Back to the Basics, Part 1

INTRODUCTION

Anyone here like gardening? I confess: I’m not a fan. I like the plants and all, I enjoy the fruit of labor, but the labor part gets to me a little bit. Here’s the part I struggle with: Gardening, as I see it, is about cultivating an environment of growth, tending to a habitable space that encourages flourishing. You plant a seed in fertile soil, not hard or rocky. You pull weeds. You water the ground. You make sure there’s the right amounts of sun and shade. You plant in the proper season. But at the end of the day, you can’t make plant grow. You are not the active agent of your plant’s flourishing; nature is. You have a role in partnering with nature, but it is not up to you, it’s up to photosynthesis. It’s up to weather patterns. It’s up to God. It requires patience, trust, and flexibility, a willingness to tend and care for the plant, however its flourishing journey goes. It’s beautiful, but it’s messy, and it’s involved.

I think sometimes that’s why I prefer building things. Building has plans. Consistency. Pattern. Materials that can be assembled and ordered. Given the right skill set and an eye for perfectionism, you can create just about anything. The time table is mine, the final look is up to me, it’s my creation, my design. When I build something, I can step back and admire my handiwork, and be proud of what I’ve done.

Now, guess which of these is most like God’s church?

Yeah, gardening.

The work of the church is not an exact science, with blueprints and org charts and step-by-step instructions. It’s more of a craft, a faithful tending. You can spend your whole life committed to the gardening of souls, the care and tending of hearts, to the nourishment of spiritual life, but if you really want to see results? Patience. Waiting for the Spirit to move and to fill with life. Given the right environment and the right season, the church may grow and flourish in beauty and health, but how it ultimately turns out and where it moves and grows is not up to you. The credit goes to the author and sustainer of life.

We are working our way through select passages of the book of Acts in our series called Great Grace. The life and flourishing of the church is not built on our work, otherwise it would be called Great Job People, or Church DIY. No, it is God who directs, who guilds, whose Spirit breathes life into the community of Christ; we are mere gardeners, tending and caring and waiting on God to move, and enjoying every bit of it. Today, we are in perhaps one of the most famous and important texts of Scripture when it comes to discerning the life of the church. If you want to know what everyday life looks like in the Christianity community, start here. And this is the question that has been going through my mind all week as I have looked at this: what is stopping us from making this rhythm of life THE RHYTHM of the church community?

PRAY

THE BASIC RHYTHM

We are in Acts 2:42-47 today. Let’s begin with verse 42, which summarizes the rest of the passage in one powerful sentence.

Acts 2:42 CSB

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.

This is how the church began to take shape in its infancy. Just beginning. Why? I think the answer is somewhat simple. They longed to be closer with God (teaching and prayer), and they longed to be closer with each other. A church, at its heart is about community with God and with man. I looked up the origin of the word “church” in English. It goes back to a Medieval Greek term, kuriakon, meaning “the house of the Lord.” It’s a nice sentiment (reminds me of Psalm 23), but the biblical word for “church” is what we are looking for. That word is ekklesia, which literally means “to be called out of.” You are being called out of this world, out of your pursuits, out of your personal loves and aims, your habits and practices, your devotion to all that this world has to off you, and you are called into a new society, a new family, to be now devoted to God and his people. He has gathered you in, together, to love him and to love one another with all of your heart. So it makes sense that the practice of these called out ones is all about deepening your love and care the community, and deepening your love for and reliance on Jesus.

There’s a word that caught my attention this week, and I want you to be mindful of it as we go. It’s actually the first action the church does. It might even be the primary activity of the church. What did they do? They devoted themselves. This word is used ten times in the Bible; six of them are in the book of Acts. The word here has a curious definition: it means to persist obstinately. To stubbornly stick to something. Now, that sounds almost legalist at first, but think of the imagery here. It would be like I surgically attached my watch to my wrist so that I could always tell time (I know that’s weird, but bear with me). My watch would become part of who I was, I would be the TIME KEEPER. And people would always come and ask me about the time, because they know I would have a watch. It would be part of Jacob—he’s the guy with the watch sewn on to his arm.

I think devotion is to be the default heart setting for the church. I think God wants us to be so devoted to the hearing of his word, so attached to growing deeper in unity with other believers, so committed to sharing meals and remembering the reality of Jesus, so reliant and dependent upon community with him in prayer, that it would become part of our identity. We would be known by our habits and practices, and those practices would make clear who it is that we love.

The rest of chapter 2, verses 43-47, take these four practices and explain them a bit further. We are just going to hit the first two today, and the the second half next week. Let’s walk through these, again, asking the question: what does it look like to make these the day-in, day-out, life rhythms of our church today?

TEACHING (ACTS 2:43)

Acts 2:43 CSB

Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles.

First, Teaching. Look at how this plays out. The apostles, the first elders and pastors of the church community, would teach. The Hebrew Scriptures would be read—our Old Testament—and then Peter and John and the others would explain how Jesus has fulfilled them through his life, death, and resurrection.

There are three parts to the Hebrew Bible: the Law, the Writings, and the Prophets.

The Law showed Israel how to be a holy bridge between the realms of sinful humanity and perfect divinity. Jesus lived a perfect life, died a perfect death, and he became the Way through which man might enter God’s presence.

The Writings explained the History of Israel, how God remained faithful, how Israel became a nation, how kings would rise and fall, and how God promised to David that one day a king from his line would come and never relinquish the throne. Jesus was that king, from the line of David, who now sits at the right hand of the Father, ruling and reigning and expanding the boundaries of his kingdom to the ends of the earth.

The Prophets urged people to follow their God, to depend on him, to commit to him. They warned people about what a life without God looks like. They also testified that God would never give up on them, that he would one day trade his life for theirs and bring about an end to suffering, to exile, to despair and sadness, and to death itself. Jesus revealed himself to be God in the flesh, dwelling among men, dying a death they should have suffered, and rising to defeat death and restore the bond we break when we are unfaithful to him.

TEACHING IN WORD

Whenever the church is together, we read the Bible. It doesn’t matter who reads it, because the power doesn’t lie in the reader, but in this, the words of God breathed out through human voices, God’s creative force animating and filling life into empty vessels. As we read, we humbly and clearly point to Jesus as the author of our salvation, of our hope, of our lives. If we read the Bible as any else—as a self-help manual, as practical advise, as an outdated religious text, as a collection of fortune cookie sayings or mystical mantras—it loses it power, it becomes lifeless, boring, unintelligible, a burden we were not meant to carry. Every word can and must therefore be read through the lens of the gospel. As preachers and teachers, as pastors, elders, leaders, our responsibility is simply to point you to Jesus at every turn.

TEACHING IN DEED

But look, it is not only teaching in word, but also in deed. Many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. God was not merely a historical remembrance, but a present and active participant in the life of the community. They anticipated that God would show up, that he would heal, that the Kingdom of God would look as powerful as it sounded. It seems that the pattern the church used was this: God leads, and we follow.

We don’t need to stir up spiritual frenzy. We don’t need to manufacture miracles. But we should expect that if the God of the universe is dwelling among us, things ought to look different. It ought to look less like a society built by the ambition and skill of humans and more like a society framed and established by the power and glory and goodness and beauty of the all powerful creator, right? And notice, signs and wonders were not performed just so that God could show up, or so that the church would be popular or powerful or influential. Signs are just that, signs that point to the reality of God who God is. God heals because he is a healer. God expels evil because he is good. God provides because he is a provider. If our hope for miracles is because want them, because we want benefits and blessings, regardless of where they came from or who they reveal, then we’ve lost sight of the ancient rhythm God’s people. In all honesty, the blessings are not the end goal, the end hope, the promised reality—they merely point to the real effect, the real goal. And so part of our church practice ought to include, in some way, the ministry of God’s Spirit through believers to one another.

Now, How does the church respond to the reading of the word, to the powerful works of God done through the people? Everyone was filled with awe. In Greek, it’s the word phobos, fear, this gripping, almost terrifying realization that the presence of the all-powerful God is in your midst, that you are truly helpless without him, that you are being absolutely swept up in his movement, his grace, his love and kindness.

Part of me wants to say, we don’t need to compare ourselves to the early church! They are days away from Jesus rising from death, from the Son of God literally walking upon the earth! Of course awe and fear are flowing through the church! But we can’t be expected to share that same sentiment, can we? Or can’t we? Shouldn’t we? After all, We are held captive by the same reality, the same grace, the same Spirit, the same Jesus. How we gather might change. But Jesus never has. And so we live and move and have our being by the same God who was and is and is to come. And so as we gather and read and teach and as God works wonders through us, the fear and awe that come upon is the very same awe that once gripped those new believers 2000 years ago. He is still present, he is still working. And that means there is endless and abundant opportunity for the church to respond.

FELLOWSHIP (ACTS 2:44-45)

Acts 2:44–45 CSB

Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need.

Second, the church is devoted to fellowship. The greek word here is koinonia. Now, hang with me for a second. I know fellowship is a big word around churches. We have a room over here that we have called the Fellowship Center, or Fellowship Hall. The idea or concept of fellowship seems to be an important aspect in churches today. But I think we need to go deeper to get a handle on what fellowship truly means. It’s more than socializing, or friendship between other Christians. Those things are good, and I actually think the church as a whole needs to be better about engaging with one another as friends who play and eat and hang out together, who go out to the movies or parks, who genuinely like each other. We do need more than that. But that’s not quite what fellowship is about. Verses 44-45 actually give us the definition. All the believers were together and held all things in common (Gr. koinos). As the Spirit of God flows through people, he unites and connects them to one another. You and I share a common thread, a bond that unites us, and it has nothing to do with our common interests or taste in movies or food or clothing. We are tied together by the blood of Christ and the Spirit of Peace. Koinonia means being together and sharing what we have.

Look at the next part of the definition. They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need. Commonality meant everything I have is yours, and if you need it more than I do, you can have it. Generosity and sharing in way that loved and cared for people who could not take care of themselves. In the book of Acts, this generally looked like people selling goods or property—earning money—and then bringing it to the leadership, who had a better sense of the needs in the community. And the apostles and deacons would take that money and distribute it among those who needed it.

Again, a reminder. These are not prescriptions, commands (at least not here in this text). This is not a how-to manual. “Teach the Bible and Give away all your possessions and then God will bless you OR do these things or else God will curse you.” Remember, what’s the point? Devotion to God and his presence among us, devotion to his people and their presence among us. A stubborn persistence to love those around you. A divine selflessness. When the people were filled with awe, they recognized a God who was bigger than them, who had authority, whose story was being written before their eyes. Nothing about them, all about God. And then, they shared with whoever had need. Their eyes on who, themselves? No, others. The struggling, the hurting, the broken, widows and orphans and paraplegics and blind and deaf, those who were considered the lowest rungs of the social ladder, those who the rest of the world considered cursed by God. The church reckoned them blessed by God, and so they shared whatever resources they possibly could. When the presence of God joins believers together, restorative justice reigns.

I like this idea of fellowship. I’ve told you before, I’m an introvert. That doesn’t mean I don’t like people (common misunderstanding). I do like people, it just doesn’t energize me to be in huge crowds. I’m not a fan of surface conversations with tons of people. I don’t schmooze. I’m not super interested in the weather, unless it’s affecting you physically or emotionally, in which case I care deeply. What I am interested in are honest conversations, real talk about real life, where you actually are, what you’re struggling with, what you are confused about, or what God is showing you and teaching you.

We have this thing called FOLLOW, where one member invites someone in the church or out of it to meet with them for at least six weeks to work through a process of following Jesus. The first time I went through it myself, I was invited by an elder at another church in the Sacramento area, a man named Mark. Every Thursday at we would have coffee at Panera Bread, and every Thursday we would share our lives, where we were at, how we were struggling, what we needed, where were at in our relationship with Jesus. Mark learned that we had a big family, but not a lot of close friends who could give a break. Mark and his wife offered to babysit for us so we could have time together. Mark learned that my family had some medical needs and that our insurance wasn’t able to cover any of that. A week later, another elder called with an offer to cover our expenses when they would come up. When the presence of God joins believers together, restorative justice reigns. That’s fellowship. There’s no program that can manufacture fellowship, just like there’s no program that can manufacture awe and wonder. It’s faith filled presence, trusting in the Spirit of God.

But we can devote ourselves. We can cultivate the ground. We can read the word together, we can point to Jesus. We can share our needs, our problems, and we can offer what he have out of love and care. We can give generously as a church, and as a church, we can distribute well. We can orient our expenses as a church to better cultivate koinonia. We can trust that God will move through people, and that God will provide through people.

We are the gardeners. But Jesus grows his church.