In his sermon, 'Steadfast Devotion to the Program of the Church,' Scott Brown emphasizes the foundational elements of the early church as depicted in Acts 2:42: the Apostles' doctrine, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers. These four elements are seen as tests and measurements of Christianity, illustrating a steadfast devotion that characterizes true believers. Brown underscores the importance of God's Word as the central guiding force in the life of a believer, highlighting its inerrancy and sufficiency. He advocates for a life centered on the church and its practices, urging believers to prioritize these elements in their lives. The sermon also highlights the concept of fellowship, not merely as social interaction but as a spiritual connection centered around God and His purposes. The breaking of bread is discussed as an integral part of church life, symbolizing unity and the remembrance of Christ's sacrifice. Brown warns against the cultural trend of diminishing attention spans, urging the congregation to engage deeply with sermons and the Word of God. The sermon concludes by encouraging believers to live according to God's design for the church, emphasizing the need for a steadfast commitment to these foundational practices.

Please open your Bibles to Acts chapter 2 and find verse 37. Acts 2, 37. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, holy, sweeter-than-honey word of God. Verse 37. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do?

Then Peter said to them, repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promise is to you and to your children and to all who are far off as many as the Lord our God will call and with many other words he testified and exhorted them saying be saved from this perverse generation then those who gladly received his word were baptized And that day about 3, 000 souls were added to them. And then the central text for this morning, verse 42. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among as anyone had need.

So continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house They ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for giving us your Word to guide us, to teach us what is good, to show us how we might conduct our lives, to show us what to do with our lives. You are so kind to give us such direction.

Pray Lord that you would pour your grace upon all of us that we might See wondrous things from your word. Amen Please be seated. So these verses Explained the the program of the church that they continued daily steadfastly in the apostles doctrine, in fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. And what we find here are really the things that characterize Christianity and these are actually tests, these are measurements. We are very used to tests and measurements, there are standards of measurement that we all use every day.

And these are actually tests of Christianity. Now if you've been with us, you know that we're taking a break from our studies in the book of Revelation for a few weeks to deal with the doctrine of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we'll be back in Revelation 20. We actually will end the series seeing the exaltation of the Church of Jesus Christ. You'll see a tremendous continuity from what we're doing now and as we rejoin Revelation in a few weeks.

So this is the second message of talking about the doctrine of the church. And I really hope that this becomes a helpful recalibration for all of us about our understanding of the church. This is a text that has been very familiar to me since I became a Christian. I grew up as a teenager and in my 20s, in a church where my pastor preached this text to our church. He wanted to make sure that we understood what the church was designed to do.

And he was very careful to help our church understand this text. This text was pivotal in my early years as a Christian and I know you know many of you have grown up in this church and you've seen how we conduct ourselves in the household of God, but I want you to get what I got. I want you to get it early. I'll just have to say I'm so thankful for my pastor who laid these things down, who drilled this text into my brain when I was in my teens. And I hope that it will bring the same blessing to you as it has to me, you know, for well over 40 years, almost 50 years of being in the Lord.

So, this focus of continuing steadfastly in the Apostles doctrine, in fellowship, in the breaking of bread and prayers is what I hope will become very clear, particularly to you who have grown up in this church. And it's very important that we understand what the Lord is doing with the church. What is God doing with his church in the world? And what God is doing is he is building his church. He said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

So as the Lord is building the church, he's engaged his people in that building project and we're involved in a project here at this local church. The church is the body of Christ and we really are on a mission to build the church along with God, the Father, and we're doing something very specific in building this church, this local church. It's not our design. We're working off architectural drawings that God printed. And these drawings are from the one who created us and we're building according to his design.

God is the infinite creative mind. He's the all-wise structural engineer in the building of the church. He's the master builder, and the plan that we've been given has been dictated by God. There are no external controls of this plan. This is God's plan for the church.

And he turns to his people to join with him to execute the plan. We'll be studying many passages of scripture that make that very, very plain. And the church is a building, and The church is being built by God. Ephesians 2.21 makes that very clear. In whom the whole building being fitted together grows into a holy temple to the Lord.

In whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the spirit. We're being built and last time when we were together, we talked about the various metaphors of the church to help us understand what is this all about? What's the church all about? And God gives dozens of handles, illustrations, to help us to understand what we're doing. What are we doing here?

And he says that we're a household, we're a body, we're a temple, we're a holy nation, we're a flock, we're a vineyard, we're a kingdom of priests, we're a bunch of living stones in his building and we're a family and we're also a bride. Well that will get us to Revelation chapter 20. We'll just have to wait for that. But this is what the church is and my prayer for this series is that we would have a clear understanding of what we're doing here and that you would have a greater sense of the importance of the local church, that you would regard it more highly than ever, that you would regard the gatherings, the worship, everything that the church does that is detailed here in this passage, these would be yours and you would seek them urgently and like it says here, steadfastly, every aspect of church life. I want every person in this church to seek steadfastly every element of church life that's identified here.

So there you have it. Now, last week we talked about Christ's love for the church and I was asking, after detailing various ways that Jesus loves his church, do you love the church of Jesus Christ? Meaning, do you love the people? Do you love her ordinances? And what would it mean if you did love the church?

So we also spoke of the fact that God loves his church so much that he composes his church of converted sinners. As our text in 1st Corinthians 6, 9 through 11, said, he takes fornicators and idolaters and adulterers and homosexuals and sodomites and thieves and covetous and drunkards and revilers and extortioners and he changes them and they're never the same again. He says none of these people inherit the kingdom of God but such were some of you but you were washed but you were sanctified. So God makes his church out of the broken people of the world. And we were talking about the fact that the church is a body of converted sinners.

And I was driving in Virginia last week and I passed by a church and the name of the church was the conversion church. And underneath the name and the sign was this text, First Corinthians six, nine through 11. So every church ought to be the conversion church. And that's really what we're here about. And we talked about the fact that there are 20 states in the United States that have outlawed conversion therapy for minors, It's illegal in those states to convert people from homosexuality or transgenderism.

But the church is designed to be a conversion center. That's why we're here. We will never stop doing that, regardless of any laws that are passed. Those laws are irrelevant to us. It's very interesting, we have a brother here among us who is from China.

He came to America for theological studies just before, just after he came to America for these theological studies, his pastor and about 100 church members were arrested in China. And his pastor, Wang Yi, is in prison now for nine years. It's been three and a half years so far, and the way I understand it, nobody's really heard from him. His wife doesn't know anything of his whereabouts or his condition. But he made a statement that was to be read at his arrest, or after his arrest.

And he said in his statement, he said, I'm not here fighting for human rights. I'm not here for political activism or civil disobedience. And here's what he wrote, I do not have the intention of changing any institutions or laws in China. As a pastor, the only thing I care about is the disruption of man's sinful nature and the testimony it bears for the cross of Christ. The church's purpose is to disrupt man's sinful nature through conversion.

And God can do it, and he's done it here. Isn't it a blessing? You know, you think about your life, your old life, and what God did in converting you. Well, this is what we're all about. There's so many reasons to love the church.

Well, let's get back to Acts chapter two here. We're focusing particularly on Acts 2.42, and we see what these converted disciples were doing, and they began to love the Church of Jesus Christ. Now this passage speaks about how the Church was born. It was born through preaching. The Apostle Peter in Acts chapter 2 has found preaching.

Three thousand were saved. They were pierced to the heart and they were born again. The Holy Spirit was poured out, the people were changed, they were announced their idols, and they had now different patterns of life, different relationships and different schedules. Their whole schedule changed and they began devoting themselves to the Apostles doctrine and the fellowship and the breaking the bread and prayers. Their whole lives, their whole patterns changed.

They traded one thing for other things. And so this is what happened. They were converted. And look at verse 40. When a person is convicted of sin, then he's converted and he separates from the world.

And that's why Peter says, be saved from this perverse generation. And then he's saved from this perverse generation, and then he desires to be baptized. We're gonna have a baptism today. What a blessing that will be. And he wants to, he hungers for teaching.

He hungers for fellowship. He hungers for the breaking of bread and prayers. That's what happens to a real Christian. If that hasn't happened to you, then you might ask yourself whether you've actually been converted. This was all done in verse 40 gladly.

Nobody forced them to do it. And in verse 46, with gladness and sincerity of heart. In other words, these sayings just came out of their hearts. It's what they wanted to do. They weren't simply going through the motions.

They did it for their joy and they were doing it gladly. And so this passage shows what it means to be a Christian. If any man is in Christ, he's a new creation. And he longs for different things. And so something becomes central, not peripheral in your life.

You know, the world is full of all kinds of people who go to church every Sunday, but it's just a peripheral thing in their life. But the Christian thinks the people of God are central and that the church of God is central, central to everything that he's doing. And that's the change that happens here. So, let's look at these four things. They had a steadfast devotion to these four things.

And this was the result of their conversion. And they were given a glad and sincere and steadfast devotion to these four things. So let's take them one by one. The Apostles Doctrine. By the way, the Greek manuscript contains the definite article before each of these.

In other words, it's the Apostles Doctrine. Well, that's how it's stated. But it's implied, but it actually reads in the original Greek, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, the prayers. In other words, it's a thing. It's something that's distinctive.

And these are four distinctive things that the church does. And we'll just start with the Apostles' doctrine. And they became hungry for the teaching. They changed their pursuits. And it was like Peter, the apostle Peter spoke of this in first Peter two.

He said, like newborn babes long for the pure milk of the word. You become like a baby and you want the word of God. You're hungry and you want to cry for it. And we gather around a book. We gather around the word of God.

It is the object of the church to preach the truth, the truth of God found in the Word of God. And this is what they called in the Reformation, sola scriptura. This is the inerrant, sufficient, sweeter than honey word of God. That's what it is. And one of the men in Bible study explained it this way.

They became sola scriptura people. And That's what the church is. It looks to scripture for everything, to define everything in life. And there are many people who believe that scripture is inerrant, but many of those don't believe that it's sufficient. They don't believe that it applies to every part of your life.

And so you can hear sermons that preach the doctrine, but they don't really tell you how to live because scripture is sufficient to teach you how to live. And that's a tremendous difference. Peter also told us that no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. So what's critical to understand here is that the church is built on teaching. And this teaching is the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

So the people of God become the people of the book. You know before they were converted they were the people of whatever. Now they have a laser being focused for the guidance of their life. Now This focus on the word of God fosters many things. I'm gonna mention six of them quickly.

These are life-giving things. First of all, when a church is focused on the Apostles' doctrine, when it's focused on the Word of God, its focus is on God. That's why the central factor of all of our service is the Word of God. How many times did we already read the Word of God while we were here? It's because we want to point everyone to God.

And not even to one another, but to God. And to get focused on God, it's necessary to get focused on the word of God. And So we want a church that's focused on God by his word. This is how God leads his church. People often visit here and they ask me, where is this church going?

And I'm gonna say, well, what did we just preach on? That's where our church is going. It's going where this word has told us to go. And next week we'll do it again. And then the next week we'll do it again.

And we'll be chasing God through the world. And we are here to imbibe the word of God. You know, it was earlier this week, I was reading the Deborah before we went to sleep, Proverbs two, one through nine, which just speaks of the value of the word of God, what it does to you, the wisdom it gives to you, the protection, the preservation it is to you, and I'll just read it, Proverbs 2, 1. My son, if you receive my words, notice that word if. If you receive my words and treasure my commandments within you so that you incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding.

Yes, if you cry out for discernment and lift up your voice for understanding. If you seek her as silver and search for her as hidden treasures, which by the way means that gold doesn't strike you, you strike gold, you go after it, Then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He's a shield to those who walk up rightly.

He guards the paths of justice and preserves the way of his saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice, equity, and every good path. The word of God is so powerful, it's so good. But you must seek it. And this is one of the blessed parts about conversion.

So the first beautiful thing about focusing on the Word of God is that it focuses you on God. Secondly, I'll just say it focuses you on an intellectual journey and intellectual engagement. God puts his people in a lifelong intellectual pursuit of truth And it's so helpful if you've read the Bible your whole life long. Things get clearer and clearer and clearer the older you get. And people put themselves under the authority of God.

And it's an intellectual exercise. You know, there are many parts of the Bible that are difficult. They just bend your mind. And frankly, as someone who's supposed to preach the word of God every Sunday, I mean, you bang your head against the wall to try to understand it. You cry out to God, you are an idiot before God.

But you keep working. And you seek him, It's an intellectual engagement. The Bible says that the word of God is like bread. It's like a hammer. It's like fire.

It's like water. It's like light. It's like a lightning bolt in your life. But it stimulates your thoughts. It gives you a whole new vocabulary.

You know, in the 1800s, you know, parents used the Bible to teach their children how to read. Think of the vocabulary they had as a result of that. But there's an exercise of the mind. You know, I was reading the other day that if you quit exercising your mind, you're more susceptible to Alzheimer's. But if you keep thinking, you keep banging your head against the wall, I'm thinking if I do this at the end of my life, maybe I won't come down with Alzheimer's because I'm gonna be thinking all the time.

So it's an intellectual engagement. Some parts of scripture are hard. Even Peter said, Paul is hard to understand. But what that means is it forces us to think. God wants a thinking people, not an empty headed people.

And the Bible is so good. You find history and doctrine and you have medicine and you have plants and animals and everything in the Bible, stars, and it's just remarkable. You know, it's all there to stimulate your mind. Also, thirdly, you get what I'm gonna call orthodoxy leading to orthopraxy. You get doctrine and practice.

Now orthodoxy is sound doctrine, orthopraxy is sound living. And the church is not simply a function of doctrinal fidelity. Doctrinal fidelity without orthopraxy is not Christianity. It's only a half of a faith. And so there's a result of the truth.

The truth sets you free. The truth makes you different. The truth changes your emotions. The truth changes the way you talk. The truth changes the way that you think about everything.

It changes the way you work. It changes the reason for you to get married. It changes for what you do when you're married. It changes everything. It changes children and it changes old people.

And you know when you come to the Bible you say, Lord change me. That's what we need. And God has given us his word. And Psalm 19 says that the law of the Lord converts the soul. Isn't that good?

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing in the heart. It's such a wonderful, powerful thing that God has given to us. It changes you.

And you find that if you're not in his word, Life isn't as sweet. But God has given his word to convert the soul and make wise the simple and rejoice the heart and enlighten the eyes and to give a great reward. That's what Psalm 19 says. And so God creates this, I'm just gonna call it a sacred space of meditation on the Word of God, where we come together and we exercise our minds in meditation on something that takes us out of ourselves and into God So it's a very wonderful thing that God has done and you know, your mind will drift You know Some of you are drifting right now, come back, come back. It happens to all of us.

But you drift, you realize you're drifting and you come back, you know. You wanna try not to drift as much as you can. Don't you hate it when, you know, maybe you haven't had enough sleep and you're nodding out you really want a listen you know but your wife is jabbing you saying stop going to sleep it can happen so there's this this fourth there's meditation God creates this space for meditation And the meditation is stimulated by the singing, it's stimulated by the prayers, it's stimulating by the readings of the word, it's stimulated by the preaching of the word. So stay with it. The fifthly, Preaching in many ways is defiance to worldly patterns, at least the patterns of today.

When you commit yourself to listen to a sermon for an hour or however long it might be, This is very counterculture today. I was in a meeting this last week where we were talking about technology and websites and podcasts and things like that And this statistics were being thrown out that in the most popular podcasts, with some of the most popular preachers of our day, the people click out in 3.5 minutes. And then they go to another thing. And then they go to another thing. And then they go to another thing and then they go to another thing and then they go to another thing and they just click from one thing to another and so and so what people are doing today is everything is getting shorter and shorter.

I read some months ago you know if you have the most popular podcasts, half the people or more click out at 12 minutes, not the hour long. We have a generation of just jumping from one thing to another. People are moving from one video, one meme, one this to another. But in preaching, it's not like that. In the church, we bring people together, and there's an extended exposition of a passage of scripture where we're dealing with language and history and doctrine and science and all kinds of things like that.

And we bring ourselves to concentrate together. This is really culturally disruptive, but we're gonna keep doing it. We're not gonna go down to sermons that are 3.9 minutes. Just because everybody lives that way. Don't let your children grow up this way, by the way.

Hey, do not let your children grow up going from one video to another. Please take the phones out of their hands and stop them from living a life of going from one meme to another. It's damaging to them. It's actually creating people who cannot concentrate. And it's very, very harmful to have a generation that can only concentrate for a few seconds.

And that's what TikTok and our whole social media world is all about. And you do not want to raise scatterbrained children. And if you raise children on the media of today, you will be raising scatterbrained children. You understand that? That's my view.

So be careful. Be careful with what you do with your children. You do not want them to become the scatterbrained 40 and 50 and 60 year olds. You want them to have a sound judgment and discernment. You want them to know how to think.

You want them to know how to think. You want them to know how to receive the word of God. You want them to be able to be taught rather than to zone out after just a few seconds or a few minutes. And you need to teach them from the time they're very, very young. Start young.

Have them dial into the preaching. Are they dialed into the preaching right now help them Help them not lose track of the preaching they will lose track, but you're gonna have to get them back if they're if they're very young That's what Deborah and I did when we were when we had young children We had our children focus on the speaker and it was very helpful. Here's the sixth. You have this matter of attentiveness. In the church, we are embodied souls and we're setting our mind on the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

We are looking to the living God with our bodies, using our minds, our voices. When we turn to the Lord's Supper, we'll be using our sense of taste, our sense of touch, our sense of smell. We engage all the senses. And so there's this matter of attentiveness in dealing with the Word of God. You know, I was reading the biography of Adoniram Judson to the Golden Shore, and there's this remarkable moment where the converts in the church were being threatened.

The emperor had issued an edict to make Christianity legal, so Adoniram Judson goes to the emperor to appeal to him, and it was a total failure. And the mature Christians in this missionary compound were talking about leaving, of getting out of there because it was made illegal. But the new Christians resisted. And They wanted to stay near the teaching, and one of them said, as for me, I will go where the preaching is to be had. Because that's what happens to when you're converted.

You want to go where the preaching is to be had. And that's what they did. And it brings us together. The preaching is so critical. You know, when we were raising our children and if someone was sick in our house, here's what Deborah and I did.

Some people, you know, If one person got sick in our house, everybody didn't stay home. The well people went, and as best we could, the sick people stayed home. Now if the children were young, they needed somebody to take care of them. But we regarded, we prioritized the preaching. We almost never missed the preaching of the word of God.

We almost never miss church growing up. The only times we ever really miss is if we were traveling or I was preaching somewhere else. But I don't, I can't, I think Deborah in our 40 years of marriage might have missed church one time. Me, a couple more times than that, but not very many. We prioritize the preaching of the word of God, and I just encourage you to do the very, very same with your family, and do it for your whole life long.

I've been doing it a long time. I am so glad. I'm so glad for my pastor who told me be devoted to the Apostles doctrine and the fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayers. I'm so thankful for that. Okay then the fellowship.

So they were devoting themselves steadfastly, also to fellowship, to the fellowship. Now, this word koinonia describes the spiritual and the organic relationships that are forged among Christians. And the word literally means sharing, togetherness, participation, communion, coming alongside of one another. You get the idea. The word appears 20 times in the New Testament.

Acts 2 42 is the very first occasion that it appears and you find many many really beautiful ways of describing it. Probably we will spend an entire session just speaking about fellowship at some point. But what's the definition of fellowship? It's the interactive connection between God and his people as they gather together. J.I.

Packer said it like this, it is first sharing with our fellow believers the things that God has made known to us about himself in hope that we may thus help them to know him better and so enrich their fellowship with him. That's what fellowship is all about. It's not just hanging out. It's deeper than hanging out. It's to share with other converted people the things of God through personal interaction.

And there are there ways, two ways that this word fellowship is used in the New Testament. And the first is fellowship with God, fellowship with God and his Son. And the other is the implications of that fellowship in our fellowship with one another. 1st Corinthians 1, 9, God is faithful by whom you are called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord even in the Lord's Supper it's a kind of fellowship first Corinthians 10 16 the cup of blessing which we bless is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And it's that word fellowship.

So we extend the right hand of fellowship. We engage in the unsearchable riches of Christ in our conversations together. In Philippians one, three, he speaks of the fellowship of the gospel, and Philippians three, 10, he speaks of the fellowship of his sufferings, and St. Corinthians chapter eight, there's this fellowship of mutual help when one has a need and there there are many many ways that fellowship is expressed so you have three parties involved God himself the believer in fellowship with God the Father and his son, and the third person, the person that you're with, the person that you're talking to, you're looking into their eyes, and there's this intimate, it's spiritual fellowship. It's, and it's in the context is the the gathering and singing and praying and eating together.

I think it's important to point out that this fellowship has nothing to do with common interests. It's not about connecting with one another, about cars or hunting or homeschooling. It's spiritual fellowship. It's not connecting about your favorite sports team. That's not fellowship.

It's not interacting about things that you just have in common, which can be a tremendous blessing. But this is spiritual fellowship. And you know, the things that we speak about on the Lord's Day, the comments that we make, let's focus on what the Lord is doing, what the Lord has said through his word. You've heard many scriptures read. We've sung beautiful songs today.

Let's talk about that. You've been given a tremendous treasure trove of things to interact about already, just in the time that we've been together. And spiritual fellowship, it includes considering one another and one another's condition. Hey, whenever we gather, you always have some people who are really discouraged, like really discouraged. There are people here today that are struggling and they're burdened and they might have fears, they feel like they fall short in everything they do, and they're tired, and you know what?

They need somebody to engage them in spiritual fellowship. They need someone to encourage them. That's happened to me many times here in this building. When somebody's eyes were on the Lord and they shared something that was so helpful or invigorating to me. But let the worship shape the conversation and let us consider one another, one another's condition, and to pray for one another.

You know, maybe you're gonna bump into somebody who's really discouraged, just pray for them, help them, encourage them, bless them. That's one reason why God brings his people together. So fellowship is so critical. And by the way, they came willing, they did this willingly. You know, over the years I've learned that it does very little good to tell people to start going to church.

It does very little good to do that because it's really designed to be willingly done. And so, I mean, I'd like to cast a vision for the glory and the beauty of life and the people of God, but if you don't want to be involved with the people of God you have a deeper problem and that is and and maybe there are various things so it does little good to berate people about going to church. Your problem is that you need to go to church. It's something more profound. It has to do with the life of God and the soul of man and the desires of your heart.

But maybe you know you can let your desires go low and they need to be fanned to flame and there are different ways to do that. We often need that. So fellowship. There's actually a command. Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as is the manner of some but exhorting one another as much The more as you see the day approaching that is Hebrews 10 25.

So the fellowship engage in the fellowship thirdly the breaking of bread One commentator defines the breaking of bread this way. The breaking of bread refers to the frequent celebration of the Lord's Supper, Which appears to have been observed at the close of the main meal? Something that was to cause problems in the Corinthian Church, so We see this practice mentioned twice in Acts 2 the breaking of verse first in verse 42 the breaking of bread and then in verse 46 they continued with one accord and breaking bread from house to house they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart and I what I the way I understand this is that this is the Lord's Supper most likely. Some would say it could possibly be a larger meal. My view is that the church increased in size so much that they met in homes.

There were no buildings till the second century in the church. And so the early church met in homes. And I think this was the Lord's Supper combined with a fellowship meal. You see the same thing in the Gospels in the upper room. It seems like they had a larger meal and then the Lord Jesus brought out the elements and established and instituted the Lord's Supper And they did that together.

And there's, we have a friend, a dear friend, Jeff Pauler down in Pensacola, when they have the Lord's Supper, They gather with a fellowship meal. When the fellowship meal is over, then they pass out the elements as a separate ordinance from the meal. So it does seem to be connected to a meal. And it was a joy to them. They ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people.

So I most likely this is connected to the Lord's Supper and even a large meal at the same time. And you know it's it's a blessing to be able to eat together. You know, we eat together, well, about 52 times at minimum a year every Sunday. And it's such a marvelous opportunity to extend the true meaning of fellowship in the church. Our confession, the Baptist confession speaks of it, the origin of the supper.

The supper of the Lord Jesus was instituted by him the same night in which he was betrayed. And then the second phrase speaks of where it's conducted. To be observed in his churches. And then when, unto the end of the world, This is just language out of our confession. And then why?

For the perpetual remembrance and showing forth of the sacrifice of Christ and his death. And also for confirmation of the faith of believers. To confirm your faith. When you take the Lord's Supper, you're saying, Jesus has forgiven me from all of my sins, how about that? He suffered and died for me, and I'm free.

So it's to commemorate, it's to confirm your faith. You know, our lives are so imperfect, we often feel so unworthy. We are. All of our worthiness comes from Christ's righteousness. It doesn't come from your life, it comes from his life.

And your faith is renewed and confirmed. It says here in the confession, for their spiritual nourishment and growth in him. In order to grow, we need to know that we're forgiven. We need to continue a reminder of it. And then who?

Who takes it? Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements of this ordinance, who do it by faith, and they feed upon Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death. And then, but not unworthily, Those who take the Lord's Supper unworthily are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, eating and drinking judgment to themselves. And there, the confession is just quoting First Corinthians chapter 10 and 11. But that's the Lord's Supper.

We gather to break bread to take the Lord's Supper, to be reminded of God's grace. And then finally, prayers. The prayers. A true church will prioritize prayer. Hey, the weekly prayer meeting has gone out of style in the modern church.

People don't want to do it anymore. But you know, the gathering of God's people together as an assembly is something that is so important that we preserve it. You know, Zechariah 820 pictures this. There's a prophecy that this would happen in the church. I'm just gonna read it.

Zechariah 820, thus says the Lord of hosts people shall yet come Inhabitants of many cities the inhabitants of one city shall go to another saying Let us go and pray before the Lord and seek the Lord of hosts. I myself will also go Yes, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem which is code for the church and pray before the Lord thus says the Lord of hosts in those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man saying, let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you. This is a picture of people saying, let's go to the house of the Lord. Let's go pray. People gathering one another to pray.

You know if someone hasn't been gathering to pray go grab them, grab them by the sleeve and say hey let's go pray. Luther spoke of prayer in a in a booklet, a simple way of praying. And I'll just give you the outline. I thought it was really beautiful. Prayer is an offering.

Prayer is incense. Prayer is lifting up the soul and the heart. Prayer is meditation. Prayer is wrestling with the Lord. Prayer is serving the Lord.

Prayer is knocking. Prayer is a spiritual and faithful opening of the heart to God for our health. And I would just add, you know, prayer is also an act of love. David said, I love the Lord because he has heard my voice. You know, a few weeks ago the elders gathered the men of the church really to exhort them, to encourage them to pray in the prayer meetings because in First Symphony Two, there's a command that men should pray in the gatherings of the church.

He's not talking about private prayer in that text. And so we we told the men that it was disturbing that only a few men pray publicly in the church. And we asked them to consider that why, why they didn't do that, because they had been commanded by God to pray. So that's what we did. We did that because it's more blessed to give than receive.

Men are supposed to be praying in the church, out of the sincerity of their heart. So they work continuing steadfastly in the Apostles doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and in prayers. So These are the things that are really tests of a true biblical church. And so I'm here to say what is being said here. Devote yourselves to these things.

Give yourselves to these things. Maybe you're young, maybe you're like I was when I was in my teens and you're hearing this. I'm here to say, hey, go for this. This is really good. This will be such a help to you.

Because God is wise. And he's prioritizing for you. And you don't have to figure life out on your own. He gives you priorities and they ought to be fixed priorities. You know, I had a conversation a little while ago with a man who was asking me about a sort of a conflict.

He had a sports practice that happened on Wednesday nights. He said, you know, do you think it would be bad that, you know, I skip prayer for this practice? And I just said, you always, in life, you always have to establish the importance of anything that you do. You have to categorize it in terms of its importance. You have to establish the importance of things or you'll just, well, you'll just do anything or everything because there's so many wondrous things that you can do.

And so, you know, how do you decide a question like that? And I told him that I heard something a long time ago that really helped me in terms of prioritization. And this person was saying that, consider your life like a large glass jar. And what wise people do is they put the big things in first. They put the large rocks in first.

The things that they know they must do. And they put those in first. And then if there's room for other things then those then you can put smaller rocks in there as well but if you fill up your life with all the smaller rocks then you won't have time for the really really important things and this this priority of the continual devotion to the Apostles doctrine and fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayers, these are the big rocks of life. Put those in first. Build your life around those things and prioritize the things that are really critical.

And you know I also said you know the way that God has ordered the church, he's given elders to the church, and elders have a responsibility to shepherd the flock, and what shepherds do is that they design discipleship experiences for the church that they think would be the most beneficial. And you know what they are. And we urgently want every man, woman, and child involved in those things that we have designed. You know, we think it's very beneficial for men to gather together on Monday mornings and study the passage that we're gonna preach on so that they go home and teach their children and their wives. We think it's really beneficial to gather the women together at Women's Mentoring to be instructed and prayed for and things like that.

This is part of the design. We think this is good. We've designed a Wednesday night prayer meeting. We don't have a lot, really a lot of structure to our church, we don't have a lot of programs, but we focus on the word of God and prayer and the breaking of bread and fellowship. That's the focus.

And so I would just say, hey, engage yourself in the things that are good, that have been communicated in this passage of scripture. So these people were pierced to the heart, they repented of their sins, they got baptized, and their whole life changed, all their relationships changed. And they continued steadfastly in the Apostles doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and prayers. Praise the Lord for such a wise way of living in the world. Would you pray with me?

Father, we thank you for the penetrating nature of your Word, how it redirects us and directs us, how it Takes us away from some things and into others So that we might be built up that we might grow together that we might learn how to love one another That we might grow in wisdom and love and sound mind Lord, thank you from for breaking the power of sin and death. Thank you for changing us from our thieving immoral bondage and bringing us into a fellowship of hope. Lord, you're so kind. I pray that you would manifest your glory through all these things in this church here in Wake Forest. Amen.