Church: All of Us, for all the World?

Introduction

Thanks, Beth. It’s been two months since the triumphant entry, since the day that the whole of Jerusalem erupted into shouts of acclamation and praise. “Hosanna to the son of David,” they called out as Jesus came into Jerusalem, the celebration that the Messiah had arrived. The city was packed full of people, who had traveled near and far for the festival of Passover. It was a bustling city celebrating the arrival of this man who they put all their hopes and dreams into.

It’s been 50 days since some of that same crowd cried, “Crucify him!” the cold, chilling cry of execution. Fifty days since the disciples were silenced, they went into hiding. Peter denied Jesus and then said, “No more.” The noise of Jerusalem started to silence down as people headed back home. The disciples were barely seen as most of the time they were in hiding, although someone heard the voices coming from James and John and Peter’s old fishing boat as someone out there on Lake of Galilee was calling out to a man on the shore, chattering voices around a campfire on the shore of the Lake of Galilee.

Then there were whispers that the disciples were back in Jerusalem, that they had been seen around the city again. In fact, someone heard them talking as they came down from the Mount of Olives one day. Someone reported they had seen a group gathered, up to 120 of them praying in one of the buildings there in Jerusalem. It’s been 50 days since the city celebrated the arrival of the Messiah and everything has become quite quiet. Then suddenly there is a noise, a violent wind so powerful, so loud that we’re told it drew people from all over Jerusalem to come and see what this noise was. It seemed to be emanating from one building there in Jerusalem.

When they got to that building, there were these 120 people who were speaking the glories of God. Amazingly, they were speaking it in a whole lot of different languages. In fact, amazingly, this was a group of mostly uneducated Galileans who were speaking the language of over 16 different people groups. Then there came the booming voice of Peter, a guy who seemed to spend most of his time with his foot in his mouth, now proclaiming in eloquent words the prophecies of God from the beginning of the Bible through to their time and into the future. This is the birth of the church. This is the moment where God’s people are empowered.

The first time the word church is used in the Bible, it’s used by Jesus. It’s used by Jesus when he’s with Peter and he asks Peter, “Who do you say I am?” in Matthew 16. Peter says, “You are the Messiah. You’re the promised one.” It’s on that declaration that Jesus says to him, “Simon, you are now going to be called Peter,” which means rock. Then he says, “And on this rock I will build my church.” That’s the first time that word is used. In Greek the word is ecclesia and it’s actually the joining together of two words e which means out of and calos which means called and so ecclesia means those that are called out.

It wasn’t a word that was created by Jesus or by the church. It was actually a word that was used in that time to talk about particular assemblies in the Roman Empire. The reason it’s two words combined is because it describes what it is. We have similarities in English. We talk about things like brunch, right? Breakfast and lunch. We crash those two words together. Because of that, we know what brunch is because of the sound of those words. If we get other ones like motel, like a motor hotel, motor in, we would use the word motel or teleathon. It describes what it does. You understand when we combine two words, we know what it means because we don’t need the definition because the words themselves tell us something about it.

That’s what the word church is. Quite literally what it was in the Roman Empire is someone would announce a special assembly and they would call the people out of their homes in a city and they would come together in a combined area and it was an official gathering. It was usually a gathering to take part of official business. It wasn’t just people gathered together. It was actually they were called together. Maybe the closest we use in that kind of contemporary sense is the word assembly, not because it’s a combination of words, but because we use that word sometimes to refer to a formal kind of gathering and assembly. People assemble for that. That’s what the word church means.

It’s used first by Jesus, not to talk about a Roman gathering with particular purpose, but something he says he’s going to build on top of Peter, something that Peter is going to be part of. We see that in this story in Acts, God is calling his people out. He’s doing that by pouring his spirit out. In fact, Peter points out that that’s been God’s plan from the very beginning. He uses this passage from Joel to cite it. He says we read this in verse 11, but he’s reading from Joel. He’s reciting Joel chapter 2, which is I will pour out my spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. That’s what God said would happen through Joel. That’s what is happening in that moment. God’s spirit is poured out and the people there are prophesying. They’re quite literally doing that. They’re doing that in this miraculously powerful way through different languages.

God’s Plan, God’s Power, God’s People

God’s Power Through Languages

This is God’s plan, but it’s also God’s power at work here. It’s tricky when we look at the New Testament and think about these miraculous moments of speaking in different languages. Often we use the words translate that word tongues to talk about different languages. The difficulty with talking about tongues is in the New Testament that word is used in a couple of different ways. Most specifically Paul uses it in two ways. In one sentence, he says, “If I speak in tongues of men and of angels,” he says. Now, I’m not entirely sure what he means in that context, whether he’s talking about no matter how crazy a different language it is or if he’s talking about a specific language that angels would use. Either way, he uses this spectrum of tongues. The word is used in a number of different ways, but it’s used in a very specific way here in Acts chapter 2, in a very specific way that it isn’t really used in any other way like this in the New Testament because this isn’t angelic tongues. We’re told very specifically this is languages of men that they’re using.

Some suggest maybe this is actually a miracle not of speaking but a miracle of hearing that the disciples are speaking something some sort of tongue and what’s happened is God has miraculously given each of the hearers the interpretation of that tongue and maybe they think that’s what’s actually happened here. That could be a possible interpretation except that’s not what the passage tells us. The Bible tells us very specifically what is happening there. We’re told in verse four, everyone present, talking about the 120 disciples that are believers that are gathered. Everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages as the Holy Spirit gave them the ability. So, we’re told quite specifically what’s happening here. It’s not up for interpretation for us. That’s what scripture says. The spirit gives them this ability to speak different languages.

What they’re doing with their speaking is they’re fulfilling Joel’s prophecy in prophesying themselves because this is what the people that hear it say. Verse 11, we all hear these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done. They are speaking prophecy. They are proclaiming the things that God has done. That’s the miraculous work that is happening.

God’s Power Through Clarity of Communication

There’s another miraculous work that’s happening there, and it’s happening in Peter. It’s a fulfillment of what Jesus plan was that Peter would be the person who would lead his church. If we follow the story of the New Testament, we find Peter rarely is an eloquent speaker. He rarely seems to know what’s going on. In fact, there’s something about when Jesus says, “Who do you say I am?” and he says, “The Messiah.” It feels like when Jesus says, “On this rock, I will build my church.” He doesn’t just mean on Peter, I will build my church. He actually means on the Peter who understands who I am, which doesn’t happen till after Jesus ascends into heaven, until Jesus resurrected again. On that Peter that Jesus is building his church, not the Peter that was fumbling his way through because God has done a miraculous work in Peter. God has opened Peter’s eyes to fully see what God is doing.

God’s Power Through a Miracle of Listening

It’s God’s power through languages. It’s God’s power through clarity of communication in Peter. There’s a third power that’s happening here, and it is a miracle of listening. We have a miracle of speaking but we do also have a miracle of hearing, not that they have been given the interpretation kind of hearing but they have understood and it has changed their hearts kind of hearing. This is what we get in verse 37. Peter’s, we didn’t read this bit, but after the bit that we read, Peter’s words pierced their hearts. Verse 41, 3,000 believed and were baptized. This is God’s power at work. This is the spirit poured out on a people who God is calling out.

God’s Gifts for All

God Gifts His People

It’s interesting as we think about the gifts of the people of God and we think we see the specific example there. When we think about the way God gifts his people, we see the languages, we see Peter’s clarity of communication, we see the ultimate work of the spirit in people receiving that truth. As we look at those, we can recognize that in the world of the church, the gifts that we receive are far bigger than just that small collection. In fact, I would argue that even as in Paul’s letters when he lists off different gifts, I would argue that even his lists aren’t exhaustive lists of every gift that exists. Occasionally a church will try to put together a discover your gift strategy and I think there’s some value in that but we want to be careful to not assume that we have the full exhaustive list of things God might give us in order to do his work.

Sometimes we overly glorify gifts that we might call more like supernatural manifestations of the spirit the miraculous or the seemingly miraculous. When we’re thinking about God’s power, anytime he uses anything that he has gifted us in any way, if God uses it for supernatural means, it has become a supernatural gift. The nature of a powerful speaker, for example, throughout history, we’ve seen gifted speakers who clearly aren’t their words aren’t being empowered by the Holy Spirit. This is clearly not things coming from God. When a gifted speaker is used by God and brings spiritual transformation in someone, that natural gift that is a gift from God has suddenly become a supernatural gift in that it’s been used for God supernaturally.

One of the challenges is that the main purpose that God supernaturally charges any gift, we see this throughout the Bible is for the purpose of people finding faith. We see this in healing cases. In fact, we’re told the one story where Jesus isn’t able to heal because there’s a lack of faith. God is always using these gifts in order to help people find faith, which means I think we have to trust that God gives gifts in a way that complements how people might find faith. An example of that for us today is my instinct is that in Western civilization in developed worlds and higher education areas it tends to be that the kind of supernatural manifestations like healing ministries don’t often result in faith. They actually come up against a fair bit of skepticism. In other places in world history they have resulted in faith and I think in developed worlds they often don’t and my instinct is that God uses other gifts more prominently in those spaces not to say he doesn’t use those things.

God Empowers His People

There’s disagreement in theology about what’s happening with the spiritual gifts. There’s a line of thinking that says that when the Bible finished being written, God stopped giving his people those kinds of supernatural gifts. That line of thinking is called sensationalism. It’s based on the word ceased. The gifts of the spirit ceased. I don’t think that is consistent with scripture. I think the picture we get is that we are still in the last days that the Bible talks about and those last days started with Jesus and they have continued. In that sense, God continues to empower his people. I think he does that through what we would often refer to as what we would consider kind of more supernatural type things still today and also natural gifts that he supernaturally charges.

If you think of the illustration of a sailboat, you know, you go down to Darling Harbor and Maritime Museum there, there’s some of the amazing tall ships there. No matter how great a ship is, no matter how big and productive it sail might be, without wind, it is powerless. There’s a similar thinking when we think about gifts from God, natural especially, that without God empowering them, they are powerless. One of the great challenges is, I think, and I say this as a church that leans more on the conservative end of the spectrum when it comes to these kinds of supernatural manifestations, sometimes we don’t see these things because we don’t ask God for them.

I’m convinced that God still does the miraculous today. I have in my ministry and life prayed for the miraculous and I’ve prayed for healing and I’ve anointed people with oil as the Bible tells us to. If you ever want prayer or anointing, then our leadership is more than happy to do that. We should be doing that for each other, praying for each other. We sometimes fall in the danger of not asking. We don’t see this is God’s people who he’s called out. It’s his plan. It’s his power. It’s his people. It’s not just Peter. You see that in this story. It’s easy to get distracted by the fact that Peter preaches this great sermon and forget the other believers that are there with him. We’re not really told in Acts two how many. We are told in Acts one that there was 120 of them gathered and then the first verse in two is all the believers were meeting. Now that could be more than 120 really. It might have been 120 then and now it’s all it has to at least be 120 if we’re to take that at its word. There’s 100. I mean that’s with our kids on a Sunday, adults and kids here. That’s around how many we have on a Sunday.

God Calls All His People

We’re told they’re all speaking about the wonders of God. This is God calling his people, not just calling a couple of gifted people. He is gifting all his people. That’s what the prophecy and Joel says is going to happen. His spirit is going to be pulled out poured out on all those all the people that he is calling. It’s all of us. As we think about what is our mission as a church, our vision is to do that mission together. That’s what we want to do.

Our Mission Together

Reaching the Lost

One of the things this week I’ve had the very exciting week of going to the Anglican Cinnid which sinned is it runs it’s built on the Westminster Parliament system. So very similar running to how Camber runs. That means we debate if we’re going to debate something we debate when we’re going to debate something. We then debate that something. Then we debate amendments to that something. Then we vote on whether we’ll have those amendments and then we’ll vote whether we’ll have the motion in the first place. By the time it literally happens that way. Sometimes we have like seven amendments. We debate out those amendments to the motion and then one by one we vote all those amendments down and then pass the motion we started with at the beginning of the day. Very fun. Very important actually as we lead together with the rest of Sydney Anglicans lead the church this year our archbishop and this has been building over the last couple of years thinking about postco but even precoid the decline of the Anglican church in Sydney it’s been on a steady decline just really just two years before co we started to see things drop down and it’s definitely on the way back up though not quite up to the numbers precoid yet across the dasis.

There’s a challenge that we’ve put and debated as a church about particularly focusing on reaching the lost that as we we people move around different churches and as we think about that if if all we’re doing is people moving around our different churches in Sydney one church might see growth but you look at the big picture and there’s not growth and so there’s a challenge to say let’s focus on sharing the good news of Jesus and reaching the lost So in a way to kind of be accountable to that we’re talking about five years growing by 5% every year. That’s I mean we debated whether numbers are godly thing but that’s the overall plan.

It’s difficult for us to think that way right because God does the work of bringing people to him. So how can we say we will reach 5% of our equivalent numbers here and kind of demand that God shows up to our vision and does what we say. Well the first thing is this is what we’re praying for and so we want to be doing that and so we could of course pray for 20%. We could pray for we could pray that the church doubles in size. Of course, this is something that we feel like would be a radical shift from where we’ve been going and would be a positive move. It has been the vision of our church for the last three years that we would grow by 5% in new commitments to Jesus each year. Over the last three years, that has been our average growth. Three years ago we saw 3% of our congregation size new commitments. Two years ago we saw 7% and last year we saw 5% of our size in new commitments to Jesus. Some of you here are in those numbers.

Inviting Others

A significant ministry we’ve done that with is Alpha. The way we think a little bit of that is we know that when people do alpha typically speaking we have found that one in four genuine seekers that come to alpha make a commitment to Jesus through alpha. That does mean sadly that three and four that come and engage with us make their decision not to follow Jesus. That is the invitation of alpha. We’re not forcing things on people but we’re inviting them to explore. But one in four. If we want to see five people make a commitment to Jesus and we know it’s one in four, then we need to be thinking about inviting 20 people to Alpha. That is kind of just some of the numbers that we can put in our heads to be praying into and committing to.

As we think about what this looks like, you know, Nikki Gumble, he’s the main speaker of Alpha. He’s put together the teaching of Alpha and he is he’s very well spoken and it’s a very clear message. This is not just about one communicator. It is about all of us. It’s not just about our ministry team here. We do lots of things in our church to keep connected to the church. Melissa runs playgroup for example and she’s leading that ministry that connects with lots of people. It takes a team to run play group. Miles is in youth in Riverston High preaching the gospel in scripture classes, but it takes a team to run youth group here on a Friday night. On top of that, all of you are more connected. We are all more connected together with far more people than say just our leadership team is connected.

The Mission of All of Us

This is not just the ministry of a few couple people paid to reach the lost. This is the mission of all of us. We want to be careful not to be distracted by the few that are on a microphone, by the few that are up the front, by Peter out here declaring the gospel and forget the 120 that are proclaiming the gospel around him. We’re told that day that 3,000 are added to their number. I mean, what a wild run that must have been for those guys. 120 similar to the size we are. Imagine if 3,000 were added to our number in one day. We would need that church building far faster than we expected. The 500 seat stage one would be the plan. These people are from a whole lot of different areas. 16 region groups are listed in that passage. There’s assumption many of them headed back to those places. When Paul is planting churches and writing letters, some of the letters he writes, he says, “I wish I could come and see you.” Because he never did. He wasn’t the one that planted that church. Other people were doing the planting. Now, of course, the other disciples were out there planting as well, but this is God’s people at work spreading out the good news. This is God’s plan with God’s power through God’s people for all people.

For All the World

The Tower of Babel Undone

Let me finish with this. There’s something significant about this picture of languages in Acts chapter 2. There’s 16 regional groups mentioned right from the beginning of the church. It’s an illustration of God’s vision for the church, not to just be one people group, that God’s vision for the church was always to see all the nations reach. It’s an illustration of that, but it’s more than that. It’s an undoing of the curse of the Tower of Babel. You might remember the Tower of Babel back at the beginning of the Bible. As world population expanded, humanity had the arrogance to say if we build whatever we can build, we can be like God. God confuses their languages. They speak about it seems like Babel to each other and scatters them.

Something significant happens there. We’ve been following the journey of humanity in the Bible up until that point. At that point, there’s a dramatic shift. Chapter 11, the nations are scattered. Chapter 12, we get the story of Abraham, one people group. Up until chapter 12, it’s been a message of God and his relationship with all people. After the curse of Babel, it’s one people. Here in Acts two, that curse is undone. Once again, this is a message to all people. What has happened in Babel is all received the consequences of their sin. In God’s grace and kindness, he offered a free gift of grace to Abraham and his family that through them grace might once again go to all people. This is the undoing of the curse of Babel and it’s also an expression of going to all the nations.

Called to Go

There’s an expression in the fact that these 120 followers start speaking a language that’s not their own. What God didn’t do in this moment is just bring 120 people that spoke different languages to all become Christians at once and then they could all speak their own language. This was a transformation of the people themselves. This was people who couldn’t speak a language now speaking that language. We talk about the message of the gospel is that we must go to all nations. The great commission Jesus says go into all the world and make disciples. If our call is to go, why are so many of us living in the same area of the world that we grew up in? Not all of us. I know some of you have traveled quite far to be in this place.

If the message is to go, why are we all not missionaries into all parts of the world? The answer is that there’s all kinds of different going that we might do. We are all called to go. Some of us that going is to another country. Some of us that going is another place in Australia. Some of us that going is just in the relationship with our neighbor. Some of us that going is to embrace different parts of different cultures so that we might welcome other people who are different to us in our own place where we live and work. It is why we are investing in the translation services that we have in our church using modern technology to do something that we didn’t have the resources to do before that so that we might go in a sense outside of the language that many of us speak to offer opportunities of other languages. It’s why we support Global Recordings Network so that other languages can be recorded to share the gospel to other people in the world.

Going Beyond Ourselves

Sam Chan has wrote a book about evangelism, done a lot of thinking about how we go to others and he talks about the going being a really deliberate relationship with other people. In fact, one of the things he says is if you want to invite people to things where they might engage with Jesus, if you want to invite them to your things, he says you need to go to their things. Go to their things and then you’re more likely to be able to invite them to your things. In one sense, sometimes going is that it’s going out beyond ourselves. The roar of the wind of the spirit continues in God’s people today. It might look a little different to how it did when it’s first poured out in this moment for this purpose, but the spirit is continued to be poured out on God’s people.

In many ways, even though we’re 2,000 years on from this story, and even though we’ve seen the gospel spread around the entire world that we might sit on the other side of the planet and talk about Jesus, in many ways, there’s many similarities to what’s happening here. Continues to happen today. 3,000 added to their number that day. It’s hard to know how many people were in Jerusalem. A high estimate is probably around 100,000. If that’s the number, then that’s 3% of the whole city became followers of Jesus that day. In some ways that’s quite a small number and in one day that’s an incredibly huge number. Today in Australia we we look at the idea that 5% of Australians regularly attend a church. Ratios not that different. In many ways we have the same mission that the church did then. In fact, in some ways our mission we we underestimate the additional challenge of the fact that we have a whole part of our world that has heard of Jesus and thinks they know the good news that they have decided isn’t good. We have the challenge of bringing in a fresh way to help them understand they actually never really understood the good news at all. We come with our own new challenges.

It’s easy for us to sit in a building that was built by generations before us and not make the sacrifices of thinking about how we continue to grow the kingdom and all the work that has gone in to the kingdom thus far and the resources that we have access to because of those who have come before us and not live the sacrificial life of going to the world around us in our life. Our mission continues because God’s mission continues. His plan, his power to use his people for all people.