Sharing Changes Everything

Transcript

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[0:00] Our sermon text for today is Acts chapter 4, verses 32 through 35. Acts 4, 32 through 35. And I want to just obviously say that this is the Sunday after Easter, so kind of the question that we have is, what does life look like in light of the resurrection? What happens when the resurrection happens? How does it change people? For one thing, obviously, they have this hope of new life. But we're going to get into that. What was life like after the resurrection for the community of believers that were around Jesus? And I want to make the case that the resurrection actually changes everything. The resurrection changes so much. It really is the pivotal point in God's interaction with human history. There's the creation, and there's the end, and in the middle really is the resurrection because it changes so much. I guess you could say that whole period of Jesus' life was a real pivotal point, but the resurrection really is. It's like the pivot point of the New Testament, you could say. There's before resurrection and after resurrection. Last week, or on Good Friday, I talked about how God defeated sin and the devil. I talked about this on Easter Sunday, now that I think about it. In the empty tomb, death was defeated as well.

[1:13] So we have sin and death and the devil all defeated because of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. And the question then is, what is next? Well, a Christian is free to live in the past. He's free to live in the present. That new life is promised after this life, but there's also a parallel to that, which is that there's new life now, after believing. So think of new life in two ways. Think of two resurrections. One, a bodily resurrection after your body dies, then you're raised again. But there's also a kind of a before that resurrection, which is the old self dies, we come to faith in Christ, we receive the resurrection, we receive the Holy Spirit, and a new person is raised to life, and there's a new life. And it's not a new body. I wish it were. That'd be kind of great. If it were, I think actually we'd get a lot of people converting to Christianity. If they got a new body the instant they believed, that would kind of just sell itself. But that's not the case. You don't get a new body, but you get a new life. You get a new start. You get a new beginning. You get a new hope. You get all these new things when you believe in Jesus. That's the resurrection.

[2:23] And... The reading today is from Acts 4, and it takes place... I want to say this. It takes place not just after the resurrection, but it takes place after Pentecost. So we're skipping ahead a few weeks, but it takes place after the Holy Spirit has been poured out at Pentecost. And what we see is that there's a new community and a new culture being created by the Spirit. So even a culture can be resurrected. It can die and be raised to new life. And it will have a new form. And that's really what we're going to be talking about today. A new culture has been formed by the Holy Spirit in the light of the resurrection. And so I want you to listen to just how different it is. Of course, you're looking at it here and you're like, I've been reading the whole time. I don't even need to have you read it. But I'm going to read it and listen as we read for just how different this new culture is that the Holy Spirit and the resurrection bring about. So our reading is from Acts 4. It goes like this. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection, there you have it, of the Lord Jesus,

[3:42] and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For, from time to time, those who owned lands, or houses, sold them, brought the money from the sales, and put it at the apostles' feet.

[4:00] And it was distributed to anyone as he had need. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it in Jesus' name. Amen. What a great word. What a short word. And what did you notice? Did you notice just how different this culture, this community was? Well, of course.

[4:27] There's no doubt that living in community is a difficult thing. Let's just take a step back and say that. Like any community that you're in, if it's made up of human beings, there's going to be difficulties, right? That's true in a household. It's true in a church. It's true in a city, and a state, and a country, and beyond. It's difficult living in human community. And that's because there's a lot of competing interests. Not everybody wants all the same things. And actually because there's a lot of self-interest. Everybody wants what's best for them, and for those closest to them. And that will often come into competition with somebody else and what they want, which is good for them, and for those people close to them. And things can heat up unless we find a way to coexist in community. And not just coexist, but for community. And not just coexist, but for Christian community. It would be to bless each other in servanthood.

[5:26] Things will just escalate if communities don't figure out how to manage the problem of self-interest. And wanting more for myself. And actually, this is very true of the early church. This conflict in community, it was really a problem. They had their share of dust-ups in the early church. Some of them were racial dust-ups. Some of them were racial dust-ups. And the problem was who they thought was the most faithful teacher of the gospel.

[5:58] They thought, well this guy was a better teacher, and then this guy was a better teacher. And so they kind of split into factions or camps. Some of them thought over whether they should hold on to old customs, old laws, old traditions, or whether there was freedom in the new life to have a new face to the community. One lens that you could use to look at the book of Acts, is really how did the church weather all the conflicts that come about as a result of being a human community that's called into this divine relationship. So that's one way, it's a great lens. And we have a lot to learn from the book of Acts. And actually if you read the book of Acts, you'll find that it's far more about conflict than it is about people getting along. Even, you know, some of the apostles got mad at each other. And they would... They wouldn't talk to each other for a while. And then they were reconciled, right?

[6:54] Today though, we see this tiny little glimmer. I'm glad it's in here. I'm glad it's in the book of Acts. This tiny little glimmer of what it can actually look like when people live a resurrection life in the power of the Holy Spirit. So I'm putting two things together here, and I think they're important. One is that there's a resurrection life, a new life that's begun before our death. A new person and a new community and a new culture can be raised up from the old. But that it happens in the power of the Spirit. And it really is the only way that it can happen. Is that the Spirit would give them power to do these things. So the first thing I noticed, and I think you noticed, is that in this new community that we read in Acts 4, is that there's a lot of generosity. Right? People selling things that they have that they don't need, or that there's more than they need, and taking that money and giving it to the disciples. And the disciples distribute it to anyone who has need. And there was not a needy person. There was a needy person among the whole community. Which is, in the history of the human world, that's probably almost never happened, right? There's always needy people. But in this small, brief moment of time,

[8:02] and I don't think it lasted, right? I don't think it lasted because the church doesn't look like this anymore, as far as I can tell. But it lasted for a while, long enough for them to write about it. Everyone was taken care of. Everyone had enough. No child went to bed hungry. Right? Everybody had enough.

[8:22] And it may sound to you a lot like communism, and we've kind of preached on this before, that it sounds like communism, but that's incorrect. Because communism, in communism there's this leveling of wealth, but it's often, or almost never, voluntary. Like, the state says, well, we're going to do it this way, and if you have a lot, you're going to have to give it up. And the person who has a lot might be like, that's great, I would love to give it all, but generally probably would never say that. They would more like say, uh, over my dead body, and that's actually what happened. This was voluntary. This was people saying, alright, I'm going to, no one's forcing me to. God loves a cheerful giver. I'm going to sell what I have and give it to the community so that it can be distributed in an equitable way among everybody. So that everybody has enough. And so, there actually, I've kind of looked, and I don't think there really is a word for what, what the disciples were doing here. Because it's so rare. I don't think it's ever really happened before. But basically you have what begins to look like a very large family. Right? In a very large family, you would say everybody counts, and everybody matters, and everybody has enough.

[9:36] Everybody counts, everybody matters, and everybody has enough. When we give my children, my three children, a meal at the dinner time, we never give a whole lot to one and nothing to another. We just don't do that. And I'm not asking for an award for that or anything. It's just how we're wired because we're a family. We don't deprive one child so another can have more. We don't do that as a family. And so, this community of unrelated people in Acts chapter 4 started to look like one big family of related people. And what related them was not blood, but the gospel. The Holy Spirit. And the new life lived in the resurrection. So that's what it started to look like.

[10:26] So, sometimes, like Bible scholars will wistfully talk about how the people of the ancient Near East, like places like Israel, they had a very community-oriented life, and they would say, well, and today we're not very community-oriented, we're more individualistic, which is true. We are very individualistic, especially as Americans. But even back then, I think it's important to put some context on that, even back then they had private property. Even back then, some had more than they needed. And they didn't help those who had less. So that happened all the time. They could store up far more than they needed, and actually there was wisdom in doing so because back then, if you had a really good year of prosperity, maybe a good harvest, it could be followed by several years of real want, and so you should save up some for you and your family so you don't all starve. So there was some wisdom to it, to self-interest. There is some wisdom to it. Without self-interest, I don't know if the human race would be here right now. You know, it's interesting. But we live supernaturally through the Spirit. That's the difference. A lot of what the Old and the New Testament talk about is condemning people for when that self-interest goes too far.

[11:39] When it goes too far. When you build up far more than you could ever possibly use on your own, or far more than your children ever really need to inherit, and all the while watching as somebody next door is starving to death. So there's the parable, for example. Jesus tells two parables among many, actually three parables. The parable of the rich man who does not feed the beggar Lazarus who lays at his door. The parable of the sheep and the goats, which we're going to look at pretty soon, not today, but in another day. The prophets of the Old Testament condemn the rich for not only hoarding wealth, but using that wealth unjustly, using it to give themselves more and more advantage.

[12:20] So it is refreshing that for one brief shining moment, people give up some of their self-interest and start living like a family. And they share what is theirs. Well, what makes this possible? What was it that allowed them to do this? And I think we need to go back and we look at the law, and the law lays the foundation for it, but the law doesn't make it happen. The law doesn't make it possible. The law is clear in the Old Testament. We looked at it in our series on the Ten Words, the Ten Commandments. One of them is just take care of your neighbor. The commandment not to kill is far more expansive. It's not just don't kill somebody, don't murder them. It's you are responsible for protecting your neighbor's life.

[13:09] You get them out of their house when a bus is about to run over their house. I mean, that's kind of a strange example, but you take care of them. You can't stand idly by if he's hurt or if he starves to death next door. And the law goes on. This is the Old Testament, but it's still good, right? The law goes further, and it says that we are to take special care. There's special care of the vulnerable. Not just your neighbor, but your vulnerable neighbor gets even more care than the Ten Commandments would offer them. And these are the people who have less power, and these are people who have less privilege. There's a very familiar phrase. You may have heard it. It goes like this. The widow and the orphan and the stranger in your land, or sometimes called the alien in your land, depending on which Bible translation you read. And those would be people who have come into the land of Israel because of economic problems in their own country or they're traveling through, but they don't have legal protection and they don't have property to protect them. The same is true of widows, sometimes. If a widow dies and the estate has to go to somebody else, she's left penniless. Same with orphans, especially with orphans. Nobody was going to take care of them.

[14:22] These are people who are not protected by property. They're not protected by wealth. And often they don't have the same legal rights. So women didn't have legal rights. Minors didn't have legal rights. And foreigners didn't have legal rights in that culture. And so in the law, God tells his people, they're vulnerable. They are vulnerable among you all the time.

[14:46] You have to take special care of them. You can't ignore them. You can't watch as they starve. You have to take special care of them. They deserve extra special treatment. And so they get special treatment. Look at, for example, Deuteronomy 24.19. And you should know this one. It goes like this. Deuteronomy 24.19. It says, When you are harvesting your crops and you forget to bring in a bundle of grain from your field, Oh, I forgot one big pile of grain. I better go back and get it. This is what the law says.

[15:19] Don't go back and get it. Maybe the Spirit caused you to forget in that moment for just such a moment as this. It says instead, Leave it for the foreigners, the orphans, and the widows. Wow. Then the Lord your God will bless you in all that you do. So there's this, special class of people, the vulnerable, who are allowed to stand by the field. And this is what actually Ruth does. The, you know, if you read the story of Ruth, she's one of these people. She's a foreigner. She's not from there. She's allowed to stand by the side of the field and not only to pick up a sheaf or a bundle that was forgotten, but actually to glean from the field any seeds that fell on the ground. The landowner was not to go back and pick them up, but to leave them for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger in the land. And so Ruth does that. She's collecting little seeds, little grains, right?

[16:18] The law doesn't say, Leave it for your rich neighbor. You could call your rich neighbor and say, I forgot some stuff in my field. You can have it. And then when you forget some stuff in your field, I can have it. And that way we preserve all our wealth together in this great club that we have. That's not what it says.

[16:33] Give it to the people who can't give it back, which is what Jesus says, right? What credit is to you? If you give to those who give back to you, it's no credit at all. And it may seem like a loss, right? You might go, Oh, I left some money on the table. I left some grain in the field. I feel bad about myself. And the law says, No, you should feel good about yourself. It's okay to take that loss. God will bless you. And you're taking special care of the vulnerable in your land. And so you should do that.

[17:04] So the law tells us to do this. The law tells us to act this way. The law tells us to live in a community where everybody belongs and everybody matters and everybody counts. The law tells us to live that way. And Paul says in Romans 7, 12, he says, So then the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. And so the question is, why can't we keep it? And why don't we have such a community all the time? Well, the answer is we can only keep the law by the power of the Holy Spirit. We talked about this when we studied the Ten Commandments. It is the Spirit poured out at Pentecost that comes in and enlivens and changes us, transforms us into people who kind of keep the law without thinking about it too much. We become these kinds of people when the Spirit animates us, when the Spirit moves through us. We can only have the new life that the resurrection promises by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the only way it happened. And this new life that comes out of the resurrection promises to create a new community, a new culture, a resurrected culture, if only we would take it. The law won't get us there. The Spirit will. But the law tells us what it looks like. Take care of the vulnerable. Take care of those who don't have enough.

[18:27] And this is the new culture then, again, I've said this several times, this is a new culture where everybody counts and everybody matters and everybody has enough. I said we were going to say something about losing and winning and I want to say this. Remember, this is a while back, we went through 1 Corinthians in the sermon series. In 1 Corinthians chapter 6, Paul says, I can't believe that there are lawsuits among you in the church. And not only is this bad for the church's witness, but the people who are bringing these lawsuits are missing some fundamental thing about the church, the church body. And that is, you cannot come into the church body with self-interest as your first motive.

[19:13] This is a place where you almost have to leave that at the door as you walk in the building. It's kind of almost like a symbolic building because the church is everywhere where we gather. It's not just this place where we are. That's made evident by the fact that you're at home right now and I'm here, but we're still the church. So we take our self-interest and we set it aside when we're believers together in a church. And churches fail, and churches have real problems when that's not the norm. When the norm is everybody gets to fight for what they want and everybody needs to win, then those churches are dysfunctional and toxic and they often survive because they can survive that way for a long time, but they won't thrive, they won't grow, and they won't be good witnesses to the gospel.

[19:58] If you want to follow Jesus, you have to sacrifice for other people. You have to sacrifice for other people. You have to sacrifice for other vulnerable people and make sure that they're cared for. And so one maybe really modern, current example of this is, this is why Christians should get vaccinated. You know?

[20:19] I recommended this video series I linked to in a church email. This really wise professor says that there is this sense that we have this individual right to get a vaccine or to not get a vaccine. And that's true. You can get it or you can't get it. No one's going to force you to get it. We don't live in the kind of country where there's a lot of people who are willing to line you up and put it in your arm whether you want it or not. Thank God. So as a Christian, you have the freedom not to take it. But he said you have a duty to actually take it. Why? Because in doing so, you protect not just yourself, but you protect other people in this world who may get sick if you get sick. And so, yes, you have rights, but you also have a servanthood duty towards other people in this world who have the law about, you shall not kill, you shall protect the life of other people. And so you're keeping the law by getting a vaccine, even if it makes you uncomfortable, right? Even if you have some questions about it, and you should watch that video series, it's quite good. If it were shown, if it were shown that taking the vaccine was worse for your health than actually taking it and that it didn't protect other people, then of course you shouldn't take it.

[21:28] But that's not the case scientifically. We can figure this out. Scientifically, the case, even people who have symptoms from this, from getting the vaccine, that's still better for them than getting COVID and spreading COVID to somebody else. So we serve others. This is what Christian community should look like. And you know, Christians have fallen prey to conspiracy theories about all sorts of things, including vaccines. And it's a poor reflection on the church and the church's witness. Some of them think that Bill Gates is putting a microchip in every dose of the vaccine to track them. Okay? And guess what? You're not that important. Bill Gates doesn't care what you do or where you go. He's just not that interested. He's not that into you. You know, he's just not that into you.

[22:16] Remember this. Unless you have proof, you cannot spread a falsehood like this because you are breaking the commandment about bearing false witness against your neighbor. And Bill Gates is your neighbor. And whoever else that is in this vaccine conspiracy theory that you think is doing this to him, to everybody, they're your neighbor. They're real people. You cannot bear false witness against them.

[22:41] Don't do it. Your personal holiness is stained when you lie about other people. That's the commandment. That's the word. So we take the vaccine to protect the vulnerable. Here it comes again. Who are the vulnerable? The people who are most likely to die if they get COVID because they have other health problems or just really, random occurrences. And if we can stop that chain that leads to them getting it, then we should do it, even if it makes us uncomfortable. All right? So we protect the vulnerable. The widow, the orphan, and the stranger in the land are now those with preexisting health conditions that could die if they got COVID. All right?

[23:26] And we reduce our self-interest for the sake of community, and we become servants to the other because this is the way of Christ, and this is the example of the cross. The example of the cross, Jesus got far worse than a vaccination on the cross, and he did that to save the world. I think we can take one shot, one or two shots in the arm.

[23:48] Here's how else it looks, I think, in the church, is that we have a focus on winning and having and controlling. And that means we count and we matter and we have enough. That's how we come into the church. Paul says further in 1 Corinthians, I'm still back in 1 Corinthians 6, where he talks about lawsuits among believers. He says, wouldn't it be better just to lose?

[24:15] Just lose. Wouldn't it be better just to be cheated? And I go, oh, I don't like this, Paul, but I get where he's coming. You know, he would never last as a college basketball coach. It just wouldn't happen. They'd be like, oh, we let the other team win because we thought it'd be nice. You're not going to win. You're fired. But he never aspired to coach basketball. He aspired to preach the gospel and to preach the cross of Jesus Christ above all other things. The cross of Jesus Christ says, you don't have to win all the time. The cross says you can get humbled. The cross says you can lose. The cross says you can even get cheated and mistreated. And you don't have to retaliate. It's not about you and not about your self-interest. It's about servanthood towards others. This is the resurrection community. Now, what makes that safe? If you're getting walked on all the time, yeah, you have to stop. You have to have some boundaries. But if everybody in the community acts this way, there's safety for everybody too. Think about it that way. If I do it and you do it, if I'm always serving you and you're always serving me, we're going to be a lot happier than you always looking out for you and me always looking out for me. Those are two drastically different things.

[25:30] And the first one is the one that Paul talks about. It's the one that Jesus talks about. It's the one that we read about here in Acts chapter 4. There's a new resurrection culture, a new resurrection community by the power of the Spirit because only the Spirit can help us let go of our self-interest and serve other people and keep the law about the vulnerable.

[25:57] And by the Spirit, we could say, I don't need to win all the time. I don't need to get my way. I don't need to have so much stuff. I can give some of it away. I can see other people as uniquely and wonderfully made by God in His own image.

[26:13] That's what I really want is for the Spirit also to change how I see so that I don't see an other person, but I see a child of God. I see a brother or a sister. That's how I want to see. Because if I have a brother or sister, they're not going to go to bed hungry. I'm going to do everything I can to keep that from happening.

[26:33] And I want to see that also that my servanthood, and this is true for you too, your servanthood to another person is servanthood to Jesus. It's servanthood to God. That's the parable of the sheep and the goats. Whatever you've done to the least, the most vulnerable of these, my brothers and sisters, you have done it unto me. We serve God by serving others.

[27:00] Now, this is the new community. This is what it looks like for them was that they shared everything. What does it look like for us? And this is, I'm at the very end here, so if you're watching the clock, you're fine. What does it look like for us? Do we all sell our homes, okay, and live together in a large compound and share all our meals? I think all the homes here in Silicon Valley, if we sold all our homes, I think we'd come up with quite a pot of money. And that would even be far more than that. That's far more than we could ever really need to live off. Do we all live in a large compound and share all our meals together? That often goes wrong. It doesn't always work out. I don't think that's what we're called to now. That's too specific. That's what was needed at the time. I'm not saying we should live in community and sell all our stuff and give each other. Though the church does help people in need. There's no doubt about it. The general principle though is this. We need to be always creating and sustaining a community, both a small C community within the church, but a large C community, which is our city, our state, our nation, and beyond. A community where those we share with, those who have less. We share with those who have less.

[28:13] And they could have less voice, or less privilege, or less power, or less control, or less wealth, or you name it. We share. We give up what we have so others could have more. So that none could be in need. Of all those things I said, voice, privilege, power, control, wealth, whatever else you can think of. And we do this voluntarily. We do it of our own accord. Because the Spirit tells us that this is what the resurrection life looks like. And we would rather live this way than any other way. Let's pray.

[28:54] Father, thank you again for your word. Thank you for the power of the Spirit that helps us keep the law. Let us live into community, Lord, that values each and every. And we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.