Devoted to the Body Acts 2:42-47 Pastor Drew Webb

Man, I have a mess this morning.

Thank you worship team for leading us.

Yeah, that was just, that was powerful.

I appreciate it.

But I have not cried as much as I have this past week.

I'll just put it out there.

A lot of you already know.

We dropped off our daughter at college this week on Wednesday.

And I knew it was going to be hard.

But to all you who have done this like before, I didn't realize what it was really going

to be like.

And it has just rocked my world and our world is just way different than I'd ever expected

it to be.

But yeah, so I've cried a lot this week.

Super sensitive.

That's me.

That's really how I am.

Anyways, pretty emotional guy.

But that was that set just kind of got me.

All right.

Let's just pray.

Oh my God, we come to you this morning and we desire for you to work in this place.

Your Holy Spirit is here among us and Holy Spirit, we ask that you would empower me as

I bring your word and Holy Spirit, would you open the hearts of all those here in attendance

that they would hear what you would have for them this morning.

And by your grace and your empowering, we'll get through this time and you will be glorified

in it.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Thanks, Matthew.

That's just one of my favorite songs and just love that song.

All right, if you would go ahead and turn to Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 2 is where we're going to be this morning.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

We're not necessarily continuing the series, but we're kind of talking about some things

that I think are pretty applicable.

As this whole summer, we've been talking about our core values and beliefs and the things

that matter to us.

And I believe Acts chapter 2 says some things that are very relevant to our lives today.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

So we'll be in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

And as we get started this morning, I'd like to give you a little historical background

to this passage.

Acts 2 is important because it's the very beginning of the church.

Prior to this moment, the church didn't exist.

We call this the beginning of the church age.

Now some 10 days before this moment, Jesus had ascended into heaven.

And at this moment, 120 of His followers from Galilee, from Europe, from Asia, and from

all around the Middle East, they're all gathered together in this moment to celebrate what is

known as the Feast of Weeks.

And the Feast of Weeks is a celebration of Thanksgiving offering for what God had already

done and the provision that He had made earlier that spring with the first harvest that they

had already received earlier that spring.

So this is one of the feasts that capable Jewish men were required to go to Jerusalem

to celebrate.

So they're gathered there and the Holy Spirit came on them in a powerful and permanent manner.

Now prior to this moment, the Holy Spirit would come on someone and anoint them and

empower them for a specific purpose or a task, a season.

And then after that, He would remove Himself from them.

And as the Holy Spirit rested on Christ's followers, they spoke in tongues and each person was

able to understand the others in spite of the fact that they didn't all speak the same

languages.

They had been baptized into the Holy Spirit and they would forever have His presence in

them.

Now after the Holy Spirit fell, Peter got up, He delivered a sermon and 3,000 people were

added to the church that day.

So this is the context for what we read here at the end of Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

I'd like to invite Jackson Bosworth to come on up and he's going to read our passage for

us this morning.

Acts chapter 2 will be in verses 42 through 47.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Let's pause.

Please, yes.

We kind of need to just get in the habit as soon as they start coming up.

Let's just get in the habit of just standing up.

It's great.

I know, Pasadena loves it.

It's just awesome when we do that.

So Jackson, would you go ahead?

Acts 2.42 through 47.

And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking

of bread and the prayers, and all came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were

being done through the apostles, 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, praising God and having favor with all the

people, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Father God, we thank you for Jackson.

We thank you for his passion for you, his deep desire to know you more and that he doesn't

just stay at the surface level things, but he wants to dig deep into his faith.

And I'm just so grateful for the passion that he brings.

God, would you just continue to grow him as a young man and follower of you?

It's in Jesus' name.

We pray.

Amen.

So, verse 42 mentioned four specific practices that the early church had devoted themselves

to.

Now, if you were to ask me what I'm devoted to, I would likely say, hey, I'm devoted to

my family and I'm devoted to God, church.

I would say those types of things are the things that I'm devoted to.

What else might say, they would say, oh, he's also devoted to the chiefs, to Chipotle, to

CrossFit, those other things.

Now, we typically tend to understand devotion as kind of just having an affinity for something

or a commitment to something, to be involved in something.

But the Greek word that's used here actually refers to persisting in something.

When you do this, you are making an intentional effort to believe or to be involved in something,

though it might be difficult to engage in that thing.

That's what it means to actually be devoted to something.

Now, I have occasionally been accused of being a bandwagon fan of the chiefs since I don't

tend to make much of the fact that I lived in Kansas City for a while and my family's

roots are actually there in Kansas City.

People often assume that I'm actually a fan of the Niners or the Giants since they associate

us with San Francisco.

Well, I have actually been a lifelong fan of the royals and the chiefs.

Now, there have been seasons where I would continue to rep my chiefs gear even though

they were horrible.

There were those seasons.

The last nine years, the royals have been horrible, yet I have still persisted in wearing

my royals stuff.

When the days are rough, when seasons are rough, you have to persist in something and you show

your true devotion.

Now, though life was hard, now that's just an example, an illustration from our lives,

though life was hard, members of the early church were likely seen as outcast by the

rest of the Jewish community.

They would have looked down on these Christ followers, but they were persisting in this

newfound faith of theirs.

They were persisting in this belief in Jesus Christ as the Messiah, regardless of what

the society and culture around them was saying.

They were wholly and completely devoted to these four practices here in Acts 2 and verse

42.

Now, the first practice they were devoted to, it says, was the apostles teaching.

So we have to ask ourselves, what was the apostles teaching?

What would it have included?

Now, if you stop to think, the teaching that they had at this moment, the New Testament

hasn't been written yet, right?

So at this moment, their teaching would have consisted of what we now call the Old Testament.

The version of the Old Testament they primarily used was a Greek Bible translation called

the Septuagint, and it was developed around 250 years before the time of Christ.

And so this was their scriptures.

This was what they studied and what they would memorize.

Scripture is very first sermon here in this chapter actually quotes from the Old Testament.

Now if you think about it, where did Paul go?

Each time he entered a new city, where did he immediately go?

He immediately went to the synagogues.

And the reason he went there was because he wanted to capitalize on their understanding

of scriptures.

He wanted to capitalize on their understanding of who the Messiah was going to be and the

picture that the Old Testament had drawn for them of the Messiah.

Then he would take this understanding that they had and he would use it to explain to

them this Jesus who walked among you.

He is the Messiah.

He's the one that you've been waiting for.

Now we can also presume that some of the apostles teaching centered around the person of Jesus,

who he is, what he had done, what he had taught them of course.

So the early church was consumed by the teaching of the apostles and the natural thing for

us to do then is examine our own context.

How can we devote ourselves as it says to the apostles teaching?

Well, when we model ourselves after them, then we would do some of the things that they

did.

First of all, we regularly attend worship services.

This is one of the best ways for us to be exposed to teaching is regularly attend worship

services.

I'm not talking just once a month, not even twice a month, but be here every week.

Week in and week out, make it habit to be here, worshiping corporately with the body

of Christ.

Parents, you are discipling your children whether you are being intentional about it or not.

Your church attendance indicates how important you think church attendance is to your faith

walk.

When you model sporadic church attendance, then that's what our children will grow up

and live out.

And we can't model sporadic church attendance and then wonder why when they leave high school

and go off to college, they leave the church.

The more we are in church modeling that for them, the more likely it is that our children

will stay closer to God and walk with him in the years after high school.

I have to say, I love where my daughter is right now.

She's at Emmaus Bible College and it's just an hour north of here in Dubuque.

And that place, she's excited because she's everyone that goes there, double majors.

You're majoring in Bible and then whatever your field of study is.

She's just so excited to jump in and just learn all that she can in her Bible classes,

theology, all the different classes she'll be taking.

She's just so passionate.

She was telling me yesterday about this friend she's making and how hungry she is for God.

And stuff is just like, oh, it's awesome.

That's the stuff you just want for your children.

And it makes me so happy to hear.

So another way to be exposed to biblical teaching is to listen to podcasts of your favorite speaker,

your favorite teacher.

We have so many resources available to us today, right?

We have all your listening platforms as well as YouTube and other resources that we can

go to those things and we can just turn those on and listen to them and we can consume God's

word of that way.

Now should you on rare occasion happen to miss one of our services?

Well, you can go to your app store and you can download 563 Church.

Look for 563 Church.

Download that app.

And I know we've been talking about it a good bit lately, but we want to keep pushing that.

563 Church is where we are trying to put everything these days.

So go download 563 Church and get set up and then you can see our services there.

You can also see our services on Facebook and on our YouTube pages.

So there are a number of ways that if you happen to miss one of our services, you can

get caught up online as well.

So they were devoted to the apostles teaching.

The next thing that they were devoted to was fellowship.

Back in 2012, we were going through a bit of a transition here.

We were going from one service to two identical Sunday morning services.

Now that meant that we would no longer be having what was called the Rock Center service.

You see the Rock Center service, for those who are not aware, the Rock Center service

was a service that was held in the Rock Center and people that attended that service would

all sit around tables and they would join, they would enjoy coffee and donuts there and

they would watch the service on a screen.

It was kind of a little bit of an overflow space as well as just an opportunity to provide

a different way for people to engage with our services.

And so we were no longer going to be having that service.

So I thought, hey, if we're not going to be having that service, let's save a good amount

of money and let's get rid of the donuts.

Now for those of you who are around may recall that that was not received very well.

How could I suggest such a thing to get rid of the donuts?

There was a significant outcry against this because people said they needed fellowship,

was the word that they used.

They needed fellowship.

And for them, as good Baptists, fellowship equals food.

So obviously, we did not get rid of the donuts.

We still have the donuts and we have expanded the donut offerings and the coffee and upped

our donut and coffee game.

But I don't think that Luke has donuts in mind when he's talking about the early church

persisting and being devoted to fellowship.

Pretty sure it wasn't donuts that he's writing about here.

Actually the word koinonia, this Greek word that is used for fellowship, means sharing,

to share in something.

It denotes intimacy in relationships and communing with others.

True fellowship is sharing life with those around us.

And this word was used to indicate the unique type and depth of relationships that the

early church had with each other.

These relationships serve as a discipleship mechanism in the body of Christ.

And me learning from you and you learning from me and sharing in our Christian walk

with others is mutually encouraging and beneficial.

Now, unfortunately, there are a number of people today who they want to be long-ranger

Christians.

They love God.

They love Jesus.

But they want nothing to do with organized religion or the church.

Now this was never part of God's intent.

Some people want to do the Christian walk on their own terms, but to do that is ignoring

the fact that Scripture tells us we should not do that.

Hebrews 10, 24 and 25 reads, Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good

works.

Not forsaking, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one

another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

You simply can't do the things that this passage is talking about while in isolation.

It's only in the context of community, corporately together as the body that we are able to build

others up and to encourage them.

Lou Vian and I have been doing CrossFit for 10 years now.

When I first got involved in it, I was looking for something that would give me the conditioning

that I'd received from many, many years in martial arts as well as my cycling time.

And then I wanted to incorporate some weightlifting that I'd grown up in.

So, it seems like CrossFit was going to be the right fit.

So, in January of 2014, Lou Vian and I stepped into our first CrossFit class.

And we've been going regularly ever since.

We've loved it so much that we even got our son Micah involved in it for the last couple

years.

Now, we enjoy how challenging CrossFit is and that it pushes us to do things that we

didn't know we were capable of doing.

But when we joined CrossFit, we were not aware of how significant the community aspect of

CrossFit actually is.

We've come to learn that CrossFit is all about the culture and the community environment.

It's not like other gyms at CrossFit.

It is expected that you know the people that you're working out with, that you engage with

them and that you encourage them.

And the person who's working out last, who's still trying to finish the workouts, they're

all being encouraged by the others who may have already finished.

Now, I do hear that at the why, it is kind of like social hour, especially if you go

in the morning.

There's a lot of people talking, people from church connecting.

So I think that's awesome.

Great to hear that.

But CrossFit is different than your typical gym.

You're expected to engage with other people and to cheer them on.

Now, it's easier to suffer in CrossFit when you're in a community with others suffering,

right?

If you have to do something by yourself, it's just not as fun.

But when you're with other people doing something, it makes it so much more enjoyable.

As good as the workouts are, I would venture to say that the workouts are not alone or

not what has led to the worldwide success of CrossFit.

It's the people.

It's the community.

It's the culture.

People sharing in something together, encouraging each other and holding them accountable.

So how do we apply this concept of fellowship to our own days, to our own time?

Well of course, first of all, as I mentioned, attending our regular weekly worship services.

But also when we have special events, participate with the body in church life.

Attend an adult Bible fellowship class each Sunday morning.

And we have special services attend those a couple of weeks ago, a lot of us went out

to the Waukesia River for our outdoor baptism service and we had a beautiful service there.

It was just wonderful.

It was an awesome opportunity to hear of how God was working in people's lives and to

witness these people who were stepping forward to make public declarations of their faith.

Now, I was very pleased when everything had basically finished and we're about to start

eating and yet the pizza is apparently running late.

Everybody just kind of shrugged it off and they turned and started talking with each

other, engaging with each other, connecting with people that maybe they hadn't connected

with in a long time.

I love that.

It's the body, fellowshiping together, being connected to each other.

Another way to engage in fellowship is to find a ministry to serve in, to share in a

ministry with others is connecting with them.

There are so many options available for us here.

There's nursery, there's children's church, there's usher, greeters, there's worship

team, there's media booth, there's congregational care, there's VBS helpers, there's all sorts

of ways to get involved.

So my encouragement to you is to get involved with something.

If you don't know what to get involved in, then maybe, look, oh, what kind of sounds

interesting?

Get involved in that thing.

If it doesn't work out, it's okay.

You can step out of that thing and engage in something else.

Get involved with something.

That's a wonderful way to share in community with the body of Christ.

You can also join the church.

On September 22nd, we will have a membership class, and membership class is one of the necessary

steps for joining Cornerstone.

We will have that class immediately following the second service, we'll have some food of

some sort, not sure if it'll be pizza or if we'll up our game a little bit and do something

nicer.

We'll see.

But you'll hear about Cornerstone, you'll hear about what matters to us, our values

and beliefs, you'll have the opportunity to ask some questions.

So I would encourage you to come to that on September 22nd.

If you'd like to sign up, let me know.

Let our office administrator, Julie Tingle know, and we'd love to get you signed up and

have you join us that day.

And then another way to connect with the body is to be engaged in smaller groups.

Now I love our worship services.

I absolutely love what we do on Sunday mornings, and as great as they are, it's not the most

important thing that we do.

One of the most beneficial and life-giving aspects of the body is engagement in small

groups or engagement in life groups.

This is so important to us that it's one of two main focus areas of mine this fall.

My goal this fall is to get more and more people engaged with life groups.

The majority of us are not engaged in life groups, and we would love to see more of you

involved in life groups growing together.

Now what does a life group look like?

Typically a life group involves, of course, sharing a meal.

You have to start with that, so you share a meal.

And then after that, there's usually a time where you dive into spiritual issues.

You engage in some sort of learning components, whether it's just a discussion or watching

a video from right now media or something like that.

But there is a spiritual learning component that is involved in our life groups to help

us probe the deeper things of the faith and examine how certain aspects may apply to our

lives.

So if you'd like to be involved in a life group, I would encourage you to contact me.

Let me know.

I already do have a list of a lot of people that I know are not in life groups that I

will be hitting up here this fall and encouraging you to get involved in life groups.

So that's a wonderful way to engage in fellowship with the church body.

My last suggestion is to participate in a discipleship relationship.

This could be an accountability partner, a mentoring relationship, maybe a discipleship

group.

There are different ways to engage in discipleship relationships.

And the goal of these relationships is to spur you on in your Christian walk.

You can study the word, you can read a book, you can talk about the issues of life and

the struggles that you're facing.

I would encourage you if you're not in some sort of discipleship relationship to get involved

in one.

We have all sorts of options for growing in our fellowship here at Cornerstone.

So we see that the early church was devoted to the apostles' teaching and they were devoted

to fellowship.

And then third, they were devoted to the breaking of bread.

Now it's likely that when you hear this phrase, breaking a bread, your first thought is that,

oh, it's a meal.

You're having a meal together.

But that's not exactly what this phrase is referring to.

Each week the church would gather together for what is called love feasts.

This was a meal.

And they would have this love feast.

And then after the feast, after the meal, they would take communion together.

And communion is actually what this breaking of bread is actually referring to.

Now when we think about the context and how the early church was growing and they had these

things that they were devoted to, it seems perhaps a little interesting or odd to us

that, well, how does communion specifically lead to spiritual growth?

But let's pause for a moment and examine the roots of communion.

Jesus first instituted communion on the night when he was betrayed.

He and his disciples had convened in the upper room for what has now come to be called the

Last Supper.

And there they were commemorating the Passover meal.

And the Passover was a celebration of how God had freed his people from slavery in Egypt.

Pharaoh had resisted each of the nine previous plagues and he had refused to let God's people

go so they could worship him.

So the 10th plague was to be the final plague.

And the people had been instructed to offer a sacrifice and to take the blood of that

sacrifice and wipe the blood of the sacrifice on the top and the sides of the doorposts.

For those who responded in obedience, the death angel, when the death angel saw the

blood that was applied to the doorposts, he would pass over that home.

But for those who did not respond in obedience, then the firstborn son in that home would

lose his life.

And this was the final straw for Pharaoh.

And so he finally relented and he let God's people go so that they could be free to worship

him.

So the Passover was a meal to recognize God's miraculous acting on behalf of his people.

And the Passover was to be remembered each spring.

Now, on the night of his arrest, Jesus and his disciples were sitting down to remember

and commemorate this occasion, the freeing of their ancestors.

Being at the Lord's table causes us to remember because there on that night as he began this

Institute of Communion or the Lord's table, he identified himself as that sacrifice.

He identified himself as a sacrifice that brings freedom.

So as we remember Communion, we remember Christ's sacrifice, remember his body that was broken

for us, his blood poured out for the forgiveness of our sins.

Remembering these things helps keep Christ's sacrifice at the forefront of our minds.

And when we are reminded of what he has done, the response is gratefulness, thankfulness

for what he has done for us.

And it causes us to draw near to him and to worship him and to offer our lives back to

him in worship.

So we can see that partaking of the Lord's table really was a benefit to their spiritual

growth.

So how do we apply that?

Of course, join in our Communion services.

If you didn't know, we have Communion on the first Sunday of every month.

We've set that time aside to be able to remember the sacrifice that our Lord made.

Another thing that we can do is we can prepare our hearts.

First Corinthians 11, 28 tells us to examine ourselves.

So in our services, we like to allow some time for you to be able to examine yourself.

And for me, this means examining my heart, checking my motives, seeing if there's any

relationships with others or with God that I need to address.

If there's any sin in my life that the Holy Spirit convicts me of, then I want to make

that right so that I can keep open communication between myself and God.

So we can prepare our hearts.

Now, so far, we've seen how the early church devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching,

to the fellowship and to the breaking of bread.

The last thing they were devoted to was, it says, the prayers.

In the Old Testament, we have evidence of there being three prayer times a day, morning,

noon, and nights.

Psalm 5517, King David said, evening and morning and at noon, I utter my complaint and I moan,

and he hears my voice.

And in Daniel 610, we see the prophet choosing to disobey King Darius' ordinance against

praying to anyone else except for himself.

And it says there in Daniel 610, it says, when Daniel knew that the document had been

signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem.

He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God

as he had done previously.

Jewish culture likely involved three times a prayer at the temple each day.

Now as they would gather for prayer and go to prayer, it also involved various scripture

passages to be incorporated into their prayer times.

We know for sure that the Shema was used daily in their prayer times.

You may be familiar with the Shema.

The Shema is found in Deuteronomy chapter 6 and the Shema reads, hero Israel, the Lord

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your hearts and with all your soul and with

all your might.

And it goes on to tell you to continue to teach these things to your children as well.

Most scripture passages were used in their daily prayer times.

So what does this look like for us in the church age to engage in prayers?

Well the first opportunity available to us is on Wednesday nights.

We have a prayer meeting and I know this doesn't work for everyone because of different schedules

and such but if you're able, I would encourage you to come out to the prayer meeting that

is held in room 216.

First of all, there's a Bible study that starts at 630 and that Bible study goes from

630 to roughly 7.

Then after the Bible study, they go into a time of prayer.

So I would encourage you to engage in that.

When we connect and pray together in the body of Christ, it brings unity.

So that's one opportunity available.

Another way to flesh this out is perhaps when maybe you're in a setting where they ask

if someone wants to pray, give you the opportunity to pray out loud, it might be that that's

something that scares you.

Well, I would encourage you to go outside of your comfort zone and do something that you're

not comfortable with and pray out loud.

This is a great way to grow in your faith.

Sometimes we tend to think that praying involves certain words and we have to put, say, just

right but that's not the case.

The great fourth century preacher, John Chrysostom, actually defined prayer simply as conversation

with God.

Talking with God.

It doesn't have to be some grand scheme of words and putting all these right things together.

We can just talk with God.

Another thing we can do is you might want to develop a prayer journal.

This can help you list out prayer requests.

It can help you also be able to write down answers to prayer requests to keep track of

it, looking and seeing, hey, I prayed for this and God responded, God worked.

When we do this, this helps grow our faith.

Others might want to incorporate a sort of structure to their prayer time and use a couple,

there are a couple different things available here.

You could use cats or acts and each of those letters actually stands for something.

A stands for adoration, C stands for confession, T stands for Thanksgiving, and S stands for

supplication or making our requests to him.

Some people like to do that and use this methodology, the structure in their prayer time.

So there's all sorts of ways that we can pray.

We can pray the scriptures back to God.

I would encourage you to grow in your faith, to set aside specific intentional time for

prayer each day to help grow in your faith.

Now the early church was thoroughly committed to performing these practices in community

and together as the body of Christ.

Now they say that if something matters to you, then it'll be reflected in your calendar

and in your checkbook.

And the early church made it clear that these things mattered to them.

Verse 44 said that they were all together and that they were sharing.

Verse 45 said they would sell and they would give to others in the body as needs would

arise.

And in verse 46 they were seen to daily set time aside for worshiping at the temple and

sharing in meals together.

They were always continually coming together, sharing of their time, sharing of their resources.

When I think about the early church sharing their resources, I'm reminded of the early

days of our marriage when we were young and broke.

I was going to seminary and working part time for our church when the engine on my car went

out.

And since we were broke, we certainly didn't have the money to get it fixed.

One Sunday morning after rehearsal we had gathered to pray with the worship team and

as we were gathering there, I was handed a thousand dollar check.

They had all pulled, the worship team had pulled their money together to come up with

this money to give to us to buy the engine so that then my brother could install it free

of charge.

We were completely blown away by this gesture of the body doing what the body does.

They were living out acts too.

How wonderful it was and is to be part of a fellowship of believers and live in community

together.

This is church.

We do community and life together, all growing as Christians on this journey of discipleship.

It's all bower heads and close our eyes if you will.

My hope this morning as we've looked at acts too is that something has connected with you,

that the Holy Spirit has nudged you and said, you need to be involved in this thing.

My encouragement to you is to be connected to the church, do life in community, not as

a lone ranger, just trying to slog through the trenches, but get connected to the support

in the body.

There's encouragement, there's love, there's accountability.

Our Christian walk can be strengthened by the body of believers around us.

Father God, we pray that you would grow us, that you would cause us to do things that

maybe we aren't necessarily comfortable with, things that might ask a little bit of us,

but we know that the sacrifice, the discomfort is worth it when we grow in you.

So God, would we be the church that you have called us to be?

Would we see others around us?

Would we fellowship them with them?

Would we pray for them?

Would we be continually exposed to your Word and remembering what Jesus Christ has done

for us, the sacrifice that he made for our freedom?

Thank you God, thank you for your Holy Spirit within us to grow us to convict us to draw

us closer to you.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

**Music**

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