JULY 11, 2021 SUNDAY MESSAGE
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Community Life Together 7.11
Transcription
Thanks to the speakers:
Pastor Kenneth Rush, Pastor Hazel Owens (who you will hear from one more time before the summer is over), Dr. Myron Duff!
Give their ideas on Devotion - Community - Mission
We are now in “COMMUNITY”
I want to start off with a little live pop quiz by a raise of hands. First question is this:
Would everyone agree with this statement: “relationships are important.”
Would you take it a step further. Would you agree with THIS “good relationships are essential in life?”
Would you take it EVEN FURTHER and say “without good relationships in your life, you will surely die!”
No matter how far you kept your hand up, most of us agree that “good relationships” are high up on the list in terms of importance.
I was reading this article the other day entitled: “Social Ties Boost Survival by 50%...study covering more than 300,000 participants across all ages reveals that adults get a 50 percent boost in longevity if they have a solid social network”
I think we understand that there are EMOTIONAL benefits but it’s PHYSICAL TOO!
The same article says, “The benefit of friends, family and even colleagues turns out to be just as good for long-term survival as giving up a 15-cigarette-a-day smoking habit. And by the study's numbers, interpersonal social networks are more crucial to physical health than exercising or beating obesity.”
Did everyone catch that? Your REAL social network is MORE important than not smoking and exercise. That’s CRAZY!
Why is it important? Think about it:
there is a sense of purpose when you have someone to connect with, depend on, and who may even depend on you for something.
When there is a mutual, communal contribution in your life, it buffers you from stressful situations or props you up when you are down and need a hand up and vice versa.
One of the points the study made was that survival rates were lifted because people around you could hold you accountable. For example "...spouses and adult children may be nagging the person with the chronic illness to take their medication.”
You can see how it makes sense, right?! We can all agree that good relationships are REALLY IMPORTANT and in light of this knowledge, I want to test another point of data I read in a book a few years ago.
Raise your hand if you have a FRIEND and keep it up...BEST FRIEND?
Keep your hand up if you have MULTIPLE “best friends.”
Keep your hand raised if you talked to your best friend in the last:
Month
2 weeks, 1 week, 24 hours.
Keep it up if they live close enough to share a grocery store (could you accidentally run into them while you’re shopping).
The book I was reading said that many women do but almost all men DO NOT....this book said it was one of the tragic fatal flaws of our society and contributes to the erosion of the christian faith more than we realize.
My point is this: even though we KNOW it’s incredibly important, for emotional and physical health, we still don’t prioritize building our social circles the same way we do other things (career, exercise) in our lives...and our culture props this up!
While there are attempts to counter it, we live in an individualist society (as opposed to a Collectivist Society) and the basic fabric of our culture are these four things Self-sufficiency
Uniqueness
Autonomy
Independence
More specifically....
- Being dependent upon others is considered shameful/embarrassing
- Individual rights take center stage over the community around us.
- People often place a greater emphasis on standing out and being unique
- People tend to be self-reliant
America is BUILT ON - and celebrates - a STRICT adherence to these four ideas (Good Dinosaur) as a means to achieve maturity, freedom, and success even if it TEARS US APART, exhausts us, and leaves us exposed and lonely and turns us over to algorithm echo chambers that tell us what we want to hear without disagreement. We will PRIZE these things and PROTECT THEM even at the cost of community in our lives...
“In individualistic cultures, people are considered "good" if they are strong, self-reliant, assertive, and independent. This contrasts with collectivist cultures where characteristics like being self-sacrificing, dependable, generous, and helpful to others are of greater importance.”
I am reminded of an old saying I heard that said, “We can have everything we want exactly as we want it, IF we want to be alone.” Right? As soon as you introduce another person into your life, a negotiation occurs...and it’s messy, and it’s filled with compromise, and the bible says it’s GOOD for you.
Open up to Rom. 12.
As I read it, we are not going deep into exegetical study. I want you to think about the essence of a community that BELIEVES AND LIVES like this and what it might look like in our culture and in your lives...ROMANS 12
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.
9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Paul’s letter to the Roman believers GIVES US a BEAUTIFUL depiction of what Christian Community SHOULD look like.
FULLY given like a sacrifice for the purposes of God
Working in opposition to the PATTERN or schematic of the world
Integrated in our
Roles and functions
With our resources
With our Gifting
Linked together in our pursuit to
“hate evil and cling to what is good”
And grow in likeness to Jesus
Interdependent on each other to be faithful to the calling he has put on us and continually stoke the flames of
Love
Spiritual zeal and fervor
Why are we encouraged to do all of this IN community as opposed to INDIVIDUALLY?? Because it’s impossible to do it alone!
IF it’s no surprise that WE NEED EACH OTHER, then why do we INSIST on doing it alone? Because it’s HARD (Amen?!) It’s HARD to be in community with people who are wired differently, have different values than you, and who are REBELLIOUS SINNERS! And it stings a little deeper when those who profess Christ are the ones doing the hurting!!
One Commentator said “In Romans 12, Paul paints pictures of the people of God as inextricably intertwined: both as a family of brothers and sisters, as well as a body with many parts, all of which need one another...if you keep reading the New Testament, and honestly if you pursue any relationship beyond the surface level, you will discover depth and community to be challenging”
1. I want us to start with the fact that we are all socially, WAY MORE connected than we ever realize.
Our cultural emphasis, in this moment, is on the individual and our culture wants to convince you that the decisions you make do not affect anyone around you!
BUT, any systems analyst or socioligist know that we are all connected…
whether we like it or not,
whether we believe in autonomy or not,
YOU DON’T EXIST IN A VOID and
what you do positively or negatively affects the people and community around you!
<Connection Circles>
Imagine it as people in a circle holding ROPES. Lessons:
Pull it and it will affect everyone
I was in a discussion group with someone talking about this and he said “This is all tracking with me. I am a computer program systems analyst and it is my job to watch the web of connections when we make changes and anticipate how a decision here will create “Blowout” on the other side. The same thing happens with people all the time!”
Think about this! We are more connected than we realize and there is no such thing as being a fully independent person because you exist in a communal system!!
SO, there is no such thing as a private decision or a private sin. Consider the Body illustration in Romans 12.
Sin can infiltrate like an infection and spreads throughout a body.
Infected toe nail.
The nail has to be removed in order for healing to occur.
So, your seemingly unseen, unspoken, and undisclosed sin affects you greater than you realize and the communities you belong to including your church community and beyond.
BUT THE OPPOSITE SHOULD ALSO BE TRUE.
Your blessings, your prayers,
your service to one another,
your diligent reading God’s word (or lack thereof) will work out to be an empty well here or it will stir up zeal, spiritual fervor, and Be joyful hope in others as Romans 12 says as you interact with them.
ALL of the positive ways we interact with each other can and SHOULD reverberate in mutual edification throughout the community -
SO,
are you contributing to creating that environment or taking from it
Are you building it up or maybe even tearing it down?!
Are you exercising your gifts in a way that benefits the community and makes its way into this body of believers
I mean just today
Multiple people shared their gifts to pull off this Sunday Gathering - preparing, practicing, ministering to children, and working together to build into the believers of Indianapolis at Common Ground Northeast!
House Churches join hands to serve in the missional opportunities that come our way AWOL.
That changes people (in big or small ways - we dont know)
Once again, “we are more connected than we realize” and more connected than our culture wants us to know!
Are you living your private life in light of this truth...because it will overflow one way or the other!
2. None of us are as intentionally connected as we should be. We are often too DISCONNECTED to be fully effective.
In fact, I think we INTENTIONALLY PROTECT ourselves from being
Too connected and
Too available, and
Too transparent
We want to be just connected enough to be friendly but not so connected that
anyone ever truly knows us to our core and
we are not overly obligated TO one another!!
BECAUSE, we don’t actually want to take responsibility FOR one another!!
So we resort to embrace the ideologies of this world like...
“I don’t want to get into their business” mostly because you don’t want them to return the favor.
God says, You NEED people that will get in your face if you are on an unhealthy path.
You might get to know people enough to be perceived as a participant but not so much that they might ask for something or inconvenience you too much.
God says, You need people that can rely on you and that you can rely on.
We will even make financial obligations with people INSTEAD of asking friends for help because it’s easier/cleaner to just pay someone instead of asking a friend who might need a favor in return some day!
....do you see how this makes its way into our day to day thinking? THis is NOT what God wants us to do...
We can see that the overarching sentiments in our culture such as
“you do you” or “I can do what I want”
nobody has the right to impose their opinions on anyone.”
“Do what you love”
“Own your truth”
None of these ideas consider a communal obligation, like what the scriptures prescribe, to one another in the greater body.
Even the idea of having a “personal relationship with Jesus” is an individualist lens by which we read the bible
Sidenote: Have you ever read acts and saw that someone and their whole household came to know the lord”
But we are trained to think: “well I don’t know if everyone in the house accepted the Lord as their personal savior..?”
Your individualist conditioning is correcting the BIBLE which is, by nature, written in a communal context and they wouldn’t have imagined a decision that big outside their community!
We are so inundated with Individualism that we can’t even understand how that phrase can be true
All the while our culture says:
“They can do what they want with Their money, their bodies, their relationships, their commitments, their vote, their politics, their time…….whatever you want to put in the blank!”
Nothing you do is AN INDEPENDENT DECISION APART FROM THE COMMUNITY.
It all affects the rest!
YOU and I are MEANT to be responsible for our community and they are meant to be responsible for you...will you take responsibility for that fact?
All of these cultural ideas will accomplish an end goal of autonomy and independence but it’s not what the scriptures tell us we are to be...not as Christians. We are supposed to be CONNECTED
Maybe you HAVE community but they are not close enough in relational proximity to be effective in your life!
Is there someone in your life who is around you enough to notice that you’ve been acting weird, different, down, short,
They can see when you are avoiding, disengaged, agitated, angry, distressed, anxious, depressed…
Is there a person in your life who knows you well enough to challenge you or call you out when you need correction?
If not, then you don’t have the kind of Christian Community described in the bible and you maturity is stunted.
RECAP:
We are all closer than we realize
We are all further apart than we should be.
This kind of COMMUNITY makes our devotion and our mission ineffective.
But, what if we embrace our connectivity and let down our walls of insulation and became a community that’s...
3. Intentionally Connected for effective Kingdom Work!
Our connection with others in Christ is unique among all others because we are moving in the same direction and toward the same goal. This means
our relationship with Christ-followers should be the Most important relationships we have on this earth.
We should prioritize our Christian relationships above other social circles.
2 Cor. 6 places a high level of emphasis on this unique relationship:
14 Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
The MOST influential relationships in your life should be that of those who are moving TOWARDS Christ.
The bible consistently describes two places of residence that we can move towards and this theme takes place throughout the bible:
OT Depicts empires vs God’s people
Egypt vs. Hebrews,
Baal or Babylon vs Israel
NT Still carries it:
Greeks or Romans Vs Jews
All of this is a historic/living metaphor for our tension to follow the
Darkness and light
Belial and Christ
World and the Kingdom
Flesh and the spirit
The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the World and they have prescribed ways of living. Romans 8:13 says, “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.”
So, it makes sense that we would be MOST coupled up with and yoked to, those with the same DESTINATION following Jesus into the Kingdom.
This doesn’t mean that we can’t learn anything from the world around us, but when you make any decisions about life, service, marriage, vocation, children, ANYTHING of IMPORTANCE, you should be operating from Godly counsel - empowered by the Spirit - as a general rule.
God gives warning to his poeple along the way NOT to be too intimately connected with the world because it will lead us to the wrong destination.
If we want to be intentionally connected for Kingdom Purposes, we must
2. Protect our Christian Community
This also means we must be a fortified people, with a distinct identity, and capable of creating strong bonds that are not easily fractured by INTERNAL or EXTERNAL pressure.
Internal: This means being able to identify and lay down:
our preferences!
Deferring to one another personally and culturally.
We will STILL be offended though!
In order to cover offenses, we have to be a
forgiving community,
willing to listen to each other, and have some fortitude of heart to stick it out when things get difficult.
If God’s people are MOST important, then the frequency should be considerable (in Acts they were together DAILY) and in a kind of proximity that would allow someone to know the good, bad, and unsavory parts of your life
External: People of conviction who hold to the “separated out-ness” The HOLY identity that God has carved out for us.
We are meant to be a DISTINCT people who are engaged with the world but not polluted by it...
or given over to our flesh.
How is your community right now?
If, at the beginning of the sermon you identified that you don’t have close community OR your close community is not close enough in proximity to be effective, then that’s your starting point.
Maybe you have a good community but you don’t have CHRISTIAN community. You need to look for community that is moving in the same direction as you.
We have so much freedom, and so many options for alternative community, that we take our christian community for granted. Deitrich Boenhoffer...
HCL will begin in the Fall...is it time to get connected?
Does your HC’s have a culture of this? If not why? How can you work to get it there?
Being in community is only as good as the people in it so are you being the kind of communal participant that you wish would be in community with you?!
If you have been HURT by Christian Community...
God tells you that He created you for community, to live in the network of interdependent relationships, that can shore each others burdens, share each others gifts to build a faithful community that blesses you, each other, and the world when it intersects with it.
The INDIVIDUALIST culture is trying to lure us away from God’s design by telling us freedom, blessing, growth, fullness of human expression is achieved by separating you from the burden of communal responsibility and pointing you toward autonomous individualism but it’s a lie and it is the Kingdom of the earth, the selfishness of the flesh, and way of the empire.
Listen, if we have any chance of following and growing up into maturity in Christ, any chance of loving God well and loving others as ourselves, if we have any capability of accomplishing the great commision, it’s going to be done - NOT IN THE CONTEXT individualism, but in the context of tight-Knit, holy spirit empowered, Christian community. It is a gift, and a grace, a calling, and a discipline to be embraced.
COMMUNION:
(1 COR. 11:23B-26)
“The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
SAVE THE DATE: The 2020 Marriage Retreat is scheduled to be Saturday and Sunday, November 7 and November 8!
PRAYER REQUESTS:
We are hosting prayer team meetings for both the congregation at large and individuals to sign up for individual prayer.
SUGGESTIONS FOR WORSHIP:
“Praise & Worship” Spotify playlist and “Praise & Worship” YouTube playlist (slightly different from each other), both of diverse music that are being constantly updated!
Bethel Music :
Bethel Music’s hours of live music YouTube Playlist, also being constantly updated
Bethel provides chords to most (if not all) of their songs here (just have to register email, but free!)
Live worship moments from the Upper Room YouTube Playlist
Journal writing! (I’m a writer too, so sometimes creative writing and writing my thoughts to God is my form of worship.)
Declare and worship with truth by singing and praying scriptures.
WORSHIP NIGHT! Dedicate a night to worship with friends and family, your house church or neighbors, those who need prayer, love worship, or just enjoy music through a video chat platform like Zoom. You can have one person leading at a time (switching off to whoever else wants to lead) while others sing along, pray, or prophesy, etc.
Serving your community, both online, in person, or both, is a great way to worship God, from spreading encouragement and God’s Word online to physically serving food to others. If you are able to go out and serve, click here for opportunities.
COMMISSIONING:
As Jesus said in John 20:21,
"Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."
Go, be the Church!
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.