As we look to the future… You know, Dennis Setliff announced that we’ll be meeting here next week. The week after, we don’t know where we will be meeting. What will it be? Will it be a storefront? Will it be some other kind of a building? Well, we don’t know, but that’s okay. We can still worship, we can still grow and develop as individuals and as a congregation of God’s people even in this kind of environment and with this uncertainty and apprehension.

And I’m here to tell you that for us for me and my family, the periods in our life that we experienced the most positive spiritual growth, where we did more work for the Lord, were during those periods of time when we had those difficult circumstances—where things weren’t convenient for us to get to worship, or we didn’t have the kind of facilities, perhaps, that we might like. But for us, those were, in our life, the periods of greatest spiritual growth. And I trust that maybe we’ll experience that again, speaking for myself and my family.

Keep in mind, again, that this first congregation of the church of Christ, which began on the Day of Pentecost in the city of Jerusalem, perhaps met in circumstances and conditions which were not dissimilar to the way we are now. For Sunday evening and Wednesday night, we will be meeting in homes. Well, again, as I said earlier, they the first churches in Jerusalem were primarily home churches…house churches. And so I think we can take comfort and encouragement from that particular fact.

Let’s look at the verses that follow verse 41 in the establishing of the church. I’d like to read for us Acts 2, verses 42 through 47: “They devoted…” now, the “they” there, of course, refers back up to the 3,000 plus who were baptized on the Day of Pentecost—those who constituted the first church of Christ, if you will. Acts 2:42-47: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

These people, this first congregation of the Lord’s church, were led and organized by the inspired apostles. And what we have just read there gives us an account of the activities of this first Christian community. Simply stated, they gathered daily in various homes to break bread (that is, to eat a meal). They met publicly in the temple precincts. And in a couple of other places in Acts—Acts 3 and Acts 5—it indicates that one of the places where they met was Solomon’s Colonnade. All the while, they were adhering to the apostolic teaching, and to fellowship and increasing in numbers day by day, praising God and enjoying the favor of all men.

May I suggest that what is said of the first congregation of the Lord’s church is a proper goal and design for this Christian community to pursue today. And this is what we want to examine more closely now.

First of all, let’s notice that this description of what the church did is prefaced by how they did it. Verse 42 says, “They devoted themselves…” The King James Version translates that, “They continued steadfastly…” This thought comes from a single Greek word which means “to adhere to, to persist in, to be devoted to, to spend much time in.” We’re familiar with and understand this kind of terminology as they apply to us, perhaps in a secular way. We know that we must adhere to the laws of the land and to certain rules in our society. We’re all persisting, or have persisted, in some effort—some task—which has been before us. And we understand what devotion is—devotion to family, devotion to the home, devotion to our country. Luke tells us here in the book of Acts that this is the way the first church of Christ was concerning their Christian community. They were persistent. They were devoted. They adhered to. They spent much time in… But what were they doing? What were they devoted to? What were they persistent in? What did they spend much time in?

And in that text, we see primarily three things: Corporate learning and teaching, corporate sharing, and corporate worship and prayer. [Corporate means that all of these things they were doing were being done together, in fellowship.] The idea of fellowship that’s contained in verse 42 emphasizes the “corporateness,” or the group relationship, of the church and calls attention to the sense of belonging and participation.

First, let’s consider corporate learning and teaching. The apostles’ doctrine was that instruction given by the apostles to the church. Earlier, in Acts, chapter 2, about verse 4, we see that the apostles were visited upon by the Holy Spirit. They were inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit guided their thoughts. Therefore, “apostles’ doctrine” really has reference to the teaching of the Lord, together with the proclamation of the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, and its meaning for man’s salvation. This teaching became an authoritative tradition in the early church, and later found its embodiment [its actual physical appearance as a book that could be touched, opened and read] in our own New Testament.