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Sermon September 16, 2018 – Re-Up part 5 – Fellowship

1 John 1

Over the last four weeks, we have been looking at various spiritual disciplines, and making personal commitments to Re-Up in the areas of Bible reading, prayer and evangelism. However, to make these commitments without support and encouragement will lead to discouragement. What we need is to re-up to fellowship to encourage one another in our personal lives. Fellowship is so much more than a handshake, a hug, or a pat on the back, fellowship in the church is doing life together, challenging one another and picking one another up when we stumble.

John starts this letter and it sounds very much like the Luke 24, where Jesus revealed himself to the disciples, he spoke to them, ate with them and allowed them to touch him in order to reveal his full and complete resurrection.

John begins this letter by making an overwhelming statement of the fact that he was a witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He makes the strongest possible case for the fact that he is a credible witness and what he is about to write, needs to be taken seriously.

He takes the first two verses to lay his foundation and then in verse three he explains why, “…so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ”.

One of the primary reasons for John’s letter was to emphasize fellowship, the importance and the value of fellowship in the life of the church.

John writes that fellowship with each other is interconnected with our fellowship with God. As we walk in fellowship with each other, we have fellowship with God the Father and the Son. As we walk in fellowship with God, we grow in fellowship with each other. If either of those connections begins to fail, it affects the other.

In verses six to ten, John bounces back between and forth between walking in darkness and sin, and walking in repentance, light and freedom. 1 John 1:6, says that you are lying to yourself and to those around you if you claim to be in fellowship with God, yet you are allowing sin in your life. And in verse 8 and 10, the Apostle John is blunt and direct. If you say you are currently without sin, then you are deceiving yourself, because we all sin and we are all prone to sin. Daily we must repent of our sins and ask Jesus to forgive us of our sins. Our sin doesn’t only affect our fellowship with God, it affects our fellowship with each other. Our relational fellowship is hurt when we give in to sin in our lives. It may be imperceptible at the start, but eventually our relationships in the body of Christ will be destroyed by our sin.

Verses 7 and 9 give the beautiful contrast, as we walk in the light, allowing the light of the Holy Spirit to destroy the darkness of sin in our lives, our fellowship is restored with God and with each other and the blood of Jesus purifies us from our sins. Please note the order of this verse, walking in fellowship or walking in the light comes first and then the blood of Jesus purifies us. We have this crazy notion that we have to be sinless to be a part of the church. John responds to this in verse 8 by saying that we are deceived, and the truth is not in us.

We don’t have to be pure to walk in fellowship, but we do have to walk in the light, admitting our struggles and our weaknesses. The church is a place for sinners in need of grace, not perfect people. If you are waiting to be good enough to get connected to a group or a fellowship, you never will, and when you finally do, you will find that we are all sinners moving forward by the grace of God. Because we have a wonderful promise from God, found in verse 9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” This is one of the greatest verses in the Bible.

The blood of Jesus is what provides the way for fellowship with God and fellowship with each other. There are no higher levels of Christian, or lower-class Christians, we are all sinners desperate for a savior and saved by the blood (see 1 Corinthians 10:12).

God has put us in community, so that we can build one another up and walk together through the challenges of life. Fellowship is one of the keys to the effectiveness of the church. A church will never be able to grow beyond its fellowship. If the fellowship is healthy in the church, it will continue to minister and grow in maturity and in number.

The Greek word for fellowship is Koinonia, it is a beautiful word that means the sharing of common life. Not just the sitting next to each other on a Sunday morning, social gatherings or drinking coffee together, fellowship is standing with someone through the tough times in life. Fellowship is also staying in community even after a disagreement. True fellowship is fighting for restoration and unity even after a disagreement.

It all stems from our fellowship with God. As children of God we have two dimensions to our standing with God, we have a relationship which is based on the righteousness of Jesus. The blood of Jesus in faith brings us into a right standing with God. Romans 8 says we are adopted as His children (see Romans 8:15-16). Our relationship as adopted sons and daughters of God the Father never changes, that is fixed.

But, our fellowship can change. Our fellowship with God is damaged by our disobedience. As we allow sin into our lives, we pull away from God and our fellowship with God is disrupted, and at the same time our fellowship with other Christians is disrupted.

But confession restores fellowship. Confession is when we agree with God as to the nature of what we have done, and we apply the promise of 1 John 1:9 to our lives. Sin is not a simple, “slip up”, sin is terrifying. Our sin is what took Jesus to the cross, sin must never be taken lightly.

One of the first signs of drifting away from fellowship with God is a tendency to pull away from fellowship with each other. We need to be sensitive to each other, when you see another Christian struggling, gently reach out to them, pray for them and encourage them. This is what the Body of Christ is all about. (see Hebrews 10:24-25).

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Sermon September 17, 2017 – Jeremiah part 3

Jeremiah 17:1-10

The nation of Judah had drifted far from God, worshipping idols and ignoring the covenant and the law that God gave Moses on mount Sinai. Their sin was deep rooted, it wasn’t simply a fleeting failure. Jeremiah uses the picture of an engraving tool in verse 1, the sins were indelibly marked in their culture. This has been the condition of man since Adam’s sin in Genesis 3. Sin is not a matter of mere actions, sin is a matter of the heart, and all of us are desperately sinful in our nature.

The Greek definition for sin is to miss the mark, to miss the standard for which we were created. We as human beings, like no other creature, were created in the image of God, and as such we were created to glorify Him by our worship, and our enjoyment of Him forever.

This is the mark we have missed, we worship, money, sex, fame, various forms of entertainment and objects of our own creation just to name a few idols.  We are no different to the nation of Judah, we have missed the mark, we are sinners. In verse 3 and 4, God says that because of their sins, he will punish them and give away all their treasures and wealth as plunder to their enemies. Even though God spoke so directly through the prophet Jeremiah, the people ignored the message and treated Jeremiah like the enemy.

The irony is that God tells them that he will enslave them in a land they do not know, but the reality is that they were already slaves. When we are living in willful sin, we are enslaved by that sin. Sin itself is slavery, because we are separated from the joy of knowing the pleasure and the grace of God in our lives.

The Lord continues in verse 5, “This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord.”

Where do you place your trust? Do you trust in your retirement fund? Your paycheck? Your savings? Your inheritance? Perhaps you trust in a person to take care of you? The truth is that no matter what we trust in, if it is not God, the Bible says we are under a curse.

The converse of verses 5 and 6 are verses 7 and 8 said. Verse 7 says, “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.” Do you want to experience God’s blessing? Trust Him!

In verse 8 we read that the person who trusts in the Lord will receive a promised blessing from the Lord, they will have no fear, no worries, and they never fail to bear fruit.

As we look at ourselves, how do we really know if we trust the Lord? We can easily fool our neighbor, our pastor, even our spouse, but God knows our heart (see Jeremiah 17:10).

Just like God knew the hearts of the people of Judah, he knows our hearts today. As a result of their sin, God punished the nation of Judah, the attack from the north came and most of them were taken into captivity. It was a terrible and dark time for the nation. The captivity in Babylon was relatively short, only 70 years, but the nation was destroyed and would never be the same again.

The punishment for sin was severe, and God still punishes sin today, we don’t like to talk about it, but He does, God loves us too much to leave our sins unpunished.

But there is good news, as we look at Jeremiah 31:31-34. This prophecy in Jeremiah 31 talks about a time far in the future for those living in the 6th Century BC, Jeremiah was prophesying about the new covenant, he was pointing to our time, this day and age.

Obviously, we still struggle with sin and the world is in a desperate state because of our rejection of God. Our problem with sin is far worse than we could ever imagine. Our sinful self is so wicked that we don’t even have the desire to know God, let alone want to come near to Him. Our hearts are inscribed with sin, we cannot erase it, it is impossible for us to change our hearts.

But here is the Incredibly Good News, God made a New Covenant with mankind. Jeremiah was prophesying about The Gospel, Jesus, the son of God, coming to earth as a child, living amongst men, and then giving his life as the ultimate and perfect sacrifice in order to save us from our desperately wicked state. We sometimes take the Gospel for granted, we gloss over it every time we celebrate communion together. But this is incredible news in Isaiah 9:2 we read, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;”

Of all the 1366 verses in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 31 and verse 33 is the pinnacle of his revelation from God.

Notice the contrast between chapter 17, where our hearts are engraved with sin, and the New Covenant in chapter 31, God promises to write a new law on our hearts. It takes a miracle to remove engraving, we cannot do it, but because of what Jesus did on the cross, by submitting our lives to his glorious gift of salvation, we get new hearts. We get the very presence of the living God living inside of us by the Holy Spirit. This is what Jesus spoke about in Luke 22:20

The Old Covenant was important to reveal to mankind that we are desperately sinful and cannot begin to fulfill the holy requirements of God. But God created us with the capacity and the need for a relationship with Him, not simply to follow a set of blind rules.

This is where the church has missed the point I believe. In our desire to make “good Christians”, we have created rules and structures, and our efforts have resulted in legalism. The truth is that:

Rules without a Relationship is Bondage.

I am not advocating for the erasing of all rules, that is anarchy, but if we are content to follow the rules without a relationship with our Heavenly Father, in a sense we are still living under the Old Covenant.

Are you still living under the Old covenant, trying to be good enough for God? That is impossible, that is why Jesus came to save us, that is why we have the Gospel!

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Worship – Part 1; September 4, 2016

Worship pt 1 Title.2

John 4:4-26

Through my mission’s travels, I have experienced many different styles and experiences of worship. Some worship style involves really loud music, some no instruments at all and others include a lot of dancing. From a western church background, sometimes it can be unnerving and unusual, but still the same it is worship to God, and we can enter into worship along with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

It is God’s plan that worship to Him will be lifted up from all corners of the earth, in all languages, and in many different styles. God is bringing about the completion of the Great Commission in order that the world will worship Him. What we are seeing is a beautiful tapestry of praise to God, across the nations, all for the Glory of God.

The well noted quote from John Piper reads; “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the Church, Worship is. Missions exist because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate and not man.”

As we begin this series, we need to ask the question; what is worship?

Recently I was emailed the results of a survey that was taken amongst people looking for a new church to attend. Amazingly 74% of the respondents say they look for “style of service”. What does that mean? We use terms like; contemporary, traditional, seeker friendly, attractional and even orthodox. Obviously two of the major “style” considerations are preaching and singing. Does the preacher wear jeans or a suit? Does the preacher use relevant applications to the text? Does he use the text at all? Do we sing from hymnals or screens? Is there a choir, band, orchestra, and in many large churches today, you have to have laser lights and smoke machines?

Sadly; what it shows is that the worship service seems to be more about our preferences than what it really is about – worshipping God

Worship is by definition what we give worth to. We are all by nature worshippers, we all give value to something. We give value to many things; bank accounts, houses, land, family and much more. All of these things are not bad, but when we give these things more value than we give to our Heavenly Father, then we are guilty of idolatry.

Take some time to think about that, what would someone who knows you well say that you give worth to?

What would an outside observer of our church say that we give worth to?

The essence of the Christian life is giving worth to God above everything else. God is to be valued and worshipped above all else in our lives.

Jesus broke so many structures when he came to live here on earth. By his death on the cross and his resurrection he removed the Old Testament methods and rituals of worship. The veil to the Holy of Holies was torn and all people now have access to God through Jesus the spotless Lamb of God. Jesus spoke about this shift that was to come in the account of the woman at the well that we read in John 4:4-26.

Jesus was explaining to this woman that a new era of worship was being ushered in. In the Old Testament we know that there were strict instructions given in the Law that Moses received from God about the style and the format of worship. But as we read the New Testament, you will notice that there is a remarkable lack of instruction and format prescribed for the worship service of the church. In fact, the translated Hebrew word for worship is virtually absent from the New Testament. Why is that? The New Testament church that began in Jerusalem did not have a set of rules or Order of Service that we are instructed to follow.

The key to answering that question is in what Jesus said to this woman, in verses 23 and 24; “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

Remember the words of Jesus in Mark 11:17; when he is chasing away the temple traders; “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations”, quoting the prophet Isaiah.

Jesus was turning the focus and attention away from the outward acts of the Jewish sacrificial system and directing their focus towards a personal relationship with our Heavenly Father. Worship doesn’t have to have a building or a temple and a series of sacrifices, it has to have faith in the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

True worship takes place within; the Bible says that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). We do not go to worship, but we are to live lives that are constantly worshipping God. That means that worship must be happening before we go to church on a Sunday morning.

 Sometimes we go about our day to day lives, we get so busy running the rat race, we drift further and further in our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Our lives grow cold to the things of the Spirit, then we come to church expecting to experience God and it feels dull and lifeless. My friends, the problem is not the church, the problem is that we are not worshipping God every day. The experience of the heart is the indispensable essence of worship.

Vaughan Roberts wrote; “Are you gripped by the mercy of God? If not, you will never worship Him. An understanding of God’s mercy to us is the fuel that energizes and empowers our worship in all parts of life.”

It is all about a relationship with God that fuels our worship, that relationship is only available through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ the risen lord.

Do you know and worship God this way?