Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / August 17, 2025 | Onward - Making a Team

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August 17, 2025 | Onward - Making a Team · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good to be with you.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new with us this morning, welcome.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: We are uh in the middle of a series called Onward, which is about basically wherever we're at in our Christian journey, sort of breaking it down into those parts and saying, what does it mean to take one more step forward?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is also my Trojan horse to talk a lot about nerdy space stuff.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it's just a vehicle for that mostly.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: But this morning we are uh we're gonna talk about one of the most impressive things, if you will, that has ever been created by man, and certainly one of the um most effective and beautiful gifts of grace that God has ever given to Christians, which is the International Space Station and the local church.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And in the next like 35 minutes, I'm gonna try real hard to combine those two things together to illustrate a point.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: About 250 miles above our head right now is the International Space Station.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is this gleaming uh testament to human engineering and ingenuity.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it is also one of the most hostile environments you could possibly live in.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Recycled air, uh rationed water, traveling over 17,000 miles per hour in the vacuum of space, just trying to avoid all of the little meteorites that normally burn up in Earth's outer atmosphere that uh can hit them at any point in time.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing thing that's up there.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And there's also a group of astronauts that have been living on the ISS for decades now.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Different astronauts, not the same ones, but they are on a mission together.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that mission is not just uh from NASA, but rather, as the name suggests, it's an international collaboration uh to advance human science and space endeavors.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, they're on something called Expedition 73, and these are some of the astronauts who are up there or were up there uh very recently.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the image of the ISS and specifically a crew on a mission together, working as one, is how God has designed the local church to operate as well.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: At some point in time in our Christian journey, if you will, we've trusted in Christ and we have grown in that space.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually we come to the point where we need to recognize that we go farther, faster, and deeper when we do things together.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, that your faith grows and the mission of the gospel grows and multiplies when those things are done in a healthy way.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Christian though science fiction might tell us that the Lone Ranger is the most interesting story, right?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody who's off on a ship doing their own thing.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Space is a team sport.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to the message of the gospel, and when it comes to living as Christ has us to live, that is a team sport as well.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we are going to go farther, faster, and deeper when we do those things together.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, where should we look to find out what the church should be, what it should look like?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: In many ways, there's not a better place than Acts chapter 2, where we see the very first church coming about in Jerusalem.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Peter has just, he has a crowd of thousands of people that are gathered around him.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's this amazing event that happened earlier in chapter 2 called Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit descended upon the believers.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: They began to speak in tongues, and uh Peter had to assure the crowd around them that had gathered to watch people speak in foreign languages that they hadn't known previously, that they were not drunk because it was only 9 a.m.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: It says that in the Bible.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um, as Peter's doing this, he with this captive audience, he begins to tell them about Jesus Christ.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the point that he makes is very simple and straightforward.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: He says, This Jesus that you have crucified, he is both your Lord and your Messiah, or your Lord and Savior.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: He is different than you have taken him to be.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: The one that you put up on the cross has done that to save your life.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the people respond, right, and they say, What do we, what do we need to do now that we have heard this information and his expectation is so very clear.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Repent of your sins, admit you were wrong, return to Christ, repent and be baptized.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And as they do that, as we'll pick up here in verse 41, all of these people begin to come together into this very first community.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're not even calling it a church at this point, but we see the early practices and formations and priorities of the church in Acts chapter 2 here.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So those who accepted Peter's message were baptized, and that day about 3,000 people were added to them.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: They devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now all the believers were together and held all things in common.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all as any had need.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple and broke bread from house to house.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: From a group of about a hundred and twenty to over three thousand people.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine what that was like?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Can you also imagine three thousand people, ninety-seven percent of which just trusted in Christ yesterday, all joining together in community, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the excitement, the enthusiasm, the momentum that would be behind that kind of gathering, but also, like, what was it like when we trusted in Christ?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you have, you know, for the first time, there's often a lot of questions.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, what's next?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: What's the next step?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, thousands of people who are all in that same space, none of whom had a parent that passed the faith on to them.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: These are all like adult converts to Christ, right?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're all coming together and they're going, what is this supposed to look like now?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's an environment that has only been replicated a few other times since because what does it mean to go into a community like this, have the gospel come and just flourish, explode into faith.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: But what they began to do, the leaders, uh, the apostles, if you will, um, and specifically Peter and kind of his team, is they began to form and shape this community into something that could be not just replicated, but would be healthy for the long term, right?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because excitement, enthusiasm, momentum, those things do begin to wane after a period of time.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so they began to establish certain practices.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: The goal was not to make a community of like-minded people, right?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: The goal was to get people together on this gospel mission, have them work together, um, sort of build this community, commit to that mission, and then share it with other people in the city.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: They were people focused on what it meant to come together to do something greater than they could do by themselves.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we see that one of the first steps they did is they devoted themselves, right, to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this had the effect, right, of everyone was just filled with awe, and there were miracles happening everywhere.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of this wild environment.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: God is moving so fast and so clearly in this early church in a way that was obvious to everyone.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: But they devoted themselves to these things, right?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't just think that it was a good idea that other people should do it.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: They dedicated themselves to what?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: To the study of God's word and to community with God's people.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: The other two things there being uh breaking of bread, which is probably the Lord's Supper, and to prayer, um, in the Greek they just sort of explain, they're subordinate to that last thing fellowship.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's two main things it's the word and the people of God, and then two of the ways that they carried out that message and that mission were through having meals with one another and praying together.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's really easy to begin to think of a church through its most populous programs or its most impressive events, right?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: TBC is a light show.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're Camp Catapult, we're Summer Sizzle, we're LOL, we're these different things that uh reach lots of people, right?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: But a church is not based on those things, nor is it defined by those things.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're good and they're wonderful and they do reach people.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we do them, right?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: But when we look at the early church, we say, well, what did it mean for people to come together and to just begin to establish this community over with a view of the long term, right?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: That they were working towards something that was going to stick together, even though persecution was very soon going to press in at their sides.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was that they focused on these most important things of discovering God's word and connecting with God's people, and they did it with a passion and sort of a zealous heart that these were the most important things they could possibly do.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: In a vacuum, okay, the study of God's Word and connecting with God's people, they don't always feel as impressive as having a lot of people come to a gospel presentation through lights during Christmas time, right?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to go and bring a meal to someone who is sick, or to um join a Bible study, or to go to a prayer meeting, or to faithfully attend service, or do any one of these number of things that feel kind of insignificant in isolation.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the early church showed that when you come together and you do these things consistently and you dedicate yourself to them, that is what weaves together this fabric of the church and makes it strong.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that is done over time, and that is how God builds it into something even more beautiful.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: When you look at the International Space Station today, it's this shiny laboratory filled with staff conducting hundreds of different experiments.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's over the length of one football field up in space, right?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is absolutely gigantic.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And they didn't just shoot it into space one day on a really big rocket.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was built over the span of basically two decades.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: In 1998, this was the first two modules that were brought together.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a combination of the Russian and U.S.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: space programs.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And from the very beginning, way back in the 80s when this idea was first conceived, they had plans for what it would become.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, we're gonna do this and this and this.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And though some of those things changed based on context, they're from the very beginning they knew what they were building towards, but they couldn't do it all at once.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it took over 42 dedicated assembly flights, rockets with pieces destined to build out the station.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: The ISS has over 30 um different modules that can be lived in that have been connected to one another, pressurized.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't even include all the we might like trusses, docking ports, the big fans, long rectangular things you see, those are solar arrays that were um rolled up.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're not hard, they were rolled up, and then once they got into the space, they were unrolled.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's just this amazing feats of engineering, but it was done through countless teams and rocket missions and people who were all working together on this main um vision.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first lesson this morning is that by devoting ourselves to consistent acts of faith, we do grow stronger together.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the points that I'm gonna try and impress upon you this morning is that it is good and in fact primary for us to think of ourselves as being a part of a mission for the gospel, but that you also individually grow further, farther, um, deeper in your faith when you are in that community too, when you are a part dedicated to the church.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: By devoting ourselves to these consistent acts of faith, we grow stronger together.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is tempting, right, to try and supercharge the process.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: What can we inject, you know?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how can we just really kick this thing off, put it into high gear, replicate what was done in Jerusalem that was the work of the Holy Spirit anyway?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: How can we manufacture that kind of growth?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer, as it is for most things in life that are worth pursuing, is that it is small things done over time that build something which is beautiful.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so the question, which each of these points has, is are you devoted to God's word and God's people, or are you trying to grow by yourself?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: When we come to faith in Christ, it often is an individual decision, right?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, ultimately, it is we are a soul, we are a body and a soul that has an eternal destiny.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we have this responsibility and opportunity to respond to the gift of Christ as an individual.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: But as we keep going in this Christian journey, which the whole point of this series, right, is what does it look like to take that next step?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: There comes a point in time where you have to recognize that you are going to do more and experience more, but also do more for the mission of God if you are a part of a team and not just trying to do it on your own.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is captivating, right?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it is very easy today to sort of walk through the motions of being a Christian.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And believe me, it is not lost on me that you can come into our environment here, our congregation, and you can walk out, and you can not really interact with anybody.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can just sort of come in and do your own thing and leave.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: That is not being a part of a church.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, it's an incumbent upon those who have been a part of the church to try and recognize you also.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Those who have been a part of the church should be looking out for those who are new amongst our bodies so that we can join together with them in this kind of fellowship.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's a two-way street.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's much harder to get to meet new people when you don't make yourself known.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, we are supposed to be doing this thing together.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so while I'm thankful for the purpose of live stream, hey, right, um, those, and there are plenty of reasons why you're sick, you know, you're on vacation, you're working at the fire station or the hospital, um, there are a whole number of different reasons.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're physically unable to come to church.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why I'm thankful for technology to bring a message and a worship environment through a screen over weeks and months and years, if we are just doing that voluntarily because it's more convenient, we are weakening our faith and we are not contributing to the gospel mission.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: That is ultimately not what Christ has called us to do and called us to be.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: So are you devoted to God's word and God's people, the foundation of the church, or are you trying to grow by yourself?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it should be no surprise, right?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: When you do gather a group of passionate people together who are united towards the same purpose, great things tend to happen.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: As we see in the text, all the believers were together in Jerusalem and held all things in common.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all as any had need.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what probably drew your attention in there is the second sentence, where they sold all their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: But what I want to point to is the first sentence, which better describes, I think, the type of environment that was so unique and beautiful about the Jerusalem church.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: All the believers were together and they held all things in common.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't about the finances.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: But as we go later on in the New Testament, we see some of the other churches.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: The point wasn't to just replicate communal living as the way a church should operate.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: But rather that this church in Jerusalem, they did have this momentum, but because they had prioritized the right things, they were joined together and they cared for one another, right?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: They knew one another's needs, they loved one another, they worshiped together, as we find out later, daily, right?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And as they did this, all united on one mission together, passionate about that mission, they began to ask the question of, well, what does it mean for us to pursue this goal together?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: For them, in their context, in that time, it was that they decided that those in their congregation who were living these destitute lives, they wanted to change that.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a type of relationship where they could do it in a healthy way.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: But what does it mean, right, for all believers to be together and hold things in common?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was their complete dedication to the gospel.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was their dedication to this mission, right?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Of telling the world and practicing themselves that Jesus Christ died for us and that he is our Lord and Savior.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: That is the mission, or rather, the uh, well, yeah, that is the mission that Peter shared with the people where thousands of people came.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like he sort of did a bait and switch.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, hey, we've got this awesome thing going on, and then they come in the doors and he's like, just so you know, you must sell everything, right?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't sort of Peter's attempt to try and, you know, beguile the masses, but rather he's like, hey, we're here for Christ.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm honest with you.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're doing.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: People come in, they're like, we're on mission for Christ, and we want to do this together.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the way the Spirit led them in Jerusalem in that time was, hey, we're we're gonna do something pretty wild.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna do something that is going to be shocking to the community around us, but we're gonna do it because we love one another.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Moreover, it's gonna enable us to that end to reach more people with the gospel and to be this captivating community that sends a message as we gather amongst the city that we're different.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: As the name suggests, the International Space Station is an international endeavor, right?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: To make a long story short, back in the 80s, it was a pretty wild idea to say that you wanted to have a permanent space station up in the sky, right?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody thought you were crazy.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, just 20 years ago, we were doing 10 years ago, we were doing good to like send people to the moon.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And now you want to have them live up there?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this idea was so big, it was so radical that any one group of people couldn't accomplish it on their own.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so the the um the US space program, NASA, joined forces with the Russian space program, the European Space Program, or European Space Agency, excuse me, and then Japan and Canada.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: They combined their designs, they shared their technology, and they pooled their resources.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And since that time, the station has been continuously inhabited by astronauts from all different countries.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: At the moment, like right now, there are six astronauts on the ISS.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: There are three Americans, one Japanese, and two Russians.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And they are working together on Expedition 73 to accomplish hundreds of science experiments and up uh module upgrades and repair jobs and installations.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: The International Space Station survives because everyone is united in their mission and dedicated to seeing its success.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: About two weeks ago, a space shuttle went up with new astronauts to the ISS and brought some back, and it will happen again in a couple months, right?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're exchanging this group all the time.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's never the same people.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's really uh longest an astronaut has been in space on the ISS has been about a year.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: That was sort of pushing it.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because things happened to your body that aren't good.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, for decades, this thing has been a collaboration from all of these different agencies saying they wanted to do something better together than they could apart.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it causes difficulties, right?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: As you might imagine, the US and Russia working together has not always been a smooth path.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Even still, it's not to this day.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: But they have come together saying we can go farther, faster, deeper when we are together.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: By dedicating ourselves to the same mission, we go farther together.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's a small picture of what we see in Acts chapter 2.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: The Jerusalem believers understood that they.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Were one body with one mission, and ultimately that what they were doing when they gathered together was bigger than any one person.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Not just in terms of numbers and heartbeats, right?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: But that simply by gathering and being on mission and being committed to that mission and pulling together for it, right?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Dedicating and devoting themselves to it, far more than just accomplishing success.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was that the simple gathering together, doing all of these things, was more important than when they would just gather or rather pursue their faith on their own.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: They were a part of something larger.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so our question here is, are you committed to the gospel mission or do you have another agenda?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean that in a negative sense, right?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because there are many reasons, right, why we come to faith in Christ that oftentimes can be motivated by self in the earliest parts.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, what does it look like when somebody says, Do you want to have eternal life?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to be forgiven of your sins?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to know peace?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And do you want to find satisfaction and purpose?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, yes, please.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Those all sound like fantastic things.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, that is what Christ brings through the Spirit as we are reunited with the Father through the Son.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: But at a certain point in time, we begin to say, okay, but the mission of the Christian life is to reflect our Savior.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And our Savior died on a cross for the sins of other people.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so what does it mean to be dedicated to something that is bigger than yourself because you see others as more important?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus washing the feet of the disciples at the Last Supper.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, our Savior modeled what it meant for us to be dedicated to something bigger than ourselves because we care more for others than we do.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we try and make that shift.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: We try and move and take gradual steps to that point where we say, it is more about how I can contribute to the mission than how the mission contributes to my life.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that the greatest satisfaction that we can find in this life is through the body of the local church accomplishing these things together.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: More wins when we do them as the same team.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: But if we are focused on the gospel, right, this is our primary reason of being together.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And this is our mission.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: We have to understand that it can't be completed, finalized, whatever you want to say, until ultimately that gospel message goes outside the walls of the church.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: The point is never to just gather together and keep learning and learning and learning and learning, right?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: We edify the saints, we're here to connect, we're here to serve one another, yes.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately we are doing it to create this community that is captivating and is on mission because there are a lot of people outside the church who don't know who Jesus is.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And as a final movement in the Jerusalem church's process or founding, whatever you want to say there too, like they were dedicated to taking this mission and sharing it with their community.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple and broke bread from house to house.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: That might not sound to you like an evangelism strategy, but it was unbelievably effective.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you why.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, until the Roman Empire, a couple hundred years later, we didn't really do church buildings.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: There wasn't a big building that was made to house everybody together.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thankful for church buildings.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: I love ours, you know.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's an old dog that needs to go to the vet quite often, but it's a beautiful building.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Buildings.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: But until a couple hundred years after the Jerusalem church, they didn't have a main place that they were gathering to worship.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, every single day they got together as a body of believers, and they went to the most populated, important, and Jewish section of the city, right next to the temple, and they worshiped there, in the public gathering space, right?
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thousands of people coming together in the Jerusalem temple courts to talk about Christ.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, right in front of the very people who Peter would say, You have crucified and killed him.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do that, right?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: When you come together in this way, but it's not confrontational.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Peter's bold, right?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: But he's not out there just condemning everybody.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're saying, come in.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's this group of people who are doing this thing, and we are on mission.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And what does it say there?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: They were enjoying the favor of all the people.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now that doesn't last forever.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Here in just a moment, we see that the Jerusalem church is sort of their riding high, that eventually those who hated Christ were going to cast some arrows at them that were very effective.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: But because they were dedicated to others, they loved one another, right?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they loved their neighbors.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: They began to develop this reputation that even though it was counter-cultural to leave, I mean, you're Jewish right next to the temple, and you're going to go to the guy that says that the temple is going to be destroyed because his body was the temple.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're talking about some radical moves.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, this is what God used to bring people to faith in Christ.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't call it an evangelism strategy that was executed with vigor, right?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: They said, out of the natural overflow in our hearts of knowing Jesus and loving Jesus, and out of a practical need to find a space where we can all gather together.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: They would do certain things in their homes, but this was the main gathering, right?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, we're going to do this, and the world is going to hear who Jesus is and what he has done.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: In my last illustration about the International Space Station, which some of you are very thankful for, you need to know that it isn't just a place where astronauts live and work in isolation, right?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: They don't just go up there, do their thing, and come back down.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: The purpose of the ISS, beyond just collaboration, is to advance the scientific community.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a whole host of experiments that they perform up there.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, some of them have to do with growing protein crystals and microgravity, right?
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Which helps us better understand diseases like Alzheimer's.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: They, as you might imagine, have a limited supply of water that needs to get reused.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the technology to do that well is then repurposed here on Earth in communities that don't have access to clean water.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: What happens on the ISS does not stay there, okay?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: It goes elsewhere.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's the opposite of Vegas, all right?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that happens there has a purpose of being extended and shared with other people.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so we look at the ISS and we say that when we have a desire to serve others first, right?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: We do more together.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when the church adopts that mission, we share Christ together.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: We show Christ to the world.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: By taking on this identity that it is for them and not just for us, we begin to change the way that we think about the church's mission.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: It is not just to come here and gather and learn, but rather to do that as an encouragement so that the other six days of the week, right, we're inviting other people to come on the seventh.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: So the other six days of the week, we're living on mission in our communities, in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, in our households.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's so that we come together and we go out as the activity of the church.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Final question this morning: Is your Christian mission more about yourself or helping someone else?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's always going to be an individual aspect to your faith.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: There should be.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: You should have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, right?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Father has made you individually in your mother's womb.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit embodies your body as a believer.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: But when all of us come together to do this thing and have a heart that is dedicated to other people first, the world begins to change, and in fact, the church becomes an attractive community of believers rather than just a place of like-minded people.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Final sentence in our passage that every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved, right?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let us be certain that we understand that it is the work of the Spirit drawing people to the Father through the Son that grows a church.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it tends to be the case that when a church is dedicated to God's word and to his people, that when they are united and devoted to a specific mission, being the gospel, and when they share that gospel message with other people, it tends to follow that God uses them to bring people to Christ.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: That God uses those communities to grow in that most important metric, which is the number of those who are being saved.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not the total number of people who are coming, the number of people who are being saved, the fruit of the gospel.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we might summarize it this way: when we grow stronger together in faith, go farther together in mission, and show Christ together in our witness, God brings the increase, just as he did in Jerusalem, adding daily to the number being saved.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And as a Christian, this should be a captivating message for you if you care about other people knowing Jesus and you yourself wanting to know Jesus more.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you're just going, you know what, I've sort of like made it in the gates, right?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've trusted in Jesus, I'm good, I'm gonna coast, it would make sense that this is not relevant to you.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: But if you go, I want to grow deeper in my faith, I want to see this mission go further, then you need to understand that it's done as a group.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's done as a bunch of individuals on mission together.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is not a mission to serve the individuals.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so there is a lot of beauty and fellowship and camaraderie and comfort and coming together with people who, generally speaking, think in a similar way about the world.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not the ultimate aim of a church, is to just be a gathering of like-minded people.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's to be people who are on mission.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you one other thing, though, about the Jerusalem church.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: This fantastic heyday, right?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: This great growth that we see in Acts chapter 2, thousands of people coming to faith in Christ, more being added every single day, just seems like unlimited potential that lasted for about a year or two.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Before one of the members of the church, a guy named Stephen, was dragged out and ultimately stoned because he professed faith in Christ.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened was that this group of people who did really did not like this church gathering together in their temple court every single day, talking about a Messiah and a Savior that had come and died for the sins of the world, they began to persecute this very church that we're talking about.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the man that ended up writing the majority of the New Testament, Paul, he was among their number.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Before he knew Christ, his job was to try and arrest and ultimately deliver as many Christians to prison and probably death as he possibly could.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: When Stephen was stoned, Paul was there, he was known as Saul at the time, was there holding the clothes of the people who were throwing the rocks.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what we find in the Jerusalem church is the bigger story about how God uses the local church.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that is, it's not about unlimited growth and potential.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about the size of the church.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: You might be impressed, I might be impressed by those numbers.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Man, 3,000 people, that's pretty darn big in one day.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Woo! But what happened was as the church scattered and families who trusted in Christ were sent into the four corners of the world, right?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Into the surrounding region, just trying to find a place where they wouldn't be persecuted for their faith, where them and their children could be safe, they took with them this seed of the gospel message.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: And they took it into these communities, and what they did is they planted little house churches that said, Hey, we're gonna devote ourselves to the reading of the word and to the meeting together as people of God.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna be dedicated to this mission, and we're gonna put our lives into this mission, and we're gonna share it with other people.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: And what you see is that even though the Jerusalem church technically decreased in number and size, the church, and by that now I'm using like a capital C, the global church, God's broader mission for the gospel, was greatly expanded.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: And far more people came to faith in Christ because ultimately of how God reduced the Jerusalem church than anybody would have if they had just been this gigantic megalith to the gospel message.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's the point in all of that, right?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the point is that we should not be wrapped up in the size of a church, but rather the impact of a church and the gospel fruit that it bears.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: When it says they added to their number day by day those who are being saved, that is the metric that we're looking at.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Who is trusted in Christ?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Who is drawing deeper in faith?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Who is becoming a disciple and ultimately discipling others?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: That is the outward fruit that we should be looking for in any good church, including this one, right?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're looking for that.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're drawing towards, that's what we're chasing after by the power of the Spirit.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so my encouragement to you is commit yourself to that mission.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you are not, if you feel like you are kind of living on the fringes of what we're doing here, commit yourself to the mission, right?
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: You individually are going to go deeper and farther and grow stronger in your faith between you and the Lord because you're a part of the local church, in part because there are certain commands that you have been given by God the Father that you can only carry out when you are a part of the local church.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you're trying to do it all by yourself, you're trying to do it with one arm behind your back.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's some stuff he's asked you to do, you don't have the place to do it.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: But more important than that, more important than your individual faith, is the faith of those in Topeka who don't know Christ.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: You, if you've trusted in Jesus, you are saved.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not all of them are.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so we need to be a place, and we are, but even more so.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Hear me in that.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like we are, but even more so, that is dedicated to leading people to life in Christ and not just what happens here, but what happens out there in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, in our homes with our friends.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: That is what we are here to do.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I can guarantee you, what is far more pleasing to the Father is to know that we are reaching people with Christ than to know that we had a bunch of people come on a Sunday.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: The metrics that we are concerned about are the ones like tonight, right?
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: I invite you, as the church, come to the baptisms.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: Come and see the people who had made a profession of faith in Christ, both those who are adults and the kids who have grown up in homes where they have heard about it or came to faith at a camp that we had, right?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: Come and celebrate them because that is what we are here to do.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is what we are here to do is lead people to life in Christ and have that be shown one of the ways is by getting dunked, right?
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: As a symbol for life in Christ.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: So even if you don't have somebody that you know personally as a friend who's being baptized, come because it's a part of your church.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Come because you are dedicated to the mission.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Come because you care that you might not know their last name until you hear their name tonight, but you are connected as individuals, all as part of one body.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: Commit to that.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the church, an instrument of grace that you have given to us, so that we might grow deeper in our faith and your gospel message would be multiplied.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, you have placed eternity in our hearts.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: And as we know that ultimately it's an individual decision that we make to trust in you as our Savior, we live that out with other people.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Live it out with other people, hopefully, Lord, who are dedicated to that mission of leading people to life in Christ.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: God, it's not an easy mission, but you never said it was going to be.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a mission that we always agree on the direction or the methods and means, but that's okay.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, you give us grace in those spaces to grow where we need to grow, even as a part of this one body.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray for our church.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: I pray for all the churches, but this morning I pray for our church that we would draw deeper in this mission towards one another.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: Love for one another, an affection for your word, a desire to serve and carry out that mission in a way that we simply cannot do on our own.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: God, reveal to us the places where we can engage more deeply, where we can commit in our hearts and our hands to doing the work that you have called us to do.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you for these things.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as we all are at different stages in our journey of faith, help us to do it together.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: In Christ's name.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: Love you.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: See you tonight at the baptism.