37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”
40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. The Fellowship of the Believers 42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common.
45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
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How many of you have ever adopted a
pet from the pound?
It’s tough, because you can’t know
much about the dog or cat. You have a
few minutes with the animal, and then you have to decide whether or not it will
be a good fit in your home. You’re
guessing, really, based on how it responds to you and the other noises around
it. If it responds lovingly to
affection, you can guess that it grew up in a nice place. If it cowers in the corner, that gives you an
entirely different idea about what its home was like before it came to the
pound. If it’s clean and well-groomed,
you can guess what kind of owner it had, and if it looks like it has never seen
a brush, then you can imagine that it probably was outside a lot.
It’s only later on, weeks and
months and years into owning the pet, that you begin to understand more fully
what the animal’s environment was like.
If it cowers when it hears a loud noise or when someone yells, you
recognize how pieces of its environment have shaped it. If it longs for human affection, you see how
the environment has shaped its personality.
In so many ways, you recognize the fingerprints of the previous owners.
We’re all shaped by our
environments. You and I both are
products of our environments. Spend a
day with me, and you’ll probably be able to guess a few things about my family
of origin. Watch me try and soothe
conflict, and you’ll guess that we didn’t all get along perfectly. See what I react to, and you can begin to
imagine what it was like growing up with me.
I was shaped by the family in which I was raised. We all were.
We all have things we are proud of, parts of our personality we
celebrate, and these are often due to our family’s influence. In the same way, we all have things we are somewhat
ashamed of, things we cower from, things we wish would go away… and these are
often due to our family, too.
Our environment powerfully shapes
how we live. Our past environment shaped
us then, and it shapes us now, and our current environment is also shaping us,
whether we like it or not. Our
personalities are shaped.
Now, listen again to the type of
community that was going on in Acts 2: 42 And they devoted themselves to the
apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the
prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being
done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all
things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and
distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending
the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food
with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the
people.
That sounds amazing, right? Of course people wanted to join this
community! Who wouldn’t want to be a
part of a community that was witnessing signs of power, that was supporting and
encouraging one another, meeting in joy and being a force for good in the
community? This sounds great,
right? We’d all sign up, wouldn’t we?
Often, we’re pretty busy trying to
imitate this type of community. We do a
pretty good job with parts of it, but we want our life together and our common
life to be like this. It sounds like a dynamic
place, filled with love and grace and the Holy Spirit at work in the hearts and
minds of the people. We’d love for our
life to be described like this.
Frankly, this text is awash in
sermons I could preach on steps to take on how to improve your life. I could go verse by verse and tell you what
you need to do today, tomorrow and next week in order to improve your
life. And we all need to improve our
life, to rededicate ourselves to being converted anew every morning. We all need to be sure that we’re allowing
space for the depths of our souls to fall in love with Christ anew each and
every day. We need to change.
But more than that, I think the one
thing that was defining about the Acts 2 community is the environment in which
they found themselves. It was this
environment that was shaping the believers in the community, encouraging them
and helping them turn into a joyous and generous people, the type of people who
were going out into the world and being used by God to bring other people into
the community. The environment was
shaping them and forming the type of people they were.
And what type of environment was
it?
It was an environment that was
shaped and guided by an awareness of how total and consuming the love of God
is.
Think about it—the sermon Peter
preached was one that focused on how the Jews had put Jesus to the death, but
that God had used that violent act to make it possible for these same Jews to
be redeemed. The love of God didn’t seek
vengeance, but rather made a way for forgiveness. It doesn’t make sense… but that love was
swallowing up the believers. They couldn’t
get enough of God’s love—they were constantly devoting themselves to the apostles’
teaching, eager to hear more about this amazing love of God, and then they were
going out into the world putting this love into action, loving one
another. They listened to stories of the
love of God, and then they enacted it. The
community, the environment, was one in which the people were amazed at how much
God loved them, and how willing God was to do anything to redeem them.
So I think the question we need to
sit with is this: is our community, is
our environment, one in which we have made space in which to be reminded
consistently about the awesome and amazing love of God? Does your life have room in it for a constant
theme of God’s life to run through it?
Do you let your environment be primarily informed by the fact that God
loves you?
If so, this will shape the type of
person that you are becoming. If you are
swallowed up by an awareness of the love of God, you will become a more loving
person, and God will use you to bring others into the light of his love. Your environment will define the type of life
you lead.
In the same way, if you’re so busy,
so caught up in everything else that you haven’t made room or time to be
reminded of God’s love, then that, too, will shape the type of person you
become.
If there’s an image I want you to
leave with, it’s this: when I was a kid
and we kept an aquarium, my dad would sometimes buy cave fish. These were fish who had lived in caves and,
as a result, had lost the use of their eyes.
They were white, empty and haunting.
Because there was no light in the cave, there was no use for eyes.
In the same way, if you don’t ever
make room in your days to be reminded of God’s love, to open Scripture and read
the stories about God’s love and kindness and grace, then you, too, will lose
your sense of love. If you don’t hear
it, you’ll forget what it’s like, and when you most need it, you might have
forgotten what it looks like.
But if you continually use the eyes
of your heart to peer into the wonder of God, if you let yourself be in awe of
God, your environment will shape you into a person who loves other and lets
yourself be loved by them, and you will be the type of person who shares that
love with others.
So how will you shape your
environment so that you are constantly reminded of God’s amazing and redeeming
love for you?
Let us pray
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