God’s People: Life In The Church
God’s People: Life In The Church
Sermon Summary:
In this powerful exploration of church life, we’re taken back to the very roots of Christianity through Acts 2:42-47. This passage paints a vivid picture of the first church in Jerusalem, offering us a blueprint for vibrant, purposeful community. We’re reminded that the church isn’t just a building or an institution, but a ‘purposeful community of gathered believers following the Jesus way together.’ This early church was characterized by discipleship, fellowship, worship, service, and evangelism – all elements we’re called to embody today. As we reflect on this, we’re challenged to consider: Are we truly devoted to learning from the apostles’ teachings (now preserved in the New Testament)? Are we fostering deep, authentic community that combats the epidemic of loneliness in our society? Are we worshipping with reverence and joy, serving others sacrificially, and actively sharing the good news of Jesus? This message invites us to re-imagine our church experience, not as passive observers, but as active participants in a living, breathing body of Christ.
Sermon Points:
believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
-The Apostles’ Creed
I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come.
-Nicene Creed
We believe the CHURCH IS THE BODY OF CHRIST ON EARTH TODAY! Jesus established the church and it exists to perform God’s will on earth. Believers are to invest themselves in the life and work of the church. (Matthew 16:17-18; Acts 2:42; 1 Corinthians 12:27)
The Church is a purposeful community of gathered believers following The Jesus Way together.
CONTEXT: In Luke 2:42-27, Luke pauses in his narrative about the miracle of Pentecost to offer a brief summary of the first church in the history of Christianity.
CHURCH LIFE: Discipleship – we learn how to be disciples at church!
CHURCH LIFE: Fellowship – we live in community with fellow believers at church!
CHURCH LIFE: Worship – we worship God together at church!
CHURCH LIFE: Service – we meet the needs of others at church!
CHURCH LIFE: Evangelism – we share the good news of Jesus with others and lead them to the church!
Key Takeaways:
- The church is essential for effective service to God and spiritual growth
- The early church in Jerusalem provides a model for church life today
- Church life involves discipleship, fellowship, worship, service, and evangelism
- The church addresses the epidemic of loneliness in modern society
- Christians are called to share the gospel and invite others into the church community
Scripture References:
- Acts 2:42-47
Stories:
- The pastor’s experience sitting next to John Stott at a conference
- The Surgeon General’s report on the epidemic of loneliness in America
- The use of ping pong balls as a visual representation of evangelism efforts
Transcript
Well, amen. Thank you, Michael, for leading us in worship. Some of us are headed to the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting today, and Michael Glenn is going to be one of our worship leaders at the bgct. How about that, Brother Michael? Okay.
And I’ll just be walking around bragging, saying, yeah, he’s one of ours. Right, Blair? I’ll just brag for you anyway. But we’re looking forward to that time together. Well, it’s good to see you here this morning.
Glad you’re here. I want us to begin my time this morning with a word of prayer. So would you join me? Let’s pray together.
Well, Father, we’re always humbled when we’re in your presence. And we thank you, Lord, for who you are and your love for us. And we love you and we acknowledge you as our sovereign Lord, majestic and glorious and holy, enthroned forever. And today, Lord, we come before you on behalf of our world. We know that, you know, our world is in a state of upheaval and violence.
There’s continued chaos in so many places on our planet today, and people are in harm’s way. And so we continue to pray for peace. We ask you to give wisdom to world leaders as they make decisions for our own nation. Lord, we come before you and pray today. We know we still have many, many people who are trying to dig out of the devastation of these hurricanes and somehow find a life for the future.
So we pray for them and all the heroic efforts that are taking place to care for them. And, Lord, we have just come through this election, and in some ways, it is still drawn to a close. And so we pray today for President Biden and Vice President Harris as they complete their terms of service for us. We pray, Lord, for President elect Trump and Vice President Elect Vance, that you would give them wisdom and grace in victory and give them the ability to lead our nation, to heal, to face problems that touch the lives of real people. And we pray for us as the people of God in America today, Lord, I pray that we will exhibit our commitment to following the Jesus way in our own behavior.
That, Lord, we would follow Jesus in how we treat each other, especially how we treat those with whom we disagree politically. We recognize that we are a free church and we live in a free state, and that is a grand experiment that continues to this day. And I just asked, Lord, that you’d give us wisdom to be the church and that we would always recognize we are citizens of a grander kingdom, brighter than any one nation, and a kingdom that demands more of us than any national or political proclivities. The kingdom, as a matter of fact, that was actually established by none other than Jesus himself. And so we confess today that he is our King, he is our Lord, he is our Savior, he’s our role model, and he is our returning Redeemer.
And now, Lord, more than ever, we need him to be all of that and offer this prayer today in his name. Amen. And Amen. Well, you know if you have been with us at all in this year, that our theme for the entire year is together. And each one of these liturgical seasons we have been exploring various facets of what it means to be together.
This is Missions Month, and for missions, our theme is Together to the People. And I hope that you’ve obtained your devotional guide already. They’re available for you also. It’s available online@fbca.org wordindeed but it has our weekly together in Word Bible readings. It has our together indeed suggestions of application.
And this particular month it has a good bit of information about our missional partnerships. And so it’s a valuable resource to you. When you came in this morning, if you came in the main welcome center, you saw some of our local partners, community partners that our church supports and would encourage you to find your way there if you haven’t done it today, just to see some of the places where you’re invested in ministry in this local community. So with that said, I want us to look at the Scripture today. I’ve entitled the message God’s People Life in the Church.
The text is Acts 2, verse 42. I will say a word of thanks to Sister Ida for reading that for us already in Arabic, and we appreciate you and Brother Raymond and your leadership and our Arabic ministry here in our church. I’m going to read the text in Alabama English, if that’s okay with y’all, and hopefully you won’t need a translator as we did for Ms. Ida as she was reading. But let’s look at this text.
Acts 2 ver. 42 they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe. The many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.
They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continue to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes. They ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily.
Those who were being saved.
This text is about the church, and that’s what I want us to talk about today. I want to talk to y’all about life, the church. I have spent my entire life in the church. My mama took me to church the second week after I was born, and I have been in the church ever since. I have spent my adult life primarily as a pastor of local churches.
So I have spent all of my life connected to a local church. In fact, I’m not even sure how I could possibly tell you the story of my life without talking about the church and the role that churches have played in my life. For the last 23 and a half years, this church and the role has played in my life. And so I’ve spent so much time thinking about, praying for, working in belonging to the church. So I want to talk about it today.
And our church is a Baptist church. And so we are re a confessional church. We’re not a creedal church. What that means is as Baptists, we historically have adopted confessions of faith that best represent what we believe as a group of people at a certain moment in history. We have not been Creedle people, however, we’re in the overwhelming minority in Christendom.
The overwhelming majority of the Christian family is Creedle. What I mean by that is when you gather for worship in churches that are Creedle in their orientation, they typically do some things that we don’t do in our worship service. For example, it’s very common much of Christendom when the church gathers on Sunday morning for the people in the congregation to read these historic creeds out loud together. And they are statements that typically begin with I believe. Are y’all familiar with this?
We’re confessional, so we don’t me do that. But we can still learn from these historic creeds. So here’s the oldest one called the Apostles Creed. Let me read to you just a brief excerpt from it that has to do with the church. In the Apostles Creed, there will be people today who will read this out loud in their churches.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Now, the more common creed that is read in most churches today across Christendom is known as the Nicene Creed. The Apostles Creed wasn’t written by the Apostles, but it dates all the way back to the second century. And there are those who believe it reflects the teachings of the Apostles, hence its name. The Nicene Creed is named for thesel that occurred in AD3.25, called by Constantine in the town of Nicaea.
And it is the more common creed that’s read in churches today, particularly in the West. And here’s what it says about the church. I believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic church. I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Now, whenever you see the word Catholic in these creeds, it’s not referring to the Roman Catholic Church.
The word Catholic just means universal. In other words, the statement is, I believe in the universal church. Now, we as Baptists, as I said, we’re confessional. And so for us here at First Baptist Arlington, we have actually embraced the Baptist faith and message, which is a confession that was written by Southern Baptists. And the one that was adopted in 1963 is the confession that we have said most fully expresses what we believe at First Baptist Arlington.
It has numerous articles, and we have taken those articles of belief and we have made them more accessible to everyone writing summaries of them. And we refer to those summaries as our core beliefs. You can find those on our website. Here’s the core belief statement about our church that we have said we believe at First Baptist Arlington. Let me read it to you.
We believe the church is the body of Christ on earth. Today, Jesus established the church, and it exists to perform God’s will on earth. Believers are to invest themselves in the life and work of the church. And the text from Matthew, Acts and 1 Corinthians guide us in that statement. Now, in our society today, if you mention the word church, you might get all kinds of responses because everybody is a critic.
I get it. And everybody’s an expert on what the church ought to be doing. And it is what it is. People have all kinds of views about the church, and they blame just about everything you can think of the church. And the church gets credit for all kinds of things that has never had anything to do with.
It’s just fascinating. You remember how I told y’all last week that sometimes I’m on an airplane and people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them I’m a Baptist pastor and they start pouring their lives out. You remember me telling you the story? Sometimes what they do is start, tell me how awful the church is. I get it, man.
They start with their stories. You know what I typically do? I will say, whenever you’re finished, I’m going to tell you some stories that a whole lot worse than the ones you just told. Because I promise you, I got insider information. I know how bad the church can be.
I’ve been in it a long time, so I get it. They’ll say things to me like, well, I just don’t believe in the organized church anymore. And I say, you know what? You ought to come to our church. We can be so disorganized sometimes.
The stuff that we do. I promise you, you’ll be right at home in first Bapt. Arlington. Sometimes they’ll say, well, I don’t believe in the institutional church. And I always say, we’ll take that up with Jesus.
He instituted the church. We didn’t. So that actually is something he chose to do, not us. But here’s what I would say. If you want to be effective in the kingdom of God, and if you want to most fully carry out the will of God, then the church is your only option, as flawed as it is.
And you may say, now, wait a minute, preacher, I can serve God outside the church. Absolutely you can, and you should. But you cannot serve it as effectively as you ought without being a part of one. So what I would tell you, get in one. Okay, now I realize I’m preaching to the choir.
I’m standing here looking at y’all, and y’all are in this one. Okay? So good job. But there are those of us joining us online or wherever you might be, and you’re not in one. Get in one.
Invest yourself in one. Become a part of one. In it. Serv in it. Because that’s really how you begin to help shape it yourself, and it helps to shape you as challenging as it can be.
So when people ask me about the church, what is the church? This is my. The typical response I usually give, and I’ve shared it with y’all before, but this is what I usually say to people. The church is a purposeful community of gathered believers following the Jesus way together. That’s how I would say it.
Succinctly. It’s purposeful. We’re here for a reason. We’re a community. We don’t live in isolation.
We’re gathered because we believe we’re supposed to come together. We’re believers because we’re all followers of Jesus and we want to follow the Jesus way. So if somebody asks you what’s going on down in First Bapbism, Arlington, that’s a real easy answer. You can say. You say a lot of things.
You say, man, there’s some really good preaching that goes on down there. You ought to come and check it out incredible music, great ministries. I mean, there’s a whole lot of stuff you could say. But at the end of the day, I would suggest what we say to people is, well, actually, first Ma of Charlington, you know, we’re just a purposeful community and we’re gathered together as believers, and we’re just doing our best to follow the Jesus way. Sometimes we get it wrong.
We’re not always right, but we’re trying to figure it out as best we know how. We’re trying to follow the way of Jesus. And so that’s our hope. So when we look at the New Testament, here’s what I want us to do today. I want us to go back to the very first century when the church was birthed and see if we can learn some things.
The New Testament is filled with information about the church. The New Testament is written in Greek, not in English. And there’s a Greek word that’s used in the New Testament that’s translated with the English word church. It’s the Greek word elesia. It comes from a verb, ko, and the prefix E rather, which means out of.
And so ko means to call, to call out. So if you put e, ko, eia, it’s the called out ones. In other words, we’ve been called out from the crowd to gather together as the people of God and serve the interests of the kingdom of God. That’s who we are. That word used 115 times in the Greek New Testament.
So it is the word that the apostles used to refer to this. We’re the eklesia. We are the called out ones, if you will. Now, there are multiple images in the New Testament to help us better understand the church, because images sometimes help. And so what are the images offered to us in the New Testament?
Let me just give you a selection of them. The church is referred to in the New Testament as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, people for his own possession, the brotherhood, the assembly, the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, the fellowship. All those images are used to help us better understand who we really are as the people of God. So here’s what I want us to do this morning for just the next few minutes. Let’s go back here we are our church.
We’re as 2024, almost 2025. We’ve been here since 1871. So our church has been here for over 150 years. But I want us to go all the way back to the very first church, okay? The church in Jerusalem.
And see what we can learn from it. See if we can see some things in it that might help us be better at doing church in the 21st century. And don’t y’all want to get better?
Don’t you? I mean, I like our church. I love it. And I think it’s good. When people ask me about first bapt on that’s what I usually say.
It’s good because I believe it is at its core. But don’t y’all agree we could get better? Okay, some of y’all at least agree with that. So we could get better. And I want us to.
Well, one of the ways I think we can do that, let’s go back to the first one, and then let’s start looking at what that church did and what God had for that church and see if we can translate it to the 21st century. So let’s go all the way back to Acts 2. So here’s the context. Acts 2, 42, 47. Luke pauses in his narrative about the miracle of Pentecost to offer a brief summary of the first church in the history of Christianity.
And here it is. He tells us about the spirit of God was given. They spoke in languages they weren’t trained in. 3,000 people joined the church right there on the spot. It was an incredible awakening.
What do we learn from the church? Well, I love this text. One of my favorite commentators on the New Testament is Dr. John Stott. Dr.
Stott has gone on to be with Jesus. He was a British Anglican scholar, pastor, theologian, writer. I love John Stott. He’s one of my heroes. In fact, years ago, right after I’d finished my PhD at Southwestern Seminary, we used to have a gathering there called Scholars in ministry.
And these PhD grads would gather from across the country, and we would have a scholar come in for a week, and we’d spend that time with them and eat with them and talk about their area of expertise. And one year, the speaker was John Stott. I was so excited. I love John Stott. And I forgot to register for it, so.
But I called in and I signed up late, and they let me in. So we get there, and when I get to the registration table, everybody has these really nice name badges, you know, with their names on it and where they serve and kind of in plastic and all that. I had nothing. And the lady at the desk said, dennis Wiles, I see. She said, you know, you were late in your registration.
I said, I know that. She said, well, I don’t have anything for you. I said, that’s okay. So they gave me a little you stick on and had me just write my name on it. Everybody else had these really nice, you know, laminated, whatever booklets with their names on them.
Anyway, she said, and we only have one seat left. And it’s where you got to sit the rest of the weeks, where you will eat every meal and attend the lectures. And it was right next to John Stottt.
So I sat down next to Dr. Stockin to let out of my colleagues. I was going, I’m the one up here with my little old Mickey Mouse name tag on. Me and John are hanging out. But here’s what Dr.
Stah. He’s WR an incredible several commentaries actually on as. But one of them in particular, I love it. Here’s what he says about this text. He says when you read this text, it’s about relationships.
He says, first of all, these people were in relationship with the apostles. When you read the text in submission, the apostles teaching, they submitted themselves to what the apostles were teaching. He says also they were in relationship to each other. They loved each other. They cared for each other, they served each other.
He says they’re in relationship to God. They worshiped each other. They broke bread. That was. We believe that first instance in the text was about the Lord’s Supper.
They attended the prayers in Greek, plural. That’s the regimented prayers at the temple. In other words, they had formal and informal worship. They were in relationship to the world. They were reaching out to people, sharing the gospel with them.
And so the Lord was adding to their number daily. So all of that is found in this text. Now, this text is very important to us because if you’ve come in the main welcome center off Office center street, you’ll find Acts 2:42 written in a scripture ring on the floor of our church. There’s the Carolingian cross there in the floor. There it is.
Those are the intersecting designs that represent the Trinity. That’s the Trinitarian cross. And you’ll see Acts 2:42 written around that ring. What we’re trying to communicate to everybody who comes in our church is we believe in the cross and what Jesus did for us. We believe in the Trinity and we believe in the church.
And we want to welcome you with that testimony just by walking in the door. One of my favorite things about it is that everybody comes in and leaves where that’s what you’re greeted by whenever we have a funeral in our church and one of our brothers or sisters has died when we leave the church Take their body out of our building. The last thing they do is we roll across that scripture ring. It’s the last thing they touch on their way out. Our belief about the cross, our belief about the Trinity, and our belief about what we believe about the church.
I love that y’all go out there and stand on it today, okay? And just contemplate it because it sends a powerful message. So this text is very important to us. So here’s what I want to do real quickly. Y’all still with mees?
All right, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to just real quickly look at the things that characterize this church and see if we can transport them to the 21st century. So let’s start here. Church life first discipleship. We learn how to be disciples at church.
These men and women who joined the church there in Jerusalem, they were committed to, devoted to the apostolic witness, the teachings of the apostles. Why? Because the apostles followed Jesus. And so we become a part of the church so that we can learn how to follow Jesus. We need to be just as committed to the apostolic witness.
What is the apostolic witness? The apostles are all gone. The New Testament, the New Testament was written by apostles or people closely associated with apostles. So it’s the apostolic witness. It’s written by people who knew Jesus or people who were closely associated with those who knew Jesus and walked with them.
As a matter of fact, one of my favorite verses in the book of Acts is you just. If you still have your Bibles open. Acts 4. A couple pages later, verse 13. Peter and John are being called in by the Sanhedrin because they’healed a guy without permission.
And it says this verse 13. When they saw the courage of Peter and John, they realized they were unschooled ordinary men. In other words, they weren’t seminary train. They didn’t go to the school of their rabbis. They were astonished.
And they took note that these men had been with Jesus. I love that they said, well, we don’t know where they got their training. All we know is we recognize them. They’ve been with Jesus. Would to God.
That’s what everybody says about us. We don’t really know that much about first baptism, all 10. But here’s what we do know. Those people, they’ve been with Jesus. That’s what a disciple is.
People who’ve been with Jesus. People who are learning how to follow Jesus. We’re an apprentice, if you will. I’m reading this book right now by John Mark Comer. It’s called Practicing the way.
I love this little book. I’m just getting through it. But let me just read you one of the things he says about this. He talks about being an apprentice and he challenges our thinking about being an disciple. And here’s what he says.
To follow Jesus then meant to walk alongside him in a posture of listening, learning, observation, obedience and imitation. For Jesus first apprentices, the goal wasn’t to pass a test, get a degree or receive a certificate to frame on your office wall. It was to master the art of living in God’s good world by learning from Jesus how to make steady progress into the kingdom of God. It was less like learning chemistry and more like learning juiu jitsu. I love that it’s not about gathering data and information.
As important as all that is, it’s about learning how to actually follow Jesus. That’s really what this is about. And so the church, that early church, that’s who they were. They were disciples. They were committed to the teachings of the apostles who had been with Jesus.
Next church life fellowship. We live in community with believers at church. It’s one of the beautiful things about church. The Greek word is koinonia. It means community.
You see, God exists in eternity in communities. Father, Son and spirit. He has created you to live in community. He has not created you to be isolated, to just live all by yourselves. The church is a place for the people of God.
I came I’ve been doing a bunch of research for this whole journey into flourishing that we’re preparing our church for these next few years. And as I was doing some research, I came across a report from the Surgeon General of the United States. His name is Vivek, Dr. Vivek Murirthy. And he has issued what he calls a general advisory.
Do you all know what a general advisory is from the Surgeon General? He is s the leading medical officer in America since 2014. It is an urgent public health issue. An epidemic. He’s issued In May of 2023 an urgent message to Americans about an epidemic.
You know what the epidemic is? Loneliness. So the Surgeon General has produced this multi page report about loneliness. Let me read to you his introduction. He says when I first took office as Surgeon General In 2014, I didn’t view loneliness as a public health concern.
But that was before I embarked on a cross country listening to her where I heard stories from my fellow Americans that surprised me. People began to tell me they felt isolated, invisible, insignificant even when they couldn’t put their finger on the word lonely. Time and time again, people of all Ages and socioeconomic backgrounds from every corner of the country would tell me, I have to shoulder all of life’s burdens by myself, or if I disappear tomorrow, no one will even notice. The surgeon general says loneliness is far more than a bad feeling. It harms both individual and societal health.
It’s associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that which is associated with obesity and physical inactivity. And the harmful consequences of a society that lacks social connection can be felt in our schools, our workplaces, and civic organizations, where performance, productivity and engagement are diminished. He then says this. We are called to build a movement to mend the social fabric of our nation.
The surgeon in general. Now, what I would say to y’all is, the church isn’t the only answer, but it’s part of it, because this is where we come to find true, deep community and shared life with each other. And the beautiful thing about the church is the church has one place you can come to empowered by the spirit of Godiencing, the unity of the spirit of God, regardless of your background or proclivities. It doesn’t matter your socioeconomic level. It doesn’t matter what neighborhood you live in.
It doesn’t matter what your educational experience is. It doesn’t matter what ethnicity you are. It doesn’t matter what nation you are from, because you will discover that the ground and the foot of the cross is level and all of us are welcome. And when you and I appreciate what God has done for us in his forgiveness and grace, it then allows us to be appreciative of what other people can do for us as well. The church, it’s a place of community and fellowship unlike any other option that we have in our society.
And then the church life is about worship. We worship God together at church. Worship is a powerful force. These people, they broke bread. It says, we think that that first text where it says that we’re thinking that it has to do with the Lord’s supper because it’s connected to prayers.
Prayers were a regimented worship time in the temple. So these apostles were engaging in formal worship and informal worship. They were reverent. It says, everybody was filled with all. They were joyful.
They served God with glad and sincere hearts. All those are products of worship because people need to worship God, you know, worship’a universal phenomenon. On Wednesdays at noon, in the pastor’s Bible study, we’ve been studying Exodus. And you know, one of the things that God tells Israel right at the end of the book of Exodus, he says, when you get in the promised land, tear down all the altars, get rid of them, get rid of all the Ashero poles, all the fertility cult worship. Because this is what God was telling Israel.
When you get to Canaan, you’re going to discover Canaan is full of worshipers. You know why? Because human beings worship. That’s why. There’s a universal impulse.
It exists all across humanity, all across history. We’ve never uncovered a civilization that didn’t worship, even if they worship pagan gods. You know why? Because God created us in his image, and there’s a desire in all of us to connect with him. So worship is universal.
Well, we as Christians in the church, we can corporately be called in the presence of God. We can gather and we can pray and praise him and confess our sins, commune with him and with each other, be baptized, receive instruction, celebrate the Lord’s Supper, commit ourselves to live better lives, be transformed by the work of the Spirit, by the truth of God, be conformed to the image of Christ. All that takes place because we live together in worship as the people of God. A couple more real quickly in church life, service, one of the things that we do in the church is we meet the needs of others. At church, we learn how to do that.
You see, as Christians, something happens when you get saved. The spirit of God takes up residence and starts to change you. And you start realizing there are people around you whose needs are greater than your own. And you have a heart for them, and you desire to do something about it. So what did these people do?
They looked around and they saw people who were poorer, who were struggling, who were having problems. So guess what they did? They started selling possessions, selling property, selling homes, whatever, bringing the money, giving to the apostles, say, take this and use this to meet the needs of others. In the church, we learn the beauty of sacrifice and service. You know, I’ll just tell y’all, I’ve been doing this a long time.
If I tried right now to just give you everything I’ve learned about the people of God regarding sacrifice, service and generosity. There’s really no way for me to do that. There’s just too much of it. God’s people in general are just generous people. They’re sacrificial people.
They serve each other because something happens to us when we’re in the presence of the Spirit of God. These people did that. That’s what we’re supposed to do one other thing real quickly. Evangelism. Do you notice what this text says?
We share the good news of Jesus with others and we lead them to the church. The Lord added to their number daily those who believed. Dr. Stott says about that notice. The Lord added believers only and he added them to the church.
So the church is for believers, Believers are for the church. In other words, nobody gets saved in the New Testament independently. And isolation has no connection to the body of Christ. What’s going to happen is churches are going to be established because that’s where we belong as the people of God. But the whole idea of reaching out, sharing Jesus, casting thisst.
These guys were fishermen. They knew how to fish. And so they’casting nets now for people, praying for them and sharing the good news of Jesus with them. Well, that’s what we do as a church. We do that individually and then we do it corporately.
Next Sunday we’re going to talk about that because on the one hand we need to do it personally. So let me just point your attention this morning to our display down here to my right, to your left. You’ll notice that it’s full of ping pong balls. We started this Sunday night. A lot of you weren’t here Sunday night, but several have them participated this morning.
Before you leave today, if you feel led, come down here to this display. And here’s what we want you to do. Take a white ping bong ball, at least one. And as God lays somebody on your heart, somebody that you know needs him, somebody that you know, somebody in your sphere, you know the Lord, they need the Lord. We just want you to put their initials on a ping pong ball and drop it in this display and just commit yourself to pray for them.
Now you’ll notice there’s a bunch of them in there that are white. Okay, so I’ve put some initials on. I actually put one in there. It has a question Mark on it. Just because I’m not sure who God might lead me to.
Then once you’ve had that first conversation with whoever that is, put their initialives on a peink one and drop that in there. I think there’s a handful. Aren’t there’some peinkuins in there right now? So it’s already starting to happen. Then once someone makes a real commitment, maybe it’s to be a part of the church with you, attend a Bible study with you, maybe give their life to the Lord, put their initial on a green one and here’s what we want to see happen over the next few weeks.
We want to see lots of people being prayed over. We want to see lots of conversations we’re havingmmering that are intentional. And we want to see the fruit of what only the spirit of God can do in people’s lives. Does that make sense? So you’ll see it out in the welcome center the rest of this month.
But today, stop by there if you haven’t done it yet and participate in it. And let’s start praying for these people individually. You might want to just pray over all of those folks. We’ll give you the chance to do that as well. And so we as a church.
You remember how I’ve talked to y all about the fact that we’ve been reevaluating things in the season of rebuilding? Have y’all heard me say that over the last few weeks? Well, we’ve been reevaluating our connections. What does it mean to do church right now in this era? And the Lord is leading us to some new pathways of connection.
One of those you’re going to hear about later is the Ascent movement. It is a North American movement, multi denominations, people coming together, seeking to share the good news of Jesus across North America. And I’m a part of that movement. Our church has already begun to support it. You’re going to hear more about it.
It’s one of those new pathways. We’ll talk about it again next week. The point is, sharing Jesus is our responsibility. We do that personally and we do that together as a body. You know why?
Because we’re the church. You know, I preached this sermon this morning. In the first service when it was over, I was talking to Dr. Wade and he said, man, really good sermon. You know why the early church did all those things, right?
And I was like, yeah. He said, you know why we should do them right? I said, yeah, they’re in the Bible. He said, no, you know why we should do them right? And I was like, u He said, because that’s what Jesus did.
I said, thank you, Dr. Way. When I grow up, I want to be like you. And I’m running out of time, actually. But the church, what is it?
It’the Colony of Heaven. It’an outpost on the frontier filled with kingdom people. And you know what we’re doing? We’re following Jesus together. Why?
For the glory of God. May it be so. Let’s pray together. Well, Lord, we love you. We thank you, Lord, today for the church.
We thank you for allowing us to be a part of it, Lord, allowing us to participate in it, have our hands on it. It’s a beautiful thing and we’re grateful. And so, Lord, I pray for our church that we will be the church you’ve called us to be, that we’ll sense the leadership, direction, wisdom of your spirit. And that you will use us to live out these truths that were a reality in the very first church. And may because of that, Lord, we be effective servants in your kingdom.
And I pray that in Jesus name, amen.