The Church

Intro to series

Before we get to the message, let me introduce the series Foundations. At the end of last year I had some conversations with the elder and with the staff about what we are seeing at the church and how can we best respond. And there were a couple of ideas as we discerned what God was doing that we could respond to.

We want to be a church where what we say and what we do match.

That we walk our talk, as it were.

That is the call of the sermon on the mount, to be holy as God is holy. To act on the things that we say.

To combine our actions with our language.

But this is difficult work. Because it takes effort and grace to do this. It takes grace on God’s part to live it out. It takes effort on our part to be bold enough to act on it.

If we do this the work is slow. If we do this the work is focused. But we want to be the kind of people that talk about the goodness of God in the world and the grace that He offers through the true proclamation of the Gospel and then, likewise, acting as if all that were true.

That is the kind of people we want to be. So this year we are going to be talking a lot about how it is we view the world as Christians and also, how it is we are called to act within it.

We will take a couple of months to talk about Foundations: Tools for Truth. And we will take a few months to talk about Discernment: Tools for wisdom. We will look at the book of Hebrews as our vision of Christ as ultimate.

We want to align our works and our words. It is easy to do either of those separately. Hard to do them together. But that is the call as the Christian.

Intro to Message

Every good character or situation has an origin story. And we love nothing more than a good origin story. And it is proved by just how many origin story movies that have come out in the last 10 years

The batman

All the Marvel movies

Dr Strange

Iron Man

Thor

Black Widow

Captain marvel

the hulk

on and on

Wonder Woman

Cruella

The Joker

Xmen

Man of Steel

Spider man x 100

And you may have your favorite origin story movie but the reality is we love them. We like seeing where people came from, how they started. And really, what motivates their actions.

We like to answer the question, “why are they doing what they are doing?”

The church, as you would think, has an origin story. Jesus initially told Peter that he would build his church through him and Peter preached the first sermon after the initiating event. But the church was “baptized” so to speak, spiritually and visibly at Pentecost. It is the origin story of the church.

We understand who we are as a gathered community because of what God did then.

So we are going to look at Acts 2 to discover what happened and then ask what are we called to understand about the church.

The church is called to live a life that only God can produce in us.

We are going to see that that is exemplified in the church

Acts two is a dynamic picture of the history of the church. It comes right after Jesus ascends into Heaven and makes the explosive statement

Acts 1:8 ESV

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

This is the promise of Christ Himself.

That we would receive through the spirit

To be his witnesses. And to be a to say that God is who he says he and he did what he said he would do. And that both of those are found in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ is ascended to heaven and the church gets on with it.

The next time we see them we see them in a room. And they are in a room on a massive Jewish celebration. And this fledgling little church is in a room upstairs praying.

And all the sudden we get an explosive event.

Jesus Makes good on His Word

Acts 2:1–4 ESV

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

To understand what’s happening we have to look at what God is doing before we understand what we are called to do with it.

There are two primary actions. There is a sound like a mighty wind. And there were tongues of fire that appeared to each of them.

We have to look at the significance of those two things, wind and fire. Why wind and fire. Why is this the beginning of the church? What did God want us to understand?

All throughout God’s interaction with His people, He has shown Himself to them in specific ways. Two of the primary ones are wind and fire.

The word for Spirit in both the Ot/nt both mean breath or wind. So when we see wind blowing in the Scriptures there is a connection with the movement of God.

And fire in the OT can be understood as a demonstration of God’s presence. When fire shows up, it represents that God is present. I want to show you three areas where God does this. It will help us understand what He is doing in Acts.

Fire God’s presence to Moses

Exodus 3:1–2 ESV

Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

God shows up as fire to Moses.

And then later in the book of Exodus we see God deliberately leading them in pillar of cloud and pillar of fire.

Exodus 13:21–22 ESV

And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.

And then importantly, God instructs the Israelites to build the tabernacle. This would be the first structure that God would use to meet with His people. When the structure was finished God’s glory in the form of fire fell

Exodus 40:36–38 ESV

Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.

Fire is God’s presence with His people

As it relates to the place where God is called to be worshiped.

The tabernacle, the temple.

When we see fire in these ways, we can conclude that God is meeting with His people. He is closing the distance between people and Himself, what Simone Weil says,

“God crosses through the thickness of the world to come to us.”

When we see fire we see God with His people.

Let’s go back to our passage this morning.

A reminder:

Acts 2:3 ESV

And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.

Fire in Pentecost is the revelation that God’s presence is with His people.

Up until point, a person would travel a specific location to worship God in his presence. Up until point, it took walls and mortar and a specific address to. Now God is not distinctly located at one place, but is located with the people who bear his name

This is the message that Christ offers His church. I am with you.

The church does not represent anyone else or anything else. To do otherwise is to cease to be the church. This is why origin stories are helpful to revisit. Because they remind us why something is. They remind us how we got to the place that we are, and why.

As a church, as Christians, we are called to go together, flames on heads, filled with the Spirit to represent Christ in the world and invite people into that relationship of reconciliation with Him.

God is Present When we are

Notice where the flame lands. It wasn’t just one fire, it was spread out to the group. That those who have entrusted themselves to Christ are now carriers of the Spirit of God. But this image doesn’t mean that you individually are the church or that I individually are the church.God is in us individually, yes. But that does not mean that we have all rights to God.

We are not at our best alone. We are at our best together. When we serve together and pray together and take communion together and worship together, we meet with God. God is in our midst when we gather. The only place that God said He would meet with His people is in the gathered church. We can be assured that when we come together God gathers with us. His presence is known, His word is proclaimed, His glory is shown.

We cannot oversell this origin story because throughout history and throughout the entire world, this is where God has promised He would meet with His people.

Are you seeking this morning? God is present

Are you hoping for something more? God is present.

And as God is present in our gathered company, we are motivated to go out and serve. TO invite people into this group. Not just to attend service but to experience the reconciled God. To experience life together. To understand we are always on our tip toes reaching for more and as we do that God comes to meet us

Acts 2:5–13 ESV

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”

This is a necessary part of the pentecost. God could have initiated the church anywhere/anytime. But He chose it at this point in this festival. Where there were people from all over the region. The church was in that moment called out to the people they were around.

If this is the origin story then this is our call as well.

The church is called to live a life that only God can produce and we are called to invite others into it.

It is peculiar. There is nothing else like it. There are other institutions that have claims on spiritual worlds and ideas, but none that have this origin story.

What the church founded and found in Jesus is can’t be repeated or mimicked elsewhere. There is nothing else like it.

That’s why we make a big deal about gathering. When we gather Christ is present. Nothing else can do that.

Your job, your hobbies, your schedule. Nothing else can make that claim.

Only the church.

And when the church gathers God is present.

We go to the people around us and invite them to be a part of it. Because it is a picture of what life is really like. IT is the answer to the big questions.

So it is not only an invitation for you to be a part but it is a call that you are needed for those near and around you. You bring something to the table. Notice the early church. It’s filled with people with flames on top of their heads, gathered in Christ. He is the center. No person, no action. If you bear Christ this morning, if you have trusted Him, you are a necessary part of this church.

You can trust that when we gather, the God of the Universe has promised to gather with us. That is worth showing up for.

Our role as a witness is to as Rowan Williams states Is to “take responsibility for Gods believability.”

That takes trusting and surrendering to Christ. Giving ourselves over to Him. We trust Christ enters when we gather. We respond trusting His promises in gathering.