Acts 2:42-47
I have a rich fantasy life. I used to do a lot of traveling when I was in business in the US and I used to work on a system of rules that would govern my ability to travel into the past. I wasnât concerned about the technology of how I would travel back in time and simply chose the car I was driving as the vehicle I would use for time travel. My concern was more about how I would interact with the past. Would I be able to affect the past? In what way or to what extent would I be able to interact with the past? How would I be protected from dangers in the past? Would I be able to get out of my car and walk around? What if I traveled into a war? Would I be capable of being injured? How would I handle the emotional trauma of observing violence and suffering and being unable to do anything about it? It is amazing how many kilometers can pass by with such speculation.
If I were to travel into the past, where would I most like to visit? I would love to be here in Rabat a couple thousand years ago and see the vast forest with lions and leopards. It would be so exciting to be in North America when the Vikings or Europeans first visited. It would be fascinating to have a meal with Shakespeare and discuss with him what he was going to write next. Can you imagine traveling with the Queen of Sheba when she came to Jerusalem to visit King Solomon?
As a Christian, I have often speculated about what it would have been like to be with Jesus. What would it have been like to visit Nazareth when Jesus was nine years old and have a meal with his family? I would love to have sat on the side of the mountain while Jesus taught and healed the crowds who came to him. But other than being with Jesus, I would have loved to be a part of the followers of Jesus on the day of Pentecost and in the weeks that followed.
Ever since I first became a believer and submitted to God by following Jesus, I have read this morningâs verses from Acts with a great deal of longing. What a thrill it must have been to be part of this new, growing, dynamic, pulsating, alive fellowship of believers. Acts 2:42-47 is how I have always wished it would be with us in the church. I have been part of nine churches in my Christian life and I have measured our life in these churches in one way or another by how we measured up to this model.
The closest I have ever come was when I attended Park Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts in the 1970s. Annie and I were two of about 600 college and graduate school age believers in a group called Seekers. Many of the characteristics of the early church were manifested in our fellowship. People with cars shared them with those who did not have a car. I received anonymous gifts that helped me pay my tuition fees for seminary. I learned a lot about the Bible from the multiple teaching opportunities each week. And maybe not every day, but every week, new believers were added to our fellowship.
In retrospect, we were part of a revival in the US in which an estimated 14,000,000 people became followers of Jesus and I have been longing for the whole of my Christian life to have a deeper and fuller measure of what we experienced in those years in the 1970s.
What happened in chapter two of the book of Acts is that the Kingdom of God burst onto the scene and the world was treated to a picture of what it will be like, at least in part, when the Kingdom of God is fully realized at the Second Coming of Jesus.
Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.
When the Kingdom of God is fully realized, we will be living in the presence of God, growing in our awe and wonder of who God is. Each day, if there are days, we will have a deeper appreciation of how great God is and when we think we have seen all of God, the next day we will realize how little we understood the day before as new and deeper aspects of God are revealed.
There will be no factions competing with each other for power and attention. We will not be talking of what is mine but will be rejoicing in what is ours. There will not be a rich section of heaven and a poor section of heaven. There will not be reserved seats for the rich and powerful. The rich will not eat and then the poor come along and eat what was left over.
We will meet with each other and rejoice in hearing the stories we each have to tell. And each time we share our story, we will understand our own story in a deeper, more insightful way. We will move deeper and deeper into the wonder and mystery of God as revealed in our own lives and the lives of those around us.
Our praise of God will grow as we grow in our understanding of him.
The Kingdom of God burst into this material world on the day of Pentecost as the church was born and I long to see the Kingdom of God burst open in our world, our church.
Christian groups throughout the centuries have tried to recreate the experience of the early church in Acts. And so rules are set up that when you join the group, you sign over all your assets to the group so that you own nothing. All you have is shared with the group. Meals are shared in common and if you fail to show up at the meal, you are questioned and perhaps disciplined.
Iâll come back to this, but what people have repeatedly failed to realize is that the description of the church in Acts makes a difference between what the disciples devoted themselves to and what were the natural consequences of their devotion and it makes an enormous difference which you try to model.
So we look at verse 42 to see what the disciples devoted themselves to:
They devoted themselves to the apostlesâ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
This one verse describes for us how we should be focused in our church experience.
They devoted themselves to the apostleâs teaching. What was that teaching? Remember that Jesus put the disciples through a three year course in ministry, teaching them and demonstrating for them how to do what it was he did. Then after his resurrection, he spent forty days with them in an intensive refresher course, helping them to see in light of his death and resurrection, a more clear understanding of all they had learned.
It was what they had learned from Jesus that the apostles now taught. They took what we refer to as the Old Testament and showed from that how Jesus had fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. They took the teachings of Jesus over the three years they had been with him and taught what he had taught. With the filling of the Holy Spirit, the word of Jesus now lived and burned within them and they taught that living word.
They devoted themselves to the fellowship. A major emphasis of Jesus had been for them to be unified. His prayer as recorded in John 17 focused on the unity of the church as the chief means of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus.
Before Jesus ascended, he instructed the disciples to return to Jerusalem and to wait. I talked in an earlier sermon about the factions among the disciples and all the reasons they had for disunity. As they waited, they prayed together. Repeatedly Luke writes that they were all together. In Acts 4 in the second description of the early church, he wrote that they were all of one heart and mind.
This did not happen easily but happened in part because they devoted themselves to the fellowship. Relationships are not easy. We live in a world of entropy in which everything is moving to a state of chaos and disorder. This is true in the material sense but it is also true in the relational sense.
A couple gets married and if the marriage is to be successful, they will have to devote themselves to that marriage and put a lot of hard and sometimes difficult work into the relationship to make it one that grows and deepens in intimacy. If a couple does not work at their marriage, it will disintegrate.
This is true in all relationships. We all have friends who were our closest and best friends and now with the passing of time, we donât even know where they are living.
The disciples devoted themselves to the fellowship. They worked at unity in the fellowship. When there was a disagreement, they worked to resolve the disagreement. A little bit later in Acts tension arose because it was felt that the Greek widows were being neglected at the expense of the Hebrew widows. So the twelve apostles chose seven Greek Jews to be in charge of the daily distribution of food. The disciples devoted themselves to the fellowship, working toward the unity of the believers.
The disciples devoted themselves to the breaking of bread. This is a reference to what we call communion or the Lordâs Supper. This was not just a bit of bread and some juice or wine, as we observe communion today. This likely involved a meal in which they followed the command of Jesus, âWhenever you eat this bread, do so in remembrance of me,â and âWhenever you drink this cup, do so in remembrance of me.â
This also served the purpose of unity among the believers. When believers come to communion, they come in full equality where there is no rich or poor, no male or female, no Spanish-speaking or French-speaking or Korean-speaking or English-speaking, no employer or employee. When believers come to the communion table, they are all sinners in need of salvation. We are all equal when we come to the table of Jesus. As Dolmae helped us understand last week in her dance, we are all desperately in need of a living relationship with Jesus.
And the disciples devoted themselves to prayer. Prayer is also not easy. We struggle, all of us, with prayer. It takes energy and determination to pray. We have to make choices to pray. And when we pray, we are drawn into the mind and heart of God. As we pray, we are transformed and we learn how it is we are to think and feel about what happens around us.
Each of these four characteristics of the early church serve the purpose of drawing us closer to God and closer to each other. In each of these activities of the church, the church drew closer to Jesus. The early church focused on Jesus by devoting themselves to these things.
And because the early church devoted themselves to the apostlesâ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer, there were certain consequences.
Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
The early church did not devote themselves to wonders and miraculous signs. The early church did not devote themselves to sharing what they had with others. The early church did not devote themselves to selling what they owned and sharing with those who were in need.
The early church devoted themselves to teaching, fellowship, communion and prayer and then some wonderful consequences were revealed.
What kind of church do we want to be? We want to be filled with awe. We want to see wonders and miraculous signs. We want to be so filled with the love of Jesus that our fellowship becomes the live, living church of Jesus in which we care for each other as Jesus cares for us. The danger is that we put our efforts into working at the consequences rather than the four activities of the early church.
Throughout history, Christians have put their focus on the consequences of devotion and the church has suffered as a result.
Jonathan Edwards was the leading theologian of the First Great Awakening in the American colonies of Britain in the middle 1700s. There was a genuine movement of the Holy Spirit and a large percentage of the population turned to a strong faith in Christ. Because Edwards had such an eagerness to see the millennium, a period of 1,000 years of peace, he instituted rules of behavior in his community to which people were pressured to adhere. The consequence was that the revival weakened, there was a rebellion in his church and he eventually was forced out of his church and community.
At different times in the history of the US, laws have been passed to enforce Christian behavior. Sabbath laws were passed that prohibited keeping a business open on a Sunday. Laws to prohibit drinking alcohol were passed.
Passing laws to legislate Christian morality is far too complex to discuss in a few lines in a sermon, but let me make this point. Society may or may not benefit by passing laws that legislate morality. That can be debated. But what is clear is that legislating Christian morality does not inspire people to draw closer to God in Christian faith. Passing laws or instituting rules for behavior puts the focus on the consequences rather than on a growing relationship with Christ.
When Jonathan Edwardsâ community experienced revival, people confessed their sin and changed their behavior because of their experience of Jesus. When the revival faded and all that was left were the rules Edwards had put in place, the community rebelled because the rules became oppressive.
When we come back to Acts next spring, we will be looking at the passage where Ananias and Sapphira focused on the consequences rather than the four devotions. Barnabas had sold one of his fields and given the money to the church. Barnabas did this because he was devoted to the teaching of the apostles, the fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer. Ananias and Sapphira liked the admiration that Barnabas received for his gift and so decided they would give a piece of land to the church as well. The problem is that their gift did not come because of their devotion and they focused on the external consequence.
Giving in the early church was voluntary, not mandatory. When we begin to mandate what we consider to be appropriate Christian behavior, we slip into a superficial, lifeless church. We may have the form of a church but we will lack the life of the church.
So if you want to experience what the early church experienced, it is a mistake to work hard at getting everyone to share what they have with everyone else. It is a mistake to work hard to see miracles and wonders in the church. It is a mistake to seek those things that will be the consequence of devotion to God. If you want to have a church that is like the church in Acts, then devote yourselves to the activities of the early church that drew them to Jesus.
So we are brought back to what the disciples devoted themselves to.
They devoted themselves to the apostlesâ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
What do we learn from the disciplesâs devotion?
The word translated âdevotionâ carries the sense of constancy and perseverance. In Acts 1:14
They all joined together constantly in prayer
In Acts 6:4, the apostles devoted themselves to
prayer and the ministry of the word
The impression I get when I read this is that the early believers did nothing but listen to the teaching of the apostles, share meals and communion with each other, meet with each other for fellowship and prayer. If I were to look at a weekly schedule of the disciples, my impression is that the daily schedule would begin with prayer and then teaching and then prayer and then fellowship where they shared with each other what they had learned so far in the day and then more prayer and then more teaching and perhaps communion when they ate lunch or supper and on and on until it was time to go to bed. My question is how did the early church survive?
In the early church, there was a necessity for someone to cook and prepare the meals the church ate. There was a necessity for someone to earn money that would pay for the food they ate. Those with land they did not sell had to manage what they had.
I devote myself to the study of the word. It takes me about 20 hours of study and writing to prepare a sermon. I do that now because it is my job to be a pastor and preach. But when I was in business, it would have been impossible for me to spend that much time a week studying the word.
When people come to Morocco to start a business, I tell them they need to devote themselves to the business. I tell them they cannot expect to start a successful business by working 30 or 40 hours a week. They must plan on spending 50 or 60 hours a week to make their business successful.
If you are working hard, spending most of the hours of the week working at your business or job, does that mean you are being in some way disobedient? By not spending more time devoting yourself to Bible study, fellowship, communion and prayer, are you depriving yourself of the blessed consequences the early church experienced?
Would it be a good idea if we quit working so hard at our jobs and began spending more time in fellowship with each other, studying the Bible together, praying with each other? After all, if our devotion to those things is what releases the power of the church, why not give it 100% and trust God to provide what we need?
It cannot be this. We are not meant to put on white robes and sit on a mountaintop, waiting for Jesus to come back. In fact, when Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica, he admonished those who were not working but were just sitting and waiting for the return of Jesus.
11 We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. 12 Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.
Some are called to study the Bible more than others because of what it is they do. Some are called to pray more than others because of how they have been gifted. But there needs to be in all of us a constancy in our study of Scripture, pursuit of fellowship and prayer. Even if you have just 15 minutes or a half an hour in the morning or evening or sometime during the day, it is important that you be devoted, constant in your pursuit of those things that will draw you closer to Jesus.
Are you devoted to the study of Godâs word given to us in the Scriptures? Do you regularly, daily, constantly open the Bible to read and meditate on what you read? Are you involved in a group that studies the Bible together? Among the books you read, are you reading books that teach you about God and his interactions with us?
Are you seeking the fellowship of the church? Are you developing deeper and more meaningful relationships with others in the body of Christ here in Rabat? Who are the people you are meeting with on a regular basis? Are you involved with a group of people who meet to encourage each other in their Christian lives? Who is encouraging you in your Christian faith? Who are you encouraging?
When you travel, seek the unity of the local fellowship where you are. When Annie and I take a vacation, we find a church wherever we are and go to that worship service. Devote yourself to the fellowship of the church.
How is your prayer life going? Take advantage of opportunities to pray with others. I have begun praying with those in lâEglise Protestante each Friday morning and I look forward to that time each week. I enjoy meeting with Beaum Geau on Thursday mornings to pray and miss it when I am unable to be there.
Is there someone in your life who you meet with to pray each week? It is important to pray by yourself throughout the course of the day. Our prayer life is a constant dialog with God, seeking his help, his wisdom, his perspective, letting God take the pressure off our shoulders as we become overwhelmed with all we have to do. But we need as well to meet with others to pray. With whom do you pray?
Devote yourself to the activities of the early church that will lead you closer to Jesus and then God will bring the consequences.
And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
The miraculous signs did not add daily to their number. Nor did their fellowship or the apostlesâ teaching. God may have used those things, but it was the work of God that brought daily to them those who were being saved.
I am not satisfied with our fellowship at RPF. I love this church and the people in this church but I want for all of us more than what we have. If we devote ourselves to the teaching of the word, the fellowship of the church, the breaking of bread and prayers, we will draw closer to Jesus and in Godâs timing, we will see him work his miracles among us and the Lord will add to our fellowship daily those who are being saved.
