A Picture of Church Life

Last week, we saw what happens when God’s people are prepared and God moves.

There was a large crowd that gathered, and 3,000 people were saved.

From the very moment the church existed, what God was doing in them overflowed into the lives of lost people around them.

In fact, most of the book of Acts is about how God equipped the church to reach people with the gospel, the good news that Jesus had died and rose again and now rules over all creation.

At different points throughout the book, though, the focus shifts to what is happening within the church.

As we look at Acts 2:42-47 this morning, that is the direction our attention turns.

Having described how the Holy Spirit was given to the church, and how God worked mightily to save 3,000 people in one day, Luke is going to give us a summary of what the “normal” church life looked like.

Although some aspects of this were unique to the time, it gives us a great picture to aim for when we think about what a church is supposed to be and do.

Even though it is a short summary, there is a lot going on in this passage, and we could come at it from several different angles.

I want to approach it by looking at three different aspects of the way that the church lived: their attitude, their actions, and the outcome.

In fact, we could actually summarize it this way: a healthy church made up of people who are devoted to learning God’s word and investing in others.

So, then, here is a big question for you to ask as we go through this: if everyone in this church acted like I do in this area, how healthy would our church be? What do I need to change personally to strengthen this church?

Let’s read through it, and then we will go back and pull it apart...

Boy, doesn’t the end of that sound good? We will get to that, but first, let’s see the attitude and actions that produced those outcomes.

First, we see that a healthy church is filled with people who have...

1) An attitude of devotion.

Look back at verse 42. Luke uses the a term that is translated as “devoted”.

He uses it again in verse 46 to talk about how they made a priority of going to the temple every day.

We will talk more about what they were actually devoted to, but I want us to stop and look at this idea for a minute.

What does it mean to be “devoted” to something?

We just got through the Super Bowl, and in a few weeks we will be heading into an unusual March Madness college basketball tournament.

If you are a sports fan, you might describe yourself as devoted to a team. That means you buy their merchandise, you watch their games and track the players’ stats.

Some of you might describe yourself as devoted to your school work or to your job. You don’t do the bare minimum; you show up early and stay late, you write more pages than your professor assigned, you are working hard to excel at what you do.

Could you use that same term to describe your commitment to God and to his people, his church?

The word that Luke uses here is the same one that he used in Acts 1:14 to talk about how the apostles devoted themselves to praying together while they waited for the Holy Spirit.

In Acts 10:7, is used to describe the role of servants who are constantly attending to their masters’ needs, and it is used in Romans 13:6 to describe how civil authorities are to be devoted to keeping those who do wrong in check.

We can’t claim this devotion with a commitment that only comprises a couple hours of our week.

So, then, let me ask you: on a scale of 1-10 with 7 not being an option, where would you rank your devotion to your personal relationship with God? Where would you put your level of devotion to God’s word and God’s people?

Maybe that is a tough question to answer right now without knowing exactly what we are talking about being devoted to.

I don’t want you to just choose something random to become passionate about.

If we are going to honor God as a church and see him move, then we must be devoted to an active faith in him that expresses itself several ways...

2) An active faith.

Look back at verse 42. What were the early believers devoted to?

The early church was marked by a faith in God that led them to do certain things.

Although they look a little different in our context, if we devoted ourselves to these as a church, we would be doing great.

We see that a healthy church is going to...

A. Study God’s Word.

In those early days, the church didn’t have the part of the Bible we call the New Testament.

They did have the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, and the apostles were teaching the people how to follow God from what God had already revealed in the Old Testament.

For an example of this, look at the sermon that Peter gave in Acts 2 and the one from Stephen in Acts 7.

They took the principles of God’s word and the teachings Jesus gave them and taught the early believers how to live.

Now, those teachings are recorded for us in the New Testament.

If the early church was devoted to the apostles’ teaching, then we should be the same way!

Reading, teaching, and studying God’s Word, both the Old and New Testaments, must be an essential part of what we do.

If you notice, we try to preach messages that break down a passage of Scripture to see what God has for us, just like what we are doing today.

We don’t simply give you a list of 5 keys to a great marriage or 7 secrets to winning at work, unless by chance the text we are looking at gives us those things!

I encourage you to make sure that anything I say and anything that our Sunday School teachers or Small Group leaders or Children and Youth teachers say lines up with what God says in his word.

If we seem to be in error, let’s talk about it and study it together.

That was one of the marks of the early church. They didn’t just listen to one sermon a week like a TED talk that makes them feel something and then they forgot what was said; they devoted themselves to knowing and understanding what God said through the Scripture and the apostles.

Can you say that you, personally, are devoted to studying God’s word? I can’t teach you everything you need to know in 40 minutes on a Sunday morning. You need to be devoting yourself to studying what God says in his word throughout the week.

That is more than just an individual commitment, though. We need to talk with other believers and wrestle together through what the Bible says.

That is part of the second action the church did together.

We also need to...

B. Partner with other believers.

Look back at the last part of verse 42.

Not only did they devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching, they also devoted themselves to the “fellowship”.

What on earth does that mean?

There is really only one time outside of church where you have heard this term in our culture.

In fact, there was a movie that had this in the title that was recently re-released. The first movie in the LOTR trilogy is named what? The Fellowship of the Ring.

What is that book and movie all about? It is the first part of a story about a diverse band of individuals who bring their skills together to help a hobbit named Frodo carry an evil ring to a place where he could destroy it.

That is a great picture of the idea of fellowship here.

The early church was devoted to banding together, doing life together, to live out their calling to walk as children of God.

Luke highlights a few components of what that partnership looked like.

In verse 42, he talks about “the breaking of bread and to prayer”.

The way this is worded indicates that this is what he means by fellowship: they ate together, and they prayed together.

In fact, he highlights that even further in verse 46.

Getting together with other believers was a part of the daily rhythm of their lives!

The idea of “breaking bread together” may include taking the Lord’s Supper together, which I plan on us doing next week. However, it also included eating regular meals with each other.

I know that we are still fighting through a pandemic and may have differing ideas on what is wise, but let me encourage you to make sure you are taking the time to at least check on other believers regularly.

At the very least, who can you check up on this week? Is there someone you need to call or get coffee with?

This wasn’t just to hang out, although part of it was spending time with others who follow Christ.

They ate together and they prayed together and they studied together. Is there anyone you pray with on a regular basis? Does anyone know you well enough to know how to pray for you?

If we are going to be a healthy church, we should have a desire to spend time with each other as we study God’s word and pray and, as cliche as it sounds, “do life together”.

There is another remarkable action we see here.

As they got together and involved in each others’ lives, they became aware of needs that existed in the lives of other believers.

They responded with radical generosity.

A part of healthy, vibrant church life is that we will...

C. Give radically to others.

Look carefully with me at verses 44-45.

The early church was incredibly generous with each other.

When we read these verses, we can easily find ourselves turning to one of two different errors.

The first error is to read these verses as a biblical endorsement of communism or socialism.

Notice that there was nothing in this that was forced on the church from the outside. As we see in chapters 4 & 5, people were free to do what they felt led to do with the resources they had.

We see other passages in the New Testament that talk about a responsibility to provide for your own household and concepts like that, so this does not seem to be teaching a forced equality.

With that said, we need to make sure we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater here and disregard this idea completely.

We cannot ignore the fact that they really did sell their possessions to make sure that no one in the church was living in poverty. Again, we will see that more clearly in 4:34.

We also see the clear teaching throughout the New Testament that I am simply a steward of the resources God has entrusted to me.

No dollar in my bank account and no item I have in my possession actually belongs to me.

Everything I have is on loan to me from God. Some of it is to meet my needs, and God gives us some to meet the needs of others.

A healthy church gives radically to make sure others are cared for.

When was the last time you gave something to someone else? Would anyone describe you as generous?

Going back to our previous point, do you know anyone well enough to know whether or not they are in need? Do you have any idea how the resources God has given you could be used for God’s kingdom?

In the early days of the church, they were marked by radical generosity.

What would it take for our church to be the same?

There is one other action that I want to highlight for us that comes out of the cultural context of one of the statements Luke makes.

Notice that verse 46 says they met daily together in the temple.

Although that was the place of worship and was part of where they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, it was also the place where they encountered people who were not yet following Christ.

As they met daily, they were also...

D. Share the gospel regularly.

The temple would be the place where Jews who were interested in spiritual matters would go. They were paying their taxes, offering sacrifices, praying, and learning there in the temple courts.

In the very next story in Acts, we find the apostles boldly talking about Jesus after healing a man in the temple courts.

These early chapters of Acts revolve around the trouble the church got in for going into the temple and talking about Jesus.

Here’s what is interesting about this: the church did this together.

Maybe that is part of our problem. We often think of personal evangelism as a “lone ranger” approach. It is about me sharing the gospel with the people in my circle, and it is me versus the world.

What if, as we are living in partnership with others who follow Jesus, we invited our lost friends from work to come over and hang out with us and we took some time to share Jesus with them?

Or, what if we got another believing friend and took up a hobby or started volunteering with an organization that would let us be around people who didn’t know Jesus regularly?

A healthy church seeks out places and ways for her members to get to know people who don’t know Jesus and help them come to know them.

Isn’t it interesting that as Luke summarizes the life of the early church, he can’t help but focus on their outward focus as well?

Their devotion to God’s word, their devotion to fellowship and generosity overflowed into the world around them as they told others about the great things God had done.

That devotion and active faith led to some awe-inspiring outcomes Look back through the passage to see some of them...

3) Awe-inspiring outcomes.

Look at how verse 43 describes their reaction to what God was doing.

There was a sense of awe as people saw God working in ways that only he can.

In the early days of the church, God often worked through miraculous signs and wonders that verified that what the apostles were saying and teaching was true.

Now, as we have the New Testament writings and 2,000 years of church history to look back on, God doesn’t perform miracles in the same way he did then.

As we saw last week, though, we can still have a sense of awe as we see God save people, convict believers of sin, equip people to serve him in great ways, restore broken relationships, release people from bitterness, help people discover their identity and purpose that can only be found in a relationship with him.

Those things fill us with awe as we see God work in ways only he can.

What else did their attitude of devotion and active faith produce?

Look at the end of verse 46: their hearts were filled with a sincere joy.

It wasn’t fake or forced; the believers were filled with joy at who God is and what he had done.

That sincere joy expressed itself in praise that overflowed towards the God who had fulfilled his promises and sent his Son to save the world.

Do we have the same, or have we gotten distracted or discouraged to the point where we have lost sight of the greatness of our God?

That’s why we keep bringing you back to the truth of the gospel over and over again. Jesus died for you! He was raised to defeat death itself, and now he is ruling over all of creation, which means he will one day set everything right.

Praise God that he would love us, be merciful to us, and yet still be the just God who will make sure every wrong is made right.

Others took notice of the joy and generosity of the church, and at this stage, this also produced a general sense of favor with the people.

As we talked about last week, that won’t always be the case, which we will see more clearly as we go through the book of Acts.

However, in these early days, people saw the way the church cared for each other and they joy that came from their relationship to Christ, and they saw something wonderful there.

Would people look at us and see joy and praise of our God? Would they see our concern for each other, or would they just see anger and division?

Again, like we said last week, the message of the gospel is offensive, and our culture doesn’t always react well when we hold up the mirror of God’s word.

However, we can make it harder for people to see the glory of God when we let division and anger fester within the church.

If we stay devoted to studying God’s word, partnering with each other, investing in each other’s lives and the lives around us, we don’t have time to fight!

That favor with the people culminated in the final outcome we want to look at in verse 47…The Lord drew people to himself in salvation.

As the believers grew in their understanding of what it meant to follow Jesus, they grew in their community with one another, and they spread that out to the people around them.

God used their witness to draw people to himself.

Wouldn’t that be awesome to see, in the truest sense of the word?

For people around us who don’t know Jesus to come into his kingdom and learn to walk with him?

We recognize and acknowledge that we cannot save anyone on our own. Only God can do that. However, we trust and believe that God works through his people as they share what God has done in their lives.

For that to happen, we need to follow the model of the early church.

We need to cultivate an attitude of devotion to Christ and to his people.

We need to be devoted to studying his word, partnering with other believers, being radically generous, and sharing our faith with the world.

As we do, we pray that God would draw people to himself, fill our lives with a sincere joy that can only be found in him, and create incredible awe for what he alone can do.

Where do you need to start this morning?