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00:00:01 [Applause] [Music] morning church is a privilege again to be able to speak here on this sunday morning and we're going to take a break from the book of matthew i'm going to share something that the elders have discussed at length and something that's burdened us and let's see what scripture says about it this morning and uh you can probably know the topic from the slide this is a one of the books that francis chan wrote called letters to the church it's a is it's part of his journey and i i it is a journey that i've been following
00:00:49 and it's an ongoing journey that has not ended and he made a statement in the book which i thought was very very profound and it's this it says if god had his way what would our churches look like and it struck me it struck me at some of our presuppositions at what we call doing church for example we are all part of first baptist church why are you here in a baptist church why not an anglican church why not a catholic church why not a charismatic church why first baptist so let me tell you how he
00:01:28 developed this and you can find this on youtube and this is from one of his statements i've expanded it here are four remarks which a lot of people would say all right there's nothing wrong with this right now you know after service someone you said i enjoyed the worship i look forward to john's preaching or could be dr peters or sam's preaching i found today's sermon great bro i felt very connected to god during worship nothing wrong with all of this but francis chan had the point and he he brought this up in a follow-up
00:01:59 and you can see this on youtube you should watch it called reading church he said the problem with this kind of remarks which i expanded is that the center of it is you now what if we change the words and it came out more like this did god enjoy the worship this morning did god look forward to john's preaching did god find today's sermon uplifting did god feel connected to us during worship that's the point and that really struck me you see today when you say you're a christian first question people ask protestant or
00:02:38 catholic charismatic or evangelical are you reform are you calvinist are you armenian i mean just let's just look at these four pictures right some churches say you had to follow tradition okay the church has been the same for thousands of years you you baptist right have no respect for tradition so they follow what we call a liturgical service other churches will say you know god has power and god grew you know 3 000 people at the end of acts chapter you know chapter one two so we have power and
00:03:16 this is the kingdom of god other people say no you know churches have to be personal small gospel centered is about mentoring and you know accountability it is very popular among the millennials everything has to be gospel centered and then some other people says you know what church just has to be no frills simple building families getting together and worshipping so the question we ask ourselves this morning is this is there such a thing as a one true church and if god looks down on all these
00:03:54 services in his myriad of it where everybody here calls themselves christian which church would he be honored and here's a here's the thing which is interesting and i think i i i thank you for telling me this you can debate our bodies forever until last year because what happened last year this happened and suddenly it doesn't matter what you think church is suddenly everything just went out of out of sync and so let me just show you some statistics you know and and this is really quite old i'm
00:04:29 trying to get something new i think the statistics are worse but last year all right just over a short period of time one in every three people in america stopped going to church because of the pandemic now we are 2021 i suspect that that number is larger and and you can check online the number of people who go online to a service versus the actual attendance is far much lower on a sunday morning and there's another thing that's happening because of this pandemic there are people who are switching
00:05:03 churches you see church has gone online so you know you follow your church for a while afterwards hang on i'm sitting in my bedroom i'm sitting in my lounge i can just follow another church so people move it's like a netflix mentality you know i'm gonna follow fbc this sunday maybe next sunday i'm gonna follow another church so this is something that you know i struggled with a lot and i i really want to share that with you as a brother this morning so today we're going to go back to basics and ask ourselves what is church
00:05:37 what what is the kind of church that god would be honored and francis chan in his book said what happens you just start with a blank piece of paper and it wrote down on scripture and went back and if you do that you have to go back in time number one you have to go back to the first church which is found in the book of acts and we're going to do that but we're going to take a little bit beyond that and something that we have never done in any of our sermons we're not only going to go back in time to the book of
00:06:04 acts we're going to go back to the early church the first 300 years so what i would like to do this morning is to to make the early church come alive for you and to share with you what they believe what they went through and how they grew they didn't have what we had no they didn't have the bible then they didn't have buildings they were persecuted large at the time they were poor and yet the church grew yes they didn't have kovit 19 they had worse for us once we have kobe 19 people drop out of our church
00:06:38 so how did the early church persevere and that's something we want to approach with humility this morning so let's come before the lord and look at our identity as a church and elijah to invite you to just open in prayer as we come in humility lord god we come before you this morning and ask that we we move aside all our presuppositions uh pride is probably the worst thing a christian has some of us think we know what church is we think we we and we look down on others who are doing church differently from us
00:07:15 and we say that no they're not bible-based they're not accountable they're not gospel centered the lord gave us some humility to just search ourselves that the way we do church is a way that honors you i mean your spirit speak may i disappear a lot but you lord take over the whole service for your presence is here with us and we say this in jesus name amen so let's go on a journey and i think some of the things i'm gonna speak on this morning you might not agree with so it's personal so don't take it if you know if you feel
00:07:51 what i'm saying is not agreeable with you let's discuss this francis chan went on this journey it took him to certain truths and he came to the conclusion that a lot of what the church does today particularly what we call the reform evangelical church is not in his view biblical it led to a lot of reaction you should follow the especially the last two months podcast has been doing so you made a remark you say when the church really takes on the humble characteristics of christ that's going to lead to revival so let's
00:08:18 have some humility and teachability in this number two i've done a lot of research in this and if you find this morning's sermon interesting i'm quite prepared to do a zoom meeting with some of you to discuss a bit of the early church history traditions of other churches like the orthodox church that's something i'm quite familiar with some of the early nissin fathers we can just go about and do a bit more reading of this but let me give you a bit of a history lesson some of you might not appreciate history but it's good to know
00:08:45 a little bit of history but i'm going to give you three points today the characteristics of the early church the practices of the of the early church and the power of the early church and i'm going to just share with you a bit of history right so that you know we're going to call what we call the patrastic period the it comes to the word patriarch and in early church there were actually five patriarch centers basically antioch jerusalem rome constantinople and alexandria each one had a patriarch
00:09:13 which traced themselves from the apostolic fathers so let me just tell you the first 300 years after paul is converted peter dies and john dies now the church moves all right i won't go through in details but these 300 years are very difficult years for the church and it ends in what is known as the dioxin persecution that persecution lasted eight years really really bad persecution and after that what happens is along the time one of the emperors become christian there's a little bit of fight here and
00:09:44 there but after this christianity becomes legal it comes from what was known as religio pravya which means a depraved religion to religio li cynthia it is a official religion and of course after that rome becomes officially christian and things happen but along here just explain to you number one they didn't even have the bible the bible the nearest form of the bible came in 200 a.d what was called in the moratorium canon the first hundred years they didn't have the bible they bid of the letters they didn't have a
00:10:18 building the first judge building is found in a place called megiddo in what is known as modern day palestine it was a house so they didn't have any of our staff and they were persecuted they were persecuted and nero they were persecuted at julius they were persecuted at uh marcus aurelius and all these people right all the early fathers right justin martha died a martha polycarp 78 year old bishop burned at a stake all of them died terribly but 300 years the church grew we have one year of kobe 19 we lose 30
00:10:55 percent of our people come on guys there's something that we got to learn from them now that's briefly what happened just to give you overview after the church becomes official i think a lot of trouble that happens because everybody becomes nominal christian and of course early christianity comes to the what's you know the council of chelsea dawn this is a famous council where they were trying to debate about uh the trinity and then there's a split just very briefly the first split happens here
00:11:24 the oriental orthodox you will know them this is alexandria splitting off and they are called the coptic christians and they have a different view of the god here we won't go into the details you want to know that we can have a zoom seminar the major schism which is bigger than the protestant reformation happens at this and this is when the orthodox church under alexandria under john chrysotom under constantinople where the time empire is very big basically has a squabble with rome you won't go into the details
00:11:55 again i can tell you the details in the seminar it's got to do with the creed some wording of it and the split and this becomes the roman catholic church one billion at heroes today and people don't realize the orthodox church claims that same kind of tradition 300 million today and what is quite interesting people don't realize a lot of evangelicals have moved to the orthodox church number two a lot of jews have moved to the orthodox church and lastly the orthodox church is very known for counseling you know in
00:12:25 their church donate family life one they do spiritual formation here you know even even secular psychologists like dr jordan peterson will acknowledge it on them and of course we have the protestants and the thing about the protesters is they start to split they move from luther to kelvin to zwingli to to do to the pure written fathers and then the brick of the 20th century to charismatic evangelicals are is going to opinion so when you talk to a catholic right a catholic will come and tell you
00:12:54 you protestants how many thousands of denominations each one of you telling you a certain point one guy says must be baptized the holy spirit another guy said must be gospel centered another guy teaches prosperity another guy says was the bible centered so this is christianity in his dilemma and as francis chan says the church is fractured so who do we follow who has basically who is truer to god's heart so what is church and that's something we're going to look at we're going to look at the book of
00:13:26 acts to find out what is church so uh let me just first give you the proposition the church is the personification of the kingdom of god now you've got to find out one thing when you when you when you look at the book of acts and the epistles especially these pieces of matthew matthew very much tries to tie the old testament to jesus which is true to jesus is the first adam jesus 40 days 40 nights what does that mean as peter pointed out 40 years in the desert he's the new moses so he's the new adam he's the
00:14:01 new moses jesus telling his disciples to break bread to basically holy communion when on passover on passover that's important isn't it because jesus is the new passover lamb the passover reminds the jews of their delivery from bondage from egypt and holy communion reminds them of their delivery from sin and the early church called it the eucharist okay we don't like to use the word but it's found in all the literature documents it means thanksgiving so the same with the church so when when jesus comes as a
00:14:35 messiah right and he says right i have disciples and the rabbis look at him and how many do you have 12. guess what they think it connects 12 tribes dear disciples so what is jesus trying to do he is trying to resurrect the kingdom of god so when we open the book of acts we find this statement and today we're just gonna run through the whole four or five chapters go back and read it and look at first i'm gonna take a few verses we're gonna look at verse six and john says this and verse six chapter one lord are you
00:15:13 at this time going to restore the kingdom to israel it's in your mind side kingdom of god jews and look at what paul jesus says them he says to them verse 7 is not for you to know the times or dates the father set by some authority you will receive power the holy spirit comes to you and here's interesting you can hear the great commission you'll be my witnesses in jerusalem judea and samaria are go into samaritans and to the ends of the earth flash news is not just going to be on the jews and the kingdom of god is not going to
00:15:49 be a literal kingdom with a literal king with walls and a palace and the first thing is jesus is telling them jesus is more concerned on inward attitudes rather than outward attributes he is not going to resurrect a physical kingdom bring a revolt towards the romans in fact in luke 17 21 please go and read it in in a discussion jesus says people will say where is the kingdom of god is it here is it there and he says no the kingdom of god is within you it's an invisible kingdom so here's the first thing which
00:16:25 impressed upon me you know people had to argue no you know uh church has to do this the church practices have to do that they have to do outer core they have to do a better worship they have to follow this kind of liturgy they have to teach people to speak in tongues they have to teach people more of the bible in the end form the building your pro your projects your programs is secondary to your attitude and that's when the old testament god says you know they come and they worship me with their thoughts with their mouth
00:16:59 they praise me they bring their sacrifices but god says is filthy rex so as the church moves as as in progression to be the kingdom of god is an invisible kingdom it's the rule of god over the people of god and god's more concerned on an inward attitude let's go on secondly it's universal in nature and you know the word catholic comes from this the original greek word i think it's called cartalicos and it was first used by a very early saint called ignatius 117 years and he meant it to mean the
00:17:37 church universal now is used to mean a denomination but the word catholic in the nicin creed means universal so let's go on and see what happens in the story acts and i'm going to take that snapshot right and of course after that jesus gets taken up in the sky they chew the 12 disciples and then pentecost happens okay so let's go down to chapter two so scroll with me to chapter two and we're going to look at a famous story of pentecost and we're going to look at verse five and look at this now they were saying jerusalem god
00:18:11 fearing jews now that's a motive later on when we have cornelius cornelius is also called god fearing but he's a gentile but here's a key word from every nation under heaven every nation this is the first church yeah and of course we have the story of them sunny uh they come from everywhere and look at what it says in verse 8 then when the holy spirit comes upon them how did each of us hear them in our own native language parthians meats elements mesopotamians judeans capricornians pontians and
00:18:44 asians blah blah blah and even arabs mainly the first church is enantiography you see god scripting out the story and says you know what this is church and what is church the church is going to go to the ends of the earth it will be universal so here's a lesson for us the characteristic of the church is it has to include the nations so and it means also for us if you stay in a small church or your church and you have your own belief system and you make no attempt to connect to people from other denominations
00:19:20 people who call yourself christians who are different from you you're not really universal now there's something that ties the universality together we go to there in a while but we we always do engaged charismatics orthodox catholics anglicans lutherans because god's church is universal and when we get to heaven you'll see people from every denomination but your whole life you've been baptist bit worrying right that's not being universal so that's a characteristic and the early church recognized this
00:19:53 secondly is flexible and adaptable is it is important and again this goes back to the inward attitude we find that gospel matthew the samaritan woman has a theological debate with jesus where should we worship you we worship in jerusalem on the mount and jesus says the time will come where you worship in spirit any truth and there again is about having an inward attitude and this inward attitude is shown in how we practice church let's see where the church occurs right let's have a few all right
00:20:23 number one we have the holy spirit coming down we all know that and it comes on a particular day what day is that it is a day of pentecost and we're going to come to that in a while and then they have this miraculous speaking of tongues then peter gives this great sermon his sermon is actually only on the gospel they all repent and at the end of verse 41 what happens those who accept this message were baptized and about 3 000 were added to that number that day 3 000 how big is fbc i think 400 people
00:20:56 are this your first mega church you know so the first mega church was born that day that's their first church really no worship team no outer call no fantastic speaker with powerpoint three thousand people ah wow never mind then you think okay well three thousand movement after that eh where did they meet we find later on when they go on uh in verses 42 where did they meet uh they met in firstly we said they devoted themselves the apostle teachings etc etc every day verse 46 they met at the temple courts
00:21:34 they met at the temple course and after that they what it was the second part they broke bread in their homes so this is where the church met you had 3 000 people after that did they set up their own building no they met at the temple cause the temple course i don't think can fit 3 000 people by the way and then after that when they did they met at the homes the home as big as they have 30 people 20 people from 3 000 30 people from big open rally to the temple to the home and later on you find as christianity
00:22:06 move they met at the basilica the basilica is the official town hall of the romans meaning god's not really concerned about whether your church is big last smaller or stained glass la god don't argue man you see christians like to argue over these things don't argue god's concern on the inside if somebody wants to build a big church with all the fancy gadgets great architecture because he was honored god don't judge him don't say that he's spending money in in incorrect manner if his heart is right
00:22:38 somebody wants to keep the church simple and clean and just a small hall don't judge him somebody wants to put icons out there and put iconography don't judge them judge them on their heart and the church is adaptable you know why they were adaptable you know why they went to the temple because to survive because they could be identified with the jews because only the jews had that protection from what we call emperor worship and their homes nobody sees you and later as the community grew they met at the town hall what we call
00:23:10 today we read the hotel and then let's do church so church is flexible let's move on the church happens every day now that's new isn't it it happens every day how do we get there look at that it says here that every day they continue to meet together in temper courts every day no wow all right beginning next week fbc is going to meet every day already the numbers really going down i think the doubles would go even less they met every day church happens when you go to work should happen when at home church
00:23:42 happens when you connect with people from fbc and if you don't do that and you only meet on sunday that's not church church occurs when people connect to one another and they do it via zoom via phone calls if they cannot meet it but they are intentional in this now this one is something i think all almost many evangelical churches forget they did not reject all traditions in fact when you read first corinthians 15 13 paul talks about how that which he has learned he passes on to them now when you look at verse 42 and what
00:24:22 the fellowship the believers did the devoting of the apostle teachings fellowship breaking a break the order of it is the same as the order of what the jews used to do in the temples so what happened is that the the word christian only occurs at chapter 11 of the book of the acts and all history tells in the first first few years everyone thought jew christians were a sack of judaism because christians identified themselves with their hebrew roots so there was a continuity of it now the problem with us with tradition is that
00:24:58 there are two extremes one some people say the church has to be the same as it was thousands of years ago so some of the older liturgical churches if you go in there the service is in latin and they tell you well thousands if you're hundreds of years ago there was in latin we're doing the vesper in latin but you can't understand latin now why did they do latin then because that was the language of the roman empire why did it have iconography because early people were not very illiterate so there were reasons for it but to do
00:25:29 it now you know you know you know it's like like jurassic park right where you had dinosaurs the dinosaurs had a place in the past to resurrect a dinosaur now in the present world the dinosaurs out of place so there's one extreme where people are very proud that their church is the same for hundreds of years now there's nothing in the scripture that says that has to be there the church is flexible adaptable and god's more concerned on the attitude but here's the other extreme which the evangelical church has done
00:25:58 we have cut off all traditions we don't read at all and so we don't learn from the past and because we don't learn from the past we make the same mistakes again and again it says some food for thought okay lastly is centered on the gospel now have you noticed one thing now how do we know that because we had a great sermon by peter before the church was formed and it was only a focus on one thing it was focused only on the gospel and at the end of it at the verse 38 peter says repent and be baptized each
00:26:32 one of you in the name of jesus christ so we know the acts 2 the great sermon there was on the was on the gospel now here's a question to you when jesus comes you look at all this all the gospels right the synoptic gospels in particular jesus says repent the kingdom of god is at hand the kingdom of heaven is here the kingdom of god is near you find the word kingdom repeated again and again paul rarely uses that he uses it in romans once or twice about attitudes but mainly paul talks about the gospel
00:27:04 so here's the question why doesn't paul talk about the kingdom and i'll give you my view is because paul is already talking to the kingdom the church is the kingdom he doesn't need to talk about the kingdom because the church is the kingdom and he's telling the kingdom what the gospel is your center and in fact that's how we can become what we call a catholic course church how we can really be catholic we are catholic when we find brothers and sisters from every traditions who believe jesus christ
00:27:38 died for our sins and rose again and is victorious over us and we follow him as savior and as lord and everybody else want to argue about tongues about traditions about liturgy about calvinism arminism dispensation go take a backseat we will love one another because the gospel demands so and the church is universal can i get an amen out there and so in the end what we see is a big picture like i said giving you just broad strokes vertical worship leads to horizontal relationships the proper response to god in our love
00:28:17 and adoration leads to the intimate relationship the first church had and when we look at how the church had an intimacy just look at that at how how intimate they were they they didn't come to church because they were dragged to come to church no look at that verse 46 they broke bring their homes and act together with glad and sincere hearts praising god you know they they enjoyed coming to church some of us sunday morning uh oh you have to go to church they love meeting together but how did that relationship come together look at
00:28:55 that look at the verse again it says they praised god he had that proper understanding of god of reverence the proper attitude of love towards god and we're gonna go a little bit into that but and one of the reasons why i think people leave churches because they fight and i think because the fight then they say somebody heard me now somebody said i'm gonna move to another church but i think a lot of it comes because our our vertical worship the way we approach god is somehow maybe not very biblical
00:29:26 and when you look at acts 1 and 2 what is the way they approach god god is to be revered and when you come to him his people he is almighty god he and jesus is king of kings he's our savior that's our intimacy but he is to be respected revealed and ought and that brings us to our knees in adoration and then out of that we love one another better let us try to develop that a little bit more and now let me just give you some writings justin martha and this is a letter he wrote to the emperor anthony's pious uh
00:30:06 when anthonis pious was persecuting the church and he was pleading to the peril emperor not to persecute the church and this white wrote we formally in 155 a.d we formally rejoice in uncleanness of life but now love only chastity before we use the magic art but now dedicate ourselves to the true and unbegotten god before we love money and possessions more than anything but now we share what we have and to everyone who is in it hang on did i get that somewhere did i oh yes i got it that's verse 45 they sold possessions to give
00:30:42 to anyone who had need is right off the book of acts in fact everything here is from the from from the new testament and before that after that he says look at that now we share with our before we hated one another i killed one another and will not eat with those of another race where do we get that from there's efficience the hostility between jews and gentiles and now since the manifestation of christ will come to a common life do when gentile becoming one ephesians chapter 3 pray for enemies there's jesus forgive
00:31:14 and am trying to win over those who hate us without cause that's the great commission the early church understood christianity what did he get for doing this this emperor didn't kill him the next emperor marcus aurelius took him and all his fellow deacons and chopped up all their heads that's in historical records so how did that early church just persevere it's really amazing so let me just go through the practices and maybe the practices give us a little bit more understanding about it right now firstly i'm going to say the first
00:31:51 thing the church does together they glorify god by worship when you look at the narrative of how the first church comes together we call this the inauguration of the church you know god had a plan firstly what he did was he ensured the church was formed on pentecost you know what is pentecost pentecost means 50 it is actually a festival of weeks just to give a bit of history the festival weeks is followed it's basically a festival after the festival first fruits is where believers come and they give their best to god
00:32:25 i give you god my best fruits my best lamb i give you my best from the nations they come the church comes together as a nation and they give the best and so god then gives them the first fruits of the holy spirit in accordance the prophet joel and because we find in chapter two and what happens in this they say this in verse 11 we hear them declaring the wonders of god in our own tongues the first act the church comes as the first fruits of the holy spirit comes from pentecost is worship that means when we get
00:33:04 together we recognize in that service we are here to worship god that's the vertical and then to cement that right clearly we find that after the 3000 rally what did what constituted worship verse 42 the apostles teaching fellowship breaking of bread and prayer and to ensure the sanctity uh the centrality of breaking break verse 46 it says again they broke bread in the homes is the only thing that's repeated twice but this is what the alleged practice themselves that was worshipped now let's take a pause
00:33:38 and look at how we do worship you know uh when you go online on after this service a very simple one after sivers go and look at the numbers i'm gonna give you a prophecy now 235 250 correct john go and check it not only that if you had looked back when you first started the service at 8 45 look at your numbers fifty and sometime nine o'clock hundred and nine fifteen hundred forty five when the summer starts maybe two hundred you you see this i'm saying this you love we are not treating the church service as a service
00:34:24 we are coming for a lecture we are fast forwarding it only to the sermon that we listen to it i say this in love that's not worship worship begins at 8 45 and it was the early church they met on time and the moment they sat down they were in the presence of god so this morning when you stand at 45 at your so far did you feel the presence of god are you set on there yeah worship sing song don't know this song yeah the pitch very high la faster like oh give money do it now do it now oh summon sermon seven okay someone i
00:35:05 better go toilet and come back i say this in love because god is watching us um you see the church now has become basically a church where we are consumers we are looking for things and if you don't entertain me as much as the netflix series i'm going to go to the next online church so i come on 8 45 give it to me baby very boring next sunday go another church and we forget at 8 45 when you come in the space is sacred the lord looks down on us the church catalikus is gathered before him and we dishonor god when we treat it
00:35:48 like a lecture this is not a ted talk this is the presence of god francis chan says this we live in a culture where we are used to evaluating and giving opinions and everything whereas the pizza we add our uber driver the movie we saw all our friends pictures social media everything is set up for us to be able to critique and compare so in the church rather than marveling at the incredible mystery that we are part of god's body we critique the leadership the music the programs anything we can turn off fbc first and best at
00:36:25 criticizing but this is what the early church understood you are in that mystery of god god's presence is with us and this is what justin martyr again said over there on the day we called the day of the sun all who dwell in the city or country in the city or country they did it allah saying it was the nearest church they walked to church for hours all who do in the city or country gather in the same place the memoirs of the apostles the writing the prophets are read where is that from acts we just read it they devoted
00:37:05 themselves to the teachings of the apostles as much as time permits as much for other how long your servant 45 minutes on your backside each year cannot hunt here when the reader is finished he precise over them gathers admonishes and challenges them to imitate these beautiful things then we all rise together and offer prayers for ourselves that's again in the same verses we just read and for all others whether they may be then someone brings bread and a cup of water and wine mixed together to him who
00:37:38 presides over the brethren that's again what we just read that early did in acts he takes them and offers praise and glory to the father universe through the name of the son of the holy spirit when he concluded the prayers and thanksgiving all present give voice to an acclamation by saying amen when he who presides has given thanks and the people responded those who have can call deacons give to those present the eucharistic bread wine and water and take them to those who are absent you know where they took them
00:38:06 they took them to the homes exactly what we wrote we read that's the practice of the early church for the early church just started at 8 45. not when the sermon started here's the next one the practice of church glorifies god by the edification of his people there's two parts we just read earlier on we had the tongues the miracles that brought them to praise god what happened after that after they had that wonderful sign peter stands up and he gives that sermon verse 14. peter stood out 11 raise his voice and
00:38:42 dress the crowd and he gives a sermon his sermon didn't have powerpoint like mine had no jokes he just had one thing what did he say at the end of sermon after declaring jesus he said this repent and be baptized what happened at end of seven everybody heard this verse 37 did they say wow arnold great sermon man i was really uplifted no they said this they will cut to the hearts and say brothers what shall we do the edification of his people begins at repentance from the gospel and then a changed
00:39:15 lifestyle now i want to go through this a little bit in his journey right uh hank uh francis chance led him to both the catholic church and to the orthodox church and this created a lot of controversy but there's any journey will take you there and you don't engage catholics you don't engage orthodox you're living in a in a nutshell and and this man is hang handicraft he used to be one of the most celebrated protestant speakers he ran an organization called christian research institute in 2017 hank handigraph converted to
00:39:47 become orthodox you can get it online and he he knows his bible very well this man metropolitan johann is an evangelist of the orthodox church they run an organization called gospel for asia and their mission work is all over asia but here's something i i saw this on youtube and francis chan said something really interesting he was in india i said the indian church were very small but people packed the church in india and they were all faithful and he made a remark which i never forgot he said in
00:40:17 america if your church doesn't have a killer sermon and a great worship nobody will come how can you say this holy spirit and that really struck me and and and i thought it's true isn't it you see in in his own life he was a celebrity he just grew because he was a multi-million best-selling author and he realized people were not coming to church to worship god they were coming to church to see francis chan and so he gave it all up and so god bless his soul you see nowadays right this is the evangelical church you know
00:40:54 it's either a rock concert or it's a ted talk no no let me just say there's nothing wrong with great worship we're giving our best to the lord there's nothing wrong with giving a great sermon but it's it's dangerous when that's the only reason why people come when people come to when a church grows very big because their worship is so fantastic you struggle with that you're not coming for god you're coming because of the worship now there's a place for it but there's a centrality we're missing let's explore this you know there was a
00:41:26 interesting series lately on netflix called the social dilemma the social dilemma basically says what you bombard your mind with after what becomes you that means whatever you keep searching online the algorithm will pick it up and it gives you back the same feed so after a while you believe what you want to believe and i think this is the root of the protestant church problem because everyone's got an opinion on the bible it's called personal interpretation you go to this church they teach you you
00:41:54 don't speak in tongues you can't be a good christian you go to this church they tell you you're not gospel centered you don't do accountability you're not a real christian you go to this church that says you don't do you don't teach empowerment and god is victory you're not a real christian and after a while everybody believes what they want to believe why do you think the movement is so broken up and if you see other people are brainwashed you you don't think that we could have that problem i mean why are you in this baptist
00:42:20 church why do you believe what you believe is it because the bible tells you so well because people are arnold lim and peter earn and all the speakers tell you so i want to repeat that do you believe what you believe because like what they did they devoted themselves to the teachings apostle or because you are fed this by speakers who are very persuasive now how did the early church guard this and this was very eye-opening to me and i'm going to make some remarks now which you may not disagree you may find it controversial but it's
00:42:54 it changed my life i'm going to share with you this is the evangelical church can you really really say jesus is the center he is the center every evangelic church is what the first thing in the middle of the church they put the pulpit all the worship thing so let me just go through some history right this is the megiddo house church found in 230 is the earliest known church found and is very well preserved we found it uh in palestine recently uh let me just show you the plan of it there's an area
00:43:30 shot of it and the irrational of it and the congregation met here the church could take 60 people as a big house and there was a table there and there's an inscription you know what the inscription says on that god loving akitios he was greek has offered this table to jesus christ as a memorial the god loving akitios has offered this table to the god jesus christ as a memorial to the early church the most important thing was the centrality of this table this table wasn't where the where the pulpit was you know
00:44:05 this table was for the sacraments and you know where the pulpit was nah you stick it in a corner so that you don't take away the centrality of god in fact you you read carefully and and you study all the early churches they were very deliberate when you give your sermons you better go to the side you know why because you better not take away attention from christ crucified and the early church developed what they call the liturgy of the word the liturgy the word is the teachings apostles that's one hand now in many ways a lot
00:44:39 of this is my view the catholic church the orthodox has forgotten this you cannot have that when your homilies are 15 minutes nobody so a lot of people they don't really read a word but here's the problem with the protestant church the liturgy of the eucharist has been forgotten in early church they recognized the two had to come together if you don't come together the centrality of the gospel is missing and to the early church what was important again and again is holy communion so let me explain one
00:45:11 thing and i've read this so much experience how often do we do holy communion once a month can you really say the honesty when you partake of it it changed your life come on when i do it i say oh jesus died for my sins i don't feel any change i will be honest with you but when you read all the early church fathers for 300 years justin martyr ignatius iranians polycarp clement jerome do you know what kept them through the fire of the brimstone you know what kept them through what allowed uh justin master to be
00:45:48 beheaded they will tell you again and again in the writings is holy communion you know why because they did it every sunday so here's the thing that we're going to push what if fbc did holy communion we will do it be simpler twice a month would you all react or not you see for the early church when they did it something happened the presence of god was with them i won't go more than that and something transformed and they kept it together with the teachings of the apostles and holy communion they kept strong and that is something i
00:46:27 plead with you the evangelical church has very much forgotten and that's why the church is split you know why without that we do not experience the presence of god in our church service you are sitting there right now right online do you feel the presence of god if you're honest with yourself most of you won't search your souls and dead so let me just end by this how do you glorify god glorify god by witnessing for him how do we do that uh there's a very early letter to diagnosis i just want to
00:46:58 quickly go through it and basically the letter said christians were the third way what is it the third way i'll explain it later basically in this episode written it said that there were three types of people they were the jews they were exclusive they were the gentiles that were everything and them the christians were the third way how did they do it this is a letter from emperor julian to his high priest uh our sages julian hated christians you know and this is why he said he hated christians so much but yet this
00:47:30 was how disgraceful that when no jew ever has to beg and the empire's christians that's why support not only the poor but ours as well all men see that our people lack it from us teach those of the hellenic faith to contribute to public service of this sort and hellenic religious villages to offer their first fruits to the gods and accustom those who love the hellenic religion to those good works by teaching this was a practice of or he was trying to bring back pagan worship and you know why he failed because you
00:47:59 know how christians worship because christians worship and they evangelize because they loved everyone you see the great commission comes from basically the abrahamic covenant the abrahamic covenant is this to be a blessing to the nations and the early church understood this they not only fed the poor they fed the poors from people other people it was their love for all mankind that brought people over and so let me just quickly end with the power of the early church and when you look at the book of acts
00:48:30 you'll find a lot of stories about power we have no time now become running late i don't want you to read all the way to the chapter 8 about it you see when we look at power we say this you know wow presence of god but you know where the early just saw power and you really got to go all the way to chapter 8. they didn't see power in this way of course their miracles in the book of acts there were a lot of signs and wonders firstly we saw love the love that allowed them to sell all the possessions
00:49:02 to the poor but do you really really want to understand power in the book of acts and the early church it wasn't this you know what it is is this this is power this is agnes of rome 305 a.d during the great dilton persecution she was of noble birth a christian somebody that wanted to marry her she spurned launched a complaint to the magistrate district naked tried to bring her to the warehouse tortured her and in the end beheaded her you can read her up you know how old she was and all along there was only one thing the magistrate
00:49:46 asked her denounced christ and she said no you know what we don't read her because she's canonized by all the eastern churches and the catholic church so we don't like to read those kind of stuff but this was a time where there was no protestant or catholics or reforms or calvinists we were all just christians you know how old she was she was 13 years old what were you and i doing with 13. their faith at 13. by the way at that time no sunday school no user visa how did they do this they had power
00:50:23 they had perseverance so let me just end with this the great the australian persecution you can get it wikipedia eight years the church has to suffer this just read it official decree throughout the entire nation nero's persecution of christians was restricted to rome the dioceutian persecution went from from two emperors to gallerius you know how the persecution ended after eight years of burning christians chopping off their heads torturing them they flee to the woods they gave up and they issued a decree
00:51:02 galleries did this and yet since most of them persevered in their determination that's where the power is and we saw that they neither paid the reverence at all to the gods in view our most mouth clemency have edited it we thought we should grant our most prompt indulgence so that they may again be christians and may hold the convention provided they do nothing contrary good order but what's interesting this wherefore for this our indulgence they ought to pray to their god they ask this pagan king emperor asking to pray to god for
00:51:34 our safety for those of the republic of rome and for their own that the republic may continue uninjured on every side and they may be able to live securely in their homes at the end of the persecution the emperor persecuted them saying hey can you pray for us and the story goes to galileo's and his deathbed he was dying of a sickness and you know what he said he said ask the christians to come and pray for me that's power so let me just end and i hope that today was a session that we all learned
00:52:10 if god had his way what would fbc look like and you know i was thinking about this and i asked this and i'll just show you one last image i know it's a long sermon i was asking myself what church resembled the early days where they were under a mighty empire that hated them that occasionally persecuted them they had to be hidden and they had to be very afraid and they didn't have divisor they didn't have great speakers i could only think of one church and it's this the church in china could it be
00:52:51 moving forward in a new millennium at china and america lockhorns the way forward will be this kind of church something for us to think about let us pray lord we come before you and we s we we humbly ask lord make fbc a church that honors you let us not do church to conform to our own needs but we come to worship you in reverence and then to to consecrate our lives and change our lives and bear witness to the world speak to us mightily this morning we say this in jesus name amen
