Series: Who? | What? | Whom? | When? | How? | Why?

I will bless the Lord at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

My soul makes its boast in the Lord;
let the humble hear and be glad.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me,
and let us exalt his name together!

~Psalm 34.1-3

3. Whom?

The Psalm calls us, as individuals, to a lifestyle of steady-state worship. Now notice the object of our worship.

LORD –– LORD –– LORD

We are not worshiping some generic idea of god, some undefined deity, we are worshiping the LORD. In your English Bible you might notice that the word LORD is all caps. This is the standard way of translating the Hebrew name of God, Yahweh. Worship is being directed toward him. He is God. He is Creator. He alone is worthy of worship. And what’s more, look at verse 5.

Those who look to him are radiant,
and their faces shall never be ashamed.
~Psalm 34.5

Elsewhere, the Bible teaches that we see God only when we look to Christ. Jesus said,

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14.9)

Paul tells us in Colossians that Jesus is,

“the image of the invisible God . . . in him all the fullness of God was please to dwell.” (Colossians 1.15,19)

Look to Christ, worship him in the ways we talked about in the previous post. I’m going to leave it at that, but for a full treatment of this idea I cannot commend to you strongly enough Charles Spurgeon’s sermon on verse 5, entitled “Looking Unto Jesus”. He preached it in 1858, and it is masterful in its magnifying of Christ.

An absolute God, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, can afford no comfort whatever to a troubled heart. We may look to him, and we shall be blinded, for the light of Godhead is insufferable, and as mortal eye cannot fix its gaze upon the sun, no human intellect could ever look unto God, and find light, for the brightness of God would strike the eye of the mind with eternal blindness. The only way in which are can see God is through the Mediator Jesus Christ.

Series: Who? | What? | Whom? | When? | How? | Why?

I will bless the Lord at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
~Psalm 34.1

2. What?

In my first blog post on this Psalm, we looked at WHO this psalm was calling to continual praise. The answer was that God is calling individuals, you and I, to praise him, to be in relationship with him, to know him and be known by him.

The second thing I want to look at from these verses is what, exactly, we get to do in relation to God.

Bless – praise – boast – magnify – exalt

If your joy is found in knowing, and being known by, God, then that joy is expressed in worship. That’s what these words are describing.

BLESS

What does it mean to “bless the Lord”? That seems like a strange turn of phrase to our ears. We bless our meals by praying over them. We bless someone who has just sneezed. We know about the Catholic practice of priests blessing the dying parishioner. In the south, we say “bless your heart” right before we say something demeaning about someone.

Bless his heart, he’s just pitiful.

That’s not what David had in mind when he wrote

“I will bless the Lord at all times.”

In this context, it means to express thanks or adoration. But not just thanks, it is thanks while acknowledging the awesomeness of the giver. Consider these verses.

Duet 8.10 – thanks

Ps 104.1-2 – adoration

1 Sam 25.32, 33, 39 – thanks, gratitude

1 Kings 1.48 – thanks, gratitude

The perfect example of this is found near the end of David’s life, in 1 Chron 29.10-20, where David expresses thanksgiving, but much more than that. He acknowledges, honors, and expresses a deep, heartfelt adoration for who God is, not just what God has given.

These other terms in our text denote various aspects of what it means to “bless the Lord.”

PRAISE

If we praise someone we express approval, admiration, gratitude, we can “sing someone’s praises” by telling others about their character or accomplishments with approval and admiration.

We often equate praise with singing at a church service, and that is not incorrect. When we sing in worship we are praising God for his character and his mighty deeds in our lives. This is why the lyrics to our music are so important, we want to make sure we’re praising God for who he is, and how he has shown himself to us, keeping the focus on him and not us. Which leads us to the next form of worship included here.

My soul make its boast in the Lord;
let the humble hear and be glad.
~Psalm 34.2

BOASTING

This means to rave about something, to think something so great that you excitedly tell others about it. We face a real problem in our souls here, at least I do. The thing I am most inclined to boast about, is myself. The reason for this self-aggrandizement is pride, I want others to think me great. Notice the second half of verse 2. The humble are not glad to hear someone boasting in themselves because that kind of boasting is full of pride. It is also full of untruth. Boasting in yourself is to lift yourself up for others to admire, to say “I am admirable above everything else I know.” This dishonors God, and gives no joy to others.

But when we lift God up as supremely admirable, when we boast in him, then others take joy in it. Those who are truly humble have trusted in God, rather than themselves. When we speak with excitement of the greatness of God, it confirms them in their trust in this same God.

Our very salvation is set up so that we may boast in God alone.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ~Ephesians 2.8-9

We can’t boast in ourselves. Apart from Christ we have nothing to boast about. Any good we do have to boast about is Christ in us, so that we don’t boast of ourselves, but in the cross of Christ. (Gal 6.14)

Here’s the situation in which David wrote Psalm 34. King Saul wanted to kill him, so he goes on the run and flees to Gath seeking refuge. In Gath, the king’s servants recognize David as a hero of Israel, and David becomes fearful that they will seize him. So he pretends to have lost his mind. He runs around drawing on the walls with a crayon and drooling in his beard. They let him go, and he escaped to some caves and wrote this Psalm.

So what David is saying here is:

“The best idea I had was to act like a madman. Yet God saved me from certain death.”

There are two more descriptors for worship in verse 3.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me,
and let us exalt his name together!
~Psalm 34.3

MAGNIFY

Here David invites others to magnify the Lord with him. To magnify something is to make something appear larger than it normally would. There are two reasons that you would magnify something. The first is that it is so small you need to magnify it to see it. The second is that it is at such a great distance that you need to magnify it to get a sense of its actual size.

That second sense is the way we magnify God. He is so vast and magnificent, but sometimes you just feel that he is at a great distance from you. He’s not, he is close to those who know him. Verse 18 tells us he is near the brokenhearted. The whole sense of the Psalm is that God is near to those who humble themselves and seek his deliverance.

But…when pressed by the concerns of life, the stress of work and family, our vision gets clouded and we can’t see God near us. So David invites others to join him in making God clear to one another. Like a telescope brings the vast expanses of distant stars into view for the one who looks through it, so the praise of God’s people brings God’s magnificence into view for those whose spiritual sight is weakened by the cares of this life.

EXALT

To exalt the name of the Lord is to raise it up to its proper place or status. Actually the sense of the Hebrew here is to heave up with all your strength. To say,

“Here it is! This should command your attention, your affection, your honor!”

So this is how David describes worship in these three verses. It is something that engages our minds, our affections, our emotions, our strength, our whole being. It is vigorous, substantial, and full of exuberant joy.

Series: Who? | What? | Whom? | When? | How? | Why?

I will bless the Lord at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
~Psalm 34.1

Continual praise.

How does that work? What does it even mean to “bless the Lord”? Shouldn’t we be asking for his blessing? How do we praise him “continually”? Does that mean we have to walk around singing all day? This is the first of six blog posts where I’ll be looking at the first 3 verses of this Psalm and attempting to answer some of the questions. But first…

1. Who?

We’d better start here. Who is doing this blessing and praising? We are! We have the incredible privilege of knowing, being in relationship with, and worshiping the sovereign creator of the universe. Notice the use of personal pronouns throughout these verses.

I – my – my – me

We’ll get to the “us” in another post. For now, I just want you to think about this for a moment. Let it sink in. How often do we pause to reflect on the fact that God created the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, everything that exists, not just the physical either, he created the angles in heaven!

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Col 1.16-17)

But he didn’t just create everything and leave it be. His active will is what holds all things together. And you and I get to praise him. We get to worship him. We get to know him! He has revealed himself to us in the Bible.

As I was reading this text and praying over it, I was struck by a thought: “Who am I that this God would speak to me? Who am I that he would care enough to write and preserve the scriptures so that I could know him? Who am I that he would take my place on the cross? I should have been nailed to that tree! But Jesus went in my place.” That broke me. Think about the idea that this God knows your name. That he wants us to speak to him through prayer. It’s amazing. This Psalm gives us a glimpse of the amazing nature of God, that with all of creation, both visible and invisible, laid out before him, he would know us as individuals and allow us to be in relationship with him.

Our ultimate joy is found in knowing, and being known by, God.

Do not drag me off with the wicked,
with the workers of evil,
who speak peace with their neighbors
while evil is in their hearts.
~ Ps 28.3

This verse intrigues me. David here speaks of those who are “wicked” and “evil”, and then describes them as being disingenuous, saying things they don’t mean, saying one thing with their mouth, but thinking something else in their hearts.

In Matthew 12 Jesus addresses the same issue. During an encounter with the Pharisees (the religious leaders of the day) Jesus confronts them about their lying words. They witnessed him heal a man who had been afflicted by an evil spirit, causing him to be both blind and mute. Apparently Jesus wasn’t the only one who was able to cast out such spirits, but because the Pharisees were jealous of his popularity with the crowds, they said something they knew wasn’t true. They knew that the power to cast out evil spirits was from God, but they accused him of doing so with the power of Satan.

Jesus calls their lie, pointing out that they aren’t accusing others of working in the power of Satan when they do similar acts.

Then Jesus says the same thing David said. If you are lying, your heart is full of evil.

“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
~Matthew 12.33–37

When was the last time you told a lie? Researchers tells us that the average person tells 3 lies every 10 minutes of conversation. The odds are, you’ve told a lie recently. Most of us wouldn’t like to admit, even to ourselves, that our hearts are wicked and evil, but that’s the truth.

We like to make excuses for our lies, thinking that we’re not really that bad. “I only told that lie so I wouldn’t hurt his feelings.” The Bible says that if we are lying, it’s because there is evil in our hearts. Maybe we’re lying because we value the opinions of others more than we value God’s opinion. Maybe we’re lying because we value other people’s feelings more than we values God’s feelings.

Whatever our reason, the lie is coming from a heart that is wicked and evil, a heart that follows after Satan rather than God. Satan is the father of lies (John 8.44), but God would have us speak the truth always. So the next time you think about telling a lie to spare someone’s feelings, remember these words from the Spirit of Truth:

“…speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” ~Eph 4.15

“Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor.” ~Eph 4.25

Let’s be grown up Christians and tell each other the truth, in love!

The house is one of the typical single family homes in Southie. It’s a tri-level house built circa 1900. It was foreclosed on almost three years ago and has been sitting empty ever since. Needless to say, we’ve got a lot of work to do before we can move in.

The house is less than a block from Thomas Park, which Haddie loves. Frankly, so do I. The view of the city from the park is awesome, and I look forward to spending regular time there in prayer for our city.

Below are some pictures of the interior of the house that should give you an idea of just what we’ve got ourselves into…

This morning is our third week in a series we’re calling ‘The Ask’. In this series we’re taking a few weeks to communicate with you the vision God has laid on our hearts, what it is we’re asking God to do at GENESIS in 2012.

Two weeks ago we heard from Michael about the big vision for the health of the church. He shared that we are asking God to add to our number in a pretty big way. We are praying to see 500 people begin to walk with Jesus, either for the first time, or in a renewed relationship. This isn’t about the number, it is about our desire to see our friends and neighbors experience the joy of knowing Christ. That’s the real heart behind The Ask.

Michael also challenged each one of us to personally be asking God to do great things in our lives this year. Most people start out the new year with a resolution or two, things you want to do (do differently, or stop doing) in the new year. But Michael challenged us to start the new year differently this year. Instead of making resolutions about what you are going to do, ask God to do something God-sized in your life this year.

So I want to share my own Ask for 2012. To be honest, this was pretty difficult for me. God did some pretty amazing things in 2011 in our family. Our second daughter, Abigail, was born. We moved from Kansas City to Boston. He connected us to GENESIS. And just before Christmas a house in South Boston came on the market. We closed on Friday and are now the proud owners of a great fixer-upper, smack in the middle of Southie. There are some amazing answers to prayer in there.

So when I sat and thought about the new year, I had a hard time discerning what I should be asking God to do in 2012. After some prayer and thought though, here’s what I’m asking God to do in my life this year.

First, I’m asking God to teach me some balance between work, work on the new house, and time spent with the family. I want to be a good steward of my time, and use it wisely, but I think that means setting some aside to just play with my girls (while they’re still little and want daddy to play with them!), take my wife on a date, that sort of thing. I’ve not done a great job of that in the past, so I’m asking God to teach me how to do that.

Second, my desire is to see our neighbors in Southie begin to walk with Jesus. So like Michael, I’m asking God to allow me a part in seeing a dozen of the folks who live around us, either where we are now, or new neighbors we’ll meet on the block where our new house is, come to know Jesus and begin walking with him in 2012.

Those are just two examples of the things I’m asking God to do in my life in 2012.

Last week Jeremy shared the biblical foundation for community groups, and what it is we are asking God to do at GENESIS, through Community Groups in 2012. We would like to see 70% of us, in meaningful community. As God adds to our number, this will mean adding more Community Group leaders. Currently we have about 7 community groups, we’d like to see 35 by the end of 2012.

This week we’re taking a look at the idea of church planting, and what we are asking God to do at GENESIS through church planting in 2012.

I want to start, by answering a couple questions.

What is church planting?
Why plant churches?

Once we’ve answered those questions, then we’ll take a look at what we are asking God to do this year at GENESIS through church planting.

What is church planting?

If we’re going to ask God to work in GENESIS through church planting, we should be clear about what we’re asking him to do.

Church planting is simply, taking a seed from an existing church, either just a pastor and his family, or a team of people, and starting a new church. This quite often involves the pastor/team moving to a new location, to start the new church in an area with low gospel saturation. In other words, an area with few, if any, churches or Christians.

So, in this particular case. My wife, Lauren, and I moved from Kansas City to South Boston in June. We came by ourselves, with the intent that a few other team members would follow in the coming year, as their situations allowed. What we had not planned, was to partner with GENESIS. But God sovereignly directed our steps to GENESIS and began to build a bond, and so now, as we move more aggressively toward starting the new church in South Boston, the team isn’t just Lauren and I, but it includes GENESIS. So there has been some cross pollination, if you will.

So the answer to our first question is that church planting is starting a new church. The reason we use the term church planting, is found in 1 Corinthians. While Jesus often used the analogy of planting to describe the kingdom, he used it in a more general sense, than pertaining to a particular local church. But Paul used it quite specifically.

The church in Corinth was pretty messed up. Paul had to write them more than one letter in attempts to straighten out the mess. When he wrote this first letter, there were a couple factions within the church arguing with each other. One group bragged that they followed Paul, the other group bragged that they followed Apollos. Both men had been instrumental in the early formation of the church in Corinth, though neither were there at the time of the dispute.

And so Paul writes them and says:

“What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3.5–7 ESV)

So Paul labels himself a church planter in this verse, but makes a very important point that we need to remember as we are involved in church planting. We labor at the planting, as Paul points out in the next few verses, but ultimately, it is God who causes the plant to grow. We can take no credit for the growth of the church, the spread of the gospel, that is all God’s doing. We do our part, which is to share the good news about Jesus with those around us, but it is God who changes people’s hearts, and only he can take the credit for the growth of his church.

This is actually one of the benefits of church planting. It reduces our tendency to rely too heavily on one man. Recognizing that Christ is the head of the church and he gives all the growth in the church, frees us plant churches when God raises up other leaders. And when the vision of God and the passion for God flourishes in more than one location, under more than one leader, it gives the life-giving mission we love increased durability.

So that answers our first question: What is church planting? You start with a small seed, either just a pastor, or a small team, and you ‘plant’ the beginnings of a new church, in a new place.

What this really is, is planting a God-centered seedbed of gospel saturated community, for a new church to grow out of.

Why plant churches?

There are a number of very good reasons to plant new churches. We don’t have time to get into them all this morning, but I want to touch on a three.

1. The Mission – God is a missionary God. He’s not just an uninvolved watch maker who set things in motion and then left it alone. While he is completely transcendent and above all things, he is also immanent. He is personally involved with his creation. He is a God with a mission. His mission is to make himself known to all people, for his glory and our joy. Think about it. If God is who the Bible says he is, the all knowing, all powerful, absolutely perfect, holy, loving Creator of everything…what could possibly be more satisfying to our souls and joyful to our hearts than knowing, and being known by, Him? Nothing!

But we don’t naturally seek him out. The Bible says we born in rebellion against God and his law, we set ourselves against him in the hardness of our hearts, making ourselves his enemies, suppressing the truth because we don’t want to believe. The Bible says we are far worse than we really think we are, and our treason and rebellion against our creator is offensive to God. His holy justice requires that our rebellion be punished. And there is nothing we can do to turn aside his justice, even if we wanted to, which we don’t.

But God is not only just, he is loving. More loving than we can possibly imagine. So loving that he came to earth, lived life among us as a man, the perfectly obedient life that we couldn’t live, and then died on a cross, the death we deserved, in our place, as a substitute, to rescue us, to reconcile us to himself.

“For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” (Romans 5.10–11 ESV)

We can’t save ourselves, he saves us. He gets the credit, we get to rejoice.

So the mission of God is to make himself known for his glory and our joy.

It follows then, that our mission is to do the same, to make God known for his glory and the joy of all people. This is why our membership manual here at GENESIS says that:

“GENESIS exists to love God and love people.”

We believe one way we can do that is through planting churches.

The book of Acts is the history of the early church, beginning with Jesus’ ascension and his commission to his followers in Acts 1.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1.8 ESV)

As you continue reading the book of Acts, you’ll see Jesus’ followers living out this command, telling all people, from Jerusalem to the ends of the known world, the good news about Jesus, and you’ll see those who believe gathering into local congregations, or churches.

As Jeremy said last week, God doesn’t save anyone in isolation. He saves us, bringing us to restored relationship with himself and with his people. It is in the context of community with other believers that we are best able to experience the life God intends for us as his children.

It is also in doing life together as a church that we find our best argument to the world for the truth claims of our faith. Jesus himself told us this.

“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”” (John 13.35 ESV)

So church planting, planting a God-centered seedbed of gospel saturated community, for a new church to grow out of, serves the mission Jesus has given us.

In fact, it is likely it will fan the flames of evangelism as the new church focuses on reaching the new community and engages in aggressive efforts to let the community know it is there, and new, and welcoming.

In addition, as a new church takes shape closer geographically to where some of us live, it will have good kingdom effects. For example, if a church meets nearer to where we live and we don’t have to drive so far to get to the gathering, we more naturally invite our neighbors to be involved in the life of the church. My prayer is that the level of excitement and commitment for this vision would be such that some people would even move to be near the new church and give their lives to making it strong.

2. Make Disciples – Furthermore, the mission to make disciples means not just telling others the good news about Jesus, but teaching them to do the same.

“And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”” (Matthew 28.18–20 ESV)

This is a very clear call to the establishment of local churches. As we go about fulfilling the mission to make disciples, telling others about Jesus for his glory and their joy, the mission doesn’t end with their acknowledgement of Jesus as Lord. We are to join them to the visible people of God through public baptism, and then to teach them to obey Jesus’ commands, which includes the command to go and make disciples. We are to see that they grow up into maturity in Christ. Paul’s letters to the churches make it clear that he expected continued teaching and maturity among the believers to be taking place in the church.

Church planting will shovel fuel into the furnace of spiritual growth and maturity among those already at GENESIS.

As we plant a new gathering, a church in South Boston, it will increase the urgency of intentional leadership development at every level (children, connections, worship, community groups, elders, and deacons). The need for more leaders in every sphere will press us all toward more rigorous efforts of nurturing spiritual growth and leadership gifts. The Bible calls the elders to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry, and church planting will press us to make that a priority.

Planting a new church will call for many faith-filled, God-reliant risks from the existing congregation. And that is good for us. It will keep us from getting soft and comfortable in a perishing world

3. Biblical Method – If you follow the history of the early church through the book of Acts, one man stands out. The Apostle Paul. He spreads the gospel further than anyone else. He is the role model missionary and church planter. If you follow his journey’s, you’ll find that he plants somewhere around 20 churches in the course of 1,400 miles. It looks like this on the map.

Now if we were to start here in Boston and follow a similar route, and similar distances, it would look like this.

We’d start in Boston, and then go to:

Syracuse, NY
Buffalo, NY
Detroit, MI
St Ignace, MI
Green Bay, WI
Chicago, IL

Now imagine planting roughly 20 churches along that route and then saying this:

“In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ;” (Romans 15.17–19 ESV)

“From Boston all the way around to Wisconsin, we have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ.”

Don’t imagine for a minute that there was no gospel work left to be done in those areas. That’s not what Paul is saying. He is saying that as a missionary/church planter, his work was done. The work of saturating these regions with the gospel, seeing that every person had an opportunity to hear and respond to the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, was the work of the churches. We find later that some of these churches planted other churches as they took the mission into the surrounding culture, so we end up with the letter to the Colossians, a church Paul never visited. Paul planted churches, expecting that they would continue the mission to their surrounding regions.

Three reasons why we want to plant churches: to further the mission, to grow up as disciples, and to follow the biblical model of spreading the gospel for the glory of God, and the joy of all people.

What are we asking God to do at GENESIS in 2012 through church planting?

To answer this question, I want to take a look at one church plant in the book of Acts. The church at Ephesus

Ephesus was the most important city in the Roman province of Asia. It was an international seaport on the west coast of Asia Minor. It bore the title of “the first and greatest metropolis of Asia.”

Ephesus was famous for two things:

The Temple of Artemis (Greek) – one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. People came from all over the world to marvel at the temple and worship there.

The Theatre – the largest in the world, capable of containing 50,000 spectators.

So this is a large city, a metropolitan city, a city of commerce and trade, but also a city of spirituality. Remember that the letter Paul writes to the church in Ephesus contains some of the most pointed teaching on spiritual warfare in the Bible.

Paul visits Ephesus more than once, but let’s take a look at the longer of his two stays there. In Acts 19 Paul returns to Ephesus and finds a handful of disciples. He begins to teach them and when he is confident of their faith, he baptizes them.

“There were about twelve men in all.” (Acts 19.7 ESV)

So he starts with a team of twelve new believers.

“And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus. This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.” (Acts 19.8–10 ESV)

Just to be clear, 3 months in the synagogue is a personal best for Paul. Usually, he’s there for a matter of days at the most, maybe just an hour or two, and then he’s being stoned, beaten, tarred and feathered…you get the picture.

The thing to really take notice of in this passage is that for Paul, making disciples = planting a church. He spends two years there, teaching and making disciples, planting a church.

All the residents of the region heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks. That’s an amazing feat in two years.

If you were to keep reading, you would read of some intense spiritual struggles, culminating in the burning of a pile of occult books worth a great deal of money. The conclusion to the episode is found in verse 20.

“So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.” (Acts 19.20 ESV)

So Paul prepares to leave the city and continue with his mission, when something happens. A riot breaks out.

“About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the Way. For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen. These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.”” (Acts 19.23–27 ESV)

The city is thrown into confusion and the theatre, which holds 50,000 people, is filled with rioting people, upset about the growth of the church. Did you see why?

The church was growing and the gospel was transforming people’s lives to the point that the idolatry fueled economy and culture of the city, were at risk of becoming irrelevant!

As the gospel spread throughout the region and people began to follow Christ, their lives where changed to the point that they began to spend their money differently, they began to engage the city’s culture differently, and it caused a stir.

Now don’t hear me saying we want to cause a riot at Fenway. That’s not our goal, not our Ask. But what we are asking God to do, is to cause a church to spring up out of the God-centered seedbed of gospel saturated community that we are planting in South Boston. A church that will be faithful and bold to confront the idolatry of the culture, but more importantly a church that will love God and love people, spreading a passion for God and his glory in a way that will transform lives to the extent that people will notice.

What we are asking God to do at GENESIS this year through church planting, is to:

• Further the mission by causing a second gathering to grow up in South Boston
• Fan the flames of evangelism at GENESIS
• Grow us up into maturity as disciples
• Transform our lives and the lives of those around us through the power of the gospel