How to Love Your Church Family Part 1

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Love Your Church Family Part 1. He will be reading out of Acts 20:1-16

If you want to love your church, don’t be the one man show, don’t be the lone ranger, don’t be the person who’s gonna do it all by themselves, but rather be the kind of person who is gonna serve with one another. Hello. This is pastor Mike Sanders. Welcome to Hope Worth Having radio program, and we are looking forward to sharing God’s word with you. And today, we’re gonna be in Acts chapter 20 verses one through 16, and I want us to learn about how to love your church family.

Isn’t that something? How to love your church family. I know it’ll be a blessing. So let’s get our bibles and let’s start learning together. If you have your Bibles this morning, let’s go to Acts chapter 20.

In Acts chapter 20, we’re gonna be in verses one through 16 and do our best to try to cover as much as we can. While you’re turning there, let me share a story with you about Elliot Huck. He was a 14 year old boy from Bloomington, Indiana, and he decided that he would skip the preliminaries to the national spelling bee. And though he had placed 40 out of more than 250 spellers in last year’s competition, and he was favored to go again, he felt convicted in his heart that he would stay home this time. More precisely, he felt convicted that he would stay in his church.

The Bloomington Herald Times championship was held on a Sunday. And in Huck’s eyes, the competition conflicted with his view of the biblical commandment to rest on the Sabbath. The paper writes that he said, I always try to glorify God with what I do in the spelling bee because he is the one who gave me the talent for spelling. He went on to say, now I think I’m going to not spell and to try to give glory to God in that. It certainly wasn’t an easy choice for Elliot Hock to choose to stay home.

He loved his time in Washington DC at last year’s competition, and he was looking forward to the same this year. But the expert Speller concluded, and I quote, I have just accepted that God knows what’s best and I’m just gonna do what he says. When we read the story of Elliot Huk, we certainly are impressed with his love for the Lord, but also uniquely his love for the church and how much he desired to be with God’s people. When we come to Acts chapter 20 in verses one through 16, we are introduced to the apostle Paul getting ready to head out of Ephesus. And he as well expresses and demonstrates how much he loves the church.

He is a model for us on how to love the church. Just a little bit of background, you see in verse one of chapter 20, that the uproar had ceased. You remember last week that there was a riot in Ephesus, because the impact of the gospel, the effect of the gospel upon the people’s lives, is that they were getting rid of their idols, and they were turning away from their sin, and totally following Christ. And this was such a dramatic change that it was influencing the economy in Ephesus. So much that they came together and started a riot, and the bible says in verse one, that after the uproar had ceased, that Paul called the disciples to himself.

We see in verse two that the bible says, Now when he had gone over that region, he encouraged them with many words and came to Greece. And verse three says, they stayed three months. And when the Jews plotted against him, as he was about to sail to Syria, he decided to return through Macedonia. So what we have here is the apostle is facing much opposition. He’s decided to leave Ephesus, because even though the riot had ceased, there was still turmoil, there was still trouble in the community.

And in an effort to try to calm things down for the local church that was in Ephesus, he desired that it was time for him to move on. You recall that he spent over three years in the city of Ephesus, helping this church to not only begin, but helping it to be established, to grow, to be organized, and to be effective in proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. But in his travels, he learns that there is a plot against him. To take his life. And so the apostle has to make some changes to his travel plans.

And so he calls together leaders, and he calls together the church, and he gets together with the disciples, and he teaches us just as we watch him unfold his affection, and his love for the church on how we can love our church. And when we refer to the church, we’re not talking about buildings, we’re not talking about technology, we’re not talking about property, and all the different things that are going on here at the Open Door Church. We’re talking about people. Because the church is people. It is God’s people.

The people who have been called out of the world into the marvelous gospel, the marvelous light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And how is it that we can love one another? How is it that we can love each other as a church family? The first thing that I want you to see is that we need to encourage one another. That we need to encourage one another.

Again, I take you back to verse one. We already talked about the circumstances, but I want you to see the phrase there in verse one where it says, that He called the disciples to Himself, and He embraced them. Then I want you to jump down to verse two, and notice again the bible says that He encouraged them with many words. What we see the apostle doing with the disciples, with the different believers, is that showing His love by encouraging them. How did He encourage them?

He showed affection by embracing them. And then he showed affection by encouraging them with his words. The apostle was committed to seeing those who had come to Christ. Converts who had believed in Christ, he was committed to their spiritual growth. His strategy was not simply just to win a bunch of people to Christ, and then leave them dangling into the winds of the doctrines of the worlds, or the philosophies of the worlds.

But rather to root them in the faith. And it was his determination that not only having established churches in the known world, and now he’s on his third missionary journey, but that he would go back to these particular churches, and that’s where we see Macedonia and Greece, and these particular areas that he is describing in verse one as he gives us his itinerary, and even the changes of his itinerary because of the plot that was against him. But his desire to go back to the people of God. His desire to go back to them and to encourage them and to help them to be strong in the faith. When we come down to verse two, and we again underscore that phrase that he encouraged them with many words.

It is the Greek word parakaleo, which means to exhort, or it’s the idea of comforting and encouraging, and giving consolation. So what he is teaching us here is that the apostle was a man, as Luke is describing this narrative of the apostle’s plans and his journey from leaving Ephesus, going back to the churches that had been already established, he helps us to see that the apostle’s desire is to come alongside and to pick up or to support or to encourage one another. And friends, we know that this word is also used in referring to the Holy Spirit. The Bible describes that when Jesus was communicating with the disciples about his departure into heaven, that he told them that he would send them a helper. And the Greek word is again, the idea of someone who would come alongside of us.

Someone who would come to encourage us and to strengthen us. I want you to know the great need that every time we come together as God’s people, how important it is for us to encourage one another. It’s easy to come to church and to be skeptical, or to be critical, or to find fault with this particular song, or maybe this particular ministry, or things aren’t done exactly the way that you would like them to be done. And what happens is we create a critical spirit, and we become negative people, and we start looking down, and we start spec finding, trying to find what’s wrong, when really what God calls us to do is to come together as a church family, and to love one another by encouraging each other. And to recognizing that everybody comes with different challenges in their life.

And that throughout the week, maybe we’ve all gone our different ways, and we’ve done our different things, and we have our roles and responsibilities, but then we come back together on Sunday. We don’t know what everybody’s been through, we don’t know what everybody is facing, but God calls us to be an encouragement. My challenge to you this morning is for you to desire every Sunday when you come, is to encourage one another, is to encourage God’s people, is to recognize that God is calling you to be a blessing. He is not calling you to drain people or to sap people of their energy, but rather to come alongside of them and to encourage them. If you’re the kind of person who has become negative in your spiritual walk, and maybe you kinda always are seeing everything, the glass half full, then I want you to know that God is calling you to be that kind of person who will repent of that, turn away from that negativity, and to embrace the spirit of encouragement in your heart.

And rather than seeing through people, and finding out what’s wrong with them or their faults in their life, I wanna encourage you to be the kind of believer, and the kind of member, and the kind of Christian that helps see people through their challenges, and their troubles, and their trials. That is the message that God has. That’s the kind of person that the apostle Paul was, is that he was a man who encouraged others. We’re called to simply encourage people in their walk towards heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you would begin every day with that mindset, if you would begin your day saying, Lord, you’ve blessed me so much and you’ve given me so much and I just wanna encourage and I just wanna bless others.

It is so unfortunate that the vocabulary of Christians is often void of terms such as build up, strengthen, and edify. But we’re reminded in Colossians four six, to let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each other. You see God is calling us to encourage one another. And when you think about that in relation to your own home, you think about that with your family, you think about it with your spouse or your children or your grandchildren or different people in your lives, We gotta remember that people cannot sustain a constant negativity in their life, it’s impossible for them. And you have to know that if you’re always finding fault with your spouse, that it’s going to create tremendous friction in your relationships.

And that if you’re always ragging on the kids, and if you’re always finding fault And I’m not saying things don’t need to be addressed, and things don’t need to be dealt with in helping your children to build their character and their strength in life. But I wanna tell you that a constant drip of that will eventually sever the relationship that you have with your children. And that you and I should use our words as the apostle did with many words. He encouraged them. Many words.

His words were words that spoke with grace. The bible tells us, let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth. But what is good for necessary edification that it may impart grace to the hearers. Think about that. What are people hearing out of your mouth?

What kind of words are they hearing from you? We think about the number of people in this world who have failed because of a lack of encouragement from people that they love and people that they respect. You say, well pastor, I was raised this way and my dad and mom never really encouraged me. Well so? That don’t make it right.

You and I have to be the people of change. And we, through the power of the spirit of God, have to let him use our lives to be an encouragement to one another. And not only within the church family, but within the context of our personal family. And in the context of even in our community, we want to be a people who speak kind words. Words of encouragement that may change the course of history, and may change the course, the life of somebody.

It is definite that when you encourage others, it does something in their hearts. The word encouragement has the idea of putting courage into the heart of someone. And you say, well, if you knew the people that I know, pastor, you would never encourage them. Well, I would say to you to ask God to help you to see the positive things in people And to begin to see the things and how God has created them in the image of God. If every time when you talk to your children, it’s negative, it’s pounding down on them, then it is no wonder that they don’t want a relationship with you.

I wanna challenge you to be that person who is encouraging one another. Listen to the words that Paul gave to the Thessalonians in chapter five and verse 11. Therefore, encourage one another. Build one another up just as you also are doing. Now some of you say, well pastor I’ve been trying to encourage everybody I can.

And praise the lord for you. It’s a blessing to have people like that in your life, amen? I always remind people, and I was taught this by a dear friend of mine, that you need three types of people in your life. And one, you need an apostle Paul, a mentor, someone who can help you and you can learn from, and somebody you can look up to. And number two, you need a Timothy’s, mentee.

Someone you can pour your life into. Someone you can help equip and train. But that third person was quite interesting to me. He said, You need a Barnabas, an encourager in your life. And we all need encouragers in our life.

We need someone who’s gonna always be cheering for us, supporting us. Not that anyone would want us to live a life of sin, or anyone would want us to fail, or to continue down a path that is destructive for our own lives. But we all need someone who is an encourager. And what you and I wanna pray about is God, how can I be an encouragement to people in my life? How can I be an encouragement to the body of Christ?

How can I be an encouragement to those who are in the family of God? Because a mark of genuine love for the church is a selfless commitment to being an encourager to others. I pray today that you will commit your heart to be more of an encourager and that even if you are already in this process and you embrace this mindset of being an encourager, that you will continue to seek more opportunities for God to give you to be one who encourages others. The second thing that I want you to see in this text is we begin to learn how to love our church family. It is not only to encourage one another, but it is to serve with one another.

I want you to look at verse four and five. Now, we have some best to go through them. But the bible says, and Sopitur of Berea accompanied him, meaning Paul, that Sopitur was with Paul, to Asia, also Aristarchus, and Secundus of the Thessalonians, and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy, and Tychicus, and Trophonus of Asia. These men going ahead waited for us at Troas. You say, pastor, how do you know how to pronounce those names?

I don’t. I just make it up like you do. But you don’t know them either and so anything I say sounds better than what you were thinking. But here’s what I want you to see is that there’s really eight people here that were on the apostle’s team. These were individuals who were serving with him on the third missionary journey.

Now I know that those of you that are detailed, you’re going through verse four, and you’ve only counted seven. And you’re saying, Well maybe the pastor, he’s got some issues and he really doesn’t know how to count. But the truth is, if you jump down to verse five, look what it says. These men going ahead waited for us. Well, who is the Us?

He’s talking about himself, Luke. Luke is the human author under the inspiration of God that would pen down the words of the book of acts and give us this narrative of how the early church function. And Luke is including himself and so he is that eighth person that is on this team. And what I want you to see here is that the apostle did not serve alone. We admire the apostle Paul and we certainly believe he was a great man of God.

And he was a very dedicated Christian committed to the cause of Christ and endured so much suffering so that the gospel may go to the regions beyond. But I want you to understand that he did not do it alone. There were others who served with him. The apostle reminds the Corinthians in first Corinthians three nine that we are God’s fellow workers. That is we are co laborers together in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If you want to love your church, don’t be isolated. Don’t be the one man show. Don’t be the lone ranger. Don’t be the person who’s gonna do it all by themselves, but rather be the kind of person who is gonna serve with one another. The church is not to be a place where we just sit down and we just learn the Bible and then we leave.

No, God has not called us to just leave, but rather he’s called us to gather together, and we learn the word of God, we soak it up, but then we go out and serve. And I tell you that Christians that do not serve God, they will become very sour Christians. They’re always taking in, but they’re never giving out the height of your healing in any trouble and trial in your life is not to stay isolated from others. It’s not to sit on the couch and to have self pity, but rather it is to break out and to use the platform that God has given you to serve and minister to others. But when you minister to others, do not do it alone.

Do not serve by yourself. It marks a big step in your development when you come to realize that other people can help you do a better job than you could ever do alone. So many times I talk to Christians about this matter and they say to me, well pastor, honestly, if I just do it by myself, I know it’s gonna be done right. If I get other people involved pastor, then they’re gonna mess it all up. And you see, you got some issues there.

And it might be that you are the kind of person who is a micromanager and controlling, and everything has to be just perfect before you’ll be able to do any kind of ministry. But listen, There’s never going to be a perfect world or a perfect circumstance in which we can serve God. Many times in the scriptures, we see Jesus, we see the apostles, we see God’s people just spontaneously engaging in ministry with the circumstances and the situation they had. And maybe they didn’t have a lot of preparation, and maybe they didn’t have a lot of training, but they just jumped in and got the job done. And what I’m saying to you is that, yes, I understand maybe you could do it better and you’ve been doing it for twenty years and it’s been doing it your way and now you don’t wanna mess that up.

But let me ask you, what benefit are you to the church in that you are the only one that can do this ministry, or you’re the only one that can do this particular way of ministry? You see, friends, it’s very much like a mother who always picks up the clothes or the toys of the children. Yes moms, you can do that for a while, but are you really helping your child? Are you really helping your child? Are you helping your child to develop skills that are important for them?

Sometimes we can enable our children not to succeed. We enable our children not to move forward in life because we do everything for them, and they become so dependent upon us that they cannot function in life without us. I want you to know that it’s just like that in the church. How important it is for you to work yourself out of a job. I remember when I first came to the Open Door Church, many of you remember pastor Art Brown.

How many of you remember pastor Art Brown? He was a wonderful soul winner, a wonderful man of the Lord. He was an associate pastor here. And when I had my meeting with him, I told him that it was his job to work himself out of a job. And he said, Pastor Mike, are you trying to get rid of me?

I said, No. I’m not trying to get rid of you. I said, I want you to train others to do what you do, so you can do other things for the Lord. And you see, that’s the key. Is that God has called every one of us not to be isolated in our ministry, but to train others.

When I was a young man and I had answered the call to preach at the age of 16, and in that revival service, that preacher from Kansas gave an invitation, and I went forward and my pastor said, Mike, why did you come forward? And I told him why I came forward, and we prayed together, and we committed everything to the Lord, and when I got done praying, he said, Mike, a call to ministry is a call to preparation. And so he wanted to get me into bible college when I graduate from high school and all that. But here’s the one thing that was great about my pastor, and again, we’re talking about a very small church of about 50 people. But he would say, now Mike, you come with me.

We’re gonna go visit the hospital. Come with me, we’re gonna go check on this family. Come with me, we need to run some errands and take care of some things for the church. And what I loved about it is he was including me in serving with him. And so many times, I was learning, not by what was taught to me, but what was caught in this sense that I was just observing how He did ministry.

And so we have to remember that it’s our job to work ourselves out of a job, not that we’re trying to get rid of you at the church, but that God is calling you to serve with others. Who is serving with you? Who is involved? You see, ministry is a partnership. Ministry is something that we do together as co laborers.

Who have you walked up to and said, hey, I’m looking for some help. Hey, would you pray about being a part of this ministry with me? Who’s gonna take your place? We’re not all gonna live forever, and we may desire that, but the point is, God is gonna call us home. And so we have to make sure that the next generation is ready.

The Bible teaches us that the men are to train the the younger men, and the older women are to teach and train the younger women. And I know many times we’re looking for some special program, or we’re looking for the pastor to to commission us. But really, you don’t need any of that. You just need to be led of the spirit of God. And you need to engage people in the opportunities that are before them.

Now church, we have a family’s responsibilities. When you become a member of a church, you commit to one another. Often people will say to me, pastor, why should I join a church? What’s the big difference? Who cares?

Why should I be a member of a church? And I always remind people that joining a church is an expression of your commitment to one another as the family of God. And when we join together, we are committing that we are gonna fulfill the one another’s in the bible. Very quickly, let me just relate to you or share with you some of the family responsibilities that we have for one another. We are to serve one another.

We’re to accept one another. We’re to forgive one another. We’re to greet one another. We’re to bear one another’s burdens. We’re to be devoted to one another.

We’re to honor one another. We are to teach one another. We are to submit to one another. There’s no doubt that the apostle loved the church, and he loved the church because his savior loved the church. And the Bible teaches us that Jesus gave his life for the church.

And so we’re called to love one another as believers, and we need to be committed as believers to encourage each other and to make sure that we are helping our brothers and sisters in Christ to walk towards Christ and not away from Christ, that we need to make sure we’re building up and strengthening and edifying one another as we are to do in the faith. So that’s how we love one another. Just those simple things, a kind word, a word of encouragement, just listening and just trying to inspire each other and not giving up on each other. These are the small ways that you can make a big difference in your church. If you’re not plugged into a church, get plugged in and find you a good bible believing local church where you can honor Jesus Christ.

Well, I wanna encourage you to check us out on hopeworthhaving.com, and I want you to sign up for our daily devotions. We can send you a daily devotion through email, and each day, you can open that daily devotion, be encouraged and inspired in the word of God, and just be able to get ready for the day that God has for you. So don’t forget to sign up on hopeworthhaving.com, those daily devotions that’ll be a blessing to you. This is pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ, there is hope worth having.