Values We Live By

SERMON: 2008-01-06--ny08--values-we-live-by-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:43:16.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with the speaker introducing the topic of values (sermon exposition) and continues through scripture readings, theological application, and a sustained musical/chant conclusion, all forming the core material of the sermon. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:39:49.300-00:43:11.740 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- I want to share some thoughts with you this morning on values we live by. We talk a lot in this church about our vision statement and our mission statement. We haven't talked a lot, at least publicly, about our values. And a vision is what defines who we are and where we're going as a community. When mission describes the component steps towards fulfilling that vision, then our values are those things that we hold dear in the process of stepping into the vision and into the mission. I want to talk about that a little bit and I want to do that sort of broadly speaking on the basis of Acts chapter 2, the verses 42 to the end of the chapter 47. This is the early church containing in itself a microcosm of the community of faith that God will be building throughout the course of history. Acts chapter 2, of course, is the story of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Three thousand were swept in the kingdom as under the anointing of the Holy Spirit Peter proclaimed that Jesus is Lord. And then it says, "They," that is the new converts, "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread into prayer. Everyone was filled with awe and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common, selling their possessions and goods they gave to anyone as they had need. Every day they continued to meet together with the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. Let me give you just a little bit of background to the subject of values that we live by. The subject of values was first addressed back in November of 2001, initially at a staff council retreat. We spent some time at that retreat talking about what are some of the values that underlie what we do? What is important to us in the process of carrying out our vision and our mission? Those values then were subsequently shared with the congregation at a congregational meeting and out of all of those discussions we made up a gross list of about two dozen values that we as a community felt defined us. Those two dozen were eventually refined so that when Dave and Valerie teach new members class now, they give them a sheet that embraces approximately seven values and I want to reduce them just a little bit further this morning for our purposes and talk about four values that I think define this community. Values that shape our corporate spirit. Values that we don't necessarily talk about a lot but that underpin everything we do. You don't even know they exist until you run a foul of them and then you wonder what is it that hit me? Why am I out of stride with the rest of this community? Reason number one I think is the centrality of our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Notice in this text the early church devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. What was the apostles' teaching? The centrality of the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and our reconciliation with God the Father through faith in Him. I remember back in my seminary days, Dr. Fred Kloster was my New Testament professor and he used to always tell us as students concerning preaching that our preaching needed always to be what he called Christologically Theocentric. You have to go to seminary to appreciate that kind of language. It's right up there with prolegomena which was another word that he used to throw at us all the time. Theocentric means centered on God, theos, the Greek word for God, Christologically centered on God through faith in Jesus Christ and I have thought many times since then we really ought to add the word pneumatically so that it becomes pneumatically Christologically Theocentric. I thought I'd impress you with that this morning. Pneumatos, the word for wind or air, hence for Holy Spirit and so our relationship with God the Father is through faith in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. We can't be around this community for very long before you know that we take seriously the message of Jesus because there is no name given among men under heaven whereby we can be saved but through the name of Jesus. Now that has some practical implications because it means that we do indeed proclaim Christ. Him we proclaim says the Apostle Paul in Colossians 1 verse 28. He is central to everything that we do because without him there is no relationship with God and there is no way to draw together men and women from every tribe, tongue and nation. It means too that we take seriously the challenge to encourage people to put their trust in Jesus. We don't just take that for granted. If you listen to our Kids Up program then you know that periodically every season we have what they call salvation Sunday. Salvation Sunday being a Sunday in which they place a special emphasis on encouraging the kids to come to faith in Jesus and to surrender their lives to him doesn't mean you can only get saved on salvation Sunday obviously. But it means that we take seriously the challenge that at some point or another there needs to be a personal surrender to faith in Jesus. A lot of us who have been raised in the church particularly in terms of our own background denominationally know that that has often been taken for granted and where that is often taken for granted sometimes what happens is that you think you're there but you're not and lives change when we bend the knee before Jesus and we receive him by faith. And it also means of course that we encourage one another to live out our life in Christ. It isn't just about making a commitment and now I'm saved and one day I'll go to heaven. No it's very much about learning how to live that out. Paul says again to the Colossians as you received Christ as Lord so live in him. It's not the start of the journey that matters. It's the continuation and how you finish on that journey that matters. We preach the centrality of Jesus. Very important to understand and appreciate because what is the tendency historically in Christian community? It is to minimize the cross of Christ. It is to advocate an other glue that holds a community together whether that be good works or law keeping or tradition or background or whatever else. And what happens then is that you lose the vitality of the presence of God because it's only in union with Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit that God becomes real and that we have the motivation the power and whatever it is that we need to put to death the old and to put on the new and learn how to walk in fulfillment of the vision and the mission that God has entrusted to his people. People who lose Jesus lose their passion for lost people because why lead people to Christ if you don't need to come to Christ to begin with? Jesus is central I believe in the values of this community. Second value that we hold dearly I think and one is I'll show you in a few moments occasionally gets us into a lot of trouble is that we value personal growth in Christ. It was Peter many years ago who said grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus the early church. Why did they gather together to listen to the Apostles teaching and shared in the breaking of bread and in prayer? Because they wanted to grow in their relationship with Christ you know as well as I do and I've said this many times just because we come to faith in Christ does not yet mean that we are mature in him. There are still many many areas of old ways that we hold on to and many new areas that we have not yet been able to step into and the purpose of being joined to Christ is to become like Jesus the word Christian means little Christ. It means to be an image bearer of him and to be an image bearer of him then means to engage in the process of sanctification and sanctification as you know has two components it means on the one hand putting off the old and on the other hand putting on the new. Paul talks about it in Ephesians chapter 4 he says put off your old self which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires and put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness and sanctification ought to be a natural process of our union with Christ it's a function of abiding in him and letting his life flow into us and so typically what happens is you have a person they come to faith in Jesus and you know they're pretty cheerful and happy in the early stages certainly of the Christian life and then God says all right now you're one of my children and so I'm gonna teach you how to live and how to behave and how to act as one of the children in my family and the Holy Spirit then begins to work in our hearts to help us to put off the old and to put on the new and so typically what happens is we become aware of sins that we have committed that we had never thought previously were sins and so we come under conviction and we're invited to confess those and to repent of them before Jesus and we feel cleansed and renewed and then the Holy Spirit comes along and he begins to address our thought patterns and the philosophies that we subscribe to the things that we think that are right and wrong and the way that we view life and the way that we see people and so the Holy Spirit comes along then and he says you know your attitude towards that man or that woman that is not a Christ-like attitude that is judgmental that's condemnation and we say Lord is that really so and you begin to deal with that and then as time goes on you discover that pretty quickly in your life you run into certain ceilings and you discover well you know there are certain people I just don't like and I don't care Lord if I'm a Christian and you want me to love my I just can't do it and so that drives that whole process then whereby the Holy Spirit starts to expose the foundations of our lives the place where we're broken the the places where fractures exist where the grace of Jesus cannot reach into the deep recesses of our lives and as we step into that and he begins to bring healing and then at the same time he begins to call us forth he calls forth gifts in us that we didn't think we had and he encourages us to step out into places where we didn't think we could ever live if we're shy we'll discover sometimes he wants us to speak boldly and where we're loud and noisy he will tell us to quiet down so that we can be sensitive to the needs of other people all around us and he calls us forth from where we are to where he wants us to be that's sanctification it's a practical reality and you don't know what conflict is and struggle is until the will of God begins to cross your will because there are places there where this sort of happens naturally and you just put it off and you put the new on and on you go but every so often the Lord will find that besetting sin won't he he'll find that besetting belief system he'll find that besetting attitude deep within our hearts and he'll flush out stuff that we didn't even know was there I gotta tell you from a personal point of view if you some of the difficulties that our families have has gone through in recent years the Lord flushes out things in my heart that I'm not terribly proud of and I bet you you can identify with that in terms of your own life and your own experience and it's how we respond then to that sanctifying work of God's Holy Spirit as he is trying to transform us into the image of Christ that determines what happens in terms of our spiritual growth if we yield to him and if we allow him to do in us what needs to be done then we discover that his amazing grace is of such a nature that he can transform the vilest sinner into the greatest saint and in those places where we choose to fight him and to resist him and go our own way we'll discover that as we resist the Holy Spirit he draws back and our lives become cold and our hearts become cold and before you know it we're going through the motions of religiosity but we've lost the passion we've lost the fire and we've lost the power and trust me there isn't a one of us here who is immune that when the fire of God's Holy Spirit begins to cleanse us out in those places and to draw us forth who isn't occasionally tempted to throw in the towel and to say this road is too hard and so the writer to the Hebrews warns us and he says take care lest there be in any of you an evil unbelieving heart that leads you to fall away from the living God in some ways this church community is not an easy community to be part of because we don't treat every day business as usual and I've often said to people I don't care how long it takes for you to grow up in this particular area of your life take 10 years take 20 years take 30 years but understand that if we're disciples of Jesus and if we're going to follow him then sooner or later when he prompts us we have to yield to him and ask him to make us willing to be made willing if nothing else to be transformed in those places because when we call Jesus Lord it means precisely that he is the boss and if only we will bow before him in those areas he is more than able to accomplish whatever needs to be done am I making sense when I'm talking this way it was when Jesus talked this way that he lost a lot of his followers because the road was too hard and sometimes in this community when this is a value that we embrace and uphold there are always some who decide this road is too painful and it's too difficult and they wander away and I got to tell you that over the years there is nothing that grieves me personally more than when people I love deeply sometimes have deeply committed myself to and poured my life into when they come to those places where they say listen this road is too hard I'm going to find an easier way around the cross and that doesn't mean that such people wander away from faith in the long term or that they won't come back it doesn't mean that years can be lost like Israel in the wilderness of old wandering around until God could raise up a generation that would just trust him to lead them to where they need to go so one of our values is relationship with God through faith in Jesus another value that I think we have as a community is to grow up to maturity in Christ so that God's love can flow through us and we can be his agents of redemption unhindered by our own crud and junk and then I think a third value that we share together is the value of Christian community notice again here in the book of Acts how the early church not only devoted themselves to prayer and to the teaching of the apostles but they also devoted themselves to the breaking of bread and to sharing their lives together every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts they broke bread in their homes and they ate together with glad and sincere hearts praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people why because when by faith you're joined to God the father and become one of his children like it or not you become brothers and sisters of everybody else that has become a child of your heavenly father and just as in our natural families we don't have any say about who our brothers and our sisters are going to be so in the family of God you don't have a lot of say about who your brothers and your sisters are going to be and you know just as well as I do that our dear Lord has got some very strange children in his household and that is everybody else accepted of course that's just the way life is why because it isn't just about individuals going to heaven God is building a people a new community that in its walk with him and in its walk with each other can model increasingly the values of heaven and so when we come into relationship with him he starts to work at bringing us into relationship with each other and helping us to grow together with Christians in local communities and Christians all around the world because we confess one holy Catholic or universal church but growing us in a body so that as a body we can be the hands and the feet of Jesus resting under peace opposition that no single Christian has all the giftings only Jesus had all the giftings and he shares that with you and with me a spiritual gift here a spiritual gift here a hand here a foot there and I there and you're there put it all together and you've got a body that can do things in the world that none of us can do individually or alone now again has a number of practical implications it means we need to welcome all God's children Romans 15 seven accept or welcome one another then as Christ has accepted you think it three with me whom does Christ accept not everybody everywhere as some people would like to teach because that's universalism and that's not a biblical teaching at all what do you have to do to come into the household of God or to become a Christian the family of God a humble broken contrite heart and spirit and awareness that I'm not worthy Christ paid the price and through faith in him my sins are forgiven I'm declared righteous before God and so I'm one of God's children and scripture says if God accepts you then I need to accept you and if you're here last night that's what they've talked about I think one of the best sermons he's ever preached deep from his heart filled with passion and biblical truth opening up our hearts are we ready to let the Lord change our prejudices our likes and our dislikes anybody can love those who are like them Jesus says even the Gentiles do that but I tell you it takes the Holy Spirit to love those who not only you don't like but who have hurt you or wounded you or who misunderstand you that becomes the test of spirituality welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you and then we need to share our lives our time our talent and treasure notice again how every day they continue to meet together in the temple courts I often wonder did these people not have jobs to go to I mean really where were they what were they doing well they obviously like hanging around with each other now it helped that they shared all their possessions in common and the rich shared with the poor and everybody was happy some people have argued that the famine they faced later on in Jerusalem was the product of an economic system that went awry I don't know that all I know is that what communism tried to do by legislation and force that is the sharing of communal wealth the early Christian community did out of their hearts because they loved God and they love each other when I see in a community like this people sharing their lives and the resources and their talents freely with each other for the glory of God then I know that we're bearing fruit in a way that honors God because that's what it's about this North American individualism where what's mine is mine and what yours is mine too if I can get my hands on it is far removed from biblical reality and if God gives you or me gifts of time or talent or treasure then the challenge of Christian community is to share that in a way that those who have little have no lack and those who have a lot don't have any left over that's Paul's interpretation in the New Testament in the book of Corinthians you will recall about manna the fact that when they went and they gathered it those that gathered a lot didn't have too much and those that gathered little had no lack we share our resources our time our talent and our treasure our giftedness is never just for me so that I can feel good or that I can be somebody no it's so that I can serve you better to help you on your journey to become everything that God wants you to be so we need to open up our hearts wide and welcome those whom God welcomes we need to share our lives prudently and wisely indeed but even as Jesus lay down his life and then we need to go step beyond that and enter into covenant with each other a covenant is a solemn agreement whereby two parties make certain pledges and commitments to each other marriage is a covenant the man in the traditional marriage format promises to love honor and maintain his wife she promises to love honor and obey that's controversial in this day and age but I'm trying to describe the concept of covenant and when we become part of Christian community we enter into covenant not only with God but we enter into covenant with each other and that has some profound implications that we don't often think about in a day and age when church membership means next to nothing to people and and people are you know like smorgasbord participants they eat here and they eat there and they drink there and they take lightly what it means to be in covenant relationship so let me take a moment spell out for you what covenant relationship in terms of church membership means it means that as a church community we are committed to helping you as a member to become all you can be in Christ it's not our job to believe for you it's not our job to keep you on the straight and narrow in the sense that we are your conscience no it's our job to come alongside each other provide the resources that God provides the church with so that you can grow up in Christ find your identity and move into God's redemptive purposes for your life in every practical area Steve was talking Sunday morning about the next phase of the men's group on Saturday your unique design helping us to find where does my passion lie where does my gifting lie where does the Holy Spirit meet me and where can I be truly alive and truly effective in the kingdom of God in my daily life at home and at work in society and in the church the glory of God Aaron is said many years ago is me and fully alive as a church community we have a vested interest in watching everybody prosper in the things of God and grow to maturity that's our job collectively as a church community in providing that for its membership and we take that very seriously because one day we're all going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ and he's going to ask us what have you done with what I have entrusted to you now from a member's point of view and you'll see this reflected in our profession of faith questions from a member's point of view I submit myself not only to God's authority but also to the authority of the community that means I allow people to speak into my life to help me on that journey with Christ and to help me put off the old put on the new and to allow myself to grow in the context of community then into that man or into that woman that God is inviting me to be now that sounds really easy and I'm often amazed when we have these professional faith service and how glibly we answer those questions you don't know what kind of trouble you get into from a church leadership point of view when somebody strays into sin or somebody has an attitude that is ungodly or a lifestyle that is obnoxious to God or hurtful to Christian community and you come alongside that brother or that sister and you say well remember when you gave your life to Christ you agreed to a discipled kind of living you agreed to putting off the old and putting on the new and I see some inconsistencies here that I'm trying to help you with well any elder or deacon or anybody in a leadership capacity in this community can tell you that's where the rubber hits the road and that's when you discover are we really yielded to Jesus or are we not and this is particularly true in those areas where we're so close to ourselves that we ourselves don't see things very objectively most of the time and sometimes we need somebody to take us by the hand and I'm not saying that you know the church is always right or that church leadership is always right or that people trying to help people always do it wisely I am the first to tell you how often mistakes are made and how difficult things get but I'll tell you something just like a child submitting to parents reaping the benefits of parents who are less than perfect so even in church community as we submit to one another before the face of God when our desire is to be what God would have us be something happens in that process that allows grace to flow and lives to flourish and people to bear fruit for the glory of God and as you know I have personally no greater joy as John said in his epistle than to see God's children flourish and become fully devoted and mature followers of the Lord Jesus Christ so we value relationship with God we value growth in Christ we value collective community we enter into covenant and if that covenant gets broken then it needs to be a mutual decision two-part ways not a unilateral withdrawal sometimes what happens in Christian community and we're all subject to this is that we get hurt in deep places in our hearts because you see part of living in community is that you open up your heart to each other and the more you open up your heart to each other the more you run the risk of being misunderstood misinterpreted or don't see and most of us what we do when that happens is we sort of keep that on the inside and we begin to retreat a little bit because while I've been hurt and I'm trying to describe how this process works because there isn't a one of us that's immune to that you retreat into your little quarter and before you know it it becomes fuel to the enemy who now begins to build up broken relationship and broken covenant and what happens is that just like with Cain of old sin is couching at the door and you need to resist it God said to him when he refused to do that he ended up building his own city and that becomes the foundation of a worldly kingdom so I can give you one piece of advice this morning and that applies to me as much as it is to you if you ever find yourself in a situation or you're stepped on and you feel misunderstood misrepresented and the Holy Spirit is stirring stuff up don't just try to brush it off don't just try to pretend you're too big and it's not going to bother you because I'll tell you it will bother you and it will keep on acting up and stirring up until eventually you end up drifting away from community because nobody knows you nobody understands you nobody loves you anymore and the thing to do is you take the head on and even though you feel foolish and stupid and and ridiculous you need to go to that person or to that situation and to say listen I really got hurt in that situation you didn't see me you didn't love me you didn't understand me I'd much rather personally have people come to me with that than to just sort of all of a sudden disappear out the back door and God knows where you've gone and I don't even know what it is that I or anybody else has done to offend you let alone hurt you part of maturity is that we learn to bear with each other and that we learn to process the things as they come up because you can't live in a sinful world you can be part of their family without stepping on each other's am I making sense here this is especially an issue when the world is full of kids that have been raised in broken homes and broken marriages that have never learned how to fight stuff out and how to work through problems so that they can maintain unity in their family and so at the slightest drop of a hat what do people do I've told you this before even gangs have changed in North American society so that now people are members of sequential gangs because they can't even hang out with their own gang long enough to get along with each other you see the work that God has to do in our lives to make serious issue of what it is to live in the body of Christ so what do we value we value relationship with God through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit we value growth in Christ we value Christian community because Jesus is coming back for a bride not just a whole bunch of individuals a bride adorned the church adorned like a bride dressed for her husband and then I don't need to tell you because we've been hitting this a lot in recent months we value outreach the Lord added to their number daily daily those who were being saved why was that church community such a growing community well first of all because they were an attractive community why were they an attractive community because Christ was in their midst and they learned how to break bread together and how to share each other's lives with glad and joyful hearts and the Apostle Paul later on says that when God is present among his people and unbelievers enter into the assembly of faith they fall flat on their faces and declare that God is in your midst outreach takes place in two ways one of the ways is by attraction and we've talked about that we have people who come here because they're attracted to life and community or they're attracted by people who are part of this community and we anticipate and expect that as we move into new facilities there will be some degree of attraction we need to capitalize on that and that needs to be done in the first couple of months when you move into new facilities but for everyone who is attracted there's a hundred out there who have no immediate connection to the community and so the early church not only attracted people but they had sent out ones they had an apostolic ministry that traveled from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and eventually to the ends of the earth and so part of outreach is that the Holy Spirit will call an anoint given individuals in this community with a passion and the ability for cross-cultural communications and that means opening up our hearts in ways that perhaps we have never opened up our hearts before it means a willingness to get dirty as we share in the pain and in the scene of the world around us not participating in the sense of joining them in it but allowing their hurt their woundedness and their trouble to rub off on me knowing that God has his elect everywhere and whereas we are so ready and so quick sometimes to judge on outward appearance God looks on the heart and when his love lives in us and we have the capacity to listen to him and to discern what happens in people's hearts we discover that some of the unlikeliest people will come to faith in Jesus and as I've often said under all that crud and mud and pain and trouble often lies a heart of gold which when it's conformed [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:39:49.300; remove through 00:43:16.000] and transformed by the [CUT] power of Jesus bears fruit for God for time and for eternity. These are the days of Elijah declaring the word of the Lord and these are the days of your servant Moses' righteousness being restored. These are the days of great trials of famine and darkness and soul still way out of poison and desert crying pray the way of the Lord be holy he comes riding on the clouds shining bright like the sun at the trumpet call lift your voice it's a year of jubilee and out of Zion's hell salvation fall. These are the days of Ezekiel the dry bones becoming his flesh and these are the days of your servant David rebuilding his temple of grace. These are the days of the harvest the fields are as wide as the world and we are the laborers in your venue declaring the word of the Lord be holy he comes riding on the clouds shining bright like the sun at the trumpet call lift your voice it's a year of jubilee and out of Zion's hell salvation fall. There is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Jehovah there is no God like Je [CUT]hovah [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:43:16.000; resume after this marked segment]