FAMILY MATTERS
“God’s Family….Better Together”
Acts 2:42-47
“I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God, I’ve been washed in the fountain, cleansed by his blood, joint heirs with Jesus as we travel this side; I’m a part of the family, the family of God.”
Have you heard that before? I certainly hope so. We sang it about 10 minutes ago. Bill Gaither wrote it many years ago. And God began forming his forever family thousands of years ago. We don’t know exactly how long ago it was …the Bible says it was in the beginning. We also don’t know how long he thought about it before He started. If we trace God’s hand back to the book of Genesis and follow it through the OT we see God as the creator of two institutions. (1) The family and (2) the church. And we quickly realize that the two are very closely related.
We see that early in Scripture that the Spirit of God was moving over the water. This refers of course to God’s Holy Spirit beginning to move throughout creation. Later in the first chapter, God speaks and he says, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. It doesn’t mean of course that we look like God; it means we have been created in such a way that we have the ability to communicate with God. Only man has this ability. So God creates the family and tells us to be fruitful and multiply and that we have done; now with 7.5 billion people on this planet.
We move into the NT and many changes have of course taken place. Jesus has come in the flesh. He was crucified, buried and then resurrected on the third day and the Scripture tells us he then ascended to heaven. But before leaving he left us with a powerful promise. You see, when Jesus was present on earth in his physical body, He could only be present in one place at a time. But when He leaves He tells us that His Holy Spirit will come and will be everywhere, in all places at all times. And that he will never, ever leave us.
Now with that bit of background we come to Act chapter 2 and the Bible says that now with the arrival of the Holy Spirit that all of God’s people are now filled with the Holy Spirit. Peter stands up to preach on the day of Pentecost and when he finishes, 3000 people have given their lives to Jesus. 3000. Look at verse 41. And now the family of God begins to prosper. The family of God begins to grow and the church begins to expand.
Now what do you do with that many new believers, all at once? That could be a great problem actually-not a problem that most churches ever have to face. Really not a problem, it’s an opportunity. But clearly what happened at this point is that God’s family had to get organized. And this is the way I view it. From the beginning, God’s family was organized on purpose, with a purpose, to carry out his purpose.
But many churches have failed in this area. Too many have organized around their traditions. For these churches they simply continue to do what they have already done. The problem is of course that the things we have been doing have not always worked, yet we repeat them over and over and over thinking we are going to get a different result. This has become a popular definition of the word insanity. Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. And then wondering why we don’t get them.
Others focus on their finances. Everything is about money. And of course many focus on their buildings. But the fact is some of the largest church buildings have been shut down and are now basically museums because they are no longer needed. God’s forever family is much bigger than any tradition, more valuable than any amount of money and will last longer than any building on earth.
So God’s forever family must be focused on discipleship. Seeing people come to Christ and then helping one another to become fully developed followers of Jesus Christ. That is the teaching of the NT. When these 3000 came to Christ and the book of acts tells us that long after that there were another 2000 who were saved —this did not happen by accident. God did it on purpose--for a purpose. God brought the family together in the OT and then brought his forever family together here because God’s people are better together. In the beginning when God created man God immediately said you know it is not good for man to be alone. So he created woman. And the two would come together and become one flesh.
And so when the church is established it is immediately obvious that we are much better off working together than if we work separately. Notice here four things churches must do together.
(1) Churches must learn together. Look at verse 42. And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. The book of Acts tells us later that deacons were put into place to meet the needs of God’s family so that the pastors could teach God’s family. It takes time to pray, to prepare to teach God’s word. Paul said study to show thyself approved, a workman who needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. And Luke reminds us here in the book of Acts that they were devoted and that they met together every day. When it comes to learning the teachings of God’s word we will never arrive, we will never reach the point where we will say I think I’ve got it all now, pretty much understand all of it. We’ll never be able to exhaust the teachings of God’s word. So churches must learn together.
(2) Churches must fellowship together. Look at verses 42 and 46. For me it is hard to even say the word fellowship without immediately thinking of a group of people. Luke was telling us here that God’s forever family must be devoted to fellowship. The Greek word here is Koinonia which refers to a bond that believers have. In the Greek, it also refers to the fact that it is unique. In other words believers have a special relationship with each other that people in the world, outside the church do not have. And because we do, we need to spend time together building that relationship. Watching it grow. We must fellowship together. They knew how to break bread together. Food was present but that was not their focus. Their focus was the bond they shared together in Jesus Christ.
(3) Churches must learn to pray together. V. 42. Someone has said that the early church used to pray and fast. Today we simply pray fast. This church was established through prayer. Here, we have seen individuals who…
• Were healed because of prayer from cancer
• were saved because of prayer
• relationships are mended because of prayer
• families restored because of prayer
There is power in prayer and there is certainly power in corporate prayer. The Scripture says when two or three are gathered together in his name that there he is in the midst of them. When God’s people get together, God gets together with them. Without prayer this church is nothing, with it we can change this entire community. Churches must learn to pray together.
(4) Churches must learn to share. Acts 2:44-45. They knew how to share. Sharing is not something we do naturally. If you don’t believe it, place two three-year-olds in the room and give them only one toy. They will fight, hit each other, one may even bite the other, pull their hair all over that toy. If you have raised more than one child you will likely recall that your first child was probably pretty happy until the second one came along. And the second one wanted to play with some of the things that belong to the first one and it didn’t go over so well. Parents have to step in at this point and say, hey you got to learn to share. And if you don’t I’ll take it away. I’ll stop sharing with you.
This church had everything in common. In chapter 4 he says that no one claimed that any of his possessions were his own... They shared everything they had. Here he says, in fact they sold it all and gave it to anyone who had a need. Churches must learn o share. This is my grade report card. When I was in grade school our report cards looked different than in high school. In high school you get an A or and B or a C but in grade school we got either an S or an S+. If you did really well you might get an S+. If you behaved poorly you might get a U in conduct. There was also a few lines that had things like if you were punctual, they would grade your conduct and one of the items on the list was “plays/works well with others.” Can we say that as a church?
In football they have a huddle, the goal of the huddle is to give you thirty seconds to call the play; that is why they give you a huddle. (At a professional football game there may be) sixty thousand people watching you huddle, they don’t mind you taking thirty seconds to call the play. They understand that you have to get organized, you have to know where you are going to go, the ends need to know where they are going to go, the quarterback needs to know where he is going to go, and the backs need to know where they are going to go. A huddle is a necessary part of the game. But let me inform you if you do not already know, sixty thousand people do not pay $100 or more a ticket to watch you huddle. They want to see if their team can overcome the opposition who is daring them to snap the ball and move the down the field to score. What they want to know is does what you did before the huddle work?
As believers we often huddle together. At least that is what the world thinks. Wonder what they do there every Sunday???? We gather together on Sunday morning...and we go nuts over the huddle! We say, "Boy did we have a huddle!!! My quarterback can call plays better than your quarterback." And boy do we go off on the huddle. But what people don’t seem to understand is; that the huddle is so that we can play the game. The effectiveness of your church cannot be measured by how well we do on Sunday morning...The test of the church is what it does on the field. What we need today is churches that are representatives of Jesus Christ not only when gather here, but not just in the huddle but on the playing field.
