Volunteers are needed to assist that evening. This might include helping someone to a table with their tray or making sure they have their flyer. For more information, contact Dawn Ward (dawn@dawnward.net).

We looked a couple of weeks ago at how the church of the New Testament was a body. Individual parts that came together to form something that worked together in an amazing way. I believe that a church today with passion, not lukewarm, who cared for the disadvantaged, a church who valued the individuals as a body values the individual parts, would be so remarkable and powerful that it would set the world on fire. No marketing, programs, or gimmicks could do what being a church like Jesus designed us to be would do. A church like that would be a blessing to its people and a radically bright light to the darkness around it. But this would be the case if this “body” was under the power and direction of the right life-giving source. That is what we will be looking at today.

Colossians 1:7 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

Have you ever seen at a fair or carnival the headless frame where you stand behind it and someone takes your picture? There might be a body builder, a ballerina, or a clown body on the frame. This is funniest when you get a little girl to stand behind the strongman cutout or a bearded gruff guy to stand behind the ballerina. What turns these things into humorous photos is that the head does not fit the body.

This is also why the church is losing its influence in our culture; people do not see the head, Christ, as fitting the body, the church. They see it as a mismatch. It becomes comical to people. Or even worse, they might even think that Christ is like the clown shown in the body. The failure of the church and religion ends up actually turning people not only against the church, but against Jesus.

Today we are going to look at another analogy, used by Christ to describe His relationship to the church, that of the vine and the branches.

John 15 The Vine and the Branches 

1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

Passage in context

When Jesus chose to use the symbolism of the vine, it was very powerful to his audience. Most of us do not think about vineyards and grapes, but in Israel at the time of Christ, grapes were an important industry. For one thing, the drinking water was not pure. If we were heading there at that time, our friends would tell us, “Don’t drink the water.” It was common to mix wine with water at that time so that the alcohol would kill the bacteria and impurities. Pretty much everyone knew about grapes, so Jesus was using an analogy very familiar to His disciples. That is what a good analogy is all about. Taking something you are trying to explain and using something very familiar as a picture of it. And Jesus picked amazing, rich analogies to teach. He used the relationship between a grape vines, branches, and grapes to symbolize the complex relationship between God and us.

What even made the grapevine a more powerful symbol was that Israel was represented as a grapevine in the book of Isaiah and in some of the Psalms. Even on the coinage of Israel, a vine was used to represent Israel. So this was the perfect picture or analogy to use.

I am

1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.

In the book of Exodus, Moses ask God what his name is:

Exodus 3:13 Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?"14 God said to Moses, "I am who I am . This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.

When Jesus uses the phrase I Am, it is one of the ways he declares that he is God. Jesus said I am: the bread of life, the light of the world, the gate, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way the truth and the life. Here he says I am the true vine. I am God and I am your source of life.

Jesus also goes on to say that God the father is the gardener. So, God the Son is the true vine, and God the Father is the gardener. This is a strong claim that Jesus makes in this single verse. He makes the implication that he is God, as the Father is God. And that He is the true vine, the true head of Israel and the church.

Jesus also explains who we are— branches. Verse 2 says that there are specifically two types of branches, those that bear fruit and those that do not. And as the skillful and loving gardener, God prunes.

Remain in me

To have direction:

2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

There is a huge grape vine near London in Hampton Court. It is a tourist attraction because of its size and age. The “Great Vine” is several hundred years old and 120 feet long. The skillful gardeners prune and shape and lift and support this massive vine. Today the vine is about 10 ft around at the base. Imagine a vine with branches 120 ft long. Even century-old branches more than 100 feet from the base of the vine produce fruit. Many hundreds of pounds of grapes are harvested each year.

Source ~http://europeforvisitors.com/london/articles/hampton-court-palace-the-gardens.htm

You see, it doesn’t matter which direction, how old, or how far the branches grow, it only matters that they remain attached to the vine, the source of life.

In his book, Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby gave a great analogy about the importance of remaining in Jesus. He told of a farmer who invited him to come out to his farm and he gave him some directions: Go 1/4 mile past the edge of town, and you will see a big red barn on your left, after that take the next road on the left. Take that road for about 3/4 mile and you will see an enormous willow tree, turn right on the next road. Go about 4 miles and you will see a big rock. He never found the farmer’s house.

The next time he tried to go to the farmer’s house, the farmer was with him. Since there was more than one way to get to the farmer’s house, he could have taken him any way he wanted to. All he had to do was listen to him and obey his instructions. The farmer was his “map.” It is the same with Jesus, He is our way, he doesn’t tell us the way, and he doesn’t give us directions. He said to remain in Him and he would take us where we are going.

The source of power:

5"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

Jesus is the source of life and power. The branches have no power when they are not connected to the vine. They cannot produce fruit, but they can bear fruit if they are connected.

I came across the story of a native from a remote mountain village who had the opportunity to visit a large modern city for the first time. He could not bring much home with him, and he had little money, but he was amazed at the electric lights which he saw everywhere. So, he bought a sack full of electric lights bulbs and sockets with switches so he could turn them off and on.

Arriving home, he hung the light bulbs in front of his home and on his and his neighbor’s trees. Everyone watched him with curiosity and asked him what he was doing, but he just smiled and said, "Just wait until dark—you’ll see." When night came he turned on the switches, but nothing happened. No one had told him about electricity. He did not know the light bulbs were useless unless connected to the source of their power.

Jesus tells you, "Apart from me you can do nothing." He provides the electricity, the power you need in your life to produce fruits of faith.

~http://meditationsandmemories.blogspot.com/

It’s about the fruit:

7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

Jesus said that we were branches. How many of you just love to eat branches from a grapevine? Or go to a vineyard to sample wines made from grape branches? Being a branch doesn’t sound very glamorous, so what is Jesus talking about here? Well, I have something to break to you that might come as a shock. Are you ready for this? It is not about you. Just like the first words from Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life. It isn’t about you, it is about the fruit.

We are just branches. And there are two types of branches: one that bears fruit and one that does not. Why would someone choose to be a branch that doesn’t bear fruit? That seems kind of dumb.

The problem? We are increasingly a society of people who value independence. We want to have the answers. We don’t want to need anyone, even God. That is why some branches don’t remain in Him. Judge Robert Bork, who was nominated, but not confirmed for the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan, wrote a book a few years back called Slouching Towards Gomorrah. In it he suggests that the main threat to the American way of life was the rise of, what he called radical, unbridled individualism. I think that we see this around us. We are our own authority on almost everything.

We choose to be unfruitful branches when we try to do everything on our own power, to try to figure out life on our own— by definition, not remaining in Him. In fact, this is the main tension or struggle in our lives. After all, what is sin but deciding that we know better what will make us happy than God and his plans for us? We think that sin will be more satisfying than what God says. The unfruitful branch does not remain in Him. Be careful— remaining in Him, is not necessarily the same as remaining in the church. In fact, one of the huge problems in the church is that it is filled with those radical individualistic people that Bork described.

7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.

What do we wish for? What do we wish for as a church? To be comfortable, secure branches and fellowship with other branches like us? No it is about the fruit.

In his book, Don’t waste Your Life, John Piper says that the gospel isn’t just about finding forgiveness of sins so that we can be better spouses or parents, so that we have purpose and hope. He said that would miss the bigger point of it all. He said that would be like a batboy at Yankee stadium who thinks that the great point of the World Series is to hand the players a bat. Sure, it is a part of it, but it is a narrow view of the bigger picture. The point is not content and happy branches, but bearing fruit. That is what we should wish for, to be fruitful, not content and comfortable. We have to remain in Jesus to care about the things that He cares about.

Conclusion

Most of you are probably aware of the Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena California every New Years Day. Many companies and organizations spend countless thousands of dollars to make elaborate floats, made almost exclusively of flowers, plants, and other natural components. Several years ago there was a company that sponsored a beautiful float. After all the preparation, something happened on the parade route that caused the float to stop and stall the progress of the parade for several minutes. The problem? It ran out of gas. All of the money and human effort in the design, procuring supplies, building this huge float of living materials that prevented anyone from constructing the float too far in advance. The flowers would die. All of the timing, engineering, designing, and planning and half-way through the parade, they ran out of gas. The most amazing and ironic thing about this story is that the company that built and sponsored the stalled float was none other than Chevron.

~www.shepherdofthesierra.org

Their float and the parade were stalled because of a lack of petroleum, the very same product that they were known for. The only thing they are known for, the only thing that they produce.

This can happen to Christians and churches. We run out of gas because we don’t have the very thing that we are trying to bring to the world around us. At least in theory, the Christian church is about introducing Jesus, the savior, to a society that desperately needs Him. But the efforts are often stalled because Jesus is not the head of the body or the vine that gives life to the branches.

7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.

Applications

1. Remain in Him

This is easier said than done. It requires us to trust, to have faith in someone other than ourselves. We cannot remain in Him and remain in control on our own. There is not room for both. It is an either or situation. If we are to bear fruit, we have to relinquish control. This is true for us, individually and as a church. We cannot trust our own genius and creativity over what Almighty God can do through those who submit to His perfect leadership.

2. Focus on the fruit

This is an extension of the first one. Not only do we have to relinquish control and remain in Christ, we have to care for something other than ourselves. It is not important that we are satisfied and content branches, but that we bear fruit. We cannot look at the gospel how the myopic batboy looked at the World Series. Making a cool place for branches to hang out and find purpose is too small a goal. A goal worthy of our lives is that we glorify God by bearing fruit.

8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

It all starts with being connected to Christ. Without Him, our lives will never be fruitful. The good news is that you can tap into this source of life right now.

Church, we can never cause fruit to happen, but if we are connected to the vine, Jesus, we can bear fruit. But we have to care about fruit, surrender our rights and relinquish control, sold out to Christ. A group of people who did this would be almost unheard of in this culture. It would be a truly remarkable thing, and I believe it would be a church that God would use to do great things through.

We have looked at what makes up a remarkable church, a church that makes people talk. The models that we have examined as examples of a remarkable church have not come from the twitters or blogs of one of the countless “church experts,” but from the word of God. What I hope you are beginning to discover is that the church found in scriptures is a remarkable, loving, scandalous, and revolutionary force. Almost unrecognizable from the “religious” organizations that we often refer to as churches.

I had planned to share this message next Sunday, but the events of this week have compelled me to swap the two messages. Today, we are going to examine a story familiar to many of you, The Parable of the Good Samaritan. If you are familiar with this story, you might be asking, “What does this have to do with church?” The answer is plenty. I think that Jesus used this parable as an example of what real love and compassion is, and how they are different from religious rules and going through the motions.

Luke 10:25-37 The Parable of the Good Samaritan

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" 26 "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" 27 He answered: " ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself."

28 "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" 30 In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.

36 "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"37 The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

Unpacking the Scriptures

A man is beaten by robbers and left for dead. Three men come upon him. The first two passersby were religious professionals: a priest and a levite, or a worship pastor.

31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

In Jewish society, the priest was a holy person. The priest taught the scriptures to people. People needed the priest to help them offer their sacrifices for their sins. You couldn’t do that on your own. You needed this holy priest, this religious leader to do that for you. The priest could go in parts of the temple that the regular people could not. Surely, if there was an example of someone with good character and mercy, it would be a priest. Yet Jesus said that the priest just went on by.

A Levite, as I mentioned, was like a worship pastor. Levites were in charge of making sure that certain traditions and ceremonies were performed correctly. They were like religious referees. They knew all of the rules and regulations about how a temple ceremony should operate. They were highly thought of by the Jews. The Levite also went on by the badly beaten man on the road. He didn’t want to get involved. We are not told why. Maybe he was afraid for his personal safety; after all, whoever beat this man so badly might still be around. But maybe it was because there was no payoff for him. You may have noticed that most acts of kindness and benevolence these days are accompanied by a camera crew. Helping people is good television. It also proves what a nice person you are. Helping a stranger on a desolate road was not very showy.

The one who did stop was a Samaritan

3 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.

What is so remarkable about that? Well, you have to remember the occasion for this parable. Jesus is addressing a question from an “expert in the law,” a Jew who wanted to know who he had to love in order to love his neighbor as himself. He was asking Jesus for the technical definition so that he could technically follow the rule about loving his neighbor. Who is my neighbor? Or, how little love can I get by with and still meet this “religious requirement?”

I mentioned before that the two who ignored the beaten man were religious leaders. Well, Jesus takes it a step further. Not only are the uncaring people who passed by religious Jews, but the compassionate man who stopped to help was a Samaritan. This does not mean much to us. The term “Good Samaritan” is common in our society, used to describe people who do nice things for others. But Samaritans and Jews did not like each other. This is a bit of an understatement. A Jew, at that time, would NEVER use the words “good” and “Samaritan” in the same sentence. Samaritans and Jews had been enemies for hundreds of years. The Jews considered the Samaritans to be outcast, unclean, the scourge of society. They got along about as well as Muslims and Jews do today, or Duke fans and Tarheel fans.

Notice that when Jesus asks the religious expert which of the three people who passed by the badly beaten man was a neighbor, what does he say?

37 The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."

Notice that the man that Jesus asked the question to could not bring himself to say the word “Samaritan.”

Why did the Samaritan stop?

Why did he care for this person who would not have even spoken to “his kind” or even walk near him in normal circumstances? A bitter enemy is wounded, so why not just finish him off?

33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.

He stopped because he had pity on the beaten man. The word used here that is translated as “pity” is an interesting one. It is not just like an intellectual pit, like “how sad, oh well.” It is a word that refers to a disturbance in the intestines or bowels. It is like when we might say that something was so sad it tore us up inside. His reaction was like a gut reaction. What he saw was gut-wrenching, causing him to feel such a pity that he was physically affected, and he had to take action. His actions took sacrifice. The Samaritan gave of himself, his time, his money, maybe even risking his personal safety. All to help an enemy.

We can learn so much from how the Samaritan did not react. Some of the most common ways that people react to seeing people in need.

It is not my problem

This would have been an easy response for the Samaritan, especially since the badly injured man was an enemy.

A few days ago I read about a church in Allentown, PA called Life Church. This church partnered with another church in SC to sponsor an orphanage in Haiti. After the Earthquake hit the other day, they did not hear from the 5 staff or 12 children as the orphanage, even after 36 hours after the quake. Their pastor, Dave Jones, said “We didn’t even know if they were still alive.” They finally got a text message saying that they were all alive and sleeping outside. By the time the pastor had received this text, the church had already mobilized a three-person team with 800 pounds of supplies, and had flown to DR. which is on the same island as Haiti.

~Philadelphia Daily News.

I was deeply moved by this story. Why would this church in Philadelphia fund an orphanage on a Caribbean island, where they were also helping to fund a school and a medical center? And then agonize over how the orphans and staff were doing? Why didn’t they just figure that an orphanage in Haiti was really not their problem? Maybe they would send a check occasionally, but how could they be expected to do so much for an orphanage in Haiti?

1 John 3:17

“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world’s goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?”

I think that this church in PA saw the orphans in Haiti as their problem because they love God. When we love someone, we start to become concerned with what they are concerned about. God loves the orphans in Haiti, so he will put compassion for them on the hearts of people and churches who love him.

If your church ceased to exist, would anyone miss it?

~ First Comes Faith: Proclaiming the Gospel in the Church By W. Frank Harrington.

This is an important thing to ask. If a church wouldn’t be missed by anyone except their own people, they are probably unremarkable and self-serving.

I get the feeling that if the Life Church in Allentown, PA ceased to exist, if no one else noticed, the orphanage in Haiti would.

The problem is too big, What can I do about it?

Have you ever felt this way? This is how we can somehow think after seeing widespread devastation

Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work. One day, an old man was walking along the shore; he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself and he walked faster to catch up. As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean. He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?" The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean." "I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the man. To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die." the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!" At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, "It made a difference for that one."

Adapted from The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley (1907-1977)

We can make a difference to this one person, one orphanage. With God there is also a divine multiplier. Throughout the Bible, we see examples of God using people to do things much bigger than themselves.

In Matthew 14, we are told of an occasion where Jesus fed 5,000 men plus women and children with 5 loaves of bread and two fish. After everyone ate until they were satisfied, there were 12 baskets full of food left over. Why would Jesus do such a thing? Suspend the laws of physics? Do the miraculous and the unexplainable? Was it to show off? “Hey check this out.” It wasn’t to win a bet. Look in Matthew 14:14 prior to feeding the crowds, what does it say?

It says When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd; he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

He fed the multitudes because of his compassion for them. When we, as a church, show compassion, it is comforting to know that we serve a savior who will do miraculous things out of that compassion. He can take our compassion and our efforts and do whatever he wants through us. We cannot look at what little we have. It would have been easy to not even mention the few loaves of bread and fish given the huge need. Why even bring it up? What good would it do? Maybe I should keep it, so at least I can eat? God can do the miraculous through compassionate people.

When God’s work is done in God’s way for God’s glory, it will never lack God’s supply.

~Hudson Taylor.

Conclusion

The story of the Good Samaritan is really about religion. Jesus used this parable to show the difference between religion, or loving enough to meet the qualifications for getting into heaven, and really loving because of a changed heart and a real relationship with God.

When the religious people came by the badly beaten man, they did nothing. They walked on by. Just like the religious often do today. Yes, churches might do a bake sale for a charity, or stuff a few shoe boxes at Christmas, but turn a blind eye to the need all around us.

The Bible says that the church is the body of Christ. As Christ’s body, we are to physically do the things that he wants us to do. Help people, hug people, care for people. We are to do what Christ wants us to do. To serve as He would.

When he said, “Love your neighbor as yourself, HE MEANT IT.

~Francis Chan.

We don’t serve people just enough to get into heaven. This is what the expert in the law was trying to get out of Jesus. How little can I do and meet the requirements?

That is what Religion is interested in — doing enough to be justified. This is the problem with religion. Like the expert in the law, religion asks the wrong questions.

How can we apply this to our lives?

1. Pray for compassion

Why do we need to pray for compassion? Shouldn’t my heart be full of compassion because I am a Christian?

If loving our neighbor was easy, it wouldn’t have needed to be in a commandment. Commanding us to do so would have been redundant. Usually when we are commanded to do something, it is not what comes easy to us. We are not commanded to eat or breathe. We are commanded to love our neighbors.

2. Give without ceremony

Jesus did not tell us whether the Samaritan man had a film crew to record his act of compassion. We don’t know if he blogged or tweeted about how impressive his intervention was.

Charles Spurgeon and his wife would sell, but refused to give away, the eggs their chickens laid. Even close relatives were told, "You may have them if you pay for them." As a result, some people labeled the Spurgeons greedy and grasping.

They accepted the criticisms without defending themselves, and only after Mrs. Spurgeon died was the full story revealed. All the profits from the sale of eggs went to support two elderly widows. Because the Spurgeons where unwilling to let their left hand know what the right hand was doing (Matthew 6:3), they endured the attacks in silence.

~Chaplain Magazine

3. Get involved.

There is a Zen saying that says something like, “To know but not do, is to not know.”

The Bible has a similar message.

James 2:15-17

15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

36 "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"37 The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

That is Christ’s message for his church, “Go and do likewise.” Not like the religious did, the priest and the Levite, but like the social outcast with compassion and mercy did. That is our take-away today. Go and do likewise.

We don’t have to do this. But if have the world’s goods, and we see people in need and close our hearts, how does the love of God abide in us?”

Would we then be a church that would not be missed if we ceased to exist? Having compassion and doing something about it is remarkable. It is what the church has been instructed to do. Go and do likewise.

It may not be evident today, but the truth is that we need each other. We don’t like to admit it. In fact, we idealize individualism in our culture. Ralph Keyes, in his book We the Lonely People, says that above all else, Americans value mobility, privacy, and convenience. These three values make developing a sense of community almost impossible.

But consider the following: In one study, women saw friends regularly throughout the year.  72 % had a remission in depression.  That’s about the same success rate as antidepressants.  

Friends are good for your heart and soul

People with strong social networks are more likely to survive a major illness such as a heart attack or cancer. Human companionship can also help reduce the effects of stress on the body, protect against illness, and help us heal when we do get sick. They’re also less susceptible to chronic illnesses such as heart disease, inflammatory bowel disease and arthritis.

Source: CapeCodTimes.com

We need each other, but relationships don’t come naturally to us and are difficult to develop in our culture. It would be truly remarkable to see a group of people who relied on one another, who valued the contributions of one another, who as a result of this uncommon relationship were part of something far greater than any of the individuals could be on their own. This is what the church is supposed to be like, the church of scriptures. The church described in scriptures is not what we often see in our culture. This may be a contributing factor in how the church in our culture has lost much of its influence and relevance in our society. It has become, in many cases, an unremarkable, rigid organization made up of rules and man-made traditions– almost completely unrecognizable when compared to the church described in the New Testament.

Last week we started looking at what it takes to be a remarkable church. Seth Godin in his book Purple Cow says that, today, what isn’t remarkable is invisible. People are too sophisticated to be reached by advertising alone today. The only way for a message or an idea to spread today, is to be remarkable, to get talked about. I am convinced that Godin is right. To the degree that the church relies on the marketing and strategies of the past, it seals its fate in losing relevance and influence on people. You cannot just build a beautiful building with a tall steeple anymore. A church has to be more. Fortunately for us, the remarkable church is found in God’s word. Rather than brainstorming hoping against hope for a way to be remarkable, all we have to do is be like the church described in scriptures. It was remarkable. People talked about it. It made an impact on the society around it. Some people hated the church. Seth Godin also said, “If you’re remarkable, it is likely that some people won’t like you. This is one of the barriers that keep people or organizations from being remarkable. How can I do something if some people won’t like it? The remarkable, the purple cows, are very rare because people are afraid.”

That is where we will be going over the next few weeks, trying to discover how to overcome fear and apathy to be the remarkable church found in scriptures. This is the only way that a church can have meaningful and lasting impact in our society. Why build an unremarkable church? They already exist all around us.

1 Corinthians 12:12-27

12: The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

14 Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15 If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

21 The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don’t need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don’t need you!" 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

Unpacking the scripture passage

Putting this scripture passage in context, it is important to consider who Paul was writing to. The book of Corinthians is a letter from Paul to the church in Corinth. Corinth was a difficult place to have a ministry. It was such a difficult assignment, that it was the city that Paul stayed in the longest. There were many problems dividing the church at Corinth. Corinth was a seaport, a center of commerce and trade. It was like a melting pot city like New York or Washington D.C. which had a huge diversity of cultures and ideas. Corinth was also somewhat like Las Vegas, Sin City, known for immorality and even witchcraft. To further complicate matters for the church at Corinth, there were both Jews and Gentiles in the church, each with deep prejudices against each other.

Paul needed to somehow express how important each person was to the church, and how these people who were often at odds with each other, desperately needed each other. Paul needed to help bring unity to the fractured. To do this Paul used a very interesting analogy to accomplish this, the body. Verse 2, “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.”

Paul used the analogy of the Body to describe Christ’s church. He used it in several of his letters to different churches. The body is an amazing analogy. Church is a living and breathing organism, not an organization, not a building like we might sometimes think of it in our society, but a living body that is made up of lots of different parts all important to the whole, like our bodies.

Parable of the Train Tracks

Suppose your eye could say to your body, “Let us walk down these train tracks. The way is all clear. Not a train in site.” So you begin to walk down the tracks. Then suppose your ear says to the body, “I hear a whistle coming from the other direction.” Your eye argues, “But nothing is on the track as far as I can see. Let’s keep on walking.” So your body listens only to your eye and keeps on walking. Soon your ear says, “That whistle is getting louder and closer!” Then your feet say, “I can feel the rumbling motion of a train coming. We better get our body off of these tracks!”

Then Blackaby asks: If this were your physical body, what would you do? Would you:

1. Get off the train tracks as soon as possible.
2. I would take a vote of all my body members and let the majority rule.
3. I would try to ignore the conflict and hope it passed away.
4. I would trust my eye and keep on walking. My eye has never let me down, yet.

~Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby and Claude King

Blackaby talks about parts like eyes, ears, and feet, but Paul takes it further in his attempt to reinforce that all the parts are equally important.

22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other

I like how Paul put this, the “unpresentable” parts, the unmentionable parts. Digestion and waste elimination would be among them. How long could we live, or would we even want to live, without those parts? These parts are unpresentable, but Paul also says in Verse 22 that they are indispensable, just like the parts of the body in a church.

In March of 1981, President Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, Jr., and was hospitalized for several weeks. Although Reagan was the nation’s chief executive, his hospitalization had little impact on the nation’s activity. Government continued on. On the other hand, suppose the garbage collectors in this country went on strike, as they did not long ago in Philadelphia. That city was not only in a literal mess, the pile of decaying trash quickly became a health hazard. A three-week nationwide strike would paralyze the country. Who is more important–the President or a garbage collector? In the body of Christ, seemingly insignificant ones are urgently needed. As Paul reminds us, "The head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable" (I Cor. 12:21-22). ~David Parsons.

Conclusion

Most likely, if I asked you to pick a body part that you would like to be, you would choose the eye so that you could see nature and sunsets, or an ear so that you could hear beautiful music or laughter. My bet is that most of you would not pick the stomach. Aesop told a fable about the resentment that the other body parts developed toward the stomach.

The Belly and the Members: An Aesop’s Fable

One fine day it occurred to the Members of the Body that they were doing all the work and the Belly was having all the food. So they held a meeting, and after a long discussion, decided to strike work till the Belly consented to take its proper share of the work. So for a day or two, the Hands refused to take the food, the Mouth refused to receive it, and the Teeth had no work to do. But after a day or two the Members began to find that they themselves were not in a very active condition: the Hands could hardly move, and the Mouth was all parched and dry, while the Legs were unable to support the rest. So thus they found that even the Belly in its dull quiet way was doing necessary work for the Body, and that all must work together or the Body will go to pieces.

I thought of this in terms of organ donation. When an organ is donated to be transplanted to a body in need of it, there is a mad rush to get the organ to the city and the hospital where the transplant will take place. The organ cannot survive long without being inside a body. Conversely, the body in need of the particular organ cannot last very long without the organ, either. There is mutual need for each other. We need each other, the church, and the church (a living organism made up of living people) needs us.

Applications

1. No matter how much it is against your nature, come to the realization that you need other Christ-followers in your life.

Ecclesiastes 4:9 Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: 10 If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! 11 Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? 12 Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

A cord of one strand is not going to hold up. Murphy’s Law says, what is quickly broken, will break even more quickly and more spectacularly than you even suspect. Don’t let this verse go by you too fast. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! The Lone Ranger should be pitied ultimately. The desire to be the Lone Ranger comes from one thing– being hurt by others. Will we still hurt each other in the church? Yes. I will hurt you. I will forget something important to you. Other people around you will hurt you. But when we stick together we have someone to help us up, a shoulder to cry on.

2. Do everything that you can to cultivate and protect the unity of your church.

Ephesians 4:2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

3. Do not try to do by yourself what God has designed you to accomplish with others.

Just like the human body, the parts of the body are stronger and function better when they are attached to the body. The parts perform better AND the body performs better. It is a two way street.

In order for a church to be remarkable, not invisible, it has to rely on the strengths, creativity, concerns of its individual parts. It isn’t about just thinking of cool gadgets for the church to do. It is up to the parts to make it great.

Management guru Peter F. Drucker: No organization can depend on genius; the supply is always scarce and unreliable. It is the test of an organization to make ordinary human beings perform better than they seem capable of, to bring out whatever strength there is in its members, and to use each man’s strength to help all the others perform. The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.

~Management (HarperCollins), Reader’s Digest, p. 209

So it is with the church. It isn’t about a church thinking of great things and allowing people to join in; it is about the parts making the whole even greater. Ordinary people performing better than they seem capable of. The parts are better off. The whole organization is better off, if this is done as God intended. Let’s be remarkable, a church that Christ would be welcomed in. A church that God can bless and send people to, and know that they will be loved and given a chance to be a part of the body, to make the body stronger through their unique gifts and abilities, to be valued. If you feel like a tuba or cymbal player or the belly, unimportant or unappreciated, all you need is to be in the orchestra, in the body. Then, and only then, will you be all you were made to be by a loving God, a loving personal God who made you and designed you uniquely for His pleasure and for His glory.

There is another New Year’s Day tradition that fascinates me. It is the New Year’s Day “Polar Bear Plunge.” They have these events in many places throughout our country and around the world. The gist of it is that people get together and cheer for the participants and encourage them to jump into FREEZING cold water. There is one place in Canada that just had their 90th annual Polar Bear Swim. The water temperature was a balmy 6 degrees for this one.

I don’t know about you, but when hundreds of people in cold climate locations jump into single-digit water temperature, I think it is pretty remarkable. For the next few weeks, we are going to discuss what it means to be remarkable and why being remarkable is vital to us as a church.

Remarkable can be defined as “worthy of being or likely to be noticed, especially as being uncommon or extraordinary.” The root of the word is “remark,” literally you could think of the word “remarkable,” as something that is exceptional enough to make someone remark, or talk about it. So to use the Polar Bear Plunge as an example, it is a remarkable, if not useful event. One of the reasons why these Polar Bear Plunges often get news coverage is that they are over the top. It is not normal to go outside in the winter and jump in the ocean or a lake. If these people were in Florida and stepping into a hot tub, it would not be remarkable. It would be routine. This would not get press coverage. You see, the opposite of remarkable is not bad, (Remarkable can be good or bad.) The opposite of remarkable is boring.

Seth Godin, Author of Purple Cow, Transform Your Business by being Remarkable says this of being remarkable: “If it’s in a manual, if it’s the accepted wisdom, if you can find it in a Dummies book, then guess what? It’s boring, not remarkable. Part of what it takes to do something remarkable is to do something first and best. What’s fashionable soon becomes unfashionable. While you might be remarkable for a time, if you don’t reinvest and reinvent, you won’t be for long. Instead of resting on your laurels, you must commit to being remarkable again quite soon.”

You see, being remarkable is not something that you discover and put into practice. Like Seth Godin said, what is remarkable today will not be tomorrow. If all cows were purple, they would not be interesting; they would be boring, the opposite of remarkable. You cannot have a boring product idea and mask it with a huge advertising budget. People today are experts at ignoring advertisements. What is boring and unremarkable is invisible. A church that wants to reach a world today needs to be remarkable. Today, we will look at an unremarkable church in the Bible. The church in Laodicea, It was a church that resembles the church in America. This was a wealthy society who didn’t think that they had any needs. They went through the motions without much passion. The assessment that scripture gives of this church is valuable to us. After all, who among us want to grow an unremarkable, passionless church? That kind of church would not benefit the world around us. That kind of church would not honor or please God; it is a church that is invisible to the people who desperately need what the church is supposed to be, like a stealth life preserver.

Revelation 3:14-21

To the Church in Laodicea 14 “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. 15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17 You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. 18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. 19 Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. 20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. 21 To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.

The churches in Revelation

In chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation, we see Jesus’ assessment of seven churches: the churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphis, and Laodicea. Jesus addresses specific issues facing each of these churches. In 6 out of 7 of these churches, the assessment contains issues that the church is to be commended for, usually followed by several key things that the church fell short on, and a way to remedy the situation. Laodicia is the only one of these seven churches that Jesus did not say something positive about. This is something that we need to take notice, especially if I am correct in my assessment that the church in Laodicia most closely resembles the church in America, today.

Laodicea was a very wealthy society located at a spot where 3 highways came together. It was well known for commerce, banking, manufacturing black wool (they had many black sheep in the area). Laodicea was also known for producing a medicinal eye ointment. The great wealth of the city was used to build theaters, stadiums, and shopping areas. Does that sound like anyplace you know of? It was a land of opportunity. Their one Achilles’ Heel was their lack of an adequate water supply.

Some Biblical scholars say that this was the main reason that John used the “lukewarm” analogy. Laodicea relied on two springs to provide water to them. Hierapolis had hot mineral springs and Collossae had pure cold water springs. The hot springs provided healing powers, the cold springs provided refreshment. Laodicea provided neither. By the time the water arrived from these two springs (from 7 and 10 miles away) via aqueducts, it was lukewarm.

First, in verse 14, it says, “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write…” What does this mean? Is God inspiring John to write a letter to an angel about a church on earth? One of the words translated as angel is “messenger.” When we read about an angel of the Lord, it often refers to a messenger. This is probably a better way to understand this passage. Jesus is writing to the messenger of the church in Laodicea, their preacher.

Verse 14 also says, “These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation.” Who is the author? It is Jesus the ruler of God’s creation, the faithful and true witness, the Amen. We usually think of the word “amen,” as a way to end a prayer. The Hebrew word amen literally means, “It is happening now.” So in context with prayer we pray to God for something and end the prayer by saying, “it is happening now.” The assessment given to the church of Laodicea is coming from Jesus Himself.

Lukewarm

Verse 16 says, “So, because you are lukewarm— neither hot nor cold— I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” What does this work lukewarm mean? We don’t use it too much anymore. It means lacking conviction or enthusiasm, indifferent. Some translations of this verse are more graphic, and say, “I will vomit you out of my mouth because you are lukewarm.” A church that makes its savior sick to His stomach, is messing up. According to this passage, the lukewarm is repulsive to Christ.

I worked for many years in food service through high school and college, and even beyond. One analogy that came to mind for me about lukewarm is food safety. You see perishable food must be either hot or cold, or it goes bad. When food gets above 40 degrees F or below 140 degrees F, it is breaking down. If food is allowed to stay at room temperature for too long, it will give you food poisoning. It will be spat out. It is useless for nutrition then. This food will do more harm than good to a body, which is not what food is supposed to be. Lukewarm is repulsive.

Their true condition

17 You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.

The church of Laodicea didn’t feel like they had any need. They didn’t need God for “give us this day our daily bread.” They had plenty. Just like our society. How can you convince an affluent society that they need a savior? They are smug in their independence, but listen to the words of Jesus; they are “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.” Not word that we hear in praise songs. “I was blind but now I am blind and naked.” Doesn’t Jesus give me credit for at least serving Him a little. No! It makes Him sick.

Is Jesus being too harsh here? No, he is addressing the church because of His love for the church. Verse 19 says, “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. 20Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

Jesus will do whatever he has to in order to help us see this. If the rebuke isn’t enough then He will discipline us.

Verse 20 is the verse that I hope is the main take-away for you today. Not the rebuking, but the way God wants to help us. It is a verse that I think is used incorrectly by many preachers. Some say that God is at the door of our hearts knocking, waiting for us to open it. The context of this passage is the church, though. Jesus says that he is standing at the door of the church waiting for someone to hear His voice and welcome Him in so that he will have fellowship with us. This is my prayer for Real Live Church.

Conclusion

A couple of weeks ago I was in Little Caesar’s picking up a few pizzas and some wings to feed a couple of guys who were displaced by the Ladies’ Christmas event. I happened to order the wings just after they sold the last of those they had ready made. As a result, I was there for a while. For some weird reason, I have always been fascinated by watching how businesses operate. That is one of the reasons I majored in Management for my undergrad degree. I cannot help myself sometimes. I have to analyze businesses and see how they operate, how they could be improved. I do it in restaurants, bank lines, theme parks. Well, at Little Caesar’s I was pretty impressed. They have pizzas for like $5 a piece, ready made. (They do need help with having wings on hand), but the pizza production was very impressive. There was a steady stream of people coming in for pizzas. It was a Friday night and no one wants to cook after a tough week. Most people came in, paid, and left, normally with multiple pizzas, in 3-4 minutes. It was impressive. It struck me that this volume of pizzas in such a short period of time would swamp the traditional pizzeria. The only thing that was not exceptional was the pizza itself. It wasn’t terrible; it had all of the necessary ingredients: dough, sauce, toppings. But the pizza was unremarkable. I doubt anyone has ever come to you and said, “You have to go to Little Caesars, the pizza is amazing.” Right? Has anyone ever told you that?

Now back in High School, for our Senior Trip, our class went to the World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. The only memory I have of the World’s Fair was some pizza I had there. I don’t remember one single exhibit at the fair. But there was this New York Pizza stand, run by Italians from New York. Up to this point in my life, I always liked pizza, like most teens. But this was the first time I ever tried pizza that was life changing, that was worthy of all of the hype that it gets. This was amazing pizza. We were at the World’s Fair for maybe 6-7 hours, I probably ate at this place three times that day. It was remarkable pizza. When I ran into someone from my school at the fair, I told them about the remarkable pizza place. If I lived near a pizzeria that was served pizza like I had at the Worlds’ Fair, I would tell everyone I knew about this place.

The interesting thing to me is that the Pizza from the World’s Fair and the pizza from Little Caesar’s have essentially the same ingredients. But the pizza was not the same. The two places had different objectives. In order to get a remarkable pizza from a pizzeria, you most likely have to pay more than you would at Little Caesar’s, maybe 2-3 times more. You might even have to wait 20-25 minutes. It takes more personal investment, both time and money. No one would wait that long or pay that much for Little Caesars pizza, but if you want what is technically “pizza,” and you want it cheap, and ready the second you get there, Little Caesars is the perfect solution for you. One place values efficiency and instantaneous satisfaction without much personal investment. The other is passionate about making remarkable pizza, pizza that is worth spending the calories on.

I am afraid that Church has become like Little Caesar’s. It has all the right ingredients, speed, efficiency, and predictability without too much personal investment. But God desires a truly remarkable experience for us.

We do not need to dream up ways to make the gospel of Jesus Christ remarkable. God leaving heaven to die for our sins is not boring or drab. It is astounding. It is remarkable. Forgiveness is remarkable. God’s great love and mercy for us is remarkable. Hear what I am saying, we are not going to try to dream up ways to make the gospel more interesting and marketable over the next few weeks, we are going to try to see it for what it is: A life-changing, one-of-a-kind story about a love that we cannot fully comprehend. Shame on us for trying to think that we can add one thing to the gospel to make it more appealing to people. It’s like we’re saying, “God, you are in luck because you have me to help spin the gospel story a little to reel in people today. These people are a tricky bunch, you wouldn’t understand them. You need me to help you.” That sounds dumb to us, but the contemporary church is full of “experts” trying to do just that, spruce up a tired story to make it interesting to people today.

But they do not burn with a desire for more of God. They do not go hard after him in the secret place. They do not fling the door wide and welcome him into the innermost places of their emotions. But they keep him just outside the door and do their business with him coolly, lukewarmly, through the mail-slot. They like the ancient (but very unbiblical) proverb: Moderation in all things.

~John Piper.

Piper is right I think, Moderation in all things is unbiblical, especially when it comes to church. Church should be about extremes: extreme passion, extreme dedication, and extreme love.

The great commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” (Luke 10:27). That is extreme. It is remarkable. It is not lukewarm. All of your heart, soul, strength and mind cannot be confused with boredom.

Francis Chan said, in his book Crazy Love: “Lukewarm people are continually concerned with playing it safe; they are slaves to the god of control. This focus on safe living keeps them from sacrificing and risking for God.”

Seth Godin also said that the riskiest thing we can do today is play it safe. Round the edges off. Being remarkable is risky. People might complain. People might criticize us.

“Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour? We should all be wearing crash helmets."

~Annie Dillard

If we have no passion, if we go through the motions, we make Jesus sick. His words, not mine. He says he will spit us out of His mouth like when we drink spoiled milk or something. I would suggest that this is not the assessment that we would like Jesus to make on our lives, and of our church. Being a great church is more about who we are than what we do. No idea, no matter how amazing, can make a remarkable church out of the lukewarm.

Reflection/application

Ask yourselves, “Am I lukewarm toward God?” Am I playing it safe? Following the crowd? Trying to be as righteous as the next guy? Am I totally in love with Jesus Christ, or halfhearted, or partially committed to Him? This is lukewarm. It is unremarkable. If a church is filled with people like this it is invisible. It is irrelevant.

If so, ask yourself why?

“Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection.”

~Martin Luther King.

I think that “bewildering” is a great word for this. I know this can be uncomfortable, but we need to examine why we are lukewarm, if we are. The love that God showed us by sending Jesus is astounding and remarkable. If we are ho hum about it, is it possible that we never truly understood it. Francis Chan, whom I quoted before, questioned if there is such a thing as a lukewarm Christian. He suggested that the term might be a construct of unsaved people who didn’t want to think of themselves in that way.

Ask God to make you hot or cold. He stands at the door and waits. The most amazing thing about our God is that he always leaves us a way out. Jesus often told people their true spiritual condition, but he also said, “I came not to condemn the world, but to save the world.” He pointed out people’s condition because He loved them and wants them to be saved.

It is time for the church to be remarkable, to stop being Little Caesar’s and start being World’s Fair, New York Italian-made Pizza. What is unremarkable is invisible. That is why we are going to camp out on this for the next few weeks: to rediscover why the church of Christ IS remarkable. It is already, we don’t need to spin it. We just need to be who God made us to be. Passionate, sold out, selfless, loving.

Verse 21: “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.”

In the 13th Century, Nicolo Polo (father of Marco Polo who was famous for inventing the cool pool game) was visiting the court of the grandson of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan. Kublai Khan was the Emperor of China and he had never met Europeans before. He was delighted to meet this visitor from Venice and he was strongly impressed by the religious faith of this man; therefore, he sent a letter back to Europe urging that some educated men be dispatched to instruct his people in the teachings of Christianity. But, because of political upheaval and infighting that was taking place in Europe, there was a long delay in anybody coming. In the end, only 2 representatives of Christianity were sent and even they lost heart soon and turned back. Because of the failure of the church of that day, Kublai Khan turned instead to Buddhism and that has been the predominant religion in the area from that day to this.

Jason Jones

Too many times in the history of the church, the church has been its own worse enemy. During the 13th century, the church was focused on exerting papal authority over secular rulers. Church leaders spent time and energy trying to unify the Latin and Greek Churches. Other priorities of the church of that time were the crusades against heretics and recovering the Holy land from the Muslims. There was lots of churchy activity going on at that time, but reaching the Chinese with the Gospel, when the Chinese Emperor was more than interested and open to hearing more about it, was not a priority. We can be very busy, diligent, and creative, but if we are not focused on what we are supposed to be focused on as a church, our efforts are a waste of time, ultimately.

Peter’s Confession of Christ

Matthew 16

13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

What is the church?

Ecclesia is the Greek word used translated as “Church.” The literal meaning is “called out.” To say “The Church,” is like saying “The Called out.”

In 1 Corinthians 1:2 the term ecclesia is used to describe a local church when he referred “To the church of God in Corinth.”

In Ephesians 1 the word “church,” or “ecclesia,” is used to describe many churches, or God’s Kingdom.

In Matthew 16:18-19, the individual church, and the larger church are used interchangeably. The truth that is good for all churches, is the same truth that grows and prospers the individual church, and even each individual in the particular church. Before we unpack this important truth, I want to mention briefly, what this passage is not about. Typically, I wouldn’t mention what a passage of scriptures was not about, but in this case, I will spend a few minutes doing just this. The reason is the teaching on this scripture has been all over the board, and I wouldn’t want anyone to be distracted by the errant view of this passage and miss the important truth that it contains.

What the passage is not about

Jesus is not saying that Peter is the foundation for the church. Some of the confusion stems from the translation of Peter’s name, Petros (meaning small stone), and not Petra, a foundational stone. Logically, Peter would not be the foundation of Christ’s church.

Some believe the “rock” is Peter, the first Pope. The idea of “Pope” was first raised only after various bishops began claiming universal authority over the church, hundreds of years after the church began.

One important principle to us when confronted by a verse of Scripture that seems to be open to more than one interpretation is to use all other Scriptures that speak on the subject to clarify the meaning.

In 1 Corinthians 3:11, Paul says, “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

Isaiah 28:16 says “Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.”

What did Peter have to say about this? He was there.

1 Peter 2

4 As you come to him, the living Stone— rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For in Scripture it says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”

Peter himself said the we are little stones being built into something acceptable to God. Peter was nothing special. A common fishermen, but when he gave testimony about Christ, God used him mightily. Just like he does with you and me.

Staying true to our sermon theme, we should look at other instances where Jesus spoke of foundations and rocks.

Matthew 7 tells a parable about a wise and a foolish builder. The wise man builds his house on the rock. Verse 24 says, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” The rock/solid foundation in this parable is the teachings of Christ.

Who do we say he is?

What do the words of Jesus spoken to Peter mean then in regard to the church. What can we learn from their conversation? What is this foundation with which Christ will build his church?

In verse 13, Jesus asks: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” Today people want to know ultimately what we make of Jesus, too.

Peter answered Jesus with several variations of the answers that people had to this question. In verse 14 he says, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Peter’s answer to Jesus was not complete. People, no doubt, said worse about Jesus. The Bible tells us that some people thought Jesus was crazy and some thought he was evil. Muslims have their own answer to who Christ was; they think he was a prophet, but not deity.

Jesus weeded through Peter’s response and pressed forward. In verse 15 Jesus says: 15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” It is important that we can answer that question individually, not based on what everyone else says.

16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Notice Jesus’ response:

17 Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

So we looked a little at what I suggested that Jesus was not saying. What does Jesus say would be the foundation of His church? Jesus is not saying that Peter was going to be the foundation of Christ’s church. That would be blasphemy. Jesus says simply that Peter’s testimony would be a message that would change lives and the church would be built upon. Jesus went on to say that God revealed this testimony to Peter. Peter’s testimony about Christ was important to the church. In just the same way, our testimony about who Christ is is vital to the church today. It is this testimony that Jesus said that he would build His church on. Peter himself said the we are little stones being built into something acceptable to God.

There is something we should not miss in verse 18. Jesus says, “I will build my church.” The church is not ours; it belongs to Jesus. Not denominations, or deacons, or families who donate the most money to it. It is His.

Peter’s testimony concerning Christ was not only the foundation, but the power that will trample the gates of hell. Notice that Jesus did not say that the gates of the church would withstand the onslaught of hell. It is the other way around. The truth of the gospel is on the offensive. I mean that both ways. Christians should be on the offense. It is the gates of hell that collapse from the testimony of Christ-followers and the church. The gates of hell will not withstand it. Also, by on the offensive, I mean that the message of Christ should offend. It always has and always will until Christ returns. If the message of a church never ruffles anyone’s feathers in the world, it is likely not a message about Jesus Christ.

Stating the obvious

So, Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Was this the great foundation that Jesus said he would build His church on? YES. It seems a little obvious.

An old recipe for rabbit stew started out with an important, if glaringly obvious, first step: "First catch the rabbit."

Often times we get our priorities out of whack even when what should be the most important things are obvious.

In a Berlin art gallery is a painting by German painter Adolf Menzel (1815-1905). The painting is only partially finished. It was intended to show Fredrick the Great speaking with some of his generals. Menzel painted some generals and the background, but left the king until last. He even put an outline of Fredrick in charcoal, but died prior to finishing. Countless Christians in countless churches come to the end of life without ever having put Christ into his proper place, center stage.

Karl Laney, Marching Orders, p. 45

The things that Menzel painted were not insignificant. In fact, the people he painted were the king’s generals. They were very important people. But the painting was supposed to honor the king. Yet, the king is not found in the painting.

The church can fall into this trap, too. focusing on important people and things, but Jesus is not found in the picture.

Christ’s foundation gives priorities for the church

Every organization has a purpose. The purpose of Apple is to make computers and to make money. The purpose of a school is to provide education to students. Things like standardized testing and bussing people past 3 or 4 schools to go to a school across town are part of what schools focus on. School helps provide a resource so that both parents can work. Schools provide many things to society, but providing an education for everyone is the priority, the foundation.

The church has a purpose, too: to spread the news of our Savior to the world. Jesus instructed us to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That’s it.

Is that what the church looks like? Or is the church focusing on something else? Spreading the good news of Christ is our purpose, so everything else that the church does is collateral. If the 13th century church mentioned earlier would have focused on this, the results may have been astounding. Billions of people could have heard the life-changing truth of Jesus, which is illegal to proclaim there to this day.

The church is the only cooperative society in the world that exists for the benefit of its non-members.

William Temple

The church is supposed to exist for the benefit of its non-members, to show them the truth and love of Christ. Is that what characterizes most churches today? Or are we more concerned about the members than the non-members? Are we so concerned about our membership privileges, that we forget what we were designed for in the first place?

Having Christ’s Vision for the church gives us purpose

If we know what Jesus said the church is built on, we can know what the priority is. It also gives us strength and endurance to carry out what He wants us to do and what He wants us to be.

If you didn’t know anything about the church, the real church that Jesus had in mind, it would be hard to carry out Christ’s vision. It isn’t easy. The early church was not easy to be a part of. There was oppression, suffering, and danger involved in being associated with it. But those involved with the early church persevered because they understood the vision.

Knowing what a church is supposed to be and the foundation it is supposed to focus on helps us today, too. If we do not know the vision that Christ has for a church, we can be easily discouraged and worn out.

Vision allows us to serve with passion and determination, even when we are serving in seemingly meaningless and unglamorous ways such as: hauling in equipment, teaching children, bringing coffee and food for people. None of that stuff is easy week in and week out. It is not glamorous work, but when the message of Christ is our foundation, we can serve joyfully.

Andy Stanley says in his book, Visioneering, “It is the difference between filling bags with dirt and building a dike in order to save a town. There’s nothing glamorous or fulfilling about filling bags with dirt. But saving a city is another thing altogether. Building a dike gives meaning to the chore of filling bags with dirt. And so it is with vision.”

When a natural disaster strikes, armies of people will come together to fill sandbags for hours and days upon a time. Filling bags with sand is not fun, or easy, or glamorous. But when people do it to save a town from being annihilated by flood waters, they can do pretty miraculous things for long periods of time and be joyful about it, too.

This is our assignment as a church: to focus on what is important, and not all the trappings of church life such as worrying about our personal agendas or being concerned about what others think are important in church. We need to keep our eyes on the vision for the church, Christ’s vision, so that we can tirelessly fill the sandbags to save the city from destruction.

Conclusion

I want to read something by Keith Copley that challenged me greatly this past week.

In the Greek Islands, one can seek out the home of Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine. In the area, one can also find an olive tree, supposedly dating from his time. If this is so, this tree would then be some 2,400 years old. The trunk of this tree is very large but completely hollow. The tree is little more than thick bark. There are a few long, straggling branches, but they are supported by sturdy wooden poles every few feet. It has an occasional leaf here and there and might produce a few olives each year. In the fields around, however, are olive groves in many directions. The strong, healthy, young trees with narrow trunks are covered with a thick canopy of leaves, under which masses of olives can be found each year. The tree of Hippocrates can still be called an olive by nature, in that it still shows the essential unique characteristics, but it has long since ceased to fulfill an olive’s function. Tourists file up to inspect this ancient relic, having some link to a dim history, but the job of the olive tree passed long ago to many successions of replanted trees. Do you know any churches (or even people) like the tree of Hippocrates? The form is there, but the function is not. They have stopped reproducing and are satisfied just being big, or having a noble history.

Is the church of Christ like this tree? It looks big and impressive, it is technically an olive tree, but produces little, if any, fruit. The Church that Christ meant us to be is much more than that. When we focus on the message of Christ, and that is our foundation, Gates of Hades will not prevail against us.

When we love like Christ, and serve others like Christ, lives are changed. Eternally. Jesus’ love was so radical that it caused a stir. It still does today. Just as Peter said, “You are the Christ the Son of the living God,” that is our message, that is our priority, that is our vision. That’s all, folks. This is why we will never grow tired of filling sandbags. We have a city to save, and a country, and a world. For the Glory of God.

Someone who is good at following people, like these smooth agents in the movies, knows that you must act ambivalent toward the person you are following. You cannot even act remotely interested in the person you are following, yet you have to stay completely focused on them every movement. You keep a safe distance. In the movies, the secret agent is often involved in a random activity like bird watching or something. Another important thing in following someone is intel. In the movies there is usually some techie side kick who sends intel on the subject that they are tailing. They send stuff like where they work, where they live, where they hang out.

Now the analogy that I wanted to make concerning following people is a little strained, as you will soon see. I want to relate it to being a follower of Christ. Here is the problem with the analogy. Being fully God, Jesus is probably difficult to follow without him being aware of you. But try to let the God part go for a second and let’s just talk about the part of Jesus that was also fully man. The truth is that many people who claim to follow Christ probably would not set off his stalker radar. The fact is that no one would probably deduce that we were following Him at all. There are many reasons for this. Too many to discuss, in the constraints of the time we have today, so I want to suggest one of the main problems we have in following Christ. It is the intel that I mentioned before. Generally, the info we have gotten concerning how to follow Christ is flawed. The things that Jesus asks us to do sometimes make no sense to us at all. We trust our sensibilities and our faulty intel over the word of God. We trust what makes us comfortable and feel safe, when what Jesus calls us to do is anything but safe and comfortable.

A man was walking along a narrow path, not paying much attention to where he was going. Suddenly he slipped over the edge of a cliff. As he fell, he grabbed a branch growing from the side of the cliff. Realizing that he couldn’t hang on for long, he called for help. The man said, “Is anybody up there?” A voice replied, “Yes, I am here!” “Who are you?” “The Lord.” “Lord, help me!” “Do you trust me?” “I trust you completely, Lord.” “Good. Let go of the branch.” “What?” “I said, let go of the branch!” After a long pause, the man asked, “Is there anybody else up there?”

Following Christ is as much about letting go of control as anything else. God knows what is best for us. He made us. No matter how sharp we are, trusting ourselves will never bring us anywhere we want to go. We cannot follow Christ and ignore where he is going.

For the past several weeks, we have been studying through the first 6 chapters of the book of Nehemiah. I have been surprised at the direct parallels between building a wall and building a church. The project that God had given Nehemiah was what we might call a “God Sized” project. Nehemiah faced many obstacles in carrying out God’s assignment for him: Lack of people, lack of resources, famine, threats to personal safety, gossip, criticism. Nehemiah and the builders of the wall can teach us a lot about leading and following. As we wrap up our look at wall-building, we are going to, naturally, be looking into the book of Hebrews. Nehemiah showed his followers how to stick to the project that God had given them to do. In Hebrews chapter 13, we will see how the ministry of Jesus intersected the gates of the city. And how we are called to respond to the safety of the walled city, exactly how Jesus did. That is, after all, what being a follower means.

Hebrews 13

11 The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. 12 And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. 13 Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. 14 For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

15 Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. 16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

Jesus Suffered

Verse 12 says that Jesus suffered outside the city gate to make people holy. There are two extremely significant things to focus on in verse 12. First, Jesus Christ suffered. His suffering was even foretold a few hundred years before his birth in the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah 53

3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, … But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

The second thing that we need to focus on in verse 12 is where Christ suffered. It was “outside the gate.”

When the high priest performed an offering, sin that was represented was vile and offensive. The body of the slain animal was burned outside the city. They did not take sin lightly. God does not either.

Jesus bore the sin of all of mankind. He suffered outside of the city to make people holy with his blood.

We are called to a life of suffering

13 Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.

Some of you might be thinking: “Gosh, where do I sign up?” So we get to go out where it is unsafe and bear the disgrace that he bore? In case you haven’t heard, Jesus bore A LOT of disgrace. Do we really have to do that?

What does it mean to go outside the camp? Most of us do not live in a walled city. What can we, as Christ followers, take from the passage in Hebrews? To Israel, the camp was safety, comfort, where people that were basically like them. When the writer of Hebrews says, “Let us go to Him outside the camp,” it is a challenge to turn our back on comfort and safety, and bear disgrace so that people can find Christ. We can easily imagine why leaving the camp meant turning our backs on safety and comfort, but where is the disgrace?

The unclean lived outside the city. Lepers and poor people lived outside the city. When someone left the city gates, people hurled insults at them and told them they were defiled. People outside the city believed different things, too. They were different from the people on the inside. Yet Jesus suffered outside the gates of the city, and the writer of Hebrews encourages us to do the same: to go to the messed up and the unloveable, to follow Christ there, to follow the need and not follow comfort and safety.

Luke 19:10 says “for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Jesus valued the outcasts. He went to where they were, and was brutally criticized for it. The church today can learn from this. We must seek and save the lost and value them over our personal comfort and safety.

Christian Author Margaret Feinberg gave a list of answers to the question: How do you define success in ministry? One of her answers: When a church moves from being a fortress from the world to being the hope of the world.

Luke 21:16

You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. 17 All men will hate you because of me.

We have to go outside the camp where we are hated, where we are misunderstood, where we are uncomfortable, and, yes, where we will likely find suffering. Being a light in the darkness means that we have to go to where the darkness is. Being light unto the light is safe and comfortable, AND completely irrelevant to the darkness. Bringing light to the darkness has a cost. It cost Christ everything. We cannot expect anything better.

At the Nicene Council, an important church meeting in the 4th century A.D., of the 318 delegates attending, fewer than 12 had not lost an eye or lost a hand or did not limp on a leg lamed by torture for their Christian faith.

Vance Havner

On a wall in his bedroom, Charles Spurgeon had a plaque with Isaiah 48:10 on it: “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.” “It is no mean thing to be chosen of God,” he wrote. “God’s choice makes chosen men choice men…We are chosen, not in the palace, but in the furnace. In the furnace, beauty is marred, fashion is destroyed, strength is melted, glory is consumed; yet here eternal love reveals its secrets, and declares its choice.”

W. Wiersbe, Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching & Preachers, p. 223.

God chose us in the furnace of affliction, not out of the comfort or safety of the Palace.

Verse 14 says “For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.” It does not make sense to be holed up in the city that is not our home. Verse 14 says we do not have an enduring city, which means we are not home yet.

There is a story told of an old missionary couple returning to the States after many years of thankless service in Africa. They happened to be on the same ship to New York as President Theodore Roosevelt, who was returning from a big game hunt in Africa. As the ship pulled past the Statue of Liberty and into the dock, huge crowds were gathered to welcome him home. The press was out in full force, and thousands of people had come to get a glimpse of the president.

In the middle of the chaos, the aged missionary couple fought their way through the crowds with their large suitcases in tow. Silently they hailed a cab and made their way to a cheap hotel. The missionary sat on the bed and said to his wife, “It just doesn’t seem right. We gave our lives to Christ to win souls for the Kingdom in Africa, and when we arrive home there is no one here to meet us. The president shoots a few animals and receives a royal welcome.”

His wife sat beside him on the bed and said softly, “That’s because we’re not home yet, dear.”

Author Unknown

Romans 8:16-17

16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

We are called to two specific sacrifices: praise and serving others.

15 Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. 16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

You might recognize these two sacrifices as the Great Commandment.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The second is this: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

To paraphrase it, love God and serve Him and others with everything you’ve got.

Conclusion

Luke 9:23

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

Being a follower of Christ means to actually follow him. Taking up the cross is not a symbol of leisure and comfort. The cross is an instrument of suffering. Taking up the cross means picking up the cross for a life of suffering.

Suffering is the heritage of the bad, of the penitent, and of the Son of God. Each one ends in the cross. The bad thief is crucified, the penitent thief is crucified, and the Son of God is crucified. By these signs we know the widespread heritage of suffering.

Oswald Chambers in Christian Discipline.

If you have been given the impression that following Christ is all about living in the safety of the city walls and blocking out the dangers and trials of the stuff that happens outside the walls, you have been misled. Suffering is our heritage.

Must I be carried to the skies On flowery beds of ease, While others fought to win the prize, And sailed through bloody seas?

Isaac Watts

13 Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.

We are not called to a life of comfort or safety. We are called to go outside the camp, where it is risky. The life of a Christian should be more like one of these commercials for an energy drink. Faith is often portrayed as some boring second-rate kind of existence. Christ-followers should be the risk-takers, not the checked-out. This is not the kind of life that Jesus led. It is not the kind of life that Jesus called us to.

Annie Dillard said in Teaching a Stone to Talk, “Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? …we should all be wearing crash helmets.”

I love that. That is how our lives should be. Not safe, but risky, not uninspired, but unwavering in our focus and tireless in our effort.

I want to read you an excerpt of a sermon by John Piper that contains what I believe should be the mission statement of our lives AND of this church.

“When Jesus said, ‘You are the salt of the earth,’ and, ‘You are the light of the world,’ in Matthew 5:13-14, I think he was referring to the preceding verses where he had described the most outrageous joy imaginable. ‘Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven’ (Matthew 5:11-12). Be glad when you are persecuted and slandered.”

Piper goes on to say, “My desire and prayer for you is that your life and your ministry have a radical flavor. A risk-taking flavor. A gutsy, counter-cultural, war-time flavor to it that makes the average prosperous Americans in your church feel uncomfortable. A strange mixture of tenderness and toughness that keeps worldly people a little off balance. A pervasive summons to something more and something hazardous and something wonderful. A saltiness and brightness, something like the life of Jesus.”

Basically, the violinist owed her success to an interesting concept, “planned neglect.” She had to purposely neglect certain things in her life in order to have time for the most important thing. We must do the same.

In 1967 Charles Hummel wrote a classic essay called, “Tyranny of the Urgent.” In it he suggested that the telephone was one of the worst instruments of distracting us from doing important, vital things. When the phone rings, and we drop everything to pick it up, we are, in a sense, a slave to the phone. It is a tyrannical thing. The phone never asks if you have a second, or if you are doing anything important, it just bleats out sound.

Distractions are even worse today. A lot has changed since 1967. Now we have cell phones, laptops, BlackBerry’s, etc. demanding us to respond. These urgent things are often at the expense of the most important things.

Sometimes we can do a “good” thing at the expense of the best thing. Very often Churches can fall into this trap. One church may do something benevolent or helpful to people, and maybe the ministry or the activity is exactly the thing that God wants that particular church to do. But what is so common is that another churches sees this and assumes that they should do this thing, too. They think, “If the other church is successful and doing great things for God, why not just copy their ideas?” The problem, of course, is that God normally does not use His people in exactly the same way. The Bible has no record of multiple ark builders, or multiple long-haired locust-eaters baptizing in the wilderness. God is creative. He works in people’s lives in very unique ways.

So what could be wrong with a church doing something that is good? What is wrong with doing what God wants and just to being safe, doing what has been successful in other churches? In business, the problem is referred to as an opportunity cost. When your money, time, and resources are invested in one venture, they cannot be invested in something else that might be more lucrative for the customer. Our time and resourced are not infinite. We cannot be distracted by urgent things, even “good” things if they are not the things that we are supposed to be doing.

Hummel also said in the “Tyranny of the Urgent” essay that “Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important.”

Andy Stanley in his book Visioneering gives a great illustration about weddings. He points out that with many couples, as the wedding day gets closer, the couple thinks less and less about the marriage and more and more about the wedding day. The marriage is the most important thing, but the wedding day brings urgency. There is much to be planned, and scheduled. Stanley says, “There are very few ugly weddings, but there are plenty of ugly marriages.” We are often distracted by a good thing at the expense of the main thing.

As we find ourselves in Nehemiah Chapter 6, Nehemiah and his posse have faced much discouragement, fear, threats, and criticism, but their work had continued.
The opposition has not stopped, though. It had intensified. If discouragement, fear, and financial hardship couldn’t stop the builders of the wall, maybe the opposition could distract them so that they worried about secondary issues and not the vision that God had in mind for them. The builders needed to stay focused and finish well.

“It is important to start right, but it is imperative to end well.”

William Clubertson, former president, Moody Bible Institute

Nehemiah 6: Further Opposition to the Rebuilding

1 When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it—though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates— 2 Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.”

But they were scheming to harm me; 3 so I sent messengers to them with this reply: “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” 4 Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer.

5 Then, the fifth time, Sanballat sent his aide to me with the same message, and in his hand was an unsealed letter 6 in which was written:

“It is reported among the nations—and Geshem says it is true—that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. Moreover, according to these reports you are about to become their king 7 and have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem: ‘There is a king in Judah!’ Now this report will get back to the king; so come, let us confer together.”

8 I sent him this reply: “Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.”  9 They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed.” But I prayed, “Now strengthen my hands.”

10 One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, “Let us meet in the house of God, inside the temple, and let us close the temple doors, because men are coming to kill you—by night they are coming to kill you.”  11 But I said, “Should a man like me run away? Or should one like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!” 12 I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. 13 He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me.

14 Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, O my God, because of what they have done; remember also the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who have been trying to intimidate me.

The Completion of the Wall 15 So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. 16 When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.

17 Also, in those days the nobles of Judah were sending many letters to Tobiah, and replies from Tobiah kept coming to them. 18 For many in Judah were under oath to him, since he was son-in-law to Shecaniah son of Arah, and his son Jehohanan had married the daughter of Meshullam son of Berekiah. 19 Moreover, they kept reporting to me his good deeds and then telling him what I said. And Tobiah sent letters to intimidate me.

Chatter

When I played Little League baseball as a child, one thing that we did almost incessantly throughout every game was something called “chatter.” You have probably heard some form of baseball chatter such as, “Hey batter, batter, swing!” We did lots of talking, but it did not mean anything. But just because the words did not mean anything does not mean that the chatter did not have a purpose. It did. To what degree it worked varied from batter to batter, but the purpose was to distract the batter, to get him to think of something else besides hitting the baseball. If you could get the kid flustered, to jaw back with you, to forget the mechanics of hitting and concentration that he had practiced, it could significantly help your team. There is one Hall of Fame Baseball player who was famous for chatter: Yogi Berra.

There is a story involving Yogi Berra, a famous catcher for the New York Yankees, and Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves, one of the best hitters in the history of baseball. The teams were playing in the World Series, and as usual, Yogi was keeping up his ceaseless chatter, intended to pep up his teammates on the one hand, and distract the Milwaukee batters on the other. As Aaron came to the plate, Yogi tried to distract him by saying, “Henry, you’re holding the bat wrong. You’re supposed to hold it so you can read the trademark.” Aaron didn’t say anything, but when the next pitch came, he hit it into the left-field bleachers. After rounding the bases and tagging up at home plate, Aaron looked at Yogi Berra and said, “I didn’t come up here to read.” (from Nehemiah, Learning to Lead, J.M. Boice, Revell, 1990, p. 38.)

Chatter did not bother Hank Aaron very much. Google his name and prove it to yourself. No steroids were necessary, either. Chatter did not seem to affect Nehemiah, either.

2 Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.”

But they were scheming to harm me; 3 so I sent messengers to them with this reply: “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?”

Chatter can come in many forms such as suggestions, flattery, or concerns.

Proverbs 26:28 says, “a lying tongue hates those it hurts, and a flattering mouth works ruin.” This is exactly what Sanballat wants for Nehemiah and the wall—ruin.

Sanballat and Geshem play like they want to do lunch. They tried physical threats, criticism, and posturing. Nehemiah and his crew continued on. So they change their tactic. Now they act like they want to meet one of their colleagues. Notice that they wanted Nehemiah to come to them, too, away from the safety and support of his people. In our lives it sometimes works this way as well. Insincere people can chatter and try to lure us away from our support structures, too. Nehemiah didn’t fall for it. He sent word that he was too busy. He had a job to do. He could not give in to the “tyranny of the urgent.”

Accusations

The next thing that Sanballat tried to use to distract Nehemiah from completing his work was spreading lies about him. He insinuated that Nehemiah’s motives were impure, that he was going to revolt against the king, and that he intended to be king over Judah. In Verse 5 it says that the gossip was in an open letter. What the open letter meant was that the accusations were made public. The letter was not sealed, so that Nehemiah was not the first to hear the accusations. The slander was intended to be scandalous so that they would spread and distract Nehemiah since he would have to spend time refuting the charges. This happens today, too. This is not some obscure thing that happened during Nehemiah’s time. We can become distracted from the important things by people who question our motives and send open letters or chain emails full of slanderous gossip.

Nehemiah’s response?

8 I sent him this reply: “Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.”  9 They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed.” But I prayed, “Now strengthen my hands.”

Nehemiah knew that their charges were false, He said they were trying to frighten us. He prayed for God to strengthen his hands. He didn’t get hysterical that people said mean things about him. He prayed and stayed on the wall, doing his work, true to the vision that God put on his heart.

Intimidation

Black Bart was a professional thief whose very name struck fear as he terrorized the Wells Fargo stage line. Between 1875 and 1883 he robbed 29 different stagecoach crews. Amazingly, Bart did it all without firing a shot or taking a hostage. Because a hood hid his face, no victim ever saw his face. Black Bart used fear to paralyze his victims. His presence was enough to overwhelm the toughest stagecoach guard.

Today in the Word, August 8, 1992.

In Verse 13 Nehemiah said, “He had been hired to intimidate me give me a bad name to discredit me….and the rest of the prophets who have been trying to intimidate me.”

The key work here is “trying.” They had been trying to intimidate Nehemiah. It wasn’t working. Nehemiah’s response was bold. People with clear vision doing the work of God need to exhibit boldness.

“The quota of wimpy Christian has been filled.”

Charles Lyons

I love that quote. No more wimpy Christians are needed. The quota is filled.

Conclusion

After laying in rubble for over 100 years, the wall of Jerusalem has been completed in a mere 52 days. Nehemiah did not let intimidation or distraction derail their effort. They focused on what was important, and finished. This led those opposed to the wall to lose their self-confidence, and led Nehemiah and his people to praise God. It was obvious to everyone, pro and con, that this could only be explained by God’s hand on this project.

One summer in 1940, Vladimir Nabakov, a Russian-born novelist and his family stayed with James Laughlin in Alta, Utah. Nabakov came there to take the opportunity to enlarge his collection of butterflies and moths.

One evening, at dusk, he returned from his day’s excursion saying that during a hot pursuit near Bear Gulch, he had heard someone groaning most piteously down by the stream.

“Did you stop?” Laughlin asked.“No,” he said, “I had to get the butterfly.”

The next day, the body of an aged prospector was discovered in what has been renamed, in Nabakov’s honor, Dead Man’s Gulch.

“While people around us are dying, how often we chase butterflies!”

Clifton Fadiman, in The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes.

Church traditions and denominations can shape our thoughts more than we realize. Starting August 23rd, we will peel back the layers and look at what Jesus actually said about the church, Himself, the Father and the Spirit, the Bible, salvation, and our life’s purpose.

Come join us at 10:30 am on Sundays at the Halle Cultural Arts Center, located at 237 N. Salem St. in downtown Apex.

Two men who lived in a small village got into a terrible dispute that they could not resolve, so they decided to talk to the town sage. The first man went to the sage’s home and told his version of what happened. When he finished, the sage said, “You’re absolutely right.” The next night, the second man called on the sage and told his side of the story. The sage responded, “You’re absolutely right.” Afterward, the sage’s wife scolded her husband. “Those men told you two different stories and you told them both they were absolutely right. That’s impossible — they can’t both be absolutely right.” The sage turned to his wife and said, “You’re absolutely right.”

David Moore in Vital Speeches of the Day.

How many of you have ever heard of the Hatfields and the McCoys? Between 1878 and 1891 near the border of Kentucky and West Virginia, these two extended families had a feud that was legendary. The origin of the tensions cannot be known for certain. There were not imbedded reporters or anything, and the two sides didn’t really agree on much, including historical note-taking. It seems that most people say that the dispute originally began over the ownership of a hog. This hog had marks on its ears that suggested that it belonged to McCoy family, but the hog was on Hatfield property. No one could tell for sure if the McCoys snuck on Hatfield property to brand the hog with their markings, or whether the Hatfields napped a McCoy hog and snuck him off to the Hatfield estate. It was no joke, though. Many lives were lost in this feud, all because of a hog.

The point is that when you hear the name Hatfield or McCoy, you think of a long and bitter dispute. Some people think the same thing when they hear the word “church.” To many people, church brings to mind bitter disputes, self-righteousness, and judgment.

“The best argument for Christianity is Christians; their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians — when they are somber and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecrations, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths.”

Sheldon Vanauken

George Carlin once said, “I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own. Both of them together is certain death.”

We have been working through the book of Nehemiah for the past several weeks. We have seen how God has used Nehemiah to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem that had collapsed and been neglected for many years, causing the inhabitants of the city to live in fear of enemies and also in disgrace. Each chapter has told of a different challenge that Nehemiah and the other wall-builders had faced in their endeavor

In the first chapter, Nehemiah was told of the condition of the wall. He grieved over the news, prayed, fasted, and decided that God was urging him to do something about the wall. In chapter two, Nehemiah had to muster up the courage to go the king to ask for time off, for materials, and for travel, a move that could have cost him his freedom or perhaps his life. In chapter three, Nehemiah had to give out building assignments. He had to organize and try to use people where they could be most helpful. Last week we saw that Nehemiah’s crew was battling discouragement due to criticism and death threats issued by Sanballat, and Tobiah, two powerful and evil dudes. But, in spite of all of these challenges, they continued on. The enemy they would face in chapter 5 was more dangerous than Sanballat and Tobiah. It is important for us to look at this, because this enemy is, most likely, the most formidable enemy that a new church will face also.

Nehemiah 5

1 Now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their Jewish brothers. 2 Some were saying, “We and our sons and daughters are numerous; in order for us to eat and stay alive, we must get grain.”

3 Others were saying, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine.”

4 Still others were saying, “We have had to borrow money to pay the king’s tax on our fields and vineyards. 5 Although we are of the same flesh and blood as our countrymen and though our sons are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless, because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.”

6 When I heard their outcry and these charges, I was very angry. 7 I pondered them in my mind and then accused the nobles and officials. I told them, “You are exacting usury from your own countrymen!” So I called together a large meeting to deal with them 8 and said: “As far as possible, we have bought back our Jewish brothers who were sold to the Gentiles. Now you are selling your brothers, only for them to be sold back to us!” They kept quiet, because they could find nothing to say.

9 So I continued, “What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies? 10 I and my brothers and my men are also lending the people money and grain. But let the exacting of usury stop! 11 Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves and houses, and also the usury you are charging them—the hundredth part of the money, grain, new wine and oil.”

12 “We will give it back,” they said. “And we will not demand anything more from them. We will do as you say.” Then I summoned the priests and made the nobles and officials take an oath to do what they had promised. 13 I also shook out the folds of my robe and said, “In this way may God shake out of his house and possessions every man who does not keep this promise. So may such a man be shaken out and emptied!” At this the whole assembly said, “Amen,” and praised the LORD. And the people did as they had promised.

14 Moreover, from the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, until his thirty-second year—twelve years—neither I nor my brothers ate the food allotted to the governor. 15 But the earlier governors—those preceding me—placed a heavy burden on the people and took forty shekels of silver from them in addition to food and wine. Their assistants also lorded it over the people. But out of reverence for God I did not act like that. 16 Instead, I devoted myself to the work on this wall. All my men were assembled there for the work; we did not acquire any land.

17 Furthermore, a hundred and fifty Jews and officials ate at my table, as well as those who came to us from the surrounding nations. 18 Each day one ox, six choice sheep and some poultry were prepared for me, and every ten days an abundant supply of wine of all kinds. In spite of all this, I never demanded the food allotted to the governor, because the demands were heavy on these people.

19 Remember me with favor, O my God, for all I have done for these people.

The enemy that I mentioned earlier, the most intimidating one they have faced so far, was THEMSELVES. So how did the fighting begin?

In verse 1-5 Nehemiah hears some concerns raised by many of the wall-builders. These were very serious concerns that could derail their success and the completion of the wall.

Some of the wives began to despair due to the financial conditions, the famine, and the injustice that they were witnessing. They had taken a courageous step of faith and left their jobs and farms to join Nehemiah in the rebuilding effort that God had called them to. Now they find themselves broke, hungry, and taken advantage of, and they have had to sell their possession and some of their sons and daughter in order to survive.

Last week we looked at criticism and how damaging it can be to us, even “helpful” or “constructive” criticism. Criticism discourages and burns us out.

The people that came to Nehemiah were not just criticizing things for the fun of it, they were desperate. Nehemiah was very concerned about what he heard from them. He didn’t just let the news discourage him, he didn’t just act concerned to appease them, he actually was concerned. Nehemiah was an amazing leader. In this chapter we see valuable lessons on how to minimize the damage caused by our most dangerous enemy, Ourselves.

Empathy

Verse 6 said he became angry when he heard how some of the people were treating each other. Normally, we don’t think of anger as the emotion that comes to mind when we think of empathy, but in this case it is appropriate. As was the case when Jesus trashed the temple and turned over the money changer’s tables, it was over money.

Money usually brings the worst out of people. Every time there is a natural disaster, you inevitably hear a story about how some sleazy and greedy people make things worse on those who were already victimized by the disaster. When someone has lost almost everything, it takes pure evil to try to take even more from them. It takes a complete lack of valuing others, the opposite of empathy.

“Misfortune does not show who your friends are, but rather who your friends are not.”

Aristotle

It should be different with the church. Tough times should bring out our best, especially to each other, like grace, mercy, and empathy, the things that God freely gave to us in our poverty.

Paul said in 2 Corinthians 8:1-2, “1 And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. 2 Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.”

Generosity is the evidence of empathy. Nehemiah didn’t see generosity with his people. He saw selfishness and greed, people abusing their own. They had no compassion, no empathy, not even for their own.

This, too often, describes the church. This happens when the church uses people without caring for them. One antonym for empathy is “Machiavellian.”

Niccolò Machiavelli held that people were, by nature, untrustworthy, evil, and self-serving, and that those in power could only maintain their position through exploitative and deceitful actions. To Machiavellian leaders, empathy is just a tool for manipulation. Actually, this would be a sort of pseudo-empathy. Most people know whether you care about them, or are putting on a show.

Daniel Goleman says in Working with Emotional Intelligence, “We have natural safeguards against such artificial empathy-the capacity to sense when empathy is not sincere.” When some of your fellow wall-builders are using you and bringing great harm to you financially, physically, or emotionally, the completion of our work is in jeopardy.

Take action to repair relationships

One of the most amazing things that Nehemiah did was to address the injustices and division. He did not just wish it away. This could have backfired on him. His people could have turned on him. They could have lashed out on those who went to Nehemiah with the complaints. Nehemiah could not worry about what might happen if he addressed these things. He could not let the abuse continue. Even so, this must have been a hard conversation to have. These are the same people that he bragged on a couple of chapters back, and now he had to rebuke them. This is how healing begins.

Jeremiah 6:15

They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.

Saying “Peace, peace,” or acting like everything is ok when they are not, is not real peace. In most of our relationships, addressing problems is extremely difficult, so much so that we often avoid doing this.

In abusive spiritual systems, it is not permissible to talk about problems, hurts, and abuses. Hence, there is not healing and restoration after the wound had occurred, and the victim is made to feel at fault for questioning or pointing out the problem.

David Johnson-The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse (p. 32).

Nehemiah insisted on repentance. He made them promise to not take advantage of each other ever again. Nehemiah knew that, no matter how large and strong a wall they built, the people would be no better if they were not safe from each other.

Genorosity — Practice what you preach

I mentioned before that generosity was evidence of empathy. Maybe even a byproduct. Just giving someone a sad look isn’t empathy. In verse 14 we learn that Nehemiah was appointed as governor over the land of Judah by the king. But Nehemiah was not a leader that required that he be served. He was a servant leader, like Jesus was — the only real kind of leader that there is. In verse 16 Nehemiah says, “I devoted myself to the work on this wall.” Verse 17 and 18 tell of his generosity and the personal expense he incurred for the wall-builders. Yes, he was devoted to building a wall, but he was also devoted to God and to the wall-builders that God put in his life.

Conclusion

“The worst threats the church has ever encountered have come more from within than without. External pressures are like water on a grease fire — causing the church to intensify and spread. Internal strife and bickering are like a deadly disease — sapping the strength and vitality from the Body.”

Russell Brownworth

It isn’t the enemy outside of the wall that hurt us. It is the internal war. When Christians fight, it is a little like nuclear war — no one really wins.

Paul says in Galatians 5:13-15, You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. 14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

If we keep devouring each other, we will be destroyed by each other.

“You can have a ‘successful’ church without loving God or People.”

Francis Chan

This statement is true if you define success as being large in number or budget, influential, and growing. That is not the definition of “successful” that I would use in reference to a church. Is it your definition? If not, then we have to do it God’s way, by loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves.