Impacting a City (Acts 19.23-41 and Ephesians 1.1-2)

Introduction

 

When I was a boy, I used to really love maps. I could (and in fact did) spend hours on end with an atlas, memorising continents, countries, counties, cities, mountain ranges, rivers and oceans. Even as a young adult living in London, I found the A-Z road plan of our capital city almost endlessly fascinating. I know, I’m a bit of a nerd…

 

When we moved to Stockton, after 18 years living in Paris, we bought a satnav. The upside of satnavs is that it eliminated the stress of navigating with a map, which Kathie will readily admit, is not chief among her many gifts. That little device vastly enhanced our marriage! 

 

The downside of satnavs though is that they don’t give you an overall picture of the route you’re taking. You just follow the pink line on the screen. You don’t really know if you are heading north, south, east or west. All you know is that at the next roundabout you have to take the second exit – or more likely in my case make a U-turn because I wasn’t paying attention.

 

We lived in Stockton for twelve years and, in all that time, I never really formed a mental picture of the town’s layout. 

 

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a bit like a map for the whole journey of Christian living. It’s not like a satnav, just telling you what’s next; it’s the big picture all on one page in grand scale. You might call it a bird’s eye view (or better still, a God’s eye view) of him, us, where it’s all come from, what’s going on, and where it’s all going. 

 

Ephesians, especially chapter 1, displays God’s wise plan and purposes from all ages past, before creation, before anything existed, into all eternity for you, me, the nations, your family, the world, my cat, everyone, everything, everywhere. It is God’s grand design. 

 

It was written, as we saw last Sunday, to the young Christian community in Ephesus, which was one of the three most influential cities in the Greco-Roman world (along with Corinth and Rome itself). Rome was the powerhouse of political might, Corinth was the commercial and economic epicentre, but Ephesus dominated as a religious stronghold with its hugely influential pagan fertility cult. It was a kind of Mecca of the ancient world.

 

In Ephesus and in Christ

 

Paul addresses his letter in v1 “to God’s holy people in Ephesus…” Ephesus is where they lived and breathed; this city perhaps three or four times the size of Darlington; well over a quarter million people, with its huge amphitheatre, its bustling markets, its monuments and its many pagan temples.

 

You live in Darlington. Or not that far away. God has placed you in this physical, geographical location and it is no accident you are here. 

 

Just as they were “God’s holy people in Ephesus” the Lord has set you apart in your locality. He sees you as special. He has chosen you, he has marked you out as different, and he has appointed you to bloom where he has planted you, the specific location where you live and work.

 

But though the original recipients of this letter were Ephesians, they had a kind of dual citizenship. They inhabited two places at once. And, if you’re a Christian believer, so do you. Because not only are you in Darlington; you’re in Christ as well. 

 

“To God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus.”

 

In the first 14 verses of this letter, the expression “in Christ” or “in him” or “in the one he loves” recurs nine times. We will never fully appreciate what it means to be a Christian until we understand what being in Christ is. 

 

Many of us talk of Jesus in my heart, or Christ living in me. That’s true, and thank God for that truth, but the New Testament speaks far more about us being in Christ that it ever does of him being in us.  

 

And what that means is this; God the Father says of Jesus, “this is my beloved son, with him I am well pleased, I’m so proud of him.” And if you have put your faith in Jesus, you stand in the exact position of Christ. So all the affection and esteem and love and favour that the Father pours out on his Son is the affection and esteem and love and favour that he lavishes on you. Because you are in Christ. 

 

You come into all the manifold blessings of heaven because you are in him. We’ll dive deeper into this next Sunday.

 

There's a scene at the beginning of the film The Bourne Identity, where Jason Bourne (played by Matt Damon) has had his memory totally erased. He doesn’t know who he is, where he’s from, or anything about his past. And he’s driven home by a new friend. They get to the door of his appartment in Paris and she says to him, “So this is it, right?” And he says, “I guess.” 

 

And then he rings the doorbell with his name - no answer, of course. She says, “You're home now.” And when they go in, she says, “You recognize this?” He looks around a bit vacantly and says, “I guess.” But he doesn't remember any of it. They look at some of the things, and she starts holding them. “Yours. This is all yours.” And once more, he just says, “I guess.”

 

And for some Christians, that's how it is with our Christian identity. We haven’t yet grasped what God has made us into, we just don’t see who we are and what's ours. It hasn’t sunk in what an awesome privilege it is to be a child of God, adopted into his family, the apple of his eye, and loved, so loved.

 

If you’re a follower of Jesus, God chose you before you chose him. And when God chose you – it was not an arbitrary decision. He didn’t just look at a crowd and absently pick one over the other (like picking teams blindfolded before a football game). His was a settled decision before time began. 

 

I’ll say it again, the Father decided from before the foundation of the world to pour out his favour on Christ for all eternity. And, if we are in him, we get everything that is his. He didn’t choose you because you are good. He chose you because he is good. 

 

So being in Christ is not a matter of performance, it is a matter of position! The reformer Martin Luther put it like this; “If I examine myself, I find enough unholiness to shock me. But when I look at Christ in me, I find that I am altogether holy.” Or as someone else has said; “When I look at myself, I don’t see how I can be saved. But when I look at Christ, I don’t see how I can be lost.”

 

Well, Ephesians lays it all out in glorious technicolour, and we are going to explore that, line by line, over the next few months.

 

Every advance is contested

 

But first of all, we’re going to take a look today at how this church was birthed in the first place. 

 

Michael served us really well last week in describing this great city of Ephesus and its magnificent temple, one of the seven wonders of the world, and how Paul broke new ground, to establish a new Christian community there.

 

Where Michael left off last week, we saw a new church doing well. People were getting rid of their occult books and burning them in public. Acts 19.20 says, “The word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.”

 

I’ve been involved in several church plants in my life, and the one thing I would say is that it never goes quite like you expect it will. And sure enough, some time into Paul’s time there, just as the young church plant is putting down roots and starting to get established, it all kicks off. And in Ephesus, being this dominant religious epicentre, it’s no surprise that the pressure it comes under is religious, in fact demonic, in nature, as we’ll see.

 

In 1908 James Fraser went to southwest China and northern Burma at the age of 22 to preach the gospel, plant churches and translate the New Testament into the local dialect of the Lisu people. He left these shores knowing it would be a lifetime’s hard work, but he was full of faith and bursting with optimism and zeal. His story is told by Eileen Fraser Crossman in the bookMountain Rain.

 

When he got there, he started to learn the local language and found, to his horror, that the Lisu worshipped demons. And here is what would happen: he would lead a family to Christ and, the very next day, one would become seriously ill, and a few days later another would die, and the family would reject their new faith in Christ and go back to demon worship. 

 

And it seems that the Ephesus church plant, in this city also dominated by dark occult practices and pagan cults, had similar issues of demonic resistance. 

 

The former bishop of Durham Tom Wright used to say, “Wherever Saint Paul went, there was a riot. Wherever I go, they serve me tea.” 

Let’s read of one such riot, picking up where Michael left off last Sunday in Acts 19.23.

 

About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought in a lot of business for the craftsmen there. He called them together, along with the workers in related trades, and said: ‘You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business. And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. 

There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshipped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.’ When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting: ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!’ Soon the whole city was in an uproar. The people seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s travelling companions from Macedonia, and all of them rushed into the theatre together. 

Paul wanted to appear before the crowd, but the disciples would not let him. Even some of the officials of the province, friends of Paul, sent him a message begging him not to venture into the theatre.

The assembly was in confusion: some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there. The Jews in the crowd pushed Alexander to the front, and they shouted instructions to him. He motioned for silence in order to make a defence before the people. But when they realised he was a Jew, they all shouted in unison for about two hours: ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!’

The city clerk quietened the crowd and said: ‘Fellow Ephesians, doesn’t all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? Therefore, since these facts are undeniable, you ought to calm down and not do anything rash. You have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess. If, then, Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. They can press charges. If there is anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly. As it is, we are in danger of being charged with rioting because of what happened today. In that case we would not be able to account for this commotion, since there is no reason for it.’ After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly.

 

Of all the letters in the New Testament, Ephesians is the one which speaks about spiritual conflict, the demonic and the armour of God in the greatest detail. It’s no wonder, given this background.

 

The great 20th Century preacher Martin Lloyd-Jones once said, “There is no grosser or greater misrepresentation of the Christian message than that which depicts it as offering a life of ease with no battle and struggle at all. Sooner or later every believer discovers that the Christian life is a battleground, not a playground.” Have you discovered that yet? If you haven’t, then you will. And it’s best to be prepared.

 

I mentioned James Fraser and the Lisu people just now. Unsurprisingly, he became really despondent in his mission. Nothing in his training had prepared him for anything like this intense spiritual warfare. I mean, people were dying! 

He brought it all to God. 

 

He told himself that he should not lose heart, because the battle is the Lord’s. That’s what the Bible says. So, he prayed and fasted and asked God for victory, and for hundreds of Lisu families to come to faith in Christ and be shielded from the demonic backlash. He wrote home and asked the faithful little prayer group in his sending church to labour with him and persevere in prayer. 

 

The Bible says that every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Every tribe and nation and people… No exceptions. That includes this Lisu tribe. So he began to claim in faith the Lisu people for Christ. This went on for some time. 

 

Then God spoke to him one morning in his prayer time. Five simple words. God said to him, “The strong man is bound.” From that day onwards, whole Lisu villages and communities began turning to Christ - thousands - even some people that James Fraser had never met.

It’s in Ephesians that Paul says, “pray in the Spirit on all occasions.” It’s in Ephesians that he says, “Be alert and always keep on praying.”

 

Things aren’t always what they seem

 

On the face of it, this is a religiously motivated riot. Luke calls it “a great disturbance.” There is uproar that the great temple of Artemis, the city’s most iconic building, will lose its magnetic appeal. There is outrage that the goddess Artemis herself will be discredited and dishonoured. 

 

The mantra of this frenzied crowd is “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” But, as with all spiritual battles, there’s much more to this than meets the eye. Things aren’t always what they seem. There are hidden agendas. There are mixed motives. There’s crowd manipulation. Actually, it’s all about money. 

 

It starts with a silversmith called Demetrius. He has made a very comfortable living crafting idols of this fertility goddess. It seems he is at the centre of a growing industry selling little models, ornaments and nick-nacks. 

 

Two or three times a year, the city of Ephesus held a kind of fair for a whole month in honour of Artemis. It was a bit like the Edinburgh Festival, with live music and theatrical performances all around the city. Visitors came from all over and it turbocharged the local economy. Luke says that these Artemis souvenirs “brought a lot of business for the craftsmen there.”

 

But, because so many people are turning to Christ, this business is waning. Things aren’t always what they seem. Demetrius isn’t all that bothered about Artemis. But Demetrius knows he’s never going to be able to stir up a crowd to shout, “Great is the fortune we are losing by selling less of this religious tat to gullible tourists!” So he masks his real motive by whipping up the crowd into a religious fervour which spirals out of control. In fact, by v32, most of the people do not even know why they are there. But they are sufficiently agitated to shout and scream for two whole hours. 

 

Things aren’t always what they seem. This is no insignificant church plant like the little communities Paul

established in small towns like Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. Ephesus is on the way to becoming a large a resource church which, as Michael explained last Sunday, will go on (it is believed) to plant daughter churches in Colossae, Laodicea, Pergamum, Philadelphia, Sardis, Smyrna and elsewhere. This is a significant church in a strategic city. And Satan knows it. That is why this attack is so heavy.

 

Ending

 

The battles we face are no doubt more subtle, more opaque, than full-scale public rampaging and running amok. 

 

In our day it’s things like an expectation, a pressure, to wear rainbow lanyards or add pronouns on your work email. In the UK in 2026 the spiritual battle is things like being singled out and harassed for non-support of unbiblical and unethical ideologies. Welcome to cancel culture.

 

G. K. Chesterton used to say, “A dead thing always goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

 

Two tribunals in just the last two weeks have centred on these kinds of pressures for Christians working in the NHS. Thank God, they won their cases but only after many months of suspension, gaslighting, criticism, shaming and being told they are the problem.

 

Paul would later describe getting embroiled in this riot as like “fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus.” That’s what being caught up in this uproar felt like to him. It was ferocious. It must have been terrifying. 

 

Christians are like tea bags; it’s only when we get into hot water that you see how strong we are. 

 

The devil’s strategy is always a variation on the same old theme; to frighten us into a subservient silence. Satan doesn’t bother with a church that’s tucked away in a corner, irrelevant and deferential. A Christianity that just affirms and recycles the values of the surrounding culture is counterfeit. It’s a false gospel, which is no gospel at all.

 

That baying mob in Ephesus - let it remind you of another crowd driven to madness, as I end. A few years earlier, one Friday morning in Jerusalem, another crowd is stirred up to shout, “Release Barabbas! Release Barabbas!” 

 

Things aren’t always what they seem. That’s not a compassionate campaign to get an innocent man off death row. 

 

“We have no king but Caesar!” they shout. Things aren’t always what they seem. That’s not a patriotic declaration of allegiance to the Emperor Tiberius. It’s a smokescreen for what they really want; “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Crucify him!”

 

And so they did. But things aren’t always what they seem. That death was precious because it saves sinners and we commemorate it together now as we break bread together with thankful hearts.

Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 25 January 2026.

Four Priorities for Healthy Churches (Acts 2.42-47)

Introduction

 

When our children were small, we had a chart on the wall, and we marked their height on it from time to time. If you had kids, many of you will have done the same. Our children always looked so disappointed, crestfallen even, if the mark was the same as the week before and they hadn’t grown at all for seven whole days. 

 

Physical growth is usually a bit more gradual than that. But there isn’t anything particularly strange about a child getting taller is there? Everyone knows that if a child is fed a healthy diet, he or she will naturally grow bigger.

 

It’s the same with spiritual growth as a disciple of Christ. Church leaders often get fixated with numbers turning up on a Sunday, but the only number Jesus is counting is the number of disciples. 

 

Every follower of Jesus should be growing in love and faith and wisdom and maturity, year on year. 

 

It’s the same with churches too. Healthy churches grow. Sick churches don’t. Sick churches get weaker and eventually die. You can drive round some of our villages and towns in Britain today and see chapels and churches, once vibrant centres of spiritual life, now converted into homes, community centres, shops, even temples for other gods, sometimes just vacant and dilapidated, with boarded-up windows and graffiti. 

 

And you know why? Revelation 2 and 3 says that Jesus shuts down churches that lose their first love, or that no longer contend for the truth. It’s not the demonic that closes churches down, Jesus does.

 

Because spiritual health really matters to him. When people saw Jesus get upset in the temple they remembered the scripture, “Zeal for your house consumes me.” He still burns with the same passion for the purity and health and strength of his church. 

 

Never forget, Jesus could close King’s Church Darlington down and, if we neglect our love for him and abandon our commitment to the gospel, in time, he will, and he should. So it literally is a matter of life and death for us to examine where we measure up against the standard God sets for the local church in the Bible.

 

Today, I want to take a look with you at the church described in Acts 2.42-47. It’s the earliest ever description of a local church. And it portrays a Spirit-filled community where people gather regularly both publicly and in their homes. 

 

Let’s read what it says. 

 

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 [that’s the public space]. They broke bread in their homes [and there’s the smaller group] 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.

 

Question: Is this just a description of what one church was like ‘way back when’? Or is it in some way a prescription for what all churches should be like? What do you think? 

 

In other words, is this passage just a curiosity, like a faded, black and white photo from the past? Or is it more like a template, a full-colour vision of what every church should aspire to be in the power of the Holy Spirit? 

 

Verse 42 shows that this living, breathing, energetic congregation had four key priorities. It says that those Christians “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” 

 

I believe that every church in every age must reproduce these four things if it wants to be healthy and therefore growing. And I believe that growth is maximised when we, like them, are in the habit of gathering in a large group, and also in small groups.

 

Everything else in this passage (the awe, the signs and wonders, the selling property, the giving, the gladness, the public favour, the conversions and the numerical expansion) flows out from v42. So we’re going to look at each priority in turn this morning. 

 

But first, notice three little words that slip in almost unnoticed at the beginning. “They devoted themselves...” To devote yourself means to pour yourself into something or to be dedicated... Another version says, “They committed themselves.” Another says, “They continued steadfastly.” You might say, they were “all in.” This church was serious, full-on and up for it. 

 

A church leader from the American Midwest, where winters are severe, used to apply what he called the 20/20 test for the members of his church. He would say, “Unless it’s 20 degrees below zero outside or unless there are 20 inches of snow on the ground, I am absolutely counting on seeing you here on Sunday. If you are not ready to commit yourself to that extent, then here’s a list of a dozen really good churches in this city. I encourage you to join one of those instead. God bless you.” 

 

That’s pretty hardcore and I’m not suggesting we adopt that approach at King’s, but I hope you are devoted to the Lord and that you prioritise involvement in your local church as a way of expressing that. 

 

If you’re here today because you’re looking for a church and you haven’t decided where you should settle down, you’re really welcome, take all the time you need and be our guest. I always say, “go where you grow” and if you find you’re growing in faith here, maybe this is the best fit for you.

 

If King’s is your spiritual home – that’s great. The biblical benchmark is “they devoted themselves” so I urge you and appeal to you to be a consistent worshipper and a committed partner. I would love you to use your spiritual gifts to help build up the church’s life and be a regular giver, to be all in. I hope that’s the way you see it too.

 

1) The Apostles’ teaching

 

It is significant that the first priority for this dynamic church is teaching. 

 

Note that the curriculum referred to is quite specific. It’s not just the hottest fads and self-help bestsellers. Charles Spurgeon used to say, “Don’t blame the sheep for eating nettles. Give them some grass!” Nettles maybe stands for trash entertainment, tabloid scandalmongering, celebrity gossip, social media drivel, the latest worldly ideas and secular values. 

 

The teaching they devoted themselves to is the apostles’ teaching, that is to say the teaching of the twelve chosen by Jesus to be with him, to listen to him, to be eyewitnesses of his resurrection and to receive authority from him. They transmitted Jesus’ words orally at first and then wrote it down to form the New Testament.

 

Jesus never said, “The words I speak to you are very interesting.” He said, “The words I speak to you are spirit and they are life.” 

 

On a scale of one to ten, one being not at all and ten being very much, how devoted do you think you are to taking on board the teaching of Scripture? Would you say you devote yourself to sound Bible teaching like they did? 

 

After decades of being a Christian, I’m realistic enough to know that some of us here won’t have read a single line from God’s word this week and a few of us probably never do apart from Sunday. Would you have to blow the dust off the Bible on your shelf before opening it? 

 

You are what you eat. Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days to make his 2004 documentary film, Super-Size Me. His bodyweight rocketed 10% in just 12 days, and he started suffering from depression, lethargy, mood swings and severe headaches. 

 

It’s really not surprising that what we eat affects our bodies. But what we give our souls to eat affects our spiritual lives too. And here’s what I’ve observed; the most fragile Christians, those most defeated by spiritual attack and crises of faith, are invariably those who open their Bibles least. 

 

This is why we place such a high value on expository Bible teaching on Sundays. But in Life Groups you can go deeper. You can ask questions about things you don’t understand. You can work through how God’s word applies to your life.

 

2) Fellowship

 

The next priority is fellowship. Kathie and I love it when we go on holiday and find another church somewhere. I never understand people who avoid church when they’re away from home. We have found all sorts of churches on our travels. Sometimes it isn’t even in a language we can speak, but there are two words that all Christians say in every language. “Alleluia” and “Amen.” So you can always praise God and know when it’s the end! 

 

But there’s a body language, there’s an understanding, there’s the hallmark of joy and love in a gathering of Christians. And, like a mobile phone picking up a Wi-Fi signal, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit starts when the Holy Spirit in me says hello the Holy Spirit in you, and we’re at home, it’s family.

 

In his book Autopsy of a Deceased Church Thom Rainer takes ten actual churches that had recently closed down and examines their stories to try and find any common denominators for why these churches became sick and died. 

 

Some focused too much on a golden age and were stuck in the past. Some had unhealthy attitudes about money. Many showed apathy towards prayer. But more than any one item, these ailing churches died when they focused on their own needs instead of others. They lost the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. 

 

Fellowship is not just friendship, though the church is a place for friends. It’s more than companionship or relationship. 

 

Sharing the fellowship of the Holy Spirit together is a profound thing. When they wrote the New Testament down they had to pick a word to describe what they saw in the Christian community. There were other words for sharing, community, friendship etc but the only one that adequately depicted what was happening was the word koinonia. 

 

It is the same word they used to describe the condition of conjoined twins, where two individuals share the same bloodstream and even some vital organs. In fact, so dependent are conjoined twins on each other, it can be very dangerous (and is often fatal) to separate them surgically. 

 

I can’t think of one instance in the New Testament where the word “fellowship” describes fun and hanging out. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot about friendship and joy in the Bible - and the early church was full of both - but that’s not even the beginning of what the fellowship of the Holy Spirit means. 

 

Verses 44 and 45 add some detail. “All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.” 

 

John Stott in his commentary on Acts qualifies these verses as “disturbing.” Maybe, but I think there’s something liberating and exhilarating about not being wedded to accumulating stuff. 

 

On dozens of occasions, I’ve known Christians voluntarily give away books, washing machines, furniture, cars, property – you name it – when they could have kept them or sold them for money. I’ve known Christians struggling to pay the bills checking the mail and finding an anonymous envelope full of banknotes for exactly the sum they needed. And, I’m sure there’s a lot more that goes on that no one ever hears about. 

 

And you can see how effective this fellowship was; by the time we get to chapter 4, it says in v34 that “there were no needy persons among them.” People shared their lives so generously, that no one wanted for anything.

 

No wonder pagan observers of the first Christians are recorded to have said, “Look, how they love one another and how they are ready to die for each other.”

 

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that being a Christian is just Jesus and me. There is in our reading about self-fulfilment. In fact, surprisingly, the Bible doesn’t anywhere contain the phrase “a personal relationship with Jesus.” That’s not to say you don’t need one – you do. But the focus in the New Testament is on the new community of people of God, joined together and members of one another. 

 

Here’s a test. When you read Paul’s letters do you read the word “you” as “you the individual”? Because most of the letters were addressed to churches. There are 44 “one another’s” in the New Testament. Again, this is why life groups are so important. Where else can you love one other, encourage one another, spur one another on, carry each other’s burdens, accept one another, build one another up, bear with each other and so on? There’s hardly time for that in the large Sunday gathering. 

 

Simon Bikersteth has done studies which show that 85% of people who join a church are unlikely to still be there a year later. Why? Why do so many leave? The answer is to do with fellowship. His research shows that that 90% of new members stick if they: 
1) make about six friendships with others in the church
2) belong to a midweek group 
3) learn to talk about their faith. 

 

I would say that Life Groups are the most single important way of growing fellowship and I hope that if you are not yet in one, you will seriously think about joining one. 

 

3) Breaking bread

 

The third thing (and I’m going to go quicker now) is what Luke calls the breaking of bread. Is this just a reference to sharing meals or does it mean the Lord’s Supper? The answer is… “Yes.” Because in the early church the two overlapped. They would eat meals together and then breaking bread and pouring out wine to remember all that Jesus did for them at the end. 

 

It says, “they ate together with glad and sincere hearts.” So there was a great atmosphere but dignity and reverence as well. 

Twice in this short passage Luke mentions eating food together – something they learned from Jesus, who sat down to eat with sinners and disreputable people. 

 

Verse 46 says, “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes.” 

 

So, as I said earlier, they intentionally gathered not just in the place of public worship, but also, more intimately, in their homes, in smaller groups, sometimes round a meal table. 

 

In our Life Group, we do a summer barbecue and Christmas party every year. We also share a simple communion together once a month, 

 

Communion reminds us about what is really important. At the heart of the early church was a regular habit of going back to the cross to remember what it’s all about. Jesus, in laying down his life, opened up direct access to God for us, won our salvation, forgave all our sins, defeated the principalities and powers, secured peace with God for us and much, much more. The cross says it all. It’s got to be at the heart. 

 

4) Prayer

Finally, “They devoted themselves to prayer.” As evangelist J.John says, “If we prayed as much as we worry, we’d have a lot less to worry about.” 

 

The health of a church is measured not in the elegance of its buildings or the effervescence of its activities but in the priority it gives to prayer. The earliest Christians “devoted themselves” to it. That was key to their spiritual strength and growth and without prayer we would not have The Acts of the Apostles in the form we have today.

 

In 1665 the bubonic plague resulted in an estimated 100,000 deaths in London. Within a year, the fearsome Great Fire of London swept through the city bringing large scale destruction and homelessness. Over 13,000 houses went up in flames. 

 

That year, there was a serious drought and the Thames was reduced to a trickle. The whole nation at that time was in serious moral decline and spiritual decay. The poet John Dryden wrote a poem entitled Annus Horribilis about the misery and suffering of that time. 

 

But on 10 October of that year, King Charles II ordered a Day of Fasting and Humiliation. The whole nation fell to its knees in repentance and prayer, asking God for mercy. That very night it began to rain and it didn’t stop for ten days.

 

Healthy churches put their trust in the Lord and pray together. And when they do that, God reveals his will, Christians get fired up, things happen and the kingdom advances. 

 

It’s great to join together in passionate, believing prayer – and we do that monthly of course but, once again, Life Groups are an ideal environment to grow in confidence in prayer. One of the members of our Life Group prayed out loud for the first time this week; it was lovely. I remember my first prayer out loud also happened in a someone’s living room. I was petrified and tere’s no way I would have stepped out to do that if Sunday worship was the only game in town. 

 

Ending

As I end, let me remind you that the biblical template is devoting yourself, committing yourself, with others, to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to breaking bread and prayer, both in this public space and in smaller groups. Are you up for it? 

 

Because the alternative to Acts 2.42-47 looks pretty miserable. Listen to the alternative that will not change the world.

 

Occasionally they spent some time half-listening to the apostles’ teaching. When they could, they met for fellowship, and for the breaking of bread and for prayer. Awe came upon precious few. To be honest, there was a conspicuous absence of signs and wonders. All who believed lived pretty separate lives kept themselves to themselves. They would hoard their possessions and goods and show indifference to any who had need. Day by day, they went about their own lives as individuals, perhaps drifting in late at the temple if they got round to it. They broke bread at home alone and ate their food with cold and empty hearts, giving token thanks to God. No one in the community really noticed them. And daily their numbers dwindled for few, if any, were getting saved.

 

The Lord is looking for people who are serious about engaging with his word. He wants to raise up a generous and loving community. He calls us to eat together, to share bread and wine together, to be Christ-centred, passionate, believing, praying people. Zeal for his house still consumes him. Are you in? 

 

Let’s pray...

Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 11 January 2026