Acts 9:18-29
Church Matters
Woodlawn Baptist Church
September 9, 2007
I want to welcome each of you to today’s services! I trust and pray that you enjoy your time with us and more importantly that you connect with God through our time of worship. In last week’s message I dealt with this question: Does preaching really matter? If you remember we said that while too often we answer that question based on whether or not lives are being changed, the real determiner of whether preaching matters is this: Does God have something to say to us? And if He does, how has He chosen to communicate that message to us? Of course God does have something to say to us, and we saw that it is through the foolishness of preaching that God has chosen to spread that message.
Today I want to move on and ask this question: Does church really matter? I can’t tell you how many times I have asked myself that question. I have even been guilty of saying that if I ever did stop preaching I’d probably just stop attending church altogether. What difference does it make? Why bother with the whole thing?
Preparing for this message led me to do some serious soul-searching. You see, when I determined a couple of weeks ago to preach on this subject, I thought I’d just preach a nice little three-point sermon about the benefits of attending church. But that’s not what this sermon is about. It’s not about attending church. It’s about church. The question is not whether church attendance matters, but whether church matters. The question has nothing to do with the Sunday morning event, but with the living, breathing body we are.
Haven’t you asked whether church matters sometime in the past? Some of you may have even asked it this morning as you were crawling out of bed. What difference does church really make? Like the preaching we talked about last week, more often than we care to admit, even at some subconscious level, we treat church as though it is optional. “I can do better on my own.” “I don’t need to be part of a church to live for God.”
Does church really matter to us? Could you get along without church? Hundreds of thousands of believers today are living outside church. Does it work? Should it work? Do we need to keep doing this every week? Does church really matter?
Thankfully the Bible answers those questions for us. We’re not left to wonder or wander around in darkness. God does have a message for us today, and it simply is that church matters.
For our text today I want us to consider the early months after Paul’s conversion to Christ, after his new birth. We’ll be considering Acts 9:18-30. You may remember the story. Paul was a staunchly religious Pharisee who hated Christ and His followers, the people of the way as they were known. He had made himself quite a reputation for his persecution of the church, arresting many and giving consent to their deaths. In Acts 9 Paul was traveling from Jerusalem with a band of men to Damascus to arrest more of the believers there. Now keep in mind that the distance from Jerusalem to Damascus was about like the distance from here to Texarkana, or from here to Waco or Longview. It was a long ways back then. I don’t know what those people in Damascus were doing or saying, but news of it had reached Jerusalem and Paul was going to put a stop to it. Well you remember then that Jesus intervened in Paul’s life, bringing him to salvation, leaving him blind and in need of direction from the man Ananias. That’s where we pick up in the story. Ananias brings good news to Paul, or Saul as was his Jewish name. Now watch what happens next.
Read Acts 9:18-30.
The first thing Paul did after his conversion was to be baptized. Then he spent some time with the disciples at Damascus. Some of your Bibles say he spent time with the believers there, but that’s a bad translation. They weren’t just believers. The Greek word says disciples – an important difference. While he was with the disciples in Damascus he began preaching and sharing Christ. When that got him run out of town he went to Jerusalem where he tried to join himself to those disciples, who eventually accepted him.
Now, what does any of this have to do with why church matters? First we’ve got to understand what a church is. When Jesus created His church, He never intended church to be what it’s evolved into today. Church in the Bible was simply a group of disciples who were doing life together. Today it has become too much a group of believers who attend worship together. If that’s all church is, then I’d say it is pretty optional. But from the beginning Jesus expected that when people were saved, they would be baptized and be disciples: followers and imitators of Him. Disciples are people who are more than learners. They are apprentices following the Master. Disciples are people who emulate their leader. In other words, there’s a seriousness, a determination to be real reflections of Jesus Christ in this world.
You can be a believer and not be a disciple. But you cannot be a disciple and not follow Jesus. Everywhere you find a church in the Bible, you find groups of disciples, and everywhere you find disciples in the Bible you find churches. Why? Because when you have a group of disciples, you have a group of people who are naturally drawn together under the banner of Christ. They want to follow together. They want to learn together. They want to do life together. They want to fulfill Christ’s purposes together.
So a church is simple a group of disciples doing life together. Paul was saved and baptized and he was drawn to the disciples in Damascus. And since disciples are people who are serious about God’s purposes, Paul began living out that purpose by sharing His faith. In Jerusalem he was again drawn to the disciples. Notice in verse 26 that these are the church members, because in verse 27 after the disciples didn’t allow Paul to join with them they brought him to the apostles. The apostles were disciples too, but there were hundreds of others!
Now go to the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20. Who is Jesus talking to in verse 18? “Them.” And who is them? Verse 16 tells us His disciples. Now watch this: Jesus commands His disciples to go and make more disciples and then to disciple them.
“Jesus came and told his disciples, I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
When Paul was saved he naturally wanted to be a disciple and to be discipled. And was it effective? He only turned out to be the greatest missionary since Christ himself!
So let’s make sure everyone is clear on this. What is a church? It’s a group of disciples doing life together. And why does a church exist? To make more disciples. And what will those disciples do? They will disciple one another and go out to make new disciples!
Many people are asking some hard questions about Christianity and the faith that they’re not finding answers for in church. In fact, many are simply giving up on Christianity altogether because the body life they read about in the Bible doesn’t match what they’re getting in real life. We criticize the Catholics for keeping people in the dark. We say that if those people would just read the Bible they’d see that they’ve been duped into believing a lie and that real faith isn’t found in all their religious trappings. But are we much different? People today are reading their Bibles, and what they’re finding is a church that looks a lot different from what’s being passed off as church today.
Now let’s bring this home. Can you be a Christian and not go to church? Sure you can. Can you be a Christian and not be part of a church? Sure you can. So does church really matter? It doesn’t if all you want to be is a Christian. But that idea is so foreign to the Bible and God’s will that I believe it’s a sin we ought to repent of. We’ve bought the lie of the devil – it’s time to wake up! Church does matter, but only if you’ve been born again, and then only if your heart’s desire is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Have you been born again? Are you saved? Have you ever trusted Jesus Christ to save you? Paul’s journey began that day he was traveling to Damascus when he recognized what a sinful man he was and how his sin had offended God. He repented of that sin and put his faith in Christ.
The next step in his journey was baptism. Have you been baptized? Have you followed the Lord in this important statement of your faith? Have you declared to the world that your life has changed? That your life now belongs to Christ? That you’re a new man or woman who has given your life to Christ?
Have you really ever joined yourself to other disciples? Today we’d love for you to be a part of this church, but the fact is that most of you are. You’ve joined, so let me rephrase that question. Have you really ever joined yourself together as disciples? You may have been a member here for some time now, but you’ve not ever surrendered your life to truly following Christ, to really being a disciple in word, thought and deed. Would you do that today?
Would you say to Christ and to one another that you’re not going to be content with attending a weekend event, but you want to be part of a living, thriving community of Christ followers. Church is going to matter to you because you’re going to be a disciple, you’re going to surrender to being discipled, and you’re going to begin purposely discipling others around you. Would you make that your decision today? Would you tell us that is your decision today?
I don’t have to tell you that churches today have become a laughing stock in America. Christianity is held in low esteem. We’re viewed as powerless, irrelevant, unnecessary and optional. That’s a far cry from a little band of disciples in Damascus that was making a name for themselves hundreds of miles away in a day where news didn’t travel fast. We can have that kind of church again today if we ever woke up to what God wanted us to be. Church matters. It matters to God. It matters to all who are disciples. I long for the day it matters to all of you. Will today be that day?
