The Best of Times And The Worst of Times

Mr. Dodd said something yesterday in the services. He said that we prepared for the Days of 11 Bread, and now we have to start preparing for Pentecost. You know, we prepare a lot for the Days of 11 Bread. We prepare for the Feast of Tabernacles, physically by preparing to go and where we're going to go and so forth. But I'm not sure we spiritually prepare for the other Holy Days like we do for the Passover, the Days of 11 Bread. And yet we should. We should be preparing for the next Holy Day, spiritually, because it reveals to us and shows us the next step in God's plan of what He's doing with humanity and what He's doing in our lives.

Probably the most famous line from any novel written in English is from a tale of two cities where it says it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That may be the best opening line in a book ever. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In a number of weeks and less than two months, we will be celebrating a Holy Day, the pictures that had the pouring out of God's Spirit and the founding, if you will, of the Church, the beginning of the Church Age.

And when you look through, we'll go through as we prepare for those days and we get closer to that day, and on that day you will hear at least one sermon or sermonette that will go to Acts Chapter 2 and go through how the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church, and we'll talk about the Holy Spirit and what God does in our lives to the Holy Spirit and how God formed the Church and what that Church is supposed to do and is supposed to accomplish.

But let's start thinking about that now. Now here we are coming out of the Days of 11 Bread. We've kept the Passover where we honor Jesus Christ as our sacrifice. We honor the fact that He came to this earth and gave up what He was to become like us, to suffer and die and be resurrected for us. We went through a whole seven-day period where we celebrated the removal of sin and the taking in of Christ.

But now we have to look forward and say, okay, what is it we're supposed to do as we prepare for the next holy day? And we come up with the question, what is the Church? Now what's interesting is if you go through the book of Acts and then you take the book of Acts and you take all the other writings of the New Testament and figure out where they fit in there. Now of course not all of them do. Some of them are written after the book of Acts. But most of Paul's writings fit in there during that time period.

And right after, towards the end of the book of Acts, right after the book of Acts, you have a lot of the writings of 1 and 2 Peter and some of those other books. And when you put that all together, that story plus when those letters were written, because they were letters, you find that for the Church you have this wonderful time in which thousands of people come to the Church. Three thousand baptized in one day in its earliest days. You have miracles taking place. You have congregations sprouting up all over the world.

And they were doing that by foot. I mean you had to walk from place to place or ride a horse or get on a boat. It wasn't easy. And congregations were forming. And it was the best of times. You can look at that time period and you can say, wow, it would have been amazing to be in the Church during those 40 years between the point where God poured out His Spirit on those people and you see all these things happening. Of course, if you read through there, you'll also see it's the worst of times.

I mean, Paul, it must have been amazing to go into a synagogue and have scores of people respond to you and then hundreds of people that were pagans come along and respond to you and in congregation forums. That must be so exciting! Think about how discouraging it was just sometimes a decade later when in some of his letters he'll say, everybody has abandoned me except... Now let me mention a few people. Home congregations he put together cease to exist.

Things happened that weren't supposed to happen. It was also the worst of times. It was the best of times to stand up in the Areopagus and preach and have all the greatest philosophers in the world before you and have a number of them say, wow, this is worth listening to. It's the worst of times when a few months later you're someplace out and they drag you out in the street and stone you. It's the best of times when there's baptism taking place, when there's all this good things happening.

It's the best of times when they started the church in Corinth and then you read 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians and it was the worst of times. I don't know if there's been a more dysfunctional group of Christians ever. A church that just nothing worked. Their services were chaos. They had pagans who had come in who were continually going out to the pagan prostitutes at the temples. You had people arguing, fighting over everything you can imagine. People got together in services and just spoke in different languages so you couldn't even tell what was going on.

There was sexual sin in the congregation. There was every kind of thing you can think of. You read Galatians and Ephesians. In Ephesians you have a church and emphasis that's being ripped apart because there's a rift between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians and they can't heal that and they're having a problem in that church. And Paul's trying to get them to work together. It was the best of times it was the worst of times.

If you read about the founding of the church in Ephesus in the book of Acts, there were so many people that the entire city, and it was a large city, the entire city was affected by these Christians. Because people stopped going to the pagan temples. They weren't necessarily coming, but they said, you know, there's something wrong with this. They had to go rent a large auditorium.

Many of the churches met in people's homes. Many of the churches in the New Testament were very small. Ephesus said that they had to rent a big auditorium to meet in. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. That's the history of the New Testament church. Actually, that's the history of the church ever since that first Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. The church has always been the best of times and the worst of times.

You know, I've been in a Sabbath-keeping church since I was seven years old, and I have lots of stories like most of you do.

I have lots of stories of wonderful times. I've seen miracles by God that are unbelievable.

I've seen people who were dead and who were alive. I've seen people who should have died that were healed. I've seen people pray and God do incredible things in their lives.

But I also can look at every period of time that I lived in the church, and it was the best of times and it was the worst of times.

I can remember back in the 1960s when I was a child, and the church had a remarkable unity then. But we actually had to have teachings in the church about how to take a bath.

Because people didn't always know how to do that. We weren't exactly getting the rich and famous into the church. And so there would be sermonettes on and instructions and ministers would go over the people's houses.

And many of the people were incredibly poor and lived in incredibly poor conditions.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

I can remember in the 70s when that was the 60s I was in the radio church of God. In the 70s, I was the worldwide church of God. And in the worldwide church of God, in the 70s was the best of times. There was enormous growth in the church, some of you around then. Enormous growth.

More money than we knew what to do with. Preaching the gospel, congregations went from a hundred to seven hundred, sometimes in five years.

I also remember that there was something terribly inequitable in the church.

Some people met in a congregation hall that was worth ten million dollars, which would be worth a couple hundred million dollars today, and others left and met in beer halls. I also remember that the 70s was a time when you could... there was a lot of different ideas being taught in the church. You could go to congregation to congregation, and the teachings were all exactly the same.

I can remember the 80s. It was the best of times. Remember the 80s? In the church.

Number one religious magazine in the world was published by the worldwide church of God, the number one religious television program in the country.

But it was also the worst of times. By the end of the 1980s, the church was exploding. By the end of the 1980s, there was also coming into our church a lot of immorality.

I remember in the early 90s going to the Feast of Tabernacles.

And it was so exciting because we had ten thousand people at this feast site. And I was in charge of the young adults' activity, and we had more young adults there at that activity than we have, and everybody combined here today.

And two young adults arrived at the Feast of Tabernacles there to that activity, and they were drunk and picked a fight with the deacon. So they called the sheriff, and the sheriff came and tried to get them to leave, and they didn't. Finally, they picked a fight with the sheriff, and he arrested them. And the sheriff walked over to me, and he said, are you the minister in charge here? And I said, yes, sir. And he said, tonight, this is the third arrest I've had to make among you people. I wish you would take your religion and go home. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

The church has always been there. The church today is what? It's the best of times, and it's the worst of times. And it will be this way until Jesus Christ returns.

And so, since it will always be that way, what you and I have a responsibility to do is to see what God is doing and to respond to what God is doing. I mean, the church of God today is a hundred separate groups that can get along within their own membership, let alone with each other.

Yet, God's doing some amazing things in this mess, this rather dysfunctional mess. It is the best of times, and it is the worst of times.

So, what is God doing? There's an old Jewish fable about two men who had grown up in this city. You know, it's a parable. It's a Jewish parable. About two men who grew up in the city, and one day they decided they were going to take their wagon and go out into the country and see what in the world the country people do. Well, they got in their wagon, they got out of the city, they got out in the country, and they saw a man out with a horse pulling some kind of instrument, taking a perfectly lovely field and breaking it up and tearing it up into clods of dirt.

And they said country people are crazy. But what he did next was even more crazy. He took perfectly good wheat and threw it out into the ground. So, the one man said, this is so ridiculous, I'm going back, and the other brother said, you know, I'm going to spend some more time out in the country and find out what makes these people so crazy. So, he stayed. Well, a few months later, he writes a letter, the brother back into the city, he gets a letter that says these people aren't crazy after all. What they were doing was plowing the ground. And what they threw out was seed. And now there's this incredible field of beautiful wheat. They're not crazy.

It's a hidden work. It's something you don't even see happening. What they're doing here seems crazy, but in the end produces something that's unbelievable because you're sitting back in the city eating bread that will come from this field made from this wheat that we thought the people were crazy because we didn't understand the end result. The moral of the parable, this Jewish parable is, and I'm going to quote the moral that goes along with it, and this is how it is with God's work too. We mortals see only the beginnings of His plan. We cannot understand the full purpose and end of His creation, so we must have faith in His wisdom.

So let's review a little bit the church. What it is, who we are. Who we are is the people of God.

Now we know that the church has certain functions. There is one great important function that the church has in the world. We can all go to Matthew 28. We know it says, the priest of the gospel to the world and make disciples. Let's go there. We all know this, but let's go there. This is one of the important functions of the church. Matthew 28 verse 16.

Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee to the mountain which Jesus has appointed for them. When He saw them, or when they saw Him, they worshiped Him, but some doubted. Jesus came and spoke to them saying, all authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even at the end of the age. Preaching the gospel is a function of the church in the world. It is not the church. It is the function of the church.

The church are the people. I mean, in the very word, that's what it means in Greek. It's a group of people. It's not a building. We call this the church building sometimes. It's just the way we use language, but this isn't the church.

If we own the building, it's not the church, it's a building. The church are the people of God, brought together for His work, for His will. Now, there's a lot of functions that the church has. One is outside. The other is to make disciples. That means people have to come in and become discipled. As I've said before, we cannot disciple people with media. We can preach the gospel with media. We can teach them certain things, but you can't disciple people with media. Discipleship comes from interaction with other disciples on an intimate level to where the people then become part of the ecclesia. They become part of the church. It's a group of people called by God.

I realize through all the years one of the hardest lessons for me to learn since I'm a firstborn, I want to fix everything, is I can't fix everything. Only God fixes everything. I can't fix the greater church, but I can't have God help fix me.

And we, we can strive to become what we're supposed to be. And in doing so, we can help influence others to do and be what they're supposed to be, because we don't live in a vacuum. We influence others. We either influence them for good or evil. It's that simple. Now, the more we try to go fix things, the worse we make it. Let me tell you that.

But when we let God help fix us, we interact with each other as a group, as a small part of the body of Christ, then we can help others. As healthy cells, we can help other cells.

As sick cells, guess what we do in the body? We make other cells sick. That's why the body analogy is used. So as healthy cells, we can help each other and we can help others.

So we must strive to do that. So I'm going to go through a few scriptures, just basic scriptures about the church. What the Bible says, what the New Testament says the church is supposed to be, and then we need to apply it to us. But we're supposed to be. We must become this, and then we can help others become this.

Not only others who may God send to us, but others in other small groups that come together.

Because, you know, there aren't very big groups. There's no mega churches in the churches of God. There's no place out there where you have 10,000 people meeting every Sabbath in a mega church.

We used to have a few. We used to have some places like in Pasadena where there was over 5,000 people a week meet. One of the first mega churches in the United States. That doesn't exist anymore. That was the good. Those were the good old days. Those were the best of times. Those were also the worst of times. The headquarters of the worldwide church of God of Pasadena was a place of pretty strange politics. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

It's always that way. At some point, we have to accept that. And when we do, we say, okay, how am I supposed to be? And how is my neighbor? How can I help my neighbor in my group?

And then how can I help others become that way? But it all starts one-on-one. It all starts with what you and I have control over. We don't have control over the big picture. Only the head of the church has to control over the big picture. So we have to accept that. But that doesn't mean we have no control at all. It doesn't mean we have no influence at all. It means we can have a lot of positive influence when we stop trying to control and we start living the way we're supposed to live. Let's go to Ephesians. These are scriptures we've read many times, but you know, I was looking at these a few verses I want to go through, the few passages today, and realized that some of these I haven't read here in years. We give sermons on so many different things that there are certain passages we say, well, everybody knows that, and so we don't read them.

And you read them and say, oh yeah, people say, oh yeah, that's a pretty common passage. But then, if you really start to analyze that some of these passages we spend years, we don't read.

Ephesians 4, verse 1. Here, Paul centers on, and he tells you all Ephesians 4. He's talking about how that church in Ephesus is supposed to function. It wasn't functioning correctly. Now, Paul was dealing that in a bigger context. Most of the churches he started, I mean, the only ones you see that really get a pretty decent letter is Thessalonica and Philippi. Nobody else gets a good letter. Most of the churches he started did not function very well.

He had a couple that did. So he's got this bigger context. He's trying to get all these churches to function, and none of them seem to be doing well, not none of them. He's got a couple of them. The rest of them just don't seem to be working very well. I mean, he got so bad that the apostle Paul, I mean, apostle John, okay, John, the one closest to Jesus Christ, was kicked out of a congregation. Can you imagine that? He sent somebody to the congregation to tell him, well, this is a mess, and they kicked his messenger out and said, no, we don't want anything to do with John. That's pretty dysfunctional church. When you kick out the messenger from the apostle John, something's wrong in your congregation, okay?

So some of this worked, and some of it didn't. It was the best of times. It was worse of times.

We have to work at this. We have to let God's Spirit guide us. As we get towards Pentecost, we begin, we have to prepare for the idea that God's Spirit is in us, not just to change us individually. That has to happen first. But then it's a collective changing. You and I have become part of a community. This is a small part of the community right here, but it's a lot more than us. If we only see this as the community, we have a wrong viewpoint. I have been very pleased with how many people here are willing to go to those little churches in Corpus Christi. I think we had, what, 13, 14 people here went down and kept the Passover and the Night to Be Much Observed and the First Day of Unleavened Bread with the People in Corpus. Serve the smaller community. I'm so glad there are people here that are willing to go give sermons and sermonettes and give special music in Austin and in Waco. It's a lot of work to go do that for 25 people, but that's part of the body of Christ. We have to serve them. Now, we can't serve everybody, but we can serve what's right in front of us. We can't affect everybody, but we can affect what's right in front of us. That's what we have to do. It's a collective experience. There are no independent Christians, a person who can live off by himself and say, I refuse to have contact with other Christians and be a Christian. That's not possible. I'll show you that in a minute. It's not possible.

Ephesians 4 verse 1, he says, I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling which you were called. He asked this church to zero in on their calling.

Same thing with us today. With all lowliness and gentleness, with long suffering, bearing with one another in love. He starts this church, it's not starting, it's in the middle of his letter. He says, look, you've got to put up with each other. Bear with each other in love.

A congregation is not an easy place to live all the time.

In so many sermons I give on doctrines, and we talk about the meaning of the holy days and this symbol of what God is teaching us. We go through the life of Christ, and we go through the stories in the Old Testament. But when we get into the New Testament, it's amazing how many of the instructions are about... I mean, they're written to churches, and they're telling these churches, you're not working. Here's how it should work. Now, I'm not saying that this congregation isn't working very well. The point is, if we're going to prepare for Passover, we've got to think about these things. Because the greater church of God needs healthy cells. And this is pretty sick body.

And I can't make the body heal it. You can't either, but guess what? We can have God heal us.

We can have God heal us. He says, "...endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." He says, you've got to work at this. You can endeavor at this. It's not easy. We've got to keep the unity of Spirit in the bond of peace.

There is one body, one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all. But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. We're all different. We have different gifts. We'll talk about that in a minute, too.

We have different gifts.

And, but this peace, we have to endeavor to have this peace.

We always don't agree on everything. Now, there are certain things we have to agree on to be part of the church. There are certain things we don't agree on. There are certain things if we disagree on, you need to go to another church. And if you don't believe in the Sabbath, then you need to go to another church. There's other things we can disagree on because we have to say, well, God isn't clear. We can live with that. Or sometimes we put up, we live with the fact that some of us learn faster than others. If we all grew the exact same time and everything, I guess it'd be great with it. But it doesn't work that way. My life doesn't work that way. Just as I assume as I think I'm working well in one area of my life, I get another area. Right? Oh, no. Now, I got to get this under control. And then something else. It's like that little game kids play with the gophers to pop up and you got to hit them with the mallet. Right?

That's the way the Christian life is. You think you got all your gophers down in their holes, but it just doesn't work that way. Skip down to verse 11.

And he himself gave some of to the apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. This is why there are people ordained in the church. There's a core doctrine in teaching about the church. There are people ordained to do different things. There's people who do different functions. And there are people who teach in Sabbath school, but they're not ordained, but they act as a teacher at that level. Different people do different things. There's people who sing. Now, people who sing aren't necessarily ordained, but it is a type of ministry. There are people who hand out songbooks. Now, we don't ordain. There is no position of songbook hand-around or whatever it be in the Bible. Okay? Put that's an act of ministry. It's an act of service. So we have ordained physicians in the church because the church is not chaotic.

But then all of us are to participate in this. But he says, why does God have it that way? Why does God ordain people to appoint people and give different people gifts? What's the reason? There's a reason for this. Now, what happens is we can stop at verse 11, and that becomes a reason in itself. And so then we get into this thing. Well, man, if I could ever be a deacon, I would truly be a spiritual person. No. There's a reason for all this. It's the reason that we have to center in on. This is how we live our lives. This is why God sets things up the way He does. There's an end result that He wants. And I gave an entire sermon about six years ago on these verses. I never got out of these verses because that's how important this is.

He says, for the equipping of the saints, who are the saints? It's everybody in this room with God's Spirit. You know, saints in the Bible aren't some special group of people that receive samehood because God did a miracle through them or whatever. Saints are all those who have God's Spirit. Even the people in Corinth, He called saints. Boy, that was one messed up group of saints.

Ephesians wasn't always functioning very well. Just read the book. Read Colossians.

Colossians was a messed up place, too. For the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, of service, for the edifying of the body of Christ. Every service we should do should help each other.

We should be committed to service that helps each other. Any time that we think that, well, a position or being charged with something is my spiritual badge. You've already failed, even if you do a good job. You understand that? You've already failed, even if you've done a good job. As far as you, you may have helped others. But the reason we do anything is to do service. We are equipped to do service to help others. This is what a congregation is. This is what a church is.

If we're going to make disciples, if new people walk in this door and you realize doing just between the first and last days of 11 bread, we had probably at least, I mean, we even had people come to the Passover that we've never seen that sit back in the back of this room and watched. We had at least 40 people visit us in the last week that aren't members of this congregation.

And some of them are going to want to come and be discipled. It is not only the pastor's job to disciple. It's the wrong concept.

People come here to be discipled by this family. If we're not that family, we cannot disciple them. All we can give them doctrine. And I tell you what you have when you have 160 people whose their sole purpose to being together is to know doctrine. Now, we have to know doctrine. Without doctrine, we won't be the church of God. But you understand what I'm saying? That's all they know. They become 160 people arguing over doctrine. That's all they become.

That doctrine has to have a purpose. It has to be a reason God gives us this knowledge. And this is here. He's telling this church in Ephesus. This is what the reason for it.

Till we all come, everybody, till we all come to the unity of the faith and then the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. And we just went through all this time period where we spent three, four weeks before Passover talking about examining ourselves, seeing how we measure up with the example of Jesus Christ. We talked about His blood. We talked about His body and the bread that we take. And we talked about the measure of Christ. And now, the purpose of the church and the purpose for even having leaders in the church is so that all of us, it's not so that you can serve the leaders, it's so that we can help all of us.

Okay, that's the purpose of this. All of us can become like Christ. That is the purpose. That's why we're here.

That's why I do what I do. Believe me, if that wasn't the purpose, I can make more money someplace else. But that purpose is more important than any money I can make. I can go back out work in the advertising world if I wanted to.

Of course, today is my birthday. If I keep getting much older, I couldn't because I'm no one would want me, but I'm already too old. Okay, well, I've just been important. I'm already too old. I guess I'll have to stay your pants, or I have no choice. No, there's a reason for doing this.

There's a reason for getting out of bed in the morning.

So we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to be a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, and the cutting craftiness of the sinful plotting.

Every one of us here has to know the teachings of God so well that nobody can walk in there.

Nobody should be able to walk in here and convince us to give up the core knowledge that we have.

I always know you're functioning well if somebody comes in here and tries to convince you to do something that is obviously against God. And I don't have to take care of it, you do.

I don't mean by running the person out on a rail, but by simply saying, sorry, that's not what we believe.

I think good.

You know, we love you. You're welcome here. But actually, if you're going to try to convince us all to keep Easter, you need to go ahead and find a church that keeps Easter. Good!

That's what we should do. Now, the person causing division, then I am supposed to step into it. Division is an important thing. I thought about giving a sermon sometime on discipline in the church. We don't talk about discipline in the church. I haven't given a sermon on discipline in the church in 25 years. And yet there is discipline in the church.

I mean, what really scares me is the discipline for elders. If I mess up, I'm supposed to be brought in front of all of you and told I messed up. I mean, if I really go out here and just blatantly break one of the tinkemamens, I'm supposed to be corrected in front of all of you. That's sort of scary. Maybe that's why I don't want to talk about discipline in the church. That's a scary thing.

That's what we're supposed to do. There's a lot of things we're supposed to do that as far as discipline in the church, we don't do it.

But he says here that we're not tossed to and from. We're not in a constant state of you know, just every little thing that comes out. Now, we're always going to have questions. We're always going to be debating certain things. We always have, you know, someone will look at a scripture and see it in a little different light. We have to look at that. We have to discuss it. That's not what I'm talking about. There's a difference between discussion and legitimate looking at things and what he's talking about here where we just don't know what we believe. We just go back and forth and back and forth. One day we believe that you have an immortal soul. The next day we believe you don't have an immortal soul. We just go back and forth. He says you can't do that. There's certain things we all come to agreement on, and then we try to work through the rest of it with God's help.

But speaking the truth and love may grow up in all things into Him who is the head Christ. I believe one of the problems in the churches of God today is we lost sight of who's the head of the church. And there it is right there. We have lost sight of that. So guess what happens when we forget who the head of the church is? You and I and everybody else try to fix it. We have thousands and thousands of people trying to fix something that you and I weren't given the right to fix.

Interesting problem. Like I said, I'm a firstborn. I understand that. I run around all the time. I must fix it. I must fix it. I meant to fix it. My wife's a firstborn German. That's even worse. We decided if I could be king and she could be queen, the world would be a good place to live in.

And then we just invade Poland. I mean, that's what Germans do.

I know there's Germans here. I'm not making fun of you. I sense... Verse 16, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies. What every joint supplies. Everybody brings something to the table here. Everybody's been called by God here. I don't care who you are, what you think you don't have. You are here because you supply something to the group. And if you supply something to this group, we supply something to another group. We don't live in a vacuum. Every congregation has the ability to affect other congregations and to affect disciples. Everybody brings something. Because you're called by God to bring something. He says, according to the effect of working by which every part does its share... The problem is sometimes we want to do somebody else's share. ... causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself and love. That's a remarkable statement. That's a 30-minute discussion on that verse alone. This is what a congregation is supposed to be. It's what the greater church is supposed to be. It's not what most congregations are. It's not what any congregation is all the time. And it's not what the greater church is much of the time. It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. This is the goal. This is why we exist. When we do this, then God will use this to affect other people. And disciples will come along. But they have to come into this kind of thing. They have to come into a situation where they see the truth being lived, not just being talked about. They have to see it being lived, not just talked about.

They have to have models. They have to have mentors. A whole group of people. Not a perfect group of people. I've talked to so many people over the years that said one of the greatest trials they went through in life was when they came into the church and realized it wasn't perfect.

And it was a shock. That's why when I invite people to church now, I tell them, now I want you to understand something, we're not a perfect group of people. We're just a group of people trying to go in the direction God is leading us. I've actually had people say, oh, good. So I tell people up front now, if you're looking for a perfect church, you probably won't be happy with us.

If you're looking for a group of people just trying to obey God and sometimes we stumble, we fall, then you'll probably feel fine with us.

This is our purpose. The rest of this chapter is interesting because it's all about personal conduct and getting along with each other. The church in Africa just couldn't get along. There are basically two factions fighting over certain issues. They could not settle. Jewish issues, Gentile issues, they could not settle it. In fact, part of the book of Ephesians is Paul saying, God's torn down that division between you. Why do you still have it? It doesn't exist anymore. All you did, yet did, in their minds. They couldn't fix it. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Let's go to Acts 2. Acts 2 gives us a description of a church that was at its peak. It's a shame because it only had existed for a couple of days.

From this point on, it never was quite this good. Acts 2. It's not long after this that they had their first problem in the church. And it's an argument over between the who's taking care of the widows of the Hellenistic Jews and the really Jewish Jews. Now, to you and I, they would have all been Jews, but they weren't together. And so you have a church that starts like this. God pours out His spirits, and within a few weeks, they have a major contradiction among themselves and a major problem that, as an outsider, you look at it and say, they know the difference. You know, it's like someone told me they went to Africa one time, but there was a war going on between two tribes within this country. And the man said, well, how do you tell each other apart? I mean, you all live in the same country, they all look the same. The guy said, oh, no, no, no, you can't tell the difference.

You know, remember the old Star Trek, the old Star Trek series, where the guy was black on one side and white on the other, and he and another guy were trying to kill each other? Some of you aren't Trekkies, but you've missed out on life, that's all. Well, and the two guys were trying to kill each other because the other guy was white on the other half and black on the other half, so they hated each other. Everybody else looked at him and couldn't tell the difference, till they realized, oh yeah, okay, you're black on the left side, and you're black on the right side, and that was the end of the difference. And they destroyed an entire civilization because they killed each other off over that. Well, if we would have looked at the Jewish churches, we said, I don't know, what's the difference? At church in Jerusalem. Big church, thriving church. Guess who's in charge? The apostles are gained by Jesus Christ. This has got to be the greatest place on earth. Most of the people there had known Jesus personally. It's the best of times. And now they're having an argument. They're having a big argument. It's the worst of times. And as to what we have are the characteristics of what the church is supposed to be. And there, after the Holy Spirit was poured out for a short period of time, they did it. Even the Jerusalem church, with the apostles in charge, didn't do it all the time. They weren't like this all the time.

We're human beings. We're imperfect. We're trying. We're struggling. And sometimes we fail. Sometimes we fail. It doesn't mean God is enjoying what He's supposed to do. And it doesn't mean that God isn't going to bring us out of our failures. It all depends if we understand the purpose of the church in Ephesians, and then we carry out what we're supposed to do. And we let Christ be the head of the church. I know. Sometimes we think, well, He sure doesn't even know what He's doing. We've just made it worse. We just made it worse. We just need to find out what He's doing and follow. Or sometimes we need to follow and then find out what He's doing. Sometimes following God isn't because you know what He's doing. You just follow God because He's God. Sometimes we have no idea what He's doing, but He's God, so we'll follow Him. Because we believe He knows what He's doing. Verse 40 of Acts chapter 2. And with many other words He testified. This is Peter. And exhorted them saying, be safe from this perverse generation. So verse 41, Then those who gladly received His word were baptized, and that day about three thousand souls were added to them. Oh, this is the best of times. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, in fellowship, in breaking of bread, and in prayers. This was a learning church.

They wanted to learn. And they were steadfast. They were baptized. They repented. And they were steadfast in the apostles' doctrine. This was a learning church. This is a church that was excited because they loved God's way. And they were moving forward in God's way.

If you go to, well, I don't know whether to spend time there or not. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 12. I have this in my notes, and then I have it where maybe I won't go there. But let's go there.

It's just a long chapter. I don't know if I want to read all of it. Because it's a sermon in itself. Once again, I've given entire sermons just on 1 Corinthians 12. But it's been a long time since I've read this. It's been a couple of years.

Remember who Paul is writing to? A church that's a huge disappointment to him.

He even tells them, you really don't want me to come there.

You know, this isn't going to be good, guys. He tells them to put somebody out of the church. He tells them this confusion is wrong. Getting drunk at the Passover is wrong.

And in 1 Corinthians 12, he talks about their spiritual gifts.

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that you were Gentiles carried away to these dumb idols, however you were led. Therefore I make it known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus a cursed and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. He's talking to these Gentiles who come out of pure idolatry. He's saying, okay, we know that you have God's Spirit because you've given up your idols. And you now believe in the one true God and you believe in His Son Jesus Christ. So we know that God's brought you this far, but you people still aren't where you're supposed to be. So he said something positive to them, which Paul does quite a bit. He usually sets up something by saying something positive. So we know that you have God's Spirit. We know that you're a church, but this church isn't working well. There are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries but the same Lord. There are diversities of activities but it's the same God who works all and all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the Prophet of all. Now that's the important point. What I've seen throughout my life in the Church of God since I was seven years old is the large diversities of gifts and usually they cause division.

I've seen differences of ministries and usually they cause division. This should not be.

This should be for the Prophet of all.

We have not always functioned very well. It's been the best of times and it's been the worst of times.

I remember when I was a kid, in the congregation we went to, it seemed like such the perfect congregation. It wasn't until I got older and my dad, who was a church elder, told me the stories. Two or three times where he had to save the pastor, literally get between the pastor because my dad was an elder and the man who was going to kill him. I got the same man. This minister was going to get killed two or three times. I guess he was an unpopular guy. It was men whose wives came to church and they, well, that pastor is taking my wife away so I'm going to go kill him. And he tells all these stories and was like, huh?

We all didn't see all that all the time as little children.

What happened to these people? Well, they got divorced. In the church, well, no, we put them out of the church. Well, what happened to this person or that person? And he would tell the stories. It was years later. I started to realize that the church wasn't as peaceful and wonderful as I thought it was. It doesn't mean there wasn't wonderful people and good, peaceful things there. I look at my experience in the church overall as a wonderful time.

I also look at it as the most stressful things I've gone through in life.

There are times in life it'd be easier not to be in the church. Well, you and I don't get that option because we are the church.

You say, well, I'm just going to leave the church, go off, live by myself, and then, you know, just me and God, it'll be okay. But at that point, the church is a group. The word means group.

So, you know, I'm going to remove myself from it. Well, now you got a problem. You see the problem? I remove myself from the group and then I'll be the perfect Christian. But it's a group. You can't say that. The logic is there. I remove myself from the group and I'll be a better member of the group. It doesn't work that way. He goes on, he says, For to one is given the word of wisdom to the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge, to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gift of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

Oh, wow! All those gifts mean, man, we could really have a vibrant, growing, wonderful church. No, all those all those gifts usually mean that people fight each other and split up.

And you have a group of the speaking in tongues and you have a group of the interpreting of tongues, but they won't get along with each other because the group who speak in tongues won't agree with the ones who interpret the tongues. The gifts God gives us tear us apart, and there's a reason, and Paul tells it. That's what's so important about 1 Corinthians 12. He tells us why God gives us gifts, and as human beings we use it to actually do the opposite of why God gives us the gifts. God gives us the gifts to edify each other. So why do gifts split people apart? And in my experience in the church, what's going on now for a long time, almost 50 years, using gifts to tear the church apart. Why? When he says, verse 11, but one and the same spirit works in all these things, distributing to each one individually as he wills. For as the body is one and as many members, but all members of one body being many, are one body, and so is Christ. For in one spirit we are all baptized in the one body, where the Jews are Greeks, where the slaves are free, we have all been made to drink of one drink. For in fact the body is not one member but many. If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? Think of the absurdity of what he just said. And if the ears should say, because I am not an eye, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? See, he's saying these have different functions, but what happens is, if we looked at this as the way God does, we're supposed to become one body, we could never do what we do. Well, I hear, you're just a big toe. I'm more important. No, I'm the big toe. I'm more important. You don't think your big toe is important? I get gout every once in a while in my big toes. Every once in a while you'll see me limp up here. Tell you what, every step I take, that big toe is real important. It's real important. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? Now, what'd you think? Paul's hyperbole here. If the whole body was a great big eyeball rolling around, he said, what could you hear if you were just one giant eyeball? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? See, he uses hyperbole to say, look, let's think about what God is doing, and it changes. But wait a minute, wait a minute. I am an eyeball. I'm a whole lot better than the nose. All it does is smell. I can see. Yes, but I want a body that sees and smells and hears, and I want a body that works, that functions, that all these things work together.

He says, verse 18, but now God has set the members, each one of them, the body just as He pleased. You know, that's an incredible statement, because I tell you what, we don't believe that.

The majority of people in the churches of God today do not believe that. If we believed it, we would treat each other differently.

We don't believe Christ is the head of the church anymore.

When you get down to it, we do not, because if we believed He was the head of the church, we would act differently. Now, you can tell what we really believe, by the way we act.

Our actions tell what we really believe, eventually. And if we really believe Jesus Christ was the head of the church, we would act differently. But we do not. And it's where we are, in many ways, right now, being the church is the best of times. We meet in peace, in an incredibly beautiful hall with good acoustics, right? We meet in a church that has 160 to 170 people.

And Sabbath-keeping churches today, that's a pretty large church, I'm sad to say.

You and I, most of us here, aren't living in poverty, if you are.

There isn't any of us here that's going hungry. It's the best of times, and it's the worst of times.

People will look back on this day and time, and they'll say, they did not believe Jesus was the head of the church.

They did not submit to Jesus Christ as the head of the church.

He goes on and talks about this whole thing about the body, this symbol of the body as the church, but He tells us why it doesn't work. Gifts don't bring unity by themselves.

Gifts in human beings bring disunity.

They do. Gifts by themselves bring disunity. That's sad, but they do.

Then we get to verse 31, where Paul says, But earnestly desire the best gifts. All of us should want the best gifts that God can give us, and then he makes this statement, and yet I show you a more excellent way. Let me tell you something that is so important, it's so excellent, that gifts become absolutely secondary. Now, what we believe is gifts are everything.

Gifts are everything, and no, they're not.

Because then in chapter 13, he goes through Agape. He said, Without this, gifts don't mean anything. With this, gifts are used to produce what Christ once produced. When we have the character of God being developed in us, then God uses the gifts He gives to us to produce what He wants to produce. No, what you and I want to produce.

No, what you and I want to produce.

It's what He wants to produce.

Many times, because of our gifts, we already have in our mind what God wants to do. And it's different than our neighbor. You know why? Our neighbor has a different gift. So they view life through their gift. We all view life through our talents and lack of talents.

So, if you have great musical talent, there's one thing that you really want. More music in the church. If you're a good speaker, there's one thing you want. And we went, I want these sermon egg guys, and the guys giving the sermons to be better speakers.

So, whatever your talent is.

And so we look at everything through our talents and our lack of talents. So we do.

Instead of looking at, am I Christ-like? And then God will use our talents to fulfill what He wants to fulfill.

I want to show you a more excellent way in the church of God.

I want to show you a more excellent way, Paul says, after telling them all about their talents.

He goes on, if we go back to Acts 2, we start looking at these characteristics of that church.

In verse 42, it says, they were together in fellowship and breaking of bread. The early church was a church of fellowship.

You know, there's a remarkable statement made by John in 1 John 1. Let's go to 1 John 1.

And then we'll come back and finish up here in Acts 2. But 1 John 1, verse 3, breaking into the middle of a sentence here to get the flow where John's going. He says, that which we have seen and heard, we declare to you that you may also have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

You and I have to have that close relationship with God as our Father with Jesus Christ. And if we do, certain things happen. And these things we write to you that your joy might be full, John says. This is the message that we have heard from Him and declare to you that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. Well, that's obvious.

If we say we have a relationship with God, and we don't live like we have a relationship with God, we're lying.

But notice verse 7. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. When you and I are cleansed from our sins, it brings us to God's Spirit. We are now brought together to have fellowship with other people. You see, but oh, it's so hard to have fellowship with these people.

This is part of the work.

Read the New Testament.

It wasn't easy to have congregations.

It wasn't easy to get congregations into groups. Or groups to work together.

It wasn't then. It's not going to be an easier now.

I mean, we're not just supposed to be a congregation, either.

We're supposed to be something greater than ourselves. We're part of salvation history.

The work that God is doing on the earth.

You know, when we go to the face of the Tabernacle, it's just to see other people of like mind, right? When you give your offering, it's because you want to see a magazine get into someone's hands, or someone come on to that website and learn about God's truth, or someone turn in the television program. We want our children to go to the United Church of God's hands. We want to be more than just ourselves. The Church is supposed to be more than themselves. You read through the book of Acts, and one of the things Paul did for years, it was every place he went, he took collections to send back to Jerusalem because they were in poverty. Boy, they were the best at times for a while. Then you see for about 20 years, the Church in Jerusalem was in absolute poverty. And Paul had to go all over the world, collecting money to send back to Jerusalem. They were the worst at times then.

That he collected money for. Because those churches saw themselves as part of the Jerusalem Church. We want to be part of something greater than ourselves.

But we have to fix home first. We always have to fix home first.

We have to make sure we're right. It says there, back in verse 42, that they continued in prayers. The early church was a praying church. They were a praying church.

You and I have to be praying church. That's not an option.

In verse 43 it says, and fear came upon every soul. Now, it's talking about all these good things that it said, but fear came upon them. What that means is that they had an awesome respect for God. You and I need to have an awesome respect for God. In verse 44 it says, there were many signs and wonders in that church. The early church was a church where things happened. We said, okay, let's wait around and wait for God to make something happen.

We make things happen by doing God's way. We make things happen by living it.

He said, well, yeah, well, you know, I don't know. I don't get along with too many people here.

Nobody divided me over their house. Well, then you invite them over your house. Make things happen. You know, the humorous Will Rogers once said that if even if you're on the right track, if you just sit there, you'll get run over by a train.

So being on the right track and just sitting there doesn't work. That's not what life is.

Verse 44 and 45 describes how the church back in Acts 2 was a sharing church. Let's go there and read those verses. Acts 2. See, if we take Ephesians and we say, okay, these are our goals. This is what God says we're to be. We take 1 Corinthians 12 and 13, and he says this is how you're going to do it. We get to Acts 2 and he says this is what it'll look like. So this is what we have to make sure we look like. Verse 44 says, now all who believe were together and had all things in common. They sold their possessions and goods, invited them among all as anyone had need. How did they share? It was a sharing church, was a giving church. It says in verse 46 that they continued daily with what accorded the temple. The early church was a church that worshiped together. You know, Hebrews 10, 23 through 25 says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. The idea that that means the assembling of yourselves together means, well, I don't know, me and one other person meets together for the Sabbath. That's what that means. That's not what that can mean. It can't mean that. In the context of the book of Hebrews, he's talking to the Hebrew Christians, the Jewish Christians, the Jewish Christians had a very formalized worship ceremony. They believed they had to come together in the synagogue on the Sabbath. It was a command. And when the church started, guess what they did? Read through the book of Acts. They came together as the church to meet on the Sabbath. The forsaking of the assembling together, we're told not to do that. But he also said in Hebrews, it will become common.

It will become common. People will just give up. This will get too hard.

How are we going to help Christ change the world if we can't do it among ourselves?

Can't do it among ourselves. It's not easy. The problems aren't solved overnight.

But it's what we're supposed to do. Verse 47 says they praised. Well, verse 46 says they broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart. In other words, they actually knew each other. They went to each other's homes. You and I have telephones and computers. We can communicate with each other in ways that they could never do.

They communicated with each other. Verse 47 said they praised God. The early church was a praising, thankful church. We talked about singing yesterday. They were a thankful, praising church. Verse 47 is what I really find interesting too. It says, praising God and having favor with all the people. The early church got persecuted. But you will find that when people knew them personally, they said, yeah, that's really a decent group of people. They found favor with people that weren't in the church. They thought their religion was weird, but they were decent people. They were good neighbors. They were nice people to have around.

That's who we should be.

Our neighbors shouldn't say, oh, they're just weird. I think they do sacrifices in their house.

People might say, well, they're weird. They go to church on Saturday. But you know, they're really nice people. They're decent people. They interact. They're kind. They're friendly. They wave when they go by.

They don't roll down the window and yell, repent, you pagan!

They found favor in the sight of the people around them.

That's what we're supposed to be. That's a big order for a church, isn't it? But see, it doesn't matter how big the church is. 80 people, 100 people, 800 people, 20 people. It doesn't matter. Once you get a group of people together, this applies.

So size doesn't matter. We think size matters because we live in a world where we measure everything by numbers, because we live in a capitalistic society where we measure everything by numbers. The more you have, the better you are, and anything. That's the way we see the world. That's not the way God always sees everything. That's not the way God always sees everything.

We have, coming up in a few short weeks, Pentecost. We need to prepare for that. We'll be talking about the Holy Spirit and how God works in this through His Spirit and covering some of those things over the next few weeks with other subjects. We also need to understand and remember what that day symbolizes. God started a new era on Acts 2. He started the age of the church, the age of the called-out ones. We weren't born into the church in the way that people were born into ancient Israel. We're all kinds of peoples, different backgrounds, different nationalities. We have different ethnic backgrounds. It should be that way. That's what it's supposed to be, neither Jew nor Gentile. People brought together a group of called-out ones so that Ephesians 4, and 1 Corinthians 12 and 13, and Acts 2 is carried out through God's Spirit. And we'll try. And sometimes it'll be the best of times.

I mean, this spring Holy Day season for me was one of the best of times. This was for me a remarkable Holy Day season. And now comes some time in the future it'll be the worst of times.

And then it'll be the best of times until Christ comes back. That's the manner of the church.

But God has called us to be His people, to weather this, to work together. God has called us to become a shining light in the world. We have that opportunity to do that here. We have that opportunity to do that in Corpus Christi and in Austin and in Waco and in Houston and in Dallas. We have these little places we can do this. But that can get bigger and bigger, depending on what God wants to do with it. And we can have an influence on others, other churches of God. We can have a positive influence on new people. But we will never do it until we go back to Ephesians forward and say and ask God, help me. I can't take over Christ's job as head of the church, but help me to become what you want me to become as a member of your church.