MeaningFULL Church (2)

Introduction

Thank John and Sarah - we have a long history. They were my youth alive directors when I was the youth pastor of FCC; have very fond memories of them.

Thank you for having me here - it’s a privilege to be able to come and join you for service today.

A lot of memories in this place - when I was pastoring in FCC we were in this building. Excited to watch you guys grow and fill this space!

Today, I want to talk about the meaning of the church - because I think that’s not something we typically talk about anymore. What’s the meaning of church?

We’re all aware of passage such as Hebrews 10:24 that exhort us to come and meet together, and we derive from that that church is important and attending it is important.

But that doesn’t necessarily instill MEANING - into church, into gathering as a body of believers. Because Church can definitely feel like a drag - you don’t need to hide it like we don’t know; we get it. It can be sometimes hard for the most avid Christian to come to church on a Sunday morning.

The problem I have here is that if we’re unaware of the real meaning of church, the real purpose behind the gathering of the saints - then we are in danger of church fatigue. Without meaning - it gets harder and harder as time goes by.

And if we are only coming because we feel “commanded to” then church inevitably becomes a pretty painful experience - for anyone.

Here’s the thing though - I think that when the church loses sight of it’s meaning - it also gets stripped of its power. The power to transform socities, cities, nations even; this ability is connected to the church’s meaning.

And I think that many churches nowadays have actually just lost sight of that meaning - but we can’t. There’s far too much at stake.

There’s one particular meaning that I feel God wants to remind US of as the church, a reason, a purpose for which we exist that we can’t lose sight of.

Let’s pray.

The Revelation of God

1 John 4:12 NIV

12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

You know one of the greatest problems that we have and will ever face in the faith is the concept of “experiencing God”.

The reality of God and tangible nature of God is something that people - even Christians - have struggled with, and continue to struggle with whether they’ve been in the faith for a year or 100.

And it’s pretty easy to understand why we struggle so much with this. It’s because we can’t SEE God.

Do you know that across the world, surveys have been conducted to ascertain which is the most important sense to humans - and almost all have concluded that it is sight - by a LARGE margin. Usually sight is rated at 70-80% and the next closest is hearing at around 10-15%.

There’s just something about being able to SEE a person or object that profoundly affects our experience with that thing.

And so because we cannot SEE God, there introduces a huge obstacle in our relationship with Him. We constantly crave a greater, stronger experience of Him.

Because we can’t see Him - we are constantly longing for a deeper connection, a more “real”, tangible experience of Him.

Sometimes this becomes such a longing that it can even introduce doubt about His actual existence, even among seasoned, mature Christians.

And that’s where this passage in 1 John comes in - it begins with a strange affirmation of this exact concept. John actually brings it up a bit out of nowhere. “No one has ever seen God”.

But then the next sentence changes everything. “But if we love one another God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.”

Catch this, I don’t want anyone to miss it - because it is so simple and yet profoundly changes everything about the way that we experience God.

The most tangible glimpse of God people will ever get is the love believers share with one another.

In other words when we love one another, this unseen God, who has been hidden from us since the fall is most profoundly encountered and experienced when we love one another.

In fact the word that John uses for “seen” in this verse is the word “tetheatai” - which is where we derive our word “Theatre” from. The meaning of this word is careful observation, almost like scrutiny.

The implication is that nobody has seen God in his unveiled glory and majesty - even up until today, nobody has seen God in his unveiled majesty. BUT when we love one another - we reveal God in a way that is as close to this revelation as humanly possible.

Can we just capture that for a minute? When believers genuinely, authentically display love toward one another - God is revealed in a profound and powerful way.

John is saying here that love between believers is not JUST essential - it is EVIDENTIAL.

We’re moving beyond basic Christian instruction here - this is not just Christian 101 anymore “love your church”, no this brings love to a completely different level of importance, it is evidential - is it now PROOF that God indwells a person.

When a believer loves another believer - a profound truth is revealed; that God dwells in that believer. In a manner that can be seen by all.

If We Love Another

And I want to make a special note here - that the phrase is “love one another”. We have to remember that this letter was written to the church.

John is elevating a specific KIND of love - the love BETWEEN believers, the love that exists WITHIN a church.

It is not “when we love others” “when we love strangers” - these things are good (of course!) and are dealt with in other places within the bible, but they are not what John is referring to here.

There exists a special place in God’s heart for the love BETWEEN believers - THIS is the love that He has chosen to reveal Himself powerfully in.

It is true that God is revealed in all love - because like the bible says, God IS love. But this specific kind of love is another level of revelation, and I really wish the church would remember that.

This is not the only place this kind of love between believers is specifically referred to:

John 13:35 “35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”” shows the value of this specific love more clearly - ALL people will see us as God’s disciples, in other words God will be REVEALED to all people - if we have love for one another; BY THE LOVE that we have for each other.

In fact just a couple of verses down in 1 John 4:20 “20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” again placing a very strong emphasis on the love BETWEEN believers.

There are no other qualifiers here - it’s not “the brothers or sisters that you agree with” or “the part of the church that you’re comfortable with”

There are certainly no qualifiers on the type of love that is to be shown. It is not “putting up with” or “patiently tolerating”. God is revealed when we LOVE one another.

Where am I going with this? This is about CHURCH. This is about us, this is about you and me, this is about the person that you’re sitting next to, the people you serve with, the people in your CG - this is about us!

When we go out of our way to love each other, God is revealed in the most phenomenal, beautiful and profound way!

His presence is made manifest, He is as close to being SEEN as humanly possible.

THIS is the meaning of church. The profound and potent revelation of God THROUGH the special love that exists between believers.

This is perhaps the greatest meaning that we can come to church for - to EXPERIENCE and BE PART of the revelation of God to the world.

ILLUSTRATION: Mt Pleasant Star Wars

Man can I share something with you guys that’s pretty wild that happened at a camp that I was speaking at last year? So I was invited to speak at this church’s youth camp; pretty decent sized camp - around 160 kids. And before I went there to speak I was informed by the youth pastor over there that they had a specific branch of youth that ministers to youth with additional needs (is that what we’re saying nowadays?) Anyway it was true, these guys had around 20 youth who were additional needs rock up to be a part of the camp, quite a lot of them had what I told was a highly social form of autism, others less so.

It was cool - they actually asked me to come and speak to these kids; and so one night around a campfire I had the privilege of sitting with some of these guys and talking to them. The youth pastor warned me, man some of these kids will go on and on and won’t stop talking; and he was right; BUT what he didn’t know was these kids were all nerds and I was like king of the nerds in high school (not now, I’m cool now) but I am totally in to Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars - honestly I think I had a better time talking to them than I did to the other campers. And for the first time in their lives they got someone talking more than them about the stuff they loved.

But then something strange happened - on the last night I was informed by the youth pastor that they had an item; they get some of these kids into the middle of the group, give them lightsabres and full on let them re-enact a star wars fight scene with the movie playing in the background. In my head I was like - when I was in high school that was called bullying. Are we about to get massively cancelled?

But anyway, this actually happened - about 8 of the kids came dressed up, Anakin, Dooku, Obi Wan and a couple of droids fought it out. And up until today it remains one of the best things I’ve ever seen; all 160 kids cheering these guys on, reacting when someone gets hit, pretending that their force powers were real, appropriately cheering when Dooku gets his hands chopped off - wild stuff.

And do you know what happened in that moment? As the entire camp was cheering and loving and supporting their brothers and sisters, something shifted in the atmosphere. I was sitting next to a new girl who had autism and she turned to her friend and said “I want to join this church.” Who needs to respond to the sermon when you can respond to a freaking LIGHTSABRE BATTLE.

I told the youth pastor afterwards - how on Earth did you manage to get this up and running? He said to me “It was the kids’ idea. We asked them how we could best love on them and they said watch star wars with us. And I was like - I can do one better than that.” And the rest was history.

The love between believers, in literally any form, emanates the manifest presence of God in a tangible way.

Commercial Christianity

Can I speak on something that the Lord has been weighing heavily on my heart recently? We live in a culture that is targetting this very expression of love between believers. I believe this is nothing less than an intentional attack by the enemy on the revelation of God in the church. I spoke recently about this at our 5PM service. I call it “Commercial Christianity”

There has been such a drive for Commercial Christianity nowadays - the faith is more about receiving than giving, the focus of faith has shifted to “what we get out of it”.

In this culture - Christianity transforms into a tick-box religion. You know what that means? Like we’re only here to tick a box. We only serve to tick a box, we only love to tick a box.

In commercial christianity we want the maximum amount of blessing received for the least amount of effort given. That is the spirit behind this false culture.

And so what can happen is that we form communities - churches, where everybody is here just to “get it over and done with”. Get in the door, and out of the door in the shortest amount of time possible.

But what this does is it subtly, and yet effectively erodes the culture of love between believers.

We begin to stick to only the people we’re familiar with, and instead of loving the different (which is one of the most powerful expressions of love) we seek to love the familiar.

When we have conflict with believers there is no desire for resolution - we immediately up and leave the church because there are now hundreds if not thousands of churches within the city and finding another is easy.

We come to service late and leave service as soon as humanly possible, because we live in a culture of social anxiety.

And I know saying things like this is going to step on people’s toes - and I humbly apologise to you if I’ve offended anyone in that discourse. But I can’t apologise for speaking what I believe to be truth; that the church is so easily compromised by this commercial form of faith. Like Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:5 it has the appearance of godliness but has no power.

This is the kind of faith that leaves churches wondering what went wrong? Why is there no impact? Why is there no growth? Why is there no meaning and purpose and fulfilment? I mean aren’t we a church? Aren’t we doing church things?

Church takes the appearance of godliness but without its power.

Voiding the church of meaning

But perhaps most significantly - when we strip down and cheapen the expression of love between believers within the church, we also significantly diminish the revelation of God within the church.

The light of God dims in the church, the manifest weight of His presence starts to recede, his abiding is less evident according to John.

What we end up doing is deconsecrating the church - robbing it of its most powerful form of revelation; and stripping away its meaning.

We begin to build churches that Jesus would have described as “whitewashed tombs” - on the outside we look good, and yet on the inside there is no life, there is no revelation of the Lord, no glimpse of His power, weak evidence of His presence.

We end up seeking encounters in worship and the word - and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that because they are birthed from a place of hunger, for more of God; but when we take LOVE out of the equation - according to 1 John 4:12 we rob the church of it’s most tangible, most empirical and powerful form of revelation.

There is NOTHING like it - there is NOTHING that compares to the lifechanging revelation of God that comes as a result of loving one another.

As powerful as Worship and Preaching is - they can’t be compared. And I have seen BOTH worship and the Word transform lives in such a significant way; but I’m telling you guys I have seen the LOVE between believers reveal God in a way that worship and preaching alone cannot do.

And this is why church “becomes a drag” it “loses its meaning” - not because people aren’t hungry for God, I genuinely believe people are more hungry for God now than ever before.

It’s not because people aren’t hungry for God - But because people aren’t encountering God in church anymore. Because we’re neglecting one of the greatest ways to reveal God - loving one another.

ILLUSTRATION: Vinny Tan

Some of you guys know that I had a season where I left church, depressed, disappointed, discouraged. In that season I really didn’t have much of a hunger for God, but I still tried to seek Him out. Because I still had a flickering belief that His presence would be enough for me.

I went to different churches, around 14 over the span of 2 years. HFTC obviously wasn’t one of those churches or Dan would have somehow talked me into taking the church back then. I went to some of the most polished worship services in the state and sat under some of my favourite preachers - and they were amazing, I’m not trying to take anything away from them at all; but I think I was just so far gone that even those wonderful services weren’t doing it for me; I couldn’t really feel God.

But I had a mate called Vinny. Vinny wasn’t even from the church I had left, he was a third degree connection from another friend; we knew each other but definitely not well.

You know in that period Vinny would call me every couple of months; for no reason at all and just ask me to meet up. At first I thought it was a trap, because there were so many people trying to get me back into church, into their church, all that stuff. But Vinny never talked about any of that, he never mentioned church at all - he just bought me lunch, asked how I was doing, gave me a hug and then left. I think we met 4 times over that period. Each time was the same - he just wanted me to know that he was praying for me, and that I could always count on him. And this was a busy guy, he’s a partner at his law firm, has plenty of stuff to do but still made time for me.

Can I say something that sounds slightly crazy? In that particular season of my life, I experienced God through the love that Vinny showed me as a brother in Christ - more than any church service that I attended.

The Examples

And I know it’s easy for someone to say “See! We just need to love on one another and be kind to one another, we don’t need the services or communal gatherings, we don’t need the ‘organised church’”

But you don’t get it - my point is that’s what the organised church is meant to BE!

First and foremost a body of believers LOVING one another, Encouraging one another, Serving one another OUT of that love.

ALSO surrounded by the protections of governance and accountability, sacred communal spiritual practises. They’re not mutually exclusive.

My point is that we SHOULD be able to encounter the presence and love of God upon walking into a local church! My point IS that we should be able to SEE God tangibly and experience Him powerfully in the love between believers in the local church.

Let’s put an end to commercial Christianity - let’s build a church where the love between believers isn’t a coincidence that happens just between friends, it’s a commonness found churchwide.

Let love be the foundation and the focus of every ministry:

Service Team - you aren’t just there to show people to their chairs in the morning, we release you to do whatever you need to do to love on the people that walk through our doors. Pray for them, minister to them, talk to them, bring food to them - whatever you need to do to show the love of God in this church, you do it!

CGs - you guys are the forefront of this charge, and I’m not just addressing leaders - I’m addressing anyone who’s IN a CG. I hope by now you’ve figured out that our small groups are the chosen vessels us to show RADICAL love and hospitality. Amidst all the teaching, worshipping, event organisation that you guys do - remember that the primary role of our Connects is to love one another so that God can be encountered, that He may be so evident when people get to see this love practised up close. We don’t want anyone to just “attend” a Connect Group - we always ask you to be a part of one - be a part of someone’s encounter of God through the love you share there.

Kids Team - teach the young ones from such a small age, how to love one another. Teach them from young how to be the revelation of God by loving each other, and they will not stray from it when they’re older.

Worship Team - beyond the outward worship you tirelessly give us; love on each other, be patient in practises, show grace and understanding amidst frustration, take time to teach and build genuine relationships, not just ministry relationships. Let all that you do be done in love.

And I really could go on and on for every single ministry in the church - but I think it’s safe to sum it up like this: Let love be the foundation AND the focus of every ministry!

Performance and efficiency are ALWAYS secondary; this isn’t a business, this is a church. If we need to become inefficient so that we can love better, so be it! If we need to become non-performative so that we can love better, so be it!

Because the Word doesn’t say that God’s presence is manifest when we are efficient and perfomative - it says He abides in those who LOVE; and the revelation of God’s presence is all we want to be about.

God’s Love Perfected

The Word says in Galatians 6:2 “2 Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

Loving each other is the fulfilment of the law. It all comes down to this, it’s one of the greatest IF NOT THE greatest revelation of God on this Earth - is to love one another.

That’s why at the end of 1 John 4:12 do you notice what it says? A very strange phrase “God’s love abides in us and His love is PERFECTED in us”. That’s quite a strange thing to say - that we have a role in the perfecting of God’s love.

But what it means is this - see for something to be “perfected” that means it has reached its intended goal or outcome. So there must have been an intention from the very beginning. It was God’s intention from the start that His presence would be revealed through our love.

In other words - this is by design. This was the plan.

We are the FINAL step in a love that was birthed from creation, that was expressed in the finished work of Christ, now to be perfected in us.

In fact the same love by which God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to die on a cross for your sins, the same love that CONQUERED the grave, COMPLETES its mission when you love your brother or sister.

What that means is: loving each other doesn’t just give the church meaning, it IS the meaning of the church. It is our entire purpose.

To perfect the love that God showed us through Christ, it’s His plan for saving the World. We’re His plan.

ILLUSTRATION: Mother Theresa’s Feet

Shane Claiborne, who spent a summer in the slums of Calcutta with Mother Teresa, wrote the following about one of his experiences there:

People often ask me what Mother Teresa was like. Sometimes it's like they wonder if she glowed in the dark or had a halo. She was short, wrinkled, and precious, maybe even a little ornery—like a beautiful, wise old granny. But there is one thing I will never forget—her feet. Her feet were deformed. Each morning in Mass, I would stare at them. I wondered if she had contracted leprosy. But I wasn't going to ask, of course. "Hey Mother, what's wrong with your feet?"

One day a sister said to us, "Have you noticed her feet?" We nodded, curious. She said: "Her feet are deformed because we get just enough donated shoes for everyone, and Mother does not want anyone to get stuck with the worst pair, so she digs through and finds them. And years of doing that have deformed her feet." Years of loving her neighbor as herself deformed her feet.

Can I tell you, church, these are the scars that I would love for us to bear.

Too many churches bear scars of unforgiveness, scars of division malice, scars of irreconcilable difference, scars of hardheartedness.

I don’t want to build a church like that - the presence of the Lord can’t shine brightly in a place like that.

I want to build a church with scars of love, that we love each other so deeply that it scars us.

Because the glory of God shines through those scars, the manifest presence of the Lord becomes evident, the house becomes sweet through those scars.

Altar Call

Inter-generational love

I had fathers and mothers in the faith who loved me and nurtured me into the man that I am today. I think we need to love across generations - and need to be open to this.

Pray for one another. Whoever is sitting next to you.

Plug yourself into a CG. Talk to someone after service. Go for lunch - be intentional in spending time investing into loving others.