Signs of a Spirit-Filled Church - Ben Stuart

Well, let me begin by bragging on my kids. You know, Sunday, after the snow fell, we woke up Monday and sent the family out to shovel our sidewalk, you know? So I was out there, the kids were out there, and they don't get money for that. I know there's different debates on allowances. Room and board is what they get. And so you gotta shovel the sidewalk. So there's nothing to really brag about there. That's just the cost of living here. What became impressive, though, was as they were shoveling, whatever it was, 10 inches of snow off our sidewalk, across the street from us, one of our neighbors is in their 90s. And we realized, you know, she is not going to dig this out. And so I looked at my oldest and said, we're gonna have to dig up her sidewalk. And without complaining, she began to do so. And we began to work on her sidewalk. And then Donna called to us, because someone who lives down the street, a retired school teacher, when the plow had come through, had sort of built one of those snow barricades around her house. And so she's trapped. And so we realized, oh, we gotta help her get out. And so we began to do that. And so we did three different homes, and then went to bed that day.

And the next day, I woke up, went to work, and found out my kids had helped the neighbor next door, and got paid to do so. But while they were doing that, they told her, hey, we've gotta go to the other side of us. This neighbor needs help getting her car out. And this neighbor said, why? And she said, would you help her? She can get a shovel and do it herself. And they said, because she's 80. And they went and dug her car out. And then we found out later, another neighbor, their driveway was trapped. And so my kids dug their driveway out, right in time for the medical ambulance to show up to administer care to this older lady who desperately needed it in her home. And it was the most fascinating thing to watch. I mean, by the end of it, I don't know if you're keeping score, I was like, six houses, you know? My forearms hurt. And the coolest thing about it, though, was watching the impact it had on the block. We got hugged by a neighbor that's never hugged us. We had some change their demeanor, come have a meal with us. We just watched how culture can be contagious. It was a pretty powerful thing. We felt it here. I don't know if you walked across a crosswalk

on your way to the Lincoln today. You were able to cross that crosswalk because about a dozen people in this room chipped through those ice mountains to make a way. On Thursday, they were all blocked. And so we just put out an all call, will you help? And some of you showed up and just went to work for hours, hammering out, cleaning up the sidewalks all around, not just Lincoln, but the blocks from the parking deck all the way here, clearing the way for you to show up at church. And it was interesting to watch. Yeah, that's worth applauding for. I heard something that I haven't heard for years on this block. And I heard it hundreds, literally of times. Thank you, thank you. People constantly crossing the sidewalks, thanking us for caring. And I go, that's the kind of church I wanna be. And that's the kind of culture we wanna be. A culture that's contagious and changes the atmosphere because of who we are. It's interesting, over the last couple of years, I've had the privilege of doing chapels for a number of NFL teams. And it's fascinating to watch how similar their lives are, their schedules, their rhythms. They even stay at the same hotels. And yet, so much of their lives are similar,

different teams, and yet some teams will go on to win the championship and some will have losing seasons. And you go, so much of your life is similar, but what separates these different teams? And it's usually not talent. All these teams have talent, and you know some teams, I mean, talent matters, but talented people lose all the time. But what I've seen is, usually the difference maker is culture. The culture of that community. Which can be hard to define because you kind of look at it and go, man, you don't see culture, but boy, you feel it. And when a team has it, it is electric. And you go, you know what? I talked to a number of guys who play. You know, an NFL career is not very long. It's a short path that you've got the kind of energy and body that can handle it. And so if I'm gonna play, so many teams say, hey, a culture that's a winning culture, I wanna be there. I want my energy there. I wanna be a part of that community with that kind of calling. I wanna be in a winning culture. Now, why do I say that? Because that's where we are in the book of Acts. We're looking at the story of the birth

of the Christian church. That the risen Jesus Christ commissioned his followers. He said, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And what we looked at last week online, if you're with us, was the Holy Spirit did arrive with the sound of the wind and tongues of fire. And they began to proclaim. the message of Jesus, and Peter gave a speech about Jesus, and in the first verse we read, verse 41, it says those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about 3,000 souls. And one day, that community went from about 120 people to about 3,120 people. But then in the last six verses of Luke chapter two, Luke doesn't advance the narrative very much. He pauses and shows us what this community was like. And we get our first glimpse at the interior life of the early church, a community that would change all of Rome and change the world as we know it. And this is the first of a few summary passages Luke gives us, primarily in the first part of Acts, that shows us the character of this movement. We saw their cause last week, to proclaim Jesus to the nations. But now we get to see their culture. We saw their vision, but what are their values, right? And this doesn't mean they were perfect.

We'll see later in the book of Acts, they had all kinds of drama. But what we're gonna get in this paragraph is the church at its best. And that's where we're headed this morning. What is the culture of a spirit-filled church? You've maybe heard it said, oh yeah, that church, that's a spirit-filled church. Or you may have heard somebody say that person, oh, she's a spiritual person. And it can sound good or sound important, or maybe to some of you it sounds weird, sounds creepy, sounds a little scary, right? But it's interesting, the vast majority of Americans in surveys would say they either are spiritual or want to be spiritual. But when asked what that means, most can't answer the question. What does that mean? And yet the Holy Spirit of God moved in power last week and built this community that will go on to change the world. And so what we're looking at today is what it means to be a truly spiritual people in a truly spiritual culture. We're gonna see it. The Spirit of God birthed a community. And what's great is this text is a good description of what they were like back then. But it's gonna be helpful to us

because it's a diagnostic of what we're supposed to be like today. This is the first day of February, which means the Whole30 is over. Donna had us do it as a family, the Whole30. And you know what? I'm good with it, because I turned 50 this year, and I said, hey, let's run the gambit. Let's get some blood work, okay? Let's do all kinds of diagnostic. I pulled out some different mobility and stretching drills that I used to do after I hurt my back just to check in on where I'm at. And I found out, hey, there were some things I prioritized in life, and I've grown and developed physically in those things. And there's some other things I've neglected, and it's a lot harder to touch my toes than it was a year ago. And I realized, oh, I'm not learning these things about myself to shame me. I want information so I can make some adjustments. And so we're gonna look at the early church, but not just to see what they were like back then. It's to be a diagnostic of what we're meant to look like in here, right? We are branches off the same tree, filled with the same spirit, so we should bear the same fruit, right? So with that said, I've taught this passage

actually before, and it can be taught in a variety of ways. You could just move through it verse by verse, or you can give it, I've taught it with five points, I've taught it with seven points. I thought today we would just shrink it down to four. And we're kind of following John Stott's outline there, but the way we do it is really gonna be all built off this key verb in verse 42. Verse 42 says, and they devoted themselves. They devoted themselves. I want you to notice, that's something you do to yourself. No one can do it for you, right? Each person in that community made a choice, and their collective choices moved in a direction together, and that's momentum. And we're gonna watch them change Rome, right? And that word devoted is an important word in the book of Acts. It actually shows up many times. And that verb is the combination of the word toward, and the word to be steadfast, or endure, which is actually built off the word strength, or might. So you could say, they aimed with strength towards something, but it also carries the idea of persistence, or persevering in something. I am moving with strength towards some things, to persist obstinately in something, to adhere firmly to something, to endure. We name this series Purpose and Action, because this is the book of Acts.

It's not just the book of thinking. That I'm making a decision to move with my energy towards particular things. It carries the idea of intention, decision, exertion. They gave time to these things, energy to these things. A lot of teams do them, but not many do them in a way that changes to a winning culture. These guys were not sporadic, or periodic, they were consistent. Notice it repeated several times in the text, day by day. You know this about going to the gym. If you go to the gym sporadically. Theoretically, you're not gonna see many gains or development, right? It's gonna be day by day that you accrue strength over time. This was a community that was marked by their devotion to four things. And that devotion were the evidences that they are a spiritual people, a spirit-filled church, and by God's grace, I want them to be true of us when it's our day and our turn. And the first one we see is they were devoted to learning. They were devoted to learning. A spirit-filled church is a learning church. That's the first evidence Luke mentions of the spirit's presence in the church. Did you see it? And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. John Stott said it this way.

One might say that the Holy Spirit opened a school in Jerusalem that day. Its teachers were the apostles whom Jesus appointed, and there were 3,000 pupils in kindergarten. He said it's interesting to note that when the Spirit of God fills a church, the first thing we see in new converts is a passion and commitment to learning. That to be truly spiritual is not to close off your mind and just try to have some sort of emotional, mystical experience. To be spiritual is not to be anti-intellectual. It's actually very much the opposite. The spirit at times is called the spirit of truth. That you see these spirit-filled people move to sit at the apostles' feet to learn from them. I remember when I was in high school, my English teacher came to faith in Jesus. I didn't know where or how, but somehow she knew I was a Christian, and so when I would walk into her classroom for homeroom, it was the funniest thing. She was just a different human right away, and the biggest difference I saw was this voracious desire to learn. I would just walk into her classroom, and she was like, Ben, you're here. Okay, Judas, is he in heaven or hell? What do you think, what's the deal? I'm like, um, hi, uh, uh, hell most likely,

and let me kinda walk you through my argument. You know, as a high school kid, I'm like, wow, she's kinda putting me on blast all the time, trying to figure this out, right? But every time I saw her, there was some new question. She had just realized, God came to meet me, I can be forgiven, I got hope in the future, I wanna learn what he's like, and I saw, man, God is moving in her life because she has this voracious appetite to learn. And Luke says they were learning the apostles' teaching. That word apostle means the official emissary, that King Jesus took these men who had witnessed his earthly ministry, and he specifically commissioned them, my spirit will lead you into all truth. And then Luke will show us later in the text, you see that God authenticated them by miracles. That's the two times the apostles are brought up, that they're teaching, and then in verse 43, by many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. We'll talk more about miracles later, but one of the things you'll see all through the Bible is that miracles are often used by God to authenticate the message and the messenger. People would blow Jesus off, dismiss him, and then he would raise up a lame person or take away blindness, and they'd go, all right, could you repeat what you were saying earlier?

And they realized the miracles made them take the message seriously. And here he says, God was powerfully working through the apostles to show, these are my guys, listen to them, right? Because they are going to teach you the truth. That's what Jesus told them to do in Matthew 28. He told them, teach them to observe all that I commanded you. That's what Peter did last week. Peter talked about who Jesus is, and then they talk about what that means for how we live our lives. Paul told the Ephesians, we're fellow citizens with the saints, members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. The Spirit of God is building a community of God that's founded upon the finished work of Jesus taught through the apostles. So the Spirit of God leads the people of God to study and submit to the Word of God, because we have the apostles' words. You can read John. You can read Matthew. You can read Peter. We have their words.

We can be devoted to the same teaching that they were, right? And so the first thing I wanna challenge us with is we gotta be serious about studying the words of Jesus' official emissaries. So let me ask you this. What are you devoted to now? What gets your attention? Some of you may wanna do this later. Some of you can do it now. Pull out your phone, go to Settings, and then click on Screen Time. Just look at it. See what happens. Because I'll tell you what you're looking at. You're looking at what's shaping your thinking, right? When Paul meets a Roman official after he's arrested, Paul is in front of this Roman official. You know what the first thing he does? Starts talking about the resurrection. He's at his trial. He might face execution. And he starts giving proofs. how Jesus rose from the dead. And this Roman official goes, what are you doing? Are you trying to convince me to be a Christian? You're on trial. And Paul's like, yeah, why else would I be here? His mind was so saturated in this word, it was the lens through which he saw the world. And so many of us are missing that lens,

and so you're missing opportunities to make a real difference in the place he's put you. Do you see your neighbors through what the Bible says about neighbors? Do you see the person sitting next to you as members of one another, as this talks about? Is your mind shaped by the word of God? It's meant to be. Now, how are we helping you do this as a church? Let's do a diagnostic for us. Well, number one is by preaching Acts every Sunday. I don't know if you know this. I'm trying to go through it verse by verse as much as we can to really show you the word of God, right, to let you see it, that you're gonna carry it home with you. And so that's one thing we're doing. Number two is we've started recording a midweek podcast to talk about all the things we didn't talk about in here. So by Wednesday, when you've forgotten 70% of what I said in here, you'll go, oh yeah, Acts two, Peter, great guy, solid, and try to get it back into your thinking, right? We made this devotional guide that you can read five days a week, a different devotion to get your head in the book of Acts and let it shape you. One time a month, we host in a variety of neighborhoods around DC, Neighborhood Nights, where we have a meal prepared where you can sit around a table with people from this church

and talk about what we're learning as it's shepherded by one of our leaders as we talk about what this word means for our lives. And then we're trying to get you all into family groups where you'll have three, four people that you're praying with that talk about, now, how are we actually applying this in our life? And we also have core classes where we can teach you theology, where you can learn more about what this book means and what it means for you. We are trying to create an environment where you can be this, because a spirit-filled church is a learning church. You see it, amen? Okay, great, all right, then I'll move on. Number two is they were devoted to loving. They were devoted to loving. A spirit-filled church is a loving church. They devoted themselves to the fellowship. You see that word? That word fellowship in Greek is the word koinonia from koinos, which means common. And it bears witness to the common life of the church in two senses. First, it expresses what they shared in together. Namely, they all shared in an intimacy with God. That's how it started, right? John, we'll say in 1 John, when we studied 1 John together,

he opened the book in 1 John 1, 3 by saying, that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you so that you may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. He says, we know God because we know God's Son, and we want you to know Him too. And Paul prayed for the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians, may the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all, that this is what we share in. This community was formed because all of them showed up in a place saying, hey, we have all made a commitment to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because He came to get us. And so we have a common fellowship in our communion with the Trinity, right? But koinonia also expresses what we share out together, that we give as well as receive, right? So it's an interesting word because it's not really an emotional word. When I say we love, I don't mean like have warm feelings for each other. It's a very physical word. The word koinonia is used by Paul several times in Romans and 2 Corinthians to talk about giving financial aid to poor churches in other parts of the world, right? Oikos is the Greek word for generous, right? That has the idea of I give you things that you need. And that seems to be Luke's emphasis here.

That's what you see in verses 44 and 45. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. That word common there is koina, same word, right? And they were selling their possessions and their belongings. So this first church, when they got together, they were selling possessions and belongings as probably real estate and their valuables, right? And they distributed the proceeds to all as any had need. Now, clarifying here is, is this communism? Some of you go, well, Ben, what is happening here? Are you telling us we're supposed to all give our goods to the collective and you'll distribute them? Do we forego individual property? The Essenes thought so. They were just down the road from them in Qumran. When you joined that monastic community, they said you had to surrender all of your goods to the community. Is that what they're doing here? No, the difference here is it's voluntary. You're not voluntold to surrender all your goods, right? You'll see here that they broke bread in homes in verse 46. That means some of them still had homes, right? And they were their homes. They had not sold them. Priscilla and Aquila, also the book of Acts. own homes, and churches meet in those homes. The sin of Ananias and Sapphira, later,

God's gonna kill them. And it's not because they were greedy, it's because they sold their property, said they gave all the money, but kept some. So they were killed, not because of their greed, but because they lied. And it's interesting, though, when I point that out, because Peter said to them, didn't it all belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? Peter has this idea of, no, you have property, that was your property, you could've done with it, why'd you lie about it, right? And so that money was at your disposal. So you have the right to do it. You own property, you make the decision. But what's interesting about the early churches, part of their culture was, they were all making that decision. That you have to do it individually, but every Christian makes a conscientious decision, I'm going to be a generous person. There was a strong tradition of that in the Old Testament, that God told them, as a nation, give 10% of your money, and we're gonna use it for the Levite, the alien, the fatherless, and the widow. And here you see in the early church, verse 45, they gave to anyone as he had a need. There were no needy persons among them, because it was distributed to any who had need.

John will write later, if we have material possessions, and see a brother or sister in need, but do not share what we have, how can we claim that God's love dwells in us? A love for God becomes a love for God's people. Those who share and commune with him, share with others what they have. What the Christian had was agency. That I care about you, and so I'm gonna use what I have to meet your needs. We are losing a sense of this in our culture today. This sense of community, of care for each other. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, now 37 million Americans live alone. That's not wrong to live alone, but that's 29% of U.S. households. The Chamber of Commerce took that information and said, let's apply that to cities, and decide who's the loneliest city in America, based on that one metric, who lives alone. Many of you know this metric. We won, past with flying colors, 48.6% live alone. And there's reasons to that. But we live in a very isolated city. Deborah Folletta, a friend who's a counselor, said this. She said, we have exchanged the intimacy of vulnerability for the safety of loneliness. And the culture of loneliness and isolation has significantly impacted our spiritual, emotional, and mental health.

Physically, loneliness has been found to increase the risk of mortality by up to 32%, meaning that loneliness can literally kill you. People who don't have friends are twice as likely to die prematurely, which is a statistic even more lethal than smoking 20 cigarettes a day. She's not advocating cigarettes, she's just making a point. Loneliness and isolation are also increased the risk of depression, cognitive decline, and dementia in older adults. It's even been found to have a direct impact on health factors like blood pressure, immune functioning, and inflammation. Some of you go, what does this have to do with generosity? There's a book written years ago by Christian Smith and Hilary Davidson called The Paradox of Generosity. And they were studying the impact of generosity on well-being. And generosity, they had different categories like giving away money, volunteering, helping your neighbors. And then well-being, they measured things like self-reported happiness, bodily health, a sense of purpose in living, avoidance of depression, and interest in personal growth. And I'll spare you all the charts and graphs, but I'll speed to the punchline.

They said, what we've learned is the following. The more generous Americans are, the more happiness, health, and purpose in life they enjoy. This association between generous practice and personal well-being is strong and highly consistent across a variety of generous practices and measures of well-being. Generosity is paradoxical. Those who give receive back in turn. By giving ourselves away, we ourselves move towards flourishing. This is not only a philosophical or religious teaching, it's a sociological fact. And they said the generosity paradox can also be stated in the negative. By grasping onto what we currently have, we lose out on better goods we might have gained. By always protecting ourselves against future uncertainties and misfortunes, we are affected in ways that make us more anxious about uncertainties and vulnerable to misfortune. In short, by failing to care for others, we do not properly take care of ourselves. It's no coincidence that the word miser is etymologically related to the word miserable. That when I decide to shrink back and not engage a community, I shrink. And yet the early church, what made them so potent, was they were committed to learning about the God who saved them and loving the people.

were made in God's image, and we're meant to do the same. Now, let me say this, so many of you are doing so great at this, okay? Our staff just shot out a text to our door holders and said, hey, this is the passage Ben's teaching on thoughts, stories, connections, and we got a few back about our church. Let's talk about us. Claire wrote, when my best friend died in October, I had to fly last minute to Dallas to help her mom and arrangements for the funeral. Ashley and Johnny texted unprompted and said they wanted to buy my flight home and make sure it wasn't a stressor, since they know our finances are really snug. I love that word, that's good. Before I could even confirm how much flights were, they sent us $1,000, which was able to cover the $6.50 last minute flight and all my travel expenses in addition to the flights. The church community has been such a blessing, so this is just one of the biggest ways we've been blessed by the generosity of our PCDC family. Abby wrote, I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but just something I've experienced, and I know many others have too, is just a generosity beyond what our culture would view as normal, like a what's mine is yours type of mindset. If you need me to pick you up at the airport, I will.

If you need a place to stay, come stay at my place. She's describing the community. Abby's not volunteering to pick you all up. She's just saying this is what we're like. If you need a place to stay, come stay at my place. She's not telling you, you get the idea. If you're hungry, I'll cook you dinner and you can raid my pantry. If you need to borrow my car, please do. When I think about how the church in Acts is described, I've never experienced church in that way with the amount of people that I have here. Maybe a handful in other churches, but never to this magnitude. And it's made me truly feel like I'm a part of the body of Christ and his family. Jerry wrote, my sister's special needs and had some health complications. Long story short, my family needed to raise 5K to pay for some legal fees associated with her healthcare. And just a few days, my family group raised all of it. My family who isn't Christian was totally shocked by the generosity. Aspen groves are strong because their roots intertwine, tangle together, and that sharing makes them strong. And what made the church so strong is they shared together, koinonia. What are you devoted to? Some of you can do this now if you want to, or you can do it later.

Pull up your calendar. What gets all of your time? Do you sacrifice it for others, or is it always for personal advancement? Pull up your banking app. Where does all the money go? I'm not saying you have to start giving it indiscriminately to people in the room, but I'm saying we are meant to be marked by generosity. Does that mark you? You want to be, by the way. It will make you a happier person. It really will. That's the paradox of generosity. In giving, I receive, and in blessing, I'm blessed. And a spirit-filled church is a loving church. Number three is they're devoted to worshiping. A spirit-filled church is a worshiping church. They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Their fellowship was expressed not only in caring for each other, but in corporate worship. That definite article, The Breaking of Bread and The Prayers, suggests this could be the Lord's Supper communion, which back then was always part of a larger meal, so you'd end up just having a meal with people, and so it could be that. But I want you to notice that's important here is Luke presents these rhythms of their spiritual life

that have a wonderful balance to them. First, he points out the formal and the informal. In verse 46, did you see they would gather in the temple courts together, and then they would break bread in their homes. So they would come to a big group gathering like this. The church would do this. And then they would break up into smaller gatherings and have meals together at church. There was kind of this formal, we all show up at these times, and these informals, let's go have a meal together. It's interesting, because sometimes you'll hear people, when they talk about church, try to pit those against each other, like all big churches are bad. And you're like, well, we're in Acts 2, and it's 3,000 people, so I don't think you wanna say that. You should only meet in homes. Well, no, no, they met in a large group in the temple, because the temple had more space. But they also broke down and met in people's homes and met with each other. These aren't meant to be put in odds. They're meant to go together, that we gather like this, and then we gather in smaller groups, right? It's interesting, the BBC ran an article back in November quoting Robin Dunbar, a biological anthropologist at the University of Oxford, and he found that eating meals together is linked to higher well-being.

This was the most fascinating part. The study showed that the meals caused the social effects rather than being the result. He said, what we found is, when people take the time to sit down and eat. eat together, it creates feelings of love for each other. Not always, Thanksgiving doesn't always end in happiness. But they said it's statistically significant that it's not that if I love you, I'll sit and have a meal with you, though that's real. They said often, sitting and sharing a meal creates feelings of connections with other people. They even did studies where if people eat out of the same candy dish, they're more likely to sign a deal faster when negotiating. Isn't that strange? I don't know why, but God built it that way. In the early church, they broke bread together, right? That they worshiped together in large groups like this, let's sing, and in small groups together. That's why we do neighborhood nights. It's an act of worship to gather in your neighborhood and sit around these tables with each other. Just to give you a sense, on a Sunday morning, we have about 1,500 people showing up on a Sunday morning right now. I don't know what that means in terms of how many people go to our church or consider us our church, I don't know. Because the statistics say all kinds of things about how frequently you people are here,

thus the survey. But our last round of neighborhood nights, 461 attended. I think that's pretty good, that's pretty great. That's one out of every three that come on a Sunday. I think that's awesome and should be celebrated. All across the DMV, people gathering for a meal together to share with each other. So I celebrate that number and I'd love to see it higher. We do it once a month, break bread with each other, right? It's a form of worship. And family groups, we had our biggest family group connect ever, ever, scheduled for last Sunday. But 620 of you are currently involved in family groups. That is us getting you in smaller groups where you can pray for each other and encourage each other. That's hard to do, just to let you know. Friendship matchmaking is not easy, okay? So if you're like, well, my family group was weird. Statistically, some percentage will be, okay? Sorry. But don't give up, right? You don't stop eating food because you had a bad meal. Don't stop going to family group because you met a weird person, okay? I can't, look. The church gathered like this and they gathered together to worship. And their worship was joyful and reverent, okay? We'll make this point fast. It says they broke bread with glad and generous hearts.

There was something glad about meeting together. There's a joyfulness to the church, right? That as they got together, they're like, you know, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Whoever believes in him wouldn't perish, but have life. Like we have life. The biggest questions in the universe, the biggest philosophical conundrums are answered for us. We have hope beyond the great, like there's something to celebrate here, right? I love the way John Stott said it. He said, every worship service should be a joyful celebration of the mighty acts of God. It is right in public worship to be dignified, but it is unforgivable to be dull. He says it's okay sometimes to have a reverent prayer. It doesn't all have to be jumping around. Notice later it says they were all filled with awe. That's those who were believers and those who weren't. That word awe is the word phobos. It's a fear that they saw the mighty acts of God in their midst and they go, these people aren't just part of a social club. God is on the move and there's something about that that can be disturbing and challenging at times. So there's a place for reverence. There's a place to hit your knees and to weep and to repent before a holy God. But then there's time to dance and celebrate and enjoy.

And it's interesting, you'll see people in church world try to pit those against each other. No, all worship should be reverent. In Gen Z, they want some more contemplative worship. And you go, you should have contemplative worship because the world's noisy. But sometimes you just gotta jump for joy that you were dead and now you're alive. And that's okay too. So we don't have to pit them against each other. So if you come here and go, what's the worship like? A lot, it's like a lot of things. It's like glad and joyful and it's reverent and holy and we wanna be both of those things because that's what Christians do. We worship together with glad and generous hearts filled with awe, right? Breaking the bread together and praying together, right? Our minds on the thoughts of God, my time with the people of God, my mouth filled with prayers to God. This isn't talking about personal, individual prayer, although that's important too. And I would encourage you to do that. And if you don't have a prayer list from other people of things you're praying for, that's part of being a part of the community. It helps you get out of yourself. I've got a pastor friend that calls me almost once a week. It's maybe every other week.

And he'll call me and just go, tell me your problems. He said, I love other people's problems. He said, I can pray for you, I can give you some advice. And then I just hang up and they're not my problem. But we found that we laugh about that. He tells me his problems, I tell him mine. And you know what? It just takes the burden off your shoulders to know somebody else cares. Someone else is praying for you. It's wonderful, right? You need that. How do we wanna help you with that? Well, today is welcome to church. You can walk down to 1201 on freshly shoveled sidewalks and head over there and have lunch, have a meal together with some people and find out how to get involved in church. You can sign up to be a door holder. We don't necessarily have a prayer team. We have prayer in every team. That you can be a part of a team with Kirk, with Corrali, with some others, that you get together with people that you'll see on a regular basis on Sunday that know you and you know them and you can pray together about life. And I've mentioned neighborhood nights, family groups. I didn't mention meetups, Unite, 40 Plus, college nights, parent table talks.

We're trying to create all kinds of different ways for you to get involved here that you can be plugged in with some people you can worship with, that we walk with God together. That's what the church is meant to do, right? And number four, the last one, is they were devoted to witnessing. Devoted to witnessing. A spirit-filled church is an evangelistic church. If you look at the first three points, what they're devoted to is study, fellowship, and worship. That's all interior life. And if you just stop there, you get a really oblong version of the church. You gotta get verse 47b in there. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. The earliest believers were not so preoccupied with my personal spiritual journey that it didn't have an impact on the people around them. The Holy Spirit is a missionary spirit. And he creates a missionary church. Harry Bohr said it this way. Acts, the book of Acts, is governed by one dominant, overriding, all-controlling motif. And that motif is the expansion of the faith through missionary witness and the power of the Spirit. Restlessly, the Spirit drives the church to witness. And continually, churches rise out of that witness. The church is a missionary church.

That yes, internally, we're committed to learning, we're committed to loving, and we're committed to worshiping. But something about that, something about the way they did it, there was a band of people who were not believers along with them who had access to observe them and said, I wanna be a part of what you're doing, and there was a way for them to get in. And church is meant to be that, that we expand. Couple lessons from this. Number one is I want you to notice who added to their number. It says the Lord did it, right? Did he do it through the preaching of the apostles? Yes, he did. Did he do it through the witness of the church? Yes, he did, as they were praising God and enjoying favor with all the people, it says in 47a. But he did it. Jesus is the head of the church. Jesus built his church. It is weird and inappropriate to take credit that our techniques or our technologies can renovate a human heart. We will keep showing up here and keep using stuff to try to help you, but salvation's a miracle, right? And so we pray that God would move in power in you

and in us, because Jesus is the chief evangelist, right? Secondly, notice what he did. He added to their number those who were being saved, right? So he didn't add them to the church without saving them, and he didn't save them without adding them to the church. Those are supposed to go together. That I come to Jesus, and then I get involved with Jesus's people, right? Those are supposed to go together. So if you're like, my spirituality is my own personal journey, that's not how the Spirit works. The Spirit of God knits together a community, right? So if you wanna be rightly related to the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God loves us, not propositionally, hypothetically, but actually and personally, likes people, right? And so we get involved with people, right? And so they're meant to be knit together. And the last thing is he added to their number daily. Do you know what that means? It means it wasn't just the job of a guy with a mic on his head. It was something about the Christian life of the people involved in the church that people were coming to faith in Christ on a Tuesday, on a Thursday. There's something about the way the church acted. People go, what's your deal? What are you people like?

What are y'all doing over there? Why are y'all praying like that? Hey, I see you in this coffee shop always talking, and then suddenly you all bow your heads. What's that about? Hey, what's going on there? Hey, y'all got your Bibles open. What are you doing? Hey, my neighbor keeps inviting me over to this meal. Hey, you've invited me to this movie, and all these people were nice and sober, so bizarre. What's going on with you people? There's something about the way Christians lived that people said, I find that interesting, and day by day they were added to their number. That's how it's supposed to go together. Praise and proclamation fitting together all the time. That's how it's meant to go. There's all relational terms. I don't know if you notice that. That I relate to the apostles as I learn their word. I relate to the church as I love these people, not just hypothetically and propositionally, but actually and physically. That I'm related to God in worship. I trust him, and I pray to him. And that I'm related to the world. I want them to know the God I found. Can I give you a challenge here, church? I prayed about this.

this a lot today. I want to challenge you. We have a city right now that is feeling a crisis. And it was so interesting to me as we shoveled snow in Shaw to look up and to see all these windows and to imagine hundreds, nay, thousands of people live on these blocks. And yet when it's time to cross the street, they all huddle to pass through one little corridor together. And it's crossed none of their minds to shovel. But there's an enormous amount of complaining online about the government failing us. And you can do whatever you want with that. But I want to empower you with a sense of agency that this is a moment where the church can show up. And so I don't judge the people in their apartments who didn't shovel. They may not own a shovel. That's real. You moved here to DC to make a difference and you forgot your shovel. I'm not judging, OK? I'm not. We don't have many, but we have some shovels down at 1201. And if you want to check one out today, you just go over there and see David, and he will give you a shovel. I'm not joking. And I want to challenge you. We thought about trying to organize some of you

to go on some shovel brigades like we did here. And incidentally, about a dozen of our people from our church went to Little Lights, the ministry that works with kids in the city, and liberated their building so 46 kids could go back to the programs at Little Lights. So some of you are already doing this. That's awesome. But I want to challenge you. And particularly, I want to challenge you young men. And that's not to say you haven't done this, but God made you strong. I want you to liberate a vehicle in Jesus's name, OK? Do it today. Whose vehicle? I don't care. Text your family group and say, let's go. We're going to take one hour. In one hour, three people can liberate at least one vehicle. One hour, four or five people can liberate a crosswalk. You can do it. One person, you can maybe get one car. But it's all right. Go get your neighbor's car. Maybe it's some person who, when the storm came, they flew down to Florida and are basking in the sun. And when they come back, they'll never know what you did. And they won't care. Or maybe it's a little old lady. Or maybe it's a single mom whose kids have been home all week. And she's doing the best she can.

I don't know. But I'm asking you, church, this is the moment we can show up. Can you imagine walking out to your car and seeing it already shoveled out and not knowing why, not knowing how? What would that do to your belief in the existence of God? I mean, seriously, think about it. Think about your neighbor. If they just walked out, we're like, what? What? And awe came upon every soul. What is this? So we don't have vests for you to wear with our church's name on it, right? This isn't some big marketing campaign. Maybe we should have, but I don't know. I'm just asking you, take an hour today and just go serve somebody else. And see what God does. Just see what God does when we live out our values. Because what we experienced in Shaw is good culture is contagious. What we experienced on our block is people want it. And we got it. We got a spirit-filled community that can change the world. And so let's go love our neighbors in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.