How is the kind of generosity displayed by the first believers maintained?
The uncommon generosity that was displayed by the believers was born from the unified mind that they had (see previous post for the discussion of this type of mindset) and a commitment to valuing others above themselves. Often, this passage is associated as a model for socialism. The only thing that can be said about that is that generically, most socialist movements are born out of envy and a sense of class warfare. Socialism is hardly born out of generosity. What is displayed here is not an economic system, but a willingness from people to treat others with a value that is above even themselves. This is something only born by the Spirit of God. It cannot be legislated, coerced, or even pretended. It only survives so long as a group of believers is yielded to the gracious Spirit of God. In what way should you give? How much? Giving must never be done for a show. As an extreme example, it resulted in the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira. This warns us that giving is not something to be taken lightly, and not something done for personal gain or recognition. Jesus told us that our charity should be done in secret and the Father who sees in secret will Himself reward us openly. If we give unto others for the notoriety, then we have all the reward we will ever get from that. Similarly, our giving is not something that should be done with an expectation of receiving something in return. If our giving is done with expectation, it is not giving, it is trading. It is not love, it is contractual obligation. It is not a service, it is a job for which a wage must be paid. True giving is done as a gift free of charge, and free of obligations and expectations. How can you give now? While you may not have money to give, there is so much more to giving than simply giving money. You can give of your time, your talents, and your efforts. Service for another human being is the mark of Christ-likeness. As a side point, if you have nothing that is yours, then you have nothing to give. It is important as young men to develop skills and grow in maturity in the Lord so that you can have something to offer others. Never so you could hoard your blessings in storehouses. Instead, receive God's blessings so that you can be poured out as a blessing.
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What is the one heart and soul that the believers possessed in Acts 4:32?
We find a good description of the unified mind of the believers in Ephesians 4:4. It is the recognition of these fundamental truths about the body of Christ that we must keep in the forefront of our minds in order to maintain unity. 1. One body: Christ has established one body, not many bodies. There are many members, but there is one body through which He is interacting with the world. Where Christ was once confined to a singular body when He was on the earth, now having poured out His Spirit, He has a new means of accomplishing the will of the Father. The church. There is one body. Anyone who is seeking to be the hands and feet of the Lord in submission to the headship of Christ is a part of the body. Our acceptance of them into the body is an acceptance of Christ's choice is including them in His body. 2. One Spirit: There is one Spirit who works to empower the body of Christ to accomplish the will of the Father. There is not a spirit for one task and a spirit for another, but one Spirit given to all. This means that all the members of the body have access to this Spirit, and some gift provided for by this Spirit. In this sense, every part of the body is essential and important. Every part is a part that glorifies Jesus. There is no caste system in the body. There is Christ. And then there are all of His followers empowered by His Spirit. If any person has received this Spirit, they are Christ's. 3. One hope: There is one hope that all believers cling to. This is a distinguishing feature of the followers of Christ. We are a people who have the hope that Christ will return, completely deliver us from sin and death and give us an inheritance which we cannot begin to imagine. These things we hope for are not vain hopes dreamt up by naive children, but rather, these are promises found in the word of the Lord. We are a people who place our hope in the promises of God as revealed and confirmed by Jesus Christ. Anyone who has this hope is unified with us. 4. One Lord: There is one person who is in charge. There is one master. There is one Lord. There is no governing structure where certain men are placed over others. There is the Lord Jesus Christ, and His bride, the church. He owns every believer. He purchased every believer with the most costly of items: His blood. No priest is ultimately in charge of the church. No politician. If there is authority over the people of God, it is set by God, and given as a stewardship by Him. Ultimately, He is the Lord. All those who confess the Lordship of Jesus are unified with every other believer. 5. One faith: There is only one Person for whom our trust can placed in that it will never be let down or betrayed. That is Jesus Christ Himself. All other people, programs, or ideologies are prone to failure and destined for destruction. If anyone confesses that their trust is in the Person of Jesus Christ Himself, then they are unified with the body. 6. One baptism: Baptism is a public declaration that an old life is being put to death, and a new one is being brought to life by faith in Christ. It is this public confession that marks the Christian life. It is this public confession that takes a person from simply wanting to follow Christ to actively pursuing that effort. If any person lives a life committing their members to the Lord in the hope of having Christ's resurrection life manifested in them, then they are unified with the body. 7. One God and Father: There is only one creator and there is only one Father. This inevitably means that there are no step-children in the family of God. Every person, no matter how annoying, different, or naturally unlikable... every person... is a family member. Therefore every person is valuable. Every person receives all of the same familial benefits. Every person is loved equally by the Father. In light of this, every believer should also be treated as equally valuable by every other believer. The Sadducees rejected the idea of the supernatural, and therefore rejected the resurrection of Jesus Christ. How does this ideology compare to today? How has materialism and naturalism influenced culture, the church, and your personal thinking?
Everything seems to be driven by materialist and naturalist thinking these days. The prevailing thought is that if something is demonstrable by scientific means, then it holds a status of absolute truth. The only things that are worthwhile are the things which we can physically interact with. All value is placed on experience and observation. This kind of thinking is in opposition to the truths of the Scriptures. Hebrews 11:2 makes it clear that by faith we understand that the things which we see were made by things that are unseen. All of our hope rests in the unseen. We trust the word of the Lord above our senses, and our reasoning, and our experience. Drifting away from this hold only results in the tragedy of a weakened faith. We should not outright reject scientific and experiential claims, but we should hold them all under the authority of God's word. What does being filled with Spirit motivate us to do? When a person is truly is filled with the Spirit, they will do as Peter did when questioned about the healing of the paralytic. They will glorify Jesus Christ, and diminish their status for the sake of bringing Jesus' name to fame. The Spirit is primarily concerned with glorifying Jesus. All efforts accomplished in the power of the Spirit result in His glorification and not the glorification of the person. We must remain on guard, maintaining a focus on Christ always, as Paul said to the church in Corinth, that "he determined not to know anything amongst them except Christ and Him crucified." What things should people marvel at in our lives? The Sadducees marveled that Peter and John spoke boldly of Jesus, even though they were uneducated people. Our lives should be those that people immediately recognize that there is a uniqueness to us because of the person of Jesus. It should not be that we are so smart, or that we have such likable personalities. But rather, it should be that we have boldness and confidence in Christ, that our love and sacrifice is reminiscent of Him, that our peace is enduring. It should be that the fruits of the Spirit as listed in Galatians 5 are clearly evident even in the midst of troubling circumstances. These fruits will bear witness to the goodness of Christ. When confronted with persecution and opposition, what should we do? We should pray for the boldness to remain faithful to the Lord and the sharing of His word in the midst of the persecution. Persecution is promised by Jesus. Can it be removed? Certainly, but we should also recognize that there is a glory in suffering for the Lord and that 1 Peter 4 reminds us that while God is blasphemed by those doing the persecuting, He is glorified by the way we faithfully serve Him in the midst of persecution. It is good to be relieved of persecution. It is better to stand strong in the Lord through it. At the beginning of Peter's sermon, what does he emphasize?
Peter immediately points out that the healing that was performed was done by the Lord, not himself. He gives all the glory to the Lord. In all things that we do, even as we are the main people involved in what the Lord is doing, it is right to give glory to God. It is never you working something, but God through you. The one who gets credit for all things that are done is the Lord. What does Peter mean when he says "faith in the name of Jesus"? Peter associates this phrase with the lame man being able to walk. If you look at how the interaction between Peter and the lame man went, you will see that the lame man was told to stand and then raised up. The lame man had to accept what Peter was about to do, and let him do it. Faith is about taking the promises of God and letting God turn them into actions in your life. It is about trusting the Lord enough to obey Him when He says to do something. If there is no obedience, there is no underlying faith. To have faith in the name of Jesus is to have this type of trust in the revealed character of Jesus the Person. Faith must be placed in something/someone. Faith in the person that Jesus has revealed Himself to be is what is meant by faith in the name of Jesus. We are called to be those who trust and obey the Jesus that is revealed in the Bible. Peter says an interesting phrase concerning repentance and the blotting out of sins in verse 19. What does this teach you about the relationship between repentance and forgiveness? Repentance and forgiveness go hand in hand. You cannot obtain forgiveness if there is no repentance. This is not an arbitrary withholding of forgiveness. It is simply impossible to forgive if repentance is not present. Repentance means to change your mind. Specifically, it means to change your mind about sin. It means that the things that you thought were right, you realize are wrong. It means that where you once thought you didn't need anything, now you see you need something. It means that where you ignored God, you now pay attention to Him. How can someone be forgiven if they do not ask to be forgiven? How can someone be forgiven if they think there is nothing that they need to be forgiven of? How can someone be forgiven if they still love their sin? If your mind doesn't change, then what are you asking to be saved from? What are you even saying? Forgiveness can only come if there is repentance. Peter and John did not go looking for someone to heal. They were simply going to the temple to pray. What does this tell you about how go about serving the Lord?
We are to continue gathering together, praying together, and learning about Jesus together. As we do so, we must simply be open to the opportunities God presents right in front of us. We do not need to make up clever plans or force things to come to be. We must simply stay close to the Lord, and stay open to the opportunities He presents us. Serve where you are in the regular things you do. What did the lame man want? What does this tell you about the needs of the world? The lame man was not asking for healing, he was asking for money. He had given up on living a different life than the one he had, and had instead settled on just trying to make the best of his bad situation. The world is just like this. People do not know that healing is being offered to them. They are so run down by their own failures, their own disappointments, their own inabilities. All they want is to find some small piece of comfort in the middle of it all, some small delight. They turn to money, to comfortable housing, to a better education, to a better government, to a better party or thrill. They turn to anything that offers a small escape from the desperate situation that they find themselves in. While it is important to sometimes help in these needs, there is a greater need that must be met for which the world is not even aware. Peter did not give the lame man what he asked for, but instead healed him in the name of Christ. What does this tell you about how you serve the world? As those who serve the Lord by serving the world, we must be able to determine the correct thing to give those in need. Not everyone Peter encountered was healed. Peter looked intently at this man, and determined (by the Spirit) that the thing the man needed most was to see God heal him. This led to the man glorifying God and praising Him. The actions we take must be those which lead others to glorifying God and trusting Him. We cannot do this without the Spirit. We cannot do this without knowing those around us and what their particular difficulties are. Perhaps someone is particularly hung up by evolution, or by hypocrisy in the church, or by some other misunderstanding of the Lord. We must see the true need, by the Spirit, and address these for the glory of the Lord. Discussion Questions: What is baptism? Why is it important? It is the public declaration that we have accepted the gospel of Christ. Symbolically, it demonstrates that we have willingly died to our old way of thinking about life, and been risen up into a new way of thinking about life. We have moved from living with faith in ourselves to living with faith in the Lord. What is the apostles doctrine? How do you continue in it? Why is continuing in it helpful? The apostles' doctrine is the teachings of the life of Jesus, the teachings about how He fulfilled the law and how He has justified us through His death and saved us by His resurrection. It is the teaching that He will return and redeem all of creation to glory. To continue in this is to study it, to remember it, and to keep it in your mind constantly. This is so important in helping us make decisions about what to do in our lives today. What is important about fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer? Fellowship is a means by which God encourages us, motivates us, corrects us, and challenges us. By being with other believers, we open ourselves up to like-minded people who love the Lord. This environment is designed to encourage us when we are low, to remind us about the truths found in His word, to motivate us to step out in faith with the Lord, to correct us when we are not following Him closely, and to challenge us to live our lives in the Spirit. Fellowship is a blessing and a privilege. It is a two-way street, where we come both to provide encouragement and to receive encouragement. The breaking of bread is the taking of communion, and is all about the remembrance of Jesus Christ. This is so important, because even as we try to serve the Lord, often we forget the Lord. It is necessary for believers to take time to stop, thank God for Jesus, and remember His life, death, and resurrection. It is a time devoted to remembering Him, remembering His sacrifice and remembering His love. Prayer is about inviting God to participate in your life, by asking Him what His will is for your life. It is not about getting God to do what you want. It is about finding out what God wants, and submitting to that. It is important to pray always so that we can always be depending on God for the guidance to know His will and the power to do His will. What does a growing church community really look like? A growing church is not necessarily a church that is growing numerically. A growing church is one where the people have an increasing fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is to consider the Lord as the most important person/thing in your life. It is to hold Him in the highest regard. It is the desire to listen to Him first before you anyone else, even yourself. This inward determination to listen to the Lord leads to an outward show of many signs and wonders. It leads to lives being lived that are so unlike the lives that people in the world live. |
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