Speaker 1: My name is Andy.
Speaker 1: I'm one of the pastors here and we're going to talk about spirit-formed community another way of talking about church.
Speaker 1: But first some stories about myself.
Speaker 1: You've heard of this.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of the male loneliness epidemic?
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 1: Epidemics is an interesting word.
Speaker 1: It implies a certain disease, but for every hour in person that young men spend, they spend seven hours digitally, like online, and you know if they were like playing video games with their friends or something that would be great.
Speaker 1: But typically what happens is what happened to me in my college years.
Speaker 1: What happens is what happened to me in my college years.
Speaker 1: I graduated in 2007 from high school and then went to college and I had great inventions of modern technology the smartphone and YouTube.
Speaker 1: And when it came to my sophomore year, I was a resident assistant and I got my own room and with that came a way to numb myself late at night from all my anxieties and failures about my coursework.
Speaker 1: I could spend hours watching Russian brain surgeries they just put them on YouTube for some reason, or much worse and I think, like, like.
Speaker 1: I really practiced numbing.
Speaker 1: I really practiced numbing my fears and I took that right into my marriage.
Speaker 1: When my wife and I got married, I started going to seminary and I struggled even more because these were the classes that I truly cared about and I was not doing as well as I'd hoped.
Speaker 1: It seemed like no one really cared that I wasn't doing well, but I felt this pressure for performance, not only from my parents but from my wife, and I talked to them both about this.
Speaker 1: This will be later.
Speaker 1: It's not that they were pressing in on me, it's that my habits of numbing kept me from connecting.
Speaker 1: When I felt bad about myself, when my wife said you didn't take the trash out or whatever, I would go, I'd turn to YouTube, I'd just sit on the couch.
Speaker 1: Then hardship hit.
Speaker 1: When my wife and I were trying to get pregnant, we struggled with miscarriages.
Speaker 1: We have four children now, but we miscarried three times, and miscarriage is already hard because it's not very public and so you kind of suffer in silence there.
Speaker 1: But as the husband, I knew that my wife had it worse, and so when I felt bad, I didn't know what to do with that.
Speaker 1: And it's not like people are like, oh, you know, guys are like, oh man, just kind of blowing it up, you know?
Speaker 1: You see the Pacers game last night or something like that.
Speaker 1: Right, loneliness is not just a young man problem, though.
Speaker 1: Loneliness is not just a young man problem though.
Speaker 1: There's a gallop poll last year, just late last quarter.
Speaker 1: Four of 2024, one in five americans say they have daily loneliness.
Speaker 1: One in five for our uh 60 plus crowd, or seniors, our seniors here in Lake County, and the survey was seven other counties in Northeastern Illinois.
Speaker 1: One third struggled with loneliness and if you had mobility issues, one half.
Speaker 1: But even if we had, you know if we made the third space a thing again and we all hung out after church and we all went to Starbucks and stuff.
Speaker 1: There are cultural problems that keep us from experiencing other people, from experiencing intimacy, from being connected with other folks, from being known and knowing others.
Speaker 1: First, we're in a fractured, divisive time politically, like I hear.
Speaker 1: I hear you hear quotes from Fox News or from CNN and you just kind of cringe Like I don't want to have this conversation right now.
Speaker 1: To cringe Like I don't want to have this conversation right now.
Speaker 1: I don't really know what they believe, but it just strikes me as like, ah, if they tow the party line, man, I ugh.
Speaker 1: You know, the rich keep getting richer and the poor, poorer.
Speaker 1: I don't know about the last part, but it feels as if there's just a greater and greater divide and these things can get very political.
Speaker 1: So I don't mean to imply anything right now, I don't whatever but like whether you think recent decisions about race-based hiring was right or not, not.
Speaker 1: The point of this, what I know to be true, is that I hear more racist things than I have in my entire life.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 1: We're all so busy In the Chicago suburbs.
Speaker 1: We work hard and we play hard.
Speaker 1: You're to be good at everything that you do.
Speaker 1: You hang out with those who are also great at what they do.
Speaker 1: I once I was trying to connect with a guy and he was like oh, I'll send you my calendar with all my availability.
Speaker 1: And he sent me the calendar and he didn't have any availability Like there was no time on his calendar to meet.
Speaker 1: I was like that's a strange flex about how busy you are.
Speaker 1: Conflict and mistrust is kind of rampant, especially as we become more and more online.
Speaker 1: It's not just that we hear people quote Fox News and CNN.
Speaker 1: We then associate them with the most obnoxious people that we can.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh man, I just don't want to go there.
Speaker 1: I just don't want to talk about that right now.
Speaker 1: And finally, we sometimes make church too easy.
Speaker 1: I'll give the analogy of a drive-thru.
Speaker 1: The Chick-fil-A has a great business model in that they can charge you for a premium chicken sandwich and you stay in line at that drive-thru because you can get that food in five minutes.
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter line at that drive-thru, because you can get that food in five minutes.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter how long the drive-thru is, they'll shove you through.
Speaker 1: And sometimes people's experience of church is like that on a Sunday morning, like everything is frictionless.
Speaker 1: They can come in and they get the spectacle of church, they get to sing some songs, they get to have coffee and donuts afterwards, but it's kind of like all right, and then on to the next thing.
Speaker 1: We're fractured, we're busy, we're weary and we make stuff about ourselves.
Speaker 1: So then where do we go from here?
Speaker 1: Well, as Christians, we go back to God's word.
Speaker 1: We're going to see how the early church got together, what church meant for them.
Speaker 1: We're going to be in.
Speaker 1: The early church got together, what church meant for them.
Speaker 1: We're going to be in the book of Acts this morning Acts, chapter 2.
Speaker 1: And the second chapter comes after the first chapter.
Speaker 1: And so the first chapter of Acts is Jesus has already died and has resurrected from the dead, defeating sin, death and the devil, and then he's going to ascend to heaven and he leaves the mission for the church.
Speaker 1: You're going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, where they were currently In Judea and Samaria, the places immediately outside of Jerusalem, and even to the ends of the earth, and that kind of charts the course for the rest of the book.
Speaker 1: You can see God's word advancing throughout the world.
Speaker 1: Pentecost happens a fancy word for the Holy Spirit coming and resting on his people.
Speaker 1: Finally, because of what Jesus has done, god can dwell among us, and it was during this crazy festival where people from all over the world were there and they spoke in different languages.
Speaker 1: And then Peter gets up and preaches this message and 3,000 people were converted.
Speaker 1: It's like if, at the end of today, this turns into 5,000, you know, it's like 2,500% growth, percent growth.
Speaker 1: A spirit-filled church, then, is different than our culture, and I'm going to say I'm going to make it in three points.
Speaker 1: Here you go.
Speaker 1: A spirit-filled church flourishes when it learns the gospel and we'll talk about the gospel if that's a new word for you.
Speaker 1: Spirit-filled church lives the gospel together and a spirit-filled church lets the gospel overflow to the world.
Speaker 1: Verse 42, acts 2, verse 42 through 47, if you're following along, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
Speaker 1: They, the converts, the three thousand, devoted themselves, word that means like, uh, like stick, like glue, if you if remember the Little Giants movie, stick like glue.
Speaker 1: They chose to devote themselves to the teaching of the apostles.
Speaker 1: Well, what were the apostles teaching?
Speaker 1: Well, everything that Jesus has already commanded them to do the good news, the gospel.
Speaker 1: I love the word gospel.
Speaker 1: It's an old-timey word.
Speaker 1: I guess I love the word gospel because it means good news, but specifically the good news in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard this before, I have great news for you.
Speaker 1: This morning.
Speaker 1: People everywhere are in rebellion against God.
Speaker 1: They choose their own way over and against what God has.
Speaker 1: It's like that.
Speaker 1: You remember Adam and Eve in the garden.
Speaker 1: They chose to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Speaker 1: Some people think, oh, they learned that.
Speaker 1: They were just curious and they learned.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, it wasn't knowledge, it wasn't the tree of knowledge, it was a tree of knowledge of good and evil, which they already knew Good, following what God says, bad, disobeying what God says, but they ate that apple anyway because they wanted to be able to make their own decisions for themselves.
Speaker 1: And you know, fast forward from thousands of years later.
Speaker 1: Here we are, where we all make our own decisions and go our own way, and we're selfish and self-centered.
Speaker 1: And God stands in judgment over us.
Speaker 1: But that's not the only way that God stands.
Speaker 1: He also stands in love over us, so much so that he sent his only son to die for those rebellious sins.
Speaker 1: His son paid the penalty that you deserve so that we might have life abundantly.
Speaker 1: That new life is transformational.
Speaker 1: That is the good news this morning and we need to learn.
Speaker 1: We need to learn it.
Speaker 1: We need to learn the gospel.
Speaker 1: It isn't just enough to say it, it's like a, it's not just like a sentence that you learn.
Speaker 1: If you I don't know why this first thing that comes to my head is welding.
Speaker 1: If you were to try to teach me how to weld I don't know how to weld you could say words to me, but then I go and try to pick up that torch and what the heck am I doing?
Speaker 1: Right, it is not just.
Speaker 1: It is not just the words that come out of our mouth, the propositional knowledge that we can say in sentences.
Speaker 1: It is the experience of God, the reception of grace and the powering of the Holy Spirit into a life together, spirit-formed community.
Speaker 1: Let's learn the gospel again.
Speaker 1: Let's learn the gospel anew.
Speaker 1: This commonality that we have is unique in Christianity.
Speaker 1: We are not brought together because of cultural similarities.
Speaker 1: Oh, you grew up in Scotland, you're Presbyterian.
Speaker 1: Oh, you grew up Arab.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're Muslim.
Speaker 1: Oh, you grew up Jewish, you're Jewish.
Speaker 1: Many secular scholars admire the growth of the Christian church because of its ability to expand outside of cultural barriers.
Speaker 1: It's not just that Paul said there's neither Greek nor Jew anymore.
Speaker 1: It's that that was a lived experience for folks.
Speaker 1: You could come into a community because we all receive the same grace, the gift of God in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Okay, very practically, now you have the teaching of the apostles and a dedication to community, the fellowship.
Speaker 1: Then you have the breaking of bread, which is another way of talking about communion and prayer, and we try to put all of those things in our small group experiences.
Speaker 1: We read God's word together, we're going through the Bible, recap a reading plan for the Bible through the whole year and we study God's word together, we share a meal together and then we pray X's and O's type stuff.
Speaker 1: This is available to you, by the way.
Speaker 1: You can go to fiercechurch dot church forward.
Speaker 1: Slash small groups.
Speaker 1: But this isn't the only way to experience community at Fierce Right.
Speaker 1: In fact, it can't just stop with us, we can't just become a holy huddle.
Speaker 1: Rather, verse 43, everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.
Speaker 1: All the believers were together and everything, and they had everything in common.
Speaker 1: They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had in need.
Speaker 1: The wonder, the awe at what God was doing through his church, led to the oneness.
Speaker 1: The wonder at what God was doing led to the unity that the church felt.
Speaker 1: Experienced, lived out.
Speaker 1: Experience lived out.
Speaker 1: It's like this is an old movie, not that old Seven Pounds starring Will Smith.
Speaker 1: You're not going to watch it here.
Speaker 1: It is so.
Speaker 1: He said he's driving and he's texting while driving.
Speaker 1: Don't do that.
Speaker 1: He gets in a car accident, kills his fiance and six other people and he is wrecked with guilt.
Speaker 1: He then steals another person's identity and tries to find people that he thinks are worthy because, plot twist, he plans on sacrificing his life and giving his organs to those folks, which is what happens he gets in a tub with his pet box jellyfish, like you guys have at home, and then his organs are preserved, but he's paralyzed or whatever.
Speaker 1: But the end of the movie ends with two people that he in particular connected with A gentleman who got his eyes and a gal who he fell in love with got his heart and it ends with their connection that they had this shared gift together, right Like there was a bond between them, even though they never knew each other, because they received the same gift.
Speaker 1: In Romans 5, you have this passage that says you're not going to die for other people, although maybe you would die for a good person.
Speaker 1: But God showed his love for us in this that while we were still sinners, christ died for us.
Speaker 1: Will Smith's character spent two years trying to find the people that were worthy and praise God that he didn't do that for us.
Speaker 1: Praise God that in our brokenness he became broken for us, that in our brokenness he became broken for us.
Speaker 1: This doesn't mean that they lost the idea of like private property.
Speaker 1: This isn't like communism, right?
Speaker 1: This is voluntarily giving because of what God has given them.
Speaker 1: They didn't pool all of their resources because once you joined the community you had to disavow all of your stuff.
Speaker 1: Rather, it was the shared life of living together, of discovering people's needs and saying well, god met me and my needs, I'll meet you and yours.
Speaker 1: And this is true in your friendships in church and in your smaller groups.
Speaker 1: It's hard to care for people if you don't even know what they're struggling with.
Speaker 1: But when you live life together and you open yourself up which is terrifying and people are trustworthy and loving and they speak truth into your life, they can also meet you where you are.
Speaker 1: A pro tip here is that as you read through these lists, this can sound exhausting.
Speaker 1: It can become like a to-do list of like oh, I need to do that and I don't do that, and I need to do that and I don't do that.
Speaker 1: And I just want to remind you you should let God do the heavy lifting.
Speaker 1: If there's someone stubborn in your life who isn't accepting of what God would have for them, that's not on you, that's between them and the Lord.
Speaker 1: We pray that the Holy Spirit would bring conviction to their hearts right when someone has a need that's too big for you, when the world has needs that's too big for any of us, right, we don't give up, but we also know that God is much bigger than us, and so we turn to him and raise these requests up back to God.
Speaker 1: This also isn't the end of the story.
Speaker 1: It's like hey, you just need to sell some of your property and then everything will be fine, right, like you guys know, there are complicated issues that still aren't solved yet that Christians are working hard on, lots of people are working hard on.
Speaker 1: Solving.
Speaker 1: Cancer isn't solved if we just pool our resources together.
Speaker 1: Right, it's gonna take more than that.
Speaker 1: Let God do the heavy lifting, though.
Speaker 1: The gospel should change our hearts enough that we are inspired to face the day.
Speaker 1: It should warm our hearts enough that we might love other people more than ourselves, and that's transformational.
Speaker 1: We need to learn the good news that God has for us in Jesus Christ, and when we get together with other folks and we rehearse this good news, we need to live this stuff out.
Speaker 1: It needs to be expressed in our lives that we are being transformed, no longer putting ourselves first.
Speaker 1: And finally, verse 46 to the end of this section.
Speaker 1: Every day, they continued to meet together in the temple courts.
Speaker 1: They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all people.
Speaker 1: The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's common that pastors try to guilt, trip you into attending events.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's common of like well, you know, like, especially like on Easter and Christmas.
Speaker 1: Oh, there's a lot of faces out here that I haven't seen in a while.
Speaker 1: You know, I think God has more for you and stuff and these.
Speaker 1: It's well-intentioned, it's well-intentioned and I'm not even I'm not really criticizing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think people would do better if they went to church more.
Speaker 1: But the preaching here you didn't have to tell people to do this, right, you're just portraying God of how great he is and people get together is and people get together.
Speaker 1: You couldn't keep them apart Large groups, small groups.
Speaker 1: You know relational settings, theology.
Speaker 1: They're talking about everything that God would have Now that Jesus has defeated death by raising from the dead.
Speaker 1: Things are different.
Speaker 1: Things are a bit different.
Speaker 1: The thing that I would say that would be most helpful at this time is that you should start rehearsing an everyday gospel every day.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes we think about the good news that Jesus saves us from our sins, as kind of like fire insurance.
Speaker 1: It's like at one point I'm going to have to go before the throne of God and at that point I would like Jesus to take my like.
Speaker 1: I would like to not be judged according to my own stuff.
Speaker 1: I would like Jesus.
Speaker 1: But these folks were practicing solving each other's problems with Jesus on the daily.
Speaker 1: When you think about the lonely gal, the old lady down the street, what's good news about Jesus to her?
Speaker 1: When you think about the blue collar worker, the dad who doesn't wakes up at 4.30, you know lunch pail in hand.
Speaker 1: Like what's good news to him about Jesus's death?
Speaker 1: When folks are struggling with anxiety and depression, what does Jesus say about sadness and about fear?
Speaker 1: Like there's a practical use to the truths that we teach in this church and we should practice using those truths.
Speaker 1: Using those truths, learn the gospel, live the gospel together and let the gospel overflow.
Speaker 1: We've already talked about a habit maybe being a small group for you coming on Sunday mornings being reminded of the truth through God's word, praying and praising together.
Speaker 1: But I also want to give you a couple more practical guides.
Speaker 1: The first is to budget for this.
Speaker 1: That might sound strange, but like if someone's hungry and you always know, I have cans of soup available.
Speaker 1: It's a real easy meal.
Speaker 1: If you know someone needs a place to crash, do you have a room or a couch?
Speaker 1: Do you have the instant Airbnb for them?
Speaker 1: A towel, a washcloth that they never use?
Speaker 1: you know these things.
Speaker 1: This summer there'll be summer suppers.
Speaker 1: It's a way to share a meal together as a church, but if you are interested in attending a summer supper, keep your ears open as we make these announcements going forward.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be.
Speaker 1: You don't have to wait on us to have people over as well.
Speaker 1: You can just host a meal in your home or share a meal together out in public.
Speaker 1: When we learn the gospel, when we live the gospel together and when we let it overflow from our hearts, people end up in awe.
Speaker 1: We end up in good favor with all people.
Speaker 1: A last plea when I was struggling in my marriage, it was my own issue, right.
Speaker 1: I had these fears of failures, and I didn't share that with my spouse.
Speaker 1: Every time she asked me to do something that I knew I would fail at, I felt worse, that I wasn't able to be enough for her, until I said that to her and then she said oh, Andy, you've been more than enough, and the shame and the embarrassment and the guilt kind of fell away.
Speaker 1: It's not that I hadn't failed her, it's that she was willing to forgive me and that those failures weren't strong enough to break our relationship.
Speaker 1: So then, going forward.
Speaker 1: I can trust that she has my back when I'm struggling with sin, with sin, when I finally shared about my miscarriage in a small group, there's an older gentleman who said oh Andy, this is why we're Christian.
Speaker 1: I was like miscarriages is why we're Christian.
Speaker 1: He said no, but God is a good father and he's a better father than you, and one day you'll meet your kid in all of his glory or hers.
Speaker 1: Many of us have been burned by the church, have been hurt in different ways, let down, gossiped about, relationships left broken, and I want to plead with you to take seriously this message anew that if we really believe in the gospel, there is enough forgiveness available for them in your heart.
Speaker 1: If you knew how much God loved you, you would be able to see his brokenness and take heart in your own.
Speaker 1: If you knew that Jesus suffered excruciating pain on your behalf, that you could then extend that to those in this church.
Speaker 1: And that's my prayer for you this morning as well is that we not only would focus on the gospel and then let that go into our hearts, but that we would practice the reconciliation as well.
Speaker 1: It's not as if everything becomes happy-go-lucky, it's not as if the brokenness disappears, but there is a way out.
Speaker 1: In Christ Jesus, At Fierce, we say the best you is in community, and that's not just us, that's God saying that the best you is in community.
Speaker 1: And because of the reconciliation, because of the reconciliatory power of the gospel, there's always room for one more.
Speaker 1: Let's pray, Heavenly Father.
Speaker 1: Lord, we ask that you would help us today to submit to your word.
Speaker 1: God, that we wouldn't just make this a spectacle, a YouTube video of a Sunday morning, but God that you would help us to seek you with our whole hearts and God that we would join others in doing so.
Speaker 1: God that you would shape and fashion this church into your image, for your glory.
Speaker 1: God, we pray that you would help give us the strength, like your son before us, a pioneer in faith, enduring the cross for our joy.
Speaker 1: God that you would help us to forgive as we've been forgiven.
Speaker 1: And finally, Lord, we pray that you would season our conversation with grace in this broken and busy and weary world.
Speaker 1: All these things we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
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