Formed for God’s Family

Week 3: The Purpose-Driven Life

                                                       Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

Destination: Sickness. It’s what Richard Halverson, the former chaplain of the United States Senate called a phenomenon that is very true among human beings, particularly in our country, he thinks. It has to do with the fact that a lot of people just don’t seem to have a purpose in life, or at least they don’t act like it or they don’t know where they are going. As Christians, we know where we are going and we do have a purpose, but so often we forget. That’s why we need to remind ourselves and why we are spending these few weeks talking about our purpose and what our purposes are in the world, reminding ourselves again that we were made, for example, for God’s joy. God has made us for that. Today we’ll talk about the fact that we were made for one another.

In the verse on the screen, we see the first two purposes that we have been talking about.

Hebrews 2:10

God is the one who made all things and all things are for His glory. He wanted to have many children share His glory.

There it is. God is the one who made all things…basic stuff. Because He is the Maker, He’s the Owner, and He’s the Purpose-Giver. He has made us, His creatures, for particular things. One, all things are made for His glory. That’s a worship statement…that all things look to the Creator and glorify and honor Him by the things we do and say. But then, God wanted more than that; He wanted to have many children share His glory. You may not know this, but the entire Bible is about this. I like to tell people that the Bible is not a novel and you shouldn’t read it like one. It’s okay to skip things like Leviticus and some of the harder places that get kind of boring – you should go back and read those after you’ve read some of the other things. But there is a story being told. We start out, of course, with the Creation and the fall, the separation of the fellowship between human beings and God. But God doesn’t just leave it there; He begins the task of bringing back human beings into fellowship with Him and with one another. It is indeed what the Bible is all about.

Look again at this particular passage.

Ephesians 1:5

His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ.

There’s the climax, if you will. You may not think of it that way, but this is what God has been about since the beginning…to bring people into a relationship, a family relationship, with one another and with Himself through Christ. Jesus is seen as our big brother, if you will, the first born, in a way, of all creation. And we follow Him and we are a part of His family.

And then the command goes out…that part of our job is to love our spiritual family, to love one another. In the Bible, fifty-eight times it says “Love one another” or some other type of “One another” statement; “Pray for one another,” “Help one another,” “Serve one another.” It is all about “One another-ing.” It’s a big part of what it means to be in the church. So your second purpose and my second purpose is fellowship. As I said last week there is a little problem with fellowship, as there is with worship. That is, we often have a misconception about it. Fellowship is not primarily simply having coffee together or eating doughnuts together or simply eating. I joke a lot that if it weren’t for the Army, where I have to do physical training test every 6 months, I would be a rather large and round pastor because all we do in the church is shove food at each other. One of my favorite movies is “Field of Dreams” – you know, “Build it and they will come.” I like to say about the church, “Feed them and they will come.” You know what, there’s nothing wrong with any of these things. We heard a little bit about the beginnings of fellowship on the tape. Fellowship does include playing softball or going on picnics and eating together or sitting around and talking over coffee. Those things are great. But it’s only a start. It’s the beginning of what it means to have fellowship. Fellowship is a process of learning to love God’s family. That’s a good definition; it is the process of learning to love God’s family. It is our second purpose.

Paul says, “I am writing so that you will know how to live in the family of God, the family that is the church.” Hear it again. Part of what is written in the scripture is to help us learn this. That family is the church. The first level of fellowship, this process, is in fact membership…choosing to belong. I have said several times since we have started going through the 40 Days of Purpose that the more I read Rick Warren, the more he sounds like a Presbyterian. He says things like, “You were created from the foundation of the world to worship God.” That sounds very Presbyterian to me; we were created from the foundation of the world to have fellowship with one another. He says things like that. I believe that kind of stuff; not all Presbyterian pastors do. But I also believe that God is telling the story and that He has written the story and that the story will end as He has written it to be. But He has also, within that story, allowed and created freedom of choice. As God has said, He has created you for fellowship with Him and with one another and for worship and the other purposes, but a lot of things get in the way. It’s why we are spending time reminding ourselves about them. These purposes, as I have said many times, are nothing new, they aren’t rocket science. They are things we already know. We are just reminding ourselves of what is already there. A lot of things get in the way of worshiping God. A lot of things get in the way of fellowship. One thing that has gotten in the way of fellowship, in terms of membership, is that our society right now is very much opposed to organized religion. A lot of people don’t care for organized religion or the church. I have said many times, I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that the church is full of hypocrites. I wish I had a nickel for every time that people say they don’t need the church, that they can be a good Christian without being a member of the church. It’s really not true. I was at the tail end of the generation of the 1960’s; I grew up in the late 60’s and early 70’s. All that institutionalism is still with us today. A lot of people don’t care for the church. I have relatives who have gotten hurt in the church or in their relationship with the church and have never gone back. It happens every day. We have to choose to belong. There is a sense in which you and I are already members of the church universal. When we become Christians, we become members of Christ’s body. We are Christians with one another and yet there is a sense in which we need to become part of a local body. It’s what God wants us to do. It’s what He commands us to do. We have to choose to belong to some group, warts and all. You have warts; you are a great group of people and I love you and am glad I’m here, but you’ve got warts. So does every other church I’ve ever served and been at. People have different warts but we all have warts. So whenever you go looking for a church, if you are looking for the perfect church, once you find it and join that church, it’s no longer perfect anymore. We have to choose to belong. That’s what I am encouraging you to do; I love for people to join this church. But God may call you to another church and you need to join something. That’s what God wants us to do. Ephesians 2:19 – “You are members of God’s very own family.” And you belong in God’s household with every other Christian. We don’t think of it in those terms, but here it is. You are members of God’s very own family and you belong in God’s household with every other Christian. In Christ, we are many for one whole body and each member belongs to the other. It’s really nonsensical to say, “I can be a Christian but not join a church,” because the vision of the scriptures says that we are saved as individuals but we are not saved into individualism. We are saved to be in the family. We are redeemed to be in this family and the view of the scriptures is as the body of Christ. Other images are as a building; you are brick that goes into the building or the wall. We all have different parts. I am convinced myself that every church has the tools and gifts and people in it to do the work that God calls that church to do. The problem is that only twenty percent usually do it; the other eighty percent often sit on the sidelines and don’t get in the game. I love this tape; I hadn’t seen it before we saw it this morning but how interesting it was for me to listen to them express all the levels of fellowship without even being told. It’s interesting to me that this stuff is really not that new and it’s pretty easy. The first level of fellowship is to join.

The second is friendship. No one expects you when you first join a church to know everybody or feel that comfortable. I’ve said to you several times as a pastor, when I’ve gone to different churches it has taken two to three years for me to feel comfortable with them and them to feel comfortable with me. I am almost here two years now and it’s much more comfortable than it was two years ago, for you and for me. It’s just a process, one we all go through. We learn how to deal with one another and love one another and work with one another. It’s the same thing. So level two is simply friendship; we heard a little bit about that. It’s daunting maybe to think about Christian fellowship; he said (in the tape), “I just want to play volleyball with people who don’t know how to play volleyball” or do whatever. We learn how to share with one another. In the early church, when Peter preached his famous sermon and they all gathered together and there were thousands of them meeting in the temple and in different homes, they were learning to share with one another. One of the things they shared was their stuff, they shared their money and houses and food and all that sort of thing. Some might ask whether they were Communists. Not really, they just were moved to do that by necessity and by God’s moving. They were not only sharing their stuff, they were sharing themselves. They were sharing their experiences. I’ve come to believe over time that we often learn more by experience than we do by books. There’s nothing wrong with book-learning at all, we should all have it, but often knowledge is more often caught than taught. We learn things truly by experience. The only problem with experience is that they are limited. We have certain experiences, but our neighbor may have others. That’s where the sharing comes in. This person may know a lot more than you about certain things; we’re all ignorant in some ways because our experience is limited. But together we make up for it by sharing our experiences. We also share our homes. You know it’s interesting in modern life how we barely know our neighbors, some of us. It’s been fun for me to get to know you a little bit and some of you have lived in your neighborhood for years. You talk about the wonderful memories of watching your kids grow up and all the things that have happened. You shared your homes with one another. But in the modern world, it has become much harder to do that…partly because of TV, busyness, and part of it is the way we are. That’s why we are encouraging people to sign up for small groups and to share their homes. Even that is hard. I think that some of our modern conveniences have made it very hard. Because we have vacuum cleaners, we expect our houses to be spotless and so when we think about inviting people over to our house, all that goes with that is a mountain of work to get everything ready. We think we have to have things spotless, make cookies, make punch, and get the silver out. Sometimes I am reluctant to go visit people by calling them on the phone and telling them I’m coming because I know what it does. “Oh, the pastor is coming…I have to get cookies out…I’ve got to clean up.” Sometimes I just like to show up because of that. We need to get beyond that. It’s been so exciting to me to know that over 350 of you are involved in small groups. I think that’s fantastic and wonderful and part of what I wanted out of the 40 Days. “Open your homes to each other,” says Peter. Last but not least, in the second level of sharing, the third part of that is sharing our problems. I don’t know how many times I’ve had people say to me when they’ve had a problem that if they get in a group where others have had similar problems, they are glad they are not alone. It’s not that they are glad that other people have problems, they are glad to see that they are not by themselves. We are not by ourselves; we all have the same questions and problems and doubts and weaknesses. We share with one another and help each other get through this. We are not out to fix people. We are out to help each other through and share each other’s troubles and problems. Hebrews says, “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together but let us encourage one another.”

The third level is partnership. I read a story about a woman back in the days when they had to do this; she wanted to go overseas so she got herself a passport. In those days, you had to go to the post office and swear an oath to the United States. So she filled out the form for the passport and the clerk had her hold up her right hand and swear the oath to the U.S.; “Are you willing to defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic?” She kind of began shaking and turning pale and asked, “All by myself?” It is true in modern life, in the church; twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work. That’s true in almost every arena it seems. But we are called to do our part because we are partners with God. Listen to what Paul says, “The whole body is fitted together perfectly as each part does its own special work. It helps the other parts grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.” When we are all doing our part, we are healthy. When we just have a few doing everything, we are not so healthy. I really think that in the history of the church we’ve got this view where some people are called to do ministry and others are just normal people and do other things. I think I’ve shared with you that I’ve been a pastor for about 22 years and about 10 of those I sort of rebelled against my calling to be a pastor. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be a pastor, I didn’t like the misunderstanding. Pastors are so often put up on a pedestal and are placed higher because people think they are more holy and have more gifts and are better than others. It just isn’t true. I’m not here because I’m holier than you. If that were true, I wouldn’t be here at all. We are all in the same boat, sinners saved by grace. Pastors just have different callings and a different gift matrix. We all have gifts; some of us are like a hand, some are like feet or like arms. We all have different gifts. God calls us to do it all. If one part isn’t doing their part, the body suffers. It’s the third level of fellowship. I want to encourage you in it and particularly in the kinship. She (in the tape) used the word; kinship. The place we want to get to – it’s a process and we don’t get there overnight, it takes time – this is part of our commitment to the church. When we walk in, we have come to want instant gratification, that it will be the perfect place right then and there. It isn’t going to happen; I don’t care where you are. If you get in, work at friendship, roll your sleeves up and get involved, we might get here. It’s where we want to be, loving other believers like family. You might say, “I don’t love my family very much, that’s not a good image.” In any family, we get troubles but the ideal is that we love our family. That is what we are after. In the early church, one of the things that separated Christians from others is that others would be amazed at how they loved one another. They were like families to one another, being devoted to one another like a loving family. How do we do this? We know that real love is because Christ gave up His life for us and so we also ought to give up our lives for our Christian brothers and sisters. In America, this is kind of hard for us because it is out of our experience, but all over the world there are Christians dying for their faith, there are Christians being tortured for their faith, they are being persecuted. Those people know a lot more than we do about being willing to take a bullet for one another. They know a lot more about loving one another, apart from feelings, just willing to go out there and take it for one another. My prayer is not that we get to that place, but that somehow or another we get to the place where we can love one another in a deeper way – kinship. I want to ask you today to judge where you are. Maybe some of you don’t even belong yet. Maybe you are considering it; I’m not trying to pressure you to join here. But I do want to pressure you a little bit that you need to join. You need to become a member someplace. You need to become a part of a body so you can learn about friendship and about doing your part and that we can all work toward this thing called kinship. So our love to one another may prove to the world that we are indeed disciples of Christ and children of God!