growing-in-grace-filled-communities-sermon-notes

Part of Something Bigger: Growing in Grace-Filled Communities

Hebrews 10:19-25

God never intended for any of us to live the Christian life alone. That’s what I want to talk to you about today. I want you to know that, in addition to His Holy Spirit who lives in us, the main gift God has given us so that we don’t live the Christian life is alone is that he has given us one another in a church like LAC.

In my estimation, the most difficult experience of all human existence is loneliness. You don’t have to be a Christian to be aware of that. In recent years, movies, books and TV shows have sought to drive that point home to us. There is a current show on Fox Network called “The Last Man on Earth” that has at its heart the premise that we who are human desperately need relationships.

One of the most forceful demonstrations of this was the 2000 movie “Cast Away” starring Tom Hanks. In it, a FedEx plane crashed into the ocean because of a storm. Chuck Noland, a driven executive who found it difficult to make room in his life for meaningful relationships in his life, washed up on the beach of a deserted island where he would spend the next three years of his life in complete isolation

As packages from the plane began to roll up on shore, one contained a Wilson volleyball. Noland’s bloody handprint on the ball made it look eerily human. With a human-like face and hair, Noland named it, what else, “Wilson”. Over many months, Wilson was Noland’s constant companion. He talked to Wilson. He laughed with Wilson, cried with Wilson, and shared his greatest fears and hopes with Wilson. When Noland came to the realization that he probably would never be rescued, he built a raft and placed Wilson on a prominent perch at the front of the raft

One of the movie’s most moving scenes took place when Wilson was launched from his perch in a severe ocean storm and Noland was forced to make a decision between rescuing Wilson and saving his own life. Ultimately, he resigned himself to the loss and watched helplessly as Wilson drifted out of his life forever.

Noland’s attachment to a blood stained volleyball with human features is a dramatic reminder of a foundational biblical truth: God made us in such a way were do not flourish outside of healthy, transparent and loving relationships. We were created both for relationships with God and with each other. In fact, it’s the consistent message of the Bible that the quality of our relationship with God rises and falls to a great extent on the quality of our relationships with one another. And the place God has placed within this neighborhood for you to have Christ-centered relationships is a local church like this one.

Today I want to tell you this: One of the most important decisions you will ever make is whether you will make the commitment to be meaningfully engaged in authentic biblical community.

This brings us today to the fourth message in our series on LAC’s Guiding Statement that we are calling “Part of Something Bigger.” We have said that God is engaged in a big and wonderful mission in this world, i.e., to make everything new and right in his creation. All things will be reconciled to him (Col 1:19-20). That “everything” includes you! Our church is committed to your growth in Christ as we saw several weeks ago in Col. 1:28: “We are to preach Christ, admonishing each one and teaching each one with all wisdom so that we may present each one complete in Christ.”

How does your growth toward becoming “complete in Christ” actually happen? Last week, we took time to see how important it is for us to worship regularly with the entire church family in order to experience the ongoing growth in our walk with Christ that God intends. But, today we will see a second essential way to be connected to the family of God. We call it community. The Bible teaches about life in a community of faith in many places – but today I want us to focus on Hebrews 10:19-25.

What is biblical community? Do not give up meeting together… (Heb 10:25).

The word translated “meeting together” in 10:25 is “episunagogen”. You may be able to hear the word “synagogue” in that Greek word. It means coming together to be personally with others. As I pointed out last week, this verse calls us to come together with the entire local church family in worship even as we are doing now. But, the context tells us that the meeting together of the entire church family to worship also should lead to something else. Yes, we must worship together for all the reasons I spoke about last week. But when you read vv. 19-25, you see that this passage a call to all of us in the church family to be involved personally in one another’s lives. I usually put it this way: There is a world of difference between people being in vicinity of one another and people living in community with one another.

Pastor Tim Keller says it a bit differently. He says, “A congregation is more than an aggregation. An aggregation is like a bunch of marbles in a bag. A congregation is like grapes organically connected to one another on a vine.” A bag of marbles may be close to one another but there is no organic connection. But grapes on the vine share a source of life. In a sense, every part of each grape, though distinct in some ways, has a connection to the other grapes on the vine.

So, a church community is not simply a group of people who have come together for a concert, an event or for a speech – and then leaves. God intends for the church to have each member connected to the rest – praying together, learning together, correcting and encouraging together…

According to the Bible, the church is a community (I call it a family or household of faith) – not just a place we go just to be taught or inspired. So, Heb 10:25 is surely about the gathered worship service. Great things are to happen in our worship gatherings together. But not everything can happen in that setting. Heb 10:19-25 declares to us all that, if we are going to become Christ-like, we need both to worship together as a whole family and to come together into smaller fellowships such as our mid-sized classes or small groups.

Look at vv. 19-23. It tells us what holds us together as a local church family?

What do we have in common? (10:19-23) We have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus.

The word “community” has to do with what a group of people have in common and Hebrews 10:19-23 tells us what we share together as well as any place in the Bible, i.e., we are all rescued by the blood of Jesus. In Hebrews, before Jesus came, even the children of Israel could not draw near to God. Instead, only the High Priest could enter the Most Holy Place on behalf of all the people – and he could only do it once a year, on Yom Kippur. There was a curtain that separated people from drawing near to Jehovah God.

But, the New Testament teaches us, because of the perfect life and sacrificial death of Jesus, we who trust him now have the privilege to draw near to God. We can have the confidence to enter right into the presence of our Creator and know him as our Abba, as our personal Father. I could say so much about this but will only make these things that we have in common:

We all have sinned and, on our own, have no personal access to our Holy God. As v.22 tells us, we all have guilt in our lives and need to be cleansed from sin.
We experience access to God – but only through faith in Jesus who shed his blood to bring us to God.
Not one of us in church today is perfect yet -- but we all have a certain hope that God will keep his promise and bring us to completion in Christ. As v. 24 puts it, “We hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for he who promised us is faithful.”

The result of this is that we who follow Jesus should be an awfully humble bunch. We know it took his death to rescue us. All of us who belong to God share these things in common. It’s the basis for commun-ity! So, how will God bring us to that completion in Christ? Alongside the empower of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, the main gift God has given us so that we might be set free from sin and guilt and become complete in Christ is life in a local church like this one.

I want you to know that I am fully aware of the fact that the inability of many churches to be the grace-filled places that allow for this kind of community is something many people are criticizing the organized church for in our day. Sometimes, local churches are criticized for being too corporate in nature and interested only in getting big and becoming successful. At other times, we are criticized for being too self-righteous so that people cannot open up their lives, find welcome in spite of sin, and experience healing among brothers and sisters in Christ.

To the extent that either of those criticisms are true of us here at LAC or of me as your pastor, I sincerely apologize and declare to you that with the empowering work of the Holy Spirit who is in this congregation we are seeking to be characterized by the graciousness of Jesus. We long to be a grace-filled community. So, we know that we dare not condone sin in our lives or in the lives of other. At the same time, we humbly know that we dare not be self-righteous. Our only hope is that God has found a way to make us right with him, i.e., the precious blood of Jesus. As those rescued by grace, we seek to come together “to spur one another on toward love and good deeds.”

Let me tell you this: There is no place anywhere else in the world that you can find a community of rescued sinners called together to help one another grow – and empowered by the presence of God’s Spirit to have our lives become complete. But that is God’s plan for us. That’s what the local church is to be.

What must happen in a church community? Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds… Let us encourage one another… (10:24-25).

The key to a local church actually doing what we must do so that each of us and all of us can grow is in two phrases in these verses: 1) “spur one another on” and 2) “encourage one another”. When we think about those two phrases, we quickly realize several very practical truths:

#1: We must know one another well enough to be able to speak into one another’s lives.

The word translated “consider” in v. 24 means to stop and think – to reflect. The Bible calls us to establish places in our church family in which we can get to know one another personally, open up our lives to one another one another and thereby see how we might help a person move toward greater godliness.

This is not easy for many of us. I’m told women are better than men at this. I hear that “millennials” are better than “baby boomers” at this. So as a male baby boomer, I think I can make a lot of excuses about keeping to myself and staying away from the kind of community the Bible says I need. But excuses are all I have. The Bible says that if I will grow, I need to be involved in community so that I can “consider” the directions of others’ lives and others can consider mine. This cannot – and sometimes dare not – happen in a huge public setting like the gathered worship serves. There must be smaller gatherings where we can get to know one another, trust one another, and speak into one another’s lives. All of us need this. We are to be in relationships close enough that we can “consider” the directions of one another’s lives.

Such accountability doesn't need to have overtones of checking up and scolding. It works, instead, to encourage us and help us in our growth and commitments. For example, we may need to ask for guidance about how to handle a difficult relationship on the job or about how to put together a family budget that reflects our commitments about lifestyle and stewardship. Or, sometimes, we just need to have people ask how things are going. The community gives us a place to air our victories and our struggles, our successes and failures. It simply gives us a way of guiding each other ever more fully in the ways of Christ.

#2: We must have enough love for one another that we are willing to say important things – both encouraging and exhorting – to one another.

Here, I want you to think about that phrase, “spur one another on” in v.24. It is a very strong word. It’s a word that was used for a rider on a horse seeing the horse running toward danger and digging in the heels to re-direct the path the horse is on. The point is that we often don’t even see the destructive directions of our lives – but others sometimes do. We often try to hide the things in our lives so we need to have a place where we need to hide no more. And this is not easy. What makes this possible?

*The trust that allows us to be open about what is real inside. (This takes time and honesty to develop.)

*The humility that is open to correction.

*The respect for others that allows us to receive their words without defensiveness.

*The courage to speak into others’ lives even when we know we need to be “spoken into” too.

*The love to take the risk to say, “I think you are living in a way that will harm yourself, those around you, and your walk with God.”

We have to have the love, humility, and courage to say to someone in our small group, “We know you want to hold on to that grudge but you must forgive.” “We know you want to engage in sex outside marriage but you must be faithful to God and your partner – or your future partner.” We need a community in which we can be spurred and we engage in spurring.

#3: We must be ready to walk alongside one another in the midst of life’s temptations and trials.

In v. 25, we are told that in our community we are not only to “spur on” one another but also to encourage one another. The word is the beautiful “parakaleo” – meaning to be called to walk alongside. It’s what the Jesus says the Holy Spirit does in John 14. This tells me what I know deep down inside, i.e., for me to grow I need both confrontation and support. I’m sure you know that some people are better at one of these or the other. But, a local church community group must engage in both. You and I need both! When we struggle or even fail, we must know that the community will not give up on us. “Do not forsake meeting with one another…” That’s what the Bible commands. Never give up on your brother or sister in Christ! Jesus never gives up on the sinner who wants tomorrow to be different from today. He offers hope for a new future to prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, thieves on crosses – and to us. And so should his family.

Now, I’m going to ask Pastor Jeff Mattesich to come up and share with you how we want to take some steps in making this kind of “community” available to you.