ACTS 2 (PART 3)
Read Acts 2:42-47. The last few verses of Chapter 2 show us what the early, Spirit-filled church looked like. It is sometimes said that Pentecost was the church’s birthday, but, of course, the church, God’s people, goes back to Old Testament times and Abraham. What did begin at Pentecost was the church as the body of Christ. We are given four characteristics of the church at this time. It was devoted to:
- Apostolic teaching
- Fellowship
- Breaking of Bread
- Prayer
We could see these as the four cornerstones of a Christian church that we, too, should be devoted to.
At the time, of course, there was no written New Testament but the apostles were alive and could teach directly about what Jesus said and did. We do have the New Testament and can access Jesus’ words and deeds through it as well as practical advice and teaching from apostles such as Peter, John and Paul. The word of God is crucial in our faith and we have been given the Holy Spirit to help us understand it and live our lives according to what is in God’s word.
The second of the four cornerstones is fellowship. We can easily just think of this as having tea and coffee after the service or gathering for a meal, which is fine, but fellowship goes deeper than that. It is about being a loving church, about helping those who are less fortunate and being a cheerful and generous giver to God and others (2 Cor 9:6-7). We are told that ‘All the believers were together and had everything in common’ (v44), and they did this because what they had in common, primarily, was faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
The third characteristic of the early church was worship, and in particular, the Lord’s Supper. Worship was varied, both formal and informal; they met in the Temple courts but also in one another’s houses, where they ‘broke bread’ (i.e. celebrated the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper). Their worship was also joyful and reverent. Church worship should be dignified. But it should also be a joyful celebration of what God has done for us through Jesus.
The fourth item mentioned by Luke is that the early church was characterised by prayer. Prayer underpinned everything that the church did and we will see that, as we work through the Book of Acts, there is nothing that happens without the prayers of the faithful. And, similarly, prayer should be at the heart of everything we do as both individuals and as a church.
Here we see a snapshot of the beginnings of the Christian church and how it functioned. And the result was that the Lord added daily to the number being saved.