November 4, 2004
Scripture
Acts
2:42-47
42They
devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the
breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and
many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers
were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their
possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they
continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their
homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and
enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily
those who were being saved.
Message
“Relationships
with God and Others”
John 3:16
As I mentioned to our children, All Saints’
Day is a celebration of those among us walking in the Christian faith, but also
all who have journeyed before us. It is also a recognition of those who will
follow us in the Christian faith, walking in the way of Jesus Christ.
As I consider this breadth of humanity we remember
this day, honestly there are a few interesting ancestors in our family of faith
with whom I’m not quite comfortable. For example:
·
Anthony – perhaps the first famous monk, a 3rd
century Christian who chose to live as a hermit in the caves of
And then of course,
there was
·
Simon, a Syrian Christian who died in 459 A.D. at the age of
69. For the last thirty years of his life Simon lived on top of a pillar
…called a stylus, hence his name became Simon Stylites.
Now, there are many example I could choose from to highlight
the colorfulness/quirkiness of our Christian family, but I mention these two in
particular, together with all who have chosen a cloistered life (a life
secluded from others), because I can’t for the life of me agree with their habitual
isolationism. Now I’m not saying that they didn’t sense God calling them to
such a life, but rather, that such a calling is not only rare, but it would
require great sacrifice.
I say that because I firmly believe
that God did not create us to live isolated lives. I believe at the very base
of understanding humanity is the truth that we were all intended to live in
relationship; relationship with God and with one another.
Now, we may receive callings that cause us to live more
isolated that the norm, but without relationships… without any human contact we
know what happens to people, we know because isolationism has been for centuries
a powerful tool of warfare, where prisoners of war are “broken” for the
purposes of the enemies by simply being kept isolated from other people.
This
Sunday as we continue to consider those crucial ingredients which promote
spiritual growth (last week having talked about God’s Word) today I want to
examine the importance of relationships. To state what I believe to be “obvious”:
We are living beings created in relationship for
relationships and it is in supportive
relationships that we grow spiritually.
If you will allow
me to do so, I preach this Word to you this day with apologies to my parents,
for all the years I gave them grief about our Church being a “social club”.
While I was right in making such an observation during my teenage years, I was
wrong in believing that somehow that was a bad thing. Relationships, and
whatever we do to promote healthy and supportive friendships, are a very good
thing, and are a crucial element within any church. Now, if that is all the
Church is, you’d have a problem, but when human relationships are built
together with our relationship with God, it is a very good thing. As the
President of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN once commented:
Never trust a Christian fellowship where
Christians regularly worship together but don't like to eat together, or where
they eat together but neglect
worship. - Richard H. Bliese, President of Luther
Seminary (St. Paul, MN)
Today we’re do both…. We’re worshiping….
And we’re eating soup. We are drawing nearer to God, and we’re drawing nearer
to one another. And that is a good thing!
Today I want to let scripture define the
importance of relationships by defining who we are, and by describing how
relationships help us to accomplish our purposes here on earth.
1. The first scripture
I point us to is Genesis 1:26-27.
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our
likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air,
over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move
along the ground."
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Created as a reflection of God’s nature, and not
as gods themselves, this first creation account in Genesis highlights the
relational nature of our being. For not only do we reflect the image of a God
who exists as an “us” (“let us make man
in our image…”, our first biblical clue as to God’s Trinitarian nature),
but also, when we were created we were created “male and female”.
In this first creation account,
we see that we were created in relationship for relationship. And one of the
ways we continue to reflect God’s image in this world is by creating new beings
within a healthy, supportive relationship. Children are to be born within a
healthy relationship for healthy relationships, but as is so evident much of
the brokenness in our society comes about when those relationships are either
unhealthy or non-existent.
2.
The second scripture I point us to in our study
of the importance of relationship to spiritual growth is Genesis 2:18.
In this second account of creation, not meant to
rival the first in terms of scientific truth, but designed to convey additional
truths, we are given a powerful lesson about human nature.
In
this second creation account, after creating the heavens and earth, plants and
animals, God has created only Adam, and we read:
The LORD God said,
"It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
I don’t know if this verse has ever struck you,
as it has me, that Adam could somehow feel loneliness. God said, “It is not
good for the man to be alone.”
What
strikes me so hard here is the notion that in an otherwise perfect world, where
Adam and God lived in perfect relationship, that something was still amiss; and
that something revolved around aloneness and its eventual feeling of
loneliness.
Have
you ever wondered how it could be that Adam might experience loneliness even
while living in relationship with God?
Again
I come back to an earlier statement of what I believe to be true:
…that human beings
were intended to live in relationship;
relationship with God and with one another.
This is why I have a hard time with saints of
the church choosing to live isolated from others. This is why I even have a
hard time with people who rationalize a lack of church attendance by saying “I
can worship God all by myself.” Now that is true… but my heart cries out, “Why
would you, if you could worship God along with other people?” Can we not see
and appreciate the importance of furthering both our relationships with God and
with one another? That is how we were created!
This
past week, as I slowly recovered from “the bug” that has infected so many of us
with deep and sustaining coughing, I found myself with severe leg pain which
turned out to be the sciatic nerve irritated by all the coughing. And I was
reminded all week long that pain is generally a good thing because it certainly
tells us that something is wrong. People who suffer diseases which affect pain
receptors, like people with leprosy… do not feel the pain necessary to take a
hand out of a fire, or to feel a stone crushing a toe.
When
we think about Adam’s loneliness, we too need to see that concern expressed by
God as an affirmation that something is wrong when Adam is alone. That is
because we were created for relationships with God and with one another.
3.
Now I want to consider that same verse again,
along with some New Testament passages to make a third point about relationships.
I do so to emphasize the word we translate in the NIV as “helper” Genesis
2:18b
“…..I will make a helper suitable for him." God
said concerning Adam
For in describing who Eve would be for Adam, we
move from confirming ourselves as relational beings, to seeing how we affect
one another in relationships. In other words, we begin to explore some of the
purpose God has given us to live relationally in this world.
But
having just highlighted the NIV translated word “helper”, I want to say that
there are better translations. For if we look at more literal translations,
albeit more difficult to read, we would be given the words “helpmate” (Darby’s
Translation) or “counterpart” (Young’s Literal Translation). And I
think the distinction is extremely important, because the term “helper” in our
culture seems to denote someone of lesser importance or status, and that is not
what the Bible is saying.
In speaking about the nature of
their relationship, Adam and Eve were helpmates, counterparts… they were different
but equal.
Now after they chose sin rather
than obedience to God’s ways, that changed, didn’t it? Eve was told by God that
Adam would “rule over her” because of her sin. That is true. But what we
oftentimes forget in Christianity is that as Jesus put to death our sins on the
cross, so too he reestablished the nature of our relationships with one
another.
Galatians
3:28
There is neither Jew nor
Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.(Paul
wrote to the Galatians)
When we
read these verses, and study Jesus’ interactions with the women presented to us
in the Gospel stories, we see a true liberation of relationships once defined
by sin. And this liberation is not just between men & women, husbands and
wives, but it speaks just as strongly to all people living in God’s Kingdom.
When we hear descriptions of working
relationships within the Body of Christ, we cannot help but be amazed at his
same emphasis on being helpmates and counterparts. For not only were we created
to live in relationship, but we are also gifted by the Spirit for working in
relationship with one another.
Simply read any of the Biblical descriptions of how
spiritual gifts operate in the church, and you will note that while gifts may
differ.. and we are encouraged to “eagerly desire the greater gifts” (1 Corinthians
12:31)…
that is, to be willing to take on greater responsibility in the Church,… every
person is gifted with an crucial element for God’s work.
As the Apostle Paul wrote:
1 Corinthians 12:14,
21-22a, 24b-27
14Now the body is not made up of one part but
of many. …..
21The eye cannot say to the hand, "I
don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need
you!" 22aOn
the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,
….. 24bGod
has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts
that lacked it, 25so that there should be no division in the body, but that
its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part
suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part
rejoices with it.
27Now you are the body of Christ, and each
one of you is a part of it.
New
life in Christ is defined by a new relationship with God, and a new
relationship with others who are different but of equal importance, all working
toward a common goal.
4.
As we see
our purpose played out relationally within the church and note how we affect
one another’s spiritual growth within the church, the Bible also speaks of the
importance of living relationally outside the Church. 2 Corinthians 5:17b-20 proclaims
…. if anyone is in
Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All
this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the
ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world
to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has
committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore
Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
Once
again we see how it is that we bear the image of God into the world, for as God
is the Reconciler, we get to be His ambassadors; bearing His passionate message
in ways similar to that of Jesus Christ.
In
perhaps what is the most relational passage in all of scripture, we are given
the model for our relational behavior as ambassadors of God’s reconciliation in
this world.
John 3:16-17
For
God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes
in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son
into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
What is it that has made all the difference in your life if it
isn’t that God Almighty has acted out of love for you.. for me… for us? You
can’t get more relational than that! The Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians
in Roman:
Romans
5:7-8
Very
rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might
possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While
we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
When we talk about what God has done for us, we
are not talking about some cheap relationship which exists only for what God
can get out of it. No way!
We’re talking about a relationship based solely
and totally upon an unconditional and sacrificial love. And that is the kind of
relationship God calls upon us to not only share with others in the Church, but
to take outside the Church and share with all peoples:
-
A love that gives,
-
A love that seeks justice, shows mercy and
offers grace.
-
A love that forgives, because we’ve been
forgiven by God, and
-
A love that proclaims the Good News of God’s
reconciliation in Jesus Christ.
It is when we
recognize all the ways we have been transformed because God has brought us back
into a relationship with Him, that we can begin to see how we can transform one
another as we live in a relationship of love with others.
When we reflect Gods loving relational nature
into the corners of our own lives, we begin to accomplish our greatest purpose
in life; to glorify God with our lives. For as we live in relationship with God,
His glory will outshine our imperfections, and He will be seen by others.
Today as we remember the One in whose image we were created,
in whose love we have been redeemed and called to be His ambassadors of
reconciliation, may we allow God to be made visible in our relationships with
others, so that they too may spiritually grow. AMEN
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL
VERSION ©.Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing
House. All rights reserved.
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