The Gospel in Community

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Steve Viars:One of the great privileges of being a follower of Jesus Christ is that because of that shed blood that we've just been singing about, you're actually adopted into the family of God. One of the many blessings and benefits of that is that immediately you have brothers and sisters in Christ around the world, around the world.

Friends, this morning I would like you to meet three of your brothers, and to be ministered to by them this morning. Pastor Luis Mendez from the Dominican Republic, who serves currently at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, is going to be delivering the morning message. Pastor Mendez travels the Latin American world strengthening churches, and I am so thankful that he and his dear wife are with us today.

We're also going to hear testimonies from Pastor Norberto Quesada who serves, along with his son Leslie who is also with us this morning, in Old Havana, Cuba. If you were with us in our church services a couple of weeks ago you saw some of the pictures that I showed you. Their church is on that street and they are being a bright light for Jesus Christ in a way that is bringing God great glory. I want you to hear a little bit of their heart and what God is doing there.

Then we're going to hear from Pastor Kike Torres. He's from Querétaro, Mexico. I had the privilege of being there last year. I wish every one of you could have been with me. God is using them as such a marvelous, marvelous way. It's such an exciting place. Don't you love having brothers and sisters from around the world? I am so thankful that these brothers are with us today. Thank you for being willing to minister the word of God to us.

Luis Mendez:Good morning, everybody. It's a great honor to be here today. On behalf of the Hispanic/Latino community that is here this week represented, I want to say thank you to you as a church. My wife and I, we have been attending to the Biblical Counseling Conference since 2010, and what a blessing you are for us.

We have a lot of friends here. Pastor Viars is very much my mentor. I believe that God is using Pastor Viars to introduce biblical counseling all over the world. I haven't met anybody so intentional, so vision-casting like Pastor Viars. You know him better than I. Rob Green have been very close friend with me, and you have here Pastor Newton Peña. He's one of my best friends. We were born and raised in the same neighborhood in the Dominican Republic. We went to the same elementary school together. We went to the same university together. We play in the same baseball team together.

We were born in 1965 but we have been together since 1964 because our mothers were also best friends, and more than that, we were pastors at the same church in the Dominican Republic, and now we are suffering the same bad weather together, so this church feel like home here. Again, it's a great honor to be with you.

Could you come with me to Acts, Chapter 2, please? We'll be speaking about the gospel in community, the power of the church living together: Acts 2:42-47. I have 30 minutes for this message so we'll be flying this morning, okay? "And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were then done through the apostles. And all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings, and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people."

Here is the best part: "And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved." What we have here in that, Chapter 2, is a historical account of the first church. This is so amazing. In the context a huge crowd was gathered on the day of Pentecost, and by the influence of the Holy Spirit they began to speak the wonderful words of God. They started speaking in the language of the people who were there, people from all different nations. That was so exciting, and also it was so confusing.

Then Peter is standing with the 11 disciples. He lifted up his voice and he explained what miracle was going on, and then Peter continued to announce to that Jewish population of Jerusalem that Jesus of Nazareth, whom they have crucified, he was both Lord and Messiah. This fantastic message that Peter gave [inaudible 00:07:07] that was remarkable. It's amazing what happened.

Look at this here in Verse 15: "In those days Peter stood up among the brothers, the company ..." I love this detail from Luke, the author. "The company of persons was in all about 120." What happened? "Those who received his word were baptized; and they were added that day about three thousand souls." So the church that was born in Jerusalem on the first day they had 3,120 members. It was a good Sunday. It was an excellent Sunday.

There is no church in the Old Testament. What we have here is the birth of the church. The question is, what was this first church like, or how can we be like that church? Imagine if you have never attended to a church service. You have never seen a worship service on television. You have never heard anyone describe the church service before. You have no idea what church is like except that you have read in the Bible the book of Acts, and with only this knowledge of the church, you entered through this door this morning. The question is, is this what you expect? How can we be like the first church?

The early church, they understood the need of being together, and we can learn from them. Basically, what I have for you is seven observations about the first church. I have seven observations, 21 minutes. Do the math. We will be flying here.

1. BIBLE-CENTERED CHURCH

First, the early church was a Bible-centered church, a Bible-centered church. Acts 2:42 said, "And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching." They knew the importance of reading the Bible, and we'll suppose the apostle teaching here was the same subject matter that we find in Peter's sermon in Acts, Chapter 2 to Chapter 4.

In other words, the content of the apostles' teaching was the gospel, the gospel, so the church was designed to be a place where gospel is continually explained, opened, pulled ... Go to Timothy in this term. This is 2 Timothy 2:2, "And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit this to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." This is the reproductive cycle of teaching: "You heard from me, and then you pass to faithful men, and also they will pass to others."

That's not the only place. 1 Timothy 4:16: "Take heed to ..." The idea is, "Keep a close watch on yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them; for in doing this, you will save both yourself and those who hear you." Guys, we are a people of the Bible. We are a church. The Bible is everything for us. "Therefore," Verse 6, "my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." The church is the right place to study the Bible, to proclaim the gospel. That's what we need. That's what we need.

Here is my conviction: if you want to learn about outer space, you're going to Purdue University. If you want to learn about political debates, you're going to CNN. If you want to learn how people waste their time, you're going to Facebook, but if you want to learn about the Bible, you're going to Faith Church. Amen. Clap. Let me tell you, we love this church. I love this church. I remember almost 10 years ago I came here and it was Bible. That's what we need: Bible. That church, the early church, was a Bible-centered church.

2. FELLOWSHIP-PROMOTING CHURCH

Second: It was a fellowship-promoting church, fellowship-promoting church. Verse 42: "And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship." We are talking about here more than studying the Bible. It is being challenged by the Bible living together. Fellowship was another very important activity of this church. The Greek word for "fellowship" is "koinonia," and it means partnership, companionship, sharing.

When you receive Jesus Christ you became a partner with Christ, and you also became a partner with every other Christian. We are talking about a spiritual togetherness, a spiritual togetherness, so we have to be intentional on this, practicing fellowship. The church is not a place for lone rangers or Rambos. This is a church. We are a family. We have to grow together. Look at Hebrews here, 10:23 and 25: "Let us ..." I think it's [inaudible 00:14:55] command here. It's not an option. God is not asking your opinion about this. "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for," that "for" is important there, "He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works."

The idea is let's think. Let's be intentional how we're going to love each other, how we're going to motivate each other to show love, to praise God in our life, growing together, living together. The question is how? How are we going to do that? Keep reading here. Verse 25: "not neglecting to meet together, not neglecting to meet together."

Sanctification is a community project. Sanctification is a community project. We are part of this Christian community in the form of the local church. Let me go straight up here. I'm talking about the problem with American individualism. This is the spirit of American life, and that is influencing many in the church. Let me quote this: "Not long ago a [banner 00:16:40] group released in a story of the founders, Christianity dominate America. Eighty-one percent self-identify as Christians." But listen to this: "Only 21 of those interviewed, they believe that spiritual maturity required a connection with the faith community."

In other words, only 21% believe that you have to be in the church. That's the problem that we are facing. The Bible does not envision the Christian life as one live apart from the believers in some invisible universal church. The universal church is also called "the body of Christ," so members, we are together. We function together.

We are a very busy generation, and that's the problem here in America. Let me give you a testimony. I remember back in 2006 I came from the Dominican Republic to Minneapolis to do my four-month theological training. I had tried to schedule a meeting with somebody, actually a pastor there. Let's suppose that we are talking on March, Tuesday 12th. He said, "Yeah, yeah, let's get together. Let's go to my calendar and let's try to find some time for that." Basically he came to me saying, "I'm ready to meet with you in April 22nd," like one month after, and I'm a like, "Probably you don't understand what I mean. I mean, get together tomorrow, next week." That's our situation: We don't have time.

We don't have time to share. We are so busy in our plans. We are so busy in our goals, and fellowship won't be possible if you don't sacrifice your individualism. Don't try to schedule your affections. The only place where fellowship precedes sacrifice is at the dictionary. Out of that, you have to sacrifice your time. Actually, we find in the text that they practiced The Lord's Supper as an expression of how intimate was that relationship. So the early church was a Bible-centered church, was a fellowship-promoting church; third, was a praying-saturated church, a praying-saturated church.

3. PRAYING-SATURATED CHURCH

Acts 2:42: "And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers," so this church was persistent in the activity of praying. We all need to pray. We always are dependent of God. We glorify God when we pray. It is a humble recognition that without him we can do nothing, and I believe that our prayer life as a church shows how well we know our weakness and how well we know the power of God. Our prayer life as a church shows how well we know our limitations and how well we know the promises of God in Jesus Christ, the promises of God in Jesus Christ.

Pastor Joe McArthur put it this way: "Praise the slender nerve that moves the muscles of the omnipotence." We should be people of praying. Let me give you two example here in the early church: There is a moment when the disciple returned to Jerusalem. Here in Act 1:14 is a description of just an ordinary moment in the life: "All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer together with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers." It was an intentional prayer time. They have that that they call "prayer time" together at the church.

Another example here is they were facing the real challenge situation because they didn't know how to replace Judas, the disciple. There were two options here: Joseph and Matthias. And they don't know what to do. What did they do? Verse 24: "And they prayed and said, 'You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen.'" Amazing: They were depending on God on this.

Pastor Jim Piper said, "How do we know what to do when we don't know what to do?" We pray. That's exactly the point, and we are full of situations like that.

4. SPIRIT-EMPOWERED CHURCH

Four: The early church was a spirit-empowered church, spirit-empowered. Verse 43 said that "an awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles." The original word is "fovos." Sometime in other places in the Bible it's translated as "fear." It was a great reverence there. "Awe" is the idea.

When Peter was speaking in the famous message, it was a powerful moment of convictions, and they felt very, very sorry. They were brokenhearted over what they have done with Jesus, and they cried in desperation. Let me show this: "What shall we do?" And Peter respond, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit," and the response was overwhelming, overwhelming.

The text says that they have a feeling, this thing of awe, fear. That word, "awe," is reserved for a special time in the scripture, those time when people minds are struck in a special reverence because something divine is happening and they don't have a way to explain it: Reverence.

Let me show you one example of it. We don't have this in this life: Luke, Chapter 7, please. Let me show you another place in the scripture that it's used, that word that is translated "awe." Luke 7:11 said that they were in a town, small village called "Nain." That's in Verse 11: "Nain." This is the only place in the scripture that that town is mentioned. Actually, if you are from in a small town in the midst of nowhere like Lafayette, Indiana, it's okay. Jesus still loves you. It's fine. Here you have Nain.

What happened is you have a funeral here. A widow's son, the only son of her, had died. I want you to understand that this is a very, very solemn moment. In Verse 13 said, "And when the Lord saw her he had compassion on her and said to her, 'Do not weep.'" Actually, this is so weird. That is not what we learn here in the biblical counsel. I don't believe that that was a good counsel. Could you imagine dying, your only son, and somebody came to you and said, "Do not weep." Really? Only Jesus can say that, and the reason is because he had something better for her. He had something better.

Verse 14: "Then he came up and touched the bier, the coffin, and the bearers stood still." The idea is Jesus has something to say to this dead young man, and Jesus, he said, "Young man, I say to you, arise. Get up!" Could you imagine you there? And what happened? Verse 15: "And the dead man sat up and began to speak." I don't know what he said, but could you imagine the funeral and this young man just sat up and said, "God, it's cold here," or something like that? Oh my God, I can't imagine. "And Jesus gave him to her. Verse 16 [inaudible 00:28:18]: "Fear seized them all, and they glorified God." That's the same expression that happened in Acts, Chapter 2.

The idea is God has been with us here. Something special is happening. God has showed his power. Everybody have been affected. Great fear in the crowd, and the idea is only the spirit of God can turn an ordinary thing into a glorious thing, ordinary act of grace into a glorious reality, the spirit of God, the spirit of God.

5. SHARING CHURCH

Number five: the early church was sharing church, a sharing church. Verse 44 said, "And all who believed were together and had all things in common." You need to think about this. There is a lot of people that are traveling. Like, here, this week was the 5th of Passover, Pentecost in Jerusalem. There was not enough space for all these people. As a result, the Jewish people opened their hearts, their home, to share their resources with Israel.

What happened is that because the assignment, the power of God there, some of those guys who were visiting, they decided to stay. They rethink the idea to come back home. That's what happened here this week. I remember saying years ago, I came here and I said, "Oh my goodness, can I stay here for another year?" or something like that. That's the idea that I was going ... So those Jewish people now are housing and feeding a new, permanent guest: They don't want to leave. They have to stay. We are talking here mainly about hospitality, hospitality. It's a Christian practice, providing a space to take in a stranger.

In Latin America this is part of our life. I remember growing as a kid, my dad saying, "Son, this is your room except if somebody show up and stay over." Guess what? Every week somebody show up, so I grow up with that sense, "This is my room but it's not my room. Hospitality: That's the challenge of togetherness. We have, I think, a spiritual grammar problem, a spiritual grammar problem. We are always functioning in the first person singular when we are supposed to operate in the first person plural. We say, "I, me, mine," when we are supposed to say, "We, us, our, and that's a problem. I believe that maturity is learning how to think more in plural than singular.

We should improve our spiritual grammar. We have to be working in fellowship. Let me tell you, and this is for you guys in faith here, you are a very generous church. We praise God for you guys. You are a very generous church. Actually you'll be listening to two testimony about that. You are providing food, spiritual food, for people in Cuba, Mexico, Dominican Republic. Pastor Viars had the sole intention to open the door for that, and because of that you have 130 people, leaders, from all those countries this week here. What a blessing you are for us. What a blessing.

6. JOYFUL CHURCH

Let me go fast. A joyful church: "Day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their home, they received their food with glad and generous hearts." They were together. Union is the idea. "Sincere hearts": Clean heart that free them to praise God and produce joy, is the idea. There is nothing against each other. They were united; then they were glad. Joy comes from unity. Unity comes from everybody praying, glorifying God on this. That's the idea.

7. GOD-BLESSED CHURCH

Finally, it was a God-blessed church. God blessed the church. God blessed the church: "Praise God and having favor with all people, and the Lord add to their number day by day those who were being saved." The church was attractive to all people. They gained favor with all people. That's what you see here in Faith. That's exactly your case. "And the Lord was adding day by day to that." Praise God for Faith Church. This is the half of that. This is a [day 00:35:05] of heaven, so that's what you have.

In the early church was a Bible-centered, fellowship-promoting, praying-saturated, spirit and power, sharing, and joyful church, and because of that it was a God-blessed church. How are we doing on this? This is an amazing place to be. Now I invite Pastor Norberto Quesada from Cuba and Pastor Kike Torres from Mexico so that you can taste in application how God is using you guys in all Latin America world. May God bless you.

Norberto:Buenos días.

Congregation:Buenos días.

Norberto:Good morning. My name is Norberto Quesada. I'm a senior pastor of the Old Havana Church in Cuba, and I'm the president of the evangelical churches Los Pinos Nuevos in Cuba. I'm married to a beautiful woman who supports me and helps me in the ministry. Also, I am the father of three children. They are very involved in the local church and the seminary. Leslie is one of this.

Our church help and ministers our community in so many ways. It was unknown to the community because its door were closed, but five years ago we had started working very hard to help our community, and today our community looks very different.Our vision is leaders and churches that transform community with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We started training leaders and we saw a training center named ["sincap" 00:37:16]. After two years we saw that churches start to look very different because its pastors were trained and have a gospel-centered ministry focus in Christ and his word. Churches start to multiply from a small group and preaching biblically. We believe in multiplication. This is the best road to sound doctrine.

We also started a community project named "A grain of sand," in Spanish it's [foreign language 00:37:58], that serve food to 50 senior citizens and 80 children every day. This has been our way to access our community with the love of God. We do activities where we gather senior citizens and children to close the gap within the generations. We have an interesting story where a grandfather meets for the first time his grandchild in this ministry. Many of them are come from dysfunctional families.

Our main goal is to preach the gospel of the grace of God to transform the whole world. It's not about law or teaching or men; it's only God's grace that he welcomes sinners. Right now we are trying to enter in one the our neighborhood that is known for its prostitution and drugs. There is a lot of child prostitution and a lot of drug dealers. There are at least 10 teenagers, they are arrested in one of these buildings to do their connection with this practice. They are not a lost to opportunity to these families and they are not offer them training.

However, we want to offer them help through conference about these two issues, and we are providing them with food. One of the thing we need to learn and need help with is how to deal with domestic violence, specifically in the community. We were glad to receive help from Dr. Steve Viars when he shared with our pastor and leaders about the importance of Bible counseling in order to create a church with a healthy character to transform the world.

In this conference he has spoke about the importance of having a clear understanding sufficient of the scripture through the grace of God as a foundation in our life. He also spoke about the indicative of the gospel that helps to see our union with God in Christ. We are right with God. We are completed in him, and how this are applied in our present needs.

This is the best methods of evangelists. We believe this is the time to start a new, solid discipleship as a result of this conference. We want ever church to become a biblical counseling center to share with the people in our community what Christ accomplished to allow his sacrifice in the cross. We want biblical counseling to be a priority of the local churches. This is going to be our next project so that our church in Old Havana would be an agent of evangelism and see more fruit in creating a healthy church. I believe this is the time to start a new movement in Cuba where church will be given with biblical counseling. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Kike:Hi. I'm Pastor Kike, and I'm super nervous because they asked me to like share with you how much God is doing in Mexico, and you feel like I throw like a three-yard pass in front of Brady and Cam Newton because you are the guy. I'm Pastor Kike Torres. I'm from Mexico. I serve as a pastor of Horizonte Mexico City and Horizonte Querétaro.

God has blessed me so much with so much men so much better than me. One of them is our community life pastor that coordinates not only the integration of new members of the body of Christ and to the body of Christ, but also the impact in our city. As a church, we support a homeless shelter. We collect goods to give clothes to the homeless people in our city. The young people of our church and the students of our school of ministry go out and serve our neighborhood, representing Jesus by just serving them and loving them, painting their houses or fixing basic things at their homes.

We give about 100 meals to the homeless every month, and we will visit every weekend to the public hospital in Mexico to just pray for the sick people and their families, give them Bibles or just give them a meal. We also offer a discipleship meeting for persons who is struggling with addiction three times a week so that God may rescue them. Every Thursday we have from 10am to 10pm already have a, and running a free Bible counseling center at the church. It's amazing but we already have a waiting list. We need more counselors. That's why this year we have like maybe 18 to 20 people from our church coming to get equipped to do that in our cities.

We do not do all this stuff because we are good people but because we have received so much grace from God. We have learned from God that he's generous and he gives. We have learned a lot from God through you guys, how much grace and love you gave us, and how Pastor Viars and his team invested in us to do like kind of your work, like being an arm of faith in Mexico.

We still shamelessly, as you teach us in our workbook in every tract that we have been a story here and we are super obedient of that. Our team members now, [Layo 00:45:25] or Leo, will sign up to study the master in martial arts of biblical counseling that [we 00:45:31] ... this year that you offer here. He will be running the place, a bible counseling center in Mexico. Since Pastor Viars and his team have shown us so much grace we want to team up with you guys in a mission to reach the lost with the gospel, the love of Jesus and his word, to reach as many people as we can in Christ for his kingdom.

The role of biblical counseling in the process of reaching and serving the community has been key for us. It has become a great resource for the members of the church. They offer friends, business partners, like neighborhoods, to the possibility to be able to receive free help or something. A key word for Latin American people is "free," so when they offer like free Bible counseling they are like, "Oh, we want it."

We have been able to even help pastors in our community, in our city, from other churches to be restored personally their families, their marriages, and much more. Faith Church has blessed me in ways that I never can be like enough thankful. More than three years ago my mentor and friend Luis Mendez invited me to go to get ... equip me here in Lafayette. He told me that I need to meet a man whose vision was very similar to the dreams that we had.

It was a turning point in my life. From the first time I heard Pastor Steve Viars and the vision that God had given him and the Faith Church about what our God is doing here, he materialized many things that God had been showing me of what we could and we should develop for his glory in our country. Not only has Faith Church impacted me by confronting me with the word of God and errors of my personal life, marriage, and ministry, but now we have... You see the video? We have a Bible counseling center.

Pastor Viars, he went where we are like in construction. We have like now 10 little offices to receive people, and that's like really, really fun and tough and kind of crazy. We are like super amateur guy doing like, "You have what problem? Okay, let me see what Pastor Viars said about it." You know? But we are learning that, so just be patient with us.

We want to ask for your prayers. As I told you before, one of our guys of our team decided to enter into the master in biblical counseling here. We see the urgent need to develop like a thesis or a program for counseling people who have been kidnapped or have his family been kidnapped. There's a problem over there. As you know, this is a really big issue in our countries. We believe that they can experience Jesus as a savior in that situation too.

You are part of this, really, not only for the impact that you have made in my life as a pastor, as a man, and in my team, but also allowing Pastor Viars to travel there. Soon, by God's grace, we expect to see more of the members of your team, as Pastor Rob Green or [foreign language 00:49:05] as his Spanish name, we have it there, go and equip our Mexican people there. With [Tract 00:49:14] one, we are praying for it. We have last November when Pastor Viars worked there like 500 people were equipped to Bible counseling.

Thank you for believing in what God is doing in Mexico. Our Mexican people thank you. If you are interested in following up and pray for what God is doing in Mexico, through us, you can visit Cristoesmejor.com, like, Christisbetter.com in Spanish, or follow us in Facebook at Horizonte Querétaro or Horizonte Mexico. Thank you.