Has Grace Impacted Your Billfold? (AM Sermon Notes)
GIST: An atmosphere unified by grace results in a lifestyle defined by generosity.
SCRIPTURE: Acts 4:32-35
This morning we're coming to the end of Acts 4. After spending several weeks following really one central story, we’re now brought to one of Luke’s “church updates”. He does this throughout the book. After building the narrative for a while, he’ll pause to give a status update on the early church.
So far we have seen the first explosion of faith and the first instances of persecution. Let’s see how the church is doing.
“32 Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. 33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold 35 and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.”
I don’t plan on speaking long this morning. Truthfully, that’s never actually my intention, but you can be the judge of how faithfully I meet those self-placed expectations ☺️. However, this morning, the truths I see in this passage should not take long to layout. Nonetheless, they’ve laid me out these past few weeks. Praise the Lord for that! His Word is active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and it cuts to my heart.
So let me just throw these two observations out there as way of introduction. First, this passage will not be easy for many of us to take seriously because it requires us to look at one of the most sacred cows of our society: the love of personal wealth. Yes, that means we’ll, at least in part, be talking about money this morning. And, yes, I know that is uncomfortable. And no, this is not a sermon geared at trying to make you give this church more money. That’s not my purpose. Yet, I pray we’re able to see the Biblical perspective here clearly and truly apply it to our lives. Because, here’s the second observation: I know I need to have this truth break me just as much if not more than any of you.
So, here’s the gist: An atmosphere unified by grace results in a lifestyle defined by generosity.
I. AN ATMOSPHERE UNIFIED BY GRACE
Before we even look at what they’re doing with their money, we really need to wrap our minds around what made them act like this. In this community→
They Were One In Heart And Soul (32a). Let’s start by making a two-part observation which points to the core nature of this church...which should also be ours. They were held together by one central desire because their lives were defined by one central transformation. Before we can even begin to understand their giving, we have to see their hearts.
We have to be careful not to romanticize the early church. These people were just as messed up as we are today and had just as many reasons to bicker with one another. In fact, within this newly exploded body of believers, we have people from various cultures with different heart languages and different societal expectations. Some were locals; some were just passing through and now had to find places to stay. The locals were opening up their homes to strangers, and the travelers were living away from the comforts of their homes. And, to top it all off, the religious leaders of the day wanted to end them! If anything, this was a setting ripe for dissension. Yet, that’s not the picture we see here. They were unified!
This should be a defining feature of the body of Christ--Christians all over the world. Rather than allowing hurt feelings or squabbles to divide us, we should be uniting in our single purpose, to glorify Jesus, to praise Him and make Him known!
They were not who they were before, so they didn’t react the way they would have under these same circumstances before, and this was all→
Because of Jesus... And They Remember That! Look at verse 33 for a second, “33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.” As we see them sharing everything they have, we have to remember this isn’t some early-church version of communism. This is a group of people transformed by Jesus being constantly reminded of Him and, as a result, living constantly for Him...and like Him! That’s the Church! That’s what we should be like! Because Jesus has made the difference, we spend our time pointing one another more and more to Him...and striving to live like Him together! And really, that’s what all this activity we see happening here is all about. An atmosphere unified by Grace→
II. RESULTS IN A LIFESTYLE DEFINED BY GENEROSITY
Look at 34-35 again, “34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold 35 and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.”
This Is The Natural Outworking Of Being Changed By Grace! Grace is getting what you don’t deserve. We can’t ever forget this. Our natural, sinful state deserves Hell. Period. We bring absolutely nothing to the table. We have rejected God and His design for our lives, and we stand condemned--and it’s a condemnation we deserve. Sin enslaves us, but we have no desire to serve any other master. But Jesus came and took on Hell for us. He took what we deserved. Then, He works in our heart and brings the change we need. If we give Him control of our lives, we will be saved! This is the amazing Grace we so often sing about. And because we have experienced this, we should live in this world very differently. Like I have often said, the greatly loved will love greatly. That’s what this is all about. They saw that they had been given so much. How in the world could they justify reacting in any other way than to freely give what they could, as well? They had a Heavenly perspective.
That’s why we see→
The Norm Was Care. Now, so far we haven’t even mentioned money at all...and we’re literally on the last sub-point of the last point☺️ (I told you I would try to be short this morning). Therefore, it is pretty safe to assume this is where the dollars and cents are going to get mentioned. However, we had to get this first: Christianity isn’t just about giving money away. And this sermon isn’t even meant to be just a call for you to tithe 10% of your income and give it to the local church. Benjamin Franklin faithfully supported his local church, but didn’t believe in Jesus as Savior and God. Instead, what we should take away from this passage is what it looks like when we’ve really been changed by God’s Grace!
When we look at what’s happening here, what we see is people using their resources to take of each other. They’re not “put out” by having to give up what is “theirs” to help others. Instead, they realize...nothing is theirs...and everything is God’s. Since everything they have is given to them by God, they use it for His glory.
There are probably several principles for us here that people far wiser than me would notice. I’ll just give these three. Actually, technically these two because the first is a “non-principle”☺️.
1. This is not a general admonition to sell everything we have. Though we should be willing to do this if necessary, it is not the principle being taught here. Everyone was taking care of everyone as they had need, but they weren’t required to sell everything, and not everyone did. We’ll see that illustrated more tonight when Peter tells Ananias and Sapphira they weren’t required to give anything away. At least some people still owned property because they were meeting in people’s houses. However, it was their attitude toward their property that had changed.
2. We should want to help one another. Where there are needs, we should want to provide assistance. Boiled down. We should care about each other.
3. We should view “our money” as a means of spreading His Gospel. Tim Keller pointed out that the idea of the 10% tithe is frequently discussed when considering how we should do this. However, most Biblical scholars agree that the idea of giving 10% of our money, which is a principle laid out in the Old Testament but not directly taught in the New, should be taken as a minimum. We’re not called to give 10%. We’re called to give everything. So 10% is definitely a good starting point, but it’s not just a box to check. Keller also observed something along these lines→ Rather than living as we want and giving God whatever we can scrape from the leftovers, we should deliberately and consistently give God off the top and learn to live with whatever is left over! Like we’ve said before, unless we intentionally make this part of our lives… it simply won’t be.
Yeah, so those might be takeaways too ☺️. But let’s look at just a few more…→
TAKEAWAYS
1. We should be a community defined by grace. We should let the overwhelming love of God so shape us into His image that when people come into our congregation they feel loved...because they are!
2. And this grace should completely change our perspectives. In Tim Keller’s sermon, he uses the Christmas Carol as an example. I’m always in Christmas mode, and this time of the year makes that seem more reasonable...so I thought this was a timely example ☺. In this story, Scrooge is given a second chance, and it changes his perspective. He doesn’t want the consequences of his bad actions, so he decides to be different. It’s a great story...but it’s not good enough. Christianity isn’t about getting a second chance to be “better”. If this were the case, we’d be out of luck! We’ll never be as good as Jesus. However, He’s not just a great model that we should follow, He’s our Savior! This isn’t just about being nicer, it’s about being called to a completely new reality. We’re sinners saved by Grace, so we should live graciously!
3. And this should be reflected in how we view and use “our money”. I know I keep coming back to Tim Keller here, but his sermon on this passage was super helpful and convicting to me. In fact, I’ll link it below. In this message, he also made this observation: “You will always give your money effortlessly to that which is your god, that which you think is your true salvation.” Yeah, just let that sink in.
For more on this topic, please listen to this sermon by Tim Keller: http://download.redeemer.com/rpcsermons/stewardship/Grace_and_Money.mp3
