Community

       I want you to focus on me.  (finger motion to eyes)

       Think!  Are you wearing a wristwatch right now?

       Stop!  Don’t look.  Just think.

       Do you usually wear a wristwatch?

       That would be a good indication that you are probably wearing one now.

       But do you specifically remember putting on a watch this morning?  Maybe you thought to yourself, “I’d better wear this watch to church so I can see if Dave is going long.”

        Or, can you, without looking, feel the watch on your wrist?  Are you sure that’s what you feel?  Do you really feel it?  Or are you just remembering what it feels like when it’s there?

       Okay.  Go ahead and look.  And that’s the last time I want to see you looking at your watch while I preach.

        With something like a watch, we quickly lose awareness that it is there.  When you first get a new watch you constantly feel it on your wrist.  But, after a while you don’t even notice it’s there.  Psychologists calls this “habituation.” 

       One of the great challenges in our Christian walk is fighting what might be called spiritual habituation.  This is when we no longer recognize what we actually have in Christ, like hope, because we’ve had it so long.  We’ve develop a kind of spiritual attention deficit disorder. 

       For example, when Carol and I were on sabbatical a few years ago we suddenly discovered that we were missing something to which we had become accustomed – the close fellowship of the church as the body of Christ. 

       We had both grown up in the church and had enjoyed ongoing fellowship with brothers and sisters in faith.  Suddenly it wasn’t there.  We met wonderful Christian people in Britain and France .  But we had no history with them.  We didn’t know their stories and they didn’t know our story.

       For Carol and me, the discovery that we were lacking close community was an exception.  But the absence of community is the unfortunate norm for many people in our society. For many people in this East County , the lack of real fellowship is their life. All their relationships are functional.  Time pressure in two-income families, changes in family structure, suburban sprawl and electronic entertainment have all played a role.  And, sadly, they have become habituated to the emptiness.

        The lack of close community is certainly not God’s will for us.  God calls us into a special community called the church.

      Last June, Moses Pulei spoke about the birth of the church on the Day of Pentecost.  The first 90% of Acts 2 tells how the Holy Spirit comes on 120 believers who are in the Upper Room.  The end result is that the 120 believers who are gathered at the start of the day have turned into 3,120 believers at the end of the day.  Luke writes at the end of Peter’s sermon, “So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”

       Now if I were the author of the Book of Acts, I would have put down my pen on chapter 2 at that point.  3000 people.  For me, that’s the climax.  But that isn’t the climax for Luke.  For Luke, the climax is what these new disciples did beginning the next morning.  For God doesn’t just save individuals.  He calls them to be a church.

       Luke writes of these new believers in Acts 2:41-47: “They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  And everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.  And all those who had believed were together, and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions, and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.  And day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart praising God, and having favor with al the people.  And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

       That is Luke’s summary description of the new church. 

       The first evidence of the Spirit’s presence in the church is that the new believers devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching.  The Holy Spirit opens a school in Jerusalem .  Its teachers are the apostles whom Jesus appointed.  There are 3,000 pupils in the kindergarten!

       Earlier that day in the Upper Room there had been 120.  Now in a flash there are over 3,000!  Three thousand new children of God – 3,000 shepherding responsibilities for the apostles.  New babies mean great responsibility and a lot of work.  Those newly born-again believers are 3,000 bundles of joy and 3,000 accidents waiting to happen.  They are 3,000 people who can fall into false teaching.  As we will see in chapter 6, they are 3,000 people who can come into conflict with each other.  They are 3,000 people who need counseling on the impact of their new faith or their families.

       Now remember, these 3,000 new believers became believers through a demonstration of Gods power at Pentecost.  So it would have been a great temptation for the early believers, fresh from that marvelous conversion experience, to focus on that immediate past. They might have longed to experience something like that again.  They might have prayed, “Please, Lord, do something miraculous again.”  They could have become miracle junkies.

        This is not what we see in the text.  What we see is a great focus on the Word.

        These new converts are not stuck in a mystical experience, which leads them to despise their minds or disdain growth in God’s word.  Anti-intellectualism and the fullness of the Spirit are mutually incompatible, because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth who works for the renewal of the mind.  These new disciples don’t imagine that, because they had received the Spirit, that He is the only teacher they need and they can dispense with human teachers.  They sit at the apostles’ feet.  They are hungry to learn and they stick with it.

       That attitude of wanting to be taught is so important for our health.

       Mystic Thomas Merton warns in The Seeds of Contemplation  “The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody.  He trusts his own visions.  He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men.  He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow.  The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.”

       But these new Acts 2 believers avoid this “my-own-experience-is-the-measure-of-all-truth” trap.  Luke says that this was a learning, studying church.  Now there were a lot of other things Luke could have said about it.  As we go on, we will find that it was also a joyful church and an expanding, vibrant church.  These are important.  But the first thing Luke talks about is the teaching.

       These first believers want more, more, more.  And they aren’t content with the mere basics – what the Book of Hebrews refers to as the milk or infant formula of “repentance from dead words and new life toward God.”  They want the meat.   They want to chew.

       If you are Spirit-filled, then you will be drawn to this Book. If you are not drawn to this Book, if you do not really want to study it, if you say, ‘Well, you know, I look at the Bible from time to time, but it seems rather boring to me: it never really does much for me,” you ought to question your growth to maturity in Christ and your openness to the Spirit.  The Holy Spirit, whose chief task is to bear witness to Jesus Christ, inevitably draws the people of God to Jesus through the Scriptures.

       The second key characteristic of the new church is fellowship.  “They devoted themselves to fellowship.”  This kind of fellowship did not exist before the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  The Greek word used here (koinonia) is not even found in the Gospels.  In fact, this is the first time the word is used in the New Testament.  The root idea is “commonness.”  New Testament Greek is called koine Greek because it was the common Greek of the day -- the street language of the people.

       Every time this word koinonia is used in the New Testament, it means some kind of sharing – either sharing something with someone as a contribution or sharing in something someone else is going through. 

       The foundation of the early Christians’ fellowship was giving.  Verses 44 and 45 make this clear:  “All the believers were together and had everything in common (Greek, koina) selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.” 

       Some people have tried to say that the early believers sold everything.   But that doesn’t fit the text. Some still had houses, as verse 46 indicates: “They broke bread in their homes.”  Also, in Acts 5 Ananias and Sapphira owned property.  The point is, the fellowship of the early church rested on a mutual generosity and sharing.

       This remarkable expression of generosity echoed the outpouring of the Holy Spirit they had just experienced.  At the same time, it arose from the peculiar circumstances of the infant church.  Acts 2 tells us that many of the new converts had come from a distance.  They are rejoicing in their new faith and fellowship.  They need more time to be taught the things of the Lord, to be discipled by the apostles.  They need to forge the kind of personal relationships with other believers which will strengthen and equip them to be faithful witnesses for Christ wherever He sent them. It’s not yet time to head for home. But staying in Jerusalem means having certain unanticipated needs.  Many in the family of believers need practical help.  So the community of goods is a spontaneous and loving response to the particular situation facing the church. 

       Because their generosity extended to the sharing of their goods “as any had need”, some have seen this as a biblical endorsement of Communism.  It is not communism.  In some ways it is the opposite of communism.  Communism is a sharing of goods that is an enforced sharing on the basis that no one has the right to own private property.  Communism is compulsory.  So it has nothing to do with generosity.

       Generosity is the key here.  The point is that fellowship cost something in the early church.  Fellowship is not just a sentimental feeling of oneness.  It is not punch and cookies in the church.

       Fellowship comes through giving.  True fellowship costs!  The truth is, we will have real fellowship only when we make it a practice to reach out to others and give something of ourselves.  If you don’t feel plugged in, ask yourself where you are plugging in.

       This kind of sharing is very powerful.   As one young person who grew up in our church said to me:  “Sometimes I feel that God doesn’t speak to me like I wish He would.  I have a lot of questions.  But the one thing I’ve never questioned is the church.  I don’t see how people get along without it.”  That was said out of that person’s experience with us.  That’s quite a recommendation. 

       Worship is the third characteristic of the early church. Luke calls it “the breaking of bread” and “prayer.”  “Breaking of bread” stands for the communion service. In this passage “prayer” is the formal exercise of prayer in the assembly.  The text actually says, “to the prayers.”  They devoted themselves “to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.”

       But they didn’t just worship in a formal setting.  They worshipped informally as well.  “They broke bread in their homes.”  They had a meal called the agape – a potluck that included communion.  They gathered in large groups and they gathered in small groups.  What a wonderful picture.

       On its own, verse 42 presents a very lopsided picture of the church’s life.  Verse 47 part two needs to be added: “and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.  Those first Jerusalem Christians are not so busy learning, sharing and worshipping that they forget about witnessing.  For the Holy Spirit is a missionary Spirit who created a missionary church. 

      Now this verse does not say specifically that they were out witnessing.  But we know that the way God reaches people is through the spoken word and that when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, those who received the Spirit immediately began to speak about Jesus. 

        They couldn’t help it.  They had experienced something wonderful in the ministry of God’s Son.  They had been present in Jerusalem when Jesus had been arrested, tried, and killed.  Some had been present when he died at the cross.  They had in their number many who were witnesses of the resurrection.  These were wonderful facts and theirs was a life-changing message.  They have to share it with other people.   

       As a result, not only is God saving people, but he is also adding them to the church.  These two things go together too.  Sometimes evangelistic groups say, “Well, let’s get out and save people.”  They do.  People raise their hands to receive Jesus. But here is no follow up.  There is no discipleship. There is no connection to the community. 

       That is not the way God wants it.  When a person is brought to the Lord Jesus Christ, he or she is not brought individualistically.  People are saved individually.  That is, people become Christians by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ themselves.  They come one at a time.  But when they come, they come into the company of God’s people.  God saved many in these days following Pentecost, but when He did, He added them to the fellowship of the church – and the church grew.

       John Stott gives a great summary of this entire text in his recent commentary on Acts.  He writete:  “Looking back over these marks of the first Spirit-filled community, it is evident that they all concerned the church’s relationships. 

       “First,” Stott notes, “they were related to the apostles (in submission).  They were eager to receive the apostles’ instruction.  A Spirit-filled church is an apostolic church, a New Testament church, anxious to believe and obey what Jesus and his apostles taught. 

       “Second, they were related to each other (in love).  They persevered in the fellowship, supporting each other and relieving the needs of the poor.  A Spirit-filled church is a loving, caring, sharing church. 

        “Third, they were related to God (in worship).  They worshiped Him in the temple and in the home, in the Lord’s Supper and in the prayers, with joy and with reverence.  A Spirit-filled church is a worshipping church. 

       “Fourthly, they were related to the world (in outreach).  They were engaged in continuous evangelism.  No self-centered, self-contained church (absorbed in its own parochial affairs) can claim to be filled with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a missionary Spirit.  So a Spirit-filled church is a missionary church.

        If we are looking as a congregation to learn what God wants for us and from us as a community of faith, these verses are as far as we need to look.