And it's wonderful to see you all today.
And hello to our sites, Himmel and Hatfield, who are joining us
this morning as well. Oh my goodness, wasn't that a
wonderful baby dedication. I just love stories.
And if you are visiting today, you're part of the family here
who've had the baby dedicated. Can I just say a massive warm
welcome again? And if you are new to church and
you're visiting again today, we love having visitors.
And our prayer is that you feel at home here today and might
even consider coming back. Who knows?
So I grew up in the middle of a beautiful, messy experiment.
My parents had moved from Pilgrims Hall in Essex to North
Devon to live in community with two other families in one large
house. And my parents were bursting
with passion and the Holy Spirit and they bounced into probably a
good four or five local churches over a period of a couple of
years, basically saying, here we are, we're ready to serve, we'll
do whatever you want. And sometimes they were met with
a absolute closed door. We don't want you, you're not
needed here. And other times, over a period
of time, it was clear that their passion for the Holy Spirit
wasn't quite the fit that that church wanted.
And so they did what all pioneers would do, and they
started a church on the ground floor of a house in a room
called the Pink Room, because it was very large and it was very
pink. And growing up, I saw the two
sides of the coin. I saw the beauty, the radical
community and fellowship. I saw people on the margins of
society finding a home, finding a community.
I saw the literal blood, sweat, and tears of sacrifice.
But I also saw the shadows. I saw the betrayals that keep
you awake at night. I saw the crushing weight of
leadership and the deep let downs when holy people act very
unholy. In my early 20s I met Chuck and
not long into our relationship I said to him, I love Jesus but
I'm not so mad on his church. I'll do anything for the Lord,
but don't you dare ask me to do anything in terms of church
leadership because I absolutely will not do it.
The truth was I felt justified in my distance and I felt safer
in my cynicism. But God has a sense of humour
and an even greater sense of restoration because he has this
incredible ability to this, to take a broken vessel and heal it
so deeply that the scar becomes a badge of passion.
And I stand here today as someone who was out but who is
now absolutely all in. Because the church, though
flawed as she is, is God's only plan A.
There is no other vehicle. There is no other way.
The local church is God's beautiful bride and the true
hope for the world. And as we read our passage this
morning, we're going to see that you can't separate the Christian
from the church. You cannot love the King and be
ambivalent to the his Kingdom. You cannot love the groom yet
reject his bride, because Jesus loved the church so much, with
all her flaws, her messy pink rooms, her complex people.
But he didn't just give her a nod of approval.
He purchased her with his own blood.
And if she is worth his life, then she is worth our heart.
Let's look at why as we continue in our Impact series, as we make
our way through the book of Acts, and as we see how a group
of ordinary people change the world.
So we're in Acts chapter 2, and we're going to read from verse
42. It's going to come up on the
screen. But if you have a Bible with
you, you might want to turn to that now.
And this is what it said. 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 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 favour of all the people.
And the Lord added to their number daily those who were
being saved. Amen.
So today we're going to dive straight into the heart of
something supernatural. We're looking at how the Holy
Spirit brings an unbreakable unity within the Church.
Now I don't need to tell you guys that we are living in a
world that is defined by fracturing and constant splits
and extreme polarisation. Deep, jagged divisions seem to
be the new normal now, don't they?
Yet we as the people of God, we are called to step into a
radically different blueprint. And today we're going to see a
powerful alternative way to live.
Now, most things, be it businesses or empires or
movements, they start small, dreaming of greatness that
they've yet to achieve. But this passage in Acts shows
us that the church at its birth was the church at its best.
Why? What was their secret?
Well, their secret was the presence of Koinonia, and it's a
Greek word that Chuck actually spoke about in his preach a few
weeks ago when he spoke about money and partnership.
Koinonia functioned as a revolution, a partnership so
deep that it revolutionised the early church's most basic
rhythms of life, from their theology to their wallets to
their dinner tables. In the Holy Spirit's economy,
fellowship isn't the absence of conflict, it's the presence of
Koinonia. It's a gritty all in commitment
that beckons us into a shared life and shows us a beautiful
picture of what the Church can look like at her best.
And we see this in verse 42. It says they devoted themselves
to the apostles teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking
of bread and to prayer. And what we're looking at here
is a blueprint of a devoted community.
It isn't just a group of friends.
It's a supernatural partnership. It's a deep level all in
fellowship, forged for one single purpose.
They were a community locked in eyes fixed and completely
devoted to the same pillars of life.
The fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer.
But before the shared meals and the shared wallets, there was a
shared truth. Now this wasn't just a
philosophy, it was the bedrock of the early churches existence.
They were devoted to the word of God.
And this devotion of God's Word isn't just a priority, it's a
sovereign force, which means that the Bible has the final
say, holds the ultimate power, and has absolute authority that
is active and moving and reshaping our lives.
Now just think back to Genesis. Think back to the very beginning
of the Bible, right at the very beginning of creation.
God didn't just suggest that light appear.
He spoke. And the Word acted as a
sovereign force that reordered chaos into cosmos.
And it's the same sovereign force for our lives that doesn't
negotiate. It settles the matter.
It overrides everything else, including our emotions.
Now this means that when my heart and the Bible disagree, my
heart is the one in the wrong. When the Word of God takes its
rightful place, it begins to override every other competing
voice that is competing for our attention.
It overrides our preferences, our politics, our personalities,
our social status, our past. This truth, God's Word,
overrides everything, including friends, our wounds, including
our pain, our deepest pain. When we've been hurt by people
or let down by the world, our emotions can become like a
choppy sea. The Scriptures were the
foundation for the early churches unity.
Because you cannot have a partnership if everyone is
following a different map. If I am navigating by my trauma
and you're navigating by your ambition and someone else is
navigating by their political preferences, then and then
adding to the mix your truth and my truth, we've got carnage.
The Word of God, the Bible, is the only thing powerful enough
to bridge the gap between our differences when our preferences
want to divide us. It's the only thing powerful
enough to demand a sacrifice from our bank accounts when our
culture demands that we hold it all for ourselves.
It's the only thing powerful enough to keep us at the table
when the grit of life actually makes us want to run.
And what we know is that if we don't allow God's Word to come
and to shape us, then we start to steer our life by our own
wounds instead of God's Word, and we can be in danger of
becoming a theology of one, letting our pain dictate.
Scriptures are the only thing powerful enough to tell our
souls the truth. When our feelings align to us.
It reminds us that we are chosen When we feel abandoned and
forgiven. When we feel condemned to
forgive even when we don't want to.
To choose not to take offence, even though it's easier to do
so. The Word of God calls us to a
better way, a higher way, a way of discipleship, a way of unity,
a way of Koinonia. And I know that for some of us,
just like it was for me, you're going to be carrying around
wounds. Those pink room wounds.
Church hurts. Church scars, church pain.
Those tender, roaring, deeply personal areas of hurt.
Friends, I know how painful those things can be and how deep
they can go because I have been there.
And the reality is that these wounds, they usually tell us to
pull apart, to protect ourselves, to say they separated
from everyone else. And let's be honest, that's so
much easier to do in a large community like Verso.
It's so much easier to hide in a crowd, to show up for church and
then disappear, not giving anything of ourselves,
protecting and preserving. Perhaps like I did, maybe you
found yourself saying, I really love Jesus, but I'm not mad on
his people. Maybe the wounds of church hurt
have caused you to Cut the Rope and you've been drifting for
many years. And if that's you today, I just
would love to just gently challenge you.
As real and as painful as these wounds are, they are not your
guide nor your compass. The word of God is Numbers 23.
Verse 19 says God is not human, that he should lie, not a human
being that he should change his mind.
Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil?
In other words, feelings lie. God does not.
He is not a man that will change his mind.
Hallelujah, Jeremiah 17 verse 9 says the heart is deceitful
above all things and beyond cure.
Who can understand it? In other words, the heart is a
very bad compass. Use the Bible instead.
Friends, when the pink room hurts, the screaming, and our
circumstances feel like a storm, we hold tight to Scripture.
It is our compass and it is our guide.
I love what Proverbs 3 verse 5 to 6 says.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own
understanding in all your ways. Submit to Him and He will make
your paths straight. You see, it doesn't just suggest
that we trust God, it explicitly tells us what not to put our
trust in. You see, we mustn't lean on our
own understanding, and our understanding is where our
feelings, our pain, and our reasoning live.
It's part of us that says this situation is hopeless or I could
never forgive that person. Yet God's Word is saying don't
put your weight on that. It's like a broken crutch.
It's going to let you down. Instead, trust in the Lord with
all your heart. And this is a call to move our
trust from the pink room, that internal wounded space, to the
Word of God, to look to the Word of God and in all your ways
submit to him. So when we come before the
presence of Jesus and we submit bit by bit and little by little,
our pain, our emotions, our disappointment, our trauma, and
we say, come Holy Spirit, come into those parts.
Come in. I give you permission to come
and do what only you can do. Come and minister.
Come and release that pain. Come and bring your healing Lord
to all those areas that so desperately need it.
We discover that as we journey with Jesus with our pain that we
no longer need to be ruled by how we feel, but instead we can
heavily lean on what Jesus is doing and who he says he is.
Fully trusting that Jesus will lead us into inner healing and
He will make a clearer path for us to walk down.
For the Holy Spirit is the only one who can reach into our inner
pain. He is the only one that can turn
ashes into beauty. He is the only one who can speak
a higher word over our history and and prove that the gospel is
bigger than any of our circumstances.
The church at its best is when we are all submitted to the
biblical truth of Scripture and where we all ask the Holy Spirit
to radically come and craft and shape us and kind of, I don't
know, rub off all the rough edges that we currently have.
Secondly, in verse 42, we see a community devoted to fellowship.
David Cameron in I think it was about 2007, he went on to
Michael Parkinson's chat show, Parkinson, and he was telling a
story about how he met the supermodel Kate Moss at a party.
And he said I was, as I was being introduced, I thought,
what on earth am I going to say to her?
You know, I'm a bit in awe of her.
And then I remembered that she lives in the same constituency
as as me and we'd had these terrible floods in West
Oxfordshire. And so I started to say to her,
it's very nice to meet you. I'm so sorry about the flooding
that's happened to your house. And I also know you like to go
to your local pub. And I've been to see the
publican and he's saying it's going to take at least six
months for the pub to reopen, but it will reopen.
So you know you will be OK. And you said he went on
Wittering on like this to her for quite a while.
And as she turns to him and she says you sound like a really
useful guy to know, can I have your number?
And he told Parkinson that he went back to his table
realising, firstly, I've just met the supermodel Kate Moss.
Secondly, the bad news is I think she thinks I'm something
to do with drainage. How many times do other people
get our identities wrong? Even worse, how many times do we
get our own identities wrong? In our culture, when someone who
doesn't know us is asking about us, often we'll lead with what
we do. I'm a bricklayer, I'm an
accountant, I'm a doctor. I'm a banker.
I'm a golfer, I'm a pastor, I'm a mum.
We scramble to cobble together an identity that makes us feel
comfortable, but it's deeply individualistic because the
church in Acts did not find their identity in what they did,
they found it in who they belong to.
It was completely countercultural even back then,
2000 years ago. For the world says you are what
you do, but the Kingdom of God says you are whose you are.
The Holy Spirit brings Koinonia by stripping away our job
descriptors and replacing them with a shared family name.
He takes a room full of people who think they are defined by
drainage or data entry or position or status, and he knits
them into a single supernatural body.
And this supernatural body is, is the Church, the fellowship of
the Holy Spirit. And we see this fellowship in
two Corinthians verses 13 to 14 that as Christians we would
often call the grace. And sometimes I think it can be
so familiar to us that we miss the miracle of it.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and
the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
This, friends, is where the rubber hits the road.
This is where our faith is put into action because we are
called to live this out in this messy, jagged reality of
everyday life. But this is also the space where
the Holy Spirit does His very best work, because He gives us a
supernatural ability to stay connected even when we feel like
we want to run, to break the divide that has kept us at arm's
length between another person for such a long time.
He gives us the power to look at the person sitting three rows in
front of you, who's offended you, who've let you down.
And he gives you the power to choose to forgive friends.
True fellowship is never free. It's expensive.
It's sacrificial and it's deeply costly, and it costs the early
church absolutely everything. Their time, their hearts, their
money, their possessions, and even their very meals.
They didn't just come to church, they poured their lives into it.
And so every time we pray the grace, we are asking the Holy
Spirit to come and to blur the lines of our individualistic
lives. We are remembering that we are
not like a bag of marbles, hard, self-contained and constantly
bumping and clashing up against each other.
Instead, through the work of the Holy Spirit, he makes us like a
bag of grapes, crushed, blended together and transformed into
something entirely new. The body of Christ, friends, I
sense that there is an invitation today to not to stay
anonymous, but instead become even more like the church in
Acts is calling us to be, calling us into something
beautiful, something that is bigger and more expansive than
just the sum of our parts. Because something happens, you
know, when we step out. When you're in venture land and
you're teaching the kids on how to minister in the power of the
Holy Spirit, or you're in village showing the little ones
how to pray. Or you're in the kitchen and
you're prepping coffee, or you're prepping food for Alpha,
or you're standing out in the pouring rain helping someone to
park. Something amazing happens.
Our labels fall away. Suddenly you aren't the CEO,
you're not the bricklayer, you're not the pharmacist or the
student. You're a brother, you're a
sister, you're a partner. In this gritty all in life,
there is a bond that forms when you are tired, when you are
sweaty, when you are serving someone else.
That simply doesn't happen when you don't do it.
Let me tell you, being part of a team is where the fire is.
We just heard that, an amazing testimony.
That's what's happening in our kids ministry.
Children not just learning Bible stories, but actually hearing
from God and ministering in the power of the Holy Spirit and
seeing miracles happen. You know that doesn't happen by
accident. It happens because someone
decided to move out of their row and into the kids ministry.
It happens because a people, a a team of people decided that the
fellowship means pouring our lives into the next generation.
And we see the fruit of that sacrifice right here, right now
as we celebrated with a baby dedication, as we stood with
this dear family, you know, we weren't just watching a ceremony
there we were witnessing the fellowship of the Holy Spirit in
action. This sweet child is being bought
into the family that promises to be all in for him and the
family. Now.
He wasn't being dedicated into a social club.
He's being woven into the supernatural body, the
supernatural body that rolls their sleeves up, does the
dishes, shares the burdens, and invests in their time, their
treasure and their talents all together.
And finally, in verse 42, we see a community devoted to the
breaking of bread and to prayer. Now, these aren't religious
things on our To Do List. You know that.
We think I must remember to do that.
They are two things that keep a body alive, nourishment and
oxygen. The breaking of bread isn't just
a religious ceremony. It's where the Holy Spirit
performs a miracle in the mundane, where he takes a simple
everyday meal and transforms it into a sacred encounter.
How? Because the Spirit isn't just in
US, He's in the space between us as well.
He's the divine thread, knitting our separate stories into one
glorious narrative. And he makes the dinner table,
and he turns it into an altar of high worship and remembrance and
radical belonging. Koinonia is found at a messy
table where life is shared and spilled and redeemed and
friends, the invitation is if you are currently doing life on
the outskirts of this church family, I believe the Holy
Spirit is inviting you into something deeper.
He's calling you into the fire of Koinonia.
And perhaps that could look like so many different things, but
maybe it could look like joining a group, A versa group.
Maybe it could even look like leading a a small group, or
starting a prayer triplet, or helping an alpha, or helping to
lead alpha, or even starting an alpha in your workplace or with
your neighbors or with your mummy friends as the kids play
at your feet. Why?
Because everybody needs a place where they are needed and known.
A group is a place where it's hard to hide behind a Sunday
smile in our rows. It's so much easier to stay
anonymous in a group. Your grit meets my grit.
We. We clash, we pray, we stumble,
and we grow together. The Holy Spirit.
He uses that friction, that honest, messy interaction to
sand off our rough edges and make us look more like Jesus.
Small groups are where we share our lives, where we move from
Roe to circle. The breaking of bread is the
table where everyone belongs and everyone is welcome.
But we can't just eat. We also have to breathe.
And for the early church, prayer was their oxygen.
In April 2019, a deep sea diver called Chris Lemons found
himself 300 feet below sea level in the North Sea when suddenly
his umbilical line. It just broke and his only
source of light and air suddenly disappeared and he was left in
total crushing darkness. Now he had 6 minutes of
emergency tank air and the unfortunate thing for Chris was
that his crew didn't reach him for 38 minutes.
So by every law of biology, he should have died.
Yet when he came to the surface, when he was hauled back up, he
took a breath and miraculously made a full recovery.
Thank you, Jesus, that we don't have to live on an emergency
oxygen tank when it comes to our prayer life.
No, we don't. For the early church, it's so
clear that they didn't live only on 6 minutes of emergency
prayer. They, like us, have this
constant, unbreakable line to the surface, to the ear of
Jesus. They had, just like we have, a
beautiful, rhythmic, unlimited supply of prayer, found in a
quiet habit of seeking God's face, where our simple breath
turns into a conversation with the King.
Friends, we are a community forged in the fire of the Spirit
and fuelled by the breath of the King.
We are a church that is real, a community that is a family.
We are a fellowship that breathes together, breaks bread
together, changes the world together.
If you're able, I'd love to invite you to stand.