They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. (v. 42)
This past week there was an article in USA Today entitled Churches’ Reception No Longer Neighborly. It begins this way:
SILVER SPRING, Md. - The members of Parker Memorial Baptist Church have a vision: a new church seating 1,500 people rising in a former cornfield. Residents of nearby homes have another vision: hundreds of cars clogging their narrow, once-quiet streets. They oppose the congregation’s plans. Churches were once considered community assets. But across the USA, houses of worship now are joining chemical plants and landfills as frequent targets of the Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) syndrome.
There is no doubt that churches are experiencing less acceptance in our society. Our society is changing and has changed over the last forty years. The Christian church used to be regarded as not only a legitimate but necessary part of every community. No longer. Today’s culture is far too pluralistic for that.
Now you may want to debate the merits or flaws in the current course of our society. But instead of focusing on society, let’s focus on the church. While there is no doubt that churches are not being treated with as much deference as they once were, we should note that the early church, after it became strong, was violently opposed by many. It became a threat to society and was unwelcome. Rather than being considered "community assets," churches were counter-culture because they stood for a standard of righteousness the community did not desire.
Perhaps we should be upset in the church when we are not opposed for our stand for righteousness. It could mean that either we do not stand for the right things or that our stand is not made known. Jesus warned us when He said, "Woe to you when all men speak well of you." (Luke 6:26) The character of a person is known not only by his friends but also by his enemies. The question we need to ask ourselves is: What made the early church stand out from its culture?
We have already seen how the early church got its start with an encounter with the living God on the Day of Pentecost. Thousands were brought to faith in Christ that day and were added to the church there in Jerusalem. But their faith not only changed their destiny, it changed their lives.
What you believe affects what you do. This was certainly true of the first church. Their lives were transformed by this encounter with God. Their priorities suddenly were changed. Think about it. They had come to Jerusalem for the great feast. They had taken this time out of their lives for this religious observance, but they were not just a bunch of homeless, jobless people with nothing else to do. They were ordinary people with families to support, work to pursue, personal matters to attend to. Like many people in church services, many were no doubt thinking about all the other things they needed to get to after the service. But all that changed for them. Before, they may have been focused on their jobs, their social relationships, and their recreation or on a host of other things. Now they were focused on Jesus Christ and His church. So their behavior changed to reflect these new priorities. They made time for the things that were important to them.
We all do this. Generally speaking, the maxim is true which says, "People do what they want to do." When your priorities change, your behavior changes to reflect those priorities.
That was certainly true for these early Christians. Our text says that they devoted themselves. The NASB renders it continually devoting themselves. Literally, it reads that they were continuing steadfastly. Here we have people who were saved in a miraculous revival meeting one day on Pentecost. Yet, what happened to them transformed their lives. It transformed their behavior. It is as if they understood that they would never be the same. And so they began to live out that commitment in a very practical way daily. We see from this that a great church is a devoted church.
To what were they devoted? What were the things that this brand new body of believers found important enough to commit themselves to? There are four mentioned in our text. I will use the terms that John Phillips uses for them in his book, Exploring Acts. He says that they were marked by a commitment to the truth, the tie, the table, and the throne.
They devoted themselves first to the apostles’ teaching. In other words, they gave a high priority to understanding the truth. Now that they had come to know Jesus, they wanted to know more about Him. They wanted to understand how to apply this teaching to their lives. And so, they continually attended the services for teaching and were continuing steadfastly devoted to hearing and understanding the teaching of the apostles.
Devotion to knowing the truth was not only needed in the early church, but it is sorely needed in the church today. In fact, we are seeing everywhere the fruits of not knowing the truth of God’s word.
We face our world every day. The issues that dominate our culture are the issues with which we must grapple. Do we have answers to the questions people are asking? I don't mean pat answers, full of cliches and simple solutions, but answers that have substance and are grounded in truth? Have we learned to think Biblically about the issues we face today in contemporary culture? What do we say about AIDS, abortion, homosexuality, poverty, homelessness, racial prejudice, pre-marital and extra-marital sex, or even the church? Unless we know what the Bible says concerning these issues, we will not have any real answers for others or even for ourselves.
Even Christians, who should know the Scriptures, are being led astray by so many teachings concerning Christianity. Many Christians do not even know how to test these teachings to see if they are right, and as a result, we hear the strangest things coming from believers who have been duped by some new doctrine. We must learn to be like the Bereans, who "examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." We must remember that everything must be tested by Scripture. Therefore, we must have more than a superficial knowledge of what Scripture teaches.
Are you devoted to the apostles’ teaching? We have it in our Bibles and it is taught each week in a variety of forums here in this local church. Come to the table and eat.
The second thing they devoted themselves to was the fellowship. It is interesting how many people think that they really don’t need the fellowship of other believers. Not so for the early church. They saw the need to continually devote themselves to a shared life with the other believers.
This is "the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love." The fellowship to which they devoted themselves was both the community of believers in the local church and the relationships of love made possible by that community. We see both "the fellowship" (assembling together with the church) and "fellowship" (sharing common life in Christ) in view here.
The writer to the Hebrew admonished us strongly when he wrote: "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching." (Heb. 10:25) Here we find the essence of what the first church captured in their devotion to the fellowship.
You can only experience true fellowship by giving diligent attention to meeting together with those in the fellowship. The former is dependent on the latter. If you absent yourself from meeting together with the other believers here, you will not have true fellowship with them, and you should not be surprised at this. It takes time and effort to develop meaningful relationships with others, even in the church. Why should that be different? In fact, it may even be a little more difficult in the church because we are called to develop relationships with people who are not "like us" and with whom we might not naturally fellowship.
People generally gravitate to others like them in some way. We find people who are our same age, or have a similar situation in life, like small children, or no children. We find people who share our interests. But in the church, we are put together with many others who are not like us. In the church our common interest is Christ and we are to transcend issues like age, education, social status, situation in life, race, and the like. This is the beauty of the church, and a testimony to the world of the love of Christ.
Thirdly, they devoted themselves to the breaking of bread. Now, this could mean one of two things, or perhaps both. It could mean that they shared their meals together. Or it could mean that they devoted themselves to the ordinance of the Lord’s Table. Perhaps both are involved.
Because they had been gathered together into this one fellowship by the sacrifice of Christ, these newly repentant and baptized believers began to celebrate their unity with and love for one another, and their worship and reverence for Christ. One way they did that was to celebrate the Lord’s Table.
There is evidence to suggest that the early Christians celebrated the Lord’s Table as a part of a corporate meal. Like any church, they would eat together frequently, perhaps more frequently than most churches today. In fact, they may have had a meal following each Lord’s Day service. This would not be unusual for their culture. Many cultures today do this. Our Filipino and Korean friends do. In any case, their celebration of the Lord’s Table took on a different form than ours. It was not the somber, almost funeral-like event that you see in many places today. It was reverent but joyful, prayerful but full of rejoicing.
Although the Scriptures do not give us specific details as to how we are to structure this ordinance other than to remember Christ’s death when we do it, we should learn something from these early Christians about how to observe this aspect of worship.
And finally, it says that they devoted themselves to prayer. Their focus was heavenward, toward the throne. Their focus was on God Himself. So they gave themselves to a life of prayer.
Jesus said that His house should be known as a "house of prayer." This early church knew the necessity of seeking God and His will in prayer. They knew that it took a continual, daily devotion to prayer. A great church must be a praying church. A great church will devote itself to prayer because it depends upon God for its existence.
Unfortunately, prayer seems to be a dying art among Christians. Many people say they believe in prayer but few people really spend much time praying. Of course, almost everyone sends up a brief prayer from time to time, some may even send up several a day. But few spend significant time in prayer, and fewer still spend any time in corporate prayer — prayer with other believers. Notice the death of the church prayer meeting. It died years ago in most churches. There may be some churches today that call one of their services a prayer meeting, but it is generally only another meeting for Bible study and worship. Prayers may be offered, but it is not a "prayer" meeting where the time is spent in communal, corporate prayer.
Of course, the reason for this is that people do not want to pray corporately. They are embarrassed to pray with others. Or they do not think that they would know what to say. The real problem may be that they have not been taught how to pray. Jesus’ disciples felt this need keenly and asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. They saw Jesus spend entire nights in prayer. And they saw the effect of that prayer. If we want to see the effect of prayer, we must pray. When we speak to others of our needs, we get what people can do. When we speak to our heavenly Father about our needs, we get what God can do.
James tells us that "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." (James 5:16) The reason for the power of prayer is that it engages God in the situation. The early church quickly learned to use prayer effectively because they began to be persecuted. Peter and John were rebuked by the Sanhedren. When they returned to the assembly, prayer was the first order of the day. Later, when Peter was imprisoned, the church came together to pray. The early church was devoted to prayer as a way of life and God moved in their midst as a result.
I just finished a relatively new biography of Spurgeon by Lewis Drummond. Many of you know that I am a Spurgeon buff. This new biography, though it ran about 800 pages, was a very good read. It contained a good deal of detail that many biographies omit. At one point this great preacher was writing to lament the declining spiritual condition of churches in London. One of the things that was an evidence of this decline, in Spurgeon’s mind, was the fact that many churches were meeting as little as twice a week for prayer! Spurgeon recognized the vital importance of prayer for the success of the local church.
For a number of years, I have been involved with a couple of different regular prayer meetings. At one point we met each weekday morning at 7:00 AM for prayer. Today, we meet twice a week. All those attending are ministers, pastors of churches in the area. Lately, we have been talking more about the reality of spiritual warfare and the necessity for us to engage in intercessory prayer for this area. Indeed, our churches may be suffering because we do not spend time doing battle in prayer. We read in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." And we also read in Ephesians 6:12, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." Like it or not, we are engaged in a spiritual battle which must be won in prayer. We must be devoted to prayer.
And so we see that a great church is a church in which people exhibit a deep level of commitment in their Christian walk — a devotion to the disciplines of the Christian walk. We must never forget that the call of Christ is a call to follow Him. It is not a call to subscribe intellectually to a set of religious teachings. A great church is a devoted church, one in which people follow Jesus. It is a church where people live out New Testament Christianity, not merely a place where they only speak of it.
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