Bentley Baptist Church Sermons
Located in Perth, Western Australia. Listen to the weekly sermons from Bentley Baptist Church. Visit our website for more information.
Bentley Baptist Church Sermons
Marks of a Spirit-filled Church
Acts 2.42-47 | Ps Alex Huggett | 11.8.2024
Part of a series on the book of Acts
© Bentley Baptist Church Inc.
www.bentleybaptist.org
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer, and everyone was filled with awe and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all as any had need. Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people, and every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. It's quite the picture, isn't it? Have you ever wondered what revival looks like? I don't know. Maybe you've been part of a revival. Did you know that we've had numerous revivals in Australia through the years? For much of our modern history? There was a revival in 19th century Parramatta. So this was in the first half of the 19th century, so the 1830s, I think so. Parramatta is now a suburb of Sydney. It wasn't back then, but it occurred when some Christians started praying for a move of God and one night they're praying in the back of church and people started gathering with tears of repentance to hear the gospel and to pray and there was such a noise coming out of the church that passers-by on the street started to come in to see what was going on and they started to repent from their sins and get saved. And over the course of weeks there were many people meeting night after night, getting saved, repenting of their sins and crying out to God in prayer. In the 1970s revival moved amongst Aboriginal communities, sort of east of us, out in the Western Desert and in northern and central Australia. Basically Hundreds of people were saved and baptized. But there was also massive social change. So I didn't know this, but apparently in Wollona crime dropped to zero and the publican had to put on free beer to get people back into the pub. How is that? Back in the 1950s, moving away from Australia, in the Scottish Hebrides a revival broke out when two elderly sisters started praying, sensing God wanted to move and they were praying earnestly and that revival was marked by people gathering, deep repentance, spiritual manifestations and prayer.
Speaker 1:And you can actually read, certainly about the Australian revivals if you go into church track, to Church Connect into resources in the Book of Acts. Over the past few weeks we've been looking at the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the church and the church was set on fire. And in these verses, luke presents us with a picture of what life looked like during this first Christian revival, when the Holy Spirit moved the crowd to a deep repentance. If you remember back to what we've been reading the last few weeks, over 3,000 people were saved on one day and thousands more over the coming week. Now, as we read these verses, what Luke is really doing is presenting us with an idealized picture of the church. Now, this is what's happening in that church. For us, it's a little bit of an ideal to attain to, but it is a picture that serves as a model for every generation since then, every generation of Jesus followers to aspire to. And so, this morning, I want us to think about what we can learn from this as we pray for God to move among us.
Speaker 1:Now, while we often talk about the Holy Spirit's work in revival, it's really important for us to remember that this revival was Jesus-focused, and every revival, that's true, will be Jesus-focused. The Holy Spirit always leads us to Jesus. Peter preached that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was evidence that Jesus was risen and exalted and he called people to faith in Christ. People were excited about the church here because they were excited about Jesus, and Jesus was the centre of the church. Now, the first thing that Peter Luke notes Luke, the author of Acts, if you haven't been with us all the way through is that they were devoted. One of the evidence that the Holy Spirit is moving is that there is a devotion, and devotion to Jesus heats up, and when devotion to Christ heats up, we inevitably become devoted to the things of Christ. The things that are on Jesus' heart move to our heart. When Paul was collecting finances for the church in Jerusalem in 2 Corinthians 8, 3 to 5, he noted that the Macedonian church so he was provoking the Corinthian church by their neighboring Macedonian churches gave themselves first to the Lord and then to the apostles. By God's will.
Speaker 1:Now the level of devotion we see during a revival is really, really intense and we often look to that as an ideal, if you know those stories. But it's not something that's sustainable. We can't sustain meeting together every day, year on year, but it's not necessarily meant to be sustainable in that way. I mean, later on in Acts we actually see churches meeting together weekly rather than daily. But something transformative happens during this time that bonds us to Jesus and to one another in a new way and raises our everyday devotion to God and his kingdom to a new level, so that, whatever life was like before that revival, afterwards it's different. At the same time, this devotion that these Christians demonstrated is instructive to us and establishes a pattern for healthy churches to follow, and the four elements of devotion that Luke mentions here are spiritual practices that are meant to transform and shape us as individuals and as a church to be like Jesus, and so the first question this does is prompts me to ask is my heart devoted to Christ? Well, the first sign of devotion or thing they were devoted to was to the apostles' teaching, which has Jesus at its centre, and now the apostles' teaching is in God's Word. We read it here.
Speaker 1:Wherever you see revival, we see people responding to the preaching of the gospel. You see revival, we see people responding to the preaching of the gospel, and this repentance usually brings a deeper hunger for sound teaching. Personally, I can't think of a single believer I've ever met who was passionate for Jesus and not passionate for his word. They always just go together. A hunger for Christ goes with a hunger for his word and for his word. They always just go together. A hunger for Christ goes with a hunger for his word and for sound teaching. Perhaps this is because discipleship following Jesus is about following the words, the ways and the works of Jesus. We want to be like him and that means we need to know his ways, words and works as revealed in Scripture. We need to let them soak deeply into our souls and shape us. My nose runs continually during winter, I'm sorry. Now we're all being shaped by something in life. Our culture is trying to disciple you. It's trying to turn you into its own image the way you spend your money, your approach to sex, how you handle power. To a Christian, the question for us is how will you make sure your soul is shaped to look like Jesus instead of the world? This is a walk of discipleship.
Speaker 1:A Spirit-filled church is a community devoted to the teaching of Jesus. Secondly, they were devoted to the fellowship. Now we sometimes think of fellowship as coffee and chat after the church service. It's far, far deeper than that, and you actually see what it looks like in the rest of this passage. It meant doing life together and sharing possessions. They held everything in common. They held everything in common, and that word in the Greek, in common, is the root word for fellowship. Consequently, acts 4.34, which we'll get to in a few weeks, says there was not a needy person among them.
Speaker 1:Now, contributing financially to the church, both for charitable purposes and to support ministers and ministries, has always been part of the fabric of life of the church. But money is only part of the equation. Its fruit grows from the root of fellowship. Fruit grows from the root of fellowship Flows again out of a radical commitment to Christ and a commitment to one another that's steeped in the grace of God. Christian fellowship involves relationships that go deep how deep. Well, generosity is a Christian practice, but more than tossing a few dollars to a homeless person at the intersection or into the plate. For this first church it was sacrificial. They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all as they had need. Show me someone who loves deeply. You see someone spending their money in a way that reflects that Spirit-filled churches practice radical fellowship.
Speaker 1:And then the early church was devoted to the breaking of bread together. Now scholars debate whether this refers to the Lord's Supper, a common meal, or a common meal with the Lord's Supper. I'd love to talk to Mike about this later and see what he thinks, but here's my view. I used to think what Luke was talking about here was a common meal, but I've actually changed my mind. I believe it refers to the Lord's Supper, or what we call communion, or many traditions call the Eucharist.
Speaker 1:Now, here's why Luke, who wrote Acts, wrote the Gospel of Luke, and there he says that at the Last Supper between Jesus and his disciples, jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it After his resurrection. On the road to Emmaus, a couple of disciples meet Jesus, but they don't recognise him at first. They invite this stranger to join them for a meal, and Luke uses this exact same Eucharistic phrase to describe what Jesus did as they sit down to the meal. He took the bread, blessed it and broke it. He took the bread, blessed it and broke it, and then their eyes were opened and the disciples recognized Jesus, and then, when they reported to the rest of the disciples what had happened, they said Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of bread, the same phrase that we read here. And so Luke uses other words for ordinary meals during Acts, and so I think this is something specific.
Speaker 1:It's okay to disagree, but now it does seem that the early church practiced communion as part of a shared meal or a love feast. Luke tells us they broke bread from house to house. But whether it was part of a meal or in its own right, what happened was the communion was putting the remembrance of Jesus at the centre of their communal life in a very concrete way. You know, we can treat communion a little bit casually sometimes. I know many churches don't like doing it too often because it can become a bit boring and familiar and shock horror. It might make the service go longer. We couldn't have that, look, perhaps familiarity does breed content. But this is only one of two rites that Jesus gave us, so baptism being the other one. And in the first recorded Christian revival the church is devoted to taking communion apparently often, maybe every day. You know, actually in Catholic and Orthodox traditions this is really a no-brainer, because communion is a sacrament that gives grace and so you want as much of that as you can get. We don't have that same view of communion, but nevertheless maybe we need to rethink its significance in the life of the church. In any case, a Spirit-filled church is devoted to the breaking of bread and finally they were devoted to prayer.
Speaker 1:Someone's called prayer the engine room of the church, and revivals typically start with the fervent prayers of a few people and result in a general movement of prayer. You know, through the years I've probably preached this passage more than any other, and the last time I preached it here I lamented that our prayer life as a church was pretty weak. I'm happy to say that I couldn't preach that sermon today. At another meeting, the Nominational meeting a few weeks ago, someone asked me what I'm most excited about in our church and I said oh, we've just started a prayer meeting. We have community prayer during our services. We've just started the fortnightly Thursday night prayer that Andrea and I hadn't necessarily intended to be public, but it's been wonderful to be joined by so many people. There's a group that meets just prior to church on Sundays for prayer and has done for many years. We started holding presence nights. A number of our small groups have done the prayer course and we're gathering resources to help you with your prayer life, like the Lectio 365 app, and again you can find that on our resources page in Church Connect. And again you can find that on our resources page in Church Connect.
Speaker 1:Prayer is so important because it's our direct connection to God, and prayer isn't just about asking God to do stuff although it is that but it's also expressing our dependence on him and submitting ourselves to him and just coming into his presence and soaking, because in prayer we don't only seek his hand, we seek his face. It's about relationship, and the deeper our prayer life, the deeper our relationship with God, the more room he has to work in our lives and in our church and in our world. That's why Paul said to pray without ceasing. And you know, everything else flows from this, from prayer and church. We've made great progress in prayer. We've got a long way to go yet. So let's keep pressing in, let's not give up, let's go further, because a spirit-filled church is a praying church.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the church in revival experienced a profound level of devotion. They were devoted to the teaching of the word of Christ. They were devoted to deep sacrificial fellowship. They were devoted to putting Christ at the center in the breaking of bread. They were devoted to putting Christ at the center in the breaking of bread. They were devoted to prayer together. But we're not in a time of revival, sadly.
Speaker 1:So what do we do with this passage? Well, first, I think it lays down a pattern of practice for the church. Not that we have to slavishly follow this, and in fact we can't. For example, they met daily in the temple. Well, the temple doesn't exist anymore and even if it did, it's a long way away. But we can use the principles in this story to guide our priorities as a church, and in fact we've actually built many of our values around this. So this is our value statement. It's fairly new. You may not be familiar with it, but we are a church family comprised of diverse cultures, ages and abilities, united by a common devotion to Jesus and his gospel, reaching out and welcoming others to join us in a common life of the Bible, prayer, worship and breaking bread. Learning to be and make disciples of Christ Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God, the Father. So that's what's most important to us. There are other things, of course. Second, we can use this as a pattern for spiritual formation for ourselves.
Speaker 1:Discipleship isn't just learning the facts of the Bible or coming to church, although those are really important. It's being formed into the image of Jesus. You know who we are and what we become is the result of hundreds of tiny habits that we develop in our lives, sometimes without thinking, and spiritual formation works best when we build practices and habits that will help to form us into Christ-likeness Habits like reading and studying the Bible, practicing generosity, contemplating Christ and prayer and there are many others as well, but these form a solid core around which we can build what's sometimes called a rule of life. The goal isn't to impress God or earn our way with him. We can't do that. The goal isn't to impress God or earn our way with him. We can't do that. And it's not to impress anyone else. No one else even needs to know.
Speaker 1:The goal is to help us develop and cultivate a life and a heart that becomes, like Jesus, pattern for the church, a pattern for spiritual formations and, finally, it's something we can simply use to fuel our prayers. What do we say? Jesus, make us a spirit-filled church that looks like this Revive us, lord, holy Spirit, come, let's pray. Father, we thank you for this picture. We see that I find so inspiring and, father, that is so challenging.
Speaker 1:Father, I'm aware that as we look at this and we want to be more like this, to do it in our own strength just becomes works and effort and a recipe for burnout, and it's not meant to be that, father. It's something that's meant to be a joy and life-giving and life-shaping, and that can only happen by your Spirit. And so, father, I pray that you will write this pattern into our hearts by your Spirit, that this won't just become something we do because we feel like we have to, but it becomes something we can't stop doing because it's who we are, and it brings us so much joy and so much life and so much purpose and meaning. Holy Spirit, revive us, revive our church. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.