Well, good morning. If you have your copy of God's word, hopefully still turn to Acts chapter two, Acts chapter two. For those of you who are, have been with us a while, whether as members or longterm guests, um, you're, you're going to find this morning to be a little odd because normally you're used to at the beginning of a new series starting in chapter 1 verse 1 of a particular book and walking through that whole book until we get done with it. That's what you're used to. If you can give a little leeway for the next month, we're going to have a few topical sermons. I know it's a shock, but that's what we're going to do. And I want to explain why. And in Proverbs chapter 29 verse 18, and if you've been with the class that I've been leading on Wednesday nights, you know, we've been walking through Proverbs together. Proverbs 29, 18 reads where there is no vision. The people are unrestrained, but happy as he who keeps the law. And so for the next four weeks, we're going to walk through a series on vision because I don't want to be unrestrained. I don't want you to be unrestrained. I don't want Sylvania church to be unrestrained. And the scripture teaches us that where there's an absence of vision, where there's an absence, the other word for that is revelation. an exposure of God's purposes in people's lives is basically what that word means, that people kind of wander around aimlessly because they're not sure what they're supposed to be about in that particular context. And so God has been gracious to us in the scripture that he gives us a vision, a revelation for what family life should be like so that we don't take the chance of wandering around aimlessly. and our families. He gives us a vision of what our work life should be like so we don't wander around aimlessly in our effort to supply for our family the things that they need. But he also lays out for us very extensively throughout the scripture a vision for what Christian worship and the Christian life corporately should look like. We don't have to wander around without restraint hoping to grasp in the darkness of what corporate worship and evangelism and discipleship and church leadership and service. And these different kinds of things ought to look like a revelation of vision from God has been given to us through his word. And I'm hoping kind of, uh, I know it's kind of cliche, but as we start off the new year, it's a perfect time. for us to settle in just for a little while and say, let's talk through what the scripture has to say. That vision is for these different things. So over the next four weeks today, we're going to be looking at a vision for proper worship. And so we'll see that this morning, next week, we're going to see a vision for proper evangelism and discipleship. The third week in January, we'll look at a vision for proper leadership in the church. And then fourth, we're going to look at a vision for proper service and community, how we're supposed to relate to one another. So. Having a vision, it seems that we hear a great deal about this, especially when New Year's rolls around. But what does it mean? How does it work? What are the steps to be taken to make a vision a reality? Because friends, I'm here to say to you this morning, a vision without action is merely a dream. That's all that it is. A vision without action is merely a dream. I know that there's been a lot said over the past several weeks about the college football championship and the playoffs and all these kinds of things. Those of you who follow me on social media know I created an early firestorm in 2018. Last time I checked 75 comments on me making a statement about a particular team needing to have been in the playoffs who were not. It seems that's what gets everybody worked up these days as sports. And so, uh, cat videos, pictures of your grandkids and sports, that's what works it on social media, you know? And so, um, but at the beginning of the season, all of those teams, they had a vision for being the best that they could be. They had a vision. They want it to accomplish a certain goal. For many of those teams, they did not take the right action that needed to be taken in order to accomplish that vision. So for them, it's merely a dream. Tomorrow night, they'll be sitting at home watching two other teams who took all of the right actions that they needed to take in an effort to accomplish the vision that they set out to because they put an action plan in place and they followed it better than everybody else did. Now, I know that there's some speculation to be said even about that, but that's the general concept. If you want to have real vision, it has to have action. Otherwise it's just a conversation about hopeful thoughts. That is not what the scripture lays out for the church community. God actually gives a real vision to the church of what we're supposed to be about. And in the process, he gives us an action plan to follow so that we are not with out restraint so that we're not wandering around, grasping in the darkness, hoping we can find our way. God has been kind enough to give us the vision and to give us the action plan. So today we're going to start with a vision for proper worship. Now here, when I talk about worship, I'm specifically talking about the concept of corporate worship. When people come together to worship God as a body of faith, that's specifically what I'm talking about. Now it has other applications, but that's what I'm specifically talking about now. Acts chapter 2 verses 37 through 42, in my opinion, is the best text to talk about this vision for proper worship. So verses 37 through 41 supply for us the first part of this. The church is nothing without Jesus and his gospel. I would encourage us all to have a greater goal in 2018 of saying amen with things that ought to be said. Amen to the church is nothing without Jesus and his gospel. That's amen. Very good. Amen. Means I agree with you. If you don't, if you can't say amen to that, let's have lunch this week. I would love to have a conversation with you about how important Jesus is for the church. It would, it would be a good conversation for us to have. The gospel, and I'm going to make a big statement. The gospel is both violently disruptive and beautifully peaceful. The gospel is both violently disruptive and beautifully peaceful. So what do you mean by that? Jesus said that the kingdom that he was bringing to the world was going to divide father against son. mother against daughter, brothers against each other. It's going to tear entire households apart. If you look at the history of the Western world, you can see whether done properly or improperly is inconsequential. The essence root of it is people engaging. Jesus has led to some of the greatest wars that have taken place. Some of the greatest public disruptions that have occurred. One of the greatest, and I hate to boil it down to something as simple as this, but one of the greatest head-butting conflicts that has existed in the world for the past roughly thousand years has been the distinction of the Christian ideological philosophy that guides most of the Western world, whether we want to admit that or not, and Islam. The gospel is violently disruptive. It upsets things. In the first century, people who were pagans and followed false gods, came into contact with other Christians and received the gospel message of Jesus Christ. And then they would go into their homes no longer wanting to worship false gods, but everyone else still wanted to do that. And so they found themselves abandoned and put out and homeless and refugees. Laws were passed saying that people could not worship this Jesus and they had to flee to entirely other regions. They had to hide and they had to do it. And you know what? They still do that in a lot of places around the world today. The gospel is violently disruptive. It will do that to you as an individual. Here you are trucking along in life, enjoying things just the way that you like. Not really worried about whether your life is moral or not. You know, you, you justify yourself. You make decisions about what's right or wrong for you. And then you run headlong into Jesus and your life is transformed. And suddenly you wake up and everything that you were okay with yesterday, you have, you hate that person and you hate those things, but you want to keep doing them violently disruptive in your own life. This is what the gospel does, but on the other side of it, the gospel is beautifully peaceful. Beautifully peaceful. One of the favorite stories that I have from church history is of Polycarp. Polycarp was one of the early church leaders he studied with and under the Apostle John. That's how long ago he lived. And in his 80s, he was brought in before the leaders of Rome and was brought up on charges of being a Christian and being a Christian leader and being a person of influence in the church. And at that time, the death penalty was the punishment for that. And in his 80s, being brought into an auditorium full of people, they brought him into a stadium and they made his trial public. And they made all these accusations against him. And the Romans used to call Christians atheists because they didn't believe in all of the gods. And so someone from the crowd, the story goes, someone from the crowd, after he was sharing the gospel with the crowd, knowing he was about to die, screamed out down with the atheist. Against polycarps, he didn't believe in all the gods. And in the middle of all of that. He knows he's about to die in the middle of that, he said, yes, and he pointed his finger back at the crowd down with all of the atheists. And then he essentially went on to tell the entire crowd of people that they needed to repent and believe the gospel. And so when it came time for them to put him to death, they were going to burn him. They put him up on the wood and they put him up by the post and they got ready to tie him to the post and they said, you don't have to do that. And he stood there untied as they set him on fire. The gospel is violently disruptive, but it's beautifully peaceful. It can transform a person's life of anxiety and worry and fear and doubt to joy and peace and comfort and hope. It's an incredible thing. So why can the gospel do this? What is the core message of the gospel here from our texts? Look at what it says. It says these men were pierced to the heart. and said, brothers, what must we do? So they've been convicted of their sins. If you can go back and read the rest of chapter two and you see Peter preached this incredible sermon and people were pierced to the heart and they were convicted of their sins. And they were asking in the middle of the service, what must we do? And he said, you need to repent and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off as many as the Lord God will call to himself. And then he called out for them at the end of verse 40, be saved from this perverse. generation. And it said then that those who received his word were baptized. And that day there were added 3000 souls to the church. So what's the core message? What's this core message that is violently disruptive and beautifully peaceful that the church is nothing without? What is the core message? The core message goes like this. God is perfect and holy. That's where we start. We start with the assumption that there is a God and that he is perfect and holy. That there's nothing wrong with him. He's not like the ancient Greek gods. He's not like the ancient Roman gods. He's not like the incredible pantheon of the Hindu religion. He is. He's not like the Mayan gods. He's not. He's not like any other deities that you can find where you can find clear, definitive flaws in their moral character. This God is holy. and perfect and just and righteous. Everything he is about is righteous, exactly as it should be. That's where we start. We start with that, but then the followup is people are not that we were that. And we decided to leave all of that and go somewhere else. Now I know some of you are real savvy. You say I didn't make that decision. Don't be coy. I make decisions every day that go against my moral principles with volition. It's not like I accidentally fall against my moral principles. I'm presented with things every day in my life where I go, I shouldn't do this or I should do that. And I do the opposite of it. And I make decisions about doing the opposite of what are clearly in my moral principles and my moral compass every day. I cannot think of a day where I have not done that in my life. So don't dare wag the finger back at our first parents and say, well, I'd have done better than them. What an arrogant thing to say. Knowing that I have failed every day on my own without any compulsion at all, willingly, most of the time. So let's not be those people. We, I say the word, we, we all collectively abandoned that. We have the opportunity, as we even sang about this morning, to walk back to it. And most of the times we don't. There is God presenting his grace to us, and we even as Christians shun it, so people are fallen and sinful, they are separated from this holy and perfect God because of their sin. And the scripture teaches us that part of this message is that death is the penalty for sin, not just physical death, but spiritual death. And I don't want to belittle this, but the reality of it is as terrible and as sad as physical death is. We all know intuitively because we're made in the image of God, that it pales in comparison to the deep abiding, painful reality of spiritual death. Spiritual death is much more agonizing than physical death. Why? Because it's with you all the time. It's with you all the time. I'm the walking dead if I don't have Jesus in my life. I long for peace and cannot find it. I long for meaning and it escapes me. I long for hope and for joy and for comfort. And they constantly evade me. And I pour all of my energies into something that I think will fill it. And it's never quite enough that spiritual death. And I constantly am looking for the next best thing. And the next best thing is never there. If that next best thing isn't Jesus. And so death is particularly spiritual death is the penalty for this sin. But Jesus came into the world and he lived a perfect and sinless life, the life we should have lived. He lived for us. Praise God. And then he died a death he did not deserve. But let's never forget, and I know that we're we're so inundated to it. that it just kind of bypasses through our minds. He died a death. He did not deserve to die. He was not guilty of anything. Sin is the cause of death. He was not a sinner. He should not have died. And yet those whom he made in his image put him to death because of how righteous he was. That's how that's how messed up our world is. The most beautiful and wonderful and righteous thing we've ever seen is come and lived and breathe among us. Let's kill it. That's how destroyed and distraught our world actually is. And so Jesus, then, after his undeserved death, overcame death through resurrection, he said, no one takes my life from me. I lay my life down on my own accord. So that I might take it up again. It says in Romans that he demonstrated himself to be the son of God and power through the resurrection. Basically, what happened is. Death came and grabbed a hold of Jesus, and in that three day time period, and we don't have any idea what sort of weird cosmic supernatural stuff was going on during that three day time period before he was physically raised from the dead, he essentially put his foot on the neck of death and basically laughed at it. That's what he did. Psalm two says that that's what God does to his enemies. He eventually puts his foot on their neck. The first enemy that is overthrown. And by the way, the last enemy that's overthrown is death. First with Jesus, later with us who are raised with him. And basically that's what he did. He grabbed ahold of death and he threw him on the ground. He stuck his foot on his neck and he said, no. You have no power over me. And he came out of the tomb. Now he offers to us repentance, which is turning away from our sin, that that empty, meaningless life that we have and faith, which is trusting in the work of Jesus. They are at the core elements of the human side of salvation. This is the perspective that we now have. We hear this wonderful message. We turn away from our wretched lives. We believe in Jesus and his work, and we move away from the darkness that was behind us and toward the light that is ahead of us. The entirety of the Christian life is based on this great exchange. Jesus's life for mine. There is nothing in Christianity that is of any value at all, unless it is associated with the person and work of Jesus. This is the core message. Now say, Philip, why do you start there? Because that's how the whole story starts here. You say, let's talk about the very beginning of the church. Okay. This is the very beginning of the church. One of the people that Jesus drew to himself and appointed to be an apostle, and he gave a message to, he said, I want you to deliver this message when I'm gone. And then Jesus is gone and he stands up and he delivers the message. And what's the message? You're a sinner and you need a savior. Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it said thousands did that. But you know what vision without actions is just a dream. So he gave them this vision of a new life. They said, OK, what must we do? You need to repent. OK, we've repented. Now what? And then he lays out the action plan. Say, Philip, what's the action plan? Here it is. Isn't God good to us? We don't have to be unrestrained. We don't have to walk around in darkness, grasping and hoping to know what it is we're supposed to be about and do. He tells us very plainly because we're sheep and don't be offended by sheep or dumb animals. And so he wants to come and talk to the dumb animals and tell them, here's the thing you're supposed to do. It's the keep it simple version of everything. This is what you need to do. All right. And here it is. Here are the four key elements of proper Christian worship. There are only four, four key elements of proper Christian worship. Here it is. Number one in verse 40 there. And by the way, they're all in verse 42, one verse you want to action plan. We'll put it in one sentence for you to make it as easy as possible. Thank you, Jesus. They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching that step. One action plan, one step, one continual devotion to the apostles teaching that word for continual devotion is actually one word in the Greek text. It means to be obstinate in your persistence in or with something to be obstinate in it. I want everyone who's ever been around this before, whether they're your own children, they're your grandchildren, or you had the joy over the holidays of being around somebody else's children for a long period of time. Everybody at some point has been around what I'm about to describe. So I want you to envision this. You got a four year old and it's Christmas and somebody has the grand idea of eating lunch before opening presents. And so the four-year-old when we call presence, when we go over presence, when we go over presence, when we go over presence, they're eating their lunch, you know, and at least from 12 o'clock to one o'clock or however long to take these lunch 987,000 times, they have been obstinate in their persistence and asking you when they're going to open their presence. We know what this word means. We've seen it before. That's what continual devotion means. But they're not continually devoted to something as trite and small as opening Christmas presents. The continual devotion of the church is to be to the apostolic teaching. So, Philip, what is that? The word of God. Now. The apostles were the ones who gave us eyewitness testimony. and were directly mandated to be the interpreters of the life and message of Jesus. That's what they were about. The actual apostles, the ones Jesus called to himself. He gave them the mandate. I want you to tell the world what all of this meant. And I want you to and I want a few of you to write some of it down. And then toward the end of it, he brought in a couple of other guys, Paul being one of them who's identified as an apostle. to have the same mandated message. And then toward the end of that, he then told those guys and the ones that they brought in under that through evangelism to discipleship. And we'll talk about this in a sermon series later. I want you guys to keep this going. We'll talk about that later because we're all about to die. Somebody needs to keep interpreting the message for the next generation. But that's what they were originally mandated to do, was to open up the scriptures of God and say, thus says the Lord. And everybody who was under the umbrella of faith and repentance was supposed to continually devote themselves to this. That's the reason why in good and proper corporate worship services, the sermon, not the music. Not the greeting time, not the announcements. Not the programmatic stuff, not the specials, not anything else. The sermon is the center focal point of corporate worship, because it is the moment when we all come together to devote ourselves to the apostles teaching. And it's necessary now. The word teaching there includes both aspects of doctrine. and the action taken with the doctrine. It's not just here. Let me teach you some theological principles. Okay, go have a great time. Remember, vision without action is a dream. Theology without action is just a dream. It's just a whole bunch of knowledge that I've got in my head. The word teaching there includes the doctrine and the action that's supposed to flow from the doctrine, which is what the scripture does on every page. It tells me something about God. It tells me something about myself. And in the process says, this is what needs to be different about me so I can be more like him. Turn the page. Guess what? You see more of that. Turn the page. Guess what? You see more of that. So that's the first thing, the first step, the first part of our action plan, continual devotion to the apostles teaching. Second, the word it uses in this one sentence for us, they were continually voting themselves, the apostles teaching and to fellowship. This word for fellowship is an interesting word, very unique word, very misused word in modern American evangelical culture. If you were to ask most people what fellowship means based on how we do it, you would say people get together and they play a game or turn on TV and they eat food and they have some laughs together and they probably coupled the end of it with maybe a Bible verse and some prayer. That was it. We had a wonderful fellowship. Not at all what this word means. Now you were close to what this word means. This word means participation. It means mutual sharing with one another. It has to do with the idea of the gospel being shared collectively between people in their lives. That's what fellowship means. It's the idea of the gospel of the teaching of the table, which we're about to get to of prayers of our very lives being integrated with one another in a way to where there's a closeness. A closeness because of the transformation that Jesus has brought. That's fellowship, so that's the second it must be. It must have there must be an interaction between the people that come together to worship. Now, obviously, the bigger a place. The more and we'll get to this in a minute, the more intentional you have to be about certain interactions. in a room this size, 220, 250 people, you're not going to be everybody's best friend. I'm not going to be able to be everybody's best friend. It's just how that, I mean, it's humanly impossible. Even Jesus, the son of God, who was flawlessly, flawless and sinless, had 120 overall disciples, 70 that they did some stuff with, 12 that were the closest ones to him, three that were closer to him than those guys, and one that was the one he loved. He sets a model out for us. Even he does. I'm not going to even begin to assume that any of us can do it better than Jesus did. But there has to be some kind of interconnectivity between the people sharing their lives together. It's necessary for worship to actually take place the way that it should. Third, he says that there is the breaking of bread. This could be, as some scholars say, an expansion on the idea of fellowship. I disagree. I think most likely. And look how funny God is in his providence. I think it's a reference to the table. The practice of the ordinances that are laid out by the Lord. Now, baptism was referenced earlier, so I think both of these are included. Friends, we are participants together in the ordinance set up, set out by the Lord. We're participants together in the table. We are participants together in each other's baptism. That's why Ephesians talks about one faith, one Lord, one baptism. It lays out all these things as one. Anytime these waters are stirred, it's a reminder of the time that I stirred the waters and a picture publicly of having expression of my faith in my repentance in the Lord and my newness of life with him. And so part of corporate worship should be the participation in the ordinances, but particularly the breaking of bread. Now, some will say, well, then Philip, shouldn't we do it every week? Probably. I'm just going to go ahead and like throw the gauntlet of controversy down right now. Yeah, probably we should. Historically in the church until evangelicalism took hold a few hundred years ago in the West, that's what they did. And in most other expressions of Christianity outside of Protestant mainline evangelicalism, that's what they still do. Why? Because this is a tangible, physical reminder of the truth of the apostles teaching. that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, that his body has been broken and his blood has been shed. And that because he was righteous and I was wicked, a great exchange has been made. And now he is in me and I am in him and I am inseparable from Jesus and by extension inseparable from all of you as we participate together in the life of the gospel. And every week people would do this together when they got together to worship as a reminder. Say, Philip, it'll lose its meaning if we do it too much, it's lost its meaning because we haven't done it enough. I'm getting lunch calls. All right, so fourth thing that's included here. So not only do we have continual devotion to the apostle's teaching, not only do we have fellowship, not only do we have the breaking of bread, which is most likely a reference to the Lord's table, and by extension, tying itself back to the other ordinance of baptism that was mentioned earlier. The last one that he closes with is prayer, prayer. What is prayer? And you say, Philip, what a silly question for a guy with a doctorate in theology to ask a group of people who all love studying the Bible. What is prayer? What a nonsensical question. I'm not going to be arrogant enough to think it's a nonsensical question. Because when the apostles, the original apostles, the 12 disciples had spent their time with Jesus long enough to become comfortable with him toward the end of his life before the end of his ministry on earth. And they could ask him anything that they wanted. Do you know what they ask him to do? Lord, teach us how to pray. Now, these were good Jewish men. They had all kind of mandated prayers that they were supposed to pray throughout the day and at certain seasons and during certain festivals and during certain parts of worship services. These guys knew about prayer. I mean, it was deeply integrated into their everyday life, not just their corporate worship. And when it really came down to it, they said, we we don't get this. I know we're supposed to pray, but I just don't get it. Teach us about this prayer stuff. Teach us how to pray. So what is prayer? Prayer is the humble acknowledgement. Get ready for this is deep. This is heavy. It's the humble acknowledgement that we are not God. And that everything, everything is in control of the hands of the almighty. That's what prayer is. Friends, I don't care what your theological grid is. I really don't. I know certain people have a much higher perspective of sovereignty and some have a higher perspective of human responsibility. And here we tend towards sovereignty. But there's many folks who don't necessarily do that. I don't care what you claim your theological perspective to be. Everyone who prays acknowledges that God is sovereign over all. That's what you're doing when you pray what you're doing. I have only ever heard one person not pray that way my entire life. And they did it on purpose to try to prove a point that you could pray, not acknowledging God's sovereignty. And by the way, the prayer was the flubbiest thing I'd ever heard in my life. It was like a self-help mantra. It wasn't really prayer. If you're praying, You are humbly acknowledging out loud that you are not God. You said, well, Philip, I don't think I'm God. That is the chief sin of all mankind. It's what threw all of us into sin in the fall in the first place. We want to take God's spot. I want to be in control of my life. I want to call my own shots. I don't want God telling me what I can and can't do with my own existence. I want to be seated on the throne. I want to make the decisions for myself. I want to be control of every aspect, minute or large of my existence right now. That's what I want. And guess what? That's not true. You aren't or have any of those things. None of it. I don't either. I'm not God. Neither are you. And when we pray, we're acknowledging that. Think about the model prayer, we call it the Lord's Prayer. We'll sing it today at the end of our service. Our father, which art in heaven, well, all right, locational already. Guess where I'm not right now. I'm not in heaven. The idea of heaven is carried with it. Theologically, he's enthroned above the heavens is really the idea that's carried in that prayer. He's the one ruling over heaven and earth. I'm acknowledging his dominion. Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed, holy worship to be your name. Now, I know a few people that have enough narcissism and arrogance to actually say that out loud about themselves, that they that their name should be worshiped. But it's only a few. Most people don't have the audacity to actually let those words come off their lips about themselves. Everybody, I'll just think I'm great. Now, most people aren't willing to go there. But I'm acknowledging that God is. Your name should be worship. Your name should be declared holy. Your kingdom come, your will be done. Not my kingdom, not my will. I'm just a citizen here and I don't make the laws. Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And then the very next one shows how little control we actually have. Give us this day today. Our daily bread. It's a whole nother sermon for a whole nother day, but an enriched society like ours. where our definition of poverty would put us in the top 1% of wealth in most countries elsewhere in the world. I don't know if you know that or not, but our poverty line puts you in the top like 5% globally in poor countries, like genuinely poor countries. Like if you took our poverty line and moved it to other places like in Africa and certain parts of Asia, South America, you would be among the wealthiest people there by what we define as poverty. So in an enriched society like ours, It's almost meaningless for us to pray about giving us today what we need to eat, because we have so much food going bad in our cabinets and our refrigerators at home that we could sustain ourselves for three to four weeks without ever going back to the grocery store. It's beyond our thought that there really are people still today, and there were a whole lot more of them back at the time that this was written, who really didn't know how they were going to eat that day, let alone tomorrow. But that's part of the prayer. Lord, give me today what I need so that I can eat. Because I'm not a control of the crop rate. I'm not a control of the economy. I'm not a control of wars and famines and rumors of worlds and natural catastrophe. And I don't know if eating tomorrow is actually going to happen, but I can eat today if you'll give it to me. This is an acknowledgement that I'm not God. And friends, it has to be a part of corporate worship. What did Jesus say when he flipped over the tables inside of the temple? My house will be called a house of prayer for who? All the nations. But you have turned it into a den of thieves and robbers. So let's ask some questions. If we're going to have vision, remember, it requires action. It's not just words. It's not just dreams. It's action. Let's ask some action based questions of our lives. Does our worship and I'm speaking specifically now of Sylvania, I know some of you may be guests, maybe here one and done your visiting family and you're out. Take these back with you where you go. But for those of us who are a part of this fellowship, we've committed to this fellowship, we're in, we're sold, we're bought into here, this place. Does our worship reflect a continual devotion to the apostles teaching? Now, I know that the quick answer that most people are going to have in their mind is yes, of course it does. Sermons, the preeminent part of the service, and it's a big deal. And other than this really weird thing you're doing right now, it's expositional and it doesn't skip anything and it's great. So let me ask a few sub questions of that. Not our preferred interpretation of the apostles teaching, but the whole gloriously uncomfortable teaching of the apostles. Are we committed as a church to the whole full counsel of God's word? Does our devotion to this teaching extend outside? Let's get really uncomfortable for a second. Does our devotion, our persistent obstinate connection to of this teaching extend outside of our weekly service into our everyday lives? Or do I just come and get a big buffet full of it once a week and let it ride until next Sunday? It says elsewhere in Acts two, As it kind of expands on how they made this work, they went to the temple and the people's houses to hear the word every day. Now, why did they do that? You know why they did that? Because they didn't have cool little gadgets that could pull up any version of the Bible on it. They didn't have 20 of these sitting around at their house because the printing press had been invented. A vast majority of the people couldn't even read. If they want it to be continually devoted to the apostles teaching, they had to go to someone else and let who had a copy of it or had it memorized and let them read it or cite it to them because they didn't have access to it. What would we be willing to do if suddenly we had no access to a Bible of our own to have the word of God in our lives every day? And with all of the ease that we have, what are we doing right now to cultivate our love and devotion to the apostles teaching every day? So does our worship service reflect that and by extension do our lives? Friends, if not, I'm not going to guilt trip you into this. Listen, I'm I'm a pastor, been doing pastoral ministries of some kind for two decades. I got two advanced degrees in theology. You would think that I would just love reading the Bible. I'm just going to be straight with you. Reading the Bible as an academic exercise. Easy. No big deal. Reading the scripture for life transformation, incredibly uncomfortable. I've told this shocks people when I say this, I've told people this before. I'm going to be a completely transparent with everybody here today in case you've never heard me say this in a private conversation. I don't like reading the Bible for personal transformation and growth. It makes me uncomfortable. Why? Because I'm a really messed up person who doesn't look as much like Jesus as I ought to. And every time I open up the scriptures and I read about what I'm supposed to be like, it bothers me. I don't like that. I don't like the fact that there's this standard that I have and it's Jesus and I don't meet it. I know I can. That's one of the cool things about the Bible. It tells me you can, you know, you can actually look like Jesus. I'll go, that'd be great. But a vision without action, guess what? It becomes a dream. But Philip, you got to give up X and you got to give up wine. You got to insert Z and you've got it. And I'm like, I don't want to do that. Guess what? You don't want to do that either. That's why Christian life so hard. And I pick up the Bible and I read it and I go, oh, I don't like that. Can we leave that out? But we can't leave it out. Academic exercise, easy. So you know what I get? It's not that people are lazy. It's not that people don't actually love God. It's all the guilt trip things about why aren't you reading the Bible? It's the Bible is a very uncomfortable book. It talks about how great God is and how not great we are and how that needs to change. And that's hard. That's hard. I get why people, in my opinion, that's the greatest reason why most Christians don't want to read the Bible because they open it up and they go, oh, more life transformation. I thought I was there. No, you're not. You're not ever there. So what do you do? What do you do? I want to read the Bible, but every time I do, it makes me uncomfortable. What do you do? You just make yourself do it. We'll say, well, Philip, that doesn't seem like love and that doesn't get all that nonsense out of your head. Right and good and holy habits. Doesn't matter the motivation behind them, their right and good and holy habits. Nobody likes eating vegetables that aren't wrapped in bacon and butter. But you're supposed to do that anyway. Nobody likes exercise and those weights are so heavy. But you do it anyway, why? Because it's a right and good habit. It keeps you alive. It makes you a better person. This is what the scripture does. It transforms you. It changes you from the inside out. So what do you do? You just do it. Well, how much do I have to do it? I have to read two chapters a day, three chapters, a whole book at a time. Do I need to finish the whole thing in the 90 day, read the Bible in 90 day deal? Do I need to do it? All of my friends, I've never read through the whole Bible at one sitting. And I have all my friends that have done it. You know, they read through the Bible every year and they've done it through 58 different versions of the Bible. And, you know, they're starting over and they've got notes all over it and they just seem so righteous. I don't care. Read one verse. Just one, I don't care. Write that one verse down and let that be the one verse you read all week. Quit getting your head about the legalism of it and just do the thing you know you're supposed to do, which is devote yourself to the apostles teaching. And if you're the kind of guy who's sitting around in the share group and somebody's talking about, well, yeah, I'm on the 90 day plan to read the whole Bible in 90 days, be like, that's awesome. I'm on the 90 year plan. I'm gonna read the whole Bible in 90 years. Who cares? You're reading the thing. It doesn't matter. So if it was the craziest thing I've ever heard from a guy that's supposed to be the preacher, I know I want you to do well. And if you set yourself up with these things that you're going to fail in, I don't want you to fail. I want you to succeed. And if saying, you know what, I'm going to take the whole year to read through Mark, most average readers could read through Mark in an afternoon. But if you want to read it in the whole year and take it a couple of verses a day, I don't care. Just devote yourself to the apostles teaching. Let the word change you from the inside out. So second question. Are we truly committed to mutual participation to fellowship? Are we involved a sub question of that? Are we involved in the lives of others and open? This is the second half of the very uncomfortable question and open to them being in our lives as well. Fellowship requires some vulnerability, some risk taking, some openness. The reason people pull back from that is sometimes relationships get messy and you get hurt. Maybe you have certain expectations and they're not met. Maybe somebody actually does something meaningfully offensive and you didn't like it and you don't know how to talk it through. Relationships are messy. Because sin is in the world and until glory comes, relationships are going to stay messy. But just because relationships are messy doesn't mean that we don't engage in fellowship, opening ourselves up to others and letting them open ourselves up to us. Do we show concern for those around us seeking, seeking what's best for them rather than what's best for us? That's the way fellowship works, by the way. Genuine fellowship participation is I want what's best for you, not what's best for me. Now, of course, there's natural human limitations of this. And I talked about this early in the service. There's this really weird thought and it's arrogance. It's all that it is. It's pride and it's arrogance. There's this really weird thought in the minds of Christians, particularly in the evangelical Western church, that. There's some sort of a threshold number of people that need to be involved in my life for me to think that people are involved in my life. And if that threshold number doesn't hit, then I've been neglected. No. Do you have someone, anyone, who you are in fellowship with in a local congregation that regularly checks in with you, sees how you're doing, talks with you, prays for you and knows what's going on in your life. If the answer is yes, you are richly blessed. You are not neglected. But in the Western Evangelical Church, it's a carryover and I don't want to offend any of our Catholic friends, if you happen to be here today, it's a carryover of Catholicism. It's it's a independent priesthood mentality. There's a group of people that are supposed to be the ones that are coming into my life on a regular basis. And if those people don't come into my life, then I haven't been blessed the way that I need to be blessed. True story from a friend of this is not from my life. I know some of you have, you've realized, Hey, I heard the story one time of this guy. And then you realize, Hey, he's talking about something that happened to him a long time ago. You don't want to say that I'm really talking about somebody else, a friend of mine in ministry a long time ago, not, not, not a joke. This really was the deal. to illustrate what I'm talking about. There was a family in the church where he was pastoring that ran into a really difficult situation. One of the members of the family, the couple, I believe it was the wife got ill and the husband simultaneously lost the job. And so they were hitting really hard times all at the same time. She had devastating illness. He lost the job. They were concerned about paying for the things. And so a number of people from the congregation made some meals. Some people offered him some side work to do. There was pastoral counsel and care that was delivered by the pastor. The church probably had about our size, 250 or so people. And there was probably a really solid group of about 12 folks that really meaningfully ministered to them over a series of months until things stabilized. He got another job and she was able to get some medication and started to get better from the severe illness that she had and that sort of thing. And then about three or so months after some stabilization, They left the church. And when there was some follow up as to why they left the church, the cited reason that they gave was, well, there were so many people who just didn't come to our aid when we needed help. But you had 12 or 14 or 15 people regularly from a congregation of about 250 that were meeting your needs and helping you for that period of time. Yeah, but there were so many other people who could have done so much more. That was really the stated reason that they gave. Friends, that's that's that's not fellowship. That's that's that's not what that is. Do you have? Someone, anyone from the fellowship of faith in your life that, you know, cares for you. That you could call on and they would respond. who really is concerned about your wellbeing. If so, you are richly blessed. That's what fellowship is. If you don't have someone like that, then just ask. I know here at Sylvania Church, there are tons of people who are asking the elders all the time, hey, are there people that need stuff in the church? They need help, they need somebody to love on them, that need somebody to encourage them, need somebody to help disciple them. Well, whatever it may be, somebody to just follow up with them. We would love to help do that. The elders have recognized, and we'll talk about this later in this vision series, the elders have recognized by the establishment of the elder family ministry model that we don't want to be the kind of place where people fall through the cracks. And so we've tried to set up a system where somebody's in contact with somebody most of the time. If you feel genuinely neglected in that, please tell someone, say, look, I don't have anybody following up with me. That's what they did in acts. Remember the widows were being neglected, the food distribution, and they brought it to the attention of the leaders. And they said, people aren't helping us the way that we think we need to be helped. And you know what they did? They said, let's fix that problem. Friends, real fellowship isn't about everybody doing everything for everyone. That's not humanly possible, but it's about some of us doing something for someone. when we can in a meaningful way. And for us receiving that with grace and as a blessing going, thank God that there are these people that were around me that love me and minister to me. That's fellowship. That's what that is. I know I've gone way over, but it's OK. Amen. I even have a timer. I just want to say, as an aside, I've really been diligently trying to keep the sermons 35 minutes and under. I'm currently 21 minutes over that. So I apologize. So anyway, preach it. So we are. All right. Third, third question. Are we committed to the seriousness and wonder of the ordinances that God has given us? We're about to do it. So this is like perfect God timing. I didn't set this up this way. Are we committed to the seriousness and wonder of the ordinances? Do we approach the Lord's table with the reverence that it deserves? You know, in the scripture, it says that people who took the table wrongly actually died from doing so. I know it's hard for us to process that, but that's what it says. that we should approach this table with reverence and with awe as participating in the life of Jesus himself. Do we take seriously our mutual participation in each other's lives in both the table and in the baptismal waters whenever they're stirred? Or is it just kind of a brush off? It's an add on something we ought to do once a month and, you know, we don't really think about it that much. This is what was given to the church friends. Listen, God made us as physical, spiritual beings. We are combined. We are the combination of the invisible and visible together. Why is it that humans have more value than all other life on earth? We can talk about all the philosophical reasons and we're rational or this or that. No, we are the union of the visible and invisible on earth. We are, as image bearers, both combining the physical and the divine at the same time. We have been given, as a gift, the spirit of the living God. He breathed his life into us. That's what makes us distinct from all other living things. And so even a fallen unredeemed human being still bears a marred image of God. That's why they're worth having the gospel preached to them. That's why they're worth hearing the good news of Jesus. That's why they were worth Christ coming to make a sacrifice for their lives, because they are bearing the image of God. And when we come to this table. It shows that we have physical elements that have no real value in and of themselves, except for the fact that they're, you know, nutritious. But yet we marry it to the theological idea of the great work that Jesus has done for us. And in this table, we have a, an outward representation of the inward reality of us. We have the physical and the spiritual slammed into one another, heaven and earth meeting together in union. That's what's happening here. And then we participate all together in that. That's a big deal. Do we really take it as seriously as we should? And then lastly, prayer is prayer and add on for our corporate worship, or is it truly an integral part of our worship experience? Do we tag on prayers at the end of things just because, hey, we're worshiping together and we ought to pray? Or is it really a concentrated effort is. Do we view prayer as a spiritual checklist item, something that ought to be done rather than something that's deeply needed and meaningful to our worship experience, if people were to look at the way the Sylvania worship service is structured, would they walk away saying, wow, They take seriously that his house is going to be called a house of prayer. Or is it just kind of an extra if we're going to humbly acknowledge that we're not God? And that everything that we just did today, everything that we just did today, we cannot actually accomplish. I've said this before from this pulpit, I've said it to the elders, I'll say it to you again today. The thing that I don't like. about the job that I do is that I cannot do it. There are lots of jobs out there that can be done. Hey, here's your route. We want you to deliver all this stuff and we want you to deliver it by the end of the day. You know, barring your truck exploding, deliveries can be done. You can actually go home and buy delivered all my stuff. You can make books line up. You can make numbers add up. You can make sales pitch work. You can close deals. You can actually, hey, here's our project. We were going to build this thing and we built it and it's done and we gave the people the keys and it's over. It's great. What is the chief thing that the scripture lays out for the pastor elder type to do? stand in front of a fall as a fallen person, stand in front of a group of other fallen people, open up the word of life that no one fully understands because it's the mind of God and presented in such a way to where it will help transform people's lives from the inside out. I can't do that. And you can't do that. But we come together corporately in worship to have our lives collectively transformed and changed. I can't change my own life. You can't change your life. You can't change my life. I can't change your life. Only God can change our lives through his grace. And the only way that that's going to be acknowledged is through prayer. Us bowing before God and saying, God, we desire something that we cannot do on our own. Please do this for us. Does that mark our worship service? Is this place really marked out by us longing and pleading with God that he would do something incredible and different and unusual with our lives for his glory? These are the questions we need to ask. Because vision without action is just a dream. And there's a vision that's been given in the scripture for what corporate worship ought to look like. Continual devotion to the apostles teaching. Fellowship with one another. Commitment to the breaking of bread and by extension baptism. And prayer. And so I know that we're long and that's OK. And I know we still have the table and that's fine. But what we're going to do right now. We're going to pray before we take the Lord's table. So I encourage everyone to turn down the kneelers in front of you, use those as an opportunity, and we're going to pray.