Text: Acts 19:8-20, Title: A Church Awaiting God, Date/Place: NRBC, 1/18/09, AM
A. Remember this is Sanctity of Life Sunday!
B. Opening illustration: funny church names like Corinth Baptist Church… Devils Lake United Methodist Church, Devils Lake, North Dakota, Crooksville First United Methodist Church, Western Ohio conf. Smackover First United Methodist Church, Smackover, AR, Boring United Methodist Church, Boring, MD, So Help Me God Church of Christ, C.R.A.C.K. House Ministries, Weedville United Methodist Church, PA, Splitwell Baptist Church, The Flippin Church of God, Located in Flippin, AR. Hooker Baptist...on Hooker Road in Greenville, NC,
C. Background to passage: Paul is now on his third missionary journey in the city of Ephesus. And we see pretty amazing things in Ephesus, which was one of the religious centers of the Eastern Roman Empire. They had three temples to Caesar, and one big one for Diana, a Greek goddess that we will find out more about later. We first met the church there in Acts 18, but only briefly, as they wanted Paul to stay and he didn’t, but promised to return, Lord willing. And now he is there with the church, and God is doing extraordinary things.
D. Main thought: I think the church in Ephesus is highlighted by the work done among them in this text, and therefore is held forth as an example—three points, Why? And Keys!
A. Why Them?
1. v. 10-They reached a whole region, an area twice the size of state of Georgia.
2. v. 17-Because of them fear and awe gripped a whole city, 250,000 people
3. v. 17-The accomplished the goal of every church: the magnification of the name of Jesus!
4. v. 20-They encountered spectacular growth, and the church did not cease there completely until 1923.
5. And they did all of this in a span of time less than three years!
B. Committed to Discipleship
1. The text indicates that this church was hungry to grow closer in their walk with Christ from the first time they met Paul. They want him to stay and teach. And they wanted and desired leadership, and were willing to follow. They understood well that they were men and women under authority. They were also committed to ridding their lives of things that were part of their old life. They were officially making the break from the world and its practices and values. Explain what a big deal it was to reveal the spells and burn the books. Luke also describes their faith here in v. 18 with a perfect tense verb (we miss it in the English) that shows the enduring quality of genuine faith. And finally, they were willing to sacrifice financially to do it. This amount of money would have been equal to about $5-6 million. They did not let materialism stand in their way of knowing Christ and doing his work in the kingdom. They evaluated things with a kingdom mindset.
2. Psa 42:1, 143:6, 63:1-3, 8, Mark 12:30
3. Illustration: “To have found Him and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too easily satisfied religionist, but justified in the happy experience by the children of the burning heart.” A. W. Tozer in The Pursuit of God. the story of the lobsterman who cut off his arm to preserve life, God’s conviction about secular music and about racial slurs about the Jews, this amount of money would have been equal to one worker’s daily pay for 137 years without a day off, John Smoltz
4. Very few times in my life have I ever been asked to stay and teach. Very few times have I been in meetings where people ask the speaker to stay longer and teach more. This was a hungry church. My prayer is that we would be hungry for the Word and for the teaching of great truth. One of the things that holds us back, maybe the main thing, is our lack of hunger. Pray that God will created within you a spiritual hunger for truth. Pray that God will help you follow your leaders and submit to their authority. Many of us hold on to things from our old life. Many of our lives do not look different from our non-Christian neighbors. We listen to the same music, watch the same TV shows, manage our money the same, have the same hobbies. But we also don’t want to present the Christian faith as some list of good things to pursue and bad things to avoid. Genuine faith is not temporary, but enduring. We must continually reexamine our love affair with money and possessions. Maybe we need to examine our stewardship as well, as we spend much on unnecessary things. Mine and Craig’s house church talk.
C. Committed to Evangelism
1. These believers were committed to reaching others, in fact, the whole region. They had a really big vision. But it is clear from this text that they were flexible with the vision. They kept the goal in mind, and changed the venue. And as far as we know, Paul stayed and taught in the school there fore the duration of his stay. The way that they reached the region was by reaching travelers, and sending people out. And the people that went were lay people, convinced of Christ’s command to go. They were a church willing to use the unexplainable to win others. These extraordinary miracles would have scared off most Baptists. And they were committed to congregational multiplication. They understood that there were many that they couldn’t reach, therefore new congregations were needed. All the scholars that I read said that during this three year stint, congregations were started in Hierapolis, Colosse, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. And again these were instrumental in spreading the message of the gospel throughout Asia.
2. Acts 6:7, 12:24, 21:20, Col 4:3, Rom 10:14-15
3. Illustration: David Rogers could not be convinced that their church cannot reach all of Valdosta, GA, "As I look ahead, far ahead, two to three years down the road, I do see God doing it, even though I may not know all of the details today. That’s what vision is. Vision is not a crystal ball or hearing audible voices. It is the belief in one’s heart that God is going to do something that is consistent with His Word and consistent with His will, and believing that what God is going to do will have an amazing impact on your life. Having vision is having the confident belief that the promises of God are going to be realized in the future of our church." Ed Stetzer, Lifeway’s Research guru, says that most SBC churches will sacrifice their children and grandchildren on the altar of tradition, b/c they would rather keep things just as they are then change are reach them… In his book Comeback Churches, Ed Stetzer said: Comeback churches cast a compelling vision for outreach. They made intentional, strategic efforts to move outward. ** - The main reason a church does not grow is that it doesn’t want to grow. Charles Lyons telling us that this comment was in the Baptist Bible too, Matt Papa’s lyrics about if you love me, keep my commands, and if you follow me, deny yourself, and if you love this world, then you don’t love me, and if you are lukewarm, you make me sick, and if you don’t speak, how will they know, and if you don’t preach, how will they believe, and if you don’t go, how will they call my name,
4. Do we really have a big vision? Do you have the vision? If we have one, why aren’t we striving to reach it? If we have one why is their seeming rebellion when some begin to work toward it? Let me tell you that there are godly men and women in this church that are dying to reach people, and frustrated with the few others that want to hold up the entire church. And the word of warning to the naysayers and status quo vision killers is that good people who love Christ will not tolerate that forever. What holds us back from winning Tifton, GA? Or the Yanamarca Valley? Or the communities right around our church? Is it money? Is it willingness to go? Is Ed Stezter’s comment true about us? Do we really want to reach people? Or do we not really care, or at least care enough to do something about it? And there are some that just don’t know how (had a conversation with one this week), and there are some that are doing a great job, and are bringing people all the time, but most are not doing anything. Is it people resources that we are lacking? Is it too much work? Is it too different? Do we scale back evangelism because of lack of funds or lack of people to work? Explain my revelation of one of the main misconceptions about church planting this week. Hit some of the highlights for beginning new congregations. There is no way to reach Tifton (or the rest of the world) without some form of beginning new congregations. In fact I would say it is an expected result. One of the main ways God displays His glory is through Christ-centered churches.
A. Closing illustration: find the posts about Summits history since JD has been there tell about a church that was waiting on God to move, and He did!
B. We should strive to be like the Ephesian Church
C. Invitation to commitment
Additional Notes
• Is Christ Exalted, Magnified, Honored, and Glorified?
