Uncommon Community | Serve One Another (May 28th, 2017) - Mike Armstrong

All right, well if you would grab your Bibles now and turn them to uh Galatians chapter five.

Galatians chapter five.

Now, uh we hear the word serve, okay, and its various forms uh come up in conversation all the time, don't we?

Right?

We hear that.

You know, how about when you go to a restaurant and you are seated, what does the person say?

They say, Your server will be with you shortly.

Right?

You've heard them say that before.

Uh or how about tennis?

You got any tennis or or volleyball fans?

Like the ball uh when you get the ball over the net to start off the place, it's called serving, right?

Serving uh the ball.

You know, or how about when you get into work and you have the an email in your inbox from IT that says, our servers are gonna be down all afternoon.

Right?

That's a fun one.

You've heard the phrase uh servant leadership.

You've probably heard that one.

Or maybe you get a knock on the door, no one likes this one, and someone hands you an envelope, and what do they say?

You've been served, right?

Exactly, you've been served.

Uh no one likes that, but everyone loves this one.

Soft serve ice cream.

Huh?

Huh?

Of course.

Well, today, as we continue in our uncommon community series, uh, it's about uh developing a biblical and and really godly culture of relationships here at our church, right?

This is what our series is all about.

Now we're gonna be looking today at what it means to serve one another.

Serve one another.

Uh so the question is, is this the is this the mindset, is this the approach or the mentality that you and I have for each other?

Right, when it comes to our relationships, specifically here uh in our church, you know, beyond, beyond physically serving in a ministry at church, okay, which is you know, obviously important, but beyond the, you know, I'm just physically there, you know, is our is our heart attitude one of profound service?

Is it one of profound service?

Do we have a gospel-driven motivation to serve?

Is that what it is?

And let me just say this right off the hop is that I think that uh we are in many ways in a great place when it comes to this in our church.

You know, we see so many of you, you know, physically serving, which is so amazing.

And so many of you are on one or two, or hopefully not, but maybe even more teams, right, where you're involved and you're you're here to carry the load of the church.

But uh, but on top of all of that, I see so many of you with such amazing, Christ-centered, biblically driven motives in doing that.

You love, you love your neighbors, you love the people in the church, and it is your joy to serve.

You realize that it's the privilege and it's and it's an honor.

And so I have you know been looking out over the you know a couple of years that our church has been around, and I'm like, man, the Lord's doing some great stuff, and I think we really need to be encouraged about all of that.

Okay, but like all things, there's also, hopefully you would agree with this, there's also, you know, always room for growth.

Right?

There's room for growth, there's areas of of improvement needed.

All right, so we're gonna look at these uh these couple of verses here, Galatians chapter five, uh starting in verse 13, just three verses.

So read along with me.

It says, For you are called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, here it is, serve one another.

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

Lord, we uh come before you as your church today, recognizing that it is a privilege and an honor to be able to serve others.

Lord, we also recognize that there are uh plenty of moments in life where we are not good at this, where our attitudes suffer, and because of that, others suffer.

And because of that, sometimes, Lord, you are not pleased.

Lord, I pray that our that our church would be um uh growing in depth in all of this, Lord.

I pray that as as people who come to our church and and visit or or come check us out because they're thinking maybe this could be my church family, Lord, I pray that they would you know see you at work because you're at work in your people, displaying this serving one another um mentality.

And so, God, again, we we recognize our weakness in this, so we we cry out for help, Lord.

Would you would you strengthen us?

Would you encourage us?

Would you reorient our motives if we're serving for the wrong reasons?

And Lord, again, it's all about you getting the fame.

It's not about us, Lord.

I play, I pray that that your church would indeed blend into the background so much can be made much so Christ can be made much of.

And so, Lord, help us in all of these things.

We pray in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, I will I will commit to a life of profound service, right?

That's sort of the big idea that we're going for here today.

Profound service.

Not half-hearted, right?

Not not going through the motions, not bare minimum to, you know, kind of check a box and make myself, you know, feel less guilty, you know, not that, but but radical service, right?

All out from the heart for the good of the person, for the glory of God's service.

Right?

That is what we mean by profound.

Okay, in other words, what is it?

It's uncommon.

It's uncommon, right?

It's it it's different than how the world serves.

Maybe the world serves when it's when it's convenient or when it's easy, or you know, because I get something back from it, or because it just makes me feel good, right?

Service in the church driven by Christ and the gospel uh is uncommon and it's different, and that is exactly uh what our church is going for here.

So here's the first thing.

Okay, it's how I express my freedom in Christ.

It's how I express my freedom.

Okay, verse 13, take a peek at that now as we kind of work through, just again, three verses.

Okay, but it says this for you were called to, there's the word, freedom, brothers.

Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.

Okay, in other words, for doing what you want to do.

Okay, but through love, serve one another.

All right, so let's just pull this apart a little bit here as we kind of go through this.

Now, first of all, that word freedom, I think many of us would probably have a pretty good sense as to what that means, but literally it just means liberty.

Right?

It means liberty.

So Christians, what you know, when it when it comes to freedom for Christians, Christians have been set free from the punishment, from the condemnation, from the judgment of sins.

Our sin is no longer counted against us.

Why?

Because of what Jesus Christ has done on the cross.

We are trusting him as our righteousness.

We're not trusting in our own good works, we're not trusting in our own righteousness or anything like that.

Okay, so there's there's freedom from ultimate punishment.

So that's absolutely one part of what freedom means, is because Christ took it all on himself.

Right?

He took it all on himself.

Okay, but beyond all of that, Galatians, which is the book that we find ourselves in today, and I realize we're kind of helicoptering in to just a couple of verses here, but some of the context there, it's teaching us through the book of Galatians that there's freedom from trying to earn our salvation, from trying to earn God's love through our morality, through trying to be good people who behave well, who do good deeds, and do all of that stuff.

Right?

The Bible in Galatians, even specifically, says that salvation is by grace.

It is simply given to us as a gift.

It's not earned, it's not deserved, you can't pay God back for it.

It's it's nothing.

Rather, it's received through faith and through trusting in what Jesus Christ did.

And so when it's talking about freedom here, it's it means that we've been freed from the burden that we often feel, sort of emotionally and inside and spiritually, of trying to gain God's approval through my own works.

You don't need to gain that anymore.

Why?

Because if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, the gospel tells us that you've already got God's approval.

You've already got his love, you've got everything.

God treats you like his firstborn son, his only son, Jesus Christ.

Right?

And that's the that's the privilege that we have been called into.

That's how God, how God looks at us.

Okay, so we're free now.

We're free.

Right?

And that's why our verse also says here that we are, look at it.

It says, we are called to freedom.

You see that?

We are called to freedom.

Means that we are called to live out that freedom.

We're called to express it in some way.

Right?

So we're not just to mentally believe that we're free, but then not have our actions back that up.

But we're actually supposed to, you know, live in line with that.

We're called to act out of the freedom that is ours.

Does that make sense?

We're supposed to live it out.

Our actions are to live in line with what we believe and what we understand.

Now, believing, that's a that's a huge part of it.

And so we have to think clearly and think biblically about all of this.

But it tells us to live it out, basically, right?

Now, the way that we express this is not by using our freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.

The flesh meaning that the desire that we all have deep down to just please ourselves, right?

The self-centeredness, the the self-grata gratification, the sinful way.

It's like, yeah, you've been set free, but don't use that to please yourself.

Right?

Don't use that to just do whatever you want to do.

That's what that's what Christ is saying here through the Apostle Paul.

But it says here, but we're to through love, through love, serve one another.

Serve one another.

Now, when you and I, when we hear that that our freedom is to be used to serve other people, I think if we're honest, that doesn't really naturally compute too well, does it?

Right?

We don't think about that very much.

And you know why?

I think it's because we often have a worldly sense of what freedom is all about.

We often think worldly.

Now, what does the world think that freedom means?

You ever thought about this?

What maybe even this is what you think freedom means?

Well, here's what it is.

Here's what the world thinks.

They think that it means I get to do whatever I want, whenever I want, with no restrictions.

Right?

That's freedom.

That's what the world would say.

No one, no one hindering me, no one telling me what to do, no, no restrictions or or boundaries placed on me uh whatsoever.

Right?

If you have kids, um you would know that this is exactly how, especially young kids, view freedom.

This is how they would they would think about it.

Because ask yourself the question, this question, you know, why do kids want to grow up?

Right?

Why when they're when they're little, why do they want to grow up?

Well, because then they get to do whatever they want, at least that's what they think, right?

I can do whatever I want.

I'm gonna I'm gonna stay up late every single night, I'm you know, I'm just gonna eat chips and candy, I'm gonna, you know, just watch Star Wars marathons all day, right?

That's at least that's my you know my kids.

That's what they want to do.

Right?

But but this is what kids want to do.

They just think it's like limitless freedom with no consequences, no, no restrictions, no nothing.

Right?

But if you're a parent, you know that freedom defined this way for your kids is what?

It's an unmitigated disaster.

Right?

It's a huge it's a bad idea.

Why?

Because it ends up actually enslaving your kids, doesn't it?

It makes them, it makes them sick, it makes them cranky, it makes them super self-centered and and maybe lazy and and tired and purposeless and you know, the ones who are addicted to too much media, maybe, and all that type of thing.

Okay, so in our verse, okay, here it's talking about freedom, the freedom that believers are called to, it's not saying, you know, freedom to do whatever you want with zero limits.

Okay, that's not what it means, because that's not true freedom.

In fact, if you think about it, that's actually slavery.

Right?

Freedom defined the world's way is slavery.

You may be like, well, what do you mean by that?

What do you mean by that?

Well, think about it.

If you are given you know no restrictions, no guidelines, no boundaries, and you could just do whatever you would you wanted to do, what are the kinds of things that we would end up doing?

Dumb things.

Right?

We would.

We would spend all of our time, all of our money in foolish ways.

We would you know engage in activities that might actually harm us and cause you know pain to ourselves and cause hurt to those that we love.

It might even cause addictions.

Those things are very much slavery.

Because you can't just get out of them because you want to.

What seems like freedom at first very quickly can become slavery.

Okay, so what the Bible says that freedom is, if you really think about it, is freedom, true freedom, is doing what God wants.

That's what freedom is, and that's what we're called to.

Now, what is what does God call us to do in our freedom as a way to express it?

Well, he says it right here.

He says, serve one another.

Right?

Serve one another.

Okay, so so when we serve one another in profound and heartfelt, I really want to do this, this is my desire, all of those kinds of ways, it's the way that we express our freedom in Christ.

Okay, so really ask yourself: do I have a biblical understanding of freedom?

Am I living according to that?

Am I selfless?

Am I serving?

Or do I have more of a worldly concept of freedom that I kind of functionally live according to?

Okay, because if you do, if you live according to a worldly understanding of freedom, it's gonna show up, it's gonna reveal itself, it's gonna leak out of you in your approach to serving others.

Okay, so I've got a few examples for you.

They're gonna be on the screen here, okay, about about not serving well.

Okay, I'm not serving well if.

Okay, we got seven things.

Okay, the first one, I want others to serve me more than I want to serve them.

Right?

This is an easy thing to struggle with.

You know, we want to just kind of sit back and we want everyone to kind of make my life better, uh, way more than I would love to kind of invest in other people and serve and bless them.

Right?

And this can easily happen in the church.

This happens all the time in the North American church, where you have this, we've talked about it before, this consumeristic, the consumerist mentality of church.

Where you come in and you're like, hmm, that church, you know, wasn't all that great.

I didn't like this, that thing, the other thing.

Their website wasn't that great.

And, you know, as soon as I walked in, people didn't just drop what they were doing and and bow before me and thank me for gracing them with my presence, right?

Sometimes we we get nitpicky about all of those things.

Right?

We can do that.

And this person rubbed me the wrong way, and you know, it's all about what the church does for me, as opposed to, you know, how can I get involved?

How can I serve?

How can I be a blessing?

How can I pour out what God has poured into me so I can help carry the load here and be a blessing in this church?

Right?

Beyond beyond church family, this can also happen in your in your home life, can't it?

This happens in marriage all the time.

You know, I don't want to serve my spouse.

I I want them to serve me.

I want them to make my life comfortable.

You know, I want to be, you know, the king of my domain, so to speak, and and they bow down.

Right?

There's all kinds of ways that this this mentality and attitude kind of creeps into life.

Got with this one, number two.

I'm overly needy and and a drain on the community.

Right?

This is maybe one way where you're not serving well, right?

And and maybe this is where you are, you know, everything is a crisis in your life, and and in reality it's not actually, but you're kind of this needy person that sort of, you know, it's sort of like you put a tap in a person's side and just start turning it, and you know, you drain them, you know, a little bit.

Maybe that's you, and and and you dominate people's time, and you know, you're always out, you just you too too much, too much.

You know, I I I've I've seen this kind of play itself out before in people who you know have come into the church office, let's say, and say, hey, I I need some money.

Right?

That's an obvious one.

You know, I need I need whatever, I need to be able to pay my rent or put groceries on the table or whatever.

Can you could give me, you know, and they don't want to be involved in the church, they don't want to do anything like that, or maybe they come until they get their grocery cards or whatever, and then it's like you never see them again.

Maybe that's an obvious one, maybe that's an extreme one.

But I think sometimes we can do this.

Now, here's what I want to be really careful of.

This is not a time to feel guilty if you have legitimate needs.

Okay, that's not what I'm saying.

Because sometimes what happens, even after the service, you know, we have a prayer time and stuff like that, and people can come forward and they ask for prayer, and it's our joy to be able to do this as a church.

Sometimes people come up with the mentality that I'm so sorry that I'm doing this, like they're a huge burden to us.

That's the whole point is to pray.

Right?

You have people have legitimate needs, people have very, very difficult, gritty, hard situations that they're going through, and they need the church to rally around them.

And yeah, it might take a lot out of the community, but hey, listen, it's our joy to do that.

We help our church when the needs are great.

And so there's there's a line in there somewhere, right?

And I don't know that I need to spell it out in massive and you know finite detail, but I think you probably know when someone is maybe overly needy versus when they know they just they have real needs and we need to help them out.

Okay, how about this?

I'm not serving well if drama follows me everywhere I go, right?

Drama follows me everywhere I go.

Right?

Are you the drama queen?

What's the male version of that?

Drama king?

Is that even such a thing?

I don't know, we'll we'll we'll make that up, right?

But maybe you're the drama person, and kind of everywhere you go, everyone's like, is that person okay?

And you know, you're kind of creating sort of this sort of explosion of drama all over the place with every single person that you come into contact with and touch.

And everyone else is stressed out because of what you're creating.

Oftentimes it borders on narcissistic, right?

And the person itself who's creating the drama is like kind of this calm, collected, center of the storm, and everyone else is going crazy around them.

But you're not you're not serving well at all if that's you, right?

Because why?

True servants blend into the background, they they fade into the background, they don't want attention, they especially don't want that that kind of negative attention.

They want they want to be able to bless other people and serve well.

Okay, so so ditch the drama if that's you.

All right, fourth one.

I attend church, but I'm not involved.

I attend church, but I'm not involved.

And so maybe this is you.

Maybe, you know, you know, this is your church home, and and you come and you know, your attendance is even really good.

And and maybe, maybe you've even you know sent your kids to youth, or you're in a small group, or whatever it is.

And so on the outside, it's like you're it looks like you're involved, but kind of in your heart and mentally you like you've checked out, right?

You're you're not all in.

You're not there, you're not investing in the people, you're not allowing people to invest in you.

Right?

Maybe you you come to church, but you come late on purpose.

Oh, you know, there's just some things happened this morning, and and I my you know my alarm didn't go off.

But really, it's because you don't want to actually really get to know anybody.

And so you kind of sneak in after the service is already started, or you know, you roll out during the last song, right?

Classic move.

If anybody like legitimately has to leave today, you're gonna feel terrible about all that.

No judgment, no judgment.

Okay, but if that if that's you constantly and and you're yeah, you're here because you like, you know, you like the worship or you like the message, or it's you know something good for your kids to do or whatever, but you're not invested here, I mean that's probably a pretty obvious way that you know our service is lacking.

How about this one, kind of related, number five?

I claim that this is my church, but my attendance is sparse.

Right?

I I've said this uh a number of times, um, but today, according to the statistics, even the most committed Christ followers uh are attending church less and less.

Right?

You just come less.

We come, you know, two out of four, or one out of six, or you know, even less than all of that.

And listen, you're doing not only yourself a disservice, if if that's you, but you're doing a disservice to the body.

Right?

Other people have been given gifts that they are to use to exercise to bless you.

Right?

And so you need to maybe, you know, step up your commitment and and and come uh uh come here, you know, instead of having the kind of the mentality that, you know, well, if something, you know, if a better offer comes up, I'm gonna be there on a Sunday, Sunday morning instead of church.

Okay, so a lack of commitment, a lack of maybe getting involved in the community through a small group or through whatever, you know, it reveals a worldly concept of freedom and a worldly concept of of service for sure.

Oh, this one, number six.

I'm constantly critical of others.

Okay, I think it's pretty obvious that that's not you know, that's not revealing real great service to the body of Christ.

Right?

I'm constantly critical.

And uh this can um this can actually affect every single person here in the room, right?

Because it often happens in our heart, it happens in our mind.

We may never express it.

Out loud, but inside, we maybe are kind of the judging person.

Maybe we're constantly critical of every little thing that doesn't go right or doesn't go the way that we would like to see it.

Okay, or maybe you are the person that started to leak out into gossip, into you know, very public ways of all of that.

But at the end of the day, you're not exuding the same grace to others that God has shown you.

And so that's what we need to remember.

If God is gracious to you, we need to be gracious to other people.

Just imagine if God was, you know, God was up there and he was like, you know, kind of nitpicking every little thing.

That'd be the worst.

I praise him that he's not like that.

Okay, here's the last thing.

I'm not serving well if I'm only ever the nice guy.

Right?

If I'm only ever the nice guy.

What do you mean by that?

Are we supposed to be you know kind to each other and you know get along and all of those things?

Of course, of course, those are good.

Right?

Nice, you know, isn't a biblical word.

I prefer the word kindness, right?

That's I think that's better.

Nice is so Canadian, right?

But I think I think if we're not, if we're not, if we're only being the nice guy, it means that maybe we don't love people enough and care to serve them enough to be able to tell them the hard thing.

Right?

Maybe they're doing something that's radically opposed to Christ.

Maybe they're doing something that's that's injuring the flock, that's injured uh injuring the church or injuring themselves.

Well, to serve them well, sometimes we need to confront.

And we don't do that with you know guns blazing.

We're not doing it like that.

We're doing it kindly, right?

We're doing it graciously.

Okay, so so the nice guy routine maybe looks good on the outside, but maybe it doesn't help build up the body of Christ.

Okay, so remember, biblical freedom, what does it mean?

It means we're free to do what God wants.

We're free to do what God wants, and He wants us to serve.

He wants us to serve each other.

So as Christ followers, we gladly do it.

We gladly, we we realize it's a privilege, it's it's an honor and a joy to do this.

Right?

I get it, we wrestle with the bad attitudes.

I'm you know putting myself in that category for sure, and we struggle with it, but we there should be some progress, there should be some some growth in our lives of realizing and having joy.

I I get to serve people, not oh, I gotta wake up early today, you know, or oh, I gotta face that person or see people and I don't want to.

No, it's a it's a joy.

It's a joy.

Second thing.

I will commit to a life of profound service.

It's how I fulfill the mission God gave me.

It's how I fulfill the mission.

Verse 14, take a look at that verse now.

It says, For the whole law is fulfilled in one word.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Shall love your neighbor as yourself.

So he's just said that through love serve one another, right?

He told us that in verse 13.

And now he says, For, or because, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And so what what's Paul doing here?

Well, he's really giving us the Coles notes of Jesus' words in Matthew chapter 22.

Matthew 22 · chapter mention

Okay, maybe you're familiar with that.

Jesus says, You shall love the Lord your God, okay, so God first, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind.

This is the great and first commandment.

Then he says, a second is like it.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And so what Jesus is really saying here is that if you take the entire Old Testament law and all the rules and all the regulations, or if you want to kind of boil them down and simplify them into the Ten Commandments, you kind of call those God's top ten, if you will, right?

If you want to take those, all right, you can boil it all down to this.

Okay?

Loving God and loving neighbor.

Right?

Every single law that you see there somehow relates to this is how you love God, or this is how you love people.

Right?

That's what that's what Jesus is saying.

And so here, Paul, he's focusing on the latter part.

Right?

You want to obey Christ, you wanna please him, you wanna you wanna fulfill the mission that he gave you?

Well, serve one another in love.

He's like, just go for it, don't hold anything back.

Okay, and so in saying this, what's Paul doing?

He's showing us the seriousness of the command to serve.

Because it's tied inextricably to the command to love.

Now we talked about loving one another just a couple of weeks ago.

Okay, and here's the thing you can't ultimately separate the two.

You can't separate love for others and service for others.

Okay, serving, you know, apart from love out of just some kind of robotic sense of duty or or because of guilt or shame or someone's you know peer pressured you into it or you know, or anything else, listen, that's not real service.

That's not real service.

It's not what Christ calls us to do, it's not what he's going for here at all or ever in the scriptures.

It's not what he means.

It's not it's not fulfilling the mission that he gave us to fulfill.

Listen, if if if you're, you know, if you think you can serve apart from love, you have to understand that there's no such thing as that.

There's no such thing.

Serving disconnected from a heart of love flat out doesn't exist.

Doesn't exist.

Now, you might be kind of thinking as I'm saying those things, well, hang on a second, Pastor.

Like I, you know, I've I feel like I've done that before.

I feel I feel like I've I I've served people.

Maybe it's you know, someone in my small group or someone at work or in the church.

I feel like I've like I've done that on a bad day without really loving them.

Like I've I've served somebody with a with a disengaged heart.

Well, here's what I would say.

Well, strictly speaking, biblically speaking, no, you haven't.

No, you haven't.

Okay, you you maybe did a job, you you know, performed a duty or carried out a task or an action, you know, whatever you want to call it.

Okay, but it wasn't it wasn't biblical service.

Okay, not according to Christ.

Now, some of us, we you know, we we probably need to hear that today, right?

As maybe, you know, life for you, service in the church, service to your family and to your friends and and your enemies has become kind of this mechanical thing.

You've kind of fallen into this groove of you know fake service, if we can kind of call it that, where you know, externally, again, everything looks like it's clicking along real nice here, but you're on, you know, maybe you're on a ministry team and you, you know, you're you know, maybe you've joined the snack schedule in your small group, and so you're you know serving them in some way, or you know, whatever it may be, but it's all done with with less than a you know love for the people attitude.

And you're like, yes, things get done, right?

And that's true, things are getting done, but you're not exactly carrying out the mission, right?

You're you're really missing the heart of it here, which means what?

Two really bad things.

First of all, this is the biggest one, God's not getting glory.

God's not getting glory.

Our mission as a church is to bring glory to God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

Right?

We need to be making disciples, and ultimately the highest aim and the chief goal of that is to bring glory to God, to honor Him, to praise Him.

And so listen, if we're doing anything in a way that's that's less than how God says to do it, we're shortchanging Him.

And we're robbing Him of glory.

Here's the other thing that ends up happening that's that's all bad.

Okay, it means that we end up drying up spiritually.

We end up drying up.

You go through the motions, you do things externally, your heart's not engaged, after a while you just feel like dust inside.

You feel numb.

There uh you know, the joy evaporates.

And what happens as a result of that as you do it and as other people do it in the church, and more and more time goes on, what happens?

Uncommon community dies.

Uncommon community dies.

That's exactly what happens.

Now, let me be real clear about this in case you're not too sure.

I struggle with this too, right?

I really do.

I struggle with this.

I I struggle having my heart engaged.

There's not a single person on God's green earth that doesn't wrestle with this from time to time.

And sometimes you are struggling with a bad attitude about things, and your service has become more mechanical.

I mean, we're all in this together, church.

Like you're not the only one if you're sensing this is you.

This is this is all of us.

Okay, so what this is a call for here to all of us is to increase not so much the quantity of our service.

Well, I need to just get involved in one more ministry, or you know, I just need to get off the bench and get involved.

Yeah, that's very important.

I would challenge you to do that.

But it's not just a call to you know increase the quantity of our service, but rather the quality of it, the quality of our service, you know, where we're we're truly fulfilling the mission that God gave us, right?

To make disciples and to serve well.

And you might be wondering, well, how do I actually do this?

Practically speaking, like, how do I get my heart engaged?

I can't just reach in with a with a wrench and a screwdriver and start to change my heart and and do some things.

Never try that, by the way.

How do I do this?

Right?

Because it's the it's the Lord who does it, right?

But but he involves us in that process somehow, and there's some mystery in how that works.

What's my involvement?

What's the Lord's involvement?

Well, you've heard me talk about this a lot, and we're talking about it a lot during this series.

We need to absorb the gospel, right?

We uh we need to apply gospel truth to our heart so that our motives and our desires actually uh change, right?

So that so that we would serve well.

And then I would the thing that I would uh challenge you or encourage you to think about, if you're like, man, my service hasn't been really with the right with the right attitude and my heart's not engaged, I would encourage you to think about how how well Christ served you.

Right?

Is that not the gospel message at the end of the day?

Right?

That that's what he's done.

Right?

God so loved the world that he sent his only son.

Jesus came and he served humanity, he served mankind from the beginning to the end, and he still continues to do that now.

Right?

He serves his church, he blesses us.

You read all through the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, you see how Lord He gave time, he gave of Himself, of His energy, He poured out love, He served the least, the most needy, the ones who were hurt, and the ones who are broken.

And listen, we can be included in that.

We were broken, we were in need of God serving us and Jesus doing that.

That's exactly what he did if you're a Christ follower here today.

But here's the thing, in our hearts are functionally speaking, we forget that really easily.

And it becomes a bunch of head knowledge, but our again, it feels like the gap between our head and our hearts like a million miles, right?

And I and I don't think about it, I'm not moved by it.

And so what do we need to do?

We need to remember the gospel.

We need to continue to to go over it and to prayerfully, you know, ask the Lord to make my heart, Lord, come alive with all of this so that I would, so that I would love you, and then when I love you, I'm gonna want to love other people more, right?

My desires, my motive will change.

Now, some of you today, and I don't know who, but some of you today need to hear that that message of the gospel, and you need to receive it.

You need to receive Jesus Christ as Savior.

You need to know that he came to serve you, that he came to take away your sins on the cross.

That's why he did it.

So that you wouldn't have to experience the punishment of all that, that you wouldn't have to experience all the true, the full extent of the consequences of an eternity in hell for all of that.

Listen, I know that that is in some ways, in many ways, offensive.

But listen, we love you enough here at our church to tell you that.

Because what we want you to receive Jesus Christ as Savior the way that we have.

So you can experience Him transforming your heart and giving you new life and so that you have a real and secure hope for all of eternity.

So again, I would I would push you, plead with you, encourage you, challenge you out of a place of love to receive Christ today.

Understand that your sins, they they create a chasm between you and God.

You can't cross that.

You keep falling down the cliff.

No good deeds, no nothing will get you to God.

But you know what?

Because God loves you, he sent his son Jesus, and Jesus in many ways bridges that gap.

If you would trust that what he did on the cross was for you, you can do that today.

Admit your sinfulness, admit your pride, ask Christ to be Savior.

That's how you get saved.

Okay, here's the last thing.

I will commit to a life of profound service.

Okay, and it's how I prevent relational destruction.

All right, but here we go, verse 15.

Verse 15.

But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

Right?

I don't know about you, but that's like a dark verse.

Right?

That's heavy.

Okay, but I think that this shows us, I think what this shows us is that this or that is the alternative for us if we refuse to serve each other.

That's the alternative.

That is the end game for us if we refuse to serve each other well as a church.

If this uncommon community is something that we don't buy into and we don't care about, and you know, nice words, pastor, but I'm still gonna do my own thing.

Listen, eventually, this is what we become.

This is what we become.

And what I mean by that is that we are we are always moving, kind of spiritually speaking.

We're always, we're always moving, either towards God or away from God.

And the idea here is that, you know, if we could if we fail to commit to what Christ calls us to, okay, spiritually speaking, we don't, we don't just hover in place.

I think we like to kind of think that sometimes.

Right?

Like spiritually speaking, I just, you know, I maybe I didn't read my Bible this week and I didn't, you know, I've skipped small group for a number of weeks, and you know, I haven't really gone to church.

Like, well, I'm just I'm just kind of where I was four weeks ago.

That would be nice, but that's not the way it works.

We drift.

That's what ends up happening.

Have you ever noticed that?

Right?

If you if you get away from reading God's word and coming face to face with God Almighty, you know, every day, if you do that, what ends up happening?

If you stop praying, what ends up happening?

If you reject uncommon community, what happens?

You drift.

Your whole mindset begins to change and you become inevitably self-inward focused.

The eyes of your heart, so to speak, turn inwards.

You stop caring or you care less about the things of Christ.

You care less about the good of your neighbor, about your brother and sister.

You care less about the things, you struggle with sin more, you desire sin more.

All of those things.

All of that happens when we drift.

Okay, likewise, if we don't commit ourselves as you know, individuals and and as the church to a life of profound service towards the body of Christ here, and you know, we don't love well, what happens is verse 15.

Verse 15 happens, right?

But oftentimes, here's the thing, it starts subtly, doesn't it?

It starts subtly.

You know, we and in many ways maybe read verse 15 and we're like, oh, we're you know decades away from that as a church, and you know, I'm thankful for what the Lord's doing here, and you know, it's so good, and I've you know, some of you have found a community that you've been looking for for so long that your heart has desired and and longed for, and I think that's so great.

Okay, but it can turn into this, into this verse 15 verse of darkness, you know, quick or at the very least, eventually.

You know, and maybe it starts off with just kind of in my in my head, like we talked about earlier, kind of critical.

You know, I don't really like the way that that person looked at me.

I uh I don't like the way that person uses their gifts.

I don't like that decision that was made by the church.

I don't, you know, it starts off that way, but then then I can kind of bleed into other things.

Yeah, I used to be just thinking into my head, but but now I now I'm gonna I'm gonna tell somebody about it.

You know, someone asked me how I'm doing.

Well, I gotta be honest, right?

And so we kind of couch it as a healthy thing.

I'm just venting to somebody that I trust about all of the bad things that I'm that I'm kind of feeling or experiencing or doing.

And so we sort of we couch it as venting and gossip, and we think that it's or we think that it's it's healthy, but it's really it's really those things.

And and then maybe it goes from just telling a person to getting so annoyed that that you know we we do petty little things.

I'm gonna block that person on social media, you know, or when I when I see that person again, I'm gonna give them a piece of my mind, I'm gonna tell them, and then you know, before you know it, it's you know, individuals having like all out battles with other individuals, and we kind of group our posse around us because we like to feel like we're on the same team with other people, and it's like all out war between this group and that group, and you know, uncommon community is just all the way through the church, it's awful.

Right in verse 15 is happening here, we're biting each other, we're we're devouring each other.

The end game is that we do we we're consumed by each other.

So listen, this is so important to talk about in the early days of our church.

Okay, do not think for one second that verse 15 can't happen here.

It can.

And some of you even need to need to really consider and bring this before the Lord and just flat out repent and turn away from it if you have already begun to loosen the pins of our foundation because you're engaging in these things.

This can happen.

And I think that the awesome community that that God is growing here and He is cultivating, and and some of you, and a lot of you are investing in and engaging in, and and a lot of what the Lord is calling us to in these verses, you guys are, you know, you're going for it and and you're doing it.

Just remember, verse 15 can happen.

And we can become consumed by each other if we're not careful and if we're not clinging to Christ, and if we don't have a mindset and a passion, desire to serve one another and serve each other well.

Right?

Serving is one of those things that prevents this kind of you know relational chaos and destruction that can so easily seep in.

Now, let me just say this.

I've kind of already sort of hinted at it and talked about it very briefly, but one of the best things, if not the best thing that we've got going here at our church, and a thing that that serves to really prevent this relational destruction that we're talking about here, is our small group ministry.

It's small groups.

We love small groups here at our church.

We do.

And some of you are like, what's that even about?

Like, what is this?

This is a foreign concept to me.

Well, it's it's when a group of you know, 10, 15, and some groups, maybe even more, people gather kind of once a week to talk through what we've been talking about here this morning on a Sunday.

And and not just to you know develop some head knowledge about all of those things, not just so that we can become theological fat heads, but that's so we can learn to actually apply these truths so that we can actually change and become more like Christ and help each other through serving each other in the small group.

And so we come together, and each time we have a discussion where the small group leader kind of leads that.

And we we have questions that are usually sent out beforehand to each group member.

You get to work through all those and bring sort of like your homework.

It's not like overly daunting, I don't think, but you bring that and you just have a discussion, talk about what is the Lord challenging you in all of this?

What are some ways that you and us as a group need to grow?

Now, when you do that and you have a time of that, and you have a time of prayer and accountability where we're really helping each other live for Christ, what does that start to breed and develop?

A heart of service.

Like now I actually know people, and beyond that, I actually like them.

Right?

I I like, I love these people.

I I want to help them, I want to see them become like Jesus Christ, and I want to I want to submit to them and see them serve me and help me when I stumble and help me when I'm down and need the encouragement.

You see how service happens through all of that and the relationships that are growing there, and many times friendships and relationships that you didn't expect would ever develop or grow or become a thing, become like so awesome.

Right?

Small groups are how we live out uncommon community here.

It's how we do it.

Now we've gone through a season where small groups were pretty tight, they were busting at the seams, but by God's grace, we're so thankful He is starting to grow those, and we've added some small groups, we're gonna be adding some more as we go here.

We've got some room in some of the ones, and listen, if you're not in a small group, you need to think about this.

This will be great for you.

It's not, don't think about it as like another night out.

No, it's like a blessing to you.

Right?

If it's just Sunday morning for you, it's really not enough.

We need to express love for each other, we need to express service to each other.

Small groups is how we do it.

You might be thinking, well, how do I get involved?

Well, the on ramp that we have for you to do that is something called step one and step two.

We actually have step two happening after the service today at our church office for those who have already done step one.

And this is how we just wanna teach you about our church, we wanna teach you.

What is our model of discipleship?

We want to talk more about small groups and talk about what it means to follow Christ and share what we what we're all about as a church.

Once you do those things, you can jump into a small group.

So would you really think about this?

Would you pray about this?

Would you talk to your spouse about these things?

And say, Yeah, listen, we need to, we need to invest.

You know, we need to, we need to buy in here fully.

You don't understand, or you know, maybe you just don't quite realize that this is gonna be a massive, massive blessing to you.

And the Lord is gonna be able to use you massively, powerfully in the lives of others.

So listen, join a small group, right?

Join one.

It's the key way that we grow this uncommon community here at our church.

It's gonna be awesome for you.

It's gonna be awesome for others, it's gonna help us grow strong and mature and Christ-like as a church.

I think it's also gonna impact our community.

It's gonna impact our town and our neighboring region in so many ways.

It's just amazing to think and kind of dream about how the Lord will do that as we grow strong.

All right, so think about that.

Commit to that.

You got any questions?

Talk to somebody about that after all this, all right?

I'm gonna pray for you.