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Being fully committed matters tremendously as we move through life. We can't do it in all areas of life, that's just dysfunctional. But there is no area of life where it matters more than in your relationship with Jesus Christ, than your walk with him as you move through life. And I want to encourage you this morning as we unpack this passage and try to apply it to our lives to consider the opportunity, not with guilt, not as a burden, not as duty, no legalism here, the opportunity that you have to fully commit yourself or to recommit yourself to living with him and for him as the priority of your life. I am absolutely fired up about this. And as we even begin this, I just want to point out, and I don't mean this with any degree of criticism at all. There's a lot of people, a good chunk of the American church, I'm not looking at any individuals, I don't do that, that have received Jesus into their heart. It drives me nuts. It's not terribly biblical. And it's a sense that we've invited him into our heart, and we've got this little teddy bear here who happens to be God, by the way, and we've added him to our life, and we go on about our lives, and our lives don't look a whole lot different. It's because we've got that backwards. We do receive him as our Lord and as our Savior. We do receive him in that regard. We acknowledge him, we submit to him, but there's almost a violent spiritual exchange that goes on. We die to ourselves, if we get this right. We die to ourselves, we give him our life, and we receive life from him. And we become his. It is not the other way around. He's not mine. I'm his. And we tend to live life a little bit backwards like that, and we miss the beauty and the opportunity of a life fully submitted to Jesus. This morning, you're going to get a beautiful picture of the early church, and man, they got this. They had just crucified the Messiah. They'd waited for him for 400 years with anticipation and excitement and expectation, and they blew it and they crucified him. But he rose from the dead, and they came to realize who he was, and now realizing this is our God, this is our Lord, this is our Savior, the one who provides full forgiveness for all of our sin forever. And they responded in a way that was transformational and beautiful. And you can watch the impact that it was having, not just on the church, but on the world around them. You and I are here this morning at a significant level because of the fact that so many of these people were fully committed. They lived it out, they shared, the church grew, the kingdom expanded, and here we are 2,000 years later, standing at some degree on their shoulders. They were all in. They gave their lives, they lived their lives to him, for him, and with him. And you and I have that opportunity today. And I want you to be excited about how this is going to come out. So we're going to walk down through this just sort of section by section and talk about the significance of it. So in verse 32, it said, now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul. And you just want to read right on past that. That's a sweet little phrase, isn't it? The full number of those who believe. Those are people that had come to a living faith in Christ. They've become children of God. Not just intellectual belief, but submission to Him as their Lord as well. They're of one heart and soul. Heart and soul. Sounds like a song that we have today. They were one. They were one at a profound and at a significant level. They were one in Christ. Jesus created unity with this fractured group of people that were out there in that society at the time. He created unity at the cross. No more Jew and Gentile, no more rich and poor, no more black and white. We are one in Christ. And what those people had, and we have the opportunity to either come to understand or remember is who they were in Christ. Born again, fully forgiven, children of God. They found their identity in him, they found their purpose in him, they found their mission moving through life in him. And it transformed everything. By the way, they threw it. I apologize, I forget if it was Pastor Adam or Pastor Tim that mentioned in the last week or two the phrase that came out of the stewardship campaign that we had about 10 years ago. All I am and all I have, all for Jesus. One more time. All I am and all I have, all for Jesus. The people that we're reading about this morning got that. Changed their lives and it began to change the world around them. And that opportunity is there for you and for me this morning. We are stewards. Stewards. We don't own ourselves anymore. We were bought at a price. We belong to God. All I am, all I have, I'm a steward of all the resources, all the possessions I have. And I forget that sometimes. And my guess is so do you. Because we're humans and we're told in our culture to earn it. Earn it. Work for it. And we do try to earn and work. But we have to remember that it all ultimately belongs to have instead of holding on to the things that we mistakenly think are ours. We get to be united with our belief here at Cross Point and with churches and other Christians that we partner with. We're united in our purpose and with our focus, trying to live missionally, and we certainly accomplish more when we cooperate together. When we as a church here at Cross Point, the called out people of God, live cooperatively together, it's amazing the impact that we have. And I want to thank you. Because you have done a wonderful job of that through the years. We have a lot of opportunities to grow, but you as a church, we as a church have experienced incredible unity. Very little disunity that we've gone through. I see what other pastors and churches go through, and my heart aches. It aches for the pain they suffer. I ache for the damage that's caused by it. We have been blessed. Yes, we've had some speed bumps along the way, and my heart aches for them. But we as a church have been unified because we find our identity, we find our purpose in Christ, and we're trying to live this life out missionally. The day we stop that, you need a new pastor. And we need to get on our knees before God. We're here to live missionally as we move through life, and that helps preserve the unity that He's created at the cross. As you root on through even the second half of that sentence, Art says, So now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul. And listen to this. And no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. Did you know the early church was communist? No, it wasn't. It was socialist. And you guys are sleeping today. No, it wasn't. It wasn't communist, it wasn't socialist. But what is it saying? Lives as a couple and as a family for the glory of God. And when we do that well, God is honored, we are blessed, and we become an increasing blessing to people in our lives. Everybody wins when we get this right. This church was living it out wonderfully. In verse 33, it goes on to say that with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them. They were empowered in their witness. Their focus, and please don't miss this, the simplicity of it, the clarity of it was awesome, was on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. We talk about witnessing in our culture, and this cuts two ways. We want to be prepared to engage and address questions and overcome concerns and obstacles that are there, and we get caught up in our shorts over this. They kept it simple. He is God. He died and paid the penalty for my sin and your sin and everyone's sin. He was buried and he rose again from the dead, demonstrating the sufficiency of his death. And the beauty of that is we serve a living Lord. We're not serving a martyr, we're not serving somebody who had been buried years ago and remains dead. Our God lives and he reigns, and we have the opportunity to look forward to him coming back. They kept it simple. He died for you, and he rose again. And he's calling you into a relationship with him. And we should equip ourselves to engage people, we should equip ourselves to address the questions and concerns that people have. It's a good thing to do, but don't overly complicate it. He died for me. And I received the grace that he's offered, the life that he offers, and I want you to know about that because he loves you and so do I. They kept it beautifully simple, even as you read through scripture, very, very consistently. They were empowered as they did it. And I want to stress this because I have to be reminded of it, and my guesses you do too. When we share with other people, if you're aware that you're honoring God and you're doing it in his strength, and you're consciously aware of him, you're asking God to bring himself to bear on the people that you're talking to. You don't have to be the genius. Okay? You don't have to be a theologian. You don't need a PhD in theology. You just need to share who Jesus is and what he has done. It's simple and it's profound at the same time. And what we're doing then is trusting that God will do the work in the people's lives that you're talking to. We so often think that that burden rests on us to make a good argument, to help and convince them, to lead them there. We play a role in it, but God is the one who does the work. Don't forget to trust Him. Don't leave God on the sidelines. He is the one that brings the conviction, He is the one that people are responding to, not to you, not to me. You don't have to be a devader. We want to keep this simple. It is beautifully simple, it is beautifully profound, and it is life-giving for people. You could stop there, and I was prepared to stop there until I realized what Tim had assigned to me. As you move back through the tail end of chapter 4 and into chapter 5, Luke gives us two examples. He gives us some an example of somebody who lived it out wonderfully, and about somebody who lived it out rather poorly and paid some significant consequences. Let's walk through that quickly, and then I want to come back and put this into context for you. In verse 36, it said, Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, he was a Levite, a native of Cyprus. He sold the field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet. I love that. So you know what you're supposed to do according to God's word. Sell your houses, sell your land, and bring it to me. Right? Wrong. He saw a need. He saw an opportunity where the resources he had could be used to honor God and bring blessing to people. This was not under compulsion, this was not legalism. He sold it and he humbly came and he entrusted it to the work of the church. When you give to Cross Point, and by the way, we are committed to conducting the ministry of this church, whether you give it a dime or nothing at all. We are committed to be here because it matters. We can do more through our collective giving, but we are committed to conducting the ministry of the church because we're called to do that. He surrendered that money to them. And what we do here at Cross Point is as you give the money and we prepare basically our budget and plans for the upcoming year. You as a church, we work together and we agree about what we're going to do. We decide. I don't decide, I don't dictate, the pastors don't, the elders don't, the leadership team doesn't, the financing facility team doesn't. We work together cooperatively to find a way that we think would best honor God as stewards of the resources we have to conduct the mission that we have as a church, to reach our community and impact the world for Christ. You're a big part of this, not just through your giving, but through your participation in that process. Barnabas lived it out wonderfully. I mean, he's just a wonderful example of somebody who was all in. It doesn't mean he got rid of all the assets he had and everything else, but he gave generously and he gave freely and he gave humbly and he laid it down at the apostles' feet. But then it goes on to give us another example on the back side of it. It says, A man named Ananias and his wife Sfira sold a piece of property, and with his wife's knowledge, he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostle's feet. Should be nothing wrong with that. But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you've contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God. And when Ananias heard these words, he fell down, breathed his last, that means he died, and great fear came upon all who heard of it. The young man rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him. And it goes from bad to worse. After an interval of about an hour of three hours, his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. And Peter said to her, Tell me whether you sold the land for so much. And she said, Yes, I sold it for so much. And Peter said to her, How is it that you have agreed together to test the spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband, they're at the door, and they'll carry you out. And immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men came in, they found her dead, and they carried her out, and they buried her beside her husband. And a great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things. Two powerful examples, a beautiful example of generous giving about somebody who was all in trying to honor God, and Ananias and Sephira. The message here: integrity with God matters. Not hypocrisy, not deceit. They were free not to sell the land. When they sold the land, they were free to keep any portion of it that they felt they wanted to keep. They were not under compulsion. This was not legalism. What they did that was wrong is they had tried to deceive themselves and God about what they had done. And they were trying to deceive the church. They were trying to look good. I want to look like Barnabas. And that deceit and that hypocrisy would have been a cancer in the early church. And God dealt with it harshly. I hate to say it, but they effectively got what they deserved in that regard. I'm glad that you and I don't, living under grace. Great fear, great reverence for God came upon them all. They were not constrained legalistically, but they were basically being taught to be honest with God and with themselves. And I bring that up about being honest with themselves because we're not always honest with ourselves. In fact, sometimes we're just plain ignorant. And these passages remind me of some of the passages that helped lead me to a saving faith in Christ. Where I had a great love for God literally all my life that I could remember as a kid, thinking I was good to go. I loved God, I worshiped God as a teenager, chugging through the Bible. Loved it. But boy, my life sure didn't look like it. And it was passages, quite frankly, on tithing. And underneath here, this act of tithing and giving back to God. It comes up not every week, but almost every week as we engage with people who ask about it, because this is new to a whole lot of people. Tithing is good for you to do. I would encourage you to at least tithe. That means giving 10% of your income to God. I have no clue what any of you give. I don't want to know what any of you give. There's only two people in this church that know what anybody gives, and they will go to their graves with it. They're a black hole. They manage the gifts, they manage the income of the church, and that's where it stays. It's with the two of them. We don't want to know that because we don't want you wondering why we're engaging with you. Is it because of how much you give or we don't engage with you because you don't give? We have no clue. And we want to keep it that way. But I do care about your giving because I care about you. And more importantly, God cares about you. And your giving has a lot to do with your relationship with God. It acknowledges as you give who He is in the essence of your stewardship. And what you're doing is giving in response to God. The tithe is 10%. And there's people that will object to tithing, saying, Well, that was under law. Kinda, sorta. It also predated the law. Tithing has existed before the law was given, it existed during the law, and it exists after the law. You and I are under grace as a child of God. We're no longer under law. So you could say, Whew, I'm hanging on to that money. I don't need to do that anymore. Well, Jesus expected us to tithe. He even said in one of his messages, and when you tithe, he is expecting us to continue that practice. In fact, if you added up all the different tithes and offerings in the Old Testament, it came to about 28% of their gross income. Whoa. When I first understood this, you know, I've shared it before, you know, our income was above average. I thought we were generous givers. We gave generously to the church and gave to the YMCA, was involved there. That's a Christian organization, Christian Children's Fund. We gave that. We tally up our taxes and pretty close to tithing on our after-tax income. And so we started reading the Bible and hearing sermons about it and went, whoo, you mean before tax? We deceive ourselves or we're ignorant. We don't realize what we're called to do by God. I want you to hear this and I want God to speak into you as you're listening to this. So Malachi chapter 3, verse 8, will a man rob God? Whoa. But you say, excuse me, will a man rob God? Yet you were robbing me. But you say, How have we robbed you? This is God speaking, and people having a discussion with people. How have we robbed you? And God says, in your tithes and your contributions, you are cursed with the curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse. Today that's the church, that there may be food in my house, and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, and see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. I think that's the only place in the Bible God says, test me. Give. Honor me with what I've called you to do. Honor me with the first and best fruits of your income. Whether that's your salaries, whether that's your capital gains on the stock market or selling a house, honor me. Honor God. And see, see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there's no more need. This is not give to get. Okay? This is not what he's saying. He's saying, honor me, and you are going to be blessed. And it doesn't mean you give this and get that. This is not about financial blessing. This is about you and your relationship with God being spiritually blessed. And the outworkings of that are beautiful. This will change your life. So if you've never been tithing before, I would encourage you with wisdom to develop the practice. We meet with people to help them not turn their lives upside down and go into bankruptcy overnight. This is not legalism. This is about you honoring God and being blessed in the process. It's about you being a good steward of everything He's entrusted you with. And as I chewed through this, I went, well, thank you, Tim. Because I needed to be reminded of that. Because as I get older and I start looking at the future and wondering, are we going to have enough to live on in the rest of our lives? Well, start looking at that little pile of money that we've set aside, thinking, is it going to be enough? And you know what I'm trusting? Savings and not God. It's a good opportunity for me to come face to face with where I was falling off kilter over the last year or two, becoming increasingly concerned about that. I don't know where you are, and I don't want to judge in any way, but I want to love you enough to encourage you to examine where you are in looking at your assets, your income, and all the things that drive your life. And I want to beg you, not just encourage you, put God first. Honor God. And I want to encourage you to consider going all in, because that's what he calls us to do. To give him your life and to live your life with him and for him. And as I was reading this, I'm going to, you're going to come get me after this one. Six or nine months ago, I ended up playing a song from Queen, which I still get grief for. I was going to play this song for you. In fact, I was going to sing it for you, but I love you too much for this. You ever hear the hokey pokey? You know, you do the hokey pokey. You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out, you put your right foot in, and you shake it all about. Sorry about that. We do the hokey pokey with God. Hit me like a brick. I could not get that song out of my head last night. I hardly slept last night. I had the hokey pokey rolling through my head all night long. And now I'm giving you that blessing. Put our right foot in, put a right foot out. We come to church for an hour a week. Put your right foot in and take your right foot out. Oh, maybe you go to a Bible study too. Put your right foot in and shake it all about. We got the Talk at a Bible study in a group. And we take it out again. And maybe we even get around to putting our left foot in. We might do some ministry service or something like that. And I'm not making fun of those things, but we dip in and out of our relationship with God. We do, and if I'm not careful, I can do the hokey pokey with God. Stop it. Stop it in order to be blessed. He should be at the center of our lives, the center of our being, and we should be moving through life with a conscious awareness of him and all the things that we do. And I don't mean every second, but I mean really in the moments, as you're approaching your jobs, as you're approaching your spouses and your kids, as you're engaging in all these different aspects of life with him and for him, all in fully committed to honoring him as you move through it. Can you imagine what this would do to be fully committed to our marriages? To be fully committed to our kids and not our plans and our goals? To be fully committed to be the ministers of the gospel that he's called us to be, to be fully committed to being the missionaries that he's called us to be in our homes, to be fully committed to honoring him with all the resources we have instead of holding on to it, but to be open-handed and to be generous. Our lives are littered with opportunities, and you will be blessed as you increasingly respond to them in a way that honors God. For application, I'm going to ask you to pray with me, and I'm going to do something dangerous. I'm going to ask God to speak into each of our hearts about this. And my prayer is that you and I will respond to Him in this moment and on an ongoing basis with a commitment to be fully in with Jesus. The opportunities for you to put this into practice are just, they're enormous. Your ability, your time, talents, and treasure as you serve as stewards of your time. I don't know how much time any of you are giving to serving the Lord, serving other people through his church and out in the community, in your families, but to be stewards of your time and to make sure that he's the priority in that. That God doesn't get the leftovers of your time that you're willing to invest in caring for one another. I want you to take just a quick look around the room, real quick. Just turn your heads left and right real quick. What's going to happen at the end of this service, if we don't do anything differently, you're all going to go connect with the people that you know. Right? We love doing that. Love seeing people that we know, know, and like, and then you're going to go home. I want to beg you, say hello to somebody different today. Invest some time. Start seeing the people through the eyes of Christ and choose to love them. Get out of your comfort zones. Invest your time in being a blessing to other people. Listen to them. Be in the moment with them. There is a whole plethora of needs that we have within the church here at Cross Point and those that we're exposed to out in the community. They're opportunities. These are not tasks that we need to do. We have a couple people that are asking to come to church and have sent out, I think, one or two emails over the last week or two. Nobody has responded because we tend to assume somebody else is doing it. We have people that want to come to church. You all remember how hard it was to come to church the first time, to a new church? Heart's thumping out of your chest a little bit. I don't know what this is going to be like. I don't want to know where the exit is. I don't know if they jump up on chairs or handle snakes. I don't know what they're doing in this place, but it's hard to come to a new church. The people that want to come have the desire, they have the courage to come already. If anybody's available to help them, you know, with a ride to church, somebody lives in Lake Katrine, another one lives in Midtown Kingston. We're trying to beef up the team a little bit that helps bring Donna Hoffler here that goes up to her house in Woodstock and picks her up and brings her in. We have a team of about six people that cycle through once every six weeks they're on. Lots of opportunities to be a blessing. We have people that have gone through surgeries that need some yard and lawn care. We have a couple 90-year-olds out in the community that have called us. They don't come to Cross Point, but they've asked for help. They're older, feeble in one case, failing at some level, don't have the financial ability to care for themselves. So we've got people from Cross Point jumping in to help, people that need trees cut up. And then there's opportunities just to bless people with meals or visits if they're shut in, to call them and ask how they're doing. Your lives are filled with opportunities to invest your time, to invest yourself to be a blessing to other people. You're giving, give. Get over it and give. Be freer about it. The Panama Missions team is still looking for funding to be able to get out of here without any debt. We have never failed to support a mission team that was going to go overseas. Never failed. And I know that we will rise to it again. Give. We have church plans that we can give more generously to. You can give to the ministry of the church. You can give your time in the nursery or be a part of the cleaning team. Help with snack. We are filled with opportunities for you to invest your time, to invest your skills, and filled with opportunities for you to give in a way that's an it's a blessing to God. No guilt, no compulsion, no duty. Find joy in your giving because that's what God loves, is a joyful, generous giver, and that can be you. This church that we're reading about this morning, man, they lifted out wonderfully. Really imperfectly. They're a bunch of messed up people just like we are, moving through life under a God who loves them and a God who extends grace. So be at peace, be blessed, and um I want to encourage you to do something that I'm gonna throw Tim under the bus for the second time. First he assigned me that passage, but uh last week or two weeks ago he talked about active listening in our relationship with God. And I caught myself praying. I pray a lot as I go through the day. I pray for you, I pray for things we're doing, I give thanks to God. And sometimes I ask God for wisdom for people I'm engaging with or what we're doing as a church. You know what I don't do? I don't listen. I pray and forget. It's like a fire and forget on a missile. And I'm trying to practice the art and the discipline of active listening to God. So as I'm praying for wisdom, as I'm praying for God to speak into my life, I want to listen for him. So I'm gonna invite you to pray with me. We're gonna turn to God. I'm gonna ask him to speak to each of us about how we could respond in a way that honors him and blesses you. Be selfish. I want you to grow into the person he's called you to be. I want you to enjoy God and experience him and be a blessing to people, but listen for how he's gonna speak into your life as you move forward. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for ministering to me again and again and again. And I pray that you would bring yourself to bear, Lord, um, for each person here. God, that you would give us a very clear understanding about how we could respond to your word, how we could respond to you. God, in a way that honors you, God, in a way that blesses us. And I pray that you would use that obedience, Lord, to um to strengthen God, your church, to advance your kingdom, to bless other people and lead them to you. And Lord, I know this is your will from your word. So I pray this with a reverent expectation, and I pray it thankfully, and I do it in Jesus' name. And Lord, as we turn back to you now in worship, I pray that we would do it as an incredibly blessed and grateful people. Amen.