Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Love Your Church Family Part 2. He will be reading out of Acts 20:1-16

Some of you got out of the habit of gathering with God’s people. I wanna challenge you to to reengage so that you might celebrate what God has done in your heart and the wonderful resurrection of our savior that you might be that person that encourages your brothers and your sisters in Christ. Hello. This is pastor Mike Sanders from the Open Door Church, and I’m delighted to welcome you to the Hopeworth having radio program this week. And I’m excited to share God’s word with you as a source of inspiration and direction for our life.

Today, we are going to be in Acts chapter 20, and we’re continuing to study how to love our church family. So let’s get into the Bible and get to studying exactly how to love your church family. Of genuine love for the church is a selfless commitment to being an encourager to others. I pray today that you will commit your heart to be more of an encourager and that even if you are already in this process and you embrace this mindset of being an encourager, that you will continue to seek more opportunities for God to give you to be one who encourages others. The second thing that I want you to see in this text is we begin to learn how to love our church family.

It is not only to encourage one another, but it is to serve with one another. I want you to look at verse four and five. Now, we have some complicated names here, we’ll do our best to go through them. But the bible says, and Sopater of Berea accompanied him, meaning Paul, that Sopater was with Paul, to Asia, also Aristarchus, and Secundus of the Thessalonians, and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy, and Tychicus, and Trophonus of Asia. These men going ahead waited for us at Troas.

You say, pastor, how do you know how to pronounce those names? I don’t. I just make it up like you do. But you don’t know them either and so anything I say sounds better than what you were thinking. But here’s what I want you to see is that there’s really eight people here that were on the apostle’s team.

These were individuals who were serving with him on the third missionary journey. Now I know that those of you that are detailed, you’re going through verse four, and you’ve only counted seven. And you’re saying, Well maybe the pastor, he’s got some issues and he really doesn’t know how to count. But the truth is, if you jump down to verse five, look what it says. These men going ahead waited for us.

Well who is the Us? He’s talking about himself, Luke. Luke is the human author under the inspiration of God that would pen down the words of the book of acts and give us this narrative of how the early church function. And Luke is including himself and so he is that eighth person that is on this team. And what I want you to see here is that the apostle did not serve alone.

We admire the apostle Paul, and we certainly believe he was a great man of God. And he was a very dedicated Christian committed to the cause of Christ, endured so much suffering so that the gospel may go to the regions beyond. But I want you to understand that he did not do it alone. There were others who served with him. The apostle reminds the Corinthians in first Corinthians three nine that we are God’s fellow workers.

That is we are co laborers together in the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you want to love your church, don’t be isolated. Don’t be the one man show. Don’t be the lone ranger. Don’t be the person who’s gonna do it all by themselves, but rather be the kind of person who is gonna serve with one another.

The church is not to be a place where we just sit down and we just learn the bible and then we leave. No. God has not called us to just leave, but rather he’s called us to gather together and we learn the word of God, we soak it up, but then we go out and serve. And I tell you that Christians that do not serve God, they will become very sour Christians. They’re always taking in, but they’re never giving out the height of your healing in any trouble and trial in your life is not to stay isolated from others.

It’s not to sit on the couch and to have self pity, but rather it is to break out and to use the platform that God has given you to serve and minister to others. But when you minister to others, do not do it alone. Do not serve by yourself. It marks a big step in your development when you come to realize that other people can help you do a better job than you could ever do alone. So many times I talk to Christians about this matter and they say to me, well, pastor, honestly, if I just do it by myself, I know it’s gonna be done right.

If I get other people involved, pastor, then they’re gonna mess it all up. And you see, you got some issues there. And it might be that you are the kind of person who is a micromanager and controlling, and everything has to be just perfect before you’ll be able to do any kind of ministry. But listen. There’s never going to be a perfect world or a perfect circumstance in which we can serve God.

Many times in the the scriptures, we see Jesus, we see the apostles, we see God’s people just spontaneously engaging in ministry with the circumstances and the situation they had. And maybe they didn’t have a lot of preparation, and maybe they didn’t have a lot of training, but they just jumped in and got the job done. And what I’m saying to you is that, yes, I understand maybe you could do it better. And you’ve been doing it for twenty years, and it’s been doing it your way, and now you don’t wanna mess that up. But let me ask you, what benefit are you to the church in that you are the only one that can do this ministry or you’re the only one that can do this particular way of ministry?

You see, friends, it’s very much like a mother who always picks up the clothes or the toys of the children. Yes, moms, you can do that for a while, but are you really helping your child? Are you really helping your child? Are you helping your child to develop skills that are important for them? Sometimes we can enable our children not to succeed.

We enable our children not to move forward in life because we do everything for them, and they become so dependent upon us that they cannot function in life without us. I want you to know that it’s just like that in the church. How important it is for you to work yourself out of a job. I remember when I first came to the Open Door Church, many of you remember Pastor Art Brown. How many of you remember Pastor Art Brown?

He was a wonderful soul winner, a wonderful man of the Lord. He was an associate pastor here. And when I had my meeting with him, I told him that it was his job to work himself out of a job. And he said, Pastor Mike, are you trying to get rid of me? I said, no.

I’m not trying to get rid of you. I said, I want you to train others to do what you do, so you can do other things for the Lord. And you see, that’s the key. Is that God has called every one of us not to be isolated in our ministry, but to train others. When I was a young man and I had answered the call to preach at the age of 16, and in that revival service, that preacher from Kansas gave an invitation, and I went forward and my pastor said, Mike why did you come forward?

And I told him why I came forward, and we prayed together, and we committed everything to the Lord, and when I got done praying, he said, Mike, a call to ministry is a call to preparation. And so he wanted to get me into bible college when I graduate from high school and all that, But here’s the one thing that was great about my pastor. And again, we’re talking about a very small church of about 50 people. But he would say, Now, Mike, you come with me. We’re gonna go visit the hospital.

Come with me, we’re gonna go check on this family. Come with me, we need to run some errands and take care of some things for the church. And what I loved about it is he was including me in serving with him. And so many times, I was learning, not by what was taught to me, but what was caught in this sense, that I was just observing how he did ministry. And so we have to remember that it’s our job to work ourselves out of a job, not that we’re trying to get rid of you at the church, but that God is calling you to serve with others.

Who is serving with you? Who is involved? You see, ministry is a partnership. Ministry is something that we do together as co laborers. Who have you walked up to and said, hey, I’m looking for some help.

Hey, would you pray about being a part of this ministry with me? Who’s gonna take your place? We’re not all gonna live forever, and we may desire that, but the point is, God is gonna call us home. And so we have to make sure that the next generation is ready. The Bible teaches us that the men are to train the younger men, and the older women are to teach and train the younger women.

And I know many times we’re looking for some special program, or we’re looking for the pastor to to commission us. But really, you don’t need any of that. You just need to be led of the spirit of God. And you need to engage people in the opportunities that are before them. Now church, we have a family’s responsibilities.

When you become a member of a church, you commit to one another. Often people will say to me, Pastor, why should I join a church? What’s the big difference? Who cares? Why should I be a member of a church?

And I always remind people that joining a church is an expression of your commitment to one another as the family of God. And when we join together, we are committing that we are gonna fulfill the one another’s in the bible. Very quickly, let me just relate to you, or share with you some of the family responsibilities that we have for one another. We are to serve one another. We’re to accept one another.

We’re to forgive one another. We’re to greet one another. We’re to bear one another’s burdens. We’re to be devoted to one another. We’re to honor one another.

We’re to teach one another. We’re to submit to one another. And we are to encourage one another. In my notes, I wrote down bible verses for each of those one anothers. And I want you to know that these are not things that the pastor is making up to just put more obligations on you, but this is what is in the scriptures.

When you say I’m a part of a church family, these are some of the one anothers that God is calling us to do. Now you might say, pastor, how do we do some of that? Because it seems like a lot of responsibility. Well, I want you to know first of all, that you can exercise those opportunities to minister the one anothers in your classes, your bible studies, your small groups, in the different programs of the church, or the different ministries of the church, or the activities of the church. These are opportunities when we come together that we can live out the one anothers that God is calling us to do.

Now you might ask, why? Why would we want to serve one another and serve with one another? Well, I want you to remember that the work that the apostle Paul is doing with his team here has eternal consequences. And the work that you are doing, the seeds that you’re planting, some of you are active in the preschool children’s ministry, the youth ministry. The seeds that you are planting into the hearts of those children have eternal consequences.

Some of you minister to the senior citizens, the shut ins, the widows, and I want you to know that the seeds that you are planting has eternal consequences. Some of you serve and minister to couples, to those who are grieving and struggling. You minister to those who are in the hospital. You minister to those who are in the nursing homes. And I want you to know that as you serve, that it has eternal consequences.

So don’t serve alone. Serve with one another. Train each other to keep on keeping on for Christ, and to keep the gospel going forward for Christ. So we’ve learned so far, and how do we love our church by encouraging each other. But we’ve also learned to serve with one another.

And the final thing that I wanna share, not that it encompasses everything on how to love, but what’s in our text, is that we’re to gather with one another. Now we come down to verse seven, and we note here that the scripture says, now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them. And he continued to his message until what, church? Midnight. Now I’m always fascinated with those who want to duplicate everything in the book of acts.

And I always say to them, you wanna duplicate every miracle and you wanna duplicate every amazing thing that is fascinating within the book of acts. But let me ask you, how many of you would like the church to duplicate to have a church service from Sunday morning all the way to midnight? The scriptures are not always designed that God is calling us to duplicate something. But here, what we see is simply that Luke is giving us a narrative of what actually took place on this particular Sunday. And they gathered with one another, and there were three things that they accomplished when they gathered together.

The first thing is that they were celebrating the Lord’s salvation and resurrection. You will note again that the scripture says that on the first day of the week, most of us see the first day of the week as Monday, but if you go back and look at your calendar, it’s Sunday. Sunday is the first day of the week. Why does the church gather on Sunday? Because we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and savior.

We are celebrating what Christ has accomplished for us. In that He gave His life on the cross and he was resurrected. Why is that significant? Because the resurrection hear me, church. The resurrection is God’s affirmation to all of us that he has accepted the sacrifice of Christ for our sins.

It’s not only that God is teaching us that there is life beyond the grave and that there is hope for tomorrow and that God has a future plan and that one day we’ll be together with our loved ones, but what he is teaching us that as God’s people, rather than under the old covenant meeting on the Sabbath, which was a Saturday, we are transitioning into the new covenant and we now are gathering together on Sunday to celebrate on the first day of the week, not giving God our leftovers, but giving him our best and coming together to celebrate what Christ has accomplished and the great salvation that he has provided each one of us. Now some are of the persuasion that this was really a man made tradition or that somehow that this was something that was done to try to distinguish Christianity from Judaism. But that’s not true. What is really true is that as we walk through the scriptures, particularly the new testament, that we see the church gathering on Sunday. And by the time we get to the book of Revelation chapter one verse 10, we see that the apostle John is now declaring that Sunday is the lord’s day.

It is the lord’s day. He refers to that right there in the passage, and so he is helping us to understand why we gather. We gather not just because there’s nothing else to do or not that we’re trying to earn points with god or that somehow we’re trying to have favor with God, but rather we come together to celebrate the Lord’s salvation and the resurrection. In a few weeks, we’ll be celebrating Easter, which is the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. But honestly, for us as believers, Easter is every Sunday.

It is every Sunday that we’re celebrating the resurrection. We see it as a great outreach to our community. We see it as a great opportunity to gather more to hear the wonderful and good news of Jesus Christ, but remember that you are coming on Sunday, the first day of the week, so that you can celebrate your salvation and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The bible tells us in Hebrews 10 verse 25 that we are to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. As the manner of some is.

But exhorting one another and so much the more, as you see the day approaching. Hear me out. There is much to be said about this, but look. He is teaching us an important principle. That it is to be a priority in our life.

To assemble ourselves together. To assemble ourselves and not to forsake that. And when you study it in its original language, it’s the idea of a habit. Some translations actually use the word habit. And in essence, he’s saying, don’t get out of the habit of coming together.

Don’t get out of the habit of gathering together with god’s people. And he goes on to tell us why. Why should we not get out of that habit? Well, because first, we’re called to exhort one another. The word exhort has the idea of building up.

Just like we were talking about earlier. That why do we gather? Well, we certainly celebrate the resurrection, but we want to encourage one another. We wanna build each other up. We don’t know what our brothers and sisters in Christ have been through.

We don’t know what they’re facing. And maybe our paths don’t always cross every day or even every week, but we want to come together so that we can bless somebody, so we can exhort someone, so we can build somebody up, so that we can continue to be an encouragement to them. And then he tells us so much the more as you see the day approaching. What day? The day of the return of our savior.

Now, church, if you can’t see the signs of the times, you’re just blind. You’re blind. And we live in troubled times. And it’s not the worst it’s ever been in the world because even the apostle faced many of these challenging times. But as we see things coming together, we know that the day is approaching.

And God is not calling us to meet less, but to meet more. So much the more. So much the more. And so maybe you’ve been just a person who gathers once a month or maybe you gather twice a month. Some of you have gotten out of the habit because of COVID.

You got out of the habit of gathering with God’s people. I wanna challenge you to commit your heart today to once again reengage and be faithful to the house of the Lord and be faithful together with God’s people so that you might not only celebrate what God has done in your heart and the wonderful resurrection of our savior, but that you might be here to be that person that encourages your brothers and your sisters in Christ to keep on keeping on for Jesus Christ. We cannot ignore the divine call to meet together, church. We just cannot ignore it. And you’ll note that he says in Hebrews, some do this.

Some do this. Some of our brothers and sisters do this, it’s our role to reach out to them, and there’s so much technology today. It’s not very hard to reach out to someone, but let them know that they’re missed, and let them know that we care about them. And if some of our brothers and sisters have gotten out of the habit, we want them back because in here, it’s not just about filling up seats, it’s really about encouraging one another, celebrating and being fed, and being encouraged and strengthened in our faith. What happens when I neglect the assembly of God’s people?

I become a vulnerable Christian. And I’m susceptible to all the temptations and the traps of the devil. As we have shared with you before, sometimes people say to me, pastor, I I really can’t remember even what you taught last Sunday. And I hear you. Sometimes I forget what I taught last Sunday.

That’s getting scary. But you know, I don’t always remember what I had for dinner last Sunday or Monday, or Tuesday. But I tell you when I was eating it, it was wonderful. And I want you to know that God was using it to nourish me. And you may not recall and remember every point that the pastor has, and you may not remember every detail of the worship service, but I’m telling you, through God’s people, through the means of grace, as he is pouring out his love and grace into your heart, God is ministering to you and he is feeding your soul.

He is nourishing your heart and he is insulating you from the temptations and the traps of the devil. There never was a day when our kids were growing up that we ever ever questioned were we going to church. I know you heard the story about the wife who was asking her husband if they were gonna go to church, and he didn’t wanna go to church and he was curled up in his bed and he didn’t wanna go to church. And she said, you have to go to church. And he said, why?

She said, because you’re the pastor. So I know you expect pastor Mike to be here. I understand that. But listen to me. I’m not here just because I’m the pastor.

Long before I was a pastor of any church, I was faithful because I needed the encouragement of God’s people. Because I needed the nourishment. And it’s just as much for me as it is for you when we come together, that we not only celebrate the Lord’s salvation and resurrection, but that we continue together. God never intended us for our lives to be lived in solitude or isolation, but he intended that we would come together and gather. And when we go to church as an assembly gathering, here’s what we are declaring by our presence, that we love God and that we love you, each other, as God’s people.

Very quickly, we also see that they were commemorating the Lord’s supper. The bible says in verse seven that they came together to break bread. Now, in the new testament, the early church again, it’s so interesting to me, but the early church, when they came together, they would have their worship service and then they would have a love feast or a big old meal after church. Then they would have the Lord’s supper together. That’s why we see in acts two verse 42 that it’s often referred that when they came together, they were breaking bread.

And then again, we see here in acts 20 verse seven that they’re breaking bread. It’s the idea that they were having this love feast that included the Lord’s supper, and that’s how they would conclude their Sunday together. Spending hours of fellowship and hours of eating and hours of just celebrating and commemorating what God has done. But I also want you to see that they were communicating the Lord’s scripture. We already mentioned to you that the bible says that Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them, and he continued his message until midnight.

How about that? Some of you are ready. I see the stirring. You’re already like, man, it’s we’re getting close. Getting close.

Don’t worry, I’m almost running out of notes. So you’re in good shape, okay? You’re in good shape. But here’s what I wanna say to you, is that the church gathered to hear God’s word taught to them, to learn and to grow together. And as they gathered together and as the apostle Paul was preaching, an amazing thing happened.

The message got so long that this guy who was sitting in the window, his name is Eutychus, you can go on and read it later this afternoon, but he fell out of the window. It reminds me of the time when I was an associate pastor of a church and the pastor was preaching and all of a sudden there was a commotion sudden there were several people grabbing this lady and dragging her out to the lobby, and the pastor didn’t quite know what to do so he said, let’s pray. And so then there were choir members back in those days, the choir used to be behind the pastor. And there were choir members jumping over the choir loft, going out there to help this lady. Unfortunately, the lady had passed away.

She had had a heart attack. And I always tease the pastor that his preaching put people to death. But that’s exactly what happened to Paul. This guy was his he was so long in his preaching that he fell out of the window and then he died there at the at the ground and Paul went down there and he did an amazing miracle and he raised Eutychus from the dead. Again, I know it’s our desire sometimes to want to replicate or duplicate what’s going on in the book of acts, but this was just again in all that I’ve taught you about the miracles is just a sign of God’s affirmation of the message that Paul was preaching and that he was God’s messenger.

But here’s what I do want you to see spiritually, is that when we come together, and we never know when there might be visitors or there might be unbelievers that are there, who are dead in their trespasses, and I wanna tell you that the power of the gospel is able to raise them up and to have new life in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the greatest miracle is not a physical. It is not a physical resurrection, but the greatest miracle is a spiritual resurrection when God brings new life to someone, a sinner, who calls on the name of the Lord for salvation. And you and I, when we come together, ought to be praying, Lord, if you send us anybody, we pray that today that the message and the love and the warmth of God’s people bring about a spiritual miracle in their heart and that many will be born again to trust the Lord as their seed. One of the things we see in this passage of scripture is Paul’s love for the church.

And he was very committed to seeing his converts to grow spiritually. His strategy was not just to win them, but he wanted to disciple them. And so one of the ways he does that is he continues to encourage the people of God. And so that’s what we’re called to do is we’re loving our church family. We need to encourage one another.

And so I wanna make sure you check out hopeworthaving.com, our website. And one of the things we’re doing is we’re featuring a different book each month. We have a bookstore and some different ways that you can learn and grow. So I hope you’ll check that out, and it’ll continue to help you to develop in your spiritual life. We just wanna thank you for being a part of this ministry, and we want to remind you that in Christ, there is hope worth having.

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