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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.
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
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:
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
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,
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.
Acts 2:
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
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.
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