Life on the Highest Plane
They preached the gospel. The gospel is the heart of the Word of God. Take away the gospel, which is "that Christ died for our sins, was buried and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures," from the Word of God and you have nothing left but the walls of a gutted building. The core of every sermon, the heart of every message delivered by those first century preachers, was the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was this gospel that pricked the hearts and consciences of men and women and made them cry out, "What must I do to be saved?"
Acts 8:25, "And they, when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans."
The preachers of the early Church were not ashamed of the Gospel. They had proved its power in their own lives and knew the miracle it had wrought. They had the compelling conviction that the preaching of the full gospel of Christ was the only means of changing either the sinful life of an individual or the corporate life of human society.
Romans 1:16, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek."
They preached Christ. If the Gospel is the heart of the Word, Christ is the heart of the gospel. The men of that day knew the Jesus of Nazareth, Cana and Capernaum far, far better than any theological historian of the twentieth century, and how they could have entranced their audiences with stories out of His earthly life! How sweet and precious must have been their memories of the years of fellowship with Him! What countless sermons Peter and James and John could have preached about the Jesus who healed the daughter of Jairus, who was transfigured on the mount and who prayed in the garden of Gethsemane! But "the Jesus of history" was not the theme of their sermons. What pain and anguish of heart must have been mingled with every remembrance of Him as they recalled their faithlessness in the hour of His deepest need; of the cowardly denial in the presence of His enemies; of the traitorous desertion at the Cross; and of the doubt and disbelief at the tomb. It was not to the incarnate Son but to the crucified, risen, ascended, exalted Son to whom they owed their deliverance from sin, self and satan. It was this Christ and Him only whom they preached.
Acts 5:42, "And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ."
Acts 9:20, "And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God."
Glance again rapidly through the book of the Acts to note the result of the preaching of the Christ of the Gospel of the Word of God. The divine record tells of conversions, baptisms additions to church membership of individuals, of households, of multitudes of men and women from all classes of society.
Let us take but a few illustrations of the marvelous power of such preaching. The Ethiopian eunuch believed and was baptized when Philip preached Christ to him from Isa. 53:7-8 (Acts 8). The Roman proconsul Sergius Paulus believed when he heard the doctrine from the mouths of Barnabas and Paul (Acts 13). The households of Cornelius, the Gentile centurion (Acts 10); of Lydia, the business woman (Acts 16); of the unnamed Philippian jailer (Acts 16) and of Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue (Acts 18), all were convicted of sin, converted and baptized through the preaching of the Christ of the Gospel of the Word.
There were evangelists in the first century Church. Philip was an evangelist and went from place to place preaching the Gospel. While much of the preaching in the early Church was without doubt apologetic, yet there is equal evidence that much of it was evangelistic both in content and in method. The appeal was to the heart and to the will as truly as to the mind and to the conscience, and the audiences were warned and exhorted as well as instructed and edified.
There were teachers in the first century Church. The early Church was thoroughly indoctrinated. New converts were taught the Word of God. Not only were the fundamental truths preached but they were taught to the whole Church. Need we any further proof of this than the Epistles which were written to these churches?
Paul's conception of the ministry was that it should be a teaching as well as a preaching ministry. He returned to the places where he had won converts in his missionary tours and sometimes stayed one or two years teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus. The last word spoken of him in the Acts tells us he was in his own hired house teaching about Jesus Christ.
Acts 18:11, "And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the Word of God among them."
Acts 19:10, "And this continued by the space of two years; so that all which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks."
The apostles of the earth Church considered it a definite and essential part of their ministry to establish and confirm the Christians in their faith, to encourage and strengthen them in their work, and to feed and foster their spiritual life.
Not the statistics of church membership but the spiritual status of church members was Paul's concern. He desired passionately that those whom he had begotten in the Gospel might be presented perfect in Christ Jesus. To that end he not only taught them but he warned, reproved and rebuked the Christians under his care.
Colossians 1:28, "Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus."
There were personal workers in the first century Church. The passion of the early Church was to win men to Christ. "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some" was its slogan (1 Cor. 9:22). Tremendous emphasis is laid upon the importance of personal soul winning by the fact that in three consecutive chapters in the Acts wonderful examples of this type of work are given.
~Ruth Paxson~
(continued with # 6)
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