The Dynamics of Devotion I, Fellowship

It just takes a while. I praise God for you and your just tremendous willingness to stick through it. I just believe that this is the quality of life that God can take and shape and mold and make of it what he wants it to be. And I just want to begin this morning by saying how I know this isn't a very spiritual word, but how proud I am in the spirit for each one of you. Paul says that he boasted about his churches. So I, with the pastors and elders, boast at your flexibility and your willingness to go to the extra degree that was necessary to make this adjustment. The deacons did a tremendous job. You don't know how much went into making this happen. There's countless little details you don't think of that. These deacons worked hours and hours and hours, and I know we all just owe a debt to them, which in Jesus I trust he'll repay. And the children's ministry is working to make everything fit. And the sound ministry has spent just hours in here. One of the reasons why in the beginning today it was hard and we were all laboring a little bit is it sounds different in here. I mean, you're looking at about a 35 foot or 40 foot ceiling. And at Bradley's, the sound didn't have any place to go, so it went right smack in your ears and you thought you were surrounded, but here, all of a sudden you're a little soloist. And that's not quite as glorious, is it? But, you know, the other part of this that can really be to our advantage is this is also a tremendous place. As we learn to sing out a little bit more, this place is really going to fill with praises. I mean, there's going to be a quality of sound here that we couldn't get at Bradley's. That's why they built these places that way. Do you know that? It's for the sound, and so far, we're still getting used to it. So everyone just take a deep breath and say, well, praise God. It's not just me then, all right? The Lord is going to bring the spirit of liberty and he's going to take us on. As I said at Bradley's, folks, the church isn't changing at all in terms of being cut out of something because we left Bradley's. In fact, if anything, I believe that the Lord is going to use all this for our good. Are you still praying those three things? I asked you to pray a couple weeks ago. I hope that you are. Turn in your Bible to Acts, chapter two, and I'm going to condense my teaching this morning. I just found a pulpit right here. There's no one in the balcony that can't see today. That's good. So I can stay down here a little bit longer. Acts Chapter 2. Just hold your place there and we're going to read it in a little bit. I feel like I missed. I just so appreciated Peter Plummer sharing last week and his exuberant spirit and his positive expectation in the Lord, didn't you? But I missed being able to launch into the new year and start with the establishment of a few things before the Lord. And so I just felt it was right of the Lord that a week later I share with you some of the things that I believe that God is calling us into as a people. In 1985 and you know, it was 10 months ago that I brought a teaching on the character of our life at North Way. And I talked about the context of who we are in the midst of the movement of the Holy Spirit in this day and about our heritage and a little bit about our brief history together. You get a lot more of that in the New to North Way gathering. But the name of that was who we Are and where we're Going. And if you haven't heard that teaching, I don't really need to sell any tapes, but you can borrow one from the tape library because there's a lot in there about the principles that guide us as a people. But the key point of that teaching was that we are. Remember I used the word pioneers, that we're not settlers, that we're not in a place to try to set down stakes and never change, but that we're constantly by God's grace, moving into new territory on the proving ground of faith rather than setting up shop and the security of the retirement home. Aren't you glad for that we're not retiring into Jesus now, but that we're pressing on into Him. Today I want to begin to address a subject that's in my estimation the balancing truth church to the whole idea of flexibility, pioneering, and a word that I never use, but it's been tossed about a lot here. That's the word caravanning came from a book that we read in our first few months together. You see, in the idea of being a flexible body of people and being on the move and pioneering and so forth, it isn't too far to begin to think in terms of being transitory, sort of passing through in an inconsistent kind of a way. In fact, to me, it's not real far from the idea of being casual. How many of you have in some experience in your life rented an apartment or a home, notice any difference in your attitude toward that place versus the one that you purchased? I mean, somehow the hedges just don't look that bad if you're renting, but when you buy it, you want everything to look just right. And we get into a whole different mentality when we realize that we're here to stay and that this represents who we are. And we make a different commitment of our energies and efforts toward that. Now, I'm not talking today about this building. I'm talking about this building, the living temple that the Bible so clearly teaches us. The thing that's going to abide is this temple made up of living stones. What a metaphor that is. There's big stones out there this morning and little stones, there's fragile stones and hardened stones. But we're living stones in the temple of Jesus and we're here to stay. And I want to say again that I feel that there has been perhaps unknowingly a bit of the permeation in our own mentality that because we're flexible and I'm going to slide over here every once in a while to wake the people up behind the pillar, that because we're flexible and because we're unstructured, as it were, in a lot of ways that this leaves room for us church to slip into a mentality of disengagement and non involvement. You know, our fruits and nuts from Southern California will tell us that it's I have my name tag on now. I can say anything I want. That the step from these terms flexible, organic and flowing to the terms casual, laid back, off and on now and then aren't very big steps to take. And whether we know it or not, there's begun to be in some of us a creeping mentality that as long as we go to church, watch the 700 Club and PTL and the other electronic ministries, listen to WPIT and give fairly regularly that God bless us, we're all that God wants us to be, or at least we're okay. Can't be too far out of the mainstream if you watch PTL and listen to PIT and go to church, and if we surround ourselves with just the right people who are also listening to, well, maybe they listen to something else just to give you a little different input. They reinforce the idea that, hey, everything's okay and we're doing what God wants us to do. But beloved, as I read the Book of Acts and as we Read it here together in just a moment. It's not what I see the church of the New Testament doing. The vital, powerful, life transforming truth that we see in these scriptures was so dynamic that it couldn't be ignored by the culture. In fact, Acts 17 6, the officials say with some consternation, the people that turned the world upside down are coming here. I'll tell you what, how would you like to be known as the people who turned this part of the world upside down? Beloved, the church of the New Testament wasn't content just simply to sit back and let it happen. They hated the word passivity. They were a church that was eager to get all that God had for them to do, all that God called them to do. They were in earnest all the time as to the purposes of God in their life. And all over Jerusalem where they started, they changed things. You know, down In Acts chapter 21 it says that tens of thousands literally in the Greek of Jews believed the gospel. Over the course of the few years that followed Pentecost, tens of. Imagine a church of tens of thousands of people. And we're seeing that in the earth today, literally changing the very fabric of society. But it didn't happen because the church was kind of waiting for God to do his thing and sort of showing up on occasion. The quality of their life, beloved, was the thing that drew people to them. And it's all summed up in this one word which we're going to read now in Acts chapter two. Would you read with me? Let's begin at verse 40. And he testified with many other words and exhorted them, saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation. So those who received his word were baptized. And there were added that day about 3,000 souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread. And the prayers and fear came upon every soul. And many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all as any had need. And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of 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 in verse 42 and in verse 46, in the original language, the word devoted appears. They were devoted to the things of God. And I want to talk for the next several weeks church on the subject. The dynamic of devotion. The dynamic of devotion. What does it mean to Be devoted rather than off and on, in and out and up and down. Webster gives us a definition of devoted like this, and I'll read it, since you may not be able to see it. To give over wholly or purposefully to center the attention and activities of oneself. It implies that one is driven with compelling motives, attachments that one holds fast to and gives persistent attention to something. That's what it means to be devoted. Now, the Greek word is even more revealing. Do we have that in the Greek dictionary? You'll find the word devoted is pros, cartereo. And that comes from two Greek words, pros, which is just the prefix, means unto or toward. And kratos, the root word for carterero, means power, strength, or might. And so literally, to be devoted means a way into power, a way into release and strength. That's the force of that word, you see, Beloved. Devotion changes things. It literally changes things in itself. Devotion is a force that causes things to be transformed. How many of you watched parts of the Olympics last summer? Okay. The rest of you were out of the country? Probably one of the groups that I guess most fascinated all of us and was probably most intriguing was the men's gym team. The reason why we found such a magnetism about their accomplishment Church, was that they did something, first of all, that no men's team, rather, had ever done before. They won an Olympic gold medal. And it wasn't because they were necessarily the best individual gymnasts. In fact, they didn't win the best all around. And. And I don't know how many of the individual gold medals they won. But there was something about that team that if you watched carefully, it was very evident that on that night, when they had the national showing of the competition, did you pick up how Bart Connors encouraged the other gymnasts so much? They were cheering for one another and what they were doing. And when one finished his routine on the pommel horse, another one would jump off and hug them. And then in the end, it just seemed to be unlike some of the football games when everyone's being real cool about they were genuinely happy for one another. There was a quality of relationship there that I don't think there was anybody that watched it that didn't have some sort of a swelling up inside that said, oh, would I love to be part of something like that? Because you could tell that they had sacrificed everything for a long time, eight years, many of them, to get to the point where they could share the jubilation of that victory. Now, you know, devotion is expected of us in every area of our life. How many of you work for an employer who says, give me 70%? If I hear anything about companies today and men and women who work for different corporations want 110%. They want everything that you can give them, right? How many of us know that marriage works if we each give 65%, we have to give all. We have to be devoted to our spouse to see that marriage be fulfilling. Athletes, as we already said, know that you just don't. You don't accomplish much unless you give full devotion in education. It's the same way a lot of us learned that the hard way, that we finally got devoted when we were in our second semester, senior year in high school. Those of us who are raising children know that they just don't get by with a little bit of attention. You've got to be devoted to them. Every area of life requires devotion. But somehow, when we get to the church and we get to the community of believers, the enemy has caused us to think that with 75% effort or 80% effort, somehow that'll be good enough after all. I mean, I've got other things to be considered with, for and about. And, you know, a lot of us begin to describe devotion according to terms that we have defined ourselves as we step into 1985. Beloved, I want to ask you a question. Are you devoted to. As the church in the New Testament was devoted, Would you be willing for the next couple of weeks to examine different areas of your life and say, lord, I want to be devoted even as these people were devoted, because I want to change the world even as these. You mean change the world? That's what I mean. Starting right here, and make a difference. You know what I fear more than anything? I fear being irrelevant. If I get to the end of my life and I've been irrelevant, if I've been able to be ignored as a person, I will have considered my life a failure. I don't want to play church. And if you're here because you need a church, there's a lot of other ones where people aren't going to say things like I'm saying today to you. I'm here, and I'm coupled with men and women in ministry who want their lives to count. And it's going by awful fast, isn't it? Four years we've been together, just about now. I don't want to be ignored. I want to make a difference. And I want to say to you that how you approach 1985, how we as a church look at what's ahead is going to determine one of two things. Our choices will mean either, number one, we're just going to kind of maintain our nice thing here at North Way and have everybody think that we're wonderful, have some more empty pews and those kinds of things. Or we can move ahead to begin to fulfill what God has prophesied that he's wanted to do through us and make such an impact on this society right here in the North Hills and in the surrounding areas of Pittsburgh that beloved, we'll be able to say at the end of this year, God is triumph Our God has done valiantly for he's tread down our enemies. I'll sing and shout the victory Christ is king. Which one do you want? Which one do I want? There's no question in my mind. You know, a lot of pastors get criticized because really all they're looking for is a nice, secure pulpit where they can preach once a week and do a few administrative things, some funerals and marriages and get a decent salary and never bother anybody. I don't want to live that way. And somehow I don't think you'd be here if you wanted to live that way. We're here to be devoted to the things of God. Amen. Now, in the New Testament, we see clearly to what these believers were devoted. Let's look together. Verse 42. And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers. I'm going to take these out of order, and I'm just going to do really one today for the sake of time. And I'm going to talk about being devoted to fellowship. There is an interesting tension in our society because we, more than any other culture that I know of on the face of the earth, value our rugged individualism. That's what we're all about, making it on our own. Don't need anybody else. Weakness. We're really weak if we have to ask someone else for help. And yet the tension that I'm talking about is the fact that we are also joiners. We're joiners at heart. We love to hear the words, now you belong. I made a little commitment here just this week, in fact, to play tennis once a week indoors. So I went down and joined the tennis club. And I don't know what they trained those people to say, but, boy, that girl just had me thinking I was the most important person that walked through her door that day. Her last words to me were with a little too much seriousness. I almost started last year, welcome to the club. Make That a life membership. Would you welcome to the club? And it's so easy for us to. We want that kind of affirmation. We want to be part of something so much. And yet our culture is also telling us, hey, make it on your own, do it your way. Now, the word fellowship here, church is the word that most of us are familiar with. If you don't know one Greek word, let me give you one today. Koinonia. How many of you have heard the word koinonia? That word has been just used to label everything that goes under the name of being together, including covered dish dinners, koinonia, club, old timers, koinonia, newborn koinonia, aching back, koinonia. You name it, just call it koinonia. And suddenly it becomes spiritual. But they were serious. They were devoted to fellowship. It amazes me, church, the number of people who come to the Lord Jesus and say, lord, I'm going to follow you. I thank you for redeeming me. I'm going to love you. And they don't do one thing to change their lifestyle. They don't do one thing to reorient the focus of their attention. If you'll remember what the word devoted talked about. They have the same friends, the same social schedule, the same priorities. They do everything the way they always did. They've just added God to their bag now, and they have some sort of a fire extinguisher mentality of salvation and church. We just don't see that. That's not devotion. That's delusion. That's deceiving yourself to think that you have God and everything else. The fundamental thing that this Bible talks about is that if we are born again, we are also born into the kingdom of God and his people. And we can't get more basic than talking about fellowship together. I read a little article about Vince Lombardi one day on a Monday after he'd lost a game to a team that he should have trumped. And he stood up and he said, gentlemen, it's time to get back to basics. Because he believed that the best way to achieve victory was to do the fundamental things well. And so he stood and said, this is a football. And then started going through all the things that we would consider to be ridiculous for professional athletes. And yet we need to realize that fellowship isn't just an attachment that God's, you know, that we can just take or leave. We need to be devoted, devoted, devoted to it. So much of the time, church, we deal with fellowship based on our feelings. I want to talk about two Ingredients of fellowship. And then we're going to close. Number one. We see here, look at verse 46, day by day. If you're reading the RSV, it says day by day by. Let me mention to you that that is the word pros. Carterero. Devoted. Some of you may have devoted. Right there. They devoted themselves. Do you have that number one, attending the temple. They assembled together corporately. When the church met, the people came. That was simple. They didn't discuss it. Hey, Abraham, are you going over to the synagogue tonight? No, I'm going to do some yard work. I was there last week. It's always the same. They went. When the church came together, the people came. It was simple. Beloved, do you know how much you feel like getting together sometimes? You know how much you feel like getting up at 5:30 to pray when it's 10 degrees and snowing outside? Listen to your body and do what it says. And you will in short order be a spiritual basket case. Because your flesh and your soul will say, don't go, you need your rest. This, that, 15 different reasons why you should stay away. But the church didn't do that when they assembled together. They were there. They met in the temple. And look, secondly, where else? Breaking bread in their homes. Now, these weren't just home groups. I think they spontaneously said, hey, let's throw our mutton stew together and share something. And I love it when I hear of people who just become friends and meet in homes here at North Way. And if you haven't joined a home group, then you've cut yourself off from the principal way of getting to know people. And the early church was devoted to meeting in homes. Beloved, if we just insist on maintaining our idea of what fellowship is about and don't see what the New Testament church was doing, we'll never experience the dynamic of devotion. It'll absolutely let all of the power out of the move of God to transform this culture. And I need to tell you, in case you don't know this, the leadership labors before the Lord as to how much we should expect of you in terms of getting together. Do you know that we don't just sit down and say, well, let's meet this night, this night and this night and this, that we say, lord, what is the balance? Because we know you have to balance your family priorities, your personal priorities, your job expectations. And so we try to be sensitive to that. That's factored into what we ask of you. But church, listen. If the body, the leadership of this body says it's time to Be together, then there shouldn't be a big discussion. Well, honey, what do you think we ought to say? Praise God, the body's meeting. There's purpose in it, and we ought to set ourselves to being together. Secondly, they met together. Number two. Rhonda. Thank you. They built relationships, okay? They built relationships. It's not enough just to meet. We've all been to meetings that were just meetings for their own sake. Church, when we come together, it's for the purpose of building relationships. To me, if we simply go to meetings and don't build relationships, it's like joining a travel club and never going anywhere. It's like joining a spa and never working out. It's like joining a book club and never reading a book. Going to a meeting and never really making friendships and relationships and committing yourself is missing the point of what God's brought us together to do. You know, it's easy to come to a meeting like this and look mature. Look at the people around you. Don't they look mature spiritually? You may be seated beside a spiritual giant. Then again, you may not be. But you don't know. You'll never know if they don't open their mouth, if they don't reveal a little bit of themselves. And let me just say to you, Church, the purpose of fellowship. Listen. Is to know and be known. The purpose of fellowship with the living God. Listen. Is to know him as we are known. The purpose of fellowship together is to know one another and be known. Why I don't want him to know my sins and my faults. Because until you bring them into the light, you'll never be changed. And you'll be deluded into thinking that you're some sort of Lone Ranger Christian that God's real happy just to have in the kingdom when all along he wants to change you and make you as his own dear son. It's only as you're in relationship that four things can happen in specific. I don't have time to develop them today. Here they are. You can love in specific. You can serve in specific. You can give in specific and you can receive in specific. Until you're related to people, you just can't do that. It's not good enough to say I love everybody. We need to be able to say, I love you, you just like you are. It's that kind of love and service and giving and receiving that's going to make an impact in 1985. And I want to be part of that. Don't you? I want to conclude by telling you a Story about a person that comes from a fellowship very much like North Way. His name was Dennis Angel. What a name, right? He wasn't a pastor even, But Dennis angel, in 1982, just two years ago, lost his job, went on unemployment, started looking for work, didn't find anything for about six months. But in February of 83, he got some good news. His wife, who had not been able to be pregnant for some years of marriage, conceived. But a month later he got some bad news and that was that the rheumatic fever that he'd had as a child had caused heart damage and he needed to have open heart surgery. So he came here to Pittsburgh. At that point, the fellowship, the New Testament fellowship, interestingly called a Christian community, just like North Way, rallied around him, prayed for him, laid hands on him. Even though he was coming from down in Washington D.C. he came up here to Pittsburgh for his surgery. Out of work, pregnant wife. Four months later, they discovered that the surgery had not been successful and they needed to operate again. Along the way he lost his unemployment because you have to be looking for work in order to receive it. So he had no money coming in. He had a pregnant wife and he had two. Then again another failure in his open heart surgery. By September of 83, he only had one option left and he went out to St. Louis. In the meantime, his fellowship devoted themselves to caring for him, paying his medical bills as he went along the way caring for his wife. In October of 1983, his baby was stillborn and they lost their child. In the midst of what could have been a crushing, heavy, depressing blow. The Church of Jesus Christ rallied around him. His community became to him devoted to his support and care and concern. And as a result, church a number of people were melted down in their hardness of heart and turned to receive the love of God in Jesus. I'm here to say to you this morning, I want to be devoted in relationship like that to each of you and you to one another and all of us together as God enables us. That's the kind of church that's going to change the world. And I want to be part of it, don't you? Amen. Let's pray, Father. We commit to you right now, Lord, that we would be devoted to fellowship in 1985, Lord. Assembling together, as you call us together, building relationships, Lord, that care and support and encourage one another. And we thank you Father, that will be possible by what you have done in Jesus and the enabling of your Holy Spirit to make it happen. Lord, we bless you. I thank you so much for this people, Lord, who are willing to be flexible. But realize, Lord, that we're here to stay. And that can build for permanence in the kingdom of God. We ask it in Jesus name. Hallelujah. We shall be as one. Go ahead. He, the Father of us all. We his chosen sons. And by his command take each other's hand. Live our lives in unity. We shall be. We shall be as one. We shall be as one. And by this shall all men know of the work he has done. Love will take us on his precious Son. Love of him who first loved us. We shall be as one.