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Redeemer Community Church is located in the historic Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham, AL. Our church family exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
For more information on who we are, what we believe, or how to join us, please visit our website at rccbirmingham.org.
Let's look at God's word together. And, you know, I'm not this smart. The the Lord laid before us the the perfect passage for us this morning, and it's not from my planning. He just knew what he was doing. We're continuing our study on Peter, what it looks like to follow Jesus.
Joel Brooks:This week, we're gonna or this morning, we're gonna look at Peter's first sermon, which led to the first church. And, if we have time, which we we probably won't, but if we do, we'll look at Peter's first miracle. But, we're just gonna read the parts that are in Acts two right now, and this story takes place immediately after Peter's restoration and right after the spirit of Pentecost fell upon him. So, Acts two, begin reading in verse 22, and this is Peter standing up and preaching now. Men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know.
Joel Brooks:This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God? You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it. Go to verse 32. Let all the house of Israel, therefore, know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.
Joel Brooks:Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? 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, for the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. With many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them, Save yourselves from this crooked generation. So, those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about 3,000 souls. And, they've devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Joel Brooks:And, awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And, all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and their 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. This is the word of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:If you would pray with me. Lord, thank you for calling Peter to yourself, so that we could look at his life and see what it means to follow you, Jesus. Not that he did that perfectly, he would fall and you would pick him up, and he'd fall and you'd pick him up over and over again. But, Lord, he does he does serve as a as an example for us, both in his heart to follow you and knowing, Lord, that you will always draw us to yourself. And, Lord, right now, in this moment, I I pray that your Spirit would do something unique and powerful in our midst.
Joel Brooks:I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but, Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. The transformation that you see here in Peter is just simply stunning, isn't it? It's hard to believe it's the same Peter, just weeks earlier, denying even knowing who Jesus was.
Joel Brooks:And now, he's standing up in front of an entire crowd, looking everyone in the eye, and he is boldlessly and fearlessly saying, you guys killed Jesus the Lord. But, you know what? He's risen from the dead, and if you'll just turn to him, forgiveness and new life could be found in his name. It's remarkable. We read in second Corinthians five that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
Joel Brooks:The old has passed away, the new has come. That's the Peter we see here. He's a new creation. The old Simon is gone. The new Peter has come.
Joel Brooks:After the Spirit fell on Peter in that upper room, he ran out like a man with his hair on fire and he just began preaching. And, this is his first sermon. Now, as far as fishermen preaching sermons go, it's okay. I mean, it's not 3,000 people saved good, but that's what happened. I mean, he wasn't very entertaining, he lacked humor, I would have loved to hear some fishing stories, he didn't use any illustrations, he's kind of scattered at times, there was no acrostic, he didn't use any of those things.
Joel Brooks:He just stood up, declared the Gospel. Jesus is Lord, He died, He rose again, you turn to Him, you'll find forgiveness and new life in the Spirit. That was enough. Straightforward. Peter didn't need to be cute, he didn't need to be original.
Joel Brooks:That's not what would make him Peter the rock on which the church was built. Peter on the the rock on which the church is built doesn't do those things, that Peter just points to Jesus. That's it. You point to Jesus. Jesus, through his spirit, he does all the heavy lifting.
Joel Brooks:I mean, when he preached those words, a power was unleashed on these people. We read that people were cut to the heart when they heard that they had crucified the Lord. But, here's the deal, those people didn't actually crucify the Lord. That was a different group of people. It's not like these people picked up the hammer and put the nails in Jesus' hands and feet, they weren't there at his trial, crying out, crucify him.
Joel Brooks:But, this is what the spirit of God does when the gospel hits us in such power. You have this realization, okay, I didn't drive the nails in His hands, but it was my sins that put Him on the cross. It was my rebellion that put Him there. And, every Christian feels that, they know that, I crucified him. So, they're cut to the heart and then, they repent and they they turn to Jesus.
Joel Brooks:It's a very simple message and 3,000 people were saved. 3,000, like that. When I was younger, I I would read that number differently. I'd I'd read that, maybe I was in college or so, and be like, woah, it's unbelievable. Now, as a 52 year old pastor, I read that and I go, wow, that's unbelievable.
Joel Brooks:How do they organize them in home groups? Like, what did that look like? Did they did they multi generational? Did they break it up geographically? Maybe they didn't use home groups.
Joel Brooks:Was it Sunday schools? Where did these people park? Childcare, were children just running all around? Did they not care? Like, I have all of these questions because how it's a mega church, instantly, overnight.
Joel Brooks:How do you organize the people like this in order to disciple the people like this? What is this large newly formed church supposed to look like? How can you make sure they're all going in the right direction? That's what Acts 42 tells us. And, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Joel Brooks:As you guys likely know, I love to go hiking. Any chance I get, I try to get out to Montana, I've been doing that for over twenty years, hiking the mountains there, and I've gotten to know the Beartooth Mountains there pretty well, and so, about the last, I don't know, five, six, seven years, I rarely go on a trail anymore, I just I just kind of navigate my way through. And so, I don't get lost, but I might get disoriented at times, just a little disoriented, and I'm pretty sure I'm going in the right direction, I'm a little disoriented, and when that happens, what I do is I just climb up as far as I could climb in order to look around and just get my bearings, and if I see the East Rosebud Creek is over there, and, you know, the plateau's there, and and Elk Mountain's there, it's like, okay, I'm going in the right direction. That's what this is here. These are the landmarks of the early church.
Joel Brooks:You see these things and you know you're going in the right direction. And, these landmarks are the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. We read that the early church devoted themselves to these things. Some of your translations might say, they continually devoted themselves to these things because that's what the word means. It means they devoted themselves again and again and again to these things.
Joel Brooks:These four things were the church's non negotiables. It's the first thing they put on their calendars, and everything else had to revolve around it. In other words, these four things were what I would call their deeply held convictions as a church. I mean, you've heard me say this multiple times, but value is something you kind of hold onto tightly, you believe it deeply, you hold onto it. A conviction is something you believe that moves you, it's why you do the things you do.
Joel Brooks:These were the deeply held convictions of the church, and it's why they did the things they did, made sure they were moving in the right direction. So, I want us to look at each of these four convictions. First, we read that they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. Now, the apostles, if you read through Acts, they did a whole lot of things in the early church, but by far, what is described most is they taught. Jesus had commissioned them to go make disciples and said, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
Joel Brooks:And, they took that commissioning seriously. They taught and they taught. Now, if you were to go to our church website, and you were to look up staff, you might notice that there are no apostles. We had some people vying for that, but, there there are no apostles here. We we have pastors, we have ministers, we have directors, we have coordinators, we have assistants, interns, all other titles, but, there are no more apostles.
Joel Brooks:That was Lord raised them up for that unique time in the Church. What we do have, however, are the apostles' teachings. We have the word of God. And, this is why preaching and teaching the word is a core conviction of who we are as a church. The bible must always remain central in church worship.
Joel Brooks:There's a reason we begin every service with the reading of God's word. We often end every service with a benediction that is from God's word. Every time we preach, we read the text from God's word. And what do we say after each time? I say, this is the word of the Lord, and you say, it's right.
Joel Brooks:Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord that you've you've given us your word in order to teach us who you are, in order to show us how to live. Thank you for the word. Now, getting a little dose of this word in a sermon or in a scripture reading at church once a week, that's a good start towards being continually devoted, but it's just a start. You cannot just listen to a sermon and then spend the rest of your week being discipled by everything else out there.
Joel Brooks:And, so, here's a little challenge for you this week. Every time, that's a challenge for me too. Alright? Every time you're tempted to pull out your phone, just scroll to get away, know, boredom, want to read something out, whenever you feel that temptation, just pull it out, I want you to first just pull up your Bible app. Get in the habit, pull up your Bible app and just read a couple of lines of first Peter, that's where we're going next, and just chew on it.
Joel Brooks:Just take fifteen, thirty seconds, just read a few verses, chew on it. And, I bet if that becomes your habit, your continual devotion, your your non negotiable, like, if if that becomes part of of your daily rhythms, you'll start to see a transformation like Peter had and your heart will turn more and more into following Jesus. So, dedicate yourself to the apostles' teaching, to the Word of God. Next, we read this, that one of the early church's convictions was fellowship. They continually devoted themselves to fellowship, meaning that gathering together as the church family in order to spend time with one another and to encourage one another, to have unhurried conversations and common meals together with one another, was not just a little nice perk of being part of a good church, It was actually something they sacrificed and they planned for.
Joel Brooks:But, why? I mean, why is fellowship so crucial to discipleship? Because it absolutely is. Why is fellowship, deep fellowship, one of the core convictions of who we are as a church? It's because this, God didn't just save you and tell you to go live the faith, life of faith alone.
Joel Brooks:You can't live it alone. And so, he saved you and he put you in the family of God, the local expression of that in a church. A couple of days ago, one of our elders' father passed away. When I heard he had been placed in hospice care a few weeks ago, I felt the spirit just prompting me to go and visit him. I I don't really know him, I've had a couple of conversations with him, but I just, for some reason, the spirit prompted me to let go, and so, said, okay, and so I drove over to Atlanta, and I went, into his room, and I just sat in a chair, I slid a chair over by his bed, said, hey, thank you for letting me come, and I wanna cut straight to the chase if I can.
Joel Brooks:I'm about to read your obituary, whether it's a couple days from now or it's a couple weeks from now, and it's gonna tell me all these beautiful, amazing things that you've done, because you've lived a remarkable life, and you've followed the Lord faithfully. But, what I wanna hear from you in these last moments is, what did you think, as you look back, what was really important? And, he was really quiet, and then he said this one word, he goes, people. People. He said, I I I didn't I didn't realize this until I was 50.
Joel Brooks:I wished I'd realized this earlier in my life. The work that I was doing was important, but working on the relationships with people is more important. He said, when it was my fiftieth birthday, I only had three people come. When I turned 60, I had over a 100, and I knew all their stories, because he started giving himself to people. And, as he was describing this to me, what I realized he was describing was the joys of Christian fellowship that changed his life, and and and how much more fervently he was following the Lord towards the end, how much more joyful he joy he had in his life towards the end.
Joel Brooks:The word fellowship in Greek, it's the word koinonia, I've preached on it a number of times in the past, it's not a mere friendship, although, it's certainly not less than friendship, it's more. It means more than just getting together, although you can't experience it unless you do get together. Fellowship is enjoying and being shaped by time spent with the family of God. It's getting together with your family in order to encourage one another to all keep moving in the same direction. I used this cheesy, cheesy illustration last time to teach you fellowship, it's probably still stuck in a lot of your heads.
Joel Brooks:When you think of fellowship, it's fellows in the same ship. And, it's it's it's when you're in the same space together, all working to help one another move in the same direction. I've been pastoring for over twenty five years now, and, unfortunately, I've seen way too many people walk away from the faith. And, most of these people, not all, but in most of these people, they they share this common trait. Before they ever walked away from the faith, they first walked away from Christian fellowship.
Joel Brooks:It didn't happen instantly in their lives, it always happened gradually, but over time, this conviction they had of fellowship started moving into the nice idea of fellowship. It's maybe kind of the hope of an occasional fellowship. So, eventually, it became the inconvenience of fellowship because it kept them away from the other activities they really wanted to be doing. And before long, they had completely abandoned all fellowship, and their lives looked absolutely no different than the rest of the world. And so, fellowship, it helps keep us all going in the the same direction.
Joel Brooks:And, not only is fellowship critical for us to keep the faith, you need to know you cannot actually even begin to live out the faith apart from fellowship. You know, we've talked about all the one anothers, love one another, be kind to one another, encourage one another, exhort one another, sing to one another, all these things. You know, you can't actually live out any of those commands unless you are with one another. It's the only way to even live out the commands that Jesus has given us, is we have to commit to being together. This is why when we read in verse 46 here, that the early church gathered together every day in what was their first church building, the temple.
Joel Brooks:That was a space they had available for them, that's where they could all gather together. And there, would gather to hear the word of God preached, they would gather together to fellowship in order to build those relationships needed to live out the teachings that they were hearing. The next conviction or the next thing that we read that they were devoting themselves to was the breaking of bread. Now, this might mean more than just a commitment to regularly eat together, but it certainly does not mean less than that. The breaking of bread, it could be a reference to the church taking communion together often.
Joel Brooks:But, for the early church, communion wasn't how we take communion now. I mean, they didn't just hand you a shot glass of, you know, grape juice and the little Chiclet or the Styrofoam thing at the top and say, that's the bread. No, communion was part of a meal. They broke the bread and they drank wine, they remember Christ and and it was part of a whole family meal together. And, I don't know if you've noticed this rhythm at our church, but, we we have celebrate communion at least once a month, the last Sunday of every month, and we do it more than that also, but, we always try to tie with it our common meal.
Joel Brooks:So, when we break bread here, that leads to us breaking bread together later. And, sometimes, you'll hear me say these words, Christ gave His body in order to create a body. And so, the the meal starts here, but we're going to continue that meal later. Finally, we see that they were continually devoting themselves to the prayers, the prayers. Once again, this might be referring to more than them just gathering together and spontaneously ly praying whatever's on their hearts, but it doesn't mean less than that.
Joel Brooks:When we read the prayers, this could be referring to written prayers like the Psalms or perhaps, they had a certain prayer book or liturgies that they would go through, But, we also know from reading the rest of Acts that they just regularly and spontaneously, they would just get together as brothers and sisters and just seek the Lord's heart, pray for His Spirit to move in their midst and and and then, their whole city and world. A church that ceases to be a praying church is a church that cuts itself off from the vine, just dies. A church that ceases to be a praying church is a church that's become so confident in its own abilities, its own programs, own strategies, that it actually thinks it no longer needs God's power and his presence to help with God's mission. This is why you've often heard me say that if we cease to be a praying church, Lord, we just go and close the doors. It's not a reason for us to gather anymore.
Joel Brooks:Who we are in prayer is who we are, period. So, what was the result of the church living into these convictions? Read verse 47. They had favor with all the people, and the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved. It's remarkable because when you when you look at those convictions, they all seem inward, don't they?
Joel Brooks:I mean, they're studying God's Word together, they're fellowshipping together, they're breaking bread together, they're praying together, it's all inward things, and yet, the impact is outward. Day by day, the Lord is just adding to their midst. And, what's happening is those outside the church, the people outside the church are looking at the way these Christians are living and how how much joy they're filled with, how they're serving one another, how they're sacrificing for one another and it is so beautiful and attractive to them. The church is becoming a city on a hill, they're becoming a light shining in the darkness and the rest of the world says, I I want that. And, it's through the church living this way that they're being introduced to Jesus.
Joel Brooks:You know, like, come on. Yes, we'll show you like, come experience the the new life and the forgiveness to be found in Jesus the Lord. I want our church to be like this with all my heart. Over the last eighteen years, the Lord has added many people to our number. You might say, added day by day to our number.
Joel Brooks:And, I believe that's because the spirit of God is at work in you, already living out these same convictions. You are devoting yourselves to these things. And, can I just tell you, as a pastor, it is so beautiful to see? I mean, like, just to see you guys running in this, it's so beautiful. And, I just pray for more.
Joel Brooks:My my prayer is that in our pursuit of Jesus, that we would continually, we would habitually, we would sacrificially, we would joyfully continue to devote ourselves to these things, and that would all result in the Lord's glory and in our joy. Jesus gave his very blood for us, and then he gave his spirit to us. All in order that we who were enemies of God now might become part of the family of God and experience all the joys that come from being a child of God and placed in that family. A family that doesn't just endure for this life, but a family that endures forever. And, can I tell you, I could not imagine a more rich and a fuller life than this?
Joel Brooks:So, church, I'm just asking, let's press in. Pray with me. Lord Jesus, thank you for shedding your blood and for giving us your spirit and giving us this new life to be part of a beautiful family of God. Lord, I pray that we would give ourselves to this. Lord, would you be so kind as to to keep us moving in the right direction, for your glory and for our joy.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the sweet name of Jesus. Amen.