Acts 2:42-47: A Community of Believers (Part 1)

Acts 2:42-47: A Community of Believers (Part 1)

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of Acts, and today the next passage we come to is Acts 2:42-47 as the passage upon which today’s message will be based. Acts 2:42-47: 

42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe 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.

We’ve been going through the book of Acts passage by passage, and the next passage we come to in that journey is Acts 2:42-47. And before we go any further, let’s pray. [Prayer]

If you’ve spent very much time at all in just about any evangelical or Bible-believing church, you’ve probably heard people talk about having “a personal relationship with Jesus.” That’s a pretty popular evangelical phrase. And even though that exact phrase doesn’t appear in the Bible, I do think it’s helpful in many ways. For example, it emphasizes the fact that it’s not enough for us to just practice various religious observances or “go through the motions,” as it were. We need to have an actual relationship with Jesus that’s real and genuine and life-changing. 

However, this phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” can also at times be interpreted in a very unhealthy way. You see, many people—especially in our individualistic society—have this view that Christianity is just about me and Jesus. They believe that living as a Christian doesn’t necessarily need to involve anyone else. You don’t need other Christians or a church because…well…having a personal relationship with Jesus is all that really matters. The decision of whether or not to be a part of a church is kind of like the decision of whether to have lemon in your water or not. Like, if you go to a restaurant and order water, the waitress will often ask you if you want lemon in your water. And it’s completely up to you, right? If you think you’d enjoy having a lemon, you can get one, and if you don’t think you’d enjoy it, then you don’t have to get one. It’s completely whatever you prefer. And that’s the way I believe a lot of people view church—merely as an optional extra that’s available if you want it but that you don’t really need in order to be a faithful or healthy Christian. 

However, when we look at the New Testament, we see that even though our relationship with Jesus may be personal, it’s not at all meant to be private. Let me say that again. Even though our relationship with Jesus may be personal, it’s not at all meant to be private. You see, when God saves you, he saves you into a family. And that family is called the church. And the passage of Scripture we’ll be looking at this morning—Acts 2:42-47—shows us very clearly just how true that is. 

Now, to set the context here, you may remember from last week that Peter has just delivered his famous sermon at Pentecost. He’s just explained to the thousands of people gathered at Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost that Jesus is their long-awaited Messiah. He refers to Jesus as “a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst.” In other words, Jesus’ miracles demonstrate his identity. But then, Peter explains, Jesus came not just to do miracles but also—and most centrally—to do something nobody expected. Jesus allowed his enemies to crucify him…voluntarily. And the reason he did that was that our sins cried out for God’s judgment. You see, God is a righteous God and therefore can’t let sin go unpunished. And typically, of course, we would be the ones to bear that punishment since we’re the ones who committed the sin. But Jesus died on the cross to bear that punishment in our place. He suffered the agony of the cross as our substitute. Then three days later, he accomplished his greatest miracle of rising from the dead in order to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was—and is—the true Messiah sent from God to rescue those who put their trust in him. 

And that rescue involves not only forgiveness of sins but also adoption into God’s family. It’s pretty incredible when you think about it. God doesn’t just forgive us but then keep us at arms’ length. He actually adopts us into his family. So, again, we come to this idea that God saves us not just into a “personal relationship with Jesus” but also into a relationship with other Christians. He saves us into a spiritual family. And that’s exactly what we see being played out here in Acts 2:42-47. Peter’s just preached his sermon and thousands of people have just put their faith in Jesus, and here’s what happens right after that: 42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe 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. 

So the main idea I’d like us to examine today that arises out of this text is that the local church is at the very center of New Testament Christianity. The local church is at the very center of New Testament Christianity. Now, this is going to a two-part sermon—this week being part one and next week being part two. And next week, we’re going to go more or less phrase by phrase through this passage and get into many of the nitty gritty details. But this week, we’re just going to stay at the 30,000 foot level and make some general observations about this passage. 

And I believe the most important thing this passage shows us is that the local church is at the very center of New Testament Christianity. Now, this is one of those things that’s so obvious in the text that it would be very easy for us to just pass right over without a second thought. But notice how when Peter preaches his sermon and 3,000 people come to faith, they don’t just all go their separate ways after that. We don’t see them saying to each other, “Hey guys, this was a lot of fun. Maybe we’ll do this again next year.” No, that’s not what happens. They don’t just take a few selfies and then disperse. Instead, they form a community. They continue meeting together on a regular basis, and verse 42 records how they continue listening to the apostles’ teaching on a regular basis and continue to gather for prayer and essentially become a spiritual family. That’s incredibly significant. Don’t just read over that. From the very first day Christianity started and onward after that, Christians have always formed themselves into Christian communities. Here in Acts 2, they viewed themselves not merely as individual followers of Jesus with each one doing their own thing but as a distinct community of people that other passages throughout the New Testament commonly refer to as a church. So that’s where we get our main idea—that the local church is at the very center of New Testament Christianity.

The Church Is Central to the Health of God’s People

And as a way of unpacking that statement, there are two observations about the church I’d like to make—both of which are clearly visible in this passage. First, the church is central to the health of God’s people. Again, the church is central to the health of God’s people. It seems as though these early Christians intuitively understood this. I love the way verse 44 describes the closeness of their fellowship. It simply says that they “were together.” They just “were together.” You didn’t often find one without finding another. And verse 46 tells us how frequently they met: every day. “Day by day,” it says. Obviously, nobody made them do this. They wanted to—and presumably sensed their need to relate to each other in that way. 

One metaphor that we find throughout the New Testament that really helps flesh out this idea that Christians need each other is that of a body. The New Testament frequently refers to the church as the body of Christ. And we find Paul elaborating on this metaphor a little bit in Romans 12:4-5. He writes, 4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. So just like the various parts of a physical body need each other, Christians, as members of a spiritual body, need each other as well. 

I mean, can you imagine what it would be like if your physical body had eyes but no hands? You wouldn’t be able to do very much would you? It’d be so frustrating—because you’d be able to see very clearly what needed to be done with your eyes, but you wouldn’t be able to do it. Or imagine that you had feet but no ears. As you may know, the inner part of the ear is very important for our balance. So even though you’d have feet that were capable of walking, you wouldn’t be able to get very far at all without going down in a very memorable face plant. So the parts of a body need each other. And according to Paul, it’s the same with the members of a church. The fact is that each member needs the ministry of other members, and the other members need the ministry of that member. And that’s why it’s so critical for us as Christians to get together on a very regular basis. 

Several weeks ago, my two older boys and I went on a Cub Scout camping trip. And we had a great time. We went hiking, we went searching for some snipe—perhaps some of you have done that before—and of course, we had a campfire that we used for cooking and for making s’mores. But then it was time to turn in for the night. And of course, before we could go to sleep, we had to do something about the campfire. You can’t just leave a campfire burning while you go to sleep. So what do you think we did with the logs and the embers inside the campfire ring? We separated them. We spread them out as much as we could—because we knew that doing that would weaken the fire considerably. We knew that the embers would no longer be able to share each other’s heat and that once they were separated, they would go out much more quickly. And it’s the same way for us as Christians. Isolation—being separated from one another—is one of the worst things that can ever happen to us. In fact, the vast majority of the time, there’s no quicker way for the fire of our passion for God to fade and eventually be extinguished than for us to be isolated. 

And, by the way, we actually have empirical evidence for that during COVID. You would think that during those first few months of COVID, when everything was locked down, that Christians would have more time to read the Bible on their own and therefore that they would do it more, right? That would seem to make sense, that Christians would read the Bible more. But according to research conducted by LifeWay, the opposite was actually the case. Christians actually reported reading their Bibles significantly less during the COVID lockdowns. That was the result when Christians weren’t able to gather together. And it’s a downward spiral—because the less we’re together, the more apathetic we often become, and the more apathetic we become, the less we desire to get together again. And by the way, Satan knows this. He’s not stupid or naïve. He knows this and will therefore do whatever he can to isolate us. That’s why I’ve heard it said—and I heartily agree—that “the most important time to be at church is when you don’t feel like it.” “The most important time to be at church is when you don’t feel like it”—because it’s then that the fire has begun to go out.

Also, in addition to the metaphor of a body, the New Testament gives us some very clear warnings about our natural tendencies in isolation from other Christians. We find one of the most sober of these warnings in Hebrews 3:12-14. The book of Hebrews, by the way, was written to Christians who were going through a difficult time. They were experiencing persecution for their faith and were therefore tempted to revert back to their old way of living. And it’s in response to that temptation that the book of Hebrews was written. And the author tells them in Hebrews 3:12-14, 12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 

So do you see what that’s saying? Apparently, looking at verse 13, there’s a real danger that we’ll be “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Left to ourselves, we can very easily wander off and start chasing after sin instead of chasing after Jesus. Sin’s “deceitful” like that. It deceives us into thinking that it’ll satisfy us, that it’ll take care of us, and that it’s our best option. And it can very easily pull us in. That’s why we need each other. One author named Paul Tripp writes in response to this verse, “I need you in order to really see and know myself. Otherwise, I will listen to my own arguments, believe my own lies, and buy into my own delusions. My self-perception is as accurate as a carnival mirror. If I am going to see myself clearly, I need you to hold the mirror of God’s Word in front of me.” That’s what we need as Christians. We need each other. And the place you get that kind of nurture and that kind of committed love is in a church. That’s why thinking you don’t need a church is, quite honestly, both incredibly prideful and incredibly foolish. 

The Church Is Central to God’s Plan for Reaching the World with the Gospel

So that’s the first observation I’d like to make this morning. The church is central to the health of God’s people. Also, in addition to that, the church is central to God’s plan for reaching the world with the gospel. The church is central to God’s plan for reaching the world with the gospel. In fact, I don’t think it would be an overstatement to say that the church is God’s plan for reaching the world with the gospel. As one theologian has said, the church is Plan A and there is no Plan B. Returning to our main passage in Acts 2, we see the remarkable way God used the church to reach more and more people. Verse 47 tells us, “And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

Then later on in Acts, after we see God use the church of Acts 2 in such a remarkable way, we see the Apostle Paul highlighted as the key missionary who spread the gospel all around the Roman world. And what was his strategy? Did he organize a media blitz? Did he try to infiltrate the government? Did he start a ministry focused on social needs? Did he just tell Christians do the best they could to reach others on their own? No, everywhere he went, he set up local communities of believers—local churches—so that those churches could continue reaching their city even after Paul moved on to the next city. He would move into the city, share the gospel, see people come to faith, organize them into a local church, and then move on to the next city. Then, he would typically come back through a while later, once the believers had had time to mature a little bit, and he would appoint leaders in these churches. And when he went away again, these churches would often get off track in various ways, so he would either send a representative to them to get them back on track or he would write a letter to them correcting their errors. And it’s a good thing he did because those letters are a major part of what we now know as the New Testament. Most of the books we find in the New Testament are letters Paul wrote not to individuals but rather to the churches he established. 

So these churches weren’t an afterthought for Paul; they were central to his missionary strategy. And they were also central to God’s strategy, because the book of Acts mentions time and time again how the Holy Spirit was the one leading Paul to do the various things he did. So if the local church was so central in Paul’s mentality, and if it was so central in God’s mentality, don’t you think it should be central in our mentality as well? As we strive to do our part to reach the world with the gospel, how knuckleheaded would we have to be to neglect something that the Bible presents as so critical? How dare we make something peripheral that the Bible makes so central?

Conclusion

So, to sort of tie all of this together, Acts 2 is in many ways ground zero for the centrality of the church in the New Testament. It shows us that the church isn’t just helpful or even important. It’s absolutely central to New Testament Christianity. The concept of being a Christian by yourself and drifting through life on your own, apart from meaningful involvement in a church, is completely foreign to the New Testament. Instead, the local church is at the very heart of New Testament Christianity. It’s central to our own spiritual health, and it’s central to God’s plan for reaching the world with the gospel.

So let me encourage you to do a few things. First of all, try to cultivate a greater awareness of how the hyper-individualistic mentality that so saturates our culture has affected your view of church and your approach to church. Spend some time reflecting on that. You know, it’s amazing how unaware we can be of the cultural assumptions and biases that are driving our lives and even driving our interpretation of Scripture. For example, you heard me say a few moments ago that most of the New Testament letters were written not to individuals but to churches. But how often do you and I read them as if they were addressed to us as individuals? How often do we read the “yous” in those letters as if they were singular “yous” rather than the plural “yous” that they are? And how might that cause us to read them differently than we should and miss the full weight of their meaning? You see, the fact is that we’re influenced by our hyper-individualistic culture far more than we often realize. And that shows up not only in our interpretation of Scripture but in the way we live our lives and, specifically, I believe, in the way we approach church. So maybe go home this afternoon and do some reflecting on how that hyper-individualistic mentality has been affecting you and perhaps causing you to fall short of biblical teaching. 

Also, and more specifically, let me encourage you to make attendance here on Sundays the priority that it needs to be. Believe it or not, I’ve actually had Christians tell me that church attendance isn’t commanded in the Bible. And I don’t know what Bible they were reading, but my Bible contains Hebrews 10:24-25, which says: 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. It’s a pretty clear command. And notice here that this isn’t just some legalistic, arbitrary command. There’s a purpose behind not neglecting to meet together. Kind of like when a parent tells their child to eat nutritious foods or go to bed at a certain time. Parents don’t have their children do those things out of some sort of legalistic spirit but rather because they know those things are ultimately what’s best for their children’s well-being. And similarly, when God instructs us not to neglect meeting together in this verse, it’s for a purpose. We need each other. Look what the verse says. We gather so that we can “stir up one another to love and good works” and also so that we can be “encouraging one another,” it says. That’s what we gather on Sundays to do. And let me point out here that gathering is necessary to do it. This isn’t something you can do just by watching the livestream of the worship service on Facebook. In order to do Hebrews 10 ministry in the church, you kind of have to be here. 

And hopefully, by the way, when you come, you’re able to come with that Hebrews 10 mindset—the mindset of being very intentional about using this time to minister to the others who are here—building relationships with them and having edifying conversations. It might not be a bad idea even to show up 20 minutes early and stay 20 minutes late. There’s so much you’re missing out on if you show up at 10:30 on the dot and then leave the moment the service is over. So let me encourage you to enter those doors with that mentality. Walk in those doors with love for the people of God, praying that God would guide you and use you to minister to the others who are gathered here and be an encouragement to them. 

And even if your ability to do that is limited for some reason—maybe you have kids climbing all over you or whatever the reason is—even if you’re not able to come early or have a lot of meaningful conversations or things like that, please know that just being here is itself a ministry to others. It’s kind of like a dad who might have a busy schedule but who always makes it a priority to be there for his kids—to be there for family meals, to be there for sports games, to be there for birthday parties, to just be present as frequently and consistently as possible. That’s a huge part of being a great dad. You don’t have to be an amazing athlete or buy lots of expensive gifts or be the coolest guy in the neighborhood. You just have to be present and engaged with your kids. And it’s the same way with the church. Don’t underestimate the value of just showing up. The simple fact that you cared enough and made it enough of a priority to be here when there are undoubtedly many other things you could be doing is, in itself, an encouragement and something that strengthens the rest of us. 

And of course, let me say that there are obviously some very legitimate reasons for not attending—such as being sick or having to work or traveling. Like, I know this is the Fourth of July weekend and we have a lot of people out of town—that’s fine. That’s why we have the livestream—for people who want to be here but legitimately aren’t able to. But just understand that the livestream is intended to function as a bridesmaid to a bride—not as something that replaces the bride. There’s just no substitute for being here in person if you’re able to. 

So let me encourage you to make being here on Sundays the priority that it needs to be. If you’re a member of the church and you’re in town and you’re healthy and you’re not obligated to work, we expect you to be here pretty much every single Sunday. And to be candid, we’ve been holding off doing this because of COVID, but the time is very quickly approaching when we’ll need to once again start removing people from church membership who aren’t faithfully attending in-person—unless, of course, there’s an extenuating circumstance in their lives. 

Brothers and sisters, if Acts 2:42-47 shows us anything, it shows us that God intends for us to live as a community of believers who love each other and care for each other and are committed to each other—all with the understanding that we need each other. When God saves a person, he saves them into a spiritual family. And it’s only in the context of that family that we can be all that God wants us to be and do all that God wants us to do.

Now before we move forward in our service, here’s what I’d like you to do. If you have a bulletin, you’ll notice on the sermon notes page that there’s space at the bottom with the heading, “How I need to grow and change.” Please locate that and grab a pen. And if you don’t have a bulletin for whatever reason, feel free to do this in your head if you need you need to. I’d like to invite you to spend a few moments thinking about how you need to respond to this message. How can you make sure God’s Word has its intended effect not just of increasing your knowledge but of shaping you to be more like Jesus? How, by God’s grace and through the power of his Spirit, do you need to grow and change? I’ll give you a few moments to write something down, and then we’ll move forward with our service.