I pray that you all be blessed by this special reading.
This is from Acts 432 to 35. All the believers were one in
heart and mine. No one claimed that any of his
possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had
with great power. The apostles continued to
testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and much grace
was with them all. There were no needy persons
among them, for from time to time those who owned lands or
houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it
in the apostles feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had
need blessings. This was in 2019 and 2020.
My wife and I were in a season of we were preparing to plant a
church and for about 6 months I went and travelled all over the
country and spent about a week or two at a time with different
church plants all over and it was one of the coolest
experiences of my life. I got to be with church plants.
Church plants in Phoenix area, in Rhode Island, in Minnesota
and Illinois, all over different stages too.
Some churches were just getting launched, so they hadn't even
started yet. Some were 10 years old and some
all the way in between. So it's a fascinating
experience. One of those trips, I was
preparing to go to church in Las Vegas for a few days and just
before that trip happened, we had kind of a little bit of a
crisis take place and we weren't expecting it, but my wife had
gotten pregnant and we didn't really actually know it at the
time. She was just in pain who went to
the hospital, found out that we were pregnant.
It wasn't something we were trying for.
We had actually just had a kid. So we weren't really looking to
go back-to-back with kids right away.
But we also didn't try not to adults know what I mean?
And so anyway, we end up we find out at the hospital that we're
pregnant and we're told it's an ectopic pregnancy.
OK, Meaning it's, it's not viable in the womb.
It was, it was taking place outside the womb.
What happened is that we were talking through this like, first
of all, we just found out we're pregnant an hour later to find
out it's not going to happen. And so a lot of emotions and I
was preparing to hop on a flight that night.
So Long story short, talking to the doctor, Doctor, you give us
assurance, hey, you are more than fine to go on this trip.
You'll be on just a couple of days.
It's fine. You can do this.
So I was like, thanks, doc, we'll do that.
We trust you, right? And so we went home and I got on
a plane, flew to Vegas. As I'm landing, I turn my my
phone back on because you're not supposed to have your phone on
on the plane, kids, because it makes the plane crash OK.
And my phone is blowing up because my, my mom had texted me
multiple times that she had rushed my wife to the hospital
to the ER because what happened is I don't understand the
biology of it, but it bursts, some burst inside.
Should it go to the ER? What happens in third world
countries often is the life of the host usually is, is doesn't
survive because they need immediate care for something
like this, right? And some of the nurses are like,
he's kind of on it anyway. And so I, I, I, I land in Vegas
as I'm literally touching down, I'm sitting on the plane.
My phone's blowing up. Had to rush your wife to the
hospital to ER. As soon as I get off the plane,
I'm trying to call and I, I couldn't get a hold of anyone
yet, but my phone rings right away.
The very first person to call me was my best friend.
It wasn't a pastor, it wasn't a a mentor of mine.
It was someone that I did life with regularly.
The day-to-day minutiae of life. We went on vacations together.
We planted a church together. He was the first one to call me
and I pick up the phone and doesn't even say hello.
The first thing, the only thing he says is, hey, man, do you
want me to tell you everything you already know?
I said, yeah, I think sometimes it's what we need.
The first person to call me, my best friend.
Around that same time, we had a, we didn't have a church yet
'cause we were playing the church.
There was a small group here in the Des Moines area of another
church. It's kind of a, a small group
that had been meeting for decades.
They, they had, they had really close community with one
another. And around the same time, they
reached out to us and wanted to do a couple of things for us.
They, they wanted to just bless us with some gift cards.
They wanted us to go on some date nights.
They offered to watch our kids. They went out of their way to
just kind of surround us and, and with with love.
And we didn't even really know these people.
They just knew we had a need and they wanted to step in.
Man, who would love to be a part of or have community in your
life like that. You'll be surrounded by a
community like that. The the what we're going to do
today, communities, unfortunately, it's a loaded
term today. Communities use a lot of
different ways, especially it's ATV show.
It's not even that good. It's a we use it for almost any
just kind of we use it almost to say almost like any gathering of
people, and that is a quote UN quote community, which is not
the case, at least from a biblical perspective.
That's not what community is. We use it across different
terms, like if there's different interests or identity
preferences. I mean, we're literally in a a
pride month where we talk about this L GB TQII think there's an
A now community, right? We wrap that word around it, OK.
And we use community in number two ways that I, it's not
actually, I believe intended to be used.
If we're going to talk about a Christian community, which is
what I want to do today from Acts 4, that's what we're going
to look at. What we're going to do today is
look at Christ's vision for community.
We're talking about the first church ever and here's how it
gets started. Look at verse 31.
It says after they prayed, the place where they were meeting
was shaken, meaning some kind of earthquake takes place.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke
the word of God boldly. Man, raise your hand.
I legitimately want you to raise your hand.
If you wish you had a community like that, Holy Spirit falling
upon, raise it high. Raise it high.
If you want to be a part, if you desire to be a part of that
community, keep your hand up. Keep your hand up.
I want you to remember this moment, the moment you said I
would love to be a part of a community like that where the
Holy Spirit falls upon us. Because the reality is, as John
Stop puts it, there's consequences to being a part of
a community like that. That's what we're going to look
at, OK? I want you to be careful for
what you wish for, all right? Because I think it's easy to
revision history and to glorify only certain parts of it that we
really like. And what I mean is this, that
for as great as belonging to a community that we're going to
read about for a community like this would be, the reality is
listen closely. It's going to require some
certain things from each of us. In fact, it may very well
require everything from some of you.
That is not an exaggeration. But I will say this, being a
part of the community like this, you'll experience that.
You will be more deeply loved than you could ever imagine, and
you will become a person of love more than you ever thought was
possible. And I'll also add this being a
part of a community like this that we're about to read, it's,
it's actually, I believe this has been God's plan for your
life. And the reason I know this, even
though I don't know many of you, the reason I know that that to
be true is because this has been God's plan since the beginning
for all of his people since Abraham.
His plan, his vision has been for his people to be a part of a
community like the one we are about to read.
In fact, Jesus's final command, his literally says his new
command. We looked at this last week.
The new command he says in in John 13, He says, love one
another as I have loved you. This is a new command as if they
didn't know that they were supposed to love one another.
He says, love one another as I have loved you, so you must love
one another. By this everyone will know that
you are my disciples if you love one another.
And I'll be honest as if I've been lying the whole time.
I don't know why we say that. I don't believe that.
If you were to take a poll of the majority of the people in
Ankeny and were to ask them their thoughts and perspectives
on most of the local churches here, I don't know how many
people would say, Oh yeah, that church, they're the church that
loves. That's something to think about.
That's what we're going to dive in today.
All month long, we've been studying Christian community,
how a Christian community is oriented.
We talked about upward, OK? We talked about inward and we
talked about outward. 2 weeks ago, we looked at the first one,
how Christian community is oriented outward, that it is a
unique community, one of the only communities that is
designed and it's for the benefit of people outside of it.
Most communities, not that way. Most communities are, like I
said, are not actually communities.
The things that you think that you've called yourself, this is
my community. The reality of it is, if I'm
being honest, it's not actually community.
Most of it is a subscription or a membership that you're paying
for, whether it's something you're doing online or a gym
that you're going to. You know how I know this?
Stop paying for it. See if you still have community,
it's, it's a business, OK? I'm, I'm not saying it's bad.
I'm not saying it's those things are, I do those things.
They're, they're inherent, they're good, not inherently
bad. It's just not community,
definitely not Christian community.
Last week we talked about inward that the, the, the Christian
community is designed for deep, honest, transparent
relationships built on love. And today we're talking about
how the Christian community is oriented upward, OK, oriented
upward, meaning that there has to be for it to be a Christian
community. It's not just go outside
outwardly and do good things to the world around you.
It's not just in relates have good relationships and let's,
let's hang out and play games and do pizza nights upwardly.
This is the most important connection.
There has to be a direct connection in reality of the
Holy Spirit existing in and among the people together.
Here's my main point. I'm going to give it to you.
True Christian community cannot exist without the Holy Spirit.
OK, I don't know. I'm getting some, I'm getting
some nodded heads. I'm getting some like obviously,
Jared, so we know this, but I want to say this again because I
feel like I could, I could stay up here.
I could say it all day. I could leave.
Things genuinely may not change. And honestly, this isn't
something that we can manufacture from being real.
It's the hard part of this sermon today is trying to give
you some takeaways. Can't really do that because the
true statement is this is that true Christian community cannot
be created without the Holy Spirit in and among its people.
You can't manifest it with just human machination.
You can't manipulate it. Howard Hendricks famously said,
I don't know who that is, but he famously said he kind of
observed the modern church, and I've heard this several times
before. I want to share with you said
this. The church is like a football
team take 20 or football game 22.
People on the field desperately in need of rest, being watched
by thousands of people desperately in need of exercise.
You know, I think there's a reality to that in the church
today. We have a, a spiritual obesity
problem like what we, we're, we're really good at just
consuming truth all day long. We're really good at consuming
Sunday sermons and other YouTube messages and podcasts.
And we're even join these small groups where we go in with the
point of we're trying to learn and trying to gain and trying to
accumulate and we do all these things.
And but the problem is we've also heard this called
constipated Christianity. We're good at consuming all this
stuff, but we're never good at letting any of it out.
I'm never good at expelling any of it from ourselves.
And we may even practice things like like the spiritual
disciplines of solitude and silence.
But most Christians today, all we end up doing is we just hoard
these things and we never relieve any of them by giving
away ourselves what we say generously.
So the question then becomes, before we're going to read this,
I promise, the question that becomes this, how do we as a as
presence church, as a Christian community here, how do we become
a community that is known not by how big we get and how much we
accumulate, but by how much we release and give away?
How do we do that? That's what we're going to talk
about chapter 4, verse 32. Let's let's read this again.
All the believers, heavy start, all of them.
We're one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their
possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had
with great power. The apostles continued to
testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and God's grace
was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no
needy persons among them. For from time to time those who
owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales
and put it at the apostles feet and it was distributed to anyone
who had need. Amazing.
So today what I thought I would do is just list my needs for you
all. No, I, I want to actually give a
word of caution. I want you to be careful here
to, to do 2 things. One, don't instantly get tense
and go on, man, we're going, the spirit's going to convict me to
sell my property. Like just relax.
He he might, but just relax. OK, The second thing I want to
caution you is, is to not romanticize this picture.
What we have is very true, real picture of this church
gathering. I don't want you to romanticize
it or idolize it by taking it out of context and studying it.
Studying it just in isolation. Here's what I mean.
Yes, this is a beautiful snapshot of the very first
Church of a Christian community, and it's actually the second
time we get a summary of a gathering of believers just two
chapters earlier. Chapter 242 through 47 is going
to be a very similar reading. OK, so I'll go back and study
that later, but I want you to notice that what we just read,
what it's couched within, I want you to understand what comes
directly before it and directly after it.
As I said, there's consequences to this kind of a community.
The first thing that happens, here's what I want you to
notice, it is couched within pretty intense and growing in
intensity, spiritual and physical warfare.
What happens all of chapter 4, if you just peek at it real
quick and kind of get the highlights, you're going to see
two people. You're going to see Peter and
John. They're preaching the gospel and
then they get arrested, they get put in jail, They get threatened
to stop talking about this or worse.
Things are going to happen and then they're released.
As soon as they are released, they go to these believers here,
they share what happened. Everyone starts praying, then
this takes place. This is the summer we get.
Directly after this, we're going to see something that's
incredibly would have been incredibly destructive to the
life of the early church, and it leads to the first death.
And directly after that, we see growing persecution where we are
our first martyr, Stephen being stoned to death.
So don't just look at this as itself and go, man, that's
beautiful. Let's do that without realizing
what the cost was, what led to it and what comes directly after
it. There's consequences.
This kind of community, just being, just being honest.
Be real with us, OK? Nonetheless, this is the life of
the church, the early church, the first church we get.
This is the life here. There are a few now I want to
say realities, OK, that I want to click in on for us to better
understand what it meant for these people to be a part of
that church. Here's what it meant for them.
And nowadays we call this church membership.
And here's the requirements for being a member at this church.
Here's your special card. Like you're at Sam's Club or
something. Right here's here's, here's kind
of the few realities. I'm going to give you 3 of them.
The first one is this. They had a, a radical attitude.
They had a radical attitude. Verse 32, it said they were one
in heart and in mind. There's an echo here in
Deuteronomy of the great Shama here, O Israel, the Lord is one,
right? So there's an echo here that
they are reflecting the Lord Himself.
He is 1. They are one in heart and in
mind. And then what Luke does, Luke's
right in Acts here. He's the author.
Luke is about to share 2 examples of of this being played
out. One, that is the right way for
this to be played out and two and the second one is the wrong
way for this to be played out and then what that looks like.
OK, they said no one claimed his possessions as their own.
Interesting language. What I want to point out here is
I don't think this means that they didn't continue to own
things, OK, but they had, they took on a radical posture, a
radical attitude toward all of the things that they did have
that they acquired, that the Lord bless them with.
Here's the point. They were one in heart and mind.
Here's the point. They were one in spirit with one
another before they became one with their stuff.
If you're sitting here today and you're kind of afraid, like
you're thinking, man, I don't want, I don't know about giving,
contributing to be a part of selling, giving up all of my
time, my money, my attention, my energy, my life.
I don't know about any of this stuff.
Relax. Because it requires A radical
attitude that requires you understanding that your identity
is no longer just you yourself as an individual, but your
identity being wrapped up in the community that is God's people.
The second point is this second reality of the congregation was
this, they took radical action. So because of the radical
attitude, they took radical action. 7 verse 33.
So from time to time it said that from time to time they do
this. OK, So the same, they, they,
they, they, they, they performed this action of selling and
distributing. We, we actually saw that in
chapter 2, verse 45. Again, that's the first summary
we saw the church, OK, but they, they said from time to time
here, it's the same language, meaning it wasn't every single
day, it wasn't everybody in the church.
What they did was they sold what they what was needed.
And here's the here's the key, here's a, here's a key point of
their own volition. The church did not force it upon
them. A government did not force it
upon them. That's communism.
This was of their own volition, their own willingness.
They wanted to do this to meet the needs of other people in
their community. And it was also sporadic.
They didn't have capital campaigns where they got
together and said, hey, we're all going to at this day, we're
going to give up everything and give this and pledge this much
so we can build a new building. That's not what they did.
It was sporadic. It was the church knew each
other well enough to know there's a need there.
We as a community can meet that need.
OK, also note this with this radical action that their great
power, it said fascinating, their great power.
When when you get great power from the Holy Spirit, what
instantly comes to mind, I, I, what I want you to notice is
that their great power didn't result in the Red Sea being
parted again. It didn't result in these crazy
radical miracles. It didn't result in mountains
being moved. Here's what it resulted in.
It said because of the great power, because of the power,
they were able to powerfully testify to the resurrection of
Jesus. That's what they did with the
great power. They spoke boldly about the good
news of Jesus Christ. Yes, they were generous with
their possessions, but on top of that, they were generous with
their story of the good news of Jesus Christ.
The third thing is this radical attitude led to radical action
and it was all wrapped up with radical grace.
For this congregation, grace was not just something they spoke
about from stage, It was not a prayer before a meal.
Grace was a for them, was a living and breathing entity
within this community. John Calvin says this about the
community. He says we must have hearts that
are harder than iron if we are not moved by the reading of this
narrative. In those days, the believers
gave abundantly of what was their own.
We in our day are content not just jealously to retain what we
possess, but callously to rob others.
They sold their own possessions in those days.
In our day, it is the lust to purchase that reign supreme.
In the passage we just read, it says God's grace was so
powerfully among them that there wasn't a single needy person.
Not one doesn't say it met all there once.
That's our problem today. We have way too many.
Once. You're all here today.
I'm going to guess most of your needs are probably a lot of your
basic needs are met. Praise the Lord for where we get
to live. There wasn't a single needy
person among them. Now here's what happens after
this. Luke, the author, uses a
literary device here by giving us 2 examples that are two sides
of the same coin. OK, one example of what this
practically look like for one of the believers in this generous
community, and another example of the exact opposite of what it
should look like. And I want you to read both
these examples with me. And I want you to just try to
picture what your previous demonstrations of generosity,
which one you feel like it more closely aligns to.
OK, Acts 436 it says this Joseph a Levite from Cyprus whom the
apostles called Barnabas, which means son of encouragement.
What a great nickname too. If we had nicknames for one
another, what would? What would yours be right like?
I love this. I bet Barnabas hated that this
showed up in the Bible. Joseph Barnabas, he sold a field
he owned and he brought the money and he put it at the
apostles feet. So first the first example here
is we have Joseph, right? A Levi.
According to Old Testament law, Levi wasn't even allowed to own
land and here in Israel. So the the land he owns, it's
probably not even close to where they're at.
I mean, he owned this far off land that probably decent price
decides to sell it and bring it and put it at the apostles feet
for who knows what. He, you know what he didn't do
with his donation to the church. He didn't go, I'm going to give
this. So you need to make sure you
give it to the youth ministry. That's what he did, right?
He just said, Hey, I'll be able the spirits lead me to do this.
I'm going to sell this. I'm going to give it the
apostles feet. There's going to be needs of
people who need this money more than I need that plot of land.
And then we're given this, this second example.
It's really unfortunate. I think that there's this
chapter division here that it starts over at chapter 5 because
this is all one story, OK? And this example here, I'm going
to, before I, before I read it, I want to highlight a couple of
things because I think this example I'm about to read it
highlights some of the greatest threats to the church, OK, And
some of the greatest threats to the church.
They're not external. It's not external persecution
that we might endure. The greatest threats to the
church, I believe are completely internalized.
It's the internal condition of our own hearts, our biggest
hurdles to experiencing a community like what we're
reading. Our biggest hurdle today is US.
Often times it's it's not. It's it.
Think about it. Like, think about these threats
like cysts, OK, a cyst. The ones that are more painful,
the ones that are obvious, typically not cancerous.
It's the silent ones. Those ones are typically the
killers. That's what these are.
The first threat is this number one is pride.
We claim, all of us. We claim our possessions as our
own. We worked for it.
We earned it. So we get to keep it and we get
to decide how we're going to use it.
And we say, we typically say things like God helps those who
help themselves. Pick yourself up by your
bootstraps. Don't be lazy, Dad.
I'm just kidding. My dad was great.
He never talked to me like that. The second one is this fear.
I think too easily. We are terrified that if we
give, there won't be enough for me and my family and my kids.
The third threat is this greed. We are very rarely content with
what God has already given us. We want more.
We want to be more. Not even we, we.
How many of you said something like, I don't even want
millions, I just want enough in the bank to just breathe and
relax, or I just want to be a just a little more comfortable,
or I want I want I want. We're never consent, typically
leading to greed. These are the things.
There's so many more we could list, but I think we're about to
read a story where these threats all take place.
This next story is going to be of two people.
Here's what's interesting. They give the exact same thing
Barnabas gave. I want you to notice that they
gave the exact same physical asset as Joseph, but the results
are completely different. OK, notice this.
It's entirely possible. Here's my point.
It is entirely possible for two people to give the exact same
thing and for one person to be bringing life to the community
and another person to be bringing death.
Acts 5 says this. Now a man named Ananias together
with his wife Sapphira also sold a piece of property.
Same thing with his wife's full knowledge.
He kept back OK that Greek word there can literally be
translated in bezel. OK, so it's we we lose a little
bit in our English translation here about the gravity of what's
going on. Kept back part of the money for
himself but brought the rest and put it at the apostles feet.
OK, so notice he gave quite a bit to the church.
Then Peter said, Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your
heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for
yourself some of the money you receive for the land?
And then he says this question, didn't it belong to you before
it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't
the money at your disposal? So what's happening here is
there's clearly some kind of agreement, some kind of covenant
of selling this property, and they'll be giving all of it.
Instead, they decide to deceive, try to deceive the church and
keep some of it back. What made you think of doing
such a thing? You have not lied just to human
beings, but you lied to God. When Ananias heard this, he fell
down and died, and great fear seized all who heard what had
happened. Then some young men came
forward, wrapped up his body and carried him out and buried him.
About 3 hours later, his wife came in, not knowing what had
happened, and Peter asked her, Hey, tell me, is is this the
price that you and Ananias got for the land?
Yeah, she said. That's the price, Peter said to
her, How could you conspire to test the spirit of the Lord?
Listen, the feet of the men who buried your husband are at the
door, and they will carry you out also.
At that moment she fell down at his feet and died.
Then the young men came in and finding her dead, carried her
out and buried her beside her husband.
At least they got buried together, right?
Great fear seized the whole church.
First time the word church shows up in the book of Acts and all
who heard about these events. It is entirely possible for two
people to give the exact same thing.
One person to give life to the community, another person to
bring death. It is entirely possible to make
it look like what you're doing is generosity and for the
reality of it to be greed. Now we don't have time to unpack
all of this, the whole section today.
There's a lot in here. I want to highlight just a
couple of things. You might be tempted to think
that this judgement seems unfair, like he didn't have to
sell the land anyway, but he decided to sell it and gives he
changed his mind. They they wanted to sell
something, keep something above it.
I encouragement to use. I would challenge you to be
careful to put yourself in the judgement seat of God when you
know you don't know everything. We don't.
This is the only part of the story we get.
We don't get the whole full context of everything else that
goes on around it. And also, you know, God does
know everything. So just be careful.
I would also challenge you that I think it's far more likely if
you're struggling with understanding this and how
unfair it seems. I would also challenge you that
I think it's far more likely your disposition towards sin is
not serious enough. Don't forget this is the first
church ever and it's a baby. They're an infant.
To start out being marked by greed and deception would be
detrimental to this infant church Church.
God hates sin. Think about this first community
of Christians, similar to the first community on earth, the
first humans on earth. I, I, I can see a direct
correlation here between this church and the Garden of Eden
event, OK. And I, I, I wanted to see if
other people saw this. And so I read a bunch of
commentators to see if they saw that kind of connection and no
one did. So you know this is true.
OK, the first think about the first community here.
Adam had his wife Eve, Ananias had his wife Sapphira.
Adam was told everything in the garden, but one thing was his.
Ananias was told everything was his already, so I lie about it.
Adam did the one thing that broke trust between him and God.
Ananias did the one thing that broke trust between him and the
church. Adam tried to deceive God.
Ananias tried to deceive the church.
Adam tried to cover it up. Ananias tried to cover it up.
Adam's punishment brought death to a pristine environment, the
garden. Ananias punishment brought death
to a pristine environment, the first church.
In other words, when sin is eradicated from the Garden of
Eden, life with God could have existed with no end.
And when sin is eradicated from within a Christian community,
the church. I think what we see in Acts 4,
that's what it's supposed to look like. 1 heart, one mind.
No one claims any of their possessions are as their own.
It's great power, great testimony and there's not a
single need among the people. OK, But the question then should
we should be asking is this how, how were all of them able to
live this way? How were they able to do this?
Now we could go real practical here and say like there's
clearly was not this many people at the very first church.
I don't believe there's a probably a much smaller Group A
year ago. What presents look like it's
kind of a church launch, probably closer to the reality
of what this scene would have been like.
So it's a little easier with a smaller community to be able to
do this kind of stuff, right? It's just easier.
OK, that's all I'm saying. The answer, I think though, the
real answer is in the very first verse we read today.
So let's go back to it. Chapter 4, verse 31.
How did they do this? Here it is after they prayed,
the place where they were meeting was shaken and here it
is. If you want to know how to have
this community, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and
spoke the word of God boldly. There it is.
How did they live this way? It's not because they worked
really hard at it. It's not because they set up
church systems and benevolence funds.
It's not because they put together some fundraisers.
It's because they prayed and they were all filled with the
Holy Spirit. This kind of community is not
something that can be contrived or manipulated into being.
It is only formed by the Holy Spirit creating it himself.
So then it's hard. It's like, how do we do this?
We, we want that God when God's people humble themselves, and I
think this is important and literally need him, literally
depend on him. I believe that's when the Spirit
will fall, when they want only him, only him, and not also our
sin, not also our addiction, but all we want is him.
That's when the Spirit will fall.
It's only formed by the Holy Spirit.
And I think that's why the Spirit fell on these early
believers, because they deeply needed the Spirit and they
deeply needed the Christian community, like literally for
their survival in the world they lived in.
They needed it to grow, to thrive.
So yes, we should strive, I believe, to embody and to
reflect this early church. This this sits before us today
as the ideal picture of the church.
So I believe we should strive for it.
Yes, we should do what the world would label as radical action
like we just did to try to take care of each other's needs.
We should do that. There shouldn't be any needs
among us. We we should be able to give
away generously our money, our possessions, our time, our
attention, our networks, our very selves.
We should be able to give it all the way generously, especially
to your oldest son, mom. But even with all of these
efforts, our community would still never reflect the reality
of this first church in the same way if the Spirit wasn't active
this past week. I was blessed to be up in
Minnesota out on a lake with family, and I didn't have any
possessions they all shared with me.
It was awesome. And on the way up there, I
passed a sailboat. Someone's getting ready to go
take a sailboat. Think about what's happening
here. Similar to preparing a sailboat
to go out on the water, you can do everything you want to try to
prepare that sailboat. You can Jimmy rig all that.
I don't know any sailboat language, but you can do all the
things. You can move boxes around and
get the food set. You can do all this stuff right.
You can get the sail up. You can even push out away from
dock. You can do everything you want
to try to go sailing. If there's no wind, you're going
nowhere. That's how it is with the
church. So as we wrap up, here's our
dilemma. Those living in the modern West,
that's us. We often have the most difficult
time with this, yet we also carry the deepest responsibility
to do it. A generous community isn't built
by hiring more pastoral staff to manage a corporate benevolence
fund. It's not how it's going to
happen. Can those things be helpful?
Of course they've done some great things.
That's not how it's done, I think.
I don't know if any of you are aware of the Hillsong story of
what what's happened the last 5-6 years at one of the largest
churches. They had 30 plus congregations
communities within like a few months.
They, they eventually at their peak hired over 1000 employees,
massive. They were generating over $100
million in annual revenue, built a huge property real estate
portfolio, and then five or six years ago, the big this big
story of all this fraud and different issues came out.
My, my, my point is that a generous community isn't built
by just getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Often times that just creates more problems.
No pastoral staff can care for 100 people, let alone 500 people
or 1000 people like what we see here in Acts 4.
You're not going to have that. The other part of this dilemma
is that those of us living here in the modern West, we're often
2 individualistic to humble ourselves and to want to
actually be a part of a community like this.
We live in homes for decades without ever actually knowing
the people that live 20 yards from us in the next door.
How weird would it be for people to just walk in your back door?
You didn't know they were coming.
We don't live in that kind of culture.
Listen, this community is not built by rows.
Kind of the irony of what we're doing today.
This community is not built by how we're sitting right now.
It's built in circles. It's built in living rooms.
It's built in close relationship so that you can know someone
else's need. And guess what?
Yours. This is the hardest part for
many of you. They can know yours.
So if you truly desire real community, I just want to be
clear on what the expectations are.
Entering into the fellowship of believers of Christ means an
expectation to participate, to contribute to His mission.
Don't join a community thinking. I really like those elements.
I really like that sermon, that song, those classes.
I really like those things. I want to see how much I can
gain, how much I can learn. Don't go to though.
Don't join a small group. Don't join a band so that you
can just receive. It's detrimental to the life of
the church. Join this community so that you
can contribute to the mission of what Jesus is trying to do.
So in that way, we can see the Kingdom come on earth as it is
in heaven. It's through this community.
Be ready to give generously of yes, your money, of yes, your
possessions, of your time, of your calendar, of your very
selves. Because when we do that church,
I really believe the church is going to be able to do some
radical crazy things that you could never imagine.
Let me give you an example. I just biked as a part of a bike
ride that was to raise funds to end human trafficking.
And on this ride, this wasn't Sorry, CJ, none of this is in
the message. I'm just winging it on this
ride. I, I, I, I was, we were told the
story about one of the private investigators.
He heard the story and he said that earlier this year there was
a 42 year old woman that was just rescued out of human
trafficking here in Des Moines, OK.
They rescued her. She had been trafficked for 29
years. I mean, she got into this when
she was 13. She missed out on junior high.
She missed out on high school. She missed out on college.
She missed out on getting married, having kids, building a
career. She missed out on having
friends. She missed out on having family.
She missed out on holidays and on vacations.
She missed out on life for 29 years.
I asked the detective. I said how did she even get into
this at 13? Did she not have any parents?
Did she not what happened? And he said the only thing he
said was her mom left early on. She never knew her mom and her
dad's. And she said was a great guy and
he really tried as hard as he could for as long as he could to
take care of each one of his kids.
But he just had so many needs that couldn't be met.
And that led to her being trafficked.
Church. If we could become a community
that learns to give generously of everything we have, think
about the lives that could be saved.
And if you're still struggling today, right now wondering, I
just don't know if I if I can give, I can be a part if I can
contribute to the way Jared's talking about that, contribute
to the way that the Bible asks us to.
Let me leave you with this question.
If you were to sell all the property you own, give it to the
church and say go meet some needs with it.
If the community, even one person, if even one person saw
that action in this church and gave their life to the lordship
of Jesus Christ, would it be worth it to you?