28th July 2010

Acts 2: 42 -47 – The Fellowship of the Believers

• Interesting how the study of God’s Word is so strongly linked to fellowship.
• Breaking of Bread did not look like the ‘Eucharist’ that happens in most churches today and was instead a meal or ‘love feast’ as it was referred to later. Jude 1:12.
• A Rabbi who lived around one hundred years after this event describes how the Jews of the 1st Century saw the connection of the teaching and the meal;
• If there is no meal there is no [study of] Torah, and if there is [no study] of Torah there is no meal. Rabbi El’azar Ben-‘Azaryhan
• It’s all about intention; being aware of God’s purpose and presence in both activities.
• Head knowledge about God is dead unless it is applied within our relationships. We cannot truly learn about God simply from teaching.
• Relationships are impotent in teaching us more about our relationship with God if we are not practicing His presence within our fellowship.
• It’s all about the Kavanah that we have that gives us what this passage is demonstrating to us; God’s power has the ability to transform communities.
• It has; but only if we make the connection.
• The connection between the Word and the Body.
• This is the first time that the disciples are really seen teaching as opposed to simply proclaiming the good news. Here they unpack [Didache] Jesus’ oral Torah.
• Why only now?
• Because only now were they filled with the Holy Spirit and their minds were being transformed. They could be guided more clearly and it seems they now finally begin to get it – Jesus’ message.
• It is the Holy Spirit who helps us make the connection.
• Without Him our lives will always see our religion in lots of separate boxes of things to do and think.
• It seems to me that the Holy Spirit brings flow and sense to all we do.