Sunday Sermon
sunday morning 1st Feb 2009
Acts 2v42-47.
Context: A huge number of people have just become followers of Jesus Christ!
What is next for them? How does God deal with his children, post conversion?
“Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”
1) the first thing we are told is that the converts “continued steadfastly proskartere,w/ devoted”- that is, they persisted, or persevered in the apostles teaching / doctrine “didach”
These thousands are hungry for the Truth! And so they dedicate themselves to what the apostles are teaching!
Again we see the importance of teaching in the kingdom. Jesus spent most of his ministry pre and post resurrection teaching! And so here the disciples are teaching and the people are devoted to that teaching!
· APP: 2 things; the importance of teaching and the importance of attending to teaching.
More and more in the wider Christian world we are moving away from teaching to entertaining! But here at the start of it all, the foundation is “didach”.
Why is teaching so important?
It is not important in and of itself, it’s important because it is in the Word that we get Christ!
And it is through receiving Him that we bear fruit: Parable of the Sower.
Then Devotion to the teaching is needed; why?
Because it is only those who really want to know the truth and who continue in it that will be productive and grow spiritually.
Note: there is nothing remarkable about this, in that, spiritual growth at this point works in the same manner as growth in any field of knowledge.
2) the new converts also devoted themselves to fellowship. “koinwni,a”42, 44-46
Fellowship here is marked by sharing together.
The word itself derives from the greek for “common to all - koinos”
Through their experience of Jesus they were moved from loners to lovers of each other!
This sharing together, fellowship, was not in word only but in practical detail, v44-46.
And at the base of it all was “the breaking of bread”.
The constant visible reminder of the bread and the wine, showed them that the Lord Jesus Christ shared his very self with them, thus they shared with each other.
This was no law, no legalism, no burden.
This was true worship. The sacrifice of Jesus inspired their “koinwni,a”!
How could they hold onto their possessions if someone beside them was in need after all that Jesus had done for them!
· App: true fellowship only grows out of a true experience of the Good News.
There is no call here to sell all that we have and give to the poor.
The call is to seek Jesus then see where that leads!
If we experience all that He has done for us, then we will be free and easy with our possession, we will be generous, happy to share.
We can gauge our spiritual temperature by asking how willing we are to share our possessions, a simple test!
The foundation though is Jesus. We need to be established and continually devoted to Christ - “the breaking of bread.”
True fellowship will occur as we all focus on Him. He is the root and cause of fellowship.
No gimmickry is needed. No entertainment, simply a looking to Christ as our all.
3) the new converts were also much in prayer! 42, 46-47.
Prayer is what keeps the early church together. Prayer marks the upward dimension of it all.
Teaching and fellowship can all be done at the purely human level.
But this devotion / commitment, to prayer brings God into the whole process.
For it brings the Good News into all this!
For prayer reminds us why Jesus came into the world. He came that we might have a relationship with God again!
He came so that we could pray! One of the biggest areas in the Lords life was prayer and he taught his disciples how to pray.
That the early church were often at prayer shows they were living “in” the Good News!
They were talking to God, they were celebrating, they were rejoicing and in it all worshiping.
They were living the new life that Jesus came to ensure that they had!
· App: prayer is a gift!
We are not called to prayer as a law but as a wonderful privilege!
Finally what is the key to all this?
The key is the commitment that the early church showed.
They were “devoted”, the “continued steadfastly”, in all these things.
In other words they were on fire!
They were living in wondrous response to all that God had done for them!
They had come to believe in the Saviour, had come to repent and receive forgiveness, they had been given the gift of the Holy Spirit!
And so they were full of Passion for the Lord.
As we look at this brightest of flames, that is the early church, how do we respond?
· We need to respond by seeking to live the Gospel too.
For nothing has changed from Gods perspective.
Salvation, forgiveness of sins, eternal life, Spirit baptism are all still there for us today.
We need to learn to live it again.
· We need to also question our devotion.
The kingdom of God never advanced through half hearted commitment.
Jesus never asked his followers for half hearted commitment!
sunday evening 1st Feb 2009
Rom 8v9-11
Last week we saw that those who were controlled by the sinful nature could not please God. The reason for that is that deep down those who are controlled by the flesh / sinful nature are at war with God. And that, as Paul states, is the natural condition of everyone who does not belong to Christ (Rom 3v23). But Paul does not want to dwell on that for too long! He quickly moves on.
· The Christian is the temple of God on earth.
Verses 9-11 focus on the great truth that the Christian is indwelt by God.
That being so certain things are now true:
1) Gods indwelling marks out the Christian : God lives in us v9.
V9 sets up for us again the whole human divide.
There are those who are “in the flesh”, that is those who are still outside of Christ.
Still lost in sin, controlled by the sinful nature, still unable to please God, incapable of submitting to the law!
And there are those who are “in the Spirit” – those who have been found.
Those who have come to believe in Jesus. And in coming to Jesus we become those who are “in the Spirit”. We belong to God, we are “in”, no longer outside!
Further not only are we “in the Spirit” but the Spirit is in us!
In fact we are those who are indwelt by God!
One of the commentators notes that one who dwells in a house is talking about the owner not just a passerby! God dwells in us and owns us!
This is a massive claim, but it is basic to our salvation.
1 Corinthians 3:16 “Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?”
What does Paul say? “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.”
What sets the Christian apart is the indwelling presence of God!
That is God living in us! Just as he lived in the Tent and the Temple in OT days so now in NT days He lives in the believer!
APP: Gods dwelling in us and therefore owning us is basic to all the living out of our faith.
Everything we do and say, we do and say with God!
2)because God is present in us there is life: the body is dead, but the spirit is alive v10.
(Note: There is some debate about this verse over the exact meaning of the word spirit. Does it refer to our spirit, or to the Spirit).
The presence of the Spirit of God in the believer has the immediate effect of giving life to us in some way. Whether we say we have new spirits within or not. The fact is we have a new dynamic of life operating in us!
We still have bodies that are corrupted by sin, that will one day die, but in our spirits we have new life! We have been born again, we are new creations!
The glory of that new creation is awesome, if we were to see it now we would be very tempted to worship ourselves! (cs lewis, i think said that).
But it is covered! Our treasure is in jars of clay – 2cor4v7.
How is it that we have these new spirits? “because of righteousness” we have been renewed because we have been made right in the sight of God.
App:
We need to keep this balance before our minds at all times.
We have been born again, the spirit is alive.
Yet at the same time the body is still dead.
This explains the contradictory experiences that we can go through as Christians.
How at one time we are full of love and devotion and yet at another are falling into sin!
3) because God is present the body one day will be resurrected v11.
But what of our bodies?
These bodies that we posses at the moment will one day be raised to new life too.
Because we have the element of life already at work in us, because we are indwelt by God, we will experience future bodily resurrection! (see 1cor15).
Our bodies are mortal now, subject to pain, suffering and death.
But salvation in Christ holds out hope for our bodies too.
This is full salvation. It is salvation of the whole person, body mind and soul!
