New: Year New Community (final)

I - want to be better

Marie Kondo

Resolutions ect

i buy into this idea that if I can just be a little better.

If I can just get this one thing figured out then things will be set right

Ill be on the right track

I want to be a little better

But of course my neatly folded shirts give way to undone laundry.

My resolution to get to bed on time fails before the first week is done.

Y - We often just want to be a little better off

Maybe your not a new years resolution person.

But you think if I can just get that raise Ill be ok

If I can just lose that weight

If I can just get that relationships

that dream

that skill

that job

that whatever

It will finally start to come togetehr.

But its always just out of reach.

It seems like no matter what I do there is this feelign that I’m not quite there. That my life is just not quite completel

And marketers, authors, polititians and all kinds of people take that little bit of dissatisfaction we have and use it to convince us to buy that thing, vote for that person, or simply keep watching, keep listening, and keep longing.

Some of us throw that dissatisfaction away eventually we try and ignore it. Convince ourselves that its not real.

But I actually think there is somethign very real about that Dissaisifaciton. that Not quite right feeling

G

Trans:

The bible would say that there is some truth to that feeling.

That the world inst quite right, and you are NOT who you are intended to be. While it may be a lie that the solution to that problem is solved by tidying up. The bible and Christian faith actually argues this.

That you have that not-quite-right feeling, because YOU, your friends, your family, in fact the WHOLE world is

Not Quite Right.

In fact, the bible teaches that the world was made GOOD, but human and spiritual evil, making many of the same kinds of bad choices we make today broke the good creation in a fundamental way so that now

we are FAR from right. That something fundamental about the world, about your family, and about your life has gone terribly wrong. And that it went wrong long before you were born and has kept going wrong all around and in you your whole life.

that we are FAR from right. That something fundamental about the world, about your family, and about your life has gone terribly wrong. And that it went wrong long before you were born and has kept going wrong all around and in you your whole life.

And this might seem extreme until you turn on the 6 o clock news, scroll through facebook, or meet someone that has just gone through a tragedy.

When you do, you see it. NOT QUITE RIGHT.

But the story doesn't stop there.

Though the world is FAR from right and though we are often FAR from right. God made everything with something much better in mind. He lovingly created the world, he set human beings made in his image to watch over it. And even though we fall short, even though we turn our backs, and even though over and over again we Reject God,

he refuses to reject us.

At Christmas we heard the story of how God sent his own son to live, die, and rise again so that we might be made right, made new.

Last week Pastor Keith told the story of Paul.

A man who thought he was living his life EXACTLY as he should. Someone who knew right from wrong and was willing to make great personal sacrifices in defence of what he thought was right.

But Paul encounter God and when he did he realized things were very different than he had believed. That his world view and conception of right and wrong was utterly mistaken.

Pastor Keith talked about how Paul who was once a chief Persecutor of the Jesus movement was made NEW by God through the Sacrifice of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit. He went from Persecuator to Evangelist spreading the very same gospel he had not long ago sought to crush.

Paul would use his own life as an example of the promise of the Gospel. That you are NOT on the right track, that something is terribly wrong with us and our world

BUT

God out of his grace wants to make us NEW.

Not by our own actions, self improvement, or rule following. But through the work of the Holy Spirit made possible by the death and Resurrection of Jesus.

And as Paul would write in letters that we still have in our new testament he would explain, that...

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

The New International Version. (2011). (). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

This message is repeated and echoed throughout the New Testament.

Dead - Alive

Old - New

This - That

While we may wish we were BETTER, God desires to make us NEW.

While we may wish we were BETTER, God desires to make us NEW.

not a little better, not one more small change so that we make the bar.

But new. Recreated and RESTORED into the people God intended us to be.

That if we LOOK to jesus. If we say yes to him. He will make us new, make us into the people he made us to be.

If you read the book of Romans that we are reading out of today, you find PAUL the one who was made new. Telling that story. The first 11 chapters explain that.

Christ Died for you, freely, so that you can be made new.

God has been SOOOOOOOOOOOO merciful to you. God loves you despite all we might do. God wants to make you new.

In chapter 12:3 Paul says, because of that, this is how we should live.

If you have been made new, If you have looked to CHRIST and accepted his transformation. Point your life in this direction.

The New International Version Chapter 12

12 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

DO NOT CONFORM, dont go back to the way you were. BE transformed.

BE NEW

and then immediately Paul launches into examples of what that looks like.

What it looks like to be NEW.

WELL A HUGE part of it has to do with one of the other MOST used examples in the new testament. And it has to do with other people.

To be new is about more than just me.

The New International Version Chapter 12

3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

Paul goes on to talk about how each member of the body has a different function. But too often we skip straight to that and right over verse 4-5, what I think might be the most challenging part of the passage.

In christ we form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

Just before Christmas I got an ear infection and let me tell you.

I tried to ignore it, but let me tell you when one part of your body is hurting. Your whole body is hurting. My feet and hands and brain had one focus during those days and one focus alone. Doing something about that ear.

I think I have an idea of what it means for the members of my Body to belong to each other.

Paul is saying this in no uncertain terms. If you have been made new, its not just between you and God. We belong to each other.

We belong to each other.

It means that in the New Community, the one formed when people who have been made new gather, we are not strangers or bystanders to each other. We need each other, we cant be new alone.

And this is hard. It’s hard because God is still working on every one of us. And though we have been made new, that NOT QUITE RIGHT. that influence of spiritual evil and the evil that is just a part of human nature still comes out.

Sometimes quite a bit.

And people get hurt by well meaning, and NOT SO WELL meaning church people. And we hurt people, intentionally and unintentionally.

It makes us want to walk away from the church all together (and sometimes that is ok)

It makes us want to keep each other at arms length or further.

It makes us want to put up walls.

It makes us want to try and figure this stuff out all on our own.

To pretend we just need to be made a little better.

To pretend we can have it all figured out while our brother or sister is struggling.

But when we do, it costs us, it costs the church, it costs the gospel, and it costs the world.

BECAUSE we BELONG TO EACH OTHER. We need each other.

When one part of the body hurts, the whole body hurts. When one part needs help the whole body needs help.

Because we were never intended to try and do faith, to be new alone.

We dont always get this right. And if you read the New TEstament I am comforted to see they diddn’t either. But this is the intention this is what God is working towards in us. This is the hope on this side of eternity.

Maybe your thinking

The Church is intended to be a a community of people Living as new people. Encouraging each other, building up, challenging and caring for each other as we do this difficult thing that is living in a NEW way in an OLD world

Oh but this is just Romans.

AND renewing and changing the world.

When the Church comes togehter

We Need each other

The bible uses one image over and over again to try and explain what the christian life is supposed to look like.

One idea to explain, one tool to use to help us figure out what it means to follow God

and its a BODY, a building, a household, a kingdom, a priesthood, a family, a nation.

Because we cant be new on our own.

We think we need to be BETTER, but God calls us to BE ONE.

Y

TRANS:

W

Y - take a step towards someone

be vulnerable

be present

ask questions

believe FOR somoone

ask someone to believe for you. The evil one wants to DIVIDE and conquer

W - We have this idea that we got to figure this stuff out alone, we have to have it all alone. We are afraid someone will figure out we dont get it

BUT MY GOD NO