OCT 1 2023 | Fellowship S1E3 | Modeling The Early Church

Sea Change Church · Fellowship S1E3 · "Modeling The Early Church" · October 1, 2023
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Acts 2 42 through 47. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, the many wonders and science performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day.

They continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily, those who were being saved. The word of the Lord. We're talking about the religion. We're talking about the religious practice of the early church.

We're in week three. And look at how some people changed history. They didn't do that without changing their lives. Got their lives changed first, and they changed the community around them. This is what they did. And then they changed the city of Jerusalem. And then the church got dispersed through persecution. And then they went out on the diaspora. They changed the, the cities around them. Then they changed the world and they changed history.

And it all happened because a group of believers said, we wanna live together and practice life together. There's a key word today. If you go to, uh, verse 46, and I've been giving you a keyword, don't even know if you notice that. Every week I'm trying to use a keyword to ex execute that scripture. And there's been three keywords. The keyword today is daily.

You're gonna see it there as every day. Now, if you have a King James version that's gonna be, say, daily, there's gonna be a usage in different versions we use of every day, daily. Um, or, or each day. You'll see something like that. Daily just worked better for the flowing of the three words that we had for this last three weeks. First week, the, the key word that we saw was, um, that the, um, believers were devoted.

So they had devoted themselves in verse 42. They had devoted themselves. It looks like that got erased from my notes for some reason. Maybe not on yours, but they devoted themselves. So it was devoted was the key word in week one. Week two was together. They devoted themselves together, devoted together. And the third word is daily.

That's how they change the world. Devoted together daily. Did you hear that? Devoted together daily. That if you want to just, just rip the essence out of this text, this Acts 2 42 through 47. There's a lot of other things. There's a results. And the Lord added to their number daily. Those were being saved, but they were devoted on a daily basis. And that's key, main idea for this week, uh, is the unity and the attraction.

They were magnetic. The unity and the attraction of the early church was found in its regularity and routine of their relationships was found in the regularity and the routine of their relationships. The result of that was people being saved. That's what religion is, right? It is a routine. It is a regularity. It is a practice. We'll, look at religion.

I think religion's gotten a bad rap. I'm not afraid of religion. I actually like religion. I just don't like false religion, like true religion. And the Bible talks about true religion says some of the hallmarks of that, or caring for widows, caring for orphans and something Paul said, the very thing that I want to do, and it's the very thing we want to do here as a church.

If we continue to lean into that, you'll hear more about that in the year to come as we reach out to, uh, the homeless and to, um, orphans as a practice. Uh, there's two main, I there's a main idea here. Lemme just read it again. The unity and attraction of the early church was found in the regularity and routine of the relationships. Result was that people were being saved.

And so two of those key words are regularity and routine. If you wanna walk with Christ, you're gonna have to have regularity of routine. Remember, when I got saved and tried to get sober, my discipler mechanic, who I sat with over a table in his kitchen for 38 weeks in a row said, best way to, to, uh, walk your faith is to change your calendar.

Just where you just fill your Friday night up, fill your Thursday up. So I just filled my calendar. I had no space for myself because at that point, space for myself was not safe. It was not as safe. I I couldn't do a lot of good with a lot of empty space. So I filled my life up with believers. Two points today, one, the early church practice and everyday faith, you can say daily, but the early church practice and every day faith, no days off, even the Sabbath wasn't a day off. It was part of their faith practice.

It wasn't a Sunday church, Wednesday night church. It was every single day. One day at a time. Alistair Begg, pastor, if you listen to him, he's a great preacher. He's a Scottish preacher. Lives in America now. Says, I live a 62nd faith. That's as much as I can do. 60 seconds. I just keep re-upping every 60 seconds. Every 60 seconds turns into every day.

First church lived or practiced in everyday faith. Number two, the way in which they did it mattered. The way in which they lived. Their faith mattered. And so it says in, let's go to verse, uh, 47, actually, verse 46 B. About halfway through, they broke bread in their home. Something I did with a bunch of believers this week, ate together.

Did too much of that this week with glad ooh, gladness circle. Glad and sincere circle. Sincere. What was sincere? Their attitudes know their hearts. Glad and sincere hearts praising God. And they enjoyed favor because of that. That's what would happen. Gladness. Sincerity and praise were magnetic characteristics of the early church believers. The word gladness there, we're just gonna look at one of those words today. In the Greek, the word gladness there is aal AEs.

It's a fun word to say. Ais. You guys wanna try it with me? 1, 2, 3. Agaist word ais is a supernatural gladness. We're gonna dive into that. Can't get that at Starbucks. Caffeine might be strong. You ain't gonna get ais from a cup of coffee. Your football team winning. This is different. We're gonna talk about that. It just as they, the young kids say, it hits different. Let's go to, uh, 0.1, the early, the early church practice in everyday faith.

Let's go to verse 46. 46. Every day or daily, they continued, they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They continued. So there was temple courts, as you know, the temple in Israel where we just were, had different sections to it. They had a section for the Gentiles. They had a section for women. They had a sec section for the sacrifices.

And then there was this holy of holies where only the high priest can go. Thankfully, the book of Hebrews says that we can go to that place now. Matter of fact, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. We have become the holy of Holies. I like Israel. I like when I go there and I get to certain places and it's like, oh, Jesus was here. That's cool. But Jesus is here and we are now the temple.

Uh, I mean, I'm, I think Jerusalem is an amazing city. God's gonna use it. He's gonna come back to it. It is important to God. But he has surpassed the importance of Jerusalem. 'cause there will be a new Jerusalem. This one will pass away, but you will not. And we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And so it says that they would meet together in these temple courts.

They met together at the temple courts on the way to the temple courts. Remember Peter and, and John were going to synagogue. They hadn't stopped going to synagogue at the time, and they met someone along the way and they healed him on the steps to the temple. They were living this everyday faith, not just in the temple courts, not just in each other's houses. They were living in everywhere they went.

They didn't leave church and turn it off, you know, we'll come back. See you at Tuesday night, small group. Now I'm gonna go get mine. I'm gonna go have a little me time. It was on continually. It says they continued to meet. You know what's interesting this day? I've really been trying to lean into this. There was not a day this week where I didn't get encouragement from one of you. And, and it just wasn't like on the job, on the clock stuff. Granted, I talked to believers every single day because that's a lot of what I do.

It was off the clock stuff. It was driving somewhere and thinking about somebody and just, you know, I'm gonna pull over and, and shoot a text. I pull over and shoot 'em a text, call somebody. Think about somebody. Hey, I'm just praying for you. Reaching out. Someone has a need. I wanna think about that need. How can I lean into that need? There wasn't a day, and I'm recur, I'm re-upping on this because I feel like I'd kind of personally got a little too selfish with my time and decided that I wanted to lean into this.

I gotta say, it was so encouraging. I can't tell you when you throw seeds out like that, you get fruit back. All of a sudden I'm struggling. I get a, a text. I reached out to somebody. I know that God has a gift of, of, of prophecy in their life. There is prophecy where they know about. Just think, just God speaks to 'em. You can get a word for 'em. God speaks to 'em. Not saying that they're Isaiah, they're not changing the Bible, but God will speak about something.

I had a little tough day one day on Tuesday, and I reached out to a couple people I know have a gift of prophecy. I said, I need a word. I hadn't done that for a long time. I said, I said, brother, I need a word. And I'm talking 15 minutes later. I didn't even tell him what it was. Whew. I got served up a hot slice of bread with God's word. And it was, it was right on what I was saying. He said, the devil's trying to tell you this.

It was exactly what I'd been thinking. The devil's trying to tell you this. The devil's trying to tell you this, but God's telling you this. I was like, man, so good. When the brothers dwell together, brothers and sisters dwell together. It says it's like do right running off the beard of Aaron. So we see the first thing that there was not a day this week, and there's not a day in their week.

I wrote the first century believers used relationships to turn as a tool to turn religion into radical faith. They used it as a tool to turn religion into radical faith. Religion gets a bad rap. I'm not religious. I'm not into organized religion. Well, then you're into disorganized religion. Like what do you mean? What is religion? Religion as, as I put here, there's a, there's a definition of religion. Uh, and I put that I believe that religion is the, the, um, harvesting and the organizing of spiritual practice and focus into doing.

It's deciding, I'm gonna read my Bible and organizing a time where you will read your Bible and then using what you found in the Bible and organizing a time to make it come alive in the streets. That's what religion is. My job is to organize religion. My job is to take practice and organize people around spiritual practice that makes a different in the streets.

When we don't have a difference that is happening in the streets, we live a false religion. I want nothing to do with false religion, but we want to have a religion is turning belief into practice. Lemme say that again. Religion, organized religion. When it's done well and you have your own organized religion, you take what we do here and then you organize your life.

Anytime it is organized, you are organizing your belief into practice. Do you believe in prayer? Well then set up a time and pray. Do you believe in community? Then spend time with people. That is what religion is. And this bad. When people say to me, I don't, you know, I don't believe in religion. I'm just spiritual. I say I totally believe in religion.

I love religion because religion organizes me because I'm just a hot mess without something organizing my life where I sit down and say, I want to put a focus on God and on people. That's what religion is, right? It's turning a focus on God and people into something that matters. This is what the early church did. They themselves were devoted to the teaching, the breaking of bread to prayer, to fellowship of the believers.

That's verse 42. That's religion. They were devoted to that. That was what they did. And what happened? Everyone was filled with many signs and wonders. They turned religion. There's a quote by f Fred Frederick Douglass, one of my early favorite founders of, of one of the kind of founding, not really founding fathers, one of the early founding believers, I guess, uh, and helped shape the nation. The quote says this, I prayed for 20 years, but received no answers until I prayed with my legs.

That's solid, right? Lemme just read that again. I prayed for 20 years, but received no answers until I prayed with my legs. Religion is praying with your legs. It's getting out there and making a difference. It's getting away from the toxic self-centeredness and my own thoughts, my own desires, my own wants. Spending time with God, seeing what he is telling you in the word.

And even if you're a person that says, God never speaks to me, well, you have a whole Bible that'll tell you what to do. It'll tell you how to live, how to give. Just do what this thing says. Think it's impossible. That's why he gave us his word. He speaks to us. And do we wanna immerse ourselves in it? Religion is turning belief into practice, and it says the Lord added to their number daily, those that were being saved.

I put the faith of the first century. Church was not confined to sacred spaces. It was constant presence in their daily actions, attitudes, and affairs. The faith of the first century church was not confined to their sacred spaces. I was in small group. This, I, I went around to a bunch of small groups. The Dad's Juujitsu group run by Harry is the coolest. I'm sorry, uh, I don't have a picture of it, but they're all on the mat and there, and they all got the shirts and they're just, ah, just beating each other up.

It was the best group. It's like 15 people and they're so cool. And it terrified me and I was watching it. Um, I was in our, our, our small group and uh, we have room for one more couple. If you have a middle schooler or a high schooler, it's right across the street. Would love to have you be a part of my small group that I'm a part of.

We had 12 people show up. Um, and we're all, everybody kind of walks in. No one kind of knew each other. Some kind of did. By the end of the night we were laughing. It was so fun. We had so much fun. And one of the people who was there was sharing and they said, you know, it's, I'm kind of, kind of getting back into faith. Never really been deep into faith, was as a kid, didn't really have a relationship, but I need God.

And that's what people kept saying. They said, I need each more people in my life from the church. I need stronger believers and I want to know more about God. And that's one of the reasons we're we're starting up this small group, um, emphasis. And he said, this is what he said. He said, it was interesting though. He says, my problem is like the only Christian friends I have are at church and everybody else in my world is non-Christian. I said, well, you know what?

That's normative. That actually usually starts out that way, especially if you're a little bit later, later in life coming back to the church. I remember when I was getting rebooting my Christian life and getting saved and getting sober. I didn't have any Christian friends. Why would I hang out with Christians? And I said to them, I said, you know, that's normative. And I said, you know what the problem is, if you stick around long enough, you won't have any unsaved friends unless you work to bring your faith with legs on it into those communities.

And you fight to stay into those communities, which is getting harder and harder in a divisive society. Satan wants to separate Christians ideologically from everyone else in the world. So we can have the satisfaction of of being around a monolith of our own opinions while people die and go to hell and die in their sin. God wants us to be involved.

I know that the only place that I was spending time with non-believers was when I was playing basketball, which was the hardest, you know, on at the Y M C A, which was the hardest place for me because all the raw, you know, you, it's hard to keep all that raw motion and energy in and keep your faith. So it was like the most difficult for place for me to be.

And sometimes I'm like, man, I just, I I just need to quit. Like, it's just bad for my job if I keep playing basketball, you know what I'm saying? Um, but to find those places, we're making a difference in society. And some of you, you work in the, in the public school system, some of you are nurses and you're surrounded, so you get it, you know what I'm talking about. But some other of us, especially if we retire, if we're working in church business, if you're in the nonprofit N G O business or things of that nature, we can end to, we can just lose touch with these people.

That's not what these believers did. It says they were praising in the temple courts and they were going all about, remember in Acts two, earlier in this passage when the Holy Spirit fell on them, they were surrounded by nonbelievers, right? And they began to speak in tongues. And then all the non-believers, there's a list earlier in chapter two that gives like 10 to 15 places where people who weren't believers were surrounding them. They weren't hiding away.

They weren't hiding at first. They were, they were afraid. But then they got Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit gave them boldness and they went out and they made a difference. So, and how they went mattered. There's the second point. Gladness, sincerity and praise were magnetic characteristics of the early believers. Verse 46, every day they continued to meet.

Every day they continued to meet and, uh, with praise. And the Lord added to their number every day. And they go to verse 46, they broke bread in the homes. They ate together with glad. That's a g galia. And sincere hearts, this word gladness, ais, it's kinda like Galilee. That's how I remembered it. Alysis, if you wanna look more into it, go to blue letter bible.com and put in this verse.

Or you can google this verse and blue letter Bible. It'll come up. You can go deeper. This is where I got this info from. And it says that gladness, a alias is not used by secular writers at the time. It's in the Sept agent, but it's not used by secular writers. This word isn't even a word that's used. It's a Christian word.

It's a a word that, that Hebrew believers who were new in Christ came, maybe they came up with this word, but it expresses something that the culture can't express. When you live according to the power of the Holy Spirit, you will live a life that this culture cannot express. God will light up who he has called you to be in such a way.

You will burn like that bush in front of Moses. You will light up the world, you will change the world. And it says, those will see the way in which you live and give praise to God when he comes back. The scripture says, it says it's not used by, um, secular writers. It speaks of exaltation and extreme joy. I put some verses there you can dig into where this word is also used in, in Luke Acts, Jude Hebrews in the psalm, the Psalm in the Old Testament has a, has a Hebrew way of saying it. And the Psalm says, it's an oil of gladness.

It's an anointing from which a person were anointed at the feast in which the writer alluding to the inaugural ceremony of anointing uses as an emblem of divine power and majesty, to which the son of God has been exalted. How do they get that? They have a class on, hey, how, how to exude gladness. Like we can do that. You ain't gonna get a aus, you're not gonna get that from it.

You know where this comes from. Go a little earlier in the scripture from the Holy Spirit. Remember earlier in the Holy Spirit, uh, earlier in chapter two, at the very beginning of this, where were they? They were all gathered together and the Holy Spirit fell upon them. And it says they were filled with the Holy Spirit. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. Well, how does that happen?

There's a lot of ways, a lot of taps that can turn on the Holy Spirit. I read in Proverbs one today as I, I read the proverbs every single month, and I started with day one. So we're back on day one. I love getting back to number one and starting over again. There was no 31 this month. I'll still pray that for my wife as a bonus prayer.

Um, and as I looked at that in, in, in, excuse me, Proverbs one, it said that, listen to wisdom, repent and follow my leading something to the paraphrase of that. And I will pour out my spirit upon you. A galia sis gladness, sincerity. We, we don't have time to get into sincerity of heart. That's a good one too. I don't even have time to get into praise. These come from the Holy Spirit.

These are not personality traits. Lemme say that again. These are not personality traits. Personality trait is extroversion, introversion, you know, these different things. You can, a lot of people say, well, I just, I just don't have that. That's just not my makeup. That's just not who I am. I'm, I'm a little quiet, so I'm not gonna go around with gladness and praise. I'm just, you know, these are not personality traits.

This is the nature of God being harvested through the download of the Holy Spirit in your life. You can't get this unless you are leaning into the Holy Spirit. Praying, reading the word of God, living in obedience. One of the best. You wanna know, one of the best ways to turn the tap of the Holy Spirit on be obedient. God never speaks to me. Oh, he doesn't, uh, tell me, is there anything God's told you not to do? I got a whole list of that. Okay, well, let's start there. Like, if God has told you, I'm not telling you what to do. If God has told you, let's start with obedience.

And it says that he, and this is Old Testament stuff, and how much more real is this in the New Testament? And when he does that, he will pour out his spirit upon you, not upon you anymore. It's within you. You see, that's the big change. It was poured out upon them. And at the beginning of acts, you see, this was a change that happened. Paul, um, Peter, um, Peter as, um, when he speaks, and, and this is not in your notes, but you can write it down and check it out later.

I don't think it's in your notes. Second Peter, one 15, I was reading second Peter. I was into second Peter. I love the epistle Peter. And he says, for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and with virtue knowledge, gladness, sincerity of heart. And praise our virtues. We live in an unvirtuous world of vice.

Our world is full of vice. Every decision you make, you can ask yourself, is this every effort to supplement my faith? You're supplementing the faith, supplementing it with virtue. Are you making a decision for virtue or are we making a decision for vice? It says do that with knowledge. And then it ends like this in Colossians three, five, the nature of God and the nature of the Holy Spirit to live with that gladness, that sincerity of heart, that hope, all those things that are downloaded from the Spirit is so unlike the way the pagans live. Where Pagans is in the, I believe it's 11 times in the New Testament, 10 or 11 times I looked up, you're living in a pagan society again, Colossians three, five says, put to death, therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature.

Sexual morality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, which is idolatry. Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming. Wrath of God is coming. I believe I'm seeing the wrath of God in the world today. I'm seeing things that are being labeled as something. We'll talk more about this in revelation, gimme my, my thoughts.

But some things are being labeled with one label, why this is happening and this is why this is happening. And I'm like, I'm not too sure. I read the prophetic literature and it said, these things are gonna happen. It's crazy. We won't get into that today. I got a new series starting next week on Revelation. We're gonna look more into that. So what's some practical takeaways?

Let's give you two practical takeaways before we take communion together, which is what the early believers did. Practice everyday faith practice every day. Organize, practice, organized religion every day. Organize your own religion. Find a time where you're gonna pray, how long you're gonna pray. Try to stick to that prayer. Figure out how you're gonna read the Bible, what you wanna read in the Bible. Like organize your spiritual life.

You go to the gym. It's better when you work on to figure out, I'm gonna do this plan. I just come in and pick and choose and do something different every day. And then go home. Get a plan. Practice everyday. Faith. And what I would say in that is as well, connect with someone from your faith community daily. Connect with someone from this faith community daily. Find someone in your, in your posse. Get a posse here. Get a crew.

Or have a crew somewhere you connect with if you're not here. And connect daily with, with believers every single day. Find just a believer, just a text. That's that. That's one help. And the next one is cultivate gladness. Sincerity and praise. We cultivate that by spending time with the Holy Spirit. You can't spend time with God without him rubbing up on you. He's like that.

You give God an inch, he'll take an eternity. You say, God, I want some more gladness. I'm gonna give you praise. I don't feel like praising, but I'm gonna give you praise because praise is a virtue. So do everything you can to supplement your faith. Supplement your faith with praise, with sincerity of heart, with gratitude that changes. Its in everyday faith. In 1933, there was a man named Nicholas Winston.

And he was a British man and he's referred to as the British Schindler. He was a believer. And he went on vacation in 1939. I seen Jim nodding his head, you've heard the story, 1939 or uh, and began to see what was happening to the Jews in Czechoslovakia. He called some of his Christian friends together and he said, we gotta get these kids, we gotta ship these kids outta here.

And he started the thing called Project Kinder. Transport began to transport children. Their parents would give their children away. I was just at the Holocaust Museum and there was a Jewish mother who couldn't care for her child anymore. And there was a picture, 'cause there was a whole bunch of pictures of a woman who had just left her baby on the sidewalk hoping someone would take the sidewalk and left. Now I, I imagine she was there watching from far away, I would imagine.

But can you imagine the desperation to just take your child and think, I can't care for this child and leave them on a sidewalk as, and the sidewalk was full of people walking by. And this man was a Christian, started calling his Christian friends in parliament and he had friends. He was a little bit connected. He was a businessman. And he began to, to connect with these people. He began to send these kids home.

And by the end of of his time Operation Kinder transported had transported 669 children during the course of the war, at great risk to himself. Even after the war started, he was still going. He was still going there. You and getting into the country and sending people over at great suffrage to himself when Czechoslovakia had already been invaded. He never told anybody.

He never told anybody his story until in the 1980s, mid 1980s, his wife, who didn't even know, was going through some old papers and found a a journal. She opened up the journal and then she saw the journal. She started seeing names and she asked him what these were. And there were names and records of every child he had sent to England to live.

She didn't tell him. 'cause he was a humble man. He didn't really wanna talk about it. It was, it was tragic. A lot of kids didn't make it. But she encouraged him. And she talked to the B B C and she said, we wanna tell this. I wanna tell this story of my husband. And so she got him on the B B C on this television show, and they had him on the television show and they brought him there and he was in the front row and they told his story. And as they told his story, he, you know, about what had happened. He said, um, they said, Hey, by the way, is there anybody in the audience today that was saved by Nicholas Winston? Here's the picture.

As every single person in the audience they had put in there, stood up around him. You can watch it online, you can look it up. It's the YouTube video. It's so touching. 'cause he turned around and all these children who had become adults stood up around him and he stood and he began to weep. He began to weep. You wanna know what that is? That's religion. That's Acts two. Religion.

That's what happens when Christians decide to get rid of the toxic self-centeredness. The woe is me. My life's the worst thing ever. And give their lives away. That's what we wanna do. That's the kind of church we want to be. Amen. Let's stand for communion. If you would.