Sunday Morning Service 8:30 AM - The Mission and the Vision Pt 1 - Acts 2:42 - Pastor Ryan Nichols

their cup and read verse 7 with me for the Lord is righteous he loves righteousness the upright will behold his face and so father we come before you and just ask now that as we continue on with our worship service by worshiping you through the study of your word that your Holy Spirit would move through this time Lord I ask that you would open our hearts open our minds and give us the ability to take in everything that your spirit would like to minister to us this morning we pray in Jesus name you may be seated if you would open up in your Bibles to the book of Acts chapter 2 with us finishing the book of Hebrews last week we're kind of in a little bit of an in-between time I

was hoping to have a missionary here with us today but but he was having some travel difficulties so he's going to be joining us two weeks from today so I bumped up the series that I was already intending to do after the book of Hebrews and and the series that I want us to take on is is is what I like to call the mission and the vision so so I like to do this every two or three years where we talk about what is the the mission and vision of Calvary Chapel because I not only want you to understand what it is but also for you to take that and own it for yourself because the work of the church is more than just the job of the pastor in the elders the work of the churches is ultimately the the work of the church you all are a part of that so I want to

see you catch the the vision that we have here at Calvary Chapel and take that and run with it and so so the the the mission statement for Calvary Chapel of Ark City is Calvary Chapel reaching in and reaching out I don't know if you've ever noticed that at the bottom of the little logo there but but reaching in and reaching out is the name of it and so in the vision is reaching in to build up the body of Christ and reaching out with the life-changing message of the gospel and so I thought we'd take these next couple of weeks to kind of talk about what that looks like I did this study a couple of years ago so if it feels familiar to you it's because you've heard it before but we'll

go over it again and so as I was preparing this a couple of years ago the Lord kind of laid it on my heart to talk about why we do church the way that we do church have you ever asked yourself why do we gather every Sunday morning like why do we gather as a body of believers why why do we gather together and call this thing church what's the what's the point where did come from all those kinds of things well it's interesting if you do a little bit of a word search on on church the first time that the word church occurs in the Bible is actually in Matthew chapter 16 Jesus has asked his disciples who they think that he is and Peter makes that great declaration of faith you are the you are

the Son of God the one who came to take away the sin of the world and he said flesh and blood did not reveal that to you my father in heaven did and and Peter on this rock I will build my church not declaring that the church was necessarily going to be built on Peter although he was one of the pillars of the early church but this declaration of faith that he made about Jesus being the very Son of God would be the foundation upon which he would build his church well that word church in the Greek is the word Ecclesia and that word Ecclesia means an assembly of people it actually was originally a secular term because the assembly was what the Greeks would use for a gathering of competent

individuals so believe it or not this is a gathering of competent individuals you can now know you're competent because we're a church a gathering of competent individuals to discuss the business of the town that was what a church originally was and so that then began to be applied to to the body of believers because they were a gathered assembly of believers in Jesus Christ and so as we look at it we are a part of what's called the the universal church now sometimes that's a scary word because you think Oh universal church does mean we're part of something weird no it just means you're a part of the church of all of history right and so the universal church that we belong to everywhere really is two different things first there's the visible church

the visible churches is everybody who is in the church of Jesus Christ who is alive today the visible church encapsulates the church here in the United States of America but it also is the the church in Nigeria the church in Syria the church in Iran that the church all over the world and I think it's important for us to remember as believers in Jesus Christ living in a small conservative town in a Western culture context that that we are not the only church that exists that that the church in America is not the only church that exists we are a part of a global movement of believers in Jesus Christ who who sometimes call themselves by by different denominations we'll talk about

that in just a moment but we but we are all part of this universal church which is why when you hear about things going on it in churches throughout the world we have to remember that that if one part of the body is affected all of the body is affected by that and so so we are all a part of this visible universal church but but there's also this aspect of the fact that we're a part of the invisible church the invisible church and that is the whole church including all those who have passed away all those who are presently a part of the church and all those who will in the future be a part of the church even after we pass off of this mortal coil right like it's it's all of the invisible church and I

and I love this because we talk about the early church all the time right like everybody old early church they did everything right all this kind of stuff but but we're a part of that same church like every every 40 years God's not like well time to start over the new church now we have a different church group no we're all a part of the same thing that means that that the same faith that the believers in Jesus Christ had in that very first century is the same faith that we have today and should the Lord tear you up 500 more years the same church that exists then we'll still be a part of that too because we're a part of this invisible church well as we get even more specific than that you are a

part of what's called a local church assembly you are a part of the church of our Kansas City Kansas do you realize that I think this is what sometimes gets lost in denominational contexts and in a different church context is is that we forget that I'm not just a part of Calvary Chapel of Ark City I'm a part of the church in Ark City and the church in Ark City is more than just this gathered body of believers it's it's all of the believers in this town that are a part of churches that bear different names as long as the Word of God is what is central and Jesus is the message as long as we hold to the tenets of the faith we're all a part of the same church and I think one of the greatest things that

we can do as believers is remind ourselves that that I am not just a part of the church of our of Calvary Chapel although that's an important thing too this is the specific local assembly that you're a part of but but that we're a part of the church in general here in our Kansas City Kansas and so that's sort of a little bit of church history like how we kind of got to being a church but now the question is why do we gather once a week and do things the way that we do I had a guy asked me this one time he goes why do we hold church the way that we do why do you get up and teach and why do we sit and listen well I did a little bit of research on that so let's talk about the the history of

gathering together as the body the Ecclesia of believers so so the first time that we begin to see believers gather was actually in the Old Testament and it was with the tabernacle when God delivered the nation of Israel from Egypt he he brought them to Mount Sinai where he gave them the law but part of the law that he gave them was the construction of a tent called the tabernacle and that tent would be the central gathering place for the nation of Israel as a matter of fact when they when they went through the wilderness when they went on their wilderness journey if you were to look at a diagram of the way the tent was set up it was kind of set up like in a in a in a plus

sign some would say a cross but like a plus sign and right at the center of the camp was the tabernacle because that would be the central gathering place for all of the followers of Jehovah all of the followers of God and they would gather together at that tabernacle for their sacrifices for their feast days the the specific feasts were all the males would come together as you watch them travel through the wilderness even when they picked up to travel the tabernacle be right in the center of the the camp that was traveling throughout the wilderness was they moved into the nation into the land that God had promised they continued to meet at that tabernacle until Solomon built a temple

and then at least three times a year all of the nation would gather together for the feasts and so these three main feasts they would gather together for because God always had this desire for his people to gather together so that they would know that they are the assembly of God that they are the people of God well as the nation of Israel dwelt within the land and they built this temple they unfortunately began to fall into idolatry and as they fell into this idolatry God had to deal with them the first thing that happened is that the nation split ten of the tribes went to the north and two of them stayed in the south where the temple was built and the ten tribes to the north went into

captivity first to the people of Assyria because of their falling into idolatry and then some years later the southern tribes fell into captivity and they were taken into captivity in Babylon and and as they went away sometime either during the exile or shortly thereafter they began to once again have a desire to gather together as followers of God and so they built these buildings called synagogues and a synagogue I don't remember the number of Jewish males there had to be I think it was at least ten but there had to be a certain number of Jewish males that would gather for it to be considered a synagogue meeting and so what they would do when they would come together for their synagogue meeting is

that they would gather together and they would sing some songs and there would be a reading of Scripture and there would usually be some sort of an explanation of that reading of Scripture by a man who would stand behind a podium reading one of the scrolls and the people would take in what he was saying as far as explaining and applying to their lives this particular passage of Scripture we now call that the synagogue model does it kind of sound familiar to you guys and so as they came back into the land after the dispersion after the exile was finished they built the temple but they continued to have these synagogues where people would gather together and they would hear a teaching from the Word of

God and and the explanation would be made it would be a time of gathering together as a matter of fact Jesus taught in many of these synagogues there was one particular time when he was teaching in his synagogue when he stood up and he read the passage of Scripture about the Messiah and he says this has now been fulfilled in your hearing and he rolled up the scroll and sat down everybody kind of freaked out about it and the the disciples taught in synagogues as a matter of fact everywhere that Paul went as he was going on his missionary journeys the first place that he would locate was a synagogue and so this model the synagogue model is what has carried down through the centuries through the early church and now what we use today and so

everybody says well you know if we were gonna do it like the early church was gonna do it we would all meet in houses because after all the early church all met in houses house churches are where it's at did they always meet in houses sometimes they did matter of fact you read of sometimes where they met from house to house because that was what they had to do sometimes they met in synagogues that's where Paul started and sometimes there would be enough believers that they could continue meeting in a synagogue for nearly no maybe just a little bit more than two years they actually met in Ephesus in a place called the school of Tyrannus which was basically a lecture hall in a

college and so so we have to be careful saying well we have to do it like the early church did they only met in houses well if we're gonna do it like the early church did we'll meet anywhere we can and give out the Word of God right like that's actually what the early church did and what God has provided for us as a building to be able to gather to be able to hear God's Word taught to take it in and to to do what we do so that's sort of probably history you didn't really care about but I think it's always important to figure out why we do things the way that we do things instead of just being told well that's how we've always done it well this is why we've always done it this way now the second

thing that I want to talk about is I want to talk about the Commission I promised I'll get to the reaching in part in just a moment but I want to talk about the commissioning so Jesus leaves well before Jesus leaves after he rose from the dead he gave what's called the Great Commission everybody ever heard of the Great Commission before now if we were to take a culmination of all of the aspects of the Great Commission there's four different places where the Great Commission is listed from Matthew Mark and Luke and then the very first chapter of the book of Acts we would come up with these four things I think I had to put them put them up there so the first thing that we see in the Great

Commission is that they were to go forth and they were to preach the gospel they were to preach the gospel now the idea of preaching the gospel is the proclamation of a message the verbal proclamation of a message and the idea of preaching carries with it very much evangelistic things in nature it is the evangelistic declaration of a message the preaching of the gospel and so he told him go forth and preach the gospel to every creature the second thing that we're told about the Great Commission is he said go forth and teach that carries with it the idea of let's go beyond just the aspect of this is what you need to do to be saved and this goes into this is what it looks like to follow this

Savior teach you what the Word has to say teach you all of the things that you need to know to know how to be a believer in Jesus Christ so he told him to preach he told him to teach the third thing within the Gospels that he tells them is go forth and make disciples make disciples and this was an important thing because because as disciple makers we now are teaching people to be learners that's what a disciple is a disciples a learner that's the basic definition of that word and as we have learned from Christ we teach other people so that they can learn from Christ it's often referred to as the discipleship cycle one disciple making other disciples and so that's sort of your role within the

body of Christ and then the fourth thing that he tells him this is out of the book of Acts and he tells them to be witnesses you may remember in the very beginning of Acts they say Lord are you at this time going to establish your kingdom and he says it's not for you to know the times or the dates which the Father has set in motion you go wait on the power of the Holy Spirit and then be witnesses of me in Jerusalem and Judea and in Samaria and in the uttermost part of the of the world and so he tells them go forth and be witnesses and so they were to do all of these things in the power of the Holy Spirit because apart from the power of the Holy Spirit all of these things would be completely useless

so they go and they wait on the power of the Holy Spirit we'll talk about that in just a moment so as we've looked at the church and as we looked at the Commission let me tell you how I kind of came up with this little vision statement that we have or mission statement that we have here at Calvary Chapel so when I was in my early 20s I did college ministry and when I was doing college ministry there was a movement going on at that point in time called the emergent church and the emergent church kind of questioned everything that we did in church and and some of it was good in that we we started questioning hey why are we doing what we're doing but some of it was bad because they

wanted to bring in pagan practices and and combine it with with Christianity so it's kind of an issue there but it did make me start thinking because here I'm working as a young 20-something year old kid with a bunch of other twenty-something year old kids and everybody's asking questions and listen questions are great God is not ever insecure about you asking a question so I started saying okay Lord what is the goal of the church what what is the role that we have what should church be and so as I studied and as I prayed and as I read I really felt like we got down to two aspects of what the church is supposed to do the church is first of all supposed to build up or edify the

body of Christ the church as you go throughout all of the New Testament you find that that's one of the central themes of everything that we are supposed to do as the church is that we are supposed to build up the body of Christ but the second thing that we are supposed to do is that we are supposed to take the gospel of Jesus to the world that is around us and if we look at those aspects of the Great Commission we find that those two things are what the Great Commission says to do we are to reach in to build up the body by teaching and making disciples and we are to reach out to the lost world around us by being witnesses and preaching the gospel and so as we look at these two

statements we see kind of what we are called to do as the church and so the last thing that we want to look out which will actually take the rest of our time here this morning is the first part of the mission statement and that is reaching in so if you would put your eyes back down to Acts chapter 2 and look at verse 42 and this is what it says and they were continually devoting themselves to the Apostles teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer this is something in historical narratives especially in the Bible that we call a summary statement this summary statement links together everything from chapters 1 & 2 to what's about to take place in chapter 3 but it

also gives us a clue into the daily activity of the church so let's build context real quick, okay? Beginning at chapter 1, Jesus is about to ascend into heaven. He gathers his disciples together, and they go to the mountain, and there he's going to ascend into heaven. And so he looks at his disciples, and they say, are you at this time going to establish the kingdom? Of course, he says, it's not really our job to know that. Your job is to

go be witnesses. And so go, tarry in Jerusalem, wait on the coming of the Holy Spirit, and once the Holy Spirit has fallen upon you, go and be those witnesses. So they gather in Jerusalem, and they're there for about 40 days. And, excuse me, they were there for about 10 days, because he'd already been around for about 40. Pentecost takes place 50 days after he rises

from the dead. So they gather in Jerusalem, they're there in the upper room, they're waiting on the Lord, they're praying, they're seeking God. And then all of a sudden, on the day of Pentecost, which is one of the feasts that they were supposed to celebrate, the Holy Spirit comes down, and flaming tongues of fire and falls on all of them. Now listen, I'm not going to give a whole dissertation on the gifts of tongues right now. That's a different study for a different day.

But this is what happens. And all of the disciples begin, as it says in the book of Acts, declaring the works of God in other languages. And so as they're doing so, people that are gathered from all over the world that are Jewish brethren that have gathered together for this feast of Pentecost are hearing the wonderful works of God declared in their own nation. And so everybody kind of freaks out about it. And they're like, these guys are drunk.

And Peter stands up and says, listen, what you're seeing here is not all of us being drunk. We are good Jewish boys, and it's only 10 in the morning. This is not what you're seeing. What you're seeing right now is the fulfillment of what we were told by the prophet Joel that the Holy Spirit would come and he would speak in various ways and give gifts to men. And this is what you're seeing,

the fulfillment of this within the church today. And so on that day, the church of Jesus Christ was born. And so he tells them, in verse 38, says, repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the Holy Spirit. And that day, about 3,000 people got saved. And all of a sudden, the church was born. They went from 200 people, which were

all gathered together waiting on the Lord, to about 3,200 people that are now a church. And as they were gathered together as this church, verse 42 lists the activities that they took part in. Notice what it says again. They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. Before we get into those four things,

there's one other word that I would like to point out to you that's at the very beginning of verse 42. It says, they were devoting themselves to these things. That word devoted there means to give constant attention to, to give constant attention to. To put it another way, this was their lifestyle. This was their lifestyle. So the things that I'm going to point out to you,

I want you to think about, this needs to become our lifestyle as believers in Jesus Christ and our lifestyle as a church. I find that too often in the Western culture context of church, church is what we do on Sunday morning or sometimes on a Wednesday evening, but it doesn't always infiltrate every aspect of our life. It doesn't actually infiltrate us to the point where every part of us is devoted to these things in our lives. And that lack of devotedness creates a lukewarmness within the church today. And that lukewarm aspect, I think,

holds back the Holy Spirit of God more than just about anything else. And it's not because God's Spirit can't move. It's that He won't move because of the lukewarm aspect of the church that oftentimes takes place today. And so I think that we need to have a little time of self-examination and say, Lord, is following you in this way my lifestyle, or is it just one part of my life?

Is it my hobby? I had a guy tell me one time when I was working construction, we were talking about hobbies, and he goes, like, for instance, church is kind of your hobby, right? And I was like, no, church isn't my hobby. Church isn't something I do to fill my empty time. This is my life. Like, following Jesus is my life. It's not just something that I do because I think it makes

me a pretty good person. And either A, we try to let church just be the thing that fills our time, or we let Jesus in attending church be the thing that we're supposed to do, because after all, as good Western culture Kansas people, we go to church on Sunday, right? No, God wants way more for us than that. He wants to envelop every aspect of our lives, because quite frankly, for all of eternity, for a believer in Jesus Christ, following Him will be the thing that envelops every aspect of our life. And so, knowing those things, we jump into the four parts

of what it looks like to reach in. Number one, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. The apostles teaching. Now, I hope you're asking yourself a question right now. If not, I'm going to ask it for you. Hope you're asking yourself a question right now. What were the apostles teaching? Because I don't know if you realize this or not, but when the apostles were around, Acts had not been written yet. They were living out the book

of Acts. The gospel of Matthew had not quite been written yet. It would be very soon. Galatians would actually be one of the earliest books that was written. But the New Testament was not written yet. So what were they, because they were either writing it or living it out as they were doing these things. So what were they teaching? Well, they were teaching the Old Testament. And they

were teaching the Old Testament with the application of Jesus Christ and the fulfillment of Jesus Christ being included. There's a great little section at the end of the book of Luke where Luke talks about a couple of believers on the road to Emmaus. And as they were on the road to Emmaus, kind of talking about the things that they had experienced that day, it says in the book of Luke, Jesus appeared with them. Only they didn't realize it was Jesus. And as they were

walking, Jesus says, well, what are you guys talking about? And they're like, what, have you been living under a rock or something? We're talking about the fact that we just saw this guy that we all thought was the Messiah crucified and dead and gone. And some of his followers are saying he rose from the dead, but we just don't know how we feel about it. He goes, that's kind

of interesting. And so it says that he began talking with them and he began teaching them from that moment, from the Old Testament, all of the things of the law that pointed to himself. Mild paraphrasing, but that's what he did. All of the things of the Old Testament that pointed to himself. On Wednesday nights, we go through the Old Testament here. And one of my favorite

things about the Old Testament, my good friend Truman Page taught me this. One of the great things about the Old Testament is Jesus is written on every single page of it. Sometimes you have to dig it out a little bit, but Jesus is written all over the Old Testament. So you can imagine them going into the Old Testament and saying, listen, what you have to understand is when we see these things, this is Jesus. This is Jesus doing all of these things. When it says, God

said, let there be light, Jesus was the word. And he was the one speaking all of these things into existence. When God sacrificed the animal, that was a picture of the coming of Jesus Christ. And you can just go throughout the entire Old Testament. And so you can imagine how exciting it had to have been for these guys who grew up knowing the Old Testament, who grew up hearing

all of the old stories, and then seeing the application of Jesus to all of those stories. I know because I kind of experienced that myself. I grew up in a Christian school, hearing God's word taught all the time. They did a phenomenal job, but they didn't leave Jesus out of it. My mind wasn't ready to take in everything just yet until I went to Bible college. And my time in Bible

college was listening to Chuck Smith teach all the way through the Bible. And one of the fantastic things that Chuck was so good at doing was making all of the connections between the Old and the New Testament of pointing out Jesus. And then after I graduated Bible college, I started working at Lakeview Village, the old folks' home up there. And I found out that there was a guy that lived there who taught Old Testament history. They were like, dude, you've got to go talk to that guy. You

guys are going to get along really, really well. He likes the Bible as much as you do. And so I'd go there on my breaks, and I would talk to him about Jesus. And he would teach me. And he made connections in the Old Testament to Jesus that I'd never seen before. And you can imagine how these guys would have been. And so they're giving out the truth of the Old Testament, making

the application of Jesus with it, which is what prompted them to write the letters of the New Testament, applying all of that Old Testament truth with the filter of Jesus Christ flowing through it. Because as you look, the Old Testament is Jesus concealed. The New Testament is Jesus revealed. And so they taught the Old Testament scriptures. And so you may have noticed here,

we put heavy emphasis on the teaching of the Word of God. We put heavy emphasis on the apostles' doctrine. And there's three ways that we go about doing that. The first is what's called lecture-style teaching. Lecture-style teaching is what we're sitting in right now. This is a lecture-style teaching. Again, from the synagogue model, you all are sitting. I'm reading the Word

to you. I'm explaining the Word to you. I'm applying the Word to you. That's lecture-style teaching. And in this context, I had somebody ask me one time, are you good with questions from the congregation? The answer's no, because that's not what this context is for. There's way too many people. I mean, we've got, what, 1,500 people here this morning. Second service, there's going

to be 250 people there. And it's going to be like, oh, I can't take questions from all those people, right? This is not the proper context for that. And so as we look, we just go, OK, this is lecture-style teaching. You do this in a church service. If you listen to most of the people on the radio, that's a lecture-style of teaching. Most podcasts, although some of those are

question-and-answer-style things, that's lecture-style teaching. Listen, it's really important. The Bible calls this God's way of using the foolishness of preaching to reach the heart of man. I don't know why God chose for this to be the way, but God chose for this to be the way, that through the foolishness of the preaching of man, that his truth would be declared.

But that's not the only way that we give out the truth of the Word of God. The second way that you can take in the truth of the Word of God is through small-group Bible study. Now, Mason sort of referenced this a little bit, but I want you to grab your bulletin. Go ahead, get it out. On this front page of the bulletin are all of the small-group Bible study meetings that

you can be a part of. Why is small-group study important? Well, because in small-group study, you can ask the questions. You can dig a little bit deeper. You know, I heard Ryan say this, and I'm curious what our thoughts are. How do we apply this to our lives? Could you explain a little bit better this section? Some of the small groups that we have, they take my outlines,

and then they build some questions off of that. Some of them are going through other books of the Bible. I know that there's the other one that's going through finance stuff right now, but that small-group time, that's where your questions and comments get to come into play, because you get to gather with a group of 5, 10, 15 people where it's a better context for discussion. And then you're bouncing things off of each other, maybe occasionally disagreeing, and that's okay.

And you're sharpening each other. And listen, if you're not involved in a small group, I'm not saying you're failing in your walk. I am saying you are not gleaning as much from this church as you possibly could be, because your small group is also where you get to share some things about yourself that nobody else gets to know. And we'll talk about those other things in just a moment, but that becomes sort of like your family within the family. All of us here, we're all family,

but that's the family that you're going to be the closest to, because those are your small-group people. And so find, this is why I say, find a spot to get plugged into, because you need to be plugged in somewhere outside of Sunday morning, because Sunday morning is wonderful, and I think it's incredibly important. It sets the tone for where we go, but growth continues to take place as you meet in a small group. And so number one, there's lecture-style teaching. Number two,

small group, but then there's personal Bible study. And this is why a few years ago, two or three years ago, I felt like the Lord said, you need to start putting something out every single week to give people a guide to go through so they know how to get into the Word of God for themselves. Because your own personal time in the Word is one of the greatest keys to your walk with Jesus Christ. And so I will continue to give any resource that I can to get you into what that has to say, because that apostles' teaching is one of the most important things that we can do, because the Word of God, as it spreads, changes the hearts and the lives of people.

As we said in Hebrews, the Word of God is powerful. It's sharper than any two-edged sword. It's living. It's able to pierce between bone and marrow to ultimately determine the thoughts and the intents of your heart. So the first thing that they devoted themselves to was the apostles' teaching, and so that's what we devote ourselves to is the teaching of the Word

of God. Number two, they devoted themselves to fellowship. They devoted themselves to fellowship. The idea of fellowship is community, joint participation, that which you have in common. That's the idea of the Word for fellowship, the things that we all have in common. But what fellowship really is, is believers gathered talking about their commonality of the truth

of Jesus Christ, the commonality of the truth that we have in Jesus Christ. So first of all, there's this principle, but then there's the activity. The principle is that now you all are bonded to each other as believers more deeply than you're bonded to anyone else in the world. And the reason why is the bonding of believers is a bonding that goes deeper than physical blood because there is a spiritual blood flowing through all of our bodies that causes us all to be bonded to each other unlike anything else. I remember when I was in Bible college, we went down to

Tijuana for good things. It's okay. On a little mission trip down there. Not Southern California. If you tell people in Southern California, you went down to Tijuana, they're like, but it was all for good things. So we went down and did a mission trip down there. And as we went down there, we went and met up with this church and we helped them do a few things. We brought an offering down to them and helped them do a few little projects around the

church. And before we left, the pastor there wanted to pray for us, only he didn't really speak the language. He didn't really speak English very well. And so he prayed over us in Spanish. And, and I remember gathering with this guy and I didn't understand almost anything he was saying until he got to Jesus Christ. I'm like, I know what that would mean. Right? Like I know that

word, but it was amazing because here's this guy that we don't speak the same language and yet we are bonded tightly and he can pray over me and I can know that everything that he's praying is according to God's word because we are bonded because of the blood of Jesus Christ. And it's just so fascinating to know that. So that's the principle of fellowship. But the activity of fellowship is that, is that you get involved in each other's lives. You know, we, we take about

two minutes because if I give you people too long, then I'm not getting you back. But I give you about two minutes, one to two minutes to talk to each other after we finished the songs. And before we come up here, partly because it gives you all a minute to kind of visit with each other because you're as ADHD as I am. And it allows me to get, or whoever's doing the announcements to get up on stage without it being too awkward. And it's just sort of a good breakup of the time. But listen,

if that's the only fellowship that you get, dude, you're missing out. You know, there's a fascinating thing that you can do right after this church service is finished. You can finish that conversation with the exact same person. You really can. It's amazing. I hear it over and over again. And listen, I'm not going to be too mean when I say this, but take it however you want to.

I hear people say this over and over again. My wife is one of them. I just don't seem to know everybody in the church. I can't even make it to some of the new people, let alone to talk to some of the people that have been here forever. But listen, sometimes where do we sit when we show up to church? The same place every Sunday. I don't know if you realize this or not, but there are

other chairs in the church. As a matter of fact, none of them have nameplates on them. I won't allow that to happen. So you could do something really. Now, when I taught this two years ago, you don't realize how much it throws me off when people move. Because I'm used to people being in places. And I'm like, I don't think I saw them at church today. And somebody says, no, they were

there. I'm like, son of a gun, they took me on my word. They moved to a different spot in the sanctuary. And so the last time I did this, all of a sudden, I didn't know who was even in church the next Sunday. Because everybody took me seriously and sat in different places. My oldest daughter came in and said, dad said we can't sit in the same place this week. Where are

we going to sit? And I was like, that's my girl. You could meet all new people doing that. And that's one of the things that I would love to see happen. I want you to know everybody that's in this church. I want you to be aware of the people that are here because there's a beauty in the fellowship. And you know, fellowship does not have to end here. You could, and I know I'm getting

outside the box here, you could get ahold of each other during the week. And you could call each other, text each other, about anything that you want to, because we have this bond that bonds us together. And so there's fellowship that's supposed to take place. So number one, the apostle's teaching. Number two is fellowship. Number three is the breaking of bread. Now this

one sort of flows into fellowship just a little bit because there's two aspects of the breaking of bread, I believe, that he talks about here. Number one is the Lord's Supper. And we celebrate the Lord's Supper at the beginning of every month. I had somebody come to me last week. Was it last week? Was last week Communion Sunday? Yeah, last week was Communion. He said, why do we

only do it once a month? Why do we do it the first Sunday of the month? And I had to be honest and say, well, it's kind of how we've always done it. But I do really have a reason why. Number one, because as Calvary Chapel Church, and this is not unique to our church, most Calvary chapels do it once a month. And the reason why is because they don't want it to become some rote

ritual, religious experience that you don't pay attention to the significance of. Because knowing the significance and paying attention to the significance is really important. We choose the beginning of the month because it's great to start the month fresh with celebrating what Jesus did for us on the cross. And I know some churches, they celebrate Communion every single week, and there's zero things wrong with that. Because the Bible says as often as you do

these things. And so there's nothing legalistic about how often we have to do it. That's just the way that we have chosen to do it over the years. And occasionally around Easter, we might do an extra Communion service, particularly on a Wednesday night. Matter of fact, there are some churches, some Calvaries, that because it's a meal for believers, they'll only do it on a Wednesday

night because they want it to be focused on the believers. And I love bringing the kids in for that because I like them to learn what this Communion thing is all about. It gives you an opportunity to have conversations with kids about that. That's one aspect of the breaking of bread, and it is something that we hold in high regard here. But the second aspect of the breaking of

bread is literally sharing meals together. Sharing meals together. Now, since the church has grown over the past few years, we have struggled to have fellowship meals together. Once or twice a year, we try to get us all together at some other location to be able to do this, but we don't have a good spot here in the building to do that. We're praying about that. We'd like to

make that happen, but there's just not a good spot here to gather everybody together. If you all don't fit in the same sanctuary for Sunday morning service, we're probably all We're going to struggle to fit everybody together around the table. But I want to tell you something else that you can do. There is something incredibly powerful about sharing meals together.

And again, this is a lot of times where small group fellowships come in clutch. I know that there's a handful of them that they do celebrate a meal together before, uh, before the study takes place. And there's just something wonderful about that, but you all could also do something really, really wild, really outside the box. You all can invite each other over for dinner.

Now, listen, this is why I think sharing meals together is such a good thing. Sharing meals together is so great because it breaks down all of our walls. Right? Like, like an ancient Jewish culture, sharing a meal together was, was not like what we do today where, where we all come and everybody has their own plate. It's sharing a meal together. It was exactly what it sounds like.

Like everybody grabbed out of the same communal bowl. They dipped out of the same communal bowl, right? Imagine chips and salsa only. I don't think everybody learns to not be a double dipper in those situations. Right? Like, like in our culture today, when we go out to eat, it's like, I don't know, going out to eat a different experience now than it used to be because it may

have been to the Chipotle and Derby. You've been to that, but you are eating with everybody in the entire land. Only you have to pretend like you're not eating with them. You ever done that? And like, there's a salt and pepper shaker that separates you from the person next to you. And listen, I would have fit in really well in Jewish culture because I like to share a meal with family.

And if you sit near me in a meal, you are my family. And so, you know, I go to the Chipotle, we sit down. My wife won't even hardly let me go there anymore to sit down and eat because of this, because, because I sit down and there's a salt and pepper shaker separating me from the family next to me. And listen, I've already told you I'm a very auditory person.

So I pick up conversations that go on around me and I'll hear a conversation. I'm like, and she just looks at me. She's like, and I'm like, and then I have a choice to make. Do I want to write home in peace or do I want to answer what they're saying? I often choose not peace. I'm like, but you don't understand. I got an answer. But, but there's some, it's amazing how walls break down when we all get

together to eat, right? You ever gone over somebody's house to eat and what's the first thing you do? Spill something on the front of your shirt. Right. And I love to wear white when I should never wear white. Mainly because I should never wear white, but I love to wear white when the way you're going to serve spaghetti or barbecue. And it's like, all right, let's do this thing.

Right. If you spill something on the front of yourself and they go, and you're like, and all of a sudden all the walls are broken down. Right. Like nobody's holding up pretenses anymore. Like your kids running around wild. Cause they're excited that there's friends over and you're like, sorry. They're like, my kid's doing the same thing. We're good. Right. I mean, it's amazing because that breaking of bread is fellowship with each other.

And all of a sudden now you're kind of bonded to each other. Mainly because they use the tide pin on your shirt. Right. And so, and so there's just something about that. And so, so while we try to have times where we break bread together as the entire church, not always possible, but that doesn't stop us from being able to break bread together as believers in Jesus Christ.

We're to vote. We're to devote ourselves to that. So they devoted themselves first of all, to the apostles teaching second of all, to fellowship third, to the breaking of bread. Fourth is to prayer. It's interesting because that word prayer, if you read it in like the Kenneth Weiss, like super, like literal translation, it says the prayer they devoted themselves to

thought prayer. I love that. Cause I put the thought in front of everything. And so I appreciate the fact that it's the prayer, but it carries with it. The idea of the formality of the fact that there's there's prayer that they gathered together to do and listen, brothers and sisters, we hold prayer in very high regard here in this church. Some of you may not realize this, but, but every Sunday morning, there are two

different prayer meetings that take place here. And all of you are invited. If you want to come join us at eight o'clock AM, we meet in this room back here. And there's a group of us that take the prayer requests that come through the prayer chain. And I'll tell you about that in just a minute. And we, and we pray over those or, or perhaps the things that are going on in

someone's life that maybe they didn't want to put on the prayer chain. And, and we gather back there at 8 AM and pray for those. And then as soon as this service ends at 10 AM, I'm not usually in this one because I'm not greeting all of you, but there's another group that meets at 10 AM, which any of you can go be a part of, again, to pray, because I believe that prayer is the source that keeps this church going. Monday nights, Thursday afternoons, the ladies that gather for Bible study, at least I know Thursday afternoons, they take at least an hour after study and they just pray together and they, and they pray over the things in the church.

Um, they come to me sometimes if I'm in my office during that time, Hey, what can we be praying for you about? Because prayer is really important. The first Sunday, although I think we forgot it last week, cause that's on me. The first Sunday of every month, we try to have an evening prayer meeting down at the other end of the hall or in the cornerstone room, um, just to pray over those things.

And I know what some people say, pray for an hour. I'm going to gather with a group of people and pray for an hour. Listen, you would be amazed at how fast that hour goes. And I know you're going, that's not, it's just not me. I don't sit still that well. Have you met me? Right. I don't sit still well at all. And yet I can sit through that hour of prayer because you realize you're

going to war at that point in time. That's, that's the battle that's taking place. And so we, so we hold prayer in this very high regard. But again, I'll remind you that the prayer doesn't just have to take place in a formal gathering like that. Prayer can take place anywhere. As we are aware of the needs of the body. If you are not signed up for this, uh, we have, uh, um, we have a prayer request.

Um, uh, what do you want to call it? Platform where we send things out. It's called flock note. And if you are not signed up for that, you can go to flock note.com slash CCAC. I think it's in your bulletin as well. I think, and you can sign up to receive those prayer requests so that you can know the things that are going on within the body of Christ, because we want to

send those out so that there's an entire group of people praying for them. Uh, I don't know if you are aware of this and I hope I'm not going to get in trouble for sharing this. I won't use names. Uh, there was a gentleman last Saturday evening whose daughter goes to church here and, and, um, and he had a very, very serious medical incident take place. And so she calls me, please send this out.

So I sent it out immediately. And, and after all the tests were done, he seems to be fine so far. And, and, and I know that he has said, I believe it's because of the prayers of the body of Christ, because we got our church praying for him. We got, uh, the first Baptist church praying for him and probably a whole lot of other churches beyond that all praying for this one guy who's having this medical emergency in this moment.

And he believes that that's, I believe too, that that's how he overcame what was going on in his life. And sometimes we have tragic things take place. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt for myself. And I know some of you have said as well, the only way you've made it through some of the tragedies in your life is because you've had God's people praying for you.

And so, and so I would encourage you to get involved in that, to get involved in what's going on with the prayer ministry, because they devoted themselves. They made their lifestyle prayer. And so, as we look at this aspect of reaching in to build up the body of Christ, reaching into edify the body of Christ, he says, number one, they devoted themselves to the building up of the body of Christ, to the teaching of the word of God through the fellowship with each other, they built each other up through the breaking of bread together, and there was a great deal of building up through prayer. And so as we finish this up this morning, I have two challenges for you.

Number one, how are you going to get involved? How are you going to get involved? Listen, I love that you're here this morning and I love that you show up every single Sunday morning. I love seeing your bright, shining faces. And I love greeting as many of you as I can on the way out the door. But brothers and sisters, if all I see you at is a Sunday morning and you're

not involved in the other things that are going on in the church, you're missing out on what God wants to do in your life and you're missing out on what God wants to do within the church. So my challenge for you is how are you going to get involved? What aspect of getting involved are you going to do to where you're not just the face that I see on a Sunday morning, but you are the life that impacts all of the people around you as you reach in to build up the body of Christ? Whether that be through attending a small group, being a part of the prayer meetings, fellowshipping with each other, or simply taking in God's word and giving it out to the people that are around you, how are you going to get involved?

And then my second challenge for you is this, of these four things, will you make it your way of life? Will you make it your way of life or will it just continue to be something that you do to add to the things that you do in your life? Or will it just be another hobby? I don't know about you, but I want these things to be what I make my lifestyle. Amen? Let's all stand.

And if you'd bow with me.

Father, we come before you. And Lord, I just thank you for the time that we've had to be in your word this morning. Lord, I thank you that you are God and that you are good and that you have given us this opportunity as the church, Lord, to be able to minister and build each other up. And so father, for every person that's here this morning, I pray that they would take the challenge that comes from your word, the challenge, hopefully that comes through the power of your Holy spirit and God, that that challenge would guide the way that they live their lives.

Father, I pray for the forming of disciples. Lord, I pray for the forming of followers of Jesus Christ. And I pray that we as disciples would continue to make disciples of the people that are around us. Father, grow this church as you see fit, but more than anything, grow each of us as you see fit to make an impact for the kingdom of God. We just thank you, father, Jesus name.

Amen. Be blessed.

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one more time holy holy holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come with all creation. I sing praise to the king of kings you are my everything and I will adore you Yes, Lord God. We just come before you this morning. We adore you or God. We praise you and we thank you Lord for who you are or you are the king of kings. You are on your throne or God

and we give you praise father. We love you. We thank you and we praise you. We adore you Jesus name. Amen. I love you guys. Have a wonderful week.