Dennis Tuuri

Turn to Acts 2, the account of the reorganization of the church, a post-Christ resurrection and glorification. The sermon scripture today is Acts 2:40-47. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Acts 2, beginning in verse 40:

“And with many other words he testified and exhorted, saying, Save yourselves from this perverse generation. Then they that gladly received his word were baptized. And the same day there were added unto them about 3,000 souls.

And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers. And fear came upon every soul. And many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. And all that believed were together and had all things common and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need. And they continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart praising God and having favor with all the people.

And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.”

We thank God for his word as we now seek his illumination of the Holy Spirit that we might understand it and apply it to our lives.

I’d like to begin by reviewing what we’ve talked about the last couple of weeks from Acts chapter 2, verses 1-41, and then going through a review of that. I think that one of the things you can see is sort of the parallelism of the outline where as we turn from the events of great historical significance recorded for us in Acts 2, and then an interpretation of them in terms of what it commands us to do as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

As we turn from that to a description in the last portion of the chapter—to what you might say are the internal activities of the church—we can see by way of application a fourfold emphasis on either side. And so we’ve talked in the last couple of weeks about the great descent of the Holy Spirit, Peter’s first sermon, and then the implications of that sermon, what the central message of it is, which is the salvation of all the world, the reversal of Babel, and then the exhortation to us on the basis of what those scriptures teach.

And what we talked about is that the community of God, so to speak, which is really more properly the subject of what we’re going to talk about today with the last few verses of Acts chapter 2. But of course, that community exists in the first portion of the book of Acts as well. That community is seen in its preaching function, its prophetic function to the world, and then the salvation of the world coming about from that.

And so as a review of Acts chapter 2, we can look at it in a little different way and see that first of all, the community of God is a saved community, and it is an enrolled community. We talked about this, and this is why I added the last verses 40 and 41 to this week’s text. It really summarizes what Peter said in Acts chapter 2. It tells us that the recorded words there were only a small portion of the preaching of the sermon or sermons that were done in that day.

It says, “With many other words did he testify to these things.” His basic message was to save yourself from this perverse or perverted, twisted, or warped generation. And so the gospel message is preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, and it comes to exalt the risen and glorified Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, and to call men to repentance for their sins that they might be saved from the perverse generation.

We have today in our nation a twisted and perverted generation as well. We have a babble of many voices. Confusion reigns. There’s a multiplicity of worldviews that continue to propagate in our nation now that the Christian worldview has been successfully shattered, so to speak, by the forces of statism. And so there is Babel—tongues—in our land today. And our message has to be a prophetic one to the idolatry of our day first and foremost.

Idolatry is the replacement of anything as a substitute god. And certainly in our day and age, when the civil state is looked to for the provision of health, education, and welfare instead of the God who is true health, true knowledge, and true goodness to his people, the civil state must be the great idolater. And unfortunately, so many of God’s people love it so, so to speak.

Quoting from the prophets: the priests lie and deceive the people, and the people love it so, because then they also are not required to let the Lord Jesus Christ be Lord and Master, taking every thought captive and reforming every area of their life.

So the community of God is a saved community, saved out of a wicked generation that knows the punishment of God is coming upon it through the preaching of God’s word. And that, of course, is an element of Peter’s sermon, and it should be a central element of our sermon as well—rebuking the idolatry of our day and age. Judgment will come. It is here now.

Homosexuality, the hearings going on in Salem looking for civil rights, special rights for sodomites—those who are in radical rebellion to God—is not going to call forth the judgment of God so much as it is an indication of the judgment of God upon a nation that has forsaken him.

That’s what you get when you reject the Lord Jesus Christ as regulator of sexual relations. You get first fornication, perversion, adultery, pornography, and you end up with sodomy, and then finally necrophilia and some of the other horrible things that exist in our country. That’s the judgment of God against a nation that refuses to acknowledge him. The Babel tongue, so to speak.

Now, as Richard said at our graduation ceremony or advancement ceremony for our homeschoolers the other night, he said that it’s proper to read “horse” when the word says “pony,” because you are making the right association. There’s a deconstruction going on in language that rips apart the very meaning of words. And so a culture that moves away from Jesus Christ, the logos, loses its ability to even communicate in the context of its own culture. It becomes Babel all over again with God’s curse upon it.

So people have to be saved out of this. When they’re saved, they’re brought into the community of God, and they are enrolled in that community.

That community has a fourfold task, by way of application here, that we can see was being accomplished on the day of Pentecost. We talked about this extensively last week, but let’s just think about it again.

We are a rebuking community. We rebuke the idolatries of our day. We are a reforming community. We don’t just rebuke the idolatries of the state. We also speak to correction in terms of the visible church of Jesus Christ. We’ll see this next week when Psalm 2 is quoted, referring to the powers of the day, both in church and state, that seek to stifle the church of Jesus Christ. A reforming community. It is a church that is continually being reformed through the tearing down of the idolatries within the church as well.

We don’t see the nation around us idolatrous without the cooperation of the church. It’s the church that has the model for how the world is to live its life. When the church fails, then the culture follows the church in its failure.

I mentioned in a question and answer period last week that an example of this came to my mind a week ago when I spoke with a man from another state who’s a member of probably one of the largest conservative Presbyterian denominations in the country. And yet they have a business meeting where they’re going to call a pastor, and communicate members—10-year-old boys, perhaps 7-year-old girls—are allowed to vote in the calling of a pastor.

Now, it’s our belief at this church, and we’re writing bylaws along this line with explanatory notes and arguments from the scriptures, etc., that only men vote at our heads of households meeting. And we think ultimately this country will return back to where it was, and only men should exercise the civil franchise as well in terms of voting in elections. I know it’s a radical statement to be made, but it seems biblical.

When the church opens its franchise, its voting privileges, up to women, the culture will follow. And the church has gone further than our culture. In many denominations now it allows all communicant members, including children, to cast votes for such an important thing as the calling of a pastor. The civil state will not be far behind. And indeed, in every session of the Oregon legislature, we see a drive to lower the voting age lower and lower.

You see, the church leads. And so the church must hear the rebuking word that it might reform itself as well. So our task is to the civil culture around us, the idolatry of our day. But it’s also a task to speak to the churches and our own church as well, that we may be a reformed church, always reforming. And that’s what happened on the day of Pentecost.

The third thing that happened, of course, is evangelism—local evangelism. And it’s very important that we take this message of the risen Savior into our neighborhoods and communities. And then finally, a perspective on global mission. All the world is gathered because what we have in Acts 2 is the salvation, by way of symbol, of the entire world. And so we look for the salvation of the whole world, that the whole world, a thousand tongues, would sing the praises of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we must be engaged in these fourfold external activities. And you could correlate them to the fourfold message that Jesus said: you’re to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world. Jerusalem, the church. Judea, the environment of the church, our local neighborhoods and our culture, our state. Samaria, the place of idolatry—that’s what Samaria was—rebuking the idolatry of the day. And finally, the uttermost parts of the earth in terms of global missions.

So we have a church who was called to various activities and exhorted to those activities as a community who then becomes a rejoicing community. Remember, we talked about the fact that in the context of all of this, it’s not just a service that’s called for. There’s a joy that is connected to that service—a joy that rejoices in rest. That’s the defeat of our enemies. That’s what biblical rest is. And a community that rejoices in land, that is the presence of God in the context of the people.

And we have that on the day of Pentecost. We have the presence of God made manifest by the Holy Spirit. And we have the defeat of God’s enemies being pictured in the salvation of the world. And the declaration that his judgment comes upon all men and nations that reject him.

And finally, a community that rejoices in receiving God’s word. They receive the word gladly. And as many as were saved were added unto the church. They were enrolled in the church.

So that takes us up to these next few verses. And our subject today is the community of God then. And the community of God is characterized in several ways in these very important texts that we have from the last few verses of Acts chapter 2.

Okay. Verses 40 and 41 talk about being saved and being enrolled. And in verse 42, it gives us a description—now in this very important genesis, so to speak, of the reorganized church, reorganized to the end that it would proclaim the gospel of Christ victoriously. We see in verse 42 and following a picture of that church in its infancy, so to speak, but in its purity as well, and in its essential task it’s called to do.

And verse 42 is so important. It tells us a fourfold aspect of what the community of God is characterized as in terms of its internal activities.

Verse 42: “They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers.”

You’ll see in your outline that’s what we’re going to speak to now. The community of God is indeed a community that is characterized by a fourfold internal activity.

First of all, the community of God is a learning community. Now, before we get into the learning aspect, it says they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine. They continued steadfastly applies to all four of those areas. Grammatically, it’s structured so that they don’t just continue steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and not these other three aspects. They continue steadfastly in all four of these.

This is very important, and I don’t want to just gloss over it. I do want to take a couple of minutes to talk about this need for continuing steadfastly.

When we ended last week, we talked about joy. Joy is the byproduct of doing those fourfold external events that the church of God, the community of God, is called to in the first few verses of Acts chapter 2. But that joy, we see that joy is really found itself ultimately in a glad reception of the word of God.

But you know, in Mark 4, in the parable of the sower and the seeds, we read that there were likewise those that were sewn on stony ground who, when they heard the word, immediately received it with gladness. But they have no root, and so they quickly wither away—the plants that grow up. It’s one thing to receive the word of instruction, God’s word, gladly. It’s another to continue steadfast in it.

And throughout the scriptures, there are warnings to us not simply to receive the word gladly at first, but to continue steadfastly in what we have learned.

For instance, in John 8:31, Jesus said to the Jews which believed in him, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed.” There are those who begin in the word but do not continue. Our Savior warns us of that over and over. True disciples of his are those who continue in the word.

In Acts 14:22, concerning the souls of the disciples—the apostles were confirming the souls of the disciples and exhorting them to continue in the faith.

In 1 John 2:19, speaking of those who did not continue: “They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us. But they went out that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.”

So we have this tremendous need to continue steadfast in what God has called us to do. The word means to cling on to tenaciously with strength. And so it’s very important that we see that these fourfold manifestations of the community of God are things which don’t just sort of happen. If you let your life just sort of happen, you’ll fall away from these things. These are things that must be clung on to tenaciously, that you must attend to with all due diligence.

And the first of these four things is the apostles’ teaching, the doctrine of the apostles.

Now, what’s being talked about here is not necessarily or at all, really, a system of beliefs. J. Alexander in his commentary said that this refers not to a belief in a system of doctrine, but to their personal attendance on the actual instruction of the twelve apostles.

Now, systems of doctrine are important. Alexander isn’t saying that they’re not. They are. But here, what’s really being stressed at the heart of the church in its fourfold internal ministry is an adherence to the instruction of the apostles—those who are called to represent Jesus Christ in his word in the context of the community.

It’s not enough to say, “I affirm belief in this particular system of doctrine,” and then walk away from the instruction in God’s word that comes through those men that have been appointed to do that. This talks about a community that is a learning community whose minds are engaged in the faith. And that’s very important for us, most of us coming out of Baptist circles, with minds not engaged.

And this tells us very clearly at the beginning of these fourfold internal activities, these manifestations of the community of God, that they’re a thinking community. They’re an instructed community continually being instructed in how God’s word relates to all of the world and all that they do. And so they’re a learning community whose brains and intellect are engaged in terms of their faith—who don’t see the faith somehow in opposition to thinking or intelligence.

No, their intellect is used under the power, the constraint of the Lord Jesus Christ. They bring every thought captive, not mystically by getting rid of thought, but rather by having those thoughts reformed through the washing of the word, renewed. So God’s word is extremely important, and it’s important that we understand that God’s word is not mediated—that’s too strong a word—but it is given to us and we’re instructed in it through men who are called to do that.

It’s interesting. In 2 Peter 3:1-2, Peter writes the second epistle: “Beloved, I now write unto you in both, which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of the apostles of the Lord and Savior.”

You see, now we know the Roman Catholic Church is not correct. The word is not mediated ultimately through a second source. There is a sense in which we have need of no one to teach us in the ultimate sense. But God says there are secondary means he uses to instruct us, and that is men—men that are called as masters of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Galatians 4:14, listen to Paul—how Paul writes how he was received by the people of Galatia: “And my temptation which is in my flesh, you despise not nor rejected, but you receive me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.”

That’s an amazing statement if you think about it. You’d think he’d be rebuking them here for receiving him so much. And of course, you don’t idolize, you don’t fall into idolatry of the men that have been called to represent him. Of course, we’re talking about the apostles here, who are a special manifestation of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. But I believe the scriptures teach that elders, men who are called to teach and instruct in the local church, also bring Christ’s word to bear.

Now, that’s a harness upon them. That means that they don’t have the ability to instruct you in things other than what Christ would have you be instructed in. But it also brings a degree of responsibility upon the congregation to be steadfastly continuing in the instruction of those men that have been called to teach you from the holy scriptures.

And so the community of God is first of all a learning community.

Secondly, the community of God is a fellowshipping community. I’m sorry, I got a little ahead of myself in the outline. It is a fellowshipping community. They continued steadfast in the apostles’ doctrine. They also continued steadfastly in fellowship.

And much could be said about this, but it’s very important to notice this application of one of the essential aspects of what a true church of Jesus Christ is. It is a fellowshipping community.

Now, that fellowship is not just having a good time. Later on in Acts 5:42, we read that day they were in the temple and in every house they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. They spent a lot of time together—that’s what this fellowshipping means. They spent time conversing together. They sought each other out. You wouldn’t find a single disciple usually by himself; he would be with other disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But they wouldn’t just be with them doing things like everybody else does. Their time would be informed by the word of God. And their speech would be characterized as speech encouraging and exhorting each other to faithfulness in that word.

I spoke to a man who was a pastor of a reconstructionist church in a particular portion of the country that went through its share of trials and tribulations. And he told me that if there was one thing really he would do differently, looking back at the experience that he went through, was that their times together—he said they would have had more times when the word and prayer would have been a part of those times together. It’s good to get together and have a good time together. But in this particular church, those times together were not necessarily characterized with the presence of God’s word and the presence of prayer.

The fellowshipping that we have in the context of the fellowshipping community of God is a fellowship in, through the Lord Jesus Christ, through the Spirit. And so it is a fellowship that is bounded by God’s word, and it’s meant to encourage and instruct us in that word and encourage us to faithfulness in it.

This is a very important aspect, and again, we’re just going to touch on each of these four today. That’s all we have time to do. But I do want to read a fairly long quote from a recent tape by Jim Mackay over from Eastern Oregon. Jim was talking on the three witnesses of God, and he said he talked about the word, the church, and the spirit. And I thought on the way here today, I was meditating on these verses, and I thought, well, in a way, the word, the church, and the spirit—you can see the word in the apostles’ doctrine, the church in fellowship, and the spirit in the breaking of the bread, the communion of the Holy Spirit that the scriptures teach us of, and prayer, of course, informing all those things.

So these three witnesses can be seen here, and it is important for him—what Mr. Mackay said in terms of the witness of the church in terms of what it witnesses to in terms of the word—the counterbalance to it. Let me just read this quote and I’ll try to explain it as I go along. It took me a while. A lot of times with Mr. Mackay, it takes listening to his tapes two or three times, thinking about it, to sort of catch what he’s trying to say. They’re very significant things. This is a very significant point, and this is a point that I think must be stressed a lot in the context of our own church—the need for fellowship and time together to a particular end, which is as a witness of God.

And let me just read from Mr. Mackay here. He was talking—as I get into this quote—of the need to reflect on who we are, reflection on who we are based upon the word of God and based upon our activity in the fellowship of God’s people, that is the church. He mentioned that in a lot of the horror movies, the vampire and Dracula—those characters—they have no reflection in the mirror because the ungodly don’t want to reflect. They don’t want to see who they are. They don’t want to reflect on who they are. The scriptures tell us that they are a reflection to us, a mirror to us, to help us reflect on who we are. And a foolish man looks at that and walks away from it and forgets what he saw. He forgets his sin. He forgets his depravity.

Well, let me just read here from Mr. Mackay on how the church is a witness to us and what the scriptures tell us. He’s discussing the communion of the saints, and he says that of course in the church is where the rubber meets the road. In the church, you find out about scripture. You know, Calvin said, “If you walk away from the church, you walk away from the primary means of the sanctification of God.”

Now, that’s a strange statement. If the first time you hear that, you think, “Now, wait a minute. I think we’re sanctified by the word, aren’t we?” Yeah, but the word in the church. Why?

Well, listen to what Mr. Mackay says here. He says, “For instance, in the scriptures, you are commanded to love your brother in Christ.” Second greatest commandment, right? And that second commandment—remember we talked before—it tells us how much we love God. You don’t say you love God if you hate your brother. You’ve seen your brother made in God’s image. So the second commandment instructs us on how well we’re doing in the first commandment to love God. So it’s central.

Well, the scriptures tell us that the central idea of command: we’re commanded to love our brother in Christ. Not a quote from Mr. Mackay. And you just know you do love them because you have such good feelings every time you think about them. But don’t you ever get close to them. Don’t you dare ever get close to them because then you might find out that you don’t really love them as much as you thought.

Perhaps then, Mr. Mackay says, you enter into a truly dynamic church where people are actually getting close to one another. And there you learn the terrible truth that you only loved your idea of a person. You find yourself either indifferent to people or merely liking them for what they give you. Or you might even find out that you hate them.

You’ve just learned a fundamental truth of scripture: Apart from an abhorrence of self and a total reliance upon Jesus Christ for life, you don’t love anybody. You hate them. You hate anything or anyone that does not love and worship yourself as you do. That’s what the body of Christ is designed to do. It is to help you see what scriptures really say. They say that you don’t love at all. You just thought you did. You just had a good feeling, but you didn’t love a bit.

When you get near people, when you find out you don’t love them, then you find out you don’t love them at all, and then the work comes to learn what it means to be in Christ so that you can truly love. This is the part the church plays in witnessing to the truth. By daring to get close to one another, we let God teach us the hard truth, which is our inability to love, so that then he may present to us the glorious truth, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

The tragedy of the church today is that many people never get close enough to each other to learn the awful truth about themselves. And so neither do they come to Jesus Christ so that they might have life. They are yet convinced of their own goodness and their own ability to love. They have—or they may be great students of the scriptures—but so long as they mistake their good feelings for their actual condition, so long as they avoid close relationships, they will be ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.

In 1 Corinthians 8:1, Paul says that knowledge puffeth up, but love edifieth. And then writes, “Knowledge without love is worse than ignorance because it feeds that king of all vices, pride.” It is in the nature of a child of Adam to think the best of himself. And therefore to imagine that he embodies those qualities of holiness that the scriptures describe. And the more he learns, the more insufferably and subtly arrogant he becomes. His only hope is that he might encounter a mature Christian who would dare to penetrate the facade and gently but firmly help expose the man to himself.

Now, you really get the thrust of that by first reading through. I know it’s hard to read it or listen to a quote being read, but I think Mr. Mackay is so on target with that. And that’s why the second designation of what the community of God is all about is that it’s a fellowshipping community who does dare to get close to each other.

Now, that’s not an easy thing to do because, as he said, one of the things you find out immediately is you don’t really love people like you thought you did. You loved your idea of them. You had good feelings about them. But then you find out people aren’t so nice. They’re not so lovable, and they don’t love you the way you hoped they had loved you.

And so the scriptures are important to us, but the scriptures can be so deceiving to ourselves. And so God gives us the church, the fellowship of the saints, as a second witness to the truth of our own depravity and of the need to rely upon the person of Jesus Christ and then to remold what love is and what our relationships to one another are.

This is so important. We walk around with great big heads—many people do—with little hearts. And the reason that you don’t even know your heart is that little is because most people today have never taken the time to develop close personal relationships within the body of Christ, and to spend this time fellowshipping together, to know each other. And then you begin to see how much you need the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and how much you must repent of the sin that so plagues you.

Mr. White talked about the rich young ruler who Jesus said, “Sell everything you’ve got,” and he walks away sad. And he said, in a way, that’s us every day. We’re faced with our inability to do this. Maybe you’re thinking right now, yeah, that’s true. I’ve avoided close personal relationships in the context of this church. Because for a couple of reasons: One, they’re going to find out who I am. And maybe you don’t think about this, but probably even more importantly, you’re going to find out who they are, but they don’t love you as much as you hope they would. They don’t worship you. And so you’re going to hate them at some level of your personality, of your being.

So maybe you feel bad about this. You’ve let yourself be kind of isolated from the community. But you know, it’s like he said: every day the Lord Jesus Christ commands us to do things that we can’t do, and we walk away sad. But that’s the beginning of the process. The end of that process is Christ in us, the hope of glory. He forgives us our sins. He empowers us through a knowledge of our own covetousness—in the sense of the rich young ruler—and then he begins to remake us, not in our own power and ability, but in the power of the Holy Spirit, to do those things he calls us to do.

So community is extremely important. Remember, the Lord Jesus Christ said, “You search the scriptures because you think in them you have life. But I am the life.”

And so, visit the church. We can search the scriptures and get a tremendous amount of intellectual understanding of the word of God. But if we haven’t exposed ourselves to the person of Jesus Christ in our brother, in the fellowship of the Christian community, then we can become as self-deceived, arrogant, and unbearable as Mr. Mackay says, as the Pharisees of old. Fellowship is absolutely vital, and it’s so difficult.

It’s easy today to study your scriptures. We have the access of the word of God. The teaching of the apostles is tremendously available to us everywhere. But not so fellowship and community.

We live in the context of a culture—I don’t remember the statistics—people move on the average of, I don’t know what it is, every three or four years something like that. They physically move. I mean, how are you going to develop relationships to help you work through to understand what the scriptures teach about yourself and about relationship of the word to the world if you’re not in the context of a community? You become so self-deceived. But how you going to form those deep relationships if you’re only at a church a couple of years?

So that’s one thing that works against us. Our very mobility makes it difficult to do this thing. And then secondly, of course, the fact that churches dot the landscape. They have no relationship with one another. Churches—people leave one church, go to another, and there’s no interest, or at least there’s not enough interest, to do anything about it on the part of the receiving church, to get together with the sending church, say, “Who are these people? Tell us about them. Let’s spend some time here getting to know these people so we don’t have to go through the whole learning curve all over again with this couple with his family.” None of that exists.

And so fellowship of the saints, the community of God, is a fellowshipping community. And you must work diligently at this because as hard as it may be for you to personally find time in your life for the word, you are going to find that as you get close—not just surface relationships in other contexts of the church, but as you get close to each other and begin to search out a deeper basis of fellowship in the Lord Jesus Christ—you’re going to find that quite difficult. It’s not going to be fun. It’s going to be painful at first. But now it becomes great joy. It becomes great joy as you persevere in it. And as you continue steadfastly in the fellowship that’s required here, then there is great joy to it. But it’s not easy at first.

The community of God, however, is a fellowshipping community.

Third, the community of God is a worshipping community. They continue steadfastly in the breaking of bread. And what’s being mentioned here, I think, quite clearly is that the breaking of bread is talking about the Eucharist. And I think that you could say that the breaking of bread and prayers—the last thing that’s mentioned—certainly the breaking of bread refers to the worship of a community. They got together on the first day of the week to break bread. We read that, for instance, in Acts 20:7: “Upon the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them.”

That’s an interesting concept too, isn’t it? They got together for the breaking of the bread and then Paul preached to them. So worship is seen as having as its focus the breaking of the bread—the communion with the Lord Jesus Christ in terms of the Eucharist. And so the community of God is a learning community with its minds engaged. It’s a fellowshipping community with its heart being ripped out and remade through the application of the word in terms of the community being reformed by it, as it were.

We have a church that has its heart engaged and a church that has its body engaged in the ecclesiastical worship as well. That’s what’s being spoken of here, I believe. And so we have here the necessity of a steadfast adherence to the Eucharist. You know, it’s a sad thing that most churches don’t do this weekly. They get together on the first day of the week to hear the instruction, but the scriptures tell us you get together the first day of the week to break bread. That’s why you’re coming here today.

Now, I thought of this, and we’ll get to prayer in a minute, but I thought of these first three aspects: a learning community—apostles’ doctrine; a fellowshipping community—the fellowship of the saints; and a worshipping community—the breaking of the bread. And I thought, you know, interestingly enough, those are the three forms of polity out there, the three traditions of the western church coming from the Reformation.

We have a Presbyterian tradition that has stressed tremendous scholarship. And I—you probably had the same experience as myself—and you come out of a Baptist church or a community church, a Bible church, you start to read some of the reformed people—Warfield and others—and then you back to the Reformers themselves, Calvin, etc., Knox. You think, “Wow, these guys—George Gillespie—these guys are bright.” You know, it’s like you’re coming out of a culture that essentially has about 800 books on personal devotions and your prayer life and your personal life, nothing on the intellectual content of the faith. And you walk into Presbyterianism, it’s like you’ve walked into a tremendous huge library, and you want to read every book. They’re so good.

Presbyterianism is known for its very good scholarship in terms of the exegesis of God’s word. I’m a conservative Presbyterian—not the liberals of today—but they’re known for that. I heard a guy—I think it was at Clinton’s inauguration—some preacher talking about how a Presbyterian is an educated Baptist.

See, I mean, the culture knows this. Presbyterians are sharp intellectually. They adhere to the apostles’ doctrine. The Baptist churches, however, adhere to the second point: fellowship, body life. You don’t hear body life being talked about a lot in Presbyterian churches. And if you go to many conservative Presbyterian churches—I’ve gone to a few of them—it’s not exactly a warm thing typically. And I’m not talking about the liturgy or the worship. I’m talking about the way people interact with you. A lot more suits, you know, a lot more distance, a lot more space between people. Emphasis on the mind, not so much on the heart.

In the Baptist, no emphasis on scholarship, but a lot of emphasis on body life. I should note these are all, you know, these are characterizations. Certainly, there are good Baptist dispensationalists who have done a lot of study of God’s word and good scholarship. And certainly, there are Presbyterians—I mean, I don’t think you can hear Greg Bahnsen’s preaching at family camp last year and accuse them of ignoring the second aspect. But you know, generally, the traditions have come down that way.

But neither one of those traditions has the weekly breaking of the bread and adherence to the worship of God being centered upon the Eucharist. Who has that? The Episcopalians. The Episcopalian church—high liturgical churches. So it’s interesting, isn’t it, that we see coming out of the Reformation, not so much three forms of polity as we do three cultures, each that has taken one aspect of these things we’re supposed to continue steadfastly in each of them and emphasized it and deemphasized some of the other things.

And one of the weird things about this church is we’re trying self-consciously—and I’m sure as a kindergartener would try to paint a masterpiece—nonetheless, we’re trying self-consciously to bring all these things together: to have good scholarship, good preaching, good teaching both from the pulpit and in Bible studies and home to home, etc. But also to have the fellowship that’s necessary, getting into close relationships with one another that can prove so disastrous, so harmful to us in the short term, but so beneficial to us in the long term. And of course, we celebrate the Lord’s supper here. We try to place an emphasis upon the liturgical worship that God gives us to do.

Well, in any event, these are three of the four aspects the community of God is characterized as. And the fourth one is that it is a praying community. And I, as I said here, some people take this praying emphasis here as a worship—talking about the prayers in the temple being a liturgical device. But I think the way of application we can see that the church of God, to successfully apply itself in terms of its learning, its fellowship, and its correct liturgical worship, it needs prayer—dependence upon God in everything that it does. The worship of the community of God is characterized as a community that is indeed a praying community as well.

Well, now we have in this—as Lesky said—we have here in this, in brief, a picture of the religious life of the first Christian congregation. All the essentials are present in their proper order and harmony. And so we have here a model picture that can help us look at what the church of God is supposed to be characterized as and how then to go about reforming our lives individually and as a church to meet the biblical path.

Now, beyond these four characteristics, the text continues to tell us they are also a rejoicing community. And I’ve got this: the community of God is characterized by these four activities, who then is a rejoicing community, because I think that the rejoicing coming at the end is again an indication that the rejoicing is a byproduct of the correct application of these other four aspects of the church: teaching, fellowship, the Eucharist, and prayer. Those things being in place, then you are a rejoicing community.

And so in verse 46, they continued daily with one accord in the temple, breaking bread from house to house, to eat their meat rather with gladness and singleness of heart. They rejoiced together. They had gladness. Singleness of heart means without any stumbling blocks, without any stones, a smooth path—nobody getting their noses bent out of shape or stubbing their toes on what happens.

Rather, they have gladness and a singleness of heart. I think here we’re not referring now to liturgical worship and Eucharist when it talks about breaking bread from house to house because it explains that they did eat their meat, their food—a more generalized term there—with gladness and singleness of heart. And again, here you see the importance—as you do throughout these six or seven verses—of people getting together, sharing fellowship with one another, spending time with each other.

And this time spent is one that is characterized as having a great deal of gladness. The result of this is that they praise God.

Verse 47: “Praising God, having favor with all the people, the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.”

J. Alexander says that this praising God is not some final aspect of the church that’s tacked on to a list of things it does. Rather, this is a summation of the whole of what the church is characterized as. Alexander says, I quote, “In a word, they only live to praise God and glorify their Master.” And the way they did that is to be characterized by these four aspects that are pointed out for us in verse 42.

By the way, this is the first historical use of the term church. We read that in verse 47, that the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. Again, the sovereignty of God in terms of the election of people is being talked about there. But it is important to note here that he refers to this historically as the church.

Now, our Savior did refer to the church in the Gospels in an anticipatory sense. But here’s the first historical occurrence of the church being identified as the church, eklesia. And I think here it’s important to notice that there were two common usages of that term. The first was that these were the called-out citizens who would rule in the context of a local city in terms of the Greek civil government. The second way ecclesia was used, however, was of the Jewish worshipping community—you talk about the Israel of God in its various congregations.

So by choosing this term, we see two very important aspects of what the church is. The church does rule in terms of the city. What happens in the context of the city of Portland primarily happens in relationship to God’s work in history in terms of the church that is there. They’re the eklesia. And if they lead well, things go well. And if they lead poorly, culture declines and judgment comes. So they are the eklesia.

But they also have continuity with the Old Testament church. Reorganized, given a far broader mandate to evangelize the whole world, but nonetheless there’s continuity.

Now, you’ll notice there then that I’ve talked about this rejoicing community. I skipped over a few verses. Verses 43 and following. Let’s go back to them.

Now, we talked in verse 42 these fourfold base of internal activities. Then verse 43, fear came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles and all that believed were together. They had all things common and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need.

Now, it’s interesting here. So we have a description of the fourfold activity of the church in verse 42. Then we have a description that fear comes upon the people. Then it talks about the charitable distribution of goods. And then it concludes by saying they spent a lot of time together being glad and praising God, and God multiplies them.

So we’ve got these fourfold activities: the community of God learns, fellowships, worships, prays, and then it ends up as being a rejoicing church. And in between those two, I think we see what it’s rejoicing over.

And I think you can see a correlary here back to what we talked about last week, which goes back to the book of Joshua. Remember what Joshua said, “No falling words.” We’ve got the word preach. Now it has success. It brings success. And it’s characterized in two ways in the book of Joshua: rest and land. And we said that proper application of God’s word preached the way that Peter did and the disciples did on the day of Pentecost—the application in those fourfold activities, the fourfold activity: rebuking idolatry, calling the church to repentance, local evangelism, global missions—that is seen as rejoicing. And we looked at the verses that show that rejoicing is related to the defeat of God’s enemies. That’s what rest is. And the presence of God with your people.

And I’ve listed a couple of sets of verses there in the bottom of your outline, beginning with Esther, these two sets of verses correlate then to the Esther passage and those that follow it—to fear and the defeat of God’s enemies and rejoicing then in terms of rest. And the second set of passages refer to the charitable activities of the church. And why I list those together is that’s the presence of God in the community. It’s a presence that condemns people, God’s enemies, but it’s a presence that is demonstrated as the people of God forsake personal hold over things when needed and give them up for the sake of the greater community.

That fellowship of God in the community that finds its penultimate expression in the rejection of our own personal goods for the better sake, for the sake of those in the context of the covenant community we’re called to be a part of—that penultimate expression is the manifestation of the presence of God in terms of the local church. And so the joy centers again over rest and land—victory and the presence of God in terms of his people.

Let’s look at it a little bit first. Fear.

We read in verse 43 of this designation: “Then fear came upon every soul.”

Why is that important to us? Because the scriptures tell us that fear is an important aspect of evangelism.

In Esther 8, after Haman is killed and Mordecai is exalted and God’s people are delivered, we read that in every province where whatsoever the king’s decree and his decree came—wherever it came—the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day. And many of the people of the land became Jews. For the fear of the Jews fell upon them.

God manifested his deliverance of his people. And he showed—when Haman is killed—what happens to the ungodly. And what happens to those who would persecute his people? The people get afraid and they convert. They proselytize to Judaism. Fear evangelism.

In Jeremiah 33:9: “It shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and honor up before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear all the good that I do unto them, and they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness, and for all the prosperity that I procure unto it.”

People see the blessings of God upon his church, and they fear and tremble. There is a discrimination in history, in God’s affairs. He exalts some, and he will debase others. Fear is related to evangelism.

In Luke—Jesus raises a daughter who is perceived as being dead. Verse 15: “And he who was dead sat up and began to speak, and he delivered him to his mother.” I’m sorry, I must…