We are in the second week of a four-part series that the church is calling.
That's the move. So as you're turning to Acts chapter two,
I just wanna rehearse with you a little bit. From last week,
we learned that the Holy Spirit came upon the, uh, people of God,
those disciples that were waiting in Jerusalem at the request of Jesus.
And this is after he rose from the dead. And after he ascended to the Father,
the Holy Spirit comes upon them. Peter preaches a message.
And what we see as a result of Peter's message is that Christ is
the message of our mission. And the mission is our mandate.
Something that we as a church need to carry on to the ends of the earth.
And so we pick up from there and we see then at the end of chapter two,
verses 20 or 42 through 47,
something that we might call the values of this early group of believers.
Now, a value is a,
a groups or a person's standard of living a judgment
on what they think is the purpose of their group.
And so the apostolic team didn't take a a weekend retreat and go away
and ensure that they understood what the values of the church were.
They were just inherent in what happened at Pentecost.
The Holy Spirit came preaching. 3000 people were added to the church that day.
We, uh, read at the end of chapter 42 and here in verse 42, uh,
and end of chapter two here, verse 42 of that same chapter says this. And they,
that's the 3000 that were added to the church after pre, uh, Peter's message.
And the 120 that were already there.
Those 3,120 devoted themselves
to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship,
to the breaking of bread.
And the prayers and awe 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.
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,
breaking bread in their homes,
they receive their food with gladness and generous, uh, generous hearts,
praising God and having favor with all the people.
And the Lord added to their name number day by day,
those who are being saved sounds utopian, doesn't it?
People's needs being met, friendships being made,
everything in common joy is experienced
and there's not a person alive that wouldn't want that kind of experience.
Joy, gladness, friendship, need meeting.
And these are the values. Now,
if you go out and you look at our hallways,
you'll see the marks we call live obediently,
serve selflessly, connect intentionally, give generously,
share willingly.
Those are marks that come right out of this passage.
We just didn't make 'em up because we thought they were cool.
This is what this passage is talking about, the marks that make up a church.
Now,
I think it's important that we realize that these aren't things that we are
necessarily, necessarily gonna just post on walls and have as as nice signs.
But these are things that we really want to pray about and go after.
But the problem with our culture today, including in the church, is this,
we have hyper individualism.
Our country has always been individualistic from the get go.
It was based and born on that, the idea of freedom and personal freedom.
But there is now a hyper individualism that's marched by three basic things.
The first is the autonomous self. Maybe you've heard that phrase.
People believing that they're a law unto themselves. That's what it means.
Self law.
They think that they are the basic and most important unit of society.
That would be me saying, I am the most important unit of society.
That would be you saying that. That's the autonomous self. In other words,
we live according to our own rules,
then it's the actualized self that is the person that says,
the most important voice for me to listen to is the voice inside of me.
And that comes out to basically say, stay true to how you feel.
That's big in our culture. And the third is the privatization of meaning.
What I mean by that is
you have an idea of what something means,
and I have an idea of what something means.
And those two things contradict each other, but they both can be true.
So my truth is my truth. Your truth is your truth.
And that is everywhere in our culture.
And if you want to fast, fast track to loneliness,
embrace these ideas.
These three things have increased.
And what we see that has also increased as a result of this self law
focused on self feelings and defining your own sense of truth.
It's, it's led to an increase in mental health issues,
particularly in our young people.
It's led to a spike in suicidal contemplation and completion
rise in the use of depressive depression and anxiety.
Prescriptions a greater sense of being overwhelmed and exhaustion is
pervasive. The idea of community is fragmented throughout.
That's what you get
when you're focused on yourself.
So let's unpack this a bit more.
People are claiming that finding their own voice and defining their own truth is
freedom. Self-expression is freedom.
But what's really happening is that they're saying that family
and church are the two most oppressive structures in
every society.
Straight from the French Renaissance, if you're familiar with that.
The idea that any authority, especially in the home and in the church,
squelches true freedom.
Men should do what they wanna do. Women should do what they wanna do.
Children should be able to do what they wanna do. And if you are at all
opposed, if anybody confronts,
then you vilify them. You castigate them,
you cancel them because they're invading the voice within.
That's our culture.
And that culture has crept into the church in many cases.
We abandon the truth of God's word for the sense of the voice from within.
We neglect community for the sake of individuality.
This hyper individualism leads to hyper loneliness.
And this is not proven just in the Bible,
but it's proven in psychology and medical journals,
clinical studies,
loneliness is like smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The impact on your health,
it creates all kinds of emotional issues and stress and anxiety, loneliness.
You have a family where they're supposed to be intimacy and it's fragmented
because everybody's doing what's right in their own eyes
where love should be unconditional. It's conditional.
So what you say is, well, I have, I have friends
and these friends are those kinds of friends,
I'll call 'em factional friends because they're just friends that happen to
agree with your ideology. And you,
you seek on social media until you find those friends that agree with you and
then that becomes your factional friend.
And you dare not lose them.
So you don't talk about anything other than that particular ideology.
'cause should you cross into another discussion,
they might disagree with you and you're gonna have to find another factional
friend.
And you've all experienced it, you've all seen it,
you've all experienced when family members divided
over issues that were not essential, especially during covid
in politics, over gender issues, over race issues,
families dividing, friends dividing.
And it's all has to do with the fact that we want to listen to our own voice
on matters. We want to be
the captain of our own soul.
So you have a number of fragmented families,
you have factional friends on the other side, but nothing in between.
So many people have nothing in between.
And so they're deeply lonely,
no unconditional friends,
no place where you can share your grace needs and your hurts and your desires
for fear. You might be rejected. And this is all the worst.
If you experience that in church and
maybe you are experiencing that in church,
the one place besides your physical family where you should find unconditional
love is here. And so pay,
perhaps you came to church to find, uh, to overcome your loneliness. And,
and you come and you are feeling like you're marginalized.
People aren't paying attention to you.
So your loneliness only increases 'cause it's, it's terrible to be lonely,
but it's really terrible to be lonely in a crowd.
And it's even worse to be lonely in a crowd of people that are supposed to care.
So how do we recover the kind of community and friendship that
God created for us to enjoy?
I'm not saying it's lost here at hope necessarily,
but there are people here in this room
that wonder if they have any friends
and every service that will ha that will happen this, this weekend at Hope.
There'll be gonna be people there that are lonely.
Well,
this account that I just read at the end of Acts is a historical situation.
There's preaching,
there's a response to the message and the people just naturally
gravitated towards each other. Remember,
the Jews had come from every nation under heaven to the, to this, uh, day,
the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem for celebration.
They hear this message about what Jesus Christ has accomplished and they're
pierced to heart. They believe they're baptized. And now they're one,
they're one family. They're foundation was Christ.
And since they were unified in Christ because of what he accomplished for them,
they shared their lives together. And it looked like what we read.
They heard the word together. They broke bread together.
They gave of, uh, their possessions for the other people who were in need.
They opened their homes to one another. They, they had the Lord supper together.
How can we cover that? We have some of those things, don't we?
But just think about that for a moment.
There was 120 believers in Jerusalem, disciples of Jesus.
And all of a sudden to that 123,000 people are
added in one day.
Can you imagine that conversation in the temple?
Those people are sitting in my pew. Oh, that guy,
man, he's prominent up from the, the country he comes from.
He's gonna be more important than me.
Could you imagine the potential of fracture and fragmentation when 3000 people
are gathered together? But it didn't happen.
They had all things in common. And there's two main reasons why.
First, there was the centrality of the word of God. And secondly,
they understood the need because of their situation to live life
with and for each other.
And I wanna look at those two points a little bit more specifically.
So let's unpack them. So to know God and to obey his word,
were key to them. 'cause they had just done that.
Peter preached the word of God to them.
They learned more about their God from the Old Testament.
They understood the Old Testament. But as Peter explained it,
in light of the Christ event, his death bureau and resurrection, they believed,
they found out something about God they did not see before.
So they were growing in their knowledge of God
and they obeyed by repenting.
So knowing God and obeying his word
are the moves that the Spirit was doing in the lives of these first
Christians.
You see, the Bible is important for a number of reasons,
but the most important reason is it's God's self revelation of to us.
He is telling you, as you open the Bible, he's telling me as,
as I open the scriptures something, in fact,
everything he wants to know about us, he's telling us.
And we have so many people that,
that leave their Bibles closed during the week and expect only to be fed on the
weekends and they're dying.
If we're not in the word of God, we can't know God.
And if we're relying for whatever we get on a Thursday night or a Sunday
morning,
we'll be spiritually anemic.
That's why these folks understood the need to get together
regularly, to know God,
to understand his word in light of Christ,
to live with and to live for each other. Now,
Jeremiah 9 23 24,
the Lord speaks to the people of Israel and he says this, thus says the Lord,
let not the wise man boast in his wisdom.
Let not the mighty man boast in his might.
Let not He who is rich boast in his riches,
but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me,
that I exercise steadfast love,
righteousness and justice in the earth. And in these things,
I delight says the Lord who
is strong,
who is noted in God's commentary,
those that know and understand him,
Jesus said something very similar.
He's praying in John 17 and he says,
this is eternal life
that they might know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you've sent
Jesus' own words.
Later on in the the epistles, Paul writes over and over again,
the basic idea is I just want to know Christ and Him
crucified. It's about knowing God.
You want Sav for your broken heart.
You want help through the trials and tribulations of life,
plunge into the character of God.
There's questions we cannot answer. There's situations that are mysterious.
We don't always know why things happen the way they happen. We can't always
trace God's hand, but we can,
as the old song says, trust his heart. But only if we know him.
Only if we understand from genesis to Revelation how he actually behaves,
how he actually acts on our behalf, the Bible's that from Genesis to Revelation,
God's activity for you, for me, his character,
we must know God. Now you can know about God
and not grow. A lot of people have head knowledge,
but you gotta know in order to grow.
And so we had to be Bible Christians, people that are in the Bible,
the word of God,
that which is disdained by many people in our culture because it's
authoritative. And anything that's authoritative speaks against their self
expression. But that's why they're lonely. And we should not be.
'cause we have a God who's always with us. He never leaves us nor forsakes us.
And we have other believers like in this room that, that agree with that.
And together we are in community.
So we not only know God, but we obey his word.
Jesus came to obey his father's will. That was his,
that was his mission to obey His father's will God of very God was here
in humility, obeying his father. And so he says,
if you love me, you'll keep my commandments.
If anyone loves me, he'll keep my word.
If you keep my commandments, you will abide my love.
Just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love,
these things I have spoken to you,
that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.
Remember that sense of utopia, that that first century, uh,
Christians were experiencing this is what Jesus is talking about.
Abide in me in my truth, obey it.
And you'll have joy, immeasurable. And that's the truth.
But if you wanna set up your own set of laws,
that self autonomy,
then you're gonna struggle.
And if I do that, I'm gonna struggle.
But we all could use a little bit more joy in our life. And Jesus says, well,
obey me and I will lead you into it.
Knowing God as he's revealed himself in the Bible,
I think relieves stress and anxiety and joy.
I like to define joy this way. Joy is a settled contentment.
That God is good and he's in control.
It doesn't mean happy clappy like, oh yeah, life is grand.
I love trials. They're so fun. No,
it's understanding that behind all the dark spaces,
the trials that you're going through,
maybe even the loneliness you're experiencing, God is at work.
He wants nothing more for you,
for you than to demonstrate his kindness to you,
his grace to you.
But if we're going off in a different direction, it's hard for him to bless us.
He blesses those, he leads those who obey into his joy.
So there's a common faith Paul talks about in Ephesians chapter four,
that we would be unified in the faith, in the word of God
and the knowledge of his son.
So there's a common faith that we must have to have a common faith.
We must know the same God from the same book we call the Bible
and we must obey it and then we can enjoy that kind of community.
And the second one is, when we do that,
then we can live life with and for each other.
And I think it's extremely important that we get a handle on this.
It says they were continually devoting themselves,
not just to the apostles teaching, not just to doctrine,
not just to the word of God, but to fellowship. That's the word partnership.
And it's a very, very powerful term. It's in, in a sense,
a contractual agreement between two people to do business.
It's used in business dealings. It's that you share life together.
It's not, you know, uh, coffee and cookies in the, in the church hall.
Like we, we used to call it growing up.
Let's go have fellowship in the fellowship hall. Oh, this is,
this is serious stuff. Well, what did it look like for them? Well, um,
they broke bread together. I think that, and that in verse 42 has to do with uh,
actually having communion together, remembering what Christ had done
and prayer. It says the prayers,
they were still Jews still involved in the temple.
They haven't gotten out of that. The gospel hasn't gone to the Gentiles yet.
So they're still going through their Jewish prayers.
But then it goes on and says this, and all who believed were together,
they were together and had all things in common.
And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the,
some people said, wait, wait a minute, this sounds like communism, socialism.
Now the point is this, when there are needs that we're able to meet,
we ought to meet those needs. And sometimes
you might sell something to help somebody. You might give somebody a car.
Many of you give regularly. So that's already going to meet the,
the thousands of needs that we meet through as a church in the community and in
our church family. Many of you're already doing that.
So it doesn't mean that you sell your possessions.
So there's equal possessions for everybody. That is not the idea here.
It's about meeting deeds. And
day by day they had 10 of the temple together. Could you imagine though,
3,100 people, brand new in their faith in Jesus?
That's a lot of excitement, a lot of joy.
But they also broke bread.
And here I think it's actually just re referring to a meal.
They broke bread in their homes. Well, why? There's people from all over,
member all over the nation are here in Jerusalem.
And so those that lived in Jerusalem said, Hey, come to our house,
hang out with us. And they enjoyed that,
that partnership of life that they had found in, in Jesus.
So they had a common life, they're a common faith.
And now they have a common life. And uh, they valued community over isolation.
And what they got was friendship over loneliness. And that's the thing, I,
if you value community, you won't be lonely.
Romans 12, nine through 13.
Unless we just think that this was part of the first, uh,
first group of Christians and it didn't happen, the rest, uh, up,
up through our day. Listen to Paul in Romans chapter 12, verses nine through 13.
Let love be genuine. Abor what is evil? Hold fast to what is good.
Love one another with brotherly affection. I do one another in showing honor.
Do not be s lawful in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord.
Rejoice and hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer.
Conti contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
All of that we see in Acts chapter two. Now,
we read about it in Romans chapter 12. These are the marks,
the standards of living for the church.
And it's hard to practice the one another's that were commanded to fulfill in
isolation. It, it just is.
You can't love one another from a distance.
You can't outdo one another in showing honor if you're not together.
The right of Hebrews says this, let us hold fast.
The confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised us
faithful. That's the word. That's a common faith.
And let us consider how to stir one another to love and good deeds.
Not neglecting meeting together as is the habit of some,
but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
So it's a common faith, holding fast. The confession of our hope.
That's the common faith in a common life where to be together,
to encourage each other, to stir up the, the,
to agitate each other, to love and good deeds. Proper way to agitate people.
You see, we can't live biblical Christianity as a private religion.
Your faith is not private.
It's personal in that you placed your faith in Jesus Christ alone and you
are responsible for that. But once you did,
you are immediately by the spirit of God brought into a family.
You're like, great, I didn't ask for that. Well, that's what you got.
And like every, every family there's joy. And like every family,
there's friction. Oh good. There's another family down the road.
I'll go to that one. Right? And that's what we do. Have a little tension here,
a little friction at this church. We'll just go down to another one.
But that's not the point. We don't do that in our families. Some do.
That's not what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to work through it.
Love one another, outdo one another and showing honor, right?
Pray for one another. Confessor sins to one, all the one another's. About 26.
One anothers rep repeated about 48 times in the New Testament.
Why emphasizing community, community,
community doing life with and life for one another.
So we live with, we live for value of giving over getting.
So you get satisfaction over dis discontent. Most of us,
if not all of us, love to give gifts. And uh,
that's no wonder 'cause God hardwired us to feel that way.
So Paul in Acts chapter 20, verse 35 said, is as Jesus says,
it is more blessed, more happy to give than to receive.
We've all experienced that bringing a neighbor groceries or whatever it might
be, it's like that felt really good. Yes, you're hardwired to give
and not to give brings a discontent
that's easily overcome by a simple act of giving.
And I think that's really important that we,
we get it to the heart of and we work hard. It says in,
in Ephesians 4 28, we work hard so that we can give to those who have need.
So two moves. We've had two moves from Acts. The early part of Acts two,
Christ is the message of our mission. The mission as our mandate.
Two moves from Acts 2 42 to 47.
Know and obey God's word.
That's a common faith. Live with live for others,
that's a common life. So what's your move?
What's your move?
Maybe you're at home watching online and the
only reason you're home watching online is because it's convenient.
The Bible says you're choosing isolation over community
and it's time to get into community.
'cause that isolation will only bring
discouragement, more fragmentation
in your life. But maybe you're here,
you came because you're lonely
and you're kinda out the outskirts relationally at Hope Community Church.
Don't wait for somebody to take a move towards you.
Make a move towards somebody.
You take the initiative to connect.
Too many people just sit on the sidelines waiting for something to happen to
them. We need to take the step forward.
Try a small group until you find one that where there's good chemistry and you
actually can connect with people.
Maybe you're actually in a small group and you, uh, serve,
you attend regularly and you still feel lonely.
That's possible because this is not about programs and getting into hope's
programs.
This is about understanding what God has done for you through Jesus Christ.
And that igniting a flame in you by the power of the Spirit to be part of a
community, to be a contributing member of the community.
Next week we're offering the Discovery class at our campuses.
And the the purpose of that is to help people understand how they can get
connected and to meaningful relationships and to opportunities to serve people
and meet needs. And we want you to do that.
So if you've not been through Discovery class,
I encourage you to participate in that next week.
If you're not in a Bible study, email me.
We'll make sure you get into one where people are opening God's word so we can
know him and learn to obey him.
And where you'll learn to develop community with those, those folks.
So important.
Take a meal to someone you need, it's in need.
Ask the Lord to give you eyes to see what's around you.
But don't be satisfied with living your own life, your own way.
It's a lonely life
and God wants you to enjoy community his way.
So what's your move? If you need help in any way,
Gary v@gethope.net, email me. We'll make sure you get the help you need.
Let's pray. Father, we're grateful, so grateful for your grace.
Thank you for your gracious way of revealing yourself to us,
Telling us what you expect of us. But before that,
telling us what you've done for us. And Lord,
I just pray that all of us gathered here would ensure
that we are getting to know you in community life.
Having a common faith, a common life,
not uniformity, but unity,
conversations, dialogue, even if there's disagreement,
no canceling, no vilifying, no castigating.
Help us to avoid the self stuff and go for the others stuff in our life.
Give us strength to do that. We pray. Convict us by your spirit to do that.
I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Let's stand together.
My words for sure.
I've nothing new.
How could I,
I could sing these songs
as I often do.
Every song must
you again.
So praise you again.
Every voice, every hand. Come on.
So I throw my hands and praise you again
that I
hall,
I have nothing else
except for Heart hall.
Well, we thank God, uh, for that message from Gary Vet. Come on,
y'all give Gary some love. Yeah, very thankful
During that message, uh, he talked about discover class.
Let me just share with you that discover is if you have not yet taken discover,
it is your best first step or your best next step.
And so one of the easiest ways that you can get signed up for Discover is simply
text the word discover to the number 7 2 9 8 9.
You can do that from the comfort of your home or you can do it in this room. Uh,
don't let this day go by without you getting connected and being a part of
Discover.
It's a great way to discover both the mission and vision of Hope Community
Church, but also what your role God may be sending you to be a part of this
movement of God. Now listen,
we love you guys and we do hope to see you back here next week.
We hope to see you too at Get Hope tv.
So just know that we love you and we want you to go out and continue to move in
the way that only the church can by God's spirit. God bless you.
We'll see you soon.