A Gospel Family on Mission Part 1

Text: Acts 2:42–47

Subject: Devotion

Theme: Gospel Family

Thesis: Christ forms His church into a devoted gospel family whose shared life displays His grace and whose witness reaches outward into the community.

Principle Statement: A healthy church is not merely a service to attend, but a family to belong to and a mission to share.

Introduction:

With today being our annual meeting, as we look to God’s word this morning I wanted to take us to a passage that specifically speaks to life in the church.

The bulk of Acts 2 is Peter’s sermon, but the final few verses, after 3000 people were added to church that day, speak about the fellowship of believers.

The church explodes into a devoted, worshiping, sharing, witnessing community.

When we look at this passage, it is more than a description of nice church life.

It is the first extended picture of what the risen and ascended Christ creates by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

As we look to our meeting this afternoon, annual meetings naturally involve reports, finances, decisions, and ministry plans.

Those things matter, but they are not the deepest issue.

Before the church asks, “What do we need to do?” we need to ask:

What kind of people is Christ forming us to be?

This passage helps us to see that.

Acts 2:42–47 gives us a picture of a Spirit-formed church: devoted to Christ, joined together in love, caring for one another, worshiping with gladness, and bearing witness in the community.

It is Jesus who forms and directs this.

He forms His church into a devoted gospel family whose shared life displays His grace

and whose witness reaches outward into the community.

A healthy church is not merely a service to attend, but a family to belong to and a mission to share.

Acts 2:42–47 ESV

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. 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. 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.

1. A Gospel Family Is Devoted to the Word and Prayer

Luke begins this picture of the early church with these words:

Acts 2:42 ESV

42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

That word devoted is important.

Luke is not describing something casual.

They did not occasionally show interest in these things.

They persistently, steadily, loyally gave themselves to them.

This became the rhythm of their life together.

These were not side activities added onto an already full life.

These were the practices that shaped their lives and, in turn, the life of the church.

That is important for us to see, because spiritual health does not usually happen by accident.

A healthy church does not drift into maturity.

A church does not accidentally become grounded in Scripture, deep in love, strong in prayer, generous in service, joyful in worship, and faithful in witness.

Those things are formed over time as God’s people continually give themselves to the means God has given.

Teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayers.

This is true for every part of our lives.

A marriage does not grow healthy by accident.

A family does not become close by accident.

A ranch, a business, a garden, a classroom, or a team does not become strong by accident.

There are repeated rhythms. There are habits. There are priorities.

There are things you keep coming back to even when life is busy, even when feelings rise and fall, even when it would be easier to neglect them.

For the church, those things are teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayers.

The church in Acts 2 was devoted to these things.

They were priority #1 for the church.

The apostles’ teaching was important because the apostles had been with Jesus.

They had heard His teaching. They had seen His works.

They had witnessed His death and resurrection.

Now, filled with the Holy Spirit, they were proclaiming the truth about Christ.

The people of the church devoted themselves to gather around the truth of Christ.

The church was being built on the gospel: Jesus crucified, risen, exalted, and reigning.

The same Jesus Peter had just preached about in his sermon.

Jesus who had poured out the Holy Spirit.

Jesus who calls sinners to repent and be baptized.

Jesus who saves, forgives, rules, and gathers His people.

The first mark of this gospel family is that they were a Word-formed people.

This is foundational because a church family cannot be built merely on friendliness.

Friendliness is good. Warmth matters. Hospitality matters.

But friendliness by itself cannot sustain a church.

Shared history cannot sustain a church.

Small-town familiarity cannot sustain a church.

Even affection for one another, as important as that is, cannot sustain the church.

The church must be held together by Christ through His Word.

The church is a people called by Christ, gathered around Christ, taught by Christ, submitted to Christ, and sent by Christ.

And Christ rules His church through His Word.

In order to be a true gospel family, a church cannot be held together merely by preferences, personalities, traditions, memories, or programs.

It must be held together by Christ through His Word.

This is why preaching matters and must be central to the church.

Not because a preacher is impressive or because sermons are a good thing to listen to and try to apply.

There are lots of ways to learn, but God determined preaching to be one of the central ways that the church is to grow.

Preaching matters because God forms His people through His Word.

This is why every part of teaching God’s word matters.

Bible study, children’s ministry.

With regards to children’s church, when children are taught Scripture, we are not merely keeping them occupied while adults do church.

We are helping the next generation hear the truth of Christ.

This is also why God’s word must be central in our individual family and personal lives as well.

Personal Bible reading, family worship times, conversations with each other about scripture.

In devoting ourselves to God’s word, we continually ask, “What does God say?” before we ask, “What do I prefer?” or “What have we always done?” or “What feels easiest?”

The Word of God is not just information for our minds. It is formation for our souls.

God’s Word confronts us. God’s Word comforts us. God’s Word corrects us. God’s Word feeds us. God’s Word exposes our sin. God’s Word reveals Christ. God’s Word teaches us how to love. God’s Word teaches us how to forgive. God’s Word teaches us how to suffer. God’s Word teaches us how to hope. God’s Word teaches us how to live together as the people of God.

If we are going to be changed, formed, and grown as a church, we must be a people who are continually brought under the Word of God.

Luke also says they were devoted to prayer.

He uses the phrase “the prayers.”

This may refer to regular times of prayer connected to their gathered worship.

It may include the ongoing prayer life of this new Christian community.

Most likely it includes both.

These first believers were still connected to the rhythms of temple prayer, but they were also now praying as people who knew Jesus as the crucified and risen Lord.

The early church models for us dependence upon God through His Word and through prayer.

That pairing is important.

A church devoted to the Word but not prayer can become proud, cold, and self-reliant.

It can know many true things and yet lack spiritual dependence.

A church devoted to prayer without the Word can become unstable, emotional, and easily led by impulse.

Acts 2 shows the early church holding them together.

The church listened to God, and the church cried out to God.

And I want to say this as an encouragement: I feel we do this pretty well here.

I know we have many people here who pray faithfully.

That is a gift. That is encouraging.

Let us continue, and may we all grow in our devotion to God’s Word and prayer.

A gospel family is formed by listening to God together and depending on God together.

This is still a reminder though that I believe we need daily, especially with the craziness of the world around us.

It is a good reminder for us today as well as we approach our annual meeting.

The church is not sustained by human effort.

We can plan. We can organize. We can budget. We can schedule. We can talk about vision. These are good things to do.

But if we are not shaped by the Word first and dependent in prayer, then all our activity can become hollow.

Psalm 127:1 says:

Psalm 127:1 ESV

1 Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

Unless the Lord builds, we cannot build what matters most.

Unless the Lord works, we cannot produce spiritual life.

Unless the Lord forms us, we will not become the kind of people Acts 2 describes.

So some questions we can ask to stay on track are these:

Are we living as a people shaped by the Word and dependent in prayer? Are we praying like we truly need God?

It is easy to talk about being a church family.

It is easy to talk about reaching the community.

It is easy to talk about wanting to see people come to Christ.

But Acts 2 shows us that living it begins by being a church on its knees under the Word.

That is where gospel family life begins.

Think about a wood stove in the winter.

You know you cannot just light it once, walk away, and expect the house to stay warm all day.

A fire has to be tended. The heat comes through steady attention, not one moment of excitement.

A gospel family is formed in a similar way.

We need the steady heat of God’s Word and the steady breath of prayer.

And when a church is devoted to the Word and prayer, something begins to happen.

God does not merely form individuals.

He forms a people.

The Word and prayer draw us not only upward toward God, but also outward toward one another.

That is where Luke goes next.

This gospel family was not only devoted to the apostles’ teaching and the prayers.

They were also devoted to the fellowship and the breaking of bread.

In other words, the gospel formed them into a shared life.

2. A Gospel Family Shares Life Around Christ

Acts 2:42, 44, 46

Luke continues:

Acts 2:42 ESV

42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

It is worth noticing how verse 42 is put together.

Depending on how you understand the wording, Luke may be giving us four closely connected things to be devoted to: the apostles’ teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers.

Or he may be giving us two main devotions that are then filled out: they were devoted to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, and that fellowship was expressed as they broke bread and prayed together.

Either way, the main point is not changed.

I see them as 4 interconnected activities within the life of the church.

Luke is not giving us disconnected church activities. He is describing a whole pattern of shared life.

The Word, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer all belong together.

The early church was a worshiping, learning, praying, eating, sharing people.

So when we come to “the fellowship,” we should not think of it as something separate from their devotion to Christ.

Their fellowship flowed from the gospel and was shaped by the Word and prayer.

That word fellowship is one of those church words we can use so often that we stop feeling the weight of it.

We hear “fellowship” and think of coffee, cookies, potlucks, visiting after church, or enjoying one another’s company.

Those things are good.

Time together matters.

But the biblical word is deeper than this.

The word Luke uses here is the Greek word koinonia.

Koinonia fundamentally means “to share, to have commonality, or to commune with other people,”

but its significance for contemporary Christian life extends far beyond simple social interaction.

The word implies a participation in the lives of other people that leads to intimacy,

creating bonds that “cement believers to the Lord Jesus and to each other.”

For modern Christians, koinonia operates on multiple levels.

Christians are “participants in the divine nature,” meaning individual faith connects to something greater than ourselves.

In Acts 2, these believers shared something far deeper than hobbies, family connections, age groups, community history, or personal preferences.

They shared Christ.

They had been saved by the same Lord. They had received the same Spirit. They had heard the same gospel. They had been baptized into the same community. They had become part of the same people of God.

True fellowship results in mutual love, mutual love is expressed in concrete ways.

That is why Luke can say in verse 44:

Acts 2:44 ESV

44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common.

This does not mean they were all identical.

They did not all have the same background, personality, income level, family situation, or opinion about everything.

What they shared was the gospel, and that is what brought them into a new shared life.

They were together because they belonged to Christ, and because they belonged to Christ, they now belonged to one another.

It is sad to see how quickly and how easily some lose sight of this fact in the church today.

Sinful selfishness so often gets in the way of true gospel community.

A church can be friendly without being family. A church can be familiar without being spiritually connected. A church can have people who know each other’s names, relatives, jobs, vehicles, and stories, and still not have deep gospel fellowship.

Even in a small community.

In a rural place, people often know a lot about each other.

We know where people live, who is related to whom, where people work, what they used to do,

and sometimes even what mistakes they made twenty years ago.

But being known in a community is not the same thing as being loved in Christ.

Biblical fellowship is not merely, “We know each other.”

It is, “We share life because we share Christ.”

Koinonia involves being in agreement with one another, being united in purpose, and serving alongside each other.

Scripture commands believers to be devoted to one another, honor one another, live in harmony, accept one another, serve one another in love, be kind and compassionate, admonish one another, encourage one another, spur one another on toward love and good deeds, offer hospitality, and love one another.

Critically, our koinonia with each other is based on our common koinonia with Jesus Christ.

For today’s Christians, this means that genuine fellowship isn’t optional social activity but a defining mark of discipleship, rooted in shared participation in Christ’s redemptive work.

Which is why Luke notes in verse 46 that the early church was also “breaking bread in their homes.”

That phrase may refer to ordinary meals, it may also include the Lord’s Supper.

In the first Christian community the two were closely connected.

They gathered publicly in the temple, and they gathered personally in homes.

Their faith was not limited to one sacred hour in one sacred place.

It spilled over into kitchens, tables, conversations, meals, and ordinary life.

The church was faces, homes, tables, food, laughter, prayer, tears, and shared time.

This is where we need to be careful with our vision of being a church family.

When I say we want to be a family, I do not mean we want to be a closed circle.

We must be careful to be a gospel family with room at the table.

That means we are not only asking, “Do I feel connected here?”

We are also asking:

Who needs to be brought in? Who is still standing on the edges? Who has not yet found their place? Who is new? Who is lonely? Who is grieving? Who is carrying something quietly? Who has been here long enough that I assume they are fine, but maybe they are not?

This is a role each of us must play.

It can be uncomfortable, because real fellowship requires availability.

It requires patience, humility, willingness to be known and the willingness to know others with grace.

There may be barriers we need to bring before the Lord.

Some of us keep distance because we are busy. Some keep distance because we have been hurt. Some keep distance because we assume we do not need anyone. Some keep distance because we are afraid of being a burden. Some keep distance because it is easier to be pleasant on Sunday than honest in relationship.

But Christ did not save us into polite distance. He saved us into His body.

And let me say a personal word here as your pastor.

I know that sometimes people may hesitate to come to me because they know life is busy. And it is. Many of you are busy too.

I have been learning that there is a difference between being approachable and being available.

I hope I am approachable, but I also realize that some of you may wonder whether I am actually available.

So let me say this clearly: if you need something from me as your pastor, please come to me.

If you have a concern, please come to me.

If you are struggling, if you need prayer, if you have a question, if something is weighing on you, please do not decide for me that I am too busy.

That does not mean I can always respond immediately.

Sometimes the answer may be, “I cannot do that today, but let us find a time.” Sometimes it may be, “I am not able to carry that in this exact way, but let me help you think through who can.”

But I do not want you to stay silent because you assume I do not have time.

As your pastor, Christ’s church is not an interruption to my calling.

You are part of my calling. Shepherding this church is not a distraction from my work; it is the work God has given me.

And I say that because gospel fellowship requires us to move toward one another.

I hope to model (though I know I do it imperfectly) the fellowship we can have with one another in the church.

This type of fellowship requires us not to assume distance where there may be an open door.

It requires us to speak, ask, pray, and carry burdens together.

I pray this pours out into our church body as a whole.

Some practical ways this can show up in our church are

Staying a little longer after church instead of rushing away every week. Inviting someone over even when the house is not perfect. Asking a better question than, “How are you?” and then actually listening. Noticing the person who sits alone. Including a newer family before they have to ask where they fit. Praying with someone instead of only telling them you will pray for them. opening our tables, our schedules, our hearts.

For some, it may look like letting the church family love you. That can be hard too.

I know for me, it is easier to serve than to receive.

It is easier to bring a meal than admit you need one.

It is easier to ask about someone else than let someone ask about you.

But fellowship works both ways.

In a gospel family, we learn both to give and to receive love.

This is part of the witness of the church.

As Jesus told his disciples.

John 13:35 ESV

35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

The world should see something different in the way Christians share life.

Not perfection.

But there should be something visible, something Christlike, something that says, “These people belong to one another because they belong to Jesus.”

That is the kind of church Acts 2 is showing us.

So let us ask the Lord to make us that kind of family.

A family gathered around Christ. A family shaped by the Word. A family dependent in prayer. A family where fellowship is more than friendliness. A family with room at the table.

Conclusion

So before we head into our annual meeting, let’s reflect on some important questions.

Where are we in the process of being formed into a gospel family?

Individually and as a church as a whole

Are we devoted to the Word? Are we dependent in prayer? Are we sharing life because we share Christ? Are we making room at the table?

May the Lord make us that kind of church.

Because when believers begin to share life that way, needs become harder to ignore.

When people are no longer just faces in rows but brothers and sisters around the table, burdens become visible.

That is what we will pick up with next week.