I'm going to read for us Philippians chapter 2 verses 1 through 5. So if you could turn there with me. Hopefully for those of you who have been here, Philippians is very near and dear to you now as you've studied through inductively. God's word says, "Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves. Do not merely look out for your own interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus." Let's pray. God thank you that you have given Christ to be our example.

That he is indeed God. And God we're so grateful that Christ too is indeed man. Who walked the walk, who understands our weaknesses, who is able to sympathize with where we are. That we might look to him and be encouraged by the fact that he understands. But also very stirred on and stirred up God by the fact that he was able to live that righteous life for us.

So thank you God that as we hear today's sermon, we have his example and we have his work completed for us. That we might hear with renewed hearts. And God for anyone who's not a believer in this room, that you would allow their eyes to see. A Jesus who has died for the sins of the world.

And God that you would cause living hope to come. And Father that eyes that were once blind to see. In Jesus name we pray, amen. We're gonna be continuing in our covenant series. Today is covenant number six. And I'll read it for us. It says, "I commit to attending BCC," that's Beroean Community Church, "functions and activities to the best of my ability for the purpose of building up the body of Christ at Berean." I'll read it one more time.

"I commit to attending BCC functions and activities to the best of my ability for the purpose of building up the body of Christ at Berean." And with these covenants, if you are new, if you haven't been here before, we have a series of 10 covenants. And all 10 of them, if you're a member, try to imagine the 10.

There's 10 of them and then you sign your name at the bottom if you wanna become a member here at Berean. And these are covenants that you commit to. To say that this is where your heart is. And number six is going to be one of those. And the main point for today's sermon, I'll just give it right up front.

Church functions and activities are not about you. That's our main point today. It's not about you. They are about building up the body of Christ and edifying others. Again, church functions and activities are not about you. They are about building up the body of Christ and edifying others. And today's sermon, we have to be a little wary.

I think there's a very easy kind of road we could go down where it seems like I'm legalistically preaching at you to say like, "Hey, you have to come out to everything that this church says you have to come out to." No, that is not what we're saying. Far from it actually.

But today I invite you to come and just evaluate your heart and to say that we're not going to be people who look and say, "Do I have to go to this? Do I have to go to that?" These functions and activities that are provided here. But to say perhaps coming from a different angle and maybe challenging you to ask different questions instead of those.

So let's try to navigate these waters a little bit. Now, I wrote out for you guys some fellowship and activities that we have here at our church. These are just a few. These are just some examples. Christmas parties. In December, it felt like there were so many Christmas parties, right?

You had to buy like six gift exchange things. Sports day, we had that recently or actually we called it picnic day. Keep forgetting. And then game nights. There are different ones that kind of pop up. Retreats. Praise and prayer nights. Special services. The New Year's Eve service was especially encouraging to me personally.

We had that New Year's Eve service counting down together. Always feels kind of cheesy, kind of awesome. Prayer meetings. That's happening on Sundays. We have praise and prayers and things like that. Sports activities. Football. I think football season is kind of gearing up right now and I see a lot of people having interesting lunches and dinners together and stuff like that.

So there's a lot of different functions, a lot of different activities. I'd say specifically given by Berea and also some that are more just loose, that people are kind of getting together. And these are the things that we're talking about. Now for me, I want to just get out there and let you know that I'm an introvert.

I'm pretty introverted. Social interaction scares me. So I had to learn the cues and all that kind of stuff. And going down this list and even preparing the sermon, I had to do a lot of heart evaluation too for myself. So I hope you understand that rather than preaching at you today, there was a lot of thought I had to put into myself.

Even just getting to retreat, there's a college retreat coming up. If you're an introvert, you know retreats are your worst nightmare. You like the sessions and you like the times in small groups, but anything in between, you want to just go to your room. So there's all these things that about me, when I think of church activities and functions, I get different feels.

I kind of look at this and I say, I say I want to go to that. I look at this and I say, "Ooh, that one is not something I would want to be at." When I first came out to this church, Wednesday night Bible studies were the scariest thing for me.

Wednesday night Bible study, there would be almost like 200 people, like 150 to 200 people here. And then that thought of, "Man, who do I talk to? Where do I belong? Am I supposed to feel like I need to belong somewhere?" All these different conflicting things were there. And so, I don't want you to get me wrong, I like interacting with people.

I actually like talking with you and things like that. That's all there. And yet, as we think about functions and activities, for every person sitting in this room, we get different feelings. We have different struggles. There are people who want to go out to anything and everything. And there are people who it's difficult to come out to these things.

So today's sermon, please evaluate it to your own heart. I want to ask you, don't be thinking about other people as much as possible as you're going through today's sermon, and try to be evaluating and thinking about where you personally and currently stand. So again, let me read covenant number six.

"I commit to attending BCC functions and activities to the best of my ability for the purpose of building up the body of Christ at Berean." I'm going to go through four points. Here's the first. Believers must be others-focused. Believers must be others-focused. So again, for members at BCC, we ask you to commit to this.

You're signing your name to this, and that you're making it more than optional in your life. The word there is commitment. This is your word. You have signed it with your name, saying, "This is what I desire and commit to do." Obviously, this isn't mandatory. The words, "To the best of your ability." That one, it makes that clear.

But the idea is that we are truly committed to even taking these functions and activities that are provided at church seriously. The question, though, becomes, "Why? Why should I?" If you're the type of heart, I kind of have a heart like this. When someone tells me what to do, I kind of want to buck the other way.

You have to ask that question, "Why?" Says who? That doesn't sound like ... It takes a little bit of work to make that sound and feel biblical. Come out to the functions and activities that this church provides. It sounds legalistic at times. You can say, "I'm coming to Bible study." You can say, "I'm coming out to weeknight, the home group," or, "I'm coming out to Sunday worships.

I'm putting in what I need to put in. I'm a very busy person." Your heart might say, "Can I not pick and choose on these optional functions and activities?" My answer to that would be, "Of course. Of course you're allowed to choose. Of course you need to take stock of your life.

You need to wisely and discerningly be able to make these decisions, to see in your life what you are capable of being a part of and not. Of course." But today, we're not asking that. What we're asking is, "Where is your heart in the decision-making process? What makes you say, 'I will go to this, I will not go to this?' Where is the beginning point?

Where is the starting point of how your heart reflexes in these things?" The idea here is, "To the best of my ability. I'm going to be trying to go to these things to the best of my ability." Now there's a difference between someone that really wants to make it but can't, and then someone that will take any and every excuse before saying that they'll go.

For an example, a parent might ask their teenage child, so if you have a teenage child, you are fully aware of this. You know what I'm talking about. When they go through puberty, and then they become kind of a different creature, and then you start asking them, before it'd be like, "We're going here," and all the kids would go, "Yeah!" But now they're too cool for school.

They have friends. They don't need you so much anymore. You're this parent of a teenager, and you're asking that question to them. "Hey, come to your sibling's birthday dinner this Sunday." You ask that question to them. And now here is where a lot of responses can come out. And here is where you can start to really gauge the heart of this child you have, this teenager.

One is, he will really try his best, because that's what he says. He says, "Okay, okay, Mom. I'll try my best." So, he will really try his best. He's going to work hard to get his assignments done. He's going to keep his schedule clear when his friends invite him to a movie.

His priority is going to be seen in his commitment to what he said, "I'll try my best." And then, there's this other side. We could think about it the epidemic of the age, which is this. "I'll try my best" falls on a spectrum, on a category, a bunch of categories.

It actually means, "I'll try my best until something better and more worth my time comes along." Now, this is very like that example of this teenager processing that. "My parents just asked me to come to this sibling birthday dinner." And they're like in a twilight zone for a little bit, right?

They're kind of in there trying to make their decision. And there's a lot of desires happening, there's a lot of thoughts happening in that process. What might this individual say? Until something better and more worth my time comes along. If it's a hangout with acquaintances that I don't necessarily like, I'm thrilled about hanging out with, then I will be there.

I will make the sacrifice to go and be at this dinner. However, if it's with a group of friends that he really likes to be with, if that girl he has a crush on happens to be there, if that thing that they're going to be doing just sounds too exciting, then all of a sudden, sorry, I can't make it to the birthday dinner.

Or it might depend on many different things. So I'll try my best. That gets relegated to, depends on what's in it for me. What do I deem to be most in line with my desire? How is that going to benefit me? I'll prioritize my family until something of a really greater priority comes along.

So the question isn't so much, not like, why should I go to this thing? But the question we should be asking is, why would I not? It kind of delves. The teenager that goes in these two opposite directions, the one that the priorities aren't right, they're going to be like, why should I go?

The one who is really, who loves their family, who wants to be there is going to ask, oh, why would I not? It comes from a different angle. And we're going to look at that. The questions that come up about how you answer that question, about how you answer the question if someone says, hey, are you going to be here?

Are you going to be at that thing? It's going to evaluate your core heart intentions. It's going to shed light on your heart desires. And covenant six goes into this. Covenant six says, prioritize the church. Prioritize fellowship. Prioritize spending time with each other. Prioritize others. Don't use church. Don't use others to build up your securities and your desires.

Prioritize them. Love them. These functions and activities are not about you. Now, of course, we have to take a side and say, of course it's about you. It's about all of us. Those things are supposed to be beneficial for each and every one of us. The idea here is that that function and that activity is not for you as an individual so much as it is for the edification of the body and of the church.

Church functions are not about you. We are concerned about the building up of the church, not individual self-interests. You are not to be simply consumed about your spiritual growth. The way we are now is we are concerned about the church's spiritual growth. So the passage in Philippians chapter two, verses one through five, I'm going to read this again.

"Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves.

Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus." And of course from there it goes into verses six through 11, that amazing passage about what Jesus did. But if you look here, he starts off this passage by saying, "If, if, if, if," four times.

He says, "If there is encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion." And that word "if" is important. There are different ways you could take the word "if," "if" statements. There are actually four general conditional statements, but we'll just look at two.

The second conditional, the condition two is, if it becomes, next slide here, there is doubt as to whether these things exist or not. And this is not the passage. This passage isn't doubting the existence of these four things. This is actually a conditional one statement, which is going to be, can you guys put that up?

I'm going to write that down. There is no doubt that these things do exist. So it is, there is no doubt that the things that are being talked about in the list of four things, that they exist. So another way you can replace "if" with is, "therefore," or you could replace it with, "since." It becomes very causal in effect, condition one.

"Because," you can say "because" too. So looking at this text again, "Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ," can be read, "Therefore, since there is encouragement in Christ, because there is consolation of love, because you have these things," in verse two, "make my joy complete by being in the same mind, being unified in thought, being unified in heart, coming together as one." And from there, it goes into the exhortations of verses three and four.

He's saying, "Do you not have love from God? Do you not have the fellowship given from the Lord? That if you do, then this is how you ought to look." So in verse three, he says that we are to do nothing out of selfish ambition or empty conceit. That word "nothing" is very powerful.

That word ought to highlight and jump out at us. Because this is the type of command where you can't wiggle out of it. We like using loopholes in commandments. When God commands us to do something, we use loopholes. The weakness of the flesh, the fact that I forgot, there's lots of different loopholes we can use.

But when he says, "Do nothing out of selfishness," think about the gravity and weight of that statement. Another way to look at that is, don't even do one thing out of selfishness. The things you say, the things you do, the decisions you make, none of it, zero. All of it has to be gone.

The decisions you make cannot come out of selfishness. Are you not a believer? Have you not received the love of the Lord? Will you not see what's to come right after this passage of how Christ set an example for us? He did not just think of you a little bit.

He did not think of you just a little bit higher or more. He died for you. And this passage, do nothing out of selfishness. Do nothing out of empty conceit. Another way to say empty conceit is vain glory. I really like that one because it kind of sheds light on it, right?

Do nothing from self-glory. Do nothing to bring glory to yourself. But in humility, consider others' interests more important than your own. This passage speaks loads into covenant number six and why it matters. I commit to attending BCC functions and activities to the best of my ability for the purpose of building up the body of Christ at Berean.

We're not here just to like do Bible study together, hear sermons together, and go our way. A church is just this part of our lives where we come and it's there. And we have to kind of categorize everything in our lives and put up boundaries and say, "Well, I know I'm called to be a good Christian." See, we're not called to be here and just be polite Christians and nice Christians.

Come and kind of Sunday to Sunday basis look at each other and say, "Hey, how are you doing?" And talk a little bit about what's been happening in the week and maybe bring up something that happened last week. Church is so much more than that. When we're called to be believers, when we are called into God's kingdom and we are transformed from who we used to be to who we are now as believers, church becomes a place when you gather these types of people together that it looks dramatically different.

See, Covenant 6 is a tangible way to live Philippians 2, verses 3 and 4 out. It gives you space and opportunity to live in obedience to God, in caring for one another, in thinking of others. We don't have various functions and activities here at Berean because we like functions and activities.

Personally, for me, I just like talking to people and then I don't know how to small talk very well. I like getting to the deeper things and all that kind of stuff. But these functions and activities, when we kind of take stock of them, we can't say, "Well, in them of themselves, of course, programs aren't what runs the church.

They're not the most important thing." And yet, these things are both very helpful and secondly, it's going to kind of help you to evaluate actually where you do stand personally. Whether you desire to go or not, we'll be able to help you ask yourself, "Why? Why don't I want to go to this?

Why would I want to go to this?" We aren't saying, obviously, that you need to be at every single thing the church provides. I know many of us are incredibly busy and honestly, sometimes it does feel like... Church does feel like, "Man, you're running to one thing to another thing." And I know many of you guys are doing that.

You're going to a meeting and then you're going to some kind of outing and then you're going to... I know. I know it gets crazy. But we do need to evaluate our hearts and how we decide and why we decide to go to all of these things. These are opportunities to build each other up and edify one another.

That list I had written up there before, these are great spaces. These are great opportunities. If there is anyone in this room that has ever sat down and said, "Man, I don't feel like I have fellowship here. I don't feel like I have friends here. I don't feel welcomed here.

I don't feel at home here." These are the places for that. And how you make your decisions will show you where your heart is. There's something heavy and weighty that describes the believer that has been saved by God. Because when you're thinking of like, "Why would I go to this or not?" And you're thinking about Philippians chapter two, verse three or four, that I would consider others' interests above my own.

This is not a nice thought of, "I need to think of others a little bit more." This is saying that you need to think of others greater than yourself. That what I deem in my defense and my survival instincts and my desire for self-satisfaction, all these things, it's not like thinking of other people just a little bit more.

This is like a complete change, a drastic difference in the believer. Look what it says in John 13, 35, "By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." If you have love for one another, they will know that you are my disciples.

When something comes up on an announcement, Pastor Mark usually gives announcements and he puts it out there saying, "This thing is coming up." Like, what's your process? Is it quickly like, "Oh, not going to that, not going to that one. Oh, I'll consider that one. That one I'm definitely going to." And again, it's not about the function all the time.

It's not about that activity all the time. My question is to your own heart. Why did you just cut these out? Why did you say maybe to this one? And why are you saying you're going to this one? Are you self-interested? Is your decision-making solely, even in functions and activities, about you?

This brings us to our second point, believers must not be self-centered. Believers must not be self-centered. Now, if you're self-centered, you're going to say, "All right, what do I have to do?" Kind of like the teenager to the parent, right? "What do I have to do? Tell me what to do and I'll do it." And we know that's wrong.

It should come more from a heart of, "I desire." Here's some common questions that will tend to reveal your heart's desires. And we're talking specifically about functions and activities here, but you can talk about church in general. Here's the first one. You can ask, "Who's going?" I hate that one the most, by the way.

"Who's going?" Whenever someone asks me, "Who's going?" I'm like, "Not you." You know, "We don't want that kind of heart here." Just kidding. Just kidding. I'm totally kidding. Please come. But, "Who's going?" Not out of curiosity, but when this question is asked to gauge whether or not you want to go, like, "Who's going?" You can see the anti-God attitude there.

And it's actually quite ugly if you really sit back and think about it. The attitude that is set against, I would say, is an anti-Christ mindset, the selfishness. The attitude that doesn't fall in line with, "Look to others' interests above my own, but what's in it for me? What am I going to learn?

What am I going to gain out of it?" The question is, "What are we going to do exactly? Can you please write down the itinerary and tell me exactly what we're going to do? And then I'll consider whether or not I'll be there or not." Again, not out of curiosity.

I know there are just curious people, the type of personalities that just wants to know everything. But because you want to gauge whether I'll go or not. Here's some common objections as to why not to go. Your heart might say, "I'm too tired. You have no idea what my week look like.

I am exhausted." And many times, it's extremely valid, that feeling. But in your decision-making process, are you self-interested or are you others' interested? Are you self-centered or in humility, do you consider others' interests greater than your own? And that at least needs to be there, right? But is that questioning there?

Is that sentiment there? That we are supremely as believers now, others-oriented. That our existence is to love God and to love others and to not love ourselves. We might say something like, "It doesn't seem worth it." You might say, "I don't have any friends there." Again many of these can be valid in certain senses.

We can come up with very good excuses. But how we go about it and the pattern as to why we make these decisions are going to reveal your heart. That's all I'm asking today for you to do. I'm not trying to guilt you into going to activities and say, "You're not a good person unless you go to these things." No, far be it from that.

I'm humbly trying to say, "Just look at your heart and how are you making decisions?" When you ask yourself whether or not the way you make practical decisions in life, you're asking, "Is it biblical?" The way I even think about things, am I taking it into consideration? Am I taking every thought captive?

Just the whole outlook of my life, what is it oriented around? And for many of us, I want to say all of us, there is that me-centered aspect. Even how we serve in church, even what we decide to do, it's very self-centered. But this is a reminder. This is a high calling.

Do nothing out of selfishness or empty conceit. We are bent on loving others in radical ways. We place others' interests above our own. How can we actively do that unless we put ourselves in position to do that? A church our size, I think it's very, very easy for us to just come and attend and go.

It's really easy. And then even if you're a little bit more church, you're like, "I have to do something in the week too, so I'll go to the home group. I'll go to some kind of Bible study." Come and then go. But you could do that with extreme self-interest there.

The Christian just looks so different. We're called to look very different than that. The Christian comes and says, "Wherever they go, I will place others' interests above my own." If you don't believe me, if you just think I'm taking one passage, if you just go through text, if you go through just the New Testament, you are going to be riddled with command after command after command to do that.

And we'll take a look at that pretty soon. So we have to be very different in the way we react and we think, and we have to renew those things. If you look at Ephesians chapter four, verse 20 through 24, it says, "But you did not learn Christ in this way.

Indeed, you have heard him and have been taught in him, just as truth is in Jesus, that in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self." That former manner of life, we'll put in there selfishness. We'll put in there self-centeredness. And he's saying, "In reference to your former manner of life," that's how you used to be before Christ, before the Holy Spirit came into you, before you were changed and renewed and resurrected in the soul.

He says, "You lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of the seed, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new self, which is in the likeness of," not just a betterment of personality or people or just thinking more of others, but to the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

The standard we're called to is Christlikeness, that we are to look to others and be Christlike in our thoughts, that we are to look at these decisions we can make in our lives, even to our time, and be Christlike. Then in Philippians, after our passage, he goes to the sheer extent of what Christ did as an example.

He went to the cross, and that is the way we think now. That is the way we make our decisions now, that we have been crucified to ourselves and to our own desires, that we live singularly for one purpose now. Our heart, our hope, our joy is all put together fully in God and his purposes now.

The old has gone, the new has come, and we are actively renewing in this. Hopefully the put on the new self takes off the burden, because when you look, you say like, "Oh man, I'm a Christian, and I don't quite look like this," and it scares you, but this is a reminder that Paul is talking to Christians, and he's giving this command to people who ought to look a certain way.

He's saying, "You don't look like that." That's for all of us. We do exist in this place where we're weak. We are selfish. We repent of that, but my question is, do you truly repent of that? Have you been turning your eyes away from living for yourself, and have you been even within the church, not just between you and God, saying, "I want to live for your kingdom, so my career is about you, God." Not just that, but even in the way we look at each other, everything has been sanctified and washed.

That brings us to our third point, believers must build one another up. We have to learn this intentional and purposeful type of interaction that comes as a result of our new life in Christ. These interactions that we have, it could be all over the spectrum again. I'll throw out random examples, but you have to make this your own.

You can have the interactions where you just have a close group of friends here at church, and you guys just go and hang out all the time because it's very comfortable, and there's good conversations that happen, and maybe even some spurring on that happens in those things, and that's good, but only to a certain degree because that could be quickly taken selfishly and made into something ugly.

But the people who are like, "There are no intentional conversations going on. No one's welcoming me. I have no choice but to feel like I've got to run to my car and leave." For you too, we look at this and we see that this is not the way we are called as Christians to take things.

When we're saved, we're saved into a group, a group of people. In 1 Peter 2, we heard a few weeks back about we're all living stones, that we're part of a building. Later on in that passage, he talks about us as a nation. We are a people chosen of God.

In 1 Corinthians 12, that we're a body. Most of the yous that you find in the New Testament, when it says you, they're mostly plural. If you're not sure if it's singular or plural, it's probably plural. God doesn't so much address the individual as he addresses a people. The way we think now, even when we read scripture then, it's not like me, it's more us.

It's not individualistic, it's corporate. Our new lives are found in loving God and others, not self. If we're to think of body parts again, I know Pastor Mark talked about it a little bit, but I was trying to think of an example. The idea, body works so well. There is no hand that is selfish.

You know what I mean? If someone was to come at me and then they put up their dukes and then they wind up and then they're about to punch me, there is no hand that says, "Ooh, let the face get hit. I don't want to get hit." There's no hand that does that.

What happens? Reactively, what happens? The hand goes and says, "I will take the impact. I will take the brunt of that punch." That idea of us being a part of the body, I try and I put myself up to that standard and I put our church up to that standard and I wonder, what is our reaction?

Are we self-centered? Are we self-interested people? That church has become a nice place and so it just feels very polite. I can't figure out another... I'm trying to grapple with this feeling in me, but church feels very polite sometimes. Very organized and there's compartments that says, "Well, come and go." So overall, sometimes it can feel that way.

And then, there's this part of me where I see the spirit at work and I get so encouraged by our church. People who are just diving into each other's lives, who are weeping with each other, rejoicing with each other, going above and beyond, who are sharpening each other. I see people praying together.

I see people on their own volition going through different books and memorizing different passages and like, "Wow." But more, we need to be greedy about this. We need more of that. Do nothing out of selfishness. If we see even one iota of that, we gotta be like, "No, get that out of our church." Philippians 2, 1 through 4.

If you look at verse 3, "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourself. Do not merely look out for your own personal interest, but also for the interests of others. Have the attitude of Christ." And the New Testament, if you go to the next slide here.

Don't try to read it. I know it's hard. But these are what you call the one and others and you look at every single one of these are commands. Here's a few. "Be at peace with one another. Watch one another's feet. Love one another a bunch of times. Be devoted, honor, live in harmony with one another.

Stop passing judgment on one another. Accept one another." And it goes on and on. You could go through the next two slides and you'll see it here and here. And it keeps going. It's all over. Now, each of these are commands to us. All of these are commands that tell you to obey.

Again, putting ourselves up to not the standard of just like trying to be a good Christian, but to the standard of God's Word. When we come across it, you cannot read scripture without realizing like the otherness that has to be in our spirituality. If we constantly feel like we've just been treating church as like come and go and not really a big part of our lives, then we have to ask, "Have I been living in disobedience?" Because as long as I'm reading scripture, like these things are popping up in every book.

Where have I... You know, like have I really been outdoing a brother and showing honor? Like, just glanced over it, like just means I got to love brothers. But have I actively been applying these things? Let's just look at that. Let's look at Romans 12. Verse four, it says, "For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function." So we though many are one body in Christ and individually members one of another.

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy and proportion to our faith, if service and our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness, let love be genuine.

Even just that command, man, let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. Love one another. Here's one of the one another's. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer, contribute to the needs of the saints, and seek to show hospitality. If we have gotten really good when we think about functions and activities and the way we decide whether to go to things or not, again, it's not about those things.

It's about an evaluation of your own heart. Have you been living for others? Have you been really seeking to make other interests better than your own, or have you been compartmentalizing, creating boundaries, and making all these things to fit church into the agenda of your life rather than seeing the body and its needs, rather than seeing the church and desiring her growth?

These commands command us because it says that that is who we are now. If our entire mindset has been devoid of pursuing deep and real relationships and thinking of ourselves, this is a call to us. Don't think I'm talking to any one person. I believe this applies to every single person.

When it comes to church, what is your mindset? When opportunities are provided to you, what is your mentality? Are you others-focused? How do you approach the decisions, whether you can make it or not? But there's traffic. Yeah, I know. I live far too. I know. It's tough. Again, I'm trying my best here not to come off like, I hope I'm not coming off arrogant or like some weird kind of authoritative type of thing.

I'm asking you to just evaluate your heart. I'm not saying you got to come out to everything. Just think. Question is, is it okay or not? Is it okay for me to miss this one or things like that? But the question is always God-centered, right? Does this glorify God?

How can I build others up? And then you need to bring in your wisdom. You need to bring in your discerning mind to really think through it. And maybe there's something she can't come out to. And that's good. If you were able to do that to the glory of God, that's good.

But this isn't a sermon that's meant to say like now we have a reason to all judge each other and point at each other and say, "Oh, you didn't come out to this thing. You selfish person." That's not what we're called to do here. That's just annoying. The picture again is of that teenage child.

When the parent asked this child to come to his brother's birthday dinner, the parent doesn't want a bunch of questions that come from a self-centered worldview. How long is it going to be? Dude, you're like, "Come on. Why that question? It's too late." The parent asks, "Aren't you a part of this family?

Don't you love spending time with us? Don't you love your brother?" To put it into the lingo of Philippians chapter two, the conditional statements, right? If you're a part of this family, if you received the love and care and concern and affection of Christ as well as all of us, if we have experienced life together, if we do truly care for each other and you say that we love one another as Christ loved us, if, then think of others better than yourselves.

It almost contradicts each other in like that first part would show that the second part, the command should not have to be said. But because of our fallen flesh that we continue to reside in, we need to hear this. See, in this scenario, even if this teenager sacrifices and comes to this dinner, who sees it as a duty and says like, "Just tell me what I need to do and I'll do it." That teenager, again, if you're a parent of one of those teenagers, what do you see that child doing?

All dinner long, phone. All dinner long, checking the watch. As soon as the time is done, "Oh, dessert's done. See you later. Got my car. Getting out of here." You know? See, that individual can say, "See, I was there. Look, I sacrificed. See, I care." And just by his tone of voice, you're like, "You fool.

No, you don't. You're a force to be here." And it shows everything about the heart sometimes. And so it is with Berean functions and activities, we desire for you to live out covenant number six. I commit to attending BCC functions and activities to the best of my ability for the purpose of building up the body of Christ at Berean.

Because you love the family. You want to live out the third vision. We really want to grow together in community and fellowship and accountability together. We love being together. We should not have to... The question isn't like, "Oh, why should I? What's in it for me?" It's like, "Man, we love each other." You know, I know you don't need to like volleyball.

You don't need to... You can look at your flimsy arms and say, "I have no power in me. I cannot pull that rope." You can even be allergic to grass and still come to All Church Picnic. Because it's not about you. You go and you participate. Yeah, participate as best you can.

Be there. You have weak arms? Well, so do I. We'll pull it together. You plus me, we're strong. I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying. But this idea of like, "What's in it for me? What are we going to do?" Well, I don't really do that. I get very encouraged when people play volleyball and they suck.

Because they're like, their heads are all hanging down and then there's always that one person who's a little bit too ambitious and too competitive. And they're like, "Get this girl off of here!" Things like that. But this person that's not good at volleyball, I love it. Because it shows that they're participating.

They're there. I can see they want to. And on the sidelines, I see them talking to people. I'm like, "This is good." I would love to see people allergic to grass who just, top to bottom, you just put clothes on. You put the gloves on. You do what you need to just be there.

To the best of your ability. Have you been doing that? To the best of your ability. Because you love the family. Because you care. Because you want to know how people are doing. Because you want to be with people. You can't expect to grow relationships by checking boxes. It's not any one activity or function or Bible study or Sunday worship that will grow a relationship.

It's mutual desire to love, care for, and grow in another, sharpen each other. These functions and activities are simply creating opportunities and space. So take advantage of them. Participate because other people enjoy it. And in that, maybe you can start to see that glimpse of, "I consider other interests more than my own." The goal is for us to participate in each other's lives.

To put ourselves out there. To sacrifice for one another. To grow in vulnerability. To take down the high boundaries that we've set in our lives. To compartmentalize our relationships. This is very, very, very difficult in our day and age. It's so hard because we are simply so busy. So again, the answer, again, needs to be, is what I do out of a love for God and therefore a love for others.

To build others up. To sharpen them. To encourage, provoke, stir them up. The image of, get Dean and June in your head, you know? Like to stir each other up. They burn forever into my mind. It's not about self-preservation, self-defense, self-satisfaction, self-infatuation, whatever. It's not about that. When we are self-loving, we can look and wonder why no one is welcoming me.

Or we can look and judge others and say, "They're not being as welcoming as I am." It just goes all over the place. It's loophole after loophole after loophole to be self-centered, to be self-interested. All the good things that we think we're doing can very quickly become perverse if we don't come out of these things as believers who have been transformed and changed by the love of God.

So let's not just be friendly on Sundays. Let's go beyond these things. Let's try not to just come to church and do our due diligence and hop in our cars and get out as fast as possible so I can take my Sunday afternoon nap. Oh, Sunday afternoon naps are glorious, right?

But man, that time can be spent in other things too. We can be people who constantly hear about what others are doing but don't want to share about ourselves when we're actually going through a difficulty. That could be self-centered. We can hide behind our spouses because they have a more out-there personality.

We can hide behind our children because people seem to like to talk about them. We can give the timed excuse of the fact that we need to go and study for a test or the fact that tomorrow's gonna be a rough at work. And again, all of these things are not wrong.

Many of them can be very, very valid. I'm like a broken recording right now, I think. But we have to survey our hearts and wonder, "Do I love others? Do I care about others better than me?" Answer that question as you're talking with people. John 15, 13, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." You will die for your friend.

So if you're a Christian that says, "Yes, I will die for my friend." And yet only Monday, Wednesday, and Friday's at 2 p.m. It doesn't make sense. There's no convenient time for this. This is what we're called to. We are saved into this community. So fourth and final point, practical application.

We're gonna run through this. A, whatever the church offers, maximize the opportunities provided. Maximize the opportunities provided. There are plenty of things that are happening. If you don't know where to start, just go to something. Just sign up and go. And when you're there, be all there. Don't just say, "I did that." It's very easy to go to these things and just talk and want to check out the whole time.

When I'm very tired, I want to do that. I want to check out all the time. Get away from me. That kind of thing. You can't have a deep, intimate relationship with every single person. But the idea is, when you go to these functions, just with who got placed there.

In this smaller setting, someone that's sitting next to you, someone you're eating with, someone you're on a team with. I don't know. There's so many different events and things. I can't even define these things. But maximize it. Go there and not say, "Oh, my purpose is to win with this team," or, "My purpose is to gain this thing," or, "To eat good food." Maybe eating, that kind of thing.

But it's, "I'm going to maximize this little opportunity that's been given to me, and I'm going to be all there and talk to people." Make the use of these opportunities to deepen friendships, to get to know new people. Please don't have the goal of, "I want to be best friends with everyone." Don't be that person.

But try to go deeper. Have a desire to interact with, to fellowship with, and to love others in the way the Bible calls us to. This church fellowship is so important, and we should be prioritizing Christian relationship. Walking in the faith of brothers and sisters around us. B, from the activities and functions, launch into continual relationship.

So once you get the surface level, like, "I got to meet people," try to launch deeper into that with continual relationship with them. So if you played a game with someone, or you were asked, there are different things where we say, "Hey, everybody break up into groups of four, pray for these things." Don't just be like, "Amen," and then it's like, "So cool." Don't be like that.

But try to see, "Oh, how could we launch into continual relationship here?" Use that time to ask more questions, to talk more, to say, "I have a free lunch this Thursday." You should do these types of things, and get closer to each other in those manners. C, don't hide behind your personality or life stage.

I'm not a big fan of like Myers-Briggs. I think Enneagrams, everyone's into it, I kind of get annoyed by Enneagrams. But these things, like, whatever the case, I know, we're all different, I understand. We're all very different. That's what they're trying to say. Great, you know? I knew that, but anyway.

So there's that, and then it's like, don't hide behind it, though. I'm an introvert, so I'll speak for myself. As an introvert, we can normalize selfishness, and comfort, and unloving attitudes. Why? Because I'm an introvert, I need to go recharge my battery, I'll be right back. You know, that kind of thing.

In the name of introversion, we can sin against God. Extroverts, don't assume that your social ways is actually an expression of Christian love. It might not be. You might just be really friendly and actually very selfish. You know, just sucking out all the life of every introvert around you.

That is what you call leaking, I'm sorry about that one. Married couples, don't hide behind your spouses, parents behind your children. College students, don't hide behind, "I'm a college student. Gotta go study." And then you're playing Smash. For those in the business of jobs, don't make it a regular thing to hide behind the need for rest.

Of course you're tired, I know, I know. Life is so tiring, and you guys are so busy. Sometimes I listen to your schedules, I'm like, "Man, I know it's hard, but don't hide behind those things." Letter D, be supportive, not critical of the function and activity. Whatever is there, just again, it's kind of like the be all there.

Don't be like, asking all the questions like, "Oh, this could have been done better. Oh, why are you doing this?" That kind of thing. Just be there and be happy to be there. Just be engaged. Let's engage. Don't be the person that's like, "Oh, I don't do that." Just be there.

Get yourself out there. Be vulnerable, even if you don't feel comfortable. It's okay to do that. Again, June and Dean, they put themselves out there last week, but they encouraged us, didn't they? Letter E, try to have one more extensive conversation at every function you're at. So if you really still don't know what to do, this is just last word of advice.

Everything that you're at, try to have one good, solid conversation. Try to get to know someone a little bit better, pray for them, and different things like that. It could be a new person. It could be someone that you have a very superficial, very friendly relationship with that you know needs to deepen.

It could be any and everything that I just talked about. So obviously, with all that said, again, you need to evaluate your own heart. This doesn't mean you have to go out to every function and activity, and we can't be kind of pointing at each other and saying, "This is our standard to judge one another now." But we do have to look at our own hearts and say, "Man, do I love others?

Is this real? Is this true for me?" Our church has rapidly grown. It's big, and it's overwhelming on Sundays. But while we can't hope to get to know everybody, and that's okay. It's okay if you don't know everybody. But hopefully that you are not looking to say, "How do I fit in?" so much as, "How can I love others, and how can I edify this church, that person, this body, this group, or wherever it is that God has placed you?" We have been people who are changed by the gospel, by a God who laid down his own life for us, and so that's just the way we tick now.

That's how we operate.