Abounding Grace

Guest (Male): Next on Abounding Grace, we'll see what a strong, healthy church really looks like.

Pastor Ed Taylor: The Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. That's a key ingredient to a healthy church: that the Lord is adding daily, not the projects and programs and methods of man, but God is adding daily. He's the one that saves.

It's possible to have a large church and not be a healthy church. It's not about being big, not in our church or in any church. It can't be. You just know you have taken a bad turn when all you care about is the size of your church. No, it's not about being big. It's about being strong and biblical. It's about staying the course in what God has called you to do.

Guest (Male): We hope it's your desire to be a part of a strong, healthy church. But what does a healthy church look like according to God? We get some clues in Acts chapter two. Pastor Ed Taylor has observed four ingredients in a church that's well, and today on Abounding Grace, we'll begin looking at each of these ingredients.

The first of which is learning. A healthy church has a commitment to the studying of God's word. Here's Pastor Ed to explain.

Pastor Ed Taylor: Take your Bibles open them to the book of Acts chapter two. We're going to pick up where we left off last time in verse 40, in a Bible study that I've entitled "A Church That Is Well." We're actually going to use the word WELL, W-E-L-L, as an acronym to remember four important ingredients to a strong, healthy, vibrant church. Because it's true, isn't it? We all want to be a part of a healthy, balanced, vibrant, strong church.

Some people would even say, "Oh yeah, not only do I want to be in a strong church, I want to find the perfect church." But by now you know there is no such thing. There is no perfect church because the church is filled with imperfect people like you and me. But I know this for sure. We're not interested in being a part of a church that's unhealthy, that's unbiblical. We don't want to be a part of a church that's harmful or imbalanced.

We want to be a part of the church that Jesus is building, that he is the chief shepherd. That we look past man and methods and programs, and we look to Jesus high and lifted up to the best of our ability in humanity. We want to be a part of the church that Jesus promised to build in Matthew chapter 16 verse 18: "And also I say this to you that you're Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it."

And we learn in the book of Acts God's prescription for spiritual health. If we want to know what the church should look like and what God's desire for his church is, we turn to the book of Acts. I believe God's prescription for a healthy church is greatly needed today in our culture. It's important for us to choose to get back to basics, to get back to simplicity, and then stay there. It takes a lot of energy and effort to work towards simplicity.

Because it's easier to make things complex. It's easier to muddy up the waters, and we have done a good job of that over the years as humans. We just make things hard and complex, and we need to fight for simplicity, returning back to simplicity. A simple walk with Jesus. We want to see the church going back to a healthy place, that we would be well and do well and progress well and serve well and impact our community well.

Really, if you want to think of the simplicity of any church family, it's this. You love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you love your neighbor as yourself. That's as simple as it gets. That's a true, real love relationship with God that turns into a love relationship with our neighbor. Christianity doesn't need to be repackaged as some are trying today, or reworked, or redone, or reinvented, or deconstructed or any of those things.

But I do believe, individually, we need to reevaluate it from time to time. We need to ask the question: "Are we doing it right? Is what we're doing biblical? Is there any biblical basis for the choices we're making and the decisions we're making? Did the Lord really lead us to do that?" And then if we say, "Well, yeah, I think the Lord led us to do it," does it fit with the construct of the Scriptures? Is it what God has for us in this time?

So while I don't think it needs to be repackaged or reworked, I do think we need to reevaluate the church from time to time. And certainly, God is asking us to reevaluate our church. He's asking us to reevaluate our lives. He's asking us to reevaluate our families, our homes, the direction of our life for the days in which we live. Status quo is not going to reach the world as it exists today.

Just going through the motions and being religious and being a church-attender and just coming in, sitting down, and leaving, that isn't going to reach the world. That's not going to be the type of... and you find that that's not what happened in the book of Acts. They weren't just simply attenders of a church. Jesus was their life. It was everything about them. Now, they were imperfect. They stumbled along the way.

Again, Jesus being our life is going to make us progress a little faster. But the idea of just being religious and going through the motions, the world doesn't need that. They have enough phoniness already. There's enough hypocrisy and phoniness in the world today that they don't need a group of people that would say, "No, we're different. We love Jesus. We trust him with our lives," and then to live hypocritical, compromising lives ourselves.

No. Here in the book of Acts, we have a church, the early church, the infant church. We're talking just moments after an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Now, when we get to verse 42, you're going to see a phrase that's used in the book of Acts that extends over time when it says they continued steadfastly. From the original language in the Greek, the tense of the verb has the idea that now this is how they progress forward.

So it's not just a moment of time, but it's a series of moments in time of how God is going to progress them and send them off into the world in which they live. But in chapter two here, this is moments after the Spirit of God is poured upon them. And how this is the essence of how they turned their world upside down. And because of their faithfulness, your world and my world was turned upside down.

And we learned last time one of the beautiful things about the early church is they just understood that Jesus was everything and that they belonged. That they had a purpose on the earth. That God saved them from something and now saved them to something. And it's the same for you. You've been rescued and delivered from something for something, to something, from something for something.

And that we would do well for you as you're in your prayer time to say, "Okay, God, I realize it. You've reached me. You've spoken to me. You've saved me. You've changed my family, changed my life. Now, I'm ready. I'm ready to obey you." And every believer, it seems, believed that they were called to do their part. They recognized that every person mattered, and every person chose to serve the Lord.

But I have to say, it's much easier, is it not, to sit on the sidelines? And instead of getting involved, it's easier to sit on the sidelines and be a critic. And it's easy. There are so many things to be critical about these days. We can be critical of the world. We can be critical of politics. We can be critical about crime. We can be critical about, yeah, you know, the church.

Even your own church. Sit around and find everything that's wrong with it. Find everything that's not working, all the mistakes that might have been made. But I'm telling you, it's a totally different perspective when you're in the game. It's one thing to be in the stands, like many of you might be heading off to the football game later today. And you'll be in the stands, and you'll watch the stands, and you're like, "Oh, they should have done this, and they should have done that. Why'd they run this play?"

And you're just such an expert on the game. Well, try putting on a uniform and going down and getting in the game. Then tell me how it goes. It's totally different, isn't it? When you are in the game, it's a completely different perspective. And I think it's true in Christianity. It's easy to sit around and go, "Oh, this is wrong, and this is wrong, and this is wrong, and this is wrong, and this is wrong," which may be true.

But from the perspective of being in the game, I'm inviting you today to get in the game, church. Get in the game. It was Teddy Roosevelt that said this, and I quote: "It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming."

"But who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." End quote.

It is not the critic that counts. It's the one that's in the game. And you know, we as a church, we have our shortcomings. We have our failures. We have our mistakes. But I encourage you to get in the game and make some mistakes with us. Step out in faith. Take a venture of faith. Try something. Rearrange your life in such a way where you are utterly dependent upon the Lord, where you have to trust him for everything.

And yeah, maybe you don't know what you're doing. Well, yeah, just start walking by faith. Trust him for the things you don't know. I'll tell you what, when you start to serve and you start to step into these things, you know what will happen? Number one, you'll become more empathetic. Empathetic. Why? Because as you make mistakes, you'll be empathetic with others that make mistakes because you know how it feels.

You're like, "Oh man, I wish I wouldn't have done that. Oh, what happened?" It happens all the time. But not only will you be empathetic, but secondly, you'll also learn to lean on the Holy Spirit for what? Patience. You start to be patient with people and appreciate them for where they're at and understand that you're not perfect, they're not perfect. You don't have it all together, they don't have it all together.

And I like how in the New King James, they translate that Greek word for patience, they translate it "long suffering," just like the word sounds, that you would suffer long with other people's mistakes and failures. That's the body of Christ. And the church today needs a lot more empathy and a lot more patience for each other and for a broken world. Serving the Lord will help you do that. Understanding your value.

Now, as we come to verse 40 in Acts chapter two, notice it says in verse 40 with many other words he testified and exhorted them. This is Peter still, saying: "Be saved from this twisted generation." Then those who gladly received his word were baptized, and that day about 3,000 souls were added to them. So by now, the church is not 120 people, but 3,120 people. God did a quick, fast, amazing work of salvation.

Now, if we translated these numbers into today's world, those that study the church and pay attention to the church, they have different categories for churches. Just like anything, they have categories and labels. And so there are those that study these things that say: "Well, there are small churches and there are medium churches and there are large churches." And then this category, 3,120, if a church is that size, the world today would call it a megachurch.

Those categories don't mean anything to God. Man might make up categories, but as we learn in our study last time, the size of your church is exactly what God wants it to be in that moment. And so if it's small or large or megachurch, none of that matters to God. That's not his deal. That's man's deal in how they measure it. But this is a large church, and it's going to pose some challenges here in the early days. There's going to be some difficulties.

But as we learned, God loves large churches. I love large churches. But we're a part of the large church, capital C. And no size church is insignificant. Every gathering of believers where two or three are gathered, Jesus says, "I'm there." Every size matters to the Lord. But the size of this church isn't as important as its health. Because as things get larger, things get more complex and more difficult.

And for churches, as churches grow, there's a great temptation to be unhealthy, to not continue how you started, where you started in the spirit but now you're trying to perfect it in the flesh. It happens to every church, especially as they grow. It is important that we spend a lot of time working toward keeping things simple, so that we remain simply worshipping God in spirit and in truth.

What's important is not the size as much as God is the one doing the adding. Did you notice that? Actually, we'll get to that at the end of verse 47. Let's read on in verse 42. He says: "They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in the breaking of bread and in prayer." Then fear came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.

Now all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among all, as anyone had need. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.

That's a key ingredient to a healthy church, is that the Lord is adding daily. Not the projects and programs and methods of man, but God is adding daily. He's the one that saves. And it's possible to have a large church but not be a strong church. It's possible to have a large church but not be a healthy church. You can do a lot of things to draw a crowd. Filling a room is not challenging. Filling a room is easy.

But just because a room is full doesn't make us the church. It's not about being big. Not in our church or in any church. It can't be. You just know you have taken a bad turn when all you care about is the size of your church. No, it's not about being big. It's about being strong and biblical. It's about staying the course in what God has called you to do.

And even as we moved here so many years ago, my heart has remained the same. I'm not interested in anything more than what the Lord has for me as a pastor. I want to serve the people that are in front of me faithfully every single time I have the opportunity. Whether it's a large amount of numbers or it's one person at a time, it doesn't matter. Whoever's in front of me is the one that I want to serve the best.

I want you to be trained that same way. Don't be impressed by numbers. Don't be impressed by, "Oh, there's so many people." But also don't panic when the numbers are smaller. Large numbers, small numbers, just give it unto the Lord. Let him sort it out. This is a time where God is adding to the church daily. And this is our prayer. Our prayer is that God would do the same thing here, that we would reach more for the gospel.

I love that. You've got to mark that. The Lord added to the church daily. Daily. So we're going to jump in now in verse 42 and we're going to dive in a little bit deeper. And we're going to use the word WELL, W-E-L-L, to identify four ingredients to a healthy church. So we're going to use each letter as an acronym to remember a word. Four ingredients.

The W stands for worshipping. A healthy church is a worshipping church. The E will stand for evangelizing. A healthy church evangelizes and shares the gospel and loves their neighbor. The first L is going to be the word learning. That's what we're going to focus on today. A healthy church is a learning church. And then finally the last L is a loving church. A healthy church is a loving church.

So what we're going to do is we're going to take the biblical order, so we actually aren't going to be able to spell the word WELL until the end. Because we're going to start with the first L right there in verse 42. Notice: "They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine." A couple of things before we jump in. First of all, the phrase "continued steadfastly." If you like to write in your Bible, circle that phrase.

Right next to it: habit. This describes the habit of their lives. This is a habit. You have habits. I have habits. The things that we do regularly and repetitively, often without thinking. This was what just came naturally for them. They woke up, this is what they did. They went to bed, it's what they did. This is what they chose to do in their new relationship with Jesus. They just continued.

It wasn't start and stop, start and stop. They were stead... we will still use the English word today: steadfast. That's a great characteristic to have. Somebody that's trustworthy and reliable. And this is a trustworthy, reliable habit that the believers of the early church had. And what was that? They stayed in the apostles' doctrine. The apostles' doctrine. They were a learning church.

And this is something you'll see throughout the book of Acts. The Holy Spirit using the word of God, depositing it in the hearts of the people of God to reach the world. And the first mark of a healthy church is their commitment wholeheartedly to the studying of God's word. And you think: "Wait a minute, Ed, what is the apostles' doctrine here?" Because at this time, they don't have the Bible like you and I have the Bible today.

The reason is that most of the Bible isn't written yet in Acts chapter two. How do you know that? Well, if you read the book of Acts, you'll know it's not until chapter nine that we meet this guy named Saul who has an encounter with God on the way to Damascus and he's saved right there on the road to Damascus. Well, Paul, Saul, as he's also known as Paul, he's the one that wrote almost two-thirds of the New Testament.

And so here in Acts chapter two, he's not even saved yet. So they don't have the books of the Bible. And again, you could also look at it chronologically. We're very early in. We're right after the ascension of Christ, and the books of the Bible are written much later. Churches aren't even planted yet. So the church in Corinth is not there yet. The church in Ephesus is not there yet. So they don't have the Bible as we have it.

What do they have? Number one, they have the Old Testament. That's what got them where they're at right now. The Old Testament is giving to you and me a foreshadow of Jesus Christ. Whenever you're reading the Bible, you want to look for Jesus in the text. So they have the Old Testament. The Old Testament that predicted and prophesied the coming of Messiah.

The Old Testament that gives the character and nature of God, and they're going to be studying through the Old Testament. And they also have the teachings of Jesus. And the apostles spent three years with Jesus, so they're going steadfastly through the teachings of Jesus that the apostles would be repeating to them until, you know, the things that were written down. That's what they... we have them written down now. Back then, they're going through them verbally.

So they're continuing what we would call today the Bible. We study the Bible. That's how we apply it in our lives. We choose to make a habit of studying the Bible. And what's true for the church at large is true for the individual. If you are a spirit-filled Christian, you consider yourself that, then you are to be in the word of God. There is no other way for you to grow than God's word.

And if you have no interest in the Bible today, you call yourself a Christian, you say you're a believer in Christ, that you're born again, and you have no desire for the Bible, no interest in reading the Bible... you think Bible study is boring and reading the Bible is boring... then I am very concerned for you because those are not real marks of a believer. A believer wants to hear and know from God.

Now, it's different where you might say: "Well, Ed, I'm just not a reader." Okay, that's different. But the desire to learn about God, the desire to hunger and thirst for God, to learn about what he wants you to do and who he wants you to be and how he wants you to live and... God, what is it that... why is it, you know, here I am this little speck on this little speck of a planet and you love me and want to learn about that love? If you have no desire for that, I'm concerned for you.

I would even go one step further and say if you have no desire for the Bible and for reading the Bible, you are spiritually sick. That's signs of a sickness. You're not healthy. That's not a healthy place to be.

Guest (Male): So a healthy church is a learning church. They have a commitment to studying God's word. We'll talk more about this next time on Abounding Grace as Pastor Ed Taylor continues our series in Acts called "Be the Church."

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More about a church that is well next time on Abounding Grace as we go deeper into Acts chapter two. Abounding Grace is brought to you by Calvary Church in Aurora, Colorado, and online at aboundinggraceradio.com.