Well, I'm going to do something this morning I've never done before. I always like to say that. People get really stiff and scared. We're going to start a new ministry this September. kind of new. We have a small group going on, but we are going to start, Lord willing, church-wide small groups starting in September. And it's going to be during the evening service. We're all going to show up 6 p.m. and watch a 30-minute video by Chip Ingram. I think he's very good at facilitating conversation. The one we're going to start with is balancing life's demands. How do you maintain a healthy relationship with God when life is incredibly busy? I was recently talking with some missionaries and they stated several times during the furlough, I can't believe how busy Americans are. I mean, it's crazy, so busy. And we all know we're busy. So at what point do we stop prioritizing what God wants us to prioritize just because life is really busy? We'll start by watching that 30-minute video, and then we'll break up into smaller groups in various rooms throughout the building. And each group is going to, of course, have a small group leader to make sure it stays Bible-focused and a good, healthy small group to accomplish that purpose. But what is new that I've never done before, I've never devoted a Sunday morning service to talk about a ministry, because I think the regular diet, of course, of a church needs to be the expository preaching of the word of God. but as I began to investigate the role of small groups throughout church history actually, sometimes we think of it as a modern thing, it's not really, throughout church history and even within the scriptures, I became increasingly excited and increasingly burdened and passionate that this ministry needs to be something really that is thriving at Berean Community. So I just want to spend our time looking at this and hopefully I can if it's the Lord's will and I believe it is hopefully I can kindle your hearts to understand just the importance of this kind of ministry and why I really hope this September it really takes off and we devote ourselves to it. One of the reasons I love the first great awakening which took place in the 1730s and 1740s It was because the First Great Awakening was probably the purest form of revival and reformation to ever take place. There's a lot of good things going on in the Reformation 15 to 1700s, but it was contaminated a lot with political Protestantism and a lot of politics and earthly-minded revolutions, so there was a lot of that going on too. Second Great Awakening had a lot of manipulation, aisle walking, sign the card, slap you on the back, don't ever doubt your salvation, you can live like the world, whatever. A lot of hype, a lot of manipulation, so it wasn't a pure revival, but the thing about the First Great Awakening under Jonathan Edwards and under George Whitfield and various other preachers is that For example, especially with Jonathan Edwards. It was just the faithful preaching of the Word of God Not even sort of trying to prime the pump for any sort of awakening or revival just the faithful relentless preaching of the Word of God, saw the Spirit of God break out over the people, and the next thing you know, great revival and awakening is taking place in a very hedonistic, in a very lukewarm environment. But just before awakening started to break out in Northampton, Massachusetts, where Jonathan Edwards was a young pastor, Actually, there were signs of awakening that started to take place in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I actually lived in Bucks County for a while. You know, it's interesting to think about this. A couple hundred years ago, there's these great awakenings taking place right in our area, in our region. And there was a man by the name of William Tennant, and William Tennant was a passionate preacher, and William Tennant had four sons. He lived in the Pennsylvania area. And he wanted to raise his sons to be preachers, and they wanted to be preachers as well. So William Tennant built a little shack out of logs on his property just a few feet from his house, and he called it the Log College, or it came to be called the Log College. And that's where he sent his four sons. There wasn't any real institution that he trusted at that point to send his sons to. So he said, I'm going to train you to be preachers. And so as he was training his sons, some of the local farm boys in the area, some of them were illiterate. They were all uneducated, comparatively speaking. Well, they got excited about this. They said, we want to be trained to be preachers as well. So they started to enroll in this log college. And of course, Because there was no accreditation and it wasn't this prestigious Ivy League University, of course it was mocked and looked down on. Anybody who graduates from log college, you know, they didn't know what they're talking about. And I love how God loves to take the foolish things of the world and confound the wise. because as men began to graduate from that little shack in this preacher's backyard, powerful things began to take place through them. As they began to take churches and to preach faithfully the word of God, signs of awakening, this was actually even before Jonathan Edwards, signs of awakening began to take place. And one of William Tennant's sons, his life especially captures my attention, his name was Gilbert Tennant. And Gilbert Tennant graduated, he took a church in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and he began to preach, and shortly after, he hadn't been there very long, he'd seen a few people come to the Lord, and they seemed to fall back into the way of the world real quick, but shortly after he was there, Gilbert Tennant fell deathly ill, and the doctor said he's gonna die, and so Gilbert began to assess his short ministry that he had, and he concluded that his preaching was deficient, and he also concluded that his local church didn't love each other like they should, and if there was more of this loving one another, more of this community that would facilitate revival and awakening, so he saw he needed to make some improvements in his preaching, some changes in his preaching, and he needed to do something about the togetherness, the one anotherness that was absent in his local congregation, so he told God, He said, if you give me six more months, then I'm going to make some changes. And God actually gave him a full life, more than six months, took him off the deathbed. And Gilbert Tennant began to preach, and he believed he was deficient in the area of pleading with men, pleading with men to repent, avoid the wrath of God, he needed to preach harder on sin, and he actually probably went a little bit to that extreme. He became one of the more controversial characters in the first Great Awakening because he blasted just about every preacher that he thought was soft-peddling the issue, became a real controversial figure. But the Lord used this man in a mighty way. And the second change that he made, in order to facilitate more of a community in the church, as he exhorted his congregation, he said, I believe each week outside of Sunday service, you should be devoting yourself to smaller groups. You should be getting together throughout the week, no more than 10, you should be dividing up into little groups, and you should be talking about Not what football team that you like or whatever hobby that you enjoy. You should be talking about your growth in the Lord. How's your sanctification going? How's your growth in the Lord? What kind of husband are you being? What kind of wife are you being? You know, just the stuff of the Christian life that we all struggle with, that we're all pursuing. said the congregation, the community needs to be getting together and talking about this. In fact, Gilbert Tennant wrote a sermon entitled Brotherly Love Recommended by the Argument of the Love of Christ, and that's the statement that Jesus makes, the new commandment I give to you that you love one another. And he said, the way to love, as Christ taught his disciples how to love, can only be done when you find out each other's faults. Didn't even Jesus say that? If you love your friends, good job, even the unbelievers do that, but if you love your enemies, well now we're looking at a supernatural kind of love. So he said, it's easy to love people, Gilbert Tennant said, it's easy to love people when they've never, when you don't know their faults. You don't know what's unlovely about them. So, big accomplishment. You love someone who, everything, by everything you can measure, they're lovely. They make you feel good. They affirm you. But when you get together and people start to share their spiritual immaturities, and in spite of that, there's a love within the body, Gilbert Tennant said, now we're talking about the same love that Christ is talking about. Or moving even further, once somebody has wronged you, and once your flesh is raging against this person, but you choose through the power of the Holy Spirit to love that person against what your flesh wants to do and how they want to treat them. And Gilbert Tennant said, now we're talking about the love that should be characteristic of a local church. And he believed one of the ways to do that is an intentional period of time where we block everything out and we get together just as a small A smaller group, he actually called them discipline groups, but by discipline he meant discipleship, not laying the smack down, all right. Because we're gonna call them discipleship groups, and I don't want anybody to think we're gonna be doing some disciplining in there. Discipleship groups, because this community's getting together, and we're really discipling one another. We're going past the veneer, the facade, and we're moving to just the practical stuff of the Christian life. And as Gilbert Tennant began to implement this, he described it as salt that acted as a preservative that preserved the positive effects of revival. So as the Spirit of God moved through congregations, people are getting saved left and right, and there's this refreshed renewal to live a life of holiness, to live a life away from worldliness, to live a life of godliness. He said what these smaller groups ended up doing is sort of locked in the flavor. It sort of preserved this instead of it just being sort of a fad or a phase that people move through. Well, they get together and they talk about it, and it pushes them on to godliness. He was amazed at the effect that this had. Now let's not remove the glory from God and put it on groups because really there's nothing magical or miraculous that takes place when small groups get together. In fact, there can be a lot of detrimental things that take place when small groups get together. Where the power is is when the Spirit of God can move freely through transparent Christians, through Christians that are more concerned about their growth in the Lord than they are with keeping up the walls and keeping up an image of a reputation. And that's really where God begins to massage the truth deep into our heart and real dynamic change takes place in a community as God has founded it. Now, it's interesting, John and Charles Wesley, also part of the First Great Awakening, they recognized what was going on here in New England, and so they, over in the Old England, they decided they wanted to do this as well. So they formed little groups, they actually called them societies. And Peter Bowler, who led John Wesley to the Lord, actually wrote a description of what small groups should look like. And I read this and I thought, oh, this is interesting. It's so long ago, but it's generally the same idea. He's got 10 points of what they should look like. He said that they will meet together once a week to confess their faults to one another and to pray for one another that they may be healed. Does that sound like a Bible verse? Sound like James chapter five, confess your faults one to another? So he said this is just James 5 being acted out. Number two, that any others of whose sincerity they are well assured may, if they desire it, meet with them for that purpose. So sincerity is key. Number three, that the persons desirous to meet together for that purpose be divided into several bands or little society. We could call them bands, but then people might start bringing instruments. We'll just call them discipleship groups. Number four, that none of these consist of fewer than five or more than ten persons. Number five, that some person in each band be desired to interrogate the rest in order who may be called the leader of that band. So he used the word interrogate. We might just say honest questions, some good questions, right? Number six, that each band meet twice in a week. Once on Monday evenings, the second time when it is most convenient for each band. Number seven, that every person come punctually at the hour, appointed without some extraordinary excuse. You know he must be a pastor if he puts that in there. No excuses, show up. Verse eight, or point eight, that those that are present begin exactly at the hour. Another sign of a pastor. Number nine, that every meeting be begun and ended with singing and prayer. Number 10, that everyone in order speak as freely, plainly, and concisely as he can the real state of his heart with his several temptations and deliverances since the last time of the meeting. So give updates on how you've succeeded over your temptations or you've failed in these temptations, the things that you struggle with. He just outlines them right here. and it's interesting with John and Charles Wesley it was these societies or bands that actually became part a great part of the impetus towards the holiness movement they started this thing called the holiness movement which was really raising the bar in the local churches to live a life of purity, of godliness, of holiness, and it had massive sociological implications for the corruption in London, everything from slave trafficking to child labor laws and abuse, and it had this massive impact because holiness was so pervasive in the Church of God that it began to just infiltrate in the community, and it actually changed politics, changed everything, it was a massive thing. Now, if you know anything about this, it actually did veer off, it ended in a very sad note. John and Charles Wesley actually invented this idea of perfectionism, that you could get the second blast of grace from God and live a perfect life, and there was all kinds of verses that tell us that's totally impossible. But towards the beginning, it was actually very good. It was very healthy. And one of the things they attributed this to was just the ubiquitous small groups that were just everywhere of Christians meeting, holding each other accountable, and moving in that deeper relationship with God. And you know, it's interesting. As you just study history and you see how valuable these things were in Reformation, it's then not surprising to see that when you move to Scriptures, Well, I guess there's a reason why it was so valuable, because this was actually a pattern that we see in the early church, when the church was first born. If you look at the early church, Peter in Acts 2 stands up and he delivers this powerful Pentecost sermon, and through the power of the preaching of God's word, 3,000 Jews are saved on the spot, and then as time progresses, 5,000 Jews, and then Luke stops counting, because so many people are getting saved, and what we read in Acts 2, verse 46, Day by day, they were continuing with one mind in the temple. Now, why were the Christians meeting in the temple? Because it was the only courtyard in Jerusalem that could hold 5,000 plus Christians. It's like a mega church, first church, it's a huge church. So the only place in town where we can all get together at once is the courtyard of the temple. So they meet and corporate worship one big group together, very important, commanded by God, but then the rest of the verse says, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart. Now I don't care how big your house is, you're not gonna fit 5,000 plus believers inside a house, so what is this? They would meet together as a massive congregation, and then they would break up, and they would meet in their little houses, and believe me, they were a lot smaller back then than they are now, and they would meet, and they would be faithful in what? The doctrine of the apostles. They would talk about whatever Peter had preached in the temple. They would talk about that, enjoy their meals together. In Judaism, that's just good old-fashioned heart-to-heart fellowship where we're communing over a meal, and they would pray together, and there would be this intimacy. So you have the big meetings, and then the smaller groups from house to house, and you see sort of this toggling back and forth in the early church, and if you think about this, I don't think Peter stood up and said, I have this great plan for small groups. I think this is just how it necessarily expressed itself when revival hit Jerusalem and God started doing things in the body. They wanted to be together for corporate worship first day of the week. But then they couldn't get enough, they needed to break it down at a practical level, and so we're finding that there's this smaller cluster of saved Jews all over the place. If there were 5,000 Christians, and each small group is about 10 people, that's like 500 discipleship groups going on in Jerusalem. I mean, no wonder why the Sanhedrin hated them so much. By the time they turned around, there's another group of Christians, another cluster of Christians, meeting and worshiping and fellowshipping and interacting and emboldening one another. And I'm sure you know how this feels. Anytime some of us men get together and we hit the streets evangelizing, I speak for myself, on the way there, you're really scared. I don't wanna do this, I don't wanna talk to strangers, this is just, and then you get there and you start talking to the brothers and you start talking about the gospel and you get yourself worked up and you go out and you're as bold as a lion. That's the power that small community has. As we exhort one another, this is what God wants us to do as we build one another up. And that's really one of the great, valuable things about smaller groups. Acts chapter five, verse 42. And every day in the temple, there's the big group, and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ. So this is the apostles, they're ministering in the big groups, and they're ministering in the small groups. And there's only a limited small number of apostles, so believe me, they're not getting to every single little group that meets in the houses they're sending out their delegates. But that's what we see again here in Acts chapter 5. You know, I almost imagine Peter, as he preaches, he's casting out the burning coals of the Word of God, and the people are catching them, and they're taking them back to their discipleship groups, and they're sort of fanning them to flame again, and that's why the book of Acts keeps saying that the scripture was abounding, the scripture was multiplying, the scripture was just growing. You just put a little scripture over here, it's always in seed terminology, if you notice that in the book of Acts. Plant a little bit of the word of God here, and it just grows. Put a little bit of the word of God here, it just grows. Everywhere you go, the word of God is abounding. Why? Because passionate believers are getting together, they're talking about it, and then they're taking it to the lost world. and it grows eventually even beyond the walls of Jerusalem. In fact, Mark Dever, that I respect very much, we have a lot of his books on what is a healthy church, the nine marks of a healthy church, what is a healthy church member. I think he's done an excellent job at synthesizing this. He's a pastor in D.C. and he's done a really good job at breaking down what are the features of a healthy church, but he's also quite a church historian, a very good church historian. And as he founded his church in Washington, D.C., he actually believed that smaller groups was so important to the life and vitality of a church that he makes it necessary for membership. Because the way he sees it, at the very least, at the very minimum, a member should do is congregate on Sunday mornings to worship as a community and then have some other strategic period of time where he's sitting down with a handful of believers and interacting and fellowshipping about sanctification issues. So they actually make it mandatory in his church, which I think is a pretty significant statement, because he's not one to just make anything just mandatory. Maybe some of you have been involved in small groups in the past. I've heard of UFC small groups. You all get together and watch people beat each other up and then pray at the end, and man, that was a great small group. You know, I don't think that's what Peter had in mind. That's not going to build the church. One lady was telling me, a small group, she was involved with the past, all the people got together, and then they all shared their dreams, visions, signs, and wonders, and there's nothing about the scripture. It was just all these extra biblical experiences, and then when scripture came up, It's that very notorious question, what does the scripture mean to you? In other words, there's no absolute truth. Let's not pretend like it actually means one thing. Let's just tear it apart and whatever it means to you, whatever it means to you. And actually, small groups in that environment became something that actually subverted the authority of the Word of God, undermined the authority of the Word of God, and elevated personal experience over the Word of God. Some small groups can turn into AA meetings where you just come to emote and say how hard your life is. But when someone comes alongside you with some biblical solutions, I went through that same thing and here's how God taught me through his word, I don't really wanna hear it. So it'll become like an AA meeting. So there's many ways smaller groups can go wrong. There's many ways anything can go wrong. There's many ways the pulpit ministry can go wrong. So that's why it's important to have good small group leaders, but it's important to know what exactly is the purpose. What are we accomplishing and achieving? And really, all we're achieving, let me just show you three passages. Turn to 1 Thessalonians 5.11. One of the wonderful things about the discipleship groups we see in the book of Acts is that there wasn't this complex philosophy behind it. It just very simply states what they did when they got together. And some principles that come out of that is what we call one another principles. If you have a good word search engine, maybe on a software program, and you type in one another, you look at all the verses, you will find a rich assortment of verses called one another verses are all the things that Christians should be doing in the body of Christ. 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 11 says, therefore encourage one another and build up one another just as you also are doing. So if you're a part of the body of Christ, you should be actively involved in thinking how you can and then executing the plan of building up one another. Look at Hebrews chapter three and verse 12 and 13. The church of Hebrews was in desperate need of getting together in communities and building each other up because of how difficult it was. Hebrews chapter three and verse 12. Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God, but encourage one another day after day. Notice that, not once a week. but day after day, because there's a great danger of falling away. The world is seductive, our flesh is casting doubts at us all the time, so it's imperative that we surround ourselves with other believers who can show us Biblically, how we should be thinking can steer us in the right direction because of the danger of falling away. Verse 13, but encourage one another day of today as long as it is still called today so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast from the beginning of our assurance firm until the end. So the writer of Hebrews seems to think that a great way to stave off the hardening of a heart, the falling away, the disillusionment that our flesh would love to bring into our walk with the Lord is to surround ourself with believers who can encourage us and exhort us. Look at Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 23. Same line of reasoning here. let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who has promised is faithful and let us consider that word consider means to spend serious time thinking about something this should occupy our thoughts "'Let us consider how to stimulate one another "'to love and good deeds, "'not forsaking our own assembling together, "'as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, "'and all the more as you see the day approaching.'" Pastor John McConaughey, when he was here, reminded me that this passage is not just about being faithful on the Sunday mornings. because it says, all the more, the more frequently. As you see the day approaching, as you see the signs of the time getting worse and worse, as the onslaught of the enemy gets more intense, we need to step up our game, we need to step up our assault, our hardening of our resolve not to be seduced by the world. And one of the ways we do that, according to Hebrews, is by making our fellowship with believers more frequent. or I should say making the intentional fellowship, not just hanging out, but intentionally having blocked periods of time where we talk about the things of the Lord and we talk about our growth with the Lord. Consider how to stimulate one another to love and good works. And maybe we might think, well, you know, I do that with my spouse. I kind of fulfill that with my family. And if that's our line of reasoning, if I can just say that, that's a terribly deficient view of the local church. We should obviously have a wonderful relationship with our spouse, there should be that spiritual accountability, but in that line of reasoning, we don't need the church. Well, we do need the church. There's a reason why, especially in the pastoral epistles, we find out that the members of the body of Christ are all given familial titles. There's spiritual fathers, there's spiritual mothers, there's brothers and sisters. Paul referred to Timothy and Titus as his sons in the faith. This is a family, far more real than anything else we'll experience. And as such, there's a way, you know, the way we interact should look very much like a family, where there is that smaller connection, there is the intimacy and interaction. And some might say, well, I have a couple Christian friends, and that's kind of where I get it. But understand that small groups isn't necessarily about us, it's not necessarily about us staying strong in the faith, It's about reaching out to other people who need to be strengthened in the Lord. If we say, well, I got my little connection of friends, I don't really need to get out of that, it's kind of a selfish way to look at life. I don't want to consider how to stimulate others to love and good works because I already have a couple of people that constitute my comfort zone. And I think the wonderful thing about smaller groups is that you have people probably in there that you're already good friends with, but you also have other people that you don't have an established relationship with. It's another opportunity to intentionally build them up in the faith, which should be a great preoccupation for the Christian life. The reality is that if in the book of Acts and throughout history, we see that Biblically organized small groups has such a positive impact on the church. It's such a symptom of godliness that really it needs to be something that becomes a priority as far as our contribution in the local church. Well, where did the Book of Acts steal the idea from? Did the idea of smaller discipleship groups originate in the Book of Acts? Well, actually, if you look back to the ministry of Christ, you see the same exact pattern. You see Jesus ministering to the masses, and then he breaks away and he ministers to the 12. Or you see Jesus ministering to the 70, 70 believers, 70 followers of Christ, but then he breaks away and he ministers to the 12. You see that same toggling back and forth between a ministry to the masses and a ministry to a smaller group. In Luke chapter six, in verse 12 through 13, it says, it was at this time when Jesus went off to the mountain to pray, and he spent the whole night in prayer to God, and when day came, he called his disciples to him and chose 12 of them whom he named as apostles. You have to pay very careful attention to that verse. He called his disciples to him and chose 12 of them. What does that mean? There was a big group of disciples. He only selected 12 out of a larger group of potential candidates that he could minister to very privately and very personally because everybody knows You have far more potential to minister and impact a life when it's done on a smaller scale than when it's done with many people. You can exhort many people with the word of God. There's a very different change in dynamic when it's a smaller group of people, and Jesus prioritized this. everywhere he went. We can even see and it's just a wonderful exploration through the gospels to see the difference between how Jesus interacted with the masses and how Jesus interacted with the 12 disciples. In Luke chapter 10, Jesus is nearing the end of his public ministry. And once again, I think this is the third time the religious leaders accuse Jesus of being empowered by Beelzebub. They can't deny his miracles because they're just undeniable, they're incredible. So they just say, well, you get your power from Satan. That's how you're pulling it off. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. And so Jesus responds with a counter volley. They attack him, he attacks them. But not with hatred, he attacks them by sending out the 70 disciples. And he sends them out. You mess with Jesus, he just empowers more people and keeps sending more people out. So he sent the 70 out and he empowered them to cast out demons and to heal the sick, and of course to preach the gospel. And they go out, they've never done this before, and they're casting out demons, they're healing the sick, and they come back and they're completely amazed. And in verse 17 of Luke 10, the 70 return with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subjected to us in your name. This is fascinating. And they have this very energetic interchange. You know, Jesus kind of calms them down and says, that's wonderful, just remember, it's more exciting that your name is written in the Lamb's book of life, let's keep our priorities straight. And he has this good conversation, but after exhorting the 70, that's not a small group, that's a big group. That's good. You need 70. You need more people in the kingdom of God advancing His cause, but it's a big group, and after He's done exhorting them, we read in verse 23, turning to the disciples, He said privately, He has something that he doesn't necessarily want to tell the 70, but he wants to tell his smaller group. He said, privately, blessed are the eyes which see things that you see. For I say to you that many prophets and kings wish to see the things which you see and did not see them and to hear the things which you hear and did not hear them. So he noticed there was this level of enthusiasm, maybe too much amongst the 70, but this is something he could share in a smaller level without it getting out of control with the 12 disciples. See, even in Jesus' teaching, he's tempering what he's saying based on if he's addressing a larger crowd of believers or a smaller group of believers. He does the same thing in Passion Week. He's delivered the woes of Matthew 23, the damnations upon the religious institution, he's preached the Olivet Discourse, he's prophesied of his second coming, and after all that great preaching before thousands of people there on Passion Week, he ends it, and I imagine Jesus sort of out of his peripheral vision, seeing this old widow sort of hobble up to the coffer, and she plunks her last coin in there. And we read in Matthew 12, verse 43, calling his disciples to him. He wanted to say something that he didn't want anybody else to hear. It's a team huddle. He calls in the 12 disciples and he said to them, truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury, for they all put in out of their surplus, but she out of her poverty, but in all she owned, put in all she owned, all she had to live on. So it's this very intimate, precious insight that only Jesus knows that he just shares with his 12 disciples. It's a fitting environment for that. In fact, if you start to tabulate all the time that Jesus spent just with his disciples, rather than the 70, rather than the masses, when he traveled to the Gadarenes across the Sea of Galilee, when he went way up to modern day Lebanon, and Syrophoenicia when he went over to Caesarea Philippi, and many times he traveled down to Jerusalem, who's he traveling with all that time? He's traveling with his 12 disciples. and imagine just the endless conversations and topics they were able to cover. Here's some benefits, kind of carrying on the same theme, but just some benefits from these smaller, more intimate discussions. The first one is it facilitates cud chewing. Have you ever chewed your cud after a sermon? I give you the truth, you process it, and you bring it up from stomach number one, and you kind of mull it over, put it into stomach number two, and you keep processing it until it's fully dispersed throughout your Christian life. People, there's people who are very good at doing that. Might download the sermon afterwards, open up the scripture, they just want all of it to sort of sink in. And we see Jesus doing that a lot after various sermons, various teachings. You see that in Mark chapter 10 and verse 22. Jesus has a dialogue with a rich young ruler. We all know the rich young ruler. He comes to Jesus. We know you're a good teacher. Jesus says, what do you mean by good? Only God is good. And he talks about, well, I've obeyed all the Ten Commandments. How do I get to heaven? Here's all the commandments I've obeyed. And Jesus shows him, well, if you're getting to heaven by works, there's always gonna be one more work that you can't obey. Can't get to heaven by works. So he shows him the work he can't obey. Sell everything you have and follow me. Rich young ruler goes away sad because he was very rich. So you have this dialogue between Jesus and the rich young ruler, and then he has a personal conversation where he chews the cud, or at least helps the disciples chew the cud about this interaction he had with the rich young ruler. And they're amazed. They're saying, if this guy can't get in the kingdom, then who can get in the kingdom? Because he's such a good person. And Jesus said, well, with man it's impossible. With God, all things are possible. And then the disciples kind of fearfully say, well, wait, we've left everything. We've given up everything, right? We're in the kingdom, right? And there's this very, almost nervous, but very energetic discussion that takes place after Jesus' discussion with the rich young ruler. And we see this in many occasions. You see this in Luke chapter 22, or chapter 12 in verse 22. As Jesus is walking by, there's a man that shouts out to Jesus, could you please tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me? And he said, man who appointed me an arbiter between me and you, and he leaves that scene, but then he calls his disciples to himself and he teaches a lesson on being money hungry. The reason that man, Jesus was implying, wanted me to solve his inheritance problem is not because of a justice issue, because he's a lover of money. And so Jesus gives a parable to his disciples and they chew this over. You also see this as Jesus is traveling down to Jerusalem and he says to his disciples, who do men say that I am? He just kind of throws this discussion out. And so they tell, well, you know, here's the buzz. Here's what we read in the local gazettes. Some think you're Elijah, some think you're John the Baptist resurrected. Who do you say that I am? That's the great confession. and then the embarrassing rebuke of Jesus, and Jesus rebukes Peter. This is all taking place in smaller group sort of discussions, and you can't have these sort of intimate back and forth conversations, questions, and answers in a larger group. But if you notice, even in the life of Peter, those were the times where he grew the most during the life of Christ. when Jesus was asking him the tough questions and he was answering them, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but always learning from the interaction that he had on a smaller level. Another benefit that comes out of smaller groups is it's the investment of time. And I don't know about you, but as busy as life can get, the most valuable thing you can give to a person is time, because there's so much competing for our time. But listen to this verse, John 3, verse 22. After these things, Jesus and his disciples came into the land of Judea, and there he was spending time with them and baptizing. We have one solitary verse just informing the reader Jesus spends time with his disciples. What's the point of that verse? that Jesus spends time with his disciples so that we spend time with Jesus' disciples. And it's really only by investing time in fellow brothers and sisters in Christ that we begin to build some sort of trust, build a relationship, and build some credit, that's important, some credit so we can ask them how their walk with the Lord is going and to make some serious progress. Mark 4.33, there's so many examples of this. This is an example of Jesus disclosing things to the disciples that he wouldn't to anybody else. Remember he did that with the Mount of Transfiguration. He allowed Peter and James and John to see it, but he said, don't tell anyone about it. Don't tell anybody what you saw, it's just for you. In Mark 4.33, with many such parables, he was speaking the word to them so far as they were able to hear it. And he did not speak to them without a parable, but he was explaining everything privately to his own disciples. So he would speak in a parable, and these were judgment parables concealing the truth from the religious leaders, but not even the disciples were understanding. They were the only ones that Jesus would privately break down the parables to. He was entrusting them with information he wasn't giving to anybody else. Another healthy feature of what a small, more intimate setting can do. We can entrust people with information for the purpose of building up and for the purpose of edification. So all throughout Jesus's life, this is what we see. So I want you to simply see that if we see Jesus, he's got three short years of public ministry to do what he needs to do, and we see him spending the majority of his time with this smaller setting, I mean he's passionate about the word, he's passionate about exhorting the masses, he does that a lot. but he's going back and forth between these two groups, suddenly Pentecost happens, suddenly the church is born, and what are the apostles doing? The same thing. They're teaching the masses, and then they're breaking away in these smaller huddles. What are the church members doing? They're congregating as a large group, and then throughout the week, they're breaking up, and they're pursuing holiness on a one-on-one level, or a one-on-nine level, or however big their smaller groups were. because it's this necessary bounce that we see that's needed in the Christian life. I don't know about you, but I'd love to be a part of small groups in the early church. Imagine reading Isaiah 53 right after Jesus ascended. Oh wow. Okay, I get it now. That's pretty amazing. To see all these prophecies come to pass, see these prophecies in the new covenant and all of a sudden it's born in the church age. Must have been a very fascinating time. But the most fascinating element about it was it was in these more intimate settings that the energy of the church only continued to increase. The religious persecution was at the mercy of the unstoppable expansion of the local church. So in closing, you know, I look at this and I look at it throughout church history and I see this as a ministry that would be hugely beneficial to commit ourselves to for the growth of the body of Christ. You know, it's It's never been a passion of mine or any of the other elders to just fill the church numerically. It's been our drive to create a community. And there are certain features that have to be present in a community. And one of them is that biblical sanctification fellowship. If that's not there, and don't get me wrong, it's happening in a major way in Berean. It's a wonderful encouragement. But as the church grows, we have to make an even more concerted effort to pursue that intimacy and to pursue that one-anotherness that the Bible prioritizes. So, there you have it. There's sign-up sheets in the back. Pray about it, think about it. If you believe this is how God wants you to spend your Sunday evenings, building into the health of the body of Christ, then I would encourage you to get on board with that for the sake of the glory of Christ and His church. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you, God, for dying to create a family, dying to create a local church and a community. We pray, Lord, that we would take this before you. We would carefully assess it, Lord, and we would discern, Lord, not what is convenient or not necessarily what we might want as far as our schedule, but we would commit ourselves, Lord. One of the great burdens I have, as you know, is that those here at Berean that have walked faithfully with you for many years, maybe even many decades, would be present in these groups so that the younger Christians would be able to see and hear of what perseverance looks like. Lord, I pray that you would especially bring our role models out, Lord, so they can continue to humbly show what it looks like to walk faithfully with you. Lord, I thank you for a faithful congregation. I thank you for a people that loves your word above all things. And Lord, may we continue to walk humbly before you. In your name, amen.