Last week I did a 5 day series on the often missed message of Acts. Today I want to capsulize its message.
Now the book of Acts does indeed tell of the spread of the church. But it is not the spread of the church that is paramount, it is the reason it spread.
The reason the church spread was because of the gospel of Christ.
The gospel has power. It has more power than the old hymns, more power than contemporary "praise and worship" music, more power than the deepest philosophy, more power than Christian behaviorism.
Paul wrote to the Romans, "I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes; first for the Jew, then for the Gentile." (Romans 1:16)
All through the book of Acts the church grew in direct proportion to the propagation of the gospel, that is the good news of Christ's life, death, burial and resurrection and the salvation that brings by the grace of God through our Faith in the gospel as God's final plan for His creation.
Remember, the apostles got in trouble with the religious leaders every time they preached the gospel. The Pharisees, the Levites, the Sadducees and the priests just could not bear to hear that Jesus was the one long prophesied.
The religious leaders told the apostles to stop preaching the gospel. They did not care what else they preached. In effect they said, "Preach anything you want to. Preach about social ills. Preach about politics. Preach about being a good parent. Preach about being a good worker. Preach about Moses' Law. Preach about the dos and don'ts of life. But please stop preaching the gospel. If you don't we will try you, imprison you and/or stone you."
The gospel is hated by "religionists." To them it is, if not repugnant, then at least boring. To them it is not relevant to today's society. To them it is old fashioned. To them the gospel doesn't go far enough. To them there has to be more than "just" the gospel.
Some preachers and teachers would much rather deal with dos and don'ts, which are legalism (although they would deny that they are legalistic). Some preachers just don't get that the Old Testament is about God's plan to bring in Messiah and that Messiah did away with the Old Covenant by fulfilling it.
Some preachers and teachers are actually afraid of the gospel. They fear that if they preach only the gospel, they will run out of things to say. They fear that society will continue on its down-slide if they don't preach about "relevant" topics.
But the gospel has more power than many of them seem to realize. They'll give lip service to believing Romans 1;16, but that lip service will not translate into believing that gospel has any real power.
In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul wrote, "I resolved to know nothing while I was with you but Jesus Christ and Him crucified." What does the word "nothing" mean? What part of "nothing" is hard to understand?
There are at least two kinds of "mega churches," those that got to be "mega" by presenting relevant messages and entertaining services and those that got to be "mega" by preaching the gospel. The former, sooner or later, will die. The latter will always be with us...until the return of Christ.
The challenge for preachers and teachers today is to have the nerve to put aside the other trappings and to boldly preach the gospel, like the apostles of Acts did. Preaching the gospel will get them into trouble with society, but it will build a solid church that will endure to the end of the age.
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