Message - November 5, 2017 - Ephesians 1:15-23
Last Sunday 11 of us from this congregation got together after the service to go for a prayer walk. We spent some time together to get oriented to what we were about to do.
We talked about some basic principles of praying for the community and about our own safety as we prayed. Then we went out for about an hour and prayed as we walked throughout the community.
I walked and prayed with Cala and Hazel, and even just in that short time, we connected.
We connected as we talked about the neighbourhood. We shared stories that we knew and people that we remembered from the past.
We stood at the places people had died and prayed for the community to not live in fear.
We prayed for those who are still mourning the loss of those who died. We and others prayed for God’s Spirit to move and transform the community by His power and for His glory.
Afterward we came back here and talked about the experience. One word people used a lot was ‘unity’.
Another said: “It is really good to know that other people have the same concerns that I have for the community”.
It was, truly, a great experience to walk in unity with brothers and sisters from this church, all with the same purpose, to bless the community and ask God’s shalom upon our neighbourhood, which has been hit with a lot of violence in the past months and years.
We closed by standing in a circle, holding hands and praying in gratitude for God’s continuing work in the community and inside of us. There was a warm feeling of community. There was a lovely sense of family.
A taste, perhaps, of something that each of us wants more. I thought then and there...this is something we need to do more. And so we will.
It is good to come to church. It is good to worship the Lord together. It is often rich and fulfilling and encouraging and empowering to do this.
And when we gather to worship, we do this together, directing all of our love and affection and worship to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And this is excellent.
And...And...there is more. There is more that is intended by God for us to be and to do together. We will always gather to worship and adore the living God. That part is do-able. But what about the other things that the church is to be.
What is God’s vision for the church - for every church, including Church at the Mission? It has to do with love. And so we come to our passage for today.
Paul Begins, and our passage today, to express His great joy and his regular practice of giving thanks for the Ephesians and remembering them in his prayers, because of two things: it’s because of their faith in the Lord Jesus, and their love for all God's people.
Today I want to focus on love. I want to focus on love because really, it’s all about love. Life is all about love. It’s all about relationships. Everything we need in life comes through relationships.
I didn’t say everything we want. We can easily get distracted by wanting stuff, wanting the latest iPhone, wanting the latest tech gear or whatever. That has nothing to do with love.
But everything that we need, actually need in life comes through relationships. Our relationship with God and our relationships with others.
The best things in life comes through relationships. And yet relationships can be some of the hardest things to deal with in life.
The struggle with relationships is that they involve other people. If I could have a relationship just with myself, that might be a bit easier.
But it’s when I need a relationship with you that I can run into trouble.
In fact there’s a growing trend, hot off the presses, called ‘sologamy’ (pic). People marrying themselves, because, well, I’m perfect for me.
But Jesus said this:
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ...17 This is my command: Love each other. John 15: 9-12, 17
When we think of God’s commands, we might be inclined to think of the 10 Commandments. We might think of a list of things that we should do and a list of things that we shouldn’t do in order to please God.
How often do we think of loving each other as a command? Why is it that Jesus says this? The thing about a command is that it’s not actually optional if you truly follow the one who commands. It’s not something I can say: “Meh!?!” to.
Jesus says to us, gathered in this place: Love each other as I have loved you. This is my command: Love each other. He says this loud and clear as a command because He knows it’s not easy to love one another.
Back in Jesus day and in the early life of the church it was not easy for them to love each other. They most often lived in small communities where they saw each other more frequently that we do during the week.
Perhaps it was a challenge to be in each others faces and worlds every day. Nowadays, our problem is the opposite. It’s more that we have ‘not enough’ time together.
So back in Jesus day, and in our day in 2017, Toronto, Canada, it is not easy to love others.
But let me ask you a question: Do you want to be loved? Does it matter to you that you are connected and are growing in relationship both with God and with other believers? Most of us would say “yes!”. But.
But, “We are all caught between a desperate desire for community and a mortal fear of vulnerability”. That’s a quote from a recent article in thegospelcoalition.org.
Jesus said the whole purpose of the law and the prophets, or most of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, is to love God and love people.
“‘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. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40
And over and over again, including in today’s passage, we are taught to love. To love God and love one another.
“Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God”. Ephesians 5:1-2
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35
Jesus equates loving God with obeying God’s commands: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”
“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).
So we need to be all about love. But I know that there are some among us whose experience of church over their lifetimes is not this. Some of us here might say that throughout our lives, a lot of our experience of church in general is that it’s all about rules.
Or judgement. Or the way you look, your Sunday best. It’s been about something other than love. And if that’s been your experience of church in the past, I’m here to say I’m sorry.
Love is what it’s all about, and sometimes you have to work to keep the church about love.
This has actually always been an issue for the church as a whole, since the very earliest days of the church in the first century, lest you think it’s only us that has to be careful and vigilant.
John the Apostle, in his letters to the churches he oversaw, wrote this:
“Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness”.
It’s clear that there were some in the church who claimed to be walking with God but were living with animosity toward others in the church, their sisters and brothers.
Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them. 1 John 2:9-11
So, how do we grow in this area? How do we grow?
How Do We Grow in Love?
The first way we grow is to have our priorities right. Love God first. In an age that encourages us to either abandon God altogether or to dream up our own ideas about God and our own ideas about morality, we really need to come to God on His terms.
And put simply, His terms are His revelation about Who He is.
And that revelation is found in His Word, in the Holy Bible.
There is no way that we can figure out God on our own.
There is no imagination great enough, even if you put together all of the brain power on this planet, the best we could come up with is a pale imitation of God in all His glory.
The book of Ephesians is giving us a glimpse into the beauty and majesty of God. Listen again to Paul’s passion prayer:
18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe.
That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.
2 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church,23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
This is a small glimpse, and there’s a lot more in the book of Ephesians and there’s a ton more in the rest of the Bible that reveals Who God is, what He is about, how He loves, How He saves, How He calls us to be His witnesses to a broken world.
We come to God on His terms, submitting ourselves to Him, and the eyes of our hearts are opened by Him and He gives us what we need to understand Him. That’s not greater brain power.
It’s spiritual revelation. It’s the Spirit of God revealing the nature of God through the Son of God in the Word of God.
So we have our priorities right. We are learning to love God, to follow Jesus, and to rely on the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, in our journey.
How Do We Grow in Love?
The second way we grow is to have our hearts and eyes open to opportunities to grow as a community, to grow in love.
Tony Evans is a pastor with good insights on love. He said:
“You can love people that you don’t like. When there is not an
emotional connection, you can still behaving loving ways toward them.
It’s always better if you like the one you love.
Biblical love is a decision, it’s a commandment that we must follow.
So what follows that is that it is a decision, not rooted in emotion.
It is the decision to compassionately and empathetically and
righteously seek the well-being of the other person.
Which is why God can tell us to love our enemies. He doesn’t tell us
to like our enemies.
Jesus says by this shall all know that you were at my disciples, that
you love one another.
The symptom, the signal that you are a serious follower of Jesus
Christ is in your love. It’s not in your biblical knowledge.
It’s not in belonging to the right church, it’s not having certain political or social views, it is in your love.
If that love for God is real, it’s going to have symptoms. It’s going to show up in the way you treat other people.
It’s going to impact and transform how you interact with other people.
According to Jesus, it will particularly impact how you relate to people that you would, apart from the commandment to love one another, not interact with.
It doesn’t first of all have to do with feelings and emotions, although it doesn’t exclude those things. First of all has to do with how much of a serious follower, a genuine disciple, of Jesus that you are.
By this shall all men know that you are for real. That you are serious
about your relationship with God. That you’re serious about actually
following Jesus.
I’ve been judged for being too conservative, I’ve been judged for
being too liberal; I’ve been judged for being too charismatic, I’ve
been judged for not being charismatic enough.
I’ve been judged for being too rich, I’ve been judged for being too poor. I’ve been judged for being a pastor.
At a wedding I officiated at, a person came up to me and said “why on earth would anyone want to be a pastor?” God bless their soul.
But I’ve never been judged for being too loving. And Even if I was
judged for that, I would welcome that judgment. Mercy triumphs over
judgment, says the Bible.
But love is a commitment. That means it’s a decision. Let means you
can decide not to do it. You’re a free agent, you make up your own
mind if you want to obey Jesus.
But if we are going to love, to grow in love as a community, it is necessary to spend time together. To communicate.
For some here, the moment in the service they most enjoy is The Peace, where we go around and welcome new people and greet each other.
That, plus the time after the service when there’s opportunity to talk and connect and maybe even make plans to get together during the week.
That’s a good place to start.
Today after the service we’re starting a new study as well - Christianity Explored - which, if you haven’t taken it or even if you have in the past, is a great way to spend time connecting with others around a common interest.
Addisu, who is leading the study, has become, since he joined us as a student back in January, very dear to many of us. He has an infectious love for God and a passion for the gospel, and he’s also just a very loving guy. A really good brother to get to know.
And there will be others there who you can connect with and learn and grow with.
And there are opportunities to ‘get on the inside’ of the life of this church. We meet Sundays for worship.
We meet Tuesdays and we meet Thursdays for our Bridges program.
Offer your time and your gifts. Are you interested in greeting people as they come to worship here? You can do that. Talk to Florence. Are you a talented singer or musician? Talk to me and ask how you can get involved?
Do you have the gift of hospitality? You can help serve the congregation after the service. Talk to Florence.
Become a part of what makes our Sunday gatherings good, and make them better through your involvement. These are just some of the opportunities to grow as a community.
And again every Tuesday and Thursday in the afternoon and evening for Bridges, our mid-week classes, dinners, worship times, support groups and a live music cafe.
There are so many ways to grow in love with this community and to learn to love each other as Jesus commands us to love one another.
How Do We Grow in Love?
And the third way is also very important. It is to dream. To vision. To imagine something beyond what things are like today.
What would it be like to be more a part of a great, loving community of followers of Jesus?
Followers of Jesus who are on mission to the world to love people to Jesus, to care for their needs. To bring the gospel of God’s saving grace in Jesus to this community?
What would it be like to be in community, to be comfortable being vulnerable at times, to be valued and cared for and to value and care for and love others?
What would it be like to be able to contribute in your areas of strength and to grow in your areas of challenge within this community?
What would it be like to experience blessing and be a part of others experiencing blessing in this community?
It would be awesome. It would be beautiful. And it is God’s purpose and intention and command that you and I love one another, as followers of Jesus Christ.
So may we listen. May we hear God speak to us. Jesus commands us to love.
May we hear Him speak, and in loving obedience and joy, follow His command to love, with the power to love that He gives us by His Holy Spirit. Amen.
