Acts 6:7
Please remain standing and turn
in your copy of the scriptures to the book of Acts. We have
one verse to read today, Acts chapter six, verse seven. Many of you know, for the last
many weeks, we’ve looked at the broader implications of chapter
six, verses one through seven. The occasion was that the early
church was Not handling the distribution of food to widows well, so it
was the occasion for the beginning of the deacons. Deacons are set
apart by God for sympathy and service in the church. We looked
at how they free up ministers to do the work of the word, how
they free up elders to do the ministry of prayer and governing.
And today we want to not let all of you off the hook. Not
many of you are ministers, elders, deacons. So we want to look at
the very last verse and the implications on being a disciple of Jesus
Christ. Before we read God’s word, pray
with me. Lord without eyes, Opened by your Holy Spirit, we will
not see. Without ears unstopped by your grace, we will not hear
your word, your voice. And without hearts melted and
tuned to receive and sing your grace, we will let these things
fall on deaf ears. So do a mighty work among us
now. Let your word dwell richly among
us. May we receive it with joy. May
we lay it up in our hearts. May we treasure it in our minds.
And most of all, may we go and do exactly what you teach us
this day in the name of Christ. Amen. Acts chapter six, verse
seven says, and the word of God continued to increase and the
number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great
many of the priest became obedient to the faith. Amen. The word
of the living God, you may be seated. When I was a college kid, the
feared word among the male population at our small Christian college
was the C word. The C word, as you well know,
is the word commitment. No young man wants to commit
to a girl. It’s a scary thing, right? We
see the statistics today, they’ve only gotten worse. If you look
at the statistics in today’s culture, marriage versus cohabitation,
we see staggering numbers. And if you look at the numbers
in relation to the world, and then within the church of Jesus
Christ, there’s virtually no difference. Why is it that we
are commitment phobic people? It’s interesting to note that
in the world of statistics, those who live this way, particularly
in the realm of relationships, those who live this way, uncommitted,
but dwelling together, they end up splitting up. They end up
divorcing, but really there’s no divorce because there’s no
marriage. And I bring this up because it’s
exactly the same in the life of the church. We have before
us today Acts chapter six, verse seven, where the ministry of
the word and prayer was vitally important to the growth of the
early church. So important that they began
a deacon, the office of deacons. So important that they let the
ministers, the elders, labor in prayer, labor in the word.
And as that word was preached, as the prayers of the, The men
of the church were answered. God moved and the church grew.
Now we know from our study of Acts already that the church
is at least 5,000 men. Remember that’s how they numbered
people in those days. And so there are women and children
attached. Remember in the old Testament,
when they numbered the Israelites who left Egypt, it was about
a million men. Well, you had the women and children, you’ve
got a couple million people. So here you’ve got, oh, better than
10,000 people in the church at Jerusalem in this early stage,
post-Pentecost. Jesus’ disciples, Jesus’ apostles
continuing the work of the ministry. I want us to think today about
life in the church together. Life in the church at Jerusalem.
Life in the church at First ARP here in Burlington. Maybe some
of you are visiting from other places. Your membership is elsewhere. Life in your local church. This is a vital subject for us
to consider. And I hope you’ll receive some
of the things I say with exactly what I intend, pastoral encouragement. I want us to think today about
reasons for church membership. The rights of church members. the responsibility of church
members. And then I have a fourth point. It sounds like the second
point, the rights of church membership, except it has nothing to do with
rights and privileges. It’s like ritual rights. So first,
reasons for church membership. I did a little sleuthing on the
internet because I’m not too familiar with some of this, but
people don’t like church membership. Oh, you’ve made that up. You’ve
got this church membership thing to control people, or better
yet, to get in their pockets, right? Because you’re going to
require tithing or something like that. Is church membership in
the Bible, people say? Well, in fact, it is. And I want
to start at the back of the Bible and quickly walk you to the front
of the Bible and show you that it is. Jesus, in his ministry
from heaven, in the book of Revelation, Revelation chapter one writes
seven letters to guess what, seven churches. And they were
in specific locales. Jesus from the throne of glory
oversaw and ministered to the churches at Sardis and Thyatira,
the church at Ephesus and so on. And in fact, he so loved
these churches, these local specific churches, he ministered to them
in a special way. Keep going backwards through
the Bible and read through the epistles. Paul wrote 13, others
wrote letters to the churches. Guess who received those letters? The church at Corinth, the church
at Colossae, the church at Philippi, the church at Ephesus, and so
on. And so we see in the work of
the apostles in the early church, in addition to Jesus’ ministry
in his seven letters to the seven churches, God works. in the lives of his people through
the local church. Notice he didn’t write a letter
to the 7 million people sitting at home watching church on their
iPad. That’s what we’re dealing with today, isn’t it? He didn’t
send 7 million letters to people who are sitting at home in their
pajamas saying, why go to church when I can get it right here?
Remember, the blessings of church is being together as the people
of God. We can’t have a corporate worship
service without a body. Right? And so the reasons for
church, remember, throughout the scriptures are there. We
back up through the Bible into the book of Acts, which we have
been considering. We’re right now in the early part of Acts,
where the church is only at Jerusalem. But remember what Jesus told
his disciples, your ministry will spread the church from Jerusalem
to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth. And when he
said that, he had a vision of little old first ARP church at
2250 Saddle Club Road. our little small church from
a conservative Scottish denomination that has over 400 years of rich
doctrinal heritage and history. God had that in mind. And so
we walk through the scriptures and we go back into the Old Testament
and you have to think of God gathering his church when he
said to little old Abraham and Ur of the Chaldeans, up, leave
your idolatry, Leave your people, leave your family and go from
this place to a place I show you and we’ll give it to your
people. We have the beginnings of the people of Israel. And
so throughout the history of God’s people, God has called
us out of the world and he has put us in fellowship. He has
put us in covenant with other people to worship him and to
walk before him and be blameless as God had said to Abraham. Remember when Abraham had gathered
his basically village, those of you who are with us on Wednesday
night when we’re studying Genesis, Abraham probably had about 3000
people in his household. God says to Abraham, in order
to mark out your family for the covenant of God, you shall circumcise
every male. And so there’s this day where
he does just that. When Isaac is born later, circumcise
on the eighth day, we walk back through the scriptures and see
throughout the people of God, throughout the people, of God’s
choosing, he initiates a relationship. He gives them a sign marking
their entrance into the covenant community. It was circumcision
in the old covenant, it’s baptism in the new. We’ll see plenty
of that as we make our way through the book of Acts. But God brings
into covenant. He brings into covenant with
his people. He brings people to himself through his covenant.
I want you to think through the seriousness of committing to God. when God
initiates a relationship. Remember in the story of Abraham,
God comes to Abraham and says, look, you’re my special guy.
I’ve called you out of paganism. I’ve called you out of the world.
I’ve called you into covenant with me. Let’s have a covenant
cutting ceremony. So Abraham takes a few animals,
he cuts them in half. And the tradition back in those
days was to walk between the two halves of the sacrificed
animal. And in this case, God would walk through with Abraham
through this covenant keeping ceremony. Well, remember Abraham
falls asleep and it’s not because he got bored in church. No, God
put Abraham to sleep and God manifest himself as a smoking
pot. That has serious cultural connotations
when I say that I just revealed. As does when I read Call the
Midwives, which I’ll catch that, and when I read Exodus 1. I think
through all kinds of things when I’m up here. But God himself,
through that smoking pot, walked through the sacrifice while Abraham
slept. Well, did Abraham keep up his end of the covenant? No. But what did God say? He said
in that action, you are a covenant breaker. I’m a covenant keeper.
Let it be to me as it was done to this animal. If I do not keep
covenant with you and what God was saying is Abraham, you can’t
keep covenant, but I myself, God will be the covenant keeper
and it will cost the life of my son. to make and keep covenant
with you forever. And so one of the reasons for
church membership is we see God’s relationship with his people
and he covenants with them and they covenant with him. And so
we see the importance of identifying with the people of God. We see
the importance of covenant cutting, vow taking, vow keeping, coming
to God, him coming to us and us covenanting with one another,
reasons for church membership. How about the rights of church
membership? What’s in it for me, you say. I want to encourage you by saying
this, we live in a day of a very high level of false Christianity.
In my generation, as I’ve grown up, I’ve seen the church say
this, you just come as you are. You come to church like it’s
Burger King. Have it your way. You come to church like it’s
McDonald’s. You can get anything you want
on the menu, and as long as you’re happy, happy meal, right? Church
is good. There are rights and there are
privileges to being the people of God, but disciples are made,
and they are not made on their terms. They’re made on God’s
terms. Remember the Great Commission?
Go into all the world, make disciples, baptizing the name of the Father,
Son, and the Holy Spirit. We live in a day and age where
church says, oh, baptism is optional. Not if Christ instituted it,
not if Christ commanded it. And so we need to recognize the
rights of church members. I had an elder at a church I
served years ago who used to say this, it’s harder to be a
member of the Kiwanis club than it is to be a member of the church.
You miss four Kiwanis meetings, you’re out. Better go try to
join the Lions and hope they hadn’t talked to each other.
Right. It’s harder to be in the Kiwanis club, but we we haven’t
is our little church here does seven vows of membership. Do
you believe you’re a sinner and need Jesus? Do you believe the
Bible is true? Do you believe that the doctrines
and the principles of our denomination are founded on the word of God
and necessary for the building up of your soul into salvation
and to see you safely home to heaven? Will you submit to the
government and discipline of the church? Will you love the
rest of the church by covenanting here and giving them your gifts
and graces and contributing to the material needs of the church?
Will you live life in such a way that the world will know you’re
a Christian and the light of the gospel will continue to spread
throughout the world? We have this serious covenant
we make when we join the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. But
remember what I told you about my college years, what are college
boys afraid of? They’re afraid of the C word
commitment. And that’s very true in today’s world. We’re very
afraid of commitment. But guess what? We’re like those
college boys. We want the benefits. And you know what I mean? We
want the benefits, but no commitment. We want the benefits of relationships,
but no commitment. And so many are living in God’s
church this way in the world. And I want to say part of it
is because the church has allowed it. Oh, you come as you are.
You come when you can. You do church on your terms.
You do church your way. You make church like a happy
meal. And as long as you’re happy, guess what? We’re happy. Well,
friends, Christ has called us to so much more as he calls us
out of the world and into his covenant community. We need to
bind ourselves to the church. We need to submit ourselves to
the church. We need God’s name placed upon us in the waters
of baptism. We need pastoral care. And I
want to land on this for just a moment. You remember in the
old covenant, when God made priests to serve his people, he put a
breastplate on these priests. And what was on the name? What
was on the breastplate? It was the names of the tribes
of Israel. And so when you are a member
of this church, this local congregation, your names are on my chest. They’re
on Jay’s chest, they’re on Bill’s chest, they’re on Jim’s chest.
Our session meetings are designed to govern the church, yes, but
to pray for you and to inquire about your spiritual well-being. And it’s our job to make sure
that you are growing in grace and going to safely arise in
heaven. You know, there’s a little phrase
in a lot of churches today, and I don’t mean any disrespect if
some of you have come from this background, But it’s this idea
of connecting people to the church. And when you hear this idea of
connecting people to the church, you’re connecting them to work
in the nursery. You’re connecting them to sit at the sound booth.
You’re connecting them to sweep and to mop. You’re connecting
them to do a lot of things. And yes, sometimes connecting
them to teaching Sunday school and doing other things. You know
what I want to connect you to here? Not a chore list. We do
need some help. And if you have an area you want
to help, we’ll take you. but we wanna connect you to the
word of the living God. Jesus says, I am the vine and
you are the branches. Abide in me and you will flourish. You will be strengthened. And
one of the things you get well in the life of a church like
ours is pastoral care. It’s first proactive through
biblical discipleship and teaching. And then when you get in the
weeds or get in trouble, we’re here to help. We’re a phone call
away. But the risen and seated and
interceding Savior, our great high priest, has given us his
word and he’s given us the church officers we have discussed in
recent weeks to serve, to oversee your souls and to make sure you
land safely on heaven’s shores. If you are not a member of a
local church, you don’t possess one vital thing. I know that
the argument can be made, well, I come, I give, I’m friends with
people, I sing the hymns, and you start listening to things
and saying, what is it that I don’t get? Well, here’s what you don’t
get. As a member of the Church of
Jesus Christ related to pastoral care, You get the rescue ministry
of Christ through his elders. We think of church discipline
often as very negative. No, church discipline first is
teaching you what’s right. Church discipline next is reclaiming
and rescuing. And if you are not a member of
our congregation, we cannot come to you and say in the name of
Jesus Christ, repent of your sins. We cannot say to you, you
stop the madness going on in your life. because that’s for
the place where you are a member to minister to you. You see,
church membership gives us the right, as many of you know who
have joined, it gives us the right to get in your business,
so to speak. Now, let me liken this to two medical conditions. Some of you may require the presence
of an EpiPen. You may have some medical condition
that requires in a certain medical emergency, you take an EpiPen
out and stick yourself and you’re back in business. If you are
not a member of the church, you don’t have the session as your
EpiPen. Some of you are heart patients and you carry in your
pocket a little bit of nitro, something like that. Your heart
starts acting a little funky. You don’t want to die on the
way to the hospital. So you pop those little things and they
work their magic. If you’re not a member of a local church, you
have no nitro for when your heart stops. And dear brothers and
sisters, if Jesus loves the church the way he does and provides
all these things for you, why would you not join? Why would
you not have these spiritual emergency rights and privileges? The word of God, the means of
grace, the sacraments, prayer, fellowship, all these wonderful
things. I want to suggest to you, if
you’re not a member of a local church, you are in grave spiritual
danger because Christ has not established the church and said,
it’s optional. Sit at home in your pajamas,
watch it on an iPad. He’s not given the church as
well. Two out of four Sundays is fine. No, remember the Sabbath day.
Keep it holy. It’s good for your soul. It’s
good for your growth and grace. Let’s think about responsibilities
of church members. It is your responsibility as
a member of a church to live a godly lifestyle. It is your
responsibility as a member of the church to bear witness outside
these doors that King Jesus rules in this place, but he also rules
in each of your hearts. It is a responsibility of the
church member, unless you are providentially hindered, and
that does not mean the eighth trip to the beach, the 12th trip
to the mountains, or boy, it’s sunny today, isn’t it? Has golf
crossed your mind? I bet it has, or sticking your
toes in the sea. But unless you are providentially
hindered, We should be like the early church people who were
steadfastly devoted to the apostles’ teaching, to the ministry of
the word, to the breaking of bread, and to not forsaking the
assembling together and to having Christ-like devotion to one another. Think about this for a moment.
Christ is so devoted to his people, he went to the cross. How devoted
are you to Christ’s people? with whom you have identified.
We have rights as church members, but dear brothers, we have responsibilities. Dear sisters, we owe each other
our gifts and our graces. And so show up. Give one another
your gifts and graces. I want you to think of this for
a moment. We love Hebrews, was it chapter 12? There’s the great
cloud of witnesses up there and they’re cheering us on, you know,
come on, Saint, come on, Saint, make it, make it, make it. You’re
running the race of faith. Make it, make it, make it. We
love that great cloud of witnesses. The loved one’s gone before us
in heaven. We love that. But what about
on Sunday when you habitually absent yourself from the church
and everybody’s looking for you and saying, I was hoping to encourage
this person today. And I was hoping to encourage
that person today. But where were they? You couldn’t
be the local cloud of witnesses. We owe each other our presence.
We owe each other our gifts, our graces, our hellos. You might
not believe this, but we owe each other our singing. Isn’t
it wonderful on a Sunday when there’s more voices? Isn’t it
sweeter on Sunday when there’s a louder Lord’s prayer and a
robust affirmation of faith? You’re like, these are my people,
right? This is a wonderful thing. I want to tell you something
else about the responsibilities of church members. When you read
the new Testament, the new Testament is in the you plural of the y’all,
right? When we read something and we
see the word you, in our English language minds, we should say,
is that a you singular or a you plural? But we’re very selfish
people, so what do we always think? Well, it’s about me, right? But when you read Paul’s letter
to the Ephesians, or Paul’s letter to the Philippians, or Peter’s
letter to the scattered exiles across Asia Minor, those are
y’alls. When I’m preaching to you, it’s
a y’all. And so when you say, well, I
don’t need to be there today, There’s one less y’all in the room. And so we can’t obey the one
another commands. For example, we can’t obey the
collective corporate commands of being the church of Jesus
Christ when we don’t take our responsibilities seriously. And you think about church for
a moment. I know I’m a step on a toe or two here and I really
don’t ask for forgiveness. I’m the pastor. So I can, I can
stomp here and there. When you don’t show up, Or when
you walk in late and people never see you, you’re not at Sunday
evening prayer time and you say, Hey, y’all, I’m here today. Put
me on the prayer list. You know what my response is?
Why don’t you come on Sunday night and put yourself on the
prayer list and let us lay hands on you. Is that not a more godly
and fitting responsibility of the covenant community? And I’m
not saying we won’t pray for you if you’re not there at the
prayer meeting, but do you begin to see how a wholly separate, called
out people living a devoted, steadfast life together will
flourish and the world watching will say, I think I wanna be
part of that. But when the church becomes so worldly, it fits in
our schedules, sometimes it doesn’t. People begin to wonder, is it
harder to be a Kiwanis? Is it harder to be a lion? Is
it harder to be in this other social club or this other type
fraternity, so to speak? I want us to think lastly about
the rights of church members, not the R-I-G-H-T-S, but the
R-I-T-E-S. And I want to begin by apologizing
to our most recent church members. You know, we kind of bring you
up and say, Hey, this is Susie, Bob, and she’s a new member.
Y’all be sure to shake hands. I found, I ran across a little
ceremony for introducing church members and I want to begin to
use it. And I forgot to bring it with
me. And some of you are probably glad because the hour is getting
late and you know, I would read it, but it’s basically stands the people
up in front of the church and says, so-and-so has declared
themselves for the name of Jesus. And if they’re baptized, how
much more special is that? And we ask them the vows of church
membership and before you and before God and before the elders,
they give their vows in assent to, I will adhere to the doctrine
of the church. I will live out the doctrine
of the church. I will let you get involved in my life when
my life does not match the doctrine of the church. And you say, I
will proclaim the doctrine of the church out in the world for
all to see and hear that they may come to faith in Jesus Christ.
And then we make this statement, you dear sister, you dear brother
have all the rights. And the privileges of being in
the family of God, the household of faith, the church of Jesus
Christ. We want to begin doing that in
the next time. So whoever’s next, you’re going
to, you’re going to get special treatment and we’ll throw in
some fruit cake or something like that. But I want you to think very
seriously about the rights of church membership. You get to
come to the worship. You get to come to the preaching.
You get to come to the sacraments. You get to come to the prayer
and the fellowship and to the to the suffering. You go through
the suffering. We go through that together.
I want you to think about the Lord’s Supper for a minute. We’ll
come to the table today. And there’s something I must
always say at the beginning of the Lord’s Supper. This is the Lord’s
table, and he invites all who profess faith in Jesus and have
been baptized. You don’t necessarily have to
be a member of this church, but you need to be a member in good standing
of another church, because why? We don’t admit to the table those
who are not members, those who have not made a public profession
of faith in Jesus. You can’t come to the table.
Christ prohibits that, and so we can’t unprohibit what he prohibits. But you may come from another
church where your church leaders have said, in order to reclaim
you from sin, you may not come to the Lord’s table. And we’re
supposed to honor that as well. And so you see the connection
between church membership and the rights, the rituals of the
church of Jesus Christ, the realities of our vertical relationship,
our relationship with God ought to match the realities of our
horizontal relationships with one another. If we say we love
God, then we must love his church and we must covenant with his
church. We must commit to his church. You know, in today’s
time, the world has said to people, well, church, church, church,
church is on your terms. You just come as you are. We’ve,
we’ve said enough of this already. Um, but the church is depriving you.
of that special covenant right, that special covenant commitment.
And in fact, we’re showing contempt to the commands of Jesus when
we don’t press you to baptism, when we don’t press you to church
membership. We’re saying, yeah, Jesus is
the head of the church, but not today. We’re going to rewrite
his bylaws. We’re gonna do this our way,
because we wanna be a little more kind and friendly and that
sort of thing. But I want you to think about
this. Jesus, the head of the church, if he has brought you
here, he has providentially placed you here. Our warts and all. He has providentially put you
here with this pastor, these elders, and these people, and
it’s for your growth and grace. And the fifth commandment, the
commandment to honor and respect those who are in authority over
us, the challenge there in our, Larger catechism says we should
reverence and honor those over us. We should honor them. We
should imitate them. We should obey them. We should submit to
them, but we should pray for them. And when we commit to one
another, we commit to what God in Christ Jesus has ordained
and providentially placed here. This is a special place where
God has put you to grow. So what kind of church member
are you? Are you a tire kicker? Or are you committed to Christ
people as Christ is committed to you? Pray with me. Our Lord, we thank you so much.
That you call us by name. That you rescue us from darkness,
that you redeem us from our sin and from our lawless lawlessness,
and that you put us in a company of saints in order that we might
grow in grace. This is a a traveling band, if
you will. This is a group of pilgrims making
our way from Babylon to Jerusalem. Oh Lord, there’s strength in
numbers. There’s fellowship along the way. There’s so many wonderful
things, and we praise you, Almighty God, for seeing fit to construct
your church, not with bricks and stones, but with living stones. And that person by person, you
are building up your church as you gather your elect and you
will bring us all one day into your heavenly presence. Lord,
you love your church much. Let us love your church much. Help us, we need your strength.
For we have become so worldly, we have become so noncommittal. And we pray now that as we come
to your Lord’s table that we would see most clearly you love
your church with an everlasting love, with a deep love, a committed
love, a love that will never let us go. We ask for your help
and grace to see these things to be so and to put them into
practice in our lives. Hear us and help us in Jesus
name. Amen.