The Church as a Filled Community
(Second in the series: The Core Characteristics of the Church)
Acts 2:43
John 14:15-21
For our Lenten emphasis this year we are embarking on a journey that takes us inside the early community of believers, asking the question, “What made these people able to transform their communities for Christ? What were the essential things that defined their existence? If we were to emulate them, what should our lives look like?”
Last week we noticed, from Acts 2:42, that they were a devoted community—devoted to Jesus which was expressed in their commitment to God’s Truth, sharing ministry together, obeying the commands of Jesus, and to prayer.
Today we look at Acts 2:43 and realize that the early believers were a community very much aware of God’s presence with them and in them. They were filled.
We are not alone!
I was drawn to the John 14 passage because of Jesus’ wonderful promise that after he physically left this earth he promised to send another Counselor to be with his followers. This Counselor was none other than the Holy Spirit—God’s presence in Spirit form—and he would not only be with the believers, but would actually live in them.
WOW!
Catch these verses again.
John 14:16-18
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever- the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
We are not alone, if we open our lives up to God.
Maybe, even as a believer, maybe there are times you have felt alone, even abandoned.
But you are not. You are never alone. The key word is felt. Yes, sometimes we feel alone; but we never are.
That promise—to be filled from on high with a presence that would never leave nor forsake—that promise comes to fulfillment in the text before us.
Acts 2:43 is summarizing the events and results of what we call, Pentecost. On Pentecost, God took up residence in his people, he filled them, and they have never been alone since.
God wants to be an active part of our lives
This verse—Acts 2:43—suggests to me that God desires to be an active part of my life. He wants to fill my day with his presence! God was doing things in their midst. He was doing things daily.
Those who gathered around the message of the Gospel were in awe. Some translations use the word fear. But it is not fear in the sense of being scared to death; rather it is fear in the sense of awe and wonder.
The difference between fear as in being scared and fear as in being in awe can be defined by your own feelings. Think of how you felt sometime when you were scared—maybe you feared for your safety—and then contrast that to how you felt when you stood in awe before something magnificent—maybe on the edge of the Grand Canyon, or before the Niagara Falls.
Those two feelings are very different. It is more the ladder that captures the meaning of Acts 2:43.
God wants us to see him active in our lives
While in High School I got a job working at Bob Lutz Tire Company, at the service station managed by our own Bob Fassnacht. At this job I was introduced to the world of tires—kinds, qualities, sizes—you name it. I was taught how to mount tires, balance them and repair them.
Something unexpected happened to me in the process. All of a sudden I began to notice tires. Walking through a parking lot, I would notice what kind of tires the cars had on them, what condition they were in, what brand they were.
I never noticed tires before. What changed? What happened?
Was it that cars did not have tires before I started working at Bob Lutz? Was it that I never needed tires before this? Hardly. The fact is that nothing had changed in regard to the prevalence of tires in our world. I was the one who had changed. I had a new frame of reference.
I had never really cared about tires before working in that environment. However, having had an encounter with tires, so to speak, they became a large part of my life, and I now cared about them. As a result, I saw them.
What’s my point?
God is all around us. He is moving in our world every day. He is even active in our lives. This is true for all of us—but it is especially true of those who are cultivating a close walk with him.
God wants you to be living with an openness and an awareness of his presence in your life. It makes all the difference in the world.
I like what Philip Yancey says in his book Seeing the Invisible God:
Every animal on earth has a set of correspondences with the environment around it, and some of those correspondences far exceed ours. Humans can perceive only thirty percent of the range of the sun’s light and 1/70th of the spectrum of electromagnetic energy. Many animals exceed our abilities. Bats detect insects by sonar; pigeons navigate by magnetic fields; bloodhounds perceive a world of smell unavailable to us.
Perhaps the spiritual or "unseen" world requires an inbuilt set of correspondences activated only through some sort of spiritual quickening. "No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above," said Jesus. "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned," said Paul. Both expressions point to a different level of correspondence available only to a person spiritually alive.
(Citation: Philip Yancey, "Seeing the Invisible God"
Books and Culture May/June 2000), p.8)
Many of us live without this awareness of God in our lives and in our world. There can be two reasons for this.
First, it could be the reason that Yancey speaks of, that is, the fact that first, before you can see God, you must know him. By opening your life to him, you activated spiritual sensitivities that have been lying dead and dormant. With this awakening, seeing God is only guesswork.
Or, secondly, you may be a Christian but have not cultivate a close relationship with God. I was a cardriver for years, riding on tires every time a rode in a car, but had little awareness of them until I cultivated, though my work, a more intimate knowledge of them.
So it is with God.
You must ask yourself the very hard question: Do I know God.?
This is not the question: Do I come to church? Or even Do I believe in God?
The very hard question is Do I know him?
If you know that you have never, seriously, given your life to him, then it is clear you do not know him. You must begin at the beginning; by faith, with repentance, invite Jesus into your life.
If you have, at some point, given your life to him, but you know when you honestly look into your heart, that you do not live with a constant awareness of his presence, then you need to begin cultivating a relationship with him.
God wants us to recognize his supernatural presence
Miracles are had to define.
On the one hand there are astounding things around us every day that mystify our explanation.
Take for example the wonder of birth. Many of you know that we have recently become grandparents. What a marvelous blessing. Holding little Yolaine in my arms takes me back to the birth of our children. It is simply marvelous how God created us to procreate, and the marvel of how a baby develops in the womb of a woman.
I’m tempted to call this a miracle. However, in the fullest sense of the word, it is not. The course of human birth is built into the wonders of the human body. When a male sperm meets a female egg, nature takes over and a baby develops. The whole process is awesome; the creation of it was supernatural; but the ongoing experience of it is natural.
Miracles are supernatural. That is, they supercede the normal, natural, course of events.
When you are facing surgery, for example for the removal of a tumor, and you pray for healing and a surgeon removes the tumor and you fully recover, this is marvelous and wonderful, but not truly miraculous.
The manner in which are bodies are created with healing potential is supernatural; but the process of healing is a natural thing built into our physical makeup.
However, when you pray and ask God to bring healing and the tumor vanishes from your body, and the surgeon can no longer find it, nor explain how it left; this is most likely a miracle.
Miracles occur, in my way of thinking, when God breaks into the normal course of events, suspends the laws of nature, as it were, and acts to bring about a new outcome.
That’s a miracle.
God does many signs and wonders in our world.
Many go unnoticed because we do not have the eyes to see.
God wants to be even more active in our world, doing signs and wonders,
but they go unclaimed because we do not have the faith to ask.
Ask and you will receive.
God moves in miraculous ways everyday. Perhaps the most significant of which occurs whenever a soul is reborn. When a person who is headed the wrong way in life, with a hard heart and a lost soul—when a such a person
Poet Myra Brooks Welch says it well in her time-honored poem, The Touch of the Master’s Hand.
Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer
Thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,
But he held it up with a smile.
"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,
"Who will start bidding for me?
A dollar, a dollar" – then, "Two!" "Only two?
Two dollars, and who’ll make it three?
Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice;
Going for three – " But no,
From the room, far back, a gray-haired man
Came forward and picked up the bow;
Then, wiping the dust from the old violin,
And tightening the loose strings,
He played a melody pure and sweet
As sweet as a caroling angel sings.
The music ceased, and the auctioneer,
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said, "What am I bidden for the old violin?"
And he held it up with the bow.
"A thousand dollars, and who’ll make it two?
Two thousand, once; Three thousand, twice;
And going, and gone!" said he.
The people cheered, but some of them cried,
"We do not quite understand
What changed its worth?" Swift came the reply:
"The touch of the master’s hand."
And many a man with life out of tune,
And battered and scattered with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd,
Much like the old violin.
A "mess of pottage," a glass of wine;
A game – and he travels on.
He’s "going" once, and "going" twice,
He’s "going" and "almost gone."
But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd
Never can quite understand
The worth of a soul, and the change that’s wrought
By the touch of the Master’s hand.
