Hey everybody, welcome to Vita Springs.
If we've not met, my name is Gordon, one of the pastors here,
and I get to teach. Go ahead and open up your Bibles
to Acts 2, Acts 2, and I got a quick announcement that I want
to add. I help a lot with our youth, our
middle school and high school groups.
So an announcement for you. Middle school and high schoolers
are back to school fall party, even though that's been a couple
weeks ago. We are having a volleyball
cookout, 20 foot water slide all out there next week, free food,
volleyball water slide. And I texted a lot of your dad's
because all the families are invited.
And I said your kids need to be humbled and this is a good
chance to do it. And one of them responded back
right away, said, oh, I have a lot of ways to humble kids.
So anyway, I hope that you're there.
And then also middle school high schoolers, if you've got friends
you've been hoping would come to church with you, this is like
one of the easiest ways or things to invite them to come to
church with me next week and stick around after free food,
volleyball, 20 foot water slide. All right, all right now into
the teaching for today. We are in a series called Church
Anatomy One O 1. If you have taken a high school
anatomy class, most of you, except for the middle schoolers
in, in an anatomy, like a true anatomy class, you're getting a
foundational understanding of the body.
And whether you go to Med school or not, it's helpful because you
have a body and you're going to have a body for a while.
And so it's good to understand how it works and how it
functions best and what's going on.
Similar. If you're a Christian, whether
or not you ever like go into full time ministry or work at a
church, if you're a Christian, you're part of a body, the
church, and you're going to be in it for a while.
And so it's good to understand how it works, how it functions,
And then as parts of that body, what we're to do.
That's what we're going to be looking at a lot today.
So today we're actually able to go back to a picture of the
original church, the first group of people after Jesus.
So that's why we're in Acts 2. Some fun things about being able
to look at an original version. It's not always possible to look
at an original version, but when you look at an original version,
it's helpful because it offers a direct, unfiltered glimpse at
the creator's intent for that work.
If you think about a painting, if you think about a recipe, it
gives you a direct, unfiltered glimpse at the Creator's intent.
If you look at the original, we look at the original church, we
see that a direct, unfiltered glimpse at the the Creator's
intent for his church. How does Jesus want his church
to be? What are the key ingredients?
What are they to do? How are they to do them?
Those are some things I hope get answered today.
You know the term bread and butter, It's like this is our
bread and butter. It refers to like bread and
butter or things that most people have in the house
everyday, their everyday ordinary.
We're looking at an original church and we're looking at like
some bread and butter everyday, original things.
That just got me thinking about bread.
Some of you think about it random times throughout the day
too. My great grandma, I called her
mom, Mom. She made the best bread.
I came from Both sides of my family are Mennonite, which is
like right next to Amish. And they know how to build
things and they know how to cook things and they know how to cook
bread. And so my mom had the best bread
and I actually have the original recipe a family member put
together compiled like all these recipes from my family.
I could sell this for a lot of money today.
I bet my grandma my mom's bread recipes in there and it gives me
a original, direct, unfiltered glimpse at how bread was
supposed to be made. There's pictures in there,
there's recipes, there's details, there's directions for
how it was made. This shows us recipe for the
original church. So before I start reading
through the verses and teach, I want to, as is our norm, just
give us a couple moments to quiet our hearts, get away all
of our distracted thoughts and really prepare our hearts to
hear from God. That's what's that's what
happens when we open the Bible. And so after a few seconds of
that, then I'll read and we'll dig in.
All right, Acts 2, verse 42 And they devoted themselves to the
apostles, teaching, and the fellowship, to the breaking of
bread and the prayers, and all came upon every soul.
Many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles,
and all who believed were together and had all things in
common. They were selling their
possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all
as any had need. Day by day, attending the temple
together and breaking bread in their homes.
They received their food with glad and generous hearts,
praising God and having favor with all the people and the Lord
added to their number day by day.
Those who are being saved. Jesus, help us to hear from you
now. Give us ears to listen, help me
as I teach. And more than anything, I pray
you would build up our church, build up all the Christians
here, and build up the ones that are part of Vita.
We want to be strong and healthy.
We want to reach maturity. We want to become everything you
want us to be. And little by little, week by
week, day by day, you build us up into that.
So we look forward to what you're going to do on US today.
Amen. All right, So if we were to just
like jump into verse 42, we're missing a lot.
And so there's just a simple question that was coming to my
mind, which is, OK, this is the church.
We've been talking about the that the last two weeks, the
people of God. Now this is what they do.
But first, how, how do I get in? How do I get into the church?
What's the doorway not to the building, but what's the doorway
into Jesus's family? And if you look at chapter 1,
chapter 2 leading up to this, it answers it pretty simply.
We see also an original glimpse into how you get into Jesus's
church. So for sake of time, I'm just
going to do SparkNotes version. So one man came and he turned
the whole world upside down, Jesus Christ.
He transformed everything. He died, He rose, He came back
to life. And in chapter 1, you see him
talking to his 12 disciples, one man, then 12 disciples who are
radically transformed by Jesus. They heard his teaching, they
saw his life, they've received eternal life through trust in
Him. In chapter 1 you also see 120
people, and in addition to the 12 disciples, there's 120 people
that are all in a room devoted to prayer, waiting for Jesus's
promise of the Holy Spirit to be poured out on them.
Then in chapter 2, you've got 3000 people that heard the
spectacle of the Holy Spirit being poured out and in a in a
moment of curiosity and awe and confusion, Peter stands up and
preaches. They too hear about Jesus Christ
and they're transformed. And an excerpt from that in the
verses right before chapter 2, verse 40 and 41, it says and
with many other words, he, Peter bore witness to Jesus Christ and
continued to exhort them, saying, save yourselves from
this crooked generation. So those who received his word
were baptized and there were added that day about 3000 souls.
So now you've got 3120 people and they're gathering and
they're Christians, God's people.
Therefore you have the early church.
So to answer this first question, how do I get in?
What's the doorway into Jesus church?
Receive his words? Or I could say simply believe
and repent and then be baptized. So believe, repent, be baptized,
believe is assumed because you're not going to repent if
you don't believe these things. They believe that Jesus went to
the cross because of their sins. For many of them, they were in
the crowd that told Pontius Pilate, give us Barabbas crucify
Jesus. And they just believe that Peter
said that man that you sent to the cross is God, and he rose
again, and only through him can you come into the family of God.
They're devout Jews. The text tells us they're devout
Jews. They came for this holiday.
And they believe the words of Peter.
He's essentially telling them you're not in God's family.
You killed God. Actually, you're in the wrong.
For us today, we hear it as our sin.
Our sin is still what made Jesus have to go to the cross.
You believe and that's the only reason you would repent.
You believe that Jesus died. He rose.
Death could not hold him through.
Trust in him. He lets us come into God's
family and forgives us of our sin.
Romans 10/9 says because if you confess with your mouth that
Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him
from the dead, you will be saved.
Salvation by grace through faith.
Repent. Part of that is I'm saying I
can't live life the same way again.
Jesus transforms you. Repent is to turn directions.
I'm not going to live my life for myself anymore.
I'm not going to devote myself to the same things anymore.
Jesus, you're my Lord. My whole life is now yours.
Whatever you say goes, Believe, repent.
You're welcomed into God's family right then and there, not
once you get baptized right then and there, Salvation through
faith, you're in. But the first act of obedience
is baptism. That's the consistent message
from John the Baptist, which is caught, why he's called John the
Baptist. Repent and be baptized.
Jesus picks up the same message, and then the apostles and Peter
right here repent and be baptized.
And that's what the 3000 people are told to do.
Baptism is their symbolic entry into God's family.
They participate with Jesus as they are buried and their old
self is dead, their sin washed away, and their new self comes
out of the grave and they're clean, they're pure, they're
made new now they're children of God.
That is why we partake in baptism, because Jesus told us
to. It's our act of obedience and
because it's an incredible symbol of what Jesus does when
he saves us. The ordinances or these two
practices that Jesus tells us to do, baptism and Lord's Supper,
many call them visual sermons. That's what they are.
You watch them and it tells you a lot.
It's your symbolic entry into Jesus's family, the church.
It's also your first practical entry into a local church.
When we're talking about membership in the series at its
base, to be a member in the church, to be a member in God's
family, You've believed, you've repented, you've been baptized.
And then it's so fun to see like a tangible expression of that
when we baptize in a church service where you've got people
that go through that burial, resurrection.
And then you know what, my favorite, one of my favorite
parts is seeing them come out and then they go and start
hugging people like you guys envelope them and there's hugs
and there's tears and there's worship.
And it's an expression of them being added into God's family.
So a quick thing for any of you who you've not trusted in Jesus,
you're not yet in the family of God, believe, repent, and be
baptized. Now some of you, you are in
God's family. You've believed and repented.
You've not been baptized. This is the first simplest thing
that Jesus asks you to do. I, I heard one pastor said it
this way, The easiest thing Jesus ever asked you to do is to
get in the water. So really practically, if you're
interested in that, it might just be as simple as I'm not
sure where I'm at, but I just want to talk.
I want to have a place where I can ask questions or you can
explain things or or maybe you're confident and you're in
and I need to be baptized. Here's what you do.
Your program has AQR code. It says new here, scan that,
fill out our welcome card. And in the bottom line it says
interested in just say I'm interested in baptism and one of
our pastors will reach out. We would love to talk with you
more about that. And our hope is that in the
coming weeks, this fall, we can do a baptism service again.
All right, so that's how I get into Jesus's church.
Now our verses, what do we do as members of God's family?
Verse 42, they devoted themselves.
Pause. We're really quick to just
jumping the task. Give me the formula.
What am I supposed to do? I want rules before any of that.
Just they devoted. I want to make a point here
because that's uncommon today, but this was common.
This was bread and butter for the early Christians.
This is just what they did. They devoted that word devote.
It actually means to continue steadfastly in a thing, to
continue steadfastly in a thing, or to give unremitting care to
and more definitions to continue steadfastly to endure, to
persist, to keep going. There is no such thing at well,
hopefully you'll understand what I mean.
To devote to something for a little bit, that may be what our
word devote means. That's not what this word devote
means. This means to continue
steadfastly unremitting is to continue with the same strength,
to not weaken. So this is like a captain going
down with the ship, continuing steadfastly unremitting.
This is a marathon runner making it to the finish line at a
steady pace, not limping or crawling.
That's devotion for Christians, for disciples now as a kind of,
by the way, a group of devoted people is not a pipe dream and
it's not a fairy tale like something you only hear in
movies or books. It's not a fairy tale like
something was special about these disciples way back then.
That's unrealistic for us today. It's not a pipe dream.
It's not a fairy tale. You've got people that devote
all the time yesterday on a football field for a sport you
had, I looked it up for all of college football.
You have 15,900 and 6018 to 24 year old men who devote
themselves to a sport. Devotion is not a fairy tale.
I was also looking up, I was thinking of other ways that
people devote. You have approximately
16,000,000 living Americans who have served in the military,
living Americans. That's a 16,000,000 who have
devoted, sacrificed for, continued steadfastly under
emitting to A cause to their country or to a sport or to a
hobby. And you could think of lots of
ways that people devote. So devotion in and of itself is
not a not a fairy tale. It's not unrealistic for us
today. You devote to what you love and
you devote to what you deem is important.
Think about Jesus as disciples. There are many practices that we
see in the life of Jesus that we want to adopt.
And that's right. Like we want to pray because
Jesus prayed. We want to be in community.
Jesus was in community, but have you thought about the
characteristic of devotion that's in Jesus?
We're going to imitate that, too.
Jesus was devoted to his task unremittingly.
He did not weaken or lose strength.
He continued steadfastly till the end for the joy that was set
before him. He endured the cross.
He went all the way for his task.
You devote to what you love. He loves his people, He loves
his church, and you devote to what's important.
The local church is important. God's family, creation, being
redeemed, people coming in is important.
As disciples, we imitate Jesus because he devoted to us, as
orphans, you could say, freed from sin, adopted into a family
because of Jesus's unremitting care to us.
We love him and we devote ourselves back to him.
His church is the most I mean, we're doing the most important
work ever. And I might sound extreme to
some of you, but I hope you'll be convinced by the end of the
series. The church is the most important
entity doing the most important work there is.
We devote to what we love. We devote to what we deem as
important. Now, devotion in and of itself
is not enough. And like a recipe, there's some
like main ingredients, but you got to mix some stuff together.
So devotion plus I'm going to add two things, devotion plus
heart and devotion in the right things.
Devotion in of of itself is how you get a devout person.
That's where that word comes from, Devout to devote to.
You have a lot of devout athletes, you have a lot of
devout patriot soldiers. You have a lot of the devout
religious people. That in and of itself not enough
for the full recipe for the original church.
You devote with heart. That's what any coach wants and
his players, they don't just want hours, they don't just want
drills. They want heart.
And that's what any commander would want is heart.
And that's what Jesus wants. It's not just that you do all
these things. He wants your heart.
And you can't just devote with heart to just anything.
A lot of people do that. You can get a trophy from a
football championship. You don't get to take that with
you. It's not going to last.
But you devote with heart to the right things.
You have a lot to show for your life and your devotion.
Growing up in a church. I grew up in a church my whole
life. One of our new families, their
babies like a week and a half old.
They were here last week with a three day old.
That was pretty much me. I grew up in church.
I was there every Sunday. My both my parents at different
times worked for the church full time.
My mom still does now. It was important.
I saw my grandparents serving. I saw my parents serving just
about every day. I heard my pastor saying
multiple times the local church is the hope of the world and I
believed it. It resonated with me and I saw
it in my parents and those I looked up to.
And so I always knew I deemed it important.
And so church was always just part of my life as a Christian.
I got that when I added the ingredient of doing you devote
to what you love. When I really loved Jesus, like
something in my heart opened up and I knew why I was doing all
these things. It was different, it was
wonderful, it's joy, it's joyful for me and I know my devotion.
At the end of my life, I'll look back and say I'm glad I chose to
devote my whole life to that. And I'm not just saying because
I'm a full time minister. That's what it looks like.
There's a lot of you who devote to Jesus, Church, his people and
to Him, and you'll have a lot to show at the end of your life.
You'll look back and be glad you did.
The original, unfiltered example of the early church calls for
steadfast, unremitting, devoted disciples now devoting to the
right things. There's four things in the text
we'll see. Look at voice, the rest of verse
42. They devoted themselves to the
apostles, Apostles teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking
of bread and the prayers, the apostles teaching, number one.
They devoted themselves to the teachings of Jesus and the
teachings of the apostles. The apostles were eyewitnesses
of Jesus, sent out to proclaim what he said in the Gospel
message. The word apostle just means
sent. So they devoted themselves to
the teaching of the apostles. The apostles appointed by God,
chosen by him to carry out this message, meant that the words
they were speaking were not man's words.
They were divinely inspired words from the mouth of God.
Because they heard it from Jesus himself, God, or because the
Holy Spirit inspired them in their teaching, they laid out
sound truth, pure truth. Not myths, not made-up stuff,
not opinions. Second, Peter, one of the
apostles, writes in chapter 1, verse 16.
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known
to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But we were eyewitnesses of His Majesty.
They just told him what they saw, told him what they heard.
Now as we think about this being devoted to the apostles
teachings, I would broaden the apostles teaching and label it
just simply a scripture for us today.
The apostles looked at the Old Testament and saw it as the word
of God and regularly pulled from it, plus Jesus's teachings, the
Gospels, and then the apostles teachings, they're preserved and
recorded their letters and books and the teachings are right here
and that's the New Testament. So to devote ourselves to sound
teaching to Scripture, Old Testament, Gospels, new, I would
say this is what it looks like for us today.
First, John 224 says, let what you heard from the beginning
abide in you. If what you heard from the
beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son
and in the Father. Now, if we think about it like
this, they're devoting themselves to sound teaching.
And I would say the take away here is as disciples of Jesus,
we devote ourselves to Scripture, the original
unfiltered sound, pure, main and plain gospel message and
inspired Word of God as taught by the apostles.
We don't come up with their own myths or opinions.
We don't veer or stray. We go back to what is inspired
by God, true sound, lasting forever, and remember that word
devote. What it means is to continue
steadfastly to abide in what we heard from the beginning to give
unremitting care to this that we don't weaken or shrink.
Instead we grow and strengthen in our devotion to truth, to
scripture. I want to I want to do some
corporate application. I'll call it we application
because these are things that we must do with this.
This is a picture of the church and this point for the early
church to devote themselves to the apostles teaching.
That means that I cannot get us there.
We're talking about Vita Springs and us looking like this church.
I cannot get us there. You cannot get us there, but we
can get us there. So what do we do with this?
We are to continue steadfastly in the simple, clear, original,
true gospel message and teachings of Jesus.
What we see in the Bible. We are as a local church, we the
pastors and teachers and who the people we, we are to guard this,
to hold each other accountable. You are to call like to hold me
accountable that if I start straying or I start veering or
you sniff something out that's funky, it's twisted.
You have to confront me about it.
We have to guard this. Usually we listen to these
things. It's kind of individually, like
I have to devote myself to reading more Bible.
That's good, but I think here this is a call for we to guard
this and continue as a church being devoted to Scripture.
If any part of the body starts veering, we will lovingly and
truthfully bring them back in or try our hardest to.
You know, in the Galatian church, the Galatians get a
letter written to them because they are veering from the gospel
message. And you know who's held
accountable? Who Paul writes the letter to,
you foolish Galatians, That's who it's written to, not you
foolish teachers, you foolish elders, you foolish Galatians.
And he calls them back to the original, main and plain, simple
scripture, truth, gospel, in order to be a healthy church
that honors Jesus, in order to get as close to the original as
we can. We're responsible to guard this.
We're just responsible to guard each other.
This is an essential ingredient found in the early church.
Now a question I'll just let you ponder.
How will you know if I'm telling you something wrong?
And how will you know if your friend starts believing
something untrue? And how will you withstand all
of the other teachings and your other 166 hours a week?
I'll leave you to ponder it. The number two practice we see
in this early church, they devote themselves to fellowship.
That word means to share with, to partner, to be together.
And we actually see it in some of these verses, a picture of
what fellowship looks like. So go to verse 44.
All who believed were together and had all things in common and
they were selling their possessions and belongings and
distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.
Day by day, attending the temple together, breaking bread in
their homes. They received their food with
glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor
with all the people. This is a beautiful picture of
community. It's one of the the things that
most eyes see when you read through.
This is why because it's shocking.
You have 3120 people and earlier it tells us they're all from
different, like nationalities, they're all from different
languages. And now you've put them all
together in a community and they're all getting together.
They had all things in common. They were giving things to
strangers that they didn't know weeks prior.
Beautiful picture of togetherness, fellowship and
this original church. You see all kinds of partnership
and fellowship. If you look at the verses and
pay attention, you see first literal sharing that word
fellowship to share. You see literal fellowship as
they're giving material possessions and they're giving
it cheerfully, voluntarily, because others in their body had
need. They're simply, you could say,
living out the second command that Jesus gave them.
Love one another as yourself. Love one another as I loved you.
They're just doing that. They're not loving themselves.
They're not preferring themselves.
They're saying this is what I would do if I needed.
This is what I would want if I needed something.
Here you go. Jesus shared with them.
Jesus participated with them. He partnered with them to the
point that he withheld nothing from them.
And So what are material possessions?
You see a picture of believers. Aside from literal sharing, you
also see a picture of believers in each other's homes, sharing
meals, having experiences together, worshipping and
praising together. You see them attending the
temple together, day by day, Verse 46.
And that word attending, It's the same word for devotion.
They're continuing steadfastly. I read 111 Way of Reading this
literally would be day by day, continuing steadfastly with one
mind in the temple. They're not just attending
church together, they're continuing steadfastly with one
mind day by day in their House of worship.
They're doing it together. So on a material level, on a
physical level, they're eating together, on a spiritual level,
they have one mind, They're unified in Jesus Christ.
They share the most important things, different languages,
different colour skins, different ages, different
backgrounds. Jesus Christ transformed them.
If you reread verse 44 again, like just read it slow, all who
believed were together and had all things in common.
You don't have to jump there, but I'm going to jump there.
Just a couple chapters later. Chapter 2, chapter 4, verse 32,
it says now the full number of those who believed were of 1
heart and soul. It's not a good way of putting
it. They're of 1 heart and soul.
I would say when you look at fellowship, what you're really
looking at is family. If this kind of fellowship
doesn't seem normal for you, maybe it also feels like a fairy
tale. We don't have a problem with
sharing. You do it for your own family.
This is normal in a biological family, and I know some of you
had difficult families that weren't like this, but in its
design, that's what the family supposed to be.
You share with each other. You have meals together when a
family members down, you lift them up when they have lack and
you have more, you don't withhold.
And so now you're invited to come into the family of God and
look around your brothers and sisters.
Really look around. You think I'm joking?
That's your brother and that's your sister.
That's your spiritual father. That's your spiritual mother or
your daughter or your son. If you're a Christian, you've
been adopted in the God's family and you treat them like family.
And when you have the privilege of being able to be a member in
a local church, those are your brothers and sisters.
When they have a need and you're able to give it, you share.
When you think about how to spend your time, who do you want
to spend your time with the most?
Again, I know some of you didn't have perfect families.
You don't like your siblings, but still it's important that
you're together whether you like it or not.
Whether you like it or not, they're your brothers and
sisters. And so you got to go to reunions
and you got to come to family dinner and you got to do chores
and pitch in. This is that's what I see when I
see the fellowship. I just see family as the church,
the family of God. The Creator's original intent is
that we would share with each other on multiple levels, not
just the 10 church together. Jesus is making us into a family
through committed partnership, fellowship, sharing with a group
of brothers and sisters. A heavenly family so take away.
As disciples of Jesus, we devote ourselves to sharing with one
another, to partnering, to fellowshipping.
I can't force you to, but I hope when you see how special it is
that Jesus would invite you into his family, that you would
choose to. And when you look around at each
other, you wouldn't see differences.
You would see that person Jesus also chose and that person Jesus
also loved. And whether I like it or not,
they're my brother and sister. No matter our differences, no
matter quirks, skin color, politics, age, no matter their
sin, I'm committed to you and you're committed to me.
Till death do us part, we'll end up in different churches.
I get that. But we're part of the family of
God. And when death does his part, I
guess we'll still be family, huh?
Now a little devotion disclaimer.
Disclaimer because I think this is something we should all
acknowledge. Realize being in a family is
easier said than done, huh? If it were simple, every local
church would still be like this. In Acts 2 you have unity and
Acts 4 you have unity and Acts 6 you have disunity.
Just read and a lot of the letters written in the New
Testament are to correct our disunity.
Many, many, many, many chapters later in 2025, we still have
Christians who we haven't achieved this, but I would just
call you to as long as Jesus is reigning, He's devoted to his
body and making it, making us into his family.
He's devoted to us. Let's devote with them to each
other. If you've been burned by a
church before, I'm sorry. Don't give up on the church.
Find a good church and devote to those people.
If you're new to this, I'm just warning you, there's bumps.
Stick with it, and if you've been at it for a while, I'd say
just in general for all of us, it's a joyful, fulfilling,
special thing to be a part of Jesus's family.
I've, like I said, I've always loved the church.
Oh, I'm sorry guys, I'm going along.
I got to speed this up. You're with me though.
I can tell when I was, I told you I grew up in the church and
I've always loved the local church.
And I had a moment a couple weeks ago where, you know, when
crisis happens, that's when you really like feel it the most,
either when you don't have support and community or when
you do. And in my case, I did and I felt
it. I had home stuff, house leak.
There were there were worries about money, there were worries
about where do we stay while it's being fixed.
And we had people that had us over for meals and gave us a
room for like 3 or 4 weeks that we could stay in, plus our two
little girls. And we had people checking in
always asking is there any way I can help?
When you need to start doing demo or remodel, just call me.
And they did. I did and they came and helped.
There was 1 moment in particular though, where when I was at my
lowest, some of you heard the story at our Discipleship
community event a while, a couple weeks ago when I was at
my lowest, there was one night in particular I called a friend
and it was one of those moments where before I just wanted to
scream and cry, which you've had those moments, right?
You just want to scream and cry. It's like I shouldn't, I won't
tell you if I screamed or cried or not, but I did end up calling
somebody. I said I could just use some
encouragement. Here's what's happening.
And they spoke truth to me. They reminded me of God's
promises. They told me it's going to be
OK. And I literally felt my like
spirit lift, like it snapped off.
I wasn't discouraged anymore. I felt faith.
It'll all work out. It's not that big of a deal.
And after that, there were moments, I think all of the ways
that the local church cared for me, the family cared for me,
they partnered with me. After all of that, I said, you
know what? This is all in my head on a
random drive through town. I'm in love with the local
church. I don't just love the local
church, I'm in love with the local church.
You know the moment when with your significant other, you go
from loving them to being in love with, it's like, I like
you, I love you, and then, man, I couldn't live without you.
I'm in love with you. I couldn't live without the
local church. I couldn't live without you
guys. I'm in love with you.
I hope all of you get to experience that.
And just quick plug, if you're not a member at Vita, but you
love Vita and you want to be a part of this church, we have a
membership series coming up October 19th.
So keep your ears peeled for that and I hope you'll join.
Maybe you're already in God's family, but I hope you'll join
this local church family. And if not, there are so many
great local church families in our city that it would be so
important for you to. Establish yourself and commit to
a local church family. They devoted themselves to
breaking bread together. This is likely meals together,
but this is also includes taking the Lord's Supper, that really
special practice that Jesus did with his disciples the moments
before he was crucified where he broke bread with them.
And he said, here I give this to you.
This represents my body broken for you on the cross.
And he gave them wine. He said here, this represents my
blood that I spilled willingly so that you could become a part
of my family. And he said, do this and
remembrance of me. He said things like I won't
drink from the cup again until I drink it new with you and the
Kingdom. And so it also is a time for us
to look ahead and remember Jesus is coming back for us.
And also one other thing about Lord's Supper I wanted to
highlight the Lord's Supper is a way that we fellowship with
Jesus. It's really cool.
But that same word fellowship to share with the partner, it's in
another place in Scripture referring to our partnering with
Jesus as we take the bread and the juice or the wine, First
Corinthians 10/16 will be on the screen.
It says the cup of blessing that we bless, referring to the
Lord's Supper. Is it not a participation in the
blood of Christ, the bread that we break?
Is it not a participation in the body of Christ, the fellowship?
Because there is one bread. We who are many are one body,
for we all, all partake of one bread.
When we take the Lord's Supper together as God's family, it
unites us to each other in a really special way and it unites
us to Jesus in a really special way.
It's like if baptism is our coming into the family of God.
This is how we regularly commune with God.
That's why it's called communion often.
And so we're told as disciples to regularly do this and are
really practical application. Today is after the teaching.
We're going to take the Lord's Supper together for all who have
put their trust in Jesus. We get to enjoy this practice.
All right, Lastly, I'm going to keep this one short.
They devoted themselves to prayers short because it's the
most self-explanatory of all. As God's people, we talked to
him and here this is talking to him together.
This is corporate prayer in the temple and in our homes.
Colossians 4/2. I'll just pick one verse.
There were many that use the same word devote and about
prayer. Here's just one Colossians 4/2
continue steadfastly and prayer being watchful in it with
Thanksgiving and it's scattered all over the Bible.
This is our bread and butter as Christians.
My boiled down simple application.
Have other Christians in your home or go to their home and
pray together three things pray that his Kingdom would advance.
Pray for our city and pray for Vita if this is your church.
If not, pray for your church, Kingdom, city, Vita regularly
devote yourself to praying. And if you want a simple for
like a outline, there's three things.
Now I'd sum up all of these areas as disciples devote to
Jesus and disciples devote to his people.
It's our bread and butter. It's part of the original
design. Now, there's some really
spectacular things that Jesus does in the midst of this that I
wish I could highlight. That's for another teaching,
another day. But there is all that grows in
the hearts of the Christians as they enjoy this really, really
special community and as they see signs and wonders, things
that only God can do happening in their midst, and especially
as they see more people being added to the Family Day by day.
God continues saving. So our conclusion, one man
transformed 12 and 120 and 3000 and it's still happening.
And you know how it happens. Ordinary disciples doing bread
and butter things. I pray that we will continue to
be transformed as we devote to these things.
And I pray God continues to add to our number around our world,
around our country. I pray in our city and I pray
here through this church. You want to take the Lord's
Supper with me. All right, y'all can stay
seated. Let me give you some directions,
worship team, you can go ahead and come up.
And for those of you elders that are helping distribute the bread
and the juice, if you would go ahead and pull these things off
for our worship team to grab some and just some notes and
instructions for Lord's Supper believers.
This is for you, all of you who have put your trust in Jesus.
This is a really, really special invitation from Jesus to join
him and the family in a meal. And as you take the bread and
the juice, remember what I was saying.
It's a reminder of what Jesus has done for us.
It's a reminder of what's coming, what we get to do with
him for eternity in heaven at his table.
And there's an actual way that we're communing with Jesus as we
do this. The instruction piece.
When it's time, you'll go out to the left.
Which way to the left just to keep it from bottlenecking go
out to the left and one of our elders will be at the front of
your section to for you to get the bread or the juice and then
take it back to your seat and wait and we'll take it together.
OK and then quickly for those of you that are not members of
God's family. I want you during this time.
I would ask you that you reflect this is a participating with
Jesus. And 1st you have to participate
through that open door which is open for you.
Believe, repent and ask for salvation.
And if you've not been baptized, I would also ask you make that
your first step, talk with the pastor about baptism and then
plan to be baptized. And then this is a way that you
get to continue communing with Jesus.
But this is for believers who have been baptized for today.