Why You Need the Church & the Church Needs You: Representing Christ

The following message from Pastor Greg Laurie is made possible by Harvest Partners, helping people everywhere know God. You're a witness out there as much as anyone who's standing on the platform is a witness.

People are watching. Is this real? Is this authentic? Are these people for real or are they crazy? We've all had a bad customer service experience.

Maybe a waiter or waitress messed up a meal, or a clerk at the check stand wouldn't honor the sale price on bananas or a loaf of bread. It not only affects how we feel about that person, but about that company, doesn't it? Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie points out how we're all representatives of Christ. How we interact with people can draw people to the Lord or push them away.

Good insight is coming. Well let's grab our Bibles now and we're in a series that we're calling What Every Growing Christian Needs to Know. And the title of my message is Why You Need the Church and the Church Needs You. Let me say one thing before we get to Acts 2. Because Acts 2 is a description of the church of the first century. This is the church that changed their world.

It was said of them, not as a compliment I might add, that they turned their world upside down. So we need to go back to this church for our example to see how to do church right. Because you know some churches they don't have growth problems. Some churches have parking problems and other churches don't. Some churches have kids running around making a lot of noise and other churches tend to be very quiet. Some churches have more expenses than money and other churches don't need to spend much money. Some churches are growing so fast you don't always know everyone's name but in other churches everyone has known everyone's name for years. Some churches are planning for the future. Some churches are living in the past. So when you come to our church and you have to wait to get a parking space or you have a hard time getting into this room or whatever, thank God that is a sign of spiritual health.

Those are good signs that we should rejoice over. So now let's look at that church that turned the world upside down. Here is what they did. Acts 2, 42 to 47. It says of those first century believers. This is after the day of Pentecost had happened and 3,000 people believed. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayers. And fear came upon every soul and many signs and wonders were done to the apostles. Now all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among all as anyone had need. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those that were being saved.

We will stop there. This church was healthy. In fact you could sum it up in this acronym well. They were well. W-E-L-L. W for they were a worshiping church. E for they were an evangelistic church. L number one they were a learning church. And L number two they were a loving church.

They were well. Worshiping. Evangelistic. Learning.

And loving. Let's start with that first principle. Number one they were a worshiping church. Look at verse 47. Praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those that were being saved. You know something wonderful happens when God's people come together for corporate worship. It's just amazing.

The world doesn't have anything like it. I remember years ago I went to a Paul McCartney concert and he was in a band called The Beatles by the way. In case you've never heard of them. And so he had his big song Let It Be and everybody knew it. And people pulled out their cell phones and such and they were swaying back and forth and singing Let It Be. And it almost took on a religious tone. It was almost like secular worship you know. Except they were worshiping a Beatle instead of God.

Or maybe worshiping their past or whatever it is they were thinking about. But I thought this is as close as the culture gets to worship. We are singing a song together. We know the lyrics of the song. But it's different when God's people gather.

Yeah we are singing a song and we know the lyrics. But the Bible says God inhabits the praises of His people. Haven't you sent the Lord's presence during worship?

It's a wonderful time. That's why I said you should not be late for church because worship is not a warm up act. It's prayer.

It's set to song. Now why would I be late for a time of prayer? And we are told in Scripture that we should be worshiping the Lord. Psalm 106 says praise the Lord.

Give thanks to the Lord for He is good and His mercy endures forever. From Genesis to Revelation our faith is one of worship and song. There is no faith on the face of the earth that has music like the Christian faith. I mean you can look at all these other religions and check out their music if you like.

They just don't have that much to sing about. But the great songs come from the Christian faith. And not just songs that we have sung in the past but new ones that are being written all the time because our faith is vibrant and it is living. And we are singing on earth and one day we will be singing in heaven.

Revelation 15 gives us this picture of our future when John says, I saw what looked like a sea of glass mixed with fire and standing beside the sea. Those who had been victorious over the beast, that would be the antichrist, and his image and over the number of his name they held harps given to them by God. So we will have harps in heaven.

Maybe they will be electrified though. I don't know. And they sang the song of Moses the servant of God and the song of the Lamb. Great and marvelous are your deeds Lord God Almighty.

Just and true are your ways king of the ages. You will be singing in heaven. And by the way we will all have good voices in heaven. Don't you wish you had a great voice? Funny thing is sometimes people with the worst voices think they have great voices. But God bless them they sing with passion. And you can hear them off key and everything.

But I would rather see someone sing off key loudly than a person who doesn't sing at all. And you know when it is all said and done God doesn't care what your pitch is or if you are on key he looks at your heart. And if your heart is engaged then that is honoring to the Lord. We should all participate in worship. And you know there are times we don't feel like worshiping. Right?

You are just not in the mood. And that is why Hebrews 13 and 15 says, Let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually that is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. You know it is one thing to praise God when the sky is blue and the birds are singing and the lights are green. It is another thing to praise God when all hell is broken loose. Or when darkness has come down in your life.

Or you are facing a tragedy. What did Job do after he found out that he had lost his possessions. His livelihood.

And worst of all his children in a series of calamities. We read when Job heard these things he worshiped. And said, Blessed be the name of the Lord. Naked I came into this world.

Naked I will go out. See that is just worship. It is like what else can I do? God help. But sometimes it is a sacrifice of praise. The Bible does not say that we should give thanks to the Lord when we feel good. But we should give thanks to the Lord because He is good.

And He always deserves our praise. Here is something maybe you have not thought about. Worship can be a witness. Your worship can actually be a form of evangelism.

Look at verse 47 again. Praising God having favor with all the people and the Lord added to the church daily those that were being saved. There was a connection between their worship and their witness.

Here is a good example. Remember when Paul and Silas were thrown into prison for preaching the gospel? And what do we read? We read at midnight Paul and Silas sang praises to God. They were in a dungeon.

Worst conditions imaginable. And they started singing. I don't know if they were like harmonizing or what. But they were singing. And the Bible says the other prisoners were listening. And that word in the original language would be listening with pleasure.

That is wonderful. See here they were in this horrible hell hole and they were giving praise to God and all the other prisoners paid attention. Well an earthquake came.

The walls collapsed. And the jailer who had cruelly treated Paul and Silas whipping them and worse was ready to kill himself because in those days if a Roman guard lost his prisoners he would be put to death. He was ready to kill himself. And Paul said, Don't kill yourself.

We are still here. And the next words out of the jailer's mouth show the connection between worship and witness. He said, Sirs what must I do to be saved? You see when you go through a hard time, when you go through suffering and your faith remains intact, nonbelievers pay attention to that and it is a powerful witness to a watching world. Let me tell you something else. When a nonbeliever comes into our place here and joins us they are checking things out.

Do you remember the first time you came to church before you were a Christian? They are checking everything out. And they are not looking for good things all the time by the way.

They are looking for things that they can complain about so they can write all of this off. And they are not just looking at me up here or our worship team. They are looking at you. In fact when we are up here worshiping or the team is leading us in worship and you are checking your texts or you are doing something else they are looking at you going, I guess this isn't that important to them or you are jabbering or you are doing something else. See you are a witness out there as much as anyone who is standing on the platform is a witness.

People are watching. Is this real? Is this authentic? Are these people for real or are they crazy? I mean that is what I thought when I first encountered Christians. I thought they were nuts. But they intrigued me at the same time because I had never seen anyone like them.

And I had to admit that some of them used to be my friends from the old days and they had changed dramatically. And I was drawn to what they were doing and eventually I gave my life to Christ. And so worship can be a witness. Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment.

Hey everybody Greg Laurie here personally inviting you to join us for what we call Harvest at Home. It is a Bible study. It is a worship service. It is church in your home. Maybe you are not able to get out to your church right now. If so join us for Harvest at Home. People are listening in from around the world.

Listen to this. We have seen thousands of people make a commitment to follow Christ. So join us this weekend for Harvest at Home at Harvest.org. Well today Pastor Greg is presenting his message why you need the church and the church needs you. We are considering the church of the first century as described in Acts chapter two. Number two they were an evangelistic church.

That is E in our acronym of well worshiping and evangelistic. There was a constant flow of new believers coming into the church. You show me a church that does not have new believers coming in and I will show you a stagnating church.

Why? Because new believers are the lifeblood of the church. So if we are not evangelizing we will soon be fossilizing. That is why we should always be bringing out our friends and our neighbors and our loved ones and co-workers to church and pray that they will come to Christ because I think you know me well enough to know and other pastors here that after a message is done I am usually going to give an opportunity for people to come to Christ. Even if it was not what we might call an evangelistic message.

We are going to give that opportunity and people respond but they are not going to get here unless you bring them here. Okay so now L number one they were a learning church. So they were worshiping, they were evangelizing and they were learning. They were learning. Now this is important because some people will say well I don't need to go to church to hear a Bible study and I just like to watch church online and I listen to Christian radio and I watch Christian television and I read Christian books and I don't really think I need to be in church.

Well listen you know I am glad you use those tools. Of course we have our Christian radio program A New Beginning. We have a TV program. And then we have devotions we put out every day. We have a little thing called the Harvest app that you can download for your iOS device, your iPhone or an Android device. You can put it on a tablet. It is just chock full of spiritual information and you can watch messages on demand.

When we have our services it goes live out on the Harvest app and a lot of people use it and that is fantastic. In fact I just received a letter today. This kind of pulls some of these loose ends together. Kind of gives you a sense of how God can use these things. It says, Hi Pastor Greg I am writing you because you said you wanted to hear from us on your radio broadcast A New Beginning.

I am a correctional officer for the state of Washington and I want to thank you for all you do. I gave myself to the Lord at a young age and was devoted to the Lord for some time. However my parents got divorced. My dad moved away. I started to hang out with the wrong crowd, etc. I am sure you have heard this story many times and I had been without God for a long time. I was becoming a very angry and bitter person.

The smallest things would set my temper off and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. Well anyway we live so far from work and we have a carpool van and a bunch of guys used a carpool together for the hour drive that we do every day to and from work and there happen to be a few Christians I work with and ride with and we would talk a little bit about Jesus. What I didn't realize was Jesus was calling me back to him. A few months back during our hour long van ride we started listening to our local Christian radio station and I enjoyed the Christian music and then we listened to the message that we are playing during our drive and one of those is you and we listened over and over and from listening to that message it brought me and several of us back to Christ. We listen every night.

I have even downloaded the Harvest app on my phone and we listen to your extended messages and I am able to download and listen to from my phone. One of the guys invited me to his church and now several of us even belong to the same church and we go every Sunday. Everyone around me notices the change in me and I got to tell you it feels so amazing to be walking with the Lord Jesus again. Praise God.

Isn't that a great story? So we are thankful for that technology that got to that guy but the best thing about that letter is here is a guy who has fallen away. He discovers it. He gets around believers that are on fire for the Lord. It shows them something is wrong in his life. He hears our show and commits his life to Christ but best of all he is in the church.

See that is kind of my point. If those things are fine to help you but you got to be in the church. It makes such a difference and this brings us to point number three. They were a learning church. They were learning and listen every time we have a service here I am just going to tell you we are going to have a Bible study. We will have worship. We will have a guest artist occasionally but then we are going to open the Bible because that is our focus. We offer theology without apology. Really what else could I do for you?

I mean who cares about my stupid opinions on anything and my jokes are the lamest ever. What do I have to say? Really nothing.

Nothing that would be more important than any other person. That is why we open up the Word of God because we care about what this has to say and we want it to become a part of the woof and warp of our life. I don't even know what woof and warp are but I want the Bible there. Our mission statement at Harvest is knowing Him and making Him known and that first century church continued in the apostles doctrine.

There is a trend in some churches today where they are moving away from Bible exposition. They have all kinds of things going on. It might be drama. It might be skits.

It might be some other thing. I have even heard of churches. They have dance. You know whatever. I am not here to criticize all those things in their place I suppose though you would never want to see me dance.

I have no rhythm whatsoever. But I think the thing is I want to come to church and hear the Word of God. And I think when a church is not doing that they are missing the purpose that God has put them on this earth for. And you look at that early church and they were into God's Word. Verse 42.

Look at it. They continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine. Underline those two words. Continued steadfastly. Those words mean they did it with a real passion. There was a passion.

There was an excitement. I think we need more anointed preaching today. Don't you think? More anointed preaching. But I also think we need more anointed listening.

More anointed listening. You know it is very easy to dismiss the preacher. Oh he is boring tonight.

Got a good nap though. Okay I mean there are boring preachers. I will admit that. And there are some preachers I mean listening to them speak is like watching paint dry.

Alright I know. But then there are times when you know it is really not the fault of the preacher. It is your fault.

Or it is my fault. Because I am not really paying attention. 1 Peter 2 says like newborn babies you should crave and desire spiritual milk. You crave it. You come to hear the Word of God.

Let me put it another way. It is attention with intention. Good Insights today from Pastor Greg Laurie's message called Why You Need the Church and the Church Needs You. And there is more practical counsel yet to come based on that acronym WELL. Also Pastor Greg has a final illustration from today's message before we wrap up for the day here on A New Beginning. Now if you missed any part of today's study you can catch up by going online to harvest.org. Just look for the message titled Why You Need the Church and the Church Needs You. Or request a CD of today's study by dialing 1-800-821-3300.

That is 1-800-821-3300. Hey everyone, Pastor Greg here in studio with my friend Darrell Strawberry. And I have to tell you a story about Darrell.

Not only is he an amazing baseball player, not only is he a gifted communicator, but he's an excellent bodyguard. And I speak from experience because we're at a White House event. And the night was going on and on and it was getting later. And I said to my wife Kathy, we need to go.

Well as it turns out there was some very agitated people on the streets doing a lot of screaming and yelling. And I'm thinking how do we get out of here? And all of a sudden who walks by but my friend Darrell Strawberry. I said hey Darrell, what are you doing? He says well I'm getting ready to leave. I said could I go with you? And he said sure, come on.

And then we met up with some other guys and I had like the greatest security force around me and I just stuck really close to them and we navigated our way through it. But Darrell has written a brand new book called Turn Your Season Around, subtitled How God Transforms Your Life. And Darrell, there's one thing that really got my attention in your new book. You dedicate an entire chapter to forgiveness. But you don't just address your own need for forgiveness. You recount a time when you were the one who needed to extend forgiveness.

Talk to us about that. Yeah, the forgiveness was an incredible moment in my life that I needed to understand what forgiveness was all about. Because we usually think it's about the other person when someone has done something to us and affected us. And in my case that's what it was. My father was an alcoholic and he had rejected me and I had kept him out of my life. He beat me when I was a kid and said I really was never going to come out to be anything.

And there I was, I go on to be a Major League Baseball player and play for 17 years in the Major Leagues and have no relationship with him in my life. And then I get saved and God changes me. And I just remember him being in the hospital down in San Diego and I was going to do a men's breakfast Saturday morning and God spoke to me Friday night about going down to my father to see him. And not only going down to see him, but he said I want you to go down to him and repent. And asked him to forgive you.

And I was like, whoa! So forgive me? And God spoke to me that night and my wife had to call me and pray for me because I told her what was going on and she said you need to listen to God and you need to obey him and go and do exactly what he said. And I did that and I went down to the hospital and I saw my father and I walked in there and I said how you doing? And I had a few words of conversation and I said well you know the Lord has changed me. I obeyed God and he said the Lord has changed me and I just need to ask you would you forgive me for keeping you out of my life?

And he shook his head yeah and a tear rolled down his eye and I just lost it. I just laid in his lap and I just cried so hard and I just laid there and I could feel the presence of God all over me and then he says raise up and then I raised up and he says now lead him in a sin of prayer and there it was. I led him in a sin of prayer. I said would you like to accept the Lord? He's changed my life and would you like to accept him?

And he shook his head and said yeah and I led him in a sin of prayer. He repeated after me and then I go on from there and I just remember what God had spoke to me when I was leaving the hospital and stuff and he was like saying how it's never about you and then he said once I got in the car I need you to remember how dare you not forgive him and I forgave you and then he reminded me that the forgiveness was not for my father. The forgiveness was for me. I carried that for all my life. I carried that throughout my baseball career when I was hitting home runs and running around the bases and thinking yeah my father think I'm nothing and here are all these people giving me current calls but I still feel empty in the inside when I still had the uniform on and take the uniform off but at that moment in the hospital after I had done that and walked out of the hospital I mean God released me and I have never been the same.

My life has moved forward from that point. Wow, powerful story about forgiving. A man who really didn't deserve to be forgiven a man who beat Darryl when he was a little boy but a man that had to be forgiven because scripture tells us to forgive. Forgiven people should be forgiving people so there's a chapter in this brand new book by Darryl Strawberry that is titled Turn Your Season Around subtitled How God Transforms Your Life so Darryl deals with that topic in this book and much more and that's why we want to rush you a copy so you can start reading this amazing story of this amazing guy and what God has done and what God is doing in and through him right now so order your copy of Turn Your Season Around by Darryl Strawberry.

Yeah, that's right, it's a powerful book especially for men. We're sending it to say thank you for your investment to help keep Pastor Greg's teaching coming your way here on A New Beginning. Your partnership helps us reach lives.

It's as simple as that. People come to know the Lord through this ministry and in fact last year alone more than 150,000 decisions were made so thank you for your investment and be sure to ask for this new book Turn Your Season Around. You can write us at A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, California 92514 or call 1-800-821-3300 1-800-821-3300 or go online to Harvest.org Well, next time more insight on the reasons we need the church and the church needs us. Hope you'll be along. But before we go, Pastor Greg has one more illustration about attention with intention letting what we hear soak in so we can put it to work. Remember I was on a flight a number of years ago from Miami. I had just spoken there and I was coming back and so the flight attendants going over the whole, you know, the routine they go through. Should we have a water landing, you know, under your seat as a life vest that you can pull and there's this little whistle and a tiny little light and you can use your seat as a flotation device and we're all thinking, no way would I survive with that stuff anyway and so you're watching them and they, you know, you don't pay attention.

Most people flip through a magazine or they're sending last minute texts. So the flight attendant did their thing and I wasn't paying attention for the most part. I just know, oh, there's the exit. There's the exit there.

That's all I need to know. Well, then we're fine for a while and we're about 40 minutes outside of LA and the voice of the captain comes on the intercom. Ladies and gentlemen, we're having some engine difficulties and you're thinking, this isn't happening. It was happening. It was happening.

And we don't know if one of our engines is going to keep working so we're gonna go through again, I forget the verbiage you used, but you know, go through what you need to know in case of an emergency landing. This time I listened. Oh, I listened to every word.

I memorized it. Well, thankfully the engine worked and we landed fine but my point is you listen differently when your life depends on it. You should listen to the Word of God as though your life depends on it because it does.

Do you realize that? Your life depends on it. Not only your afterlife. You want to make sure you're right with God and you know you're going to heaven because you put your faith in Christ but then just life in general. Life before you. How to live as a follower of Jesus Christ. That's how the early church listened and that's how we ought to listen. This is the day, the day when life begins. The preceding message from Greg Laurie was made possible by Harvest Partners. Helping people everywhere know God. Sign up for Pastor Greg's free daily email devotions at harvest.org.