1 Note: This is the sermon manuscript that Ben carried into the pulpit. Feel free to use it in any way to advance the kingdom of God. Healthy Churches Celebrate the Supper Acts 2:42-47 Englewood Baptist Church Sunday morning, Nov. 1, 2009 Please open your Bible to Acts 2. Don t you wish that you could find the perfect church? When I teach our Discover Englewood Class, I love to spend time with those people because many of them see Englewood through rose-colored glasses. They have been inspired by the worship, warmly greeted by the parking lot ministers. They have kept every bulletin and have been encouraged by the quality of the youth or children s space. The problem is they just haven t gotten to know us yet. I don t mean that ugly. You are all some of the finest people I have ever met in my life, but let s face it: you re people. You live in jars of clay and you make selfish decisions at times and you can be standoffish and even rude. So can I. The problem with the church is that she has people. The Lord s Supper service cuts through all that sin, though. When we come together to take the Supper, we have the freedom to forget all that sin, and to focus our eyes on the one who freed from that sin. That s why early church celebrated the Supper so often. It was a celebration that Christ had died and had bound them together in love. His broken body created a new body, the redeemed church. In Acts 2, we see a glimpse of the early church before she was tainted by too much humanity. This is a model church for us to look at, but let me be clear: this was not a perfect church. Just a few chapters later we meet hypocrites that are church members. Ananias and Sapphira are pretenders and they enjoyed the image they projected. They wanted people to think that they were more spiritual than they truly were. And this church soon would face doctrinal errors as works based righteousness worked its way in. Even so, this church was a remarkable church and one that we should regularly examine so that we might be convicted. Do you want to know why I think healthy churches take the Lord s Supper? Because the Lord s Supper makes them healthy. The Lord s Supper ceremony is convicting. It forces us to soul search and to reflect upon our lifestyles and our values. Let s look at this passage tonight and see how we measure up to the church in Acts. Read Acts 2:42-47 The church in Acts 2 was a mega church. Over 3000 people were saved and surrendered. There was a need for multiple staff as the church had administrative needs and organizational demands.
That s why the first deacons were selected and put into place to keep the peace in the community and to organize ministry to the widows. Not only was it a large church, it was an urban church. And what do we know about urban churches? There is never enough space. So this church set itself up as a house church because they had no other way. I am convinced that if they had a sanctuary like this, they would have been overjoyed. But they didn t. So they had to get cutting edge and innovative. They had house churches. And I want you to notice the characteristics of this church. The Model Church A Learning, Studying Church The first phrase says that they devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles. They were a Bible studying church. Now you and I recognize that the Bible as we know it had not been firmly finished. The Holy Spirit was still writing. But they had the Old Testament Scriptures which Jesus affirmed and quoted often. They studied those Scriptures. But not only that, they had the apostles who spent 3 years with Jesus. And the Lord had told them in the Great Commission: teach them to obey everything that I have commanded you. Now I want you to remember that this church had experienced the miraculous and on the Day of Pentecost, they had witnessed with their own eyes, supernatural signs and wonders. It would have been easy for them to live in the glory days, in the past, and to try to re-create that moment. It would have been easy for them to pray, Lord do something miraculous again! But that is not what we find. We find them digging deep into God s Word and building their lives around the truth, rather than experience. This is what grounded the church. This is what grounds every church. President of my seminary, Al Mohler, wrote an article once that has deeply impacted my ministry. The article is called The Pastor as Theologian. As many observers have noted, today s pastors are often pulled in many directions simultaneously... The managerial revolution has left many pastors feeling more like administrators than theologians, dealing with matters of organizational theory before ever turning to the deep truths of God s Word and the application of these truths to everyday life. The rise of therapeutic concerns within the culture means that many pastors, and many of their church members, believe that the pastoral calling is best understood as a helping profession. As such, the pastor is seen as someone who functions in a therapeutic role in which theology is often seen as more of a problem than a solution. Today s pastors must recover and reclaim the pastoral calling as inherently and cheerfully theological. Otherwise, pastors will be nothing more than communicators, counselors, and managers of congregatins that have been emptied of the gospel and of biblical truth. Al Mohler, The Pastor as Theologian 2
What Dr. Mohler is saying is that there was a time when the supreme calling of a pastor was to know the Bible inside and out. And I m just telling you church, I don t know this book as well as I plan to know it in 1 year or 5 years or 20 years. There is a reason why, as I preach, it takes me less hours to prepare a sermon. Why is that? Because I am building up a storehouse of theology and it takes time. Someone once asked Adrian Rogers, How long did it take you to make that sermon? He said, My whole life. And it s so true. We need to be stockpiling the Word of God. And my prayer is that I wouldn t be the only person in this place doing that. We all need to devoted to learning and studying. As you consider taking the Lord s Supper, should you confess your sin of neglect, lack of devotion to the Word of God? The word disciple means pupil, or learner. Are you a disciple in the truest sense of the Word? Outside of what you learned in church today, what new information have you gleaned about God this week? What do you know that you didn t know last Sunday night? Are you devoted to the teaching? If not, repent, receive grace, and recommit yourself. A Loving Church They devoted themselves to the fellowship. That word fellowship refers to a deep level of life sharing. I m not talking about the kind of sharing where you show up at a party and drop off a rattle and a pack of Huggies for a new baby. That s nice and that is sharing, but this type of sharing in Acts 2 is much more than sacrificial. And we need to be convicted here, church, always. There s not a person in this room that doesn t need to read this passage regularly. This church was generous. Generosity was their native tongue. V. 44 shows what fellowship looks like. Read v. 44-45. Now I don t believe that God calls every Christian to total poverty. Some people he does. He calls some to leave everything they have in the rear view mirror and go to the mission field. And they go, not reluctantly, but joyfully because they are giving what they have decided in their hearts to give. They want to. In the same way, I could use my gift for communication to guilt you into giving, but what good is that. God is only glorified when we give from our hearts. And look at this church. They loved to give. This is not Communism. In college, my roommates and I would split the grocery bill and we would throw it all in the fridge and we had community milk and community bread and community PB and J. It worked, most the time, until one guy decided to hog all the milk. Some have said that Acts 2 was communal. They threw all their resources into one hat and nobody owned anything. Well, I think that is sill. For one thing, look where they met. They met in each other s homes. Some of them had larger homes than others. Some of them lived close. Some lived on the other side of town, I m sure. But they owned property. And they were selling their possessions as there was need. 3
So this wasn t communism, it was Christianity. It was selfless living. It was people admitting that they had hardship and others willing to meet that need. It was sharing. And this is one of the reasons why this church has chosen to take up a Benevolent offering, like we will do tonight, for the poor. It s just one tangible way for us to imitate this early church. You have a few extra dollars in your wallet. You could spend it on a new CD or a combo meal at Taco Bell, but instead, you throw it in a plate and you trust that God will use it to bless others. It s called sharing and it s a mark of true community. A few weeks ago, I was able to attend the UT football game at Neyland Stadium when Crompton had the game of his life and Georgia went home in shock. It was a great game and a wonderful day for football. 104, 000 fans in that stadium, decked out in Orange. The ticket I had in my hand that day was free and I was thankful because it said $73.00 on it. Man, I like football, but wow. And I m not math genius but 73 X 100,00 that s over 7 M bucks for one game, and that s not even including a Smoky Dog and a Coke. And here is what is so convicting about that. You and I can spend $100 at a ball game and not even think twice, but putting $100 of our extra spending money in an offering plate, let s face it. That hurts. We can t help it. We drift toward self-preservation and selfish living. But this church in Acts 2, it s not that they were against having things, or enjoying things, they were just so willing to share the extra. I wonder am I that way? Is the church that way? Maybe we need to examine ourselves tonight before the Supper. Are we rich toward God and toward His people? Or are we rich toward ourselves? Tough questions. I wrestle with them constantly. A Worshipping Church They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Getting together and worshipping God was a big deal. They weren t trying to do it alone, or to isolate themselves. They drew strength from hearing one another sing, pray, confess sin, and read Scripture aloud, and swallow the bread and drink from the cup. It wasn t just private prayer and private worship, it was public. And I want you to see that this church was committed to both big group and small group meetings. V. 46 says everyday they met at the temple where there was plenty of space and they worshipped God. They weren t offering Old Testament sacrifices. They were using the big building, the big courtyard, to gather and worship. But not only that, they broke down into small groups and shared what God was doing. It was worship. I mentioned a few weeks ago I was in East Tennessee. We did go to a football game, but we did more than that. On Sunday morning, all 5 couples that went, we got up and overlooking the mountains, we formed a circle and God came down in that group. We shared our hearts, our 4
struggles, we asked for prayer, for patience, and for encouragement. We talked about our shortcomings, our need for grace, our need for accountability. It was informal. There was no bulletin, no order of worship, no time that we had to finish. The only structure was that we were going around a circle. And I m telling you, we had church that morning in the Smoky Mountains. It didn t look like this. I love this. There s a place for this. But there s also a need for soul bearing conversation and humble pleas for prayer. This is the part that is so lacking in the Church. We have Sunday School classes, over 50 of them. And those classes facilitate a lot of this informal gathering. It s just different to talk about the Bible over a donut than it is to sit and listen the whole time. Those gatherings are essential to the life of this church. But, but, let me say this. I believe this. You can be in a Sunday School class and hide. You can be in a class and pretend. You can be in a class and never open up your soul to another human being. You can do that. And so don t pat yourself on the back just because you are in group. That s a great start, but do community with a sincere heart. Let some people into your world and you will worship with them. When it says that these people in Acts met in one another s homes and broke bread. That s Communion. It means that they did what Jesus told them they should do. Do this in remembrance of me. The Supper made them more sincere. It made them closer friends. It made them godlier people. And that s why we do this tonight. An Outreach-Driven Church Look how this passage ends in v. 47. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. This church was like a magnet for lost people. They were like a Kirby Vacuum cleaner, they were just sucking people in. All kinds of people. This wasn t a social club. This was a body of Christ. Daily, people were being saved and added to their number. I want you to hear me on this because I don t want to be misunderstood. I am 100% supportive of our GO Visitation ministry and every program we do in missions. We need to do more. In fact, we had a young woman recently that came to a Pastor s Fellowship meal and said she wanted to join the church because two people came to her house, shared the gospel with her, and she got saved. We need to be going out from this place and witnessing as we have opportunity. But I want you to see here that this church didn t seem to have an evangelistic program. It doesn t say that they were knocking on doors, or handing notes to people in the city, or anything like that. Those are good strategies, but it doesn t suggest that they were busy about those things. And I wonder, is it possible, that when a church truly lives by the Spirit, learning, loving, sharing, growing. When these things are happening in a church, and a community sees something special going on with those people, is that perhaps the greatest evangelistic message we can carry? 5
Because I can tell you this. People are searching for a place like this Acts 2. And could it be that the reason that many churches have stopped growing is not because the music is out-dated, or because the building has bad carpet, or because the sound system crackles, but because they don t even try to be this church in Acts 2. They ve learned all they want to learn, shared as much as they want to share, and the Spirit has left the building. I believe that when we live like this, love like this, learn like this, we can t help but draw people in. So tonight, before we take the Lord s Supper, we need to examine our hearts about the witness we have in this city. Are we known by our love? Are we astounding people by our forgiving spirits? Are we mesmerizing our neighbors by our sacrificial care for one another? These are important questions to consider before the Supper. 6