Come to the table of worship. Acts 2:42-47
Eric A. Snyder, Minister, Farwell Church of Christ
September 19, 2002
I can remember when I was in college I was on the school meal plan. Now great lakes tries very hard but I never was a big fan of the way that they would cook food. In fact I thought the 4 food groups were, Taco bell, Burger king, Pizza hut, and Arby’s.
We all know what happens when anyone is exposed to that kind of diet for a period of time. We lose our good vitamins and our body starts getting too much of one thing. And not enough of another. So we become chemically imbalanced. We get tired easier and we wear out faster when we don’t have a balanced diet.
There are many diet programs out right now. And a lot of them are designed to starve you from something that your system needs. For example you’ve heard of the low carb diet. Or the all protein diet.
What scientists have found is that if to go on one of these diets. Such as the all protein diet then your body can’t handle what’s happening so in order to get the nourishment it needs your body starts feeding off the muscle. So you end up losing more of your good stuff than your bad stuff.
Does this mean we shouldn’t diet? NO Rather it means that we need to find out how to balance our diet. We need to feel comfortable coming to the table and eating. But we also need to maintain balanced portions of what we eat.
Our spiritual life is no different when it comes to worship. And I would imagine that with this new format it would be incredible easy to worship in song and to pray as part of our worship but use the intermission to leave and miss the sermon all together. Or for some I imagine that it would be easy to come for the sermon and not participate in the part where we offer a blessing to God through song for his goodness.
All of these parts of worship help us to have a balanced walk when it comes to following Jesus. This morning I hope that the whole worship experience will come together for you and you will see just how these 4 spiritual food groups help you have a balanced spiritual life.
When you go to a restaurant let’s say you walk in and sit down and order a steak. You are then given a choice about what kind of vegetable you would like. Sunday morning has become something like that. Hopefully the communion, offering and message are the steak in your spiritual diet this morning. But you can begin to have your choice of different flavors of your vegetable. For some you will want a traditional setting and for others you will want a contemporary setting.
All we ask is that you leave here having feasted at the table of worship on Sunday morning. And if you want to stay for all 3 segments I think you fill find that something extra special comes through your worship.
This morning will you come to the table of worship. The Bible tells us that this table of worship gives us nourishment in 4 different ways but it also says that these four things are like the legs of the table and each leg holds up a different area of worship.
Our text today is Acts 2:42-47 and it describes how the early church met together and worshiped. But this is not the only text that describes the worship of Jesus followers. But this text is the text that puts it all in one place.
It’s interesting that we see a format for worshiping but as we read this it is also important to understand that this was not something that happened once a week. It was not just a Sunday occurrence but rather the scripture points out that they did this every day.
Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
This text says that there are 4 parts to worshiping God. I want you to note a couple of things this text is about the church not particularly about a the way they worshiped. Because it does not say that they sang. Yet in every other example of people praising God together in the New Testament the people were singing as a major part of the worship.
It says that these people were committed to The teaching, you might call that the sermon or the message. They were committed to breaking bread, you might call that communion. To prayer. We still call that prayer.
In fact when we look at common elements of worship in the bible we find that there are four common elements taking place during the worship time. In Ezra’s day the elements were still Preaching, Proclaiming the message from God, Singing, praising God for His greatness, Praying, and finding a time to connect with God. And in the New Testament we find the element of communion added. To take away the place where people would have sacrificed to God.
Praise, prayer, message communion, 4 legs that the table of worship stands on. Let me ask you what would happen if one of those legs were missing?
Well that depends right. It might stand up if the side with 3 legs has more weight on that side. But then again it could fall over.
I would suggest that some have experienced that kind of worship before. You may have participated in 3 of the four elements and maybe it worked and you felt like you worshiped. Or maybe you participated in 3 areas of worship and the whole day just fell flat.
Let me ask you what would happen if the table only had 2 legs? Then there’s no way it’s going to stand up right. This is why it’s so crucial for you to not only take part in the message and communion but to offer God some time in prayer and singing.
In fact the bible almost puts more emphasis on the singing than it does the message. The bible says offer glad songs in your heart to God. When we come in together it should be a time of letting the blessings overflow out of our hearts onto God’s ears.
I think sometimes we forget what a powerful blessing that worship is. I can remember when I was growing up we had a cartoon character called captain planet. He was a trend setter. 10 years later I went home one day and saw my brother with blue hair. Captain planet was this powerful superhero. And he had 4 planeteers. They were environmentalist and each week they had a different adventure. For example they had to save the rainforest from being chopped down by loggers. And these industrialists were always evil. We’re going to turn this wildlife preserve into a roller rink. And they would cackle in this high pitched voice.
These planeteers even had their own little song. “ We’re the planeteers you can be one too cause saving our planet it the thing to do.” They all had special powers that were these forces of nature. Such as earth, wind, fire water.
I have to tell you fire is a deadly force. It is powerful. Water is powerful when you look at how quickly it erodes a path. Wind can sometimes get so bad that we have to issue hurricane warnings. But there are 4 elements of praising God that are more powerful than any gale force wind that could come our way and it just may be that when you pour yourself in worship that God’s Spirit will use those words in that song or prayer or message to erode a path to your heart.
Praising God is the most powerful thing ever because it creates a direct connection between God and His church, in fact in Acts 5 the believers had just been threatened and told not to speak in the name of Jesus and they went to God in a time of united prayer and the bible says that when they were done praying that the earth began to shake. Do you realize what that means? That means that when the presence of God is concentrated in one place then it is more powerful than anything else.
It’s more powerful than a million sticks of dynamite. And if we will come before him and pour it all our then this place will explode with the message of Jesus.
We’re going to take some time today and look at the different parts of worship.
The message is where we dig into the word of God and find all the wonderful resources He has given us to use.
A southern minister was completing a sermon about drunkenness. With great expression he said, "If I had all the beer in the world, I’d take it and pour it into the river."
With even greater emphasis he said, "And if I had all the wine in the world, I’d take it and pour it into the river."
And then finally, he said, "And if I had all the whiskey in the world, I’d take it and pour it into the river." Sermon complete, he then sat down.
The song leader stood very cautiously and announced with a smile, "For our closing song, let us sing Hymn #365: ’Shall We Gather at the River’."
You have known some who are determined to make a joke of the message. You have known some who hear the message preached and after it is over they immediately can find a fault in it.
But God says. The message is to dig into my word and through the message we need to get to know God better.
The message should give us hope and inspiration and sometimes the message is even the place where God looks at our hearts and exposes some kind of sin in our lives.
A sermon needs to be a clear word from God. So don’t let yourself walk out of here unless you have heard the message from God today.
There are days when I work so hard on the sermon and when Sunday comes around People come up to me and say I didn’t understand this part. For some you may hear the sermon but it doesn’t sink in because there were too few jokes or too many jokes or that guy is so young how can he know what he’s talking about.
People need a clear word from God. When you leave here you need to be clear about what God said to you today. If you don’t hear it then your table is sure to be a little unstable.
The message is how we dig into God’s word during worship. But there is another part of worship that is powerful also
Prayer is the open line of communication between us and God.
Tony Campolo tells a story about standing up and praying before his church and at the end of the service a lady came up and said you know you made 14 grammatical errors in that prayer today. Tony said and before I could even think about what I was saying I said “Lady I wasn’t talking to you anyway”
Prayer is not a time to preach a sermon. In fact when we see the New Testament church praying with power there are a couple of common elements. First they prayed and the text many times says they were united in this prayer. That everyone was praying this prayer together.
Wow. Now let me ask a question. When someone here prays. Are you praying that prayer too or are you just listening? A huge part of the reality in collective prayer is that we need to be praying together.
We have a tendency to say amen when we know a part of the sermon to be true but Prayer is where we talk to God directly and so when I hear Phil praying I need to be thinking and praying Yes Lord move in that situation.
The other thing that happens in this worship with prayer is a great majority of the prayer time is concentrated around God’s goodness and the focus of helping others come to Jesus.
That’s what’s happening in Acts 5 they say Lord here’s what’s happening now here’s what we want you to do… grow your church. Enlarge this kingdom and God use us wherever necessary. A large part of prayer in worship was meant to show that we want God to move in this area. We are not just comfortable paying the bills but that everyone must know that God is real and he is alive and he is to be worshiped.
Prayer can be a gentle breeze comforting our soul or it can be a strong wind that ushers in the presence of God
The songs that we sing are sung so that that fire in our heart can continue to burn without fear of being extinguished.
There is something incredibly majestic about offering praise to God through song. In fact the writer of psalms said that there are some things that we can only express to God through song. There is incredible power in singing and He enjoys hearing our praise.
But there is something else that happens when we come to God and sing honestly. The message of the song begins to imprint itself on our hearts. And as we pour ourselves out in worship we find that we begin to get filled up with fresh wind and fresh fire as one writer puts it.
Tat the Joy of Knowing Jesus is restored to our lives when we make a joy filled noise in the presence of God.
I can’t tell you how you how much energy and excitement you will find after you have entered into a time of honest praise to God through song.
Communion is an incredible part of why we come together. It is the part of the service where we are reminded about Jesus words of being living water. It is the part where we really reflect and remember Jesus and the sacrifice he chose to endure because of his love for us.
Communion is the time when God searches our heart and provides water to your soul. We become refreshed in the time of personal connection that we have with God.
Communion is the time when God searches our heart and provides water to your soul. We become refreshed in the time of personal connection that we have with God. Yet for some who don’t get the full benefit the point of remembrance is sometimes sadly forgotten. When that happens our relationship with Jesus is tragically diminished.
Satan attacks communion so heavily. He does this because there is an incredible memorial to Christ and if we focus on him during that time it will be one of the most precious and powerful aspects of worship.
But Satan attacks our minds because it’s easy. It’s easy to write out the check, it’s easy to get a stick of gum, it’s easy to talk to your neighbor but don’t you let this time slip by each week.
Signal player
When you put them all together all of these parts of worship lead us to a place where we are directly in the presence of God. And when we come to this place everything else is so clear.
When we come into God’s presence truthfully we are automatically convicted that we need to be doing some things to expend The kingdom yet for others we are convicted of some sin that we need to let go of, and still for others we become aware of the life changes we need to make.
If you need to make some life changes we invite you to come as we stand together and sing.
