Finding Financial Resilience in Community

I want to invite you to open with me to Acts, chapter 4, verse 32.

Acts 4:32

Acts 4, verse 32, I'm reading from the Christian Standard Bible.

Acts 4:32

Now, the entire group of those who believe were of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but instead they held everything in common With great power.

The apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was on all of them, For there was not a needy person among them, because all those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid them at the apostles' feet.

This was then distributed to each person as any had need.

Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus by birth, the one the apostles called Barnabas, which is a translated son of encouragement sold a field he owned, brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.

If you're a gardener, you might know about companion planting.

It's the idea that you plant different kinds of plants together so that they benefit each other.

So you might plant corn with zucchini, and the idea is that the corn stalk tall corn stalks will shade the zucchini bush and the zucchini leaves act as a kind of living mulch for the corn's roots, and both plants are meant to do better as a result.

As the book of Ecclesiastes says, two are better than one because they get a better return on their labor.

Now, of course, for this to work, there needs to be a complementarity between the two plants or people, and not competition between them.

If you were here last week, you might remember I touched on the difference between an abundance mindset of grace and the scarcity mindset of consumption.

And a scarcity mindset sets us up for competition, where we have to try and grab to have enough, whereas the abundance mindset sets us up for cooperation, where we can just be generous and liberal because we don't fear about missing out.

And it's that abundance mindset that fueled the community that we're reading about today.

And we're in a series called how to Stay Afloat when the Economy is Sinking.

And this morning I want to talk about the power of community in developing financial resilience.

Clearly, the Jerusalem church was on to something and it serves as something of a paradigm for the later church.

You know there are still today people who advocate for a kind of Christian communism based on these verses.

I've always actually been attracted to the idea of Christian community, living in close proximity and sharing things.

And when Andrea and I were serving as missionaries, we were on a ship called the Dullos.

It was in the early 90s and that was actually how we lived for two years very frugally, very simply, everyone having everything in common, and it was a really wonderful experience.

But we live in a very different world from the first century and we're a missionary community.

Is such a lifestyle even possible today?

And what can we learn from the first church?

Well, luke is the author of Acts and he notes a few features of the church during this period.

In verse 32, he says the entire group were of one heart and mind and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own.

They were everything in common.

So what we see here is a remarkable level of unity.

They were completely committed to one another, to such a degree that they shared their possessions and property freely.

And we see back in Acts 2, they went from house to house eating together.

Where did such a level of unity come from?

Well, I think this sense of unity in common life flowed from a radical commitment to Jesus Christ, and it shouldn't surprise us.

In John, chapter 17, jesus prayed for a deep unity among believers.

John 17 · chapter mention

That would be world transforming.

And in John, chapter 17, verse 21, he prayed may they all be one.

John 17:21

As you, father, are in me and I am in you, May they also be in us so that the world may believe you sent me.

And so the unity between believers would spring from their unity with Christ.

And it's important in this context to remember that this church, particularly that we're reading about this morning, was birthed supernaturally in what we would call a revival, a sovereign move of the Holy Spirit.

So people have tried to manufacture this sense of unity and common life in different ways through the centuries, and it rarely works.

A few committed individuals have always lived in monastic communities, right back into the first couple of centuries of the church, but this is recognized as a special calling and not necessarily for everyone.

People in society often Christians but not always have tried to set up utopian communities, going to the New World, america or wherever.

But these inevitably fall apart, and the great experiment of communism, which kind of forces a common life on its citizens, has always resulted in terrible oppression.

The type of life giving unity we see in Acts flows from a life of devotion to Christ, to prayer, to the gospel and to seeking the kingdom of God, it has to flow from within, from hearts transformed by the Holy Spirit, but when it happens, it's truly remarkable.

Now, within the structure of Luke's narrative, the next section sort of serves as the centerpiece of the passage.

It's sandwiched between two comments, the one we've just read on unity and the common life, and then we'll read some more of that in a moment.

So Luke is sort of highlighting this central passage, and what he emphasizes is that, with great power, the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was on all of them.

So whatever was going on in this community, it resulted in grace and gospel effectiveness.

So what was going on?

Well, luke couches this within the context of the love and unity being expressed in the church, and this dynamic of love and unity and grace and power shouldn't surprise us.

I mean, do you remember what Jesus said in John, chapter 13, verse 35, about how people would know we are His disciples?

John 13:35

How do people know that we're Christians?

Not by being nice, not by doing good to others, although we call to do good to others.

Everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.

And so the quality of the community was a key driver of the gospel harvest.

But again, we mustn't lose sight of the broader context.

The community was Christ-centered, spirit-filled, and the Holy Spirit was moving powerfully.

And this passage, if you read the passage before it, this passage comes off the back of a very powerful prayer meeting that literally shook the earth and moved heaven.

So isn't it remarkable that these things go together?

Well, maybe not Prayer, unity and fruitfulness.

So it's in this context of revival and unity that Luke then describes a community that was experiencing abundance.

He says there was no needy person among them.

Why?

Because those who had more than enough, that's, the rich or those who had enough, sold their houses and lands and donated the proceeds to the church's welfare system or the welfare program.

So does this mean you should go and sell your house or your car and donate it to the church?

Well, no, I don't think it means you should do that.

That would be a dumb idea and I don't think that's what the pastor is saying.

So in the final little story we read about Barnabas who sold a field.

What is house, a field?

How many fields did Barnabas own?

I don't know.

I get the impression that he may have had quite a number.

There's no indication that he made himself broke by being generous, even though it obviously cost him, and it doesn't mean the poor became rich at others' expense either, but it does mean there were no needs in the community.

No one went hungry, no one went homeless, no one went naked.

Now I'm sure this common life and this generosity went just beyond welfare as well, since, you know, the Bible speaks about welfare, not like we have unemployment benefits.

The Bible never talks about things like unemployment benefits.

It talks about things like looking after widows, looking after orphans and those sorts of things.

In fact, in the church, those who could work were expected to do so In 2 Thessalonians, 3, 10,.

If anyone isn't willing to work, he shouldn't eat.

That's the apostle Paul.

So we can imagine that the community looked out for each other in this way as well.

If I needed a job and someone over there had a business or something, they were looking for employment, we could work that out, and employers would have found jobs for Christian workers who needed one, and so on and so forth.

There was just this whole dynamic and almost economy happening within the church.

And so what we see in this early church are three things present Unity, the grace or the power of God and abundance.

Like the plants in our companion garden, everyone was working together for the benefit of the community, and so everyone thrived spiritually, socially and economically.

Okay, so how does this apply to us today?

I mean, obviously we live in a very different culture and economy.

There was no social welfare then, and society was far more stratified between rich and poor.

We have quite a robust welfare system and we're far more egalitarian, but a social safety net can only get you so far.

As I'm sure some of you will be very aware of.

Many people still struggle to make ends meet, to find somewhere to live or even to afford timely medical care.

We've got a great Medicare system, but sometimes you have to wait for a long time to get there.

So, to bring it back to our theme, how does this passage help us stay afloat when the economy is sinking?

Well, when it comes to our finances, we often tend to think in terms of individual responsibility.

Especially those of us who come from a more Western background Now, I know some of you come from indigenous culture or from some of other cultures are far more community minded, but in Australia, the dominant culture is one of individualism, and to an extent, that's right.

I am responsible for myself.

I am responsible for my own financial health.

No one else can fix it for me.

I have to take responsibility for that if I'm gonna do well.

So this isn't about palming off responsibility, and in a couple of weeks we're going to look at actually money management at a practical level.

But all the same, we, as a church that belongs to Jesus, who prayed for deep, radical unity, we are more about the we than the me.

Family is a term tossed around pretty casually by every marketing department in the country nowadays.

Oh, we're family.

Andrea's company says we care like family and a lot of the employees dispute that.

But anyway, that's not the point.

When we say it as a church, we actually mean it.

Do we always feel it?

Do we always get it right?

Well, there's some pretty messed up families out there.

So maybe we do.

I don't know.

But you know what I mean.

We're not just a social club.

We're not just a place to come on Sunday or have a couple of programs or whatever it is.

We are the family of God.

We have been united together in Christ.

We have bound together by the Holy Spirit.

We are a we, not just a me, and what does family do or what's it meant to do?

We look out for each other and this family, this community, is a powerful resource when times are tough, and whether that resource is economic or social or spiritual and I just love it and I get to see it quite often Christians come together and support one another in these ways.

It is magic.

There is something in the church and there is something in this church that just isn't there in wider society.

So the first church was devoted to Jesus and the gospel.

They were all about living and sharing the gospel.

It was a church at prayer and experiencing a move of the Holy Spirit and, as a result, the practical expression of care for one another was an outpouring of love and an expression of the unity they had in Jesus.

It wasn't an obligation, it wasn't something they were guilted into and it wasn't something they had to manufacture.

I guess that's what I want to drive at this morning.

Whatever this common life for us in Christ means, it has to come from that place.

It has to come from the vertical relationship with God and love for one another that flows out of that.

It's not something we can manipulate.

There's a scene at the end of the 1990 movie Navy Seals, in which the SEAL team has gone on this big mission and they've completed their mission and they somehow wind up stuck in the ocean and they're waiting for extraction by a submarine.

So they're just sort of sitting there and what they do because they're just treading water literally is they all link arms and there's this big circle of these Navy SEALs trading water and holding each other up in this hostile ocean while they wait for the submarine to arrive.

How do we stay afloat when the economy is sinking?

Well, we stay afloat together and as our economy faces some strong headwinds we talked about that last week there's an opportunity for us to explore, to learn to find financial Resilience together as a loving Christian community.

So what does that look like?

I Actually don't know.

I haven't come with an answer this morning.

I want to just open up a conversation Because I could come with some sort of idea, and I don't want to fall into manipulation, because it has to come from the heart, it has to come from a move of the Holy Spirit, it has to flow out of the dynamic we have in Jesus.

So I want to ask you what could it look like?

What are the needs in our church community?

We often talk about the needs in our broader community and we need to, as Christians, care for that.

But good deeds begin with the household of faith.

There's no point caring for people outside the church if we're struggling within the church and I'm not saying we are.

But what needs do we have?

What might be the opportunities for gospel witness through Radical acts of love and unity within the church?

But once again, I want to say, as we think about this and I do encourage you to go away talk about it in your families, talk about it in your discipleship groups.

Just pray about it.

This is seek God.

Ask him to do a fresh work among us so that we can more deeply reflect the love and unity that he longs for in his church.

Let's pray so.

Father, I'm just really challenged by this passage this morning and I have to admit I'm a little bit at a loss with what to do with it.

Father, I just hold this up, as your word is challenging, your word is counter cultural, your word is amazing.

And, lord, perhaps what we see here is just something we long for in the new Jerusalem, when your kingdom comes in fullness.

But, lord, just move among us, show us how to live, show us how we can have a little taste of heaven amongst our midst now.

But, father, most of all, we just recognize that I am selfish.

Father, we, we live in just mess, a messy world.

Please, you move us, you speak to us, you do something among us sovereignly.

We pray in Jesus name, amen.