Acts 4:23-35
John Gerber said last week that I always start off my sermons with a joke, so this week let me begin with a story of the history of the church.
I was walking in San Francisco along the Golden Gate Bridge when I saw a man about to jump off. I tried to dissuade him from committing suicide and told him simply that God loved him. A tear came to his eye. I then asked him, “Are you a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu, or what?” He said, “I’m a Christian.” I said, “Me, too, small world. Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me too, what denomination?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Well, me too. Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Amazing, so am I! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist or Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist?” He said, “Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist.” I said, “Remarkable! Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist Great Lakes Region or Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “It’s a miracle! Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist Great Lakes Region 1879 or Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist Great Lakes Region of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist Great Lakes Region of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” and pushed him over.
Thatâs a funny story but as with most funny stories, there is pain that lies underneath. The pain that makes this story funny is the reality that the church of Jesus Christ is more a history of separation than it is a story of unity. The denomination in which I am ordained is the Presbyterian Church and it is sometimes referred to as the split peas of the Christian church because there are so many divisions among those who call themselves Presbyterians.
The extent of the tragedy of the disunity of the church of Jesus Christ cannot be overstated and it becomes clear how much of a tragedy the disunity of the church is when we see how clear Scripture is about the critical importance of unity.
Did you pick up this morning a key verse in the scripture we read from Acts that talks about the unity of the church?
32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.
One in heart and mind. I think Luke (who wrote this book to Theophilus as a second installment in his account of the life of Jesus) wanted to underscore the unity of the church and so he adds that No one claimed that any of his possessions were his own, but they shared everything they had. This was not a superficial unity, not just a phrase of the church. This was a foundational characteristic of the church.
The believers were one in heart and mind and what happened? Peter preached a sermon and 3,000 were added to their numbers that day. Daily, we read in Acts, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. As we read Acts, we are impressed with the life and vitality of the church.
Did you hear the power and vitality of the church revealed in that text Franklin read this morning? Let me put it in context for you. Peter and John were arrested for preaching the Gospel of Christ, put in jail and called before the Sanhedrin. This was the body that had condemned Jesus to death, just a few short months before. They were questioned, threatened and then released. Upon their release, they met together with the other believers and prayed the prayer in the text we read this morning.
Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. 30 Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.
As we read through Acts we see that God answered this prayer powerfully. Many were healed in the name of Jesus and it came to be that people even laid the sick on the path so that Peterâs shadow would fall on them to bring them healing. It was an amazing time in the life of the church.
We long to see the church today have the life and vitality of the church in Acts but we must not ignore the unity of the believers that undergirded its life and vitality.
You may have seen a video titled Transformations that focuses on four communities in the world: one in California in the US, one in Guatemala, one in Columbia and the fourth in Kenya. Each of these communities experienced a Christian revival that made a tangible difference in the quality of life of the community. The whole community benefitted, not just those who were themselves revived and discovered faith in Jesus. One of the key factors that preceded each of these revivals was that church leaders came together to pray. They put aside their differences. They put their egos on the shelf. They stopped trying to compete with each other to see who could be the biggest church, the most powerful church. They put all this aside and came together to pray.
The churches in these communities worked for unity and God blessed them with revival.
I read Acts this summer in France and realized how much I long to see God work powerfully in this country. In Paulâs first letter to the Corinthians, he writes that âJews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdomâ. It seems to me from stories that I have heard that the people of this land are more like the Jews than the Greeks in this regard. And so I long for God to stretch out his hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of Jesus.
But we must work to be unified.
The fact that unity is so critical to revival should not come as a surprise to anyone who has read the Gospels. When Jesus prayed his high priestly prayer in John 17, what was a primary focus for him? Let me read a section of this prayer using Eugene Petersonâs Message translation:
Iâm praying not only for them
But also for those who will believe in me
Because of them and their witness about me.
The goal is for all of them to become one heart
and mindâ
Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
So they might be one heart and mind with us.
Then the world might believe that you, in fact,
sent me.
The same glory you gave me, I gave them,
So theyâll be as unified and together as we areâ
I in them and you in me.
Then theyâll be mature in this oneness,
And give the godless world evidence
That youâve sent me and loved them
In the same way youâve loved me.
Jesus prayed for unity and in his prayer revealed the practical consequence of unity that would build the church.
Unity in the church enables the world to know first that Jesus was sent by God and second that those in the world are loved by God.
So they might be one heart and mind with us.
Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.
Then theyâll be mature in this oneness,
And give the godless world evidence
That youâve sent me and loved them
In the same way youâve loved me.
Jesus prayed for the unity of the church. The church has seen over and over in its history that unity bears the fruit of growth in the church. Why is it that we have such a difficult time being unified?
The second law of thermodynamics is known as entropy. This law states that systems move from order to disorder. Loosely understood, this means the universe is in a state of disintegration and energy is required to resist this move to disorder. Buy a house and do nothing to maintain it and what happens. In just a few decades it will be in ruins.
Entropy can also be applied to the social world. Relationships require energy, effort. If effort is not put into a relationship, the relationship dissolves. This is true with casual friendships, marriage and it is true with our relationship with God.
Marriage takes work. If you donât believe this, ask anyone who is married. Marriage is not about falling in love and then relaxing and being happily married until death do us part. Marriage requires work to communicate and understand. Couples must take time to talk with each other. A couple where the husband works during the day and sits in front of the TV watching sports in the evenings and weekends with his buddies and interacts with his wife only to get a meal or be satisfied is not a marriage relationship that is growing.
It takes effort for nations to be unified. Look at the history of civil wars in the world? Look at the countries in the Balkans who have separated to become independent. Look at Indonesia.
On a smaller scale, in the US, part of Los Angeles is trying to separate to be its own city. A similar move has been made in New York City. Quebec has been trying to separate from Canada for several decades.
This move to disorder can be seen from the most casual of friendships to the most intimate of relationships. It is seen with individuals and it is seen in nations.
The move to disorder is part of our human condition. It is natural. It is what happens if we do nothing to prevent it.
Another way of looking at it is to think of swimming in a river. What happens if you relax and float? You move downstream. Unless you expend effort you will never be able to move upstream or even stay in the same spot where you started.
This is the problem with unity in the church. The natural course is to see differences and separate. Racial, ethnic, class, and style differences cause churches to separate. Churches separate over theological issues of great importance but they also separate over issues of relative insignificance. When Christ returns, will his return be preceded by a thousand years of peace? Or will his return be followed by a thousand years of peace or is the talk of a thousand years of peace only a metaphor? Will there be seven years of persecution of Christians before the thousand years of peace? Will Christians be taken up into heaven before, during or after this seven year period of persecution? Churches actually separate over differences of opinion on these speculative, future events.
Even the sacraments of baptism and communion which were given to draw us into unity have become the focus of disunity and separated Christians from Christians.
Next week I will spend some time talking about spiritual gifts, given to build the body of Christ up into unity and these as well have been used to divide the body of Christ. This is a tragedy.
There are many churches in which the preacher preaches the need for revival from the pulpit and ignores the separations that have been a part of his churchâs history. In Albertville, France where I studied this July there are four churches that are the consequence of three separations. None of these churches are large and in fact they are all small in number. What is the witness of the church to the town of Albertville when the church cannot get along and be unified? How can the church grow and experience revival when such disunity abounds?
We have a much better record of unity in Rabat. There is only one English-speaking church in Rabat. The Catholic church has an English service once a month, but there are not many options for those who want to go to a Christian Church.
Donât let this go to your head. It is not to our credit that we have just one church. The unity we experience is a forced unity. We are unified because we donât have other options. If an Anglican church began services in Rabat and then a Pentecostal church and a Baptist church and three or four others, would we continue to meet together or would we begin to drift apart and join the other churches in town?
Our unity is the consequence of a lack of options and I want to point out to you the benefits of our enforced unity. I want to make a case for why you are fortunate that there are not other options. I want to make a case for why you are fortunate to be a part of this international, multi-denominational church.
The first lesson we learn in this multi-denominational, international church is that Godâs beach is a lot bigger than our sandbox. Picture yourself at the ocean on a wonderful sand beach, an enormous expanse of sand as far as you can see. And then you look at a family playing in a little sandbox on the beach. Itâs a nice sandbox with bright red boards marking the four sides but they ignore the beach and seem to see only the sand inside their little sandbox. Youâd probably scratch your head, unable to understand why the family stays in their sand box when there is a huge expanse of sand in which to play.
This reminds me of the story of the man who was being given a tour of heaven. The angel giving the tour was showing him all the beautiful sights of heaven, huge waterfalls and forests and fields of flowers but more beautiful than anything he had ever seen on earth. Then they came by a small area enclosed by huge walls. âWhatâs that?â asked the new arrival in heaven. âOh,â said the angel, âthatâs for the [insert here Baptist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Pentecostal – whoever you choose]. They think theyâre the only ones in heaven and we donât want to disillusion them.â
Being part of the community of faith at RPF opens our eyes to the worldwide body of Christ. We have the opportunity to play on Godâs beautiful beach and not just in our little sandbox. We discover at RPF the breadth and depth of the worldwide body of Christ.
A second lesson we learn is that we are incomplete without each other. I had a professor of New Testament in seminary named Gordon Fee. In addition to being a brilliant professor (he has written a wonderful commentary on I Corinthians), Dr. Fee is an ordained minister in the Assembly of God. That makes him a Pentecostal.
He said something once I have never forgotten. He said that the Evangelicals need the heart of the Pentecostals and that the Pentecostals need the head of the Evangelicals. Over and over, in the twenty-five years since then, I have seen the wisdom of that statement.
As an Evangelical, I have benefitted from the Pentecostals in our community. I have been encouraged to lift my heart in worship to experience the presence of God in our services. Pentecostals in our community have helped me to have greater expectations for what God can do in our midst. Pentecostals have helped me to be bolder in my prayers.
On the other hand, Pentecostals have benefitted from an Evangelical approach to preaching the Scriptures. Phil List, who had to return to the US this past spring after contracting MS, told me how much he appreciated my preaching on the theology of suffering. This was something he had never been exposed to in his years in the Pentecostal church.
When we separate and divide, we have part of Godâs truth. When we come together, we have a more complete understanding. We are a more complete body of Christ when we are together.
Next Sunday I will talk about spiritual gifts and one point I want to make is that we need all the gifts God has to give us. That is a basic understanding of spiritual gifts in the theology of Paul. If we divide up the church on the basis of spiritual gifts, how can we be the complete body God desires us to be?
We are blessed to have a diverse community of faith here at RPF.
Our unity here at RPF is an enforced unity – but entropy is at work here in RPF as it is elsewhere in the universe. Unity at RPF does not happen without our efforts to be unified.
One of the things I noticed when I first came to this church is how people would work to resolve differences. If someone was offended by something that happened, that person was not ignored. Instead an effort was made to intercede and repair any damage that had been done.
Maybe this is because with only one church for English speakers in the community, we have to protect what we have. It is like being on a lifeboat in the Atlantic. With nowhere else to go, differences have to be resolved so we donât sink the only boat we have.
I encourage you to work at building unity in our community of faith. Get to know people you do not know well. Invite someone to dinner after church. Build relationships with each other. Seek out opportunities to pray together, to study the Bible together, to share with each other the difficulties in adjusting to a foreign culture.
When someone has a problem, find out how you can help them. Pray that God will give you a servantâs heart for the church.
Tom Lukas died this past Thursday after having been part of our church community for just a year. When I think about his time with us, the first thing that comes to my mind is how he was always volunteering to help, to be a part of what we were doing. He raised money for the Village of Hope at Ain Leuh. He looked forward to the bi-monthly bus trips we took to work at the orphanage. We would all do well to follow his example and work to deepen our relationships within our community.
Put aside the denominational distinctives that separate us. Focus on the core of our faith that we have in common. God created the world and sent his Son into the world to redeem it. Christ was born a man, died on the cross for our sins, was resurrected and ascended into heaven and now we await his return, encouraged by the presence of the Holy Spirit. This is the core on which we build our church.
If someone has an infant and chooses to have the infant baptized, donât be offended if you come from a church where only adults are baptized by immersion. If you are not accustomed to a woman preaching, donât be disturbed but be blessed by how God speaks through her to your heart.
If you come from a high church background, choose not to be critical that we do not have a more formal liturgy. Choose instead to enjoy the benefits we have in our international, multi-denominational church. If you are used to a more free-flowing Pentecostal service, donât resist our more formal service but see how the Holy Spirit works in this kind of service as well as the services you are used to.
You are fortunate to have the opportunity to be part of this community of faith. We are a wonderful community, not only because we are wonderful but because we have been put in a situation where we can grow more completely.
I love this community. I love the people that God has put in this community. When I first came as pastor, I said I would be here for five years. That thought very quickly changed as I saw how blessed I was to be a part of this community of faith and now I say ten years which is to say I donât know where I would go to find a church community more wonderful than this one and I am here indefinitely until God leads me elsewhere.
Those of us who have been a part of RPF know that what I am saying is true. I trust that those who will join with us this year will open their eyes and hearts and experience the blessing of this community of faith as well.
