Eastwood Baptist Church, Gatesville, Texas

Eastwood Baptist Church, Gatesville, Texas On October 18 and 25, 1953, a group of believers came together and organized a church which would become Eastwood Baptist Church.

The church began its meetings in a white two-story house that stood in the midst of a grove of oak trees. Today, that beginning has been blessed and cultivated into a church building complex that includes a 300+ seat worship center completed in late 2003, education and office space and a fellowship hall. Eastwood has exciting, Christ-centered, blended worship services, a children's program, a youth program, Sunday School, and various Bible studies for members and guests of all ages.

06/08/2026

Yesterday's sermon. I address the church and politics at least once a year!
Render Unto Caesar (Matthew 22:15-22)
The lectionary readings this past week included the story of Jesus being challenged about paying the imperial tax. It’s an important story for understanding the Christian’s obligations to the government. Since we’re in another election season, and the country is celebrating its 250th anniversary (semiquincentennial) next month, I thought I would focus on that gospel reading this morning.
Our text is in Matthew 22. As you turn there, let me give you a bit of background on the story. This story is part of the Passion Week account in all three synoptic gospels. On Sunday, Jesus had come into town being acclaimed by the crowds, causing the religious leaders real concern. On Monday, Jesus cleared the temple of the moneychangers and animals, which was another challenge to the corrupt temple authorities and religious leaders. They resolved to get rid of him any way they could.
This story takes place the next day, on Tuesday. The leaders in Jerusalem were afraid to arrest Jesus openly, fearing the crowds would take his side. They needed some way to turn the crowds against him, or a pretext for the Romans to move against him. So they laid a trap that they were sure Jesus couldn’t escape. With that background, let’s read our text, Matthew 22:15-22.
The Pharisees saw themselves as the religious guardians of Israel. They hated Jesus because Jesus didn’t answer to them—he claimed to have authority straight from God.
Their partners in trying to trap Jesus were the Herodians. The Herodians weren’t particularly religious. They were more into political power—how to stay on the good side of Rome, and how to use Roman power for their own benefit.
Before the Pharisees and Herodians posed their question, they laid on the flattery: “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are.” Others might sell out to the rich and powerful, but not you! We know you’ll stand up to the Man! The crowd already perceived Jesus as a heroic, truth-telling prophet, based on his clearing the temple. The conspirators wanted Jesus to assume that role in a way that would make him vulnerable to arrest.
That was the set-up. Then came the question: “Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar, or not?”
The Romans assessed a tax of one denarius a year on every man, woman, and child in the empire, as a source of general revenue. (A denarius was worth one day's wages for a worker.) The Jews resented having to pay the tax because it was a reminder that they were under the power of a pagan government and couldn’t really do anything about it.
The Pharisees who posed the question were thinking, “We’ve got him now! If he says, ‘Jews shouldn’t pay the Roman tax. We should assert our independence! We should throw off the shackles of Roman oppression. God wants the land of Israel to be free!’ If he says that, the Herodians will immediately report him to the Roman authorities as a rebel, and he’ll be crucified.
On the other hand, if he says, ‘Yes, we should pay the tax,’ then we’ll tell the crowds that Jesus is nothing but a sellout and a collaborator with the Romans, and he’ll lose all his credibility. That way, when we arrest him and do away with him, the crowds won’t come to his rescue.”
But Jesus knew their evil intent. He responded to them, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius. On one side of the coin was an image of Tiberius Caesar. On the other side was an inscription that read, “Tiberius Caesar Augustus, son of the divine Augustus.”
Jesus asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied.
“So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
“When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.”
They were amazed that Jesus was able to disarm the trap so simply and effectively. They couldn’t accuse Jesus of being a rebel against Rome—Jesus had advocated paying the tax. But they couldn’t tell the people that Jesus ignored Jewish heritage and law. Jesus advocated giving to God what was properly due to God, which would include obedience and worship.
I think Jesus was the wisest man who ever lived, and this is a great example of his wisdom. But what Jesus says also gives us guidance about a critical question: How should a Christian relate to the government?
Jesus said, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” The Greek word translated “give back” is “apodidomi,” which means to pay, compensate, or give back. The implication is that Caesar, or governments in general, provide us with some important benefits, and therefore we should support the government with our taxes.
Do you remember the line from the Monty Python movie, “OK, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, fresh water, and system of public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?” A properly functioning government provides real benefits for the people. As we heard in the earlier reading from Romans 13, the Bible endorses the idea that the government is there to reign in bad behavior, punish evildoers, and encourage the acts of good people, and therefore, it’s appropriate for Christians to support the government by paying taxes.
But Jesus also commands us to give back to God what is due to God. And that’s our worship, our gratitude, our service, and our obedience. Our allegiance to God is over and above our allegiance to the government. God is the ultimate authority.
What happens when a government begins acting against Biblical mandates and principles? When it begins to act unjustly, or sets up systems that are outside the scope of what the government should be doing, or restricts the free proclamation of the gospel? In those cases, it’s the duty of the Christian to obey God rather than the government. That’s clear from many stories in the book of Acts.
Could that happen in America? Absolutely! Some local governments are mandating that immoral behavior be taught in the schools. In those places Christian parents should take a stand at school board meetings, and run candidates for the local school board who will vote down such policies. If the school won’t back down, then Christian parents should seek out a private school or home school.
If the government mandates that worship services be shut down, or allows the disruption of worship services, or arrests street preachers and peaceful pro-life protesters, Christians should ignore the government and continue to meet, preach, protest, and worship.
If a government defaults on its core biblical mandate to punish lawbreakers by allowing in millions of illegal aliens and then refusing to punish them when they commit crimes, then Christians should take a stand against those policies and support candidates who promise a return to law and order.
If the government fosters a court system in which people of a particular race or political party go largely unpunished for rioting, looting, destruction of property, and assault, but people who protest the government’s corruption or inaction are given harsh prison sentences, then Christians should take a vocal stand against such an unjust judicial system and support candidates who promise a return to the fair and impartial application of the law.
Christians should support good government, be law-abiding citizens, be informed voters, and pay their taxes. Christians should pray every day for their government leaders, even the terrible ones. And Christians should take a stand when the government fails to do what it should be doing and starts doing what it shouldn’t be doing. There may be a high cost for doing that, but that’s our obligation.

06/01/2026

Yesterday's sermon...
For God So Loved the World (John 3:13-18)
This morning’s lectionary readings include the most famous verse in the New Testament, John 3:16. I will never pass up the opportunity to preach on John 3:16! But before we read our text, let me remind you of the context.
Much of the Gospel of John consists of dialogues between Jesus and people who are trying to figure Jesus out. John chapter 3 includes one of those dialogues. Nicodemus, a well-regarded teacher of the law in Israel, was aware of the miracles and signs that Jesus had been performing. He came to Jesus one night because he perceived that Jesus was a prophet who had access to divine wisdom and divine power.
I think Nicodemus had a basic philosophy about salvation, a philosophy held by most Jews of that day, and he wanted to see if Jesus agreed with that philosophy. That philosophy was this: God gave the laws of Moses to his chosen people, and if the people were zealous enough in following those laws, God would bless them and account them as worthy to enter his kingdom.
But Jesus didn’t buy into that philosophy. Jesus knew that not even a good man like Nicodemus could follow the law exactly and lead a perfect life. We need to be born again. We need to have a new spirit within us, and that can only come from a work of God’s Spirit. And that’s where we’ll pick up the conversation today between Jesus and Nicodemus, and the conclusion that John drew from that conversation. Our text is John 3:13-18.
Jesus told Nicodemus, “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.” If you’re looking for how to connect with God, you need to go to someone who already has an intimate connection with God, more intimate than even Moses had. Moses was a man who had failings, including the fact that he had murdered an Egyptian. As far as mediators went, he was the best the world could produce, but it wasn’t enough.
But now a better mediator had arrived, a mediator who had come from God himself and who had direct access to God. Jesus was the “Son of Man” who had come from heaven, God become a human being. And this mediator, the perfect mediator, didn’t need to present us with a system by which the blood of animals would be used to try to cleanse us from sin. Jesus himself would be the source of cleansing and salvation, as he told Nicodemus: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” (v. 14-15).
The “snake in the wilderness” story is told in Numbers 21, when the Israelites were grumbling about being out in the desert, and God sent venomous snakes among them, and the snakes started killing people. The people appealed to Moses for deliverance from the snakes. God told Moses, “‘Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.’”
So if you were an Israelite out there dying from a snakebite, and you looked at the bronze snake affixed to the pole for healing, it was given to you. Looking at the snake was a matter of faith, faith that despite the current judgment God cared about you and had made a way for you to be saved.
Moses lifted up the snake on the pole so that it could be seen by all the Israelites. In a similar way, the Son of Man would be raised up–raised on a cross–so that he could be seen by the whole world. Everyone who believes that he is God’s way of salvation, that he’s the only real mediator between God and mankind, that he has taken on our sins and paid for them–everyone who believes that will be saved.
What does it mean to “believe” in Jesus? “Believe” doesn’t just mean, “I think it happened.” Nearly every atheist historian out there believes that there was a Jesus who was crucified by the Romans.
“Believe,” is more than that. The Greek word translated “believe,” pistuo, can describe someone who has something valuable, and they entrust that valuable thing to someone they believe in.
“Believe,” in the Gospel of John, means both understanding and commitment: “I believe that Jesus really was the Son of Man who came from heaven, and that he was raised up on a cross, and that because of his death, I can be saved. I entrust myself, my life, my eternity, to him.”
Then John gives us his wonderful gloss on the conversation in verse 16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” The key to God’s character, who God is in his essential being, is love. God looked at people doomed to be separated from him forever because of their sin, because of their willful disobedience and disbelief, and he resolved to pay in his own person the price for our sin, so that we could be reconnected to him.
Jesus is God’s love personified. When he was hanging on the cross, he was taking all the dysfunction and death of the world onto himself and into himself. He paid the price for every sin, past, present, and future, for the whole world.
And all we have to do to receive salvation, to receive eternal life, is to look at God’s Son, and believe in him, to entrust our lives to him. And the “eternal life” we’ll receive doesn’t mean just life stretching on forever. It means being immersed into the joyful, self-existent, loving, creative, sacrificing life of God himself, while we still retain our own personhood. We will always be giving our hearts and service to Him, and he will always be pouring his life and love into us.
Have you ever lost track of time when you were with people you love doing things you love? That’s what life will be like in the new creation.
Next John says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” God isn’t sitting up there watching you on a console, finger poised over a button labeled “SMITE.” God is like the father in the “prodigal son” story, looking down the road every morning and evening, hoping to see you coming home.
The last thing John says in this passage is, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” It may be that God doesn’t condemn anyone for their sins because Jesus has already paid the price for all our sins on the cross. What will get you excluded, what will get you “condemned,” is a refusal to believe in Jesus. A refusal to look on him as the Savior and entrust yourself to him. What will get you excluded is saying to God, “I DON’T NEED YOUR BLEEDING CHARITY.”
God doesn’t coerce our love. He invites us to look at Christ his Son on the cross and believe in him. He says to every person, “Won’t you receive salvation? Won’t you receive eternal life? I offer it to you freely. Look on my Son and believe. Look on my Son and be saved.”
If you’re here this morning, and you’ve never looked at Christ on the cross and said, “I believe that you’re the Son of God who died for my sins. I entrust myself, my life, to you. I want your life in me.” Please pray that today. That’s all it takes to be forgiven by God, and to receive eternal life, and to become one of God’s beloved children.
And if you’re sitting here today, and you’ve made that commitment of your life to Christ, maybe many years ago, I encourage you to look again at Christ on the cross, and fall in love with him again. Pray that God will give you a passion for his Son that impacts everything you do, everything you say to people, what you think, how you spend your time.
Pray that God will raise up the Son in your life over everything else, so when people look at you, they will see the loving, sacrificing character of Christ.

05/25/2026

Yesterday's sermon...
The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-11)
This morning is Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost concludes the Easter season, which I hope has been a time of repentance from sin and strengthening of our faith. Having reflected again on the crucifixion and the resurrection of God’s Son, we’re now charged to be filled by Christ’s Spirit and move out into the world with the Gospel, the “good news” that God has decisively defeated sin and death and begun the renewal of all creation.
The word “Pentecost” is a Greek word denoting the period of 50 days between the Passover and the Jewish festival of “Shavuot,” which was initially a harvest festival but then came to be a celebration of the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses, recorded in Exodus 19-20. At the giving of the Law, the Lord descended on Mount Sinai in fire, and there was a sound like a loud trumpet blast. The descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus’ disciples at Pentecost is accompanied by somewhat similar signs. Let’s read the account now. Our text is Acts 2:1-11.
The first sign of the Holy Spirit’s coming was “a sound like the blowing of a violent wind.” In John 3, Jesus told Nicodemus that the Spirit is like a wind that “blows wherever it pleases, and you can hear its sound.” You can perceive the wind in some ways, although you can’t see it. But its source and its power are above and beyond our control. So it is with the Spirit.
The sound of the violent wind is also an intensification of the scene from John 20 on Easter night where the resurrected Christ breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” What the Son had done gently at Easter, the Father does with the power cranked up to 11 at Pentecost.
Accompanying the wind is a fire that separates into tongues of flame that separate and rest on each of them. As in Exodus 19, the fire signals the very presence of God in their midst. “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire,” Moses says in Deuteronomy 4:24. The image of the “tongues of flame” (the Greek has the same image: “glossa hosay pyros”) denotes both the shape of the flames and the purpose of the flames: to supercharge the disciples with the ability to communicate the gospel to the world. When touched by those tongues of fire, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (v. 4).
The disciples were in a large house perhaps near the marketplace or the temple. People who had come from all over the Roman empire to celebrate the giving of God’s law now began hearing about the giving of God’s grace through Jesus Christ.
And they heard the gospel in their native languages. The disciples had been given a miraculous gift to speak in these various languages. What were the disciples preaching? Luke says that they were “declaring the wonders of God.”
What wonders were they declaring? There's a lot to say about the wonders of creation, or the wonder of a new-born baby. But I think it was primarily the wonder of God’s redeeming love. God looked at people in bo***ge to sin, people scattered and lost, people doomed to death. And God resolved to do something about it, to fix the problems, to make everything right, no matter what the cost to himself.
So He sent his own Son, the heart of his heart, into the world, to bring renewal and salvation and reconnection with him. How did we treat God’s Son when he arrived? We mocked him and beat him and crucified him. But Jesus endured the torture and the death for our sakes, receiving into himself all the brokenness and evil of this world, and all the terrible consequences of our sin: pain and loneliness and addiction and death.
God so loved the world that he sent his only-begotten Son. Jesus, hanging on the cross, is God’s love personified. Jesus on the cross is God taking upon himself the sins of the world and paying for them. Jesus on the cross is the way God can take broken, sinful, rebellious, addicted, prideful people and make them into beloved sons and daughters.
The world killed Jesus—we killed Jesus—but he didn’t stay dead. The Father raised him from the dead, and in so doing broke the power of death, and opened the doors for us to receive eternal life and eternal fellowship with him. The resurrection of Jesus meant the new creation had begun breaking into this dark old world. And God, in his grace, invites us to be part of that process of renewing creation by spreading the story of Christ and the life of Christ to everyone we can.
Someday, all creation will be renewed. It will be restored to something like the Garden of Eden, where Adam walked in fellowship with God, but even better than Eden, because the people of the new creation will have even more reasons to love our Creator and our Redeemer. The sin problem will have been done away with forever. Our hearts will be made of sterner stuff that will keep growing in love for God our Father and for Jesus Christ our Savior through each bright moment of eternity.
That’s the wonderful God whom we worship and serve and proclaim today. That’s the wonderful Son who paid with his very life so that we also can become children of the Father. That’s the wonderful Spirit who changes our hearts and transforms our lives and empowers us to take the gospel to the world. Those are the wonders of God that the disciples preached on Pentecost, preached in the power of the Holy Spirit.

05/11/2026

Be Prepared to Give an Answer to Everyone Who Asks (1 Peter 3:13-18)
[The video played at the start of the sermon focused on two Florida policemen talking a man out of jumping off a bridge.]
We’re back in 1 Peter this morning. The main subject of 1 Peter is persevering through persecution. At the time Peter was writing, the emperor Nero had initiated the persecution of Christians in Rome, and persecution had subsequently spread to some other parts of the Roman empire. Peter wanted these persecuted Christians to continue to be faithful to Christ through their suffering, and to understand that God could take something evil like persecution and turn it to something good. With that background, let’s read our text, 1 Peter 3:13-18.
Peter starts this section of the letter by posing a question: “Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?” If a Christian is out there working hard, being honest, and obeying the laws, then most of the time that Christian will not face persecution. Why would they? They’re being model citizens and employees.
But sometimes Christians do face unjust persecution. Peter wants to strengthen their faithfulness by asserting that, “even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed.” Peter was probably remembering Christ’s words from the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10). So that’s one good that can come of persecution: Christians who persevere through persecution can look forward to receiving a commendation by God himself and being assigned high responsibilities and high authority in the new creation.
So don’t be frightened, Peter says. “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord.”
The Romans had a salute: “Kaiser kyrios.” Caesar is lord. But Christians know that no power of this world, no king of this world, is the lord. Christ is the Lord. That’s the starting point for being faithful in persecution.
Then Peter counsels, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” When people persecute you for your faith, and you continue to be faithful to God, they’ll wonder why. When people act evilly toward you and you forgive them, they’ll wonder why. They’ll wonder why you have hope when the world around you is sinking into despair.
What is the hope that we have? It’s the hope that all the evil powers of this world that seem so strong will one day crumble into dust. It’s the hope that every king, president, and dictator of this world will one day bow before Christ and confess that he is the Lord, as Paul says will happen in Philippians 2:9-10. It’s the hope that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any other powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
Our response to people–even people who are hurting us–must be characterized by “gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience.”
Our attitude can’t be, “You may be hurting me now, but trust me, you’re going to get yours in the end. You’re on the losing side. God is going to condemn you and throw you into hell. And when you’re burning in hell, I’m going to relish every minute of it.”
We can’t have that attitude because our goal is to bring everyone we can under the grace of God, into God’s salvation. We’re not called to overlook evil. We’re called to challenge evil at its core, to give people a chance at real repentance and real change.
If you suffer for doing evil, that doesn’t do any good for yourself or the world. But if you suffer for doing good, now you’re getting close to God’s redemptive heart; now you’re levering the impact of the cross. That’s what Peter says next: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”
The cross of Christ is the foundation for the divine principle that the unjust suffering of a righteous person can bring salvation to an unrighteous person. The only truly righteous person who ever lived, Jesus of Nazareth, was treated more unjustly than any other person who has ever lived, and suffered more than any other person who ever lived. He had to endure the physical torments of being beaten and flogged and crucified, the emotional torments of being scorned and spat on, and spiritual torments we can’t even imagine as he took onto himself and into himself all the evil of this world, betrayals and addictions and disease and crime, and all the torments of hell, compressed into one experience and mainlined right into his heart.
And it killed him—but that wasn’t the end of his story: “He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. As strong as evil is, as final as death seems—God is stronger still. God’s Spirit went into the lifeless co**se of Jesus and made him alive again. And that’s the reason for the hope that we have. Christians have confidence that Jesus will share his victory over death with everyone who will make him Lord.
Think back to the video we saw at the start of the sermon. The cop standing there, reaching his hand out to the guy about to jump from the bridge, telling him, “You mind if I just hold your hand and pray with you? I’m praying with you. If you jump, you’ll hurt so many other people. The cycle of hurt has got to stop. I love you. We all love you. We wear this badge for many reasons. This is the main reason. To reach those whom the devil thinks he got. He ain’t got you. We got you.”
Because there was a cop there who reached out to him, who prayed for him, the hopeless man was saved from committing su***de that night.
“We wear this badge for many reasons.” If you’re a Christian, you’re wearing the badge of Christ. You carry within you the life of Christ. You carry within you the love of the Father. And your purpose in life is the same purpose that cop had: “to reach those whom the devil thinks he got.”
“Always be prepared to give an answer” does mean be ready with some basic responses if someone asks you why you think there is a God or why you think Jesus came back from the dead–what we call “apologetics.” But it also means being ready to connect with people who are hurting, who have lost hope. Ready to hold their hands and pray with them. Ready to share the hope that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, and whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.”

05/04/2026

A Healthy Church (Acts 6:1-7)
The early church, as described in Acts 4, is rightly held up as a model of unity, power, charity, and bold witness. But by the time we get to Acts 5, with the story of Ananias and Sapphira, who misrepresented their charity to aggrandize themselves and were struck dead for it, we see that there was already a problem of hypocrisy in the church. By Chapter 6, we see the first example division in the church. As we read the story, listen for how the church dealt with the problem. Our text is Acts 6:1-7.
Probably all or nearly all the Christians who worshiped together in Jerusalem were Jews, but they came from two different backgrounds. “Hebraic Jews” grew up in Judea and spoke Hebrew or Aramaic as their native language. “Hellenistic Jews” typically grew up in some other part of the Roman empire and later moved to Jerusalem. Their native language was Greek. The Hebraic Jews might have had a tendency to look down on the Hellenistic Jews as just a bit compromised by their contact Greco-Roman culture.
In Jewish culture, if an elderly woman was widowed and had no other way to make a living, then the synagogue would provide her with food. The early church continued this practice. The church gathered daily for worship and provided a meal for the widows in the church. But somehow, from some prejudicial treatment or poor administration, the Hellenistic widows were being overlooked in the distribution of the food. They went with their concerns to the apostles who, among their other duties, were overseeing the distribution of the food.
The apostles got together, talked about it, and came up with a plan. The apostles themselves had been called by God to minister to people by prayer, preaching, and teaching. I don’t think they minded overseeing the food distribution, but they simply didn’t have time to do it well, and their priority had to be on prayer, preaching, and teaching.
However, they understood that the food distribution was also important to the church, and it needed to be overseen by competent people who had the time to do it well. So the apostles presented a plan to the congregation: “Choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them.”
The congregation got together and chose seven men who were “full of the Spirit” (they were on fire with the Spirit’s power) and full of wisdom (they were smart guys, good administrators). Why seven? Probably one for each day of the week. We don’t learn anything else about these seven guys besides Stephen, whose story is told in the next section of Acts. (Stephen becomes the first Christian martyr.) But their names indicate the quality of their characters: “Prochorus” means “chorus leader.” Nicanor means “victorious.” Timon means “worthy.” Parmenas means “faithful.” All seven of the guys have Greek names, meaning the church was doing everything it could to ensure that the Hellenistic widows were treated fairly and that any division in the church was healed.
The congregation presented their choices to the apostles, and the apostles confirmed their choices and initiated their ministry by laying hands on them–a gesture of blessing and commissioning, and perhaps a communication of a special spiritual endowment or gift for their task.
Luke adds this postscript to the story: “So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.”
Just think: many of the very religious leaders who had conspired to kill Jesus now became his followers, based on the dramatic eyewitness testimonies to the resurrection, the conviction of their guilt by the Holy Spirit, and the power and unity of the early church.
This is a passage that has a number of important lessons for the church today, and for this congregation.
The first lesson is this: the devil will always try to undermine the impact of the church, and his two main weapons of attack are hypocrisy and divisions. When Christians are shown to be hypocrites, especially when it involves high-profile ministers, that causes the people in the world to think that the church is full of hypocrites who have ulterior motives. That obviously undermines the effectiveness of the church’s witness and dilutes the power of the gospel message.
Similarly, when people in the church fight over issues and cause divisions and splits, that also undermines the witness of the church. I’ve heard of congregational splits over stuff like the color of the church carpet or the translation of the Bible that the preacher uses. But even when the split is over something more substantive, maybe a theological matter like the nature of God’s sovereignty, the world perceives any split in the church as showing that Christians aren’t very loving and forgiving after all.
So, we should as individuals and as a congregation resolve to be sincere in our faith, guarding against personal hypocrisy, and committed to church unity. We have to do that to preserve the integrity and witness of the church.
Another important lesson is this. The church building should be a place where people can hear the gospel preached, where people can learn about the Bible and be nourished by the Bible in a substantive way, where people can pray together and eat together and worship together. But don’t confuse the church with the church building. The church is a gathering of believers who come together to pray for each other and share with each other and worship together and learn together. We could do all that even if we didn’t have this nice building.
So, it’s great to “go to church” for the Sunday morning service or Wednesday evening activities. But if you’re not participating in the life of the church in other ways–in giving, in sharing, in praying, in healing, in witnessing, in teaching, then you’re probably not participating in the life of the church the way that God wants you to be.
If you come to church and to pass judgment on other people and gripe about things, to observe the service as a spectator and critic, and then leave–you’re not being part of the body the way God wants you to be.
The Holy Spirit gives us gifts of love and forgiveness and service and teaching and healing and generosity to build up the church. If we exercise those gifts, working together, working with real synergy, we strengthen the witness of the church to the community.
One last lesson. Acts 6 also compels us to look at how we’re treating the elderly in our own congregation. If we need to take meals to them, or mow their yard, or just visit them at their homes or in the nursing home, we should be attentive to that need. You don’t have to have some special spiritual gift, and you don’t have to be on the church staff, to minister to the elderly.
And to tell you the truth, it’s kind of fun.

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2518 E Main Street
Gatesville, TX
76528

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