A message and a life worth multiplying

 “Meanwhile, the church multiplied...”

(Acts 9:31, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, February 26, 2012)

31 So the church

Jesus had promised His disciples that He would build His church, and that His assembly of worshipers would be on the move with the message and the life of the cross. The death of Jesus is a fact that yields a powerful message and a powerful way of life. Is that what you want?

Not everyone can accept the message of the cross. Among those who hear the message, not everyone can receive the gift of the powerful way of life that it demands. The church is at its best when it receives both the message and the way of life that flows from the fact of the cross.

The church is a New Testament reality based on the Old Testament Scriptures. The death and resurrection of Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament Scriptures. When Stephen, Philip, Saul, and Peter went out as representatives of the Lord's message and His surprising way of life, they preached the Old Testament. They clearly had many opponents who stood against them.

They preached something else in addition to the passages in the Law and the prophets that prepared the Jews for the coming Messiah. They preached the events that capped those Scriptures. Not only did passages from Genesis to Malachi prepare the people of God for the coming Messiah who would suffer, die, and rise again. In the fulness of time those events happened. They were convinced that the Scriptures and the events of Messiah were good news.

throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria

This good news of Jesus was being preached throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria. Those first century territories covered the area that was originally the Promised Land. Back in the day of Moses, the Canaanites were in that land. God gave that territory to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

But Israel would not obey the voice of the Lord in the Scriptures. They would not follow the Law of God.

Eventually they were driven from the Land, receiving the curse of the covenant that God had promised to them if they would not obey Him. Through the centuries of Old Testament history, it became clear that the kingdom of God would not come through Israel's sin.

Far less likely still was any idea that peace for the world could come through the message and life of Gentile nations. The Hebrew Scriptures were not even part of their religious systems. They did not know anything about a suffering Jewish Messiah. They certainly had not heard that the way to glory would come through a cross.

But God's settled intention since the foundation of the world was captured well in one of the songs of Israel. In the words of Psalm 100, “All people that on earth do dwell, sing to the Lord with cheerful voice; him serve with fear, his praise forthtell, come ye before him and rejoice.”

The message and life of the cross spread throughout the old territory of Israel, but it was just too good to stop at those old borders. People beyond Israel needed to know that good news. His chosen mechanism for the publication of salvation would be this assembly of suffering servants who would bring the Word forward in a great proclamation and demonstration of love. That work of God through the church, the body of Christ, would be unstoppable. The very gates of hell guarding the nations of the world would not be able to prevail against the people aligned with a Jewish Rabbi named Jesus who died for their sins, and rose again for the public declaration of a righteousness that comes to them from His obedience alone.

had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

This is our message. This is our way of life. Since the beginning of the Christian church, we have been a suffering assembly of worship. Peter and John suffered for the word of the cross. Stephen was stoned by an angry mob of religious rulers who found his teaching completely unacceptable. Saul of Tarsus faced death threats from those who were once his allies in persecuting the church.

Since those early days the suffering of the body of Christ has continued in every place where the message and life of the cross moved forward. But through it all the church has had peace with God and some measure of peace with one another around the common bond of Jesus. Through all the stonings, imprisonments, expulsions, murders, thefts, and oppressions that would take place since that day so long ago when our Savior died for our sins, the church was being built up.

How can you succeed with the word of the cross and the life of the cross? That message and that life demonstrate that power for the best multiplication is in God and not in mankind. When we get away from that message and that life, we become distracted, we lose, and others will take our place who remember these words: “Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever.”

Today in the western world, the church is held in derision by many, marginalized as archaic and out of step with the way things are, and considered dangerous and strange whenever it holds to the message and life that is its only glory, the cross. But its most formidable attack comes from within its own ranks from those who may still claim the message of the cross but combine it with a life that is foreign to that cross. When we combine a message that uses the Name of Jesus with a life that just yearns for success according to the world's terms, we empty the cross that we preach of its power. No matter how big that gets, it will never be the kingdom.

How do we come back home to the vitality of the persecuted church that was known in the first century throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria? We need to return to the King of the kingdom who made the heavens and the earth. He is the only one who can give us the fear of the Lord that would keep us from being too moved by those who might see us as fools. Only in Him will we have the comfort of the Holy Spirit, assuring us that this message and life is the Way, and worth living and dying for. Only then will we see the true multiplication of heavenly life.

What we need is God, the great God who made the earth, the good God who sees us in our weakness and rescues us. We need the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who knew what it would take to build a resurrection world and gave His Son for that greatest of all enterprises. We need the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who healed and taught with power that was far beyond anything that the Pharisees could compete with, but who was willing to empty Himself and suffer for our redemption. We need the Holy Spirit, giving us the words of the cross, and leading us in the life of that same cross. With God, we win. Without the cross, we have nothing to give, and we will never know the multiplication that causes rejoicing in heaven.

1. What is the church? Where did it come from? What is its purpose and destiny?

2. What is the significance of the territories mentioned in this summary verse?

3. Despite the persecutions, what was happening in the church in those early years?

4. What is happening in the church today?

OT Passage: Psalm 100