Acts 2:42-47 "From Ordinary to Extraordinary"

1:08One evening, after yet another disappointing day at the office, Bob came home and damaged his car door. He was frustrated about that, so he broke the window. And that made him even angrier, so he picked up his car and was about to throw it when he noticed a young child sitting on a tricycle, staring at the car. At him in slack-jawed amazement. Bob, of course, is better known to us as Mr. Incredible, a superhero forced into a dull suburban existence in the classic Pixar movie, The Incredibles. One of my favorite scenes is when Bob comes home from work the next day to find the same neighbor kid waiting right there for him.

1:56And Bob asks him, Well, what are you waiting for? And the little boy sheepishly replies, I don't know. Something amazing, I guess. That scene is almost a perfect parallel for many believers in the church. You have older, mature believers, many of whom have seen God do great things, and they want to see God do great things, but for a variety of reasons, they have stopped expecting God to do great things. They almost look at younger believers with that same kind of cynicism and disdain. Well, what are you waiting for?

2:42And then you have younger believers who want to see God do great things, but they're not really sure if they should expect that. They almost feel challenged by older believers who seem to be asking them what they're waiting for, and they seem to sheepishly say, I don't know. Something amazing, I guess. Maybe you find yourself in one of those two positions. Perhaps you've been a Christian for many years and you've seen God do some great things and you expected him to do some great things, but not so much anymore.

3:21Maybe some of your prayers went unanswered. Your expectations weren't met. Your hopes for life just haven't been realized. Life has not simply turned out the way that you wanted it to. And somewhere along the way, not immediately, not overnight, but over time, you stopped expecting God to move. Or maybe you're a high school student, or a college student, or a young professional, and you've been walking with Jesus for a few years, and you want to see God do great things, but you have this nagging concern in the background.

4:06Like, maybe you shouldn't expect that. Like, maybe all that stuff was in the past. In the days of Moses and Jesus and the apostles. Well, friends, last Sunday we started a two-week series called Act with Expectation. How great was Micah's sermon? I am dumbfounded that a college professor can walk up here and preach like that. If I went into Micah's classroom and attempted to teach chemical engineering, that would be an abject failure. I don't even know why you would need to engineer a chemical.

4:56Don't they come pre-engineered from the plant? I don't know. But anyway, we're in this little series called Act with Expectation. We're going to be back in our Romans series next week. If you're new here, we went through Romans 1 through 8 last school year. And this year, we're going to go through Romans 9 through 16. That's right, all of that really hard stuff. We did judges this summer. We're gluttons for punishment here at New Life. But we're going to be back in that series next week. We wanted to start off the school year with this series, Act with Expectation, because we all need to be challenged to act with expectation. We do not want to get to the end of this semester, to the end of this calendar year, and say to ourselves, well, we did it. We made it through another few months of our lives.

5:49We got up and we read our Bibles and we went to church. And nothing extraordinary happened, which is exactly what we expected. We don't want to do that. We want to be like Peter and John in Acts chapter 3, the sermon text that we covered last week. These men, filled with the Holy Spirit, come across a lame man begging in the temple, outside the temple, and they acted with expectation. Peter and John knew that they could not heal this guy. They didn't have anything to offer him, but they believed that God could heal him.

6:26And God did heal that man. Not only could he walk for the first time in his life, he goes about leaping and praising God, which provided an opportunity for Peter to share the good news about Jesus' life and death and resurrection. And many people came to saving faith in Christ through that preaching. An extraordinary thing, all because two men acted with expectation. So, brothers and sisters, we all want to see God do extraordinary things. We want him to do extraordinary things in us and through us and among us. We want to see that for his glory.

7:14And Acts 3 reminds us that we can't make extraordinary things happen. That is outside of our control. Only God can do extraordinary things. But that doesn't mean that we sit back and do nothing. Is not what that means. Because God works through means. He worked through Peter and John to heal that lame man and to preach the gospel to people who became believers in Jesus. God works through means, and so we are called to act with expectation.

7:50And so today we're going to look at Acts 2:42 through 47, the passage that occurs right before what we learned about last week in Acts chapter 3, because this section lays the groundwork for acting with expectation. So here's what we're going to learn today. This will be on the screen. God uses ordinary people doing ordinary things to achieve extraordinary results. God uses ordinary people doing ordinary things to achieve extraordinary results. So let's draw our attention now to the passage where we'll see the first truth. God uses ordinary people.

8:36When you look at this text, who are these verses about? Well, in verse 44, if you look there, it is about all who believed. That is, all who believe that Jesus is the Son of God who lived a sinless and miraculous life, who died, was buried, and rose from the grave on the third day. And at this point, all who believe. Wasn't a large number of people. It's about 3,000 people. Now, if that sounds like a big number, you've got to remember, this is 3,000 people in the world who believe this good news about Jesus.

9:13And these people were ordinary. I mean, you've got the disciples of Jesus. You've got Mary, the mother of Jesus. You have Jesus' half-brothers who didn't even believe in him until he rose from the grave. You've got people like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea who helped with his burial. I mean, these people were fishermen. They were tax collectors. They were teachers. They were moms. They were just ordinary people. But, friends, God loves to use ordinary people. Take a look on the screen at 1 Corinthians 1.

9:53Paul says, For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

10:30Now, don't those verses challenge our thinking about the kinds of people that God loves to use? Our culture idolizes celebrities. People magazine and TMZ and companies like those exist solely to photograph and video celebrities and then to write stuff about them so that we can watch it and read about it. And it's big business. And we have all been discipled by that culture. So if Morgan Wallen mentions God in a song, if Kanye West professes faith in Christ, if Justin Bieber gets baptized in an NBA player's bathtub at midnight, we all lose our minds. Like, now everybody's going to become a Christian.

11:29But friends, it almost never, ever works that way. Why not? Because God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. He chose what is low and despised in the world so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. So thinking back to Acts chapter 3, after God heals this lame man, Peter and John are taken in for questioning by the religious leaders. And they take the opportunity to preach the gospel to those religious leaders as well. I want you to take a look on the screen at what happens next.

12:09Now, when the religious leaders saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. Isn't that awesome? These guys are just a couple of fishermen from a tiny town in the middle of nowhere that almost no one had ever heard of, let alone been to. So when the religious leaders heard them preach, they were astonished and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. They recognized these are just ordinary guys, but they've been with Jesus. That's the difference. You see, God uses ordinary people because then he gets all the glory.

13:07When people come to faith in Christ through an ordinary classmate or teammate or co-worker or neighbor, God gets the glory. So, my friend, are you an ordinary person? If so, take heart. God loves to use ordinary people like you because then he gets the glory. You do not have to be extraordinary. You just need to be with Jesus. That's all. So that's the first truth. God uses ordinary people. Now let's consider the second. God uses ordinary people doing ordinary things.

13:59Now, in this section, we find the ordinary people who comprise the church in Jerusalem doing ordinary things. And we can group those into three main categories. They worshiped God, they lived in community, and they gave generously. First, they worshiped God. Take a look at Acts 2:42. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Look down at verse 46. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts.

14:51These are just ordinary things. They gathered to hear God's word preached and taught. Gather to celebrate the Lord's Supper. That's why it's referred to as the breaking of bread, not just breaking of bread, eating together, but the breaking of bread, celebrating the Lord's Supper. They gathered together to pray. The very things that we gather together to do every single week right here, in this room, and all throughout the week. Second, they lived in community. We already saw in verse 42 they devoted themselves to the fellowship, but look at verse 46 again.

15:34They broke bread in their homes. They received their food with glad and generous hearts. Just ordinary things. They met together daily to enjoy fellowship, to eat together, to encourage each other and build each other up. The very things that we do each week in life group and in our men's and women's ministries, in college ministry, in the discipling relationships that we have with each other, these are just the ordinary things that we do each week. And then, third, they gave generously. Look at verse 44.

16:19And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all. As any had need. Just ordinary things. These people understood that God owns everything, that they are merely stewards of what God has entrusted them with. They believed that God would never leave them nor forsake them, so they didn't have to hoard their stuff. They didn't have to hoard their money, their possessions. They could share everything that they had, they could sell some of it and give the proceeds to people who were in need.

17:03Brothers and sisters, these were ordinary people just doing ordinary things. They gathered to worship. They lived in community. They gave generously. And yet, as we're going to see in just a moment, God did extraordinary things through these ordinary people doing these ordinary things because these ordinary people acted with expectation. That is the difference. They acted, they did all of these things with the expectation that God could and would use them to do extraordinary things. Now, you may feel like you're not seeing anything extraordinary in your life, and you may have concluded that the reason that you're not seeing anything extraordinary in your life is that you're not doing. Doing anything extraordinary.

18:03And so you think, I need to go to a conference or to a retreat of some kind that's going to promise me spiritual breakthrough in my life. You may think, I need to read a book or I need to read this certain author because they can unlock the key that I'm missing to understand what I need to understand to experience and see extraordinary things in my life. Some people will even need to tell you, despite what the Bible teaches, that you need some kind of a second baptism, that you need to be able to speak in tongues if you want to experience extraordinary things in your life. But, friends, from the scripture and from our text that we're looking at this morning, that's just not the case. These were ordinary people doing ordinary things that God did extraordinary things through simply because they acted with the expectation that God would use them.

19:05And so that is our problem. Our problem is that we either don't do the ordinary things that God says that he blesses, or we do those ordinary things, but we don't do them with any expectation at all. There is a great example of what it looks like to act without expectation. In Mark chapter 9. In this chapter of the Bible, a man brings his demon-possessed son to the disciples, and he asks them to drive this demon out. They can't do it, and so Jesus comes back, and I want you to see how Jesus responds, and then what happens next. Take a look on the screen.

19:52And Jesus answered them, O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me. And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked his father, How long has this been happening to him? And he said, from childhood, and it has often cast him into fire and into water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.

20:30And Jesus said to him, If you can, all things are possible for one who believes. Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, I believe. Help my unbelief. And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again. And after crying out and convulsing him, him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, he is dead.

21:06But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, why could we not cast it out? And he said to them, this kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer. Now remember, what did Jesus say when the man said that the disciples couldn't cast out the demon? He said, O faithless generation, unbelief, or what we might call a lack of expectation.

21:49Then the man tells Jesus, but if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. If you can. Unbelief, a lack of expectation. And then, after Jesus has driven out the evil spirit and the disciples say, why couldn't we cast him out? Jesus said, this kind does not come out by anything except prayer. Not a magical prayer of some kind, but a faith-filled prayer of expectation, acting with expectation, praying with expectation. You see, our problem is not that you and I are not doing extraordinary things. Things. Our problem is that we either aren't doing the ordinary things God blesses, or we're doing the ordinary things, but we're not acting with expectation.

22:44We're living in unbelief. But, friends, what if we started today? What if we started today? What if we came to worship on Sunday mornings filled with the expectation that God was going to transform our lives through the preaching and teaching of God's Word, through prayer, through gathering together to worship the God of the universe? What if we were so devoted to the fellowship that instead of retreating to our individual homes and apartments and bedrooms, we instead got together regularly for Christian fellowship to encourage each other and build each other up, to share meals together and pray together and to invite non-Christians in to experience that?

23:51What if we invited one lonely person that we knew? That classmate that's always sitting by himself. Himself, that co-worker who always eats lunch alone, that neighbor that everybody else seems to ignore. What if we invited one lonely person to come to worship, to come to our life group, to come to our house, to experience, to taste and see what it feels like to belong to the Christian community, the family of God? What if we gave so generously that there wasn't a single need among us?

24:39And what if we gave so generously that many of the needs in our community were met in such a way that everybody knew the churches in Bryan College Station are the ones who are taking care of these needs? They are the ones sacrificing, they are the ones giving, they are the ones serving. Friends, what if? God does extraordinary things when His ordinary people do ordinary things with expectation, when we expect Him to move. And so that takes us into that final truth. God does ordinary things.

25:20God uses ordinary people to do, what am I saying? God uses ordinary people doing ordinary things to achieve extraordinary results. I'm an ordinary preacher. You only get Micah a few times a year. Verse 43. Thank you. Thank you. I'll be here all week. Literally, I work here, so. Verse 43. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. Ordinary things. These people got together and did ordinary things, and the result was awe.

26:04They were in awe of what God was doing through these ordinary people. I'm sure that the signs and the wonders were incredible. But I bet it was even more amazing to see this diverse group of people from all of these different nations coming together to worship, to fellowship and live in community, and to provide for each other's needs. In some ways, that's more miraculous than someone being healed. Because think about it. All of those ordinary things are radically countercultural today.

26:45In a secular society, worshiping God is radically countercultural. In a lonely society, living in community is radically countercultural. In a materialistic society, generous giving is radically countercultural. These should be ordinary things, worshiping God, living in community, giving generously, those should be ordinary things, but in our society, they are radically countercultural. And so, when we do those ordinary things, it leaves the world in awe. Look at verse 47, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved.

27:45Friends, we live in a divided country. There is no doubt about that. But think about these people living in first-century Jerusalem. They are occupied and ruled by the hated Roman Empire. Their society, which was supposed to be governed by God's word, was torn apart by religious divisions. Pharisees and Sadducees, scribes and lawyers, all with different interpretations. There were ethnic tensions all the time, Galilee and Samaria and Judea. And yet, Luke can testify that the early church, these ordinary people doing ordinary things, Things, they had favor with all of the people. Outsiders looked at them, and even if they didn't believe that Jesus was the Son of God who rose from the dead, they looked at those people and said, Wow, what is going on there?

28:46They respected them so much that they said, I wonder what this Christian faith is all about. I wonder why these people live like they do. I wonder what they believe. I want to find out. And so they did. And the result was that every single day, people were coming to faith in Jesus Christ. Every single day, people were being saved from the power and the penalty of sin. They were being brought out from darkness to light, from death to life. Extraordinary miracles. The most extraordinary thing that can ever happen is someone being saved, and it was happening every single day.

29:34All because ordinary people did ordinary things and they acted with expectation. And so maybe you came today because you know a Christian here in this room, or perhaps several Christians here in this room, and you are wondering about the joy. The hope, the peace that they have. Maybe you've seen or you've experienced a little bit of the community that they enjoy through the church. Maybe you've seen or experienced some of their hospitality or generosity. And you're wondering what that's all about.

30:25Well, friends, you need to know that all of that, everything that we do, is because of the grace of God that we have received in Jesus Christ. You see, we believe that God created all of us in his image and likeness to worship him and to know him forever. But we have all rebelled against him. We've turned and done our own thing. We've gone our own way. We have said, I will not worship and serve God. I will not obey him. I will be the God of my life. I will be the captain of my ship, the master of my destiny. Every one of us has done that. The Bible calls that sin.

31:08Sin is not so much things that we do that are bad. Sin at its root is a turning from God to the self and saying, I will be Lord, I will be master. We have all done that. And because of that, we all deserve eternal punishment. But the good news. Is that God sent his only Son, Jesus. Jesus left His eternal glory and throne in the heavens and took on flesh, and He lived a sinless life, a perfect life, the life that you and I are supposed to live, but don't. He took our place. He went to the cross and died where we should have died for our sins. He was buried, and on the third day, He rose from the grave, victorious over sin and death. And now anyone who turns from sin and puts their hope in Jesus Christ will be forgiven and adopted into God's family and set free from that life of sin and self to be able to live generously in every single way, just like we see here in Acts chapter 2.

32:27And so, friend, if you're wondering what this Christianity, what this thing is all about, it's all about Jesus. It's all about what Jesus has done. You can be a part of it. All you need to do is repent, turn from your sin, and put your faith in Jesus Christ this morning. Do that today. Don't wait any longer. If you're already a believer in Jesus, then I want to encourage and Challenge you this morning to act with expectation.

33:05Guys, what do we want? Do we really want to get to December? Do we want to get to Christmas break? Do we want to get to the end of this year and say, same old, same old? Read the Bible, went to church, did my homework, did my projects, but I didn't see anything extraordinary. I don't think you want that. I don't want that. And so I want to challenge you and encourage you to do the ordinary things with expectation. My hope is that God will revive your heart this morning, that He will grant you faith to believe that He can use you, He can do extraordinary things through you, an ordinary person, by simply doing ordinary things. I pray that you would begin to act with expectation so that if someone were to come and challenge you and say, What are you waiting for?

34:12you could respond with faith. I don't know. Something amazing, I guess. Let's pray. Father, would you forgive us for not acting with expectation for going through the motions of the Christian life for praying but not looking for the answers to our prayers? Would you forgive us for praying small prayers? Prayers that really don't require faith. I ask God that you would help us to pray big prayers this year. I ask you to help us act with expectation that you are moving and that you will move through us.

35:52Help us to believe that we are going to see extraordinary things, not because we're extraordinary people. Not because we've cracked a code or solved a formula or anything like that, but because you exist. You are the God of the universe. You have sent your Holy Spirit and filled us with your Holy Spirit that we might be able to do what you've commanded us to do with your power. I pray for the friends and the family workers, family members and the co-workers that we have sought to share the gospel with, but we've lost hope that they're ever going to come to faith in Christ. I pray that this year those people would profess faith in Christ. That this year they would be baptized. That this year they would begin following Jesus Christ.

36:46God, I pray that you would teach us to forsake the American way of life, of isolation and materialism, for a life of beautiful community and generosity that not only blesses the church, but blesses everybody that sees us and knows about us. Oh, God, fill our hearts with faith and help us to act with expectation. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, Visit us online at newlifecs.net.