The Early Church
Acts 2:41-47

New Testament scholars regularly point to these verses as a major passage describing the early church and its nature. Notice the sudden tsunami of new believers – 3000 in one day! What if your church, whatever its size, held an evangelistic service in a stadium and had 3000 new members in one day? Can you imagine the administrative logistics problem? Assume each of the original 120 could teach. That would give each one 25 new converts to train. If each of the 12 supervised, that would give him a leaders' class of 10 that in turn teach 250! Of course we have no idea how they managed that crowd. I point it out to remind us that they did handle it very successfully. The first sign of a problem doesn't show up until chapter 6. We do know that many continued to worship in the temple. The first Christians likely considered themselves a continuation of Israel, still Jews, and many thought them a branch of Judaism. Gradually, the differences became apparent, and Christians became a separate movement. One group of the new Christians believed that Christianity was for Jews only, and therefore one had to convert to Judaism and keep the Jewish laws before also accepting Christ. A good deal of Acts deals with the movement from a Jewish sect to a worldwide faith.

In verse 42 – the church, old and new, focused on at least four things Luke mentioned:
    The apostles' teaching – listed first. Primarily, they would tell the stories and teachings of Jesus from the sources that led to the gospels. In light of the resurrection, they would interpret those stories as God's saving act in His world. They would have taught the emerging doctrine as they understood it in those days. Underlying the teaching was the belief that followers needed to understand their faith and where it came from.
    The fellowship – Erase any ideas of a religious social gathering or party. Instead think of the closeness of a good athletic team, the bond between workers who have labored together for years. Add to that the binding power of the Holy Spirit and the common experience they shared in Christ. A few churches and classes here and there have such a fellowship. You cannot over-emphasize the importance of fellowship in the NT. It should be considered a doctrine along with any other.
    The breaking of bread – This could mean two things or both. Some believe it refers to communion, the Lord's Supper. Others think it means the fellowship meal eaten together. If you look in 1 Corinthians 11:17ff, you will see that the Lord's Supper was usually eaten in homes perhaps like our covered-dish suppers, and was part of the overall meal. This makes us aware that the growing Christian worship was divided between the Temple and house churches, probably in different parts of the city where a believer was willing to host the meeting and dinner. By the time the faith migrated to Corinth, apparently some people were arriving early and gobbling more than their share and were drinking enough wine to get drunk. Paul makes explicit one cannot observe the sacred part of the meal with that attitude and an intoxicated state of mind. Indeed, the Jewish attitude toward meals was that breaking bread together in itself had a sacred bond attached.
   Have you noticed that those who come only to worship, however faithful, do not become a really thorough part of the church as those who are involved in a Bible study class and come to the fellowship meal.
    The prayers – We do and we don't know what this means. We know the importance of prayer, but we don't know the exact ritual they used. Did they have a period of silent prayer, all praying aloud together, or – as we do – have one person lead and the others follow silently. Nevertheless, nail it down that in Luke's mind prayer was one of the four most notable things the church did.

Verse 43 – Fear came on “everyone,” presumably the outsiders who witnessed the “wonders and signs” the apostles were doing. We see more of these in the next few chapters, but they were continuing and expanding the work of Jesus. And they gave the Lord the credit, not attributing it to themselves.

Verse 44 – The believers shared whatever they had with whoever needed it. They even sold property to donate to the church. Some have  pointed to this as communism. Not so for several reasons. Communism involves government and the theory that the government owns everything with no private property. Government had nothing to do with this. Their giving was of their personal property, often inspired by the Spirit, but still their choice. Now we have also found from the Dead Sea Scrolls and related documents, that the Essene community did practice a form of communism. An entrant to their sect put up all his property in escrow for the community for a year while he was a probationary member. If after a year, he was accepted and still wanted to join, he would sign over all his property. How much the early Christians knew of this is not recorded, but this was not their practice. People gave as they do today, but were apparently more enthusiastic than most of us are now.

Verses 46-7 – We see that they did indeed worship in the temple and in homes. There was an excited, happy group of believers. They were joyful, praising God, and living the new life before the people. The joyful life attracted others, and the Lord added people to the church as they were converted. Notice a point of church polity here. Baptists and other congregationalists believe that the church is a group of believers, who have knowingly professed their faith in Christ. This is why we don't count children nor “baptize” them. Baptizing children originated in the belief that the holy water had power in itself to cancel original sin. Thus if you baptize the baby, no matter how much or little water you use (Greeks use more than Romans), the baby doesn't understand. In the NT, baptism came to new believers as a symbol both of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and the death of the Christian to an old way of life and  his resurrection to the new life in Christ.

THE BIRTH OF THE CHURCH

I once pastored a church that had two birthdays. The first was in the early 1900's, but around 1930 it went dormant for a few years. Then, a group got together and re-created the old church. It was born again!

When did what we think of as the first Church start? One possibility is at the point of Peter's great confession: You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God! But an equally good argument could be made for the Day of Pentecost when the church suddenly expanded from 120 to 3000 in an hour or two! Sunday's lesson is about that experience as recorded in Acts 2:1-15.

Pentecost also called Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks follows several weeks after Passover. The latter represents the Exodus from Egypt, while Shavuot serves to remember the giving of the Torah, or Ten Commandments to Israel. The Jews looked back on this as the birth of their nation. Thus the coming of the Holy Spirit and the conversion of 3000 on Pentecost is fittingly seen as the birth of the Church.

They were all together in one place. They refers to the 11 apostles plus other followers of Christ, probably totaling around 120. Much has been made of the fact they were all together – unity and all that. And this was indeed a core, which was going to explode into a dynamic organism before the sun went down.

I write this on a day of record-setting storms including strong winds. Notice Luke did not say the wind blew, he said a sound LIKE the wind came, and not just any wind, but the “blowing of a violent wind,” perhaps like a tornado. The sound filled the house. I enjoy classical organ music, so I'm in heaven when a skilled organist opens up the instrument to fill the auditorium with sound. Imagine such a filling of the sound of power in that place, coupled with something that again appeared LIKE tongues of fire. The words enable us to envision a fiery tongue swooping into the room and dividing itself among each member of the nascent church.

Fire has long been a symbol of the Spirit. It has the power to destroy and to purify, as well as to bring light.

It's important to notice that the tongues rested on EACH of them. There was no hierarchy, for there was one Spirit infusing the spirits of each of the 120. Notice also that immediately after the coming of the Spirit, they hit the streets to proclaim Jesus the Messiah, crucified and resurrected. Whenever the Spirit is described as filling one of the disciples, the immediate result is sharing Jesus.

They began to speak in other languages. Although Pentecostals use Acts 1:8 as one of their watchwords, they are mistaken. They can find a partial support from 1 Corinthians 14, but here we are not talking about ecstatic speech or a prayer language. Instead their words were comprehensible. Remember this was a Jewish feast and one that people from all over the world came “home” to Jerusalem to observe. In fact, Luke lists 15 different countries and languages or dialects present. And each heard the gospel in their own language.

I imagine the day going something like this. When the group poured out of the building, they began telling the people they met about Jesus. The Spirit enabled them to speak in whatever language was native to the one they were witnessing to. This sudden explosion of 120 people onto the narrow streets of the city, speaking in all sorts of languages created a hubbub that attracted even more people. As they came up, they saw and heard what was going on and also noted the ones involved were not scholarly types. They recognized some as from Galilee, obviously not priests, nor Levites.

And then there were the cynics. There are always cynics. (And a healthy dose of cynicism can be good in weighing what we hear. Particularly when you venture into the area of politics!) Anyway, these cynics made fun of the happenings and said it's just a bunch of drunks. Really? Peter heard it, and that set him off on his first evangelistic speech. He began by saying you gotta be kidding me! Drunk at nine o'clock in the morning? Not hardly. Take a look at what the prophet Joel said.

Then follows Peter's famous Pentecostal sermon. Note several things.

1 – It was aimed at the Jews and in their thought patterns.

2 - He quoted OT scripture – that was the only Bible they had at the time – and showed how it applied to Christ.

3 – He told the story of Jesus simply and pointedly. Next week we'll see the end of that day and what happened.

What's our takeaway from today's lesson?

If you have received Christ, you have also received His Spirit.

That Spirit guides you in Christian living, and especially in Christian witness.

Peter was essentially a layman, a fisherman, preaching one of his first sermons. Yet a huge crowd responded. It wasn't Peter, it was the Lord. So when you think “I can't,” perhaps YOU can't. But remember HE CAN! So give it a shot!

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
INTRODUCTION
&
Chapter One

Luke wrote a type of history, history from the viewpoint of a believer who lived through part of that history, talked with some who made the rest of it, and researched what else was available. He wrote to spread that knowledge, first to some guy named Theophilus, then to whoever else might read it. I doubt he expected millions over hundreds of years.

The book tells the story of the gospel and church moving from Jerusalem to Rome, overcoming obstacles along the way. In fact, an SBC seminary professor, Frank Stagg, thinks the theme of the book is overcoming obstacles. The book ends suddenly with the word “unhindered.” Scholars have debated whether that was intentional or whether Luke intended to add more. Stagg believes Luke was proclaiming the victory of the gospel being proclaimed freely in Rome at the heart of the Empire that ruled the world.

The book ends around 62 a.d. We know its writing must have been later, but we're not sure when. I personally prefer dating soon after that, but some scholars put it much later. I recently read a piece by a guy who thinks all the gospels were written after the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the temple in 70 a.d. He (and quite a few others) believe the scattering of the Jews and their total depression over such a massive loss inspired the authors to set the story down so it could be carried everywhere. But neither the gospels nor Acts mentions the destruction of the temple, and I find it hard to believe it would not have been included somehow. Some thing the “little apocalypse” in Mark 13 and the parallels refer to it, setting history as prophesy. These writers don't think Jesus was likely to foresee it, but there had been enough going on for any astute observer to predict something was going to happen, much less one with divine insight.

The book begins where the gospels end. Jesus gives His missionary charge to the Twelve and ascends to heaven. Acts then follows His outline: beginning in Jerusalem, all Judea, and the uttermost part of the earth. The first 12 chapters focus on the 12 and the 7. Peter, John, Philip, and Stephen are the principles. Then Paul begins his missionary trips, and the remainder of the book relates his adventures. Those include three missionary journeys, or four if you count the trip to Rome under arrest.
Now let's look at chapter one.

Luke begins by addressing Theophilus, which means “friend of God.” Was that his actual name, or a sobriquet the writer gave him. Or did he possibly mean any follower of Christ? He referred to his previous gospel about Jesus's life, saying it was about what he BEGAN to do an teach while physically here on earth. Luke felt sure Jesus was continuing to act and teach through his followers.

Jesus had remained on earth forty days after His crucifixion. During that time He proved the reality of His resurrection by repeated appearances to those who knew Him. Paul has gathered several of those occasions in the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians.

Finally, He told the 12 not to leave Jerusalem until they received the gift of the Holy Spirit. I once knew some men who formed a weekly witnessing group. They focused on prayer, including specific other men they felt were not Christians. They had a unique rule I have not heard of elsewhere. They would go see no one until their prayers led them to a conviction that the Holy Spirit was directing them to talk with that guy. They said they were able to lead quite a few men to become believers that way. Jesus said wait. And waiting can be hard.

Jesus laid out a specific direction for them. Start where they were. There in Jerusalem. Our International Mission Board does not appoint foreign missionaries until they have had satisfactory experience here in the US. If you can't function in your own culture, how can you operate in a strange land, language, and culture. Begin at home.

Expand from there. Judea might be compared to our state and state missions. Samaria could be compared to “home” missions in this country. And the uttermost part is exactly that. Christianity is a missionary religion. This younger generation of Christians – the same one seniors gripe about being superficial in their music – are much more involved in mission activities than we were. My church sends older children, youth, and college students to various mission trips every year. Adult missions both have gone to the Northeast states, Macedonia, and nations in the Gulf of Mexico.

At that point, Jesus ascended to heaven, and the disciples immediately rushed out to fulfill his commands! THEY DID NOT! They stood there with their mouths open and might be there yet, except the Lord sent a couple of angels to ask them, “How come you guys are standing their gawking into the sky? Didn't you hear the man? He'll be back one day. Meanwhile, get with the program!”

Does that speech fit you? Are you constantly praying and studying and bustling about this and that, but you never get with the program God has laid out for you? We are all indeed guilty from time to time and need to be reminded. So let's do it!

Moving right along, notice that there are 120 people, give or take, making up this larger group of disciples. It includes 11 of the original 12, minus Judas, and other believers including “the women.” Occasionally in the gospels we get a glimpse of a group of women among Jesus's followers. In Luke's Gospel 8:3, he says the women supported Him and His work. Three women are named, but there must have been more. One writer suggested the wives of the Twelve may have travelled with them. We know from Paul's comment (I Cor 9) that Peter's wife did, so perhaps she and others were part of the 120.

From this group a steady prayer meeting evolved, involving daily temple worship and some common gathering place, perhaps the upper room of the last supper. At any rate, one day Peter stood up and said, “I've been thinking. We are called “The Twelve,” but we are now only 11. What about choosing a replacement? He would need to be someone who has been in the crowd all along, so he can testify to what Jesus said and did and to his resurrection just as we can.” They agreed and devoted themselves to prayer. (These dudes prayed about every thing! Think that could teach us something?) Finally, under the leadership of the Spirit, they picked out two candidates and “cast lots,” believing the Lord would influence the choice. We're not exactly sure how that worked. It could have been a couple of rocks of two colors, pitched out with the one falling furthest the winner. Anyhow, it was the equivalent of flipping a coin. Not chance, but God made the difference. They set out Joe and Matt, and Matt won. We never hear of either again! I bet they both have great stories to tell.

In fact prayer and the Holy Spirit are so heavily involved throughout the Book of Acts, that many have thought it should be named The Acts of the Holy Spirit. How involved is the Spirit in your life?