A New Community

This week, Pastor Luke continued our study in the book of Acts by looking at how the early church devoted themselves to teaching, fellowship, prayer, and generosity through Christ-centered community.

Creators and Guests

Host

Luke Miller

Luke is the Associate Pastor at Conduit Ministries

What is Conduit Ministries?

We are all about helping people get closer to Jesus.
Sundays @ 9 AM & 11 AM - 120 Delaware Ave in Jamestown, NY

Speaker 1: 00:06

Let's, let's pray for pastor Luke as he comes up to deliver, the word, the next sermon in the, acts sermon series. Heavenly father, we thank you for the gift of your word. And Lord, we ask and pray that you would, bless its proclamation. Lord, that you would open our ears that we may hear, that you would open our hearts that we would receive it and believe it, Lord, and that our lives would become measured in obedience to your word, Lord. We pray, Father, for an environment free of distraction now, Lord, that your Holy Spirit may take your truth and plant it firmly in our hearts.

Speaker 1: 00:50

In Jesus' name. Amen.

Luke: 00:53

Good morning, everyone. I'm Pastor Luke. I'm one of the pastors, and we're going to be picking up in our sermon series in the book of Acts. So you can go ahead if you want to. You can open up to Acts chapter two, or if you have one of those Acts journals.

Luke: 01:10

I think we still have just a few Acts journals back on the bookshelf if you want to pick one of those up. Two, three. I can read. We have three of those Acts journals back there. What they are is they're just one page is the entire book of Acts on each page, and then on the opposite page is a place to take notes.

Luke: 01:28

So some of you are making use of that as a way to participate in this sermon series. It's a great way to do that. I'm kind of a like, I'm I'm a nerd, in case you've not known me long enough. And I love, like, interesting facts and stories and things like that. But, like, have you ever kind of, like, sat and wondered, you know, like, why are like, I'd like to just look at things and say, why why is it that way?

Luke: 01:57

You know? Like, one of my who here has ever heard of, like, the phrase, like, your time in the limelight? A couple okay. I know it's a little old, but time in the limelight. Right?

Luke: 02:09

Like, your time on stage. Do you know why we say that? Like, a lime doesn't actually emit any light. Right? Like, if we ever just thought about that, limelight actually was what they used in theater back in the day.

Luke: 02:22

They used to take a rock a piece of rock, lime, and then they would light it on fire, and they would use that to light the stage, and it would give off kind of a greenish yellowish hue hue. It's also why so many theaters burned down. Yeah. If you like, I don't know that I've ever walked into a historic theater that's, like, not had a plaque about the great fire of something something. So, like, that's why we call it that's why that phrase stuck around for so long.

Luke: 02:52

Your time in the limelight, your time on stage. Or has anyone ever thought about, like, just why exactly is the keyboard that you use on your phone or at your desktop laid out the way it is, the QWERTY keyboard? Well, it was designed that way, all the numbers mixed up and jumbled up the way specifically that they are, in order to slow your typing down. See, when you were using a has anyone here ever used a mechanical key or typewriter? Okay.

Luke: 03:24

A couple of you people have used mechanical typewriter. If you've ever used one, if you type too fast, you can cause it to jam because the key strikes come up there. And if you get two of them coming up at the same time too close together, they stick. And so they developed the keyboard in order to move certain keystrokes far away from each other so that you couldn't type too fast, and it would stop you from jamming the the typewriter. Well, we still use that keyboard.

Luke: 03:54

Right? We that's what we still use. We're using something that was designed to be slower. If you wanna look at more efficient and faster keyboards, there are plenty of them out there. Just nobody uses them because they're really weird.

Luke: 04:10

And we're just not used to them. Or it's baseball season. I don't this is a fun fact about me. I don't ever, like, really sit down to watch baseball, but I love watching baseball clips on the Internet. I don't know why.

Luke: 04:23

I love watching the umpire and the catcher and the pitcher just yell at each other, And I love seeing the breakdowns and all that stuff. But baseball's, you know, got a long history to it. I also love baseball movies, but I just don't ever go watch a game. But, you know, the seventh inning stretch. Right?

Luke: 04:44

Seventh inning, everybody gets up, takes a stretch. Why is that? And baseball has, like, a legend about that. They think that president Taft was at a game one time, and he got up during the seventh inning, and everyone thought he was getting ready to leave. So everybody stood up to show respect for the president, and then he was just stretching.

Luke: 05:00

And ever since then, they've been doing it. At least that's the story. They don't really know why they do a seventh inning stretch. It's just that way. The world is full of things that we do, but we don't always know why we do them.

Luke: 05:16

We don't always know if we're even doing the right thing. Is this the correct thing to be doing? Why are we here today? Why are we here on a Sunday sitting in pews listening to me talk as I have the Bible open? Are we doing the right things, and are we doing them for the right reasons?

Luke: 05:35

I think this is an important question because we can kind of just have this assumption that, oh, the church I go to, the way I think church should be done is absolutely the right way. And, of course, we're doing it for the right reasons. This is a question of saying, are we? And why do we do it? Why is preaching part of a Sunday gathering for us?

Luke: 05:58

Anyone ever thought about that? And in the book of Acts where we're at, we're studying and looking at the early church. We're seeing what did the earliest Christians do and why. And so we're gonna be looking at what were they doing. So let's read together in Acts chapter two.

Luke: 06:17

We're gonna start in verse 42. Chapter two, verse 42 of Acts. And this has a this is probably a this is probably the passage I've heard the most preached out of the book of Acts. It's probably the most commonly preached one, and it's a and it's it's fairly straightforward. You're we're I'm just gonna I could just read the passage and probably stop preaching, and all of you could have an early lunch, but I won't do that.

Luke: 06:43

So Acts chapter two, verse 42 says this, and they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship and the breaking of bread and the prayers. And the awe came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together and have all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes. And they received their food with glad and generous hearts, Praising God and having favor with all people, the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Luke: 07:31

And so there is probably one of the most direct and quick descriptions of what the early church was doing and why. But well, first, I could say Acts that first verse 42. Right? It says real quick, they devoted themselves to what? The apostles' teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers.

Luke: 07:55

There's simple four things that they devoted themselves to. But the question is that that answers the what. Right? That tells us what they were doing. The question is I started out with was why.

Luke: 08:08

Why are they doing that? Why are they doing these four things? Why are they doing because as we go through this list and we start to read it, we're like, wow, this is pretty radical. They're hanging out with each other. It sounds like every day they're selling their possessions.

Luke: 08:22

They're behaving in some pretty extreme ways. Why would these people be behaving this way like this? Well, the first thing that we need to do is we need to recognize that there's something that came before. Right? One of my Bible professors always loved to tell at yell at us.

Luke: 08:44

He would always say, a text without context is a pretext for a proof text. Meaning saying, if you don't read what's around what you're reading in the Bible, you're going to miss things. And I almost did too, because I've heard this passage preached so many times that I just kind of like, Oh, yeah, yeah, I know I'm going to talk about. But I was ignoring because there's if you're looking at your Bible, most likely your Bible has a little kind of paragraph break, maybe a heading right before verse 42. So it kind of makes you think, oh, this is like a brand new section.

Luke: 09:17

This is a new idea. I don't necessarily I can just jump in right here and not pay attention to what was happening before that. Let's read let's go back a couple of verses and see what we missed if we don't go back just a few verses. Look in Acts two thirty seven. It says this, and this is Peter.

Luke: 09:37

This is after the day of Pentecost. Pastor Cameron preached about it. They were speaking in tongues in different languages, and everybody was able to understand in their own native language what was being said. Peter gives a sermon, and this is the response at the end of Peter's sermon in verse 37. He says, Now when they heard this sermon, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

Luke: 10:03

And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So Peter's response is, you got to get baptized. You got start following Jesus, being baptized, not in the name of Peter, not in the name of the Apostles, but in the name of Christ. And they give their lives to Christ in this thing. Verse 41 ends with this.

Luke: 10:33

It says, for those who received his word were baptized, and they were added to that and there were added that day about 3,000 souls came to Christ that day on Pentecost. And then if we ignore the break, if we just keep on reading into the next verse, and they, the people who were just baptized, the people who just became Christians, are doing what? These things. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. So why were they doing these four things?

Luke: 11:09

Because their lives have been radically transformed by Christ. Right? They weren't just like, we're just going to randomly do this. Oh, to be part of this group, we're just going to have to behave this way. No, their lives were radically transformed around who Jesus Christ was, what he had done for them, that he had saved them out of sin, that he'd given them new life, and that he had called them into a new community.

Luke: 11:32

And it had radically reoriented the way they live their lives. I was thinking about things that tend to kind of reorient things in our common life experience that change the way we live. I was reflecting and I was thinking, I was like, you know what changed my life? It was like my first full time job. Right?

Luke: 11:53

Like I up until then, I had no cares in the world. Right? But I started working full time. I'm like, oh, boy. I gotta I gotta wake up.

Luke: 12:03

I gotta I gotta go show up, and I gotta do this forty hours a week. It changed my life. Sometimes maybe this is a little dramatic to say about a hobby. But a hobby can change your life or it can reorient your life a little bit, at least the way I do hobbies. You know, if you get into a brand new hobby and you're excited and you get all the things and you're just like, that's what I'm thinking about all the time and that's what I want to do and I'm trying to find time in my day to kind of carve out to do this thing that I'm interested in.

Luke: 12:35

Marriage reorients our life. If we get married to someone, all of a sudden, somebody else's concerns, their schedule, everything about them impacts us, and we have to change the way we live our life. When you have children that reorients your life, all of a sudden, have a small thing that depends entirely upon my sanity. And like like, this is kind of it reorients and changes the way you see everything. You know, I I I don't we don't have kids right now, but like one of the things when we have people over and we have their kids over to our house that I realized is just how much of a death trap my house is.

Luke: 13:15

I was just like, oh gosh. Like, we like, it just cut like, for a I was like, is that what happens? Like, as soon as, like, you have a kid, you realize just how, you know, how breakable everything is in your house? So I don't know. Hopefully, to find out.

Luke: 13:32

So these things radically reorient the way that you see the world. They radically reorient the way you live your life. And when we give our lives to Christ, when we say, I'm going to follow Jesus, I'm going to be a disciple, it radically reorients our life. Changes the way we see everything, changes the way we interact with everything. It changes us.

Luke: 13:55

And this changed them. They were no longer just concerned about themselves, but they were like, I am part of a new community, and I need to live in and with that community. And so they gave themselves to these four things. The apostles' teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. So let's talk about those four things because it's not immediately obvious to us what those four things are.

Luke: 14:20

Right? It says the apostles' teaching in verse 42. And you might be saying, okay, Luke, how is our church devoted to the apostles teaching? Because last I checked, you're not an apostle. And I'm not.

Luke: 14:33

And you shouldn't listen to me if I said I was an apostle. Like and so how does the modern church, how do we today continue to devote ourselves to the apostles' teaching? Well, the simple answer is we open the scripture. The New Testament is filled. All of the gospels written by apostles.

Luke: 14:53

The New Testament is written by apostles. It holds the teachings of the church. And the Old Testament carries with it the things that the apostles taught. They taught from the Old Testament. They explained like Jesus did on the road to Emmaus, how the Old Testament pointed to him, and he fulfilled all things in the Old Testament.

Luke: 15:16

And so when we open the scripture and we study this student studiously and we study and we try our best to understand it and we're led by the Holy Spirit, we are doing just the same thing. We are devoting ourselves to the apostles teaching as best as we can. This is why it's so important. That's why we get up here every week and we open this scripture. I'm not up here just making things up.

Luke: 15:41

Right? I'm I'm trying to do my best to explain and apply what's in the text. And we're not here just to give opinions. We're here to open and listen to God's word. And hopefully, prayerfully, the Holy Spirit is active in it.

Luke: 15:56

And this is why we have classes. This is why we make books available in the back is because we want to enable you to learn to read God's Word on your own so that you feel confident so that you can do the same thing and devote yourself to the teachings of the Apostles and ultimately the teachings of Christ. So that's one thing. That's one thing. One thing that we do is we're simply trying to understand who Jesus is.

Luke: 16:24

If Jesus is reoriented our lives and he's at the center of it, we better understand what he taught. We better understand what he has called us to, the way he has said we ought to live our lives. If we don't know what he's told us to do, how can we follow him? So this is a core and always has been a core practice of the church. Now, what's that second thing?

Luke: 16:51

Verse 42, it says, it says, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. Second, they devoted themselves to the fellowship. If we go down just a little bit further into verse forty four and forty six, we'll see this. And all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, they were attending temple together and breaking bread in their homes, and they received their food with glad and generous hearts.

Luke: 17:28

Now that's a pretty interesting description of community, but let's flip forward to chapter four. I want to flip forward just a few pages in your in your scripture to chapter four, and we're gonna look at verse 32 through 37. Chapter four, verse 32 through 37. This passage gives an even more detailed description about some of practices that they were doing in community, and they were even more radical. Verse 32 says this, Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.

Luke: 18:16

And with great power, the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. And there was not a needy person among them. For as many were owners of lands and houses, they sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. And they laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Now that's a pretty wild statement.

Luke: 18:46

Verse 36 continues to give a specific example. Thus, Joseph, who was called by the Apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, a Levite native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him, and he brought the money and laid it at the Apostles' feet. They give an specific example of Barnabas donating the money from the sale of a property to the early church. Okay. So fellowship.

Luke: 19:13

What were they doing? Well, one simple way to say it is that they were spending time together. In chapter two, right? It says that they were they were believed together. They had all things in common.

Luke: 19:26

They were selling their possessions. And day by day, they were attending temple together and breaking bread in homes. They were in each other's homes sharing meal. They were with each other on a regular basis going to temple. It was something that all of a sudden they were like, well, I didn't know you before, but now we're going to be doing this together, and we're doing this routinely, and we're going to be in each other's homes.

Luke: 19:51

They were practicing hospitality. And hospitality is a spiritual discipline that kind of gets pushed over to the side a little bit. We're just like, oh, that's not really like that important, I guess. Like, it's just like over there. Like, you don't really need to practice hospitality.

Luke: 20:09

I think hospitality is probably one of the most important spiritual disciplines a Christian can practice. And now when I say hospitality, I don't mean Western hospitality. I don't mean our modern conception of hospitality where, okay, we get every we're gonna pretend that this house is for sale and that no one lives here. We're gonna perfectly stage it. And when someone walks into their house, they're gonna be, oh my gosh.

Luke: 20:38

No one's ever touched this floor before. Like like right? Like that that kind of idea where we have to perfectly clean the house because dare somebody think that we have a dust bunny anywhere. Guess what? Can we just all be honest for a minute?

Luke: 20:55

All of our houses are a little messy. Right? Why? Because we live in them. I have two dogs.

Luke: 21:04

K. That's all I need to say about that. But this idea where we have to put on an air of perfection when it comes to hospitality, this idea that we have to have everything perfectly cleaned and put together in order to host someone, has much more to do about our own anxiety about what the person thinks about us than actually being hospitable towards the person. I mean, like, make sure, like, there's a chair they can sit on. But like you know what I mean?

Luke: 21:37

Like, there's there's a line here. Right? And you gotta be your own judge. But there's a line between making sure that they can come in and be comfortable in your home and cleaning and making it such a way so that you can soothe some sort of personal anxiety about your own appearance. And hospitality is a willingness to invite someone into your life.

Luke: 22:00

It's not putting on a show so that they think you're the best cook ever or think you're the best housekeeper ever or think that you've got it all together. It's spending life together. It's taking small opportunities to be with one another so that we can encourage one another and be formed by one another. All too often, we're isolated. We're the loneliness epidemic.

Luke: 22:24

I know we talked about this earlier this year, but there is a literal epidemic of loneliness going through The United States. People are lonelier and more disconnected than they have ever been, yet they're still more connected. You can contact almost anybody at any time of day in any place because of these things that we carry around our pocket. But why do we still feel so immensely lonely? This is a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Luke: 22:55

He here gives a strong and powerful quote and statement about the impact of loneliness and isolation on our lives. He says this. He said, sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation.

Luke: 23:27

Community is the antidote. Community is the thing that pulls us out of self defeating cycles of sin. Community and fellowship and being known, being in the light, and being connected to other people is an antidote to shame. It pulls us out of a place where we're stuck so that we can be known by other people who also love Jesus. This is I just this is not in my notes.

Luke: 23:58

This is not on the screen. One of the most important Bible verses I ever read was in First John. And in First John, John is going along and he's talking and he says that he says that God is love. Right? We've all heard that verse before.

Luke: 24:13

God is love. That's great. But then he goes on and he says, but no one has ever seen God. So how can we experience the love of God if we've never seen him, particularly you and I? When John wrote it, John had seen Jesus, but no one here in this room has physically seen Jesus.

Luke: 24:33

If you have, come talk to me. But, like, how then are we to experience the love of this all loving God if we can't physically sit across the table from Jesus? Well, he goes on, and he says that Christ's love is made complete or perfected when we love one another. The best way for us to experience the love of Christ is to love one another because Christ is loving each of us through each other. If Christ is in us, dwells in me, and dwells in us as a body, when we spend time with one another, when we are hospitable to one another, when we love one another and encourage one another, it is as if Christ is sitting with you, encouraging you, and loving you.

Luke: 25:21

And so when you disconnect yourself from community, when you disconnect yourself from the body and from the church, you are disconnecting yourself from the primary means that God has put in place for you to experience his love. That doesn't mean that church isn't complicated. Doesn't mean that the church doesn't have people in it that hurt people. It doesn't mean that I'm not going to be that doesn't mean I'm perfect. It doesn't mean that I'm always going to do or say the right thing, that I might offend you or hurt you.

Luke: 25:52

But it does mean that when we are in line with the spirit, Christ is flowing love out of us to one another, and we have to stay connected to that for our own benefit. So hospitality, we say it this way here at Conduit, and we've been saying it, and we want to continue to say it to our hospitality team. And the way that we do things here is that hospitality is discipleship. That being with one another, that caring for one another, that loving the other person in front of us as we would love Christ is a way of discipleship. It is a way to help us become more like Christ.

Luke: 26:33

Being in relationship forms us. If you've ever heard the like self development, self help quote, it's really kind of famous or well known that you are the sum total of the five closest relationships that you have. The five closest people you spend the most time with are going to have the biggest impact on who you are and how you behave. My wife, like, she has kind of this oh, she's going be embarrassed. She has this thing where she kind of instead of etcetera etcetera, she says da da da da da da.

Luke: 27:03

And so now I say da da da da da when I'm kind of like and so like and so that so that's the so that's what I say. Like, that is an impact that I've had on my speech because I spend so much time with her. And so who you spend time with is going to impact how you are and who you become. And now some of you say, okay, Luke, that sounds great, this idea of hospitality, caring for one another, but I have got some questions about selling all of my property. Right?

Luke: 27:36

Did anybody read that in in chapter four and they'd be like, I got questions. Right? Luke, are you about to tell us all that we have to go out and sell our homes and give it to you? Like, what are we what are we talking about here? Well, I wanna read this carefully because when we read this, I think we have a tendency to insert words or qualifiers that are not actually in the text.

Luke: 27:59

So if we look back at chapter four, I'm going to see verse 34. There was not a needy person. Chapter four verse 34. There was not a needy person among them for as many as were owners of lands and houses sold them. What is not being said there is it does not say all.

Luke: 28:22

It does not say they were made to sell them. It's indicating primarily, it's making example of the people who owned multiples. Right? So it's not like somebody was like, I have a singular home, a singular property. I'm going to sell it and then become homeless and then need the church to support me for the money that I just gave it.

Luke: 28:46

Right? That's not what this passage is describing. There are cults out there, right, that are like, you have to sell everything you own and you have to give it to us and you can't own anything. And it's compulsory for you to be a part of the cult or group or whatever they call themselves. That is not what this passage is describing.

Luke: 29:07

Some people love to talk about these passages and say, oh, see, Jesus was a communist or he was a socialist or something like that. Now, I'm not up here to debate about political or philosophical philosophies, but simply here to say what we see demonstrated here isn't related to some sort of philosophy of economics or anything like that. It is a radically reoriented understanding of possession. It's the believers, it says says in verse 32, it says this, they were now of now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said this is what they were saying in their heart. They said none of the they said that any of these things that belong to him was his own, but they had all things and everything in common.

Luke: 29:59

They came to an understanding of stewardship. They said, I what I have, right, is not just mine anymore. I'm simply a steward. God has given me all things, and it's my job to be a good steward of them. Jesus talks about this in parables all of the time.

Luke: 30:19

Pastor Cameron talked about this a couple weeks ago. Says, do not store up for yourself treasures that oh my gosh. That moth and rust destroy. Almost said the same thing he did and mixed it. Moth and rust destroy.

Luke: 30:34

They were saying if Jesus is truly the king, if we're really living for an heavenly kingdom and not for this earthly kingdom, what good does it for me to have the most things when I die? What are you gonna do? Attach a U Haul to your hearse? Right? That's a serious question.

Luke: 30:53

And so they have a have an understanding that the possessions that they had were theirs to steward, and they decided to be generous. And whenever need arose, they took care of it. They became aware of a need in the Church of the Body, and somebody was generous towards it. Now, you guys don't get to see all of this part of what Conduit does because it wouldn't be appropriate for for privacy's sake and other things like that. But Conduit does support people who are in times of need from time to time.

Luke: 31:25

We get calls on a regular basis from people from the community or part of our church who need a little bit of help, and we step in when it is appropriate and wise to do so. If you right now, if you go out this afternoon and you go down to Brooklyn Square, you can find a whole bunch of hot meals being passed out to people. Why? Because we take this seriously, providing for one another and being the love of Christ through tangible means. And so all that to say, if you're like, pastor Luke, are you telling me I need to sell everything?

Luke: 31:57

No. I'm not saying by any means that anything, any giving. Your generosity should be coming out of your heart, not out of compulsion. It does not need to be or should not be entire so as to make yourself destitute, and it is a demonstration of our unity in community. It's a demonstration of us being united and caring for one another as the body of Christ.

Luke: 32:21

Alright. Those are the two things that we've talked about so far, the apostles teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread. Verse 42, it says that they devoted themselves to the breaking of bread. We see this mentioned again in verse 46 of chapter two. It says, Day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes.

Luke: 32:42

Now there's some debate about what exactly is being said when it says the breaking of bread. There's two major kind of opinions about what this passage is talking about. One is, is that they were simply having a meal together. Breaking bread is kind of a euphemism or a nice way of just saying, they're having a meal together. They're sharing and having fellowship with one another.

Luke: 33:03

They're being hospitable. It's another extension of that. The other view, which I think is the view that I lean towards, is that they were having communion with one another. What we do here once a month on, the first Sunday of the month, and we have everyone come down, break a piece of the bread, dip it into the into the juice and have communion, was something that they were practicing on a regular basis. That's why we do it on a regular basis.

Luke: 33:29

And so it was something that they were doing. They were sitting down to maybe have a meal together. And as part of that meal, maybe to start the meal, they would have communion together before they would eat the rest of the meal. And why is that important? Why is communion an essential Christian practice?

Luke: 33:48

Was an essential Christian practice partly because Jesus told us to do it. He said, do this in remembrance of me. I have made a new covenant with my body and my blood. He has made us new people because of his death and resurrection, because of his sacrifice. When we do communion, it is literally remembering that Christ is with us, that we are centered around this.

Luke: 34:16

Say it this way, the community focused itself around Jesus and the gospel. They were saying by practicing communion, they're fixing, they were remembering themselves. They are participating and saying, this is what binds us together. This is the central thing. We ought to be doing this.

Luke: 34:35

We ought to be remembering Christ's sacrifice that he is with us, that we are now by his blood, by his sacrifice made into this community. Communion has as much about our relationship with each other as it does with God. Those are two equally important aspects of sharing communion with one another. Why do we take out of a loaf of bread? Why do we share that with one another?

Luke: 35:01

Personally, like, don't want to make this like some sort of like sacred cow, like, you know, those little the little wafer juice things or whatever. And like, if that's the way that you're used to taking communion or a church does it, I'm not trying to overly exert or being overly negative about it. But I love the symbolism of breaking a shared loaf. The reason being is because we are of one body. Right?

Luke: 35:27

I think that is important. And so they are consistently reminding themselves and focusing around Jesus and the gospel because that's what reoriented their lives. The final thing, the fourth thing that they focused themselves on and devoted themselves to was the prayers. Now this is an interesting thing because it says the prayers. Doesn't just say prayer, it says the prayers, and that kind of asks or begs us a little bit of interpreting what does that mean?

Luke: 35:59

Were there specific prayers that they were saying? What were those specific prayers? We don't really know. It's very possible that obviously we know that they were praying the Lord's Prayer, Our Father who art in heaven. They were saying that from a very early time.

Luke: 36:13

And so obviously that was part of their worship. But what I think this is perhaps referring to, if we go down to verse 46, we see this. And day by day they were attending temple together. They were going to church together. Temple.

Luke: 36:30

So if in ancient Judas practice, it was common to have three, at least three times of prayer a day. Once in the morning, once at noon, and once in the evening. And early Christians adopted that practice. And very honestly, many Christians have and still do practice multiple times of prayer throughout the day. It's called or it's traditionally been referred to as what's called the daily office.

Luke: 36:59

You can look up devotionals. I have a couple great devotionals if you would love to have that resource. I'm just thinking about it right now. But they're thirty days through the Psalms, thirty days through the teachings of Jesus, thirty days through Paul's letters, and it's divided up into three. Each day you have a devotion in the morning, the noon, and the evening.

Luke: 37:19

And if you do that over a course of thirty days, you'll go through that chunk of scripture. But it's a practice of what's called the daily office of setting aside specific times throughout the day to focus our attention on Christ, to reorient ourself amidst the busyness. Like, I'm sure that they thought they were busy back in, like, the New Testament, but they had no idea how busy we would be. Right? And they felt the need throughout their busy day to refocus their attention on Christ.

Luke: 37:53

How much more do we need time and availability to refocus our attention on Jesus. Our eyes should be daily fixed on Jesus, not just once a week. I love that you're here. I'm so happy that you've been here at Conduit. If you're like, it's your first time here or you have not been here for very long, I'm very happy that you're here.

Luke: 38:15

I'm always, always glad that you're here. But I really hope for your own soul, for your own well-being, that you are getting fed spiritually and nourished and meeting with God outside of this space. I'm glad that this is a place that meets you, where you feel God's presence, that you are hopefully being ministered to and you are growing. But you need this more than just once a week. I need this more than just once a week.

Luke: 38:46

And so if we are starving ourself for six days and expecting a singular meal of spiritual nourishment on Sunday to get us through, that is not sustainable. So they were constantly fixing their eyes on Jesus. Now, I don't have the time today, but there are a number of things that the church can focus their attention on. Right? The church can focus their attention on a personality.

Luke: 39:16

We see this too often where we get fixated on one singular talented preacher or teacher or leader, and we say, oh, all of our faith hangs on them. Or perhaps the church can get fixated and say, Oh, you know what? We're a community that's got it all figured out. And all those people out there, we're hiding from the evil outside in the world. Or sometimes church can become about performance and appearance.

Luke: 39:38

Church is about having it all together, putting on the nice clothes and having everything perfectly figured out. Or sometimes it can become about a spiritual product, consumerism. That's what I was just talking about. I don't want you to be a spiritual consumer of Sunday morning. I want you to be an active participant in your life with Christ.

Luke: 40:00

Those are things that the church can unintentionally fixate on that are not the essentials. So we've talked about, again, the four things that the church focused on. They focused on what? The apostles' teachings, the teachings of Christ. They focused on fellowship, being with one another.

Luke: 40:20

They focused on Christ. They focused on breaking bread, communion with one another. And then they finally, they they focused on the prayers, fixing their eyes on Jesus. What do these four things say for us? Are they or is this kind of like we could understand this in two ways.

Luke: 40:41

One is to say, that's the only thing the church should ever do. If the church isn't doing one of those four things, it's doing it should doing something, it should stop. I don't think that's a good way to understand this passage. I think the better way to understand this passage is that these are things that are essential. These are the basics.

Luke: 41:03

Like, if we're gonna do nothing else, this is what we ought to be doing. And to be honest, like, most of what we're doing here at Conduit does fit into one of those boxes in some ways. These are the things that we ought to be doing on a regular basis that we let we best not forget or neglect. If we have I forgot to put this up on the screen, but we have our four values here at Conduit. Four things that we say we as a communion community are gonna be focused on.

Luke: 41:31

Presence, formation, mission, and community. Those four things sit really neatly over top of these four things. Presence, being centered around Christ. Formation, learning, understanding, being devoted to the teachings of Christ. Caring for those out there, giving and serving.

Luke: 41:55

And then finally, community being in fellowship with one another. This is what I really want you to understand is that the church is a community of people who are in loving relationship with both each other and with God. If we have to sum it all up, if we have to make it even simpler than just four, we can make it into two. Jesus taught, he said that the most important commandment is this, love the Lord your God before your heart, mind and strength. And the second commandment is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.

Luke: 42:30

Love God, love neighbor. These are the things that we ought to be doing and focused in on as a church. Christianity is not about becoming Mr. Smarty pants. It's not about becoming Mr.

Luke: 42:44

All Put Together. It's about becoming a person of love. Someone who loves God and someone who loves other people as God would love them. We have to fight for that. We were created to be in community with God and with other people.

Luke: 43:03

This is really, really important. We all love the idea of community. I don't know that I can talk to anybody, they're just like, Oh, yeah, I really just would hate to have more deep, meaningful friendships and relationships. I haven't met that person yet. Most of us are like, yeah, I could use to stand some really close people to me.

Luke: 43:23

I could really use a brother or a sister in Christ who is there like family for me. If you want that, you have to hear this. If you want that, it requires your time. You cannot have it without the sacrifice of time. If you cannot carve out time in your schedule to sit down and to literally just be with someone, you don't have to be doing anything.

Luke: 43:51

You can be doing something, but you got to literally just be with them. That requires a sacrifice of our time, of our schedule, and of our freedom. And unless we're willing to offer some of that up, we will not have that level of community. If you're still like looking around and saying, I'm just waiting for it to happen, it's not going to happen. You have to be intentional about it.

Luke: 44:21

You have to find someone and say, This person looks like they're following Jesus. I wouldn't mind being a little bit more like them in a couple of years. Let me find some time to spend with them. And then finally, I think we need to understand that we are only stewards of our resources and we're not owners. That radical generosity that we talked about, that why was Barnabas willing to sell extra land that he had so that he could give it to the church so that the church could care for people?

Luke: 44:54

It's because he understood that the land wasn't his. And we need to understand that our time isn't ours, that our bank account isn't ours. We're merely caretakers. We're people who were God has given us things so that we might use them wisely and be good stewards. And so this is what we're called to.

Luke: 45:16

We're called into a radical sense of community. One where we act more like a family and less like a social club. One where we're not an organization, but we are here for one another to know one another and to care for one another. Is it messy? Oh, yeah.

Luke: 45:33

But at its best, it's Christ filled, Christ centered, and the Holy Spirit is active in it despite our own flaws. That's where I want to go as a community, and I hope that you're willing to go with us in that. Let's pray as the worship team comes on up. Heavenly Father, pray that you would help us to live into this vision of community. Lord, that you would help us to be willing to love one another with the kind of love that you have loved us.

Luke: 46:18

Lord, I ask that you would help us to serve one another. And, Lord, I ask that you would help us to keep you at the center, that we would not get distracted by things of you and miss you yourself. Lord, help us to not be so busy doing things for you that we forget to be with you. And, Lord, I pray that as we are with you and we are with other people that love you, that we would be changed to look more like you. In Jesus' name we pray.

Luke: 46:55

Amen. Conduit, as you go from here, it's my prayer that you would abide in Christ and that you would abide in the fellowship of believers as well. Go from here and know that you are loved. Go in peace.