Christ Church

April 17, 2005: 8.00am

Acts 2:42-27

We have in that reading from the book of Acts this morning a fascinating insight into the life and nature of the very infant church, for there is nothing to suggest that what is described is how those first believers conducted themselves in the days immediately after the Day of Pentecost. These men and women were entering into something completely new; completely radical, and it’s worth taking a look at some of those characteristics of God’s church just after its foundation. Let’s not fail to remember just what we mean by ‘church’.

  We clearly are not to understand the building! We meet here this morning ‘in church’. Yet we are ‘the church’. Indeed in verse 46 we’re told ‘every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts’. They also ‘broke bread in their homes’. Certainly no ‘church building’. The Greek word we get translated as ‘church’ is ek-klesia, which means very simple ‘the assembly of the called-out ones’. They were the church when they met in the Temple courts- and it may be that they observed the daily temple ritual. Straight after this we read in Acts chapter 3 and verse 1; One day Peter and John were going up to the Temple about the time of prayer-at three in the afternoon. But equally they were ‘church’ when they met as they did daily in one another’s homes.

 Now we do (rightly maybe), complain about the number of church meetings! But even if we belong to a house group we may meet a group of fellow-believers once a week or fortnight as the case may be. If we learn anything from this infant church, then we must ask ourselves about our division of time. They were very much a minority sect, a very new sect and had a felt need to support one another in this new faith. We are back to the situation today where we are a minority group. The only difference is, maybe, that we are not so radically different from the surrounding world as those first disciples were. OK: the church has been round a long time now, and is not something so new, but our own personal faith is, or was at some point, something very new for us.

If I may skip to the end of our passage, there we read this:

And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Daily. Daily their numbers were increasing. They increased not because they had attended a course on ‘How to be church’. How relevant I sometimes have to ask myself are these courses? So, you know, the question arises, ‘Is God out of the business of saving people?’ God is the same God as he was at Pentecost. We have our Pentecost celebrations, and so on- we had one on the Millennium Park two years ago. But unless God is out of the business of salvation, then what has gone wrong? Daily. If we are added to by one or two new converts a year then we probably have done well! Something is wrong somewhere! Can we glean any answers from our reading today and from that infant church? Several things seem to stand out.

1. In verse 42, we read ‘they devoted themselves’. It wasn’t just a casual interest among many others. They were in this for earnest. They were hungry to learn, and their source of teaching was from the apostles. Now, of course, we don’t have the apostles with us. We do though have their teaching in the Scriptures. How much do we devote ourselves?  They also devoted themselves to the ‘fellowship’, to the sharing together of their new faith, they devoted themselves to prayer. And to breaking of bread- almost certainly following our Lord’s command to ‘do this is remembrance of me’.
2. They had everything in common. Now that was probably force of circumstance, but underlying it all was a sharing together; a sharing together not just of worldly resources, but of time too. They counted nothing their own. They truly were laying up their treasure in heaven. Do you think they needed funding campaigns?.
3. They praised God. Scripture says that God inhabits the praises of his people. So far as we praise God, so far is he to be found in our midst. I still recall returning from leading a Matins at Langford, and I got back just after 10 o’clock, so I crept into the back of church. The music group were singing a chorus- I forget which, but I do remember the almost tangible sense of God’s presence. I remember going to New Wine and one afternoon going into the back of a worship seminar led by the French group ‘Flamme’. I could only go so far- so strong and powerful was the feeling of the awe of God’s presence.

We read too in verse 43 that ‘everyone was filled with awe. ‘. That everyone was, presumably, the population at large. Need I say more….? I am sure that God has not moved out of the business of saving people. He will find someone, and if we are not actively involved then he will consider us an irrelevance. Let us seek to learn lessons from the infant church. Amen