Clough Acts Lesson 8

Dipped or Damned – Acts 2:37-47

 

[Feedback card] …Paul was the apostle who replaced Judas, then you list the qualifications of the apostles, such as how he was commissioned in acts 9.  In Acts 3 you say Matthias is the apostle that replaced Judas and that  Paul is a special apostle to the Gentiles.  Have you changed your mind from Ephesians to Acts and why?  Yes I have, for reasons which I gave when I dealt with verse 26 in Acts 1 which were: (1) there were only twelve apostles, that’s taught in Matthew 19:28 and Revelation 21; (2) the circle of twelve apostles was closed before Paul came along; that’s taught in Acts 2:14 and Acts 6:2; conclusion therefore that Matthias was the twelfth apostle; Paul was later on commissioned as an apostle but wasn’t considered in the circle of the twelve. 

 

Let’s turn to Acts 2 and continue our study of the first recorded sermon in church history.  This sermon is important for us because the sermon gives us “the real thing” to paraphrase the commercial of a certain well-known product.  Here you have the real thing, which is real evangelism; evangelism at it’s best.  Although it’s a special form of evangelism due to that particular situation at that particular time, the principles carry over to our day and if you compare how Peter does his thing with how many Christians do their thing today you’ll see there’s quite a bit of difference.  Notice the sermon stopped in verse 36, it began in verse 14.  That makes a total of 23 verses.  Now if we go through that 23 verse section and count the number of full Old Testament quotes we’ll see verse 17, 18, 19, 20, 21; there are five verses that are just simply nothing more than a direct quote out of the Old Testament.  Then we have verse 25, 26, 27, 28, four more, that makes nine verses.  Then we have verses 30-31, two more, that makes 11 verses.  Verses 34 and 35, two more, that makes 13 verses.  So there were thirteen out of twenty-six or better than 50% of Peter’s sermon direct Old Testament quote.  That does not count the number of words that he uses borrowed from those Old Testament quotes by way of comment in the rest of the speech. 

 

What does that tell us?  It tell us one thing; it tells us that Peter, when he preached his evangelistic sermon emphasized the divine viewpoint framework.  He emphasized the basic truths of Scripture before he got into the detailed truths of Jesus Christ.  You cannot preach Jesus too fast and the reason for that, it goes back to the way we were made, the soul. We are made to receive the Word of God through our central nervous system, through our eyes, through our ears, going through the brain to the mind.  Now the mind and the conscience work in coordination with one another, the conscience bearing witness when true revelatory material is being entertained in the mind.  And so the conscience gives its approval and cycles with the mind this way. As the mind receives categories of doctrine it builds this divine viewpoint framework; it begins to have the ability to subdue the world around us, to handle the problems of life, to analyze correctly why things happen, why things don’t happen, how things happen, why people say the things they do, why history moves the way it moves.  All of this is possible only when the mind receives what God has put into history. 

 

Now Peter emphasized in his sermon over and over this divine viewpoint framework, so that when he then came to announce Jesus people could interpret Jesus’ character truly.  See, it doesn’t do any good to slap a bumper sticker on your car, “Honk if you love Jesus” and various other idiotic things because the word Jesus can mean many things to many different people.  Everyone has their idea of what Jesus is, or was like during the days of His incarnation.  Now which idea of Jesus is the right one.  If you just tell me honk if you love Jesus, or believe on Jesus or Jesus this or Jesus that, that tells me nothing because you have an idea in your head what Jesus is and I have an idea in my head and if those two ideas don’t correspond, I can’t respond to the Biblical Christ.  So this is why in the New Testament evangelism was concerned very much preparing people for the message of Jesus Christ than just giving them the message of Jesus Christ; a lot of material just in preparation.  Why?  So the mind would be prepared and have the categories available to it.  Some of those categories, some of the things that people have to be clear on before they can correctly Jesus would be who and what God is.  They must be clear on this and a lot of people aren’t clear on this.  God becomes an “it,” He becomes a process, and this is why the combination of western liberal theology and eastern religion is so popular.  There’s no difference between Paul Tillich and an Indian guru, they both say the same thing, that God is an impersonal it, and therefore we are just kind of little warts floating on the sea of impersonality.  That kind of thing; that’s all the world’s nature religions, apart from the near offshoots of the Christian faith. 

 

Now Peter gives his people all this background and the result, Acts 2:37, “When they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?”  “What shall we do?”  Notice there was real conviction wrought in the hearts of those people.  These people didn’t run around, they didn’t scream, yell, they didn’t carry on, they didn’t holler and whoop and so on. What did they do? They asked for a specific set of instructions because Peter had convinced them so soundly of something. 

 

And then in Acts 2:38 we come to our little verse of being baptized.  Let’s see what Peter told them in response to their question.  “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  [39] For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord, our God, shall call.  [40] And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked” or untoward “generation.”  We come to Acts 2:38, and item of controversy, particularly in this part of the country. 

 

To understand Acts 2:38 we want to pause for a few moments and review some English grammar.  This sounds incongruous to do on a Sunday morning but I found that I can’t explain things because I presume that people know this and they don’t, so we’re going to go back through an English verb.  English verbs can be classified six ways; they can be classified as to whether they’re singular or plural and can be classified as to whether they’re first person, second person or third person.  This is what we used to have in English courses before we began creative writing in second grade.  I say, first person singular; we say, plural.  Now the third, he or she or it says.  They say.  And we used to in the King James have a distinction in the second person; today because language tends to coalesce with time, in modern English we’ve lost the distinction between the singular and the plural, that is, except in Texas, it Texas it’s y’all if you mean second plural and singular, but in the mainstream of English there is no such thing; these two things have coalesced.  Now in the King James translation which some of you despise, and you shouldn’t because it really is excellent in the English; thee, and it’s ye, these are two things that we use; it wouldn’t be used in this situation, but thee, or thou has said, something like this would be used and ye; and the reason you see that isn’t because they liked to talk that way, it’s because they were trying to distinguish between the singular and the plural of the second person which we don’t.  Our language has become ambiguous at this point; we don’t have the flexibility in our language that we used to have in  years gone buy.  So here is a verb chart; now supposedly everyone learns that in grammar school and as we move to Acts 2:38 we’re going to use that because the first verb is “repent.”  It is second plural, “you all repent” it says.  Then it says, “be baptized,” third singular … third singular.  Now these two verbs have a shift in them and this is an unusual shift, it’s not in the other exhortations in the book of Acts.  Most exhortations in the Scripture are all second person.  So you find a verb not only shifts from plural to singular but it also shifts from second person to third person, that’s a sign that hey now, just a minute, let’s read this through slowly and find out what’s happening.   and when we observe further in the text, we read down, it says “be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins,” it literally in the original reads “for the remission of your sins,” “… your sins.”  That in the Greek is second person plural.  That means by a most elementary rule of language, that the phrase “for the remission of your sins” cannot be attached to the third singular verb; it must be attached to the second plural verb.  So this phrase is not to be attached to the phrase, “be baptized,” but to the verb “repent.” 

 

Let me try to illustrate why.  If I were to say: let each one of you be baptized for the sins of the world, would that make sense, or would it make more sense to say: let each one of you be baptized for your personal sin.  In that case what I said, your personal sins, that would be your (singular) sins, so you have this shift to the plural.  This is a plural, this is a plural, so that phrase goes with this verb, not with this verb.  It’s just the attraction of like number in the syntax.  You say well if that’s the case then how come the phrases don’t repeat each other this way.  For the reason that in the Greek you don’t have underlining, italics and other systems that we do in the English for emphasis and the way you emphasize in the Greek is syntactically, by ordering the words and the phrases in the sentences, by arranging clauses for emphasis.  This was the way they had of doing it, so here Peter is emphasizing the acts that he wants the people to do; repent and be baptized.

 

Now keep in mind that this doesn’t solve all of the theological difficulties of verse 38; I’m not proposing this as a solution to all the theological difficulties of Acts 2:38 but I am saying that it helps you solve some of these difficulties if you will understand that in Peter’s mind it was repentance that was associated with remission of sins, not water baptism.  Water baptism was something that came afterward.  So we can put it all together and say this is how it looks: “Repent for the remission of your sins, and each one (who repents understood) let him be baptized.”  That’s the point that he’s saying.  He shifts because he addresses the entire group of people listening to the sermon by the verb repent; then he addresses those who have already repented, he says for you people, sub group of the big group, you people, now you be water baptized. 

 

Now why water baptism.  Water baptism is obviously something that involves us in a certain theology.  And there have been two major answers down through church history of baptism; there has been the sacramental view of baptism and the evangelical view of baptism.  The sacramental view of baptism would be held by people in Roman Catholicism, my own background religiously out of the High Angelical Church, we had a sacramental view of baptism, in High Lutheran circles you would have a sacramental view of baptism.  And in the sacramental view you have the sacrament as the outward sign of the inward grace and the idea is that at the point of water baptism you have two things happen: on the outside you have the ceremony and on the inside you have the work of God’s grace.  And this is roughly the sacramental position.

 

However, the evangelical position, from the Protestant Reformers on down in history, always argued that at one given point you may have them occur or you may have them offset so that you might have the inward act of grace located at one point in time and then after that point you might have the outward ceremony.  The evangelical view is looser than the sacramental view; it separates these two components and can separate them in a time scale.  So a person could trust in Jesus Christ, could be born again in the Spirit, then in obedience to that be water baptized.  Or somebody very disobediently might be water baptized because they’re trying to impress girlfriend, wife, husband, boyfriend, church authority or someone else, and be water baptized and it mean naturally nothing and then later on in life trust in Christ.  So you’d have these two things, you’d have the actual spiritual work and then you’d have the physical ceremonial work; one the reality the other the ritual.  So the evangelical view is always distinguished between reality and ritual. 

 

And it’s the evangelical view that is held in the Old Testament.  The Jews did not hold the sacramental view of the Seder, they didn’t hold a sacramental view of Passover, the idea that the Passover was some sort of thing that at the moment of Passover it was conveying grace to the participants.  It was a memorial service that the grace was extended only insofar as the participants realized what was going on and it was a memorial looking backward in time.  So you had these two views. 

 

Now in recent years, the last hundred years or so we had something that comes up locally which is a variation on the evangelical view which is what we’ll call the Campbellite teaching.  In the Campbellite teaching you have the idea that true faith, true saving faith will always show up in water baptism.  Now this is not the sacramental view, it is really not the evangelical view of the Protestant Reformation, it’s kind of an in between view because it links the two together some­what like the sacramental view but yet keeps them distinguished like the evangelical view.  In sympathy with what Campbellism originally taught and why it taught it was this: they argued, and rightly so, that if a person were really born again then there ought to be some sign that they were born again and what better sign could you have than the willingness to submit to the ordinance of baptism.  Now that’s a good motive.  Nothing wrong with that motive, that it’s good to seek a sign of saving faith.  But where Campbellism oversteps the boundary, the very delicate boundary, is that it goes on to say that it must always 100% of the time be shown this way, and this quickly degenerates into a salvation by works scheme. 

 

The point is that a person theoretically could be saved and not be water baptized.  Take the obvious case is someone who dropped dead a minute after they repented.  So the separation is valid but the motive behind Campbellism is also valid, namely looking for an outer evidence of the inner saving grace.  This has frequently happened in church history, that a bona fide motive gets all screwed up doctrinally.  Maybe the best illustration of the Biblical position would be like a bride and her ring, her wedding band.  You couldn’t always say that if a woman was going to be married, come to the altar, make her vows and if she refused to wear the wedding band under some conditions that might convey a certain mental attitude; one might have very interesting questions about why does this woman refuse to wear her wedding band.  Is it not just because she has arthritis of the finger or is it that she has something on the mind; there can be motives, it raises questions in other words, but it doesn’t prove that she’s not married.  And so the best way we can summarize the Biblical position would be that water baptism is like the ring on a bride’s finger; it belongs there and you certainly have questions if it’s not there.  But it is not the reality; it’s an adjunct of the reality.  Water baptism ought to be submitted to by those who profess to believe in Christ and one would have questions about one who refuses submission to water baptism upon conversion but that doesn’t prove that the person who has converted hasn’t really converted, it just raises questions about them.  And besides we have the additional problem in our day because of the problem of infant baptism so many people who are converted later in life had become infant baptized and this fouls the picture up.  So in this particular congregation our constitution does not require a particular mode of baptism for membership and that’s historically why this congregation has never done that because it’s recognized that people can come having been infant baptized, baptized as an infant and have convictions over what that baptism was versus a so-called believer’s baptism.  Myself, I will only baptize by the mode of immersion but the constitution of this church is more liberal than I am.

 

Let’s look at how the book of Acts is worded on this point of baptism for another little picture.  Let’s look at three items: repentance, baptism and the receiving of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, Acts 8 and Acts 10.  In Acts 2 you have repentance, you have baptism and you have the reception of the Holy Spirit, presumably and this is presumably.  In Acts 8 you have repentance, presumably from the context, you have baptism, reception of the Spirit.  But now look what happens in Acts 10; you have repentance, presumably, you have the reception of the Spirit and you have baptism.  Now that’s why I keep saying over and over it is foolish for you to go into Acts at 60 miles an hour, put on the brakes and say see, Acts 2 is a model for all time.  It isn’t a model for all time; why isn’t Acts 10 the model for all time.  You say Acts 2 is the model for all time and I’ll say Acts 10 is the model for all time and here we sit arguing over some stupid thing between Acts 2 and 10 and both of us are wrong because both of us have a wrong attitude toward Acts.  Acts isn’t intended to give us a final model for all time.  It’s intended to record what happened in the early days of the Church.  And sometimes it happens the way it happened in Acts 2 and at other times it happened the way it happened in Acts 10 and neither one is a model for all time.  So don’t say well, let’s just get back to Acts. That’s a foolish statement; Acts has contradictory reports in it, not contradictions in the sense that we have an errant Scripture, but we have contradictory methods of working of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes He works this way; sometimes He works this way and who are you and who am I to decide which way is the way for the Holy Spirit to work.  Acts is a book, as I have said a thousand times, a book of transition.

 

Now Peter in Acts 2:38 says, “Repent for the remission of your sins and then be baptized, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ,” this would openly identify those believers before the Jewish community and if no one wanted to be baptized it would certainly raised questions that they had actually believed in Christ.  Then he says “you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,” and he cites the Joel passage, and he cites Isaiah 57 in verse 39.  and if you were coloring with your colored pencil you would color all the last of verse 39, “to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord, our God, shall call.”  Notice that is a re-quote of the Joel passage.  It’s also a quote from Isaiah 57:19.  Peter applies this verse and says the Holy Spirit, the two parallel programs of God, the program of judgment and the program of salvation are going to expand across the face of the earth.  Now Peter himself, in verse 39 is probably, probably thinking only in terms of the Jews over in Parthia, the Jews down in Egypt, the Jews over in Asia Minor, and that’s probably the extent of what he thinks when he himself teaches this.  But we’re going to find even Peter’s surprise in Acts 10 when it turns out that “those who are afar off” include Gentiles.  And that’s a shock to him.  So it shows you that the apostles learned slowly as the book of Acts went along.

Acts 2:40, “And with many other words he did testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation,” that means crooked, or put in contemporary English, we would translate it bent out of shape, that’s literally what the Hebrew means, “bent out of shape generation.”  Notice the salvation from that generation; why?  Because that generation had rejected Messiah and therefore in forty years, one generation, forty years equals one generation, in forty years judgment would come down and the nation would be destroyed in 70 AD by invasion.  So he is saying that invasion hangs over your heads and when you see the verb “Save” in verse 40, especially those of you who have been raised in Christian circles, you have heard this word save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save until you use it like hello and goodbye and it’s lost all meaning for you.  When you see a word like this, ask yourself, in the context where was it used first.  And you look and see in the context it was used first in verse 21, in that Joel quote.  And what is that salvation’s from?  It is salvation from the judgment that is coming on the nation. 

 

Now it’s true in the background it’s saving from eternal judgment but that’s not in the foreground.  In the foreground the judgment is a physical judgment that is going to come shortly upon the city of Jerusalem.  Peter is saying now you people, you’ve had your opportunity to accept or reject Messiah, now there’s only one solution, if you want to get out of this mess that’s coming you’d better trust in Christ right now, right here.  Save yourselves from this generation, meaning not just all Jews but that generation of Jews that rejected the Messiah. 

 

Notice also Acts 2:41 and following we have a biography.  This is a biography of how converts were received into the Church and how they grew in their first days as Christians.  Now again we have to be careful, some things have changed; some things we do differently because of the time but on the other hand, as we read verses 41-47 understand too that many of these principles ought to be applied today if we just apply them carefully and not jus blindly.  Let’s first read verses 41-47.  Follow and visualize in your mind as we read it and ask yourself as you read it right now, ask yourself do I see this happening today, are some things that are possible to happen today happening.

 

Acts 2:41, “Then they that gladly received his word were baptized; and the same day there were added unto them three thousand souls.  [42]  And they continued steadfastly in the apostle’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.  [43] And fear came upon every soul; and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.  [44] And all that believed were together hand had all things in common,” the verb “had” is imperfect, they “continually had all things in common, [45] And they continually sold their possessions and goods, they continually parted them to all men, as every man had need.  [46] And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, were continually eating their meat [food] with gladness and singleness of heart, [47] Praising God, and having favor with all the people.  And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.” 

 

Okay, this is a biography of early evangelism and follow-up.  Now let’s watch what the elements are so we can conclude by applying what should be applied and not applying what can’t be applied because of the cultural shifting.  Notice the first thing mentioned in verse 41, “they that gladly received his word,” in the Greek we have a verb, apodekomai, dekomai is a verb stem that means to welcome, to receive.  It’s used in 1 Corinthians 2, “the natural man does not welcome the things of the Spirit of God,” that’s what it means.  It doesn’t mean that you can’t hear it, it doesn’t mean that the message never gets into the brain; it means that the message gets into the brain and is welcomed by the conscience and by the mind; it’s absorbed with welcoming, not by resistance.  That’s the word dekomai.  Now when you put a prefix like apo, one of the Greek prepositions in front of the main verb stem it has the effect of intensifying the meaning; not always in the direction of the preposition but the preposition generally intensifies that.  So what we have is really welcome. 

 

Now let’s back off a minute and just digest what we’ve just observed.  What we have observed as the primary characteristic of the first generation of Christian converts was their open desire for the Word of God.  That’s the first thing noticeable about a true convert of the faith; not that they come down an aisle, not that they immediately get involved in some church activity.  More good Christians have been driven off by anxious Christian workers who, because of the lack of man power just grab any new Christian that shows any interest whatever and just gets plugged on to some responsible position.  Why I trusted Christ yesterday and today I’m a Sunday School teacher.  I trotted down the aisle in the great evangelistic crusade and now I’m a deacon; this sort of thing.  Now that’s wrong.  A new convert is like a new baby, he ought to be given time to grow on his own.  And you kill off enthusiasm and you turn off the Holy Spirit and you resist the Spirit’s work to jam a little baby into a man’s slot and it’s wrong, it’s immoral is what it is.  It comes about because Christian workers, men who are in charge just aren’t simply trusting the Lord, they’re impatient to see something happen and so in their impatience to see something happen they quickly scramble and get people ahead of the time; I’ve done my share of that error and I’ve been sorry every single time I have taken a person who was not ready for a position and encouraged them to be in that position. I think of the major mistakes I’ve made in my ministry that is the one that I have made most frequently. 

 

So we have these people, they are gladly receiving this word, that means they are trusting it, they are welcoming it, they are hungering for more.  They want more of the Word, they have just received a sermon that was 50% plus of Old Testament Scripture and they are fascinated with this.  It doesn’t say Peter immediately put them into some sort of a Christian hustling operation; it means that they just were suddenly struck by a deep hunger in their soul, they couldn’t get enough of the Word of God.  And we have had people in here and I’ll say something else from my experience in watching, the people that today are productive in this congregation on their own, they maybe anywhere from teaching a class in Sunday School to witnessing in their own situation to working with a home type situation or whatever, working on the job, having an effective ministry on their job, those people are generally the people who walk in here and knew nothing when they first walked in.  I say this to encourage some of you who get frustrated every once in a while.  These people walked in here and didn’t know a thing.  And as they got involved with the Word of God they suddenly became aware of the immensity, the depths of what God has spoken into history and they became hungry.  And they would take out tapes, they would go in the library and take out books, they would read on their own, they would read Scripture. 

 

It happens again and again and some of you who have this Bible-belt mentality where you kind of dial a number on Sunday morning to see what church you’re going to go to this morning and trot around, or in the evening take a spin on a roulette wheel to see what’s the best show in town tonight.  We don’t care that much whether you happen to trot in here if that’s your attitude because here we are interested in a continuous program of teaching that won’t amount to a hill of beans in your life unless you get with the program over a period of time and that doesn’t mean showing up Easter and Christmas.  That isn’t going to anything for you; not a thing.  The only way you can do yourself a favor is to get somewhere, here or somewhere else where there’s a continual constant indoctrination in Scripture to the point you get so you can think Scripturally and it does not come by sitting here absorbing five minutes of this and going some other place and absorbing five minutes of something else.  You’ve got the whole wrong attitude to the Christian faith.  That’s not the Christian faith that you’ve got; I don’t know what it is but it’s not Biblical Christianity.  It’s some sort of a cultural habit that you have.  People must select churches like they select TV channels.  Where I come from if you’re not a Christian or you’re not interested in the Word you stay home and enjoy yourself on Sunday. 

 

Let’s look at verse 41, after these people responded and they were baptized, there were three thousand who personally converted that day.  Three thousand!  Now this should remind you of the Lord Jesus Christ’s words, “greater works shall you do than I have done.”  Jesus Christ never in His lifetime saw three thousand people born again; never.  And so this is an adumbration of what is going to happen down through the Church Age; the Christian body of Christ is going to expand and expand and expand and expand in ways that Christ never Himself personally saw. 

 

Now what else happened in this biography of early Christian follow-up.  In Acts 2:42 it says, “They were continuing steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.”  Notice, “continued steadfastly,” present tense, meaning they continued day after day after day after day after day after day and the word, didake for teaching can me the content of what is taught or the classes.  And here it means the classes; this doesn’t mean that they went in and they got a handbook, Peter’s faith, they’d take it and they’d keep Peter’s faith continually;  that’s not the picture; the picture is that they continually attended the classes taught by the apostles. The word “doctrine” means teaching classes.  So constantly these people were under teaching.  Now if you are a typical person of our good American culture who trusts in Christ, you come to Christ very barren in your soul of many, many basics and it will take you, I would estimate on the basis of three to four years of rather intensive study, that doesn’t mean day and night kind of thing but rather consistent study of the Word of God before you basically going to get your soul in a halfway mature state.  That’s just a rough time schedule, some people can do it faster, some people can do it more, but I’m throwing those figures out to you to give you an estimate for yourself.  The Word of God has basically that much content to it that it would take you this long to master the basics and to get your mentality set up so you respond almost automatically to life in a Scriptural way, at least on the major basic points. 

 

So these people stayed in these classes.  Now what do you suppose went on in these classes.  Where would you find out what went on in the apostle’s classes.  Is there any place in the Bible we could go to find out what was taught in the classes.  Some people might think and I once thought this myself, that what the apostles did, they had a question and answer period and somebody said hey, what kind of food did Jesus eat?  Did you guys have breakfast with Him every morning?  Now these are the kind of questions I’d feel tempted to ask, just curiosity, I’d like to know those things.  But the point remains that apparently from all the data we have that is not what was taught in these classes.  What the apostles taught in the classes is what they taught in the New Testament epistles.  The epistles give you the content of what was being taught in these classes.  The classes concentrated on Christology; the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ, that He was God, that He was man, that He was in one person forever, that Jesus Christ was a soter, a true Savior instead of Kaiser, the Caesar, that Jesus Christ was the One who had come to bring in the kingdom and not Rome and so on; the high priestly ministry of Christ, these are the things that were taught and in these classes they used the Old Testament.  So we could translate the word “apostle’s doctrine” by, without stretching the word at all, “apostle’s Bible classes,” because that’s ultimately what they were, teaching the people the true content of the Old Testament Scriptures with the person of Christ.  So these people constantly attended the apostle’s Bible classes and they didn’t have this thing that you hear in Christian circles, oh, you’d better watch out, you can get spiritually fat going to too many Bible classes.  You don’t find that here at all, “they continued steadfastly.”  [tape turns]

 

… fellowship is a famous word koinonia, and fellowship is defined here as consisting of two things; that’s the way the Greek syntax operates in verse 42.  The fellowship is explained as consisting primarily in communion and prayer meetings…communion and prayer meetings, that is the true fellowship.  The word breaking of bread is a word for communion and the reason it was used for communion was that the breaking of the matzo was the point that represented the death of Christ, and so this held a foremost position in communion and therefore it was called breaking of bread.  It doesn’t mean just normal eating, it is a special meal, the meal that was communion. Apparently, by the way, they did get together for meals but in the course of the meal they had communion; not like we have with just the communion, they would come together for a supper and the reason they could do that is because the church groups met in small homes so they’d meet together for supper and as part of the supper have communion. This is why in Corinthians a lot of people brought alcohol to the food and before they could get to communion they were already under the table, that’s what’s going on in Corinthians which by the way shows you that wine was used; you don’t get soused on Kool-Aid.

 

Fellowship then consisted of communion and prayer meeting.  The prayer meeting was done to coordinate the kind of praying… equivalent to this would be the prayer meeting we have on Wednesday night that everyone tries to avoid.  The prayer meetings were used to engineer the petitions and you can tell what a prayer meeting looked like, we’ll get to one in Acts 4 and I’ll show you how they prayed.  They prayed thinking through what they were going to pray because when you get to Acts 4, when you read it you realize, hey, wait a minute, they didn’t just come spontaneously out with these petitions; they were thinking through these petitions.  They had time.  We would have also, you see in the prayer list we have tactical prayer groups; these are groups dedicated to praying over small specialized areas.  If you have a special interest start your own tactical prayer group and concentrate on this.  We have found things that are happening today, this week, are literally answers to prayer prayed in one particular tactical group about three years ago.  So the tactical groups have been a great source of blessing for those who’ve participated.  For those who haven’t they don’t know what they’ve missed. 

 

But that’s what fellowship was in the early church, attendance at Bible classes under the teachings of the apostles constantly and communion and prayer meetings; this is what they thought of fellowship.  Now the result in Acts 2:43.  The result was that “fear came upon every soul,” the word “every soul” is a Greek idiom Luke borrowed from the Septuagint, it refers to Gentiles, in the sense it refers to all men, not just believers.  Verse 43 shows the impact of verses 41-42 on the outside society.  Notice it doesn’t say in verse 42 “they continued steadfast in the apostle’s doctrine and fellowship and they hustled, they knocked on every door in Jerusalem, they went in to the Jaffa Road and handed out tracts, they did this, they did that.  Now maybe some of those things were going on, but they’re not emphasized by the Holy Spirit and do you know why?  Because evangelism, true evangelism, true evangelism is a natural by-product of verse 42.  We have had people come I and get in the Word of God and be very quiet, not mentioning much to anyone, just quiet individual Christians, just absorb the Word of God and maybe 2 or 3 years later they call up and say hey, you know what happened to me and they describe this phenomenal opportunity that came up at work, in business, in school, at home, in the neighborhood; I didn’t hustle, I didn’t call anybody, I just literally fell into this fantastic opportunity.  Now how come?  Well guess who arranges it, because when He sees that you are prepared opportunities will come, you don’t have to.  It doesn’t mean you just sit back and don’t do anything but it means that He makes the breaks for you when He considers you qualified for that door, then He opens it.  And you’re just going to wear out your knuckles knocking on the door before you are ready to walk through the door.  So if you want to see witnessing opportunities in your life and you want to communicate Jesus Christ, and you ought to, to the non-Christian and you want that excitement and it is an excitement, then the best way you can prepare is do what the Christians were doing here in verse 42, because the same thing that happened to them can happen to you.  “They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine, they constantly took in the Word of God,” and they found themselves in a position where God just caused all sorts of opportunities.  They were professionally prepared. 

 

[43] “And fear came upon every soul,” that means respect, it doesn’t mean that, you know, they saw two Christians walking down the street, ooh, here comes the Christians.  It wasn’t that; it was that people respected these people.  Now some of you men are on job situations and you’re going to miss a promotion of two, sometimes you think, because you’re a Christian.  Now if you miss a promotion or two because you’re a clod I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about doing your job and then really not getting the promotion that you really deserve or not getting the advance or missing a sale that you ought to have had and you did everything within your human means possible to do that and you still wind up without the thing. Oftentimes this is due simply to the fact that this is the world system and basically the world system hates anyone that stands up for the Word of God and it will be expressed by all sorts of very nice people; the people that will do you in in the business world are not the shyster; beware of those guys, they communicate who they are before they come in the door, but the people that will really nail you to the wall are the nice guys, the smiley boys the glad-hand crowd that always say one thing and mean exactly the opposite, who promise you and never deliver; those are the kind of people to watch out for and those are the people that’ll do you in and those are the people you have to pray using some of David’s psalms, claiming God’s protection in your business relationships against this kind of a person.  But when it’s all said and done the Christian man on the job aims ultimately to be respected, not to be liked.

 

If you aim in your life to be liked you will end up losing respect.  Aim first for being respected, then if people like you it’s fine, if they don’t to hell with them.  Now you have to have that attitude as a Biblical Christian.  That may not sound loving, it actually is very loving because you cannot win someone to what you say if they don’t respect the say-er.  And if you compromise and you go around in various things and you lose your respect, then don’t expect anybody to take what you say seriously.  There’ll come a time.  There was a case when I first came to this church of a tremendously mature Christian and he missed a promotion or two because people didn’t like that he didn’t carouse around and engage in the same kind of activities a lot of the fellow officers did and they had gossip and maligning all over because of this situation, the military is like everything else, gossip still exists.  And this man patiently took it and patiently took it and when you had an IG or when you had any kind of another inspection guess who always got called, come here, sir, we need your help desperately, the inspectors are coming next week and we’ve got to make sure everything is done with quality and who would always be called?  That Christian man; that’s respect; he had a testimony, he may have been discouraged by his treatment at the hands of those people but that was the testimony that’s the kind of “fearing” in verse 43.  It wasn’t that these people liked Peter or they liked the other apostles but they respected them and one thing that led to the respect, of course, was what else is mentioned in verse 43, “the wonders and signs.”

 

Acts 2:44-45 that people always look at say see, the early church had communists in it.  I had some liberal clergy man after I became a Christian in the city of Boston argue for socialism and communism on the basis of well, I’m perfectly Scriptural.  Amazing how these people can be perfectly Scriptural at times.  In verses 44-45 he trotted that one to justify participation in communist causes.  I just about flipped; at the time I was the instigator behind getting an anti-communist on the campus to speak and lecture and he did a very good job, challenged any guys to debate and won a few of them and the repercussion was that some guy wrote in the university paper and said I had done this and I had done that and I was the most anti-Christian student on the campus and blah, blah, blah for doing this kind of thing.  And it came from the chaplain’s office; I wondered what the heck is wrong with the chaplain. So I go over to the chaplain and this is the verse I get quoted, that the guy was wrong, unbiblical because see, communism here! 


Let’s look at this.  We’re not engaging in a communist witch hunt, we just want to see if there are communists in verses 44-45, that’s all.  “And all that believed were together,” now there’s nothing communist about that, it just means they liked one another, “and they were having all things in common.”  Now the “having all things” means they shared it, it doesn’t mean necessarily they gave up ownership; it was the fact they shared things during this time period.  And there are two things about these verses that prove it is not communism.  The first thing is that it is voluntary. 

No communist believes in voluntary giving up of private property; it’s part of communist doctrine that it will be stolen from you.  All the time that we had that mess in Vietnam last year and the year before people were saying oh this wonderful glorious regime in South Vietnam, why, they’re communists but they’re different, they’re going to work everything out voluntarily.  And now what do we get through the Christian grape vine and through the missionary circles?  They’ve had a year and a half to secure their position, to gradually sell everybody on them and get themselves in high positions and now what’s starting?  Systematic survey; who are the leading Christian workers, we’re going to jail them, house arrest.  And now you watch, the blood bath is about to begin.  It didn’t begin immediately because the communists who took over South Vietnam didn’t have the hold on the people; if they started their blood bath immediately there would have been an armed revolt.  First you have to disarm the people, literally and psychologically.  Then after that, now you go from house to house and pick off your Christian leaders; if you pick off the Christian leaders then the masses can’t operate well, so get rid of them and that’s exactly what began this month in South Vietnam.  Now we are going to see the blood bath that Solzhenitsyn warned about and you’re going to see the Christian blood flow in the streets of every city in South Vietnam and then wonder, who’s responsible for that.  And so in country after country it goes on; communists are not believers in free will; they’re believers in the force of the state. 

So it has always been an axiom that we confiscate property, we don’t permit people to give property; confiscation of property is theft of property, it is a violation of the 8th of the Ten Commandments, “thou shalt not steal.”  You usually think of the Ten Commandments applied to individuals but the state itself can be in violation of the Ten Commandments.  When the state steals it’s still a sin and the state steals when it confiscates property.  Christians of all people ought to see this and yet I can think of two good examples of Christians by the carload who seem utterly blind to this complete flagrant violation of the 8th commandment.  In New York City in the metropolitan area there are evangelicals who believe that the solution to the crime of New York City in the metropolitan area is simply even more stringent gun controls than they already have.  New York City already has one of the most stringent gun controls, the Sullivan law, it’s had it for forty years.  Have you notice the crime decreasing in New York City recently because of the Sullivan Law?  Absolutely not. 

 

Now you see, what’s wrong with the thinking of people is this: they think that the possession of a good is equal to the misuse of the good, and they say that what we have to do is remove the possession before the people misuse it.  But is it a sin to possess something?  No.  Not under God it isn’t; God only condemns the misuse of the gun, and so the same people that argue that we should take the gun out of the private citizen’s hand is the same person who, when they’re on a jury, refuses to convict the person who has been involved in a crime using a gun.  It is so inconsistent.  The Biblical approach is very simple, it’s spelled out in passage after passage of Scripture, it’s so obvious I couldn’t understand how anybody could miss the point.  The point is that you condemn a person and you judge them in the social justice system for the use of guns in crimes, and lay it on them.  That’s where you put your heat; you don’t put your heat in confiscating, which amounts to theft, all gun type operation is basically the state thieving, stealing the guns that you own personally.  We has similarly in the United States people who a generation back argued that it was wrong to have wealthy families in the United States and so we passed graduated income tax and inheritance taxes.  And they said on Christian grounds, what we’re tying to do is even things out but they never asked the question: is it an evil to be wealthy, or is it an evil to misuse wealth?  Obviously the latter.  And so the wrong doing is in the misuse of wealth, not the possession of wealth.  To steal wealth from a wealthy family is still theft.  Somehow we think to steal from a poor man is more of a sin than to steal from a rich man.  Not at all, both are violations of the 8th commandment.  And so now we have a tax structure that basically legitimizes theft and is a systematic violation of the 8th commandment. 

 

So we’ve had Christians promote this kind of thing that read verses 44-45 this way.  Notice it says in verse 45, “they were continually selling possessions … as every man had need,” as a crisis would arise, which leads us to the second reason why this passage is not referring to communism.  The first reason is that it is purely voluntary, the state is not compelling giving up private property.  The second reason is that you lived in a time of crisis.  It was not know whether the judgment would fall in Jerusalem in 35 AD, 50 AD or 70 AD.  That was the big question, they didn’t know then.  They never knew what would happen and so since the judgment may be very close at hand it would be foolish to possess large property any way so therefore they were exchanging it in the crisis.  Fine, so there is no communism in verses 44-45.  What does that mean to me today as a Christian?  What it means to us is that verses 44-45 give us emergency means that Christians down through the centuries do resort to when the chips are down.  That is a legitimate system.  What is the kibbutz in Israel today but a repeat of verses 44-45, where people, families get together in one kibbutz, one gathering, the word “kibbutz” comes from the word to gather, and they gather together and they specialize and they farm together, using the same implements and so on. Why is that?  Two reasons; efficiency in production when you have low capital and defense against guerilla warfare.  So traditionally the high class, that means the Biblical class of people, whenever they are under severe economic, military and political persecution, resorts to the kibbutz or the collective system of living and this was done then.  We may well live in our country to see the day when as Christians we may have to resort to the same emergency systems but this is your central passage on the churches backstop, they plan b or plan c in case of crisis.  Incidentally also that emergency plan in verses 44-45 is why deacons originally arose in the Church; they arose under a crisis situation to administer this program. And therefore in the future deacons will be the ones who would have to be in charge of similar emergency programs in the future. 

 

Acts 2:46-47, “They, continuing daily with one accord in the temple,” notice they merged with the temple, there was no separation from Judaism and Christianity, “breaking bread from house to house,” church meetings were in homes, they didn’t have buildings, church buildings, at all then;  they were “eating their food with gladness and singleness of heart.”  That means there was no gossip, maligning and criticism, it hadn’t had a chance to start yet, it did by chapter 4 and 5.  And in verse 47, “Praising God, and having favor,” that means respect, “with all the people.” 

 

Now lest we thing that they were going around in that day, O praise the Lord, O praise the Lord, O praise the Lord, God did this, God did that, O praise the Lord, God spoke to me, blah, blah, blah, lest we think that’s what’s meant by praising God, turn to Luke 19:37 and we’ll see what Luke means by this verb praise.  Exactly the same word by exactly the same author, lest you think that Clough is interpreting this his own private way, here’s how Luke himself interprets the word.  “And when He was come nigh [near],” this is Christ coming into the city of Jerusalem on palm Sunday, “And when He was come nigh, even at the descent of the Mount of Olives,” I’ve shown you that Kidron Valley, you come off the ridge of the Mount of Olives, you walk down then you come up to the walls of the city of Jerusalem on the east side, so this is where Christ parade, He came down that slope and He was just coming down the slope into the echo zone of the valley of Kidron and when he got down into that echo zone where this would be effective, here’s what happened.  “…the whole multitude of disciples began to rejoice and praise God,” all right, how did they praise God; it says they praised Him “with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, [38] Saying,” quote, “Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord; peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.”  That is a direct quotation of Psalm 118.  So what does praise mean?  It was the recitation of a psalm; applied today a hymn, that’s praise, and it was corporate and it was done using the Word of God. 

 

Finally, at the end of this section on the biography in the book of Acts we have “the Lord added constantly to,” not the church, the word “church” isn’t there in the best text, “the Lord was adding to their group daily such as should be saved.”  Notice God’s sovereignty in the situation.  Now to apply this for our own situation we want to notice 6 factors that made the early church the thing it was.  Three of these factors are still present with us; three are no longer present with us.  What are the six factors: I’ll list the six and the first three I list are no longer operational; the last three are. 

 

The first one; Jesus Christ had recently died and rose, so you had the immanency of His life.  So you had the immanency of His life; we’ve lost that, 19 centuries have come and gone.

Second, the general public man in the street knew more Bible than most seminary students today.   We’ve lost that for sure.  The average person you would meet in the street knew so much of the Old Testament it was very easy to start where they were and just lead them on to the Messiah.  Very easy; we have lost that today.

 

The third thing is there were supernatural signs and miracles under the apostles.  We have lost that as of 70 AD. 

 

Fourth, and here’s what we still have, the Church believes in a continual series of Bible instruction over and over and over.  We can have that if we want it today.

 

Fifth, they had a mature fellowship based on a commonly shared doctrine; we can also have that today, a mature fellowship such as they did, wise praying, a full mature appreciation for communion.

 

Finally, lest we forget it, these people remained in contact with unbelieving society; they did not gravitate to a monastery, they did not hide in their own little Christian click; they got out and they mixed with the people who were non-Christians and they didn’t lose the communication links.  Notice it says they stayed in the temple, a very valuable point. 

 

But most of all is that fourth one I listed, they were continually in the Word; from the beginning to the end the early Church respected the Word and showed their respect by a constant intake of it.