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August 10, 2008
A Missionary Church Stands Together
a sermon on Acts 4.32-37,
5.12-16
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama
A.W.
Tozer was a pastor with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. He is best known
for his 31 year ministry at the Southside Alliance Church in Chicago and his
more than 50 books on Christian spirituality. When I was at the Beeson Pastors
School recently I attended an interesting workshop about balancing ministry and
family. Dr. Lyle Dorsett used four famous pastors and evangelists as case
studies: Dwight L. Moody, E.M. Bounds, Billy Sunday, and Tozer. He looked at
their successes and failures and speculated at what worked and why. Moody and
Bounds had wonderful family lives. Sunday’s was a disaster. Tozer was in
between. On the one hand he was loyal and he tried hard. For example, he took
Wednesday off to be with the kids, so that his wife could go to circle meeting
and then go shopping with her friends. He was there, but he was emotionally
distant. His wife remarried after he died. When her children asked if she was
happy, she replied that she had never been happier. “Your father loved Jesus,”
she told them. “This man loves me.” A question that has haunted Dorsett and
intrigued the workshop was this: How could a person so obviously intimate with
God have so much trouble relating to his family? How could such a mature
Christian, full of grace, struggle so much in his closest relationships?
Frankly, it is not a question that troubles me on an intellectual level. God is
not finished with any of us, and all of us have areas where we need more grace
and healing and growth. But Dorsett has put his mind to this and he had two
thoughts. First, considering how terrible Tozer’s family of origin was and the
kind of father he had, the surprise is not that he struggled but that he did as
well as he did! Second, Dorsett reflected that Tozer never had a mentor. He
never had someone to come alongside him, help him see his blind spots and find
healing. He never had a group of friends, like an accountability group, to help
him. Dorsett pointed to the story of Lazarus. Jesus comes to Bethany, and his
friend Lazarus is dead. The funeral is going on—funerals lasted for days in
first century Palestine. Mary and Martha want to know where Jesus has been. “If
you had been here, our brother would not have died.” But Jesus has a plan. He
goes to the tomb and shouts, “Lazarus! Come forth!” And the dead man rises. He
gets up and walks out of the tomb. He is still wound up in the grave clothes.
Then Jesus says to the people standing there watching all this in amazement:
“You unbind him, and let him go.” It’s right there in the Greek: You (plural)
unbind him.
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Here’s Lazarus. Jesus has called him. Jesus has given him new life. That new
life is inside him. He’s alive! But he’s still wrapped in the grave clothes. How
will he get out? Jesus tells those around him: You unbind him. Dorsett compared
Tozer to Lazarus. Tozer never had people around him who could unbind him. That
image seared my mind. I will never forget it. I will never hear the Lazarus
story the same way. We need one another. If you know Jesus and have experienced
his grace, you have new life. He lives in you. You can get up out of your grave
and walk again. But those grave clothes might still cling tightly. How are you
going to get them off? You need help. You need people who love you and who can
help you heal. This is the first sermon in a four-part series from the Book of
Acts about being a missionary church. Many of you will remember the sermon I
preached last month, in which I contrasted the work of chaplains and
missionaries. One is an insider, the other an outsider. One has standing, the
other does not. My point was: The Christian church in America used to function
as the nation’s chaplain. Now, however, society has changed so much that we are
out of a job. We either learn to function as a missionary, or we just slowly
disappear. This first sermon will come as a surprise to those who took my
previous message to heart. The one trait above all that makes a church a
missionary church is its outward focus. Church is not about “us” (the members)
but about those outside. A chaplain church thinks ministry is what happens in
the church building on Sunday morning. A missionary church thinks it is
something every Christian does out in the community all week long. Everyone who
talks about this sort of thing agrees: Churches need to look and act beyond
themselves. So why in the world is my first sermon in this series about caring
for one another? The answer is, the book of Acts. Our situation bears eerie
similarity to the world of the New Testament church. If we want to see what a
missionary church looks like, we can see several right in the Bible, especially
the book of Acts, which describes how the Good News about Jesus spread in those
early days. Acts is all about the church. So I am just trying to go where
scripture leads me. Do not lose sight of how the inner life of the church made
an impression on those outside. The Acts Christians were not off hiding
somewhere, as we will see. People saw them. Outsiders knew who they were.
Outsiders heard the Christian message. They saw how it was lived by the
Christian community. So you always have to keep this dynamic in mind. One of the
problems with the way we practice Christianity is that we do not stand out
enough. For the most part, we are just like everyone else, except we go to
church on Sundays. I expect that will change more and more if the
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culture continues in the direction it is going. But it has already gone a long
way, and we have mostly gone along with it. Christians face tough choices about
whether to go along with the culture or to be faithful to the teachings of
Jesus. It has become impossible to do both, though we try. We try. This tension
between changing Christianity to fit the culture versus daring to be faithful
and different is behind the divisions and battles in the mainline denominations.
Those battles are important, but we all deal with the same thing every day.
Wherever Christians are in a non-Christian environment and we dare to be
different and faithful, people take notice. They did in Acts. They do today. So
this sermon is about standing together and caring for one another, but it is
also about how our life together can be a sign of the power and truth of the
gospel. In the first part of our scripture reading we find those earliest
Christians sharing their possessions. What’s the deal with that? There are a
couple of significant things going on here. This text is not about economic
systems. It’s not about capitalism or communism or anything like that. It is
about love. They were doing what Jesus said: love one another. Love always takes
a practical form. It may be as simple as a smile or an understanding attitude,
or it may be a check when you are in financial trouble. It is not always
tangible, but it is always practical. Love is action. It is how you treat others
and how you care for them. Did those first Christians love one another? I think
we would all agree they did. How do we know? The text doesn’t say so, not
explicitly. But it doesn’t have to. It tells how they looked after one another.
They had to. Life was hard back then. I said this isn’t about economic systems.
They only knew one economic system. To survive you depended on family. Extended
families and broader family ties were absolutely essential for survival. Yet
when people came to Christ, they risked those relationships. Now if the whole
family came to Christ, they just had to worry about the neighbors and business
associates. But if you came to Christ and your family didn’t, they might turn
you out. Where would you go? In those days the church functioned as an extended
family for many of its members. At our best, we still do today. That was my
experience. When my family of origin fell apart and I didn’t have a father
anymore, my church became my family. Men stepped up as role models. I went to my
first baseball game with my Sunday school teacher and his wife. The church can
still be a family today. We still help those in need. Sometimes the church helps
directly when a member is in need. Sometimes one member simply helps another. We
have to. If we are not a family … if our love doesn’t take the form of action …
we are not the church. I fear we will have more occasions to help one another in
today’s economy. So we try to follow the example of the Acts church in helping
one another. Yet there is something else here you need to see. Luke reports that
the Christians “were of one
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heart and soul.” The background to this is Jeremiah 32.39. Jeremiah prophesied
the Babylonian captivity, but he also held out hope of a new beginning for God’s
people. Here is part of God’s promise given through Jeremiah: “They shall be my
people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that
they may fear me for all time, for their own good and the good of their children
after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them, never to draw back
from doing good to them; and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, so that
they may not turn from me.” Luke also points out that with Christians helping
one another, “there was not a needy person among them.” No one went without
anything essential. This also has an Old Testament background. Deuteronomy 15.4
is part of God’s instructions to his people when they entered the promised land:
“There will, however, be no one in need among you, because the LORD is sure to
bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as a possession to
occupy.” This background is important. What would life be like when God settled
his people in the promised land? What would life be like when he forgave their
sins and brought an end to their long exile? They would have unity of heart, and
no one would be in need. In other words, Luke is pointing to the early church
and saying, “Look! This is how it is supposed to be! This community is a sign
that God has done what he promised. You want proof that Jesus is the Messiah?
See for yourself! The church is living the dream Moses and Jeremiah promised so
long ago. This is God’s new covenant community.” I have to say something about
Barnabas. He is a great hero of the faith for the simple reason that he
encouraged people. Barnabas was a Levite. The Levites were minor temple
officials. The priests were also from the tribe of Levi, but they were
specifically descended from Moses’ brother, Aaron. So Barnabas did something in
the temple, at least part of the year—they had a rotating system of service.
Actually Barnabas was a nickname. His real name was Joseph. The apostles called
him Barnabas because it means “son of encouragement.” In this passage, he sells
some property and gives the money to help the poor. Later, when Paul became a
believer, it was Barnabas who reached out to him and gave him a chance. Most
Christians understandably wanted nothing to do with him. Barnabas and Paul went
on a mission trip together. And still later they split up because Barnabas
wanted to give another young missionary a second chance. Barnabas is one of my
favorite Bible people. We need more like him. If God offered to give me anyone
in the Bible except Jesus himself to come to Westminster and help us in
ministry, I wouldn’t choose Moses or Solomon or Mary or Peter or Paul or any of
the other apostles. I would choose Barnabas. Let’s all try to be more like him.
He’s that guy on the team that makes all the others believe in themselves. I
doubt any church can be a missionary church without at least one Barnabas. Who
is ours? Might it be you?
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Our reading skipped over the account of Ananias and Sapphira. That’s a difficult
passage. Probably I should save it for a stewardship sermon. The point of it is,
I think, the holiness of the community. Before Christ, God’s glory dwelt in the
temple. Now, after Pentecost, it dwells in his people. When you give to the
church, you give to God. When you serve in the church you serve God. We have a
sobering text for a sobering truth. The second part of our reading is about the
apostles healing people. Again, there is something going on you need to see. The
Christians were meeting in Solomon’s Portico. What was Solomon’s Portico? It was
part of the temple precinct. Herod the Great wanted to make the temple in
Jerusalem the biggest and grandest in the world. Part of the reason was to
legitimate his rule; another was probably vanity. He had a problem, however. The
size and shape of the temple is spelled out clearly in the scriptures. So he
wasn’t free to monkey with the architecture of the temple itself. His solution
was to make the temple grounds the largest and grandest in the world, with
pools, rows of columns, porticoes, and that sort of thing. So when Luke tells us
the Christians gathered in Solomon’s portico, we ought to be amazed. After what
happened to Jesus, we might expect them to lay low—go to Galilee, stay in the
upper room, or hide in house churches. But there were too many of them by then,
and anyway they had no interest in hiding. They wanted people to know what God
had done. And so, in spite of the problems it would cause, they gathered in
public, in the temple itself. They were living their faith in the open. Luke
reports that no one who wasn’t a Christian dared to gather with them. This was
for fear of the authorities. But they were held in high esteem by everyone.
People could see what they were about. And more believers were constantly added
to their number. Those were exciting times, particularly because of the
healings. What are we to make of this? Luke tells how the apostles performed
signs and wonders. They continued the healing ministry of Jesus. Jesus healed
people and worked other miracles in order to show people that God’s kingdom was
near. The healings were expressions of love and compassion, of course, but also
signs pointing to God. Now the apostles were doing the same thing, just as Jesus
had said they would. To be honest, the part about Peter’s shadow strikes me as
odd. Later in Acts people will be healed by touching Paul’s handkerchief. I
can’t say I have that figured out. Nor do I really understand why, if God gave
the church signs and wonders back then, he doesn’t give some to us today.
Actually, I believe he does. Sometimes, when we pray for a sick person, a
miraculous healing takes place. I know of that happening. Doctors give up hope,
then suddenly the patient is healthy. Of course, that doesn’t always happen. I
don’t know why it happens on occasion but not always. I am planning a sermon for
October about cancer. I’ll have more to say on this topic then.
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Don’t hold your breath for a startling revelation, though, because what God does
and what God lets happen are beyond me most all of the time. What I know is
this: God gave the apostles power to heal people, and those healings pointed
people to God. They healed in the name of Jesus, and no one could argue with
results. We certainly ought to pray for people to be healed today. That is
always an appropriate prayer because we know disease is not what God wants for
anyone, not ultimately. Jesus died and rose again so that at our resurrection
death and disease will never happen again. We pray. We seek the best medical
care we can, which only makes sense because God expects us to use the means he
has provided. Then we trust God, and we keep on trusting him no matter what. Yet
despite miracles today, healing is not for us the sign it was for them. So we
have to ask ourselves: What has God put within our power to do as a sign of his
presence? It doesn’t have to be miraculous. It just has to be something that
gives results no one can argue with. Another example from scripture is racial
reconciliation. Paul always pointed to the way Jews and Gentiles became one in
Christ as a powerful sign of the truth of the gospel. What about us? What do we
do? What can we do? What makes non-Christians take notice? What makes them
wonder whether maybe there is something to Christianity after all? We may not
have healings as in the days of the apostles, but we have something, surely. How
are God’s power and grace evident among us? What has God given us the power to
do? I could take a shot at answering that question, but I’m not going to. I am
going to let you noodle it a while, and I hope you do. Because maybe as you
think it through you will hit upon an idea. In a missionary church, every member
is a minister and every member’s ministry matters. Programs and events are not
signs. Results are. Where are the results, the fruits, of our life together that
point people toward Christ? … A missionary church stands together. We need one
another. That’s why God has brought us together. We are the church when we love
one another in practical ways. We are the church when we live our faith in the
open so people can see what we are about. We are the church when our life
together makes people stop and think again about the truth of the gospel. I hope
you will find this series on Acts meaningful. Being part of the church is
exciting, because God is at work. Don’t approach this series with a dull sense
of obligation: “OK, here’s what the preacher says we have to do.” It’s not like
that at all. Approach it from the perspective of faith. Say, “God is capable of
exciting and amazing things. He can do things in our congregation we would never
have imagined. He can do things in my own life that will blow me away. What
might he do? What will he do?” Then pray: “God, I am ready and willing for
whatever you have in mind. I’ll trust you and I’ll do my part. Please, do
wonderful things here.” Amen.
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