If you’ve never been to Grace’s Care Center, let me tell you about it. It’s kind of a magical place. I’ve been able to volunteer with the choice food pantry from time to time, and it always just blows my mind.
The things that define people on the outside don’t seem to matter when you’re in there. You’ve got business leaders loading pallets of vegetables. You’ve got stay-at-home moms commanding big groups of volunteers. You’ve got church elders doing menial tasks.
I love volunteering a personal shopper because most of the people I meet have no idea who I am and don’t feel the need to apologize every time they swear in my presence.
The cool thing is that, for the Care Center friends who have come to get food, there is no judgment. No shame. They’re treated like brothers and sisters.
In fact, it’s not uncommon for a volunteer to finish their shift, then go grab a cart because their family is in need of assistance too. Nobody bats an eye, because we’re all one big family and we’re in this together.
There are hugs and smiles and prayers and laughter… There is so much love in that place.
I believe there is something powerful happening at the Care Center, and it goes so far beyond just a few good-natured individuals doing charity work. I think something supernatural is happening there.
I believe the Holy Spirit is up to something, and my prayer is that the love and compassion we’re experiencing there would break free from the walls of our Care Center and come to define our church as a whole.
REVIVAL
Is that possible? Today? A time when hate-fueled rhetoric has become the new normal in our political discourse? When racial tensions have boiled over to levels we haven’t seen since the 60’s? When social media has limited our perspectives to only those who see the world exactly the way we do?
Is it possible for love and compassion to become the hallmarks of Grace Church in the world we live in today?
I believe the answer is yes. But it not going to happen with our good intensions. It’s not even going to happen if we all work really hard at it. It will only happen as a work of the Holy Spirit.
We need a revival.
For the last three weeks, we’ve been looking at what happens when the Holy Spirit brings revival on a church. This is kind of like the third act of our series called “Days of Wind and Fire.”
At our 25th anniversary, my dad talked about how incredible it was that at Pentecost the Holy Spirit empowered ordinary people to do extraordinary things to spread the kingdom. He gave them supernatural abilities and gifts. And dad also talked about how in many ways that has happened here at Grace.
Last week, dad talked about the supernatural healing the Holy Spirit makes possible, and how that is evidence of revival.
Today I want to talk about a third evidence: supernatural love and community.
To do that, we’re going to look at a passage that may be familiar to some of you. It’s in the book of Acts, chapter 2. [House Bibles]
Acts 2:42, Page _________
Now, a little bit of context for those of you who aren’t as familiar.
The book of Acts is an account written by the apostle Luke, who was one of Jesus’ disciples. It starts right when Jesus ascends into heaven, it talks about the miraculous pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and then it goes on to tell the story of how the Church went from a tiny cluster of believers in Jerusalem to a movement that spread across the ancient world.
What I love about the book is just how new everything is to the people in it.
· Ordinary fishermen and homemakers are suddenly healing people and speaking other languages.
· Unclean Gentiles are all of a sudden welcomed into the community.
· There are miracles and dramatic conversions and hope springing up even in the midst of violent persecution.
I imagine everyone in Acts walking around with their eyes the size of saucers the whole time. The Holy Spirit was doing something new. It was a revival.
Now, one of the most profound things the Spirit unlocks in this new community probably doesn’t seem all that impressive next to cast out demons and shipwreck survivors. But I find it mind-blowing.
When the Holy Spirit was poured out on the early Church, they experienced a level of love and community that had never existed before.
Let’s read what happened. Acts 2:42.
Acts 2:42-47
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Ok. There is a lot going on here. But I want to point out three radical realities that began to characterize this community. All three of them point to the supernatural level of love and unity that had begun taking root in this early Church.
WONDERS
The first of these realities is that acts of the Holy Spirit were becoming commonplace.
Acts 2:43
Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.
Now I want to point out something about these wonders and miraculous signs.
First of all, look at how the community responded to what the apostles were doing. It wasn’t just, “Aw, neat! Cool trick.”
This wasn’t a magic show.
The word Luke uses here is “awe.” The literal word in Greek is phobos. Fear. Deep, profound, body-trembling reverence. It’s the same way people respond in scripture when they meet angels or enter into the very presence of God.
These were ordinary people doing miraculous things. Things that had once seemed impossible. My jaw would be on the floor too. I’d be in awe.
But the second thing I want to point out is that these miracles and wonders weren’t being done in a vacuum. They weren’t just happening so that everyone could be amazed. There was a bigger purpose.
When you look at the broader context of Acts, and even more in the rest of the New Testament, it’s clear the apostles performed signs and wonders for the sake of the community.
· There were miracles done to bring new believers to the faith.
· There were prophetic words of encouragement to bring hope to the community.
· There were miraculous healings done to bring relief to suffering families in the church.
The apostle Paul described it like this:
1 Corinthians 12:7
Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.
The common good. These spiritual gifts are never about personal gain or benefit. Signs and wonders in the Church are always meant to spread supernatural love and community that only the Holy Spirit can make possible.
That’s what was happening here. The Holy Spirit had swept into this community, allowing for profound miracles that filled everyone with a sense of awe and bonded them together in unity.
And this is the big idea for today’s message.
When the Spirit moves, the Church becomes one.
EVERYTHING IN COMMON
So. Signs and wonders: that’s the first reality. The second one, I think, springs out of the first. As you might imagine, with all this supernatural energy flowing through the community, people started to change the way they lived. Look at verse 44:
Acts 2:44-45
All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
A couple chapters later, Luke expands on this a bit. In Acts 4:32, he says,
Acts 4:32, 34-35
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… 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, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.
What was happening here? Well, Luke sums it up in 4:32. “All the believers were one in heart and mind.” The me was becoming us.
When people started getting caught up in this new revival, their identities shifted. The Holy Spirit moved, and now they weren’t just a loose conglomeration of individuals. They were one. One mind. One body. The body of Christ.
When someone in their community had a need, it wasn’t, “Oh, that person over there is poor. I guess I’ll dig deep in my own compassion and give them something that belongs to me.”
No! It was, “We have a brother who needs help. Let’s use what we have to help meet our community’s need.”
I realize this is a hard concept for us to get our heads around today. We spend so much time, energy, and money protecting what’s ours. The idea of freely sharing our carefully managed possessions and wealth is almost blasphemy to the American consumer.
And yet this is what the Holy Spirit enabled in the early church. People moved from me to us. From mine to ours. And as a result, everyone’s needs were met.
This was a supernatural level of self-sacrifice. The apostle John once put it this way:
1 John 3:16-18
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
The Spirit allows us to move beyond our selfish, greedy acquisitiveness, and gives us the power to truly love each other with the resources God has given us. I’ll say it again:
When the Spirit moves, the Church becomes one.
BREAKING BREAD
Ok. Signs and wonders were building up the community. People were practicing radical generosity for the sake of others. I want to point out one other aspect of this passage. One other reality that characterized the early Church. And it has to do with this whole idea of breaking bread.
Look at verse 46.
Acts 2:46-47
Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Ok. Breaking bread. It does mean sharing a meal. Eating dinner together. More on that in a second.
But it’s also very likely that these believers were beginning to practice the Lord’s Supper together - a.k.a. Communion. The Eucharist. They were remembering the death and resurrection of Jesus by partaking in his body and blood. The bread and the wine.
It was an act of worship and an act of remembrance, but it was also an act of unity. We are all eating from the same broken loaf and drinking from the same cup. We are one.
And this may have become a new ritual as a part of these shared meals.
This was a huge, huge deal. In the ancient world, people spent a lot of time and energy avoiding contamination. Everyone knew some objects were impure, some objects were holy. Some people were safe to hang around, and others were untouchable.
Just look at how indignant the Pharisees in the gospels when Jesus hung out with “sinners” and lepers and women. In that culture, Jesus wasn’t just risking his reputation. He was putting himself in harm’s way - becoming ritually impure.
You can still see hints of this today in places like rural India, where the Caste System continues to divide people based on race. If you stop at a roadside chai stand, they’ll often serve you tea in little clay cups.
[IMAGE: Chai]
After you’re done drinking, they take the cups out back and smash them. That way, nobody has to worry about being “contaminated” by drinking from the same cup as a lower caste person or an “untouchable.”
So imagine living in a culture like that, a culture like first century Israel, where purity and contamination were constantly on peoples’ minds. And in the middle of a society like that, a group of crazy people start throwing caution to the wind and break bread together.
Wealthy people are inviting the homeless to their dinner table. Pharisees are dining with prostitutes and tax collectors. Foreigners from every corner of the earth - with their weird customs and odd-smelling foods and their incomprehensible table manners - are sitting around a common meal. To an outsider it would have been incomprehensible.
Before long, the Gentiles were in on it, too. The Gentiles, who were pretty much the definition of impurity to the Jews.
Something supernatural was happening in the early Church that allowed these people to dine together. These followers of Jesus were experiencing a level of unity and love that had never existed before.
When the Spirit moves, the Church becomes one.
REVIVAL
Ok. So the early Church was experiencing a revival.
· Miracles were building up the community.
· Individuals began to identify themselves as a part of something bigger, and gave generously to anyone who had need.
· And people who had once avoided each other started sharing meals as family.
This wasn’t some hippie commune. This wasn’t an experiment in socioeconomics. This was an honest to goodness, supernatural, Holy-Spirit-enabled revival.
The Apostle Paul put it best.
Galatians 3:28
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
MISSION TO UKRAINE
I believe the Holy Spirit is continuing to work like this today. Let me give you one example. It’s about Mission to Ukraine.
Now, I realize I talk about Mission to Ukraine a lot, and I apologize if I’m starting to sound like a broken record. But I really believe God is doing something amazing there, and we have a lot to learn from our brothers and sisters in Zhytomyr.
Ok, so this past July I was at their summer camp. Essentially, they bring in about 100 kids with a range of different disabilities and special needs and give them pretty much the ultimate summer camp experience while their moms get to enjoy a retreat.
What makes this experience so amazing is that Mission to Ukraine treats these kids with more dignity and respect than I have ever seen. They actually see them as normal people.
Here in the US, those in the disabilities world talk about using “person-first language.” Like, you don’t say “That’s a special needs man,” you say, “That’s a man with special needs.” You put the person first in your language to show that the disability doesn’t define them.
Well, in Ukraine, they have a person-first lifestyle. A person-first everything! It seems crazy to say this, but the staff and volunteers at MTU literally do not see the disabilities. They see children in need of love.
They don’t baby talk kids with mental disabilities. They don’t ignore children who are non-verbal. It doesn’t matter what activity is going on; they make sure that every single child gets to participate, regardless of their level of disability.
You have not seen love until you’ve watched four sweaty Ukrainian volunteers hauling a large child with a huge grin on his face to the top of their inflatable slide. It doesn’t matter how hard it is to get him up there. That kid is going down the slide.
It’s profound. And knowing how little the surrounding culture in Ukraine values kids with disabilities, I think this love is supernatural.
Take a look at this quick video from last summer’s camp and marvel with me at what is possible when the church becomes one.
[VIDEO: Ukraine]
This past summer, there was a new mom at camp, named Tanya. She brought her two kids, Valya and Lonya.
[IMAGE: Tanya 01]
They had never experienced anything like this before. It turns out the mom, Tanya, has some special needs herself. She spoke a little differently and sometimes did some odd things, and invaded people’s personal space a bit.
When Tanya is living out her everyday life in the city, people avoid her. They don’t know how to interact with her. She seems weird and different. People laugh at her.
But when the staff and volunteers of Mission to Ukraine looked at Tanya, they didn’t see someone weird or different or awkward.
[IMAGE: Tanya 02]
They just saw a woman who needed to be loved, and so they loved her. It wasn’t charity. They actually loved her as a sister.
And by the end of camp, Tanya said something I’ll never forget. She said, “I never want to leave this place, because everybody treats me like I’m normal.”
[IMAGE: Tanya 03]
“And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
When the Spirit moves, the Church becomes one.
Divisions fall away. Old grudges dissolve. The sick are healed. The poor are cared for. The lost and broken and strange and lonely people of the world are loved as family.
What would it look like if that happened here? Can you imagine it?
Imagine if the unity happening right now in our Care Center were to spread and become the hallmark of our congregation.
Imagine if wealthy families in this church were so open handed with their possessions that nobody in our community went hungry anymore.
Imagine if African Americans could openly grieve systemic racism in our country, knowing that we as a community are grieving right alongside them as their brothers and sisters.
Imagine if gay or transgender people could enter this place confident that they are welcomed and loved. Period.
Imagine if hundreds of families in this church started opening their homes to refugees and orphans.
Imagine if we became a community known for how often we adopted children with special needs.
Can you imagine how much that love would change this world?
In Acts 2 it says they had “glad and sincere hearts” with this newfound love and unity, and people flocked to be a part of it. That could be true for us.
When the Spirit moves, the Church becomes one. And when that happens, we become an unstoppable magnet of love.
WHAT DO WE DO?
So what do we do? How do we make this happen? Is there some Buzzfeed list of “five steps to become more supernaturally compassionate?”
No. I don’t believe there is. There is no how-to guide. Because like I said at the beginning, this type of radical love is not something that can be accomplished by human effort. It is a work of the Holy Spirit.
Our job is not to wedge more warm fuzzy feelings into our hearts. It’s not to force ourselves to be more accepting of people who are different. Our job is to surrender. To lay aside our wills, our possessions, our identities, our lives, and to let the Holy Spirit show us who we are. To let the Holy Spirit guide our steps.
“Not my will, but yours be done, God.” It’s a posture. A posture of surrender.
The love and the compassion and the unity… Those are the outcomes - the results - of our hearts transformed.
So no. I’m not going to give you a bunch of crystal clear action steps this time, except for one. Would you pray and ask the Holy Spirit to transform your heart? To change your perspective from “me” to “us” and to let God’s supernatural love flow out of you?
Would you invite the Holy Spirit to fill you?
COMMUNION
In a few moments, we are going give you space to pray about this as we practice the same act done by those early Christ-followers in Jerusalem. We are going to take communion together.
As we do, remember how scandalous it was for the early church to do this - to risk becoming unclean by sharing this meal with untouchables and “sinners.” It’s not all that different today. You will share this sacrament with people the world thinks you should hate.
Look around you. You will be sharing the bread and the cup with Trump supporters and Hillary supporters, with poor people and wealthy people, with people from a different race than you, and a different sexual orientation. You will share it with foreigners, immigrants, and native-born citizens alike.
Under your own power, this level of unity is impossible. But when the Holy Spirit moves, the Church becomes one.
In Christ, we have the power to love one another in a way the world does not understand.
Holy Spirit, we invite you here. Transform our hearts. We’re ready for a little bit of awe.