Love Your Church
Notes
Transcript
Pray
Pray
Today we begin something that I hope will shape our whole year together.
Loving our church.
Not the building — which is lucky as we don't even own one.
Not the institution, not the machinery of rotas and meetings.
But: the people of God, gathered around the Word of God.
We're calling it "Love Your Church."
I could preach on a title like that and it could a be a sermon that says: right, everyone — try harder.
Come earlier.
Sing louder.
Serve more.
Host better,
And in the months ahead we will, gently, talk about some of those things.
But if that is where we begin, we will have got the whole of the Christian faith precisely backwards.
"We love, “our brothers and sisters, says 1 John, "because he, God, first loved us."
So today, I don't want to start with ‘us’ at all.
I want to start with Jesus.
In fact I want to ask us one question,
and it is a question the whole letter to the Hebrews has been asking,
for ten chapters before todays reading:
Do you know who Jesus is?
Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
The very first word? "Therefore."
"Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter…"
Now, a "therefore" is a hinge.
It swings on what has come before it.
When you walk in on a conversation and the first word you hear is "therefore," you know you've missed the important part.
And a "therefore" is only ever as strong as what's before it.
So before we can feel the force of "let us draw near," or spur one another on,
we have to go back and hear what this writer has spent ten chapters saying about Jesus.
let us climb the mountain with the writer:
Do you know who Jesus is?
Do you know who Jesus is?
In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.
Jesus is not just a good teacher.
He is God's final, complete word to the human race:
God the Son,
holding the galaxies up by speaking.
And do you see how that opening sentence ends?
"after making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high."
He is a priest, who cleanses sin.
A king, who sits down.
He climbs on thourhgh the early chapters.
This Son, Jesus, is greater than the angels — the shining, powerful servants of heaven.
Greater than Moses, the greatest man Israel ever had — but Moses was only ever a servant in God's house,
but Christ is a Son over God's house. 3v6
Hold on to that phrase — "over God's house" — because it's going to walk back onto the stage at the top of our reading.
And yet — here is the wonder of it
— this Son, so far above us, came all the way down to us.
"He shared in flesh and blood," chapter 2, so that by dying he could break the power of death, and
"make propitiation for the sins of the people."
He became a merciful and faithful high priest. He has been where you are.
He has been tired, and tempted, and let down, and afraid.
There is no room in your life so dark that he has to stand outside it.
But our writer continues to tell us more about Jesus and to settle onto his great theme,
and this is where we should lean in,
because this is the part the "therefore" is really standing on.
Jesus is our great high priest. Chapter 4:
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to feel sympathy for our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Did you catch it? Draw near. He says it here, in chapter 4.
And he is going to say it again, in our passage, in chapter 10.
That has been the destination all along.
What kind of priest is he? Not the ordinary kind.
The old priests inherited the job by bloodline, and then they died, and the next man took over, and so on down the centuries
— a long line of dying priests.
But Jesus, chapter 7, is a priest "in the order of Melchizedek" —
one who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life.
Jesus doesn't die and hand over.
Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.
Right now, today, there is a man in the presence of God praying for you, and he will never, ever stop, because he cannot die again.
And the old priests were always working.
Day after day, the same sacrifices, the same blood, the same animals, over and over, and none of it could ever actually take sin away — it could only cover it until a perfect sacrifice came.
But this priest, Jesus,
He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, so obtaining eternal redemption.
He didn't bring a sacrifice. He was the sacrifice.
And then, chapter 10v12 — this is the summit of the mountain—
"when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God."
He sat down.
No priest ever sat down; there was always more blood to bring.
But this Jesus finished it, and sat.
For by one sacrifice he has made perfect for ever those who are being made holy.
And then the line that empties the OT undertsanding of a temple of its whole purpose:
Then he adds: ‘Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.’ And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.
It is done. It is finished. There is nothing left to pay.
Do yoiu know who Jesus is?
The Son who upholds the universe.
The high priest who became one of us.
The one who offered himself once, and sat down.
So now — now — hear the "therefore,"
Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
2 - the open door (verses 19–21)
2 - the open door (verses 19–21)
Let us make sure we can see the picture here, because everything hangs on it.
In the temple, God's presence lived in the innermost room — the Most Holy Place.
And across the front of it hung a curtain.
An enormous, heavy curtain.
And that curtain was not decoration; it was a barrier.
Today it would be a locked door with a sign on it that said: keep out. God is holy, and you cannot simply come in.
Ordinary people never went through it. Not once in their lives. Even the high priest went behind it only one day a year,
and only carrying blood,
and, I imagine, with his heart in his mouth - such was the right fear of God in their hearts and the right understanding of their sinfulness.
And then Jesus died.
And Matthew tells us that at the moment he died, the curtain in the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom —
From the heavens to the earth - God tore it open.
in other words, God swung open his own front door and said all may now come in - through Jesus.
And here in Hebrews we're told what that meant:
Jesus opened "a new and living way… through the curtain, that is, through his body." Or better literally, his flesh.
His body, torn on the cross, is the torn curtain. The barrier that kept us out has been ripped open by his death.
Jesus not only opened the door as God, but is the door as High Preist and Man.
The way into the presence of God — shut to us our whole lives, shut since Eden — is now standing wide open, and it was his own torn body that opened it.
And notice the last phrase: we have "a great priest over the house of God."
There's our phrase from chapter 3, back again — only now, thanks to Jesus, the house is ours, and the priest at its door is Jesus.
This is the love that makes all our love possible.
The blood that opened the door is the blood of the one who, Paul says, "loved the church and gave himself up for her." Eph 5v25
So when we aim to really "love our church," understand
— we are not first handing out a demand.
We are actually talking about the centrality of the Love of Jesus for us His people, his church.
All the OT points forward to a preist who will make a once for all church, and final and eternal dwelling of God amoungst his poeple.
With the door finaly wide open.
Jesus died to create The church, and so as we gather in local churches across the world, we are the local evidnce of Jesus love!
As we gather we are pointing to a torn curtain and an open door and a Saviour who bled to bring us in.
There is no concept in the bible of a loan ranger Christain. Jesus did not die to save individulas to be individuals.
He died, in love, to gather his people to be His dwelling place, to be his children, a family, and church.
I’m trying a new reading plan that gets you to read every book of the bible 30times over 7 years. I started 1 John, 13 days ago and I’ve read it 16 times (what can I say, I’m an over achiver)
But my point is not about that but about 1 John - he constantly harks on about Loving your brothers in Christ as a chief evidence of your faith. You cannont say you love Goid, if you do not love your brother.
Look around - this is Jesus’ plan for you, this church family, worts and all.
He died so we could love oneanother as we dwell with and testify about God.
So our 3rd and most practical point
3 - Three ways to love your church (verses 22–25)
3 - Three ways to love your church (verses 22–25)
The writer, having flung the door open, now turns to us and says three things — three times,
"let us."
And they are not a to-do list.
They are what people do when they finally realise they're welcome to God, through Christ.
and every single one of them is something we do ‘together.’
First: let us draw near. Verse 22.
let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.
Come in. Come right in. Draw near.
Not creep to the doorway and peer through — come in, wholeheartedly to God’s family,
sure of your welcome,
because your welcome doesn't depend on your week, and it doesn’t deopend on how well someone welcomes you at the gate (although how we should put such effort into that task now we undertsand why we love the church)
Our welcome depends on Jesus’ blood.
And here's what that means for a Sunday.
Corporate Worship, our services, are not a performance you watch.
It is a room you enter.
When we gather, we are not an audience; we are a family gathering celebrating our Father God togetehr.
So sing like you mean it - going through the motions is not to draw near with a sincere heart!
Remeber you have full assurance in Christ,
Your sins are clensed,
our guilt removed,
our bodies washed.
Listen to his Word read and preached, like your life depends on it, because it does. It is God himself speaking to us together.
Bring your whole self through the door — don't leave half of you in the car park.
Come on time, no actually come early, so you are ready to draw near.
And parents, this is the great thing we get to do for our children: to help them draw near — to teach them, little by little, that this is the God who opened the door for them too, and that coming to him as his gathered church is the best thing they will ever do every week.
Teach them to listen, teach them to behave in a way means they participate, and know the welcome of God into his family.
Second: let us hold fast. Verse 23.
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
Now be honest — there are seasons when the holding-on to Jesus, and more especially the holding onto his church, the people - is hard.
When faith feels thin. When you're tired, or grieving, or full of doubt, when others have not met your expectations or even their own.
and coming through that door on a Sunday takes more than you've got.
Hear this: your grip on him is not what keeps you.
His grip on you is what keeps you.
"He who promised is faithful."
So we hold fast — and we hold fast together, because on the mornings when your hands are too weak to hold on, the whole point of a church is that as we gather we pay testement to the fact that he is holding on for you.
Don’t abandond church when things are tough - that’s the opposite of what will help you,
as hard as it is,
drag yourself along.
It wont nessicerily be a quick fix, but gathering is far more liekly to renew our confidecen in the hope we prifess than avoiding would.
If that's you this morning — weary, wavering — you don't have to hold on alone. That is what we are all here for.
And third — let us consider one another.
And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Here is the challenge that sits most uncomfortabley with us becasue of the culture to which we nelopng.
Gathering is not for you alone, it’s for one another.
When it warns about "neglecting to meet together," it is first of all talking about people who were giving up on church altogether — drifting off, staying home, letting go of the gathering.
But I don't think we twist it if we take it a step further, into how we gather.
Because you simply cannot "stir one another up,"
you cannot "encourage one another," from a distance - physical or mental.
You can't encourage the person you never speak to.
You can't spur on the brother you arrive too late to see and leave too quickly to find.
So loving your church, at its most practical, starts with something as ordinary as being there, in good time, ready — there are people in this room whose week will be different because you turned up and looked them in the eye.
Becasue you sat with them in their sadness,
Becasue you arrived early and chatted,
because you sang with conviction instead of sipping your coffee and looking at the ceiling.
Your voice is not only for you.
The person beside you needs to hear the faith in the room,
and your voice is part of how they're carried.
This is why we bother with the small courtesies — why we don't drift about during the singing or the sermon or the service generally — not out of stuffiness, but because every one of us is trying to consider one another and spur them on in faith,
and love makes room for that.
And notice the reason he gives — "all the more as you see the Day drawing near."
This isn't housekeeping.
This is not about being tidy.
It's about the fact that Jesus is coming back, and that changes what a Sunday is.
This gathering is not one more thing competing with the fixture list and the family calendar.
It is the people of the coming King, rehearsing for the day they see him.
That's why it matters more than anything else in your week.
Close
Close
So — do you know who Jesus is?
He is the Son who upholds the universe, and the priest who bled to open the door, and he is standing at the door of his house, and it is open.
We draw near, and we hold fast, and we consider one another — not to earn our way in, but because the way is already open and the great priest is already ours.
To love this church — this ordinary, imperfect, precious people — To love this church is simply to love what cost Christ his own blood to gather.
He loved the church and gave himself up for her.
This year, by his grace, so will we.
Let's pray.
