Bethel Baptist Church

Bethel Baptist Church Bethel Baptist Church
6486 Confederate Hwy
Fairfax, SC 29827

Morning Worship 11am

Pastor Travis Morehead
803-702-7150

06/03/2026

Good Morning,

July 27-29 is the correct date for Children's Camp at Camp Jackson.
Please disregard the dates listed in the Association's June Newsletter.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let Patricia, at the Association office, know.

06/03/2026

We mentioned Sunday, the goal of the disciples in Acts was not to get as many people to join First Baptist of Jerusalem as possible. (Nor Jerusalem Independent Baptist, Jerusalem Presbyterian, Jerusalem Church of Christ, St. Mary’s of Jerusalem, The Church of the Ascension, or any other name you can think of!) They weren’t looking to brag about their numbers, their new converts or members, or swell their programs. They didn’t even really care what the community thought of them. They were only concerned about one thing: pointing people to God. That is what God is about. That is what the early Church was about. And that is what we should be about, plain and simple.

But here’s the thing: when we do that, we end up coming together in groups. We see that here in Acts. We see that throughout the rest of the New Testament. We see that throughout history up to us now. We are even reminded in Hebrews how we are to consider how to provoke love and good works in each other and to not neglect the gathering together. Jesus even said that on the confession that he is the Christ he will build his assembly: the whole gathering of his followers. This is a natural thing for us to do. We can show love towards each other in this way, we can encourage each other in this way, and we can correct and lift up each other in this way - saving brothers and sisters from falling away. We can also work cooperatively like this, accomplishing more together than we can apart. We see this example also in this early Church. No one had a need because they were all coming together to take care of them. We are a Church.

We are a part of this same body as these early disciples were. We have the same salvation, the same Lord, and the same Spirit. This is what your local church should be. Now, not all of them are and not all of the people in a church are believers. Some churches add or subtract from the Gospel of Jesus. If they do this, they are not a part of the Universal Church. Some churches ignore some parts of God’s Word while others only focus on certain parts. These also are not part of Christ’s body. This is what is important, not what denomination is in the name. Sometimes we are separated by physical location. This was true of the early Church as well as we will see in the next few chapters in Acts. Sometimes it is a season of life: you’ve moved, you’ve moved to a different season in your life, you’ve aged and your life has changed, a job change, many things can create reasons why you are apart from the original local body you were involved with. Sometimes there are even level-two or level-three things which do not endanger our salvation and do not divide us in love but may divide us in thought and theology. I believe this is also an acceptable reason to be a member of a different local body. Just make sure it keeps the main things the main thing: Jesus is Savior and Lord.

Along with the body, I can’t emphasize enough, you are a part of that body for a reason. God has directed you, as long as you are listening and obeying, to the body where you worship and minister. It is no accident! God guides you there, he prepares the way for you to be there, he has work for you to do there, and it is just for you. All of this is part of God’s plan. The example of the body is perfect. The body works best when all pieces and parts are healthy and working together. The same is true of God’s body. When all the pieces, us, are healthy - in a right, growing relationship with God - we work together in unison and towards the same goal. Then the work of God is done how he planned for it to be. The results will be like the early Church: we will see great growth and we will see persecution. But all of this is necessary as we look forward to Jesus’ return!

'For just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body — so also is Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free — and we were all given one Spirit to drink. Indeed, the body is not one part but many. But as it is, God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted. And if they were all the same part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. which our respectable parts do not need. Instead, God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the less honorable, so that there would be no division in the body, but that the members would have the same concern for each other. '
1 Corinthians 12:12-14,18-20,24-25 CSB

06/02/2026

Tomorrow we will talk more about the body of believers. We are getting the blueprint to how to do that successfully here in Acts. But before we get into that this week, I feel we still need to talk about the individual. We have seen that God takes this extremely seriously. To do the same, the body of believers must be made up of serious believers. We said it is a personal relationship and not just the outward things we do like playing at religion or relying on religion. But we also said our faith is made complete by how it shows up in our lives. It is the evidence that we are serious about our relationship with God. So to have the right overall group, we must have the right ingredients. Note: just because a group has members doesn’t mean they are all the right ingredients and the group is the right group. We just saw in the last chapter how Ananias and Sapphira were not the right ingredients. We also have seen in these chapters, and will continue to see, the religious leaders were not the right members either. I’m also reminded of the story recorded in Mark 1 where Jesus drives out an unclean spirit …. in the synagogue in Capernaum on a Sabbath! Throughout the history of the Bible we can see where members of the assembly were not on the right paths and it affects the whole assembly. Just look back at the episode with the golden calf at the foot of Mt. Sinai. It doesn’t stop with the Bible stories either. Take any century or even decade and we can see how the wrong ingredients has led the church in the wrong direction and/or hurt its witness. I don’t mean just sin and falling away; we are all imperfect people. But I mean those who are not serious about living a life surrendered to Jesus.

So what does it take to be that person? What will it look like to be one of the “right ingredients”? We looked at three directives from God which are important and we have seen in this early Church. The first was a witness. Jesus told them to go and wait in Jerusalem, and after they received power, they would be his witnesses. Peter said we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard. When the religious leaders threatened them again, they said we must obey God rather than you. We are witnesses to these things along with the Holy Spirit you have seen doing these things. We have seen and heard things as well. You can have someone argue theology with you, but no one can argue against what you have seen and heard God do in your life. There is so much we can witness to. One of the ways we are going to be a good member of the body of Christ is to do like these disciples did and don’t stop being a witness to the things God has done.

The next thing we looked at was to disciple. In another account of some of Jesus’ last words, he told those who were deciding to follow him they needed to go and make disciples. Now there are two things about making disciples. The first is you have to know the teachings of Jesus. You have to have a personal relationship with God and have received his Spirit. Then you have to grow and mature in your surrendered walk. When you do this, God will freely give you the wisdom you need. The second is sharing this knowledge. When we know the words of Jesus, we can share the words of Jesus. They are the words of life! They are the wisdom to survive and thrive in this world. They are what everyone needs just like we did. Then, if they choose to believe them for themselves, we can continue to share his Truths with them so they too can develop and grow a personal relationship with God. We see over and over again that was a main goal of these early disciples. They taught the words and lessons they heard from Jesus. They shared the truths they learned from each other. They continued to share this with all who would listen.

The third thing that is necessary is to serve. Jesus said that even he did not come to be served but to serve. Paul explains in Philippians that even though he was God himself, he did not come down and demand what was rightfully his but humbled himself to the role of a servant. He taught his apostles this on the night he was arrested. He took the role of a servant as he washed their feet. Then when he finished, he asked if they understood what he had done and told them to go and do the same for one another. This is the main topic we talked about Sunday. This is where you fit in the body of Christ. This is the story we see from Acts 6 when there was an unmet need in the body of believers. There were people who were being good disciples of Jesus and God had them at the right place at the right time. They submitted to and obeyed the Spirit and they were able to serve the body. They were being the hands and feet of the body of Jesus.

Whatever group you are looking for, you have to make sure they have the main thing as the main thing. But when you find that group, make sure you are being a healthy part of the body where God has placed you!

'Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne. '
Hebrews 12:1-2 NLT

06/01/2026

Again, we seem to be keep repeating ourselves. We see in Acts God is taking this new thing seriously. This is what he promised from the beginning. He is showing evidence that he has been faithful. And he is showing this is something the people who choose to follow him need to take just as seriously. It is not like the religion they had before. God does not want burnt offerings. God does not want ritual. God does not want people to only praise him with their lips but not their hearts.

We not only see this is how God viewed this time but his disciples did the same. We started with around 120 people when the account in Acts began. We are over 5,000 now. But we see they are all taking this seriously. They are all going in the same direction, they are all in agreement, they are all putting the Lord and his work first. We see this over and over in these stories. We even see one account of a couple who did not do this and what happened to them as a result. This also had an effect on the rest of the group and how they saw the work they were doing. Here it is called the great “fear of the Lord”.

So the obvious question we should look at is are we taking it as seriously? Are we as serious about what God is doing as he is? Are we serious about the work he has for us to do? Yes, this was a different time, different culture, and different scenario, but there are a lot of things we can take from their example. The first one is the seriousness of it all. God’s not playing. Jesus didn’t come to get distracted. The Spirit of God doesn’t save us for us to float through life like we’re on a lazy river. Now we can be a member of a church, we can even claim a religion or morality, we can even call ourselves “Christians” and not take things too seriously. But that is not what God desires. That wasn’t his plan for the early Church and that is not his plan for the Church today. I saw a quote not too long ago I shared on social media: “If your salvation hasn’t changed you, it hasn’t saved you.” I think this can be applied in this lesson as well: “if your salvation (and baptism of the Holy Spirit) hasn’t made you take this new life seriously, it’s quite possible it hasn’t saved you.”

What can we do instead? There are some who are scoffers. We saw this at Pentecost. Ah, they’re drunk. This is silliness. Who needs that kind of stuff. We are just fine without it. There is another reaction. We can be like Ananias and Sapphira. We can be playing at religion. Making sure we meet enough criteria for it to look like we are religious. Making sure we look like we are involved and committed to God but inwardly we are selfish looking after ourselves and our interests. The third group is the religious group. They were so sure in their religion they believed that is what was saving them. People can follow whatever code, dogma, or theology that seems best to them; we can even make and evolve something into our own made-up religion based on whatever we choose. But as we see in Acts, all of these groups were on the outside. They were not coming to God, choosing to put their faith in something else. That is not what God wants. He was a real, sincere, personal relationship with him. God is just calling you to him. This is his plan, he takes it seriously. He wants you to do the same.

'At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, because this was your good pleasure. All things have been entrusted to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son desires to reveal him. “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”'
Matthew 11:25-30 CSB

05/31/2026

May 31, 2026

05/29/2026

But I have a lot going on in my life! I have responsibilities. I have a marriage. I have a family. I have a career. I have schedules to keep and things to accomplish. I have people that rely on me. I have a long list of things I want to do in this life. Besides, that was back then. That was a different time and a different culture. God was just making sure everyone saw the evidence that he was doing something different. He doesn’t really expect us to give up everything for him, only follow his plan, and completely seek to do away with sin …. does he?!

I think maybe he does. Does that mean you need to go and sell your land and give it all to God’s fellowship? No, I don’t think so. Does that mean you have to leave your family and get together in a group and collectively care for everyone? No, I don’t think that’s the case either. Do I have to give up all the things on my calendar, all the things I’m chasing, everything I’ve planned? Not necessarily. But I do think this is important. It was important to God then and it still is now. We are still in these last days. We should still be following the instructions Jesus left for his disciples: while you are waiting for my return, go and be witnesses, making disciples as you go.

So I should be wise when I look at the life I am living and the one God wants me to live. I need to make sure I am not buying some kind of modern Christianity that dilutes God and what he demands. I need to make sure I am not wrongly defining the words “believe” and “forgiveness”. We can easily fall into a wrong way of thinking which leads to a wrong way of living. Look back at Ananias and Sapphira. They probably were just doing religion and life like they always had. God had not spoken to Israel for about 400 years! The religion had become a modern version of dos and don’ts that you just followed the best you could. They had probably offered their sin offerings and followed other religious rituals the same way: just look good on the outside but make sure you’re taking care of yourself on the inside. So they just assumed this new thing could be done with the same level of commitment. They were wrong! We need to make sure we are not wrong like them!

How do I see Sin? How do you see Sin? Are we viewing it incorrectly? Are we making excuses to continue in it? Or, are we agreeing with God? Then, am I dealing with the Sin in my life? If I agree with him on what Sin is, am I agreeing with him about how to handle it? I cannot live as God wants me to live until I deal with the Sin in my life. I cannot worship, pray, walk, or be victorious if I am not dealing with Sin. But it’s my decision; it’s your decision. There is the verse in Matthew 16 where Jesus says “the gates of hell will not conquer” his kingdom. The powers from the outside of the Church will not prevail against it. But it can be hindered by those inside it. I can hinder my own walk. Just after that same verse in Matthew 16, Jesus is talking about his coming death and Peter tells Jesus he is wrong. Jesus turns to him and says “get away from me, Satan!” Wow. Peter was probably taken aback by that response. “I was just saying….” But Jesus knew where it was coming from. Peter eventually realized this as well. That is why when he was confronting Ananias and Sapphira he asked them “why have you let Satan fill your heart? Why have you lied to the Holy Spirit? How could the two of you even think of conspiring to test the Spirit of the Lord like this?” But wait, they thought, we were just doing religion. Weren’t we doing what everyone else was doing? It was just a small thing. We didn’t think it was that serious. We need to learn the lessons from this part of Acts: God hates Sin, we must deal with Sin, we must come to God and walk with him in all things. Does that mean reordering my life? Probably so. Does that mean reordering my schedules? Probably so. Does that mean viewing Sin and devotion to and service to God differently? Probably so. Let us take heed.

'Great fear gripped the entire church and everyone else who heard what had happened. The apostles were performing many miraculous signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers were meeting regularly at the Temple in the area known as Solomon’s Colonnade. But no one else dared to join them, even though all the people had high regard for them. Yet more and more people believed and were brought to the Lord—crowds of both men and women. As a result of the apostles’ work, sick people were brought out into the streets on beds and mats so that Peter’s shadow might fall across some of them as he went by. Crowds came from the villages around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those possessed by evil spirits, and they were all healed. '
Acts of the Apostles 5:11-16 NLT

05/28/2026

Announcement:

We will be postponing the start of this new group. It will not begin this coming Sunday, May 31st. We are aiming for a new starting date near the end of the summer. If you have any questions, please let us know.

05/28/2026

There is always something for us to learn. For those who have ears …. We see how Ananias and Sapphira lied. We see what happened to them. We don’t want to share in their disobedience nor in their consequences. So how do we deal with Sin? A perfect example is the one who was called “a man after God’s own heart”. Wait, you mean the guy who committed adultery, murder, and caused others to be caught up in his cover-up? Yes, that one. Why him? Because in his repentance we see what God desires, in his heart, for us to do to come back to him.

The first way the Spirit will lead us to deal with Sin is he will convict us of the sin. That is one of the characteristics of the Spirit. He leads to conviction. When we are unsaved, he is the one who chases after us, convicting us of the life we are living. And this conviction is not unto judgment but unto repentance! It is out of love he shows us where we are wrong. He creates that conflict in us so that we see our deficiencies and realize we need to come to God. He continues to do this when we are saved. Again, it’s not for judgment but for repentance. It is for us to mature and grow into the character of Jesus. It comes from many sources. It comes from God’s Word (the Bible), it comes directly from God’s Spirit, and it also comes from God’s Church: fellow believers who are there to correct, restore, and encourage us. The last thing about this is our will: we get to choose whether to heed this convicting or not. Heeding leads back to God; not heeding leads away from God. David dealt with this conviction. He said in Psalms 32 “when I kept silent, my bones wasted away”. In Psalm 51 he said “my sin is always before me”. Ever felt those?? When we are a follower of Jesus and we are harboring Sin in our lives, we will feel this conviction.

Next, there has to be a confrontation. The example I used this past Sunday was to remember when we were younger. When you did something wrong, there was a confrontation. But it had to happen. One of the problems with society today is there is no confrontation over bad behavior. There has to be confrontation to know where the boundaries are. When we cross the line, the Spirit will confront us. Again, this can come from his Word and his Spirit, but it can also come from brothers or sisters and also from the consequences of our actions. Nathan was God’s tool to confront King David. Again, the image of Nathan pointing his finger at David can give you chills. We’ve been there; we know the feeling. We can choose not to change after a confrontation. David could have had Nathan killed; he was king. He could have continued to try and hide his Sin. But he knew better. He knew what God required. God confronted Adam and Eve in the Garden. God confronted Cain before he refused to listen. God used Peter to confront Ananias and Sapphira. God will confront us as well.

A right response to the confrontation is confession. Confession means agreeing with God. We admit we sinned. We acknowledge the transgression against him. We come to him confessing we missed his mark of holiness. We agree Jesus is the only way to come back into a right relationship with God. Jesus had the authority to forgive sins! We see where Ananias and Sapphira chose poorly. They were confronted but they refused to confess. We see where David chose wisely. After his confrontation, he chose to confess. Again, read Psalm 51 today; what a beautiful song!! This is how you agree with God.

The response to confession is cleansing. When we follow these steps and truly confess to God, the Spirit offers cleansing. I can’t do it myself. I can’t ever get totally rid of all the results of my Sin. I can hide, cover, and even ignore it, but I can’t get rid of it. God is the only one who can cleanse me. The blood Jesus shed on the cross is the only acceptable covering for my Sin. But there is a problem we run into here in our world today. I believe we have either forgotten or mislearned the true meaning of asking for forgiveness. We think it just means I don’t have to feel guilty any longer. We think it means I don’t have to worry about the consequences afterwards. Sometimes I just ask for forgiveness knowing I am going to do it again. Sometimes I ask for forgiveness so my scale gets reset or because I think that’s just what I’m supposed to do after I mess up. But look back at Psalm 51 again. That’s not what David is asking of God. He uses the words “blot out”, “wash away the stain”, “cleansing”, “purging”. David is not asking God to deal with this one sin so he can go and keep on living and sinning, he is asking go to do all this so he will have Sin no longer! He is asking God to “un-sin” him. That is a lot different than using our modern idea of asking for forgiveness. That is totally taking it away. That is never dealing with it again. That is leaving it all behind because I have agreed with God about Sin and trusted in him alone to cover it. That’s different than just saying “I’m sorry” to God.

Why do we go back to Sin? Why do we struggle getting free? Why do we still feel bad afterwards? Why do we start to develop hard hearts? We do not follow the same path with the same intention David did. We look a little more like Ananias and Sapphira than we do David. But look at the end results. Ananias and Sapphira ended up dead. David ended up writing Psalm 32. Which path should we follow?

'Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight! Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty! '
Psalms 32:1-2 NLT

'But God removed Saul and replaced him with David, a man about whom God said, ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him to do.’ '
Acts of the Apostles 13:22 NLT

05/27/2026

God reacted to Ananias and Sapphira in a specific way for this specific time. But while this was particular to this story, that doesn’t mean things similar to it won’t happen again. Will the evidences shown at Pentecost happen again? Most likely not but things similar could. So if God has responded like this before, it would be unwise to test him in this way again. However, most times he does not. Romans tells us God is patient with us, showing us kindness and restraining from giving us what we deserve immediately. He does this to lead us to repentance. But even if we don’t get this result, there are other dangers for us when we lie to God’s Spirit.

A first one is separation from God. Again, God hates Sin. He is not going to be a part of Sin. If we are insisting on hanging around Sin, God will not be a part of that. His Spirit will not stay and empower someone who is living in Sin. We can do this knowingly or unknowingly. We know when we just outright deny God. Many people in the world choose this path. They purposely choose to be against God. But there are also people who claim to be Christians who do the same. We should be careful to knowingly go against God’s Word, God’s Son, and God’s Spirit. We go back to all those reasons we mentioned yesterday to continue in Sin. We say “I know, but ….”, anything that comes after that leads us to separation from God. If we do this long enough, we can develop a hard heart and eventually get to the place where we don’t even hear the Spirit speaking to us. If we are not careful, we can get to the point of “unknowingly” being separated from God. We think we are ok because we are “Christians”, because we go to a church, because we do some good things. But because we are entertaining Sin, we are cut off from God. Our being uninformed or misinformed can lead to our physical, and possibly our spiritual, death.

The next danger of lying to the Spirit is we won’t be empowered by the Spirit. If we are saved, we have the power of God within us and working through us and around us to bring us along in his Will. We get all of heaven to accomplish what God has planned and set out for us! But if we are not agreeing with God about Sin and we are not dealing properly with Sin, we will not be in his Will. If we are not in his Will, we will not be on the path he has for us, at the time we are supposed to be on it, and heading towards the result he has planned. We are on our own, going our own way and getting our own results. This we will be doing in our own power. Now we can accomplish a lot of things on our own. We can even get some really good results, most of the time, mostly how we want them to turn out. But we all know how that ends. It tends to not work out like we want, the consequences are not what we want to deal with, and it doesn’t last like we hoped it would. This is our future for all things if we are not walking along with God’s Spirit.

The last danger of lying to the Spirit of God is we miss the blessings of God. Look at Barnabas. He was submitted to the Spirit and walking accordingly. He saw an opportunity and was obedient. This was a character of his entire life. We looked briefly at all he did for the rest of his life. His character was defined by the Holy Spirit. Because of this, we know Barnabas as an example to follow. He truly lived a blessed life! Now compare that to Ananias and Sapphira. They saw what Barnabas did and they wanted the same. But they did it wrong. They did it with the wrong intentions and with the wrong actions. Because of this, they didn’t receive the blessings of God Barnabas did. The same happens to us. When we follow him, we get his outcomes; and boy can he provide miraculous outcomes! But when we do it our way, we ruin relationships. We lose our peace. We don’t have proper relationships with God, others, or ourselves. But when we do, God brings his blessing. Not only do we get his outcomes, but we get our mental peace, our emotional peace, our physical peace, our social peace, and our spiritual peace. When we are honest with the Holy Spirit, we are back in God’s Will with his blessing as we are supposed to be.

'And we know that God, in his justice, will punish anyone who does such things. Since you judge others for doing these things, why do you think you can avoid God’s judgment when you do the same things? Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin? But because you are stubborn and refuse to turn from your sin, you are storing up terrible punishment for yourself. For a day of anger is coming, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. He will judge everyone according to what they have done. '
Romans 2:2-6 NLT

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6486 Confederate Highway
Ulmer, SC
29827

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