Living Waters of Grace 09.19.25

This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark

Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,

County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he

continues teaching through God's Word.

So anybody that tells you doctrine isn't important or

doctrine's boring, or doctrine divides, Yeah, it divides truth

from error. It says it's profitable doctrine

for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness.

So reproof, when I'm in the Word and I'm in a church or I'm in a

congregation where the pastor's teaching the Word faithfully,

I'm going to be convicted about some things that need to be

adjusted in my life. Not condemned.

But just like, hey, Clark, this is something you need, you need

to change or consider or whatever, right?

The sound doctrine is like a compass guiding you through a

world of confusion. In today's message, Pastor Clark

reveals how doctrine divides truth from error as Scripture

teaches it's instruction for righteousness.

When you're in a church that faithfully teaches the Word,

you'll likely feel convicted with just parts of your life as

God speaks to you. Doctrine shapes your faith,

keeping you on the right path. Are you embracing sound doctrine

to guide and correct your walk with God now?

Here's Pastor Clark in Acts Chapter 2 with today's edition

Acts 2 · chapter mention

of Living Waters of Grace. So this study is founded in the

inception of what is called the New Testament Church.

The church didn't exist until Pentecost.

And so the way the Lord God organized people, he organized

them as nationality groups, if you may like the nation of

Israel. And God first worked with Israel

as a nation to be his chosen people.

And so you remember studying in the Old Testament about Abraham

and Isaac and Jacob, the patriarchs, the leaders of the

that particular nation at the time.

And their responsibility was to carry on the truth of the Word

of God to the people of God throughout the earth, the known

world at that time. God chose to gather people and

community, just like we are here today together as a group of

people. God never chose to work with

people in isolation. He knew that we needed one

another, we needed companionship, we needed

encouragement, we needed to be around other human beings to

know how to help each other get through the good times and bad

times of life. So he established a Tabernacle

in the Old Testament, and it was a physical structure that was

built by God's direction through the leadership of Moses and

others. And so wherever that Tabernacle

moved, the people of God moved. They, they didn't say, well, I'm

not going to follow that anymore, I'm just going to stay

here. They realized that God's

blessing was always based upon the habitation of God where he

was geographically at that time with the people.

Now God's omnipresent, and so He's everywhere present at the

same time, but he chose to manifest himself personally

within the confines of the Tabernacle, by the pillar of

fire by night and the cloud by day.

And so whenever the Tabernacle moved, the people of God moved

with it. Whenever the people were not

around the Tabernacle before the Tabernacle was built, they felt

isolated, they felt alone, and they felt void and empty of this

presence of God. The presence of God is very

important for each of us to sense and experience.

That's what the book of the Acts is all about.

It's about the work of the Holy Spirit within the church and

within the lives of the people that belong to the church.

The presence of God manifests himself in the heart of the

believer, but He also manifests himself whenever the believers

gather together to worship Him in any given locale in local

church. God never intended people to not

have a place to meet with other people to worship him.

So the church is God's idea. It wasn't man's idea.

God was the one that knew that we needed to have assembly.

As a matter of fact, he told us in the book of Hebrews, we're

not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, meaning not

coming together like we are today.

We're together. We're, we're, we're, we're

making every effort to be physically present in the place

that God has established for believers to come together to

be, to worship him, to hear his word, to study the Bible

together, and to be taught the word of God.

Whenever you don't have a church and some of you know what that's

like, it's sort of a lonely trek and journey because you're

trying to do your faith by yourself.

Maybe you watch online, that's probably better than nothing or

listening on the radio, but there's nothing like being with

people physically in a confine building or outside or whatever.

People gather to hear from God and God works not only through

the pastor, but he works through the people in the church.

When you come and you see each other physically, it, it, it

encourages you, it, it reminds you that you're not alone in

your journey toward the Kingdom. One day there's others with you.

You're you're never alone. If you're going through a

difficult time or a challenge, you're not going through it

alone. When you're part of a church, we

go through it together. We do what we can to help each

other through the challenges and difficulties of life.

And we grieve with people who grieve and we rejoice with

people who rejoice and we hurt with people who hurt.

And we, we, we're just there for one another.

And it's, it's such a, a wonderful infrastructure that

God has built. They're called the New Testament

church. So the church was birthed at

Pentecost. Up until this point, people were

pretty nomadic. If you were Jewish, you would go

to the Temple on Saturday. Then Christ rose again from the

dead on Sunday, which is the first day of the week.

And in the New Testament, the Gentiles began to meet on

Sunday, the 1st day of the week. There's nothing special about

any personal day of the week. You worship God every day.

I hope it's not on Sunday or through Jewish.

And you, you, you, you, you want to follow the rituals of the Old

Testament. And you, you gather on a

Saturday to follow your customs as a Jewish person there.

There's nothing wrong with that. But we are called to gather

together in the church. So what is the church and what

does the church look like? And how does the church act?

And how does the church work? In Greensburg?

There's a church on every corner of the city and you could choose

to go wherever you want to go. But what what happened with the

church in the beginning stages? It was pure in the sense it was

not touched with traditions of, of men, if you may, and, and the

book of the Acts. It, it just started out on fire.

It started out alive. There was no one running the

church other than Jesus Christ and those he placed in charge at

the time. The apostles and even the

apostles weren't really running anything.

They were just gathering believers together like we are

today to meet, to be in the Word together.

And so God knows, and we probably know too, that if we

aren't somewhere like we are today to hear the Word of God

and to worship God, we're going to drift spiritually, right?

I don't care who it is. It could be me or you or any of

us, that if I'm not under the word of God and I'm not in an

environment like this where there's people of God that love

God, that worship God, and I'm not with those kind of people,

then I'm going to be weak spiritually.

I'm not going to be following the Lord closely.

I'll begin to drift, I'll begin to backslide.

I'll begin to take things for granted.

I'll begin to compromise. And it's just the nature of the

human heart. So the the church in in God's

Providence and his plan was to gather us together, keep us on

track together, to keep us moving toward the Kingdom, to

keep us in a place of humility and and need of the Lord, a

place of repentance where we're corrected.

If anything in my life wasn't right this week, I guarantee

when I'm in church and I hear the word of God, the Lord will

correct it. He'll convict me.

I take the Lord's Supper and I'm reminded of what Jesus has done

for me every week when I'm in this church.

My life is continually learning to walk with the Lord.

So the church has been set up so that you and I would know how to

follow God, how to obey God, how to hear God, and how to live in

the ways of God. Court without the church.

None of us do that. Well, if you're on the golf

course, you might look at the creation and praise God a little

bit when you get a good shot, but most of the time you're

complaint not hitting it in the direction you want to hear

something, you know, and maybe you have a few choice words

while you're not hitting it in the direction you want to hit

it. Or you're on the beach and you

think, well, I can worship God on the beach and, and you can,

you know, hopefully you do, but there's distractions on the

beach, you know, And so you gotta be in an environment at

least a couple hours a week sometime in your life to be

under the anointing of, of God's word in your life as it's

taught. And also as a Holy Spirit moves

in your life with the person beside you, behind you, in front

of you, the people you talk to, the people you see, the people

you listen to, you hear their stories, you catch up with one

another. Hopefully you don't run out too

quick. You get to know people and that

kind of stuff. You begin to develop this

community relationship. And so the heading of the text

in my Bible in Acts chapter 2, verse 40, it says a vital church

Acts 2:40

grows. So this is the beginning stages

of the of the New Testament church.

There was no Catholic Church. There was no Orthodox Church in

the sense of how we see it today.

There was no Protestant church. There was this people like us

that were Pagan, that weren't trying to become bad people,

becoming good people. It was God making dead people

alive, right? That's what he did for us.

He made us dead in trespasses and sin.

He saved us and he made us alive together in Jesus Christ.

It's miraculous. And we're born again.

We're new creations in Christ. We're heading toward the the

heavenly city. And so it was so wonderful in

the beginning because there was really only one church and it

started here at Pentecost. Peter preached that sermon that

day after the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the 120 in the

upper room. All these people in the

community heard their heard the word of God, people worshipping

God in their own language. It was miraculous.

These people were given supernatural ability to talk

actual languages that they had never studied or learned.

So all these people that were there at Pentecost were hearing

the the word of God and and many of them then began to become

convicted as Peter preached that sermon.

And over 3000 people got saved in that one day.

So the church went from 120 people in an upper room to 3120

people in an instant. So there they have this church.

What do we do? What do we do with all these

people? There was no, you know, a five

year plan or one year plan. There was no, you know, agenda

that anybody had established. They this met together just like

we are now. And it says in verse 40 and with

many other words, he testified this is Peter and exhorted them,

encouraged them saying be saved from this perverse generation.

They're living in a world like we are today, people that don't

know God, people who are doing evil things, immoral things,

ungodly things, governments that aren't under the authority of

God at the time. All these people heard the word

of God and they were saved from this world system that

everyone's born into. We're all born as sinners into

this world. We need a Savior.

And it says, and those who gladly received His Word, and I

trust today that we're here to receive gladly His word.

They were baptized and that day about 3000 souls were added to

them. A miracle of God's power, Holy

Spirit power in convicting people's hearts to need a

Savior. And that's our prayer throughout

the earth today. When the church gathers and the

Word of God is being preached, people are in these churches and

maybe they've been invited or they just show up and they don't

even know why they're there. And all of a sudden they start

hearing stuff that makes sense. And all of a sudden they realize

by the grace and the power of God and the Holy Spirit that

they need a savior. And Jesus is the only one that

can be their savior. For Jesus is the way.

He's the only way, the only truth and the only life.

Jesus said that about himself, when no man comes to the Father,

but through him. And so this is what they began

to do all these people. Verse 42 and they continued

steadfastly in the apostles doctrine.

Now, when we go to church, we shouldn't be interested in

anybody's opinion other than God's.

If whoever is responsible for teaching the, the, the sermon,

if they're not in the apostles doctrine, get up and leave.

There's no reason to be there. There's no truth apart from this

truth in regard to Christianity and the and the and the way to

follow Jesus. It comes only from the word of

God. So if we're not in the word of

God, there's no purpose and reason to gather.

It's just a social club, right? That's an organization of man.

And so they were meeting together in the apostles.

Doctrine. Now people say many times, well,

doctrine isn't important, but doctrine's critical because this

is what happens with doctrine. And Second Timothy, the apostle

Paul wrote this chapter 3, verse 16, he says all Scripture.

That means everything from Genesis through Revelation, OK,

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.

Man doesn't have the right to choose what he wants to teach

and what he doesn't want to teach.

Paul told the elders in Ephesus on the shore before he was

heading toward his martyrdom, and he wasn't going to see him

again. He told them very clearly.

I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole council of

God. He didn't skip anything.

He didn't gloss over anything. He didn't say, well, I don't

think this is that important. So I'm not going to tell him

about that. No, he wanted to be clean from

the the blood of of any kinds of God, an ungodly approach toward

anything that had to do with the things of God.

He wanted to to be just before the Lord and be faithful to give

the people exactly what the Lord told him to give him.

But sometimes people make fun of churches that teach the Bible.

They say, well, there should be other things you should talk

about other than the Bible. Well, I like to talk about other

things in the Bible. I like to talk about golf, and I

like to talk about my grandkids, and I like to talk about sports

and I like to talk about business or whatever, but not in

the pulpit. Those are conversations for

other times for people to listen to, right?

We all have other interests, you know, other than just the Bible.

And that's a good thing. There's nothing wrong with

literature and reading and music or whatever sports.

But when it comes to the church gathering, there's a reason all

Scriptures given by inspiration of God is profitable for

doctrine. So anybody that tells you

doctrine isn't important or doctrine's boring, or doctrine

divides, Yeah, it divides truth from error.

It says it's profitable doctrine for reproof, for correction, for

instruction and righteousness. So reproof, when I'm in the word

and I'm in a church or I'm in a congregation where the pastor's

teaching the word faithfully, I'm going to be convicted about

some things that need to be adjusted in my life, not

condemned, but just like, hey, Clark, this is something you

need to change or consider or whatever, right?

It's it's the Lord speaking to me through the word of God and

also for correction that I hear something and I better apply it

to my life. I better just not ignore it or

blow it off because God's warning me through the word that

this is the pathway of a blessed life.

If I follow and obey his word, if I choose not to obey the

word, my life isn't going to be blessed.

It's going to be a mess. And all of us have come from

places of messed up lies because A, we didn't know the word or B,

we weren't living the word or obeying the word.

You don't mess with the truth. The truth is the truth and we

need to live it and we need to apply it to our lives and then

for instruction and righteousness.

So how do you do the Christian life?

How do you live it? What do you?

Well, this is this is what this is for, right?

This teaches all of us how to do the Christian life so wonderful

that we have this and it says that the man of God and when it

says man, it's it's male, female, that the person of God

may be completely, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

So how can I live a life that's pleasing to God?

How can I be a good husband or a Good Wife or a good dad or mom

or grandson or grandfather or whatever the roles we have?

How can I be a good employer? How can I be a good employee?

How can I be a good neighbor? All these kind of things teaches

us from doctrine how to be equipped for every good thing in

this life. So if you go to a church that

doesn't teach the Bible and never talks about doctrine, what

are you going to learn how to live life?

You're just not going to know. The Bible tells us in the last

days there's going to be a famine for the Word of God,

meaning that there will be churches, but there'll be few

churches that are teaching the Word of God anymore.

The only reason we felt compelled to plant this church

25 years ago is that when we moved from Philadelphia, from

Calvary Chapel Philadelphia, we were used to what you guys get

here. We got back here, we went to

churches and it wasn't happening.

There was like a sermon, but it maybe had one or two verses and

it was all over the place. And then most of the time we had

no idea what was trying to be emphasized.

And eventually we just didn't go anywhere, which wasn't a good

thing. And then finally the Lord

supernaturally began to move on my life about planning a Bible

church at Calvary Chapel here in Greensburg.

Now, I'm not saying other churches are bad and we're

better. That's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying that if the church is the church, it teaches the whole

council of God. If it doesn't teach the whole

council of God, it's not a, it's not a New Testament church.

So they've, they meet as a group of people, a lot of people at

the temple grounds there. They also met in houses.

We'll get to that in a minute. These people when they met, they

continued steadfast in the apostles doctrine.

What's it mean to be steadfast? It means to be consistent

steadfast. Attendance to church isn't once

a month, it's as often as you can get there, right?

No one's taken attendance here, so don't worry about that.

But you know, you want to be there.

You want, you want to be steadfast in the apostles word

so that you can be steadfast in your Christian life.

Steadfastness is this consistency.

Right now I like to sleep in like everybody else does, you

know, but I can't. I'm the pastor, so I got to be

here every Sunday. They were faithful.

They they enjoyed being in the word and they liked being with

one another as believers. OK.

They were steadfast and they also had fellowship.

The fellowship is this community gathering of you see people and

you're glad to see each other. You hug each other or you shake

each other's hands or you fist pump each other, whatever,

whatever you're comfortable with, you know, you wave at each

other. We're family.

You know, it's not a religious institution.

It's a community of like minded brothers and sisters, right?

You do life together. You pray for each other.

You you're there for each other. You help each other.

And and so someone this week called me.

She's got a diagnosis of some kind of cervical cancer.

I don't know what I would do without my church family when I

got bad news if I didn't have people to pray for me and help

help me and encourage me, get me off the ledge when I was

freaking out, right? This particular woman, she said

she's new to the church and she said that she's never been at a

church like this, that there appears to be people that care

for each other, that actually love each other.

What an example because of you, Jesus said by this people will

know you're my disciples by the love you have for one another.

Nope, your criticism or judgmentalism or holier and thou

thank God we're not going down those paths here.

None of us are better than each other.

Well, the purpose of the church, the fellowship, is that, right?

Helping one another. And sometimes you might not want

to be helped because you think you can do it yourself.

Well, you need help. That's what it is.

It's a blessing to serve people. It's not an inconvenience, is

it? That's what we do as Christians.

We care for one another. We love one another.

We want to help each other. We want to be there for one

another. That's the fellowship.

Thank you for listening to this edition of Living Waters of

Grace. Pastor Clark is teaching us

about the book of Acts in this series.

Acts is a powerful and unique part of Scripture, not just

because it records the spread of the gospel geographically from

Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, but also culturally.

Acts shows us how the message of Jesus moved beyond its Jewish

roots and began to reach the Gentile world.

What started with Peter leading a small group in the Upper Room

became a global movement with Paul taking the gospel to

cities, synagogues and marketplaces across the Roman

Empire. Acts captures this vital

transition and reminds us that the good news of Jesus is for

all people in every place. May we be inspired to carry that

same gospel boldly into our world today.

Living Waters of Grace comes to you from Calvary Chapel,

Westmoreland. If you're in the Greensburg, PA

area, you can listen to Grace FM on the new 91.7 frequency.

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thousands more listeners. Send gifts to Grace FMPO, Box

716, Greensburg, PA 15601 also invite you to join us in person

this Sunday at 10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St.

Unit 6B. To stay up to date, visit

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