What Now? (Acts) | The Resurrection Community

What kind of life are you reaching for? Most of us don't decide. We just look around and start moving toward what everyone else has. In this message from Acts 4:32–5:11, Pastor Derek explores what happens when a community is formed not by the world's values, but by the Spirit of the risen Jesus. The early church didn't just believe differently, it behaved differently. No needy persons among them. Resources released freely. People showing up honestly with whatever they had.

But the resurrection community gets tested. The story of Ananias and Sapphira isn't just a warning about lying. It's a diagnosis of something deeper: the belief that what we have isn't enough and the performance we put on to cover that up. The resurrection community doesn't need impressive people. It needs honest ones.

This is part of the ongoing series What Now? — a walk through the book of Acts asking what the risen Jesus is doing now, and what we're called to be in response.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

It's good to be back. Emily and I were traveling last week, and big thanks to Pastor Rich for stepping in and teaching last Sunday. I uh we're continuing our teaching series through the book of Acts today. And I I was you know thinking this week that I know very few people who have ever sat down and just sort of decided the kind of life that they want. Mostly what we do is is we just sort of look around us and we see what the people next to us are doing. We see what the people next to us are buying. We see the truck in their driveway, we see the vacations that they take, we see the camp that they send their kids to. And then what we do is we just sort of start moving in that direction, not because we choose to again so much, but just because that's what everybody around us is doing. And if that's what everybody else is after, it must be worth having, it must be worth pursuing. And if you live on this island, you know exactly what that looks like. There's a certain kind of life here that signals that you've made it. And you don't have to be told what it is. Uh you just have to look around and you start moving toward it. But here's the thing: most people who get there find out that it isn't really what they thought it would be. The feelings that they thought they would have don't actually materialize, or maybe it does show up, but it's fleeting. It just doesn't last very long. It's gone quickly. And they're left standing there in the place that they worked so hard to get to, wondering what they missed along the way. And it's not just individual people either. This sort of thing happens to communities, it happens to churches. Some of us look around at churches that seem to be doing well. Because we have the internet, we can see all kinds of churches out there, and we see the big crowds, and we see the big quality production, and we see the social media presence, and without anybody actually deciding to, the church begins to just gravitate towards those things. And before long, the church is being shaped by something other than the spirit of the living God in that particular place and in that particular time. And this is nothing new. What I'm describing this morning is as true or was as true for the people who were living in Jesus' day as it is for us today. The same sort of looking around, the same sort of reaching for what the people next to them had, the same promise that turns out in many ways to be hollow when they they finally get there. But what I want us to see and what I think the book of Acts is revealing to us is that everything changed after Jesus was raised from the dead. Something happened in the resurrection of Jesus that shifted the way that the world works. Something opened up, a possibility for the way that the world could be. And what begins to happen, we see in the book of Acts, is that a community begins to form around a new way of being, uh, a new way of living together. Not because a group of people had figured something out that nobody else had figured out before, but because the spirit who raised Jesus from the dead was forming them into something that the world had no power to produce on its own. What was being formed was not a new religion. What was being formed was what we'll call this morning a resurrection community, a community birthed out of and formed by the resurrection of Jesus. Summer Street Church isn't here today to admire that community. I mean, I think all of us maybe at some point have been or could be guilty of reading the book of Acts and idealizing what was happening there and saying that's what that's what we should be. That's not what we're here to do. We're not trying to copy what God did then. But we are here because we want the same spirit that formed that first community to form this community. That's why we're here. And that's a different approach altogether. Uh, if you have a Bible or a Bible app this morning, I want to invite you to turn to Acts chapter four. Acts chapter four. There are uh printed Bibles on each of the rows. If you'd like to follow that way, please feel free to do so. If you don't have a Bible, feel free to take that one home with you. As I mentioned at the front, we are continuing our series through the book of Acts today. We're calling the series what now? Because after the resurrection of Jesus, everything changed. And so we've got to ask the question, what now in light of the resurrection? And I want to ask a more specific question this morning. And that question is this What does a community formed by the resurrection of Jesus actually look like? What does a community that is being formed by the resurrection of Jesus, what does that community actually look like? Okay, Acts chapter 4. Follow along. We're gonna start way down in verse 32. We already talked about the first part of Acts chapter 4, and uh today we're gonna start at the bottom of Acts 4 and work our way into Acts chapter 5. Verse 32. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God's grace was so powerfully at work in them, uh at work in them all, that there were no needy persons among them. There's some remarkable things I want to point out about the beginning of this text this morning. And the first is this phrase that they were of one heart and one mind. Every person in that community, in that room, would have recognized what Luke, the author of the book of Acts, is describing here. Because to be in one in heart and one in mind, that was the language of God's people's deepest devotion. I don't know if you've ever heard of the Shema. It's a the central prayer of religious life for the Hebrew people. Every faithful Hebrew person recited this prayer morning and evening. It was the first thing that the parents taught their children as their children were young, taught them how to pray the Shememah. It was the last thing that a person was supposed to say before they died. I guess if you have the opportunity to say something before you die, you were to say the Shema. This is what the Shema says. It's from Deuteronomy. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul. That's the Shema. The most sacred words in the Hebrew world. And what I want you to see this morning is that Luke is using that language to describe this new community. He's not simply saying, hey, there's a big group of people, and you know what? They got along remarkably well. That's not what he's saying when he's talking about them being in one heart and one mind. He's saying that the resurrection of Jesus had produced in this community the kind of unity that God's people had only ever directed toward God in their prayers. It was a prayer for hope. God make this true of us. And then we read this: this is remarkable. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own. There's a word here that I referenced a couple of weeks ago because it showed up there as well. The Greek word behind this phrase, their own, is the word idios. And some of you remember a couple of weeks ago, we talked about this root word. When the council, the religious council, looked at Peter and John, they were in essence putting them on trial for healing. Amen. And they called them idiotics. They're not saying idiots in the sense that we use it necessarily, but they were saying that these were unschooled and ordinary men. They couldn't figure out how Peter and John had pulled off this miracle being so unschooled and so ordinary. It's the same root word here. And in the ancient world, an idiote or an idiot was not a fool. It was just simply a person primarily concerned with their own affairs. They didn't really have a public persona or role in the community necessarily. And what Luke is saying here is in the resurrection community, there are no idiotes. There, no one is living for themselves. There's no idea here, or there's no sort of example or or or picture here of people in the church seeing themselves as private people, keeping to themselves, no one treating their private resources as their own. In the first century, uh Roman city, any Roman city at the time, this sentence was almost unbelievable, actually, that there would be a group of people anywhere in the Roman world where there was no need, needy person among them. And poverty was everywhere, poverty was permanent. And here in this new community, we see this observable fact about them that there were no needy persons. And I want you to listen to what I'm saying this morning. Because the resurrection community does not just believe differently, the resurrection community behaves differently. And if we think our primary aim here as a church, when we gather on Sundays or we gather at midweek on Wednesdays, or when we get together in coffee shops around the island and in each other's homes, if we think that the goal is to just believe the right thing, we're partly right, that's fine, but that's not really our primary objective. Our primary objective is to gather together and allow the Holy Spirit, who raised Jesus from the dead, to form in us a new way of behaving, of being. And that's what we're seeing here. I hope you're hearing me this morning. This is what the resurrection community looks like. Just gives us a glimpse of what a resurrection community looks like. Luke kind of takes a turn here and then he shows us what the resurrection community does. That's what it looks like. Now here's what it does. Verse 34. For from time to time, those who owned land or houses sold them. They brought the money from the sales and they put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas. I don't know if that name rings a bell, but we're going to see him quite a bit throughout the rest of the book of Acts, which means his name, son of encouragement. Barnabas sold a field he owned, and he brought the money and he put it at the apostles' feet. So what happens here in uh Acts chapter 4 is Luke moves from this portrait of the church, and he mentions this Joseph, this Levite from Cyprus, as an example of how what this behavior looked like when it worked its way out in the community. He talks about Joseph, this Levite, the apostles call him Barnabas, and what does he do? He sells a field, he brings the money, and he puts it at the apostles' feet. Why? Why did Barnabas do that? The reason is because something happened to Barnabas that changed his relationship to what he owned. Something really profound happened and it changed his relationship to the stuff that belonged to him. That's what the resurrection does. It loosens our grip on our earthly things so that we might share them with others, so there might be no needy person among us. When the spirit of the risen Jesus takes up residence in a person like it did in Barnabas, their grip loosened. No one told Barnabas, hey, here's what we're doing. We got this new church we're starting. It's called the church. And and what we're gonna do is if you're wealthy or you own stuff, you're gonna sell it and you're gonna bring the money. And then that's what you're gonna do. That's how we're gonna operate. Nobody sort of set this out as some sort of program or way of operating. No one commanded him, no one initiated a policy or a program. This wasn't the result. What Barnabas does of any kind of instruction, it was the result of transformation. Barnabas does this on his own because he was being transformed by the resurrection of Jesus. You know, look, we can redistribute resources without the resurrection. It doesn't take the resurrection of Jesus to redistribute resources. Governments do it, organizations do it. But what you cannot do is produce people who freely give without the spirit of the risen Jesus, who just say, whatever belongs to me belongs to the community, belongs to anybody in need. And so what we're seeing in the book of Acts is not a policy change, it's a heart change. And it's a heart change produced specifically by the resurrection. Everything is changed. And so what does the resurrection community do? It brings what it has. It releases what it's been holding on to. And for Barnabas, it happened to be a field. For you, maybe it's your time. Maybe it's your skill. Maybe it's your money. For you, it may be something else. But and the scale here, selling a field or selling a house and bringing that money, the scale here is not the point. The point here is the posture. It's the posture. And that's the question that the scripture puts to each of us. Not are you a good member of Summer Street Church, but are you a participant in what God is doing here? That's what the scripture is putting to us. The resurrection community, I want you to see though, is not a fantasy. This isn't some sort of ideal thing where everything just sort of works out. I want you to look at how the community is tested, and it's tested in a pretty scary way. Look at turn the page, Acts chapter 5, verse 1. Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also that'd be a great band name, Ananias and Sapphira. Or maybe not. We'll see what happens to them in a second. They also sold a piece of property. And with his wife's full knowledge, he kept back part of the money for himself, but he brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet. And look at Peter, he's like, Ananias, question for you. How is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? A little bit of a different response than to Barnabas. And then Peter continues, said, Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? I mean, you could have done whatever you wanted to with it. What made you think of doing such a thing? And then he says, You have not lied just to human beings, but to God. And when Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. And then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him. There's a new ministry for you at Summer Street Church there. We're looking for some young men to carry out the bodies and bury them in the yard next door. Now listen to this. About three hours later, his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. And Peter asked her, Hey, tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land? Yes, she said, That is the price. And Peter said to her, How could you conspire to test the spirit of the Lord? And he says, Look, the feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also. And at that moment, she fell down at his feet and died. And then the young men came in and finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. I want you to see the result of this kind of thing. Great fear. It's the second time we see this. Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events. Now, if you're sitting here this morning and you're feeling a little unsettled by what happened here, I would say to you, I would hope so. I would hope so. This is really unsettling. The standard reading of this passage probably goes something like this. Ananias and Sapphira lied. God punished them. Don't lie. That's probably the standard reading of what's happening here. And I want to say that's not wrong per se, but it's shallow. Something much deeper going on here. And if we stay in this sort of modification of behavior sort of thing, we're going to miss the deeper diagnosis. So I want us to look more carefully at what's happening here. Ananias and Sapphira do what? Exactly what Barnabas did. They sell property, they bring money, they put it at the apostles' feet. Of course, the key difference being that they hold back some of the money. And what's happening here, it's important to understand, is they are presenting this money as if it were everything they got for selling the property. Remember, this was not a mandated thing. No one had to sell property, no one had to bring money. And if you did bring money, no one said that you have to bring all of the money. But they're presenting something that isn't true. And Peter names what's happening. He says, How is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit? There's a lie here. And then critically he says this didn't the land belong to you before it was sold, and after it was sold, money was at your disposal. Peter isn't confronting them about the money, he's confronting them about the lie. And so, what exactly is the lie that Peter is confronting them about? The lie here is the gap between who they are and who they're presenting themselves to be. Not enough to earn the standing that they were after in the community, not enough to be seen the way that they wanted to be seen. And so they made it appear as something more. But they didn't lie to Peter. As Peter points out, they made a mockery of everything that the Spirit was doing in the resurrection community. Because the resurrection community is not built on impressive contributions, it is built on honest contributions. Barnabas didn't give because he was trying to impress anybody. So what does it look like to show up the way that Barnabas showed up? It's an important question, I think we should be asking this morning. I think, at least in part, it begins to look like showing up in the community, in the church community, even when you don't feel like you have it together. You show up before your life gets to a better place, the place you're hoping it gets to. You show up and you bring whatever you have and you let that be enough. Because the brothers and sisters in this church they don't need you to have it all figured out. But what they need you to be is just honest about who you are and where you are. Why? In part because you're honest. Honesty gives them permission to be honest about who they are and where they are at. And that's how the spirit begins to build a resurrection community. That means when someone asks you how you're doing, you tell them the truth. Now, I don't know if you have time, you're coming in and someone's handing you a bulletin, hey, how are you? But maybe not the right opportunity to tell them the truth. But you tell the truth. And it also means, at least according to what we're seeing here as it emerges in the book of Acts, it also means that you give. The New Testament is not ambiguous about the subject of generosity, not in the least. It's not a suggestion for people who feel like they have enough to spare to give, whether it's time or whether it's money. It is actually generosity, a mark of resurrection community membership. And I know what many of you are thinking because it's a lot of what I used to think, and from time to time and tempted to sort of adopt again as a way of thinking. I'll give more when I have more. Or I'll give or show up when things settle down. I'll do something else when my bills sort of get under control. Let me tell you, that's probably not going to happen. I'll feel or I'll give or I'll serve or I'll give my time or whatever it is when I feel like I'm in a position to do so. And I think that's perfectly reasonable and understandable. Uh, because outside the resurrection community, that's how we make those decisions. But inside the resurrection community, that is there's a different posture that's being taken. And this is the posture of someone who is waiting to have enough before they bring what they have. And so to counter that, Jesus points to a widow in the temple. Remember the story about the widow who just gave like a fraction of a penny, and Jesus says, Hey, look what she gave. It's more than everybody else. He points to her, a woman who gave before she had enough to give. She gave from her poverty. And Jesus chooses her as the example in what would become the resurrection community. Not because the amount she gave was impressive, it was very much less than that, but because her posture was honest. See, unlike Ananias and Sapphira, she just gave what she had and she let it be enough. She didn't try and dress it up. She didn't wrap it in a little table napkin so that when she dropped it in the box it wouldn't cling around, so that people know she just put a little coin in. Her posture was honest. And I think this is what we're asking of each other here at Summer Street Church. Not impressive giving. I think what we're asking is just honest giving, regular giving. Giving from what you actually have, not from what you wish you had. I think fundamentally we know this. Emily and I just got to take an amazing trip and spend time in a lot of really, really beautiful, very old cathedrals. And those cathedrals belong to a religious organization that really doesn't need any more resources. But I just want to point out, in case any of us are confused about how this church operates, we depend on the generosity of our members. Not because we're trying to build something impressive here on Nantucket, but because we're trying to be something different, a generous resurrection community, being formed by the Spirit of God. Resurrection communities, churches like ours, were funded by the offerings of people who bring what they have and trust God with the rest. That's how this church has survived all these years and how it will continue to survive. I want to introduce just, I mean, I know you know this word, but I want us to think about the word integrity for a second this morning. And I want you to I want to talk about what it really means. The word integrity comes from the Latin word integer. Any mathematics, mathematician, good math people in here, not me. I don't even know how to say the word math, apparently. But that word means whole. It means undivided. And so a person of integrity is what? A person of integrity is the same person in private that they are in public. They're whole. They're undivided. Ananias and Sapphira, the problem was they were divided people. They didn't believe what they had was enough, and so they make it appear to be something more. And they brought that division into the resurrection community. And what we see, I think, is that division like that cannot survive in the resurrection community. The spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is not looking for performers. We don't need performers in this church. The spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is looking for people who will open themselves out to the personal work of transformation that the spirit has for them. He's interested in producing new life in our midst. We cannot perform our way into resurrection. We can only receive it. And the test of the resurrection community is this it's the test of integrity because it requires not perfect people, just honest ones. Honest people. Now let's look finally at what happens through the resurrection community. Verse 12. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon's colonnade. No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people. Nevertheless, over time, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. People brought the sick into the streets, and they laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. That's crazy. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick, those tormented by e uh impure spirits, and all of them were healed. I want you to notice what's missing from this passage. There's no mention of any sort of outreach strategy by this church to reach their neighbors for Jesus. There's no mention here of any sort of campaign to get people into their building around Easter or around Christmas or in any other time of the year. There's no mention here of any effort at all to attract outsiders. What we see instead is that the resurrection community is just being what it is. And because of that, people in need are being drawn toward it. Far too many churches repelling people today. And they've got the money and the crowd and the strategies and the presence and all of that. But nobody's being drawn there. Here they are. They're bringing the sick into the streets, they're laying them on mats. They hope that even the shadow of someone who's filled with the Holy Spirit, not even Jesus, but someone who's filled with the Spirit of Jesus might uh might fall on them, on a person who needed healing. I want you to think about what that means, that this community, this resurrection community here, had become so marked by the power and the presence of the Spirit that people who are not a part of that community are willing to go to extraordinary lengths just to get close to it. Not because it had great programs, but because of its life. And this is what happens through the resurrection community, becomes a place through which healing flows to the community around it. That's what we want to happen here. Where the healing of Jesus flows through the people of Summer Street Church to the community around us. A place where resources find their way to the needs. A place where the watching world sees something that it just simply can't explain, apart from the living God. And I want to connect this back to where we started this morning. We talked about how the world forms us, it's just simply by us looking around what other people are doing and have and going, and we just sort of gravitate towards that. And that begins to form us into a kind of being. How that formation happens to us as individuals, how it could easily happen to us as a church as well. And here's the alternative that Acts is presenting to us: that a community so formed by the spirit of the risen Jesus that they're uh that the people around it are uh start looking at it the way they used to look at the world. Do you see what I'm saying here? That people are sort of in this place of pre-discipleship. They're realizing that the way that they are being formed out there in the world is not really going anywhere. And they see this community of life and they're being drawn toward it, and they start to see it in a way that says that they begin to say, I want that. I want to be formed by that. This is a powerful, powerful thing. Not because this community is impressive. It wasn't very impressive, actually, but because it was alive. Because there's something happening in it that the world just simply couldn't produce. You know, the world is full of impressive communities. There are a lot of impressive communities on the island. I'm not disparaging any of them. We need them, they're wonderful communities. But what the world is desperately short of are communities that are alive with the spirit of Jesus. And that's what we want to be. We don't want to be impressive. That is not our goal as a church. We want to be alive. And here's the thing about that: we can't manufacture it. Uh, we can't pick the right songs or spend enough money on production or whatever. We can't hype it up. We can't make it happen. We can't program our way into it. All we can do is receive it, and to receive it, we have to do what we've been singing about all morning, and that is make room for it. And the only way we make room for it is letting go. Letting go of what we think this church should be, letting go of what we think is going to give our life meaning and purpose, and allowing the Spirit of God to move in. The same spirit who formed that community in Acts is forming this community right now. I hope you know that. In this room, on this island, but don't miss this. The Holy Spirit forms resurrection communities out of people who show up honestly. People who bring what they have and they let it be enough. You know, we started with a question this morning. What does a community form by the resurrection of Jesus look like? And and here is the answer that Axe gives us. It it looks like people who have been so encountered by the spirit of the risen Jesus that worldly pursuits have begun to lose their grip on them. People who are no longer just reaching for what everybody else has around them. How freeing would that be for each of us as a part of this resurrection community? For the stuff we see around the island to have completely lost its power on us. To not even be tempted by it. To say, God, whatever it is you have for me, great. I'm gonna be enough and I'm gonna bring myself and I'm gonna bring what I have and I'm gonna let that be enough. I don't have to be impressive. I can just show up real and honest. That's the resurrection community, and that's what we're being called to be. So here's what I want to ask of you this week. So I do have an ask. It's one, it's just simply one thing. I want you to take a little bit of time this week. You're gonna have to like write this down. You're not gonna remember this after lunch. I'm telling you, right? You probably want to remember it before lunch. So if you if you want to do this, you might want to write it down. I want you to create some space this week. Maybe today would be a good time to do it. To prayerfully and without self-judgment, ask the spirit to reveal to you something you've been withholding. Uh something you've been holding back on. For some of us, it might be our presence. This is something I can struggle with from time to time. Being in the room, but not really present. Not really authentic, not really honest. Uh, for those others of us in this room, it maybe it is the honesty piece. We've been conditioned that if we get honest, then then people are gonna leave us or people are not gonna love us, and that's the shame talking. And so it is scary to show up in a community and be honest. But this is what God is doing amongst us. Uh, maybe it is your money. I mean, we sort of unapologetically uh want to mention that this morning because that's tough here on this island. It's tough for many of you who are working a couple of jobs and you've got a lot of stuff going on right now. And I get that. Remember, it's about our posture. That's it. Uh, so you've been telling yourself, I'll show up, I'll get real, I'll I'll go to the midweek gathering at some point. I'll I'll start giving financially to the church at some point. I'll start doing this when I have more or when I feel more or whatever it is. And so what I'm asking you this week is to take a chance and to just begin, to show up this week, to get honest this week, to start giving this week, just from what you have. That's it. Not from what you wish you had. Just let it be enough, because it is enough. It's enough for us, it's enough for the Lord. And then trust the Holy Spirit to do in you what only He can do. Let me pray over you this morning as we begin to transition to the table. Lord Jesus, you are you are risen. And because you are risen, Jesus, we don't have to perform anymore. We don't have to wait until we have more. We don't have to manage how we appear. We can just show up. Be seen, honest, and open-handed, bring what we have and just trust you with the rest. And so we just invite you by your spirit to form us into this kind of resurrection community. Not an impressive community, but a community that is alive, not a community that performs, but a community that is known. And so, God, let the watching world and the small world around us here on Nantucket see something in us this week that cannot be explained apart from you. In Jesus' name, amen. I want to invite you to stand as we prepare for communion. If you're serving communion, would you come to the front? Philip, one of our elders, is going to come and lead us in the table liturgy this morning. And I just want to say, I want you to notice what we are doing this morning when we come to the table. We're just simply receiving what Jesus had to give. The body and the blood of a crucified and risen Savior. The table is the resurrection community, I think, at its most honest. And we don't come this morning because we have it all together. We come because we don't have it all together. And we come this morning with empty hands, and we just let Jesus be enough for us. Why do we do it every week? Because it takes practice. It takes practice. So uh Philip's gonna lead us in our liturgy, and the invitation is yours.