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  Long Island Abundant Life Church 長島豐盛生命教會

Acts 10:34–48

7/10/2012

 
Click here to read today's passage on Bible Gateway.

The Way Things Should Be?
"Nowhere else in Acts does the Spirit come before baptism. Later Peter explained to the Christians in Jerusalem that the way the Holy Spirit came on these people was “as he had come on us at the beginning” (11:15). It was accompanied by “speaking in tongues and praising God” (10:46). In spite of all the leading that God had given up to this point, Jewish believers are astonished that these Gentiles have received the Holy Spirit (10:45). With such unmistakable evidence that these Gentiles have indeed been converted, Peter does not hesitate to baptize them immediately (10:47–48). The specific reason he gives is clear: “They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have” (10:47)." [1] (emphasis mine)

I highlighted that first line because I want to talk briefly about an important question we need to think about when reading the book of Acts.  Obviously Acts tells us A LOT about the early Church, the Holy Spirit, missions, etc.  The question we need to answer is this:

Are the things that are recorded in Acts -
a) Prescriptive:  Telling us how we should also do Church, see the Spirit working, etc.
-or-
b) Descriptive:  Telling us simply how things happened and leaving us to do Church and theology our own way, as long as it is Biblical

You can probably tell by my phrasing that I think the nearly always the answer is b). There are a lot of books and people these days that are hearkening us to go back to the "New Testament Church", the good 'ole days, as it were.  My response to that is "Which part do you want to go back to?  Do you want people having sex with their mothers-in-law like 1 Corinthians, or do you want them totally forsaking the Gospel, like in Galatians?"  The temptation in reading Acts is to see everything as perfect and to think that God wants us to "do Church" just like they did then.  But the fact is, if you read Acts closely, its REALLY hard to work out "the way that we should do things".  In this passage, people receive the Spirit before being baptized.  That doesn't happen anywhere else.  We ourselves receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit at the moment of conversion.  They early Church shared everything in common. GREAT!  But we don't have any of the details, other than that Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead.

I think it's a good thing to seek to be Biblical, but I think that desperately trying to be the Church that is in the book of Acts is not only misguided, but impossible.  Acts isn't meant to be a handbook on how to be the Church, it is the earliest history of that Church. 

So what do we do?  How do we know how to do Church?  Love Jesus, tell others about Jesus, know the Bible, teach the Bible, reach our culture and community in the best way we know how, and stop comparing ourselves to everyone else.  We really need to get over ourselves in most cases.  Don't worry about the right way to "do Church" worry about BEING the Church.  Love Jesus unashamedly and unrestrainedly, know the Bible and follow it, and beware of the mistakes that others have made throughout the history of the Church so that we don't make the same mistakes.  Then just do it.  I'm pretty sure that's what they did in Acts.

[1] Ajith Fernando, Acts, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), 337.
Andrei
7/10/2012 07:12:07 pm

I'm not too familiar with the discourse within the church about going back to the 'good old days.' However, it seems like those people would have a lot of strong points. Can the argument be made that how the state of the church back then was better than it is now because they did the things you mention like love Jesus unashamedly, know the Bible and follow it... more than we do it now? Or would that not necessarily be true because I'm coming from the perspective of our church and the church in the U.S.? I guess one of your points is that these critics take their ideas too far in that they want the modern church to be exactly like the NT church?

Greg
7/11/2012 07:06:16 am

I think you could possibly argue that the NT church is healthier than the American church. We tend to think of "the church today" as synonymous with "the church in the US", which it is not. If the NT church was healthier, it was because it was filled with TRUE believers. It didn't benefit anyone to be just a pew-sitter that didn't really believe back then. Those that claimed to follow Jesus knew it would cost something. In that way, the NT church was very similar to the persecuted church today, which is healthy in some ways, but not all.

My caution about the NT church is that if you read the NT closely, it's actually not as healthy and carefree as it seems at first. You have people stealing money and lying about it in Acts, a man sleeping with his mother-in-law and others sleeping with prostitutes in Corinthians (in the name of "Christian freedom" no less), people forsaking the Gospel and seeking God through works in Galatians, a whole mess of problems in the churches at the beginning of Revelation, people fighting about what preacher they follow, etc, etc. Unless you're shooting for VERY early church, like in Acts 4 as mentioned in just a few verses that aren't very detailed, you're definitely not looking at a Church without problems.

The basic issue beyond even the pragmatic seeking of the NT church is whether or not Acts is even telling us how to do church. Should we be sharing everything? I would argue that Acts is simply describing how it was, not telling us how to do it. There will definitely be "prescriptive" passages later in the NT about some things, but I don't think that's the point of acts.

And yes, there is a whole group of people that seeks to go back to the NT, some to the point that they even reject musical instruments in church because they aren't mentioned in Acts. I'm arguing here that the important part isn't the METHODS recorded in Acts, but the ATTITUDES of the Church.

Gina
7/11/2012 12:27:22 am

Could the difference be in having that spirit filled life that produces fruitful works which I think earlier Church had? Modern church sometimes tend to be too legalistic we missed the whole point.

Greg
7/11/2012 07:09:42 am

Gina,

See my reply to Andrei above. I think that what you mention is part of it, but I would change it a bit: I think that part of the problem is that our churches are filled with people that claim to be Christians and even think that they are Christians, but show no evidence of it. Legalism is a symptom of that, but so is "license" (doing whatever you want). I think we see both in the Church in the US. The fact is that our churches are filled with people that are there for cultural reasons, not because they are seeking God. You can see this VERY clearly where I grew up in West Michigan. EVERYONE goes to church, but that's where it stops - just attending.


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