Transcription of Sermon:

I’ve never been to the Holy Land.  Sometimes I wish I had been there, but so far I haven’t.  But I’ve been there in my imagination; I’ve been aboard a jet that’s also a time machine.  So I took off and came down in Jerusalem at a time when things were just starting for the church of Jesus Christ.  They were all together and the joy they were experiencing was quite intoxicating.  You just couldn’t walk past them without becoming infected with intoxicating joy that exuded from the group as they gathered together.  But I was afraid.  I was afraid that the noise of their hallelujahs and their choruses based on the Psalms, and their praise the Lords were just going to get too much.  But there was great joy among them.  But then I wanted to know, do they teach the word of God?  The teaching was exhilarating; the preaching was so powerful, that I said to Peter after the meeting was over, “Peter, if you go on for two hours like that, well it won’t be long before you lose your congregation.” 

Then they invited me along to one of their homes where they were going to have a meal before they started the meeting in the temple again.  I said, “That would be nice”, but over the meal they started to open up their hearts to one another; their problems and needs were shared without any embarrassment…but I was embarrassed.  I mean, they were so honest and open and I was afraid for outsiders who might come in and be embarrassed themselves by such reality.  But then on returning to the meeting I discovered that it hadn’t actually stopped, it was still going on.  And the miracles – they were absolutely extraordinary.  A man went by leaping and walking and praising God, and I asked him what had caused such exuberance.  He told me, “I never walked before today.  I’m just enjoying it; come with me!”  And he tried to grab my hand and pull me round with him.  But I was afraid, of course, that if it went on much longer like this they would become superficial sign-seekers.

And then of course, they always wanted to be together, to pray and praise; to share and eat; and I thought, “This is all going to go wrong.  I was afraid that they were just going to become a ‘holy huddle’.  And then it was unbelievable, they began to share their possessions; their wealth.  The things that others needed, where they could, they provided.  And I said to myself, “This is very unwise, what are they going to do when there comes a rainy day?”

They celebrated the Lord's Supper at nearly every meal and I thought, “They’re going to end up in a routine!  They’ll get themselves into a rut and it will all become quite meaningless.”  There were so many people saved and added to the church daily.  Well, I was just afraid that the whole organisation would collapse and certainly the new members’ classes wouldn’t be able to cope.

And when they prayed, my, it was frightening.  It felt as if the building itself was shaking.  So I was really glad to get back on my jet time machine and say “Phew, thank you Lord that it isn’t like that today.”  But I don’t mean it.  Pray to the Lord that we might know the dynamic power of God in our day, here in Southend and West Leigh; indeed, around our nation.

So what can we learn from this church in Jerusalem?  Can it give us a vision for our church today?  Well I believe it can.  What they were discovering there, these new people of God, this new church – as the Holy Spirit came upon them – was that they were being made into a new community.  Now there’s a word that we have lost the meaning of – community – it’s a misunderstood and misused word today because of things like the community charge that we used to have; or ‘care in the community’ that we still have, that provides hardly any care for many people.  We heard that awful story in the news this week about the policeman killed by a person out in the community, supposedly being cared for by the community.  It’s often a meaningless word – community – because community is about being accepted and loved.  It’s about being welcomed, and belonging; about finding a place of safety and security; it’s about knowing and being known; it’s about being cared for and in turn caring for others.  And it was community, in the light of the Holy Spirit's outpouring upon them, that the church in Jerusalem had discovered.

The community has to have foundations; things that its members have in common.  These early Christian people were connected to one another now.  What were the things that connected and linked them?  What were they committed to that made them a community?  The first was this, I believe; a commitment to worship, which was balanced worship.  It was both formal and informal.  It incorporated the liturgy of the temple, which was structured and ordered but within it they could find a spontaneity and new formality of worship that often eludes us today.

Yes, a commitment to worship that was balanced – it was both formal and informal; it had a structure to it but within that structure there was openness for spontaneity.  Theirs was a balanced commitment to worship in a way which was at times large and at others small.

They met in the temple where there was lots of room for them to gather together, but they also met in their homes, in smaller groups, where they worshipped the Lord; and it was both joyful and reverent.  Joyful – in verse 46 of Acts 2, Luke tells us that everyday they continued to meet together in the temple with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of the people.  There was glad and unaffected joy about them.  But there was also a sense of fear and awe.  Everyone was filled with awe; and perhaps a hint of fearfulness.  Not that we should be afraid to come into God's presence; we can freely do so because of Jesus.  But never the less we should recognise that we come into the presence of a Holy God.  My wife and I often have this discussion about what reverence is.  She likes to think that it is that quietness, that hushed sense, that you used to experience often; I say used to, because I think it is now an historical thing in most churches; something that we used to experience before worship began; that kind of hushed sense, where everybody whispered rather that talked and chattered.  I don’t think this necessary for reverence to be there.  Reverence is an attitude of heart and mind, that is coming willingly to revere God.  We can do that when we’re conversing with one another, when we’re talking with one another, when we’re thinking about the things that have happened in our lives – we can be ready to revere God.

So their worship was balanced; it was formal and informal; it was large and small; it was joyful and reverent; glad and unaffected joy matched by fear and awe.  So we need to have a commitment to worship.  But there was commitment also to teaching.

I’ve just started to read a book called ‘The Gospel Driven Church’.  It’s written by a Baptist pastor, now in Guildford, as part of a doctorate that he has done on the way in which the trends affecting the church have affected us.  He is saying that we need to re-think a lot of the things that we do, and I’m thinking “Yes!” to myself.  As I read, my wife is getting worried because every time I read a paragraph I say “Amen, amen!”  The chapter that I’m just reading is the chapter about preaching and how somehow, preaching has lost its standing within the evangelical church these days.

This church in Jerusalem was committed to teaching the word of God.  Committed to sharing what the apostles knew and had experienced and wanted to develop in the hearts and lives of the people of God because Jesus was there and because of their experience of Him.  We need a commitment, a renewed commitment, to teaching and preaching the word of God in our churches these days, I believe.  And we need that word of God because it’s God's revelation to us.  It tells us things that we could not know apart from His willingness to reveal them to us.  We need to have the word of God opened up for us.  For there are things here that we could not discover, apart from its truth and power.  Revelation and truth!  Preaching and teaching are not just about informing our minds, they’re about transforming our lives.

Preaching and teaching that doesn’t have that hallmark about it won’t be true to the reality of what the scriptures want to do in and through us.  God just doesn’t want us to have our minds filled with truth – he wants that truth to affect the way that we live our lives day by day with one another, with the people around us.  And so I believe still in the place of expository preaching in the life of the church – because then we are exposed not just to our favourite bits but to the whole counsel of God as he reveals His will and His purposes for us in His word.  So they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.  There was a commitment to such teaching because the revelation of God was coming in and through them, revealed now in these pages and its truth is there not just to inform our minds but to transform our lives.

So they had a commitment then to worship that was balanced; a commitment to teaching that would change; and a commitment to fellowship.  The Greek word here is ‘koinonia’ and it’s all about what we share in together.  We share in the experience of knowing God as our father, and so we say “Our Father, who art in heaven”.  We share in the experience of being forgiven and cleansed; we share in the experience of knowing that the Holy Spirit can fill our hearts and lives and give us praise for God in the way that we speak and the way in which we live – lots of things that we share in together in koinonia.

But it’s also about what we share out together.  Did you notice, there in verse 45, “…selling their possessions and goods they gave to one another who had need.”  Now our English word – fellowship – doesn’t come as an immediate translation from koinonia.  Our English word, fellowship, comes from an Anglo-Saxon word.  Apparently if you had a cow on your little bit of land, on your Anglo-Saxon bit of ground, the cow was called a fee.  Now if you decided with your neighbour who had also got his cow, his fee, that it would be better for your cows to come together (your fees to come together), and knocked down the wall between you and your neighbour, then you had ‘fee-low-ship’.  Now that’s what I’m told by a reliable preacher I heard in the past; that’s where fellowship, our English word, comes from; an Anglo-Saxon word all about cows coming together in a field, where the walls were knocked down between the different bits of land.

Now that, I believe, is what Jesus wants to be happening in his church.  He doesn’t want us to have walls between ourselves.  As we share in our experience of God as father, our forgiveness from Jesus as our saviour; as we share in the experience of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives, then we share out with one another and have fellowship.  I might say that within the church at West Leigh, I’ve found at different times, a lovely willingness toward me (and I know it’s gone out to others) a generosity of spirit that meant that not only had I shared in things with others but they had shared out toward me in a way that I would never have expected, except that we belong together in Jesus.

And so these people were together; the walls were knocked down, they had fellowship – koinonia.  Not that they lived together necessarily, it means that they were aware that they belonged together, and the church should be living that out and exemplifying that, so that people think, “Wow this must be something good to be a part of!”  They were family; aware of one another’s needs, material, physical, spiritual.  And this kind of fellowship, where we share in things together because of God and we share out with one another because of God, is enduring.  Or it should be…  We’re thinking about doing a building project and I’ve just bought our church leaders a booklet about another church’s building experience.  One of the sad things said by the minister who wrote this booklet, is how, in the midst of the challenges of things that were going on in the church, people left because they wouldn’t recognise or accept that change was needed.  My friends, I believe that fellowship ought to be about things that endure, that say, “It’s not going to end if you upset me because I’m loyal to you and I am secure.  Even when we have to disagree on things you’re still my brother I’m still your sister.”  And it will endure.  Let that be the case, in this church, in my church, in churches generally.  Fellowship that is enduring, that is not going to end because somebody upsets me – and embracing of all.

One of the lovely descriptions I find of the church in the New Testament is in Acts chapter 13.  A little group of leaders were together in the church of Antioch and they were from all sorts of different backgrounds.  But there they were, together as leaders of the church there in Antioch, because the church and its fellowship are embracing of all.  And that unity of fellowship needs to be there despite the diversity that we have with one another.  I just want to emphasise this again, by asking you to look at Ephesians chapter 4, verse 3, where the apostle Paul writes, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.”  It seems to me that he is recognising that there is a unity of spirit between Christian believers; that it is an accepted norm.  There is a unity of spirit among Christian believers, but he says to them, “make every effort to keep the unity of spirit” because he knows how fragile that unity can be.

So let us, on this church anniversary,* be committed again.  Committed to belonging together; to sharing in things together; to sharing out things together.  Enduring and embracing one another, in the diversity of ideas, opinions, gifts and experience that there will be in any group of people this size.  So – a commitment to worship that was balanced; a commitment to teaching; a commitment to fellowship; and finally, a commitment to prayer.

Jesus had taught them to pray.  They recognised this, because over the last 10 days they had been waiting upon God; praying together; asking Jesus to fulfil the promise that he made to them as he left for heaven, saying that before many days the Holy Spirit would be given to them.  And they had been praying together and the fulfilment of their prayers came as the Holy Spirit came upon them.  But they weren’t content to leave it there, they went on praying, asking God to fill them, give them courage and boldness; asking God to release them when they got into trouble and were imprisoned; asking God to be there with them as they went off on their different tasks and journeys, seeking to spread the good news of Jesus Christ.  There was among them a commitment to prayer. 

I pray that you will find, here at Clarence Road as we might at West Leigh, a growing commitment to prayer, that we might see the glory of God.  Now perhaps we could add a commitment to evangelism?  But I don’t think that it was a commitment the early church made.  They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship; to the breaking of bread and to prayer – and as they did that evangelism happened naturally, because of the life of that community.

There are men, who like the writer Alan Crider, speak about not only persuasion, but the fascination of this new community.  People were fascinated; and they were drawn, and as they came closer to experiencing and to seeing what was happening they felt the love of Jesus.  They realised their need of him and came, as these first disciples did, to the point of repentance and believing and trusting in Jesus, who had died for them, who was alive to be their saviour and who now would give to them the gift of the Holy Spirit to enable them to be different – enable them to live in community with one another.  On this church anniversary, the church in Acts chapter 2 is a wonderful example to us.  Let it teach us so that we make our commitment to worship, to teaching, to fellowship and to prayer – for the glory of God!

Amen.

*Clarence Road Baptist Church 123^rd anniversary
 

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