Untitled Episode

But in the person of Jesus Christ, you came for us.

You lived the life that we were supposed to live.

You died the death that we deserved.

God, you raised Jesus from the dead in power.

You provided for the news of what He's done to reach us.

You gave us faith to believe.

You adopted us into your family.

You filled us with your Holy Spirit.

You gave us a purpose and belonging.

You gave us a hope in a future that nothing in this world can take from us.

Our hope is not in us, but in Christ in us.

And because of that, we have hope indeed.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, church family, you may take a seat.

I do want to ask if you would to stay in this um posture of prayer because we're going to move into a time of prayer.

I don't know if lights are coming back down or up.

Adam, I'm not sure.

Luke, I'm sorry, I didn't know.

Sorry, guys.

Um something kind of cool is happening this week.

Um, we're part of a uh group of churches.

It's called the Charleston Baptist Association.

Um, this Thursday, we celebrate our 275th anniversary.

Um, we can put our hands together.

Look.

We are 25 years older than our country.

Isn't that incredible?

Um, this is uh the oldest association in the country, um, and we get to celebrate 275 years of God's faithfulness, which is just incredible.

Um so what we want to do is um, you know, one, I have a couple prayer prompts for us on the screen.

Um, but I hope that as you consider that churches like ours have been a part of this gospel ministry in our city for 275 plus, very big that God is doing, just in that there's just a sense of being very small and something very big that God is doing just in one part of the world.

It's really good for you and I to feel very small in the sight of a big and amazing God.

And um at the same time, you know, we we want to play our part, we want to play our role in this movement of gospel renewal in our city.

And so uh we have a couple of prayer prompts on the screen.

I want to invite every single one of you just to take a moment and pray right where you are.

If if you would be so bold, I want to invite you to pray out loud.

I want to turn this whole room into just uh just a room that's called a house of prayer.

And in just a moment, I'll come back and I'll close this out.

But you pray and I'll come back.

But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

We are the light of the world.

A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Father, that is our prayer for the Charleston Baptist Association, these 72 different churches who um collaborate together to see a gospel movement in our city.

God, for the other churches in our city that are also cities set on a hill that are lights to a dark and dying world.

Father, we pray, we first of all we just celebrate your faithfulness.

And at the same time, we are just very cognizant that there's so much work to be done.

And we, your church, we pray that we would see a gospel movement in the city.

We're just one small church in a big city, but we want to do our part.

And as I think about the Capital C church that's present in our city and in our region, we want to be that city that's set on a hill.

That our good deeds shine light, the world sees, and leads to the world glorifying our Father who is in heaven.

So do this, we pray through our association.

Thank you for your faithfulness all these years and lead us on, we pray.

Amen.

Amen and amen.

All right.

Well, good morning, Harbor City.

I know it's rainy, but we can do better than that.

All right, good morning, Harbor City.

All right.

Hey, um, I want to go ahead and tell you where we're going in our time and God's word this morning.

Here's here's the main idea of the sermon.

I'll give it to you up front.

Okay, it's this that you, you and I, we can't save people, but we can make room for them to experience the one who can.

That's our idea.

We're talking today about this idea of mission.

Okay.

We've been in a series, five-week series called Together on six verses from Acts chapter two, verses 42 through 47.

That's principally where we've been the last uh four weeks.

And what we've said is that um as we consider that the message of the gospel, the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, that that when we believe it, that we're not just forgiven of our sin and reconciled to God, but we're also brought into the family of God.

We we've said it this way that Jesus didn't just die to save you from sin, he died to bring you into his family.

Okay?

Jesus didn't just die to save you from sin, he died to bring you into his family.

And um, we've been looking at these six verses in Acts chapter two to show what that looked like for the for the earliest church.

My friend Kyle Mercer has this phrase, he says, the the church at its beginning is the church at its best.

And I really think that that is true.

As we consider the example of Acts, uh the church in Acts 2, we can really see the pattern that God has set for us today, 2026 um Harbor City Church.

So um I'm gonna read the passage on which our teaching is based.

Um, but before I do, let me just I'm gonna do a little thought experiment with you, okay?

All right, just imagine that um right down the road from you, just a few minutes away, uh part of your family lives, okay, but you didn't know it.

Um, part of your family has been in Charleston this entire time and you didn't realize it.

These are people who love you, care about you, people who would care for your kids when you need someone to care for your kids, people who would visit you if you were sick, people who would help encourage you when you were down, and you've lived by them for you know however long you've been here, and yet you never even realized it.

Um, would you be a little angry if you discovered that?

Would you be like, man, like I had to pay people to help me move here, and I had people who are part of my family here all along, and I didn't even know it.

Well, listen, that's that's the place that many, many people who live in our city are not knowing that there is a church, the family of God, that is near them and that really would genuinely care about them, that really would genuinely serve them, that really would genuinely pray for them when they're in need.

Uh we're talking today about mission.

Mission is the idea of how the church goes about God's family business.

Okay, um talk about this idea of family business real fast.

Um again, I I'm using some metaphors here, but when you believe the gospel, when you um turn to Jesus as your savior and Lord, you're adopted into the family of God.

Make sense?

So if if you if you're a Christian, you're adopted into the family of God.

And God's family has a family business.

All right, I don't know if you ever grew up and had a family business.

Some of you, yes, and some of you know.

Uh, but the family business of God is actually seen through the the work of the Son of God, Jesus.

He he actually tells us what it is in the gospel of Luke.

He says this.

I wonder if anybody here can like finish this.

He says, The Son of Man came to anybody finish that statement from Luke to seek and save the lost.

Okay, that's great.

Um, extra points.

You guys didn't just come to uh church in torrential downpour, you know, you got extra points in church.

That's awesome.

The son of man came to seek and save the lost.

That's the family, that's why that that that's what's that's what God is doing in the world.

Now, principally he sent Jesus to accomplish that.

But as the family of God, as another metaphor, we we find the body of Christ, that's also our business too.

What you know, so let's be clear, we we don't save anyone.

Jesus does that, but we do make room for those that Jesus is saving.

That's the point of this whole idea of mission, as we look at in the early church in Acts chapter two.

Um, let me give you a real quick metaphor before we go any further.

Uh I I talk about this in the weekender.

If you've heard it in the weekender, you got to pretend like this is the first time you're hearing it.

Okay.

Um, I say this like the Harbor City Church, we want to be a whole lot more like the incredibles than the Avengers.

You guys anybody remember me saying this?

Okay, nobody?

Okay.

All right.

Really sticky, really memorable.

Okay.

Um, you know, think about the Avengers.

My son and I, we just um watched through like the whole first like Marvel arc that culminates with Avengers, like in game, okay?

Can benefit the team.

And they're not what makes you an Avenger is that you have this incredible ability that you know can benefit the team.

And they're not really related.

They don't like each other very much, the Avengers, but they all have to come together to save the world, right?

That's the Avengers.

The Incredibles are a little bit different.

Okay, the Incredibles are actually, they also happen to have superpowers, but they're actually related, they're a family.

As a matter of fact, there's a member of the Incredibles, Jack Jack, who, at least in the first movie, nobody is really sure what he can do.

He's just a baby, right?

But he's still a part of the family anyway.

Um, both both groups are on a mission to save the world, if you will, but one is a family that is on that mission together.

Does that make sense?

All right.

The church is Jesus's family on mission.

Okay.

All right, if we don't get this, we're not gonna get anywhere else we're going in the sermon.

So let me, I just want to make sure we're we're we're here.

The church is Jesus's family on mission.

Let me um let me try to demonstrate that through um understanding the order of operations that happens in the book of Acts, okay?

Um, in Acts chapter one, we're given what's called the the Great Commission, the Acts version of it.

Okay, in Acts chapter one.

In Acts chapter two, we have the birth of the church.

Everybody follow so far?

Okay, so what comes first?

The church or the mission?

I need to hear from you.

What comes first?

The mission.

The mission comes first and the church comes second.

Um I've heard it said this way that God, let me make sure I get this right.

Um, God doesn't have a mission for his church as much as he has a church for his mission.

Does that make sense?

It's not like God creates his family and it's like, well, I gotta come up with something for them to do.

They're gonna be bored for a while.

No, God actually creates the church in a way that's supposed to advance his mission.

Does that make sense?

And so what we're gonna look about to look at today is how the the earliest church actually goes about advancing that mission in Acts chapter two.

And listen, here's my my guess.

I bet it's in ways that you will surprise you a little bit.

Okay.

So Acts chapter two, verses 42 through 47.

And they, that's the church, devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

And all came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.

And all who believed, they were together.

That's where we get our series title.

All who believed were together, and they had all things in common.

And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.

And day by day, attending the temple and together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.

And here's where we get this idea of mission.

And the Lord added to their number day by day those who are being saved.

All right, this has been our passage for the last this is now what's week five in this series, six verses, five weeks, where we're looking at um God's design for the church.

Um, week one, we looked at this and we said the gospel is the instrument that God uses to create the church.

So the gospel is the good news of the life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ, and those who believe the gospel are brought into a right relationship, first with God as Father, and second with the church as brothers and sisters, if you will.

Okay.

That was week one.

We talked about the gospel.

Week number two, we talked about how this shared worship creates shared community.

Week number three, we talked in depth about what that community looked like.

What does it look like for a community of people who've been reconciled to God to know and be known with one another?

The fourth week, last week, we talked about how that creates generosity.

Do you see all these examples of generosity in the early church that they had all things in common, that they didn't consider any of their possessions, their own, that they would even sell things as other people had need and they would distribute the proceeds to all.

They were providing for each other.

It's the language of family.

And so we talked about that idea of generosity.

This week we're looking at mission.

The generosity of the church, this shared life that they have together, actually becomes the way the church goes on mission all throughout the book of Acts.

That's what we're looking at today.

Okay.

So the first thing I want you to see is that the earliest church, they devoted themselves to life together.

All right, and if we want to be like that early church, here's what we need to do: we need to devote ourselves, devote yourself to life together.

Remember that that imminent that word devoted, it has this um idea of being like a boat that's tethered to the dock.

That's what it means to be devoted.

Or a master or a servant who's at his master's side is devoted.

Devote yourself to life together.

The Holy Spirit in Acts chapter 2 forms a family that learned together, that worshiped together, that prayed together, that gave together and ate together.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

And they did this day by day.

Let's look really quick in verse 42.

They devoted themselves to what?

We've said this before, to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer.

In verse 46, it takes us right into what their normal week looked like.

They attended the temple together and they broke bread in their homes.

It's almost like the church in Acts chapter 2 had two addresses, not just one address, two addresses.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Where did the church meet?

If you're in Acts chapter 2 and say, hey, where can I find the church?

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Like, uh, you're either going to find them at the temple or in each other's homes.

Isn't that an awesome description of what that life together looked like?

Luke, the author here of Acts, is showing what happened after people received Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

What happens?

They become a people who belong to one another.

How many of you know that we live in a world that's searching for belonging?

We talked about this a few weeks ago, but um, you know, you think back, you know, for some of you it's been a while, but think back to middle school.

Okay.

Um, do you remember ever entering that middle school lunch room, that cafeteria for the very first time?

And I I I would guess that you had one of two reactions.

One is, you know, maybe you had gone to school in elementary school and now you're at middle school, but you still knew a bunch of your friends or whatever, and you walk into the middle school cafeteria, and you're the first thing your eyes just scan, scan, scan.

Where am I gonna sit?

And then you find your friend, and all of a sudden, what is that like psychologically, what's happening like in your heart and soul and mind?

You're like, oh, safety.

Like I they know me and I know them.

I can go sit with them, and then you make your way and sit with them, and that kind of becomes your crew for middle school, right?

Or maybe you had the opposite experience.

You walk into that middle school cafeteria and you don't know anybody.

And you look and you look and you look and you're like, uh there's nobody here that I know.

There's nobody here that knows me.

And you probably had this thoughts.

I mean, I I just don't feel comfortable, I don't feel safe here.

And maybe you sat alone.

You know, I made this observation a few weeks, you know, we're not middle school anymore, but some of us are still sitting alone.

We we are made for belonging.

Genesis 2.18, when God made man, who is by the way, this is before sin entered the world and in perfect relationship with God and in a world that was perfect.

God says the very first thing in all scripture that's not good is it was not good for man to be alone.

We were made for each other, we were made to belong.

And what we see here is that the early church finds this deep sense of belonging one to another.

And what unfolds is this beautiful description of this life together.

You know what it's like, right?

To like go to an event or a place and not know anybody else who's there.

Have you ever been there?

Um you know, um, maybe you get invited to like your wife's like company party and you don't know a person there.

Um okay, maybe it's just me.

Uh you get there and you're like, you know, I'm I have some decent social skills, but I feel so awkward.

I'm just gonna I you know I have some urgent email I need to look at.

So I just pull out my phone and I look at it, and I just why do we do that?

Because we just don't want to feel exposed or alone or feel by ourselves.

Do you know sometimes that's the experience that people have when they come to church?

You know, that's it's it's like you know, not every church does this, and I'm not saying that our church does this necessarily, but churches can be a place like this where it's like you're surrounded by people and they're friendly, but they don't really create space for you to belong.

You know, like it's like you're walking, and I don't know if you ever had this experience in a social setting where there's a bunch of people talking in a circle and the conversation seems kind of interesting and you love to jump in, but there's no room.

There's not space in the circle.

The circle's closed, if you will.

One of the things that's so amazing about this early church is that they were meeting together, but they were also meeting together in such a way that there was always room at the circle.

I don't know if you saw that at the end of verse 47.

And and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

It's like constantly, hey, um this person is hearing the good news and they're believing, hey, that there's room in the family of God for you.

Come on in.

Isn't that such an amazing picture?

Now, what what does this mean for us, Harbor City?

I think one of the things that this means is kind of a practical application is you know, are we creating space in our lives for other people?

Um you know, you can do that in your friendships, you know, you can do that at your family gatherings, you can do that at church.

But um, is there is there room in the circle for someone else?

Um Justin Early, who wrote the book uh Made for People, I recommended a few weeks back, he tells the story of um basically he he and another friend were like best friends in high school, and um they like wanted to keep their circle tight because they finally found each other, you know, they've been very lonely, found each other, wanted to be friends, and they were like best friends.

They were kind of locked together.

And this other guy kind of like forced his way into their friendship in kind of an awkward way, tells the story in the book.

But he actually became a friendship of three people, not just two people.

And he tells the story.

They're they've been like lifelong friends.

They're they're looking back in their, I think, uh 40s now on that experience in high school, you know, 25 years previously.

And what they said is, man, what that did to our friendship, you would think that you know, moving from two friends to three friends actually weakens the friendship between the original two.

It's like what it actually did is it strengthened it.

Isn't that really interesting?

But you can actually add people to your circle and you don't get a lessening of the relational quality, equity that is in in the group, you can actually get a greater equity.

And so that's what's happening with the early church.

They're devoting to this, they're devoted to the shared life together.

But as they're practicing this life together, the breaking of bread and the fellowship, they're creating space.

The implication is for room for others.

Number two, this is the second thing that Luke is going to show us happens in this passage as it relates to the mission of the church.

They don't just devote themselves to the shared life together.

The early church displayed the love of Jesus.

They displayed the love of Jesus.

If we're going to be a church like the early church, we too need to display the love of Jesus.

Now, um, I want you to think about this.

Have you ever been shopping and gone to a store at the front of the store as a display?

It's at a mall, and there's like all these mannequins, and maybe they're wearing clothes or there's products or whatever.

Basically, you're supposed to walk by, see that display, and say, Oh, I know what type of store this is, I know what they sell because of what is displayed to me, right?

Everybody follow so far?

Everybody?

Okay.

Um, that's the same type of image that comes to mind when we talk about the church's engagement in the world.

That people in the world are supposed to see your life and my life and our shared life together.

And it's supposed to act kind of like a display that tells them what Jesus is like.

Think about that metaphor again that we use for the church.

The church is called the body of Christ.

When people see the church, they're supposed to know what Jesus is like.

Now, let me just stop and pause right here.

Because I know, you know, in the world that we live in, that there's probably a number of you who are here who've uh the display of what Jesus was like by a Christian or a Christian leader or a group of Christians may not in your past have been a positive display.

And just as a pastor, I want to say, like, I'm sorry for that experience.

I know that that that's a real experience that many people have had.

This is the other thing I want to tell you is that the measure of Christianity is not found in the measure of Christians, but in the measure of the Christ.

And so I'm I'm very sorry if, and I truly mean this, like if there was a group of Christians or a person, a leader who did not display Christ well to you.

But I just want to appeal to you.

Like, don't let that turn you off to seeing who Jesus is, to seeing the Christ that they were always meant to display.

So look back at verse 47.

Um, I love this detail.

The believers, this the church were praising God.

They were having favor with all the people.

All right, so the early church wasn't hidden away from the world, it was on display.

People around this early church knew that something about the way that they lived.

And Luke says the result of that is they looked on them with favor.

You ever think, like, what did they see when they looked at this church?

Well, we can look at verses 44 and 45.

There was a practice of real generosity, there was a sense of unity, that all who believed were together.

Um, we see that when they worshiped together, that they were praising God with glad and generous hearts.

There was a type of joy in this church.

We see that.

And Luke doesn't say specifically which of these produced favor with the world that was looking at the church, but something that the way the church was relating to each other got noticed by the watching world.

Here's what I think that looks like in real life in today's world.

You know, maybe somebody in your community group has a baby and the meal train to their house runs for three weeks.

The neighbor across the road watches as cars come and go and says, Man, what's going on there?

And then maybe that same neighbor has a family member who has surgery, and the same cars show up in their driveway, and the meal train continues to them.

She never came to church, but church has a way of coming to her.

Isn't that a way that we can live that out today, Harbor City, in a way that produces favor with all the people?

Now listen, Jesus told his disciples that the thing that was going to be that the on display in front of the watching world was their love for one another.

In John 13, 35, Jesus says this, by this all men, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

He prays later in John 17 that the world would believe that the Father sent Jesus by their love, by the church's love for one another.

In other words, don't miss this.

The church can show a kind of love no one person can display alone.

Let me say that again.

The church together can display a kind of love that no one person can display alone.

Um, listen, you you know, the Bible calls us all if you're here and you're in Christ, you're a member of the body of Christ, you are not all of Christ.

It is not your responsibility to represent all of Jesus to the world because frankly, you just can't.

But in the body of Christ, we, the church, we get to image Christ to a watching world.

I know maybe we think today, like, my faith is personal.

Well, of course our faith is personal.

Jesus knows you by name, but he calls us together a city set on a hill.

The way that we love each other is something that our neighbors can and should see.

And when they ask about that, we get to tell them not like, well, we're just great people.

You just glad you noticed.

We get to tell them rather about Jesus.

Now, I want to be clear about this.

We don't love each other so that outsiders will be impressed.

Okay.

That would be a really shallow type of relationship.

Um, instead, Jesus loves us first.

We receive his love.

We we act out of that same love that Jesus has given to us in the way that we relate to people in the church and the world notices.

Um, first time I'm, I think we might have this image.

We have this image of the coffee cup that's being filled up.

Um, first time I heard this kind of idea was from a quote by Billy Graham.

He said, um, he's talking about evangelism, sharing, sharing the faith.

And he says, a cup that is continually being filled is bound to overflow.

Now I I love that, I love that quote.

And I love that quote, particularly as it relates to evangelism, sharing your faith, or as it relates to the mission of the church.

Think about this: a cup that is continually being filled, like we are constantly church receiving the love of Jesus for us.

And after we're continually being filled, it's bound to overflow.

What does it overflow in this analogy?

It overflows to a watching world around us, right?

And so it's not us like trying to manufacture love for each other and then give it away to each other, because that's really hard.

And frankly, we're gonna uh we're gonna uh run on empty when that happens.

Instead, it's receiving the love of God for you, which is more than you ever know.

And if you actually, actually truly begin to comprehend that the height and width and depth of the love of God for you in Christ Jesus, that is bound to overflow in your life.

It's bound to overflow to the people that you're closest to.

It's bound to overflow in the church.

When people are overwhelmed at the love of God for us in Christ, in this space, in the church, it will overflow in our love for other people.

Um, I know this is old school, but I actually kind of love this.

I love the theology that this communicates.

There's um something that sometimes old preachers or pastors will do when they talk to their congregation, they'll use the term beloved.

And what they're trying to do is one, they're drawing on the theology of the Apostle John, but they're actually casting the identity of the church.

You know who you are?

You're the beloved, your beloved.

God loves you.

You're the ones to whom God has set his love upon.

That's your identity, that's who you are.

And as we begin to receive that, it begins to overflow.

The love that we've received becomes the love that we give away.

Um, and I love, by the way, how this happens with people who are very unlike each other.

All right, flash poll, okay?

I'm gonna give you some uh permission to make some noise in church, okay?

All right.

If you are here and you are a Clemson fan, I want you to represent your Clemson fandom by making some noise.

Go.

Retired.

All right.

If you're a Game Cock fan, you knew where I was coming here.

I want you to represent your fandom by making some noise.

Let's go Gamecock! All right, all right.

Um now, this is what I love about the church, okay?

Let's say you're a Gamecock fan and you're in a community group with somebody who's a diehard Clemson fan, and they have a kid that's in the hospital.

Are you gonna care for them in their moment of need?

Absolutely.

The situation was reversed, you'll do the same thing.

What I love about the church is that um we're what Scott McKnight calls a fellowship of difference, not C E, different people.

We're a fellowship of difference.

We are people that are radically unlike each other, and yet in Christ we're bound together, we're brought together through this great love that we're talking about, and that love is what we display to the watching world.

It's a love that doesn't make sense.

So we first we receive that love from Jesus, we give it away to other people, and as we do that, the world begins to take notice.

Um, third thing that this passage is teaching us to do is all these, by the way, start with the it helps me remember them.

First, we're devoted to that shared life together.

We're displaying the love of Jesus to others.

And now, number three, we depend on the Lord for growth.

We depend on the Lord for growth.

The early church didn't have some church growth strategy that they were implementing.

Their strategy is that Jesus is alive, that he's risen, and he's building his church.

And we're gonna depend on him for growth.

Did you look, everybody look with me, okay?

Um, Acts 2, 47.

All right, look with me.

What does it say?

And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

All right, everybody go back to grammar class.

You remember sentences have a subject and a verb, right?

Who is the subject of this sentence, everybody?

The Lord.

We're not quite confident of that.

I'm gonna say it again.

Who's the subject of the sentence?

The Lord, right?

Who is the one doing the action, the adding?

Who is it?

Is it the church that's doing the adding?

It's the Lord that's doing the adding.

Now, I want you to think about that as it relates to mission, sharing your faith, evangelism.

Think about that.

Whose job is to do the adding, church?

And so, in any of the way that we love one another and sharing our faith with others and inviting people to church and engaging in mission trips overseas or engaging in our lives as a church planner or missionary in someplace strategic, all of those things are possible because it is the Lord who is doing the adding.

Isn't that like take the pressure off a little bit?

Have you ever felt any pressure when it came to sharing your faith with somebody that you love?

Maybe it's a family member.

Maybe it's a child.

You're you're asking yourself the question, did I get the words right?

Did I say it right?

Did I pray hard enough?

Did I like not present it in a way that they could understand it?

And sometimes we forget.

We're not the ones who do the adding.

Listen, I know, and I'm looking around and see a bunch of different faces, and I know some of your stories.

I know that there's some of you here who have been desperately praying for someone you love to come to know Jesus.

I want to tell you, it's the Lord that does the adding.

Now, listen, I also want to say we do depend on the Lord for growth.

The church is depending on the Lord for growth.

That doesn't mean that we don't have a role to play, but we just got to remember what our role is.

Remember, the Lord is the one who does the adding.

So what is the responsibility of the church?

Well, the responsibility is that we make room.

Um, let me back up a little bit.

I want to point back to verse 47.

I want you to notice what Jesus adds people to.

Luke here, author of Acts, says that the Lord added to their number.

Who is their number?

That is the church, right?

So the Lord is adding to the church those who are being saved.

In other words, he saves people and then brings them into a people.

There's no difference between the vertical reconciliation with God and then the bringing into the family of God, the horizontal reconciliation.

You guys see that?

Salvation and belonging come in the same sentence.

Paul puts it this way to a people who had always been on the outside, Ephesians chapter two.

This is good.

He says, This, you are no longer strangers and aliens, which implies that at one time they were.

He's writing to people who are part of the church and said, You were at one time strangers and aliens, but you're that no longer.

You are fellow citizens with the saints.

And then look at this phrase, and members of the household of God.

What what what is the mission of God?

What is the mission of the church to make strangers become family?

That is what it what is meant when the text tells us that Jesus is adding to their number those who are being saved.

Here's something else that's really good for us to remember.

We went through the Gospel of Matthew earlier this year.

Matthew chapter 16, Jesus starts talking about something he doesn't talk about a lot in Matthew.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

He talks about the church.

I want to say the word church is only used two times in the Gospel of Matthew.

And in Matthew 16, Jesus makes a promise.

The promise is this I will build my church.

The disciples were like, What's a church?

You know, like you mean the synagogue?

Jesus is like, No, uh, there's going to be this thing called the church, the gathering of my family, and I will be the one who builds it.

That promise belongs to Jesus, but it frees us to be faithful without pretending that the results rest on our shoulders.

Whenever it comes for the opportunity for you to share your faith with somebody else, you always have to remember that Jesus is the one who does the adding.

He is the one who is building his church.

It's not up to you.

By the way, I'll just say, moment of confession.

That's really good news for me.

Because sometimes I get under the mistaken assumption that I, because of my role here, am responsible for building the church.

Um I love um, I love this analogy I heard from um I read from Charles Spurgeon, great um uh 19th century preacher.

He talked about the role of the Holy Spirit in preaching the word of God.

And he's he's actually talking to a group of preachers, and he tells a story of um this company that was trying to make a road through a uh Italian Alp, a mountain.

And um, this one company had a way of doing it twice as fast as any other company.

Instead of just starting on one side of this mountain and blasting their way through the mountain, they actually started on each side of the mountain.

And they would both begin to, both crews would begin to blast their way until they found a way to actually meet in the middle.

Spurgeon says, that's what happens, you know, when you preach or proclaim the message of the gospel.

It's like, yes, you are trying to like have somebody hear the good news and respond, but the Holy Spirit is on the other side.

And he's actually working in their life, he's drawing them to Jesus, and he will meet you in the middle.

I love that image, by the way, for us as we think about what it means to engage in mission, engage in sharing our faith.

It's not just us who are working.

Yes, do we have a role, church?

Yes, we absolutely do, but it's not all up to us.

The Lord's the one who adds, Jesus is the one who builds, and the Holy Spirit is already at work in the hearts of those that we're talking to.

So it should take off some of the pressure.

Have you ever had an evangelistic conversation with somebody that felt really awkward?

They're like, hey, you know, you're at work.

Hey, how was your weekend?

It was good.

But the real question is if you were to die tonight, where would you spend eternity?

Your coworker's like, What?

What just happened?

I just got evangelized on.

Like, um this confidence that Jesus is the one who is building his church, it changes the nature of those conversations, doesn't it?

In a good way.

Hey, how was your weekend?

It was good.

Um, we went to church and I heard some things that were taught there that I've really been thinking about.

Well, what what did you learn?

It gives you the opportunity to open up your mouth and to share.

Doesn't understanding that Jesus is the one building his church, it doesn't minimize our role in displaying Jesus to a watching world, but it does take a lot of the pressure off.

You know, I don't want us to misunderstand this idea that the Lord is the one that adds as an excuse for us to do nothing.

If you look back on verse 47, it's the believers are the ones who are praising God with glad and generous hearts.

And the result of that is that the Lord is adding to their number daily those who are being saved.

The apostle Paul would say in 1 Corinthians 3, like this.

He's talking about the church.

He says, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.

Isn't that interesting?

We we plant, we really do take steps of faith where we open our mouth and share what Jesus has done.

We plant, sometimes we water, sometimes we pray, but ultimately it's God who gives the growth.

Watch how this plays out through the rest of the book of Acts.

Jesus had told his disciples, Acts chapter 1, verse 8.

Acts 1:8

You disciples, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

Now, when we hear that, we think, okay, God is going to use this group of eleven men, these disciples, to actually take the gospel all over the Roman Empire.

That's what we kind of expect from that.

But that's not exactly what ends up happening in the book of Acts.

Let's jump from Acts 1.8 to Acts 8, verse 1.

Acts 8:1

All right.

Um and there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem.

This is referring to the stoning of Stephen.

And so this church that had grown incredibly in Jerusalem now faces an incredible wave of persecution.

And they were all scattered.

The church was all scattered throughout the regions of where?

Judea and Samaria.

And then this phrase, do you see this?

Except the apostles.

So, except the apostles, the apostles are the ones who stay in Jerusalem.

Ordinary believers, ordinary Christians who names that we don't know were the ones who carried the message outward.

If you were to keep reading chapter 8 and go to verse 4, it says this those who were scattered went about preaching the word.

So how does how does the church spread throughout the book of Acts?

Sometimes it does happen through the apostles getting up and preaching and God working just like he did in Acts chapter 2, but most of the time it happens through ordinary Christians sharing their life and their love for one another with those that they're close to.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

The way that we say it around here is who's far from God but close to you?

Um, my pastor back and Raleigh pointed this out, thought it was so interesting.

He said, if you study the life of the Apostle Paul, Paul had this ambition, you know, namely to preach Christ where he was not named.

And he particularly felt a passion to go to the center of power of that day, to the city of Rome, and to plant a church in Rome.

That was the Apostle Paul's ambition.

So you read the story of Acts, it's all about how he's trying to get to Rome.

And by the time he gets to Rome, do you know who he's greeted by?

The church.

Because through ordinary, everyday members of the church, the gospel had already gotten to Rome and a church was already founded by the time he got there.

Isn't that amazing?

That the church doesn't just advance in these big and you know dynamic ways like that happened in Acts chapter 2 at Pentecost.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

But the church advances through these everyday, ordinary conversations with ordinary Christians, having conversations about an extraordinary God.

Matter of fact, um, there's a guy named Rodney Stark, he's a sociologist, and he wanted to study um the phenomenon of the rise of Christianity.

I want you to think about this.

If you didn't know what you knew about Christianity now, you you would just marvel about how it has come to be a world influence that it has today.

2.2 plus billion people claim to be Christians today.

Um, in Acts chapter 1, there's 120 Christians.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

By the year, I think this is it's it's like 430 A.D., there's about 30 million Christians in the Roman Empire.

So Rodney Stark, sociologist, this is what sociologists do.

They're like, how in the world did this movement go from 120 people to 30 million people in these four centuries?

And here's what he says.

I'm gonna read it to you.

For the fact is that typically people do not seek a faith, they encounter one through their ties to other people who have already accepted their faith.

That's sociologists speak for ordinary people sharing the extraordinary news of the gospel and people hearing and believing, and the Lord adding to their number daily those who are being saved.

You can't save people, but you can make room for them to experience the the love of the one who can.

Why do we make room?

We make room because Jesus came looking for us first.

He said, the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.

And then after his resurrection, he told his disciples, as the Father has sent me, so I send you.

If you're here and you're a follower of Jesus, Jesus has sent you with the hope of the gospel to the people who are around you.

We we talk about it here again at the weekend, or we talk about what it looks like to take the gospel where we live and learn and work and play, to the people that are on your street or on your apartment hallway, to the people who work near you, to the people who are in class with you or go to your kids' school, to the people who like to do the things that you do, where you live and learn and work and play, God has sent you there on purpose for a purpose.

And that purpose is to be used by God to see the lost brought back into the family of God.

The Apostle Paul, again, in conclusion, he puts it plainly plainly.

He says, Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.

Romans 15, 7.

Harbor City Church, what does it mean for us to be a people that we are a family on mission?

I think it means number one, that we make room.

That we make room, number one, for our lives individually.

We make room in our community group, we make room as a church.

That's one of the big things that we're in this season that we call a one more initiative is all about.

It's all about us creating room.

And this the second thing is that we would welcome people who are looking for a place to belong.

That we just kind of have a, you know, have you ever noticed you know, ever been like in the market for a car?

All of a sudden you see all the car ads, you see cars for sale, you know what I'm saying?

Guess what will happen?

If you start looking for people or looking for a place to belong, guess what?

You'll start seeing them.

And that's how we can apply what we're told to do, to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.

So here's let me try to make this a specific challenge.

I want to challenge each of you to learn one name of one person who maybe you see around you, but you don't actually know their name.

Maybe somebody walks around their dog in your neighborhood and you actually know the name of their dog, but you don't know their name.

Here's the challenge.

Can you just be aware of that person and just try to, hey, you know, I see you around, what's your name?

And then when they share their name, ask one good question.

Man, how how's life going for you?

What's what what what's occupying your time these days?

Then one name, one question, here's the third thing, and then maybe make one invitation when it's right.

Hey, would you ever want to grab some coffee or grab lunch and talk more about that?

That's one of the ways that we can intentionally make space to create belonging and displaying the love of Jesus to the watching world church.

And it's one of the ways that the mission of God goes forward, not just in the book of Acts, but can go forward right here in our city and our time through us.

Towards that end, let's pray.

Um Father, I um first of all, I'm just so aware that um we can welcome other people because we have been freely welcomed into relationship with you because of Jesus.

And so I just we we just praise you.

Um