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The Purpose Driven Life
4
40 Days of Purpose
Love
your neighbor as yourself !
By Pastor Samuel Chess
Introduction:
Matthew 22: 34-38 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the
Sadducees the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law
tested him with this question. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment
in the Law? Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and
greatest commandment.
V: 39-40 And the second is like it: Love your neighbor
as yourself. All the law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
The second part of God’s great purpose for your life involves
your relationship with the rest of God’s human creation.
Love your neighbor as yourself !
I.
Formed for God’s Family
Heb 2:10a
God is the one who made all things, and all things are for his glory. He
wanted to have many children share his glory. NCV
That’s
why your here... God wanted a family. He wanted children. The Bible says
he planned everything in the universe so we could be born, so we could
come to know him as our Father, so we could share in his glory, so we
could be part of his family.
Eph. 1:5
His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own family
by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. NLT
The
whole Bible is the story of God building a family. The family God is
building is going to last, not just here on earth, but forever and ever in
eternity. It’s an eternal family! As painful as it is to hear our
physical family here on earth will eventually no longer exist. Those birth
links are often wonderful and meaningful (sometimes not)
but they
were only ever intended by God to be temporary, a life-size training
ground, a world wide object lesson. The Bible has little to say about our
relationship with our physical family....(I’ve often been frustrated on
national holidays..) On the other hand much of the entire Bible is devoted
to the building of God’s eternal family. The spiritual family of God will
go on for ever and ever.
Biggest
question of your life... Are you part of God’s spiritual family? Being
born on to this earth does not guarantee one inclusion into God’s family.
Gal. 3:26 You are
children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. NLT
I Peter 1:3b ...God
has given us the privilege of being born again, so that we are now members
of God’s own family. LB
1) Repent
2) Admit
3) Believe
4) Accept
5) Invite
II.
Loving my Neighbor expressed inside the Family of God is called
Fellowship.
While
your relationship to those outside the family of God is critically
important, (and we will be looking at that in great detail).... because
Jesus says that loving your neighbor is the second most important thing
you can do in life then the bulk of the New Testament is spent describing
how you are to express love to others inside the Family of God. That sheer
volume of evidence points to the fact that;
A) Our #2 purpose in life is to Fellowship as a part of
God’s Family.
1 John 4:21 The person who loves God must also love
other believers. GW
1 Peter 2:17b Show special love for God’s people. CEV
Gal. 6:10 When we have the opportunity to help anyone,
we should do it. But we should give special attention to those who are in
the family of believers. NCV
B) Fellowship is Loving God’s Family
I Timothy 3:14-15
I’m writing this to you... so that you’ll know how to live in the family
of God. That family is the church. NCV
Circle
the word family and the word church. Put arrows back and
forth between them. In the new Testament those words are synonyms for the
same thing.
Church is not a place you go... Church is a family you
belong to!
III.
Four Levels of Fellowship
A) Level 1: Membership: Choosing to Belong
Ephesians 2:19 ...You are members of God’s very own
family... and you belong in God’s household with every other Christian.
LB
I’ve
discovered that the mixture of the two words church and membership makes
some people very uneasy..... Let me let you in on a little secret...
There
are a few words in scripture that originated with the writing of the
Bible. The Greek word AGAPE was coined by God to describe a selfless
love, demonstrated by Jesus for us and that we are supposed to show to God
and others. There was no word in New Testament times to describe it so
God coined a new word. (There are several others)
This word member is another of those words. Up till the
time of Paul the word member was only used to describe a part of the human
body. Paul used it to describe members of the human body. Then, under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit he used the word to describe our individual
relationship with the Family of God.
Romans 12:5 In Christ we who are many form one Body,
and each member belongs to all the others. NIV
Now many
groups have used the word to describe their participants relationship.
Here two days before the elections you are probably carrying a new card
with your membership to a political party on it. Many of you are members
of a civic organization or some other grouping of people. Understand that
your organization, whether they know it or not, borrowed that concept from
a term coined to describe a believers relationship to the Family of God.
And that’s a problem....
Some of you will walk in to the polling booths on Tuesday and
vote for somebody who is not a part of the party that you’re a member of.
So what???
I am a member of Kash and Karry’s Preferred Customer program
and I am a member of Winn Dixie’s Customer Reward Program and still
sometimes I go
to Publix’s.
Member ship has become just a cute but meaningless tag which a
very different purpose than what God coined the word to describe.
One part
is the same..... In order to be a member of any organization you have
to choose to be a part. The same is true for the original
membership family.
The Christian life is not just a matter of believing, it is
a matter of belonging.
Ephesians 2:19
...You are members of God’s very own family... and you belong in
God’s household with every other Christian. LB
Fellowship begins with belonging, with making that choice..
God want you to identify... to make the choice to be part of His family.
You do not choose to be part of the human race; that decision
was made for you. You do have to make a choice to become a part of God’s
family.
How
often I’ve heard people say; I’m a Christian... I just don’t want to
belong to a church, or even attend one, for that matter.
Let me
be blunt; If you understand the New Testament at all, that makes no sense.
-It’s like saying, I’m a football player, but I don’t want to
be part of a team.
- I’m a tuba player but I don’t want to be surrounded by an
orchestra
- I’m a soldier, just don’t tie me down with a bunch of other
soldiers
- I’m a bee.. but that hive thing... that’s just so
claustrophobic
Romans 12:5 In Christ we who are many form one Body,
and each member belongs to all the others. NIV
Here’s
the thing...
If you want to grow the way Scripture says spiritual
growth is supposed to take place, it has to take place in association with
other believers.
Balanced Biblical spiritual growth cannot take place in
isolation!!!
In order
for growth to properly take place you have to be rubbing up against other
believers often who will challenge you, cry with you, laugh with you,
scold you, motivate you, love you, sometimes offend you, etc. etc.
The
people who say I don’t want to be around other believers because they are
too strange are the ones who become the strangest of them all. Because God
designed membership to be a balance where the strengths of one balances
the weakness of another he took the example right off the human body. My
hand developed (fairly largely) in conjuction with the rest of my body. My
hand with the rest of me would just be a lifeless piece of tissue.
Romans 12:4-5 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 cast off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? Msg
God’s
intention was that we would come to Christ, find the local body he has
called us to, settle into it and begin the growth process. Sooner or
later everyone will run into an issue of some kind that makes them
uncomfortable..... please understand that’s part of the growing process.
Here in America we are famous, when something makes us uncomfortable in
one part of the body for simply slipping over to another part of the body.
There are times when God has arranged for us to change churches( move,
serious issue) but much of what we claim to be God moving us on was simply
our unwillingness to grow where we were planted.
If you want to grow, if you want to see God at work in your
life, you have to dive in to the body life of a local church.
Jesus
calls the church his Body; imagine what he really hears us say when we say
to him; Jesus I love you with all my heart, soul, mind, strength..... I
just can’t stand your Body.
Jesus
calls the church his bride: I love you Jesus. I just hate your wife.
Matthew 22:39-40 And the second is like it: Love your
neighbor as yourself. All the law and the Prophets hang on these
two commandments.
Fellowship level #1- Membership: Choosing to belong
B) Level#2: Friendship- Learning to Share
This
takes you a step deeper into biblical fellowship...
Acts 2:44 All the believers met together constantly and
shared everything with each other. LB
Friendship requires two things listed here:
1) “met together” you can’t develop friendships in isolation
2) “shared everything” you can’t develop friendships without
giving yourself away
We see
people sometimes who have formed deep friendships with others and we think
how lucky they are. They’re not lucky at all. They choose to develop deep
relationship by making time for the other person. Developing deep
relationships within the Body of Christ doesn’t just happen. You have to
make it a priority of your life to meet with other Christian people and
share yourself until your relationship with them begins to deepen. You
don’t really fellowship sitting here in this room on Sunday morning. This
is worship/celebration.... but the real deepening of your fellowship will
take place in one on one settings. The church leaders here at Grace try
hard to schedule times when fellowship can take place; but we can’t make
it happen, we can’t force you to come, we can’t force you to invite
someone to meet you for coffee, we can’t force anyone to unload their
hurts and fears to anyone else even though we know that doing so would add
a love dimension to your life that is second only to your love for God.
1) What to share???
a) Experiences-Prov.27:17 People learn from one another
as iron sharpens iron
b) Hospitality- 1Peter 3:9 open your homes to each
other NCV
c) Problems- Gal 6:2 Share each others troubles and
problems NLT
Not
required to fix everyone’s problems; just listen, share encouragement.
Hebrew 10:25 Let us not give up the habit of meeting
together. Instead, let us encourage one another.
Don’t
try to kick this habit
C)
Fellowship Level#3: Partnership- Doing my Part
Partnership comes when we realize that the family of God needs me, I have
a contribution to make, I’m going to step up to the plate and do my part.
Just as
every family divides up the chores so it is with the Christian family. the
Father sets up the chores, he even gives us special ability to do the
chores he assigns us. The whole family works together to get the job done.
However, many of the chores in /god’s family have to do with easing the
burden of the rest of the family. 58 times in the Bible we find the phrase
“One Another”. My family chores done correctly contribute to your life. If
any one of us in the family don’t step up to the plate and do what our
Father has assigned us to do, others in the family will suffer.
In the Partnership level of Fellowship, my life and your
life become deeply
intertwined. Your needs become my business. My needs become your
business. We are a family, forever.
1 Cor. 3:9a We are partners working together for God. CEV
Eph. 4:16 The whole body is fitted together perfectly- This is
God’s job: he does this-- as each part does it’s own special work, it
helps the other parts grow, so that the whole Body is healthy and
growing and full of love. NLT
D) Fellowship level #4: Kinship: Deepest possible relationships
When
somebody has an accident they try to find the next of kin. Not Aunt Ethyl;
the person they care about the most, the one they hold most dear.
We are
supposed to reach the point of spiritual kinship in our spiritual family:
Romans 12:10 Be devoted to each other like a loving family
Koinonia- Devotion to each other second only to our devotion
to Jesus Christ.
1 John 3:16 We know what real love is because Christ gave up
his life for us. And we ought to give up our lives for our Christian
brothers and sisters. NLT
10
million Christians die every year just because they are Christians in
persecuted countries. How would your fellowship with your brother or
sister across the isle change if you knew that each of you might die for
you faith before this week is out.
New Testament Fellowship was literally “I’ll take a sword
for you” deep!
At the very least ours should be” When everyone else walks out
count on me walking in!
When I
go to the bedside of someone who is dying, They never say: bring me my
diplomas, bring me my trophies, bring me the gold watch I got for
retirement, or bring me my dayplanner.
What do
dying people want at their bedside? They always seem to long for their
closest friends and family.
That’s the longing God wants to create in us for our spiritual
family while we are living to prepare for a whole eternity of reigning
with him in heaven.
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(Serve God by serving others)
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