We are the Church!

Imagine you find yourself stranded on a deserted island with nothing but a copy of the Bible. You have no experience with Christianity whatsoever, and all you know about the church will come from your reading of the Bible. How would you imagine a church to function?

Does this image match the church today at all? What should be different? How can the church become vital again?

Over the last couple of decades the church has slowly declined and it is no longer the place where people want to be but rather it is the place where some people fill like it is mandatory that they come to once or twice a week.

What drastically changed and made church a place where people dread coming too?

How can the church become vital again?

If you ask your friends to come to church who do not typically come to church what is their response going to be?

Probably not the best of responses.

The answer to the church becoming vital again would be that the church needs to place priority on coming together as believers and focusing on Christ. Whenever we look at how the church was formed and the importance the early believers put in doing life together we see a drastic difference in today’s church.

The church is not a building or but rather the church is the group of believers who are following after Christ and encouraging others to do the same.

Tonight we are going to be diving into Acts 2:42-47 and if you were at church on Sunday morning 2 weeks ago you have already heard these verses before.

Acts 2:42–47 NLT

42 All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer. 43 A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. 44 And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. 45 They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. 46 They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity—47 all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.

This is the very beginnings of what we would call the church. The church formed just a couple of verses earlier whenever the Holy Spirit came upon the people and entered into their lives. The same Holy Spirit that came upon the early church also lives within those who are saved. The church was formed through the common goal of worshipping and glorifying God. Since we know this the next question is this:

What is drastically different from what we see today?

1. They were DEVOTED

Acts 2:42 NLT

42 All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.

The church began by people falling in love with Christ and became devoted to what was being taught about him and through him. What does it mean to be devoted to something?

Mike Leach the coach for MSU defines being devoted like this:

There is a major difference in being commited and devoted to something.

Let’s take breakfast for instance: You have a chicken and you have a pig.

When you eat breakfast the chicken provides the eggs for the breakfast at very little cost to the chicken.

On the other hand the pig provides the bacon and ham for breakfast at the complete cost of the pig.

The Chicken is committed to breakfast but not devoted.

The Pig is both committed and devoted.

Websters dictionary defines devoted as

Devote: To give all or a large part of one’s time or resources to a person or cause

The early church was devoted to the teachings of the apostles, fellowship, sharing meals, and prayer.

One of the major problems within the church today is that there are very very few people who are truly devoted to the church. Whenever something better comes along people will quickly dip out of church and start joining something different in order to make themselves fill better.

This is crazy because the church should be the most joyful place to be especially if you are a Christian. Do you really think that the group of people in the early church all agreed on absolutely everything? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

There is not a single person in this room that agrees with everything 100%. However, they were devoted to the most important person in life and that’s all that matters. They could put aside their minor differences like what each other is wearing or how a person looks because they were devoted to growing in christ. The church needs to be completely devoted to Christ and living their lives in a way that draws people to him.

They were devoted to prayer! The early church probably didn’t just say empty words when they prayed but rather realized who they were praying too. They legitimately prayed because the God they prayed to was worthy of full hearted devotion rather than half heartedly throwing up empty words. There is a person in India that took prayer seriously to the point that he would prayer for close to 4 hours daily. He would pray by his bed on wood floor and there are divots in the wood where his knees would be pressed into the floor.

The church needs to return to praying together corporately for God to draw them to himself and to honor God for who he is. Through having the same goal in mind they:

2. They did life together

Acts 2:43–45 NLT

43 A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. 44 And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. 45 They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need.

Because they were devoted to Christ they were drawn to do life together. So many times we look at the church as being the place where people go to on Sundays and Wednesdays because that is typically the only time the “church” meets together. The only problem with this mind set is that the church is not a building at all but rather the people doing life together.

The early church did not meet in a specific building but rather they began living life together. Their entire purpose of living was building each other up in Christ and growing together spiritually. The early church ensured that there was not a single person within the church that was in need. They did so by being generous with each other because they were living a radically different life.

Can you imagine in today’s culture a group of people selling their own possessions in order to help others? The early church understood that their purpose of living was not to be selfish with their belonging but selfless.

3. They worshipped together

Acts 2:46 NLT

46 They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity—

The church did not just meet on 2 days out of the week. They met daily!! The church assembled daily in order to worship their savior. Take a moment and imagine how our world and city would be drastically different if we all worshipped God daily. The early church would worship together daily.

How can we worship God daily?

There are some simple ways to worship God daily.

Praying and praying for others.

Studying Scripture daily. Daily Bible study.

Worshipping also includes music as well. Have you ever just sat and listened to worship music and thought about all that God is? Or how incredible it is that we can have a relationship with the creator of everything!

That is exactly why the early church worshipped daily because they understood the importance of giving God our worship.

We so often get caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday life that we completely forget to worship the creator of life!

Worship is not something that is supposed to be boring like we so often think, but it is a time to just reflect on the things of God and praise God for being perfect in all that he does.

The early church did meet corporately daily in order to learn scripture because they did not have the bible like we do today. We take for granted the opportunity to read the entire Bible because every single person in this room has multiple bibles at home or on your phone. The early church did not have a single bible because first of all it had not been completed yet and second of all they did not have a printing press in which mass printing would be accessible.

We should be thankful that we have abundant access to God’s Word daily. This is the way we can learn about the God that we worship. Whenever we read His word we should be overcome with gratitude and awe of Him.

Another reason we should be worshipping God is that we are able to have a relationship with Him and that he is not a god who is distant from us but rather he wants to be involved with us. That alone should draw us to worshipping God on a daily basis.

4. They grew together

Acts 2:47 NLT

47 all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.

When the church was focused completely on God and the things of God then people were getting saved and the entire church began growing together for one purpose and goal. The church did not stop being the church once the meeting was over or else they would not be growing. The people would go back to their homes and places of work and would evangelize to other people. Another word for evangelism would be outreach. The church started inviting others to join in on the worship through sharing Jesus with others. They wanted people to join the community that they were involved in because it brought about joy and solidarity that nothing else could bring. The Lord added to their number daily because they were faithful in worshipping, praising, and witnessing about Him.

The goal of a church is to grow together in order to reach others for Christ. The church is about encouraging each other to grow in your faith.

I want our goal as a student ministry to be that we will grow together spiritually and begin spreading Christ throughout the school!

The early church started with only a few people but rapidly grew to thousands of people because they took their faith seriously. They understood the importance of Salvation and understood the importance of the church.