If you would like to send your offering through the mail, our mailing address is:
CrossPointe Community Church P O Box 126 Chippewa Lake, OH 44215
CALL TO WORSHIP
For Lent, we have been examining the word ‘atonement.’ May I remind you that atonement means at-one-ment and refers to the fact that through our faith in the death of Christ, we are at-one-ment with God. We have already examined the word ‘atonement’ as covenant and reconciliation. Next week, we will look at it as sacrifice. And today, we are going to cover two descriptions of the atonement; redemption now and justification a little later.
Redemption took place in ancient times when one army would conquer another people. And when the battle was over, the victors would sift through the survivors looking for people to take back to their home country as slaves. After getting back home, if they found that they had someone of value to the conquered; say a town official or a wealthy person, they would send word to the conquered people that they had so and so and if they were willing to pay a price, they could buy them back. If the conquered people could come up with the money required, they would redeem or buy back the person in question. The sum of money was known as a ransom. This describes the process of redemption. Why New Testament writers chose this word to describe one aspect of the atonement is clear.
Human beings were taken captive by the evil one. We were made subjects of his domain. If God were going to buy us back or redeem us, He would pay a ransom. In our case, the ransom paid was the death of Jesus. Jesus said, “For I came not to be served, but to serve and to give My life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 28:20).
He (God the Father) has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
If you would like to send your offering through the mail, our mailing address is:
CrossPointe Community Church P O Box 126 Chippewa Lake, OH 44215
CALL TO WORSHIP
For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
Romans 5:6-11
Reconciliation is perhaps the easiest way to understand our keyword for this Lenten series: ‘atonement.’ Unlike last week’s word, ‘covenant,’ or ‘redemption,’ or ‘justification,’ which we will consider as part of this series, ‘reconciliation’ is a term we use much the same way today as it was when Paul used it. Allow me to remind you that ‘reconciliation’ occurs when two parties who were at odds with one another over some issue decide that the issue is not going to destroy the relationship, so they deal with the issue and makeup with one another.
If you would like to send your offering through the mail, our mailing address is:
CrossPointe Community Church P O Box 126 Chippewa Lake, OH 44215
CALL TO WORSHIP
But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.
John 4:14
SCRIPTURE
“The day is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” says the Lord.
“But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the Lord.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already,” says the Lord. “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.”
Jeremiah 31:31-34
When the time came, Jesus and the apostles sat down together at the table. Jesus said, “I have been very eager to eat this Passover meal with you before my suffering begins. For I tell you now that I won’t eat this meal again until its meaning is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.” Then He took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. Then He said, “Take this and share it among yourselves. For I will not drink wine again until the Kingdom of God has come.” He took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then He broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “This is My body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.” After supper He took another cup of wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant between God and His people—an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you.
Luke 22:14-20
Under the old system, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer could cleanse people’s bodies from ceremonial impurity. Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God. For by the power of the eternal Spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins. That is why He is the one who mediates a new covenant between God and people, so that all who are called can receive the eternal inheritance God has promised them. For Christ died to set them free from the penalty of the sins they had committed under that first covenant.
If you would like to send your offering through the mail, our mailing address is:
CrossPointe Community Church P O Box 126 Chippewa Lake, OH 44215
CALL TO WORSHIP
It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. Attending Him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. They were calling out to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies! The whole earth is filled with his glory!” Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke. Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. He touched my lips with it and said, “See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.”
Isaiah 6:1-7
Preachers need to discover fresh new ways to get the attention of their people; especially when it comes to preaching the gospel. For the old, old story of Christ’s death on the cross for the sake of humanity has been told so many times that there exists the real possibility that we might become inoculated to it. You know what I mean; “Yea, yea, yea; we’ve heard that a hundred times.”
That’s why I am beginning a series of messages that will attempt to view the cross from angles that we’ve never seen before; perhaps never even heard of before. Our departure point for all seven of these messages is one word: ATONEMENT.
The word atonement has an interesting etymology. It was coined by William Tyndale, the first to translate the Bible into English in the year of our Lord 1525. 1 He was searching for an English equivalent to an Old Testament Hebrew word that literally meant ‘to cover over,’ as when, for example, in Genesis Noah ‘covered over’ the ark with pitch to make it watertight. Later, when the sacrificial system was instituted, this word began to be used to describe the ‘covering over’ of sin with blood. Thus sin could be ‘covered over,’ if you will; hidden from God’s sight, that is to say, ‘forgiven,’ through the means of the blood of a sacrifice.
So the word began to take on the meaning of ‘appease’ or ‘satisfy,’ and in that sense, ‘to bring two parties together.’ Thus the covering over of sin brought about forgiveness for the sinner because it ‘appeased’ or ‘satisfied’ God’s loathing of sin and brought the two parties (sinners and God) together.
And Tyndale thought ‘to bring two parties together’ could mean ‘at-one-ment.’ And somebody, somewhere along the way, changed the pronunciation from ‘at-one-ment’ to ‘atonement.’
The word atonement has seven meanings that are fleshed out in the New Testament. All of them describe a different aspect of what Christ’s death on the cross secured on our behalf. These words are ‘covenant,’ justification,’ ‘passover,’ ‘reconciliation,’ ‘redemption,’ ‘sacrifice,’ and today we begin with the Old Testament Day of Atonement, which has to do with ACCESS.
If you would like to send your offering through the mail, our mailing address is:
CrossPointe Community Church P O Box 126 Chippewa Lake, OH 44215
CALL TO WORSHIP
All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave Him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace He has poured out on us who belong to His dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that He purchased our freedom with the blood of His Son and forgave our sins. He has showered His kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.
God has now revealed to us His mysterious will regarding Christ—which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for He chose us in advance, and He makes everything work out according to His plan. God’s purpose was that we Jews who were the first to trust in Christ would bring praise and glory to God. And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, He identified you as His own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom He promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that He will give us the inheritance He promised and that He has purchased us to be His own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify Him.
Ephesians 1:3-14
SCRIPTURE
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.” Then He asked them, “But who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.
If you would like to send your offering through the mail, our mailing address is:
CrossPointe Community Church P O Box 126 Chippewa Lake, OH 44215
In a Christianity Today article, Daniel Darling, (By the way, how would you like to have the last name ‘Darling?’ Randy Darling?) anyway Daniel Darling writes:
Like any long relationship, there can be seasons of great enthusiasm and seasons of drought in church life. There will be times when participating in a local body is fun, exciting, and full of energy and hope. There will also be times when church, and all that goes with it will be hard, stressful, annoying, or boring. It is important to remember that even those times can, and often do, bear fruit. I also believe that in some ways the church does—or did—save me. It didn’t save me in the ways you might expect: a spectacular Sunday service, a homerun sermon, or a gripping worship set. God’s primary tool to transform my heart was not the conference speaker or the travelling revivalist or the worship concert. Those events were important, but now I realize that, more often, God changed my life using routine worship services in which I sang hymns I didn’t quite understand and heard messages I didn’t quite grasp. 1
I’m so glad we don’t have to produce a “gripping music set” or “homerun sermon” in order to accomplish the will of our heavenly Father in a church worship service. We don’t have to be perfect, or even close to it; because Jesus is among us and He’s all we really need, you see. Jesus takes the paltry five loaves and two fish that we have to offer and He multiplies them into a service of worship that can minister to our needs, but more importantly glorifies Him!
We are far from perfectly understanding that which I am about to read; however, what I am about to read WILL have an impact on our souls.
If you would like to send your offering through the mail, our mailing address is:
CrossPointe Community Church P O Box 126 Chippewa Lake, OH 44215
There’s a story told, probably a lie, about two friendly little microbes swimming merrily along in the bloodstream of a horse. As these two microbes are doing the backstroke, one of them becomes discontented and he tells his friend, “I’m getting tired of living life in this vein.” And so he shakes hands with his little friend and they have sort of a tearful parting, and this little microbe moves over to a neighboring artery. At this precise moment, a veterinarian is giving this horse a huge shot of penicillin, (the plot thickens at this point). The penicillin runs directly up the artery and kills our little microbe friend. The moral of the story then, is, don’t change streams in the middle of a horse.
Or more appropriate to series on the subject of the church, no matter how discontented we may become with the church, and there will be times of discontentment, it is the Lord’s will that we not give up on His Church.
This is why I have been preaching about not only believing in but also, loving the Church. Last week, I believe in and love the church because the head of the church invites each and every one of us to participate in the most vital aspect of His Church: Reaching people for Christ! Prior to that, I believe in and love the church of Jesus Christ because it was designed by Jesus to be the primo place where people find community, healing, and love. And prior to that, I believe in and love the church of Jesus Christ because it is the place where you and I as followers of Jesus have a great opportunity to grow into Christlikeness.
Today, I believe in and love the church of Jesus Christ because it is the only institution in society that provides perspective to convey dignity to all human beings. For Biblical evidence of that premise, I turn to:
When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. Yes, people sinned even before the law was given. But it was not counted as sin because there was not yet any law to break. Still, everyone died—from the time of Adam to the time of Moses—even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God, as Adam did. Now Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ, who was yet to come.
But there is a great difference between Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and His gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ.
And the result of God’s gracious gift is very different from the result of that one man’s sin. For Adam’s sin led to condemnation, but God’s free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we are guilty of many sins. For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and His gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ.
Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone. Because one person disobeyed God, many became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous.
Romans 5:12-19
SERMON
Dignity For All!
Randy K’Meyer
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it had crippling depression, by being constantly reminded that its life was worthless to those who looked down on it as a mere piece of meat, not a living, breathing creature, worthy of respect and dignity. It didn’t want to live in a constant state of worthlessness, fear, and insignificance, knowing that its only purpose in life would be death. So it escaped the farm and took off to the highway, and though the creature still feared its ultimate demise, it was relieved to be free from an impending doom.
So in short… to get to the other side.
According to Merriman’s online dictionary, the definition of ‘dignity’ is “the quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed.” 1
We can consider dignity in two dimensions: (1) our own sense of dignity, and, (2) the dignity we convey to others.
And do you suppose that there is a relationship between to two? Of course, our own sense of dignity, or lack thereof, will have a direct impact on whether or not, and to what degree, we treat others with dignity.
I would say that the 15 year old freshman in Georgia who drug his female teachers to the floor and wailed on her this past week doesn’t carry very much of his own dignity. I would say that the parents who started a brawl resulting in the death of a 60 year old man at a high school basketball game in New Jersey this past week didn’t have very much self-worth. And what can we say about the five police officers in Memphis?
He or she who pays attention to what’s going on in this world know that human dignity is in short supply. Too many people feel like our chicken friend; no dignity.
In an article in the Guardian, titled, Human Dignity in Danger, the author states, “When we abandon efforts to uphold human dignity, we forfeit the essential meaning of being human, … and what follows is duplicity and folly, corruption and tyranny, and the endless stream of humanitarian crises that we see in the world today.” 2
So my premise is that the world, and maybe some of us, are in desperate need of a renewed sense of dignity for ourselves and for all human beings. And I believe in and love the church because the church of Jesus Christ is the one institution in society that provides the perspective to convey that dignity to all human beings.
Why do I say that?
Because we honor and revere a book that champions human dignity; that conveys meaning and significance and value and worth to every human being who has ever lived.
“Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in Our image, to be like Us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.’ So God created human beings in His own image. In the image of God He created them; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:26-27).
In the very act of creation, God imputed dignity to all of His creation, because He loves that which He created.
And when Adam and Eve did their best to squander that which God had given, the Creator went to extreme measures to restore dignity to fallen humankind.
“Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone” (5:18).
C. S. Lewis helps us get a handle on this idea of imputed dignity. He says, take a fraction and let the numerator be 100 and let 100 represent the man who beats the numbers; he doesn’t live to three score and ten, he lives to be 100 years. And in the denominator, put the combined dynasties of China, 5,000 years. The man lives 100 years, society lives 5,000 years. Therefore, society must be 50 times more important than man. Therefore, if society is more important than a man, then a man is just the raw material that you feed into the sausage grinder of society to produce the sausages of societal accomplishment.
In the words of the 1960’s Russian dictator, Nakita Kruschev, when confronted by an American journalist who asked about the terrible lack of human dignity inside Russian prisons housing political dissidents, “you have to break eggs to make an omelet.” Therefore; human beings have become a means to an end in modern society.
But C. S. Lewis says, suppose that isn’t the way it works. Supposing that man doesn’t live 100 years and then turn toes up. Supposing man is, as the Bible says, eternal. Now it’s a little hard to write eternity in a number. We could set every computer printer in the world to printing out zeros and let them go at it for as long as you wish and they will still never come close to writing eternity.
So we have to scale it back to get our brains around it, so let’s take a billion. If you took a billion dollar bills and sewed then end to end, they would go around the equator 2 ½ times. So now we take the man we talked about earlier and in his place we put a billion! Put below the line the combined dynasties of China, 5,000 years and what happens? Suddenly man is infinitely more important than society.
This is the essential Christian message! In his letter to his pastor-friend, Titus 2:11, the Apostle Paul wrote: “For the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people.”
Everything around us that seems so solid and natural is an illusion. It will be at some point in history be folded up as an old garment and disappear. But every person that God created in His image will be alive somewhere a billion years from now.
Practically speaking, what do we, as the church, and as individual Christians, do with that truth?
In seminary, I learned about a man who went to Ecuador 25 working for Wickliffe Bible Translators. He walked into a village of the Cofan Indians, only 600 on the face of the earth. The Cofan Indians had no written language. So he points to his nose and says, “nose.” And when they catch on, they said their word for nose and he took their word and with the phonetic language, he wrote their word. Similarly, he said, “eye, ear, hair,” they all had hair. And over the course of 24 years, he reduced their sounds to a written language and then taught them to read their own language.
Then he took the New Testament and translated it into the Cofan language. Then he taught them to read their NT and he told them about Jesus Christ. Now, why didn’t somebody take those 600 Cofan Indians and put them on a cattle truck and take them to Quito, teach them pigeon Spanish and how to drive a taxicab? Why do you bother with a group of 600 Cofan Indians? Why does a man with 6 years of graduate education in Biblical studies, go down to Ecuador to work with a group of people who are never going to contribute in any way to the American church scene?
And the answer is that one little Cofan Indian is worth more than everything traded on Wall Street from now until the kingdom comes!
Why do Christian people answer God’s call to go into the Ghettos of Chicago and work with black children who are never going to have any clout in this world, who will probably struggle for mere existence? Why would they go to Chicago or Nairobi, Indonesia, or wherever the Lord leads them to go to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ?
Because the church of Jesus Christ understands that human beings have dignity and value and worth imputed to them by God Himself.
I believe in and love the church of Jesus Christ because it is the one institution that stands in the midst of our fallen world and reminds that world that the dignity of the world lies in the human being himself, not in the world that is around him. Not in the baubles and trinkets of society, people are where it’s at baby!
How do we know? Because the Bible says, “See how very much our Father loves us, for He calls us His children, and that is what we are” (I John 3:1).
Dennis Farthing, a missionary translating the Bible into an African Tribe’s language talks about a way he came to communicate the fullness of God’s love. He notes the verbs for this language consistently end with 1 of 3 vowels depending upon the usage . . . ‘a,’ ‘i,’ or ‘u.’ But the word for love ‘dv’ was only found with an ‘a’ and ‘i’ . . . why no ‘u’?”
In an effort to truly understand the concept of love in this African language, the missionary began to question a group of the tribe’s elders. “Can you dva your wife?” “Yes, that kind of love depends on the wife’s actions; she would be loved as long as she remained faithful and took good care of her husband.” “Could you dvi your wife?” “Yes, that would mean that the wife had been loved, but the love was gone.” “Well then, could you dvu your wife?” Everyone in the room laughed; “Of course not!” they replied. “If you said that, you would have to keep loving your wife no matter what she did, even if she never got you water and never cooked a meal and even committed adultery; you would have to keep on loving her. No, we would never say you could dvu your wife.”
The missionary sat quietly for a while, thinking about the love of God and then he said, “My friends, I am here to tell you that God dvus you.”
This missionary says there was complete silence for about five minutes. Then tears started to trickle down faces of the elderly men of the tribe. Finally, they responded, “Do you know what this would mean? This would mean that God kept loving us over and over and over, while at the same time we rejected His great love. He would be compelled to love us, even if we did wrong in His eyes.”
Have you embraced the fact that God dvu’s you? He loves you because of Who HE is and not because of who you are or what you have done! You are known and loved by Him Who loves you just because of Who He is.
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
“Now I’ve found the greatest love of all, since You laid down Your life, the greatest sacrifice.”
There once was a man named George Thomas, a pastor in a small New England town. One Sunday morning he came to the Church carrying a rusty, bent, old birdcage, and set it on the Communion Table alongside the body and blood of Christ. Eyebrows were raised, and, as if in response, Pastor Thomas began to speak.
“I was walking through town yesterday when I saw a young boy coming toward me swinging this birdcage. On the bottom of the cage were three little birds, shivering with cold and fright. I stopped the lad and asked, ‘What you got there, son?’ ‘Just some old birds,’ came the reply. ‘What are you gonna do with them?’ I asked. ‘I got some cats at home,’ he smiled a devilish smile, ‘and they like birds.’
The pastor was silent for a moment. ‘How much do you want for those birds, son?’ ‘Why, you don’t want these birds, mister; they’re just plain old field birds, they don’t sing, they ain’t pretty, they aren’t worth anything but to be eaten.’ ‘How much?’ the pastor asked again. The boy sized up the pastor as if he were crazy and said, ‘$ 10?’ The pastor reached into his pocket and took out a ten-dollar bill. He placed it in the boy’s hand and in a flash, the boy was gone. The pastor picked up the cage, opened the door, and by softly tapping the bars, persuaded the birds out, setting them free.” Well, that explained the empty birdcage sitting next to the holy sacrament. And then the pastor began to tell another story.
“Satan had just come from the Garden of Eden, and he was gloating and boasting and said to Jesus, ‘Yes, sir, I just caught the world full of people down there. Set me a trap, used bait I knew they couldn’t resist; got ’em all!’ ‘What are you going to do with them?’ Jesus asked. Satan replied, ‘Oh, I’m gonna have fun! I’m gonna teach them how to disrespect and hate and abuse and even kill each other.’ ‘And what will you do when you get done with them?’ Jesus asked. ‘Oh, I’ll kill them forever,’ Satan glared proudly. ‘How much do you want for them?’ Jesus asked. ‘Oh, you don’t want those people; they ain’t no good, they don’t have any value. Why, you’ll take them and they’ll just hate you. They’ll spit on you, curse you and kill you. You don’t want those people!!” ‘How much?’ Jesus asked again. Satan looked at Jesus and sneered, ‘Your very life.’ Jesus said, ‘DONE!’ then He paid the price.
The pastor picked up the cage, opened the door and he walked from the pulpit as the congregation stood to sing, “Amazing Grace.”
If you would like to send your offering through the mail, our mailing address is:
CrossPointe Community Church P O Box 126 Chippewa Lake, OH 44215
SCRIPTURE
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.” Then He asked them, “But who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because My Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build My church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.
Matthew 16:13-18
“So let everyone in Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, to be both Lord and Messiah!” Peter’s words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is to you, to your children, and to those far away—all who have been called by the Lord our God.” Then Peter continued preaching for a long time, strongly urging all his listeners, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation!”
Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all. All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer. A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.
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