Opening illustration: A U.S. Lutheran bishop tells of visiting a parish church in California and finding a stirring red and orange banner on the wall. “Come Holy Spirit. Hallelujah!” it declared in words printed under a picture of a fire burning. The bishop was also interested in the sign directly underneath the banner which said: “Fire extinguisher.” So much for that parish’s commitment to spiritual renewal.
How can revival take place when the church is dead and there is no voice to speak life into them? Such is the state of affairs of the churches today. Are there any people who will stand in the gap and not only pray but act on God’s behalf to revive and resurrect the church?
Introduction: In the New Testament, church means "people," not "buildings." The church lies at the very heart of God's eternal purpose. God's purpose is not merely to save isolated individuals and so perpetuate our loneliness. God's purpose is to build a church, to build a redeemed people for his own glory. We're very concerned about the renewal of the church, and we're concerned about the biblical vision of what the church is intended to be.
So, I want to ask this question this morning: What are the chief distinguishing marks of the church? One of the best ways to answer the question is to take a fresh look at the first Christian community as it came into being in Jerusalem on and after the day of Pentecost. Mind you, as we do that this morning, it's important to be realistic. There is a tendency to idealize or romanticize the early church, to look back through tinted spectacles, to speak of it with bated breath as if it had no blemishes. Then we miss the heresies and the hypocrisies and the rivalries and the immoralities that troubled the early church, just as they trouble the church today. Nevertheless, one thing is certain: the early church was radically moved and renewed by the Holy Spirit.
So, let me rephrase my question. What does a Spirit-filled church look like? What evidence did that first-century church give of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in its midst? If we can answer that question, we're well on the way to ask what the marks of a renewed church should be today.
What are the Marks of a Renewed People?
1. A LEARNING People
In this passage from Acts 2, the first mark that Luke gives us of that early renewed and Spirit-filled church is that it was a learning church. It was a studying church. They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles. That's exceedingly significant. One might say that the Holy Spirit opened a school in Jerusalem that day. Jesus had appointed the apostles as the teachers in the school, and there were no fewer than 3,000 pupils in kindergarten. It was a remarkable situation. These Spirit-filled converts were not enjoying some mystical experience, which led them to neglect their intellect or to despise theology or to stop thinking. On the contrary, they devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles. Moreover, they didn't imagine that the Holy Spirit was the only teacher they needed and could dispense with human teachers. Not at all. They sat at the apostles' feet. They acknowledged that Jesus had appointed the apostles as the teachers of the church, and they submitted to their authority, authenticated to them by miracles.
So, the first mark of a Spirit-filled church is that it's a studying church, an apostolic church, a church that takes seriously the authority of the New Testament and seeks to submit to it today. Its ministers will expound the Bible from the pulpit. Its parents will teach their children out of the Scriptures. Its members will read and reflect upon the Scriptures every day in order to grow into maturity in Christ. The Spirit of God leads the people of God to submit to the Word of God and His leadership.
2. A CARING People
Second, a renewed church is a caring church, a loving church, a supportive church. Its members love and care for one another. If the first mark of a renewed church is study, the second is fellowship. "They devoted themselves to … the fellowship." That's the Greek word koinonia. It comes from the adjective koinos that means "common." Koinonia bears witness to what we have in common and what we share as Christian men and women and young people. It bears witness to two complementary truths.
First, koinonia expresses what we share in together, what we have received together, what we participate in together. That is the grace of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So, the apostle John, at the beginning of his first letter, says, "Our fellowship [koinonia] is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." The apostle Paul adds the phrase "the fellowship of the Spirit." So authentic fellowship is Trinitarian fellowship. It is our common participation in the grace and the life and the mercy of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We come from different nations, denominations, and cultures, but we are unified by our common share in the grace of God.
But koinonia also bears witness to what we share outward together—not only what we receive together, but what we give together. Koinonia is the word that Paul uses of the collection that he was organizing from the Greek churches for the benefit of the poverty-stricken churches in Judea. And koinonikos, the adjective, means "generous." So, it is on this that Luke lays his emphasis in our text.
Not everybody in Jerusalem sold and gave away everything. We read in verse 46 that they met in one another's homes. But I thought they'd all sold their homes and their furniture and their possessions! Apparently not. The giving and selling were voluntary—as it should be today. I think I hear sighs of relief in the church. You were afraid I was going to tell you to go and sell everything. No, that's not the vocation of every Christian. Nevertheless, we should not avoid the challenge of these verses. Those early Christians loved one another—hardly surprising, since the fruit of the Spirit is love. They cared for their poor sisters and brothers who were less fortunate than themselves. They shared their goods. They shared their homes.
That principle of voluntary and generous sharing with one another is permanent and universal. I believe the church was the first community in which poverty was actually abolished. The number of people who are destitute in the world today, who lack the necessities for survival, is about 100 million. The average number of people who die from starvation every day is 10,000. How can we live with these statistics? Surely the Holy Spirit gives his people a tender social conscience. Surely those of us who live in affluent circumstances, as you and I do, must simplify our economic lifestyle. Not because we think that it will solve the macroeconomic problems of the world, but as a solidarity with the poor and because the New Testament calls us to simplicity, contentment, and generosity.
3. A WORSHIPING People
Third, a renewed church worships together. Continuing in verse 42: "They devoted themselves to the breaking of the bread and the prayers." Luke uses the definite article in both cases. The breaking of the bread is evidently the Lord's Supper, though with a fellowship meal thrown in as well. "The prayers" means prayer meetings and prayer services. Both phrases refer to Christian worship. What impresses me about the worship of the early church is its balance in two respects.
Formal and informal
Firstly, it was both formal and informal; it took place in the temple and in their homes. They continued to attend the prayer services of the temple. I'm sure they wanted to reform them according to the gospel. I'm convinced they didn't continue in the sacrifices of the temple, because they knew they'd been fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ. But they did continue in the prayer services of the temple, which had a degree of formality. So, they didn't immediately abandon the institutional church. There is an important lesson here: they supplemented the services in the temple with their own simple, informal, unstructured, spontaneous meetings at home.
We need to keep those two things together. I know you do in your church, as we do here. We have the dignified service in the church, and we have meetings in one another's homes. We call them fellowship groups, but people give them different names in other places. Why must we always polarize? Old fogies like me prefer the dignity of the church service. But we need the experience of exuberant worship that young people prefer in the home, when they let down their hair and get out their guitars. But they also need the experience of the dignity of the church service. Don't polarize. There's no need to choose. We can have them both, just as they did in the early church.
Joyful and reverent
There's a second aspect of their balance: it was joyful and reverent at the same time. There's no doubt of their joy. The end of verse 46 uses a word that means exaltation, an exalted form of joy. God sent his Son into the world. He'd sent his Spirit into their hearts. How could they not be joyful over the mighty acts of God in Christ and by the Spirit? And the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. Where the Holy Spirit is, joy should be, too—a more uninhibited joy than our ecclesiastical traditions and courage.
While visiting some churches, I think I've gone to a funeral by mistake. Everybody is dressed in black. Nobody smiles. Nobody laughs. Nobody talks. The hymns are played at a snail's pace, and the whole atmosphere is lugubrious. And if I could overcome my English, I would want to shout out, "Cheer up!" Christianity is a joyful religion, and we need to have a note of joy in our worship.
But it also should be reverent. We read in verse 43 that fear—awe and wonder—came upon every soul. Although some services are too funereal-like, other services are too flippant. In some church circles there seems to be no sense of the greatness and the glory and the majesty of Almighty God, before whom we should bow down in that combination of awe and wonder and humility which we call worship. We must worship in joy and reverence together, not one without the other.
4. An EVANGELIZING People
Fourth, a renewed church is an evangelizing church. So far, we've covered the domestic life of the congregation: study, worship, and fellowship. If that's all a church possesses, it's like an ingrown toenail—self-regarding. What about the world outside? Are we not concerned about the outside world, in its pain and its grief and its lostness and its loneliness? Are Christians so absorbed with themselves that they have no mission to the outside world? No, of course not. But this is a good example of the danger of textual preaching. Millions of sermons have been preached on Acts 2:42, and if they stayed in Acts 2:42, they're unbalanced. Verse 42 speaks only of the church's worship, fellowship, and study. The church's mission isn't addressed until we come to verse 47. In verse 47 we read, "The Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved." There are three very important lessons about evangelism we can learn from verse 47.
First, the Lord Jesus did it himself: "The Lord added to their number." He did it through the preaching of the apostles and through the witness of the ordinary members and through their common life of love, but he did it. And only he can. He delegates to pastors the responsibility of adding people to the visible church by baptism. But only one Person can add people to the invisible church: the head of the church, Jesus Christ. Through the Holy Spirit, he can give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, life to the spiritually dead, adding them to his church.
I wish we could humbly put our trust and confidence for evangelistic success in him and not in ourselves. Second, he did two things together: "He added to their number those who were being saved." He didn't save them without adding them to the church, and he didn't add them to the church without saving them. He did the two together, because salvation and church membership always belong together.
Third, he did it every day. Day by day he added to their number those who are being saved. I wish we could get back to that expectation. Evangelism is continuous outreach into the community seeking to bring people into Christ and his community. There are some churches that regard evangelism as an occasional and sporadic enterprise. They enthusiastically organize a mission once every five years. And when the mission is over, they sink back into their respectable bourgeois mediocrity for another five years. Missions are fine as long as they're only episodes in the ongoing evangelistic outreach of the church. I know some churches that haven't had a convert for a decade, and they wouldn't know what to do with one if they got one. Don't be like those churches. Expect converts. Expect growth.
Application: These four marks of a Renewed People all concern our relationships.
I was curious to discover what they were looking for but had been unable to find. And you will be as astonished as I was that they went right through these four things without realizing what they were doing. They said, "We were looking for a biblical preaching ministry that relates the Word of God to the modern world. Second, we're looking for a loving, supportive, caring fellowship. Third, we're looking for worship with the living God, where the people bow down before him. Fourth, we're looking for compassionate outreach into the community." They didn't know those were the marks of a renewed church in Acts 2. But that's what young people are looking for in the church today. May God enable our churches to approximate much more closely this beautiful biblical ideal.
We don't need to wait for the Holy Spirit to come. The Holy Spirit did come on the day of Pentecost, and he's never left the church. Pentecost was one of those unique events, the final event in the saving career of Jesus. He was born once, died once, rose once, ascended once, and sent the Holy Spirit once. Our responsibility is to seek the power, the direction, and the fullness of the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit is given his rightful place of freedom in the Christian community, then our churches will approximate this ideal—biblical faith, loving fellowship, living worship, ongoing evangelism. God, make our churches like that today.
