What the Church does

At about 6pm, dinner will normally be ready, (or pretty close to being ready). Following dinner, the kids all troupe off to the bath. This is followed by what seems a lot like herding cats, where you try to get them all to clean their teeth and get in the pajamas.

We then have a time of reading books, and in the case of Elise, often doing her homework, before we then get them to bed, which involves a prayer and a song.

Now there is nothing particularly special about this routine. In fact, all of our lives are full of them.

Routines in churches

And they're not just in our lives. Are churches are full of routine as well.

We like to think of some churches as being traditional, where they are just a bit stuck in an old way of doing things. The reality is however, that all churches have traditions, even if many of them might be quite new.

Most churches, including our own, have a reasonably set structure of how the church runs. Here we sing a few songs, have announcements and offering - do a few more songs followed by prayer, then another song before the message and then close with one last song and a benediction.

You could dig a bit deeper and look at many other traditions within that set structure.

Benefit of routines

Now there is nothing wrong with routines. They can be very helpful. They've been figured out over time to help us make the most of what we can offer.

Potential problems

But they can also come with potential problems in that the things we do are done with such little thought, that they're not really servicing any purpose.

Some songs can have amazingly powerful lyrics, yet the words come out of our mouths so automatically that we don't let the truths we speak sink into us.

This morning we had communion which is an institution passed down to us by the Lord himself, and symbolizes the oneness we share with Christ, yet it can so easily become just another thing we do at church.

Avoiding this problem

Today as we continue to explore the idea of what it means to be a church, we come to look at the various aspects of what the church does. To do this, we're going to look specifically at Acts 2:42-47, which gives us this brief picture of the very early community of believers. We'll pick up some very specific things that this early community did, some of which I'll argue are really important elements for which the church today should keep central to its current practice.

But as I do, what is going to become so important in this discussion is not just how we can add these elements to our routine in some empty way, but rather seeing how there are certain things that will keep our focus right where it should be.

Context of Passage

So before we move into looking at this picture of church, its important as always to look at the context of the passage.

Well, the book of Acts starts with the ascension of Jesus. Looking at this first chapter, we're told in verse 3 that Jesus appeared to various people over a period of forty days following his glorious resurrection from the dead.

As he is about to ascend before the eyes of his apostles, he tells them that he wants them to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

It is these last words that then set the scene for the rest of the book of Acts, which follow this very pattern. First, the witness of Jesus is spread throughout Jerusalem.

This takes us up to chapter 8, when we then see the church moving throughout Judea and Samaria. And then finally, starting in chapter 13, Paul takes centre stage where the church moves to the many different nations.

Acts 2 - Birth of the church?

But it is back in chapter 2, with Jerusalem being the centre of the action, where we come today and see the initial flurry of activity.

Some call this the chapter the birth of the church, and in some regards it is, although from another perspective, if you see the church as the people called by God to be his chosen people, then you can see the church in the Old Testament as well.

But in one sense, Acts 2 sees the church taking on a whole new form, and it's exciting stuff.

Pentecost

It starts on the day of Pentecost, which was a very significant date on the Jewish calendar, but from a Christian perspective, it is about to take on a whole new level of meaning with what happens in Acts 2.

The action starts in verse 2 when you first get the sound like a blowing of a violent wind. It tells us that it filled the whole house where the disciples where sitting.

Then it gets a little stranger with what seemed to be tongues of fire separating and coming to rest on each of them.

Suddenly they are all filled with the Holy Spirit and each speak in a tongue as the Spirit enables them.

What becomes clear is that the language they were speaking were not just strange utterances unable to be understood by others, rather languages that people who speak other earthly languages could well understand.

There were many people listening to all this, and it perplexed them greatly. Some in fact quickly drawing the conclusion that they must be drunk.

But this prompted Peter to address the crowd, which he did clearly with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

He gave a powerful speech which is recorded for us from verses 14 through to 39.

In it, he links the events that have just happened with prophecies from scripture.

He then describes the death and resurrection of Jesus and the power that comes from this.

And he concludes with the exhortation to repent and be baptised, and that if they do, they too can have the gift of the Holy Spirit like they've witnessed from the disciples.

There was clearly the work of the spirit at hand, because that very day, we are told that 3,000 people were added to their number.

I describe this event to you now, because as we move to look at what the community that formed as a result looked like, its important to realise the amazing way that God has just revealed himself.

These people didn't know what hit them. And believe me, this was not just some sort of trickery which got people excited in the moment only for them to fall away soon after. Because what is at play is the Spirit opening eyes to the reality of what God has done. This is the sort of change that lasts for eternity.

This was powerful stuff, and the way the community acted was a direct response to what happened.

So let's now turn to verse 42 to see what they did.

Four elements of worship

Well, straight up, there are four things that are listed to which this new community devoted themselves to, and I'm briefly going to look at each.

Apostle's teaching

First up, we read that they were devoted to the apostles teaching.

This is a really important one to remember, particularly given the context I just mentioned. You see, it could easily seem that they were all just getting caught up in the moment and it was all about getting warm fuzzy feelings - and while I by no means want to minimise the amazing feeling you get when the Spirit reveals himself to you, but the truth is that there is a whole lot of historical fact behind those feelings.

Those feelings you get are based on hard, objective facts - which unfortunately is something that the postmodern world we live in so often just doesn't get.

But grounding ourselves in the teaching of who God is, becomes so very important otherwise we end up with some kind of make-your-own religion, which sadly is what has happened for so many people.

This is why today we place a lot of importance on the sermon. The sermon is not a place for the pastor to have some sort of rant, rather it is for expounding the Holy Scriptures so that we can ground our belief in the objective facts of what God has done for us.

The sermon of course isn't the only place where we can devote ourselves to teaching. You can also have private study, group studies, scripture readings, or all sorts of such things.

The important thing however is that for us now, that teaching (in whatever form it might take), should be grounded in scripture and not just our fallible thinking. You'll see in the passage it is the apostles teaching. For us now, those apostles are long gone, and so we're now reliant on the Bible as our objective truth.

Fellowship

Secondly, we read that they were devoted to fellowship. Sometime we use fellowship in a very loose sense of just hanging out together. To an extent, there is some truth to that, but the word translated fellowship, which some of you might know is 'koinonia', has a deeper meaning such that the idea of sharing together is in view.

We see shortly the extent to which their sharing went, yet what I believe is mostly in view here is the way in which they all looked out for one another.

There was certainly not a view of their Christianity being just a personal thing and not concerning others, rather there had a deep sense of belonging to a body like we looked at last week.

Breaking of Bread

Thirdly, we see that they are devoted to the breaking of bread. Of course, this didn't mean that they just loved randomly ripping bread in half, rather it was the phrase they used for what we now call Communion, or in the language Paul liked to use, the Lord's Supper.

You might call it a sacrament, which is a word that describes a certain ritual or routine through which God's grace is given to us. As Baptist's we tend to steer clear of the term sacrament, as we usually recognise that it is not the process itself which somehow mystically transmits something of God, rather the what might be called a sacrament is symbolic of what God is giving to us.

With these differences, we find that there are quite a few different understandings about communion, but I'm not going to go into detail about this, rather, on a very basic level, what we find when we take part in it, is that we are identifying ourselves with our Lord Jesus Christ and what he has done for us. It is more than just a memorial, rather there is a far deeper connection that goes with it.

For this reason, I believe it is an important tradition for us to keep, as so powerfully symbolizes what we have with Jesus.

Prayer

Fourthly and finally, the new church devoted themselves to prayer.

There is a lot we can say about prayer. It is something that can easily be put to the side, particularly when we get too caught up in the worldly practical side of things. But when we realise that what we are a part of is not of this world, but rather something that is solely of God, then we need to recognise that prayer is the means by which we connect ourselves with him.

A church without prayer, is like a child who thinks they don't need to speak with their parents.

Being devoted to prayer is far more than just getting your wish list granted - although this is how we sometimes treat it. Rather, through prayer, the church is guided through the trials and struggles that naturally come with being planted in this world.

I can't stress this point enough that the church needs prayer - not as some thing that sits to the side, rather as something that every thing we do is completely rooted in.

How they mix

In some ways we can look at these four elements and think they are four separate functions of the church, yet in some ways they are all related.

In fact some people believe that only one thing is in view in these four things, and that is what they do around the communion table.

You see, part of communion is actually teaching, in that we learn of the wonderful truths of what Jesus has done for us. Communion is also fellowship in that we are sharing with one another the very thing Jesus has done for us. In some ways, having communion together is the deepest form of fellowship.

We've already discussed how the breaking of bread is another name for communion, and finally, prayer is an aspect of communion.

Now I'm not going to push that line too far, but I find it fascinating how connected we find everything we do in church is.

That's because the functions of the church help us grow in two connected ways. Firstly it helps us grow closer to God, and secondly helps us grow closer to one another.

Growing closer to God

I believe it makes good sense. If we think of the church as the people called out by God for his purpose, then as we meet together we are going to grow in that calling. Therefore the things we do will help us grow closer to God.

Even as we move beyond the things just in this passage. We can think of things like singing and even mission spots, and realise that as we worship God, and consider the ways he is working, we are also drawing close to him.

Closer to others

And these functions also help us draw closer to one another because in God we find a unifying love that sees everyone as equals.

A picture of the community

If I move back to the passage, from verse 43 onwards we get this beautiful picture of the community, and we see how these people, as they drew closer to God, they also drew closer to one another.

It starts by saying that everyone was filled with awe. This is what happens when you spend time being with God and considering how he works.

Sharing

But then it all seems to get a bit weird as verse 44 tells us that they had everything in common.

Now your mind might go to some form of communism when you read these verses, but I'd recommend steering clear of that thinking because there is way too much political baggage with communism that just isn't present in these verses.

So, instead of reading these verses and wondering if this we should be replicating this exact way of living, I suggest that we see it as the way that they worked out the natural consequences of drawing close to one another.

In our culture and context, I suggest it will naturally look different, but that being said, as we do church together there should be a natural drawing closer to one another.

This is despite the fact that we are a diverse bunch of people who have very different likes and dislikes. With some people who have similar interests, you will find you do more with these people, yet while you might not hang out as much with some of the others, by the fact that they are your brother or sister in Christ, there should still be this beautiful connection you have with them.

The types of sharing

We see a number of different types of sharing.

In verse 45, we see a sharing of possessions.

In verse 46 we see a sharing of time together.

In that same verse we see that this time together involved drawing closer to God.

In verse 47 we see that they shared their praises with God.

The exact nature to which we share these things will look different in different cultures, but the important thing is that we do share with one another the things that God has given us.

The result of it

Finally, I want to briefly look at what naturally should happen as a result of being the church.

In verse 47 we read that the Lord asses to their number daily those who were being saved.

Now it is important to note the very specific time in the history of the church that this was occurring.

The Holy Spirit was working in a big way as the church took on this new form as new covenant people.

For this reason we might naturally expect that the extent of the growth at this time might be more than the speed of the growth today.

Nevertheless, as we looked at two weeks ago, firmly in the DNA of the church is the idea that we should grow, and for this reason, the church, even today, should naturally experience growth.

This can be a little disheartening at times when we don't see things happen at the rate we would like, but we need to continue to trust that God will see his work done.

Now while I maintain that we should try to be deliberate about sharing the good news, there is also a sense in which, as we sing praises to God, and generally show care and true love to one another, that people will naturally want to join the church.

In this way, growth becomes almost a by-product of what we do.

Now I don't want to sound like I'm contradicting myself from two weeks ago. This is not an excuse to be lazy in evangelism, rather it trying to show the full extent to which God works his purposes out.

Summing up...

In all this discussion, it is important to recognise that the passage we've discussed today does not become a strict how-to guide. If it does, then we've just got ourselves another empty routine whose purpose is just in being a routine.

But, what is important to recognise in this passage is that what they do as a church is a direct result of what God has done to them.

God has called them to be a part of the church, and so the things they do have the purpose of drawing themselves closer to God, which in turn draws them closer to others, and then in turn naturally draws other people into the community.

As we think about what we do here at Tanilba Bay Baptist in 2016, we need to ensure that the things we do likewise reflects how God has called us to him and that we now need to draw close to him.

This will happen through singing, praying together, sharing with one another, learning together and sharing in the Lord's supper together.

Let's be deliberate in the way we do these things so that we can be the church that God has called us to be.