Staying Alive Acts 2

I want to turn to the second chapter of Acts. Just a brief reading of Scripture this morning, beginning in verse 41 of the second chapter of Acts. So those who received his word were baptized. And there were added that day about 3,000 souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread. And the prayers and fear came upon every soul. And many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts. We identify with that one. Praising God and having favor with all the people. The Lord added to their number day by day, those who were being saved. I hope the familiarity of those words to us will not diminish the impact that the Lord would intend for them in our lives today. Anyone who watched the news this week was aware of the anguish of many Californians and the graphic media display of the destruction that came as a result of the heavy rains in Northern California. And the rather intense winds in Southern California caused us all to be really thankful for the sub zero weather I expect. But I marvel every time I see it. And it's really a trait of human nature, isn't it, that in a time of critical disaster, or in a time of severe need, or in a time of phenomenon, people come together. If you watch the news, you saw a score of people shoveling mud out of someone's house and garage, and you may have heard a commentary now and then about someone saying that, gee, it's been really great because everyone's pitched in. And you get the sense that what it takes to bring people together is a disaster. What it takes to bring them out of their individuality and their privateness is something catastrophic. But isn't it also just like human nature that a week later they'll be back behind their fences, back in their own little worlds, and back to living their independent lives? The church in the Book of Acts experienced something of this phenomenal coming together. Did you read the numbers that are listed there? Did that register with you? How many were saved in that first day of Pentecost? 3,000 souls. Amazing. Clearly there was something that took place there that absolutely drew people together. And I get a sense that here in the Book of Acts that what we see being expressed is, if you will, a phenomenological. Try to say that fast. I can't do it. Experience. People are experiencing something that is driving them, pulling them literally together. And we see the expression of people helping each other and loving each other and giving to each other. And we find here an expression of the best, of the spirit of God. But to me, the most incredible miracle about the Book of Acts as that what took place here continued to happen. We can read episode after episode in Acts chapter 4 in Acts chapter 9, that the phenomenon of people coming forth and staying together continued to occur. As I finally today, as I promised a couple weeks ago, want to address the corporate life of Northway for 1982. The miracle that we seek is that we would continue on in that which we've begun together, that we'd not shrink back, that we'd not settle in here and say, well, this is about what we're going to be and let's just be comfortable in being this. But that we'd somehow sense that the Spirit of God is a spirit that keeps on going, keeps on moving together. And I trust that as we look through these scriptures today, you're going to see something of what was implanted in those people and I trust will be implanted in you so that as we go ahead, as we look toward this year ahead of us, we can have a sense of what God would work in us and then what God would work through us. It's really important that we don't just settle back and say, well, sort of the birth is over. How many of you know you can give birth to a 10 pound 6 ounce baby or a 5 pound 6 ounce baby, but in the end they both, both might weigh 180 pounds or 120 pounds. So it's not really your birth that counts, it's your walk. And that's what we want to look at today. All right, three things we're going to look at. Just to make it simple. People oftentimes ask me if I intend to be so simple. I don't know how to take that. But I do intend for you to, to keep this in mind. We're going to look at first of all the attitudes of the people, the resultant actions of the people, and finally the atmosphere in which it all took place. The attitudes, what was fundamentally motivating. Many psychologists will tell you actions follow attitudes. You don't act unless you are motivated to do so. The first thing that I see, there's four words here I want to pick out and land on. The first one is after the salvation, after the 3,000 were gathered in, in verse 41. Look at verse 42. The first word I want you to see is this. And they devoted themselves. Devoted themselves now in the north way news which we're going to try to distribute. Just to make a simple thing even more complicated, we're going to distribute that right when we're finished here today so that you won't all mob the table back there. I talk a little bit about this word for devoted, which is proskatero, P, R O S K A R, T E R O. And it's the combination of two Greek words which means to be strong, with, to be strong towards. Pros is the Greek prefix that means it's an infinitive prefix which means to or towards or with. And cartero is the word for strength. It means to endure in it means to persevere in it means to be giving yourself to. It means to be attending continually. It's the same word that's used in Mark, the third chapter and the ninth verse where Jesus says that the disciples were to make a boat ready for him. What did that mean? They were cleaning all up inside and get it out of the way? No, they had a boat right there waiting for his need. That's to be devoted, you see. It's to be available on a continuing basis. And this is a fundamentally lacking or absent quality in the church of Jesus Christ at large. Beloved, as much as this hurts for us all to confess, it's true that we do so much in our lives because. Because of the convenience of it, because of the comfortableness of it. I praise the Lord that in our body God's starting to break us loose from that. And we're being willing to give beyond what's comfortable of our time and of ourselves. And we need much, much more of that. We can't afford to just let things sort of happen. And when we feel like plugging in, we do. The early disciples were devoted to. They were in their hearts strong towards the things of God. And I pray that you'll recognize that in you and in me there's got to be an attending to the things of the Lord, a giving of ourselves. I'm not going to mention any names today because this is an inordinately severe illustration, obviously, when it's so cold out. But the kind of attitude of which I speak today is, oh, it's so nice and warm in bed. I don't really think I'm going to go to church today. And that attitude was expressed this morning because it's just too cold out. And this wasn't an elderly person who may have a difficult time. And so Forth. This was a healthy individual, male individual. And I feel badly because I think that that's. It's a seed of what we're talking about not wanting to fall into. And it's true for all of us. All of us have places at nighttime. Do we turn on the television set and get hooked into something? Or do we spend a little time in the Word? Are we strong towards the things of God persevering in them? It's a needed quality. Let me move ahead. What brings about this matter of being strong towards something? Well, the next verse tells us verse 43, fear came upon every soul. The fear of the Lord. That's what makes us motivated brothers and sisters, or one thing, anyhow, the fear of the Lord. I guess you can probably sense from my pace here that I could easily have gone into a lengthy discussion of each of these words. And I resist the temptation. It's really a temptation to do that. But we don't have anywhere near the healthy understanding of what the fear of God is all about. These apostles, these early believers, they were captivated by what God was doing. The fear of the Lord is the inner conviction that God is sovereignly working in your life. It's the inner belief of who the supernatural God is. I don't know if you got a chance to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which, when it first came out, was hailed and then really kind of never lived up to its expectations as a film. But Richard Dreyfus plays the lead character in that film, and he has what you'd have to describe as an ultimate experience or encounter with alien beings. And it doesn't matter what you think about all that, but the point was, as you followed the movie, that encounter with those alien beings, the force of it absolutely gripped his life. And his whole life was just geared around fulfilling what that experience was all about, which was to go to the mountain and so on. Well, in the same kind of a way, I believe that these early disciples were so gripped with the expression of God. Look what it says. Many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Later on in the book of Acts, right after Ananias and Sapphira. And if you didn't think that struck some fear of the Lord in the people's hearts, verse 11, it says in it, chapter 5, great fear came upon the whole church. Might have had a few in the beginning, but they had the whole church after Ananias and Sapphira. And upon all those who heard these things, I mean, it was so intense. Verse 13 of chapter 5, speaking of the apostles says none of the rest dared join them, but the people held them in high honor. What was happening there was. There was such a manifestation of the life of God that people absolutely found themselves, let's see, what's the word? Consumed by it. They were involved in it. The fear of the Lord had gripped them. Now fear of the Lord doesn't mean that you're afraid that he's going to drop his heavy hammer on you. But it's just an awareness that God is sovereignly the being who has invaded your life. As Rudolf Otto the theologian said, he is wholly other. He's transcendent, different. And when you begin to get a vision of who God is, you cannot help but recognize that he is bigger than you are and man wants to control him. And see, it's the fear of the Lord, brothers and sisters, that motivates us. It's when we can't do anything else but be God's person, then we're motivated. Fear can make you do a lot of things. I heard of a story of a man that was walking through a cemetery on a dark night. He thought he knew his way very well, but he got off the path a little bit and he slipped into a newly dug out grave site down about 8ft and couldn't quite reach the top to get a hold. And he started muttering and he said, I can't get out here. And he tried to jump up and he tried to dig in the side of the walls of the. And he was just getting pretty exasperated. He couldn't get out and he couldn't get out. So he sat down and said, I got to try one more thing. So he got a running start but couldn't get up the side of it. And he was really getting frustrated. Then a voice from the other side of the pit said relax buddy, you'll never get out of here. But he did. Fear can motivate you. And so let's see, in our own hearts is the fear of the Lord is the awareness of who God is motivating us on to be devoted. Now people would think that those who are devoted and those who are aware of the greatness of God in their life, living and motivated by that respect of God, that's another word for fear or awe of him. That they would be glum and heavy faced and long jawed. But look what happens here day by Day, verse 46, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes. They partook of food with what kind of hearts? Glad and generous hearts. Glad hearts, the Greek word for Glad there. There's two Greek words for glad. One of them is pretty glad, and one of them is exceedingly glad. This one is exceedingly glad. It's a word that is described in Hebrews 1:9 of the anointing oil that is poured on the oil of joy of the Holy Spirit. They were deeply glad. And we could do a word study of what Christian joy is. It's more than happiness. It comes from within. It's a deep, settled confidence that radiates through your being. And if you're moving in devotion to the Lord and under the fear of God, you're going to be glad. There's going to be a gladness, there's going to be attraction about you. It's not a somber God is dealing with me kind of attitude. I'm in the fear of the Lord. You're in some kind of a predisposed religiosity if you're walking around with this heaviness over you all the time. And not only did they have the gladness, but look at verse 47. They were praising God. That was an attitude that was implicit in the life of the church. And it seems to me, and I'm sure it does to you, contradictory that what's in that next statement there, praising God and having favor with all the people. Doesn't that sound contradictory in our culture? If you praise God, how can you have favor with people? I'll tell you why. Because when you see this kind of lifestyle, the world has to admit that they don't have it. I was part of a wedding yesterday up in Elwood city of Mike Gere and Sue Ko, who were from that was Sue's hometown and so on. And they, through their ceremony, expressed the life of the Lord and the love of the Lord in their lives. There was a lot of friends and family there who weren't Christians. But the comments that were heard afterwards about what was expressed, not just how nice it was and how beautiful everyone looked, but people would say things like the words and the love. And you see, it was an opportunity to express publicly what should be lived out among us corporately. And that's what community life is about. This is what God would work in us. So four attitudes. You got them. Devotion, right, the fear of the Lord, gladness of heart and praise on our lips. And we've talked about praise a lot in the past and we'll continue in the future, but I won't get to it today. Now, unless you're moving in a measure of those four fundamental attitudes, what I'm going to say next will never matter to you because you won't be able to live it. It'll be a burden, it'll be a guilt trip. It'll be a frustration. I want you to take a minute right now, not turn your chairs around necessarily, but if you need to turn yourself around, get eyeball to eyeball with one or two other people, no more than one or two other people, and share with them. Of those four attitudes I in my life this year feel I most need to see which one devotion, the fear of the Lord, the gladness of my heart, or the praise of God as being a thing that's part of my life. Would you do that? Go ahead. Right now, turn to somebody next to you, say, I really feel like I need this attitude more than anything else. Everyone do it, please. Okay, Hope you've had time to express that. Let me urge you, if you shared with somebody, to pray for them on that score, would you make a commitment to them that I'll pray for that devotion in your life. I'll pray for that fear of the Lord to really become manifest to you, whatever it might be. Now, let's look and see as we envision our own community and brothers and sisters understand that as I share this today, it's not just so we can have some greater understanding about what they used to do. I have a problem with people who say, let's duplicate what happened in the early church. We're not looking to duplicate that experience. What we want to do is to live in the dynamic of it. Amen. Okay? The apostles teaching. The early church devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. To me, there is an implied obedience in this message. These early Christians were not there just to build up their doctrine, were they? What does it say in James? Faith without works is dead. When they gave themselves, devoted themselves to that teaching, they weren't always just sitting at the feet of these men and saying, well, I'm glad. I understand that. They were what? They were obeying it. They were living out. And how many of you, after reading the New Testament, know that there's a lot of exhortation toward lifestyle. They were living it out. They were moving a head in it. And I believe that we can expand that to our community in 1982 and say one thing and I believe, and I'll tell you this honestly, as sure as I know my own heart, the Lord has spoken to me about the word of God in this community, that there are many of us who are still dependent upon someone else to interpret the Bible to us. There's many of you from Catholic backgrounds for whom even reading the Bible on your own was not really encouraged. Others of us from way back when always knew about the Bible. We know the stories and so on, but we don't know how to make it our own. God spoke into my heart that this Word is to be yours. This year. The little thing that we've begun on the Northway notes at the bottom, that's one way that you can start to read through the New Testament. You don't have to just randomly let the thing drop open. You know when you do that, what happens, don't you? You fall right into Lamentations or the back of Micah and you're wiped out. That's the end of your commitment to read the Word. Take that orange sheet. So what if you've missed a week? Start today. You can pick up the first 10 chapters this weekend. But get through it. Start. Start reading the Word, making it your own. One of the commitments that I have is in the coming months we're going to teach on how to make the Word of God your own, how to live in it. I'll tell you something that helped me in my growing up as a Christian was someone said this simple little phrase. You probably already know it, but it's so profound when it comes to the Word of God. It's this phrase, give a man a fish and he can eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he can eat for a lifetime. That's what we want to do, is we want to teach you how to eat for a lifetime. The word of God, 2nd Timothy 3, 16. All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching and reproof and correction and training in righteousness. All Scripture. You can't waste your time reading the Bible, even if it's in Lamentations. It just discourages your soul somewhat because it's heavy. And I want to say this on top of that, that's a general comment. There's some specific ones of you in here who know the Word, but as men and women of God have not really come forth in the ability to teach it. Hebrews chapter five would be a word to you today that you should be teachers. And I really believe that the Lord would raise up a number of teachers. And we're praying earnestly. Believe us, the Servants Council is praying earnestly about how do we release more teaching into the body. But we encourage you, some of you need to sharpen that sword and get yourself in a place where you can teach so you can rightly Handle the word of truth as 2 Timothy 2:15 talks about. If that's you, you know it. You need to be encouraged in that. And if you feel like you don't know what to do next, come up and share that with me or grant one of the other brethren and will seek to help you in it. All right. The second thing that they were about doing, look at it, is fellowship. Wasn't it encouraging that the Lord put the word koinoni on David McMunn's heart to share today so that I don't have to get into that study? But I do want to say this. Look at it. They were devoted to fellowship. They were devoted to it. They gave themselves to fellowship. They weren't just slinking around and going when they didn't have anything else to do at night or when the weather was nice. They were strong towards this matter of fellowship. And I believe it's from the Lord. The other night in our home group. We've been together, I guess since originally in was it February or March? And our home group met in our home last Thursday night and we had our study of a particular book that we'd been working our way through and we spent time sharing and all the rest. And we finished about a quarter to 10. And frequently when we meet in other homes, Carol and I leave shortly after that because of our children and all that kind of thing. Well, ever since it was in our home, we really couldn't leave. But it was all right. We were prepared and it was a delight to see people stay around and for an hour until almost 11 o', clock, just want to be there and to talk about the things of God. Not talking about all the trash in the world, but talking about the things of God and the return of Jesus and how to support other people. And I've seen God knitting our home group together, making us one. And it's beautiful. And if you're not signed up for a home group, let me say this to you, there's a need for you to do that. We haven't defined it very clearly. You only have an eight week commitment as a first time home group participant. But if you're going to be part of this body, you need to be in a home group. It's as simple as that. We urge you to do it. The early disciples devoted themselves to it. They cared for one another. There was loyalty. The next thing that we see was that they were devoted to the breaking of bread. What do you think that means? There's two obvious answers. One is communion and the Other is simply a sharing in the meal, sort of a common table kind of thing, really. It's not perfectly clear as you study the original text, but to me it underscores a bigger principle, which is that they were devoted to the ordinances of the church. In other words, they gave themselves to disciplines of the church. And communion was certainly one of those disciplines. And from what I can gather, they had communion very frequently. Disciplines of the church. And a word that's related to disciplines and ordinances is disciples and discipling. That's men and women coming under an authority for learning and beloved. There are some of us here today who are looking for that kind of relationship where we can be teamed up, whether it be in a home group or whether it can be with a group of men for discipleship and for learning. I pray that's you. I pray you are. We need that in our body. All right. And the next thing that they were involved in is what they were devoted to prayer. As I read through the New Testament book of Acts in particular on this score, it's amazing to me how many references to prayer that there are. It's also amazing to me how much we resist involving ourselves in it. Now. You can't learn to pray in a body if you're not praying individually. And really, if you're not praying individually, you're basically not going to be involving yourself with other people in prayer because you're afraid to do it. But in the New Testament, they were given to it and they were continually doing it. They were always together. Look at Acts 12:12 for a moment, would you? In Chapter 12 of the book of Acts, martyrdom is coming upon the church. Persecution is coming upon the church. James, the brother of Jesus is killed, or brother of John. He was killed and Peter's arrested. And it looks really grim for the early church. What were they doing? Were they complaining and moaning? Now look at verse 12. He realized this. Speaking of Peter, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. Many, not a handful of women who didn't have anything else to do. Many young people, working people, men and women, gathered together for prayer. And it happens all through the New Testament. People were praying Acts, chapter four. Tremendous story. Won't turn there, but it's tremendous. To my knowledge, there are three meetings for prayer directly related to the life of this community. Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning, and Friday morning. I'm believing the Lord in my prayer life right now for three new home group prayer meetings to start. I don't want to confuse the terms, but three new home prayer meetings, not when your home group gets together. And let's just pray for this. But I mean, I think there should be a group of people in Cranberry meeting for prayer. Not just fellowship, but for prayer. There should be people down in Sewickley area. We're getting more and more families from that area praying together, spending an hour in prayer together. And I just believe that God wants to stir us up to be devoted to prayer. If you don't know about the prayer meetings that exist, there's 6:30 in the morning for men on Tuesdays and Fridays in Hedwig Drive. And there's one at 9:30 in the morning on Windmill Lane at the Straws for women. And there's one at Vivian Reel's. One's at. Okay. And Wednesday morning. So there is one happening out in the Cranberry area. Praise the Lord. That's one of the three. We need to see more and more of this, folks. I'm really serious about this. We can't afford to just rest back and say, well, there's a handful praying. We've got to see it as life of the church. Two other things. The next one is outreach. Back in Acts 2, look at the result of what's happening there. And the Lord added to their number day by day, those who were being saved. There it is. He added day by day to their number those who were being saved. We've experienced the joy of seeing people come to the Lord and we continue to do that. But God must before us keep the vision that's out there of the world to reach. And the banquet, I guess, was sort of the pinnacle of that expression for us. But it's just really, isn't it just touching the tip of the iceberg? We need to be conscious of the needs that are out there. The Luzanne Congress and World Evangelization said this. Imagine that all the population of the world was condensed to the size of one village of 100 people. In this village, 67 of that 100 people would be poor. The other 33 would be in varying degrees of well off of the total population. Only seven would be North Americans. The other 93 people would watch the North Americans spend one half of the money, eat one seventh of all the food and use one half of all the bathtubs. These seven people would have 10 times more doctors than the other 93. Meanwhile, the seven would continue to get more and more in the 93, less and less as part of the wealthy seven we are trying to reach as many of the other 93 as we can for Christ. We tell them about Jesus and they watch us throw away more food than they ever hope to eat. We are busy building beautiful church buildings and they scrounge to find shelter for their families. We have money in the bank and they do not have enough money to buy food for their children. And all the while we tell them that our master was the servant of men, the Savior who gave his all for us and bids us to give us all, all of us for him. We are that rich minority. We may be able to forget about the other 93 and consider it unimportant. But the question is, will they? I'm not intending to put a guilt trip on us. I believe that we are moving that direction. But I am intending to underscore that we have a mission, brothers and sisters. We've got to be continually looking out. And I pray in 1982 we'll grow in that mission and you'll grow in it as we come together in the spirit of God. The last thing I want to talk about is an area, an action that we're going to experience in 1982 is not in that section, but it immediately follows it. And that is that I believe that we will all be called to suffer for Jesus sake in this year ahead. I believe that many of us have become very comfortable with the understanding that it would never happen to us. And I don't know if it means personal tragedy or corporate persecution, but I do know this. The Bible says that all who desire to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. If you find that in your life there's very little or no persecution. That is to say, if you find that nobody really seems to give a rip about the fact that you're a Christian, there's a pretty good chance that nobody knows. And I believe that in this year ahead, I don't know if it's going to come from the government. We see the first signs of pushing the church to its very limits educationally and so on. Schools are closing down completely to any kind of sharing of the love of God in any plane in the schools, in the name of separations, which was never intended by the Constitution in the first place. But I'll have to talk about that another time. And I don't know what the government will do. But I know this, that if we begin to take stands of Christian conviction, if we begin to speak out against issues that we know God hates, like abortion, as difficult and traumatic experience as that May be for a mother who doesn't want a child or who has been made pregnant through some disastrous way, rape or whatever. As much as that's traumatic, we know that God cares about the unborn life. And one reason why we don't get any persecution at all is because we don't speak out on things like that. We don't speak out on what the government may be doing with our money. We don't speak out about the way people are being treated. We don't make ourselves known. And if we're willing to begin to do that and get our eyes up of our own self, we'll suffer some brothers and sisters, but it'll be of God. The Bible says in the last days that people will seek out for themselves deceitful teachers who will tickle their ears. That just means that people are looking for someone who's not going to upset them because they don't want to go through the suffering and the persecution. They don't want to be subjected to that which is going to strain them and stress them. And I believe if we're to be a faithful community, we're going to experience it. So those are some of the actions devoting themselves to the word of God, to fellowship, to the ordinances and disciplines of the church, to the prayer life of the church, seeing themselves in outreach, an awareness of those in need and a willingness to suffer. That's where we're going in 1982. But it all takes place in an atmosphere. And I want to conclude with this. You may overlook it, it's so obvious, but to me it's absolutely crucial to see that this life that we see modeled and almost foreshadowed by the early church followed what. What had just taken place. Pentecost, the giving of the Holy Spirit. You see, life in the church flows out of the Holy Spirit. And we in 1982 must by necessity looking to the Holy Spirit of God to energize our lives. We must by necessity be continually tapping into that flow of life that comes from the Holy Spirit. It's no coincidence that Pentecost precedes this expression of life. It's the only time it could have happened. And the Holy Spirit does one other thing. He draws us to our first love that we would never forsake. Our first love who is Jesus himself. Not this community, not church life, not all the good things that we do, but Jesus himself. I love Colossians 3:11. Christ who is all in all. Is Christ all in all for you today? Is he the beginning and the end is he everything to us as a community? You see, if we remain in Jesus, we won't be divided. And if you ever want to find out if a person really shares fellowship with you, I don't know about you, but I have an opportunity to mix with a lot of people from other denominations and all that kind of thing. And when I want to get down to finding out the heartbeat of that person, all I have to do is I start talking about Jesus. Try it. Don't just talk about the church that you belong to or the thing. Start talking about Jesus. And you see, in him we share fellowship. In him we are one and all. The man made ecumenistic kind of ways of knitting ourselves together in alliances and all the rest fall like a ho