On Your Mark, Get Set...Grow! Part 1-Part A

Many people will say, it doesn't matter what you know, it matters how you feel. And knowledge, Bible knowledge, doctrinal knowledge is relegated to the back seat. Yet, the prophet Hosea said, my people are destroyed from lack of what? Knowledge.

And welcome to Connect We Skip Weekend Edition. Let's pretend you have a dream to play for your favorite NFL team. You work hard all throughout high school and college to play the best you can.

And then finally, one day, your dream comes true. You're drafted to play for your favorite team. You then spend the rest of your career happily sitting on the bench.

Now wait, what kind of a dream is that if all you do is sit on the bench? Well, unfortunately, that seems to be what a lot of Christians are content to do once they join God's team. Well, today here in Connect We Skip Weekend Edition, Skip Heitzig tells us how to avoid being a bench warmer for Christ.

But first, let's find out more about this month's Connect We Skip resource offer. The beating heart of Bible prophecy is the land of Israel and the Middle East. Joel Rosenberg has his finger on the pulse of the world-shaking changes happening right now, and he unveils them in his new nonfiction book, Enemies and Allies. This is the first book of its kind that takes you inside the overwhelming, inside the palaces of the kings and crown princes, the presidents and the prime ministers in Israel and in the Arab world. As we ask them, what do you think about religious freedom, about making peace with Israel, about the threat from Iran, about U.S.-Arab relations, U.S.-Israel relations? Enemies and Allies from multiple New York Times bestselling author Joel Rosenberg takes you on an unforgettable journey inside the turbulent Middle East. You'll go behind closed doors to hear from the very kings and crown princes, presidents and prime ministers who are leading the charge. Enemies and Allies includes exclusive, never-before-published quotes, insights and analysis from the author's conversations with some of the world's most controversial leaders. Your hardcover copy of Enemies and Allies is our thanks for your generous gift of $35 or more today.

To give, call 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskiff.com. Open your Bibles to Acts Chapter 2 today in our series Church Who Needs It? We join Skiff Heitzig as he shares about one of his first encounters with the Bible. I distinctly remember my family Bible, and I remember as a child finding that Bible in the bottom drawer of one of the pieces of furniture in my parents' bedroom. And one of the things I noticed about this Bible, it was huge. It was humongous, and it weighed a lot. I was even wondering if I was able to pick it up as a little child. But I did manage to pick it up, and the second thing I noticed about it is it was really stiff. It's because it was rarely opened.

And the other thing I noticed about it, it had dust on it. Just to show you how often we would actually read it. Somebody once said that if everybody in the world read their Bibles at the same time, it would be the biggest dust storm in history. On a serious note, Dr. Michael Vlach from theologicalstudies.org said there is a crisis of biblical knowledge in the American church. And he said that the most widely known Bible verse among adults and teenagers is, get ready for it, God helps those who help themselves. Which of course is not in the Bible at all.

It was written by Ben Franklin. It's actually contradictory to what the Bible teaches, but that's what most people see as, it's in the Bible. God helps those who help themselves. A while back Jay Leno was interviewing people in his audience about the Bible. And he said, can any of you name one of the 10 commandments? And somebody piped up immediately and said, God helps those who help themselves. Well first of all, that's not even a commandment, it's just a statement.

But nonetheless, they got the answer wrong. And then Jay Leno said, can you name one of the apostles? Not a single person in the audience could name one of the 12 apostles. But when Jay Leno said, can you name the Beatles?

Like an anthem. John, Paul, George Ringo, everybody knew that. Now we've been asking a question in this series, it's called church.

Who needs it? And we've made some discoveries so far. We've discovered that God thinks the world needs the church. The scripture calls the church the pillar and the ground of all truth. The truth is conveyed through his people, the church on the earth. So God believes the world needs the church and so we have seen Jesus' own declaration that he would build his church in Matthew 16.

He announced that's his program. We've also considered John chapter 17 where Jesus anticipates and prays for certain characteristics that the church would embody. But now today we come to Acts chapter 2.

This is the beginning. This is the birth of the church. And the day of Pentecost is the birthday of the church. And here we discover exactly what the first church in Jerusalem was like. So the name of this message is on your mark, get set, grow. Because from this day forward the church grows astronomically.

Spiritually, personally people grow, but it also grows numerically. I'm going to have you turn with me to Acts chapter 2 and we're going to be zeroing in on a single verse, but for the sake of context and to understand the flow of the story, let's pick it up in Acts 2 verse 41 and we'll read through the end of the chapter. Then those who gladly received his word, that is Peter's preaching, were baptized and that day about 3,000 souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship in breaking of bread and in prayers. And then fear came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Now all who believed were together and had all things in common.

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 daily to the church or to the church daily those who were being saved. So we here have the mission statement of the first church in Jerusalem, what their priorities were. Number one, it was a learning church. They devoted themselves to the apostles' doctrine. Number two, it was a caring church. They devoted themselves to fellowship. Number three, it was a worshiping church. They devoted themselves to breaking bread and prayers and finally it was a generous church as they pooled their resources and as they took care of one another.

These four priorities form the mission statement and we will consider them week in and week out. Today we're going to look at one verse and one component of this only and that is the first part of chapter 2 verse 42. They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and I hope that by the end of this message you'll understand a little bit better why I do what I do and why we place such an emphasis here on the preaching and the teaching of the word of God.

Now just a footnote before we get into this. When we use the word church and we use it quite a bit, most often we are not referring to an institution. We're not talking about a particular brand of a church or a denomination of a church.

We're talking specifically about a group of people, some may be in one group, some may be in another group, but all true believers, all authentic, born again believers, wherever they assemble, whether it's a cathedral or a home or a storefront or a field that comprises the church of Jesus Christ on the earth. And again today we consider just one portion of verse 42 and I want to make three applicational statements about this first priority and I'll derive them all from the text. Here's the statements. Learning leads to growing.

That's the first. Second, preaching leads to practicing. It should and it most often does when it's the right preaching and the right listening. And number three, continuing leads to persevering. Let's take the first statement and look at verse 42.

Learning leads to growing. Now I'm going to focus in on one word here, doctrine. Doctrine means teaching or instruction.

They devoted themselves to doctrine, not opinions, not thoughts, but doctrine. And this church that was learning was growing and their learning of doctrine, of teaching, of instruction led to their growth personally as well as numerically. For verse 47 says the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.

And this is how I take that paragraph to read. The church kept its priorities. God honored the church keeping those priorities and so he added to their numbers daily because they kept those priorities. But this church was a learning church and because it was learning it was growing.

John R.W. Stott writes, one might say that the Holy Spirit opened a school in Jerusalem that day. The school teachers were the apostles whom Jesus had appointed and trained and there were 3,000 pupils in kindergarten. Here's what I want you to notice. This is first on their list of what's important. And that surprises a lot of us because it's not typically what we would think should be on the priority list for a church. Some people might think it should read they devoted themselves steadfastly to love. Then say that.

Why? Or they devoted themselves steadfastly to missions or to singing or to service. It says they devoted themselves steadfastly to the apostles doctrine. How many today are devoted to doctrine? Ask the average Christian that. Go up to a Christian this week who wasn't a part of this message and ask them, hey are you devoted to doctrine? And they might look at you like you're the weirdest person in the world devoted to doctrine.

And yet this is first on the list. If you go into a Christian bookstore I could almost guarantee you that the number one selling book is not a doctrinal book. It's probably a marriage book or a finance book these days, but probably not a doctrinal book. But the first church kept this as the number one priority, doctrine. Now that word sounds awfully stuffy and rigid and cold, but it shouldn't because it simply means, as I said, instruction or teaching or truth. That's what they devoted themselves to. If ever there was a word that I personally felt sorry for, it's the word doctrine. I feel sorry for it because I hear the way people talk about it. Oh, we're not really into doctrine. It really isn't that important to us.

What is important to us is this or that as a priority. It's sort of like when you buy a gadget. I love gadgets.

I love phones and cameras and things that beep. I love gadgets, cool new things that make life easy and complicated, but I like gadgets. The thing I don't like about gadgets is the manual. I don't like to read manuals. I like it if there's lots of pictures or if somebody tells me or if there's a tutorial that's a computer video movie I can watch that I like, but I don't like the manual.

They're usually thick and awkward and I never read them until I break my gadget. Then I consult the manual and that's how a lot of people live their lives. They fly by the seat of the pants, they'll figure it out as they go along, never consulting the manual that God gave us of how to make life work at its best. That's how many people approach their own lives.

That's a concern. In fact, unfortunately, in the church, many people will say it doesn't matter what you know, it matters how you feel. And knowledge, Bible knowledge, doctrinal knowledge is relegated to the backseat and it often shows up in certain statements like this. Well, it's not about head knowledge, it's about heart knowledge. Now that sounds awfully good and pious and spiritual.

It's just lousy way of thinking. Or it's not about what you know, it's about how you feel passionately from your heart. Yet the prophet Hosea said, my people are destroyed from lack of what? Knowledge. My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.

I discovered something I want to share with you. The word heart, H-E-A-R-T appears 858 times in the Old Testament. You know what it almost always refers to? The mind. The mind, not the emotions, the mind. Now we in the West typically use the word heart as a metaphor for the core, the center of our emotional being.

I believe this in my heart, I feel this in my heart. The Hebrews did not do that. The Hebrews placed the center of the emotions metaphorically in the abdomen, the gut. In fact, more specifically, the bowels. If you have an old King James Bible, you may have been befuddled when you come across verses like bowels of tender mercy. And you go, what?

I'm supposed to have merciful bowels? What's that all about? It's simply their way of saying that the deepest emotion a person can feel is in the gut, the pit of the stomach we would say. But they would place the heart as where we do our thinking, the mind.

That's where they would place it. All of that to say the early church engaged the mind. They were not anti-intellectual. They were not mystical. They didn't avoid theology. They did not avoid doctrine.

They put it at the top of their list in their purpose statement. When I gave my life to Jesus Christ, right afterwards I went to a Bible teaching church. They just taught through the Bible. And my pastor was Chuck Smith and to this day I walk up to him and I thank him for his emphasis on the Bible. Because every Sunday I heard stuff I never heard growing up.

Chuck would smile and say, turn in your Bibles to John chapter 1 or whatever it would be. And week by week I found myself getting set free. You will know the truth said Jesus and the truth will set you free. I was learning. And as I was learning I was growing spiritually. And I'll never forget a couple of guys I met after an evening Bible study there at the church. They had graduated seminary and they said, Skip, you know what? We have learned more at this church in the last one year than we have learned in four years of seminary.

And I thought, well then I'm going to still go to this church and be there week after week and hear Chuck say, now turn in your Bibles too. I wanted to get it. I wanted to learn. I wanted to grow. Learning leads to growing. You and I can never grow spiritually unless we are spiritually learning truth. 2 Peter 3.18 we're told, Grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 2.2, As newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby. I heard about a farmer who was angry that the cost of oats had gone sky high. He couldn't afford to buy them anymore to feed his donkeys. So he did something unusual. He took sawdust and mixed it with the oats that he gave his mule. It was filling, but he didn't have to pay for the rising cost of oats. Well as the price got higher and higher, he put more and more sawdust in the oats.

And eventually guess what happened? That's right, the donkey died. Malnutrition. We need spiritual food. We need to eat right. And if it's true that we are what we eat, then it follows that if we feast on truth will become true. If we feast on falsehood will become false.

So this priority leads us to make the statement, learning leads to growing. Second statement I want to make is that preaching leads to practicing. Preaching leads to practicing. This time I draw your attention in verse 42 to the adjective before the noun doctrine and that is apostles. It wasn't that they devoted themselves to any kind of doctrine, anybody getting up and sharing anything that they felt they wanted to. This was the apostles doctrine. There was after all all sorts of false doctrine going on in Jerusalem even at that time. So they were all about not just teaching, not just instruction, but the apostles doctrine as preached through the mouths and the lives of Peter and John, these apostles who follow Jesus. Now initially the apostles doctrine was simply the explanations and the comments made by the apostles about the Old Testament and how those Old Testament texts applied to people's lives then and there. So Peter would stand up, John would stand up and show how the law and the prophets and the Psalms and the history all work together to give the grand prophetic message of the coming of Jesus Christ in his death and his resurrection.

Now I want to show you this. Look at chapter 2 verse 14. But Peter standing up with the eleven raised his voice and said to them, this is after the speaking in tongues on the day of Pentecost, men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and heed my words.

Again, know something, use your mind and listen to what I'm saying, my words. For these are not drunk as you suppose since it's only the third hour of the day, but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. Now he quotes Joel chapter 2 from the Old Testament. And it shall come to pass in the last day says God that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. So Joel is showing them that the scripture is fulfilled and he does it, watch carefully, from the text itself.

From Joel. Well we hear a lot about the importance of accepting Christ, but once we do that there's plenty for us to do afterward. Accepting him isn't where our journey in life ends, but rather where life begins. And that's all the time we have for today. But before we go, here's Skip and Lenya with a few more thoughts on what it means to grow as a Christian.

Lenya? In today's study we saw how the first church was a learning church and we learned that some Christians struggle to grow because of an attitude toward doctrine. What are some of the detriments of not growing in doctrine? Well here's what's amazing is that on the list given in Acts chapter 2, what was topping the list was doctrine.

They devoted themselves steadfastly first of all to the Apostles' doctrine. I think that, you know the list goes on fellowship, breaking bread, and prayers. I think a lot of times there's churches, people who would emphasize fellowship over doctrine. Well you don't know how to fellowship unless you have doctrine. You don't know how to worship unless you have doctrine. So the word doctrine simply means good, solid, biblical teaching and unfortunately there's not a lot of believers left who have devoted themselves to doctrine. And so let me just say to any pastors, how about some good old-fashioned doctrinal preaching once in a while? You know the Apostles preached doctrine. It's what they learned from Jesus. And they laid the foundation. So I would love to see more pulpits actually infuse doctrine instead of just a big hoorah and a rally. Exhortation is good and it makes us feel excited and encouraged and wanting to go out and do something, but it's almost like that just puffs up if it's really not built on a strong foundation.

That's right. And if I'd learned anything from looking at the book of Acts, first and foremost it was a learning church. They gathered together and rallied around the Apostles' teaching, the Apostles' doctrine. And it's what they saw, what they learned from Jesus, but they laid a foundation that through persecution and whatever would come their way, they had something solid to hold onto, not just a rally, a pep rally in their minds that happened a month ago that they got all excited about, but they knew why they believed.

They knew what they believed, and that carried them through. That's next time here in Connect with Skip Weekend Edition. We continue to examine what our responsibilities and duties are after we become a Christian. That's next time here in Connect with Skip Weekend Edition, a presentation of Connection Communications. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross. Cast all burdens on His hand. Connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.