First Church
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Introduction
Introduction
Today we continue in our journey through the book of Acts. Last week we talked about the coming of the Holy Spirit and Peter’s sermon at Pentecost. In that message he gave proofs from the scriptures showing that Jesus was the promised that the Jewish people had been awaiting for so long. And at the end of the passage we read last week we saw the people ask Peter, “What should we do?” Peter tells them, “Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children, and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call.” Remember, last week I said that this section is the promise to us. This is where Peter is saying, “This promise of salvation, and of the gift of the Holy Spirit isn’t limited just to the Jews. It’s for everyone.” Our passage this morning picks up right where we left off last week. So join me in reading beginning in Acts chapter 2 verse 41.
41 So those who accepted his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand people were added to them. 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.
43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. 44 Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. 45 They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.
Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. 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. Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
We talked a little bit about verse 41 last week. It says that in that one day, following Peter’s sermon there were about 3000 people added to the church. So there were 3000 who received salvation and received the gift of the Holy Spirit in that one day. Then the remaining verses give us a quick summary of the church in those early days after the coming of the Spirit. Verse 42 tells us, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.” Then the remaining few verses of the chapter expound on what these things mean. And that’s what I want to look at this morning, because these verses give us a picture of what the church is supposed to look like, what we’re supposed to be doing. Now as we’ll see later on in the book of Acts, this isn’t always the way the church behaves, because, let’s face it, the church is made up of human beings, and we’re fallible, and we fall to temptation, and we sin. So the church is never going to be perfect, but this is the model that we should be striving to be like. This is the target that we’re aiming at. So let’s look at each of these four things that Luke tells us this first church was engaged in and see how that applies to us as a church today.
They devoted themselves to:
To he Apostles’ Teaching
To he Apostles’ Teaching
For the early church this was pretty straightforward. Remember Jesus gave his apostles a mission back in verse 8 of chapter 1. He told them:
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
That’s what this first practice of the early church is focused on. The apostles were witnesses of Jesus’s ministry. So they spent time passing on what they had learned, what they had seen, what they had been taught by Jesus himself. This teaching would have included the Old Testament scriptures, Jesus’s teaching, and definitely the apostle’s personal witness of the miracles Jesus performed and of his death, burial and resurrection.
But today, 2000 years later, we don’t have that eyewitness testimony that the early church had. At least, we don’t have it in verbal form. We can’t sit and listen to someone speaking who was actually there. But we do have something that the early church didn’t have. We have the eyewitness accounts in written form. In these first days of the church all the apostles were gathered together in Jerusalem sharing the gospel with those who were visiting the city. But as we’ll see as we continue through Acts, this wasn’t always the case. The apostles began to spread out. They went out on mission to other areas of the country, and even other areas of the world, just as Jesus had said they would, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” So as they spread out, the people they were talking to and sharing with only had that one account of things. So one group might hear things from Peter’s perspective while another group heard it from John’s view. But then, the Holy Spirit inspired some of them to write down what they had seen and heard. And these writings began to be passed around among the believing communities in different cities and regions. And eventually they came together to be what we now know as the New Testament. So we can read the eyewitness accounts from different points of view. We can gather together and devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching just as those in the early church did. We just get that teaching from the Bible instead of from the mouths of the apostles themselves.
To the Fellowship
To the Fellowship
The next thing that Luke tells us about for the early church is that they were devoted “to the fellowship.” Now what does this mean? The Greek word that Luke uses here is “κοινωνίᾳ.” This was a word used often by Paul in his writings but this is the only time that Luke uses it in either his gospel or here in Acts. The basic meaning of this word is “Association, communion, fellowship, or close relationship.” In the secular Greek world it could involve the sharing of goods, which seems to be what we see a little later on in the passage in verse 44 when it says,
44 Now all the believers were together and held all things in common.
The word can also refer to communion with a god, especially in the context of a sacred meal. That would seem to be the case here since the next item in our list is the breaking of bread. But then, if the fellowship refers to sharing a sacred meal, then why include both items here? I think this is referring to more than just sharing a sacred meal. I think this “fellowship” that is referred to here is the church itself. It’s the community, the gathering together of people with a shared faith in Jesus as the Messiah.
But I think it’s more than just
This idea is evidenced in the later verses in our passage.
45 They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts,
Acts 2:
44 Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. 45 They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts,
We see here that this idea of κοινωνίᾳ was not limited to just a sacred meal. Yes it involved sharing meals together, but it was much more than that. In the terms of the modern church it was “doing life together.” It was gathering together to worship in the temple. It was sharing meals in each others’ homes. And it was seeing the needs of someone in their community and doing whatever it took to meet those needs.
So what does that look like for us in the modern church? Well, honestly, it looks pretty much the same. It’s gathering together to worship. It’s opening our homes to each other to share a meal, or getting together for a cup of coffee, or playing a round of golf (if you’re into that sort of thing). But, doing life together means more than just eating together, or playing together, or drinking too much caffeine together. We have to go deeper when we get together, because the other part of that passage says that “they sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need.” When we get together we have to open up, we have to share what’s going on in our lives. If we don’t how will we know when someone has a need? And if we don’t know the needs how can we meet them? So we need to be sharing our needs with those in our community of believers. We need to be talking about our hopes and our dreams, and discussing what we’ve been reading in the Bible, or talking about the sermon we heard last week, or anything of some consequence. We need to be talking about things other than the weather, or the score of last night’s football, or basketball, or “insert your chosen sport here” game.
I’ve loved watching what has gone on in here over the last 6 plus months since we moved our service and changed the format. When we first started, the community was pretty similar to what we had at the chapel. Service would end, we’d drink a little more coffee and eat the last of the donuts and then clean up and go home. But I’ve seen that change dramatically over the last few months. Now people are sitting around talking until well after the service is over. There are groups going out to lunch after the service. There are people spending time getting to know each other on more than just a surface level and that is exactly what the term κοινωνίᾳ means. It’s fellowship. Not just standing around drinking coffee. That’s true fellowship.
To the Breaking of Bread
To the Breaking of Bread
The next thing that Luke highlights as a practice of the early church is devotion to the breaking of bread. Now this can be a part of the fellowship aspect that we just talked about. After all, the phrase “breaking bread” refers to sharing a meal together. But as I’ve already stated, I don’t think that Luke would have included both fellowship and breaking of bread in this list of practices if they referred to the same activity. I believe that what Luke is referring to here is specifically the sacred meal, the Lord’s Supper. Remember, as these events that Luke is writing about are occuring, it hasn’t been all that long since the resurrection and all the events surrounding it. That means that it hasn’t been all that long since the Last Supper in the upper room on the night when Jesus was betrayed. Let’s look back at the way Luke portrayed that first Lord’s Supper in his gospel.
Luke 22:14-
14 When the hour came, he reclined at the table, and the apostles with him. 15 Then he said to them, “I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves. 18 For I tell you, from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”
19 And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
20 In the same way he also took the cup after supper and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
The Lord’s Supper was established that night to be a remembrance of Jesus sacrifice for us. As such the early church felt that it was important that they continue to partake in that remembrance. So they regularly observed the Lord’s Supper, just as we do each week at the end of our service.
To Prayer
To Prayer
The last thing in the list that Luke gives us is prayer. It says that the believers devoted themselves to prayer, and that’s something that we should be doing as well. Prayer is our fellowship with God. It’s a conversation. It’s not just us talking to God, it’s God replying, talking back to us. Now I know some of you are sitting there thinking, “I pray but I’ve never heard God speak.” Well a big part of prayer is learning to listen, learning to “hear” the voice of God speaking back to you. It may come in the form of a phone call from a friend at just the right time. It may come in the form of a bumper sticker on the back of the car sitting in front of you at the red light. That one actually happened to me. I won’t go into all the details about it this morning but it’s part of the story that led me to seminary and eventually to become a chaplain. If you want to hear the whole story some time I’ll tell you over a cup of coffee.
And then sometimes the voice of God can even come as an audible voice. I remember hearing Louie Giglio speak to a group of college students one time. He was talking about his call to ministry and how he didn’t really care about his undergraduate studies. He was attending college in Atlanta but he was basically flunking out. He said he just wanted to get on to seminary so he could start doing the ministry that God had called him to. And he said he was driving down one of the major highways through Atlanta one day praying about this and telling God how he just wanted to get on with it and he said, “All of a sudden I heard this audible voice say, “You know Louie, to get in to seminary you have to have a bachelor’s degreee.”” He said he almost caused a wreck because he slammed on the brakes right there in the middle of I75 in downtown Atlanta. But after he got a hold of himself, he went back to school, finished up his degree, with a much better GPA for the rest of it, and went on to seminary.
But the point of that story is this. He was devoted to prayer. He spent time not just talking to God, but listening, waiting for the answers. And he learned to discern the voice of God speaking to him. In this case it spoke out loud because he was being a little thick at the time, as we all do, but he heard his master’s voice. That’s what devotion to prayer looks like.
So that wraps up the second chapter of Acts. Next week we’ll turn to chapter three and begin to see some of the “signs and wonders” that Luke spoke briefly about here in verse 43. But for now, would you join me in prayer?
That’s devotion to prayer. That’s