Glad and Sincere Hearts

Attitudes Shaped by Grace | Day 33

“Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:46-47, NIV)

Good morning, and may the Lord fill this day with his gladness. In many congregations there is one faithful person who arrives before anyone else.

The fellowship hall is still dark when the coffee pot begins to gurgle, and by the time the first family comes through the door, the whole room smells like a welcome. No one assigned that person the job. They were simply glad to be there first.

What Made Them Glad

Luke gives us a picture of the first weeks of the New Testament church in Jerusalem. “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:46-47, NIV). These believers met in the temple courts and around kitchen tables, and they did both with glad and sincere hearts. Their gladness was not a show put on for visitors, and their sincerity was not grim duty. Then Luke gives the last sentence to the Lord. The Lord added to their number. The believers did not grow the church by being pleasant. The Holy Spirit brought people to faith through the Word, and he still does. Jesus Christ died for every person in that city and every person in ours, and God wants all of them to be saved.

Many of us can remember neighborhoods where people shared life more often than they do now. A death on the street meant casseroles on the porch by evening. A graduation or a wedding brought out half the block. Church potlucks ran well into the afternoon because no one was in a hurry to leave. Much of that has thinned out. The world now prizes anonymity and calls it privacy. We can sit near the same people in church for years and never learn their names. Our phones fill the quiet minutes before the service begins, and some of us slip out during the last hymn so no one can stop us in the aisle.

That habit reveals something deeper. We have treated the gathering of God’s people as an obligation to manage rather than a gift to receive, and we have chosen our own comfort and control over the good things Christ gives when his people meet. Jesus Christ has forgiven that, all of it. He did not keep his distance from us. He came all the way to us, and he keeps coming.

Long before the New Testament church gathered in Jerusalem, as Acts describes, God’s people were already gathering in faith, trusting the Savior he had promised. David was one of them, and he wrote down what it felt like to be invited to worship. “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the LORD.’” (Psalm 122:1, NIV). The joy began with the invitation, before anyone reached the gate. The house of the Lord was the place God had promised to dwell among his people, first at the tabernacle and later at the temple Solomon built. Jesus spoke of his own body as the temple, and in him that promise is fulfilled. The house of the Lord is now wherever Christ gathers his people around his Word and his Sacraments, and an invitation to go there is still a reason to rejoice.

Where He Makes Himself Known

On the evening of the first Easter, two disciples were walking away from Jerusalem with heavy hearts. A stranger joined them on the road and, beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, explained what all the Scriptures said concerning himself. As they approached their village, they urged him to stay. “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’” (Luke 24:30-32, NIV). Their hearts burned while the Scriptures were opened, and their eyes were opened at the table. Luke tells us that they got up and returned at once to Jerusalem, where they found the Eleven and told them what had happened. That afternoon they had left Jerusalem downcast. That night they hurried back with news they could not keep to themselves.

The risen Christ still makes himself known among his people. Paul wrote to the Corinthians about the Lord’s Supper, “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16, NIV). When our pastor, called to serve us, gives us the bread and the wine, Christ gives us his true body and blood with them for the forgiveness of our sins. We do not come forward only to remember a gift. We come to receive one. Jesus also gave a promise while teaching his disciples how to win back a brother and how to pray together. “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:20, NIV). His presence does not depend on a full sanctuary. It rests on his promise, and two or three are enough.

David also put the joy of that unity into a single line. “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” (Psalm 133:1, NIV). The unity is pleasant because it is the Lord’s gift, not because everyone in the room is easy to be around. Through his Word, the Holy Spirit grows in us the same gladness he grew in Jerusalem, and it shows up in ordinary ways. We arrive a few minutes early. We leave the phone in the car. We stay for coffee and learn the name of the person two rows back. We bring a meal when someone is grieving and offer a ride to someone who has no way to come. None of this earns a place at the table. It is what gladness looks like when it has hands, and many of us are already doing it quietly. The Lord sees every bit of it.

Everything we have in our gatherings, we have because of Jesus Christ. He is the true temple and the host of every table where his Word is spoken. He lived for us, he gave his life for the sins of the whole world, and he rose from the dead. He walked the road to Emmaus, opened the Scriptures to two discouraged followers, and made himself known to them. Long before anyone arrives to start the coffee, Jesus Christ is already there, and he prepared the table at the cost of his own life. He is the reason we can walk through those doors with glad and sincere hearts.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, thank you for gathering your people and for inviting me to be among them. I confess that I have often treated worship as a duty to get through, and that I have hidden behind my phone, my schedule, and my comfort when you were offering me your gifts. Forgive me for the sake of Jesus Christ, who came near to me when I kept my distance.

Lord Jesus, thank you for opening the Scriptures to me and for giving me your true body and blood for my forgiveness. Thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit, who makes my heart glad to go to the house of the Lord. Help me notice the people around me, learn their names, and make room for anyone who has no one to sit with. Add to your church, Lord, and use my glad heart to welcome them. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Thank you for reading this morning. In the next devotion we will sit with Jesus on the hardest night of his life, when he asked his closest friends for one hour, and we will look at the gift of being fully present with the people God puts in front of us. May the Lord give you a glad heart wherever his people gather around you today.

To God be the glory.

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

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