We Love Jesus
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Chet. We've entitled this sermon series, Home Sweet Home. We're spending five weeks just looking at the church, looking who the church is, what are the characteristics of the church, if you find God's people on earth, what do they look like, how ought they to organize themselves, and that's what we've been spending some time doing. So we're in our second week.
Last week, what we said was the church is the church through Jesus' work on its behalf. The church is people. It's God's people on earth. The church is all of the people throughout all of history who have ever believed in Jesus. So when you talk about the church, you're talking about all Christians everywhere, around the globe and throughout all history who have believed in Jesus, and then each local church is made up of those people, a group of those people.
And the church, we would be tempted to say that the church is a group of people who do this, have these certain characteristics, act this way, behave a certain way, follow a certain set of rules, follow the Bible, whatever. We would be tempted to say that. So it's people's actions first, and that's what makes them the church. But when you start reading the Bible, and we looked in Ephesians 1 and 2, what we saw was the churches made the church by Jesus, that it was his actions on behalf of the church, on behalf of his people, that actually makes them the church, that he died for their sins, that he welcomes them, that he adopts them, that he accomplishes everything for them.
So we said it's kind of like a family. So here's how this works. You have the genetic makeup that you have. You have the last name that you have based off of the actions of other people, not off of your actions. You're in the family you're in based off of other people's actions. So, I don't know, a hundred years ago, there was a young lady.
She worked at a bookstore. There was a young man. And he had what they would have said a hundred years ago, mad game. And he came to the bookstore, and he began to talk with her, to flirt with her. They met at a train station. They grew up in school together.
They met in college. They grew up, their families lived next door. It doesn't matter. Everybody's got these different stories. But there's these people that came together.
And about the same time, there were some other people that met and came together. And both of those people around the same time-ish, within 20 to 30 years of each other, had children. And then those people grew up and met each other at a bookstore or a train station or the internet, whatever. And eventually, you have what we have now, which is a certain genetic build, a certain genetic makeup, a certain last name. And it's based solely off of the effort, energy, work of somebody else. And that's the church, that we're the church, that Christians are Christians based off of what Jesus has already done, based off of what he accomplished for us on the cross.
You wouldn't have Christians without Christ. I know that seems complex, but it's pretty straightforward. Without Jesus, there is no church, because the church is his people on earth. And so, what we're going to talk about today is, though, what does the church begin to look like? If there are Christians made so by Jesus' effort, made so by Jesus' work, what do they look like? What are the characteristics?
What are the attributes that if you went across the globe, if you went back in time, if you looked at any given church, what are the things that automatically begin to show up because they belong to Jesus? So, one of the ways to think about this, if we're still kind of following the family idea, is on my dad's side, he's got a brother. My uncle and my aunt, they have four children. Three of them are boys. One of them is a girl. And in that family, because of the genetic makeup, because of the genes they have, because of the upbringing, if you're one of their children, you're tall, you're sarcastic, like aggressively so, you're just kind of aggressive in general, and you're fairly good at sports.
Like, that's just kind of their children fit that category. So, even my cousin Cindy, who's a girl, she's tall for a girl, she's sarcastic, and she's, you know, good at sports for a girl. I just said that to annoy some people. I was just for my own enjoyment. So, I'm sorry. But, she, that's just what it is.
That's how it works. And it has to do with their genes, and it has to do with their upbringing. It has to do with the parents they had, the situations where they lived. I'm like, it has all these things to do with that. And there are just certain qualities and characteristics that are just going to come through their DNA they had no real choice about. That's the church.
That when we become Christians, when Jesus works on your behalf, and you see what he's accomplished for you on the cross, and you place your faith in him, and what we read last week, the Holy Spirit comes in and dwells in you, it's like you have new DNA. You've been made new. The Bible says you've been born again. You've been welcomed into a new family. And so you have a new father and some new DNA, and the church begins to look like the church across the globe, regardless of language, regardless of culture. There are certain things that are just going to be there.
Now, this is very important for us to understand before we start reading this text today. If you are tall and sarcastic and athletic, that does not make you my cousin. They don't recruit. Like, they don't just meet people and be like, hey, you're tall. I saw you using your words to hurt that person's feelings. Want to be my brother?
Like, they don't do that. My uncle's not like, I think I met one of my sons today. No, like, he knows. So here's what I'm saying, and here's what the Bible says very clearly. We're going to look at what are the characteristics, what are the attributes of the church? If you're going, okay, I want to be a Christian, or I see that in my life I don't have any of those, the response is not, let me start doing those.
The response is, let me have Jesus make me part of his family. You go to Jesus first. He's got to adopt you. He's got to pay for your sins. He's got to make you one of his before those characteristics will start showing up. So you don't just white knuckle, okay, let me do all the actions.
Just the same with, like, growing up in my house. You know, I had to cut the grass. I slept in my house. I had to eat at a tape pool with my family at a certain time. If you just showed up, cut my grass, showed up to dinner, slept in my house, the next day you looked at my dad and you were like, hey, daddy. He'd have been like, boy, what are you doing?
Like, who are you? Get out of here. Like, just because you do the actions doesn't make you a son. It doesn't make you a daughter. And so what you've got to realize, and Jesus puts it this way, he says that you don't get figs from a thistle bush, which is basically like nobody's ever picked a peach from a pine tree. So if we go through this today and you start realizing you don't have the characteristics, you don't have the attributes, you're like, oh, I'm a peach tree.
I'm a peach tree. And it's like, why are you making pine cones? Like, those peaches are the worst, crunchiest, most terrible peaches. I'm a peach tree. I'm just really tall and I throw needles everywhere. And during a certain time of the year, I throw yellow dust everywhere onto all the cars, you know, like all the other peach trees.
Like, if you realize that, the response isn't start really trying hard to make peaches. The response is, go to Jesus. Say, hey, I need you to dig me up. I need you to plant a new tree here. Okay? So, now let's look at what are the characteristics of the church.
Go to Acts chapter 2. In your blue and white Bibles, that's going to be on page, we're going to be on page 592. Acts chapter 2. So what this is, is Jesus has already died. He's already taken disciples and trained them on what it looked like to follow him. And then he dies to pay for sin because it wasn't just about following him.
He actually needed a sacrifice on our behalf. We needed someone to die for us. So Jesus dies and then he rises again from the grave. And when he rises, he goes back to his disciples and he says, okay, what we were doing already, I need you to keep doing. And I need you to tell people that there has been a sacrifice, that they can be saved, that there is hope. I need you to go be my people, be my church.
And so what we're going to read is the beginning of the church in Acts chapter 2. And here's what we're seeing. It's kind of like flipping through an old photo album and realizing that your great, great, great granddad has your sister's, wait, no, granddad, that would be weird, has your brother's face. Or your brother has your great, great, great granddad's face. Maybe he's your sister. Maybe she's, you know, got some really strong features.
Or he has some soft ones. Like you don't know. Your granddad, you realize, whoa, y'all's faces are the same. Like we look the same. That's what we're doing. We're looking back at the church and saying, what are the characteristics that we see that are typical, that are the attributes of all of the church throughout time and history?
If you went to Botswana, you would see this. If you went back in time 300 years, you would see this. Like you would see this in the church. That's what we're looking at, in Christians. And so as a Christian today, if you're in here, you're just basically asking this question, how do I see this showing up in my life? Where is this in me?
Where is this in our church? And we are going to talk about what we see in this passage and then we'll reference other passages just to try to help make it clear. And so we'll be a little more all over the place than we usually are, but we'll stay in here in our Bibles and show stuff on the screen. And we'll pray and we're going to start reading. God, we thank you that we have your word. We thank you that your Holy Spirit leads us from the inside out, that you begin to change us and make us yours.
I pray, Lord, that you would shape us as a church, as your people, to live out what it means, what it looks like to be your people on earth. And I pray, Lord, that you would claim more people for yourself today, that more people would respond to your love, that more people would respond to what you've accomplished on the cross today, and that more people would be a part of your church today. We love you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so Peter is one of Jesus' followers, and this is the Holy Spirit comes on Peter and on all of the other disciples and indwells them, and Peter begins to proclaim.
He opens the Bible, begins to teach, he begins to quote Scripture and preach to about thousands of people. There's just a giant crowd, and so we're going to pick up in verse 37 where he's finishing up what he's been saying. And what he's been saying is, in the Old Testament, it is clear that Jesus fulfills these prophecies and that Jesus is who he says he was. He is God who died for our sins, and we're going to pick up where he finishes. And what we're looking for is what are the characteristics that begin to immediately show up in the church that ought to show up in us. Verse 36, Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.
So Peter finishes by saying, Jesus who was crucified, who died for your sins in your place, is Lord and Christ. He is the one who was promised who would save us. And he's Lord, he's in charge. Verse 37, Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart. And they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do? The first characteristic that is absolutely first and foremost in the church is that the church, that Christians love Jesus.
That's the first characteristic. That the church, that Christians are cut to the heart by Jesus and they love Jesus. That they see what he accomplished for them on the cross. And there's this love, this response to Jesus' love for us. That the Christians in the church respond by loving Jesus. And so here's what that means for us.
1 John 4 says that it's God that loves us and that we respond in love. Like that we didn't love him first, but he loved us first. Went to the cross for us. That he redeemed us to make us his and that we love in response. Matthew 22, Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. He says that's the primary thing, that we would love God.
Now, you can't always feel lovey. Like some of us hear that. You hear that you should love God. And there's like, maybe the room's like half and half. Half of the room is like, yes. Love God.
I do that. I do that right now. Like half of the room, like you talk to them and you're like, hey, how's it going? How are you and Jesus? And they're like, oh, wonderful. I've just been reading my Bible and it was like, I felt today like God gave me a hug.
People, it's like, that's beautiful. I'm probably not going to say that to you if you ask me how things are going. Like, it's like, I just don't, I don't feel my way through life. I'm not emotioning around everywhere. And so there's this thing when we see, like, you should love God and there's this immediate like, for half of us that are like, I don't know how to do that. I agree.
That sounds good. But how do you do that? Like, how do you, and so you just, it's almost like you try to force yourself to feel a feeling. Which is really hard. Like, all right, make yourself hungry right now. If you're not hungry, unhungry yourself.
Nope. Or if you are hungry, unhungry yourself. If you're not hungry, well done. You already unhungried yourself. I just got confusing. It wasn't helpful.
You can't make yourself feel a feeling. That's what I was going for. All right. Nailed it. But you can't.
Like, how do you produce that? And so here's where the Bible actually steps in and helps us out a lot. Just makes it much easier on us. John 14. This quote will be on the screen. John 14 says this.
If you love me, this is Jesus talking to his disciples. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Another place he says, if you love me, you'll obey me. Now, I used to read that and think, like, oh, I got to do what you say and then I'll be in the club. Like, that's, that's the, if you love me, do what I say. Like, and it used to bother me until I realized that I have a hard time feeling like I love Jesus.
Like, that happens sometimes. But what it made so clear to me was, what he's saying is, not if you commit, if you do my commandments, you'll love me. This is the other way around. If you love me, like, if you have that characteristic, you'll do this. And it'll be easy. And that makes sense.
It's like saying, if you trust me, you'll do what I say. So there are some people in your life that you just, when a situation comes up, you're like, I just need to call them. I need to talk to them. And you basically just show up to them and say, hey, what should I do here? And you're just going to do what they say. You already know you're going to do what they say because you trust them.
You believe that what they're going to say and they'll say, you should do this. And you go, all right, sounds good. And it depends on how much you trust them as to how willing you're able to do that. What he's saying is, if you love me, and so for people who don't feel lovey, we get to obey. And that's how we show Jesus that we love him. We get to do, we get to read what he says and do it.
And that's one of the ways that we get to say, no, I love you. Be the same way if I said, oh, I love my wife. I love her. I mean, I don't, I hadn't seen her in a while. I don't really hang out with her anymore. Or I hadn't done any of that husband stuff recently.
Like, talk to her or help her do anything. You'd be like, I don't know how much you like. Did she leave? Like, or why is there? No, she's there. She's probably crying.
I'm not there. I don't know what she's doing. Like you, like it shows up. Like you would say, I don't think you, do you know what the word love means? Like you're supposed to, like there's some things that go along with, whatever. That's what Jesus is saying.
If you love me, this will show up. If you love me, you'll obey me. Let me, I'm going to read a quote from C.S. Lewis because he's addressing this. And I think it's really helpful. They are told as Christians that they ought to love God.
They cannot find any such feelings in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, if I were sure I loved God, what would I do?
When you have found the answer, go and do it. On the whole, God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for him. Nobody can always have devout feelings. And even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will. If we are trying to do his will, we are obeying the commandment, thou shalt love the Lord thy God.
He will give us feelings of love if he pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves and we must not demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go, his love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins or our indifference. And therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to him. We just get to follow and remember forever that he loves us.
But one of the first traits, characteristics that you'll see in the church is a love for Jesus, shown in an appreciation of Jesus, shown in an obedience to Jesus. And when you find a church that is a church that is Christians, you'll find people singing to Jesus, you'll find people praying to Jesus, you'll find people preaching about Jesus, you'll find people gathering on a regular basis to remind themselves what he's done for them and to celebrate that it's already been accomplished because they love Jesus. And so the first thing that we see right out the gate is that they're cut to the heart by Jesus. And let's keep reading.
We'll move on to the next characteristic that you're going to see. So Christians love Jesus. The church loves Jesus. Verse 37. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?
And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Okay. Peter says repent. Repent means stop sinning. Acknowledge where you're wrong and turn away from that. Put it down.
Acknowledge that you need Jesus to save you, that you can't save yourself. Confess that and leave it. Turn away from your sin and come to Jesus. So he says repent. The second thing that we see that is true about the church is that the church hates sin. Christians hate sin. hatred comes from love.
Just so y'all know. Hatred comes out of love. The only reason you hate things is because you love something else. If you've ever met a person who truly hated, it first was born out of love. It came out of love. So let's say after the gathering today, we're hanging out.
I got a one-year-old son. His name's Archer. He comes running up and like hits your leg and you take offense because what the heck is he trying to do? So you just, I don't know, slap him in the face. He falls on the ground. My wife's there and she's like, comes at you, you know, like her eyes turn to fire and she assaults you and you push her down.
Then I'm going to come over there and you know what I'm going to say? I'm going to go, hey, you probably shouldn't hit children. And that was my wife. You should quit kicking her. You're hurting her. Like, no, that's not what's going to happen.
You and I are going to have an interaction because I love, because I love them. I'm going to hate anything that hurts them because I love them. I'm going to hate anything that comes against them. So Christians who love Jesus hate our sin because our sin killed Jesus. It was our sin that sent Jesus to the cross. It was our sin, our failure, our rebellion that he had to come pay for.
Christians hate sin. If there was a weapon that killed your brother, there was a gun that somebody shot your brother with, you wouldn't take it to your house and hang it over your mantle and people came over and said, what is that? You say, oh, it's the gun that killed my brother. I polished it up and hung it up here. You wouldn't do that. And if you meet Christians, people who are part of the church that don't care about their sin, they don't, they're missing something.
So Christians repent. Christians hate sin, fight sin. Now, we don't hate sin in a superior way that we look down on those evil sinners. No, we were the first people to repent. That was how we responded to Jesus. We acknowledged our sin.
We hate sin the same way we hate cancer. That it's in us and it's in other people and we want to get rid of it. We want to fight it in ourselves and we want to fight it in other people. We're not mad at the people. We want to help them. Christians hate sin.
They hate how sin tears families apart. They hate how sin causes death and murder and lies and strife. They hate how sin eats away at us so that we can't even think straight anymore. They hate how sin tears up all of our relationships. We hate sin and so we fight against it. Romans 8 is going to say that we put to death through the Holy Spirit we put to death the deeds of the body.
That Christians actively aggressively fight sin. Know it. Look for it. Realize that's what made Jesus have to save us. Repent. Acknowledge it.
Fight sin. Hate sin. That's in the church. If you're in here today and you say you are a Christian and your life is not marked by active repentance continually looking at your own sin and despising it and actively working to change if you say you're a Christian and nobody can ever come tell you that you're wrong nobody can ever address error in you that's scary because the first step of becoming a Christian was saying I see that Jesus had to die for my sin and I want to turn away from it. I don't want any more of it. Now we're going to keep sinning.
You're going to keep failing. You're going to keep falling short. It doesn't say Christians don't sin. We just don't like it. We don't like how evil our hearts are. We don't like that we're actively in sin.
I'm going to read a quote. This is from 1 John so it'll be on the screen. If we say we have fellowship with him which means we're connected with in relationship with Jesus while we walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves. If you were like I don't know I'm doing pretty good.
I don't have any sin. The sin was you just lied to yourself. Repent of that and then try to figure out what else is going on because we've got something going on. We're continually lying to ourselves. If we confess our sins he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned we make him a liar and his word is not in us.
So here's what he's saying. If we walk in darkness if we're actively sinning actively unrepentant actively pursuing sin we're in darkness we're not in the light. We haven't shown a light on haven't seen clearly how messed up we are. You want to hear something kind of gross about me? It's not real gross. I'll just tell it and then you can decide whether or not you want to hear it.
And his word is not in us. So here's what he's saying. If we walk in darkness if we're actively sinning actively unrepentant actively pursuing sin we're in darkness we're not in the light. We haven't shown a light on haven't seen clearly how messed up we are. You want to hear something kind of gross about me? It's not real gross. I'll just tell it and then you can decide whether or not you want to hear it. I'm kind of a sweaty person. I have really thick hair and whenever I'm doing something like activity wise I start sweating and I do this a lot with my hand
Just while I'm doing stuff like I'll just run my hand through my hair and what happens is there's some sort of a weird biological thing I have that is due to the consistency of my sweat maybe high fructose corn syrup I should try to drink less Mountain Dew and the thickness of my hair that it turns into the most amazing hair gel you've ever seen and after I have been sweating or working out or whatever I can make my hair do just whatever I want it to and it'll stay that way forever. Yesterday I was putting floors down in my house and apparently
For some reason kept doing this and so I had been doing this for a while people would come over to my house I talked to people I went outside for a while and talked to my neighbors for a little bit I walked by a mirror and every hair on my head was standing straight up and the only way you would assume that happened was I actively stood in front of a mirror and was like this looks good because there's no other reason why anyone's hair should ever do that I mean I look like
A character from like a cartoon or something like my hair just and I thought that's why my neighbors looked at me weird because I was just straight up talking to them like yeah what's going on and they were like yeah okay like don't know me well enough to go hey bro that's not a good look like you should you should go fix that I didn't know it because I hadn't looked at myself and what he's saying is if we if we walk in darkness
We're not walking in the light of Jesus but once we shine a light on it we see it and we fix it it was too late for me yesterday because my hair was done like I couldn't get it back down it's not too late for our sin like we get to see our sin and we get to confess it we get to bring it to Jesus it's the same way with your room looks really clean until you turn the light on your house is really nice until you move the refrigerator and you gotta see what's behind there
Like that's what he's saying so honestly if we hadn't noticed your sin in a while you probably haven't been very close to Jesus because that's where we notice our sin but here's the good news we just confess he's already forgiven us we just we hate our sin we repent of it but he's already accomplished everything it's not about your behavior your ability to be good it's about you acknowledging it and getting to move forward because he forgives us Christians hate sin
The church hates sin alright let's keep reading so he starts off with repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself just wanted to point this out noticing sin in ourselves does not create superiority or pride or self-righteousness
Towards other people it helps us love them more so when we see someone else sinning and doing things that we would never do because we sin in a different area we just get to go yeah they're far off too they're far off like I was far off and this is for everyone who's far off everyone who's not even remotely close to being like Jesus gets to be welcomed in 40 and with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them saying save yourselves from this crooked generation
So those who received his word were baptized and there were added that day about 3,000 souls so 3,000 people just became the church just joined the church there was about 120 before this so now there are 3,000 Christians on the face of the planet and immediately the Holy Spirit goes to work to begin to change in them and give them the family traits that we're looking at today so 42 and they
Those 3,000 people devoted themselves to the apostles teaching okay this is something else that you will find every church everywhere they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching what that means is they took everything the apostles which were the 12 men who followed Jesus around whatever they said they took it they wanted to learn they wanted to grow they wanted to understand who Jesus was what he had done
What that meant the apostles we know were teaching from the Old Testament and then we have now what they wrote down in the New Testament and so what this means for us today is that the church loves the word the church loves the word which means we love the Bible we studied the Bible we grow in the Bible because it's what teaches us how we ought to act how we ought to live what Jesus has done for us you go around the world you're going to find people
That read this study this memorize this in places in places where it's illegal they've made there are people that had the Bible mounted to the underside of a stool so they could flip it over and be reading and if anybody authority or whatever came they could flip the stool back over and sit down on top of it because the Bible would be hidden underneath there are people who would pass around just sheets all you would get
Was a crumpled up torn out page from a Bible and you would work as hard as you could to memorize that section and then you would trade with someone else and they would give you another torn out sheet of page from the Bible and you would try to memorize that because the church loves the word when I was in junior in college I went to Romania and I was going to get to speak at some churches in Romania and I remember
Asking the pastor I was like hey how long do you usually preach and he was like till you're done and I was like what yeah but okay how long should it be before I'm done because I'm American we pretty much have time limits on this thing and he looked at me and said about half the people here will have walked six miles or further to be here
To hear what the Bible says you go until you're done and on a regular basis I would preach which for me he was still only like 30 minutes or something 15 20 30 minutes even with a translator it's not the case now but that was when I was a junior in college and then they would still get up they'd say thank you
And they'd pick another passage and they would preach right behind it so we're going to start doing that every Sunday we'll have sermon one we'll have an intermission we'll have sermon two no but the church regardless of where it is loves the word we're going to read this we're going to study this we're going to try to grow that's why
Every week we start off with open your Bibles to this place because we're going to read this we're not just going to talk about things that we think and feel we're going to read this and try to apply this and try to see what because we believe that this is how God speaks to us this is how
We're changed and how we grow we're devoted to it now personally you got to find a way to get in the word to consume the Bible to be devoted to teaching and we have now you have more avenues for this than anybody ever has you can listen to it while you
Ride around you can put it on your iPad you can listen to other sermons where people are taking this you can order any kind of book you want to from Amazon and read this and read a commentary and what I found is we have as much access to this as any place in the world ever and we don't
Touch it but Christians do we want to know what it says we want to study we want to learn from it I've noticed a couple of things one is if it gets if your relationship to Jesus is dry or feels off or not great
The response is to start reading the Bible so let me explain how this works my wife and I have been married for going on seven years we have a son now and there are times where it's like we just kind of live in the same house
We're both there making sure things you know get done or whatever but we're not like enjoying our relationship and even harder now that we have a kid and some of y'all have like seven children and Lord bless y'all but we have one child
And it's like it's hard for us to even have a conversation where we're not like in the middle of a sentence and then having to go put it down stop quit you're gonna hurt yourself I'm gonna hurt you or like you're in the middle of a conversation
And we're like is that jelly or blood do you want to taste it like I mean we're doing pretty good as parents just so y'all know like but uh it's hard so there are times where it's like we're just not relating well and so what we do is we put I
Don't go ah you know what we're not getting along hope that gets better I put forth energy because I'm a Christian I believe we're gonna be married forever so if we're not getting along I want to make sure we get along that's gonna make forever a long time like if I gotta stay married forever
And we don't like each other that's bad so I'm like no we're gonna figure out how to like each other like we're gonna get along we're gonna I'm gonna tell some jokes we're gonna laugh if something's gonna happen we're gonna ride a roller coaster so we can at least smile near each other like
We're gonna figure this out but I have to go I have to do work I have to get somebody to watch the kids so we can go on a date or whatever and that date if we hadn't been getting along or hadn't been on a date or hadn't had a conversation with each other for a while it's awkward but the
Point is I press into it so that we can get back to where we need to be so that I can grow so the relationship can begin to grow it's not gonna happen on its own and for some of us it's like I don't know I'm just not relating well to Jesus and it's like when was the last time you opened this up when was the last time you sat with him and said I just need to talk I need you to and
You're like well it's awkward yeah it's not gonna get better not doing that that's that's how we do it I've also found Christians will sometimes say yeah I'm just really praying about this and trying to see what God wants me to do my next question always is are you reading your Bible no that's like saying I'm waiting for a phone call where's your phone in the house you're not gonna get that call like it's
Harder the person could show up the person could show up at your house and when we say I'm trying to find what God's will is for me but I'm not gonna read the main thing that he's already told me all of his will in it's a lot harder the the other thing this is I'm just trying to help us see how the word shows up in us and how how it matters to us I mean I'm going to cover two more things but let's I want to read a passage for us first
To one is from first Timothy he says until I come he's talking to a pastor devote yourself to the public reading of scripture to exhortation and teaching what he's saying is get together read this he says to that same pastor again in another letter in second Timothy 316 this will be on the screen all scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching for us to grow and learn for reproof for correction correction is hey you're a little bit out of line here
Reproof is dude pay attention the difference there reproof is a little more aggressive and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete equipped for every good work I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearance and by his kingdom by his appearing in his kingdom preach the word be ready in season and out of season reprove rebuke and exhort with complete patience and the teaching I love it
Is good for my soul that it says reprove rebuke exhort that the reason for preaching is that what it means is when I come to the Bible I've got to realize that Jesus is going to need to reprove me he's going to correct me he's going to need to rebuke me there's going to be times where I'm off and that's what the Bible does is it helps change me and then he's going to need to exhort me which is help me grow and actually want to put forth effort two other quick things when it
Comes to reading the Bible Christians sometimes say they're actively pursuing sin and then they'll say well I prayed about it and I just feel like I don't I don't feel like I mean I think I can just keep kind of going like I don't feel like God told me to stop what you have just said if the Bible clearly explicitly says you should not be doing the behavior doing should not be actively involved in when you're involved in and you say I prayed about it but don't feel like I should stop what you have
Articulated out loud just so you know the next time you say that sentence is I'm so far removed from Jesus right now that even though he's already clearly said it it's not actively at work in me there are some things you don't need to pray about he's already made really clear and we learn through the word the other thing sometimes Christians act like they want to be led by the Holy Spirit and all Christians should all Christians should want to be led by the Holy Spirit and so Christians will say well I just don't read a lot because I
Want to be led by the Spirit I just want the Spirit to guide me like I'd much rather just have the Spirit in me than then read the Bible that thought process is confusing you're just kind of off there the Holy Spirit breathed out the Bible first Peter says that it was people carried along by the Spirit that wrote the Bible so the Holy Spirit is going to teach you through the Bible the Holy Spirit is going to teach you using the Bible the Holy Spirit can teach you can lead you when you're not near a Bible but he's going to line up with what the Bible already says it's like this you ever been around a couple and they can have a conversation
Without using words they've just been together long enough like like you would you would be around them and something would happen and one of them would look at the other one and go and they look back and go and look back and go and it was like a pitcher and a catcher doing the like you know giving each other signals and you like one of them will be like what y'all's faces doing but they have a whole conversation without ever having the reason they got there is they've been around each other so much that they knew what each other were thinking they knew like Anna and I the closest I have gotten is that I'll think up something hilarious and Anna
Will look at me and go don't say that and I'll be like my face gave me away I got to look less excited that's about as close as we get right now otherwise we got to actually say words to each other but we can't do the face thing yet but when someone says I want to just be led by the Holy Spirit the way you do that is by learning the word and it makes it way easier for the Holy Spirit to converse with you for the Holy Spirit to teach you when you're not near the Bible so if I said I really want Anna and I to be able to just have face conversations the way we practice that is not it's through real conversations that's how we learn what the face meant first the face
Needs to say words to us and then we can just get the expression part and some of us like I really just want to be led by the Spirit get in here start reading this and the Spirit will lead you that's how that's how that works he's going to lead you here and then he'll start leading you when you're not near it okay Christians love the word for oh no not for I got to read it here first that'll make sense otherwise you know where'd you get that no I got the passage we didn't read um they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship what that means is they devoted themselves to each other they devoted themselves to they belonged to one another so the Bible in several places is going
To say we're actually members of one another we belong to one another the same way that your foot belongs to your hand like you connected they're devoted to one another the Bible has 59 one another's we're going to read all of them next week and the week after probably that was 59 one another's where it says do this with one another this is how you relate to one another you're members of one another love one another bear one another's burdens like it's going to over and over and over again because it's just assumed that we're going to be connected to one another we're going to be devoted to one another when when God became your father if you place faith in him you got a whole lot of brothers and sisters so if you're like well can't can't a
Christian be a Christian on an island yes you can be a Christian on an island none of us are like I haven't seen anybody walk in here wearing a loincloth holding a volleyball with paint on it or whatever and if if we did we would say we're so glad you're off the island you should get in a community group unless you plan on going back to the island you need to get in a group that's what we say because here's the thing we were designed to be to relate to one another to love one another that the church loves one another Christians are devoted to one another first John 4 10 through 11 says this oh nope sorry that's way back wait I'm gonna get it yeah it's first John 4 10 through 11 and this is love not that we have loved God but have loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for
Our sins which means he turned away wrath says beloved if God so loved us we also ought to love one another John 13 35 says this by all by this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another one of the ways that we put God on display is our relationship to one another that's one of the things that I love about whenever we have baptisms those videos over and over and over again is somebody saying yeah I started hanging out with a group I started hanging out with a community group I got around this person and this person and this person this person harassed me and then this person loved me and then this person sir like and it's just this I got to see Jesus at work through his people the church loves one another I feel like sometimes on Sunday what we're doing is like a cooking show you watch a cooking show that I like them at the beginning when I
See a little bit of the cooking show I'm like oh it looks great but then by the end when they walk over and they're like okay they open the oven it's already cooked and then they pull it out and then it's the worst when they go mmm this is so good it's like all right this just got annoying because I want to eat that and I'm not putting any of that effort into it and you also moved way too quickly on some of the stuff like I understood what you were talking about like polonaise what I thought I was an island um that may not be a word it might be polonaise or something like that so it's spelled like bologna anyway um it feels like you sometimes that's what Sunday is to me we're going to proclaim Jesus we're going to open the Bible but we're going to say is this is the ingredients this is what it should look like and if you just do Sundays you don't ever get to taste it if you just
Do Sundays and so what we're saying when we say get in the group is that you actually get to it makes it tangible it makes it real when you see people actually loving each other actually forgiving each other actually bearing one another's burdens because you actually get to see the gospel on display that's why Jesus says they'll know you're my disciples by the way you love one another the church is committed to loving one another we're going to spend more time on that next week and the week after the last one is this we're gonna read the rest of this passage to the breaking of bread and the prayers which was them getting together praying together to them celebrating Jesus connected with one another and all came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common and they were selling
Their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need and day after day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes they received their food with glad and generous hearts what I love about that section is that all of those people's friends probably thought they were crazy they were like whoa you are hanging out with these people way too much you're giving them some of your money like y'all are eating together all the time like this is getting weird and it's like no this is what family looks like we've been all brought into the same family so they were devoted to one another 47 46 and day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes they received their food with glad and generous hearts praising God and having favor with all the people that's the people who weren't in the church and
The Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved the church loves Jesus's mission the church loves the people who aren't in the church yet that's what it ended with was that everybody appreciated that the church existed and more and more people were invited in if you're a Christian you care that people aren't Christians not because you want them to come be good like you that's not Christianity Christianity is I know what sin is like I know what it does to people and I know that it's been taken care of on the cross I know that there's hope I know that there's freedom I know that the things you're chasing after will never fill you up will never fix you Christians love Jesus's mission which is to see more people brought into the family to see more people have their sin paid for Christians the church loves their neighbors the church loves their enemies because they realize that they need
Jesus if you're here today and you don't know Jesus we want you to know Jesus we want you to be saved by Jesus we want you to be taken by Jesus and made his we want your sins paid for by Jesus because somebody's gonna pay for your sins and it's gonna be you or it's gonna be Jesus and the church wants more and more people to know Jesus wants more and more people to be welcomed in this was Jesus's plan from the beginning when he calls the disciples he says follow me I'll make you fishers of men which means I'm gonna teach you what it's like to be rescued to be redeemed to know and be loved and then I want you to do that with other people I want you to get more people to know this it says he appointed 12 that he said he appointed them so they could be with him and that he could send them out to preach send them out to tell people about this when Jesus is about to leave in Matthew 28 it says that he tells him go make disciples which is just go do the same
Thing I was doing with you second Corinthians 5 17 this is Paul writing to the church and here's what he says therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation the old has passed away the behold the new has come all this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that is in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself not counting their trespasses that sins against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation therefore we are ambassadors of Christ we're representatives of his God making his appeal through us we implore you on behalf of Christ be reconciled to God if you find God's people they vehemently actively continually want to see more people meet Jesus go out of their way pull money out of their wallets give up their time to see more people come to know Jesus because Christians know that that matters and Christians know where their hope comes
From and Christians know that life is is ultimately empty and fleeting and futile without Jesus if you're not a Christian today you're here and you're hanging out you're like I'm just hanging out with church people somebody invited me whatever I know I'm not a Christian here's what I would say most everything I just said does not apply to you at all it may be helpful for you to know what a church ought to look like what you need to know is that Jesus died to pay for your sins because he loves you he loved you so much he gave up his life so that you can have one what we read last week says that we were children of wrath but we've been adopted as sons we deserve to be crushed but we were brought into the family and the only way that happened was that the son became a child of wrath that the son of God took wrath on our behalf so that you who deserve wrath can be a son like that's that's what it's saying if you're here today and you're a Christian real quick if you're not a Christian and
You see that the response is the same thing that Peter said which is repent and be baptized acknowledge that you're a sinner so that you can be saved and then we'll talk about the baptism stuff later if you're a Christian the question really is are those five things showing up do you love Jesus are you obedient are you following him do you enjoy Jesus do you hate sin are you repenting you actively in sin and don't care do you love his word do you study do you read do you try to intake and grow and understand what the Bible says do you do you love the church do you love your fellow believers your brothers and sisters and do you care that people don't know Jesus if you're saying I'm a Christian those need to be showing up and you can ask Jesus to help you you continue to go back to Jesus and say I need help here I need to change here I need you to work in me here I need your DNA to be more active here I need the Holy Spirit to work in me here and if you're here today and you say I'm a
Christian but you don't have any of those none of those are showing up none of those are active in you I don't think you're a Christian if you have no evidence of those things at all I don't think you're a Christian we're not mad at you you just need to know you're not a Christian it's a dangerous spot to be in to not actually believe and follow Jesus and have him work in you and believe that that he is and the response isn't work harder the response is go back to Jesus and say I need to be made new we're gonna spend the next few weeks talking about what a local church gets to look like and how we're designed to interact with one another but those are some characteristics that define Jesus's people that are at work around the globe what's beautiful is as you open this and study it you're doing what another million people are doing in all their kind of different languages when you go out of your way to help point someone to Jesus you're doing what people have done
Through the centuries because Jesus saved people and it was his plan that his people would change the world make sure you get to join in here locally what the church looks like throughout history and throughout the globe as we love one another and serve one another as God's people let's pray God we thank you that we can be saved we thank you that that's based off of your work not ours and we ask God that you would be at work in us to help us love you more to help us follow you God to show us our sin and help us to hate it God that you would teach us through your word and that we would grow to love your word empower in us the ability to love one another even when that's hard the ability to love one another in all of life and God I pray that you would help us to have our hearts broken over the people who don't yet know you that we might go out of our way to help them come to know you
Jesus help us be your church Amen Amen Amen
The Goodness of Gathering
Transcript
Yeah, I hope you enjoyed the holidays. Hope you had a good break. I know I did. Got to spend some time with family and all that kind of stuff. But after two weeks, I'm ready to get back together with people.
I'm like, where is my people? I'm ready to sing. I'm ready to see everybody. But we're kind of a young church, and so a lot of our church family has been traveling over the last couple of weeks, and they're starting to get back into a normal routine of things. USC kicks back off tomorrow, so some of our college students will be traveling today. So just keep them in your prayers.
College football playoffs have been going on. Go Tigers! Amen. That is not the response I was expecting. I'm excited. Did someone just say roll tide?
Get. Go. Okay. Well, there's kind of this lull this time of year between Christmas and New Year's where we all kind of just start reflecting a little bit. We start looking back on 2015 and saying, okay, well, I wish that could have been better. I would have done that differently.
You start looking at time with your family and stuff like that, and you look forward to 2016 and maybe some changes and stuff you want to make. But all of us kind of do this reflection. You're thinking about your family. You're thinking about all that kind of stuff. So hopefully you've had some time to do that.
Maybe you do resolutions. Maybe you don't. Even if you don't, it's still just kind of rolling around in the back of your mind thinking about last year and going into this year. And so over the break, I took some time and just wanted to pray over Mill City Church and just ask some questions. Ask, how are our groups doing? Are we training leaders?
Are we accomplishing the mission that we feel like God's called us to do in this city? Are we making disciples? And so as I pray through that and ask those questions, with that being said, I want to ask you a question, and I need you to participate and help me out. You're going to have to raise your hand. Okay. I need you to raise your hand if, from this stage, you have heard this statement or something similar.
Okay, you ready? We are our groups. If you're not in a group, you need to get in a group. If you're just hanging out on Sundays, you're missing out, get in a group. Hold them up if that's you. Good.
You can put them down. All right, that's actually a good thing. Some of you have heard that for years. You've heard it on repeat for years now. It echoes in your dreams. And the reason being is we believe that following Jesus is an all-of-life commitment.
So when you start following Jesus, it infiltrates how you think about work. It begins to influence how you live with your family. It impacts everything. And since that's true, being the church can't just be what we get together and do on Sundays. It's got to be more. And what we see is that the early church understood that, and all throughout Scripture, is that life is meant to be following Jesus in relationship with other believers on mission.
So letting the gospel impact your life as you're in a community on mission, gospel-centered community on mission. See what I'm doing there? See? See what I'm doing there? All right, you're smart.
Here's how I want us to start off this morning. We're going to put some Scripture on the screen in just a second. It's a foundational passage for us as a church. Some of you will be familiar with it. But we're going to be in the book of Acts looking at chapter 2.
And what we're seeing here in the book of Acts is what we have recorded of the early church. You don't have to turn there. We're going to put it on the screen in just a second. But what we're getting in Acts 2 is a snapshot glimpse into first-century Christians and how they were trying to follow Jesus. And so as Luke is writing Acts, he's not necessarily writing to tell us how we should do things. He's mostly just describing what he's seeing.
So it's not necessarily prescriptive. It's more descriptive. And this is a huge foundational passage for us as a church. And I think we're going to have it on screen. Yeah. All right, cool.
So Acts 2, 42 through 47. Let's read this together. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship. to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And all came upon every soul. And many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common.
And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts. Praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. Okay, and as soon as you read that, if you're a part of a community group or if you've been hanging out with our church for a while, you're already seeing aspects of who we are as a church show up. Things that we're shooting for as a church family.
It said that they fellowshiped together, which meant that they actually spent time together. They broke bread in each other's homes. It said they were devoted to the apostles' teaching, which just meant that they were engaging with Scripture together. It said that they were praying together. It said they were selling possessions and giving them to those that had need. This was a group of people who were living this out together, and we absolutely want to see that modeled in our community groups.
But here's what I want to do this morning. I want to go back. We're actually going to look at another section that we just read and emphasize something that we haven't necessarily spent a whole lot of time talking about as a church family. But it's just as beautiful and just as important as the other stuff that we looked at. It's actually in verses 46 and 47. Let's look at it again.
And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. So what we see in the early church right there in verse 46 is this balance. We see this balance in how they followed Jesus together. There was this collection of all of them together where they were attending the temple together as a big group of people. And then it said they gathered in homes.
So there's this gathering all together in the temple courts, and then there's gathering in homes. And so the church has kind of exploded at this point. There was about 120 followers of Jesus, and it has just grown to 3,000, which 3,000 is a logistical nightmare. A logistical nightmare that I would be happy to have, guys. I'm not going to say. So if you just want to keep inviting your friends and family, we'll figure it out.
I'll say that. We'll figure it out. We'll put people in classrooms. We'll get it all figured out. But the church grew, and what we see is this ebb and flow to their relationship where they saw value, where they saw merit in all coming together and then scattering as smaller groups into their home.
They all gathered together and then scattered as smaller groups. And so some of you have even asked us before, like, why do we call this a gathering as opposed to maybe how some churches call it a worship service? And that's honestly one of the reasons from these verses because we believe it's a better description of what we're doing when we all come. We're coming together. It's a gathering of the church. And worship is more than just what we do on Sunday.
Worship is what we do with our lives. And so as you look at that passage, you can see, okay, that's what our church should be shooting for. That's what we're shooting for, and we're accomplishing that in our community groups. And we talk about them all the time. We want people to actively be living out their faith in Jesus. But if we're not careful, what can happen is we can talk about our community groups and living it out so much that we begin to neglect this beautiful expression that God has given us.
That we can talk about our groups so much and emphasize them so much that we kind of push gatherings to the side, and they kind of lose time, and they kind of lose value in our eyes. And what we've said a lot from this stage is if you're just hanging out on Sundays, you're missing out. What we haven't said as much as if you're just hanging out with a group and catching the podcast before you hang out with them, you're also missing out. And I realize there are people in our church family whose work schedule doesn't allow them to be here with us on Sunday, and I'm thankful that we record our sermons.
But there's just something unmistakably holy and good about when the whole church gathers together, and we sing and we listen to the word, that there's something beautiful about that. And so after having two weeks off, we're back together. So that's what we're going to be talking about this morning is the goodness of gathering. The goodness of gathering all together as a church family. And here's the question we're trying to answer. We're going to put it up on the screen.
This is the question we're trying to answer. If being the church is what really matters, why is it important that we gather together? So in essence, if being the church, if living it out, if letting it impact you 24-7 is what really matters, why is it important that the church gathers together? We're going to talk about it in three different ways, and I'm going to go ahead and give them to you up front. I never do this, but I want you to see it. The church gathers to open the Bible.
The church gathers to respond to God and celebrate the gospel. And the church gathers to be sent out on mission. And we're going to focus on those three things. And what we're going to see is you can look at them and see we do those things in our community group. But we're going to talk about how when we do them on Sundays, there's something beautiful and distinct and unique about what Jesus does in us and for us when we all gather together.
So let's pray before we hop in. God, I ask that you would submit this in our minds and our hearts to understand the value and the goodness of all gathering together. Lord, of seeing your word laid open and having its truth applied to our lives and singing together and responding to you. God, there's nothing better than being in your presence and enjoying the relationship that you purchased for us through what Jesus did on the cross. And so, God, we pray that your Holy Spirit would lead us, would give us the ability to see what you're showing us in Scripture clearly today. In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, so grab a Bible. This part is actually not going to be on the screen, so I want you to grab a Bible. If you don't have one, grab one of the blue and white ones that we have in the seat. We're going to be in Nehemiah chapter 8, which is on page 258 in those blue and white Bibles. And let me go ahead and say this. If you don't have a Bible, we're going to be talking about how important it is and how good it is.
We want you to take that one with you. That's our gift to you. If it's your first time hanging out with us, you don't have a Bible. If you want a Bible, please take that one with you. But we're going to be in Nehemiah chapter 8.
And again, what we're trying to do today is talk about the beauty of the whole church gathering together. And why it's important and good and valuable. And again, today's not meant to be corrective as much as it is an encouragement into understanding why we do what we do. You know this. Anything that you're doing, when you start to put vision into it and people start to help you see the purpose and why, it just makes it more enjoyable. It just makes it better.
And so for us, my hope, my prayer for us this morning is as we look at this passage, we're going to be encouraged. We're going to begin to look at gatherings with new eyes, with a fresh attitude, with a renewed sense of the goodness of us all gathering together. And we're going to be looking at that in Nehemiah chapter 8. And most of the time when we're gathering on Sundays, we're in the middle of a series or we're walking verse by verse through a book of the Bible. We are jumping straight into the middle of Nehemiah. So let me give you just a little bit of the back story.
Okay. In Nehemiah 8, the people of God, the Hebrews, the Israelites have been taken captive. That God allowed them to be taken captive because they had stopped worshiping him. They started worshiping false idols and being like the people around them. And so God allowed them to be captured. And now God has rescued them and they're coming back into the promised land.
Okay. So this is the people coming back into the promised land. They're being led by Nehemiah, being led by Ezra. And they've been here for about a week at this point. And it's not going super well. Now, miraculously, they have been able to get the wall built back up to kind of protect the city.
But there's so much to do. I mean, this city has been desolate for almost 70 years. And they've got all this different stuff to do. And what's interesting is the people, one of the first things that they want to do is they want to get together as the people of God to worship God by listening to the word of God. They said all that other stuff can wait. That stuff is good and valuable and important.
But all of that stuff can wait. And I think even just as we're hopping in, there's a lesson there. There's a lesson there just to see that the rest of that can wait. We're going to gather to worship God. And we see kind of Nehemiah and Ezra. And what happens is all the people kind of gather into the square.
And that's a little bit of the picture of what we're getting right here in Nehemiah chapter 8. Let's look at it. Nehemiah chapter 8, verse 1. Let's read it together. And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the water gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel.
So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the water gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose. And beside him stood Mattathia and Shema and we'll just say four of his other close friends to the right. And Padaiah and six other homies to his left.
Verse 5. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people. And as he opened it, all the people stood. So like I said, the city's been deserted for about 70 years and the people are starting to come back. And they need to rebuild the temple. They need to rebuild the city.
They need to reestablish life. And if you think about it, there's a ton of stuff that needs to be done. I mean, where's food coming from? Farmers have got to start planting so that there's food. They've got to figure out how fresh water is going to be in the city. They've got to clear roads.
They've got to set up systems for market and trade. And all of that stuff has to happen. But from early on, the people say, we need to all gather to hear from God. And that's important because the nation of Israel learned something while they were in captivity. The reason that they had to go into exile is that they lost that laser focus with their lives. They lost that focus that if God is supreme and God is the most important thing and God's our focus, then it puts everything else in its proper place.
Then work begins to make sense. The family relationships begin to make sense. And they had lost some of that focus. And so all the people gathered together into the square. It's awesome. There's like 50,000 people all together in the square.
And what it says, they said, they sent Ezra the scribe to go get the book of the law. And we don't know exactly who the they is. It could have been just the people who were also kind of on the platform thing. It could have just been all of them going, Bible, Bible, we want the Bible. I don't know if it was like that or not. But they sent Ezra to go get the Bible.
And it says he stood on the platform and opened it. And he read from it. And how long did he read? He read from morning to midday. He read from morning to, that's like eight hours. I mean, guys, you know I'm all about a long sermon.
I mean, but that's intense. So to illustrate this morning, I'm going to see how long I can go. So I pass out. I ate my Wheaties. I drank a Gatorade. I chased it with a Red Bull.
Let's do this thing. I mean, that's a long, that's a long time. And it says the ears of the people were attentive. They were listening. In fact, as soon as he opened it, verse 5 said the people just stood up. I don't know if that was like a collective.
Should we stand? Do you stand? I'll stand. One Carl stands and everyone else stands. I don't know. But the people were attentive.
They were hungry for it. They knew how desperately they needed the Word of God. And so that's honestly the first reason that we get together on Sundays is that we gather to open the Bible. We get together collectively as a church family to open the Bible. Now, immediately you're going, okay, well, I mean, I can read the Bible on my own at home. And most times when my group isn't playing Phase 10 or Catchphrase, we're opening the Bible too and studying it.
So I don't, what's the point? And let me say this, I want that to be a rhythm in your life. I want you to be opening the Bible and seeing the truth that's there and getting together with your community group and studying it too. Those are all beautiful disciplines. If that's not something that's going on in your life, if you're not diving into the Word, let that be your takeaway this morning. Hear that.
Just open the book and start reading. Let that be a part of your life. If you don't know where to start, I would love to talk to you after we're done and explain some different areas that you can go in and read. But, yeah, we do. We open the Bible at other times. We do it in our community groups.
But what we're trying to do in our community groups is more talk about how does it apply to our lives. We're going for application. Like, where is this leading me to repent? What does this mean for how I approach things? Where do I agree? Where do I disagree?
What does this person think? And we kind of wrestle with it all together. And when we gather as an entire church family together, there's something different about it. When we all gather together, there's something unique about having a posture of sitting and receiving and soaking something in that's being taught. I'm going to say that again. There's something unique about sitting and receiving and just soaking in something that is being taught.
And when I was in college, if I was in a class and I had a professor at the front of the room, unless I was given permission to ask questions or permission to speak, my posture in that class was listener and learner. There would be time when I got together with other people or a study group to be like, well, I didn't agree with that or that didn't make sense or I wonder if that's going to be on the test, but not necessarily in that moment. In essence, what I was saying in that classroom was, okay, I'm submitting to the authority of the professor, his education, and the content that he is teaching. And again, that's just an example to get us thinking along those same lines, but even that begins to break down.
Because what it's saying is there's something special about the professor, but when the church gathers, there's nothing special about the person who stands on the stage and opens the Bible. What's special is God and his word that he wants to communicate into our lives. It wasn't about Ezra. You want to know how I know that? Ezra wasn't the only person on the stage. There were a whole bunch of other people.
The stage wasn't for Ezra. The stage was for the word of God. So the word of God could be over top of all the people. And I think that's a beautiful picture of how we should see the word of God in our own lives. That we should see that God is over us and his word is over us in a way that we're not trying to take our life and justify it by the word. No, no, no, no.
We're running to the word to help us understand who God is and how we might live in relationship with him. So there's something, there's just something different about it. When someone's standing up and teaching something and you're just soaking it in and receiving it. And I'll tell you, in our culture, specifically with my generation, that kind of teaching is just kind of waning in popularity. It's not something that people are really excited about. They don't want to go and sit and listen to someone.
And some of that's because a lot of people in my generation are like, is there absolute truth or is it all just kind of relative? And we know that there are different styles of learning now. And so do we really need that type of teaching? That's why I think it's beautiful that we have gatherings and we have our groups and we're discipling each other in all of life. But there is something unique and special about opening the word of God and letting it be spoken into our lives.
And we see it all throughout scripture. Our God is a preaching God. That God uses his word to accomplish his will. From the very beginning, God stands up and he preaches. He preaches the world into existence. And then throughout the Old Testament, he uses prophets and he speaks through them into the lives of his people.
And then Jesus comes and he preaches repentance and the gospel. And then he raises up his disciples and sends them out to preach the message. And so when the church gathers together, what we're saying is we will sit under the authority of Jesus and allow it to shape our lives. And there's something beautiful about not just doing it by yourself, but doing it all together. Where we're collectively sitting in the room and you're looking around and people are head nodding and people are saying amen. And it's this beautiful excitement of saying, no, I'm not just doing this by myself.
We're actually getting to do it together. There's something unique about that. There's something beautiful about how the Holy Spirit uses that and works that in our lives. And in fact, the Bible talks about itself. The Bible teaches us about the Bible. And I want to read a couple of these things because it's awesome.
Here's what the Bible says about itself. That it's breathed out by God. You'll hear arguments of people, yeah, well, it was written by human authors. No, no, no. Hear this. It was breathed out by God and he just chose to use those authors.
And it's profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training. That the Bible, that it makes man complete, equipped for every good work. That it keeps us from sinning. That it's a lamp to our feet and a light to our path and so forth and so on. The Bible just describes itself as God's word to do work in our lives. And there's something valuable about when we get to do it together.
And here's another thing that makes gatherings distinct. There are times when I'm sitting there and Chet's preaching or maybe Raz is preaching. And I am loving everything that is being said. I'm digging it. I'm being encouraged. I'm being reminded of my identity, being in Christ.
I mean, I'm just, I can feel myself getting excited because it's the truth of it. There are also times where I'm sitting there listening and I'm not so excited about it. And I'm going, ah, I don't want to do that. Oh, I'm not naturally inclined to do that. I'm actually being convicted. I feel like I need to repent.
This is really making me uncomfortable. And what I want to do is head for the exit sign. But I don't because I'm in a group of people that are collectively saying we submit to the authority of God. And in fact, those moments where you want to head for the exit sign or maybe it's rubbing you wrong and you don't understand and you don't like it. Those may be the times that you want to lean in and listen just a little bit more. Because it may be that the Holy Spirit is working and moving and trying to show you something completely new.
And when we're all gathering together, it's not just you having to figure out how to do it. You've got a group of people around you that are willing to encourage you and walk side by side with you to see you accomplish Jesus' will in your life. And so the church gathers to open the Bible. Verse 6, let's keep going. Verse 6. Sorry guys, I got the power this morning.
Verse 6. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Also, Jeshua and Bonnie, and you can just skip on to where it says the Levites, helped the people to understand the law while the people remained in their places. They read from the book, from the law of God clearly, and they gave the sense so that the people understood the reading. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe and the Levites who taught the people, said to all the people, This day is holy to the Lord your God.
Do not mourn or weep, for all the people wept as they heard the words of the law. Okay, so as the word of God was being read, the people began to respond. We know that as soon as the Bible was open, as soon as the scriptures were open and they started reading, it says that the people just stood up. And I don't know exactly what that was like, but the people just stood up. And then it says they began to raise their hands. So I don't know exactly what that was like.
I don't know if it was any of this or any of this. Or maybe it was more of just a stretching out, like give me more. Or maybe it was more open hands, like let me receive this. And then it says they fell and put their faces to the ground. This picture of humility. Guys, remember, the city's not cleaned up yet.
We don't know what's on the ground. They don't care. It's this posture of humility as they hear. In fact, verse 9 says that some of them were moved to tears by what they heard. And so one of the reasons the church gathers, one of the reasons we gather, is we gather to respond to God and celebrate the gospel. So we gather to open the Bible, but the other thing we do is we gather to respond to God and celebrate the gospel.
So that as the word is proclaimed, we begin to respond. And the church, the people of God, the church throughout history, across people groups and tribes and languages, has always found this way to gather together and respond and to celebrate. Some people may do it with a whole bunch of instruments and a whole bunch of people singing and dancing. And this group over here may not use instruments at all. And then you've got this group who may meet in a building, and this group may meet out in a field. But the church has always found ways to respond to God collectively as a group.
And truth is, we do this in our community groups as well. We respond to God in our community groups. We talk about how it affects our lives. We wrestle with that together. We don't just say this is like information for you. It's information that impacts your life.
Like how do you live this out at work? How do you live it out in your marriage? How do we encourage each other to do it? We repent and confess to each other where we're off and where we're struggling. And in the midst of doing that, we celebrate the gospel. We celebrate the good news that Jesus came and he lived a perfect, sinless life, and he died on the cross so that we might have life in him.
And he rose from the dead. Like we celebrate that and we encourage each other with that truth because it's not just good news then, it's good news now. And so we remind each other, we don't just say you should love people. We say because he first loved you, we get to love others. Not just go out and serve, but we serve because he served us. He came and met us at our greatest need.
We encourage each other with the gospel. But when we all get together as a big church family, we get to respond in some different ways. It's kind of different. Maybe some things that you don't get to do in your community group all the time. We get together and we pray all together. We ask God to do stuff on behalf of our city to move and to work and to bring people to salvation.
There are times when we celebrate communion, where we remember the broken body and the shed blood. There are times where we give, where we give our finances to support what Jesus is doing in the city and doing through this church. We get together and we baptize people. And when we baptize people, we get fried chicken and we throw a party and we dunk people in water and we go crazy. So crazy that we can't talk.
I mean, I love baptisms. Just so you know, Easter, baptism, that is happening. So if you're trying to figure out whether you should be baptized, interested in being baptized, let me put that plug in. That's coming at Easter, so not too long from now. But one of the main ways that the church responds to God when we're all collected together is that we sing.
We get together and we sing. And y'all know, y'all know I love that. In fact, on the Sundays where I preach, I get really excited because we've got super talented musicians who love Jesus and are a part of community groups who lead us to sing truths about Jesus. And I love when I just get to be a part of that. But I also love the times where I get to be up here and I get to see your faces.
I get to see you sing. I get to see you raise your hands and then sometimes just sit and reflect on what's being sung. It's the best. And we live in a culture that highly values music. That's a big deal kind of in our culture right now is music. And maybe on the other side of that, maybe just more the entertainment side of music.
And some of that, like the value of that, has kind of seeped into our American Christian culture so much so that when people think about church and what the church is and stuff, what they've got in their mind is just what we get together and do on Sundays. It's an incomplete picture. So much so that you'll hear people say, I go to that church. What they mean is, what they're saying is, I go to that building on that street at that time on that day. And they're missing out on the fact that the church is the people who have been rescued by Jesus and it's all of life and that's just a picture of what we do.
But I kind of grew up with a similar type understanding. I kind of grew up thinking about Sundays as a really big deal, that that was kind of the pinnacle of everything that Christians did. I grew up in a church that had like a lot of music. We had all kinds of different musical stuff and there were choirs and there was an orchestra. I mean, it was crazy, a whole bunch of stuff. You kind of had to dress up to go there.
But it was good stuff. And afterwards, like any good kid, I would like run around and play tag with my friends. But there was always that little old lady that goes, Don't run in the church! And I just wish I knew then what I knew now. Because I would have turned around and been like, The church is people. And just like taken off running.
But our church valued Sunday. Sunday was a big deal. It was what was talked about. It was what was celebrated. So much so that we did it twice on the same day.
You went home and took a power nap to get ready because you're coming back. Like, we're doing this again. So the church I grew up in really valued Sunday. Then I got to college and I got introduced to my first mega church. And oh, buddy. Lights, lasers, smoke machines.
I mean, music that would like melt your face. Thousands of people just standing, singing. I mean, it was, whew! They cared about Sunday. I'm telling you. And I'm telling you, it was awesome.
It was beautiful to see all those people worshiping together. But even then, I'm starting to go, okay, is there, what else, what else should I do? And it's kind of like, oh, you can come back next Sunday. All right, I'll do that. But there's got to be more.
There's something more to it. And then I started working for a church while I was in college. And part of what I did was help plan. What did we do on Sundays? And all along the way, I'm trying to figure out, okay, how does, how does this work? Like, what is this?
Sundays are important, but it's not just Sundays. It's all of life. And as I grew in my understanding of the gospel and as I began to read in scripture, it's not a competition between Sundays and all of life. It's both. It's this beautiful ebb and flow, this back and forth of the church gathering all together and then scattering out. And it has just changed my understanding of why the church gathers and why it's important.
And one of the reasons we do that is so that we can get together and have good music. It's so that we can get together and sing at the top of our lungs and to raise our hands and to respond to the truth that's being said. Because God uses music in such a special way. Let me show you. It is highly unlikely that during the week you have walked around with the three main points of a sermon stuck in your head. Right?
I mean, most of us, by the time we're going to hang out with our community group, we're going, what were we talking about on Sunday? Sorry, guys. Maybe I should go listen to the podcast before I could hang out with our group, even though I was there on Sunday. But you have had a song stuck in your head. Right? We've all had that annoying song that gets stuck in your head.
Or maybe it's your favorite song. You just sing it on repeat all the time. Because music has that ability to stick with us. Let me prove it to you. Ready? Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. What song did I just hum? Hail the King. Right? Hail the King. I hummed Hail the King.
Okay, what were the words that I was singing? We have by faith through Jesus. It's only. That was, guys, if we were a choir, we blew it. But yeah, for the most part, you could recall those lyrics.
And sometimes, we sing that song a good bit. That song gets stuck in my head all the time. And do you see how beautiful that is? That in the middle of your work week, when you're at work and you just got chewed out by your boss, or you just had an argument with your wife, that song pops in your head and you're going, no, no, no, I've been justified. That there's a Creator God and I rebelled against Him. But He sent Jesus to die on the cross so that I might be saved, so that I could have salvation, not because of my work, but Jesus' work on my behalf.
That I could place faith in Jesus. And it's a gift of God's grace. And as I begin to remember that, it just reshapes everything. It has this beautiful impact on our lives. And so when we get together, we celebrate that truth. We're reminding ourselves.
And here's another thing. Here's something that's really important to point out. Our worship, when we get together on Sundays, is just a foretaste of what's coming later. It's just a foretaste of the future that is waiting for us. I mean, you can honestly just start thinking about Sunday as heaven practice. Go ahead and get that in your mind, like you've got to get stressed, get warmed up.
This is heaven practice for the eternity that we've been created for us. And we all know this. When there's something to celebrate, the phrase, the more the merrier, absolutely fits. When you're excited, when you want to throw a party, when you want to celebrate, the more the merrier. Let me illustrate. If I'm sitting at home and I'm watching the Clemson game by myself and they win, I mean, I'm excited.
I mean, you know, I may woo-hoo. And then I may change the channel and flip to another game. And the rest of it, I just go on with the rest of my life. If I'm watching the Clemson game at Charlie Earp's house, I'm like jumping up. And I'm doing like some of the fist pumping type stuff. And we're high-fiving and we're getting really excited.
And we're making fun of the people who weren't pulling for Clemson. Like, it's just this bigger celebration. If I'm in Death Valley with 80,000 of my closest friends, I'm storming the field. I may take my shirt off and run around. I have no, I mean, it's amazing when you get with a group of people and just celebrate it. And that's what heaven's going to be like.
There's going to be people from every tribe and language and tongue and people group. That have come to place their faith in Jesus. And we're all going to stand around the throne and sing and bring praises to God as we stand in the presence of our Savior. It's going to be awesome. And heaven's not just that. It's not going to be just that.
We're going to do other stuff as well. But it won't be less than that. I can tell you that. It won't be less than that. And there's this, I was at a concert with Katie a couple of years ago. And there's a Christian artist named David Crowder.
You may have heard him before. And before the concert they said, if anybody works for a church or is on staff for the church, come to the back. We want you to pray with David. And David Crowder prayed that night. And it was something like this. I just want to read this to you.
Let's see. He prayed, I mean, that blew my mind when he prayed that because it's absolutely true. Let our feet be lifted off the ground just a little so that we might experience what heaven is going to be like. It's going to be this amazing time of worship. In fact, there's this really cool scripture that I read in Zephaniah 3 this week where it says that Jesus is going to stand in the midst of his people. And he's going to sing over us.
Like a great choir master, he's going to stand in the midst of us and sing. And we're going to sing. It's going to be this beautiful time of celebration. And we get to mimic that. We get to mirror that as a church on Sundays. And let's kind of bring this thing to a close.
Let's jump back into verse 10. Then he said to them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink sweet wine, and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready. For this day is holy to our Lord. Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. So the Levites calmed all the people, saying, Be quiet, for this day is holy.
Do not be grieved. And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing because they had understood the words that were declared to them. So the church came together to sit under the authority of God's word. And as they heard the word, they began to respond to the word all together. And then what does it say that they did? It says they went their way.
It says they went their way to eat and they went their way to drink. Back to their families. Back to their work. Back to everything. Infused with the truth that they had been taught and what they had celebrated. The third reason that the church gathers is we gather to be sent out.
We gather to be sent out. We don't stay here. As good as this is and how fun is this, this is fun and good. We don't stay here. We're sent out. And we know specifically on this side of the resurrection, for those of us in this room that have placed faith in Jesus, we know that we've been sent out specifically on mission.
And so we gather to be sent out on mission. The mission that Jesus has given us, which is to go and to make disciples, to share his love with other people, to help them come to know his love and to begin to follow him and to place their faith in him. And yeah, we do that in our groups. We get together and we talk about the people that we're building relationships with and we pray over them that Jesus might work in their life. But there's something different about when we do it all together.
It's way more like General Patton and his troops. It's way more like Mel Gibson riding on a horse in front of the Scottish. You ever seen that movie? Oh man, it's amazing. Braveheart's amazing. It's this call to this is who you are.
Go and do that. This is who you are. He doesn't say go do this because of who you are. He says because of who you are, go accomplish the victory. And that's what's true for us. As Christians, our identity is seated in Christ.
And so out of who Jesus has made us, we are sent out. And so I hope that this morning you've been refreshed. I hope that you've been reminded of the goodness of gathering, that it's not this competition between whether you're in a group or whether you come on Sundays. It's this beautiful ebb and flow that we see in Acts 2 and we're seeing here in Nehemiah 8, that the church gathers together and then we're scattered out. And so just to kind of bring us to a close, we gather to open the Bible, to let it have authority to speak truth into our lives. We gather to respond and to celebrate the gospel.
We stand and we sing and we proclaim and we pray and we give. And then we're sent out all mission together, that we accomplish the mission of Jesus as this church in our community groups. And it's this beautiful expression of the church being one all together and then going out together all mission. The band's going to come back up. Here's kind of how I want you to respond with this. I want you to have fresh vision and fresh eyes for Sundays.
And I want Sundays to be an important part of how you follow Jesus, that you see how good and how valuable it is, that you begin to let this be an aspect of how you build community with other believers, that you stand shoulder to shoulder, you stand side by side with other Christians and you sing at the top of your lungs and you remind yourself of what's true and you pray all together and you give together and then you go out so that you're sitting with and you're seeing people that are in your community group and in other community groups and you're going, yeah, let's go out. Let's be who Jesus has made us to be. He's made us to be His church. And so what we're going to do now is we're going to sing a song that says that.
We will be the church to live out your heart. Oh God, arise up in us. We'll show the world how you love. Take heart. You have overcome the world. That's the message.
That's the message of the church. It's the message of the gospel. And we stand and respond and sing those things at the top of our lungs because they're true and there's something beautiful about getting to do them together. together all as one big church family. Let me pray over us. God, I pray that you would let that sink in or that the joy of gathering with your family and gathering with your people would culminate in Sundays where we preach the gospel and we sing songs at the top of our lungs for your glory and for your namesake and then we're sent out together on mission to see more people come to know you come to love you and place their faith in you.
And so God, I pray that your spirit would move in us to remind us of who we are as your people. In Jesus' name, amen.
Groups that Multiply
Transcript
We're wrapping up our anchor series, and so what we've been doing for the past six weeks is just kind of walking through and looking at who we are as a church family, what we feel called to do and to be in this area. And so really what we've been doing is taking – we're a gospel-centered community on mission. That's what we say about ourselves. That's what we strive to be. And so we've just been taking that and saying, okay, if we're a gospel-centered community on mission, what does that mean? What do we mean when we say that?
What does that look like? How do we do that? Where did we get that from? Did we just make that up? We didn't. We got it mostly out of the Bible, liked the phrasing of some other churches and how they talk about things.
And so we stole some things from other Christians who are smart. But we really just wanted to help define who we are. And so that's what we say. We're a gospel-centered community on mission. And so in the anchor series, we've just been looking and saying, okay, what are we talking about? What's that look like?
So today is our last day in the anchor series. And the next week, we're going to start walking verse by verse through the book of Jonah. So I'm really excited that we get to do that because we like books of the Bible and we like going through books of the Bible. But today is our last day in the anchor series. And so what we're going to do is we're going to try to sum it all up, try to wrap it all together, put a nice bow on it. And so we've got our work cut out for us.
So what I'm going to do before we hop in, before we get to talking about what we're going to look at today, is I just want to take a minute to recap where we've been, what we've been talking about for the past six weeks, what we've been trying to articulate. And so what we did was the first three weeks, we just talked about the gospel. We talked about what does it mean for us to be gospel centered. So if we're gospel centered, if that's primary for us, everything else comes out of that. What is the gospel? And so we walked through the first six chapters of Romans because we're ambitious.
And so we took one Sunday and walked through the first six chapters of Romans and just kind of skipped around, but tried to get a really clear picture of what the gospel is. And basically what we saw is that God created everything and designed everything to exist in relationship with him as creator and creation. Just like a husband and wife would exist in relationship with one another. So if you were married and you acted like you did not have a spouse, that would make you a bad spouse just because of the relationship. So if I was hanging out with you and I was like, man, don't you need to like head home, check on your wife, like whatever.
And you're like, nah, man, I don't even act like that holds me down. I'd be like, you're a terrible husband. Like you aren't doing this right. And so the biggest problem that we have as creation is that we haven't existed with God in that relationship. We have removed God from the position that he ought to hold as our creator. And we've worshipped other things.
We've pursued other things. We've loved other things. And this is sin. And this is what leads us into all sin. It's when we begin to value something more than God. We begin to look at anything and say, you're going to complete me.
You're going to make me whole. You're going to fix me. If I can just have this, then I'll be okay. When we were designed to be fulfilled and complete by God, when we remove him from the equation and put anything else there, that becomes a fundamental issue. And it's treason of the highest type. And so it puts us in a bad spot.
So as we went to Romans, we saw that we've sinned, we've fallen short, and there's no way we can fix this. We can't moral our way back into it. We can't behave our way back into fixing this problem. That even in a lot of our morality and behavior-based stuff, we're just using that to put God in our debt. And so he's still not in the place of creator. And so what we saw was that Jesus came and lived perfectly on our behalf, did exactly what we ought to have done, loved the way we ought to have loved, worshipped the way we ought to have worshipped, related with other people the way we ought to relate with other people.
And then he was perfect. And in his perfection, he was killed. He was nailed to a cross. And he died in our place for our sin as our substitute. So that he took our execution that we deserved.
And when he did that, he took our death that we deserved, and he gave us his life that we did not earn. And so that through Jesus, we can be saved. We can be made right with God. So we're saved by Jesus's work, not ours. That's the gospel. And that's really good news.
We don't gather together as a church to celebrate that we can all behave well. That would be a terrible group of people to have to try to be a part of. I would be the worst at it. So we gather together to celebrate the fact that Jesus behaved, Jesus loved, Jesus worshipped in our place, Jesus did everything, and he took our punishment to set us free. So that's what we're centered on.
That's our story. That's the way we view the world. And so what we did was we took the next two weeks and just talked about, if that's true for us, then that affects how we talk to people. It affects how we respond to each other in our sin. So if I'm walking with somebody, and they're walking with me through life, and I'm struggling with being a jerk, they don't just say, hey, here's your problem.
You're a jerk. Which that wouldn't be a good, like they didn't need it. I would be like, cite your sources. Tell me how I'm a jerk. And then 30 minutes later, I'd be like, I get the picture. That's enough.
Like, I didn't realize you had, like, footnotes and stuff and, like, dates. Like, you ever get in an argument with your wife, and they're like, well. Because they've got, like, way more memory than you do. And they're like, well, four months ago, you said this at 7.15 p.m. on a Thursday. And I'm like, maybe. Sounds like something I might would have said.
I don't remember. But they wouldn't just say, she wouldn't just say, my wife wouldn't just say, or the friend just wouldn't just say, or we wouldn't just say as Christians, hey, here's your behavioral problem. Fix your behavior. Here's the behavioral change that needs to take place. Because that actually Acts as if we don't know that the gospel is true. Which is, not that our behavior fixed the problem, but that Jesus did.
And that our major problem isn't a behavioral one, but a worship one. And so actually, the way we respond to each other is with the gospel. Which is, you have a behavioral issue, but what it means is, and what it betrays is, that's just a symptom, but you have cancer. And what we're seeing is that you're actually not worshiping and loving God the way you ought to. You don't actually believe the gospel the way you ought to. And here's what Jesus did on your behalf, and that in that, our hearts can actually change, and then our behavior can change.
But the behavior is the smaller problem. And so that we actually respond to each other and point each other to Jesus, and that's how we change, and that's how we grow, and that's how we get life. And that's the story anyway. Not that we behave, but that he did. Not that we're good, but he was. And so we don't just try to behavior modification one another.
And then we understand in that, that our main problem is idolatry. That's our major sin issue, is that we're worshiping something other than God as God. And so we address that, that there's always sin beneath our sin. So that if I'm not generous, the major problem isn't that I'm not generous. The major problem is that I believe something about money that is fundamentally not true. Which means I believe something about God that's fundamentally not true.
And so we address that. So we spent three weeks talking about that, talking about the gospel, what it means for us to be gospel-centered. And then we talked about community. All right, so we exist in the context of relationships. We exist as a family because God, when Jesus died for us, he actually reconciled us to God, and we've been adopted. So the Bible is repeatedly going to say that we've been adopted into God's family so that we are in relationships with one another as an eternal family.
So that if your spouse at one point, if you're both believers, someday you will no longer be spouse and husband and wife, but you will be brother and sister forever because of Jesus. And so that we treat our church family as family. So that when a phone call comes in at midnight, we answer. When somebody's moving, we help. If you could ask your dad to come help you with something, if you could ask your cousin to come help you with something, or your brother or your sister, then you can ask church family to help with the same thing. That's how we relate to one another.
And then we said that in that, in that relating to one another, it's very difficult and painful, and that's part of how we get to grow in relationships and how we get to grow in the gospel. So that I actually get to understand how costly Jesus' forgiveness was when I have to forgive someone. I actually get to understand how great his sacrifice was when I have to sacrifice my time, my energy for someone else. And so that we actually grow and are designed to serve in those relationships. And then last week, Raz talked about that we, because of that, so because of the gospel is true and because we exist in relationships with each other, then we just normally in everyday life move on mission, that we invite other people into that, that we tell the good news, and that in normal everyday life, we make disciples by building relationships with people.
That's people in our church family and people who don't know Jesus yet. And so Raz specifically talked about what does it look like to make disciples, what are we doing in life as we do that, and that we're called to make disciples of all nations, which is just all ethnic groups, that everybody is invited in. And that's normal for Christians. That in normal life, we build relationships, we see who we're around, we pray for people, and we seek to share good news. And so what we're going to do today is we're going to kind of tie all that together. We're going to look at how that plays out in the context of us as our church family specifically and as Christians in general and why it's important, why it actually matters that we're a gospel-centered community on mission, why it actually matters that we pay attention to this, that we think about this, that we would take the time at the beginning of the year to remind ourselves of this.
And so what I'd like for us to do is, I know everybody's had to get here this morning. You've had to go through maybe a decent amount to get ready, to time everything right, to drive in the rain, to decide whether or not it was going to be freezing rain and whether or not you should even risk it. So you are all risk-takers. You love to live dangerously. That's what I know about the people that are here this morning. And you also understand that it wasn't going to be freezing rain because it's out in Carolina.
So what I'd like for us to do is to take just a second. If you've been here for that entire time, all the stuff we just recapped, or if you've been here for a couple of those or maybe this is your first Sunday, what I'd like for us to do is just take a second. And for Christians in the room, I want us to just, we're going to be quiet for about 60 seconds. I want us to just invite the Holy Spirit to remind us of all of that, to help us feel it and know that it's true. And then to help us as we look today to really show us what this looks like for us personally and in the context of our groups. If you're not a Christian and you're hanging out with us this morning, you really have two options for what we're about to do.
Option one is sit quietly for 60 seconds. Maybe daydream, pick where you want to eat lunch, something like that. Option two would be to actually pray, to just inside your head, ask God to speak to you, to reveal himself today. If you're here hanging out and checking us all out and you weren't dragged here, maybe you're checking out the whole Jesus thing. So you can pray and say, God, if you are real, help me see that today.
We would invite you to do that. At worst, that's a waste of time. At best, you talk to the creator of the universe and he might respond. And so we would invite you to do that. So Christians, we're going to pray that the Holy Spirit would remind us of this, of what we've talked about, help us to see it, to have it actually be real to us.
So let's do that now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to spend a little bit of time in Acts chapter 1 and Acts chapter 2. I got to speak at my home church, the church I grew up in this past Sunday, last Sunday night.
And we looked at Acts chapter 1 and Acts chapter 2. And I told them, I was like, our church family looks at this passage all the time. Like if you grab a pew Bible or a row Bible, I guess we don't really have pews, but if you grab a row Bible at our church family and you go to Acts chapter 2, the words are all smudged because we've read them too much. And so, but this is one of the foundational things that helped us get started as a church family that we look at a good bit, that we remind ourselves of. And so we're going to be in Acts chapter 1 to start and then we're going to jump over to Acts chapter 2 and just get to see a really beautiful picture of what the church gets to look like as the gospel takes hold in the lives of believers.
All right, so Acts chapter 1 starting in verse 6. So when they had come together, they asked him. Okay, so they being Jesus and his disciples, and they asked him, so they being the disciples, asked Jesus. Now, that seems like a very normal sentence and it's one of the weirdest ones you probably have ever read in your entire life. Because the they that got together includes a bunch of random kind of hodgepodge group of guys that were brought together by Jesus in and around Galilee and Jerusalem in the first century. It includes them, but more than that, it includes a guy who had been dead 40 days earlier.
Not like on the table, heart stopped, clear, and he came back and he's like, I was dead. No, three days in a tomb, dead. Had been wrapped up. They were going to put some smell good stuff on him when it turns out he wasn't dead anymore and had come back to life. So that's a really weird sentence.
It says they got together and they asked him. They're there with a guy who had been dead, who had said all along that he was God and that he was going to be killed and then rose from the grave. So you don't get to say that sentence. You're not like, yeah, my uncle passed away, but in two weeks we're going to be going to vacation together. Or, yeah, I was just hanging out with my grandmother who died last year. Do what now?
Like, you should probably get some help. That's weird. I hope that she wasn't actually there because if she was actually there, that's even worse. Like, you should have buried her. Like, this is bad. So Jesus was dead and is alive, bodily, physically resurrected, alive.
And so they're with Jesus. He said he was God and then when he came back from the dead, they were like, oh, oh, for real though? Okay. No, no, yeah, we get it now. That makes more sense. All the stuff you had said about dying and coming back.
We thought it was like metaphorical and then when you died, we were all bummed and then now you're not dead and that makes way more sense. Okay. Verse 6. So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. Basically, you're asking the wrong question.
That's not what we're going to talk about. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. Okay. So that got weirder.
He had died. Said he was God. Said he was going to die. Said that he was going to atone for sins through that. He died. Three days later, he rose again.
He tells them, here's what you're going to do. And then he flies. He ascends back into heaven and a cloud took him out of the way. He didn't like vaporize. Like he just, his whole body just took off. And I used to, when I would imagine that, I used to imagine it was like slow.
Like if you had like little wires or something, he just started to float. Do you know how long that would have taken? Like if it was slow? Like after a while, he'd have just been like, I mean, you'd have been enthralled because the guy was flying. But after a while, he'd be like, man, it's going to take forever until he hits that cloud.
Like he'd be waving or whatever. I think he just took off. He just said what he had to say. He said, here's what's going to happen. The Holy Spirit's going to come. You're going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth.
And then he was just like, boom, dust. They looked up and then they just, it says they stared up there for a while like, oh, goodness. And then angels show up or some men show up. It doesn't tell us they're angels, but men wearing right robes go say, hey, are y'all going to go do what he said? But here's what he said.
And here's what I want us to see. He says, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, the ends of the earth, that the Holy Spirit's going to come upon you so that Jesus is going to leave and the Holy Spirit's going to come and empower his church to do this, to be witnesses. What are they witnesses of? What is he talking about? What is the church, us as believers? What are we witnesses of?
The gospel. We're witnesses to the fact that Jesus died and rose again. That's what they were going to go tell people. And here's the way witnessing works. Here's what a witness does. They just tell you what's happened.
That's all they do. They're just telling a story. They're telling about an event that happened. If a cop gets called up on the witness stand, he doesn't sit down and start explaining how to be a cop. His primary role as a witness is just to tell everybody what he's seen, what happened. If you're watching a news program and they have a cooking segment, the cooking segment and the eyewitness segment are completely different.
The cooking segment is here's what you do to receive these results. The eyewitness section is just someone holding a mic and telling us not a whole lot other than what they've seen. So, yeah, we're out on the scene and there's an ambulance. Uh-huh. Some tape. People were running.
It's like, okay, that's what we get to do as Christians. We just get to be witnesses to who Jesus is, to what he's done. Yes, there was a man who came from God. Turns out he was God. He lived perfectly and he died. And three days later he came back.
That was the story that they got to tell. And here's the thing. Jesus did that to save the world, to reconcile it back to himself. And then he hands that mission over to his disciples. That mission is handed over to the church. God's plan to save the world is the local church.
God's plan to save the world is the local church. We have been given this message to declare. We have been called to be witnesses. And it says where? Well, for them it was Jerusalem, where they were. Judea.
Samaria, which was a place they didn't like. A bunch of people they didn't get along with. They racially weren't happy with. And to the ends of the earth. That it goes to everyone. Everyone is invited in.
That's the church. Have been given the message to declare. To declare the gospel. That's why we're gospel centered. Because we're witnesses. We've been called to make much of Jesus.
In normal everyday life. We've been sent out by God to declare. So here's what happens. That's what they do. They begin to pray. The Holy Spirit comes.
Empowers them. And then they go declare this message. They go be witnesses. And so let's jump to Acts chapter 2. We're going to pick up in verse 36. And we're going to see what happens as they declare this message.
What happens as a group of people who believes this message begins to be witnesses to it. 36. So this is Peter. He stood up. The Holy Spirit comes. Peter stands up.
Begins to proclaim the gospel. Begins to tell this good news. And people are listening. And this is the very end of it. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ. This Jesus whom you crucified.
So Peter ends with it's your fault. The reason Jesus was crucified is on you. That Jesus was fundamentally in the gospel is a little bit of we have to respond because it's our fault. He had to die for our sin personally. So he says you whom you crucified.
So let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ. This Jesus whom you crucified. Now when they heard this. If you're thinking. Okay but hold on a second. He's talking to the guys that actually crucified him.
Maybe. The Romans actually crucified him. The Jewish people were culpable. But this is the feast of Pentecost. So there was people from miles around.
So it's the same message to us. That we're culpable. We're guilty. When it comes to the death of Jesus. 37. Now when they heard this.
They were cut to the heart. And said to Peter and the rest of the apostles. Brothers what shall we do? And Peter said to them repent. Which means turn away from your sin. Turn away from your brokenness.
Turn away from your need. Repent and be baptized every one of you. In the name of Jesus Christ. For the forgiveness of your sins. You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you.
And for your children. And for all who are far off. Everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. And with many other words he bore witness. And continued to exhort them saying. Save yourselves from this crooked generation.
So those who received his word were baptized. And there were added that day about 3,000 souls. Baptism is just an outward showing of what's inwardly happened. So they trusted Jesus. Were saved. And then they were baptized.
Which means that they dumped them in water. The word baptized just means to dip. Or to submerge in water. And so that's what they were. They were baptized. Who responded?
Who trusted Jesus? Who became Christians? The first people to say. I'm broken. I'm needy. It was the people who saw that they were guilty.
And said I have nothing to offer. Nothing to bring to the table. What must we do? And he says trust Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. That Jesus is both Lord and Christ. Which means king and savior.
He's in charge. And he's the one who saves us. The only people who aren't invited in. Are those who don't think they have need. The only people who did not respond. And who walked away that day.
Were the people who did not believe this message. And didn't think they were broken. And that breaks down into people who don't think that Jesus is Lord. Don't think he's king. And to people who don't think he's savior. You see if I'm really moral.
I'm really good. I behave really well. I'm upright. I'm a good citizen. Listen. I'm a red state American.
Then it's very likely that I'll believe I don't need a savior. Because I'm good enough. That the way I'm saved is through my behavior. So in our culture they might be called closed minded. Might be called bigoted. But they'll walk away from Jesus.
Because they're believing that they can save themselves. That they can fix themselves. You know how else walks away from that? Everybody who's broken. Everybody who's needy. Everybody who realizes they have nothing to offer.
Gets invited in. It's only the people that exclude themselves. You know how else walks away from that? The people who think that they're on Lord. That Jesus isn't king. I'm open minded.
I'm free. Whose rules would I have to follow? Whose regulations? I can make my own decisions. All of that religious stuff. That's for closed minded people.
That's for ignorant people. I'm a true blue stated American. And I can rely on myself. You see both sides of that? Self reliance. Self salvation.
Self lordship. But everyone who realizes they have nothing to offer. Nothing to bring to the table. Nothing. They're invited in. That's why the church can't hold a position of moral superiority in culture.
Because we were the first people to say we're busted and we need a savior. That's why everyone's invited into the church. Oh you're prideful? Oh you think you have it all together and you're just realizing now that you don't? You're welcome. Come on in.
We got a lot of prideful jerks here. Who need Jesus? Jesus. Oh you're rebellious? Oh you've run after every type of flagrant sin you could possibly chase after? And you've just now realized you have nothing to offer and you need Jesus?
Welcome. We've got a lot of people who struggle with that here. We've got a lot of people who can't remember many nights because they were too drunk. We've got a lot of people who've realized their need for Jesus and have been invited in. The only people who aren't invited are the people who think they're already in through their behavior, through their moral superiority, through their intelligence. Everyone who realizes that they're far off, everyone who realizes that they're out gets invited in.
That's the church. So what happens in that group of people? What happens in us as we begin to believe the gospel and exist in relationships? What happens in this group of people who were the first to say, I need a savior. I need someone else to do this on my behalf. I'm not good enough.
I'm not smart enough. I'm not strong enough. What happens? 42. 42. And they, that's the 3,000 people.
That's all the believers. All the people who said, I realize I'm needy. I'm broken. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. What were the apostles' teaching? The gospel.
They were taking the Old Testament and they were saying, here's the gospel. And then as we get their teaching in the New Testament because it's the stuff that apostles actually penned. But that's what they were devoting themselves to was understanding the gospel, what it looked like to live in light of the gospel. If Jesus was actually God, how do we rightly relate to him? That's what they were doing. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship.
That just means, that's a fancy word for they were hanging out with each other. They were being church family. So, you know, like you hang out with friends and then you become a Christian. And so instead of saying like, oh, yeah, we had a really good time hanging out, you say, oh, we had a wonderful time of fellowship. That's where that comes from. That's why people say that.
Oh, bless this fellowship because it's just a fancy Christian word for us being together and being in a relationship. Okay? So if you want to like out-Christian somebody, throw fellowship around. It's real helpful. Anyway, sorry. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship.
They were church family. They existed in relationships with one another. And to the breaking of bread. That shows up in two ways. That's communion. That's celebrating that Jesus died for us.
Reminding ourselves of the gospel tangibly. It also seems like it just means they ate meals together. Breaking of bread. Breaking of bread. And the prayers. And all came upon every soul.
And many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. They got together, realized the gospel is true, realized they were family. And suddenly they got to hold everything with an open hand. You need this.
You need to borrow that. You need to, like, we're family. And everything's already been given to me in Jesus. 46. And day by day, attending the temple together. So they got together in big groups.
And breaking bread in their homes. They got together in smaller groups and homes. They received their food with glad and generous hearts. Praising God and having favor with all the people. The city was glad that they were there. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
Okay. That last line's a little weird. You can just read over and not pay attention. But the last line's a little weird. Because how? How did the Lord add to their number day by day those who were being saved?
Those who were believing the gospel? Because it doesn't tell us. It just tells us what they were doing. And most of the way we respond in the church is like, well, what did they do? Did they go knock on doors? Did they have a program where they got people together and they sent them out?
Did they have some kind of thing where they were inviting people? Like, we don't. We're like, how? How did people become Christians every day? Love to see that happen in our church. How'd they do that?
Well, they just told us. They were devoted to the gospel and to each other. They spent time in relationships with one another, celebrating the gospel by breaking bread. And they prayed. And people become Christians. It becomes normal for people to become Christians.
Because they actually believed the gospel, which is good news. If you're here and you're a Christian and the gospel doesn't feel like good news to you, if it doesn't feel like it sets you free and gives you hope, I don't think you've believed the right gospel. I don't think you understand what's true about it. Because it's actually good news that Jesus saves us through his own work, not ours. And here's the thing about good news. We want to share it.
When that becomes real, when I understand exactly what Jesus has done for me, in those moments, I want to tell people. You ever had really good news? Like, we've had a couple of couples in our church family recently become pregnant. They're going to have children. They go around and they share that good news. They want to share that joy.
They want to have different groups of people to get together to share that with. We've had people, when they get a promotion, they want to throw a party. They want to share that news. The biggest way I do this on a regular basis is with restaurants. That's my favorite thing to talk to somebody about. Like, if I eat somewhere good, I want everyone to know it.
And that's how good news gets spread. So, like, if you're giving me directions and you're like, do you know where Tillman Street is? I'll be like, do restaurants. You'll be like, do you know where the Taco Bell is in West Columbia? Yep. I know where that is.
That's how I get around. That's how I get to know a city is I eat places. And if I ever eat somewhere good, I'm going to tell you about it. Egg Roll Station, it's on where Sunset meets State Street. It looks like a barn. And you have to have cash only, and it is amazing.
But anyway, that's what we want to share good news with people. And they had good news that Jesus saves, that he rescues, that he redeems, and that everyone's invited in. Everyone. Everyone. And people on a normal, regular, everyday basis start believing the good news and being invited in because they see the church being the church because the gospel was true. Have you had that?
Do you have those moments when the gospel is so true? When Jesus's generosity towards you is so real and somebody needs something, you have that moment where money's just money? You just have the opportunity to bless? Like you didn't even hesitate to grab your wallet and help somebody? Have you had that moment? Have you had that moment when Jesus's sacrifice was so real to you that when someone called and asked for help, you didn't even think about it because you got to just hop in?
That's few and far between for us, and that's why we spent a whole week saying we get to grow as we work in that. But even as we've walked through this series, if you had those moments where the gospel seems so real, so tangible, that you understand why we exist in relationships with each other as family. That's what was going on for them. It was so real, so rich, they could taste it, what had been accomplished for them on the cross, that they just lived it out in normal everyday life. You see, the plan to save the world, God's plan to rescue the world is the church. And there is no plan B.
And the way he does that is through normal everyday life. Certainly, some of them ended up moving far off. Certainly, some of them ended up saying, I feel specifically led to go to this area. But most of it happened in normal everyday life. And you know what happens when the gospel is real? The weight's lifted up.
We don't have to earn it. We don't have to achieve it. We're not burdened by being good. We want to be good. We have a desire for it because of Jesus' work in us, because the gospel is true, but we're not burdened by it. And everything suddenly has meaning.
There is no wasted day anymore if the gospel is true. So that was what messed me up in college. I started reading the Bible in the morning. I'd always read the Bible growing up. I didn't know. I grew up in a Christian home.
I didn't know people didn't read the Bible. So I just always read the Bible, start to finish all the way through. So I mean, I was like in middle school reading the book of Numbers. I don't know if I understood any of it, but I read it. I got to college and I started reading the Bible in the morning and drinking coffee. That messed up my whole life.
That's why I'm standing here this morning. Because it totally altered things for me. Because I started reading the Bible. I read sections like this. I remember distinctly reading this section in college and thinking, if the gospel is actually true, if what we're here saying we believe this morning is actually true, well, that changes everything. And it would actually change how I live.
It actually changed how I treat people, how I view the world, what I do with my time, my money, my energy, if it's actually true. If what we just read about Jesus coming back to life and then in bodily form ascending into heaven is true, that he is Lord and Christ, that one day he will return and he will rule and reign forever. And that the two options for his creation are you pay for your sin or Jesus pays for your sin. You exclude yourself or you get invited in. If that's actually true, I couldn't keep living my life the way I was. And that's what we see here.
That's why you read this in Acts and you go, why did they suddenly change? Why did this group of people in this, why did they, because it was true. Because they believed it and it affects everything. That's what we get to see and that's what we get to be as a church family. We get to be Christians in normal everyday life. We get to have normal jobs, but we get to have them with intentionality.
We get to go to school. We get to study physical health. We get to study to be an athletic trainer. We get to study to go be a nurse practitioner. And we get to do that absolutely wrecked by the grace of the gospel and absolutely invited in to be a part of God's mission. And so here's how that plays out.
What we see is that God added to them day by day, those who were being saved. I want us to read that again. 46. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. So again, the city was happy they were there.
And the Lord added to their number day by day, those who were being saved. That's why we organize the way we do as a church family. That's why we get together in groups. That's why on Sundays, I remember we were meeting at First Baptist and Hope Bridge. I would stand up. Not Hope Bridge.
First Baptist. I lied. Hope Bridge, we didn't say this. First Baptist, I would stand up on Sundays. We would get together Sunday nights. I would look at everyone, all 15 of you, and I knew everyone was in a group.
And I would say, hey, if you want to get in a group, I remember doing that and people going, who's this fool talking to? Bro, we in your group. I'm going to see you Thursday. The reason we did it was because that's who we are. That's how we exist in relationships in life. And I want everybody to remember that, not get confused by what we're doing on Sunday.
And I wanted everybody to know if you get somebody to come hang out with you, somebody wants to come hang out with us on Sunday, we're going to tell them about how we exist as a church family. We're going to talk about it because that's who we are. We walk through everyday life together because we're trying to do this. Because we believe this is how we grow and this is how we have life and this is how we remind ourselves constantly of the gospel. We believe that's what we're called to. And here's what we're going to do as a church.
We're going to try to grow and multiply at all levels. It says day by day they were added to their number, those who were being saved. What we want to see is that people who follow Jesus help other people follow Jesus. That disciples make disciples. So I'm a Jesus follower so automatically I'm going to help other people follow Jesus because it's actually good news.
It's actually real. It actually gives me hope. It actually gives me peace. He's actually rescued me. That for our group leaders, we have community groups and we have group leaders, that they would train other people to be group leaders, which is just someone who's intentionally going to give some extra time to help pastor our church family, to help gather people together, to help be organized, go out of their way to do that so that group leaders would train other group leaders, that groups would make other groups. My group has grown to the point now at some point we're going to have to multiply.
We have this debate all the time. They're like, but isn't it dividing? It feels like dividing. They'll use the word split. I'm like, we're not using split. Like that's not, that's a bad word.
We're multiplying because we're gaining. We're growing through it. We're seeing more people get to hop in. Here's what's beautiful. None of us, you didn't know anybody here two years ago. And now you can't imagine life without them.
And there are people who are not here today that that's true for. It'll be true for them in a year. There's two real people. You don't know them yet. We'll call them Eric and Sarah. They're real.
You don't know them because you haven't met them yet. But in a year, you won't be able to imagine what it was like, what life was like without Eric in it because of how much joy he brings because that time he just sat next to you on your couch after your relative died and was just there. You'll be able to look back a year from now and remember the time that you screamed your head off when he was baptized. And you won't be able to imagine what it was like to be in a community group to exist as church family without Eric around. Sarah, you'll look forward to hearing her laugh because she has an infectious laugh.
She laughs at dumb jokes that aren't funny and makes everyone else laugh with her because the way she laughs is great. currently, the place that she sits regularly when she gathers with your group throughout the week, just a throw pillow sitting there. But a year from now, you won't be able to imagine what it was like without Sarah around, without Sarah in your life to call. That's why we get to be who we get to be because there are real people in this city who don't have hope, who don't know Jesus, who haven't been set free, who are lonely and have no one to call and haven't been invited into family. The reason why we get to be, the reason why we're a gospel-centered community on mission is because of us.
Because we didn't have that at one point. Because there's people who exist in our city who were like us two, three, five years ago. without hope, without church family, without Jesus. If you take a circle and just draw it around West Columbia, just West Columbia, not Columbia, not Irma, not Lexington, just the West Columbia area. It's like a four-mile radius. 60,000 people in that circle aren't a part of a church family and most likely don't know Jesus. A lot of them probably think they do.
But they think it's about behavior. It's about work. And that's why we do what we do. And that's why we're going to continue to multiply groups and continue to train group leaders. And that's why it's worth it. Because we get to be God's church.
And His plan to save the world is the local church. It's groups of people that actually believe the gospel. It's communities centered around the gospel on mission. That's us. That's what we're shooting for. That's who we get to be.
And here's why it matters. Flip over to the book of Revelation. So in the book of Revelation if you're not really familiar with it you've probably heard weird stuff about it. We'll be on page 666. So go ahead and get that out of the way.
It's fitting that that page would be in the book of Revelation. But we're in the book of Revelation. Here's what happens in the book of Revelation. There was a disciple named John. He wrote the book of John. He wrote 1st, 2nd, 3rd John.
I think there's a 3rd John. It's real short. Yeah, he wrote 1st, 2nd, 3rd John because I know about the Bible, guys. And he wrote the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation is really old. He was exiled to an island.
He had already been boiled alive in oil but he didn't die. But he probably looked weird after that. But he was exiled to an island. The Holy Spirit takes him and shows him some future stuff and shows him some weird things and he just kind of writes down what he sees. At this point though he's getting a glimpse into heaven. He's getting a glimpse into eternity.
And so I just want us to take a second to look at that and see why this matters. We're going to be verse 9, chapter 7. After this I looked, that's John, he looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the Lamb. So God, the Father, is on the throne. The Lamb is Jesus who died for our sins as our sacrifice. Do you see what he just said?
Jesus in Matthew, chapter 28, what Razvalad read last week was, go and make disciples of all people groups. Jesus, so what we see right before he ascends in Acts, chapter 1, says, you're going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. God, God, everyone, everyone's invited in and everyone makes it. Not everyone on earth is going to make it, but God will not have a people group, a nation, a tribe not represented before his throne. And you know what's beautiful about that? When he looks out and sees them, he still sees people groups, nations, and tribes and languages.
Everyone's invited in and there is not one set culture for Christianity because God made everyone and every people group, every type of person shows and reflects some of his glory. Everybody gets invited in. That is going to be the best singing and worship that exists. I remember going up to visit Liberty University before I was going to go to seminary there and I walked in and there was two white dudes, skinny jeans and like flock of seagulls haircuts. Like, I mean, they just looked ridiculous. Um, like the, a super long version of like the Macklemore haircut or whatever.
Um, and I remember thinking, okay. And they both had, uh, acoustic guitars and they started just leading us in singing, uh, through worship. And I mean, I'm white and I was like, this is great. Like I totally got into it. Like we, I was able to worship because a white people can worship to two electric, uh, two acoustic guitars. Most white people can, can sing and praise Jesus.
That's some of our music. I remember last year we got together for Easter or one of the weeks before Easter. And we had like, uh, we had a violin and a, um, mandolin. And I mean, I was, we were, they were warming up and practicing. I was like, this is great. This is amazing music.
And it may be too white. Like if I'm liking it this much, it may be we've, we've overshot our goal of what we're doing. I remember gathering with a, um, a church in Lynchburg that was, uh, mostly African-American and a guy led worship from a drum set. And it was awesome. That was it. It was just a drum set and them singing.
It was great. And I had no clue what to do with that. Like, I'm like, do I cut? Okay. I don't like I, that's all I had. It was beautiful.
I just had to sit and listen, but I couldn't do anything with it. I remember in, in, uh, college being a part of a gospel choir. Um, and so it was Matt helped lead it, but it was, we were the only two white boys involved in this. And, uh, I remember I can, I can sing. Okay. If I'm standing next to somebody who can sing in the last day before our gospel choir, big showcase thing, we're, we're going over to the place to practice and aunt Frederick, uh, not aunt Frederick, uh, Antoine Thomas looks at us and says, all right, we walk in.
Here's what we're going to do. We're going to stomp, stomp, clap, stomp. And I was like, do what? You going to tell me this the last day? This is what I should have been practicing the whole time. They were like, what?
We go sing the same songs. I was like, what? We go sing the same songs. I got to stomp and clap while I sing. I'm not kidding you. And you can ask Anna for verification.
I could either sing the songs or I could clap and sway. I could not do both. And it was me and another friend of mine, he was on the end. And so I messed him up the entire time. We would run into each other because we were supposed to be swaying this way. And I was swaying this way and I'd be hitting him and he'd be looking at me like, dude, get together.
So eventually I just did this, kept up with the clapping and swaying. Didn't say a word because I didn't have it. I ain't got it. It just ain't going to happen. In eternity, we're all there. We're all welcomed in.
Everybody's invited and everything gets to be a part of it. And it doesn't get erased and it doesn't get washed over and it doesn't become, oh, only this culture, only this type of people, only this nationality, only this background, only this language, all of them, because God's God of all of them. And everyone's invited in. And we get to be his church in this city. Who gets to be a part of that? Who gets to be a part of looking like the kingdom of God already, going out of our way to invite everyone in because we want that throne room packed.
Let's read the rest of this because it gets good. We'll start back up at nine. After this, I looked and behold, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the lamb. So what we're screaming out is the gospel. We didn't earn this. We didn't accomplish this.
We didn't make this happen, but you did. Salvation belongs to you. And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. And they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God saying, amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen. And one of the elders addressed me saying, who are these clothed in white robes and from where have they come?
And I said, sir, you know, and he said to me, these are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb. There's going to be an eternity where we get to praise and worship Jesus that he cleaned us up through his own blood, that he made us right through his sacrifice, that we were all welcomed in because he was cast out, that we all get to have a real father, a true father, father because his for forsaken him, that we get to have a life because he died, that we're washed clean because he shed his blood for us. That's true. Eternity is real.
So are we going to go out of our way to multiply groups? Are we going to go out of our way to invite people in? Are we going to go out of our way to sacrifice? Absolutely. Because the gospel is real. Is that going to affect everyday life?
Absolutely. Why wouldn't it? Is that going to affect what we do with our money and our time? Absolutely. Why wouldn't it? Is that going to affect how we relate to our neighbors?
How we relate to our coworkers? Absolutely. Why wouldn't it? And we're Christians. We wouldn't have it any other way than to be family, to center our entire lives around the gospel and to see that throne room packed out with everybody. All those who knew they had need and ran to the king.
The Method
Transcript
My name is Chet. It's good to see everybody this morning. Excited to be able to meet here and excited for our second time being able to meet here at Glen Forest School. We are in our third week of Dawn of the Church. So we're finishing up today, which feels a little odd because we spent 11 weeks in the book of Colossians.
And so we've only been three weeks walking through the first couple of chapters of the book of Acts. And so it's felt a little short, but it's been I think it's been good. What we wanted to do is just spend a little bit of time and look at some family history. We wanted to look and see how the church started, what it looked like when the Holy Spirit first moved among a group of people, what it looked like for them to begin to follow Jesus, to begin to be the church. And so what we looked at was week one, we looked at the mission that we've been given as a church, that Jesus talking with his disciples says, this is what you're supposed to do.
This is what you're called to do. You're going to be my witnesses. And you're going to start here where they just killed me, which not many people get to say. Like not many people get to say that's where I just died. Like you don't usually get to tell people that you don't usually get to have this conversation. But Jesus had been crucified, he'd been murdered, and he didn't stay dead.
And so he says, you're going to start here where they just killed me. And then you're going to expand out from there. Then you're going to move to a place that you don't get along with these people. You have prejudice against them. And then you're going to move to the ends of the earth. And so we just looked at what the mission is that we're supposed to be witnesses of what Jesus has accomplished to the ends of the earth.
Last week we spent some time looking at the message that we're given to declare. So what the Holy Spirit actually, when he moves, what we point people to, what we talk about. And so today we're just going to look at the method by which that moves forward. The way that the mission, the message moves forward on the mission. And so it's kind of like this. This is a very simple way to think about it.
And so it's going to break down if you think about it too long. But think about it in a very simple way. And this can be helpful. So let's say we were going to make a sandwich and we were going to put some peanut butter on bread. And so that's the first part of what we're going to do. And we're going to put chunky peanut butter on the bread because we're going to eat the sandwich, not throw it away for bringing shame to sandwiches.
So it's going to be chunky peanut butter. And we're going to put that on the bread. And so in some ways the mission is that process. We're going to put chunky peanut butter on the bread. And it kind of answers the what's the overall goal and where. And so the overall goal is to get chunky peanut butter all over the surface of the bread.
And so that's what we looked at week one where Jesus says you're going to spread this message over the face of the earth. And so the message is kind of the chunky peanut butter. It's like the actual content of what's moving forward. And so what we're looking at today is the method, which would be like the knife that you used or the spoon that you used to spread the chunky peanut butter. Or, you know, like three fingers, depending on if you have roommates and or no one's watching. So, like, that's what we're looking at.
And so if the mission is spread the message all over the earth, and that's kind of the bread, that's what we looked at. Like, what are we doing and where is it going? The second week we looked at what's the content, what actually moves forward. And today we're looking at, like, how are we going to do that? How does the church actually accomplish this? And so we're going to be in Acts chapter 2.
I'm going to pray, and then we're going to start kind of looking at this and trying to answer this question. God, we thank you that you did come, that you did rescue us. And we pray that we would appropriately feel the weight of being called into your mission, that we wouldn't get complacent with what it is that we're supposed to be doing as we follow you. And, God, we ask that you would empower us through your Holy Spirit to continue your mission in this city. And we love you. We praise you.
Speak to us now as we have time to open your word and study. In Jesus' name, amen. So we'll be in Acts 2, starting in verse 41. I just want to point out in verse 38. Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the Holy Spirit. And so then 41 says, So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about 3,000 souls.
So, Peter says, repent, turn away from your sin, you'll be forgiven because of what Jesus has already done. It's not about what you do, but it's about what Jesus has done. And you'll receive the Holy Spirit. So the Spirit of God will come move and dwell among you. And then it says that 3,000 people became Christians. And so I said this last week.
That's like a logistical nightmare as far as, All right, cool. They had about 120. They're like, All right, we're going to start a church. We're going to do this thing. And then 3,000 people become Christians. And they were like, Okay, let's figure it out.
And so what we're going to look at as we look in this chapter, Luke, who's writing this story, is just going to describe what happens among the church when it first got started. So he's just telling us this is what it looked like. This is what they looked like as they first got started. And so in the Bible, there's prescriptive and descriptive sections of Scripture. So prescriptive is like a doctor gives you a prescription and it's, Go home, take these, rest this way, don't do this.
It's like, do, don't, this is what's best for you. That's like prescriptive. And so the Bible has some of that where it's like, Love your neighbors, be generous, be kind to one another, bear one another's burdens. Like it just straight up just says, do this. And then it has descriptive passages where it just says, It just tells a story, just tells you something that happened. And so sometimes we get confused when we're reading descriptive passages and think it somehow applies to what we're supposed to do.
So like there are times in the Bible, it talks about humans. So it talks about a bunch of messed up stuff. So Cain and Abel, Abel pleases God. Cain gets mad and kills him. And they're brothers. That's not a prescriptive thing.
That's not like the Bible saying, Here's how to handle your brother when he makes you angry. That's not what that is. It's not like, well, I'm going to go all Genesis 4 on this sucker. Like that's not what we get to do. It's just describing what happened. And so what this passage is doing is it's just going to describe for us what the early church looked like.
But in that we're going to get to see what the Holy Spirit does among a group of people that he's taking over, that he's moving in, that he's captivating, that he's changing. And so it's just the Holy Spirit moves in. And this is not. So we're going to look at it. It's going to describe the early church. And what it's not saying is, look at how well they organize themselves.
Look at the great leadership of the apostles. That's not what's happening. What it's saying is, look at what the Holy Spirit does when he begins to change, busted up, broken people, when he moves in and takes over. So we're looking at what the Holy Spirit does in believers as we read through this. We're going to see that the apostles mess stuff up consistently. They're in and out of jail because they're proclaiming the gospel.
So it's not that they're always being able to do great leadership stuff because half the time they're not there. Like people are having to pray, like let's get him out of jail. Some of them are going to be murdered. In Acts 6, they realize that they're not organized well. And so this isn't pointing to how to organize your church, how well it's what the Holy Spirit does among a group of people. Now, we should be organized.
That's one thing that we've seen as we've continued to grow is we're trying to organize ourselves better. We're trying to always train leaders and that sort of thing. So I just wanted to put a shameless plug out there. If you're good at logistical things, that's a Holy Spirit-empowered gift. Like if you can do spreadsheets, the Holy Spirit empowers that. That's a gift of administration.
I'm just letting you know. Biblically, there's a gift of administration. And so some people are really good at that kind of stuff and they feel like, well, I don't know how to really plug in and serve. That's actually how. And so they do try to get more organized. They're not organized yet.
And so we're right in line with Scripture being disorganized. But I want you to see that there's 3,000 new believers. Now, when we look in this section, we don't know how much time has passed. He just begins to describe the early church. So a couple days, some weeks.
Maybe he describes the first months of. Maybe he's describing the church in Jerusalem as a whole over the course of some years. But it basically says 3,000 people become believers, so 41. So those who received the word were baptized. And they were added that day about 3,000 souls. And then he immediately goes into.
And this is what they did. This is what they look like. So the majority of these people had been Christians for, like the apostles had only known and been following Jesus for three years. So think about that for a second. Some of us in here would say, I don't know, I've been a Christian for years. Some of you have been like, I think a couple of weeks-ish, give or take.
And that's what most of the people here were. The vast majority were like, I'm just trying to figure this thing out. And the truth is, that's the way the church should always look. There should always be people who have just become believers and are just trying to figure it out. And it's actually way more fun that way. It's way harder and way more messy.
Like, it's really nice to get 50 Christians who've been Christians for a really long time together and sit in a room. And maybe there's less mess, maybe they understand more, but it's way less fun. And so the whole time here, there's 3,000 new believers trying to figure out what it looks like to follow Jesus. And so it says, And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And so what we're about to look at is devoted themselves. What they devoted themselves to.
And so for us, devotion, like, I don't know if we understand devotion. I mean, we see it in certain places. Like, I want to talk to you about something very important. This week, football comes back. It's here, guys. Thursday.
Like, we got together. My community group meets on Thursday. And we got together and the discussion was, Who's got the SEC network? And somebody raised, We're going to your house. You're throwing a party. I don't know if you knew that.
You're going to be throwing a party because the Carolina game is going to be on Thursday. And you have the SEC network. And so we understand devotion a little bit when it comes to, like, being devoted to a brand. So you have people, like, devoted to Apple products. Who, like, always want to fight people who like Microsoft. Like, people who have apples get angry about it.
Like, I don't know. Like, this is better and I'm mad. Like, that's kind of their attitude. We see devotion when it comes to teams. So we have devotion, like a heart level loyalty.
Care about a team. You want to argue for why your team's the best. You want to argue against other teams. Like, if I see someone wearing orange, I just push them down. Like, that's just kind of how. No, we've got, we've got, I mean, in our church family, we've got people that are Clemson fans.
And every week, as we always do with everybody, we invite them to repent. And we've got Carolina fans that we were devoted. Like, we care about it. But I was talking to my wife's cousin who lives in Alabama. And he's a Clemson grad. And he said, I was talking to him about it.
He's an eye doctor there. And he goes, you know we're just kind of messing around in South Carolina when it comes to being devoted to teams, right? He's like, I'm in Alabama. And it's serious there. He said that he was, he's an eye doctor. He's about to perform surgery.
And he was standing in a room with about ten family members of this guy who's about to cut his eyes open. He said before this moment, he would always, like, have this conversation where it's like, okay, we're about to, y'all are about to have to leave. I'm about to wheel him back here. Does anybody have any more questions? Like, is there any clarification needed? Do you want to pray?
Like, he always just kind of opens it up for whatever's going to take place. And he said, they all just kind of stood there. And nobody asked any questions or anything. And then one by one, they walked by this guy. His name was Johnny. And they were going, Roll Tide, Johnny.
Roll Tide. Roll Tide, Johnny. Just, like, fist pumping and rubbing. He said, Roll Tide. Roll Tide, Johnny. And he said, like, 15 of them.
Roll Tide. And then they just walked out. And he was like, he said he wanted to be filming it, but he thought he might, like, get in trouble or something because he's a doctor. And so we have devotion there. We see devotion in, I think, I've actually gotten to where I like going to weddings. And I know that's weird.
I don't like, there's some things I don't like about it. Like, I don't actually like the whole process. Like, I don't like having to dress up. This past Easter, I was trying to dress up a little bit for when we did our stuff. And I asked Anna, like, how did I look? And she looked at me for a second.
And then she goes, you know, some people are supposed to dress up and other people aren't. And I think you're one of those aren't people. And I was like, that was very hurtful. But it's kind of true. So I don't like dressing up when I go to weddings.
I don't enjoy that process. But there's two things I kind of like about weddings. I like awkwardness. And weddings are awkward. So I always just kind of appreciate awkwardness.
And so when people are standing up doing their wedding, like, they don't know what to do. They don't know what to do with their hands. Everyone's sweating. I enjoy that. And then I enjoy the actual process of what we're doing. Weddings are intense.
It's two people standing up and saying, forsaking all others, I'm devoted to you. Like, it's me and you forever. Whatever comes, whatever's coming after us, like, this is going to be hard. And we're messed up and we're sinful. And this is going to be difficult. And it's not going to always be fun, but it's us forever.
And that's, I think, one of the best pictures we have when people genuinely take marriage seriously of what devotion is. And so what we're going to see here is not what the disciples did. We're actually looking at heart level change that the Holy Spirit did in them. Does that make sense? So it's the Holy Spirit moves in, begins to wreck shop, and changes loyalty and changes love in the hearts of these new believers.
Because it's not about how well they organized themselves and how well they disseminated the word and how well they did all these. It is absolutely, Holy Spirit moves in, 3,000 believers. There's no way this is going to be organized. And then the Holy Spirit changes all of them together to look this way. And so, as we read through this, last caveat, don't read through and think, oh, so that's what I do. That's what I do to work really hard to earn this.
No. This is what the Holy Spirit does in believers. And so if you're sitting in here and you're thinking, I don't really have a desire to do any of that. Some of that actually sounds kind of horrible. The response isn't, I'll work really hard, do those things, and then be a good Christian. No, the response is, repent of sin and place your faith in Jesus, and then the Holy Spirit does this in us.
Does that make sense? Is that fair? Okay. Four things they devoted themselves. Four things heart level change that the Holy Spirit made in them. It says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching.
Alright, so what that means is that they were devoted to what the apostles were telling them about Jesus. What the apostles were training them in. And so the apostles were the people who'd been following Jesus around for three years, and the apostles were teaching them, here's what Jesus' kingdom looks like. Here's what it looks like for us to follow him. Here's how this plays out in the world. And so when the Holy Spirit moves in and begins to take over the lives of believers, they automatically begin being sold out to learning who Jesus is, what he did, what they'd been called into, what he'd accomplished on their behalf, what it looked like for them to be the church.
And so for us, that might as well just say, devoted to the Bible. That's why we would spend all summer just walking through the book of Colossians. That's why we study the Bible when we get together in our community groups, because we're devoted to learning and growing and understanding what it means to be Jesus followers. That's one of my favorite things to see this in people. So you see somebody who starts kind of placing their faith in Jesus, and then they'll suddenly start being like, hey, I was reading this in Scripture the other day.
Hey, I was looking at this, and I have a question about this. And it's like, oh, there's the Holy Spirit at work, drawing somebody in to read the Bible, because that's what he does. The Holy Spirit starts working in somebody, and we just want to read. I used to have conversations with Russ, who's one of the guys, one of the first guys to become a Christian as a part of our church. And he would ask me questions. Like one time he looked at me and said, he said, okay, you've got cancer, and your dad has cancer cure serum.
But then he says, I'll give it to you if you worship me. What the crap is that about? And I was like, what? Your dad sounds horrible, Russ. And so he was a very antagonistic approach to who God was, and I had to break all of that down, which was like, that's not at all what's happened here. Jesus came and died for us.
Like he took our cancer and died with it so that we could be cured, and then we would want to worship. So like we had to have those conversations. And then Russ became a Christian, and his attitude changed. So he always had like a bajillion questions about the church and about the Bible, and they were always kind of antagonistic. And then he became a Christian, and he started asking questions like, hey, what do we believe about this? And his whole response was different.
Like it was just like, oh, well, we believe this, Russ. And we would just flip to the thing. He was like, oh, cool. Okay, okay. That sounds good. And then there were other times he was like, really?
I don't really like that. And it's like, oh, yeah, me neither. But that's what we believe. We repent. You know, God's right. We're not.
And so we get to have those conversations. But there's just something that happens in believers that we change to where we're devoted to learning, devoted to reading Scripture, devoted to growing in it. And that's what happened among them. So they were devoted to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship. So they were devoted to each other.
That's great. Fellowship basically means friendship with a purpose, like community with a goal. So it's fellowship. It's friendship around something that kind of holds you all together. And so if you're Lord of the Rings fans, the first book in the Lord of the Rings is the Fellowship of the Ring. It was like a group of people that came together for a goal.
And so that's what they were devoted to being around each other. They made time for it. As we read through the rest of it, it says day by day they were gathering in large groups and they were gathering in smaller groups, meeting in homes. And so they were devoted to, took time out of their schedule to be around church family. They were devoted to each other. The Holy Spirit changed their heart to where they actually wanted to go out of their way to be around each other.
And I think we find this true if you've been a part of a community group. And it's easy to kind of get out of the rhythm of being around church family. And a way I think about this sometimes is when Anna and I first got married, we moved into this really sketchy house that like uneven floors. And if you ran the washing machine while trying to eat a meal, the table was going, and you could just bounce your stuff up and down on it. And we lived there fixing it up instead of paying rent. So it was like, we'll paint and like get rid of the snakes and most of the cockroaches and the mice and you don't make us pay rent.
And he was like, deal. So that was the house we lived in for the first couple of months of being married. And we were painting one of the rooms and it had oil-based paint. So we were painting over it with oil-based paint. If you've ever painted much, oil-based paint is pretty intense. And so we were in this room and we're painting.
And, you know, painting is not fun. So we're painting for a little while. And then, you know, the paint smells horrible. And then you kind of get used to, you don't notice the paint smell anymore. And then we both kind of were like grumpy. And then everything was hilarious.
And so at one point I'm sitting there, we're both like laughing hysterically about something that didn't make any sense. And I was like, that wasn't funny. And I was like, but I think it was funny. And I was like, maybe we should go outside. And so we went outside and that first breath of air, it was like, oh yeah, this is what oxygen is like. This is what this was supposed to have been like the whole time.
And so that's what church community, that's what church family is like sometimes. It's like we get out of it and we don't realize that what we're breathing in and what we're walking in on a daily basis actually isn't good for us and actually isn't healthy and actually isn't right. And then the first time we get back around church family, we go, oh yeah. Oh yeah, this is what this was supposed to be like. Oh yeah, this is what I've forgotten what it was like to be around church family and actually have people I can talk about real life with. And there's something that the Holy Spirit does in us that draws us into that.
And so they devoted themselves to fellowship. Which, isn't that just great though? Like if the Holy Spirit is going to do something in us, isn't it great that he draws us in to be around each other? A bunch of sinful people who know Jesus. And so like, you know I'm going to be sinful. You don't expect amazing things out of me.
And I don't expect amazing things out of you. We expect amazing things out of Jesus. And it's just a group of people to be in life with and be friends with. Like I'm just excited that that's what the Holy Spirit does. So the Holy Spirit draws us into fellowship.
And the Apostle, it so says, That is not what the breaking of bread means. It kind of means two things. And it happens in the context of fellowship. And we'll see it later. It says from house to house they were breaking bread in their homes. What it means is they were devoted to Jesus' presence.
They were devoted to the presence of Jesus. It's an active, intentional process of taking communion together. So they shared meals. Communion meals were meals. They shared meals. We see later in the book of something that Paul wrote that slips my mind now.
I think it's Corinthians. He fusses at them for some of them eating too much. And some of them not having any when they finally show up. And some people drinking enough to be drunk. And so like it's an actual meal that would have taken a while. And they would share meals together with the intense purpose of gathering around the gospel.
So Jesus on the last night before he was crucified said, This is my body. He took bread. He said, This is my body broken for you. And this is the blood of the new covenant which I pour out on your behalf. And so when it says that they were devoted to the breaking of bread, what it means is they were devoted to actively participating in the gospel together. That they intentionally gathered around the gospel.
They intentionally actively sought the presence of Jesus in their fellowship. So like sometimes my community group will get together and we say we're going to gospel each other. Which just means tell us what's going on in your life. And let's remind each other of how the gospel applies to that. Tell us what's going on in your life. And let's remind each other of how Jesus is at work in that.
And how he rescues us in that. And how the gospel works in that. And it can be really awkward sometimes. But it's just us saying we're intentionally going to press into the gospel. We're intentionally going to be centered around the gospel. And that's what happened.
They automatically became gospel centered people. They automatically began to devote themselves to the presence of Jesus. And so that these communities that gathered in homes were around the gospel. Their intense purpose was their intentional purposeful approach to walking. And what it looked like to have the gospel effect who they were. So they devoted themselves to the presence of Jesus.
And the prayers. Which just makes sense. They devoted themselves to prayer. That as the Holy Spirit works in us he draws us towards God. Because prayer is a couple things for believers. It's asking God to work.
To move. So as Christians what we believe is that we didn't fix this on our own. That we didn't rescue ourselves. But that Jesus did. That we needed help. We needed something outside of us to rescue us.
That's why we fill ourselves up with the Bible. Because it's not about finding our inner person who's wonderful. Like that's not what we're shooting for as Christians. I can tell you pretty clearly my inner person is not wonderful. So like y'all don't want to meet more of him.
You want more of the Bible filling me up. And we want more of the Holy Spirit working and moving. And so prayer is just us saying. This isn't up to us. This isn't about us being great. This isn't about us being moral.
This isn't about us being smart. And so we just pray and ask the Holy Spirit to move. Ask God to work. It's just active surrender. And so they devoted themselves to prayer. And all of this kind of happens in the context of community.
In the context of fellowship. They were devoted to each other. Devoted to learning with each other. Devoted to praying with each other. And devoted to intentionally building themselves around the presence of Jesus. And the gospel work in their life.
And that's what the Holy Spirit did in them. That's how the Holy Spirit began to work in them. And so the response again isn't. Cool. I'll do those four things. The response is the Holy Spirit does this in us.
And so if you don't have a desire for that. We just repent and become Christians. We place our faith in Jesus. And the Holy Spirit begins to work. So this is what happens.
This is what they began to devote themselves to. This is what begins to take place in a minute. And then it's going to tell us what they looked like. So 43. And all came upon every soul. And many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
And all who believed were together. And had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings. And distributing to the proceeds to all. As any had need. And day by day attending the temple together.
So they got together in large groups. And breaking bread in their homes. So then they gathered in smaller groups. And shared meals together to be intentional about. The gospel taking place in their hearts. And it says this is day by day.
Breaking bread in their homes. They received their food with glad and generous hearts. Praising God and having favor with all the people. So we're going to stop there. So here's what happens.
It says. They devoted themselves to these four things. And then this is what they look like. They had glad and generous hearts. They were being generous to one another. People were selling stuff that they had.
So that they could give more to other people. People were receiving gladly. So here. When the Holy Spirit moves in. Jesus comes after our passions. He actually begins to change in us what we care about.
What we love. Where our loyalties lie. And so then you have a group of people that become generous. Wait. Wait. Wait.
Wait. The God of heaven stepped out of heaven. So that I could have good things. Like he gave up all good things to suffer on my behalf. And he died in my place. Where I deserve to be punished.
Where I deserve to die. He died in my place. So that I could have life. So that I could have joy. And eventually I could go to heaven. Like I could join him in heaven.
He stepped away from heaven. So that I could have good things. Well suddenly that group of people doesn't hold on to their possessions the same way anymore. It's like oh you need stuff? Yeah. I've got stuff.
Oh you need help with that? I can help with that. Because the God of heaven gave up everything. So that I could have everything. And since I already have everything. Everything I have is his.
And yours. That's what happened. They began to sell their possessions. And give things away. So it's like what I had designed in my brain was heaven.
Where I wanted to live. And how I wanted to design my life. And how I wanted it to look. And the possessions I wanted to have. Heaven isn't the same to me anymore. And so I can give these things up.
To be a part of this community that Jesus has changed. And so it says they were generous. They. Everything they had. They had in common. It was like you need this.
You can have it. It's all of the things I have. Are given to me by Jesus. And then it says that they. Distributing the proceeds to any as all had need. And day by day.
Attending the temple together. And breaking bread in their homes. They received their food. With glad and generous hearts. Not only were they generous in giving. And gracious in giving.
They were generous. And gracious in receiving. And so that's actually another way that the gospel works among this group of people. Among Christians. Is it is. Oh.
Everything I have. Everything I've ever been given. Was given to me by grace. So when someone else gives. I can just receive. Because I know how to receive.
By grace. The gospel has changed my heart to where I can receive. Like have you ever noticed that. That there's something in us. Automatically. That when someone gives us something.
We feel like we owe them. You ever notice that. Like someone serves you. Or does something nice for you. And you feel like they. That you owe them.
So like before. Somebody will give you a birthday gift. And you're like. Oh sweet. A birthday gift. Ah.
Crap. I'm going to have to remember your birthday now. So like people give me stuff. I'm like. Dang it. I am never going to remember your birthday.
So I just like. I'll thank them. And be like. Just so you know. I'm not reciprocating. Unless you remind me.
Like. But there's something in you. That feels that. Like when someone's generous to you. You want to. You want to be generous back.
And you almost feel like you owe a debt now. Because someone was nice. And what it says is. They received. With glad and generous hearts. That the gospel actually moves in.
To make people generous. In giving and receiving. To make people gracious. In giving and receiving. And so that they were able to just. Hey.
Yeah. I actually do need. The whole gospel is predicated on the fact. That we need. That we're broken. That we're busted.
That we fall short. And so it's like. Sometimes in life. It's like. I'm. Not only do I need the gospel.
To change me. And to save me. From my sin. But I actually need help. Paying bills right now. And the gospel is that I fall short.
Not that I'm great. Not that I can prove myself. And so the gospel actually frees me up. To walk through life. And get help. Walk through life.
And receive assistance. And not feel bad about it. Isn't that beautiful? And doesn't that just mess. With your Americanness? Doesn't that kind of annoy you?
It annoys me. It's like. No. No. I need to prove that I'm awesome. It's like.
Well the gospel says you're not. So like. When Jesus died on the cross. He definitively declared. Chet is busted. And he needs my help.
Because if there were some of us. Who were going to work it out. He wouldn't have had to die. Like if there were some of us. Who were just going to be good enough. On our own.
He wouldn't have had to go to the cross. And so when he went to the cross. He declared definitively. For everyone in this room. You need help. You're not going to work it out.
You need Jesus. To step in. On your behalf. And that applies to everything. And so then we actually become generous in giving and receiving. And that's what the church did.
It became a generous people. And it says they were glad. Isn't that great? It doesn't say the Holy Spirit came in. And 3,000 people became believers. And they all got really angry.
And mad about morals. And they gathered together. To fuss at one another. And to hit themselves with whips. And cry. Like that's not what it says.
It says the Holy Spirit moves among the people. And they became generous. And gracious. And happy. And that's cool. That's a beautiful thing to be true.
That that's what the Holy Spirit does. Because it wasn't the apostles training them to do this. It was 3,000 people being changed by the Holy Spirit. To follow him. And that's what he does among us. It was really cool.
Last week. I don't know if y'all have gotten to meet. Some of y'all may have been able to meet Billy Briggs. Who's kind of the facilities guy here. And this place has been really gracious with us. And good with us.
But we were talking to him last week. And it was funny. After we had done everything. We were cleaning up. And then there was just a handful. I mean a decent amount of people just hanging out and talking.
Because we always do that. We hang out in our church family and talk. And have fun together. And that's why we brought the cornhole boards in here. Because it was too hot last week to do them outside. So we want to be able to hang out and be church family when we're done.
And so we were doing that. And he was showing Matt and I like how to not tear things up. And how to get in the doors. And get out of the doors. And how to lock stuff. And he stops at one point and looks at me.
And Matt was over talking to people. And he goes, so you're like actually the pastor. Huh. And I said, I was like, well, yeah, Matt and I are. And he goes, okay. He's like, we didn't know.
Because we'd only ever seen y'all. But we thought maybe the pastor was going to show up later. Like riding in on a golden chariot. And y'all were like his henchmen or like lackeys or something. And I was like, I'm glad I threw off that vibe. That lackey henchman vibe.
And so it was like, yep, no, it's us. So I bet you regret your decision to enter into a deal with us now. Like I don't know what his thought process was. And then he was just talking about it. He goes, and we're sitting there. We were walking up.
And we see everybody just kind of hanging out and talking and laughing. And I mean, it's been, you know, 30, 45 minutes after we were done. And they're hanging out. And he goes, well, I think it was good. I think it was a good space for y'all. And I think they enjoyed stuff.
He's like, they're still here. And I was like, oh, this is what we do. I said, a bunch of us are going to go eat now. That's because we like food and each other. So like that's what we're going to do.
And he said, he said, man, that's great. He said, that's what churches should look like. He said, we've had them before, had to meet here in our facility. And like five minutes afterwards, people are flashing the lights. Like, back it up. This is what he said.
He said, flashing the lights like, hey, our God thing's over. The week's about to start. And I was just like, yeah. And like, you don't realize it. I mean, I get into this and feel like this is what it's supposed to be. And this is what the Holy Spirit does among people.
They become glad and generous and enjoy each other and are devoted to each other. And it's beautiful. And here's what happens. So what we've said is God's given us a mission to see the message move forward, which is that Jesus came and died on our behalf and that we weren't going to earn anything. We weren't going to save ourselves. We weren't going to accomplish this on our own through our good morals or our really smartiness.
It's wasn't going to happen. Our amazing religious ideas weren't going to happen. That Jesus had to step in and rescue us. And so the message that was declared is you're sinful. You killed Jesus. He had to die for you.
And he saves you. So he's Lord and Christ. Like he is the one who's rescued us. This is what Peter stands up and declares. And so we have a mission to move that out everywhere. To declare that message everywhere.
That we need Jesus. That we need Jesus. And then what we see is this is how it's done. When the Holy Spirit moves into a group of people, what we've talked about is what they automatically look like. But what he does is he makes communities of people just like this.
And that's actually how the mission moves forward. That's actually how the message gets spread is that there's communities of people just like this. That actually have the Holy Spirit working in them. 47. Well here we'll start at, we'll read the whole thing. Because reading the Bible is good.
42. And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship. To the breaking of bread and prayers. And all came upon every soul. And many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common.
And they were selling their possessions and belongings. And distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes. They received their food with glad and generous hearts. Praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
The way the Holy Spirit works in his people to move the message forward. Is communities of people who are changed and empowered by the Holy Spirit. To gather themselves around the gospel. To intentionally practice the presence of Jesus. And to grow. To be in normal everyday life.
It says it was day by day God added to them those who were being saved. Day by day. Day by day. That more and more and more and more and more and more people became Christians. Got around and said no I want to be a part of this. Not only do I hear what you're saying about Jesus.
But I see it. I see generosity. I see graciousness. I see your ability to receive things. And I always feel like I have to prove myself. And I see that you don't feel that.
Why is that? Oh the gospel. I can't prove myself. So it would really be horrible to try to feel like I had to. I'm freed up by Jesus. So there's groups of people that gather around this.
And the communities of people that move this forward. And people get saved. That's how we walk on mission. Is allowing the Holy Spirit to change us. To move in us. And to move among us.
And day by day people become believers. As we devote ourselves. As the church devotes themselves. To growing and understanding what we're called into. Who Jesus is and what he's done. Devote ourselves to each other.
Devote ourselves to intentionally being about the gospel. Practicing the presence of Jesus. And to praying. To asking and begging God to show up. And to do what only he can do. Because it says the Lord added to their number.
At no point is it about how amazing these believers were. And at all points is it about what the Holy Spirit does among a group of people. As he begins to wreck shop and take over their hearts. And that is how God has designed his church to move forward. That's our family history. That's how it got started.
And that's what we get to be in this city. We get to be communities of people intentionally centered around the gospel. Devoted to Jesus and his church. To having the Holy Spirit work in our hearts to change us. That's us. That gets to be us because of the Holy Spirit.
Because of who God is. And it's beautiful. And it's fun. And it's important. To get to invite more people in to what's already been accomplished for us in the cross. Band's going to come back up.
We're going to sing. And then we're going to do this. We're going to be communities of people intentionally centered around the gospel. We're going to gather together in large groups. We're going to meet in homes. Share bread.
Intentionally be about Jesus and what he's done for us. We're going to pray. Because we need Jesus to show up. If those statistics are still true. 48,000 people inside of like a six mile radius. That doesn't include Columbia.
There's like 100,000 people within a five mile radius of the state house that don't know Jesus. We're just talking about the West Columbia area is 48,000. We're not getting into Irmo. We've got a group meeting in Irmo. We didn't even touch people out there with that number. We've been given a mission.
We've been given a message that's actually good news. And we've been given the means by which to do that. The method that God has designed that as communities of people changed by the Holy Spirit. I'm going to pray. We're going to stand up and sing. And then we're going to be the church.
As we respond to who Jesus is. As we allow the Holy Spirit to work in us. We've got communion set up. And communion is just. So they intentionally gathered together.
And they partook in. They broke bread together. They shared a meal that was an intentional communion meal. To remind themselves of what Jesus had accomplished. And one of the ways that we do that is we have some juice and some bread set up. Which is just to actively remind ourselves of the need for the gospel.
And so as a large group today we're going to do that. We're going to break bread together. In a very simple way. And then when we gather together in our homes. We're going to share meals together. We're intentionally remembering that we need Jesus.
So if you're a believer. And want to partake in communion. Want to remind yourself of your need for the gospel. Want to celebrate and actively participate in the presence of Jesus. We've got that set up at both sides of the room. If you're sitting here and you thought.
I don't really have a desire to be devoted to any of those things. Then the response isn't work really hard. And you can earn it. The response is realize that you need Jesus. That he actively works in our hearts. That he wants to change us.
And that's what happens among believers. We get to repent. We get to place our faith in Jesus. And he does this in us. God we thank you. For your grace.
And God we ask. As right now the believers in this room. As we devote ourselves to prayer. As we do what we do all the time. Where we pray together. God we ask that your Holy Spirit would.
Empower this in our souls. That your Holy Spirit would work in our hearts. To change us. To make us more. Like you. That you would help us be devoted to these things.
We praise you for your grace. And your love. In Jesus name. Amen.