Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS 28 Feb 2010 and 01 Dec 2019
As we start into our church’s fifteenth year of existence, I want to take the opportunity to review the four core values of our church and expound on two unique ways we seek to do these things through Christ the Redeemer Church: The four values we have agreed to emphasize in Christ the Redeemer Church are:
Exalting our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ: As a community of believers in fellowship with one another, we seek to glorify God in all that we do. We worship, in spirit and truth, the triune God as revealed through His inerrant Word which gives us all that we need for life and godliness and is the final authority in all doctrinal matters. The church is the pillar and buttress of truth, standing fast for the glory of God’s name.
Equipping the saints: We are committed as a community of believers to encourage and equip one another to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. By God’s grace we seek to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age and be a people who are zealous to do good works. We believe that every saint has one or more spiritual gifts that are useful and necessary for building up the body of Christ. We seek to help the saints identify their gifts and use them for the edification of the Church and the performing of good works that God has prepared for His saints to do. By living individually and corporately in obedience to God’s Word, we seek to be salt and light to the world, loving our neighbors as ourselves and transforming culture in order to bring all things under the submission of Jesus Christ.
Evangelizing the world: We believe God is redeeming a people for Himself and that He reaches them through the proclamation of the Gospel. We believe God’s truth in salvation is most accurately represented by the historic Reformed doctrines of grace. We believe that man is dead in his sins and unable to save himself. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. We are committed as a community of believers in obedience to the Lord’s Great Commission to be His witnesses and to make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all of God’s commands.
Encouraging godly households. We believe that God works in covenant with His people mainly through households and we seek to develop godly households to the glory of God. We believe that households are most strengthened through age integrated worship and activities. We seek to encourage husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the Church, to encourage wives to submit to their husbands as to the Lord, to encourage fathers to bring up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, and to encourage children to honor and obey their parents in the Lord. We believe all Christians are adopted as children of God and we welcome all believers to the household of God. We are committed as a community of believers in fellowship with one another to enhance the solidarity of one another’s households and the larger household of faith.
· The two ways we live out these values as a church community are unique among modern American churches, and if you do not grasp these two things, there’s a lot in our church that will not make sense, so I want to expound on these two things so that our church can walk together effectively. These two ways we do church are:
Synagogic
Domocentric
I think I made those two words up, so let me unpack them.
Greek: sun + agw
Translit: syn + ago
Meaning:together + lead
Sunagogic = gathering people together
As much as our culture idealizes unity, in practice the world around us seems to emphasize our differences.
In our jobs, specialization is prized – the further out on a branch of a branch of a branch of knowledge you are, the more secure your job is. For instance, I know a guy with a Ph.D. in Wheat Diseases!
Socially, America is an extremely balkanized nation with socially-enforced separations between old people, middle-aged people, young professionals, teenagers, children, and babies.
The old people stay within the walls of the nursing homes and the elderly social centers,
the babies stay in day care,
the teenagers stay plugged into an intense media culture that is intentionally developed to be foreign and incomprehensible to adults,
professionals have their offices and sports bars, etc, etc.
The different age groups grew up separated from each other and they naturally want to stay that way,
and if anybody tries to buck the system, social pressure is exerted to get back into the institutions of your age group and stop rocking the boat.
If you look at social networking sites on the Internet, you’ll see how people are trying to find identity in specialized groups.
When I was diagnosed with hemachromatosis a decade ago, someone recommended that I join the American Hemachromatosis Society – I couldn’t believe it – they even had their own webpage.
I think that people are associating with specialized groups because they are seeking to establish their identity through their uniquenesses.
As Christians, we agree that God made us and gifted each of us uniquely, but that is not what we get our identity from; our identity is in the fact that we believe and obey Jesus.
The church needs to be a place that brings God’s people together under our common identity as sons and daughters of God rather than on the basis of our age group or spiritual gifts or ethnicity or profession, or you-name-it. Why? Because…
It is part of the nature of God to bring people together.
In Genesis 2, we see God joining together two different genders, male and female. “What God has joined together, let not man separate” (Mat 19:6).
In Psalm 148, we see everybody called to praise God together “11) Kings of the earth and all peoples; Princes and all judges of the earth; 12) Both young men and virgins; Old men and children: 13 Let them praise the name of Jehovah”
This carries over into the church of the New Testament: Gal 3:26 “For you are all sons of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus… There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
This is certainly the message of the book of 1 Corinthians despite the disagreements over who was the preeminent apostle and whether or not they had to freedom to eat at pagan temples and who had the greatest spiritual gift. Paul wrote: “exactly as the body is a unit and has many members, yet all the members of the body, being many, are one body” (1 Cor 12: 12).
When God said, “Come out from among them and be separate,” (2Cor 6:17), He wasn’t talking about separating from other Christians; He was talking about breaking ties with the world. The wall between God’s people and the world is where a Biblical distinction comes in, not between one group of believers and another.
Sunagw
is used to speak of God’s work in gathering His people to
believe in His Son
and then of Jesus gathering these people
together to heaven when He returns:
Mat 13:47 “the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered in [just the trout?] every kind:”
Mat 22:10 “the servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was filled with guests.”
John 4:36 “The reaper is receiving wages and gathering fruit unto life eternal...”
John 11:52b “that He might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad.” (See also Mat 12:30/ Luk 11:23)
Mat 13:30 “Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn.”
Mat 25:32 “and before Him [Jesus] shall be gathered all the nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;”
Mat 3:12
“He will thoroughly clean His threshing-floor; and He will
gather His wheat into the garner, but the chaff He will burn
up with unquenchable fire.” (cf Luk 3:17)
So you see
that this action of gathering all kinds together to be with Him is
what God does.
Sunagw is also used to speak of Christian believers gathering together
Initially to
describe the Israelites who began following Jesus during His earthly
ministry:
Mark 4:1 “…He began to teach
by the sea-side, and there gathered to Him a really big crowd,
so that He entered into a boat and sat in the sea, and all the
multitude were by the sea on the land.” (cf. Mat 13:2, see also
Mar 2:2, 5:21)
Then of the church following His ascension to heaven:
Mat 18:20 “For where 2 or 3 are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”
Mat 25:35 “for I was hungry, and you fed me; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you gathered me in;”
Acts 4:31 “And when they [the disciples] had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.”
Acts 11:26 “for a whole year they [Paul and Barnabas] were gathered (synagogued) together with the church, and taught many people, and the disciples were first called ‘Christians’ in Antioch.”
Acts 13:44 “the next Sabbath, almost the whole city [of Pisidian Antioch] was gathered together (synagogued) to hear the word of God.”
Acts 14:27 “And when they [Paul and Barnabus] had arrived [back in Syrian Antioch] and had gathered the church together, they rehearsed all things that God had done with them…”
Then they “synagogued” with the elders in Jerusalem to talk about Gentiles in the church, and the Apostle James wrote a letter for Paul and Barnabus to read back in Antioch and at the other Gentile churches they had planted. So, in Acts 15:30 “they… returned to Antioch; and having gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle.”
Acts 20:7 “And upon the first day of the week, when we [that’s the church in Ephesus] were gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them…” (see also v.8)
And again, sunagw is used of the church meetings in Corinth across the ocean from Ephesus: 1Cor 5:4 “…you have been gathered together in the name of our Lord Jesus…”
When we look at passages that explicitly describe who was there when God’s people gathered together, we see all sorts of people gathering together, not a bunch of different age groups and special-interest groups meeting separately:
In Exodus 10, Pharoah insisted that only the men go to worship, but Moses insisted that they, "go with our young and our old; with our sons and our daughters…”
Then when Moses wrote the law, he commanded it to be read regularly by the priests to all the people: Deuteronomy 31:11 “you shall read this law in front of all Israel in their hearing. 12 Assemble the people, the men and the women and children and the alien who is in your town, so that they may hear and learn and fear the LORD your God, and be careful to observe all the words of this law. 13 Their children, who have not known, will hear and learn to fear the LORD your God..."
In 2 Chronicles 20, when the Syrian army started coming against Judah and king Jehosaphat, it says, “Judah gathered together (sunagw) to seek help from the LORD; they even came from all the cities of Judah to seek the LORD. 5 Then Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the LORD before the new court, 6 and [it records his prayer, and then concludes with this statement about who all was in the temple that day,] 13 All Judah was standing before the LORD, with their infants, their wives and their children.”
The prophet Joel, likewise in his 2nd chapter, calling the people to get right with God said, “16 Gather (sunagw) the people, sanctify the congregation, Assemble the elders, Gather (sunagw) the children and the nursing infants. Some 400 years later, the Jews finally heeded the call, and Ezra 10 records that, “while Ezra was praying and making confession, weeping and prostrating himself before the house of God, a very large assembly (ekklhsia), men, women and children, gathered (sunagw) to him from Israel; for the people wept bitterly. 2 Shecaniah… said to Ezra, ‘We have been unfaithful to our God… yet now there is hope for Israel...’”
Later on, when Jesus taught on the earth as a man, He gathered all ages together when He taught in the open air and in the temple:
Matthew 14 specifically mentions that there were women and children present at the feeding of the 5,000, and it was one of those little children who provided the fish and bread that Jesus used to feed the whole crowd as they sat on the green grass by family units.
Children were standing around as He taught outdoors on other occasions too, such as Matt 18, when He said, “Whoever humbles himself like this child will be greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
And, in the temple, Jesus taught with elders and little children present because in Matthew 21 we have the story of the elders telling Jesus to make the kids be quiet because they were yelling “Hosanna” in the temple!
And all ages and social statuses were apparently present in gatherings of the N.T. churches, too.
John specifically addresses children, young men, and fathers in his first letter which was read aloud in churches for the children, young men, and fathers to hear (1 John 2:12-14). He didn’t write a separate epistle for the children.
And James, in the 2nd chapter of his book describes a worship meeting that has both wealthy and poor people together.
This does not mean, however, that every meeting of the church has to have everybody in it. There is plenty of scriptural basis for special meetings for elders and other segments of the church, such as the elders who met together in the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 to decide the matter of Gentiles joining the church. (Viz: Acts 4:26, 15:6, Mat 22:34, 41, 26:3, 57, 27:17,27, Mark 6:30, 7:1 John 11:47, 18:2) But the principle of focusing on meetings of the church that are inclusive of all ages, ethnicities, and status is one that we want to uphold in our church.
We want to be a church that brings people together. So, how does that work out practically?
We must strive to gather together with those in our church who are different from us:
This means taking the time
to get to know other people who are different from
you and asking questions so that you can understand
where they are coming from.
This means walking together
as brothers and sisters in Christ, even if you disagree
over the Bible’s teaching in practical areas,
Even if you have different cultures, not excluding them unless they actually reject Jesus & the Bible. ILLUSTRATION: In my hometown, the rich whites moved out of the city of Birmingham up onto a mountain on one side of the city. My Dad was called to pastor a church near that mountain, and, due to these social dynamics, it was all-white ethnically. When one black lady actually stepped across that social barrier and applied for membership at our church, there were some white folks who left our church. But I tell you, I came to love that dear old lady, as have many others; we call her “Mama Lois.”
This will take careful thought and effort to show solidarity with fellow Christians and avoid offense while still practicing what you believe.
This means “working out our
salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12) and developing
Biblical reasons for why you do what you do so that
you can know where you can be flexible enough to try other
cultural traditions that are foreign to you because you have
established that there is no Biblical reason to object to
them.
ILLUSTRATION: When I’m singing worship songs
with other groups of Christians, sometimes I have to drop out, much
as I love singing, because the words are contrary to what I
understand the Bible teaches. I’ve done that on the song that
repeats the line “Holy Spirit come” over and
over again because I don’t believe I have to ask the Holy
Spirit to come; I believe He’s right with me always. I’ll
sing as much as I can with them, though. Same with praying
with other Christians: say ‘Amen’ to what you
can, and just pray a corrective prayer between you and God
if your brother prays something that’s really off base.
Sometimes, however, when I’m praying with a Christian from a
different tradition, that person will start praying things I’ve
never heard before, but as I listen, I’m startled to see how
clearly it lines up with Scripture and how limited my own prayers
have been.
This also means being willing to step across lines that have historically divided some Christian denominations in order to demonstrate to the world that “Christ is not divided” (1 Cor 1:13).
We must strive to hold the different ages within our church together:
Worship leaders (and I point the finger at myself here), we need to work hard at connecting with the entire range of ages, intellect, and experiences in the congregation in our music and teaching. For instance, we’re trying to chose some hymns that are real meaty in their words for all the intellectual folks here, and other songs that have a repetitive chorus so the little kids can catch on.
Gathering together different age groups also means preparing our children to worship with everybody else:
a. This includes training children at home to memorize and understand the creeds we use and the Lord’s Prayer and other things that are a regular part of the worship service.
b. This includes teaching children to read the Bible (and to read music) so they can participate with God’s people in worship.
c. It includes discipline to build in your children the self-discipline to sit still and to follow the main points of the sermon. Homeschoolers who wouldn’t otherwise have their little boys sitting at a desk for very long particularly may need to have training sessions of sitting and listening to sermon audio during the week.
d. It means everybody else supporting those parents by not casting exasperated looks at screaming babies in the worship service. Just be gracious and put up with a little extra noise.
e. We also need to offer child care that helps children grow in their ability to worship God in the church and helps parents that need it.
f. And, of course, there are practical things we can do to make it easier, such as going to bed early enough Saturday night, Doing special things on Sunday so that everybody looks forward to the Lord’s Day, and bringing a water bottle or pacifier or cushion or whatever.
g. I know how much work it is to raise children, but I believe it will be worth the effort even if it is difficult right now.