Habits: Church Involvement/Sunday School, April 13

***SHOW DRIVE-THRU CHURCH VIDEO***


Yes, this video is very cheesy, but I think it's pretty spot-on. We have somehow come to the conclusion that the word "church" means a place that we go, fun songs, nice clothes, clapping hands, sermons, confessions, a way to feel good about yourself, a moral duty, a way to have fun, a place to take communion, a place to cry, a place to get advice, etc., etc., etc.

This is scary!

I think that we have all started mis-using the word "church."

In the Bible, the word that was first used for "church" was the Greek word "ekklesia," which means "called out," "called forth," or "an assembly of people."

Right away we see the gap between what is commonly believed to be the church and what the Bible intended for the church to be.

In reality, the church is all about people. It's all about the gathering of believers, the assembly of the body of Christ.

On Friday, I went with a couple of people to a concert in Deep Ellum, where Shawn McDonald and two other artists were playing. Each artist shared their testimony, and each of them was very powerful and very passionate. The first guy told a story about growing up. He told a story about how they were so poor that one time, he was driving down the road and the car door just fell off. I mean can you imagine that?? You're on your way to school, halfway asleep, and then all of a sudden the door just disappears! Crazy! So anyway, this guy was so poor that he was always wearing these really awkward and embarrassing hand-me-downs to school. It got to the point where he was just mortified, and all he could think about was having a cool pair of jeans. So he started praying every single night to God, saying, "God, if you really do exist, if you really are out there, bring me a pair of jeans." By this time, tears are coming out of this guy's eyes, so I know that he's really not kidding when he says that these blue jeans were important to him. One day, he woke up and opened the door to their trailer, and sitting on the step was a neatly folded pair of jeans, just the right size. And he said that that was when he knew that there was something bigger out there.

Now, he made very clear after that that he didn't think that there was like some celestual blue jean angel that swooped down to give little kids jeans. And he didn't think that God used superpowers to make the jeans appear either. No, he knew that someone in the trailer park, someone in that community, had brought him those jeans.

Guys, that is what the church is. The church is when God uses human bodies, men and women, you and me, as vessels of His spirit. The church is when we become the hands and the feet of God.

12 -13You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you're still one body. It's exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
14 -18I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge. It's all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, "I'm not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don't belong to this body," would that make it so? If Ear said, "I'm not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don't deserve a place on the head," would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.
19 -24But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, "Get lost; I don't need you"? Or, Head telling Foot, "You're fired; your job has been phased out"? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the "lower" the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it's a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?
1 Corinthians 12:12-30 (The Message)

Now the recurring theme here is the idea of the body. There is this ongoing analogy throughout the New Testament that refers to the community of believers or followers as the physical representation of Christ on Earth. Paul and the other writers are constantly reiterating this idea that we each represent a small, yet absolutely essential part of the body, whose heart is that of Christ.

This specific passage stresses how important it is to recognize what you are a part of. It says "For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster."

We are only great because of the greater body that we belong to. Only when we realize that we have a specific function within the greater body do we really realize the greatness of God, and only when we realize the greatness of God do we realize our full potential. A couple of weeks ago, Neil said that "Our destinies are fulfilled not by proving our own greatness, but by demonstrating God's greatness through our lives."

We can only be great because there is a larger thing happening within us, around us, and through us.

***SHOW STORK VIDEO***

In this commercial, the stork goes through all of this work for the guy, and in the end, the guy is not living up to his potential, settling for being part of the everyday working world.

It is the same way with God. He has gone through so much to create you into the perfect, beautiful, absolutely irreplaceable part of his body. If we want to reach our full potential, if we want to fulfill our destinies, we have to realize that we can't do it without being a part of the body of Christ, the church.

Romans 12:3-5 says:
4 -6In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we're talking about is Christ's body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn't amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ's body, let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't. ?
Romans 12:3-5 (The Message)

This series that we started last week is called "habits." Last week, Phil took some time defining what exactly the word "habit" means, and where it comes from. We learned that the word "habit" is very different from the way we use it today (kind of like the word "church" right??). We normally think of the word "habit" as some repeated behavior that we do over and over again, usually without thinking about it. However, Phil revealed to us that, in actuality, the word habit has three origin words, meaning "clothing or behavior custom," "condition or character," and "to have or to hold."

This week our habit is to involve ourselves with the church. We are to make the church our clothing, our behavior custom, our condition, our character, we are to have the church and hold the church.

Whew. Makes the church WAY more than just clapping hands, pretty buildings, and a decent sermon every now and then.

We are to literally BE the church. As we said last week that we were going to put on the habit of Jesus, wear Jesus as clothing, we will wear the church, put on the church, become the church.

Jesus said in Matthew, Chapter 18:

"For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there with them."
Matthew 18:20 (New Living Translation)

When we come together, forming an assembly of believers (which, if you remember, was the definition of the word church), Jesus is here with us.

I don't believe that Jesus meant here that he was going to pick a chair and go sit down next to us. I don't think either that he meant he was going to stand in the back or even hover over us.

When groups of believers assemble, they become the body of Christ. As we sit here together, we are uniting as the various parts that we are to form a much greater body. It's like the word "synergy," which means that a group of something is exponentially greater than the sum of its individual parts.

As you go into your small groups, and as you leave this building today, I want to challenge you to become the body of Christ, to recognize the greatness of God so that you can fulfill your destiny and your potential as the part of the body you were created to be.

I want you to think about how you can wear the church, make the church your character, to have the church, and to hold the church.