Acts 2 - The Church is a gift
Notes
Transcript
Christmas has come and gone, and I’m still not a good gift giver.
This year was a fun year for me, though.
Silas’s first Christmas where it actually mattered.
Parents, you know what I’m talking about.
The first two Christmases are like, “eh.” But that third one, the training wheels are off.
He left milk and cookies and so Santa *wink* brought him some homemade cookies.
“For me?!”
He treasured these cookies as a gift.
What we want to see today is:
Big Idea: The Church is a gift.
Big Idea: The Church is a gift.
Historical
About 120 disciples are in the upper Room during Pentecost
This was a huge festival where people from all over came to participate.
A mighty rushing wind filled the room and tongues of fire rested on each of them.
The Holy Spirit descended on the disciples and they began speaking in the languages of the people outside, proclaiming the glories of God in known languages.
Peter preaches at Pentecost
He points the Jews to the Old Testament and explains to them that the Jesus who was crucified was the Jesus the Scriptures had prophesied of.
He pointed them to Joel 2, Psalm 16, and Psalm 110, then he said, “These Scriptures talk about Jesus. And YOU KILLED HIM.”
Acts 2:23–24 “23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”
They have just heard the good news of the gospel for the first time.
The divine message, bringing divine power!
Peter just preached this beautiful, exegetical sermon and applied it to them.
Let’s see their response.
Stand to read
37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 And Peter said to 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. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” 40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
Leader: This is God’s Word
Everybody: Thanks be to God.
The Holy Spirit is all over this scene.
It wasn’t Peter’s words or the miracles they saw.
The Holy Spirit used Peter’s sermon as an arrow to pierce them to their heart and bring them alive in Christ.
When sinner’s eyes are opened to Jesus, they cannot but be pricked to the heart for sin.
The Holy Spirit revealed their wickedness and they were repulsed.
They immediately want to know what they could do.
Up to that point, they relied on the sacrificial system to atone for their sins.
Peter just exhorted them to repent of their sins and trust in the crucified Jesus for forgiveness!
In doing so, they would receive the life of Christ, remission of their sins, and partake in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
A lot is happening here.
We see the beauty of the simplicity of the gospel.
Gospel presentation
What is required of us to become Christians?
Recognize that we have sinned against God
Believe that Jesus had to die in order for us to be forgiven.
God poured out His hate toward our sin on Jesus!
Believe that God raised Jesus from the dead
In Jesus, we have eternal life because He lives.
This is the beauty of the gospel!
The Lord no longer desires our sacrifices, but pours out His mercy onto us because of the finished work of Jesus Christ!
If you’re not a Christian, I want you to become a Christian.
I want you to be in heaven with me and I want you to have the full life that is in Jesus!
Believe that Jesus is the Son of God who died for you and then was raised so that you can live!
More than the privileges of going to heaven, you get to be the Church.
I know the term “church” brings some whence.
Some people have said, “I’ll take Jesus, but I don’t want the church.”
This comes from an experience of pain from other people.
The problem is that you can’t have Jesus without His Church.
Christians are people who Jesus died for.
Jesus died for the Church.
He gave Himself up for a particular people, who would be forgiven by His blood—This is the church.
This means that if you are a Christian, you are the Church.
We are the Church.
We are the Church.
We are the people for whom Jesus died!
The Church gets the blessing of knowing; loving; being with; experiencing the presence of Jesus!
The rest of the world does not have this treasure.
This is the most beautiful reality in the universe.
A group of people, who are so incredibly flawed yet so incredibly loved by Jesus.
Jesus died for you, but not just for you—for His people.
He died to reconcile to God a Kingdom of people and fix the brokenness of this world.
We get to exist in gospel-community with one another where we experience the gospel regularly.
When one of us sins, the other forgives.
When the other is down, we build one another up.
This is a different kind of community than we’ve ever seen.
The Spirit of God was creating a community unlike any other.
We, the church, are suppose to look like the Kingdom of God on earth.
There were a few things that the church was marked by that we want to lean into.
42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
The Church devoted themselves to sound doctrine and to the fellowship.
They listened intently as the apostles explained what Jesus had taught them.
“Devoted” is an important word.
We’re well into high school basketball season.
My wife is a major basketball fan and she has some “isms.”
“Free throws win basketball games.”
Think about the skill and ability it takes to step up to the free-throw line after breathing heavily, hurting from a foul, getting after it.
Then when all the pressure is on, making that free throw.
This doesn’t come from luck or chance.
This comes from devotion to the sport.
Shooting hundreds of free throws.
Countless hours in practice and play.
Here, we see a similar devotion.
They devoted themselves to spiritual growth, which started with the apostles teaching.
Growing in their understanding of the Old Testament and how it related to Jesus
Growing in their understanding of what Jesus taught the apostles.
By the Holy Spirit’s power, these 3,000 new Christians were hungry for God’s Word.
We need the same type of hunger for God’s Word today.
Churches rise and fall based on their commitment and devotion to God’s Word.
One of our Core Values is that:
We Stand on the Word
We Stand on the Word
Where the Spirit of God lives, a love for God’s Word reigns.
Those early believers studied the Scriptures and God spoke to them through it.
We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that we can hear from God without being immersed into the Word.
Colossians 3:16 “16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
Christians who followed Jesus knew nothing of “I don’t like to read”/ “I can’t understand the Bible.
The backbone of a healthy Christian life is through teaching and understanding God’s Word.
Basketball practice isn’t always cheerful and the athlete doesn’t always feel up to it.
But when it’s game time, you can see who put the work in.
If we want to be the Church and engage and enjoy the gift of the church, we must stand on God’s Word.
Let’s devote ourselves to studying and understanding the Bible together.
You don’t have to do this alone.
The early church certainly didn’t.
44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.
This means that the Christ followers shared a common way of life.
They were spiritually united as believer and worked toward practical love and support for one another.
This is sort of the opposite of what the average church looks like in America.
Let this not be so of us!
The early church set us an example.
We sustain through genuine community
We sustain through genuine community
Here’s what I like about having to set up and tear down/not having our own facilities—We have to rely on one another.
We don’t invite people to come to events we’re putting on
When we launch small groups, they’ll meet in homes.
We make friends with our co-workers, baristas, barbers, cashiers.
We go to a populated park to have a Party in the park.
We want to be in the world and not of the world.
We don’t feel the need to spend millions of dollars on facilities to have them come to us, we go to where the people are.
We’re not trying to save people to church—There a bunch of people in church that aren’t saved. *Ouch*
What we want to do is model what we’re seeing in Acts 2.
We want to love one another so deeply that when the world watches they’re intrigued by it.
How we handle our money, our homes, our jobs, our commitment to one another.
It’s countercultural to live in biblical community where forgiveness, charity, generosity, and growth happen together.
In our day, individualism and dog-eat-dog is prevalant.
That’s not what’s happening here.
This is walking toward/with Jesus together in every way and fulfilling one another’s needs.
This type of love and unity leads to charity.
“Isn’t this a communist verse?!” (v. 45)
Absolutely not. Communist manifestos are trying to copy the Kingdom of God by leaving God out.
The Bible doesn’t teach communism, but it does teach radical generosity.
These Christians just said, “We don’t need stuff. We need to love our brothers and sisters, and we’re happy to do it.”
We are able to meet one another needs as they present themselves.
This is Kingdom life, and it’s so unworldly and so foreign to us.
Jesus said that the world would know we are His disciples by the way we love one another.
People outside the church thinks that church people are unloving, judgey, greedy, money-hungry people.
That’s not what we find in this text.
This isn’t what the church is about.
That’s not what we’re about!
Love which leads to unity, which leads to charity, which leads to God’s glory alone.
46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
They were daily meeting with one another, praying with and for one another, going to church together, taking the Lord’s Supper (we’ll do next week), they were eating together in their homes.
They were all filled with gladness and generosity in their hearts, which led to deeper worship of God and favor with people.
Praising God and having favor with people.
We exist to put Jesus first in our lives for our neighbors.
This is what the Christian life looks like.
I want to experience the presence, the power, the joy, the love of Jesus in my life
I want this for my neighbors.
I want to enjoy the Lord out loud because I want people to be drawn in.
The disciples were in awe of the Lord and grew in favor with the people. How did that go for them?
The Lord added to their number day by day.
Notice “day by day” occurs twice (vv. 46 and 47)
The disciples remained devoted to following Jesus (v. 46)
On days I don’t feel like reading my Bible, praying, going to small group or church
I want to remain devoted because I want God to meet me there.
Day by day they were running after Jesus as hard as they could.
The Lord continued to add those who were being saved (v. 47)
They were faithful with what they were given, and God was faithful to continue to save people.
How could you not want this?
The sweetness and life that flows from this?
The blessings of God and growth that come from this type of life.
This teaches us that:
We spread through worship
We spread through worship
If we want to see God use this fellowship to change our area, we spread through worship.
Each Christian has a ministry, and that ministry can only come from an overflow of joy in Jesus.
What we experience with Jesus overflows into our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces.
And you’ll grow in worship of the Lord and favor with people.
The Church is a profound gift from the Lord.
I absolutely adored when Silas enjoyed his gifts we bought him for Christmas.
Watching him play on the roller coaster, eating homemade cookies was such a delight to my eyes.
Imagine the joy that Jesus gets when He sees us participate in the beautiful gift He’s given us.
We have this collective group of people who have a ferocious love for Jesus and a ferocious love for one another.
Let’s see and savor the beautiful of the Church, Jesus’s bride, who He gave Himself up for that you and I may live.