Devoted To...The Breaking of Bread and Prayer

Intro: The 5 Characteristics of the Early Church

Biblical, Jesus-centered preaching & teaching

2. Sacrificial fellowship

3. “Emotional” worship

4. Outrageous generosity

5. Powerful evangelism

Lets look at our passage again as we discover what these characteristics mean for us as individuals and as a church body.

Acts 2:42–47 (NIVUK84)

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

Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.

All the believers were together and had everything in common.

Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,

praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Devoted

Steadfast, perseverance

The Greek phrase for “devoted themselves”, (esan proskarterountes) repeats an earlier description of this ongoing compulsion of the Apostles and others to prayer found in Acts 1:14

Acts 1:14 NIVUK84

They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

I asked you all to wrestle with these questions last week and I pray that you did. What are you committed to?

Hobbies?

Work? Career?

Relationships?

What occupies your time?

What occupies your conversation?

What occupies your resources?

What makes up your identity?

What we are devoted to is expressed by the fruit visible in our life.

There is a connection in this passage that I missed before that I want to be sure we see now.

I was not great in English class in school but there is an interesting set of connections in verse 42.

We see two sets of pairs in Luke’s description of the church.

I see this as an invitation for us to explore not just a grammatical link, but something more in these connections.

Devoted To…The Breaking of Bread

Some scholars believe that this is in reference to the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper.

There is great importance in the taking of the elements of the Lord’s Supper as long as we are taking to heart the last part of what Jesus tells us to do as we take it.

1 Corinthians 11:25 NIVUK84

In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

As we look at the rest of this passage, some more context gives indication that the Lord’s Supper wasn’t the only thing Luke wants us to understand the importance of.

When we look a little further down in verse 46 it gives us the picture of something a little different.

Acts 2:46 NIVUK84

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,

Where is the most important room in your house?

What would you consider the heart of your home?

For many of us it may be the kitchen table.

Think about what happens around this piece of furniture.

Work and homework may be done.

Meals are shared.

Conversations are held.

The importance of the kitchen table in many homes is being lost.

It’s being replaced by the comfy couch and the TV

Why is this devotion to the breaking of bread together so important that Luke would mention it here?

What happens as we meet often together, gathered together in breaking of bread?

We testify to the Goodness of God!

We share the struggles of what is happening in our lives.

There is something special with the gathering around a meal in with the intention of something more than just eating.

Devoted To…Prayer

In many other translations outside of the NIV, there is a plural used here.

We need to remember that what is happening here is happening with the Jews.

There were prescribed times of prayers that they still followed even though they accepted Jesus as Messiah. When we get to Acts 3, we will see Peter and John going to the temple at one of those times.

However, there is more evidence here that Luke is referencing more than these prescribed times of prayer.

Luke is also emphasizing that there is more to these prayer times than reciting memorized prayers or following a schedule.

In Acts 2:1 we see they were gathered together in one place.

In Acts 1:14, it says they joined together constantly in prayer.

The phrase that is used in this verses, joined…constantly, describes an inner compulsion to or a persistent devotion.

It describes an ongoing typical behavior.

According to Luke this devotion was an observable characteristic.

If we are honest with ourselves here, this may be where the most of us struggle. The apostles leading their times together in this way is very different than when Jesus asked them to come with him to pray. They kept falling asleep and Jesus was frustrated with them.

We struggle with this devotion to prayer.

Whenever they gathered they were devoted to this.

The Connection

There is a strengthening of the fellowship that takes place during times of worship, prayer, spiritual practices and the social connection that brings them together.

Do remember the Greek word for a group that comes together with these things in common?

koinōnia - fellowship, the close association between persons, emphasizing what is common between them

I think there is even more to this. What i picture here is a group committed to these characteristics and the things of God, that doing these things were a natural expression of their experience of them.

Deuteronomy 6:7 NIVUK84

Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

“Them” is in reference to 6:1 - commands, decrees, and the laws of the Lord.

For me, imagining this verse in Deuteronomy carried out in a natural everyday way, looks like our kitchen tables.

This is a picture of discipling “as you go.”

We see a picture here of where the “sacred” extends beyond the temple, or the church into the everyday.

Remember that these are Jews who still held to Jewish practices and theology.

For them, meals were understood theologically as fellowship with God

Let’s bring the sacred into the everyday.