Acts 2:42-47 Sermon: Vital Signs of a Spirit-Filled Church | March 1, 2026

Well, grace and peace to you, friends.

We do study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

If you'd like a paper copy, just lift up your hand, and we have some folks who will uh pass them around to you.

Be good to have a copy of the text in front of you this morning as we continue in the Acts of the Apostles.

We always have a robust group of folks who are worshiping with us online.

Last week we had the privilege of worshiping with people from Singapore.

In fact, most of our views last week was uh from Singapore, Dallas, Texas.

Any Texas folks in here?

Uh all right, we got one.

That's good.

That's good.

All right.

Uh Philippines and Wales, which uh one of my favorite countries to visit.

May the Spirit of the Lord move among you wherever you might be today.

Well, over the past few weeks we've been tracing the birth of the New Testament church from the book of Acts.

Jesus died, he rose, he ascended, and then told his followers to wait.

And for ten days they waited.

And then on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit of God was poured out in a way no one could have anticipated.

The roar of mighty wind, tongues of fire setting on everyone's head, and a room full of ordinary people speaking in native languages of all the nations from the known world, or many of them.

The crowd didn't know what to make of it.

Some were amazed, some were dismissive.

And then Peter stands up and he preaches the first sermon which we studied last week, telling all who would listen in Jerusalem that day about Jesus, his death, and resurrection, what it would mean for them, for all who turned to him to repentance and faith.

And that message cut many to the heart.

And that's where we find ourselves in the story this morning.

The opening pages of Acts are a whirlwind, aren't they?

This young, fledgling church is set ablaze by the Spirit of God through the preaching of the word.

3,000 believers came to faith that day.

Think about it, ten times the number of folks in this room that day.

And it says they were baptized as well.

If you've been to Jerusalem, you can still see some of the pools in Jerusalem.

Perhaps they use those for the baptism, we don't know.

3,000 that day.

But as we continue reading the story, Luke unfolds this story in a rather interesting way.

Instead of rushing forward with the narrative of this revival, he pauses and he pulls back the curtain of the life of this church in its first few weeks, and he says, Here, take a look.

Here is what the Holy Spirit produces.

Here is the kind of people the Holy Spirit creates.

And what he records for us in our text that we're going to be studying today is a little, what I would call a sketch of the first Christian community, what they looked like.

They had a new nature, they had new norms that ran counter to the culture.

And this group of Jesus followers were, frankly, I would say, strange.

They were kind of weird.

They were peculiar people.

But the text tells us that many people looked and they were in awe.

Something was going on there.

Right there in the middle of this Roman society, a society known, well known, even in those days, for its moral decay, its lust for power and for domination.

There was this group of at least 3,000, 3,120 at least, and growing.

We're living in a completely different way.

Hearts transformed by the Spirit of God.

They had come alive by the power of the Spirit, worshiping the Father, lives centered around the Son.

And the Spirit of God is doing that same kind of transforming work today.

And I hope you know that.

Another Christ-centered church is all around the city and the world.

Eugene Peterson says this about the church.

So why the church?

Good question.

Well, the short answer is because the Holy Spirit formed it to be a colony of heaven and the country of death.

Church is the core element in the strategy of the Holy Spirit for providing human witness and physical presence to the Jesus-inaugurated kingdom of God in this world.

And church, we can say amen to that.

All of us who call on the name of Jesus this morning are a small part of this growing fledgling band of followers with roots all the way back to that day in Jerusalem.

Turn with me, if you would, to Luke chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

I'll start with verse 42.

Luke chapter 2, 42.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

I said, Luke, I meant Acts.

Thank you, Jim.

Luke did write it.

Just give me a little credit there.

Acts chapter 2, verse 42.

Acts 2:42

As Luke gives us a sketch of this young church, I think we'll see that his description offers us vital signs of what this young church looks like, this alive church, spirit-created, spirit-formed, spirit-filled church looks like.

And it's not a perfect church.

If you just read a few chapters ahead, you're going to see that.

But vital signs are what tell a physician whether something is dead or alive.

And this early church was radiating with life as they centered their day-to-day lives around Jesus and demonstrated it in word indeed.

There's so much for us to learn from these early believers.

So, yes, Acts chapter 2, verse 42.

Acts 2:42

Let me pray for us.

We'll get started.

Heavenly Father, we come to you with our Bibles open.

Open your word to us and open us to your word.

May your Spirit comfort and convict and lead us to our only hope in life and death.

Your Son Jesus Christ.

And we all say.

Amen.

Chapter 2, verse 42.

And they, and that they there are the three thousand that have come to faith, they continually devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.

We have a fourfold summary, and he's going to expand it a little bit as we continue to read.

Let me read it again.

They devoted themselves continually to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, which is likely communion in this context, could also just be having a meal in a home, but likely here it's communion, the Lord's Supper, and to the prayers.

43.

And awe came upon every soul.

And many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.

The authority of the apostles were confirmed with these signs and wonders which pointed to Jesus and that they were with Jesus.

44.

And all who believed were together and had all things in common.

And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.

And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts.

We see hospitality there.

47, praising God and having favor with all the people.

And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

This is a church set ablaze, a church alive.

We can see vital signs there.

If we look at verse 42, it says they devoted, or some translations say, continually devoted.

It's an active verb, devoted themselves to these things.

And the word devotion there is a strong word.

It means to persist stubbornly.

It means to cling tenaciously.

This wasn't a casual kind of a commitment.

They were devoted to what the Holy Spirit had produced in them.

And Luke continues to bear out and bear witness to what this church looked like.

Now, for some you might read this and think, was this like the early economic model of socialism or something?

They had all things in common.

I promise you it was not.

This was voluntary, number one.

They were voluntarily selling their possessions.

This was also likely temporary.

Remember, 3,000 came to faith in this city of Jerusalem.

They needed space and homes.

And also, not everyone sold everything they had because they met in their homes.

But let's not lose the sharp edge of what's going on here.

There is a radical generosity at play, and there ran counter-culture, counter to the culture of their day, just as it does for us in the Roman times in the ancient world.

Acquiring things, having possession of things was a form of power and domination.

And I'd say this group of people, this group of 3,000 who have been set free, actually had been set free by the Holy Spirit.

Free from the power of possessions and holding on to whatever they didn't have to cling anymore.

They had a greater treasure in Jesus.

There's freedom here in this church.

Well, this is a reading of God's word, and we all said, praise me.

Well, we can be enamored, I think, I can, by reading Acts chapter 2, especially at the beginning of Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention Acts 2 · chapter mention

The wind, the fire, the tongues.

And we should stand in awe when we read that move of God on that day.

But we should not, or we should be very careful not to blow past the end of Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Jesus was still at work in and through these new believers.

That's what Luke is showing us here, shaping this growing community into a colony of heaven, as Eugene Peterson puts it.

And he is still doing that work today.

In our midst, and in churches all around the world, this sketch, this portrait of the early life of the church, it immediately in the story follows Pentecost and Peter's sermon and the 3,000 that come to faith.

They weren't separate stories.

They were all of one piece.

The narrative follows that great move of God to show us what a spirit-filled church can look like, its vital signs, if you will.

And Luke begins with that fourfold summary.

Look again there at verse 42.

The apostles' teaching, the fellowship, koinonia, which we'll talk about a little bit more, the breaking of bread with the Lord's Supper, and the prayers, a growing intimacy with God and dependency on Him.

These four elements, at least, define the early church, and they should define, and they do define us here today.

They aren't the only foundational marks of a healthy church, but you can't, you can never tear these four apart and separate them without diminishing the vitality of a church's life.

Pulling on this thread, I'd love for us to consider just a few of these vital signs taken from the whole of Luke's portrait here.

What I'm going to call, we see a hungry church, a loving church, a worshiping church, and a praying church.

We'll start with a hungry church.

The initial descriptor that Luke uses to characterize this young group of believers is the word devoted.

And as I said before, it's a strong word, a very strong word, persistent, wholehearted loyalty, stubborn loyalty, you could even say.

This wasn't a casual commitment.

And the very first expression of the life of this church was devotion to the Word of God through the Apostles' teaching.

That's what we're reading here.

We'd already been given a summary of the apostles' teaching in Peter's sermon in our study last week.

And what was the message of Peter's sermon?

Jesus.

His death, his resurrection, and what that meant for them and for all who had turned and believe.

He goes back to the Old Testament, in particular Joel from the Old Testament, showing how all of Scripture pointed forward to Jesus.

They believed the Scriptures, they devoured the Scriptures.

That was the very first expression of the life of the church.

In other words, the first mark of the New Testament church was a hunger for God's word.

A hunger to learn more of Jesus, who he was, who he is, and what he did and what he's doing through his spirit.

So you can learn a lot about what a person is like and who they are by looking at what they're devoted to, can't you?

When you go into somebody's home and you look at their bookshelf or you look at the photos on their wall, you know who and what they're devoted to.

I remember going into my uh my mother and father-in-law's home the first time when we were dating, and they have pictures of the family everywhere on all the walls.

And I just love that.

It just showed what they really valued, what they were devoted to.

Marathon Runners' whole rhythm of life continually revolves around training and nutrition and workouts.

You know what he or she is devoted to.

You meet a Treky, and within five minutes, they'll tell you what their favorite episode was.

You meet a CrossFit person, you don't even have to ask.

They'll tell you.

You meet a devoted Costco member, they can't wait to tell you how much mayonnaise they scored for$5.99 and they rolled it out to their car that afternoon.

You can tell what a person is devoted to.

In the days following Pentecost, anyone observing this new growing group of believers would know what they were devoted to.

And the vital sign that Luke leads with was their commitment to learning more about Jesus through the preaching of the word.

This was a community that had an unquenchable appetite for the scriptures.

We've tried to cultivate that appetite here the last 25 years.

I've been a part of half of that about.

And it's why we continually come back every Sunday to study through books of the Bible.

And that won't ever change.

Continual devotion, devotion to the scripture, though, it is hard work, both as a church and as an individual.

You and I always have to be on guard against counterfeits and distractions.

Think about the book on spirituality, the latest book on spirituality that says interesting things about God but never actually opens the scriptures.

The podcast that leaves you inspired for about an hour but doesn't assure you of the hope of Jesus and doesn't hold up when suffering comes.

The conversation with a friend, or now AI, that tells you exactly what you want to hear.

Paul told Timothy about this.

A time would come, he said, when people would not endure sound teaching, that is from the scriptures, but would accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.

Itching ears, it said in 2 Timothy.

So this is not a new problem, but the pull towards something new, something novel, is relentless, and it can masquerade, at least in my own life, it can masquerade as growth.

At least for a little bit.

But the early church was not devoted to what was new.

They were devoted to what was true.

And they went back to the word through the apostles' teaching, and they were hungry for more.

It's a good question for us to ask.

What is my appetite like?

What am I continually devoted to?

John Stott said one of the clearest evidences of a spirit-filled Christian is his hunger for Scripture and his humble submissiveness to the authority of Scripture as God's written word.

For the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, as Jesus called him.

He has given us to be our teacher, and those who are filled with him have a keen appetite for his instruction.

Whereas the Apostle Peter would put it in the Gospel of John, if you remember the story, many of the disciples were fleeing, and Jesus looked to Peter and John, and Peter stood up and said, Jesus says, Are you going to leave too?

And Peter says, Lord, to whom else would we go?

Only you have the words of eternal life.

Now, when we read a text like this, or to say for myself, when I read a text like this, my natural inclination is to turn it into a prescription.

Okay, study God's word, check.

Fellowship with believers, check, break bread, check, and pray.

Four steps to a healthy church.

But I think that actually gets it exactly backwards.

Dr.

Luke isn't writing a prescription, he's recording vital signs.

He's describing what was already happening in a community that had been fundamentally transformed by a work of God's grace through his spirit.

The people did not sit down and decide to be devoted.

The Spirit filled them, and the gospel cut them to the heart, as we studied last week.

And their hunger for the apostles' teaching, it wasn't merely a discipline to be practiced, although that is something for us to do.

It was a natural craving for people who had come alive.

And alive people have an appetite.

Alive people are hungry.

However, as Dallas Willard puts it, we say it often here, grace is opposed to earning, but it's not opposed to effort.

And their hearts had been changed, but the text tells us, if we look at verse 42 again, they were continually devoted to the apostles' teaching.

They were invited to participate.

There was something for them to do in the new life in Christ, and they leaned in.

And friends, I have to ask us, what is our appetite like?

What is your appetite like?

What is mine like?

What am I hungry for?

It's a good question to ask.

I'm grateful for the long faithfulness of this church here, which has nurtured my own hunger for God's word, and I pray it does for you.

As we lean in together, eager for a hearty appetite for the word, the depths of God's love in Christ cannot be plumbed fully this side.

So we come back and study through books of the Bible again and again.

Our standard for belief and for behavior.

It's the voice of God for us when we need to be corrected and assured and comforted.

When the sting of death rears its head, it's the word of God which assures us of the promise of Jesus.

I am the resurrection and the life.

When sorrow and suffering greet us.

As it has many in this room, even today.

The latest book on spirituality won't hold up to that kind of weight.

But the timeless truth of Scripture comforts us with the promise of Jesus that says, I am making all things new.

We come back to the Word.

So we see in these early believers a church hungry for more of His Word, and we see a church marked by love for one another.

It's a loving church.

Look again at 42.

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship.

Koinonia.

Later, if you look at verse 44, we see they had all things in common.

There was a radical generosity there.

46, they attended the temple together for prayer, breaking bread in homes.

Verse 47, they were praising God together and having favor with all the people.

And what it's saying there is there was even a witness to the watching world who saw this kind of love and were they stood amazed.

What was going on here?

There was something unique, something different.

There was integrity between the message that they preached and the lives they lived.

And they made the watching world sit up and take notice.

The early church was taking seriously what Jesus had taught his disciples in the Gospel of John.

Jesus says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.

You are also to love one another.

By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

And we see that lived out here in this text this morning.

So that word fellowship there is the word, like I said, koinonia in Greek, and we don't have a great English word that captures its meaning fully.

Its root word koina or koine or koinos means common.

And they had a common or mutual love for Christ and for one another.

Now, when I hear the word fellowship, if you grew up in the church, you might have a similar experience.

Fellowship was something you did after church, presumably in the fellowship hall, typically with some stale coffee, and if you're lucky, some stale donuts left over from the morning.

What Luke is describing here is far richer.

It's an all-of-life kind of devotion to one another.

He calls it the fellowship.

Definite article.

And Koinonia here describes a deep relational bond, an affection typically reserved for blood related family.

That's what's going on here.

How could the watching world not see something unique?

What should strike us is that many of these people, apart from Jesus would have had very little in common.

So think back to the ancient world.

Your social identity was everything.

Your ethnicity, your trade, your social class, those categories were rigid and you did not cross them.

But here, the gospel dissolved those barriers when their hearts were changed by the Spirit of God.

Sinclair Ferguson, it's not on the screen, but he'd say it this way: Ties of grace are thicker than blood in the new community of Jesus' church.

Their identities had been reoriented around the person of Jesus.

There wasn't anything more valuable in the world that could break the precious bond that they shared in Christ.

Now, if you spend five minutes with any group of people, you know well that it's really hard work.

Can I get an amen?

This kind of koinonia fellowship that they enjoyed presupposed some things.

It presupposed bearing with one another's limitations and quirks and preferences.

Presupposes humility and patience.

Presupposes forgiveness.

We can assume that the prayers they prayed included the prayer that our Lord taught us and taught them, Lord, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

I once heard a pastor tell a story about his young son not wanting to help clean the house, and the boy crossed his arm and said, I'm not cleaning that up.

I didn't make that mess.

And the father said, Son, what's your first name?

And the boy said, His first name.

And then he said, What's your last name?

And the boy told him, and he said, Right.

And in this home, we remember our last name.

It's the family name.

And in this family, we serve one another.

Remember your last name.

When you know whose name you carry, it transforms the way you live.

That's exactly what's happening in this church here, this young church.

These believers knew to whom they belonged, and their lives radiated with practical, sacrificial, it cost something, kind of love.

Not because someone told them they should, but it's what family does.

They had a new name under the name of Jesus.

When you meet another person who you haven't met before who calls on the name of Jesus, they are your brother and they are your sister.

The young church understood that reality.

And as we'll see throughout Acts, that love spilled over into the streets, into their neighborhoods, and into the herding world that never had seen a love quite like it.

By God's grace, we've witnessed even this week that kind of love, that kind of koinonia fellowship here at PVC, not perfection, but a continually devoted love for the good of one another.

Prayer for one another.

Even what we were doing here this morning as we prayed for each other.

This world is starving for that kind of love that seeks to put another ahead of yourself.

By this, people will know that you are my disciples, Jesus said.

And we pray for more and more of that in our midst.

There was a lawyer in the second century under the Emperor Hadrian.

His name was Aristides, and he was defending Christians, and he actually wrote, he was trying to describe what Christians looked like at the time.

Second century, he writes this Christians love one another.

They never fail to help widows.

They save orphans from those who would hurt them.

If a man has something, he gives freely to the man who has nothing.

If they see a stranger, Christians take him home and are happy, as though he were a real brother.

They don't consider themselves brothers in the usual sense, but brothers instead through the Spirit in God.

If one of them is poor and there isn't enough food to go around, they fast several days to give him the food he needs.

This is really a new kind of person.

There's something divine in them.

Second century.

That same spirit that transforms hearts like that is doing it here today.

Or think about it this way: it's like someone with an accent from another country.

The early church and so much of we see of our own fellowship here at TBC live lives that have the accent of the colony of heaven.

Let's lean into that, friends.

And it does take work and sacrifice.

It's costly, but it delights our Heavenly Father.

And I know there are many who have been hurt by other kinds of church experiences and church leaders who don't resemble this early church.

And we should lament that and also be on guard.

Church hurt is real, but I also want to say church healing is real.

The gospel of Jesus renovated the hearts of all kinds of people that day.

Some of them would have been natural enemies if it wasn't for the grace of God that softened their stony hearts.

They found in Jesus a greater treasure than any other.

And they gathered together around the Word of God and they bowed their knees before the Son of God who was worthy of their worship.

So we see in this church a hungry church, hungry for the Word of God and more of Jesus, a loving church for one another and for the watching world, and a church marked by its worship.

Number three.

In other words, the vital life of this young church radiated so much that the world paid attention.

The worship of God was a natural response to the word of God to which they had devoted themselves.

This is a worshiping church.

Theology should always lead to doxology, worship.

Studying his word should lead us to worship.

Friends, we are a people who gather every Sunday to proclaim that a dead man walked out of a grave.

And he is worthy of our worship.

And if that is true and it is, then what else could be our response than to lift high the name of Jesus?

To bless him, to honor him, to bow before him.

And as we sing his word, as we pray it, as we hear his word, as we drink from the cup and eat the bread, which we'll do later today, we can't help but be changed as we encounter the living God who meets with us.

Jamie Smith says worship is the arena in which God recalibrates our hearts, reforms our desires, and rehabituates our loves.

Worship isn't just something we do, it's where God does something to us.

Worship is the heart of discipleship because it is the gymnasium in which God retrains our hearts.

When we gather together on Sunday morning or on Wednesday or in homes across the city, we often come in a state of God forgetfulness.

Or Paul Tripp would say, God amnesiacs after a week of living and working in a world that is so good at drawing us away from the Lord.

So part of what we do when we come here on Sunday morning is to reorient ourselves around the reality of God's saving love for us in Christ Jesus.

To remind one another again and again of who we are, what our family name is, and who he is.

How deep the Father's love for us, we sing.

How vast beyond all measure.

We can't measure it.

He should give his only son and make a wretch his treasure.

When we come to worship, it's good for me to be reminded that I'm not the center of the universe, but rather the wretch that's become a treasure.

Not because of anything good I've done, but because of the grace of God who drew himself, or drew me rather, to himself by his spirit.

And that sets me free.

That sets you free.

It set this young church free, no longer bound to old ethnic boundaries or social standing.

Each of them were laid bare at the foot of the cross of Jesus.

And they were set free from a life centered on self, bondage to possessions and props, and they were set free to give of themselves because of what the Lord had done.

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Second Corinthians tells us.

It wasn't behavior modification, their affections had been changed by the power of God.

And the only appropriate response to this work of grace was worship.

It says day by day they were praising God.

Why?

Because they had learned and were continuing to learn just how deep the Father's love was for them.

How vast beyond all measure.

That's why we come to the table to remember and to give thanks to our Heavenly Father.

So they were a hungry church, a loving church, a worshiping church, and they were a praying church.

They were devoted to the prayers, it says.

John Knox, a Scottish preacher, said the strength of the church lies not in its numbers, but in its cries to God in the assembly of prayer.

This young church was a praying church.

They were continually devoted.

They came to the Lord in prayer as an act of dependence.

That's a good summary of what prayer is.

It's a posture of dependence on the Lord.

And it's also defiance against the world, the flesh, and the devil.

It's dependence on the Lord and it's defiance against those things.

It's a posture that says, Lord, I need you.

Whether it's a public gathering, Lord, we need you.

Maybe it's privately at home, Lord, we need you.

I need you.

It's praying for one another.

My friend needs you.

My family needs you.

My church needs you.

I need you.

Our church has been so faithful in bringing one another to the Lord, and we did it today, especially over the last several weeks, as many in our congregation have faced the sting of death and suffering, sorrow, loss.

We need you.

And as we continue to watch the early church move forward in its mission of making disciples of all nations, don't miss it.

Prayer and mission go hand in hand.

And we'll see it in just a few chapters.

In chapter four, Peter and John are put into prison for preaching the resurrected Jesus.

And Luke records for us the prayer that these young believers prayed after they were put into prison.

And it wasn't prayers for ease or for comfort or even to keep them from out of prison.

It was prayers for boldness to continue on their mission of preaching the good news of Jesus Christ to a world who's hungry for it.

These early believers were a praying church.

And so we must be dependent, trusting, expecting, hope-filled.

Carl Bart says to clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.

The church was a hungry church.

It was a loving church, a worshiping church.

It was a praying church.

And it came alive by the power of the Spirit.

The vital signs were obvious.

I hope you saw that today.

If you call on the name of Jesus, friends, the same Spirit at work there is at work in you today, and we're invited to lean in and enjoy the gifts of the Word and His people, worship and prayer.

It's a great diagnostic question for us to ask, to chew on this week.

What am I devoted to?

What am I hungry for?

Ask that this week and invite the Spirit to change your heart.

And let's lean in together into what the Lord began in Jerusalem that Pentecost day and what he is still doing among us today in church.

If you believe that, say amen.

He is still at work.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Would you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of your Son and for His Spirit which brings life.

Wherever our hearts have gone cold or stale to your word or to your people or to your mission in this word, world, Holy Spirit, set us ablaze.

Fall fresh on us again, even in this moment.

As we gather around your table, as we meet with you, as we break bread.

Lord, continue to move among us, reshape our hearts, rekindle our affections for you and for one another.

Teach us what it means to be your people in our time, in the place you've planted us.

And may this body of believers here in Nashville and around the world continue to hallow your name and to point people to your Son, Jesus.

In whose precious name we pray, we all said.

Amen.