back to indexBCC 2018 Retreat - General Session 3
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All right. Well, I know it's Sunday morning, which is usually a time where I think a lot of us are eager to, 00:00:29.000 |
you know, fellowship and hang out because we haven't seen each other all week. 00:00:32.000 |
But given that we're at retreat, we've already spent 14.4 hours together. 00:00:36.000 |
We were now kind of getting that itch to be away from each other and go back home. 00:00:42.000 |
And I know like a lot of you guys were up late last night, 00:00:45.000 |
totally disregarded everything I said in our second sermon. 00:00:51.000 |
I etched your faces into my mind so I can keep track of who you guys are, make sure you guys don't fall asleep. 00:00:57.000 |
But again, yeah, it's just been a joy to hang out with you guys at the fellowship. 00:01:04.000 |
I think now it's time to be a lot of you guys just finding out your story about how you came out to Berlin. 00:01:09.000 |
And I wish we had actually a few more days to spend together because that way I can meet all of you. 00:01:15.000 |
But my hope and my expectation is that both Tina and myself as well as her family come down, you know, 00:01:22.000 |
many times throughout the next few years and hopefully little by little we can get to know small segments of the church 00:01:32.000 |
All right, so that's really my goal and my desire. 00:01:34.000 |
But again, I'm just really grateful for the opportunity to be able to fellowship with you guys this weekend. 00:01:41.000 |
Let's go ahead and bow our heads for a word of prayer as we ask the Lord's blessing for this third session. 00:01:57.000 |
We're thankful, Lord God, that it is through Jesus that we have these means of access to you, 00:02:05.000 |
that we can pray to you, that we can worship you, and that we can be for you. 00:02:13.000 |
And we're thankful for this church because it is the bride of clemency by the blood of Jesus. 00:02:21.000 |
And you've brought us here and assembled us together for the purpose of doing ministry with one body. 00:02:28.000 |
And so we pray the word this morning as we look into your word once more, 00:02:33.000 |
as we see, Lord God, all these truths that you have recorded for us on the pages of Scripture, 00:02:40.000 |
that really make our hearts teachable this morning. 00:02:43.000 |
I thought for those of us who are fatigued, for those of us who are weary, 00:02:47.000 |
and for those of us who might be discouraged spiritually, 00:02:52.000 |
that you would help us, Lord God, to renew our vision of who you are. 00:02:56.000 |
And Lord, I believe not only this session, but really this weekend, with a spirit of rejoicing and celebration 00:03:03.000 |
over all that you've done, all that you've accomplished on our behalf. 00:03:07.000 |
And Lord, we thank you, Lord God, for your fruit, for your grace. 00:03:14.000 |
eHarmony.com first launched on August 22nd, the year 2000. 00:03:20.000 |
For those of you who don't know, eHarmony is an online matchmaking and dating service. 00:03:26.000 |
It is hugely popular. It was a copy and staple before the copy and staple. 00:03:32.000 |
On average, over 15,000 new accounts are opened each day. 00:03:38.000 |
And since it started about 15 years ago, eHarmony has accumulated over 33 million registered users 00:03:52.000 |
Most people attribute eHarmony's commercial success to its highly complex, computerized matchmaking algorithms. 00:04:01.000 |
See, whenever someone opens up a new account on eHarmony, 00:04:04.000 |
they're required to fill out a comprehensive survey consisting of 150 different questions. 00:04:14.000 |
These questions measure everything from personality traits, to moral values, to religious and political beliefs. 00:04:23.000 |
And then each one of those answers are inputted into a proprietary software program created by eHarmony engineers, 00:04:31.000 |
which optimizes matches between different users. 00:04:35.000 |
But for all its complexity, the matchmaking system of eHarmony is actually based on one very, very simple and fundamental principle. 00:04:48.000 |
One of eHarmony's original founders was once quoted as saying this, "Opposites attract, but then they attack." 00:04:58.000 |
Meaning, the greater the difference between two individuals are, the less likely they'll end up having romantic chemistry. 00:05:07.000 |
On the other hand, on the flip side, the more similar two people are, 00:05:10.000 |
the higher the probability that a lasting relationship will result. 00:05:15.000 |
I think judging from your numbers alone, the principle of compatibility works. 00:05:20.000 |
As a matter of fact, I learned that there are actually more than a handful of couples here at the church 00:05:25.000 |
who have met and since gotten married, but they met through eHarmony. 00:05:30.000 |
Believe it or not, according to market research data, an average of 3,800 eHarmony members in the United States 00:05:41.000 |
Today, eHarmony is actually seeking to apply this principle of compatibility, which works so well for dating and marriage relationships. 00:05:49.000 |
And they want to extend it out to other areas of life. 00:05:53.000 |
The leaders of eHarmony are confident that their ability to measure compatibility can help people make new friends, 00:06:05.000 |
even assist them with things like finances, aging, as well as mental and emotional health. 00:06:12.000 |
I want to ask you guys a question this morning. 00:06:15.000 |
What would happen if we took eHarmony's matching dating algorithms 00:06:20.000 |
and we applied them here, in the context of this church? 00:06:25.000 |
Let's say every single one of us filled out that 150-question survey, 00:06:30.000 |
profiling our likes and our dislikes, our interests and our disinterests. 00:06:35.000 |
Would a Berean Community Church, as we see it today, be the church that results? 00:06:43.000 |
Would the people that you're sitting next to be the ones that computers would deem as the best possible fit to be involved with 00:06:55.000 |
We've been slowly making our way through this review of the Fourfold Vision. 00:06:59.000 |
Again, we began this morning by talking about the importance of God-centered worship, 00:07:03.000 |
and then we followed that up in the afternoon session by discussing the importance of Scripture. 00:07:08.000 |
With this rewarding, I want us to unpack the third point of the church vision, 00:07:12.000 |
which is to build a community based on love and accountability. 00:07:19.000 |
I think one of the key ingredients that's absolutely essential to building a community is unity. 00:07:27.000 |
When you think about it, you can't just spell the word "community" without the word "unity." 00:07:32.000 |
And so, it shouldn't come as any kind of surprise to us that unity and community is a real prevalent theme 00:07:38.000 |
that's found throughout God's Word, but perhaps most especially in the book of Ephesians. 00:07:46.000 |
The primary theme for Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus is that of Christian unity. 00:07:52.000 |
And to understand and appreciate why, you have to know something about the historical context behind this book. 00:07:58.000 |
The ancient city of Ephesus was a major composite policy area. 00:08:04.000 |
It was this port city located off the coast of what we know today as modern-day Turkey. 00:08:09.000 |
And it's been said that during biblical times, up to a quarter million people lived there. 00:08:15.000 |
As you might imagine, culturally speaking, Ephesus was very much a melting pot, 00:08:21.000 |
consisting of this wide array of different races and ethnic groups. 00:08:25.000 |
And this diversity was also reflected in the religious beliefs as well. 00:08:29.000 |
It's not like everyone went to church or everyone went to synagogue. 00:08:33.000 |
Most of the city's residents were actually polytheistic, meaning they believed in a multitude of different gods. 00:08:39.000 |
And this was a very common trait among Greco-Romans of this time period. 00:08:44.000 |
But my point is this. The city of Ephesus was this highly diverse, multi-faceted kind of place. 00:08:52.000 |
And the church in Ephesus also meted many of these differences as well. 00:08:58.000 |
The Ephesian church, the church in Ephesus, was comprised of two basic peoples, Jew and Gentile. 00:09:07.000 |
Now the distinction between Jew and Gentile often times is kind of flattened out. 00:09:11.000 |
People think it's just a distinction between race or ethnicity. 00:09:17.000 |
It also extends to their worldview, to the way they thought about life, to the way that they viewed the world. 00:09:23.000 |
And it also extends to their sense of personal identity, how they thought of themselves. 00:09:28.000 |
You see, the Jews, they considered themselves to be the covenant people of God. 00:09:34.000 |
The Israelites, the Jews were specially chosen by God, from among all nations, to bring light and blessing to the entire world. 00:09:45.000 |
The Gentiles, on the other hand, they were known to be irreligious greedy people. 00:09:50.000 |
People that grew up in idolatry, people who had a long history of willful opposition to the Israelites throughout the Old Testament. 00:09:59.000 |
And so, for the entire lives, for as long as they had known one another, these two groups of people, Jew and Gentile, had been trained to hate each other. 00:10:10.000 |
The Jews regarded Gentiles as being ceremonially unclean, which meant they wouldn't walk where Gentiles walked. 00:10:19.000 |
They wouldn't dine with them for a meal. They wouldn't even eat with them at the same table. 00:10:25.000 |
Gentiles, on the other hand, they regarded Jews as being lazy and strange. 00:10:32.000 |
After all, the Jews, they would just take a Saturday off every single week. They just weren't working. 00:10:38.000 |
And that struck the Gentiles as being strange. 00:10:41.000 |
Not only that, but the Jews had this weird religious ritual where they would circumcise all their infant sons. 00:10:48.000 |
And again, the Gentiles just couldn't understand that. They found that to be gruesome and bizarre. 00:10:53.000 |
And so, the disdain, the contempt that was shared between these two groups was really intense. 00:11:00.000 |
But then all of a sudden, by the grace of God, and through the preaching of the Gospel, Jews and Gentiles, people who could have been any more different, people who had grown up with all this tension, were all of a sudden now being brought together in what was being called the Church. 00:11:20.000 |
And as you might have guessed, that transition was not easy. 00:11:24.000 |
I want you to imagine if neo-Nazis and members of the Black Lives Matter movement were all of a sudden forced to cast aside their differences and join hands to share in a common cause. 00:11:40.000 |
In all likelihood, it would probably take some time. It would probably take a considerable amount of time before they learned how to coexist. 00:11:49.000 |
And for these Christian Jews and these Christian Gentiles, despite their common belief in Christ, it really was no different. 00:11:59.000 |
The Ephesian Church was forced to navigate through fracture, through conflict, and through relational discord. 00:12:08.000 |
And the reason why I'm highlighting the extremity of their differences is really just to make a very basic point. 00:12:14.000 |
That if these two groups in the early Church, if Christian Jews and Christian Gentiles, could learn to overcome what the divide was, so they could live together in the context of the same community, then surely you and I can do the same as well. 00:12:31.000 |
I want you guys to consider this straight forward. We're in community church. 00:12:35.000 |
I want you to consider all the number of different factors that can and could potentially divide us. 00:12:41.000 |
I take a look at this room, and I see a lot more diversity than there was in the five years. And I'm grateful for that. 00:12:49.000 |
But by and large, I think we're still largely homogeneous. 00:12:54.000 |
I think people that look to us as part of our group, just from a distance, they can tell who's a part of our group and who's not. 00:13:02.000 |
But if you dig a little bit deeper, I think what you're going to discover is that some of those superficial similarities that you shared, they're not actually accurate to all the significant differences that actually separate us. 00:13:15.000 |
BNC is not this one-dimensional thing. It's not this monolithic entity. 00:13:21.000 |
And thinking of it that way, wouldn't it do justice to all the diversity that's actually represented in this room? 00:13:27.000 |
There's tremendous diversity here, in terms of backgrounds and other things. 00:13:33.000 |
There's diversity in terms of our career, our vocation. 00:13:36.000 |
You guys all have all different lifestyles. You have different tastes in food and in music and in clothing, different hobbies and interests. 00:13:44.000 |
You hold different political convictions. And I'm sure the differences can go on and on. 00:13:49.000 |
There are so many differences that can potentially divide this church. 00:13:55.000 |
Race, gender, personality, vocation, education level, geography, socioeconomic status, marital status, political affiliation, so on and so forth. 00:14:09.000 |
But God's desire is that we overcome those differences in the pursuit of a mutual goal of building a community that's based on love and accountability. 00:14:21.000 |
And so for the rest of our time together, I want us to consider what this concept of unity and community is supposed to look like in the context of this church. 00:14:30.000 |
And to do so, I encourage you guys to turn your attention to our Gospel, Ephesians chapter 4. 00:14:47.000 |
It says there, "I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 00:15:00.000 |
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. 00:15:10.000 |
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. 00:15:17.000 |
One Lord, one thing, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." 00:15:28.000 |
Our first point for this morning is the basis of community. 00:15:33.000 |
Paul, who wrote the book of Ephesians, while he was under house arrest in Rome. 00:15:40.000 |
As a result, Ephesians, along with Colossians, Olympians, and Philemon, they were put together as the prison epistles to the apostle Paul. 00:15:49.000 |
If you guys want to know what the prison epistles are, just want an easy way to memorize what those books are, 00:16:00.000 |
Philemon, Ephesians, Olympians, Colossians. Those are the prison epistles. 00:16:07.000 |
Well, Ephesians, much like another prison epistle, the book of Colossians, was organized and structured in Acts. 00:16:14.000 |
Paul, he wrote these books. It's not like he just kind of wrote them out of the stream of consciousness, 00:16:18.000 |
not knowing what he was going to say next. He had a game plan. He drew out a blueprint. 00:16:24.000 |
In the first half of this letter, it's very much document and theological orientation. 00:16:30.000 |
While the second half of this letter is much more practical in scope. 00:16:38.000 |
And the first three chapters are all about the truths of the gospel. 00:16:45.000 |
While Ephesians 4-6, the next three chapters are all about how the truths of this gospel 00:16:50.000 |
are being applied with respect to our interpersonal relationships. 00:16:55.000 |
Which is the reason why Paul is using the word "therefore" to begin the second half of this book. 00:17:01.000 |
Again, in verse 20, he says, "I therefore, a prisoner before the Lord, urge you to want a man worthy of calling to which you have been called." 00:17:10.000 |
Anytime you see the word "therefore" appear in Scripture, you need to ask yourself the question. 00:17:23.000 |
Wherefore is the therefore, therefore. Why is that therefore? 00:17:27.000 |
Because that's not a word to gloss over. That's not a word to just kind of skip and skimp. 00:17:33.000 |
It's a significant word. And the reason why is because the word "therefore" always serves as a kind of hinge. 00:17:41.000 |
Meaning it connects what Paul was after with what preceded before him. 00:17:48.000 |
And so Paul, he's using the word "therefore" here at the beginning of chapter 4 00:17:52.000 |
because he wants his readers to understand how the person in love with Jesus Christ, 00:17:58.000 |
which he has just said three chapters expounding on, was the shape and transform the life and culture of their children. 00:18:06.000 |
In short, Jesus and the gospel of Jesus was to serve as the basis and the foundation for their community. 00:18:18.000 |
In a lot of ways, I think the Apostle Paul was uniquely qualified to speak on the subject of Jew and Gentile religion. 00:18:27.000 |
You guys remember, Paul himself was a Pharisee Jew. 00:18:32.000 |
And he had spent most of his post-conversion life ministering to Gentiles. 00:18:37.000 |
And so he understood, I think better than most people would, especially during this time, 00:18:42.000 |
all the challenges that were associated with trying to unite these two very vastly different groups together. 00:18:50.000 |
It wasn't simply a matter of sticking everyone inside of a room, calling a conference, calling a retreat, 00:18:55.000 |
and then getting them to kind of talk it out so they could establish some commonality between us. 00:19:01.000 |
Paul knew and he understood that Jews and Gentiles, they didn't eat the same foods, 00:19:06.000 |
they didn't go to the same places, they didn't have the same interests. 00:19:11.000 |
And therefore, the only glue that could actually bind these people together was the good news of Jesus Christ. 00:19:22.000 |
And that's the reason why Paul writes earlier in this letter, Ephesians chapter 2, verses 14 through 16, 00:19:28.000 |
"For he," referring to Jesus, "himself is our peace, who has made his first one, 00:19:37.000 |
and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of the apostolate." 00:19:43.000 |
He's speaking about all those Jews and all those Gentiles that comprise this church. 00:19:49.000 |
Verse 15, "By abolishing the law of the commandments expressed in ordinances, 00:19:54.000 |
that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, 00:20:00.000 |
so making peace, and might reconcile his growth to God in one body through the cross, 00:20:12.000 |
A few months ago, a 14-year-old, Carvin Nomani, won the 2018 Scripps National Study. 00:20:20.000 |
He was winning his final award for the championship round. 00:20:24.000 |
Nomani politely asked, "May I have the definition?" 00:20:28.000 |
To which the moderator replied, "Intimate spiritual communion, 00:20:33.000 |
and participative sharing in a common religious commitment in spiritual communion." 00:20:38.000 |
Nomani, like all other Study B contestants, then asked for the language of the four-letter word, 00:20:48.000 |
And then finally, Nomani inquired about the hard speech for his award, and he was told, "Nam." 00:20:55.000 |
And after the serious questions, Nomani slowly began to spell out the word that he had been given, 00:21:01.000 |
the word that he would need to win the study. 00:21:18.000 |
As soon as he finished spelling out the word, he was promptly showered with confetti, 00:21:21.000 |
and was rose-tinted with seeds to give him applause. 00:21:25.000 |
Many of us who have grown up in the church for some time, I think we recognize, we're familiar with that term, 00:21:32.000 |
I think maybe during the 90s when I was growing up, K-O-I-N-O-N-I-N was used for everything. 00:21:36.000 |
It was used for like, praise meetings, and like, retreats, and youth group meetings, and everything else. 00:21:42.000 |
In the Bible, koinonia is usually translated as fellowship, or partnership. 00:21:47.000 |
So when you see that word in your English Bible, chances are it's a translation of the word koinonia. 00:21:53.000 |
And while that word doesn't necessarily appear in our text this morning, 00:21:56.000 |
I think the concept or the idea of koinonia and fellowship was very much a chief concern of the Apostle Paul as he wrote this book. 00:22:06.000 |
But here's something that I think is rather interesting. 00:22:09.000 |
Did you know that the Bible, not once, never does the Bible ever command Christians to create koinonia? 00:22:20.000 |
Never once in the Bible will you be told to create fellowship. 00:22:27.000 |
And the reason why is because true koinonia, true fellowship, can only be accomplished by God and God alone. 00:22:36.000 |
He doesn't expect us to do something that we are incapable of accomplishing. 00:22:46.000 |
We don't get it, and we do not possess the power or the ability to bring people together. 00:22:52.000 |
The world is trying to do that all the time, and look how that's going. 00:22:58.000 |
Instead, our responsibility is to simply maintain and preserve the community that's already ours through Christ. 00:23:07.000 |
So again, our responsibility is not to create koinonia. 00:23:11.000 |
Our responsibility as Christians is to maintain koinonia, to preserve koinonia. 00:23:18.000 |
I think far too often Christians forget this. 00:23:21.000 |
And what we end up trying to do is artificially produce a sense of togetherness 00:23:25.000 |
by organizing ministry events around things like basketball and board games and brunch. 00:23:32.000 |
We even call these activities in the church "fellowship," right? 00:23:37.000 |
As if merely attaching a word makes what we're doing koinonia. 00:23:43.000 |
But while all of these things are good, and I think they're actually very helpful in meaning to bring the people in the church together, 00:23:50.000 |
those things by themselves can never serve as the basis for community in the local church. 00:23:57.000 |
As believers, we need to learn how to connect our ecclesiology with soteriology. 00:24:04.000 |
Meaning, we need to integrate our understanding of the church with our understanding of salvation. 00:24:10.000 |
And we need to come to a recognition that the only basis for true koinonia is the gospel of Jesus Christ. 00:24:19.000 |
It's literally the only thing that binds us together. 00:24:22.000 |
And it's the only thing that separates what we're doing here in the church 00:24:26.000 |
from all the other social gatherings that are taking place outside in the world. 00:24:31.000 |
Just as Jesus was the only thing that his believing Jews and Gentiles and Ephesus could rally around, 00:24:38.000 |
in the same way Jesus is the only one who makes green, community church possible. 00:24:49.000 |
When an orchestra performs in a concert, each individual musician has to tune their own instrument before the show can get underway. 00:24:59.000 |
But how do they do that when there's so many? 00:25:02.000 |
There's all these different musicians, they all play different instruments. 00:25:05.000 |
How do they make sure that they're all playing in the right key? 00:25:09.000 |
Suppose each musician just started playing whatever note they felt like, 00:25:14.000 |
believing that their instrument was the only one they're proper tuned. 00:25:20.000 |
So what do professional orchestras do instead? 00:25:24.000 |
Well, they choose one person, and that person is called the concertmaster. 00:25:30.000 |
And the concertmaster becomes a reference point for everybody else. 00:25:35.000 |
The concertmaster's responsibility is to play an A note on his instrument. 00:25:41.000 |
And then the rest of the musicians use that A note to tune their own instruments. 00:25:46.000 |
In other words, the concertmaster's A is what keeps everyone in the orchestra playing in the same key. 00:25:54.000 |
And in much the same way, here in the church, Jesus is our concertmaster, so to speak. 00:26:06.000 |
These are the only things that enable you and I to remain in harmony with one another. 00:26:13.000 |
If we understand that Jesus is a God-obtaining basis for community in the church, 00:26:19.000 |
it's going to have far-reaching ramifications for the way that we practice community here in the context of arena. 00:26:27.000 |
So for those of you guys who spend a lot of time hanging out with people here, I want you guys to ask yourselves, 00:26:42.000 |
Is it simply the fact that we like doing the same things? 00:26:45.000 |
Is it simply the fact that we like going to the same places? 00:26:49.000 |
Because my follow-up question to that would be, what's going to happen when your interests change? 00:26:54.000 |
And they will change, because we're not static. 00:26:57.000 |
We're constantly evolving and developing as human beings. 00:27:01.000 |
And so our tastes, our preferences, what we like, what we desire, all those things are going to change. 00:27:06.000 |
And when they do, then the question is, will that spell the end of our interactions with one another? 00:27:14.000 |
Or, are our relationships substantial enough and deep enough to withstand those changes 00:27:22.000 |
because our friendships are based upon Jesus, who never changed? 00:27:29.000 |
Perhaps a helpful way of gauging how Christ-centered the fellowship of this church actually is, 00:27:35.000 |
is simply by asking ourselves, how often does the topic of spiritual things come up in conversation with my brothers and sisters here at this church? 00:27:44.000 |
Is it awkward to ask each other how we're doing spiritually? 00:27:49.000 |
Is this a topic that comes up organically and naturally? 00:27:54.000 |
For those of you who may struggle to find friends at this church, and I know it's overwhelming. 00:27:59.000 |
And that may mean you guys who've only been at this church for maybe a month or two. 00:28:03.000 |
For others of you, you've been at this church for a long time, but you're still having a hard time fitting in because maybe you're an introvert. 00:28:10.000 |
Or maybe you've tried, and the people that you've encountered, they're just so different from you 00:28:15.000 |
that you've reached a point where you've kind of given up altogether. 00:28:18.000 |
Like, I don't think I can really find the community that I'm looking for here at Green. 00:28:24.000 |
Will you at least be willing to concede that the primary purpose of the role of church may not necessarily be to help you make friends? 00:28:33.000 |
Are you at least willing to concede that the church may not be the place where people understand you? 00:28:42.000 |
And again, I hope and pray that all of us can experience those blessings of friendship and people who understand us. 00:28:49.000 |
But at the end of the day, will you at least concede that Christ is the only reason why I'm really here? 00:28:57.000 |
Because I have a relationship with Jesus, and I don't know what that means for my relationship with others. 00:29:02.000 |
But I know first and foremost, the reason why I'm at this church is because these people love Jesus, and these people are loved by Jesus. 00:29:12.000 |
And as a result, will that mean that I'm willing to invest in this church community, rather than getting out, rather than simply checking out? 00:29:21.000 |
Will you persist, even when it's difficult, to cultivate the types of relationships that are founded upon Christ, 00:29:28.000 |
even with those individuals that you have absolutely nothing else in common with? 00:29:35.000 |
All of us who regularly attend this church, member or non-member alike, anyone who considers Berea Community Church to be their church home, 00:29:44.000 |
needs to be striving to keep Jesus as a central basis of this community. 00:29:58.000 |
Just like we discussed before, community may be an objective reality that's been established by Christ in the Gospel. 00:30:05.000 |
But you and I, we still have a duty, we still have a responsibility to maintain and preserve this community 00:30:11.000 |
by the way that we treat one another here in the church. 00:30:15.000 |
Because our experience of community is going to ebb and flow depending on the nature of our relationships. 00:30:23.000 |
After the wedding day, a marital status of a couple remains fixed. 00:30:31.000 |
But the experience of marriage is going to be contingent upon how well the husband and wife are fulfilling their vows. 00:30:41.000 |
Is it a happy marriage? Well, that's another question. 00:30:46.000 |
Because God's already created that point on the end. 00:30:49.000 |
But are you a happy community? Are you a thriving community? Are you a flourishing community? 00:30:55.000 |
Again, that's going to depend on our relationships. 00:30:58.000 |
And so in this passage, what Paul does is he offers us some helpful counsel to give shape to our interactions with one another. 00:31:05.000 |
So that we might more effectively maintain and preserve community here in this church. 00:31:10.000 |
Looking again at the text in Ephesians 4, verse 1. 00:31:13.000 |
"I therefore," 1 Corinthians 4, the Lord Paul says, "urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the call with which you have been called, 00:31:21.000 |
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace." 00:31:33.000 |
"Now be you to walk in a manner worthy of our calling." 00:31:39.000 |
I think one of the theme verses for the retreat was 14 to 127, which is to live worthy of the gospel. 00:31:49.000 |
Because at first glance, when I hear "live worthy of the calling," or "live worthy of the gospel," 00:31:54.000 |
the first thing that comes to mind is, I've got to measure up to the gospel. 00:32:00.000 |
I've got to live in such a way as to make myself worthy of Jesus. 00:32:08.000 |
Who in the world can live their life in such a manner as to make themselves worthy of the gospel? 00:32:17.000 |
The gospel is all about how we have not merited salvation. 00:32:22.000 |
It's not about behaving in such a way as to achieve salvation. 00:32:27.000 |
Salvation is a free gift offered to us by the grace of God. 00:32:31.000 |
So what then does "calling" mean when he says that we are to live in a manner worthy of our calling? 00:32:39.000 |
Well, the word that's translated "worthy" here literally means to balance something on a scale. 00:32:45.000 |
It can also be translated as "appropriate," or "fitting," or "consistent." 00:32:52.000 |
So essentially, what Paul is urging his readers to do here in Ephesians 4 00:32:56.000 |
is to live in such a way that their lives are in accordance to, or consistent with, the gospel they've already received. 00:33:05.000 |
And one of the primary ways that they could do that was to make sure that the gospel was being displayed 00:33:11.000 |
in the way that they treated one another in the church. 00:33:15.000 |
And according to this passage, that meant relating to their brothers and sisters in Christ 00:33:19.000 |
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. 00:33:29.000 |
Suffice it to say, the way that brothers and sisters in Christ and the church treat one another 00:33:34.000 |
needs to reflect the ways that God has treated us in the gospel. 00:33:40.000 |
So that just as Jesus was humble toward us, we are to be humble toward one another. 00:33:48.000 |
And that just as Jesus forgave us, we are to be a forgiving spirit toward one another. 00:33:56.000 |
And just as Jesus was gentle and meek toward us, we are to be gentle and meek with one another. 00:34:03.000 |
Again, that's what it means to live "worthy," or in accordance to, the calling that we've received. 00:34:10.000 |
And I really like the way that Paul puts it at the end of verse 2. 00:34:14.000 |
Notice that he doesn't say it out here, "to bear with one another in accordance." 00:34:20.000 |
But here he just says what? "Bear with one another." Period. 00:34:25.000 |
It means sometimes you just have to put out good people in the church. 00:34:33.000 |
Wouldn't church be so much easier if all we had to do was show up, sing a few praise songs, 00:34:39.000 |
listen to some preaching, maybe eat some good food, some good snacks, and then be our own? 00:34:45.000 |
Wouldn't it be so nice if we didn't have to deal with each other? 00:34:52.000 |
If we didn't have to put up with those who annoy us or irritate us or frustrate us. 00:34:57.000 |
Church would be so much easier if we didn't have to deal with people. 00:35:02.000 |
And I think that might be the reason why some of you consider your friends outside the church 00:35:07.000 |
to be closer to you than those inside the church. 00:35:12.000 |
"I have this friend outside the church who's not even a Christian. 00:35:17.000 |
I think he understands me better than the brothers and sisters of this church." 00:35:21.000 |
And I get it. And the reason why I get it is because you get to choose who your friends are outside the church. 00:35:30.000 |
You don't get to choose who your brothers and sisters are in Christ. 00:35:37.000 |
I mean, I guess you could insert yourself as part of a walk-in team to satisfy the whole process of integrating newcomers 00:35:45.000 |
But generally speaking, we don't get to choose who the church members that we share a relationship with here at Marine. 00:35:57.000 |
It is fundamental to building a church that's based on love and accountability. 00:36:02.000 |
If you're only willing to spend time with a specially curated list of people, 00:36:10.000 |
a select few that you've personally handpicked because you feel naturally compatible with them, 00:36:17.000 |
then chances are you are not obeying the one-another commands that we find peppered throughout God's work. 00:36:23.000 |
Commands like "serve one another," "be at peace with one another," "do not growl against one another," 00:36:32.000 |
You can't do those things when all you're doing is picking and choosing who you want to be in a relationship with. 00:36:39.000 |
Walk me a man worthy of the calling that you have received mandates that we are actively involved in the community of the local church. 00:36:47.000 |
But the fact of the matter is, life in community is going to be messy because people are messy. 00:36:54.000 |
And if you haven't experienced any kind of conflict in the church recently, 00:36:58.000 |
if you're like, "Oh, you're not talking about me because I'm at peace with everyone," 00:37:02.000 |
I'm willing to bet the reason why you're not in conflict with people is because your relationships with people here at this church don't go very far. 00:37:11.000 |
Maybe the reason why you don't experience drama with people is because your relationships with people at this church are superficial. 00:37:20.000 |
Because the fact of the matter is, you and I are broken, sinful people on our way toward Christ's likeness. 00:37:27.000 |
And inevitably, when you put hundreds of those types of people together in the context of the same community, 00:37:40.000 |
That's even true after that one, back at home, after all. 00:37:45.000 |
He and I, we've known each other since college. 00:37:47.000 |
We've maintained a friendship throughout many, many years. 00:37:51.000 |
There have been times where he and I, we've had to actually sit down and patch our differences. 00:37:57.000 |
There have been times where we've had to speak the truth to one another in love. 00:38:01.000 |
There have been times where we've had to forgive each other out of grace and out of love and out of compassion because the gospel demands that we do so. 00:38:11.000 |
And that's the reason why my friendship with that brother of mine has become strengthened to the point where we're able to work together in a way that's true. 00:38:22.000 |
Living in community inevitably produces its fair share of challenges. 00:38:27.000 |
Because churches are just the kind of place where all sorts of different people come. 00:38:34.000 |
Awkward people, weird people, strange people, difficult people, racist people, in short, people just like you and me. 00:38:45.000 |
Just like with our early siblings, we don't get to choose who our brothers and sisters are. 00:38:51.000 |
So rather than grumbling and rather than complaining and rather than wishing that there was somebody else that God would bring into our family, 00:38:58.000 |
let's learn to treat one another in the same manner that God's treated us. That kind of conduct. 00:39:04.000 |
Is there anyone here in the church that you need to forgive? 00:39:08.000 |
The church is at a size now where you can safely avoid certain people for an entire year. 00:39:16.000 |
But is there anyone here in the church that you need to forgive? 00:39:20.000 |
Does the conduct of the gospel, living in a manner worthy of the gospel demand that you humble yourself before someone and ask them for forgiveness? 00:39:30.000 |
Maybe you know that it offended a certain person. 00:39:33.000 |
And maybe it comes to the realization that you need to ask for forgiveness, but it just feels awkward because so much time has passed and you guys are no longer on speaking terms. 00:39:43.000 |
Are you eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace? 00:39:48.000 |
Or are you actually hindering unity in the spirit because of the bitterness that you hold in your heart? 00:39:55.000 |
Because of the resentment that you feel toward other people? 00:40:01.000 |
Because it's in the gospel that God has shown us what it looks like to love and to be loved. 00:40:07.000 |
So then let us walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we've been called. 00:40:11.000 |
Specifically, by conducting ourselves in a way that is consistent with and in accordance to the gospel. 00:40:18.000 |
Our third and final point for this morning, the God of community. 00:40:23.000 |
Returning back to our passage, this time in verse 4, Paul says there is one God and one spirit. 00:40:33.000 |
Just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your calling. 00:40:36.000 |
One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. 00:40:44.000 |
As I was reading through those verses, hopefully you guys began to notice the repetition of the word "one." 00:40:50.000 |
In the short span of just three verses, that word "one" appears seven times. 00:40:58.000 |
One body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, Father of all. 00:41:06.000 |
Most commentators believe that Paul is actually quoting from an ancient creed that the early church adopted as one of their confessions. 00:41:14.000 |
That some scholars even refer to the ancient score as the "Oneness Creed." 00:41:19.000 |
And the purpose of this creed was very, very simple. 00:41:22.000 |
It was to provide the church a summary list of truths that united people together. 00:41:30.000 |
When the people in Ephesus showed up to church on Sunday morning, and they looked at their neighbors and realized, 00:41:36.000 |
"I don't have anything in common with these people." 00:41:38.000 |
They were to recite the Oneness Creed to themselves. 00:41:41.000 |
Because those truths were things that united this church together. 00:41:46.000 |
And so Paul is not describing a bunch of people who couldn't be any more different from each other, 00:41:51.000 |
sticking them in a room and telling them to play nice and get along. 00:41:54.000 |
No, he's providing for them theological, doctrinal truths, whereby they could rally around those truths, 00:42:02.000 |
in order to unite together in context and scene and community. 00:42:06.000 |
In other words, their unity was to be built on what they believed about God. 00:42:12.000 |
And if you guys read through verses 4 through 6 carefully, 00:42:15.000 |
the other thing that you're going to notice, and this is crazy, okay, 00:42:22.000 |
There is a distinctly triune shape to everything that Paul says. 00:42:30.000 |
One Lord, referring to Jesus, is the firstborn. 00:42:34.000 |
One God, a Father, is the first and the simplest. 00:42:39.000 |
Paul's role in this letter is to get people in the church together. 00:42:43.000 |
To be united. To live in such a way that they're living worthy of the gospel, worthy of the covenant. 00:42:50.000 |
And so he says that the template for Christian unity is to be found in the character and nature of the triune God. 00:43:01.000 |
In other words, God not only creates the unity that binds us together, 00:43:06.000 |
but God is also the highest example of what true relational unity is supposed to look like. 00:43:13.000 |
God is the best example of what true unity is supposed to look like. 00:43:18.000 |
Here's one of those silly but I think actually quite profound questions that maybe a kid in Sunday school might ask. 00:43:29.000 |
before God created the heavens and the earth, 00:43:36.000 |
Was God just sitting up in space even though there wasn't space? 00:43:40.000 |
Was God just sitting wherever he was, kind of bored and quivering his thighs? 00:43:55.000 |
From eternity past, the three persons of the gospel, 00:43:59.000 |
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, 00:44:02.000 |
they have forever existed in perfect community. 00:44:07.000 |
And so the Trinity, the Trinity serves as an ultimate model for what community living inside a church is supposed to look like. 00:44:16.000 |
Take a look at John 7. It's up on the screen. 00:44:20.000 |
This is Christ's high Christian prayer, which he offers up shortly before he's crucified. 00:44:26.000 |
And we start to get a glimpse, because he peels back the curtain, as it were, 00:44:30.000 |
to show the kind of relationships that he shared with God the Father and God the Son. 00:44:36.000 |
And he says this in John 17, beginning from verse 20. 00:44:40.000 |
"I do not ask for these only," referring to the 12 disciples, 00:44:45.000 |
"but also for those who will believe in me through their word," referring to you and to me, verse 21, 00:44:56.000 |
Just as you, Father, are me and I am you, that they also may be in us, 00:45:02.000 |
so that the world may believe that you have said it. 00:45:06.000 |
The glory that you have given me I give to them, 00:45:16.000 |
I in them, and you in me, that they may become perfectly one. 00:45:24.000 |
The tri-unity of the Trinity remains the best and most clearest example 00:45:31.000 |
of what community is supposed to look like for Christians today. 00:45:35.000 |
The oneness that we are striving after is to be patterned after our Triune God. 00:45:42.000 |
You think about it, in the work of redemption, 00:45:45.000 |
when God carries out the work of salvation in our lives, 00:45:48.000 |
the three persons of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 00:45:52.000 |
they don't have their own separate individual agendas. 00:45:57.000 |
They work in complementary fashion, harmoniously, 00:46:03.000 |
And each member of the Trinity, each person of the Trinity, 00:46:17.000 |
God the Son, He accomplishes salvation for us 00:46:21.000 |
by dying on the cross as a sacrifice to our sins. 00:46:24.000 |
And then God the Holy Spirit, what does He do? 00:46:26.000 |
He applies salvation to us by taking the benefits and the rewards 00:46:32.000 |
and applying them to undeserved sinners, such as our son. 00:46:36.000 |
The son doesn't give away to the father, saying, 00:46:41.000 |
And the spirit doesn't shove us over, saying, 00:46:43.000 |
"No, I don't want people to die for sinners on the cross." 00:46:51.000 |
The trinity nature of God's being and doing should deepen 00:46:58.000 |
That just as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit 00:47:01.000 |
work together to decree, accomplish, and apply salvation for our sins, 00:47:06.000 |
in the same way, we need to learn to work together in life fashion. 00:47:12.000 |
The Holy Trinity is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 00:47:23.000 |
When we approach church with a self-centered, selfish, 00:47:28.000 |
all-accord mentality--that is, when we pick and choose 00:47:31.000 |
the parts of community life that we want to be involved with-- 00:47:34.000 |
it ultimately undermines the unity that God has established in this church. 00:47:41.000 |
Oh, my friends, the people I love, they're going through this event today. 00:47:46.000 |
But man, I saw the guest list on Facebook, and who's coming to that other church? 00:47:53.000 |
All the trees outside, it's going to be a lot of fun, so I'm going to show up to that. 00:47:57.000 |
But you know what? Maybe Bible study is kind of drag, and I'm tired, 00:48:05.000 |
If there's a mandate, I'm just going to pick and choose what I want. 00:48:08.000 |
As a kid, I remember--because I went through my teenage years just like you guys did, 00:48:13.000 |
and I went through that emo experience where I just wanted to be alone all the time. 00:48:18.000 |
Sometimes I would ask my mom and dad, "I don't want to eat at the dinner table. 00:48:22.000 |
Can I take my meal and eat it inside of the room?" 00:48:27.000 |
And the reason why--I'm going to ask them, "Why? 00:48:32.000 |
They would say, "Because eating together is a part of what it means to be part of the same family." 00:48:39.000 |
Eating together is what it means to be part of the same family. 00:48:43.000 |
And in the same way, I think community--it's difficult to practice a naturality in real life 00:48:49.000 |
when everyone is just kind of picking and choosing their own thing. 00:48:55.000 |
rather than just selecting the parts of community life that you want to participate in, 00:49:02.000 |
any time the pastor or the leaders ask the church to come together, 00:49:11.000 |
That's what it means to practice community with one another. 00:49:15.000 |
And I don't think us, the triune God, come together to achieve this one singular purpose of saving us, 00:49:21.000 |
but after He redeems us, He places us into one body of God. 00:49:30.000 |
I think perhaps one of the most misunderstood and controversial aspects of community life in a church 00:49:41.000 |
Speaking for myself, I think cliques are small. 00:49:46.000 |
If what we mean by a clique is just a smaller group of people that we feel closer to, 00:49:51.000 |
because the fact of the matter is, we don't have the relational bandwidth to be close to everyone equally. 00:49:59.000 |
Even Pastor Peter, I see him greet certain people, and it definitely seems like he knows them well. 00:50:03.000 |
And other people, it's like, you know, he says hello, and I'm like, "This is Pastor Peter." 00:50:09.000 |
Even Pastor Peter is up here every Sunday, and he sees all your faces, 00:50:16.000 |
And if you're bitter, it's because, well, you're not bitter because, you know, so and so. 00:50:26.000 |
I mean, guys, there's a lot of other people in the church. 00:50:30.000 |
But Jesus, from among the crowds, he chose twelve. 00:50:40.000 |
Again, all are talking about a small group of people that we feel more closely connected to. 00:50:45.000 |
The problem is, the problem is when cliques become an excuse for us not to associate with 00:50:52.000 |
or not to interact with certain people in the church. 00:50:56.000 |
And we might be one body of God people, but in reality and function, 00:51:02.000 |
we're actually two bodies or three bodies or four bodies or five bodies. 00:51:08.000 |
And with a church at this scale and this size, maybe dozens and dozens of individual bodies. 00:51:15.000 |
See, there's a really thin line between being tight and close-knit as a group, 00:51:21.000 |
which I think is fine, and being insular and exclusive, which obviously is destructive. 00:51:27.000 |
And you're going to have to be careful about exercising wisdom in this sermon 00:51:31.000 |
to make sure that you remain on the right side of that line. 00:51:35.000 |
Otherwise, you end up creating a church within the church. 00:51:39.000 |
So again, ask yourselves, is the group that I belong to, whatever group that might be, 00:51:44.000 |
is the group that I belong to a springboard that serves others in this community? 00:51:51.000 |
Or is the group that I belong to actually proving to be a hindrance to true union 00:52:01.000 |
I've approached people at our church back home, and I've asked them out of service, 00:52:07.000 |
"Hey, would it be okay if you invited that person out to lunch with you guys?" 00:52:13.000 |
And one time I had a person respond to me, half-jokingly, but there was some truth to it. 00:52:18.000 |
He said, "Pastor Eric, please don't make us invite that person." 00:52:25.000 |
"Because I've worked really hard to create relational chemistry here in this group, 00:52:31.000 |
and I don't want to disrupt that in any way by adding someone new to the mix." 00:52:36.000 |
And they were verbalizing something that I think many of us say internally. 00:52:41.000 |
We have our group of friends, the people we feel comfortable with, 00:52:47.000 |
And a lot of times we don't want to disrupt that. 00:52:50.000 |
And so for fear of disrupting that, we don't want to do it beyond our group to include others. 00:52:56.000 |
And again, that's when things become destructive. 00:53:00.000 |
In all our community healings, we have to strive to resemble the oneness that we share in Jesus Christ. 00:53:08.000 |
So as we close, I'm just going to review our three points one final time. 00:53:16.000 |
As a church, we can search and search and search for things that bring us together, 00:53:20.000 |
but the only sufficient basis for a point on the end is Christ Himself. 00:53:25.000 |
The conduct of community, number two, is to be gospel-sharing. 00:53:30.000 |
So even when we're forced to deal with people in the church who are difficult or hurtful or annoying, 00:53:35.000 |
we're not to retaliate in our flesh, but instead we are to remember how God is acting toward us in the gospel. 00:53:41.000 |
We are to have that shaped the way that we relate to the people here in the church. 00:53:46.000 |
Thirdly and finally, the God of our community is trinity. 00:53:50.000 |
That just as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have worked together to achieve the mutual purpose and goal of saving us, 00:53:56.000 |
we as a church by us should also strive to be united in what we do, 00:54:00.000 |
so that our oneness might be fully displayed to the glory of God. 00:54:04.000 |
And it's my hope and my prayer, and I'm sure the hope and prayer of the leaders here, 00:54:07.000 |
that as you guys depart from a tree later today and in the coming weeks, 00:54:11.000 |
that you would find many, many opportunities not to create koinonia, 00:54:17.000 |
but to maintain and preserve koinonia that you have been blessed with as a reward of the gospel, 00:54:35.000 |
Our Heavenly Father and we are thankful for this meeting. 00:54:40.000 |
And inasmuch as we have reason to complain and grumble, be annoyed and be frustrated 00:54:45.000 |
by certain people around us, we also recognize at the very same time 00:54:49.000 |
that we ourselves are probably a source of a lot of that contention. 00:54:54.000 |
And so we want to confess our sins before you. 00:54:57.000 |
We want to confess our sins before one another. 00:55:00.000 |
And as this church grows in more and more people, as this church grows in number, 00:55:06.000 |
we pray the word of God that the depth of our relationship would grow as well. 00:55:10.000 |
Father, it is hard work building relationships, 00:55:13.000 |
but it is hard work, the word of God, to do it in a relationship with us. 00:55:17.000 |
And so we pray the word that you would cause us to remember all that you've done for us in Christ, 00:55:21.000 |
and that you would motivate us and energize us and empower us to stop being lazy, 00:55:27.000 |
and instead the word of God to work hard to serve others, to love others, to forgive others, 00:55:32.000 |
so that you would be pleased and honor and glorify us. 00:55:35.000 |
We pray the word of God that the community that you have won for us through Christ 00:55:39.000 |
would be realized in this community here at Berean, 00:55:42.000 |
that we would live in such a way as to be consistent, to live worthy of the calling that we have received.