Sermon: Stewarding the Gift of Community

Tonight will be the last in our faith focused sermon series on stewardship. We have been examining the Christian's calling in relation to the gifts that God has given to each one of us. In our evening sessions. Uh, we've, we've talked about stewarding the gifts of children, of the means of grace and even of the gospel itself. And tonight we are going to dig into the gift of the local church body and how we are to steward that gift.

But let's pray together before we come to the word of God. Father, we, we give you thanks that we can close this Sunday meditating together upon your holy word, a lamp to our path. A light to our feet sharper than any two-edged sword it is to it is more to be desired than gold, sweeter than honey and never returns empty. We ask that you would give to us attentive hearts and willing minds and we ask that as we meditate upon it, you would grow in us

the joy of our salvation. In the name of Christ we pray, amen. Our text tonight is Colossians chapter three, uh, verses one through 17.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory but to death. Therefore what is earthly in you? Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire

and covetousness which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming in. These you two once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander and obscene. Talk from your mouths. Do not lie to one another. Seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised

and uncircumcised, barbarian, cian, slave free. But Christ is all and in all put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience bearing with one another. And if anyone has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you also must forgive. And above all these put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony

and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. Singing Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with thanksgiving in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Amen. Now it,

it may seem odd to think about stewardship in relation to the church community, perhaps less so if you are a leader in the church, but as members of the body of Christ, we are all called to regard these unique relationships that we have here with a special care and reverence. Tonight I want to reflect on three things related to this. First, that the church body is a unique gift. And next that this special care that we are called

to take requires humility and meekness on our part toward our brothers and sisters. And finally, it requires teaching and admonishing one another with the wisdom that is found in the word of God. So first, as we have seen throughout all of our stewardship sermons, the gifts of God carry with them accompanying duties for the Christian. If God gives a gift, he expects us to care for that gift. Well there's an obligation

that follows from the blessing. Peter Parker learned that with great power comes great responsibility. And likewise for the Christian with great blessing comes a duty to bless. We are obligated to live our thanksgiving for these gifts that have been given by God in such a way that gives honor to the giver. This is the root of the idea of Christian stewardship, our thankfulness for these blessings that takes the form of obedient care

and use of these gifts, how we interact with and treat the blessings of God proves our love and thanksgiving to God. If you're given children, we saw you seek to honor the giver with how you bring them up. If you're given earthly material things you seek to honor the giver by using it to care well for those whom he loves. If you're given talent, natural or spiritual, you seek to honor the giver by using them to bless others

and the people of God are a gift to you. Perhaps we don't meditate frequently upon this truth frequently enough. Consider that the best thing, consider the best thing that ever has happened to you, namely the salvation of your soul. It did not happen in a vacuum. Someone from from Christ's body told you the good news, some sermon that you heard preached or some passage from the Bible that you talked over with someone was used by the Holy Spirit

to bring you to faith. Think about the other times of great encouragement and transformation from the Lord that has happened in your life. I can, I can confidently say that almost every one of them, if not all of them, occurred through the ministry of a brother or sister in Christ acting in love on behalf of their savior. It's probably someone in this room right now, a pastor, a counselor, an elder, a small group leader, someone who

given the gift of grace themselves by our loving savior, sought to pass that along to you. Our text says that the Christian is raised with Christ, that our life is hidden with Christ in God. In fact that Christ himself is our life. It says that in him we have been made new and our being is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator and that we will one day be with him in glory. All of these things just from our text tonight are true

of the Christian and these things are the essential and most important identifying characteristics of a Christians' in her life. This creates a a profound unity between those who share the faith. These are things that are true of both you and I that define us and set us apart from the rest of the world. And it's fair to say that even the identifying bonds, bonds of family do not go as deep as these bonds. That is to say more essentially than I am a

hinkley, I am a Christian. Consider the the levels of identity that are laid out for us. In verse 11. We have ethnicity, religious background, nationality and socioeconomic or class background more than I am defined by any of those things. I am defined by belonging to Christ. Christ is all and in all the mark of Christ makes you unique and sets you among of people, among a people that although they may be very different in background,

have more in common with you in these essential and definitive ways than those who have the same background. What you've been given in Christ is a new family, a new people with whom you have all of the most important things in common. I could say some things to my brother in Christ that I don't, that I don't even know particularly well, that I couldn't say maybe to a close family member who was an unbeliever. A close unbelieving family member might say,

why don't you wanna watch this movie with me so great because I'm trying to fight sin in my heart. And that movie is explicit. They might say, your kid is so good at their sport and they could really excel. Why won't you let them play on Sundays? 'cause there are more important things than excelling at sports. They might say, you're about to spend your retirement in another country teaching people about Jesus. Why on earth do you see that?

Even those closest to us in proximity sometimes cannot fathom who we are in Christ. But those of you in this room whose Lord and Savior is Jesus Christ, understand these things easily. You and I understand Paul when he says Christ is all and in all do you see deeper than blood, nationality or class? As important as those things may be is the shared purpose to glorify our savior with our lives and to be given this glorious

otherworldly purpose is a gift. And to be given a community of brothers and sisters who have the exact same purpose is a gift upon a gift. Brothers and sisters whom I can encourage as they seek to love God and their neighbor and who can encourage me to live the same. Brothers and sisters whose reason for living is the same as mine, whose goal in all things is the same. Whose existential and eschatological hope is the same is more.

This new family, this new nation, this fellowship of believers are precisely who God has ordained to use as his means to convert, bless, encourage, strengthen, and heal his people here on earth. God uses the church for the propagation of the gospel, for the healing of broken souls and for all of our, each of our growth in grace, it's right for us to celebrate and point out that there is salvation and transformation power in the word of God.

And it is also right to humbly thank God for the people in our lives who obediently have brought that word to us on his behalf. How beautiful said Isaiah and Paul are the feet of those who bring good news, meaning you who told me the message that changed my life, that brought me from death to life. You who obeyed your master's calling to go and make disciples. I see the profound loveliness of your obedience and I'm so thankful for your patient, your faithfulness.

As we as a church enter our 60th year of life together, it's a cause for celebration. But let's be clear, when we celebrate a church and we celebrate this church, what we are celebrating is the Lord's work through a specific group of faithful saints, ministering God's word to one another over a period of time committed to one another for Jesus' sake, serving and loving one another in his name, not because of inherent earthly connections or

because of any inherent beauty or glory within the group itself, but because of their shared commitment to Christ, they, we serve one another, we invest in each other and bless one another because we belong to a savior who calls us to that kind of love, encouragement, and strengthening.

Also, it's not only to your benefit to have those who speak the truth to you and love and pray for you and care for your needs in Christ. Of course those things are good, but it is also good that you are given the opportunity to speak the truth and love to pray for others and care for their needs in Christ. God intends for our good in the receiving of love from his body, but also in the calling upon our lives to show love in his name.

This is also for our good. It is for your good that there are people who are following in your footsteps. It is, it is for your good that you have the opportunity to serve here, to pray here, to give here, to build one another up in the faith as much is as much the purpose in your sanctification as it is to be built up in the faith. You are healed inside by the gospel that you might look up in thanksgiving. And then look out to your brethren in love

and servants, brother or sister, are you thankful for the people of God here in your life? Do you thank him for whom he has given to you in the church? Do you thank him for the leaders that seek to equip you? And for those who are in need of your ministry, the body of Christ is a gift of God to you for your growth and grace, how is it that you personally are seeking to honor that gift?

I want to add one more thought as we transition to our second reflection on this topic. And that is, in Christ we have duties toward our brethren and most specifically to those brethren within our local church body. We have unity with the church invisible throughout the world and throughout history. But nowhere is that unity more plainly put into practice than in the local church, than in this room, in this building to together.

The duty that you have to these Christians is higher than the duty that you have to Christians elsewhere. These people here are your people in Christ and we would do well to count that cost before we join a church. Before you join this church, if you have not already and hear me saying to those of you who have not joined a church that you should join a church about URC begins next week. At the early service. When you join a church,

you are committing to that local body of believers. You are committing to leaders, you are committing to members both of whom will prove to be imperfect. People you are committing to follow your leaders, to pray for them, to minister to them. As you're able and you're committing to coming alongside your brothers and sisters here and seeking to strengthen them in their walk of faith, you're committing both to ministering to these people here

and to being ministered to by these people here. Church membership is not a spectator sport. And if your church life is a spectator sport, you are not doing it right. Church life is one anothering. It is investment, it is stewardship, it is risk. It is committing to help and it is committing to allow others to help you and all because back to verse 11, Christ is all and in all the glorification of Christ is the purpose of my life.

And where is he? How do I serve him today? Now, certainly my service of Christ will mean that I get to work on my inner life and I I fight sin and I pray and I read my Bible and I go to those who also have union with him by faith and I serve them and I also allow them to serve. We serve me and together we serve the world through the discipleship of the lost.

Second, uh, what specific forms, uh, might this special care that I described, uh, take God calls us to service toward one another in the church in verses 12 to 17 of our text. Identify several ways, but I want to draw out two that I think are some of the most important. First, a posture of humility and meekness toward one another in the church. And second, that we are to demonstrate our love for one another by teaching

and admonishing one another with the word of God. So a posture of humility we're called to this posture in an ongoing way toward one another. Verse 12 explicitly uses the word humility and the following verses presuppose humility. It's interesting to observe Paul's use of the word here in contrast, the common use of the word in broader Greek culture. You could translate the word he uses here for humility as lowliness of mind

or a mindset that does not consider itself too high. Lowness in the broader cultural context at the time was not something to be prized. It was something about which you should be ashamed. Paul, the word Paul uses here is literally an antonym of the Aristotelian virtue of high mindedness. Aristotle taught that it was a virtue to know that you are great and that you deserve to be treated with honor and to not bother with low things or low people

and to be offended by being treated as ordinary. This virtue sounds very contemporary to me. People today might say, you are the main character of your story or you need to own your own worth. Paul is saying exactly the opposite of these things, and he's simply echoing our Lord who said, whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. Nietzsche criticized this mindset.

Christian humility to his mind was equated with slavery. The humility called for in our passage is profoundly counter-cultural and has been throughout all of human history. And if not for the beginning of verse 12, you might see the critic's point are Christians supposed to just be a bunch of doormats who hate themselves and think that they can't do anything right? That everyone else is better than them at any, at everything.

But verse 12 illustrates the true power and security that only the Christian has. What these critics call weakness is the power of Christ alive in the Christian. Verse 12 says that we are to put on low mindedness because we are God's chosen one's, holy and beloved. I can put myself in the role of a servant precisely because of how precisely because how important I am is a permanently settled matter. A poet I once heard said it in this way that worth,

value and beauty are not determined by any innate quality, but by the lengths to which an owner would go to possess a thing. So Christian, your worth, value and beauty have been set at the cross to God. You are worth the death of his son. You are chosen holy and beloved by the living God. And that is infinitely better than being the main character of your story. Not only this, in our humble service, we are simply emulating and following our Lord.

We are having the mind among ourselves, which is ours in Christ Jesus, who though being though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians two, do you see contrary to worldly logic, it is the humility

of Christ that is the arrow through the heart of the devil. Sin and death itself. Christ demonstrated his power by submitting to a death on a cross. In his humility, he asserted his sovereignty. That's our model for service in the church. This is our elder brother who's in whose steps we are to follow. This is our God whose character and nature determines what is good and right. Remember, early on in my Christian life

being a poor homeowners and the diaconate of this church found out that our dryer was broken and they sent someone in the congregation over to look it over and he looked, you know, opened it up, looked, said the motor was bad and he would order a new one and come over next week and, and fix it. And I was, I was so surprised, so encouraged. And I said, naively, well, well, if you think you could do that, that's great. He humbly said, no problem.

I'm happy to serve what he did not tell me. And what I found out later was that in his day job, he repaired the cyclotron. And I had said, if you think you could do that, but, but a Christian cyclotron mechanic is not too good to fix the dryer of a poor young Christian and not because of a lack of dignity or value in himself, but precisely because his value is so secure that he can follow his Lord into humble service.

We are free to serve all and especially our brothers and sisters in the faith, in a humble posture because we are chosen holy and beloved, and doing so shows to one another and to the world, the character of the Savior whom we worship. Finally, the practice of encouragement and exhortation. Our text specifically outlines the nature of our most effective service to one another in the church. We are to humbly strengthen one another through

encouragement and exhortation. We are to put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. We are to enter in relationally with our brethren and we invite them into our lives and we become a part of their lives. We are to bear with one another in love, and we affirm what is good in them and in love, caution against what is bad, and we stick with them through it all. Verse 16 says that we are to do these things with

all wisdom or in all wisdom. Wisdom is absolutely necessary to know when a brother or sister needs a push or sympathetic counsel. Paul says in one Thessalonians five that we are to admonish the idol, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak and be patient with them all. Idleness and faint heartedness can look very similar from the outside, and we need wisdom to know which is which and wi how we are to help our brothers and sisters.

But notice that verse 16 doesn't just say be wise about these things. It identifies the source of the wisdom that we need. It tells us how we might grow in our ability to help and strengthen our brothers and sisters. Not only this, it calls us to the best tool that we have to truly help let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Paul says, the word is able to train us to tell the difference between the faint hearted and the idol.

And the word actually has the power that we do not have to strengthen and motivate the heart. The word is the root of our wi wisdom, and it's the only truly helpful and transformative thing that we have to share. You can talk about your own experiences with your brother or sister, and that is a good and right thing to do. And you can share your heart about whatever topic it is. Again, good and right, but your wisdom and your heart will not transform your brother

and sister from one degree of sanctification to the next. However, the word by the power of the spirit has the power to change a heart when you're sick. Do you want a doctor who has deep sympathy and has been sick himself? Or do you want a doctor who knows how to heal you? Probably both, right? Let's, let's aim for both. When you are lost, do you want someone who knows how it feels to be lost or someone with a map? Again, why not both?

I'm not saying that we should not share our wisdom experience in our heart. Not at all. God has given you these things so that you can help others. What I am saying is that these things will ultimately be powerless without the explanatory and transformative power of the word of God. When our passage says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, it means seek to apply it to your own heart, to your own experiences. Seek to gain its wisdom.

And then when you are coming alongside others, encourage them with the same comfort and the same wisdom that you have received from the word you can see. I think that there's a difference between saying to someone who's going through a hard time. Romans eight says, all things are for your good. So stop being sad and saying, when I have been sad, deeply sad, what a great comfort. To me, Romans eight has been just a, a final and small observation.

Interesting, isn't it that as a part of our teaching and admonishing, Paul says that we should sing songs together.

This is not, uh, a part of my usual practice when I'm meeting with someone for discipleship. I don't, uh, I don't sing with them. But I think Paul is saying that I should, uh, we in our songs, these songs are from the Bible or reflect biblical wisdom. And we do learn a lot together. The words that we sing with one another in worship. And it does mean something to sing with conviction. Whatever my lot thou has taught me to say,

it is well with my soul. It means something to you, but it means something to those who are singing it with you and seeing you sing it with conviction and with sincerity. It means if, if I can have this comfort, you can have this comfort as well. We would do good to consider our worship together, even our worship together here tonight as a part of this mutual teaching and admonishment, people of God, particularly the local church, are a gift, a great gift

to be stewarded by us. And we must honor the giver of this good gift with our humble love toward one another, our humble investment in one another. And we must steep ourselves in the word of God and seek to apply its transformative power to those who belong to us in Christ. And we should be thankful. Thankful, because Christ is all and in all, let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for the body in which you have placed us. We thank you for the investment and the care that we have received from your people and for the investment and care that you have called us to do. We thank you that you are at work among us through the humble love of the church. And we thank you for encouraging words and for loving admonishments. We ask that you would enable us to put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility,

meekness, patience, forgiveness, peaceable thanksgiving and love. And may the word of Christ dwell in us richly. And may we do it all just as we pray it all in. In Jesus' name. Amen.