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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
Acts 242 347.
And they devoted themselves
to the apostle's teaching
and the fellowship,
to the breaking of bread
and the prayers,
and all 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.
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.
They received their food
with glad and generous hearts,
praising God and having favor
with all the people.
And the Lord added to their number day
by day, those who were being saved.
I wonder if I told you that God
wants to use this church
to change the world.
What kind of a response
that would elicit from you?
I mean, it's unquestionably true
that God has used the local church
believing
and preaching the gospel of Jesus
to change the world.
If you doubt that, consider this.
The passage we're reading
is about a local church in Jerusalem.
We are reading it this morning
in a part of the world
they didn't even know existed
when this was happening.
The local church believing and preaching
the gospel of Jesus has changed the world.
But if I said he wants to use this church
to change the world,
my guess is that might elicit
a kind of an eyeroll.
At least it would for me.
I mean, it's just so big, so esoteric,
so theoretical.
It's like, what, are you pushing a button?
Starting a program.
How are we changing the world? But.
But what if I said God wants
to use this church to change your world?
Now, that's a little more imminent,
a little more practical.
There's a verse in this passage
that I've been thinking about all week.
Verse 47, the very last verse.
And it says,
and the Lord added to their number daily,
every day
someone new was buying in to Jesus.
Now that's fascinating to me
for a couple of reasons.
One is Christianity was pretty new
at this point, so it wasn't like people
were moving into town and googling, hey,
where's the coolest church in the area?
And the only thing
most people knew about Christianity
is that previously their leader
had been publicly crucified,
not exactly
at the height of its popularity.
And yet, every day
people were coming to faith in Jesus.
That's amazing to me.
I mean, we have experienced at this church
something incredible.
In January 2021,
we launched our reimagined vision.
We set some 30 year goals.
We kind of changed the way we approached
church and since January 2021
to today, we've baptized 641 people.
That's amazing, in fact,
that that happened over 1485 days.
So basically,
we've been baptizing someone every two
and a half days, which is awesome.
But in this passage,
they were doing three times that
someone
was getting baptized every single day.
If we had seen that here at the church
over the last four years,
that means another 840
people would have come to faith in Jesus.
And it's not the number
that I want you to focus on,
but the people in this passage
who are adding to their number daily.
Where did they come from?
They weren't stumbling into the church.
These people that were adding
to their number are they?
They were connected to
someone in the church.
That's the only way they would know about
what was going on.
That that was somebody's
husband, somebody's wife,
somebody's brother, sister, mom, dad,
coworker, neighbor.
So when I say that God
wants to use this church
to change your world,
let me ask you a question.
If one of those 840 people
that God wanted to
reach had been your husband,
would that have changed your world?
If you didn't have to drag him to church?
But if he was calling you from the car
in the garage
going, hey, we're all ready to go,
where are you?
We have to get there. It's 10:00 in West.
If you don't get there early,
you don't get a seat.
Would your world not be changed
if your wife wanted
to work on your marriage
because of what Jesus
was doing in her life?
If she wanted to work on your marriage
because of what he was doing in your life,
would your world not be changed
if he finally got sober?
If she got clean,
if he was ready to forgive you?
You get the point.
Listen, God does want to use this
church to change your world,
to save your
family, to rebuild your marriage,
to interject your life with joy.
That is the mission of the church.
And by the way, let me just say this.
If you're here this weekend
and you don't really know where you are
with God, you maybe wouldn't
call yourself a follower of Jesus.
I want you to see in this passage
that God's mission for this place
is to bring you in.
God does want to change your world.
So the question then, of course, is how?
How do we become the kind of place
where this kind of world changing happens?
How do we become the kind of place
that sees three times what we've seen
over the last four years,
in the next four years?
Well, to answer that question,
I need you to open your Bible
to Acts chapter two and look at verses
42 through 47.
By the way, the verses I use
are going to be on the screen behind me.
You don't have to have
a Bible in your hands.
You can take out your phone or your iPad
if you want.
If you want to hold
something in your hands,
there are Bibles in this room
or in the back of the room in East Hall.
And if you want to use one of these,
today's reading is on page 857,
upper left hand side
if you want to look at it.
But however you're getting there,
let me hold out to the outline
I'm going to use to talk about
how this place can become a place
that changes your world.
Three things very simple.
Change your verb.
Change your pronouns.
Change your expectations.
Change your verbs. Change your pronouns.
Change your expectations.
All right,
let me start with the first one.
Change your verbs.
I don't love to talk about
the original language.
Feels like a weird flex.
Now I get all week to get ready.
I don't I'm not really that smart,
but the Greek verb here
is incredibly important.
Look with me in acts two verse 42,
I just want you to notice
what was going on
in the life of this church.
Verse 42.
And they devoted themselves
to the apostles teaching
and the fellowship,
to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Two things
I want you to notice right off the top.
The first is that
this church was pretty boring.
I mean, they weren't doing anything
unusual.
The Bible says they were doing four things
the apostles teaching.
That means they were studying the Bible.
They were spending time together.
That's fellowship.
They were taking communion,
which we're going to do in a minute.
That's the breaking of bread.
And they were praying together
those four things.
That's the same playbook that every church
has been running for 2000 years there.
Their secret wasn't in their methodology.
They were doing the same things
that every church is doing.
The secret is in the verb.
Look at what it says in the English
and they devoted themselves in the Greek.
This word is really interesting.
It it's a combination of a preposition
and a verb.
It means to point yourself
in a certain direction.
That's the preposition, and then not
stop moving until you get there.
That's the verb to to set your face
to something and,
and to keep moving with relentlessness
until you get there.
To be devoted is to move without stopping.
When I think about this verb, maybe
the best way I can communicate to you
is that if you're like me,
your life is governed by your calendar.
Now I use outlook,
but you can use whatever you want.
Microsoft doesn't pay me, so go crazy.
But every morning
the first thing I do is pull up
my calendar to try to figure out
what I'm supposed to do that day.
And I wear a lot of hats.
I mean, I'm a pastor, I'm a boss, I'm a
I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a friend.
And so usually my calendar
is full of things that other people
are counting on me to do.
And that's great.
Sometimes, though,
those things are competing.
Sometimes multiple people
want something from me
at a particular time,
and then I have to decide
who wins and who loses.
What this verb is
saying is that there's something for each
one of us that tends to always win.
There's something for each one of us
that almost never loses a tie.
It's that thing that we say, hey,
when anything goes up against this, I'm.
I'm going to commit to that.
So maybe for you, it's,
it's family or or work or your hobby
or but for this church,
they said the thing on our calendar
that we don't deviate
from is chasing after Jesus.
That's what it means to be devoted.
It doesn't mean
they didn't have families or jobs or
or hobbies or dreams or ambitions.
It just meant they weren't
willing to sacrifice.
Except asking God
and experiencing his kingdom
for anything.
You see, this
church is sacred
is that they built their lives around
Jesus instead of trying to fit Jesus
in the nooks and crannies of their lives.
Now, that's important
because the thing you're devoted to,
the thing in your calendar that always
wins, that's the thing that defines you.
You know that everybody around
you knows you don't bother her at work.
You don't get in the way of his family.
It's summertime.
He's on the golf course.
Everybody knows that. It's
what defines you.
And it's also what
everyone around you notices.
So for this church, what was happening
is that people around them were going,
wow, they're not they're not like kind of
into the God thing.
They're
they're building their lives around God.
And so I'm going to kind of stand back
and see what happens.
And what was happening is
people were changing
and their brothers and sisters
and husbands and wives
and mothers and, and were showing up
because they were saying, what must
you have found for it
to be everything else?
That's what it means to be devoted.
I'll give you an example up.
Who in Ohio State
just won the national championship? Oh!
Let's go.
We're champions, baby, let's live it up.
We win every game
except for the one that matters.
So Ohio State just won the championship.
I'm basking in the glory.
It was my freshman year of college.
Ohio State won the national championship.
If you remember, that was Jim Tressel.
Craig Krenzel
Holy Buckeye against Purdue, right.
It's kind of a crazy year
because we weren't expected
to win the championship that year.
Right.
And so you kind of watching
we just kept kind of winning games
all the way up until now.
We're going to go up
against the juggernaut of Miami,
in the national championship game.
And my dad this particular year,
my dad was visiting me in college,
and I was introducing him to the girl
I had just started dating, named Amy,
who's now my wife had been married
almost 20 years,
and I was so excited for him to meet her.
And we're all sitting around talking,
and my dad and
I are talking about the Buckeyes,
and Amy's just kind of soaking it in.
Right.
And we're talk about how amazing
I say to my dad, when is the game
win is like, what's the date
of the national championship game?
And he tells me and Amy goes, oh,
that's when we're going on
that ski trip with my family.
My dad says all the
color just drained out of my face.
Because in that moment,
two things that I really cared about
were competing the Buckeyes and this girl
that I was falling in love with.
Well, of course I went on the ski trip
and I don't regret it.
I don't regret it because that's
what it means to be devoted.
I will let me finish that story, though.
I got on the charter bus that was going to
and from the ski trip, and I
it was the night of the game,
and I told everybody
from the front of the bus,
I didn't know any of these people.
I just said, listen, my name is Zach. I'm
a Ohio State fan.
I'm taping the game.
Here's a list of words
you're not allowed to say.
Football or Buckeyes.
Hurricanes don't ruin this game for me.
Every guy on the bus was like, I got you.
Every girl was like, who is this jerk?
So until
finally we stop at a McDonald's and,
for some coffee and use a bathroom,
and we go in
and there's a USA today on the counter
that's talking about the game.
And Amy goes, oh, look at Ohio State
and the lady behind the register goes,
it's an overtime right now.
One day I will forgive my wife.
But that's what it means to be devoted.
Listen,
if you want to see your family members
become curious about Jesus,
if you want to see three times
the amount of people, then
Jesus has got to stop losing the things.
Because if we dabble in Jesus,
but we're devoted to travel sports,
what are they going to think about Jesus
if we dabble in Jesus?
But we're devoted to family, devoted
to work, then what shapes us is family.
What shapes us is work.
And those things are good things,
but they're not the kingdom of God.
This church was devoted it.
They built their lives around God,
around the relationship with Jesus.
But not only that.
Second thing,
you got to change your pronouns.
This is not that sermon,
but I knew it would get your attention.
But I want you to look with me in verses
44 through 46.
I want you to notice the pronouns
in these verses.
Here's what it says.
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
attending the temple together
and breaking bread in their homes,
they received their food
with glad and generous hearts.
You see the pronouns
you don't see in this passage
are I and me.
Christianity is a team sport.
It's about being part
of the people of God.
It's about
what God is doing in a group of people, in
and through them and in their midst.
Americans are so individualistic, and
we've interjected that into Christianity.
Growing up in the church,
I was always being asked like,
did you do your quiet time with God
this morning?
Zach, how is your prayer life?
Zach, how is your obedience?
And listen, those things matter.
But if we're not careful, the idea is that
it's you and God and me and God.
And when we gather, we're just kind of
mutually helping each other progress.
But that's not what the Bible says.
I don't have time to explore this theme
completely, but read the New Testament.
It is written to churches,
not to individuals, but to churches.
Look at how many times the writers
in the New Testament will say one another
when they talk about pray,
when they talk about reading,
when they talk about obedience.
It's a group project.
And the reason this is so important
is because God moves
in the midst of his people.
Listen, 20 years of being a pastor,
I've spent a lot of time with people
who are struggling in their faith,
and they'll say things like this.
Maybe you've felt one or all of these.
They'll say things like,
I just don't feel close to God.
Hey, Pastor Zach, why doesn't
God do big things anymore like he did
in the Bible?
I just don't feel God's love.
Listen,
if you've said one of those things,
let me try to make the point to you
this way.
Can you imagine
what those would sound like
if one Israelite was saying them
to another?
And the banks of the Red sea,
like Pharaoh's army is pressing
down on you, and God splits the Red sea,
and you take.
I mean, if at least offer me,
you take that first tentative step
just to see if it's going to work
and you're crossing in between the waters,
and what are you going to do?
You're walking to your buddy
and you are talking and
and he looks at you and he goes,
you know what?
I just don't feel close to God.
And you would just go.
And he would say, how come God doesn't do
big things anymore?
Like my parents told me
he did with Abraham, and you would go.
And he would say,
I just don't feel God's love.
And you would say, the fact
that you're not feeling an Egyptian spear
is God's love.
My point is, listen, God is moving.
He moves in the midst of his people.
You're chasing
too much individual satisfaction.
Listen, I'm in the atrium, and a guy
stops me the other day and he goes.
Pastor Zach passes.
I guess what I said, what? He goes.
I just celebrated
my 1,100th day of sobriety.
And he said, it all began
when I came here and heard about Jesus.
My life has been totally changed.
Listen,
you have any addicts in your family?
Is 1100 days of sobriety
any less than the Red sea?
I can tell you stories.
Marriage is being put back together.
People being healed from cancer.
I can tell you all kinds of stories.
You know where you find those stories.
In the people of God.
Listen.
It's as we began to build our lives around
Jesus and begin to become intermixed
with the people of Jesus, that amazing
things happen
and everyone around us takes notice.
And the only thing that doesn't make sense
is saying, I don't feel close to God
because you're sitting next to the family
that just had their marriage
rescued.
You got to change your pronouns.
It's not about you and Jesus.
It's not about me and God.
It's about us
and what God is doing in our midst.
That leads me to my third point,
which is to say you have to change
your expectations
to change your expectations.
Look at verse 43.
I love this verse is what it says,
and all came upon every soul,
and many wonders and signs
were being done through the apostles.
I take this to mean that God says,
you show me a church that is devoted.
You show me a church that is together
and I will blow the doors off that church.
This verse 43 is what only God can do.
It's what God has to bring
to the equation.
But here's the thing
I don't think acts two is a snapshot
of a particular church
in a particular time and place.
I think it's a template for what God wants
every church
to be.
God wants every church
to change the world of the people in
and around it.
Like, imagine for a second you're
a man on an island.
You're
just just you on an island with the Bible,
and you read the Bible, and through it
you meet Jesus.
You become a believer,
a follower of Jesus.
You read in in acts two about the church
and the day you read acts
two, a boat finally shows up
and you're rescued,
and the people on the boat are Christians
and you're telling them, hey, listen,
you're not going to believe this,
but I found a Bible.
Tom Hanks had a volleyball, I had a Bible,
and unmet Jesus.
And I've become a Christian.
And I just have one question for you.
Are you part of a church?
What's it like?
Friends,
the expectations we should have for this
church are not about your past experience
with churches.
The expectations we should have for this
place are about what God wants to do in
and through his people.
He does want to reach your husband.
He does want to save your marriage.
He does want to change your world.
That's the best way
I can think of saying this.
I've told you this before.
Is is is to contrast the experience
of being a Browns fan and a Buckeyes fan,
and some of you feel this in your soul.
When I watch the Browns play,
I know how they're going to lose.
About halfway through the first quarter.
You know, we'll miss an extra point
and I'll go, yep, there it is.
Right.
You know you know,
and sometimes I watch a Browns game
with someone who's not a Browns fan.
And about halfway
through the first quarter,
they're like, you're so cynical, man.
Then by the end of the game,
they're like, hey,
can I get the lottery numbers
for this week?
Like, I've seen the movie?
You know, I expect the Browns
to break my heart, but that's not true.
When I watch Ohio State.
When I went to the game Monday
night, Notre Dame,
great team I won of the game
feeling cocky, feeling good
because overwhelmingly Ohio State wins
more of their games.
It's a totally different experience.
We miss a field going, I'm going,
do we kick a field goal?
Sure. Just a touchdown pass.
Life has a
way of reducing our expectations
for who God is
and what he wants to do to Browns
and levels.
You probably didn't show up this morning
expecting God to change your world.
But friends, we don't base
our expectations for this place
on our past experience.
We don't base our expectations on
how our week is going.
God is saying to us in this passage,
I want three times more
than the amazing things
you've already experienced.
I had a lunch with a guy this week
and he said, hey Pastor Zach, this
premier night thing
you guys keep talking about,
you tell us the sermon series,
get ready for that.
He's like, hey, what's that really about?
You can tell me
and the 100 people I will tell after this.
And I said, man, listen,
I can't tell you I'm sworn to secrecy,
but I'll give you a little spoiler.
You want to get ready for premiere night?
You got to raise your expectations.
Not for us. Not for what we do.
Not for what happens on stage.
This church was doing all the things
that we do.
We to raise our expectations
because God wants
more.
More lives changed.
More eternities changed.
God wants you.
And to change your world.
Let me pray for us, father God, thank you
so much for acts two.
And the resetting of our expectations.
The call
to think bigger, to believe bigger.
To believe that as we are
devoted, as we are together,
you will interject this place
with the wonders
that you talk about in verse 43.
And God, that is our desire
to see you move in our midst
for your glory,
for the good of our family members
and friends,
and for our joy.
In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.