The Lord Added to Their Number
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
June 7, 2020
Scripture Readings
Acts 1:8
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Acts 2:46-47
46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 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.
Acts 5:14
14 And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women,
Acts 6:7
7 And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.
Acts 9:31
31 So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.
Acts 12:24
24 But the word of God increased and multiplied.
Acts 16:5
5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily.
Acts 19:20
20 So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.
Acts 28:30-31
30 He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, 31 proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.
Last summer, I stood in my front lawn and looked up at my roof. A small tree grew out of the gutter on my third story roof. If you’ve ever tried to grow something, you know how difficult it can be to keep something alive and healthy—tomato plants, goldfish, children. I looked up at the little tree wondering how it got there? Whatever soil had accumulated in my gutter didn’t seem like enough for life, but there it was—growing.
We’ve been preaching through the book of Acts, which tells the story of the birth of the church in the first thirty years after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. So many times when you look at the individual stories in Acts—stories of hurt and healing, sin and salvation—you can cock your head to the side, squint your eyes, and wonder how they ever made it, how this little, fragile life grew in such inhospitable soil?
Maybe you wonder the same thing about our church or the church at large. I know I do. How will our little, fragile band of believers grow in inhospitable soil when the world is on fire?
We typically preach one passage after the next, but it didn’t feel appropriate to keep going with the next passage, to be business as usual on such a day for our church and such a moment for our country. Next week, we’ll move on to the next story in Acts (8:9ff). This week, I want to focus on what are called the summary verses in the book of Acts. You just heard many of them read. Did you hear a common theme? What was it? The Lord builds his church, they say.
Those summary verses are like the chorus or the refrain of a song. It’s funny how a chorus can get stuck in your head. I remember having a conversation with some of our worship leaders about this. It may be that the chorus gets stuck in our head, I said, but it’s the verses that give the chorus their meaning. It’s the verses that become the backdrop that lets the chorus shine.
1. The Verses
If those passages we read a moment ago make up the chorus, the refrain of the book of Acts, what happens between the choruses? What are the varying backdrops?
We certainly don’t have time to explore them all, not this Sunday or anyone Sunday. We’ll be in the book for a year by the time we’re done. But let me pick a few.
Consider Acts 6. We read 6:7, which says,
And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. (Acts 6:7)
That’s the chorus of Acts, the Lord building his church. But what was happening around this specific chorus? I’ll give you the answer: racism. There was a shortage of food in the Christian community. But only certain Christians were left with hungry bellies, those who were Gentile converts first to Judaism, then to Christianity. Those who were ethnically Jewish, who had become Christians, got the food they needed.
This issue blew back in the face of the church leaders. And they had to look ugly, uncomfortable questions in the eye, not just as they looked out at their church but also as they looked back in the mirror. They had to probe their hearts, seeing how they had failed and how they needed to listen and learn and make changes.
And they did. They installed leaders to run a new ministry, many who didn’t look like them or have the same background. They gave away power, laying their hands on those of another ethnicity, saying, “We’re sorry, and we believe God has called you, by his grace, to fix this.” And we read that God grew his church.
Their issues are not just their issues are they? Where will you and I find this kind of strength, this kind of humility, this kind of love? Not from looking within us.
Consider the context around the summary statement in chapter 12. I only had Emily read v. 24, but look at the verses around it.
Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they came to him with one accord, and having persuaded Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, they asked for peace, because their country depended on the king’s country for food. On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last. But the word of God increased and multiplied. (Acts 12:20–24)
Herod was an arrogant leader, who had a facade of religion but not the real thing. And God struck him down when he let people worship him. I didn’t read it, but in the first verse of that same chapter Herod had killed a Christian named James and violently arrested Peter. This is the ugly, seemingly inhospitable soil. But the church grows like an unlikely tree in a gutter. Luke writes, “the word of God increased and multiplied.”
In Acts 15, there is disunity among believers. Just what were they to do with these new, Gentile converts? And how were they all to relate to the Old Testament law? Our church spent the last nine weeks in Sunday School talking about, in a way, the same issues, the relevance of the Old Testament and how it pertains to Christians. We’ve had 2,000 years to think about it; they were working out these issues in real-time, not hindsight. I bet some tempers flared. I bet some well-meaning Christians spoke harsh words. But what also happened? Leaders listened. Leaders prayed. Leaders pursued unity and sought to bring as many along as possible. And as the leaders visited cities, spreading this message of hope and unity in Jesus. What do we read in Acts 16:5?
So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily. (Acts 16:5)
We could go on and on, looking at the stories between the summary refrains, the verses between the choruses. There was famine mentioned in 11:28 and a harrowing shipwreck in chapter 27, so-called natural disasters; we could talk about those. And there is persecution throughout the book. And yet God grows his church in an unlikely gutter.
Do you remember the BP oil spill of 2010, later dubbed Deepwater Horizon? That oil spill spewed 210 million gallons of oil.[1] That’s hard to imagine. But picture this. If you took all the lanes of the Pennsylvania turnpike, both east and west, and filled the roads with milk jugs of oil, placing them side by side, you could lay milk jugs across the state—twice. That’s how much oil spilled.
As that oil bubbled up, all kinds of things needed to happen: the rescue of workers from the ocean, reform of procedures for drilling, cleanup of beaches and shoreline and animal rescue, aid for businesses impacted, and a hundred other initiatives to fix problems.
But what was the main thing that needed to happen? From April 20 to September 19, 2010 the main thing that needed to happen was stopping the flow of oil. The gusher needed to be sealed. The root problem needed to be addressed. We’ll come back to that.
2. The Chorus
As we read of the calamities of in the book of Acts, again and again Luke points us to our only hope: the chorus of the hope of the grace of God who builds his church.
And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women, (Acts 5:14)
So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. (Acts 9:31)
So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. (Acts 19:20)
The chorus of the book of Acts sings that the grace of God is strong, overcoming deep resistance. The chorus sings that the grace of God is for everyone. The cross, as is so often said, levels the playing field where every sinner, no matter how bad, can become a saint. In the chorus in Acts, Luke sings to us again and again that the grace of God is the only thing that can stop the gusher of sin. The life of Jesus, the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, and the second coming of Jesus, is for everyone who wants it. And we all need it.
But when we consider the whole book of Acts, we see that the grace of God is not just forgiveness; the good news of Jesus is not just a fix for our past problem with sin. The grace of God also provides the power to live for God in a hostile, inhospitable environment. The grace of God is the power to make changes and the power to act, which is why we call it the book of Acts.
Just like in the BP oil spill, there is a root cause of all the destruction, our sin and our alienation with God. If you do a thousand reforms but don’t address the root, it’s like fixing businesses and rescuing animals but continuing to let the gusher gush. But when the flow is fix, then we go about the thousand other initiatives to bring hope and healing. We need God for both.
The church, by the power of God, can and will grow in unlikely, inhospitable soil. A mere religious club would shrivel and die, but when God gives birth to a church, he causes her to shine. That’s what the chorus reminds us in the book of Acts.
The grace of God was their hope then. And it’s our hope now.
