The Apostles’ Teaching

They Devoted Themselves To The Apostles’ Teaching

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So it is with our hearing messages from the Bible. We are cleansed and purified by our contact with apostolic truth. Jesus prayed for that. That is why we need the teaching of the apostles every week. It is absolutely essential. Then there is another reason why we need this teaching. Your exposure to the teaching of Matthew and John and Peter and Paul is going to save you from losing your way in life.

He is the Word who was in the beginning with God and he is God. You will learn to be guided by the Scriptures and not by your feelings or your imagination. Be this kind of workman. Be this kind of boss. Be this kind of preacher.

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So you are not waiting for the goose-pimples, or the tingle factor, before you act in a God-honouring and self-denying way. Your actions and your words are guided by all the teaching of the apostles, for example, all the self-disclosure of the suffering of the apostle Paul, and his wrestling with the thorn in his flesh. Kuiper speaks of a farm labourer who was fed up with his life on a farm, and one day he went to see the farmer and told him that he was quitting to become a preacher.

Be this kind of preacher, with these kinds of gifts. Of course the teaching of the apostles is far wider than that. You may be a student. Are you studying psychology, or international politics, or law, or the natural sciences? You will receive great help from the Bible.

It will bring your thoughts under the influence of God the Creator. In every dilemma, in every area of inquiry certain theological principles will come to bear on your thoughts, and those who have learned the doctrines of the apostles will be able to live more pleasingly to God. There is no other path to Christ-likeness than by a growing understanding the teaching of the apostles.

The more we know about God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and his relationship with the world the better we will trust him, and then the more we will adore him, and we will want to magnify his name. Think of the virgin Mary after God had met with her and disclosed what he was going to do through her in fulfilling the promise of sending the Messiah. Do you remember her words?

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She had the greatest possible. When I became a man I put away childish things.

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How mighty and infinite and glorious he is. That is what true revival does; it magnifies God.

His praise characterizes our gatherings. The knowledge of God is often linked in the New Testament with mature Christian living. Now no Christian believes that all the chapters of the Bible are equally important. All are inspired in their composition by God at sundry times and in different circumstances. But they are not all equally crucial. The six chapters of the letter to the Ephesians are infinitely more important than the first six chapters of the first book of Chronicles.

So too I do not believe that all the truths of the Bible are major truths. Certain truths about the return of the Lord Jesus Christ are quite minor doctrines. Then I asked the opening question which was this, whether Dr. Without hesitation he said he thought it was a trunk and branch doctrine, a major doctrine of our Lord and his apostles. How do you tell the difference between trunk and branch doctrines and leaf doctrines?

THE LEADERSHIP IN THE APOSTLES’ TEACHING

A trunk and branch doctrine is one that has a significant impact on our thinking and on how we live our Christian lives, and how we think of other people, especially non-believers. So the teaching of the apostles, particularly in the 27 books of the New Testament, is very effectual to enable us to live a Christ-like life. They devoted themselves to it. So how can we do that?

Paul warns the early church that knowledge alone puffs up. From his own experience he had been brought to that conviction. God himself was so aware that the knowledge Paul had gained on one never to be forgotten occasion when he had been caught up to the third heaven and had seen sights of glory and heard words of praise. So God was conscious of what past blessings may bring into our lives, that men can become puffed up by them, and so even the apostle Paul could become proud and useless and fail to continue as a helpful preacher-pastor and letter writer.

So he thrust some thorn into the flesh of Paul as a counterpoise to his pride. See how much better I could serve you and the people without this. What a pain it is! How it drags me down! So our dealings with God and the consequent growth in our knowledge of him would always be in the atmosphere of growing prayer. That follows from the first point because there is no such thing as proud praying. It is the poor in spirit alone who are blessed.

It is the meek alone who inherit the earth. And Peter knew this as much as any apostle in the New Testament. He writes to a church and urges them to clothe themselves with humility towards one another. God gives grace to the humble, he tells them. That is apostolic teaching. We can make rapid progress in our grasp of what Christianity teaches. At university we can join a Christian Union and hear numbers of good speakers. We can get some splendid books, and listen to famous preachers on line. We can have wonderful fresh opportunities of satisfying our new devotion to grow in apostolic teaching.

Now there are old Christians we meet who have never had those opportunities. They did not go to university, and the place they get their teaching is from the pulpit of their local church, and so maybe they are less impressive in their grasp of Christian doctrine and the history of the church than we are though they have been Christian for fifty years.

CHURCH FATHERS: The Teaching of the Apostles

It is then so easy to be critical and dismissive of them, but they have kept the faith for years, and they have been married for years, and they have raised children and struggled with finances and paying their bills and looked after elderly parents. They have learned the obedience of God by the things that they have suffered, and been unable to hear loads of preachers and read a library of books. You are not learning them to put down another believer. You are not learning them that always you can have the last word.

Then there is another way we are to devote ourselves to truth. I mean with sanctified common sense, and with understanding, so that we can draw certain conclusions from it about its relevance to your life today. We can come to some deductions from certain verses of Scripture that are correct, just as long as those deductions do not contradict the clear passages of other parts of Scripture. For example, we learn from apostolic teaching that the Father is God, and that the Son is God and that the Spirit is God.

Yet we are told in Scripture that the Lord our God is one God. There are not three gods. And so we conclude that there are three separate persons in the godhead, all equally divine, and yet there is only the one God, the one being of God. So we do not twist the plain meaning of Scripture by quoting the more obscure verses.

So also there is no contradiction between the responsibility of man to respond to the gospel and the electing grace of God in choosing many favoured sinners. Both are found in apostolic teaching. Again there is no contradiction in the New Testament between James saying that Abraham was justified by works and Paul saying that Abraham was justified by his faith in God. Although the Church at Sardis had quite a reputation in its community, Jesus viewed it as having already died Rev. All Christian believers should carefully evaluate the beliefs and practices of a church by the standards of God's Word.

Then they should associate with and support the one that meets the New Testament standards. However, it is safe to assume that this creed may have been a collection of teachings that were compiled from the spiritual doctrines set out by the apostles to guide the New Testament church community. These were possibly principles derived from public teachings and writings of the apostles that were respected and used by the believers to guide their public worship to distinguish the church from the faith and practices of Judaism from which most of the Jewish believers were converted.

They could also have consisted of basic statements of faith for the emerging church community or a set of regulations defining the conduct of believers. We may never know precisely what was contained in the creed but it must have a beneficial collection of teachings for the church then since they did not have the benefit of the New Testament canon that is available to us today. Cindy Jennings Disciple The "apostles' doctrine" is simply the foundational content for the believer's spiritual growth and maturity and was the Scripture, God's revealed truth, which the apostles received and taught faithfully from the footnotes in the MacArthur Study Bible.

In other words, their doctrine is what you read in the NT since they wrote it with the guidance of the HS. Fellowship refers to the responsibility of all believers to share and hold each other accountable for obedience. Breaking of bread, of course, refers to communion, which is mandatory for all Christians. Prayers refers to individual and corporate prayer. It's a fairly straightforward verse. Nothing tough about its interpretation. Stanley Zantarski There are four parts to this verse: The Apostles teaching, the fellowshipping, the breaking of bread, and prayers. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself.

He is telling us that the followers were convinced of the Apostles authority and of the soundness of their teaching. They were committed to following them. They were also committed to fellowshipping. They got to know one another, minister to one another, and share with one another.

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The Apostles were also following the example of Christ who broke bread, gave thanks, and shared it with the masses. Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. We are called to pray all throughout scripture. Christ prayed often throughout scripture. Prayer is a unique form of communication for Christians, between themselves and God. In conclusion, we see that the four characteristics of the first church: We cannot just "assume" because then we simply have man's opinion rather than letting the scripture itself speak to us.

Just prior to the statement, "They continued steadfast in the Apostle's doctrine," the only teaching revealed is the sermon Peter delivered. A careful combing of that sermon reveals what is being referred to. An assumption that letters, all written later, are included with this statement is part of the problem of using the word to make it say what you think, rather than thinking what scripture reveals.

Read Peter's sermon, note the specifics he shares, and understand that this was the doctrine being taught, along with the previous things Jesus taught His disciples during his 3 years with them.

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