Why We Go to Church - Part 1

Audio on demand from Vision Christian Media. As David introduces his special message, why we go to church. No children's programs, no youth programs, just everybody coming to the church service. And we had a couple of thousand people that came to church every week, and we sang and we preached and we celebrated. Things are changing now.

We don't know where it all ends up. But what we have learned is the importance of gathering. There was an awful lot of material out there during the coronavirus that when you watched church online, that was the same as being in church, but it's not, because in the Bible, church is when we gather. It's the gathering together.

That's actually in the name itself. So today I thought it would be interesting for us to just kind of review why we go to church, why it's important. Maybe you've stayed home during all of this and you've decided that online services are just fine for you. You get up, you don't even change out of your pajamas. You go and you go to church in the living room and you think that's pretty cool. But friends, that's not church. That's the best substitute we can have for church when church isn't possible, but it's not church. So today, open your heart as we talk about this very seriously.

Why do we go to church? Acts chapter 2, verses 40 through 47. Here's part one. Now I'm going to read a portion of Scripture and I want you to read it from your Bible. It's in the second chapter of the book of Acts. It's a portion of just a few verses beginning at the 40th verse. But before we read that, before I read that out loud and you follow reading it in your own Bible, I want to tell you that this is a very special section of God's Word. To put it in the right setting, the Lord Jesus has died and he's been buried. He's resurrected and it's now, during this period of time after his resurrection, the ascension and then the Holy Spirit is poured out on the Day of Pentecost. And you will know what happened in the second chapter of Acts.

The Bible says everybody was filled with the Spirit of God and they were miraculously empowered to speak in languages they had never prayed. And they shared the Word of God and there was a tremendous evangelistic response and people got saved and the church just caught on fire. And so now the church is alive, the Holy Spirit is here, people are coming to Christ, and the next question is what do we do?

What do we do with all these people? How do we go forward from this explosion that happened on the Day of Pentecost? And the Bible tells us that there was a gathering of people together. This is what the Scripture says.

Follow in your Bible as I read from the 40th verse of the second chapter. Now with many other words he testified and exhorted them saying, be saved from this perverse generation and those who gladly received his Word were baptized and that day 3,000 souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and in fellowship and in the breaking of bread and in prayers and fear came on every soul and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Now all who believed were together and had all things in common and sold their possessions and goods and divided them among all as anyone had need. And continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God, having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.

Here's a question I'd like to pose to you. Why in the world do we go to church? Why is it important in our culture, in our families among us that the church is on our schedule? We hear a lot today about the church and some of that is not so good. I read the statistics that come across my desk about how churches are failing. I read a thought that in the next seven years 50,000 churches in America will close their doors. That's hard to believe, but we know this from a first-hand knowledge that churches across the country, not all of them are doing well.

But the news is not totally negative. Evangelical Christianity is growing in America. From 2007 to 2014, the number of Evangelicals in America rose from 59 million to 62 million. And despite what many people are saying, Evangelical Christians are attending church more than ever. The latest general social survey found that in the last two years of the study, a greater percentage of Evangelicals are attending church than in any other time in the last 30 years. Currently, 55% of Evangelicals attend church at least every week.

Now, let's be honest. The church is not a building. The church is not a place where we go. The church is the body of Christ made up of everyone who has put their trust and faith in the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So just like in those early days after those people came to Christ as the result of Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, they came together in unity and they developed a new thing. This was God's idea. The church was God's idea. And here in the book of Acts, these words we have just read, that's the first mention of the church in the book of Acts. And so when we're asking the question, why do I go to church? And what kind of church should we be that people might want to come here? We have to go back to the beginning. We have to go back to where the church was founded.

Why was the church instituted in the first place? And what did it look like? If you had been alive back then and walked in on one of the church services, what would you have seen?

What was happening? How many of you know that if you want to know how to do something, you read the directions? That's hard for us men, but it's still a good idea. So whether you're a man or a woman, when it comes to how do you do church, you should read the directions. And the directions for the church are found in the Bible, and especially in the book of Acts, which is the book which is called the Acts of the Holy Spirit through the apostles. And here in this seminal passage of Scripture, we have a picture of the church of the church as God intends it to be and as he wants it to be now. So I want to go through what this passage says, and let's kind of take a little inventory to say, how can we do church better? It's not by reading all of the new things that come out in the mail. I can't believe all the stuff I get about how to do church, and some of it's pretty ridiculous if you want to know the truth.

It's so far-fetched you wouldn't even think about it, but some people do. I want to know what church is supposed to be like, what we're supposed to do in the church, and the only place I know where to go to find out is the Bible. So let's go through this list. What was the church and what did they do when they met the first time? First of all, there was exposition. There was the teaching of the Word of God. Acts 2.41 says, those who received the Word and later on continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine. I read an article recently that was written by Tim Challies reporting on the hottest thing at church today.

This is really quite amazing. He said, according to a new study by Gallup, the hottest thing at church today is not the worship and not the pastor. It's not the smoke and lights, and it's not the hip and relevant youth programs.

It's not the fair trade organic coffee in the bookstore. It's not the hottest thing in the church. The hottest thing in the church today is the preaching. Not only is it the preaching, but a very specific form of it, preaching that's based on the Bible. And just like that, decades of church growth bunkum thrown under the bus. Isn't it interesting? We've gone on this journey trying to figure out how to do church, and now here we are back.

People are really discovering. One of the key things about a good church is they teach the Bible. Despite a new wave of contemporary church buzzwords that I read about, people who show up on Sunday are looking for something that has long anchored all of our key services, preachers preaching the Bible. Should come as no surprise that God's people want God's Word.

A baby wants nothing more than his mother's milk because he needs nothing more than his mother's milk. A Christian wants nothing more than God's Word because there's nothing he needs more than God's Word. And Christians may not know it or be able to verbalize it any more than the baby can, but within every true believer there is a deep hunger to be spiritually fed, to be nourished up in the Word of God, to come to a place where you hear a word from God. Not a word from the pastor, but a word from God. Where do those words live?

They live in the Bible. So, as good or bad or indifferent as all of the rest of the things we do, if we ever stop doing this, the church will never flourish. And if you want to know the truth, one of the reasons I think there's been such discouragement in so many churches is we've gotten away from doing that. You can go to some churches and you will never hear the Bible ever mentioned. I'm just here to tell you, I didn't make this up, and I'm not just telling you this because this is what I do. I'm telling you this is what I do because this is what the Bible tells us to do, and this is the only thing I know how to do.

So, if you're looking for something else, I don't know how to do anything else. All I know how to do is open the Bible and teach the truth. Now, it's interesting that in this text that we've looked at, there are a lot of things that Luke could have said about the church. The author of the book of Acts, who's recording all of this, he could have said that it was a joyful church. He could have said that it was an expanding church, a vibrant church. These are all important things, but the first thing that Luke talks about when he describes the early church is the teaching, and that's pretty relevant because these people had just come through the most emotional, supernatural experience that's probably ever happened in any church anywhere. These people had come through Pentecost. They came through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit from heaven. You talk about a charged-up environment. I mean, today we would have said, get them all together, get their hands up in the air, and let's hoot and holler for Jesus.

I mean, that's kind of the way it would have been. But Luke said, no, you're all saved. You came through Pentecost.

Here's what you need. You need the teaching of the Word of God. He put it first. The first thing Luke talks about is the teaching. He stresses that in these early days, in spite of an experience as great as Pentecost, which might have caused them to focus on their experience, the disciples devoted themselves first to teaching, and the Bible says they were teaching the apostles' doctrine.

What was that? Well, you didn't have the New Testament in the early church. They had the Old Testament, but they didn't have the New Testament. They had the oral words of Jesus, probably some of them written down in fragmentary form, but they didn't have the Jeremiah study Bible in the early church.

All they had were different parts of the teachings of Jesus, but the apostles took what Jesus had taught them, and they taught that to these early disciples. God's church is the place where God's Word is to be proclaimed and explained, and this truth is emphasized throughout the epistles, but it is especially emphasized when Paul writes to young Timothy. You know, Timothy was Paul's disciple, and Paul's trying to help Timothy become a pastor and teach him how to do church, so Paul writes to Timothy.

Listen to what he says. If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed. Later on, he said, and the things that you have heard from among many witnesses, Timothy, commit these things to faithful men who can teach others also. In other words, don't just teach it to those people. Teach it to people who can teach it to other people. Get the cycle going, Timothy. And then to young Titus, who was also one of Paul's proteges, he said, hold fast the faithful word as you have been taught, that you may be able by sound doctrine to exhort and convict those who contradict.

I could stay on this and make this the whole message. It's just one part. It's just one of the things they did at the church. One of the reasons I put it first is because in so many places today, they put it last. In so many places today, it's kind of like, oh yeah, we had something from the Bible. In so many places today, they say we don't do much with the Bible anymore. It's not relevant. How many of you know the Bible is getting more relevant every day? Just read the papers.

Just read the news. This book that's supposed to be not relevant is pretty relevant. So, one of the things they did when they went to church is they learned. They studied. They opened their Bibles, and somebody got up and explained what the Bible meant. And they came to church with a hunger to learn. I'm so thankful that you all are like that.

I watch you often, and I see you taking notes. I see you looking things up, and it makes me realize that just as it was in the early days, there's a group of people who hunger after the Word of God. Number two, not only was there exposition, the teaching of the Word of God, there was evangelism, the winning of the lost to Christ. Even after the day of Pentecost when there were so many people who became Christians, here's what we read in Acts 2. And with many other words, Stephen testified and exhorted them saying, be saved from this perverse generation. And that day, 3,000 people were added to them, and the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. The result of Peter's preaching and Stephen's preaching was that the Holy Spirit was out poured. Can you imagine going to church one Sunday and having 3,000 people come to Christ in the service? I mean, I can't imagine that, but it happened.

It happened in that early day. And the Bible says their names were added to the number, but it doesn't say it really was their names. It says their souls were added. Did you know that Peter had more converts on that day when he preached than Jesus had in his entire lifetime on this earth? This made the total number of believers in the early church total up to 3,120, because if you go back to the first chapter, you'll find there were 120 disciples. Now 3,000 more people have gotten saved, so now the church has got 3,120 people.

Believe it or not, they counted them, and that's how many they had. So they taught the Word of God, and then they shared the gospel. Now, I need to talk to you about that just for a moment, because there's not anything that I know that puts most of us into fear and guilt and grief than somebody coming up to us and saying to us, when was the last time you shared your faith? What do you mean? Share my faith?

We have all these little classes, and we teach people to do all these little things, and we've made this way too hard. Sharing your faith is just telling people what Jesus Christ has done for you. It's not a formula. Oh, you can get some formulas. In fact, I was reminded again that there have been many people who have taken the gospel and put it into little books where you can just take one page at a time and go through the book and tell people how to be saved. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to do that. Just give them a copy of the book, and you keep the book and go read the book together. You say, you can do that?

Oh, yes, you can do it. You know how many people have come to Christ by that? Because the power isn't what you say.

The power isn't what the book says. The power is in the Holy Spirit, and if you just follow the Holy Spirit and let him lead you, probably one of the greatest evangelistic tools that has been used in my lifetime was Campus Crusade's Four Spiritual Laws, and you can debate the theology of it all you want to. Thousands of people came to Christ, hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people, simply because somebody came up with an idea to make the gospel simple enough that anybody could share it. The Bible tells us to share our faith. Tell people how Jesus has blessed your life, and then when they ask you, how did Jesus get into your life, whip out your two little books and say, hey, let's go through this, and I'll show you how this happens. So, there was exposition, and there was evangelism, and then there was expression.

When they got together in the church, I think their church service was pretty lively. Listen to what it says, and fear came upon every soul. Many wonders and signs were done through the apostles, and continuing daily with one accord in the temple, breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all men. So, when they went to church, they kind of did what we do. They worshiped. Worship was one of the ways they expressed their faith, and I think their worship wasn't all that different than what we do. The Bible says, first of all, when they came to worship, they came in a sense of awe because the apostles were still in the afterglow of the presence of Christ on this earth, and they were doing signs and miracles. So, when you went to church, something happened, and they came to church, and they watched these things happen, and then the Bible says that they began to lift their worship. The word praising God is in the text, and it's evident from this passage that there were two kinds of worship in the early church. There was the formal worship, where they experienced temple worship, kind of like what we do in the church services, and then there was informal worship, which they did in their homes. All of their worship had a couple of qualities. I want you to see this in the text. Look at your Bibles. The two qualities that describe their worship are gladness and simplicity.

Do you see that? With gladness and simplicity, they worshiped. Now, the word gladness is the word from which we get the word to rejoice.

Others have translated this word exult, or unaffected joy, total joy. When we get together to worship men and women, we shouldn't all be sad. I mean, we have some somber songs we sing on occasion, but worship is primarily a glad and happy and joyous experience. If you come to this church and you think, well, their music is too uptempo, or it's too upbeat, or it's too happy, I don't know how to explain to you that I don't have an answer for you. What do you mean it's too happy?

How happy should you be because your sins have been forgiven and you're on your way to heaven? I mean, is it like this or like this? I mean, but however it is you worship, the Bible says it is with gladness and joy. And then I love this, with simplicity.

I never saw that before. And one of the things you hear about modern worship is, oh, it's so simple. Seven words spoken 11 times in every song. 7-11 worship.

Have you ever heard that? Worship songs are so simple. They're biblical. They're simple.

That doesn't mean they're meaningless. Watch now what happened. They come together in the church and they teach the Word of God. They come together in the church and they have a desire to see other people become Christians.

So they had some way that they did that. They shared their faith. And I would imagine in the early church there were as many bashful people in that church as there are in this church, but somehow they work through their bashfulness and they begin to tell other people about Jesus. And man, if you can't do that, you can invite them to church.

At least do that. And then they worshiped. They were praising God. And when they gathered in the temple courts, they sang psalms and hymns. Did you know that Christianity is the only singing religion in the world? Did you know that? Others moan and they groan and they mumble, but only Christians sing.

And of course you know that was called in question in recent weeks. We were told we could go to church, but we couldn't sing. Most of us didn't pay any attention to that because we know trying to worship God without singing is pretty tough. And the interesting thing about this passage of Scripture for me is to look down through it and realize how many of those things we have to do in community and how few of them we can do alone.

I mean you can do some of them alone. It's not the same, but here's the news that needs to come away from all of this. Church is the church gathered. And the church scattered can't be the church gathered. So it's good to be in church. And one of the things that I've been so thankful for as a pastor here, obviously we live in a great place for outdoor church, but we haven't missed a Sunday. We've had church every week since all of the craziness began in our culture.

And frankly the church is what we've looked forward to every week. It's kept us going. It's kept us moving. It's kept us sane. It's kept us free of stress and anxiety.

Why to go to church? More of that tomorrow as we move toward the end of the month. And speaking of the end of the month, I only have today and really one more day to tell you about our special gift. It's the Colors of Creation calendar for 2021.

It actually begins in November of this year. It's beautiful. It's intriguing.

It's something you want to have in your office, your den, your kitchen. So make sure you sit down today, send your gift, and when you do, ask for the 2021 calendar, Colors of Creation. Thank you for being a part of us. For more information on this special message from Dr. Jeremiah, please be sure to visit our website, where we offer two free ways to help you stay connected, our monthly magazine Turning Points, and our daily email devotional. Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio. And when you do, ask for your copy of our 14-month 2021 calendar, Colors of Creation.

It highlights God's breathtaking handiwork, and it's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard and New International versions, as well as in Standard or Large Print in the New King James, with helpful notes from over 40 years of study by Dr. Jeremiah. Visit davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio for details. I'm Gary Hoogfleet. Join us tomorrow as David shares a message of encouragement. That's here on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.