Relationships
- okay, it’s test time
- these past four times Pastor Ed and I have preached, we’ve been talking about the purpose of the church
- we’ve been asking that famous question that toddlers and smart adults like to ask – “Why?”
- why does our church exist?
- we’ve answered by saying that we exist to lead all people to become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ
- and we’ve talked about the five purposes God has given us to accomplish our mission
- they’re the 5 reasons why we exist as a church – the things that we’ll never stop doing no matter what
- now my question today is, what do you think of when you think of our fourth purpose in S.W.O.R.D. – relationships?
- what comes to mind when you think of relationships?
- [solicit answers]
- you know, for a long time I missed the point on this issue
- it’s very easy to think of fellowship as nothing deeper than surface relationships and church socials
- today let’s look at God’s plan for our relationships in the church
- but before we do, let’s pray
- Father:
- open our eyes this morning to what you’ve called us to be
- stir within our hearts the good desires you’ve placed there
- make us into the people you would have us be
- I pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
- would you agree with me that in all of us – from the most introverted to the most extroverted – there is a deep hunger for relationship?
- there is a desire to know and to be known, to be truly understood, to be accepted without judgment, to relate at the deepest level to another human being
- you know what this is like – we even have a word for it
- to connect – to know that at the deepest level of the heart, something significant has been shared with another human being
- we are all hungry for this type of relationship in life
- you need supportive relationships if you’re going to make it
- God put Adam in the Garden of Eden
- it was a perfect environment, and yet do you remember what God said?
- “It’s not good for man to be alone”
- you were made for relationship!
- and where does the church enter this?
- when you were born physically, you joined the human family, the human race
- when you’re born spiritually, you join God’s family
- 1 Timothy 3:14 says:
- (1 Timothy 3:14 NLT) I am writing these things to you now…
- (1 Timothy 3:15 NLT) so that if I can’t come for a while, you will know how people must conduct themselves in the household [or family] of God.
- the church is a family
- it’s not an institution, not a religious club, not a society, not an organization, and not a business
- the Bible says it’s a family, and that’s how we are to relate to each other
- when you were born, you were born not just into the human race – you were born into a family
- and when you’re born again, you’re born into the family of God
- but you need a local family where you can give and be given to, receive support, and so on
- and what I want to say to you today is that the Christian life is just about believing, it includes belonging
- you’re meant to belong to a spiritual family, and that’s more than just attending a church service
- God doesn’t want church to be something you go to
- he wants it to be a family you’re part of
- does this make sense?
- this morning I’d like to look at three beliefs we need to accept
- Jesus said:
- (John 13:34 NLT) So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.
- (John 13:35 NLT) Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.
- three beliefs about what I’ll call church love that we need to accept
- FIRST, CHURCH LOVE IS DIFFICULT
- love is one of the hardest lessons in life to learn
- it’s not easy to love within the church
- disappointment will be inevitable
- everywhere you turn within the church – both now and in days of old – you see what relationships could be, and yet you see the difficulties as well
- (Philippians 4:2 NLT) And now I want to plead with those two women, Eudoia and Syntyche, because you belong to the Lord, settle your disagreement.
- Paul writes to a church which had no doctrinal problems, in which these two women had been used to bring many people to God, and what’s the problem?
- the problem is relational
- you could go into any church including this one and find relational difficulties
- the easiest thing in the world is to begin to write off what God has commanded – to settle for shallow relationships
- to substitute meet-and-greet time for connecting, potlucks for heart-issues
- a couple moved to sunny Florida from the gray Midwest
- they walked one block west of the luxury beach hotels, and what they saw shocked them
- there was a very ordinary big-city street – noisy, dirty, less-than-elegant
- they came to the wood-slatted porch of retirement home – a porch teen feet deep and about sixty feet long
- and there on the porch were at least a hundred chairs arranged in neat rows and columns, none touching, each in exactly the same position as the others
- the occupied chairs each held one motionless retired man or woman staring straight ahead at the street
- no heads turned to see traffic go by
- no heads were turned to converse with another porch-sitter
- there was no conversation, no evidence that any of these people had been created by a relational God to enjoy deep, intimate relating
- their souls were asleep – numbed by years of lifeless relationships and pointless conversations
- they had worked their entire lives with the dream of retiring in Florida
- and they had made it, only to sit in isolation – never looking into another’s eyes, never knowing anyone, never being known
- the man who saw this writes:
- “Every Sunday morning we stand, then sit, then sing on command. Some of us raise our hands, most of us sit still while someone talks to us. At some point we reach into our wallets and drop [money] into a big soup bowl with a velvet lining to keep the silver from clanging. We’re doing a lot. But I wonder if the Spirit, who lives in a circle with two Others who are always relating, sees us as…the retired folks on the Miami Beach porch: lined up in chairs facing straight ahead with no life passing back and forth among them. Is that what we really look like?” (Larry Crabb, The Safest Place on Earth)
- even in small groups, isn’t it easy to never move to a deeper level – never really meeting, never giving or receiving what is most wanted?
- it’s hard to turn our chairs
- it’s hard to live in community the way God designed us
- that’s the first belief about love within the church we need to believe
- do you believe it?
- here’s the second truth about love within the church
- SECOND, CHURCH LOVE IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY
- it’s not an option within the church
- it’s not a program – it’s a necessity
- no doubt you’ve been at a wedding and heard somebody read 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter
- we usually apply it to marriage, but when Paul wrote it he didn’t have marriage in mind – he had the church in mind
- listen to what he wrote:
- (1 Corinthians 13:1 NLT) If I could speak in any language in heaven or on earth but didn’t love others, I would only be making meaningless noise like a loud gong or a clanging symbol.
- (1 Corinthians 13:2 NLT) If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I knew all the mysteries of the future and knew everything about everything, but didn’t love others, what good w ould I be? And if I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, without love I would be no good to anybody.
- (1 Corinthians 13:3 NLT) If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would be of no value whatsoever.
- what Paul is saying is this:
- a church could have all the spiritual gifts, great acts of dedication and service, great programs, stimulating sermons, and inspiring services, miracle-working power – and yet if it doesn’t have love, it has nothing
- a church that has everything going for it, minus love, is a church that has nothing
- love is absolutely necessary within the church
- the Bible says that love is our mark as believers
- (1 John 3:18 NLT) Dear children, let us stop just saying that we love each other; let us really show it by our actions.
- (1 John 3:19 NLT) It is by our actions that we know we are living in the truth…
- Frances Schaeffer goes so far as to say that the mark of a Christian is loving other people
- it’s not wearing a cross around one’s neck, it’s not even going to a certain building with stained glass windows on a Sunday morning
- the mark of a Christian is love
- and God gives the right to unbelievers to look at believers and say, by how they love other people, whether or not they’re true believers
- there’s no other option but to deeply relate in love to each other within the church
- did you know that there are over 30 commands in the New Testament that you cannot obey unless you love within the church?
- Ephesians 2:19 says:
- (Ephesians 2:19 NLT) So now you…are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family.
- so love within the church is difficult, and it’s also absolutely necessary
- without it, a church is nothing
- do you believe that?
- repeat after me, “Without love, a church is nothing”
- there’s a third belief about love within the church we need to understand
- THREE: CHURCH LOVE IS UNIQUE
- the kind of love we’re talking about – that’s so difficult and is absolutely necessary within the church – is the kind of love that you’ll find nowhere else in the world
- people are looking for love
- they’re starved for deep relationships
- and the only way they’ll ever find that love is if they experience the love that God has designed to be shared within the church
- why do I say that?
- listen to what Paul said about church love
- remember that he’s not talking primarily of love within a marriage; he’s discussing the sort of love that’s necessary within the church
- (1 Corinthians 13:4 NLT) Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud
- (1 Corinthians 13:5 NLT) or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged.
- (1 Corinthians 13:6 NLT) It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.
- (1 Corinthians 13:7 NLT) Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
- now, that’s a description of Christ’s love
- in fact, every time Paul uses the word love, you could substitute Jesus’ name
- “Jesus is patient and kind. Jesus is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Jesus does not demand his own way. Jesus is not irritable, and keeps no record of when he has been wronged. Jesus is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Jesus never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance”
- I’m here to tell you, friends, that the more we become like Jesus, the more these words apply to us
- the more they apply to us, the more we will show others the kind of love they’re hungry for
- and the church will become what one person has called “the safest place on earth”
- it will be a place where you can love and be loved
- where you can know and be known
- where you can celebrate and be celebrated
- where you can serve and be served
- that’s what heaven is like, and the church is a little like heaven here and now
- there was a man with a serious drinking problem
- and one day he wandered into a church
- and in the church he met a man named Virgil
- he asked Virgil if he could have some money to take a train from Illinois to Cleveland, Ohio
- Virgil sat down with this man for a while and shared how he could know Christ as his Savior
- the man responded, “I’m not really interested in that. Could I just have the money for the ticket to Cleveland?”
- “Okay,” Virgil agreed, “we can give you that kind of help if that’s all you really want”
- he was quiet for a while and then shook his head
- “You know something?” he said, looking straight at the man
- “You’ve just let me off the hook, because if you had chosen a new way of life in the Kingdom of God, then as your brother I would have had to lay down my whole life for you – my house, my time, all my money. Whatever you needed to meet your needs would have been totally at your disposal for the rest of your life. But all you want is some money for a train ticket”
- the guy was so shocked that he got up and left without even the money for the ticket
- on Sunday, the guy came back and sat beside Virgil in church
- he said, “What kind of people are they, that if I became a follower of Jesus Christ, they would sacrifice that much for me?”
- one person writes:
- “Every congregation has a choice to be one of two things. You can choose to be a bag of marbles, single units that don’t affect each other except in collision. On Sunday mornings you can choose to go to church or sleep in. Who really cares if there are 192 or 193 marbles in a bag?
- “Or, churches can choose to be a bag of grapes. The juices begin to mingle and there is no way to extricate yourself if you try. Each is part of all – part of the fragrance, part of the stuff.”
- a bag of marbles or a bag of grapes – that’s the choice we need to make
- can you see that this thing called relationships is far more than meet-and-greet time and potluck lunches?
- it’s more than small groups that just scratch the surface
- it’s about becoming a biblically functioning community that’s full of love
- at age 21, a student of Moody Bible College lay in a hospital bed
- his name was George Sweeting, and he was given less than a year to live
- he had terminal cancer
- he had 30 radium treatments and three operations
- he was down to 128 pounds of weight, and he was not a small man
- as he lay in his bed, he kept asking, “Why? What’s the point? What’s the purpose of this life? Why am I here?”
- a friend gave him a book called The Power of God’s Love
- and as Sweeting finished the last page of that book, he said, “I’ve got it. The reason I’m here is to love God and love other people.
- now, miraculously, George Sweeting recuperated
- he graduated from Moody
- eventually he became president of the Moody Bible Institute, and he traveled around teaching seminars saying, “This is our purpose in life. It’s to love God and others. There’s nothing else – that’s all there is”
- let me close with the words of Larry Crabb
- “We need a safe place for weary pilgrims. It’s time to put political campaigns and ego-driven agendas and building programs and church activities and inspiring services on the back burner. We need to dive into the unmanageable, messy world of relationships, to admit our failure, to identify our tensions, to explore our shortcomings. We need to become the answer to our Lord’s praye r, that we become one the way He and the Father are one.
- “It’s time we paid whatever price must be paid to become part of a spiritual community rather than an ecclesiastical organization.
- “It’s time we turned our chairs toward one another and learned how to walk in ways that stir anorexics to eat, multiples to integrate, sexual addicts to indulge nobler appetites, and tired Christians to press on through dark valleys toward green pastures and on to the very throne room of heaven.
- “It’s time to build the church, a community of people who take refuge in God and encourage each other never to flee to another source of help, a community of folks who know the only way to live in this world is to focus on the spiritual life – our life with God and others. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it. Our impact on the world is at stake” (Larry Crabb, The Safest Place on Earth)
- let’s pray
- Father,
- turn this group of people into a bag of grapes
- transform us into a “group of individuals who have learned to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than [our] masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to rejoice together, mourn together, and to delight in each other and make others’ conditions as [our] own” (Scott Peck)
- help us turn our chairs toward each other
- may we become more like Christ so that we may love more like Christ
- and may Jesus’ words be proved true, that our love for one another will prove to the world that we are your disciples
- in Jesus’ name, Amen.
