Speaker 1: Well, good morning.
Speaker 1: How are you today?
Speaker 1: Good, it's good to hear I'm good too.
Speaker 1: Thanks for asking.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Hey, thank you for being here today for Discipleship Sunday.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a special time in God's Word.
Speaker 1: We've already had an incredible time already this morning with the baptisms, weren't they amazing?
Speaker 1: God is doing something so special here at First Baptist Bernie and we get to witness that week after week as we see those waters stirred and people professing their faith in Jesus and publicly identifying with Him.
Speaker 1: What a special thing that is Worship this morning.
Speaker 1: Man, you guys sound good Like being down front hearing you sing.
Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness, what an awesome time Wasn't our worship team?
Speaker 1: Just they were on today.
Speaker 1: This was a great, great morning, and I want to ask you a question.
Speaker 1: The video that we just watched, the end of it, said we are better together.
Speaker 1: Do you believe that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say.
Speaker 1: I mean, my guess would be that for most of us in this room, we would at least give verbal affirmation to that statement.
Speaker 1: Of course, as the body of Christ, we are better together than we are just by ourselves.
Speaker 1: But I want to ask a couple of more clarifying questions.
Speaker 1: This morning, if you were to audit, or if you were to allow me to audit your daily, your weekly, your monthly, your yearly schedule, just to see the rhythm of what you prioritize and what you spend your time doing.
Speaker 1: Would what we find in your schedule reflect that belief that we are better together, that you have genuine Christian community that you are a part of?
Speaker 1: Does your schedule show that you believe that?
Speaker 1: Let me ask another clarifying question.
Speaker 1: You say well, of course it does.
Speaker 1: I'm in a growth group I serve.
Speaker 1: I come to Wednesday night Bible studies, I'm in a weekday Bible study.
Speaker 1: I have all kinds of Christian community.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 1: Let me ask a question about that community.
Speaker 1: If you were to evaluate the community that you do have, would you know how to determine whether it's the kind of community that actually God designed you for when it comes to being part of the body of Christ?
Speaker 1: When we talk about being better together?
Speaker 1: Those are important questions.
Speaker 1: Do you truly believe that you need, that we need, one another in the body of Christ, and do you have the tools from the Word of God that help you know whether the community you're part of actually has some of the distinctives of Christian community?
Speaker 1: What I would say is gospel-shaped community.
Speaker 1: So this morning we're going to look at a very familiar passage of Scripture.
Speaker 1: So if you got your Bible, go ahead and open it up to Acts, chapter 2.
Speaker 1: Our text this morning is going to be verses 42 through 47.
Speaker 1: And while you're finding your place there, if you don't have a Bible, use the one in the pew back there in front of you.
Speaker 1: And if you don't even have one at home, take that one with you so that you can begin to read the word of God and spend time in it.
Speaker 1: We would love for that to be a gift to you, to take that copy of God's word and make it your own if you don't have one.
Speaker 1: But this morning, in Acts 2, verses 42 through 47, we're going to see four distinctives of what we're going to call gospel-shaped community, and here's what I want you to know before we read our text this morning.
Speaker 1: I'm convinced that a clear understanding of what gospel-shaped community is will actually show us how essential that kind of community is for our lives and it will move us to prioritize it.
Speaker 1: I'm also convinced, by the authority of the Word of God and from personal experience being part of community within the body of Christ, that when these distinctives are applied to our lives and they're applied to the community that we are part of.
Speaker 1: They can be powerful tools in the hands of God.
Speaker 1: Our community, our Christian community, can be a powerful tool in the hands of God to shape us, to give us purpose, to grow us, to comfort us, to challenge us, to bring joy to our lives that we can't experience any other way.
Speaker 1: And so I hope this morning that you'll lean in and you'll look at these distinctives with me and you'll begin to ask some questions about is this true in my life and is this true of where I engage in community within the body of Christ?
Speaker 1: So follow along as I read our text and then we're going to unpack it a little bit here this morning.
Speaker 1: Acts, chapter 2, beginning in verse 42.
Speaker 1: It says Many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles, and all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need, and, day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes.
Speaker 1: They received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved.
Speaker 1: Would you pray with me, father, as we come to your word this morning?
Speaker 1: God, I ask that your Spirit would speak to each and every one of our hearts.
Speaker 1: God, I pray that I would get out of the way this morning so that you can speak clearly.
Speaker 1: God, I pray that distractions would be minimized so that we can focus on what it is you want to say to us through your word.
Speaker 1: Your word is alive.
Speaker 1: Your word is truth.
Speaker 1: God, you want to speak to us today.
Speaker 1: You want us to leave here different than how we came in, but, god, only you can change a heart.
Speaker 1: So I pray this morning that you would use your word to do just that, in Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1: So, as we come to this passage, here's what I want us to understand this morning for our purposes today.
Speaker 1: I want us to see that here in Acts, chapter 2, this is the dawning of the church.
Speaker 1: The church has begun.
Speaker 1: We're going to look back in just a moment at the verses that precede our text today.
Speaker 1: But here's what has happened.
Speaker 1: The gospel is exploding in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: People are being saved, people are being reconciled to God, but the gospel doesn't just reconcile us to God.
Speaker 1: What we see in verses 42 through 47 is that the gospel, when it does its work in us, it creates a new kind of community for us to be part of.
Speaker 1: So look back, if you would look back, at verses 36 through verse 41.
Speaker 1: Peter is preaching.
Speaker 1: This is Pentecost.
Speaker 1: Peter is preaching the Holy Spirit has fallen, just as Jesus had promised in the Gospel of John.
Speaker 1: He says when I go away, I will send the Spirit.
Speaker 1: He has sent the Spirit.
Speaker 1: And look, peter is preaching Verse 36,.
Speaker 1: Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus who you crucified.
Speaker 1: Now look at the response of the people when they've heard the gospel.
Speaker 1: It says they were cut to the heart and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles brothers, what shall we do?
Speaker 1: And Peter said to them repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: You'll be saved.
Speaker 1: And for the promises for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord, our God, calls to himself.
Speaker 1: And with many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying save yourselves from this crooked generation.
Speaker 1: And so those who received his word were baptized, and there were added to them that day about 3,000 souls.
Speaker 1: So as we get to our text today, I want you to have the context to see what has been going on.
Speaker 1: The Holy Spirit has fallen, the gospel has been proclaimed, and people have been cut to the heart by the truth of the gospel, as Peter has been preaching, and from their response they have repented of their sin, they have placed their faith in Jesus.
Speaker 1: The text says they were baptized, so they publicly professed Christ through this act of baptism, just like we saw this morning, and it says that.
Speaker 1: From that then, in verse 42, it says now, here's what this new community that has been formed began to do, what the gospel began to do in them as they began to live life together, church.
Speaker 1: I want you to understand that.
Speaker 1: Why do we spend a whole Sunday talking about ways for you to get connected here at FBC?
Speaker 1: Why do we say it's better for us to do life together?
Speaker 1: Because one of the incredible fruits of the gospel is community.
Speaker 1: Christ's death, burial, resurrection.
Speaker 1: The work of the gospel doesn't just reconcile us to God.
Speaker 1: It allows us to have relationships with one another that can be powerfully used by God in our lives to make us more Christ-like, to comfort us in the most difficult situations that we'll ever walk through, to bring a joy to our lives that we could not have otherwise.
Speaker 1: And so in our text this morning, there's four distinctives that I want us to see about this kind of community, why we can say emphatically that we are better together when these distinctives are true of what we call community, what we call the relationships that we have within the body of Christ.
Speaker 1: So the first distinctive I want you to see is in verse 42.
Speaker 1: And it is this that they were devoted to the apostles' teaching.
Speaker 1: Look at our text, look at verse 42.
Speaker 1: It says it right there.
Speaker 1: And it says this group of people who had been saved, they devoted themselves.
Speaker 1: What does this word even mean?
Speaker 1: To be devoted?
Speaker 1: It means to persevere, it means to be steadfast.
Speaker 1: This is not casual or occasional engagement with the Word of God.
Speaker 1: This is not.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know, I opened my Bible app this, you know this morning and I read my verse of the day I'm devoted to the Word of God.
Speaker 1: No, that's not what this is talking about.
Speaker 1: It says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching.
Speaker 1: What's so special about the apostles' teaching?
Speaker 1: Why were they committed?
Speaker 1: Why were they steadfast?
Speaker 1: Why were they just consumed with wanting to hear what the apostles were teaching?
Speaker 1: The important thing that we get when we look at what the apostles taught throughout the book of Acts in the New Testament, we see that they had a Christ-centered understanding of all Scripture.
Speaker 1: In other words, every passage they read from the Old Testament they didn't even have the New Testament yet so every passage they read, every verse that they taught, every sermon that they preached, even from the Old Testament scriptures to create a new kind of community that we could be part of that brings glory to God.
Speaker 1: That was what they were teaching.
Speaker 1: And these new believers says they devoted themselves to this understanding of the word of God.
Speaker 1: In other words, it became the authority for their lives.
Speaker 1: It became the thing that determined everything else.
Speaker 1: Everything else was interpreted through the lens of Scripture.
Speaker 1: That was what their devotion, that's what characterized their devotion to the Word of God, the Word of God.
Speaker 1: Jesus affirms this apostolic teaching of the Word of God in John, chapter 5, verse 39.
Speaker 1: Listen to what he says here he's talking and he says you search the scriptures because you think that in them you will have eternal life.
Speaker 1: But he says and it is they.
Speaker 1: But he says, and it is they, it is the scriptures that bear witness about me.
Speaker 1: Jesus himself says it All of the word of God points to me.
Speaker 1: If you want to know Jesus, you must know the word of God.
Speaker 1: There is no other way to grow in your relationship with Christ than to be devoted to the word of God.
Speaker 1: Amen, and that was one of the distinctives of this new community that has been formed and birthed out of the gospel.
Speaker 1: So it leads to a question that I'm asking myself and I want to pose to you this morning Does devotion to the word of God as the authority for your life, devotion to the word of God as the way that you grow in your faith, does that describe your Christian life?
Speaker 1: Let me ask it this way too Does it describe the community that you were part of?
Speaker 1: Or do we have a tendency to treat the word of God as just a commodity to consume at our convenience?
Speaker 1: In other words, do we go to the word of God kind of like?
Speaker 1: It's one of Aesop's fables.
Speaker 1: It's got some good stories.
Speaker 1: It's got some good lessons that help us, you know, be healthy, wealthy and wise.
Speaker 1: Right, it's good, practical, you know, insight for daily living.
Speaker 1: It's a great self-help book at times.
Speaker 1: Is that how we approach the word of God, that I'm looking for just moral principles to make my life better?
Speaker 1: Or do I come to the Word of God to say, if I do not have this Lord, I need it, I need to feast upon it, I will just, I will wither away, I will starve spiritually if I am not in your Word.
Speaker 1: Is that how we approach it?
Speaker 1: Is that how the community that you are part of approaches the word of God?
Speaker 1: You have that kind of reverence and awe and love and devotion to the word of God.
Speaker 1: It's the foundation.
Speaker 1: It's why it's first.
Speaker 1: It's why the first thing they say to describe this new community is they were devoted to the word of God.
Speaker 1: All the other distinctives that we're going to see in the next few minutes, they don't matter if it's not built on the foundation of the authority of the Word of God.
Speaker 1: So, are you devoted to the Word of God?
Speaker 1: The second distinctive we see is that they were a community not just devoted to the Word of God, but they were a community shaped by doing life together, by shared life.
Speaker 1: Look at the text here.
Speaker 1: I want to put it up on the screen for you, the whole passage that we read.
Speaker 1: Look at the words in white that you see up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: They were devoted to the apostles' teaching and into fellowship.
Speaker 1: Now look at what that fellowship was like.
Speaker 1: All who believed they were together.
Speaker 1: They had all things in common.
Speaker 1: It says that they were even willing to sell possessions and belongings and give to those who were in need.
Speaker 1: It says they attended the temple together.
Speaker 1: This was a community thing to go and worship together.
Speaker 1: It says they spent time together, even in their homes, not just on Sunday, but they got together at other times, breaking bread in their homes, having meals together.
Speaker 1: In other words, they were sharing life together.
Speaker 1: The Greek word for fellowship may be one you've heard koinonia.
Speaker 1: This is not just like coffee and conversation.
Speaker 1: This is partnership in a mission.
Speaker 1: This is the willingness to share and to sacrifice our resources to help one another.
Speaker 1: Sacrifice our resources to help one another.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of fellowship that this new community experienced.
Speaker 1: Church followers of Jesus are not meant to live in isolation.
Speaker 1: Let me say that again.
Speaker 1: Followers of Jesus are not meant to live in isolation.
Speaker 1: And you may say well, I'm not, I'm here, I'm sitting here in this room.
Speaker 1: I came to worship today.
Speaker 1: In fact, I come more Sundays than I miss.
Speaker 1: I've got community.
Speaker 1: I need to press in a little bit today.
Speaker 1: If just attending a worship service once a week, three times out of four each month, is what you call community, then you are missing what the Bible describes as community.
Speaker 1: Is corporate worship part of community?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we're commanded to participate in it in the Word of God.
Speaker 1: But if this is all you do, is come to a worship service once a week, then you are missing the richness of community in the body of Christ.
Speaker 1: That's not what this passage says.
Speaker 1: One of the distinctives is not that they just got together for worship once a week and then they went back to their lives.
Speaker 1: You see the unspoken thing that we all know, because I bet most of us have been guilty of this.
Speaker 1: We come to worship because it's like, okay, we checked the box, we did our spiritual thing, but we know if we're honest, you can hide in a room like this.
Speaker 1: People don't have to know you when you sit in a room like this.
Speaker 1: With this many people, you can be isolated, even in a crowd, but not in community, not in true gospel shaped community church.
Speaker 1: We need one another.
Speaker 1: We need what community provides for us.
Speaker 1: We're not meant to do life alone.
Speaker 1: You say that's scary, that makes me vulnerable.
Speaker 1: People have to see my weaknesses when I engage in community.
Speaker 1: That's right they do.
Speaker 1: But you know what the gospel does for you.
Speaker 1: The gospel has already given you a new identity.
Speaker 1: Your security has already been established in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: You have been adopted.
Speaker 1: You have a new name, you have a new future, you have a new inheritance.
Speaker 1: You are already secure.
Speaker 1: So you can let down those walls that we like to put up to keep from being known by one another, and we can instead replace it with a heart that says I want to be known, because in being known it helps to mold me and shape me, to look more like Jesus.
Speaker 1: And I want to be known so that I can love others, so that I can show other people the kind of love that Christ has shown to me.
Speaker 1: We need this kind of community and church.
Speaker 1: I just want to say this plainly Anything less than this is a cheap imitation of what God has for us when it comes to doing life together in the body of Christ.
Speaker 1: I love in this text it says part of their community was breaking bread together in their homes.
Speaker 1: This is why Baptists like to eat right.
Speaker 1: We love to eat right.
Speaker 1: My waistline is like a testimony to how much we love to eat.
Speaker 1: But isn't there something special about coming around the table together, just being part of one another's lives, getting to know them, laughing together, encouraging one another, praying for one another, just doing life together, celebrating wins for our friends and our family, walking alongside those who are grieving and supporting them in the midst of that?
Speaker 1: There's something so special about that.
Speaker 1: But we miss it when we aren't willing to engage in it, when we try to say a church service is enough.
Speaker 1: I want to push you today to say no.
Speaker 1: If this is all your Christian community entails, then you are missing something, and God has more for you.
Speaker 1: Part of sharing life is also a willing to pour into others, and one of the things that I want to challenge all of us with this morning is the incredible ways that we have, even here at FBC, to actually invest in others, to serve others, and maybe that's a step that God's going to lead you to take this morning.
Speaker 1: It's not just to find your circle of people, because maybe you have that, but maybe it's a willingness to step in, to give of yourself, to open up your schedule, to give of your time, your resources, your talents, to say I'm going to serve, I'm going to volunteer with kids to help mold and shape the next generation, so that maybe their parents then have an opportunity to find that kind of community that they need.
Speaker 1: Or you learn like, hey, part of the community that I'm part of, we're gonna serve together, because we know that part of what we do is we do life together, is being willing to invest in other people.
Speaker 1: So a question for this are you being shaped by true gospel community or do you just fill your time with casual acquaintances?
Speaker 1: What really, if you're honest, what really describes what you call Christian community?
Speaker 1: Which is it?
Speaker 1: Is it something that is molding you and shaping you to look more like Jesus, or is it something less than that that you've settled for?
Speaker 1: The third distinctive that I want us to see there were a community that was sustained by worship and by prayer.
Speaker 1: Look at what they did when they were sharing life together in our text up here on the screen.
Speaker 1: Yes, they were breaking bread.
Speaker 1: This breaking of bread, it's talking about fellowship and meals together.
Speaker 1: But this is also a reference to communion, to coming together around the Lord's table to remember Christ's death and his sacrifice for them.
Speaker 1: So they were worshiping together.
Speaker 1: They were praying together.
Speaker 1: It says all came upon every soul.
Speaker 1: The focus was on Jesus.
Speaker 1: Part of what was being produced by this sharing life together was just praise and adoration and worship to the one true king.
Speaker 1: It says they attended church together, they went to the temple together, but it didn't stop there.
Speaker 1: It says they were in their homes praising God with glad and generous hearts.
Speaker 1: Everything they did.
Speaker 1: What's the idea here?
Speaker 1: It's that everything that they did, their life, was entwined around Jesus' finished work.
Speaker 1: Their walk with Christ infused everything that they did, whether it was a worship service or just a time of fellowship and hanging out.
Speaker 1: Jesus was at the center of all of it.
Speaker 1: Their prayer was corporate, but it was also persistent.
Speaker 1: They were depending upon the Spirit to lead them.
Speaker 1: In other words, the vertical, their prayer and their worship, their vertical relationship with God, is what fueled those horizontal relationships.
Speaker 1: Why was the community so rich?
Speaker 1: Because they were devoted to the apostles' teaching, and they were worshiping God as they spent time together.
Speaker 1: We don't have time to preach a second sermon here, but if I did, I would say let's talk about worship and how everything we do can be an act of worship.
Speaker 1: Even the way you engage in community can be an act of worship, and our worship fuels our community.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this what sustains the community that you're part of?
Speaker 1: I think far too often, even for believers, our strongest community is built around earthly or temporary things Favorite sports teams, hobbies, just stages of life and that becomes our deepest levels of community, right, but those temporary things are not what Scripture is talking about.
Speaker 1: Gospel-shaped community is fueled by something so much richer than that, something so much more meaningful than that.
Speaker 1: So is worship and prayer.
Speaker 1: Is Christ at the center of your closest community?
Speaker 1: Or, if you're honest, would you say you know the people who know me best like what I would call my closest community?
Speaker 1: We don't really talk about Christ.
Speaker 1: We talk about the score of the ball game, right, we talk about how work's going, but we really don't infuse conversations about Jesus that I would challenge you this morning your closest community should be built on Christ.
Speaker 1: What fuels your closest community?
Speaker 1: Do the people you do life with on a regular basis push you to a deeper walk with Christ?
Speaker 1: The fourth distinctive that I want us to see this community that's devoted to the apostles' teaching, that has a Christ-centered understanding of Scripture, that's sharing a life together and they're being shaped by it.
Speaker 1: They're being sustained and fueled by worship and by prayer.
Speaker 1: What does this kind of community produce?
Speaker 1: Look at verse 47.
Speaker 1: The Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved.
Speaker 1: Church evangelism is not a separate program of the church, but it is the overflow of healthy, gospel shaped community.
Speaker 1: When we are truly living life together the way god intended us to, the way the gospel gives us the opportunity to do life together, the gospel will take center stage for those who do not know Christ and they will see in us a picture of who Jesus is and what it is he can do in our lives.
Speaker 1: And it will become visible and it will become compelling for those who do not know him.
Speaker 1: And the word of God gives testimony to that.
Speaker 1: It says, as people watch this new community and the way they loved one another, the way they served one another, the way they were growing together.
Speaker 1: It says people wanted that and every day somebody else was coming to Christ.
Speaker 1: It will always multiply.
Speaker 1: Our walk with Christ is never meant to stop with us.
Speaker 1: It is always meant to multiply, to grow, to be an invitation to someone else to hear the good news of Jesus and place their faith in Him.
Speaker 1: Hear the good news of Jesus and place their faith in him.
Speaker 1: How has the Christian community that you engage with been used to draw others to Jesus?
Speaker 1: When's the last time your growth group, someone, could stand up and say as a result of the way we do life together, someone who did not know Christ saw a picture of Jesus from the way that we loved one another and the way we served one another, and they came to Christ as a result of seeing the way that we interacted with one another.
Speaker 1: Christian community, when we do life together, the way God has described for us in his word, we should be seeing others come to faith in Jesus, amen.
Speaker 1: So these are the distinctives.
Speaker 1: These are the distinctives we see about what it means to do life together, and this is why we can say we are better together To do life together.
Speaker 1: This should be a priority.
Speaker 1: This should be one of our top priorities Amen.
Speaker 1: So we call today Discipleship Sunday.
Speaker 1: The goal today in the plaza is just to provide you with some clear on-ramps of different ministries that we have here at FBC that can help you find community.
Speaker 1: That'll help you grow in your walk with Christ.
Speaker 1: What is in the plaza today is not just another activity to add to your schedule.
Speaker 1: That's not why we have those things that we have here, right.
Speaker 1: It's not just so that you can check a box and say, all right, I've added my church activity to the schedule.
Speaker 1: No, all of these things are ways where you can find community.
Speaker 1: That has these distinctives running through them and we want to get better at having those distinctives permeate all of the ministries that we have here at FBC.
Speaker 1: You're going to find information about growth groups out there in the plaza, our Sunday morning groups.
Speaker 1: That is a great first step to find community.
Speaker 1: You're going to find information about all the things going on on Wednesday nights that begin this week, things like a financial peace class.
Speaker 1: That is not just an opportunity for you to learn how to manage your money.
Speaker 1: That is an opportunity for you to do life with other people that can help hold you accountable to honoring God with your finances.
Speaker 1: The Bible studies on Wednesday nights are not just a place for you to get more information.
Speaker 1: They're a way to help you be more devoted to the word of God as you do life with other people who have that same aspiration.
Speaker 1: There's information out there about how you can do life together in one-on-one relationships.
Speaker 1: We have a ministry here at the church called Real Life Mentoring.
Speaker 1: It is a way that if you say, hey, I need someone just to walk with me as I go through life, someone to help me know how to read my Bible better, someone that's just willing to pray with me, someone that I can talk to, who maybe has been where I am and they are willing to just do life together with me Guess what Out in the plaza today, you can let us know I would love a mentor, and we have people in our church who have said I would love to be that mentor.
Speaker 1: So today, maybe the way for you to take a step into this idea of community is to say I can invest in someone else.
Speaker 1: God has done a work in me and I can share what he's done in my life with someone else I can step up and help mentor.
Speaker 1: You may say no, today.
Speaker 1: I need to be known because far too long I've just tried to isolate myself and hide, but I need to take a step and be known.
Speaker 1: Mentoring may be a great step for you.
Speaker 1: Our ladies have an opportunity called Table 34.
Speaker 1: That is a mentoring relationship that's just done with all the girly frills that guys don't do right, but it's a meal that they share together.
Speaker 1: I know I did not describe that well.
Speaker 1: I may get in trouble with the women's ministry later, but that is what it is.
Speaker 1: It's a really cute and sweet.
Speaker 1: You know mentoring time it's a powerful thing.
Speaker 1: The testimonies that come out of table 34 are life-changing.
Speaker 1: They are changing and they are shaping families.
Speaker 1: You guys just make it look really cute when you do it, but, ladies, that may be a spot for you.
Speaker 1: There's information out there in the plaza about it.
Speaker 1: There's information out there about our next-gen ministry.
Speaker 1: God is doing something special in the lives of the next generation.
Speaker 1: Here at FBC, our children's building is bursting at the seams.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you could do as a way to find community.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the sweetest community we find is with the people we serve alongside Amen.
Speaker 1: Maybe what you need to do this fall is clear a space in your schedule to say I'm going to pour into children, I'm going to give an hour of my week or two hours a month, whatever it might be, to help teach children the Word of God Right, to help continue to foster this understanding of what it means to do life together.
Speaker 1: We've got an opportunity for those who are grandparents in the room to do life together around this incredible blessing of being a grandparent and to learn how to do it from a biblical perspective.
Speaker 1: There's a seminar, a workshop coming up on a Saturday in October where you can do life together with people in that same stage of life to learn how you can invest the gospel into your grandkids in better ways.
Speaker 1: To learn together to do that.
Speaker 1: A little teaser in January, on Wednesday nights, we're going to have something called a biblical blueprint for marriage and it's going to be a 16-week journey that involves teaching and mentors and activities where 20 couples are going to get to walk together with the community for a semester, learning how to strengthen their marriages.
Speaker 1: There are so many ways for you to find community here at FBC.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because we believe what's on the screen, that we are better together, that we need one another.
Speaker 1: But we don't just need to gather and hang out.
Speaker 1: We need to do it with these distinctives that we've seen in the Word of God infusing everything we do.
Speaker 1: So what is your next step today when it comes to this idea of being part of gospel-shaped community?
Speaker 1: Do you need to take your first step toward it?
Speaker 1: Do you need to be part of a growth group?
Speaker 1: Do you need to reach out and say I need someone to walk with me in a mentoring relationship?
Speaker 1: Do you need to turn around and look at the community you're a part of and say do these distinctives, are they evident in my growth group, in my Tuesday morning or Wednesday morning or Thursday night Bible study?
Speaker 1: Do these distinctives infuse what we do when we're doing life together?
Speaker 1: If not, maybe you're the one God wants to use to begin to shape your community to look more like what Scripture describes that it should be.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's your next step is to help your community, to massage it a little bit, to help it, shape it and form it and and move it to looking more like what scripture says it should be.
Speaker 1: Or maybe your next step with community is to serve, to serve the body of christ, to find community and serving and to allow others to find community by serving.
Speaker 1: I don't know how the Lord is speaking, but here's what I do know we need one another and if our schedules are too busy for community, then our schedules are too busy and the thing that we sacrifice should not be community with the body of Christ.
Speaker 1: There's something else that needs to be cleared from your schedule if you're too busy to find community.
Speaker 1: The room got really quiet, didn't it?
Speaker 1: But I'm going to leave that right there For the sake of time.
Speaker 1: I'm going to let you off easy and not dig into that one too much, but I'm going to pray that the Holy Spirit would dig into that one a little bit more with us, because I think we all need to recognize maybe I filled my schedule with a lot of things and they may be good things, but they're not the best thing, and maybe I need to clear space for community, and maybe I need to clear space for community as we close this morning.
Speaker 1: I'm going to invite the worship team to come back up.
Speaker 1: We're going to sing one song as kind of a final time for us in this service to respond to the Lord.
Speaker 1: I don't know how the Lord's been speaking to you today, but I know, on the authority of his word, when his word is proclaimed and when Jesus is lifted up, his spirit moves.
Speaker 1: And so my question today is are you going to be obedient to what the spirit is saying to you today?
Speaker 1: Maybe it is in regards to finding community, and maybe God has impressed on you a way that you need to engage with it to help your walk with Christ continue to grow.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's another step of obedience that you need to take.
Speaker 1: Maybe you need to follow the Lord in baptism, like we saw this father and daughter do this morning.
Speaker 1: Maybe you need to place your faith in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Maybe you need the gospel to take root in you and you need to repent and place your faith in Jesus and then find that community that we've looked at this morning.
Speaker 1: I don't know how God is speaking, but this morning I know that he's moving, I know that he's working and I want to invite you to respond.
Speaker 1: We're going to have ministers down front who would love to talk with you, to pray with you, if there's a decision that you need to make.
Speaker 1: But I invite you now to stand and I'm going to pray, and then we're going to sing, and after we sing I'm going to invite you to come out to the plaza and to check out all the ways that you can engage more in the life of our church.
Speaker 1: So, father, we lift this time to you.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your word, god.
Speaker 1: I pray this morning that you would move in our hearts, god, that you would give us the courage to respond, to be obedient to what you are calling us to do.
Speaker 1: God, help us to live out this belief that we are better together because of the gospel and how it shapes us.
Speaker 1: In Jesus' name, would you stand and let's sing together.