Practical Holiness

So may we be different, different Christians, different church members, different husbands, different siblings, different everything.

On that day when free from sinning, we shall see His lovely face. That was the beginning of the last verse of the song that we just sang and it reminded me of an important truth that I think is needful in this time of study and that is we will not cease to struggle against sin until we are glorified in the presence of our

Lord. There has been in the history of the church a very insidious and I would say often devastating doctrine called the doctrine of sinless perfectionism.

The idea that one can attain to a state of sanctification in this life where he neither sins in thought, word, or deed.

And the Bible knows of no such thing that a

Christian would come to a place in this life where he would be perfectly sanctified in all areas including thought, word, and deed.

It reminded me of a story of a man who visited our church and it just so happened that night it was on a

Wednesday evening and we were having Bible study and I wasn't the teacher that evening.

One of our men in the church was teaching on Baptist history and so I sat in the back of the room and we had a visitor come in and he sat down.

Actually he came in first and sat down and I went and sat next to him just to welcome him, make him feel like we were happy that he was there and he was by himself so I went and sat next to him and introduced myself.

About 10 minutes into this study of Baptist history, which I know is an exhilarating subject anyway, this guy just folds up his

Bible, picks it up, and walks out kind of in an upset look and I gots to know.

I can't just let you go. I got to know why you're leaving. Is it because we're talking about Baptist history? Is it because we're

Baptists? I don't know, but I gots to know. So I got up and I followed him out to the

North Ex area right before you leave the church. There's that little foyer and I just said, sir, I just want to say thank you for visiting with us tonight and just wanted to say we're glad to have you and he turned to me and he just looked very frustrated and he said, what are you about here?

I've never been asked that question in quite such a frank way. What are you all about? And I said, well, in simple terms, we're about telling men that they are sinners and they are in need of a savior and the only savior is

Jesus Christ. You want to know what that's all about? That's, in a nutshell, that's what we're about. Men are saviors.

Men are sinners. They need a savior and the only savior is Jesus. And he said, well, I'm not a sinner. Say what?

And he says, I'm not a sinner. And oh, you are. But I said, what do you say?

He said, I'm sanctified. I'm a saint. I am not a sinner. And I said, well,

I think we may be engaging in a little semantical distinction. You know, when we're born again, we are made holy.

We know that. I said, but are you telling me that you don't sin? That's what

I'm saying. I am not a sinner. I don't sin. And I said, sir, have you loved the

Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and all your strength from the moment you woke up to this very moment perfectly all day long?

And he said, well, I didn't say I was perfect. I said, no, you really did. That's exactly what you said. You said

I'm not a sinner and I don't sin. And I just showed you in two seconds that you really are.

And so I want you to understand, I give that illustration moving into this final session because we are now going to move into the area that we call practical holiness, living out our

Christian walk. And I don't want you to confuse what I'm about to encourage you to think that I'm teaching you sinless perfectionism.

Again, I appeal to J .C. Ryle's book. He spends a lot of time in the book repudiating the idea of sinless perfectionism while at the same time pointing people to holiness.

He said, I'm calling you to holiness, to strive for holiness, without which no man will see God. Right. I'm calling you to this, but I'm also telling you,

I'm not teaching this. I'm not teaching that if you fail. That you have somehow demonstrated you're not a

Christian because the Bible says that we're to not sin. But if we do sin, what we have an advocate with the father and when we sin, what are we to do?

We're to repent and go to God and know that he says, if we confess our sin, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

Right. There's a God that we go to when we sin and a

God who will receive us and restore us based upon the work of his son. And so everything

I'm going to say needs to be predicated on this is not a message of sinless perfectionism, but it is a message that understands the difference between sinless perfectionism and what we mean by practical daily

Christian living. Practical holiness means to live the

Christian life day by day, and we have days that you fail. Yes. But as you see in your life, you will see a progression.

As many people have noted, the hardest part about being a Christian for a long time is you, you, you know more about your sin now than you did then because you know more.

But at the same time, you can say, I know that God has changed my life. I was telling somebody asked me for my testimony earlier and I said, you know,

I got saved at 19, 27 years in the Lord. I am not the same man I was at 19.

I'm not the same man I was at 26. I'm not the same man I was at 30. And I'm not saying

I have arrived, I have not arrived. But I see God working and I see

God doing that, which only he can do. And so that's what we're talking about today,

God working out that practical Christ likeness in us. And what does it look like and what are the means

God uses to bring about those changes? And so we're going to look at Acts chapter 2.

And as you're turning there to verse 42, so we're going to look at Acts 2, 42 to 47.

I want to give a caveat about the book of Acts before we read. And here's the caveat.

Acts is redemptive history. In fact, it is one of the most important historical works of all time because it gives us the work of the early church and what they did and how the church was founded and established and made its way into the into the world.

But not everything in Acts is meant to be prescriptive. Some things are merely descriptive, like this is what the church did, not necessarily that this is the model for all time.

And so understanding that will help us to understand at least some things in the book of Acts that aren't always meant to be prescriptive in nature.

This is how the church is to always be. But what we do see in today's text is a snapshot of what daily living was like in the early church.

And even though it's not all necessarily prescriptive, I think it is descriptive and it provides us at least a model of what regular

Christian living looks like. All right. So with that, let's read beginning at verse 42.

And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

And awe 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.

Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. Now, as we dive into it for this last time at this conference,

I do pray, Lord, that this message will be highly applicable, that you will take what we've learned about your holiness, that you'll take what we've learned about our positional holiness in Christ.

And we will apply that now to our practical holiness lived out in the daily Christian walk. And I pray as we look at the model of the early church, looking at this passage, which shows us what they did or that we would see those things that we can apply to us and what we can do, knowing all of it is done,

Lord, by the power of your spirit. And I pray, God, for, again, all the men here.

Lord, that you would open their eyes to the text, open their eyes and their heart to the truth.

And, Lord, help them to not be confused about their salvation, help them not to be confused with their assurance.

And, Lord, for those who are not yet Christians, I pray that today might be the day that you would save them through the preaching of your gospel.

And we pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. So in the book of Acts, we, of course, have the laying of the foundation of the new covenant church.

And in this particular text that we are looking at today, we find ourselves at a portion where it's simply giving a description of what's happening in the early church.

What did it look like? What were the people doing and how were they living their lives? And this is certainly not all encompassing.

It doesn't tell us everything there is to know about the life and times of the early church, but it gives us enough to point us to some of the things that we can begin to apply to ourselves.

And there are three main things about this text that I want us to take away today, three things that I believe this text should cause us to want to embrace.

This text should cause us to want to embrace three things. Number one, it should cause us to want to embrace the ordinary means of growth that God has given to us, the ordinary means of growth that God has given to us.

That's number one. Number two, it should cause us to embrace the church as our spiritual family, to embrace the church as our spiritual family.

And number three, I believe this text should cause us to embrace a daily passion for the things of God, a daily passion for the things of God.

So with that as our outline, let's go back to the beginning and let's look at the ordinary means of growth.

Now, I want to say this. I am not opposed at all. I think the term means of grace is fine, and that's probably a phrase you guys use an awful lot.

So I'm not denying the phrase means of grace. But in this case, since we're talking about growing and holiness,

I'm saying one of the ways God grows us is through those ordinary means, through those ordinary means.

And so I call these not only the means of grace, but they're the means of growth. This is the means by which

God sanctifies us. And I think sometimes we imagine that those means are going to be radical.

Years ago, there was a book that was very popular that came out, and the title of the book was

Radical. It was David Platt, very much. And David wrote about his work and missions and how

Christians ought to be engaging in a radical form of change and behavior. And it should, you know, we should run away from the ordinary things and run toward the radical things, right?

Michael Horton, who was one of my favorite theologians, Michael Horton wrote a response.

Did you know that? Did you see that Michael Horton wrote that response? You know what the title of Michael's book was? Ordinary. He said, there is actual blessing and growth and power in an ordinary

Christian life, in an ordinary Christian life. Now, I'm not I'm not discouraging you from radicality.

Oh, you ever heard? I think it's made up a word. Radicality. I mean, if God calls you to go share the gospel in the

Himalayas, you get on that plane and you go share the gospel in the Himalayas. If God calls you to do these things, and God has called us all to be evangelists.

And we're going to talk about that's actually the third point today. We're all to be be living this daily life of sharing the gospel and these things.

But the ordinary life of being a father, being a husband, being a church member, may not be a deacon, may not be an elder, may not aspire to those things.

But just being an ordinary Christian at work, and an ordinary Christian is actually a pretty radical thing.

If you do those things that Christians do, it's actually a pretty powerful thing.

And yet it's the ordinary means that God uses to grow us.

The early church was devoted to ordinary activities. And we see these in verse 42.

There are four specific things that were standard or common.

And by the way, that's what I mean by ordinary. I don't mean that they lack value, or they're just, you know, like we say, oh, that's ordinary.

It's not impressive. No, what I mean is they're standard and they are commonplace. They're standard and they're commonplace.

They're ordinary. The church was doing four things that you would expect the church to do.

They're the ordinary things. And we see these in verse 42. First, it says they devoted themselves to the apostles' doctrine or the apostles' teaching.

The word there is didache. We have a book called the Didache. It's teaching.

And the King James Version says doctrine. In the ESV, it says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching.

But the word here is they devoted themselves actually to what was being taught. They devoted themselves to learning what was being taught.

I want to tell you something, and this is honestly, and I meet a lot of people, go to a lot of places. I have been so impressed listening to you all.

Because at the fire last night, in the areas over here when we're at lunch,

I'm hearing you guys talk about things that many people don't talk about.

Theology, doctrine, truth. I mean, pastors, you should be encouraged that these things are happening.

Because this is one of the things we are to be devoted to. We're to be devoted to the apostles' doctrine.

And it says the apostles' doctrine because we actually study what the apostles taught us about Christ. You know, we don't have anything

Jesus ever wrote. You understand? Everything that we have in the New Testament is written by the apostles or by the associates of the apostles.

The only thing we have an idea Jesus ever wrote was when he put his finger in the sand when the woman was thrown at his feet, right?

The woman caught in adultery. We don't know what he wrote there. I think he wrote the name of their girlfriends. But that's all we know.

Jesus wrote something in the sand. Outside of that, we have no idea of Jesus ever writing anything. But we have what the apostles wrote.

This is why the Bible says the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone.

We call ourselves an apostolic church. You guys recite the creeds? You recite the

Nicene Creed? And what does it say? We are part of the one holy and apostolic church.

Universal as well. One holy universal. Catholic, you know what it means. Catholic means universal. One holy catholic and apostolic church.

It's apostolic because it's founded on the teachings of the apostles. These were the men

God, through Jesus Christ, appointed and sent out and were his representatives.

And that's what we are to become the students of. That's what we are to be learning.

I remember years ago, I was at a fair at another church.

It was like a carnival thing they were doing for kids. And we brought our kids to play with some of the kids from another church. And one of the young men there knew me and he came up to me and he said, hey,

Pastor Keith, I want you to know God's called me into ministry.

And I said, that's great. Praise the Lord. I said, you know, if you decide where you want to go to school,

I want to give you some advice of some places where you can go and learn sound doctrine.

And he said, oh, I hate doctrine. I said, son, well,

I didn't go there. My first thought, I said, if you love the truth, you can't hate doctrine.

This doctrine is how we know the difference between truth and error. Doctrine is how I said, I said, I said,

I don't think you know what you're saying. When you say you hate doctrine, I don't think you understand what you're saying.

Your life is dedicated to preaching the truth, knowing the truth. The apostles doctrine is what they devoted themselves to.

And so that is one of the ordinary means by which God grows us is growing in our knowledge of the apostles teaching.

And if you don't have that, if you don't have a desire for that, certainly you're not fit for ministry.

I agree. But as an ordinary Christian man should not we all be growing in the apostles doctrine.

And how many churches you go to today and you hear the pastor get up and say something like, well, there's the doctrine of the

Trinity, but nobody really knows what it means. Nobody really knows how to explain it. So we're just going to move on. I hear guys say stuff like that all the time.

It breaks my heart because we stand on the shoulders of giants, right? Like our ancestors would have heard such a thing.

It wouldn't even have registered that we're not going to at least give the theological formulation.

God is one in essence, three in persons. These three persons are co -equal, co -eternal and distinct. And this is the doctrine of the

Trinity. I mean, we ought to at least be able to do that. And yet we have in many ways in the church abandoned a sense of duty in knowing what we believe.

As I said before, there are men, if you spent 20 years as a hunter and you knew nothing about hunting, people wouldn't say you're a hunter.

If you spent 20 years as a mechanic and you didn't know anything about cars, it would be hard to say you were really a mechanic.

But people will spend 20 years as church members and know nothing of the apostles' doctrine and not feel at all as if they have missed anything.

It's heartbreaking. So the first ordinary means of growth is to be devoted to the doctrine, the apostles' teaching.

That's number one. Number two in this list of four is fellowship, koinonia, mutual relationships, partnerships, not just getting together to talk about,

I was going to say football, but up here it's hockey, right? Who knows? It depends on the season.

Anybody soccer? Oh, okay. We'll be careful. Somebody at lunch said underwater hockey.

It exists. Look it up. Not right now, but look it up later. It exists. And that's another thing

I see a lot of times, and this is, again, I want to commend you. And I'm not simply just trying to win your favor by flattering you.

I'm not flattering you. I'm telling you the truth. A lot of times I get together with men's groups and men's groups want to talk about everything but Christ and everything but scripture and everything.

You guys have been talking about these things. That's what Christian fellowship is. It's not just getting together with your buddies, but it's getting together with your buddies to grow in Christ.

That's fellowship. That's what we're doing. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't get together and watch the game or get together.

You should do life together, and I think doing life together is a valuable part of our Christian walk. And if that means getting together for fun, get together for fun, but we should not do that in spite of getting together, but we should do that in addition to spending our life learning about Christ together.

This fellowship here is precious. It's partnership in the gospel, and that was part of what they did.

They got together, and they did it regularly. Notice it says they devoted themselves to this.

You know what the average, according to statistics, average church members, meaning they attend church average amount of time, what do you think the statistic is for average church members in the

United States? Once a month, 12 times a year. He nailed it. Twelve times a year counts as average.

Average means medium or mean. That means there are people who don't make it 12 times a year. Huh? I don't know what that means.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We call them CEOs, Christmas, Easter only. Yeah, but no, 12 times a year, pastor, 12 times a year.

There you go. There you go. We had something similar. It was basically a de facto membership.

You know, if you hadn't been in worship for a certain amount of weeks, you just weren't an active member anymore, so very similar, not the same, but I think that's true because how do you live?

There's no such thing as lone wolf Christianity, right? Living the Christian life is living in community.

It's living together. You can't do it if you're not here. So, yeah, I agree.

So, the first is the apostles teaching. Second is the fellowship. Third in this is the breaking of bread.

Now, there is debate about this, and again, if you want to debate this,

I'll be leaving for the airport, so talk to your pastor. There are some who believe the breaking of the bread here only pertain to the normal participation in meals, and there are others who

I would favor this account, that this would actually refer to the regular participation in the

Lord's Supper, because the breaking of bread, I think, especially with the definite article here, is referring to specifically that participation in that part of worship, and certainly churches do it differently.

Our church just happens to be a church that takes this supper every week, but I'm not saying that's a requirement, but regular participation in the

Lord's Supper, whether it is however your church does it, whatever their regular looks like, should be a regular part of your life, and if you're not in worship, you're not going to be doing it, but when you are in worship, this should be a regular part of who we are as Christians participating in this, not because that in the participation in the

Lord's Supper that we are somehow re -atoning for our sins, as the Roman Catholics believe that this is a representation of the sacrifice of Christ and somehow this is, again, laying

Christ as the unbloody sacrifice on the altar for our sins. No, it's not that, but this is this means by which

God has given us to commune with Him through this element that unites us with His Son in this moment, and we have this powerful moment where God gives us this time, and when we neglect that, we don't participate in that, we're neglecting one of those things that God has given us for growth.

Amen. I don't know if I said this yet already, but like Luther said, I preach the gospel every week because every week my people forget.

Yeah, and that's same, and actually that's one of my arguments for weekly participation in communion,

I say because no matter what I'm preaching on, we always end with the gospel, because no matter what the subject of the sermon is, we always come to the table and we're reminded of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and Christ says, do this until I return, right?

This in remembrance of me, and as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show forth the

Lord's death until He comes. We do this to be reminded, absolutely. And finally, in this list is, and again,

I note the definite article here, I don't think it's by accident, I don't think anything in Scripture is by accident, and it says, the prayers, the prayers, and I believe the article indicates something specific,

I believe it indicates intentional prayers, and you say, well, what does that mean?

There are different kinds of prayers, and I believe we are called to pray all different kinds of prayers.

I think sometimes we allow our prayer life to become very anemic when it becomes, one, always spontaneous and never thought out, and two, always sort of just going through the same things, you know, let's pray for Mama, let's pray for Daddy, let's pray for Aunt Edna, you know, and those are fine, pray for Mama, Daddy, and Aunt Edna, but we get very repetitious.

I'm careful with this with my kids, because, you know, we get around the table, it's easy for them to pick up me praying in repetition, and then them repeating what

I say, and they go to a Christian school, so sometimes I hear them praying a prayer, and I know they got it from somebody else, like, that didn't come out of you, that was something you heard, and now you're repeating it.

Not that repeating prayers is necessarily bad, but we should be learning to pray the different types of prayer that Scripture gives us, and in our church, last summer, we do expository preaching, but over the summer,

I usually do a course that's more topical, or, we call it subject -based, because topical sounds so, you know, big even, we're subject -based, you know, sounds much nicer, but over the summer, we'll do a short series on something, and last year,

I did it on worship, why do we do what we do on the Lord's Day, and we literally walk through everything, what do we do every moment of the worship service, what's it for, and I said, we have seven specific prayers that we pray, we pray a prayer of invocation, we pray a prayer of dedication for the offering, we pray a prayer of,

I'm trying to say, I have to walk through them all, I'm sorry, illumination before the sermon, yeah, benediction at the end, and we pray a consecration when we're praying for the table, because we do that every week, so when you go through all of them, you say, you know, and we have a prayer of intercession, that's the one that most people are familiar with, because you're praying for Ananda's, you know, bunions, or whatever it is, like, people ask you to pray, well, you know, people are like, we need you to pray for, you know,

Mama Hurtado, you know, and that's fine, pray for Mama's toe, but each one of those prayers is focused, how much time do we give to a focused prayer life?

There's a book called The Valley of Vision, which is a series of Puritan prayers, and it's broken up by category, and if you don't own a copy,

I would commend it to your purchase, just reading the way that these men put their prayers on paper, and actually thought through what they're praying about, their own sin, and their own need for Christ, and their own salvation, and their own sanctification, their own growth and holiness, all those pour out of that book,

The Valley of Vision, so again, these are the ordinary things God gives us, the

Apostles' Doctrine, fellowship, mutual partnership in the gospel, the ordinances or sacraments of the church, breaking of bread,

I think, refers to that, and the prayers, and again, the term ordinary actually is in the teachings of Reformed catechisms, now

I'm going to use a catechism which is not technically Reformed, because it's Baptist, don't hurt me, or I guess you'd be happy,

Spurgeon's Catechism, this is what it says, what are the outward means whereby the

Holy Spirit communicates to us the benefits of redemption? What are the outward means by which the Holy Spirit communicates to us the benefits of redemption?

The answer, the outward and ordinary means whereby the Holy Spirit communicates to us the benefits of Christ's redemption are the word by which souls are begotten to spiritual life, baptism, the

Lord's Supper, prayer, and meditation, by which all believers are further edified in this most holy faith,

I believe so, and it's almost exactly the same as Westminster 88, so these are all so similar, they're all so similar, they're all saying the same thing,

God has given us means of growth, and here they are, and they're not drastic, radical things, they're the normal things that all

Christians should be doing all the time, if you want to grow in holiness, if that is a desire of your heart, and you don't have these things in your life,

I would say these are the things that you should immediately begin to seek out. There's a belief that church should abandon the ordinary and adopt the exciting.

Many churches are based on that. I call them, you know, family fun zone churches, you know, six flags over Jesus, right?

We can't use the ordinary means anymore, we have to make everything explosively extraordinary and everything has to be a show.

Recently, there was a church that said that they weren't going to worship on the Lord's Day, they were going to feed the homeless.

That sounds like, oh, man, and of course, the news media thought, oh, how holy, they're not going to worship, they're going to feed the homeless.

And you might think me a bad person for looking on that and not thinking it's a good thing. Because as good as it is to feed the homeless, we are not to abandon the word and sacrament for anything.

Because those are the means by which God grows us. And we have six other days that we could be feeding the homeless.

And there's nothing to say we couldn't, in addition to our worship, feed the homeless, but not suspend the worship of God and the participation in word and sacrament to do something else, no matter how noble it may be.

Because these are the things that God has given us to use and to do, one, to glorify

Him and two, for our own growth. On the Lord's Day, we devote ourselves to the apostles teaching to the fellowship to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers.

The church, many churches can often no longer be satisfied, simply to come together and worship

God, they have to have something to distract or excite, must be an event, must be a production, must require everything but simply the word and sacrament.

Because the word, prayer and sacrament are not enough. But they are. That's the truth of this is they are enough.

They are enough. John MacArthur says this, he says, the church has become mired in restlessness, impatience and selfishness.

He says, by the way, that's the characteristic of childishness. The church is adolescent, wanting to be indulged and entertained.

The church is largely superficial and immature and experiences are designed to be for the people who are impatient, selfish, shallow adolescents.

The God ordained ordinary patterns of slow, faithful, thoughtful study and absorption of the word and slow, steady growth and grace and knowledge of Christ in the midst of a faithful congregation is far too ordinary for the salesman of adolescent extreme radical experience.

And that's what many churches are selling. I like that phrase. Adolescent extreme radical experience, that's what's being sold instead of the ordinary means that God has given us to grow.

There is an endless supply of adolescents to entertain, ready to be fooled. Ligonier has this.

This is a devotional they posted. It says prayer, the preaching of the word and the sacraments are not elaborate or fancy methods of giving us what we need to conform our trust or to confirm our trust in Christ to the outside observer.

They do not seem special at all. After all, they make use of rather common things such as human speech, bread, wine and water.

But by faith in the work of the spirit, these common elements are used to do an uncommon work.

The confirmation of our trust in Jesus and the strengthening of our wills to flee from sin and rest in Christ alone.

They come in these ordinary things, these ordinary things. So that's number one, we need to embrace the ordinary means of growth.

Number two, we need to embrace the church as spiritual family.

Let's read again verses forty three to forty five. It says an 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.

They were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. Now, right away,

I want to say, as I said at the beginning, this is descriptive, not prescriptive. This is not saying that in all times and in all places, all

Christians are to have a voluntary selling of everything they have and bringing it together where it would be under the hands of the apostles.

Certainly this is at a time and a place. And this certainly, as I said in last night's message, this is not an endorsement of communism because everything here is being done voluntary and that's the very opposite of communism, which is done under the threat of the government.

But what we do see here is we see the voluntary love of the church for one another, the voluntary love of the church for one another.

The reason why people were selling their possessions was not because it was mandatory for church membership, but rather because it was for a mutual concern for the welfare of each church member.

Think of the blessing of seeing a church that loves one another so much that they would be willing to suspend their own creature comforts and the things that they have and even the things that they may need to help and love one another.

Chris Austin said this was an angelic commonwealth not to call anything of their own of their own forthwith the root of evils was cut out, none reproached, none envied, none begrudged, no pride, no contempt was there.

The poor man knew no shame and the rich man knew no haughtiness. They were just brothers and sisters in Christ.

And as needs arose, needs were met. This leads to a good diagnostic question because I will say this, especially for me, and maybe it's different for you.

When it comes to study, like I enjoy study, I enjoy learning and growing in doctrine and teachings.

I love it. But loving people is hard. I thought

I would get an amen. Let me say it again. Loving people is hard. Amen. Okay, thank you. I put this out the other day as a syllogism.

I said, ministry is people. People are hard. Therefore ministry is hard.

Ministry is people. People are hard. Therefore ministry is hard. And I mean, anybody who's been in ministry for any length of time will tell you it's hard.

The burnout rate for pastors is huge. And guys who make it past four or five years are very rare.

There's an old story about a pastor starts a church and the previous pastor said, I left three envelopes in the desk.

The first time you have your first major problem, read the first envelope. They're marked one, two, and three. So after about six months, you know that honeymoon period, after about six months, the pastor goes in and he opens up the first letter.

He's going through his first real problem. And it says, blame the deacons. Put your head down and push forward.

Okay. Well, about a year later, he went through his second major problem. He went to envelope number two and he opened it up.

It says, blame the elders. Keep your head down and move forward. And then when the next problem comes up, open up letter number three.

Well, about a year later, a real problem came and he opened up letter number three and it said, write three letters.

I mean, brothers, it hurts your heart, but you know what I'm talking about? The reality of ministry is it's hard and it's not just hard for ministers.

It's hard for those in church life because we have to deal with people we don't always like.

Here's the thing, I love to point this out to people. Like is not a biblical command.

Love is. And the reason why is love is a choice and like is not. I like ice cream and I hate boiled okra.

I didn't make that choice. That was choice God gave me. Boiled okra is rough, but ice cream is great.

And some people just naturally you connect with and you like and you like them, but we're not called to love just who we like.

We're called to love everyone, even people we don't like. And in church, there's going to be people we don't like. But we're called to love them.

We're called to sacrifice for them and to minister to them. This is what this is, what the church is.

The church is a community of people, all of which are at different levels of sanctification, all of which are at different levels of growth in Christ and all of which are going to fail sometimes.

There's a whole lot of conversation online about church hurt. And I would never diminish the reality that there are people who have experienced genuine pain at the hands of ministers and the hands of church folks.

And that's I would never for a second diminish the fact that there have been real realities of people being hurt.

But at the same time, at the same time, we are called to participate in the body.

And even when we experience struggles and pains and hurts, we're not to use that as an excuse to run back to the world and avoid

God's people. We are called to love one another, even warts and all.

I know that's hard to hear sometimes. But do we love each other that way?

Yes, sir, please. That's a great example,

Rock. I mean, that's true, right? That's what I said. We got to love people even if they don't love us. And sometimes that's hard because we're in the same pew with that guy.

Yeah, we have to. Amen. Amen. Absolutely.

And we do that. Because we don't do a quote -unquote invitation because we don't have a time at the end of the service where people come forward to pray.

We have the Lord's Supper. And I say, that's the invitation. I say, because it's going to face you with one of three things.

Either you're a believer and you're ready to take the table, you're a believer and you're not ready to take table because there's something in your heart you need to repent of, or you are an unbeliever who shouldn't be taking the table.

And that's your moment to realize where you are. You're not in Christ and you need to be. So all of those are faced with the table at that moment.

But yeah, it's a moment of self -reflection in the midst of that. One of the things the church has not done well is to show love within its ranks.

I can tell you story after story after story of times where I've been hurt and where times where people would say

I've hurt them, not intentionally, but there's still things that happen. But this is no excuse to abandon fellowship.

The world calls the church a den of hypocrites because we talk about love and we can't even love one another.

What is the one thing that Jesus said, they will know you are my disciples for your love for one another, your love for one another.

If we really hope to reach the world, we must embrace first our responsibility to love one another. And so one, we embrace the ordinary means of growth, which are those things, apostles doctrine, prayer, fellowship, and breaking of bread, the sacraments.

But the second thing is we have to embrace the church as our spiritual family. This is the people God has given us that we are going to spend eternity with.

I have family members who are my blood relatives who do not know Christ and as much as I love them and pray for them and yearn for them to come to Christ, there is a certain sense in which as close as I am to them familially,

I am more close to the people that I'm going to spend eternity with because they are the ones who are in Christ.

And so am I and my family who is outside of Christ. One day, I may not ever see them again if they stay outside of Christ, if they continue to reject the gospel.

But those who are in Christ, even people I don't like one day, all of my sinful inclinations will go away and we'll love each other as we're supposed to.

Number three, embracing a daily passion for the things of God.

Read with me verses 46 and 47. 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.

There's two times in this short two verses where we see the phrase day by day, which indicates this was a regular aspect of their life.

It was an ordinary aspect of their life. How many people in the church limit their expressions of faith to once a week?

Many, many of them. Yeah. Many Christians get up on Sunday, they go to church, they fulfill their religious requirement.

They go home without any giving, without giving their faith another thought until the next week. Church becomes something of a checklist, sort of a mental to do list.

I did my religious duty for the week. I went to church. But the early church were going to the temple.

These men, they were going to the temple and there's debate about why they went to the temple. I think part of why they went to the temple was they were evangelizing.

They were going and they were sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. And they were going daily.

They were breaking bread daily. They were praising God daily. And by the way, there's something that we should be doing daily from this passage, and that is the daily work of evangelism.

It says that the Lord was adding to their number day by day. Those were being saved. How do you think those people came to faith?

By hearing the word, right? Romans chapter 10, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ, right?

These people were going and they were sharing the word of God with others. Personal witnessing, by the way.

Is the ordinary means by which souls come to faith, the ordinary means by which souls come to faith.

Their witnessing was so fervent that they saw a daily increase in the amount of believers. George Whitefield was a powerful evangelist who preached to scores of hearers in England and America in the 1700s.

And it is said that if he went two weeks without seeing someone come to Christ, he would cry out in prayer, Oh Lord, what's wrong?

Because he was daily sharing the gospel, daily sharing the gospel.

Living for Christ is a full -time commitment. It's a lifestyle. It's not part -time.

We're called to seek after Christ with all of our might on a daily basis. And if we really hope to influence our friends, our community and our world, it will never come from a life that is spent one day a week in church.

And there's nothing about our faith that shows forth in the other six days. So many people.

Consider. A passion for God. To be a name on a church role.

But it's not. A passion for God shows forth when what we do in church on Sunday is an overflow of what we have lived the entire week.

This is a daily passion for the things of God. Again, looking at the verse day by day, they were doing these things.

They were attending the temple. They were breaking bread. They were receiving their food. They were they were praising God. They were having favor with the people.

They were they were doing these things day by day. And this reminds us that spiritual growth doesn't have to be drastic or extreme.

It just has to be consistent. You talk to most people in the field of athletics.

And they will tell you that the people who make the most incredible transformations in their life are the people who are consistently and are just consistently willing to keep going.

And just day by day, make those things, do those things that are necessary.

Spurgeon said this, he said, you will not gain holiness by standing still. I read that as I was prepping for this message, and I just said, boy, that's a good place to end because we know we have been made positionally holy in Christ.

We've already explained that. But now that we're talking about practical holiness, we will not gain practical holiness by standing still.

And he goes on to say this, nobody ever grew holy without consenting, desiring and agonizing. Sin will grow without sowing, but holiness needs cultivation.

Sin will grow without having to be sowed or cultivated, but holiness will not.

We should follow it. We should pursue it. And we should do so with eagerness, with perseverance as a hunter pursues, pursues his prey.

Yes. Amen. Yeah, people often think revival is something that happens at a church one time a year, right?

The revival happens in the hearts, the hearts of people. Before we were saved.

We chased after sin. And after we're saved, sin chases after us.

So our duty as men of God. Is to recognize that and chase after Christ.

You will not gain holiness by standing still. God is holy. He has declared us holy in Christ.

He calls us to pursue daily practical holiness by the means he provides.

And may God give you a desire to seek after that holiness day by day.

Let us pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for these men and for this conference and for this time we've had together.

Lord, may you use this to help us all have a renewed desire through your ordinary means to grow in conformity to the image of Christ.