Signs of a Evangelizing Church

Read Acts 5;12-16

This summary of life in the early church shows a snap shot of how they were living there lives as a church.

There are 3 main groups we are dealing with in these passages

Believers- Church (universal not local)

Non Believers- people

New believers- Those who were added

Most of this account takes place where the apostles and some of the believers would gather at Solomon’s Portico

Which was a large covered area where the public could gather after a religious gathering and discuss theology

This is the same located at the temple that they healed the lame man

The same place the Sadducees is located

Three Main Themes

Following God over government

Spreading the Gospel

Serving others

Break down the three main themes

This passage is in regards the what we now call the universal church. It is a poor interpretation of these verses to think this is only referring to the the local church.

Following God over government

Apostles are not following the “no witnessing law” set forth by the Sadducees

Because these men were tasked with spreading the message of Jesus, by Jesus these men were not willing to stop. This was there God given mission and they were not going to stop. They fully understood that they were predestined to do this and had no intentions of stoping

Spreading the Gospel

This is the primary goal of the church

In this passage we see that this was manly carried out by the Apostles, however in as you study this book as a whole and look into other records of what was occurring we see the same thing as today were this is done by each and every believer

As a result Believers being added

Serving Others

In our passage we see an example of serving others as healing the sick, which was done by all the Apostles, but we know that this is not all that was done from other books.

This healing did not occur only at the temple because most were not comfortable going there due to issues with the Sadducees

It is clear they were doing there work all over the city and even outside of the city limits

People not believing but respecting the believers

The respected part is something to pay attention to, the early Christians were respected by the unbelievers the came across.

This is something we see constituently brought up throughout out the NT

Read Ephesians 2:1-10

In Ephesians what we see is a declaration of how believers saved

It is because God save us

We did nothing to deserve to be Saved of our sin by Jesus

But before the world began, it was decided by God that you, in this time, would be saved from eternal suffering and be declared righteous in the name of the one true God whom all things originated from

Now let that just kinda soak in your mind, there was nothing you did to earn your salvation

James 2:14-19

What James is saying is what good is it for you to be saved, and given a assignment all from God for you to do nothing with it?

There would be no point to to it! Jesus entire mission would have been in vain if His entire church was like hey thanks for saving me, I’m going to the beach to do nothing for the rest of my life.

James is not saying that you are only saved if you do work to this level or that, that is faith by works which he clearly says is not a thing

What James is getting at is out of your understanding of what it means to be saved, you respond by a desire to serve.

this is not a strange thing for us, when ever someone does something nice for us, we feel a need to repay them.

This is how we are wired, this is the same response James is talking about and this is the same response we see being demonstrated for us in Acts.

What this looks like today

Today we see these main themes playing out in how we are to do God’s work for us.

As we saw in Ephesians we all have been predestined for this moment in time and we all have a job to do

We are to have compassion for the lost because we were lost and it is only by the grace of God that we are not

We are not to let anything stand in our way of completing this task

We are not operating under our own orders but God’s to his work

These tasks are not always carried out inside our church building

Usually our work will not be in the walls of a building, this is not where we find the lost, this is not were we effect those who need to see God’s love in action

We need to be witnessing in every aspect of our lives

Weather it is at work, or baseball, basket ball, football or any other thing you find yourself doing we need to be witness for God

We also need to keep ours eyes open for opportunities to show God’s love by involving ourselves in helping people in need.

We do not save

We need to always remember that just because we are serving and witnessing, just as we did not do anything to be saved, we do not save anyone God does.

We need to remember our job is to proclaim God’s love, so if no one is saved you do not need to feel bad, that is not your job.

Closing

My encouragement to you all is be active in your community, don’t fall into the trap of your christian life being a “church” thing only, don’t be afraid to try things it is not you who saves so what harm can come from being informative, and as always be aware of what your reputation is with others and be someone they would listen to and respect, not someone who is unflattering so that no one will listen to you.

Be encouraged that nothing about you is an accident, there is nothing random occuring here, you are you, for a reason, and God chose you to do this work before the anything existed.