How to Grow a Church (Acts 2)

Acts 2 is one of my favorite New Testament passages. I love Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost. I think it is foundational to New Testament theology. And I love the story of the church at the end of Acts 2. I guess as a pastor I am particularly interested by the fact that 3,000 people were saved in one day. I would probably be thrilled by 3,000 in a lifetime. They had 3,000 in a day! And it didn't stop there. Daily, people were being added to their number.

How is it that the church was able to grow? I think the answer is found in verse 42. There were four things that allowed the church to grow:

1. They were committed to the Word of God (the apostles' teaching)
2. They were committed to serving and loving one another (fellowship)
3. They were committed to worship (breaking of the bread, ie communion)
4. They were committed to prayer.

And in all these things who were they really committed to? They were committed to Jesus. There is no real secret to church growth. A church has the opportunity to grow as its people are committed to Jesus.

Matthias Madness (Acts 1)

As a pastor, I have found two points of Biblical interpretation that people will get quite worked up over. Now, there is nothing wrong with getting worked up over Biblical interpretation. If you are defending the divinity of Christ, or the reality of hell, or the penal substitutionary view of the atonement, go for it. But these two points of interpretation that I have seen people get so exercised over seem to have little true import. Point one: who is the Melchizedek in Genesis? Is it a real flesh and blood person or an appearance of the pre-Incarnate Christ. Give the wrong answer to that one and you will be branded a heretic. Point two: were the disciples right in appointing Matthias the twelfth apostle in Acts 1?

I am long familiar with the Melchizedek question. I grew up hearing all the arguments for that one. I am less familiar with the Matthias issue. Though, in the last 5 years, I have heard the question discussed so much that it makes up for the 35 years I didn't know it was an issue. Apparently, there are lot of people out there who think that the apostles made a big boo-boo in appointing Matthias. As I understand it, there are several reasons why those who take this stance feel the apostles were wrong:

1. 1:4 seems to suggest that Jesus wanted the Apostles to sit around and do nothing until they received the Holy Spirit.

2. The future appointment of Paul as an apostle seems to suggest that the church nominated the wrong guy. Paul was supposed to be 12 not Matthias.

3. Matthias might as well rhyme with anonymous. We hear nothing of Matthias after Acts 1. If Matthias was a good choice, why does he disappear?

There may be more reasons than that. I am not sure. I don't really understand the whole argument. I think that the choice of Matthias was a good one for the following reasons:

1. There is nothing in the text that suggests that this was a bad choice. I mean if it was a bad choice, why does Luke even mention it? He could have skipped the whole incident and nothing would have been lost.

2. The Apostles quote Scripture to defend their actions (1:20). I think that Luke (inspired by the Holy Spirit) is showing this is a Biblical thing to do.

3. The argument that Matthias is not mentioned again in Acts is irrelevant. Many of the disciples are not really mentioned by name in Acts. Was Jesus wrong in choosing them?

4. (The real clincher). God chose Matthias not the Apostles. The Apostles only made their selection after much prayer. And, they decided by casting lots. Proverbs 16:33 says: "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord." I think the text tells us that it was ultimately God who chose Matthias.

To me, the last part of Acts 1 is meant to emphasize the historic reality of the Gospel story. The Apostles were not making up tales. They selected a witness who could tell all that Jesus did. This wasn't a bad choice. It was a good one. The Apostles wanted to remind us that the story of Jesus is true and factual. It is too important to have the truth and details lost.

The Best for Last (John 21)

One of my favorite verses in John has always been the last one. John 21:25 says: "Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." Books were not small in John's day. They couldn't fit on a CD or be stored on the Internet. But still, books weren't the largest thing around either. A world full of books would contain a lot of books. At the end of John's Gospel, John reminds us that we can always learn more about Jesus. There is more to learn about Jesus' work in history, and there is more to learn about Jesus' work in present. May I never think that I have arrived in my knowledge of Jesus.

Some Random Thoughts (John 17)

In John 17, we have what is truly the Lord's prayer. John 17 represents the longest of Jesus' prayers that we have on record. There are some special things to note here:

1. Eternal life does not begin in heaven. It begins now. Jesus says in verse 3: "And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Eternal life is not just about a quantity of life. It is about a quality of life. And while the fullest quality of our life with Jesus is not known until heaven, we do begin to experience that quality now in knowing Jesus and the Father. The Gospel is not just for the future. It is for the present. And those with faith in Jesus have begun to taste heaven through their knowledge of Jesus.

2. It is amazing to think that Jesus prayed for each and every one of us. In verses 20-21, Jesus says: "I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me." Jesus prays for those who would believe in the future. And what does He pray for us? He prays that we would be one in the family of God. He also prays that we would live in the Father and Himself. In other words, Jesus asks that we would rely on the Father and Son's power. As we are united and empowered by the Spirit, we give witness to the world that Jesus is from heaven and that His words are true. May today's Church live up to this prayer.

The Spirit Advantage (John 16)

In John 16, Jesus tells His disciples that it is to their advantage that he go away. I'm sure at the time they had a hard time believing that. The years they had spent with Jesus undoubtedly had been the best years of their lives. Yes, they had left home and family. Yes, there had been tension with the religious leaders. But they had seen miracles every day. They had heard Jesus' wonderful teaching. More than that, they had performed miracles and gotten to teach themselves. How could Jesus going away be an advantage?

That is the question that Jesus answers here in John 16. To paraphrase, Jesus says that the advantage of His leaving is that the Holy Spirit (the Comforter) is coming. Believe it or not, we live in a more advantaged age than the disciples. That is hard for us to believe. We think that if Jesus were with us like He was with the disciples we would have a much easier time with our faith and Christian living. But that is not necessarily the case. Jesus says we have several advantages over the disciples in having the Holy Spirit:

1. The Holy Spirit gives power to our message. He convicts people of the truth of the Gospel message
2. The Spirit guides us into truth. He is an inner revelation to our minds and hearts of all that God has to teach us. The disciples had Jesus as an external teacher. We have an internal revelation from God that unfolds the Scriptures to us.
3. The Spirit is omnipresent. Jesus, being fully God and man, was limited by His human body to being in any one location at a time. The Spirit knows no such boundaries so He is able to be with every believer.

The blessings of the Spirit are far more than those outlined in John 16. We should rejoice that we live in a time where we can say that "the Comforter has come."

An Easter Meditation (John 14)

I didn't really come to John 14 expecting to write an Easter meditation. But, that is where verse 19 led me. Jesus says there: "Because I live, you will also live." When we first hear those words (especially out of their context), we assume that Jesus is talking about eternal life. Because Jesus has eternal life, we will have eternal life too. But a closer examination of John 14 tells us that Jesus is speaking about something more. In John 14, Jesus is speaking about our indwelling by the Holy Spirit. He says that we will do great things and have direct access to God because the Spirit is in us. Thus, the life of which Jesus speaks in verse 19 is not the life to come. It is the life that we are living now as the Spirit dwells within us. Jesus tells us that one of the great benefits of His being alive is that we have a full and complete life in the here and now. How thankful we can be that Jesus rose from the dead so that we can have the life that is really worth living!

Glory in the Lowest (John 11)

My first thought was that my comment on John 11 would most likely involve John 11:35 ("Jesus wept). After all, that is every kid's favorite Bible verse- the shortest verse of the Bible. That was the verse you always hoped they would have you memorize in Sunday School. But somehow they never did. Sunday School required a lot more work than that.

The verse "Jesus wept" teaches us a great deal about Jesus' humanity and His empathy with our struggles and sorrows. But as I came to John 11 I was once again struck by John's use of the word "glory." As in John 9, glory is a persistent theme in this chapter. Over and over again, Jesus says that He will be glorified in the death of Lazarus. Glory is a theme of John's Gospel. The word makes an immediate appearance in chapter 1. In 1:14, John writes: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

When I read that verse in John 1, I pictured a heavenly glory. I pictured bright light and trumpets blaring. I pictured radiance and beauty and hope. But as one reads through John, one sees that the glory of God shows up in unexpected places. It is not seen in palaces or temples. It is seen in blindness and death. It is seen in brokenness and pain. The glory of God is not made manifest in our strength. It is revealed in our weakness. The glory of God is not seen in cathedrals. It is seen in hovels. It is not seen in sublime works of art. It is seen in the refuse pile. Weakness and pain are things that we run from, yet it is often there that the glory of God is revealed.

As a pastor, I have seen my share of lilies. Every Easter I take a Claritin in anticipation of the lilies that will be present in church. A church is a glorious frame for a lily. Yet, the most beautiful lily I ever saw was not in a church. The most beautiful lily I ever saw was in Ireland. This lily was in a cemetery, growing right out of a tombstone. A tombstone seems a strange soil and odd backdrop for a lily. Yet, against that backdrop, the lily could be seen in all its glory. In a place of death, the lily was at its most beautiful.

The glory of God often reveals itself in the places of weakness and death. None of us long for those places. But it comforting to know that it is in those places that the power and strength of God is revealed.