Slide 1
Jesus’ rhythm: He goes UP the mountain to spend time in prayer, He comes DOWN the mountain to spend time in fellowship with His disciples, and He sends them OUT to love others. Luke 6:12-19; Mark 3:13-14

Slide 2
Love Experienced. We are committed to discipleship as a lifelong journey of growing in relationship with God and becoming more like Jesus. We seek to empower individuals to fulfill their God-given purpose within a supportive community.

Slide 3
Biblical community is not just your group of friends.

Slide 4
Biblical community: A fellowship of believers who are united in Christ, committed to one another in love, and living life together for the purpose of spiritual growth, mutual support, and gospel mission.

Slide 5
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. Acts 2:42-47

Slide 6
But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, 2 and with his wife’s knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles’ feet. 3 But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? 4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.” 5 When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it. 6 The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him. Acts 5:1-6

Slide 7
Community is hard!
– People are messy
– Building meaningful connection requires effort
– True community demands vulnerability
– Deep relationships take time (can’t microwave it)

Slide 8
“Almost everyone finds their early days in a community ideal. It all seems perfect. They feel they are surrounded by saints, heroes, or at the least, most exceptional people who are everything they want to be themselves. And then comes the letdown. The greater their idealization of the community at the start, the greater the disenchantment. If people manage to get through this second period, they come to a third phase — that of realization and of true commitment. They no longer see other members of the community as saints or devils, but as people — each with a mixture of good and bad, darkness and light, each growing and each with their own hope. The community is neither heaven nor hell, but planted firmly on earth, and they are ready to walk in it, and with it. They accept the community and the other members as they are; they are confident that together they can grow towards something more beautiful.”
— Jean Vaier

Slide 9
Who I am today VS Who I want to become.

Slide 10
Community reveals our flaws (sanctification).

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? James 4:1

Slide 11
Community is where we grow.

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Hebrews 10:24

Slide 12
Community is where we find support.

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2

Slide 13
Community brings healing.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. James 5:16

Slide 14
Community is our witness.

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. John 13:35

Slide 15
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. 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. 1 Corinthians 12:12-13

Slide 16
“We vow to remain all our life with our local community. We live together, pray together, work together, relax together. We give up the temptation to move from place to place in search of an ideal situation. Ultimately there is no escape from oneself, and the idea that things would be better someplace else is usually an illusion. And when interpersonal conflicts arise, we have a great incentive to work things out and restore peace. This means learning the practices of love: acknowledging one’s own offensive behavior, giving up one’s preferences, forgiving.”
— Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey

If you walked in late and you’re like, why is there a whacking on stage? That’s because VBS starts tomorrow. It’s gonna be an amazing, amazing week. Also, in two weeks, also a western thing. We’ve got riding high. So on Father’s Day we’ve got riding high. It’s important for you to know that because the 10 30 service on that riding high Sunday will start at 11 o’clock. And the reason is because there’s gonna be a horse on stage and it takes a little bit to get the horse off stage and the new horse on stage. And so I hope that you will join us for that. My wife and I this last year started enjoying the show alone. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched the the show alone. We specifically watch the Australian version of the TV show alone, mainly because it’s the same show, but cooler accents.

And basically the idea is they take about 15 to 20 people and they put ’em off in the wild completely by themselves. And whoever can survive the longest alone wins a cash prize. Now, all the people that they bring have tremendous background. So it’s military background or survivalist background, or a hunter background. And everybody goes in knowing that if they have any shot to win, they’re gonna have to be by themselves for at least a month. And yet the thing that causes most of them to quit the show is not that they don’t have enough food. It’s not that they’re about to die of, of not enough water or a grizzly bear. It all comes down to the psychological part of the show. It’s loneliness. That’s the name alone. Now, what’s crazy is most of the time, within the first 36 hours of the show, like a third of the people quit and leave.

Like, just imagine like you’re a hunter and you’re like, I’m gonna go for a month by myself in the wilderness. You get there, you last sometimes 12 hours, sometimes 24 hours, sometimes it’s 36 hours, and they’re like, I can’t do it. I’m tapping out. I’m calling the phone. And the reason is because the most challenging part about being in the wilderness is not hunting for your own food. It’s not gathering your own food. It’s not building yourself a shelter. It’s simply coping with being alone. Why? Because God wired us in such a way that we need community. God designed us to need one another. We see this all the way back in Genesis when it says that he creates Adam, God says, it is not fit for man to be alone. And so he makes Eve. And then yet, when you look at our culture right now, loneliness is a challenge. Sociologists would say that loneliness is an epidemic. Roughly 20% of all people struggle with loneliness. If you look at the way the chart breaks down on recent research you see that younger people, specifically that demographic between 19 and 29 years old, 27% of that demographic struggles with loneliness. God created us for community. And yet in a time where social media, in theory, makes us

So

Socially connected,

We feel so

Alone. In the last week and this week and next week, we are looking at some of the things that we believe as a church. Some of the core things that we are

Striving for as a church.

Our logo

Has

A purpose and a meaning. There’s an up

Arrow, there’s a down arrow.

There’s

An out arrow. Last week we talked about worship, that that up arrow is our relationship with

God.

That vertical

Arrow is the most important relationship you or I have. If

We get that relationship with God, right? That overflows into

The down arrow. Now, that

Is our

Relationship in community, in

Discipleship with

Each other. We wanna grow deep in community so that we can go out. Man, we get that from the rhythm that we see in Jesus’

Life. That

Jesus rhythm is like this,

That he goes up

Onto the mountaintop, he spends time with God. He spends time in prayer. He comes down from the mountaintop. He spends time in community and discipleship. And then what does he

Do with his disciples, his followers?

He sends them out to demonstrate the

Love of God to the world.

So one of the things that, that we

Value as a church

Is community. What are we doing to make community healthy? And right now, now here’s the challenge is what we’re talking about is biblical community. And that’s different than just having friends.

So, so friendship is good, friendship

Is important, but biblical community is not the same as just whoever you hang out with,

Whoever

You hang out with that you

Probably have the best laughs of your life with those

Deep friendships.

You probably do

Certain hobbies that

You enjoy together. But the

Definition of biblical community means that there’s a purpose,

There’s

An intentionality of

What you’re

Doing and why you’re doing it. My thought when I think of biblical community would be

To describe it like this. It’s a fellowship of believers

Who were united in Christ, committed to one another in love and living life

Together for the purpose of spiritual growth,

Mutual support, and gospel mission.

So

If you have friends, but they’re not giving

You spiritual support,

If you’re not growing together

Closer to Jesus,

I’m not saying they’re not good friends, but

That’s

Different than biblical community. Biblical community has

A

Destination in mind. If you’ve got a Bible turn with me to Acts chapter

Two.

Acts chapter

Two,

Starting in verse 42. Anytime in church you hear

People

Talk about community, we start here. And why This is the beginning of the church. It helps us to understand what

A church is.

And it’s also

Perfect.

Like we’ll read it and you’ll be like, man, that sounds amazing. That’s

Exactly what I want.

It is

The ideal

Community.

It’s the goal. Acts chapter

Two, starting in verse 42.

It says this.

And they, the, the early church devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers and all came upon every soul. And many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day, those who are being saved you, if you stop right there and don’t read anything else, it’s like, yes, that’s exactly it. Notice that there’s no complaining in the early church. Nobody’s grumbling about stuff. And because they’re living in such a way that is so distinct, it’s causing their numbers to grow, that God is doing this great work.

And if you’ve been around church for any amount of time, you’ve heard that and you say, that’s what I want. Why can’t my church be more like that? Well, the truth is, it didn’t stay like that for very long in the early church. And here’s why. We know that. Flip over a couple pages to Acts chapter five. So three chapters later, this is what happens. It says, but a man named Ananias with his wife, SAP Fire, a sold a piece of property. And with his wife’s knowledge, he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a pair part of it and laid it at the apostle’s feet. But Peter said, in Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? Well, it remained unsold. Did it not remain your own?

And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man, but to God? Now, pause for a second. So context of what happens. So e everybody’s giving possessions and, and selling things and supporting the church. And then an nice of fire. They say, Hey, why don’t we take this property that we own? Why don’t we sell it? And the issue was not, this is a, an important distinction. The issue was not that they didn’t, they had to have given all the land to the church. The, the issue was not that they should have taken every single piece of the proceeds and given it to the church, that that was not the issue. The issue was that they took all the proceeds from the land, they claimed to the church, that they were giving all the proceeds to the church while secretly they were actually holding back some for themselves.

And then what is the result of it? Look what it says in verse five. It says, when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. It’s a really polite way of saying he dead. And great fear came upon all Who heard of it? Yeah, I would be scared too. It says then the young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him. Which verse six to me is this funny, hilarious, throwaway land line. And I think the only reason that it’s there is because it’s true. Like they weren’t sure. Like, Anna and I just drop dead. Like, what do we do with ’em? Like let’s wrap ’em up and go bury him the very different cultural context in the first century than now. Like, if someone drops dead today in service, we ain’t wrapping you up and bury him out on the back 20.

Like, that’s, that’s, that’s not how it worked. We would get arrested if we did that. So why is it in there? Because it actually happened. That is what they did. Now, now probably, if you’ve heard this passage preached at church before, it was probably connected to a giving sermon, which I don’t think it actually connects to a giving sermon at all. But, but maybe you’ve heard it, A pastor use this passage and the the message went something like this. Hey, and Anai and Sapphira, they sold the property. They didn’t give it all to the church and God killed them. So maybe, maybe you should give more. Like I I, for whatever reason that that’s become like the, the way that we use that passage in church. And, and really that’s not the point of the passage. The point of the passage is not that they should have given everything to the church.

Not that they kept something back for themselves. It was the deceit, it was the selfishness. It was that they were acting like they were pretending, like they were all in. They were saying, oh, we’re giving all that we have to you. But they were really just lying to God. The the reality behind it is that the facade that they were putting out to the church was different than their heart. And the reality that what breaks up this beautiful community we see happening in the next two, that, that almost instantly, what, what starts to happen is selfishness. Selfishness. They, they really, you wanna look at what struggles we have inside the church, what struggles we have in any relationship. It comes down to that, that, oh, hey, I want, I want to do all these things. I want all the benefits of it, but I’m not, I’m not sure that I want to fully be all in.

‘Cause There’s this part of me that I want to hold back. Acts two, beautiful picture of community three chapters later. It’s already starting to have challenges. Why? It’s because community is hard. If you’ve experienced community in any way, shape, or form, you know, intellectually that community is hard and your family community is hard with your neighbor’s. Community can be hard, and a church community can be hard. Why is that? Handful of reasons. Number one, people are messy. And we are in community with broken, sinful, selfish people. And as a result of that, being in community together means that it, it is messy. Also, building meaningful community requires effort. If I wanna have intentional connection with somebody else, it doesn’t happen on accident. There. There’s an intentional effort. I have to take a step in that direction. Community’s also hard because true community demands vulnerability and man, that’s hard.

That’s uncomfortable. That’s not something that I always want to do. Sometimes I, I’m like, well, hey, I, I really want community. But, but then when it starts to get uncomfortable and I’m supposed to be sharing more of my heart and my life, like, yeah, I don’t really know about that. That kinda feels challenging. And then community’s also hard because relationships, especially deep relationships, they take time. You can’t just hit the microwave button and make it happen like this. One of the things that we say, if you come to a starting point, we said that we want you, us in our community, we want everybody to be known by name and by need. Now, that doesn’t mean that like me in my position, that I’m literally gonna know every single person by name and by need, or that you would know every single person by name and by need.

But it means that we want everybody to be able to find a community where, in that community, that community knows you by name and by need. What does that mean to know someone by name takes effort. You’ve seen people that you see them, you know, they know you know their name and you, you see in their faces recognition where they should know your name, but they don’t know your name. And you’re in a conversation with them and we’re like, they don’t know my name right now. And it feels what it feels, feels unkind. You kind of feel disappointed. And the reason you know what that face looks like is because you and I have given that same face to somebody else where somebody sees us and they know our name and we should know their name, but we don’t know their name. And so then we pretend, we try, we say things like, Hey, you and buddy guy gal buckaroo, like, we try and fill it in with things to make it less awkward.

But they know that feeling when you don’t know their name. So knowing people by name is an intentional effort towards relationship. But knowing someone by need, you don’t know someone’s biggest need in their life by accident. You look to your left and your right. If you said, do I know that person’s biggest need, the only way you find somebody’s biggest needs is by having conversation, by being in community, being vulnerable, getting to know that person. And that’s the challenge that we face. John Mark Comer and his writings on practicing the way his teachings on practicing the way, Hey, he has a couple quotes about community that I love. Here’s one of them by Jean Veer. He writes, almost everyone finds their early days in a community ideal. It all seems perfect. They feel they’re surrounded by saints heroes or at the least most exceptional people who are everything they want to be themselves.

And then comes the let down the greater their idealization of the community At the start, the greater the disenchantment. If people manage to get through this second period, they come to a third phase that of realization and of true commitment. They no longer see other members of the community as saints or devils, but as people each with a mixture of good and of bad darkness and light, each growing in each with their own hope, the community is neither heaven nor hell, but planted firmly on earth and they’re ready to walk in it. And with it, they accept the community and the other members as they are, they’re confident that together they can grow towards something more beautiful. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. Maybe you’ve gone to a church and at first everything seems awesome. Like, man, I love the preacher and the message and the music and the people and everything seems wonderful.

But if you hang around that church long enough, what’s gonna happen? That ideal is no longer met. You start to see some flaws and some fractures. You start to hear some complaining, start to see some issues. And here’s the ugly truth of church, that if you hang out at church long enough, you will be hurt because we are sinful broken people. Which kind of leads us into category two, where, where sometimes we get so turned off by church, we say, oh, well, it was all fake and it was all facade, and I don’t like it and I’ve been hurt. And it can lead some people to just turn and walk away and say, I’m totally done with church. I don’t want anything to do with church. And that’s tragic too, because there is this third place to enter into. That’s where real discipleship and community happens.

It’s when you enter in and say, Hey, there are some broken people here, some messy people and relationships are hard. But we’re gonna pursue something together, something that with community together we can achieve that individually I would struggle to achieve on my own. You see, the, the call of Christianity that we become more and more like Jesus. It’s this question for myself of who am I today versus who I want to become? Who, who I am right now. And then I look forward a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, who am I becoming? Who, who is it that God wants me to be? And if, if I do that by myself, I I can achieve some success. But it’s far more successful we see throughout the entire New Testament. When that is done in community, why let, let’s talk about some of the benefits that we see in the New Testament that come directly from community.

The first one is, this community reveals our flaws. That the process of sanctification is that I’m pursuing to become more and more and more like Jesus. And in order to do that, one of the things that’s the hardest is realizing that I’ve got sin in my life right now, junk in my life right now that I’m unaware of. If I was aware of it, I, I’d try and change it. But if I’m pursuing God, I have to be more and more aware of the challenges in my heart and my life. Community helps us to reveal the sinfulness in our heart. Look at what James, the brother of Jesus writes in James chapter four, verse one. He says, what is it that causes corals? What causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? He’s saying that our selfishness is what causes conflict.

And corals, you look at any look in the globe right now, look at any war that has happened. Any war that has ever happened at the root of that war, root of that conflict is selfishness. Either on both sides or a minimum one side. My way is better. My thought is better if you would just do it my way. If you would just listen to me or I want more, I want that. I want this. That’s true when it comes to war. It’s true when it comes to every relationship. It’s true in our marriages that if I live by myself, I, I can feel pretty good about myself, but you throw me in with another person and all of a sudden I realize some of my own challenges. Why? Because I realize some of the sinfulness of my spouse and my spouse is continually recognizing the sinfulness in me.

You have kids and it’s, it’s this wake up call that kids are sinners like constantly. There is challenges and conflict and selfishness that is happening all the time. About 15 years ago, I I was on staff at a church and one of the guys on our staff had kind of two jobs. He worked on the church staff, but also served in the sheriff’s department. And he oversaw a division that went and served high risk warrants, which I thought was the coolest thing. And so in a conversation with him one time he’s describing what he does, and I’m like, dude, that sounds amazing. And he says, you should go sometime. And I said, excuse me? He said, yeah, you should go. It’s called a ride along. You can ride along when we go out and do high risk warrants. I was like, I’m game sounds awesome.

Let’s do it now. Now pause. ’cause This is an important moment in the story. I remember at this moment telling my wife, Hey, I’m gonna go on this ride along. She does not remember that conversation, so that’s gonna be important context for later on. So they go do these high risk warrants late at night. And the reason is because it’s more likely that that person is gonna be at home if it’s nighttime. So they tend to start around 10 o’clock at night and they go until two o’clock in the morning. It was a Wednesday night. So I was at church on Wednesday night. Normally I would get home at like nine o’clock on a Wednesday night. But this time right after I get done with church, I go over to the high-risk go spot. And so I, I meet him up and it was the coolest thing.

Like I, I, I show up and, and he’s got his cop car there. And, and I think in my mind, a ride along means I’m just going to literally be riding in the car the whole time I show up. And, and of course I had to fill out all kinds of paperwork. And then he hands me a bulletproof vest and I looked, I was like, what’s that for? And he said, well, when we’re going in, just in case unlikely, but just in case you get shot. I’m like, okay. So I put on this vest on the front, it said, sheriff, I said, can I have a gun? He said, no. I said, well, figured I’d ask. And so, so I have a vest on, and we go from 10 o’clock till two o’clock in the morning and we show up and they’re bursting into houses, and they would always knock first and then sometimes bursting into houses.

They’re arresting high risk criminals. And I’m just like, along for the ride, like with this vest on, I’m like, this is the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me. And so probably about 11 o’clock, maybe midnight, I I get in the cop car and I look down my phone and I’ve got some missed phone calls, and I also have a text from my wife, and it simply says, are you alive? Question mark, exclamation point, question mark. And I respond back, barely exclamation point because in my mind it’s like she knows I’m doing this crazy man thing like high risk warrant. I’m like, barely babe. And then I responded with, they won’t let me have my phone.

And then I turned, turned my phone on silent, and I put it away because I didn’t wanna be the guy here. In my mind is the reason why, like, we’re we’re going into houses and arresting people and I didn’t wanna, like, we’re all going in together. And then all of a sudden, I didn’t wanna be that guy. So, so I just put the phone in the car, I leave it there. It’s on silent now. Now let me pause from my perspective in the story and take you over to my wife’s perspective in the story. She did not remember any kind of a conversation about me going on a ride along. So nine o’clock happens. Normally I’d come home from church. I I hadn’t come home from church. 9 30, 10 o’clock, she starts calling some of the staff that I worked with. She’s like, Hey, have you seen Kirk?

They’re like, no, he was at church tonight. Like he hasn’t come home. They’re like, that’s weird. Apparently I didn’t tell any of the other staff about what I was doing. And so, so finally it gets to 11 o’clock at night and she sends me a text message like, this is out of character for me. And she says, are you alive? Now? In her mind, she’s being sarcastic, like, Hey, why aren’t you home? Are you dead right now? And then she gets a text message back from her husband that says, barely they won’t let me have my phone. And she’s like, what is going on right now? And so now she is just worried, like to the ninth degree. She’s like, he texted me back. But it’s like, is she, is he kidnapped right now? They won’t let him have his phone. What is ha He’s barely alive now. Now you go back to me and we finish up the night. It’s like two o’clock in the morning. I get back into my car, I’m like, on cloud nine. Adrenaline’s going crazy. And then I look at my phone and I have 17 missed phone calls.

And,

And I even, it was two o’clock in the morning, I call my wife, she

Was awake. Crazy as that is. She

Answers immediately.

She’s like, where were you? I was like,

Babe, don’t you remember

I, I told

You I was going on the high risk warrant thing. I did a ride along. And she responds with,

Well,

She didn’t remember that conversation at all. She

Also says, I was about to call the cops, which I said,

That would’ve been so ironic because

I

Was with him.

And so we go home

And, and I remember the conversation because everything in me was just defensive.

I was like, babe, I’m sure I told you

Like a month ago. Calm down. You’re

Overreacting.

It’s not that big of a deal. And, and at the root of

It, why did I

Respond that way? Well, one ’cause I felt bad, but

Ultimately it’s

‘Cause it’s selfishness.

You, you see, if

I would’ve really been thinking of her first,

Here’s how that

Would’ve gone. I would’ve told her a month ahead of time, Hey, I’m gonna go on this ride along. Then a day

Before I would say, Hey,

I, I need to remind you that tomorrow night I’m going on this ride along. And then that night, as I’m headed to the ride along, calling her and saying, Hey,

Just, just

A heads up. I’m going on this ride along. I probably won’t be around my phone. I probably won’t be home until about two o’clock in the morning. Like, that’s what I should have done. But that’s not what I did. And why did I not do that? ’cause I wasn’t thinking of anybody other than myself

And at, at a truth. That’s, that’s

The challenge that we all face

Is

Selfishness. And when we’re in community, like, like if I’m not married,

That whole story plays itself

Out and there’s no issue, there’s no problem.

But

Because I’m in community with somebody else, it means that I can’t just think about myself. I have to think about somebody else too. Community

Requires this effort. It

Requires me to

Realize that

I am inherently selfish and I have to work on that. Another benefit of community is that community is where

We grow. It says in Hebrews chapter

10, verse 24, and let us consider how to stir up one another

To

Love and good works.

That, that we together are

Stirring up in one another,

A love for Jesus

That is gonna overflow into the actions of how

We treat the

People around us. Have you noticed that just in almost any community, your friends stir up emotions inside you? Now, sometimes it’s bad emotions. Sometimes you hang out with a certain group of friends and they stir

Up

Bad things in you, you know, you can hang out with, with certain people, and it stirs

Up

Certain allegiances and certain loyalties and certain habits that are, that are not good things. You can also hang out with people

That are gonna stir up

Really good things. I promise you start hanging out with like

Really healthy fit

Health fanatics. It

Starts to

Overflow into your

Life. And so

Biblical community is this

Idea

That I’m hanging out with people

Who love Jesus

And they’re gonna stir up inside of me that same love, that same desire

To live for

Him. Community is also

Where we

Find support. There’s a natural part of community where when good things happen, we wanna share it

With other people. Like

If you get a promotion, you’re, you’re calling your mom or your spouse or a friend, say, Hey, guess

What just happened?

Something good happens in your life and you wanna share it. Why do we wanna share those moments? Because it makes those moments more special.

A shared

Experience takes a good thing, it makes it a great thing. But in the same way community

Takes those

Burdens, those moments in life, when the bottom falls

Out

And it makes that burden lighter.

Look

What it says in Galatians six two,

Bear

One another’s burdens. And so

Fulfill the law of Christ. The

Biblical community means that when you go

Through the pit,

You’re just barely making it and life feels like

It’s

Just falling apart and you have a burden on your back that is

Just too

Much to carry.

That

There’s a community that surrounds you and loves you and helps

Carry

That burden and sometimes carries that burden for

You. That’s what

Biblical community is. Community also brings healing. There’s a verse in James that often when we talk about church, we think about physical healing. But in context of the verse, that’s not the primary point of the verse. Now we believe in physical healing. If you need physical

Healing,

We think biblical. You should come to church and say,

Hey, let’s pray for these things. We believe that

God can heal. He doesn’t always choose

To heal, but he

Can. But this

Verse that we always

Connect with that really

Has a

Different meaning. Look what it says in James chapter

Five, verse

16. It

Says,

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be

Healed. The prayer of a righteous

Person has

Great power as it is working

In, in context, especially with the verses around it. The primary thing it’s saying is that if I’ve got junk in my life, I’ve got sin in my life, I’ve got addiction in my life, and I try and deal with it by myself,

Rarely will I be successful. But if I

Take that junk, that brokenness, and I, I bring it into

Biblical

Community and confess that sin and say, I need

Help, that there’s a

Holistic healing that can happen through community, through

Prayer, that together, that

It can help me deal with that stuff, that I can find a

Spiritual,

Emotional, physical healing that comes from community that I can’t find on my own. The last thing, and and maybe

The,

The biggest thing when it comes to the capital

C

Church is that community

Is our

Witness. That’s what Jesus is talking about in John 1335. When Jesus says, by this, all people will know that you are my disciples. If you have love for one another, I mean love for one another doesn’t happen in isolation. Doesn’t happen when I’m going at it alone. Love for one another is what happens when we are together and act different. Jesus is saying that the world will take note of the church, of how we’re treating people inside the church, how we’re treating people outside the church, how we live this life of love. And in the first century church, how they lived, looked so radically different from the world around them. Look what it says in one Corinthians chapter 12, sermon in verse 12. It says, 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.

For in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves are free and all were made to drink of one spirit. Now, now you’re probably somewhat familiar with that verse if you, if you’ve been around church and, and it’s a great verse, it’s talking about unity. But what we miss is what no one would’ve missed in the first century. And and that is when he says, Hey, you’re not Jew or Gentile, you’re not slave for free. Like, like these are distinctions that in the first century were a big deal. Up until this point, every religion in the history of the world was homogeneous. Like it was the same cultural people, same ethical people in the same socioeconomic status. And now all of a sudden, Christianity burst on the scene and people that should not be hanging out together or hanging out together, like in the first century, Jewish people and gentiles, they didn’t hang out.

They didn’t break bread together. They didn’t have meals together. Like if you were a slave or, or a free person. Those weren’t people that were socializing together. Men and women didn’t socialize together. And all of a sudden here’s what happens in the church that people say, Hey, we have different backgrounds. We have different opinions, we have different preferences. We have our own selfish desires. We’re gonna lay those things aside in the central thing that draws us together will be Jesus. And the results were crazy because the world was looking at him saying, Hey, why do those people love each other? Why do those people choose to be in community together? And the only answer was, Jesus, that they’re choosing to love something bigger than themselves. To put it in our cultural context we live in a very divided culture. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that or not, but, but imagine maybe, maybe this happens at your, your Thanksgiving table.

That, that you have someone who is just a far, far right maga extreme hat wearing big Trump fan, and then someone on the far, far, far left that hates everything about the far, far, far right. Imagine that they are sitting at a table like our cultural context would be, well, they’re gonna hate each other just naturally. They got no reason to like one another. But imagine if church becomes the place where people with far, far different opinions on so many different things come together and say, we’re gonna come together in unity around the person of Jesus. That is something that the world would look at and say, Hey, everywhere else people are bickering and fighting, but for some reason in this place, they’re not. Because they’re too focused on Jesus to fight with each other. There’s this, this vow that our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey wrote.

And and I’m not saying that this is the vow that I’m gonna ask you to make as a church, but I think it’s it’s a convicting vow of what a pursuit of biblical community can look like. This was their vow. We vow or remain all our life with our local community. We live together, pray together, work together, relax together. We give up the temptation to move from place to place in search of an ideal situation. Ultimately, there is no escape from oneself. And the idea that things would be better someplace else is usually an illusion. And when interpersonal conflicts arise, we have a great incentive to work things out and restore peace. This means the learning, the practices of love, acknowledging one’s own offensive behavior, giving up one’s preferences for giving here would be my challenge in cultural Christian America church. Here’s what we tend to do, that we often will choose a church based off of our personal preferences.

Well, we get out of it like, Hey, I like that style of music. I like that preacher, and so therefore I’m gonna choose that church. But here’s the problem with, with that being the primary decision maker when we choose a church is that eventually you will get tired of my preaching, I promise. Eventually you’ll get tired of the music. Eventually there will be some other church that you say, I like their style better than this style. But if that’s why we make the decision, guess what? We’re just gonna move from church to church to church to church. We’re always gonna be choosing based off of just my own personal preferences. And so here’s, here’s the challenge. I is what if we said, okay, I’m going to choose a church and dive in deep and I’m gonna make community a priority, and I’m gonna choose to be vulnerable and choose to, to put in the time and choose to take that next step.

Let me tell you along the way, there would be challenges and there would be bumps, and there would be bruises, and there’d be moments know where you’re hurt. And maybe you’re in a place where you say, Hey, I’ve tried that before and I got hurt in the past. Which, which means that you have this choice. You can either just give up on the church and I know a lot of people have, or you can say, Hey, warts and all. I, I think it’s worth giving this thing a shot because I believe that what is possible together is better than what I can figure out on my own. And maybe you’re hearing, you’re like, well, hey, I I don’t know that that place is Cherry Hills for me. Can I, can I promise you genuinely, I would rather you go to another church and be all in and find biblical community than stay here and never find biblical community.

So what would it look like? And so let me, let me encourage you, what would the next step look like for you? Maybe that next step for you is to say, Hey, I’m gonna try a connect group. Maybe it’s, I’m gonna go to a men’s Bible study. Maybe it’s gonna be, I’m gonna go to a women’s Bible study. Maybe you’re gonna find an area to serve in. What is that place that you can say, I will be in community with other people that know me by name and by need, and I know them by name and by need? What? What would it look like if we together as a church, we’re never gonna be the ideal of Acts chapter two. But what if we started striving for it and there wasn’t conflict and selfishness and complaining, but instead it was a group of people loving each other well and lifting up the name of Jesus?

Man, what a testimony that would be to the world around us. Heavenly Father. Now we thank you that you call us to community, and yet community is hard. And maybe that’s the point, because in striving for something difficult and challenging, it grows us and it’s a witness to the world around us. Lord, help us to be a place that makes community as easy as possible. I pray for anyone in this room that is on the fence, that they’ve been hurt in the past, and I pray that they give it a shot, a chance. Take that next step. Try and find biblical community in this place. It’s amen. Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen.