SIGNAL CHURCH CAPE TOWN
Mike Day:- Build : A Sacramental Church Pt.3
package, thank you guys. Good to be with all of you. My name is Mike as Gaz Said and Julie and I moved back from London, end of November last year and this is the community that we've landed in and we absolutely love it. We are on the staff as well, doing a whole bunch of different things, connecting with a bunch of you as well. So if you see emails from us or texts from us, don't block us. We are trying to do our job well. So really good to be with you and to be sharing this morning. I want to kick off with a question that I would love you to consider for two seconds, just your split second response to this question. Have you ever considered why you are here? I'm not talking about the big questions about purpose and existence and meaning though those are really important questions, I mean here in church. Why are you here right now? What are your reasons for being here? You could have been in many other places, it's fairly early, it's about 9.30 when we arrive or 9.15. You could be other places like in bed, sleeping in, you could be considering different options to go for a brunch or a breakfast or a coffee or do nothing at all. You could have done many other things. If you have kids, you also know that sometimes you come to church and you catch about sometimes five minutes of the worship or 10 minutes of the sermon and so you ask yourself, why do we do it? Why have we come? Why is it worth it? What is the reason that I am here this morning? There could be many potential reasons. Perhaps you're a newcomer and someone told you to come or invited you to come and you felt a bit too bad to say no and so you're here. You're here and you're hoping to find some kind of connection with God, some kind of connection with God or at least try to understand the connection that your friend or family member has with God and that's amazing that you're here. I think you're in the right place to figure out and to find out what God is like and how to be connected to God. You're in the right place. Or perhaps you're an old-timer. This is all you've always done. From as long as you can remember, you've been in church on Sundays. This is what you do and you absolutely love it. Or maybe you don't love it but this is just what you do on a Sunday. Or perhaps you're a fair weather church attendee. Literally if the weather is good, you're here. Or you need a bit of inspiration or you need a bit of connection to community. Not bad reasons to come to church. I'm just trying to highlight some of the possibilities as to why you may be here. Why are you here in church today? I'm not saying these with any judgment. It's just worth asking the question and thinking through why you participate and prioritize gathering in local church community. So we're in a three week series of the moment called Build. Discovering the church that Jesus is building. We're exploring these kinds of questions. Why do we do church? Why do we do this thing every week on a Sunday? Come hail, storm, flood, all sorts of things. We just keep meeting. Why? We're hoping to explore that. What has Jesus been doing for the last 2000 years? What has he been up to? Well, he's been ruling and reigning over creation. As I read the Bible, we were told that he is exalted to the right hand of the Father and he's been glorified. He's been given honor. He holds a position of honor in the universe ruling over the creation. He's also praying on behalf of his people. The scriptures tell us that the Bible says that he lives to ever intercede for his people. Isn't that good news? Jesus is praying for his people. Remember one person put it so vividly to me. He said we serve a God who reigns as it were on his knees. He reigns on his knees. He's praying for you. He's praying for me. And thirdly, he's been building his church. He's building his church. And he's been pretty busy. The center for the study of global Christianity puts a number of Christians in mid 2024 at 2.6 billion people, many of whom are in local churches just like this, all over Cape Town, all over South Africa, all over the world. Jesus said in Matthew 16, I will build my church. That is exactly what he's been doing. But notice where the emphasis lies here. Jesus says, I will build my church. So that means it's his idea. It's not our idea. Someone didn't dream this up in the beginning. Jesus kind of died and there were people claiming there was a resurrection and they thought, what's a good thing to do? Well, let's meet every single week and talk about this story. I think we should do that. And it just kind of caught on, like fire, just caught on. That's not really how it happened. Jesus said, I'm going to go to the Father. I'm going to pour out my spirit. And there's going to be a new community that's going to kind of be like a new humanity where the kingdom of God is built up, is expressed, is lived out, where that future age where everything God wants to happen starts to happen now in this community here and now in today's world. It's his idea. It's not ours. But also it's his church. It's not ours. We don't own the church. We don't own this idea, the structure, this way, this place. This is Jesus's church. I will build my church. And then thirdly, it's his way. It's not ours. We don't get to make it up as we go either. It's Jesus's way. It's Jesus's church. And actually his way is the best way. And so we want to ask God, what are you doing? What are you doing now in the 21st century church? What are you doing now in signal in 2024? How do we get on board with that? We want to follow your way. So, though it's Jesus' idea and he oversees it from start to finish, he invites us in to co-mission and to co-labor with him. Augustine was a fourth-fifth century bishop in North Africa. And he said, without God we cannot, but without us God will not. Without God we cannot. Without us God will not. God has chosen to do this thing through the church. For all our faults, for all our blemishes, for all our false starts and our faltering, he's chosen to place himself in the midst of an imperfect people and to achieve his will through them. Isn't that amazing? God does that through us. He's building his church and he invites you and he invites me to get in on the action. One of our leaders recently said, God is using the series to define and refine us as a church. It was Dave Child. Thank you, Dave, for that wisdom. God is using the series to define and refine us as a church. What are we about? Why do we prioritize meeting regularly? How do we come back to Jesus' vision of the church? So we don't need a new vision for church. Vision casting is really just casting the vision that Jesus has always had for his church. We want to come back to his vision for the church. And so to do this, we're unpacking Acts chapter 2, chapter 2. It's that original community that experienced the resurrection power of Jesus, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, which just simply means the spirit resting on their lives, leading their lives. And they are loading to live this out as this first church. So what Acts 2 paints for us or presents us with is an ideal picture of the first church for all churches across all ages to align with and to. Michael Eaton, I've got a lot of quotes here, sorry, but they really are saying it well. Michael Eaton is a theologian. He said this about the church of Acts. The quote should come up on the screen. Acts is about what the church is meant to be, not what the church is to remember as its past. Act is about what the church is meant to be, not what the church is to remember as its past. It's a blueprint for us to live out today, not to remember a heyday once way back when this is what the church looked like. It's a picture of what we ought to be living in today. So far we've discovered Jesus' building. In our first week we talked about a Jesus magnifying church, a sproutful church, a go-and-tell, come-and-see church, and a city-serving church. Week 2, Terence spoke and he talked about a gathering church, a welcoming church, and a family church. I want to add three more layers to this understanding of the church that Jesus is building. Firstly, he's building a devoted church. Secondly, he's building a teaching church. And thirdly, he's building a sacramental church, which is just another word for communion, the elements of the Lord's Supper, the blood and the body, the bread and the wine. So let me pray for us, and I want to dive into some of these verses together. Lord, we thank you that you are here, that you have already been with us this morning. I ask that you would speak through your word this morning, that you would capture our imaginations and our hearts, and you would lead us to become that church that you imagined that we would be and that you died for us to be. In your name we pray. Amen. Okay, so firstly, Jesus is building a devoted church. Where do we get this from? I'm going to read a few verses from Acts chapter 2, actually just two verses today. Actually, I was only given one verse, but I thought that was too short, so add it a second verse. Verse 41, "So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about 3,000 persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the praise." Verse 42, I want to read again, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and praise. They were a devoted church." So here's some context for what has just happened in this moment. We've seen a crowd has gathered to hear Peter preach, so up until this point they've been a scared church. They've been holed up in a room, 120 of them praying every day. They've been told by Jesus to wait, so they're waiting. They don't really know what they're waiting for. They know it's the spirit, they don't know what that looks like. They're waiting. The spirit comes, beginning of Acts chapter 2, is poured out over the community, and they're pushed outside of the venue that they are in. Peter stands up to preach, and we need to understand what's going on here, because this crowd that he's preaching to is very likely included, if not full of, people who were at the crucifixion of Jesus and endorsed it. We're endorsing the crucifixion. Peter knows what happens when you talk about the message of Jesus publicly. Jesus had just been crucified for it. He has Peter standing up, speaking to the same crowd, that three days earlier had cried, "Crucify him." And now they are cut to the heart, as Peter speaks, and they cry out, "What shall we do?" See, that question is not just about what's the next step. They're realizing that they're wrongly called for the crucifixion of the one that Peter says is now being called the Lord and the Messiah, and they've been convicted by the spirit that this is true. We crucified the one who's actually the Lord and the Messiah. What should we do? What comes next? And Peter says, "You're welcomed in. Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins." See, some 3,000 people were added to the church after one message, after the spirit had been poured out over a community. Do you know that that's roughly 10% of the entire population living in Jerusalem at the time? 10% of that population come to responding to the gospel of Jesus. A scholar called F.F. Bruce says this about this moment of 3,000 people being added. He says, "Through the apostolic witness," which just means this message, the apostles preached. "Through the apostolic witness, Jesus thus acquired more followers in one day than in the whole of his public ministry." See, this is an example of what Jesus said when he said, "Greater works you will do." Jesus never had 3,000 people turn to him in a single day. The apostles get up in the power of the Spirit and they do more than he was able to do in his whole public ministry. And it's these converts, these fresh followers of Jesus, plus those early followers of Jesus who were there from the beginning who formed the original church in Jerusalem. And as I read this description of this first Christian community, I was really struck by this one word that I thank God wants to speak to us through prophetically through the scriptures this morning, and it's the word devoted. Devoted this new community who knew next to nothing or very little, coming together, meeting daily were devoted to Jesus and to his community. What does this word mean? Well, I don't know what you think of when you think of devoted, but pretty much I'm sure we could all agree that it looks like something we could describe as total commitment. Total commitment. We said this kind of word in relationships. He's a devoted father or friend or an attitude to work. She's devoted to her job or to her studies. And we know what's meant. We don't really need much description. There's an intuitive understanding. It's something we are stubbornly dedicated to. Something we're willing to sacrifice for. When we devoted to something, other things come second. We sacrifice for that thing because that's what we devoted to. What would you say deserves the description devoted in your life right now? What are you devoted to in your life? What are you doggedly committed to? What comes second behind this thing? What's the substance of your nightmares and your dreams? Is the reward worth the cost of what you're devoted to? See, the early believers were devoted to Jesus and his community. The Greek word for devoted is proskar terreo, which means decisive or unflinching perseverance. Unflinching perseverance. This is a powerful image for me. It's a group of people who've set themselves to follow Jesus unflinchingly come what may. They had a single vision. There was no complacency. There was no passivity. There was no second-guessing. And the reality is when you see this kind of community, when you see a devoted community, you know that it's a compelling community. We're compelled by that kind of devotion. We're intrigued. We want to know what's behind this. What's the substance of this? But remaining devoted is not easy. It's actually really difficult. See, it's easy at the beginning of a new project, a new relationship, a new hobby to be devoted, right? When Julena and I were dating, and she said to me that she had a 15-minute window to see me later on in the day, even though we had seen each other in the morning, I drove 30 to 45 minutes to make sure that it happened. And I did it with a smile. Now you're Zoom meetings. When she asks me to make a cup of tea, I sometimes say to my shame, I just sat down. Or when she asked me to go get something from the shops and that we'd forgotten to buy in an earlier shop, I'm like, it's a bit late. Can I go? Can I go tomorrow? What happened to the devotion? What happened to the devotion? We get distracted. We get distracted. It's a book I read recently by a sociologist called James Hunter, and he's been researching this. He calls it continual partial attention, continual partial attention. The context that we live in today in the 21st century is geared towards and leads us into fragmentation, constantly fragmented in a million different directions. We know this challenge really well, right? Whether it's a million tabs open on your computer as you're working, and you don't know what you're trying to do, or where that thing was that you're trying to work on, or WhatsApp chats while you're also trying to have a conversation in person, or catching up on emails while watching series at the same time, or worse, catching up on emails while watching series while driving. I don't know if anyone's actually tried that, but it's the most extreme thing I could think of. See, the result of all of this is CPA, is continual partial attention, or fragmented and frantic existence. Our attention is so divided as to make devotion near unimpossible. We are so distracted, including myself. Someone once said that purity of heart, or in our language of today, devotion, is to will one thing. Purity of heart is to will one thing. He says, "I've been thinking about my own distractedness, I've been trying to remind myself to stay present and in the moment. The hardest thing today is to stay present because we continue thinking about the next thing we need to do, although WhatsApp message pinging across on my phone, demanding that I respond to it, or the list of 25 emails I know are still unclicked, which really, really bothers me as a type a perfectionist, but maybe you're happy to have 350 emails unopened in your inbox like my wife, which is also fine. It's hard to stay present, and so what I'm trying to remind myself is I literally will say to myself, resist CPA and embrace faithful presence, embrace faithful presence. I think some of us could really benefit from the exercise of sitting down with God and a piece of paper and asking, "Lord, what needs to stay? What needs to change? What needs to go?" That devotion could be more present in my life. Let's resist distractedness. It's so easy in our day to be distracted. I get it. I'm a victim of it. I'm a perpetrator of it, and whatever you want to call it, but I want to go after devotion like this early church did. They were devoted to Jesus. So it's not just distractedness or partial attention that makes devotion hard. It's actually also different seasons that we find ourselves in, different seasons of life. Devotion can be challenged by trying life experiences and seasons that we go through. We were maybe once devoted and found that quite easy, but as we've gone through life, as we've had some experiences that have been perhaps disappointing, or we feel maybe isolated or confused, or we have continuous health challenges or relationship breakdowns, suddenly devotion feels a little bit more difficult. Maybe church or Bible study has lost its appeal. It just doesn't have that kind of joy that it used to have. But I say this from experience. I've experienced in my own very challenging seasons where I've questioned, "Where is my devotion?" that there's no wasted season with God. There's no wasted season with God, and it's not like you're now in a space where you can't be devoted or experience God. But there's a new invitation that's been given to you for a new kind of devotion or new experience of relationship with God. In every season, there's an invitation. So I want to ask you, what's the invitation for you in this season? Are you trying to live by a previous season or a previous expression of your faith when God's inviting you into something fresh, inviting you into something new? See, harder seasons can be strengthening. There can be overcoming seasons, but only if we respond to the invitation. I think of my 16-year-old self and how easy it was to be devoted to Jesus. I used to spend hours in God's presence reading the scriptures, singing worship songs, just wasted time on Jesus, basically. That's what I did. I think about my 33-year-old self now with a one-year-old son, and if I get 15 to 30 minutes in the morning to just be still and to be quiet and to focus on Jesus, I feel like that's a win. Honestly, my wins have changed based on the season that I find myself in. But there's an invitation that we get to respond to. How do we get back to a place of devotion? How was this community able to be as devoted as it was? The answer is because of God's devotion to them. Because of God's devotion to them. See, the Christian faith isn't about mustering up all kinds of devoted, perseverant type of feelings. That's not what it's about. It's about a God who initiates towards us and we respond in the light of what God has come to do and to bring. There's always someone who initiates and there's someone who responds across different areas of life, whatever it might be. If I were to throw a ball to Taren, you would catch it, right? I've initiated. Taren has responded. God is the one who makes that first initiating move towards us. We respond to him. It's not the other way around. We need to see him as the devoted, loving Father like Gazz was talking about. There he is. See, the degree to which we see God's devotion afresh, our devotion will be refreshed and expanded. God is a devoted God. Second, Jesus is building a teaching church. He's building a teaching church. The early church was devoted specifically to the apostles' teaching and fellowship. So we heard two weeks ago from Taren that we are a spirit-filled church. The early church was a spirit-filled church and we are a spirit-filled church. We expect God to be present and in our midst. We expect God to be speaking. We want to listen. We expect God to move. We want to respond. We come into this room as I'm sure you've experienced with high levels of expectation. That's good. That's right. We're a spirit-filled church. We are also a word church. We're also a word church. There's a tension here that we need to hang on to between word and spirit. There's often those who want to camp out at one of these two things. They want to camp out on the spirit side of things or they want to camp out on the word side of things. They kind of see it as a problem that we need to solve by choosing one over the other. But the truth is that this early community didn't see it as a problem to be solved. They saw it as a tension to manage. So we're a church who's a church of the word and we're a church of the spirit. We live in the tension of both. We resist the either or and we embrace the both and. We need to avoid the anti-mind sentiments that can sometimes come in into certain streams of charismatic church. I love the charismatic church. It's always been my church. I love encountering God and the experiences that come with that. But we need to remember who Jesus was. He was a healer and he was a teacher. He did profound things and he taught profound things. There's no conflict in the ministry of Jesus or in the experience of the early church. So the greatest commandment that Jesus told us when he was asked the question, he reminded us that it's to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your strength and your mind. Why do we leave our mind out of our discipleship? We need to be those who experience discipleship of the mind, to learn to think Christianly, to think after the way that Jesus did. We don't kiss our brains goodbye when we come into the church. Thank God, or I probably might not be here. I love the life of the mind. I love the process of learning. And the reality is that to be a disciple of Jesus, which is the language we find in the scriptures, to be an apprentice of Jesus means to be a lifelong learner of our rabbi, our teacher, Jesus. To be a disciple is to engage your mind in the process of spiritual formation and in following him. We don't kiss our minds goodbye. We bring them with us in the discipleship journey. In signal, we want to be a word church because the early church was a word church. And they base their fellowship on the teaching of the apostles. What was this teaching? What was the teaching of the apostles? It's the teaching of Jesus that he spoke and communicated in his ministry. So they didn't make up a new message or teaching. They restated the teaching that they had experienced under their discipleship journey with Jesus. There was a continuation of Jesus' teaching in his earthly ministry in the light of the resurrection and the ascension and the pouring art of the Holy Spirit. The community was built on the foundation of the apostolic witness and teaching. And we are faithful to Jesus' intention for the church when we to build our churches on this testimony and teaching. This is a value of ours. In signal, we want to be rooted in Scripture and Kingdom theology. We want to be rooted, in other words, in the teachings of Jesus, which is why you're going to find a week in and a week out. We stand up and we preach from the Bible because that's what the early church did. That's what the early church did. We work hard as preachers to serve up a meal from the Scriptures that hopefully encourages us and builds us and forms us in our lives because that's what the early church did. And it's not just about being fed on Sundays. It's about learning habits of feeding ourselves as well. The Scriptures that we have, the second half, the New Testaments, the second half of the Bible is called the New Testaments. And it is the written form of that early teaching of the apostles. We have it written down right here for ourselves. You don't have to wait for a preacher to tell you. You can open up your Bible perhaps to the Gospel of Mark or the Gospel of John and just read slowly, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book. And you're going to engage with that original teaching of the early church. It still has power now. See, my experience of the Bible was being very confused until I actually opened it and I asked God to help me to understand it and then finding that it had a life of its own. The Scriptures are incredibly, incredibly powerful. And we often have made up our minds more about what we think it says and what we disagree with before we've actually opened up and read it for ourselves and allowed God to speak to us through it. See, my experience of reading the Scriptures is that as I start to read them, they actually, they read me. They read me. They reflect back to me the ways in which I can respond more devotedly, more intentionally to Jesus, the things I can hand over, the things God has done. There's power in reading the Scriptures. See, all the studies tell us, they all tell us that one of the top contributors to spiritual growth is personal Bible study. Are you reading the Bible for yourself? If you've never done that, if you're still exploring Jesus claims, can I encourage you to do that? It's an amazing way to get to know what this is all about. And you'll find, as you start to read the Scriptures, there'll be an almost voice from the outside starting to highlight things and speak to you and apply things to your life that you never thought were possible. Reading the Bible is one of the most exhilarating things you could ever do. And sometimes, it's one of the most normal things you could ever do. But even just the act of doing it, God is working His truth into our lives. I can't tell you the amount of times that I didn't even know that I'd remembered something, but in the moment when I needed, it flashes into my mind as a truth flows. Has anyone else experienced that? The power of the Scriptures to shape how we live and respond and engage is otherworldly. I would encourage you to get into that apostolic teaching that you can find for yourself in the Bible. Finally, in just the last couple of minutes here, I want to talk about the third layer, the third aspect of the church Jesus is building. So we've talked about Jesus building a devoted church. We've talked about Jesus building a teaching church. Third then, finally, Jesus is building a sacramental church, a sacramental church. Verse 42, "They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread and the prayers." I feel like we need to slow down on this point a little bit. And after I've spoken about it, we're going to do it. I'm not going to say much about this, but I want us just to slow down a little bit here because the point of being a sacramental church, the point of being a church that has the Lord's Supper or communion, whatever tradition you're used to, whatever language you used to, at the center of what it does is remembrance, is remembrance, remembering who Jesus is, what He's come to do and our response to that reality. So when we're talking about the breaking of bread, we're talking about the Lord's Supper, we're talking about communion. We're talking about that moment when Jesus reinterprets the Passover meal, which Jews have gathered around for centuries to annually commemorate their exodus from Egypt. Do you remember the moment? Blood on the doorposts, the sacrifice of a lamb, God passing over, hence Passover, and their freedom and exodus from slavery into the promised land. That's what Jesus is reinterpreting, which would have been a very sacred and unknown thing to do. What he is doing is totally unique. He is interpreting that bread of affliction that represents their slavery and suffering. There's a lot of slavery and suffering for 400 years. He's representing that by his own body, that he will take that into himself and he's representing that blood that was painted over the doorposts as the blood that he will shed for his people, for the forgiveness of sins, and for their own exodus from slavery to sin into the freedom of relationship with him. He's reinterpreting the bread of affliction as his body and the wine as his blood. And as we break the bread, we remember his broken body for us. As we drink the wine or the grape juice, we remember his blood poured out for us. The earliest church broke bread and drank wine often because it's an act of remembrance. We tend to forget, so we need to remember. And it's also an act of victory, a victorious celebration. It's a celebration of victory. We remember the victory of Jesus over sin, death, and evil. This is originally done in homes. Back in the day, just as part of the meal, it wasn't done necessarily in the way that we do it today. I would encourage you to do it at home. Do it at home. We'll do it here, but do it at home as well. Find ways when you break bread to remember the broken body of Jesus. It's an act we do every day, but it's infused with meaning and can be in our homes as well. I want to invite the worship team up if they can come and join me as I land this here. In a moment, we're going to have the kids come and join us from upstairs in communion. We're one family, so we want to bridge this moment of the upstairs in this room. We want our kids to learn what it means to remember Jesus and to celebrate two years in what he's done. In a moment, the kids are going to come down and they're going to participate in communion with us. I just want to pray though, as we prepare our hearts for this meal, this moment of remembrance, would you would you close your eyes with me as we pray? Father, we prepare our hearts this morning to take of this meal, this incredible remembrance act of what you've done, of the victory that you've won, and so we prepare our hearts this morning to remember and to celebrate. Even now, can I just ask you just to just to prepare your heart in whatever way you need to, close your eyes if that helps, open your hands if that helps, but there's power in this moment and in this meal. So come Holy Spirit, thank you that you are here, would you fill this moment with remembrance and your personal presence? Even for those who've never done this before, you're still looking and Lord, would you meet them right now in Jesus' name? Parents, I'm going to ask you to go and get your kids and take communion together and we have, we have juice and we have bread up at the front and at the back. Can I encourage you when you're ready, maybe once the parents have got their kids, can you get up when you're ready and go and come back and when you're ready to take communion, maybe pray with one or two people next to you if you're comfortable to do that. If you've never done this before, there's no pressure, don't feel pressure to go up and get the elements of bread and juice, feel free to sit there in this moment, listen to the words, thank you, let's go for it.