Small Groups - For Saving Life (Sermon FFMC, 24th September 2017)

Scripture Text — Acts 2:47b

^47b And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Good morning church. I would like to thank Pastor Daniel for the privilege to share God’s word today. The title that was given is “Small groups – for Saving Life”, at this point I do wish that someone would save my life, now this is because my sermon today may not exactly fit with the title, but I hope that afterwards, Pastor Daniel would still spare my life. Let’s now pray before we begin.

Before we begin, let me ask - who wrote the book of Acts? Correct, the author is Luke and we can tell because in the book of Luke (written by Luke), he states in Luke 1:3 “to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus” and in Acts 1:1, the author starts off by stating “In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach”. So this helps us to see the author of Acts is most likely Luke.

Now Acts is considered a historical narrative. Many of the OT books like Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges and in the NT, the Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke are considered narratives.

According to Fee and Stuart: “Narratives are stories—purposeful stories retelling the historical events of the past that are intended to give meaning and direction for a given people in the present.”

Therefore when we study Acts, it is important to ask ourselves - what does this passage in Acts mean for us now and what direction does it provide for us in Fairfield. Let’s then look at what is the purpose of Luke in writing Acts. If we look at Acts 1:1-2

In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.

We can infer that in Acts, Luke’s second writing to Theophilus, he would be sharing what happens after Jesus ascended to Heaven. And we see throughout the book of Acts, how the early church began to grow and expand throughout different regions and this through the work of the Holy Spirit in normal people.

Understanding why Luke wrote Acts, we go on to look at the passage for today from Acts 2:47b which reads:

^47b And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

To help us to understand what the passage means for us today, I will be looking at four questions:

1.     What is our awakening?

2.     What is our acceptance?

3.     What is our attention?

4.     What is our assurance?

1)    What is our awakening?

If we go back a bit earlier before Acts 2:47, we see that after the ascension, Matthias was chosen to replace Judas, then was the coming of the Holy Spirit followed by Peter’s powerful sermon. At the end of the sermon at Acts 2:37, we read that those who listened “were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?””. Peter asked them to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and to be “saved from this crooked generation”. After that we read that there were “three thousand souls that were added that day”. Reading Acts 2:42-47, we see something which has been described as what a healthy, renewed or I used the term “awakened” church should look like, there was worship and prayer, good teaching, there was an intimate fellowship, there was evangelism and also compassion and social concern.

Acts 2:42-47 - “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.  And all who believed were together and had all things in common.  And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.  And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts,  praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.“

<reference to Pastor Ling and King Hee’s sermons>

What then is our awakening? Have we been cut to the heart? We all have experienced physical cuts before and know that it hurts and there is tenderness where the cut is. Do we have a real sense of God’s holiness and how depraved we are? In our small group, we discussed once about how when Simon Peter saw the supernatural catch of fish, “he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”” Isn’t his response counter intuitive, wouldn’t we have expected him to say wow, that’s amazing, or you are great and sing aloud in worship instead of asking Jesus to go away because he saw himself as sinful? The point is that when we truly have a glimpse of God’s glory, we will see how ugly we are. And God’s amazing response to us is that he still wants us to be part of his story, just like how he invited Simon Peter to join him.

May our response be like that of Simon Peter.

2)    What is our acceptance?

We see that it is the Lord that added to their number

a.      We see here that the addition is “to their number”, implying that addition was to a group of believers, and here the early form of the church.

b.     I did a lookup on the Greek form of the word “added” and what I found is that the subject, which is the Lord, is executing the action, which is adding. And that this adding is “an action continually or repeatedly happening in past time.” So it was not just one time, but continuous.

c.      The question to ask here would be how did God do this adding? Imagine our church now, how are new believers added? Was it by God blessing the church with babies? Did the believers do anything, or did they just sit there and watch new comers join the church by themselves? Or was it an outcome of a super duper evangelistic outreach program?

d.     If we look at Acts, there is no prescription around this, Luke hardly provides details about how to organize the church or around operations, although there are glimpses such as in Acts 6 about choosing seven men to help with operations while the apostles could focus on preaching the Word. But in general no prescription was provided around this.

e.      What I would suggest to this question is to think about how you came about to join Fairfield, or if you are here for the first time, think about what led you to be here. For most of the younger ones here, you are here most probably because of your parents. Or you could be here because of your friend who invited you here.

Most may not know how I came to be in Fairfield. I grew up in a Christian family and attended the Church my parents went to for almost 20+ years. At that point in time, I was the Youth leader of my previous Church and to cut a long story short, I felt wronged by the leaders, I felt that I wasn’t growing in the church and decided to leave the church. I left along with some others in the youth ministry and after almost a year of visiting different churches, we finally came to settle in Fairfield. Why Fairfield you may ask, well we felt it met most of the criteria we set for ourselves as a good church and eventually we took a vote. It has been almost I think 12-15 years since we joined.

f.      Now don’t get me wrong, I am not encouraging the youths or anyone else for that matter to leave Fairfield, but I shared my story to show that God works in many ways, and often beyond our immediate understanding. What is important is that we know He is sovereign and ultimately He is the one that adds and I believe the adding can take many different forms.

g.     The other point about the Lord adding is this - do we get to choose the people that are added to church? It is human tendency to relate to people that we think are alike with us. But if someone who is totally different from us or even worse, someone whom we think is obnoxious and not really fit to be a Christian joins our church, what would be our natural tendency? As I was thinking about this, it occurred that in the same way, other people may be thinking the same about ourselves. The church as we know is not perfect. I believe that the early church in Acts was also not perfect. But what was the difference? I think they were simply pursuing the right things. I would dare say that they realized their own depravity, they were motivated by more than their own concerns. Imagine if there were factions among them, would they have been attractive to those outside the church, would there be something radical about them, a divine unity that would have attracted others to want to be part of them?

h.     The fact of the matter is that we all crave acceptance, we all want to be loved, to be ourselves, but until we realise deep down that we are truly accepted by God for who we are, that it is God who chose us not because we are good in anyway, but because of who he is, that we can truly begin to be an intimate fellowship that shows Jesus to the rest of the world.

i.       Dietrich Bonhoeffer (he was a German Lutheran pastor who opposed the Nazi regime and was executed for his involvement in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffer was an important Christian theologian who wanted the church to become actively involved in solving the world's problems.) had this to share:

“It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!” 
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

3)    What is our attention?

We note that the adding was done daily

a.      I wondered about this as I was studying this passage. If you think in our context, our church is not exactly open every day. I mean it is for our pastors and staff who come in to work <share about lift breakdown>, but we only gather once a week, so how are new believers added every day or daily? One of the first thoughts I admit when I read this was - didn’t the early church goers have to work or go to school? Now if you pause for a while and think about my thoughts, what does it reveal about me? You would probably think that I have a very busy life to lead and having to deal with new believers everyday would almost be like a distraction, something that takes me unnecessarily away from my planned activities each day, in fact almost like a disruption!

b.     Before we start feeling guilty about this, some of us may argue that it was a custom for them to attend the temple together every day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon to pray. This is very much like today, for those of us who have Muslim friends or colleagues, we would notice that on Friday’s, they would usually have extended lunch hours, because they go to the mosques to pray. We don’t see it so much here, but when I was based in Jakarta for a few years, one thing that struck me was the early morning prayers that would wake me up and the evening prayers. Almost wherever you are, except maybe in a mall, you would be able to hear the prayers echoing from nearby mosques through loud speakers. And so we would say that it was part of the routine in the early church to meet every day in the temple and twice actually, so of course they could facilitate or bring new believers to church every day. But for us it is now culturally different.

c.      However I think if we were to be honest about it, what we fear is more the disruption to our routine, we have our priorities. And if I were to suggest even further, when we think about doing quiet time, or reading the bible or prayer, we may sometimes also think of those as disrupting our routine. What in effect we are saying is that spending time with God is not that important, it is not a priority, or maybe it is but not today, it will be a priority tomorrow.

d.     So what captures our attention? Is it the beauty of Christ and the manifold promises that he gives to us? Or does the world capture our attention more. If we take a quick look at Joseph in the OT, he was despised by his brothers, sold as a slave, but God was with him as Joseph sought to please him with his actions. Even his master recognised that.

Genesis 39:3 - His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. 

e.      The point is this, that we can allow the world to capture our attention or we can be like Joseph who made God his attention and in so doing Joseph was made successful in the eyes of the world, capturing all the world’s attention.

4)    What is our assurance?

Those added were those who were being saved

a.         Again I did a search to understand the Greek form of “those who were being save” and found out that it “denotes continuous kind of action. It shows 'action in progress'”. It also means that the “subject is the recipient of the action” or that "the performer of the action actually acting upon himself".

b.        I had a look at other versions of the bible and most of the versions phrase this in the same way. King James bible was one of the exceptions, which phrases it as “such as should be saved.”. That gives the notion that there are those that should not be saved that are not added.

c.         To further understand this, let’s turn to 1 Corinthians 1:8 which reads: 

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

d.        The phrase “who are being saved” appears again here. And we see here also that it also talks about “those who are perishing”. Putting what we have just understood together, what we can say is that salvation is a process, but so is perishing and we need to be sure on which side we are on. And one indicator as can be seen from the verse we just read is how we treat the Word of the cross.

e.         I would like to focus for a moment on the process of salvation. This is because I see that for those of us who are Christians, we are in the category of “those who were being saved”. It is just that we are all on different parts on this process of salvation. How do you see yourself along this process?

f.         Not only that, but if you consider for a moment the behaviours and actions of the early believers and you contrast it with our own behaviours today – are we at times thinking of excuses for ourselves?

g.        Or how about new converts in our midst, how would they view those who are older in the faith? Would they be inspired? Would they see us as models to follow?

h.        Which brings me to the question what is our assurance? Why is this important or relevant to this passage? I believe that those who are fully assured, will exhibit the characteristics of the early believers. I believe they were driven by joy not duty, they really wanted to serve and love one another because they truly felt they were first loved by God. They were more than willing to give up what they had for each other not to prove to each other and find acceptance, but they did so because they felt secure in God’s promises and felt instead they owed everything to God.

A story was told that some years ago at a drawing-room function, one of England's leading actors was asked to recite for the pleasure of his fellow guests. He consented and asked if there was anything special that his audience would like to hear.

After a moment's pause, an old clergyman present said: "Could you, sir, recite to us the Twenty-third Psalm?"

A strange look passed over the actor's face; he paused for a moment, and then said: "I can, and I will, upon one condition; and that is that after I have recited it, you, my friend, will do the same."

"I?" said the clergyman, in surprise. "But I am not an elocutionist. However, if you wish it, I will do so."

Impressively, the great actor began the psalm. His voice and his intonation were perfect. He held his audience spell­bound; and as he finished, a great burst of applause broke from the guests.

Then, as it died away, the old clergyman arose and began the psalm. His voice was not remarkable; his intonation was not faultless. When he had finished, no sound of applause broke the silence—but there was not a dry eye in the room, and many heads were bowed.

Then the actor rose to his feet again. His voice shook as he laid his hand upon the shoulder of the old clergyman and said: "I reached your eyes and ears, my friends; he reached your hearts. The difference is just this—I know the Twenty- third Psalm, but he knows the Shepherd."

i.          What is our assurance? If we do not know God, he is here waiting to enter your heart, all you have to do is to receive him by faith. The bible tells us that:

2 Cor 5:21 - For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

j.          Jesus, who knew no sin, died for us, this is amazing grace, this is the gospel and the power to save. There is no other name as beautiful as Jesus’. 

Matthew 11:28 - Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

k.        God also desires that his children persist and be earnest in the pursuit of full assurance. He doesn’t want us to live in fear of the future or uncertainty about our salvation. 

Hebrews 6:11 - And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

l.          In Fairfield, this is what we hope to do as part of our disciple-making journey. That we can all be faithful disciples and disciple-makers, and for those that come after us, hopefully we would be disciples they can imitate. At this point, I want to say a quick word about our disciple making efforts. There are feedback that there are too many programs, and that we should just go out there, and there’s also feedback that we are not organized enough. What Tim Keller says about the church is that it is both an organism and an organization. The bible describes the church as a living body, as such we cannot program or build that, else we may be building a Frankenstein, only God can build the body. On the other hand, the bible also alludes to the church being an organization. We are provided instructions about electing elders and deacons and given guidance around attributes of such office holders. Therefore I think we need to hold both in balance, we cannot have one without the other and we should not weigh into one side more than the other unnecessarily.

In conclusion, what does this passage mean for us today? 

·          What is our awakening – are we awakened to depravity of our sins and God’s glory? Let that humble us in our interaction with one another, to look out for the interests of others, as we follow Jesus who even though was the king of the universe, came down to earth to be a servant and humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death of a cross – that will give us.

·          What is our acceptance – do we truly believe that God has chosen and added us to his church, and seek our acceptance only from Him? And in so doing, let us not be hypocrites but be authentic with each other, so that we can truly encourage one another, to pray for another and to bear each other’s burdens.

·          What is our attention – does the world or our own interest capture our attention more than the beauty and infinite wealth of Jesus? Here I would want to encourage those who find it difficult to join a small group because of other commitments to make joining a small group your priority. Indeed it is within the context of a small group where we can share life and in so doing hopefully by His grace, save lives.

·          What is our assurance – do we know Jesus as our personal savior and are growing deeper and deeper in love with him every day? And in so doing, that will be the motivation to show the characteristics of the early church.

·          I thought the words of the hymn “When I survey the wondrous cross” aptly summarized what we have heard today and here are the words to close. 

When I survey the wondrous cross

On which the Prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all. 

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