Again, this is just the last line of Peter's sermon in Acts chapter 2 verse 36, which says, Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart. And said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, and for your children, and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation. So those who received his word were baptized, and they were added that day about three thousand souls. 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. Let's pray together. God, I ask that you would help us today to hear your word, to receive it into our minds and into our hearts, that Your Holy Spirit would make it clear to us. And God, we would not simply hear it and tuck it away for another day, but that this would become the living reality in our lives. That we would be a people, a church, after Your design. That we would seek our gladness ultimately in Christ, and in the way He has designed His body to work. So help us today, in Jesus' name. Amen. A number of years ago, I think maybe like 10 or 15 years ago, there was a Christian bestseller that challenged believers to be more radical, away from our consumeristic, stagnant Christian life, and the book was called Radical. Another author wrote a book about the ordinary Christian life, God's just simple work over a lifetime of faithfulness and contentment. And I think it was a response to the first book, it was called Ordinary. Both were paperbacks, they served their purpose and they're probably not worth going back and reading again. But you know, both those books touched on aspects of the Christian life that we, I think, need to consider and apply in the 21st century. There is a radical component. You've been saved by God's grace in Jesus Christ. And therefore God intends to change everything about you. That's very radical. That's both terrifying and exhilarating. And so if that's the case, and it certainly is, then we need to be warned about the ways in which the cultural currents can suck us in. We need to be not conformed to the world around us, but transformed by the gospel. We kind of always need that reminder. Be a little more radical. And yet there is this extremely ordinary component to your Christian life. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and for the last 2,000 years, Christians have gathered, read scripture, prayed, taken the Lord's Supper, and applied our faith into all aspects of life. You should do some church history work. It's always a good thing to read and study a little church history. And what you'll find out is that Christians have basically been the same sorts of people for the last 2000 years. And so we do need to be warned against the folly of innovation, which there's always a lot of that. So both radical and ordinary are fitting descriptions of the Christian life. And I think very fitting descriptions of what we see at the end of Acts chapter two. So we're gonna look at what happens here and try to apply these same principles to our Christian lives. So that's why I titled my sermon, Radically Ordinary Christianity. And the metaphor, I'll help you work through this as a recipe. What we see in Acts chapter two is a recipe for radically ordinary Christianity. And it breaks down into six parts, and they all start with the letter C. So those of you that are note takers, this is my gift to you. So here, I'll say them, and we'll go back a lot, and I'll repeat these, so don't worry. Cheerfulness, that's number one. Commitment, congregating, communion, care, and converts. Now, that's a nice outline, and it's a good recipe. I encourage you just to do something with this. I think first and foremost, we ought to give thanks to God for the ways in which He's transformed our lives. None of us are finished products yet, but we should be looking back and say, wow, God has done some amazing things through some pretty ordinary practices in my life. So give thanks to God. And also, I think, give thanks for the community of Christians that we have here at Crossroads. Crossroads, I'm sure there's lots of things that we could do differently or better or change, there's always things to think about, but really I'm encouraged by the sense of community that we have that I think matches what's happening in Acts chapter two. So take the corrections where there are corrections and instructions where there are instructions as just a push to help us only deepen what God has already done among us. So maybe you need to grow here. I mean, maybe what you've never thought through is, well, what does it mean to sort of live my whole life as a Christian and to be a part of a local church? Maybe you need guidance on that. Acts chapter two, 42 through 47 is your pocket guide. Maybe you're a seasoned Christian that needs that little nudge that you've just grown a little too stagnant. You've forgotten to think through areas of your lives where you need to live a little bit more radical and you need to identify some places where you need to grow again. That would all be very good. So just listen today for something that you can put into practice. So the first C in my recipe for, not my recipe, I think God's recipe, for radically ordinary Christianity is cheerfulness. That's the end that we're aiming at. That's the result we're after. So it's one thing to look at a recipe, and in my mind, I'm thinking of the one recipe that I've looked at the most is the one on the back of the chocolate chip bag that tells you how to make chocolate chip cookies. And you look at that recipe, and it's one thing to look at it. It's a whole different thing to eat warm cookies, that's the result that you're after, right? So we start to, I look at the recipe because I want the result, right? So that's how we think about this. What's the end of following what God has put in front of us? What's the result? The result is what makes the recipe worth following and the result of radically ordinary Christianity is cheerfulness, cheerfulness. Look at verses 46 and 47. It says, in day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food, and that word could also mean nourishment, so both from the bread they ate in their homes and from what happened at the temple, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all people. That phrase, they receive their food with glad and generous hearts, that's the real heart of the passage. It's the thread that runs through attending the temple and breaking bread and praising God and having favor. All of those things are pointers at this main central idea of glad and generous hearts. So what do those words mean? I'm using the word cheerfulness. So here's a good way to unpack this a little bit. I use the English Standard Version, love the ESV, just use it for consistency sake. There are lots of other wonderful translations of the Bible. And sometimes, in order to get a more robust understanding of a particular phrase in the New Testament, it's a good idea to crack open those other translations and just see how they translated from Greek into English. So let me just read that phrase, they received their food with glad and generous hearts. I'm gonna read these out of a handful of other translations. And just to get a little sense of how their hearts were being changed by God. So the NIV and the NASB, the New American Standard, are very similar. They say something like, they ate together with glad and sincere hearts. The New King James Version, which is similar to the King James Version, says they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart. The New Living Translation says they shared their meals with great joy and generosity. The Christian Standard Bible, one you may not be as familiar with, but a good translation, a newer translation, they ate their food with joyful and sincere heart. And another one you may not be as familiar with, the NET, the Net Bible, sharing their food with glad and humble hearts. So just to put all those terms together. The hearts of these first Christians were filled with gladness, great joy, generosity, simplicity, humility, and sincerity. Doesn't that sound like a great life? That's the sort of stuff I want in my life. I'm using the word cheerfulness, because I think it kind of wraps all those up into one word, and it starts with C. Both those things worked in my advantage. But this is what God intends for us. Cheerfulness, gladness, simplicity, humility, sincerity, This is what God intends for the church to be. Right? So we saw in Peter's sermon at Pentecost that he preaches Jesus died and rose again and ascended into heaven and then he pours out his spirit on the disciples and so they begin to proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord and Christ. He's God and the Messiah. and He gives eternal life, He forgives sin, He grants grace. Peter calls people then to repent and believe, and we would ask them, well what happens to people who receive God's grace in Jesus Christ? What happens when people are filled with the Holy Spirit? What's the result of that? It's a cheerful community. That's the result. This is what God intends to accomplish through His gospel, working out in His people a cheerful community. And now we can get backwards here if we say, okay, we better work really hard to be cheerful. Don't forget that even the cheerfulness of our community is a gift of God's grace. Just peek at verse 47, and don't miss the emphasis here. They were praising God and having favor with all people, and, here it is, the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved. So who is it that makes the cheerful community? Well, it's God that does. As God gathers his people and cheers our hearts and unites us together, it's his production, it's his results. So just think about your life right now, and just ask this simple question, is it cheerful? You might say, well, no. Some people might say, yes. I think most of us probably say, well, sometimes. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Okay, but don't you want more? Wherever you're at, don't you want more gladness and generosity and joy and simplicity and humility and sincerity? Like, if that's what God has for us in Jesus, I want more of that. Well then, yes, you're gonna have to follow the recipe that God gives us to get there. Now, if you feel like there are pockets of your life that are chronically joyless, cheerless, overwhelmed, prideful, grumpy, fake, those are all kind of opposites of all those words, then you have to change the way you're doing things. It's just as simple as that. If God designs his community to produce cheerfulness in his people and you aren't having cheerfulness, then you need to say, well, what am I doing wrong? What changes do I have to make in my life? And maybe as we walk through the rest of these, you'll see some. And the good news is that God helps us and He guides us. So what we're after here is what God designs, which is cheerful Christianity. That's the result. All right, now to the recipe. So the second C is commitment. Commitment, look at verse 42. And these all with one accord, oh sorry, that's another verse. They devoted themselves, verse 42, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to breaking of bread and the prayers. And you could extend that, devoted themselves. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. They devoted themselves to the fellowship. They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread. They devoted themselves to the prayers. Devotion is a habit. that becomes characteristic of who you are. You don't get devoted to something over a weekend. It happens over months and months of consistent practice. And so the picture that we're getting here is not just what happened on the day of Pentecost, but what the church became known for. Remember, we actually saw this same concept back in Acts chapter one. In verse 14, when it says, all these were of one accord and were devoting themselves to prayer. So call devotion loyalty, practice, habit, or if it starts with a C, call it commitment. Cheerfulness in Jesus is the fruit of commitment. Now that is both radical and ordinary. It's radical because of what Jesus tells us commitment to Him looks like. He says things like you have to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him. You've got to lose your life to gain it. You have to forsake all to follow Him. You need to kill sin and learn holiness. You might need to make radical changes to your daily and weekly habits to be devoted to Jesus. It's just as simple as that. But it's worth it for the cheerfulness in the end. Right? If you have major hindrances to following Jesus that you can just easily identify, don't ignore those. address them, change them, get some help, because all you're doing is robbing your own joy that you could have in Jesus, if you just keep doing the things the way that you're doing things. So that's radical. That's radical. But this devotion also plays out in very ordinary ways. What sort of devotion do we have here? Well, it's reading the Bible, praying, gathering with the local church. That is so ordinary. I think sometimes we think that the only way that I'm ever going to be joyful in Jesus is if I sort of go max speed Christianity. I've got to spend all night in prayer. And then I need to be an expert in every aspect of scripture and theology. And I need to be at every church event with maximal engagement. That's the only people who ever get happy in Christianity. That's not the picture of Acts 2 though. Acts chapter 2 verse 42 is so, so simple. The real fruit of cheerfulness is born over a lifetime of simple habits. Look at verse 46 again, where it says, day by day, they were attending temple together and breaking bread in their homes. In that word attending, there in verse 46, in Greek it's the same word that's translated devoted in verse 42, but notice it's day by day. It is not possible to live at max speed Christianity day by day. You have to sleep. You have to eat. You have to work. But you can have ordinary habits. You can just come to church every Sunday. You can take a few minutes of serious prayer each day. A few minutes of Bible reading. Anyone can do that. And in my estimation, the most cheerful Christians that I know are the ones with the most simple habits. That's the recipe. So look at your habits. If you have really good habits, stay the course. Seek God's joy in them. If you don't have good habits, then ask for help. Like, your church family's here to help you, I don't know. Well, some people in this room have really great, excellent habits of Bible reading and prayer and fellowship with the local church. Like, just ask somebody how you do it. Learn from them. We're here to help each other along. Now, it seems to me that every Christian will, at some point, start to get a little angsty about the church, mostly because what we do is pretty ordinary, and, you know, ordinary things we start to get a little uncomfortable with. And so somebody will say, and there's whole groups that have built denominations on this, like, I just wish we could be like the early church. I just want to go back to the Book of Acts. And I say, amen, let's do it. Let's just read the Book of Acts, though, and see what they did. Like, we can. They were radically devoted to the ordinary means of grace. They were just committed people to the simple habits of Christianity. If you want cheerfulness in Jesus, you have to be committed. Second, or the, sorry, we're at the third C. Third C is congregating in our little recipe. They were committed, but they were committed together. Congregating means getting together. Notice as we read through this passage, everything is plural. You don't picture individual Christians in a long line going up to the apostles to hear their teaching. You picture a group of people sitting or standing to hear the apostles' teaching. And in verse 44, it says, all who believed were together. And in verse 46, they were attending the temple together. Radically ordinary Christianity is done together. We congregate. If you want to be cheerful with Jesus, or cheerful in Jesus, you need to be with other Christians. So I think verses 42 through 47 are giving us a pattern of the early Christian gatherings. This is like, we want to try to understand what are we supposed to do when we get together on the Lord's day? This is our guide. Notice first that they gathered around the apostles' teaching. The apostles were the eyewitnesses of Jesus' death, burial, resurrection, and his life. The apostles received a unique commission to pass on this information. They heard the teaching from Jesus, the Holy Spirit would bring it to their minds, and they would tell it to God's people. And of course, as the church grew and spread, as we'll read through the book of Acts, it was both expedient and inspired that the apostles would write down their teaching. And we still congregate today around the apostles' teaching. It has been preserved by God in what we call the New Testament, which is the eyewitness account of the apostles. So whether we're here for our weekly worship together or just visiting in a home, however we get together, it is normal that as Christians we congregate around the Word, with our Bibles open. Because this is where God speaks to us. This is where God leads us to have joy in His ways. So Christians congregate around the Bible. And? We congregate around prayer. Notice they were devoted to the prayers here in Acts 2.42. That could be a short prayer. It could be a devoted time of prayer in a congregational worship. It could be a dedicated time of intense prayer together, like when Christians meet, we pray. And we congregate around, it says in Acts 2.42, the breaking of bread. Now, I take that to refer to the Lord's Supper. It could just refer to regular eating, but I think it's Luke's way of saying the Lord's Supper. That remembrance meal of Jesus Christ within gathered worship. So here we are, 2,000 years and a lot of miles away from Jerusalem. What are we doing? We're gathering around the Lord's Word, devoted to the scriptures, we're reading them, we're listening to them, we're preaching them, we're praying together, we're taking the Lord's Supper. That is, wonderfully ordinary. And as we gather each week and we just walk these familiar paths, I hope it produces in you a sense of joyful rest in Jesus. Like just as He doesn't change, His worship doesn't really change from Acts chapter 2 to today. And that gives us comfort and peace and rest. But, at the same time, as it's ordinary, our gathering is radical. When you commit yourself to a local church, it's like joining a new family. Look again at verse 46, when it says, day by day, they were attending temple together and breaking bread in their homes. I think, at first glance, it's like, really? Every day? They went to the temple, which is where there was teaching and prayer happening, and then they ate together every day? That's pretty radical. Now, some of this is context. Okay, people in the first century didn't have cars. They lived in close proximity. The temple was probably a place where they frequented most of the week anyway for gathering or for teaching. It's where teachers taught. It's where people prayed. And lives were generally more communal. Houses were open. Tables were open. But when we zoom forward to the 21st century, man, we are a long ways from that, aren't we? Like we live really disconnected lives. Our homes, our work, our entertainment, our shopping, you can do all of it alone from the privacy of your home. And even if you do go out in the 21st century, the odds of running into somebody from church are slim, right? So when we think about how do I bridge this gap between Acts 2 and 2024, There's a lot there. There's a really big gap there. And so to follow this is going to be quite radical. What was ordinary for them is probably quite radical for us. So here's my challenge to you. How can you spend just a little bit of time each week, maybe even every day with your church family? It's a big challenge. Let me give you some ideas. You could leverage technology. We have this technology called an automobile that allows us to all live in different places. That's great. And it causes a problem. So let's leverage different technology. You could have a 15 minute prayer meeting with somebody over the phone. That doesn't take you any time, you don't have to drive anywhere to do that. We even have video calls. Now, you could carve out a couple hours of your week where you're going to go visit a different family in the church. Just to brighten their day. We see in Acts 2.46 that the Christians ate their meals together. Well, you can do that. You can invite people from the church over to your house for lunch or dinner or coffee or dessert. And again, don't be fancy. Just eat together. You can utilize our church building. It's basically empty all week long. If you're like me, sometimes I just go, I don't even know why. Like it seems weird to own a building for a couple hours on Sunday morning. Very convenient, I'm not knocking it, but you could just meet somebody here. It's open to you. If you don't have a key, ask me, I'll get you one. You could just meet someone here to read scripture together, because it's kind of a central spot. Or you could bring your kids here on a rainy day because you just want to get out of the house and go somewhere. It's open. You could even host a little prayer meeting for other people who get up early and drive to work. You just do that kind of stuff. Utilize our church building. You can also do ordinary things in life together. I know of people in our church that go grocery shopping together, people that watch football together, people that go out to coffee, people that take each other to doctor's appointments, and I'm sure the list could go on and on. Those are just a whole bunch of little ideas, but here's the point. The Christian community gets together for ordinary life. But it means a radical habit of self-sacrifice for the good of others. And so when we gather for serious, planned times of worship like this, or for casual, unplanned times of being together, God cheers our hearts. Now you may have noticed as I was going through Acts 2 42 that I left out one word. They were devoted to fellowship. I left that out on purpose because it's its own part of the recipe. Another word for fellowship is communion. And I'm not, don't confuse that with the Lord's Supper. Rather, when we say communion, it's that idea of belonging to a community, belonging to each other. That's the fourth C, communion. So characteristic of the Christian community is that we commune. Well, first we commune with God in Christ. So by faith you are united to Jesus, united to His death and His resurrection. That union with Jesus then results in daily communion with Him in a relationship of love through the reading of Scripture and of prayer. Like, the Bible just describes this relationship that we have with Jesus in very active, intimate terms, like abiding, or dwelling, or having fellowship with Jesus. So that's just part of our Christian life, is communing with God. Another part of that love relationship with Jesus is that it's shared in a community of Christians. So our attitude is, I will love you because you are loved by Jesus. So fellowship or communion in a local church is pursuing an ever-deepening friendship because we both love Jesus. So I think we see both of those aspects here in Acts chapter 2, both communion with God and communion with others. The communion with God component is a little bit of, there's a lot of connections to make, so just bear with me here for a moment, in verse 43. Verse 43 says that awe, or fear, came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. Notice the apostles are channels here. It is God who works through the apostles to do signs and wonders. And if you trace this idea of signs and wonders throughout the book of Acts, you'll notice that this is the pattern. God is doing signs and wonders through apostles. So it's God's work. What's the effect of God working signs and wonders? What's awe? It's literally fear. We might say, well, awe of whom? Fear of whom? God. So what was happening amazingly among the Christian community by the hands of the apostles resulted in fear and reverence and awe of God. So the community of Christians, then, is characterized by our reverence of God at His mighty works. Now, the regular working of signs and wonders was unique to the time of the apostles. So if we go, well, are we supposed to, like, get together every week and hope for some sort of cool miracle that makes us marvel at God? Well, no. No, rather, we marvel at the mighty works of God as we read the Word and see what God has done in the past, and as we share with each other the providences of God in our lives, the simple answers to prayer, sometimes even the big ones, the exciting ones. As you share good things that God is doing in your life, it should be causing all of us to look at God and go, wow, God is amazing, to be filled with fear and reverence and awe. And so as we stand in awe of God, we commune with Him. He fills our hearts with gladness. Similarly, we get a similar gladness when we commune with each other. Here's what happens. The more time you spend with one another, the more you will learn to love one another. That happens in all sorts of contexts. Now, certainly that means that when you do that, you'll have conflicts with people. But you also have resolutions. There will be mistakes. But there will also be successes. Like, the more time you spend with each other, there will be deeper friendship, fun memories, and I think if Acts chapter 2 is any indication, good food. You know, we usually lump all of those into the category of fellowship, and I think that's right. I think that's right. Fellowship is not this intense, radically committed Christianity. It is part of that, like together. Fellowship is also very easy and casual and enjoyable. Fellowship is both labor together and worship together and rest together. All right, so in one sense, it's the intentional gathering around God's word and prayer. It's working together to spread the gospel to our friends and families and neighbors. It's laboring to do good to help the needy. And fellowship is enjoying God's common graces together. It is mostly the ordinary fruit of congregating. Now, it seems to me, though, in order to have this sort of communion or community today, You have to be really radical at prioritizing it. You have to change some of your habits and reduce some of your busyness to have time for other people in Jesus' name that lead to deep friendships. So there's a lot of different ways you could work this out. I'll give you a suggestion of where to start. Sunday. Plan to have wide margins around our gathering. By wide margins, I mean lots of extra time. So in one sense, that leaves you unhurried as you get to worship, and unhurried as you leave. And most of this is like the as you leave thing, right? Because that's probably where we have the most wiggle room in time. So let's say someone says to you today, man, it's a beautiful day, and it is a beautiful day today. Would you like to go for a walk down by the river with me? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say yes and not, oh, I have to go to Costco? Or if someone says to you, and you say, oh, how you doing? They say, well, I'm actually really discouraged. I could use someone to talk to today. You don't say, oh, the Seahawks are on at 1 o'clock. I don't know if they are or not. Wouldn't it be nice to just be able to say, I'm here for you. Let's talk. Oh, they played Thursday night. All right, well, I'm a Steelers fan and they're playing at one o'clock today. I don't really care. I'll watch the highlights later. Or, what if someone in the church is injured this week and wasn't able to be with us? And you said, you know, wouldn't it be nice if we could just drive by their house and say hi and tell them we miss them? In order to be able to do those sorts of things, you have to build margin into your life. You have to say, I'm not going to be rushed on the Lord's Day. Do you know what happens then when you start to build in that time, and maybe it's not every week that something spectacular happens, but you start to just rest with other Christians instead of just giving in to the busyness of our world? You know what happens when you start to listen to people and pray for people and have good substantive conversations with people? You know what happens when you go out of your way to be really kind to somebody? Just kind for no other reason? You will be more cheerful. I've just never met somebody who gives time to people in love that is depressed about it. You will be more cheerful. And I think that's both radical and ordinary. When we commune with Christ, we commune with one another. And when we're intentional about community with one another, we grow in our cheerfulness. That's how God designed it. So when Christians get together, when we grow in love, then we're ready to meet needs when they arise. Which brings us to our fifth C in our recipe for radically ordinary Christianity. Care. Care. Look at Acts chapter 2 verses 44 through 45. It says, 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. I don't know if that makes you uneasy or not. It's a pretty radical view. Now wait, buckle up, because it gets a lot more serious when we get to the end of chapter four and the beginning of chapter five. We'll really go into their sort of communal living. But what we see here is Christians who are radically generous to one another. Now, I think the opportunities to be radically generous will come and go. But the attitude is what needs to be ordinary. The attitude of saying, everything that I have is a gift from God. Therefore, I will happily share it with those who are in need. Let's just think about how this might work out in the 21st century. Imagine that one of our tri-cities windstorms knocks over a tree that destroys somebody's house and cars, and they happen to be a member of our church. Praise God, the people are fine, okay, in this scenario. They're fine, everybody's fine, but they are in sudden, desperate, immediate need of help. What should we do as a local church? Well, I think right away, as soon as we found out, a few of us would try to get over there, just to be there to pray for them? But then wouldn't we ask, well, who has extra space for them to stay for a few weeks or months? Who has an extra car that we can loan them? How can we collect some basic necessities like food and clothing and cash to help them out? We need to get a work crew over to their house to help do repairs. Could we do that sort of thing? I have great confidence that we could. Crossroads Bible Church, like all of those things, though they're big, They're not beyond us. Like a community of Christians that's built on the love and grace of God cares for one another. Praise God, it is good providence. That just doesn't happen every day. Those big tree falling down on your house sorts of opportunities. But we ought to be ready for it. Ready to sacrifice time and money and convenience to meet the needs of others. That's a pretty extreme example. We'll see some more ordinary examples later in the book of Acts. But what I want to encourage you towards is cultivating such an attitude, cultivating such an attitude of care. So along with regularly giving to the church to provide for our ordinary communal needs, how about setting aside some money that could be used to help when special needs arise? Because they do. Maybe you should walk through your house and look out at your cars and take stock of your possessions, not just to send to the insurance company to tell them what you have, but to ask God, how can I use these things that you've given me for the good of others? And friends, that doesn't always mean giving things away. It might. That would be pretty radical. But I also think of, I was just thinking about our church, I can think of trucks, and trailers, and tools, and kitchens, and sewing rooms, and gardens that are just open to the church. Right, you just would have to ask. Maybe you don't even know about them. Like people in our church are happy to share the things that they have given to help you with your various needs, big and small. And I think that's maybe one of the more radical parts of this, is learning to ask for help. in big and little ways. Our culture's just like so, so individual. We don't ask for help. So maybe what you need to do is be radical and let your needs be known. Maybe if you're hurting financially, you need to say something to somebody. Say, do you think the church could help out? We could help out. Or maybe you just don't know how you're gonna move this really big object from one place to another. Well, say something, we can help out. I think you need to learn to make your needs known and watch how the church helps. I say that because I don't think that our church needs to be reminded to be generous. I think it's something we do well. Maybe if you have a need, you just don't know how generous people will be to you. So care. Christians who love one another, who commune together, care for one another. I hope you see there's sort of a progression here. Like the practical generous care for other Christians happens in the context of committed, of a committed community of Jesus. Now, if I was a skeptic, I would probably pull back and say, yeah, but like every community is like that. Like any group of people who spend time together and they start to love one another and they're willing to help each other. What makes the community of Jesus different? It's that our unity starts and ends with Jesus. If we have nothing else in common, that's enough to love one another, to serve one another, and help one another. We love each other because Christ first loved us. It's not that we just have a common interest or that we have similar phases of life. Or that we help others because they help us. No, we are a radical, generous, loving community because God has been radically generous and loving towards us in Christ. And here's the amazing thing. It's not just us. God loves and saves more people. One of the great joys of a Christian community is that God grows it. Through converts, there's our last C. verse 47 of Acts chapter 2. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. We'll call those converts. God has sent us on a mission, Christians, to be witnesses, to tell people of the death and resurrection of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life. And God works through our telling to bring people to saving faith. And when that happens, the community grows, both in number and in gladness. So my encouragement is that we would pray and labor for increased gladness in our Christian community through new converts added to our midst. Many communities grow insular. That is like, it's hard to get in. It's hard to fit in. That should not be so in the community of Jesus. We are to be a people ready to welcome anyone that Jesus welcomes. So when God saves someone, we would welcome them into this community of love. So maybe just as a good thought exercise, we're a small church, What would happen if God doubled the number of people in our church because people got saved? How would you feel about that? If your first thought is, oh, I just love being in a small church. Like, remember those people were saved from sin and death and hell? We should be more thankful for that. Right? I mean, sure, it would make some challenges for us. We'd have to probably learn to do things a little bit differently. We probably have to grow in our margin that we give towards the local church just to meet new people and care for more people. We'd have to grow in being welcoming. I love being a small church. I think it's a great environment to cultivate the sorts of friendship and community that Acts chapter 2 has in view. We can easily share meals together. We can easily do ordinary life together. Acts chapter 2 is Christianity is well suited for small churches. But we should want our community to grow. Because we want God to save more people. Like it might make us more intentional in cultivating community. It might force us to build in more margin. It might make us even multiply into more churches. But if God is saving people and adding to our number and souls are rescued from death and hell and given eternal life in Jesus, that is a source of great gladness, cheerfulness. Maybe the radically ordinary thing you need to do is to tell someone about Jesus. To invite them to come to our Christian community with you next Sunday. I hope you want all that. Not just the growth in converts, but the whole recipe. I hope you want commitment, and congregation, and communion, and care, and conversion, all for your cheerfulness in Christ. Now I know, when you have a six-point sermon, that's probably a lot more than any of us can possibly implement this week. So take a deep breath. You don't have to do everything, but you can do something. Maybe it's something really ordinary, like just saying, I'm gonna block out the hour and a half after church to be with my church family. Maybe you have to rethink some of your finances. Maybe you need to pick up a phone at some point this week and call somebody and pray with them. Or maybe it's something a lot more radical. Like the reason that I use the metaphor of a recipe is because recipes have essential components, but they often allow for a lot of creativity within them. I think that's how God has designed the Christian community. And if you wanna make a chicken soup, you need chicken and broth. But you can put all sorts of other stuff in there to make it a chicken soup. So we have some pretty basic elements here in the Christian community that we see in scripture. Prayer, gathering around the word, gathering for worship, the Lord's Supper, fellowship. You know, you can be pretty creative, though, how those things play out throughout your daily and weekly lives. So just think back through those six Cs. Think of something that you can grow in. And don't forget why. Don't forget the results. cheerfulness in Jesus. I want a glad and generous heart that comes from knowing Jesus and sharing life with his people. That is a satisfying result of radically ordinary Christianity. Let's pray. So God, we're asking for your help in this. I love what you've done at Crossroads Bible Church in this community. We have such sweet friendship, fellowship with each other. It's a people devoted to the Word and prayer together. God, and I think a lot of people might look at us from the outside and think we're pretty ordinary. And I hope that we would be happy to know that we're ordinary Christians, God, and we would be cheered by you. But I pray, too, that you would strengthen us and grow us, God, where perhaps we become insular, or we become just conditioned by our culture of our normal habits, that you would shake us up and break us out of those routines. God, that we might further know you and make you known and know the gladness that you give us together. God, would you please grow this community, both in converts and in our love for one another. I ask in Jesus' name, amen.