The Church that Eats Together
Who likes food? I want to tell you a sad statistic. 10% of the world’s population goes to bed hungry every night.[1] I eat a snack before bed just because I’m bored, and up to 783 million people are going to bed hungry. We need food in order to live. We need food for health and vitality. What happens when someone doesn’t have food? They become malnourished.
If someone is physically malnourished, there are signs. Here are some of them:[2]
· Reduced appetite
· Lack of interest in food and drink
· Feeling tired all the time
· Feeling weaker
· Getting ill often and taking a long time to recover
· Wounds taking a long time to heal
· Poor concentration
· Feeling cold most of the time
We’re not here to talk about food this morning. There is something of greater importance than the body that is nourished by food. It’s the soul. In the same way the body needs to be fed, so does the soul. 68.2% of the world’s population claims to be non-Christian. They aren’t feeding on the things of God, and there’s many more who claim to be Christians who are not feeding on the things of God as well. If someone isn’t feeding on the things of God, they become spiritually malnourished. If someone is spiritually malnourished, there are signs as well, and even ones that go along with the signs of physical malnourishment.
· Reduced appetite for the things of God and gathering with God’s people
· Lack of interest in God’s Word
· Feeling apathetic all the time
· Prone to give into temptation
· Having bouts of depression or spiritual darkness
· Hold grudges and prone to bitterness
· Easily focused on the things of the world, not on things above
· Cold-hearted
If someone is physically malnourished, what should you do? Give them food! If someone is spiritually malnourished, what should you do? Give them spiritual food! And then if someone is eating properly and has the proper nutrition, what are they. They are healthy. Did you know that not only can individuals be spiritually malnourished, but churches can be as well? Well, that’s what we’re going to see today. We’re going to see some signs of a healthy church.
We have previously dug into each one of these areas of what the church devoted themselves to in our series, “Devoted.” We’re going to take a broader look today. I’m sure you want to be healthy. I hope you desire that our church be healthy. The picture we see here in Acts 2 is, I believe, the healthiest the church has ever been. So, let’s see where their health comes from and let’s seek to model our lives and our church after this healthy first church.
1) A proper relationship to God
Their devotion was first and foremost to God. It wasn’t to themselves or based on what others thought. Their devotion was first and foremost to God. He was the center of all they did. God should be central to all our pursuits. That means our motives must be in their proper place. We will see two ways God was central to their pursuits and how he should be central to ours as well.
Study God’s Word. (vs 42) They were devoted to the apostles’ teaching. “God builds his church by his Word.”[3] The pastor H.B. Charles said this a few days ago, and I love it. Remember, we are talking about the health of the church. He said this:
“The week-to-week diet of a local church should consist of the interpretation and application of one passage of scripture. It is better to go deeper into one text than to touch multiple verses superficially. Dig deeper wells!”
That’s why we are walking through scripture together. When we do so we grow as God intends. When you hit different passages and cover topics, you grow only as deep as the pastor that is teaching. I seek to look like Christ, but I am far from it! That’s partly why you should be shaped by God’s Word, not by me.
I love how Tony Merida explains this in terms of how the Apostle Paul led the church:
“In this Spirit-filled congregation the people didn’t abandon study of the Word because the Spirit was at work. If you’re walking in the fullness of the Spirit, you will be drawn to the Bible. All true spiritual awakenings involve healthy teaching from it. Consider the apostle Paul. Was anyone more Spirit filled or Spirit led than this man? Yet we repeatedly find him teaching the gospel message from the Word of God (18:11; 19:10; 20:20, 31); it is central to his life. He repeatedly urges Titus and Timothy to teach sound doctrine to churches because there’s no substitute for it (e.g., 1 Tim 4:16; Titus 2:2). Healthy congregations, Paul knows, consume a healthy diet of sound doctrine. They feast on the Word of God, which tells the message of the Savior.”[4]
You know what is a sign of a healthy church? They eat together. They feast on the Word of God. And when you feast on the Word of God, you will never go hungry. “Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”[5]
Worship God together. (vs 46-47) They were attending the temple together, day by day, and they were praising God. I want to ask you…do you have a song in your heart? Is there praise in your heart? Is there a godward song in your heart? If there is, then it’s a sign that you are spiritually healthy. Singing and praise is a sign of spiritual vitality. You might say, “I don’t really feel like praising God right now.” Remember, this point is falling within the larger context of a proper relationship with God. I want to ask you something. Is God worthy of your praise whether you feel like He is or not? The answer is an overwhelming yes!
The other time Luke used this exact word for “praise” is Luke 2:20. This is during the Christmas story when the angels proclaimed the good news of great joy that will be for all the people, and right after they went and saw this good news for themselves. Luke says, “And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.” Glorifying God and praise go hand in hand.
We have become so me-centered in our culture and age that we often make praise and worship about us! You look at majority of hit worship songs today and you will find a common theme—me! God is worth worshiping, yes, because of what He does for us. He is mighty to save! It’s just like when God led His people out of Egypt, they couldn’t help but sing and praise God!
Exodus 15:1-2
1 Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying,
“I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.
2 The Lord is my strength and my song,
and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise him…
God is worthy of our worship not just for what he does, but for who he is. Hear what Moses and the people sing in verse 11:
“Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?”
God is worthy of our praise, period. Church, let’s take the gaze off ourselves and place it on God. You know what doesn’t matter? The style of music. You know what does matter? The content that informs our praise and the heart of the worshipper. If you are healthy spiritually, you should be coming to church already busting at the seams with a song of praise in your heart.
2) A proper relationship with one another (42, 44, 46)
If you remember the fellowship message of our “Devoted” series, you will remember that there are 100 “one-anothers” found in the New Testament. One sign of a healthy church is eating God’s Word together. Do you know what another sign of a healthy church is? Literally eating together. You love spending time with one another! You have a bond that is deeper than the superficial bonds of our culture. You are bound by the blood of Christ and made one in him! So, we shouldn’t just share meals. We should share life.
You will not have the fellowship that marks a healthy Christian life if you don’t show up consistently. You have to be present. I love how Tony Merida says this:
“Half the job of a good church member is showing up! You can’t build relationships if you aren’t meeting with God’s people…The church met both at the “temple” and “house to house.” One gathering was large, and one was small.”[6]
We are going to seek to model our devotion to fellowship and God’s Word together after the early church. This September we will roll out groups in peoples’ homes on Sunday nights or other times throughout the week. And it is all modeled after God’s design here in that healthy early church. You see, fellowship is so much deeper than how we often seek to practice it. It’s not an event at church. It’s not a meet and greet. It’s a shared life.
Share fellowship (koinonia). (42) This word for fellowship is the Greek word koinonia. It’s much deeper than what we often attribute to what fellowship is.
“This kind of fellowship did not exist before the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The Greek word used here (koinonia) is not even found in the Gospels. This is the first occurrence of the word in the New Testament. The root idea is “commonness” or “commonality.” New Testament Greek is called koine Greek because it was the common Greek of the day—the street language of the people.
Every time this word is used in the New Testament, it denotes some kind of sharing—either sharing something with someone (for instance, in 2 Corinthians 8:4; 9:13 where it means an offering, collection, or contribution) or sharing in something someone else is experiencing. Here in Acts the emphasis of the word is on contributing or giving. The foundation of the early Christians’ fellowship was giving.”[7]
Fellowship comes through giving. (45)
“So many people never know the joys of Christian fellowship because they have never learned to give themselves away. They visit a church or small study group with an eye only for their own needs (hardly aware of others) and go away saying, “There is no fellowship there.” The truth is, we will have fellowship only when we make it a practice to reach out to others and give something of ourselves.”[8]
Do you give of yourself, or do you expect fellowship to come to you?
3) A proper relationship to the world (45, 47) We have seen that a healthy church should eat together. We should feast on God’s Word, and we should share our lives with one another. We should literally eat together. But there’s one more sign of a healthy church we see here. We should share our bread. If someone is hungry, and you know it, what should you do? Give them food. We saw earlier that man does not live by bread alone, but by the Word of God. Our spiritual lives are of more value than our physical lives. Our body will die, but our soul will live on forever. If we are truly to feed people, we must feed them the Word of God.
Share God’s Word. People all around you are spiritually malnourished. Many are clinically dead. But you have the best news in the world. Jesus brings people to life! And His Word brings life!
Meet people’s physical needs. (45) We shouldn’t only meet people’s spiritual needs, but we should meet their physical needs as well. God really convicted me of this this week while I was studying for this message. I was reading about an ancient document from the mid 300s that described the compelling nature of Christianity at that time. Here’s what I read:
“Emperor Julian angrily tried to stop the spread of Christianity. He said that a reason for its growth was due to Christians’ “charity to the poor”: “The impious Galileans not only feed their own poor but ours as well,” he complained, “welcoming them to their agape; they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes.”[9]
The commentator referencing this then said:
“What amazing descriptions of the King’s people! Our broken world needs compassion, and the watching world needs to see Christians demonstrating it. In turn, many will be attracted to the faith.”[10]
As I was reading this, do you know who was outside my office? There was a homeless man taking a nap at the picnic table. I was just going to leave him alone and let him rest. God had a different plan. And He has a different plan for us. We’re not called to sit back. We have bread and the bread of life! It was Tuesday, so the summer lunch program (who literally feeds children both bread and the bread of life twice each week!) was preparing their meals. I went and asked them, and they made extra for this man. I then went and talked with him, listened to him as a person (because he is a person, created in the image of God, and dearly loved by God), gave him food, gave him one of our “The Four” bracelets, and prayed for him. He said he was a believer in Jesus. I don’t know if he was or not, but I do know he was fed. He was fed physically and spiritually, and he walked away knowing God sees him and loves him.
I’m not telling you this to pat myself on the back. I’m telling you this out of confession. I was going to just let him sit there! If God hadn’t had me read those very words about caring for the poor while the poor was literally sitting outside, I would have missed the opportunity God had clearly placed before me. I wonder how many opportunities we miss daily.
In verse 47 we see they were “having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” All the people. The church had favor with them. Can the same be said of us? We shouldn’t just be a church for “them.” We should be a church of “them.” The Lord added to their number…with “those” people. If we are truly living this out, as a healthy church, this church will start to look different, because the people will start to look different. God turns those people into His people.
We’ve got to get away from this notion of the church as a structure. We have to get back to the reality that it is a people. When we think of the church as a structure, and we hear messages like this, it seems like there is no way we can ever live up to the model set by this early church. We have this mindset because, if we have our kids in school, and we have these sports programs, and we are involved in this organization, and my wife and I need a date night, and you just keep adding to the list, where can all of this church stuff add into the mix? They were gathering daily. Some of us have a hard time gathering once a week.
The thing is, the church isn’t something you go to. It is something you are. When you realize this, it changes everything. All of those activities you were previously doing, you are the church at those, either glorifying God with other believers or reaching out to unbelievers. The only structured corporate gathering we see in these passages is found in verse 46. They were “attending the temple together.”
You are attending the church building together right now. And as you leave this building, you aren’t leaving the church, you are leaving as the church. You are leaving to go be the church. To feast and feed throughout the week.
We said it at the beginning, God should be central to all our pursuits. That means our whole life. When you pause and look at your life, can you genuinely say He has all of it? Do you have a song in your heart? Are you feeding yourself, eating with others, and feeding those in need? Or do you have signs of spiritual malnourishment? There’s a cure. It’s Jesus. You can eat freely of the Bread of Life.
Jesus said in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
[1] https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/10-quick-facts-hunger-wfps-work
[2] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/malnutrition/symptoms
[3] Tony Merida, Exalting Jesus in Acts, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary (Nashville: B&H, 2017), 35.
[4] Merida, Exalting Jesus in Acts, 35-36.
[5] Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4
[6] Merida, Exalting Jesus in Acts, 40.
[7] R. Kent Hughes, Acts, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1996), 48.
[8] R. Kent Hughes, Acts, 49.
[9] Originally from Epistle to Pagan High Priests. Referenced in: Tony Merida, Exalting Jesus in Acts, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary (Nashville: B&H, 2017), 41.
[10] Merida, Exalting Jesus in Acts, 41.
