We Pray For Oneness
Pastor Zach Pummill • September 20, 2020
Sermon Overview
ACTS 4:32–37
The unity of the early church in the book of Acts is incredible. In this passage we see what Spirit-filled unity looks like as the people of God are united on mission. They held everything in common with one another and gave the outside world a glimpse of the radical type of community that God creates. It’s a community that exhibits the love and kindness of God in Jesus Christ.
Sermon Transcript
This morning we're given an incredible picture of how powerful the Christian community can be. It's an extraordinary picture, in fact, one of the most extraordinary that we will find in the entire Bible, the power of and potential of what God's people are called to be.
I was thinking about my experience with Christian community this week. I remember walking on Rollins Road on the campus of the University of Missouri years ago, it was a bitterly cold day, walking back to my dorm room. And I was walking on these empty streets, I was just reflecting on all that my life had become, my life had changed in extraordinary ways in those recent months. I was a transfer student and I had started attending this church where I got connected with other college students and I got swept up and brought into this community that I had never experienced before. There's a deep hunger for God's word that they had. They prayed with one another. They had a passion for mission. They had a deep love and oneness together that I'd never experienced.
And God used this community to awaken something within me. I've been raised in church my entire life, every Sunday. I remember one Sunday, my entire upbringing that I missed, is at a Chiefs game. And so here I was churched and yet I'd experience something more. I remember walking on that road and it hit me like a ton of bricks, just this realization, "If this is what it means to have friends, then I have never had friends my entire life."
I wish I could bottle up how I felt in that moment and just give it to you, because it was profound. That sense that life had really changed, that God had really done something in my life. It was through this community that God changed my definitions, and I never even expected to find community like this because I didn't even know this type of community even existed in the first place. And it was through this community that God radically altered the course of my life.
Christian community can be a powerful, life-changing thing.
And yet, there's a flip side of that, isn't there? Because for some of you, you hold a deep skepticism towards Christian community, because for you, it's been a source of hurt, it's been a source of pain, it's been a source of rejection, and so when you think about Christian community, you carry that with you. You think about ways that you were hurt, ways that you were rejected, ways that you were made to feel small and insignificant, ways that you were always an outsider, never an insider, ways that you were unconcerned about, ways that you trusted someone and yet they betrayed you, ways that you were gossiped about, and you became a punchline and trampled over. Maybe that's you.
And so for you to still be a part of the church, your participation is really more about risk management than it really is about experiencing the beauty of Christian relationship. And so sure, you on the one hand read a passage like this and you think to yourself, "Yeah, that sounds really beautiful." But on the other hand, you might as well be reading about Never, Never Land because it feels like a fairy tale.
And I'd have to say this, I don't think you're alone, I think a lot of people feel that way. I think part of us recognizing that we want to reach out into our community is to recognize the context into which we are reaching. We are a churched community. We are a people that have experiences with the Church. Most of the people we come in contact with, have a church experience and many have an experience that is just like that, they were hurt and disenfranchised by the church. And so as we think about reaching out into that community, maybe part of that recognition for us that we need to lay hold of, is recognizing that part of that mission is that we would be a place that people would learn to trust the Church again, we would be a place that people learn to trust the Church because they experience the beauty of Christ's work among his people. I think that's the type of community that Jesus desires.
And if we read John 17, rightly, then we have to recognize that Jesus' desires for you and for us, are far greater than the desires that we have for ourselves. And we need to open our hearts and have the courage to become the people that he desires us to become.
Because last week in John 17, we saw the Jesus prayed for oneness, a deep, profound oneness amongst his people. And as we're in a season of prayer, we too are praying for oneness, allowing Jesus to show us the way for what we should be praying for. And so what does that type of oneness actually look like? How does that type of oneness actually happen?
Well, we have this passage in Acts 4. We see a picture of this oneness and we see a picture of what this type of oneness looks like when Jesus' prayer is answered and comes to life in the life of God's people. And we see this oneness right off the bat in verse 32, it says, "Now the full number of those who believe "were of one heart and soul, "and no one said that any of the things "that belong to him was his own, "but they had everything in common."
Now, as Marq pointed out last week, that whenever we see that Jesus prayed that we would be one, we immediately start thinking in horizontal terms, we immediately start thinking about you and I in terms of oneness and unity. And so we essentially boiled Jesus's prayer down to "Yeah, Jesus prayed for oneness, Jesus prayed that we would all get along. So we need to recognize that, and we need to take responsibility for oneness and make it happen." And we can do that same thing and make that same mistake with a passage like this. We think of how we need to create unity and oneness. We need to do unity. We need to do oneness. Jesus prayed for unity, so we're gonna do unity and here's a passage where we see unity and oneness so we're gonna do this passage. Let's go, everybody get out your checkbook, right?
Now, I wish that Jesus would regularly send out Top 10 lists to the Church, like a little blog or something. And one of those Top 10 lists was the most abused and misinterpreted passages in the entire Bible because I think this passage might make the list, because this passage can often be treated like it's a formula. We come to a passage like this and we say, "Oh, there's unity and there's oneness, we just need to do that."
And so we treat this passage like it's a formula because we're thinking in unity and oneness, first and foremost, in horizontal terms and so we make it into a formula where we try to fabricate oneness by mandating a certain level of generosity or mandating a particular type of life together and we treat it like it's a formula.
When I graduated college, I knew some people that wanted to take this passage very seriously. They saw all that it said all things in common and they wanted to, with good intentions, they wanted to live as Jesus intended. And so they saw that passage and so they decided that they were all gonna move into a house together. They were gonna buy a house together. They were gonna live together. They were gonna have a common shared bank account. They were gonna raise their kids together and they were gonna do oneness, they were gonna do unity. And they were saying, "Well, we're gonna put ourselves in a position, "we have to work all these things out. "We have to choose each and every day to live as one, "to love each other and to do oneness, "all things in common." The problem is it never happened because they couldn't agree on how to get started.
It's amazing how whenever we think in horizontal terms about oneness, we all have different definitions of what oneness actually looks like.
Or we can treat this passage like it's a formula for our church and we start up a sermon series called "All Things in Common." And that sermon series comes with a side of guilt because we say, "Look at this first century Church. Are you giving like this first century Church? Are you living sacrificially the way that they are?" And so we say they have all things in common. “How often do you have people into your home? How often are you sharing of your resources? Look, they're selling land and their assets and their possessions to give to the kingdom. Are you a Barnabas or are you a burden or a bum? Are you giving to the church land project that we've got going on? We have this land, are you building the kingdom? Are you building your own kingdom?”
And what's the subtext of all of that when we treat this like it's a formula? It's that oneness is based upon us. It's that we can create this type of oneness by constantly giving our resources more and more and more. The problem is when oneness doesn't happen, then whose fault is it? It's yours. You're not giving enough. You're not doing enough. We need to give more. And all that does is become a vehicle for guilt and shame, which is the complete opposite of what this passage is about.
Does anything in this passage sound like it's forced? Does anything in this passage sound like this type of community was contrived and coerced?
If we treat this passage like it's a formula then we completely miss the point of it. Because if we just take a closer look at this passage, then we are going to see that this oneness of this community is actually something that we cannot create. The oneness of this community is not something that we can create ourselves. Just look at the scope of the oneness in this community.
In verse 32, it says, "The full number of those who believed "were of one heart and one soul." Now, at this point in the book of Acts, what's the full number of those who believed? Well, the church at this point, the full number of those who believed was in the upwards of 20,000 people. So this isn't just a few families and a couple couples that want to do life together, this is a multitude united as one.
And consider the character of their oneness because what you see happening in this community was completely contrary to Roman culture and the way their sociology operated inside of the Roman empire. Because the Roman empire was a culture that was built on favors, they didn't have First National Bank of Rome. So the way it worked was that it was a favor-driven society. So if you needed help with your debt, if you needed to make an investment in your business, you'd go to another person to help you out, you'd go to a wealthier benefactor and you would ask them and they would do a favor for you as long as you did a favor for them. And so everything was about advancing in society, gaining in social status by giving based on what you would get in return. It was all based on reciprocity and you don't see any of that in this community. You see them selling their land and taking and giving it just to whoever had need. They're bringing it to the apostles and saying, "Just take it, it's yours." With no expectation of what would be given to them in return.
And consider the effect of the oneness of this community. Because it's estimated that the upper and middle classes comprised about 15% of the Roman population, which means that 85% of the Roman population lived at the poverty level or below. That's an incredible amount of felt need that they faced and yet what's it say in verse 34, "There was not a needy person among them." That's an incredible effect of this community.
And lastly, this type of oneness and radical generosity wasn't mandated. Nowhere in the entire book of Acts do the apostles demand this type of generosity. It was given freely. It was given volitionally, wholeheartedly for the sake of the kingdom. In fact, the first big problem they had to face was how to actually deal with all of the money that was coming in, it's for that reason they created deacons, because the people's generosity had put such a massive administrative burden upon the apostles.
Now, I say all of that so that we might consider this, that does this one sound like something that we can create ourselves? Does this type of oneness sound like something that we can create cause of a few sermons? Or because we start a giving campaign? When we think about this passage like it's a formula, then we just think materialistically, and we think about the material things that they were sharing and having all of those things in common and we miss the deeper point. Right at the beginning of the passage, what's really at the heart of this community is a oneness of heart and a oneness of soul.
This is a spiritual oneness that lies at the heart of this community, and we see it in verse 33. It says, "And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them all." Great grace was upon them all. And so if we desire this type of community for ourselves and this type of oneness that Jesus prayed for, then the first thing we have to realize is that this is not something that we can create, it's something that we are created into, and it's God by his incredible grace and favor that creates this type of community. And he builds this community of grace around the witness and testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's it. They're not one because they like the worship style. They're not one because they like children's programs. This entire community of grace is built on the witness and testimony of the gospel and the gospel is central.
And as you hear that, as you hear "gospel", you kind of want to say, "Well, of course, it's Acts, "witness and the gospel and all that." Well, let's not go so fast. When you think about gospel and you hear gospel at the heart of this community, I don't want you to immediately think about the gospel simply as the forgiveness of sins. I want you to think deeper.
I want you to think about what we saw Jesus pray for, in John 17, because Jesus prayed that he would be glorified in the cross, why? So that we may have eternal life. And how did he define eternal life? He defined it when he said, "And this is eternal life, that they know you, my Father, and they know me, your Son." The goal of the gospel is that we would know Him. That's the very thing for which Jesus prayed. And in his prayer, he also prayed for that oneness, not just a horizontal oneness, but the deeper level of oneness, a deeper desire that we would be one with the triune God. We would be in the Father and the Son, we would be brought into the center of the fellowship and communion between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that we would know Him, that we have forgiveness of sins so that it paves the way so that we might have more of Him. And that has been God's very desire from the very beginning, for you and for us, that we would know Him.
Because just think for a second about the very beginning of this story, just think about a deeper question, why did God create the world? Why did God create us? Because that's kind of a question for those that believe in a Trinity, right? Because we believe in the Trinity, we believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we believe in one-in-three, three-in-one. And we believe that in eternity past they existed in perfect, harmonious, incredible, unending bliss and communion one with another, perfectly united, lacking in nothing.
So why then would God create the world and create us? Is it because he was bored? Well, that's kind of a big theological statement, that God was bored with God so He created us!
And was it because he needed worship? Well, that's quite the statement as well as though God needed an ego boost. No, we believe in the Trinity, that out of the fullness of their relationship and their oneness, they lacked in nothing.
So why did God create the world? It was so that he could give himself, so that he could share the fullness of his being with his people. And we see that all throughout the Scriptures. We see a giving God, create the world and then just give it to Adam and Eve, all of it, gift wraps it and gives it to them. And then He puts the cherry on top and He says, "I give you myself. "I give you face to face relationship with me."
And then we see mankind rebel. We see mankind go their own way and they turn away from God, and yet God continues to give Himself over and over to his people. He invites them into relationship to have more of Him, century after century, millennia after millennia. And he's the God that says what? "If my people pray and seek my face," why? "Because my desire is to give myself to them." "My desire is to give the fullness of my being to my people."
He's the God that gives and gives and gives. And it's in the cross of the Lord Jesus, that it displays the full weight and desire and commitment of God to give himself to his people. You see a Father that would give his most prized possession in his Son. You see a Son that would give his own life, why? So that you and I may know Him. He's a self-emptying God.
We see Jesus become poor so that we might become rich.
We see Jesus empty himself so that we might be filled.
We see Jesus curse so that we might be blessed.
We see Jesus rejected so that we might be accepted.
We see Jesus die so that we might live and know him fully.
And that story of that God is at the heart of this community. It's the story of this self-giving God that would give his most prized possession to us so that we might know Him and the full weight and beauty of his love for us.
And so what we are seeing in this extraordinary community, is when God awakens his people to it, we are seeing what happens when God awakens his people to what they have been given in Jesus Christ. And so we see a self-giving community because they've awakened to this self-giving God. We see a self-emptying community because they've awakened to this self-emptying God. And we see God, by his grace, shaping them together in oneness and out of that oneness, they display the nature and character of this God to the world by their life together. And that's a powerful community.
And so it's one thing to look at this passage and be blown away by what they were giving but I want something deeper for us, that we would know what they were given, that we would know that love of God that slammed so powerfully into their hearts so they could give so freely, they could give so generously, to know what it was to possess Christ who gives us all things and for them to say, "What's a piece of land when I possess all things in Jesus Christ?!" And to have the reality of the gospel, of this God that desires us to know Him, have that break out into our community and into our life together. It's in this community we see that they can give so much because they've awakened to what they have been given.
So we can't create this type of community and oneness. It's something that we are created into. When God by his grace reveals more and more and more of what we have been given in Jesus Christ. When God by his grace reveals the unsurpassable riches that we have in Jesus Christ. And it's only God that can create this type of oneness. And so that's why in this season of prayer, we pray, we seek his face and we ask for more of Him and we can ask for that boldly and abundantly, because we know that when we ask for more of Him, that shapes the people that we become.
But at the same time, we can ask for those things boldly and abundantly, because we know that when we ask for them, we share in the very desire that God has for us, that we would know Him.
Sometimes as Christians, we forget about that, we think about the language of the New Testament, we think about, we stop thinking about the riches of the glory, of the inheritance that we have. And you see all throughout the New Testament, this very language happening in almost every letter of the New Testament. You don't see Paul, the New Testament writer saying, "Well, now that you guys believe "just kinda go and do some Christian stuff." No, what do they say?
They say over and over and over again, how they want their recipients, these churches to have more and understand more and have more revealed to them of what they possess in Jesus Christ. To know the height, the width, the depth and breadth, the unimaginable love of God. To know the glorious inheritance that we have as saints in Jesus Christ. Because they know that it's out of that, realizing what we have been given, that we can become a people that gives something altogether more to the world and we can become that which God would desire us to be. We could become one.
And you know, we're in a season of prayer in which we are asking that God would move among us. We are asking for more of Him. You have to recognize in this passage that if we do want to be a people that reach out into a community and to be used, that it's really a result of realizing and having revealed to us what we have been given. And we just do desire that type of oneness. We do desire becoming the type of people that Jesus would have us be, and to really offer something to the world. And we've said that in 2020, we want to reach out into our community and we want to display this type of oneness to the world to the best that we can. And so, as we think about that, does it not come back to us realizing first what we have been given in the Lord Jesus Christ?
Because in that, we go out into a world in which there is incredible need. We go out into a world in which there is a lot of loneliness and sorrow right now. And really, it's times like these in which the riches and beauty of Christ can be on full display, it can appear more beautiful than ever. And so this fall, we want to reach out into our community and at the end of October, we're going to do just that. We're planning for our Community Groups, we're scheduling them at the end of October to take a Saturday and we're just going walk the streets. We're going divide up the streets of downtown and we're going to go on a prayer walk.
We're going to pray for our community. We're going to pray that God would use us to offer something to them, that he would help us find those who need this type of community. We're going to pray that God would open those doors and help us to find the people that are hurting behind them. And that we would be willing to go out to them and share what we have been given. And as we do that prayer walk, two weeks later, we're gonna lay that foundation of prayer and then two weeks later, we're going to come back and we're going to go door-to-door. We're going to just knock on doors and ask how people are doing. We're going to check on them. Just something as simple as saying, "Hey, we're with the church down the street. These are crazy times, we just wanted to check in on you, make sure you have somebody looking after you, make sure you have everything that you need. Is everything working in your home okay? Can we pray with you?" And just be willing to find the need that we could minister to.
And at the end of that, each of those conversations, we're going to invite people to come to a Thanksgiving meal here on Thanksgiving Day at Rockwall Pres. I know a number of us don't travel for Thanksgiving, we don't travel, and so we want to invite them to a Thanksgiving dinner here at the church for those that don't have a place to go, for those that don't have maybe the money to buy a meal for their family, or maybe those that spend the holidays alone because they don't have family. The holidays can be some of the most lonely times of the year for people, especially in a year like 2020.
We want to be able to go out to them and invite them into our home. We're not asking anybody to change their Thanksgiving traditions, this is just for people in that position, that they are able to come and be a part of it, and we're able to come and minister to people that don't have maybe what we have. But at the end of all of that, it's one thing for us to say, "Yeah, we want to go out," and we make the plans and we think about oneness and we do all of those things, but at the heart of that, our effectiveness is really a product of a deeper desire, not just to reach out, but to have more of Him.
And it's in this season of prayer that we are asking for more of Him so that, out of that, we might have something more to offer to the world.
And last week in our Community Group, Matt prayed to close us out and he said something that stuck with me all week. He said, "Jesus, I can't wait to see what you will do "through a deeply praying community." I agree.
Let's pray.
