As we encounter and experience Jesus through worship and go deeper into relationship with him through his living and active Word, we find that he wants to work in us and show us our purpose.

But this is most powerful when we are a part of a loving Christian family, working in community.

Today we’ll see what God is saying to us through the life of Jesus in the gospels and the early church in the book of Acts.

Jesus and the twelve disciples

Luke chapter 6 shows us something of a pattern we might learn from Jesus:

¹² One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. ¹³ When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles…

¹⁷ He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, ¹⁸ who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by impure spirits were cured, ¹⁹ and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all. (Luke 6:12-19)

As we think though our 4 values in order, starting with worship we might remember that we call worship, ‘living life with Jesus at the centre.’ For Jesus himself this could be described as living life with God the Father at the centre. Spending the night in prayer was what he did just before he appointed the 12. Before he was to expand his ministry he needed to know he was walking perfectly in the will of the Father.

For us to follow in this example means we will seek his face, sit at his feet, spend time with God before anything else.

Today we are thinking about the value we have called oneness. I just wanted to demonstrate from this passage that perhaps Jesus knew that to bring a group of men together with different personalities in unity, his own connection to the Father was crucial. Indeed, before gathering people together in oneness, our worship and connection to God must come first. When we are connected to God and aligned to his will, we will gather around the right people.

In this case it was only Jesus who spent the night in prayer, and not the disciples. From their perspective they had not necessarily been seeking God’s face. But now they are with Jesus – God incarnate. They will learn to align to Jesus’ lifestyle and teachings, and this will in turn enable them to be aligned to one another.

So whether you look at it from Jesus’ perspective in this story or from that of the disciples, in order to be effective together, and stay together, we need to be close to God.

This brings me to think about another of our values – work.

Once united with Jesus, and then with one another, they find the work they have to do together. God has work for us to do. But he rarely has us operate in isolation from other believers. In fact it’s clear in scripture that we are meant to be together, in unity, and that is how we are most effective.

Let’s clarify the pattern that can be found in this story before moving on. It starts with our connection to God – our worship, or ‘communion’ with the Father. Then we are able to fellowship with one another. We move from communion to community. As we do this, God leads us to the works he has prepared in advance for us to do, our ministry.

The danger is we do this the other way around. We have a heart to do something, to be his hands and his feet, and we set out to do it with all our might, and we get on with it wholeheartedly. But we soon find we are short of resources. So our work calls for others.

Then we move from ministry to look to the church community. We look for help from those who might not really have a passion for what we are trying to do. Some may help out of guilt, some because they agree it’s a good idea, those with money donate finance so they don’t have to get involved but help from a distance and those with no money and no energy say they will offer prayer support!

Then when it still seems not to be working, we look to God and seek him, saying, why God, why did you not bless this ministry?

And God says, “At last, let’s talk.”

So it starts with God and our relationship with him. Then we build community together, which is what this talk is about, then we understand each other. We become known. We see each other’s weakness and strengths. And as we do this whilst staying in connection with God we begin to see a plan emerge.

In the gospel of Mark we see this pattern alluded to again:

He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach (Mark 3:14)

The first thing they were to do was to be with him. Knowing God, knowing Jesus, fellowshipping with the Father, being in communion with him is the first priority. Then he can send us out to do the work he has prepared for us to do – together.

I’m pretty sure you’ve seen people trying to do good things in community without God in the picture. The problem is, if we get too close to someone, they offend us at some point. How will we deal with it? If we have not first found our identity in God, we might be looking to this community, or this person to help make us feel accepted, better, whole. But because they are not perfect themselves there will be a point when they eventually let us down. And that sense of community breaks down. But if we are a community of people who are all looking to God for our identity, for our sense of acceptance and belonging; if we are becoming aware of his undying love for us, then even when someone in our ministry group or community upsets us, we still have that closeness to God. We can forgive, we can mend our relationship because we are not looking to that other broken person for an acceptance and love only God can give.

So we absolutely must know God first. Then we can be at one with each other and risk being offended. We can know one another, warts and all, and things can even get a bit messy at times but we won’t take offence and fall out with people because we were not looking to them to fill a void only God can fill. When we are like that, God can really use us. And we see this in action in the early church in the book of Acts.

The Early Church

Well, we’re a Pentecostal church and we’re familiar with Acts chapter 2.

Apart from the obvious message in this passage about being filled with the Holy Spirit, there is another very important point to note. There is great oneness amongst God’s people. This is not a result of their being filled because it is noted by Luke before they were filled,

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. (Acts 2:1)

Neither is this togetherness necessarily a prerequisite for people being filled. However, it is observed by Luke that they were indeed all in one place, ‘of one accord’, before the Holy Spirit came upon them. This was a corporate experience as well as an individual one. Today people experience the infilling of the Holy Spirit in their bedrooms, alone, or in large gatherings. But at this point in time they were united.

So while it’s not a prerequisite for being filled with the Spirit, and while there is no doctrine in the bible of corporate filling, the point I am making is that I believe there is great power when God’s people are together in one ‘place’ spiritually and physically, AND filled with the Holy Spirit. The two together are a powerful force.

After Pentecost, they did not then go off to their personal lives and live a private faith.

Verse 44 of Acts 2 tells us,

All the believers were together and had everything in common. (Acts 2:44)

This is the challenge I believe God wants to bring to us as a church. Not only are we to be filled, but we are to be together. Many churches are good at one or the other of these elements, but I feel God saying that for us at BCC there is great power to be found when we combine the two.

So the take-away action from this sermon is two-fold:

1. Fellowship with the Father
2. Absolutely, be filled with the Holy Spirit
3. Let’s continue to build relationships within the church, outside of Sundays.

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