Care For Each Other

Seventy-nine minutes into the game, the score was 12-10 for them. One minute left to play, Meninga got the ball and handed it off to Langer who in turn passed to Walters, to Carne and Renouf, Hancock, Smith, Langer, Meninga and finally Mark Coyne who had come on from the reserve bench slammed the ball down for a most excellent try. The Queensland Coach Wally Lewis said if that ending had of been written into a novel nobody would have believed it. And you are wondering what I am talking about. The year was 1994 it was the interstate Rugby rivalry between New South Wales and Queensland, and it looked something like this: Show video clip.

The first two minutes have nothing to do with the message, but they are fun.

It is just a game. Nothing more and nothing less just a game. Nobody’s life or eternity was on the line and yet those guys played it and we watched it as if the outcome was of eternal consequence.

If we took our Christianity as serious as we take the sports, we would live in a very different world.

That last play though, that was the most incredible display of cooperation and teamwork I have ever seen.

And friends that is what Cornerstone Wesleyan Church needs to exhibit to the world. We may need to show love to those around us, but Christ told us that people would know we were Christians not because we loved non-Christians but because we loved one another.

1 Corinthians 12:25 This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other.

Fairly simple and yet what exactly does it entail. And is it something that we want to do. You see the church is not made up of a mass of people, nor is it simply made up of individuals; it is much more complex than that.

You see the church is made up and occupied by a strange creature called an “each other.” And it’s not a simple thing to understand or to love. It has a multitude of heads to think with and a multitude of hearts to feel with. And this morning we are going to look at some of the “Each Others” in the Scriptures.

Let’s start with, Romans 12:10 Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honouring each other.

1) Honour Each Other. You see in Christianity there is more than just you, and there is more then just your family. There needs to be a loyalty to Christ and His Church, but it goes even deeper than the devotion that you feel for you family. Remember the words of Christ in Luke 12:53 ‘Father will be divided against son and son against father; mother against daughter

and daughter against mother; and mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’”

You say “Denn, that’s terrible.”

No that’s life, families have problems. The first family in the Bible had a sibling rivalry that ended in the death of one brother. It is all too common to see children who are alienated from their parents and that isn’t a common problem it has been around for thousands of years.

But our loyalties to God’s family, the body of Christ has to go even beyond what we feel toward our families. How devoted are you to each other?

Romans 12:16 Live in harmony with each other.

2) Live in Harmony With Each Other

The church needs to realize that harmony means unity not uniformity. There is a big difference. You see we won’t always agree, that isn’t what’s important. There are times that I can’t even agree with me. What is important when we disagree is how we handle our disagreements. There are times that we need to agree to disagree. Consensus does not mean everyone thinks the same way, but it does mean that everyone gets an opportunity to express his or her opinion if they want. However, realize that nobody can force you to express your opinion.

The thing that I marvel at time after time is the dumb things that we disagree about. Nine times out of ten not only won’t they be important a decade from now they probably won’t even be important a week from now. It’s like music.

It’s incredible how Satan can take something like Holy Spirit anointed music and turn it into a battle ground for the Saints. I know we don’t all have the same musical taste but so what?

I read recently that throughout the church’s history, each generation has found the musical tastes of the next generation unacceptable and as a result has declared it un-spiritual.

We may not live in agreement but as a church family we best live in harmony, which means if we don’t get our way, we don’t whinge about it and we don’t get up on our hobby horses.