A Synagogical Church

Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS 28 Feb 2010 and 01 Dec 2019

Introduction

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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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:

  1. Synagogic

  2. Domocentric

I think I made those two words up, so let me unpack them.

Synagogic

1. Definition

2. Situation

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.

If you look at social networking sites on the Internet, you’ll see how people are trying to find identity in specialized groups.

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…

3. Biblical Basis

It is part of the nature of God to bring people together.

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:

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:

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:


APPLICATION:

  1. We must strive to gather together with those in our church who are different from us:

  1. We must strive to hold the different ages within our church together:

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.