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Sunday – February 16, 2020 Book of Acts –Acts 6:1-7 “Waiting on the Widows”

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Sunday – February 16, 2020

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Word On Worship – Sunday – February 16, 2020

Acts 6:2-4
So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them 4 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”

Someone has said, “If you ever find the perfect church, don’t join it because you will spoil it!” I often tell the new members class, “I promise that if you join this church, we will at some point offend you.” Or, as some wag put it, “To dwell above with the saints we love, O that will be glory! But to dwell below with the saints we know, well, that’s a different story!” To have been in the early church would have been a wonderful experience to see God was working in powerful ways. But the early church was not a perfect church. We’ve already seen the problem of hypocrisy, with Ananias and Sapphira. Now Luke shows us another problem that occurred in the midst of this phenomenal growth: a complaint arose that threatened to split the church.

It is significant that the apostles did not say, “It’s time that we divide the church up into the First Hellenistic Church of Jerusalem and the First Hebrew Church of Jerusalem.” They never considered division as an option. Even though these two groups had diverse backgrounds and even different mother tongues, they wanted to work this problem out in a spirit of unity, not division.

Not even the apostles could do it all. They were gifted and called to the ministry of prayer and preaching the Word. They were not control-freaks, who had to direct every aspect of church ministry. They were willing to delegate responsibility to other godly men who could deal with the problems.  One key to solving church problems is to recognize and implement the division of labor on the basis of spiritual gifts. No one man or group of men, however gifted, can carry on the work of the local church. It is only when every member gets involved in serving in accordance with his or her gifts that the church will be strong.

The church is primarily an organism—the living body of which Christ is the head. But all organisms are organized. It is a mistake to over-emphasize organization to the neglect of organism. It is also a mistake to over-emphasize organism and neglect proper organization. The solution was the blend between apostolic direction and congregational participation. The apostles did not choose these seven men; they delegated that job to the congregation after giving the necessary qualifications. The congregation brought the seven back to the apostles, who validated the choice by praying and laying hands on them. The church is not a democracy, but wise elders will involve the congregation on important decisions. The entire church must be functionally under the headship of Jesus Christ, seeking to honor Him and follow His will.

Sunday – July 14, 2019 Gospel of Luke – Luke 19:45 to Luke 20:18 “Tempest in the Temple”

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Sunday – July 14, 2019

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Word On Worship – Sunday – July 14, 2019

Luke 20:1-2
One day as he was teaching the people in the temple courts and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, together with the elders, came up to him. “Tell us by what authority you are doing these things,” they said. “Who gave you this authority?”

The problem that the Jewish leaders faced was Jesus and His authority confronted their authority. Through the years they had their share of run-ins with Jesus. At the start of His ministry, Jesus had also gone up to Jerusalem and cleansed the temple (John 2:13-22). But then He left town and had pretty much kept to the north, while they had continued to run the religious establishment in Jerusalem. Jesus had come to town a few times and stirred things up, but He always had left and things had gone back to normal. But now things were coming to a head.

The problem the Jewish religious leaders faced is the same problem that every person who comes into contact with Jesus faces: His authority confronts my authority. At first, maybe it’s just an irritating sermon that makes you a bit uncomfortable. You don’t like it, but you brush it aside and continue on with your agenda for your life. Then a passage in the Bible steps on your toes. Your level of discomfort goes up a notch. You realize that if He takes over your life, there are going to be some radical changes, and you’re not sure that you want to relinquish that much control. So, you try and dodge the implications of who Jesus is by raising all sorts of intellectual questions. But Jesus keeps coming to town and confronting your authority to run your own life. Sooner or later, you come to a crisis point where you have to deal with the question that these Jewish religious leaders asked: “By what authority does Jesus say and do these things?”

If Jesus Christ is God in human flesh, who gave His life for you on the cross, then He is the absolute sovereign who has the supreme right to govern your life. Jesus the Christ could go into the temple, turn over the tables of the money-changers, drive out those who were selling, and confront the religious leaders because He was acting under the authority of the sovereign God. That same authority gives Him the right to confront you and me with the way we are living for ourselves, even if we cover it over with religiosity.

J.C. Ryle perceptively commented, “The ruin of thousands is simply this, that they deal dishonestly with their own souls. They allege pretended difficulties as the cause of their not serving Christ, while in reality they ‘love darkness rather than light,’ and have no honest desire to change.” The question for us today is, how do we respond when He suddenly upends our comfortable way of life? Do we challenge His right to confront us? Or, do we honestly face our own sinful selfishness, our insistence on running our lives on our terms? Do we yield to His rightful lordship? Since Jesus Christ is acting by God’s authority, we had better submit to Him!

Sunday – April 28, 2019 Gospel of Luke – Luke 17:5-17 “A Lesson in Faith”

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Sunday – April 28, 2019

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Word On Worship – Sunday – April 28, 2019

Luke 17:3-5
“Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”

How many times have you thought the reason why you could not obey a command of our Lord was you had too little faith? If our problem is one of insufficient faith, we seem to have only two options. First, if faith is only given by God, then faith is God’s problem. How can we be responsible until He provides it first? That almost seems to be the mindset of the apostles. The second possibility would be to try and conjure up the faith on our own. Nowhere does Jesus teach us how to build faith in the way we try to build our bodies. There is not a problem with the quantity of our faith, but a failure to grasp the nature of faith.

Jesus did not minimize the need for faith, but neither did He say a lack of faith was the disciple’s problem, and so granting more faith was not the solution. Jesus’ response in the parable of the slave and the one grateful Samaritan focus on obedience and gratitude. The slave of verses 7-10 is to faithfully obey his master, and not to expect him to show gratitude. The master has the right to expect obedience of a slave, but has no obligation to be thankful for it. In the same way, when the disciple is obedient to Christ, he does not see it as meriting anything from God, nor does he equate his worthiness with it. For all men, even the most obedient of them, are unworthy of divine favor.

If this is true, then what we do not need is a system of rules to keep, for in keeping them there is no reward. If we are unworthy even at our best—even when we keep all of God’s commandments—then what we need is not Law, but grace. Grace is God’s favor bestowed upon us because we are unworthy, not because we are worthy. Grace and mercy are always prompted by our unworthiness, while God’s gratitude cannot even be prompted by our best efforts.

It is the grace of God, poured out freely upon sinners, which produces gratitude. It is grace produced gratitude which serves to motivate the recipient of grace to also bestow it on others, not more faith. Just as God has forgiven us of our sins against Him, solely on the basis of our confession of sin and repentance, so we are to forgive others on the same basis. It is not a greater faith that is required for us to do this, but a better understanding of what faith is and how it works.

Sunday – March 31, 2019 Gospel of Luke – Luke 16:14-18 “Heart Knowledge”

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Sunday – March 31, 2019

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Word On Worship – Sunday – March 31, 2019

Luke 16:14-15
Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him. And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.

When we experience the rejection of the world for our faith, we gain a small glimpse of the rejection our Lord Jesus experienced. We tend to think that all who scoff at Jesus are outside the religious establishment, similar to our experience. But the gospel accounts show us there are many who put on a pretense of being religious, but who scoff at the Savior. Sadly, not much has changed as the world of religion is filled with those who wear the mantle of piety, but inside seek attention of world over the approval of God. The word “scoff” literally means, “to turn up one’s nose” at someone. It is a term of utter contempt and disregard.

But what, specifically, were the Pharisees scoffing about? They judged on appearances. Jesus was talking a great deal about money, and how to use it. They could well have said to themselves and others, “Who is this expert on money, anyway? Who does He think He is? How much money does He possess? He is so poor that He has to have women of means accompany Him, to provide for His needs!” They may very well have mocked Jesus’ teaching, based simply upon His poverty.

In response to these scoffers, Jesus did not bother pointing out that the Pharisees were really “lovers of money.” Jesus was interested in the source of their problem, not just in symptoms. Loving money was a serious problem, but it was not the root of the Pharisees problem. In verses 15 Jesus exposed the root problem—The Pharisees sought approval from the wrong people, on the wrong basis. I can see why the Pharisees valued money so highly. Money, to the Pharisee, was one of the external proofs of piety. After all, had God not promised to prosper His people Israel if they kept His laws (Deuteronomy 28:1-14), and to bring them great poverty and adversity if they disobeyed (Deuteronomy 28:15)? Money was the proof of piety that would cause an externalist to love.

The Pharisees’ love of money was an indication of their attachment to external standards and appearances, in order to obtain the praise of men. In the process of seeking men’s praise, they also obtained God’s condemnation. It is God, however, who justifies and not men. God does not judge on the basis of outward appearance, but He knows and bases His judgment on what is in man’s heart: “But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

Sunday – November 4, 2018 Gospel of Luke – Luke 11:1-13 “Teach Us How to Pray”

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Sunday – November 4, 2018

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Word On Worship – Sunday – November 4, 2018

Luke 11:9-10
“So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened.”

All of us who are Christians have struggled with the problem of unanswered prayer. In fact, that problem can discourage us so much that we start thinking, “What’s the use?” and we even quit praying. We hear stories of how God answered prayer for others, but for us it just doesn’t seem to work. Sometimes we may try again, but we’re like boys who ring the doorbell and run away. We don’t stick around long enough to find out if God is home and if He is going to open the door and answer our request.

The strong emphasis in this whole section is on receiving answers to our prayers. The friend at midnight did not go away empty-handed. He got the bread that he came for. The application emphasizes that one who keeps asking, seeking, and knocking will receive what he is after. The story of the father and his son makes the same point: the boy will get what he asks from his father. The final application drives it home again with force: How much more will the heavenly Father respond favorably to those who ask Him? Our Lord wants us to come to the Father and keep on coming until He gives us what we need to see His kingdom come.

If we do not pray daily to God as our Father for these needs, or if we pray only for some of them, it may be because God is not a Father to us, but our foe. Only the one who knows God as their Father can pray to Him as their heavenly Father and do so expecting Him to hear and to answer with good gifts. Some things the true disciple is instructed to pray to come to pass would be viewed as distasteful, even dreaded by a non-Christian. What unbeliever would pray for the coming of the Lord’s kingdom, knowing that it would not only spell the end of their sinful lives, but also their damnation? Who would pray for forgiveness of sins, if they denied that they were sinners?

If you lack the confidence to come to Him as your Father, then God has a way for you to become His child. That way is through God’s Son, Jesus Christ. He has come to the earth and has died in your place. God’s anger toward your sin has already fallen on Him. All that you must do is to receive God’s gift of forgiveness and of eternal life through His Son, and through His death on the cross of Calvary. Come to the Father as your Father, now.