Building God’s Church Part 1 - The Heart of the Church

Ephesians 4:17 – 32 18 February 2007

Andrew Lim

What’s the story of your life / my life?
There’s a meta-narrative / a larger story than that which began for me

If you are a child of God
you will know that the most significant decision you ever made in your life
was your decision over Who Jesus is

It is a story of high drama / of intrigue and suspense
even though you and I sometimes do not look at it that way

First of all / if you read Ephesians chapters 1 to 3
you understand once again / that really you’ve been wrenched
from a most terrifying place a person could be

God saved us from a place where we would be ultimately totally destroyed
Then with such love and tenderness / He adopts us into His family

You really have got to read those three chapters of Ephesians
to take a long hard look at the dark hole we’ve fallen into
and the unbelievable grace of God in pulling us out of that hole

Can you imagine the Queen in her walkabout / taking notice of you a commoner
and then stooping down / to receive you / and listen to you / that’s grace

Because in the normal scheme of things / there is nothing in a commoner
that deserves to be noticed / let alone touched and blessed

Grace is something given / which you totally absolutely do not deserve

Let me put it this way / as a sinner I deserve vengeance / I deserve raw justice
My only hope / is a last minute phone call in the execution chamber
after I have been strapped down waiting for the lethal injection

That phone call / from the Queen / the King / the President is my only hope
And that if it should come / would be pure grace
Purer grace in its purest form / if I am allowed a double emphasis there

And if it came / it will make no earthly sense!
Its like the family of one of the victims of the Oklahoma bombing
taking Timothy McVeigh / the killer home
and adopting him as the son they lost from his hands

Grace makes no sense / But though it makes no sense / God does it every day
At the split second / that you change your mind about God
turn around and accept Jesus as your Savior
He gives you a stay of execution
He pronounces upon you / in the court of heaven
the verdict of “Not Guilty”
But not only that / He adopts you into His family

Instead of executing justice / God extends grace
It makes no sense / grace makes no sense

But the point I want to emphasize is this
If this is the depth of God’s radical love / how should we then live
as a community of redeemed people

When God put us together He meant for us to have life together
with the expressed purpose
that we live in such a way that we reflect the reality of God on earth

For that / He gets us / to form a new spiritual community

We’re meant to be forging a new community
The Bible calls it church
The Greek word for church “ecclesia” / speaks of a group of people
set apart to live out God's desire here on earth

The church is a living testimony that God is real in the world
Scripture says that we must live in such a way
that we live to the praise of His glory

But is she?
Is the testimony of the average church God-honouring
Will this church show / by the way we lives / that we feel deeply
a deep sense of gratitude to God for giving us life?

Is the church alive and well? / Is the testimony of the average church vibrant

Jesus Christ says the Church will never die
And He is right / the Church at large on earth will never die
It will go on bearing witness / until Christi comes again
The Church on earth is the “church-militant” / it will triumph
and the gates of hell can never prevail against it

But our Lord was talking about the Church Universal
He wasn’t talking about the local congregation
The local church can die / and many have died
And perhaps some are in the process of dying

The church at Sardis / example / was described as a “dead” church / Rev 3:1

The church is an organism / not an organization
And because it is an organism / its got life
And because its got life / it is under constant threat of death

There are at least two ways a church may die

One: It may simply cease to exist / and close its doors
We see evidences of this / in many old European countries
where churches have been turned in workshops / studios and theatres
How very sad / but nevertheless true

Two: A church may die inwardly / even while it appears to live on outwardly
John Stott says in so many churches / the building remains intact
the people continue to congregate / the minister continues to minister
but the lamp-stand has been removed from their midst
and the spirit of God no longer lives there

Now / this is a state of affairs / which should terrify us all
- worshiping in a lifeless shell / a dead cocoon

But what kills a church?
There are at least four elements / that endanger the life of any church

First / Persecution / the Church of Smyrna went through that/ Rev. 2:9,10

Second / False Teaching
It threatened the church at Ephesus and Pergamos / Re 2:2,6; 2:13-15

Third / Worldliness
This includes immorality and materialism
The church at Thyatira was threatened by the influence of Jezebel
Rev. 2:20-23

Fourth / Indifference
This was what devastated the church at Ephesus
Christ told them / You have lost your “first love” - Re 2:4

The church / indeed is a highly vulnerable organism
when you are aware that we are pitted against immensely powerful forces
that seek to destroy its life and witness

Looking at it this way / the church is such a paradox really
On the one hand / there is the church that God has created
- the bride of Christ / spotless / pure / and holy / the Church Universal

On the other hand there is the local church
- its a church that's not so pure / and not so holy

It comprises a bunch of sinful people / called by God to live together
and the whole enterprise can be a potentially explosive one
- people fail us / we fail one another
- people spend much time / fighting each other
bickering against each other / or ignoring each other
And sometimes the church looks so much like a gigantic flea market

But whatever it is / the church is God's idea / He / put us together
And we’ve got to go back to His Word and see if He has a prescription

And if we go to the Word / we find that the word
gives us two strategies to safeguard our church

Negatively we need to be on our guard
against those forces that seek to destroy us

Positively / we need to build up those stuff that go to make this church
one which glorifies God

And this second approach / is what I want for us to look into
Just what are some aspects of church life / that we need to embrace
that will promote and nourish life /

How should we live / so that God’s name is honoured in our midst?
We have been privileged to be given this glorious opportunity
to start this new witness in the city
But how then shall we live / as a church?

To bring honour to the Name of God / as a church / we must live inside out
It’s got to begin from inside my heart and your heart
Whether people out there see as to be fragrant or foul
depends if we’ve got it right here / heart

But what’s the heart of the church? / What does God want of us?

I was most encouraged by the brainstorming session we had some weeks back
(By the way there is one coming up and I want to encourage all to be there)

I have here with me the notes taken on that afternoon
Then again / on our very first Sunday here from the interactive sermon
- many of you again shared your heart
- you told us what you value for this church

Here are some of points I took down
truth-telling / care for the poor / prayer / love for one another
rebuking evil / repentance / faith / obedience / accountability
discipleship / uphold justice / humility / teaching / vision
evangelism / service / community / doing life together / mission
seeking the will of God / healing / joy in operating through the Spirit

I’ve been look at the list ever since
There is not a single item on that list / that is at odds with the heart of God
But not only that / those are the very values
that God tells us quite consistently in His Word
that He is pleased with if we uphold them and practice them

The brainstorming session meant a lot to me
I think if it everyday / I continue to be challenged by the reponse
I am as excited over it today as I was that day
that God in His grace / should choose to take us on such a journey

I believe with all my heart
that if God gives us both the grace and the strength
to let our hearts be marked with those values
that His light will shine out from us into the city
- to His honor / to His glory

And I want this morning to look into some of them

First the element of joy!

If we purport to have been people redeemed from the clutch of Satan
and set free to live freely for God / shouldn’t that show in our community?

The message Jesus came to give is a message of hope / forgiveness / freedom
He says: “If you stay by My word / you are truly my disciples
and you shall know the truth / and the truth shall make you free”
John 8:30-32

Free from what? Free from your own inhibitions
free from guilt and shame / free from any feelings of condemnation
free from the tyranny of other people’s opinions
other people’s expectations / other people’s demands

And then becoming free to obey
free to love / free to forgive others as well as myself
free to allow others to be who they are / different from me
free to serve God and free to enjoy God

This was so much in His mind / our Lord emphasizes it again
saying “If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed”
John 8:36

The image of the church we get from Scripture
is the image of a community living zestfully / joyfully

The Christian life is a dancing / leaping / daring life
But we’ve turned it into something
that’s / dull and flat / and storgy and colourless

Isn’t it strange / that the one place on earth
where we would most expect to be set free
is in fact / the very place we are most likely to be put back into slavery

Merryll Tenney / the NT scholar calls the book of Galatians
the Magna Carta of Christian Liberty

There is one verse in the book / which / if obeyed / would go a long way
in putting a stop to all the stifling legalism we see

Galatians 5:1 “For freedom Christ has set us free / stand fast therefore
and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery”

In that letter / Paul says: “Hey you guys / You’ve been running well
Who hindered you from obeying the truth?”
You have been set free / gloriously / Who has bewitched you now?
Galatians 3:1-3
The Living Bible
“What magician has hypnotized you and cast an evil spell upon you?”
Have you gone completely crazy? Who stole your mind?

We call such people legalists / They are petty / and small-minded
They put non you prohibitions that God Himself never intended to
- they demand from people in church / what they must do or not do
- how they should dress / what they can eat

How very sad in this new community / to still feel the need
to compare / to control / to and manipulate
Grace is strangled / and legalists are grace-killers
They take the joy of living zestfully for Christ

Let’s be aware that we don’t become petty
Petty people are ugly people
Petty people are people who’ve lost the big picture
they’ve lost the reason / why they’re here in the first place
So they major on the minor / on what’s on the peripheral

You allow them to manipulate you /you’ll be immobilized by their obsession
You’ll come away cramped / smothered / stifled

I pray that we will strive to be a community of people
who’ve experienced the joys of being liberated
and have been given the permission to live under grace


The second value I want to pick up is that if unity

“There is one body and one Spirit / just as you were called to one hope
when you were called” / Ephesians 4:4

We are one body / with one Spirit /Ephesians 4:5-6
It takes one body to contain one spirit
If you have one body / but more than one spirit
you have no hope of survival / either as a church or as an individual

And as a church / if we have several diverse and opposing spirits
it is only a matter of time / before we totally succumb to the Enemy

It is disastrous to have competing spirits within the same body
This is why God hates double-minded people
We cannot have one body and several spirits

We are intimately united at this point in the life of our new church
Will we be as united twelve months down the road?

Whether we will or not
depends much on how well we “keep” the unity of Spirit

Ephesians 4:3 say “keep the unity of the Spirit”
Paul is not telling us to generate unity / or produce unity in the body

Unity is a given
it is already naturally there where people meet in the Name of Christ
- our duty is to “keep” it
We may not be able to create unity / But its definitely our job to keep it

The word “keep” means to stand guard over something

Disunity within the church is one of the greatest threat
The devil is acutely alert to any hairline fracture
in the relationship of people in church

Soon as he detects such a situation / he worms into it
capitalises on it / implicates as many people as possible
confuses everyone and everything
and sometimes brings about a split

Its so much like Satan / isn't it? / he doesn't just eat / he devours

We need to
be careful of any divisive spirit
be careful of what the Bible calls "party spirit"
be careful that the words you speak are not divisive words
be careful of a spirit of murmuring / a spirit of discontent

Remember
the devil is highly intelligent / immensely cunning and utterly unscrupulously

If unity meant so much to our Lord / & made it the top priority in his prayers
we need to keep our unity with great vigilance

The third value which you would like to see in our new church is humility

This is really an answer as to how we might maintain the unity of the Spirit
In Philippians 2:3 / “In humility / count others better than yourselves”
2 Sam 22:28 / “God delivers the humble”
The psalmist says “God adorns the humble with victory” / Ps 149:4
Solomon says “Humility goes before honor” / Prov. 15:33

It is very easy to find reasons to be critical of others in the body
We all have feet of clay / even those of us who don’t realize it

Yet the things that will please the Lord greatly here
gentleness / patience and forbearance / and what are those but humility


It is so vitally important in living together
for each one to pray to God often asking for a spirit of humility
Ro 12:3 “Be honest in your estimate of yourself”

Scripture is rather blunt here isn’t it?
It is often when we think we are superior to other people
that is the beginning of trouble in church

If we would only consider ourselves / smaller than other people
and the church will look beautiful to people who come in

In our quiet moments to ourselves / in our sober moments
we know deep inside we haven’t got it all together
- we’re inadequate in so many ways

Humility includes a willingness to do even the “menial” tasks
The Japanese people have a wise proverb:
“The taller the bamboo grows / the lower it bends”

The truly great people are the ones who bow the lowest

Lawrence Bell once said:
Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things
and I’ll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things”


The fourth value you would like to see in place here is truth-speaking

Pascal / who lived so long ago / said that no one should expect
to meet more than three or four honest people in a lifetime

The Bible is totally realistic about the whole thing:
In it God says: “The human heart is deceitful above all things”

But against all the lies we see around us stands the Word of God
And it says: “You should not lie” / Why ?

Because this commandment is founded on the character of God Himself
God by His very nature is truth

The Book of Numbers tells us that God cannot lie (23:19)
- there is nothing more contrary to His nature than a lie

Jesus Himself said: “I am the Way / the Truth / and the Life”
- there is never any trace of flattery
in His words that He spoke to the good people
- and neither is there any trace of falsehood
in anything he said about people that was bad

If he called a man a fox / which he did / that man was a fox
If he called you a precious person you are a precious person

What he said lost him many friends, / but that was the truth
The Bible says: No cunning is found in Him
No treachery / No craft / No deceit is found in His mouth

God is called “the God of truth”
Jesus said of Himself “I am the Truth”
The Holy Spirit is called the "Spirit of Truth"
And about God’s Word / John say: “Your word is truth”

On the other hand / the opposite of truth / the lie
is identified completely with Satan

Let there be no lies / slander / backbiting in our new community
Be careful especially of slander
The devil's name in Greek is “diabolos” / which means slanderer

Jesus said of people who lie / John 8:44:
“You belong to your father / the devil
He was a murderer from the beginning
- Not holding to the truth / for there is no truth in him
Remember Amy Carmichael would always ask herself
three questions before she speaks anything about anyone
This was her three-way rule: Is it true / kind / necessary

If you want help on how to speak truthfully
I have found this acronym CHORD to be extremely helpful

Let us in this church / when we speak to each other / or of one another
Let us speak the truth in love
Clearly / Honestly / Openly / Respectfully / Directly

Even if by speaking I will hurt / embarrassed / upset / annoyed