ACTS "What's Missing From the Church"- Acts 19:20 - Part 1

Brett Meador: The word of God, living, powerful. It's not just a book of literature. There's something living and powerful in the nature of the Bible, which is the living word of God.
Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador recommends Scripture as a daily source of strength, wisdom, and direction.
Brett Meador: If the word of God is as powerful as I'm saying it is, which it absolutely is, wouldn't we want to make this a major part of our Christianity? Devour as much of the scripture as we can. Read it, study it, learn it, memorize it, make a big deal out of it.
Guest (Male): The word of God radically transformed both individual lives and the entire community of Ephesus we read in Acts chapter 19. As Pastor Brett Meador opens today's word, we'll learn what the word of God is, see how preaching and teaching the word played a vital role in the early church, and discover the blessings we can expect when we too commit to reading and studying our Bibles.
Brett Meador: Acts chapter 19, verse 20. It says there, "So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." I just love that verse and it really is a verse that pops out because I believe that there's something the Book of Acts is really attempting to tell us. There's something the Book of Acts that I think a lot of people are missing. Could it be that the church of Jesus Christ by and large in the world has lost some of the power that's supposed to belong to God's people and the church of Jesus Christ? I wonder if the church... everybody's trying to figure out why is the church failing? If you're a pastor and you follow the leadership podcasts and all the guys who are trying to figure out why people are leaving the church in the droves, I hear all these hypothesis and people pontificating about what is the problem, but I wonder if it's right in front of our faces right here in the Book of Acts. So many people are missing it. It's heartbreaking to me. Paul and his missionary journeys, we see the power of God going before them. We know that that power definitely is what the Holy Spirit is doing through Paul, but it's the Spirit in Paul using a tool, a part of the Holy Spirit, a part of God himself that is neglected in today's church. What's wrong with the church today? I believe it might be this thing that's being overlooked, and that is the idea of the power behind the word of God. Today, pastors are oftentimes sadly just maybe at best tacking on a verse to some topic they really want to talk about. So they'll search the Bible and find a verse that kind of applies, or maybe does apply, and then just kind of do that. Now, if you teach 50 plus weeks a year as a pastor, that gives you 50 verses. Now let's see, carry the one, how many verses are we covering in the Bible if we're just doing a few verses here and there? You're not getting the full counsel. Paul said, "I will not neglect to declare unto you the whole counsel of God." That's what Paul said in Acts chapter 20 to the elders of the church at Ephesus. It is so sad to me that today we don't really give priority largely in a lot of the church world. I don't care if you're a Catholic or Protestant. I don't care if you love topical teaching. The Lord uses topical teaching and I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. I'm just saying, are we really tapping into the source, the power, the thing that like our scripture says, there's a prevailing thing that's happening here? What's prevailed? "So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." What is that all about? Well, the word of God is that which prevailed. The more Paul preaches the word, the more prevailing we see. What made all the things happen in the early church as Paul and Silas and Paul and Barnabas went around preaching the word? It was the word. There was a single tool that the Lord is using here to change lives and really to change the whole world. The word "word" is an interesting word and it's fairly complex when you start looking it up because you get a sense from this even this little verse. There's something mysterious about the word "word." "So mightily grew the word, and the word of God prevailed." If you're new to Christianity, you might be like, why are we bringing up the word "word"? Well, it's actually a Greek word and it's the word "logos." Some people say "logos." Now, it's a complex Greek word and that's why there's 10 definitions of the word "logos" in my Greek dictionary at home. There's a richness to this word "logos." There's a couple here like number five, a title for Christ. You remember John chapter 1, verse 1: "In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, and the word was God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us." That's talking about Jesus. That's a pretty big one. But the one that's employed here in Acts chapter 19, verse 20 is this one right here: the gospel, the content of what is preached about Christ. The gospel, what is preached about Christ. Now you might say, "Okay, so that's preaching." Yes, kind of. But one of the things you might want to learn about implication here about this, the word, the logos, is the preaching of Paul in the New Testament became our written New Testament. I want you to make that connection. So often when you come across the word "word" in the Bible, "logos," this might be a clumsy way of saying it, but one of the safest things you can say about the logos is the Bible. Old Testament and New, the Bible is the logos, the written word. Now, they didn't have the New Testament. Paul preached the Old Testament. They used the Old Testament to confirm. Remember the Bereans we met, "be as the Bereans," Acts 17:11, searched the scriptures daily to see if what is being said is true or false? That's searching the logos, the word. They were searching the Old Testament. You and I have an advantage because we have the logos written both the Old Testament and the New. But the gospel, what is that? You and I have the clear in black and white logos written right here in our hands. And it's the word of God. It's the gospel, the content of what is preached about Christ. Logos is the Greek term translated as word, sometimes speech or principle or thought in Greek philosophy. But then the Christians, Paul and the gang, sort of took the word and said it's the mind of God. The logos is the mind of God, and that fits with what we hold in our hands. This is the mind of God, this word, this logos in our hands. In this context, what is Paul speaking about? It's eventually going to become the written New Testament, the word which is the living word of God. The word of God, living, powerful. It's not just a book in your library. There's something living and powerful in the nature of the Bible, which is so huge and so important. And it says verse 20, "it prevailed." There was a prevailing. What does the word "prevail" against? Well, we need to back up a little bit for some context. Back up to verse 18. "Many that believed came and confessed and showed their deeds." Many, verse 19, "of them also which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men. And they counted the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." Prevailed against the stuff that they just burned. What did they burn? Well, you go, "Oh wonderful, how nice, a book burning. That's what Paul's starting. That's great, lovely." And I understand book burnings are not always the best idea. Nazis did it, Hitler did it, so you think, "Should we do book burnings?" Well, one thing about book burnings, these people were burning their own books. You understand that? They brought their own books and they burned them. These people in Acts are realizing, "Man, we've got evil stuff in our homes." It's an interesting thing. Look at verse 19: "Many of them which also used curious arts brought their books together." What's curious arts? It's an interesting Greek word, "periergos," which means magic arts, practicing magic and also linked with the idea of busybody. So you got busybody witches and necromancers running around the town doing all their weird stuff, busybodies. But they were also into the curious arts. Busy about small impertinent things, neglectful of important matters, that's the idea. But these people in hearing the gospel of the word of God, the power of the word made them realize we've got to get rid of this junk. It's evil and dark. And I think there's a healthy example right here for that. What do you have in your life that should be put out in the bonfire in the back 40? What should you haul out of your house? What shouldn't be there? What social media things are you friends with or subscribed to? Do you think if Jesus were sitting next to you as you're scrolling through your Instagram he would go, "I'm glad you're liking that"? I wonder if we need to have that attitude. Man, we've got to dump this stuff. Get rid of it. Stop playing around and dabbling. I love that. And so, what was Paul's message? Burn books? No. But he shared the word of God and it, the word, made them want to clean things out. It wasn't Paul running around their houses, "Okay, I'm going to search your houses. I'm going to find evil and wicked things." No, the word of God did the work of cleansing in their hearts, and I'll show you more about that in a second. And that's the living nature. We see it right here in this story where these people into witchcraft and all kinds of weird magic and stuff, we see the word, for Hebrews 4:12: "For the word of God is living, powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, and the joints and the marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart." So that's what's happening. The sword of the Spirit's hacking into their lives and separating out that which is good, that which is evil, those that are going to be ill-intentioned things versus good-intentioned things. And the word magically, supernaturally, powerfully has that power to do that. This is why I love this. The only offensive weapon God has given us in our armor of God narrative in the evil of Satan is the sword of the Spirit, the word of God. It's a powerful sword. And this sword was changing the world through Paul and his sharing of the word. I told you earlier, this is a major theme that I believe is largely missed in churches today. If the word of God is as powerful as I'm saying it is, which it absolutely is, wouldn't we want to use it more often? Wouldn't we want to make this a major part of our Christianity? Not just tack on a scripture here and there, but let's just devour as much of the scripture as we can. Read it, study it, learn it, memorize it, make a big deal out of it. And we need to be aware of the evil. I believe it's a work of Satan to get people away from the word of God. Let's go back in a little review. I hate to be tedious here, hopefully I'm not, but I want to show you what we've covered just in the last few weeks. What have we seen in the Book of Acts that maybe we're missing here? Because this is a major theme of how the world was turned upside down. It wasn't Paul's suave and debonair character. In fact, history tells us he was a short, bald guy with a big hooked nose. He was brilliant. Was that his power? No, I think the brilliance in Paul's ministry was he spoke the word of God. That's where the power was. And I think Paul and Luke here as the author of the Book of Acts is trying to tell us that. So let's look at these examples so far that we've covered. I'm just going to go over my favorites. Acts chapter 2, verse 41: "Then they that gladly received his word, logos, were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls." Remember after Peter preached that sermon in Acts chapter 2, 3,000 people got saved. Where was the power in that? The word. Acts chapter 4, verse 4: "Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed, and the number of men was about five thousand." Do you see the power of the word? I see these podcasts, "How do we get people to come to our churches?" and they talk about making good coffee and make sure your worship team is really awesome and that the lights and the smoke look really cool. And they're talking about the wrong stuff. You can do good coffee or have lights or no lights, but you've got to have the word of God. That's the thing that's powerful here. What happened? 5,000 people because they heard the word. Acts chapter 6, verse 7: "And the word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly, and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith." Now even the priests are coming to Christ, which is an amazing... that's a powerful thing. And all this multiplication is from the word of God. It doesn't say and Paul eloquently talked about Jesus. It doesn't say that. It's the word, which is the logos, the word of God, which is God. Acts chapter 8, verse 4 says: "Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word." So not only were people getting saved by hearing the word, they would go and do the same thing and it would multiply. The people that heard the word and received it, then they went and told other people about the word. It's like a domino effect. That's the power of the word of God. Acts chapter 10, verse 44, we covered this just a few weeks ago: "While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word." When did the Holy Ghost... see, some people put the Holy Ghost almost like over the word. I don't think they're really independent of each other. I think the Holy Spirit and the word of God is linked because "In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us," and it's part of God. God is the living word. Jesus is the one who walked in the flesh. God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all linked up in the word of God, and that's where the power is. So when did the Holy Ghost fall on the people? When they heard the word. This is such an important part of that understanding. I think some of our Pentecostal brothers don't spend a lot of time teaching the Bible and they're wondering maybe why it seems a little fake or maybe a little contrived sometimes to flop around and swing around on the chandeliers. They don't realize the power of the Spirit, the true power of the Holy Spirit, comes by the preaching and the hearing of the word of God. Acts 11:1: "And the apostles and the brethren that were in Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God." Remember it went from the Jews all the way to the Gentiles. They were hearing the word and now tens of thousands of people are being saved in Acts 11. Acts chapter 12, verse 24: "But the word of God grew and multiplied." Acts chapter 13, verse 44: "And the next Sabbath day came almost the whole city together." What did they come to hear? Paul's eloquence? To see his bald head? To see Barnabas, who looked like Zeus? No, they came together to hear the word of God. It's the powerful word of God. Acts 13:46 it says: "Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold and said, 'It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you, but seeing you put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.'" This is a sad thing because this is the first time in the Book of Acts we're starting to get this notion that there are those that will hear the word, but notice what these people do. These were the Jewish people. It says, "But seeing you put the word from you." You put it away from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life. If you're not willing to hear the word of God, you're putting it away, saying, "I don't care about the Bible, I don't care about the word," you're putting away everlasting life and you're swapping it out for everlasting death and hell. Man, the consequences of not listening and pushing away the word of God are eternal. Do we really understand the implications of what it means to put away the word of God from among yourselves? That's what these people were doing. So tragic. But the people that heard the word like the Gentiles, Paul turned to the Gentiles and started preaching the word to them, and they believed and accepted and were saved. Acts chapter 13, verse 48: "And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of God." Did they glorify Paul? Silas? Nope. The word of God was glorified, and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed and the word of the Lord was published throughout all the region. Acts 14:25: "And when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia." So they were all about the preaching of the word. Acts 15:35 and 36: "Paul also and Barnabas continued in Antioch teaching and preaching the word of the Lord with many others also. And some days after Paul said unto Barnabas, 'Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord and see how they do.'" So it was given the word, check in on them, see if they're really still following the word of the Lord. It was all about the word of the Lord. Acts chapter 16, verse 32: "And they spake unto him the word of the Lord and to all that were in his house." That was the effective ministry there to the jailer in Philippi. Acts chapter 17, verse 11: "These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, the Bereans, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily to see if those things were so." And then Acts chapter 18, we saw this, it says: "And he continued there a year and six months teaching the word among them." He wasn't fundraising. He wasn't doing missionary slides about his missionary journeys and raising funds for that. What was he doing? Just teaching the word. Not even preaching, he was teaching the word of God. Acts chapter 19, verse 10: "And this continued by all the space of two years so that all they which dwelt in Asia," that's Asia Minor, "heard the word of the Lord Jesus both Jews and Greeks." And then now our text, Acts 19:20: "So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." Are you guys getting the theme here in the Book of Acts? I just showed you a ton of scripture just in the first 19 chapters of the Book of Acts. It's what turned the world upside down. It's why here we sit and we're all about the word of God because it is where the power is. It's what the church is missing today. If you know a church or if you're a pastor of a church and you feel like something's really missing, this is the first place I'd look. If you feel like the Spirit of God has left your church, if people aren't coming to your church, this is the first place I would look. Do you emphasize the word not by your brilliant emphasis, but are you emphasizing the word because it is powerful? It is what people are hungry for. They don't care about your good looks or the way you present, necessarily. People are just starving for the word of God. They might not even know it, but when they hear it, they know it and they sense it, and sadly so many people are missing that. So this is something I think we have to take note of and it's one of the most overlooked things right now in modern-day churchianaity that I think has become such a problem. What's the problem with the church today? I think they've missed this theme, major theme of the Book of Acts. Well, Brett, okay, I got it. So you're just trying to reinforce what you're doing? Exactly. I would love to encourage pastors to go just verse by verse. I know some people think, "Well, I can't do that in the Book of Numbers or Leviticus or come on, there's scriptures that are just Song of Solomon, are you serious? You're going to go through that?" When we go through those books, our church has been hugely blessed, maybe even more blessed than some of the big guns like the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, because all those books point to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It reinforces the Gospel of Christ. It gives us understanding and helps us to apply the Bible powerfully. So that's why we at Athey put an emphasis on verse by verse, chapter by chapter. We don't skip a verse. But some of you might still be a little bit foggy on what's the benefit to you. Because not only is the church sadly missing the word, I think there's a lot of personal people that are missing the word in their own lives. I think the word should be a daily thing for every believer. Just carve out time to read the word, study the scriptures. Devotionally, what if I don't understand it? It's miraculous. Do you understand that? I think just by reading it even if you don't understand it, you'll find benefit from it. When you do morning devotions this week and you go, "I didn't understand a word I just read," just say, "Okay, I'm going to tuck that away, don't understand it, but someday I will." And if you keep reading the word, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen. You'll be on some other scripture and you'll read something, and you go, "Wait a minute. I read that about this and about this," and you'll start to connect the dots. And I'll tell you the Bible becomes... has anybody ever put a puzzle together, like a pretty good puzzle, one with thousands of pieces? Have you ever noticed the first puzzle pieces, it's like where do I begin? So you start with the easy ones, the one with the straight line, right? There's a lot of straight-line verses. The Gospel's a good straight-line puzzle piece for the Bible. Just read the Gospel and you go, "Wow, the story of Jesus. Puzzle with straight lines." Then you start reading the rest of the New Testament, and those are some of the ones that maybe have dramatic color differences and you're like, "Okay, those puzzle pieces go up in this section." As you slowly start finding them, then they start almost exponentially fitting better, and by the end, you're just starting to snap puzzle pieces in because they just drop into place and you've got it dialed. Reading the Bible is like that, only it's not a puzzle that takes four days to put together. It's a lifetime of that. And it's wonderful.
Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador with an encouraging illustration for the benefits of regular reading and continued study of God's word. And Pastor Brett is standing by to join me with a special request before we conclude today's word, so I invite you to stay right there. But first, let me tell you a little bit more about Brett Meador. He's the senior pastor of Athey Creek Church, just outside of Portland, Oregon. Brett's been the pastor of Athey Creek for 30 years, where he goes verse by verse in his study of the Bible. If you missed any portion of our study, you'll find all of Pastor Brett's messages online at todayswordradio.com. That's todayswordradio.com. All right, Pastor Brett is with me now. One of the things we really enjoy hearing is stories of changed lives because of these daily studies in God's word. And Brett, if someone would like to share their story of how God has impacted their life, how can they do that?
Brett Meador: Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that because those stories are a giant encouragement to our whole team. We put these messages out day after day, but much of the time we don't get to see what God's doing on the other side of the radio. So when we hear from people, it really is a blessing. When someone gives us a note about a particular teaching that brought them back to church or gave new hope in a current time of despair or strengthening their marriage, it's amazing to hear those stories and they really do encourage us. They remind us also that the word of God never returns empty. It's like when Isaiah the prophet said that the word never returns unto me void. I think that that's one of the things that keeps us going is when we hear how the word is changing lives. So we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at [email protected]. You can also connect with us on our website for more information. Your story doesn't have to be dramatic. Sometimes the simple story where a teaching just gave you a little encouragement, that's all we need is just to hear how you're doing. Remember the man that was delivered there in Mark chapter 5? Jesus did a work and then told the man, "Go home to your friends, tell them the great things the Lord has done for thee." I think that there's power in telling others what the Lord is doing in your life. So please send us a message and we'd love to hear your story, rejoice with you, thank the Lord for the work he's doing in your life.
Guest (Male): Yes, we would indeed love to hear from you. And if you'd like to share your story of how these daily messages have had an impact on your life, just email us. That email address again is [email protected]. Again, tell us your story at [email protected] or you can go to our website, which is todayswordradio.com. Well, that's all the time we have. Next time, Pastor Brett will look at the Psalms and how it remarkably refers to the glory of the word of God while providing the reader divine direction. Today's Word with Pastor Brett Meador is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in West Linn, Oregon.