Embracing God's Way

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Acts chapter 2 and find your way to verse 42.
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We are continuing our series entitled Beyond Our Borders.
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As you know who have been here, our focus in 2015 is to go beyond our personal, congregational and national borders.
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We want to see the gospel increase from our congregation in personal evangelism, community outreach and world missions.
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Because we have renewed our focus on this subject, we have begun an examination of the book of Acts.
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The first century church worked off of a promise and a mission that they were given by Christ.
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Christ said, I am going to give you the Holy Spirit and from there you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and even to the end of the earth.
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You are going to take the Holy Spirit of God with you and you are going to be my witnesses out into the world.
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My prayer is this.
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My prayer is that as we go through this study, as we look through Acts, and as I have said from the beginning, this is not a verse by verse study, but simply looking at certain points of the book of Acts and how they relate to us as a church.
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I hope that we adopt and that we catch, if you will, the same passion and desire that the early church had to see people come to know Christ.
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So this morning we are going to read Acts 2 and verse 42 to 47.
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This is right after, if you remember last week, Peter gave his great sermon.
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There was the great Pentecostal miracle where the people heard it in every tongue and every language that was there, heard the gospel in their own language, and Peter preached.
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And 3,000 souls are saved and now you have a church, a relatively large church.
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We might call it a mega church in today's standards.
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We have a large church now.
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What do we do? And we see, beginning in verse 42, how the church operated and that is what we are going to focus on today.
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We are going to be talking about the subject of embracing God's way.
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So let's stand together and read, beginning at verse 42.
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And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
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And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
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And all who believed were together and had all things in common.
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And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.
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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.
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And the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved.
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Father in heaven, I ask now that you would fill me with your Holy Spirit, that I might preach your word with power and conviction, and that you would keep me from error, hold me tightly to the truth, and open the hearts of your people to understand it.
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That when we seek the word together, that your Holy Spirit would ultimately be the teacher, that you would convict and convert as only you can.
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Help us to see what we need to embrace as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And it's in His name we pray, Amen.
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The first century church gives us an example of what we can look at when we're evaluating our own efforts as a church.
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It is important to understand that not everything that the early church did was meant for our emulation.
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Some things that they did were prescriptive.
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Some things that we read are simply descriptive, it's simply telling us what was going on at that time in history.
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Those things which are prescriptive come to us by way of command in the New Testament, do this, this way.
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Those things which are descriptive come to us by way of narrative history, and they're not always meant to be emulated.
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Such as today's text when we read about the apostles performing miracles, well that was something that was done during the apostolic age.
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That wasn't something that was intended to go on and on through the different ages of the church.
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The office of the apostle closed with the death of John, who was the last apostle living.
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And when he died so did the age of the apostles, and now that is no longer normative.
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So what our goal is in this study of Acts is to look at those things which we should be embracing, look at those things which are prescriptive, those things which are commanded, and also the things which are descriptive and can still have place in the church today.
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They still have a purpose for us today.
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And I want to begin today with a question.
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If we really have a passion to reach the world, what should we be embracing as a church? If we really have a passion to fulfill the great commission, what should we embrace as a church? Well, as I see in this text, there are three things that we should be embracing as a local body of Christ.
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And I've given you an outline in your worship folder.
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If you'd like to fill in the blanks, they'll be on the board, on the board, on the screens.
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But we're going to look at the first one, and probably spend most of our time on this first one, but we will get to the other two if the Lord wills.
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But we're going to look at this first one because I think this is so important.
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The first thing we need to embrace, we must embrace as a church, is God's ordinary means of growth.
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The ordinary means of growth.
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Look at verse 42 again with me.
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It says, and they, speaking of the first church there in Jerusalem, and they devoted themselves to four things.
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The apostles' teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers.
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Now the reason why I'm making a big deal about this word ordinary is because that's what those things are.
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Those are ordinary church activities.
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They're standard, that's what the word ordinary means, commonplace.
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The church was doing the things that you would expect the church to do, and they were doing the things that the church should still be doing 2,000 years later.
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It's the ordinary work of the church, the ordinary things of the church.
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Consider the list for a moment.
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The first thing, the apostles' teachings.
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The word there is didache.
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The Greek word means doctrine.
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In fact, in the King James Version it says that.
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They devoted themselves to the apostles' doctrine.
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Now isn't that one thing that's been abandoned in many modern churches, is the idea that we should study doctrine, to study our faith, to understand why we believe what we believe and the importance of the teaching of the faith, and yet that was what they were devoting themselves to in the first church.
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They were devoting themselves to doctrine, to learning the faith.
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And it also says fellowship.
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It was the fellowship that they devoted themselves to.
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The word fellowship is koinonia.
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Now the way we usually think about fellowship is a good Sunday afternoon meal.
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And while feasting together is a way that fellowship takes place, the word actually indicates making a partnership.
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It indicates more than simply eating together, but it's coming together as partners in ministry.
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It's coming together to work together as a team or a body.
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See what happens often is we'll have our little meals or we'll have people over to our homes or we'll have our little fellowships, but nothing is done in partnering for ministry.
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It's just getting to know one another.
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And we call that fellowship, but that's not what fellowship is about.
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Fellowship is getting to know one another so that we can grow together, iron sharpening iron and make strides for the kingdom.
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That's the purpose of fellowship.
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Partnering together to make strides for the kingdom.
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And that's what we see here.
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And it says the breaking of bread.
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Now it's important that we understand that the term breaking of bread here is referencing the sacrament of the Lord's table.
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It is making reference to that.
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But it's also referencing the fact that the early church combined that with a meal.
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They had what they called the agape feast.
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They would come together and eat a meal together.
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They had a sort of a potluck.
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They would all bring food in to share.
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In fact, by the time that 1 Corinthians is written, the apostle Paul is challenging the church because people were bringing in food and not sharing.
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And he says you're not celebrating the agape feast, the love feast, if you're not willing to share your food with one another.
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Stay home and eat.
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If you won't share, just stay home.
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You can eat your own food at home, but when you come to the church and we're doing the church together, we're ministering to one another, we're going to share.
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And so there's that in 1 Corinthians 11 that he addresses.
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So here we see the breaking of bread.
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They came together to feast together and they had the Lord's table.
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It says in 1 Corinthians 11 that after they would eat, they would also share in the bread and the cup in remembrance of the body and the blood of Christ.
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Finally it says the prayers.
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I like the fact that you have an articular noun here, the prayers, because it's indicating that these were intentional prayers.
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And I also believe that this includes singing.
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I believe that singing is a type of prayer.
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The apostle tells us to speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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That's how we are to relate as Christians.
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And part of what singing is, is singing prayers to God.
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That's what the psalms are.
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It's song after song after song of prayer to God.
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So he says, come together for the prayers.
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And I think included in the prayers there would be singing.
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I'm not going to argue with you about it, but I do think that that's included as part of what the early church was doing.
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They spoke to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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So we see that listed here as part of the ordinary activities of the church.
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Now, I want to address the term ordinary means, because that's what I put in your notes.
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We talk about ordinary means, that actually has history in the Reformed church.
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That term comes to us in two different catechisms, actually multiple catechisms, but two specific catechisms that we would recognize as being good.
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Number one would be Spurgeon's catechism.
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How many of you know Spurgeon? Charles Spurgeon? We've talked about him quite a few times.
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Well, the catechism which he used, number 71, this is the question.
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What are the outward means whereby the Holy Spirit communicates to us the benefits of redemption? That's the question.
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What are the outward means? The answer, the outward and ordinary means whereby the Holy Spirit communicates to us the benefits of Christ's redemption are the word, that is to say preaching, by which souls are begotten to spiritual life, baptism, the Lord's Supper, prayer and meditation, by all which believers are further edified in their most holy faith.
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So what's this saying? It's saying what is the way that God grows us? What is the way that we increase in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ? As the Bible says that we should be doing that.
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That we should grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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It's by these ordinary means, by preaching, by the sacrament, by the prayers, by the fellowship.
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That's the ordinary means of growth.
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And we must embrace those.
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And here's, you might say, well, why is he getting on this ordinary means? Because there is a belief in many churches that we should abandon the ordinary means and adopt a worldly approach.
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Nothing is allowed to be, quote unquote, ordinary anymore.
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Everything has to be extreme.
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Everything has to be awesome.
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Everything has to be cutting edge, big thinking, risk taking, or the one I heard just yesterday, irrational.
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That's the way it's got to be.
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Nothing can be ordinary.
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Church recently that I'm aware of didn't have church on Sunday.
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They didn't have worship on Sunday.
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Instead, they got together and made homeless boxes.
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And people say, oh, what a great thing.
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Oh, how wonderful.
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They didn't take time to worship.
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They just went right into doing the Lord's work and they made boxes for homeless people.
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I think it's terrible.
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And I'll tell you why.
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You have six days to do those things.
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You have the afternoon on Sunday to do those things.
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Why do you have to replace the ordinary means of grace with that? You don't.
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It's a gimmick.
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It's a way of saying, we're not like everybody else.
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We're extreme.
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We're radical.
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We're different.
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I'm sorry if I'm being ugly.
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I'm being the truth.
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We cannot abandon the ordinary means of grace.
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We cannot abandon the ordinary means of growth.
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We cannot do that because that is what we are called to.
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We are called to come to the place of worship, to God's community of faith, and to hear the Word, and to pray, and to participate in the ordinances.
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That's what we're called to do.
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And yes, it's not spectacular.
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Yes, it's not Grinchmas.
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Yes, it's not a Broadway show.
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Yes, it's not Saturday Night Live.
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But this is the means of growth.
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Everything's got to be a show now.
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It's got to be an event.
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Every Sunday has to be a production.
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It has to have a director, a stage manager, an audio-visual technician, a sound engineer, a personal coordinator, on and on and on and on.
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Why? Because the Word and sacrament and prayer is not enough.
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It's not enough for worldly people and that's why they've abandoned it.
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Because they're reaching to the worldly and they're using the worldly to reach.
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I came to preach today.
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I've been thinking about this all week long.
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This is so on my heart.
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I want to quote John MacArthur.
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This is a lengthy quote, but I think it's worth hearing.
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This is what John MacArthur says.
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He says, The church has become mired in restlessness, impatience, and selfishness.
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And by the way, that is the characteristic of childishness.
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The church is an adolescent wanting to be indulged and entertained.
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The church is largely superficial and immature, and experiences are designed for impatient, selfish, shallow adolescents.
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The God-ordained ordinary patterns of slow, faithful, thoughtful study and absorption of the Word of God and slow, steady growth in grace and the knowledge of Christ in the midst of a faithful congregation is far too ordinary for the salesman of adolescent extreme radical experience.
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There seems to be an endless supply of adolescents to entertain, ready to be fooled.
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I'm not saying God is ordinary.
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God is not ordinary.
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But God works through ordinary means.
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Ordinary people and ordinary churches doing very ordinary things.
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God uses real language and ordinary folks as His instruments to move His ordinary church to high impact in the world.
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That was a long quote, but I think it was worth hearing.
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So what's MacArthur saying there? He's saying there's all this attempt to minimalize teaching, to minimalize praying, to minimalize the sacrament.
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How many churches do sacrament once a year, twice a year, four times a year? Minimalize everything and make everything a show.
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Beloved, if we really want to see growth, growth begins here.
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Growth begins here.
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We do not need to embrace the world's means.
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We need to embrace God's means.
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We need to preach the Word.
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We need to pray persistently.
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We need to partake of the sacraments.
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We need to partner with one another in ministry.
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We must do these things.
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They may not be exciting from the world's perspective.
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But these are God's ordinary means of growth.
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And we need to embrace them.
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So that's my first point.
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I think that's in the text.
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I think this is what they devoted themselves to 2,000 years.
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We still need to devote ourselves to those four things.
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Okay? Number two.
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We must embrace one another as spiritual family members.
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We must embrace one another as spiritual family members.
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I didn't take as long as I thought I would on the first point.
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So, now I can hang out here for a minute.
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Beginning at verse 43 down to verse 45.
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It says, And all came upon every soul.
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Many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
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Verse 44.
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And all who believed were together and had all things in common.
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Verse 45.
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And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.
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Now, I want to address this passage in the clearest way I can.
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Number one, I want to make the point that this passage has led to some confusion in the church.
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Some argue that here we find the roots of socialism and communism.
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That's not true.
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How do you know it's not true, Pastor? Well, because socialism and communism are never voluntary.
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Communism is the taking by force of that which the government wants and redistributing as it sees fit.
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Socialism is communism without a gun.
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Well, sort of.
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It's the redistribution of wealth without any say on those who are being distributed from and distributed to.
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That is not what we see here.
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What we see here is the voluntary giving up of those who had to help those who did not.
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And that is not socialism.
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It is not communism.
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No one in this text is forced to give up anything.
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Likewise, they were not selling everything that they owned.
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If you look at verse 46, it says they were meeting in their homes to eat.
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Well, if they sold everything they owned, they wouldn't have those homes to meet in.
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In fact, I want to quote John Stott.
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He says this.
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He says it is noteworthy that the tense of both verbs in verse 45 is imperfect, which indicates that the selling and the giving were occasional in response to particular needs, not once for all.
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It's an important truth.
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The reason people were selling their possessions was not because it was mandatory for church membership.
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Think about Ananias and Sapphira.
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We're going to look at them in a few weeks.
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But one of the things about Ananias and Sapphira that always gets me is when they come and they bring this money, and the Apostle Peter says, why have you lied to the Holy Spirit? It was your money.
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It was your land.
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You could have done with it what you wanted.
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You didn't have to do this.
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You know why Ananias and Sapphira sold their land? Because Barnabas did it the chapter before.
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And they saw the recognition he received in the church for being so benevolent.
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They liked the recognition he received.
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They wanted the same recognition at half the price.
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So they felt like, well this is...
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But you can tell by that story that it's not mandatory.
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The selling of all these things was not membership in the early church was not based on that.
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However, it was the regulative action of the early church because there were so many who were without.
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Why? Because they had been abandoned by family.
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They had been abandoned by jobs because they had come to Christ.
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They had people that literally were exorcised or ostracized from their family because they came to Christ.
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These people had nothing.
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They had no food.
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They had no roof.
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They had no clothing.
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They had no nothing.
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So what do we do for them? Those of us who have are going to take what we have and help them.
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It was a loving expression of the family of God working together in community.
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Chris Austin says this.
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He says, This was an angelic commonwealth, not to call anything of theirs their own.
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Forthwith the root of all evil was cut out.
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None reproached, none envied, none grudged.
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No pride, no contempt.
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The poor man knew no shame.
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The rich man knew no pride.
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And that's what you had in the early church.
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The blessing of love among the people.
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And that leads me to a diagnostic question from my own heart.
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And thus I'll relate this to you because it's a question I ask myself.
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Do I love you as my congregation, as my family, my spiritual brothers and sisters? Do I love you the same way the early church loved itself? Would I be willing to give up something of my creature comforts or even my needed comforts to ensure that a fellow Christian had what he or she needed? Would I be willing to sacrifice something that I wanted to make sure that a missionary had what he or she needed to go out into the field? Would I be willing to have a genuine concern for another person just like family? Because I tell you, there's nothing I wouldn't do for my kids.
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If I knew my kids were going hungry, I'd sell everything I had to buy them food.
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But would I do that for your kids? Would I do that for you? That's the love that is being seen in the early church.
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And if we hope to reach the world, we have to do it through love.
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Jesus told us that they will know you are Christians by your love for one another.
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If people see that we don't even love one another, how will they believe us when we tell them we love them? Why would people want to be among us if all we are is a backbiting, gossiping, hatefully speaking, tear one another down community of people? You know the way we treat one another is one of the most precious personal witnesses that we have.
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The way we treat each other as Christians is even more important than how we treat non-Christians.
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Because the world looks at us and how we treat one another, and that speaks volumes.
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How we treat one another is so important, especially in the age because it is so easily tarnished.
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And in the age of things like social media, where we are all on Twitter, well some of us are on Twitter, some of us still have phones that flip open.
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But we have Twitter and we have Facebook, and all of our conversations are now out there for people to see.
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And how we talk to one another is so dangerous, because people claim to be Christians and they destroy one another through the social media.
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Because what? I'm protected by my keyboard, I'm protected by the veneer of the screen.
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It's not real.
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But to other people it is real.
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To other people they are seeing this.
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And they are saying this man or woman is a Christian, and they speak to other Christians like they are dogs.
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This is serious guys.
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I mean, it really is.
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How we relate to one another, how the world sees us relate to one another, is a huge part of our witness.
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We must understand that we are a spiritual family.
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Love one another like we love our kids.
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Love one another like we love our spouses.
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Love one another with the same type of patience and love that we have for our own immediate family.
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You are my immediate church family.
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I don't like everything you do.
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And you don't like everything I do.
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I hear about it a lot.
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But, I love you.
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I hope you love me.
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And I hope that our expression of love goes beyond all of those things.
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And that we are able to love one another through our difficulties.
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That's the goal of this little community called the church.
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I know a lot of people who say they've been hurt by church.
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And while that's no excuse to abandon the church, and I'll tell anybody their face, being hurt by church might be a reason to leave a church, but it's not a reason to abandon the fellowship of believers.
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It is understandable why some have.
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And we have to understand that.
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What are we to be as the body of Christ? We are to love each other as we love ourselves.
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Be patient with one another as the same type of patience we want for ourselves.
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We extend to others.
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Because everybody wants that.
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Everybody wants forgiveness and is willing to distribute justice.
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We want people to forgive us for our sins and our mistakes.
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And that's what they are.
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They are mistakes when we do it.
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It's sins when you do it.
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It's a mistake when I do it.
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It's a sin when you do it.
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And that's the way we act.
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We have to be willing to distribute as much grace as God has distributed to us.
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That's hard.
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It's hard, but that's what we are called to.
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Family, spiritual, family.
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Now that's the second thing.
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Because honestly, seriously, you want to make an impact in this world? Love one another.
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Have people see you love one another.
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Have people see that your love for one another makes a difference in this church.
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And that will reach people beyond what you ever could imagine.
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Finally, number three.
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We must embrace a daily passion for the things of God.
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Start at verse 46 and we'll read verses 46 and 47.
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It says in verse 46, And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.
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And the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved.
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By the way, that phrase, day by day, simply means every day.
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Not a hard concept.
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Not hard in the Greek.
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It's just every day.
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I went and looked it up.
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Made sure I was making sure I was right.
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It's just every day.
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How many of us limit our faith expression or our expression of our faith in Christ to once a week? Many Christians get up on Sunday, they go to church, they fulfill that religious requirement that they have in their brain, they go home without giving much thought to what was said or what was done, and their faith is then put on hold all through the week until the next week when they come in they do it all over again.
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Church becomes something of a mental check-off list.
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I'm going to do this on Sunday from 10 to 12 and then I'm done.
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But the early church gives us the example that every day they were going into the temple, and we don't know why they were going to the temple because that's the Jewish temple.
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They could have been going just to pray.
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They could have been going to preach to the Jews.
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We know that they were going there.
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It doesn't tell us exactly why.
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It could be that this was part of the establishment of the new church, the new church was seeking converts.
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You don't know, but they were going there every day.
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They were breaking bread together every day.
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They were praising God every day.
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And they were doing something else every day that's not listed, but I can guarantee you it was happening because of the implicit nature of this text.
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This text implies something.
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It implies that every day they were going about the act of personal evangelism.
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Why? Because the Lord was adding to their number every day those who were being saved.
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And that don't happen by accident.
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The Lord does not add people to the number of the church by accident.
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He adds them through the intentional personal evangelism of the church.
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That's the means whereby the elect are drawn into the body.
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Personal evangelism is how the elect are drawn in.
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So that's what's happening here.
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It reminds me of George Whitefield.
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George Whitefield was one of the most powerful evangelists in the history of the church.
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He evangelized on two continents.
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He evangelized in multiple cities.
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He pulled crowds of upwards of 20,000 people before they knew what a microphone was, before they had any idea of expanding the voice.
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He would cry out to crowds of thousands of people.
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And you know what he said in one of his writings? He said if he went two weeks without seeing someone converted, he would pray to God and say, God, what am I doing wrong? He would say, God, what's changed? What do I need to change? Because he lived a full-time Christian life.
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His Christianity was full-time.
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It wasn't limited to Sunday.
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It wasn't limited to Wednesday night.
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It wasn't limited to the times when he was with other Christians.
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He went out into the world and shook the world for the gospel.
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We are called to seek after God with all of our might daily, not weekly.
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And we could say weekly, W-E-A-K-L-E-Y.
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I better not try that.
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Not weekly, W-E-A-K-L-E-Y.
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Weekly, you understand what I'm saying.
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If we really hope to influence the world, we cannot hope to do it two hours a week.
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If we really hope to win souls for Christ, we cannot hope to do it two hours a week.
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This is the time where the body of Christ comes together.
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This isn't even really the time for evangelism, though evangelism does happen on Sunday morning because the gospel is proclaimed.
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And any time the gospel is proclaimed, evangelism is happening.
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But the purpose for coming together is not for winning the lost.
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The purpose for coming together is for worshiping God.
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And then we go out to win the lost to bring them back to make worshipers.
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Evangelism exists because worship doesn't.
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That's what John Piper said, and I agree.
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He said, there's people out there who aren't worshiping God, so we need to go out there and get them to be worshipers of God.
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And that's what evangelism is.
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Evangelism exists because worship doesn't.
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We need to go out and make worshipers.
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That's what we do, make disciples.
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So many people are unwilling to shed even one drop of sweat for the kingdom of God.
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We'll sweat for everything else.
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We'll sweat for our diets.
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We'll sweat for our exercise.
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We'll sweat for our hobbies.
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We'll sweat for our jobs.
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But we won't sweat one drop for Christ.
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Yet the early church provides us a different example.
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They not only have faith as a priority, they have faith as a daily priority.
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Day by day.
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They didn't just do church, they were the church.
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Every day.
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We have a definite goal this year.
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I hope that I've been clear what my goal for the church is for this year.
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I hope that I've been clear as a leader in stepping out in front and saying, let's go.
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The goal is simple.
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Whatever borders you've set up in your mind, whatever borders you've set up around yourself, personally, congregationally, whatever, whatever borders there are is to go over them.
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Take steps over those borders.
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But here's the thing you need to keep in mind, and I will preach this and I will pound this forever, we have to do it God's way.
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God has a way for us to do this.
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We do not need to adopt the methodology of the world.
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To reach the world we do not need sharp business acumen.
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We don't need fancy marketing schemes.
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We don't need Saturday Night Live.
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We don't need comedy shows.
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We don't need dramatic praise and ballet and all that in the church.
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What we need is trust that God's way is the right way, and His way is very simple.
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We embrace the ordinary means of growth, which are the Word, Sacrament, and Prayer.
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We embrace one another as spiritual family members.
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That means we love each other even when it's hard, even when it's difficult, even when we don't want to.
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We love each other through our unlovable times, and we embrace a daily passion for the things of God.
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In particular, a desire to see others worship Him who aren't yet.
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And that last one will only happen when we stop coming to church, and we start being the church.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for this text of Scripture that You've given us to study.
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I pray that our desire would be to have the same empowerment that the early church has, the empowerment of the Holy Spirit of God, to daily seek after Your face, to daily seek after Your will, to daily seek that people would come to know Christ.
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I pray for the weeks ahead, as we begin an evangelism training on Wednesday nights, and in the weeks ahead as we continue to study the book of Acts, that every week we would be confronted with the truth of the Word of God, and to be moved toward more faithfulness in daily serving You.
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Use us, O God, in whatever way You see fit in the service of Your ministry.
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In Jesus' name we pray.
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Amen.