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Bellevue Baptist Church Middle School Ministry
Amen. Goodness, that is so good.
that we become more aware of His goodness and of His presence, and even in abide.
And we can do nothing apart from Him.
That is just, that is just such a good word.
If you have a Bible tonight, I just gotta say, I'm so excited to dig into the Word tonight. Like I said earlier, I love the mix. I love being able to worship with you guys, and I love being able to open up the Word. So, if you have a Bible tonight, first, I want you to raise it up in the air. Let me see it. If you brought one, come on. Y'all are awesome.
Put it back in your lap and open up to Acts.
Acts chapter 2, Acts chapter 2. If you don't know where that's at, ask your neighbor.
It's a little bit towards the back of the Bible.
Few books into the New Testament.
And while you do that, I wanna give you a little bit of a snapshot of where we're gonna be going for the next few weeks.
So we are gonna be taking a look at the book of Acts, and we're gonna see...
that God uses ordinary people like you and me for extraordinary things. You and I could never do all of the work that God wants us to do to obey Him the way that we're supposed to, to love Him the way that we're supposed to, to love other people the way that we're supposed to, but He is so gracious and so kind to give us the Helper that is the Holy Spirit if we're a believer in Christ. And so for us to accomplish the work that God wants us to do, we are given His Spirit, and His Spirit does a mighty work in our hearts. Now He could accomplish His works in so many other ways, but He chooses to use us because He loves us and He wants us to be a part of His plan. And so tonight is the first message in a series called More Than Meets the Eye.
More than meets the eye. The idea of more than meets the eye is when you look at somebody, there's more to them than you can see with your physical eyes. And believers in Christ that are filled with the Holy Spirit, there's more to them than you can see with your eyes. They have been changed. They have been empowered. And their desires have changed. Their motivations have changed. The things that they prioritize have changed. And the things that they devote themselves to have changed.
And what we want to talk about tonight is how God, by his Spirit, creates community. God's Spirit creates community. And at the heart of genuine godly community is the individual hearts of believers that have been changed by God by the power of his Spirit.
And so tonight we're gonna look at what it looks like for believers' hearts to be made alive and what motivates them to participate in genuine community with other believers and what that means for us and what that should look like for us. And so there's three truths about the heart of the believer that I wanna point out to you in Acts chapter two. And we're gonna start in verse 42. If you're there, say I'm there.
All right.
Acts chapter 2, verse 42 says this,
And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship,
to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 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 the first thing I wanna point out about the heart of the believer tonight is that the heart of the believer is devoted to growth. If you're taking notes, the first thing is that the heart of the believer is devoted to growth.
Verse 42 said, And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
And so I wanna give you a little bit of context from the beginning of chapter two. At the very beginning of chapter two, the Holy Spirit of God comes and fills the believers for the very first time.
And so the believers had been waiting for God to send what Jesus said was the helper, the Holy Spirit, to come and to empower them to do the work of the kingdom of God. And so at the very beginning of the chapter, the Holy Spirit comes, and the believers experienced a day called the Day of Pentecost. And each and every believer that was there, everyone that believed in Jesus and had repented of their sins, received the Holy Spirit and was empowered to go and to do the work that God had put before them, to go and to share the gospel, to love people the way that Jesus loved them.
And so Peter, one of the apostles, he got up and he started preaching, and he was preaching with power like he never had before. The believers who were fresh to believing in Jesus, they were going and they were bold for what they believed to be true. The other apostles were doing miracles and there were crazy things that were being done, and people were in awe of what God was doing by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And so now we come to these believers who have gathered together, and they are devoting themselves to these four things. Does anybody know what it means to devote yourself to something? Anybody want to give a shot at it? Gabe.
What does it mean to be devoted to something?
哪
야?
Yeah, being very passionate towards something, right here?
Believing in it? OK, right here.
Focus on it. I love it. Those are great answers. I did some research on devotion, and this is what I found.
The quote that I found, the definition that I found is, devotion is an unconditional, deep bond of loyalty to a person or thing or idea that leads to complete dedication. It goes beyond a simple promise or a temporary duty.
But true devotion means staying loyal and giving your full care and your full focus.
Even when things get hard.
And so when I think about devotion, of being dedicated to something that's more than just a quick commitment that fizzles out later, I think about Spider-Man.
Y'all love Spider-Man?
Come on!
Spider-Man is my favorite superhero. All right, shh.
Spider-Man is my favorite superhero, and when I think about devotion to something, I think about Spider-Man.
You know, you think about Spider-Man, he's fighting these villains, he's protecting people, he's taking down robbers, and his whole thing is the quote from Uncle Ben. Can you guys help me out? It is, with great power comes great...
Responsibility, exactly!
And he feels that because of the power that he's received from the spider bite that he got,
That he has the responsibility to go and to help people, and he is completely devoted to it. Am I right?
I mean, he's tired, he's beat up, he's got stuff going on in his life. He is still out there with the mask on, helping people, because he knows that it's his responsibility because of the power that he's been given.
And so these believers in the very early stages of the church, they are devoting themselves to these four things. It's not just a simple decision that they made, just like, yeah, I guess I'll do it. It is a commitment to these four things, even when things get hard, even if it's a sacrifice. So these are the four things that they devoted themselves to. Number one is God's word. Say God's word.
Come on, they devoted themselves to God's Word. God's Word is the primary source that we have to learn about who God is and how we're supposed to relate to him, and what it is that we're supposed to do. It is a gift that we've received and that we can learn from. And so these believers, they had the opportunity of hearing directly from the apostles. These are the guys that walked and talked with Jesus.
They learned from him directly. And so they were getting up and they were teaching them everything that Jesus had taught. And these believers are devoting themselves to listening to what the apostles had to say, what they had to teach, and what they were writing down.
Because they knew that just like we sang in that song just a minute ago, that unless we are connected to God, there is nothing that we can do, that we have no power, no strength apart from the Lord. And for us to be rooted in His Word allows us to grow.
The next thing is the fellowship with other believers. They knew that it was important for them to do this side by side with fellow believers. Um in order for us to live the Christian life, we have to have fellowship with other people who love Jesus. If we're trying to do it alone, we're gonna stumble, we're gonna fall down, and there's gonna be nobody to pick us up, because we're trying to do it all on our own.
It's hard to do it by yourself. And also, if we're trying to do it alone, and we're saying, I'm gonna go lone wolf, if somebody else falls down, we won't be there to pick them up.
The Christian life is meant to be done side by side, helping one another. And there's so many verses in Scripture that talk about our responsibility to help and to love and to serve one another. Romans 12:10 says, love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Galatians 6:2 says, carry one another's burdens.
Philippians 2:3 says, In humility, count others more important than yourselves.
Hebrews 10:24 says, Let us watch out for one another to provoke love and good works.
If we're truly to live out the Christian life, we have to do it side by side with other believers. And that is what these believers in the early church understood, and they devoted themselves to that.
The third thing was the breaking of bread, and I'm gonna level with you. This one felt the weirdest to me. I was like, that kind of seems out of place. You know, when we talk about the things that we're supposed to do as believers, we usually talk about reading the Bible, right?
We usually talk about praying. We usually talk about being with other believers, right?
Do we talk about going to Chipotle and sitting down and having a meal?
Not usually.
But what this is talking about is two different things.
Number one, it's talking about the opportunity for believers to gather together for a common purpose and to engage in conversation with one another, to encourage one another, to share a meal with each other, to be the church and to be encouragers, to be people who are challenging each other to grow. It is an opportunity for us to gather. Have you ever sat down one-on-one with somebody for a meal?
Yeah, I'm gonna be honest, that's some of the best conversations I will ever have. I sat down for a meal with a friend of mine named Noah the other night, and we had one of the best conversations we've had probably in the last few months. There's something about getting food together that just allows you to go deep in a conversation and to really talk with somebody.
And the second thing that this refers to is literally the Lord's Supper. So the Lord's Supper, we take it to remember the sacrifice that Christ made for us on the cross, that His body was broken for us, and He shed His blood for us so that we could be forgiven and we could be brought into a relationship with Him. And so, they devoted themselves to gathering together, to share a meal, to encourage one another, and to remember what Jesus had done for them.
And the fourth thing that they devoted themselves to was prayer.
And I wanna ask you, what is the most important person that you can think of? Give me some super important people.
야.
Jesus, that's a really good one. That wasn't what I was looking for, though.
President Trump, there you go. Who else?
Your parents? I love it. Back here, Nathaniel?
Friends, ya?
When I think about the most important person, I probably think about the president. I think about, you know, kings of countries. I think about artists, like music artists, that are, you know, super important. Can I just go and call up LeBron James and say, hey bro, you wanna sit down for a meal?
Whoever said yes, thank you for thinking so highly of me. I cannot just call up LeBron James. There are people that are so important that we can't get access to them. But the reality of prayer is that we have a completely open 24-7 communication access with the God and the creator of the entire universe. The most important person in the entire universe has said, hey...
I want to talk with you, and I am available whenever you want to talk.
And so, these believers understood that God wanted to speak with them, and that they had the opportunity to do that. So they devoted themselves to prayer. And how often do we take prayer for granted?
That we don't think about how important it is and what a gift it is that we can, whenever we want to, whenever we need to, we can go and we can talk to God. We can ask for His help. We can thank Him for the things that He's done in our life.
Just like a father wants to help his child, but won't help unless the child goes and asks for help.
God wants us to go to him and ask for help.
And He will answer in a way that is for His glory and it's for our good, and we can trust in that.
And so these four things.
The God's Word.
Fellowship with other believers, the breaking of bread and prayer, these are the things that the early church believers devoted themselves to. The devotion to these things is evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in their lives. Their priorities had changed. They weren't looking for money. They weren't looking for glory. They weren't looking to achieve great things. They weren't devoting themselves to sports. They weren't devoting themselves to being the most important person in the room.
They were devoting themselves to God's Word, to fellowship with other believers, to eating with other believers, and to prayer.
Those four simple things.
They are devoting themselves to those because they understood the importance of them because of the work that God had done in their lives.
Believers are the ones that are devoted to those kinds of things. If you're not a believer, those are not things that matter.
God's word doesn't matter if you're not a believer. Praying, that doesn't matter to you if you're not a believer. Those are things that a changed heart desires and will devote themselves to.
And so I wanna ask you, what is it that you're devoting yourself to?
Is it sports? Is it your friends? Is it, is it, you name it.
What are you devoting yourself to, complete dedication, complete focus on?
Is it the things of God?
Or is it your desires? Has God worked on your heart to change your desires and your priorities?
If we're to live our lives in a manner that honors God, these are the things that should be the absolute most important to us.
These things that even when it's hard, we're still committed to them. And I have to ask myself that same question. Am I devoting myself to the things of God, or am I devoting myself to the things of me?
So what are you devoting yourself to? Because the heart of the believer is devoted to growth, number one. Number two, the heart of the believer is motivated to generosity.
motivated to generosity.
Verse 43 and following says this,
in awe,
just shock and they're blown away by what God is doing, 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 belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And they received their food with glad and generous hearts.
The believers who were brought together by God into this beautiful, God-centered community were laying aside their desires, they were laying aside the things that they held onto so tightly, their possessions, their land, all of those things, and they were selling them, and they were giving it to the people who had needs.
Now, that's kind of mind-blowing to me, to be honest. Like, that is, that is radical generosity.
I mean, they're selling their Pokemon cards, they're selling their shoe collections, they're selling their cars, their homes, they're selling their favorite video games, the collector one that you have in the little metal case.
They're selling their bobblehead collections, everything. The things that are the most important to them, they are selling so that they can give to the people who have needs.
Another thing that they're giving of is their time.
It says that they day by day attended the temple together, and they were breaking bread in their homes.
So not just their money they were making sacrifices of, they were making sacrifices of their time. They were giving generously to the people who were around them in their money and in their time.
And I don't know about you, but like I said, that's a radical thing, and that kind of generosity is really not my first reaction.
When I was little, my brother and I loved Hot Wheels cars. You guys like Hot Wheels cars? Or am I just getting old?
Yeah? Hey, I appreciate that.
I love Hot Wheels cars, and my brother and I, we used to have this huge bin of Hot Wheels cars. Yeah, there it is. Huge bin of Hot Wheels cars that we would share.
So I would have, like, my five favorite, and he would have his five or so favorite, and the rest of them we would share.
And I remember one day, we were in our room, we shared a room, and I was on my side, he was on his, and the bucket of Hot Wheels cars was right in the middle.
And, uh, I had my five.
but my five just wasn't enough for me.
So I went to the bin and I would grab a car and I'd put it in a line over by mine.
And then I'd go back and I'd grab another one, and I would grab another one, and I'd grab another one, and another one, and another one, and another one, until the entire bin was empty, and I had like 40 or 50 cars lined up on my side of the room, and my brother had his five.
And so, could I even play with all of those Hot Wheels cars all at the same time?
No! Was it enough for me?
No! So I went over to my brother's side of the room, and when he wasn't looking, he turned his head, and he's playing with his car, I snagged one of his five, and I put it over on my side.
And obviously, that was enough then, right?
Nope, so I went back, he's looking away again, playing, I grabbed another one, put it on my side.
And at that point, he noticed, and he's like, bro, what are you doing? I was like, I'm just playing with them over here. I needed it for the, the race I'm doing over here.
And so I just kept taking and kept taking, and I didn't want him to have any. And that's our natural reaction with generosity sometimes, is we don't want to just give of all of the things that we have. We don't want to just freely give to the people who are around us. And so that is why this is an evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in these believers' lives. That's why this moment is so miraculous. We so naturally are bent towards selfishness and an unwillingness to give to others, but because of the change in the heart that these believers experienced, they were motivated to be radically generous to their fellow believers and to give of their time and of their possessions and of their money, that they would sell everything in order to make sure that their neighbor had a meal to eat that night, that they would sell everything to make sure that their fellow believer had a roof over their head.
And so, does your heart, does my heart, desire to have that kind of a generosity, to give freely to those who God has called us to love?
Jesus has given us the greatest and most generous gift by offering us the opportunity to be forgiven of our sins, and that should motivate us.
to want to give generously to the people around us.
Are we that kind of generous, or are we just focused on the things that we want and the things that we desire?
The third and final thing I want you to see from the heart of the believer in this is the heart of the believer is moved to gratitude.
to move to gratitude.
Verse 47 says this, And they were praising God.
And having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
The believers of the early church, they experienced joy.
And they experienced the peace and they experienced the beauty of the community that God had given them. They understood the gift that they'd been given of salvation.
And that brought them to a spot where they were so moved by their gratitude that they could not help.
But praise God when they are together.
That they would gather for the purpose of just praising God, giving Him glory, worshiping Him the way that He deserves.
And the other day, I was making a cup of coffee. I love coffee. Probably drink too much coffee.
When I was making a cup of coffee, and I put the little coffee pod in the machine, filled it up with water, and I pushed the button, and I walked away. I went to go fold some laundry.
And I came back into the kitchen.
And the coffee mug is just completely and totally overflowing.
It's completely full. It's overflowing. There is coffee all over the counter, all over the floor.
I don't even know how it made that much coffee, but I miscalculated, and it completely overflowed this cup, made this huge mess. I burned my hands in the hot coffee trying to clean it up. It was a whole ordeal.
But it reminded me...
This is the kind of gratitude that we should have for God. A gratitude that so fills our heart that we can't even hold it in.
That we're so thankful for what God has done, and we're so thankful for the things that He has done in our life that it overflows and it pours over the sides of our cup, that we are filled to overflowing.
And that is the kind of blessing, and that is the kind of gratitude that these believers had. They saw the great blessing that it was that God had given them this community. They saw the blessing that it was that God had blessed them with salvation.
And it was that the community that they had wasn't something they could have mustered up, that they couldn't have made it happen, that they could only give glory to God for it. And it brought them to a spot where they were so filled with joy and so filled with gratitude that their cup could not hold it all.
And it spilled over in praise to God.
And that they had more than enough reason to praise God together. And so the question here is, do we give God the praise that He deserves for the things in our life? Are we full of gratitude all the way to overflowing at the fact that even right now,
that we have the opportunity to gather together.
As believers, we have the opportunity to gather together and to worship God, to open up the Word that He has for us, that we can learn and we can grow and we can be encouraged and we can be challenged to be better.
And that we have the opportunity literally right now to do that.
Are we full of gratitude for that? Do we understand the gift that that is?
Do we see it as a gift, or do we see something like this as just another thing to do on a Wednesday night?
Do we see life groups on Sunday morning as just another thing to do?
Or do we see it as a beautiful opportunity to partake in the community that God has blessed us with?
And we have the opportunity to worship God together. Do we see it as a gift? Are you grateful for what God has done for you, or are you just indifferent?
The believers in Acts 2 were so grateful for what God has done, and they praised him for it.
And so the power of God's Spirit creates beautiful community among believers in Jesus, but that work, the work that causes that community to form starts in me and you.
It starts when we confess Jesus as our Lord and Savior, and we are saved. We're forgiven of our sins, and we're filled with the Holy Spirit, and he begins to change our hearts, begins to change us and to change our desires and our perspective, and he calls us to devote ourselves to these things, to devote ourselves to growth, to be motivated to generosity, and to be moved to gratitude. It starts there, and then those things help us to be in the community that we're supposed to have in Christ.
So we've looked at what the heart of the believer looks like. We've looked at what we are supposed to devote ourselves to. We've looked at the kind of generosity we're supposed to have. We look at the kind of gratitude that we're supposed to have.
And so I want you to evaluate yourself tonight.
And I want you to ask yourself some hard questions.
I want you to, I want you to ask yourself that if you pulled back the curtain...
on your life, and somebody had the opportunity to look at your heart, look at your life.
Luke writes the book of Acts, and he describes these believers in this way. If somebody looked into your life...
How would they describe you?
Would they describe you as devoted to God's Word and to fellowship and to prayer and to the breaking of bread?
Would they describe you as someone who is generous with their time and with the things that they've been blessed with?
Would they describe you as someone who's full of gratitude for what God has done?
And if the answer is no...
I wanna tell you this. It is so okay.
We serve a God who is gracious and he's so merciful and he is so good and he wants to help us to grow. And so I wanna ask about two different types of people.
Maybe, maybe you would say that you don't have that kind of heart, that if somebody looked at you, that you wouldn't have that kind, they wouldn't describe you that way, that your heart doesn't look like that because maybe you've never come to a spot where you have said, I believe in Jesus as my Lord and my Savior.
I don't have a relationship with Jesus like that. Like, I've never, I wouldn't say that my heart's been changed. And I wanna tell you, you can have that opportunity tonight.
Jesus loves you and he loves me so much, and God loves us so much that he sent his one and only son to die on the cross for your sins and for mine.
We sin and we mess up every single day and we fall short of God's standard.
And because of that, we deserve punishment. But God didn't want to leave us in that, so he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins and to raise again on the third day to prove his victory over sin and death. And all he asks us to do...
is to repent of our sins, to say, Lord, I am a sinner. I don't want to do those things anymore. I wanna live the kind of life that looks like this. I wanna be able to live this life that is so full of joy and so full of gratitude. I wanna be more like you.
And then we believe in Jesus. That's the second thing. To repent and then to believe in Jesus, believe that He did truly come and He lived a perfect life, that He died on the cross for your sins, and that He rose again on the third day in victory.
And so tonight, I don't want you to leave if you haven't had the opportunity to talk with somebody about that.
And if that's you, come and talk to me after. Come and talk with somebody on our team. Come and talk with a leader who's in the back. If you have questions about what it means to follow Jesus, we want you to have the opportunity to ask that.
And then, for the rest of us, whether you're in a season where you feel like you're just shoulder to shoulder with the Lord, that you're just super close with Him, you are, you would say, yeah, I, I, I am like this. I am devoted. I am generous. I am grateful.
Whether you're like that or whether you would say you are far from God, and this has been a tough season, I want you to...
Do an evaluation on yourself, to look and to reflect on what we've talked about tonight, and to reflect on the example that these believers have set.
And so...
In your seats, on your talk sheets, on the back, there are...
Reflection Questions
And so, you don't have to do it right now, but before you go to bed tonight, I want you to really take some time.
prayerfully, and to read through those questions and to answer them honestly.
I want you to be able to be real with yourself and say...
how am I doing in these areas? So answer those questions, and after you do, I want you to take a moment and I want you to pray.
And I want you to ask God to help you to be devoted to growth in Him, to be motivated to generosity, and to be filled with gratitude, and know that the Lord will work mightily in your heart if you are willing to submit to Him and to ask Him for His help.
And so, before you go to bed tonight, take a minute and to just work through those reflection questions and be honest with yourself about where you are tonight.
And then, as you continue to come to a place like The Mix, look for opportunities to be in the community, but it starts in you. It starts in your own heart. It starts in my heart.
That I am a person who is changed by Jesus, filled with His Spirit, and brought to a spot where I am just so devoted to Him.
And I am so grateful for all that he's done, and I am so excited to be able to be generous to the people around me.
So I'm gonna pray for us, and then we're gonna worship together.
One more time, so let me pray for us. Lord, thank you so much for tonight. Lord, thank you for your word.
Lord, thank you for your Holy Spirit, that you come in and you work on our hearts, you change us, you grow us to be more like you.
Lord, I thank you for just the opportunity that we've had to dig into your word and to worship you tonight. God, I pray that we wouldn't take that for granted, that we wouldn't take this gift that you have given us for granted, but Lord, that we would hold on to it and be so grateful for it. And God, I pray that each and every one of our hearts, that we would continue to grow, to be more like you, to be people that reflect who you are.
Reflect your heart, Lord, that you are so loving and you are so kind, and you are so generous.
Lord, I pray that we would be more like you each and every day.
Lord, help us to do that. Help us to be devoted to you.
Help us to be generous and help us to be full of gratitude, Lord.
It's in Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Y'all stand up, let's worship.