| Andrew Lim
10 August 2008 - I Corinthians 12:14-26
It is God’s purpose / desire and design
for human people to live in a community
That’s the delight of God’s heart
He created us not only to relate to Him / but to one another
But loving relationships is one thing Satan hates
Satan seethes with displeasure whenever he sees true loving community
- that’s why he hates families so intensely / and the church so fiercely
Satan’s ploy is to get people isolate / and alienated from one another
- he hates any thriving happy community / and he’s been eroding it
He disrupted the first relationship between the first man and woman
He violated the first brotherly love between Cain and Able
God comes to the garden and He calls out to Adam “Where are you”
“Why are you hiding? I did not create you to hide from me”
And God comes to Cain / and asks him almost the same question
“Where is your brother? What have you done?
And ever since that day / the venom from the dragon’s tongue
has poisoned our relationship to God and our relationship to one another
and out planet has been shrouded by the pain and misery
over what human people have inflicted on one another
the crusades / the slave trade / child-labour / the holocaust
the two great world wars / the killing fields in Cambodia
the sorrow of the numerous cases of ethnic cleansing in history
the 150,000 babies aborted everyday around the world
abused children / broken marriages / split churches
the way we mistrust each other / suspect each other / kill each other
Time and again God comes along us / and the same cry rings from His heart
“Where are you? What have you done? I didn’t create you for this
I created you for love / relationship / intimacy / joy
What Look wave you done?”
God longs for human people to relate with one another
Jesus came to earth to reconcile people to God
and people to people / and a person to himself
And when God describes our human nature / that’s been infected by sin
He uses words that talk of the stuff we do to each other / with each other
“sexual immorality / impurity and debauchery / hatred / discord
idolatry and witchcraft / jealousy / fits of rage / selfish ambition
dissensions / factions and envy / drunkenness / orgies and the like”
Gal 5:19-21
And the Bible is realistic that as this world draws to a close
human relationships are going to get / not better / but steadily worse
This is what it says: “Mark this:
There will be terrible times in the last days
People will be lovers of themselves / lovers of money / boastful
proud / abusive / disobedient to their parents / ungrateful / unholy
without love / unforgiving / slanderous / without self control/ brutal
not lovers of the good / treacherous / rash / conceited /
lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God / 2 Tim 3:1-4
But God’s desire is for us to relate / commune with one another
We have a mistaken belief that Christianity is simply concerned
with a person’s individual relationship with Jesus
We look at out faith in God as private personal commitment
But that isn’t what the Scripture teaches
Christianity is much more than just a private transaction with Jesus
When Peter confessed Christ / Jesus did not say to him:
“Good / Peter / now that you are saved / Go your way
be at peace with yourself / and have good and full life
Instead immediately after Peter handed his life over to Jesus
and confessed Him as Lord / Jesus says to him
“I want to established the church through you”
The same with us / the day you commit yourself to Christ
you commit yourself to a community of believers
you become part of His new community
For good or for ill / we’re bonded together
There is no Christianity apart from the church
Christianity is corporate / we’re meant to live our lives together
in a new redeemed community
Commitment to Christ should generate a commitment to a Church
God puts us together / And He put us together for a purpose
He meant for us to have life together
He wants for us / to form a new spiritual community
We saw last week that the Greek word for church is “ecclesia”
speaks of a group of people set aside
to live the kind of lives Jesus taught us to live
so that she may be a living testimony that God is real
The line in our creed this morning says
“I believe in the communion of saints”
In a larger context / the “communion of saints”
speaks of our company with the millions of Christians
who have lived before but now died and are with the Lord
Some churches observe All Saints Sunday
It is the reminder that as a church
we are a part of something larger than ourselves
we go beyond what we can see and hear and feel
in our immediate context
Hebrews 11 is often call God’s Hall of Fame
It tells us of a great “cloud of witnesses”
You walk down what looks like an unending corridor
and you see thousands of portraits hanging there
a whole litany of God’s faithful
Abel / Enoch / Noah / Abraham / Isaac / Jacob / Joseph
Moses / Rahab / the list just goes on
Its as if God wants us to draw strength
from those who gone on ahead of us
So in this larger context / to say “I believe in the Communion of Saints”
is to say that we believe in the power of the community of believers
to strengthen our faith
It tells us that together we can make it
But this morning / we are talking of the communion of saints
of a different kind
The word "communion" here is used in the broader sense of the word
in which a group of people "commune" together
It's a word that comes from the same root as the word "community"
It means “being together / not just in body / but in heart”
To be in communion with someone
is to be open to someone at a deep / heart level
being ready to love accept / reconcile and forgive
The word "saint" in the Bible simply means a believer
means "holy one" in both Greek and Hebrew
meaning someone set apart for God
So the term “the Communion of Saints” speaks of sharing lives together
The Bible word for this is the old word “fellowship” / Gk / “koinonia”
it describes people sharing their lives together
it describes people sharing what they have with others
submitting to one another / supporting one another
bearing one another's burdens / building up one another
Acts 2:44-46 draws a clear picture
of what fellowship looked like in the early church
- all those who had believed were together
- they had all things in common
- they began selling their property and possession
- they shared them with the needy
- they gathered with one mind in the temple
- they broke bread from house to house
- they shared their meals together
We may all be so diversely different one from the other
- we don’t all like the same kind of clothing / food / music
- yet we’re bonded because of our mutual love of Jesus Christ
that / is Christian konoinia
Francis Schaeffer speaks of this way of living
and he says / “Love / is the final apologetics”
But Jesus said it two thousand years ago
“By this shall will all people know that you are my disciples
that you love one another”
If we do not in fact have life together / then we have no message
True life together involves sustaining one another / supporting one another
helping one another / committing to one another
- both through practical ways and through prayer
“We are One Body because we all share One Bread”
To be a Christian is to be part of a community
It demands that we come out of our isolation
and make a choice to be committed to one another
Sometimes people say they don’t need to be with other believers
that they can pray and worship God on my own
and grow without the help of others
But it is a reality that without fellowship
we easily lose our love for God and become spiritually cold
We have the analogy of a pile of burning coal
As long as the pieces of coal remain together
they burn with a raging fire
But if one piece is removed from the pile and put away
it will soon lose its glow / and eventually die out
We all face tremendous odds / as Christians
pressures of your work / family commitments / temptations
our resistance can be worn down rather quickly
Remember Lot / the nephew of Abraham
As long as he was together with Abraham / he and his family were well
But they parted company
Lot chose to live near the sinful city of Sodom
His family gradually came under its influence
Lot’s wife looked back with longing at Sodom / as they fled
from its destruction and she was turned into a pillar of salt
Lot’s daughters ended up adopting the immoral ways of Sodom
Don’t say / that’s Lot / a more godly person could survive that
Elijah fled from his own people
and in his isolation under the broom tree
he capitulated under the threat of the queen and wanted to die
May I remind you that the book of Hebrews is a book of warnings!
It tells us that bad things start snowballing
when a person chooses to isolate herself
First / you begin to drift / Hebrews 2:1 / by the way nobody drifts upstream
Second / You will doubt / Heb.3:12-13
Three / You become dull of hearing / Heb.5:11-14
Four / You will backslide / Heb.6:4-6
On the other side of the equation / let me document for you
the great reasons / for living lives together
Living life together / strengthens us to accomplish more for the Lord
Ecclesiastes 4:9 / “Two are better than one
because they have a good return for their work”
Living life together / helps to support one another
Ecclesiastes 4:10 / “If one falls down / his friend can help him up
But pity the man who falls / and has no one to help him up!”
Living life together / helps us win our spiritual battles
Ecclesiastes 4:12 / “Though one may be overpowered
two can defend themselves / A cord of three strands
is not quickly broken”
Living life together / is a sheer pleasure in God’s sight
Psalm 133:1 / “How good and pleasant it is
when brothers live together in unity!”
Living life together / is the desire of the heart of Christ
John 13:34,35 / “A new command I give you: Love one another
As I have loved you / so you must love one another”
But just what do we do when we do come together
One / we pray with each other / The disciple were always praying
together / and God heard them / and answered their prayers
Two / we build up / we help each other grow in knowledge and service
Three / we strongly encourage one another
the biblical word is “exhort” / it means cheering each other on
Four / we teach one another about things we have learned from the Lord
Five / we help each other out in practical ways when someone is in need
comforting / serving one another
forbearing and forgiving one another
Now we are not saying that living life together is going to be easy
Living life together / in the biblical sense
involves serious commitment and obligations
The commitment isn’t just serious / it is costly
In our first church / we shared the gospel with a young Hindu
He came to the Lord / was baptised
But his Hindu family disowned / for renouncing his own faith
In a situation like that / what would true fellowship require
It would require that as his brothers and sisters now
- you lend him the spiritual / and financial support
And this the church did / we took him in and gave him a home
and provided for his needs
We have as a church helped numerous people
who’ve fallen into bad times
Biblical fellowship is messy / costly / and often frustrating
Could this be the reason / why we’re less than enthusiastic
about trying to live our lives together?
But there is a dimension of messiness about biblical fellowship
that I believe is one strong reason
why Christians today are less than keen to commit themselves
to living lives together
This has got to do with the biblical idea of mutual accountability
Biblical fellowship involves / more than loving one another
and wrapping our arms around someone / when he is hurting
To be sure / fellowship involves unconditional love
But it involves tough love as well
The church needs tough love
because the church / is the pure spotless body of the Bride
and to keep her purity pure in faith and practice
she must hold people accountable to truth and righteousness
When I fail as get you to account for your conduct
I have not loved you as I should
Softness / mustn’t be confused for love
Spinelessness / mustn’t be confused for love
Love becomes mere sentimentality if not under girded by truth
If I keep my silence / when you have violated
the purity and unity of the body in a way that is serious
that / is not love / that’s sentimentality
- love becomes mere sentimentality if not under girded by truth
You see / the church is a family / and like any family
things will go wrong / and sometimes things do go wrong
- people saying things totally out of whack
- people backbiting one another / disrupting the unity of church
- people living in sin
True biblical fellowship demands
that we do not back off from having to confront
True fellowship will insist that accountability is absolutely essential
for the purity and the vibrancy of the church
John Wesley was so concerned with cultivating a righteous fellowship
he devised a series of questions for his followers
to ask each other / every week
Some found this system of inquiry too demanding and left
Today / you recoil even hearing about it
Yet / there are people today who still wisely follow such a practice
Chuck Swindoll / for example / has seven very tough questions
that he and a group of fellow pastors
challenge each other with / periodically
to hold one another accountable
1. Have you been with a woman anywhere this past week
that might be seen as compromising?
2. Have any of your financial dealings lack integrity?
3. Have you exposed yourself to any sexually explicit material?
4. Have you spent adequate time in Bible study & prayer ?
5. Have you given priority time to your family ?
6. Have you fulfilled the mandates of your calling?
7. Have you just lied to me?
What we are ultimately accountable to one another / are two things
- one / correct belief (orthodoxy) / Two / upright moral conduct
But accountability is an empty concept
if ultimately we do not have the teeth to enforce those demands
For when we cannot call people to account for their words and deeds
we lose our authority
Not too long ago a pastor of a church began teaching
and endorsing the belief that divorce / and premarital sex is OK
He was publicly disciplined
And that / was a noble moment for the church
We weaken the church
when we fail to discipline wrong teaching / or unholy behaviour
But when the church backs off / what shame it brings
Just take a look at Bishop John Shelby Spong
This man with his heretical teachings / is allowed to run loose
without so much as a whimper of protest
from all those weak church leaders
- and the world laughs at us / and rightly so
Sermons on holy living are empty exercises
unless the church is willing to back them up with action
There is real blessing in having church leaders
who love us / and act like they are servants
But there is also real blessing in having church leaders
who are bold enough to speak truthfully / plainly and firmly
about things in our lives / that are not right
How secure it is to be under a leadership
who loves you with an unconditional love
But who also loves you with a tough love
- a love that rebukes and challenges
Paul said to the people at Ephesus (Acts 20:31)
“Remember that for three years
I never stopped warning each one of you”
I want you to examine your own attitude about coming under / submitting
- is there a sense in which you are not ready / or will not submit
to the leaders of the church / if they should speak into your lives
- will you humbly listen if they should correct you
- or will you get up and leave
Heb 13:17 “Obey your leaders submit to them
for they are keeping watch over your souls
They themselves are accountable to God”
So that’s a lot involved then / in choosing to live our lives together
But it is a pure spotless body of the Bride we are talking about
and we need to keep her pure and spotless
And if the cost is high / its because the stakes are high
But we thank God that because these are His desires
He will give the grace of strength / to accomplish them
I want now to touch on something most crucial
when it comes to building up a wholesome Christian community
Let me put it this way
It is well and right to emphasise the need to build each other up
But we need to balance that up with being alone
If I am always everywhere available to everyone all the time
I will not be good enough for anyone / when I am available
For I would be bankrupt of anything worthwhile to give
If I haven’t been alone sufficiently / to wait on God / to hear from Him
I will be of no value to anyone / when I am available to them
It was Bonhoeffer / in his book Life Together / who said:
“Let him who cannot be alone beware of community
Let him who is not in community beware of being alone”
People who want to be with other people without having been with God
in the words of Bonhoeffer
“plunges into the void of words and feelings”
On the other hand / people who seeks solitude without fellowship
“perishes in the abyss of vanity / self infatuation / and despair”
If we are committed to living lives together
we need seriously to be committed to living life alone also
we need to come to cherish solitude a little more than we do
Some people are to addicted to people
they need to be in the company of people all the time
Jim Elliot once said / “I think the devil has made it his business
to monopolise on three elements - noise / hurry / crowds”
Then Elliot added these words:
“Satan is quite aware of the power of silence”
Satan knows that in our silence / we will more likely find God
And he is afraid we might actually use the silence to find God
But unless we plan for regular periods of solitary silence before God
we won’t be good for anyone / when we are around them
Without exception people who have made an impact for God
have been people who developed a daily time of solitude with God
We need the habit of solitude and silence
We need to choose to abstain from speaking
so that we begin to the Lord speak to us
Sometimes we need silence in order to read / to write / to pray
Without silence and solitude we are shallow
Not only are we shallow / we become of no good to one another
Because if we are not cleansed we infect others with what is plaguing us
I want to close now by encouraging you
to make a decision to commit yourself
living lives together with one another here
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