Spiritual Gifts: Our Role

How does God intend to change the world?

That's where we're going today, and you need your hand out.

Is it purple? Purple things. How does God intend to change the world? That's the question we're going to answer over the next several weeks. But before we begin today, let's begin with prayer.

Lord, help us to understand what your plan is. Help us to understand our role in it. But let us not be passive. Let us not just sit back and soak in information as we come to gather as your believers to learn. But help us to be changed, to be different, to be motivated, to be all that you want us to be here on earth.

For it is in Christ's name we pray. Amen. How does God intend to change the world? Here's the first answer. The first answer is he intends to change the world through the church.

The church is not the only institution ordained by God on earth. He ordained government to maintain a semblance of order. He ordained the family for the nurturing of children. But the only distinctively Christian institution, government and family are not distinctively Christian, the only distinctively Christian institution is the church.

And God intends primarily to change the world through the church.

that ought to scare us to some degree when we look at the anemic church in this country. But it ought to at the same time motivate us to be what God wants us to be. And that's what we're going to talk about today. What's the church supposed to look like?

what is the church I went and looked up some definitions this is just to get you started thinking the Christian church is a society of sinners it is the only society in the world in which membership is based upon the single qualification be unworthy of membership.

None of us are worthy to be counted among God's people. The church should be, William George Spencer says, the society of the forgiven and the forgiving.

Wilbur Leroux says, the church is the only institution in the world that has lower entrance requirements than those for getting on a bus.

What he's talking about, we want the worst of sinners to become part of this family.

And lastly, a church is a hospital for sinners, not a club for saints. But we are the saints. We're going to talk about that more in just a minute. sense, the church is the worldwide community of true Christian believers who are joined together with Christ as their head.

That's the church. The worldwide community of true Christian believers, there are some who are part of the visible church, who are part of the institution, who are not true Christian believers, but the church is really made up of those who are true Christian believers. This is sometimes called the invisible church because we can't always tell who's part of that church.

Who are joined together with Christ as their head. Christ is our leader. to whom we owe our allegiance. That's the church. The church is thus both global, it's worldwide, but it is also local. You see the church, we sometimes talk about the church as a local body of believers, and it is local in the sense that there are gatherings in every village and city across the world, but those local churches are part of the bigger thing, the big church.

We sometimes talk about para-church ministries. Para-church means alongside the church. That really means alongside the local church because I would submit to you that many things we call para-church ministries are really part of the church in the big sense, the worldwide sense. Campus Crusade for Christ is part of the church because they are part of the worldwide community of true Christian believers Christ is their head. The navigators who work on college campuses.

They are part of the church in the big sense. So sometimes when we use the word parachurch, I think we need to be careful. God often works through many different avenues to get his message out into the world. And some of those ways are through what we typically call parachurch. But that really means alongside the local church.

But again, I'm going to argue that's part of the big church.

Does everybody see what I'm saying?

There are metaphors for the church in the scriptures. We are called the people of God. We are called the body of Christ. And that imagery of being a body is going to be very important as we continue through this study. We're called the temple of the Holy Spirit.

I like that Trinitarian way of referring to the worldwide community of true Christian believers. People of God, body of Christ, temple of the Holy Spirit. And Scripture calls us the saints, which literally means holy ones. Now we've got to be careful that holiness is in the first instance a holiness given to us by what Christ has done. We come into the kingdom of faith by belief in Him, and it is His righteousness or His holiness with which we are clothed in God's eyes.

It's not a righteousness of our own. But as we come to faith in Christ and as we grow in Christ, we are to be growing in holiness. The church should look different in its behavior from the rest of the world. In other words, our standards of conduct should be higher. We should be more honest.

We should be more reliable. We should be more sexually pure. We should be more caring for the poor. We should be the superlatives of what is right and good conduct.

And we should individually and in the church as a whole, we should do all in our power to put aside the old nature and self, those sinful behaviors, and we should become a lighthouse of people who live the way God intended us to live. We're not going to be perfect, but we're supposed to be moving toward that perfection. It is true that we will always in this life struggle with sin. But I'm going to submit to you that we shouldn't take that truth and let it keep us from moving in the direction we're to be heading. Some people say, well, we're all, you know, I'm a sinner.

That's true. But God doesn't want you to be a sinner. He wants you to quit being a sinner and start being a saint. and we should be growing in maturity in Christ and growing more and more in holiness each and every day.

Well, where do we get glimpses of what the church is supposed to be like? Well, I want to go back to the very first church and that's where we're going today and we're going to take a look at the very first church. If you've got your Bibles, turn to Acts 2, verse 42.

I'm going to do something I don't normally do. translation other than the NIV this morning. I'm going to do that because I think in a couple of places the New American Standard captures some things, but you read along in your translation. I know most of you read the NIV, which I do typically. Acts 2.42 through 47. Here we go.

They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Literally, it's literally, I'm going to give you the literal Greek. Look at that first again. They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to the prayers, plural. To the prayers, plural.

Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe were taking place through the apostles and all those who had believed were together and had all things in common and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all as anyone might have need day by day continuing with one mind in the temple and breaking bread from house to house they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart praising God and having favor with the people with all the people and the Lord

So what are some glimpses of the life and work of the first church? What can we learn from them? The context.

Jesus died, was resurrected. Before He ascended into heaven, He tells His apostles that He is sending His Spirit to them. Holy Spirit will descend upon them. And he says in Acts 1-8 that you're going to be my witnesses. In Judea, Samaria, to the uttermost part of the earth.

That's the whole theme of Acts. The church being Christ's witnesses on earth.

And then as the disciples are gathered together in the upper room, the Spirit comes down. and it looks like tongues of fire a light on the apostles and the disciples and suddenly there's bedlam because they're all speaking in tongues and the people who are there to celebrate the feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem people from Rome and other parts of the world can hear these disciples speaking and they all speak different languages but they can all understand what the disciples are saying.

It was a mighty outpouring of the Spirit in a very dramatic way that they speak in these tongues and the people can hear. And Peter gets up and begins to preach. And he says, I want to tell you, brothers and sisters, this Jesus whom you crucified, He is the Messiah. The prophet David said He would not abandon His Holy One to the grave. would not abandon his holy one to the grave the prophet david said god would not let his holy one see decay and i want to tell you brothers and sisters this jesus is raised from the dead and we are all witnesses of this fact and that is the proof that he is the messiah and as the people listened their hearts were stirred and three thousand people come to faith faith in Christ. Now what do you do? Now what do you do? You got 3,000 converts. Boom. And they didn't have a real church staff to speak of. They really weren't organized for this. So what did they do? That's where verse 42 begins. We see what the early church does with these 3,000 new And here's what they do.

Number one, they began to meet in the temple to do certain things.

We know that the early Christians continued to meet in the temple. If you go read Acts 5, 12, you will see that they met at Solomon's Colonnade in the temple. was where God's people went previously. And after people came to faith in Christ, and these are all Jewish believers that were at Pentecost, these Jewish people who are now Christians, they go back to the temple. But they, these new Christians, gather around Solomon's colonnade, apparently, and they do several things.

First, they devote themselves to the teaching of the apostles. and the apostles would get up and teach them

and their teaching assuredly was about the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and how people could have salvation through him and every day they were gathering at the temple to hear the teaching of the apostles I'm going to submit to you that if we're going to be like that early church of the apostles the books of the new testament are were confirmed in the minds of the early church to be part of the holy scriptures because those books were all written either by apostles or those who were closely affiliated with apostles and when we're talking about apostles in the sense i'm using it we mean those people who saw and got their commission directly from Christ. We're talking about people like Peter and James and so forth. So the New Testament, if we want to be giving ourselves to the teaching of the apostles, it means we need to be a Bible centered church that is studying the writings of those apostles or those closely affiliated with them. So we too can know about ministry, life, death, resurrection of Christ. No church will be it to be unless it is a Bible-centered, Bible-preaching, Bible-teaching, Bible-devoted church.

I've talked in a number of churches over the years. One question I usually ask when I go to teach somewhere else, one question I ask of those who invite me, how many people will have their Bibles with them when I teach?

in our church it's a good percentage i've been told two percent etc anytime if satan can do one thing he wants us to put our bibles aside and begin to ignore them that's one way to diminish the effectiveness of the church so we must be devoted to the teaching of the apostles the second thing they did is they were devoted to the fellowship the text word fellowship has the sense of sharing in something and these new converts were gathering daily because they were devoted to the fellowship and the sense is they were devoted to the sharing with others the truth about God's word and sharing in the witness and testimony about what God has done they did not ignore the fellowship this was not something they did when it was convenient when it wasn't raining hard when they didn't were feeling great when they woke up in the morning this is something they did every day they had a devotion to the fellowship if we're going to be the church god intended us to be we must be devoted to the fellowship that's the gathering end the things of God with one another.

Are we devoted to the fellowship? Or is it something we do when it's convenient, when something else doesn't come first, when something else isn't offered? Number three, they were devoted to the breaking of bread. And this has got to, most scholars believe, and I think it's correct this has got to be talking about the Lord's Supper. When they gathered they remembered the death of Christ and his sacrifice by sharing in the breaking of bread the Lord's Supper. It was something I would submit they did a lot more than we typically do in most Baptist churches. It was a regular testimony and witness about the work of Christ. And fourthly they were devoted to the prayers literally is what the text says.

the prayers so they were a praying church but when it says the prayers probably probably what is meant is they continued the jewish practice of praying at certain times of the day the jews prayed three times a day 9 a.m noon and 3 p.m devout jews prayed and the sense seems to sense The sense seems to be that these folks devoted themselves to the prayers. The sense seems to be these regular times of prayer that had been the practice before the church exploded. They continued. So they had regular prayer times daily. They were a praying church.

And they were a praising church. Verse 47 says that when they gathered for their times together,

If we're going to be the church God wants us to be, all of these elements need to be a part of what we do as the local church and as the worldwide church. Now, they also informally gathered in homes. Acts 2.46 tells us that. They gathered there for breaking of bread. of bread but for breaking of bread and apparently they got together in homes and there were so many they couldn't have been in one home but they had informal gatherings these weren't the regular formal times of worship but they had informal times where they gathered in different people's homes and they would eat together but then the text tells us that they would praise together And it seems to be that these home meetings were times of informal worship, but powerful worship, when they could communicate in smaller groups with one another and share the fellowship with one another and praise God.

So there seems to be a sense, if we're going to be the church that God wants us to be, we need our formal times of worship in large groups, but we need some more intimate gatherings, gatherings, smaller groups where we can informally fellowship with one another, share about the things of God, pray together, and praise God.

That may be an element we need to work on.

How often do we gather in small groups to pray, praise, and worship? there's something powerful about being with a small group with which you can be more intimate you can share at a more personal level you can talk about things that are difficult in your life but also talk about the great riches in christ maybe that's an element we're missing to some degree that we need that to reincorporate into our worship the third thing they did is they cared for the needy. The text tells us that they had everything in common. And I want us to flip over just a few pages and read about in Acts 4, verses 32 to 37. This echoes this notion of caring for the needy. Listen to what it says about the early, the first church. Acts believers were one in heart and mind. And listen, you capitalists, no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them.

For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet and it was distributed to anyone as he had need. And that included a guy named Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus whom the apostles called Barnabas, which means son of encouragement. He sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet. Now the picture is not property it was their own property if you go over to acts 12 we see that mother that mary the mother of john mark owned her own house and the believers would gather there you remember ananias and sapphira who claimed to have sold all their stuff and brought it to the disciples it was a lie they hadn't done so but peter says to ananias was it not your own property in other words you owned it and so you had the right to sell it or not to sell it but what you've done is you've lied about what you've done so the picture is not that the early church didn't have some sense about private property but the difference was just because it was their property in an ownership perspective from an earthly perspective as between you and me it might be my property they viewed it all as gods. Not something to be clutched to themselves, but something to be used in God's service.

And when somebody else had a greater need than they had, those who had more than they needed would go and sell it to help those who needed help. It was a church of tremendous generosity, tremendous caring. They weren't so wed to their stuff that they clutched it tightly to their chest and tightly with their hands they held it loosely for those who were in need so among the early church there were no needy among them because anybody who had need got it met now we'll read the apostle paul say in some of his writings if somebody won't work then don't let them eat because he knew that would motivate them to work so the early church didn't believe in people just on their hands and doing nothing. Those who could were supposed to work to help themselves, but the needy were cared for and there were no needy among them. What a great attraction

to draw people, particularly in this first century when the poverty in Palestine was so great. You want a lifetime insurance plan? You want a lifetime protection? You want disability insurance? you want it all, join the church.

And if you get hurt or injured and can't care for your family, don't worry. They're cared for by the church. Your house burns down, you don't have a place to stay, no problema. Not only will we take care of you until we get the house rebuilt, we'll rebuild the house for you. You don't have enough to clothe your children, no problem, you'll have it.

Somebody go sell something that they have more of than they need, and they'll help you. The church of Jesus Christ ought to have a program for caring for the poor. And it ought to be a program that is so outrageously generous that people will give what they have to care for those who don't. And we ought to start with the family. We ought to first make sure the family's okay.

Well, I know this is radical stuff. we Americans, it's mine and I'm going to keep it. I'll give of the crumbs to help. But don't touch my stuff.

After all, I earned it, didn't I? Who gave you the ability to do whatever you do to earn whatever you have? God himself. Whatever you have is ultimately by the grace of God. It is to be used for his purposes and his pleasures, not your own selfish pleasures.

those of us who are

diseased by this American culture of wealth who call ourselves Christians need a radical reorientation in our thinking about our stuff

until we get rid of that

coveting that desire for more and more stuff we will never be the church God intends us to be I submit Radical stuff. What made them different? There are some organizations that have all of these elements as part of them. The teaching, the praying, the fellowship, breaking bread together, even some programs to care for the poor. What made the early church different?

I'm going to submit to you it is several characteristics that come out of the text here. First, their devotion. Their devotion. If you look in your Bibles, Acts 2.42,

the NIV and the New American Standard, both in that first verse, Acts 2.42, used the word devoted. They were continually devoting themselves. And that same word is used in verse 46. Day by day they continued or continuing to meet. that word continuing is the same word as in verse 42 and it's devotion.

In other words, there was a diligence, a loyalty, and a perseverance of these early Christians to the things of God. This was not something that they did for a little while and then quit. There was a real devotion to the things of God. Devotion to the apostles' teaching. Devotion to the fellowship.

Prayers, devotion to helping the poor. It was a consistent, persevering diligence. Never quitting.

God could not call them to do something they wouldn't be willing to do because they were devoted to His things. There was no journey too far, no mountain too tall, no task they were not willing to undertake because they were devoted. The second quality we see is unity. In verse 46, the NIV really misses this here, verse 46 they continue day by day with one mind the new american standard says and it's capturing a word there that means that they were they had a common purpose and by common consent they together were going to take on this task of changing the world for the glory of god and they were united in that purpose that's why they were that early church was such a powerful force they army they were marines going in invading the world they knew the rightful king had landed on this earth and they were going into the world to claim this earth for the rightful king jesus christ but they were united in that and it was the power of their unity that made such a difference the third is that they had extreme joy verse 46 says they and this is really referring in their meeting in the homes. They did it, my Bible says, with gladness.

This is a word here that means more than just gladness. It is a word that means extreme joy to the point that you're doing something with your body to show the excitement. You could be smiling. You could be laughing. You could be dancing. You could be raising your hands.

But it is the kind of joy that is not just, oh, I feel joy. It's the kind of joy that you can't control to the point that you've got to do something outward to do it. You've got to shout hallelujah. You've got to shout amen. You've got to do something.

It was that kind of joy that they had as they gathered together. And fourthly, verse 46 says they gathered with simplicity of heart. The NIV says with sincere hearts. but I think a better translation is with simplicity of heart. Simplicity of heart means these early Christians had hearts that were not distracted by all the things of the world.

They were simple in the sense that they had a single focus.

and that single focus was to Christ, to His church, and to His people. You know the problem with the church today? You know one real problem? And it's a problem endemic in our culture? We're just distracted.

We are pulled in so many directions. Our schedules are overloaded. We're trying to do everything. Somehow that busyness makes us important. That unless we are just busy with all these different things, somehow we're not doing what we're supposed to do.

To the point that we say when we're asked to do things for God, well, I don't have time. You've got time. What you don't have and what I don't have often is the right priority on my time. And what I think the early church did is they developed a single mind, a singleness that was a simplicity of their heart to be focused on the things of God first, foremost, last, always, and everything else took 110th place. We've lost that simplicity of heart because we're so distracted.

Their effect on nonbelievers, we've heard of shock and awe in recent days. The text says that everyone, this is verse 43, everyone kept feeling a sense of awe. And this is in contrast to verse 44 talking about the believers. So I think that everyone means all those Jewish unbelievers who saw what was happening with this new group within the Jewish circle, these Christians, they were stirring up fear and awe. The word there can mean fear in the sense of terror.

You know, what's going to happen? It can mean awe in the sense of sort of a respect for what's happening. And I think there was a little bit of both going on. These new Christians were kind of scaring some of these other non-believers. What was this going to do to the Jewish faith?

But there was a respect because they saw what they were doing, that it was real, how they were helping the poor.

Do people feel fear and awe, either one or both, about what we do as the church in this country?

God's confirmation about what was going on. Wonders and miraculous signs were performed, the NIV says, by the apostles. Literally, it's through the apostles. The apostles didn't have any power in and of themselves. God confirmed what they were doing by allowing them to do wonders and miraculous signs.

And I think we see in the early days of this first church that God was saying, I'm putting my seal of approval on what's happening. I want the world to know this is what I intended. And he demonstrated that by allowing the apostles to do wonders and miraculous signs. And secondly, the Lord was adding to their number each day those who were being saved. It was the Lord's work to add, but the church was doing those things that God called them to do, and God was blessing that by adding to their number every day.

Adding to their number every day. Adding to their number Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Lessons for life. The church must and should be an integral part of our lives. Church should not be, folks, something that we do when it's convenient. Church should not be something that we avoid for the slightest excuse. It's hard to get folks to church when it's raining.

Tendence is down.

I wonder what the early Christians would have thought about that. We are to be different. We are to be different. I'm not talking about being weird in our personality. I'm talking about being different in what we value, in our attitudes toward life, in what we think is important.

we should not want to be like the rest of the world. We spend so much of our lives trying to be like everybody else. Our children spend so much time because we let them trying to be like everybody else. We don't want to be like everybody else. We want to be different.

difference to stand out in what we how we live and what we say and what we think where we put our time where we put our energy when everybody else is going in one direction we want to be going in the other because most of the time the crowd is headed the wrong way we need to teach our children that but the reason our children don't know it is because we don't know it and we don't live it Our children are a mirror of who we are. And until we are different, we can't expect them to be different. Thirdly, we are to be radically devoted to Christ, His Word, and His people. Radical devotion. Christ doesn't ask us to come part way.

He says, I want you completely and everything you've got. That's the call of Christ. We should not present to the world an invitation to come to Christ that diminishes the radical call. It's a simple message. Come as you are after you...

I don't want to say it that way. That implies they can come just like they are with no repentance. Repent. Start right where you are today. Repent. Come to Christ.

But understand, He only asks you to give Him your life. That's all He asks. Your life. I don't see that. I do not see that radical devotion to Christ in our culture today.

Our effectiveness is diminished when we're consumed by the worries of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things. You remember the story of the parable of the sower who's throwing out the seed. Some seed gets eaten up right away by the bird. Some falls among the stones and the sun comes out and burns it up in a hurry. but then some seed takes root and begins to grow.

And what does Satan do to those who have started to grow? Which I think are most Christians, most of us, we're growing. What does he do? Well, he wasn't able to take the Word completely. He wasn't able to kill it right at its infancy.

Growth has begun, so what does he do? He says, I've got to distract them. I've got to get them focused on the worries of this world. I've got to get them focused on stuff. Because you know people like riches and money and stuff.

So I'm going to try to get them focused there. I'm going to try to get them to desire anything other than Jesus Christ. And if I can do that, I can choke the word and it will become unfruitful. I think that's the problem with most who claim to be in Christ today in this country. is the words being choked, the fruitfulness is being choked because we've been distracted by these other things.

Fifthly, we need to develop and nurture simple hearts. Single hearts, hearts solely committed to Christ, not devoted to so many other things. Sixthly, we need to live more simply so that we can more generously help others to simply live.

And lastly, let us never forget, the gates of hell will never defeat the church. The church will triumph by God's power.

He can take a small group of Ethiopian men, ages 16 to 27, one of whom we heard stand up in Ethiopia and tell us as a teenage boy, he was imprisoned by the communist government in Ethiopia because of his fate. As a teenage boy, they put him in prison.

He was eventually let out. His wife had died the previous year, leaving him childless. And while he was very saddened by that death, and it was a heartbreaker, he said, now, I'm Jesus, and Jesus alone. I have no distractions whatsoever, but I can serve him and serve him alone. When I finished meeting with those men, I said, the gates of hell will never prevail against the church because God raises up people like that.

May we be that kind of people. Let's pray. Lord, forgive us for not being what we should be. Help us to be more of what you want us to be. By your power, may we be the church of Jesus Christ here to change the world.

For it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.