Posted on: March 1st, 2009 Entering the New Community – Acts 2:37-47 (Class #7, 2/22/09)
Here is the outline for class #7 in our Acts study at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Austin, TX. The title of the course is “A New Kind of Conquest” (see blog categories below). For the outline of Acts we are using, see here, and for more info please contact Matt.
Acts 2:37 – 47 (Sunday, February 22, 2009)
“(Entrance into) the New Community”
I. Review: “these last days” from Holy Eucharist Rite II, Prayer B.
II. Repent & be baptized.
A. Repent, or turn, from what?[1]
B. Baptism: comparison with John’s baptism
1. Repentance in Lk 3 (vv 3, 8)
2. “What should we do? (Lk 3:12)
C. Baptism: contrasts with John’s baptism
1. Name of Jesus
2. Reception of HS
3. John’s baptism not sufficient: 18:24-26;19:4-5
III. Life in the New Community
A. Teaching
B. Fellowship / koinonia
C. Breaking of Bread
D. “The Prayers”
· Rather than look at all four of these separately and in depth, I want to suggest that this is a picture of a “worship service” in the early church. The key to this is to see that it was the breaking of bread which is central (perhaps because tactile and concrete) to the worship service: see Lk 22:19; 24:30-35; Acts 20:7,11.[2]
[1] NTW, 40 – 41.
[2] For some background on “first day of the week,” see John 20:1,19. Here John is stressing that it was on the first day of the week that Jesus rose from the dead.
