Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
A Healthy Body - The Blueprint Series
54 Plays6 months ago
In this sermon, Ridley Barron preached about the fundamental elements that define a healthy church, drawing guidance from Acts 2:42. He focused on the church's commitment to the apostles' teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer, underlining these as indispensable practices for a thriving spiritual community. Barron emphasized the importance of communal engagement, both in smaller groups for deeper accountability and in larger gatherings for collective energy and worship. He advocated for joyous faith that attracts others through visible love and unity and stressed the active participation in daily evangelism and radical generosity as modeled by the early church. Using personal stories and biblical references, he urged his congregation to uphold love, honor, and commitment to one another to foster a more robust and supportive church environment suitable for spiritual growth and outreach.
Timestamps:
00:00 Fellowship, community, and church are God's creation.
04:32 Early Christians shared all, worshiped fervently, gained followers.
08:37 Preach God's word consistently for spiritual strength.
11:54 Fellowship with God ties to fellowship with church.
12:37 Warning against being a church hypocrite; repentance.
18:06 Prayer should be desperate, not merely functional.
21:47 Communism denied by private ownership and sharing.
23:25 Giving in Jesus' name impacts even non-believers.
28:14 Under 45: 85 texts, 500 YouTube hours/min.
32:03 Personal connections and corporate worship are crucial.
33:35 Reluctant start turns into joyful truck worship.
36:23 Resolve conflicts through direct communication and compassion.
41:29 Leading someone to Christ in Baltimore, Maryland.
45:09 God values every individual, not just numbers.
47:41 Get connected in church, find your purpose.
49:09 Invite for discernment and obedience to God.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to a Healthy Church
00:00:00
Speaker
Man, I'm excited about this one today just because the fact there is a lot of stuff here. We are in the end of Acts chapter two, beginning in verse 42. We're talking about today what it means to be a healthy church based on what is probably a familiar passage to some of you. It's been preached for a long, long time, regards to the subject. Again, just a lot of stuff in here. But before we dive in, I wanna remind you of two really important things, just to kind of lay the groundwork.
Community and Faith Practice
00:00:27
Speaker
Number one,
00:00:28
Speaker
the church was God's idea. The church was God's idea. It's not some man-made thing. It's not something we created. It's always been a part of God's idea because God, even though he set out to create a personal relationship with every single one of us, he created it in such a way that those personal relationships would take
00:00:46
Speaker
take place inside the confines of a corporate body of people who work together. You were not meant to do this life alone. You are not Superman. You are not Wonder Woman. When you come into a relationship with Jesus Christ, you need encouragement of other people. You need accountability from other people. You need people who will pray for you, who will look you in the eye and say, how can I help you? You need those kinds of things. And so God created us to be together in this fellowship as a communal body who worships together, works together for the kingdom
Birth of the Church and the Power of God's Word
00:01:16
Speaker
calls.
00:01:16
Speaker
And Titus chapter two verse 14, Paul writes this, he said, he, Jesus, gave himself up for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people for his own possession and eager to do good works. That's who we were created to be. So remember this, that what we're talking about, this idea of the church, the church is God's idea. I want you to hold that in the back of your head. The second thing I want you to remember is this. I want you to remember how the church was born.
00:01:46
Speaker
The church was born because Peter, one of the apostles, stood up and began to preach the word of God. The word of God has power. We're gonna go deeper into this in just a second. But he preached the word and by that word, the church of Jesus Christ was born, it was created, it came alive.
Curiosity and Belief through the Gospel
00:02:04
Speaker
And I want you to hear something pretty remarkable. You are here today because people prayed that you would be here.
00:02:12
Speaker
People prayed, beginning with the early church, that the church would grow, that the church would reach to the uttermost parts of the earth, and you are a part of the answer to that prayer. It also is a reality that you and I are here because somebody preached the word to you. Somebody preached the gospel, somebody preached the truth, you received that, and because of that you were here. Now you may not have a relationship with Jesus yet,
00:02:34
Speaker
You may not be at that place where you can actually call him your personal Lord and Savior, but the gospel has been preached to you and it piqued your curiosity enough that you showed up here today to go, okay, what's next?
Traits of a Healthy Church (Acts 2:42)
00:02:44
Speaker
How do I find out more about this? So let's jump into Acts 2, verse 42, and we're gonna read through here, and we're gonna talk about some signs of a healthy church. Now, here's the good news. Much of this we're pretty good at. We're celebrating that God is doing some good things in our church. We just had another baptism this morning. That puts us, I think, somewhere near 30 for the year. And we have had an amazing movement of God continuing in our church. That's really good, and I wanna celebrate those good things, but we can always get better, right? We can always, can we?
00:03:15
Speaker
Okay, some of you don't know that. You can get better, okay? And then there's some other things that we need to, y'all gonna have to loosen up because it's gonna be a long morning for you if you don't loosen up. There's also this reality that there's some of this we don't do well. Maybe we need to need to fine tune that. Maybe we need to be aware of it. Maybe we just aren't conscious of it yet. So we wanna approach all these things. We wanna look at them with a wide open heart and say, okay, Holy Spirit, doing us what you need to make us the kind of church you want us to be, okay?
Early Church as a Model
00:03:43
Speaker
So Acts chapter 2, verse 42, starts off and he says, they devoted. So let's stop right there. You're going to hear that word devoted multiple times through here. The Greek word there is this word, proscartero, okay? That word literally means to persevere without fainting away.
00:04:03
Speaker
to persevere with consistent energy, to hang on, push forward, not give up. In other words, they didn't give up on each other. They were committed to these things and these ideas. So keep that in your mind each time you hear that word devoted. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles.
00:04:28
Speaker
Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all as any had need. Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.
Church Growth and Identity
00:04:49
Speaker
Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
00:04:54
Speaker
And that last sentence is really important because it's an indication of what was going on as a result of the movement of the Spirit of God in that place. Remember the last verse that we read right prior to this passage said 3,000 people were added to their number in just one day because of the movement of the Spirit of God. This verse says they continued to be added to daily because the Spirit of God continued to work in them because they were a healthy church.
00:05:19
Speaker
A church is not a building. A church is the people of God gathered in one place.
Spiritual Growth Analogy
00:05:24
Speaker
Okay? That's who we are. We are the church here today. So let's talk about this. I want to uncover this. We're going to take a look at it. When you go to the doctor and you have your annual physical, they take care of all these different numbers. They look at your blood pressure, your blood pressure, your cholesterol, all those kinds of things. The good news about this exam today is there are no vaccinations involved. Okay? But there is a transplant.
00:05:49
Speaker
We wanna take the mind of Christ and adopt it as our mind. We wanna take the heart of God for the world and adopt it as our own. We want to be transplanted, to have that stuff transplanted into us, okay?
Devotion to the Word of God
00:06:02
Speaker
So first sign of a healthy church is a commitment to the word of God.
00:06:07
Speaker
a commitment to the word of God. You see, one thing that's biblically absolutely necessary for a church to grow is a full devotion to the word of God. Everything we do must be informed by this book we call the Bible. This is not just the best seller of all time. It's not just a great read. It's not a motivational self-help. This is life-changing material that's right here in front of us. This may shock you to hear this because it puts my job in jeopardy, but you don't need me to preach you this word.
00:06:37
Speaker
If you will notice this morning, our staff made a recommitment that we're gonna continue to put the word in this service week by week in many different fashions. We've read it this morning, we've sung it this morning, it's about to be preached to you, but the Bible tells us in Isaiah 55, when the word goes forth, it will not return void. There is power in this book and you don't have to have me up here to tell it to you, but you need me.
00:07:05
Speaker
Just as a reminder, you need me.
00:07:09
Speaker
No, you can pick up this book and you can read it for yourself. In fact, you should be reading it for yourself. James 1, verse 21, James writes this, he says, therefore, reading yourselves of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, humbly receive the implanted word which
Deep Relationships and 'Koinonia'
00:07:26
Speaker
is able to save your souls. Two things that you need to hear there. Number one, he says, humbly receive the implanted word. The only way you can receive the word is humbly. If you have arrogance, that word is not gonna affect you.
00:07:38
Speaker
If you have pride, that word's not going to change your heart. It's not going to have any effect. It's going to be the seed that falls on the hard ground.
00:07:45
Speaker
But if you are humbled, the word has the ability to change your life, and it has the ability to, as it says at the very end, to save your soul. This is the incredible life-changing word of God. This is why I'm so thankful that we have Lori and Kyle, who are doing such a great job of just planting seeds of the gospel in our children. The next generation of the church is being trained up right now in our building, and I am so, so thankful for that.
00:08:11
Speaker
I am thankful for our life groups, our D groups, our Bible studies that are going on right now because we are putting the word of God in people's lives. And when God wants to have a spiritual awakening, he sends his word. It's his word that changes people. You read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, when people's lives were changed, it was because the word of God was applied to their lives. You see, preaching the word and teaching the word is essential.
00:08:37
Speaker
In fact, preaching God's word unleashes God's power in God's people so that we can fulfill God's purpose. So we have to be consistent to preach and teach God's word with regularity. Paul encouraged Titus and Timothy to always teach sound doctrine in the church that they preached to would be healthy and would be set on a right track. Healthy churches feast on the word of God to stay healthy. Now here's something you need to understand.
00:09:06
Speaker
If you are in touch with the Holy Spirit and you have the Holy Spirit guiding your life, then you're going to long for the word. I'm going to say that to you again because there's some of you out here today who may be struggling. You may be at that place where you're going,
00:09:20
Speaker
The word, I can take it or I can leave it. It's not essential for me. If that's the case, I'm not saying you may not be, I'm not saying you're necessarily not a Christian, but I am saying if you're not desiring the word, then you are out of step with the Holy Spirit in your life. Because the Holy Spirit, I can't talk this morning, the Holy Spirit puts inside you this hunger for what only the word can give you. Now, there are days when I read the Bible and I go, oh, okay,
00:09:48
Speaker
I did what I'm supposed to do. There are days when that happens, but there are also days when I do that and later in the afternoon I go, oh, that's why he made me read that this morning. There are also times where it's three weeks later and I go, oh, I remember that passage three weeks ago. It didn't say much to me then, but it's really speaking to me now.
00:10:07
Speaker
The Bible has the ability to do that for us and we must believe with all our hearts that scripture is sufficient for everything we need. 95% of what you need to know from God himself comes from this word. So you gotta be in this word to know it. Second sign of a healthy church is our devotion to one another.
Breaking Bread and Spiritual Leadership
00:10:27
Speaker
Interesting thing is the word here that's in verse 42,
00:10:32
Speaker
is translated fellowship is a Greek word, koinonia. Some of you may have heard this word, koinonia, but what's interesting is this is the first place it appears in the New Testament, but it's in the New Testament in multiple places and it's never translated the same. Sometimes it's translated fellowship, sometimes it's translated
00:10:51
Speaker
giving, sometimes it's translated sharing. And it's not because scholars can't figure out what the word means, it's because the word means so much. It tries to capture what happens when a human being is intimately engaged in a relationship with the living God. So it encompasses all these things. This is a bad example, but this is the only thing I could think of, so here's where we go with this.
00:11:16
Speaker
You go to Disney World, you say, I go to Disney World, but inside Disney World, they have multiple kingdoms, right? All of those things make up what is Disney World. You say, I go to Disney World, but you could say, I go to whatever, La La Land, Animal Land or whatever, Animal Kingdom. You know, those are all those different lands, okay? So when you talk about Koinonia, when you talk about fellowship, that word is trying to capture all the things that happen when a human being submits themselves to a relationship with God.
00:11:45
Speaker
And so it's translated different things in different places and it's actually a word that's kind of divine in its nature in the sense that it tries to capture all those things for us. So he says, our fellowship with each other is directly tied to our fellowship with God. Did you catch that? If we're gonna be in direct relationship with God, if we're gonna follow God and be in obedience to Him, then we need to be connected to His body. If people are out of fellowship with Jesus Christ,
00:12:13
Speaker
then they will be out of fellowship with the church. Now, catch the flip side of that. If they are out of fellowship with the church, it quite often means they are out of fellowship with Jesus. Now, I know some of you, same way you've heard this, people go, well, I don't have to go to church to be a Christian. No, but to be a good Christian, you need to be in the church. Thank you for that, amen. The rest of you need to wake up.
00:12:37
Speaker
That's not a joke. You need to wake up because this is the word of God coming to you this morning and I'm not gonna hold back. No filtration on this this morning. I'm just warning you. The reality is that we have people who are walking the streets of this community who call themselves believers who say, I can be just as good a believer out of the church as I can be in the church. I can read my Bible at home, which immediately proves to me you're not reading your Bible at home because if you were reading your Bible at home, you'd be in the church.
00:13:02
Speaker
You follow me? We gotta quit making excuses for all the reasons we fall short of God and start confessing and repenting those things and get back to what we're being commanded to do. By the way, this book, 66 different books in this Bible, not one suggestion from God, but it's full of all kinds of commands. There's no place in here where God goes, let me make a suggestion to you. Let me give you a little tip.
00:13:30
Speaker
None of that's in here. What's in here is a God who says, thus saith the Lord. If you want to be my child, if you want to be my father, if you want to be obedient to me, this is what you will do. Not a suggestion, a command. And so what we need to do is we need to understand that the power of the word then connects us to this fellowship that we're supposed to have with other people.
00:13:53
Speaker
If we're out of fellowship with Jesus, we will fall out of fellowship with the church because that's how strong the Christ Church connection is. Jesus Christ says that the church is my bride, right? You follow me so far? You can walk up to me and you look at me in the face and say, I love you Ridley, but I don't like your wife. We are no longer friends. You follow me? I'm probably gonna defriend you on social media.
00:14:24
Speaker
I know I went that far, right? If you come to me and say, I wanna be your friend, but I can't be friends with your wife, there's a problem with that image. We've got people walking around who say, I wanna be friends with Jesus, but I don't like the church. You can't do that. You can't say that. I've said this to you before, the church doesn't hurt people, people hurt people. But if the grocery store clerk hurts your feelings, you don't stop buying groceries, do you? Somebody hurts your feelings on the interstate, you don't pull over on the side of the road and say, I refuse to drive again.
00:14:54
Speaker
But you let one person say one wrong thing or look at you wrong in the hallway and suddenly we're gonna write off the whole church because of it. That's Satan, guys. That's Satan. And what we gotta do is we gotta get back to this idea that God calls us to a devotion to his church. I'm not telling you people aren't gonna hurt your feelings. You know what? I'm probably gonna hurt your feelings. I might even do it before the sermon's over with today.
00:15:19
Speaker
But I want you to love me enough to look at me in the face and say, I want to be your brother. And because of that, I am devoted to you and I expect you to be devoted to me. We got to be willing to hear from one another and hear those hard words and have those hard conversations with one another. There are dozens of commands to do things for one another in scripture. Love each other, honor each other, those kinds of things. I want you to look at this one.
00:15:44
Speaker
Romans 12, 10, Paul writes, he says, love one another deeply as brothers and sisters, take the lead in honoring one another. Imagine what the world would think about Grove Hill Church if we were competing to see how much we could love each other. If we were trying to outdo each other in honoring each other. If we ended every service by going, I can honor you more this week than you can honor me. Think about how the world would see us differently instead of us constantly nitpicking each other to death.
00:16:14
Speaker
Constantly trying to find out the problem. Let me just go ahead and set your mind at ease. You're not gonna have to look very hard to find a problem with me. But if you're following Jesus Christ, you're gonna have to work hard to stay committed to me, to devote yourself to me, just like these guys devoted themselves to each other. You're gonna have to work hard to love me, and guess what? I'm gonna have to work hard to love you too, because you're not so likable yourself.
00:16:37
Speaker
This is who we are. This is what we are as frail human beings. And this is the miracle of what Jesus does in us when he calls us together as family. We have to be devoted to each other. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his incredible book, Life Together, said, it is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brothers and sisters. Third sign of a healthy church is commitment to breaking bread.
Prayer and Male Leadership
00:17:02
Speaker
Very simply, this is the Lord's Supper.
00:17:04
Speaker
This is when they would get together and to obey the command that Christ had given them to take this meal. And it was part of a daily thing that they did quite early in the church. They would daily get together. They would have these fellowship meals, which was kind of like the old-fashioned covered dish supper, right? They'd bring all their meal together, bring their food together, but then they would do the Lord's Supper, which was the breaking of bread.
00:17:24
Speaker
Then it turned into a weekly procedure, and then they kind of broke it apart and continued to do those kinds of things. It was everything in the early church was built around the life and the ministry of Jesus. And that's the way we want to build this church. We want it to be about the life of Jesus, us modeling who He is and who He was. We want to represent that to the world around us. The next sign at your healthy church is the commitment to regular prayer.
00:17:49
Speaker
Commitment to regular prayer there are examples of the church's prayer life all the way through the book of Acts beginning with chapter 1 all the way through the book we see how they prayed and things happen we prayed and people were changed they prayed and boldness was received they prayed and courage came I Know so many times people have looked at me and said hey, you know in Acts chapter 2 it talks about the fact that there were miracles and wonders every day How come we don't say that see that because we don't pray the way they prayed We just don't
00:18:19
Speaker
We're a pretty good praying church. I love that we have people who come up here on Saturday night and pray for you guys before we even open the doors on Sunday. I love the fact that we have people who come up here on Sunday morning and pray over whoever's gonna be bringing the word that day, and that's a serious part of what we do. I love that we have D groups and life groups that are committed to prayer with one another. But man, we pray, we pray many times that we're carrying out a function rather than praying like we're dying without Jesus.
00:18:47
Speaker
We don't pray like he's our lifeline, we pray like he's an adult. I've been to other countries and you get some of these other countries and you get into real, real poverty in other places and you find people who are so desperate for Jesus because they don't have anything else. And you listen to them pray, man, it'll change your life.
00:19:10
Speaker
it'll change your life. Some of you going to Guatemala this summer on mission trips, you're gonna hear some people pray some prayers and you're gonna be amazed that somebody can be so hungry for Jesus that they literally won't get up off their knees until they've had time to sit before him and pray for him, pray to him. Now, little side note.
00:19:29
Speaker
This morning we had a guy stand up here get baptized. One of the members of our life group said he was recommitting himself to be the leader of his home, leader of his family, leading his wife, leading his kids. I just want to tell you something. Lisa and I have done multiple marriage conferences over the years. I've never once had a woman come up to me and say, I wish my husband would stop praying with me. Or I wish he would pray less. What I have heard is many, many women in tears saying, I wish my husband would take the lead.
00:19:59
Speaker
I wish my husband would grab me by the hand and pray with me. I wish he would take the time to lead my kids in devotionals. I wish he would be that kind of spiritual leader. Guys, there is no reason for you not to be a spiritual leader. You know why it's so hard? Because Satan knows how it happens. When a man leads his family, families are changed.
00:20:20
Speaker
Families are changed radically. And so he's gonna do everything he can to convince you that you're not smart enough, you don't read well enough, you don't have the right words to pray, you don't know how to pray. He's gonna convince you of all those things and every single one of those is a lie from hell itself to keep you from being the man God created you to be. So how do you start praying? Speak your heart. Just speak your heart. God already knows it.
00:20:47
Speaker
And what he's waiting for you is just to come to him with it and to open yourself up and say, I'm here to leave my family, God, I need your help. That's probably one of the most sincere prayers that any man can pray. So they were committed to prayer.
Radical Generosity vs. Communism
00:21:02
Speaker
A healthy church is a praying church without exception. You show me a church that's not serious about prayer and I'll show you a great civic organization. Because what they're doing doesn't depend on God. Next sign of a healthy church is radical generosity.
00:21:17
Speaker
Radical generosity, no, we're not taking another offering, so don't panic. There are numerous examples of radical sharing in ministry all the way through the book of Acts, but this was not communism.
00:21:31
Speaker
This was not socialism, okay? Many times people read this, a lot of people who are more on the progressive end of the Christianity, that's a loose term, but on the progressive end of the scale, they will tell you, oh, this is the early signs of communism. Why don't we go back to communism? This was not communism. How do you know it wasn't communism? Because they still had private ownership of things.
00:21:52
Speaker
They still own their stuff. It just says that when there was a need they were unafraid to sell it and bring it for somebody else to benefit from it. What were they saying? Luke says basically they held onto their things loosely because they realized they don't need stuff as much as they need each other.
00:22:07
Speaker
A few weeks ago, Cody Gardner shared his testimony on Easter Sunday by video. Many of you remember that. And he was talking about life together and doing community together. And his example was, and if I ever need a trailer, I pick up the phone and I call somebody in my life group and they'll loan me their trailer. And I thought, what an incredibly good example of how we just don't worry about those things because we take care of each other. If you need something, call me. If I don't have it, I'm going to help you find it. Why? Because it doesn't belong to me to begin with.
00:22:34
Speaker
God was kind enough to give me a house, God was kind enough to give me a barn, God was kind enough to give me a pool in my backyard. You want it, come use it.
True Relationships vs. Digital Connections
00:22:42
Speaker
Don't wear your bikini. I don't need that in my backyard, that's not worthy. But if you want to borrow something from me, if you want to, now listen, some of you will go, hey, man, things are hard, things are tight, inflation's hard, I get it, I get it. We just don't have a whole lot to give anybody. Do you have a cup of ice water?
00:23:02
Speaker
You got a cup of ice water, then you can bless somebody. Put some ice water on your table and invite four or five people from church over and say, let's just sit and pray together. Let's just have a conversation. Let's just sit and laugh. Let's just enjoy each other's company. Let's build each other up. Take a cooler ice water and take it downtown Nashville, bless somebody. That was one of the examples Jesus himself used. Give a cup of cold water in Jesus name. You don't have to have lots of stuff in order to give.
00:23:32
Speaker
but you have to be willing to give. It's part of what they did, it's part of their regular practice. It was such an impressionable thing that the Julian, the emperor of Rome, who was actually trying to squash Christianity in the 300s, wrote this in one of his writings. He said, the Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours as well, welcome them to their agape. They attract them as children are attracted with cakes. He was going, you know what, here I am trying to squash them out and they're feeding my people.
00:24:03
Speaker
They're feeding my people. You got an enemy, feed them. You got an enemy, cut their grass, take their trashcan out to the road. You got an enemy, pick them up on the side of the road and take them to work when their car doesn't work. You don't have permission to put people down. You do have permission. You have a command to lift people up.
00:24:27
Speaker
Healthy churches give freely, they give sacrificially, they give generously, and here's why, because their heart has been changed by Jesus, they wanna see others' hearts changed by Jesus. This is why, this is why, as a church, a pastor should never have to get up and say, I need you to give more. I told you it was gonna get personal. Y'all all got real quiet right then.
00:24:57
Speaker
A pastor should never have to get up and say, hey, we need extra money for this. One person agrees with me. There is more wealth in this church right here than this community needs. I know you're not liking this conversation right now, but there should never be a moment of need in this community as long as Christians are in this community. You know what's wrong with charity in America today? It's run by the government, not by the church.
00:25:25
Speaker
The government took it away from the church and ruined it. If the church would take it back and do it, the miracle would be a lot better off. But you know why the church can't take it back and do it? Because you're sitting on your wallets. You're sitting on your trucks. You're sitting on your beach houses. You're sitting on all your stuff. We are sitting on all our stuff. I'm in there too. And I'll be honest with you, there are times when the bills come in and I go, man, it's going to be tight this month. But then I have to be reminded. It wasn't mine to begin with.
00:25:58
Speaker
All right, I'm gonna get off that subject. Y'all can relax now. Another sign to the healthy church is regular interaction with one another. Regular interaction with one another. You see they were involved in each other's lives daily. Now we are commissioned to go out and love the whole world. We're commissioned to love everybody, but we also recognize as a healthy church we should meet regularly to encourage and love one another. If you're not in a life group, shame on you.
00:26:24
Speaker
you're missing a great opportunity to be connected with other believers. This morning when we baptized Aaron Fretz, Aaron Fretz stood in that water and turned and looked at this little section over here was full of his life group. That section right there full of his life group. They all came to the eight o'clock service this morning just to be here to support him and encourage him as he made that decision.
00:26:42
Speaker
You have a down day, life group there to encourage you. You have an off moment and you need prayer, your D group there to encourage you. You need, again, those people in your lives. You need those relationships. We all have to have them. And half of the challenge of being a good church member is just showing up. It's just showing up. What do I mean by that? Well, you can't have a relationship with people you're supposed to have a relationship with if you're never around them. You cannot do that sitting at home on livestream.
00:27:12
Speaker
Sorry, livestream people. That's great if you're homesick. That's great if you've got something going on, you've got to be at work today and you can watch it from work. That's fantastic. It never can take the place of what's going on in here.
00:27:26
Speaker
It can't. It wasn't created to do that. You see, the problem is we live in a world today where we're confused about what relationships really look like. We don't know how to carry on interpersonal relationships. Great book, recommend it to you. It's called When Your Way Isn't Working by Kyle Idelman, who is the pastor of Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. It's an easy read. I read it on Thursday. Okay, one day. Super easy read. But I want you to hear this. This is mind boggling. We live in a world today that built around social media and internet. We think those are relationships. But I want you to hear this.
00:27:58
Speaker
2023 is when this book was written. The average American is exposed to about 54,000 words and 443 minutes of video every day. There are enough new tweets every day to write a 10 million page book. The average person under the age of 45 sends and receives more than 85 text messages every day.
00:28:22
Speaker
More than 500 videos, excuse me, more than 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day. There have been more than two trillion searches for information from Google alone this past year. This one blows my mind. Every two days, we create as much information as the total amount of information that was produced from the beginning of time to 2003.
00:28:53
Speaker
every two days. So you see, if you're trying to keep up with that information, you know what's happening? You're constantly falling behind. And you don't have time to look somebody in the eye and have a real relationship with somebody. Story in the book.
00:29:09
Speaker
Guy had 700 followers on Facebook, so he decided to try a little experiment. He said, I'm gonna invite everybody to an event. I'm gonna buy dinner and drinks for somebody at a restaurant. So he put a Facebook post out there, created this event, said, please reply. As the event got closer, it was obvious that most of them weren't gonna make it. There were only probably, I can't remember the exact number, 30 or 40 people who said, yeah, we'll be there. He got to the restaurant about 15 minutes early that night, showed up, sat at the bar. One person out of 700 showed up.
00:29:36
Speaker
She walked in and said, where's everybody else? He said, I don't know. And she turned around and left. 700 people he thought were friends, not one of them had a real relationship with him. Guys, you can't replace what's in here with what the world calls relationships on social media. You just can't do it. It's created a new psychological disorder, basically, or I don't know if you call it a sickness or whatever, but it's called information fatigue syndrome.
00:30:07
Speaker
information fatigue syndrome. If you're going to try to keep up with everything that's going on in the world, you're going to constantly be falling behind. And you just can't keep up with it. And you see, that's why God created us to have real relationships, starting with what goes on in our homes, with our families. Most of us don't have a real relationship with our family because we come in, we sit down at dinner, we're doing this while dinner's going on, if we even sit down to have dinner together.
00:30:31
Speaker
because we're racing thousand different places, gotta get kids to the ball game, gotta get kids to school, I gotta work late, I gotta be at work early. There's all kinds of things that are competing and we're missing out on what God created us to be and that's relational people. Ask
Large Group Worship vs. Small Group Intimacy
00:30:47
Speaker
anybody in here who runs a business today what kind of employees they're getting. They're not committed to anything anymore. There it is, I knew there was somebody.
00:30:58
Speaker
You know what we've been taught? We've been taught that if life's not going well, just hit the reset button. So what does that mean? That means we walk out on our marriages at remarkably record rates. We leave friendships because somebody looks at us wrong or says the wrong thing.
00:31:13
Speaker
Our kids won't commit to a job because if they don't give me a $10 an hour raise after six months of working, then I'm going to go find somewhere else to work. I mean, that's the kind of mentality we've been brought up with. We've got to get away from that. We've got to get back to what it means to have face to face communion with one another.
00:31:31
Speaker
I could spend all day on that. All right. The next sign of a healthy church is this. Large and small group meetings. They did both. A lot of people like to talk about this versus that. If you look at it, they had 3,000 people they would meet together in the temple. Large group setting.
00:31:47
Speaker
On the other hand, it says that they met house to house. They were in small groups together. They were doing basically what we do as life groups. Why do you need both? Because in a life group, you're going to have the opportunity to sit face to face with somebody and pray for them, encourage them, hear their heartache, look them in the eye and see the things they're struggling with. You're going to be able to be really personal in those situations, but you're not going to have the energy of what you get in here on a Sunday morning, the corporate worship.
00:32:11
Speaker
and the ability to listen to that energy and feel that energy as we get together. And if you think that's not important and you haven't read the book of Revelation very carefully where it says every nation, tongue, and tribe will get together and worship God, this is a little taste of what that's gonna feel like. So this brings us energy, this brings us encouragement, the small group brings us the ability to have accountability and intimacy in our relationships with one another. Both of them are important. It's not an either or, it's a both and.
00:32:38
Speaker
The next sign of a healthy church is the spirit of all gladness and praise. It says they met with all in joyful hearts, but some of you have a real hard time praising God in hard times. And I get that, that's the human nature, but can I just remind you that a hard life would be much harder if you didn't have God in it? You see, when you are saved for a relationship with Jesus Christ, you're not saved from suffering.
00:33:01
Speaker
You're still gonna have suffering because you live on a broken planet. You are not saved from suffering, you are saved to have God with you through your suffering. He's gonna give you the strength to walk through those daily trials, those challenges, those testings. Do not be afraid of embracing the suffering that'll come because God's gonna get you through that. He wouldn't bring you to it if he wouldn't. So we have to praise God at all times. And if you praise God at all times and in all situations, no matter how bad it looks, I promise you, your outlook will change.
00:33:30
Speaker
Your outlook will change. Listen, I'm like you. There are days I wake up and I think, oh, this is gonna be a skunky day. I really don't wanna be a part of this day. I would rather just stay home today. I'm not excited about this. I'll get up, I'll get in my truck, I'll turn on the radio and I'll start worshiping. That's a great place to worship because nobody has to listen to me and I can sing as loud as I want to and I can even dance a little bit if I want to in the middle of my truck. If you ever see me doing that in the middle of the community, just look the other way.
00:33:57
Speaker
But the minute I start doing that, my attitude begins to change. It absolutely does. Sunday morning, first thing my wife and I do, we pray together in bed before we get out of bed. Before I even get out of the bed, she says, turn on the music. I will turn on my Spotify. We'll have worship music playing. If you drive by our house, you're gonna think there's some kind of party going on. Do not get this image in your head, but we're dancing all over the house. We're singing. We're getting ready for church. We're having a great time. By the time I get here, I'm hyped and I'm ready to go, because I'm gonna be with you worshiping God. But I started long before I ever got here.
00:34:28
Speaker
You see, worship of God should never be boring. It should never be gloomy because he's God. He's God, for crying out loud.
Attractive Faith and Unity in Diversity
00:34:39
Speaker
Now, can it be reflective? Can it be more meditative? Absolutely. There can be times where it's a little more subdued, but it should never be without joy because there's joy in all things when you have a relationship with Christ. Next sign of a healthy church is having an attractive faith.
00:34:57
Speaker
Have any attractive faith. It says that many outsiders were attracted to these believers. This is a reflection of what Jesus talked about in John 1334 with his apostles when he said, I'm going to give you another command. Love one another. Just like I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. It's the best advertisement in the world.
00:35:20
Speaker
best advertisement in the world. When people see you treating other people like Jesus treated you, when they see you loving people, regardless of what they look like, what they act like, what they dress like, when they see that, then they are compelled to ask questions about why you are different. They wanna know. And let me remind you, as the body of Christ, we are not called to be uniform, we're called to be unified.
00:35:46
Speaker
I'm not supposed to look like you, act like you, dress like you, smell like you, thank you God. I don't wanna be you because if I'm just like you, then one of us is irrelevant. But God created us, all of us unique, all of us different, all of us with great talents, great skills. Find out what those things are, use them. But don't look at me and judge me because I'm not just like you. And I promise you, I won't judge you because you're not just like me. Because all of us are only here by the grace of God.
00:36:16
Speaker
And so we unify around the cross of
Addressing Conflicts and Maintaining Unity
00:36:18
Speaker
Christ. If we have a problem, you know what you're supposed to do? You're supposed to come have a conversation with me. If I tick you off, and I promise you, I will tick you off if you stay around here long enough, because guess what? You probably already have ticked me off. The Bible says you're not supposed to go talk to anybody else about it. You're supposed to come straight to me, Matthew 18, sit and have a conversation and say, let's figure out what's going on.
00:36:42
Speaker
If we're doing this thing right, if we're loving Jesus and doing exactly what He commanded us to do, I can go over there and call Chris Smith and I can say, Chris, you're not, something's going on, something's not right, we need to have a conversation. Chris Smith's gonna sit down, he's gonna have that conversation with me, he's gonna love me, he's gonna hug me when it's all over with, he may take me to dinner. I don't know. Steak, there you go. How do I know that? Because I know Chris, Chris is my brother in Christ, has been for six years, I know his character. I know that he loves Jesus because he loves Jesus, he can put up with me.
00:37:12
Speaker
And it's only because I love Jesus that I can put up with him. And that's a beautiful thing, ain't it, brother? There's some of you in this room, I know for a fact you're that way with me. There's several, I could go around the room and call people out. There's some of you though, you're just looking for somebody to upset you. Some of you just looking for somebody to make you mad. Oh man, they walked down the other hallway, they ignored me. Can I just tell you, grow up. Grow, grow up.
00:37:40
Speaker
And if you can't figure out how to grow up, can I take you back to point number one? Getting the word of God. If Jesus can go through the persecution he went through, then you can put up with somebody not looking at you the right way. And for crying out loud, do not go put it all over social media. The world does not need to see the church bickering with one another. That's the worst example that the world could ever see.
00:38:04
Speaker
And listen, let me just say this to you. Some of you don't need, man, connect the dots on this. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people go up to somebody and say, I need to ask your forgiveness and that person will get them going, I don't even know what you're talking about. And you've been six months over here stewing in your anger and your bitterness and they didn't even have a clue they offended you. Guess what? If you'd have done Matthew 18, that would have been over with six months ago. You would have gotten it out of the way. You'd be back to being brothers and sisters and everything would be all right.
00:38:33
Speaker
You follow me on this? So here's my pledge to you. I'm gonna speak truth to you. You speak truth to me and let's do it for each other. Let's expect the best for each other.
00:38:45
Speaker
Let's not assume that people are irritated with us. Let's look at people and go, hey, you know what? They're following Jesus just like I am. I bet they're trying to do the right thing too. I bet they just had a bad week. I bet they just got an unexpected bill. I bet they're having a little bit of struggle at work. It's not personal towards me. I bet there's something else going on. You know what? Instead of getting all offended and putting it on Instagram, I can go over there and say I don't have a conversation with them and let's pray together. That's a great remedy for all these things.
Daily Evangelism and Healthy Church Qualities
00:39:15
Speaker
All right. You know why I did that? Can I just be honest with y'all? You know why I did that? Because as their pastor, I know I could preach that every week, and every week there's gonna be somebody who's gonna get their panties in a wad. I wasn't supposed to say that word, was I? Okay, thank you April. I need that encouragement.
00:39:44
Speaker
All right, daily evangelism, daily evangelism. Faithful and consistent evangelism is a part of what a healthy church does. It's what we're called to do, remember? Early on, Titus 1.12, we talked about this, this is what the church is called to go out and do, to bring people in. Some are naturally gifted with evangelism. If you know Kyle Hess, you know that Kyle Hess can take a box of frosted flakes and turn it into evangelism conversation. He does it all the time. I love Kyle Hess. Kyle Hess is not me.
00:40:13
Speaker
Tuesday of this week, he and I went and moved some furniture for a lady in our church that had some need. We were riding down the road and I said, you know what? I love the fact that you can do that. I'll be honest, I'm a little jealous as a pastor. I'm a little jealous. I want to be more that way. I want to be more like that ability just to take any conversation and turn it into a Jesus conversation. But you know what? It's not the way God made me. Does that exempt me from being an evangelist? No.
00:40:38
Speaker
and it doesn't exempt you. You see, my spiritual gift is discipleship. I can sit down with just about anybody and explain the gospel and turn from four-year-old up. I can explain it not in a three-year-old. Four-year-old up, I can explain it to anybody. This is what the gospel's all about, and I can teach you how to grow. I can teach you how to mold that and mature. That's my gifting. And you know what? God brought Kyle to me because the two of us make a beautiful body.
00:41:04
Speaker
His gifts match with my gifts, match with your gifts, match with your gifts. This is the way the body's supposed to work. So don't sit around and go, I don't have the gift of evangelism because I don't either. But I'm still called to speak the name of Jesus. Still called. And let me tell you something. If you've never, if you've never led anybody to Jesus, I encourage you just say a prayer and say, God, can you help me do that?
00:41:26
Speaker
I did not lead anybody to Christ until I was 19 years old. The first time I led somebody to Christ, Baltimore, Maryland in a city park, ran into day camp on a mission trip with a bunch of teenagers. And I will never forget that day because the day that happened, I sat on a park bench, Baltimore, Maryland, cried over a little kid that I had never met who had just received Jesus Christ, and I said to Jesus, I wanna do this the rest of my life. It will change you.
00:41:53
Speaker
It will change you and it will change somebody's eternity if you take the time to do it. And let me remind you, it's not your responsibility if they receive Jesus, it's just your responsibility to speak Jesus, the Holy Spirit's responsible for the saving. If you get rejected a hundred times, you still go back and do a hundred and one.
00:42:12
Speaker
All right, so here we go. Four questions to check your personal spiritual health. This is gonna be quick. Some of you thinking I'm fixing to start next 30 minutes of the sermon. I'm not, okay? Number one, how is your biblical nourishment? Are you being fed on a regular basis the Word of God? You cannot live without it. You can live without it. You can't live the Christian life without it.
00:42:32
Speaker
How is your Bible nourishment? How are you getting it? Listen, some of you are going, you know what? I just can't. I'm not a good reader. I have a hard time comprehending it. You're without excuse. There are podcasts now that literally read the Bible to you.
00:42:43
Speaker
Put it on while you're driving to work. Put it on while you're sitting outside in the sunshine today. Let the Bible be put into your life any way you can put it in your life. There are Spotify playlists now, scripture, put to music. Put it on and listen to it while you're in the shower, while you're cutting your grass. There are all kinds of ways, any way you can get the word in your life is a successful thing, all right? Number two, how is your fellowship with other believers? How is your fellowship with other believers?
00:43:10
Speaker
Be honest, be honest, because you see what made a difference in that early church is that they were literally willing to die for each other, and many of them didn't. There are stories of first saints who died so that others might continue to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, so that others could come to know that gospel of Jesus Christ. I wanna ask you a question, other than your spouse and your children, who in this room would you die for? Who in this room would you die for?
00:43:40
Speaker
Because if you have to think long and hard about that, you may need to ask God to soften your heart a little bit more to what he's really called you to. And you're going, would Jesus ever ask me to die? Sorry, but he started the relationship by saying, unless you die, you can't know me. Number three, what is your worship of God like?
00:44:01
Speaker
Now I'm not asking about whether or not you enjoy the worship services, that's one thing. I'm asking about what is your worship of God like? What do I mean by that? Worship is what you do Sunday through Saturday. Worship is how you treat people on the interstate. Worship is how you treat the bag boy at Brooke's grocery. Worship is how you spend your Friday night entertainment. Worship is what you watch on Saturday morning.
00:44:32
Speaker
Worship is what you do with your free time. Worship is how you treat your spouse. You see, worship is what your life says about Jesus. Is he really the priority for you? Lastly,
00:44:47
Speaker
Do you live a sent life with your words and your ministry to others? We talk about a sent life all the time. It's really, really important. I know what some of you are saying. It sounds like it's all about numbers for you. Numbers don't matter. It's not quantity. It's quality. Well, if you believe that, then you've never read the fourth book of the Bible, which is called
00:45:07
Speaker
numbers. You've never paid close attention to the Old Testament where numerous times God commanded that they do censuses, is that the right word? Since I, I don't know, multiple census so that they could count how many people they had. And if you think that, if you really think that it's more about quality than it is about quantity, then tell me why you would take four children on a camping trip, four of them disappear, three come back, you don't look at them and go, well baby, we got the three quality ones, we don't worry about the fourth one.
00:45:38
Speaker
It's all about the quality, right? I mean, would you look at God and say that? Because God has eight billion people on this planet. Most of them are still lost in the woods. And he's saying, can you go find them? And we're over here in our little holy huddles going, we got the quality ones. We got the ones that matter. We got the quality ones. And God's saying, every single one of them matter to me. I want every single one of them to be a part of what's going on here. You don't have permission to select and choose who you want there. I want them all.
00:46:08
Speaker
I died for them all. That whole sanctimonious. But we just want the quality ones. What makes you the quality one? What makes you better than the lost person who's out there, who's never had the opportunity to hear?
00:46:29
Speaker
So we have to learn how to live sent lives. Again, I know that some of us are uncomfortable, but let me just say very quickly, this is what you gotta do. God, today, will you give me an opportunity to meet someone who needs to know Jesus? Will you open my eyes to see that opportunity, open my heart to receive what you want me to say in that opportunity, open my mouth so I speak Jesus to them in that opportunity?
00:46:56
Speaker
and prepare to watch people's lives be changed, starting with yours. Healthy church. It's what God called us to be, it's what God created us to be. This is who we are supposed to be.
Call to Action for Church Engagement
00:47:11
Speaker
Some of these things we're doing really, really well. Some of them we have work to do. All of them we can get better at. So this morning, this is how I would love for you to respond is we're singing the song of response. I'm gonna get Jaden and Mary to come on back
00:47:26
Speaker
Maybe God is saying to you as one of the guys in this church, I am not the spiritual leader of my home, I need to be. I need to get all that straightened out, I need to get down there. Don't leave your spouse sitting back there by herself, that defeats the point. Bring her up here with you, bring him up here with you. Y'all get on your knees before God and say, let's figure out how we start this the right way.
00:47:47
Speaker
how we get this fixed. Some of you may be saying, you know what, I need a life group, and I know you talk about that all the time, and I think today I just figured out I really need to be connected with people better in this church. John's gonna be up here, Becca's up here. We got others who are up here who can talk to you about that, get you connected to groups, whether it's a D group or a life group. There may be some of you who say, you know what, I think I just probably need to get more engaged in serving my church. I hear you say all the time, Ridley, that you got spiritual gifts and you need to use them.
00:48:17
Speaker
And I do say that this church would be better equipped, this church would be better encouraged and edified if all of us were using our gifts the way we need to. So maybe you just need to come up here and pray with somebody and say, hey, I'm not sure where to start. I'm not sure what that looks like, what that journey involves. We'd be happy to have those conversations with you. This hasn't been like an crazy evangelistic sermon where we talk about, hey, you need to know Jesus, but can I just tell you something?
00:48:46
Speaker
You need to know Jesus. That's where it all starts. Chaos of this world begins to make sense when you find out who the creator is. When you find out the one who gave you life and breath and put blood in your veins and air in your lungs. When you get to know that Jesus well, then you begin to find some sense out of all that's going on around you.
00:49:09
Speaker
So I invite you, if you don't have that relationship, you don't have to make that decision right here. Maybe it's just time to ask some really good questions about what it looks like. And we would welcome that as well. You respond as God leads you. Let me pray for us. Lord, in this moment, let it be yours. Let our hearts be yours. May we respond according to what you have put there. Let us be obedient. Let us be courageous. Let us be different. Different, Lord, than the rest of this world so that the rest of this world will see how we're different.
00:49:37
Speaker
and would ask questions about this Jesus we serve. In his name we pray, amen. You stand as we sing this morning.