Acts 2.42

Pentecost 3

Hymns: 279, 280, 283, 281

As we prepare to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of our congrega-tion in April of 2010, we have adopted the name BRIDGES as our theme. We want to honor the past even as we prepare for the future. With this theme we are saying that in order to move into the future we need to appreciate what has been given to us. The families that started this congregation 25 years ago were willing to make sacrifices to expand the ministry of Calvary Lutheran Church, their home church, by establishing Atonement Lutheran Church in order to reach more people with the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. They were willing to leave the comfort of Calvary and start all over, worshiping in rented facilities (school, funeral home, dance studio), hold worship services in the afternoons or evenings, worship with only a handful of people, canvass the neighborhoods to uncover people who did not have a church home and invite them to become a part of this new venture. There were countless hours spent in meetings and in making plans and decisions that were not always easy to make. There were times of frustration and discouragement and wondering if a new congregation would ever become a reality.

What you and I have today in this worship facility and in the fellowship of a little over 200 baptized members of this congre-gation did not come without perseverance and diligence and a willingness to step forward and do whatever was necessary to start this congregation. No one had the luxury of sitting back and letting others spend the time and energy needed.

Why were these pioneer Lutherans willing to put forth all this effort and dedication? The 1960s and 70s and 80s were a time of turmoil for Lutheranism in our country. There was a battle going on...a battle for doctrinal truth and biblical authority. I plan to cover some of that history in the future. But for now it is enough to know that the people who started Atonement and many other WELS congregations in Texas did so in order to preserve the teaching and preaching of true doctrine. These were people who held the conviction that THERE IS NO SUBSTI-TUTE FOR TRUTH...EVER!

In order to honor the past we need to go way beyond the found-ing of Atonement Lutheran Church in April of 1985. We need to go back to the very beginning of the Christian Church, back to the first century and to the Christians who were members of the very first Christian congregation. Our text speaks about them when it says (text).

The apostles were Jesus’ disciples. The word ‘apostle’ means ‘one who is sent.’ There are only 14 men in the entire history of the world who qualify for the name apostle: Jesus’ twelve di-sciples (Mk 3.13-19); Paul and Matthias who replaced Judas Is-cariot. For three years the original 12 disciples were with Jesus. During that time he trained them to be the teachers of Christians after he would finish the work of salvation and go back into heaven. He taught them God’s truth, doctrine...the doctrine of sin, forgiveness, love, salvation, heaven and hell, faith, unbelief, the devil and everything there is to know about God and how to have eternal life after death. Jesus taught them truth and to value truth because there is no substitute for truth...ever. And Jesus told his disciples (Mt 28.19,20). It was vital that the disciples taught people exactly what Jesus taught them about the forgive-ness of sins, life and salvation, and everything else there was to know about God. They were not to change what Jesus taught them because whatever they changed it to would not have been the truth but a lie. Where people would spend eternity, heaven or hell, depended on the disciples’ teaching the truth, people believing the truth, and they in turn passing that truth along to the next generation down to this very point in time today.

At no point in the history of the world has it been the preroga-tive of man to change what God gave us as his word of truth. He tells us in Genesis that he created the world in six days; no one can change that truth into the myth of evolution or some other false idea. God tells us how sin came into the world and infects us all; no one can change that truth. God tells us how he would pay for sin through Jesus his Son; no one can change that truth. No one can change any of God’s Word without changing truth and there is no substitute for truth...ever!

These first Christians knew that. Listen again (text). These first Christians who formed the first Christian congregation in Jeru-salem believed what they were taught by the apostles, believed the doctrine or body of material about God. And they continued to hold on to what they were taught, to preserve what they were taught because it was the truth, and there is no substitute for truth...ever. And these first Christians taught their children what they were taught and on and on through the generations until this very point in time. There still is no substitute for truth... ever. Not even today. Our salvation depends on believing the truth, true doctrine that has been handed down to us through the history of the church and written down for us by God himself in the Bible. We have an authoritative body of truth that God has given us through the apostles and through faithful ministers of the gospel through the ages.

But it has not been without controversy. False doctrine that con-tradicted what the apostles taught soon entered the church. Most of Paul’s writings in the Bible were written to correct false doc-trine, to condemn false doctrine, to appeal to his readers to pre-serve true doctrine because their salvation from sin and going to heaven depended on their knowing and believing the truth be-cause there is no substitute for the truth...ever!

The heart of that truth is that Jesus is the true and only Son of God who came into the world to pay for the sins of the world by living a perfect life, dying on a cross to pay the debt of sin and rising from the dead in victory over the curse of sin, over the permanence of death and over the horror of hell. There is no substitute for that truth. There is not even a little bit of our goodness that is needed for our forgiveness. There is not even a little bit of our goodness that is possible to gain forgiveness. A little bit of anything we might think we can contribute for our forgiveness fails to acknowledge that our sinful nature make any amount of personal goodness impossible...even just a little bit of it. Jesus is the heart of every doctrine and teaching we know...his perfect life and death and resurrection that has paid for the sins of all. Nothing else could accomplish that.

Deny any part of God’s truth and the truth about Jesus as the world’s only Savior from sin is also in some way rejected, to the peril of people’s souls.

In the coming weeks we will look at various true and unchang-ing doctrines of the Bible under the theme: First Century Bibli-cal Truths for 21^st Century Biblical Christians. We will rein-force this truth that there is no substitute for truth...ever and that we can know the truth of salvation and need to preserve it.