Unity and Self Sacrifice of Church

Well, you may have noticed in your bulletin this morning a strange insert.

It's strange for two reasons. First of all, it's strange because it is written in a foreign language and is approximately 1800 years old, but it's also strange in that as I sat up here this morning and I was looking at it and started reading through it,

I realized that there is one that I should have given you before I gave you this one. This isn't completely out of step.

It's from Acts chapter 5, but I have one from Acts chapter 4, and either

I just got them confused or they have been mislabeled in my big old massive file of images of P45.

So I may have to provide you with another one to fill in. Not that too many of you would care one way or the other,

I realize that, but there are a couple. I mean, is Brother George hiding someplace?

He does actually keep track of these things, so I don't want to disappoint him. But for those of you who may be visiting, over the past number of, well, it's been about a year or so, whenever I finished up the last series of sermons, and especially during the summer, and this is that time of the summer where Pastor Fry, we actually can get rid of him for one weekend, that's all we can manage.

They left yesterday and will be back before next Lord's Day, so they go for about two weeks, but not quite, because they just can't be gone that long.

And if any of you know Pastor Fry, you will not be shocked to discover that he is a man of tradition, and he doesn't like changing things too much.

And so they're right back where they've been, I don't know, for 15 years now or so, going to the same place, even on vacation, or as they say over in Europe, on holiday, that he still likes to have things pretty much the same.

Not a big guy on change at all. So anyways, during the summer months, either in July or August, normally early

August, I have the responsibility of preaching a little bit more than normal, and so we began a series from this manuscript, this is a photocopy, well not really a photocopy, it's actually a very high quality copy of a fragment from manuscript

Papyrus P45, Papyrus 45, which most of you know is part of a doctoral program that I'm doing in Northwest University in Patrasum, South Africa, in textual criticism.

And so what we've been doing is we have been utilizing it as somewhat of a guide, if it contains any portion of a chapter of the

Bible, then we are preaching that chapter of the Bible. And so we did what was found in John, and now we are in the book of Acts, specifically toward the end of Acts chapter 4, if you wish to turn there.

This was supposed to be Acts 4 .27 and following, but as I said,

I have now discovered that my graphics are misidentified, basically because I started reading through it going, well that's not from Acts 4.

And you may note, if you kept some of those that I passed out to you before, you may recognize that this looks like it's much more of a close -up, and what that means is the fragments in the

Acts are much smaller. If you remember the book of John, they were pretty large.

They would contain the vast majority of the text. This is sort of right down the middle of the middle of the page, well actually toward the top of the page.

You can see you've got the top margin up there at the top. And so not in as good a shape as you had in the

Gospel of John. And so there's a lot of the text that is missing. And so you have to sort of compare it with other manuscripts, obviously, to be able to put it all together.

But as I've said many times, when people look at the early papyri and go, man, that's not in great shape,

I just look at them and say, what are you going to look like 1800 years from now? So keep that in mind when you consider the things that this scrap of papyrus has survived, wars and fires and bugs and floods and everything else, and yet it's still here.

I can assure you that whoever the scribe was that copied this manuscript so long ago of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, that he had absolutely no conception that his handwriting would be looked upon by people 1800 years in the future by photocopy in a land on the other side of the earth.

That would never have entered his mind, I can assure you. And so that is what we've been doing.

And so we are in Acts chapter 4. And if you were with us last time, you know that we dealt with the issue of the first persecution and the church's response to that first persecution.

The fact that once the apostles are threatened by the

Sanhedrin, and they are commanded specifically not to teach or preach any longer in the name of Jesus, and that word name is going to become very important throughout the book of Acts.

It is the name for which they suffer, the name in which they preach, specifically a

Christian proclamation, which is denied by the

Jewish leadership. So even though these are at least the beginning, primarily Jewish people, we have here the beginnings of this differentiation.

And there is a certain level of necessary differentiation, and then there unfortunately are levels of differentiation that have taken place during church history that were not necessary and have ended up being very unhealthy in the division that took place between the synagogue and the early church.

But the necessary division is, of course, the centrality of the name of Jesus.

And we saw the church's statement in verse 27, for truly in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant

Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.

And so the last time we were together, we gave consideration to what it meant that the church, upon experiencing persecution, immediately falls back upon foundational and basic beliefs, foundational and basic truths, and specifically that God has been very much behind what has taken place, that this was not some great mistake, this was not, okay,

God's come up with plan B. No, what took place, which from the world's perspective was the uniting together of the most powerful empire on earth against Jesus and this terrible, horrible death, a death that was by a means that was considered to be the worst means possible for someone to be put to death.

No Roman citizen could ever be crucified no matter how horrible an act they may have committed.

And yet, for the early church, they see Herod and Pontius Pilate and the

Romans and the peoples of Israel all doing whatever

God's hand and God's purpose had predestined to occur. These are not decrees of God that we know beforehand, but in looking back, they are able to see that God most assuredly was in control of what took place, this was not some great mistake, this was not some great tragedy, this was what

God had intended to take place. And in light of that then, they asked that God would grant that their bondservants might speak the word with all confidence and so on and so forth.

And so the apostles then, filled with the Holy Spirit, began to speak the word of God with boldness.

And so we have this early period in the church. This then becomes the context for our text this morning, which has had a tremendous history of utilization in the past.

And once we read it, you will be able to see why that is the case. Once again, we remind ourselves that the chapter and verse divisions came much, much, much later in the history of the church.

Twelve to thirteen hundred years for the chapter divisions and the verse divisions, specifically for the

New Testament, were first introduced in the year 1551. And so we are talking about way down the road from the original authors, and we do encounter a situation where really, smack dab in the middle of a story and smack dab in the middle of a theme, we have a chapter division between chapters four and five.

It is somewhat of an unfortunate division, as we will see. And once again, the warning that I've given many times, it is very easy for us to use those divisions to lose track of the flow of the text and to, as a result, think that what's going on in chapter five is somehow separated in some conceptual fashion from what is going on in chapter four, when in point of fact, it is the same story and the same theme, just undergoing further development.

So beginning in verse 32, and the congregation, and that's not the normal term for a church, an ecclesia, but the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and one soul.

And not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them.

And with great power, the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all.

For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need.

Now that's just the introduction, but I think many of you know that we need to spend at least a little amount of time on this particular text because of the utilization of it down through the ages.

This is a key text, and I'm sort of looking around for Dr. Barth, but I don't, so he must be in the nursery or something today.

Is that true? Aha, what a guess. Perfect timing on that, because I was going to be watching his facial expressions, or facial tics, depending on whether you agreed or disagreed with what

I was saying, in regards to this particular text, because as you can probably imagine, there has been tremendously wide utilization of this particular text, and I cannot help but think about an incredibly important story in church history that I'm going to be telling you in the church history series within the next couple of weeks.

It's one of the reasons I've put off pursuing the rest of church history, is we're going to spend an entire class, minimally, on this one story, and I've already read a couple books and articles on the subject, so the revolution that took place in the northern

German city of Münster between 1534 and 1535 is one of the most fascinating and instructive stories in church history, and I can assure you that this very text was central in the establishment of what could only be described as a strange mixture of theocracy, kingship, and communism, in that small city, a very heavily fortified city, which is why they were able to hold off the king -bishops, the prince -bishops forces for well over a year, and take control of this major city, and establish a really, really strange conglomeration of cultic theology, and just Joseph Smith way before his time, and all sorts of strange things.

I mean, there is a reason why the three cages that they put the dead bodies of the leaders in once this was all over with, and hung them from the church tower, there's a reason why those cages are hanging from that church tower today.

You can go to Münster, Germany, and take pictures of them. The bodies are gone, for obvious reasons, but they left them up there as a warning against what can happen.

Well, I can assure you that the individuals in charge of that, a fellow by the name of Bernard Rothman, Bernard Nipperdaling, and especially the two

Jans, Jan Matthias and Jan of Leiden, the primary leaders, utilized this text because they did establish a communal, a communistic form of government there in Münster, and every communist sect, whether it be religious or anything else, has made reference to this particular text, and you will hear it very commonly stated that the early church was, in fact, a communist or a communistic style of organization.

And so, is that the case? Well, just as with so many things in the

Book of Acts, we must be very, very careful to properly recognize the context in which we are dealing.

We are looking here at the most primitive period of the church, and there are many people who would say, well, that's what we want to get back to.

I don't think that that is a well -thought -through concept. The church at this point in time has no

Gospels. The church at this point in time has nothing but what we would call the

Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Ketuvim, the Greek translation of the Old Testament outside of Judea, and of course the

Hebrew text within Judea, and they do not yet have the fullness of the

New Testament Scriptures. There is still a great deal of revelation yet to take place for the benefit of the church.

And as we're going to see, there are some rather unique issues that that initial community faces as it exists there, specifically in Jerusalem.

And we need to keep in mind that it was God's good pleasure to drive them pretty much out of Jerusalem.

He is going to allow a very severe persecution to come against the church because sitting around Jerusalem is not accomplishing the

Great Commission, which is to go into all the world. And so we aren't even to the point in time at this point in the

Book of Acts where you have the Gentile mission coming into the full consciousness of the church.

And so when people say, well I want the purity of the early church, I want to go, exactly what do you mean by that?

Do you mean you want the purity of the church in Corinth? Do you want the purity of the church at Rome, or at Ephesus, or you name almost, you know,

Philippi, you name it, and we will be able to find some kind of issue where if we took even

Philippi, where there's very little negative said in Paul's epistle to them, there's still need for exhortation for unity amongst them.

And so there's going to be imbalance as a result of trying to say, well, we want to go back.

It's understandable when we look at church history and we see all the accretions of traditions and things like that that can end up overthrowing the

Word of God. That is why we must engage in honest, continuous exegesis of the text.

That's why we have that saying, semper reformanda, always reforming, because we recognize that it's so easy for us to become comfortable with a particular traditionalism.

We understand that. And so on the one hand, you can see situations where there was a need to go back, but it was to go back to the apostles and to that deposit of faith, not to a specific example of what might have happened in Acts chapter 4, or Acts chapter 20, or Revelation chapter 3, or whatever it might be, where you're given an insight into life in the early period of the church in particular locations.

God plants local churches in different places, and what is very, very clear is when you look at the book of Revelation, when you look at the letters written to the churches, there are unique characteristics of each of those churches, and those churches were primarily city churches, and we think of a city, we go, you couldn't have just one church in Phoenix.

Well, that's because our cities now are so much more massive than they were then.

Not necessarily just in population, though that is certainly true, but likewise in the simple reality of communication and travel, the ability to commute.

We have the ability to commute long distances. It would be interesting sometime to put something in the back foyer there and ask everybody who's come here, write down the round trip distance that you have traveled to be in church today.

Some of you would help very much, thank you very much, in really expanding our numbers, and some others of you are closer, but I have a feeling that it would probably average farther than the average person could possibly travel in an entire day of travel back in these days, and so things were completely different as far as cultural context, the ability to commute, how you could have churches, and of course we have the reality of the development of the church over time, and as a result, the history of the apostasy of the

Roman church and all the things that come with that, that have caused tremendous numbers of different churches to exist in our day.

And so keeping all those things in mind as a background, when people turn to this text,

I think very often that context is ignored. We are talking about a very specific location, a very centralized location, we have all of the apostles here, and so you have a concentration of the

Christian faith in one place that has not yet begun the major mission of evangelizing the world, and they will start to do that only when persecution drives them out of the comfort of what it was to be in Jerusalem.

But right now they are in the city of Jesus' death, his burial, his resurrection, they are in the holy city, and they are using the same scriptures as the

Jews, and this is where Jesus, you know, Mount of Olives ascends to heaven,

I mean this seems like a good place to be, right? And they can't have any real full idea of just how large and how great

God's plans are at this point in time, but what they do have is tremendous unity of spirit.

The congregation or the gathering together of those who believed were of one heart and one soul, literally the believing ones were heart and soul one.

Heart and soul one, in other words, one thing we can desire and we can look back upon with some longing in light of the divisions that exist amongst so many of us today, was this was the situation of tremendous unity in the body.

But this was one, in essence, one local church. I mean there was no building obviously, they are attending to the apostles' teaching.

But there is no division, no false teachers have shown up yet, no false prophets have shown up yet.

And so you have a time where they're one heart, one soul, focused together.

And as a result, not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them.

Now there is nothing in this text that says that the apostles commanded this to be done.

There is nothing that says, okay, we're going to establish the communal city of Zion like they did in Munster, or like they did in Waco, or like they have done literally dozens, maybe even hundreds of times down through church history.

It happened before in Strasbourg, for example, just a few years prior to this.

And church history records many, many, many, many, many people down through history who have gone off into the woods someplace and tried to recreate

Jerusalem very shortly after Pentecost. And they have always failed in the process, most often because they brought tremendously unbiblical things along with them, and they almost always end up trying to recreate the office of an apostle, as they did in Munster as well, in essence.

And so there is nothing here that says that the apostles demanded that this be so.

And in fact, once we get into the story of Barnabas and then

Ananias and Sapphira, we will see that one of the statements that is made by Peter is, once you sold your land, once you sold that, it was still under your control.

You could do with it as you pleased. In other words, you were under no compulsion either to sell it or to then bring any portion of its value into the community.

So there was no apostolic teaching that demanded the establishment of this. Instead, this desire to make sure that each one was taken care of flowed out of the fact that they were of one heart and soul.

There was such a sense of community that it was absolutely natural that when someone had a need, that the entire group together met that particular need.

This is the foundation of it. And so this is the result of the commitment that they have to the gospel and to one another and to the fact that they have the apostles right there.

There isn't anything here that is going to reflect later on the realities of what the church was going to have to face.

For example, in just over 10 chapters, they're going to have to get together in Jerusalem and talk about what's going on in the

Gentile churches. And there will be division amongst these very apostles because of the fact that now this church is getting bigger and bigger and bigger, it's having to deal with so many more issues.

Now we're having to deal with all these... There are a lot of different kinds of Gentiles. I mean, it was a little bit easier to have this kind of one heart and one mind in Jerusalem because there wasn't much of what we would call diversity in the church at this point in time.

Oh, you might have all sorts of different colors, but even at that point, they were probably all converts to Judaism.

They were proselytes. They're just... The Gentile mission hasn't started yet.

And so you have this tremendous unity that exists. And so they meet the need of anyone within that community.

And with great power, verse 33, the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the

Lord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all. And so this is a time of preaching.

This is a time of establishing, notice the power of the apostles.

Great power was upon the apostles. They were giving testimony of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. It's very important.

It's difficult for us to imagine this, but there needed to be this period of time of establishing apostolic authority.

We talk much about the authority of apostolic writings and apostolic teaching, but there had to be a time when those men became recognized as bearing that kind of authority and as being the ones that God was using through whom to give to his new covenant people the very kind of documents, which we call the

New Testament, that the old covenant had possessed. And so just as there was a period of time where Moses' authority was built up over time, the experiences that he had in leading the people of God and the testing and things that he faced, so too there needs to be a time where the apostles become known to the infant church and we understand their placement within that church.

So with great power, they are giving testimony to a rather relatively recent event.

I mean, it's difficult for us, I'm afraid, 2 ,000 years down the road to have an understanding,

I think, of just how amazing it must have been at this point of time to walk the streets of Jerusalem and everyone that you're talking to is a person who is at least a contemporary with this particular event.

They may not have been one of the 500 witnesses, but there are still 500 witnesses around, and they knew about the crucifixion.

There were many people who had witnessed it. They were there. I mean, this is such a fresh experience at this point in time, and then to have the teaching of Jesus, which he's given to the disciples during his post -resurrection ministry before his ascension, to have this teaching now being delivered to you by the apostles so that you're opening the scriptures and you're explaining to people, look at Isaiah 53 and look at Psalm 2 and look at Psalm 22 and look at what it says here, and have you ever considered this, and have you ever noticed the

Old Testament story just sort of ends, and it ends in expectation, and of course there'd be lots of folks that were looking for the

Messiah, but they weren't looking for that kind of Messiah. They were looking for the militaristic type of Messiah, but you're now proclaiming a

Messiah who has come and has provided everything in his own self -sacrifice for peace with God, and he's going to come again, and it must have been a really, really exciting time.

Truly exciting. Not like when people start cranking out the 24th book of the blood moon's prophecies in our day, where it's just sort of like, oh, another blood moon coming?

Yay. It was sort of exciting the first time around, but after about the 14th, 15th time, it was like, oh, okay.

That's called an eclipse. They happen fairly regularly, actually, so we don't need to worry about the blood part.

Anyway, and so abundant grace was upon them all. This is all a work of God's grace amongst his people.

All of them are experiencing this. What must it have been like?

What a tremendous blessing from God, but again, it wasn't

God's purpose that it stay this way, because Jesus' own words had talked about the light of the

Gentiles and all the rest of the stuff, and that's not going to happen if you're all just in your own little community, just really enjoying

God's grace in one place, rather than going out and evangelizing the world, and how

God gets them going is, uh, is, is, is, is, is actually violent in, in how it takes place.

For there was not a needy person among them for all who are owners of land or houses.

Now, that would not be a large portion when you think about it. I mean, how many people owned land and houses?

Those are, those are the elite. Those are the rich, and while we know that God has been gracious to rich people in church history, we also know the church was primarily looked down in the early ages, looked down upon as, as the poor, the rabble, the uneducated.

It's not that there were not wealthy or educated people, but they did not predominate in the

Christian congregation. And so for all who are owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need.

Now, what's going to happen in just a couple chapters is this distribution to the people in Jerusalem is going to lead eventually to hard feelings and divisions.

Because once you have, uh, the recognition of some of the

Greek speaking widows, you know, and so eventually you have the establishment of the office of deacon, uh, because right now, okay, in this period of time, well, the apostles, okay, they bring the money and the apostles do the distribution, but as the church gets bigger and bigger and bigger, eventually they realize this is a full -time job.

We, we can't, we cannot undertake to fulfill the ministry that God has called us to have in the teaching and preaching of the gospel and the answering of all the questions that are now coming up as to what this amazing event means, especially in, well, people are asking us questions we never even thought they would end up asking, and this is really what the church is going to be dealing with for quite some time.

But that is what eventually leads them to realize, um, we need others whose hearts are specifically oriented towards service, uh, to engage in that task, and that's where the deacons are going to come from, and it's going to be in the distribution of this, this material.

So, what we have then is we have people who, there is no preaching against private property here.

There is no preaching that you were under some obligation to divest yourself.

There is nothing here about we all need to have the exact same amount of stuff. Uh, it's so plain and so obvious when you allow the whole

New Testament to speak that, for example, once the famine hits a few years down the road from this period of time in church history, in the book of Acts, a famine hits the land of Israel, and Jerusalem is impacted by this.

Remember, Paul wants to have the Gentile churches contribute together toward the relief of the saints who were still in Jerusalem as a sign of that unity of the body.

Well, the only way that works is if there are people in non, outside of Jerusalem, uh, who have enough to give.

And so there is, there is not a absolute equality, uh, between, uh, all the individuals here, but there is a willingness to be able to sell what you had and then provide that and through the apostolic distribution, uh, would provide to anyone who had need.

This is not a communistic idea that says everybody in the church should have the exact same amount.

Uh, God is the one who recognizes and gives gifts to individuals, uh, and those gifts include the ability to, uh, work and working in some areas is going to bring more income than working in other areas.

So the, the topic doesn't change going into verse 36. What you have now is the example that is going to lead to the story of Ananias and Sapphira.

And it's interesting that this ends up being a Barnabas, uh, Joseph, a

Levite of Cyprian birth who is also called Barnabas by the apostles, which translated means son of encouragement.

So here's Barnabas, uh, the son of encouragement. Uh, sometimes

I have informed certain friends of mine that they are all Barnabas, uh, which would make them the not son of encouragement or son of discouragement, depending on how you want to put it.

But, uh, uh, Joseph, uh, or Barnabas, uh, was clearly an individual with a, a gift for giving a person who gave of himself in the service of others.

This was just simply a, uh, uh, part of the way that God had made Barnabas.

And he, uh, has, I think an important place in the history of the church.

He is going to be an important individual. And so he is the son of encouragement and he owned a tract of land.

And again, it is not said that as a result of apostolic command, uh, he divested himself so that he could be just the same as everybody else.

Uh, he does this freely. He owns a tract of land, he sells it, and he brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.

Now no further commentary is made, but, and again, the, the chapter division here, that's the last verse of chapter four.

They're, they're, they're just, it's a horrible place to divide. I, I realize it's hard to, to do this.

It's real easy to second guess, uh, those who, who did this work in, in the past.

Uh, but verse one of chapter five begins with a adversative, but a man named

Ananias. And so it's connecting it right back to what happened to Barnabas.

And so the example of Barnabas is given, not to try to puff up Barnabas and say,

Oh, we all need, need to be like Barnabas. And so everybody go sell your houses and bring money to the church tonight.

Uh, that's not why he's put there. Instead, you can imagine what happened.

Here is this very encouraging man. He's acting in accordance with his nature as an encouraging individual.

And so he sells a tract of land. Did he have others? Might have, we're not told.

But he sells it and he brings the money and lays it at the apostles feet.

And clearly there would have been in the congregation, those who would observe this and see how positively this was received by others.

And there would have been a, maybe a, you know, I really, really doubt that there was a blowing of trumpets and a special congregational meeting.

And then Barnabas comes in with this big old bag of money and you know, and Oh, put that one on the scales.

Wow. You know? And so in other words, all the stuff we see on that channel between 20 and 22, um, would not have been taking place in this particular context.

Uh, but at the same time, you've got a pretty small close knit community here and we all know how that works, right?

You don't need to have Facebook to know exactly what's going on, uh, amongst everybody. And so there, there would have been a knowledge of the fact that this very encouraging man had, uh, had given a substantial sum of money, uh, to help meet the needs of others.

And when that happens, there are others who will observe that and they, there are people, there are many people who are willing to give up money and earthly goods in exchange for the approval of others.

Now there are a lot of people who just simply pray on the saints for money. There's no question about that.

But there will be there, down through church history, there have been many who have been willing to give up earthly goods if it meant that they were looked upon, that they were praised, that they were honored amongst men.

And that's what then lays the foundation for what happens with Ananias and Sapphira.

But, uh, we will look at that this evening. The intention this morning is to be thankful, indeed, when such a unity exists amongst

God's people that there is a willingness to self -sacrifice. There is a willingness. Is this, is this not exactly what

Paul referred to in Philippians chapter 2?

What is, what is the WD -40 that keeps the church going?

You know, WD -40, that's in every mechanic's bag because it's good stuff.

Has a lot of uses. Kills cockroaches, too, once in a while, too. It's great stuff. I was out of raid once and nailed them with WD -40.

And they didn't squeak anymore, but they didn't live very long either. So it has multiple, multiple uses.

And so what's the WD -40 that keeps the squeaks and the friction out of the

Christian congregation? Well, according to Philippians chapter 2, it's looking at others as if they are more important than yourself.

Putting others before yourself. Humility of mind.

And when we look at Barnabas, is that not one of the very aspects of his character that we can look back upon and be thankful for the grace of God in his life as the example that he provides?

He thinks of others before himself. That's what it means to be of one heart and one mind.

There is a sensitivity to others. Now, let's just be honest.

We look at a passage like this and we go, it seems like there's something different in this context than what we are accustomed to.

And what might it be? Well, certainly, there is a

Western individualism that is a part and parcel of our experience of the

Christian faith. We are Westerners by and large. We have been raised within Western culture.

And Western culture emphasizes very strongly individual rights and individual privacy.

And so the idea of community, this kind of close lived community, especially in our nation today, is a little bit strange to us.

It's also strange to us because you got to realize in those days most families would live together in one place.

You didn't grow up, go out, buy your own three -bedroom home with a car because there were no three -bedroom homes to be purchased and there were no cars.

And so the home that you lived in, your parents lived in, and your grandparents lived in, and your great -grandparents lived in it, and that's the homestead.

And you saw your great -grandparents die if they lived that long or certainly saw your grandparents die.

And there was a sense of community that our emphasis upon individualism finds to be not only strange, but let's be honest, a little scary.

And as a result, we sort of sit back and go, well, it would be nice to have one heart and one mind, but it just seems like they were awfully close.

They were awfully intimate in the sense of living very often very close and sharing a life.

And I was just over in Lethborough, England, about two and a half hours almost directly north of London, the

Midlands. And if you've been over there, you know that the houses there are not like our houses.

The streets are not like our streets. When you park your car at night, you pull in your rearview mirror if you want it there in the morning because there's only room for one car to go through at a time and it's tight.

I mean, I don't know how they do it. And the houses don't have nearly the room we have.

And I stayed, I visited the home of one of the fellows there and there would be like three or four families in one three level house and there's only one kitchen.

So you share your meals together and you do laundry together and it's just, it's how you do things.

And some of us might, who are so accustomed to having all of our stuff in one place and like this,

I could never do that. It's amazing how fast you can adjust, actually. But yeah, it introduces all sorts of new dynamics.

There's no question about it. And so we look at this, we might ask ourselves the question, well, what's the application in a very different context where we live, some of us live 40, 50 miles away from one another.

Nobody in this time period could have even imagined a body that was made up of people that lived that far apart from one another.

That doesn't make any sense in their thinking. So what can we take away from this when we will leave here and go a long ways away from one another?

Well, obviously there are other ways to be involved in a person's life. There are other ways of meeting needs.

We use our deacon's fund, which is sort of a natural progression of this down the road in the

Book of Acts, to be able to assist people and to help people. And that's one way in which the body together does so.

But our prayer calendar, praying for one another, encouraging one another, these are ways, even though we do not see one another with the regularity that you would have in this particular context, that we can continue.

And obviously it's our desire that we want to, with power, give testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And so the more focused we are upon that as the goal of the body together, the more unified we can be in the accomplishment of that very task.

And we certainly live in a day, we certainly live in a day where our society and our local community needs the message of that empty tomb just as much, just as much as they did then.

In fact, in other ways, even more so. And so let us be united in our seeking to proclaim that message with the power that the apostles did.

And we pray that God's grace will be upon us all, even as it was upon them at that point in time.

We will continue with the Ananias and Sapphira story this evening when we gather again together with the

Lord's grace. Let's pray together. Our Grace Heavenly Father, we are thankful for those early believers, the grace you poured out upon them, the unity that was theirs.

Lord, we know the situation is different, but we desire to have a unity born of your spirit. We desire to be of one heart and one mind focused upon your truth.

Lord, help us to prioritize the resurrection, the message of the gospel above all other things.

When all of us do that, Lord, we know that we will be together in having one heart and one mind.

And so, Lord, may your word go forth with power this day. May you honor and glorify the name of Jesus Christ amongst your people this day.