Contagious Christianity, Acts 2:42-47
Introduction
A number of years ago a Johns Hopkins University professor asked his graduate students to locate 200 boys, ages 12-16, and then to research their family backgrounds. The assignment was then to predict their future. The students were sent to the slum area of the city to find the boys. The conclusion reached by the graduate students was that 90 percent of those researched would spend time in jail. The final chapter of this study would not be completed until 25 years later.
When the 200 original students were sought after, some 25 years later, John Hopkins sent the researchers into the slum area again. Some of the group still remained in the slums; others had moved away, a few had died. In all they were able to locate 180 of the original 200. What they found amazed them. Only four had ever been to jail (remember the prediction had been 90 percent of 200)!
What caused this figure to be so low when all indications pointed to a larger number? When the researchers began to ask this question they found that they were getting the same answer, “Well, there was this teacher….” Pressed further, the researchers found that the teacher in all cases was one and the same. The boys had all been influenced by the same teacher.
The graduate students traced down the teacher, now living in a retirement home, and inquired about her remarkable influence over a group of boys who were headed for a life of crime.
She really could not think of any reason why she would have this kind of influence. She did mention that “I truly loved my students.”
Transition
The teacher who had made such a difference in the lives of these inner city boys had made that difference because of her genuine love for them. She could not remember any profound lecture that she had given. She could not remember any great and outstanding curriculum of learning that she had developed or used.
Love was the instrument that she used to change the lives of these young men just as love was the instrument which Jesus used to change the lives of the disciples and it is still love which is the primary tool in the hands of the Church to revolutionize the world for Jesus Christ.
It was the love and uniqueness of Jesus message that caused a certain Scribe to say to Jesus in Matthew 8:19, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.” (NKJV)
It was the uniqueness of the words of Jesus which caused Peter to say in John 6:68, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (NKJV)
This morning, we will examine what it is that gave the early Church its power, its vigor, and its vitality within the context of ancient society.
Exposition
Jesus was born into a world that was prepared for his coming more than at any time prior. There is a saying which says that “all roads lead to Rome.” In the days of the height of the Roman Empire this was literally true as all of the vast roads that the Romans built radiated from the center of power – the city of Rome.
In fact, the influence that the Roman Empire had on the spreading of the Gospel message can not be overlooked. The Romans had developed a culture like non other the world had ever seen. They had developed within their citizens a deep sense of the solidarity of mankind.
Philosophically minded Romans explained this unity of mankind by borrowing from the Greek concept of an unwritten and unseen “universal law” which are written into the nature of humanity and can be discovered through rational investigation and philosophical pursuit.
This worldview was incredibly fertile soil to plant the seeds of the Gospel message that all humanity is in a fallen and sinful state and in need of a savior. The Romans developed a system of law that was daily pressed upon all of its citizens through the impartial justice of Romans courts.
In the fifth century before Christ these laws were codified into the Twelve Tablets and Roman citizens were educated in their nature and contents as children. That means that every person living in the Roman Empire was at a place in their thinking where the concepts of the unity of humanity and the nature of God’s Law were able to be grasped and understood.
In the Roman Empire there were two types of citizenship; full Roman Citizenship and then something called the Latin Right – which was a class of Roman Citizenship which was extended to free (non-slave) foreigners living in Roman controlled lands.
The reason that all of this is so significant is that this means that in essence the entire known western world was for the first time unified under one code of law with a common worldview in an empire which had roads stretching literally thousands of miles in nearly every direction upon which news – the gospel – could travel.
You see, for hundreds of years even before the coming of Christ, God was setting the stage for the presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
It is largely a result of these Roman contributions to history that the Gospel was able to go forth. I am convinced that God’s sovereignty knows no coincidence. It was by His design and plan that Jesus should come just when He did. There is perhaps no other time in history that one can imagine when the season was riper for the harvest of the Gospel.
It’s also significant to note the role that the role that Roman military conquest played in preparing the seed bed for the early Church. The Romans had conquered many people groups and in the process the local people abandoned their pagan gods en mass.
The pagan deities whom they had previously worshiped had not been able to save them from the Roman military! No doubt these conquered people had called out to their false gods to save them from the Romans and in every case their prayers turned out to be of on avail.
The Romans brought with them the empty cult of Emperor Worship which did not offer anything by way of the deeper spiritual life. There were the mystery cults which the Romans brought with them however which did play an interesting role in the development of the early Church.
Many of the mystery cults introduced Roman people groups to ideas similar to Christianity. Mithraism which had been imported from Persia had elements which were vaguely Christian such as yearly feasts and the need for baptism and blood.
These mystery cults provided a sort of introduction to ideas that made Christianity seem much more familiar and acceptable. But where these religions failed to provide any lasting solace and hope Christianity provided both.
Where false religion and Emperor Worship had only the power to unify one with the Roman State, Christianity offered eternal hope and real spiritual power.
While all of these historical factors made the ancient Roman world more receptive to the Gospel but it was another factor that made the Church so attractive to so many ancient people and is a chief aspect of the growth of the early Church.
In John 13:35 Jesus said, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (NKJV) The early Church exemplified these words of Jesus. The early Church had love for one another.
Listen to some of the key words in today’s Scripture – Acts 2:42-47; breaking of bread, prayers, were together, had all things in common, they cared as anyone as they had need, gladness, simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor.
There is one thread running through them all – love. The early Church had love for one another and offered something which was and is radically unique.
Illustration
Flypaper is an amazingly simple and at the same time profoundly genius product. I did a bunch of research about flypaper. It turns out that you can even make your flypaper at home using some syrup, brown sugar, granulated sugar, and strips of brown paper bags.
You see, for flypaper to be flypaper it only needs to have two properties. It has to be sweet and it has to be sticky. The sweetness is attractive to the flies and the sticky makes them stay.
God is calling us, as a church, to be sweet and sticky like flypaper. The love of Christ is sticky in that it binds us together and when other people come into contact with it they find themselves not wanting to leave it.
Genuine love is an altogether rare commodity in this world but it should not be so in the Church of Jesus Christ. We, more than any others, ought to reflect the radical love of Jesus toward one another in ways that are obvious to others.
The early Church was attractive because it had something sweet which was of rare commodity. That commodity – love – is still a rare commodity. Indeed, we are living in times much akin to the days of the early Church.
As we look around our society is increasingly pluralistic. In fact, we see many of the same threads of thought in the New Age religions of our day that existed in the mystery cults of the Romans Empire.
We too see a type of Emperor Worship as well, don’t we? In Rome the Emperor was worshiped as a god or more specifically and a representative of the gods. Is this any different from the modern secular worldview which rejects the notion of the family and Church as the primary structures of society – instead replacing Church and family with secularism, evolution, science, and the State?
I am reminded of the words of Romans 1:20-25 where the Apostle Paul writes, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man – and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator… Amen.” (NKJV)
Conclusion
In the ancient world, God – according to His divine providence – broke into history at just the appointed moment. He broke in with a kind of love that the world had never seen and has yet to fully comprehend.
While the world tells us that we are on our own; the Church showed the world around them that we are in this together.
While the world tells us that there is no power greater than that of the State; the Church showed the world around them that God reigns supreme.
While the world’s false religions failed to satisfy the hearts and minds of the great multitudes of people; the God of creation offered the presence of the Holy Spirit within the very hearts and men and women who would seek Him.
What made the early Church so attractive? Why were they able, with God’s help, to turn the world upside down as it says in Acts 17:6? Because they were filled with the love of Christ!
Today let us be reminded that it is the same radical love which made the early Church attractive and beautiful which makes us attractive and beautiful.
In the Church today there is so much talk about what makes a church grow and how best to attract this current generation of people. Are we really under the mistaken impression that our times are any more secular, pagan, and morally bankrupt than the times in which the Church began?
Do we really think that we need to leave behind the very things which made the early Church grow in order to grow today? We do need to market our churches in ways that our communities know that we are here.
Advertisements and websites are important but when the people come it is our love for one another and for them which will make us sticky.
It is the love of Christ in us that is needed in people’s lives. It is genuine Christianity which turned the world upside down and it is genuine Christ-like love which transforms lives.
Let us in this place commit and recommit and commit and recommit ourselves to being filled with the sweet and sticky attractive life changing love of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
