This week, I’d like to begin by sharing a couple of poems that I found this week. But there’s a twist. For now, I’m going to leave out the last verse of each poem and come back to them a little later on.
The Perfect Church
If you could find the perfect church
Without one fault or smear
For goodness sake, don’t join that church You’d spoil the atmosphere.
Author Unknown
The Perfect Church
I think that I shall never see
A Church that’s all it ought to be;
A Church that has no empty pews,
Whose Pastor never has the blues;
A Church whose Deacons always Deke
And none is proud but all are meek;
Where gossips never peddle lies
Or make complaints or criticize;
Where all are always sweet and kind
And all to other’s faults are blind.
Such perfect churches there may be,
But none of them are known to me.
Author Unknown
It seems that many people spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect church. In fact, I read this week about a church who thought that they had even come up with the perfect design.
A rich man went to his pastor and said, "I want you and your wife to take a three month trip to Hawaii at my expense. When you come back, I’ll have a surprise for you". The pastor accepted the offer and he and his wife went off to hang out on the beach in Kauai.
Three months later they returned home and were met by the wealthy parishioner, who told them while they were gone, he had had a new church built. "It’s the finest building money can buy, pastor," said the man, "No expense was spared." And he was right. It was a magnificent edifice both outside and in.
But there was one striking difference. There was only one pew and it was at the very back. "A church with only one pew?" asked the pastor.
"You just wait until Sunday." said the rich man.
When the time came for the Sunday service, the early arrivals entered the church, filed onto the one pew and sat down. When the pew was full, a switch clicked silently, a circuit closed, the gears meshed, a belt moved and, automatically, the rear pew began to move forward. When it reached the front of the church it came to a stop. At the same time, another empty pew came up from below at the back and more people sat down. And so it continued, pews filling and moving forwards until finally the church was full, from front to back.
"Wonderful!" said the pastor, "Marvelous!"
The service began, and the pastor started to preach his sermon. He launched into his text and, when 12 o’clock came, he was still going strong with no end in sight. Suddenly a bell rang and a trap door in the floor behind the pulpit dropped open.
"Wonderful!" said the congregation, "Marvelous!"
Even though I think most people intuitively know that there is no such thing as a perfect church, that doesn’t seem to keep people from trying to find one. And so in our culture today, that had led to two trends that are relatively recent phenomena:
• Church hoppers
Some people, in their quest to find the perfect church, go from church to church. Sometimes they’ll settle down in one place for a while, but it isn’t long until they realize the church isn’t perfect and they move on. Maybe, the type of music doesn’t suit their tastes. Maybe the pastor preaches too long, or heaven forbid, he even has the audacity to preach about some sin that they need to deal with in their lives. Or maybe someone sits in their favorite seat or offends them in some way. Most of the time, it’s not theology or doctrine that causes these people to jump from church to church. It’s the fact that they have to deal with other sinners.
Eugene Peterson hits the nail on the head when he writes:
…when we get serious about the Christian life we eventually end up in a place and among a people undecidedly uncongenial to what we had expected. That place and people is often called a church. It’s hard to get over the disappointment that God, having made an exception in my case, doesn’t call nice people to repentance.
[from Leap over a Wall]
• “Lone Ranger” Christians
The other response, which I seem to see more and more, is that people become what I call “Lone Ranger” Christians. They figure that they can just be a Christian on their own. They don’t need a church. Some of them will sit at home on Sunday morning and watch their favorite TV preacher. But go to a local church where they have to interact with all those sinners – no way!
One of the things that we learn by looking at the life of David is that God intends for people to live out their faith in a community of other believers. And because all those other believers are like us, wretched sinners saved only by the grace of God, living out our faith in community with others is usually difficult and messy. That was certainly true for David.
This morning, we’re going to end up in 1 Samuel 30, but in order for us to get some background, we’ll have to start several chapters earlier. We don’t have a real accurate timeline of these events, but the period of time we’ll look at this morning probably encompassed five to ten years of David’s life. David has been anointed king, but Saul is still on the throne and David spends most of this time in the wilderness, fleeing from Saul, who is trying to kill him. In 1 Samuel 22 we find a key introduction to this part of David’s life:
David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and his father’s household heard about it, they went down to him there. All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their leader. About four hundred men were with him.
1 Samuel 22:1, 2 (NIV)
While this group of people isn’t a church, in the strict sense of the word, we find that over the next several years they function very much like a church. A group of people live out their spirituality in the midst of a community of believers. It’s not always pretty; they don’t always do what they should; but it’s real.
And what a group of characters it is. This group of 400 men and their families are described as those in distress, in debt and discontented. That passage right there is a preacher’s dream – one doesn’t even have to come up with the alliteration, it’s already there. But isn’t that a pretty good description of what the church is? It’s a collection of people who are in distress, in debt and discontented who come together to live out their faith in a community of believers. Jesus knew that is exactly what the church would be like:
That night Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to be his dinner guests, along with his fellow tax collectors and many other notorious sinners. (There were many people of this kind among the crowds that followed Jesus.) But when some of the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with people like that, they said to his disciples, "Why does he eat with such scum?" When Jesus heard this, he told them, "Healthy people don’t need a doctor - sick people do. I have come to call sinners, not those who think they are already good enough."
Mark 2:15-17 (NLT)
We obviously don’t have time to cover the next several chapters this morning, but I want to encourage you to go home and read 1 Samuel 22 – 29 this week. Those passages describe how this community of misfits lives out their faith together. Sometimes, David and the people exhibit their faith quite well. David inquires of the Lord and God give him success in battle. David has a couple of opportunities to kill Saul, but out of his respect for God’s anointed, he spares Saul’s life.
But David also takes refuge with a Philistine king, Achish, and once again David turns to lies and deception. He pretends to attack his own Jewish people while he is in fact destroying Philistine cities. As a result, Achish even gave David and his men the town of Ziklag where they could live. And now we come to 1 Samuel 30.
Read 1 Samuel 30:1-25
David and the families he lead weren’t exactly a church, and they certainly weren’t perfect, but the events recorded in this chapter certainly represent a high point on their process of living out their spirituality together. It seems that they took the approach advocated in the last verses of the two poems that I read to you to start the message this morning:
But since no perfect church exists
Where people never sin
Let’s cease looking for that church
And love the one we’re in!
But still we’ll work, and pray and plan
To make our Church the best we can!
So if we can’t make our church perfect, how can we at least make it the best we can?
HOW TO MAKE OUR CHURCH THE BEST WE CAN:
As I read this passage, it seems that making our church the best it can be, is really a matter of focus. There are three types of focus we need to have as a church:
1. Upward focus – focus on God (vv. 6-8)
We saw last week that because of his ongoing relationship with God, most of the time it was David’s habit to go to God whenever he was in trouble. In fact, if you go to the Psalms, many of which were written by David, you’ll find out that David brought his problems and needs before God very honestly. Many of the Psalms begin with David pouring out his heart to God. But then as David gets an upward focus and focuses on God, his attitude changes. He gets his focus off his problems and needs and on to God and it completely turns around his mindset.
That’s what David does here in 1 Samuel 30. David and his men are in deep sorrow because their families and all their possessions have been taken away. And David’s men are angry at him. After all, he was their leader and while he was out leading them in battle, they had lost all that was precious to them. But then in verse 6, the whole situation is turned around:
…But David found strength in the LORD his God.
When things seem hopeless, when there is nowhere else to turn, David turns his focus upward and seeks God. And because David seeks God and follows God’s leading, he and his men are able to go and retrieve everything they had lost.
I’m convinced that the upward focus of David and his men is the key to everything else that followed. The upward focus is the foundation on which everything else they did was built. Without the focus on God, nothing else they did would have really mattered. In fact, that’s exactly what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount:
Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs, and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.
Matthew 6:32-33 (NLT)
Although that verse certainly has application for all of us as individuals, I think it also applies to us as a body of believers. If we want God to meet our day to day needs as a church, then we have to have that upward focus. We have to live for God and make His kingdom our primary focus.
Every week when Denny and I plan our worship services, we try to make sure that everything we do revolves around God – that all our energy and attention is focused on Him. And our elders, as we lead our church, try to put God at the center of everything we do. We try to determine if the things we do as a church will bring glory and honor to God.
That’s why this morning our prayer is that you would experience the presence of God in our worship service. It’s not about the musicians or singers. It’s not about Denny or me. It’s about God. All of us are just tools that God uses to direct our attention to Him so that He can receive glory and honor and praise.
But whether or not we have an upward focus is really up to each one of us. We can come in and find the wrong note that someone plays or sings or the misspelling in the bulletin or on the PowerPoint. We can focus on how long the sermon is and think about what we’re going to do for lunch.
We can even be like the man who came to church one day. As the pastor’s sermon stretched on and on, the man got up left and then returned before the end of the sermon. The pastor had noticed the man get up and leave so he asked the man where he had gone. The man replied, “To get a haircut.” The pastor asked, “Why didn’t you do that before the service?” The man answered, “I didn’t need one then.”
Or we can come and look for God in the words of the songs and allow Him to speak to our hearts through the Scripture readings and prayer and the message. That’s up to each one of us.
If we really want our church to be the best it can be, we must first of all have an upward focus – a focus on God.
2. Outward focus – focus on compassion (vv. 11-16)
In this passage we have what I would in effect call a story of an Old Testament “good Samaritan.” David and his men come upon an Egyptian, but not just any Egyptian. He had been with the Amalekites who had raided Ziklag and kidnapped the men’s families. Now David could have taken the Jack Bauer approach and tortured the man until he gave them the information they needed.
In fact, now that the latest season of “24” has just concluded, I thought I’d share some Jack Bauer facts with you:
• If you wake up in the morning, it’s because Jack Bauer spared your life.
• There have been no terrorist attacks in United States since Jack Bauer has appeared on television.
• Superman wears Jack Bauer pajamas.
• Jack Bauer sleeps with a pillow under his gun.
• Jack Bauer’s calendar goes from March 31st to April 2nd - no one fools Jack Bauer.
• Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.
• 1.6 billion Chinese are angry with Jack Bauer. Sounds like a fair fight.
But instead, David and his men treated this traitor with kindness and compassion. They fed him, cared for his needs and then invited him to come and be part of their community. They had an outward focus. Instead of just focusing on their own needs and hurts, David and his men were willing to reach out and provide compassion to another. And as a result, God used that man to lead David and his men to the place where they could get back their families.
I think there is an important lesson for us here. In general, I think there is a tendency for churches to get so focused on their own needs and desires that they lose their outward focus. We know that there is a world out there that is apathetic and even sometimes downright hostile to the church and to Jesus Christ. But that’s nothing new. Jesus experienced the same thing Himself. But when Jesus looked on those people, He had compassion for them:
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Matthew 9:36 (NIV)
I’m pretty sure that is exactly how Jesus wants us to look at these people, too. There is a whole community of people right outside the doors of this auditorium who are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. And we are to make sure we have an outward focus that looks upon these people with compassion. But true compassion is more than just a feeling, it also requires action. Like David and his men, we need to look for ways to meet needs and minister to people outside these walls, even to those who despise us and hate us.
Here’s the way the Apostle Paul described our need for an outward focus:
Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Philippians 2:4 (NIV)
As a church, we must never get so caught up in taking care of our own that we fail to reach out to a lost and dying world around us.
If we want our church to be the best it can be, we must first have an upward focus – a focus on God. Then we must have an outward focus – compassion to those outside our body. And third we need to have an…
3. Inward focus – focus on grace (vv. 17-25)
When David and his men came to the Brook Besor, two hundred of the six hundred men were too tired to go on, so David and the other four hundred men went and fought the battle. They recovered everyone and everything they had lost. When they returned to the Brook Besor, the men who had fought the battle were willing to return the families of the men who had stayed behind, but that was it. Since these other men had not taken part in the battle, it was only fair that they not share in the rest of the plunder.
But David would not allow that to happen. Instead, he decreed that everyone – those who had taken part in the battle and those that stayed behind – would share equally in the plunder. Since it was God who had given them victory and it was God who had provided all these material goods, no one had really earned any of this on their own. This is pure gospel. A bunch of men who all deserved nothing were blessed by the grace of God. It didn’t matter that some of the men had actually gone to battle while the others stayed home.
We’ve already seen that these families were nothing but a bunch of sinners who lived out their spirituality together in community. None of them had done anything to deserve God’s bountiful blessings in their lives. It was only by the grace of God that they had anything. And since God loved each of them equally, each was to be the recipient of His grace. What they had done or not done on their own was of no consequence.
As a church, once we’ve experienced an upward focus and an outward focus, we’re also entitled to an inward focus. But when we do that, when we focus on ourselves as a community of faith, the standard by which we are to treat others is grace. Since that is how God has treated each one of us, that’s how He expects us to deal with other believers. Peter summarized this principle pretty clearly in just one verse:
Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.
1 Peter 3:8 (NIV)
That sounds pretty simple doesn’t it? But in practice it’s easier said that done. My experience, as both a “lay person” and a pastor in various churches is that most of us are a lot better at receiving grace than in dishing it out:
• We’re quick to find faults in others and slow to forgive
• We want things done our way, regardless of how it affects others. We want our preferred type of music, our preferred translation of the Bible.
• We want the sermon to be just the right length. Someone once said that a sermon should be like a woman’s skirt – long enough to cover the essentials, but short enough to keep it interesting.
• It’s good if the sermon addresses the sins of others, but when it addresses my sins, then it’s meddling.
I’ve seen people leave churches for all kinds of reasons, but it seems to me that the root cause in most cases is the lack of grace toward others.
Our church isn’t perfect – and it never will be. But it sure can be the best it can if we have the right focus:
1. An upward focus that focuses on God
2. An outward focus that treats unbelievers with compassion
3. An inward focus that treats other believers with grace.
Looking Back
1. Read 1 Samuel 22-30. Look for ways that God was at work among this community of faith, even during those times when they turned away from God.
2. What actions can I take personally to make my church the best it can be?
• How can I focus on God better?
• How can I maintain an outward focus?
• How can I treat my Christian brothers and sisters with grace?
Looking Ahead
1. Read Hebrews 3:12-14 and 10:24. Begin to think about some ways that I can encourage others.
