we should obey
that which the church should obey. We should love God and
love others. We should be peaceful, kind,
merciful, forgiving. Galatians 5, starting in verse
22, we see the fruit of the Spirit of God. Those things should be
evident in our lives. We see the antithesis of those
things that should not be in our lives through the book of
Ephesians, where it says, should not even be named among you.
Maliciousness, malice, grief, coarse joking, crudeness, sexual
immorality, should not even be named among you. So we know what
we should do, we know what we shouldn't do. We should obey
those things because Jesus says, if you love me, you will obey
my commands. Jesus even tells, talking about
false teachers in Matthew, that those who are false teachers,
you will know them by their fruit. In the same sense, beloved, the
false church will be known by their fruit. The false believer
will be known by their fruit. We should obey that which the
church should obey. We should worship as the church is to worship.
And we can worship through song if there is a message there worthy
of hearing. If we can say that what we just
sang, come thou fount of many blessings. Oh, to grace, how
great a debtor. Are you a debtor to grace? Absolutely.
If you're in Christ. We are a debtor to grace beyond
all means that and there is a debt that can never be fulfilled in
all of eternities. And an eternity of eternities,
we can never repay the debt that we owe to God. For God is satisfied
in himself and he's satisfied in his son and those who are
in Christ Jesus, God is well pleased with. Because they are
holy. Just as Jesus is holy. What a
beautiful message. Not only are we to worship as
the church is to worship, we're to worship in spirit and in truth.
We see Jesus talking to the woman from Sychar, the Samaritan, who
worshiped on Mount Gerizim with a little copy of Mount Jerusalem. They did the same things, sort
of looked the same way. They believed in the same fathers
of their own faith, Jacob, Abraham, Jesus is truth and God is spirit. So the only way we can worship
God, the father, the only way we can worship God is to worship
in Christ. The only way we can worship in
Christ is if the word of God is so full in us that there is
something worthy of worship inside of us, that we are overwhelmed
and the outpouring of that which is in our heart comes from our
mouth and worship. And it's not just about corporate
worship either. It's about it's about personal worship. Romans
12. Remember that it's become almost cliche. Do not be conformed
to this world, to the patterns of this world, but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind. This is a spiritual act of worship
or being transformed by the renewing of our mind. And if we are, the
only way that's going to happen is through the word of God. We
must worship as a church. So let me give you those four
things. If you haven't been following my very clear outline. Number
one, the church should do the things that the church is supposed
to do as seen in Acts 2. Two, the church should believe
that which the church should believe. Three, the church should
obey that which the church should obey. And fourthly, the church
should worship as the church should worship. Fifthly, not
only should we do these things as the church, but also as the
church, we are to do what Christ has commanded us in Matthew 28,
to go into all the world, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded
you. Do you realize evangelism is
not an opportunity to respond, but a command to obey? Did you
hear that? Evangelism is not, hey, there's
a really awesome Jesus over here. He wants you to come and go on
through that door right there. Evangelism is, hey, here is God
Almighty as a man lived. He is the righteousness of God.
And he took your sins on the cross and he was raised to life. And if you were to be justified
before God, you must believe fully upon him. That's the evangelism. How do we do that? You must believe
the gospel. You must believe what I just
told you. You must believe what I just told you. And if God has
given you the faith that is in you, then the fruit of that will
come and you will then obey all that Christ has commanded. You
see, we can't obey Christ if we're not in Christ. We can fake
it to an extent in some things, but we cannot obey Christ if
we're not in Christ. And when we do sin, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. who is
our propitiation. We're to teach others to obey
all that He's commanded. And sixthly, if I could give a number
here, we should reveal that which the church should reveal through
our fruit. What are we known for? Beloved,
what are you known for? Because whatever you're known
for is what we're known for. Whatever I'm known for is what
you're known for. And vice versa all over this room. and the 19,
20 people who aren't here this morning. We're known for what
each other is known for. We're all part of the same body. What should we be known for?
I have 18 things. Just a list. I think we should
be known to have a high view of scripture. A high view, not
a low view, a high view. 19 things, I'm adding one. We
should be known to have a high view of marriage because it is a display, a microscopic
display of the macrocosmic reality of Christ in the church. We should
have a high view of scripture because it is the power of God.
It is the truth. It is Jesus Christ, the word.
We should have a high view of the church. It's not a place,
it's not an opportunity, it's a people who live together. And
good and bad. Guess what, church? The church
is going to have problems. We're going to have problems.
You know why? Because we're in it. Sorry. We're in it. Like a dear
brother in the Lord told me in 2000 in, oh my goodness, two. He said, you want to hear the
good news? We get to work with people. You want to hear the bad news?
We get to work with people. Have you of the church? We are
the called of God. We are sealed and we are the
eternal purpose of God in Christ Jesus. Do you realize that? God is glorified in the birth
of his people through Jesus Christ. God's glory is the end, but the
eternal purpose of God is that we be transformed by his grace
into the image of Jesus Christ. A high view of the gospel, for
it is the power of God. We're not ashamed of it. It's the good
news. There is never a time when the gospel is bad news. We have
a high view of holiness, the fruit of God's spirit within
us. We want to see it. We want to show it. We have a
high view of preaching. The preaching of God's word is
the prophetic arm through which the church grows and the church
is encouraged and the church is accountable. But it comes
down off this pulpit and then lives within us. We realize that
the preaching of God's Word, no matter what method or means
to which it's communicated, my communication style is much different
than most people's. I don't do it correctly. The
question is, am I saying what is correct? That's what's important. But are we learning? We have
a high view of preaching. Or do we put it low on the totem
pole? Do we put preaching aside so
we can have a play? Or do we put preaching aside
so we can do something fun? Or do we put preaching aside?
Listen, there's times to do things that are fun. There's times to
do a play. But it's not in lieu of the preaching
of God's Word. I really believe if it were up
to me, we'd have about a two-hour service and an hour and a half
of it would be preaching. If you want any more music, you
can stay late. I mean, that's just me. Jesse would have to really step
up. He'd have to start maybe every other week or something
because I don't know that I could do that every week. Believe it or not, I have
to hear preaching too. We have a high view of affection,
the love of God that is ours and given toward us. In turn,
we have a love for Him and a love for His people that Paul could
even pray, I love you with all the affection of Christ. He was
willing to do that, and he showed it, evidenced by the fact he
was willing not to die, but continue to suffer in prison for the sake
of continually writing letters to the church of Philippi that
they might grow in the joy of the Lord, so that they might
teach each other. I'm not trying to get the church
back. to where it was 50 years ago
or 500 years ago, I'd like to see the church to be who it is
as it began 2000 years ago. We have a high view of worship.
We have a high view of prayer, our dependence upon it, our practice,
our discipline therein, the intimacy with the Lord that comes through
it. We have a high view of joy. Even if it's inexpressible in
the midst of pain, the joy of the Lord is our strength. That
means that we can stand in the midst of mire when we feel like
we can't even lift our heads, but Christ is our strength. So
therefore, Paul would say, I boast all the more about my weaknesses,
that in my weakness, you are strong. Friends, if we're strong
enough to handle it, we need not God for anything. You hear
that? Quit listening to the lies of
the devil that tells you you've got to stand up, bolt up, man
up, and get up and go. It is not about that. The people
of God fall and they labor, they cry, and then God picks them
up. God is the strength. We're not the strength. It's
not in us. Then when we do stand and everybody
goes, wow, look how strong of a believer he is, we say, hey,
it's all of Christ. He is my strength. How are you
handling this? I'm not. Christ is handling it.
How are you carrying this burden? I'm not. God has given me the
endurance. You don't know how many times I've cried on the
floor and kicked it. You ever cried like that? What
are you talking about? You ever seen a kid pound the
floor and kick the floor? You ever been that distraught?
Well, beloved, there's nothing else to do but see that the Lord's
got it, because you've lost it. And in seasons of my life when
I've had to cry that way, I've lost it. It's extended showers where all
the water runs out because you're just sitting there in the floor
of the bathroom, supposedly taking a shower and you're weeping and
crying. So your family doesn't know that you've lost it. These
are, you laugh brother, these are the moments where God's strength
is powerful. When you take your desk, and
at that time I had a CRT monitor, like 40 pounds and you shove
it off, you clean your desk off, monitor cracks, everything's
gone and you throw your Bible and you just look like a maniac. You don't know what else to do
and you hate everything that you are and you're sitting there
and you dare God to even speak and he does anyway. And the Word
of God is just reminded and you hear Hebrews 1. And you don't see your little
pity party there, but you see the ineffable glory of God in
the face of Jesus Christ, who is speaking to you this moment
through his scripture. And there is nothing that can
stop him because he's all powerful and he reaches into a desperate
soul and he brings life out of it. That is a story that happened
to me. Now, Baha'u'llah of joy. We have
a high view of reconciliation. As long as it's up to us in any
way possible, as a paraphrase of Romans 15, we are to try at
all costs to be reconciled to each other. We have a high view
of humility. God opposes the proud, but gives
grace to the humble. A high view of truth, a high
view of honesty, a high view of maturity, a high view of forbearing
and caring and ministry and a high view of discipline. as we see
that we must sometimes, with great grief, bring others to
a place of discipline and bring them out of the church. Because
when we have a high view of all these things, beloved, we have
a high view of Jesus Christ. For we are His body, and who
He is exudes and personifies all of these traits perfectly,
so that if we are His body, we also shall be like Him. One day
we will be like Him perfectly. Right now it is all-out war. And I say, well, where's the
power on all this? What did I start with? The word
of God. And I shall end there. And I
won't give you all these, but we are alive, beloved, because
God the Father has made us alive in Christ Jesus, and we have
been sealed by the spirit. We are loved by God. And all
of this is effectual. And if you don't know, I am going
to this year start to preach through John's gospel once we're
done with second Thessalonians. And so just in flavor of that,
think of these words in John 6, 63, the word that I speak
to you, they are spirit and in them there is life. Jesus says
that what He says gives life to His hearers. That's what Paul
says in Romans 10, 17. How do we have that life today,
beloved? By the Word of God. You see how self-reliance is
such a wall between joy and faith and hope? Because we fail to
go to the simple task of what God has commanded us to do, is
to hear the words of Christ, And we still think, well, when
I get to this place, then I'll be ready for that. Or I can just
do this. Friends, you cannot. We cannot.
We cannot. Christ can. In the Word of God
is life. You are clean through the Word
which I've spoken to you, John 15. How can I walk holy? Because Jesus' words speak into
us and tells us that we are His righteousness. When we are the righteousness
of God, The work of the Spirit of God is at work. In Ephesians 6, I know it's not
in John, but in Ephesians 6, the sword of the Spirit, which
is the word of God. This is the hearing of God's
word. The spoken word to our... It's
not the text of the Bible. It's not the paper and the cow.
This is no power until it's open and read. Because God is powerful. This
is eternal life, John 17, 3. I use this text a lot. That they
know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have
sent. John 17, 17, that same chapter of Esophagus, your prayer,
and 19. Sanctify them through my truth, for my word is truth.
This is Jesus praying to the Father. John 17, 19, that they
also might be sanctified through the truth. Beloved, if we are
to be the church that Jesus has made us to be, it is going to
be through the power of the word of God. I guess we'll look at it this
way and ask this question, are you? The body. Not this time, collectively,
are you in the body personally? Are you born of God? You believe
in Jesus Christ. Church, it's not just something
to give me a close so we can sing another song. It's a question
that has the greatest imperative. It is very grave reality that
oftentimes some of us who sit in the fellowship of the church,
in the proximity of God's people, are not in the body. And if we are beloved, God's
Spirit will testify to our spirits that we are His children. But
you cannot know either eternal life or security if you are not
in the Word. And we cannot be intimately in
love with each other and seeing the fulfillment of God's purposes
in us through Christ Jesus if we are not in the Word together
and individually as we live this life. My prayer for you, beloved,
is that you'd be encouraged by this, that you'd be empowered
by this, that you'd be challenged by this. For we are the people
of God's own possession. Let's pray. We love you, Father. We worship you. We have joy and hope and peace
and life. Thank you, Father. Thank you
for the cross. Thank you for your gospel. Thank
you that it is your power at work. Lord, may your name be glorified
in us as a people. May the intimacy that we so desire
with you and with each other be not a labor of our own doing,
but be a supernatural work of your hand. Hold us and protect us as we
fight the good fight, as we are reconciled to one another, as
we are unable to live, as you've called us to live, And Lord,
as we're called to go and teach others to do the same, that through
this teaching, Lord, you may bring many to faith in Jesus
Christ. We pray in his name, these things. Amen.