This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
So anybody that tells you doctrine isn't important or
doctrine's boring, or doctrine divides, Yeah, it divides truth
from error. It says it's profitable doctrine
for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness.
So reproof, when I'm in the Word and I'm in a church or I'm in a
congregation where the pastor's teaching the Word faithfully,
I'm going to be convicted about some things that need to be
adjusted in my life. Not condemned.
But just like, hey, Clark, this is something you need, you need
to change or consider or whatever, right?
The sound doctrine is like a compass guiding you through a
world of confusion. In today's message, Pastor Clark
reveals how doctrine divides truth from error as Scripture
teaches it's instruction for righteousness.
When you're in a church that faithfully teaches the Word,
you'll likely feel convicted with just parts of your life as
God speaks to you. Doctrine shapes your faith,
keeping you on the right path. Are you embracing sound doctrine
to guide and correct your walk with God now?
Here's Pastor Clark in Acts Chapter 2 with today's edition
of Living Waters of Grace. So this study is founded in the
inception of what is called the New Testament Church.
The church didn't exist until Pentecost.
And so the way the Lord God organized people, he organized
them as nationality groups, if you may like the nation of
Israel. And God first worked with Israel
as a nation to be his chosen people.
And so you remember studying in the Old Testament about Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob, the patriarchs, the leaders of the
that particular nation at the time.
And their responsibility was to carry on the truth of the Word
of God to the people of God throughout the earth, the known
world at that time. God chose to gather people and
community, just like we are here today together as a group of
people. God never chose to work with
people in isolation. He knew that we needed one
another, we needed companionship, we needed
encouragement, we needed to be around other human beings to
know how to help each other get through the good times and bad
times of life. So he established a Tabernacle
in the Old Testament, and it was a physical structure that was
built by God's direction through the leadership of Moses and
others. And so wherever that Tabernacle
moved, the people of God moved. They, they didn't say, well, I'm
not going to follow that anymore, I'm just going to stay
here. They realized that God's
blessing was always based upon the habitation of God where he
was geographically at that time with the people.
Now God's omnipresent, and so He's everywhere present at the
same time, but he chose to manifest himself personally
within the confines of the Tabernacle, by the pillar of
fire by night and the cloud by day.
And so whenever the Tabernacle moved, the people of God moved
with it. Whenever the people were not
around the Tabernacle before the Tabernacle was built, they felt
isolated, they felt alone, and they felt void and empty of this
presence of God. The presence of God is very
important for each of us to sense and experience.
That's what the book of the Acts is all about.
It's about the work of the Holy Spirit within the church and
within the lives of the people that belong to the church.
The presence of God manifests himself in the heart of the
believer, but He also manifests himself whenever the believers
gather together to worship Him in any given locale in local
church. God never intended people to not
have a place to meet with other people to worship him.
So the church is God's idea. It wasn't man's idea.
God was the one that knew that we needed to have assembly.
As a matter of fact, he told us in the book of Hebrews, we're
not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, meaning not
coming together like we are today.
We're together. We're, we're, we're, we're
making every effort to be physically present in the place
that God has established for believers to come together to
be, to worship him, to hear his word, to study the Bible
together, and to be taught the word of God.
Whenever you don't have a church and some of you know what that's
like, it's sort of a lonely trek and journey because you're
trying to do your faith by yourself.
Maybe you watch online, that's probably better than nothing or
listening on the radio, but there's nothing like being with
people physically in a confine building or outside or whatever.
People gather to hear from God and God works not only through
the pastor, but he works through the people in the church.
When you come and you see each other physically, it, it, it
encourages you, it, it reminds you that you're not alone in
your journey toward the Kingdom. One day there's others with you.
You're you're never alone. If you're going through a
difficult time or a challenge, you're not going through it
alone. When you're part of a church, we
go through it together. We do what we can to help each
other through the challenges and difficulties of life.
And we grieve with people who grieve and we rejoice with
people who rejoice and we hurt with people who hurt.
And we, we, we're just there for one another.
And it's, it's such a, a wonderful infrastructure that
God has built. They're called the New Testament
church. So the church was birthed at
Pentecost. Up until this point, people were
pretty nomadic. If you were Jewish, you would go
to the Temple on Saturday. Then Christ rose again from the
dead on Sunday, which is the first day of the week.
And in the New Testament, the Gentiles began to meet on
Sunday, the 1st day of the week. There's nothing special about
any personal day of the week. You worship God every day.
I hope it's not on Sunday or through Jewish.
And you, you, you, you, you want to follow the rituals of the Old
Testament. And you, you gather on a
Saturday to follow your customs as a Jewish person there.
There's nothing wrong with that. But we are called to gather
together in the church. So what is the church and what
does the church look like? And how does the church act?
And how does the church work? In Greensburg?
There's a church on every corner of the city and you could choose
to go wherever you want to go. But what what happened with the
church in the beginning stages? It was pure in the sense it was
not touched with traditions of, of men, if you may, and, and the
book of the Acts. It, it just started out on fire.
It started out alive. There was no one running the
church other than Jesus Christ and those he placed in charge at
the time. The apostles and even the
apostles weren't really running anything.
They were just gathering believers together like we are
today to meet, to be in the Word together.
And so God knows, and we probably know too, that if we
aren't somewhere like we are today to hear the Word of God
and to worship God, we're going to drift spiritually, right?
I don't care who it is. It could be me or you or any of
us, that if I'm not under the word of God and I'm not in an
environment like this where there's people of God that love
God, that worship God, and I'm not with those kind of people,
then I'm going to be weak spiritually.
I'm not going to be following the Lord closely.
I'll begin to drift, I'll begin to backslide.
I'll begin to take things for granted.
I'll begin to compromise. And it's just the nature of the
human heart. So the the church in in God's
Providence and his plan was to gather us together, keep us on
track together, to keep us moving toward the Kingdom, to
keep us in a place of humility and and need of the Lord, a
place of repentance where we're corrected.
If anything in my life wasn't right this week, I guarantee
when I'm in church and I hear the word of God, the Lord will
correct it. He'll convict me.
I take the Lord's Supper and I'm reminded of what Jesus has done
for me every week when I'm in this church.
My life is continually learning to walk with the Lord.
So the church has been set up so that you and I would know how to
follow God, how to obey God, how to hear God, and how to live in
the ways of God. Court without the church.
None of us do that. Well, if you're on the golf
course, you might look at the creation and praise God a little
bit when you get a good shot, but most of the time you're
complaint not hitting it in the direction you want to hear
something, you know, and maybe you have a few choice words
while you're not hitting it in the direction you want to hit
it. Or you're on the beach and you
think, well, I can worship God on the beach and, and you can,
you know, hopefully you do, but there's distractions on the
beach, you know, And so you gotta be in an environment at
least a couple hours a week sometime in your life to be
under the anointing of, of God's word in your life as it's
taught. And also as a Holy Spirit moves
in your life with the person beside you, behind you, in front
of you, the people you talk to, the people you see, the people
you listen to, you hear their stories, you catch up with one
another. Hopefully you don't run out too
quick. You get to know people and that
kind of stuff. You begin to develop this
community relationship. And so the heading of the text
in my Bible in Acts chapter 2, verse 40, it says a vital church
grows. So this is the beginning stages
of the of the New Testament church.
There was no Catholic Church. There was no Orthodox Church in
the sense of how we see it today.
There was no Protestant church. There was this people like us
that were Pagan, that weren't trying to become bad people,
becoming good people. It was God making dead people
alive, right? That's what he did for us.
He made us dead in trespasses and sin.
He saved us and he made us alive together in Jesus Christ.
It's miraculous. And we're born again.
We're new creations in Christ. We're heading toward the the
heavenly city. And so it was so wonderful in
the beginning because there was really only one church and it
started here at Pentecost. Peter preached that sermon that
day after the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the 120 in the
upper room. All these people in the
community heard their heard the word of God, people worshipping
God in their own language. It was miraculous.
These people were given supernatural ability to talk
actual languages that they had never studied or learned.
So all these people that were there at Pentecost were hearing
the the word of God and and many of them then began to become
convicted as Peter preached that sermon.
And over 3000 people got saved in that one day.
So the church went from 120 people in an upper room to 3120
people in an instant. So there they have this church.
What do we do? What do we do with all these
people? There was no, you know, a five
year plan or one year plan. There was no, you know, agenda
that anybody had established. They this met together just like
we are now. And it says in verse 40 and with
many other words, he testified this is Peter and exhorted them,
encouraged them saying be saved from this perverse generation.
They're living in a world like we are today, people that don't
know God, people who are doing evil things, immoral things,
ungodly things, governments that aren't under the authority of
God at the time. All these people heard the word
of God and they were saved from this world system that
everyone's born into. We're all born as sinners into
this world. We need a Savior.
And it says, and those who gladly received His Word, and I
trust today that we're here to receive gladly His word.
They were baptized and that day about 3000 souls were added to
them. A miracle of God's power, Holy
Spirit power in convicting people's hearts to need a
Savior. And that's our prayer throughout
the earth today. When the church gathers and the
Word of God is being preached, people are in these churches and
maybe they've been invited or they just show up and they don't
even know why they're there. And all of a sudden they start
hearing stuff that makes sense. And all of a sudden they realize
by the grace and the power of God and the Holy Spirit that
they need a savior. And Jesus is the only one that
can be their savior. For Jesus is the way.
He's the only way, the only truth and the only life.
Jesus said that about himself, when no man comes to the Father,
but through him. And so this is what they began
to do all these people. Verse 42 and they continued
steadfastly in the apostles doctrine.
Now, when we go to church, we shouldn't be interested in
anybody's opinion other than God's.
If whoever is responsible for teaching the, the, the sermon,
if they're not in the apostles doctrine, get up and leave.
There's no reason to be there. There's no truth apart from this
truth in regard to Christianity and the and the and the way to
follow Jesus. It comes only from the word of
God. So if we're not in the word of
God, there's no purpose and reason to gather.
It's just a social club, right? That's an organization of man.
And so they were meeting together in the apostles.
Doctrine. Now people say many times, well,
doctrine isn't important, but doctrine's critical because this
is what happens with doctrine. And Second Timothy, the apostle
Paul wrote this chapter 3, verse 16, he says all Scripture.
That means everything from Genesis through Revelation, OK,
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.
Man doesn't have the right to choose what he wants to teach
and what he doesn't want to teach.
Paul told the elders in Ephesus on the shore before he was
heading toward his martyrdom, and he wasn't going to see him
again. He told them very clearly.
I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole council of
God. He didn't skip anything.
He didn't gloss over anything. He didn't say, well, I don't
think this is that important. So I'm not going to tell him
about that. No, he wanted to be clean from
the the blood of of any kinds of God, an ungodly approach toward
anything that had to do with the things of God.
He wanted to to be just before the Lord and be faithful to give
the people exactly what the Lord told him to give him.
But sometimes people make fun of churches that teach the Bible.
They say, well, there should be other things you should talk
about other than the Bible. Well, I like to talk about other
things in the Bible. I like to talk about golf, and I
like to talk about my grandkids, and I like to talk about sports
and I like to talk about business or whatever, but not in
the pulpit. Those are conversations for
other times for people to listen to, right?
We all have other interests, you know, other than just the Bible.
And that's a good thing. There's nothing wrong with
literature and reading and music or whatever sports.
But when it comes to the church gathering, there's a reason all
Scriptures given by inspiration of God is profitable for
doctrine. So anybody that tells you
doctrine isn't important or doctrine's boring, or doctrine
divides, Yeah, it divides truth from error.
It says it's profitable doctrine for reproof, for correction, for
instruction and righteousness. So reproof, when I'm in the word
and I'm in a church or I'm in a congregation where the pastor's
teaching the word faithfully, I'm going to be convicted about
some things that need to be adjusted in my life, not
condemned, but just like, hey, Clark, this is something you
need to change or consider or whatever, right?
It's it's the Lord speaking to me through the word of God and
also for correction that I hear something and I better apply it
to my life. I better just not ignore it or
blow it off because God's warning me through the word that
this is the pathway of a blessed life.
If I follow and obey his word, if I choose not to obey the
word, my life isn't going to be blessed.
It's going to be a mess. And all of us have come from
places of messed up lies because A, we didn't know the word or B,
we weren't living the word or obeying the word.
You don't mess with the truth. The truth is the truth and we
need to live it and we need to apply it to our lives and then
for instruction and righteousness.
So how do you do the Christian life?
How do you live it? What do you?
Well, this is this is what this is for, right?
This teaches all of us how to do the Christian life so wonderful
that we have this and it says that the man of God and when it
says man, it's it's male, female, that the person of God
may be completely, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
So how can I live a life that's pleasing to God?
How can I be a good husband or a Good Wife or a good dad or mom
or grandson or grandfather or whatever the roles we have?
How can I be a good employer? How can I be a good employee?
How can I be a good neighbor? All these kind of things teaches
us from doctrine how to be equipped for every good thing in
this life. So if you go to a church that
doesn't teach the Bible and never talks about doctrine, what
are you going to learn how to live life?
You're just not going to know. The Bible tells us in the last
days there's going to be a famine for the Word of God,
meaning that there will be churches, but there'll be few
churches that are teaching the Word of God anymore.
The only reason we felt compelled to plant this church
25 years ago is that when we moved from Philadelphia, from
Calvary Chapel Philadelphia, we were used to what you guys get
here. We got back here, we went to
churches and it wasn't happening.
There was like a sermon, but it maybe had one or two verses and
it was all over the place. And then most of the time we had
no idea what was trying to be emphasized.
And eventually we just didn't go anywhere, which wasn't a good
thing. And then finally the Lord
supernaturally began to move on my life about planning a Bible
church at Calvary Chapel here in Greensburg.
Now, I'm not saying other churches are bad and we're
better. That's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying that if the church is the church, it teaches the whole
council of God. If it doesn't teach the whole
council of God, it's not a, it's not a New Testament church.
So they've, they meet as a group of people, a lot of people at
the temple grounds there. They also met in houses.
We'll get to that in a minute. These people when they met, they
continued steadfast in the apostles doctrine.
What's it mean to be steadfast? It means to be consistent
steadfast. Attendance to church isn't once
a month, it's as often as you can get there, right?
No one's taken attendance here, so don't worry about that.
But you know, you want to be there.
You want, you want to be steadfast in the apostles word
so that you can be steadfast in your Christian life.
Steadfastness is this consistency.
Right now I like to sleep in like everybody else does, you
know, but I can't. I'm the pastor, so I got to be
here every Sunday. They were faithful.
They they enjoyed being in the word and they liked being with
one another as believers. OK.
They were steadfast and they also had fellowship.
The fellowship is this community gathering of you see people and
you're glad to see each other. You hug each other or you shake
each other's hands or you fist pump each other, whatever,
whatever you're comfortable with, you know, you wave at each
other. We're family.
You know, it's not a religious institution.
It's a community of like minded brothers and sisters, right?
You do life together. You pray for each other.
You you're there for each other. You help each other.
And and so someone this week called me.
She's got a diagnosis of some kind of cervical cancer.
I don't know what I would do without my church family when I
got bad news if I didn't have people to pray for me and help
help me and encourage me, get me off the ledge when I was
freaking out, right? This particular woman, she said
she's new to the church and she said that she's never been at a
church like this, that there appears to be people that care
for each other, that actually love each other.
What an example because of you, Jesus said by this people will
know you're my disciples by the love you have for one another.
Nope, your criticism or judgmentalism or holier and thou
thank God we're not going down those paths here.
None of us are better than each other.
Well, the purpose of the church, the fellowship, is that, right?
Helping one another. And sometimes you might not want
to be helped because you think you can do it yourself.
Well, you need help. That's what it is.
It's a blessing to serve people. It's not an inconvenience, is
it? That's what we do as Christians.
We care for one another. We love one another.
We want to help each other. We want to be there for one
another. That's the fellowship.
Thank you for listening to this edition of Living Waters of
Grace. Pastor Clark is teaching us
about the book of Acts in this series.
Acts is a powerful and unique part of Scripture, not just
because it records the spread of the gospel geographically from
Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, but also culturally.
Acts shows us how the message of Jesus moved beyond its Jewish
roots and began to reach the Gentile world.
What started with Peter leading a small group in the Upper Room
became a global movement with Paul taking the gospel to
cities, synagogues and marketplaces across the Roman
Empire. Acts captures this vital
transition and reminds us that the good news of Jesus is for
all people in every place. May we be inspired to carry that
same gospel boldly into our world today.
Living Waters of Grace comes to you from Calvary Chapel,
Westmoreland. If you're in the Greensburg, PA
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716, Greensburg, PA 15601 also invite you to join us in person
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