Devoted

Transcript

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Before we get into the scripture, I wanted to talk real briefly and kind of take it back. Imagine what it had been to be the disciples, the apostles, to have first been on the banks of the Jordan River, seeing a wild man known as John the Baptist, proclaiming, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And John and Andrew, they start following him. And they tell their brothers, and more and more until Jesus has chosen his twelve. And they will follow him the next three years. They will see miracle after miracle that's too astonishing to even fathom. The very first one is that a wedding. Jesus turns water into wine. And they'll be getting greater and greater from there. People with leprosy will be fully restored. Something that had never been done in the history of Israel. There's instructions on what to do when someone was healed. But there's no recording in the Old Testament of a person inside of Israel being healed of leprosy until Jesus came. Then we'd see Jesus and Peter walk on water. We'd see dead people being brought back to life. And then as their expectations are getting higher and higher that Jesus truly is the Messiah, he's the King of the Jews, he's going to restore like the kingdom of David. And then one of his own betrays him. And he's arrested.

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He's beaten within an inch of his life and crucified.

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And then we all flee. We run. We hide because we're afraid they're going to do that to us. But there's that still small voice in the back of your mind that said, Didn't he say this would happen? Three days later, I will rise again. And first it's the women that come to you and say, We've seen Jesus. He is risen. And then, as you're cowering in a room, afraid to go outside, afraid that you might be arrested, Jesus appears. Not going through the door, not crawling in through a window, but he just appears because he is God in the flesh. He is in his resurrected body, the same body that you were promised one day. But then something you did not expect. Surely Jesus could snaps his kingdom now, right? No, he says to you, Go and make disciples, teaching them all that I have commanded you, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Oh, VT dubs, I'm out.

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He ascends up to heaven, and now it's on you. He says, You will do greater things even than I have done. He says, Wait here until the Holy Spirit descends upon you.

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He is the helper I promised you. Like, okay, you've seen Jesus do all these things, but now it's your turn. It's your turn to get up and go to work. It's your turn to proclaim to the masses that Jesus is risen. The same thing that God Jesus crucified is the thing Jesus is telling you, go and proclaim to the ends of the earth, making disciples. I want to reiterate that because the passage we're about to read is on the day of Pentecost, 50 days after Jesus ascends to heaven, the Holy Spirit comes down upon this group as they're eating in a room, praying together. At that time, there was a total of 120 disciples. And what sounded like, I'm sure, a hurricane. It's described it as rushing wind fills the room, and tongues of fire descend upon them, and the Holy Spirit lands on them. You and I have it a little bit different. The moment we believe, we get the Holy Spirit. So we have even more reason to be about the work of the Lord. Amen. We didn't have to wait. The moment you believed, you were filled with the Spirit. And so with that, I would have you turn to Acts chapter 2. I'm going to be reading verses 42 through 47. When you find your place, please stand for in God's Holy Word. Alright. Verse 42. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers, and all came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles, and all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day attending the temple together, breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

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Here's the word, you may be seated.

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So we have, as I said, the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is received. Now there's a big section of scripture between these two events, but this is the same day. So what happened between the Holy Spirit descending and 3,000 people becoming part of the church in that same day, and then them devoting themselves to one another? Well, first and foremost, Peter, loudmouth Peter, that gets himself in trouble, putting his foot in the mouth all the time when Jesus was around. He has been transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. He's emboldened. He has what the old preachers talk about. He's got fire in his bones to proclaim the word of the Lord. And so he gets up and he proclaims the word. Read to you from starting from verse 36 from Acts chapter 2. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for eternity that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus, whom you crucified. 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? 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 Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children, and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. With many other words, he bore witnesses and continued to exhort them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation. So those who received his word were baptized, and they were at that about 3,000 souls. So that is the setup. Verse 42. I've preached this section of scripture many times. Most pastors, when they first started a church, turned to Acts 2, 42. If a pastor could have his dream, is that we would be in Acts 2, 42 through 47 church, that we would be a people devoted to the apostles' teaching, first and foremost, devoted to the word of God, devoted to the fellowship, devoted to the breaking of bread. That is what we call the Lord's table or communion, and the prayers. And so, first and foremost, we see the apostles' teaching. Too often in times, churches, we tend on TV preachers, or we turn to our devotionals, and these are good and helpful things. But at some point, you need to take the responsibility upon yourself to open the Word of God and to take it up and to read. How do you know what the apostles taught? How do you know what I am teaching you is what they taught? You are warned over and over again in this very book that there will come false teachers, false prophets that will come in seeking to deceive you. So often I run into people and I'm sharing the word of God with them, and they go into these things that are not scriptural, that they've heard on the TV or on YouTube, or that just over time has become part of their natural belief system of what Christianity is. You hear phrases like, God will never give you more than you can handle. Is that what scripture says? No, scripture actually says God is going to give you more than you can handle. Because then it's not in your power that salvation will come, but in his. You will be overcome by the trials of this world. The devil will tempt you. The night Jesus was betrayed, he looks Peter in the eyes and says, Satan has asked the permission to sift you like wheat. Do you think Peter was overcome? Wasn't yet filled with the Holy Spirit. He denied his Lord three times. Do you think you're more powerful than Peter? I don't think anybody's more strong-willed than Peter was in those days. I bring this point to you because we must be people that are about the word of God. We must be about what it what it says. We must live lives of grace and truth. We must be willing as a church to speak as Peter does. He hits them hard. It says he cuts them to the heart. How many, not preachers, but how many churches would allow that today? They say you're being mean, you're you're attacking people. We just want to feel good when we come to church. If that is how you feel, you're not part of a church. You're part of a social club, maybe. Maybe part of a religious cult, but if you're not willing to allow the word of God to penetrate in your heart as a believer, there is some disconnect. You can't blame the pastor for it. Notice that they heard the word of the Lord, they were baptized, and they devoted themselves. And say they waited for Peter to give more instruction. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. The apostles' teaching was a carbon copy of what Jesus had taught them. There should be no new teaching in the church. We should be teaching what Jesus taught the apostles, what the prophets set down. It always makes me nervous when somebody says, I have a new word for the Lord. I'm like, really? Is that part of the apostles' teaching? If it doesn't align with the apostles' teaching, we should not be embracing it. But so often people like what you need something fresh. Like I've read my Bible a thousand times. I need God to give me something new. And start back over. Go back to Genesis. But we should not expect God to give us something new. We should expect Him to build upon the foundation that He set for us. And so, part I'm going to give you today these four marks that you see in the Fellowship of Believers. Four marks of devotion that reveal a person's salvation. Number one is devotion to the Word of God. That this will become the most important book of life. And when times get hard, you will go here. And when times are easy, you'll start today here. Many of us use devotions, and those are good things because that should be rooted in the word of God. But if devotional, you're missing the point. Devotions should encourage you to get the word and go deeper and deeper and deeper. I've heard the scriptures to describe it this way that scripture is like the ocean. You could go in and just get your feet a little bit wet. Or you could go deeper and deeper to the point where our submarines and our machines can't get down to the bottom of the trenches because that is how deep God's word is. We need to have that kind of devotion to them. Notice here it says the apostles' teaching and the fellowship. The fellowship is this word koinania, this word that they they had for one another. And so when we talk about fellowship, fellowship isn't staying after Trevor's service and having conversation and maybe a warm cup of coffee with somebody. Fellowship is that deep family connection of getting to know one another, allowing other people into your lives. For them to join the church in that Jewish community was to be ostracized. Why did many of them have to sell their possessions to provide for the needs of others? Because they had lost their jobs. Because many of them were being threatened with their very life, their families cut them off. Could you imagine that? Where your parents no longer talked to you, or your family didn't want to have anything to do with you. Your friends and neighbors, they would walk across the street as if you had leprosy to get to the other side because they didn't want to associate with you because you claimed the name of Christ. This is that devotional level of fellowship that they had, that the brothers and sisters in Christ became closer than even their own families. And this is how it should be. Do you know each other? Do you really know each other? Not the cleaned up Facebook, always putting on your best version of yourself. But do you know each other's pain, the difficulty times that they've walked through, why they have these different struggles in life? And do they know you? Do they know you're 41 and how you've overcome? I've shared before with you guys the problem for so many that are sharing their faith is they tell people about Jesus, yes. But they don't want to talk about the ugly past. They don't want to talk about their wilderness, they don't want to talk about their addictions and their sin and how long they have struggled. We just want to go right to Jesus. Like life is great. You know what I found? When I crossed into 41, when I placed my faith in the Christ, life got immensely harder. Spiritual attacks came again and again and again. And that is not what I have been told by American Christianity that if you just place your faith in Christ, it's a better road and you become rich and wealthy and everything will go right for you. That's not what I've experienced. I've experienced that will get hard. And even the people that should love you the most will be the very ones that turn on you because they think your faith is too radical. You're too much. I've been told by people, you're just really into God a little too much. It's Jesus, you it's really all you're about. I'm like, well, thank you. And amen. Should that not be said about all of us that Jesus is what our life is about? The problem in our culture is we like Jesus, but we don't love him. We want a little bit of Jesus. We want our athletes to say, first and foremost, I want to thank our my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and just go on and tell tell us all about the game. We don't actually want people to share Jesus with us. Because Jesus is going to confront us. The most religious people of his day are the ones he had the biggest problem with. The harlots, those that went down to the bar, the people that were struggling in sin were cast out by society, those were his people. That's where he was most comfortable with. And he told us that I came to seek and save the lost. These are the people that need a doctor. But because you say you are not sick, you have no need of a doctor. And so this is the Jesus we're following. Not a popular Jesus, not the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus you see in movies sometimes. Jesus tells them a day will come that people have done miracles in my name, and I will say, Depart from me, for I never knew you. And so these people had this moment, they heard Peter's sermon, they were transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they devoted themselves to the Word of God, to the apostles' teaching, and this fellowship what many of you guys have on a Sunday afternoon. That is genuine fellowship, as the Bible is talking about. Now the question is: as we grow as a church, can we do that for others? Can we figure out how to take what we have and let others have it as well? Because that is what they had. A single sermon changed their life. The third point. The breaking of bread. And in just a little bit, we are going to do this, so it's very, very timely to come upon this passage. But the breaking of bread was so important to them, they name it one of the four founding pillars of the early church. What do we do when we break bread?

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Yeah.

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We should be checking our heart before we ever come to the table. Yeah, we're recognizing his death. He said, This is my body broken for you. We are recognizing that he died in our place, a real physical death. And as we share in this image, this symbol, this painting that he's giving us in the bread, we recognize that he was the true bread of life that was broken in our place. And so, number one, we declare that he has died, that he was crucified for our sins. Number two, we declare that he has risen again. And then number three, we declare that he is coming again. This is what we do. This was the central core of the gospel message. And so when people when people partake of the Lord's table, we are telling the world that Jesus, the Son of God, has come. He truly has died in our place, and he has been resurrected. Understand that if Jesus truly has been resurrected, with all my being, I know that he has. There's not enough evidence in the world to convince me otherwise. I've seen the research that people have done, and there's more historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ than that you and I are living breathing in this room this day. There are witnesses that are historical documents. But beyond that, because the Spirit indwells us, we know this to be true. And because we know this to be true, it should change everything. Because by Jesus being resurrected, A, it means that everything he says is validated. When he says, I am the bread of life, when he says, No one can come to the Father but by me, he is the only one who's ever come back. Everyone else who has ever died has stayed dead, not him. And he declares to us that he's coming again, not just to come to be with us, but he is coming to judge the living and the dead. There is a consequence to what we do with Jesus. There's a consequence to the community that we live in, our neighbors, our friends, our families, people that don't like us. There's a real consequence with how we live our lives and what we say and what we do about Jesus. The problem is there's many in our culture and many in that day who say, I believe in Jesus, but they weren't devoted to the Word of God. They weren't devoted to fellowship. How many do you know who say, Well, I love Jesus, but I'm not going to church again? They are not devoted to fellowship if you're not willing to be with brothers and sisters. It never made sense to me. Yes, I've been hurt many times by churches, not as a pastor, not only as a pastor, but as a member. But when we get to heaven, what are you gonna do?

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Spend the rest of eternity with your brothers and sisters you've been avoiding a whole lifetime. And then finally.

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Well, I don't think one could be said to be more important than the other. And the prayers. If I were to examine my life and the life of most members of churches I've ever been part of, this is always the weakest point.

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Is the prayer life.

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3,000 people devoted themselves that day to the prayers. And what is meant by the prayers? The prayers are what we lift up to God, asking God to not only do things in our life, the healings, those kinds of things that we desire, but more importantly, they prayed that God would make a way, not just provide for them, but provide for their community, to transform their lives truly. And that is what the prayers are asking that God would go before them to sustain them, to be part of the early church meant to be persecuted. It meant that there was gonna be those who not only didn't like you, those who not only would try to financially ruin you, but would in fact try to kill you. The person who writes two-thirds of the New Testament Saul Narsus went around with the permission of the religious leaders to arrest and kill Christians. And this should be our prayers that God, not only would you stop these things from happening, but transform those who are persecuting us, so they may join us, they may be leaders among us. That's not an easy prayer to pray. I'm sure for Peter and others, they knew many brothers and sisters who were put to the death at the hands of Saul, who would become Paul. And all of a sudden God is saying, I have redeemed him. I am certain that was hard for them, as it would be hard for all of us.

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But in these things, we see the foundation of the church. Now the church would struggle.

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The church was not perfect. This same church would go on to have to have letters of first and second Corinthians written to them. Now I don't know how well versed you are in your Bible, but first Corinthians especially is filled with. All kinds of sinful debauchery that Paul is addressing. He's telling people that you need to kick people out of the church because they're sleeping with their mother-in-law. Like that's the kind of level of church that's going on. That's the kind of disgusting things that were happening in the church. And so sin had to be called out. These four things alone won't prevent sin from entering it. If we don't have these things, we're not really a church. If the word of God is not being proclaimed and taught in Sunday schools and small groups and those kinds of things, it's really not a church. If we're not having fellowship with one another, if you've never been to my home or I've never been to your home, are we fellowshipping together? If we're not part of each other's lives, are we fellowshipping together? Church was never meant to be a place to go to. Church is a people. And so if we're not having that connection with one another, are we really being the people? If we're not celebrating the Lord's table, if we're not breaking bread, we're not remembering his death, burial, and resurrection, we're not remembering that he said he's going to come again.

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He is coming. Are we ready for that?

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And if we are not lifting up one another in prayers, we certainly are not a pastor or a church. I encourage you always be praying for your pastor, be praying for your leaders, praying for your brothers and sisters. There will be times where you might find yourself ready to complain about leadership in 4041. Before you do that, pray for them. Brothers and sisters, we all have different ideas and different ways of doing things.

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But first and foremost, we need to be surrounded by that love of prayer.

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43 speaks that they had come upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done. I will be a proclaimer of the truth. I will say, Thus says the Lord. The apostles were given a special ability so that the people would know that the same power that was on Christ to confirm his message is confirming their message. That message has been confirmed. So, yes, we pray that God will do miracles among us. For many of them, that would be the basis of why they listen to the apostles. You and I, we have this truth proclaimed, so we do not need that the way that we need it. We don't need to be a Thomas and say, Lord, prove to me you are what you say you are, because it has been proved for over 2,000 years. What we need is a faithful group of people willing to share their faith, willing to evangelize, willing to pray, willing to invite somebody in their home, even if it's not comfortable, to say, I love you. I need to know more about you. I need to know what you've been so I know how to pray for you. I need to know what struggles you've had in the past so that maybe we could help you avoid those in the future. If we bring somebody in, if God provides somebody that's maybe struggling with alcohol addiction, having wine in the community table may not be the best thing for them. Helping them over those kinds of addictions. To help avoid those kinds of things. So in just a moment, ask us to go get the kids and we are gonna give the instruction on uh the Lord's table. So, yes, you mean it is very important for us as we officially have our first Lord's table as a worship service to make sure that we understand the words that Christ gave to the Apostle Paul in First Corinthians 11. It would be my desire for you and for any church you are ever part of, that if somebody is instructing you on the Lord's table, that they read to you these words.

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They they help us to reflect.

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The table is not something to come to lightly, the table is what we gather around to celebrate and to remember the Lord's table. It is an exception in the altar. So we call Passover. The Jews would remember once a year what had been done for them, how God had delivered them out of the wilderness through the Exodus, providing them bread. And the lamb was slain at Passover to point to the true Lamb that was coming. Now we have a blessing of being on the other side of that, where we've experienced the Lamb God, we know who He is. And so He takes part of Passover and makes it part of our table, our communion, our fellowship together. And so as I read these words, take the time in your hearts if there's any sin that you need to confess, confess it to the Lord now. The Apostle Paul said, For I receive from the Lord what I also deliver to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is a new covenant, my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks, without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment upon himself. This is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. If we judge ourselves truly, we would not be judged, but when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned along with the world. So then, my brothers, whenever you come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that when you come together, it will not be for judgment. About the other things I have given directions when I come. The Apostle Paul had much to say to the Corinthian church. But it's to that church he gives us these words that have been accorded for all time. So I want to take a brief moment, uh, allow you to go before the Lord. If there's anything you need to confess to him, do that before we partake of the table. I will um pray over the bread um and break it, and we will have uh people come up individually so that we're not making a mess out of Martha's living room here, especially with the Jews. Let us pray. Father, Lord Jesus, we thank you for this day. We thank you for allowing us to come together to worship you, Lord. We thank you, Lord, for these four things you've given to us. We thank you for your apostles and the teaching they've handed down, for these words that Peter is recorded, and for these words Paul is recorded regarding your table. If there's any sin on us, Lord, you would you bring it to our mind, we confess it to you now.