Sermon Tone Analysis

Today is January 2 and it is the season of New Years’ Resolutions.

My wife helped me with this intro this week.

She Googled “weirdest new years’ resolutions”.

It is my pleasure to share these with you now.

These are some of the top resolutions made on Twitter.

Get lost without any help from Siri

Check facts before sharing on social media

Stop kids from eating dirt

Stop kids from flossing in public

Watch every episode of Power Rangers

Rule the world

Stop procrastinating

Wash my underwear more often

Don’t make any New Years’ resolutions

How many of you have made a New Years’ resolution?

We know the typical resolutions we tend to make: I’m going to give up soda, I’m going to workout five days a week, I’m going to read the Bible all the way through.

What if we thought differently about making New Years resolutions?

What if we went deeper than any of that to the root of things?

What if, in other words, we made a commitment to live in light of three truths: the holiness of God, our sin, and God’s grace?

I wonder how that would affect the other resolutions we make.

Notice with me three things from this passage today.

This passage will introduce God’s holiness, our sin, and God’s grace in a very powerful and memorable way.

#1: The big-heartedness of the church in Jerusalem

Notice with the big-heartedness of the early church.

Big-heartedness - why have I chosen that word?

Look with me at verse 32: “Now the full number of those who believed” - and note that phrase, “the number of those who believed” - the book of Acts consistently refers to the church as the gathering of those who believed - not those who pursue good works, not those who pray, not those who give their money and possessions — no, while those things ought to be true of us, before we are any of those things we are a people of faith, a people who believe the gospel is true and we seek to bring our lives into conformity with the gospel.

“Now the full number of those who believed were” - now look at this next phrase, and underline it: “[they] were of one hearted and soul.”

That’s the unity of the early church and it’s God’s intention for every church, including our church.

God the Holy Spirit has united each of us with the risen Savior and because each of us are one with Him, we are one with each other.

If you are a believe, you have more in common with your fellow believers, your fellow church members, than you have with your blood relatives who are not believers.

So that’s their unity, and it leads them to be generous, to be benevolent, to be, in other words, big hearted: “they were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common” (Acts 4:32 ESV).

Makes sense, right?

If you’re really and truly one with a person, as we are with each other as Christians, then the natural overflow of that is to share our lives, share our property, share our possessions with each other.

Just like in a marriage: when my wife and I got married, everything she had become mine and everything I had became hers - including my french fries.

And by the way, this unity that we enjoy as believers is something the world around us seeks persistently and obsessively but has not found.

And in fact, they never will find it, because true unity comes from being one with Jesus Christ in a personal relationship by faith.

Make no mistake, church, Jesus is the only person who can take people who previously hated one another and bring them into loving fellowship with one another in the church.

The gospel message is the only message that can take our hardened and hateful hearts and transform them into hearts of love and joy and peace.

Just think of Jews and Gentiles.

But we started with the word bigheartedness.

What does that word mean?

Bighearted:

Kind

Benevolent

Generous

Openhanded

Now, considering those descriptions, would you say the early church was big-hearted?

Go back with me and read the second part of verse 32: “and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.”

But wait, there’s more, verses 34-35: “There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.”

I really like that last word: openness.

Let’s do a little exercise.

Stretch out your hands, just like this.

Now turn your hands so that your palms are facing upward, and open your palms like this.

Now keep your hands stretched out, but make your hands into fists.

Which feels more natural?

I think it feels more natural to be openhanded.

And being openhanded is how the early church managed to be so bighearted.

And their bigheartedness led them to radical generosity.

They were determined, Luke says, that there would not be a poor person in their midst.

Did the wealthier church members have to sell what they had and give the money?

No. God respects property ownership.

But here’s the thing: if God’s grace in Jesus Christ is changing you, then increasingly you’re going to want to be big-hearted, you’re going to want to practice radical generosity.

Three steps to generosity:

1.

They gave themselves to Christ

2. They saw themselves as stewards, not owners

3.

They gave themselves, and their possessions, to others

Because, you see, open palms show that we are opening ourselves to God to work in our lives, and open palms show others that we are open to them too: we will love and care for them, even to the point of giving our wealth to them if they have need.

Here’s the progression: they gave themselves to Christ, they chose to see themselves as stewards of their possessions rather than owners, and they gave themselves, and their possessions, to one another.

And this is despite the persecution the church was facing right then!

Peter and John have been threatened by the authorities.

Stop preaching Jesus or else.

They went back and gathered together as one to pray for boldness.

God grants the boldness, and the early church presses on.

I like what the Puritan pastor Stephen Charnock said about this verse:

“The church never was so like to heaven as when it was most persecuted by hell.”

There’s a little picture there for you, too.

You didn’t know this until now, but in 2022 these man-wigs are going to come back in style again.

This is the bigheartedness of the early church.

#2: The big-heartedness of Barnabas

How many of you remember the TV series B. L. Stryker?

It ran in the late 1980s into 1990.

It was part of the ABC Mystery Movie umbrella group and it featured Rita Moreno and Burt Reynolds, directed by Tom Selleck.

One episode of this TV series featured a daring rescue.

Burt Reynolds saves a woman from a burning house in Palm Beach, FL that was detonated by a bomb.

The front yard of this was the epicenter of a really violent scene with cars crashing and blowing up.

You know, your typical 1980s action movie.

Now the people who lived in the house were of course asked, “Can we use your hard to, you know, blow up a bunch of stuff in” And of course they said, “Sure”.

Problem is, they didn’t own the house; they were renters.

And the owner of the house ended up getting a tip from a neighbor that his house was literally burning.

Those renters didn’t understand that as renters, they were stewarding the property for someone else.

It belong to them.

They were stewards, not owners.

Many of you know we just bought a house in Cherryville.

That’s the first house we have ever owned.

Prior to that, we rented.

And prior to that, we lived in a parsonage.

My first church had a parsonage, and I’ve often wondered if there’s still evidence of our time in that house.

You see, our kids were much, much younger then; they were two and four when we started at Mt. Zion and they were almost five and seven when we moved out.

And the parsonage, how shall we put this: you could only conclude that small children had lived there.

There were pencil drawings on the walls in the hallway; there were stains on the carpet (some of those stains might have been mine, by the way).