Exploring My Strange Bible - Why Church Matters Part 2: Sharing Grace

Episode Date: September 27, 2017

In this teaching, we'll continue exploring the portrait of the first "church" community in Acts ch.2, specifically how they committed to sharing their resources with each other. This shows us a core habit of the church from the beginning, crossing over the boundary lines between ourselves and other people, and releasing our time and resources into their lives. Why is it so hard to share our stuff? Why does church play such a critical part in helping us learn this habit? We explore these questions in this episode.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right, well, this is the second part of a short two-part series that represents some teachings that I did a number of years ago about the meaning of church as it's described

in the New Testament. The earliest church communities were groups of Jesus' followers gathering in Jerusalem around a core set of habits and practices that are described in Acts chapter 2. And so in this teaching, I explore the discipline and the habit of sharing resources and time and our lives with each other, that opening up the boundary lines that we place around ourselves, our time, our resources, and letting other people in and letting our time and resources out into the lives of other people around us. From the very beginning, this characterizes a core habit of followers of Jesus.

So why is that? Why is learning how to share something that we can't stop learning like in kindergarten, but something that we have to relearn and commit ourselves to in every season of our life. And why does church play such a key part in helping us keep learning how to share? That's what we explore in this teaching from Acts chapter 2. So there you go. Let's dive in. And just surgeon general's warning, I remember being deeply personally challenged by this teaching, And I keep coming back to these passages and these texts in the New Testament over and over again in different seasons of my own life. So I hope it's helpful for you. Let's go for it.

We're camping out in the first chapters of Acts here, and we're kind of watching Luke's depiction. He's off of the book of Acts. The book of Acts is like a foundation story for us as a community of Jesus' people, and we're looking at how he depicts the rhythms and the routines and the values and priorities of this church community. So, why don't you open with me, if you haven't already, to the book of Acts chapter 2, and we're going to dive into the same passage we were in last week and discover new things there. The Mishnah, which is a collection of teachings and reflections on God's Word from non-Christian Jewish rabbis and so on, there's this great little phrase they have about the Torah, which is their way of referring to the Scriptures, and particularly the first five books of the Bible. And they say,

Torah is like a diamond, because you turn it and turn it again and look, because everything is in it. If you have ears, listen. Right? But it's like this multifaceted diamond, and you can look at the, you can read the, you can read the same passage in the Bible, you know, 10 times or whatever, or read it, you know, over many years, and then all of a sudden you turn it again, and you're like, holy, I never saw that before. Are you kidding me? No, that's so odd. Do you guys know what I'm talking about?

So that's why these passages, like in Acts that we're about to read tonight, we're going to look at some of the same verses that we liked last week, because it's like a diamond. Turn it. Turn it again. Everything is in there. Chapter 2, verse 42, and we traced the whole story last week, this explosion of new followers of Jesus after Peter gives this amazing witness to the risen Jesus through his words, and 3,000 people are added to their number.

And what are these followers of Jesus doing? Verse 42. and possessions to give to anyone who had need. And every day they were meeting together in the temple courts, big gatherings of people, but they broke bread in their homes, small gatherings too, and they were eating together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God, enjoying the favor of the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. The Lord adds to the number of his people

when his people are faithful to bear witness to him in their words, like Peter was doing, but also now in the life. The common life of this community itself enforces the words of Peter and becomes a form of witness. And last week, we looked at these four habits. Look at verse 42. This community of people adopts a whole new set of routines and of life habits together. And that's one way of thinking about what it means to become a Christian is to adopt a new set of habits around a new set of priorities, but also describe what the life of a church is. It has a focal point and it has routines and rhythms of gathering people together

around this core set of priorities. And so I kind of laid these out last week. I'll do them again because we're going to camp out on a different one. So the first one, what are they devoting themselves to? So the apostles' teaching, all right? So first and foremost, I'm going to translate these into kind of what this means. This is a community of learning. This is about exploring. If the gospel is actually true, what does that mean for every part of human life and experience under the sun, for relationships, for work, and for how you think about money and sex and justice and art and everything else in between.

And so the apostles' teaching is about the Holy Spirit inspired through the apostles this guidance of what it means to live day-to-day life as a follower of Jesus. And so this community was known foremost as a community that gathered to learn a whole new way of life, a whole new way of thinking, and a whole new way of behaving. Now the second thing is what we're going to camp out on tonight. So let's just leave that one blank for the second. What's the third thing they dedicate themselves to? So that is a phrase that sometimes refers to taking the Lord's Supper, like the bread and the cup. It also could just be referring to like them gathering to eat

constantly together, because they either lived in Portland, right, where we love to eat a lot, or they're gathering people's homes. And actually the two aren't disconnected. In the home, it was actually precisely in the house gatherings, we learned this from 1 Corinthians, it was in these home gatherings of when these disciples of Jesus would gather, that they would eat meals together, and as a part of those meals, they would take the bread and the cup. It was kind of like the way that you might pray before, at the end of a meal or something.

This is how they would eat their meals together, and a part of it would be taking time to take the bread and the cup to remember Jesus' broken body. And so this isn't just about communion. This is about to certain, it was a priority for them in different ways, in big groups and small groups, to just being together.

That's kind of a bland way of describing it. But there's intentionality here, an intentional commitment to be together as often as we can. And then what's the fourth thing they devote themselves to? Prayer. Or you could say worship. This is about our response to the God who's revealed himself to us in Jesus. Okay, so we kind of talked about these last week. I want to focus in on the second one here. And I'm guessing in most of our translations, last week. I want to focus in on the second one here. And I'm guessing in most of our translations,

we're going to, what's the second thing that they dedicate themselves to? What is it? Fellowship. Okay. Now, so this is another one of these code words in English, right? Fellowship. I doubt you used it in any other conversation with anybody in your normal day-to-day life. But somehow, like go over to someone's, to another Christian's house for dinner, and it was a really great time, and you leave and say, oh, wasn't that such a great time of fellowship? And you would never say that about anybody else or your friends who aren't Christians.

Like, well, I'm looking forward to fellowshipping with you. You would never say that. That's Christian code language. And in English, what does it mean? It just means hang out. Let's just hang out and be together as Christians, and we'll talk about our faith and life and everything else and good food, because that's just a part of life. It's what you do. So hanging out is wonderful. You should

absolutely hang out with people. That's good for you. And you should absolutely prioritize hanging out with Christians of like mind, and you can help encourage each other and so on. But that's not primarily what this word means and what this concept is about in the New Testament. So the word that Luke uses right here, I'm going to learn a new Greek word here, it's the word koinonia. Why don't you say it with me? Koinonia. So koinonia is about much, much more than just like hanging out. And actually, let's just let Luke describe what the word means for us, because he does it in verse 44 and following. Look back at verse 44. Luke says, all of the believers, they were together. There they are.

They're hanging out together. So that must be fellowship. No, no, keep reading. They were hanging out together, and they must be fellowship. No, no, keep reading. They were hanging out together, and they had everything in. Now, English translations have common. The word that Luke uses in Greek is a form of this word right here, koinonia. What does that mean? Well, he says it right here, verse 45. People were selling their property and their possessions to give to anyone else in the community who had need. They're gathering together, meeting together in the temple courts, and they're breaking bread

in their homes, eating together with glad and sincere hearts. So what Luke's saying here is they dedicated themselves, this was a priority and a commitment, a regular practice on the part of all these disciples of Jesus, to koinonia, which is very clear that it involves being together, but a specific practice, that it has to do with as our minds are being remade by the gospel, it also remakes how you think about your life and your stuff. And so a simple way of translating this is that this is all about sharing. This is a commitment to sharing, but it's sharing all kinds of things. It's about sharing my resources. It's about sharing my stuff, my money. It's about sharing my time. It's about

opening my home to be a place where we can be together and focus and talk about things that matter to us as followers of Jesus and so on. You guys with me here? Luke defines what fellowship means right here, and it's not just hanging out. It's a commitment to share my life and share my stuff with the community. Turn the page, chapter four. There's about half a dozen of these places, as you read through the book of Acts, which I highly recommend and actually doesn't take very long, there's about half a dozen places where Luke kind of pauses the story, and he just gives a little comment or a description of what the life of these church communities were like, and so on. So that's one in chapter 2. This is another one in chapter 4. Look at verse 32 with me. And this is just a few

months down the line here, still same network of churches here in the city of Jerusalem. Chapter 4, verse 32. And he begins this description. He says, all the believers were one in heart and mind. Now, just pause right there. And just internalize that. All of these believers. How many Christians are we talking about here, at least?

At least 3,000, right? And then plus those who are, you know, however many, the hundreds before then. And then, you know, maybe we have a week or a month that's passed here, and we heard that they were adding to their number daily. So who knows? Well over 3,000 people. Now that's crazy to be able to make a statement about 3,000 people that they were all one in heart and mind. When does that ever happen? You know what I'm saying? Like, even in American context, it's even more absurd, you know what I

mean, to have that idea. One in heart and mind? Are you kidding me? That's not how we would think to describe a community of thousands of people, but that's how Luke describes them. It's even more remarkable. How did these thousands of people come together? Well, we just read it last week. There's tens of thousands of people flocking to Jerusalem at one of these pilgrimage feasts. And they're all Jewish. They have that in common. But we're told that they are coming from all different places around the Mediterranean, different languages, different cultures. They're ethnically Jewish, but they're living in different cultures and so on. So you can imagine like there's all kinds of different food in Jerusalem

that week. You know, some are eating the hummus, some are definitely not eating the hummus. They're totally about the grape stuff, grape leaves, you know, and there's this, there are all these diversities of experience and food and language and culture. And then a whole bunch of them become disciples of Jesus because they encountered this whole thing while they were there. And a whole bunch decide to stay in town. And so they're staying with these people that they just met a couple weeks ago. I mean, just imagine the scene right here. And so a month or two goes by.

And what's happening in this community? They're forming this unified, in heart and mind, this unified community. And this is actually a really key part of what the word koinonia means. It's not just about sharing your stuff. It's about realizing that we are, we're connected in a really unique and important way. Therefore, what's mine needs to be made available to you if you should have need. Look how he describes this here. He says, all the believers were one in heart and mind, and nobody claimed that any of their possessions was their own.

But they did what? What does it say? They shared. I have the New International Version. Any other translations? Do we all have shared? Are there? They all shared their possessions or everything they had. Or some of your translations have everything among them was common. And guess what word Luke uses right here once again? Everything was koinonia. Everything was subject to this deep unifying value as a community, that we are connected in Jesus. There's a connection between us that maybe didn't exist

three months ago before all of this went down. But now there's something that binds us together that's even deeper for these people than their own existing blood ties as Jews. It's their identity as disciples of this Jesus, and that all of them are coming together on level ground before this Jesus, who lived for them, who died for them, and who was raised from them. And it begins to remake their minds as they gather to learn the implications of the gospel, as they commit to meeting each other in relationships and gathering and focusing their worship. And it remakes how they think about their stuff. They see themselves as one community,

and therefore there's a commitment to share. Are you guys with me? Here. Okay, let's keep on going. Verse 33. The plot thickens. Dun, dun, dun, dun. With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And we're thinking, oh, that's exactly what Jesus told them to do.

The Holy Spirit will empower you. You'll be my witnesses, starting right here in Jerusalem, spreading, spreading, spreading. So they're doing their job, exactly what Jesus told them to do. The apostles continued to testify. Pay attention, right? This is so profound. God's grace was powerfully at work in all of them. Or some of your translations have, and great grace was upon them all. For there were no needy people among them. From time to time, those who owned land or houses,

they would sell them, and they brought the money from the sales, they put it at the apostles' feet, and then it got distributed to anybody who had need. This is really, really profound, and it struck me. This is one of the turn the diamond, and holy cow, I've been reading Acts for years, never noticed this before. So we have this

commitment to koinonia here, this commitment to share, which means, now some people have run with this, the first communists, right here, there you go, right? They didn't own anything, everything they had in common. What's interesting is that his language would lead you to believe that, but then he goes on to describe how it actually worked out. And it was that they didn't view their stuff as their own. Therefore, somebody who would own property or this, they would sell it and then that would get distributed. It's not like if you're a disciple, you can just walk into some other Christian's house that you don't know. Hey, your stuff, my stuff, hey, you know, I'm gonna crash on your couch or whatever. So it's not talking about that. It's talking about there is this awareness

that other people in this community have something that I need, or maybe that I'm not using, that I have, but I don't need. And so they would sell it, and so on. It's sort of like, this happens really commonly at my dinner table right now, where everything is subject to koinonia at my dinner table, because I sit by my two-year-old son, and he's got a perfectly good sippy cup right here. It's a wonderful little sippy cup. But then there's my glass that's right here, and somehow my glass is better than his always. And so he'll be like, Dad, I want a drink.

And I'll be like, Yeah, buddy. Your sippy cup's right there, dude. And he'll be like, Go for it, buddy. Oh, he grabs mine. And he grabs mine, and then it's like the backwash and the bits of the backwash and the bits of broccoli and this and the smear all over the cup. And then he puts it down, and I'm just like, well, we're family, you know? So it's koinonia. So that could be what Luke's talking

about, right? That kind of koinonia. What he actually goes on to describe is something more like Roman. You know what? I have two water glasses. Here you go, bud. Here you go. I'm not even using this one at all. And then you take what you have that you don't need or whatever, and you give it to the community. And there's actually quite a lot of debate about how this shared stuff worked in this church, and Luke doesn't give us that much information. But you get the principle. Are you guys with me here? There's an awareness that I am so deeply connected in with the fate and the lives and the well-being of the people in my community, and the gospel remakes, and we'll talk about how that works,

the gospel remakes what I view as mine. And so these people are in a habit of taking whatever they have but don't need, or have and maybe need but feel like they need, to give for the well-being of others. They dedicate to the community. It gets sold and distributed to anyone who has needs. Now, sanctified imagination, too. You have to think how many untold stories are underneath this here. So if you have over 3,000 people with a big money donation and distribution system, think of all the people gifted at administration that had to run this process. We never hear about them, you know, like their stories are not, who are those people?

And like, did they get frustrated on some days? Really? You know, why'd you sell that? You know, that kind of thing. So, but that's what's clearly at work underneath this here. There's a whole community working out the details and it's all based on this huge value right here. Now, look at verse 33 again. This is the process. This is what it looks like. And Luke, he thinks this is remarkable. Otherwise, he wouldn't be sharing this with us. It's as if there was a power at work animating and motivating and inspiring these people to do things with their stuff that people don't normally do. You guys catch that? And look at verse 33. He has a word to describe what was going on or what was at work in these people. And what is that word? It says grace. Grace. Did you see it there? So great grace was on all of them.

How do you know grace was on them? Because this is what they were doing, and he describes this whole commitment to share. God's grace. Now, this is an important, important pairing of ideas, so I'm going to connect them here. Grace. This is another very rich, rich word with a whole bunch of deep connections to koinonia, and that's what we're going to explore with the rest of our time. The Greek word for grace is the word charis. Charis. Any charises in the room? Bummer. It's a big room, so I thought there might be one here tonight. So maybe you know a friend named charis. Most likely a girl. Her name means grace. The core idea of char chorus is this connection with the idea of gift. Gift.

And so we think about, you know, God's grace. One of the most important ideas at the core of the gospel is that what is God's response to a world of human beings who've been given immense opportunity and responsibility just with our lives and our choices and our relationships and our decisions, and what have we done with the place? I mean, it's a good thing sunset still looks so beautiful, you know what I'm saying? But we've pretty much ruined the place, you know, and ruined each other. And that's what the story of the Bible is trying to tell us. What is God's response to a world of

people who ignore him, who ignore the Creator, who ignore or begin to dull and mute that sense, that knowledge of good and evil that's inside of us, how we redraw the concepts of good and bad, always for our own self-advantage, and we ruin the place. And what is the Christian God's response to a world of people like that? And this is at the core of the Christian view of God and of the gospel. His response, and it's one of the key words in the New Testament, is grace. Grace.

Not only does he not give us what we do deserve, he gives us something that we do not deserve, which is the definition of a gift, right? So if you worked all year long for something and then that's what you got for Christmas, you're not stoked on that. Like, that's not great at all. What makes Christmas so rad is when you get something

that was just totally surprising as a gift. So it's grace. It's grace. Most of us are familiar with that idea that God, in Jesus, in his living for us, in his dying for us, in his rising for us, in doing that for us and in our place, and that if I grab on in faith to Jesus, what's true of him is now true of me as a pure gift. Just there you go. It's yours. That's God's decision that he did that to move towards us in Jesus. That's the base meaning

of grace in the New Testament. But the way Luke is using this word, it seems like Luke sees more to this. In other words, when he says there was great grace on all of them, he's not just talking about, and all of these people felt forgiven by Jesus or forgiven by God. There's something more here. The way he's using this word, it's as if Luke's saying, the only way I can describe what would motivate people to do this with their stuff and be so free and so generous and commit to sharing anything and everything for the well-being of others in the community, the only thing he can think of to describe what would motivate that, he says, grace, charis.

And what happens with this word in the New Testament, we're going to see this in a couple other places, is that Luke is using grace not simply to describe this act that God has done on our behalf, but he's describing what happens when you accept that gift, it starts to mess with you. It starts to do stuff to you, especially if you're in the habit and the routine of remaking your mind around the story of the gospel and constantly reminding yourself of it within a community of learning, and it begins to mess with you and do stuff to you. This is how I'm going to try and describe what Luke is saying here. It seems to me he's saying that God's grace was not just something that he did for them.

It becomes this power or a presence in their lives that begins to motivate and generate these kinds of behaviors. And not only that, but then it becomes this word in the New Testament. We're going to see this. It comes to describe not just the gift that God gives us and not just the power and presence that motivates giving inside of me, it comes to actually stand for the act of giving itself. And so there are biblical passages, we're going to look at one in a second, that actually call on Christians to show grace. And by that, it means to be generous with my stuff. You guys with me here? This is a very rich word and concept in the New Testament, and Luke is drawing on it here, just saying the only thing

I can explain to what happened here with these people and how dedicated they were to each other, whereas they probably didn't even know each other a year ago, was that God's grace was messing with them. God's gift to them in Jesus began to motivate and empower a whole new way of living with each other, namely sharing, so that none of them had any need. Okay, let's take one more step here. So about 15, 20 years goes by, and the church in Jerusalem ends up expanding and even dispersing at some parts, and you just read the story of Acts. And so then kind of the hub of operation moves up north to a city called Antioch. And from there, the Jesus movement, or the community of Jesus' disciples, starts spreading just all over to the big cities of the Roman world. And the key

player in the book of Acts in starting many of these new communities is a guy named what? Paul. We spent all of last fall focusing in on one of his writings. And so Paul, he's starting all of these new communities of disciples, and they're mostly not Jewish, right? They're not ethnically connected to these Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. And something happens in Jerusalem and the region around. And that's a huge food shortage, a drought, and a famine. You can read about it in the book of Acts. And so these Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, they get hit super hard. There's starvation, and there's poverty, and people can't find anything to eat, and it's very, very difficult times for everybody, especially these

Christians in Jerusalem. So Paul, being the intense guy that he is, he gets this harebrained idea. He said, what if we did this? What if I were to make this quick trip around all of these churches of non-Jewish Christians that I helped start, and I helped rally them towards an act of unity with these Christians in Jerusalem? And not just an act of unity, it's a fundraiser. It's an act of koinonia is what it is. We're going to demonstrate our unity across a thousand miles with these Christians that I've never met and don't have any particular connection to,

except that, you know, we wouldn't exist as a church community here in Athens, Greece, if it weren't for what happened there in Jerusalem. And so Paul, you can read about this project in many of Paul's letters. And he describes it. And there's one episode in this whole interesting story of Paul doing this fundraiser as an act of unity that broadens into this connection here of koinonia and grace

and what this means for us to be a church community. So in 2 Corinthians, and you can turn there, 2 Corinthians 8, or I'm going to have it up here on the screen because I want to play with the Greek words and do that kind of thing up in front of you. So Paul's going to tell a story right here. He's writing to the Corinthians and he's telling a story about grace and koinonia, about charis and koinonia. He's going to tell a story about how he went up to some Christians who live up in Macedonia. And he says this to

the Corinthians that he's writing to. He says, and now brothers and sisters who are in Corinth, we want you to know about the grace, here's our word, about the grace of God that has been given to the Macedonian churches. Okay, stop. Just stop right there. Pretend the rest doesn't exist, right? So let's say I were to come up to you and say like, hey, you know, dude, I have to tell you about this amazing story of grace that's happened to these people up in Macedonia. What kind of story would you think I was about to tell you? And my guess is you'd probably think, oh, this is going to be a story about how they heard the good news about Jesus and became disciples of Jesus and accepted God's forgiveness for them. And that's not the story that Paul tells. What he tells is a story about this. He says, brothers

and sisters, I want to tell you about this thing that happened to these Christians. These are already disciples of Jesus, but something happened to them. God's grace happened to them. He says, us, but something happened to them. God's grace happened to them. He says, in the midst of very severe persecution, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. Now that, there's a whole story underneath there that is incredible and inspiring and profound. So you have a community of Christians, and we have at least one of Paul's letters to these Christians in Macedonia. We call them first and second Thessalonians, but they are letters written to these Christians right here. And we know that they were undergoing persecution. We don't know quite what form,

if there was execution or there were people being arrested or kidnapped or something, but it was stuff like that, super intense. So you have these brand new communities of Jesus' disciples, and that's what they're going through, and they're dirt poor. That's what he says right there, deep poverty, extreme poverty. But what describes their attitude and their mindset? What does he say? Joy.

Now let me ask you, your sister got kidnapped, you lost your job because you associate with Jesus. How are you feeling when you wake up tomorrow morning? So joy. So this is a whole other like message or series we could do on joy as a Christian, because it's not just about an emotional feeling that you get. Joy as a Christian is about a faith commitment that I will not allow my circumstances to determine the significance or the meaning or the trajectory of my life. That Jesus has such a firm grip on me because he lived for me, he died for me, he rose for me, that not even death itself gets the last word in my story. Jesus' life, his death, his resurrection for me

determine everything for me. That's my identity. That's my future. Therefore, I can grab onto this joy that everyone else will think I'm absolutely crazy for experiencing because they think I should be like, you know, considering suicide right now. My life is so hard.

That's what's happening here. And so you have these Christians under extreme persecution. They're dirt poor, but they're utterly, utterly hanging on to Jesus in faith and therefore have joy. And what does all of this result in? What does he say? He said, dude, they came up with so much money, you wouldn't even believe it. They came up with so much money, you wouldn't even believe it, right? They came up so

much koinonia. Their commitment to the unity and sharing with these other Christians in Jerusalem, whom they've never met, it just, look what he says here. He says, I'm telling you, I testify, by which he means, I swear to God, that's what he means right there, I swear to God, they gave as much as they were able. No, excuse me, correct that. They gave more than they were able. I have no idea how they came up with this huge gift for who they were and their circumstances. It's crazy. And listen, this is entirely on their own.

None of us were pressuring them. They were pleading with us for the privilege of, and come on, come on, what? It's just too convenient, right? It's all connected. It's all connected right here. Koinonia. In other words, they're saying we were going to leave them out, you know, like they're really poor, they're having a hard time. We were going to ask the Macedonian Christians. And they were like, what? You're going to leave us out? No way. You know, they were pleading with us. We want to give. We want to give. And so he says they wanted so badly,

they pleaded with us the privilege of koinonia, with the Lord's people, and that refers to the Christians in Jerusalem. Now just stop and think this. This is amazing. What an amazing story. Is this a good story? This is an amazing story.

Their faith and their joy and their commitment has been retold millions of times throughout the 2,000 years of Christian history. And this is a story worth retelling. It's that their commitment to both the unity, I've never met these Christians in Jerusalem, but they're brothers and sisters in Christ, and they're going through a food shortage.

Holy cow, I know what that's like. They're going through persecution. We know what that's like. They sense a deep unity and connection with these Christians, and that results in the act of sharing, sharing the little resource that they do have. And so Paul, look at, so Paul is trying to, how do you explain something like that? And he uses the same exact word that Luke used to describe this crazy commitment to sharing in the book of

Acts. What happened to these Christians? What happened to them? He says grace. Grace happened to them. Both God's gift towards them, but he's describing like something empowered them and energized them to be able to do this. And then here's where the passage gets really great,

because then he turns to the Corinthians. And the Corinthians had said like, yeah, we're all in. We totally want to give to this. And then, like, three months later, Paul hears the report, like, yeah, they kind of forgot. And they, like, haven't been, like, saving up or anything like that. And so look at what Paul says next here, just two sentences later. He says, since you Corinthians, since you excel in everything, you guys are growing as disciples.

You're growing in everything. You guys are growing as disciples. You're growing in faith. You're growing in speech, how to talk about this new life in Christ and talk about it amongst each other, with other people. You're growing in your knowledge as learners and disciples of Jesus. You're growing in total earnestness. No one can, you know, no one can fault you for that. You really are into everything that you're doing. You're growing in love. So you guys, don't forget that part of being a disciple of Jesus means excelling and growing in grace. Now, what does that mean? It's very clear what he's talking about. He's talking about giving, generosity, this commitment to koinonia. And so what both Paul and Luke are getting at is that being a disciple of Jesus

and accepting this gift of God's grace to me in Jesus, that before I was even looking for it, I was not looking for it, I was completely anti and opposed, or I was just doing whatever I wanted to do, to a world full of people who either are ignorant or willfully ignorant and just doing their own thing, God's response is to give a gift, to make a decision to permanently bind himself to broken, screwed up, sinful, selfish humans forever by becoming one of us in Jesus of Nazareth

and living for us, dying for us, being raised for us. And therefore, when I pledge my faith to Jesus and grab onto him, this is not just some like legal transaction or external transaction that takes place that's sort of like, okay, check, received the gift, okay, here I go with my life now. What Paul's saying is that when you sign up for this ride of pledging your faith to Jesus, like, stuff happens to you. If you join a community of faith and commit to being together, making Jesus more and more the focal point of what your life is about, and you commit to learning and having your mind remade,

this will follow, Paul's saying. It's just a natural outflow. Why? Why? Because what happens when I become a Christian is not simply that God's just like, okay, great, you're passed over, not going to destroy you now, on to the rest. It's actually God sharing his life with us. It's God binding himself to us in Jesus, sharing in our humanity, in the Spirit, in the person of the Holy Spirit, actually coming to be with us and to bind his life and begin to share his own character in life

with us. When the Holy Spirit takes up residence in your life, it's the Spirit of a generous, giving God. Are you with me here? And so it's not just like, okay, I'm a Christian, it's good to share stuff now, I guess that's a nice thing to do. No, it's not just like, okay, I'm a Christian. It's good to share stuff now. I guess that's a nice thing to do. No, it's like the generous giving God has bound himself to me permanently in Jesus. He's taken up residence in my life. And so Paul says, listen, you're growing and learning. You're growing in faith. You're growing in this. Seek to grow in this grace too. Learning that my commitment to this community is not just some volunteer thing that I do.

It's who we are. We're disciples of Jesus. And we're bound together in unity because the gift of the generous giving God, and he's in our midst, prodding, poking, influencing us to get our eyes off of ourselves and onto the needs of other people and to do something about it.

That was just to put it very simply. That's what Paul's getting at here. And so look at how Paul sums all this up in 2 Corinthians 8, verse 9. And look what he says here. He grounds all of this. He says, listen, you guys. You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And he's going to describe this right here. He says, you know the grace that even though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you, through his poverty, might become rich. God's grace is that decision that God made to become what we are so that we may become what he is. That's the story. That's our foundation story as a community. And so Paul says, if that's who we are, if that's the power that's at work within us, then seek to grow in this area of your life.

And it will result in koinonia, a heightened sense of unity and commitment to the community of disciples that I'm a part of, and a heightened commitment to share my life, to share my time, my resources in a way that benefits other people. You guys with me? Let's just stop and let's just reflect on this. Because if you really think about it, how you choose to spend your time, how you choose to spend whatever resources of time or money that you have, those just speak volumes

about what you care about most in life. And same for me. We, what we care about most in life. And what it means to be a part and to commit to this particular community, as with any church community, I would hope, but what's what we're shooting for this one? This is part of who we are. We're disciples of Jesus, and we're seeking to grow in faith and knowledge and in speech and all these other areas. We want to seek to excel in this grace too. Because if we're not, it means

that we're actually neglecting the very presence of the giving, generous God in our lives who's trying to get us to become more like himself. And who this God is is revealed in the great gift of grace. It's who we are. It's where we're going. And so it seems to me there's three implications that I want to take a few minutes to explore here for us. And again, just like last week, I just kind of put the ball in your court and just ask yourself, what does this mean for you? If you've been a part of Door of Hope, if Door of Hope's your home church,

if you're considering being committed to Door of Hope, ball's in your court, what does this mean for us? So the first implication, I think, is kind of what you're all going to expect me to say. And I don't even need to say very much about it, except being a part of a church means a commitment to be a part of a church. And so we totally recognize some people are in fly-on-the-wall mode. You know, you've been, whatever, you've been burned by Christians, or you have never been a part of a church before, you're a new Christian, or you're coming back and you're interested, you're owning your faith

in Jesus for the first time ever, maybe as an adult, we're all over the map here. And so you need to be flying on the wall for a while. We're so stoked to be a place where you can do that. That's wonderful. But we are not stoked if you do it for too long. And it's not selfish. It's actually we don't think it's good for you.

Because you can grow in all kinds of areas, but you won't grow in this grace, in the grace of koinonia, if you forever remain a fly on the wall. It won't happen. There will be parts of you that will remain just unmature and not compelled and forced to grow if you don't make some level of commitment, both to relationships and then also to put, you know, your money and your time where your mouth is. And so Door of Hope, you know, put, you know, your money and your time where your mouth is. And so Door of Hope, you know, throughout, you know, the four and a half year history, you know, finances have always been a challenge.

And it's been the thing we celebrate and scratch our heads and get frustrated about all at the same time, right? And we're excited about it because there's a lot of new believers. And so this is a growing process. because there's a lot of new believers. And so this is a growing process, and it seems, as with the Corinthians, as with most of us, like this is one of the last graces that we grow in for some reason, right?

As we become Christians. And so this one takes a while. And so we're glad to be a place where you can grow, but we do think it's healthy for you to grow. We have a lot of young people who aren't super financially stable. And so, you know, it's been one of these funny things where we have big attendance spikes in Door of Hope history,

and then the giving goes down. And we're like, how do you make sense of that one? Like, that's interesting. More people and less money. Like, how does that work? And we're in a culture that doesn't think about things this way. One of the ways that we have our minds remade is that if I'm a part of this community,

it's both about the resources of my money, yes, that's a part, but also about my time and just being around, committing, serving, giving. It's just part of who we are. We're disciples. We pitch in. We help feed into the common life of what's happening here.

You guys with me here? It's the first implication. You guys were probably expecting me to say that. And if you're feeling guilty, you know, Josh loves to make people feel guilty and trying to motive them. And then we're kind of the two ends of the spectrum here. And so I'm all about just kind of let people simmer, whatever. And he's like, they've simmered long enough. Like, Jess, tell them what to do. And so he'll get up here next week and he'll do that. And that's fine.

That's how we work as a team. I'll let that sit with you. But you're actually acting against your own well-being. If you forever remain a round door of hope, but you're actually acting against your own well-being if you forever remain a round door of hope, but never connected, never choosing to invest. That's the first implication. The second implication, for me, it just struck me again, the turn the diamond and you see it and you're like, whoa, is think about the language used in both of these stories that we read here in the New Testament. These are stories about these Christians doing unbelievable acts of giving, right? These Jerusalem Christians sharing their stuff, selling it so they can give, give, give, give. These Macedonian Christians who are dirt poor, they're under persecution, but they give,

give, give. But in both cases, the way Luke and Paul describes what happened and why these people did what they did, they use the language of these Christians who are giving, but they say that they were given something. Did you catch that as we read this story? Paul says these Macedonian Christians, they gave more than anybody thought they had. But how he describes it is he says they've been given, they were given a grace. That's what he says.

A grace was upon these Christians and happened to them and was given to them to empower them. The very presence of the generous giving God in their lives empowered them. And this is so profound, I think, for how we've talked about giving around here. Because when Paul wants to talk about what motivates somebody to give something, what he says and what Luke says is that they received something. They received a power. They received a gift that started to mess with them. And all of a sudden, it was just, this is just what you do. You just give. And this is profound, I think, because, in other words, he describes these Macedonians.

The Corinthians, clearly, Paul says, like, yeah, you need to pray that you get some of that. You know, pray that you grow in this grace. But the Macedonians, it just happened to them. And clearly, Paul's amazed and doesn't really know how to describe it. He just says, God's grace happened to them. And so, think about it this way. We, yes, it's a commitment to give. If I'm a Christian, a disciple, I'm going to commit to give and to share and to be a part of what's going on here. But how many of you have been in situations, whether you're in a church, you know, or you're at home or whatever, and you see commercials, you see TV ads or magazine or something, and it's the disaster relief

TV ads or magazine or something, and it's the disaster relief organization. It's the orphan organization. It's one of the 2,000 non-profits that exist here in Portland, right? And they're sharing with you the specific thing that they're working on and the need and what they need. And, you know, we're saturated with these online and on TV and so on. And so how many of you have had this experience? You're exposed to so many of these in a day, and all it does is shut you down. You guys with me here? You're just kind of like, like, oh, I'm just going to go home, you know, and have a martini or something like that. I don't know. You know, we just don't know what to do. It's this paralysis by this overwhelming barrage of need. There's so many. How do I even begin to know where to give time or volunteer or do this or that? And so we end up doing nothing.

And I think there's wisdom here in these two passages and in this idea about how you begin the discernment process. Because when Paul describes these Macedonians, he just says, dude, they were given a grace. How else do you explain these poor persecuted Christians and the moment they heard about it, they were just on it. We are all over that. We can't not do something about that. And so maybe

there's, again, ball in your court, there's a prayer that you need to begin to pray. As Paul says, to seek this grace. There's a grace that we are given for certain things. When the Macedonians respond to this need, there was something happened in them. He said God's grace happened to them and they could not not do something about it. They had to do something about it. And so perhaps there are times, there are places, there are moments

where God gives us a grace for a certain need and the thing that we need to begin to pray is not like make me into superwoman or superman who can meet all the needs of the world, is to just give me a grace for one thing that I can focus on and that I can give myself. Give me a grace for this thing. And what happens, you know that you have been given a grace for something. It's because when you hear about it, like no one needs to guilt you and you don't need to hear Josh guilt you next week. You know, like you just, you're just like, I have to do something about that. So earlier last

year when we had the opportunity to bring Anna Clitherow on and start Door of Hope Mentoring, it's awesome, right out of the church among you all connecting with at-risk youth for mentoring and so on. And there's a whole bunch of you that you just, you heard about that, something happened inside of you. And it's a big commitment. So it's a big time commitment of your lives. But for those of you that I've talked to you who are doing at it, it doesn't, it's a, yes, it's a big commitment, but it energizes you. And Paul would say, dude, grace happened to you. You've been given a power and a grace for that. Run with it. You guys hear me here? And so Paul says, seek this grace. Some of us, like, it's not even on our radar. And so my encouragement to you would

be, like, you know, don't just sign up for everything. Don't do everything for every need that comes across your way. Pray for the grace that will be given to you to do the thing that God will give you to do. And see, what this does is it frees us. There are some people who are just really passionate in the church about their thing or whatever. And so it's very easy to get into, you know, they clearly have a grace and a passion for something. And then they, like, start to look down on the other Christians in their church who aren't as passionate about their thing. You guys know what I'm talking about? And then it's sort of like, it's like, what's up? These other, these lazy Christians, they don't love Jesus. Like, they're not into, like, this thing, orphan care for this or that or whatever. Why don't you wake

up, people? You know, and it's like, chill, hold on, chill out. Okay, it could be that they're lazy. That could totally be the case. It could also be the case that they've been given a grace for something else. And that's okay. That's great, you know. You have your run with yours, you know. And then all of a sudden when you meet people

who have been given the grace for the same need that you're passionate about, there's a special bond there. You form a team. You're not alone in it anymore. And it frees us from the anxiety and the frustration to just say, seek to grow in this grace. What will growing in this grace look like

for each and every one of us? I have no idea. This is what the Holy Spirit's job is with us. That's the second implication, to seek to grow in this grace for the particular needs. And when the Holy Spirit is orchestrating it, the body will grow. The body will grow. Which leads to the third implication, and this is really more of an encouragement, but I think it's so important to speak this to us. What Paul emphasizes about these Macedonians. What Luke tells us about these disciples of Jesus is very clear.

These were average, everyday people. These are Jewish people who had come for one of the feasts in Jerusalem. They're just normal people. These are just poor Macedonian Christians or whatever. But when grace happens, when people receive and seek to grow in the grace of koinonia and of generosity, ordinary people are capable of extraordinary stories and acts of generosity. Are you with me? For 2,000 years, the story of these poor Macedonians, like, it got into the Bible, you know? Like, how's that? That's awesome. What if it was a story of you? That would be so humbling and scary and incredible, too. But, like, really think about that.

These are just normal people. And I think for many of us, whatever, like our church experience we've had, maybe even experiences you've had at Door of Hope. Maybe it's the experience you had in your family growing up. We get into this mindset that we're not capable of very much. That you're actually not capable of doing anything very significant as a disciple of Jesus. And these passages just come along and they just say, you have no idea. The Son of God loves you. He gave himself for you. His very presence and power is with you. He knows your whole story. He's challenging you to

pray for the grace that would empower you to do the thing that he has put in front of you or is going to put in front of you. You have no idea what you're capable of. Every single one of us is capable of incredible koinonia and generosity. Who knows? You know? And so that's the story that remains to be told here. And so I just, as we close in prayer, as we move on in our gathering here, I would just, again, balls in your court. What does this mean for you? What does it mean for you to take a step not being a fly on the wall anymore? For some of us, it's about not just like being involved, but actually beginning to embody my unity and connection with this community by serving and by giving. And for

some of us, it's beginning a discernment process of how do I discern among the many things I could do. And then just, dude, you guys have no idea what we're capable of. There's so many people in this room right now. There's like way more people here than normal. I'm kind of freaked out about it right now, yeah? And so it's just like, man, look at you, look at this. This is so much of the city of Portland represented right here. There's so many workplaces represented. There's so many apartment complexes and streets of our city represented.

If all of us had something happen to us, like what happened to the Macedonians, just imagine the stories of grace that could be told because of what God did in our midst. And that's our prayer. And that's my prayer for you. All right, you guys, thanks for listening to the Exploring My Strange Bible podcast. I hope this is helpful for you. If it is, you can help share the word, which means sharing these episodes with other people that you think might also find them helpful, or just go to iTunes and leave a review. That's helpful.

Or whatever, don't do any of those things. Just enjoy listening to them, and that's great. I don't do any of those things just enjoy listening to them and uh that's great i'm happy to share them with you we'll see you next time for a new series and a new episode