So I'm going to start by reading our text today, and we are looking at Acts chapter 2, verses 42 to 47. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.
Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. So as I've heard from many of you this morning about how cold it is. It feels like spring has been a long time coming this year, doesn't it?
Winter seems to keep holding on. It feels like it's— everybody starts putting on their coats and huddling up here.
It does seem like winter's reluctant to let go. Every time, even when the sun was shining this week, I'd notice like some snowflakes starting to fall and no. Now some of you people like winter, strange as that may be, but I think most of us would agree it's not a season where we witness a lot of growth, right? But lately with a few warmer days and more sunlight, there are hints that something is changing. Spring is in the air.
And for some that means it's time to start thinking about gardens. Are there any gardeners here? Anybody get into gardening? Yes? Okay.
Have you started your seeds indoors? Yes?
Okay. Getting ready for the day that you get to finally go outside and dig in that dirt and plant them? There's something about this time of year when we begin seeing hints of colour peeking through all the brown and the grey, When we're able to start digging in the dirt, preparing our garden plots, there's something about all of that that reminds us how life works. All winter long, the ground looks quiet and still and empty. The trees are bare, the gardens look lifeless, and the soil feels cold and unproductive.
But gardeners know something important. Just because you can't see life doesn't mean that nothing is happening. Beneath the surface, there are seeds of potential growth. Roots are beginning to form, and life is quietly beginning to prepare to emerge. And when the conditions are right, when the right balance of sun and rain comes, suddenly, almost unexpectedly, little green shoots begin to push through the soil, and what once looked barren suddenly begins to come alive.
And in many ways, the church is like that. It begins with something that seems small, almost like a seed planted in the ground. But when that seed takes root, it begins to grow into something far greater than anyone first imagined. Now, when you think of seeds being planted, what image comes to mind? Like, do you think about a farmer going out with one seed in his hand and walking out into his big field and planting that one seed all by itself?
No, right?
You think about how many seeds are scattered. Many are planted at a time. That would be more along the lines of what a planting season happens— that takes place, right? Seeds aren't planted alone. They're planted in a field or a garden together.
Now, 80 years ago, a small group of faithful people, feeling led by the Spirit, planted something in the Fallingbrook community. They couldn't see everything that was going to come from it. They couldn't see the generations who would gather for worship, first in one building and now in this one. They couldn't see the children who would learn about Jesus, the lives that would be changed, or the ways that God would work through this church. But they planted a seed, and God grew that seed into his church.
So what we heard in Acts 2 was a glimpse of something similar happening. The resurrection had, had already just taken place. But now the Spirit is at work in a powerful, invisible way. What began with confusion and only partial understanding is being brought together, given direction, and sent out. A new community begins to grow.
What started with a small group of followers becomes a movement that would eventually spread far beyond them and around the world. Because when Jesus rose from the dead, something new was planted in the world. Not a building, not an institution, but a living, breathing community of people whose lives were reshaped by him, as lives continue to be reshaped by him today. It wasn't a building or an institution that was planted, but his church. The church is part of God's plan, and that plan is bigger than just a collection of individual stories.
Yes, faith is personal. Each of us responds to Jesus personally. But it was never meant to stop there. Christianity is personal, but it is not individualistic. God is not just saving isolated individuals.
He is forming a people, just as he always has. With Israel, he called and shaped a people through covenant, law, and promise. And what we're seeing now isn't God starting over. It's God fulfilling and expanding that same purpose through Jesus. We see that clearly in Titus 2:14 where we're told that Jesus is redeeming a people for himself, and we see it lived out in Acts 1-2, chapters 1 and 2, where believers are gathered together waiting, praying, and then growing.
Not as disconnected individuals, but as a community shaped by the Spirit. This isn't a one-time moment. It becomes the pattern throughout the New Testament. The letters that follow weren't written to scattered individuals trying to figure things out on their own, were they? They were written to churches, real communities learning how to live out their faith together, which means that this matters.
If the church is central to what God is doing, then it's important that we understand what the church is meant to be. And how we are meant to live as that people. Because the church isn't just somewhere we go, it's who we are together. Now, last week we celebrated Easter. We celebrated that Jesus is alive, that death does not have the final word, that hope is not buried, it rises.
But the question that comes right after Easter is this: Now what? Or as our title for our series asks, "So what?" What does resurrection actually do in a person's life, and what does it do in the life of the church? What does it look like when resurrection moves from something we celebrate to something that we live together? Because Easter was never meant to just be a moment. It was meant to be the planting of something new, a seed that was placed into the soil of the world.
A seed that at first might seem small or even hidden, but carries within it the power of new life. And that's exactly what we see here in this passage. Not just people believing in the resurrection, but people being reshaped by it. And as their lives were reshaped, they became the first to carry and plant this new life into the world. Sowing the seeds of what the church would become.
And as those seeds took root, what had been planted began to grow into something visible, a community shaped by that same new life. What God planted through them began to take the visible form of a community marked by deep commitment. Verse 42 says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. These early believers weren't just gathering, they were committed to learning and being shaped. At the very top of that list was the apostles' teaching, and that's not accidental.
It comes first because everything else in their life was shaped by it. This is what nourishes the roots, what feeds the life that God has planted and allows it to grow strong. The word of God wasn't just one part of their life, it was the foundation of all of it. From what we see in Acts 2 and throughout the rest of the book, the apostles were consistently teaching about Jesus from the scriptures, helping people understand who he is and what he has done. And what's striking is this: even in a Spirit-filled church, they didn't move away from the word.
They were drawn deeper into it. Because sometimes we tend to think of the Spirit and the Word as if they're kind of separate things. But in reality, the Spirit leads us into the truth, not away from it. When the Spirit is at work, there is a growing hunger to know God through his Word. And we see this pattern again and again in Scripture in moments of renewal, like in Nehemiah 8.
The people return to the Word, listening and learning and being shaped by it. And the same is true in the life of Paul, right, the apostle. Few people were more led by the Spirit than him, and yet his ministry was always grounded in teaching. Everywhere he went, he opened the scriptures, he explained the gospel, he urged others to hold firmly to sound teaching because there's no substitute for it. Healthy churches are formed by healthy teaching.
They're nourished by truth. They are shaped by the storey of Jesus. And healthy churches also understand that the Spirit and the Word are never separated. They belong together. The Spirit does not lead in ways that contradict Scripture, and Scripture helps us to discern and test the leading of the Spirit.
They don't compete. They work together to keep the church grounded and growing in truth. So healthy churches don't just hear the Word occasionally, they feed on it. Now, what else do we learn about the church from this passage? What else were they devoted to besides the apostles' teaching?
Luke tells us they were devoted to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. Now, fellowship wasn't just a casual connexion or occasional interaction. It was shared life. Their commitment to one another was real and it was costly. They didn't just meet together, they belonged to one another.
And it's worth noticing that what we often call fellowship today often falls very short of that. At times today it can just mean a brief catch-up after a service or a planned time labelled fellowship that really just means socialising or hanging out together. And those things aren't wrong, but they are a much smaller idea than what Luke is describing here. The breaking of bread, of course, points to shared meals, but also to the Lord's Supper. In other words, their faith wasn't only something that they thought about, it was something that they practised together around tables, in homes, in everyday moments.
They remembered Jesus and they centred their lives on him. And we also read that they were devoted to prayer. It was not something that they just did as a last resort. Prayer in the early church was not confined to a moment or to a place. It was a rhythm of their entire life together.
They prayed in the temple and in homes. They planned times of deep intercession and in spontaneous moments as needs arose. They prayed as they walked along the road, as they encountered the sick and the suffering, before they preached, and they listened. In seasons of persecution and in seasons of peace, They prayed over meals, giving thanks for daily provision. They prayed in gratitude for the forgiveness of sins, in songs of praise, and in simple petitions for God to meet their everyday needs.
In other words, prayer wasn't something that they added to their life, it was how they lived their life. And this reminds us that a healthy church is a praying church. The early believers had very few earthly resources at their disposal. But that did not limit their impact. What they lacked in human strength, they received through dependence on God.
Through prayer, they drew on heavenly resources that no opposition could take away. And it was this continual and dependent prayer that God used to shape them, to sustain them, and to send them into the world with power. The picture that is forming for us from learning about the Acts church is of a community that is deeply rooted in God and deeply connected to one another. Today, many churches have small groups, sometimes called life groups. They have a ministry of them which is designed to help people learn how to do life together as believers, and that's a good and important aim.
But what we see in Acts is even more immediate and integrated than that. The early church didn't need to create spaces to learn how to do life together because they were already living it. Their connexion wasn't scheduled or occasional, it had already been planted deep into the soil of their shared life in Christ. So let's move to verses 44 and 45. All the believers were together and had everything in common.
They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. It's one of the most striking pictures in the New Testament, don't you think? These people shared what they had, cared for one another's needs, and held their lives with open hands. Why?
Because the resurrection changed how they saw each other, and it changed the reality that they believed they were living in. They no longer saw themselves as isolated individuals; they saw themselves as a people. If Jesus is still dead, then life is limited, resources are scarce, security has to be protected, and ultimately it's every person for themselves. But if Jesus has risen, then everything shifts. Now death is not the end, fear is no longer the driving force, and identity is no longer rooted in what you have but in who you belong to.
So they begin to see each other differently. They are no longer just individuals trying to survive, they are people who have all been forgiven. They are people who have all been met by grace, and they are people who have all been given new life. And that creates a new kind of belonging. Because of the resurrection, they don't just share beliefs, they share a new identity.
They are now a people, forgiven together, raised to new life together, and held by the same Lord together. And when that becomes real, it becomes very difficult to hold tightly to your life as if it only belongs to you. So what we see happening in the Acts church is generosity that flows not out of obligation but out of belonging. They don't give because they're told to, they give because they no longer see a sharp line between mine and yours.
Luke makes this visible in the way that the early church lived. He highlights how they responded to the needs among them so that no one was left overlooked or alone. Possessions were still real and private ownership still existed, but something had shifted in their hearts. They no longer treated what they had as something to be guarded, but as something to be shared. In fact, Luke says that no one claimed that any of their possessions was truly their own.
These were people so shaped by grace that they began to say, We don't need to hold tightly to what we have if it can serve someone else. Their giving was free and voluntary and sacrificial, not out of pressure, but out of a deep awareness of what they themselves had received in Christ. The resurrection doesn't just give them hope for the future, it reshapes how they see the person standing next to them.
Which means if we believe we've been given new life by Jesus, then we don't just stand next to each other, we belong to each other.
The church is not just a place that we attend, it's a people we belong to, and not because we choose each other— some of you might be saying, "That's true"— but because Christ has brought us together. This isn't a random accident that we're all together. Grace doesn't just connect us to God, it connects us to one another, which brings us to the last part of our passage. "Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people.
And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." In the early church, we see that the connexion with one another becomes visible in the rhythms of their life together. They were constantly present with one another, not occasionally, daily. Their shared life took shape in both gatherings and smaller, more intimate settings. They gathered in the temple courts for teaching and worship, and from house to house around tables, sharing meals and life together. Their faith wasn't lived at a distance, it was lived up close.
And that's not always easy, because real community means inconvenience, vulnerability, and sacrifice. But it also means support, shared joy, and that you're not walking alone. It's like roots growing beneath the surface that are intertwining and strengthening and holding one another in place. You don't always see it right away, but it makes the whole thing strong. And when the roots go down, when lives begin to intertwine, something starts to rise above the surface.
We start to see the results of the planted seeds.
And we see such things as the Acts 2 church saw. We see joy. They saw it in glad and sincere hearts. Worship by praising God. Witness, favour with people, and growth.
"The Lord added." Now notice that last part very carefully. "The Lord added." We don't read of a strategy for the Acts 2 church. Not a single programme is mentioned. There's no membership classes, there's no baptism classes, we don't read about a discipleship plan being developed, there's no budget talks on how much to save and how much to spend, and there's no discussion on how to make services more attractive to new people. Yet the church grew.
It grew because the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. In other words, God did it. So yesterday I heard from a church leader about how his church had prayed for years and years for some young men to start coming and attending their church.
And there was little or no result until one day a young man attended their church. This young man was looking for community and for support and encouragement in his faith, and he had left the church for a while, the church with the big C, and then he felt God calling him back to it. And he arrived at this church that had been praying for years and years for someone just like him to show up. The young man began attending regularly and then bringing his friends who were also young men. The church's prayers had been answered.
And as the pastor of the church said, the cool thing was, was that it didn't come about through any strategic planning on their part. They prayed about it faithfully, but it was God who did it. God who spoke to that young man and led him to that church. So our job is not to force growth. Our ministry should not be dependent on how many butts are in the seats on Sunday morning.
It doesn't grow from our budget or how much money we save for the future. And while we are certainly called to do ministry and to reach the lost, we don't successfully do that from our own initiatives, our own plans, or our own goals. Growth does not come from us working to fulfil our own agendas, and it is not the result of outreach that is primarily driven by trying to increase attendance on Sunday morning. Growth is not gonna come from decisions we make based on our own desires or plans for the church. Our job is to be faithfully planted, to stay rooted in Christ, and to live deeply connected to one another, to serve the community and each other with no other motive than to be the hands and feet of Christ and to love as he loved.
And we do this in dependence on the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. This is not ordinary effort or human strength. It is resurrection power at work in and through us. The life that brought Christ out of the grave is the life that sustains the church, shapes the church, and enables the church to bear fruit. So we remain planted, we remain faithful, and we remain available.
And when that happens, We trust God to bring the growth he alone can bring. Growth comes— becomes the natural result of life already at work. If we are truly planted in Christ, we don't have to manufacture fruit. God brings it. If we are being faithful to his mission, if we are staying rooted to Jesus as we reach out, if we focus on loving and serving others and entrusting God's provision, then God will bless that.
So what does that mean for us today as his church? It means that we are people who have been planted in Christ, rooted in community, and are growing into a life that we could never produce on our own. It means that this is not about building something impressive. It's about becoming something alive. It means we realise that most of the time when a seed is planted, you don't see anything Right away, the soil looks the same, the surface is still still.
It can even feel like nothing is happening at all. But beneath the surface, something is taking place. Roots are forming, life is beginning to take hold in ways that we can't see. And in time, slowly, quietly, but surely, that life pushes upward. It breaks through the soil, and what was once hidden becomes visible.
And that's what resurrection life is like. When resurrection life is planted in us, it doesn't always appear in dramatic or immediate ways. Sometimes it looks small, subtle, even unnoticed. But beneath the surface, God is at work reshaping hearts, forming community, growing faith, and deepening love. And in many ways, that is where we are as the church right now.
We are in a planting season. New ministries have been started, new rhythms are forming, seeds have been placed in the soil, but we may not yet see all that they will become. That requires both hope and patience, because growth takes the right conditions. It needs good soil— hearts that are open and receptive to Christ. It needs water— the steady nourishment of God's word and prayer.
It needs sunlight— lives that are turned towards Jesus and walking in his truth. And it needs care, faithful investment, encouragement, and time. And we have a role to play in all of that, but we must always keep in mind that we are not the source of growth. God is. And more than that, our strength as a church does not come from our activity, our plans, or our efforts.
It comes from being firmly planted in Christ himself. Because of the resurrection, we are not striving to produce life. We are living from the life he has already given. He is the one who brings the life. He is the one who causes what has been planted in him to take root and rise.
So our call is simple: stay rooted in Christ. Stay connected to one another. Stay faithful in what he has placed in our hands and remain planted in him, and trust that whatever resurrection life is truly planted, wherever that happens, something will grow. So the question is, what is God growing in his church here?
