God's Church - [Acts 2:37-42]

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It is a joy indeed to be here. And thinking about your church, you play a vital role in this area here in the
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States and as Paul says in Philippians, shine like bright lights in a dark world.
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And I send greetings, I bring greetings from our church in Bornasulinovo.
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The believers there, they told me, please greet the church there, but they also said thank them.
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Thank them for, they are thankful for sending Pastor Mike to Poland last year when he came and preached at our
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Faithful to the World conference. They are also faithful for everyone who helps us stay in ministry and your support makes a big significant difference in our ministry, makes us able to stay in the field.
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So our church is faithful for that as well. And I have to tell you that some of the most embarrassing moments of my life are connected to me trying to speak
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English. English is not my native language, it's not my first language. And one of the examples is one time
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I was teaching and instead of calling people meticulous, I called them malicious. And I was wondering, you know, why is the weird look on their face there?
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But I cannot tell you about other examples because it is too embarrassing. So by God's grace, we can do it, right?
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So let me share with you about my loves.
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I love Jesus Christ most of all. He's my Savior. He is my
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Lord. I've been His disciple for 16 years. I became a believer in 1998.
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And He turned my world upside down, or I should rather say downside up.
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And I was never seeking after God. I was not interested in spiritual things.
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I mocked believers when they tried to share the gospel with me for two years. They've been trying to preach the gospel to me.
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I would mock them, but He saved me. He saved me. He transformed my heart.
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He made me hate the bad things I loved and love the good things
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I hated. He forgave my sins and He's the biggest love of my life.
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And I'm happy I'll spend eternity with Him. I love my wife. My wife is a godly woman.
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She's smart. She's wise. She's the best help God could have given me.
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She's the great helper. She's beautiful. And somehow I was able to trick her into loving me, wanting to be with me.
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So we've been married for 11 years now. And I love the church. I truly love the church.
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It is a significant work of God in this world. I believe the church is.
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It has a very special place in the heart of God. So I've learned to love the church.
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I not always was like that, but I've learned to love the church, understand what church is in the mind of God.
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And I do not mean a building or a denomination or an event. But I mean by the church, here's what
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I mean. I mean the universal body of Christ that consists of all believers who ever lived and will ever live, but expressed through the visible local assemblies organized according to the mind of Christ, under the headship of Christ, and for the purposes of Christ.
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That's what I mean by the church. That's a short definition of what the church is.
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And in that sense, I want to serve the church. I want to be in the church.
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I want to see the church grow. I want to see the church grow in godliness. I want to see the church grow in number.
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Because I do believe a church has a very special place in the heart of God. It is a very unique and significant work of God.
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And many of you are just as in love with Christ and with his church as I am, or many of you maybe even more.
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So I hope today, as I want to speak to you about the church and about the biblical understanding of the church and the biblical life of the church,
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I hope this will be a reminder to you and an encouragement to you and motivation for you to continue in your commitment to the church as you are already committed.
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But maybe some of you are here who are wondering, how much should I be committed to the church?
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Is the church that important? Really, it's all about Jesus after all, isn't it? So maybe some of you are trying to answer this question in your own mind.
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Should I be committed to the church? How much? How is it important? So hopefully this will be helpful to you.
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But maybe there are some of you who are not part of the church even. You're not a
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Christian. You're not a believer. Maybe you're a visitor. I don't know. You're not part of Christ's church.
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Well, then I want you also to pay careful attention to this sermon because there will be a tremendously important message for you as well.
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So I want to invite you to the book of Acts. The book of Acts, chapter 2.
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And we'll look at some of the things that Luke tells us about the church.
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Well, this is what we're going to do. We're going to read a passage from chapter 2, verses 36 to 42.
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But then we'll kind of zoom out and look a little bit at the context of the book of Acts and actually even what comes before that.
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And then we'll come back to the passage we're going to read now. And we're going to see what
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Luke is trying to tell us there. Okay, so let's read chapter 2, verses 36 and following.
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So as Peter is preaching the gospel and we read in verse 36, Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?
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And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the
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Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the
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Lord our God calls to himself. And with many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them saying, save yourself from this crooked generation.
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So those who received his word were baptized and there were added that day about 3000 souls.
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And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship and the breaking of bread and the prayers.
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So at least in Poland, I imagine the same in America. The church is more and more often neglected, disregarded, disrespected, not valued.
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In many parts of the world today, as always, as from the beginning, the church is persecuted.
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It's being attacked, we can say from the outside. It's attacked by those who are in the world by persecution.
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And ironically, when those attacks take place, it seems that the more the church is persecuted, the more it is loved, valued and cherished.
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But in our Western culture, I consider Poland to be a Western culture. In our
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Western world, the church is also under attack, but not so much from the outside as it is from the inside, from within the church.
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It is attacked by how we are influenced by the culture that is outside of the church.
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And being influenced with that culture, we are influencing the culture of the church with the culture that is not from the church.
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So it is often being attacked from the inside. It is attacked by a warped, distorted understanding of what the church is or how the church should look like.
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And unfortunately, unlike the attacks that come from the outside, the attacks that come from the inside, most often they cause us to neglect the church more and more and not to cherish it and love it, but disregard it and mistreat it.
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I want to read, before we go into the text, I want to read to you a few examples of what people actually say about the church.
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It's from a website I found. There are just a few comments out of hundreds on this website where people express what they feel about the church.
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Here it is. One person says, I'm not into church, I'm into Jesus. No reason to be a part of any group.
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You don't need a church to praise the Lord. Of course, many of those things, they're true, they're half true.
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Another person says, I take responsibility of my own spiritual life. Most Christians are too narrow -minded anyway.
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Or another person says, I don't agree with corporate church any longer because Jesus just didn't suggest it.
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I'm not going to let others tell me what to believe. By the way, the church is full of hypocrisy anyway.
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Et cetera, et cetera. So some people disregard the church because of pure ignorance.
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They are not committed to know what God has to say about the church. That's why they disregard the church.
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They just don't understand out of pure ignorance. Some disregard the church out of disappointment. There are people who have been disappointed by the church in some way or another.
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Some who live in unrepentant sin. There is sin in their life.
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They don't want to repent from it. They like it too much. Or maybe they fell into the lie of Satan who told them, well, this sin is too big.
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You cannot go back to church. It's just be ashamed for the rest of your life.
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And they don't repent and they stay away from the church. Some disregard the church because they have never actually been born again.
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And if they have not been born again, they stay, they remain dead to the things of God. And there are others who out of a desire to control or destroy the church, they disregard the church.
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And those are those whom Paul calls wolves in sheep's clothing.
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So, of course, we know the church is ugly sometimes and always imperfect, always.
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We say it in Poland. You probably say it here as well sometimes. Even if you find a perfect church, don't join it because you're going to spoil it.
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So the church is always imperfect because it's full of sinners in need of grace of God.
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So even though it is imperfect and it's ugly sometimes, let's remind ourselves in the midst of her imperfections about the uniqueness and exceptionality of the church.
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And let's hope our love for the church will grow. So today I want to talk to you about two biblical commitments as a believer you should have towards the church.
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Two biblical commitments towards the church that will glorify God, that will grow your love towards the church, and that will profit you spiritually.
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They're good for you spiritually. I want to talk about these commitments. Commitment number one, commit yourself to the biblical understanding of the church.
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Be committed to understand the church for what it is, for how God presents the church. Commit yourself to the biblical understanding of the church.
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It is the first commitment I want to point out that you need to make as a believer. You need to understand what
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God says about the church as about everything in life. You have to rely on what
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God has to say, not what your inner being tells you, not what your heart tells you about the church, not what your tradition tells you, where you come from, where you grew up, not what your guesses tell you, your culture or your experience, but the
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Word of God, the truth of the Word of God. You need to see how God paints the picture of what the church is and what place does it have in the mind of God.
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We need to be committed to that. So I want to show you how Luke presents the church as a unique work of God and we need to be committed to understanding the church in that biblical way.
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So in order to see that, let's look at the context a little bit from the passage we read where Peter stood up, he preaches the gospel, he calls to repentance, but what happens before that?
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What's the context? Well, in Acts chapter 1 verses 1 to 3,
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Luke gives a summary of kind of what took place before he moves on to describing the events of the book of Acts.
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What did happen before that? Well, the gospels happened before that.
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Jesus came, a promised Messiah came, a son of God incarnate in human flesh, lived a sinless life, died death on the cross.
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Three days later, he was raised from the dead, confirming everything that was said about him was true.
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Then for 40 days, he appeared to 500 eyewitnesses.
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Then he ascended to heaven and is seated on the throne. He's going to come back one day.
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But before he ascended, before he left his disciples, what happened? He had given them commands.
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In Acts chapter 1, we read that until in verse 2, 1 -2, until the day when he was taken up, before he left, before he was taken up to heaven, he had given commands through the
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Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. And it almost seems like the book of Acts is the fulfillment of those commands.
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This is what Luke almost is trying to tell us. So he had given them commands. And this is now in this book,
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I'm going to describe to you how those commands were being fulfilled. It's almost like the book of Acts is the fulfillment of the commands of Christ left to the apostles, to the disciples.
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So what kind of commands did he give them? Well, there are two commands that were given by the
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Lord to the disciples before he returned to heaven. One command he had given them is in Luke 24, 49.
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And this is also repeated in Acts chapter 1, verse 4. It is a command that they should stay in Jerusalem.
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They should stay in Jerusalem. And then a second command is from Luke 24, 47, but also in Acts 1, 8 is repeated, is that they will go into the world as witnesses.
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So as they wait in Jerusalem, then in Acts 1, 8, they are to wait for the
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Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is going to come upon them and they are going to become witnesses, witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
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That's the command he left them. The command is pretty much the Great Commission. It's what we call the Great Commission.
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It's what Matthew tells us in Matthew 28, 18 to 20. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them everything
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I commanded you. That's the command he left them. That's the mission that they had.
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And it's almost like the book of Acts is the fulfillment of that commission. Like God is trying to tell us through the book of Acts what it means to fulfill the
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Great Commission. What does it mean to fulfill, to follow, to obey the commands that Christ left the disciples?
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So this is the question I want to ask is what did Christ mean by that? How did Christ and how did the apostles understand those commands?
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Well, they did stay in Jerusalem. We know that. We read about it in Acts 1 and 2. And what else?
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Well, in chapter 2, the promised Holy Spirit, he comes and fills the disciples.
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And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, he steps out and he starts preaching the gospel in chapter 2.
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And then we get to our passage. So, of course, the fulfillment of the command of Christ was to preach the gospel.
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And this is precisely what Peter is doing. He stood up, he preaches the gospel about Jesus. And in verse 36, it's kind of a summary of what he's trying to tell them, tell the people.
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Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, the
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Jesus whom you crucified. The Jesus whom you crucified, he's the Lord and he's the
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Savior. God made him Savior and Lord, Christ and Lord.
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This is what Peter is preaching. And then in verse 37, we read that people's hearts were cut when they heard this, when they heard the gospel, when they heard the truth about who
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Christ is and what they did to Christ, because Christ would have never had to die if it wasn't for our sin.
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So when they heard this message, they were cut to the heart. They were stung.
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That's what the word means. They were stung to their heart. Or as Homer, the Greek, classical
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Greek writer says, he uses the same verb to describe horses stamping the earth with their hooves.
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It's like, it's like the horses ran on their hearts and stamping their hearts with hooves.
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Their hearts were touched, cut, stung to the gospel, convicted of sin.
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And Jesus crucified that they crucified Christ. And Christ is the Lord and Savior.
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Their hearts were cut. And they ask a question, of course, they respond. And they ask, what shall we do?
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What shall we do then? And in verse 38, Peter replies, repent and be baptized.
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He does exactly what Jesus told them to do. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them everything
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I commanded you. So he says, repent and be baptized. So we see this fulfillment of the command that Christ left to his disciples.
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This is what the book of Acts is about. So he's preaching the gospel. He calls people to repentance. He calls people to be baptized for forgiveness of their sins.
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And by the way, when the Bible says in this passage, in 238, be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins.
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It does not mean that baptism is what assures forgiveness. It does not mean that baptism is a condition for forgiveness.
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In order to be forgiven, you have to be baptized. That's not what this passage says. Why? Well, at least for two reasons.
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One reason is a grammatical reason. The preposition that is used there, the little word for, for the forgiveness of sins.
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In Greek, it can mean both things. It can either mean, it can express either purpose or result.
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It can mean for the forgiveness of sins, like it says. Or it can also mean on the account of forgiveness of sins, or on the basis of forgiveness of sins.
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So this preposition has double meaning. It can be used in both ways, as a purpose or as a result.
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And I believe that's how it's best understood, especially since Luke, that's the second reason why baptism is not a condition for forgiveness.
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The second reason is because that's what is consistent with the rest of the teaching of Luke in his language, and the rest of the
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New Testament. It's very clear that forgiveness of sins is not connected to baptism, but it is connected with repentance or faith.
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And we see that in Acts 3 .9. Just one chapter farther, 3 .19,
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sorry. Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out.
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There's no more baptism, mentioning of baptism. The same in Luke 24 .47. So forgiveness of sins is connected to repentance and faith, not to baptism, not to any kind of work.
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It is by grace through faith that we are saved. It is a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.
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So in Acts 2 .39, so as he calls them to repentance, and he calls them to be baptized on the basis of their forgiveness, of their repentance, to express that through baptism, he continues in verse 39, he says, this promise is for you, for your children.
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It is for everyone. This promise is for everyone who hears this message and whom the
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Lord our God calls to Himself. And then in verse 40, we see that with many other words, he bore witness.
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See, when you read the message of Peter in chapter 2, you can read it in three minutes.
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So the question is, was Peter's preaching only three minutes long? No, it wasn't.
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No, it wasn't. In verse 40, we see that with many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, save yourself from this crooked generation.
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And now verse 41. This is where I want you to notice something, a little small word that I think means a lot in the language of Luke, that he's trying to present something.
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That's why it's there. Because it wouldn't have to be there, but he decides to include it in verse 41.
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And those, so those who received his word were baptized.
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And there were added that day about 3 ,000 souls. So we see three things happened.
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People received the preaching. They received the gospel. They were baptized. Is that it?
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Is that a great commission? Well, not in the understanding of Luke, not in the understanding of Peter.
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I don't think not in the way Jesus understood the great commission where he gave it. So that's why verse 41 says about the third thing that happened.
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They were added. They were added. 3 ,000 souls, 3 ,000 people were added that day.
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What does it mean? To what were they added? Why is it there? Why is it included? And it's not the only time that Luke talks about adding people to something.
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Because in the same passage, just farther down in verse 47, he uses the same language.
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He says, and the Lord added to their number day by day, those who were being saved.
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So we see it's very important for Luke that we understand in the beginning, as on the day of Pentecost, the church is being born, is being started, that we understand that as people hear the gospel, as Peter goes to people and he calls them to repent and be baptized, they are being added to church.
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He doesn't say, okay, so now you get the gospel. You are saved. Move on to your own business, to live your individual lives.
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It's all about Jesus after all, isn't it? He doesn't say that. They were added to something.
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To what? Well, to Christ. Yeah, definitely when people believe, repent, and are baptized, they are
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Christ's. They are in Christ. Christ is in them. They belong to Christ.
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And that's very important because that gospel is fully individual matter.
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It is you and God. It's between you and God. Salvation doesn't come through church.
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It doesn't come by being added to the church. It doesn't come by finding the church you like or you feel good at.
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It doesn't come through any group of people. It doesn't come through your parents who are maybe believers.
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It comes from your repentance and your faith, from the work of God through the gospel in your life.
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It's a totally individual matter. But what were they added to?
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I believe they were added to the church. That's what the passage is about. That's what
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Luke is trying to emphasize here. The language Luke is using is an expression of adding to a group.
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That's the word added is an expression of adding to something, to a group. And in verse 47, that's precisely what is being said.
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Lord added to their number. Whose number? Well, the number of believers. So the language
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Luke is using is an expression of adding to the group. And it is best rendered, or it could be rendered as about 3 ,000 more believers that day joined their group.
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Whose group? Or the Lord made the group bigger by about 3 ,000 people.
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Which group? Well, it's not the first time that Peter is using or Luke is using numbers.
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Because when you rewind to chapter 1 verse 15, he already used a number.
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He said there were 120 of disciples who met in the upper room.
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So he's really specific. He wants us to know in the beginning that there's 120 people. And then when
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Holy Spirit comes and Peter preaches the gospel, people respond, it's not 120 anymore.
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It's 3 ,120 at least. So he wants us to know that this is what
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Christ is about. He's about building the church, establishing the church. This is the work of Christ.
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This is the fulfillment of Great Commission. Preaching the gospel, calling people to repentance, baptizing them, adding them to the church.
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And that's what the book of Acts is about. It's about establishment, establishing of the universal church of Christ expressed through the establishment of local churches all over Asia Minor and in Europe.
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So the book of Acts, I believe, makes it very clear that the ministry of Jesus is continued through the apostles in this way.
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Yes, by proclaiming the gospel of salvation and calling people individually to repentance, but then those who are being saved, incorporating them by the gospel into the local churches.
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In Matthew 16, at the time of well -known confession of Peter, where Jesus asks, who people say
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I am, but who do you say I am? And Peter says, you are Christ. You are the Son of God, the living
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God. And then Jesus replies to him, on this rock, I believe the rock of your confession, pretty much
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Jesus is saying, on me, on me, the Son of God, Son of the living God, on this rock,
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I will build my church. I will build my ecclesia, which means a gathering. Those who are being called out, ekkaleo, calling out of,
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I will call my own people. I will call my own group. I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail it.
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In other words, we can almost say that conversion to Christ, salvation, is not an end in itself.
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Responding by faith and repentance, it's not an end in itself. It's almost as it is means by which
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God incorporates people to his church. It's a means by which God adds people to his church.
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You see, even though salvation is totally individual matter, God is not interested strictly in saving individuals, but in saving the church for himself.
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In Ephesians chapter 5, Paul makes it very clear. Ephesians 5, 25 to 27.
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5, 25 to 27. He addresses husbands and he tells them, you love your wives, but then he moves on to Christ, as Christ loved the church.
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He doesn't say husbands love your wives as Christ loved you husbands. He says, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
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What a marvelous passage about the love Christ has for his church.
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If there is anything in this world, we can with certainty say that God is involved in building it.
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It is this one thing, the church. It is the church. In Acts chapter 20, verse 28, when
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Paul says goodbye to the Ephesian elders and he warns them of certain things.
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In verse 28, 20, 28, he says to them, pay careful attention to yourself and to all the flock in which the
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Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.
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He obtained it with his own blood. What a special place the church has in the mind of God, in the heart of God.
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Jesus said it. He taught it. Peter understood it. Luke understood it.
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Paul understood it. That's what the rest of the New Testament is about. It's about epistles to the churches or to those who were supposed to take care of the flock of churches, like to Timothy who was left in a church in Ephesus and Paul writes him a letter so that he knows what to do in the church of the living
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God, which is the pillar and buttress of truth. So we need to be committed to the biblical understanding of the church.
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Out of what we know, what we think about a church, will flow the attitude towards the church.
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And the biblical understanding of the church, it is that it is a very unique and a very special in the heart of God and in the work of God in this age.
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Just think about it. Just think about it. If God loves his church that much, if in Acts 20, 28, we read that he obtained the church with his own blood and in Ephesians 5, we read that he loved the church and he died for the church and he's cleansing the church and he's going to present the church as blameless before himself.
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I mean, how much, how much should we love the church? If Christ loved the church that way, if we love
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Christ, we are going to love the church. We are going to be committed to loving the church.
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It's almost a contradiction to say, I love Christ, but I don't love his church. You see, a
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Bible presents very unique pictures of what the church is. For example, it presents a church as a dwelling place of God, a temple of God.
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In Ephesians chapter 2, we read from verse 16 to 22, where Paul says to those believers, now you are reconciled through the cross.
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And then he continues, build on the foundation of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the
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Lord. In him, you also believers in Ephesians are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirit.
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The dwelling place of God, the holy temple of God, and not as a building, but as a body of living people in whom
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God dwells with his presence. What a picture. And then it presents also the church as a body of Christ.
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In Colossians chapter 1, verses 17 -18, in this one of the most beautiful passages about preeminence of Christ, right there in Colossians, about his majesty, about his preexistence, about his preeminence.
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Right there in this passage, Paul decides to include this. And he's before all things.
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And in him, all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church.
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And then, of course, in Revelation, the church is the bride. Revelation chapter 19, verses 6 -8, we read about the feast of Christ and his bride, the church.
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Just think about it. Just think about it. How can we honestly say we love
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Christ, but we disregard the church? We are committed to Christ, but we are not committed to the church.
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It's like you would be committed to buying a foundation and never building a house on it.
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Just being content with the foundation and spending the rest of your life living on the foundation.
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Or just imagine wanting a head without a body. Just imagine telling your wife,
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Honey, I love you. I just can't stand your body. The church is the body of Christ.
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It is the body of Christ. And he loves the church. And, of course, in 1
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Timothy, as I already mentioned, 3 .15 is the pillar and buttress of truth. You see,
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Christ loves the church. The church might be imperfect. It is imperfect, ugly, often hurts, might cause pain.
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But glory be to God for his love for the church. Because the church is also the best place on this earth.
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I believe so. As much as I, myself, experience different struggles in the church, and I've seen leaders abuse their roles, and I've seen people being selfish, it is also in the church that I've met my best heroes.
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It is in the church I've met most generous people, most loving people, smart people, committed people, people who are the best example of what it means to be a husband, what it means to be a friend.
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It is through the church I learned, I saw the visible work of Christ, His love being expressed through the love of people who are in the church.
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It is where we learn that Christ, what Christ's love is. When we see the ugliness of the church, then we learn, we have a visible picture of how boundless love of Christ is.
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Because he loved the church, not because the church is pretty, because it's beautiful, but because the church is full of sinners.
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And he saved the church regardless of the church. He saved the church because of his love, his great mercy.
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So when the church causes you struggles, then you are reminded, wow, Christ, how great is your mercy.
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And when church is doing well, and it's giving you expressions of love and care and prayer, then you get to see
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God at work through his people. A quote from John Stott, some people construct a
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Christianity which consists entirely of a personal relationship to Jesus Christ and has virtually nothing to do with the church.
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Others make a grudging concession to the need for church membership, but add that they have given up the ecclesiastical institution as hopeless.
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Now it is understandable, even inevitable, that we are critical of many of the church's inherited structures and traditions.
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Every church in every place at every time is in need of reform and renewal, but we need to beware lest we despise the church of God and are blind to his work in history.
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We may safely say that God has not abandoned his church, however displeased with it he may be.
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He is still building it and refining it. And if God has not abandoned it, how can we?
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So commit yourself to the biblical understanding of the church, understanding the church as a unique and special work of God.
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Second commitment I want to point out to you from verse 42 as we continue reading.
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So as the 3 ,000 people were added to the group of 120, they formed this group, this body.
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In verse 42 we continue to read, and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
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So Luke continues to say that they devoted themselves to, there was a togetherness among them.
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Together they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to fellowship.
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So I believe he talks about two things in this verse. In verse 42 he talks about the teaching and the fellowship because as we continue to read verse 42 where it says, teaching and the fellowship, comma, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
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It's actually, there is a reason why there's a comma. There is no word and in Greek, which grammatically, most likely, most commentators agree with that.
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Most likely, everything that follows fellowship stands under fellowship. In other words,
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Luke is trying to describe, give certain characteristics of what this fellowship was. So he says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship.
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What kind of fellowship? Well, the fellowship that was expressed by what? Breaking bread and prayers.
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I believe that's what he's trying to say in this verse. So they were committed to two things, teaching, fellowship, teaching and fellowship.
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But when he says they devoted themselves, it's an interesting word. It carries the meaning of spending time.
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They were giving themselves to something, being eager for something. So what they were spending time doing or what were they giving themselves to or being eager for was the teaching and fellowship.
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That's what they were spending time doing. Teaching, being committed to the biblical life of the church means being committed to the teaching of the word of God.
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So yes, commit yourself to the biblical understanding of the church, understanding it as a unique and special work of God.
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But secondly, commit yourself to the biblical life of the church, which is expressed by your devotion, your commitment to being taught the word of God.
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Because when he says they committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, well, yeah, because the apostles were those that were laying the foundation for the church.
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There was no written word of God. The canon was enclosed and they were the ones appointed by Christ.
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They were the witnesses of the works of Christ. And they were the ones who authoritatively were teaching the word of God.
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Today, we don't have apostles anymore. Apostles don't exist today. John MacArthur gives at least three necessary criteria for apostles and three reasons why today we don't have apostles anymore.
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Number one, an apostle had to be a physical eyewitness of the resurrected Christ. Secondly, and there are verses,
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Acts 1 .22, 10 .39 -41, 1 Corinthians 9 .1. Second reason, an apostle had to be personally appointed by the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Mark 3 .14, Luke 6 .13,
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Acts 1 .2. And the third reason, an apostle had to be able to authenticate his apostolic appointment with miraculous signs.
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And that's Matthew 10, verses 1 and 2, Acts 1 .5 -8, 2 .43, 4 .33,
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5 .12, and so on and so on. So today we don't have apostles, but we don't need apostles because the foundation was laid, as Paul says in Ephesians, by prophets and apostles.
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We have the word of the apostles. We have the word of God. We have the word of prophets. And this is what we devote ourselves to, to the teaching of this book.
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We are the people of the book, of the Bible, of the word of God. And this is the biblical commitment to the life of the church.
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The life of the church means the word of God, teaching of the word of God. That's what
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Luke is emphasizing in this passage. So as the church was born, people committed themselves.
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They were spending time being taught the word of God, the words of apostles, the word of God, breathed out by God.
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This is the word of God. And it's all profitable for walking in righteousness. If there is anything that you should expect from the church, it is a faithful teaching of the word of God.
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If there's a biggest need that the church fulfills, meets, it is teaching the word of God.
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That's the first and foremost expectation that we should have. It's being taught the word of God.
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It's not having fun. It's not doing various things. And it's being taught the word of God, devoting ourselves to the teaching of the word of God.
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So being committed to the biblical life of the church means being devoted to the teaching of the word of God. But also it means being committed to the fellowship.
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That's the second thing that Luke mentions. He says they committed, they devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and fellowship.
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Fellowship, the word means sharing of goods. It may mean association. It may mean close relationships.
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It may mean communion. It means lots of things, but it means, in a way, togetherness.
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They devoted themselves to togetherness, not to individualism, but to togetherness.
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So they were associating with one another. They were communing with another. They were sharing lives together, at least in two ways.
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Two marks, at least two marks of this fellowship, Luke tells us. First one, breaking of bread.
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Breaking of bread, the phrase most likely describes Christians fellowshipping together at mealtime.
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That was probably followed by celebration of Lord's Supper. Because in a
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New Testament church, that's most likely where communion took place. It was a meal that they had together that was followed by the celebration of the
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Lord's Supper. So they were sharing that time together, the time of communion and meals.
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And then they were committed to prayers. That's another mark of their fellowship. They prayed together.
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They probably, in public and in private, in house meetings and in the temple, they shared fellowship with each other as they shared fellowship with God.
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So, commit yourself to the biblical life of the church by devoting your church to the teaching of God's Word and to the fellowship with other believers.
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It's so easy in our times, at least in Poland, I'm guessing here as well. It's so easy to be individualistic, to be locked down in our own world.
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It's so easy. But the mark of the biblical commitment to the church is togetherness, is fellowship.
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It's also so easy in our times to fall into a trap of consumerism, to be a consumer.
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So do not be a consumer, do not be taker, be a giver of fellowship. So the
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Bible doesn't tell us go to church to receive fellowship, to be served. It tells fellowship.
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It's a word to us. You fellowship. You share life with others. You pray with others.
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So don't be a consumer. Don't be a taker. Be a giver. Consumerism is opposite to the biblical attitude.
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Consumerism says I am the client and the church is the shopping center. I have my needs. I have my ambitions.
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I have my opinions. I have my expectations. The church is there to serve my needs, to meet my needs.
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The music must be of my kind. The preacher must be of my kind. The sermon is best when it agrees with my worldview and not necessarily with the
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Word of God because then it actually might even offend me. Such attitude often shows itself in such way that when you come to church, you expect performance and you expect satisfaction.
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But ironically, it never comes. You're never satisfied because instead of living for the glory of God, you've been actually living for your own.
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So as we conclude, commit yourself to the biblical life of the church, biblical understanding of the church, understanding it as a unique work of God, loved by Christ, purchased with His blood, but also commit yourself to the biblical life of the church.
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And I just want to close with one last word. I told those of you who are not in a church, you're not part of the church because you've never understood the gospel.
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You have never responded to the gospel with repentance and faith. I told you there will be a tremendously important message for you.
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It is. It is important because you see, Peter started with the gospel and called to repentance.
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Joining a church followed. So the message for you today is not to join a church or to look for a church.
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Yeah, be in a church, be exposed to the teaching of the Word, but what you need is repentance.
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The church is going to change nothing. Membership in a church is going to change nothing in your spiritual state.
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You need to be reconciled with God by repentance and faith that is found in Christ, in His work, in His sinless life.
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And when He became sin on the cross so that we might be righteousness before God, substitutionary sacrifice that He made on the cross for the sins of those who believe.
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So I encourage you to think about a gospel, think about who Christ is, think about your life, and think about that you're going to face
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Christ either as a judge or as a savior one day. May God bless you.
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Let me pray. Lord, we thank you for your wonderful work in history.
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We thank you for your sovereign work in building your church.
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You said you're going to build your church and you are building your church. Thank you for that. And thank you most of all for the work of salvation that was accomplished on the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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Thank you for the transforming power of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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Thank you for the forgiveness of sins, but also thank you for the hope of new life. Thank you for the transformation.
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Thank you that you start a good work and you continue it to the end.
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And as we receive your gospel, as we understand your love for us, we also want to grow in our love for your work in this world, which is the church.
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So help us to be good church people, committed to your truth, committed to one another, committed to wearing each other's burdens and helping one another, rebuking one another, teaching one another, encouraging one another.