Commit to a Local Church

Mosaic Boston - Sermons

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If you have your Bibles open up to Acts 2, we're continuing our sermon series that we started last week. The series is called Committed Essential Habits of An Abundant Life. Over the course of this series, we're going to be taking a look at 11 essential, non-negotiable, super practical commitments that every Christian must make in order to grow in their faith, in order to persevere through the trials of life, in order to fulfill God's calling and purpose for you as a Christian and in order to truly enjoy and experience the abundant life that Jesus came to give. We looked at the passage in John 10 of Jesus last week, of Jesus the good shepherd who came to give us life and to give us abundant life. We looked last week at Acts 2, the birth of the church. The Apostle Peter gets up, he preached this sermon and we're told that 3000 people that day got saved, they got baptized and they committed their life to doing what the most important commitment that we all need to make, they committed themselves to following Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

So that's first. Today we're going to be looking at what is arguably the second most important commitment that every Christian needs to make, that you've received the gospel, you've repented of your sin, you've put your faith in Christ, you have committed to follow Him. Now what? Well, we're going to see the answer to that as we finish up the rest of Acts 2 that after these 3000 people committed themselves to following Jesus, the very next thing that they did was committed themselves to one another. They committed themselves to be the church to a local church. That's the title of today's sermon. Commit to a Local Church. We're going to be taking a look at what the early church devoted itself to, and we're going to talk a little bit about what is the church and why it's important that every Christian should be a member of a local church and then we're going to talk a little bit about how we live that out here at Mosaic.

We're in Acts 2 and we're picking up right where we left off from last week in verse 41 and it says this, "Now, those who received His word were baptized and they were added that day about 3000 souls, and they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers and awe came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who are being saved."

Could you please join me in prayer for our sermon this morning? God, what a amazing, beautiful picture of what your church should be, of what your church can be by the power of your Holy Spirit. Jesus, we thank you that you have not only saved us to yourself, but you have made us a family. I pray that today that you would show us what a blessing it is when we as individual members find our place in that family, find our proper place in the household of God. I pray that you bless our time in your word this morning, in the name of your son Jesus Christ. Amen.

One of the unique privileges of being a pastor here or even being a member here at Mosaic is you get to meet a lot of people from all over the world with different backgrounds, and getting to know many of you, I know that some of you grew up in Christian households, some of you did not. Some of you grew up with parents who maybe were atheists or you practiced a different religion in the family that you grew up in. I know personally some of you even had family members who were opposed to you becoming a follower of Christ. Well, personally I was blessed to grow up in a happy Christian home. My mom and dad were both Christians. They loved Jesus. They were very active in our church. So I had the benefit of growing up with a lot of healthy habits and routines.

We attended church multiple times during the week. I got to see my parents read their bibles and pray and serve at church, and I got to hear the word preached faithfully week after week. I got to have Sunday school teachers in my life that taught me the Bible, taught me about Jesus and I grew up benefiting from many of the blessings that come not just from being a member of a Christian family but from being a part of a local church. It's kind of ironic that as I grew up and became a teenager and went off to college that one of the first things I did was I stopped attending church. I kind of had this mindset going on, "Things between me and God are pretty okay and so I don't really see why I have to go to church." Maybe if I was back visiting my family, I'd go to church with them, but when I was off on my own, I didn't.

I'm not going to get into all of the problems that that caused, but what was behind this was ... well, on the one hand I was just young and I was naive and I was proud and I was really what our brother Eli was just praying a minute ago, I wanted to do things my way. I wanted to go out and I wanted to live my own life and I didn't want anything holding me down. I didn't really want to be part of a church where there was going to be people that are going to challenge me and hold me accountable. That was part of it and part of my problem was I was basing, I was building my understanding of church and of Christianity upon a really serious misinterpretation of Matthew 18. I think this is probably up there among the most misquoted verses in all of scripture. You're probably familiar with it. Matthew 18:20, Jesus said to his disciples, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them."

It's really encouraging, it's meant to be encouraging, but I read that and I took that to mean and okay, well therefore church is not some organized community that I need to be committed to. Church can just be whatever I make of it. I can have church in my dorm room or I can have church driving in my car or out in the woods or whatever. I mean, I never actually did that, but theoretically I could have. That's what I would tell myself. I had some Christian friends on campus that I would hang out with once in a while. At the time, I don't really think I was a Christian. I'd grown up in the church, but I wasn't actually a Christian yet and so I really had a lot more fun hanging out with my non-Christian friends. I would occasionally turn on Christian radio in my car and I'd pray once in a while and I thought, "Okay, well I'm doing these good things and so I think that means I'm a good person, so I think things are good between me and God. I don't really see why I would need to go to church."

Now, the problems that that caused were many, but my thinking and my basis for it was all wrong because Matthew 18:20, that's not what Jesus is talking about. This verse isn't something that you can read in a vacuum. You have to understand it in the context of the rest of what Jesus is saying. When you look at the verse in its context, you see that Jesus is actually ... He's giving instruction to the church of how to organize at a church. Really what He's talking about, He's talking about matters of church discipline and how as a church you need to draw distinctions between who is in the church body and who is not in the church body. So read it in context, Matthew 18, beginning in verse 15 to see what Jesus was getting at.

He says, "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you've gained your brother. But if he doesn't listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a gentile and tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven, for where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them."

Then Peter came up and he said to Him, "Well, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times." When you read this verse in its context and you read this passage, you should discover three things. First, you should see that committing to a local church matters because it mattered to Jesus. He just assumed that every follower of His, every Christian was going to be part of a local church where they were known and accounted for. Secondly, that means that committing to a local church matters because as we see here, Jesus calls the church to make clear distinctions about who is part of that church body. Then thirdly, though, committing to a local church matters because as we see in this text, the church is a family.

If your brother sins against you, go to your brother. Win back your brother, forgive your brother that we as Christians ... yeah, Jesus saves us to Himself, but he doesn't save us to Himself alone. He saves us into a family. He adopts us. We're adopted by the blood of Christ into the household of God and within this family we have brothers and sisters and we got to learn how to get along with these siblings of ours. We got to learn how to bear with one another. He talks about the need to ... you're going to have to learn how to ask for forgiveness because you're going to sin against each other. You're going to learn how to extend forgiveness to one and over, over and over again. But you see this picture that the church, the vision that Jesus has, the church is like a family. I say this so that if you're kind of in that place where I was of thinking, "I think things are good between me and God, so I really don't see the need for church."

Maybe you haven't been attending church or you kind of attend church sporadically here and there, maybe you're just not committed to the church. We're going to talk about how the early church functioned, but I want to give you four things to think about and consider before we do to see why this really matters. The first thing is this. Consider that scripture describes the church as a flock of sheep placed under shepherds. This 1 Peter 5:1-5. It says, "I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder pastor and a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that's going to be revealed to shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you. Not for shameful gain, but eagerly. Not domineering those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

"When the chief shepherd," that's Jesus Christ, "Appears when he returns, you, the under shepherds, the pastors, the elders, will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger," so the members of the church, "Be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another. For God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." We also see this in Acts 20:28. He tells the pastors, "Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God which He obtained with His own blood." In Hebrews 13:17, "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning for that would be of no advantage to you."

The picture here is that Jesus, if you are a Christian, He is your good shepherd. He is the one that we talked about last week who leads you in and out and helps you, brings you into good pastures, gives you this abundant life. He's the good shepherd. He's also the chief shepherd. He's the chief shepherd that there then calls you to subject yourself to the care of under shepherds, of pastors, elders of local churches. The picture that we have is that a Christian without a local church, it's like a lost sheep. It's like a sheep without its shepherd, a sheep without its flock. It's both out of place but it's also in danger. You're doing a disservice to yourself but also to the church as well and even to the shepherds, the pastors of the church. Because as pastors, Hebrews tells us in this risk that we just read, we're going to give an account to the chief pastor, the chief shepherd, Jesus, for the flock that He has entrusted us with, well then we need to know who is that.

We're not going to give an account for every person that walks through the doors or attends services here at Mosaic, but we are going to give an account before God. This is a very sobering reality for every committed member of this church and this is one of the reasons it's so urgent and important for us to know who those members are. So first, I want you to consider that the church is ... it's described as a flock placed under shepherds. Secondly, consider that the church is a body made up of many members. It's another metaphor that scripture often uses. We saw this in Romans when we went through our Roman series in chapter 12:4 says, "For as in one body we have many members and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another."

Same thing in 1 Corinthians 12:12, "Just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greek, slave free, we're all made to drink of one Spirit." Then you have this really beautiful description of the church in Colossians 3:12 where Paul tells the church, he says, "Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. As the Lord is forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all of these, put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which you are indeed called in one body, and be thankful," he says.

The image here is that a Christian without a church, it's not just like a sheep without its flock. Actually, it's like a hand or a foot that's been cut off from a body, that the hand is useless for lack of the body, but the body also suffers for lack of the hand, that you need the body and that the body needs you. So consider that the church is described like a flock, it's described like a body. Third, consider that the church is described as a temple built of living stones. This is 1 Peter 2:4-5, "As you come to Him," as you come to Christ, "A living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."

We actually have two kind of pictures going on, is that of the spiritual house, but he also says you're a holy priesthood. When my wife and I got baptized, the day that we got baptized, the pastor of that church told us, "When you step out of the baptistry, you step into the ministry," that every member of the church is a minister of the church and that the idea here is that pastors are not people that churches hire to do the work of the ministry on behalf of the church. That's not a pastor's job. Pastors oversee, they guide the flock, they feed the sheep. But as scripture says, the job of the pastors is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, to equip the members of the church for the work of the ministry because every member of the church is a minister of the church, has a ministry to perform, has a part to play.

That's part of what we see here in this passage. But the second thing is he says you're like these living stones that are being built together into this spiritual house. It's like we together are built as a temple for the Holy Spirit. The church is not a building. Sometimes we call church buildings, that's the church and we understand what we mean. The church is not the building, but the church is a spiritual house. We are a temple for the Holy Spirit. If we're going to stand, therefore we need to stand together. Of course, with Jesus Christ being the one chosen and precious by God as the cornerstone for that building. Fourth, consider finally then that the church is described as the family in the household of God. Ephesians 2:19, "So you're no longer strangers and aliens, but you're a fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God."

1 Timothy 3:14, Paul says to Timothy, "I hope to come to you soon, but I'm writing these things so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth." Then Jesus in Matthew 12, we're told that, "While He was still speaking to the people, behold His mother and His brothers stood outside asking to speak to him, but He replied to the man who told them, "Who is my mother and who are my brothers?" Then stretching His hand out toward His disciples He said, "Here are my mother and my brothers, for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." That a Christian without a church, it's not just like a sheep without a shepherd, it's not just a hand without a body, It's like a child without a family.

Over and over we see how vital it is that we belong to a local church, that we belong to a group of people who are committed to caring for one another, to supporting one another and encouraging one another to walk and to follow Jesus together. I wanted to start here just because over the years whenever we talk about membership, there's always people that want to kind of push back against that and say, "yeah, but the Bible never actually teaches church membership." In a sense, it's true that the Bible, there's not a chapter in the Bible that outlines this is church membership and how you do it specifically. But when you read the New Testament, you see church membership everywhere. You see that it's constantly being assumed, it's being implied and you really can't make sense of the New Testament church without it.

This is why here at Mosaic we do practice church membership and we value church membership. We take it seriously because we believe on the one hand that it's biblical, but we also believe it's beneficial and when it's done properly, it is incredibly beautiful. The question then is what is church membership? We've been talking about this. If I had to summarize church membership at Mosaic into one concise statement, I would simply say this. Membership at Mosaic, it's just simply a mutual commitment of care and accountability that we formally make with one another as members of the church. That by becoming a member you are committing before God and you're making a commitment to the other members of the church in general and then to a specific group of people, primarily your community group in particular, you're committing yourself to them. To encourage them to love them, to care for them, to hold them accountable, to be your brother's keeper, to be your sister's keeper. You're committing to do that for them.

Then at the same time you're inviting them to do that for you as well. Because we all know, you know, I know we know that we need this. We can't live the Christian life alone. We need the support of other Christians if we are going to run with endurance the race that was set before us. We read that in Hebrews last week. You probably heard the saying, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We need to understand the Christian race, it's not a hundred-meter dash, it's a marathon. It takes endurance and we need the help and the support of one another to run this race well.

If it helps, think of it like this. My wife and I got married, believe it or not, on our wedding day. A big surprise there. Before the wedding we lived apart. I had my own apartment, she lived in a house on campus with some roommates. After the wedding, we moved in together and we did life together. Now, theoretically we could have left the wedding and gone back to our own separate places and continued to live and do life apart and we could have still remained married in some legal technical sense perhaps. But realistically, well, first of all, I can't imagine a more miserable marriage than that. But if you knew us, at some point you would have to look at our marriage and the arrangement that we had and you'd really have to begin questioning the sincerity of the vows that we made at our wedding.

If you truly are in Christ, you are a member of the universal church. That's just a fact. But this reality should give you an inner desire to have true, meaningful fellowship with other followers of Jesus and to experience the blessing of being committed to a local church. It's the right thing to do, but it's also what's best for you, it's what's best for the church. With that all out of the way, if you're not a member, can't wait to see you at our next membership class. We got another one of those ... we had a great one last week. Our next one's not coming up for a while, but we'd love to get you signed up for it and in the meantime, if you have any questions about that, we'd love to talk to you about membership.

Now, let's get back to our text because I really ... what I want to do is I want to look at what this commitment looks like in day-to-day life because what we're told in Acts 2:42 is the first thing we're told is that they devoted themselves, they committed themselves, and then the rest of the passage, it shows us some of the things that the early church committed itself to. I'm going to read the passage again. Acts 2:42 says this, "And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching." This is the teaching that we have recorded for us in scripture and in the New Testament. "They devoted themselves to the truth of God's word, to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common."

It says, "They were even selling their possessions and belongings to distributing the proceeds to all as any had need, and day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they receive their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people and the Lord added to their number day by day, those who are being saved." I want to quickly take a look at four commitments, four habits that we see the early church devoted themselves to and that we need to devote ourselves to as well as we follow Christ. The first is this. The early church was devoted to gathering in the temple for worship.

We rent space in a Jewish temple. We like to joke sometime we take this verse very literally here at Mosaic, but the temple is not the point here. Before Jesus, it was. Before Jesus, God's people had to gather in the temple in Jerusalem to worship Him because that is where His present dwelled within the holy of holies, and before Jesus, the only hope that they could have of approaching this holy God in worship was to go through this system, this temple system of priests and of sacrifices that would allow them to approach a holy God. Now, after Jesus, this all changed. Hebrews tells us that Jesus is now our great high priest, that his death has put an end to the entire temple system with its priest, with its sacrifices once and for all. We're told that the moment that Jesus died on the cross, that the earth was shaken, that the curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom and that the barrier separating God's holiness from sinful man, it was no longer needed.

Not because we were no longer sinful or because God was no longer holy, but because Jesus Christ had fully paid the penalty of our sin. He'd made atonement for us on the cross so that as God's people we can now draw near to the presence of God with confidence and with boldness, because we have been clothed with the righteousness of Christ, we have been cleansed by His blood on the cross and there is no further sacrifice that will ever need to be made. His was sufficient. The Holy Spirit no longer dwells in a temple. The Holy Spirit now dwells in a people. The Holy Spirit dwells in the church that we individually and together are a temple for the Holy Spirit. Why did the early church then continue to gather in the temple?

Well, the answer that we see throughout the New Testament is that the early church chose to gather for worship, not just in the temple in Jerusalem, but really in whatever location was convenient and available and accommodating to a large group of people gathering together. It just so happened to be in Jerusalem the best place to do that was in the temple, but in other places you see them gathering in synagogues or in public places or even out in nature sometime. The emphasis is not on the building, the temple, the location. The emphasis is on the reality that something special happens when God's people come together, gather together as a large group to worship him. This is why to this day, all over the world, Christians gather on Sunday mornings. They gather together to read the scripture, to preach the word, to praise and to worship God together.

This is not something that we should neglect and this is not something we should take for granted. Hebrews 10 talks about this very thing and it says in verse 19, "Therefore brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus," using the temple [inaudible 00:28:10] to kind of describe what Jesus has done, since we can enter the holy of holies, the presence of God by the blood of Jesus, not by the old way, but "By the new and living way that He opened up for us through the curtain that is through his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us then draw near with true hearts and full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

hen verse 24 says this, "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as we see the day drawing near." Really quick, I just want to give us seven compelling reasons for why we should make this a priority and why we should not neglect gathering together and worshiping here together on Sunday mornings as a church. First of all, we commit to do this above everything else. Our top priority, the main motivation for why we gather here every week is because God is worthy of our praise. This is important because it's easy to come in like, "I hope I get something out of the service today. I hope I leave feeling fed or encouraged or I hope the band sings some good songs."

Yeah, that's all going to happen by God's grace and praise God for the many benefits that we have of coming and gathering together, but that shouldn't be our primary motivation. Our primary motivation is that no matter what's going on or what's happened over the last week, that God is still the same and He's still worthy of our praise, and so we are going to gather and give Him the praise that He is worthy of not. We're not coming here primarily to get something, but to give something, to give God the glory for His faithfulness and his character and his attributes for being the holy, perfect, beautiful God that He is. We commit because God's worthy. With that, we commit because it's what we are made to do, that we were made to worship and that if we neglect to worship God, if we fail to give that glory to God, our hearts are going to find something else to give it to.

We cannot help but worship. It's what we were created to do, but God alone is the one worthy of our worship and so we commit to come and to gather and to do that. A third, we commit to gather for worship because we know that God blesses the preaching of His word. We see this throughout a scripture, but God uses this time in a special way and it's not the messenger. We're imperfect people, but by God's grace He uses the preaching of His word to correct and to edify and to encourage and to unify His church. A fourth, we see in the passage from Hebrews that we should commit to doing this because we need to stir one another up to love and to good work. We talk about this, this is halftime in the locker room at the Super Bowl, right? We gather and we look back over the first half over last week and we thank God and we praise Him for His faithfulness for getting us this far.

We celebrate the victories and we learn from any mistakes that we have made and we get ourselves pumped up to go out in the second half and live on mission in the week to come. It's a time for us to come and to stir one another up to love and to good works. Then fifth, with that, Hebrew says we also do this because we need to encourage one another, that we should be showing up here ready to give courage to one another, not coming as consumers. I'm going to talk about this a little bit more here in a few minutes, but we talk about this at our membership class every time we have one, that our goal at Mosaic is not to be a cruise ship. Our goal is to be more like a battleship where we have a mission to accomplish and that mission is going to take courage.

This idea of encouragement, literally think about that, is we're filling, we're giving other people courage to do what they need to do because it's not going to be easy. There's a battle to be fought, fighting the good fight of faith, and we need to gather to encourage one another. So we show up here every week saying, "Who can I help? Who can I serve? Who can I be an encouragement to today?" Six, we do this because we know as Hebrews says, that the day is drawing near. All the more reason to commit to gathering together, because we know every day is one day closer to when Christ is going to return and praise God for that. But we understand that therefore we don't want to be caught off guard. We want to be ready, waiting, excited, anticipating His return, awake and alert and walking faithfully together.

Which really leads us to the final thing is that as this day draws near, we commit to gather for worship because we understand that this is a foretaste of heaven. This is an experience where we get just a small glimpse of what it's going to be like to be together worshiping God in eternity. If we want to experience this abundant life that we've been talking about, this is perhaps no greater commitment that we could make to experience this than to commit ourselves to a local church and to begin to do that by making this Sunday morning really the top priority of our week. This is the first day of the week. We want to give God our first and our best. This should be the priority of our week. I gave you seven reasons why. I'm going to give you five practical tips for how you can do that, how we can make this time a priority so that everyone gets the most out of it that we can.

Number one, commit to pray for this gathering throughout the week. Pray for your pastors who are going to be preaching the word. Pray for the worship team that's going to be leading us in praise. Pray for the teachers and the volunteers in Mini Mosaic and in Mosaic Teens as they prepare to guide and to shepherd the hearts of our children. Pray for the children, pray for the teenagers. Pray that they not just be learning about God but they'd be coming here and truly experience His love for them. Pray for the hospitality, the operations teams that work so hard behind the scenes to make all of this possible week after week. Pray that the saints would be edified and encouraged. Pray that unbelievers would come and hear the gospel, that the Lord would add to our number daily those who are being saved. Then most of all, pray that God would be glorified.

Pray the name of Jesus Christ would be highly exalted here at Mosaic and that the spirit would be working in and through us as a church. Commit to pray for this gathering throughout the week. The second thing you can do is commit to ready yourself for worship before you come. Super practical stuff. Saturday night, go to bed on time, get a good night's sleep. Get up Sunday morning, wake up early if you need to kind of prepare your heart for worship. It's like going into a workout. You don't want to go in completely cold. You got to do a little bit of a warmup first. So turn on some worship music, spend some time in prayer. If you know the scripture we're going to be talking about today, read it. Meditate on it ahead of time. If you know the songs we're going to be singing, listen to them.

Think about the words that we're going to be singing together, but warm your hearts, get yourself ready for worship. Then along with that, and I know this is difficult, but make it a priority to not let other things take place of this on your calendar. I understand, especially as parents, this can be hard. I have had to say no to so many sports and so many birthday parties for my kids, but I can encourage you that one, if you hold a consistent front on that, they just stop asking after a while. They don't even think about it. Of course, we're not going to do that because it's Sunday, we're going to church. But also when you do this, you're showing them that you're saying no to certain things because you're saying yes to something better. You're saying yes to what is really truly best, not just for yourself, but for them to come and to be a part of this.

You're showing that you actually believe this and that this is a priority to you and that's going to help it become so much easier for it to be a priority for them as well. So commit to ready yourself for worship and to protect this time. I understand things come up and you're not going to be a hundred percent perfect in this, but you do your best. Third, commit to be here early. Notice I didn't say commit to be here on time and there's a reason for that. Showing up on time is a rookie mistake in Boston. If you leave on time in the city of Boston, you're already late. You know got to leave at least 15 minutes earlier than you think that you need to be, and then maybe perhaps sometimes you'll actually get there on time.

But this is really important and I'm going to spend some time on that. I know we've mentioned this a few times over the last couple of weeks, but in the first service I said there's nothing more discouraging than beginning a worship service with an empty room and then seeing it filled up by the time the sermon starts. On a more positive note, there's nothing more encouraging than being here and when the service starts, the room is full and people are ready and everyone's excited to worship together. One of the most encouraging things that we can experience, but it's something we need to do for one another as a church. It's not going to happen by accident. You got to make it a priority. You got to think about it and plan and be intentional. When we say that worship starts at 09:15, just tell yourself, "No it doesn't, it starts at nine o'clock," or 11 o'clock if you come to this service.

If you got kids that you need to check into Mini Mo, you got to figure that out and factor that in too. Mini Mosaic opens at nine o'clock and so you can start getting them checked in right at nine o'clock. But it's going to be a blessing to you, to your kids so you're not rushing in, frazzled. They got time to get adjusted and ready for Mini Mosaic. You got time to come upstairs, take a deep breath, get a cup of coffee, say hello to some people. It'll be a game changer. With this, commit to be here early and commit to serve. I don't primarily mean commit to joining a service team, although I think that would be great. We've got tons of opportunities to serve and we're always looking for more people to do that and we're thankful for the people that do.

What I mean, though, is come with a servant heart. Show up early with a servant heart, not a consumer mentality. Because when you show up early with a servant's heart, you have the opportunity to do the work of the ministry, to be the church to one another. It's not complicated. Just saying hello and greeting your friends, your presence is such an encouragement to them. On top of that, every week we've got people here at Mosaic that are visiting us for the first time. It's just a reality. People when they visit a church for the first time, it's not a hundred percent of the time, but most of the time they show up early. If you get here early, most of the people in the room, it's like their first time here.

You could be the person that goes up, shakes their hands, welcomes them, helps them, maybe invite them to your community group or help them get connected. Somehow you can make a huge difference in someone's life just with some simple changes like that. It's not only you get to be a blessing to others, but you also be an encouragement to the whole church. Just a couple of tips, because I understand it's kind of a big church, there's a lot of people here and so sometimes you're like, "I don't want to go up and say hello to someone because I don't know if they're new or if they've been attending here for five years," because we've all had that awkward conversation of like, "Oh, are you new here?" "No, I've been here longer than you have." So here's a tip. Don't ask somebody if they're new to Mosaic. Go up, shake their hands, say, "Hey, how long have you been coming to Mosaic?"

Then if they say, "Hey, this is my first time," great, then you know that and you can help them get connected. If they say, "Hey, I've been going here for five years," well that's great too, glad that we finally met, but it's less awkward. Also, if you see someone walk in, this is just a reality. You see somebody before, after, during the worship service that won't stop staring up at this terrifying thing looming over our heads, that's usually a pretty good sign that they're new to Mosaic too. Because after a few weeks, you get used to it, you forget that it's there. But if you're new, you're walking in, you're like, "Oh my goodness, are we going to die? Is that going to fall on us?" It's been up there for a hundred years, so I think we're good, but a good indication that somebody's new and then especially if they take out their phones, they're taking pictures, go talk to them. Probably their first time here.

We call this fishing in the aquarium, right? You're showing up as a missionary and you've got the lowest hanging fruit that you could ask for because God's already done the work of drawing these people here. They're here for a reason. Some of them are looking for a church, maybe they're new to the city, some of them are looking for God. It might be the first time that they've ever been to church. Think about that and have that mindset that you're coming in ready to just be here with a servant's heart and to connect and to encourage one another. Then finally commit to give God your full attention and participation while you're here. If you're doing the other things I mentioned, this part's going to come naturally, you'll be coming in less stressed, less distracted. But the idea is expect that there's a reason that you're here right now, that God in His sovereignty has ordained that you would be here right now.

So stay focused and be attentive. If you need to turn your phone off, the world's still going to be here an hour and 15 minutes from now. If the sermon's a little bit long, maybe Jesus will come back before the end of the service. But be it attentive. If we're singing, sing loud, think about the words. If someone's praying, pray along with them in your heart. If someone's preaching, really apply your mind to try to focus, no matter how long and boring the sermon might be, trusting that God is going to use it and that He has something for you that He wants you to understand from His scriptures. If everyone in the room committed to doing these five things, just imagine the energy and the excitement that we would have as we come in, as we worship together even more than we do already right now.

Living in this city, just doing life, I understand it can suck the life out of you if you let it. I understand it's easy to kind of stumble in here sometimes half zombified, but I also understand that that's not ideal, that's not healthy and it's not going to change if you don't do something to change it. It's going to take commitment and discipline and planning and forethought, intentionality. But I promise it'll be worth it. It'll be worth it for you, it'll be worth it for the people that you connect with here on Sunday. So fight the busyness, fight the distractions, fight the cynicism of the city and fight to make this a priority, to show up here every week, ready, rested and excited, to serve one another, to be an encouragement to one another into worship together.

Point number two. Don't worry, the rest of the points are going to go really fast. The early church was devoted to gathering in the temple for worship. They were also devoted to gathering in homes for fellowship. Says that they day by day attended the temple together and they broke bread in their homes, receiving their food with glad and generous hearts. We're going to talk a little bit more about this in the coming weeks, but just for right now, just what we see here is that as important and as vital as this Sunday gathering is, there are certain shortcomings that come with it, that in a larger gathering like this, it's easy to be anonymous, it's a little harder to make meaningful connections, to have really deep, meaningful life-changing conversations. What we see is that the early church, they met in the temple, but then they also met in smaller groups in their homes.

We do this at Mosaic through our community groups. If you've been to another church, maybe you call them small group, fellowship group, life group, whatever. All kind of the same idea where you're getting together outside of Sunday, usually in a home, and it's just a smaller, more intimate environment where you can talk about Sunday and what we learned from the sermon, but it's also a time where you can build those meaningful relationships, where you can pray for one another's specific needs, where you can encourage one another and hold one another accountable as a family. Personally, I've been involved in community group consistently for almost 20 years. My wife and I joined our first group about 19 years ago. We were engaged at the time and I can just say for myself that community groups have been one of the single greatest contributing factors to our health, to our growth, to our sanctification and maturity in the faith.

If you're not in a community group, I would challenge you, make that a priority as soon as possible. We've got over 20 groups meet all over the city throughout the week. It should be easy for you to find one that works with your schedule or with your location. We would be happy to help you find that. You can stop by the welcome center. People there could show you a map and help you figure out what might work best for you. You can also find that information all on our website. But the early church was devoted to gathering in their homes for fellowship. Third, with this, they were devoted and we see this, they were sharing their lives sacrificially. We're told that verse 44, "All who believed were together and had all things in common and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need," just freely sharing their lives with one another, meeting one another's needs.

It kind of builds off the last point. What you see is that the early church clearly had something going on that was deeper than what we think about as friendship. What they had was fellowship, right? The beginning of Acts, it said that they devoted themselves to the fellowship and fellowship, it's not something that is built around just shared hobbies or interest. It's deeper than that. Fellowship is something that is built around a shared commitment to a vision, a mission, a goal, a purpose, and this is what drove the early church to therefore with that freely share their lives with one another so sacrificially. I mentioned this earlier, that we like to try to think about Mosaic as being more like a battleship and less like a cruise ship. Cruises are great. I've been on a cruise, they're fun. You might make some acquaintances on a cruise and you have a good time, but fellowship is built on battleships.

Fellowship is something that is forged in the heat of battle through these deep, meaningful bonds. That's where they're formed, where people are accountable to one another and where they're constantly counting on one another and they're working together towards something bigger than themselves. Think of it like this. If you're thinking about church like a cruise, you show up to a cruise and you expect to be served and entertained by the crew. If you're not, you're disappointed. When you get on a battleship, you are the crew. We're all the crew. When you get on a cruise, you go around, you have a good time and you end up right back where you started. When you get on a battleship, you go out with a mission to accomplish and to accomplish together.

This is what creates that fellowship where you're like, "We're ready to sacrifice for one another," because we know if one part of the body is hurting, we're all hurting. If one member of the body is wounded, we all feel the pain. When one member of the body wins, we all celebrate that victory together, that we're all in this together. In the early church, they were devoted to sharing their lives sacrificially and then finally we see in this passage they were devoted to sharing the gospel expectantly. Says verse 47, "Having favor with all the people and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved." This doesn't mean that they weren't met with any hardships. When you look at the New Testament, you see that the early church clearly expected two things that were seemingly contradictory things to happen as they went out on mission and shared the gospel.

On the one hand, they expected sinners to reject Jesus, and on the other hand, they expected Jesus to save sinners. This shouldn't be a surprise to us because this is what Jesus told us to expect. He taught us this in the Sermon of the Mountain. Matthew 5, it says in verse 10, "Blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed you and others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account." It says, "Rejoice and be glad for greatest your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." But He says, "But you are the salt of the earth. If the salt is lost its taste, how shall it saltiness be restored? It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet."

It says, "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on its stand and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who's in heaven." If you follow me and if you preach this gospel, Jesus tells us that you should expect that some people are going to hate you. They're going to slander you and they're going to persecute you. He says, "But don't let that discourage you. Don't let that cause you to lose your saltiness." Instead, He says, "Rejoice and be glad. Keep on shining that light." This is the same light that's going to blind those who love the darkness, it's going to shine like a beacon of hope to those that God is drawing to Himself, that they're going to see it and they're going to give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Charles Spurgeon said ... I'm not a hundred percent sure that he said this, but this is commonly attributed to him, that's what a big deal he was as a preacher. There's a quote that is attributed to him where he says this, that "The same sun which melts the wax hardens the clay. And the same gospel which melts some persons to repentance, hardens others in their sin." It's not our duty to do the hardening or to do the softening. That is up to the sovereignty of God. Our duty is to shine the light of the gospel together in faith and trust that as we do that, even if we face opposition, that Jesus will save. The early church believed this. They were committed to sharing the gospel, expecting that despite the opposition that Jesus was going to save. If you come back over the next couple of weeks, we're going to dive into this in more detail.

Two weeks from now, we're going to talk about being committed to discipleship. Next week we're going to talk about being committed to evangelism. I'm excited to get into those topics with you and just look at some of the practical implications of those. But my challenge to you for today is just this. If you've committed to follow Jesus, then commit to a local church. If not Mosaic, then another Bible-believing, like-minded, Jesus-loving following, gospel proclaiming church. Commit to a local church. If you are committed to a local church, if you're already a member at Mosaic, well this would be a good time to just kind of take an evaluation of that commitment. This is something we as Christians should do routinely, just evaluate our lives.

Consider the practical things that we talked about today and if you need to just go home this week and grade your level of commitment. "Have I been making worship the priority that it should be? Have I been making my participation in worship the priority that it should be? Have I been making my community group the priority that it should be? Am I showing up there ready to love and serve and encourage those people and ready to receive them as they do the same for me?" If you find yourself right now bored with church, I would challenge you to consider that it's not church that you're bored with, but perhaps what you're bored with is consumeristic cruise ship Christianity type church. It's a lot more exciting to be on board the battleship that Jesus calls us to, that He is calling for all hands on deck. If you hear that call that I pray today that you would answer that call and I would invite you to come and to get on board and to join us and be part of this mission as we work together here at Mosaic.

With that being said, let's pray and we will spend some time worshiping God together. God, we thank you for making us a family, brothers and sisters saved by the blood of our big brother, your son, Jesus Christ. God, we also thank you for calling us into your family business, for calling us as a church to your mission and for bringing us on board this battleship. I pray, Lord, that as your word reminds us, our battle is not against flesh and blood. Our battle is against the spiritual forces of darkness, against Satan, against sin, against the lies and temptations of the enemy. Your word tells us that our weapons are spiritual and divine, in nature. Even now, Lord, our worship is a weapon that we can wheel to push back the forces of darkness as we together sing and proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Lord, I pray right now that we would sing these words from our hearts knowing that they are true, because we know that you are our heavenly Father, that you love us, because we know that your Holy Spirit is working in and through us, and because we know that your son, Jesus Christ, is with us, that He is building His church and that he has promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against us. Lord, you alone are God. You alone have the power to save. You alone are worthy of our praise and so we give you our praise right now together, in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, amen.