Fellowship Of The Believers

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Great to have you here today, and it's great to celebrate today. We are celebrating five youth in our congregation who are going to be giving testimony of their faith. And one thing I want to get straight, it's in the traditions in many churches, it's called confirmation, and that's a good word because it's about confirming their faith, but they are not getting confirmed. I know that sounds, it's like, what? No. They are confirming their faith. They are giving testimony of their faith today. It's not like something's going to happen to you, that I'm going to do something on you that's going to change you. That doesn't happen. What has happened is over the last few years, you have been learning, mainly on Zoom this last year, right, learning in person and on Zoom about the life of Jesus, about God, the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, how he has worked in our history. So they've learned not only just facts and information about the Bible, but they've also learned to make this and appropriate this faith as their own. And I think it's just so appropriate that we have started a new sermon series today called Neighborhoods to Nations, as we are looking through the book of Acts, and we're starting with one passage in the book of Acts, Acts chapter 2 today, that talks about how the community of faith was so different. And I think that's important, because faith, for the five of you, is not simply a bunch of facts and a bunch of information. It's not like any other class that you've had, that you just learn facts, spit them back. It's a trusting relationship and a personal, risen Savior, Jesus Christ, who is very real, who is very right here, who will always be with you. And so that's why we're talking about that today, the Sunday after Easter, as we celebrate both the resurrection and how the church just exploded on the scene with something totally different. So we're going to read about that in Acts chapter 2. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers, and awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And 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. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. Wow. That's the first description of the church, and I think it's still an apt description for today, only that we may live into it. But the real question is, why does the Jesus movement, because it was a movement by the Holy Spirit, but it grew explosively through the first three centuries. Every historian who studies that era and the Roman world knows that it started from almost absolutely nothing and exploded to, after three centuries, had changed the entire Roman world. And if you look at it, you go like, well, wait a minute. It doesn't add up. It doesn't make sense, because actually, they had the worst public relations you could ever think of. I mean, the Roman Empire and the elites were not for it. So they had nobody in power within society. And the Jewish religious leaders were against it at the time, too. Nobody that had any authority or power or anything thought anything of this movement. And then they had no resources. They had no buildings. They had no one who endorsed them. They had no marketing campaign, by the way. And no sociopolitical power, no media to put out, no little catchphrases, nothing. The only catchphrase they had was Jesus is Lord, if you want to have a catchphrase. Fascinating, isn't it? So how did it happen? And boy, we'll quote later on somebody, Lucian of Samosata, they were fully misunderstood. So how in the world does this happen? And we're going to learn today the difference, okay? How they were different and why they were different. And I'm looking at the five of you specifically, Piper and Paxton and Reagan and Emma and Emma. We never knew that when we named Emma, Emma, there would be so many Emmas. My mom thought, oh, don't name her that. It was my mother's middle name, my grandmother's first name. And my mom didn't like it. Until we named our daughter Emma. Then she loved it, you know? And I, you know, there's a lot of Emmas, right? We didn't think so. But anyways, what's great about this is I want to see the difference that Jesus has made for you, lived out by you, and that becomes the why for everything that you do from now on. We're going to be talking about that a little. So first of all, how they were different, okay? I don't know if you recognize that, but this passage really shows how the first C...