The Foundation (Part A)

John 17 verse 20, Jesus speaking. He says, I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. That goes beyond just preaching the gospel, the gospel of the story of salvation. But what about discipleship, to be a saint, to be separated to Christ? I need to know that. I'm not going to stumble into Christianity.

Nor will I stumble into perfection. It's hard work. about cross-reference radio. Specifically, how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick with a brand new message called The Foundation in Acts chapter 2. All who believe were together and had all things in common and 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 who were being saved.

The Foundation, that's the title, The Foundation, because that is what verse 42 is. In that one verse, we have the gospel and everything to do with the gospel. And the believers, they continued to do what got them this far since the ascension of Christ.

Since Peter preached that sermon beginning with Joel and then going to the Psalms and the life of David, all about Jesus Christ, they continued. That's key to a victorious Christian life, to a fruitful Christian life, to a life that can withstand the fiery darts. Paul said it this way to the Galatians, having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? You came to Christ, you responded to the Spirit, you submitted to Him, you trusted Him, you depended on Him, you looked to His word for guidance and life. And then he says, are you so foolish that you think you're going to do better without God's word? Without God's way?

Did you come this far only to depart from what brought you this far? Well, the apostles aren't departing, they're sticking to it. And we're going to find that many of the believers at this point are going to continue steadfastly. My pastor repeated this verse from Galatians 3-3, he stressed it at almost every pastor's conference. He was so concerned that the pastors would depart from the spiritual dependence on the word and on God and look to the means and methods of men to grow their churches.

And sadly, many of them just did not register. Does God's word, does the preaching of God's word register with you? Does it mean anything when you hear these things, regardless of how much they bite or encourage? Do they mean something to you?

Do you get it? Or is it just going in one ear and out the other because you only want to hear what you've already decided to agree with? Well, each one's going to have to decide that for themselves. I also say this from Galatians, I hope often enough, having begun in the Spirit, I will not be perfected as a Christian if I get into the flesh and depart from the Spirit. And I have watched some heed and I have watched others fail to heed. And I have distanced myself from those who don't heed.

You know, we like to say, can two walk together unless they are agreed? Until it really gets down, really gets down to the facts of what we must agree on and not those emotional choices that we all tend to make. Emotions can inflict us so heavily to the point we get flashbacks that we don't want to have. And you've got to fight your own emotions if you're going to continue steadfastly or you're going to give in to something else.

Something like, I used to like that guy but I don't anymore. Many times it's not because they did something immoral. They just didn't do what you liked. And this is a battle in life and Satan knows it. These apostles did not change, appease or accommodate anyone. They stuck to the message. They were more interested in pleasing Jesus Christ than anyone else. Now Peter's going to be shaken by this later on. He's going to want to appease and accommodate and change for the Jews that come up from Jerusalem to Antioch. And Paul is going to stand up and say, I'm not appeasing anybody.

I'm not accommodating anyone. This is the truth. You know it. Barnabas knows it and you've departed from it.

Now what are you going to do? Well Peter corrected himself. He even writes later on. Listen to what Paul has to say. It's deep what he has to say.

Why? Because he does not depart from the Spirit. He sticks with the things that are the Gospel.

Peter saw converts, over 3,000 of them, because of the Scripture, because of the Spirit, because of the fact and the truth that belong to that. Stephen will die doing the same thing. Stephen's not going to back down from them. God told Ezekiel, I'm going to make your head harder than their heads. They want to butt heads? I'm going to make you prevail. We should, as Christians, understand these things. We go into the workplace and these schools, wherever we find ourselves, our head is harder than their head and I know that.

And you do too. Revelation 3, verse 10. This church at Philadelphia was two of seven that Jesus singled out.

Two of seven that stood their ground, that had their hard heads against the lesser hard heads. Revelation 3, 10. Because you have kept my command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial, which shall come upon the whole world.

He goes on to say, because you have kept my word, they did not depart, having begun in the Spirit. Hold to the apostles' teachings and be ready to rumble with any Christian that thinks they know better than the Bible, and anyone that says they're Christian and thinks they can do it better than what the Bible, and we're seeing this all over the place. A line, a thick line that separates those Christians in churches that are looking to observe and obey what the Scripture has to say, and those who are looking for cultural ways to identify with sinners.

The line is getting thicker. The old covenant was not in the blood of Christ. The new covenant is. You are New Testament Christians, and we don't go forward without the Old Testament. We take both of them, but we understand the old because of the new, because of our relationship with the one who died for us on the cross, and we've got to be very clear about that. Our identity. Who are you?

If you were stripped of everything you have, what would you be left with? Hopefully, it is your testimony in Jesus Christ, and I would ask for the same thing for me. If the pastor follows the sheep, then he's not the pastor. He's one of the sheep, and there are times that the pastor is going to say things and do things that the sheep won't like.

Don't break formation. I'm not talking about some immoral sin. I'm talking about some emotional thing. Satan knows that, and he picks off believers all the time. I look at some that used to belong to a good church, and now they don't do anything because the time came when their feelings were hurt.

They saw something. I promise you, if you stick around, I'm going to do something you don't like. It's amazing how many fathers want their wives and children to submit and obey to them, but they won't do it to the authority in the church. That's a disconnect.

Something's wrong with that. And again, I'm not talking about heretics, bad doctrine, sin. I'm talking about the things that are within the sphere of the pastor.

This is how we get things done. Well, verse 42, And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and in prayers. They here, referred to in verse 2, are the believers, the apostles and the believers. This was the foundation of the first Christian church.

This was their foundation. It is to be the foundation, I believe, of every church because in that doctrine of the apostles is the gospel, is the truth, is everything from Genesis 1-1 to the end of the revelation of Christ. That is the apostles' doctrine, their teachings that they received from Christ himself. If you can get that one and adhere to it, you are on the path of righteousness.

This is the case because there's nothing as good and there's nothing better. The gospel of Jesus Christ. And alternate foundations are heretical. They are false foundations. They will collapse.

They may take you as far as death, but they're going to fail you after that. And that's why John, for example, takes to task the Gnostics that were infiltrating the church not too long after these events taking place here in Jerusalem as the church began to spread out to the Gentile world. The Gnostics began attacking and the apostles did not stand for that. That's why we have them attacking it back, counter-attacking in their epistles. It says here, continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine. There are five basic activities here. The first one is devotion.

They continue. It's not devotion if you only stick to it as you like it. It's devotion when you know it's right, even if you don't like it. That's devotion. That's loyalty.

And that's what it takes. Devotion. The apostles' teachings. The fellowship. The communion. Which God is saying, you know, fellowship's not enough. You need to expand that to have fellowship with me in the midst of fellowship with your brothers and sisters.

I need to be there. It's not enough to turn the church into a place where people gather and exchange social niceties. It is the place of Christ. That's what the communion table says. The communion says, this is about him, his blood, his body, broken, bled, shed for us.

That's what the communion table is and that's what they're going to continue in. And of course, there's prayer. Why write a book on prayer? We know what prayer is. It's talking to God. It's getting things done in this life in conversation with God. It includes the supplication, asking for supplies, petitions, asking for things that you need, things that you don't have, never had, need, intercessory prayer.

I'm ahead of myself here. We're still on continuing steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine. Paul said to Timothy, you must continue. You must be steadfast. You must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them. Timothy's been through the fires with Paul. He's a seasoned pastor by this time and Paul is still concerned about him.

You have to continue. Satan wants to pick you off. Your flesh will cooperate with Satan far faster than it will ever cooperate with anything coming from Christ.

And you need to know these things and be reminded of these things. To follow their teachings, one has to worship God in spirit and in truth. It's not enough to quote scripture. Satan can do that. It's just no truth when he quotes it.

His application is false. So we must look to make sure our facts are right. That's what Peter did when he said, this is what the prophet Joel spoke of. The early church did more to make converts than, at this point, the early church did more than make converts. They made disciples. They attracted other people to be like them, to learn the Christian life, to join them. It's not enough to make a convert.

Because what have you converted them to? The knowledge of Christ. But there's still a lot of flesh hanging out. There needs to be more.

There needs to be an education, a schooling. There needs to be some time in the trench with other believers who've been there before. This is one of the beautiful things about the church is you can't find this anywhere else. You won't find it sitting at home in your living room. You've got to come to church, to the assembly, and get your lumps like the rest of us. This is life. But there's not only lumps.

There's a lot of love in the Christian body. You just go out and say, you know, my car broke down. There'll be people coming. I can have an extra car. I can loan you a car. You need it.

What can I do for you? You've got to give them the chance to love on you. I will say, they will not. There's a stubbornness with Christianity. It's quite disgusting. They will not wash the pastor's truck.

This is something that has got to change. Kidding, kidding. Well, in the spirit, I'm kidding. But in the flesh, I'm very serious.

To follow their teachings. Not emotional-ism. Not, you know, what warms my heart.

It's not enough. I mean, there is that with truth. But there's also that with lies.

And if you are one of those folks that is emotionally driven, you probably don't care about other people's emotions if they don't match yours. You notice that? But I feel it. Yeah, but I don't feel it. In fact, I feel it's wrong.

And that's where a clash begins. And it's helpful to be mindful of these things. You learn that as life goes on. You know, the other person, maybe I give them the benefit of the doubt sometimes. Maybe they're not up to no good. Maybe they're just, you know, having a bad day. Maybe they just missed that sermon last week or something. Maybe they're just not getting it. And for example, you can tell somebody, listen, lighting candles will not draw you closer to God. It will melt wax, but it will not draw you closer to God.

And some people who are emotionally invested in this kind of stuff will get upset with you for saying something like that. The apostles. Those were the leaders of the early church. And Christ appointed them our leaders also.

And the leaders, they were united in one accord. The church was centered on them as people go. John 17, verse 20, Jesus speaking. He says, I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. That goes beyond just preaching the gospel. The gospel of the story of salvation. But what about discipleship? To be a saint. To be separated to Christ. And to know that. I'm not going to stumble into Christianity, nor will I stumble into perfection.

It's hard work. The apostles, initially, it meant, in its strictest meaning, the 12 apostles. Well, 13, one forfeited the position. Initially, they were the hand-picked men of Jesus Christ. No human being had anything to do with their appointment as these early authorities in the church. And as I've said before, you do better to support the pastor than to criticize.

All of us would. I would say this to any church. I would say this to a family member that lived in another state or another country that were attending a church. If you find the church that God has led you to, he's led you there to support, not to break down.

And it's not something that comes to us naturally, I've discovered. Well, in the strict sense, they were disciples. God gave the Old Testament prophets, but he added apostles to the New Testament church. He didn't take away the prophets, but he added the apostles.

And that is significant. He was saying, you know, the Old Testament law, as beautiful as it is, as I have authored it, it's just not enough to tell the world about me and my immersing the believers in the Holy Spirit and the work that we have to do. And if it was enough, I would not give you the New Testament.

But he has. And Paul had to fight every inch of the way to get this truth into the heads of the Jewish people that just had a difficult time breaking from this. Again, that's the entire Hebrew letter. The letter to the Romans, the letter to the Galatians. It's loaded with these arguments from the Apostle Paul of these truths. Ephesians 2, having been built on the foundation of the apostles. This is our foundation. This is what we stand upon, what we build upon.

Without it, nothing goes upward and stays upward. Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. That chief cornerstone does not exercise his will apart from his people.

That's how he set it up. In the end, of course, he starts employing angels again. But right now, it's the ministry of the church. These are the apostles of Jesus Christ.

Jude says this. You know, his little letter, he just wanted to talk about the gospel. But the Holy Spirit said to him, I need you to deal with some heavier things right now in the church.

They're saved, but they're being corrupted. And he deals with that, the creeps coming into the church. And then he writes, but you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember their words. He will go on to single out that they were warning the church about scoffers.

But it is a general statement that stands by itself. Remember the words that were first spoken by the apostles. And when you pick up your New Testament, that's what you're reading. The words spoken by the apostles. Mark and Luke, who were not apostles, were under the authority of apostles.

Mark under Peter, Luke under Paul. And these things just cannot be dismissed. And we look at verse 43 just for a moment, and there we read, Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. It's big.

You should not even want to shrink this down. You should be thanking the Lord for taking men like me and using them in such a large way. The first Christians, they accepted this. But again, the heretics are coming. They will not stand for it. Just like you.

You find a good church, Satan is not going to stand for that. He's going to come at you. You should be ready and not be ambushed.

And if you are, you should know how to respond to an ambush. And it's never pretty. It's not, you know, the dance of the nutcracker.

It's very ugly. Well, then there are apostles in the church in a broader sense that are apostles of the church, not of Jesus Christ. Because apostle means one who is sent out. Well, Jesus picked 13 to send out with this authority. 2 Corinthians 8.

If anyone inquires about Titus, he is my partner and fellow worker concerning you. Or, if our brethren are inquired about, they are apostles of the church, the glory of Christ. That's 2 Corinthians 8.13. It's translated in the King James Version, the New King James, as the messengers.

But it is the identical Greek word. They are apostles of the church. Whenever the church sends people out on a mission, they are in that sense sent out with that authority. The doctrine. Again, that's what Jesus taught them. This is the doctrine of the apostles.

It's not something they came up with. I used to think that before I became a Christian. I used to think that guys just sat under a tree and philosophied about God. Philosophy, human philosophy is guessing. It's all guesswork. Sometimes they get it right, most of the time they get it wrong.

And now with the Internet, we've got them everywhere. You know how many experts are out there? Man, it's just they take one course and then they put up a video and teach you how to do it. It's ridiculous. I mean, who would trust an Internet doctor who never went to med school or anything like that and spent time in the trenches in the ERs of the hospitals around the world, but just felt that, you know, I really care about people. And what's bothering you? Stick your tongue out.

Would you go to that guy? And that goes for a lot of other trades. Well, anyway, back to this. What is the purpose of doctrine, this teaching that is so upheld in Scripture? Well, to get us to please God by lining up with God, by being on his side, sharing his views, his opinions and submitting ourselves to his authority. Without submission, there cannot be salvation.

We must submit. These apostles, their doctrine was formed by direct teaching and contact with Jesus Christ. Not only did they get the words of Christ, they got the facial expressions and the hand gestures and the body motions too. So if Jesus said, it's a big deal, they saw that. And they didn't write about that. They didn't say, and at that point, he squinted.

It would have been nice sometimes, right? But then it would limit what was being said. Luke's Gospel 24 verse 27, And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scripture, the things concerning himself. That's their doctrine.

That's where they got it from. This is what he sent them out in authority to have. It is almost impossible to overemphasize doctrine, the teaching of God's word, the doctrine of the apostles. It is what we call the Bible. Because again, the Old Testament makes no sense without someone coming along and illuminating it for us. It is the Holy Spirit and He uses people. This is the case with the Ethiopian eunuch who said, who does this man speak about, himself or someone else? He's reading Isaiah 53 and Philip comes up and he expounds the scripture to him.

And what was the result? Action. What is water? What stops me from being baptized? Philip said, if you believe, if you believe. And he did believe and he was baptized. When Solomon dedicates the temple, he brings in the Ark of the Covenant that David danced before with all of his might because that Ark of the Covenant represented so much more than the temple could ever mean to the people because of the presence of God. The presence of God is what meant everything to David, not the Ark of the Covenant.

That was just a point of contact. Well, what was in that Ark? Well, originally in the days of Moses, there was that rod of Aaron that budded.

It was his dead stick. It was a dead stick and it brought forth ripe almonds to show that he was God's man of authority and you better not mess with him because the same power that made this rod bud can go upside your head, bud. That's part of the lesson because there was a revolt against Moses and his brother.

So serious was God about it, the ground opened up and swallowed up people. The other thing in the Ark was the pot of manna, the provision of God, the bread of life. But those two, by the time Solomon dedicates the temple, by the time David dances before the Ark, those two are not in there anymore. There's only one thing left from the days of Moses, the word of God.

That's it. Written on stone by the finger of God, Isaiah 40 verse 8. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God stands forever.

That's what that meant. And a righteous Jew would have made that connection. Thus the nation was to continue in the doctrine of God according to the prophets.

We continue based on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone. You've been listening to Cross Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, today's teaching is available free of charge at our website. Simply visit crossreferenceradio.com. That's crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can subscribe at crossreferenceradio.com or simply search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. Tune in next time as Pastor Rick continues teaching through the book of Acts, right here on Cross Reference Radio.