What Kind of Community Is This?

One of the things I like about both Facebook and the photo app I use on my phone is the memories feature.

Each day when I pick up my phone or log into Facebook, I am greeted with a new set of photos from that particular day in years past.

Lately, those photos have been from my time in Haiti four years ago.

Even as I say that now, I’m a bit shocked that it’s been so long since I was in Haiti. I had a short visit in 2018, but even that was more than three years ago.

I miss it very much, and I sincerely hope I will be able to return soon.

I’m not surprised that I miss the boys — now they’re young men — who called me Grandpa. I’m not surprised that I miss Gary, the Haitian director of Supply and Multiply, or that I miss the elderly women and men we served at the Matthew 25 House, some of whom have gone on to be with the Lord since I left.

But I also miss the community where I lived when I was there.

I miss being in a place where people walked just about everywhere they went, because almost nobody had cars.

I miss stopping along the path on the way to the missionary housing to say hello to the woman who sold soap and shampoo out of a booth and to hold little Brianna, her three-year-old daughter, who loved to tug on my beard.

I miss dropping in on Madamn Chabon, the stooped old lady who made a very meager living selling charcoal by the bowlful. I miss walking past the home of Gary’s mother and hearing her call out “Bonjou, Pasté Res!” from behind the flimsy curtain that served as her front door.

I miss playing Uno with no rules under a makeshift shelter with kids who would run off in the middle of the game, carrying their cards with them.

I miss haggling with a lady over the fruit whose price she had inflated because she was dealing with a foreigner and then giving her more than she’d originally asked, just to be sure that she could feed her child playing in the dust at our feet during the negotiations.

There are so many things I miss about Haiti, but the thing that struck me as I thought about this week’s message is that I miss the feeling of community in that little part of Montrouis where I served.

We don’t have that here. We drive everywhere we go. We hardly see most of our neighbors, much less get to know them. We shop at supermarkets where we barely say hello to the cashiers.

And if you stopped to play with some random kid in the street, someone would call the police.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my life here, and I believe I’m right where God wants me to be. But I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve lost something important in the poor way we do community.

You see, we were MADE to be in community. I used to have a dream of living in a lighthouse somewhere, all on my own, where I wouldn’t have to deal with other people, and they wouldn’t have to deal with me.

But what I’ve come to realize is that that dream was evidence of my brokenness. We were never meant to be solitary creatures.

That’s why God made Eve. From the very beginning of creation, God saw that it was not good for mankind to be alone, so He made a helper suitable for that first man, Adam.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were in community with their Creator, the God who exists as a Trinity. The Trinity itself — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — have existed in perfect community, in perfect communion with one another, for all eternity.

And when Jesus prayed for His disciples at the Last Supper, He prayed that they would be one, even as He and His Father and the Holy Spirit are one.

He prayed that they and those who would come to believe in Him because of their witness would be in perfect community together, just as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have always been.

I believe that when He prayed this beautiful prayer for his direct disciples and for those who would come to faith in Him across the centuries, Jesus had in mind the community of the church, which would not come into being until the Day of Pentecost.

In that Upper Room at the Last Supper, Jesus promised the coming of the Helper, the Holy Spirit, and He promised that the coming of the Spirit would be to the apostles’ advantage. In other words, having the Spirit would be even BETTER than having Jesus.

Better than Jesus?! C’mon Pastor Res, that’s sacrilege! Well, no it’s not. First of all, I’m not saying it; Jesus said it in John 16:7.

And secondly, with the arrival of the Holy Spirit, something entirely new in the history of the world would come into being.

The church, born in a baptism of fire 40 days after the resurrected Jesus ascended back into heaven, would become the Spirit-enabled and Spirit-infused community that represents the present form of the Kingdom of Heaven that is still to come in all its fullness and glory.

And it can only be so because of the Spirit who indwells each believer and who draws us together in Christian love and unity.

So today, as we continue this series of messages I’m calling “The Church — Revealed,” I want to give you a touchstone for understanding everything else we will discuss in the coming weeks.

I want to answer a question that I suspect many of you have never thought to ask: Just what IS the church?

Let me give you a short definition that I hope you’ll remember going forward: The church is the New Covenant community of the Spirit.

Now, it might not sound as if I’ve told you much with that short definition, and the truth is that I’ll be defining it a little differently next week. But even in what we talk about next week, this definition will be at the heart of our discussion.

What we need to do today is to unpack those six words, “the New Covenant community of the Spirit,” to understand this new thing that Jesus instituted in Matthew, chapter 16, this thing that came into being in the streets of Jerusalem 50 days after the crucifixion, as we saw last week from our study of Acts, chapter 2.

So, what do I mean by the New Covenant community of the Spirit? Well, let’s start in the middle of the phrase and work toward both ends.

First, the church is a community. As I said, God created humans to be people who need to be in community.

I hope that I never find myself in prison, but if for some reason I ever do, the worst thing they could do to me would be to put me in solitary confinement.

I’ve had some terrible roommates in my time, but the truth is that none has been worse than myself. Being locked up alone, with only my own thoughts for company is pretty much the worst thing I can imagine.

I need others around me to love me and be loved by me. I need others around me to keep me from spinning out of control in self-loathing. I need others around me to give me someone else to focus on besides myself.

And when we think of the various ways that Scripture describes both individual Christians and the corporate church, we see that we are nearly always described in a corporate context.

Each of us is PART of something bigger than ourselves. There is no passage in the New Testament in which sinners are given new life in Christ to go out and live that life apart from other Christians for any extended period of time.

We are described as sheep within a flock. We are described as a Kingdom of Priests (plural) under the Chief Priest, Jesus. We are described as branches (plural) springing from the True Vine.

We are described as building stones built upon the foundation of the Apostles and around the Chief Cornerstone. We are described as the body of Christ, but how many bodies have just one part?

The Book of Revelation describes the Church as the bride (singular) of Christ, but it’s worthwhile to look at that reference to see that even this singular reference is a corporate one that includes all individual believers in heaven.

We see this reference in the 19th chapter of Revelation, and I’ll begin with verse 6.

Revelation 19:6–8 NASB95

Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. “Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.” It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

The great multitude singing “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns” is the gathering of all the believers of all time who will have been taken up with Jesus in His return in the clouds at the Rapture. They are the saints — the holy ones — who are clothed in fine linen, bright and clean.

So, this is a corporate reference to the church here. And the point that I want to reiterate is that nowhere in the New Testament is it ever considered normal that there would be Christians who do not closely associate themselves with other Christians in regular gatherings together.

In fact, the writer of Hebrews warns that such behavior smacks of abandonment. Look at the passage from Hebrews 10.

Hebrews 10:23–25 NASB95

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

The word that’s translated as “forsaking” there means to leave helpless, to abandon, or to desert.

And the idea is that, as we assemble together, we have the opportunity to help one another hold onto hope, to spur one another to do good in the world; and to encourage one another, especially in times like these, when we feel desperate for the Lord to return.

It’s hard to be encouraging to folks we never see. It’s hard to show love to people who don’t show up.

Now, I do recognize that there are some who simply cannot be with us from week to week because of health problems or job commitments or vacations or the like.

What I’m talking about is people who make it their habit to be somewhere else, people who abandon their calling to be a part of the body of Christ, people who leave us helpless by withdrawing the spiritual gifts they have been given for the edification of the church.

We are called to be in community together. That should be our default position. Have you been hurt by the church? So has Jesus, and yet He still loves the church, and He still promises to be in its midst whenever two or more are gathered together in His name.

And I’m going to say just one more thing about this before moving on: Whether it is THIS church or some other church, find a church where you can be faithful and active.

Find a church where God’s word is taught, where the gospel is preached, and where they take seriously Jesus’ commandments to love God and to love others.

And then — stay there. Let Jesus have the time to place your stone on top of the others and then others on top of yours so that you can be part of this household of God that He is building through the Holy Spirit.

Which brings me to the next part of this definition I gave you: the New Covenant community of the Spirit.

I said last week that the church did not come into being until the 120 disciples of Jesus who were gathered in the Upper Room had received the Holy Spirit.

And perhaps you will also recall that I said the appearance of the tongues of fire above their heads represented the baptism of fire that Jesus had promised. The church was born in this baptism of fire.

Jesus had told the disciples to wait for the Spirit before going out and preaching about Him. He said in verse 8 of Acts, chapter 1, that they would

Acts 1:8 NASB95

but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”

The word that’s translated as “power” here is dunamis, and we get the word dynamite from it. This power that Jesus promised, however, is not the power to destroy, but the power to bring together.

And that’s just what we saw last week in Acts, chapter 2, where the 120 disciples who had received the Holy Spirit went out into the streets of Jerusalem and spoke in the languages of all the many nations that were represented there at that time, and that day were added 3,000 souls to the new church.

This is the power that enables the church to transcend culture and race and ethnicity. This is the power that brought together slave and free, Roman officials and the people Rome had subjugated, jailers and prisoners, prostitutes and Pharisees.

All together in one body. All together in one community. All together in love and unity. All together in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Let me tell you that a church without the Spirit is not a church, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word. A church without the Spirit is like the dead church of Sardis in Revelation, chapter 3, where Jesus says through the Apostle John:

Revelation 3:1 NASB95

“To the angel of the church in Sardis write: He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars, says this: ‘I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.

So, how can you tell whether a church has the Holy Spirit?

First of all, it will be a church that has power, the power that Jesus promised in Acts 1:8. It will be a church characterized by the things the Spirit empowers: love and unity and fellowship in community.

And second, it will be a church DOING the things the Spirit empowers, the righteous acts of the saints from Rev. 19:8.

Finally, it will be a church that is GOING and MAKING disciples of all the nations, and BAPTIZING them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and TEACHING them to observe all that Jesus commanded.

In short, it will be a church that is committed to three things in unity and love: evangelizing the lost, teaching the truth, and acting with love.

So, the church is a community. But not just a community — a community of the Spirit. And not just a community of the Spirit, but a NEW COVENANT community of the Spirit.

Perhaps you will recall some of the covenants of the Old Testament.

There was God’s covenant with Abraham. You might remember this from Genesis, chapter 12.

Genesis 12:1–3 NASB95

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

This was an eternal and unconditional covenant with blessings that would come to those whose faith is evidenced by obedience. God promised Abraham a land, a people, a great name and blessings for all peoples through him and his descendants.

Then, there was the Mosaic covenant, which can be distilled to the 10 Commandments, along with the blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience that God outlined in the Book of Deuteronomy.

And this covenant, too, was, in part given to the people of Israel so they could bless the nations by showing them the blessedness of life lived by faith in God.

But this was a temporary covenant, as Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians.

Galatians 3:19 NASB95

Why the Law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made.

And the coming of the seed to whom the promise had been made took place when God sent His unique and eternal Son, Jesus, to live a sinless life as a man and give Himself as a sacrifice, taking upon Himself the sins of mankind and their just punishment so that all who believe in Him can have eternal life.

And as Jesus shared the wine with His disciples at the Last Supper on the night before He was crucified, He said “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.”

This covenant to which He referred was the New Covenant that had been described by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel in Old Testament times.

From Jeremiah, chapter 31:

Jeremiah 31:31–34 NASB95

“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

He would forgive our sins; he would write His law on our very hearts. From the least to the greatest, we will know Him, and He will be our God, and we will be His people.

When God spoke through the prophet Ezekiel about this New Covenant, He described the great wonders He would perform for Israel, for the believing Jews, and for the Gentiles who would put their faith in Him through Jesus.

From chapter 36:

Ezekiel 36:26–28 NASB95

“Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. “You will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God.

Hearts of stone would be replaced with hearts of flesh. The Holy Spirit would indwell His people and help them to be obedient to His commandments. He would be our God, and we would be His people.

From chapter 37:

Ezekiel 37:26–28 NASB95

“I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in their midst forever. “My dwelling place also will be with them; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. “And the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forever.” ’ ”

No longer are those who follow Jesus in faith enemies of God. Jesus signed the peace treaty in His own blood. And now, because of His sacrificial death and supernatural resurrection, we who follow Him in faith can truly say that His Father is our God, and we are His people.

I really want to encourage you to go home and read these two chapters, because you’ll get a great view of what life will be like in the new heavens and the new earth, when Jesus has made all things new. If you do, you will see that God intends to fulfill all his promises to the remnant of Israel that follows Jesus in faith.

But that’s the not-yet aspect of the Kingdom of Heaven. We live in the already aspect of God’s Kingdom. And the church is the present form of that Kingdom.

It is now through US — this New Covenant community of the Spirit — that the peoples of the earth will be blessed.

And the blessing will come to them only insofar as we are a church that is committed to three things in unity and love: evangelizing the lost, teaching the truth, and acting with love.

These are the things that constitute the true work of the church. Everything else is window dressing.

These are the things you will hear me come back to over and over again as we talk about the church in the coming weeks. Everything we do here MUST be aimed at accomplishing those three tasks.

This is our mission. Let’s do it.