In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he declares that the church is God’s household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ himself as the chief cornerstone (Eph. 2:20). Take away Christ crucified and you are undermining the very foundation of the church. Everything is likely to collapse! I remember reading about the Methodist church in Cuba. While the Methodist church in north America and Great Britain are rapidly contracting, it is flourishing. Reading that article, I concluded that churches which are truly healthy are those with a genuine openness to the person and work of the Holy Spirit and a glad dependence on the Word that He inspired.
Captain Siva was a young man working as a pitot for Malaysian Airlines. He was from a Hindu background. While in a hotel in east Malaysia he had an urge to read the Gideon Bible in his room. He began at Genesis and encountered a God who is our creator and who is personal. He had never thought of God in personal terms before.
Over the next months he came across other Bibles and kept reading. One text that stood out to him was when God says in Isaiah that it is abomination to worship idols. As a Hindu he had worshipped many idols.
Then in the early hours of August 17th 1980, as his wife was giving birth to their daughter Rachel, he prayed. ‘Here I am in the middle of the night reading your word. Are you speaking to me?’ He heard no voice but, in his heart, he knew God was saying to him, ‘I am your Father.’
As his daughter came into the world Siva declared, ‘as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.’ He has been living for God ever since.
When we read the book of Acts we see that the word of God has a power all of its own. ‘So, the word of God spread’ (Acts 6:7). ‘The Word continued to spread and flourish’ (Acts 12:24). ‘The word spread through the whole region’ (Acts 13:49). ‘In this way the Word of God spread widely and grew in power’ (Acts 19:20). One of the key themes of this book is that the word of God spreads with an unstoppable force.
In the sixteenth-century Martin Luther rediscovered the simple gospel of grace as he turned back to the word of God. That discovery changed the face of Europe. His sidekick was called Philip Melanchthon. When Luther was asked how they made such an impact, he replied, ‘myself and Philip drank our beer, the word did the rest.’
The word is the foundation of the church.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.
We can see an example of the apostles’ teaching earlier in this chapter. Peter got up and explained to a Jewish crowd that the scriptures pointed to Jesus. He centred his words on the cross and the resurrection. Then there was a response.
Paul would later be added to that unique group of first-century apostles. He would sum up all that he taught by declaring, ‘we preach Christ crucified’ (1 Cor. 1:23).
Remember that this is Luke’s second book. In his first, the gospel of Luke, the risen Jesus opens His followers’ eyes to see that all of the Bible points to Him, and in particular to the fact that He would die and rise from the dead (Luke 24:27 and 47).
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he declares that the church is God’s household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ himself as the chief cornerstone (Eph. 2:20). Take away Christ crucified and you are undermining the very foundation of the church. Everything is likely to collapse!
I remember reading about the Methodist church in Cuba. While the Methodist church in north America and Great Britain are rapidly contracting, it is flourishing. Reading that article, I concluded that churches which are truly healthy are those with a genuine openness to the person and work of the Holy Spirit and a glad dependence on the Word that He inspired.
The word is the food that sustains us.
Speaking to the elders at Ephesus the apostle Paul committed them ‘to the word of grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among the sanctified’ (Acts 20:32).