GOD'S "PLAN A"

INTRO

Good morning!

I don’t claim to be very good at making food, but, one of the things I’ve really enjoyed over the years is learning how to bake bread. There’s just something about the smell that comes when the bread is rising, and when it’s in the oven—it’s almost unbeatable. And I remember I got hooked on this when one of my middle school teachers baked bread in the classroom, and so all day you could smell it from down the hall.

But I really started to get into it when I was in high school and a man named Larry Russ showed me his personal recipe. But what’s always made me laugh is that bread is literally the simplest thing in the world to make—which is one of the reasons why it’s the only thing I’m able to bake.

Bread has been around since the very beginning of civilization. And for the most part, the recipe has not really changed: flour, water, yeast, and oil. There are some slight variations, but really, each one of those ingredient is essential. And yet, it amazes me how many times, even when I’m following the same recipe, even when I think I’ve got everything right, things just don’t turn out. And if you’ve ever tried to follow along with a cooking show, or with a TikTok hack, you know this feeling! I’m doing exactly what you’re doing, and I’m following the recipe to a T, but what I’m seeing coming out of my oven is not the same thing I’m seeing in the picture.

And you know, this is the same thing I’ve seen happen at times when it comes to the church. People look and it seems like they’ve got the right ingredients, and yet somehow things don’t seem to be coming together quite right. We hear about how the church is the bride of Christ, the people of God, like it’s this place we’re supposed to belong to one another and grow in Christ. And yet if we’re honest, at times, we take it out of the oven and we wonder if we’re missing something. Things don’t seem to be going quite right.

The reality is that we have a church problem in America. And at least part of the problem is that people have misunderstood what the church is here for, and that can include people who believe in Jesus. They think that it’s a building, an institution, or a passtime. And when things don’t turn out, people leave the building. They mistrust the institution. They get bored of the passtime.

And not only have people misunderstood the Church, but also the Church isn’t perfect. And one of the things that cuts me so deeply as a pastor is hearing from some of you the stories of the ways that you have been wounded by the Church. And so what we see is that, for one reason or another, whether it’s because of confusion or disappointment or hurt, many, many people have given up on the Church. And the stats bear this out. We’re learning now that in America, only 3 in 10 adults regularly attend Church. And that means 7 in 10 Americans have practically given up on the Church.

But in a day and age when so many have given up on the Church, it is in this generation that we need to remember: God has not given up on His church. The Church has always been a part of God’s plan, and it still is today. And it was Jesus Himself who said “I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it!” Just like we’ve been learning in this “Acts Now” series, God is not done with His mission, and that means that He is not done with the Church either. And that’s why I’m so excited to open up to Acts chapter 2 with you today, because what we find is that It’s not a complicated recipe. There are some simple essentials that go into the Church. So what we need to do is to return to the simple, and yet totally extraordinary life that is described here in these pages. In the midst of all the confusion, we need to return to the Scriptures, and to allow the Scriptures to set the vision for the Church—not the world, not our preferences, but the very Word of God.

SET UP

So go ahead and turn to Acts 2, and find verse 42. What we’re about to read is one of the clearest descriptions of the life of the Church in all the Bible. And I want us to be challenged by the vision Luke casts. Because these verses are a little bit like a puzzle box cover for what we’re trying to do in the Church. They’re like the image of what’s supposed to come out of the oven. So I don’t know what your experience is of the church, but I wanna invite us this morning to allow God’s Word to define for us again, and to paint for us again an image of what the Church ought be, and I believe, what it can be again.

So let’s read together.

Acts 2:42–47 “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 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, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

This is the Word of the Lord! You may be seated.

BODY

It’s such an incredible Text that we have this morning, and there’s so much that’s packed into these six verses. You can go ahead and count—there are sixteen things that are used to describe the life of the early Church, but we don’t have time to have a sixteen point sermon, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to look at verse 42, because Luke uses that as like a summary of the life of the Church, and we’ll reference the rest of the Text as we walk through it.

And I know a lot of us have read the Book of Acts before, but let me ask you to try to see it today with fresh eyes. If you take the story at face value, the book up until this point has been all anticipation. Jesus is preparing His disciples, comissioning them, and then ascending into heaven, and promising them that they are going to be His witnesses and receive power. And then you get to Acts 2, and you get to Pentecost, and literally tongues of fire descend, and a rushing wind fills the place where the disciples are praying, and God’s Holy Spirit--the Spirit that descended on the tabernacle in the Old Testament, the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead--comes to fill these people. All these prophecies are being fulfilled, and God starts moving in power, and then Peter stands up and preaches this sermon, and at the end he says ““Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” And we read that they were cut to the heart, because the Holy Spirit was opening their eyes to see the truth of the Gospel. And it says that “Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.” And so in Pentecost we see this high point in the history of the world, where God is coming to be among His people in a fresh way, and revival is breaking out!

And then we read our Text today, and it’s like how do you follow up Pentecost? Who wants to follow that act? I mean that’s one of the most exciting things that’s ever happened—and it leaves us wondering, what is God going to do next? And we read: “They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.” And I hate to say it, but for some of us, if we’re honest, this feels like a let down. It feels like the loss of the momentum. It feels like a side note to the exciting story. And that should cause us to pause. We need to investigate that response.

See, when the Spirit fell, the result wasn’t this constant Pentecost moment. Rather, the legacy of Pentecost was a group of people filled with God’s Spirit, and drawn together into this new thing called the Church. Like Pastor Charlie said in week one of this series, the Church is God’s Plan A; there is no Plan B. This is what God’s Spirit came to do; not just Pentecost on repeat, but the life of the Church. And in the midst of these simple ingredients, God was still at work among them. Because God uses these rhythms to shape His Church. And Luke captures this moment in the church for future generations like us to look back and to answer the question… What are the ordinary rhythms that God wants to use in the Church to impact the world? What are the rhythms that God prompts by His Spirit, that He gives us a hunger for, that God uses to form the us?

See, we all want to have an impact. But so often we put it into the box of these huge mountaintop Pentecost moments. And we get tired of the day-to-day of following Jesus, and we end up just waiting for the next big thing to happen. Yet the reality is that, just like we see in our text, and just like we heard last week, God loves to use the “ordinary” stuff of life to do extraordinary work. So let’s look at these rhythms, and see what we can learn from them.

POINT ONE

Back in our text, we read that the followers of Jesus “devoted themselves to the apostles teaching.” So the first thing that we see happening is that these brand new followers of Jesus--these 3,000 people who heard Peter’s message and were cut to the heart--could not get enough of what the Apostles had to say. This is the first key ingredient: From its earliest days, the Church has been about faithful teaching—Teaching that was faithful to the apostle’s witness, which was faithful to the person and work of Jesus Christ.

And this is something that you’ll notice in yourself if you’re new to the faith, or that you’ll notice in those that you lead to Christ and disciple: The Holy Spirit produces in us a hunger for God’s Word that drives the life of the Church. Because notice with me that it was the truth of the Gospel in Peter’s sermon that drew them together in the first place! From day one, the Church was a group not just of brothers, but of believers. It was their belief in Jesus that set them apart.

So one thing I want us to recognize from our Text this morning is that the life of the church, and the Christian life in general, is so much more than just what we believe--but it is not less. So on the one hand, if the life of our church is mere teaching, if it’s only about what we think, if it’s all about gaining information, then we’ve missed the point. Because this idea of being “devoted to the teaching” doesn’t just mean that they gathered to hear it; it also means that they determined to live it out. They allowed it to transform their lives.

But on the other hand, the minute that a church stops preaching the Good News of Jesus, and stops standing on the truth of the Gospel, it loses the message that formed it in the first place. And what we’re seeing today in America is people looking at the statistics, and watching their church buildings empty, and they believe that the solution is to compromise on the truth. They’re watering down the gospel. They’re forsaking the apostles’ teaching. And this is the same thing that can happen in our hearts when things start to get awkward at home, at the store, or in the work place. We shy away from the Gospel to make people more comfortable.

Jesus said that we were supposed to be salt and light in the world, but what makes us a beacon of hope and a preservative influence is not our ministry programming, or our social influence, or how comfortable we make people feel; What makes us salt and light is the truth that, as Peter says, “God has made Jesus, whom we crucify by our sin, both Lord and Messiah.”

The Church didn’t gather to hear lectures because of pure intellectual delight. They gathered because they were cut to the heart and their eyes were opened to Gospel. And when the Gospel is rightly preached, and Jesus is lifted up, He draws people to Himself. So it’s not only our hunger for the Word, but also our love for Christ that forms the life of the Church.

And when Christ is lifted up, and when He draws people to Himself, notice with me that He also draws people together. And that’s exactly what we see happening next.

POINT TWO

Going back to our text, we also read that the Church “devoted themselves to… fellowship.” And in a general sense, this fellowship is talking about the way that they gathered together, both in the temple for worship and prayer and teaching, but also in homes like we read later in our text. So the idea of fellowship includes gathering, it goes way beyond just gathering.

In the Greek, the word here is one you might recognize: It’s the word koinonia, which means a deep, intimate sharing of life in all aspects. You’re not just sharing a location with somebody; you’re sharing your life with them, and you’re sharing yourself with them. So they weren’t merely getting together; they were being drawn by God into a deep fellowship.

And if you think back to Pentecost, these were not people who just had a whole lot in common anyway. Remember how it says the disciples spoke in tongues and everyone heard it in their own language? Well that means that the people who came to know Christ were from different places, different cultures, liked different foods, observed different customs, and spoke different languages. And yet, their commitment to Christ was beginning to change their whole identity, so that the fact that they had Christ in common became the most important thing. And that gave them this hunger not just to share space with one another, to share life with one another as well.

This is why it talks about how they had everything in common. Because their fellowship wasn’t just an attitude or a feeling, but something that they lived out. So what we see is that they were getting together often, deeply unified by Christ across boundaries that usually divide, forming deep friendships, doing life together, and practically serving one another in love. This is the picture of the fellowship in Acts 2!

Does that describe your experience of the Church?

Because a part of this is how you’re choosing to engage. Are you engaging in the fellowship in these kinds of ways—getting together, deeply unified, forming friendships, life together, and serving one another in love. Is that how you’re choosing to engage with the fellowship? Or does your fellowship with the Church tend to start and end on a Sunday morning?

See, the life of the Church and what was happening wasn’t something that they could compartmentalize and keep at the temple at a safe distance. The majority of the time they spent together was not in rows or in crowds WHERE THEY COULD HIDE, but in homes around a table WHERE THEY COULD GET CLOSE TO ONE ANOTHER.

The Church has always made a habit of corporate assembly; but what I want you to remember from this point is that the Church only gets real when the Church gets small.

And this to me is the beauty of LifeGroups. It’s simple, and yet when God is moving in our homes, we see exactly the kinds of things happen that we’re reading about. This is what just blew me away last summer. All of the sudden during the Excursion we did, people started to show up. And I can’t explain what happened next other than to say God started to draw us together. I mean, it was exactly the things we read about in this passage. People were hungry to learn about Christ. People were hungry to get together. And as God drew us together, people started just bringing food, and hanging out in one anothers’ homes, and giving gifts to one another, and serving one another, and meeting peoples financial needs. It just blew me away to hear the stories of what God was doing.

And for the first time in awhile, as I was seeing this happen around a fire in my backyard every Tuesday night, I felt like I was living in a story out of the book of Acts. Not because we were seeing miracles, but because I was seeing a group of people gathering, loving one another, and sharing everything in common as they pursue Christ. And in every season of my life, when I’ve seen the most growth, it’s always been tied to the groups of people God has brought alongside me to share the journey.

So let me challenge us: if our fellowship stays out of our home, and away from our tables, then we’re missing out on the kind of fellowship that God desires for us. Because discipleship and deep friendship just doesn’t happen in a crowd. We need to find a way to let the Church get small for us, because this is one of those rhythms that God wants to use to shape His Church.

POINT THREE

Back in our text, the next thing we read is that “They devoted themselves… to the breaking of bread.”

Now, at first glance this looks like just another reference to the meals that we were talking about. But the language that Luke uses here is not just a reference to an ordinary meal, but to the breaking of bread. So not only would they get together and eat, but when they did, they would celebrate communion together. And this is why the NLT adds this phrase in it’s translation, “and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper)!” So this wasn’t an either-or thing for the early Church. Because like Paul talks about later in 1 Corinthians 11:26, “whenever” they would break bread--so during all of these meals that they were eating together--they would remember Jesus’ words at the Last Supper: “This is my body, broken for you,” and they would “proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”

It’s incredible to me to remember that one of the last things Jesus did with His time on earth is to entrust His disciples with an invitation to His table.

In the Church, we’re invited to the table not just with one another, but with Christ Himself. And when Paul talks about the Lord’s Supper in His letters, He calls this meal “a participation in Christ” which is that word we just talked about: koinonia. So not only is the Church about koinonia with one another, but it’s also koinonia with God. And at times we can get so caught up in what’s going on, and in our fellowship with one another that we forget that our first call is not to one another, but to this relationship that God wants to have with us through Christ.

Reflecting on this idea reminded me of the story of Mary and Martha from Luke chapter 10. In the Church, there is so much ministry to be done, that we can end up spending all of our time running around like Martha. And yet we need to remember that before Jesus invites us to serve Him, He invites us to be with Him. To sit at His feet. To enjoy His presence. And as Mary is sitting at His feet, Jesus says to Martha, “You are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.” And that necessary thing is to be with Jesus. Because from the earliest days, the life of the Church was fueled by a hunger for God’s presence. In the midst of all the other important things to do, remembering Christ and enjoying His presence is the one thing we can’t live without. And that’s a hunger that also drove them to this last rhythm that we read about:

POINT FOUR

“They devoted themselves... to prayer.” We don’t know exactly what they prayed for or about, but we know that praying together was absolutely a hallmark of the early Church.

And on the one hand, prayer is certainly one of the ways that we enjoy our relationship with God. But what I want to focus on here is that the kinds of prayer that we read about in the book of Acts were more than simply spending time with God. When it’s mentioned in Acts, it always seems to anticipate the move of God. It’s how they responded to seasons of waiting; it’s what they did when they were confused; it’s where they turned when they were in trouble; it’s what they relied on to know what was next. At every significant turning point, we find the church praying. But not only were they seeking God’s presence; in their prayers, they were also seeking His mission. They wanted to see His Kingdom advance.

See, the prayers of the early church were missional prayers, because they were hungry to see God move. And this is something that I want so badly for our church. That we would be hungry not only for God’s presence, but to see God impact our communities, and bring revival to our cities. And that’s why our monthly impact for May is going to center around prayer.

Pastor Charlie mentioned this briefly when we kicked off the series, but as a pastoral team we want to give you all some really practical ways to live out what we’re learning in the Book of Acts. So every month this summer, we’re going to challenge you to put into practice what you’ve heard, and what we’re seeing in the Text. And because we want to see God move, the first thing we need to do is pray. We’ve seen it already in Acts: The Church is a Church of prayer because the Church is a Church of Mission.

So on your way out this morning, the ushers are going to hand you your first impact card. It looks like this, and it’s designed for you to write the name of someone in your life that doesn’t know Jesus, and then to stick this in your car, or on your fridge, or on your mirror. And then every day for the next week, there are unique prayer prompts that will take you right to the Scriptures and lead you to pray missional prayers for the people you love. I’m excited for us to take this up together, and I’m excited to hear the stories of what God is going to do throughout our Church as we pray for Him to move.

CONCLUSION

And that brings me to the last thing I want to share with you from this Text. That in the midst of all these things the Church was doing, in the end, Luke is careful to point out that it’s not the Church that causes the growth. The Church exists to accomplish God’s mission, but it’s not the Church that changes the world. Rather, Luke writes that “The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” At the end of the day, it doesn’t come down to what we do; it comes down to what God is doing in us.

AND YET... that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a role to play. Just like I was talking about with baking bread at the beginning, each one of these ingredients is essential to what God is doing. We can’t afford to leave any of these things out. And we get it wrong when we think we can cut out the teaching. We get it wrong when we think we can do it alone, without the gathering and the fellowship. We get it wrong when we’re not remembering Christ’s death and celebrating His presence with us. And we get it wrong when we are slow to come to prayer.

So let me just pause and ask you: Where is your heart when it comes to the Church? Do you have a hunger for these things? Are you hungry for God’s Word? Are you hungry for shared life with other believers? Are you hungry for God’s presence? Are you hungry for God to move? And is that hunger actually impacting your life?

The Church is a living relationship with the God of the Universe, and just like any relationship, it requires work and dedication and devotion. There are days when I serve my wife because I love her; and there are days when I serve my wife because I’m her husband; but over time those both grow the relationship.

And yet, when the Spirit is moving in us, and when Christ is at the center of our lives, we shouldn’t find ourselves having to constantly work up the appetite for these things.Back to our passage, the early church wasn’t gathering together out of obligation. It’s not that they were dragging themselves to the assembly; rather, the sense is that you could not keep them from these things because the Spirit was birthing in them a desire for them. Even when they were being persecuted, and mocked, and tortured, and killed, you couldn’t keep them from teaching. You couldn’t keep them from gathering. You couldn’t keep them from prayer. Why? Because this was not just a check list to them; it was an organic move of the Holy Spirit that had transformed them from the inside out.

See, there’s a temptation in us to treat this all like a check list, that if we just do the right stuff, we’ll see God move, and the Church will grow, and the mission will advance. And don’t get me wrong, there is life to be found in these things! And yet, the life of the Church is so much greater than the sum of its parts.

Just like with the bread, you can put flour and water and oil and yeast into a bowl, and you can have all the right ingredients, and yet at the end of the day all you have is dough. There is no way to go from the raw ingredients to the bread that will nourish you without a transformative agent. No amount of mixing and kneading with get you there. You can try all you want, but you can’t go from flour to bread without fire. And you can’t go from these ordinary rhythms to the move of God without the Holy Spirit. Because the Church is not a program that we’re building, it is a people that we are becoming as we cooperate with the Holy Spirit who is at work within us.

And the Church accomplishes God’s mission only when it learns to cooperate with God’s Spirit.

And if the church in the West is going to rise to the occasion of this generation, it will not be only because we guarded the doctrine. It will not be only because we didn’t forsake the assembling of ourselves together. It will not be only because we break bread and pray. It will be because in the midst of all of these things, God sends His Spirit into a valley of dry bones to cause them to live again.

So my prayer, and my hope, for our church, and for the next generation, and for my children, is that God will come and build His Church. That He will use these simple rhythms to change us, and that He will draw people to Himself. Because at the end of the day, God doesn’t need all of us to go out and perform miracles. Rather, the road to life is paved by the feet of regular men and women who learned to live out this sacred ordinary task of the Church—

who were called by Jesus, changed by His Spirit, drawn by His grace, formed by His teaching, filled with His presence,

and who saw the world changed one neighborhood at a time. And the question I want to leave you with today is this: Will you join them?

Our world is desperate not for better programming, or for nicer people. Our world is desperate for the Church of Jesus Christ, which is filled with His Spirit, to carry His presence to a world in need.

So let me pray that over us this morning.