A Community of Accountability

Intro:

I don’t know about y’all, but I absolutely hate conflict. Confrontation and arguments is just not where I thrive. Just the thought of it makes me feel like I’m going to break into hives. If I go to a restaurant and the waiter brings me the wrong food, for most of my life, like until fairly recently I would not have said anything and I probably would have thought to myself “It’s fine, I didn’t really want what I actually ordered anyway” **through suppressed tears**). — And ultimately things like that don’t really matter, right? But for some of us for whatever reason it is difficult to speak up in those situations.

— Even though that’s a really small example, and it pretty much ultimately meaningless. When there is potential disagreement or conflict it can be pretty uncomfortable.

— In Matthew 22 Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment, and this is how he answers — Matthew 22:37-40

Matthew 22:37–40 NIV

Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

When we think of a community that loves one another, we might be envisioning a community that gets along with one another. A community that’s not rampant with conflict — and sure that’s part of it. — naturally a community made up of people who love one another would lead to people existing in harmony with one another rather than being at odds with each other all the time.

But here is the mistake that so many Christians make — loving one another and getting a long are not the same thing!

— You might be thinking to yourself, “well, yeah, duh.” But it happens all the time, not just in our youth group, but all over the place, where we will see someone in our community acting in a way that they probably shouldn’t but we don’t do anything about it. — and there are probably a few different reasons as to why we might not get involved.

We feel like we should not condemn the people we love and care about.

we feel like it just is not our place to get involved.

— But this line of thinking is flawed. because 1) we are not condemning the people themselves we are condemning whatever the thing is that they are doing. — and 2) if we really care for the person who is not walking down the path that they should be walking down (and by the way we should care because they are also in the body of Christ, so not caring about them is not really an option), but because we care about them we should be willing to speak up.

— Not speaking up, is not loving!

So this is why the last aspect of community that we are going to talk about this weekend is accountability…

— A couple weeks ago at Surge we talked about how one of the most important ingredients in creating Godly maturing Christians is Godly maturing Christians — and basically to recap, essentially this is important for a couple reasons. If we want to be growing to be more like Jesus then we need to be surrounded by other people who want to do the same thing. If we primarily surround ourselves with people who care about being better volleyball players or better students than primarily that might be all that we should be expecting. We might become better athletes and better students, but if we are not surrounding ourselves with people who want to grow in their relationships with God then we probably aren’t going to grow a ton in our personal relationships with God.— — — But a big part of how a community grows toward God together is through accountability!!

— If I start walking away from the path that God has laid out for me… I know I have people in my life that will call me out for it. I know that the people in my small group will call me out if they see sin in my life. — And that’s because my small group is a community that loves one another. They can call me out because they care about me!!

Now when we talk about accountability, and holding people accountable, for the sake of the conversation we are having right now, I am specifically talking about people in our faith community. Or people who are part of the body of Christ. —

— For the sake of this conversation, we can feel pretty confident in the fact that the people in our community care about the values and the standards of the Kingdom of Heaven. — I remember in early in 6th grade in the locker room after P.E I heard some of the 8th grade students having a conversation that as you might imagine was not super appropriate. So I walked over to them — and do y’all know the meme with the kid who says NO MORE SAYING CUSS WORDS GUYS, ITS INAPPROPRIATE AND VIOLENT, well that was the approach I took— and I was like “hey guys, we really shouldn’t be cursing like this.” — and… as you might imagine… it was not recieved well (Lol). — my attempt of trying to help was met with a whole string of much worse cuss words and insults. so so much for that…

Let’s take a quick looks at Matthew 7:6 where Jesus says:

Matthew 7:6 NIV

“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

It’s really easy to get distracted by the language of this passage and miss the real meaning of this passage which is not derogatory and is actually pretty simple. What Jesus is saying is don’t wast things of value on those who not only do not appreciate them, but they might even be angered by the offer. — So the emphasis is not on other people, but its on God’s people. This verse is a warning to Christians: don’t waste time to people who don’t care about or are hostile towards the standards of the Kingdom.

— the group of kids I told not to curse, they did not care about the standards of the kingdom. so it probably wasn’t going to work out well for me to try to reason with them using the standards of the kingdom.

So let’s then turn our attention back to God’s people— let’s take a look at James 5:19-20 which says

James 5:19–20 NIV

My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.

So off the bat, James addresses his brothers and sisters. — so who’s he talking to? His community of believers, who he knows would be receptive to accountability.

But really at the end of the day the big take away from this passage is that ultimately the spirit of accountability is about grace and love and not judgement and condemnation.

If we truly love and care about our brothers and sisters then it should be natural that we would want to help bring them back on the path that God has laid out for them.

— But while we are holding one another accountable we need to remember that we are not perfect either. 2 Corinthians 5:10 says

2 Corinthians 5:10 NIV

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

I don’t know about you but I am certainly not perfect. My sin is no better or less serious than anyone else. So in our community of accountability we have to recognize that yes we should be making sure that our friends, our brothers and sisters don’t stray from truth but when we correct one another we must not do so looking down our noses with judgement.

because again — we are equally sinful. your sin is no less serious than mine and mine is no less serious than yours. Therefore neither you nor myself is in any position to condemn one another and only God can be the ultimate judge of the world.

So let us be a people… a community… who hates sin. a community that won’t stand for sin — but also let us be a community who loves — a community whose accountability, whose words of correction don’t tear each other down, but they equip one another, encourage one another, and bring one another back into the light and truth of the Lord

Let’s pray