Sermon Series: It’s Time to Go Home!

Acts 2:29-47

Introduction:  Life has a way of reminding us when it’s time to go home.

For the purpose of this series let us use a scriptural definition for home. 

• Home, synonymous with household, is that immediate group of people with whom we share life most closely; your sphere of greatest influence. 

In the Old Testament the word for household was “mishpachah” or family as in Numbers 1:2 - “Take a census of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by their fathers' houses, according to the number of names, every male individually…”  and Joshua 7:14 , “In the morning therefore you shall be brought according to your tribes. And it shall be that the tribe which the Lord takes shall come according to families; and the family which the Lord takes shall come by households; and the household which the Lord takes shall come man by man.”

   Another word was for household was “bayith” as in Joshua 24:15 – “And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."

 The New Testament word and that which will frame the focus for our series on Discipleship is Oikos!  Oikos is our household, our immediate group of people with whom we share life most closely; those people with whom we have the greatest influence.

 Our Oikos is the people for whom God wants to prepare us to become an ideal instrument of His grace.

 For us, Oikos began on Pentecost!  Acts 2:1 says “they were with one accord in one place.”  That’s Oikos! Acts 2:36 says, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”  That’s Oikos!  Verse 39 says, “For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord will call.”  That’s Oikos!

 But something happened to take us from our immediate focus on those close to us!  Something happened to cause us to become content with arousing song, thought provoking sermons, token giving and occasional sacrifice.  Some cheap substitute snuck in and secured our time such that we stopped talking about what Jesus has done for us individually, collectively and generationally.  We have settled for safe and socially acceptable conversation topics.  We have settled for the comfortable common bonds that connect us.  We avoid the areas of conflict for the sake of getting along. Something happened to cause us to abandon a fundamental concept that God mentioned in His word some 295 times!  The Oikos exists, we just stopped discipling it.

Why Oikos?  Why focus on your family and those closest to you? 

1.   Because it is Gods Mandate! (“The Word cut them…”)                                                                      Vs 37-38

 Acts 1:8 – “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."

Matthew 28:19-20 – “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen.

2.   It’s Gods Method! (Even Jesus began at home!)                                                                               Vs 39

Luke 2:49-51 – “And He said to them, "Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business?" But they did not understand the statement which He spoke to them. Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them…”

John 2 – Jesus first miracle was done at his mother’s request in Cana, “even though His hour had not yet come!”

3.   It’s GodsMessage! (“Tell them what God is doing in you!”)                                                               Vs 40

Mark 5:19 – “…Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you."

Conclusion: Go home…