The Ingredients to a Healthy Church

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

Acts 2:42 and the Vision for a Healthy Church

Well, if you would, please turn with me in your Bibles to Acts chapter 2 and verse 42. Our brother did a fine job of reading verses 42 through 47, so I won't read it again. But this afternoon, in the context of all of Acts chapter 2, we're going to hone in on Acts chapter 2 and verse 42.

And this week as we take this detour that we are on from the book of Ephesians, I want us to consider. I don't start sermons very often with a title, but I'll give you a title up front because it'll give you the flavor of this sermon.

I want us to consider what I am calling the ingredients for a thriving church. I believe that there is a great deal for us to learn here in just this one verse in Acts chapter 2 and verse 42. And my aim today, as we look at just this single verse in the book of Acts, is to recapture a biblical vision of what it means to live and move and thrive as a strong, healthy, and vibrant local church.

Now, as soon as I mention that word vision, I'm not sure if any of you, just your attention is peaked. You don't know what's going to come next. And so when I use that word vision, I need to immediately qualify what I mean by recapturing a biblical vision for a thriving local church.

If you're attuned to the winds and waves of teaching in larger Christendom, you will know that in the recent years, there have been many books written about vision casting, of visioneering. And perhaps I think the worst is behind us, but it seemed that for a time, all of Christian ministry was going to be overwhelmed by this vision casting movement that was becoming in its own right a cottage industry in the Christian publishing world.

If you listen to podcasts, if you looked at pastoral ministry books, there seemed to just be an endless, an unending number of books and of seminars and of courses being created and consumed to help church leaders, if I can say it this way, forge and cast a vision for their local churches.

And while there were certainly some strengths there, it wasn't all weaknesses, what ended up happening was a large number of people did violence to texts like Proverbs 29 and verse 18, where it says in some translations, where there is no vision, the people perish.

And so they said, each individual church needs its own vision. Now, when I speak about recapturing a biblical vision for a thriving local church, I am not speaking in these terms. I, for one, do not think that it is the prerogative of the elders of any church to seek out some kind of mystical vision and then to cast that before the congregation as if it were some kind of special revelation from God that the church itself is bound to.

Yet, and there's an asterisk there, yet at the same time, I believe that we as Christians need to be reminded, not of priorities of visions that I received in a shed in my backyard, but of biblical priorities that we are to devote ourselves to as members of the local church.

As we seek to lead healthy Christian lives, as we seek to establish and maintain a flourishing local church, we need to be reminded of the immovable benchmarks that Holy Scripture gives us to accomplish these things.

And the fact of the matter is, the reason why we need to be reminded of these biblical priorities, of these benchmarks for a healthy church, is because it will not come by accident. We never, ever, ever drift towards purity, towards faithfulness, towards biblical accuracy and precision.

But you and I know, we live in this world that we get bogged down with the worries and the cares and the pressures and the difficulties and the afflictions of the Christian life, and it begins to blur our vision, so much so that we get stuck in a kind of survival mode.

And even our own souls suffer, and then by extension, our local churches suffer also. But just in this one verse, in Acts 2, in verse 42, we see that while there is no such thing as a perfect church, Acts reminds us of that later, there is such a thing as a healthy church, and each member of the local church plays a vital role in promoting the health of the local church.

It is possible, it is necessary to belong to a strong, vital and resilient local church, but the health of that local church does not depend solely on its leadership. The health of that local church does not depend on vision casting, but it depends on the every member ministry of the local church, and every member ministry that is fully devoted to the priorities that God alone has set about in Scripture.

And today, in Acts 2, in verse 42, we're going to see at least four of those priorities. How do we, in a busy world, where we lose sight of things, how do we reorient ourselves so that we can be healthy Christians belonging to a healthy church?

So, turning our attention to Acts 2, in verse 42, I'll read just the first verse. I'm going to set some context, and then we'll look at some of these priorities together. Acts 2, in verse 42. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, and the fellowship, and the breaking of bread, and the prayers.

Now, it's not often that we parachute into a single verse in a book that we are not studying without any context. I think that every good Bible study requires context. If you hear someone say something from Scripture that sounds odd, that you don't agree with because it just seems at odds with the larger storyline of Scripture, ask yourself, what is the context?

Context is king. And so we're going to delve first into the context. In Acts 2, in verse 42, where we find ourselves is in Jerusalem, some 50 days after the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we know this, but how do we know this fact?

You'll recall that after Christ's death, after His burial, after His resurrection, He reappeared. He appeared to His disciples on many occasions before He ascended into heaven. If we were to turn, you can turn there with me to Acts 1, in verse 3, you can see that in Acts 1, in verse 3, that He appeared to them, it says, during 40 days, speaking about the kingdom of God.

And after 40 days with His disciples, teaching them and instructing them, giving them kind of the last guidance before He is to ascend. After those 40 days, we're told that He ascended, a glorious ascension into heaven where He now is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Father in what theologians call Christ's session.

He is next to Christ. He's next to the Father even now. And after that ascension, in chapter 2, in verse 1, we're told that on the day of Pentecost, the disciples gathered together. Now if you're like many readers of scripture, you have read that word Pentecost a thousand times, a hundred times, who knows how many times.

And most people, when you ask them, have no idea what Pentecost actually is. We talk about Pentecost, but what is it? Well, we know what it is not. It does not refer to the founding of the Pentecostal Church.

It does not refer to a Roman Catholic calendar. But what Pentecost is, the Greek word simply translated means 50th. It was the 50th day after the Passover. And so 50 days after the Passover, the Jews met together again for Pentecost.

And during Pentecost, they would celebrate the second of the three major festivals in Israel. That being a festival to celebrate the Lord's faithfulness at the first wheat harvest. And it's amazing when you begin to see the Lord's timing in all of this, that oftentimes we wonder when we go through trials at the Lord's timing.

And yet we see a perfect example of God's wonderful and good providential timing. Isn't it interesting that the Lord ordained that Christ would be crucified in Jerusalem during the biggest festival of the year.

You've heard me talk about what Passover would have been like in Jerusalem. Over a million people swelling into this relatively small city, bursting at the seams. And with that over a million people in the city, Christ would be publicly crucified as the only Savior of the world.

The Lord remained with his disciples 40 days, was ascended. The Lord could have poured out his Holy Spirit then, but waited an additional 10 days to the next festival. When again, the city is bustling with activity.

And it was there that he poured his Holy Spirit upon the disciples. That they would praise God in all the languages of the visitors in Jerusalem. And I might add, let the reader understand perhaps then the purpose of tongues.

Speaking human languages that everyone who was visiting at that time could understand. And we're told in Acts chapter 2 that after that Spirit had been poured out, after the crowd had gathered, beginning in verse 14, Peter preached a sermon.

And it was the kind of sermon that cut people to the heart. That the Holy Spirit worked in people so much that in Acts chapter 2 in verse 41, it says that 3 ,000 souls were baptized and added to the church.

And so all of this leads up to Acts chapter 2 in verse 42. You have the church in its infancy. At the very beginning, the way that I like to think of it, this was the day that First Baptist Church Jerusalem was planted.

3 ,000 believers baptized and coming into the church. And while this text offers us description and not prescription, I and a number of, I could say a great cloud of commentators, believe that this text was inspired and immortalized in the pages of Scripture.

To lay the groundwork, to identify the priorities of every local church that is to exist until Christ returns. R .C. Sproul says about Acts chapter 2 in verse 42 and its application to us, its applicability to us.

He says Acts 2 .42 characterizes the ongoing life of the local church and the essential elements needed presently in Christian discipleship. He adds these elements were the ones that the apostles learned from their experience with Jesus.

And so what Christ passed on to his disciples, the disciples now pass on to us. More than that, Matthew Henry says, here we see the history of the truly primitive church in its state of infancy, in its state of its greatest innocence.

Perhaps the purest iteration of the church. And so we ought to imitate this church. Not prescriptively, but to see what the church did and to emulate its leaders. God put Acts 2 .42 in our Bibles, not so that we would simply admire this church, to admire the church's faithfulness, to admire the church's thriving, but that we would emulate this church's faithfulness.

And so it begs the question, what did this church prioritize? And by extension, then what should we prioritize as we seek to establish and maintain healthy local churches? How can we, brethren, in this small church, regardless of the size, foster a truly strong, vital, healthy church?

That every member that belongs to this church would praise the Lord that they belong to such a church. And that every visitor who comes through the door would praise the Lord that they have found a church to which they can belong.

We'll look at four priorities. And it's going to be very simple. They're clearly delineated in the text. For those who preach, you know sometimes how difficult it can be to divide a text into points. Acts 2 .42 is a preacher's gift.

And so the first priority that we will encounter is this. It says, the apostles' teaching, or what I have called a robust ministry of the Word. That every true, biblical, faithful, healthy local church will prioritize a robust ministry of the Word.

Do you need to be convinced of this? I don't think you need to be convinced of it, but we will flesh it out and see how it applies to us today. So they devoted themselves, in verse 42 it says, to the apostles' teaching.

I love word studies for the sake of diving in and to see what just these individual words mean. And that word, devoted to, means far more than what we would think of today. When we say, I did my devotions, for instance.

What might be a person's devotions? Well, it was five minutes and I passed through and I did it. If you're reading the Word of God five minutes a day, as opposed to not reading the Word of God, I praise the Lord that you're reading the Word of God five minutes a day.

But devotion, to be devoted to the ministry of the Word, means far more than a passing activity. Far more than a passing interest. It's more than a mere preference. But it was, if we understand that word devoted, or the expression devoted to, it was a compulsion.

It was an obsession. That word devoted in the original language means to be faithful to, to be busily engaged in. It goes so far as to mean that a person attaches themselves to something. And as I was thinking about how I might illustrate this, a thought came to my mind.

When you think of those people who, maybe they live somewhere in New York or Philadelphia, on the East Coast, in a very climate activist type of culture. And they hear that there's a logging activity somewhere in the Redwood Forest in Northern California.

They will jump in their carbon-fueled planes and they will fly across the country. And they will get in their cars and they will drive to Northern California. And they'll see the tractors and the plows and the dump trucks and the logging trucks.

And they will go up and they will ascend into the canopy of the Redwood Forest. The canopy of the Redwood Forest is some 350 feet above the ground. And some have gone all the way up to the top of the canopy.

And they've chained themselves to the tree. They've attached themselves to the tree. They are devoted to that tree. That if the logging company is going to come and cut down that tree, they're going to die with and for that tree.

Where that tree goes, they will go. That is what Luke, the author of Acts, means when he says,. And they were devoted. That they had attached themselves to it. And they had attached themselves to the apostles' teaching.

To the ministry of the word. Now, I'm not commending that kind of activism. Alice, if you go home today and say, if you climb your tree and chain yourself to it, do not tell your parents, I told you to do that.

I'm not commending that kind of activism. But what I am trying to say is that the church was truly devoted to the ministry of the word. And when it came to the apostolic church's priorities, at the front of the line was the preaching and the teaching of the inerrant word of God.

See this with me for a moment. That in the church's infancy, at its very inception, 50 days after Christ's crucifixion, 10 days after his ascension, at the planting of First Baptist Church Jerusalem. Some of you appreciate that joke.

When the Lord poured the Holy Spirit out on the church, the preaching of the word had the primary, the position of primacy in the church's activities. The church, Christianity itself, has always been a word-centered, word-oriented faith.

And if you disagree with that assertion, your conflict, your protest is not with me. It's not even with the apostles. It's with the triune God. The Father who inspired the word. The Holy Spirit who was the word, became flesh.

The Holy Spirit who has given us the word, inscripturated in this text, your problem is with him. Isn't it telling that God has not given us a painting? He's not given us a screenplay. He hasn't given us, I praise the Lord, he's not given us a dance.

But he's given us a message to proclaim. And that message is in a book. And it must inform every single thing that we do. Every single thing. I have this in my notes, but I removed it. So if you'll tolerate me for just a moment.

This week as I was studying, I went back and looked at this one organization that I'm familiar with in the church planning movement. If you go to a church planning conference today, they're usually in Eastern Canada, but if you go to a church planning conference today, every church planning conference I have been to, one of the loudest voices, one of the most boisterous voices, typically one of the most critical voices, is an organization that on their website, they actively instruct churches to de-emphasize the ministry of the word.

In one article that I was reading, it asked the question, is preaching necessary in a local church? And the conclusion was, absolutely not. They said, in fact, that the apex of the ministry of the local church is the ordinance of the Lord's Supper.

Now that is, and there was some wonky thing about how we don't deal with exhortation, we deal with formation, to which I wanted to shout at my computer screen, you don't get formation without exhortation.

And what they want to do, whether they realize it or not, is they want to take the church back, and they want to plant these kind of churches all over Canada. They want to take the church back to a place where the blind lead the blind.

And the mass is given in Latin, to those who can't understand it by one who can't understand it himself. And the centrality of the preaching of God's word would be put aside, that people would be left again in darkness.

And that was one of the things I'm so grateful for when the Reformation happened, that they took all of the altars, because of texts like Acts chapter 2 and verse 42, and they put those altars with the Lord's table in the right place, off to the side.

And in its place came the pulpit. There is a reason why we have such a big pulpit in such a small room, because our furniture conveys something about what our priorities are, and the priorities of a local church.

Priority number one is to preach the word. Now, am I overstating this? I'm not going to go into great lengths, but I want you to see with me that this is scriptural, this is not just sentimental on my part.

We see, for instance, that if you turn with me to Luke chapter 4 and verse 43, that the primacy of the ministry of the word of God was modeled by Jesus Christ. For as often as I quote Spurgeon from this pulpit, I'm here to tell you, Spurgeon was not the greatest preacher that ever walked the face of this earth.

The prince of preachers is the Lord Jesus Christ. That that was his principal ministry on this earth. He came to seek and to save that which was lost.

Amen.

But as he did it, he repeated to his disciples at multiple points that he was here to preach. In Luke chapter 4 and verse 43, he said, I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well.

For I was sent for this purpose. That as he had his eyes set ahead of him, his eyes were set on this, to preach the word to the next place, to the next people. The greatest sermon in the world. Thankfully, I can rest in the fact that I never have to preach the greatest sermon in the world because it has been preached already.

It's in Matthew chapter 5 through 7, the Sermon on the Mount. I hope that all of my corpus of preaching can live up to just a fraction of the value of that sermon. Christ, Jesus Christ himself, was about preaching.

But not only that, preaching was modeled by the early apostles. In Acts chapter 2, sorry, Acts chapter 6, if you'd turn there with me, we're floating around in Acts. This is, in some ways, the user manual of the church.

It was modeled by the early apostles. It's interesting that today, more and more, those churches that seek to minimize the ministry of the word want to elevate the ministry of mercy. This church loves mercy ministries.

We should help the poor. We should care for the needy. We should seek to meet their physical and spiritual needs.

Amen.

But preaching, not food programs, was the top priority of the early church. In Acts chapter 6 and verse 2, when an argument emerged amongst the Hellenists, the Greek-speaking Jews and the Hebrews, the Greek-speaking Jewish Christians and the Hebrews, the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.

But in verse 4, note that word, but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to ministry of the word. It was modeled by the apostle Paul in Acts chapter 19. If you just continue this wave through Acts with me, Acts chapter 19 in verse 8.

This is one of my favorite narrative accounts in the book of Acts. And they entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. The apostle Paul goes to the synagogues first, as was his custom.

But then when they wouldn't hear him in verse 9, but when some became stubborn, continued in their unbelief, speaking evil of the way, that is the Christian faith before the congregation, he withdrew from them.

Now, did he say, preaching is not effective. I'm not going to preach anymore. Clearly preaching doesn't reach unbelievers. It's not going to be beneficial to the church.

What does he do?

He preaches more. He withdrew from them and took the disciples with them, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus. This continued for two years so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

Now, there is a textual variant there that says that as he preached, he preached from the fifth hour to the tenth hour, meaning from 11 a .m. until 4 p .m. Five hours of preaching a day in the hall of Tyrannus.

Paul modeled preaching. And Paul preached long sermons. If we go to Acts chapter 20, if you ever wonder why do they preach 45, 50, 60 minutes in this church, we do it on biblical warrant, but certainly not to kill you.

Acts chapter 20. Paul preached so long that his sermon went past midnight. Now, I'm not sure if they started in the morning or if they started in the afternoon, if they started after supper. One thing we do know is that they started long enough before that Eutychus, a young man who was near a window, fell asleep, fell out of the third story window, and died.

The preaching of God was so important to the apostle Paul that he literally preached people to death. Thankfully, he had the power to revive them. But all of this is descriptive. Do we have anything that's prescriptive, Shane?

That's the early church. That's when they're getting the Bible. Give me something for today. In 2 Timothy chapter 4 in verse 1, this passage is a preacher's best friend. When you're studying and you're laboring and the pulpit feels more like a cross than a blessing in the moment.

How many times have I turned to 2 Timothy chapter 4? Lord, do you really want me to spend this much time preparing a sermon? Do you really want me to devote my life to this call? Maybe Timothy was asking the same question in this time period.

And Paul writes to him in 2 Timothy 4 in verse 1. And think of this. The weight of this. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who's going to love you and give you a hug. No, in the presence of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead.

He is coming as a judge. There is accountability. And by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season, when it's popular, when it's unpopular, when they'll listen, when they won't listen.

Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. Because, and he says this, because just half a chapter earlier in 2 Timothy 3 .16, Paul knows what makes a full Christian. He knows what makes a healthy Christian.

He knows what makes a healthy church. 2 Timothy 3 .16. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

The ministry of the word is to be central in the church because it is what will make us as Christians, you as a Christian and me as a Christian, complete, equipped for every good work. And so, brethren, we must preach the word.

We must preach the word in this church every day, every Sunday, every Lord's Day, every opportunity we can get, when the Lord takes me home, or takes me elsewhere, or takes me on vacation. Whoever is here behind this pulpit, do not let them move this pulpit, but make them stand behind this pulpit because their job is to preach the word, no matter how popular or unpopular it becomes.

I'm reminded of a story of a man named Hugh Latimer. During Reformation Day, I spoke about him when we highlighted the English Reformation. And Hugh Latimer, if you recall, he was the man who said, as he was being burned on the stake, he said, be of good courage, Master Ridley, and play the man.

We shall be lit like a candle. I'm paraphrasing here. A fire that will be set that will never be burned out. He died for the gospel. And on one occasion, he was invited to preach before King Henry VIII.

If you know your history, you don't need to know your history, I can inform you, but if you know your history, you know that King Henry VIII was a maniacal, murderous madman. He was the man who had six wives.

He killed two of them. He accused them of adultery, but they were killed because they could not bear him a son. And so it was more expedient to kill them in that instance than to divorce them. One day, Hugh Latimer was invited to preach before King Henry.

And as he preached his sermon, he preached boldly. He preached the word faithfully. And at the end of the sermon, I believe it was the bishop that came to him and said, you made some grave errors in your sermon.

Errors that offended the king. And you need to go back and amend your sermon. You will be invited back next week. You can preach the amended sermon that will not offend the king and you will issue a public apology.

And so the next week, they called Hugh Latimer before the king. The bishop introduced Hugh Latimer and he said to him in particular, he said, Hugh Latimer, dost thou know to whom thou art to speak? To the high and mighty monarch, the king's most excellent majesty who can take away thy life if thou offendest.

Therefore, take heed. And what did Hugh Latimer do? He got into the pulpit and he preached the same sermon again, but we're told with greater boldness, with more vehemence, with more energy. And by God's grace, at least at that time, his life was spared.

And so this church is to devote ourselves to the preaching of the word, to hold those who preach the word accountable, but to ourselves, to devote ourselves to hearing the word preached. I want to give you a few quick practical steps on how you can do this.

How you can be devoted to a robust ministry of the word. First one is prepare. Prepare your hearts. Read the passage in advance. You will see that in the bulletin almost every week, we have the passage given in advance.

Prepare your hearts to hear it. I love when brothers or sisters read a commentary on the text and then come to me afterwards and said, it said this in the commentary that I read, that's different than what you said.

I'm not offended by that. I'm tickled pink by that. The people are prepared to hear the word preached.

Pray.

Pray for yourself and pray for the preacher. You've heard me say it. I'll say it again. I love what the Dutch reformer said. Pray me full and I will preach you full. Pray me empty and I will preach you empty.

Pray the preacher full. As I've said before in our membership classes, seek to be praying for the preacher before he has even started to preach. Go home Sunday night and pray for the preacher who's next.

Pray for Neil who's preaching next week, next Sunday. And then if I might say, discern. There are some men in this church who are, I trust are called to preach and teach God's word. It is without a doubt, one of the greatest privileges in all the world.

But it is without a doubt, one of the heaviest crosses that you will carry. When everyone is having fun and the sky is blue and the sun is rising and the children are playing in the street, you will be in your study with an open Bible in your books preparing to preach the word.

Therefore, a healthy and thriving church prioritizes a robust ministry of the word. The second priority that I want to bring before us is true koinonia fellowship. It's interesting that I should qualify it that way.

True fellowship. That they devoted themselves, it says, to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship. Now notice that I did not just simply say fellowship. But koinonia, true koinonia fellowship. Now is there a difference between the two?

If you were in our men's group a few weeks ago, you will know that there is a difference between what I might call fellowship light in modern day churchianity and true koinonia fellowship. Now we are told here to be devoted to fellowship.

The reason I use that word koinonia is because that is the word that is used in the original language. The Greek term koinonia conveys something that is far more than socializing. It is far more than fellowship light.

It denotes a sharing or a partnership in something. And that shared object, if I can say it this way, that sun in the solar system of Christian fellowship is the triune God. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And when we see one another as part of this true koinonia fellowship, there is a mutual camaraderie that we have in Christ that the world knows nothing of. The tightest knit gang. The closest family. The closest association that you can find.

Two soldiers in a foxhole for two months hiding out from the enemy. They know nothing of the fellowship that we have together in Jesus Christ. Why is that? Because we share. We have a koinonia with one another as those who are elect of the Father, saved of the Son, filled with the Holy Spirit.

We have a relationship that is, without exaggeration, out of this world. 1 Corinthians 12 and verse 13 says, For in one spirit you were all baptized into one body. Jews are Greeks, slaves are free, and all were made to drink of one spirit.

Did you see that? That we have been baptized into one body. And this koinonia, partnership, if you ever wonder why we have kind of an awkward sounding church name, Grace Fellowship Church, as opposed to Grace Community Church or just Grace Church, it was on this basis that we wanted to be a church that is Grace Koinonia Church.

That there is a mutual sharing in this life and that as part of this koinonia, this church, we are not just a room filled with a bunch of different people like when you go to a mall or when you go to an airport.

But we are an entire group of people that together comprise one church. We are one people. We are one family. We are a family with a common savior, with a common purpose, with a common inheritance, with common joys, with common hope, with common temptations, with common afflictions.

It's interesting that, for those of you who know that I worked in law enforcement at one time, one of the things that brought the whole group together that when you got past recruit class, you know that every single person that you are working alongside, they went through all the same struggles that you did.

That they were all up at 6 .30 in the morning carrying their recruit classmates on their shoulders, screaming bloody murder while people terrorized them in the night. It was a hellish experience and it was meant to forge a fellowship that was stronger than any bond that the world knows.

I can tell you, having been through that, that they know nothing of true Christian fellowship. That we know all of the joys and the hardships that come with being a Christian. And yet, why is it that we talk so little about it when we're together?

Why is it that we highlight all the trivial, worldly things and deny ourselves the blessing of that fellowship that we have been purchased, that has been purchased for us in Christ? Once we were not a people, but now we are God's people.

J .C. Ryle says this, it's a long quote, I've shortened it a little bit, but every word is worth $100. He said, Who indeed can describe the pleasure with which the members of Christ's flock do meet each other face to face?

They may have been strangers before, they may have lived apart and never been in company, but it is a wonderful thing to observe how soon they seem to understand each other. There seems to be a thorough oneness of opinion, taste and judgment, so that a man would think that they had known each other for years.