Sunday, July 26, 2009: The Church and the World

The Church and the World
Acts 2: 42 – 47.

I. Introduction.

Today is a big day in the Pittman household. I suppose you noticed that my daughter, JoEllen was one of the preschoolers we recognized this morning. These preschoolers are the “New Kids on the Pew.” They will be joining us for “big church” every Sunday. Of course, they will leave worship early on most Sundays—when we have children’s church.

Today marks a big moment for these preschoolers. They are coming to “big church” now. And we pray they will be coming to “big church” for the rest of their lives. For children like these, this is a normal, natural, even an expected transition. They are entering into church as 4 year olds. Most of these children have been in Sunday School and preschool ministry activities for their entire lives. But, this is not the case with many people in our community. There are adults in Angelina County that have never been in church in their lives.

Sometimes I wonder why people choose not to go to church. Perhaps the most obvious reason is that these people might not be Christians. Truly, some people do not attend church, because they do not know Jesus and have not accepted Jesus’ death and resurrection as the remedy for their sin problem.

Last week I read a blog post by Thom Rainer, the president of LifeWay—LifeWay is what we used to call the Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. Thom Rainer has conducted research among a group of people he calls the “formerly unchurched.” These are men and women who became Christians and started going to church. The research focused on the “formerly unchurched” during their first year as Christians. (Perhaps, it would be simpler to say they interviewed adults who had been Christians for less than a year.)

One of the questions the research team asked dealt with the way unchurched people think of Christians. They asked these new Christians “to specify issues, attitudes, actions and words that turned them away from church and the Gospel.”

Five Negatives: Though the responses varied in their specific wording, we were able to group the negatives into five major categories. So what it is that the unchurched don’t like about Christians? Some of the responses hit too close to home for my comfort.

· I don’t like Christians who treat other Christians poorly. The unchurched don’t expect us Christians to be perfect, but they can’t understand why we treat each other without dignity and respect. “I thought Christians were supposed to love one another,” Sandy from Pennsylvania told us. “But the more I observed Christians, the more I thought they really didn’t like each other.”

· I don’t like “holier-than-thou” attitudes. The unchurched know that Christians will make mistakes, and they often have a forgiving attitude when we mess up. But they are repulsed when Christians act in superior ways to them “It would help,” said Bailey of Tampa, “if Christians showed just a little humility.”

· I don’t like Christians who talk more than they listen. Many of the unchurched, at some point, have a perception that a Christian is a person who can offer a sympathetic and compassionate ear. Unfortunately, many of the unchurched thought Christians were too busy talking to listen to them.

· I don’t like Christians who won’t get involved in my life. One of the many surprises of our study was discovering how much many unchurched persons would like to have a Christian as a friend. Yet very few Christians are willing to invest their lives in the messy world that evangelism requires.

· I don’t like Christians who don’t go to church. The unchurched saw the disconnect between belief and practice in the lives of Christians who did not or who rarely attended church. “You would think that Christians would want to have the time together to worship and study,” noted Frances. “But I am amazed how many Christians just are not committed to any church.”[1]


Read Acts 2: 42 – 47.

Have you ever experienced a spiritually high moment? Have you ever had a moment when you felt God working in your life and leading you in fresh, powerful ways? Maybe it happened while you were at youth camp, like our middle school group which returned from Student Life Camp last night. Maybe you were in an old fashioned revival meeting. Maybe you were in the middle of a giant decision, and God gave you unusual wisdom to make the right choice. This is what happened to the disciples when the Holy Spirit was poured out on them.

But there is a difference between what the disciples experienced and what you and I experienced in our spiritual high moments. You and I go through various periods of highs and lows. One moment we feel closer to God than at any other moment of our lives. The next moment, we come crashing down to earth and the real world. We have grown so accustomed to moments like these that we no longer expect our “enthusiasm” to last forever. We watch others—sometimes a new Christian, sometimes a teenager coming home from youth camp—with a skeptic’s eye. We don’t expect “enthusiasm” to last forever.

Do you know what the word “enthusiasm” means? It comes from two Greek words: “en” and “theos.” The Greek word “en” is similar to our English word “in.” The Greek word “theos” means God. To say that a person is “enthusiastic” is to say that people is literally “filled with God.”

Immediately after the story of Pentecost, Luke goes to great lengths to show us how the early Christians maintained their “enthusiasm.” Yes, they were “enthusiastic” on the day of Pentecost. But they were also “filled with God” from that moment on. Their “enthusiasm” took on new meaning and demonstrated itself in a new kind of community. The new community is the church. And, the church is always “filled with God.”

II. The Apostles’ Teachings.
The first way the church demonstrated that they were “filled with God” is the way they devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teachings.

Before the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, there were 12 Apostles and a total of 120 Christians. All of these people had lived with Jesus. The Apostles had sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to all his teachings. The rest of the Christians had followed Jesus in the crowds, witnessing all the miracles and learning from Jesus’ public sermons. They knew what Jesus had stood for and what he had come to accomplish in his death and resurrection.

After the Holy Spirit came, over 3,000 new believers committed their lives to Jesus as Lord. These people did not have the same kind of knowledge and understanding about what Jesus had done for them. Therefore, it was now necessary for the 12 Apostles to share what they knew about Jesus with others.

The most important thing we can say about the Apostles’ Teaching, is to say that they were teaching others what Jesus had taught them. The Apostles were not making up new teachings to share with the new believers. They were giving others what Jesus had first given them.
In the Twenty-First Century, this is the same thing as teaching the Bible. We teach the Bible, because the Bible is God’s Word. It contains the teachings of Jesus passed down to his Apostles, who in turn wrote it down so that we can know what Jesus has done for us.

III. The Fellowship.
The church was also devoted to a new kind of fellowship. This is the Greek word “Koinonia.” It refers to fellowship in the sense of Christian brothers and sisters relating to each other through the love of Christ. The heart of the word “Koinonia” is the Greek word “koinos,” which means common. In other words, these new Christians had something in common with the original 12 Apostles and the original 120 Christians.

I find it noteworthy that Luke does not say the early church was committed to “fellowship.” He says they were committed to “THE fellowship.” There is something different, something unique about the fellowship these Christians shared with one another. For me, I have always associated fellowship with the church. And, I have always associated church fellowships with pimento and cheese sandwiches with the crust cut off. That might be “a fellowship,” but it is not “THE fellowship” Luke was talking about in this passage.

THE fellowship is the significant bond we share with each other that can only come as a result of our relationship with Jesus. When a man or woman places their faith in Jesus, something supernatural occurs. At the moment we profess our faith, God places his Holy Spirit in us to begin the work of shaping us into the image of Jesus. When a group of people whom God is shaping to become like Jesus get together in the church, God begins to work on that church. God shapes that community of believers into the image of Jesus. Just as God is working on you and me as individuals to make us more like Jesus, so God is working on our church to make us more like Jesus.

THE fellowship of Christian brothers and sisters is different from the community life on non-Christians. God is forming us into a community like no other. He is placing in us the same loves and desires that Jesus demonstrated in his life. THE fellowship we experience is a missional experience. Sure, we like to hang out with each other and laugh together. But, we also feel called—even compelled by God—to meet the needs of the world around us and to share the life-changing message of the cross.

IV. The Breaking of Bread.
There is no better place to see community life in action than to observe people who are eating together. Some have interpreted this as a reference to the Lord’s Supper—the act of eating bread and drinking wine (or grape juice) in remembrance of Jesus’ sacrificial death. Others interpret this as simply sharing food together. I prefer to think of this as simply sharing a meal together.

We believe the book of Acts is the second volume of Luke’s account of Christianity. The first volume is the Gospel According to Luke. One of the many consistent themes in the Gospel According to Luke is the criticism Jesus faced as a result of his eating habits. In Luke, Jesus rarely ate supper with good, religious people. Most of the time, Luke tells us that Jesus ate supper with tax collectors and sinners. The religious folks did not like this, because it was against their customs to eat with people who were different from them. Jesus broke the religious and cultural norms of his day by sharing his meals with “undesirable” people.

Some of you are old enough to remember the civil unrest in our country during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s. One aspect of the Civil Rights movement related to the restaurants and lunch counters in our country. The burning question of the day was: Should black men and women be allowed to eat with white people? The reason this was such an issue is because sharing a meal with another person is like saying we consider that person our equal. All social barriers are broken down when people sit shoulder to shoulder at the same table.

I find it remarkable that the 120 Jewish men and women who made up the very first Christians were comfortable eating at the same table with foreigners. They abandoned their Jewish, social norms in favor of a new kind of community where all who believe in Jesus are considered equal.


V. The Prayers.
Literally, Luke tells us the new community was devoted to “THE prayers.” This leads many scholars to interpret this as reference to the official Jewish practice of religion. In other words, the church abandoned their traditional social norms but did not abandon the worship of God in the Temple. In fact, we will continue to see the Apostles teaching and preaching in the Temple and showing how Jesus is the fulfillment of everything the Jews had been hoping for in the Old Testament.

That is a great historical fact, but it does not translate very well to our Twenty-First Century American, Christian lives. What does translate is the way the early Christians were committed to the power of God that is only possible through prayer.

What do you think about people who pray? Some people think prayer is a sign of weakness. They think people who pray cannot take care of their own needs under their own power and abilities. These people are exactly right. This is why we pray. We pray, because we need God. We pray, because we cannot make it on our own power and abilities. We pray in order to express our total dependence on God for even our smallest needs. Without God and his power, we can do nothing.

VI. Selling Their Possessions, They Gave…
This is a source of great debate. Among many theologians, there is a belief that the early church practiced a form of socialism. They claim that individual church members did not own property. They think this is God’s ideal for us, even today.

I do not subscribe to this interpretation. In fact, there is evidence here that Luke did not want to communicate this kind of shared property. Luke described the church’s action by using a Greek Imperfect tense. The Imperfect tense is translated as “continuous action in past time.” In other words, we can translate this as “they kept on selling their possessions to give to those in need.”

The best way to describe what the Christians were doing here is to compare it with stewardship. They used their personal possessions and their personal wealth in ways that demonstrated the life of Jesus. They gave to those in need, and they gave to advance the Kingdom of God missionally.

VII. Conclusion: The Favor of All the People.
When a church is “filled with God,” people outside the church will notice. Being “filled with God” is not something we can hide easily. It should be visible to the world. This is what I believe our church needs right now…Visibility.

A friend of mine is pastor of First Baptist Church in Longview. He recently met a man, who asked him where he worked. He told the man he was pastor of First Baptist Church. The man asked where First Baptist is. When he told him the church’s location, the man asked, “How long has there been a church there?” The pastor replied, “136 years.”

Perhaps there was a time when downtown Lufkin was a thriving and booming place. I have heard some of our seniors reminisce about families gathering around the courthouse square on Saturday afternoons. But that doesn’t happen anymore. In fact, buying a marriage license and disputing your property taxes are the only reasons people would pass by our church buildings during the week.

Yet, if Thom Rainer’s research is correct…We are visible. There are people watching us and making judgments about how we live our lives.

If people outside our church do not see us living out the Gospel in our daily lives, they will not want to be a part of what we are doing.


[1] http://www.thomrainer.com/2009/07/what-the-unchurched-dont-like-about-christians.php , also cited in http://www.abpnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4253&Itemid=53