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SIGNS OF A HEALTHY CHURCH - I
Acts 2:42-47
Bob Bonner
June 27, 2010
Having recently broken the sixty-year-old barrier, I thought it a good idea to have a thorough physical to make sure that the standard signs for being in good health were evident in my life. Thankfully, I am doing quite well, all things considered. My weight, cholesterol, blood tests, blood pressure, and heart rate reveal no signs for concern for a person my age. But what if some of those tests did show a situation needing attention? Would I want the doctor to tell me so, or would I want him to conceal what he knows from me? Preferably, I would want him to tell me the truth and to hold nothing back. Furthermore, I would also hope that he would tell me what I can do about the situation so that I can return to better health, or what steps I can take to protect myself from matters getting worse.
Similarly, going to the Word of God is somewhat like having an honest and perfect spiritual physician examine you. If we study it and ask the Lord to reveal areas for needed growth or signs of bad spiritual health, we will be shown the truth through His Word. Furthermore, wise are we to take seriously the result of our spiritual exams as revealed by the Word, and to take action steps toward making any changes that would be necessary.
This morning, we come to a passage of Scripture that should cause us as a church family and as individual Christians to look closely at the results of our own spiritual exam. How are we faring as a church and as individual Christians? What are the sure signs of a healthy church or of us as individuals being spiritually healthy?
When it comes to physical indicators, there are certain things that may reveal a good level of health, but these alone are not always reliable. For instance, the color of the whites of one’s eyes, skin color, urine color, sleep patterns, and a good appetite may look great and lead one to a false sense of security. Actually, something inside may still be seriously wrong. Similarly, as churches and as individuals we look to and trust certain indicators for proof that God is blessing our lives and we are doing well. For instance, if we have a good attendance that shows little sign of falling off, we think all must be well, spiritually speaking. This is not necessarily true. Or the reverse--if we have shrinking numbers, the church family must be ill. In this wicked world, I can assure you that the lack of numbers in a church is not necessarily a sign of spiritual sickness. It can often be more a sign of the spiritual sickness of our world. Some think that as long as we have enough money to pay our bills, God must be pleased with us. Again, not true. You see, if those were correct and certain indicators that we have God’s blessing and are spiritually healthy, then religious cults who are growing in numbers, buying up land, and amassing stores of cash would appear to be under God’s blessing as well. Because God permits churches or other organizations to grow in size and have money to pay the bills, or because He allows some people to possess a lot of money is not a guarantee that they are spiritually healthy or being used of God. So what are the true signs of spiritual health? Where would we look for such signs? Obviously, we would go to our Spiritual Doctor, the Word of God, and allow it to examine us according to its key indicators of spiritual health.
That’s just what we want to do this morning and next week. As we look at Acts 2:42-47, we want to examine the natural, normal signs of spiritual health of a growing local church and of growing Christians. This week we will highlight two signs that measure the degree of one’s spiritual health. Is our spiritual church body performing well? Are we as individuals exhibiting signs of spiritual growth, or are we vulnerable to spiritual disease?
I will warn you ahead of time that after we finish looking at this passage today and next week, we may or may not like our results. Whether we like or dislike the results is irrelevant. What is relevant is what you are going to do about it. And we are wasting our time studying God’s Word if we are not committed to taking practical steps to apply to our lives.
Our passage describes the historical outworking of God’s ideal in the first local church. It describes the newborn church in its prime, when it possessed a purity of devotion to the risen Lord unmatched in succeeding generations. Due to our study of baptism, a message on Serve Grants Pass, and our Promotion Sunday study of Psalm 121, we have been away from our study of Acts for six weeks. Hence, before we return to Acts 2 and this passage, it would be wise for us to take a brief moment to remind ourselves what has taken place just previous to this passage. In other words, let’s refresh our minds as to the literary and historical context of our passage.
Immediately following the event of Pentecost and the coming and filling of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Peter stands up on the temple mount among thousands of devout Jews to explain what has just happened. He preaches a sermon that begins in verse 14 and carries through to verse 41. It is evident from a closer study of this text that this is only an abridged version of Peter’s entire sermon. The previous passage makes it clear that Peter and the other apostles spent all day at the Temple preaching and answering the devout Jews’ questions concerning Peter’s initial sermon. The few verses we have of Peter’s sermon wouldn’t have taken eight hours to give.
If you remember our study, Peter’s message to these devout Jews was to prove to them from their Old Testament scriptures that the man they had crucified fifty days earlier had been their long-awaited and anticipated Messiah. After being convinced this, many of them sought God’s forgiveness and put their trust in Christ. They changed their thinking concerning who Jesus was and humbly submitted their lives to Jesus Christ as their Messiah, their master and savior. In verse 41, as an outward declaration of their commitment to Christ, they willingly sought after and were baptized, the first true outward sign that someone has trusted Christ.
Following this is our passage for study today and next week, verses 42-47. In these verses we will see the effects of Pentecost and the gospel being preached for the first time to these devout Jews. We will see the classic evidence of what happens to someone or to a group of people who commit their lives to Christ. We will see the marks of the first healthy, devoted church family who seeks to follow after Christ. In addition, we will note the marks of those who have truly come to know Christ as their master and savior, and who are growing in a healthy manner toward maturity in their faith.
Let’s read the whole passage together and then park ourselves on verse 42, which has so much in it that we won’t be able to address all that is there in just one message. Beginning with verse 42, Luke writes:
They [those new believers of verse 41] were continually devoting
themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to [the] fellowship, to the
breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone kept feeling a sense
of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through
the apostles. 44And all those who had believed were together and had
all things in common; 45and they began selling their property and
possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.
46Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking
bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with
gladness and sincerity of heart, 47praising God and having favor with all
the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those
who were being saved.
According to verse 42, these new devout Jewish followers of Jesus Christ mentioned in verse 41 plus those 120 disciples who had just been filled with the Holy Spirit, as explained in Acts 2:1-13, all gave themselves wholeheartedly to two primary activities: the apostles' teaching and the fellowship. The grammar of the Greek sentence sets off these two actions of teaching and fellowship as being distinct from the next two activities mentioned, the breaking of bread and corporate prayer. Grammatically, the breaking of bread and corporate prayer are two key ingredients or examples of what is part of the true Biblical meaning of fellowship. The meaning and importance of the breaking of bread and of corporate prayer we will save for next week. This morning, we simply want to examine these two primary activities to which Dr. Luke refers in verse 42. Next time we will pick up the second half of verse 42 and try to cover the rest of the passage.
Wanting to make sure that he properly introduces the significance of these signs of a healthy church and healthy, growing, genuine believers, Luke explains that these committed followers of Christ “continually devoted themselves” to these two activities.
This Greek word “devoted” comes from a word that means “a steadfast and single-minded fidelity to a certain course of action.” We would call such a person “intensely focused and committed.” The word “continually” only adds to this picture of devotion. These Christians considered these practices to be very serious and of a high priority for their lives. If I were to describe in more modern terms the level of these Christians’ commitment to the apostles teaching and to fellowship together, I would put it this way: These two activities put together were the single-most important objective in their lives. And as we will see in the weeks to come, it is out of this priority that everything that would be of importance to the Christian ambassador of Jesus would flow. In other words, if they or we are going to effectively serve Jesus Christ in a world that so wants to disregard him, to ignore him, and to pretend He never existed, everything we do must begin with these two objectives: getting taught by the apostles and living in fellowship with one another.
What did Luke mean when he writes that these early believers were devoted to the apostles teaching? First, to answer the question we need to consider the content of the teaching. The apostles' teaching included the Jewish Scriptures as well as the teachings of Christ on earth and the revelations He gave to the apostles from heaven. In short, this means that the early believers held that the foundation of the content of their instruction was solely based the Word of God. It was the authority of God’s Word that gave them direction as to how they were to live their lives. These early believers had a hunger for learning God’s Word, as was exhibited by their devotion to gathering together to do so.
Today, the teaching of the apostles has come down to us in the New Testament, and hence, contemporary devotion to the apostles teaching will mean a hunger to learn and to submit to the authority of the New Testament.
Furthermore, the apostles’ teaching centered around the practical implications of the Gospel for everyday life. When you study the Apostle Paul’s writings, you notice that he always begins with doctrine and then follows with an explanation as to why that doctrine is so important to their daily living and how it is to be applied to their lives in the here and now. Hence, the purpose in teaching God’s Word is not to indoctrinate but to transform lives. The end goal of teaching God’s Word is not simply to fill Christians’ minds with dogma, but rather to apply God’s Word so that it will result in the transformation of life here on earth.
A commitment to the apostles’ teaching is foundational to the growth and spiritual health of every church. The apostle Peter supports this point when he states in 1 Peter 2:2, “Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.” A baby does not understand much as an infant, but he does have a strong instinct for milk. And when he wants it, everybody knows about it. So it is with a new believer. A new believer will root around looking from radio stations to TV programs to various Bible studies to get fed from the Word of God. It is instinctive that he wants to know more about God.
However, it’s not just any old feeding that makes for a healthy spiritual diet that produces maturity and growth in a believer. The Apostle Paul, in the same line of thinking as Peter, writes to a very spiritually unhealthy church, the church at Corinth, concerning their spiritual feeding. He says to this backward, spiritually growth-stunted church in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able.” That was a pretty good Greek-to-English, word-for-word translation of 1 Corinthians 3:1-2. Now look at two modern paraphrases of the same passage that bring out the emotional nuances of Paul’s words. In the New Living Translation we read:
Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I
would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this
world or as though you were infants in the Christian life. I had to feed
you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for
anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready.
The MESSAGE paraphrase reads: “But for right now, friends, I’m completely frustrated by your unspiritual dealings with each other and with God. You’re acting like infants in relation to Christ, capable of nothing much more than nursing at the breast. Well, then, I’ll nurse you since you don’t seem capable of anything more.”
Do you get the point? In the beginning, you give people the basics and you take your time explaining to them the truth. But eventually, if you want the church family to grow in a healthy manner, to mature, you must move on to more solid food, the meat of the Word. If one is going to grow into a healthy spiritual adult, one needs more than pablum. We need solid teaching from the Word. These early Jewish believers clearly understood this, and that’s why they devoted themselves to the ongoing process of studying God’s Word, or sitting at the feet of those who had studied it, in hopes that they might learn more.
Once more the Apostle Paul, in his letters to his protégés Timothy and Titus, affirms the importance for the church and individuals to study God’s Word. Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2:20 that the church is built upon the apostles and prophets. The local church family stands upon the solid foundation of the teachings of these earlier and great men of God. And the focus of their teaching was always Christ and His gospel and how it applied to their lives.
It is clear that God designed the church to be the place where His Word is to be proclaimed and explained. Not only should theology be passed on, but there should be answers to the questions, “So what? How am I supposed to live now that I have learned this? What difference does it make in my thinking, attitudes, and actions? What am I being challenged to consider or do? Should I evaluate my stewardship or slave relationship to the Master in light of Scripture?” In addition, as we will see next week, the church was also a place where non-believers were welcomed and enabled to understand what God’s Word says about life. Whether or not they chose to trust Christ was another matter.
John MacArthur illustrates the truth of the church being the place where God’s Word is to be proclaimed and explained when he writes:
It can be shown that the strength of the 16th century Reformation, the 17th
century Puritan revival, the 18th century Great Awakening, the Revival of the
19th century with such greats as D. L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon, Joseph
Parker, and Alexander Maclaren, has pointed to churches that were steeped in
in-depth teaching, and at the hub of the church family life has been strong
Biblical preaching. In turn, the weakness of the modern church is the lack of
and the people being intolerant of strong teaching from the pulpit. We would
rather have our ears tickled with pleasantries that don’t become an affront to
our lifestyles or hold us accountable to who we are in Christ.”
I couldn’t agree more with John in this matter.
Sadly many churches today ignore the exposition and application of Scripture at its peril, as Hosea 4:6 warns, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Believers cannot function on principles they have not learned, and the unsaved can’t be saved if they don’t hear and understand the truth and its application to personal life right now. This fact should be obvious to all churches today. However, what do we find taking place in a majority of our evangelical churches? Churches are giving more time to music, drama, videos, and dance, all the while shortening the allotted time for the teaching of God’s Word. It is not that more music is wrong, or that using videos or dance or drama as a tool of declaring truth is wrong. Those things can certainly spice up the application of truth. What’s wrong is that these devices, which are typically used to attract the lost, to entertain, or to make people feel good are replacing what God’s Word says is the absolute necessity for church growth, the solid instruction of God’s Word.
From the evidence in Acts 2 of these new and true believers, the closer the men and women came to God, the closer they wanted to get to where He speaks to their hearts, and that is in the Bible. What was true of the church then is true for individuals today. If you are Spirit-filled, then you will be drawn to this Book. It is the norm, not the exception, for those who have truly met Christ.
If the health signs in your life reveal that you are not drawn to this Book, if you do not really want to study it, if you say, “Well you know, I look at the Bible from time to time, but it seems rather boring to me. It never really does much for me,” it seriously raises the question of whether or not you really are born again. If all of the new believers in Acts had a passion to learn God’s Word, then why don’t you? The Spirit-filled church should offer as many ways as it can for people to get to know the Bible, beginning with the preaching, different Bible classes, and small groups. Truly, the spirit-filled church focuses first on the study of God’s Word. Everything the church and individual Christians do from there on out is an outflow of the understanding of God’s Word and the directions He gives us on how we can live meaningful lives and how we can make the greatest impact in our world for Christ.
The second sign of a healthy church and a healthy growing Christian concerns the practice of fellowship. The simple term for “fellowship” refers to the sharing of things in common with others. The word in Greek for fellowship is koinonia. The word in verse 44 for “common” comes from a part of the root word of koinonia, “koina.” Even more interesting is that later, the word for “generous” in Greek is “koinonikos.” Altogether, these similar and closely-related words in Greek tell us that the concept of fellowship meant to generously hold many things in common. In verse 44, Luke’s point was that these believers generously shared with other believers their material goods for the temporary needs of those Jewish worshipers who were from out of town and who had come to celebrate Pentecost. Even though their fellowship extended to material goods, the New Testament term for “fellowship” primarily refers to the holding in common of ideas, attitudes, purposes, mission, and activities that centered on Christ.
As I mentioned earlier when reading through our passage, the actual translation of the Greek in verse 42 states “the fellowship.” When you add the article “the” to fellowship, it indicates that this fellowship was distinctive or unique. At this time, “this unique fellowship” referred to the fellowship of Christian Jews within Judaism who held in common their commitment to Jesus as their Messiah and to His purposes and the truth of the Gospel.
In addition, the use of this term “fellowship” by the early church never pointed to something superficial like a group of Christians socializing over a card game, playing softball, or fishing together. Even though we may use it that way today to speak of enjoying one another’s company as Christians, that is not how it was understood back then. True fellowship is deep, vital, and becomes one of the major spiritual energizers of life. It is community family life lived out as God meant it to be.
That’s why these early Jewish Christians were willing to sell property temporarily to meet the immediate needs of those new believers from out of town. These new believers, who would soon return to their homes in distant places, needed to stay in Jerusalem for a short period of time, maybe a month or so, to receive some basic grounding in the Word before they headed back home. When they got home, there would be no apostles to further lead them for awhile. Hence, these Jerusalem Christians were so concerned for their fellow Christians that they made it possible for them to get as established in the faith as possible before leaving Jerusalem.
Contrary to the socialists who love to use this passage from the Bible to support their cause, this passage has absolutely nothing to do with socialism. The Bible does not teach nor does it even support the concept of socialism. If anything, I believe that it can be shown from scripture that socialism is not just an a-biblical concept, but it is an anti-biblical concept. Instead, the passage refers to the church body meeting a short term need, not the long term existence of a fellow Christian.
This term fellowship described the new life of those who became Christians. When someone became a Christian, suddenly they had this new Life, that is, the life of Christ within them, whereby they became a part of a unique association with other Christians. This new life with Christ lived out in association with other Christians became the single-most important thing to them. It became the very center of their lives. They looked forward to and enjoyed the company of those who shared their same Messiah. In this early church, they not only came together regularly, but willingly. They did not come reluctantly or out of obligation or in a spirit of fear. They did not come merely to perform a task or duty. They came because they realized that they either needed the support of other believers or they were needed to support other believers. They came because they needed to learn from the Word of God. They came together several times a week because they wanted to worship their common Messiah together.
As to this subject of fellowship, Luke has more to say to us, and we will pick it up next week. But I leave you with a few questions to consider based on what we have learned thus far this morning. According to your Spiritual Doctor, the Word of God, how healthy are you as it concerns your learning from the Word of God? Other than here on Sunday morning, what study are you involved in during the week that helps you grow in the understanding of your life in Christ? What personal study are you doing during the week? If you have nothing else going for you than Sunday services, then you are not as spiritually healthy as you may think you are. The doctor recommends that if you want to continue to grow and become spiritually mature, spend more time in the study of the Word of God.
Secondly, according to your Spiritual Doctor, the Word of God, how healthy are you as it concerns your fellowship with other Christians? Other than your attendance on Sunday morning at church, do you spend time with other brothers and sisters in Christ whereby you are either being encouraged and supported and built up in your faith by them, or you are being used to encourage them through fellowship? If you are not deliberately, with purpose, involved with other Christians in building into their lives other than our times here in corporate worship, what are you going to do about it? The doctor recommends that if you want to continue to grow and become spiritually mature, then you need to seek out at least one more contact with fellow believers during the week on a regular basis.
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