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.

The text we are about to consider has been a problematic text throughout Christian history.  On the one hand, many simply deny that the words we are about to read are true, that this description of the early church is accurate at all, or that the early church ever lived the kind of life described here.  I am thinking here of somebody like Harold Bloom, who wrote in his book, The American Religion, that this romantic vision of the early church is just that:  a romantic vision.  He says that this church never really existed as it is presented in Acts.

Among Christians, the almost utopian vision we find in Acts 2:42-47 can create a kind of despair.  After all, when one reads this description then looks at the reality of what the Church in many quarters has become, it can lead to real frustration.  In the book The Permanent Revolution, which he co-wrote with Alan Hirsch, Tim Catchim writes:

Now I had not grown up in the church. At sixteen I picked up the Bible, read it cover to cover, and became a Christian. I was under the impression that what I had read in the Gospels and in the book of Acts was how the church actually functioned. It was a bit jarring to walk into the local church for the first time and see that it was only a shadow of what I’d read in scripture.[1]

This is perhaps an understandable reaction, but let us be sure of this:  Luke does not provide this description of the early church in order to cause us to despair or cause us to think less of our current congregational lives.  On the contrary, he is trying to get us to understand what the Church can be when it yields itself to gospel purity and conviction.  The New Testament in fact presents us with plenty of less-than-glowing pictures of the Church.  It is encouraging, then, to find what we find in our text this morning.

What do we find?  Simply this:

The early church was a learning, fellowshipping, praying, awe-filled, power-demonstrating, radically generous, consistent, glad, praise-filled, well-thought-of, growing body of Jesus followers.

That’s a long, full sentence, but no word in it is filler.  All of those descriptors are rooted in our text.  Let us take a cursory glimpse at each element.

a. Learning

^42a And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching

We may think primarily of  Church today in terms of relationships and family.  These are undoubtedly true components of what it means to be the Church.  But it must be recognized that at the heart of the Church is the truth of the gospel, and the heart of the gospel is Jesus.

They “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.”  They would accept no substitute for apostolic teaching, for the apostles were those who had seen the resurrected Lord and who had passed on the truths of the gospel, “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints,” as Jude put it in Jude 3.

This teaching was authoritative and not to be abandoned, as Paul put it so powerfully in Galatians 1.

⁶ I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—⁷ not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. ⁸ But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. ⁹ As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

We dare not abandon apostolic truth!  That is why we gather each week around an open Bible.  We too are devoting ourselves to the apostles’ teachings.

There is one other element to be found in these words, and it is an important one.  William Willimon astutely wrote about this passage, “Far from any modern mushy ‘inclusiveness,’ Luke is quite careful to separate those on the inside, who know, from those on the outside, who do not know.”[2]  The Church is defined as a group of people who know the gospel and are devoted to growing in it, who are, in fact, born again Christ-followers.  Earlier Baptists referred to this as “regenerate church membership.”  We ascribe to this truth today:  embracing the gospel of Christ is essential for membership in the Church.

b. Fellowshipping

^42b and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread

But there learning was not mere learning.  It was, in fact, community-forming learning.  As they gathered around the word, they gathered together and they fellowshipped, living life together.  They “devoted themselves” to “fellowship, to the breaking of bread.”

Many suggest that this reference to bread is a reference to the observance of the Lord’s Supper.  Luke’s usage of the word “breaking” may be intended to remind us of the Lord’s Supper.  Others suggest that it simply means that they were doing life together, eating together and fellowshipping around a common table.  Still others suggest that both meals may be being alluded to here.  I actually suspect this is the case, as Paul, in 1 Corinthians 11:17-33, seems to suggest that the Lord’s Supper was observed in the context of ordinary meal time.

Regardless, the image of fellowship and of gathering around meals speaks of a Church that understood their lives together could not be occasional or careless.  It was deliberate, intentional, and real.  In the middle of the third century, Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage, wrote that a “common mind…prevailed once” in the Church.  He then wrote, “God is one, and Christ is one, and His Church is one; one is the faith, and one the people cemented together by harmony into the strong unity of a body.”[3]

c. Praying

^42c and the prayers.

They also devoted themselves to prayer.  James Montgomery Boice pointed to the presence of the article “the” in this verse (“and the prayers”) to argue that, “obviously, that is a reference to something formal – to worship in which the people got together and praised God.”[4]  That could be, though it could still be a reference simply to them coming together and prayer.  Either way, prayer was a tremendous priority to the early church.

Prayer opened the floodgates of divine power in the early Church.  It does so in the life of the Church today as well.  In 1858, something astounding happened in the United States.  A Christian layman began a midday prayer meeting for business folks.  That prayer meeting soon spread across the country and is now known as “the Awakening of 1858.”  To get at the power of prayer in the Church, let me offer some quotes from Roy J. Fish’s When Heaven Touched Earth: The Awakening of 1858 and Its Effects on Baptists.

The editor of The New York Times wrote in March (20^th, 1858):

In this City, we have beheld a sight which not the most enthusiastic fanatic for church observances could ever have hoped to look upon.  We have seen in a business quarter of the City, in the busiest hours, assemblies of merchants, clerks and working men, to the number of 5,000, gathered day after day for simple and solemn worship.  Similar assemblies we find in other portions of the City; a theatre is turned into a chapel; churches of all sects are opened and crowded by day and night.

Revival began in Newark.  An unusual burden for souls led a few members of the First Baptist Church to begin weekly prayer meetings late in 1857.  The spiritual tempo of these meetings increased, and soon as many as 300 conversions had been experienced in the church.  This precipitated a revival of unusual proportion in the city.  Morning prayer meetings were begun.  A short while later, noon-day prayer meetings were started and were quickly crowded to overflowing.  Various business establishments in Newark closed their doors at noon, leaving a notice on the door:  “Will re-open at the close of prayer meeting.”  Early in the year, around 2,800 conversions were reported, and among these were persons of the strongest and maturest minds in the community.  There was an average of almost 100 conversions for each reporting congregation.

The occasion of the great prayer revival is in almost every city, town, and neighborhood…daily prayer meetings held at noon in all the cities and large places, not only in the churches, but in halls, stores, and other places of business.  The voice of prayer was everywhere one accordant melody. (Centennial Celebration of the Baptist Church, New London, N.H., 1889)

 Prayer is the power of the church; could I speak as loud as the trumpet which is to wake the dead, I would thus call upon the church in all its branches and in all lands – “Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem.  Arise, shine, for thy light is come…”  The churches which are most prayerful are the most useful.  The heathen are to be given to Christ for an inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession, in answer to prayer. (Samuel I. Prime)[5]

Church, can we not pray together as the Church once did?  Can we not cry out to God together as they did?  We will see mighty things happen if we will pray!

d. Awe-Filled

^43a And awe came upon every soul,

The word “awful” was originally a good word.  It meant “full of awe.”  In this sense, then, the early Church was an awful Church…meaning a great church!  Awe fell upon the believers and many of the watching unbelievers as well.  Their fellowship was marked by power, by the Spirit of God, and by the awe that comes with these things.  They were not bored.  They were not watching the clock.  They were filled with awe!

e. Power-Demonstrating

^43b and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.

And powerful things were happening through the apostles.  People were being healed both physically and spiritually.  Relationships were being mended.  Marriages were being restored.  Friendships were being reclaimed.  Bad habits were being abandoned.  The chains of sin were being loosed.  The gospel was being proclaimed.  All of these are signs and wonders.

It is a shame that we do not expect to see divine power today.  Paul Powell once described the modern Church as an entity that builds million dollar launching pads to send up bottle rockets.  But God wants so much more for us!  We have indeed seen healings in this Church.  We have indeed seen miracles here.  But we could see so much more if we came to Christ with reckless abandon and expectant hearts.

f. Radically Generous

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.

They were also marked by radical generosity.  What an amazing picture!  They “had all things in common,” sold what they had, and gave it to those in need.  This is a challenging passage, but a critical passage.

Many commentators have pointed out that verb for “selling” in Greek is used here in the imperfect tense, suggesting that “there was not one big sale of goods upon a person’s conversion, but that individuals sold portions of their personal and real property as needs in the community surfaced.”[6]  Literally, they “kept on selling” what they had and distributing it.

A.T. Robertson likewise pointed to the imperfect active tense of the verb “had” in “and had all things in common,” translating it as “kept on having.”  He saw in the grammar and context of these verses evidence of “a habit in the present emergency.”  In other words, he saw this sharing of property as exceptional as need required, not as the creation of a new law.

It was not actual communism, but they held all there property ready for use for the common good as it was needed (4:32).  This situation appears nowhere else except in Jerusalem and was evidently due to special conditions there which did not survive permanently.  Later Paul will take a special collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem.[7]

Furthermore, the 16^th century Swiss Protestant preacher Rudolph Gwalther argued that he could “easily prove it was not in the apostle’s mind or intention that all things should be common without any property belonging to anyone.”  He then pointed to the following examples elsewhere in Acts of believers holding personal property in the New Testament without censure:  “Tabitha, Lydia, Mary the mother of Mark, Simon the tanner, Cornelius the centurion, Philip and many others.”  In addition he pointed to Caius and Philemon.[8]

We must be careful here.  It seems clear that these are valid cautions and need to be heeded.  Even so, we should not seek to take the radical edge off of what the early Church did, and none of these cautions, properly understood, should do so.  But we must make sure we do not lessen the challenge of this text:  we should be a sharing body in which nobody goes without while others have more than enough.

g. Consistent

^46a And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes,

It needs to be understood as well that this kind of fellowship does not just happen.  It happens when life is consistently lived together.  “Day by day,” Luke tells us, they were “attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes.”

This is important to understand:  if your connection to the Church is occasional, happenstance, and inconsistent, you are shortchanging yourself of those truly deep and meaningful relationships that only arise from a life lived together.

Do you see?  This is not really about “good church attendance.”  This is about building life rhythms together.  This is about being a family.  Those things do not happen when you either not present or are rarely present.

h. Glad

^46b they received their food with glad and generous hearts,

Luke also gives us a glimpse into the disposition of the early Church.  They had “glad and generous hearts.”  This, too, does not happen in a vacuum.  All of these elements are connected.  Gladness is almost inevitable when you live life together in this way.

Here is what I have observed:  those who are invested in the life of the Church, who are devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to prayer, to radical generosity, and to living life together tend to be glad and generous and joyful.  Those who see the Church as a product they consume, or as a dispenser of religious services, who are lax in their devotion and have no real commitment to investing in a shared life tend to be unhappy.

Connect to the body of Christ and you will be glad.  Invest your life in the great cause of the advance of the gospel in and through a local Christian congregation and you will find something to rejoice about.  But keep your commitments weak and your connections shallow, and you will be amazed at how unhappy you become.

i. Praise-Filled

^47a praising God

Hand in hand with joy is praise.  Out of “glad and generous hearts,” praise comes.  Here is a Welsh poem about praise.

God shall not

refuse or reject

whoever strives to praise Him

at the beginning and end

of the day[9]

We should indeed praise our great God at the beginning and end of each day, as the early Church did!  The early Church praised Him because of what He had done and was doing through Christ, but they also undoubtedly praised Him because of the miracle of their emerging life together.  In other words, the life of the Church itself is an occasion for praise, for only a miracle-working God could bring a people together in such a way and make this kind of family of them.

Behind it all and the in the midst of it all, however, is Jesus, who makes all things new.  In truth, if your relationship with the Church is primarily one of discontent and complaint, may I ask why?  Is Jesus not so glorious that you cannot find motivation to praise Him alongside others who have likewise bent their knees and hearts before them?

A Church that has Christ at the center will be a Church of passionate praise.  It cannot help but be.

j. Well-thought-of

^47b and having favor with all the people.

Perhaps most miraculously, those outside the Church thought well of them because of what they were doing and becoming.  Surely not all felt this way, for the early Christians met with persecution too, as Luke will record very soon in Acts.  But it is still the case that many who saw what was happening were amazed at it, respected it, and marveled, even though, for whatever reason, they did not join.  This is the case in the world.  Some want to destroy the Church, but some (secretly, perhaps) are envious of the strengths they see in the Church when the Church is being the Church.

Should this not challenge us?  Should there not be a love here that the world envies?  Should there not be a generosity here at which the world marvels?  Should there not be a sweetness of fellowship here that the world can barely even understand?

When Christ is given rule in His Church, He still draws all men to Himself.

k. Growing

^47c And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Finally, we see the Church growing.  They do not grow because of their own wisdom or skills.  They grow, Luke tells us, because “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”  It was God-driven growth.  This does not mean the Church was inactive.  No, this was a gospel-proclaiming Church.  But God was at work, drawing men and women into the family of faith!

He will do the same with us.  If we too seek to become this kind of family, united in the gospel, bold in witness, sincere in our love, faithful in our life together, God will grant the increase!  This account in Acts need not be mere history.  It remains a living possibility for the Church, and the only way forward.

I began this sermon by telling of how this text is a problematic text for many people.  I mentioned Tim Catchim’s frustration at comparing what he saw in Acts with what he saw in the local church.  Francis Chan went through the same thing.  I would like to conclude with his words because I think they are hopeful and true.

For years I did not have peace when I read the book of Acts.  The level of unity, commitment, and power that the early church displayed was so different from my Christian experience.  People tried to explain why this could not take place today.  Yet the more I studied the Scriptures, the more I became convinced that it must take place today.  I’m grateful that I did not back down because I am finally experiencing it.  I’m sharing the gospel alongside some radical followers of Christ, and it reminds me of what I read about in Scripture.  The unity we share looks like what I read about in Acts.  And we have experienced God’s power, leaving us with a feeling of awe similar to that which accompanied the believers in Acts (2:42-47).[10]

Amen.