A People With Purpose Series

A PEOPLE WITH PURPOSE

Acts 2:42-47

S: Church

C: Purpose of the Community

Th: A People with Purpose

Pr: WE ARE TO BE A DEVOTED PEOPLE.

?: What? To what are we to be devoted?

KW: Activities

TS: We will find in our study of Acts 2:42, four activities to which, as believers in the Lord Jesus, we are to be devoted.

Type: Propositional

The ____ activity is…

I. LEARNING

II. PARTNERING

III. REMEMBERING

IV. PRAYING

PA: How is the change to be observed?

• We will share in the supernatural – God works.

• We will share with each other – there is unity.

• We will see God adding to the church – reproduction.

Version: ESV

RMBC 08 January 06 AM

INTRODUCTION:

1. Do you have good intentions?

ILL Intention: With All Good Intentions

As the coals from their barbecue burned down, the Congers husband passed out marshmallows and long roasting forks to all their dinner guests. Just then two fire trucks whizzed past, stopping at a house right down the block.

All 12 of them raced down the street, where they found the owners of the blazing house standing by helplessly. The fire victims glared at them with looks of disgust.

Rightly so. For it was at that instant the Congers realized that all 12 of them were still holding their marshmallow forks.

I am sure that most of us intend to live in such a way to not offend others.

We intend to be helpful.

We intend to be encouraging.

But as you can tell with this story, what we intend is not always what happens.

Thus, I want to follow up with this question…

2. Do you have good intentions when it comes to your faith?

It may be that you are a person that likes to make New Year’s Resolutions.

I admit, I rarely make a formal resolution, but I often start the year with new intentions and resolves for the coming year.

And some years I do better than others, but I do them so that I will have direction.

TRANSITION:

It is my hope that you will join me in being intentional in fulfilling our theme for the year 2006: “A People with Purpose.”

You see…

1. The church has been given a mission and purpose.

Our church has been given a mission and purpose.

It is our mission and purpose to expand the kingdom of God here on earth.

God has given the church the responsibility to help more and more people come to recognize Jesus as Savior and Lord.

But I think that some of us have been waiting for the church to fulfill its purpose without having the intention to do so ourselves.

It doesn’t work that way.

Individually, it is our responsibility to discover the mission and purpose of the church, and then do it.

That does make sense, doesn’t it?

We only fulfill the purpose of the church – when the people that make up the church – act.

You see, our church could have one of the greatest preachers in the country…

We could have exciting greeters that make people feel right at home as soon as they enter the doors…

We could have the most modern facility with state of the art technology…

We could be doing all the most recent leadership and organizational techniques…

We could have creative youth ministries and outreaches…

We could have all those things…

…and still fail to fulfill our mission and purpose.

But Scripture does help us in knowing how to fulfill our mission and purpose.

It comes from our theme verse for the year, Acts 2:42.

Simply…

2. WE ARE TO BE A DEVOTED PEOPLE.

How many of you have heard of “devotions” or “devos” (which is more of a youthful campy term)?

When we speak of devotions, we talk of a personal time with the Lord, usually involving the reading of the Bible and prayer.

About ten years ago, I stopped using the term devotions altogether and began referring to this personal time with the Lord as my time of devotion.

Just dropping the “s” brought home for me what it was all about.

“Devotions” was not to be an activity that received a checkmark on my list of things to do every day.

Rather, changing the term ever so slightly helped me to be more intentional, because it described my relationship with Jesus.

This is the very way the early church is described in Acts 2.

There is an intense devotion to the Lord.

As the church got started, believers were continually being deeply attentive and completely committed to the things of God.

Because of this, the church was experiencing tremendous growth.

I want to bring emphasis to this concept, because I believe…

3. The church is always in danger of sliding into casual Christianity.