The First Christians Followed Jesus | Together is the Way | Rick Atchely

Here we go. Welcome to The Hills. Preacher Rick here, delighted to welcome our online family and everyone in person in Dallas or Keller in West Fort Worth or North Richland Hills. And before the year's over, people will be in person in Weatherford, our fifth campus. Part of our nation's and generation's vision was to see five campuses in the five years of that vision, and it is going to happen. And other great things have happened in our vision. That's why filling out that survey will be a great blessing to us as we know some of the impact we've had and some of the ways God has moved among you. So please do that. And I'll be sharing the update of our vision in September. But in August, we're taking time to look at a special word, the word together. And I want to begin my teaching by talking about my grandkids. I have four grandchildren that are three or under. And they love Jesus. I mean, they love toy Jesus. They love this guy. My wife has bought a box full of toy Jesus says, and all my grandkids have one and love them. Well, my three-year-old Sadie was with us recently at Chick-fil-A because we're a Christian family and she lost Jesus. And she was very upset about this. Where is Jesus? I need to find Jesus. And the more she looked, the louder she got until the whole restaurant could hear this little girl saying, I need Jesus. I need Jesus. And revival broke out and there were three salvations before we went to the car. Well, two weeks later, her father, my son-in-law, Grant Hamilton, sent me this picture.

Apparently, Jesus had had a rough day. And Grant texted, I dare you to make a sermon illustration out of this. And I texted right back, go to church, Jesus needs his body, okay? And he really does need his body. And every follower of Jesus really does need his body too. You hear us say all the time, the Hills Church exists to make and grow followers of Jesus. That's it. That's the bottom line. That's the truth. We have no other mission than that mission. We think everybody needs to follow Jesus. And we do this together by being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus and doing what Jesus did. And I said last week that together is the only way to follow Jesus. Maybe that's why you don't find in the Bible the phrase, have a personal relationship with God or with Jesus. Now, of course, you should. I did a series recently on the Holy Spirit encouraging all of you to develop deep, intimate, personal relationship with God through the presence of the Holy Spirit. But what I'm challenging in this series is the idea I hear sometimes, well, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious. I love Jesus, but I don't love the church. I'm challenging the idea that you can have a healthy, personal relationship with Jesus without a healthy communal relationship with Jesus. And I say that because I know something about how Jesus called people to follow him. In Jesus' day, everybody understood this, that if a rabbi asked you to follow him, you could not choose his company if you would not choose his community. There was no other way to follow a rabbi in Jesus' day except in community. Devotion to following included devotion to fellowship. And so, the very first Christians knew no other way to follow Jesus. But together.

Well, we see this all through the book of Acts in Acts 2. When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. In Acts 5, the apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people, and all the believers used to meet together in Solomon's colony. In Acts 20, Luke, who was traveling with Paul, said on the first day of the week, we came together to break bread. In the very first days, together was the only way anybody followed Jesus. It was non-negotiable, and at times it could be controversial because Jesus wasn't just promoting spirituality. He was producing. He was building a new society, and it was controversial because Jesus was demanding allegiance to this new community that transcended any other relational allegiances you had. Now, let me show you that, and it's going to make us all a little uncomfortable, but I'm just sharing with you exactly what Jesus said. Luke 9. A man says, I will follow you, but let me bury my father first. Jesus said, let the dead bury the dead. You go proclaim the kingdom of God. Now, there's a lot going on there,

but it's pretty clear Jesus said, allegiance to me transcends any other allegiance you have. In Mark 3, he's in a house. His mother and brothers come, and someone says, your family's outside, and Jesus said, who's my mother and my brother and my sister? Isn't it these people here doing the will of God? That's my family. In Mark 10, Peter said, we've left everything to follow you, and Jesus said this. Okay, I'm not making this up. I'm quoting him. No one who has left father or mother or brother or sister or children to follow me will not have as hundred times as much in this life and in the life to come eternal life. He's creating a family that's not based on blood, but based on apprenticeship, and he's declaring your allegiance to me now transcends any other relational allegiance you've ever had. Now, Jesus lived in what was then a patrilineal culture. A patril is just a Latin word for father. Here's what this means. In the first century, you decided who your family was based on the father and his bloodline. Here's what that means. I have brothers and sisters. We share the same father. We are family.

I have no higher allegiance than to my brothers and my sisters. If I get married, my wife is not family like my sister is. She's not first, not before my sister because my sister and I share the same blood. Again, I'm not saying you have to like this. I'm saying that's what the world understood. In the same way, if I had children and I had a son, his children are my family, the same bloodline. If I have a daughter and she has children, her children are not my family like my son's children. In the ancient world, you had no higher commitment relationally than to your brother and to your sister. Why is this important? Well, the first church is launched and people start coming to Christ across the world. What do they call each other? Not disciples. What they called each other more than anything else is brother and sister. That means nothing to us because we use that word all the time. We call somebody bro, a sister, and we don't even know them. But in the first century, if you called somebody your brother or your sister, you were saying, I don't have any relationships in the world more important than you. You see, at Pentecost, a new family is getting birthed and it's based on water and blood, the water of baptism and the blood of a crucified rabbi. And this new kind of family is... Redefining what it means to be together in a radical new way.

And I will show that to you in the very first paragraph ever written about a church. It's in Acts 2. Peter has preached. The Spirit has fallen. The crowds have gathered. He's declared Jesus as Messiah, and you killed him. What do we do, they said. And Peter said, you need to repent, and you need to get baptized, and you'll be forgiven of your sins, and you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. That day, 3,000 people did that, and every day, people were doing that, and all of a sudden, you've got this brand-new community that's never existed before. How are they gonna relate to each other? There was no book to read. There was no podcast to listen to, but they just did what they had done when Jesus was with them. They didn't stumble into this community. They intentionally devoted themselves to fellowship, not gather. Now, we know how to gather. We know how to get in the same room, but they didn't do gather. They did together. It's a whole different level of commitment. Let me show you that now in Acts 2. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.

All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who 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. This is what together looked like from the very beginning. Let me show you three things about it that we need to practice. Number one, real together values doctrinal fidelity. The first thing it says is they were devoted to the apostles' teaching. True fellowship is rooted in the reception of truth about Jesus as it has been revealed to us in the teachings and the writings of his apostles. How does Jesus want the world to know who he is? He chose apostles, and he said, whoever receives you receives me. How did we come up with our New Testament? Well, it's a little simplistic, but basically the church fathers, there were lots of books out there. Which ones are gospel? Which ones are part of canon? Well, how close is it to the apostle? Did an apostle write it, or did the person that wrote it have a close connection to an apostle? See, the church doesn't create what it believes.

We receive what we believe. You don't just get to believe or think or teach anything you want and be a part of Jesus' family. You've got to be devoted to what he taught his apostles to give to us. So, the very first creed the church had, 1 Corinthians 15. Probably just a very few years after Jesus ascended, Paul said, I passed on what I received. Notice, I didn't make this up. I received this. Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried. He was raised from the dead according to the scriptures. So, in the very first beginning, you couldn't be a part of together if you didn't receive the truth about Jesus the way it was taught by his apostles. And that's changed today. Some years back, I was in a resort community in another state, and they had a golf course, and I got to play it. Now, around this golf course were lots of homes that people wanted to stay at if they were part of this resort. And some of the homes, people lived there permanently, some just whenever they visited. And they built a chapel in that community for these people. And I went inside and saw the brochure. It offered different levels of membership. You could have a regular membership if you came all the time. You could have an associate membership if you just came every now and then.

And then they offered a fellowship membership. I've never seen this before. It was a kind of membership you could have if, and I wrote this down, if you don't want to commit to the Christian statement of faith. The first Christians would have said, what? You offer fellowship to people? Don't want to commit to the truth. We were taught about Jesus See one thing that binds us together is we all believe the same story About who Jesus is and about what Jesus has done and that he's Lord and Messiah This is why you notice that every day when they were having a meal they'd stop and say wait a second. Let's break bread What does that seem? That means we takes a cup and we take some bread and we'd say let's remember Who Jesus is? He's the story that brings us together as family. They did that daily We do that at our church Weakly It's what binds us together in this age of designer faith where I'm just gonna believe what I want to believe and and think about God what I want to Think and say what I think Jude the brother of Jesus said you need To hold on to the faith That was once for all delivered to God's holy People I think this is one of my primary responsibilities as a teaching pastor Paul said of pastors in Titus 1 he must hold for firmly to the trustworthy message as it's been taught so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it and 2nd Timothy Paul told his young mentee preach the word Be prepared in season out of season correct rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction for the time will come When people will not put up with sound doctrine

Jesus told this was become Jesus said your greatest threat to my family is not going to be on the outside It's gonna be on the inside. He said false Teachers are gonna rise up and tell you to believe things that I never taught There's no room in Jesus family for those that reject the teachings that he gave to his Apostles But there's a lot of room in the family for all who come to believe the truth about Jesus no matter where they come from That's the second thing about together we we value doctrinal fidelity, but we model Intentional unity we see this hinted in Acts 2 We know that Jesus brothers were part of the first family now in the Gospels They did not fellowship with the Apostles, but in Acts 1 you find them praying together. They got accepted We see it. We know that the very first church was multilingual You had Hebrew-speaking people and you had Greek-speaking people that created some conflict that had to be dealt with later in the book But there was difference they were still together But the greatest hint was at the end of Peter's sermon He said you need to get baptized receive the Spirit This promise is for you and your children and all who are far off He had no idea how what a big statement he just made by the way preachers do that We say things that are true and we don't even know how big they are when we say them So what Peter didn't know is he was prophesying? about the inclusion of the Gentiles The Holy Spirit would make that clear a few chapters later when he met a guy named Cornelius But here's the thing. I want you to see that our rabbis definition of together was going to include an Extended family like the world had never seen before Jesus was going to bring people together That had never been together like this ever Another guy in the Bible prophesied didn't know it. The name was Caiaphas Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead The Jewish elite are concerned everyone's running to him

The Romans are going to get upset and come and destroy our nation and this priest Caiaphas said well It's better to kill one man Then have the whole nation die now. He didn't know what he was saying John who's in filled with the Holy Spirit interpreted what he was saying John says He didn't say this on his own But as high priest that year He prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation and not only for that nation But also for the scattered children of God to bring them Together and make them one see this was always God's plan when he called Abraham I'm going to bless all the nations through my regentive plan launched with you Now we take this for granted we say God so loved the world. Nobody believed that in the ancient world. Nobody, nobody believed their God or their gods loved the whole world. It was the Christians that introduced this radical idea, and you know how they did it? They practiced together. They put people in a room together around a table that had never been together before, and that's how they convinced the world that God loves everybody. The first Christians were taught to base fellowship not on compatibility, but on commonality, our shared need for the work of the cross. Old and young need the cross. Men and women need the cross. Slave and free need the cross. Jews and Gentiles need the cross,

and the cross turns walls into bridges. Now, Paul said this is what the gospel is doing in Ephesians 3. The mystery is that through the gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. Now, here's the thing. You agree with that, and I do too. We all agree that all people in Jesus ought to be together, but it's so much easier to preach than it is to practice. Unity's easier as a concept to extol than it is to experience. When Peter met Cornelius and baptized him, he got called on the carpet by the Jewish church, not for baptizing Cornelius, but for eating with him, and that's the rub. Then and now, many Christians want to believe together in doctrine but not get together in person. I told you I grew up in a church that sent missionaries to Africa but would literally disinvite black families from coming back to our assembly. To explain what I'm saying, let's talk about pizza. So 10 years ago, Pizza Hut is declining sales. Their CEO gets the marketing department together, puts them in a room and says, don't come out until you can fix this. Nine hours later, they came out with their new motto, easy beats better.

Here's the logic. We're not going to be able to fix this. Here's the logic. We don't live in an age where people care about quality anymore, they care about convenience. We're in uber age, we're in everything's on an app age where I can get whatever I want, not even have to see people age. They said, let's stop trying to sell pizza saying our pizza tastes better. Let's sell pizza, our pizza's easier to get. And it worked. Because people love easy if messy, if better is messy. If better is messy, people love easy if better is messy. The multicultural church, the multi-ethnic church, getting together with people with different contexts and different backgrounds and different stories is messy. It's easier just to break up into our little pods and be only with people like us. When I was a young preacher, it was called the homogeneous principle. You want to build a church fast? Only reach people of a certain kind. People like to be together with people just like them. And it works. The only problem is it's completely unbiblical and anti-gospel. And to explain that, let's talk about pizza. So when I was a boy, just like your kids, what kind of pizza did I like?

Cheese, just bread and cheese. But I got a little more mature. Somebody put some pepperoni on that sucker. And some sausage and some green olives and then praise the Lord, some breakfast bacon. And my pizza got messier and it got so much better. And what we believe is that one of the greatest ways we can show the gospel to the world is the messy business of getting a church that looks like it's city and getting people from different places and backgrounds together. At the hills, we believe we're better together. And we want to be an intentional witness now of what heaven is going to look like then, where all the tribes and all the tongues are gathered around the throne together. But our unity is not the only thing our extended family's known for. We value doctrinal fidelity, intentional unity. But one more thing. Reeled together practices radical generosity. The very first Christians, right off the bat, had financial trouble. Here's why. You've been a Jew all your life. All your neighbors are Jewish. Your whole community is Jewish. And then you make this radical decision to call a crucified man your Messiah.

You just lost your job. If you had a small business, you lost your customers. If you're a widow and you existed because you were on the roll of the synagogue that gave food to widows, you got kicked off the roll. From the very start, there was great financial hardship with the first Christians. But you know what they decided? They decided that their new community was more important than their old property. It says all the believers were together and shared everything. They would sell their land and the things they owned and then divide the money and give it to anyone who needed it. And you know a family is made of the right stuff when family is more important than stuff. See, Jesus' family is countercultural. Generosity is not what we do. It's who we are. We are following the most selfless, radically generous man who ever lived. And that's how we do family. I've told you before about a professor at Wheaton University, a well-known Christian school in Chicago. His name is Dr. Palmer Chinchin. And a few years back, he took the basketball team from Wheaton College to Africa, specifically Malawi, because that's where his brother had been for 10 years. And his brother coached the national basketball team in Malawi. And they were going to have a scrimmage at African

Christian College. They got in the gym. And some of the boys from America started to snicker because the Malawian team was practicing. And they noticed two boys who just had one shoe. But then Palmer's brother came over and explained that in that culture, it's shameful for a man to be in public in no shoes. And one of the boys, he'd outgrown his tennis shoes. His foot was too big. He couldn't buy another pair of tennis shoes. And so, a teammate said, well, you come and I will give you one of my shoes. And the snickering stopped. You don't know it, but every week, Acts 2 happens at our church. Every week, people in our church radically meet needs of other people. I'll give you some examples just recently. I could tell you about the member that needed a brand new mouth. I mean, literally, 28 extractions and dentures. And people paid for it. I could tell you about the sister that took her new sister in Christ shopping for clothes because she had just gotten out of prison and didn't have any clothes. I could tell you about the member who found out they had cancer. And some friends in our church got together and paid her rent for a year because she had some medical bills to deal with. Or the family that donated their SUV to help a single mom get

back on her feet. Or the family that found out about one of our widows that couldn't afford to pay for new brakes or an oil change, so they just took care of it. Or the group that got together because one of their members needed knee surgery and they paid for it so they'd get back to work. This happens all the time. If you give online, the drop box will say family care. That's in case you ever wanted to give some extra money that goes into an account just for things like this. We're trying to be an Acts 2 church, and that means sometimes church needs to be a verb. As John said, let's not merely say we love each other. Let us show the truth by our actions. And here's what happens. When we get serious and we give real attention to this kind of together, we get attention. People notice. I like how it reads in the message. People in general like what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved. The church found favor with their neighbor. And their neighbors found a Savior named Jesus. That's what happens, that Jesus' family brings the gospel and people together. This is God's plan. It's always been His plan, that through the power of the gospel, He was going to bring together people, and their togetherness was going to be a witness to the world of a God who loved everybody. Real together gets rave reviews.

I was reminded of this just this summer. On my study break, as I mentioned, I went to visit four church planters in one of those churches in Seattle. You have to be with Phil Moore and Caitlin Boltz, who have started one church in Seattle, which is considered maybe the most unchurched city in America. They meet in a theater in downtown Seattle. It's hard to get to, and it's hard to find a place to park. We went there that day. Phil Moore preached. He is a great preacher. Right now, I'm preaching through the book of Romans, doing a great job. But here's the picture I want you to see the most. Place was packed, and that picture doesn't show you the balcony that was equally packed. And that's just one of three services they have every Sunday, and they're starting a fourth service. They're 23 months old, averaging 1,000 a week, and have already had 198 baptisms. And Phil Moore will tell you, yes, the preaching and the worship are attractional, but our real strength is every week we meet in groups all over the city, and we have a meal together. We have a meal together, and we talk about the sermon, and we give as much or more training to those groups as we do to Sunday. That church is filled with young adults, the kind of young adults we're told that are turning away from the gospel. But you know what? They're longing for belonging. And it is the witness of a church doing together well that is reaching people some would think couldn't be reached, because God's plan works. Together brings the gospel and people together. Jesus really does need His body. It's part of the plan, but you need Jesus' body just as much. And you know how to gather.

My question is, is it time for you to get it together? So bow your heads. Father, we thank You for our church. We thank You for our times to meet. We thank You for the good things that happen when we gather. But God, help us take it to another level. Help us embody the kind of fellowship that You always wanted, the kind that gives a witness to the world of Your love for the nations. May we at the hills become the beautiful, colorful family of God. Bring us together in Jesus' name, amen.