Today’s message is from Acts 2:42-47 (and some other passages, too). It’s about the church when it first started—right after Pentecost. I’m going to talk quite a bit about the church today. I’ve said this before and I’m going to say it again today. I think we have lost sight of the importance of the church. I’m going to talk about the importance of the church. But before we go on to today’s passage, I want to review what happened at Pentecost.
[prayer]
Now let me review what happened at Pentecost—some of the things Tom talked about last week. What happened at Pentecost was the result of the working of God’s Holy Spirit. It was the result of God’s power and grace and mercy.
People, Jews and converts to Judaism, had gathered from all over the Roman Empire to observe this feast, Pentecost. (I’ve heard that during these feast times the population of Jerusalem doubled.) When these people heard all the commotion, the sound of the roaring wind and the apostles speaking in tongues, they gathered to see what was going on. Peter spoke to them. What he told them was the truth about Jesus.
You know, when you think about it, these people were really serious about there religion. Some of them traveled hundreds of miles—some much further than that—some on foot, some by ship, some on horses or donkeys. (I can also guarantee you that none traveled by car or by airplane.) Would any of us make such a great effort to observe some holiday simply because it was a tradition? I don’t think they would have come to Jerusalem to observe this holiday simply because it was traditional.
It sure looks like these people were serious about their religion. And they were looking forward to the coming of the Messiah, the Christ—the Christ who was to be the Savior of Israel. He was the one who would rescue and deliver them and restore Israel to its former glory. They would all have at least said that they were looking forward to the coming of the Messiah. They probably all prayed every day, too—more than once.
Peter told them that the one they had been waiting for had already come and that they had killed him! What a wild statement to make! They should have recognized him. God had accredited him to them by many miraculous signs and they knew it. But they had killed him: “You, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross!”
But God raised Jesus from the dead. Peter quoted from the Old Testament: “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for you feet.’” Then he said, “Let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
They were supposedly looking forward to his coming. When he came, they didn’t recognize him—and they killed him—and now they are his enemies—and God will make his enemies a footstool for his feet.
They said, “Brothers, what shall we do?” Peter told them, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Three thousand of them repented!
Jesus is still reigning at the right hand of God. He will reign until all of his enemies are submitted under his feet. And, you know, he is coming back! And when he comes, there will be no room for doubt that it’s him. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord! Are you looking forward to his coming? Are you looking forward to heaven or are you holding onto the things of this life? Are you storing up treasure in heaven or are you storing up treasure on earth? (I’m just checking.) It’s easy to pay lip service to these things but not live according to them. Those at Pentecost probably did that and we do it, too.
Peter warned the crowd and pleaded with them with many other words. He told them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” About three thousand were added to there number that day. Through the work of the Holy Spirit the 120 or so believers grew to over 3,000 in one day. This is the power of the Holy Spirit—the power of God!
Just a question: Do you think our present generation is more corrupt than that generation was? Just a question.
Well, I wanted to review what had happened up to this point, so that’s the review. Now let’s go on to today’s passage. I’ll read it. You can follow along as I read:
42They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47 –NIV)
Verse 42 says, “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” They is the church. This verse describes what the church did from the beginning and is our example of what the church is supposed to do until Jesus comes back for his bride.
So, if you repent and are baptized for the forgiveness of your sins, then what do you do? This is what you do. You do what they did. I’m going to talk quite a bit about God’s purpose for the church. I’m going to refer to other parts of the New Testament.
But before I do that though, I want to remind all of you, as always, of the importance of the word of God. You need the word of God every day to sustain your life. Really, it’s more important than physical food which just keeps your physical body alive. Your physical body will sooner or later perish. Jesus says, in fact, heaven and earth will pass away, but that his words will never pass away. Verse 42 in today’s passage says, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.” We need to devote ourselves to the apostles teaching, too.
Now let’s go to Ephesians to see what the apostle Paul has to say about the church. Look at Ephesians 1:22, 23: “And God placed all things under his (Jesus’s) feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” I’m going to go back to something I wrote 7 or 8 years ago and have repeated several times since. I’m going to repeat it again now.
These verses, Ephesians 1:22, 23, say that God placed all things under Jesus' feet and made him head over everything. Why did he do this? According to these verses, he did it for the church! The church must be very important indeed. And it is! Verse 23 says that the church is Jesus' body—and that it, the church, is the fullness of God who fills everything in every way.
In case you don't know what the significance of the "fullness of God" is (and I didn't.), I'll tell you what I found out. I looked up the Greek word for fullness in several lexicons. Here are some of the meanings:
• “full contents”
• “full measure”
• “what is beyond measure”
• “wealth”
• “overflowing amount”
• “abundance”
• “full and perfect nature”
• “fulfillment”
I also looked up the word fills and found out that it also means completes or fulfills. In order to convey more fully the meaning of the phrase “the fullness of him who fills everything in every way”, I made an “amplified” translation using the lexicon definitions of fullness and fills. Here it is:
The Church is “the overflowing abundance, the wealth beyond measure and the full and perfect nature of him (God) who fulfills and completes everything in every way.”
This is what God says the church is. (And I didn't add to what the Bible says. I just gave the full meanings of the words.) The purpose of the church is to represent God on earth—and not represent in the sense of a person simply having authority to speak for you, but in the sense that if anyone wants to see the nature of God he can look at the church and see all that can be seen of God. The church is the “full and perfect nature of God”. (If it doesn’t look like that now, it’s because God is still perfecting it.)
The bottom line—the goal—is that if someone wants to know what God looks like, you should be able to say, “Look at the church. If you’ve seen the church, you’ve seen God. If you’ve seen the church, you’ve seen Jesus. The church is his body.”
Now let’s look at Ephesians 2:19-22. Here’s what it says:
19Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22 –NIV)
Open your Bible and look at that carefully. You see, the church is represented as a temple of God with Jesus as the cornerstone—a building in which God lives by his Holy Spirit.
We are used to thinking of ourselves as being indwelt by the Holy Spirit individually. This passage says that each of us is a building block of God’s temple (which is obviously something that is much greater than the sum of its parts, the individual building blocks) and that God’s Holy Spirit lives in this building. God (speaking through the apostle Paul) is representing the church to us, not as a building made of building blocks individually indwelt by the Holy Spirit (although we are each indwelt by the Holy Spirit) but as an entire building in which God lives by his spirit.
I think our strong individuality, especially in this country, blinds us to what God has to say about the church and his purpose for the church. What God has to say is more about the church than about us as individuals.
Have you noticed the number of what I call “I” and “me” hymns and “I” and “me” worship song as opposed to “we” and “us” hymns and worship songs. We are gathered together as a church and we sing about “I” and “me” instead of “we” and “us”. Consider this. This is a slightly modified version of the Lord ’s Prayer. Here it is:
“My Father who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. They kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give me this day my daily bread and forgive me my debts as I have forgiven my debtors. Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from the evil one. (And also, forget about all these other guys.) Sounds a little weird, doesn’t it—not quite the way Jesus taught it. The “I” and “me” hymns and worship songs ought to sound just as weird when we sing them together, but we’re used to doing it that way. How do you think they sound to God? (By the way, there is a place for “I” songs, but not when we are singing together as a group. There are plenty of “I” psalms in the book of Psalms and it’s OK to read them.)
One time quite a while back when we were first starting to use some of the worship songs (as opposed to the hymns), I especially noticed how many “I” songs there were. I brought this up along with some of the points that I just made to one of the worship leaders. He told me that they had actually changed the we’s to I’s in order to make the songs seem more personal. He said that he saw the point and agreed that they wouldn’t do it any more. However, nothing changed. I found out after a while that they had prayed about it and decided to keep changing the we’s to I’s.
The church is represented as Christ’s body (as in Ephesians 1:22, 23) in many other places. The apostle Paul uses the expression one body over and over again when he is talking about the church: “Speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (Eph. 4:15, 16)
And Romans 12:4, 5 –“Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” Notice that each member belongs to all the others. We all belong not just to Jesus but to each other.
Now I’m going to read from 1 Corinthians 12:12-27. Remember, the body is the church and it’s the body of Christ. Listen:
12The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body— whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free— and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
21The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. (1 Corinthians 12:12-27 –NIV)
It’s pretty much self-explanatory. We need each other just as we need Jesus and—Jesus is the head.
Now let’s look at 1 Corinthians 3:16, 17. The apostle Paul is talking about divisions in the church in Corinth. He says that there’s quarrelling and jealousy. Some say that they follow Paul. Others say they are following Apollos. He says that that they are worldly—mere men because of this. Now listen as I read 1 Corinthians 3:16, 17. This is Paul’s warning about divisions:
16Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? 17If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple. (1 Corinthians 3:16, 17 –NIV)
If you destroy God’s temple, God will destroy you. If you didn’t before, by now you know that God’s temple is the church. (And I might point out that many people use this verse to tell you to quit smoking or to quit doing something else that’s bad for your health. They reason that God’s temple is your body because his Spirit lives in you. The you is plural in this case, however, although it not brought out in the NIV translation. The you, the plural you is all the believer at Corinth, the church at Corinth. I think that the confusion about this is at least in part because our individualistic way of thinking.)
Quite a number of people have left this church—LHF. In fact there are just a few of us left.
Some of those who left just left. They simply stopped coming. Most of the others who have left told us that they had decided to leave and then left. Now, most of them didn’t leave the body of Christ, they went to other churches which are still part of the body of Christ. But I have pointed out in the past that when one member leaves this particular part of the body—this congregation (or any other, for that matter)—it affects the entire congregation. No member is indispensable. Now it may be God’s will and direction for you to go to another congregation. But it’s not for you to determine that for yourself. Your staying or going affects the entire congregation and the entire congregation—not just you—not just the elders—but the entire congregation should pray for God’s will and guidance to be plain. I can think of only two families that actually did that—that asked the entire congregation to pray for God’s guidance in their decision. There may have been more, but that’s all I can think of at the moment. I think many people will say to the rest of the congregation (or think), “It’s none of your business whether we leave or stay. It’s a personal decision.” But it’s not. It affects the entire congregation. (By the way, do you think that a decision to marry should be prayed about by the whole congregation? Does it affect the whole congregation? ...just something to think about.)
Well, today’s passage (in verse 42) says that they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship... Fellowship is what it’s all about. We may be individuals, but we are members of the body of Christ. I’m going to quote just one more passage about what the church does. This is from James 5:13-16:
13Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. 14Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. (James 5:13-16 –NIV)
We are to confess out sins to each other and pray for each other. How many of us struggle with some sin all by ourselves or pray to get well, but don’t ask anyone else to pray unless we’re almost dead. We think, “It’s just between me and God. It’s none of your business.” Or maybe, “I’ve got to overcome this on my own. I don’t want anyone else’s help.” We need to be humble and to pray for each other. We need to ask each other to pray. “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”
There seems be even more of the idea that we don’t need each other lately. I have a book by George Barna, the Christian pollster. He polled and interviewed a number of Christians about their affiliation with local churches. I haven’t read the whole thing, but apparently more and more people are trying to live Christian lives apart from being member of a local congregation. It’s not that they don’t associate with other Christians, but that they don’t have any close connections with any individual group of Christians. George Barna says that they are full of zeal and that it’s a good thing. But my question is “Do they have any group that they have close enough fellowship with that they can do things like confess their sins and ask for prayer. Are they accountable to any group of Christians?” Each of us needs to be part of a congregation.
Verse 42 says that they devoted themselves to the breaking of bread. This is the Lord’s Supper that we observe when we meet together. I could talk a lot more about it (and we do every Sunday). But I’ll just say this: We observe the Lord’s supper to be reminded of the fact that we owe everything to Jesus. He is the one who suffered on our behalf. He is the one who gave his life to save us from our sins. He is the one who rose from the dead and is reigning at the right hand of God. He is the head of the body, the church. And he is the one who will come back to get his church at the proper time.
Well that’s the first verse of today’s passage and a little more. So let’s go on. (I’m not going to spend as much time on the rest of the passage.)
Verses 43 through 45 says:
43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. (Acts 2:43-47 –NIV)
I think everyone would have been filled with awe (literally, fear) regardless of whether or not miraculous signs were being done by the apostles. I think a lot of people would have been scared just to see people actually loving each other and sharing their possessions. That’s so unnatural. It shows the power of God. Sinners are afraid when they see the power of God. Satan hates it.
And by the way, having everything in common and sharing with those who are in need is not communism. In communism, you don’t own the property, the government does. These people in the early church owned the property, they just didn’t treat it as though it were their own, but shared it with anyone else who had need. There’s a vast difference between sharing because of love, because of God’s grace, and because the government doesn’t give you any choice! Why do you think communist governments do everything they can to stamp out Christianity? They are afraid when they see the power of God!
Now let’s look at verses 46 and 47: I’ll read them:
46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:46, 47 –NIV)
We don’t meet every day. Maybe if we lived closer together we could. But it says that they met in the temple courts as well as in homes. I’ve heard that the population of Jerusalem may have been around 500,000. They couldn’t all have lived close to the temple, but they still met daily in the temple courts. And there’s something else to think about: Many of the people who heard Peter’s message were not from Jerusalem. They were from distant lands—places where they spoke foreign languages. Many of them must have left their homes behind and settled in Jerusalem so that they could devote themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
They all praised God with glad and sincere hearts. Sincere hearts: That means that they did not hide anything from each other. There were no hidden motives. What they looked like from the outside was what they were! And they were happy to be what they were, which was—sinners saved by grace. They praised God continually. The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. The Lord did it. They didn’t do it. Amen! Come back and hear more next week.
The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.
[prayer]