Be the Church: Joyfully Expectant

Pastor Fletcher begins our new sermon series about the early church, preaching from Acts 2:42-47 [read for us in French]. Discussion points: Feeling awe for God and his creation is the first step towards renewing our hearts towards God; our souls may be numbed by disobedience, distraction, or disappointment; being in awe of God leads us to be joyfully expectant of him.

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  Scripture reader: Today's reading is from Acts chapter 2 verses 42 to 47. I'm going to read the text and, and then at the end I will say this is the word of the Lord, and you can please respond by saying thanks be to God.

  [Acts 2:42-47, read in French]

  And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.

  And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

  This is the word of the Lord.

  Preacher: All right, good morning. It's good to see everybody this morning. My name's Fletcher. If I haven't met you yet, I would love to meet you after the service. We, we're doing the next steps thing after the service. We'll be right over here for about 5 minutes after the service. Would love to tell you a little bit more about our church and be able to answer any questions that you might have for us and.

  Today we're starting a new series. So we just finished the book of Hebrews. We were in Hebrews for 21 weeks, and so today we're starting a new series, and this is gonna be a fun series because it is every week the same passage. We are going through Acts chapter 2 for the next four weeks. Acts chapter 2 verses 42 to 47, because this is one of the most famous passages in all of the scripture. It describes the early church, and what the early church was like and how they function. And when we read this, we can read it and think, how should we be like the early church? How can we be the church that God wants us to be.

  Earlier this week, I was, you know, flipping through reels as one does on Instagram, and I came across, a reel of two really young, 20-somethings, just really bubbly and just talking about their church, and they're like, we just, we just do what the Bible says. We just do Acts Acts 2. We, we have all things in common, and it's great. And I'm like, it's a little more complicated, being a pastor, but I love your spirit. I love how you want to do that. But I do think it's a good thing for us to go back to Acts chapter 2, and to consider what the earliest church, with the very first church was like, and how we can be more like that church.

  This first church that we read about, it's amazing. Awe came upon every soul. They were wonders. There were signs being done. Everyone had everything in common, and then they were taking their resources and pulling them and distributing them to all those who were in need. People were devoted to meeting with one another, not just in the temples once a week, but in homes throughout the week. They were together and they had all things in common. They received their food with glad and generous hearts. They had favor with all people, not just their own people, and the Lord was adding to their people day after day. The 21st century church. How much can we say it looks just like this? Especially the church in America.

  A pastor named John Tyson from New York City took this passage, and he rewrote it to reflect our modern day church. I think I have the quote on the screen for us here. This is how it might be written, if written to the 21st century American church. They studied the apostles' teaching when they had time, and they went to fellowship when they could fit it in, and they prayed when they needed something and got coffee together every now and then. They went, they were content without and had low expectation for signs and wonders in their midst. They sometimes talked about generosity but kept all their possessions for themselves. Two out of five Sundays they came to corporate gatherings. They didn't invite people into their homes and rarely revealed their hearts. They were largely irrelevant to all the people, and occasionally someone was randomly saved.

  Unfortunately, I feel like John Tyson's version of Acts 2 is far too true of the church today as opposed to the Acts 2 Paul, Luke, excuse me, he wrote Acts, the Paul the Paul, the Acts 2 Luke version of. This description of the church. And so over the next four weeks, we're going to be looking at this description of the church and considering what does it mean for us today, 21st century Somerville, Massachusetts, to live out this idea of being the church. And so this week we're going to be talking about what it means to be joyfully expectant of the Lord. Next week we're going to be talking about what it means to be absolutely committed to one another. The next week we're going to be talking about being radically generous, and the last week we're going to talk about being faithfully bold, so that we can see our numbers grow, see people come to know the Lord.

  This week, focusing on this idea of being joyfully expectant. This early church, they were joyfully expecting that God could and would work in their midst. This passage says that awe came upon every soul and that signs and wonders were being done in the church. And so let me ask you this question. When was the last time that awe came upon your soul? I'm not only talking about in a church service or with your Bible open sometime, but just in general, when was the last time your soul was captured by awe?

  This winter, my wife, she did this thing, and she does this thing sometimes where she says, hey, we're doing this, and then she goes and buys all the equipment for the thing, and then I don't have any way to argue with her. so like this, this past winter, she went and we became skiers, but without me even realizing what was happening. It's like there were skis at my house. And, we, I, I was very skeptical of this because the Lang crew are not necessarily known for our athleticism. So Megan might be the most athletic among us, and the last time she went down a blue, a blue slope, she tore her ACL. So, like, we're not in, not the most athletic, and so I was very skeptical of this, but Megan, she was very committed. Let's give it a try, let's give it a try.

  And so we made our way up to the mountain during the Christmas vacation. And we had 3 days there, we signed the kids up for ski school. This is all an investment. It's an expensive investment, but it was one that was worth it for us. And we signed the kids up for ski school, and, we nervously went and made our way down the, the green slopes that day. We've gotten better, OK. but we nervously made our way down, and then at the middle of the day we were picking up the kids, and we were kind of nervous about how it had gone. And as we picked up the kids, kind of one by one, because they're all in different locations, we saw awe upon people's souls. Kennedy looked happier than I've ever seen her. Shepherd, in the car on the way home, said, I think that was the best day of my life. And Rowan, when we tried to get him off the mountain. Well, I told him it was time to go and he said no. As Rowan does. And so I took his skis off of him, and he promptly jumped on them and laid on them and refused to go until I had to threaten to get the, to get the ski patrol, out. He doesn't know that that's not what they do. I just had to tell him the ski patrol's gonna get him, because this is not how little boys act when they're leaving the mountain.

  And so we finally had to force him into the car, but I would say that that was a time when awe had fallen upon their souls, and as a parent, when you see awe on your children's eyes, it brings awe into your own heart as well.

  In the verses leading up to this passage, we see the miracles of Pentecost. We see the Spirit come upon people with power, the presence of God and the power of God made manifest among the people of God. And we see a come upon every soul. Jesus is freshly ascended into heaven, but he promises to give his Holy Spirit, and on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes, and the people are filled with the Spirit, and people are speaking different languages. They're hearing the scriptures, they're hearing the message of Christ, clearly in their mother tongue, in their natural language. And as they receive that, they receive the Holy Spirit, and they're filled with awe.

  Verse 20, verse, chapter 2, verse 37. Now when they had heard this, they were cut to the heart. After Peter had preached the gospel to them, the message of Jesus Christ, this man who is also God, who came to die the death that they deserve, and he was resurrected from the dead and now has ascended into heaven. So he goes and he declares this to a large number of people, and they hear it, and how do they respond? They look to Peter and they say, brothers, what shall we do? They were cut to the heart, is what the passage says. That they felt conviction for their sins, that they knew that what Peter was preaching was true. And they said, what must we do to be saved? And Peter responds, verse 38, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. On that day, 3000 people were saved, added to their number.

  These verses that we're studying over the next 4 weeks are about how those first 3000 Christians decided to become the church and live their lives. Now I just want you to imagine for a moment that the Lord saves 3000 within our own number. It would be quite exhausting in many ways to disciple that many, but so exciting to see new believers, you know, have you ever, I don't know, there are a few new believers around the church. I don't know if you've had conversations with them recently, but they glow. There's something, miraculous in their life. They're so happy to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. And look guys, I barely survived two services last week. I don't think I could do 10, OK? If we had 3000 added to our number, but may it be so. May it be so. I don't know if there's enough caffeine in the world to get me through it, but may it be so. May it be so.

  For, for me, when I first became a Christian, it was in a Pentecost kind of place and kind of way. I was at a youth camp. I don't know how many of you guys have had this experience, like the youth camp classic, you know, everybody's crying at the end. I was at a youth camp and the year was 2001, quite a while ago now. and the speaker was a guy named Louis Giglio, so he's somewhat famous. You, you might recognize that name. he was speaking on the last night of camp. There was 1200 kids there, and I had not grown up in church, and at the end of his sermon, for some reason, I look up and literally up, there's like balconies. We're like in this huge basketball stadium. We, and there's everybody in the room seems to be crying.

  And in that moment, I remember awe coming upon my own soul, and saying, God must be real. He's obviously here, he's obviously moving in these people's hearts and in their lives. I want to give my life to this. And for the weeks leading to months, leading to years, my Christian life was marked by one of experiencing amazement and on the Lord's love for me. And I'm sure that many of you can relate. But for most of us, over time, the awe tends to fade. I have three reasons why we might lose this sense of awe in our Christian life. Why we might lose this sense of amazement in who God is and what he's done.

  First is we're numb. We're numb. When you go to get a surgery, you go in and say you, you need to have your, your, I mentioned my wife's ACL earlier. You, you need to have your knee operated on. And so you go into the surgery and they mark your knee. They literally wrote no on the knee that was good, and drew a big circle on the one that they needed to operate on. I don't want to know about the lawsuit that caused that to be the case. But then they give you anesthesia. And she still to this day says it's the best nap she's ever had in her entire life. But they give you this anesthesia to block you from being able to feel the surgeon's knife cut in to repair what's going on. And I believe that many of us today. We live in a state of perpetual anesthesia. Where we can't feel the fact that we need our hearts to be cut, that we need to be cut to our core so that we can see our need for God.

  What happens if you live in a perpetual state of anesthesia? If your knee is under anesthesia, you can't tell if it's being cut. And so many of us, we might have cuts and wounds in our life, but we've numbed ourselves to them. We've become callous maybe through repeated acts of sin or disobedience to God. Your heart has become callous, you can no longer feel, or maybe you're just deciding not to look at it, and so you've anesthetize yourself using whatever means you can think of. And so while you might have serious things that you need to come to the Lord for, that you might be cut, you cannot feel it. And we walk in the state of being spiritually numb. And for many of us, this is the state that we live in.

  But another reason why we might not feel all as we would as early as early Christians might. Is that we're distracted. Our lives feel. More filled with notifications than filled with the spirit and awe. We often don't slow down enough to appreciate God and all of his gifts. We don't look up from our screens long enough to see the work of God. We're like teenagers at a national park, looking at our cell phones. I tried this earlier this week. I just said for one minute. I'm going to sit and appreciate everything that's going on around me. And my heart was moved rather quickly, within the course of a minute, toward awe. I heard birds chirping. It's easy to do this on a nice day like we've had the past couple of days. Felt the sun. Felt the cool breeze, considered the lunch I had had earlier that day. And I allowed my heart to give praise to God. And I think many of us, we live so distracted, that we don't have time to allow ourselves to be filled with the awe of the Lord.

  And the third reason why we might not have this sense of awe is we're disappointed. For many of us, our lack of awe isn't because we don't care. It's because we've been let down. We've prayed for that breakthrough. That never came. We've seen leaders we respected fail. We've invested. In a community here in Somerville. Only to see people move away two years later. And disappointments, they can act as a spiritual defense mechanism. Where we can say, you know, if I don't expect much from God, I cannot be disappointed from God when I don't get what I'm not expecting. And so we have this defense mechanism that's like, if I just don't expect anything from him, then if he just does anything, then I'll be happy.

  And so when we go into a situation and we see a younger Christian who might be encountering the Lord for the first time, and they go to that, go to the Lord. With awe and amazement, praying big prayers, expecting big things from God. We don't look at them and say that's wonderful, good for them, we say, with a cynic's heart, well, I wonder how long that's gonna last. Until they get disappointed like I'm disappointed, jaded, like I'm just like I'm jaded.

  But friends, Jesus, he invites us. To ask for whatever our heart desires for, to knock, to seek Him, and yes, he changes our desires. In fact, I think that he uses prayer to shape our desires. It's not like a vending machine where you just ask for the thing, but God will give us more than what we ask for. We come with low expectations of God and we receive low return. But friends, what would happen? If we brought high expectations to a God that is all powerful. How much could he do in our lives and in our midst? If we want to change the type of church that we are, if we want to be more like the Acts 2 Church, then we need to become re-enchanted with who God is and what he is able to do.

  And listen to me really carefully. This is my favorite part of the sermon, OK?. The answer cannot simply be, try harder to be this type of church. I've preached a lot of those sermons. I'm sorry. It cannot be just try harder to be this type of church, because I would love to do that. In fact, many of you would love it if I said, hey, let's try harder, let's do this. These are our company values, let's embody them. But the reality is. That many of you are good at checklists, good at accomplishing things, and bad at trusting God. And so we don't need just another checklist to say this is the type of church we need to be. I need to do these things. Just add joyfully expectant, add sense of awe to your checklist.

  No, that's not what happened in the early church. They weren't saying, OK, now we gotta be the type of church that is generous and committed to one another. No, the early church, they encountered God Himself. And it changed the way that they lived. And what would happen for us if we came back to God with our big prayers, our big desires, our big longings, and it changes the way that we live. When someone visits our community, when they come and visit us on a Sunday, or community groups throughout the week, I hope that they notice lots of things about us. I hope that they say, wow, this is a group of people who are diverse and an uncanny kind of way. I would never see these people hanging out together in the regular world. But God has brought them together here. They're so committed to one another. I hope that they say that. I hope that they come into our community and they say, wow, this is a people who are truly generous. They put their money where their mouth is. They care for one another's needs. It's amazing. But here's what I really hope that they say, more than either of those things, I hope that they say, wow. It is obvious that God is with these people. Because if we have that one. All the other ones will flow out of it.

  God shapes us to be like Christ, as he transforms us. The answer isn't just try harder to be a good church, but it's to look to Christ because we aren't that church. Jesus had every right to feel disappointed by his community. He had every right to feel feel jaded. He was betrayed by his clo one of his closest friends, sentenced to death by those he came to save, forsaken by God the Father himself on the cross. He was condemned so that we might have fellowship with God. And the key to having this beautiful Acts 2 kind of church community is to first experience this depth of intimacy with God that we can only have in Christ.

  You see, if we want to have intimacy with one another, first we must experience intimacy with God himself. This is the reason why Jesus came. That you might have intimacy with God, that through belief in Christ, you're adopted into the family of God himself. And you are loved as a son or a daughter by God. It's you get to participate in the divine relationship of the Trinity. It's an amazing reality. We must never let our hearts grow stale of this. That we have access with the God Almighty through Jesus Christ. Praise be to God.

  And through that vertical relationship, our relationships flow outward, and our relationship that's been marked with God, where we know how generous, kind, gentle, loving and compassionate God our Father is, it flows into our relationships with one another, because as we experience His compassion and kindness, we express compassion and kindness to one another. As we experience his radical generosity, we flow outward with radical generosity. This is the vision of the Acts 2 Church, not that we just try harder, but that we experience this thing from God, and it flows into our relationships with one another. That's why we have to start with all falling upon every soul. We have to start with being radically, joyfully expectant of God in our midst. If you don't start there, it's just moralism. But we start with who God is and let that affect us.

  Now, How do we recapture this wonder? How do we put ourselves in a place where we can experience that from God? Let's look at the text, verse 42. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. So the first word that we see here that I wanna pick up on is devoted. The word devoted here, and they said that they were devoting themselves. When you say you devote something, you're usually setting it aside or giving it away. I'm going to devote this portion of our budget toward this. I'm going to devote, my, my time toward this effort. You're giving it away.

  And so what were these first Christians giving away? Themselves. They were giving away their time themselves to one another. They gave themselves away, as Tim Keller says. What made the early Christians so unusual was this principle of radical unselfishness that had never really been seen before. And because of the radical self-giving, unselfish acts of Jesus, this community was transformed to give their lives away as well. And so what did they devote themselves to? But two things. And then we get some descriptors of the second thing. The first thing is the apostles' teaching. The second thing is the fellowship. Now I've heard it described as four things. The fourth one being the breaking of bread and the prayers. But I think that those are written in the Greek to be describing fellowship. And so I'm gonna say it's apostles' teaching and fellowship, and then we have some descriptors of fellowship.

  So what is the apostles' teaching? It was the teaching about who Jesus was, that the apostles who were there, they didn't have the New Testament as of yet. The apostles were among them and we're teaching them about the life of who Jesus was. And when we read the New Testament, actually what we're reading is a collection of the apostles' teaching. That is what the New Testament is. It is the collection of the apostles' teaching. And so as we read our word on Sunday mornings, in our community groups and our families individually, we're devoting ourselves to the apostles' teaching. This is why we keep the word center, and who we are and what we do as a church. We believe that the apostles' teaching deserves attention. And that gives us everything we need for life and godliness. That God has revealed himself in his book, and as we study his word, he comes alive in our hearts.

  The second category that we're given here is fellowship. Now, the Greek word for fellowship is koinonia. That's one you all can say. Everybody say koinonia. Thank you. And it means association, communion, fellowship, or close relationship. And so how does he describe the fellowship through the breaking of bread? That's, I don't think he's talking about communion here. I think he's just talking about eating food together and through prayers. That when the apostles were teaching the first Church how to be Christian community, they said, look, y'all eat together and then you pray together. That sounds pretty good. I don't know about you guys. Like I think that we could use some more shared meals in our lives. And it's one reason why we've structured our communion groups as we have all but all of our communion groups, except for one maybe, shares a meal, and we love that one. They have healthy snacks. They still eat together. If you're attending on Sunday, and you're not a part of a community group or joining us for prayer on Wednesday mornings, which is a wonderful time to seek the Lord's face in awe. You're seeing only a small portion of what we do.

  And so we'd invite you, we'd love for you to be a part of our community, more than what we do just on Sundays. And so this first church was filled with awe. They kept that awe by devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship.

  I don't know about you. When I think about all the, when I think about recapturing that wonder, this description of just devoting myself to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, it feels a little. Disappointing, like simplistic. Like I think I would rather go on like a quest, or, like have some type of like guru speak into my life, help me figure out how do I recapture that wonder. But really guys, the scripture, every time when it describes how you connect with God, it's the ordinary means of grace. I think a lot of us are looking for this radical experience. And friends, it's really just the ordinary means of grace. We go back to them over and over again, just hearing the word of God, studying the Word of God, seeking Him in prayer. And reading his word and being in fellowship with other believers, sharing meals with other believers. It's ordinary means of grace that God does extraordinary things through.

  For us today, what does this mean? How do we make a shift from complacency toward joyful expectancy? Three quick things, three quick things, and then I'll move on. Devote yourself to the word and fellowship. Devote yourself to the word and fellowship. Hey, you're here. You're, that's one step. And maybe you can take other steps to devote yourself more toward the word and fellowship. Second, shift from consumer to participant. You know, the American church today has a strong consumer mindset, because Americans are consumers. That's, that's who we are, what we do, that's how we're marketed to all the time as people willing to buy things.

  And so we need to make this shift though, from where our community groups aren't a sermon review, study group, but instead it's people talking about what God has been doing in their lives and in their heart. You can review my sermon. I'm a big boy. I can take it. But. I want you to actually encounter the word in your group. I want you to encounter the God of grace amongst you. And we have to make this shift from coming and just judging what we see to participating in it. What if we came to church ready to encounter God, not just evaluate the service. Not just looking for a few tips on how to live my life differently, but actually seeking God himself.

  A couple of weeks ago, I, I said we need to shift from being a, here I am person, ready to be a consumer, wanting people to take care of me to a there you are person. Where you see someone else and you say, there you are. I'm so glad you're here today. And as we all do that, it creates a culture of unselfishness amongst us. And if you've been here for more than a few weeks, congratulations, you've been promoted to there you are person.

  And the third thing that we can do to make that shift from complacency toward joyful expectancy in God. The normal stuff that I just listed, right? One more normal one, but it's look for God in all of your life. I love how the preacher HB Charles put this. I won't do it justice, because he says it with so much more power than I do. But he says, when you are filled with the flesh, it takes a great sermon or a great song to make you praise God. But when you are filled with the spirit, just seeing a plate of food, and remembering God's provision is enough to spark praise. And so we have to be Willing to slow down enough to be with God, to see the awesome things that he's done for us every day. To appreciate the work of Christ on our behalf.

  The call to be the church, this whole four-week series that we're doing, is not a call to work harder or be a better church. It's a call to be a people so stunned, so joyfully expectant of what Jesus can do and what he has already done, that we can't help but be together to be the church. We need to we need to confess that we've expected too little of God, that we've managed our expectations so that we don't experience disappointment, that we need to confess that we've been. That we've tried to build the church that we want, instead of the church that God wants, need to look to God and allow ourselves to be cut by conviction again, so that our sense of awe might return.

  And so I pray that as we close today that your heart might be cut, that you might see your need for Christ, your need for other people, the joy of being in the church, to be surrounded by believers, then you might be cut to the heart. And then you might look to the one who is pierced for you. That he was pierced for our transgressions, that he paid the penalty that we deserve, that though we might feel cut, he has experienced the full wrath of God on our behalf. And as a result, we get to have life with him, get to be his family, get to be with him each and every day.

  On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took a loaf of bread. And he said, this is my body, broken for you. And he took a cup, and he said, this is my blood shed for you. And he gave us a sacred meal. Saying do this and remember what I've done for you, that my body's been broken, my blood has been shed. And so each week we participate in the sacred meal as a way to respond to what God has done. And today we come to it being reminded that we are the church together, that he didn't die for us each individually, but died for us collectively as his church, that we come to the table. That this is a small meal that we're enjoying as a fellowship, as a community of believers, bound and committed to one another. As we close and we consider how to respond to God today, would you join me by standing if you are able, as we pray.

  Father, as we consider what Christ has done for us, as we consider who you are calling us to be, and how you desire us to reflect your glory, we pray that you would fill our hearts again, fill us with awe again that we might know you, that we might experience your truth. God help us to be a people who don't just pray small safe prayers, but have huge requests, who are not afraid of being disappointed because you are not a disappointing God. Help us to be a people who call upon you, who long for you, know you. And help us to live that out with one another. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.