Nov 16, 2009

Why WE are HERE — The Mission of the Church in the Grass

Part Two — Here for the Family

Let’s pray…
Okay, if you are a visitor with us tonight, you have come in at a great time. You want to get an idea of what we’re about? We’re going to unpack that, some this week and more next week.

Let’s start by picking up the flier that was in your seat. It has the time and location and our name and all of that, and if you look there, you will also see our mission statement. It reads:


Last week we talked about the first piece of this mission statement, we talked about how we try to allow every message that we preach here to marinate in the Gospel {unpack}.
Tonight we are going to move on to the second piece of our Mission, the mission of the Church in the Grass.

Our goal is to present...the importance of a church family...

I was going to start this sermon out by talking about family. Blood relation family; aunts, uncles, moms, dads, brothers, sisters, cousins and all that. You know thanksgiving is coming, so I was gonna talk about how you are either longing for the day when everyone gets together, or you wish you could run away and stay as far away as possible.

I’m a person who sometimes can’t wait to see them and sometimes within five minutes, I’m looking to escape. Am I the only one?

Anyway, I scrapped that idea of comparing the family of God to our blood relation families, because I believe that sin and the brokenness of the world has fractured the family so much that now it is more of a hindrance to the picture God’s design than a help.

For example, I know some of your stories, so I know this isn’t the case across the board, but some of you might look to your earthly dad and say, if God is supposed to be my Father like that, then I don’t want anything to do with Him.

Or, you see the Bible calling fellow believers brothers and sisters and you look to the sibling rivalry that may have gone off the rails in your life and say, no thanks.

So instead, I’m going to say this. No matter if you had the worst father, or the best daddy, or even if you never knew the guy, get all that out of your head. And if you have a Brady bunch family or if your family could fill a year’s worth of Dr. Phil shows with all their dysfunction, get rid of that picture too.

Instead, look at it this way; that the message of God’s salvation that we talked about last week (and every week) is the message of reconciliation. It’s the message of fixing all that was broken by sin; the message that everything will be brought back into His perfect framework — His perfect design.

Everything.
That’s true for your heart, your sin soaked spirit, and that is true with the concept of family. Everything is made new through Christ.

Now, when I was preparing for this message, I found so many great scriptures about the family of God, which is our model, that I finally had to just stop looking, otherwise we’d be here all night.

Here’s the points, if you are going to tune out, wait until I’m done with this little list. God willing, this is what we’re going to cover tonight:
— When we come to God we are adopted into a family, the church.
— When we are adopted into that family, the church it is both universal and local.
— When we are adopted into the family of God it is for our benefit. But also,
— When we are adopted into the family of God it is for the benefit of all the other family members and most of all
— Our adoption into this family is to, by the power of the Holy Spirit point us and other people toward the true perfect Father God, and His Son, Jesus Christ.

So, we’re going to be flipping through the Bible quite a bit tonight. I’m going to go fast though, so if you want you can just jot down the Scripture references and look them up later.

Let’s start at the beginning,
Gen 1:26-28

And then the Bible fleshes this out more in Gen. 2:18-24
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

23 The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."

24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

Do you see what was happening? If you read the creation accounts carefully you’ll see a rhythm there.
He said let there be…and it was good, and He said let there be…and it was good, and He said let there be…and it was good, until He got to man, until He got to the one creation that was made in Their image.

You see if we are made in the image of a Triune God, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, than like them we are designed to live in community with one another. It is true from the start, we need one another. And not just other people milling about on the same piece of real estate. No, we need family.
Okay, so that’s the beginning, then what happened? These two decided that God didn’t have their best interests at heart, so they disobeyed him, they did the one thing that He forbade, they ate the fruit and sin entered into the world and broke EVERYTHING, we’ve been over this.

So what’s God do? He starts setting aside people to point redemptive History toward Jesus.

In Gen 6:18, God sets aside Noah, yes we all know that, but not just Noah, his family also. If God wants to repopulate the world, He isn’t doing it with one lonely guy.

Later in Gen. 12 God set’s aside Abram, He pulls Abram out of his old family, and sets Abram up to be the patriarch of a new people, a new FAMILY, that would continue a bloodline, down through the ages to Jesus.

Okay, so fast forward to Jesus, He comes on the scene, and He doesn’t just zap into the world, isolated from everyone else. Instead He is born into a home, with a flesh and blood mom and a step-dad and eventually with siblings. He’s born into a family.

And He grows up and He is baptized and He starts His ministry and this is where we see something different happening.

You see from Adam and Eve, through Jesus and the people of that time, everything was traced to bloodline, are you from the tribe of Judah, of Ben, of Ruben or Levi? Who are you with?

But as Jesus taught and as He made a mark in the land, He caused waves. And, as we see in the Sermon on the Mount, He said, some people are going to reject His message.

And that is not just going to be true when we encounter strangers or co-workers or next-door neighbors with the Gospel, some of those who reject the message of Jesus are going to be our own flesh and blood.

In Matthew 10:33-36 Jesus says:

Jesus tells Nicodemus in John 3, it is not the family that you are born into that will determine your eternity, but the family that you are born again into. And listen, some of you have already experienced this right?

Some of you come to Christ from totally pagan backgrounds and you’ve been mocked or scorned or even excluded from your birth family because Jesus has transformed who you are and the Holy Spirit is continuing that transformation.

And some of you are like me and you haven’t been scorned or shunned off, but each day that you walk closer with Jesus, you feel that much farther out of touch with the family that raised you. And they still love you today but they don’t understand you.

And each time you see them dealing with the consequences of their sin and when you see the path that they are on that leads to death and Hell it grieves you. You want to shake faith into them, but you can’t get them to see it and the divide grows and grows.

Faith will divide. If you’ve felt that truth already, I know how much that hurts first hand. And if you haven’t felt it, I’m sorry to have to tell you that day is coming.

But, you and I, we, have a Savior who knows how this feels.

Mark 3:31-35 shows us a glimpse of the division in His own life because, before the death burial and resurrection, Jesus’ family just didn’t totally get it.


And that’s where we are tonight. No matter what your past looks like, no matter how you were raised and no matter who raised you, when you come to Christ, you are adopted into a new family, the family of God. And this new family trumps what we had before.

Now, let me put on the brakes and make this clear. We are not teaching that you need to leave your family, shave your head, and join a commune, alright?

A lot of cults twist this around and actually use the Scriptures to coerce very impressionable people to come into their cloistered little societies and it almost always ends very badly. Jesus is not saying abandon your family ties and join a cult.

He IS saying that there will be people in your family who will tune you out or even kick you out because of your faith.

But you don’t run for the hills, you stay where you are and pray, pray, pray that they might also receive the adoption and salvation that you have received through Christ.
You pray that your brother might become your brother in Christ, amen.

Okay, you’ve come to Christ and that means you’ve been adopted into the family, which is the church. That is the church universal and the church local.

In other words, when you are adopted, you are then connected through the Holy Spirit to every other believer on the planet. So the struggles that you see in the missionaries lives should grieve you as much as your own struggles.

And when you see another group of Christ followers experiencing success and deepening in their faith, than you should be rejoicing and praising God for their blessings.

We see this kind of rejoicing for the universal church in nearly every letter from the Apostle Paul. Let’s just look at 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4 as an example:

This is why I have very little patience with churches who act like we are in competition with one another. Listen, if church A is bringing the people to the Lord, we all rejoice! If church B needs help, we come together because it is a common need.

If you think we are in competition you are not paying attention to how many people are still out there, lost and hopeless without the Lord.

That’s why Jesus told his crew, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” (Matthew 9:37)

But, now let’s zoom in a little closer. Where are we in all of this, what about the local church the congregation that meets here on Wednesday nights or the churches that gather on Sundays all around the county; what is the distinctive feature there, of the local church?

Simply put, it is like the difference between your immediate and extended family. Do you love your great uncle Charlie? Sure, but he lives two states away and you only get to see him about once every two or three years.

That’s how we are as we get look outside of our congregation and into the larger (universal) body of believers.

You see, it is in this local setting that we grow together and all of the “one another’s” of the New Testament come to find their meaning.

Can we love other Christians around the world? Absolutely, but how are we to wash one another’s feet like Jesus commands us to do in John 13:14 if not in a local, intimate setting?

How are we to greet one another with a holy kiss (handshake or hug is fine there) as Paul instructs us to do in Romans 16:16, if we’re not meeting together one to one or in small groups (explain small relative to worldwide)?

How are we to wait for one another when we come together for communion as instructed in 1 Corinthians 11 if we’re not talking about a local congregation?

How do we practically live out Galatians 6:2 and carry one another’s burdens?

How do we know a person well enough to spot when they might be falling away and back toward sin? How can they know us enough to see when we need to be corrected?

These “one another’s” can only happen when we are growing as a FAMILY together.

We are here to encourage and equip one another for the works of ministry and to stay on the narrow path that leads to eternal life. We are together as the local church body to point one another and to be pointed ourselves toward a closer and more intimate walk with God.

We are to share together in a community that resembles the triune God, always giving and receiving love from one another.

Look, there is so much more we could talk about, but it is getting late, let me just encourage you and push you a little bit before we go.

Whether you are a part of this church or another church on Sunday.
Do not think that this gospel centered, God centered family life just happens by coming to church, and sitting in a chair or a pew and listening to somebody proclaim the Gospel.

As Larry Crabb says in his book The Safest Place on Earth, we are going to need to turn our chairs and start looking people in the eye.

We are going to have to start growing horizontally as well as vertically.

Do we want you to know more about Jesus each week, absolutely, but you can’t really live what you know if you don’t start sharing yourself with others.

Sharing your joys and your hurts, your triumphs and your struggles; until you begin to trust others enough to open up and be vulnerable, the true family that we have been designed to be for one another will never come to be.

But, once we do let people in it will be in these moments of intimacy and vulnerability that we may see God work through the other members of the church, and where He can work through us. Building one another up together.

Now, some of you may say, “No way! I tried to do this before and I was hurt. I was betrayed by the people I trusted. Never again!”

I will answer that with a heartfelt apology, God knows we Christians have had a habit of getting in the way of Jesus’ purpose for us here in this life.

But, a bad experience at a doctor doesn’t make you decide to never go back does it? What about if a supermarket is dissatisfying? You don’t write-off shopping do you?

If you’ve had a bad experience when you’ve gotten close to people before, don’t let that be the reason that you never get to have the joy of a good relationship — One that God designed for you.

And also remember that we are all works in progress, one of us may let you down as we walk this out together,

You may let someone else down, but that’s no reason to throw out close church family relationships.

It’s an opportunity to grow in our sanctification, pouring out the same love and forgiveness and faithfulness that our Savior, Jesus Christ poured out on us.

Like I said, when we are adopted into the family of God it is for our benefit. It is in the intimacy of a local church, where we get to know others and we allow ourselves to be known that we really do grow together.

But also, listen. Bob Hicks was talking to his church up on the hill this weekend about service and he made it very clear, a message that we all need to hear: It’s not all about YOU.

When we are adopted into the family of God it is for the benefit of all the other family members. If you don’t connect, if you don’t get plugged in, if you don’t follow the design laid out in Scriptures, you are not only robbing yourself of growth, you are robbing your fellow Christ followers in the church

And you are not being all that God has called you to be.

Again, whether you want to be a member of our family here or if you go somewhere else on Sunday, stop just being a church member or a church visitor. Stop just taking what you can get without ever letting people into your life and without ever giving your time, talent, treasure and love for the building up of the family.

And take your rightful place as a family member as a brother or sister. That is why Jesus shed His blood.
We will close with the mission statement once again:

Our goal is to present God’s message of salvation, the importance of a church family, and the proper expression of God’s love into the world.

We’ll tackle the last part of the mission next week.
Let’s pray…
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