Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Guest (Male): Hey everybody, thanks for stopping by today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. Today Rick will continue his message called Real Christianity: The Model of the First Church. In this message, he guides us through a deeper look at what authentic faith looks like. Rick explores how the early believers lived, worshiped, and supported one another and what that means for your life today. And now, here's Rick with part two.

Rick Warren: God brought you here to this church because there are people only you can reach and there's a language that you speak that will reach those people. You say, "Wait a minute, I just speak English, or I speak Spanish, or I speak Vietnamese or Korean." I'm not talking about your international language.

I'm talking about the other languages you speak. For instance, some of you speak MOPS, Mothers of Preschoolers speech. If you've ever been around mothers of preschoolers, they've got their own lingo. They talk about jumpy-jumpers and baby diapers and bottles, and I haven't the slightest. You might as well be talking hip-hop. I wouldn't know what they're talking about. In fact, some of you do speak hip-hop and you can talk and reach people who speak hip-hop.

Some of you speak CEO. Some of you speak accounting. Some of you speak truck driving. You know mechanical terms. Some of you speak retirement because you do, you are retired. Some of you speak the languages of art, and some of you speak the languages of music. Some of you have a craft or a hobby, and you know all the phrases and terms in that hobby. Or you speak the language of sports, golf terms or whatever. Everybody's got their own language.

God says real Christianity, everybody's language gets used. Whether it's a sport or a hobby or stage of life or whatever, you use your language to reach people only you can reach with the good news.

Number three, real Christianity uses everyone's gifts. It uses everybody's gifts and we've all got different gifts. In Bible times, there was no such thing like what we're doing right now, where one guy talks to a huge group. That just didn't happen. There were no audiences, there was only an army. There were no spectators, there were only participants.

There were no consumer Christians who come to church, listen, go home, and do nothing about it. Everybody was a contributor. The audience was an army. The spectators were participants. 100% participation. Every age group, every race, every gender, all stages of life. Every body was involved.

Look at the next verse. Verse 14 says, "Then Peter, the apostle Peter, stood up and he starts to explain what's going on." All of these people have seen these people speaking in languages they didn't understand an hour ago. They've got these little flames over their head and they hear the loud noise.

Peter stood up and said, "These people aren't drunk as you might suppose. It's only 9:00 in the morning." This is actually quite humorous here. He's gone, "Friends, it's only 9:00 a.m. The bars aren't open yet." These guys aren't drunk. They may act like they're drunk, but they're not drunk.

He says, "This is the Holy Spirit." He says, "God says, I will pour out my spirit on everyone." Circle "on everyone." He says, "Your sons and your daughters will proclaim my message." In other words, everybody's going to be a preacher. "Your young men will see visions and your old men will have dreams." He says, "Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days and they will all proclaim my message."

Everybody is a messenger. Everybody's a missionary. Everybody's a minister. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. If you're taking notes, I want you to circle some things here. I want you to circle "sons and daughters." He says your sons and daughters are going to proclaim my message.

I want you to circle "young and old." Visions and dreams from the young and the old. And I want you to circle "men and women." Sons and daughters, young and old, men and women. Now, question, who does that exclude? Martians? That's about it. It includes everybody. He's saying everybody gets—you're never too old to be used by God. You're never too young to be used by God. You have gifts and abilities and talents God has put in you, and he says everybody is going to be used. Every person, every age group, and every gender.

Every woman being mobilized, every man being mobilized. We call it every member's a minister. Your kids are ministers. Your spouse is a minister. You are a minister. Not everybody's a pastor, but the Bible says God calls everyone. This is how they grew from 120 people to dominating the Roman Empire in 300 years. Just a little group of people. Why? Because everybody was involved. Everybody was included.

Let me just be honest with you. Somebody who loves you. If you passively just want to sit around in the next 10 years and just waste your life on things that don't last, you probably want to find another church. Because you're not going to really feel comfortable here, because if you're in this church, I'm coming after you to be mobilized.

On the other hand, if you want your life to count for the purpose for which God created it, you're in the right place. Because we're going to mobilize you, using your language and your gifts to do what God wants to do with your life for God's purposes. He wants to do that.

Number four, real Christianity not only has supernatural power, uses everybody's language, uses everybody's gifts, but it offers life-changing truth. Real Christianity offers life-changing truth. That is the truths that transform people. We don't offer pop psychology in this church. We don't offer self-help in this church. We don't offer polite little moralisms and inspirations in this church. We offer the gospel. It is God's word that changed. Jesus said, "It is the truth that sets you free." Only the truth will set you free.

Until you know the truth about you, the truth about God, the truth about life, the truth about death, the truth about what matters in life, until you know the truth in every area, you're enslaved. You'll be a slave to the culture, slave to the expectations of others, slave to people's approval, slave to peer pressure. You'll be enslaved to habits, addictions, and all kinds of things. It is the truth that sets you free.

Now the church offered the truth of God, which you can't get anywhere else. It was transforming truth. No other organization, no other group of people has the truth that says your past can be forgiven, you get a purpose for living, you get a home in heaven. Where else are you gonna get that? Nowhere.

No other message changes lives like the good news. No other message changes a guy from a wife-beater to being a loving, responsible husband. It's when that truth gets in him from God, he changes.

Now Peter in Acts chapter 2 gives the very first Christian sermon at the very first day of the very first church. And in verse 14 to 40 is Peter's sermon. I don't have time to get into it. I could spend a couple hours just on that sermon. But let me just summarize it for you.

Notice here in verse 14, Peter addressed the crowd. He says, "Let me explain this to you." In other words, he's seeing everybody talking in another language and they're going, "What's going on here?" "Let me explain this to you. Listen carefully to what I say. This is that." He says, "This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel."

Joel had said this, "I will show wonders in the heaven above, signs on the earth below, and everybody who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." Who's Joel? Joel is a prophet in the Old Testament near the end of the Old Testament. Got a very short book, just a couple chapters. In fact, I want you to go home today and read the book of Joel. I want you to read it so that when you get to heaven, you're not embarrassed. Because I don't want Joel to come up to you and say, "Hey, how'd you like my book?" And you go, "Oh, Mr. Joel, I didn't even know you were in the Bible."

Really, you need to go home and read these guys, so at least when you get to heaven you're not embarrassed and go, "Oh yeah, Joel. Loved the book. Great book." Now Joel had predicted hundreds of years earlier what was going to happen on the day of Pentecost when God sends his Holy Spirit and this Christian church begins.

He says there's going to be all kinds of signs and wonders and miracles. And when Peter gets up to speak, he says, "Okay you guys, you see what's going on right now? This is that. This is that. This is what Joel was talking about a hundred years ago, predicted it was going to happen. Well guess what? It's happening. This is that." Now how does this relate to your life?

You will never understand what God is doing in your life until you know how God has worked in the past. This is why we study the Bible. This is why we look at church history. Because you don't have the slightest idea how God is going to work in your life until you know how he's done it in other people's lives in the past. It's why we study the Bible.

Then you go, "Oh, well that's how God does it." For the last six weeks we've been looking at in our small groups the six phases of faith. You get a dream, you make the decision on the dream, and then there's the delay, and then there's the difficulty, then there's the dead end, and then finally there's the deliverance. How do we know God works that way? Because we read the Bible.

Because that's the way he worked in Abraham's life, that's the way he worked in Moses' life, that's the way he worked in David's life. It's how he worked in everybody's life. It's how he's worked in the history of the church. It's how he's worked at Saddleback over and over the years. So we go, "Oh well that's how he does it." So then when you hit delay, you go, "It's no big deal." And when you hit difficulty and you hit dead end, you're not freaking out because you know that's how God works. It's to build my faith. This is that.

If you want to grow in your spiritual life, you've got to know how God has worked in the Bible and in the last 2,000 years of the church. You gotta know church history and you gotta know scripture.

Peter shares the gospel in this message. What is the gospel? The gospel is just the good news. Gospel is the old English word for good news. And there are eight parts to the gospel. And Peter covers all eight of them in this sermon. Now again, I don't have time to go through it all, so turn your outline over and here it is summarized. Here is Peter's Pentecost sermon summarized from verse 22 all down to verse 40.

Here's what he says. He says number one, the good news is Jesus is God and all the miracles he did prove it. That's good news. God has come to earth to show us what he's like. Second, Jesus died on the cross for your sin. He said that's good news, that's the gospel. Third, God raised him back to life. He didn't stay dead. That's good news.

He says this gives us gladness, it gives us joy, and it gives us hope. That's good news. And he says now he's gone back to heaven, but he's sent his Spirit from heaven, and we must repent, turn from our ways, and be baptized. And then we're going to be given his Holy Spirit. He's going to live in us and then we will have the power to live differently in the world.

No wonder it's the good news. No wonder it's the gospel. That's all good news. And notice the result when you teach the good news. Acts 2:40, "Those who accepted his message were baptized and about how many were added to their number that day? How many?" 3,000. Would you circle that 3,000?

The church became a mega-church on the first day. There was no small church in the Bible. But the point is real Christianity is based on the Bible. It's not based on popular opinion or psychology. It's based on God's word and it says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. That's why the church had power.

What is the apostles' teaching? It's this right here. It is the Bible, the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Romans. It's written by the apostles: Paul and Peter and Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. It's written by apostles who wrote it down, the word of God, and we have it today.

Number five, real Christianity provides loving support. In other words, the church provides a support network when you're going through a tough time. In the first church, they loved each other, they took care of each other, they cared for each other because they were all being killed by the Roman Empire. Tomorrow you may be being fed to the lions because it's illegal to be a Christian.

So they banded together and they really took care of each other. They loved and they supported each other. There's a Bible word for that support network. It's called fellowship. Fellowship means we care and support each other. It means we are as committed to each other as we are to Jesus Christ.

The Bible says this. Acts 2:42, "They took part in the fellowship and sharing in the fellowship meals and in praying together." The CEV translation says, "They were like family to each other." Circle family. Over and over again, the church is called a family. It's not a business, it's not an organization, it's not a social club. The church is a family.

In fact, the Bible tells us that you are to treat older men in the church as spiritual fathers. You are to treat the older women in our church as spiritual mothers. You're to treat other women in the church as sisters and you're to treat other men in our church family as brothers, because we're in a family. Everybody sitting on the row with you right now, you may not know them, but they're your brother and sister.

In fact, for thousands of years in the church, the church has called each other brother and sister. They'd say brother so-and-so and sister so-and-so, Sister Mary and Brother John, and they used the term brother and sister because God says you guys aren't just members of an organization, you're part of the family of God. You are to treat the other people in your church as family. And what do you do with family? You defend them even if they're weird. Okay?

You stick up for them even if everybody's got goofy people, uncles and aunts, but they're part of your family. So you take care of them and you defend them. And they had fellowship. It says, "All the believers continued together in close fellowship." The Message paraphrase said, "They lived in wonderful harmony."

You know the thing about the first 300 years of the church, I've been studying what the critics of the first 300 years who hated Christianity said about the church. I've been reading all these ancient documents. And do you know what they said? Here's what the critics said about the church: "Those Christians, they're weird. They're kooky. They're like a cult. They don't worship all the gods, they just worship one God. They don't do all the pagan practices. They're weird. But man, those guys really love each other."

The one thing that impressed them was not how smart they were, but how much they loved each other. Nobody in the Roman Empire loved people like the Christians did. And love attracts. When a church genuinely loves, you'd have to lock the doors to keep people out because everybody's looking for love. Looking for love in all the wrong places.

What the world has done today is the world has tried to create fellowship out there. But it's fake fellowship, it's phony fellowship, it's false fellowship. It's not the real deal. Everybody wants, has this need for fellowship, to feel like I belong and people accept me and love me and aren't going to reject me even with my warts and all. I mean remember the theme of Cheers? You want to go where everybody knows your name. That's fellowship.

But the world creates all these phony—nothing is more phony than a singles' bar where everybody's pretending they're happy, but they're not. It's so phony. Where else in society do you walk up to a total stranger and offer to buy them something? Can I buy you a drink?

Think that through. If you were in Sears, would you walk up to a gorgeous woman and say, "Can I get you a toaster?" You see a cute chick in Albertsons, "Care for a bunch of bananas?" Nowhere else in society do you go to a total stranger and offer to buy them a drink or anything else. And everybody's sitting there pretending like they're having fun and they're not.

Real fellowship happens in the church because we're brothers and we're sisters and we love each other. And when you're in trouble, we're going to help you. And when you're out of work, we're going to help you. And when I'm out of work, you help me.

Now this family, the Bible says we're to be affectionate with each other. They showed love. In fact, several times in the Bible, if you've ever read the New Testament through, you know it says, "Greet one another with a holy kiss." It says it several times, not just once. "Greet one another with a holy kiss." Why? Because in the Bible times, in the first church, they literally kissed each other because they said we're family.

Now I'm not talking about on the lips, I'm talking about on the cheek. And they kissed each other with a holy kiss, and it impressed all the non-believers. But then what was funny is that after a while, after a few generations, some bishops who were a little legalistic decided that this might cause lust.

So they made a new rule that from that point on, men should only kiss men and women should only kiss women, and the tradition died within one generation. Now here at Saddleback, we don't do the holy kiss, but we do do the holy hug. Okay? When I'm out on the patio hugging people after the service, I hug somebody often and wonder, I wonder how long that hug's got to last that person.

Because I've talked to many people who said, "Rick, the only physical affection I get is at church." Did you know that you need physical affection? I'm not talking about sexuality, sensuality. I'm talking about you need to be touched for your own health, emotional and physical health. You need to be touched.

Do you know that babies that are not touched, their skin isn't touched with tactile stimulation, they get failure to thrive syndrome? A preemie in an incubator has to be taken out on a regular basis in a hospital and stroked and touched by that nurse or the mom or the dad, because if a baby is not touched enough as a baby, it gets failure to thrive. Brain development doesn't go as closely. You were wired for touch. You need it for your own good.

When I'm out on the patio, I've often thought about going into full-time Christian hugging. I think it'd be a pretty good thing. It'd help a lot of people. Now if you're a part of Saddleback and you don't like to be hugged, get over it. Get rid of that neurosis. Maybe you grew up in a family where nobody touched you. Well get over it. You need to be touched for your emotional and physical and spiritual development.

That's why at least twice in every service we say turn around and shake hands with people. A pat on the back, a hug, a squeeze of the hand. When Jesus dealt with people, he gave everybody a look, a word, and a touch. And you can change people's lives giving them a look, a word, and a touch. Look into their eyes, give them a word of encouragement, and give them a touch of affirmation.

People flock to loving churches. They're looking for love. They're looking for fellowship. And the church grew because it provided loving support. Now where did they provide it? Look at the next verse, verse 46. "They met in small groups in homes for communion and they shared meals with great joy and thanksgiving." Why do we do small groups? Because that's the way the first church did it and in this church we do it the way the Bible says.

Guest (Male): What a great message from Pastor Rick. I hope it touched you just like it touched me today. And now let's end our show with a closing thought from Rick.

Rick Warren: God has five purposes for your life. He wants you to know and love him; that's called worship. He wants you to belong to his family; that's called fellowship. He wants you to grow in character to be more like Christ; that's called discipleship. And he wants you to learn to serve using your gifts and talents, serve God by serving others; that's called your ministry.

Finally, he wants you to share the good news and your life message with other people around the world. That's called your mission. I'd like to close today to talk to you for just a second about your personal mission.

Did you know that the Bible says every time somebody accepts the Lord, they throw a party in heaven? It's right there in Luke 15:7 where the Bible says there's more joy in heaven over one sinner who changes his heart and life than over 99 who don't need to turn to Christ, who are already there. The day that you accepted Jesus Christ, there was a party in heaven for you.

By the way, the day that you help somebody else come to know the Lord, there's going to be a party in heaven, but there's also going to be a party in your heart. I want to encourage you today to look outward, to look around you and see the people who need to hear about the love of God, about the message of Christ, about the purpose of life, about the daily hope that we have in our hearts. The Bible says always be ready to share the hope that is within you.

Could I pray for you? And as we bow in prayer, you might want to pray this prayer with me. Say, "Father, I want the joy that you've given me to be shared with other people. And a lot of times I'm afraid or hesitant to talk about you to others. Would you give me so much love for other people that the love overcomes my fears and gives me the right words to say as I share the hope that's in me?

Allow me to help others find you, to find real hope, to find joy through knowing you. Thank you, Lord, so much for trusting me to help bring others to you. I want to accept my mission and I want to use it for your glory and in the power of your Spirit. Thank you Jesus. Put somebody in my life today that I can tell about you. In your name I pray. Amen."

Guest (Male): Be sure to join us next time as we look into God's word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.