THE TRANSFORMED COMMUNITY (8 OF 56)
Scripture: Acts 3:1-11
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The Transformed Community (8 of 56)
Series: The Church in ACTSion
Wyman Richardson
Acts 3:1-11
Read Acts 2:42-47
The text we are about to consider has been a problematic text throughout Christian history. On the one hand, many simply deny that the words we are about to read are true, that this description of the early church is accurate at all, or that the early church ever lived the kind of life described here. I am thinking here of somebody like Harold Bloom, who wrote in his book, The American Religion, that this romantic vision of the early church is just that: a romantic vision. He says that this church never really existed as it is presented in Acts.
Among Christians, the almost utopian vision we find in Acts 2:42-47 can create a kind of despair. After all, when one reads this description then looks at the reality of what the Church in many quarters has become, it can lead to real frustration. In the book The Permanent Revolution, which he co-wrote with Alan Hirsch, Tim Catchim writes:
Now I had not grown up in the church. At sixteen I picked up the Bible, read it cover to cover, and became a Christian. I was under the impression that what I had read in the Gospels and in the book of Acts was how the church actually functioned. It was a bit jarring to walk into the local church for the first time and see that it was only a shadow of what I'd read in scripture.
This is perhaps an understandable reaction, but let us be sure of this: Luke does not provide this description of the early church in order to cause us to despair or cause us to think less of our current congregational lives. On the contrary, he is trying to get us to understand what the Church can be when it yields itself to gospel purity and conviction. The New Testament in fact presents us with plenty of less-than-glowing pictures of the Church. It is encouraging, then, to find what we find in our text this morning.
What do we find? Simply this:
The early church was a learn ...
Series: The Church in ACTSion
Wyman Richardson
Acts 3:1-11
Read Acts 2:42-47
The text we are about to consider has been a problematic text throughout Christian history. On the one hand, many simply deny that the words we are about to read are true, that this description of the early church is accurate at all, or that the early church ever lived the kind of life described here. I am thinking here of somebody like Harold Bloom, who wrote in his book, The American Religion, that this romantic vision of the early church is just that: a romantic vision. He says that this church never really existed as it is presented in Acts.
Among Christians, the almost utopian vision we find in Acts 2:42-47 can create a kind of despair. After all, when one reads this description then looks at the reality of what the Church in many quarters has become, it can lead to real frustration. In the book The Permanent Revolution, which he co-wrote with Alan Hirsch, Tim Catchim writes:
Now I had not grown up in the church. At sixteen I picked up the Bible, read it cover to cover, and became a Christian. I was under the impression that what I had read in the Gospels and in the book of Acts was how the church actually functioned. It was a bit jarring to walk into the local church for the first time and see that it was only a shadow of what I'd read in scripture.
This is perhaps an understandable reaction, but let us be sure of this: Luke does not provide this description of the early church in order to cause us to despair or cause us to think less of our current congregational lives. On the contrary, he is trying to get us to understand what the Church can be when it yields itself to gospel purity and conviction. The New Testament in fact presents us with plenty of less-than-glowing pictures of the Church. It is encouraging, then, to find what we find in our text this morning.
What do we find? Simply this:
The early church was a learn ...
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