[00:00:01] Welcome to the River Church podcast. We're all about bringing the life, hope and love of Jesus to everyone around us. For more information, check out our
[email protected] Morning, everyone.
[00:00:15] Nice to be here.
[00:00:19] And we are continuing our Practicing the Way series, which is all about being, being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus and doing as Jesus did. And as Mary J has said, we're looking at community this morning and we can tend to feel a sense of community when we share a common interest with people. You might feel a sense of community with those who live in your street or your kind of neighbourhood or maybe around a local school. Community.
[00:00:51] You might feel a sense of community with people who you hang out with because of some sort of fitness thing, the cycling or the running club or going to the same gym. It might be a sense of community with people who go to the same book club or craft event around a sort of hobby. So there's loads of different communities that we can be part of.
[00:01:17] And nowadays the majority of our interactions with those people, the conversations that we have in those communities, largely done by different social media platforms. We go onto Facebook or to WhatsApp chats, we use Instagram or, you know, the younger generation, not me, use things like Snapchat to kind of contact and stay in touch with each other.
[00:01:41] And the beauty of social media is that we can communicate with either one person or a whole group of people at any time of day or night. We communicate with them instantly and we can communicate with them all together at one time and it doesn't matter how near or far away they live from us.
[00:02:00] And the younger generation who are growing up with technology, who use this primarily to relate to their friends, actually don't even worry about picking up the phone and having a phone conversation anymore, because everything is done through social media because we just have lives that are really, really busy and social media is just so quick and instant.
[00:02:26] And the beauty as well of social media is that we can filter out the bits that we don't want people to see. We can filter out the bits that are kind of quite mundane. I've forgotten to put my slides along. These are the highlights. We filter out the bits that are mundane and we just show people the highlights of our lives, don't we? The celebrations that we go to that are full of friends, the kind of things that our children have achieved. We celebrate our holidays, we show our holiday photos to, to other people and we portray this image that our lives are just full of fulfilling relationships that make us happy.
[00:03:06] And there's nothing Sort of mundane or boring about our lives.
[00:03:11] And so the world tells us that community is based on sort of superficial relationships with people who live anywhere across the globe, providing they know some sort of information about us.
[00:03:24] We don't really need to have face to face conversations. And the relationships we have with these people make us feel happy and fulfilled. And they are totally problem free, but they are quite superficial and they can lead to kind of us being lonely.
[00:03:44] And Mother Teresa, many of you know who she is, she says loneliness is, is the leprosy of the modern world.
[00:03:54] God's intention is for us together to be a church as a community.
[00:04:01] We can slip into thinking that the church kind of should function like the communities do, that we're kind of in, you know, in the world, part of, you know, the communities that we're in with our friends in other spheres. The community and the church should actually function like that. And what I want us to do is look at what the Bible says and how the church community should function because it is different from the other communities that the world can offer us.
[00:04:31] Matthew 4, okay, it talks about Jesus and how he calls his disciples to him. It says, as Jesus. Sorry, this is really, really small.
[00:04:45] As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers. Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. Come, follow me, Jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people at once. They left their nets and followed him.
[00:05:04] Going on from there. He saw two other brothers, James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John.
[00:05:09] They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
[00:05:20] Jesus could have just, you know, this is just the start of who Jesus called. Here we've got four of the people who became Jesus disciples. But Jesus called them together at the same time. And he wanted to group them together so that they would, so that he could teach them together and so that they would live together and relate to one another. He intentionally created an environment, a community environment where they would relate to one another. Because there's something about a group dynamic where we are able to learn from each other and where growth can take place.
[00:05:59] And growing to be more like Jesus means that we need to get stuck into the community, into the church community.
[00:06:07] But it's hard for us to sometimes get our heads around the fact that growing to be like Jesus involves being part of a community.
[00:06:17] Because we live in a consumerist and individualistic society, we're encouraged to focus on our own personal needs, our own preferences and desires, to think of what suits me rather than we.
[00:06:32] And we find it difficult to see how shared experiences help us build deep relationships unless those experiences suit our own personal needs and our own preferences.
[00:06:51] Oops. But one Peter, it says, as you come to him, the living stone, 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.
[00:07:09] See, God is busy spiritually building us together and he's busy shaping us not as individuals, but a whole group of people where the Holy Spirit will come and take up residence.
[00:07:27] The early church, they modelled this community. Acts 2 tells us about the early church. It says they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.
[00:07:51] And every day they continued to meet together in 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.
[00:08:09] This group of people, the early church, they devoted themselves to the scriptures. They fellowshipped with one another. They took communion together and prayed together. They. They hung out together and shared their belongings. Sometimes they were in a large group, like we are this morning. Other times they were in small groups like we would be in our homes, and they ate together. Food is really good. Okay, but fellowship, this is a really odd word. Okay. It's not something we would generally use in our everyday language. Unless you're Lord of the Rings fan, maybe, but. But it actually comes from a Greek word that's used in the Bible, and I think it's pronounced koinonia. Okay, if you know better, that's fine.
[00:08:54] And this word, it means that between us as people, as individuals, we relate to each other in an interdependent way. This word, fellowship, koinonia, means communion, sharing a sense of partnership where there is mutual support.
[00:09:15] But it goes beyond what the communities in our world can offer us because there's a spiritual bond that we have with one another.
[00:09:27] And these relationships that we have in the church primarily are the ones where we can experience God's love.
[00:09:35] And where we find ourselves, faith is strengthened.
[00:09:39] And they're the relationships that shape us to be more and more like Christ.
[00:09:45] And so if we don't have these relationships, we're going to miss out on experiencing the love of God like He really wants for us. And our spiritual growth is going to be sluggish.
[00:10:01] And God wants us to spiritually grow. He's committed to our spiritual growth, and he wants us to be committed to our spiritual growth as well. Ezekiel 36 talks about the fact that God is going to cleanse us from all our impurities and from all our idols, that he's going to give us a new heart and put a new spirit in us, that he's going to remove from us our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, that he's going to put his spirit in us and move us to follow his decrees and be careful to keep his laws.
[00:10:33] Romans talks about the fact that God has predestined us to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. And Philippians talks about the fact that that work is not going to be finished until we meet Jesus face to face.
[00:10:49] You know, we're all works in progress, and we need deep relationship with one another in the church to become more like Christ.
[00:11:01] And the extent to which we share our lives with one another and partnership with one another and create interdependence amongst us will actually determine how much we grow in Christ.
[00:11:16] So how do we build community?
[00:11:18] Well, the sort of relationships where we experience koinonia or fellowship don't just happen, you know, stereotypically. Women probably find it much easier to relate and build deep relationships with men.
[00:11:33] Sorry, with other women, they find it easier to build relationships than men do. Okay. Men have a tendency, don't you? To talk about cars, sports, music, the latest gadget. Lots of talk about the latest gadgets.
[00:11:52] And it's easier for our conversations to stay really superficial. But if we're going to experience fellowship, we need to be intentional about building these deep relationships with one another and ensure that our small, superficial talk leads into deep talk. We need to talk about how we feel. Not just the happy emotions, but also about the doubts, the insecurities, the fears that we have, or maybe the struggles that we're going through. We need to talk about the temptations we're facing. We need to talk about our inner life with God, the things that he is speaking to us about, and the areas of our lives where he wants us to change.
[00:12:35] You know, it's about being honest and transparent with other people so that we have no secrets now. You know, let's be realistic. I'm conscious we are not going to be doing this with every single person in the room.
[00:12:50] There's probably maybe Two or three people that you could do this with.
[00:12:56] But Jesus sets the model, doesn't he? He's got his closest friends amongst the 12. He's got Peter, James and John, those three disciples that were his closest confidants.
[00:13:09] And when we reveal our inner thoughts and feelings, we can often worry about how others are going to respond to us. What would they think of us if they find out what we're really like? If it doesn't measure up to their perception of us, we run the risk of feeling judged and feeling ashamed. We run the risk of even being rejected.
[00:13:35] But essentially what we're saying is, can we trust these people?
[00:13:44] You know, when I was in my late teens and early twenties when I first joined this church, first really started following Jesus properly, not properly, but, you know, like with wholehearted kind of devotion, I was terrified, absolutely terrified that people would find out what I was really like and that they would reject me.
[00:14:08] I spent huge amounts of emotional energy trying to kind of COVID things up and hide because I genuinely thought that if people could see what I was really like, they just wouldn't like me.
[00:14:22] And I felt at that time that I just couldn't cope with any more emotional pain. But I ended up being in a financial situation where I needed a lodger.
[00:14:32] And so someone from the church actually moved into my home.
[00:14:36] And her friendship had a significant impact on me.
[00:14:42] And her friendship helped me start to trust people again. And at the same time, around a very similar time, I started spending time with Jane. And Jane's wisdom and counsel in my life brought massive freedom over the course of, well, countless number of coffees over a course of years just speaking into my life. And I would regularly hang out at their house and anyone who knows Alistair and Jane will know that Jane doesn't. Sorry, Al. Doesn't speak quite as much as Jane, but I would go to their home and he's. I think I probably love the Bible as much as I do now because of album.
[00:15:31] And I would go to their home and he would.
[00:15:34] The Bible would just come out of him and it was just him being who he is.
[00:15:40] But their kind of the way that they lived their lives had such a significant impact on me and was a model to the way that I could spend time with Jesus. And I learned from them just by the way that they lived their lives.
[00:15:56] And I learned to trust my people from my flatmate who moved into my flat.
[00:16:02] And it was the fact of these relationships that significantly shaped my life and significantly bought deep healing.
[00:16:15] And so when you spend time with one another. When you're honest about struggles, when you're honest and transparent, don't underestimate what God can do through those relationships.
[00:16:30] And don't be like me in terms of trying to hide things from other people.
[00:16:36] Because when we hide things and when we don't share and we put up barriers and put up walls, we trap the pain that we're carrying in our hearts and we carry it around with us.
[00:16:49] It doesn't diminish over time because time doesn't heal, but it influences our lives and relationship. It leaks out.
[00:16:58] We don't give other opportunities for people to speak into our lives and we miss out on their wisdom and counsel.
[00:17:07] And we can end up being quite self sufficient, which causes us to feel lonely.
[00:17:15] And we can become really stunted in our spiritual growth, which isn't what God wants for us.
[00:17:21] Our Heavenly Father wants us to experience freedom, his love, his peace.
[00:17:28] And the majority of that spiritual growth will come through face to face interactions with other people within this church community.
[00:17:41] So I'm trying to say resist the urge to play it safe, Be open and honest with one another and build deep, meaningful relationships. And can I just say a word to connect group leaders? If you lead a small group or a connect group, whether it's a formal thing or whether it's an informal thing where you're getting together just with a number of other people within the church community, you know, easy to discuss the content of the Bible, isn't it? In quite a cerebral way, in a theoretical way.
[00:18:12] And our conversations can sometimes stay very sort of theoretical and minimal change happens.
[00:18:19] I want us to lead if we are leaders, by being vulnerable, by being open, by talking about the things that God's doing in our lives, not just the victories, but the struggles that we face as well. Because as we are open with other people, it creates an environment for other people within those groups to feel like they can be open. We create a psychologically safe environment for other people to be transparent. And it can lead to growth, not just our own, but other people's as well.
[00:18:56] But I'm conscious that we live, that my clicker isn't working.
[00:19:01] And we live in a imperfect world and we live with, you know, imperfect people in the church.
[00:19:11] And we only have to look at Jesus disciples to realize that. Matthew 10 says that Jesus called his 12 disciples to him and he gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.
[00:19:26] These are the names of the twelve apostles. First Simon, who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew James, son of Zebedee and his brother John.
[00:19:35] So you've got two sets of siblings. You've got Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector, James, son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus, Simon the zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
[00:19:51] So I would imagine between those two sets of brothers, there was probably a bit of sibling rivalry. We don't know much about the other disciples, but we know that Matthew was a tax collector, so he worked for the Roman government. He would take from his own people, from the Jews, the money that the Roman government were charging, but he would charge a little bit extra and pocket it himself.
[00:20:16] So he was essentially stealing from his own people. Whether or not the disciples were some that he had stolen from, we don't know. But that could be the case. We've got Simon, who is the zealot. So he's part of a political group who is trying to overthrow the Roman government. So can you imagine? Dinner time.
[00:20:35] Don't let Simon sit next to Matthew. They'll just end up arguing about politics again, you know. But one of the stories that we do know about one of these sets of brothers is what are James and John? They're called the sons of thunder. And there's a story that's documented in the Gospels, but, you know, the one that was in Mark 10 is where James and John actually go to their mother. And they say to their mother, can you have a word with Jesus for us? One of us wants to sit on his right. One of us since wants to sit on his left. When we get into eternity, can you speak to him for us about it? And of course, she goes with James and John. She speaks to Jesus about it. And the rest of the disciples hear and they're angry about it. And, you know, we'd like to think that they're angry because it's righteous anger. What they've done is wrong. But actually, if we just flick, you know, a couple of pages before in our Bibles to the previous chapter, we realize that actually the other disciples have been privately, without Jesus hearing privately, discussing the same matter, because they want the same as well. And you suddenly realize that this group of individuals that have been called together by Jesus is causing their selfish ambition to actually come to the surface.
[00:21:58] And when we first join a community, we can actually think it's all perfection.
[00:22:06] The people are lovely, they're amazing.
[00:22:09] I mean, they're just great.
[00:22:12] And then as relationship grows, suddenly we realize that the people aren't quite as perfect as we thought they were. You know, we didn't think they were really perfect, but we just had a standard, an expectation, and so far they'd met that expectation. But they suddenly do something that causes us to feel let down. And we reach step two, that stage of being a bit disillusioned.
[00:22:41] And we have to kind of work through the fact that other people have also got ungodly attitudes and brokenness in their own lives. We just hadn't seen it before. But this sense of community has brought it to the surface.
[00:23:00] And so we have a choice to make.
[00:23:03] Step three, do we withdraw from the relationship?
[00:23:08] You know, we might not actually let them know, we might just take a step back, or do we commit?
[00:23:20] God wants us to commit. When it comes to decision time, he wants us to commit.
[00:23:26] If we're the one who has done the hurting, it's really important that we're quick to apologise.
[00:23:34] It's really important that we guard against feeling the need to justify what we've done, because that's just trying to shift the blame.
[00:23:43] And then we quickly run to our Heavenly Father to ask him for forgiveness and ask him to change us and ask the Holy Spirit for help.
[00:23:55] But often we can hurt others and we can be totally oblivious, can't we, to it?
[00:24:03] If you're the person who has got hurt and the person is. Who has hurt you is totally oblivious, it's important to forgive them. You know, Scripture teaches that we pay forward the forgiveness that we've received from God ourselves.
[00:24:21] But it's also important to learn to address situations like this well, so that we enter into a conversation with a person who's hurt us, we graciously explain to the other person what they've done and how it's hurt us. And we give them an opportunity to respond.
[00:24:40] And these conversations are not an opportunity for us to. To just vent our anger.
[00:24:49] The intention in talking about our emotions is so that we are growing in shared understanding, which leads to a deeper relationship.
[00:25:02] And when we have deep relationships with people, it's much easier to have these sorts of conversations.
[00:25:14] But when we have these difficult conversations with people, and it does deepen our relationships, we don't just grow in shared understanding, we grow in love.
[00:25:24] And our ability to love others is a mark of spiritual maturity.
[00:25:31] Marks of spiritual maturity isn't how much we read our Bible, how much we pray, how much we fast or even do sabbaths.
[00:25:39] Marks of spiritual maturity is how much we love other people.
[00:25:44] And the idea of these conversations is to make sure that we produce fruit in both our own lives and in the person's Life who has hurt us not to vent our anger. Okay, so the world has a version of community that often results in people feeling lonely.
[00:26:09] But God's design for community amongst us as a church is vastly superior.
[00:26:17] We're designed to be a community where we're vulnerable with one another, where we don't just do everything over WhatsApp or Instagram or Facebook or Snapchat, where we have face to face conversations with one another, where we hang out together, where we spend time with one another, where we experience fellowship in deep, meaningful relationships that meet each other's physical, emotional and spiritual needs.
[00:26:48] And those relationships will bring healing, care, wisdom into our lives and they will shape us. So we flourish and we grow.
[00:27:01] And these relationships that God has intended for us to have as a church aren't just for our own benefit.
[00:27:10] John 13 says, As I have loved you, love one another, then everyone will know that you are my disciples.
[00:27:20] See, it's part of our witness to the unsaved in our wider communities, in the communities that we have in the world.
[00:27:28] We want people in our communities, our unsaved family, friends, neighbours, work colleagues, to come to know Jesus.
[00:27:39] And if you do, then get involved in the church community and build deeper relationships because they will be a witness to the other people that you know.
[00:27:56] Fellowship actually also means communion, which is why we are going to take communion together.
[00:28:08] It's communion with Christ and communion with one another.
[00:28:13] And in the Gospels, Jesus told his disciples to take communion in remembrance of him. We remember that our sin was part of the cause of Jesus suffering and death.
[00:28:27] And Jesus invites us to receive his sacrifice. The bread symbolizes Jesus body, the wine his blood.
[00:28:37] And as we take communion, we share in the benefits of his life, his suffering, his death, his resurrection and victory, his forgiveness.
[00:28:52] And in ancient times, communion used to be a whole meal that the church community would gather together and eat together.
[00:29:02] And while the bread and the wine were designed to nourish their bodies physically, they would also act as spiritual reminders that God would sustain them spiritually in that present time, but also for all of eternity.
[00:29:19] And as we take communion by faith, we become more and more united with Christ.
[00:29:28] And Jesus past and his future will increasingly break into our lives.
[00:29:36] And by his spirit, it will bring transformation to our lives. Now, can we have the band back, please?
[00:29:48] But before we take communion, the Bible instructs us to examine our hearts. In 1 Corinthians 11, it says, can someone push the next slide on? Thanks, Alec. 1 Corinthians 11 it says, so then whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat the bread and drink the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ, Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.
[00:30:28] That's why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.
[00:30:34] But if we were more discerning with regard to ourselves, we would not come under such judgment.
[00:30:39] Nevertheless, when we are judged in this way by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be finally condemned with the world.
[00:30:47] Paul writes about the believers eating and drinking in an unworthy manner, and they were acting selfishly and putting their needs before others, rather than imitating Christ's humility and love and working together like the different parts of one body do so in a moment. The stewards are going to invite us to come and get communion.
[00:31:12] And before we take it, I'd like us to consider our own conduct.
[00:31:19] Are we behaving in a consumerist or individualistic way, coming along and just doing things that suit our own needs and our own preferences?
[00:31:30] Or are we behaving in a sacrificially loving way where we're committed to each other, committed to each other's growth, committed to building deep relationships, prioritizing ours and other people's spiritual growth?
