Transcribed by Beluga AI.
Amen. Well, let’s give God a round of applause. Any good that comes out of a sinner’s life is amazing. Miracle that a sinner like me can be any use to the Lord and be any blessing to any person. That is such a miracle. And God did it all. He did it all. We just plant, we water. The growth comes from him. He gets all the glory.
And so I appreciate the thanksgiving. But quickly we just say it’s not any person who did anything, really. We give God all the glory.
We give God all the glory. He did it all. Any blessing in your life through one another is because the Lord did it. We really didn’t do much of anything. We were just faithful, obedient. If something good came out of it, salvation, surrendering of your life and growth spiritually, it’s not because of this church. It’s not because of any person. It’s really, the Lord did it. Let’s always remember that the Lord did it. We gave him all the glory. Yes. So let me read from Acts 2:41.
41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. 42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2:41-47, ESV)
Okay, let’s pray.
Father, thank you for these verses. May they come alive as we hear directly from you what that could mean for Hill Community Church as we close and we enter into a new season with you. Thank you, Lord. We pray all this in Jesus Name, Amen.
I spoke with two pastors recently. One pastor said this, and so I will take it as this is from the Lord. I will share these last three weeks with the same themes of we are not going to church. We are the church. We don’t attend church. We don’t go to a church. You are the church. So that’s the first thing I heard.
The second thing I heard, I met a pastor yesterday through Timothy. An introduction. And it’s not an accidental meeting because it’s somebody who attended Pastor Max and Amy’s church and First Baptist Church of Culver City.
And we had a men’s breakfast here, invited Pastor Max and some of the brothers to come, and I got to know one of the brothers. His name is Jeff. He joins our morning devotion with Brother Ed.
Through Jeff, because he knew Timothy needed a job, he put him in contact with this person in tech, who also is a pastor. He came out of First Baptist Culver City about a year and a half ago, was called by the Lord to be a pastor, and he’s been doing a house church for that time.
And he is a young man, but very zealous for the Lord. I met him, and I heard bits and pieces of his story, but I just asked him to share last night when we were gathering at Encounter Jesus Fellowship. A couple of things that he shared stuck out to me.
The first is he mentioned Acts 2:42-47. I don’t know if you know, but these were critical verses when we first launched. They’ve since been removed from our website.
I don’t know why, but I think I am returning and seeing why these verses were so critical. And now maybe I’m understanding it a bit more.
He also said, what was it? He said, if all, if we, if we never attended a church and we never were part of what we consider church in our modern context and we grew up on a deserted island and all we had was a Bible, what would, what would the gathering of believers look like?
And I’m sitting on that because often we attend something, and we have a certain model that gets fixed. You start with praise. You do a few songs. There’s a prayer, there’s a sermon, there’s a closing praise set, and then we fellowship.
There’s a certain program, consciously or unconsciously, we follow. We’ve grown up in this thing called church. And I’m sitting with that question.
If all I had was this passage and this first manifestation of the church when Holy Spirit came and filled the hearts of the 120 who were gathered in the upper room, and Peter preaches one message, and this message, 3,000 people were saved and baptized, and that was the birth of this thing that we now call church.
I wonder, would we do it the way we’ve been doing it? I’m not sure. And this is something to wrestle with as I step into a different season.
And I’m going to be sitting on these verses, and I encourage you also to sit on these verses.
What does it mean to be a church? The first thing I notice is before there was Internet, because now we have the Internet. So if you have a great speaker, like when we were growing up, like a Francis Chan or our current day Philip Anthony Mitchell, you just have YouTube, and you can understand why just in a very short time, a church can grow to be thousands.
It’s possible if you have a dynamic speaker and you have the Internet and social media. But aside from all of that, how long would it have taken 120 committed followers to grow a church of 3,000 without the Internet?
That would have been probably many years in the making, maybe never quite getting there. But with the Holy Spirit’s help and one sermon, we see what God can do when we do it.
There’s a lot of straining, a lot of toil, a lot of effort, and then the outcome is nothing close to what the Lord can do in a moment. And so just that as the background, God’s church done his way versus man’s church done his way. There’s no comparison. There’s no comparison.
We want to learn how does God do church his way. The first thing he says is the believers devoted themselves to several things. And this idea of devotion is there’s no spectators in God’s church. There’s no, like leaders and attenders.
First of all, the context is so different. you’re living under the Roman Empire, and to be a Christian publicly, you might be killed. And so 3,000 people, they’re not saying, let’s rent out the Coliseum and let’s keep gathering in the Coliseum. That’s not how they’re thinking because if they were to do that, they’d all be rounded up and killed.
After the 3,000 were saved, how did they gather? They gathered in homes, and every single person, because their life was literally on the line, they devoted themselves. There’s such a high bar to just enter into the community of believers. Nobody who is half-hearted, who’s double-minded, who’s worldly, who’s afraid, fearful, nobody would step into a believer’s home knowing that this could be the end of their life.
And so the bar, the devotion needed just to say I am a believer is so high. And that’s the first thing I see, such a high bar to say, I am a follower of Jesus Christ. Such a high bar. And every single person was devoted. No half-hearted, no going through the motions, no one person, a group of people running everything, everybody else showing up. It’s not like that. Everybody is all in, everybody is devoted.
That’s first what I see in God’s church. There’s no half-heartedness, there’s no tears. Everybody fully in, fully devoted, diligent because their life was on the line, and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching. So, we need to know what the apostles taught. We need to know the New Testament. You need to know the Bible.
That way, when somebody preaches a strange thing out of context, even when they quote the Bible, they twist it. And they’re trying to teach something that the apostles never taught. And it only popped up 50, 60 years ago, or 20 years ago, or 10 years ago, or just this year it popped up.
You never heard it taught in church history. And yet they are diverging from the apostles’ teaching. But unless you know what the apostles taught, you will be deceived. And every member took it upon themselves.
I need to know what the apostles taught. I have the Holy Spirit in me. I don’t need a church to tell me what the Bible says. I have the Spirit in me. I am devoting myself to this teaching. I don’t have to be the best communicator, but I want to be somebody who is devoted to the apostles teaching and not rely on other people and be casual about this Bible and my devotion time. No, you want to become someone who really, really understands what the apostles taught and you can share it freely. Not only the apostles’ teaching to the fellowship in this one. It’s all-encompassing. It is spiritual, it is relational, it is financial. Everything is wrapped up in this one word of fellowship.
It’s not what we do after service and just check in. This is all of your life coming together with this house-church, and saying, I’m all in with this group. And we are fellowshipping around the apostles’ teaching and the other things that he mentions. But every single person is devoted to this.
There’s no seekers coming in and like checking it out. No to step in. you’re already vetted. There can’t be somebody who could potentially be a spy and then turn you in. Every single person who steps into that house church has been vetted. Somebody who’s very serious, who is devoted like you are.
Which means all the evangelism and all the discipleship and all the ministry is happening outside of this church, house-church. It’s just coming out day to day as you are shining the light of Jesus in your neighborhood, and you’re getting to know somebody, and you’re sharing Christ with them.
And once they become a believer, then they also devote themselves and say, okay, we’re meeting in this location. It’s quiet. Let’s keep it. Let’s keep it under wraps. We don’t want anyone to know we’re meeting here. But now I trust you. You are my brother, my sister in Christ. Now, why don’t you come to our… to our house church?
The same thing that is happening in China, I think, is the closest thing that I can approximate what’s happening in the Acts 2 church. It’s by invitation only. People who are vetted and everybody devoted equally to this because their life literally is on the line to fellowship and apostles teaching and to the breaking of bread.
It’s hard for us, even in this congregation, to do what it says here because we’re so spread out. So you can consider this as possibly what the Lord is inviting you to start with your house, with your family.
Let that be the central hub of your ministry going forward. And you shine the light of Jesus to people in that area. You invite that person into your house, and you minister to that person. You disciple that person, you baptize that person.
Because this is a very high level of commitment to do church like this. And it has to be people who can easily come to your place often because they live nearby. It cannot be an hour drive. You can do it once, twice a week. You can’t do it like these people.
It seems like they’re gathering every single day. Like you, you’re with your family every single day. Just add a person, add two people to that life, this Christian life that you’re doing in your first household ministry, which is your family.
Add people to that one by one. Take them in and make them your family. Love them, care for them, be generous with them. And do this often, not once a week. Often. It’s a different model for church.
And this breaking of bread, also, as we know from 1 Corinthians 11, this, this, it is a meal. So you’re sharing a meal, but you’re also there because you’re partaking in the Lord’s Supper. So get some grape juice, because we’re against alcohol. Get a loaf of bread, break it. Remember what the Lord Jesus did for you.
Every time you share a meal with somebody, make sure the Lord is central to that fellowship, that dinner. We’re not just catching up with each other, having fun together. Make sure you remember what the Lord Jesus did.
That’s why we’re gathering, and that’s why we’re inviting people into our home to remind us of what Jesus did for us. He bled, he died. His body was broken. For this group to form and to prayer, how many churches in a traditional sense have a prayer meeting? Not many. Why did we stop our prayer meeting? Because there wasn’t enough attendance.
This prayer, this commitment to prayer, it has to be all of us. All of us have to be together in this. That if we are a church, at the very least we do these four things. Prayer is essential. Of course, Sunday gathering is essential. You hear the preaching of the word, but there’s nothing that says prayer is less important.
So if you’re going to remove something from your weekly schedule, remove prayer. Because people are not interested in gathering for prayer. I understand it’s hard to gather if you’re driving far away, but that’s why you start with people in your area, invite them to your home, and pray with them.
The early church, they were devoted to these four things. It is a different model. Think of the headache if you had 3,000 plus people in your church. How much energy would be spent running a church of 3,000 people gathering in one place?
Of course there’s a place for it. Acts 6. The Office of deacon started. The widows had to be cared for, the distribution of food. So there was some organization needed. Elders separated themselves from the deacons who were serving food.
They were devoting themselves to prayer and the Word of God and the preaching of his word. So I understand there is some organization needed as this church grew. But imagine at this stage trying, like what kind of energy would be spent to gather 3,000 people in one location and run a church like that.
And it seems like God doesn’t do it that way. That’s man’s attempt to do man’s church. God’s way is just working through one person at a time, one group at a time. And he added to their number. He added to their number.
We don’t have to try so hard if we are the church. You don’t attend church, but you are the church. Wherever, whatever city you live in, you just shine brightly, and everybody knows that you’re a Christian. Everybody knows there’s a home. I can knock on the door, and I can receive prayer, and we can read the Bible together. There’s a home away from home that I can go to, and I know I’m going to be loved there, and I’m going to receive prayer, and we’re going to break bread together. We’re going to remember the Lord’s Supper.
What if we, at least for a season, just removed what we think is church and just study God’s word and consider the first gathering of believers and every person devoting themselves to four things: apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer?
What if all of us made that the four things on the top of our list in our family? Day to day, we’re going to do these four things. I think God would be pleased, and I think God would add number. Maybe not in a way that you can track in a local church, but to his universal church. He’s going to add number the same way he did back then. And I want to see that.
And if you continue to read, all the signs and wonders will come, everybody, radical generosity, almost like communism. Just sell everything. It’s all God’s family. Do you see churches like this? Have we fallen so far from the biblical church that we can’t? We don’t even think it’s possible to live this way. And yet here it is in God’s word.
And I’m excited that God is going to add to our number in various locations, people who are hungry and thirsty, who need you to shine brightly to them and to receive them into your house and to love on them.
There’s no more pressure to say, let’s just drive to this church. It’s a long drive, but why don’t you just come? It’s much easier to say, oh, I’m just down the block. Just come over for a meal. Let’s just share life together. Let’s pray for one another. Let me. Let me share my Jesus with you.
Okay, let’s pray.
Father, we don’t attend church. We are the church. We are the bride of Christ. We are the body of Christ. We’re members of your body where Jesus is the senior pastor. He is the head of his universal church in every local church that bears his name.
Lord, we want to consider for this next season what church could be like according to your word, as each believer devotes themselves to four things: the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer.
What if all the saints at Hill Community Church devoted themselves to these four things every single day in their home, and they invited people into what you are starting in their lives and in their homes? How clearly you would add to our number, not to any local church’s number, but to the number of this universal church, as you bring one soul at a time into the kingdom of God.
So Lord, help us, help us to struggle with this text. Help us to expect that you’re doing a new thing. Whatever man tries to think up, your ways are higher and better. And if you do church your way and we submit to it, there’s amazing blessings that all of us can experience.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for dying on a cross, for allowing your body to be broken and Your Blood shed. Thank you that you unify your church under the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we have total unity in God’s church because of what Jesus did.
We know that Satan and human people have divided God’s church over theology and denominational lines, but Lord, we understand there’s total unity when we lift up the Name of Jesus and we make him the center of all that we do. That’s important. Everything else that we disagree about really is not important. So, Lord, we want to put you first and primary and supreme, preeminent in all things. Thank you, Lord. Please minister to us as we close out this service. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.