I had the opportunity to preach last Sunday in a series on the Nicene Creed. My task was to cover the line “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church”. The text I preached from was Acts 2:42-47. Here is the first part of the sermon. The second will follow.
As Luke writes the “Acts of the Apostles” he is deliberate in pointing out the significant actions and reactions in the earliest days of the church. What we ought to notice in the reading is that these folks were different from the world. They had a common purpose and identity that shaped their daily lives. It was different to any other religious community in Jerusalem.
Tim Keller, Author and Pastor, tells us that “The early church was strikingly different from the culture around it in this way – the pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body. A pagan gave nobody their money and practically gave everybody their body. And the Christians came along and gave practically nobody their body and they gave practically everybody their money.”
Luke summarizes four distinguishing features: they devoted themselves to apostolic teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer. These give us a pattern as to how the church ought to be. It sets up priorities for the church from its earliest inception.
The apostle’s teaching was the only way new believers had the teaching of Jesus shared with and explained to them before the written New Testament. Luke does not tell us exactly what that teaching was. Likely it emphasized Jesus as the Christ and Lord. We can tell this by looking at what was being preached and taught in that time. One aspect of the early church that Luke highlights in Acts is the proclamation of the gospel. It only makes sense that the apostles teaching would be focused on how and why the gospel changes everything.
Being devoted to the apostles teaching means submitting to the authority of scripture. The bible is central to the life of believers and the life of the church. When I was college student one of the hardest things to find was good bible teaching. I then discovered expository Bible teaching on the radio. Every Monday thru Friday I was in my room listening to one or two great preachers working their way through a book of the Bible. As a young Christian this fed me and left me with hunger for solid teaching that has never left me. We need to be taught from the scriptures.
Fellowship – The greek word koinonia which is translated as fellowship only appears once in Luke’s writing though Paul uses it often. Its basic idea is sharing, but it’s also used to denote intimacy and fellowship. The same word koinonia is used for the fellowship of the Holy Spirit when we say the grace (2 Cor 13:14) and koinonia is translated as participation in the blood and body of Christ during communion (1 Cor 10:16). The various occurrences of koinonia in the NT suggest that the church used this word to mean the common identity and relationship with Jesus that was shared by believers.
Verses 43-37 describe what this fellowship was like. It is odd then that the word fellowship has so often come to mean small talk over food and drink. To say that people were devoted to coffee and cookies after worship is really to miss the point of verse 42. The sharing they were devoted to was radical and life changing. Perhaps the most relevant use of the word fellowship that we might relate to is in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The fellowship of the ring was a group of people devoted to the task of getting Frodo to the rings final demise.
One way we devote ourselves to fellowship in the church today is by participating in what my church calls community groups or HC calls life groups. In those there is an intimacy, a sharing of life with all its joys and burdens. It’s where relationships tend to run deeper. These groups are a microcosm of the church in that we also study scripture and pray together. If you have not been part of one, I encourage you to give it a try.
The Breaking of bread… this could refer to Holy Communion being celebrated or it simply means they ate together. Some argue that v42 indicates the Lord’s Supper and the reference to breaking bread in v46 is about just eating a meal together. Others see this passage as being about eating meals and not about the Eucharist.
Either way, there are two things we can be sure of. They ate together regularly and at some point they celebrated Holy Communion together. When they came together they worshipped the Lord and that alone is sufficient to indicate that they took communion together. Being devoted to worship is one of the essentials of growing in Christ. It gives us the opportunity to offer God praise and thanksgiving for all that he has done in our lives.
Yet we should not overlook the significance of them sharing food together. It is a very human thing to enjoy meals with others. It is something we enjoy regularly with family and friends. As fellow believers we are in many senses both. Fellowship around food was important to the early church and is a blessing to the church still today.
Prayer might refer to prayer during the set times of prayer in the temple as well as praying with other believers. Prayer is another aspect of the early church that Luke draws major attention to. We see a pattern in Acts of prayer and proclaiming the gospel and going back to prayer regularly. Read Acts chapter 4 to see this played out.
Prayer is one of the essentials of the Christian faith and is our source of power in the church. Years ago I moved my family to England where I served a vibrant church as their first youth minister. What really impressed me was their devotion to prayer. Every other week there was a Wednesday night prayer meeting where a quarter of the congregation spent an hour praying for the needs of the church, the community, each other, and so on. Prior to that I valued and believed in prayer but my experience there was profound. I witnessed the power of prayer beyond anything I had seen before. Every meeting or gathering of people in that church was saturated in prayer.
(to be continued)
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