Caring For Other Beleivers Series

You and I were created for community. That’s why our topic this morning is so important. You were made to have intimate relationships, to serve people lavishly, to share the stuff that you have, to build into the lives of the people around you, to have people to whom you can entrust the secrets of your heart and to laugh, praise, pray and cry with other human beings. Many of you are experiencing that every week in your TLC group.

But, here’s a weird truth about human beings. While we long for community, we also run from it. It has been said that when humankind fell from grace, we inherited not only a tendency to hide from God, but a tendency to hide from one another as well. We struggle with conflicting desires. On the one hand, we desire to be close to one another, and on the other, we want to hold others at arm’s length. We have learned to be suspicious of other people’s motives. At times we’ve been taken advantage of and we fear being burned again and so we erect barriers. These barriers effectively insulate us from one another, and become an impediment to true community in the Church.

Jesus prayed, in John 17:22-23, that we might be one, even as He and the Father are one: “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in Me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

But for that to happen, as we sang earlier, many walls have to fall down. Suspicion has to be replaced with openness; uncertainty has to be replaced with willingness; and fear has to be replaced with love. On the day of Pentecost, that is precisely what happened — the barriers came falling down. The Holy Spirit of God moved in and produced a wonderful unity in that first group of believers.

Our text today describes the extent of that unity as it existed at the very beginning. For a while, they were allowed to live in the glorious oneness which only the Spirit can produce. I believe this sense of community can be recaptured today when we allow Christ to be Lord, and surrender to the leading of the Holy Spirit in our personal lives.

I believe that deep down within us, we all long to be close, to be part of the same family, to be in tune -- and in touch with one another. Acts 4:32-35 gives us an inside look at how the church cared for other believers. In this passage, we’ll see 3 different degrees of their unity ­ they had a mystical unity, a ministerial unity, and a material unity. We’ll also discover three timeless principles that can help us experience that same depth of unity today.

As we look at this passage of Scripture before us, let’s see what kind of community the Spirit produced in this young church and what kind of community He can produce in us.

A Mystical Unity

Let’s begin by looking at 4:32: “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.”

When the Holy Spirit of God took charge of the lives of these believers on the day of Pentecost, ­#1, He produced a mystical unity among them. In the first part of verse 32, we read that the believers were of one heart and mind. They were experiencing a oneness, a unity which they could never have produced on their own. The diverse multitude that had gathered from all nations and tongues had been melted together by divine love into a union which was mystical in nature and divine in origin. Those things, which before had divided them, now faded away into insignificance. They had met the Lord. They were together and they were one.