Vision 2: Value #1—Authentic Family

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Acts 2:42-47

N:

Welcome

Bye, kids!

Good morning again, and thanks for being here today, whether you’re in the room of online, to worship the Lord Jesus together, and to spend time in fellowship and in the study of His Word with the family of Eastern Hills.

If you’re a guest in the room today, I would like to encourage you to fill out the communication card that you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. We would just like to be able to know that you were here this morning, be able to pray for you, and to send you a note thanking you for your visit. When you’ve filled that out, you can get it back to us by dropping it in the offering boxes that are by the doors as you leave later on, or better yet, if you could bring the card down to me here at the front once service has ended, I’d like to meet you personally and give you a small gift to thank you for your visit today. If you’re online and visiting with us today, you can fill out a short communication card on our website: ehbc.org, under the “I’m New” tab.

I wanted to take a moment to thank our AV Ministry. I think my first place volunteering in the church was up in the sound booth with the Audio-Visual ministry. Good times.

Announcements

Week of Prayer for North American Missions: March 8-15 (Flyers on foyer table by the office March 1.)

Mon., March 9, 7:00-8:30 PM—Dessert Prayer Fellowships in homes. To be a host, contact Donna Treece

Wed., March 11, 6:30 A.M.-7:30 P.M.—Day of Prayer in Church Prayer Room—30-min. time slots. Sign-Up Sheet for specific times is on the Get Connected table in the foyer. Information and prayer requests will be provided for your prayer time.

Fri., March 13, 10:30 A.M.-1:00 P.M.—Pot Luck Brunch & Prayer Time at Keith & Donna Treece’s house.

Annie Armstrong Offering Collected in March & April. Goal is $23,500 this year, starting next Sunday.

Opening

I want to say thanks to Pastor Joe for filling the pulpit last week while I was leading the musical praise and worship with the student ministry at Lone Tree last weekend. We had a great time of study, worship, fellowship, and fun together. Joe started our Vision series out right with a message thinking through our Mission statement: People helping people live out the unexpected love of Jesus every day, using John 13 as His framework. This series will be a whole-church focus on our Mission, Core Values, and Outcome statements from our vision-framing journey. The goal is to get everyone on the same page as we begin to start some of the small shifts that will need to take place if we are going to go in the direction we believe God has for this church family. Joe’s application of mutual ministry, daily discipleship, and unexpected love as the key distinctions in our Mission Statement is a helpful framework for thinking about why we do what we do.

If Joe’s message was “The Why,” then today, I will start talking about “The Who.” Not the band from the 60’s and 70’s… This morning we will start considering what the Bible has to say about who we are as the church family of Eastern Hills, given how God has put this group of people together in this place in this time. Our focal passage today is Acts 2, verses 42-47. So as you are able to, please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word, and turn in your Bibles or your Bible apps to Acts 2:

Acts 2:42–47 CSB

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. 44 Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. 45 They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

PRAYER (Iran situation)

So as I said in my introduction, today we begin thinking through WHO we are and want to be as Eastern Hills. The vision framing work that addresses this is called our Core Values. These four values and the short explanations that go with them are both informational—they describe who we are and what is important to us right now as Eastern Hills—and they are also aspirational—they describe who God is forming us to be and who we actually want to be as Eastern Hills as we mature and grow as a Christ-centered community of faith.

We’ve reviewed these a few times at the close of service in the last year, so these shouldn’t be new for most of us:

AUTHENTIC FAMILY We have fun and encourage each other through life’s ups and downs.

REAL TRUTH We dig into Scripture for clarity in a confusing world.

TRANSFORMATIONAL GROWTH We thrive as we learn to become more like Jesus together.

PRACTICAL IMPACT We seek to meet the needs of our neighbors wherever we find them.

These values also form a distinctive path: We are an authentic family at Eastern Hills, seeking real truth in the context of our family gatherings, so that we might experience God’s transformational growth in our lives, which we will then seek to live out in the form of having a practical impact in the lives of our neighbors (whoever we are with or near at the moment who is in need of our help or care, including each other), showing them the unexpected love of Jesus every day (if we’re going to connect it to our Mission Statement).

Over the next four weeks we will look at each of our four Core Values in turn, starting today with Authentic Family. Throughout the Bible, we see Christians referred to in family terms. We are called “brothers and sisters,” over and over again. We are referred to as being adopted as God’s children in Ephesians 1:4 and Galatians 4:5, and Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 6:18:

2 Corinthians 6:18 CSB

18 And I will be a Father to you, and you will be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.

Our identity as family is in one sense positional. It’s been declared to be fact by God because we are each in Christ. However, our first core value acknowledges the importance of and desire for our family bond being practical as well.

Many of you, probably most of you, know my personal Eastern Hills story. However, I have to repeat it this morning because I can’t think of the idea of the family of God apart from my own experience with Eastern Hills. Eastern Hills is truly like my family’s home. Melanie and I both heard the Gospel through the ministry of the members of Eastern Hills. I surrendered my life to Christ in the Prayer Room off the foyer. We both were baptized in the baptistery behind me. This the only church we’ve ever been members of. We were married on this platform. We were discipled through Sunday School and other small groups by this body of believers. I was licensed and ordained to the Gospel ministry by this congregation, and I have served my entire ministry “career” (if you can call it that) here. We dedicated both of our daughters to the Lord in this room. They were both also baptized in that baptistery back there. They both went to our Academy from preschool through eighth grade. They know this building like the backs of their hands. The whole church family has watched those two girls grow up basically on this very stage, the stage on which I got to perform Maggie and Nathan’s wedding. Nearly all of my best friends either are or have been members of this church family. And now, several members of my family of origin are active members and attenders of this church. Mel and I cannot even picture our life without Eastern Hills in the frame. God has truly used this church family in incredible ways just in our life. We’ve been provided for, prayed for, encouraged, challenged, and gifted by this fellowship in more ways than I could even begin to recount. This family has walked with us in our highest highs and our lowest lows.

So when I use the phrase “authentic family” to describe Eastern Hills, I mean it. It isn’t just something that I say. And there are lots of people in this room who see and feel the same way. This is what we want Eastern Hills to feel like for everyone—that this is family. Now, do we do this perfectly? Of course not. That’s where the aspirational part comes in. We want, more and more, for this group of believers to be an authentic family, where we are devoted, generous, joyful, and sincere. These are the four characteristics that we see pictured by the first church in our focal passage in the book of Acts this morning. These are things that we should emulate as a body if we are going to be the kind of authentic family that we long to be.

1: Devoted

Twice in our focal passage this morning, we see that the church was “devoted.” In fact their devotion was a decision, a choice, an act of the will: they “devoted themselves.” And in verses 42 and the first part of 46, we see basically four things that they devoted themselves to:

Acts 2:42 CSB

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.

Bill: Remember it’s 46a!

Acts 2:46 CSB

46a Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house.

The first item in the summary list of what the first church family devoted themselves to is the teaching of the apostles. Because of Peter’s sermon earlier in chapter 2, the belief is that the teaching of the early church would have been primarily Christological—how Christ had fulfilled Old Testament prophecy about Messiah—recollections and repetition of Jesus’s teachings, and the testimony of the apostles’ personal experiences with the Lord, including both His crucifixion and resurrection, and a call to believe.

They also were devoted to the “fellowship,” the Greek word koinonia. There was a sense of partnership, relational solidarity, even in a sense responsibility for one another in our ancestral church family. You could say that in the family sense, they belonged to each other because they each belonged to the Lord. They were with each other daily, according to verse 46. Now, this doesn’t mean that the whole church spent all day every day together. It means that they met together in both a large group at the temple (perhaps during the morning and evening prayers of their Jewish heritage?), and in smaller gatherings at various other times in each others’ homes.

“The breaking of bread” certainly included the Lord’s Supper, but it was very likely much broader than that as well, including any kind of table fellowship between the believers. Meals in their culture were intimate times where sharing together meant you identified with each other. This fits very well in the idea of koinonia. Again, verse 46 tells us that they did this primarily in their smaller house gatherings. The size of this first church (3000+ and growing every day) would have made partaking of meals together in the temple courts impractical.

And finally, the first church was devoted to prayer. This perhaps included the daily temple prayers I just mentioned, but would have included personal prayers in their smaller gatherings as well.

In his commentary on this passage, Grant Osborne wrote of verse 42:

“This verse tells us what constituted the most important aspects of the life and worship of the early church and provides an essential model for us to follow.”

— Grant R. Osborne; Acts: Verse by Verse

Now, I’m not saying that our context today is the same as theirs. However, the principles that we see in the actions of the first church bear considering.

Our church practice should include the teaching of the apostolic message of the Word of God and the declaration of the Gospel. While we don’t have apostles in this sense today, we still have the apostolic witness found in the Holy Scriptures. So when we preach the Word accurately, we are repeating the apostles’ teaching.

It should include our spending time spending time with one another in both large groups, such as Family Worship, and smaller groups, such as our Sunday morning Bible Study groups. If you’re not in a smaller group, please let us know so we can connect you to one.

It should include the breaking of bread, both in the practice of the Lord’s Supper which we will take here in a bit, and in sharing meals with one another both inside and outside of the church building. Life happens across and around the table.

And it should include prayer, both personal and corporate. As God’s people, we depend on Him for everything that we are and do, and so when we are together, prayer should be a part of what takes place.

So those are the things that our family should not only be doing, but should be devoted to doing. Remember earlier I said that the fact that the first believers “devoted themselves” to these things shows that this was an act of the will, a choice that they made.

However, this doesn’t mean that every person knew every other person, or spent time with every other person. There are around 300 people in this room this morning, and we don’t all know each other. Could you imagine 3000+ people all trying to all be in direct fellowship with each other? So that’s not what this means. It means that every person in the church was personally devoted to engaging in the family life of the church as a part of the regular rhythm of their personal lives, in both large and small ways. Someone wasn’t close to everyone. But everyone was close to at least someone in the church.

It wasn’t just the apostles. It wasn’t just the leaders. It was everyone. They were all devoted to engaging in the family life of the church. It doesn’t mean that they didn’t work jobs and care for families and manage the day-to-day of life. It means that they chose to participate in the life of others in the church in a regular, passionate, ongoing basis, because the church was their Christian family, and they saw it as such.

Think about how many ways we can connect with each other today that they didn’t have then. Sure, face-to-face is wonderful, and we need to be willing to invite others into our homes to enjoy a meal together. But we can also call, and text, and email, and Facetime, and direct message, and go out for coffee, or grab a slice of pie, or hit some golf balls, or… a zillion other ways to connect with each other: To have fun and encourage each other through life’s ups and downs.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is who we are. We are the family of God at Eastern Hills. We belong to one another. And we belong with one another on a regular basis. This is the basic framework of who we are, and who we want to be as a church family.

And in the first church, this basic devotion overflowed in several other characteristics of what the church family looked like. Everyone—both those inside and those outside the fellowship—were astounded at what the church was like, and according to verse 43, the Holy Spirit was actively affirming the truth of the Gospel through the working of miraculous signs through the apostles.

Acts 2:43 CSB

43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles.

Basically, the things that Jesus had done were being done by His followers. The Spirit was on display in the life of the church, and that anointed church life led to the next characteristic of authentic family: they were generous.

2: Generous

The next couple of verses in Acts 2 are often misunderstood and misapplied. While we can certainly say that there is an aspect of communal sharing that took place, this does not mean that the first church was communist or even socialist, because there is no indication that the holding of things in common, sale of possessions, or distribution of proceeds was mandated in any way by the apostles (in fact, the opposite is true… the apostles were just the ones who received and distributed the funds when given). Consider verses 44 and 45:

Acts 2:44–45 CSB

44 Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. 45 They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need.

Instead, as the believers were led by the Holy Spirit, they willingly gave what they had as needs arose in the church family. They didn’t all go and sell everything they had, and the goal was not some kind of equalization of wealth. Instead, the goal was the alleviation of need through generous family living under the direction of the Spirit of God.

The Scripture says that “all the believers were together.” I don’t think this means that they were all in same physical place. I think it means that they were all of the same mind and heart—none of the believers saw themselves as more important than the others. Paul would later explain this perspective this way to the churches of Galatia (Gentiles had come into the church by this point):

Galatians 3:28 CSB

28 There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Voluntary sacrificial giving for the benefit of the whole body was a part of the life of the church family. We see Barnabas as a very positive example of this in Acts 4. We see Ananias and Sapphira as a very negative example of this in Acts 5.

Church family, thank you for being so generous! You are so faithful to give to the work of this church family. You keep the lights on. You keep the lights on at my house. Your giving has been used to help church members when they have been in desperate need. Your giving makes sure our various ministries have the supplies and equipment that they need to do what they are called to do, like having Bible study materials on Sundays. Your giving means our children’s ministry can put on Vacation Bible School to share the Gospel with the community this summer. It means that our students could go to Lone Tree last weekend to hear about how they are called into the body, called out to serve others, and maybe even called up to a specific ministry vocation. Your giving means that our young adults can have a special gathering every month for fellowship and encouragement; that our women’s ministry can do things like the ladies tea a couple of weeks ago; that our men’s ministry can enjoy a good breakfast before shoveling rocks or pulling weeds; that our senior adults can gather every month for much-needed fellowship and fun. I could go on and on and on about what your generosity means for our church family’s life! None of those things happen without your faithful and generous giving!

Not only that, but many in the church family are giving above and beyond to the Endeavor campaign to finish paying off the balance we owe as a church for our electrical, HVAC, lighting, display, and roof upgrades. Can you believe that those things cost somewhere around $1.7M, and we only owe about $300K after less than three years? God has blessed this congregation with and through faithful generosity!

There are so many ways that your giving not only blesses people who are in this local church family, but goes out to bless other churches and ministries throughout the state. I just got a letter from Steve Ballew this week, where he thanked us for being one of the top 5 State Mission Offering giving churches (we take that special offering every fall), and one of the top 10 Cooperative Program giving churches in the State of New Mexico last year. We directly supported several smaller church plants through either direct giving to their ministry or through sharing our resources in things like VBS. We support families through the Academy. We support college students through ongoing giving to the Christian Challenge at UNM. We support missionaries, both by sending people and giving funds.

Eastern Hills is living out this aspect of being an authentic family, and what a blessing it is to be a part of giving to the glory of God!

What a thrill it is to be able to say all of this! Even as I was writing it, I was so excited by all that God is doing through Eastern Hills for the sake of His kingdom: my heart was beating faster, my fingers typed faster, I had a big old smile on my face… Putting it all down at one time was just a joy. This brings us to our next characteristic:

3: Joyful

I think in some ways this could be one of the characteristics that we struggle the most with. What we need to understand about the joy that the first church family had is that their joy was manifested both when they were together and when they were apart. Look at the end of verse 46 and the beginning of verse 47:

Bill: Remember it’s 46b-47a.

Acts 2:46–47 CSB

46b They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, 47a praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.

It’s funny: we read this very simply, “oh, they were joyful.” Some translations even use “glad,” but the Greek here does not picture a bunch of people sitting around grinning. The Greek word is agaLLIasis, which the Lexham Theological Wordbook explains as:

Lexham Theological Wordbook ἀγαλλίασις

ἀγαλλίασις (

These weren’t dour, serious people. These were people full of laughter, fun, and excitement! When God’s people got together, they enjoyed the fact that they were with family. It was probably often noisy, sometimes chaotic, and full of smiles and hugs and conversation. Not that there’s anything wrong with being serious (we’ll see that in a moment), but it seems to me that everyone was just filled with anticipation for what God was doing and was going to do through them. And if overflowed into praising God when they were together, and when they were apart.

Church family, in a lot of ways, this is how we are. There is a reason that the vision framing team put “we have fun” at the beginning of the explanation sentence for this core value. Eastern Hills likes to have fun! We try not to take ourselves too seriously, but to enjoy the family dynamic that we have. Most of our gatherings are peppered with conversation and laughter because we enjoy being with each other. Our church life is an adventure that God has us on on together, and we’re having a good time.

But as I said, joyful wasn’t the only characteristic we see here. There was an aspect of seriousness as well, expressed as “sincere:”

4: Sincere

I decided to split these two things up because of what this last one brings out. The verse reference is the same as the last point:

Bill: Remember it’s 46b-47a again!

Acts 2:46–47 CSB

46b They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, 47a praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.

The idea behind having “sincere hearts” is that the church family was humble and as a result, their gatherings were marked by a relational simplicity. They didn’t think of themselves more highly than they ought to, as Paul said to the Romans in chapter 12 of that letter:

Romans 12:3 CSB

3 For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one.

They weren’t there for themselves, for their own agendas. They were there for each other, and for the glory and praise of God, exalting the name of Jesus in the power of the Spirit. The love they had for one another overflowed into how they talked about both the Lord and the church, and it turned them into natural evangelists, according to verse 47:

Bill: Remember this is 47b!

Acts 2:47 CSB

47b Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

The LORD was adding, not them. But the church family couldn’t help but be attractive to those around them because of what God had already done in them, and how they loved one another. Joe looked at John 13:35 last week, but it bears being used as a reminder today:

John 13:35 CSB

35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

But what was it the Lord had done? He had saved them, and He was using them to proclaim the Gospel as He saved others: that God the Son, Jesus, had come as a man and died in our place, so that we could be forgiven of our sins, taking our punishment on Himself. And He beat death and rose from the grave declaring that death had no mastery over Him. Those who believe the Gospel—those who trust in what Jesus has done to save them, who surrender to Him as Lord—are saved… we are set free from sin, and we are promised eternal life and the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in our hearts. This is the source of our joy. The basis of our fellowship. The reason for our hope. If you’ve never believed the Gospel, we invite you today to trust in Jesus.

Closing

Authentic family: We have fun and encourage each other through life’s ups and downs. This is our first core value. Who we are, and who we want to be as we grow together to be more like Christ.

As I was reflecting on this passage and on what a blessing it is to be a part of the church family of Eastern Hills, I came across the words to hymn #396: “I Thank the Lord for You.” We aren’t going to sing it. Just listen to these words:

I thank the Lord for you, my friend, and all that we have shared. My life is so much richer now; His love has placed you there.

The face and hands of Christ Himself Seem human now and true. I’ve grown to know and love Him more; I’ve seen Him, friend, in you.

I pray that Christ will grow in me And let my life express The depths of love He feels for you In patient tenderness.

Our Lord will draw our hearts to Him Till love lights ev’ry face. Then all our lives will join to sing The beauty of His grace.

I thank the Lord for you, church family.

Church membership

Salvation

Baptism

Giving

PRAYER

Observance of the Lord’s Supper

In our focal passage this morning, the church family devoted themselves to “the breaking of bread.” This included the taking of the Lord’s Supper, which is why we’ve decided to observe this ordinance this morning.

I’d like to invite our deacons to come down and prepare to serve the Supper to our church family.

As they come, I give both a warning and a welcome.

The warning is that if you do not belong to God through believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, please do not take the Supper. Since this is a time of memorial of and identification with the Gospel, if you do not believe, you should not participate. This is to safeguard the sanctity of the ordinance and for your protection as well, according to Scripture. We love you, and we’re glad that you’re here. We pray that witnessing this ordinance will be a blessing to you and open your heart to ask questions or to want to find out more about following Christ.

However, the Scripture is clear that the Supper is to be taken in a “worthy manner… recognizing the body.” To take it as an unbeliever is to do so in an “unworthy” manner, because you don’t believe what the ordinance means, memorializes, and stands for. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 11:27–32 CSB

27 So, then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine himself; in this way let him eat the bread and drink from the cup. 29 For whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30 This is why many are sick and ill among you, and many have fallen asleep. 31 If we were properly judging ourselves, we would not be judged, 32 but when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned with the world.

In accordance with this passage, take just a moment to examine your own heart, confess any sin, and ask the Lord to reveal any sin that needs repentance and confession this morning.

The welcome is that we’re here together in this room (and online if you are participating at home today), and it’s such a joy to be able to take the Supper together as a church family. We’re told to welcome one another as we come together for the Supper:

1 Corinthians 11:33 CSB

33 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, welcome one another.

Look around you for just a moment and welcome each other to the family table.

Ask Jeff and Bryan to come and distribute the bread to the deacons. Have one of the deacons ask the Lord to bless the bread.

1 Corinthians 11:23–24 CSB

23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

After the cup is distributed to the deacons, have another deacon ask the Lord to bless the cup.

1 Corinthians 11:25–26 CSB

25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Thank the deacons for their service to the church family this morning.

Closing Remarks

Bible reading (Exo 5; Lk 8; Job 22; 1 Cor 9)

Pastor’s Study tonight

Prayer Meeting Wednesday

Instructions for guests

Benediction

Hymn #393: “The Family of God”

I’m so glad I’m a part of the fam’ly of God— I’ve been washed in the fountain, Cleansed by His blood! Joint heirs with Jesus as we travel this sod; For I’m part of the fam’ly, The fam’ly of God.