Discipleship Week 2 • Community

Sunday, August 14th • Beau Bradberry

"And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." — Matthew 4:19

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Show Notes

August 14th, 2022 • "And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." — Matthew 4:19

–
Podcast: https://pod.link/willowridgechurch
Website: https://willowridgechurch.org
Instagram: https://instagram.com/willowridgechurch
Facebook: https://facebook.com/willowridgechurch
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@willowridgechurch

Creators and Guests

Host

Beau Bradberry

Senior Pastor

What is Willow Ridge Sermons?

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Thanks for listening.

Good morning.

If you've got your Bibles, I want to invite you to join me in Matthew 4 and in Acts chapter 2,

two different passages of Scripture that we're going to look at this morning.

If you do not have your Bible with you, I want to encourage you to bring your Bible with you each week

as we open up and study from God's Word.

If you don't own a Bible, back at the table back here to my left,

where Aaron and I will be standing at the end of the service, we do have some free copies.

So if you don't have one, please feel free to stop by there.

You can just grab one.

It's our gift to you.

We want to make sure everybody has a copy of God's Word.

A couple of reminders, our family mission trip, sign-ups are still going on for that.

So if you would like to join us the first weekend in September in serving at Black Mountain Children Home,

we would love for you to join us.

And so you can grab a registration form, fill that out.

You can leave it with us.

We'd love to have you.

And then also, we hope to see you all back tonight for our church family picnic as we'll gather together.

Some questions have been asked.

You know, it's South Carolina, so it can be anywhere between 70 and 150 degrees,

but you're going to sweat regardless, all right?

So we're going to have—you'll be able to be inside to eat and do the different things,

and then we have some of our activities that will be outside.

So I hope to see you all here this evening.

Like, let's set a goal to run out of food, amen?

All right, and I'm really looking forward of sampling a little bit of what all of you bring,

especially for desserts.

And because you know me, if there's a request out there,

if you're sitting there right now and you're like, I don't know what to do, right?

Normally, I give you one option.

I'm going to give you two, all right?

Homemade chocolate chip cookies always go over well, and so does banana pudding.

I've never been mad at either one of those.

I say homemade.

Who are we kidding?

If you go buy store-bought, that's pretty good, too, all right?

So we'd love to have you guys back with us.

Now, I was thinking about this standing over there.

Dave, thank you, man, making me a little emotional with talking with the first day back at school

and realize in my 43 years of being on this earth, I've got 43 years of, in some way, shape, or form,

the first day of school.

I was raised by a teacher.

My mom was a teacher.

She's retired now.

And then I married a teacher.

And then in my 43 years, I have been a student in some way, shape, or form for the last 30 years, or for 30 years.

That's been the span from kindergarten all the way up through high school, college, master's, doctoral study,

all of those over the course of a 30 year.

So, like, I get first days of school.

I get the balance that's all there.

But I'm experiencing something that I've never experienced, which this year will be my kids' first year in high school.

So, here's, we're about to pray for teachers and students here in just a second.

But here's what I'm going to need you to do.

Tuesday morning, I'm not going to be okay.

All right?

And so, it's going to be bad.

Like, 8.05 to 8.10, I'm going to try to hold it together while I drop them off.

But it's going to be like a lifetime Christmas movie from the time that I drop them off until I get here.

So, if you love me, just lift me up.

Pray for me.

Encourage me.

I went there the other day for orientation.

They were good.

I was overwhelmed.

It's tough.

It's tough.

It's tough.

All right.

So, but seriously, for all of the teachers, district employees, school workers that we've got here,

number one, I want to say thank you for what you do in serving our community and in pouring into these kids each and every day.

I know most of the time when you open up an email from a parent or someone outside of there, it is not filled with affirmation and encouragement.

And so, we just want to encourage you just by saying thank you for what you do to serve these kids well.

And then for all of us who are going to be, whether it's a college classroom, whether it's a kindergarten class, everywhere in between,

as we are students, man, go and pursue the education that the Lord has for you because what he can do is take that and use you in a greater way and a greater depth for the kingdom.

And whether you're a teacher, student, employee, just be the light of Christ wherever you are.

So, before we jump into this, let's just go ahead and go to the Lord in prayer real quickly.

God, I thank you for yet another first week of school, first day of school this week.

Lord, I thank you for the opportunities that are there to see young minds grow beyond what they were before.

Lord, I thank you for the teachers and the administrators, the staff of the school.

That, Lord, fill those hallways every day to serve a meal, to make sure a classroom is clean, to present new information to be learned,

or, Lord, to lead and guide the faculty and staff.

Lord, I thank you for the districts that are represented in our community,

that make difficult decisions to create cultures and environments in all of our schools so that learning can be achieved for every student.

Lord, I pray for all of these adults that fill these capacities, Lord, especially, Lord, those ones that are believers,

Lord, that it would be more than just an education, but it would be an opportunity to impact a life for the sake of the gospel.

Lord, I pray for all of our students,

whether first-year students going into kindergarten or old 43-year-olds signing up for another class through a seminary

and everyone in between.

Lord, expand our minds to learn more.

Lord, and use it in the capacity to grow deeper with you.

And, Lord, we thank you for the wonderful privileges that we have.

Lord, with everything that's gone on and what we know,

which is, for some of us, stored on the back of our brains that we want to forget,

and some of us at the front that we can become fixated on,

Lord, I just pray for protection around our schools.

Lord, I pray for the safeguard that you could provide them in these days and times.

And Jesus will celebrate you for it.

And it's in your name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

So we are in week two of our discipleship series.

Last week, we started this off and talked about church membership and why it's important for you to truly belong to a local body.

Now, we're not going to go recap all that.

I looked this week.

It got a little carried away.

It took me 54 minutes last week.

So go online, listen to that, talks about membership and why we value that.

But then over the next four weeks, what we're going to do is look at different aspects of discipleship.

And so here's what I want to kind of start off.

Normally, we start off by defining what something is.

But this morning, I want to just kind of briefly talk about what something is not.

And so discipleship is not this.

Discipleship is not simply put saying, I attend this class.

I attend this small group.

I attend this Sunday school class.

Box checked.

I'm done.

I'm a disciple of Jesus.

Now, I believe that those classes, Sunday school classes, small groups, studies, small groups,

I believe that all of that is used in a powerful way and is an integral part of discipleship.

But what we'll find out as we work through this series together is that discipleship is not a program that we go to,

a box that we can check, a diploma that we can receive and say, been there, done that.

I'm good to go in my life now.

But instead, what we find is that discipleship, true discipleship, true Christian discipleship

is a process that crosses over into every detail of your life.

Every single moment of your life is a moment that God is giving you to disciple you,

the discipleship process, so that you can become more and more like Jesus.

Now, I believe that when we look at the models that we're going to see in one of the models

over the course of the next several weeks is going to be Jesus and his interaction with his disciples, right?

And what we see in Jesus' life is that his discipleship process with them was 24 hours a day,

seven days a week for somewhere around three and a half years.

This is the process he went through.

Why?

Because Jesus understood as he looked at his 12 disciples that it wasn't going to be,

hey, meet me back here Sunday morning at 10.

We'll talk for 45 minutes and then break and then come back.

But Jesus understood and needed to implement to them as going to be the early leaders of the church

is that discipleship weaves into every aspect of your life.

So here's what I'm going to say up front going into this for four weeks.

We're not going to cover all of the aspects of discipleship.

There's no way in four weeks that we can figure out every minute detail of your life and my life

and how discipleship fits in there.

But I think what we can begin to do is scratch the surface of all of the areas

and then try to dig down a little bit deeper into each one of these

and see, okay, God, how you can use this in my life to grow me more to being like you.

And so over the four weeks, here's what we're going to talk about.

Today is going to be discipleship and community.

Next week we'll gather back and talk about discipleship and serving.

And then after that we're going to talk about discipleship and personal responsibility.

And then our very last week we're going to talk about discipleship and the family

and look at all of these different aspects.

And what I think we're going to look at and see is what we're going to find is that in Christian discipleship,

it's both the formal and informal process with which we live our lives.

Meaning this, earlier today, and I love this, my kids got here a little bit after nine.

They took off, they went upstairs to this room right up here to my right,

which is where Joel Van Ham was up there with another group of kids.

And they sat down and had an environment that was created where they discussed scripture,

they discussed life, and that's a part of the formal process of discipleship

that our students have an opportunity to be a part of each and every Sunday morning here

at Willow Ridge Church.

All right, that's a formal process that is used and valued and God's doing great things in that.

Almost every week Joel comes out and just talks about how God is using that in the lives of these students,

but also in his life as well.

So we see the formal structure of discipleship that is there,

but God also uses the informal moments of our life in discipleship.

So I don't get to say, oh cool, my kids are being discipled, check that box, we move on from that.

No, no, no, no. We continue that on into aspects of her life.

So when we're riding down the road, we can sit there and we can talk about what it means to follow Christ.

We see something come on the TV and it triggers something to where we talk about what that means with Jesus, right?

So we look at our lives and it's the formal that we use and it's the informal process by which we become more like Christ.

We're going to get into this in just a moment, but I want to say this and we can yes and amen this, right?

We're not trying to become more like each other.

We're trying to become more like Jesus.

And all too often when ego gets in the way, we try to become more like an idol that we've created in a man or a woman,

but we become more like Christ.

And what happens in that is we formal and informal process by which we become more like Christ,

there's something that needs to begin to take place, right?

Like we don't earn our salvation, but God definitely gives us a whole lot of commands of what we're to do when we are saved, right?

And we become more invested in the mission of God.

We're going to become more and more invested in the mission of God in every aspect of our life.

So we stop looking at our walk with Jesus in segmented blocks on our calendar like a school schedule.

And we start looking at our walk and our being on mission with Jesus, right, in every single aspect of our life.

So as we talk about discipleship, we're going to talk about what it means to be a disciple.

So we're going to ask this question this morning.

So we're going to look at in Matthew 4, what is a disciple?

What is a disciple?

So in Matthew 4, Jesus is going to call his first disciples.

This is a pretty big deal.

He's going to call Simon Peter and his brother Andrew.

And what we see is Jesus is walking by the Sea of Galilee.

He sees Peter and Andrew fishing.

Now, this isn't like me on a pond, like hoping to get a brim, all right?

This is their livelihood.

This is what they do.

This is how they support themselves, right?

This is what they do for a living.

And verse 19 says,

And he said to them, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

Verse 20,

Immediately, they left their nets and followed him, right?

Pretty interesting, brief interaction.

It was going to carry more and more over in their life.

And Jesus gives a definition of what it means to be a disciple by this command that he gives Andrew and Simon Peter.

And so that's what we want to look at.

We're going to look at this statement of Jesus and see what this means.

So the first thing, he gives these two words, right?

Follow me.

So being a disciple begins with following Jesus.

To reiterate what I just said, discipleship is about following Jesus.

Not a church, not a program, not an earthly leader.

Discipleship is about following Jesus and Jesus alone.

And this is the first command that he gives them.

It's got to begin with this.

Follow me.

Heard a guy say one time that discipleship should not begin in the church, but discipleship should begin on the mission field.

That when we engage lost men, women, and children with the gospel of Jesus Christ,

when we say follow Jesus, what we're doing is we're pointing them to a Messiah on a road of discipleship that they can join us on as we follow him as well.

So what we begin to understand is that if you identify yourself as a follower of Jesus,

then whether you're engaged formally or informally with discipleship or not, right,

you've signed up for it.

You've signed up for it.

This is who you are.

And this is why for us at our church, it's so important that this is for every area of our church and every stage of life in our church.

If you are a follower of Jesus, then discipleship is a part of what we're calling you to.

I heard a guy say one time, and I love this,

if you have air in your lungs and your heart is beating, God's not done with you.

And if God's not done with you, then you're called to be a disciple, right?

The second thing that we see is being transformed by Jesus.

Jesus tells them, I will make you fishers of men.

Now, when Jesus says, I will make you, we get this implication that he's going to change them.

It's the beautiful picture that we get.

Up until this moment, more than likely, what are they mainly focused on?

Catching fish, right?

It's a good thing if that's your living.

You need to catch fish.

And Jesus says, if you were to define yourself, they would define themselves as fishermen, those that catch fish.

But Jesus says, I'm going to make you fishers of men.

Now, this word make, y'all know I'm a nerd and I like to look at word stuff, so just bear with me if this isn't you, okay?

But the word make there is actually the word that means to produce, right?

And so what Jesus is saying to them is, come and follow me, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to produce something in you, right?

You see, because it's not just simply about tweaking and modifying and changing behaviors, but it's a spiritual work.

It's a work that takes us into the thoughts of creation of what God's going to change and what God's going to do and what God's going to create.

So Jesus says, I'm not just going to change you.

Jesus says, I'm going to produce something in you.

This is who you're going to become at the very fiber of your being that you will be a disciple.

And then, like, this isn't a normal phrase of what he says he's going to do.

Now, if you're here and you've been a part of church for a while, you've heard this phrase, fishers of men, all right?

Now, I want to throw this out to you.

Like, if you know of anyone who doesn't, who's never gone to church, never read the Bible, go ask them what they think this phrase means, right?

Like, it's different.

It's not a common phrase.

He says he's going to make them fishers of men.

So your goal is to go and do something else.

And Jesus says, nope, we're going to be counter from all of those things.

And we're going to now be about people, which brings us to our third living on mission with Jesus.

And so over the next three years, right, this is what happens.

Jesus will teach the crowd.

Jesus will perform miracles.

But he's going to take this small group of misfits and outcasts, and he's going to show them what it means to be on mission.

And he's going to release and empower them to do their mission.

And it's going to be what the Great Commission tells us, what Acts 1-8 tells us, to go and make disciples.

And this is big.

This is huge.

Jesus doesn't say, go and build big churches.

Jesus doesn't say, go and make converts.

Jesus says his words, take it up with him if you don't like it.

Go and make disciples.

Right?

Go share the gospel.

Baptize them.

Teach them to obey Jesus.

So here's what this means.

When we look at the healthy growth that we long for and that we desire,

number one, our goal in life is not just to figure out how can we surround ourselves with more and more churchgoers.

And then in there.

But our goal also isn't to walk up to someone and figure out how to talk them into the gospel,

high-five them, and walk away.

Our goal from what Jesus calls for us is, yes, there are churchgoers that are part of our congregation.

Yes, absolutely.

Do not mistake what I say, that we're not supposed to go and see people converted to Christianity.

We are, but that in that we're not just satisfied with one action that happens,

and instead what we understand that we're working toward is building the kingdom of God

through men and women and children who are disciples, growing in their relationship.

And so what we're going to look at this morning as we talk through all this is discipleship in community.

Discipleship in community.

Now, when I say discipleship, here's what I mean.

That you and I are called to a form of discipleship.

I've played around with this sentence a lot this week.

And here's what I feel really good about.

That involves varying levels of interaction with other Christians and other people

as we help them and they help us become more like Jesus.

And here's why I say varying levels of interaction with other people,

because this is what we see in Jesus' life.

Jesus ministered and lived in community, right, in varying forms and in varying degrees in his life.

Largely, and it's because it's the best model when we look at that,

and it's what I've done a lot this morning, is we look at Jesus in the 12.

They're the ones who spent the most time with Jesus, and that's true.

But Jesus wasn't this random guy walking around with 12 people,

isolating the rest of the world.

That's not what we see at all.

And what we find that is in Jesus' life, it wasn't just the 12 that said, sign me up,

that there were other men and women and children who professed faith in Christ.

So we see the discipleship arch of Jesus' ministry expand beyond that.

And so Jesus preached to and ministered to, at different times, hundreds and even up to thousands in Scripture that we see.

We see from there when Jesus performed the miracle with the fish and the bread, right, and he fed the thousands.

We see the Sermon on the Mount where most believe of the hundreds that were there, and we see this in his life, and it's a part of discipleship.

There's value, right, in the large gathering.

And this is part of discipleship.

We also see Jesus preach to and minister to smaller crowds, like 20 to 50.

We see in Scripture different times where houses are filled because Jesus is in there, and he's teaching, or they just heard that he's there.

And so no one else can get into the house.

We see that.

We see different stories where Jesus is walking through some of these small towns that would have been capping out around 50 people,

and the crowd is so close to him that other people have to kind of fight and strain to get by Jesus.

So we see the crowds in different areas shrink down a little bit, right?

We see Jesus preached and ministered to the 12.

Here's what's really interesting and I find really neat about this in the discipleship mode of what we talk about

is that we hear stories, we read from Scripture, where Jesus would go out and, like, share a parable with a larger group of people.

Let's say 50 to 75 people, Jesus shares this parable and shares this teaching.

And then after that's over with, he's walking with just the 12, just that smaller group of disciples,

and then they ask Jesus what it's about, or Jesus just goes into a teaching that breaks it down a little bit more

that's clearer for them to understand.

And so we see, like, the discipleship of Jesus working more into this funnel area where it gets smaller and smaller.

And then sometimes even from the life of Jesus, we see that he gets alone with just a few, primarily Peter, James, and John.

And Peter, James, and John had the privilege of the calling by Christ to go places where no other disciples went

and to see things in the life of Christ that no other disciples saw.

And so we see Jesus go from the thousands to the three.

And what I would press is all of these settings are great in value.

They're all essential.

They're all needed.

They're all a part of the ministry and the life of Jesus.

And they're all a part and valuable for our life.

But what we find is the smaller the group gets, the greater the depth of discipleship.

The smaller the group gets, the greater the depth of discipleship.

And we know this, especially if you've been a part of a smaller group.

We can gather in here.

We can talk about things.

I say we.

Y'all know it's just me.

I can get up here and I can talk about things, right?

And you can sit there and hopefully take some notes and jot some things down.

And then we see the greater depth of discipleship happen while you're sitting at the table with your spouse afterwards.

And you're talking about different things.

I heard from a parent last week for the message a few weeks ago.

And they said it was just great because afterwards it just, as we talked about self-control,

here's what it brought out as we begin to talk about this with our student, right?

We begin to see these greater depths of discipleship.

Or we gather on Sunday morning and we do this.

And then you go meet with your small group on Sunday night.

And you're able to really kind of look at these things and ask your questions and to dive in and to see all of that, right?

Right?

So in your life, community can look different like it did with Jesus opening to various and varying groups of people.

We want to look at an example of this.

And so flip over to Acts chapter 2 now, right?

Acts chapter 2, and we see this picture of community in Scripture.

Starting in verse 42.

And this is the formation of the early church, okay?

This is,

And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and 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.

So what we want to do is we just want to kind of look at this in this aspect or characteristics of community and ask ourselves this question.

As I see the things that the early church was doing in Acts chapter 2.

So they've gotten the call of Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit.

And they're going and they're seeing men and women and children come to faith in Jesus Christ.

And they're gathering together in these small groups.

And there are these aspects in their relationships that were vital to their discipleship and their growth.

So I think for us, right, years and years later, like we can take the step back and look at that and ask ourselves the question.

Are these the things, are these the part, the defining moments of our relationships that we see?

And if these begin to be a part of who we are, not only as a body of believers, but if this is what I value as an individual believer,

then what can God work and do in my life and in the lives of others?

And so we see these characteristics that are common to them from this passage to talk about them.

And it says, number one, that they were devoted to God's word.

It says that they devoted themselves to the apostles' teachings.

So it kind of makes it sound like they devoted themselves to preaching.

And as a preacher, I like the way that sounds.

But I don't believe that this is what this is fully carrying here.

This word teaching is used 30 different times in the New Testament.

And every time it is used, it carries with it authoritative and inspired teaching, meaning God's word.

When Acts chapter 2 was taking place and a believer become a follower of Christ, right?

They couldn't send them to the back table to get a free copy of God's word, could they?

They couldn't jump on Amazon and go figure out what's the latest study Bible that I want to do to be able to have.

And so there was an even greater dependence on the authoritative word of the apostles' teachings.

And so as the New Testament would be written and as the letters would be passed, they were so precious as they came to them.

And as they were taught and as they were instructed, they valued the depth of knowing and processing God's word, right?

And we need to have the same value.

And I find that oftentimes we can slightly, for some of us, or maybe even most of us, myself included, begin to wander from that, right?

Give you kind of a picture of what I'm talking about.

I love books, right?

Before seminary, I liked to read more then than I do now.

I'm just being honest.

But you find now you've got to read more because you have to, not necessarily because you want to.

But I love books.

Now, in my office, I have roughly, I try to do a quick count between my office at home and my office here.

I have somewhere around 400 books.

Now, as my son will kind of make fun of me about, Dad, that was a really passive flex.

All right, so let me be honest with you about what I'm saying here this morning, all right?

I haven't read all 400 of those, all right?

This isn't like, oh, come look at the wealth of knowledge that I have, right?

That's not where I'm at.

But I have 400 books, roughly 400 books that I own that talk about God's Word.

Whether it's talking about missions, whether it's talking about theology, whether it's a commentary, whether it's about family, whether it's about counseling, whether it's about finances.

Roughly 400 books that talk about things of God, but not one of them or not all of them even combined come with the authority that God's Word does, right?

That this is it.

It's not that they're bad, but they're not this.

I love podcasts.

I listen to about 10 different podcasts each week that talk about God's Word.

I listen to teachers who live all over the world as they open up God's Word and as they teach from it.

But not one of them is meant to replace or stand in equality with the Bible, with God's Word.

When I think about this and we talked about who we're to be like, we have to be careful that we aren't becoming a disciple of insert your favorite podcast or author.

Right?

There's some authors that I love, that I love, but I don't need to be more like them.

I need to be more like Him.

And where I know that I can find this is in God's Word.

Now, this isn't a call not to read, not any of that.

But here's what it is a call to do.

What I love about the books that I read is here's what I believe, that the person who is writing the books is depending as much as they can on the Holy Spirit who is inside of them for them to understand the scripture that they're reading, to process that, and then to write that.

And it's beautiful to see what the Holy Spirit does in an author's life or in a preacher's life.

But you've got that same Holy Spirit.

And nothing can take away, can replace you in dependence on the Holy Spirit as you read God's Word, seeking for the Holy Spirit to work and to move inside of you.

Second thing, they thought beyond themselves.

It says that they were devoted to fellowship.

The usage of the word they.

We're going from seeing this group of people in their life and in many different ways, they're interwoven together.

But here's what I love, but there's always room for others.

It says, and they all believed who were together and had all things in common.

And then at the end, what the Lord added to their number every day, those who were being saved.

So let's work through this.

There was never a point where they were like, nah, we're good.

We're full.

No space for you.

That they were devoted themselves to one another, but they were also receptive to what the Lord was doing as the Lord added to their number.

Right?

And they devoted themselves.

And they didn't become carbon copies of one another, but here's what I believe is we see this devoted to fellowship of what it means.

It's what Paul's going to talk about in Romans 12, 15, when he says, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.

What does that mean?

It means your lives are so interwoven together that when someone experiences joy, you experience it with them.

When someone experiences grief, you experience them with them.

Why?

Because your lives are interwoven together and their connectivity, that equals shared life experiences.

They thought beyond themselves.

Third thing that we see is they lived sacrificially.

Acts 2 tells us that they were selling their possessions and belongings

and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.

They understood the Christian phrase that we use of love God and love others.

And they understand to do that, I can't be at the top.

I can't be at the top.

It can't be me and my ego and my pride of driving this.

Right?

They understood that they were a part of something bigger than themselves.

Right?

And as a result, they were willing to give to it.

Right?

They were willing to give their tithe.

But they were also willing to give their offering.

And when we talk about next level generosity for the kingdom of God, what they were doing is,

and what happened in Acts 2, what we're going to see, and what we're going to see at all the New Testament church,

and what we still see today, is what the gospel does, is it brings wealthy, and it brings poor.

And it says, let's be united in Christ.

What the gospel does is, the gospel says, oh, you've got a job, and you're providing, and you're good,

but you just lost your job, and you're hurting, and you're suffering, and your family's there.

It's okay, because we have one another.

And so what they did was, is they lived sacrificially, which meant this.

They didn't just look at the bank account and go, well, but we've got this, but we're saving up for these things,

and all this kind of stuff.

No, no, no.

If we're going to be radical about what scripture says, it says, and they were selling their extra car,

and their boat, and their clothes, and their shoes, and extra food,

and they were giving their belongings and proceeds to all as any had need.

That's the picture of Christianity.

I heard a pastor say it, and I'm not pointing any fingers at you, and I'm wrestling with this in my heart.

He said this.

He said, the church of Christ is not going to understand the generosity of God

until we stop throwing Jesus our pocket change.

And we give sacrificially.

And we give till it hurts.

And this is what community did.

To where you don't have, and I do, well, brother, that's not okay.

Have, right?

Fourth thing that we see is personal relationships and mutual acceptance.

It says that they devoted to the breaking of bread.

From scripture, we get what's called the table fellowship, right?

And all throughout, what we see in the gospels, we see in Acts, we see in the epistles,

this concept of people coming into the homes and having this table fellowship,

where lives who before would not cross have now crossed.

And the foundation of the solidness of this relationship is going to go to a different level, right?

Not through a handshake or a fist bump as we pass each other, but to bringing into the home, right?

This is what happened with Jesus and Zacchaeus, right?

My favorite story, years ago, I believe it was about eight years ago,

I sang the song of Zacchaeus on the stage.

I'm not going to do that, all right?

But it's a story in Luke 19.

Zacchaeus is the chief tax collector, but he wants to know Jesus.

And if you know the song, you know the story.

Zacchaeus was despised.

Zacchaeus was a crook.

Zacchaeus was a thief.

Zacchaeus was a traitor.

But he wanted to know Jesus.

And I believe right now, just like it was then, right now in our world, there's a lot of despised thieves who are crooks,

who have betrayed everyone, who want to know Jesus, and they don't understand the stirring that's in them.

Right?

And so you know the song, right?

Climbs up that tree.

And Jesus says, get down.

And the song says, what?

I'm going to your house today.

The Bible says, I'm going to go stay at your house.

Get a bed ready.

Jesus is coming to stay at your house.

Religious leaders grumble and complain about this.

But here's what happens at his house.

When Jesus steps through the premise of what's there.

Can you imagine living in a community where everyone has identified you as the unacceptable outcast?

I bet there ain't been a whole lot of people that sat at his dinner table.

And now Jesus does.

And do you know what Zacchaeus does?

He repents of his sin.

He seeks reconciliation with all who he's hurt.

And Jesus says that on that day salvation enters into his home.

Right?

What does Jesus do?

He begins a relational, intimate, personal relationship with Zacchaeus.

I'm coming into your house.

You see, I think there's more about the breaking of bread than making sure that we're all sitting down together and having hamburgers.

Right?

It's a defining moment of a personal depth of relationship that's different.

But then even within this, especially in the church, there's this level of mutual acceptance.

You see, all during the times of Christ, just like today,

pick your group, stay in your lane.

Christianity comes in and says, no, that's not how we work.

That's not what this is about.

He's our lane that we're going to stay in.

And there's room enough in the lane for every race, right?

Every tribe, every tongue, every people, every socioeconomic group, every gender.

There's room in the lane for this, right?

And so what we see is this group of individuals that come together that would have never come together before.

In fact, in 1 Corinthians, Paul's dealing with that with the church because they're beginning to isolate themselves from one another,

between the haves and the have-nots.

And Paul comes in and lays it down.

He's like, no, no, no, no, no.

This isn't it.

This is ungodly.

This is satanic.

This is not of God.

It's the acceptance of one another.

And this is what we see.

Men and women and children coming together and devoted to the breaking of bread,

to the table fellowship, to personal relationships, acceptance, unified under Christ.

And then lastly, we see in this depth of community, they were dependent on God and directed by God.

The Bible says that they were devoted to the prayers.

They were devoted to the prayers.

What does that mean?

What does it mean to be devoted to a life of prayer?