Engaging Scripture

Important lessons from a food crisis – Acts 5-6:7, Part 5

*Photo by Element 5 Digital on Unsplash*

I don’t really love food crises. At all. But there is one that happened among the first Christians that we can learn a lot from. The sad fact is that there should not have been a crisis at all. They actually manufactured the crisis because of their poor behavior, which might have been some racism or prejudice.

This week we’ve been looking at three crises in the early church. The food crisis is the third one, and it is found in Acts 6:1-7. Before reading further, go ahead and read that.

I love this passage for a number of reasons. Let me count the ways:

First, I love that the earliest Christians had a food distribution ministry for widows. In their society widows could be extremely vulnerable, so the church is lovingly caring for them. This is an important reminder to us, that we are caring for the vulnerable people in our communities: homebound people, widows, single moms, family in need, and seniors. The early church followed the pattern of Jesus who demonstrated a heart for social action.

I also love that this passage reminds us that people are people. Well, I don’t love what happened, but I’m glad that the writer of Acts includes this story, showing us that the earliest Christians had flaws and struggles just like anyone else. We saw that pretty clearly with Ananias and Sapphira, and here again as there was some bickering and infighting. Notice that this quarrel had an ethnic nuance to it. Though they were all Jews, it was the Jews from Greece versus Jews from Israel. The Grecian widows weren’t being treated fairly.

Next, I love how the apostles, when they thought about solving the problem, were clear about their own role and responsibility. They had a leadership role, and it was okay that they didn’t need to take care of this problem. In fact, they identified that if they did try to solve problems like this, they would not have time to fulfill the duties in their job description.

I love that they have a job description: they were to focus on the ministry of the word and prayer.

And I love that the apostles fulfill their leadership role by raising up other people to address issues that are not on the apostles’ job description.

I love that they have a certain kind of person they are looking for. In the NIV we read two qualities of people they are looking for, as we see in verse 3: they must be full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. But there is actually a third quality, and you might see that if you are reading a different translation. The NAS for example says, “Men who are of good reputation, full of the Spirit and of wisdom.” They didn’t choose people in the food industry to deal with a food distribution problem. Instead they looked for people with spiritual maturity.

I love that this passage, supported by teaching in other New Testament letters that Paul wrote, gives us a two-part leadership structure in the church: leaders (elders) and servants (deacons). That is why at Faith Church we have a leadership team and we have serve teams. The leadership team leads the church spiritually, and the serve teams lead the church through various serving ministries.

I love that the apostles choose the qualifications, and then allowed the church to choose the seven men who fit those qualifications.

I love that the church chooses seven men with Greek names, meaning that they identified the marginalization of the Greek widows and wanted to make sure it was resolved, as those with a Greek background would be more likely to be extra sensitive to their plight.

I love that the seven Deacons are commissioned by the apostles to serve through the laying on of hands and prayer, those showing the apostolic authority the Seven had.

Finally, I love the result. The church continues to grow! Even if the church hadn’t grown as a result, I love all the previous steps they took to address the crisis. But I must admit that it is affirming to see the principle of “healthy things grow” illustrated here. I know that in the church sometimes getting healthier means a church gets smaller, but even still there is growth, just not growth measured in more bodies or buildings or bucks.

To summarize this week’s posts, in Acts 5-6:1-7, we have seen three crises in the church, and each one had various lessons:

Crisis #1: Ananias & Sapphira – Be generous and loving to your church family, and don’t lie about it or make a show of it. Be ready to give all you have for the Kingdom.

Crisis #2: Imprisonment – keep introducing people to Jesus, telling the story of Jesus, no matter what people do or say to you. Be ready to give your life for the Kingdom.

Crisis #3: Food Distribution – Practice social justice to those in need, and raise up godly leaders to lead and serve the church. Be ready to serve for the Kingdom.

We covered a lot of ground. We’ve watched how the church handled crisis. They didn’t avoid it, but dealt with it. Through it all their focus was on Jesus. They were ready.

Christians, are we ready? Let’s be ready at a moment’s notice to part with our stuff, to give of our lives and our time, because the greater joy is found in seeing Jesus as our King, and serving his mission. I am so thankful that word is already out in our community that Faith Church is a loving church that seeks the good of the community: Good News Club, Summer Lunch Club, CVCCS, Trunk or Treat, Community Picnic, Serving those struggling with homelessness through Breakout’s City Gate outreach, Community dinners, and soon coming ESL classes. All awesome stuff that we actively support. Perhaps your church has a very similar community outreach. But let me ask you this? What if we took it to another level? What if word got out that we were selling off personal property, giving up vacations and hobbies, living very simply, so that we could help others in need? Imagine the impact!

How to introduce people to Jesus – Acts 5-6:1-7, Part 4

Do you ever struggle to talk about Jesus? Religion can be a very difficult thing to discuss. You might want to talk about Jesus, but it can feel awkward, especially when you’re not sure what the people you’re talking to think about faith. This week we’ve been studying Acts 5 through 6:1-7, a passage of Scripture about three crises the earliest Christians faced. You can read about the first crisis here.

Now we look at Crisis #2: Acts 5, verses 17-42. If you’re following the blog series on Acts, you might have noticed that I didn’t write about Acts chapters 3 and 4 (with the exception of the last few verses of chapter 4). I was out of town for a recent weekend, which I’ll talk about more below, and we had a guest speaker preach on that passage. If you want to go back and read Acts 3 and 4, you’ll notice that it has some similarities to what we’ll be studying in this post, the rest of Acts chapter 5.

Here’s a quick summary of Crisis #2, Acts 5:17-42: Because the church is growing, the Jewish leaders arrest the apostles and lock them up in jail. God’s angel miraculously frees the apostles, tells them to keep preaching, and they do just that. The captain of the temple guard finds out and is mystified how these guys got out of a locked jail, so he rounds up the apostles, who by that time were back in the temple courts preaching, and brings them back to the religious leaders. The leaders say to the apostles, “We told you not to preach in the name of Jesus anymore!” Peter responds with what has become a famous statement: “We must obey God rather than men,” and he preaches about Jesus to the leaders, then and there, right to their faces! He is so beautifully bold!!!

Not surprisingly, the leaders are really upset about this, wanting to end this thing immediately by killing the apostles. But one of their members, Gamaliel, intervenes, saying, “Guys, there’s been other movements like this in the past, and when their leader was killed, the movement fizzled. Let’s give it time. If this is truly from God, we’re not stopping it.” Likewise, this new movement’s leader, Jesus, was, in their minds, dead and gone, so the Jewish leaders agreed, had the disciples flogged (which is a brutal whipping), and then once again they ordered the apostles not to preach anymore and let them go. The disciples are scared, freaked out and return to Galilee where they resume their careers as fishermen, and we never hear from them again.

Of course they don’t do that. Instead they say to one another, “That was rough, guys…we dodged a bullet. Let’s regroup. We need to find a way to make sure we’re never treated like that again. Let’s start meeting in secret and in hiding.”

NO! What do they really do? It’s amazing. They rejoice that they were persecuted for Jesus. And they go right back out there and preach anyway. As Peter said, “We must obey God rather than men.”

This passage clearly applies to the many people being persecuted for Christ. There are places around the world today where people are suffering just like this. I encourage you to get in touch with organizations that track religious persecution around the world today. Persecution Magazine and The Voice of the Martyrs are two examples, reporting on the awful persecution happening to our brothers and sisters in Christ across the globe.

But to us in America? Well, being jailed or flogged for our faith can seem so distant. How, then, does this passage apply to us?

Some people say, if we were more bold, like the apostles, maybe we would face more persecution? Maybe. How can we boldly share the story of Jesus, without coming across legalistic or judgmental, but being gracious, loving? Should we all be doing street preaching? No. Not if we are talking about our regular lives. What does it mean to be bold in our regular lives? What does it mean to obey God rather than men at work, in our neighborhoods, at school? It means that we are people who are witnesses, introducing people to Jesus in the places where we live and work.

We recently spent the weekend in Texas celebrating my wife, Michelle’s cousin’s launch of his book (which is excellent, by the way, and I encourage you to read it!). So he invited numerous writer friends to attend various gatherings. We happened to sit near one guy a couple times throughout the weekend, and we got to talking about our lives. At lunch one day, he started asking more about my role as pastor.

To be honest, when I’m in a setting with people I don’t know, and we share introductions, and the conversation inevitably goes to “What do you do?” Or “What career are you involved in?” my answers tend to be conversation killers: “Pastor. Bible professor. Theology student.” People respond with, “That’s great!” as their eyes glaze over, and they start looking around, and you know they’re thinking, “How can I get out of this conversation?”

But it turns out that this gentleman’s wife is very involved in her church, and even studied for ministry for a time. So he asked me how I got into ministry. I was able to share with him the story of how God worked in my life. As I talked I simply wanted introduce Jesus by telling the story of my experience with Jesus. When I finished, hHe said he was very grateful to hear my story.

What can it look like for us to share God’s goodness every place he takes us? What can it look like for us to introduce people to Jesus? You know how you would normally introduce people who are meeting each other for the first time? If you’re the mutual friend, you take the lead, saying, “This is so-and-so, and this is so-and-so,” and as they shake hands, you might say a few things about how you know each of them, and who they are. You can do the same thing with Jesus. Learn to introduce your friends to Jesus.

We have one more crisis in the church, so check back in to the next post!

If you lie, you’ll die? – Acts 5-6:7, Part 3

Do you think the title of this post sounds harsh? I think it sounds very harsh. That’s why I put a question mark at the end of the title. But what does it refer to? If you lie, you die? It refers to the next section of Acts that we’re studying.

So far this week, we’ve seen how amazingly generous the earliest Christians were with one another. What I’ve asked in each of the previous two posts, though, is this: Isn’t it possible that at least some people in the church are having trouble with all this generosity?

In fact, there were. It took a while (see the previous two posts that set this up here and here), but now we’re ready to read the passage that we’re studying this week, and it includes the first of three crises that we’re going to going to learn about through this and the next two posts. The first crisis is found in Acts 5 verses 1-11. Please read that section of verses. You’ll want to read them before continuing with this post, because what you will read there is a freaky situation. Then come back to this post, and we’ll talk about it.

So what do you think about that? If you lie, you’ll die. Really? What is happening in this weird, and kinda scary story of Ananias and Sapphira? The first question that comes to my mind is this: Did Ananias and Sapphira have to sell their land? Considering what we already read in Acts 2 and Acts 4, are we to understand that everyone in the church had to sell off everything they owned? No.

Remember that time where Jesus said to the rich young ruler, “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor”? Could it be that the first Christians, as they were organizing the church, said, “OK everyone, Jesus said sell everything you have, so that’s what we’re all going to do, period. Get out there, sell all your stuff and bring us the cash.”? Doubtful they said that. Remember that in Acts 4:32, we read they only sold off property “from time to time.” It seems best to understand that the sold the properties on an as-needed basis. But keep in mind that they were clearly ready to sell when a need arose.

Next, look at the questions Peters asks in Acts 5, verse 4. It seems Ananias and Sapphira did have the freedom to choose how to use the property. They could have chosen to keep the property, or if they sold it, they could have chosen to use the proceeds how they wanted.

But they voluntarily chose to sell. And that is great, except for one thing: they didn’t handle it right.

The issue here is that they lied. They said they gave all, when they did not give all. It was a lie. But why lie? It seems they wanted to look good, to keep up appearances, so the rest of the people in the church would think that Ananias and Sapphira were generous people like Barnabas. If the lie worked, they could still benefit financially from the sale of the house.

But God knew. You cannot lie to God.

And then it gets crazy. God steps in and kills Ananias and Sapphira. Or does he?

What does the text say? Not that God killed them. Just that they died. Was it a heart attack, possibly from the shock of getting caught in a lie? Like natural consequences? Maybe. Or maybe Peter killed them. He was an impetuous guy who once cut a man’s ear off. Or maybe Ananias and Sapphira’s deaths were just an author’s literary way to compare the early church to Adam and Eve and their sin in the Garden (see Genesis 3)? There is much scholarly speculation about this. Google it and you’ll see what I mean; you can go down a worm hole for hours. In the end, we don’t really know the answer of how they died. The text doesn’t explicitly say, but the insinuation of the text is that their deaths were connected to their sin.

Am I saying that the moral of the story is, “If you lie, you’ll die”? It rhymes, and it is kinda catchy and memorable, but that’s not what the story is saying.

My personal opinion is that their deaths weren’t God’s doing because God is not like that. Instead I think it is best to focus on what is clear in this passage, and that is the sacrificial love the church had for one another. We can have that same kind of generous love for one another. Likewise, let us avoid deceit, avoid self-righteousness, and avoid making a show of generosity.

So after this first crisis takes place, what happens in the church? You’d think people might be freaked out and get far away. People dying at Peter’s feet? When word got out about that scene, people could easily have been thinking, there is some weird stuff going on with these Jesus people, and want to have nothing to do with them. So far chapter 5 sounds almost cultish. In your Bible, read Acts 5 verses 12-16 to see what happens.

In this brief historical interlude, we learn that the church grows, in spite of the fear. Why? Because God is at work! I love the difference between verses 13 and 14. People are kinda freaked out, not daring to join them, and yet the Christians are so compelling, and God’s power is so clearly manifest in them, that the people can’t help but want to be a part of it all. As a result more and more men and women become followers of Jesus!

It wasn’t happily ever after though. Take a look at the next post for crisis #2.

How the earliest Christians eradicated poverty – Acts 5-6:7, Part 2

Wouldn’t it be amazing if no one was poor? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone had enough? The first Christians found a way to get there! Let’s look at what they did, and perhaps we can make strides to eradicating poverty in our communities.

To do that we need to move on to the second passage that will help us understand Acts 5:1-11. The first passage was Acts 2:42-47, which we discussed in the previous post. There we learned that the earliest Christians were selling off properties to help those in need. Really wonderful generosity, right? Before we look at the second passage that will help us understand Acts 5:1-11, I want to ask, how long did the early church keep practicing the selling possessions and helping those in need? Maybe they only did this common property stewardship thing for just a short time. They couldn’t possibly keep that up, could they?

Well, open a Bible to Acts chapter 4, verse 32, our second passage. Between Acts 2 and Acts 4, some time has passed, but we don’t know how much. Was it a couple months? A couple years? We don’t know. My guess is that it was between 6-18 months. And what do we read in Acts 4:32?

“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.”

It sounds like now they are even more committed to this than they were in Acts 2! Back in Acts 2 the writer mentions that they were together and had everything in common. But here in Acts 4 we have what appears to be an even stronger statement: no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own. They shared everything. It wasn’t forced on them. They were choosing to do this based on the teachings of Jesus. It wasn’t a government program. It wasn’t a political philosophy. Instead it was a voluntary choice to be part of a community of love.

But I still imagine that there had to be some people doubting this idea of seeing your possessions as not your own. Some people had to be uncomfortable with this, right? Or is it possible that I am just thinking about it like that because it seems so radical, so different from us. Maybe it shouldn’t be radical. What they did lines up pretty nicely with Jesus’ teaching to the rich young ruler to sell all you have and give to the poor, and it really expresses his sacrificial love very well.

And what’s more, look at the difference it makes in Acts 4:34-37:

“There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means Son of Encouragement), sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles’ feet.”

Wow! The result of their love for one another was that every need was met. Poverty was eradicated. That’s astounding. Remember, this is the church the writer is talking about. He is not talking about the city of Jerusalem or the nation of Israel or Rome. It is very possible that there were still needy persons in the wider community. We don’t know for sure, but I would say it is likely. But in the church? There were no needy persons among them because those who had means did not see their possessions as they own. Instead they saw their possessions as God’s property to be used to benefit their brothers and sisters in need.

Acts 4:34 tells us that it happened “from time to time” meaning that this selling and giving wasn’t compulsory. It was voluntary. It didn’t happen all the time, but from time to time, giving us the idea that it was as-needed. There is a sense that those who had houses and lands were on the ready, so to speak. They did not see their possessions as their own, such that they were ready at a moment’s notice to liquidate their possessions, get the money and lay it at the apostles’ feet so that it could be used to benefit those in need.

That is awesome. What can it look like for us to think like that, to choose to be generous like that? This kind of generosity is not only applicable to people with multiple homes and lands. It can apply to any of us who have lots of extra clothing, cars, gadgets, savings accounts, food, extra rooms, you name it. Use it for the Kingdom! Use it to benefit those in need. Choose to use it for God. None of it is yours anyway.

“Are you saying, Joel, that I might not be able to enjoy life like I used to? Are you saying it is wrong to take vacations, to own multiple properties, to have hobbies, or many other typical American activities, that we can enjoy because of what our American life makes possible?”

I’m not saying that. I’m not saying that God is socialist or communist and wants you to be miserable. Not at all. Instead God wants you to experience a deeper joy, a fulfillment that vacations and properties and hobbies and shopping and cell phones and Netflix can never give us. Sure those things do feel really great for a time. There is a time and season for them. In Ecclesiastes we read that we should “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die.” The writer’s point is that there is a time for celebrating, for joy, and partying and feasting. What I’m saying is that there is a deeper joy.

We see this joy in the early church through their amazing commitment to love one another, consistent with what they learned from Jesus and with how they watched him live, and they found the deepest satisfaction in living that out. Generosity releases us from the bonds of materialism and consumerism, and frees to live a life of mutual love and interdependence in the community of a church family. Therein is found the deeper joy.

Still I wonder if some people were not convinced. Isn’t possible that at least some people in the church having trouble with all this generosity? Well, there were some struggling with this, and we meet them in the next post.

Was the early church communist or socialist? – Acts 5-6:7, Part 1

I typed “crisis in the church” in Google’s image search, and what do you think most of the images depicted?

The sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. It’s an absolute mess. I live in the Harrisburg (PA) Diocese, and it made national news recently when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Before we Protestants get condescending about this, as if church crisis is just a Catholic thing, when we take a hard look at the Protestant and Evangelical church, we’ll find we have our fair share of serious issues too. Narcissistic leaders, especially in recent megachurches, sex scandals, declining memberships, rampant racism and more.

We’ve been studying the early church in the book of Acts, and so far they have been perfect. No crisis whatsoever. As we’ll see this week, that perfect record grinds to a halt.

While we’re going to be studying Acts 5 through Acts 6:1-7 this, we’re not going to read it just yet because it is important that we take some time to see how what we’re about to read in Acts 5:1-11 is connected to what we learned from two other passages that we already studied in previous weeks.

First, look back at Acts 2:42-47, which is the earliest description of how the church organized itself. Jesus had ascended to his father in heaven, and his remaining 120 followers waited in Jerusalem, praying constantly, for the Spirit to arrive, as Jesus promised. 10 days later, the Spirit arrived, filled them, and Peter preached the first ever sermon of the church, and we read that 3000 people joined them to become followers of Jesus. What did they do next? In this passage we read that they were devoted to a number of practices. But I want us to look specifically at verses 44-45, which relate to fellowship and generosity.

Here’s what we read there: “All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.”

There are two important phrases here:

They had everything in common.
They sold their possessions and goods, giving to anyone as they had need.

The question that sometimes comes up when contemporary Americans read this passage is this: were the first Christians socialists or communists? What the early church was doing sure sounds like socialism or communism, doesn’t it? But what exactly do these terms mean? They’re similar, but have some important differences, as you can see on the picture below.

Communism is more extreme. Socialism is somewhere between capitalism and communism. In both of them, you might be working hard to benefit other people, rather than getting all the fruit of your labors. And other people will be deciding how all or some of the wealth you generate is spent.

So is the early church socialist or communist? No. Neither one. Far from it. Why not? First of all, the early church is not implementing a political theory, and they are not advocating that the government should own everything. Second, even together as a church they did not agree that the church family would own or regulate all property.

Instead we read that everyone in the church had everything in common, and they were willing to sell property to help those in need.

What does that mean? How is that different from communism or socialism? It is very different because they viewed Jesus as the owner of all they had. They loved Jesus, and they were following his teaching to love one another. So when needed they placed their possessions at God’s disposal to benefit the community, because God was the owner anyway. This is a stewardship view of wealth and possessions, and it is very different from socialism. We are stewards of God’s property and money, and we use it wisely for the mission of his Kingdom.

But I do have a question that I wish I could sit down and ask of those early Christians. How did this actually work? Here in Acts 2:44-45 it sounds like it is the most natural thing in the world. But I wondered, did any of the Christians struggle with this? The text doesn’t say. Doesn’t it seem like there would have been at least some of them who think, “Whew…I don’t know about this. I like my vacation house by the Mediterranean Sea. I don’t want to sell it. I want to keep enjoying it.” Or “I like my new cloak. It looks great. I want to be able to wear it. I worked hard for it. Yeah, I know that Silas’ cloak is falling apart, and he doesn’t have the money to buy another one, but do I have to be the one to help him? What about all these other people who are now part of the church? There’s plenty other people that can help too. Simon over there has three coats. He’s really the one who could be helping.” You’d think there would some of that, right? But in Acts 2:42-47, we hear none of that. It doesn’t mean some people weren’t grumbling inwardly, it’s just that the writer doesn’t mention it.

We, too, can follow the early church’s loving actions to care for those in need. If a person has an extra home or car or clothing, they could give it to a family that needs one. If their extra home is far away, they could sell it and use the proceeds to help those in need. The same would go for any extras in our lives that we really don’t need such as hobbies, extras, collections. Those things add flavor to our lives and are not wrong, but we should hold them very loosely. We should remember that the stuff of excess is normal in American life, but very abnormal for many other places around the world. Think about the resources that could be freed up if we sold our excess and made it available to the Kingdom of God?

Some might respond, “But what about wise investing? Wouldn’t it be better to start a church endowment fund in order to earn more money to be more generous the long run?” That’s a wonderful idea. Start one up at your church. My church should start one too.

Others might also say, “Is it wrong to have vacations, hobbies, vacation homes, collections, etc.” No, those things aren’t wrong, as long as we have the same attitude of the early church, seeing everything not as ours to use for our enjoyment, but as God’s to use for his Kingdom.

What churches need to be devoted to (and a building is not one of them) – Acts 2, Part 5

What would your church do if God brought revival to your church and in a relatively short time period thousands of new people started coming to your church? What we have seen in the first church was that 3000 people were added to their number that day in Acts 2. If that happened to us, we couldn’t fit all the people in our church sanctuary. Packed to the gills, we would still need to and have worship services every day of the week and probably some days have two. And that is just worship services. How would all those people get to know one another, grow in Christ, serve, and become part of the church family? It would be a wild ride.

And then I thought, “Wait a minute. That actually did happen to the early church. What did they do to incorporate all those people?” Remember back in chapter 1 verse 15 where we learn that there were 120 of them at the beginning? After Peter’s sermon, how did those 120 people bring 3000 more into their church family? Because some of them were from other countries, only in town for Pentecost, it is reasonable to think that they would have returned to their home countries. But there were still many that lived in Jerusalem or nearby, as we will see, and they had to be incorporated into the church family. This gets back to question I asked at the beginning of the sermon. How did they start the church? Did they form a building committee and start a capital campaign, thinking they better build a building to fit all those people? Nope.

They moved from revival to discipleship.

What we read next is not revival but discipleship, the formation of a church family into a group that lives out the way of Jesus in their world. Read Acts 2:42-47 to see what I mean.

This is the earliest description of how the first church family organized itself after the Spirit arrived. What did they do? It says they were devoted to a few specific practices. Devoted means that they applied intense effort to things. It is a passionate commitment. As you read the practices they were devoted, consider how these relate to your church. Is your church devoted to them as well?

First, they were devoted to the apostles teaching. These were the people who spent three years walking with Jesus, the people who Jesus invested deeply in. By the Spirit, they communicated the teaching of Jesus to the people.

Second, fellowship. This is word that refers to the people relating to one another, caring for a loving one another. The next few habits will show how they practiced fellowship in their community.

Third, breaking of bread, probably referring to meals together that included communion, is also fellowship, but probably worship too. The earliest Christians met in the temple, likely for large groups, but as we will see, not for long. Their worship gatherings took place in homes, and thus were comprised of smaller groups. They would sit around tables for dinner, and that would include a meal, discussion about the apostles’ teaching, singing, praying, and communion. The passage also says that their gatherings were daily.

Fourth, prayer. We’ve seen this a lot already from this group of early Christians. They were a bunch committed to prayer. They didn’t just pray as they waited for the Spirit to empower them, they kept praying, they made it a regular practice of their gatherings. Prayer is vital.

Fifth, they treated their possessions as not their own, but were willing to sell possession to help those in need. Their amazing generosity was precisely what Jesus taught them.

Through this community of worship, fellowship and discipleship, the Spirit of God was still at work for outreach. The chapter concludes saying that they enjoyed favor and God added to the number daily those who were being saved.

At the beginning of this week’s series on Acts 2, I asked what you would do if you were given the task of starting a church. Through studying Acts 2, we’ve learned how the first Christians started their church. No building needed. No programs. Just a Holy Spirit-filled group of people who are devoted to God, to one another, and to the mission of his Kingdom. Yes, it involves devotion to God’s Word, which for them was the Apostle’s teaching. Yes, it involves gathering together regularly, to support and encourage one another and discuss how to live out that teaching. And this is most easily done around tables where there is good food. Yes it involves prayer together. And yes generosity. Notice how sacrificial was their generosity.

As I said, above, no building needed. There is nothing wrong with having a church property and building, as long as we keep the building in proper perspective. The church is the people, not the building. The building is a tool. If disaster happened, like a fire, and your building was out of commission, your church family would still be the church. Some might ask, “Then why do we put all this money and energy into the building? Is it wrong to have one?” No, as long as you use the building as a tool for the Kingdom. Use it as a gathering place for your community, as a place that can serve the mission of God, to make disciples. Keep your rental fees very reasonable, and be willing to offer the use of your building at no cost.

Those first Christians give us an incredible picture of how to be the church. Their situation is not the same as ours, so it is expected that our expression of church will likely look different than theirs. But we can still learn from them. We can still be devoted to what they were devoted to. As with any church, yours is likely not perfect. We can and should have the posture of learning, changing, pursuing becoming the church that God wants us to be. A devoted church.

Why we need the Holy Spirit to help us speak in tongues – Acts 2, Part 4

The purpose of the filling of the Holy Spirit is to motivate you for mission. This is why Christians would do well to gather, to cry out for the Spirit to fill us, to motivate us to mission, to outreach, to boldly preach the Good News, to fill us with a method of communicating the language of the people around us so we can tell them the story of Jesus. That’s right, we need to Spirit to help us speak in tongues!

But maybe you’re thinking, “Joel, everyone in America does or should speak English.” Or “The people in my community pretty much all speak English.” In other words, why would we need the Spirit to fill us and help us speak other languages? Here’s why:

First of all, our culture is becoming less and less Christian, meaning that there is a growing number of people that don’t know our Christian kind of talk, they don’t know the biblical stories, and it seems like we and they are talking different languages. So we have to learn to talk in a way that communicates the story of Jesus in terms they understand. Frankly, that will likely mean we spend most of our time listening and asking questions so we can learn where they are coming from. It will be like learning to speak in a different language. We can and should pray for the Spirit to help us.

Second, they might speak an actual different language. Our culture is so different than it was even 20 years ago. Where I live, the most recent stats from the school district newsletter say that our once nearly 100% white school district is now only 60% white, and 40 % persons of color! I asked the principal of the local elementary school, Smoketown, if she could tell me how many languages are spoken by the students and families there.

First of all, in Smoketown she said there are at least 20 languages represented, with a few that are different dialects. But second, she said that there are over 40 languages represented across the district.

Do you think English as a Second Language classes might be helpful? Faith Church is starting ESL classes in April! And could the people from Faith Church who lead ESL classes benefit from the empowerment of the Spirit to communicate? Yes!

As we continue looking at the revival in Acts 2, what happened next is amazing. Check back in tomorrow to see!

The first revival (and could revival happen again?) – Acts 2, Part 3

Revival. What is it? We sometimes talk about a revival of an old musical production. Or when a person stops breathing, they can be revived through CPR. Revival is the breathing of new life into something that is dead or dying. While there is physical revival, as we continue studying Acts 2, we’ve come to a story of spiritual revival. After being filled with the Holy Spirit, one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter, stands up with the rest of the disciples around him, and he raises his voice and begins to preach to the crowds in the city of Jerusalem. You can read his sermon in Acts 2:14-36.

Do you see what Peter is doing in his sermon? He is sharing the good news that Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophets, that though he died, he was resurrected. Peter is taking on the role of a witness, sharing testimony of what he saw with his own eyes. (Read more about what it means to be a witness for Jesus here.) Peter’s witnessing led people to receive this good news with gladness. In verse 37 we read that the people were cut/pierced to the heart. People asked, “What shall we do?”

Peter’s response? “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus.” Repent is an inward and outward turning away from self-focused lives toward a God-focused life. Repentance of head, heart and hands. This is the same message that John the Baptist and Jesus preached. To repent is to turn away from a life that does not honor God, and turn toward the God-honoring life is essential for a person to be a follower of Jesus. And that day, 3000 repented and were baptized and joined the church. It was a revival!

Let’s take a few minutes and talk about revival. Peter preached a revival message!

Revival on this scale does not occur again in the Bible, which covers roughly the next 60-70 years. That’s not to say that in that time period revival like that didn’t happen again. The writers of the New Testament just don’t record anything like it. As we think about the church throughout the centuries, this kind of revival does occur again, many times. Often revival is preceded by prayer, just as the Acts 2 revival was preceded by prayer in Acts 1. The same thing has happened many times in history, including here in the United States, especially through the Great Awakening in the 1700s and the Second Great Awakening that went into the 1800s.

In 1805-6, revival broke out here in central Pennsylvania through the ministry of Jacob Albright and George Miller, two Evangelical pastors. Albright started the Evangelical Association that is the predecessor denomination to my own denomination, the Evangelical Congregational Church.

George Miller wrote this about Albright, when Albright was preaching in a meeting that took place in a home: “Indeed even his bearing, countenance and movements often betrayed the presence of God’s Spirit in his chest, so that the hearers were deeply moved without his saying many words. And there were times in which he so entirely forgot his humanness and even himself—when such a high rapture worked on and in him—that he was driven from his position as far as halfway through the house in which he spoke without he himself even being aware of it. And after such a shaking of his spirit, one then saw on his face a special joy and the praise of God poured from his lips, and one saw him so moved that all his limbs were in motion.”

Miller remembered when he first came under the conviction of the Spirit while hearing Albright preach: “I was touched in such a manner by his powerful sermon, that if I had not taken hold of a table, I should have sunk to the floor.” Only a few years later, after Miller had become a preacher himself, this powerful experience would continue through his ministry as well. In 1805 while preaching right here in Lancaster County in a home, Miller notes that, “The Lord gave me grace to preach his word with feeling and power so that nearly all were melted.” On October 25, 1806, a revival broke out in Union County. George Miller delivered the opening sermon at a “Big Meeting” and “the power of the Lord came upon the congregation with such force that many fell on their knees, and with tears in their eyes, besought the Lord to save them.” In the ensuing months, as the revival progressed, the Holy Spirit continued to be poured out, this time under Albright’s preaching so that “a great commotion resulted with many falling on their knees and crying aloud for mercy.”

My question to you is this, could this happen again? YES! And I believe we are right to pray for it. Often in my church’s Wednesday evening prayer meeting, we pray for revival. Let’s keep praying for the Spirit to work!

The moment that changed everything (also the Spirit as wind, fire…and speaking in tongues)- Acts 2, Part 2

This is the moment everything changed. Have you experienced one of those in your life? A 9/11 moment where you say, “Before that day life was one way, and now after that day, everything seems different.” It could be a job loss, a death of a loved one, a serious illness, or very positive events, like marriage, the birth of a child, or the beginning of a new career. In our ongoing series through Acts, the disciples and followers of Jesus have just watched him ascend to heaven, and now they have been waiting together in prayer…for ten days! He told them to wait in Jerusalem because he was sending the Spirit to them.

And then it happens. Look at the description of verse 2. Imagine what you would have seen, heard and felt if you had been there?

Verse two says there was a “sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house.” Is this what the disciples expected would happen when Jesus said the Spirit would come? Would you have expected a violent wind from heaven to fill the house?

My house is situated with farmer’s fields to our east and west, so most days a breeze is blowing, and sometimes it is gale force wind. A few weeks ago in the middle of the night, the winds were particularly strong, lifting our glass-top picnic table off our deck, sending it sailing down the deck steps and crashing into the yard where the glass splintered into thousands of pieces. I literally had to vacuum the grass. Who knows what my neighbors were thinking if they were watching me. Weeks later I’m still finding glass, and probably will be for years. Laying in bed that night, the sound of that wind woke us, like a freight train going by. Maybe that was what the disciples heard.

In both the Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek, the word for Spirit means “wind” or “breath.” I love the Keith Green song, “Rushing Wind” which talks about how the Holy Spirit can enliven and revive us. In that day, the first indwelling of the Spirit, this was all new.

And then there is another surprise in verses 3. Tongues of fire? What is going on with that?

There are many times in the Bible when flames or fire is a symbol of the divine presence, like the burning bush Moses saw in Exodus 3:2. Or when God led the nation of Israel in the pillar of fire during the Exodus. Now the Holy Spirit shows up in what the writer tells us seemed to be tongues of fire.

The description of the flame as a tongue is both real and symbolic. It is real because flames do look like tongues flashing up, but it was also symbolic because of what would happen next. In verse four we read: “All were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke in other tongues.”

The implication of the passage is that the Spirit filled them all through what appeared to be flaming tongues, and thus enabled them to speak real languages that they didn’t previously know. Read verses 5-13 to see what happened when they spoke in other tongues.

What is going on with this speaking in tongues? When we think of speaking in tongues in our day, we think of ecstatic speech. But notice that the people heard the preaching about Jesus in words from their real languages that they could understand. Some scholars wonder if that is actually the miracle here, that the people could understand what the disciples were saying.

They prayed, were filled, and it led to mission. We read that a crowd forms because they were hearing the followers of Jesus talking in their own languages, and this amazed the crowd because these disciples from the area in northern Israel called Galilee should not have known all those foreign languages. Verses 9-11 list all kinds of places in the known world that people in the crowd were from. They were in Jerusalem for the Pentecost celebration, and now they are hearing the story of Jesus in their home languages. Some in the crowd were so confounded, they said, “These guys are just drunk.” It must have been quite a scene!

The important point is not what it sounded like. The important point is that when the Spirit came, he empowered the disciples for outreach! For mission!

Let me say that again, the Holy Spirit empowers the church for mission. Filled with the Spirit, the disciples were engaging in mission by witnessing. A witness is one who tells what they see. What had the disciples seen? They had seen Jesus, the Messiah, who lived, died and rose again. Thus they told the story of Jesus. Jesus said in Acts 1:8 that the disciples would be his witnesses. Now the Spirit empowers them, and they start witnessing, telling the story of Jesus. How are you telling the story of Jesus in your community?

How would you start a church? – Acts 2, Part 1

What would you do if you were starting a church from scratch? Would you dream up a creative architectural design for a building that would draw attention from the community? Would you focus on the gathering for worship and put together a certain kind of musical or artistic program? Would it be multi-cultural? What doctrines would the church hold to? The possibilities are endless, especially when you consider all the expressions of church out there.

When it comes to starting a church, the reality, though, is that we don’t start from scratch. Instead we believe God, through his Word, has given us some guidelines for what a church should be. In Acts 2, which we’re studying in this week’s series of posts, we get to observe the beginning of the first church. How did the disciples and other followers of Jesus, the ones who walked with him for three years, start the church? Most importantly, can we learn from them how to be the church? I think we can.

Last week I started a new blog series about how to live as Christians in the world, and we are studying the book of Acts to learn how the first Christians lived out their faith. I think it will be very obvious how this passage of Scripture can relate not only to each one of us individually, but also to our identity as Christians who are part of a church family.

If you want, you can follow along by opening a Bible to Acts 2:1-4.

Verse 1 starts by mentioning Pentecost. This was a Jewish holiday that took place 50 days after the Sabbath of Passover. It was an ancient feast the God asked the people of Israel to observe to celebrate harvest. Because Jews were spread out around the known world in the First Century, thousands of them would travel to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast.

On that day, we read that the 120 remaining followers of Jesus “were all together in one place”

Remember what we read last week in Acts 1? Look at chapter 1, verse 4. In some of his final instructions to them, Jesus told them to wait in Jerusalem for a few days when they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Soon after that he ascended back to his father in heaven, and what did they do?

Now look at chapter 1, verse 14. They waited by “joining together constantly in prayer.” That short phrase is amazing. First I want to point out that they were all together. This was a group effort. Next they joined, they were like-minded. There was unity. Finally, they gave themselves to constant prayer. That’s quite a prayer meeting, right? And it reminds us of the importance of church families gathering together for prayer.

But I have to ask, how long were they doing this? Jesus had said they would have to wait, “a few days,” until the Spirit would arrive. As chapter 1 ends, they’ve been praying and waiting. We don’t know how much time passes between the end of chapter 1 and the Day of Pentecost which we read about in chapter 2 verse 1. Some scholars believe they might have waited together in prayer as many as 10 days. But on day 10 right in the middle of their gathering, everything changes.

There were many times when Jesus told the disciples the Spirit was coming. When the Spirit came he wanted them to be ready!

What would they have been expecting? They knew from their nation’s history that the Holy Spirit sometimes filled and empowered leaders, and those stories would have been all they had to try to understand what Jesus might have meant. When the Holy Spirit filled people in the Hebrew Bible, things got a little crazy. There was wild, ecstatic prophesying, as they called it. Or there was Samson killing thousands of Philistines. Or there was David dancing with all his might as the Ark of God came into Jerusalem. But as we saw in the story of Samson, that filling of the Spirit was temporary. Who knows what the disciples were thinking was going to happen! And then it happens.

Check back in to the next post as we’ll learn what happens!