Belonging together

Acts 2: 43 - 47

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 07 Oct, 2007

IT’S A great day, because we are welcoming Mouy into membership in this church. It’s a great day because the family is growing, and it is an encouragement to us all to belong.

When I became a member of a Baptist Church. I was anxious. It was near Leaving Certificate time — that was what we had before the Higher School Certificate — and I knew my father wanted me to concentrate on examinations and forget church matters.

But there were problems in the church. How could I not work for things to be done rightly? We were hurting each other, and damaging our witness to Christ! God worked his miracles and saw me through both my exams and the Church affairs. He handles it if we trust him.

I am glad that Mouy has decided to join us. Mouy is the kind of person who aims to see things done rightly and kindly, and she will be an asset, helping to keep us all on track.

People who are committed to Christ are committed to his people, and want to see them grow and do things well. If you believe in Jesus, you believe in doing what you can to draw his people into following him. You don’t stand aside and judge: you get in and work as an insider to bring about change!

It isn’t always easy for people to join our church. Their family may say, “Don’t get too involved. We want you with us. There is a better church down the street. We need your time, your effort.” There will always be someone with a reason why you shouldn’t join, maybe even why you shouldn’t participate.

Of course, I am not knocking people who make their church choices based on family needs or travel issues.

But I am thankful for people like Mouy, who  has chosen to belong to us. We are excited like we were when D‘Andro was born, but we are also flattered, to be chosen.

That is how it always is when someone chooses to belong to your church.

I want to spend a little time this morning reviewing what it is like when people belong together in a church.

We read about three common factors — togetherness factors — which had two common, shared results. There was sharing together, there was meeting together, there was worshipping together, and that led to shared miracles and to shared evangelism.

We need to understand this, because one of the dominant themes in both the Old and the New Testaments is that of community, of acting and living together.

SHARING TOGETHER

We had a pastor at Fairfield who used to emphasise over and over, the Greek word, koinonia — the word for community or fellowship or togetherness. He was right, because that is crucial to an effective church.

As we read in Psalm 133:

How good and pleasant it is, when brothers live together in unity...

Unity is an aspect of community. The early Christians were real Communists — not because it was imposed on them, but because God put it into their hearts

And we find this in the verses we read.

⁴⁴ All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵ Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.

This was a radically different way of living. The Jews had many laws to prevent Israelites from suffering too much if they became poor. A poor person could pick fruit and vegetables and grain that grew at the edges of a field or spread over the fence. A poor person could sell himself as a slave for a period until he had worked off a debt. And the synagogue had to provide for people who were hard up. That was one of the reasons for tithing and special gifts.

But the early Christians went further. They sold what they had so that they would always have resources to care for anyone in need.

We Christians can get to thinking that there is something wrong with caring for the needy. We quote that verse,

If anyone will not work, he should not eat.

What they forget is that Paul said this to churches which were in the habit of giving until it hurt. He was not urging Christians not to be generous; he was telling generous Christians not to let people exploit their generosity.

In my lifetime there have been several periods when even able–bodied, willing people have found it incredibly hard to get work. There was the so called “Credit Squeeze” in 1961.

There was another big downturn about 1973 when the bottom fell right out of housing. Many people could not find work.

Yet people in the midst of those times said, “There’s plenty of work. If anyone doesn’t have a job, it’s because he isn’t looking!”

We Christians need to care for widows and orphans and the out–of–work. And one of the reasons we come together is so that we can share with those among us who have needs.

But our care has to go beyond material care. I have often come across people with no job, or insufficient resources, and their real problem was not money, but fear that they wouldn’t survive, or that no–one was backing them up.

What about people in a mess because of what some agency or business has done to them? The stories are rife about people on the brink because of banks, Government Departments, businesses. Often it takes someone to stand up for them and just refuse to be bullied. That’s a kind of giving, too. We have to share our time, our effort, our willingness to listen.

Mouy has come among us to give, but also to receive from us.

When I first went into theological college, my pastor reminded me that one of the hardest things I would have to do would be to receive from other people, because pastors are supposed to give. And he reminded me of the woman who gave her valuable perfume to Jesus because she loved him. If we want people to learn to give we have to let them practice on us!

The better a church is, the more it shares its resources together.

MEETING TOGETHER

Good churches also meet together. As the writer to the Hebrews says,

Don't abandon meeting together.

John Wesley put it like this:

“The Bible knows nothing of the solitary Christian.”

We need each other.

It is hard to keep on being a Christian. Someone wrote to a paper, complaining that he hardly remembered any ot the thousands of sermons he had heard in his lifetime of Church–going. Someone else wrote back that he hardly remembered any of the thousands of meals he had eaten, but he would be in a pretty poor case if he hadn’t had them!

A friend of mine commented about my sermons for today that I had an ability to make the mundane interesting. I smiled at what that implied. But there is a truth. I suppose that occasionally one of you comes to church and goes away saying, “Wow! That hit me between the eyes!”

But you can’t handle the“Wow!” — not every week, anyway. Yet, every time you come to church and meet with your brothers and sisters and assert that you really are God’s people together, it reminds you of who you are. It helps you when times are tough and you think you might give up, because you remember those peopel who met you and maybe even prayed for you on Sunday.

Look at these early Christians!

⁴⁶ Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,

See those two components to their meeting in common. They met daily in the temple, and they met regularly in their homes.

It’s amazing, actually. In many Christian circles today, people tell you, “Unless they preach the gospel exactly as you have heard it from us, you must leave them!”

But these Christians met every day — not just every week, every day — in a place where people worshipped God, but didn’t believe in Jesus, hardly even knew about him!

It’s like you and me going to a Jehovahs Witness hall every day to worship God.

The thing was that they didn’t care how their fellow Jews believed. They could worship God the Father through Jesus when they were together. They heard the ancient words of the Temple rituals, and, at each point, they thought about what they were hearing, and they nudged each other, and said, “Did you hear that? They are talking about the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, but we know that they are talking about Jesus!” Can you understand how that actually made them feel stronger as Christians, because they felt special in that situation?

And then they went to each others’ homes. They didn’t have church buildings. There were probably no church buildings until about the third century. Sometimes richer people bought two adjoining flats or apartments and knocked out a wall so that everyone could get in.

They they broke bread and shared a cup of wine and ate their shared meals with glad and sincere hearts.

They didn’t have splendid buildings of their own, but they had each other, and that was what counted. They shared their lives with each other, and God blessed them.

In our lives together, we may find times of struggle, and perhaps go through periods when we lack facilities to do what we want. But when we can gather somewhere for worship and fellowship, we’ve got the main thing!

It’s not about buildings or equipment, but, ultimately, it’s about meeting in fellowship.

By being members of a congregation, we commit ourselves to those things.

WORSHIPPING TOGETHER

However, being Christians involves more than sharing and more than gathering. We all know that our primary goal is worship.

These early believers knew what it was all about, and gave themselves to it.

Acts shows that they spent their time,

 ...praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people.

My father used to say that heaven would be too noisy with all those crowns being thrown around and all the people shouting all the time.

There’s a long tradition of noisy celebration. In the Psalms we hear about people praising God with harps and trumpets and drums and shouts of praise. In Revelation they cast their crowns before God and shout out his praises.

It is vital to praise, to worship, to celebrate out God, and to do it with energy and gusto.

There are important psychological principles here. What we do reinforces what we believe. People who claim to believe something but never act on it eventually forget they ever believed it.

Also, what we put effort into sticks with us more than what we do half-heartedly.

And what we do where we are seen by others is more real to us than what we do privately without interaction with others.

Finally, what we speak aloud means more to us than what we keep inside.

How did Luke know that the people praised God? Because they were doing it together, because they were doing it aloud, and because they were getting personal benefits from it. God created us so that what is good for us generally feels pretty good. And praising God is good for you and me

When we come together, we should do it.

MIRACLES AND EVANGELISM

Well, we have seen that these early Christians shared together, that they met together and that they worshipped together. And, in that, they provide us with patterns for how we should relate to one another. And, as Mouy joins us in commitment to this fellowship, we must recommit ourselves to working towards becoming that kind of fellowship, that shares, meets and worships with real commitment.

But I said that there were two main consequences of their doing that.

First, there were common miracles, and second there was common evangelism. What I mean is that they shared in miracles and they shared in evangelism.

We read,

many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.

and

...the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

People often doubt miracles, but most of us have experienced what we recognise as a miracle. Sometimes it is when your need and something quite natural just happen to come together at the right time, like when we couldn’t afford our insurances even after we had special appeals, and, when we had a day of prayer, we received notifications that day of an insurance pay out and a bequest which more than covered our need. When God’s people work together in unity, it is amazing how often that kind of thing happens.

Of course, there are also those quite inexplicable things like when you all prayed for me while I was sick with pneumonia, and I didn’t know you were praying but, at that time, I suddenly realised that I had turned the corner and was getting better. You can’t have that kind of joint prayer that leads to healing and other miracles unless you are all together in unity as God’s people.

In the same way, when God’s people come closest together, God will work the greatest miracles of conversion. People are drawn to community, to togetherness. They see in it God’s love — the love he has for the entire world, the love which sent his Son into the world.

When they see us sharing together, meeting together, worshipping together in real fellowship, they will see in us how good that can be, and will want it for themselves.

GETTING IT TOGETHER

The first step in getting together in this way is consciously deciding to belong together.

I have been friendly with Peter Dixon of the Church of Christ Church for many years, and I greatly respect the work he does. So I am not having a go at him personally or at the quality of his ministry down the road from us. But I have one criticism of the Churches of Christ in general, and that is that their idea of membership does not have a strong emphasis on choosing to belong to each other, I believe that is a strength we have — if we choose to use it,

Mouy has chosen to be part of us, and we have chosen to receive her — and that is great.

Then we have to choose to put into practice the shared life that the earliest Christians had, and that Christians through the ages have had when we have been at our most effective. God blesses that kind of fellowship, so let"s do it!

Do we add our Amen?

© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)