A Model Church (Acts 2:40-47; 4:32-35) | 2/6/22
Acts 2:40-47; 4:32-35 | 2/6/22 | Will DuVal
Last week, in our study through the book of Acts, we observed together a “model sermon”, preached by the apostle PETER after receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And this morning, we’ll witness a model CHURCH. If I asked YOU to describe a model church, the ideal church, what would be its defining characteristics?
Some of you traditionalists might suggest that for starters we need to bring back the organ and the choir robes and the hymnals; others think we need to “hip it up” a bit – the three hymns we opened with this morning were written in 1875, 1865, and 1787 – can we sing something from the last CENTURY and a HALF please?!
Some of you think there’s no reason that ANY sermon should EVER include more than 3 points and last more than 20 minutes; others of you (the REAL Christians) are just getting warmed up 40 minutes in when I’m just winding down.
Some of you wish we could enfold the kids more into the life of the church; other parents have offered to fund a water slide down in the Doxa – whatever keeps your kids happy in THAT wing of the building for as LONG as possible on Sundays.
But as we’ll see this morning, the TRUE marks, the biblical marks of a healthy, model church, have less to do with style of worship, length of sermon, or philosophy of kids ministry; they cut much DEEPER than that. The early church of Acts exemplifies for us SIXdefining traits. (I did CHEAT on the sixth one, and combine EIGHTtraits into one bullet point; this may not be a THREE-point sermon, but at least it’s not a 14-pointer!)
We pick the story back up in Acts ch2, v40. Peter has just addressed the crowd of Jewish pilgrims, gathered in Jerusalem, awe-struck by this group of 120 uneducated Galileans able to speak in their native tongues, and Peter explained that this was God’s fulfillment of His OT promise to the prophet Joel to fill His people with His Spirit, so THAT they might proclaim the GOSPEL– the good news about Jesus, their Messiah, to ALL nations. And Peter called on them to “Repent and be baptized every one of youin the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you [TOO] will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 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 we pick up in v40; if you would stand with me… Acts 2:40-47; 4:32-37 (very similar description to what we find at the end of ch2, so I thought I’d go ahead and wrap IT in this morning as well…)
“And with many other words [Peter] bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. 42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe[d] came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. 33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold 35 and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.”
This is the word of the Lord… Let’s pray…
The model church:
#1 – Receives God’s word. (2:40-42; 4:33)
Acts 4:33, “the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.”
Ch2, v40: “with many other words [Peter] bore witness… and those who received his word were baptized, and added” to the church.
So the Church, first and foremost, is built upon, founded upon, the word of God; the apostolic witness to the truth of what God has spoken. As we sang this morning: “How firm a foundation, you saints of the lord, Is laid for your faith in his excellent word”.
The Bible is God’s WORD, spoken through God’s appointed messengers, the OT prophets, and the NT apostles.
Eph 2:20 explains that “the household of God [is] built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone”.
Peter will plainly state in his second epistle that: “NO prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Pet 1:20-21)
So the model church must receive the Scriptures, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, for what they really are: NOT the prophecies of men, NOT someone’s mere interpretation of God’s thoughts and feelings, but as the divinely inspired, and thus INERRANT and unchanging word of GOD – men speaking IN the Spirit, on BEHALF of God Himself. “All Scripture is God-BREATHED…” (2 Tim 3:16)
Any church that DOESN’T, that abdicates the Bible as the divinely inspired word of God, not only fails to be a MODEL church; it ceases to be a church in ANY meaningful sense of the term. That, sadly, is the story of so many mainline “churches” in this country over the past 50 or so years – the United Methodist, Episcopal, PCUSA, ELCA, UCC, DOC; the list and the abbreviations go on and on, but any “church” that compromises on the authority and inspiration of Scripture not only resigns itself practically to a slow and painful death – because the congregation understandablystop coming; Frankly, I’m not worth showing up for, week after week, friends; if [THIS] is not God’s word, and Sundays are simply ME speaking to you, then save yourself the trip and sleep in; mywords aren’t worth showing up for – but more significantly and spiritually, in GOD’S eyes, that “church” is no longer a church at all, because Ephesians 2 defined the church as built on the foundation of the apostles’ testimony, as recorded in Holy Scripture.
The idea of “deconstructing” your faith has become popular recently. In reality, it’s been popular ever since Genesis 3, when Satan got Eve to question whether or not God REALLY said they shouldn’t eat the fruit; That’s the question that all of “deconstruction” ultimately boils down to: Did God really say… Will we receive the Bible as God’s word…
Even when it calls homosexuality a sin?
Even when it claims that men and women are different.
Even when it says that most people will spend an eternity in HELL?
Look, if it’s really GOD’S word, shouldn’t we EXPECT it to offend us in some places? If God is really “wholly other” than us – “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways”, says the Lord (Isa 55:9) – shouldn’t we EXPECT Him to say some stuff that WE wouldn’t say, in His word?
But when, by faith, you come to receive the Bible as God’s word, then like the church in Acts 2, you will continually “devote [yourself] to the apostles’ teaching”. Let me offer you a few questions for personal application with each of these 6 points:
*Have you received the Bible as God’s word, and have you personally received the gospel that it declares – Christ crucified and raised for the forgiveness of your sins?
*If SO, praise God; are you now “continually devoting yourself” to God’s word? Do you treasure it above all else? Does your passionfor, your consumption of, your adherence to the Bible all TESTIFYto its being nothing less than the very word of God, for you? *To paraphrase Billy Graham, if you were on trial for believing the Bible is God’s word, would there be enough evidence to CONVICT you? Or does it honestly kinda BORE you, and thus, it collects dust on your shelf?
The church, above all else, must receive the word of God.
#2 – The model church Repents, is Baptized, and it Unites. (2:41)
The church is filled with those who have REPENTED – turned FROM their sin – been BAPTIZED – been united WITH Christ, byfaith, through baptism – and who have been united with one ANOTHER, by joining the church, so they can continue to grow in Christ together, through mutual sanctification.
V41: “So those who received [Peter’s] word – his call to REPENT – they were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”
Kent Hughes explains: “For a [first century] Jew, [baptism] was a traumatic step… In Jewish culture, baptism was a rite for Gentileconverts [into Judaism] that symbolized a [radical] break with one’s past.” (46) But NOW, these Jewish converts to Christianityare symbolically leaving the Judaism they grew up with behind, allfor the sake of Christ: the old has gone; the NEW has come!
And then baptism serves as a rite of passage into the CHURCH. They joined the church. There was none of the wishy-washy, non-committal, serial dating complex, church-shopping phenomenon that plagues the 21st c American church. They didn’t watch services online for 6 months to feel it out, then attend in personfor another 6 months, then start volunteering and checking out a life group for another 6 months, then attend the membership class and pray on it for 6 months… they just JOINED. They knew that being an active, contributing member in the Body of Christ was too essential to their faith NOT to join. They didn’t wait on the perfect church, because they knew there’s no such thing as a perfect church (and even if there was, you’d RUIN it as soon as YOU joined cuz you’re a SINNER!)
So a few important, personal application questions:
Have you repented – turned from your sin, TO Jesus?
Have you been baptized as a symbol of your new life in Christ?
And have you united with other believers by joining the church, both for your OWN spiritual health and growth as well as for our collective witness and ministry to the world?
Find a gospel-centered, Bible-preaching, God-and-people-loving church, and join.
I was so encouraged to see the 31 of you who attended our membership class last week. God willing, we’ll be officially welcoming many of you into the West Hills family in the weeks to come. Which brings us to point…
#3 – The church RELATES to one another as a spiritual family. (2:42; 4:32a)
When we’re united by faith with Christ, we are not only adopted into a new relationship with God our heavenly Father, but we’re adopted into a whole new FAMILY, a spiritual family, as well. That’s what the church IS. That’s why believers all throughout the NT call each other “brother and sister”; that’s why I call Y’ALL that. We now belong to the same spiritual family, God’s family. And that means we are now UNITED in 3 important ways:
Ch2, v42 – “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching [we covered that] and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.” Relational unity (fellowship), physicalunity (the breaking of bread), and spiritual unity (the prayers).
First of all, the church shares relational unity. Ch4,v32 says, “the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul”. They were intimately knit together. Ch2, v42 uses the word “Fellowship” which we’ve cheapened these days, so let’s try and recover the biblical meaning: The Greek word – koinonia – means “commonality”. Now think about that: there are 3,120 believers now in this first church, from at least 16 different “ethnes” listed at the beginning of Acts 2 – Jews and proselytes, men andwomen, slave and free – and yet, the word Luke chooses to DESCRIBE this seemingly hodge-podged assortment of people is koinonia, “commonality”. They could barely even SPEAK to one another; what in the world could they possibly share in common?!
Just one thing: the HOLY SPIRIT. They share the unity of the Spirit, because of their common confession that Jesus is Lord and Savior. Fun fact: the word koinonia doesn’t even show UP in the Bible until here in Acts 2, because it wasn’t even possible until the Holy Spirit united the Church; our fellowship IS, 2 Corinthians 13:14 – “the fellowship OF the Holy Spirit”. And brothers and sisters: the unity that we now share in the SPIRIT, is stronger than ANY other force that would seek to divide us.
Tony Merida puts it this way: “The source of our unity isn’t our common affinities; it’s our gospel identity” (69). And the gospel that unites us is stronger than the identity markers that would otherwise divide us.
The world loves to play identity politics. To define us by race, gender, politics, education, socio-economic status, so it can PITus AGAINST one another. I think that’s why God made sure there were so many people of EVERY conceivable race, nationality, religious past, social status, all there at Pentecost; not ONLY to prove that the gospel is truly for ALL people, but to prove that the ONLY GLUE that can possibly hold a community like this one in Acts 2 together in koinonia, the only glue that can hold a church like WEST HILLS together –
Whites AND Blacks,
Rich AND Poor,
Republicans AND Democrats,
Nerds AND Jocks –
The glue’s got to be STRONGER than any of those factors, than ALL of those factors combined; and the ONLY glue THAT strong is our new, shared identity in CHRIST!
“Fellowship is not just a sentimental feeling… It is not punch and cookies” after the worship service (Hughes, 49). Real, biblical fellowship means a radical reorientation of our identity, and a radical renunciation of our personal preferences, for the sake of unity in Christ.
Unity doesn’t mean uniformity (Merida, p69). If we were all the same, there’d be no NEED for unity, because it’s easy, natural, biological, to hang out with folks who look and talk and think and vote like you do. Even the DEMONS do that. What makes the Church the Church is NOT our uniformity, but rather our unitydespite diversity. The fact that I can be relationally closer to a poor, black, same-sex attracted, Biden-supporting woman than I am to another upper-middle class, straight, white, male, classicalRepublican, if SHE’S a believer and HE’S not. Our commonality in Christ trumps EVERY other identity marker. The world, with its identity politics, can’t make sense of that! That is a jarring, counter-cultural witness to the power of the gospel to unite God’s people.
By contrast, when we insist that the church endorse OUR candidate, enforce OUR preferred mask policy, champion OUR pet, second- or third-tier theological issues (“I can ONLY worship at a church where EVERYONE is a Reformed, cessationist, complementarian, credobaptist, dispensationalist!”), then we show the world that we in the Church really aren’t any different from them at all; we just live in an even more self-righteous echo chamber.
Darrel Bock notes that the word koinonia “was often used [in antiquity] of the type of mutuality that takes place in marriage” (150). And marriage is a good analogy; Polly and I tell every couple we do premarital counseling with: the #1 thing you can do to ensure a healthy, growing, UNIFIED marriage is to both pursue the Lord with all your heart mind soul and strength, because if I’M getting closer to God, and SHE’S getting closer to God, then we are NECESSARILY getting closer to one another as well.
THAT is the key to koinonia in the church as well, how we keep growing in relational intimacy as a spiritual family: we share a common pursuit of CHRIST.
Remember Jesus’ final prayer for his Church in John 17? Father, “I ask… for those who will believe in me… that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (Jn 17:20-21) There’s our witness again: “SO THAT the world may BELIEVE.”
Plus, it’s nice to have friends, isn’t it? Y’all aren’t JUST my spiritual family – you don’t get to choose family; family you’re BORN into and you just gotta put up with, and there may be a degree of that with your church family too – but friends are folks you ENJOY. I LOVE y’all. I really do, and not just cuz I HAVE to. I may be the only person here who has the pleasure of knowing all 350+ of you at West Hills, but I SHOULDN’T be. We’ve got some truly wonderful folks here; do yourself a favor and get to know them.
And a great way to DO that, Point 3, B, is around the DINNER table. “They devoted themselves to… the fellowship, AND to the breaking of bread”. Nothing brings people together quite like FOOD, does it? That’s why the perfect unity we look forward to one day sharing together in HEAVEN is depicted in Revelation 19:7 not just as God’s people all gathered around His throne, but around His TABLE, at the “Marriage Supper of the Lamb”. They say, “The family that PRAYS together STAYS together,” and we’ll get to that in point 3c, but it is ALSO true that the family who EATS together stays together.
But conversely, you can’t share relational unity with someone you don’t share PHYSICAL unity with. That’s why there’s no such thing as “virtual church”. Because church isn’t an event you watch, it’s a PEOPLE you’re WITH. Even the word “church”, in Greek ekklesia, means “gathering”, a physical gathering or assembly… We need to get back to meeting in one another’s HOMES for life group, and D-group, and sharing MEALS again. We need to get BACK to “the breaking of bread”, and physical unity.
Finally, 3c – “they devoted themselves to… the prayers.” They shared SPIRITUAL unity. Corporate prayer is such an interesting thing. You can only DO it if you’re spiritually unified, with the folks you’re praying with. When someone else is praying, in a group setting, you’re doing one of three things: either 1) you’re tuning them out; or 2) you’re tuned in, but you’re just passively listening, as THEY pray; OR 3) you’re actively praying alongside them, agreeing WITH them; that’s what the word “Amen” means, by the way, “I agree”. But you can only DO that, pray WITH someone, if you are spiritually UNITED. Have you ever been praying with someone who starts praying stuff you DON’T agree with? It’s awkward – do you start praying AGAINST their prayers?
But MOST of the time, prayer is spiritually UNIFYING. We’re lifting our SHARED hearts and souls up to the Lord. Have you noticed: it’s very difficult to stay mad at someone you’re praying with.
Personal application:
Do you share relational unity with the church? Do you KNOW one another? So many of you share your excitement with me that “There are so many new faces at church these days;” I’ve started responding: “Sounds like you’ve got your WORK cut out for you!” If we’re really gonna be a spiritual family; you can’t be STRANGERSwith someone in your own FAMILY! Meet someone new every Sunday.
How about physical unity? When was the last time you “broke bread” with a new brother or sister from West Hills?
Spiritual unity? Who are you praying for here? Who are you praying WITH?
Ps 133:1 “how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!”
#4 – A model church Reveals God’s power. (2:43; 4:33)
Ch2,v43: “And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles…”
Ch4,v33: “with great power the apostles were giving their testimony…”
Now, for sake of time, I’m gonna save our discussion of “signs and wonders” for next week, in chapter 3. But suffice it to say that WHATEVER you think about the existence of “signs and wonders” in the Church TODAY, there can be NO debate that God was working nothing short of MIRACLES in and through His Church in the book of Acts. And moreover, there’s no question WHY God performed those signs; it was His validation of the gospel message the apostles preached, through the demonstration of God’s power at work within them. Every miracle – all 30 of them – performed in the book of Acts, was for the expressed purpose of confirming the truth of the GOSPEL: that Jesus really DOEShave the power to raise us to new life.
So I’ll leave that there for now, and simply ask you this personal application question, as a teaser for next week:
When was the last time you said or did something so UNLIKE you, in a GOOD way, in a GOD way, that others around you were forced to ask HOW, WHY you did it? By what POWER did you do that? Because that didn’t sound like, look like, the OLD Will DuVal. The OLD _____, that I used to know.
Maybe you haven’t performed any miracles lately. But the same Holy Spirit power that lived in these apostles now lives inside YOU, and ME. Do we reveal God’s power – when the world looks at us, do they see JESUS? Matthew 5:16 “let your light shine before others, [let GOD’S light, shine THROUGH you, to others…] so that[b] they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Is that true of us, church?
#5 – The model church Rations resources. (2:44-45; 4:32,34-47)
Now, this may strike us today as the most extreme, even controversial mark of the early church, but that’s just because we’re so materialistic, so individualistic. But we do need to note a few things about what their resource-rationing WAS, and what it WASN’T:
For starters, it wasn’t universal. They didn’t share their stuff with EVERYONE in Jerusalem. 2:44: “all who believed were together and had all things in common.” Belief in JESUS was the prerequisite for joining the church and benefitting from the Community Needs Fund, just like it is here at West Hills. 1 Timothy 5:8 – you gotta take care of your own FAMILY first, before you can even think about providing for those outside the family.
Secondly, selling all your stuff was NOT a prerequisite of joining the church. Bock explains (215): “The imperfect verb “werebringing” and present participle “were selling” suggest a gradualliquidation of assets, [as needed,] not selling everything all at once.” After all, in v46 they’re eating in one another’s homes, so at least SOME of them kept their houses. But if the choice was: hang on to “my stuff” while someone else in the church goes hungry, OR move in with the in-laws so I can help feed a starving brother or sister, then I guess we’re moving. Because if koinoniasuggests the same mutuality as MARRIAGE; Polly and I are 2-become-1: 2 bank accounts have become 1 – what’s mine is hers and hers is mine, then when you covenant to join the CHURCH, we agree to that same kind of reciprocity as a spiritual family as well: what’s mine is ____ and what’s ____ is mine.
R.C. Sproul explains: (69): “Everyone who has ever argued the case for communism has used these verses to support it… Distinctly absent from this description [though] is government, either secular or ecclesiastical”; their sharing of resources was entirely voluntary; no one is ENFORCING it (other than God HIMSELF, we’ll see in a few weeks in ch5, who strikes Ananias and Sapphira DEAD for selfishly holding their possessions back).
But Hughes differentiates (71): “Communism says, “What is yours is everyone’s”. Christianity says, “What is mine is yours”; it’s not compulsory; they willingly gave.
If it seems radical, that’s because it WAS. The early church was marked by radical generosity. And just like their relational unity – koinonia – their material unity, this sharing of resources, was yet another powerful, counter-cultural witness. About a century later, in AD 125, the Emperor Hadrian wanted an explanation for why this still relatively newer religion “Christianity” was spreading so quickly; here is the report sent to him by a man named Aristides: “If one of them has [servants], through love towards them they persuade them to become Christians, and when they have done so, they call them brethren without distinction… They go their way in all modesty and cheerfulness. Falsehood is not found among them; and they love one another, and from widows they do not turn away their esteem; and they deliver the orphan from him who treats him harshly. And he, who has, gives to him who has not, without boasting. And when they see a stranger, they take him into their homes and rejoice over him as a very brother… And whenever one of their poor passes from the world, each one of them according to his ability gives heed to him and carefully sees to his burial. And if they hear that one of their number is imprisoned or afflicted on account of the name of their Messiah, all of them anxiously minister to his necessity, and if it is possible to redeem him they set him free [pay his bail]. And if there is among them any that is poor and needy, and if they have no spare food, they fast two or three days in order to supply to the needy their lack of food” (Merida, p41, from The Apology of Aristides, XV)
You know, it’s really remarkable, AMAZING, when you think about how we get by, financially, as a church. Can you imagine if the GOVERNMENT said, “Everyone just give what you want in taxes this year; whatever feels right; 10% is a good rule of thumb, but, really, whatever is on your heart to donate”! And yet, that’s exactlyhow we operate, as a Church. And the Lord provides. Because he fills YOU with His Spirit of generosity. We give richly because we know how much we’ve so richly been given, in Christ. And as your pastor, I’m so grateful for what a generous, sharing church you are with one another.
Lastly, rapid-fire; we’ll finish with an 8-traits-in-1-bullet-point flurry?
#6 – The model church Responds to the grace she has been given in Christ with public, personal, grateful, generous, reverent, reputable, evangelistic, expanding faith. (2:46-47) All 8 marks are right there in ch2, vv46-47. 4 sets of 2 contrasting pairs:
First, our faith is BOTH public and personal. It’s public – they were “attending the temple together” – that corresponds to our corporate worship together here on Sundays; but it’s ALSO personal – they were “breaking bread in their homes” – that corresponds to our life groups and discipleship groups throughout the week. But in NEITHER case is faith private; it may be personal, it MUST be personal – a personal relationship with JESUS! – but Christianity is NEVER “private”; it’s a team sport.
Second, their faith is both GRATEFUL and GENEROUS. “they received their food with glad hearts” – they were grateful – but they were ALSO generous – they had “generous hearts” – if gratitude is being thankful for what you’ve received, generosity is being joyful in how you GIVE. The model church gives ANDreceives well.
Thirdly, their faith was both REVERENT and REPUTABLE. They were reverent of the LORD, worshipful, v47 – they were “praising God” – but they knew in order to be effective witnesses FOR the Lord, they ALSO had to have an eye to their reputation in the surrounding society – they had “favor with all the people”. We’ve focused mostly today on the church’s INWARD relationships, with one another, as a community. But here at the end, Luke reminds us of the utmost importance of our UPWARD relationship, with God, as well as our OUTWARD relationships, missionally, to the world, as well.
Finally, theirs was both an EVANGELISTIC, as well as an EXPANDING faith. The early church was marked, as much as ANYTHING, by GROWTH; this was an expanding, a RAPIDLY expanding community – they started with 120. After one sermonthat became 3,120. And now by the END of chapter 2, we hear “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” Every single day, the church is growing. Because the church is a living organism, the BODY of Christ. And healthy living things GROW. But HOW does the Church grow? Through evangelism.
It may seem like there’s a TENSION there. Evangelism is what we do OUTSIDE the walls of the church. But here, we see the Lord “building His church”, as He promised to in Matthew 16, internally. So which is it: should we be concerned with going OUTWARD, or with growing INWARD. And once again, the answer is BOTH. Churches that are only focused inward become self-serving and shrivel up and die; churches that are only focused outward fail to care for those already under their care, and suffer for it.
West Hills, may WE be a model, biblical church: public AND personal; grateful AND generous; reverent AND reputable; evangelistic AND expanding.