A Model Church

Our scripture this morning will be Acts chapter 2 and verses 43 to 47

I'll actually begin reading at verse 37, but our text for preaching will be 42 to 47

And as you turn there You're going to hear as I read the scripture about the church the church, which is just emerged from the womb if you will a

Vibrant church, it's just been birthed and it's full of wonder at the new breath that it has in its lungs it is overjoyed at the continual presence of her midwife the

Holy Spirit and Is continually nourished by her bridegroom who is Jesus Christ who day by day?

Feeds them and nourishes this new church by the word, which he is giving day by day through the

Apostles And you'll notice as I read these verses in a moment that their devotion to each other was exceeded only by their devotion to Jesus Christ Day by day the

Spirit of God we will find adding to their number We'll see them leaving behind their old hearts of stone following the leadings of their new heart of flesh

They worship they gave they testified in every way imaginable We'll find them becoming such a bright and shining light that the glory of God in and among them was undeniable and It was undeniable even even among the watching looking in unbelievers whose admiration

Though probably a bit begrudging was genuine This is the church at its earliest the church many would say at its period at its purest

So let us stand as we honor God's Word I will read Acts chapter 2 verses 37 to 47

Now when they heard this this of course being Peter's Pentecostal Sermon when they heard this they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the

Apostles brothers, what shall we do and Peter said to them repent and be baptized every one 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 Everyone whom the

Lord our God calls to himself and with many other words He bore witness and continued to exert them saying save yourselves from this crooked generation

So those who received his word were baptized and there were added that day about 3 ,000 souls and now for the text this morning beginning in verse 42 and They devoted themselves to the

Apostles teaching and fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers and all came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the

Apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common and they were selling their possessions and belongings and Distributing the proceeds to all as any who had need and day by day

Attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes They received their food with glad and generous hearts

Praising God and having favor with all the people and the Lord added to their number day by day

Those who are being saved may God bless the reading and now with his blessing the proclamation this would please be seated

Now I want to ask you Whether this church that I just read up to you the Church of Acts chapter 2 verses 42 to 47

Commonly just called the acts to church Does it sound to you like the ideal of an unreachable of an unreachable ideal of a bygone age

Like something meant only for those simpler those less hectic times those times when men were more amenable to spirituality than we are today

Does it sound to you like that is the ideal church But it's something that is past that we can no longer attain to we can no longer have

Does that church sound like something that we should attain to that we should desire

Now if I took a poll Asking you which church you would rather be ours as it is today or this one in Acts chapter 2 as it was then

Well, most of you would vote for the latter, wouldn't you wouldn't you vote for that new vibrant pure exciting church?

When everything was new and fresh and people were coming in and the joy and the enthusiasm of the

Lord was so palpable and so Obvious that even the cynics from outside had to look in and say

God is truly among this people Wouldn't that be wonderful to have wouldn't you vote for that church?

If indeed we could vote That pure that lovely church before compromise set in that pure and lovely church before the weeds came in among the tears

Church fresh Gleaming gloriously new Wouldn't that be a wonderful church to be to model ourselves after and more than model after to actually become

Well the scriptures here that I just read to you Give us this model they give us a model of what the church of Jesus Christ looked at Looked like when she emerged from Peter's spirit -filled sermon at the

Pentecost And I ask you again What if we believe that the church could return to or could have this purity

What if we believe that I mean what if you really believe that Heart soul mind and strength you believe that this scripture describes a church that is more than just an ideal of a bygone age

But a church that is possible today What if you really believe that What if you believe that enough to work for it to fight for it would it be worth the effort

If I took a poll I'm not asking you to raise your hands but if I did ask you to raise your hands and say how many of you think if I could develop for you the

Idea that this church is attainable Not just something from 2 ,000 years ago, and we just gloss it over as historical record an anachronism

But something we could indeed do and possibly should do and I ask you to raise your hands if you're willing to work even to strain to sacrifice

To fight to be such a church. How many of you would raise your hands and say I'm in I Think we all would

What was the great characteristic of this church in Acts chapter 2 there many answers to a question like that But the answer

I'm going to give and I'm not going to go and give you an analysis of other answers that are out there Impossible.

I'm saying nothing for against them. But here's the answer. I want us to focus on this morning the character of this

Acts chapter 2 church was unity It was unity that made them so unique in that day.

It was unity That caused them to be this light shining on a hill giving glory to God So that all the world would look and see that light on the hill and as it says that they had favor with all the

People people had fit they had favor with the people why? Because they saw God's glory in what in their unity in their coming together in their practice of Worshiping together as a body and calling out the praises of Jesus Christ their

Savior The character of this church was unity the gospel of peace which

God brings You unity to men we have unity because Jesus Christ won it for us and he gave it to us and you need to appreciate our unity as A God -given gift is something worth having it is something we're striving for it is something worth constantly improving

And I would argue in Acts chapter 2 this ideal church this pure church this church before the compromises set in Is a church that was characterized primarily by this

God -given unity Well, I want us to appreciate this morning

I want us to appreciate it enough that when I say amen at the end of this message, we're all together

We're all saying, you know This is something we're striving for something worth straining for something worth working for and something worth maybe even fighting for I Want us to appreciate it.

I Really was And what it says about what the church today

Can be how do we do this? How do we appreciate it? Well first I'm going to come off the text a bit

I'm gonna take us way back in history because I want you to understand What it is that the church represents in so many ways and I'm only gonna pick one of those many ways

It's a manifold church. There are many things we could talk about this one. I want to bring us back to his Genesis 11

We'll go back there and there we're going to see one of the major acts of God's judgments that in the church is finally resolved

And we need this because if the prevailing characteristic the characteristic of the church is our unity then

Genesis 11 Genesis 11 explains why this can only be brought about by God that's first and then we're going to appreciate this simply by going through these verses and Understanding the original pattern of the church.

What does the divine text tell us about this church? How is it described and what can we extract from that and that will take us back to Acts chapter 2 42 through 47 which is our text where the church is described along with the reaction of the watching world

And third and finally and perhaps most importantly and not absent from any of the other preaching

But what we will focus third on and last upon from the same verses is our total reliance upon God's Holy Spirit To accomplish anything of any value any value in his eyes

So Genesis 11, so we understand what is actually being reversed in the church

Then we will go through our verse our verses point by point To see what they tell us how it describes the church to us and then we will close by looking at God's Holy Spirit It's the only way we can do anything of any eternal value

So only God brings true unity to the church if we enjoy any unity at all

We have to accept it as a divine gift of God Only God can do this and if we ask why if the question is why can only

God do this? Don't men come together for all kinds of things. We're talking about true unity we're talking about unity that God is pleased with and only he can bring this about and that's because God is the reason that man became disunified in the first place

It is God who decreed that men should part company with each other It is God who decreed it therefore only

God can abrogate his decree and bring men back together The church's unity is a reversal of one of the major judgments that God ever made

And for this you can turn to Genesis chapter 11 Genesis 11

I'll read Verses 1 through 9. This is very familiar to many of us. This is a story of Babel This is where men came together for one purpose

God saw it and disperses them. Let's read these verses Beginning of verse 1 now the whole earth had one language and the same words

And as people migrated from the east they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there

And they said to one another come let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly and they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar

Then they said come let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens and let us make a name

For ourselves lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth Now you should say we can stop for even a moment

They are Afraid of being dispersed throughout the whole earth But after the flood in Genesis 9 God said repeating what he had told

Adam and Eve really go be dispersed Go fill the earth. They say no, we're going to stay here.

We want to stay here together We're all speaking the same words. They're all speaking the same language We like it here and the

Lord God came down to see the city This is verse 5 and the tower which the children of man had built and the

Lord said behold they are one people and they have all one language and this is only the beginning of what they will do and Nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them

Come let us go down there and confuse their language so that they may not understand one another's speech

So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth and they left off building the city

Therefore its name was called Babel Because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth and from there the

Lord dispersed them over the face of the earth You know in chapter 2 verse 39 of Acts and Peter's Pentecostal sermon towards the end of it, which we read a moment ago

He says for the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off Everyone whom the

Lord our God calls to himself Now what does he mean by the promise? Well, the immediate answer to what he meant by the promise was the giving of the

Holy Spirit Now these people had seen the Holy Spirit the tongues the divided tongues as a fire

They had heard the rushing wind. They heard Peter preaching in languages so that they all understood the unifying language of the gospel and The promise of the

Holy Spirit the promise of the giving of the Holy Spirit. He referred back to the Prophet Joel and some others Is the immediate answer to what's the promise that you by faith in Christ Jesus will receive the

Holy Spirit? But then he adds something and this is what I wasn't want to focus in on here for just a few moments

He adds that the promise is for all who are a far -off all who are far off If far from where?

Well from each other would be a first answer, but why are they far off? Why do they have to be brought from anywhere to come back together as a people?

And the answer is and we just read it from Genesis 11 because God had dispersed them

Because God had broken up because God had dis unified them Now the

Jews hearing Peter their first thought to far off would have meant the

Jews dispersed throughout the world after the Babylonian exile of 586 BC about 600 years before his sermon and So they would hear that the promise is for you and all who are far off They would say well, you mean my cousin

Joe who's in Macedonia and you mean my uncle? Frank who's in Greece and so forth because the

Jews had been dispersed throughout the land some 600 years before And that answer, you know the sense would have been correct, but only in a limited sense

Because was the Gospels the gospel only for the Jews was for the Jew first, but also for the

Greek in Acts chapter 8

The gospel goes out to Samaria so goes away from Jerusalem and expands into Samaria and soon thereafter it goes to Ethiopia through Candace's Servant that Ethiopian eunuch and in Acts chapter 10 the the gospel goes to the

Gentiles when Peter goes to the Roman Centurion Cornelius and brings the gospel him and his household is is

Converted and on it goes and expands and grows and goes until all the world

Hears the gospel the unifying language of the Lord Jesus Christ The church brings it to his fold men and women and children from different peoples and different lands and different tribes and tongues

Revelation chapter 14 verse 6 it says that the gospel goes to every nation and tribe and language and people and Jesus said the same thing when he said go therefore and make disciples of all

Jewish dispersed peoples know of all nations every kindred every tribe every tongue

So it's far beyond Just the dispersed Jews what we call the Diaspora It includes them, but it goes so far beyond it is all humanity.

And this is why we started with Genesis 11 To appreciate what has come together here

The gospel is the power of God for salvation as Romans 1 16 to the Jew first and also to the

Greek As far as I know, there's only one person in this church who was born of Jewish blood and raised that way and that's me but our coming together

Our mutual love and care for each other because of our faith in the one Lord Jesus Christ Is a fulfillment of this reversal that's not just for the

Jew it's for everyone It's for anyone who will hear the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and put their faith and their trust in him

You see the judgment of God at Babel was reversed at Pentecost There's only one truly unifying language and that is the gospel and is reversed there when the church is birthed by Peter's Sermon there at Pentecost When God came down, he saw men striving together unified in their purpose to be his equal

He drove them away. He drove them away from each other centuries later

God came down again, but God came down in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ In him the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we saw his glory

When God came down he saw men striving to be like God he broke them apart He gave them different languages says you're going to speak this and you're going to speak that and soon men went to gather together with those who spoke the same words and Then they drew up their borders against others who spoke different words and became enemies with each other

Which is far better than being enemies of God but this is what is reversed in the gospel and And the fulfillment of that reversal is

Here in this church in Acts chapter 2 and it's here in this church today 20 centuries later

God still by his spirit by the unifying language of the gospel of his forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ is

Drawing men back from Babel and to his son So the church that Jesus founded and is still building is the place where God can truly and rightly be worshipped

By people who come from every background Babel being completely reversed by what we have here

Only here is Babel reversed only here in Christ is true unity found unity founded on one

Lord who is Jesus Christ on one faith one baptism one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all

Only here do men and women worship in spirit and truth Only the church of Jesus Christ populated by we who are called from far off Only here is that good and pleasant dwelling together that pleases

God and brings honor to his son Jesus So you see that here at this church

Do you see this kind of beautiful pure loving Christ honoring unity

Perhaps like they had in Acts chapter 2 when the church was first born Well, it's here

It may be be a bit hidden especially compared to the beautiful picture We have of the

Acts 2 church, but it is here our unity may be a penlight piercing through a thick fog

But it's still there and it's here because it's not something we accomplished It's not something

I can give to you neither can pastor Owens It's not something you can bring. It's something that Christ has accomplished

It's a great gift One to be cherished one to be nurtured one to be grown

Not something we did Jesus did it by the cross? Unity is something we have we just need to uncover it

We just need to bring back and buff up the what we have so it lusters

So it shines the way it did in Acts chapter 2 if Acts chapter 2 is indeed something that you would have raised your hand

Say yes, I vote for that. Let's do that You know many years ago.

My dad was a Few days away from passing away. I was cleaning the garage

We turned around on vacation we were out in Yellowstone Called my mother. She said you better come so we came my dad had about a week left

And one of the things I did just to keep busy was there was cleaned up this garage My dad was not known for having nice tools just a lot of tools

They bought lousy tools. Honestly, they bought him a flea market It's not because he was cheap because he liked talking to people

He would just buy the stuff and all the soccers were rounded and they couldn't grab any nuts and his Screwdrivers were always chipped and they couldn't turn any screws

And so I'm just tossing this stuff and tossing this stuff and I'm weeping because I know my dad's going to pass pretty soon And while I'm doing this,

I found on the floor of all things a two bladed Schrade Uncle Henry knife four -inch blades

And I'm about ready to toss it right away because it's my dad's tool and he bought it a flea market So I know it's not going to be worth keeping but well,

I kind of like knives So I stopped I open it a little hard to open the blade, but it opened

And it was a little pitted a little rusted the emblem on the handle. You couldn't quite see

Schrade on it or Uncle Henry and Honestly, you could have given it to a child to play with without any loss of conscience because it wasn't going to do anybody any harm

But I kept it and I have it now and I buffed it up and I cleaned it up and I got all the pits

Off of it and to spend me many hours meeting. Mr. Arkansas sharpening stone But the point is when

I first picked it up it was still a knife Couldn't function the way a knife is supposed to function quite but it was still a knife

And I tell you this morning that this church today Even if we don't have a luster gleaming unity like that Church of Acts 2 which we so pine for so often

We're still a church We are a proper church and a church that with the hard work with getting the blade onto the

Arkansas stone and putting the right Oil, I'm working and working with patience and diligence Patience Can give

Christ Jesus all the more glory and be all the more like this church in Acts chapter 2 and The first way we begin to restore that luster

Is to appreciate where our unity came from It came all the way back from Babel in Genesis chapter 11 when

God dispersed men Because of their unity together to insult him really to be like him and in the gospel

Brings us back together all these nations all these people who he dispersed He now by faith in his son

Jesus Christ brings back and this is the way We work that old knife and get it functioning the way it should like the

Acts chapter 2 Church so again to our passage To Acts chapter 2 now that we've covered

Genesis 11 and seeing God bring back together whom he had dispersed I want to read the whole passage again from verse 42 and they devoted themselves to the

Apostles teaching and fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers and all came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the

Apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common and they were selling their possessions and belongings and Distributing the proceeds to all as any had need and day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes they received their food with glad and generous hearts praising

God and having favor with all the people and The Lord added to the number day by day those who were being saved

So what do we have here in this? description of the first iteration of the church

The church when it was first born some read this and conclude something like this at the church Therefore must meet in homes.

How do we get back to being that Acts chapter 2 Church? Why we meet in homes because in verse 46 they met in their homes but brethren, this is narrative and Describes what took place now biblical narrative can carry doctrine, but it doesn't usually

Usually it simply tells us what happened and that's here in Acts chapter 2 Telling us what happened telling us what things were like But that said the language here does lend itself to seeing a model for the church not a model of where they met

But how they met Not a model of the place they went to the homes

But the spirit that they brought with them when they went It's a pattern for that very primitive church

And we're going to have the unity described here in Acts chapter 2 the unity that pleases God the unity intended by God in Christ's cross

We need to see something that they had in their church life They were consistent

They were consistent in their worship of God. They were consistent in their fellowship together

They were consistent in their unity Now, how do we say that we say that because the verbs that Luke uses here are what we call imperfects

It doesn't mean that the bad verbs or that they're less good than any other verb It means it denotes an action that doesn't come to an end.

It denotes a past action. This is history That doesn't come to an end. It's continual.

It's their practice. It's their habit to do these things Verse 42 they devoted that's your first imperfect consistently habitually constantly

Devoted themselves to something to the Apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of the bread and the prayers

So what do we have here? Out of contagious love for Christ out of joy and salvation that he gave them

They just couldn't get enough They were there because they loved the Lord and knew him to be present where his people gathered and worshipped as Jesus said

We're two or three gathered in my name there. I am among them Now a friend of mine had a next pastor as a member of his church who would preach

Fairly often for him and it seemed wherever this gentleman was. I liked him a lot wherever he was in Scripture He had a single application

Therefore you better not miss a church meeting Now he could be preaching about Aaron's robes

Genesis 1 1 Or he could be in one of the doctrinal sections of Romans and he would always seem to come around at this application

They had this way of waving his finger. Therefore you better not miss any of the church's meetings Now how that derived from such a variety of biblical passages is beyond our scope this morning, and I love this man

But sometimes people seem so dull to the things of the Lord Which are taught and encouraged in meetings of the church

Sometimes people seem so inured to them that a pastor just becomes desperate to find ways to get people there

Now I'm not gonna bark out some legalistic order to you. I mean our Church Covenant does speak of attending the meetings of the church and If Peter did tell them something like to not forsake the gathering of the

Saints our careful historian Luke didn't record it He let something else permeate this record

It's the sweet -smelling aroma of brethren who worship together out of unrestrained joy in the

Lord Not the exciting music not the awe -inspiring preaching not bright lights or cute children's skits

But conversion to Christ, which is an unquenchable thirst to know him more and to be with like -minded people

This is what is happening here This is why they devoted themselves to this teaching devoted themselves constantly to the fellowship to the breaking of the bread to the prayers

After those imperfect verbs and this continual practice, there's something else here we need to see and that's all the thus

How many times the word the comes up here? You see they weren't attending some amorphous

Organization they had no purpose. They devoted themselves to certain things that they devoted themselves that imperfect verb that constancy relates to these things

The apostles teaching emphasis mine What we would today call the scriptures

The fellowship not some casual or ad -hoc gathering but the fellowship created by the

Word of God attended by the Spirit's power the breaking of the bread now by the article by the word the

Luke is making it clear. He means something other than sandwiches and and and soda He means the

Lord's table the breaking of the bread something celebrated even then and The prayers again prayers offered up by the assembled church

Very specific very definite things. This was their consistent and continual habit and practice

You know human organizations tend to lose their direction over time The initial enthusiasm for the fresh vision that first carried them along sort of wanes the

Boy Scouts lasted a long time before this happened to them, but it did recently happen and Recent compromises came about from from this loss of vision and now they're practically defunct

And we can think of many other organizations that have had this thing happen to them where they start out with all this energy and all this direction and people are all excited and Soon the succeeding generation says.

Oh if only you had been there then Because that was when it was really cool that was when it was really exciting

The church is the church should be the church must be different from that See, we're an organization like others were populated by people like others, but that's where the similarity ends

Listen verse 43 says and all came and again an imperfect verb came constantly

Regularly came upon every soul and many wonders and signs are being done again constantly through the

Apostles What's that tell us about the church the church is a place of awe

Because here the wonder of God's presence is experienced It's a place of awe

It's an overused word today. Oh, that's awesome And we hear it so much that awesome doesn't mean awesome anymore

It means mundane and regular and everybody's got to be awesome But here everybody's filled with awe as the word really means

Amazement and reverence for God They were continually awestruck the signs and wonders of the

Apostles are of a time gone by and I'm gonna let it rest there They authenticated the Apostles as God's the

Lord's true emissaries. They were necessary then in a way that they are not today How did the unity come about?

Well, God gave it to him by reversing Babel What was one of the characteristics of the unity they were filled with all together

I Think sometimes we hold our reverence to God hostage to his doing something to impress us.

I mean pastors do feel this pressure and it leads to disaster quite often as the pastor will distance himself from the

Apostles teaching from The Word of God and end up somewhere that they never foresaw or intended entertaining rather than worshiping

This is when you get preachers Just trying to get people excited about being in church and starting out with a good heart and then compromising on the

Word of God Next thing, you know He's just a shuckster or a jokester trying to entertain trying to be excited because of his own personage

Starting out well, because I want you to feel the awe of being in God's presence

And I don't sense that you have it I'm not speaking for me in relation to you my mythical pastor my hypothetical pastor

Who then goes down this road of compromise in order to gain the all where does all come from?

What comes from faith in Jesus Christ comes from appreciating what he on the cross did to save you But where does all come in to the church

You know Psalm 22 verse 23 says you who fear the Lord praise him Do you fear the

Lord? praise him all you offspring of Jacob We say children of Abraham true children of Abraham by faith in Jesus all you offspring of Jacob glorify him and Stand in awe of him

All you offspring of Israel all you people of faith all you who believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ Stand in awe of him Malachi 2 5 speaks of how

Israel once stood in awe of God's name How does it wane and fade away?

If you ever knew this kind of awe and reverence for God, how does it how does it fade away?

Like that knife sitting on the floor of dad's garage slowly getting a patina of rust and pits in the blades

I I Think of the gravediggers in Hamlet They're singing those happy tunes during their sad task and like them.

We just sort of get used to things You forget the joy of your salvation. You forget the wonder you knew when

God first opened your eyes to salvation is so Jesus Christ It's like ho hum

Another Sunday, here we go. La dee da another meeting of the Saints. Let's do it. Yawn Just another morning in the presence of God worshiping his son

Jesus in the power of his spirit nice comfortable mundane routine We forget what a wonderful thing it is to be friends of God by faith in his son

Jesus Christ Where does it all come from? There's all that filled this church.

They were continually filled with all It comes from you It's really your job to be filled with all not because of me not because of pastor

Owens Not because of the music being exciting or the building being glamorous, but because Jesus Christ is here by his spirit

You need to bring the all with you Not something we give you when you arrive on Sunday Like when we check your temperature and see if you can come in We have a little scan say oh you have all come on in No, you got to go home pick up your all and bring it back with you

That's not something we give you It's something you add all filled Christians make for an awe -inspiring church a unified church

Verses 44 and 45 tell us that their reverence for God led to their devotion to each other

As I said to the beginning the only thing that exceeded their devotion and love for each other was their devotion and love

For Jesus Christ and their devotion love for Jesus Christ led to their devotion love for each other

So it's this expanding circle All who believed were together and had all things in common again in perfect verbs as continual practice

And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as many as had need

Now it may have been in Peter's many other words But Luke doesn't tell us exactly why they held all things in common

So we can engage in just a little bit of speculation and I would say that speculation is easily answered

The Holy Spirit is the reason they held all things in common It was he who first showed himself in the tongues as a fire and that mighty rushing wind that caught their attention

He the Holy Spirit who loosened Peter's tongue and brought a new unity among men by reversing their

Confounded language into the gospel of peace with God by faith in Christ See at one time men united against God and here they unite in God where men once stood for their own good

Here they're concerned with each other's good Here they follow in the Savior's footsteps and they look out not only for their own interests, but the interests of others

The Philippians would be told this in chapter 2 verse 4 of Paul's letter to them Here it was the spontaneous outburst of their joy in the

Lord and their common salvation in Christ Jesus This is where the unity came from joy in the

Lord and Coming together in common reverence for God All were filled with awe

Which is something you bring if indeed you have this awe for God in Christ Jesus Do you know

Christ? He is all inspiring By faith in Christ, do you know his father

God the father? Because an awesome thing he did in sending his son God the

Son the eternal Son who never was not and sending him The perfect and sinless and spotless

Lamb of God To walk this earth in the form of sinful flesh and to be like us

Is that not awe -inspiring? Does that not give you a reverence that should attach to the other

Reverences within this place and the other believers who feel the same way about the Lord Jesus Christ And should it not circle up into this great worship of God and this unity of heart we have together

As we worship the one true and living God in this way And finally this unity has to extend beyond the confines of the church and day by day verse 46

Attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes. They received their food with glad generous hearts

Praising God and having favor with all the people Now the meetings in verse 42 were formal and purposeful.

This is informal This is not the breaking of the bread. This is just breaking bread together having a meal together simple hospitality

It's the desire for the company of fellow believers for the sake of the company of fellow believers And there's something very important here in the order of things

That they were they were seen in the temple. They wouldn't go on for long. They The temple would shoot soon be destroyed in 70

AD The distinctions as you Christians had over and against the Jewish religion would soon separate them from the old credit traditions

But Luke adds here then how they met in their homes with glad generous hearts

So breaking bread here is simply having meals together No specifying the bread

What does this mean? Again? It's about the unity that God gives us. It's about the simple desire to simply be with Like -minded people who have the same awe and reverence for God and this is how the church brushes off that little layer of rust shines up the blade sharpens up the edges and Becomes more bright and more gleaming

This is what the world looks at and sees men and women from all languages and tribes and tongues and Economic places and all the different differences that God brings together in His Son Jesus Christ And Luke is very clear here is that as they were seen

Attending in the temple something that would soon have to end but for then they were seen doing it

Breaking bread in their home. So they're seen going together and having this fellowship together a unique and a different thing

What is this new religion you're bringing about here? They might have asked Why is it you're meeting like this with such joy and such glad generous hearts is because of God It's because of God and the looking world sees in and they had favor with all people.

I would argue a begrudging favor Like oh boy, you know, they're not quite like the rest of us

But you know, these people really believe what they're doing. These people really do what they say they're going to do

After all of that is when Luke writes about the favor they had with everyone So why would this watching world admire them for what they were doing?

Well, Luke doesn't tell us exactly but we know from the Gospels that the religious leaders lorded it over the people as Jesus said in Matthew 20 25 in John chapter 9 verse 34

The religious leaders cast out a man for his audacity in defending Jesus using the scriptures to make his case in John chapter 7 verse 49 the religious leaders call the people accursed and now here they see this group of Jews the first converts being all

Jews not yet broken away from the temple having open and joyful communion together

They're devoid of class distinctions. Did they have a leader? They had Peter the

Apostle was he the priest over them? No, he was one of them He was simply the pastor not lording it over them in any way.

This is what they were seeing Their pastors were the Apostles who far from being over and above them knew that they too were sinners in need of grace

And this seems to be what gave them favor with all around This is at least one way they were a light on a hill that caused men to give

God the glory This is the fruit of true unity These days this sort of fellowship is difficult difficult to engage for obvious reasons

We have the pandemic we cannot come together as close physically as we'd like to And I can't tell you how much

I miss our weekly fellowship meals and many of you told me the same

But even so we can trust God that our praises will cause men to praise

Him as by our gathering here together We show the power of Christ to unify a people and by our gathering together the way we do here safely

God willing We show the world out there that this is important That our reverence for God brings us together that our unity together is something that we cherish

Not because we're all so grand, but I think some of you are pretty grand But because we have a unity

We have a worship we have a God we have a Savior to worship and it means something to us

In these fractious times when a single misplaced word can destroy an entire career where personal identity is practically worshipped

Where diversity is extolled but diverse opinions are squelched the Church of Jesus Christ does and must stand apart and distinct

Because we are apart and distinct and we have something that no other organization has which is unity with each other by our unity in the

Spirit The people in Acts 2 had favor with all the people and more important they have favor with God Verse 47 and the

Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved The church had favor with all men because they saw their beliefs being impacting the way that they lived

The church was so unified that every door was open and these believers once estranged by Babel We're now brothers and sisters in Christ and all this

God used to add to them day by day All whom he the Lord called and calls to himself

You know when I first found that shred, it was so dull. It was harmless. Like I said, you could have given it to a child

But it was still a knife It didn't function much like a knife it was dull it was dull to look at it was dull to touch

But elbow grease the Arkansas sharpening stones WD -40 some superfine steel wool and hours of work and I've got a shiny clean knife

With gleaming blades and you can do that dry shave thing. You ever see guys do that? Yeah, it can dry shave.

I've got blank spots here And Can we be more like the church in Acts chapter 2

I Ask you should we try to be more like the church in Acts chapter 2?

Should we work on that the way I worked on that old knife? Should we be like the church that attended itself to the apostolic teaching a church?

It was anxious to put everything into practice the church that was filled with all filled believers

The same word that Peter preached then is the word that I and Pastor Owens preached to you today

The same Holy Spirit who brought that church into being Brought this church into being and that same

Holy Spirit who draws men to himself Into the church is working today as he did then for Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever

Do you want the Acts 2 church? Do you want that purity? Do you want to be that gleaming light on?

a hill that men can see and Even as if even if it's begrudging have to admit that God is truly among this people and give him the glory

Unless it's a different Word of God Unless it is a different Holy Spirit among us than it was then

These things are not only Desirable they're possible. Are you willing to work for that? Are you willing to strain for that with us?

Our sharpening stone is the scripture and the Holy Spirit is using it to smooth out our pits and our burrs

God willing as we meet with awe and reverence as you bring your awe and reverence into us

United in Christ Jesus our Lord will show forth his glories and God will be pleased to add

To us in number and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ and in our unity.

Amen Heavenly Father Thank you Again for the day that you've given us for allowing us again to meet here in this place and have your word always before us

I pray father you would conform us to the image of your son Jesus that you would form this church to be the church that would please you the most and All things receive all the glory and the praise the reverence and the awe from us in Jesus name