The Power of Praying People-Acts 2:42-47

Acts of the Apostles, Sermons

In Acts 2, The Power of Pentecost (2:1-13) and The Power of Preaching (2:14-41) is followed by The Power of Praying People (2:42-47). From Acts 1-2:

  • Are you a Spirit-empowered witness (Ac 1:8)?
  • What vision do you have for your life (Ac 2:17)?
  • Are you empowered by words (Jn 6:63)? By truth (Jn 8:31-32)? By preaching (Ac 2:14, 22)?
  • What are you devoted to (Ac 2:42)?

A flying start by the end of Acts 2 with:

  • the risen Jesus appearing to the apostles over 40 days (Ac 1:3),
  • the spectacular events on the day of Pentecost (2:1-12),
  • Peter’s 1st Christian sermon emphasizing the cross (2:13-21, 22-36) and God’s rescue operation through him (2:37-41).
  • It’s a glorious dramatic exciting new beginning with full of energy, possibility and hope. Everthing is in full swing. Now at the end of the 1st Pentecost, Luke pauses for breath, looks around and describes the situation. The new era of the church–the Messianic age–has begun.

The ideal picture of the church (Ac 2:42-47). The ideal life of the church is one that is nurtured on Spirit, Word, and Sacrament. We need a diet of all three to have a healthy and holistic Christian community. Ac 2:42 is often regarded as laying down “the 4 marks of the church”: the apostle’s teaching, the common life of those who believed, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. These 4 go together. You can’t separate them, or leave one out, without damage to the whole thing.

  1. Without attention to teaching, and to constant, lifelong Christian learning, people quickly revert to the worldview or mindset of the surrounding culture, and end up with their minds shaped by whichever social pressures are most persuasive, with Jesus somewhere around as a pale influence or memory.
  2. Without the common life of the Christian family, it is difficult to sustain a living faith.
  3. Without regularly sharing in “the breaking of bread” [initially a simple meal “in remembrance of Jesus”], we fail to raise the flag which says, “Jesus’ death and resurrection are the center of everything” (1 Cor 11:26).
  4. Without prayer together we forget that Christians are supposed to be “heaven-and-earth people.” Prayer makes no sense whatever–unless heaven and earth are designed to be joined together, and we can share in that already.

A new family. The 4 pillars. 4 separate elements characterize a Christian gathering (Ac 2:42, 43-47). What are the 4 distinguishing marks of a Spirit-filled church, a church deeply and radically stirred by the Holy Spirit? What is she like?

  1. A learning studying church based on the apostles’ teaching (Ac 2:43a; 1 Tim 4:1-13). The Holy Spirit “opened a school” that day. The schoolteachers were the apostles, whom Jesus appointed and trained with 3,000 new pupils!
    • These new Spirit-filled converts were not enjoying mystical experiences leading them to neglect their intellect, suspend thinking and despise theology. Rather, they concentrated on being taught, receiving instruction. Anti-intellectualism and the fullness of the Spirit are incompatible. For the Spirit is “the Spirit of truth” (Jn 16:13). Thus, truth matters.
    • Though the Holy Spirit was their teacher they did not dispense with human teachers, but sat at the apostles’ feet. They were eager to learn so that they could be Jesus’ witnesses too (Ac 1:8).
    • The apostles’ teaching was authenticated by miracles (Ac 2:43; 2 Cor 12:12).
    • How do we submit to the apostles’ teaching today? The only way is to submit to their teaching in the NT. Fidelity to the apostles’ teachng is the very 1st mark of an authentic church.
  2. A loving church (Gal 5:22) devoted to fellowship/koinonia (Ac 2:43, 44-46a; 4:32-35). Koinonia expresses our common Christian life, what we share as Christian believers. It bears witness to 2 complementary truths: what we share in and what we share out.
    1. The grace of God is what we share in together (1 Jn 1:3; 2 Cor 13:14). Authentic fellowship is trinitarian fellowship, our participation in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
    2. Generosity [koinonikos means generous] is what we share out together (Ac 2:44-45). A Spirit-filled church/person is a generous church. Generosity has always been a characteristic of God’s people. Our God is a generous God; his people must be generous too. Jesus does call some to total voluntary poverty, like the rich young ruler, St. Francis of Assisi and his followers, Mother Theresa and her sisters, etc, to witness to the truth that a human life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions (Lk 12:15). But not all Christians are called to this (Ac 2:45). The prohibition of private property is a Marxist, not a Christian, doctrine. Also, the giving and selling was voluntary, for some “broke bread in their homes” (Ac 2:46). The sin of Ananias was not greed, but deceit (Ac 5:4). Thus, all Christians have to make a conscientious decision before God how we use our possessions, with the principle of voluntary Christian sharing being a permanent one. Living in affluent circumstances, we must simplify our economic lifestyle, not imagining that this would solve the macroeconomic problems of the world, but out of solidarity with the poor.
  3. A lauding/worshipping praying church centered on “the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Ac 2:43, 46b’ Psalm 95), the former evidently is a reference to the Lord’s Supper, though probably with a fellowship meal included, and the latter “prayer” is more literally “prayers,” alluding to prayer services or prayer meetings. Prayer is a major emphasis in the Gospel of Luke, and 1/3rd of all the references to prayer in the NT are in Luke-Acts. God’s people depend on God in everything they do, and they must involve and invoke him in every area of their lives. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus bathed every major life occasion in prayer (Lk 3:21; 6:12; 9:18, 28; 22:41-42; 23:34, 43, 46), and this continued in the life of the church (Ac 1:14, 24-25; 3:1; 4:23-31; 6:4; 8:15; 9:11; 13:3; 14:23; 16:25), not just as formal liturgical prayers as in the synagogue, but as being personal prayers both at the corporate and individual levels.
    1. Their worship was both formal and informal, taking place both in the temple and in their homes (Ac 2:46). They continued to attend the traditional services that must have been formal, which they supplemented with informal home meetings. We should not polarize between the structured and the unstructured, the liturgical and the spontaneous. The early church had both. The early church had both. So should we. Every congregation of any size should break itself into small groups.
    2. Their worship was both joyful and reverant. Christianity is a joyful religious. Every meeting or service should be a celebration of joy. Praising [agalliasis] (Ac 2:46) denotes an exuberant outburst of joy (Gal 5:22), and sometimes a more uninhibited joy than our churches encourage. Some church services are like a funeral. Nobody smiles. Everyone looks serious. The whole atmosphere is lugubrious [looking or sounding sad and dismal] rather than joyful. But joy must never be irreverent. If some church services are funereal, others are flippant. If joy is a mark of authentic worship, so is reverance (Ac 2:43; Lk 5:26; 8:37). The mixture of wonder and humility, of joy and reverance is what true worship is.
  4. A lavish/generous evangelistic church bathed in prayer (Ac 2:43, 47; 1 Th 1:1-10). 1. Study, 2. fellowship and 3. worship are aspects of the church’s interious life, but they tell us nothering about outreach to the world. Millions of sermons have been preached on Ac 2:42, as it gives a comprehensive account of the church. But it may present a disastrously unbalanced picture of the church, giving the impression that the early church was interested only in studying from the apostles, caring for its own members and worshiping God. It was living in its own ghetto, in its own echo chamber, preoccupied with its own domestic life and ignoring the the lonely and the lost outside. But the early Christians were also committed to mission. Ac 2:47 corrects the imbalance of Ac 2:42. What 3 lessons can we learn?
    1. The Lord himself did it–adding to their number (Ac 2:47b). Doubtless it was though the apostles’ preaching, the everyday witness of church members, and their common life of love and joy. But God did it.
    2. Jesus did 2 things together: “added to their number … those who were being saved” (Ac 2:47b). Jesus did not add people without saving them, nor save them without adding them to the church. Salvation and church membership go together.
    3. Jesus did both “daily” (Ac 2:47b). The early Christians did not regard evangelism as an occasional activity. Day by day people were added to the church. We must recover this expectation today.

How is your pattern of teaching, fellowship, bread-breaking and prayer? Are you awestruck (Ac 2:43; Lk 5:26; 8:37)? Or does “going to church” and “Bible study” and “fellowship” become quite humdrum and ordinary and no big deal? Is there astonishing teaching and imaginative learning in the church? Is there “common life” built around a shared belief in Jesus?

References:

  1. Wright, N.T. Acts for Everyone, Part 1. Chapters 1-12. 2008.
  2. Witherington III, Ben. The Acts of the Apostles. A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary. 1998.
  3. Stott, John. The Message of Acts. 1990.
  4. Peterson, David G. The Acts of the Apostles. The Pillar NT commentary. 2009.
  5. Osborne, Grant. Acts. Verse by Verse. 2019.
  6. Marshall, I. Howard. Acts. Tyndale NT commentaries (TNTC). 1980.
  7. Barclay, William. The Acts of the Apostles. The Daily Study Bible Series. 1976. 
  8. Fernando, Ajith. The Message of Jesus in Action. 2010. 
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