Devoted to the Common Life

Acts 2:40-47 Devoted to the Common Life Introduction: Last week we talked extensively about how the early Church was enamored with the Jesus story - It had cut so deeply to their hearts that the whole of their lives were radically changed. When the Gospel (what Jesus did when he gave himself for you) becomes the defining reality of your life you look at everything differently. As we saw a few weeks ago when Jesus comes in to your life with transforming power you get a new freedom, a new identity and community, a new power and new way of seeing the world. As Paul said, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.[b] The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." Luke tells us that this New Life expressed itself a whole life devotion of the Jesus story, as we looked last week - these people came together everyday to learn more about the Jesus story, to practice the Jesus way of living (self sacrificial service to others), to remember Jesus substitutionary death and to take advantage of the Jesus story through prayer. This morning we want to consider what it means to be devoted to the Common Life, or as we called it -The Jesus way of Living. 1. They Devoted Themselves...to the Common Life 1. We said last week that these new Christians were so deeply cut to the heart, so enamored by what Jesus had done for them that they devoted themselves to the Jesus way of living. In the Gospel they had found the supreme purpose of life - and now they committed their lives to practice it, to live it out. 2. If you are a Christian you must devote yourself to a Church community in order to live out the gospel, and in order to grow in Christlikeness. 3. To be devoted, committed, to something is actually to limit yourself, which on the surface is very unattractive to our current culture. Our culture considers the supreme good to be autonomy, and total freedom. Yet true freedom demands closure, it can't be an end in itself. If you think about it everyone who really loves something, or desires something, will limit their freedom in order to get it. The athlete will curve his appetite, or schedule to be his best, to win the gold, or the championship. A college student will curve her desire to party and stay out late in college to get the degree she wants to have the job she wants, to enjoy the life she's dreamed of having... we limit our freedom to spend time with the one we love. You can be in love or you can be free and autonomous - but never both at the same time. We limit our freedom, we sacrifice for things we deem supremely important..This could be a whole series of sermons, but all to say - There is no such thing as freedom without restraint. 4. We live in a culture in which the interests and desires of the individual take precedence over those of the family, group, or community. As a result, a high percentage of people want to achieve spiritual growth without losing their independence to a church or to any organized institution.... But there is no way you will be able to grow spiritually apart from deep involvement in a community of other believers. You can't live the Christian life without a band of Christian friends, without a family of believers in which you find your place...... 1. "Christians commonly say they want a relationship with Jesus, that they want to "get to know him better." You will never be able to do that by yourself. You must be deeply involved in the Church, in Christian community, with strong relationships of love and accountability. Only if you are part of a community of believers seeking to resemble, serve, and love Jesus will you ever get to know him and grow into his likeness. - Tim Keller 5. Paul believed in personal limitations - "His antidote for this all too human tendency was to stay within the limits of his own life and calling." Paul writes, "We, however will not boast beyond measure but according to the measure of the area of ministry that God has assigned to us... For we are not overextending ourselves..since we have come to you with the gospel of Christ' - 2 Corinthians 10:13-14 6. Each of us has been given an area by God within which to work. We are placed in a context, in a community, in institutions and webs of responsibility. And Paul is reminding us that this is good. The script of our culture tells us that we can only find self-fulfillment when we break away from these limitations, but Paul is reversing that false view of life. Limitations and the defined space of living and ministering that God gives us with in the institution of the church is a gift. God places us in institutions, relationships, responsibilities, to teach us and shape us into Christlikeness. 1. Ruth Haley Barton writes, "One of the ways to recognize narcissism within ourselves is to notice when we have not yet accepted the field, the sphere of action, that God has given us - the opportunities and the limits of life in this body, this community, this set of relationships...this place where we have been called by God to serve. Narcissistic leaders are always looking longingly at someone else's field as somehow more worthy or more indicative of success. They are always pushing the limits of their situation rather than lovingly working the field they have been given...our unwillingness to live within limits - both personally and in community - is one of the deepest sources of depletion and eventual burnout." 2. This devotion, this limit on their freedom, came because they believed that they had found in Jesus the supreme meaning for life and it was a supreme joy to live that out with one another. 3. When the Gospel (what Jesus did when he gave himself for you) becomes the defining reality of your life you look at everything differently. Commitment isn't only about what you get out of it but another way of imitating Christ in relationships. 2. The Common Life -what was the life that they were committed to? 1. Luke Describes the Fellowship or the Common Life as, "having all things in common and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the Temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts." 2. Luke obviously describes this common life in the best of terms. Later he will show us that not everything was puppies and kittens. 1. Positively we can say that the common life means financially and physically we take care of one another as there is need. If we have a need - whether physical, spiritual, mental, emotional we make it known. When there is an issue we don't give up on one another but we continue to try to work things out... We communicate openly. We seek to deepen our relationships with one another by spending time together; therefore we meet together often, as often as possible. We talk about Big life issues and decisions with each other openly. We make big life decisions that our community and scripture supports. We confess sin and pray for one another and hold each other accountable -so we can be healed and grow... We help one another through good times and hard times, in sickness, in health, in weakness and strength, through sin and righteousness, in abundance in poverty and need. We weep, and rejoice together. We fight sin and temptation together. We wrestle together for greater commitment to, and affections for Jesus. We don't leave the community without a BIG conversation..explaining what is going on and a chance to work things out... We respect one another's difference of opinion and practices in non essential issues. We love one another! This is the most important thing of all - we are committed to the good, the blessing, the wholeness of each other. We are committed to seeing Christ magnified in each others lives! 2. Negatively -Devotion to fellowship and the common life means that we will have to push through seasons of hardship, frustration, disillusionment.... 3. What determines your commitment to your church community? What is the limit to your love? 4. Is it about you, or is it about Jesus and others? 1. Dietrich Bonhöeffer in his book on Christian community, Life Together, says,"We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions." This is challenging, we don't like to be inconvenienced, and interrupted in our daily lives, we like to be calculated and planned. 5. It must be remembered that community is messy, it is difficult, it will test our limits and even bring us beyond our limits of love, but it does so in order that we might rely on the power of God - on his Spirit and his love at work through us... Paul said, "But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh." 6. Jesus, our supreme example of this love and devotion, was committed to us even through shedding his own blood, through death. His devotion was not based upon our goodness, our loveliness, we want to be a community that shines forth the faithfulness of God, and that really happens when our devotion is tested. 7. C.S. Lewis wrote, "Love as distinct from 'being in love' - is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else. 'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it." 8. Many of us are like this when we first join a christian church and community, we are experience the infatuation side of love. We are excited about everything, a part of every ministry and every community group. I imagine that this is what it was like for the early church as well. Everything was exciting and new. But as life gets real, and you realize that this isn't a perfect church, and christian people are often just as difficult as non-Christians, the honeymoon is over. BUT it is devotion that will teach us to truly love one another when the thrill is gone. 3. Devotion is the witness of God's love 1. This newly formed Jesus community treated each other as brothers and sisters, like family. As I said last week their lives became marked by bearing one another's burden's, making sure that no one lacked anything, no one considered anything their own... when the Gospel cuts you to the heart you have a whole new way of looking at other people. No longer do you look out for just yourself and your own interest, why? Because God did not look out for his own interest but made himself of no reputation and took upon himself the form of a bond slave -for you and I! When love like this is happening in a community people take notice of it, it stands out. Because this kind of love is literally out of this world.. God's never stopping, never giving up, un-breaking, always and forever love. 2. Tertullian an early church father, said that the Romans would say, "see how they love one another" about the Christians. The world around them took notice of the quality of love that they showed toward one another. 1. Wayne Meeks professor of biblical studies at Yale university says that the reason Christianity spread and had such power and appeal was because of their doctrine of God's love..."One of the things that runs through the Pauline letters, is his conviction that what he calls the Word of the Cross, or the reasoning of the Cross, ought to pervade the whole lives of the congregations which he has founded. So, that... the way in which one exercises leadership or authority in the congregation... must somehow tally with the notion that the power of God is manifested in this reversal of things, in which the powerful one comes to be crucified in the most shameful form, that the one who is equal with God, gives that up to take on the form of a slave. This becomes the model of what love is. Or in the Johannine literature and the Johannine letters, you have similar kinds of language, "We love because he first loved us." So that love is in some sense being re-defined as this other-regarding sacrificial act, [choosing] to put oneself on the line for the sake of the good of the other, and this is grounded in the claim about the way the ultimate power and structure of the universe manifests itself in human society. I think this must have had a very powerful, emotional appeal to people." 1. Jesus himself said, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." 2. The greatest apologetic to the culture around us, the greatest service we can do for the furtherance of the kingdom of God is to love one another as God has loved us in Christ. It's astounding isn't it? Of all the things that Jesus wants his people to be marked by - holiness, world wide evangelism, church growth, successful programs, deep heartfelt teaching, knowledge, cultural influence..etc. Love for neighbor (God's people) is the greatest witness of the Life of God in us. Conclusion: Church we need to align ourselves, our thinking, our action with the Gospel and the scriptures. What I mean is that we often have a way in which we dumb down the teaching of the Bible, we modernize it, or soften it, but when we do this we rob it of it's power! The radical demands of the Gospel and the New Testament are radical because they are from God. They are not our way of living, loving, thinking, or acting, they are God's way! They are the New way, the Jesus story way! Augustine said, "God commands what we cannot do, so that we may know what we should ask of him." My prayer is that we would examine our lives in light of this teaching with these two questions: 1. Do I love my church community in a way that makes the world wonder, and ask about my Faith? Do I love with God's costly love? 2. If not, by God's Spirit at work in me how can I change? How or in what ways can I love my brothers and sisters like God has loved me?