Strong Churches – Acts 16:1-5

As I said this morning, every Christian sermon can be brought back to the cross.

As we see in verse 5, the churches of Galatia were increasing daily.

That means that people were being saved by the grace of God and being led of the Holy Spirit to join with other saints in the churches of Christ.

And when churches are NOT being well-established in the faith, there will not be any BIBLICAL evangelism, even of their own children and grandchildren.

Even this verse can be taken back to the subject of salvation.

But this evening I’d like you to think about what this scripture says in regard to strong churches:

How they are FORMED, how they are ESTABLISHED and how they INCREASE.

This scripture doesn’t EXACTLY tell us about the formation of the churches mentioned in verse 5.

But that doesn’t mean that we are left totally in the dark.

Those churches were organized on the First Missionary Journey through the area.

Paul and Barnabas were authorized and ordained as missionaries out of the church in Antioch, Syria.

They traveled throughout Cyprus, Pontus, Pamphylia and Lyconia in Galatia.

They preached the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and saw many of those people trust Christ.

Then they retraced their steps back through most of that area organizing churches and ordaining pastors.

We studied these things at the end of Acts 14.

Now, in Acts 16:5 we see Paul and his new team visiting those churches, establishing them in the faith and watching them increase in numbers daily.

That is a pretty simple point, but before we move on, let’s get a little more complex.

Notice, once again, that the word “churches” is plural.

“And so were the CHURCHES established in the faith, and increased in number daily.”

Luke was referring to the churches (plural) in the cities of Lystra, Iconium and perhaps Derbe.

Similarly, when Paul introduced his epistle to the people of Galatia, he wrote:

“Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;)

And all the brethren which are with me, unto the CHURCHES of Galatia.”

Then in Galatians 1:22 he spoke of the CHURCHES of Judea.

The Bible does not teach the Roman Catholic idea of a single Catholic church that extends around the world.

Nor does the Bible teach the Protestant doctrine of a universal, invisible church made up of all the saved.

The Bible teaches that there is a difference between the family of God and the church of Christ.

All those whom the Lord has saved are born into the family of God,

But unfortunately, only some of the family of God are obedient to the Lord in joining one of the Lord’s authorized churches.

But I hear someone say, “Yes, Paul speaks of the churches of Galatia in Galatians 1:2, but he also talks about the single church of God in Galatians 1:13.”

“For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it.”

I realize that this is difficult for people to see if they have been immersed in the idea of a universal church,

But Paul was PROBABLY referring to the fact that he persecuted the church of God in Jerusalem.

There isn’t a single verse which says that Paul ever persecuted any church but that of Jerusalem.

He INTENDED to attack others, and was on his way to do so, but was stopped and converted.

And then secondly, Paul COULD have been thinking GENERICALLY when he spoke of “the church of God.”

It is common practice in language to use a singular word when thinking about lots of individual units.

For example, at this time of the year “air travel” is at its absolute busiest.

By that I mean all the air travel of all the air-lines, but I spoke of them as if they were one.

Maybe in a few more years as United merges with American and Southwest buys out Alaska, they will all literally be one air-line, but in the mean time we can still talk of them AS IF they were one.

There is no Universal church to be found in the Bible, but there are cases where we read of many churches generically.

For example, our Lord said, “I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.”

What He was talking about was enlarging the membership of the church in Jerusalem,

And then starting a church in Antioch and enlarging it,

And then using that church to start local churches in Galatia and dozens of other regions as well.

He was talking about what was happening here in Acts 16:5.

Despite the language that Jesus used, He was talking about individual churches – thousands of them.

I mentioned a moment ago that this is difficult for people to understand if they have been IMMERSED in the idea of a universal church.

I thought about substituting the word “baptized” instead of “immersed,” because they mean the same thing.

And I thought about using that word in order to point out another related subject:

No one has ever been BAPTIZED by the Universal church.

Even if there was such an organization, it would be impossible, by definition, for that church to have a baptismal service.

Churches are said to do many things in the Bible, but not one of them can be done by a Universal church – by a church that is invisible and unassembled.

Once again I say, there is no such thing as a Universal church.

Acts 16:5 is talking about local churches which had been formed and organized by Paul and Barnabas.

Now, on this Second Missionary Journey Paul and Silas were helping to ESTABLISH those churches.

The word which is translated “established” is found only three times in the Bible,

But only once is it used in relation to a church.

The other two occurrences are found in Acts 3.

When Peter and John went into the Temple to pray they were met by a lame man begging for alms.

Peter then gave his famous reply:

“Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.

And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones RECEIVED STRENGTH.

And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God.”

Where the Bible says that man’s ankle bones received strength, it is the same Greek word we find here.

And then when Peter was preaching to the mob who gathered around the healed man and the preachers,

Peter said, “Ye denied the Holy One & the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you;

And killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.

And his name through faith in his name hath made this man STRONG.”

I debated about telling you this Greek word, but it is just too juicy for me to ignore:

It is “stereoo” (ster-eh-o’-o).

Among other things, aren’t STEROIDS illegally used today to make athletes stronger?

I have no idea where the word “steroid” came from, but it could originally be from this Greek word.

What were Paul, Silas, Timothy and the rest of their group doing to establish those churches?

They weren’t teaching them modern tactics for church growth.

They had purpose, but they were not modern purpose-driven churches.

Paul was not showing them how to taper their message or their doctrines to please the unchurched.

He wasn’t adapting their musical service to give wicked people Christian lyrics with which to dance.

He wasn’t telling the churches how to cut corners, relax standards and camouflage their doctrines.

The missionaries were giving those churches heavy doses of scriptural truth,

Because establishment and edification require a proper foundation.

And doctrinal truth is that foundation.

Beware of a church whose ONLY message is an insipid invitation to believe on Jesus, believe on Jesus.

May God burn this building to the ground if we ever stop preaching repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

But if we stop trying to deliberately preach the whole counsel of God there will be no need to burn us out, we will quickly wash out.

God’s churches are established on a system of absolutes.

The Bible is filled with absolute truth and distinct revelation from God.

Although there are a lot of things which the Bible doesn’t address, it is still filled with enough uncompromiseable revelation to give Spirit-led saints a standard for ALL their faith and practice.

Over and over again the Lord tells us that His Word is eternal.

That is because in many ways truth is eternal; right behavior is eternal; the definition of sin is eternal.

Lies are always temporary; they may be long-lived, but they will all, without exception, come to an end.

And generally speaking when you hear of a church of Christ dying out, it will be because it has neglected to establish its members in the truth or it has imbibed various lies.

“Do you believe in the doctrine of eternal security?”

I was debating with myself over the last couple of weeks about how appropriate are questions like that.

Is it linguistically correct to ask, “Do you believe in such and such a doctrine?”

Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to ask, “Do you ACCEPT the doctrine of eternal security?”

Isn’t it possible for a person to believe in a perfectly good doctrine and not in Christ?

I mention that to introduce the fact that Paul helped to establish those churches “in the faith.”– “In the faith.”

In this case the Bible is not talking about the acting of RELYING UPON the Lord or TRUSTING the Bible.

Biblical faith is an extremely important subject, and as I said last week, without faith in Christ there is no salvation from sin.

However this reference to faith is not to the ACT of trusting, but to the OBJECT of that trust.

Peter exhorts us, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast IN THE FAITH.”

Beside the Lord Himself, our primary against the attacks of Satan is the truth – doctrinal truth.

Jude says, “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for THE FAITH which was once delivered unto the saints.”

Doesn’t the Bible speak of what we hold to be Truth, calling it “faith,” BECAUSE these things are believed by us?

Jude tells us to earnestly contend for what we believe to be true.

Paul & Silas were establishing the churches of Galatia in what they were to believe as Christian churches.

And by the way, it should be obvious that the way that people live is based upon what they believe.

When the missionaries read the letter from Jerusalem, telling the Gentiles not to associate with idolatry or fornication, I assume that they obeyed.

But it wasn’t because of the letter that they obeyed, but rather because they had been taught from the Word of God that adultery and fornication were sins against God.

They should have chosen to avoid contact with idolatry because they had learned the truth about the Lord.

The truth had been and was still being absorbed by those people, and it was governing their outward lives as well as their hearts.

An unsettled creed produces unsettled deeds.

Once again, orthodoxy produces orthopraxy.

The last thing that verse 5 tells us is that the churches were INCREASING in number daily.

If it wasn’t for the word “daily” we might argue whether this growth was in membership within the churches,

Or that there were more and more churches throughout the area.

I read just the other day that the Barna research group says that there are about 10 million self-professing, “born-again Christians” who have not been to church in the last six months, apart from Christmas and Easter.

These are people who SAY that they made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ,

And that they will go to heaven when they die, because they have accepted Jesus as their Saviour.

About 1/3 of all Americans claim that they don’t have a church,

And about 1/3 of them still claim to be born-again.

Then that article said that the author considered those people “Gnostic Christians.”

It was apparent that their SPIRITS could be with Jesus, while their BODIES could do whatever they wanted.

But if that is the definition of those unchurched Christians then they are not Christians at all.

And I’m afraid that is closer to the truth than any of us would like to admit.

In the same article there was a little joke:

A man had been cast away on a deserted island, and then after 20 years he was rescued.

His rescuer was astonished to find all the fine buildings that the poor man had been able to build.

Seeing at a long, beautiful stone structure overlooking the bay, the rescuer asked, what is that?

The man replied that it was his home.

“What about that building over there with the tall spires at each corner?”

“That,” the castaway said, “is my church.”

“But wait!” the other said, “That building over there with the steeple and the old ship’s bell; what’s that?”

“That is the church to which I used to belong.”

I’m afraid that is the way of modern Christendom.

We build ’em, and we quit ‘em; we build ’em, and we quit ‘em.

It seems that most professing Christians would eventually leave their church even if they were the only member.

How totally unlike real Christianity that kind of behaviour is.

Bible Christianity has a social nature to it.

Yes, it is SPIRITUAL, and it’s members are supposed to have an unbreakable relationship to Christ Jesus.

And yes, Bible Christianity is DOCTRINAL, based upon the revelation of God’s Word.

But as we see from the Book of Acts, there is also a SOCIAL aspect.

“Then they that gladly received his word were baptized:

And the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.

And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.”

It is to be seriously doubted that someone has genuine faith in Christ when they refuse to associate, fellowship, and mutually serve Christ with other believers.

The churches of Galatia were increasing in numbers daily because the Lord was so blessing the preaching of Paul and Silas and the pastors of those churches, that people were being saved daily.

The work of the Lord wasn’t being confined to Sundays and Wednesdays.

There was an excitement and thrill that made each day seem to melt into the next.

Perhaps that will be the way that it will be during the Millennium and throughout eternity.

The word “daily” suggests the SPEED with which those churches were growing and the CONSISTENCY of that growth

And those saints were not ashamed of the Lord Jesus Christ.

They were not slow to be baptized and to physically join the Lord’s church.

They accepted what the Bible said about how the lives of Christians are to be lived.

And they didn’t show much undue concern about the persecution that was sweeping some of their members into eternity.

Those Christians were not Gnostics separating the spiritual from the physical.

How closely connected was the increase of the churches to the establishment of the church?

Vitally connected, BUT connected in the Biblical order.

In modern thought the establishment of a church is based on its increase in members and finances.

But Biblically the increase of a church is based on its establishment in the things of God.

A church can be Biblical, well-established and still be small,

While another church can be large and financially well-off but be an Ichabod church.

I fear that our church is miles from perfection, from the ideals that we see in the Word of God.

And if we are content to be this way, then we deserve to have our candle put out.

But as long as we love the Lord and hold His Word in reverence there is hope.

Do you love the Word of God?

Then I must ask if you are living in obedience to it?

Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ?

Are you a child of God?

Have you really been born again?