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Christianity Explains Community
Text: Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
The value of relationships
- Here are a thousand pieces of wood. But here is a carpenter. He takes a thousand pieces of wood and puts them together. The way they become related to one another creates a home. The carpenter takes a thousand pieces of wood and builds a home.
- The relationships are like a nail to two pieces of wood. The relationship gives the individual parts more value because it allows them to build something more valuable than the individual. You take a $30 piece of lumber and make it part of a $1M home. The whole creates something more valuable than the sum of its parts.
- Solomon said this in Ecclesiastes, one of the most profound public speeches in all history. He said two are better than one.
- because they have a good reward for their labor (get more done with two because the work is DIVIDED, not subtracted. And the reward is MULTIPLIED, not added.)
- if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow, but if she’s alone, who picks her up?
- if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?
- if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him;
- and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
- Solomon explains that the best things in life are the product of relationships. This is not just marriage, it is all relationships.
The nature of relationships
- When we think of relationships, we are not thinking about inanimate objects but more complicated things like relationships between people.
- These connections are not made by a hammer and nails.
- These connections are between conscious, feeling, and human beings.
- These connections are more sophisticated, more costly, and more valuable.
- There are biological relationships. These are chemical matters of the flesh. They can lead to more meaningful relationships, but that is only sometimes the case.
- Let me read to you what Jesus said in Mark 3:31-35.
- Eight things are the basis for healthy relationships: honor, trust, openness (vulnerability or honesty), communication, affection, sacrifice (effort or compromise), partnership (fellowship), and reward. We’ll discuss respect or honor today.
- These are healthy and good because this is how people relate to a loving God.
- For the next few weeks, we are going to consider eight foundations of a godly healthy relationship.
God’s purpose is accomplished in relationships
- I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Jesus of Nazareth was a carpenter who came to build the house of God.
- A people prepared for the LORD, not a person. Peter says God is building a spiritual house, an entire priesthood, a holy nation!
- John asks the question If you are prosperous and you see your brother in need, but you refuse to help, how does God’s love live in you anyway? If you say, I love God and hate your brother, you’re a liar: for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
- Your social relationships tell you what you are. How you treat other people is who you are. So community is a valid judge of you.
- The LORD points you in this direction of community. He did it in the Old Testament and in the New Covenant.
- Do you remember what two statements the entire law and prophets are based on? Love God and love your neighbor. An upward look and an outward look. And this determines who and what you are.
- We have traded the gospel of escape for the real point of the gospel is to engage and be an ambassador of God’s goodness. Instead, we’ve made Christianity revolve around the question where you’re going when you die. We’ve turned salvation into something it’s not and missed the kingdom of God’s principles and fruit that the Holy Spirit is trying to produce in people.
- We thought Christianity was about individual salvation, but it’s not. It’s about God building a house that has much more value than the sum of its parts.
- We think we’re the center of God’s world. If you were the only one in the world, Jesus would’ve died for you. I don’t know if that’s true, but it certainly makes me feel like I’m the most important thing to God when I’m not.
- But in that egotistical worldview, we have hijacked the work of God and the value of Christianity.
- American religion talks about Jesus Christ without contributing to what Christ is building. We won’t participate in the building because we’re so terrible at relationships. We’re so terrible at relationships because we have the wrong view of what the Father is doing through the Son Jesus Christ.
- The value is created by relationships because the purpose is accomplished by the relationships.
- You and I are the physical product of a relationship. More than that, what you’ve come to love and learn in life is a product of relationships.
- As people were created in the image of God, we are all called to the same purpose which is to carry the image of God and curate goodness in this life.
- God is the Creator of good things, the giver of good gifts and Jesus went about doing good and wants a people zealous of good works.
- Christianity is the explanation for this life and the mechanics of this life.
