Edit: I updated the title of this post to hopefully convey better meaning… my focus in these posts is to talk about the culture of the community we have been invited into.
Happy Pentecost weekend! Beginning on Thursday evening our Jewish sisters and brothers celebrated Shavuot. We call it Pentecost in Greek. The Jewish people celebrate it as the day that God declared his covenant with his people at Mount Sinai and formed them as a new community.1 As believers in Yeshua (Jesus in English) we celebrate that same day as the day God gave His Holy Spirit and formed His community (the church)
One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Acts 2:42-47. It is a description of that earliest community of Messiah after Jesus’ return to the Father’s side and the Holy Spirit’s arrival in power to the community of Messiah.
“They were devoting themselves to the teaching of the emissaries and to fellowship, to breaking bread and to prayers. Fear lay upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were happening through the emissaries. And all who believed were together, having everything in common. They began selling their property and possessions and sharing them with all, as any had need. Day by day they continued with one mind, spending time at the Temple and breaking bread from house to house. They were sharing meals with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And every day the Lord was adding to their number those being saved.”
Acts 2:42-47 TLV
It has been on my heart for a while to do a series on this passage… Not without coincidence I started writing this last night as Shavuot was coming to a close.
My personal opinion is that the passage above is not only descriptive, but prescriptive…. the author Luke’s writing style seems to be a deep dive and investigation into these first events (for what would become the Jewish and Gentile community of God)
I believe he was trying to discover the how and the why behind the power in this first community so that it could be replicated in succeeding generations.
I believe this because this is exactly what I have seen happen around the world when a community is forced or chooses to live only by what they see in the Bible and depend on only the Holy Spirit.
Stories coming out of China, Iran, India, and other places where there is systematic persecution of Christians very much remind me of these stories.2
The book of Acts is actually Volume 2 of a two part work that began with the book of Luke. He clearly sees a connection between what happened while Jesus was walking on earth… and what happened when he went back to the Father.
This is how he starts Acts:
“I wrote the first volume, Theophilus, about all that Yeshua began to do and teach—up to the day He was taken up…”
To Luke… what Jesus did while he was on earth was only the beginning of what he did.. he continues to do those some things through his people by the power of Holy Spirit.
The goal of this series is to:
1. Reframe this passage in light of the gospel of Luke. To demonstrate that the acts of the Holy Spirit were the continuation of the acts of the Father and the Son in the gospels.
2. Reframe the whole story in terms of the familial nature of those early communities.
When I say reframe what I mean is I want to take the picture of the Bible and place it in the frame of what I believe are it’s original cultural and familial context.
God is a Father. We are His Children. Jesus is our elder brother and firstborn who has received all good things from our Father and he distributes them to us.
Over the next week or so.. I intend to unpack this passage, specifically Acts 2:42.
I want to make a link between how that community was obedient to action… and how God worked in their midst.
They devoted themselves to prayer, fellowship, breaking of bread, and the apostles teaching….
God saved people and performed many miracles through his people.
Footnotes
1. Exodus 19. To explain. Pentecost happens 50 days after Passover. Exodus 19 happens “in the third month” after the Jewish people leave Egypt. The timing lines up as the most significant event that happens in that month
2. For a quick overview of some things God is doing around the world check out my prior post: The Internationally Engaged Dad: Part 2
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