Heavenly Father, this morning,

we don’t want to be here because we’re supposed to be here, because it’s Sunday. We don’t want to be here because it’s just what we’ve always done. We want to be here because we deeply desire to meet with You. Lord, to feel You move in us. Lord, for Your truth to change us, for our eyes to be further open, for our hearts to have a greater passion for the name of Jesus. Jesus, Lord, that desire that we have is only by Your grace, Lord, that You have called us. So we just say thank You, and we worship You and praise You for what You have done in Jesus to call us Your people, Lord. So we just bless Your name this morning. And Lord, we look forward to the day when all the earth will sing Your praises.

So Lord, help us now in this moment. Until You return, live faithfully. Help us now with the lives. Lord, as You’ve given us, Lord, offer them back up to You that we would follow Jesus and glorify You, Lord, as we grow up in Him.

We thank You for Your goodness, and we thank You for Your love.

We just pray in Christ’s name. Amen. You can be seated. You can be seated.

Well, good morning. It’s good to have you here. I’m glad to have you this morning. I praise the Lord for seeing some of you. We’ve come back from COVIDville, and other people have taken the trip to there. So we just swapped people out, it seems like. But it’s good to be with you this morning. I want to take us to Acts chapter 4. If you have your Bibles, I want to turn with me to Acts chapter 4.

Acts chapter 4, verse 32 to 37. I know we’ve been in Corinthians for a while, but I just felt led to be here this morning.

Acts chapter 4, verse 32.

It says, Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had, but they had everything in common. And with great power, the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had, and it was distributed to each as any had, and it was distributed to each as any had,

Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet. I don’t know what you think about when you hear the word ancient. I think of ruins. I remember on my honeymoon, Jessica and I went to Mayan ruins, and you see the civilization, the ancient that existed so long ago, or you think about Athens, or you think about Rome, and all these amazing structures that still stand that tell a story of a people that lived long ago, and their way of life is gone. Their way of life, whatever it was, it’s not there anymore, just remnants of it.

Maybe if you get along in age, you start to refer to yourself as ancient. I’ve heard people say that, right? But really when we think about ancientness, when we think about the ancient church in Acts, we’re not talking about, we shouldn’t be talking about a way of life that’s died a couple thousand years ago. When you talk about the ancient church in Acts, we’re talking about simultaneously the true church. We’re talking about a beautiful picture, a beautiful template for all time, for all people, for all cultures. This is what every church, this is what every Christian should look like. Right? And that’s what I want to ask us this morning. Are we a church of an ancient kind? Are we Christians of an ancient kind? Are we Christians, are we church that’s truly following Christ the way He said, this is what it looks like when my people are truly mine?

That’s what Luke is writing about here in Acts.

Now what happened right before we read that they were so together as we just did, is Pentecost. So Peter preaches at Pentecost and we’re told thousands come to faith there. And then later Peter heals a lame man and he preaches at Solomon’s porch and we’re told a couple thousand more people come. So in total at this point, the church is already 5,000 men, Acts tells us, and that’s not including women and children. So you’ve got a small town of people essentially who are Christians. They’re Jesus followers. And that’s a lot of people. I don’t know if you’ve ever been around people, but people like, you know, just a few of them together, there can be division. Just a few people, there’s some strife. Just a few people, there’s animosity, there’s politics, there’s infighting. It happens in your workplace. It happens in neighborhoods. It happens in families even.

But we read that these people, the thousands of them, they’re all considering themselves of the exact same rank and file. They’re all equally followers of Jesus. It didn’t matter if they were poor. It didn’t matter if they were rich. It didn’t matter what color their skin was. It didn’t matter what worldly merit or accomplishments they had. You had Jews who grew up in Jerusalem. You had Jews who were Greek-speaking Jews. You had Jews from the diaspora who had gone out from the exile and had come back since. You have all kinds of them in their thousands. You have the full number, though, it says, the full number of them they were, it says, of one. Heart and soul. Now, that’s a pretty, like, maximum, radical way of talking. One heart and soul. It goes back to a Hebrew phrase, one heart and soul. And what it means, one heart and soul, is to say that two or more people, they’ve got the exact same will. It’s like, you’re my blood brother, and so we’re all blood brothers that close. That’s the kind of radical tone Mark’s using. We’re all that close. We all think the same way about everything. We value one another the exact same way. It’s that profound. It’s that together. It’s that harmonious. It’s that selfless. Luke makes it more explicit. He says, no one, so think about it. There’s thousands and thousands of people. No one said, my stuff’s my stuff. People see their stuff, their bank accounts, their homes, whatever means of transportation they had, everything that they had, they didn’t consider it. There’s a loan.

You think about that, how radical that is. You know, you’ve read about water being turned into wine. You’ve read about lame people walking. You’ve heard about dead people being raised from the dead. But I think that’s light work compared to this.

Because people of any size, certainly of the thousands, in perfect unity and harmony, that to me is undeniable evidence of something supernatural. And I’m not being radical. You know, preachers always get, you know, stereotyped for being, you know, embellishers, make a story a little more interesting than it is to make it work in a sermon. I’m not doing that. Luke’s doing it. It’s Luke. It’s his plain words of this historical ancient church. He says in verse 34, there’s not a needy person there. There’s not even a needy one. All the rich folks, all the just well-off folks, they got lands, they got stuff they’re selling. They’re giving up financial cushions. Perhaps they’re giving up their children’s inheritance so that nobody can say they’re impoverished, so no one can say they don’t have food to put in their mouth. You know, people don’t have bank accounts. They don’t have 401ks like we have. They have land. They have cattle. That’s their wealth. They’re selling all the things that are precious to people to take care of one another. That’s what they’re doing. But I want you to see this. And this is what makes the passage precious. And if this isn’t true, I think the whole thing, this whole thing is a sham.

It’s all entirely voluntary.

Nobody is told, you know, you know what you should be doing with your stuff. Hey, you know. The apostles didn’t say, hey, we’re apostles. And because we’re apostles, like we know Jesus and God better than you, so we know how to handle your stuff better. So what we think you should do is pray about making a sizable donation to the church and we’ll distribute it the way that, that didn’t happen. No one said, hey, this is not fair. It’s you got all this stuff and he doesn’t have any stuff. So let’s take your stuff and give it to you over there. That doesn’t happen. It’s entirely voluntary because each person had a desire in them to take care of one another. And that’s what makes it beautiful. That’s what makes it miraculous.

If we’re of the ancient church, if you’re an ancient kind of Christian, you will have, you will have certain outward evidences in your life that are apparent. How can you know that? The first one Luke shows us is this. You will have the outward evidence of utter selflessness. You will.

So see what this passage does, that’s true. If these are true Christians and the evidence we see in our life is this radical carelessness for self and love for one another, what this passage does is it invalidates, I think probably discredits, it’s a better word, it discredits professors. Someone who is not a Christian, would say, oh, I’m a Christian and they can go on to say a bunch of positive things about the Christian faith or someone who can impress or prove they’re a Christian because they can go back and forth with you about the core tenets of the Christian faith. What this passage does really is it even discredits people who can claim some experience of having felt or known or received God at some point in their life. You have no profession if you have no radically sacrificial life to accompany it. Heaven is no more yours because of your empty profession and God is no more the fool as if he can’t see past the talking mouth.

And I’m not saying that to drop a hammer. What I want to do is reach out a hand so this passage can be an escape from the mire of self-deceit.

Jesus says in John chapter 14, and we read a similar verse in John during worship, but in John chapter 14, in John 14, 15, Jesus says, if you love me, you’ll talk about it, you’ll know the lingo. That’s not what Jesus said. He said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. And then 1 John, from John’s Gospel, John’s Epistle, he makes it clear what that looks like. In 1 John 4, 21, he says, and this is the commandment. What’s the commandment, John? Whoever loves God, loves his brother,

loves his wife, See, the great problem today, friends, with the church in the West is we’re willing to own, we’re willing to claim people who have hollow hearts with lighter-than-air professions. Jesus says, if you love me, you will be unmistakably mine by the outward evidences of your life. And loving Jesus means so often loving his body, loving the local. I’ll say it even plainer. When you said yes to Jesus, you said yes to the local church. When you said yes to Jesus, you said yes to the local church. You said farewell to yourself, to your own wants, your own preferences, how you want to spend your time, the things you want to spend money on, the people you prefer to spend your life around. You gave up those rights to the people you love. To carry a cross. Because you know what? Jesus carried a cross. Jesus saved you by his cross. And Jesus is calling you into glory. But he says, if you want to go into glory, you want to go into eternity with me, you’ve got to strap a cross on your back and bear it as I did. Through your dying to yourself will you live in Christ Jesus. That’s loving Jesus and loving his bride, the church, with your whole heart, with your whole life. It’s an obvious evidence. Richard Niebuhr has famously said, a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross. And I think that gets to the heart of us today. We don’t necessarily want to escape a self-obsessed life. We just want to escape the consequences of it.

So then the outward evidence is of an ancient kind of Christian. Friend, they should be so very apparent.

Can you rattle off jargon about Jesus? Perhaps you can. Can you agree to the core tenets of the faith? I’m sure you would. Can you describe a time when you walked down an aisle when you were a kid? Probably.

Bella, when you go under the water this morning and come back up, it’s not just because you say you know Jesus, it’s because you have Jesus. And he’s, in you, and he’s made you brand new. And that’s wonderful. And that’s what’s so wonderful about baptism, friends. It makes us actually brand new people who live different lives.

I think marriage is always a good illustration for it. I think that’s why the Bible uses marriage a lot. It’s as bad as if someone stands, you know, in a church and says all this stuff to a woman and has no intention of doing any of the things he said. Well, did he say it? Well, of course he said it. Everybody saw him say it. But is he going to put her first? Is he going to die to his own preferences? Hmm? Is he going to care for her in sickness and health until death do they part? No, he just said the words. But to be married means to truly give yourself up for someone else.

Remember Jesus, his parable about the man in the field and he realized that this field had this one treasure. So what’s the man do? He goes and he sells everything off, everything he had that he thought was so good and so precious in his life. He realized it was scrap metal and he gave it all up because he finally found the one thing worth living for.

That’s what mattered to the man. And that’s the question, friends, is does Jesus matter to you? Because there will be the outward evidences of what you do with the man. With your life.

Jonathan Edwards has said, the kingdom of heaven is not to be taken but by violence. Without earnestness, there is no getting along in that narrow way that leads to life. And so no arriving at the state of that glorious life and the happiness to which it leads. Without earnest labor and constant laboriousness, there is no hope of finally and fully attaining to eternal life. Slothfulness in the service of God and his professed servants is as damning as open rebellion. So I throw it around a lot because I think it’s just such a great phrase and encapsulates what it means to be a Christian. Christ-centered community. That’s what a local church should be. It should be a place marked by Christ-centered community. And we see that illustrated so well in our passage in Acts. It’s all of us looking at Jesus saying, Jesus, you showed us what it looked like to be human. And it looked like loving God and loving man perfectly. And we love man, by being filled with the love of God. And Jesus was that perfectly. So if we’re going to be a church, we’ve got to do more than sing songs and we’ve got to do more than talk the talk. What we’ve got to do is die to ourselves and love one another, sacrifice for one another, bear one another up, care about one another. It’s 59. 59 one another’s in the New Testament. It’s because so much of the Christian life is not found in doctrine as much as I love it and you should. It’s found in people work. It’s found in caring about one another.

A church that has Christ-centered community as a hallmark is a church that’s truly a witness for what the Gospel’s all about. If you really want the world to come to Christ, yes, share the Gospel. But friends, we must be the people of the Gospel.

Lastly on that, I want to encourage you to test yourself. Paul says that. It’s a wise thing if you call yourself a Christian to test yourself. Do you find in yourself a love for the local church? Do you find in yourself a desire to see those in the local church thrive in the Christian life? Are you deeply, intimately involved with one or a few other believers in which you are helping them grow and they are helping you grow? Are you meaningfully connected to a church where you’re learning and where you’re growing? And it’s so easy, and we talk about this a lot, to fall out of alignment, when I take my eyes off Jesus, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, like, oh, wait a second, it looks like that over there, and I’ve got to come back to the ancient church. Friend, are there outward evidences in your life that you love to disciple and you love to give and you love to pray for and you love to be burdened with the burdens of those who are following Jesus with you? It’s a very real, undeniable mark of a real Christian. Is that evidence there? The second evidence, though, for a true church is do we have to be a Christian? Do we have the inward evidence? He talks about this outward evidence that we find in chapter 4 in inward evidence in verse 33.

He says, and with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.

One theologian notes, we’re not witnessing the unity of friends, but an enterprise of divine character. Now, think about the apostles because we have a way with the apostles to think very highly of them because of the office they hold, and we should to a degree because you see many great feats. You see Paul casting out demons. Paul’s planting churches. They’re all doing great, incredible things for God. But you’ve got to remember just a couple months ago, these fellows were locked up in a room. They were scared to death. They had no hope. They didn’t know what to do with themselves. Why? Because they lost their Lord. He was tortured and killed. Jesus was their power. Jesus was their authority. Jesus was the reason that they were anybody to anybody, you know, anywhere. And all of a sudden, He’s gone. And what happens in that three-day span when Christ is in the grave is they feel like they’ve never felt before the anemic essence and nature of themselves. In those days without Christ, they’re profoundly aware of their own frailty without Him. Their frailty to do anything without Jesus. You don’t read Peter and say, Jesus was pretty good, guys. We’ve got to give Him that. He could really do some great stuff. He could teach. He could raise people from the dead. But we’re going to have to kind of change our angle and we’re going to have to keep going as a ministry. We’ll figure out what we do. They didn’t do that. They couldn’t do that. They were just afraid and frail without Christ.

But the resurrected Jesus comes to them and the resurrected Jesus doesn’t say, alright, things are going to go back to the way they were. Business as usual. That’s not what happens. Jesus says things are going to be better than they were before. Jesus says, y’all are going to do ministry in the way you’ve never done ministry before. He says, actually, you’re going to be with me in a way you’ve never been with me before. You say, well, where does Jesus say that? Look at Acts chapter 1.

He says in verse 4, and while staying with them, He ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which He said, you heard from Me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. So when they had come together, they asked Him, Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said, it’s not for you, it’s for you to know times or seasons that the Father is fixed by His own authority. But, here’s what He says will happen. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and then you will be My witnesses.

Then. You can’t flip it, and you can’t subtract it. When the Holy Spirit comes on you, then you will have power.

Nothing like Pentecost, had ever happened before. Nothing like God indwelling the soul of a man had happened before in the way that He did that day when the Holy Spirit fell. And truly, praise God, and it’s just as miraculous in 2021 as it was back then, it’s just as miraculous that He comes and He falls on us, on you, in the very same way. He changed them. He made them new. He made them something they weren’t. He reoriented them.

It wasn’t their spirit. It wasn’t their power. It was the Spirit of Christ upon them. And the power that He put on them, it wasn’t a power to dominate. It wasn’t a power to rule people. It wasn’t a way to set themselves up as better. It was a power to give away and to serve so that they would have the very same thing that God had given them. So that they would be near to God as they had known it. That was the power. It was the power to set them loose and to set them free. So see what the great grace is when Luke writes, the power, they were preaching the power, power and great grace was upon them all. The great grace was the power of the gospel. That was the grace. It was the power of God doing only what God could do through the truth of the gospel. And it was undeniable. It was undeniable.

Their principle had been changed. Their principle chief governing mechanism was different.

They’d heard about God. They’d heard about God. And they knew something about God. But their whole life was an oriented towards and filled with this God. For the first time ever, human beings are filled with and oriented towards God in a way that had never happened before. There was an alien force on them. And it was Christ remaking them, joining them to His body, using them for His work.

How else could a person give up his own welfare?

How else could you love someone different from you, especially your enemies? How could you have love for God in your heart? How could you hate the sin you once enjoyed? How could you have desire for a holy life? How could you imagine you have peace with God? How could you imagine you have hope of heaven? And there’s just one answer. It’s littered throughout the Old Testament as much as it is the New.

Ezekiel 11.19 This is what God, by His grace, always had in mind to do. I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone. And He says, what? I’m going to replace it with a real thing. A living thing. They’re going to be alive to me in a way that they never have been before. It’s going to be a heart of flesh.

See how good and wise and powerful God is? He didn’t strong arm you with His power into complying. He wooed you into obeying. Amen. That’s all the difference. You comply at work. Hey, such and such left. They put in their two weeks notice. Or, hey, such and such, you know, they’re not very good. I need you to do this. I need you to work long hours. I need you to figure this out.

What can you do but comply? You don’t want to do it. The grace of the power of the gospel has brought you from spiritual death to spiritual life wherein you desire inwardly to know and to serve and to die. Because in that dying, there’s true life. There’s true joy. You have a new principal agent.

I say all this in reference to that one little verse, friends, because that’s something you’ve got to know. That’s something you’ve got to know like the back of your hand. Deep down, what is your principal agent? Is it the Lord Jesus Christ?

Do you waffle on that?

Can you say, oh no, Jesus is there. Jesus is there. You’re hurting yourself if you say, well, I don’t know, or you’re just going to force yourself to say yes. Why risk so much? Why risk your eternal soul?

Friend, in just the same way the external evidence should be plain, to you, you should be convinced Christ is my governing agent. Christ is my life. Can you say that? Because He calls you to know it for sure. He calls you to surrender that you would be set free.

Or do you find that your kind of Christianity is what we’ll call complicit Christianity?

I read my Bible because I’m supposed to. I show up to church because I’m supposed to. I know you’re not supposed to sleep in on Sundays, but I don’t do it. I’d rather. I know I’m not supposed to watch dirty movies. I’d rather. I’m not supposed to laugh at the dirty jokes. I’d rather.

I’d rather do a lot of things I know I’m not supposed to do.

Friends, it’s Jesus changing you so that you’re just a brand new person on the inside.

Put it to a question. Do you think that the Spirit of God, if He truly could come inside of you, come inside of a person, do you think that He is so weak and anemic that He leaves people in complicit, miserable states to follow Jesus?

No. The Word tells us the Spirit of God bears the fruit of joy. He bears the fruit of zeal. He bears the fruit of love. He bears the fruit of long-suffering for God. That’s what the Spirit does if He’s in you, if He’s truly governing your soul. Do you love Him? Maybe what’s worse than a marriage where someone says it and doesn’t mean it is a marriage where a husband complies. He just does it so he can just go on with it. He’s just doing the bare minimum. He doesn’t love it, but he doesn’t want it to talk about it. Let’s just do what I’ve got to do. Let’s just do what I’ve got to do to keep some semblance of false peace. Maybe that’s even worse.

Is your Christianity complicit Christianity? Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you love His church in your heart? Do you love His Word? Do you desire to see the overwhelming power of the Spirit save many with the Gospel? Do you desire to see Christ as the principle ruling many? Let me ask you men this morning, are you leading your family in the style of complicit Christianity? Are you living the Christian life you would really want your wife and your children to lead? You know what Jesus says in Revelation 3 to Laodicea? I actually don’t want that. I’d rather you just, you know, cuss me, be done with me, than just to kind of pretend and sort of do this thing. Jesus says, no, no, surrender to me and lead others fully to me. That’s real Christianity. That governs and changes inwardly and outwardly.

Luke closes that section, I think, in an interesting and powerful way. He does it with an illustration. It seems almost like random that he says it, but it’s like Luke is saying, thus, he says, thus this person. In other words, all that thing I said about the power and the grace on them all and everything in common, like, have y’all heard of Barnabas? Like, y’all know Barnabas? There, that’s what I mean. So he says in 36, thus Joseph, who is also called by the apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement. He was a Levite, a native of Cyprus. He sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

This Barnabas, he, when Paul was ready to discard John Mark for, you know, busting out on him and leaving him behind on a missionary journey, Barnabas is like, no, I want to give him a second chance, man. Let’s give this dude a second chance. He’s young and he’s dumb. Let’s give him a second chance.

Barnabas serves as an intercessor between the Christians at Antioch and Jerusalem. He’s ready to go back and forth to make peace with them. Barnabas, he spends his whole life on missionary ventures all outside Jerusalem so that many more would know Christ. And of course, he says that Barnabas, he sold his land and he brought the money and he said to the apostles, here, y’all give it to who needs it. You give it to my brothers and sisters in Christ.

So you see what happens then when the Holy Spirit is a governing force inside of you. It comes outwardly so that someone can say, hey, look, there, that’s what I mean. Do you know Barnabas? There’s a good example. And you know you met a Barnabas when you met a Barnabas because when you meet him, you walk away going, you just feel a little warmer. You’re ready to get back in the word. You’re ready to know God a little bit. You’re ready to share the gospel a little bit more. You’re ready to share the gospel a little bit more because Christ has rubbed off on you. That principal agent, oh, it stirred something up inside of you. Are you a Barnabas then? Do you desire that for other people? Because here’s what Luke says. If you’ve got the inward and outward evidences in your life, you will hold nothing back. You will hold nothing back and it will be apparent and obvious to all.

Apparent and obvious to all.

I just want to ask you this morning, is your life the Lord’s alone? Are you governed by His Spirit? Are you surrendered to His work? Are you still holding something back? Perhaps this morning, like you know that you know that you’re saved and I don’t want you to doubt that if you are,

but perhaps you need some real repentance and get on your knees and figure out what it really means to follow this Jesus. And get back on it.

Or perhaps you can’t sow with any surety that you know Christ. Great. I mean, it’s great because you can surrender right now. It’s great because He says just turn from yourself and just turn from your sins and believe that Jesus is perfect and believe that Jesus has all the inward and outward evidences to save you from your sin and He will fill you with Himself. You can do that right now and know it for sure.

Friends, are you ready to give everything to Jesus and hold nothing back? Because I want to say this to you as we close. Jesus on His cross, He held nothing back from you. He held nothing back from you.

Are you an ancient, true kind of Christian? Are we an ancient and true kind of church? Then let’s hold nothing back from the Lord and from one another. Let’s pray.

Father, as we read Your Word, we’re not looking into a mirror. We don’t see ourselves perfectly. We see so much that we fail to obey. But in seeing what we fail to obey, we see how Jesus has done it perfectly in our place.

And we know that through all of our failures, You are ready to stir us back up. Stir us back up to awaken us, to enliven us, to obedience. You’re ready to wash us of our sins. You’re ready to renew us so that we can pursue Jesus and have joy in Him.

So Father, my prayer this morning

is that we would see all that it means to follow Christ, that You would give us power in the Spirit, Lord, to see Jesus as that beautiful treasure worth the loss of all things, that we would see the bride of Christ as precious and good, and we would pray that You would give us