Committing to the Church

Today we are switching gears a little bit to focus on the church, and I want us to talk about a couple things together. First, what does it look like for you as a Christian to be committed to the family that God has saved you into? That’s what we’ll be talking about this morning. Tonight, we’re going to talk about how the church, together as a family, engages the culture that we live in.

So, the task this morning is to encourage and exhort you all to take commitment to the church seriously. We talked about this last year as well, from the perspective of adoption. Do you guys remember that? We talked about how when God adopts us, we not only become his son or daughter, but we also become sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, uncles and aunties, to our Christian family. We are deeply linked together as a family, whether we always like that or not.

Well, as much as I wanted to just repeat the talk I gave last year – that would’ve been lazy on my part. Plus, there is so much in the Bible about the importance of Christians committing to the church that we need to see the full scope of God’s design for our lives.

J.I Packer – has anyone read him? If not you, should. But he has this clever way of talking about this that I’ve always liked. He says that no Christian may cut loose from the church and act as if they are the only pebble on God’s beach. You understand what he’s saying? The life of a Christian isn’t a choose your own adventure story. We are grafted into God’s story, which includes the family that he has given us.

This morning we’re going to look at how the Apostle Peter and the author to the Hebrews communicates the importance of the church. There’s three things I want us to see this morning: God’s Action, Our Response, and Our Commitment

God’s Action ()

are some beautiful words about what God has done for his people. There are numerous Old Testament references in these 2 verses, and if you have a reference Bible you can check out all of them. But by referring back to all these promises from the Old Testament, the Apostle Peter is clearly saying that all of God’s promises to his people have been fulfilled in the church. So, for example, in God said,

Exodus 19:6 ESV

and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”

and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.

You see then how Peter is using this text from Exodus? God promised, “you will be to me priests and a holy nation.” Peter now says, “You ARE a priesthood and a holy nation.” What was promised is now true.

We need to understand how incredible this is. In order to do that, we have to review a bit of Bible history. If you had to summarize the entire Old Testament in one or two sentences, how might you do it? Anyone want to take a stab at it?

God’s faithfulness to his unfaithful people.

You all do know that the nation of Israel like, really messed things up, right? They didn’t treat each other well, they didn’t treat people outside the nation of Israel well, they abused the land, they abused each other, they worshipped false gods, they relied on foreign kings rather than on God, it was a complete mess. So, What does God do? Eventually he says, ok, I’ve had enough. Over and over again I’ve been gracious and kinds to you, and over and over again you’ve mucked it up. There were severe consequences for the people’s actions. God used foreign nations to punish the Israelites and take them into exile. The glory that the people once had was taken from them.

Throughout the Bible, God’s relationship to his people is illustrated through marriage. God is the husband, and his people are the bride. So whenever God’s people sin against God, he considers it adultery. We are forsaking, in a sense, our marriage commitments to God.

This is the big idea of the first 3 chapters of the book of Hosea. Here we read about how God commands the prophet Hosea to marry a woman who would be an adulterer, and who will have children with other men, because this would be the image God used to communicate the severity of Israel’s sin. So, in very strong language, God tells Hosea in chapter 1:

When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.”

Hosea 1:2 ESV

When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.”

God uses Hosea’s marriage to an adulterous wife to communicate the severity of our spiritual adultery toward him.

Hosea’s wife, Gomer, ends up having 3 children. The 3 children illustrate just how badly we have broken our relationship with God. One of the children’s name is “No Mercy.” God, in effect, says, I have been incredibly gracious and merciful to my people, but that’s gone. Now I will no longer show them mercy, and they will face the consequences of their actions.

Another child’s name is “Not my People.” And again, God is telling his people, over and over again I’ve been gracious to you, and you’ve forsaken me. So strong is my punishment toward you, that it could be said you are no longer my people.

Now, I give you this brief detour through Bible history to make a point. Apart from God’s grace, you and I are no better than the people of Israel. We all have turned from God and sinned against him, the natural man, apart from the grace of God, is without hope in this world. And God would’ve been perfectly just and right to leave us there. He didn’t owe us anything. He had already been gracious over and over again to his people. The fact that we still draw breath at all is grace from him.

But he didn’t leave us there, did he? In his perfect plan, and his perfect timing, he sent Jesus Christ into the world, the eternal son of God, to take God’s wrath so we wouldn’t have to. God loved his people too much to leave us in a place of sin, misery and punishment. Jesus took our sin and punishment so that our relationship with God could be completely restored.

The restoration that God brings us is total. Every area of our life is healed and restored by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Our thoughts, desires, what we love, who we love, what we do, all of that is being restored, because our relationship with God has been restored by Jesus.

So complete is our redemption that Jesus even completely restores our relationship with God. So you see why what Peter says in verse 10 is so incredible?

God has acted in Jesus to restore what was broken. And now it’s on us to respond.

Our Response ()

Let’s turn our attention back to together. I want you to see how the author of Hebrews develops on the work of Christ and applies it to how we respond together as those who follow Jesus.

He begins by reminding us of what Jesus has done for us…

And then he says what that means for us. We draw near to Jesus, because we ought to have confidence of his great love for us.

We hold fast to what we believe to be true, we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.

These things are somewhat on an individual basis, how the work of Jesus changes our personal relationship with God.

But then in verses 24-25 the author widens up his application to how we relate to one another.

First in verse 24, it says that we are to consider how to “stir up” one another to love and good works.

This word “stir up” is a strong one. It literally means to agitate, or provoke someone to do something. It’s kind of like going up to someone and continually poking them until they become agitated enough to do what you want them to do.

That’s what is in view here. The reason why such a strong word is used is because we are all going to enter seasons of our life where we are feeling apathetic, a bit lazy, uncaring, or tired. We’re all going to be tempted to just take the easy way out and abandon the call that Christ has in our lives. And when that happens, we need other Christians who will surround us and provoke us back to a life of service and love to God and to others.

I have a friend, who is now a fellow pastor, who I was telling about this retreat and that I would be coming back to speak to you. His first response was, “Make sure you tell them the gospel, and make sure you talk to them about the importance of the church.” He went on to tell me how he had grown up in a youth group, but never took those things seriously, and so far a large part of his adult life he wandered from the faith and spent all his time on his career. While he’s grateful now that the Lord brought him back and is using him to be a pastor, there is a sense of regret that he didn’t use so many years of his life wisely and with purpose for God and his church.

Some of you may already be feeling a tug to make other commitments more important than the church and your Christian brothers and sisters. Maybe that’s with sports teams, school, a future career. But if not now, at some point you will start to feel those tugs in other directions, to forsake your call to the church and your commitment to other believers, and instead pursue other passions.

When that happens, we need our church family to agitate us, to remind us of our commitment to the church.

I think many American Christians view the church in the same way that they view gas stations: we show up to fill up, and then go on our way to do whatever we wanted to do. But God has saved us for something more. We don’t come to church just to be filled up, we come to church because that is the place where we have fellowship with and hear from the God who has promised to fill us.

Our Commitment ()

Last thing I want us to see is the commitment we must make to each other. In verse 25 of , he says that we shouldn’t neglect to meet together as is the habit of some. You see, even in the very early church, there were those who thought they could remain spiritually united to Jesus even if they didn’t live their lives within the bounds of the church. Our author here is reminding us that this simply isn’t the case. A Christian who has willfully separated themselves from the church is a contradiction, and a foreign idea to the Bible. It simply isn’t possible.

There’s a sense in which we can all lose a sense of urgency for the call God has made on our lives, and I think that’s the problem our author is dealing with here. He reminds us that we must meet together all the more as the Day is coming near. That is, the Day of the Lord when Christ returns is soon. But its now been almost 2000 years since Christ came, and we are still waiting for him to return. It’s easy for us to forget that Christ could come at any moment, and that he is coming back soon. The call he has on our lives is still urgent, just as urgent as it was for the first-century Christians. We are to be diligent in our commitment to other believers.

So here’s the call to us this morning: we must fight to stay committed to the local church.

Look. Christians are going to disappoint you. The church will let you down. You will see things that will shock you. Sin still has its way with us sometimes. But don't let that discourage you from being part of a church. As you get older, you're going to hear this a lot: I'm spiritual but not religious. And that will sound enticing. You'll even hear people say, I'm Christian, but I'm not religious, I'm not part of a church. The church is man made, I don't need it. But see, here is the problem with that. Nowhere in the Bible will you find that it is permissible for the Christian life to be a solo adventure. You are not the only pebble on God's beach. Most of the New Testament commands can only be carried out in a church: Love one another, carry each other's burdens, correct one another. The letter of 1 Corinthians is written to a church in the midst of conflict. But what does Paul say? Leave the church? No, he reminds them of who they are. They are one body. They are a family. They are members of one another.

The church may let you down. Christians may let you down, they may hurt you. But there is no other place to be a Christian than in the church.

Many of you are reaching the age where you're going to leave the house, either for college, or to get a job and your own apartment, or whatever. And it's going to be very easy for you to fall prey to this idea that you don't need the church. It's going to be easy for you to become undisciplined about going to church. And it will start in a small way. You'll say to yourself ah, I've had a long week, I'll just skip church this one time. I'll just skip my community group this one time. And then you'll wake up one day and realize you haven't been to church or community group in 6 months.

Fight to be a part of the church. Fight to maintain unity. Fight for your family members, your brothers and sisters. This is going to take resolve, commitment, discipline, and energy on your part. It’s going to mean staying closely involved with other Christians so that they can hold you accountable and restore and encourage you when you need it. It means turning to God in prayer and asking for his help in forgiving other Christians when they wound you.

One of the best ways for you to do this is to make finding a new church a priority before you move away, before you go to college, before you get the new job in a new town. Find a new church first, reach out to the pastor and let them know that you’re moving first. Often times when we’re in a season of transition we can get too busy with our new classes or our new job, and that’s when we let something like finding a church slip through the cracks. And then it’s a downward spiral from there: we stop attending church, we stop reading our Bibles and praying, we begin to forget what obedience to God looks like, and slowly sin begins to creep into our lives and lead us away from the Lord.

When I look at a lot of college students who leave for school and come back and they say they’re not a Christian anymore, I’ve never found a college student who started questioning their faith for intellectual reasons. Like this idea of a college student who goes off to school and then finds an evil atheist professor to convince them that Christianity isn’t true, I actually think that’s very rare. What is more common is the 18 year old Christian who goes off to college but stops going to church, stops reading their Bible, and gets mixed up in the wrong crowd. They start getting drunk 4 nights a week and giving into peer pressure in all kinds of ways. And when that happens, you have to start explaining away your Christian faith. You have to start justifying your behavior somehow, and the only way to do that as a Christian is to say that my Christian faith is no longer true.

And again, I think most of the time, this downward spiral begins with the simple act of removing ourselves from going to church.

Have you ever seen those wildlife shows of animals out in like Africa? And they show these herds of gazelles or something like that running, and they’re being chased by a hyena. Then inevitably one of the gazelle’s breaks off. The herd turns right, and it turns left. And then you know exactly where this is going. The hyena’s stop chasing the herd and they chase the one gazelle that went off on its own. Game over for the gazelle.

Sin works the same way. If we break ourselves off from the family of God, we become a prime target for sin to take over and have its way with us.

You see, we are not ourselves by ourselves. We were made to love and be loved by God. Which means any human being will only find their truest selves once they are adopted into God’s family. Your truest self, your deepest purpose and meaning, is found as a daughter or son of God. Its who you are. Its who we are.

And that means our truest selves, our God glorifying selves, can only be expressed in the body of Christ, in the church. That is how God designed our lives to be. So, remember, that you are important to the body of Christ. Your brothers and sisters need you to make the body whole. Seek out ways to serve others with your gifts by looking for needs around you. Encourage one another with your speech. Fight to be a part of the family of God.

Don’t neglect to meet together, but band together, and commit yourselves together all the more.