The Foundation

Transcript

This morning, we’re gonna spend our time in Ephesians chapter two. We’re gonna be picking up what we left off last week. So if you’d be so kind as to turn with me in your Bibles to Ephesians two. And as you’re turning there, I’ll pray for us and then we’ll dive in.

Father, we do pray that you would be our help, that you would be our guide, that you would be our wisdom. We confess this morning that in order for us to understand your word, we need help. We’re not ashamed to ask. We ask because we need it. And so Father, would you please help me as I seek to communicate your word rightly? And would you help the brothers and sisters here to listen and to engage and to respond appropriately to your word? From the preaching and the receiving and the supernatural dance that happens between the two, Father, we are desperate for help. So meet us this morning, we pray. In Christ’s name, amen.

Well, every week at the end of the sermon, just before we approach the Lord’s table, we come to the point called covenant renewal where we corporately recite a creed to express what it is or what are the things that we as Christians believe. One of the truths we recite concerns the church. So whether it’s the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed, they both contain the same phrase concerning the church. And that is we believe in one holy Christian and apostolic church. Now, the original creed says one holy Catholic and apostolic church. But since Catholic simply means universal church and because Catholic and universal church in Portland, Oregon can be confusing, we simply say Christian church because that’s what it means. And that’s what we mean. And so as we’ve been asking this question that we started last week, what is the church? We saw last week in Ephesians 2, verses one through 19,

The Apostolic Foundation

a bit of what we see in the creeds that we confess. We saw that the church is a gathering of a particular people who in every way have trusted in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins and identify Jesus as Lord and Savior. So the church is a Christian church. We saw that God has called us out of the world and set us apart. We’ve been remade, we’ve been made holy. And the reason we’ve been made holy is to reflect the holiness and handiwork of God. So the church is holy. We saw that Jesus has broken down the walls of hostility between God and each other and placed us together as a church. We are a church full of diverse and different people. We’ve been supernaturally united by Christ. We’ve been purchased by his own blood, which makes us distinct from the world. And that supernatural unity in the church

is put on display for a watching world. So the church is one. And this morning, as we continue our study on what is the church, we will begin to look specifically at the foundation of the church. Ephesians 2 verse 20 tells us that the foundation of the church is built on the apostles. This is why the creed says that we are one, holy, Christian, and apostolic church, mostly making reference to Ephesians 2. Now, normally we preach what we call expositional. Simply means that we typically take a portion of scripture and we preach that by verse, explaining the text in its historical context, finding how the points of the text connect with our contemporary context. And we do that at Trinity Church as faithful as we can by staying as tethered to the text as possible. We at Trinity Church believe that this is the most

helpful way for us to understand the scriptures. But sometimes we’re confronted with a certain theme or a concept in scripture that might be better understood from a wider biblical approach. So this morning, we will be picking up where we left off last week in Ephesians 2, but looking at verses 19 through 22 but we’re also gonna be bouncing around a bit in our Bibles to look at other passages to help us better understand from that wider vantage point, the theme of the apostolic church. Now, we’re gonna begin in verse 19, but before we do that, let me just briefly catch some of you up to speed in case you weren’t here where we left off last week. Paul in verse one explains that we were dead in our sins. We used to follow the pattern of the world and its evil ways. We were by nature bent to satisfy the desires of our flesh.

So in many ways, our flesh was our former foundation for which we lived our lives. But because of God and his great love and mercy, we who were once spiritually dead have been made alive in Christ, we’ve been saved. Because of what Christ has accomplished, both Jews and Gentiles or religious and irreligious people have been brought together into this new structure we call the church. Paul goes on to say that we are God’s handiwork created by God for good works. Paul says that we were once far from God, we had no peace with God, but Christ has brought us near and that he’s brought us peace both with God and each other and he’s brought us into this strange thing that we call the church. So in light of that reality or in consequence of all that Christ has done, Paul says, starting in verse 19, so then, in light of all that,

you are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirit

— Ephesians 2

(ESV)

. So Paul essentially is saying, now that you understand what Christ has done for you, let me explain what this means for you in terms of how you are to live and relate with one another as members in this unified church. Now, Paul in his writings uses a lot of metaphors to help us understand the church. And here he uses three metaphors in the span of four verses to help us understand the church. He references a city, a family, and a temple, okay?

He likens Christians in the church to a city, a city occupied by citizens from different nations, different cultures, different backgrounds, who now share one new nationality, okay? Now, we ought not read too much into nationality as it’s just a metaphor, so I wanna be clear. The city metaphor isn’t a proof text for Christian nationalism. It’s just an image that Paul uses to help us better understand. He likens us to a family, a household of faith, where children, all of us, have been adopted and grafted into this new family structure. He likens us to a holy temple in which we as believers are joined together, or to use construction language, we’re framed together, a building that God himself, by his spirit, dwells within. So a city of God, a family of God, and a temple of God. And the common thread that runs through all of these metaphors is that they all have structure.

So whatever the metaphor is, Paul helps us here to understand that the apostles are the foundation of that structure. So the apostles in a city might be the government. The apostles in a family might be the parents. The apostles in a temple might be the concrete, okay? The church is built on the foundation of the apostles, but not to get it twisted, the Lord Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of that foundation. He is the first stone in the foundation that sets the structure, the strength, and the stability for the foundation. So the apostles set in motion the structure for the church, but it was Christ himself who designed and orchestrated the structure for the apostles. And in this structure, Christ has ordained for us, the people of God, to follow the pattern of what we call the apostolic church. Now, the apostolic church, or the word apostolic,

is one of those religious words that can be defined in a variety of different ways. It means different things to different folks. So if you ask like a Roman Catholic, or an Anglican, or even someone who’s a bit more charismatic leaning to define apostolic church, they’re gonna give you three totally different perspectives on what that kind of church is. Today, it’s become very popular in certain evangelical cultures or circles to say that in order to be a true apostolic church, you must rid yourself of any structure, like church buildings, or church affiliation, or denomination. You gotta get rid of church admin and staff. According to these folks, if you wanna be a true church, you need to ditch your building and go the old school route of house churches. They often take the scripture that talks about having all things in common, quite literal, and set up

some kind of monastic living situation, okay? Now, that’s not the case. There’s nothing wrong with having a house church, but just because you’re in a church building, just because you’re part of a denomination or have a church staff does not mean that you’re not an apostolic church. Some people believe that in order to be an apostolic church, you have to constantly be demonstrating in the life of the church miraculous signs and miracles. But that’s not necessarily the case either. You can be a church in a context that sees very little miraculous signs or miracles and still be an apostolic church. And furthermore, I would submit to you that what one defines as a miracle, others might interpret as normative. Things like becoming a believer, growing in godliness, living in unity, all of those things I would consider to be miracles. But for others, they think it’s not enough.

You need to have better kinds of miracles to be a true apostolic church, but brothers and sisters, that’s not the case. So with all this confusion, what then is an apostolic church? How do we define it biblically? Furthermore, if it is the foundation that Christ Jesus has built the church upon, it’s probably a good look for us to become acquainted with what it is. And not just what it is, but most importantly, what does it actually look like? So the question I wanna give most of our attention to this morning is what are those defining features of an apostolic church? If our aim is to align ourselves with the scriptures and to be authentic with the creeds that we confess, that we are one, holy, Christian and apostolic church, then we need to know what that means. And in order to figure that out, we’re gonna have to do some work this morning, okay?

We’re gonna have to take a brief survey of the life and ministry of the apostles. Because if you wanna know what it means to be an apostolic church, you gotta understand the pattern and the practices of the apostles. What it is that they professed, what they prioritized and what they promoted. And in order to do that, we have to bounce around a bit in our Bibles, okay? So I would, if I were you, keep one hand or one thumb in Ephesians and another finger in the book of Acts because we’re gonna be, you know, bouncing around. Okay, my hope this morning is to show us five features of an apostolic church. Though there’s probably many more, but I’m gonna look at five features. And when I survey the book of Acts and Ephesians, I see five features of the apostles’ teaching. So we’re gonna explore those things

so that we at Trinity Church can be reminded, be realigned and recommitted to the foundation of Christ’s church. Now, before we dive into the life of the apostles, let me just say this. The apostles, they were just men. At times, they were foolish, dismissive, prideful, slow to listen, quick to fall asleep, quick to miss the point. But in their human frailty and all their inadequacy, the Lord used these men to flip the world upside down for the sake of the gospel. Ordinary men with ordinary means, but with extraordinary power because of an extraordinary God. And we, Trinity Church, can learn a lot from that reality. We take great comfort in that because we are ordinary men and women that use ordinary means, but capable of doing extraordinary things because we serve an extraordinary God. When we look at the life and ministry of the apostles,

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Centered on Christ

we see first and foremost that the priority of the apostles was Jesus, both in their preaching and in their practice. They proclaimed Jesus and they lived for Jesus. Everything they did centered on the person and work of Jesus. So the first defining feature of an apostolic is to be centered on Christ. The apostles had it embedded in their DNA that Christ was the cornerstone of their world. Christ was the center of everything. So all of their work centered on him. This is what the book of Acts clearly puts on display. In fact, if you read through the book of Acts, you cannot miss it. In fact, the book of Acts is not necessarily the Acts of the apostles. It’s the Acts of Jesus Christ through the apostles. It is the apostles working under the power and authority of Christ Jesus. Now, many of you know, before I was a full-time pastor,

I worked a bit in music business. I still do a little bit, but part of my role was an artist manager. Part of my responsibility was to handle some of the business and legal affairs of the artists. Still do that a bit today for Shy and Blair Lynn. As their manager, I sign contracts. I book a show, I sign their contract. Schedule an interview, I sign their contract. I even manage their calendar to a certain degree, at least their business part of their calendar. In many ways, I function a bit of what you might call a power of attorney. And so when I sign my name on their contracts, they are legally responsible to fulfill those contracts because I’m legally moving and operating under the authority they gave me, the authority they commissioned me with. I speak for them, I sign for them as a representative of them.

And this is in some small way how it worked for the apostles. They were commissioned to speak and operate under the authority of Jesus as a representative of Jesus. So the book of Acts, which records most of the physical acts of the apostles, doesn’t really record much of the physical acts of Jesus. But because the apostles were fully authorized by Jesus to act on his behalf, the book of Acts is all about the acts of Jesus. You understand that? And what was the primary work that the apostles were commissioned to do by Jesus? Proclaim Christ himself, his life, his death, and resurrection. Friends, the apostles were preoccupied with what you might call Christ-centered preaching. That’s why we make such a priority here at Trinity Church to preach Jesus Christ every single Sunday. If we fail to preach Jesus Christ, we fail to preach a Christian sermon.

That’s why we make such a big deal about gathering together to sit under the word because it’s apostolic in nature. It’s foundational to the church. It’s what the apostles did. So that’s what we should do. So friends, don’t let the culture train you to devalue the preaching of God’s word in church as the least significant thing that happens in the church because it’s not. Christian culture has increasingly pushed this idea that the most important thing about church is community. But I would suggest to you that the preaching is what primarily shapes the community. Okay? Now that doesn’t mean that it’s the only thing that we do at Trinity Church, certainly not. But friends, it is one of the primary things that we do as a church. And if it’s a primary thing, then we need to make sure that we are primarily preaching Christ, his life, his death, and resurrection.

We see the primacy of preaching Christ with the apostles all over the book of Acts. Peter in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost says this.

Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it

— Acts 2

(ESV)

. You see what’s happening here? Life, death, resurrection. Again, in Acts 3, Peter preaches in Solomon’s portico, Acts 3.15, and you killed the author of life whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. So the author of life was killed, but God resurrected.

Okay? In chapter four, Peter preaches again, but this time to the Sanhedrin, Acts 4, verses 10 through 11. Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. Interesting. Life, death, and resurrection. Here, Peter speaks authoritatively and powerfully, laying the foundation of the apostolic church, modeling Christ-centered preaching, and he even references Christ as the cornerstone. And when the apostle Paul begins preaching, well, he preaches the same message that Peter did, Acts 13, 28 through 31. And though they found in him no guilt worthy of death, they asked Pilate to have him executed. And when they had carried out all that was written of him,

they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people. Life, death, and resurrection. The apostles were all about Christ-centered preaching, which means Christ-centered preaching is a natural and necessary feature of an apostolic church. So we’re not an apostolic church if we’re preaching about living for the comforts of this life, preaching politics. We’re not an apostolic church if we’re preaching behavior modification. We’re not an apostolic church if we’re preaching about having better marriages, building better communities, or preaching six practical steps to remove anxiety. Friends, that’s a man-centered preaching. That type of preaching orbits around man, strategies, and sociology. Furthermore, we don’t preach moralism or behavior modification. We preach Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection,

and what that does to modify our hearts and save us from our sins. The apostolic church is centered on Christ and its preaching, but friends, it’s also centered on our practice. Listen, part of your job as a member of this church is to encourage one another about what Christ has done for one another through his life, death, and resurrection, but also reminding one another of what Christ has secured for the here and now because of his life, death, and resurrection. Family, all of us in this church are living in a world that is pushing down on us, causing all kinds of emotional and physical stress. For some, it is so overwhelming that they sometimes feel like God is so far removed from their experiences. Many don’t feel like God loves them as a result of the stresses of their life and feel completely hopeless in this world.

These are common feelings of Christians who live in a fallen world, and so we need to proclaim to one another the love of God in sending Jesus not only to save us from our sins, but to be near in our suffering and to be our comfort through the indwelling Holy Spirit that came as a result of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, to remind us that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is the same power to help you navigate all of those difficult and dark circumstances of your life, the challenges that we face in this world as Christians, and that when all of our life comes to an end, we will stand on the future hope and promise of a better world, that all of our suffering in this life is not without purpose, but it’s preparing in us an eternal weight of glory,

our future glory, when we will be with God and each other in a perfect world with no pain and no suffering for all of eternity. In other words, brothers and sisters, your job is to preach Christ to one another, and when you preach Christ to one another, it looks like saying, hold on, hold on, hold fast, because of Jesus, because of his life, death, and resurrection, we have both temporal and eternal hope that secures us. We can rest on that fact because Jesus raised from the grave. The second defining feature of an apostolic church is to be saturated in scripture. Ephesians 2, verse 20 says that we’re built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. So we believe in the whole Bible. We talked a bit about this when we were unpacking the doctrine of scripture. We believe in a comprehensive Bible

from the prophets of the Old Testament to the apostles of the New Testament. This means an apostolic church is receiving its insight, wisdom, and revelation concerning Christ from both the New Testament and the Old Testament. So God gave the church apostles and prophets to establish the foundation of the church, but the reason the foundation starts with the apostles is because of proximity, where the prophets in the Old Testament can only push us forward to a coming Messiah, the apostles, because of proximity to Jesus, because they could visually see Jesus, were able to point directly to Jesus, God incarnate. They uniquely had the opportunity to point directly to Jesus while helping people to look backwards to see that Jesus has always been there, okay? The apostles always preached Christ from the Old Testament. I mean, you’d be pretty hard-pressed to find an occasion where the apostles were preaching

and didn’t, at some point, reference the Old Testament. Again, when you look at their sermon in Acts, Peter and Paul both used the Old Testament in their sermons. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, when he preached his sermon, he made reference to Psalm 16 and Joel 2. Acts 10.43, Peter referenced the Old Testament and says, to him, all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. And Paul did the same thing. He preached from the Old Testament. When preaching in Antioch, Paul referenced Psalm 2, Psalm 16, Isaiah 45, Isaiah 55, and Habakkuk 1. And again, you see this in Acts 17.2. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on the Sabbath days, he reasoned with them from the scriptures. What scriptures? The Old Testament scriptures. Paul broke down the Old Testament. You see, the apostles were biblically comprehensive

because Jesus was biblically comprehensive. They learned to preach this way from watching Jesus. This is what happened on the road to Emmaus when Jesus concealed his identity with these two dudes walking on the road. Luke 24, 27 says, and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he, that is Jesus, interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Jesus himself taught us to read the New Testament in light of the Old Testament. And the apostles helped us frame this feature for the church because they were firsthand witnesses of Christ himself who modeled it to them. And just a side note, that’s what really helps us to define an apostle. It means to be eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus. Friends, it gets weird when people begin to identify themselves as an apostle. Okay, don’t do that.

All right, you have a powerful ministry, praise God for that and say, I’m just a person. Don’t call yourself an apostle. Now, some people bring up the fact that Paul, you know, they say, you know, Paul didn’t see Jesus, but you have to remember, Paul on the road to Damascus was confronted by the resurrected Jesus. Jesus himself said to Paul, why are you persecuting me? Speaking of the church. So to be clear, there are no more apostles. They set the foundation. It’s a done deal. The concrete is set, okay? But just because there are no more apostles doesn’t mean that the message the apostles preached is done. They set the foundation for us. Amen, brother, you can say that. To be an apostolic church means to preach the same doctrine as the apostles did and preach the same Christ as the apostles did from both the Old Testament

and New Testament. And family, this means that we as a church should follow that same pattern, okay? We should follow that same pattern by opening our scriptures with one another, okay? Opening up our Bibles, sitting down together, and reading the Old Testament and the New Testament, seeing what’s in it, seeing how it points to Jesus, using the scriptures to point one another to Jesus, who is the word of God and the wisdom of God. I mean, can I just be honest with you? How many times do you get together and open up your Bibles to study the scriptures?

Saturated in Scripture

If you never do that, let me just strongly encourage you to begin doing that. Okay, that’s part of your responsibility as a member of the church, is encouraging one another through the scriptures, both the Old and New Testament, okay? The next defining feature is to be generous with grace. Look at these literations. These are alliterations, folks.

I worked really hard on these, I’ll be honest. The ministry of the apostles were inextricably connected to grace. Whenever an appeal was made to embrace the saving message of the gospel, so was the proclamation that salvation was a gift from God. Friends, we saw this last week, Ephesians chapter two, verse one and six, and we read that this morning. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all, all of us, once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, that wonderful twist, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us,

even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. The good news of the gospel was not dependent upon us being good people. We don’t deserve it. We didn’t earn it. In fact, because of our sin, we deserve the opposite. We earned the opposite. Paul says that we were dead in our sins. We had no hope, but God made us alive in Christ. Trinity Church, this is grace. This is grace. In Acts 20, Paul says, but I do not account my life of any value, nor as precious to myself. If only I may finish my course in the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. Grace is connected in every way to the gospel.

The ministry of the apostles were always focused on grace. Whenever the apostles preached the gospel, they always preached that salvation was accomplished by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, so as to enforce the reality that salvation is by grace. Who lived, who died, who rose again for your sins? Christ Jesus. That’s his gift to you. You did nothing. Family, we are so prone to fall back into our former patterns of working to earn God’s acceptance and approval and salvation. Part of our job as a church is to remind each other, brother, sister, rest in the grace that God has provided you. When you fall into momentary sin, get up in the grace that God has given you. Don’t believe that you have to kind of work to pay off the debt of your sin. Simply confess it and turn in repentance. We are a people, for whatever reason,

Generous with Grace

in this particular culture, so prone to shame. So we need to hear about the grace of God. Family, be generous with grace. Speak to one another all the time about grace. Hearing about God’s grace has a way of lifting us out of our shame, of our guilt. Amen? The fourth defining feature of an apostolic church is to be forward with faith. This means to be evangelistically ambitious. The apostles always made clear that the pathway to receiving grace was through faith. You can’t promote grace without faith. They are inextricably connected. They work together. Again, we saw this last week, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is a gift from God, not a result of work, so that no one may boast. Faith is the gateway to grace. So the apostles pushed the message of grace

through faith forward to a dying world. They were ambitious when it came to evangelism. And the fruit of their evangelistic faithfulness, in many ways, is unquantifiable. We sit here this morning, recipients of their ministry fruit. In Acts 4, we get just a little picture of the fruitfulness. It says in Acts 4, verse 4, but many of those who had heard the word, what was being proclaimed evangelistically, believed. And the number of the men came to about 5,000. Dang.

That’s crazy. That is pushing forward faith. And that’s just a snapshot from one verse. You see this pattern with the apostles. They make every effort to evangelize. They were radically zealous to do that. Wherever they landed, in the marketplace, in prison, in prison, in a synagogue, they were forward with their faith. Acts 17, the apostle Paul, Mars Hill says to the Epicurean philosophers, and I’m just gonna read it for us, 17, verses 22 through 28. Just listen to how Paul was just a master of evangelism here. He says, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it

being Lord of heaven and earth does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being. As even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. This is personal evangelism 101. The apostle Paul did not run from culture, but rather ran into it. He observed the culture. He quoted one of their poets. He observed the culture and used cultural references

looking to find any and every opportunity to push faith forward. And we could be here all day with this text. Paul saw in Athens the religious tendencies of an irreligious culture, and he pointed them to a better religion, a real religion, a more satisfying religion, not one built off of moralism or tribalism or karma, but a religion built on grace through faith in Jesus Christ, his life, death, and resurrection. Friends, we exist in a world of very religious but irreligious people. Think about people who chase politics. That’s their religion. People who chase their sexual identity, that’s their religion. Find points of entry, offer them a new and better religion. Amen? Evangelism was taught and handed down to us by the apostles who learned it first and foremost and firsthand from Jesus. And just a quick side note, evangelism without an appeal to believe in Jesus Christ

is not biblical evangelism. Hanging out with non-believers is a good thing. I encourage you to do that. We should be spending time with non-believers. You hear me? It’s one of the reasons why we don’t have a thousand programs here, so that you can make time to engage with non-believers, but don’t call it evangelism if all you ever do is just hang out with them. Don’t call it evangelism if you never get around to addressing the more meaningful and significant issue, faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. You gotta help people believe that, okay? Jesus Christ himself calls you to be obedient to the task of evangelism. You see this command in Matthew 28 with the Great Commission. If we as a church are not doing evangelism, then we are not an apostolic church. We are not a faithful church. An apostolic church is to push faith forward.

Forward with Faith

It’s to be evangelistically ambitious. Friends, one of the reasons why we try so hard to put the gospel in every aspect of the liturgy is twofold, so that anyone who walks into these doors will hear in every part of our service the gospel of Jesus Christ and its power to save sinners, and to train you, to show you this is how you get to the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is how you confess the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is how you call people to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We ask you to bring your children to the table because we want you to use this table as a means to evangelize your children. Okay? This is part of our responsibility as a church is to evangelize our dying world. And lastly, a defining feature of an apostolic church is to be given to glory.

Ephesians 2.10, Paul writes, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Paul says we are created for good works. And the reason he created us for good works is because it is by our good works that God gets glory. The end of chapter three in Ephesians, Paul says, now to him who was able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever, amen. In the ministry of the apostles, everything was done for the glory of God. Nothing was done for selfish ambition, for their own reputation, for their social equity or for their popularity. They did nothing to increase their influence or secure their own success.

In fact, they did the opposite. They relinquished their privileges and their preferences for the sake of others, because in so doing, they brought glory to Jesus. The apostles had an appropriate aim for life and ministry and worship and that aim was God’s glory. All of their ministry efforts, everything they did culminated in the glory of God. And this wasn’t just for show. It was authentic or authentic, as the young folks would say. Sometimes people parade their righteousness or their works or their piety to receive accolades from people to look good in front of people. But here’s the thing, the apostles, these cats put their money where their mouth was, because history tells us that a lot of these apostles were martyred for their faith. You see, the threat of death has a way of revealing true motives.

If their aim was self, then self-preservation would be their outcome. But because they were genuinely motivated by God’s glory, they were willing to suffer whatever the cost for the cause of Christ, even if that cost was martyrdom. They saw the glory of God in the cross of Christ and followed his pattern. And family, so should we. Jesus himself says, if you wanna be my disciple, if you wanna follow me, you must pick up your cross. In other words, you must die.

God’s glory not only motivated the apostles, but God’s glory was the chief end of the apostles. And because they are the model for the church, so it should be also that God’s glory is the chief end of the members of Trinity Church, so that we as a church would glorify God and enjoy him forever. I wonder how much of our life together in this church is motivated by God’s glory.

When you show up here on Sunday morning, are you thinking in those categories? How can I bring glory to God in our gathering this morning? Or do you come here with all kinds of other motives? Who’s preaching this morning? What am I gonna get out of it? Is the microphone gonna work? Are the kids gonna be too loud, right? What is your aim and your focus when you come here? How will you put aside your preferences and your unique privileges to serve one another so that God’s glory is put on display, so that we can all revel in that glory?

If God is our ultimate aim, then we will not get caught up in all the unimportant and superficial things that typically happen in a church. Think of how much conflict would be resolved if God’s glory was our primary aim. How much more are we willing to give up in terms of our privileges and preferences for God’s glory? Brothers and sisters, we can start this today. We can be completely given to the task of God’s glory.

Given to Glory

May we be a church that is marked by selfless living, hospitality, and radical generosity. May we be a church that is driven by confession and repentance and grace towards one another. May we be a congregation that is preoccupied with stirring up one another to love and good works, putting the supernatural unity of the church on display for a watching world, because we know when we do those things, we fan the flame of God’s glory. We make the glory of the invisible God visible not only to a watching world, but to one another. We should be asking God to conform us and capture our hearts in such a way that we are given to glory. So the defining features of an apostolic church are to be centered on Christ, saturated in scripture, generous with grace, forward with faith, and given to glory. Christ, scripture, grace, faith, glory.

I wonder when you hear those five words together, if they connect any dots for you. They should, because those five words together radically shape the Protestant Reformation. Christ alone, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, God’s glory alone. This is what’s referred to as the five solas. When the church drifted from its foundation into Roman Catholicism, praise be to God, folks like Luther and Calvin began to realign and reform the church. And the way they did that was they took their cues from the apostles. Instead of building something new, they went backwards. They looked back to the foundation of the church in which Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone. It went back to what has always been God’s design and blueprint from the church, to use the apostles, to use these imperfect people to build the foundation of a perfect church. And he continues to use imperfect people like you and me

to bring people into this perfect church, perfect in terms of its design, imperfect with us, but you know what I mean. We are not apostles, friends, just to be clear, but we are very much like the apostles in that we work from the same foundation with Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone. So why is the apostolic church important for us here at Trinity Church? Because friends, I know that all of us here desire desperately for our foundation as a church to be strong, stable, and secure, to be a church that will not deviate from the foundation because we wanna be a church that pleases God and gives God glory with how we operate as a church. So family, we need to be a people who are radically committed to praying that this would be us as a church. The crazy thing is with all of these things on our own,

we can’t muster this up. We can’t just produce this naturally. We need God by his spirit to supernaturally intervene to shape our life together as a church. So family, that starts with prayer. We need to be praying this way for one another throughout the week, when we gather, when we gather on Fridays, amen? This needs to be our priority, centered on Christ, saturated in scripture, generous with grace, forward in faith, and given to glory. Christ alone, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, for God’s glory alone. Family, may God smile on this church and keep us in apostolic church. May we continue to preach Jesus, sing Jesus, and testify of Jesus. May Jesus be the center of our life and our liturgy. May Jesus be found in all of the scripture that gets proclaimed in the pulpit and with one another, not because we’re forcing it,

but because it’s always been there, because we’re faithfully looking for him while wholly relying on the Holy Spirit to show us Jesus in all of scripture. And may we be ambitious to proclaim the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, his life, death, and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins to our families, to our friends, to our neighbors, to our coworkers, to Portland, and to this dying world. And may we delight and find ultimate satisfaction as we work together the chief end of mankind to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Amen.