Over the years of my Christian life it has been my privilege to have had a whole series of friends who have been medical doctors and also leaders in the Christian church (indeed, some of them preachers in the Christian church). Watching them at work has reinforced to me a conviction that treating the physical body and treating the spiritual body of Christ is an ability to use medicine with many different parallels. Your physical physician needs to be skilled in observation. He needs to have logical powers to analyse the cause of your malady. He needs to have an understanding of how the whole body works. He needs to have an ability not only to diagnose, but to prescribe, and perhaps to encourage you with some good prognosis for the future. And the same is true with physicians of the soul. And the Church has believed almost from the beginning that both the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles were written by one individual who was both a physician of the body and a physician of the soul. A physician for the physical needs and a physician who understood the body of Christ – its health, its strength, its needs, and the remedies that were often needed to bring it back to full strength.

In that light, it is a very interesting thing that there are a number of little features, particularly in the Acts of the Apostles, that remind us of the way in which a medical doctor might work and think. For example, Luke punctuates the Acts of the Apostles with a whole series of progress reports on the life of the Church. Here in Acts 2:42ff. is the very first of them, and it is the longest of them because, in a sense, the baby has just been born. We are anxious to know how it is going to do. But he goes on in later chapters – sometimes simply in a sentence, sometimes by pausing the dynamic of the narrative – to explain to us what the spiritual condition of the Church had become, and very often just to give us a little encouragement. “Do you see,” he says, “how the Word of God was growing? Do you see how the Church was increasing? Do you see how God was spreading the Church, in His providential wisdom, throughout the world?”

And I want, as we look at these verses briefly this morning, to extend that medical metaphor just a little by suggesting to you that in these verses Doctor Luke is giving three things to us. He is telling us about the healthy condition of the new Church in Jerusalem, and he is saying, “I want you to notice what the Church is really like when it is in a healthy spiritual condition.” So in a way, first of all, he gives us a prescription for the Church’s spiritual health. And then, as a wise physician, he tells us some of the possible side effects that may be experienced in the Church’s life. And then, as we think about this passage, he gives us a prognosis about the healthy Church’s wonderful condition.

A Prescription for Spiritual Health⤒🔗

First of all, he gives us a kind of basic prescription for a Church’s spiritual health. What was it that made this church – this congregation of 3000 people in those early days in Jerusalem – so obviously a model church, despite all the problems that soon would arise? You would almost expect a physician to say, “There are two things that are most essential: How is your diet, and are you getting enough exercise?” This is exactly what he does. He begins by describing the new Church’s diet. They were being fed a most wonderful diet of the ministry of God’s Word. We are told in vs. 42 that “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.” They became addicted to the glorious good news about Jesus Christ and to all the different ways in which it would work out in their lives. I have no doubt they said to the apostles, “You were with Him those three years and you were with Him those forty days between His resurrection and ascension – tell us everything you possibly can that Jesus told you to tell us!” The Church was wonderfully strong because they were being nourished and fed on this diet of the ministry of God’s Word.

That was something actually that continued right through the Acts of the Apostles. For example, when the apostle Paul was in Ephesus, do you remember how he hired the lecture hall of the philosopher Tyrannus? Probably during the siesta period, when nobody could think or talk philosophy – between the late morning and the mid-afternoon. And day after day, for a period over two years, the apostle Paul taught the people of God the Word of God.

And actually, when you look back on the history of the Christian Church to the great days of revival, to the great days of the Reformation, one of the things that is so obvious is the strength of the diet of the teaching of God’s Word that God’s people were being nourished by. As was once said about John Bunyan: If you had done a blood test on him and discovered in his blood what it was that he was addicted to, someone said that you would discover that his blood flowed Bible. It was this that made God’s people strong: The Bible, the Word of God, became part and parcel of their basic instinct about how to think about God and about themselves and about the needs of the world. And it was this that transformed the churches of our nations in the past. And I suppose one of the questions that Doctor Luke is prescribing for all future spiritual physicians is to remind them to always ask the question: What kind of diet are you on to enable you to live a strong Christian life?

But also: Are you getting any exercise? And you see the exercise they were getting. They were devoted, yes, to the apostles’ teaching, but “to fellowship” and “to the breaking of bread” (which I take here to be a reference to the Lord’s Supper) and “the prayers” (to the worship). They were being exercised spiritually as they ministered to one another. They were being encouraged spiritually as they were so frequently apparently reminded of the dying love of Jesus for them, that they were ransomed – not with bulls and goats that they had seen in the temple, but with the precious lifeblood of Christ, the Lamb sacrificed without blemish.

And the fascinating thing is that there was nothing else. The Christian Church today in the 21^st century is crying out for strategies, for plans, for new things, for gimmicks that will help us to make an impact on the world. And the one thing that we so constantly seem to miss is the basic questions: What is the diet of God’s Word in our lives like? To what extent do we share in the fellowship and in prayer? To what extent are we devoted to one another?

And do you see what the result was? The result was, Luke tells us, that awe came upon every soul. Awe came upon every soul!  Don’t you feel we sometimes touch that in our worship services (i.e. a moment ago in these various songs that were sung by us) as we extol the Lord in our praises? There is something of a sense of the awesomeness of our God – the beautiful, joyful, awesomeness of our God descends upon us! And people noticed! People noticed that there was something awesomely heavenly about this fellowship. And what was their strategy? Their strategy was simply to be the Church. When the Church becomes a Church like this, awe falls on every soul, and men and women in the world begin to search and question and seek and ask, and by God’s grace (as we notice here), find Jesus Christ.

The Possible Side Effects←⤒🔗

Now, hold that thought for a moment – Luke’s prescription for a healthy Church – because he now slips in just a word about the possible side effects. Nowadays, when you go to the pharmacist and you get your little bottle of pills or medicine, there is this huge booklet that comes with it that you dare not read or you may never take the medicine! Or when it is being advertised on television, do you notice that the voiceover suddenly goes at 100 miles an hour when it starts telling you of all the nasty things that can happen to you as a result of taking this medicine? It is intended to heal, but there are possible side effects. And do you see the side effects here? Verse 44: “All who believed were together and had everything in common. They sold their possessions and belongings and distributed the proceeds to all as any had need…They opened their homes and they received their food with glad and generous hearts, and they were full of praise for God.”

What is Luke saying? Luke is saying that when the Church is really the Church, our lives are turned upside down, inside out, right-side up. And when the offering plate goes around, instead of simply putting in our cheques, or our bills, or our coins, or our envelopes, the Church puts itself in. That would be something to see in a morning  service, wouldn’t it? Somebody struggling to get themselves into the offering plate! But can you imagine what it would mean if, with whole-heartedness, each of us took our favourite photograph of ourselves – the one that really shows you at your best – and we put that into the offering plate and said, “All I have, all I am, all I possess – it is yours.”

It is not that these Christians denied the right of personal property. It is very obvious in these opening chapters that they still had their own possessions. But something wonderful had happened to them: and that was that they had given themselves unreservedly to the Lord, and so they gave themselves unreservedly to one another.

And [notice] the result. Notice this, because Luke uses exactly the same expression about the infant Church as he had used in Luke 2 about the twelve-year-old Jesus: “He grew in favour with God and men.” Now, that does not mean to say people were all being converted and that people all loved the Church – some of them hated the Church.  But they could not stop themselves recognizing that there was something supernaturally wonderful about this community of people. There was great favour upon them, because there was a consistency between the glorious message they proclaimed – that Jesus had forgiven their sins, that He was raised from the dead, that He was Lord of their lives – and how they lived. Their lives gave flesh and blood expression to the truth of the gospel! And when that begins to happen, the world sits up and takes notice.

A Wonderful Prognosis←⤒🔗

That is why the third thing you notice in these verses is Luke’s wonderful prognosis for the Church’s future. As he brings the passage to a conclusion, he gives us this wonderful prognosis for such a Church’s future: as they praise God and have favour with all the people, the “Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

And all it takes is for the Church to be the Church. Last year we were being told in the evangelical media that Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ was “the greatest evangelistic instrument since the days of the apostles.” I read that with my own eyes, and I thought to myself, “What about the Church? Do you really mean to say that God will do something through a movie that He will not, cannot, and has not done through the Church?” And yet, so often in our modern world we become blinkered to the real instruments that God wants to use to bring His glory and His grace to the world. For the Church simply to be so amazingly radical and clear thinking as to say, “From now on, we will just be the Church, and we will see God’s blessing poured out upon us.”

I have a little theory (it is one that I have developed as an observer of the life of the American Church). Perhaps I can put it in a kind of a drama. Here in the 1^st century is Jacob, and he meets his friend Benjamin. Benjamin says to him, “Jacob, I left a message on your cell phone last Sunday night at 6:30, and you weren’t there.” Jacob says, “Sorry Ben, I was actually out.” Benjamin says, “Can you come around to our place Sunday night around 6 O’clock? We have got some fantastic olives.” Jacob kind of fiddles a little and says, “That’s very kind of you Ben, but actually we are booked up.” Benjamin exasperatedly says, “But this is the third week in a row! Where are you on Sunday?” Somewhat nervously (because he does not know what to expect), Jacob says, “I was at church.” “You were where?” “I was at church.” His friend goes away and says, “What has happened to our friend?” And then he begins to discover that there are hundreds of friends like this with messages on their cell phones with declined invitations.

What is the strategy? Actually, the Church has the keys in its own pocket, and all it needs to do is take the keys out of its pocket. You do not need to be eloquent; you do not need to have a rare gift of evangelism. My theory (and it is only a theory) is that if the Church became the Church like this – addicted to the Word of God, to fellowship together and time for fellowship together, and prayer and worship – we would scarcely need any other gift. If that were true of all the churches around this city and of all the churches around the USA – no strategy, just worship – the cities of this nation would be reverberating with the world’s witness to what God was doing among His people. The great sadness is that the 21^st century Church has all the keys in its pocket, and it is looking for something else to open the door.

The early Christians believed that what would topple the temples of the ancient world was their worship. And exactly the same is true today. Isn’t that something? It is great that Luke gives us these wonderful expressions that teach us how the Church will be spiritually healthy, but I recognize and you recognize that it is also a call to reprioritize the whole of my life around the worship of God and the fellowship of God and the ministry among God’s people, which will turn us more and more into the kind of Christian community that will actually make the world ask the evangelistic questions and give us an opportunity to point them to Jesus Christ and the privileges of belonging to Zion.

Fading is the worldling’s pleasure,
All his boasted pomp and show;
Solid joys and lasting treasure
None by Zion’s children know.
Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken, John Newton, 1779.

Oh brothers and sisters, let us be Zion’s children, and by God’s grace, be for His glory a church something like this. May God give us grace so to live together.