Physical Practices point to Spiritual Priorities

Good morning. Welcome to Hope. Glad to have you here. My name's Cor. I'd love to meet you. If I haven't had the chance to meet you, we can connect after, after today's service this morning, want to introduce you to two individuals. They're, they're fictitious, but you might know them and, or resemble them. Positive Pete and Sober Sally. So that's where I want to start this morning. Oh, I clicked past it. Positive Pete gave a. Can you click back there? Perfect, thank you. Positive Pete is on the left and Sober Sally on the right. Positive Pete, this actually comes from a friend of mine who's overseas and serving and trying to share God's love over there. And he's been sharing in contrast to a local religious leader. And of the local religious leader, Positive Pete said, you know what, what you've been sharing with me is good and it's big, kind of like the world. But what this person, my friend, this missionary sharing is much greater. It's more like a universe. And just the size and scope of the message, of the Christian message feels universal, feels bigger, expansive than what the local religious leader was putting forth. That local religious leader not professing faith in Christ and so positive peace, just overwhelming. Glowingly speaking of this message, this word, this Christian cross, and the beliefs that we hold in our church, Sober Sally came by way a different direction, a social media post that I saw. And as it happens, people talk about the church, they have opinions about the church, and when those opinions get shared in a space of social media, some positive and some negative and some more on the sober side, in this case, Sober Sally said something akin to assume all ministries are toxic, abusive, self serving, dog excrement, I'll put in garbage until proven otherwise. Sober Sally stating very clearly some misgivings about the church. And so in the church, you might have overly positive people that maybe lack the sobriety, the honesty of some of the difficulties and challenges and realities of the church. And on the other side, maybe the overly sober person that sometimes lacks positivity. And we get the chance to look directly at the church today in our passage from the Book of Acts. This is our sermon series for this spring and we're looking at the story continuing through God's people, in God's church here and now. And we want to do that, yes, with sobriety, but also with a degree of positivity because God is still at work. He is still writing a story. He is the author with pen in hand, writing now through us, through Hope Community Church here in downtown and so want to get you caught up to speed. If you are new with us. Just checking out church, we are in the Book of Acts. So if you find that in the table of contents, that's going to be towards the ladder quarter of your Bible. Why? Because the first 3/4 lot of history called the Old Testament that prefigures, that prophesies, that anticipates the coming of Jesus, Jesus comes on the scene. That's where we get to our New Testament. And there's four distinct gospels of Jesus Christ. Not biographies, Gospels, Gospels indicating good news that there is not just Jesus as a historical figure, which he is, or a biography telling you about his life, which it does, but rather a Gospel. A good news retelling of what Jesus did, specifically his death and resurrection is a part of that good news, that retelling of it. Then we get to the book of Acts. After the Book of Acts, you're going to get a bunch of letters written to individuals and churches. So the Book of Acts stands out for its uniqueness because it tells a lot of story, a lot of history, a lot of narratives, a lot of Acts, actions, happenings of the early church in the wake of Jesus ascension. So Jesus dies, buried, raised, and then ascends. And we get this now kind of historical retelling of what, what happened after he departed. And it says Acts of the Apostles, which is a way of saying Acts of, of those who were eyewitnesses, who were appointed of carrying this faith now forward upon Jesus departure. Sometimes it's called Acts of the early church or the Acts of Peter and Paul because they're kind of significant in its retelling or just Acts of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is given to the church and then moves within the church. And now what we have is a recording of those actions. Not surprisingly then when you're starting a church planting network, you might think like, okay, how many chapters are in the book of Acts 28? Oh, well, we want to do something now. So Acts 29 is kind of where our church planting network got its name from, is just kind of this ongoing movement of God as churches start new churches. And we got another church that will be starting later this fall. We're excited and we're going to have Paul preach here in June to tell you more about that. But the story is ongoing, friends, and we're super excited to share a small, small sliver of what God is doing. Two weeks ago, Pastor Steve kind of kicked things off. And I just want to give you four verses, four significant verses from chapter one, to remind us kind of where we've been from verse three, it says this, after his suffering, after Jesus suffered, he presented himself alive, which is significant, but maybe you've heard that. So it kind of can fall on deaf ears or dull hearts sometimes. Like, he presented himself, a dead guy presented himself alive. And that is significant and consequential, right? And he did it through many convincing proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. So the ministry continues, the messaging continues, but yet over 40 days, this is not some parlor trick. He was really dead, and now he's really alive. Our Savior, our Lord, the Coming one, the Messiah, the victorious one. And so it gives us hope, who might have anxiety about death or anxiety about the future to know, like, okay, on the other side of the cross, he came out alive, victorious conqueror. And as we unite ourselves with him, that is what awaits us no matter what this life entails. Because I can't forecast what you're going to experience in your life. The suffering, pain, trials, consequences, struggles. And yet we know the outcome. We know there is a good ending in this story. In our story, Acts 1:8 says that you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, into the ends of the earth. Couple things to note. They waited that they might be filled. And that is a great demonstration and I hope is a paradigm that we have for the church. We were empty and God filled us. Like, if you need a gospel that's accessible for your kindergartner, for a sixth grader, for you and for me. Let's not overcomplicate this. We were empty and God filled us. We were empty and in need of a counselor and a comforter. And the Holy Spirit is sent to be that counselor and to be that comforter for us. And then there's this ongoing witness to Jesus in his death and resurrection that is carried out, not just in Jerusalem, kind of the immediate context. And that's where we're gonna be for several chapters, but eventually to the ends of the earth, that this is a message that will spread. This is a message for everybody, not just people that seem like they'll show up in church one day. This is for the ends of the earth, for everybody in our offices, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our communities, that ultimately Jesus says, I want to be Savior and Lord of all, not just those that you and I look on and go, yeah, I think they're close. They're definitely Closer than other guy. Like, no, no, also the other guy to the ends of the earth. And then this from verses 21 and 22. Therefore, it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with you the whole time. The Lord Jesus was living among us, beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection. I include that just to kind of highlight the role of an apostle, different than a disciple. The 12 disciples you might have heard, sometimes they're referred to as apostles. Like, how should we understand that? All are called to be disciples. All are called to be learners and followers of Jesus. Yet there was this unique role, this apostleship that just said there was an authority there. Because they were witnesses of these things and because Jesus charged them with some things to do it uniquely in that time, in that space, it will have ongoing repercussions. But there was a role in office, an eyewitness reality to this that's significant and consequential. We'll hit that again here in a moment. Last week, Davis talked about the beginning of chapter two. I'll take the end of chapter two. He had many more verses to cover than I do this week, which I'm thankful for. I'll recap later just a couple of those verses because it's significant and ties into today's passage. But I want to go back to one of the quotes that he used where it says this with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Do you remember that? The Spirit comes. The tongues of Fire. That weird commercial he shared about. I'm not looking it up. The curse of Babel begins to unravel. So that's a reference way back to the book of Genesis, Tower of Babel. Even if people unfamiliar with the Bible might remember just like this kind of weird thing that happened. Yeah, God confused their speech. Why? Because they were trying to do something that they weren't called to do. But here, there's this undoing. No longer is the gospel confined to Hebrew. It is available directly to all nations and all languages. The restored order of God's kingdom begins to break into the dark and confused world of sin. So I want to make note of that, because physical realities many times point to spiritual realities. And when we go back and we kind of look at this confusing thing called this Tower of Babel, like, why would God do that? That's weird. It's confusing. And then there's something that corresponds to it later in the story Many times it's an undoing. It's like, here's where the brokenness of the world leads. And now in Christ, it gets spiritually undone, even to the most obvious of, like, Genesis 3. Sin enters the world and death through sin. And now we fast forward to the spiritual reality of Jesus bringing forth life out of death. And so just something to be aware of as we progress forward this morning. So let me take you to our passage for today. Gonna look at just six verses late in chapter two. You can turn there if you want. It'll also be on the screen. It reads this. 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. So that's our passage for this morning. And maybe you've heard this reference. Like, maybe you've even been asked, if people hear that you go to a church, they might even ask you, like, is it an Acts 2 church? And that kind of is shorthand for this passage referencing these verses. And yet, just because one might be an Acts 2 church, you might say, yeah, I think so. I think we want to be that. That sounds good. Like a church that's found in the Bible. We should ascribe to those things so many times we need to differentiate that which is prescriptive versus descriptive, that there are things described in the Bible that I would never say, hey, you should do likewise. Namely, all the times that sin is manifested in dramatic, like, hey, that's not just describing. That's prescribing how you should live like sin, abundantly. Like, no, there are certain things, even positive things, seemingly good things that happened that for whatever reason, we wouldn't actually say, this is a prescription. You should do likewise. And even a couple of them are found in our passage this morning. And maybe you didn't catch them, but I just want to kind of like highlight a couple of them from the passage. So is it prescriptive that in our gatherings we should just have signs and wonders? Or is that like the Sunday night service, like, come back for the signs and wonder service? Right. Do signs and wonders happen? Yes. Can we forecast them and prescribe them I don't think so. And so we need to just acknowledge that maybe there was something to give validity to the preaching validity at that time in that space. It doesn't mean though that healings don't happen. Healings do happen. But there, there's just a piece that we have to have an open handedness with this. Maybe it's describing something that was significant and timely, that for us it might be sporadic, unexpected, unexplainable. I have testimonies coming from hospitals where doctors are dumbfounded, like it shouldn't be carrying forward in this way, but it is. And we're as surprised as anybody. Like that feels like a sign and wonder. It just isn't bound to our gatherings and to our services. This idea of having everything in common. I think it just, it's a question that we're gonna come back to later in our series, but just are there parameters on that, like how much and where do we draw those lines of distinction with regard to generosity? Should that be prescribed or is that being described here? I think another one to make note of is just this idea of like going to the temple. Are you in Acts 2 Church? Well, if Acts 2 Church. You mean do I frequent the temple? I guess no. Right. So there's some things described because it's a Jewish community in the wake of Jesus dying, being raised and ascending. That is unique and timely for that. I think more modern conversations deal with like size of the church. I don't know, when I was in seminary there was just like important, like what was prized at that time was like house, church, small church, but not too small because you need to be multiplying. You got to show, like if you're gonna validate the end of this passage, you need to be multiplying so that you can be too small and too stagnant. But don't get too big. If you get too big, you've sold out. You're no longer doing Acts 2 stuff. So these conversations were confusing giving habits. What does this mean? And at Hope, we've tried to have an open handed, like there's an invitation, not an expectation. Nobody's going around and saying, hey, what's your W2? And how's that look with your giving trend? Like, no, no, there's a, there's an invitation. We think it'll bring joy to your life. And it doesn't have to be at Hope, but just there's a way by which we dramatize the gospel in our giving of just God's been generous and we get the Chance to be generous, another one and then I'll move on. Just the existence of paid staff versus volunteer staff. House church would be maybe more volunteer staff. Nobody in the church is paid. They're burned out, but they're not paid right or paid staff. Feels very stuffy. Institutional, organized religion. I don't know if I like that. You know, so conversations that just kind of bleed out of that, like, are you an Acts 2 church? Hopefully we'll blow away some of that fog this morning and get some clarity on what, what could it mean and what does it mean here at Hope? And so I want to Highlight just verse 42. That's our framework for this service. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. That's what they devoted themselves to. I think it could be argued that verses 43 and what follows is kind of like, okay, and this is what it looked like in their context. And then we can talk about what it looks like in our context. But they devoted themselves, they gave themselves over to what? To the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. I'm going to combine those middle terms, fellowship and breaking of bread, into one. So just going to hit three things for us this morning. I'm going to start at the end with prayer. I am going to start with prayer. I thought, huh, interesting. It's updated in my notes. Maybe I got the wrong PowerPoint in there. Can you see a prayer comes next. Talk about something amongst yourselves. Yeah, what's wrong here? That's all right. Maybe I didn't save it before I print it. Okay, so we're going to start with prayer. Then we're going to go to apostles teaching and we're going to end with fellowship and the breaking of bread. Because I think that has a lot of significance and consequence for us. As far as what is our fellowship look like? A principle that I've operated by for some time is the. Not just in the Bible, but in real life is that physical realities point to spiritual realities, that, that Jesus Christ came to make an invisible God visible, that we understand things because he came and lived among us, visible as a human, with us doing, like, things, similar things. Okay, so there's something about physical realities in the Bible pointing to spiritual realities. I already gave the example of the Tower of Babel. Something was happening spiritually. They were abandoning God. And so there's this physical Tower of Babel experience. Something happens physically. Tongues of fire come to demonstrate something spiritually. God's at work in our Midst. Okay, today I would maybe just amend this. Edit this to say that physical practices point to spiritual priorities or reveal spiritual priorities. That you and I, as we go through life and we live our Christian life, and if you're not yet a Christian today, you can become one during this service. There's a way by which physical practices, physical relationships, decisions about how you and I operate through life that reveal that point to our spiritual priorities can take some time to just ask, how did it look then and there of that church? And then kind of by extension, what does it look like here and now for us? So let's start with prayer, right? Yes, prayer. All right. They devoted themselves to prayer. We shouldn't be surprised by that. And yet it's highlighted a couple different times, couple different ways. The show, hey, physical practice of prayer communicate something spiritual, a spiritual priority later. There's actually an issue with food distribution. Easy for you to say. And actually the apostles, some of the leaders are like, hey, can we appoint somebody to kind of work through that food issue so that we can prioritize other things? And as captured for us here in chapter six, brothers and sisters, choose seven from among you who are known to be full of spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility, the food thing, over to them. And then we will give our attention to two things, prayer and ministry of the word. Prayer and ministry of the word. Those are going to be our kind of physical practices and priorities, demonstrating some sort of spiritual reality. So prayer, why. Why is that the church's devotion? I just want you to think of physically in prayer. Like, what, what does one do? What do you do? What do. What do I do? When we pray, maybe close our eyes, maybe fold our hands, maybe open, like put our hands up like this to receive. Right. Most of the time, some do walking prayers, but many times we're just stationary. There's a certain do nothingness appearance. And certainly to somebody who doesn't have faith, they're like, what's that person doing? Nothing. They're stagnant. They're just sitting there. They're just standing there, right? And in contrast to that, imagine somebody who's in a hurry just constantly going from one thing to the next to the next to the. And just consider, just consider physically that practice. One person, stationary, stagnant, do nothing, and the other person quite frazzled, going here to there in every which way. If you were here during Gospel mixtape last summer, I had the Inside Out 2 sermon. If you were here for it. And this is the picture of anxiety, if you remember. Anxiety says to the other emotions. My job is to protect Riley from the scary stuff she can't see. I plan for the future. That's anxiety's job. And I ended this sermon by saying, no, no, no, no, no, that's Jesus job. Jesus comes to you and to me and says, my job is to protect you from the scary stuff that you can't see. Jesus says, I plan for the future. And so our physical priorities, our physical practices of prayer, of stopping in a world that prioritizes movement, slowing down, giving the appearance of do nothingness in a world that says never stop, never slow down, you're falling behind, friends. That physical practice, that physical posture, the do nothingness of it reveals a priority of what? Spiritually, Reliance, dependence, trust, faith, belief. Now it doesn't mean we should never do anything, but there's something that we proclaim spiritually about the gospel about God. That God doesn't need our works, does not need our actions, does not need our behaviors, does not need our rituals, does not need our ceremonies. Rather, the gospel is about what Jesus gives to you and to me. And prayer demonstrates that we come to him again and again and again empty handed, in need God. We are a vessel that needs to be filled again today, this morning. And I'm worried, friends. And I just, I'll own this myself. I'm not putting this on you. I'll put this on me as a person, as a Christian, as a family, husband and dad, and as a Christian pastor. I'm concerned that my prayerlessness communicates a false gospel, a gospel of self reliance, self confidence. Why? I've studied these things, I've learned about these things. I've done Bible studies, part of a parachurch ministry in college, got to go on and do seminary, got to go and do a doctorate of ministry. I've looked at these things professionally for 20 years. Prayer, my prayerlessness communicates something about God that I don't want to communicate. My lack of physical practice can communicate a lack of spiritual priority. The posture of prayer, of just opening ourselves to receive from God, friends, that communicates so much about the gospel about God. And if you're struggling in prayer, I get it, it's not easy. My, my brother in law taught me a lot about prayer and he just this kind of misnomer that, well, prayer should just be easy. If you're a Christian, you should just, it's like, oh, to communicate and commune with the Almighty, that should just be easy. It should just be intuitive. It's difficult. And so in the midst of that, what, what are Some. What's a phrase that I like to grab onto and maybe this will be helpful. Maybe, maybe not. God, I come to you hopeful and expectant. Hopeful and expectant, yet humble and patient. That's kind of my posture when I come before God in prayer. God, I want to be hopeful and expectant because you're God Almighty and you can do anything. And yet humble, patient. Because God doesn't always operate according to my designs and desires. Right. Maybe you've experienced that. And so I need to be humble and patient to realize that maybe God has a different timeline or a different set of priorities. And so I want to be humble and patient enough to receive what he has for me today. And in that, that slowing down, just that physical posture of stopping, folding hands, closing eyes, giving an appearance of do nothingness, and somebody out there saying, hey, so you guys just, in your church life, you just, you pray, you just kind of do nothing? Yeah, yeah. So that you might know and we might be able to show you a spiritual priority, that God does everything. I would never want my hurriedness, my level of activity, to miscommunicate that it's really about us and not about God. He has acted and we get the chance to be recipients of that. So that's prayer number two. The apostles teaching, they devoted themselves. They gave themselves over to the apostles teaching. Now that should be alarming or surprising or dumbfounding. Why? Because they're going to be noted in a couple chapters as being unschooled, ordinary people. They're not religious leaders. They're not Pharisees or Sadducees or experts in the law or those who explicate these things. That's not them. There's a whole other group of people and population that do that. And so it's like, wait, you want to have us devote ourselves to those guys, those former fishermen and that one tax collector? And like that group of people, they're teaching. You want us to give ourselves to that rather than these other religious leaders? It might sound foolish. And so I think it causes us to go back to the part of Davis chapter last week and say, what again? What were the apostles teaching? What was their message? If we're going to devote ourselves to this, we should at least review it and look at it. I'm just going to do a few verses here. It says this. God has raised this Jesus. Remember the sermon, Peter? Right. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it, exalted to the right hand of God. He has received from the Father, the Promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. Therefore let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Messiah. Couple quick things to know before we ask like why did they devote themselves to the apostles teaching? But just a couple things to note. We see the triune God here, right here, right hand of God. We have the, the Father, we have the Holy Spirit, and we have Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Messiah, right? So there's, there's the Trinity, right? In these several verses here, Jesus is clearly depicted as Israel's Messiah, as the one they were to be expecting. Now he didn't match all their expectations. They had different things on their list when they prayed. They wanted conquering hero to be set free from the Romans. And that wasn't the type of Messiah that came into the world. That wasn't what they expected. But Jesus is the one they were waiting for upon his crucifixion, revolution, resurrection and ascension. And then according to Old Testament prophecy, the Spirit is poured out. So we see all persons of the Trinity at work here. And then we have to ask ourselves why? Why? Devotion to the apostles teaching Again, physical practices reveal point to spiritual priorities. So what is the spiritual priority that they want to give themselves? The early church is devoted to these things. The apostles teaching. What's the spiritual priority? I think it's a bit of a mistake to think that the teaching is just something to be learned. I think we're going to see here in a moment that it's really so much more. It's about worship, it's about following. It's about a life change, life transformation, the fact that these things demand a response. And so if you're new to the church and new to Christianity, it's like what I'm putting in front of us this morning. We'll take demand a response like, do you believe this? Do you ascribe to this? If you were here last week, Vasik said, I believe these things. And his friend was like, that makes you a Christian. It's like, okay, he just became, he became a Christian as he believed these things. Do you believe these things? If you don't, then you're not a Christian. Doesn't matter that you came into a church or into a small group or do charitable things in your city or in your community. What makes one a Christian is in ascribing a wholehearted belief, a willingness to say, this is it. This is the foundation of my life. I believe these things. I trust These things. Jesus, I really believe that you died and were raised and that upon that I'm forgiven of sin and I get a chance to live with you. Not just live with you, die and be raised like you were. And so therefore it's not about traditions, it's not about organized religion, it's not about rituals. It's not about your habits and behaviors and your hot takes and your political views. It's not that the apostles teaching is the heart of Christianity. It's ascribing to a God who has moved in our midst. I want to share a term that's newer to me it's a French term. Any French people in the crowd. So you won't know if this is true. I am making this up. It's a phrase called deformation professionale. Anybody heard of this profession Defor? Nope. Deformation professionale feels like I'm making up. I don't even know what it. This is what the French term communicates. And I think we've probably all experienced this to a certain degree in our professions. That's the professionale and then the deformation deformed side of our professions. It says this. Physicians grow callous sometimes, not all the time. You physicians in the crowd grow callous to pain or maybe if you're a labor and delivery nurse or doctor, you maybe grow immune to the wonder of childbirth. Right? That's the way by which our professionale, our professions get deformed, get warped. Why? Just because it's just can become so ordinary, so common. You're around pain or you're around childbirth all the time. Lawyers may grow cynical of the courts or cold to the rule of law. Teachers may correct grammar outside the classroom. This is not a time of confession, but if you feel the need to raise your hand. Engineers may overwhelm a 14 year old tour guide due to their lack of precision about the buildings and the structures and the quality and the engineering. Parents may parent not just their kids, but other kids or other parents. What connection does that have here? Christians can grow callous, can grow cold toward grace, toward this, the apostles teaching and start to make the Christian life out to be something else, something more tangible, something more physical, something more demonstrable. It's just can feel like the belief is not enough anymore. It was and coming to faith. But then it's just like yeah, but it really is about my small group participation. It really is about the depth of my learning as I read books. It really is about how many times a week I'm going out into the community to share and to contribute and to bless. It really is about me and friends. I just want to warn us, I want to encourage us. Don't grow callous. This idea of a deformation professionale like it can happen to any of us. We just lose vision for what's most important in this faith. And it is again and again and again the grace of God. Don't grow tired of it, don't graduate out from it. It is coming back to that well again and again and again and finding there's always refreshment for your soul. We are so diligent on Sunday mornings to hold this tight because it can be so easy to give ourselves to other things. I heard somebody put it this way, why are we so given toward the law? Say I don't know. The law is clear and the law can feel safe. If it says, do this and I do it, I know I'm good. And if it says don't do this and I don't, I feel good. A spirit filled church, a spirit filled life does not follow law. It's being attuned to what God is doing in our midst. And sometimes it says, hey, I want you to participate. And sometimes it says, I want you to abstain. And most of us, and especially, you know, some of the, let's see, I'm enfp. So I s. The S's in the. And the world right in the room are kind of like, I like clear lines of distinction, right? And that's great that that's your personality. And then sometimes a spirit filled life, it's like the lines are blurry. Cause sometimes it means I want you to eat. And sometimes it means I want you to abstain. Sometimes drink and don't drink, or sometimes go and sometimes stay. It can be tough, it can be challenging. And so coming back to grace, coming back to God's goodness, God's kindness, God's love, it's more about him than it is about us. It doesn't mean we don't do things. But friends at the heart of our faith. And what the priority of this practice communicates, why we value this, is to prioritize spiritually that it's about God. It's about what God has done, it's about what Jesus has done. It's what the Spirit is doing rather than putting the onus on you or on me. And so if you should find yourselves struggling, challenged with this, keep reading. It says, you know, brothers, what shall we do? Because we haven't been living by this. He says, repent, 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. The promise is for you and for your children, for all who are far off. For all whom the Lord our God will call again and again and again. Repent. Turn back to God if you should find yourself wandering. Turn back to God if you should find yourself growing cold and callous to the grace of God. It's just not hitting, it's not singing. Say spirit of God, move in my heart today I have enough of a church background where I remember one or two things from my upbringing. And one was a tune that the pastor would just sing. And I'm not going to sing it. You're welcome. Created me a clean heart. Oh, oh God. Oh woe. There was some musical notes there. And renew a right spirit within me can cast me not away from thy presence, O Lord, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. It's just. It's a calling out, it's a prayer, it's God. Will you help me again today? I have need for you. I'm growing cold to you and callous to this. I'm experiencing that deformation professionale and I don't want to. God, help me, hear me soften my heart to this message. Physical realities, Physical practices point to reveal spiritual priorities. Turn to God. Repent, be baptized, believe, be filled. All of these cause us to take our attention off ourselves and put them back to God. One more for us this morning, the fellowship and the breaking of bread. I'm going to combine those even though others may not, and for basically two reasons. I want to highlight the common, ordinary gatherings. Common, ordinary meals. And then highlight kind of the uncommon unordinary meal. So first kind of this devoting themselves to fellowship, which is koinonia, which is to say common. And then later you'll see it in verse there. All the believers were together and had everything in koinonia. Koinos, Koinos, common. So that word's repeated. So there's something about a common life, common gatherings, ordinary meals, table fellowship. It's this. It's pictures of our small groups in and around and about and doing their thing. And it's just life together. It is sharing time, sharing space, sharing updates, sharing meals, sharing fun. It's a group of church people. And yet if you double click on them, I can highlight all the ways in which they're different from one another. Different political beliefs, different upbringings, different origins, different families, different stories, different histories. And so I think the practice of gathering together communicates a spiritual Reality that we want to proclaim that Jesus really does bring together broken people who are of differences. And I want to say, like friends that'll preach in this age, in this world, the fact that in small groups in our church gatherings we have blue and red represented, that we have laborers and professionals represented, men and women, people of different races and ethnicities, see, that proclaims the gospel. Why? Because Jesus is going to make a church of every tongue, tribe and nation. That it's not just like, oh, the uber intelligent, like no, no, Jesus, like I'm going to reveal myself to little children. There's something about this practice of gathering together people of different backgrounds, different political beliefs, different vocations gathering together that proclaim something to the world, a spiritual priority, that the gospel is for everybody. How fantastic. The other piece, and I want to quote my brother in law who's a pastor down the street about how just showing up, coming into community just. Do you realize that that physical practice of joining together with other people, what that communicates as far as a spiritual priority, listen to this. If our propensity to worship ourselves is a problem, and it is, he made that case. I'm just going to assume that that's a reality for most of us, not you guys over there, but the rest of us, then it would make sense that when we're saved, we'd be drawn away from ourselves. Do you hear that? So if the spiritual principle is that kind of we're worshiping ourselves and we need a change in worship and so we take our eyes off ourselves and put them to God, then it's like, okay, what does that physically look like? Well, we are drawn away from ourselves and on a weekly basis or sometimes more, drawn away from our actual physical homes and on a more macro scale, away from our past lives as we repent to be with Jesus and his people. That's exactly what we see here. The doctrine of the church in a strange kind of indirect way reveals to us what our greatest problem is. And that is too much of us individually. So gathering with the church collectively, corporately being drawn away from ourselves individually, away from too much individualism, too much internalization of lies and bad theology and self worship and our lives just being all about us. Jesus dies for that, he continues. But Jesus also now starts to undo that whole thing practically in our lives through us now being together with other Christians and of course him through those other Christians. The early church clearly instinctually didn't have a just me and Jesus mentality or spirituality. The early church instinctually didn't have a I don't need the church way of thinking. That's very American, but it's not ancient or Christian. A great way to think about the acts of church is just being with other Christians. The practice, the physical practice of showing up proclaims something, proclaims a spiritual priority, friendship. Look down upon our gathering here or gathering with your small group or gathering with the hospitality or gathering with your friends or gathering with your houses. And having at the center of that Jesus just showing up in that space proclaims something, a spiritual belief, a spiritual priority that we need Jesus and we need others, that we have needs outside of ourselves. Don't give ourselves to this American isolation or individualism. That practice communicates something spiritually of self reliance, of self worship, that you're just so important that you cannot be bothered by the world. Jesus was not so important as to not be bothered by the world. He was like, no, no, no, I will engage with this world. I will go and meet with them, I will go and be among them. I will go and serve them. Why? Because the spiritual priority is they can't be left alone. They have need. And so, friends, you can't be left alone. You have needs. First and foremost. Jesus is here to meet those needs. But then his church showing up, joining with you might be hesitant because you've been hurt by the church. And I get that and I understand that it's challenging in the wake of that hurt to trust again and to move people towards someone else again. One person put it this way, no one has been hurt more by the church than Jesus. It's like, oh, so it's probably no surprise that the church, which is the body of Jesus, would bear some of that hurt, some of that pain that we dish it out, but then we also receive it at times. There's probably no way out from under it that we will be hurt if we get together in community. And that brings us to the uncommon unordinary meal of communion. This idea of breaking of bread, it does mean common ordinary meals, but it also means Jesus breaking bread at the Last Supper and saying, take and eat. This is my body given for you, friends. That goes way back in the Old Testament to a physical practice. In Deuteronomy 16 it says this. Eat this bread without yeast for seven days. May it be unleavened, the bread of affliction. Because you left Egypt in haste. So that all the days of your life you may remember the time of your departure from Egypt. Do this physical practice, break this bread so you can remember your Departure from Egypt, out of slavery. You've been delivered. And now we do dissimilar. As part of our services, we eat this uncommon unordinary meal. We break this bread, we have this juice. Remember, a body broken for us and blood shed for us. There's a physical practice which reminds us of the spiritual reality that Jesus alone goes to the cross. It's his affliction, his suffering that brings our deliverance and our rescue. I want to invite the worship team forward. We're going to get a chance to come to this communion table. We're going to get a chance to pray, to open up our hands and our hearts, to stop and to say, God, we have need. We're going to get a chance to sing out our devotion to the Lord through worship. There's an opportunity to demonstrate a generosity and all things in common through giving. And as we do these things, I just two questions. What do your physical practices reveal about. Well, get me there. There we go. What do your physical practices reveal about your spiritual priorities? Individually, what do your physical practices reveal about your spiritual priorities? And then I think for us collectively, what do our practices reveal about our spiritual priorities? And I ask that of leaders, of elders, of governance team members, of small group leaders. What do our physical priorities, our physical practices communicate. Proclaim about our spiritual priorities? Friends, a church, a world that cannot see Jesus. They're not spiritually attuned to see Jesus. They will look to something that they can see, something as physical and visible, the church. When they look to us, what will they see? What will they conclude about where our priorities lay? We got a chance, friends, through proclaim a gospel to a world that needs it. A world that is in desperate need of Jesus, his life, his death, his resurrection, the pouring of his spirit and the unity that we experience that is just gone outside these walls. We have a chance to give it to them and provide it and proclaim it to them. Let's pray. Jesus, we're not a perfect church, but we're a church devoted to these things. To prayer, to apostles teaching, to fellowship and to the breaking of bread. In this God, we need you. You are at the center. You are at the heart. You will never be dislodged from the foundation and the center of hope. Community church. So, God, where priorities have been misplaced, where we've grown cold or calloused or wayward, we've been sober, without positivity or positive, without sobriety, God, right now renew in us a clean heart. Take not your holy spirit from us, but cleanse us by your goodness and by your cross, we pray this in Jesus name, amen.