Principle Priorities Series

A few years ago, some wag told his friends he wasn’t going to any more ball games. Why? Well he said…

Whenever I go to a game, they ask for money.

The other fans don't care about me.

The seats are too hard.

Coach never visits me.

The referee makes calls I don't agree with.

Some of the games go into overtime and make me late for dinner.

The band plays songs I don't know.

I have other things to do at game time.

My parents took me to too many games when I was growing up.

I know more than the coaches do anyway.

I can be just as good a fan at the lake.

I won't take my kids to a game either. They must choose for themselves which teams to follow. (Mike and Amy Nappa, A Heart Like His, Barbour, 1999, pp.182-183; www.PreachingToday.com)

It’s silly, isn’t it? But no more silly than the excuses I’ve heard from people for not participating the in the services of the church. So why do people use them? Is it because we have different expectations for church than we do for ball games? Sure we do, but are they the right expectations?

People want soft seats, a visit from the “coach” every once in a while, and familiar music, but is that really what church is all about fundamentally? When we cut through all the extraneous stuff, what should be our fundamental commitments as a church? What should be our principle priorities? To what should we devote ourselves primarily if we want to be all that God has called us to be?

Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Acts 2, Acts 2, where we see the first church’s fundamental commitments, by which they turned their world upside down.

Acts 2:42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (ESV)

There you have it, in a nutshell – How the early church came to be all that God called it to be. They devoted themselves to three (3) things – the little word, “and,” being the dividing point. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching AND to the fellowship, which included the breaking of bread, AND to prayer.

That’s what we need to do, if we’re going to be all that God has called us to be. First, we need to devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching, which is our New Testament. In other words, we need to…

DEVOTE OURSELVES TO GOD’S WORD.

We must dedicate ourselves to learning and applying the principles found in the Bible. We must commit ourselves to living in obedience to God’s Word. That’s what the first church did.

Acts 2:43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. (ESV)

The apostles taught and performed miracles to back up their teaching. That was the reason for the “signs and wonders.” In 2 Corinthians 12:12, the apostle Paul writes to a group of people who doubt the authority of his message, and he says to them, “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.” Hebrews 2:3-4 says, “How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to by us (i.e., by the apostles) by those who heard, while God bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles…”

God confirmed the apostle’s teaching with signs and wonders. The miracles proved that their message came from God, and “awe came upon every soul,” verse 43 says. Literally, they were filled with fear, with respect for God’s Word.

Now, I’m not going to perform miracles for you today, but even so, we need no less a respect for God’s Word than what they had in the first church. They DEVOTED themselves to the “apostles teaching,” and that’s what we must do if we’re going to accomplish the mission before us.

When Beth Moore and her husband, Keith, spent time in war-torn Angola, she said, “I learned something in one of the rural villages that will mark my teaching and response to the Word of God.” They were trying to absorb the sights and smells of living death, when their new friend, Isak Pretorius, told them, ‘One of the most frustrating things is that in villages where they received seed, they often eat the seed rather than planting it and bringing forth the harvest.’

Beth Moore says, “I couldn't get the statement out of my mind and suddenly had an answer to the question I most often ask God: Why do some people see the results of the Word and others don't?” For example, she says, “Why have many of us read books on forgiving people, known the teachings were true and right, cried over them, marked them up with highlighters, yet remain in our bitterness? Because we ate the seed instead of sowing it.” (Beth Moore, Stepping Up: A Journey Through the Psalms of Ascent, LifeWay Press, 2007; www.PreachingToday.com)