Life is a Journey - Lesson 11

I. Authentic Biblical Community

A. New family

When you and I became Christians, we walked through the gate, as it were, one person at a time. There was no family plan. We don’t get into heaven because of mom or dad or uncles or aunts. We walk through one person at a time. And yet on the other side of that gate lies our new family, a family we will walk with as we go through life, a family where we have a new father and new brothers and new sisters.

It’s interesting that the word “brothers” is the most common way in which the New Testament refers to believers, men and women alike. We are brothers. We are a family that is not divided based on gender or race or class. We are a family that is bound together by our Father’s love for us, our love for him, and then that love for our Father flows out to one another. It is, in fact, this loving unity that is to characterize the family of God, which then tells the world about Jesus.

As an aside, let me ask you, how do you refer to other members of your faith community? In some parts of the world, we still say “brothers,” meaning men and women. But in other parts of the world, we call the members of our faith community “brothers and sisters.” In deference to this ongoing change in the English language, I’m going to refer to us as brothers and sisters.

In John chapter 17, Jesus is praying to God for the church. And in verses 21 to 23, he prays that all of them, that’s meaning you and me, “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one.” Wow. The unity of the church is supposed to be the same as the unity of the Godhead.

Then Jesus repeats himself in verse 23. “I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.” Why is that so important? Jesus concludes, “Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” Wow.

John 17 verses 21 to 23 is what authentic biblical community is all about. As you and I are bound together in our love for God, people will look at us and they’ll say, oh, how they love God. When people look at us, they will see the Father’s love in us and conclude, Jesus says, that God sent his son to the world. All of this is tied up in the fact that you and I are to be the family of God. We are to be an authentic biblical community.

Do you think this is how the world sees us? Do they see a divine unity that almost forces them to believe that God sent Jesus? There’s a lot at stake in this issue of the unity of the church, and I would guess that the church overall is failing miserably at this point.

B. Biblical and authentic

I need to define the two words “biblical” and “authentic.” By “biblical” I mean that the community is to be based on biblical principles, the teachings of Jesus. The church is not a social club. It is a community that is bound together by our common beliefs in and love for Jesus.

By “authentic,” I mean it is honest. I think one of the worst words in the English language is “fine.” I ask someone how they’re doing and they’ll respond, “fine.” And often, perhaps usually, “fine” means they have real struggles but they don’t think I care enough to listen and enter into their life, so they say, “fine.” Okay, that’s inauthentic.

II. Challenges

A. Many challenges

Because authentic biblical community is so important, it should come as no surprise that there are challenges in creating it. If it’s really this important, and if it is God’s way of showing his love and drawing people to himself, then we should expect challenges in creating and living in community.

There are, in fact, many challenges. Sin divides people. Sometimes families are their own tribe and they refuse to merge into the larger body of the church. Sometimes people are lusting for power, and they use gossip to divide and to conquer. But I want to focus on the issue of culture.

B. Challenge of culture

American culture, and perhaps Western culture as a whole, is one of individualism and of isolationism. It is not one of community. Gallup polls have shown time and time again that Americans are among the loneliest people on the earth. We have more toys than just about anybody, but no one to play with. Our culture is one of fragmentation and isolation and loneliness. This is one of the larger challenges to authentic biblical community.

In the book, The Connecting Church, a book I would recommend you reading, the author, Randy Frazee, talks about the fact that we have many disconnected circles of relationships. The circle of relationships perhaps that we call the church, the circle of relationships that we have called work, this circle of relationships that we have that we call family. We also have circles of relationships connected with our children. We have soccer teams and basketball teams and neighborhood activities and Girl Scouts, and the list goes on and on. We have so many circles of relationships, and most of them are not connected. This means that the very thing we crave the most, authentically deep relationships built on the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, we’ll never find because we are so busy living fragmented, disconnected lives. American culture is one of isolation. It is not one of community.

In his book, Frazee goes on to document the cultural changes in America that have happened over the last hundred years. What I enjoyed reading in this book, among other things, are all the things that I take for granted, but then I realized that there was a shift, a change when I was a kid. For example, he talks as many sociologists do about the flight of rural America into the impersonal urban centers that we call cities. He talks about how we used to sit on the porch and talk to people when they walk by. Now we sit in our air-conditioned homes or perhaps go outside to our private back decks. We don’t talk to our neighbors. We used to walk to the neighborhood stores, but now we drive to super stores. In fact, now we can go through the speed checkout counter and we don’t even have to talk to the cashierist. When I was in school in Scotland, I lived in a small town and there was a butcher and there was a vegetable market and there were other small stores. I would walk from store to store to get the different things that I needed and I would talk to the people and enjoy community.

Our parents or perhaps grandparents all used to do this. We used to walk around the block. Now we have treadmills in our basements in our bedrooms so we can watch the news. We used to go to the post office and stand in line and talk to people. Now there are televisions and we can watch television and we don’t have to talk to anybody. We’re getting to the point where we never really have to leave the house and do all of our shopping on the internet. Things are changing.

In his book, Frazee talks about a man named Robert Putnam. He’s a Harvard professor whose research shows that Americans entertain friends at home, get this, 45% less often in the late 90s than they did in the mid to late 70s. He also uncovered the rather shocking fact that between 1974 and 1998, the frequency with which Americans spend a social evening with someone who lives in their neighborhoods fell by about a third. I would think that the numbers today — those numbers are about 20 years old — that today they’re much more severe. The home has become a place of solitary confinement and the home, if you can call it that, has become for many a boarding house with people who occasionally eat and mostly just sleep.

The other day I read a plea for American families to function as a family. The author said that if we would do just one thing, it would be the most important thing that we could do. He said, have at least one meal a week together. One meal a week? It made me realize how fortunate I am in being raised in a home that was a real family eating at least two meals a day together.

But here’s the point. We live in an individualistic, fragmented, lonely culture, and the problem is we were built for community. When God made Adam, he looked at him and said, it is not good that he is alone. So he made Eve. We weren’t made for isolation. What’s true of marriage relationships like Adam and Eve is also true of larger social units, the social units of family and the family of God. So God created the church to meet our deep need of community.

III. MODEL OF THE EARLY CHURCH

A. All about God

As we look at the model of the early church in Acts 2, we can see what God intended for us to be like. Here’s the author’s description of the early church in Acts 2. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42–47).

When we look at this picture of the early church, we start to get a taste for what God wants community to look like. It starts first and foremost with God. God is the absolute center. It’s all about him. God pervades everything they did. They devoted themselves to prayers. They were praising God. They were involved in evangelism and people were being saved. Day by day, they were involved in worshiping God, attending the temple together. God was the absolute center, the central focus of the early church, and that pervaded everything they did.

If God is not the center of our church family, then we are nothing more than friends and casual acquaintances. Without God, we’re just a social club and a community center. However, it’s because God is our Father that you and I can truly be brothers and sisters. It’s all about God. He is the absolute center.

As we read the story of the early church, we quickly realize that if God truly is a center, both for us as an individual and for the church as a whole, then this fact is going to push itself out, as it were, flowing in different directions. You can’t just love God and nothing else. I love the fact that when Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment in the law, how did he answer? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and in a different gospel, it adds “all your strength.” This is the first and greatest commandment. God is the center, right? Then, even though he wasn’t asked what the top two commandments were, he quickly adds the second. “And the second is like it. You love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the greatest commandment in Matthew 22.

It’s interesting that the Greek word behind the translation “neighbor” generally means the “other” person. I suspect we tend to narrow the scope of Jesus’s answer to people living on, I don’t know, both sides of our house, or our apartment, and perhaps a family across the street, or across the hall. Neighbors should be understood in much broader terms, but here’s the point. We can’t love God, and he can’t be the center of our lives, without it flowing out into other areas. Jesus makes that clear. We love him, and we love others. The two are inseparable.

B. Consequences

There are at least three different directions that our relationship with God, and our love for him, should flow. One is growth into spiritual maturity. We’ll see this in Acts 2. Then growth into fellowship, and growth into service. Let’s look at each one of those three.

1. Growth in spiritual maturity

One way in which our love for God flows out is into the area of spiritual maturity. As you and I love God, we will learn more about what he is like. If we don’t learn about him, how can we be like him? This is why the early church devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching. In Colossians, Paul is reviewing his ministry with the Colossian church, and he talks about how his goal for the lives was that they grow up, that they mature. In chapter 1 verse 28, he says that Christ, “is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom.” Why? “So that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.” We don’t learn just to know more. We learned so that we can be changed, transformed, so that we can grow into full maturity.

And this is why BiblicalTraining.org exists, and why we encourage people to learn together, so they don’t learn only but they’ll also be challenged by others in their group to be transformed, to grow spiritually. So there’s growth into learning that is transforming, and that’s part of what spiritual maturity is.

2. Growth into fellowship

Secondly, there is growth into fellowship. Our relationship with God pushes its way out in this second way, and that is in the area of fellowship. In Acts chapter 2, the church devoted themselves to fellowship. Day by day they were breaking bread, the text says, in their homes. I think, as we read this passage, it’s fair to say that the church was the social center of their lives. The circle of relationships in that church was a central set of relationship in all their lives.

I often encourage people with the idea of a Christian crockpot. The crockpot is not Christian, but that’s what I always have called it, the “Christian Crockpot.” The idea is to get up Sunday morning and throw a bigger roast in the crockpot. Throw a couple more potatoes, a couple more carrots, and a couple cans of soup. It’s not hard to do. You just turn it on when you leave. You go to church and you look for someone you don’t recognize. And you say, you know, I don’t know you, even though you are my brother or sister. Come on over after church and let’s get to know each other. What do you call a family where siblings don’t know each other? I call it “dysfunctional.”

When I was in graduate school, one of the most influential families in Northern Scotland was a family who, every Sunday, did this. They would look for someone they didn’t know in the church, it was usually graduate students, and invite them over. Their ministry was not just to entertain. It was to make people feel welcome, to say, welcome into our family. I had more Sunday meals with them than I can possibly remember. May I encourage all of us to make the family of God the primary social circle in our lives. As long as we have all these different disconnected circles of relationships, our lives will be fragmented and we’ll never have a sense of connection because we’re scattered all over the place.

One of the things that Frazee encourages in his book is for us to narrow our scope of circles. We certainly should have friends outside the church. That’s really important. But the church should be our primary social circle for our lives. I would love to see a day in which a church building is full every hour. I would love to see young moms, when they’re going a little crazy with their kids, call another young mom who’s also going a little crazy with her kids and say, let’s meet at church for coffee. Not at the coffee shop, meet at the church. There’s always coffee on at church. And while you’re there, you let your kids run rampant. You can clean up when you’re done. Personal comment. Have coffee together, talk together, share your lives and be encouraged by one another.

I would love to see the day when a son comes home and says, hey dad, let’s go play basketball. But instead of going to some recreational center, the dad says, okay, hey, let’s go to church to play. In fact, let’s call up someone else that we know from church and have him and his son come too. We’ll set up the hoop in the gym and we’ll play together. Assuming your church has a gym, if not, maybe a parking lot.

I would love to see the day when those who have moved into retirement from teaching all of their lives say, you know, I’ve taught math and science for 40 years. I’ll be in the library from two to four in the afternoon. If your kids are struggling, bring them in. I would love to share my knowledge and I would love to share my life’s experiences with these young brothers and sisters. I mean, after all, retirement means now you really have time to serve the family of God.

I can see a day when these things happen, but it’s not going to happen until we become fully devoted to fellowship, and that means making the church body the center of our relational lives.

Authentic biblical community is a lot more than just the fun times, as important as those times are. If you’re going to be devoted to fellowship, I think it means that your church will have to become a “haven of grace.” I read Philip Yancey’s book, What’s So Amazing About Grace. It’s an amazing book. Yancey is trying to define what it means for God to treat us with grace. He says that God’s grace means that there’s nothing I can do to make God love me more. Grace means there’s nothing I can do to make God love me less. God doesn’t love me because of who I am or what I do. He simply loves me.

When we let that kind of grace pervade our thinking, that’s when the “one anothers” in Scripture come alive. We are to live in harmony with one another. We are to not pass judgment on one another. We are to not speak evil of one another. We are to encourage one another. We are to show hospitality to one another. We are to bear one another’s burdens. As Paul said, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

It is impossible to be obedient to God in isolation, and it’s impossible to be obedient to God without grace. If we’re off living by ourselves, if we don’t understand grace, how can we bear one another’s burdens? If we refuse to attend services, how can we show compassion to one another? It’s impossible. What it means to be devoted to fellowship is to have God central in our lives. Not us, not our jobs, not our wealth, not our fame, not our fortune, but God. If God is truly central in my life, we will be devoted to fellowship just like the early church.

I need to add an important caveat here. Church is not a building. Just because you go to the building owned by a non-profit organization doesn’t mean it’s the church. Robin and I trained our children to never say they were, “going to church.” Why? Because you can’t go to what you are. Think about that. You can’t go to what you are. My kids heard that hundreds of times.

The church is the people. And so, for some, the church is a group of people that you meet with regularly for fellowship and spiritual encouragement, perhaps at the park or a coffee shop. In fact, I think you can argue the reverse, that if your church building holds thousands of people where there’s no real community, where you can’t do the one another’s, is it really a church? It’s something to think about.

3. Growth into Ministry

In Acts, there’s a third way in which the centrality of Christ pushes its way out into their lives, and that is in the whole area of service. If God is central in our lives, and if God is central in the family of God, and he is, then it will show itself in service. It’ll show itself in outreach.

Service within the church. In the book of Hebrews, the author says, “Let us consider how we may spur on one another to love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another” (10:24–25). That’s a great way to say it, I think. “Consider.” Let’s sit down and think through how we can encourage, how we can stir up one another to love one another, to do good deeds. Let’s be deliberate about it and think through this.

This is why Paul repeatedly says that the spiritual gifts are given to meet all the needs of the people in the church. The gifts of ministry, service, preaching, teaching, showing mercy, giving, faith, all these gifts were given for the common good. They were given to you and to me so that together we can serve one another. If we’re not in a community, we can’t do any of that.

I should add, serving the body includes our finances, which is certainly one of the outstanding features of the early church. God was so central in who they were that while they weren’t commanded to sell everything, they did, and they shared the money with the people. I know people will often say, well, it doesn’t say that I have to sell everything. That’s true, and yet there are other passages that may give us cause to think.

For example, John writes, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. Practically speaking, what does that mean? John continues, “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?” The answer is it can’t. If you and I love God, we of necessity will love the other person. John concludes, “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:16–18). In other words, talk is cheap.

If God is central in our lives, it will also push itself out into service outside of the body, and this is what missions and evangelism is all about. I’ll be talking about evangelism in our next lesson, so I’ll spend most of my time on evangelism in that lesson. As you and I are unified by the love of God, our love for him and for others will spread out, and as a result, people will look at us and say, oh, they’re different. Look at how they love Jesus, how they love their friends, and they even love people around the world they’ve never met. The message they preach must be true. That’s what Jesus says.

People will often respond to us in the same way that they responded in Acts 2. Not always, but they will often do it. We will have favor with people. People will be saved and will be added to our numbers, and this is why churches have missions budgets, and deacon offerings.

IV. Hard work

Community is hard work. If you’re reflecting on what I’m saying, this is not some easy task that comes naturally. It’s radical and it’s countercultural, just like Jesus and the church are countercultural. In speaking of his ministry, Paul says, for this I toil. Toil is the word that refers specifically to manual labor, kind of like digging dishes. Paul says, “for this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:29, ESV). Community is hard work.

A. Common purpose

But community is not only difficult; it begins with a common purpose. The church, as I’ve said, is neither a community center or a social club. The church is not a place where you can come and have your spiritual sensitivities tickled. That’s not the purpose. The church is the family of God that exists for one central purpose, and that is to glorify God in everything that we say and do, and everything we don’t say and don’t do. Yes, the church is a place for us to belong, to build relationships, to encourage, be encouraged, to learn, and to teach. Yes, obviously I’ve been saying that, but it’s central function, it’s common purpose, the point of the spear is to glorify God, as John Piper says, “to make much of God.”

I love the illustration from A. W. Tozer when he asks, how do you tune a hundred pianos so they play together? You don’t tune them to each other. You tune them to one tuning fork. As our lives are focused on that one tuning fork, and that’s God, it pervades our lives so that we say and do only what will advance the kingdom of God. Even in our eating and drinking, Paul tells the Corinthians, whatever you do, do unto the Lord (1 Corinthians 10:31) because your driving purpose is to glorify God. That’s our common purpose. That’s the tie that binds us together. That tie is not because we meet in the same building. That tie is because we love God, and he is central to our lives individually and corporately. he’s our one tuning fork.

B. Simplify

May I encourage all of us to simplify our lives. Simplification is hard, especially with my personality, because there’s a million things that we want to do. May I also encourage all of us to make our brothers and sisters the central set of relationships in our lives. I encourage all of us to understand Paul’s teaching that based on the picture, the image that Christ has given us, that we are to be humble servants, to be putting the needs of others ahead of our own, to treat others as more significant than ourselves; the passage in Philippians 2:3–4.

C. Haven of grace

If we do, then our set of relationships will become that haven of grace, the place of honest, open, authentic relationship where the masks come down and where we have freely received grace from one another, and in turn, we freely give grace back to others. Our set of relationships will be where we bear one another’s burdens, where we encourage one another towards holiness, a place where loneliness will no longer be but instead a place where that deep sense of belonging will be satisfying.

Most importantly, though, we will be a place where people will come in and look at us and say how they love Jesus, how they love one another. Jesus must be who he says he is. He must be the answer to the problems in my life. He must be the solution to my sin. All of this is based on the unity of the church as a reflection of God’s love. Just as Jesus and God the Father are one, so also we are to be one.