Loving Sunday, Part 1

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.” Acts 2:42-43

Note the definite article: “the fellowship, the breaking of bread, the prayers…”

This is a description of their formal worship meeting.

Finally, Luke records what happened to the new converts. Four activities are listed in which they took part. These are generally regarded as four separate things, but a case can be made out that they are in fact the four elements which characterized a Christian gathering in the early church, and on the whole this is the preferable view.

Marshall, I. H. (1980). Acts: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 5, p. 88). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Jonathan Edwards says,

“The original shows plainly that ‘the apostles’ doctrine, and the fellowship…and the breaking of bread, and the prayers,’ are mentioned as four distinct parts of the public service of the church.”

Edwards, J. (2006). The “Blank Bible”: Part 1 & Part 2. (S. J. Stein & H. S. Stout, Eds.) (Vol. 24, p. 969). New Haven; London: Yale University Press.

These are activities assigned to the church. What purpose do they serve? Why be devoted to these four activities?

I.The Aspiration of Awe

I think you should be seeking ‘awe’. Do you see that in the text?

Remember, the original scriptures did not include verse numbers. Read the text again…

Acts 2:42–43 ESV

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.

Don’t read this text with spiritual dyslexia. If life gives you melons you might be dyslexic. Pay careful attention to the order of things. Don’t let your mind invert the order in a way that makes more sense to you. The awe we are seeing here isn’t a result of the wonders and signs. The awe comes on the heels of the four activities to which they were devoted.

So the aspiration of these four activities is awe. Let’s say that is the goal of a Sunday morning.

Not information — though awe certainly involves the mind

Not encouragement — though biblical awe will encourage us

Not manufactured awe — emotional parlor tricks, playing the right chords or hitting the right crescendo.

Not awe because of the signs and wonders. It is presented the other way around.

What exactly is Awe?

The word is translated elsewhere as ‘fear’ but that word is also quite loaded with various meanings. I read something helpful by a Victorian art critic named John Ruskin.

He said that awe is contemplation of dreadfulness from a position of safety, as a stormy sea from the she; while fear is the contemplation of dreadfulness when one is in immediate danger.

I don’t know if that’s perfect. But I know all of read through the scriptures and see the phrase “feear of the Lord” and wonder what exactly that means. And this art critic might be on to more than he knows. There is a sense in which the awe of God — for those in Christ — ought to be something like “the contemplation of dreadfulness from a position of safety.”

I probably wouldn’t use the word dreadful . But I’m not sure what word I’d replace it with. I think you get the point.

So what we’re after in our gathering, as we engage in these four activities is a very particular kind of feeling. And that’s a tricky thing. It is difficult to tell someone what to feel. Our culture hold’s personal feelings as sacrosanct. If I feel something, then that is my truth. Period, end of story. And we’re more susceptible to this unbiblical idea than we realize.

But of course, God’s word regularly commands us to feel certain things. How is that possible? We are diverse emotional beings. How can God command introverts and extroverts, highly emotional people, barely emotional people, etc… How can God command all these different kinds of emotional makeups to feel the same thing?

Because there are some truths so true, some beauties so beautiful, some glories so glorious that they really do encompass all of humanity — whatever their emotional profile. We should aspire to awe on Sundays because it is the universally appropriate reaction to the four activities in which we are engaged.

II. The Appropriateness of Awe

Psalm 33:8 ESV

Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!

Note the universal. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Awe is appropriate for all of humanity in all times, cultures, and circumstances.

Hebrews 12:28 ESV

Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe,

See how reverence and awe are elements of acceptable worship.

One of the theological dictionaries I use says of awe,

“The adoration of what is mysterious and sublime is an essential element in religion. When expressed towards unworthy objects the result is superstition, but the motive itself is the soul of worship. As the feeling is thus fundamental to the relationship between the human and the Divine, increase of knowledge, while testing and purifying this relationship, should protect and strengthen it.”

Mackie, G. M. (1906). Awe. In J. Hastings (Ed.), A Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels: Aaron–Zion (Vol. 1, p. 160). Edinburgh; New York: T&T Clark; Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Awe is a great antidote to pride and unbelief. Awe helps us feel small and special. Small because we see God’s majesty. Special because we have a sense of how, in Christ, all of that divine glory is with us and not against us.

When we feel awe toward God, we may be the safest from temptation that we will ever be.

There are arguments you’ve been involved in where you and the person you’re arguing with are entirely free from the fear of the Lord. You aren’t fearful of being unmerciful. You aren’t fearful of deep hypocrisies you can’t see. And if awe would come to you in those moments, you’d be speaking an entirely different way.

When we feel awe toward God, we are being successful humans. If our lives exist to give glory to God and to worship him, then feeling awe toward God might be the most #winning moments of our lives.

And the absence of awe can be a pretty good sign that something in us is broken.

We all know that there is a difference between picking up God’s word and being picked up by God’s word. We all know the feeling of reading something like Isaiah 40:12 that talks about God holding all the waters of the world in the cup of his hand (how much water can you hold in your hand — God could easily hold the ocean) — we read it — and we don’t anything appropriate to such a majestic image.

And what do you do with that feeling of not feeling? I think it depends on whether you want to be well or do you want to be delusional? If you’re ok being delusional, then I guess you could just blame your lack of feeling awe on God and move on. Or, you could meet the moment with belief and say — God doesn’t command his children to do things without empowering them to do it.

That’s godly fatherhood 101. If you really need it — and I’m telling you we do need it. Then we’re going to have to decide if who we believe God is.

So let’s talk about how God can help us in the accomplishment of awe.

III. The Accomplishment of Awe

Let’s go back to the text.

Acts 2:42–43 ESV

Four Christ Displaying Activities

We’ve already established that engaging in these four activities produced awe. How? They all do it the same way, these four activities produce awe by revealing Jesus Christ to the human heart. They are intended to show our hearts that Jesus is glorious and present. The awe produced was not because the preaching was great or the prayers were profound but rather because biblical preaching reveals Christ and biblical fellowship reveals Christ and biblical prayers reveal Christ and biblical practiced communion reveals Christ.

And when the redeemed and regenerated soul sees Jesus, his heart leaps, he feels awe. These activities are assigned for our gathers so that we may see Christ and stand amazed in his presence.

The bible tells us that Jesus actually put off his awe inspiring qualities when he took on flesh and became a man. Isaiah 53:2 says that, “He had no stately form or majesty to attract us, no beauty that we should desire Him.” This was a horrible injustice. Every time Jesus walked by someone and they failed to fall down and worship him — a massive injustice occured. But he did that. He put off his awe so that we could have abundant, never-ending access to awe.

The Role of Devotion

Now we’ve all engaged in these activities when nothing has happened. Why? There are two possibilities:

The first one is that the activity was not led with Christ in mind at all. Sermons without Christ are unfortunately common. Fellowship without Christ may be even more so.

But this text uses that word devotion. They were devoted to these activities. And this seems to be the key that most of us forget about. The key to seeing Christ in a sermon seems to have more to do with the audience’s devotion than the preacher’s delivery. The key to seeing Christ in a prayer seems to have more to do with your devotion to seeing Christ in it -- than the profundity of the prayer.

When we walk away from a worship service feeling flat — we tend to blame the delivery rather than our own devotion. We think of the preacher’s skill or the band’s skill, etc… But remember just a little bit ago we said that each one of us feels flat when we read God’s word. Who would we blame in that case?

The truth is that the bible is pretty clear on this count.

Jeremiah 29:11–13 ESV

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

When you come on Sundays with an eagerness to see Christ in the preaching, in the prayers, in the fellowship, at the table — when you come hungry for more of Jesus — the chances are you’ll get him and when you get him — you’ll get the awe we’re talking about.

I heard a phrase in Hebrews that perfectly sums up the problem. The writer of Hebrews tells the people that they have become lazy in their listening (see Hebrews 5:11). We all do it.

Come desperate.

Come needy.

Come hungry.

Come asking.

And you may find that awe is more the rule than the exception of your Sunday experience.

For some of you, this just feels like more work. I get it. But I am asking you trust God’s word.

At this point in the message you shouldn’t doubt whether awe should be our individual and collective aspiration.

And you shouldn’t doubt whether awe is the appropriate response to an encounter with the holy God.

And whether it is the safest place you could be.

And whether it is the most success you could possible have.

And you should also see plainly that these activities are given to you to show you Christ and thereby give you the awe which God demands of you and you desperately need.

Your affections are not beyond saving. Your feelings are not beyond transforming. God will help you.

There’s a pretty funny moment in Acts 20 where Paul is preaching in an upper room of a house. He’s preaching for a very long time and in the back of the room there’s a young man who is sitting in a window sill. And he falls asleep. Maybe this young man is not devoted to the apostle’s teaching! Or maybe he is doing his best and his body simply takes over. Either way, what we can say for sure is that that young man was not feeling awe.

He falls asleep and when he does, he actually falls out of that third story window. The text says that everybody rushed downstairs and when they found him - he was dead. Paul brings him back to life and then goes back to his preaching and did not finish until dawn the next day.

Let me tell you something, that young man felt awe eventually.

He was overcome by sleep. Meaning he wasn’t trying to sleep. But it happened. The same happened with the disciples during prayer with Jesus. The same sort of weakness befalls our fellowship and our communion. Yet God is faithful to wake us up. And God is faithful to give us the awe we need one way or the other.

English Standard Version Chapter 5

“Awake, O sleeper,

and arise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you.”

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