Family Matters | Family | John Dutton

We're starting a new series called Family Matters.

Should be a nice little slide that appears for us.

Thank you, Aidan.

And across this series, our heart is to go through the different relationships and periods of life that God has called us to steward this side of eternity.

And across the series, as you'll you'll see on the screen as well, we'll be covering things like marriage, singleness, parenting, growing older, and or finishing well.

And this is not the kind of list of the universal expectations that kind of like of what you happens in your life.

It's not like rites of passage you go through, because not everyone will be married, not everyone will have children.

However, it doesn't mean that they are irrelevant for us as a community as well.

As a community again, as a family, as we go on to here today, we have a responsibility towards one another, hold each other accountable to scripture, to challenge, to encourage, to affirm, and to support each other's in our different seasons of relationship responsibility in different parts of our lives.

So what I want us to do is just as we embark on this series together, I just believe this is a this is going to be a significant series for us as a church, uh something to look back on, a kind of a um, I don't know, a landmark kind of thing that we hold on to for the for the for the years to come.

Um so what I'd love us to do just as we begin this journey is just pray.

Just take a moment just to be before God as a community, as a family, knowing that all these things we're gonna be covering together.

Um and just come before the Lord and just say, Lord, would you speak to me?

So why in the moment, just in this moment, just bow your heads, um, close your eyes, just come before Jesus for yourself, and I'll pray.

So, Lord God, we behold you this morning, and just we want to remind ourselves, God, that you are within yourself, you are a community, you are in yourself a togetherness, but together a body of one, um, that you are Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and you invite us into that, you invite us into that relationship.

Um, and we desire to express again your relationality, your love to one another.

And Lord, so when we consider this series, we just pray fill us with your word, fill us, Lord, to change and transform us into the image of your son.

Lord, we just pray that you we come against any hard hardness we might have this series, anything that might um cause us to just prick us in areas that we are uncomfortable with, um, Lord, that we'd feel unsettled in.

God, help us to humble ourselves, but also just to again be open-hearted to the words that you have to receive, uh the words you want us to receive, Lord.

Um, so Lord, fill us with your wisdom, your love, and we pray as a result of this series we'll be together closer as a family, but also more fruitful.

Um, for your kingdom and name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Um, wonderful.

So, onto the topic for this morning.

So, um, in 1997, a film was released which smashed box office records and went on to hold the record for 12 years.

It is the joint top winner of the Academy Awards, holding 11 Oscars from 14 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.

And alongside its release, also a song was written with it that still holds today, as it stands, it's kind of the third best or best-selling single ever to be released by a female artist.

Um, does anyone know where that film might be?

Somebody already said, Well done.

It's Titanic, and so it's easy to see from those accolades, from the profit that that kind of that that film um received, it struck a chord with us as a people, as a Western group of people.

Um, but and the center of it is a love story that provides the anchor, again, no pun intended, um, to the story itself.

And this romance is between Jack, a 20-year-old penniless nomadic artist, and Rose, a 17-year-old high society debutante.

Yeah, I've got to try and say that fast.

And um, Rose particularly appears trapped in this kind of upper class nightmare where following the death of her father, secretly her family is broke and they are deeply in debt.

So Rose's mother pressures her into an engagement with Carl Hockley, who's this arrogant heir of a steel fortune.

Um, and this mother, in a memorable scene, reminds Rose that this arranged marriage is in the best interest of their family.

And it is in their hope of kind of maintaining their wealth and preserving their social status.

And so Rose has kind of been set up with a man that has absolutely no affection, well, she has no affection for, in order to guarantee an honorable future for her extended family.

Um, but one evening Rose meets Jack on the deck of a ship, and in and this encounter ignites the flame of a romantic fling that serves as the film's main story throughout.

And so Rose is left with this choice: Jack or Cal, a man she has desperately fallen for, and I would be honest, a very short period of time.

And Cal, this aristocratic iceberg of a man.

And obviously, the film and the cultural weight of success we have given to it kind of reveals that we approve of Jack, because that's kind of the central plot.

It goes that way.

If we didn't like it, we wouldn't kind of pay you to go see it.

Um, and so I think if for many of us, if we go back in time, we might go and if we could go back and talk to Rose in the film on the ship, we would go, you know, forget the family fortunes, ignore your mother's wishes, dump the rich bozo, you know, folly your heart and go after Jack.

And perhaps, you know, give him some space on that massive door at some point, you know, when you when you clock that.

Um, but but I wanna I want us to see that this Titanic love story would not have been nearly as well received in the ancient cultures of the New Testament world.

Not only because they didn't have TVs to play on, obviously, they wouldn't receive it particularly well that in one way.

But if Titanic was shown in the first century Palestine with Aramaic subtitles, the audience would have been utterly appalled with Rose.

They would have been shocked that she would ever consider sacrificing the good of her extended family for her own relational satisfaction.

First century Jews would have expected Rose to marry the rich guy and endure an emotional, a life of emotional dissatisfaction.

So if such an arranged marriage could somehow again preserve the family's honor and social status and financial security, because for them the group was more important than the individual.

So for us, Rose is the heroine.

For them, Rose would have been the villain.

So same story but opposite reaction.

And I think that gap is probably one of the biggest differences between our world and the New Testament world, is in that we are individualists.

We are the main characters of our stories.

It's my desires, my happiness, my life.

You know, we know the ideas and the ideal kind of frames of follow your dreams, be true to yourself, you do you.

But the people in the ancient world, the period of time Jesus was walking around and teaching into, those people were not individualists.

They were what cultural anthropologists call collectivists.

Which, what that meant is for the people of the new the world of the New Testament, the welfare of the groups to which they belonged to took priority over the individual's happiness and relational satisfaction.

And this is essentially for us to understand as we approach Jesus' teaching and the and the rest of the New Testament teaching on the vision of family.

And and this is what we're going to be looking at as we begin the series on family matters.

This series, we're going to be looking at the question of who is our family, biblically speaking, and how are we called to live with them as a result.

And um, so family was a massive deal to people in the ancient world.

You know, when we consider the Titanic story, Rose's mother to us looks cold, calculating, a woman trading her daughter almost for a bank balance.

To them, she was simply being a mother, protecting her wider family interests.

And again, this is roughly how the ancient world thought, right through the New Testament era um era.

For for us, you know, we what we do is we often keep our lives in separate boxes.

You know, we have our career box, our romance box, our friends box, our family box.

And when they clash, we kind of choose which one to open.

But they had one box, which was family, and everything else fits inside of that.

So your name, your money, your safety, your whole future, there was very little that would have been outside of the box of family.

And I think that showed up in three specific ways.

There were three ancient family values that they had, and this is kind of observed in the in the old in the New Testament context.

Um, so three things.

The first one is the group comes first, and this is the collectivist mindset.

A professor of biblical studies, um, a guy called Randolph Richards says this.

He says the most important entity wasn't the individual, but the group.

That preserving the harmony of the community was everyone's primary goal, and is perceived as much more important than self-expression or self-fulfillment of the individual.

A person's identity comes not from distinguishing himself from the community, but in knowing and faithfully fulfilling their place.

Members of a group first mindset made decisions based on a council of elders, parents, aunts, or uncles.

And the highest goal and virtue in this sort of culture is supporting the community, and this is what was understood to make people happy.

So that's that whole sense of group comes first.

And the second thing was that um was that everything served the family.

So in an ancient context, a person's primary loyalty was to their father's blood family, meaning your job, wherever you lived, who you were married to, were lower in priority.

And so not only that, but you were kind of subject to living for only what benefited that family as well, the blood family.

So it didn't matter in if you're gonna have applied this to the what this context, it didn't matter what if you wanted a degree in communications or you wanted to live in a certain city or have a job as a barista or whatever, whatever you whatever your family believed benefited, all of them took precedence.

And thirdly, it's this one it's siblings over spouses.

And this one surprised me in my research, but it's this is what it this is what the reality is.

There's a Jewish wisdom text called Sirach, which is written a couple of centuries before Jesus.

It's not part of our Bible, but I think it offers a real window into understanding the ancient context.

And one chapter opens with this kind of short list about what the author believed God took pleasure in.

And he said this he said, God delights in an agreement between siblings, friendship between neighbors, and a wife and husband who live in harmony.

And as in pretty much all Jewish literature, the order is really important.

And it's interesting in this one that siblings are first, then neighbors, and marriage comes last in this category of lists.

And this was not just one guy's kind of ideas, it was the whole ancient world's how it ranked its relationships.

Marriages that back then worked more like contracts than they did romances, arrangements meant to strengthen the kind of extended family through an alliance and then children as well.

Your husband or wife came from a different blood family, so even though there was a kind of real bond together between you, it ranked lower.

And so your brothers and sisters, the family you were born into came first.

And actually, what's really fascinating there is there's the emotional intimacy that we as kind of modern Westerners would expect from marriage, ancient people expected from their brothers and sisters.

Which is why the New Testament's language of when we talks about brothers and sisters for the church, wasn't just this light metaphor, it was actually pulling on us, emulating the strongest bond of the day.

So that's what the world was Jesus grew up in, and the world obviously he was teaching into.

But the question we've got to be asking is what did he do with it?

How did he engage with that culture of the day?

Jesus, did Jesus reject this family dynamic or did he uphold it?

Because if either is true, then we should inform our expectations and responsibility in creating such family as well.

So the question I want to ask really, it was Jesus family friendly?

Was he a family-friendly figure?

You know, was it was the equivalent of the kind of first century of the dad from Bluey, if you know what that is.

If you know, yeah, we know Andy's nodding.

He knows the dad from Bluey.

Great family figure for our modern age, gonna be honest.

Was Jesus that?

Let's find out.

So let's start with Matthew 10, um, verses 34 to 37.

And this is what it says.

Jesus says, Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.

I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

For I have come to set man against his father, and daughter against her mother, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a person's enemies will be those of his own household.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

I think it's throwing the family and friendly thing into question immediately.

Um Jesus says, Do you not think that I've come to bring peace to the earth?

I think if I was in that situation, I'd probably go to Jesus, you know, there was this kind of prophecy a while ago that said you were the prince of peace, but I maybe I got that wrong.

Like, maybe that's me.

Um and he says he hasn't come to bring peace, not anyway, yeah.

He said he came to bring a sword.

And the question is, where's that sword pointing?

He says, family, man against father, daughter against mother, your enemies, he says, will be the people of your own household.

And he says it's because of him.

And he says these are kind of heavy words to sit under, especially, you know, it's this is exist a few chapters earlier.

We Jesus told us to love our enemies in Matthew, um uh Matthew 6 or 7, one of those, the conversation.

Um so the question is, what's going on here?

Because context is key, like always.

Um, and what this is in this portion of scripture sits in a much longer speech where Jesus is commissioning the twelve disciples, and it opens in verse six with calling them to go to the lost sheep of Israel.

He says, Go and heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out demons.

But by the time he gets to here, he's actually what he's doing is explaining the cost of that mission, the cost of following him.

And again, he doesn't leave it vague.

He said, Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

And there must have been, like when you were hearing that, you must have been even his disciples, like, who is this man?

You know, he named the two closest bonds of a per of that a person has, the parents that raised you and the children that you raise.

And he says his claim on your love has to outrank both of them.

And no good teacher would have required that.

No wise rabbi would have ever said something like that.

That's the a claim that only God gets to make of a person.

So when people started moving as they followed Jesus, that they're moving their primary allegiance from the family that they were born in into this towards this man, of course, Jesus was aware this was gonna cause strife, it was gonna cause hardship, it was gonna cause tension, it's gonna mean that people were left out of inheritance, inheritances, it's gonna mean marriages called off, it's gonna mean an empty seat around the family table.

Jesus wasn't asking for a place in the family, he was asking and commanding to be put above it.

And you know, for me, you know, I experienced a level of this, you know, I still remember very clearly when I was I first became a Christian at the age of 18.

You know, I didn't grow up in a Christian household, and I've been going to church, like just basically a new Christian going to church, um, week in, week out for just over a few months.

And my dad finally questioned me and he says, he said very seriously, he said, Do you love God more than your family?

And I was like, What am I gonna say?

No, no, you're right, dad.

Forget the God who spoke the universe into you saying you're clearly the bigger deal here.

But I was like, Yeah, he's he's God, and he was like, What?

How could you do this to us?

And he started like pacing back and forth in front of me, he said, you know, we put the roof over your head, we're the ones who feed you every day.

He started calling me brainwashed, which is a fun situation to be in.

And that may not be your situation, but this is what Jesus demands of us that he must come above our direct relatives, our parents, and our children.

And so the question we've got to be asking is what does that look like for us on the everyday to put God above our family, for him to be our first love, for our primary devotion to be his?

That's what we've got a question.

And as soon as we put Jesus and God in the right place in our relationships, as we put him as primary, everything else works and makes sense as well.

It's not saying that there will always have no tension as a result of that.

That's not the reality.

That's not what Jesus promises very clearly, but it's the reality of actually as we put Jesus in the rightful place, all other things start to fit and make sense as well.

And then the other two verses that I want to focus on together is um, you know, because the first one we just read it was simply again about God being put before the family and Jesus obviously himself being God in the flesh.

But the two are basically are about the vision of family Christ is calling us into or come call commanding us to become.

So I'll read these two verses together.

And so we're gonna look at Mark 3, verses 31 to 35, and Mark 10, 28 to 30.

Mark 3:31–35

And this is what Mark 3 says.

It says, And his mothers and brothers came, um standing outside, they sent of him and called him.

And a crowd were sitting around him, and they said to him, Your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you, talking to Jesus.

And he answered them, Who are my mother and my brothers?

And looking at those who sat around him, he said, Here are my mothers and my brothers, or mother and brothers, sorry.

For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.

And then Mark 10, 28 to 30 says that Peter began to say to him, See what we have left, um, see, we have left everything and followed you.

Jesus said, Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters, and or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time.

Houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands and persecutions, oh, sorry, with persecutions and in the age to come, eternal life.

So, what happens in both these passages?

Jesus is turning the spotlight away from the blood family.

In the first, Jesus is teaching a room, and while outside, his mother and his brothers are demanding to see him.

And if you go back a few verses earlier in that verse 21 talks about why basically what happened is his family had already decided he was going a bit crazy.

Jesus was kind of out of his mind at this point that they were damaging their family's reputation, and so they decided to kind of take hold of him and take him back home.

And so when they show up, they haven't just come to check in.

Again, they come to kind of damage limitation their own family's reputation.

But what Jesus doesn't do, he just doesn't go out to them.

And that alone would have been a scandal, refusing your own mother.

But he goes further and he says, Who are my mother and brothers?

Whoa.

Then looking around at the people sitting with him, he answers his own question.

He says, Here are my mother and my brothers.

Whoever does the will of God is my mother, is my brother and sister and mother.

So Jesus is saying that a new family is taking priority now.

One that isn't based on blood, but one that is based upon their response to God and locality.

Because it's here, here he says, Here are my mothers and brother.

And this is those who do the will of God.

There is a response to God in will, following his will and locality.

Here in a bit.

So, and the next passage, what we see is Peter has just pointed out that he and the others have left everything to follow Jesus.

They'd left family, they left loved ones, they'd had to to come to Jesus, they left their businesses and all that kind of stuff.

And Jesus doesn't correct them in that, he confirms it.

And he goes further.

He says, Who anyone who left house, brothers, sisters, and mother and father, children of land for his sake and for the gospel will receive it back a hundredfold.

And what it's easy to miss is the when to which Jesus says that hundredfold blessing will be received.

Because look, it doesn't just say that this blessing is for the next life only, he says it's now in this time, houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, land a hundredfold with persecutions and eternal life on top of that in the age to come.

What's he talking about?

He's talking about the church, the new family of God he was about to create, local bodies of brothers and sisters, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters, coming together as the new first family.

He was about to birth.

A scholar by the name of Joseph Helleman, commenting on this passage, says that Jesus affirms what Peter has said and promises him that the family relationship he'd sacrificed for the kingdom would be restored to him in the church family.

Whatever became of Peter's relationship with his family of origin, his primary family, loyalty wise, was now the surrogate family of God.

And friends, it's kind of easy to spiritualise these kind of hundredfold blessing promises things that we see in the Bible, but Jesus but Jesus means it.

He says that this blessing will be received relationally and kind of spatially as well.

He says, Sisters, children, houses, and land.

He's talking about a real place to belong, with real people to share your life with, not this ethereal reality.

And now this kind of lands us with a question then for us is firstly, is this how we see church, friends?

Do we see the church as Jesus teaches us?

That our primary loyalty is not with our kind of our blood family, but to a new spiritual one that Christ has created, the family of God.

Because for me, I you know I know this to be true, and my journey into it perhaps wasn't particularly hard to choose in some aspects, but um, you know, and again, I didn't I I didn't grow up in particular the most functional of families, you know, before and throughout my childhood, my father was in in the army.

He was an officer as well for a period of time, and he was in the army for 25 years until he confessed to me that he was discharged for bullying.

And very much of the culture of the army was the culture of my house.

Um, so it was strict, there was it was drill sergeant governed, I'll put it down to.

So you understood authority very clearly, and it was the rule of the household because do what I say, not what I do.

And you were provided for, materially speaking, and that's where you needed to remain content.

However, when I came to Christ at the age of 18 and joined a church, I discovered personally a whole new realm of family that I'd not since received.

People who cared, people who were together.

And yes, while there was kind of those who felt a bit on the fringes, by and large, there were those who were committed and faithful, who you could connect with and know over a period of years, who were they and they would support you and you would support them, and they would encourage you and you would encourage them.

And there was every age, you know, there were children you played with after church who remembered you and they would kind of look at you like an older brother, fathers who invested you in searching questions, mothers who cared for you and remembered your challenges and never failed to ask.

You had brothers who you could cry with and laugh with, sisters who supported and championed you.

And so I can say that through what I experienced is exactly what Jesus had said, that this hundredfold blessing I know.

And the challenge I want to put before us is kind of the question of are you part of that?

Are you part of that?

The second question I believe I would want this pastors to ask us is what do you think of when the when the people come through our doors and they stick around for a while, do they receive that hundredfold blessing?

Do they receive new fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters?

Do they receive a place to be and to belong?

And this, friends, is what the family of God is meant to be.

It is meant to be a people deeply invested in each other's lives.

Not just show up on a Sunday and not just know where they sit and in the have their own space and interact with a few.

It's it's but it's about that actively engaging, encouraging, seeing yourself as a participant in this great family, not as a benefactor or a critic.

Or simply this is kind of my social club where I hang out with my friends and come together for our individual Christian experience.

If that's you, you've missed the point.

You've missed the point.

The church doesn't need more attendees, not more seat warmers, it needs more fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters.

So the question we've got to ask is how do we become this family?

The way Christ intends for us.

And I believe there's kind of three main points that I want us to consider.

There's lots more, but in some ways I couldn't, so I won't want to speak after it all afternoon.

For us to become the kind of family I think God would call us to be.

And the first one is uh no community.

Brett McCracken, a um a pastor, and he leads a ministry in the States, he says, the perfect church does not exist, but committing to a church in spite of its flaws is essential and worth it.

Churchless Christianity is an oxymoron.

So you cannot have a loose relationship with the bride of Christ.

To be truly the people God has called us to be, we have to live in proximity and consistency with one another regularly.

And this is why guarantee is Jesus' expectation regarding the family, the church he designed us to be.

He said, Here are my mothers and brothers.

Here.

If we are not here, Sunday, midweek, family is hard to forge.

And I think this is what nobody wants us to hear when we talk about developing church or developing family.

What we don't want to often hear is it's slow.

It is slow.

In an age of instant gratification and next day delivery and smartphones, relationships remain at the same speed they've always been.

You know, in our youth work, over the years I've watched young people walk through our doors and say, you know, I don't know anyone here.

I don't know anyone, I don't know any friends.

And that's hard, and we never dismiss that.

As a youth team, we never dismiss that.

But and it's crucial what we do about that as a youth team, how we engage them and encourage them, and what we create in our space.

And then, but then there's some parents who encourage them to stick it out.

You know, this is our church, you know, keep going, keep giving to it, keep giving your time.

And and they walk with them in years of encouragement to lean in, even when it's hard.

And so they stay, and they, you know, sometimes they're chatting to us leaders, which I'm sure is you know the best fun for them.

We are lovely, and they do their best to connect in, but then they stay in consistently instead of a sporadicness.

And then a year later, they're in a totally different place because they were encouraged to find a way through rather than a way out.

And the same is true for us as well.

You know, when it comes to community groups, you know, people I think turn up expecting to click to immediately find your people.

And we expect it to be like the Titanic, you know, two strangers meet on the deck of a ship, and then one the next day they're giving up, one's given up his life for the other person.

It's just not real, is it?

It's a it's a film, and clicking is rare, it's it's a reality, but it's rare.

Clicking is all about compatibility, and that's not always true about community.

Community is love that holds across difference, and that's not something that I stumbled upon.

It's built slowly.

Slowly.

It's forged as you continually give of yourself, and it's the can it's a community that truly impacts the in the world and us actually as well.

It's one that is diverse, where we engage with people you wouldn't always you wouldn't engage with anywhere else in your life, young and old, different backgrounds, different economic economic situations, different races, different abilities, where we live, love, and serve one another.

You know, it's so easy just to fall into your own group of people.

The people that are like you, the same age, the same stage, and just feel safe, feel seen, feel understood.

But that's not community, friends.

That's a clique.

And a Christian thinker by the name of Elizabeth Oldfield, she coins the term, she calls it people like me syndrome, where our natural distorted inclinations lead us only to interact with the people who are similar to us.

And like Jesus, we have got to do everything in our power to resist that, to venture across lines of difference and be willing to not always be pretty and perfect, but to faithfully love our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Amen.

The second one is nobody in need.

Acts 2, 44 to 45 says, and all who believed were together and had c had all things in common.

And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.

Now this sounds like a family, doesn't it?

It sounds like a family language, sharing of your possessions, so there is no one in need.

And so there is a few ways, I believe, that God has called us to share.

And I can't list them all because again I'll be talking forever, but I've got two, I think, specifically to us.

And this passage talks about that we are called to share of our possessions, to use what we have to ensure that no one in our family, our spiritual family, is in lack.

You know, and I still remember, and I will continue to remember that when our car broke down a few years ago, um, in the depths of winter, I went, you know, our car went to the garage, Laura, me and me and Laura's car, and it was in there a long time.

And in fact, actually, that car was bought for of a member of this congregation.

They just, out of the generosity of their own heart, they bought us that car.

But when that car went into the garage, we we couldn't afford to just replace it immediately.

So Jessemy, our beloved kids worker, hat off for you, um, offered us one of her two cars to help.

And she was using that car to teach one of her daughters to drive at that time, but she was willing to find another way just to support us.

And she would, it was without a second thought.

She was like, Of course, you need it, it's yours.

Use it as long as you need.

We are called to share our belongings when others are in need.

You know, it's our most precious resource, it's one we can't ever get back.

You can always get more money, you can never get more time.

You know, and we need to give of our presence to one another, and specifically in obviously in times where it's hard, times of grieving, and when people are in need, but also when they're celebrating, when they're again, this is what our presence shows a way of valuing other people.

Romans 12, 15 says, Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.

And friends, it is impossible to do that from a distance.

Giving our time is crucial, helping people who are going through transitions, moving, or children, having children for the first time, or when children come into the world, or they're in crisis or suffering or loss, being there.

You haven't got to fix anything.

Haven't got to fix anything, but being there is what people remember.

Being present is what people remember.

But also just in the everyday as well.

You know, this week, Neil he called me and he he's wanted to get something out of his car.

Um, that it was ideally a little bit too heavy for him and Sonia.

So he just called me and just said, John, could you come around and get that out of my boot?

And I was like, Absolutely, you know, there was no obligation, I wasn't trying to get brownie points with Neil.

Um but it I just he's just a man I deeply respect as a spiritual father, and so I can I wanted to offer help as as as when I can.

And so Neil, he assumed that I was family, and he assumes correct.

And that's why, again, we can we can ask for each other when we're in need, when we need help, we can call on each other.

That should be our expectation of one another in this place, and you know, of course, it's things like babysitting.

We get so much help with babysitting, helping garden, redecorate people because this is this is what our brothers we are, brothers and sisters, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, we're called to be together, giving of ourselves for each other's good.

And finally, the our third one is that it's the idea of living out your role.

That we again, as brothers and sisters in Christ, we have a responsibility for and to one another.

Paul says we are to not uh rebuke an older man harshly, but to exhort him as if he were your father.

Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters with absolute purity.

So, I mean, deeply in your heart question, you know, just in the in this in this space, just as a look around this room, give it a little glance.

When you look across this room at different members of the church, do you see brothers and sisters?

A spiritual father and mother, a spiritual son or daughter?

Is there a level of care or concern, a desire for them to grow and know Jesus more, to come more alive to what he has for them, as Christ has called them to?

Is there that desire within you for one another?

Because that is our responsibility.

1 Corinthians 12 24 says, God has put the body together, so that there should be no division in the body, but its parts should share and have equal concern for each other, equal concern across the body.

Hebrews 10 24 says, Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good works.

But of all, so we question ourselves when we arrive on Sunday morning or midweek in small groups, what are we considering?

Are we considering how we may spur on a spiritual family towards the fullness of what God has for them?

Because that's what we're called to be for one another.

As we spur each other on, we are also spurred on as well, as we expect that from our brothers and sisters.

And likewise, you know, I sat with a young man a while ago and he's still on fire for Jesus, but he's not on part of this church anymore.

And he was looking back over the years of growing up in this church, and he told me about spiritual mothers, he told me about women who checked in with him, women who challenged him, women who tried to know him, women he saw things, saw Christ in and wanted to emulate.

And then when he he actually stopped and he reflected on me, he said, you know what?

I struggled for spiritual fathers.

I struggled for spiritual fathers, and that grieved me when I heard that.

It really did grieve me when I heard that.

Not because, again, we haven't got good men, or we have, but it's worth questioning ourselves, men in this room.

Are we checking in with people?

Are we close enough to spiritual sons to challenge them?

Are we, as men, people that they can see people sa other people see Jesus in and desire to emulate?

Is that within us as well?

You know, Hebrew says to people who'd been in church for years, he says, by now you ought to be teachers.

He says, by now you should be feeding others, and you're still on milk, he says.

You know, friends, children are fed, and fathers feed, mothers do the same.

You know, we have responsibility for the spiritual health of our spiritual family.

So let us consider how we're stirring up one another to see Jesus, know Jesus, and follow him.

Amen.

So those are the three.

This is no commitment, no community, nobody in need, and living your role.

That's family.

That's what we're called to be.

Just before I finish this time, before I want us to respond, I'm gonna say something that I think a leader isn't supposed to say about church on Sunday.

So brace yourself.

But this isn't enough.

This this isn't enough.

Sunday morning, this room isn't enough.

Again, look around.

You can look around, just just to appease me.

Consider where you're facing, right?

Where are your chairs pointing?

You're pointing towards the front or the back of someone's head.

You know, that's all you can see.

You can sit, and the thing is, you can sit behind a person for ten years and know their haircut better than their heart.

It's true.

It's funny, but it's a reality as well, isn't it?

It's not great.

And that's the reality of this room, but it can't be everything we need it for.

This room can never be what we need it for.

This room is for instruction, it's for corporate worship, it's for the public reading of scripture, it's for catching up with a brother or sister.

But truly, family doesn't sit in rows, family sits around a table.

And the first church, the first church knew that.

You know, Luke tells us that they met in the temple courts every day and they broke bread in one another's homes.

There was gatherings, both large gatherings and small.

John Motcomer calls it church around a stage and church around a table, and we need both.

And you know, Jesus never promised us rows.

When you read back to the passage, Jesus never promised us rows, he promised us houses, brothers, sisters, mothers a hundredfold now in this time.

And a church that only meets in rows for me isn't a family, it's an audience.

And so, for friends, my encouragement should be join a community group, get your children along to infinity.

You know, we if we need more, we need to see each other's faces, know each other, because this will never be enough.

It will never be enough.

Amen.

So in the Titanic, we'll just come back there.

In near for nearly 30 years, we cheered for a girl saying, Yes, follow your heart, do what you feel, don't let any restraint kind of get hold of you.

And that's the creed of our age.

It's the creed of our age, and this age is a sinking ship.

And our scripture calls us to it, calls us to bear with one another, carry each other's burdens, lay down your life for your brothers.

Do not neglect meeting with one another.

This is the foundation of family.

And I want to leave you with this quote.

This uh quote from a the mentor of the late Tim Keller, if you've heard of him, this guy called Richard Lovelace, he's a church historian and theologian.

He said this: he said, It's impossible to grow up in Christ on your own.

Impossible, not hard, not unlikely, impossible.

He says, You need the small gathering and the large one, a table and an altar.

So, friends, in every space this family meets together, give of yourself to know and be known, to love and be loved, to truly become brothers and sisters that Christ has envisioned for us to become.

Amen.

Amen.

So let's I'd love us to just stand as to respond if you're able.

That would be wonderful.

So again, I've been talking at you for about four about 35, 40 minutes.

And um, what I want us to do is because I think, you know, there's it's great, we don't become a family by agreeing with a sermon.

I'm just gonna be honest, that doesn't that's not how we do things.

We become one by saying yes together with our mouths, but also with our bodies as well.

So I want us to do two things.

So the first thing we're gonna do is use our voice and say honestly before God with that with this is something we want to commit to.

So on the screen, and I will read it out, I'm gonna go and have six questions.

And as part of those six questions, what I'd love us to do is respond by just saying, Here I am, here I am.

It's what Isaiah said when he spoke to God when God asked him who would go, and he said to God, here I am, Lord.

So as far as you can honestly mean it, and I'll genuinely say again, this is you becoming before God, you know, God will take our word seriously.

One day we'll stand before God and give an account to him on what we have said, is what the scriptures literally say.

So if you if this is something you genuinely mean, then mean it from the deepest parts of yourself.

And again, if you're visiting or still working all this stuff out, then just just listen.

Nobody's watching you, nobody's checking you, no one's judging you.

So so this will this is what we're gonna read six questions.

Are you ready?

And again, we'll say together, here I am Lord.

So the first question it should appear on the screen as well, if you can see.

So who will keep showing up and will not neglect to meet together?

Here I am Lord, who will bear one another, sorry, bear with one another when it's slow and awkward and difficult.

Here I am Lord, who will hold what they have loosely so that no one in this family goes without?

Here I am Lord, who will give their time to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep?

Here I am Lord, who will see each other as fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters.

Here I am Lord, who will consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.

Here I am Lord.

Wonderful.

Now, I want us to not just use our voice, I want us to use our bodies as well.

And um, there's one command in this in the New Testament, particularly that I think many of us tend to overlook.

And um, it's and we have a lot of these one another's, if you've heard of them, you know, love one another, bear one another's burdens.

We've got a lot of those, but there's one that's repeated more than any other, and that is to greet one another with a holy kiss.

Well, we get there.

And so um, I would love us to practice that this morning.

However, however, as you get a little bit hot under the cover the collar there, you know, or you start putting your lipstick on, don't you know just put that back in.

I'm just gonna be honest.

Um, we are we're called to live out the principle of that, um, not the letter of that, just because again, the kisses in that context didn't mean the same as it does here in the Western world.

But the physical affection does.

Physical affection signs where we can show each other that we love each other, that we care for each other, that we want, that we're we're we're glad each other are here.

So we're gonna be doing that this morning.

I'd love us to just go around and I'd love us to be as chaotic as possible, um, really, and just to show physical affection.

That can be a handshake, it can be a hug.

You know, please just recognize the other person's needs and desires within that.

But then as you do that, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, eager beavers, eager beavers, hold up.

Um, as you do that, please say something meaningful to them.

Please say something meaningful.

Say, I'm glad you are here.

I'm you're my brother, you're my sister.

Say something meaningful and mean it.

If it's awkward, lean into that, that's fine.

You're already going.

But go, but make sure as well, if you have a physical disability, if you're unable to move, please stay with you while people will come and gather to you.

But other than that, please just go and show love to each other.

Reach across to the line, don't just go to the people you know, but show love to one another.

Okay?