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Pat Steeves · Tidal Church Moncton · January 14, 2024 · We Are the Church series
Pat Steeves looks at Acts 2 and the first church's devotion to Scripture, fellowship, shared meals and prayer. He shows that God made us for community, and invites us to read the Bible daily and join a small group.
More from Pat Steeves · The We Are the Church series
Topics: Relationships, Mission & Outreach, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:00] Is it just me? It probably is, but I just want to check to see if anyone can relate to this struggle. And this reality that I've been noticing in our culture, it seems as though we are becoming less and less self-aware. Now, again, it could be my age as I'm getting older, I'm not sure, but has anybody else been noticing that people just continue to do more and more obnoxious things in public? Like, again, maybe it's just my lack of patience, but I did go to Google, all right? And Google will pretty much, it will confirm anything that you're thinking, really.
[0:46] So this is not scientific, but I wanna share with you some things that might reaffirm that as a culture, as a society, we are becoming less and less self-aware. And so some of these things maybe you can relate to. Maybe you do these things yourself. And so maybe it's a little check to say, "You know what? Maybe I should make some changes." But Google shares with us a few things that maybe we need to reconsider doing in public settings. So here's one of four things that are very annoying. So number one, okay, is people who listen, who are on their cell phone, talking on their cell phone, but they're on speakerphone in public. I dunno if you guys have done this or you've heard people. Google says it's not a great idea.
[1:36] How about those that, at their desk, at their workplace, at lunch, they eat foods with strong lingering smells? Okay? And just to add it, to make it a little worse, those that chew really loud. Some of the things that people do that are obnoxious, other things that this is for you parents, parents that are out there. You allow your kids to listen to their iPad, their favorite YouTube influencer, without earbuds in their ear so that everybody else can hear just how annoying they are, especially on an airplane. Parents, don't allow that. Lastly, it's the individual that shows up to work with flu symptoms, or even worse, the family gathering, all right?
[2:32] Social cues that I think that we can all learn from Google this morning. But here's the fun part. We are in a series called We Are the Church, and we are focusing on doing life together. And although we tend to do some annoying, obnoxious things, the world wants to try to lure us into the reality of self-dependence, right? Where we don't need anybody, we can just do things on our own. Life is good. We don't need God, we just need us. That lure of self-dependence, the reality is, God created us for community. And so if we are created for community, how many know we gotta figure out how to work together, how to live together.
[3:22] And so we're gonna look at some things today that I believe are very, very helpful and a reality check for those of us that are believers, that are, and followers of Jesus. Now, here's the reality of where we're at. If you've spoken to anyone recently, you would know that loneliness is becoming an epidemic and actually a pandemic, some would say, in our world. And often we always thought of this as just being amongst seniors and the elderly and the shut-ins. But the reality is, I've spoke to teenagers, young adults in their 20s, and loneliness is becoming an epidemic.
[4:08] But here's the thing: God didn't intend it to be this way. I want us to look at, I just wanna share a couple of facts that from a study of Harvard University, and this is sobering, one out of three, one out of three people. So if you just kinda like look to the side, look in front, one out of three people, okay? Based on Harvard's studies, you have needs in your life and no one to meet them. You have hurts to share, and there's no one to listen. You have love to give and no one to receive love from you. One out of three people are struggling with loneliness and isolation.
[4:57] It goes on to say this, that from the outside, we all look really good, don't we? Right? Like we've got the latest, the greatest, the best, right? But we could be married, we could have children, but inside we are struggling with an epidemic of loneliness like we have never seen before. And the great news is God never intended it to be this way. And what's amazing, and that's why these times that we get to come together for a few minutes and open up the Bible, it's a tremendous opportunity for us to realize that the principles found in God's Word here, they give us hope that we don't have to live with the problems and the struggles that we face in this world.
[5:51] Can I get an amen? Amen. Okay. The Word of God and the things that we share and we learn about each week, they give us an opportunity to be able to live our lives differently and not struggle with some of the things that the world struggles with. And so would you guys just repeat this with me as we just kind of like focus on the reality that God wants to say something. Would you just say this: God, say, God, give me eyes to see Your Word today. Give me eyes to see Your Word today. Give me ears to hear what You're saying to me today and give me a heart to receive it.
[6:40] How many of you guys have ever looked into your family tree or ancestry to learn a little bit about where you come from? Parents, grandparents, how many of you have ever looked into that? Okay. It's amazing when you do. It's interesting. Somebody just brought to me some, our last name is Steeves. If you're from this area, there's a lot of us. So I'm sorry about that. But somebody actually brought me some information on some of our family tree and how big it is and our descendants and all those things. And the fascinating thing is we learn so much about ourselves, and it causes us to evaluate and see where we've come from and to be very grateful for what we have.
[7:25] And so this morning as we look at, we are the church, I want us to actually go back to the very beginning of where the church began. And I had some fun in learning some things this week when it comes to where did the church begin? Could you guys just repeat after me? Say, "We are the church." The church, let's do that again. Say, "We are the church." We are the church. Now, this is a sobering thought, but if you look around, okay, this is the team that we have for 2024. Like, we are the church. This is who God has for this community. Now, there's many communities and many churches meeting all over the place, but I hope today that we're gonna realize that we are the church of 2024.
[8:18] Some of you're like, "Oh, no," right? But we need to take ownership and responsibility of this. But let's go back to the very beginning, the very first church. And what's interesting is you can discover this in the book of Acts, Acts of the Apostles, is where the first Church began. The first church. And so let's look at this. And I wanna give just a little bit of context here. Okay? So Jesus, He had just died on a cross, risen again. And the disciples, His 12 disciples are still trying to figure out and process all that has happened and what's going on.
[9:03] And so you can read this in Acts chapter 1, but Jesus actually comes back to the disciples and there's a story of where He's eating with them. Now, this is crazy, right? Like comes back from the dead and He's with them like, just imagine that. Like you just can't, right? And so He's giving the disciples some important information, some important details as to what's to happen. And so He tells the disciples, here's what you need to do. You need to go to Jerusalem and wait there because I'm gonna be no longer with you in person, but God is going to give you the presence of the Holy Spirit, which is Me in you.
[9:49] You're gonna be able to take Me everywhere. The power and the presence of God is gonna live in you. And the disciples, again, not fully understanding what this all means, but they just know we need to go to Jerusalem. So that's what they do. And they begin to wait together. The Bible says there was 120 people waiting together in an upper room. Okay? Why am I sharing this? This is the very beginnings of what we know as the church. And it's actually called the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit comes into that upper room, a wind and a noise, and fills those people with the power of the Holy Spirit. When you read this story, people in Jerusalem didn't understand what was happening.
[10:37] They thought it was a party from the night before that had just gone long and people are drunk, alright? But it was nine o'clock in the morning and they knew that couldn't have happened, but they were filled with the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit speaking in other tongues. It's just mayhem and people are not understanding what's happening. So we're gonna pick the story up right there. And one of the disciples, Peter, he's kind of the spokesman. So he steps up and maybe they step out of the upper room and now they're in the town of Jerusalem. And people are wondering, what is going on? Someone needs to explain this. And so Peter, under the power of the Holy Spirit, begins speaking and preaching like nobody's business.
[11:26] Alright? So he is preaching, people are listening. And from that moment, okay, lemme just pause there. Let's just have a look at Scripture here in Acts 2. In Acts 2, we see here where Peter is preaching, okay? And he says this in verse 40 of Acts 2, he says, then Peter continued preaching for a long time, okay? Preaching for a long time, strongly urging his listeners to save yourself from this crooked culture. What's interesting, one translation says, to save yourself from this sick culture.
[12:13] How many know that, like in the beginning church, like we're still preaching the same thing, right? We need to veer off from this crooked and sick culture, but he's challenging them. And here's the amazing thing: those who believed what Peter said, they were baptized and added to the church, about 3,000 people in that one day. Now, for some of you guys who don't like megachurches, okay? That was the first megachurch ever born right there. But that is the beginning of the church, alright? The FCJ church, the first church of Jerusalem, okay? On the north side, whatever it was, okay?
[13:01] That is the beginning of the first church right there. And I want us to continue going through Acts chapter 2. 'Cause we're gonna learn about the first church and what they did, how they lived their lives. Remember we're talking about, we are the church. Let's learn. Let's see what we can learn. How many of you ever had that humbling experience where your father or your grandfather sat you down and they're like, son, daughter, I need to have a talk with you and share with you just how hard we had it, right? And they love to teach us lessons from back in the day, right? And so I think that we can, as a church today, Moncton Wesleyan Church, I want us to be humbled.
[13:52] I want us to be challenged today at what the early church did, what they sacrificed. And so we're gonna go in to read this and it says, here's what the disciples, the early church devoted themselves to. Are you guys ready for this? It says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to breaking of bread and prayer. And because of all those four things, we're gonna talk about some of this today. But because of these things, look what happens. A deep sense of awe came over them all and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders.
[14:37] I wish somebody would be excited about that. 'Cause we need to see those things happening in the church of 2024, right? But when we become devoted to some of these things, we're gonna talk about this and catch this, this is mind blowing. And all the believers met together in one place. They shared everything that they had. They sold their properties and possessions, shared their money with those in need. They worshiped together at the temple each day, met in homes for the Lord's Supper and shared their meals, shared their meals. Some of us, that's a struggle, shared their meals with great joy and generosity, all while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of the people.
[15:22] And each day, can somebody say, each day, the Lord added to their fellowship those that were being saved. That is a picture. I don't know if you can capture, that's what's happening in the early church. And I think the reality for us today is we have to understand that we're not seeing in 2024 the extent of what they were seeing in the early church. And as I read through this this week, it hit me and it challenged me to say, we can do better. And so I wanna show you a version of the church today. Now I'm gonna paraphrase for you, okay? This version of the church, okay? This is a paraphrase.
[16:09] This is not from scripture. So this is not from Scripture, it's a paraphrase, but I want you to listen to this and see if we can see ourselves in this. This is a paraphrase of Acts 2, what I just read. It says, they were devoted to their comfort, happiness, personal goals, dreams, and bucket lists. No one really noticed the Christians because they focused on themselves. Very few of the believers were together. And when they were, they fought about stupid things in their small groups.
[16:54] If they sold anything, they used the money to buy something better for themselves. And they claim to love God, but they didn't love each other. So they felt empty, alone, depressed. And as a result, most people disliked them and very few lives were changed. Now, I know, I don't want to admit it, but there is some truth, some reality there. And I don't know about you, but I believe God has better for us. Would you guys agree with that online in the chat? Would you guys agree with us that God has more for us as a church?
[17:41] And if we want different results, we need to do different things. And so I want us to go back through and I want us to look at what our, the first century church was doing. We're gonna go back to Acts 2, and we're gonna talk about a couple of the things that we've seen the first century doing and see what we can learn from this. In verse 42, as I mentioned before, it says they were devoted. Somebody say devoted. Devoted, they were devoted to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, breaking of bread, and to prayer. Now, looking at that, you'd be like, okay, you know, I don't see anything there specifically that maybe we're not doing, but I want us to look at this word devoted.
[18:34] And it's actually a Greek word, okay? And it's difficult to pronounce, but I'm gonna give it a shot. Proskartereo. Proskartereo means devoted. I wanna read this meaning. It means to live in a constant state, to live in a constant state of relentless pursuit. It's a persistent, ongoing obsession and devotion. Now, here's the deal. We all have our own proskartereo. We all have our own devotion. Now, for many of you, it's your kids, right? It's like, you know, we had them, so you know, we gotta love them, right?
[19:21] And the reality is, our kids keep us really, really busy, right? That is our devotion, that's our focus. For others, it might be success or our career. That's what we're obsessed with. That's what we're persistently chasing after. For some of us it's the new house, it's the dream vacation. For some of us it's getting our hands on some Taylor Swift tickets. But that is what we're passionate about and we're obsessed with. And what I want us to realize is that the early church was obsessed.
[20:07] They were persistent. They were relentless with what the apostles' teaching, breaking of bread, prayer. These were the things that they chased after. It's whatever is taking up the majority share of your heart, affection, and devotion. What is it? As the church of 2024, what is our passion? What are we devoted to? You see, the first century church believers, they were sold out. They were all in, they were fully devoted followers of Christ.
[20:52] What are you devoted to today? I wanna share just a brief story if I can of, back when I was in my late teen years, finishing up high school and I was part of a youth group. How many of you were part of youth group growing up? Some of you, many of you. There was a, an, there were 11 of us, massive youth group, okay? 11 of us and geeky Christian kids. And I can remember the summer where God did something powerful in this group of 11.
[21:38] And we became very passionate, devoted, almost obsessed with the reality that there are teenagers in our community that are faced with hopeless situations. And we believed that the message in the gospel of Jesus could give hope to people who were hopeless, teenagers who didn't see anything more than what the world had to offer them. And we were so passionate and we didn't know necessarily what to do. But we just began to spend our time in these communities, in these neighborhoods. For some of us, like myself, that were, you know, could play sports and dribble a basketball in our extra time.
[22:24] That's where we spent it, in these neighborhoods just playing basketball, hanging out with other teenagers and just trying to encourage them, but there was something happening inside of us as we would meet week after week in our youth group. There became this obsession that, you know what, we can reach this community with the gospel of Jesus. And I can't explain exactly how it all happened, but there was something that attracted these other teenagers to come to our church. Again, 11 geeky Christian kids, but obsessed and passionate with showing, giving hope and love to a lost and broken group of teenagers.
[23:13] And what began to happen was we began to see students start, teenagers start coming to our church and we would start filling our cars with young people. And we began to see our youth group grow. And then we began to run out of room. And so we began to have to buy a bus to be able to pick up teenagers. And I dunno if you remember the story in Acts that I read where people who had money would give to those in need. And this is what I began to see, where young people that were in their like twenties, they barely just had their driver's license and they were saving for their first car and they felt like God was saying to take that money and buy another bus so that we could pick up more students so that they could find Jesus.
[24:06] And it was powerful. It was messy, right? It was messy, but God did something incredible. And even to this day, we've seen in that period of time, our little youth group grow from 11 to over 300 teens that met every week and experienced Jesus. And that's nothing that, that was just something that I was part of and I wish I could explain more in detail, but people gave to that work to see teenagers. And we, and here's just some of the details we've seen. We got letters from high school principals that saw students come back to school. Drug rates dropped in schools and in neighborhoods and communities like we have, the newspaper would come, I dunno if some of you guys know what the newspaper was, but it was like before like Facebook and all that stuff.
[25:04] But they wanted to come and hear what was happening. And there's statistics that backed up what was happening. And when I read Acts, I believe that I, the church of 2024, that we can become devoted followers of Jesus and see some incredible things happen. Now, how can this happen? What is one step that we can take as a believer of Christ for this to happen? And I want us to just look here on the screen. It says they were devoted to the apostles' teaching. What does that mean? I interpret that as they were devoted to the Bible.
[25:50] And I wanna challenge each and every one of you here today to be able to, if you're not, to step, first step to being devoted to Jesus is to read this Bible every day. And I know for some of us that's like, oh my gosh, every day. But I wanna share with you this Bible app. You can take your phone out and you can just like scan the QR code and it's gonna take you to a Bible app where there's a link there. But the YouVersion Bible app, if there's anything that you hear today, anything that you hear today, it is such a powerful tool.
[26:39] As you look every day into that Bible app, there are guided devotionals, guided prayers that if you'll just start by taking one minute or two minutes in this app, I believe that God will begin speaking to you in your life in a very personal and real way. I truly believe that the Word of God is alive and it's a book like no other. But the first step for us as a church is to become devoted to the Bible. And I wanna take out all the pressure or all the obstacles, just start spending one or two minutes a day reading Scripture, doing this devotional, this Bible app.
[27:26] I'm telling you, you'll not notice anything. I'll be straight up, okay? It might be three weeks, four weeks. But if you continue doing this for a few weeks, you are gonna be able to start, to begin to hear God's voice speak into your life like never before. Psalms talks about how shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed to the Word of God? And it says the Word of God I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against God. As you begin daily applying and reading the Word of God, you're gonna hear the voice of God, the voice of the Holy Spirit, speak and lead and guide and direct your life in a way that is so exciting, so changing, so powerful.
[28:18] You're gonna begin obeying the voice of God. And it's gonna start changing the way you think, the way you talk, how you interact with people. You're gonna start having ideas, creative ideas. God's gonna say, I want you to do this. And you're gonna do, you're gonna start living the most exciting, passionate life. And we're gonna begin to experience what the early church experienced. How many people can say amen to that? Amen. Apply the Bible to our life. It's exciting. And I gotta say this, we're being discipled by something. Facebook disciples us, Instagram, TikTok, the news, all of those things, whether we know it or not, they are discipling us.
[29:12] And so I wanna push back on that. And in my own life, say I want to be discipled by the Word of God, the manual for my life. Number two, you guys still with me? Devoted to fellowship and breaking of bread. Now this gets me excited. How many of you guys like food? Come on, right? Don't we all like food? I believe that as Christians, we need to get good at this. And some of you're like, oh, I am way too good at this breaking of bread, right? Eat way too much of that. Now, I don't know if they eat gluten-free or what type of bread they're talking about there, but here's the reality.
[30:00] I believe as Christians, this fellowshipping, this getting together with people, spending time with others, laughing. I believe that this is part of our spiritual journey. And I think that sometimes we just consider church functions and this is what we do. But how many, when was the last time that you sat around a campfire with a group of people and laughed and ate food and told stories and after it was all over you just like, something in you just felt really good? How many of you experienced that? I'm telling you, this sort of community and fellowship is part of us as followers of Christ.
[30:50] Now, for some of you guys that know, we are a hockey family and we have four kids in hockey, and that means a lot of hockey tournaments. Do you know what I've come to realize? Like hockey parents are a little, okay, they're kind of a little different, okay? But here's what I've come to learn is, yeah, as much as they enjoy the sport, but they enjoy the times in the hotel where a few people get together and just tell stories and laugh. And I believe that as Christians, we can't forget that that is a healthy part of who we are. And as we read about the early church, they got together daily for these sorts of things.
[31:38] They got together daily, devoted themselves to the things of Jesus, to fellowship, to breaking of bread. See, the fundamental difference between the early church and people today is this: the first century believers desperately, desperately needed each other and they knew it. And believers today, we desperately need each other, but we've forgotten it. We've forgotten that we need to be together. We were created for community. We sometimes easily buy into we can do this life on our own.
[32:27] And we can see, and the statistics are backing up where it's taking us. The early church met together, not because it was convenient. I know that for many of us, our lives are busy, they're hectic. But I wanna challenge us today to make these sorts of things a priority. And as we talk about created for community within our church here, one of the ways that we do that is through small groups. Through small groups where it's intentionally providing accountability. It's intentionally connecting together, making it a priority.
[33:13] It's intentionally caring for one another. And guess what? Within this group of people, we then can also serve in our community. And I believe this is an example. This is a way that we can replicate what the early church did. And don't believe the lie that you can do it on your own. I know for me, I need the accountability. We need the accountability. If we wanna be a church that is alive in 2024, like the early church that is seeing a move of God, we need to do it together. Now we have an incredible amount of people that join each week online, and I get to be able to track with some of the numbers.
[34:03] And we have over 170 people join online each and every week. Can you guys just give a round of applause? So those that are joining online today, we love the reality that the message of the gospel and this connection in this community can go beyond. And for multiple reasons it's so beneficial. But you guys know that I love you and I wanna speak directly to you today that are online is I wanna encourage you that you need this community that's here. And I know for some of you there are barriers that prevent that from happening, but there's some of you that maybe got out of the routine and out of the habit.
[34:48] And I wanna encourage and challenge you today that you need this. But guess what? We need you. We need your gifts, your talents, your passions, because I believe today that we are better together. I wanna close with this one last verse, and last week in this series that we are calling We Are the Church. How many of you guys were here? This is not a test or anything like that. But we ended with a powerful time of prayer, didn't we? A powerful time of ministry. And Jeremy shared this verse of Scripture found in James 5:16.
[35:43] Just gotta try and find it here. We'll pull it up on the screen: "Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for each other that you might be healed." And as we talk about community, let's just leave that verse up there: created for community. Oftentimes we go to God for our needs. "God, we need a miracle. God, we need You to work in a certain area of our life." And I've been around church long enough to know this.
[36:33] Guess who God uses. He uses you and you and you. God uses each and every one of us. And sometimes we spend a lot of time crying out to God, "God, I need You to help me." And the answer is found in His church. God uses people, and He wants to use you. But sometimes our obsession, sometimes the things we're devoted to, the things we're too busy. We're relentlessly pursuing some different things.
[37:18] And I just want to challenge myself and challenge us as the church of 2024 that we would get relentlessly pursuing and devoted to the Bible and allow God to just come alive in our life and speak to us like never before. And I would like to challenge you to join a small group, if you're not already in one. We've got the link that we put up on the screen. We've got some helpful volunteers out in the atrium that would love to help you. Sign up for a group. Small groups are for you. Small groups are for us. They're for everyone.
[38:03] Maybe you've joined a group and you've sort of not made it a priority. I wanna challenge you. 2024. Let's make small groups and accountability and connecting together a priority. Would we do that as a church? Our city needs us. Our community needs us, and we are better together. We are created for community. Would you guys join me as we pray? God, as we start what is still yet a very new year, and as we always look to make changes and evaluate what's important, God, I just ask that somehow through this message, through the Scriptures that we looked at, that we would evaluate, God, the direction of our life, our focuses, what we're devoted to.
[39:07] And God, it is my prayer in preparing for today that, God, people would pick up the Word of God and make it a daily practice, not to check it off in a box as something that they did, but that open ourselves up to the voice and the leading of the Holy Spirit. Because we need that personally. We need it as our church. God, I want to speak to small groups. God, I'm so thankful for the group leaders that invest the time and the energy, the commitment so that people can come together. Thank You, God, for our small group leaders. But God, I ask that You would challenge us, God, to join in a community.
[39:59] Yeah, it's gonna be uncomfortable. Yeah, there's gonna be some different kinds of people there, but that's what family is. That's what family's about. That's who you are. God, challenge us as a church, God, for more. May we be reminded today that we are created for community. In Jesus' name we pray, everybody said amen. Would you guys stand with us as we continue to worship?