A Healthy Church

The New Testament gives us insight to a lot of things, but what's very interesting is to look at the New Testament with the book of Acts and then the letters that were written to various churches and study how different congregations formed. What's interesting is when you see the spread of the New Testament church, starting with the congregation in Jerusalem, and as they spread out, they planted congregations, is that each congregation was different in one way or another.

I mean, obviously, the church in Jerusalem, based with people who had come in from a Jewish background and the church in Corinth, where they were coming in from a Greek pagan background, had totally different problems. There was no problem with idolatry or visiting the temple prostitutes in Jerusalem, but you see they had that problem in Corinth. And so when you study Paul's book to the Romans or his letter to Ephesus or Philippi or Colossae, you see people with different problems, different congregations formed different ways.

You see the same thing in the book of Revelation. When we look at chapters 2 and 3, and we see those seven churches in Revelation. I mean, those have a prophetic meaning, but they also had a literal meaning at the time. There were seven actual congregations in Asia Minor, one is now Turkey. And they were very different churches. In fact, five out of the seven, according to the description, are spiritually and real serious problems.

So, what is a congregation supposed to look like? Have you thought about that? What is a congregation supposed to look like? What's the model of what a congregation is supposed to look like? It's interesting. The first congregation we have, of course, in the New Testament is the one in Jerusalem. We have a lot of information through the book of Acts about the history of the congregation in Jerusalem. And it is a very interesting history, with their ups and their downs and their problems. Their incredible growth at one point, their incredible persecution at other points, their decimation. Very wealthy church at one point, a couple decades later, they're such a poor church that they're collecting money from all over the world, just to send it back to Jerusalem because they're so poor.

It is a congregation that went through a lot of cycles, a lot of issues, and eventually, of course, had to leave. Actually, leave Jerusalem in 70 AD with the Rome that surrounded it. And God told them to leave. So, what we have is the history of this congregation. Now, there's other histories, too. Actually, the church we probably have the most information about is Ephesus. Between the book of Acts and the letter of Ephesians, and what is said in Revelation, we have a huge amount of history about Ephesus, and it's a fascinating church.

But I want to look today at the church congregation in Jerusalem. First congregation, as a model, it tells us something of what we should strive to be as a group of people, as a congregation. Every congregation should strive to be this way. Now, every congregation, like I said, will be slightly different. They have different customs. Even in the United States, it's different. I mean, you know, a pastor in Texas, half the church, half the men showed up in their cowboy boots. Some of the women showed up in their cowboy boots.

You won't see that in Tennessee too much. Just different customs. These little cowboy boots. Now, we're talking about $500 cowboy boots. We're not talking about something, you know, something you use to go out and work in the backyard or work in the back 40. These were expensive, high-quality dress boots. You don't see that too much here. Different customs. But we're not talking about customs. We're not even going to talk about traditions. We're going to talk about what is the church supposed to be spiritually.

I mean, if you walked into a church in Jerusalem and you walked into a church in Rome, they might be dressed slightly different. Just like if you walked into a church here today in the United States and you walked into a church in the Philippines, the people might be dressed slightly different. That's what we're talking about. We're going to look at what is supposed to be spiritually.

We actually have a description of the early church at the very beginning. Now, it didn't stay this way, by the way. Very long. It started at the bottom and in some ways moved down. And we'll see that as we go through some examples in the book of Acts. We're just going to be in the book of Acts today. Just the book of Acts. Because it's a very simple concept.

Let's go look at the model of this church and let's look at how that played out over the next few years. Not only there, but as they started to plant churches all over the Roman Empire. Now, how did that spread out? So let's go to Acts 2. We read Acts 2 with Pentecost so many times because of the pouring out of God's Spirit.

And what that symbolizes on that day as the church was founded. But a lot of times we don't read the last part of this chapter, which explains what happened with the group of people after the pouring out of God's Spirit. So let's start in verse 41. Let's just read verse 41-42. Now, we're going to keep coming back to this.

We'll skip around a little bit through the book of Acts, but we'll keep coming back so you can put a marker here. That those who gladly received the Word were baptized, and that day about 3,000 souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and the breaking of bread and in prayers. Now, let's just stop there because that's an awful lot packed into two sentences. This is the first church of God. This is the first church founded after the pouring out of God's Spirit in 31-80. So we see the description of sort of the model of what it's supposed to be like.

And it says that they gladly received or were baptized. About that day, 3,000 were added. That's sort of the first point. And we're going to be going through all these points. We'll be spending a lot of time on certain points and not as much time on others. But the early church was a repented church. Baptism was important.

They were a repented church. Baptism was important. It's interesting. As the church goes on, it gets two, three, four, and five generations. Baptism sometimes can lose its importance.

I was born in this church, people. What do I need to be baptized for? And I've had that discussion. I understand it. I was seven when my parents came into the old radio church of God. I understand, well, wait a minute. I grew up in this church. I've never, you know, I haven't used drugs and I haven't stolen it. So, yeah, I've done a few bad things, but what's baptism? Why do I need to be baptized? I've always kept the Sabbath.

So baptism can lose its impact. Baptism is a command. In fact, you cannot receive salvation. And you cannot be converted without being baptized and without receiving God's Spirit. Now, we do know there's a couple places in the Bible when God gave His Spirit before baptism. But the pattern we see, and even at the very beginning early church, baptism was very important to what they did. They were a repentant church. People were repentant. Now, remember, these 3,000 people are either Jews or proselytes who had already converted to Judaism. These weren't pagans. These were people who were already keeping the Sabbath. These were people who didn't worship idols. These were people who had never worshiped Zeus. These were, for the most part, the proselytes, but mainly they were Jews. These were people who had always kept the Holy Days. And they had to repent because they had to realize, they came to the realization that there was this fall concept they had that their goodness earned them salvation. I done all these good things, therefore I received salvation. And they had to come to grips with their old, corrupted human nature. The early church was a baptizing church. It was a repenting church. Now, you say, oh good, I was baptized 30 years ago. I'm glad you're telling all these other people they need to be baptized.

Repentance is not a one-time experience. As you read through the book of Acts, as you read through the writings to these people, when Paul had to write a letter to them, to the people in Galatia, there was this constant reminder. You look at, especially 1st and 2nd Corinthians, this constant reminder, you must keep repenting. And 1st and 2nd Corinthians is really strong in that concept. You must keep repenting. You must keep looking at where you don't measure up to where God wants you to be as a model of Jesus Christ. And you have to keep repenting. They were a baptizing church and they were a repenting church. Repentance is a lifetime experience. So in order to have a healthy church, what we're talking about today is a spiritually healthy church. All of us, the spiritual health of our church depends on all of us humbly repenting before God all the time. And a humble humility before God repenting all the time. And holding to the importance of baptism. So we see the first thing. Then it says they continued in the Apostles' doctrine. Now, this doesn't mean the Apostles' doctrine was different than Scripture. The Apostles' doctrine was they took the Scripture and applied it to where they were. The most important key to the Apostles' doctrine was who was Jesus Christ? Because they were in a Jewish world in Jerusalem and they didn't know Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Messiah. He wasn't Jesus Bar-Joseph, a carpenter's son. And so they had to use the Scripture. Now remember, what Scripture did they have?

In 31 A.D. there's nothing except what we call the Old Testament written. There isn't a single letter or book of the New Testament exists. It doesn't exist yet. And it wouldn't exist for years. The first years of the church, all they had was what we call the Old Testament. They were a Bible-based church, and this is very, very important. One of the problems with the Pharisees is that they were a tradition-based religious group. Now they used the Scripture, believe me, those Pharisees knew the Hebrew Scriptures. They knew Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus and Isaiah. They knew the Bible. But they had stacked so much tradition on top of it that they had actually twisted or perverted what God was saying. A congregation. We must be a Bible-based congregation. Look at Acts 17. We'll come back here in a minute. But Acts 17. Here they are spreading out from Jerusalem, especially with Paul, starting churches all over the place. And look what it says in verse 1.

Because you'll see this, I'm just sort of cherry-taking this out, but you'll see this all through the book of Acts.

They had passed through the anthropophilus, that place, and went to Amplodia. They came to Thessalonica, and there was a synagogue of the Jews. Now Paul, as his custom was, went into them, and for three Sabbaths, reason with them from the Scriptures.

You know, we've been going through the Bible studies. As we start going through the foundational doctrines, we've been going through who is God. In fact, today we'll go through our last Bible study on the nature of Jesus Christ. Next time we'll go through the Holy Spirit, and then we'll move on to the next foundational doctrines. But why have I been spending so much time with this? Because I've been showing you, part of the problem we have is that the explanation of God today in the Christian world is as much philosophy as the description of God. So we have to look at the Scripture. What does it say? Now, as I've already shown in those Bible studies, when you really start to look at the Scripture, you realize God's a whole lot greater than we can imagine.

And that's part of the respect and all and just overwhelming concepts we're supposed to have of God. We'll even show how they had to deal with that here in the early Church.

Scripture. Now, that doesn't mean we don't have traditions. It doesn't mean that we don't have ways that we do things. But we have to understand that tradition and Scripture aren't always the same thing. I'll give you an example. I do this... I like traditions. There's nothing wrong with traditions. But I'll give you an example. When I first came into the ministry many years ago, I was taught in the World White Church of God and it's taught in the United Church of God. That for Passover, we need to buy wine that is 10 to 12 percent alcohol.

And I remember a ministry that had to be burgundy. Now, that's a nice tradition. The problem is... it's not biblical.

I have no idea what percent alcohol they had. Although, if you do some research, it is believed that the alcohol content of the wines that they would have had as a table wine... because remember, if they had a meal, a table wine in Judea would have been a fairly low alcohol content. You know, if you've ever been to Italy, where they drink lots of wine, watch the water that wine down. Because if they drink 12 percent wine, pour glasses at a meal, everybody would be stoned out of their minds. So, I don't buy wine that's only 4 percent because it's our tradition. I guess if there was some time when the wine bottle broke and you had to run down and get some wine from the local gas station... and besides, they didn't have burgundy... burgundy France didn't exist 2,000 years ago. There were no burgundy grapes. You see, tradition's important. By the way, this year we'll probably buy wine 10 to 12 percent. That's our tradition. But it's not biblical. We can't put that on the same plane as Scripture.

So when they were talking about the apostles' doctrine here, they're not thinking about how the apostles were making up doctrine. They were taking the Scripture and explaining it, yes, in a new way, because Jesus had already started that. But he said things like, you've heard it said that adultery's bad. Let me tell you what's just as bad. He had already started to expand the Scripture. He wasn't changing it. He was expanding it. So, the early church is a scriptural church. They look at the apostles' doctrine. You and I have something very, very, a real blessing they did not have. You know what we have? We have the apostles' writings. Remember, they didn't have any of the apostles' writings. And if you read through, especially Paul, you will see how they developed certain teachings over the course of 20 or 30 years. They actually had to develop, as God worked with them, certain teachings. I mean, Paul thought at one point that Christ was coming back in his lifetime. Later, he says, I'm going to die. It's beyond me. This is happening after my lifetime. But there was a point he thought it was in his lifetime. You see how they had to struggle, work through things. God had to help them. That's, you know, as they worked through certain issues with the Bible. You and I have their writings. We don't have to make up new doctrines. We don't have to make up new doctrines. We have the Old Testament. We have the New Testament. We have the Apostles' doctrines. So we don't have to argue over whether you have to be physically circumcised like they did. That was a 40-year battle in the early Church. But we do know we have to be circumcised in the heart. We're back to baptism again, aren't we? So they were a Church that continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrines. Verse 42, back in Acts 2, it says that they continued in fellowship and breaking of bread.

The early Church was a Church involved in meaningful fellowship. Now, I can tell you one way here in Murfreesboro, we are just like that Church. We like to break bread. We're good at it. It may be at the top of our list. We are an eating group of people we like to eat together, right? And fellowship and breaking of bread. They just didn't come together on the Sabbath to go to services, say hi to everybody, put on sort of the Sabbath face. You know, we all act sort of like churchy. We're here. Hi, how are you? I had that problem yesterday. One of the ladies from Nashville came up, and she went to hug me, and I went to shake her hand. And then I went like this, and she went to shake my hand. And then we're all three times. Finally, I said, ahh! And I grabbed her and gave her a big bear hug, which shocked the daylights out of her. And she took a step back, and her eyes kept thinking, and she just walked away. And she didn't want to do it then, so I thought, I probably shouldn't have done that. I tell Kim, I forget sometimes. These people don't know me yet, you know, and I do these things sometimes. But we act churchy, don't we?

These people were becoming real brothers and sisters. That's what a congregation must be. People who come together to be brothers and sisters. Now, let's go back to Acts 2 here, and let's skip down. Verse 44.

Now, this doesn't mean they lived in a commune, because it doesn't say they sold all their houses, although some people were. It does mean this church shared. They shared their goods, they shared their food, they shared their time.

See, a congregation is a blessing, and anyone who's had to live someplace without a congregation, you ever talk to somebody that says, well, I'm five hours from the nearest congregation. Or talk to a shut-in. I've said many times with shut-ins who just cry and say, oh, just to be able to see people, to literally hug somebody, to talk, to be at a congregation and sing together. They miss it. A congregation is a blessing, and fellowship is a blessing. This has to be more than just coming together, a sort of plain church once a week.

This is the model that we have. Now, they struggle with this now. If you read the book of Acts, they struggle with all these things. This is how they started. Maintaining this is not easy, because it takes God's Spirit to help maintain this. Fellowship. They shared so much with each other. Now, in one way, this is harder for us. Remember, if you belong to the Jerusalem church, you live within a very easy walk to where they met for Sabbath services. Or maybe a little horse ride, but it wasn't very quite well. You wouldn't have ridden a horse through Jerusalem on the Sabbath. They wouldn't let you. This is why the early Christian church was an urban movement. You couldn't get to the people that were out in the farmers and people outside of the town. Or, if they were converted, they didn't have a place to go. They were very much alone. Because it was hard to travel back then. So, the good side of that is, you probably live within walking distance of everybody in your congregation. You know, maybe they're across town, it may take a couple hours to get there, but during the day, you can hook up a horse or a donkey or your cart or whatever and go, Sam! Today, we live...some of you live 40, 50, 60 miles away from each other. But, our plus side is combustion engine with air conditioning.

Telephone. Texting. You know, if you just took every week one person that you know wasn't here, one person you know is a shut-in, one person you know is sick. If you just took one, two, three people a week and called them, it wouldn't take much time. It would change you and it would change them. See, we actually have more availability of health. A five-minute conversation. If you're real... Now, you know, if you're having a down time or you're sick, you may not want to talk to somebody much, but just...if you're in bed sick and your husband came in and said, someone called and said to tell you they're praying for you, and I told them you really didn't want to talk and they said they understood, what would you say? Well, that was so nice, right? It would matter that you didn't call them. It's the action that counts.

These people were together in fellowship and breaking of bread. There's something about eating together, right? There's just something about eating together that brings people together.

Here's our bottle. Now, verse 42 says, they were together in prayers. They continued in prayers. The early church was a praying church.

Let's face it, anything we do spiritually in this life, we do moving forward on our knees.

So much the time we think we're doing something and we take such pride in what we do. Either God works through us or we're just doing it ourselves. If we're doing it ourselves, it's not pleasing to God. It's submitting to God that counts. It's submitting to God. It's obeying God because of our relationship with Him. We move forward on our knees. There is no way to maintain a proper relationship with God without prayer time. It's not possible. Now, what's interesting, let's go to Acts 12. This is a story here about prayer. It's a very amusing story.

Acts 12. Then what again if you feel the Jerusalem church? Verse 1.

Now, the Jerusalem church also had very difficult times. Not long after what we just read here in Acts 2, within months and a few years, well, in weeks, they were actually suffering persecution. But over the next few years, even in the midst of all this growth, we can imagine 3,000 new people in one congregation in one day.

In the midst of all this growth comes all this persecution. As the religious leaders of the day say, this movement is out of hand. We have to stop this. They keep saying, Jesus, who we handed over to the Romans and killed, was resurrected. If they're right, we're in real trouble. Now, some of the even the Pharisees realized that was right. They looked at the Scripture because what you will see in the New Testament is Pharisees converting to the church. The problem is, when the Pharisees came into the church, they kept trying to bring the traditions with them.

And more important, the Scripture. And so you see that problem over and over again. But many Pharisees did come into the church. Because they said, wait a minute, Jesus has been resurrected. He is the Messiah. Others kept saying, this is heresy. They're saying, this carpenter is the Messiah. This is heresy. And they're being persecuted. 1.1 says, Now, about that time, Herod the King stretched out his hand and harassed him from the church. He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. Because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to cease Peter also. It was during the days of another bread. So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison and delivered him to force squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after the Passover. 2.1 says, Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church, by the people. The ecclesia, the called out ones, they continued to pray.

The strength of our congregation depends on the strength of our personal relationships with God.

It's actually easy to build.

I read a book one time on how to build a church. It was very interesting. There's a psychology they use to do what they do.

For one thing, you build a church in a location where everybody in that area basically has the same culture. In other words, you have to build a building to match the culture. That's why you see so many mega churches in very rich areas.

The psychology behind it is, it's just very interesting. You try to make it a very sociable place. We can be a very friendly place and not be this church. Now, friendliness is part of what we have to be, but it has to be these other things too. You understand? That's part of what we have to be. But let's face it. Tennessee is famous for its friendliness. You can walk into any Baptist church and they're very friendly.

So we have to be more than that. Prayer has to be the basis. The basis of who we are. Each of us, in our relationship with God, and that's what we bring together. That's what brings us together. The other thing we can do is we can simply unite ourselves with attacks on other people or other things. I gave a sermon here a couple weeks ago and I talked about a wrong Catholic teaching concerning the worship of saints and Mary and idolatry. I could do that every week. I could make it the biggest anti-Catholic group around.

I try not to do that, although I am on the... I used to be. I don't know if I'm still on the Catholic Church's Anti-Defamation League's website. I'm an enemy of the Catholic Church. Yeah. I'm an enemy of the Catholic Church because of something I said on one of the radio programs I used to do. And I get marked. Anyways, I was just talking about a doctrine. I'm sorry, it's not biblical. But anyways, so we can be against something. We can unite each other by being against something. And actually, in a negative world, that's easy for us to do. We can be united because we're against. You know, it's kind of more than that. That's... What you see in Acts 2 is more than that. They just weren't against the world. They were for something. There was a positivist to it. Now, we know what happens here. Peter gets put in jail, and people are praying, and an angel comes along and basically breaks him out of jail. In fact, he thinks he's having a dream. This can't really be happening. And he breaks him out of jail, and he's free. Now, what do you do when you've just been part of a prison break? Or are you going to go next? I suppose go saddle up a horse and get as far out of Jerusalem as you can, right? Verse 12. So when he had considered this, you know, while I have just been brought out of... This is real. This is the real... He came to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying. This was a prayer. Did you even pray together?

Now that's saying, oh, let's all go get together and have prayer meetings in each other's houses. That's not what I'm saying. But I am saying there's a time to say, hey, let's pray. Now, I will warn you, if you feel like you have a need to lead everybody in prayer all the time, you will probably end up being pretty much a loner. Because, you know, we don't all want to be led in prayer all the time by somebody else. So, yeah, don't do that. That's not what we're talking about here. But there's a time to say, wow, let's pray about that.

I remember I was in Victor Cubic's house, and he had some people there from Ukraine. Now, they had some different... These are Sabbath keepers, but they had some different customs. And one is, the woman there was going to go on a trip. So, they had to pray about it. So, everybody literally knelt down in a circle, and everybody prayed for her. And when it came my turn to pray, they all looked at me, and I prayed too. And I thought, what a decustom. We all prayed for this person. Everybody knelt down and prayed. Now, I'm not saying we have to do that. That's a custom. That's a tradition. But you understand what I'm saying. These people had no fear of, well, let's pray about this, and pray together.

And, you know, if somebody's sick and you're devastated, you look around and say, should we pray about this? Everybody says, yes. Pray about it. If you do it silently, pray... Well, let's just pray silently. Everybody bow your head and pray together. You say, wow, that's weird. Is this a Protestant doctrine? No, I got that right out of Acts, okay? I'm saying they pray... I'm not saying we should... like I said, that we should have some kind of prayer meeting. I'm not saying that. I am saying, there are times when you pray, these people are in a crisis. What did they do in that crisis? They went over to somebody's house, probably to do what? Someone should break bread. And what did they do when they were there? I was praying for Peter. What are we going to do? Are we... James has been killed? Think of the crisis they're in. And they all pray. Now, if you read the rest of the story, it's hilarious, because Peter shows up. Docs at the door, a woman goes and opens the door, and shuts the door and runs back and says, Peter! And he's standing out there. He's probably looking around and saying, now the soldiers will catch up to me sooner or later. And I'm stuck outside and he'll be in the door. And then he says, ah, it's not Peter. Here it is. They went over to the door and turned up. He was there.

The human aspect of that story is, you know, shut the door and run back and say, Peter's at the door. I could just see people doing it. A person's doing it. I could see myself doing it. Peter, shut the door and run back and tell everybody it's Peter.

But the important is, this church prayed.

They were on their knees a lot.

Our spiritual well-being is directly related to our prayer, our relationship with God, our praying with God, our involvement with God. So the well-being of our congregation is what? Just a collection of all of us. That's what's nice about a congregation. When one person's down, other people can pick them up.

Now let's go back to verse 43.

Acts 2, 43.

It says that fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.

Fear came upon every soul, and many signs of wonder. So we've got two things here. One, these people had a proper respect and fear of God.

One of the reasons I think we don't have a proper respect and fear of God is because we live in a world that does not truly recognize eternal consequences. You know, what is the most common belief today in so much of the Protestant world is, well, even in Catholicism, though. Well, all roads lead to God. It doesn't matter your religion. As long as you have a good heart, as long as Billy Graham said, as long as you have a good heart, even if you're a Hindu, that means Jesus is in your heart. What does that mean? I'm sorry, it sounds so incredulous, but that has no meaning. It has no meaning.

When you look at the Scripture, because the Scripture says, only one day you're under heaven, where you can be saved. So if I worship Krishna and I'm a good person, that doesn't make me a follower of Christ. What it doesn't recognize is corrupt human nature. The human nature is corrupt and needs God to come in and change it. What we find, though, in Acts 5, because what happens is, right away, now remember, this is right after, within days or weeks, of the beginning of this Church. They begin to automatically have a problem. Verse 1, And a certain man named Ananias and Sapphira and his wife saw the possession. They kept back part of the proceeds, and the wife also being aware of it, and brought a certain part of it right at the Apostle's feet. What this is a con game in order to get recognition.

People were selling what they had. They were giving to the Church. Go back to chapter 4, verse 36. And Joseph, who was also named Barnabas by the Apostles, which is translated Son of Encouragement, a Levite of the country of Cyprus, having land sold it, brought the money, and laid it at the Apostle's feet. So Barnabas had some land. He sold it and donated all the proceeds, all the money, to the Jerusalem Church. But that's an amazing thing. Now, there's no command in the Bible that we all should do that. Now, I... If, you know, I'm not going to get ready to say everybody sell your land and give it to the Church, that would be wrong. There's no biblical command for that. There's no scriptural command for that. But Barnabas, because of his dedication, did it. Now, you can imagine, it was probably a large sum of money, how encouraging this was to the Jerusalem Church. They're going through all this growth, all this new people coming in, all these things are happening, and all of a sudden they have money to do all kinds of things.

And Barnabas is really hooked up, too. The Apostles have actually changed his name. They've given him a nickname. You know, Joseph said, how they call him Barnabas. Wherever he goes, he encourages people. I'm going to give a sermon to Barnabas someday. He's another one of my heroes. Remarkable, old man.

And so, Ananias and Sapphira see that and say, you know what, we'd like a piece of that recognition. We would like to be known as someone special. Now, Ananias and Sapphira were just members of the Church. They were probably fine members of the Church. But they had a very serious problem. It had to do with the need to be recognized.

And so, what they do is they sell some land, pretend to bring it all, and donate it. They donate part of it.

But Peter says, verse 3, Ananias, why didn't it have Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why, if you could see this thing in your heart, you have not lied to men, but to God, he says, you didn't have to do this. God didn't require that you give everything. You weren't even required to sell it. The problem here is the lie. The lie in order to gain recognition. And why would he do that? Now, why would he do that? You think about that. You think, well, he just wants to be recognized as someone important in the juice of congregation. But verse 5 says, Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and breathed his last. So great fear came upon all those who heard these things. His wife runs in and gives the same lie. And God strikes her down. This isn't the Old Testament. This is the New Testament. This is God killing people in the church. Wow! I feel a little scary today if someone committed some overt sin that God just struck him dead right in front of everybody.

But what was the result of this? Why would they do this? He strikes at the core. Why would God do this? Because he wants the entire church to learn the lesson that these two people have failed in.

Verse 10 says, this is after Sapphira comes in. And immediately, after she fell down at his feet and breathed her last, and the young man came and found her dead and carried her out, buried her by her husband. Verse 11, so great fear came upon all the church and upon all those who heard these things.

Great fear. Now, they weren't paralyzed with fear that said, oh, I can't obey God. God's out to get me. No, fear and realization that what God had given them, he had given them a calling. He had given them his spirit. They were witness to Jesus Christ. The people who drove them all to who Jesus was, they were witness to him. These people know that God had given them his spirit, and to take that lightly was a frightening thing. They feared to take their calling lightly. They sort of feared to be half a Christian. So this fear came upon them. Now look at verse 12, because this is very interesting. Remember, it says there, what we just read in Acts 2, that the great fear came upon them. They just respect this all of God. They still went to God as Father. They knew they were loved. This wasn't the issue, although I get to live my life just petrified of what God's going to do next. It was a realization of what God was doing in our lives, and a realization of the greatness of God. Then remember in Acts 2, the next thing it says, there were many signs and wonders. Look what it says here in verse 12, after it says, great fear came upon them. And through the hands of the apostles, many signs and wonders were done among the people. In other words, when we go back to Acts 2, let's go back to Acts 2 now, verse 43, that fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. These two things are connected. It was their fear or their submission, their recognition of the greatness of God, their fear to disobey, their desire to obey, their commitment to God, because of that, God did many signs and wonders. Your connected things. So this was a church that had great fear of God. It's something we lack a lot of. Now, I don't mean the kind of fear that wipes out God's love. God's love is what gets us where we are.

But we need to be reminded of what it is to turn against God. And what they did here at Ein Ein Sefire was just an attempt to get recognition through lying.

So there were many signs and wonders.

This church was a church where things happened. Things happened in this church. Now, if you go through the history of the Jerusalem church, there's a point where things weren't happening that were good. Bad things were happening. They were persecuted. They were bottled up. Roman armies surrounding Jerusalem. And they all were starting to starve. And God got them out. I'm not saying they were in a church that didn't go through its problems. But it was a church that stayed right with God in spite of its problems. God worked through those people. And when you look at the history of the Jerusalem church just in the book of Acts, Stephen gets out and spreads the word immediately. Acts chapter 7. He starts spreading the word. Amazing things are happening. And what happens to him? These are David Deacons. And great things are happening. They kill him. Wow! That's going to be discouraging. Here's the man that you see. Wow! God's working through that guy. And the next day you find out, you know, they killed him.

Things happened. But you know, sometimes we think, if we have the perfect congregation, nothing but good things will happen. That's not true.

Life is always messy. You and I live in Satan's world. This is always messy. It's always going to be messy. In your life, it's going to be messy. And in the church, it's going to be messy. That's reality. So, we have to be close to God. Or what we'll do is, Satan will find a way to lead us away from God because of something that happens in the church.

Something in the congregation. You'll get upset with someone. Or you'll find someone sins. Or you'll find out the pastor's not perfect. You figured that one out, honey. And what will happen is, in that offense, in that offense, well, this isn't the right place. Every place you go will be the same. Very imperfect. Very imperfect. Where's God put you? Where's God put you? You know, when you look at the Jerusalem church, Acts 6, the first big problem they had was over administration. It had to do with your dating of deacons. They fought over... I mean, the whole church was split because the Jewish widows got better treatment than the... well, no, they were basically all Jews. The women born in Judea got better treatment than the Greek-speaking Jews. Remember the Jews? There was a Greek-speaking Jews. Because they were scattered throughout the Roman Empire, and they spoke Greek. So the Hebrew-speaking Jews got better treatment, the widows, than the Greek-speaking widows. And they had to fight over it. The apostles had to deal with it. So they had an administration problem. Then it wasn't long before in Acts 10 they had a problem with prejudice. In this case it was Peter. He just wasn't going to baptize Cornelius because he was an Italian.

See, Peter would baptize anybody but Italians. You weren't going to let a Roman in the church, okay? So Peter baptized anybody but Italians. So what did God do? He had to give his spirit to Cornelius first. And then Peter said, oh, I guess they'd better baptize him. He baptized him after he received God's spirit because he wasn't going to do it. Come on, you got that problem. You got all the personal problems of people. You got Acts 15, you have a doctrinal problem that they have to fix. It is major, and there's no way you and I could totally understand how major circumcision was. Well, one way. What if I got up here and said, you don't have to be baptized. You'd all be appalled, right? Put the Bible commands in. When they got up and said, the males don't have to be circumcised, but that's what it commands. They thought they were going to get Scripture. Now, I can show you the Old Testament. There's a time it says that it'll be changed. But you really got to work at it. You're going to put that all together. But it's there. In fact, it's going back to Deuteronomy that it's going to be changed. I will circumcise you no longer in the flesh, but I will circumcise you in the heart. Think about it. You've read it. It's there, see? They would have had to build that argument and explain it. It took them 40 years to work that one out. But Acts 15 is what? The Jerusalem churches and then all the other churches. They're all fighting over circumcision. But think about the Jerusalem churches. They still stuck it out. That congregation stuck it out. It wasn't all good.

They stuck together. They did what they were supposed to do. They had personality conflicts. Barnabas and Paul ended up arguing.

It is a blessing to have a congregation. But it takes a lot of work to be a congregation that God wants. Now let's go back and just look at the last parts here. Acts 2, 46.

So continuing daily with one accord in the temple. This was a worshiping church. They worshiped together. They had a holy convocation. They had to come brought together. These two assembled together. So they assembled together, in this case, in the temple. So we have to be a worshiping church. And breaking bread... Wow, that's mentioned twice. These people like to eat.

Twice is mentioned. So after we're done here, let's all go eat so we can fulfill Acts 2. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house. Once again, we're back to the point that they were a... a fellowshiping church. But notice what it says. They ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart. This was a positive church. It's so hard for us to be positive in a negative world. But we are to be a positive church. But the first here, the little phrase here that's so important, and so missed, and it's an entire sermon in itself. Simplicity of heart.

Their motives... they had a singular motive. Love of God and love of brother. Remember, we skipped down to verse 46, verse 44 and 45 talks about how they shared.

There wasn't a great competition between them. They shared.

And here we have the simplicity of heart.

I think joy and simplicity of heart may be one of our biggest battles in today's world.

We become negative. We become depressed. We struggle with... You know, my wife and I, every once in a while, I'll say to her, boy, you're just being negative. And every once in a while, she'll say to me, you're just being negative.

No, I'm not. I deserve to be this one. Boy, that's a good argument. That's my argument. She doesn't say anything. I owe that. I'm not negative. I'm just... I deserve it. You know, some stupid argument. And she'll just shake her head and smile.

We're negative. Where's the joy? But you know why? We don't have simplicity of heart. We have a multiplicity of motives. So that's a whole other sermon. We'll get into that one, too. These are all sermons I'm going to give in the next year or so. I have a whole list. We'll have to talk about simplicity of heart. Our motives, let's be right. But how do we do that? Well, I'm just going to give you a little heads up. We'll talk about it more some other time. Acts 13, 52. Acts 13, 52.

And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. Once again, this gladness of heart, or gladness and simplicity of heart, isn't just because they had a nice hall to meet in. Now that makes the Sabbath nice, doesn't it? But sometimes you don't have a nice hall to meet in.

Now, I've met beer halls before for the Sabbath. Sometimes you don't. Can we still have gladness and simplicity of heart? But things aren't right.

Only with God's Spirit. You're filled with joy because you're filled with God's Spirit. This all comes back to God working us. It all comes back to our relationship with God. Verse 47 there, the last verse. Praising God and having favor with all of the people, and the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. Praising God. One of the reasons they had gladness, they had joy, and simplicity of heart is because this was a thankful church.

They were a thankful church.

I've known of people I find this interesting who actually at night, when they can't go to sleep, start with A. This is something I'm thankful for. I read it in the Book of the time too, but I know people do that. A. Is there anything I can be thankful for that starts with A? God, I'm thankful for the apples I got today. B. Nobody gets the Z because I don't know what you'd be thankful for in Z. The Nashville Zoo, I don't know. But you start and you change as you go through what are you thankful for. These people praised God.

Praising happens in our prayer. Praising happens in our speech. Now, you know, if you've ever met somebody that every other word is praise God, that doesn't mean anything, does it? Praising God means yesterday. I'll tell you this about Frances after the funeral yesterday. Lee's wife. She came up to me and asked useless, you're adorable on this positive attitude. Give me a big hug and said, thanks for coming! Like I wouldn't come, you know. And I said, you know, thank you for being so strong. She said, I prayed for two things today. I prayed for the strength, you know, to help the family. And I prayed that God would give us a blue sky. And both of us looked up and it was absolutely blue. And she said, you know what I'm going to do when I go home? And I said, thank God. And she said, that's right. Now that's praising God. You see what I mean? That thought, praise God, which is a multiplicity of heart, I wouldn't look like I'm religious. That was just an honest statement. If this is what I'm going to do, that's praising God. You and I sing songs at church. And we come together as a congregation to praise God.

That's an important action. These people praise God. And having favor with all the people. You know what I find interesting? This was a persecuted church. When people stirred up persecuted against them. But you know what their neighbors would have said? You know, those Christians are really pretty nice people.

They're pretty nice people. Remember the time I got sick? I didn't even know them. But she brought me over some food. Remember when Bob's car broke down and he came out with us and brought his toolbox and helped us? You know, they never blare their music so loud.

That we can't sleep at night. Sort of weird. They get into church every Saturday.

Of course, they wouldn't have been in Jerusalem. Everybody went to church on Saturday. But, you see, they found favor.

These people weren't weird. They were persecuted because of their beliefs in God. Not because they just had to be weird people. Our example to the world must be good.

That's part of what a Christian congregation is. But, see, once again, that comes down to what? Oh, good. That's organizing the world to be a good example to everybody.

I mean, we should do things, service projects. But, you know, that could also become nothing more than vanity. Oh, look at how good our congregation is. Now, we need to do some of those. But, you know what I mean? I'm talking to, well, my church does all these service projects. And, yeah, but what? Do you obey God? Well, we don't have to. We just have love in our heart. We do good service projects.

So, yes, we have to individually and as a congregation. That's why we do this, which I forgot to this morning. And, spill my coffee. The first thing I said was, oh, no, did I stay in the carpet? Nope. Someone produced Clorox immediately and cleaned it up. It was amazing. It was like this army of women came around and cleaned everything up.

Why? Because we want to leave the hall better than we found it. Why? Because we've known this. It is our Christian responsibility to be a good example. That's why. That seems like a little thing, but this is what we do. This is what we should do as a congregation. Fred Keller, you know what he does up in Nashville? He's almost the last person to leave. You know why? He makes sure that hall is spic and spin. Better than when they arrived.

He's been the last one to leave for years. What I asked him, why do you sweep? Somebody else just swept. They didn't get all of it. And it's our responsibility. We pay them money to be a good example to them. He shamed me so much, I find myself now helping clean up afterwards, because there he is, cleaning up. He still does it.

A congregation is more than just a group of people who beat on set. You know that. But I think it's important to be reminded every once in a while, that it would go through Acts 2. Just a few verses. Now read that and read the book of Acts, and you'll see how they spent the next 30 years trying to do that. And tried to build churches to do that. And it was pretty much a hit in this experiment. It all depended on how much the people responded to God's Spirit. Being part of a, and I've said this before, but being part of a congregation is a blessing from God. Read Acts 2 and then look at the rest of the book of Acts. That history is just fascinating. It's got planted congregations all over. The earliest of the congregations, the first of the Christian congregations, is a model for us. So I encourage all of us, including myself, to strive to fulfill that model, to study their example. So that our congregations, our congregations can become models of what Jesus Christ wants as the head of the church.