Two Points:: Wednesday May 19

To restate the point of the frequency and content of this blog...Our series on the church will give us a compass for the purpose of our church. Our series Questioning the Church seeks to provide us with a biblical understanding of the church. This blog will reinforce those teachings.

Point 1- “You can be baptized in the church, raised in the church, confirmed in the church, serve in the church, marry in the church, die in the church, and have your funeral in the church, and still wake up in hell if you are merely in the church and not in Christ.” (Mark Driscoll)

Dave used this quote in the sermon last week and it really leads us well into some of the stuff that will talk about this week and it gets to the heart of the foundation of the church.

Scripture uses lots of metaphors and imagery to teach about the church. The principle that is taught by most of them is that Jesus Christ is the essence of what the church is built upon. This is the heart of the message that I will preach this week.

I think that Driscoll here is getting to that point, but he is also getting to a critique on the church and on church people. Church can become the end. Church is supposed to be a means to an end. That end is God. It can become the thing that is worshiped.

Point 2-Acts 2:36-47

In this passage verse 42 is a well known and frequently quoted verse in regard to the activities of a church. It says, "They devoted themselves to..." Dave summed up the passage with four calls for the church.

1. Gospel centered preaching

An Apostle was one who had been with Jesus and been given charge by Jesus to go and preach. A church should have at its core of preaching the gospel and Jesus.

2. Gospel centered, loving relationships
Dave used a phrase on Sunday that was great and I want us to think on it. He said, "The gospel informed how they lived their lives." These people in the church that Acts 2 is talking received their instruction, direction and motivation for their relationships from Jesus and his gospel. The gospel informed how they lived their lives. This is a natural outflow of a church that is on mission.

3. Baptism and the Lord’s supper

These are what are called sacraments or rites of the church. Scripture teaches that churches are to be administering these rites, helping to remind the church of what Jesus did to cleanse and feed the assembly of called out believers.

4. Pursuing relationship with God together (Acts 2:42, Acts 2:46)

Go back and reread those verses. Think deeply on them and understand that our privatized culture has made giving ourselves over to this kind of living very difficult. We are guarded and like to hide. But this early church was not. Ask yourself this question: What relationships do I have that could develop into this kind of relationship? Then pray that God would begin to prepare you and develop you for it.