Devoted

Well, again, good morning and welcome to Hope Lowertown. Those who don't know me, my name is Brian, lead pastor here, and excited to jump back into the book of Acts and looking at how the story continues. And so what the highlight of Acts is, is not. Not. Not Jesus. It is the apostles doing things. Now, the church, as we're gonna see, is gonna be starting to get established and gonna be learning things. But it's just that we were to see it in a couple weeks here in Acts, chapter four, it just says that through ordinary people that the gospel goes forth. And that's our story, that the story continues in that. And so part of that, I mentioned this. I wanna show a video. And this one is a little bit longer, but it just is really good. So as I watch it this week, I was like, man, there's no way I can't show this. So I just wanna show this video. It's from someone who doesn't attend church here. She goes to our downtown, ironically enough. I brought her up. I mentioned her last week. Florence Craig. Craig. I quoted her. So it's kind of ironic. So, anyways, I want to show this video, and then we will continue with our sermon in Acts this morning. All right. Again, that's just. We're talking last week, spent a whole sermon talking about Pentecost, and Henry's over there whispering 50th, not 15th, 50th, in case you were here last week. And, yeah, it's just beautiful to see that just through ordinary people. Just as someone who just says, I'm an artist, but I want to even. Just display what God has done for me, even through that, and see the beauty of God in that. Those of you who know me know I love cooking. And I recently, over Valentine's Day, I was like, I want to make. I want to do something different. I don't want to just do salmon, you know, or steak, or. I want to. Is there anything different that I could maybe make? And I didn't know. So, you know, I did what I. What any one of us would do. I chat. GPT. Give me. Give me something to make that's not your standard Valentine's Day meal. And so beef burgundy, or if you're French, beef bourguignon was one that popped up. And so I was like, all right, I'll give that a shot. And I just stumbled across. Cause then I watch YouTube or TikTok and I watch someone make it, but I stumbled across this guy. I don't know his name or his YouTube channel. I probably should give him credit, which I'm trying to do, but I don't know what it is. Oh, Order up. That's what it's called. Every time he makes a dish, he goes, order up. That's what it is. Anyways, he then kind of does this. He does, like a. He does what he calls a cage match. And he makes all the recipes. He opens a cookbook from all three. You got Julia Child, Anthony Bourdain, and Thomas Keller. And he makes all three of their Beef Burgundy recipes. And Julia Child won hands down. Apparently, in this. I was like, well, that's the one I'm gonna make. Right? I'll let you do all the work, and then I'll go with the recipe. It was really, really good, and it was different. I'd never had it before, so it was very good. I enjoyed it, and I know Angela liked it too. I did not serve it to the kids. They had chicken nuggets. I don't remember what they had that night, but they did not have that. Anyways, I say that because there's kind of this cage match. And sometimes what happens in the passage that we're about to read in End of Acts, chapter two, excuse me, is kind of this cage match between churches. Isn't that a beautiful picture? Just these, like. Just like, hey, what's the best kind of church? What's the best way to do church? And I'm gonna fight for my way to do it. And if you do it any other way, I think that you're wrong, and I think that you're shallow or you're too rigid or just fill in the blank. And it can turn into this cage match of churches that look down on one another or they feel that they're haughty, which should not be the case. And it for sure shouldn't be the way that we interpret this text, whether it's Baptist versus Presbyterian or Lutheran or a mega church versus a local church, or maybe organized religion versus. You know, we just need to get back to the house church. And so does the Book of Acts give us any insight in how we should do church today? That's what we're gonna be looking at a little bit this morning. Again, just a simple recap. Just Acts of the Holy Spirit through ordinary people. That's what this is. It's historically called the Acts of the Apostles, but this is really the Holy Spirit working through ordinary people as we see the church established and as it grows and spreads across the entire globe. And so we are going to start in Acts 1 this is where we have been in my former book. It's this doctor, a physician who writes this named Luke, and he seems to be funded by this guy Theophilus to write the book of Luke and now Acts. Acts is really just Luke 2. So if you are familiar with the Gospel of Luke, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Luke is one of the authors. And now we've got kind of Luke 2, where it's acts that in his first book, he writes about all Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven. And then this is now after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles that he had chosen. And again, this transparency of just saying there's going to be a lot of overlap between Luke and Acts that they kind of overlay on one another and makes a more beautiful, beautiful picture and fuller picture, as beautiful of a picture on a transparency projector could be. I guess today's sermon is just simply titled Devoted. As we'll see in this passage in Acts chapter two, we're gonna be looking at verses 41 through 47. And just to give a little bit of context, to kind of just remind us, and if you weren't here last week, that's okay. That's why I'm doing this, of saying what happened, right? So there's a little. A little flame there in Jerusalem. And this is where Pentecost happens. The Holy Spirit descends on the apostles and they start speaking about Jesus and telling people about Jesus, but everyone from all over the known world, from Rome and Greece and Africa and Asia, that they are Jews who have traveled to Jerusalem for this religious holiday, the first fruits of what would be called Pentecost and Greek. And they're traveling there and they go, holy cow. We can understand what they're saying in our own languages, that we can understand the Gospel, which just means good news of Jesus in their own language. And they believe. And so they're pilgrims. They're there. They're Jewish pilgrims, devoted Jewish pilgrims that are there to celebrate this Pentecost, this feast of the first fruits. And in doing so, they hear the good news about Jesus and they go, yeah, I'm on Team Messiah, on Team Jesus. Now. We didn't even know the Messiah had come. And now we are hearing this from the apostles in our own language. Let me just read the passage for today. It's a shorter one. And so let me just read it. So I'm going to go back one verse and the commentaries I was looking at this week, they actually group 41 to 47 and so I'm going to do that this morning, says those who accepted his message. This is Peter again preaching. Jesus were baptized and about 3,000 were added to their number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread into prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who are being saved. So if you have a handout, I've got just again simple outline and then the passage we'll be looking at and then in the back discussion questions if you're in a small group. So the first point here is one to one meaning how do we know what laws that the Bible talks about that we should apply to our lives? How do we decipher some laws versus other laws? Is it just Old Testament, New Testament? Is it but the New Testament? How are we supposed to interpret this? And do we just take what was said as then law, or this is the way the church ought to function? How do we know what to follow and what not to? Well, I've got two texts here, just two different laws. How do we know which one of these to obey? One of them says of any of you who hunts any animal or bird that may be eaten must drain the blood and cover it with the earth, because the life of every creature is in its blood. Some of you are hunters. I've hunted. Can't say I've ever done that. Am I in sin? Like what's happening here? I appeal to you, the next law here, that all of you who agree with one another, that all of you agree with one another in what you say, that there be no divisions among you, that you be perfectly united in mind and thought, well, which is it? Is it both? Are we look, that seems like a law with the old, with this understanding of the blood and of an animal. And then, yeah, we should be unified. All right, but we can look at this. The first one is Leviticus, chapter 17, 13 and 14. The second one is 1 Corinthians 1:10. And as we look at these two, we go, okay, well one of them, as the author of Hebrews clearly states, that this is old covenant, it's becoming obsolete. That by doing these rituals and these things, even though they might be good. It does not put me in a right standing with God the way the old covenant did. We have a new covenant that is in Christ. And so now when we have an apostle, one who was commissioned by God to give scriptures, to give word to the church of how we ought to live. Now, as followers of Jesus, you can see the difference. That one is very detailed. And you just keep reading that passage of like, you need to do this and don't do that, do this, don't do that. And then we've got this that's a little bit more broad. There are some specifics in the New Testament when it comes to these laws. And so the big idea when we look at, when we're interpreting the Bible is this phrase that I find very helpful, that is this text descriptive versus prescriptive? Is it describing what's happening or is it prescribing what's going on? Right. When you go to the doctor and you got some rash on your arm or whatever, right? And you're describing the rash to them, you're describing, how did it happen, what's going on? You're describing it. The doctor might even be describing what is going on with your body. But he's not prescribing anything yet. It's not until he then says, you need to do this, you need to keep it dry, you need to take this medication. He's prescribing something. But the problem is, so many times has the church and myself, you probably have done it as well that you take that. We take a passage in the scripture that's describing something that's going on, and we prescribe it. We take laws. That's why. You know, I grew up, you weren't allowed to have a tattoo. Why? Well, because there's a law in Leviticus about not getting tattoos. Okay, cool. But what about all the other laws in Leviticus we don't obey. I don't understand. We don't make sacrifices, right? So it was confusing that we would pick and choose certain laws that don't pertain to us. Mark chapter 11:1:7 says this. Jesus sent two of his disciples saying to them, go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, why are you doing this? Say the Lord needs it and we'll send it back here shortly. They went and found a colt outside the street, tied it at the doorway, and as they untied it, some people Standing there, asked, what are you doing untying that colt? And he answered as Jesus had told them to. And the people let them go. And when they brought the colt to Jesus, they threw their cloaks over it and he sat on it. Why did I read that? Here's why. Because no one ever, at least as long as I've been alive, has ever told me that you need to ride to church or anywhere on a donkey or a colt the way Jesus did. Right? This is describing what Jesus did. It's not prescribing. It's a narrative. It's very obvious. And yet so many times when we read something that's describing it, we go, oh, that's for us today, we gotta be careful on our interpretation. Maybe another way to look at that, that's the same thing would be descriptive versus prescriptive. But then narrative versus an epistle. An epistle is just a letter that an apostle wrote to the church. Is this a narrative? Is it describing what's happening versus this is what you need to do. This is why it happens a lot when you read the Old Testament and there's wild things that happen. They go, look what God. Look what God is having his people do. It's like, well, God's not doing that. The people are doing that. They're living in sin, right? This isn't what's happening. He's not prescribing that we have multiple wives. That's not what's happening. That's a negative thing that happens in the Old Testament versus an epistle that is very clear on how to live on so many things. And so I've shared this a million times. I'm not going to get into it, but this is again from Scott Duvall's Grasping God's Word Book of. Grasp the text in their town, you gauge the width of the river, cross the principalizing bridge, consult the biblical roadmap, and then you can apply it. And so when you read a text, if we just jump to application land, we get in trouble. So we got to cross or gauge the width of that river, meaning what is the genre? And if the genre is narrative, then I can learn something about who God is. I can learn something about how God moved in the early church. But to prescribe it as a one to one, we got to be careful to do that. Now, as we read this text, we're going to see, wow, there's a lot of really good things that the church should do and ought to be doing in that way. But the reason is, why do we do it because it says in the book of Acts, this is what the first century church did. Or do we do it because we love Jesus? That's a very different way of looking at this. So again, a narrative can still teach doctrine and what God thinks about a particular topic. That's what doctrine means. What does God think about a particular topic? So as we read narrative, we can learn a lot, but it's not necessarily law, do this or don't do that. The second point is then, is Luke then talking about having some kind of megachurch? Megachurch by definition is a church of over 2000 plus with many social and outreach ministries and their use of modern tech. So then, as Luke here then saying In Acts chapter 2, verse 41, those who accepted his message were baptized and about 3,000 were added to their number that day. So Luke here is saying, wow, we should have large churches just bursting at the seams. Is that what he's saying? No. Right again, because of what we're looking at. This is narrative. This is describing something that's happening. It's not prescribing. Luke here is not pro megachurch and he's not against megachurch. This has nothing to do with the size of church. He's simply describing what happens after Peter's sermon when they went from 120 in Jerusalem of followers of Jesus to over 3,000. What's interesting here, I think the point of this is that the ministry explodes. Think about this. Nowhere ever in the New Testament, any of the Gospels, excuse me, any of the Gospels do we see Jesus adding 3,000 followers to himself. He's got 12 disciples. There's like 70 at one point. It's small numbers of people who go, yeah, Jesus, you're doing these miracles. We believe you're the guy. Until they kill him. And then they leave. They scatter. They go, no, he clearly wasn't the Messiah. He clearly wasn't going to restore Israel to its proper standing and kick out Rome. He's not the Messiah. He needs to die. He's a false prophet. And yet we have then just a couple, 50 days later, Peter and the apostles getting up and preaching and 3,000 people that God is moving through ordinary people. In John chapter 14, Jesus tells his followers that he must leave so that the Holy Spirit, someone will, someone else will come to perform greater works, greater works than what Jesus does. And that same spirit is with us that we also get to point people to Jesus. We are ordinary people. Jesus doesn't do this. He could have just stood on a mountain and said, hey, I'm God. Look at me. Look at all the things I can do. There's something about ordinary people telling people and pointing to Jesus being a witness about who he is and what he's done, how he's transformed our lives, that takes faith and requires that faith. So there are really good things the first century church in Acts does here that every church, I think, should try to incorporate in some way or another. But not everything. Not everything because we read this and go, well, hold on a second. This seems like these are all really good things. We read that text. It's like, we should get back to the early church, right? This is something that I have heard, I have read books on this of like, we got to get back to an Acts chapter two church. And there's some really good things that we should try to incorporate, but not everything. Again, this is descriptive. And if we say that we should get back to an Acts chapter 2 Church, none of us, as far as I'm aware, would be allowed as part of this church. Why is that? Seriously? That's not a. What is it called? A rhetorical question? It is a rhetorical question. Why is it? How come none of us would be allowed into this church? We're not Jewish. We're not Jewish. Okay, sorry. Paul did something that made me laugh. Thanks, Elder Paul. All right, getting back here. All right, we're not Jewish. Okay, we're not Jewish. And so that's the thing is that when we look at the New Testament church in Acts Chapter two, it's very ethnocentric. It's actually very against everything that I would want to teach and preach about the new covenant in Christ. That is for all people in all nations, not just one ethnicity. It's about all nations through Jesus, not one nation through Israel. So when we use this phrase, we got to get back to the early church, we still, they the first early church, have a very truncated view on the scope of who God is planning on saving through his Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. So we got to be careful when we say that there are really good things in this passage that I think that we do incorporate as a church. But to say, oh, we got to get back again, it's, it's, you know, we're splitting hairs on words. And I get that. Semantics. But we gotta be careful here. We don't want to go back to the church that acts Luke here, Dr. Luke, is not prescribing what every church should do and how they should do it. What he does do is point out Some things that are really good that we should strive for. And this is the title of the sermon here. Devoted. So they devoted themselves. The they refers back to verse 41 of the 3000. Okay, so the 3000 individuals who are pilgrims who come to Jerusalem for Pentecost become followers of Jesus, and now they devote themselves. Why is this? Did the apostles say, hey, we got to do this? We're going to give a list of things to do so we can be the fastest growing church in the country? Well, I guess it would. It actually was in the world. Right. Well, we're do that. We've got this strategy that we're going to plan. We're going to. We're going to do this, and we're going to do this, and we're going to do this, and then. And then we'll grow exponentially and all this thing would be great. No, it's got nothing to do with that. This is a natural outcome of being a follower of Jesus. That when we live for Jesus, we become a fully devoted follower is a natural outcome of seeing Jesus and meeting him. When I was a kid, this comes up every once in a while because a lot of, you know, I grew up in Chicago, and yet I'm a Green Bay Packer fan. Praise God. Now, why is that? Right? Nobody here's a Bears fan, right? Yeah. Okay, so we're on the same page. We're on that team, right? My kids call it. They say the Stinky Bears. It's the Stinky Bears. Not the Bears. It's the Stinky Bears. Right? I don't do that with the Vikings. It's just the Vikings and it's the Stinky Bears. I had a point to that. Let me grab it. If I chase the rabbit. Let's catch it. Here it is. So that when I was a child, right, I grew up in Chicago, and the Bears were awful. It was the early 90s, and they were terrible. And I started playing football, and I started watching football, and I was like, why would I ever be a Bears fan? They're terrible. And then I turn the TV on and I see Brett Favre. I'm like, when you see Jesus as beautiful, you can't help yourself. You go, yeah, I'm on Team Packers. I'm on Team Jesus. They're synonymous. Obviously, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. This is interesting. And it was something that I was trying to figure out this week of, like, why. Why would it say Jesus teaching? Because this actually is synonymous here that they learned. The apostles sit under the teaching and Preaching of Jesus for three years and then they go, oh, yeah, now this is the outcome. We learned, we listened, and now we are actually applying this to the New Testament. Ff Bruce says this, this teaching was authoritative because it was the teaching that the Lord communicated through the apostles in the power of the Spirit. For believers of later generations, the New Testament scriptures form the written deposit of the apostolic teaching. So we have the apostles, these epistles, these letters from the apostles with authoritative teaching written to the church. It is about Jesus because it's from Jesus. But notice they don't just study theology. Luke here doesn't just say that they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching period. It isn't just. They don't just become theological nerds studying theology and doctrines. Good. It's helpful. It's great. I think it gives you a greater view of God and it increases your love for God. That's been my experience. And it's a good thing, but it's not the only thing. And it can't even be the highest thing. There's a balance between other things that Christ taught. What are some other things they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship. Fellowship is one of those interesting words that's very Christianese, right? It's a. A lot of Christians might use that word, fellowship, because it's in the Bible. We use the word community. It seems to be a little bit more fitting in our context. In college, I went to Fellowship Baptist Church, and that was everyone. It was like the boring church they used to call it. Oh, you go to Fell Asleep Baptist Church. It's like, yeah. And then unfortunately, the pastor's name was Moore. Instead go, oh, you go to Pastor Snores Fell Asleep Church. It was like, I loved it. I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. I had no problem going to that church. But it is a very Christian word. Right? The problem with it, though, is that when community, when you just take fellowship or community and it becomes the thing, it can become an idol. When it becomes the main thing or the only thing or the highest thing. I or you. We might. You might gain a best friend from somebody in this room. Like a bff. Like, we are Ride and die. Let's go get matching tattoos. Like, you might get that. Probably not. And that's okay, right? That's not necessarily a bad thing. You might not. This is the longest. This is just Brian talking. This is the longest I've ever attended a church. Hope Lowertown is by far the, like, double. Literally double the amount I've ever been at a church. Has Been hope Lowertown. And I've got some really good friends here. And that's good, and that's a positive thing. But we go through spiritual seasons and highs. Those are good. Those are really good. To long for those things again. Maybe it was a time in college, maybe it was a friendship or relationship you had when you were maybe just graduated and you got plugged into a new church, like your first real adult church. Maybe that was the time where you just were on fire for God and you were just loving it. You had some really good relationships, and for whatever reason, you moved. And now we're just kind of. Man, I just. I wish I had that. And it's good to long for. It's good to strive for that again. It's good to miss it, even without making it the end goal, without making it an idol. Because the thing is, when we look at that word fellowship and community, it's not always a positive thing. Community isn't always equally reciprocated. You can really try to be a good friend to someone, but if they just. They're just wired differently, and that's okay, right? It's not a bad thing. And also, what happens within community is pain and suffering. That. That we're all not just living on clouds and rainbows and sprinkles and sunshine here, right? We go through life and it's hard and it's difficult. And when someone else is going through a difficult time, well, I'm. I'm doing okay. I don't want to get, you know, into their mess. That's part of community. As we enter into one another's suffering, we can worship the idea of church or a past church and not be present in our current church. You will see that that only leads to frustration. There was a time. This is a picture of myself and all my Viking family. The packers had just won. It's weird how that happens. It didn't happen this last year. I know and I know it. We have a bad year once every century or two. And so what happened here, obviously, what's going on, I cherish this time. I was just telling my wife this. There was a time where my cousin, who's my best friend, Nathan, he lived just 10 minutes from me. And we both had dogs. He had a German shepherd. I had a golden retriever. And he'd watch our dog and I'd watch their dog and go on vacation. It was just a sweet time. It's such a good time together. And I look back at that time. Cause then he moved. He moved all the way to Minnetonka, it's like, that's not that far. It's like, yeah, it actually is. Right when you're just like, hey, I'm kind of bored. You want to hang out? No, that's like a. That's a commitment now, right? No, no, I'm not that. I don't like you that much. And so this was a sweet time. And I look at that time with fondness and gladness and it warms my heart. But if I say, well, let's try to re. Let's try to replicate that. Well, then what? We got to buy a dog again. And then I got to clean it up in the spring. How gross. Like, I don't want to mess with all that. It was a sweet time and it's good to miss that. And some of us might have that spiritually, we might have that within a church or a pastime to say, yeah, I want to long for that. Maybe we can replicate that. That's good. But don't make that the thing. It'll become an idol and you will simply get frustrated. They devoted themselves, the apostles teaching to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Again, the. Let's talk about sharing a meal. Come over to my house after church if you wanna. Again, I'd love to just break a meal, share a meal with you. This became this idea of breaking bread was an idea that they would actually have a meal together. And that would slowly then turn into just historically, what we would call the Lord's table or communion, that they would actually do that. They would have a meal and they would break bread. Cause bread was at every meal. And they would do that and they would say, yeah, this is to remember what Jesus did for us. And so again, pray to the pastors and then to prayer. These books came in A Praying Life and so I've got 20 of them in the back. If you are interested in a book free of charge, just grab one. If you're like, this is my first time ever coming to church, take a book. This is my gift to you. Our gift to you. A Praying Life by Paul Miller. I started reading it and it's really good. So now I can recommend it. I bought it and now it's good. I'm telling you, it's really good. So let me give a little teaser here. This is from Paul Miller talking about this praying life of devoting ourselves to prayer. So when Jesus tells us to become little children, he isn't telling us to do anything he hasn't already Done. Jesus is without question the most dependent human being who ever lived because he can't do life on his own. He prays and he prays and he prays. Luke tells us that Jesus would withdraw to desolate places to pray in Luke 5:16. And when Jesus tells us that apart from me you can do nothing, John 15:5, he is inviting us into his life of a living dependence on his heavenly Father. I even, I started reading this book and I had to go find a highlighter, which I don't think I've ever. I haven't done that since like seminary when I had to like get tested on something. So it's really been really been a good book. So encourage you to grab that. If you are a couple, maybe just grab one and you can share. Just use different colored highlighters or something. Next, next little chunk here. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Again, if this is narrative, this is descript. This is. This is not a commentary on government. This isn't a commentary on lifestyle and where we should be today. Is there anything wrong with this? Is there anything with the believers kind of pulling things together and sharing all that have in common? Not necessarily to some extent, because I've also been part of a commune and part of a community that's just only Christians. We're just gonna hang out with Christians. We're not gonna talk to anyone that's worldly. We're not gonna do anything worldly. We're all just gonna, hey, we got everything in common. But then those kinds of people and ways of life tend to die off because they're not sharing the good news of Jesus. They're not any contact with anybody else. It says all the believers were together and had everything in common. This is again, a really good thing to do. But the principle here, when we cross that principalizing bridge, is that when you have a need, the church comes together to help. And I know a lot of us that have been part of this community for a while, that when there's a need and we express that need, that our small groups, our friends in this church, maybe even the church itself financially, is able to say, hey, let's try to help one another. Let's care for each other in ways that we wouldn't be able to do if you're on our own. That's part of being in a community. Again, the context is you've got 3,000 people who don't live there, staying now for an extended period of time. They're pilgrims, they came, they learn about Jesus, they get saved and they say, I wanna stay and I wanna learn, but I don't have anywhere to stay. I don't have any income, I don't have any food. And so the people that lived in Jerusalem that had land would sell property and they'd get the income and they would all share. I think it was very unique for that time and that culture. Not necessarily again, what we need to do. But there are principles there that still apply to anyone who's just a follower of Jesus to care for one another, to meet one another's needs. For sure, I can't read my notes. I was going to say something else there, but moving on. Acts chapter 2. Looking at verse 46. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts and they broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts. I have read books and parts of books that talk about this, why we need to move back to a home or a house style church, that we don't need organized religion, we don't need a professional pastor over anything. We need to get back into our homes. Because that's what Luke says here. Again, that's not what's happening. And when we look at the context, he also says that they met together in the temple courts. This is a huge area. In other we can figure out that they most likely met in what's called Solomon's colonnade or portico. It's kind of the area that has all those pillars over there, this big outdoor area. They would go over there, they would teach and they'd preach and they would listen to the apostles teaching. And because it was a huge crowd that they would go back into the homes to eat a meal together in smaller units. And then it says this, praising God and enjoying all favor, the favor of all people. And the Lord added their number daily, those who are being saved. Again, FF Bruce says this. Within the community there was a spirit of rejoicing and generosity. Outside it, they enjoyed great popular goodwill. The praises of God were constantly on their tongues. Their numbers were constantly increased. And he added more and more believers to the faithful remnant. That's just a word of Israelites believing in the Messiah. It is the Lord's prerogative to add new members to his own community. It is the joyful prerogative of existing members to welcome to their fellowship those whom he has accepted. Jesus teaches us In John chapter 13 this idea, a new Commandment I give you love one another as I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know. Everyone is going to know that you are my disciples. How? If you love one another. That's how they know if you love one another. So in conclusion, in Gospel application, let's devote ourselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship and to breaking of bread into prayer. Let's not idolize one over the other. It's easy to do, right? We all have different personalities and perspectives. Some of us love theology. Me and I would love to just. Let's just study that, make that our thing. Well, that's not the thing. It can't be the thing. Let's focus on community and just be really good friends and be really close knit. That's great. It can't be the only thing. Let's get into each other's houses, let's have meals together. It's all about sharing meals together. That's really good and it's important, but it's not the thing. But prayer, we for sure need to be a people of prayer. We need to be people that pray, that depend on the Spirit for all those things. And when all those things are combined, we can live that lower town life. I got stickers. Yeah, look at that. I ordered way too many of them. Okay, so it was cheaper to order 500 than 100. Okay. I don't get how that works. But anyways, they're in the back. So grab a book, grab a lot of stickers, and they're like waterproof. They're good ones. You can put them on anything. They stick to anything. Imagine that. But this is what the lower town life is. I want to devote, become a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ. That is our mission statement. I want to honor God by helping as many people as possible become fully devoted followers of Jesus. I want to honor God by helping as many people as possible, sharing the good news and being fully devoted followers of Jesus. Devoted to the apostles, teaching to fellowship with one another, to breaking of bread and to prayer. And so, last question, and I don't mean to end on maybe a heavy note, but maybe a little bit more introspective, because it hit me this week as I was thinking about this, as I was reading that quote from FF Bruce, is there anyone who could walk through those doors that you would have a hard time welcoming into our fellowship? That's a real question. Is there a person, you know, maybe even a political party that maybe would walk in and go, holy cow, you don't belong Here. Oh, maybe it's a relative, maybe it's a friend, somebody who just. Yeah, I don't. I'd have a really hard time if they became part of our church again. That quote from Bruce is. It is the joyful prerogative of existing members to welcome to their fellowship those whom he has accepted. We now have an opportunity and a time here to break bread. We get a chance now to break bread with one another. It's not a meal the way it would have been back then. You can do that at my house after church. But this is communion. And so we take the juice that represents the blood of Christ that was shed for our sin. We take the wafer. There's a gluten free option on my left if you need that on your right. And we get to take that and we get to break it. And we get to remember the finished work of Christ for us on the cross. Let me pray and let's give God the glory and let's kind of recommit ourselves to our mission statement to honor God by helping as many people as possible become fully devoted followers of Jesus and to devote ourselves to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to breaking of bread and to prayer. Let me pray. Father, thank you for our time together. I pray that as we worship you now in this opportunity to break bread, to share this, this meal of sorts together in your remembrance, the finished work of Christ on the cross. That is what you did that yet we are ordinary people. And your spirit can choose to work at any time your spirit wants to work. But we are ordinary people pointing people to Jesus. Would you help us do that? Half the time we don't know what we're saying. We don't know what we're doing. But your spirit can use that. And you can take people who are spiritually dead and make them spiritually alive for all of eternity. That's our prayer. And pray for any of us who maybe when I read that last question, is there anyone that maybe somebody specific came to mind? Would you help us to repent of that and then change? And maybe we haven't been willing to share the gospel with somebody simply because we just don't like them personally. Would we repent of them? Because thankfully you aren't like that. We are those people who walked in at some point because your spirit led us to and you changed us. You brought us back to life. You quickened us. So God we love you. It's your name we pray. Amen.