Hallmarks Of A Healthy Church

A Snapshot of the Early Church in Acts 2 1:54

“And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.”

— Acts 2:42 (NKJV)

In any case, the relationship that we're called to have, the relationship we should have, the ideal is what we're looking at today in this morning's text. In this morning's reading, what we're seeing is a snapshot, so to speak, of the early church. And the snapshot that we see is that of a deeply relational body.

The body that we see in Acts 2 is so relational, so community-minded, that when one person or one family had a need, the others quickly sacrificed to themselves in order to meet that need. This church was so tight. You know, they met in the temple. They also met, as we see, from house to house, from one place to another.

They fellowshiped dearly. They fellowshiped regularly. They fellowshiped intimately with one another. They bore each other's burdens.

They ministered to one another's hearts. Is that your relationship with the local church? Some of the people in our culture, even good Christians in our culture, think, in order to testify that I love Jesus, in order to testify that I really love Jesus, I'll shout it from a mountaintop. I'll go and make a pilgrimage.

I'll go into the ministry, some will think. Now, all those things may be well and good, but Jesus tells us that the most simple, basic, essential way to bear witness to Him, and frankly, to demonstrate your love for Him, is to love on the people to your left and to your right this morning.

That said, let's return to today's text now. Let's figure out how can we do this better.

Repentance, Baptism, and Three Thousand Souls 3:18

“Then Peter said to them, Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

— Acts 2:38 (NKJV)

Let's do it line by line, beginning at verse 38. Then Peter said to them, repent, let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For this promise is to you and to your children and to all who are far off, as many as the Lord God will call.

And with many other words, he testified, he was a preacher, he's preaching it. With many other words, he testified, he exhorted them saying, be saved from this perverse generation. Then, verse 41, then those who gladly received his word were baptized. And that day, that day, about 3,000 souls were added to them.

As this morning's reading begins, we encounter really the last part of a lengthy message that the Apostle Peter is giving immediately after the events of Pentecost. In the course of the sermon, Peter said some hard things. Peter had said some heavy things, and they were things that were hard, especially for the Jewish audience to hear, to understand.

And so after they had heard these things, Acts 2 tells us in verse 37, they were cut to the heart. Sometimes Scripture does that. Sometimes Scripture convicts us. Sometimes it cuts to the division of soul and spirit.

If you've never had that experience, then you're either skipping passages or you're not reading very closely. Scripture will convict us if we spend enough time in it. That's what happened here. Peter is preaching.

The people are convicted. They're cut to the heart is what we see in this message. And they ask, but they say, what do we do? The Holy Spirit enables them to understand that they're sinners, that they've done messed up.

And their question, the natural question is, what then? What a problem we've got. Peter says, aha, I have a solution. Repent.

Turn from that way in which you lived. Stop trusting in yourselves. Turn to your Savior and trust in the work He did on Calvary. And be baptized as a sign of this covenant that God has made with you.

In any case, Peter said some heavy things. The people have asked, you know, what will we do? And that's the question that he's answering when he tells them to repent and be baptized. And as a result, again, verse 41 says that same day, 3,000 souls were added to the church.

Salvation by the Ordinary Means of Grace 5:40

“Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them.”

— Acts 2:41 (NKJV)

Now, if we just stand back for a moment, we'll do this a little bit as we go through this text. A question to ask is, 3,000 souls, that's a lot. That's a lot of people joining the local church, so to speak. Did they join because of some fancy gimmick that Peter had?

Did they join because of some radical new program that Peter offered? No. Did Peter promise that life, if they joined the church, would suddenly become Six Flags Over Jesus? No, absolutely not. That's not what we see.

They came by what? It came by the ordinary means of grace, ordinary means of preaching. God is content to use something as silly as a silly man and a silly tie to bring about good things. God uses preaching to bring people to the cross.

That's what happened here. They came to Christ by the very ordinary means of the preaching of the word of God, not just preaching of opinions. Let me make sure that distinction is made clear. Not just preaching of thoughts and ideas that fill the man's heart on any given Sunday, but preaching specifically of this, the Word of God.

In any case, again, Peter said a lot of hard things. People have been cut to the heart. It's hard for them to hear. But rather than being driven away, rather than being driven away after having heard stuff that they didn't want to hear, something amazing happened.

The exposition of truth led them to Jesus.

Preaching the Full Counsel of God 7:09

“Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?”

— Acts 2:37 (NKJV)

It is not different in our day. When we think it is, when we water things down, when we skip around the hard parts of Scripture, not only are we not showing love to God, we're not showing love to people, because this is the medicine that we need. Remember, the medicine that we want is not always the medicine we need.

But fortunately, God knows what we need. And He pours it out, primarily, through Scripture. In any case, let me offer this. A hallmark of a healthy church is that it preaches the full counsel of God.

Even those things that convict. Even those things that cut to our core. Even those things that are unpopular in the world around us. Now, presuming that you agree with that, I hope you'll bear it in mind because we have some convicting things yet to get into in the verses yet ahead.

Let's look at verses 42 and 43. Verse 42. And they continued steadfastly. So the 3,000 souls were added to the church.

Did they just come forward for the call and disappear into the woodwork? No. What we see here is that they continued steadfastly. In what? In the apostles, doctrine, and fellowship.

In the breaking of bread and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.

The Three Hallmarks: Doctrine, Fellowship, and Prayer 8:38

Upon being saved, there were three things that marked the lives of these new believers. There were three practices. There were three habits that defined the members of the early church. Now, what were they?

Well, if you have a pen handy, I'll give you them. There's three things that we can boil down that defined the lives of the early believers, that were hallmarks of the individual members of the local church. They were doctrine, fellowship, and prayer. Three hallmarks that defined the members of the early church and defined the church itself were doctrine, fellowship, and prayer.

In our day, there are thousands of different strategies as to how churches can grow or expand. Most of you know, Ann and I, our family started a church plant in Wyoming. And coming out of seminary and starting a church plant, people gave me all sorts of books and recommendations on things you need to read in order to plant a vibrant church.

And there'd be pictures of trees on the books and all these different things. And there was more books than I, frankly, had time or inclination to read. But there was all sorts of helpful ideas and strategies and things you got to do. Frankly, a lot of them, especially books published since the dawn of the new century, were very gimmicky.

Does that surprise us? There's all manner of strategies. Every day it seems like a new bestseller talks about some way to advance God's work. As if God didn't know what He was doing when He gave us Acts 2.

Or as if Acts 2 and everything else in scripture was insufficient. Or was not relevant in our day. And to reach millennials, we've got to think through a thousand roads to the cross. It was never meant to be that hard.

Doctrine, fellowship, and prayer have always been the ordinary means by which God has been pleased to grow and expand His kingdom. Now, they don't sound flashy. I get that. But when put into practice, they are effective.

They are effective. Now, let's talk briefly about each of these components.

The First Hallmark: Doctrine as the Teaching of the Church 10:33

Doctrine. Doctrine is a word that in our culture, you hear the word doctrine and immediately people think of their grandpa or something. Immediately you think of some stiff man standing behind a lectern with a bow tie or what have you and lecturing about the doctrine. Doctrine is not a bad word.

Doctrine is not a word reserved for the academics. Doctrine belongs to you and I. Now, what is doctrine? It's teaching. Doctrine is teaching.

It's what we see in Scripture. It's the truth of Scripture as it is distilled. Doctrine is the teaching, the theology of the church. Again, in our culture, it's become almost a bad word.

But it's not. Our culture places, even modern evangelical culture places, a very limited value upon doctrine. And what has doctrine been replaced by? Emotion.

What you know about God and His word, it's been replaced by how you feel about Him or how you feel about worship. And the result? An evangelical culture where most folks can't even name the Ten Commandments, let alone get into the meat. They're stuck in the milk, can't even get into the steak of God's Word.

We also have a culture that believes it is wise and good and godly and appropriate to mimic and imitate the culture around us in order to grow and be relevant in our witness. If you want to be relevant, don't yoke your ministry to passing fads and philosophies. Only do the Word of God.

There's the relevance that we need. So doctrine was one of the hallmarks of the early church.

The Second Hallmark: Fellowship Against a Consumerist Faith 12:21

Now the second hallmark is fellowship. Now we're going to talk at greater length in a few minutes here about what fellowship is because Luke's going to spend the rest of the passage demonstrating to us by talking about the early church just what fellowship is. With that said, let me mention this one thing about fellowship.

Our culture has done everything in its power to make you and I see, if we're going to participate in church, if we're going to participate in our faith in Christianity, our culture has done everything possible to make us see our faith through the lens of consumerism. Our culture has done everything in its power to make us a consumer of Christianity and church life rather than an active participant.

And guess what? We've listened. Consumers of Christianity have a me-first mentality. They partake in only those parts of church life that selectively fit their wants.

Not those parts that involve getting into the painful mess of other people's lives. Who wants that, people say? I don't need fellowship. I have all the fellowship I can handle down at the job site.

Consumers tend to approach church as a buffet. And they selectively say, well, I really like the music. Or I really like the sermon. I really like some other such thing.

But I don't have the time for this aspect or this aspect or this thing. And that's how you get a church where only a small percentage can be bothered with things like Sunday school or prayer meetings or Bible studies. Because the majority are consumers. I believe that other forms of fellowship are frankly not that critical.

This is the case across the largest, this is not limited to any one congregation, this is the case across Christendom. We've adopted a consumerist mentality. To that mentality, Jesus says, they will know you are My disciples by the love that you have with one another. If you think fellowship is optional, Jesus is saying, I'm telling you, it is not.

So stop discounting participation in the things that you otherwise should, because they are to be a benefit to you. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face when you throw them out. And you selectively identify only those things you want. I think Jesus would say, that's not the way it's meant to be.

All right, so doctrine, fellowship are two hallmarks of the early church.

The Third Hallmark: Prayer and the Example of Elijah 15:00

The third hallmark that we see in verse 42 is prayer. Now, you know, in the Old Testament, there was a man named Elijah. Well, in the book of James, a book in the New Testament, James looks back and he thinks back about this man, Elijah. And he says in his writings, Elijah was a man with a nature just like ours.

So James is describing Elijah as this great prophet. He says, Elijah was a man, as good as he was, as godly as he was, as wonderful as he was. He was a man with a nature just like ours. And yet he prayed earnestly that it would not rain.

And it did not rain. It did not rain on the land for three years and for six months. And then he prayed again and the heaven gave rain and the earth produced its fruit. You know, Elijah was a very effective prophet.

Elijah was exceptionally effective. And the effectiveness of Elijah's entire ministry could be boiled down to two words. You know what those words are? He prayed.

The effectiveness of the ministry of Elijah boiled down to two words. He prayed. That's what James is telling us. He's saying, you know, Elijah was a man.

His nature was just like ours. He was fallen. He was frail. He was a sinner.

But he was effective because he prayed. He was diligent. He was given to our temptations, and yet he was so useful in ministry, because he didn't trust overly unto himself, he prayed. The achievements of Elijah, such as they were, were made possible by the prayers of Elijah.

Now, specifically in James' writing, he's referring back to that time when Elijah prayed that God was going to withhold the rain as a sign of God's wrath and displeasure over the king at that time, Ahab, and his leadership. Now, if you stand back and think about it, praying that it wouldn't rain, okay.

If you stand back and think about it, the more you think about it, that prayer becomes kind of mind-boggling. Because in his prayer, this is what Elijah was asking for. In his prayer, Elijah was asking God to change the weather system of the entire planet. Because that's how things work for a period of several years or more.

Elijah's prayer involved changing the weather system of the entire globe in order to preserve this area as a dry habitation. For a period of years. Now what kind of man can offer such a prayer and that God would actually hear it and respond to it? Again, James says that Elijah was a man with nature just like ours.

Elijah was a man of flesh and blood. His prayer was not heard because he was a demigod. Or because he was somehow intrinsically different than you and I are this morning. Do you know why God heard Elijah's prayer?

It's not a trick question. Because he prayed it. So often we're just, we don't believe God will do anything, we won't respond, we don't have the time, we don't have the inclination. Our mouths are so silent compared to the call we have to open them up.

What a difference it would make in our lives as individuals and as a body. If prayer really was a hallmark of who we are. Just as Elijah's ministry was anchored upon prayer, ours must be as well.

Holding All Things Loosely: Sacrificial Generosity 18:14

Okay, let's look at verses 44 and 45 now. Verse 44. Now, all who believed were together. They had all things in common.

They sold all their possessions and goods and divided them among all as anyone had need. Now, I told you earlier that we were going to get some part in the text that was going to be convicting. Some parts of the text that were going to challenge us. That were going to cause us to wonder, what does this mean?

How am I to apply it? In researching these particular verses, something I encounter is that they are rarely preached upon. There is a lot of available material for men who have worked through this text. I mean, there are some, but it's not as much as if you were to compare verses that talk about, say, prosperity gospel stuff versus this, the imbalance is very high.

Now, when these verses are preached upon, another thing I notice is this. There's oftentimes a great linguistic and theological effort made to make these verses appear to say something different than what they say. Once again, let me read these verses, then I'll offer some comments. Verse 44, now all who believed were together.

They had all things in common and sold their possessions and goods and divided them among all as anyone had need. What's your reaction upon hearing those words? What do you think I'm going to say next about this? What do you hope I say?

What's your reaction upon hearing these words? Most people, including the man standing here, feel discomforted this. So it is comforted in our hearts, so it is comforted in our wallets. And as I've said, because of that, some folks just kind of skip over the text, or they seek to interpret in a way that doesn't compel them to have to respond to it.

What would you have me do? Is this text advocating some sort of communal living? Is this text advocating socialism or some other fiscal paradigm? Is this text telling you that you can't own your own car or house or whatever?

No. That's not what the text is doing. But what it is telling us, what it is telling us is that everything that we've been given is to be held loosely. Everything we've been given is to be held loosely in our hands and is to be readily dispersed to those of the brethren who are in need.

Having all things in common doesn't mean we all own the same car. I mean, you're welcome to share with me if you want, but that's not what we see here. It doesn't mean that we all have the same bank account. That's not what it means.

But what it does mean is that everything that we own is subject to the needs of our fellow believers. Everything that we own is subject to the needs of our fellow believers. It does mean that when a legitimate need becomes evident in our midst, we should be willing to sacrifice more than we'd like to, frankly, more than we're used to, in order to see that the need is met.

Is there any other way to interpret this? Anything that's less convicting to our hearts and wallets? I think not, not while being biblically sound.

The Rich Young Ruler and the Choice of Christ or Mammon 21:32

You know, there was a time when Jesus was out and about and a rich, young ruler approaches Jesus. And in essence, he asks if he can be one of Christ's disciples. Now, what did Jesus say? What was Jesus' response?

Well, first, Jesus tells him to go and sell everything that he had. First, go and sell everything that he had. And scripture tells us that this man, oh, he went away sad. He went away sad.

Because he was very wealthy. For that man, God and mammon, God and money, the same thing. Now, if that man could have pursued both Christ and riches, he would have. In fact, that's what he wanted.

If he could have pursued both Christ and riches, that was his objective. But Jesus put him to the point of a choice. Didn't He? Sell all you have, then you can follow Me.

It went away sad. Jesus put that man to the point of a choice. I submit to you, Scripture is doing the same thing to us this day. Particularly on a day when we're starting the deacon's fund.

In our materialistic culture, this is counter-cultural. It's not easy. It's not easy to read from passages that talk about things like giving in such an extreme way. In our culture, we tend to prioritize the accumulation of things and wealth.

And in and of itself, again, let me make it clear, owning things or being wealthy is not a sin. Remember where I said they met from house to house? That means some people still had houses, right? It's not a bad thing to own a house, okay?

So it's not ownership of things that is the problem per se. In and of itself, it is not wrong to have possessions or means. But it becomes a sin to withhold grace, to withhold means from others when God has deliberately given them to us, given us those means, in order that we might meet the needs of our fellow saints.

It becomes a sin when we withhold grace and help from others, when God has deliberately given us the means to meet their needs, and we instead walk away sad. Because what we own means so much to us.

The Deacons Fund: Mercy and Missions in Practice 24:01

As individuals, the call out of this text, hold what you have loosely. As a church, we've had to take this to heart in leadership. As a church, we've determined to take Scripture's mandates on these things seriously. Which is why 2017 marks the creation of the Deacons Fund.

This year, those of you who attended our budget meeting know this. We're renewing our commitment to mercy and to missions. And we do so with some trepidation, given the budget impact involved. But we do it because it's scriptural.

We do it because it's right. We trust that God is going to bless us and validate our faith in doing so.

Living the Faith in Community, Not as Lone Rangers 24:50

“So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”

— Acts 2:46-47 (NKJV)

Let's look at our final verses, verses 46 and 47. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who are being saved.

Now, so far in today's sermon we said that the three specific things marked or defined the early church, as at least as we see it in Acts 2. Specifically, those things were doctrine, fellowship, and prayer. Well, in verses 46 and 47 all of those things are kind of implied in the text. As the people came together they came to be taught and to teach.

They came together to fellowship. They came together to pray. They worshipped together. They enjoyed the Lord's Supper.

They broke bread together. They met together in the temple. They met together in various homes. They lived out their faith in community.

So he said in the past, we're not lone rangers. We think we are because the world tells us we are. Scripture says otherwise. We're not lone rangers.

The church is instituted not just so a funny man in a funny tie can stand up and speak and wave his arms around for an hour. It's instituted so we can come together through the word, through prayer, through fellowship, and grow in faith and grow into into the the building, the temple, the holy temple that exceeds the temple that was ever built in Jerusalem.

One body by which are members of one another, of the others in this room. That's the call we see in this text. That is not what the world, that what the world elevates in our eyes. Community, relationships is a necessity.

In any case, as a result of the faithfulness of the of the early believers in pursuing these three things of doctrine, fellowship, and prayer, verse 47 closes by saying because of what they were doing the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. So we said at the outset being a growing church doesn't mean that we need to reinvent the wheel.

Being a growing church doesn't mean that we have to progressively change things up. We have to progressively change things up that the church has been doing very well for centuries. In 2,000 years, the church has grown from a handful of believers in the upper room to an institution that fills the entire globe.

Do you think God knew what He was doing? If you look at so many modern books, you'd say no. Follow the gimmicks and programs. Of course, God does know what He's doing. He's provided ordinary means by which our church and the churches across the globe are to grow.

We don't need to have all these modern attempts to radicalize or reinvent or be relevant. If we're paying attention, if we're paying attention, what Scripture tells us is that the ordinary means of grace really works. Doctrine, fellowship, prayer. These are what our church must devote ourselves to in the time ahead.

Let us commit to doing so.