Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that the difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is that the Christian lives his/her life in the awareness that he/she is always in the presence of God. What compels the Christian to turn his/her face towards God is, in the words of J.I. Packer, the “tremendous relief in knowing that God’s love to me is based at every point on the prior knowledge of the worst about me.”
The four characteristics of the first Church in the book of Acts were present in the Church because they understood that God sent his Son to redeem them even though he saw the worst in them and because of the cross of Christ. They were aware of always being in the presence of God. This my dear brothers was the catalyst and reason for the profound impact that the first Christians had on their world:
- They were devoted to God.
- They were devoted to one another.
- They were devoted to prayer.
- They were devoted to the mission of God.
Apart from the diligent prayers of God’s people, the Church’s ability to live out her mission will fall flat. The reason the church in Acts was characterized by a devotion to prayer was that they were convinced that the success of their mission (Matt. 28:19-20) was dependent on the power and ability of God, not on their own creativity.
With the time that we have left, let us turn our attention to the last two characteristics of the first Church.
They Devoted Themselves to Prayer
Charles Spurgeon said that, "True prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a vocal performance. It is far deeper than that - it is spiritual transaction with the Creator of Heaven and Earth.” If being devoted to the God is the act of his people turning their ears and their eyes to knowing and understanding him, then prayer is the act of God turning his ear to hear his children. All healthy relationships require communication between the parties involved, and regarding our relationship with the Almighty, there is no exception.
There is a prayer that the Old Testament Prophet, Habakkuk, prayed that helps me understand the relationship between prayer and the mission of God: “Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy” (Habakkuk 3:1–2, NIV).
Habakkuk heard of God’s reputation. He heard of the God who spoke galaxies into being (Gen. 1:1). He heard of how God delivered the Hebrews through the Red Sea (Exod. 14). Habakkuk heard about the wall of Jericho falling (Josh. 6). He heard about how Samson struck down one thousand Philistines with only the jawbone of a donkey, because God was with him (Jud. 15). Habakkuk grew up hearing about exploits of King David and how he brought back the Ark of the Covenant after defeating the Philistines. Habakkuk also heard how Uzzah died when he tried to keep the ark from falling into the dirt, even though he was told that no unclean person was permitted to touch the ark or lest that person die. Habakkuk understood that Uzzah was arrogant to believe that his hand was cleaner than the dirt of the ground.
I am sure that the prophet grieved over the long history of Israel’s idolatry and sin, which resulted in the discipline of the LORD, but he was also aware of God’s promise in 2 Chronicles 7:13-14, “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:13–14).
He was also aware that every time God’s people prayed for things that lined up with the heart of God, God moved powerfully. These are the same reasons why the church in Acts was devoted to prayer. When Judah[1] fell into moral and spiritual chaos, at the age of 25, a young man by the name of Hezekiah ascended the throne as the rightful heir to serve as Judah’s king. Unlike the kings before him, and after David, Hezekiah was devoted to God, to the people of God, and to prayer. Hezekiah removed the idols from the land and led his people back to the worship of Yahweh. When Hezekiah found that his army was outnumbered by the same evil empire that leveled the Northern Kingdom, he believed that God was able to protect Judah. One day Hezekiah received a letter from Sennacherib that read:
“Thus shall you speak to Hezekiah king of Judah: ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And shall you be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed?’” (2 Kings 19:10–13, ESV)
So, what did Hezekiah do? He went to the temple where he worshiped God, spread out the letter, and prayed:
“O Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed. So now, O Lord our God, save us, please, from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, are God alone.”” (2 Kings 19:15–19, ESV)
The same God that Habakkuk and the first Church devoted themselves to in prayer, spared Judah, and destroyed 185,000 of the Assyrian army. Sennacherib went back to Nineveh defeated and humiliated.
Prayer is drawing near to God, approaching God, and entering into the presence of God with the understanding that we are powerless and that He is all-powerful. That is why, when we go before God in prayer, we can and should pray prayers like Habakkuk’s: “Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy” (Habakkuk 3:1–2, NIV).
The same God who was responsible for the great deeds recorded for us in the Bible, the same God who created all things, also sent his Son into the world out of his great love for you and for me, and raised Jesus from the grave. The God of the Bible is the same One who hears you when you pray. The church in Acts devoted themselves to prayer, because they understood that God was bigger than their limitations. Moreover, if he could raise Jesus from the grave, he could transform the lives of people through the gospel of Jesus Christ through the Church.
They Devoted Themselves to the Mission of God
When we read Acts 2:42-47, we discover not a program that the church was adhering to, but a way of life they were living out before a watching world. When Jesus commanded his disciples to, “Go and make disciples of all nations…”(Matthew 28:19–20), he did not assign them a program. Discipleship for the Christian is simply living out your life with gospel intentionality in a way that is infused by a devotion to God, one another, and prayer.
The mission of God is not something that was created for the Church; the mission of God is as old as Genesis and is one of the two grand overarching themes in the Bible. Christopher Wright wrote in his book, The Mission of God: “Here is The Story, the grand universal narrative that stretches from creation to new creation, and accounts for everything in between. This is the Story that tells us where we have come from, how we got to be here, who we are, why the world is in the mess it is, how it can be (and has been) changed, and where we are ultimately going. And the whole story is predicated on the reality of this God and the mission of this God.”
In the beginning, Adam and Eve were created in the image of God and called to manage the Garden by the Creator Himself. God concluded each day of Creation by declaring His creative acts “good,” but only after the creation of man and woman in His image, did He ever say that His creative act was “very good.”
There was harmony in creation like a marriage made in Heaven. There were neither thorns nor the shedding of blood, and in that day, the lion and the lamb could live in peace, while the child could play by the viper’s den. All of that ended in Genesis 3 when Adam bit into the forbidden fruit with Eve. Adam and Eve rebelled against God, which brought disunity into what was once a creation unified within itself. The only creature created in the image of the Creator rebelled by declaring his intention to usurp the authority of God and oppose Him. Adam’s sin resulted in a curse upon all creation.
After Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, their innocence was stripped away. They sewed fig leaves together to cover their newfound shame, over their newly realized nakedness, and hid from God. Since that fateful day in the garden, our world has been characterized by shame and hiding. But we learn from Genesis 3:15-16 that God will not leave the world cursed; theologians call this passage the Proto-Evangelion (the first Gospel). God promised Adam and Eve that He would one day make all things new, and He has been on a mission do so ever since.
The Church was made for this mission. What sets us apart from every move of God among his people and the human race is that, for the first time in human history, a people has been set apart as the Bride of the second member of a Triune God – namely Jesus Christ. The Promised seed of Genesis 3 was born in Bethlehem on Christmas night – the “Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). Jesus lived a life in total and perfect submission to God’s moral Law as our representative, and he died the death we deserved because, unlike him, we all broke God’s moral law due to our sin. This sin is the reason He wore a crown of thorns: to symbolize the curse we have been under since Adam, and to validate the claim that he was, indeed, the Messiah. Jesus rose from the grave and conquered death on the third day.
The reason the Church in Acts was characterized by a devotion to the mission of God is because they felt what Peter wrote in 2 Peter 1:16, “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16). They understood that the means by which people will hear about the Gospel of Jesus Christ is through those who make up the Church, and the only hope of success is through complete dependence on God. Because Jesus rose from the grave, the Church was committed to telling people about it, even if it meant certain death.
Application
My dear brothers and sisters, the greatest need of Cheyenne is Jesus! The only hope we will have in seeing this city transformed for the good is if we lean into God as the only one who can bring life into our city through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If we become the kind of people characterized by a devotion to God and his Word, to one another, to prayer, and to the mission of God, I believe we will see lives transformed.
I mentioned last week how I thought God was calling us to be a people devoted to himself and to one another. Let me tell you how I think we will become a people completely committed to the mission of God: Prayer. I believe prayer is the linchpin for our ability to make the God to whom we are devoted known to a people who have no devotion to him.
