Meet Together (Acts 2:42-47)

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You can go ahead and grab your Bibles. Open up to Acts chapter two. Acts chapter two will be in verses 42 to 47 this morning. Acts 242, to 47 as you’re turning their recent reading came across a story of mom. She was sharing about how every year her son had the big out of town soccer tournament, one of the the capstones of the summer. Very exciting course, especially because this team had been together for years. So third grade, it was the highlight. Fourth grade, fifth grade, they’d, you know, go out for dinner the night before, they’d make sure they were staying in a hotel with a pool so they could cause as much mayhem as possible. All this was great until sixth grade. Sixth grade? Why sixth grade? Not the hormones, not this early teenager stuff. It’s because that was the year they all got smartphones, and it changed the whole experience of the tournament at dinner. Of course, everybody just did this. Only two kids on the team who didn’t have smartphones yet, and so they played in the pool by themselves, until eventually, after, you know, an hour or two, the rest of the team kind of came downstairs, probably shoot out of the room by their parents came down, you know, dipped themselves in the water and then had to get right back out. You know, check make sure that snapshot Snapchat streak is still alive. You know, that kind of stuff that is like addiction to it. Or different mom, same book that I was reading, but different mom shared a story, you know, talking to her son, and he always explained what had happened that day, what recess was like, most important class of the day, and stuff. And she noticed that he stopped talking about two of his friends, Sam and Casper. It used to be, you know, fixtures and this. And she’s like, okay, you know, pursuing the heart, like, is there relational conflict here? Or something like, what’s going on? And the son just said, Oh no, they’re phone people now, and you know what that means they’re not friends anymore, because this is how they interact with people and not this is how they don’t play anymore. If we could put it as bluntly as that bad, right? Thank goodness it’s only our kids who struggle with this. Sure it is the Louisiana elementary school teacher who gave a writing prompt of, you know, what’s a bad invention, and you’re thinking like, I don’t know, nuclear bombs comes to mind, or something like that, about a quarter of the class wished that phones had never been invented and said things like, I don’t like the phone because my parents are on their phone every day. I hate my mom’s phone, and I wish she’d never gotten it. By the way, if you have small kids, that is what they think of your phone, almost guaranteed. I know my kids think it of my phone, and I try to be fairly vigilant in this area even. And I get comments all the time about it. We understand why it’s the digitalization that we talked about week one of this series. The problem with technology in general, not just phones, but technology in general, it is that it gives us the illusion of connection. We’re more connected than ever. No, we are absolutely not, but it gives us the illusion of connection and community. But we know it’s not true. There’s a Stanford study done recently about Gen Z. These are the people who are digital natives. They had a smartphone with the umbilical cord. Kind of thing started with it, and they were trying to figure out what method of communication Gen Z kids liked best, prefer, like, really curious. Here is it email? Is it Snapchat? Is it text? Is it Do they still like phone calls? Do the phones even do that anymore kind of thing? And almost to a person, they said face to face, but you’re like, well, obviously it makes sense, but they actually surprised the Stanford people studying this, because we figured digital natives would go, no, they want the in person connection. Of course they do look at this point with everything that we’ve heard in the last two weeks, if you weren’t here, fine, everything I just said right now, like we know that we need a radical reorientation when it comes to community, that what we’re doing now is not good enough, if I can borrow a tech industry word, because I think we need to to, like turn text tricks against itself. We need disruption. Disruption. We need a massive break with what is happening currently. Now, I thought to myself, as I was listening to Kyle preach last week, and this is certainly no comment on Kyle’s preaching. I thought at this of my week, the week, week before too. I’ve heard all of this before you. From this pulpit, even I don’t think I’ve said anything Kyle or I in the last two weeks that we haven’t said before. In our series on community, in our series on hospitality, in our series on being an embodied person, in our series, I could just go on and on and on like we just keep talking about this. And so I stopped while listening to Kyle last week and went, why do I keep picking these series? Why do we keep saying the same thing over and over again? And of course, the answer is obvious. It’s because we still need to hear it. Because we have not changed yet. We have been hearers of the word and not doers of it. And I’m using the first person plural, very intentionally, put myself in this category. We need to hear it, but then we need to put it into practice. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about this week, getting intensely practical, what it would look like to put this into practice, drawing on the portrait of the earliest Church’s approach to community, which is what we see in Acts chapter two. Let me read Acts 242, to 47 now and then we’re going to kind of pull some themes out of this passage that will help us as we strive to do life together. Here it is, Acts two, beginning in verse 42 they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day, they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people and the Lord added to their number daily, those who were being saved. Let’s pause for a moment and just talk about that word. Almost at the start of the passage, devoted. They devoted themselves. So our first point devotion. What does it mean to have devotion to community? Devoted actually shows up twice in this passage. It’s only translated, devoted once right there in verse 42 but again in verse 46 every day they continued, is the same word we might say every day they devoted themselves to meeting together, shows up two times, kind of at the beginning and the end of the passage. Worth looking at that and considering, okay, what exactly does it mean they devoted themselves to this. This word devotion that’s used here is the way one commentator defines it, a persistent and submissive perseverance of a self enclosed group, all right, so a certain group of people collectively oriented toward specific goals. So it’s a group of people who are going, Okay, I’m going to submit my preferences, and I’m going to do so persistently for the sake of this collective goal. I read that definition, and you know what came to mind? It was maybe a weird one, but this is what came to mind anyway. I was thinking to myself, what would it take to get a high school boy to shave his legs. I mean, obviously losing a bet is the main one, right? But let’s assume that they wanted to do this. How would you get a high school boy to go? I am choosing to shave my legs swim team. They were devoted to the swim team, and so they were willing to submit this was not my top choice. Didn’t really want to go through with this, but I am submitting myself persistently to a team goal, to a group goal. That’s what’s being talked about here. The same word shows up in Acts chapter 10, to just describe the person who stands next to Cornelius. Cornelius is a big shot Roman, and he has its translated attendant there, but it really just says the devoted to guy, because that’s what an attendant would do. I’m only here for Cornelius’s sake, and so that gives us a good sense of what this word means, to attend constantly, to busy yourself with. And so now the question is, with what what did the early church attend to constantly? What did they busy themselves with? And we get a long list of things here in this passage. They busy themselves. They attended constantly to things like the word prayer, worship, fellowship, including meals together, like doing life together, compassion and outreach. And did you notice how all encompassing this devotion is? I mean, it says things like, everyone, all the believers, everything in common, anyone who had need every day. These are big words,
and in fact, in verse 46 we see when that word shows up again, how it affects their priorities and especially their schedules, because they are constantly meeting together daily. Be meeting together. So devotion looks like but there’s the rub for us today, because we read this and we think, Well, this is an idealized portrait. This is a maybe back then, certainly not today. We got a lot more to do these people here. I mean, they’re just like farmers and laborers, so they got plenty of free time. There’s no hard work involved in any of that, right? So yes, we have this crazy idea that somehow we have less free time than they did. And so we begin to think like, Who has time for this today? Doesn’t work in our context, especially not in the suburbs. They were in an urban environment, so maybe then it would work, but we can’t just walk, and so no way it’s not going to work. And hence our whole problem. And I know, having done this series a bunch of times already, as I just said, it is not going to work for me to tell you to try harder, do better. We’re going to need something to transform us inwardly. If we’re going to be the sorts of people who devote ourselves to community like this, what could possibly transform us inwardly? What would be point two, of course, you all know the answer, if you’ve been coming for any length of time at all, the answer is the gospel only the gospel transforms us inwardly. So let’s look at the gospel here. Point two, gospel. And you’re looking at this passage and you’re going, okay, there’s not a lot of gospel in the passage. Actually, I don’t know if you notice. I don’t even mention Jesus at any point. There’s no cross, there’s no resurrection. It does say they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, and the apostles teaching, if we could sum it up in a word, would be the gospel. So it’s there, but it just doesn’t seem to be the emphasis, okay, but we gotta make sure we set this passage in its context. I need you to trust me on this next point. Okay, I have a master’s in divinity and whatnot. Verse 42 where we began, follows verse 41 it actually follows verses 14 to 41 really important. In other words, it comes immediately after something. It comes immediately after Peter preaches the first gospel sermon, the first sermon after Christ’s death and resurrection. So the gospel is preached, and then gospel community forms really important for us to see this. It’s almost like Luke has this here. Luke, who wrote acts, has this here to answer the question, what sort of community would exist if we as a community were centered on and shaped by the gospel, if what Peter says is true and we believed it, what would it look like for us? And Luke says this, this is what it would look like. Sure, maybe it’s a little idealized, but it is not impossible. So all these excuses that we have, we don’t have time for community like this, you know. Or people don’t initiate. I want community like this. Nobody asks me to be a part of community like this. We’ll talk about that in a moment. Or community sounds great. Community with those people sounds dicey to me. Or, again, we live in the suburbs. It’s all too hard. You know, all these excuses that we have, we have to see that the gospel overcomes all of them. The Gospel overcomes in our hearts the greatest obstacles to true community, to doing life together truly. I want to look at four, four obstacles. These are big categories for sure. First of all, the Gospel overcomes self sufficiency. Self sufficiency, which is one expression of pride, by the way, self sufficiency. I don’t need anyone guys. I don’t need to be in community, because I’ve got this. I’m a rock, I’m an island. I may use people. Probably wouldn’t say it that way, but that’s what’s happening. I may want to be around people, but I don’t need people. The problem with that thinking is that Christianity has as its centerpiece the cross of Jesus Christ, and the cross outs us. It exposes that as a lie. The Cross says in the loudest possible terms, you can’t do much of anything by yourself, because you couldn’t even save yourself. You needed somebody else, Jesus Jesus Christ to come and do that for you. And Jesus says things in case you’re like, Okay, that’s salvation. But everywhere else, I’m pretty good, Jesus says things like, John 15. Apart from me, you can do nothing. So at the very least we got one, someone capital S that we need. We’re. Really badly. There’s the end of our self sufficiency already, but the weight of the New Testament suggests that actually we’re going to need some other somebody’s too. Because we read passages like Hebrews 10 that Kyle preached on last week. Don’t forsake meeting together, as some of you are in the habit of doing, but encourage one another. Okay, so there’s one another idea there. And we read passages like Ephesians, 416, which we come back to here a lot at Cityview, from Jesus, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. So each part is necessary. We are a body, and the body is composed of many parts and kind of needs all of them. So it’s like Paul there is saying we need to be connected to the head Jesus Christ, but we need to be connected to the rest of the body too. You are not self sufficient. You need the Church of Jesus Christ. And think also of how insulting self sufficiency is to Jesus, Jesus who was alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, abandoned and forsaken by his friends as he heads to the cross, Jesus who cries out even to our father on the cross, why have you forsaken me? Do you see that Jesus was alone? Jesus was forsaken and abandoned by God and man, so that we never have to be and then we go, I don’t need anyone else. I don’t think so. Self sufficiency doesn’t work in a gospel context. The second obstacle the gospel overcomes is self righteousness. Self righteousness, this is another expression of pride, of course. So self sufficiency means I don’t need other people. Self righteousness says I am better than other people. And I can’t think of anything that would kill community faster than looking down on the people you’re supposed to be in community with. But just look and consider the diversity of the group that’s present in Acts chapter two. And by the way, this is early, it gets way more diverse if you keep reading the rest of the book of Acts. But think of the racial, socioeconomic and religious differences. We know who’s there, because we can look back at the beginning of chapter two, verses eight and nine. We’ve got Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, near Cyrene, Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism. Means we got Gentiles there also Gentile God fears, Cretans and Arabs all here at this moment. That’s a lot of diversity. And again, it’s just nothing compared to what’s coming in the rest of Acts. So this is the sort of community that’s there. It’s this very diverse group. But that says something, of course, if you find yourself wishing that certain people weren’t a part of your fellowship. This is you. This is you self righteous. And by fellowship I mean any sort this congregation, absolutely, but maybe smaller expressions of it. I love my community group. I just, I really hope they don’t join it. That’s you, then this is your sin that you need to address. But you can see where this comes from, right? If our identity is based on those sorts of groups, again, maybe it’s racial, maybe it’s economic, but maybe it’s more just the like this would never happen in church, but play make believe with me. Maybe it’s the people who have their lives put together. That’s what you come to church to show right, where the lives put together people and so I don’t want somebody in my life whose life is messy, because that’s exhausting, or the, you know, the fun people like kind of the cool crowd, the people who make me laugh, versus the people who are a little bit awkward socially. I don’t need them in my community group. So if your identity is based on that, my life is put together. I’m one of the fun, cool people, or I’m this or that or the other thing, whatever it is, you’re always going to look down on the people who don’t measure up to your standard, because you don’t have a gospel mindset, right? The whole idea is the measuring up. I am this sort of person. If your identity, the core of your identity, is a gospel identity, then that means, what is the core of your identity? I didn’t measure up. I mean, you think just how antithetical that view is to the gospel. If this person isn’t good enough to hang out with me. You know, the only person who should have said that ever
God about you, because you are not good enough to hang out with Jesus. And what did Jesus do that? I will make a way for you to be able to hang out with me. And so that’s how we approach community. It’s. Third All right, self sufficiency, self righteousness. Third obstacle, self loathing. This one’s different. We had two expressions of pride. Now we have an expression of shame. Notice, it still starts with self though it is still self focused in so many ways. So it’s the opposite problem, but it stems from the same root, and that root is the failure to reckon with the gospel, because here you’re basically going, I’m not good enough to be a part of this community to which God says, Yep, that is correct, and neither is anyone else here. So you got that in common? You guys can hang out. You’re going to do great together, because the cross outs us, right? So what are you worried that people are going to discover about you if you’re in true community? Because some of us have that, like, if they really knew me, I would not be accepted. Okay, let me tell you what we all know about you already. Every one of us here knows this about you. You are not good enough. You are a wretched sinner, totally depraved, so wicked, you could not save yourself. Even if the Lord said, Do this and you will be saved, you wouldn’t do it. So God came and saved you. Oh, by the way you also were complicit in the murder of the Son of God. Okay, so that’s all of us. What are you gonna share that’s worse than that? All you’re gonna share is what confirms that, and we already know that about you. I love the way Dietrich bonhofer says it in his book, life together. Really good title. He stole it from me, not the other way around. He says this The pious fellowship. That’s code for church people right? The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner, so everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship we dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners. James 516 Kyle read for us earlier, confess your sins to one another. How could we not? We know it, and you will be healed, and that’s what we’re looking for. Now, one way this expresses itself, by the way, as an obstacle to community, this self loathing, is waiting for others to reach out first. That happens a lot where you’re like, Okay, I would love to be a part of this. I can’t wait for them to invite me. There’s almost this testing people, making them prove themselves to you, but there is still that focus on self at that point, right? It is not loving to go. I’m going to wait for you to reach out to me so that I know that I am loved. Now we reach out all of us, so that we love first. And this is helpful. I hear often. I know what people are saying when they say it, and I get that it’s not like wrong, but I’ll often hear people who come to Cityview, for example, and say, we are looking for community. I don’t think that’s right. I think we gotta tweak that a little bit, right? You don’t find community, you make community, you form community. So if you are looking for community, invite some people into your life. Okay, don’t wait for them to invite you into their lives. Fourth obstacle, self centeredness. Self centeredness. This is an expression of idolatry, and it is the priorities issue. All of us have other things we could be doing. Different things we could be doing right now, at this moment, and for sure, different things we could be doing at other times of the week, like when journey groups and community groups show up and things like that, and probably they seem more important most of the time. So my encouragement to you here is, if you can’t find time for true biblical community, dig deep in your heart like ask why, and I guarantee you that you will find idols there underneath it. What are some of those idols you’re going to see? I mean, there are a lot of options. Of course, kids is a big one in the western suburbs. It’s a huge one. Probably a big. Part of the reason you live in Elmhurst or nearby is because the great place to raise a family. So you got to watch out for family as an idol. Lots of good things with family, but they can become an idol, absolutely. Oh, and that will affect schedules. Then where it looks like, you know, I gotta be the perfect parent, which means my kids have got to have the perfect life. And the perfect life looks like how the world defines it, how Elmhurst defines it, not how school. Sure defines it, or we’re working hours more than we need to, because money is an idol. By the way, money is never an idol. Money buys you what your real idol is, comfort, security, things like that, pleasure, recreation, whatever it is like, ask yourself the question, what causes me to miss community? And I mean, ask at practice, like, what are the last two Sundays you missed? Why did your community group not meet last time out? Because six of you weren’t going to be there. And figure out, what was it like? What was on my calendar? Start to pay attention to the patterns that you see again. There are some good reasons to miss. There are a lot of bad reasons to miss. And so if you got bad reasons coming again and again and again, start to go okay. So what is it about this event or activity? What do I think that that? What do I think it’s giving me that is better than Christ and his community, the Gospel deals with those idols. Of course, that’s the good news, right? Because we know again, where our identity rests. We don’t need to win approval from the world as the perfect parent, because we already have the approval of the perfect parent if we are in Christ. That’s the good news. We can go from there. Of course, lots of other idols the gospel. In other words, it transforms our hearts, addressing these deep obstacles to community. But a transformed heart will, will not should, will lead to transformed practices. And that’s where we’re turning next community, our third point, and here I want to give specific, concrete steps we can take to do life together, to truly disrupt our habits and even the culture we inhabit. I’ve got five of them, kind of big categories we’ll talk about first one is just reconceive community. Reconceive community, our prevailing view today we talked a lot about this week. One is sovereign autonomy. We are all individuals, kind of standing on our own, juggling our wants and needs and responsibilities, which in an achievement society, is a lot of juggling. So juggling is really the right word, how it feels, right? Or plates spinning, something like that. You got family, you got friends, you got work, you got leisure, you got chores, you got church, you got school, you got kids, you got all that and more. Unless you’re a really good juggler, things are gonna fall. Plates are gonna crash, of course. And so what happens? I think one of the most powerful things Kyle said last week really caught me, at least, is the idea of trying to fit church in, right? And so we often try to fit church in against one of the balls we’re juggling. And so then church is one of the first balls we drop to picture a young couple, Bob and Mary. Will say, Bob and Mary pregnant find out they’re having twins. That is like chainsaws that you’re juggling at this point, right? Like I got two brothers with twins. It’s a lot for sure. You know, stuff is going to drop. Bob does not get to play golf anymore, right? At least until the kids are old enough that he, like, finds the loophole in the system I’m teaching them to play golf, right? Yeah, so he’s not playing golf for years. But what else would maybe drop? Well, church. I mean, no one would expect them to show up week one or two,
three or four, and pretty soon, it’s easy not to ever come back. But if we reconceive community in biblical terms, then at the center of our lives is the Christian community. It’s not one of the balls we juggle, it is more like the hub and the rest of our lives are spokes coming off of the hub. Talked a lot about that before. I can’t make the whole case here, so ask me about it, if you want to, but that’s what we see in Acts chapter two. Of course, it is not a collection of individuals, it is a community. So it’s not another ball to juggle, but the orienting center of our lives. So what happens to Bob and Mary, if that’s their conception and the conception of their church, of what community is? Well, that means twins is not something that happens to Bob and Mary, something that happens to the whole church, and so the whole church is going to be involved in the response, providing meals, of course, but probably not for a week or two, like maybe for a year or two. And then it’s going to look even bolder than that. This is the disruption idea. What are they going to need? Sanity breaks? And child care. So maybe there’s an empty nester mom who’s a couple blocks away, who goes, I’m just gonna come over every day from nine to 930 so that you can go upstairs and have time with Jesus. I watch the kids. Or we’re gonna provide twice a month you’re going out on date night. Just go walk, go sleep. For all I care, just go do something away from them. It looks like things like people saying, Hey, Bob, you work in Oak Brook. I work in Oak Brook. It’s not exactly on my way, but I’m gonna swing by every morning and drive you to work, and then I will drive you home every day so that again, you can sleep those extra 15 minutes, or you can read the Bible in the car. Or we can just talk and process like, I’ll ask you some questions. You can tell me what’s going on in your heart, and then I’ll pray for you for those last five minutes. We can do it again at the end of the day, like I know that, that what I just described is insane, like no one does that. That’s what I mean by disruption. We should be doing that radical reorientation, yes, but necessary reorientation, because the church community is the at the center of our new identity in Christ. Because, of course it is, because if I’m in Christ and you’re in Christ, then we’re in Christ and we’re in it, in him together. And so it’s at the center of our practices as well that’s going to affect our schedules radically, radically. It means, first and foremost, I will be so black and white on this point. It means this hour, Sunday morning, is sacrosanct and inviolable. This is the first thing in your calendar. Nothing else happens. Sunday mornings, with so few exceptions, family wedding, out of town. Of course, you’re all going to take a vacation once or twice a year, unless you’re a millennial or younger, in which case you don’t take vacations, right? Okay, we talked about that week one, but otherwise, you are here because you know, you need this time, and that might mean making sacrifices. Kyle talked about travel baseball and what they did last year, or what their approach is. Coopers are different, partly because we have twice as many kids as bjergas who had to be a little more radical. We just don’t do travel. That’s not a thing. It’s not because they’re not good enough. Sealy has been asked to play travel soccer many times, and we just said, No, it’s not gonna work for us, so she plays Park District soccer. All right, that’s what it looks like. But there are other moments also. It’s not just Sunday morning. You know what else is inviolable for me, Monday nights, 30 weeks out of the year, 30 weeks out of the year. That is a sacrifice, by the way, that Amy makes, also, because that’s journey group. Nothing gets in the way of Journey group, because I know I need that time, for my sake and for the sake of the men that I am discipling again, first thing on the calendar, because we know we need these moments. We need gospel community. We need to remind and remember in worship and prayer, in teaching, in confession, and then we need to respond. And we need people to help us respond with discernment, rebuke, hospitality and the rest. Second, second, I’m in so much trouble. Time wise, it’s Kyle’s fault. He did the parent commissioning. Second do it together. And I know some of you are like you want me to do life together together. That’s brilliant. Brandon, what I mean here is you need a network of like minded people with you and spurring you on. Like I can speak from very personal experience, it is very hard for your kid to be the only kid who doesn’t have a smartphone. It is a lot easier when you can go, no, no, no, no, they don’t have smartphones either. They don’t have smartphones either. And especially if you’re explaining why, what makes us different? It’s not smartphones, it’s Jesus. And they go, Oh, I get that. That makes sense. Mom, that makes sense. Dad, we need that otherwise. Travel sports like I said, Can I tell you I am an optimist. I know that, but I think this could happen. I don’t know why we can’t push back on culture. We’re actually a pretty significant chunk of culture. You know what? I would love to see Kyle mentioned again. They go to the coach every year and say, We don’t play Sunday mornings. And the coaches say, Okay, we’ll let you miss that game. That’s because one person did it on his team. What if six people on the team said, we won’t be there Sunday morning? What do you think would start to happen? They’d stop scheduling things on Sunday mornings. Like, you know, in Iowa they I don’t even know why it’s Iowa, like, Iowa has nothing good in it, okay? My father in law is from Iowa. Jake’s from Iowa. Whoa, Kate. I got all sorts of people angry. Okay, not my people. I don’t want me to fellowship with them. No, I love Iowa. It’s funny, they don’t have school sports on Wednesdays. Right? Because that’s when youth groups meet in Iowa. I don’t know why it’s not in Scripture, but that’s when they meet. Okay? Like, that’s what happens when we as a subculture, say, No, we’re done with this. Okay? I don’t care as much about baseball as I care about Jesus and His people. We can win this war against our culture and for our kids. I’m sorry. You know, I’m a prophet, not a pastor. Okay, so let me just say this. Don’t clap for me. Do it. Do it. That’s what we need here. I don’t even know where I am anymore. You So Much of this series has been crazy. This is so much more radical than don’t have sex before marriage. Okay, I know that we will not do it unless we have people encouraging us constantly in it, and I know I’m keenly aware of the fact that I’m speaking to two groups of people right now, that one group of you is already tuned me out because it is too much disruption, and you love the world and its values too much to do anything different. But there is another group of you who’s going, this is what I want. Find each other. They’re not hard to spot, by the way. They’re the ones who show up, find them and get this sort of network and community together. What are you going to do when you do that third point, open your home. Open your home. I love what Anna Maria Pinedo says in our article on hospitality. She says, We are short today. We are short, not only of tables that welcome strangers. That’s what the word hospitality means in Greek, by the way, the love of stranger. We are short, not only of tables that welcome strangers, but even of tables that welcome friends. Yes, that is correct. This community portrait in Acts two is almost unthinkable to us today. I mean, you look at this and you think, Nope, doesn’t work. Why not say it this way, y’all gotta eat right? So that’s 30 minutes of prep and at least 30 minutes of just eating dinner. So you got an hour every day do it together. So I mean, by opening home do it together, why not eat with somebody else? Why not pick a night each week where you go, Okay, we don’t have anything this week, so, you know, or this night and Tuesdays or whatever are open. So on Tuesdays, we’re gonna invite someone over every week that’s just our somebody comes over night of the week. Or you we do this a lot, Amy, and I should be like, Hey, we actually don’t have anything tonight, which is miraculous. Usually. Like, is there someone we can text and just text him at four and be like, Why don’t you come on over? Okay, why? I mean, first of all, what does this look like when you have them over? And why is it worth it? This is not entertaining, entertaining. And this is Jen Wilkin, who said this entertaining seeks to impress. Hospitality, seeks to bless. Entertaining is about you. Do you see what my home looks like? Do you see what sort of cook I am? Hospitality is about the other person? Hospitality is an expression of love. The good news, though, is that reduces the pressure. It eases the burden on you to do this, you’re going to entertain, you better impress, but you’re going to do hospitality, whatever, whatever you have. That’s good enough. What that means? How many of you been wondering by the Oh, it’s not there. Go to the next slide. Nope. The life together one sorry, haha. There we go. How
many been sitting here this whole time going, why that graphic? Why not like people doing life together? Big mess here? No, it’s because I knew I was going to say this back when we were putting the graphic together. What this means, this view of hospitality is we can’t have people over because the house is a mess. Doesn’t fly anymore. That’s done in a gospel context. It also, though, means, if we’re doing this in community, right, that means, then again, it’s not even necessarily I’m blessing you, but we’re getting together. That means everybody chips in. You walk in in a hospitality meal, and you go, Hey, can you chop the veggies, which you don’t do in entertaining, of course, but we do in hospitality. And then afterwards, after you eat in somebody else’s home, you pick up your plate, you carry it to the kitchen, you put it down, and you start doing the dishes. And what are they going to say to you? Oh, don’t. Don’t. Don’t. No, no, no, I’ll get that later. My wife is one of those crazy people who says those things, I’m like, Baby, like, let them do the dishes. What I I don’t want to do the dishes. So when they say that to you, you go, nope, no, no. This is biblical community. Okay? We do this together. You start doing. Dishes together, you can keep talking together then as well. And what this communicates why it matters so much. Hospitality communicates physically and spiritually. I have room for you in my life, which is about as powerful an expression of love as you could possibly make. So my challenge, we had a challenge each time. My challenge this week is have someone over to your house this week. Some of you are like, Oh man, this is the worst week ever, and I’m gonna get 18 invitations because we’re all in the room together. Have someone over this week. If it is someone from this church, you may not clean up beforehand, and you must make them do something, and they’re gonna be expecting it, because they’re in the room with you. Okay, it’s fine. Fourth gotta fly here. Fourth set specific goals. I’m stealing this from Erin lookners book. The opt out family actually gotten a couple illustrations from her here. Very good. The whole point of this is using text playbook against itself, so using text ideas against tech and so she’s like, we do need chat GPT. Specifically, we need to chat about our GPT goals, principles and truths. I love that, so have a chat GPT this week. Goals, where are we going? What sort of family do we want to be, or what sort of community do I want to be a part of as an individual? Principles, how will we get there? And here we’re talking about the thing beneath the thing, the principle is not potlucks and the like, Die Hard Baptists in the room are like, come again. Yeah, it is. But okay, it’s not potlucks, right? It’s the thing beneath potlucks, hospitality, community, something like that. So principles are usually expressed with something like in our family or in this house, we fill in the blank and then T truth. Why does it matter? Which is this is the easy one for Christians, because we got a big book of truth that we can draw from. So it looks something like this, goal, have more people over principle in our family, we practice hospitality, truth. Biblical community matters, and we will make time for it as this summer or sorry, as this series wraps up. But I said summer, because summer is such a great time to do this, because things do slow down a bit in the summer as this series wraps up. In summer, great time to set new rhythms. What goals do you have if you’re in community groups? Certainly you should be. If you haven’t gotten that in this series yet. Let me say it again. This is what you’ll be talking about in particular on this series. And then fifth point, invite others in. Because interestingly, all this leads to mission. Actually, here we’re, like, intensely focused on the church community, and it wraps up with verse 46, and seven, they’re enjoying the favor of all the people, and the Lord’s adding to their number daily. Which makes sense, of course, because it’s such a radical change from the world. Can I say it like this, when you look like the world, no one cares what you believe. Why would anyone say what makes you different if there’s nothing different about you, but when you look different, they’re gonna go, can you give me a reason for the hospitality within you? To misquote Peter, people today are longing for this. We live in a barren wasteland at this point, relationally in an inhuman world, as we said week one, people are desperate for community. When they’re not finding it, they’ll be drawn to people who have it, which is why so often people today belong before they believe they will come for the community and stay for the Christ. I like the way one book puts it total church by Chester and Timis. It says evangelism is best done out of the context of a gospel community whose corporate life demonstrates the reality of the word that gave her life. So we’re gonna proclaim a word of life and then present the Word of Life. We’re gonna be like, Yes, that makes sense. I see it in you. Jesus even told us that the world will know us by our love. And love is not something an individual does by himself that happens in community, pull all these threads together just like what could this look like? Just going to give you this closing illustration. Some of you read this before because it’s in Dustin Willis’s life and community, which a bunch of us have studied together. There’s a couple who decided to walk nightly just to meet new neighbors. In particular. That’s why they tried to walk. And sure enough, they did. Met Ted and Barb, who were first time parents, and they were out walking because their newborn was not sleeping. And so they were trying to do the like, if you they will maybe fall asleep, which is what we did with Charis. By the way, met lots of people when we did that. And so this couple, they remember those days they had four kids themselves. Not all of them were great sleepers, so they knew that this young couple needed rest, and so they said, why don’t you come over for dinner, like, we’ll cook for you sometime. That’s one meal at least off your plate. You can sit like we can help with kids, whatever, all that kind of stuff. They came over because they’re desperate for community, of course, and they’re able then these two couples to commiserate about parenting. They got to talk strategies for helping babies sleep, but mostly just experience the joy of life together. And then Ted and Barb asked this church couple why they always had cars in their driveway on Thursday nights, because that’s when they host their small group, which, by the way, gets the importance of consistently meeting its community. You do not ask your neighbors why they have cars in their driveway twice a year. We all have that, but every week is something else, and so they asked about it. Well, that’s our small group, by the way. We’d love to have you join us sometime, and they did, and they belonged before they believed, but they heard the gospel and then saw the gospel, lived in community and placed their faith in Christ. Now I have no special insight or vision, but I can peer into your hearts right now and know that most of you are thinking, I want to be like that. That’s what I want to be true of my life, our life. We want to be those sorts of people. So what is holding you back do the hard work of diagnosing your heart and set those goals and establish new rhythms and practices. Big Idea is basically just the three words we’ve looked at. It’s nothing new. I spend no time on it. Devote yourself. You know what that word means now, devote yourself to gospel shaped community. In other words, live out implications of the gospel with others, because implications of the gospel are not individual, not primarily, don’t leave here unchanged. My favorite series I ever preached here was when we did our giving campaign, not because I really like, I don’t like talking about money, most pastors don’t. But what I liked about it was, at the end of the series, everybody came up front and said, This is how my life is gonna change. As a result, it was a pledge. You know, of course, at that point, I sometimes feel like we should do that every series, like everyone just Usher forward, like, here’s what we’re gonna do coming out of here. Do it for yourself. At least do it in your community. Group, your journey group, shoot me an email. I’d love to be a part of this anyway. Like, pick one area and make a move. Devote yourselves in new ways to gospel shaped community. Let’s pray, Lord. We know we need you here.
We need the gospel. We need the gospel to change us, because in our flesh, we want to do things our own way, and that is going to lead to selfish isolation every time. And we see it, Lord. We see the effects of our sin lived out in our lives and in our inability to develop form the sort of community we want to have. We own that Lord, we confess that before you now we pray that you would change us, let the gospel change us, so that this biblical community has the place in our hearts and lives and schedules that it should have change us, Lord, make us more like Jesus. In fact, Lord, as we sing those words together. Now may it be our prayer here in this area, that we would be more like Jesus as we leave here today, we pray in Christ’s name, Amen.