Reverend Jonathan Waits
Sermon: Growing Requires Growth (Acts 2:42-47)
Date: January 7, 2024
We’ll get to our message this morning in just a bit, but can we take just a second here at the beginning of our time and make an important observation? It has been a good year in the life of First Baptist Oakboro. God has been faithful, and we have experienced His kingdom’s growing in our midst. That’s a bit of an abstract idea, though. I mean, it’s one thing to just say something like that. Anybody can say something like that about any organization at any time. The Titanic was proclaimed unsinkable right up to the moment that she hit that iceberg. So, let me pour a bit of concrete on that idea for us this morning. My hope and prayer is that in hearing all of this, you are left more excited about our future than you were when you walked in those doors a little while ago.
In the last year, we have seen new believers baptized. That lies right at the heart of who we are as a church and why we do what we do. Last spring we got to baptize a great group of both students and adults. That’s always a good day. That’s not nearly all, though. In the last year we have seen new members connected as well. Several different folks have made their connection with this church formal. Not only that, but we have seen several new guests turn into returning visitors and then regular attenders. In other words, as a church we have experienced some exciting growth in the last year.
There’s more. In the last year we have supported and participated in the first two mission trips we have taken in a very long time. The youth went to Fredericksburg to work with a young church plant up there to help support their outreach efforts. That trip has turned into a financial partnership, and in fact the pastor of Impact Church, Brandon Hembree, will be here delivering our message next week. You won’t want to miss that. We also sent a group to Guatemala to work with a ministry down there through a partnership with our State Convention. We didn’t just do missions regionally and internationally, though. Our Meals on a Mission team continues to faithfully serve this community well, showing the love of Christ in tangible ways to one of the most easily forgotten segments of any society—its seniors.
Our missions involvement as a church hasn’t just been going and doing, though. And indeed, not everyone can go and do. Many—arguably most—are called to support from home. And you have done that. In the last year you have given almost $50,000 to various missions causes as a church. You deserve a round of applause for that. In a day when charitable giving has been trending down across the country, you have continued to give and give generously. Your financial faithfulness in the midst of a challenging economy is making a kingdom difference in this community and beyond. Keep up that good work. Continue practicing sacrificial generosity with the resources God has put within your control. The blessings for such faithfulness just don’t stop. Your generosity has allowed us to partner financially with ministry partners locally, regionally, and internationally, empowering the advance of the Gospel in ways and places we could have never managed on our own. When churches support churches like this, the kingdom grows.
This last year has also brought a renewed focus on expanding our ministry facilities. That project alone has been developing for more than a decade. It has taken longer than anyone who started it planned. Covid stopped the whole thing in its tracks and resulted in an entirely new set of tracks, but we are moving forward with hope and encouragement, working with a ministry partner who has the wisdom and experience to get us across the finish line. Prayerfully, we will see the ground break on a new worship space before this calendar year is over. That will allow this space to serve the purpose it was designed for in the beginning, and put our worship space and nursery under the same roof for the first time in nearly two decades. It will bring some much-needed renovations to the old building including the addition of an elevator.
If I keep going much longer, there won’t be time for a message at all. But there’s just so much to say. We can talk about The Gathering Place and how it has once again become the heartbeat of our community here at First Baptist Oakboro. That weekly time of agenda-less fellowship and Bible study and discipleship has grown into a powerful event each week where we see a little less than 5% of the population of Oakboro gather to share life, including a number of students for whom this is the only Gospel exposure they get. If you are someone who is fairly far along in your journey of faith, The Gathering Place is not just a fellowship and discipleship opportunity for you, it’s a prime missions opportunity as well. Think about that: God is giving you the chance to participate directly in the expansion of His kingdom each week and all you have to do is come to church, something you’re doing anyway. Don’t miss out on that.
Let’s go lightning-round fashion here and then move forward. We continue to have a significant and positive presence in the Oakboro community from a water bottle giveaway at the Fourth of July Parade, a Christmas Parade float, and to our Trunk or Treat event that has become the third largest event that happens in Oakboro. Our Students with adults for God (or, SWAG) nights at the Gathering Place are becoming a really unique and important opportunity to de-silo our student and adult ministries in order to be more intentional about making and training disciples. We ordained a new deacon. We self-published an Advent devotional book that was a huge blessing to many folks in our community through the Advent season. We sent nearly 150 shoeboxes that went to communities in Honduras, bringing hope and joy to children in a nation most of us will never even dream of visiting, and where the hope of the Gospel is a very much needed thing. And we could keep going, but we’ve got to move on.
In short: God’s kingdom has been advanced, His glory has been increased, His Gospel has been shared, all because of your faithfulness to the call of Christ. You should be really proud of all of this. As your pastor, I certainly am. When pastors get together, we invariably talk shop just like you do with people who work the same job as you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat and listened to pastors reflecting with frustration or resignation or even sadness at the state of things in their churches. When everybody finally looks at me, I almost feel bad (except I really don’t at all) when I can only talk about what an incredible community this is and how many things God is doing here. I love it. I love getting to be a part of this church.
So then, where do we go from here? That’s what we’re talking about last week and this. We are taking a look ahead together at what God has done, is doing, and how we can experience more of that together. Last week we tackled this from a very much corporate level. If we want to see more people experience the goodness of God’s kingdom with us, the very best way to see that happen is to invite them to be a part of it. Jesus’ ministry grows by invitation. It grows by your invitation.
But there’s a bit of a catch here. The blessings of God that come by virtue of His graciousness in response to our faithfulness (that ordering is important so we don’t forget that all these good things aren’t ultimately about us; they start with Him, are empowered by Him, and point back to Him) don’t just flow like a tap set permanently to on. If we want to experience more of the good things God has planned for us, then we need to make sure we are daily making ourselves into a place, into a people, that is ready to receive them. This means giving focused and intentional attention to our own spiritual growth and development as individual followers of Jesus. We’ll do a lot of things here together, but there’s just no substitute for the work each of us does on our own. If we aren’t each personally committed to becoming more fully who God made us to be, we’ll never be able to effectively help the people around us do the same. To put that another way, if we aren’t committed to our own love of God, we won’t love the people around us well which is literally our one job as followers of Jesus. If our body is going to be strong, that is going to happen when all of its members are strong. This means we have to be intentional about being faithful disciples in our individual lives. Now, that idea can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but fortunately, we have an example from the early church that is worth following.
If you have a copy of the Scriptures with you this morning, would you find your way with me to Acts 2? Luke writes something really important here about how the earliest church experienced all the incredible Gospel success they did (things that put our meager-by-comparison efforts to shame) that we’ve looked at before, but which is worth reminding ourselves of again this morning.
The first two chapters of Luke’s record of the growth and expansion of the early church that we know of as Acts, or Acts of the Apostles (which is where we get the name “Acts”) marks a division of history that is perhaps more dramatic than any other historical event or era save only the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. In Acts 1, the Holy Spirit hasn’t come. In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit comes. The world has never been the same since. The arrival of the promised Holy Spirit into the world resulted in the explosion into existence of the church, the body of Christ, the clearest and best expression of His physical form on this side of His ascension back to the Father’s right hand.
Because the church is for everybody, just like Jesus is for everybody, when the Holy Spirit came, the 120 men and women who were the only followers of Jesus in the world at that point in history (look around the room: imagine if this was all the Christians there were in the whole world), when they received the gift of the Spirit in their hearts, they began speaking in languages other than their native tongue. People from all over the world were gathered in Jerusalem that day for the festival of Pentecost. All of these people suddenly began hearing their native tongue spoken by someone other than their immediate traveling party. If you have had the opportunity to travel to a nation that does not speak English, you know just how noticeable a thing it is to suddenly hear your language being spoken by someone other than you.
This explosion of languages drew a crowd. And as everyone was trying to figure out what was going on, the apostle Peter came out and addressed the gathered congregation. He delivered a powerful Gospel message that resulted in some 3,000 people accepting Jesus as Lord at the prompting of the Holy Spirit and the prodding of Peter’s preaching. On that single day the church grew by 2500%.
Coming out of all of this, Luke offers us a summary description of the church in those early days. Listen to these words that many of you have heard before, but which contain much important truth for us to consider together. Follow along with me in Acts 2:42: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need. Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”
Now, as I said, there’s a lot going on here. But one thing rises to the top. Luke is telling us how the early church maintained its momentum and growth. Now, this isn’t some kind of a recipe that is going to bring guaranteed success if we just put it into practice. Rather, Luke, under the direction and guidance of the Holy Spirit, is pointing us to some general trends that have all the potential of keeping us on the right track if we take note of them. To perhaps put that another way, this is all more about patterns than programs.
So then, what are the patterns we can reproduce in hopes of experiencing the kind of spiritual, Gospel momentum they did? Well, while Luke describes several different things going on here, I think they can be combined together into three basic groups. These early followers of Jesus spent time engaging with the Scriptures. That’s not quite so obvious as it could be, though, so let me clarify. Luke notes twice that they devoted themselves to something. The first thing was the apostles’ teachings; the second was meeting together in the temple. The temple was likely where the apostles did much of their teaching because it was public and it was spacious. This formed the foundation for everything else they did. Without this teaching, they didn’t know what God had to say to them. They didn’t know how they should be living or what they should be doing or where they should be going. They didn’t know a thing.
Well, the same is true for us today. Without a regular and active engagement with the Scriptures, we won’t know how to follow Jesus faithfully and well. We won’t know what God has to say about how we should live our lives. This is true in the abstract. It’s also true more specifically. In several surveys of Christians and Christian maturity, followers of Jesus who regularly engage with the Scriptures report beliefs that are more in line with historic orthodoxy than those who don’t. They demonstrate a greater commitment to pretty well every other basic Christian practice than those who don’t. They are generally more mature in their faith than those who don’t. I don’t say this to heap on guilt if you’re not doing this. I say it simply by observation and presentation of fact. There is also an opportunity here: If you want to grow in your faith and in your relationship with God, engaging regularly with the Scriptures is the beginning point of how that will happen. If you do this intentionally and consistently, you will grow. If you don’t, you won’t. If all of us together want to experience more of God’s working in our midst, putting ourselves individually in a place where we are more likely to experience His working through our lives because of the depth and richness of our relationship with Him is going to be an essential part of this process. When He is working through each one of us individually, He will be working through all of us collectively.
The second thing Luke talks about the early church doing here is engaging with God through prayer. This is another thing he mentions more than once. He talks about prayer generally in v. 42 and praise specifically in v. 47. The first and best way to know what God has to say about how we should be living is to engage with His word. The second (although no less significant) way is to engage with Him directly in prayer. Prayer is how we communicate with God directly. He has communicated with us primarily through His word, and indeed He will often point us to His word for an answer in response to our praying, but in order to engage with His Spirit so that He can lead us like this, prayer is the best and more powerful tool at our disposal. The early church prayed diligently and fervently, listening carefully for the leading of God’s Spirit (which often came through their engaging with the Scriptures), and put into practice what they heard.
Once again, this is a pattern we can follow. Sitting in a close second place to the importance of our engaging with the Scriptures, if we want to experience the kind of power and movement that only God can provide in our lives, prayer is how that is going to happen. Now, this means learning to understand what prayer is and what prayer is not. Prayer is not simply the means by which we get from God what we want or have convinced ourselves we need. It is a means by which we build our relationship with Him just like building a relationship with another person requires regular, active, and intentional communication. If we want to experience more of God’s work in our midst, making sure we are all individually tapped into His power through prayer is how that is going to happen.
One last pattern here we can mimic in our lives. These early believers engaged with the church. While these spiritual practices were ones they could pursue individually then (especially prayer; engaging with the Scriptures wasn’t quite so easy for them as it is for us which is why they met together daily in the temple), they regularly took what they produced as individuals and pursued its application in the group. Just look again at all the references Luke gives us to their activity together as a group. They shared fellowship. They broke bread together. They held all things in common. They were generous with one another. They met together daily. They opened their homes to one another. In short, they were the church together.
If we are going to experience together more of what God plans to do in and among us, while the things we do individually like engaging with the Scriptures and engaging with God through prayer are vital and necessary, they are not sufficient in and of themselves. We have to engage with one another as a church. To put that a bit more directly: If you want to experience more of what God has been doing in the last year, you have to be at church. This community must be your most vital community. That’s not to say you can’t have other communities, but rather that this must be your first and most fundamental community. All of your other communities must be seen through the lens of this one.
For some of you, that means continuing to visit as you discern if this really is a community with whom God is calling you to connect more deeply. For others, it means taking the plunge and making a formal commitment to this body by joining. Unless you have a really good reason, don’t wait on that any longer. Let this new year be the start of a brand new relationship with the church. For still others of you, this means considering just how engaged you are and taking a step to invest yourselves in the building up of the body in love in a way perhaps you haven’t before, or maybe finally doing something God has been calling you to do for a long time and you just haven’t done it yet. Wherever exactly this lands for you, you will not experience the full weight of what God intends to accomplish through your life and by that through the lives of the people around you and even the lives of people you’ve never met unless and until you are engaging regularly and intentionally with the body of Christ. This thing God is doing really will take all of us.
Looking ahead from our perch early on in this new year, the thought of just what God intends to accomplish in this community and beyond through this body of believers really is an exciting one. But it is not one we have any hope of experiencing to its fullest potential if we are not all committed heart and mind to seeing it brought into reality by the Spirit’s power and direction. If we are going to grow as a group, that is going to require each of us to be growing as individuals. If we want to grow, we each have to grow.
If you are one of those people who has made a resolution to finally get in shape this year, let’s say you were to start going to the gym. But instead of giving yourself a full-body workout, you focus on just one muscle; let’s say your left bicep. If just that bicep gets all your attention, the rest of your body is not going to grow along with it. You will eventually have a really impressive-looking left bicep while the rest of your body is in just the same shape as it was before. Sure, there may be some residual growth to the muscle groups around that bicep, but it won’t help your right arm or your legs or your heart or your lungs or just about any other part of your body. If you are going to grow, you have to grow all of you. The same thing applies with your mental health. If you try to tackle part of your mental health without approaching the whole thing, you will end up with a bunch of compartmentalized problems that will just create a bigger mess for their lack of integration. If you want to grow, you have to grow all of you. Well, if we want to grow, we each have to grow.
Rather than sitting back and thinking about what the church has done for or means to you, shift your thinking to what God is planning to do through you for the church. Some of you are already rocking and rolling in this, but some of you have room to grow. Far from being a guilt thing, though, that’s a good thing. It means God has plans to do some great things through you. Your part in that is simple: engage with the Scriptures, engage with God through prayer, and engage with the church. If we want to grow, we each have to grow. I don’t know about you, but I want to grow. I want to see us grow. I want more of the kinds of things we talked about a few minutes ago. I want more of that, and I’m willing to do my part. I hope you are too. If we want to grow, we each have to grow. Let’s get growing together and enjoy the sweet fruits God has planned for us.