What Does the Bible Say? | Church

Intro

Hey Y’all! How was spring break? Everybody have fun? Everybody good? Good!

So question for you

How many of you like to belong to things? Like to an organization, or a club, or are fans of a certain sports team?

What are you a part of what clubs?

All of us have that feeling. All of us have these desires to belong to some sort of group. Belong to something bigger than ourselves.

I think we are all have that hard wired in our minds to need that sense of belonging. I think God placed that in our minds because we are social beings. So the thing I want us to keep in the back of our mind tonight is, what is the ultimate thing we should belong to.

Even when we say that, it brings up thoughts of family or church. Especially in the south, most everyone belongs to some sort of church.

So tonight we are going to continue with our study on what does the bible say, and this will be the last night that we talk about what the bible says about things we are really familiar with, from there we will shift to more Hot Topics and things people have really hard opinions on.

but tonight we are going to talk about what the bible says about the church. We all here at a a building that we call the church, we end every service on Wednesdays by saying “Go Be the Church” but I think that can get vague and nebulous if we don’t really examine what the church is, we will lose sight of why we are the church.

This would be like, on Friday nights during football season, Jones county is about to come out of the locker room super hyped, ready to go out there are wear out the other team, “we are putting up 70, Austin Barnes is like, I’m puttin’ two in the hospital tonight! Then you come running out of the locker room, straight to the parking lot and you get in your truck and go home. You have to go an do the thing you are designed to do.

SO that is what we are talking about tonight.

Context

SO tonight we are going to be in Acts Chapter 2 verses 42-47 looking at a glimpse of what the church looked like in it’s very early days. How the church kind of became the church.

So if you need bible go on a throw a hand up we will get you a bible. If you have a bible at home bring it, it really does help. But before we really get to the text tonight let me give you some background so that you have an idea as to what is going on.

Where does this idea of Church come from, what is going on? we are going to try and answer a few questions tonight, what is the church? Who is the church. What is the problem with how we view the church? What is the cause of that problem? and What do we do about that problem.

So, let’s start at the very beginning, In Genesis we see where God is walking with Adam and Eve in the garden, physically in the garden.

Then we goofed, Adam sinned and ruined it all for us, we are kicked out. We severed the relationship with God.

Then later on in Genesis we see God choosing a people, Choosing the Hebrew people as His people and creating the covenant with Abraham. His descendents are going to be the His people. Then we see God saving His people from slavery in Egypt, and renewing the covenant with Moses. Giving Moses the Ten Commandments. Then we see through out the old testament The People of God rebelling against God, God Judging His people, and God saving His people. When you look at the book of Judges, it is all about the Hebrew People and Israel being Judged, either through captivity or through crazy ruler. But God is also faithful to save His people from ultimate destruction.

Rebellion and redemption. Rebellion and Redemption is the story of the bible. it is the story of the old testament. The main constant is the people of God. God’s people, rebelling and God’s redeeming His people.

Throughout the whole Old Testament and the first part of the New Testament, we see that God’s people are the Hebrew People. The Israelites. Through out most of the bible, there are two main distinctions of people. You have the Israelites and the Gentiles. If we lived in the biblical days, we would be considered Gentiles, at least most of us would be.

We see the people of God, and the people not of God.

everybody tracking? I know I may be moving a little fast, but this is super important.

So what does this have to do with what the bible says about the church? The Hebrew people didn’t even call it church, they called it synagogue.

Some of y’all might be picking up on it, the people of God is the church. But how did this happen?

This brings us to the book we are in tonight. Acts. The Book of acts was written by the same guy who wrote the book of Luke, so Luke wrote acts. if you really look at it, Acts is just book 2 of Luke. If the book of Luke is about the life and work of Christ, the book of Acts is the all about the work for the early of church. The full name of the book is the “Acts of the Apostles.” The Act of the messengers of Christ.

So what is going on in so far? Well Jesus has already ascended to heaven, and the holy spirit has come upon the 12 disciples. The original twelve disciples, minus Judas - he hung himself-, are starting the work of the Church, of carrying the message of the Gospel out in to the world.

Right before the text we are about to read, We see Peter, who was not one for words give one of the more famous sermons in the bible. He given the sermon that is known as the sermon at pentecost. Peter preaches for like 30 mins and 3000 people get saved. right there. wild. Imagine that new members class we would have to do here at FBC.

So that is what is going on right there in the early church.

So where are we? Let’s catch out breath. Let me pray for our time in the world and then we will read this text together.

pray

English Standard Version Chapter 2

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Main Idea

The Goal of the Church is to point to Christ.

Okay cool, so what is going on here? We see this right after Peter did his best Billy Grahm impression, 3000 people got saved and the church is growing daily like this. Theses are some seriously exciting days in the early church.

This texts gives us a look at how the church should look.

So the main idea tonight is, The goal of the church should point to Christ. if you remember anything nothing else tonight, remember that. The Goal of the Church should point to Christ.

Problem - The Church Should point to Christ.

And this is where we could go and end it right here, but we aren’t. Because this picture that we see here in this text isn’t what we see sometimes today.

And what makes this text so interesting is, this picture we see here in this passage is also not the picture we saw of God’s people before christ came.

Remember, we looked briefly about God’s people in the OT, and in the New Testament the people of God come on the scene as being under Roman rule. Which is different from the other times Israel has been under the power of a foreign power. See Rome was smart, Rome would come in and defeat your army but instead of wiping your civilization out of history, they would just say,

“Hey, you guys can keep doing what you’re doing, keep worshiping who ever, we are gonna bring some nice roads in, and we are gonna make sure you have some running water, it’ll be great! But we are gonna tax you, and if you don’t pay us, we will kill every last one of you. Cool? Great. Buh Bye now.”

So the people of God got cozy, the people of God got lulled in to this sense of, “well things aren’t too bad.” They weren’t thrilled to be under roman rule but it wasn’t OT slavery. They had the best roads, the Romans would defend them if invaders showed up. You know, it wasn’t too bad.

So the people of God became worried about things that didn’t matter. When we see the people of God in the new testament, they are kinda split, in to two main factions. They have forgotten about what matters, and are splitting between themselves. We see the Saddiuces and the Pharisee, one was all about the law, and the other was all about coming out from under Rome. They were political factions as well as theological factions. Th people of God had been bogged down by about 600 something laws that they had to keep. Forget just keeping ten, you have to keep all 600 or you have broken the whole of the Law.

Hav you ever played the game operation? You know where you become the doctor and try to take stuff out of this game board wired up to a battery so that if you touch the metal in the little dude open wound, it makes a buzzing noise and you lose your turn. When I was in new Orleans we played operation one night at small group, but one of our buddies was an ER surgeon, and that dude killed us. It wasn’t even close. But that’s besides the point.

If you touch the metal at all, even if just slightly that buzzer is going off, and you’ve broken the entire law. If you break it once, you’ve broken it for the rest of time.

That is how the people of God got from the 10 Commandments to 600 laws that no one can keep but everyone is focused on more than God Almighty.

The people of God has stopped pointing to God.

And we see this today. How many times have we, inside the church, have seen some of the meanest things said to one another.

This even made a country song from back in the day, literally had the line, “Church League, Softball, Fist Fight.”

We have seen and have been the people who are pointing to something else other than Christ.

look at verse 44

English Standard Version Chapter 2

And all who believed were together and had all things in common

Look at this, look at what the church looked like in the beginning. This said they had all things in common.

So what does this mean? What is Luke getting at here? This is saying the people of the Church were in everything together. They knew what the goal was, they knew they had to point to Christ. This didn’t mean they all agreed on everything at all times, this saying they agreed on the thing that mattered most. They agreed on the mission, they agreed that the mission is to point to Christ. There are all kinds of people here. If you get 30 people in a room let alone 3000 people in a room you are gonna have some people who don’t agree on somethings, you are gonna have people who don’t like each other.

So how did they do it in the first century? Cause this was weird, the church we see in Acts 2 was so against the society of the day, it was weird. It made no sense to the world around them. How’d they do it? The were joined in the work of pointing to Christ. They were joined in the calling of he Church to help build the Kingdom.

Cause - The Church is called to help build the kingdom. We have lost sight of that.

So how did this happen? How did the church go from what we see here in Acts to what we see here in 2021? How did we get to where everyone is on board in the mission of Christ and people were being added daily? How did we get here?

I know I’ve talked about this before, and I know I use a lot of sports illustrations, but Y’all remember the Super Bowl with the Falcons? Man the Falcons are up 28-3 in the 3rd qt. Man they should have closed that game out. We all know we were dumbfounded watching the patriots come back and win that game. And after the game if you were a falcons fan you asked, “How did this happen?”

How did that happen? How did they not close that game out? They lost sight of the ultimate goal of that game, all they had to do was sit back and kick a field goal and run the clock out. but they saw the lead and said, you know what, lets get more, lets not just win let’s make them hurt. Let’s try to rub their nose in it. Their sights changed, they went from a machine that was going to win the super bowl to a prideful group that wanted to stat pad. They Lost sight of the goal was.

And that is what we see here in the church, how did we go from acts 2 to a society that sees us as hypocritical, that sees us a purely judgmental, that sees us as not that much different than themselves.

We lost sight of the mission, we lost sight of the goal. We don’t have to agree on every single thing, but we do have to agree on the ultimate thing, we do have to agree on Christ and Him crucified. We have to see the mission of God.

So many times us in the church are seeing things that aren’t the main thing and saying, “You know that’d be nice to have, you know that’d be pretty sweet.”

Too often we trade the mission of Christ for things that do not matter, for things that are not the main thing. We say, “Yeah, Christ is nice, but it would be super cool to go chase after these girls, or Christ is great but i really want to devote my life chasing after that first high i got the first time I got high” and those are the easy ones for us to point out, but there are other things that we see in the church, we say, “yes let’s follow the mission, but you know what would really help us carry out this mission? Power, if we just had some of that power up in congress we could bring Christ back right now.” It so easy to do in our lives to take out eyes off the mission. It’s so easy to even well intention and say, this will really help God if i do this my way, I know better than God. We have at one point all been guilty of that. We have all at one point been the ones to say, God, I got this.

So when we ask how did this happen? The answer is we took our eyes off God, our own sinful ways got in the way. We have taken our eyes off the ultimate goal, to point to Christ, to help build the kingdom.

Solution - Turn back to the mission, Turn back to Christ.

So what do we do about this? How do we try to reclaim this first century church feel? How do we reset our eyes on the mission?

Look back at this text, look at what was the first thing they did.

English Standard Version Chapter 2

42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

The devoted themselves to the study of God’s word, and to the being with the church, being with the people of God. They prayed with one another, they ate with one another. I know not every single person agreed on every single thing, but they agreed on one thing at least that the goal was to know christ deeper, that the goal was point to Christ in all that they did, that the goal is to help build the kingdom.

If we keep going we will see that while they were studying the goal was not to merely learn about God, but to know God better. The felt a real sense of awe toward God. It is interesting, later in the new testament, when we look through all the letters of Paul to all the different churches, and all the different people, in all the different circumstances, with Paul also not having the greatest of circumstances; in his prayers for all of these people he never once asks God to change someone’s circumstance. I mean Paul was writing in the middle of the roman persecution of christians, and he never once asked “hey God, if it’s your will let them get out of being crucified today.” No! Paul always prayed, God let them know you more, let them know you deeper. Because Paul knew that was more important for those in the church. Paul knew what the goal was

They were eat and being with one another, praying with one another.

When we ask how do we reset our eyes on the mission, how do we draw closer to christ? We have to realize that we are not called to do this alone. There are no lone wolves in Christianity. We are not called to be loan wolves, we are called to be a part of the flock of God. We are called to do life together with one another. This text is saying if you want more people in the four walls, you gotta get people in the four walls of your house. You gotta cultivate a community of believers who are there for one another, united in the mission of Christ. You wanna see radical life change, start praying that you would know God better, if you say you don’t know how to pray man, just ask god that, say “i don’t now how to pray, let me know you deeper God.” Boom that’s a prayer. If you want to see God grow you spiritually, ask Him. Trust me, He will.

So last thing, why does this matter? What’s the point? The point is we can’t read this text nod our heads, agree with it, and then when we leave here go to the parking lot and get in our trucks and not think about it.

This text is calling us to a couple things, if your a believer, this text is calling you to chew on it, how can you sharpen your sights on the mission of Christ, how can the church point to Christ? but more importantly how can you know the Lord deeper. How can you draw closer to the Lord, this text is calling you when you leave here tonight to not just go and get in the truck and not think about it. This text is calling you to chew on it, to sit in it. Who can I pray for and, who can I pray with?

If you don’t know Christ and you’re in here and you don’t know what you believe, then this text is calling you to see God for who He is, to have a true since of awe for God. This text is calling you to repent and believe that Christ is Lord. This text is calling you trade your life which leads to death for a life that leads to life everlasting. To know Christ more. The prayer is not that these words would become alive to you, but that you would become alive to the word of God

pray with me