Monday, November 06, 2017

CREC- C4-Life Together- Sermon Notes

CREC C4- Life Together

I could easily have done another sermon, or even several sermons on C4- Life Together. However, I DO need to get through this sermon series and back to some chapter by chapter exegetical preaching. So, I am pressing on. I delivered this sermon on the same day after finishing C3- Sacraments. So, it was about a 15 minute coverage of this topic, but very important! You can listen to it here


CREC C4- Life Together
Sermon Notes
Sunday, November 5, 2017
Lynchburg, Virginia

EXHORDIUM
C4- Life Together
Eph. 4:29-5:2 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. 30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: 32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.
Eph. 5:1   Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; 2 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.

I could easily do another entire sermon on Life Together. However, I am going to keep on moving through these sermons. I hope to write this out into an essay or short booklet, so we can get a larger treatment there.
For now, let me leave with you an exhortation on our C4-Communion, in the CREC-C1 means understanding the Covenant. It means CREC-C2 Covenant Renewal Worship. CREC-C3 means partaking of the two Sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. And finally, CREC C4, borrowing Bonhoffer’s terminology, it means Life Together.
Life Together is a mess. Embrace the mess. In the CREC, we believe that living our lives together in the mess, committed by covenant, is central to who we are. I am not sure how well we are doing in this category. Something is missing and I am not sure what.
We teach that we are connected to one another. We are to love on another. We ought to think of others more highly than ourselves. We should spend time with our friends from the church outside of the church, having fellowship around the Table or in other share life experiences.
There is a problem that occurs when you do this, however. You get to know people. And the perfect people you met at church are not the same people that you have over to your home. Those people are sinners. They make a mess. They stay too long, eat too much, talk about themselves, have trouble controlling their kids. Sometimes, just the opposite. And that bothers us.
But there is something worse than that that bothers us. Sometimes, they stay exactly the right amount of time. They eat just the right amount and in precise portions with careful manners. They don’t talk about themselves the whole time, but ask you questions about how you are doing, how your kids are doing and offer to pray for you. Their kids obey the first time asked, or at least after dad gives them that knowing glance. In short, they are a really organized and ship shape family. The reality of this performance might be true, too. It might not just be for show. They might actually act that way at home when no one is around. And this bugs you more than if they were a mess. How dare they be so perfect! Don’t they know how bad this makes me feel?
Dear Saints, I would argue that neither of these responses is loving the saints. We are to be like our Father, in heaven. Slow to anger and quick to forgive.
Of course, work on being godly but do not come up with some idea in your head about what a perfect church looks like. There is no perfect church. Does your church exhibit the marks of a true church? Do we preach the whole bible? Do we faithfully administer the sacraments? Are we willing to hold wayward saints accountable?
Then, these are reasons enough to commit to these saints and love them without letting a root of bitterness grow in your heart and defile many.
Bonhoffer says it is a dreamer that has an ideal of the perfect church in his mind. He calls it a wish-dream. You are wishing the church was like the image in your head. The problem is that you love people for the image that is in your head. When they don’t measure up, you grow weary of loving them. In reality, this is some strange form of idolatry.
You ought to rather love those people that God has placed in your life. Your spouse, not some idealized version of him. Your children, not some idea of them. Your pastor, not the perfect pastor in your mind. Your fellow saints, in this church, not some make believe vision of them, that frankly, does not, and cannot exist.
When I say we are not doing very well in this area, I say this because we teach these things but still seem to have the modern church problem of the revolving door. People come and go at their whim and often the real reasons are at some level relationship problems with other people.
But isn’t this expecting them to meet up with your ideal? Let us love in word and in deed. Let us love the people in our midst. Let us consider them brothers and sisters, people we do not abandon for light and transient reasons.
If there are fundamental failures at the church, or you have had core doctrinal shifts, then these are not light and transient reasons. But having your feelings hurt, or feeling inadequate to the standard, or being frustrated with other people, are not good reasons. Life Together requires us to love our brothers and sisters because Christ is in them. He is the one who covers their sins, messes, inadequacies. And yours, too.

This is part of the joy of living our lives together. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

No comments: