Many have dismissed the church as being outdated and irrelevant. The world says that there are many groups or organizations that you can belong to, that they believe are serving the world’s needs much more effectively. You can explain the church’s worship and be told that you can worship alone. You can boast of the church’s social services, and others will quickly point to the Red Cross and other agencies that seem to be much more effective at meeting the needs of people. You can speak of the peace of mind and stability that the church provides only to hear of the marvelous things happening in psychology and mutual help groups. So we are faced with a large dilemma. How does one begin to effectively explain the continuing importance of the church? Especially to people who live in a world that is skeptical about the church and trying to escape what society terms as organized religion? Probably the best approach will be to start by discovering where the church came from. The church may superficially resemble other organizations, but nothing even begins to compare because the church was designed and conceived in the mind of God. Think of any club or organization the world has to offer, and you will soon discover that nothing can hold a candle to what our Heavenly Father created. The task ahead of us is to learn to make our church relevant to the culture so once again it will be returned to place of prominence that it once held in our society. Today let’s begin our journey by going back and discovering the church’s roots.
I. The Church was conceived in the mind of God.
A. The events of Pentecost were without a doubt was God’s doing – of that Peter was certain.
1. Positively, Peter explains the phenomena taking place among the early Christians at Pentecost as being the fulfillment of Joel 2:28-32
2. Peter responded to the questions and accusations of the crowd by calling attention to the Old Testament prophet Joel. He would not let stand the uninformed charges of skeptics.
3. Peter had been an unstable leader, but Christ had forgiven and restored him, now Peter is not only bold but humble as well.
4. Peter assures the people that the life of Christ, His death and resurrection, the miraculous events happening on Pentecost were a sure sign of God working in their midst.
B. The church did not spring to existence as the brainchild of men; it came from the mind of God.
1. Both Paul and Peter agreed that God didn’t work according to sudden whims; He always has an eternal plan. (Ephesians 3:7-11)
2. The growth of the church and through their ministries and those of others were in accordance with God’s eternal purpose.
3. This is what makes the church so vital, because God didn’t choose to display His wisdom and purpose through any government but through His church.
4. He didn’t choose to announce His message through angels, but He entrusted His church to make sure His message was broadcast to the people of every century.
C. On the day of Pentecost Peter announced the way men could come into an eternal relationship with God through the grace of Jesus Christ.
1. As recipients of the Grace of God they were received into the fellowship of Christ’s body.
2. Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. (Acts 2:41)
3. Added to what? The following verses make it clear they were added to Christ and each other.
4. They became the church!
5. The emphasis on the dawning of the age of the Messiah, the universal appeal of the gospel, and the hope of restoration by a merciful God are themes which appear again and again throughout the history of the church.
II. The church didn’t just appear out of nowhere, its roots were deep in the people of Israel.
A. Just as we can trace our blood lineage back generations we can do the very same thing with the lineage of our faith.
1. We can trace our the ancestry of our faith back through the Restoration movement, the Reformation, the early the days of the Roman Catholic Church, the New Testament Church, Jesus Christ clear back to the Ancient Hebrews.
2. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is our God as well. (Genesis 12:1-3)
3. The final promise to Abraham was fulfilled when Christ opened up membership to the family of God to those who were not necessarily blood descendants of Abraham.
4. It was through Christ that I who have no Hebrew blood, could become a member of the Family of God.
5. In the nation of Israel God’s promise was handed down from generation to generation while God prepared for just the right moment. (Galatians 4:4-5)
B. Before the birth of Christ, Israel was distinctive among the world’s nations because of their high concept of God and the high moral standards the strived to hold themselves to.
1. The nation of Israel believed that God was at work among them, directing them and fulfilling His purpose.
2. Through their failures and heartaches they remained God’s people.
3. The priests taught them, the prophets warned them and their kings led them.
4. They held tight to the promise that one day God would send them a Messiah who would rescue them from their enemies.
C. The prophet Jeremiah eloquently told of the day when the covenant established through Moses would be replaced by a better covenant and a new relationship between God and man.
1. Jeremiah promised that from their very beginning God had something better in mind. (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
2. So rather then view the Old Testament as an outdated history book we instead cherish it as a record of God’s work of bring the church into existence.
3. On the Day of Pentecost the right time had arrived to bring the New Covenant into being.
4. Those who accepted the message responded with faith and repentance and were baptized.
5. The people remained together steadfastly and they became the church.
III. Christ and His intimate followers modeled the actual life of the New Covenant church for the earliest Christians and for us.
A. There was no church when Christ was personally with the disciples, of course, but they were the prototype of the church.
1. In a sense it all began with Jesus and His friends living together, growing together and ministering to others.
2. His followers did not isolate themselves from society like many religious sects of the day, they were actively involved in the lives of people, meeting people where they were and ministering to them.
3. With His disciples, Jesus laid the foundation for the church.
4. Eugene Peterson in his work “The Message” puts Ephesians 2:20 this way; “He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together.”
B. The disciples learned the lessons that Jesus taught them, they were awed by His power and captivated by the unconditional love He showed them.
1. Jesus’ followers after the resurrection began to boldly share the good news about Jesus Christ and laid claim to being the new people of God.
2. They not only taught what they heard Him teach but they began doing what they saw Him do.
3. They called others in His name to His loving fellowship; they urged repentance for the forgiveness of sin because of the Kingdom just as He had done.
C. The disciples realized that God had sent Christ so that men would know His will and purposes in the flesh.
1. The disciples grasped the fact that only in Christ would God’s love be experienced.
2. Men do not fall in love with and devote themselves to God’s purposes in the abstract.
3. Christ came so that men could see and hear and touch and believe in a Person, not some abstract ideal.
4. He came that we might behold, and left the behind the church so that subsequent generations might experience the love of God.
5. Jesus was the center of the disciples’ band; the studied His teachings, ate meals with Him, loved and sacrificed for each other, and reach out beyond themselves to others who were in need.
6. Our model is the life of Jesus and His disciples and we have the privilege as the church to live His example on a daily basis.
7. When a church body emphasizes dynamic worship, solid life applicable Biblical teaching, true heartfelt loving fellowship, members being actively involved in ministry it will be healthy and growing.
8. A healthy, caring and loving Christian community will always attract others to Christ.
It seems that a young man and his friend were driving through the city on their way to a basketball game. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, the car was sideswiped on the passenger’s side by a tractor-trailer. Both men were knocked unconscious, and the car was thrown violently into a ditch on the side of the highway. When the driver awakened, he did a quick check of himself to see if there was any major damage, but then he noticed that his friend had been horribly injured. Blood was everywhere! The passenger would die soon if he was not able to get help! The young driver managed to pry his friend out of the wreckage and into his arms. As the blood from his friend’s injured body stained his clothes; the driver looked up on the hillside only to notice a sign advertising a doctor’s clinic. He thought to himself, "If I could only get him up there to the doctor, he will live!"
So the driver began to climb the hill with his friend in his arms. When he got to the door of the building below the advertisement, he knocked violently on the door until a man in a white coat came out. "May I help you?" the man asked. The driver looked at his friend in shock and replied, "You can see that my friend is injured, will you PLEASE save him!" The man at the door replied, "I quit practicing medicine five years ago. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you!" The driver looked at the man, looked at his friend, and then looked at the sign and responded, "If you aren’t going to help anyone, THEN YOU SHOULD TAKE DOWN YOUR SIGN!"
There are millions of people in our world today that are broken and bleeding. In front of our churches we advertise a place of healing, but are we truly practicing what we advertise? Do we turn people away because we don’t know how to handle their problems? Do we turn them away because it makes us uncomfortable? Do we turn them away because they don’t look, act, dress, or smell like us? We need to take a long, hard look at what we do as a body of believers, because we need to either practice what we say--or take down the sign!
