Community Minded

Welcome

Welcome again to Redeemer Church! I am so glad to see you all here! As you can see, the Wilson’s are not hear today. Paul gave me lip one too many times and I had to enact church discipline and they are gone now. No, they are actually visiting their family in TN and will be back next week. One quick announcement before we get going; This is the last Sunday we will be here in mine and Kayla’s living room! For at least the next two and a half months, we will be holding our worship services in the St. Albans City Hall auditorium. There is a chance we will be able to rent it more after that, but I will keep you updated in that regard, but let us praise God for the provision He has shown us!

Now as you all know, we have been digging into our core values, what we want to be most focused on as a church. And these values are important! They are what shape our church culture. If we as a church, begin to value other things, such as what the culture around thinks of us, being trendy, valuing our attract-ability more than truth, or if we start valuing perfectionism, hiding sin and our troubles to put on a facade in front of the other church people, then the culture inside of Redeemer Church will begin to reflect those values and the community that we are inviting people to join will reek of the world and people from the outside will smell it on us a mile away!

And community itself is one of our values and the one we will be speaking of today. We as a church must be community minded, thinking and praying about the kind of culture our church community is creating by what it is we value. Now we said that in order to create a godly community culture, we must purposefully strive to adhere to our values of being Christ-centered and committed to the Word of God, but let’s go deeper into what Jesus and His word have to say more specifically about how we should be community minded and what a Christian community looks like.

But first let’s pray.

Members of Two Communities

A metaphor that the Bible uses to describe our relationship to the current age we live in now and the age that is to come is the metaphor of citizenship. Being a citizen now and in the time of the NT was a legal status, granting certain privileges and carrying certain obligations. Paul frequently appealed to his citizenship. For instance, in Acts 22, he appeals to his Roman citizenship when being flogged and says, “Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned? . . . I am a citizen by birth” But Paul also recognized that he actually has a dual citizenship. In his letter to the Philippian church he says, “our citizenship is in heaven.” While Paul was a Roman citizen by earthly birth, he was a citizen of heaven by his spiritual new birth. So you, Christian, have a dual citizenship, living in between two kingdoms, the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of God, until the day Christ comes to obliterate the kingdom of darkness and sin.

Now that is a whole sermon for another day, but I use that example to show you that just as you have dual citizenship in two kingdoms, with your chief citizenship being in heaven, you also belong to two unique communities; the community of your city or town and the community of the church. And there is a manner to which Christ has called you to be a part of and interact with each.

Church Community

Let us begin with the church. Now with my specific audience that I have right now, I can easily take for granted that you know what the church truly is. But there many people, when they hear the word church or they think of what it is, their minds are flooded with pictures of buildings, thinking that the church is something you go to and that it is segmented and isolated from the rest of your life. But this understanding of what the church is is thoroughly unbiblical. The church isn’t a place you go to, it is a community you belong to! It is a family that you have been adopted into and those people who are true believers around the world, every single one of them are your brothers and sisters. The bond you share with the believer in South-East Asia is deeper and more significant than the bond you share with an unbelieving family member. Now that seems insane to our ears but that is just one of the effects of being in Christ. The church is comprised of every believer, from every continent, from every ethnicity, from every moment in history, and each member is intrinsically related to one another in the most profound ways that human beings can be related to one another.

Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, explains this great truth. What’s more, he gives light to the churches truest identity; that we are the body of Christ and gives instructions on how we are to live as the body of Christ in relation to one another. Let’s take a look at 1 Cor. 12:12-26: 1 Corinthians 12:12–26 (ESV)

One Body with Many Members

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

Using the metaphor of the body, Paul explains to us that the just as a physical body, meaning parts, like fingers, toes, hands, the body of Christ is made of of many individuals. Individuals from all walks of life and social status. Black people, white people, Hispanic, asian, rich, poor, middle class, the body of Christ is comprised of them all. Now the world would look at these people of disparate backgrounds and ethnicities. Now the culture we live in and many cultures around the world, would say that each of those individuals first and foremost belong in their segmented boxes, that we cannot relate to one another, that there will always be a barrier between us, no matter how badly we want to step outside of our boxes to commune with someone from a different box. And this view point as seeped it’s way into the church as well, essentially saying that what defines you as a person is your background, your economic status, your skin color, and because of those things there will always be a dividing wall between you and them. Now take that view point and compare it with Scripture: look at verse 12 again, “ For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”

We are ONE body! The body of Christ is a unified body! And each of us, every ethnicity and social class, were baptized into ONE body! This is a unification that is done by the power of the Spirit, binding us all together! We are Christians, meaning we are new creations, and we are no longer defined by our physical qualities or circumstances. If you are a Christian and are listening to this and what defines you is your bank account, you need to repent. If your identity is in your social statues, if it is in your political party you need to repent! And if your identity is found in your skin color, you need to repent and place your identity firmly in the Christ and as a member of His body, and pray for God to remind you that every Christian has been baptized by the Spirit, or another way of saying that is that we have all been indwelled by the Holy Spirit, and that indwelling decimates any barrier separating us from one another.

And because we have all been baptized by the Spirit and are one body, this means we are all equal in the sight of God;

Community of St. Albans