One Church (Acts 2) 4- Living The Mission

Well, good morning again.

It is so good to see you here this morning.

Appreciate you getting up and getting ready and coming into the Lord's house to worship with us this morning.

If you're a first-time guest, let me just say a special hello to you.

It's good to have you here.

If you wouldn't mind uh during the service, if you'll take a look at that connect card that's in your worship guide that you got, if we could get a little bit of information from you, we just want to thank you for being here and we want to invite you back again.

We're so thankful that you could be here.

Also, the uh if you're joining us online today in our Facebook live stream, it's good to see you without seeing you.

But if you'll give us a comment on there and let us know that you were here, we're so thankful for that tech ministry as well and to be able to connect people that way.

So if I haven't gotten an opportunity to meet you, or maybe you weren't here last week, my name is Brandon Gillam, and I'm honored to be a part of the teaching team here at RLC.

And every now and then I get the privilege and the honor to stand up here with you and study God's word together.

And I'm so thankful for that.

This week uh is Pastor Brandon's last week of sabbatical.

So if you could be praying for him, we're gonna be thankful to have him back up here.

But I just want to give you a little bit of a teaser as to what's coming this next week so you can prepare yourself.

I'm really excited about it.

But next week, we're gonna be starting a brand new series, uh, and it'll be the first week.

It's simply entitled Yahweh.

And it's gonna be uh going through the characteristics of God and how important those are and how we focus on all of those and who he is to us.

So I'm super excited about that and excited to have Pastor Brandon back as well.

So don't forget to put that on your calendar for this next week.

Uh, let's see, what else do we got?

I think that's it.

I think that's it.

So let's dive into God's word together.

This week, we are going to be continuing in our series that we've been in called One Church.

And we've been going through this series the last three weeks, and we're gonna be closing it out today.

And the basis of this series, if you remember, is out of Acts chapter 2, specifically verse 42.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

But in Acts chapter 2, there are these two pivotal things that happen in the Bible that are very important.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

The first is this is the first baptism of the apostles, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

And the second event, in response to that first event, is the beginning of the New Testament church.

It's the birth of the New Testament church.

It's the beginning of what we are still today.

It's the beginning of the body of Christ, and is the start and the first look at what the Bible refers to as the bride of Christ.

It's the church.

And if in Paul's epistle to the Corinthians, he says it like this: he says, the human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body.

And so as it is in the body of Christ, we have all been baptized into one body.

And in this series, we focused on the main pillars that started the New Testament church in the beginning.

And now here we are, some 2,000 plus years later, and we see how those same pillars are and should be the basis of the same body of Christ today, the same church today that lives today.

And even though now it's a long time later, and even though we're split into many different denominations because of small, little things, we all stand as Christians on the same exact cornerstone, and that is Jesus Christ.

The same rock that started, the same foundation as it was back then, is the same rock and foundation that braces it today.

And even though our language is a little different than the apostles, even though we have a little bit different skin color than the apostles, even though we live in a different part of the world, we are the exact same body of Christ, the same bride, and we're all comprised of all different peoples, all different nations, of every tongue, just as the Bible says, and we're brought together under this one grace of Jesus Christ to be one church, the bride of Jesus Christ.

And those foundational pillars of the church are found in Acts chapter 2, verse 42.

Acts 2:42

And it says this it says, all believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and to the sharing of meals and to prayer.

And if you remember, in the first week we went through unity through God's Word.

And the second week we looked at community.

What does it mean to be united in community?

And last week we talked about unity and prayer.

And this week I want to talk to you what it looks like to be unified through service, through service.

And if I were to give this message one subtitle, it would be one church and what it means to live the mission, to actually live for Jesus Christ, doing what he's commanded us to do in the Bible.

And my hope is that when we leave church today, there is this new desire or this new part of us, this new part of the bride of Christ that not only would be his mission, but that we would strive to live it.

And that we wouldn't just be another Sunday church attending Christians, but that would be we would be striving for more than that.

Actual, actual disciples of Christ.

That we would be one church that lives the mission of Christ through service.

So if you've got your Bibles with you, you could be turning to Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

We're going to be continuing in that today as we look at verses 43 through 47.

That's where we're going to be at the next five verses past the theme verse, which is verse 42.

But I do want to read again, starting in Acts 42, or excuse me, verse 42.

So if you've got your Bible starting in verse 42, it says it like this it says, All the believers were devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and to the sharing of meals and to prayer.

That's what we've been talking about.

And it says, A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders.

And all of the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had.

They sold their property and their possessions, and they shared the money with those in need.

They worshiped together at the temple each day.

They met in homes for the Lord's Supper, and they shared their meals with great joy and generosity, all while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all people.

And it says that each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.

Now, when you look at this passage and what these people did in the early church, you see that there are two focused areas of service, two main areas of service.

They served each other, so there was service to each other, but then also they served the mission.

And that's what I want to talk to you about today.

So service to each other.

I'm not talking about just to other believers.

I'm not talking about us serving each other, though that is important.

I'm talking about reaching all people.

It says they were doing signs and wonders for all people.

Those are acts of service, healing people, cleansing them, changing their lives.

Just regular people that they came encountered with.

So I did what all firemen do.

I started my very own lawn business.

Every fireman mows at some point.

So I started this lawn business.

It was called Showcase Lawns, and the tagline was the professional cut you've been looking for.

You probably heard of it.

It's a pretty big deal.

I had like 15 yards, so word got around pretty quick.

But the idea was, and also I had never driven a zero-turn mower up to that point.

So I kind of lied about the tagline there.

But, anyways, I had this one yard in particular that I mowed over by Western.

And it was just one of those yards that was just not fun to mow.

And every single week, I hated it.

I didn't look forward to it.

You know, there was more push mowing than there was actually mowing, and then there was more trimming even than push mowing.

And you always had to get off the mower and move stuff and then get back on.

And so it was just a pain in the neck.

But I remember on this one particular day, the Lord spoke to me through this yard.

And I was just there.

I pulled up and I was doing a really good job of whining about what I was having to do.

I mean, I was really getting into it.

I did not want to be there, and I was just making it absolutely as hard as I could.

And on top of that, the owners had asked me to do a couple other small things while I was there.

So that hints the whining.

As always, I was behind schedule.

But I remember I started doing these things, and one of the things that they asked me to do was to kind of trim this flower bed that kind of hadn't been trimmed before.

And so I started trimming this flower bed, and I saw this rock that was sitting right in the middle of it.

It was more of like a plaque or like a garden decoration.

And it had a quote on it, and the quote said this it said, service to others is the rent we pay for being human.

Service to others is the rent that we pay for being human.

And then it had the uh verse on there in Corinthians that says, Work enthusiastically for the Lord and all you do.

And yeah, I mean, I was just like, wow, guilt.

Lay it on thick, Lord.

Yes, but I remember that to this day.

And that helped with that yard.

And I cleared that rock off and I put it in the middle of the flower bed.

And each and every day when I pulled up to that, it was a little bit different.

It didn't bother me as bad anymore.

And that's how service should be.

And that reminded me of that.

Service to others should just be a given.

It's just part of life.

How much better would this world be if we all thought of each other before we thought of ourselves?

That's exactly how the Bible describes that the world was supposed to be.

That's what God made it to be.

I heard a parable, actually, I read it in an email.

It's a story, I don't even know if it's parable, but uh it's a story in an email, and I read it, and I've been thinking about it a lot, and it goes like this it explains two types of people.

And it says, A landowner who owned a vineyard came out one day and he had two workers working in his field.

And he came out in the heat of the day when the sun was was beating down, and he brought them water.

So he gave them each a glass, and in each glass he poured water for them, and then he left.

And after the landowner left, the first worker came over to the second worker and looked in his glass to see if he had enough to drink.

And then the second worker looked in the first worker's glass to see if he had more than him.

And it explains the two types of people that there are in the world.

Which one of those are we?

The one to look to see if others have enough, or the one to look to see if others have more than us.

Which worker would we be?

Service should be as routine as a bill to be paid.

It should happen all the time.

Anytime it comes around, we just do it.

Paying it forward for everything that we've been given.

And as the quote says, we're just renting this life.

We're just renting this time.

It's not permanent.

Life is a gift.

And while we're here, while we're working, service to others should be one of the most important parts of it.

We should always be giving.

And the second part is service to the mission.

Just as important because if you're not doing the first part, you're not doing the second part.

Because the first part is the second part.

When you're serving others, you are serving the mission.

And if you've ever been in the military, then you know this type of service very well.

Because it's drilled into you from day one.

The mission is the most important accomplishment.

Mission accomplishment.

Even the military understands this.

If you can get all of the soldiers, all of the individuals together thinking about the big picture, your chances of success are much, much higher.

They're greatly increased.

When I was in the Marines, we called this a constant state of readiness.

They wanted everybody on mission-mindedness.

And that was to simply be always ready, always ready to do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission.

And for that period of time when you're in the military, you literally are living the mission.

And that's what they want from you.

And I think to a certain extent, that's exactly how Jesus describes it to us as well.

We should always be ready for his return.

Always.

We should always be living each day as if they're numbered because they are.

Each day might be your last day.

We are near the end.

The moment that Jesus died on the cross, the end time started.

He will return.

And are we ready?

Do we have that purpose in mind?

The mission, the purpose he set out for us.

If you were to ask people why Jesus came, you'd probably get uh closely related answers of He came to die on the cross for our sins.

He came to save us from ourselves, he came to get us into heaven, to allow us that opportunity.

That's exactly what I would say.

And all of those things are 100% right, and I'm thankful for those.

But that's not the only reason that Jesus came.

He also came to show us how to live this life.

And how to live this life well.

The Bible says abundantly.

It means with freedom.

How to live this life well, and how to live in service of others.

And the Bible says that he came to seek and to save.

And he came to serve, but not to be served.

He came to serve others, to show us what it meant to be true disciples.

And when he was here, he was seeking people, he was changing lives, he was revealing the nature of the Father.

One of the most important things he did, he renewed minds, he changed hearts, he saved people, and he sought to give you and I a fulfilling life here as well.

Even though he says to keep our mind on eternity, what's to come, he wanted us to live a purposeful existence.

He wanted us to live simply in freedom, freedom from our sin, freedom from ourselves.

And we are the church, one church.

We're all the messengers of Christ for our generation.

And my fear is that we simply fall incomplacent on what that really means.

We are the ones called to do the work now and here.

And I'm worried that we've come simply Sunday morning message consumers instead of message producers.

The Bible says that we are the salt and we are the light of the whole earth.

We are tasked in preservation and spreading of the message.

But the truth is that salt does nothing if it doesn't leave a shaker.

Light doesn't go anywhere in the darkness if you don't take it there.

What good is a messenger that doesn't spread a message?

What good is a Christian if they don't interact with the world around them?

People should see us in a constant state of readiness, fearlessness, living for the mission, living for people around us.

And they should look at us and they should say, Gosh, yeah, that Jesus thing.

That must be real.

That must be real.

Look at the way that they're living, look at the way that they're serving others.

It's made real through the way we live.

They truly love Jesus and they truly love people.

The greatest messages and the greatest lessons, the most impactful things ever to other people are not sermons from up here on the stage.

They're not words that somebody speaks talking to you.

The greatest lessons are never even spoken.

The most important lessons that we live are the are not on a page, but we live them out loud.

We live them in our lives.

And when people actually taste the salt, that's when they're impacted.

When they actually see that light for themselves, that's when they're impacted instead of just hearing about it every now and then, instead of just hearing about it once a week, when we come in on Sundays, people will remember what you do far longer than they will remember what you say.

It's just the truth of the world.

And we are one church, the body of Christ.

But if some people can't look at us and the way we live, and they can't see a serving, and they can't see the message of Christ in our lives, and we aren't building disciples, then we stink to be in the church.

It just is what it is.

There is no fine print.

The gospel is the gospel, and everybody needs to hear it.

It is the only way.

And I'm not talking to you about being perfect.

I'm not talking about a perfect life, and I'm not talking about never making another mistake, never sinning ever again.

I'm just talking about our service to each other.

That's it.

That's what people need to see.

They don't need perfection.

Nobody needs to see perfection, it's out of reach.

What they need is transformed people pointing to a transforming savior.

They need to see us being transformed.

They need us spreading the message.

And the message is that there is one way, and the savior has come, and the savior still lives today.

One church together in service to others, in discipleship, one church living the mission together, living the message.

That's what the Bible says when it says to pick up your cross every single day, to lay down your own lives and live for Jesus instead.

It says in Luke 9, 23 through 24, If any of you wants to be my follow follower, if any of you, you must give up your own way, take up your cross and follow me.

And if you try and hang on your own life, you will lose it.

But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.

In other words, if our sole f focus is self-preservation, if it's comfort, if it's personal ambition, then ultimately you will end up losing what truly matters.

But when you put all of that aside and you decide to live for something greater than yourself, that's when you discover what life truly is.

That's when you discover what the Bible calls deep joy.

And eventually you'll discover what eternal life is.

Because the truth is salvation, it is free to you.

It's a free gift.

But being a Christian.

Being a Christian and a disciple of Jesus, really walking with Jesus, living the mission as we stood, that does cost something.

That will cost you something.

In Acts 2, it says, they sold all their property and their possessions to share with each other.

I thought maybe we'd get out our phones and all list our houses on Zillow together.

I didn't think, I didn't think that'd go over well.

But it does make me wrestle with questions dealing with this sort of thing often.

They're always in my head.

What's Jesus' take on that for us?

Here, the same church, but 2,000 years later, what changes for us?

And here's what I came up with.

This is what I think.

We live in the same exact sins.

And there are always the same hurting people.

And the same hurting people need the same church.

And the same church has always had the same mission.

And the mission is to get those same hurting people to the same Jesus.

The mission is never, it's never changed.

It's always been the same.

So what am I saying?

Do I think we need to sell everything that we have and to give all of our possessions away to be a good disciple of Christ?

I don't think that's what we have to do.

I don't think that's what Jesus wanted.

But I think we ought to have the heart where we would.

I think we ought to put our hearts where it matters.

I don't think Jesus has called us to all be missionaries.

I don't think he wants us going off into all these foreign lands and these countries on the other side of the world.

That's not for all of us.

But I think he'd like to know that we would if he asked us to.

Would we do that?

Can we honestly say, here I am?

Send me?

Would we go?

We shouldn't have to change our daily lives to serve Jesus because serving Jesus should be our daily life.

It should.

Disciples of Christ live the mission.

When I was studying through this passage and I was praying for the Holy Spirit to lead me in the direction that He would have me take it and the way this message should go, I read the passage over and over and over.

And I kept thinking of three key words in here.

This has been our passage for four weeks.

Three words stuck out to me.

These three.

All believers devoted.

All believers devoted.

There is unity in all things.

There is one church when all believers are devoted to the mission of Jesus.

How devoted are we?

And the truth is the word all.

The word all is heavily focused in all of these passages.

All of us should be playing a part.

I love ya.

I love ya.

I really do.

And it's because I love you I'm gonna tell you.

Most churches operate under what's called the 80-20 principle.

If you've never heard of it, let me tell you what the 80-20 principle is.

80% of tithes are given by 20% of attendees.

80% of serving is done by 20% of us.

80% of the work is carried by 20% of the church.

And it may not be like that all the time.

My hope is it isn't.

But I would say that in love, not because I want to guilt you into giving your money or to giving your time away.

I say that in love because I want more for you.

I want more for you.

I want you to know what it means to be more than just an attender, more than just a consumer of a Sunday message.

I want you to have more than a little freedom.

I want you to have more than just a little bit of Jesus.

I want you to be more than a believer.

I want you to be a disciple.

I want all of us to be disciples.

I'm talking to myself too.

Not just a believer, but a follower.

Someone who picks up the cross daily and follows.

One church is meant to rise up.

One church is meant to bring forth disciples.

And the only way that you can go from believer to disciple is through devotion.

Through stepping up and living the mission, living what it truly means to be a Christian.

So I want to give you some examples, some differences here.

A disciple submits to the word of God, even when the truth is confronting.

The Bible is always right.

A believer occasionally visits God in prayer.

A disciple lives with God, abides with God in prayer daily.

A believer seeks the blessings of God and a disciple seeks his will.

The will of the kingdom.

A believer asks, is something sinful?

But a disciple asks, Am I honoring God?

A believer avoids sin when it's possible.

A disciple goes to war with it.

A disciple will flee from it when necessary.

A believer will avoid discomfort.

And a disciple races to pick up the cross he's meant to carry.

A believer will read scripture, but a disciple lets it change them.

A believer will find a new identity in Christ.

Salvation is free.

But a disciple willingly lays down everything he was for what Christ calls them to be.

It can be separated in these two things: action and sacrifice.

The first part, action.

We all get that.

That's the verb part.

That's the action of it.

The actual act of serving, the effort put forth, the actual potential in it, the service you are doing for somebody else.

That's the action.

The second part is sacrifice.

And the sacrifice is always there.

But it's silent.

Sometimes we find it in the background.

Not everybody is gonna see it.

There is no front row seat for it.

It's not the loud part and it's not the flashy part that gets the attention.

It typically isn't waved around like a flag, but it's there.

It's never not there.

And anytime there is action of service, anytime you serve anybody in any way, there is always sacrifice to it.

And usually it comes in the time in the forms of time or money or energy.

Those are all things that we sacrifice.

Time with family, time when you want to be doing the things you want to do, time doing the things you need to get done, times when you were gonna sleep.

Those are sacrificed.

Money.

Money we've saved.

Money we've hard earned.

Sometimes money we have to pay back.

Money we owe.

And your energy, gosh, your energy is just a constant depleting drain cycle.

Eventually, your energy has to be recharged, your batteries have to go back up, they have to be restored.

It's just the way it is.

And those are all sacrifices and they're always there.

And they're in the background.

But those, the sacrifices, those things, those are what adds the meaning to the service, even when people don't see it.

The action part, yes.

That's for other people.

That's what they see.

The action part is for them.

Sacrifice, that's for you.

That's what grows you.

That's what Jesus sees.

And that's what pushes the mission forward.

That's what brings us all together as one church and compels the word of Jesus to the places where it's supposed to be.

The sacrifice is truly what changes people.

The whole scripture is like this.

All believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and to the sharing of meals and to prayer.

A deep sense of awe came over them all.

And the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders.

And all of the believers, all of them, met together in one place, and they shared everything, everything that they had.

They even sold their property and their possessions to give to those in need.

They worshiped together at the temple every day.

They met in each other's homes for the Lord's Supper.

And they shared their meals with great joy and generosity, all while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all people.

But don't miss this last verse.

And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.

The Lord added, I take great comfort in that.

It is not you or I who are called to save.

We are not the heroes.

We are the messengers set forth to spread the word, to plant the seeds.

The saving part, the eternity part, the part with real weight to it.

The Lord does that part.

Do not be discouraged.

We are the messengers.

We go forth and spread the word of Christ.

The church.

That's who we are.

Church.

Church comes from two Greek primary words.

There they are.

Put them up there for you.

I wonder if they sound the same in your head as they do mine.

Two primary words.

This one.

Those who are called out.

That's what that means.

Those who are called out.

Those who are set apart.

The Bible says, those who are chosen.

That's what that means.

The second simply means belonging to the Lord.

Those who are chosen and belong to the Lord.

That's what the church is.

It's not a place, it's not a building that we go on Sundays, it's not some abstract thing.

We are the church.

And the Bible is not a story about faithfulness of the church.

It's not a story about faithfulness of the people, even.

The Bible is a story about a faithful God, our Lord, and the sovereign plan that He has one day to save the world.

And He saved it through one faithful man.

And that faithful man would come not only to save us from our sin, but to build up a people.

Not a perfect people, not people that never make a mistake, but a people who would be willing to set themselves apart, to do what it took, to be mission ready, a people rooted in God's word, a people that does life together in a community, a people that prays together, and a people who puts others before themselves in service.

The Bible says this, it says, and this is Jesus praying.

It says, I pray that they would all be one, that they would all be one just as you and I are one.

May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me.

Jesus said that.

That they may experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me here.

One people with one mission to be one church.

That's the hope of Christ.

Let's pray together this morning.

Lord, we're thankful to be in your presence.

I'm thankful, Lord, for the people that you sent here today.

And I pray that we would be a people that are willing to stand up and to do what's right and to serve each other in your name, Father.

And I pray, Father, that you would continue to give us courage to reach out to those around us, those who aren't attending with us now, Father.

I pray that you would just open their hearts and soften their hearts and help us to be your messengers, Father, and help us to realize that that's all we are.

We're to spread the word, Father, and that you do the rest.

We plant the seeds, Father, and you do the watering.

Lord, we're humbled to be called your children.

And I'm thankful, Lord, for your sovereignty of this world.

That you set a plan in motion all the way back at the beginning.

That you never gave up on us, and that you knew one day the day would come that we would need saving.

And I thank you, Lord, that you would send your son to die on the cross for the things that we did, to wash us clean, so that we could live and abide in you for eternity, Father.

Father, I pray that you would pour down blessings on everybody under the sound of my voice, Father, that they would see you and everything that's going on, Father.

And I pray for those that have not heard the message, Father, that you would open their hearts and provide us with the opportunity this week to touch somebody, to tell them about you, to show them freedom.

Lord, we're so thankful.

Help us to live the mission.

Help us to give you all the glory and all the praise.

It's in your son's name I pray.

Amen.

Thank you for being here today.

Tough message.

I talked a lot today about the difference between a believer and a disciple.

And a lot of times we leave it to think that those who sacrifice their lives, those that become the martyrs, those are supposed to be the missionaries, or the evangelists, or the street preachers, things of that nature.

There is no distinction of that in the Bible.

The Bible says that those people that go forth, those martyrs, those missionaries, those evangelists, they're simply called Christians.

That's what we are.

Christians.

My hope is that we can live, live up to that word.

If you need prayer this morning, we would love to pray with you.

Our prayer team is in the back of the tables.

Please.

Please come and get prayer.

As always, the altar is always open.

I want to leave you with one challenge this week as we close out this series.

It's going to be tough.

This week, if you would humble yourself and gain the courage, find somebody you don't know.

Find somebody and reach out to them and simply ask to pray for them.

That's the greatest act of service that you could do for anybody.

Doesn't have to be long, doesn't have to be anything crazy.

Just find one person that needs Jesus and pray for them.

Let's stand together and worship.