Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Local Church Matters | New Testament | Acts 2

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

God didn't create you to be alone. God created you for community. In today's episode, Keith explains the church in Acts 2 and explains the importance of the local church and its community. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Acts 2

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell tells the strange story of Christopher Langen. Christopher Langen was a genius with a staggering IQ of 195. Now, just for a little perspective, Einstein's IQ was 150. During high school, Langen could ace any foreign language test by skimming the textbook in two to three minutes before the exam. In other words, he's the kid you just didn't like in school because school came so easy

for him. He got a perfect score on his SAT, even though at one point during the test, he fell asleep. Langen grew up poor with parents that didn't really know how to support him. According to Gladwell, Langen never had the ability to relate to other people, and so he never had a community in his life to help him capitalize on his gifts. Langen failed to use his exceptional gifts and ended up working on a horse farm. Gladwell summarizes the story of Christopher Langen in one sentence. He says Langen had to make his own way alone. And no one, not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires,

and not even geniuses ever make it alone. I think we can add to Malcolm Gladwell's list. No one, not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, not geniuses. And here's what I want to add, not Christians ever make it alone. own. God didn't design us to live the Christian life alone. Yesterday we started through the book of Acts on TMBT. Acts was written by Luke. Together, the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts make up about 28% of the New Testament. Just to put that in perspective, all of Paul's letters make up only 24% of the New Testament. My point is that Luke and Acts together are long and important books. The Gospels tell us how

Jesus started the church, Acts tells us how he grew the church. Acts is short for Acts of the apostles. While the apostles, or at least some of them, get starring roles in the book, a better title would be Acts of the Holy Spirit. Luke makes it clear that the Holy Spirit is working to grow the church in both breadth and depth. In Acts chapter 2, we see Peter preaching to the crowds in Jerusalem. And that's pretty amazing, considering that only 50 days earlier, Peter had committed the greatest denial of Jesus in history. Remember that Peter told Jesus that he'd never leave him, but of course he denied Jesus after he was arrested. Now only 50 days later, and Peter is given the first sermon recorded in the Book of Acts. It's a reminder that God uses broken people. And if God uses broken

people, he will even use you and me. Peter wasn't talking to a friendly crowd. Earlier, these same people had yelled to crucify Jesus, and that's exactly what Rome and the Jewish leaders had done. It seemed like everything was over. But here we are a few weeks later, and Peter's preaching, and thousands of people are coming to faith. Here's chapter 2, verse 37. Peter's words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and the other apostles, brothers, what should we do? Peter tells them to repent or turn from their sin and toward faith in Jesus. And then he reminds them that the promise of forgiveness is for everyone. So verse 41 says those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day, about 3,000 in all. Now notice that the Bible isn't afraid to tell

us the number of people that came to faith. Sometimes Christians get weirded out by numbers, as if it's wrong to use numbers or to care about numbers. Now, I think it's important to say that sometimes people can fall into the opposite trap and think that just because there are big numbers, everything is okay. I realize that numbers can create spiritual pride or spiritual discouragement. Numbers can mess with motivation, and churches might see numbers instead of people. It's true that numbers can be misused and take the focus off Jesus. But I assume that God knows all that, and right here in the Book of Acts, It tells us that 3,000 people came to faith and were baptized.

Even with all the reasons to be cautious about numbers, Luke uses them. There are probably a few reasons that he does, but I think one reason is because behind each number is a person God loves. Each number represents a person whose life God is changing. Notice also that this is a big church. I mean, by current definitions, the Jerusalem Church was a mega church. I mentioned that because some people think that big churches are bad. In the New Testament, you see larger churches and smaller churches. The Bible doesn't say that the size of the church is either good or bad,

so big churches are not better or worse than smaller churches. The key for every church is to keep the focus on Jesus and obeying Him. But now put yourself back in the Apostles' place. 3,000 people have just started following Jesus. What are you going to do with them? Remember that Jesus had told you to go out and make disciples of all the nations. So how do you do that? What the apostles did is put these people in community.

Here's how it is described in Acts 2. The people who had believed in Jesus devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the Apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. they sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,

praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who are being saved. So in other words, in response to all these people coming to faith in Christ, what the apostles did was start churches. The people started meeting together, but this wasn't only a social club. They were devoted to the Apostle's teaching, to fellowship, to prayer, to financial giving, and communion. I think people today are suspicious of becoming members of churches.

We live in an anti-institutional age, and so it's easy for us to criticize institutions and to not trust them. And I get it. Churches and other institutions have done things that you can understand why people don't trust them. And yet, Jesus established the church. The apostles called people to be connected to the church. Jesus loves the church. He calls the church his bride. He died for the church. And I think the New Testament tells us that it is really important for all of us to be committed, serving, giving, and members of our local church. Let me tell you a few reasons that membership and commitment to a local church matter.

The first reason is that the church is God's plan to make you more like him. Right? In a strange kind of way, God wants to transform you to be more Christ-like in the context of your church. Now, I get it that church is full of sinners, unkind, selfish, unmerciful, immoral, gossipy, angry, controlling, dishonest, power-hungry sinners. I get it. But you know what? You are a sinner too. and so am I. There's no such thing as a perfect church because there's no such thing as a perfect

Christian. But somehow God puts us imperfect sinners together in a community and then uses those people to make us more like Jesus. Sometimes it's in the conflict. Sometimes it's in the pain that we become more like him. We become the people he wants us to be. The second reason you should be a member of a church, is that God has a worldwide mission, and he needs his whole body to work together to accomplish it. Paul tells every Christian that he or she is part of the body of Jesus. We are his heart, his hands, his feet, his eyes. A hand is useless without a body, but with a body, a hand can do amazing things. Jesus wants to use you, but you won't be useful if you're on your own. A third reason we should be a part of a church is that our loving commitment to others

shocks and attracts people to Jesus. Did you notice in Acts 2 it says that as the people lived in connected sacrificial community, more people were coming to faith in Jesus? There's something about that loving, committed, sacrificial community that is magnetic. It draws people to Christ. In our individualistic culture, we tend to be committed to something as long as it's good for us. But when we serve other people, when we put other people's interests ahead of our own, not only do we become more like Jesus, but we form the kind of community that other people want to be a

part of. Another reason to be a part of a church is because accountability is good for us. I know we don't like to be accountable. I know we like to live kind of behind a facade that we put up, but it is good for other people to know us. It is good for other people to call us out in a loving, helpful, kind way. We need other people to help us see our sin in our own life and to help us grow. Remember the proverb says that the wounds of a friend are a gift. Did you know that you can't obey God's will for your life a part of being a part of a community, a part of being a part of the church that God created? All the New Testament letters were written, to Christian communities, not to individuals. There are dozens of one another passages that can't be

obeyed except inside of one of those communities. We're to love one another, serve one another, encourage one another, and the list goes on and on. The last reason I'll mention today about why it is important to be a part of a local church is because it is good for your friends, your spouse, your kids. See, when you become a member of a church, you're publicly declaring your allegiance to King Jesus. No one takes your commitment to Jesus seriously if you reject the king's bride. Jesus established the church, fills the church, loves the church, died for the church. Don't miss out on what God is doing inside the church.

If you're having trouble finding a solid church where you live, not a perfect church, because remember there aren't any perfect churches, but just a church that loves Jesus and preaches the Bible, Let us know. I can't make any promises, but we'll do our best to help you find a church in your community that you can be a part of. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week. It'll challenge you to grow in your faith, give you interesting background on today's passage, and a lot, lot more. Just click the link in the show notes to sign up. It'll help you deepen your journey with Jesus.