Devoted to the Means

Well, one of the, one of the dangers of, of passages like the ones we’ve been walking through is they tend to be quite application heavy, also information dense, as you’re having to wrestle through what these different concepts mean. And after we do that, one of the temptations is for us to simply kind of go, “Ah, yep. Now I know what to do. There’s these 4 things we’ve gotta do.” And then off we go on our merry way, and it doesn’t really do anything. Doesn’t bring any change. You know, we, we sort of have a fire in the pan that flashes, and then it just sort of blows out of steam. And in 6 months time, no one really remembers the 4 things that we talked about in the beginning. And we all just sort of move on with our lives.

And so it’s important for us, as I said, to bring these things together and, and seek to take what we’ve learnt and, and see how they fit together in the mind of God for a very express purpose. Not just to give us information, but this is God’s plan for the Church of God. And so I want us to look at 3 things today that we see in this text. Firstly, I want us to consider them, these 4 things as the means of Christ for His Church. Secondly, we’re gonna see that these means are the means whereby His Church receives blessing. So we’re gonna see means, we’re gonna see blessing, and then lastly, we’re gonna see that this is the way that He fulfills His purpose in the Church. So if you just want those 3 words, if you’re a notetaker, it’s means, purpose—Sorry. Means, blessing, and purpose.

So these, these 4 things, it’s really important for us to understand these, these were not, these were not just 4 arbitrary things that the Church at that time decided to give them to. It’d be tempting for us to read it that way, kind of. And, and we see a lot of that today, where the Church of Jesus Christ says, “You know, I’ve got much better plans. Actually, I, I know what works really, really well. I know some really fantastic strategical approaches that will grow a building really quickly.” Uh, not a building. Fill a building really quickly. I mean, you might have to grow the building quickly, too. But, you know, there are certain strategies that just work. I mean, if you give chocolates out on the Lord’s Day, mate, the kids come flocking. You know? And, and you’re s- you have programs where the kids turn up, and they get Coke when they walk through the door and a movie during church. It’s great. And smoke machines and laser lights and, and, you know—Look, these things work. They fill a building real quick. There’s a reason there’s so many large-scale Pentecostal charismatic churches filled with lots of people, ’cause it’s effective. Humanly speaking, of course, you know.

But the problem is, this completely misses the, the logic of Christ, right? The logic of God. What it skips over is the fact that Christ has appointed means for His Church to use, and these 4 things are not just-uh, some stuff that they did, but they are the means that the Church of Christ is to devote itself in order to see the propagation of the Gospel, to see the means of God, the purposes of God’s work, God worked out. We are not going to get to the fulfillment of the purposes of God without the means of God being done. And that really stresses the importance of actually focusing upon these 4 things, right?

And so, you notice that these 4 things weren’t, they weren’t just sort of briefly mentioned, like, “Oh, by the way, the Church devoted themselves to these things.” You actually see them being done immediately. Did you notice that? You get the summary statement in 42, “They devoted themselves to these 4 things,” and then you see them immediately actually practicing them as it moves forward. And so, what happens? They begin sharing what they have. Why? Because they love the fellowship. They’ve devoted themselves to the fellowship. They’re going to the temple. Why? Because they love to be gathered together in prayer and worship. They devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and so we see that awe came upon everybody, and the apostles are doing signs and wonders, and the teaching of Christ is going out to his people.

And funnily enough, throughout the Book of Acts, what do you see? A whole lot of preaching as the Church of God gives itself to the apostles’ teaching. For example, in Ephesus, Paul preached and taught for 5 hours every day from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM in the Hall of Tyrannus, and the Church gathered together for 5 hours every day in siesta time. They gave up their siesta in order to come and hear Paul preach the word of God. They devoted themselves to it. And the breaking of bread, over, and over, and over throughout the Book of Acts we run into this phrase, as we talked about last week, “They gave themselves.” Every gathering, coming together, breaking bread together, celebrating the Lord’s Supper.

This is not just a theoretical statement of the importance of the means of Christ. It’s the very thing the Church practiced, and so we have to get into our heads, brothers and sisters, this is not something for us to just speak about, right? But it must be something we do as God’s people. I was speaking to a friend today, and I just said to him, “The most important thing,” thinking about the apostles’ teaching, “The most important thing is finding yourself a place where you can go where the word of God is upheld. And run for your life if it’s not, because it’s the appointed means of grace to keep us, and edify us, and build us up.” And we can say that about all of them. If any of the means are neglected, we need to be very concerned.

It is when these 4 things happen, but when these 4 things happen together. You see, they’re interconnected together. I wonder if you’ve thought about that before. You see, we are taught the things of Christ, and we receive the things of Christ from the apostles, and because we receive from the apostles’ teaching the things of Christ, we now look at the fellowship of G- Christ and see it with very different eyes. Because we see, and we learn, and we love, and as we see, and we learn, and we love the body of Christ, we also then begin to what? Partake together as the fellowship in the Lord’s supper, as one people, because we realize, “I’m not an individual coming to a priest to receive a piece of bread, but rather we are one people receiving Christ’s sacrament together.” And then when we’ve done that, and we recognize all we’ve received from Christ, what more would we do than pray? Then lift up our voices together as one people, and pleading before him.

And so we see that these four things act like the, the touchstone or the litmus test for a healthy church. I don’t know if you ever, any of you that are young people probably can’t remember doing litmus tests. I don’t know if they did them. We did when I was growing up. You did the litmus test, right? Well, this is like the litmus test for the Church of God. You take your litmus little piece of cardboard thing, and you dunk it in the church of God, and you pull it out, and you see are they devoted to the teaching? Are they devoted to the body of Christ? Are they devoted to the Lord’s supper? Are they devoted to the prayers? Because if not, you’re in danger? But if they are, here’s the important thing that we have to hold of, there’s a wonderful gift in this, because if the church is devoted to these four things, then they can expect something to come of it.

And that is the blessing of Christ, you see, because Christ is pleased to pour out his blessing upon his means. He appoints the means, but he also sends forth the blessing upon them, and that’s exactly what we see in our text. So, the Church of Christ devotes itself to the means, and see the blessing that comes. We’re told in verse 43 that awe came upon every soul. The, the Greek word is phobos, fear. Generally a negative, fear can be used positively, but often used negatively. It’s a type of intimidation. You know what awe means, right? When you see something and you see something incredible, maybe it’s a piece of scenery or a piece of art, you see something that is so spectacular that all you can do is stand back and just look at it. And you don’t know what to say, and when someone says, “What do you think?” You, you say, “I don’t have words to describe it.” Why? Well, one of two reasons. One, because it’s magnificent, the o- other because it’s terrible.

And so what we see here is this blessing of Christ coming upon the church as it devotes itself to its means and awe coming upon every soul. It’s interesting, every soul, it’s not just awe upon the church. It’s not the church in awe. It’s their neighbors, it’s their friends, it’s their family, it’s onlookers looking at the church and saying, “There’s something different about that place. I don’t know what they have, but they do their groceries different to me. There’s something different.” So, awe falls upon them.

Th- the second thing you see is that everyone had exactly what they needed. It’s a beautiful picture, isn’t it? As they devote themselves to the fellowship, verse 44, they hold everything in common, they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. Now, this is not—You have to be careful when you’re dealing with historical narrative. Historical narrative is not like a, “This is the example, you must now go and do it.” So, the application of this is, you know, “Everyone go away and sell everything you have and give it to me, and I’ll look after it for you,” and we’re now communists. That’s right. No, that’s not what the teaching is, but the point is what? The blessing of God as they cared for one another was of such a nature that no one went without. That’s a beautiful picture, right?

In a, in a time when lots of people went without, there was no social welfare, what happens to people when there’s no social welfare, when they can’t look after themselves? Do you know the answer to that? They die. That’s what happens to them, and yet here is this Church of Christ, unlike the entirety of the rest of the world, where every single person has what they need. Every widow is fed when there is no pension. Every unemployed sick person is cared for even though there’s no unemployment benefit. Everywhere in the church, they are abundantly provided for because of the immense love that they have for one another.

So secondly, we see the fellowship there playing out. Thirdly, we see the outcome of the devotion to prayer and to the sacraments. They gather together daily worshiping and praising, and look at the description, it’s, it’s beautiful. Day by day, they attend together, they break their bread in their homes, they receive their food with glad and generous hearts. The, the English translation doesn’t capture it very well. It’s, it’s—The word is exultant. exultant, and, and simplicity. It’s- it’s the picture of- of content hearts which overflow in praise. That’s a beautiful thing to behold, right? Contentment. I mean, how many people do you know that are truly content? Not many. It is an awe-inspiring thing when you meet a person who is so content that you say to them, “Well, I mean, what else do you want?” They’re like, “Na- literally nothing. I’ve got everything I could ever need. I’m completely content.” A- and then when they lose everything, they’re just as contented. That type of a person sticks out like a sore thumb in a consumerist world.

And here we saw not just one or two, but a whole community of people who delighted in the worship of God because they recognized Christ had given them everything they need. Don’t you long for that? Not that you would physically have everything you need, but that you would recognize what you have, what Christ has given you, is exactly everything you need, and so you would just render thanksgiving and praise to God with all simplicity and purity. And yet, brothers and sisters, this is the exact blessing of God that he pours out on the church when they do the means of grace, when they practice the things that God Christ says, “These are my means. This is what I give for you to do. Devote yourself to the Word. Devote yourself to the body of Christ. Devote yourself to the sacraments. Devote yourself to the prayers, and I will bless you. I will pour out my blessing upon you.”

Now, I feel like I can hear one of you wanting to ask the question, “Wait a second, Pastor, ’cause there’s lots of churches that practice the four things, and they don’t look very blessed.” In fact, one of you might say, “I know of a church that practiced all of the four things, and they died.” Or, “I know of the group that did it, and everything seemed to go wrong.” While I did say, and I do mean, that if the church will practice the means of Christ, they will receive Christ’s blessing, guaranteed, part of the problem is, we don’t rightly understand the blessing of Christ.

Firstly, let me challenge you. Try it. If you don’t believe me, try it. Try the four things faithfully as a people, and see if Christ will not bless us. Secondly, recognize, recognize that the blessing of Christ is very different to what we consider to be a blessing. What do we consider to be a blessing? Health. Money. Friends. Comfort. Security. Warmth. Have you ever paid attention to where this blessing got them? Well, they’re doing signs and wonders. I mean, God’s healing people. The blessing of Christ is flowing out, and then Peter and John get arrested. And then Ananias and Sapphira get struck down dead, and then Stephen gets stoned to death, and what happens? James dies. Peter dies. Everyone dies. Persecution rampages. The church suffers.

And what we come to realize is that this is exactly how Christ blesses his church. You see, because as we devote ourselves to Christ, we do not devote ourselves to a bed of comfort and ease, do we? Because what did Jesus say? “Take up my cross and follow me.” And so frequently what happens is that when the Church of Christ devotes themselves to Christ, Christ blesses them with suffering. Why? Because it is through suffering and tribulation, the apostles say, that we must enter the kingdom of heaven. And the primary witness of the church is that they cling to Christ in their suffering.

I mean, what testimony is it to the world if you believe in Christ and you’ve got a nice car? What testimony is it? No one cares. Lots of people have nice cars. It means nothing to the world. If you have a fat life and someone says to you, “Oh, are you a Christian?” You go, “Yeah, I am.” What do they say? Well, they’ll say exactly what the devil said, “Well, of course he believes in you. Of course Joe believes in you. You’ve given him nice stuff.” But what will he do when you take—Oh, the testimony in heaven. Do you remember that day? Imagine that day, the testimony in heaven when the devil comes back in and God says, “Hey, Satan. Have you seen my servant? He has not cursed me, even though I let you have a go at him.”

You see, the real testimony to this world is when the people of Christ are harassed and battered and tortured and twisted, and yet they cling to Christ and his means like it’s their only hope, because it is. You see, and so we discover that the blessing of Christ on his church is that they lay hold of the means of grace and they lay hold of Christ, and as winds and billows roll, they continue to sing, “It is well with my soul.” It’s like Peter says, “Always be ready to give”—What? An answer. For the hope that you have within you. Now, the context of that is in persecution.

So this is the way it goes. You live in righteousness, you live in godliness, and they’re gonna hate you for it, and they’re gonna persecute you for it, and you’re not gonna care, and you’re gonna keep clinging to Christ. And then one of them is gonna come to you and say, “Why are you doing this? It makes no sense. You could just give up on Christ and I won’t hurt you.” And then you’re ready to give an answer for the hope that you have, ’cause Christ is worthy of everything. And so we see a blessing promised and guaranteed for his church. I mean, what a motivation, brothers and sisters. Christ promises us that if we will give ourselves to the means of grace, he will bless us. Oh, it might be through—

You see, it’s interesting, isn’t it? The church often prays for revival and renewal. They have no idea what they’re praying for, because with the blessing of God so often comes hardships. And yet we also see that third thing, the purposes of Christ. You see, Christ appoints the means, and when the means are used, Christ brings blessing. But the reason he brings blessing is in order to fulfill his purposes. You see, Christ has purposes in this earth, right? He’s not just aimlessly working things out. He has a goal. He’s getting things done, and there are 3 primary purposes that Christ is working out that we see in this passage.

Firstly, the care of his people. You see, Christ is the good shepherd, he is the husband of his people, and he loves them. No one loves you more than Jesus. He is the physician of your soul. I love you more than I can express, and Christ loves you infinitely more so. He loves you enough that he would give up his life so that you might have it. He loved you enough that he would walk through the hell of torment, of the wrath of God, so that you might live with him forever. Christ loves you infinitely, and Christ appoints the means to bring a blessing so that his church might be cared for.

Do you think Christ did not care for the widows in this early church? Who do you think had eyes upon the poor slave who converted to Christ in 1st century Rome? And yet Christ, in his goodness and loving care, heaped out this blessing upon the church but through them following the means so that that little slave would have a family, and so that the desperate little old widow would have food on her table at the end of the week. Because such is the providential care of our good shepherd who, yes, leads us into the valley of death and also causes us to lie down in green pastures and leads us to still waters.

So he does these things so that his church would be cared for, for that is one of his purposes, and the great thing is we’re heading to a day when that will be complete and we will live under his providential care forever. But secondly, the second purpose, the second purpose is for the salvation of sinners. And so we see at the end there, “The Lord added to their number every once in a while, day by day.” We find that hard to imagine, can’t we? Now can you—I mean, I find that hard to imagine. Can you imagine, like, even if it was just one person every day being saved, day by day, just one per—I mean, at the end of the year you’ve got 365 people here. Like, that’s nuts. I struggle to imagine that, and yet, you know, you don’t have to look very far back through history to see this.

There was a man called John Hyde, who was nicknamed Praying Hyde. You know, he w- he wasn’t very smart, he, he couldn’t learn languages, and he became a missionary. Turns out it’s a bad plan to be a missionary if you can’t learn languages, or that’s what people said. But he felt called to be a missionary, so he went. He couldn’t learn the language, he really struggled, but what he could do is he could pray. And so he would devote sometimes 12, 15 hours a day in a prayer room just to pleading to God for souls to be saved, and, and one day he got this great idea that they needed souls to be saved and so he would just—He, he said he would dec—He decided he would pray that God would save a soul every day, uh, for the whole year. That was his mission, and he just gave himself all day every day praying and praying and praying and praying. So he would pray for 12, 14 hours and then rush out the door to go preach somewhere with 3 seconds preparation, and then he’d go back to this prayer room again, and he’d do this over and over again. And at the end of a whole year, guess how many people were saved? 365 on the money.

And so you know what John said? He said, “Well, if God can save one person every day, why can’t he save 2 people every day?” And so you know what he did? He gave himself to prayer, no jokes. I’ve got his biography at home. He gave himself to prayer all year long, day in and day out. “Lord, I want 2 souls. You are a savior. You promised to save souls. Give us souls, 2 a day.” Lo and behold, by the end of the year, 2 souls every single day, and people derided him. People called him lazy, “Yeah, you don’t do any work, just sit around and pray.” “He’s just sleeping in the corner of the prayer room,” people would say. God still does this. He’s pleased. Why? Because Christ’s purpose is to save. What did he say? “I came to seek and save the lost.” And he has an elect, and he will save them come hell or high water, and so we can be bold, can’t we? We can be courageous knowing that Christ’s purpose is to save.

And so, He’s gonna pour out His blessing upon us through the means of Christ, not so we can have a, a lovely church, not so we can be comfortable, not so that things can be orderly and tidy. ‘Cause you can guarantee things were not orderly and tidy when you’ve got people getting saved every day, coming from all over, all sorts of different places, with all of their problems and all of their difficulties, and you don’t have time to deal with it all. I mean, there’s 11, plus the one new guy, apostles. 3,000 people just got saved, and you just added more people day-by-day. It starts getting a bit hectic. But Christ’s purpose is for people to be saved, and so we’re like the, the sick room. We’re the emergency department of the spiritual world where the saved flock for help. And we’re here just to bandage wounds and minister to them and care for them. And whether they come here or whether they go somewhere else makes no difference, but Christ’s purpose of saving sinners is fulfilled, and we play our part through His blessing upon His means in our midst as we follow what Christ commands.

But there’s one more, and that’s the very obvious one. We s- we started with it early in our service. What is the chief end of man? The chief and highest end, highest good? To glorify God and enjoy Him fully. How much more the Church of Jesus Christ? I mean, that’s true for all of creation, right? How much more the Church of Jesus Christ? You see, Christ’s Church gets given Christ’s means so that Christ might pour out His blessing, so that Christ’s purposes might be done, so that Christ might be glorified in our midst, because it’s not about you and me. It’s not. I know it’s hard to hear sometimes, but you and I don’t matter. And our lives don’t matter, and our glory doesn’t matter, and our praise doesn’t matter, and our preferences don’t matter. But what matters is the magnification of the glorious name of our Savior.

And it works simply like this, ’cause it’s very easy for us to say, “Magnify Christ’s name. Glorify Christ’s name.” What does that even mean? Think of that light magnification. Kids, you know what a magnifying glass is? Don’t think about it like that. That’s not helpful. Okay. A magnifying glass takes something, what? Very small and makes it bigger than it actually is. That’s not how magnifying God works. It works like a telescope. You think about one of those big spaceship telescope things that enables you to look into the heavens and see stars, see the sun closer up, see the moon, and all those sorts of things, amazing things. Now, what they, what they don’t do is take something really small and make it bigger, right? They take something enormous that’s far away and brings it closer into reality for me. Or just a regular telescope on a ship. Land ahoy! The land’s huge. When I look at it from here, it’s tiny. But when I look through my telescope, I realize, “Oh, it’s much bigger than I thought.”

And this is how magnification work. The Church of Christ exists so that people would see the Church and see the glory of Christ brought nearer, that they would see and look and say, “Wow. If that’s what His bride looks like, what must the husband be like? Because she’s beautiful.” I mean, this is what they all said when my wife walked into our wedding. I’m slightly biased. I mean, what kind of a man must have won a woman like this? They may have been disappointed when I walked in, but you get the point, right? The bride of Christ reflecting the glory of her bridegroom, and He is very pleased to make that happen.

That’s the wonderful thing about the means of Christ. What you come to realize is that you don’t have to think, “Oh, what if? What if we do these?” G- Christ delights in these things, and so of course He’s gonna do them. We don’t have to doubt. We don’t have to wonder, because He’s promised to glorify Himself. He’s promised to save sinners. He’s promised to care for His Church. He’s promised to fulfill His purposes. He’s promised to bless His Church, and He’s given us the means whereby to obtain it.

And so the application is as simple as just do it. Church life is not rocket science. It’s one of the things I love about the Christian church. You know, if you’re a Jew, you’ve gotta do this washing and that washing, and you’ve gotta sacrifice this and you’ve gotta sacrifice that. You’ve gotta go up to the temple this many times. And if you’re a Muslim, you’ve gotta make sure you pray in a certain direction, and you better have the direction right. And if you’re a Hindu, you better make sure you burn the right incense, and if you get it wrong then you won’t be accepted. And if you’re a animist, well, you better make sure you appease the spirits because otherwise you’ll be rejected. Oh, isn’t it wonderful to have a simple God in the sense in which he gives us simple things? ‘Cause we’re simple people, and so we don’t worry about flapping and panicking about getting everything right. We just give ourselves to the simple things of the church.

I was talking about this on Wednesday night, uh, with my best friend, Jeff, down in Wyndham. Him and I have often reflected together on, on a church that we used to be a part of, our denomination, and, and the fact that we were experts at everything and useless at the main things. We’d be talking about cultural engagement and how we can en- how we can engage with the culture. We’d be talking about the latest strategies of how to do church planting, and if you stood up and asked the denomination, “How many people have a prayer meeting?” guess how many would put their hand—3 out of 22. And we’re talking about all of the latest outreach programs and how we can reach the lost and how we can do this and how we can do that, and you’d say, “How many of you are preaching the gospel twice on the Lord’s day?” And there were 3 churches. And you go, “Well, if we can’t do the main things, why are we bothering with all the rest?” That was our general answer.

And this is my simple method to church strategy, brothers and sisters. Do what the Bible says and forget the rest, and once we’ve mastered that, which I don’t think we will this side of glory, we can then start thinking about all the other stuff because God is very pleased to bless the means that he appoints to use. And so we can simply follow our eternal King in his eternal ways and see the Kingdom of God advanced.

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