HoHum:
In his book, “Imagine Your Life Without Fear” Max Lucado gives some significant insight when he says,"Questions can make hermits out of us, driving us into hiding. Yet the cave has no answers. Christ distributes courage through community; he dissipates doubts through fellowship. He never deposits all knowledge in one person but distributes pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to many. When you interlock your understanding with mine, and we share our discoveries, when we mix, mingle, confess and pray, Christ speaks."
WBTU:
This morning we looked at the need for community from humanity’s perspective. This evening we will look at community from God’s perspective.
Thesis: God’s case has 3 basic ideas
For instances:
1. The Godhead, the Trinity
Godhead is best described by the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy- God in 3 persons, blessed Trinity
What does this have to do with fellowship, with community? All 3 involved in creation:
1. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1, NIV.
“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Genesis 1:2, NIV.
“Through him (the Word) all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” John 1:3, NIV.
When God came to make man this is what he said: “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness...”” Genesis 1:26, NIV. To whom is God talking? Is God talking to himself? In a way. All of this demonstrates the relationships in the Godhead.
The Godhead comes to a consensus to create humans in His image. It is not enough to say God is interested in community. God, rightly defined and understood, is community. The doctrine of the Godhead is extremely complex and but this has implications for the importance of community. Since God himself lives and works in community and since we are created in God’s image, then we too are created in and for community.
In God there is the identity of the One, and yet there are Three in One. There is individuality in the Godhead. God exists in community. This picture of the Oneness of God should shatter our independence.
Let’s dig deeper into this statement, “Let us make man in our image.” What does this mean?
This means that humans have eternal souls in contrast to the animals. This is true and part of what is being said but not exactly.
Sure God gave humans a soul that distinguishes us from plants, animals, and other created beings. But He did more. God chose to give to us a distinct kind of relational DNA. God created us all with a “community gene,” an essential part of what it means to be a human.
All people have a great hunger for togetherness. If we treat this hunger as unimportant, we deny a big part of how we were created. When the church understands this, we validate the nature of the God whose image we bear. We need to work with the grain and not against it. We are created in God’s image; therefore, we are created for community.
Jesus and community
Notice how Jesus conducted his ministry: Always started with prayer, then moved into community and then ministry. Let’s talk about Jesus and community. We see Jesus having several levels of community:
At the first level, Jesus fed and preached to thousands. “Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another...” Luke 12:1, NIV.
Jesus worked with hundreds- “In those days Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty)” Acts 1:15, NIV.
Jesus sent 72 (or 70) for a special mission.
Notice that Jesus zeroed in on 12 men. “He appointed twelve--designating them apostles--that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach” Mark 3:14, NIV. Jesus spent a large amount of his time with these 12.
Even deeper a group of 3. Jesus had special friends- Peter, James and John.
Sociologists have found this to be true. Called the Dunbar numbers (proposed by a person named Dunbar) and they are similar to the numbers we have just gone over. The best known, a hundred and fifty, is the number of people we call casual friends—the people, say, we’d invite to a large party. The next step down, fifty, is the number of people we call close friends—perhaps the people we’d invite to a group dinner. We see them often, but not so much that we consider them to be true friends. Then there’s the circle of fifteen: the friends that we can turn to for sympathy when we need it, the ones we can confide in about most things. The most intimate Dunbar number, five, is our close support group. These are our best friends.
Jesus, being fully human, could only manage a limited number of relationships. Cannot get to know thousands or even hundreds. We must learn from Jesus. Jesus poured his life into these 12 men and see what happened. These apostles changed the world.
Lynn Anderson tells the story of Art, a long time elder, who was in an elder’s meeting, slumped over in a chair, so emotional that tears reached down to his elbows. “Art, what’s wrong?” I asked. “I feel so overwhelmed,” Art responded. “God has called me to be a shepherd of this flock. We have so many new members, and try as I might, I don’t even know but a fraction of them. So how can I shepherd them? I am so tired. And I feel as if I’m failing as a shepherd.”
Need to understand something that Jesus understood. Jesus knew that people have desperate needs. Yet, he spent a great deal of his public ministry doing life together with this little company of 12. He drew away from the many, then selected a few to reach the many. We cannot reach thousands or even hundreds but we can have a profound affect upon a few.
Took a small groups class and I was thinking about the small groups of which I have been involved. Owe a lot to small groups like Bible Bowl during my teen years. Owe a lot to discipleship groups and support groups during my college days. Owe a lot to preachers groups in various places. Owe a lot to prayer groups, get together and pray and saw dramatic results. Important to get involved in small group and invest in their lives. Why don’t I do something like that today? Praying about it. So simple that I missed it. I am involved in a small group. We don’t meet monthly or weekly or even daily like the early Christians, how about 24/7. I’m talking about my family. My wife and I are leaders of this small group. We eat together, sleep together, work together, fight together, read and study the Bible together, reach out to others together, pray together. This is the kind of group that Jesus lead. They spent over 3 years together and eat together, slept together, worked together, argued together, read and studied the Bible together, minister to the crowds together, prayed together. Because I have my small group I decline to get involved in other small groups because my focus is on them. Because I have my small group I say no to various things that are good but I chose what I feel is better. Jesus did the same thing. He declined to do various things at times to focus on what was best and that was spending time with his apostles.
We have various seasons of life and our small group will probably change over time. Grady Jolly said this, “Find someone who knows more than you and learn from that person. And find someone who needs what you know and teach that person. Every Christian is a student; every Christian is a teacher.” I learn so much from my small group and hopefully they learn a lot from me. Growing together! Dare say that the apostles learned a lot from Jesus and Jesus learned a lot from the apostles! It is no accident that Paul and other apostles followed Jesus’ style in their own ministries!
Because our culture emphasizes individualism and self reliance, many Christians miss this. They think they can be Christlike without pursuing community, relationships with others.
John 17
Notice this chapter’s setting. The meal is concluded and Jesus is doing talking with the apostles. Jesus is having a final, pre-death, extended conversation with his heavenly Father. The eleven remaining apostles are gathered around Jesus. They hand on Jesus’ every word. This gives us an insiders prayer of Jesus. Jesus prays as One who, from and for all time, shares essence of being with God, talking to another with whom he has existed in the most intimate of relationships, the Godhead.
Notice that the Godhead is all over this prayer. Jesus knows that he is going to experience this relationship in its fullness once more after the cross. “So that they may be one as we are one.” To say it another way, “I want human beings- these apostles and many more- to find the kind of oneness we experience in the Trinity.” The Godhead is the model of community. Is this possible among humans? Jesus thinks so. That Jesus thinks it is possible for humans to find such relational connection is remarkable.
Gilbert Bilezikain- “This concern for the survival of the church down through the ages provides the explanation for Jesus’ prayer. He knew that if the church should fail to demonstrate community to the world, it would fail to accomplish its mission, because the world would have reason to disbelieve the gospel (John 17:21, 23). According to that prayer, the most convincing proof of the truth of the gospel is the oneness of his followers.”
