It Takes a Church

Listen Online:

Transcript:

Turn with me, if you would, to Acts chapter 2, please. I say I’m thrilled to be here. I’m thrilled to go anywhere where they will let me preach.

Acts chapter 2. Today I’m going to talk to you about two of the subjects that are nearest and dearest to my heart. This morning we’re going to talk about the role of the local church, and then tonight we’re going to talk about the character of God.

I think these are both important subjects that we need to talk about. As you probably noticed, if you’ve been bored enough to sit down and read the resume of mine that they’ve included in the bulletin, you’ll notice that Christian and I are part of a church planting team for the BMA of Oklahoma. They’re in Norman.

We actually live about a mile away from the OU campus. So we’ve been working for about a year, helping with a team that’s planting small groups there with the intent of starting churches, because there’s not a BMA church in Norman. It’s the third largest city in Oklahoma, and there used to be one or two BMA churches there, but they folded in the 80s, and there just aren’t a whole lot of good churches there.

There are some, but there just aren’t a whole lot of good ones. It’s the most unchurched city in Oklahoma, and so we’ve gone and tried to work to remedy that, and it’s been slow going, but we’ve seen some progress. But what we see a lot of is not just people that are hostile to the things of God.

We expected some of that with the college community and just the culture there. We expected some of that. But what we’ve also seen are people that are hostile toward the local church.

We’ve seen people that profess to be Christians who are hostile toward the local church. And that breaks my heart because the local church is so important to me. I was raised in church.

I was a weird kid when we would have business meeting in church when I was little. I was saved and baptized at 5, so I was a member of the church at 5. And at 5, 6, 7, they’d have business meeting and they’d send the kids to go out and play, and I wouldn’t hear of it.

I wanted to be in business meeting. Now I can’t wait to get out of business meeting. I’ve always loved being at church, being involved in everything to do with the local church.

It’s just always been a part of my life and who I am. And it’s always been something near and dear to my heart. to see the hostility that some people professing Christians have toward the church.

They’re interested in God, they’re interested in Jesus, they’ll even study the Bible with you, but they don’t want to be part of the local church. That breaks my heart because the local church was God’s design to bring us together to serve one another, to serve the community, to teach one another, hold each other accountable. Everything that we’re supposed to do as Christians is easier or better because of the local church.

And when people don’t get that, I think, you know, you can study the Bible at home, you can love God at home, you can do all these things, and you should. You should be a consistent Christian once you walk out these doors. You can do all the things you’re supposed to do as a Christian at home, but you’re more able to do it when you have the local church.

That’s why God designed it. It wasn’t just for us to come and be here on Sundays and listen to a fantastic sermon or a not-so-fantastic sermon, depending on who you’ve got up here, and then go home. God put us together to be the body of Christ, to be his hands and feet in this community.

And so when people are hostile toward that, I just don’t understand it until I look around. And as I talked to you this morning, I’m not criticizing anything you all are doing because I don’t know that much about what you’re doing. And what I’ve heard so far is good.

I’ve heard about how loving you are and how committed to each other you are and just the spirit in this church. And it sounds like a great thing. But I’ve noticed as I’ve looked around at some of the churches in our area that so many of them have either become completely inward focused, where it’s all about taking care of ourselves and one another and no thought to the outside world, or it’s become like a country club where everybody comes and enjoys what it has to offer and goes home and they never are a part of each other’s lives.

They don’t know anything about each other and they’re really not even hearing the Bible. They’re not hearing the gospel. It’s just become a country club atmosphere.

And folks, neither of those things are what the local church is supposed to be. The local church is not supposed to be just a little clique where we focus on each other and nothing else outside. And it’s not supposed to be something where we come and get entertained and then go home and nothing ever changes.

And I look at those and I think no wonder some people are soured on the local church. Or they go into places where people are more concerned with the clothes that they wear than the condition of their heart. I think no wonder people are soured on the local church.

Folks, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. But if we make an effort, if we make a concerted effort to not just do church, not just have church, but be the church that God designed the church to be, there is nothing on earth that will accomplish the things that the local church can accomplish. So I want to look this morning at Acts chapter 2.

It’s probably a familiar passage to most of us. In Acts chapter 2, I won’t read through the whole chapter. You’re more than welcome to go do that later.

We’re going to look at the end of the chapter. In the beginning is Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, where he stands up before the Jews that are there at Jerusalem, who’ve come from all over the world, and he preaches to them. And not only does he preach to them, but they actually hear the gospel message in their own languages.

It was an incredible thing that happened at Pentecost. And his message to them was that this Jesus that they had crucified was the one that they’d been looking for all along, the anointed one, the Messiah of God, that he had sent to save Israel from their sins, and that they had crucified and rejected him, and he calls on them to repent and turn to Christ. And we pick up in verse 37, and I really do encourage you to go back and read Peter’s message. It’s phenomenal. Better than anything I could preach to you. But in verse 37, after he tells them about Christ, it says, When they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?

So they were not only moved by this, it says they were pricked in their heart, they were cut in their hearts. It was a cutting message that they not only heard and thought, hmm, that’s interesting, but they said, okay, now what do we do because of what we’ve heard? It was something that compelled them to action.

And in verse 38, it says, Then Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. And that didn’t mean repent and be baptized, baptism that your sins will be forgiven, but he was telling them it was important for them to be baptized. He said, the promises unto you and to your children and to all that are far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, save yourselves from this untoward generation.

And so he’s told them, repent, be baptized, be part of this local church that we’re getting ready to see here. And I’d like to take the time to explain Acts 2. 38 a little better, but that would have to be a separate message altogether.

But he tells them basically, Turn toward Christ. Turn toward Christ and away from this wicked generation, this untoward generation. And they’d been pricked in their hearts. He tells them what to do.

And in verse 41, it says, Then they that gladly received his word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers. And fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.

and all that believed were together and had all things common, and sold their possessions and goods and parted them out to all men as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.

My goodness, in one day they saw 3,000 people added to this church. I don’t know that there’s any church in America that could handle an influx of 3,000 people in one day. But that’s what happened, and they knew how to deal with it.

And the reason those people were added was because the church was doing what the church was supposed to be doing. The church was doing things that were described just prior to that, and those are what we’re going to talk about this morning. The things that the first church there in Jerusalem did right.

Things that God doesn’t say at the end of this passage, now go and do all these things. this is a commandment, although we could look other places in the New Testament, and he does tell us to do these things. But we can look at just their example here and see what the local church is supposed to look like when it actually functions as the local church, and what the heart is, what the attitude is.

The first thing that the local church is supposed to do, if it’s going to be the local church God designed it to be, is to teach the truth. In verse 42, it says, and they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine. What was the apostles’ doctrine?

The apostles’ doctrine were the things that Jesus taught. Because the apostles, Peter, James, and John, the others, they were teaching the things that they had learned from Jesus Christ. They weren’t teaching things that they had come up with because, I’m sorry, who would want to invent a religion that was going to make, eventually going to make everybody mad at them, get them martyred? Nobody in their right mind does that and says, I’m just going to come up with something new that’s going to put me at risk like that, knowing where it’s going to lead.

Jesus had been clear about where all this was going to lead. These were not new ideas that they had come up with on their own. These were the teachings of Christ. The apostles’ doctrine was Bible truth.

The apostles were teaching Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises for thousands of years in the Old Testament, as we see in the beginning of Acts chapter 2. Peter appeals back to the Psalms and the writings of David, and he tells them that this is who God has been promising all this time. So the apostles’ doctrine was that Jesus was the anointed one, the promised one of God, who came and was crucified to save Israel from their sins.

He shed his blood. He died on the cross to earn them forgiveness that they needed desperately for the sins that they committed against God. That was the apostles doctrine.

Simply put, it was truth. They were teaching the truth, not their opinions, not their preferences. They were teaching the truth of God’s work.

And they weren’t just teaching it. It says they continued steadfastly. Not only were they teaching it, they weren’t teaching it just because it was convenient.

They were not moved or shaken from God’s truth. They were steadfast in teaching the truth. That’s what the local church needs to be doing today.

And by the way, as I give you these things, I’m not giving you these in order of importance or anything, just in the order that we see them here in Acts chapter 2. They were teaching God’s truth to people. That’s what the local church needs to be doing today.

Because if not us, where else is it going to happen? Can we go to the movies and hear that Christ died for us and rose again, and that we can have a relationship with God, we can have forgiveness of sins as a result of his blood and his death on that cross. Are we going to hear that from Hollywood?

When the Bible says you must be born again, are we going to see that on television? No. When God says there’s a right way to live and a wrong way to live, we’re not going to hear that down the street.

We’re not going to hear that at the bar. We’re not going to hear that at the football game. When it comes to God’s truth, there’s one place that is responsible for teaching it, and that’s the local church.

It’s the local church. There’s a reason Paul, in talking to Timothy, writing to Timothy, rather, calls the local church the pillar and the ground of truth. That this local church ought to be the one proclaiming God’s word.

And not just the parts we’re comfortable with, not just the parts that are easy, but the whole counsel of God. Every bit of God’s truth ought to be what we’re committed to. That we’re going to tell the world the truth.

Whether they want to hear it, sometimes there are going to be things that the world doesn’t want to hear. Sometimes there are going to be things from God’s word that we don’t want to hear. But they’re part of God’s word and we need to hear them because God’s left them here for us.

And so it’s the local church’s job to teach the truth because if not here, nobody’s going to be able to hear it anywhere. We have a responsibility to make sure that we know God’s word, that we teach one another God’s word, hold each other accountable to it. That’s the local church’s job.

I assume most of you heard about the predictions back in May that the rapture was coming on the 21st, Harold Camping, all of that. Did that make the news here? It did in Oklahoma, and I was kind of surprised because people hadn’t paid attention to him.

I kind of have because I’ve researched cults and all that stuff. kind of been watching him for a little while, but it showed up on the news, and I thought, hey, people are waking up to this. One of the interesting things that Harold Camping did, you know, he duped a lot of people into saying that the rapture was going to happen on May 21st, and now he’s saying, oh, I just was off by a few months, it’s coming in October, which I don’t understand.

Clearly, the Bible says no man knows the date or the hour, so why set dates, why speculate? And I think these people were so into their Bibles, they should have known that, but one of the interesting things that Harold Camping did several years ago was on his radio broadcast was to tell people that God has ended the church age, which where he saw that in the Bible or what spirit told him that, I’d like to know. But he said, God has ended the church age, it’s over with, and God said all the churches are corrupt, come out of them, and don’t go to the churches anymore, just stay home and listen to my broadcasts.

Easy to see why people are fooled when he said, come out of the Bible teaching churches and just listen to my broadcasts when he wasn’t paying attention to what the Bible said, or he was looking for deeper meanings than just what the Bible said, what he could make it to say. And I’m not saying that every local congregation on earth is teaching the Bible because we know they’re not. But folks, when we get separated from the Bible believing, Bible teaching, Christ proclaiming church, it becomes a lot easier to fall into to errors.

It becomes a lot easier to fall into sin. And so this local church, just like any local church, has got to be one that teaches the truth and stands for the truth steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine. And he doesn’t stop there.

I don’t want to give the impression that the local church is just somewhere we come to get pounded on Sundays and go home feeling bad about ourselves. In verse 42, he says, and they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship. So there’s also, it’s not just a Sunday morning, come and hear the sermon and take it to heart and go home kind of Christianity.

The local church is here to foster fellowship. It’s here to teach truth and to foster fellowship. Fellowship basically includes all the things that we do together in Christ’s name.

Spending time together, building one another up, the things where the Bible says wherever two or more are gathered. Folks, we need each other. This world is growing ever more hostile toward the things of God.

It’s, or at least this country is. You know, the world has always been hostile towards Christ. The world has always been hostile toward the things of God. We had kind of a reprieve from that for a few hundred years in this country, but things are, even here, are swinging in that direction.

And folks, it’s harder and harder to be a Christian and to live the life that God has called us to live if we’re going to do it on our own. We need one another. That’s one of the big reasons that God put us together is because when we’re trying to serve Christ and we’re fighting off the temptations fighting off sin and error and trying to walk in the straight and narrow, we need somebody to lean on at times.

And at times, we can always lean on Jesus, but at times we need somebody here with skin on them. So God has put us together. And folks, in the local church, we ought to have fellowship with each other.

We ought to be a part of each other’s lives. As we’ve been traveling, excuse me, as we’ve been traveling, doing this mission work, we don’t have Sunday services yet in Norman, while I’m able to be here this morning. We meet during the week.

And so on Sundays, Christian and I and Benjamin since he’s gotten here have been traveling the state of Oklahoma a lot to different churches just to promote the work, let them know what’s going on. And we’ve gotten to see a lot of good churches. We’ve gotten to see a lot of bad churches.

And when I say bad churches, I don’t mean that they’re bad people. I just mean that they’ve a while ago forgotten to do the things that they’re supposed to do. The fellowship one is typically something that churches do very well.

Just to tell you a brief story, though, about how important fellowship is, The first church I pastored, and I’m not gossiping about another church because we talked about this while I was there. They know this. Other churches in the area know this.

But the first church I pastored, when I came in, I came in as the associate. They’d had an interim pastor for several years because they’d not been able to find a pastor. And the church had a reputation in the area for just a series of splits over the last 20 years that had brought it down to about 6 to 12 people, depending on the Sunday.

And I came in as the associate pastor with the understanding that there was going to be a transition time, and then I was going to take over as pastor. And there were still splits there, even after we got there, while I was the associate. And the church wasn’t growing.

We couldn’t get people from the neighborhood to come to church if we begged them, because they knew the things that were going on. And Christian and I, the church asked us, come here and help us grow and get back on track. And we realized very quickly the first thing we had to do was to get them to like each other.

That’s important, folks. I don’t know if you realize that, but in the local church, it’s important that we like each other. It just is.

When you don’t like each other, there are going to be things like physical altercations in the hallway after business meeting. I’m not kidding. We saw some of that.

It’s important. You know, we all say we love each other. We’re Christians.

We love each other. It’s important that we like each other, too. If not, we’re not going to have fellowship.

And the world’s going to look at us and say, that group of people there, why would I want to have anything to do with it? It’s important that we love each other. It’s important that we like each other.

I tell Christian all the time, I like you. And early on in our marriage, she said, I thought you loved me. I do, but I like you too.

And that’s important for you to know too. Because sometimes you can, your family, for example, sometimes you can love them, but you don’t always like them. You have to love them.

You don’t have to like them, but it’s better if you do. Folks, in the local church, we need to love and like each other. We need to have fellowship with each other.

We need to have a bond with one another, that we’re connected to each other, that we’re a part of each other’s lives, even outside of this Sunday morning meeting. I don’t mean that we need to all sell our houses and move into a compound in the mountains so we can all be together. But folks, we need to have fellowship with each other.

We need to be a part of each other’s lives because it’s just too hard out there to be a Christian if we’re not. I’ve heard people say that Christianity is a crutch for the weak. Guilty as charged.

I couldn’t do what God could do for me. I’ve heard people say that the church is a crutch. Again, guilty as charged.

None of us is strong enough to do what we’re supposed to do alone. And so we need each other, and we need fellowship and closeness in the body so that we can support each other. And the way you know that if you’ve actually had fellowship instead of we’ve just come and sit and occupied a pew together is if you leave from this place, is it painful?

I don’t mean do you get in your car to go home for lunch, is it painful? I mean you miss a Sunday and you miss the people. Or you think about leaving and it just, you know, it tugs at you.

Folks, we need to have a connection to one another in the local church. You need to have a connection to one another. You need to be a part of each other’s lives and not just people who occupy a pew together.

And again, I’m not saying that you don’t. I don’t know that. We came in early this morning and finally found everybody down in the fellowship hall, and y’all looked like you were getting along pretty well.

Y’all looked like y’all were genuinely enjoying spending some time together, and that’s a sign of good fellowship. Folks, that’s one of the jobs of the local church. And when people walk into people that are just desperate to have somebody love them, they walk into a church of 3,000 people and nobody says hi to them.

They don’t know anybody. No wonder they think, why do I want a part of this? I can do this at home, and they can.

They can sit and listen to a sermon at home. But the local church is a place that we go to be loved and supported by one another and to support one another. We need to have fellowship.

The third thing, certainly not third in importance, but the third thing we see here in the text is to glorify God. One of the things that the church is supposed to do. It says in verse 43, And fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.

Now, we know that the apostles were not doing the things that they were doing under their own power. It’s not like Paul, Paul wasn’t there at that point. It’s not like Peter had the ability within himself to just zap something and turn water into wine.

He didn’t have the power Jesus did. But the things that they were able to do, Jesus had said that there would be signs and miracles following these early apostles. He had given them that power.

He had given them that authority. So basically what the people were seeing, these miracles, these wonders that were being done, was the power of God working through these apostles. And they saw that and they recognized that.

These people, these Jewish people that were there at the time realized that’s the power of God. And they saw these things, and it says, and fear came upon every soul. God knew that when he gave these people the power, when he worked through them, that the people around them would see these miracles, would see these signs, would recognize them for what they were, that they were the power of God.

And he knew how they would react, and so he worked through the apostles, and as a result it said, fear came upon every soul. And I don’t know if that meant they were scared to death. It might have been.

Some of them might have been scared to death. I don’t know if it was just a reverence for the power of God. It could be both.

We see verses in the Bible, and I’ve heard people say that when we see verses about fearing God, that it’s not being afraid. It’s just a healthy reverence for God. Folks, I think a healthy reverence for God ought to include a little bit of fear in his presence.

That we know he loves us as a father, but he is still the God of this universe. And folks, they saw this. They saw this power working through the apostles, and they knew where it came from.

And fear came upon every soul, a reverence for God. And we know it wasn’t just fear toward the apostles because of the way they react to God. They were already primed there and knowing that their hearts were far from God and what is it that we need to do.

And they saw these things and folks, everybody saw it and recognized for what it was. And they feared people’s attention was turned to God because they saw what the apostles were doing. One of the jobs of the local church is to glorify God.

When we do things, do people look at that and say, wow, God is really moving? When things happen here, when you all are serving and ministering, when we’re serving and ministering back in Oklahoma, do people look at that and say, oh, there’s just another church doing stuff? Or do they say, God is really doing something incredible here?

When we do something, do we take the credit for it, or do we give God the glory for it? It’s really easy. Sometimes I don’t know if people mean it or if it’s just something you say, but we’ll go and fill in at churches, and people will say, great sermon.

And sometimes I’m thinking, what church service were you at? Because that didn’t feel like a great sermon. But it’s so easy when you feel like you’ve done well, and you preached well, and they say great sermon.

Well, thank you. You know, I did well today. Not that I’ve never said that, but you can kind of find yourself thinking that way.

Well, I did okay today. When our response really ought to be, that was God, because I would have just been stammering all over the place. And on my own, I’m nothing.

And it doesn’t just apply to preachers. when we do something nice for our neighbor and they’re thankful for it. Do we walk away patting ourselves on the back?

See, I told you I’d be stammering if I tried to do it myself. Do we walk away and we just pat ourselves on the back and think I am a pretty good person? Or do we say, thank you God for giving me the ability to help?

Folks, everything we do ought to be designed to glorify God. Everything we do ought to be designed to glorify God. If God’s not glorified in it, we ought not to do it.

That’s just the bottom line. Everything we think about doing, we need to ask ourselves the question of does it glorify God? Should we get involved in this project?

Should we get involved in this ministry? Should we start this class? Should I go here?

Should I go there? All these things need to be started with the question of does it glorify God? And if it doesn’t, that’s the end of the discussion.

But as we move forward with things, we need to ask ourselves, okay, how can we bring God glory? He’s glorified in, like I said, some of these other things that we do. When we teach the truth, God’s glorified.

When we fellowship with one another, when we love one another within the church, God is glorified in that. because God’s not glorified in a church where they walk in and where somebody walks in from outside and the two sides of the room don’t talk to each other. God’s not glorified in that.

But when we’re serving God and we’re constantly looking toward not what’s going to bring us glory, but what’s going to bring Him glory, folks, the things that a church can accomplish, the incredible things that a church can accomplish when we stop worrying about our own preferences and opinions and even our own glory, our own credit, and we start focusing on what will glorify God and what God can do, He will do amazing things in and through us that we couldn’t have done. And I believe fear will come on every soul, that people will see the awesome power of God. What an incredible thing to bring God glory and let Him be glorified in us.

What an incredible thing. That ought to be the thing that drives us in everything we do. In verses 44 and 45, it tells us about the fact that the local church noticed needs.

It says starting in verse 44, And all that believed were together and had all things common and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need. So they got together and they took care of each other. When somebody had a need, they met it.

It was done. They took care of one another in a way that we really ought to today. And I’ve heard people say, you probably have too, that this verse advocates socialism.

I want to clarify right now that the difference between what the apostles did and socialism is that they were doing what they did of their own free will because they knew it would please God and it was the right thing to do, not because anybody held a gun to their head and made them do it. They just knew it was the right thing to do for us to take care of one another. When we see a brother that’s struggling, we ought to be the first ones that are there to come to his aid.

We ought to, when we see a lady in the body that can’t pay her electric bill, we ought to be the first ones there. I’m not saying we vote to do it out of budget. I mean, that might be okay too.

But I’m saying we as individuals in the church, we ought to be the first ones there with our wallets open saying, let us help you. We see this. You probably see this all the time.

Here we do too. In Oklahoma, we kind of get more than our fair share of natural disasters. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say God was mad at us about something.

But I don’t think it works that way. But we get windstorms and tornadoes all the time. As a matter of fact, a couple weeks ago, Christian and I had neighbors trampolines smash into the front of our house.

We’ve still got to get our roof fixed. Trees down, and the next day, people are out with chainsaws helping one another. there was a family in our church in Blanchard the church that sponsors t