Message 4th of October - It was a Loving Church
Lessons from the Acts Church
Welcome
In the mid to late nineties a Christian band called DC Talk were at the height of their powers. I was nearing the end of high school (I realise some of you were probably kicking about in nappies at this time but anyway)... DC Talk in this period released three fantastic albums - Free at Last, Jesus Freak and Supernatural - if you have not listened to these albums, particularly the last two… as Molly Meldrum would say, do yourself a favour... On the first album I mentioned - Free at Last there was a song on there - Luv is a verb - that’s love spelt - l - u - v… I remember listening to that CD feeling boss-as - rapping along with Toby Mac - the guy who always did the rap parts, y’know, feelin pretty gansta - well an aussie, Christian, pacifist gangsta…
That song Luv is a Verb… I don’t reckon I knew at the time what it meant. But as we know, a verb is an action word. They were saying that love is more than words or feelings - it’s something that you actually need to demonstrate. I’ll read to the chorus to you now (and if I burst into song I apologise):
Words come easy but don't mean much
When the words they're sayin' we can't put trust in
We're talkin' 'bout love in a different light
And if we all learn to love it would be just right
That first line really hits the nail on the head - words come easy but don’t mean much. In other words, talk is cheap… don’t tell me how much you love me, show me… Unfortunately, when we talk about love, many people over-promise and under-deliver.
Okay, let’s just park that off to the side for a moment and let me pray before I unpack what relevance this has to the Acts church in a moment.
Let’s pray
This morning we’re continuing the series that I began last week - Lessons from the Acts church. This series is centred on the passage from Acts chapter 2, verses 42-47. While you’re opening up your Bibles to this passage, I just want to recap a little bit from last week.
Remember that when I use the word church, I’m not referring to a timeslot or a building - it’s about a bunch of people who are following Jesus. People who are at different places in their spiritual journeys, people who don’t always get it right but each day we do our best to be Jesus… to imitate him in our world.
This series is not about copying the structure of the Acts church rather, we’re attempting to answer the question - what are characteristics that they demonstrated that we can learn from? Last week we… learnt… that the Acts church was a learning church. Not content to stay where they were, they were willing to grow and open to change.
Have you got that passage open? Let’s read it together:
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Remember last week we looked at the word devote - Devote was defined as, ‘To give all or most of one’s time or resources to a person or activity’. We learned that the Greek here means to give constant attention to… So as we discovered last week, the early followers of Jesus gave all or most of their time or resources… they gave their constant attention to the apostle’s teaching.
This week we’re particularly looking at the second half of verse 42 and subsequent verses. Verse 42 tells us another thing that the Acts church were devoted to was fellowship. The Greek word we have translated here as fellowship is koinōnía. Koinōnía can mean contact, fellowship and intimacy. I think these three words give us a greater understanding of what the Acts church were about. They weren’t just devoted to fellowship in the sense of a morning tea once a week following a church service… They were in constant contact, they were unified in the fellowship of being followers of Jesus Christ and sons and daughters of God, and they knew each other at an intimate level - they weren’t just content to interact with each other at a surface level - they cut through the fluff and got to know each other deeply.
That brings us to our second lesson from the Acts church and that is, it was a loving church. You might be thinking, ‘how’d he come up with that?’... ‘I’m not really seeing that’. Well have a listen to what’s written in the following verses - tell me that this doesn’t smack of a bunch of people who loved each other. Let’s read from verse 44 and while we do that, try and get a sense of what life must have been like for those 3,000 early followers of Jesus Christ: 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.
I mean you could do a sermon on each of these three verses but let’s take it apart for just a moment. All the believers were together - In other words, they spent a bunch of time together… We read in verse forty-six that every day they continued to meet together… Church, how much time do we spend together? Is an hour-and-fifteen minutes once-a-week too much for some of us?
And had everything in common - I don’t think it’s saying here that every person was exactly the same. What I think it is saying is that they shared common goals, aspirations and dreams. It wasn’t about each person individually, it was about the church, about edifying (building up) the body of Christ.
They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Those who felt called to sell their property and possessions did, it wasn’t compulsory (because we read in the second half of verse 46 that they met in each other’s homes). They were generous with each other, with what had been entrusted to them.
Now I put to you… it’s extremely difficult… no actually… I’m just going to say, you cannot do these three things - be together, share in a common purpose and sell items to give to those in need, unless you love the church. So obviously and I’m sure you’ve picked it up, but my premise here is that the Acts church was a loving church and that we should be a loving church as well… and I’ve heard people say that about us which is great, but let’s unpack a bit how we actually go about that.
Being that we struggled to memorise our vision statement I’m tipping no-one here can remember our Ethos statement, which was the statement that underpinned our vision and mission statements? The first part of our Ethos statement says, ‘Being an authentic and transformational community of God’. I just want to focus on that word authentic for a moment.
I mentioned earlier about intimacy and cutting through the fluff, this in a nutshell is what authenticity is all about. I remember when we consulted with the congregation about the Ethos statement and this idea of being authentic… of being real, was vitally important to people.
I believe you can’t have love without authenticity. Brené Brown is an American scholar, author and public speaker and currently a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. She does this fantastic TED talk on the power of vulnerability - check it out if you haven’t already. Brown says that vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, accountability and authenticity.
If we want to be a loving church, we need to be a church who are vulnerable with each other. If being a loving church is the what, then being vulnerable people is the how. I’m not saying that you walk in here on a Sunday or you come to your small group on whatever day that is and just unload all of your life’s problems on the first person who comes into your field of view… What I’m suggesting is that when an opportunity presents itself to open up, that you do.
A lot of us, particularly us blokes don’t really want to open up because we’re scared of being perceived as weak, we’re worried that people might think we’re losing our crap - but you know what? Being vulnerable is actually a huge demonstration of strength and courage.
And just a disclaimer, we need to choose who we’re vulnerable with. If you’re married,be vulnerable with your spouse. If you’re a woman, be vulnerable with other women. If you’re a man, be vulnerable with men. Because the thing is is that vulnerability leads to deeper relationships and if we’re not careful, if we’re not doing things the right way, then we can sin and cause others to sin.
I’ve talked a bit about the what and how, now I want to talk about the why. Apart from following the example of the Acts church, why should we be a loving church? Well like a lot of the stuff I tell you from the front to do, I can think of no better reason than it being something that Jesus said… no lemme check… something he commanded his disciples… his followers to do.
He says to his disciples in John 13:34-35:
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Anyone have any questions about that? Because sometimes I feel like the fact that Jesus said to do something is not reason enough to do it. I feel like at times, that we need more of a reason to do it. Like we need to get something out of it for ourselves. Well here’s a thought, it’s not actually about you… in other words perhaps there is nothing in it for you. I’m not saying I’m out of the woods with regards to this either, but perhaps we should just do things because we call ourselves Christians. We are people who follow Jesus. If Jesus is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith (Heb 12:2)... If we must all appear before his judgement seat (2 Cor 5:10)... Then we want to make pretty darn sure that we’re doing what he says.
‘Love one another’ - sounds straightforward enough??? But Jesus doesn’t set the bar for love the same way we do. He doesn’t say, ‘As a man loves his wife’... or ‘As a baby loves their mother’... He is the measure by which we should compare ourselves to. He says, ‘As I have loved you, so you must love one another’. Let that just sink in for a moment. Could Jesus really mean putting the needs of others above our own? Could he really mean being generous with our time, talents and resources? Could he mean sacrificing that which is near and dear to us for the good of God’s people and Kingdom? I know all that sounds pretty extreme. But I gotta tell you that our God is extreme and the life that he demands is extreme. He demonstrated extreme love to us and he commands us to do the same with each other.
Verse 35 talks about the flow-on effect of being a loving church: By this everyone will know that you are my disciples. Could that be right? That by the love we show each other, that is how the world will know we are disciples of Jesus? You know what, I think it might be true… And just in case we didn’t get it the first time, this clarification is added: if you love one another.
I wonder if that’s why people are so confused with what the church (and I mean that in the broader sense, the big C church) is about at the moment? What is the Church about? Rather than seeing God’s love on display by the way we love each other, all they ever see and hear about from us is what we’re against. It’s not completely their fault but they have no clue about what we’re for.
My desire and I believe God’s desire for us is that we would be a loving church. My hope is that people would look at us and think, ‘crikey, they love each other’. I want us to love the hell outta people… Think about that, that works at a couple of different levels. I would rather someone left here feeling loved too much, than not loved enough. Can you imagine them turning up at another church saying, ‘yeah I had to leave Mayfield, they were just too loving’.
A loving community is an attractive thing. If you’ve seen the news over the last couple of days you would know that last Friday a 15 year-old boy killed a NSW police accountant by shooting him in the back of the head outside the Parramatta police headquarters. This boy was then killed by officers who had heard the earlier gunshot. Two families are now mourning the loss of their loved-ones.
People wonder why these young people are becoming radicalised. I would suggest that it’s because these young people are feeling like they are not accepted by society. They are feeling like they’re not able to or are not allowed to make a meaningful contribution to society. They are feeling like society is pushing them down. Yet they are finding that these needs are being met in groups where they are being manipulated by religious extremists to carry out these terrible crimes. They are finding what they think is love and acceptance under people who only seek to exploit them.
How good would it be if these young people, not just young people, but all people, could look at the Church and see a community that is characterised by love? How awesome would it be for people to realise that Jesus wants them to have life and have it abundantly? If we get love right in here - we will start having an impact out there!
Jesus said, ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another’. People will have no doubt in their minds as to what we’re about. And I think ultimately, the way this plays out is much like the way in played out in the Acts church in the passage we read earlier (verses 46 & 47) - they enjoyed the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
I mentioned at the beginning of this message one of my favourite Christian bands of all time DC Talk and their song luv is a verb. There seems to be some confusion about what love actually is. A band called The Darkness released a song in 2003, Love is only a feeling. There has been more songs written about love, than any other thing… and of course everyone has their own idea of what love is. Well is it a verb or a feeling, or something else entirely?
Well where do we go for guidance on how to think about something - let’s check out God’s Word, and probably the most well-known passage on love in the Bible. I’m not going to read the whole thing but I just want to read verses 4 to 7 from 1 Corinthians chapter 13:
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
There is a list of things there that we need to do if we’re going to be a loving church. This is what love is. Some of these things we do pretty well, but we can always do better. Last week we got a bit interactive and I think it went well. I know it was scary for some people, but judging from the discussions I could hear - it was positive. So, we’re going to be getting interactive again, but rather than talking to someone else, I want you to write something down as a reminder to yourself. This morning I want you to think about something, one thing you can do better. Something on this list that you need to do more or less of. If you’re like me you could probably do the whole list better but I want you just to pick one thing to focus on. I invite you to come down the front, write it on a piece of paper and take it home with you as a reminder for today, this week, this month and beyond about you can love better and thus how we can be a loving church.
Pray
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