Below are audio and text from a sermon preached at East End Fellowship on August 17th, 2025
When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
1 Corinthians 2:1-5
My heart is that this time is not a display of my preaching, but of the Spirit’s power, and that you would allow that same Spirit to shape your hearing. Let’s invite the Spirit to move.
[Pray to invite the Spirit]
We are at the start of the “Do the Bible” sermon series, where we will explore how we can live out our call to be the Church using Acts 2:42-47:
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 favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Over the coming months we will dive into the practical invitations in this passage, however one short phrase stood out to me: “All the Believers.” It’s easy to gloss over this phrase, yet that one word – “all” – is vital to our ability to live out the invitation to be the Church. Before we focus on the practical ways to live as the Church, it is imperative that we determine who we consider the Church to be by asking ourselves this important question:
“Who is ‘all’ to us?”
Take a moment to let that question settle in. When we think of our spiritual family, who comes to mind? Is there anyone we are unintentionally – or intentionally – not including in our “all”? Do we shape how we function with an awareness of “all”, or does it bend to the preference of certain demographics?
Many churches say “all are welcome”, though human nature often makes it difficult to live out, especially long-term. We are inclined to see and accommodate those most like us, and pass over or even neglect those least like us. Our best intentions fall short when pursuing “all” makes engaging church confusing, challenging, and costly.
To be the Church, I believe we must humbly confront the limitations we place on our “all” and take steps to ensure “all the believers [are] together”; when we do, we will see the Spirit move in ways we could never achieve on our own.
This time is about invitation, not condemnation; opening our eyes to opportunities rather than pointing out flaws. In fact, if we go into this series without humbly exploring who “all” is to us, we may do some amazing practical things for only some of the Church God is forming beyond these walls.
To that end, we can never invite the Spirit too much, so let’s invite Him again:
Holy Spirit, move in this place and in us; guide our ears and minds as we consider who is ‘all’ to us, and who is not, and bring wisdom to know how to respond. If there is anything you want forefront on our minds, we offer this space now to listen.
It’s easy to lament that we can’t be more like that first church, who embraced “all the believers” in powerful ways. I mean, they had it figured out, right? We can’t even get past that Acts 2 passage without seeing it immediately embodied:
One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer—at three in the afternoon. Now a man who was lame from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, “Look at us!” So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.
Then Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
Acts 3:1-10
This man was so used to being seen as only a beggar that he was caught off-guard when someone actually looked at him. Instead of being ignored or insulted, he was treated with dignity. Peter and James saw him as an image bearer worthy of love, and did not hesitate to not just welcome him into their “all”, but immediately incorporate him into their daily plans and their worship. He was not a project to fix and move on, but an important part of the Body that just didn’t know it yet. Not only was his life impacted, many – who had only seen a beggar – were “filled with wonder and amazement.”
If only we could be like the first church!
We have this tendency of seeing believers like those in Acts as “Super Christians” functioning at a level we could never attain. “They’re such great Christ-followers… I wish I could live like they did, but I can’t.”
Acts 6 reveals something unexpected: the Acts Church struggled to live this too:
In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. (Acts 6:1)
Last week Nathan pressed us into the idea of “doing the Bible” by digging into James 1, including verse 27:
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows.
Somehow they let Hellenistic widows slip out of their “all”; an entire demographic of believers was overlooked.
When it comes to qualifications for being “Super Christians”, they were checking all the boxes: filled with the Spirit, embodying spiritual disciplines, spreading the good news… by this point they had even faced persecution for the sake of Christ! Yet even this thriving Church was capable of losing sight of who “all” included.
This wasn’t a one-off. In Acts 10 we find Peter praying on a roof, and dinner was taking so long he fell into a hunger-trance where he saw a massive sheet covered in animals being lowered, and God saying, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
Peter defaulted to denying God’s request:
“Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.
While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon’s house was and stopped at the gate.
While Peter assumed this was a hunger-based vision, God was gearing up to confront his understanding of “all.” Peter’s life-long boundaries extended beyond what he would and would not eat to who he would and would not engage. The men mentioned in this passage were sent by Cornelius, described as “devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.”
Cornelius sounds like the kind of guy who would fit well in the Church family described in Acts 2; here’s how Peter responds when he meets Cornelius, his relatives, and close friends:
“You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?”
Peter would not have visited them were it not for the Spirit. In fact, in verses 19 and 20 the Spirit had to be blunt to get him to move.
The encounter shook not just Peter’s understanding of “all”, but the entire Acts Church, as we see in Acts 15, when after much arguing they gather a council in Jerusalem and finally, through the Spirit, tear down the barrier between Jews and Gentiles.
Well, mostly.
Peter, who walked with Jesus as part of his inner-circle and was directly called to “feed his sheep”, who was given a vision and miracle from God to show the Gentiles were part of the “all”, was still human, as noted by a condemnation from Paul in Galatians 2:
When Cephas (Peter) came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.
Truly embodying “all” is a work of God through us, not simply our best efforts. Our best efforts will always be at the mercy of our fears, desires, biases, conditioning, experiences, and everything else that shapes who we do and do not love. We all – including the Acts Church – are an imperfect people called to an impossible task of forging unity where unity cannot exist.
Fortunately, Jesus says in Luke 18:27, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”
Holy Spirit, move.
Church, unity is not optional; the call to live as “all the believers” saturates the entirety of scripture.
So, how do we “do the Bible” as “all the believers”?
I want to say more than I can in the remaining time, so I’ve got three quick points paired with prayer focuses, and will close with a resource. I’m confident the Spirit can do immeasurably more with this in and through you. Sound good?
