Pastor Jared walks us through the second week of our sermon series, "A Life That Matters".
Park Springs Sermons
July 28, 2024 - A Life That Matters - Community
(upbeat music) - You're listening to a message from Park Springs Bible Church located in Arlington, Texas, where we discover life in the power of God's grace and share his life-changing grace with others. (upbeat music) Join us as we hear from the word. - Good morning. Come on, first through sixth grade. Y'all should be used to participating. I was counting on y'all this morning. I was hoping y'all were in the room and used to call in response. Good morning. Okay, there we go. It is good to see y'all. My name is Jared. I'm one of the pastors here. It's my privilege to share with you from the word of God. And do just want to say again, we are so glad that our families and kids are in the room with us this morning as we dive into the idea of Christian community. And I'd like to kind of set the stage for this morning with a story. I think there's about my second year on staff here as one of the pastors that one time during the week, I was up in my office and our ministry coordinator, Ms. Helen, called me up in my office and said, "Hey, there is a young man here "who would like to talk to a pastor. "Would you mind coming down and talking with him?" I was available at the time. So I tripped down and met this guy and we picked one of the rooms and went and sat down and asked what I could do for him that morning. He was a couple of years older than me. It was a nicely dressed, but I didn't notice he had some scrapes down the side of his face. But we sat down and began to talk and he kind of just began to tell me a little bit about his life. So he was in his early 30s and what he began to tell me was kind of the setup for what was going on in his life. And so one of those realities was, he said, "Hey, by this point in my life, "both of my parents have passed away "and in both sets of my grandparents have passed away." And then he told me he was like, "And I'm also an only child." And he said that recently he had moved to DFW. He wasn't from the DFW area, but had moved here for work. And what he did for work was that he was a dog trainer. So he had this certification of license and kind of ran his own company training dogs for people. So he didn't have a physical location. Essentially what people would do is hire him, he would come and take their dog and train them, then return him. And so he was kind of just kind of explaining that aspect of his life. And so he kept kind of unpacking that most of his family relationships no longer existed. And then he didn't really have a lot of work relationships because he worked with animals. And then he was also new to the area. And so he didn't have a lot of friendship. So he was kind of just explaining all this and setting it up to me. And then it hit this point where he kind of got to the reason why he had wandered into a church that day. And he kind of paused. And he said, this week I got jumped and mugged by a couple of people in Rob's. And I realized that if I had been killed, there was nobody that would have known or had cared that I had died. And then he sat and cried in my office for a while. And it was a really profound moment for me as a 25-year-old to sit with him and hear him kind of reflect on his life and to feel the weight of that absence of relationship and community. And it's something that has continued to just have this impact on me as I have been involved in people's lives and think often about the importance of relationships specifically in the context of church. And it has continued to just bring home that reality to me that our relationships matter a great deal to our humanity. So let me just offer my entire point for this Sunday's sermon. I would say this, you were made to live a life interconnected to other people. And our word for this is community. You were made to live a life interconnected to other people. In our word, we use to explain that is community. And that's a truth that's all over the Bible for sure. And I hope to just kind of illustrate for you why it can be a universal reality for all people through all time. But the Word of God is very clear on the matter. And I always even go back to the very beginning of the Bible in Genesis chapter 2 when all things are set in motion and God speaks everything into existence, including people, one of the first negative statements you ever get in the Bible is in Genesis 2, 18, where God had made Adam all by himself and then makes the profound statement that the Lord God said it is not good that man should be alone. And that's at the very beginning of the Bible kind of begins to explain this reality that our hardwiring as human beings is to have relationships with other people. It is not good for us to be alone. And you continue to get this thread woven through the Scriptures on how God has called a people to himself that are to be reconciled to him and also to be interconnected to others. And so we can even bring that into our New Testament context in our followership of Jesus that when the church of Jesus Christ kicks off, we have this moment in the book of Acts Acts chapter 2 is where we look at it's kind of like the movement explodes in this moment called Pentecost where the apostles who had all followed Jesus, now Jesus has charged them to take the message because he has gone back to the Father and then they're spending time in prayer and then this incredible sermon gets preached by the apostle Peter and this is like 2,000 people get saved. So it's really the picture of like the first Christian church there in Jerusalem at what it looks like. And oftentimes we reflect back on this image we get in Acts chapter 2 verse 42 because it describes how followers of Jesus live out their lives. And it says this, says they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And so I love a couple of aspects of this verse. One, it says they devoted themselves that it did take some effort and intentionality to include these spiritual components in their lives. So it wasn't something that just happened passively. It was an active choice to prioritize certain actions because of their relationship and the salvation that they had found in Jesus. So there was a devotion aspect and we get those aspects of what we know typically belong in the church setting like reading the apostles' teachings or the prayers. But he also uses this word in there that we translate fellowship. And it's this Greek word called quanenia and what it literally means is a mutual sharing of life. And so for those who had had an encounter with Jesus Christ and had experienced salvation by faith in him, they devoted themselves to the teachings of the scriptures and to a mutual sharing of life with others. Why? Because it is not good that man should be alone. That they were made just like us to live a life interconnected to other people. And so this is a goal of our lives and especially as Christians. And even just as humans, it is something we need. But in a lot of ways, I'd say by and large, this isn't necessarily something that is present in everybody's lives. Now it may not have been as dramatically highlighted as the man I had that conversation with one day that there was a complete absence of relationships. But for a lot of people, by and large, there does feel this disconnect between maybe the longing of our hearts to have a deep interconnected life to others, but then the reality we live out every single day. And so one of the realities I think we can begin to think about is that we're kind of living in this cultural moment where our identity is a constant conversation. The question is asked often in these days of what defines us as people. And there is a certain movement and some of the ideas being promoted that we really get to define ourselves, that we can articulate who and what we are as people, which has really not been the predominant view throughout human history. And I feel like literally the culture we've been brought up and especially if you're from the southern United States, we do have this individualistic streak to us. And so that's always kind of been a part of collectively who we are as Americans. And then if you're from the South for sure, we have this individualism that typically has been in regards to personal responsibility and we all are responsible for the decisions we make. But it can begin to bleed in how we view ourselves even as a human. So I would make the claim this morning that identity has a lot of drivers in our behavior and outside of our literal biology, the biggest drivers in our identity are disconnected from the internal and more about the relational structure we have in our lives. And so I'll just say this, some of my most powerful identity markers are my relationships to others. I am a son because I have parents. I am a brother because I have siblings. I am a husband because I have a wife. I am a parent because I have children. I am a friend because I have friends and I'm a pastor because of you people here. Those connections define my life. But for so many of us, we are in a disconnected age. By and large, as they do statistical studies and surveys across the country, our population, what is just kind of normative for the people around us is a sense of isolation and being disconnected. There was a poll done earlier this year by the American Psychiatric Association on loneliness in America. And I look at these almost every year because the needle is not really moving. And if it does move, it is usually in a negative direction. And so out of the survey they took, how most people kind of identified that relational aspect of their life is one out of every three people said that at least once a week, they struggle with profound feelings of loneliness. So one out of 33% of people feel loneliness every single week. In one out of 10, 10% of our population every single day would say they struggle with feelings of loneliness. And out of those who are surveyed, 50% said that daily, they use distraction to ease the feelings of loneliness, things like Netflix and podcasts and alcohol. There are different generational trends. But by and large, this is a true across all ages. That loneliness is a constant struggle for us. And so if we do bring that into the church setting and as good people of God, we want to look into the scriptures and what we would see is something very different highlighted for what should be a marker of our life. And so we would probably all know that the Sunday school answer for what is the church is people. And so we know that so the people of God, those who've placed their faith in Jesus are brought into this reality of they become the church of Jesus Christ. And so as you read through the New Testament and you get all these different scriptures about what that is supposed to be and how it is supposed to look, you get some recurring metaphors for how the church is described. So one of those is a building. It's like the people of God are being built into a building to a temple of God to worship God. So that's one of the metaphors you get for the church. And then you also get the idea of the church being the bride of Christ that we are being prepared with this eternal relationship with Jesus Christ as our savior and our groom. That's one of the metaphors. But then the other two metaphors you get most often about what the church is supposed to be like. One is as a family. And then the second is as a human body. And those two I think are very important for us because they give very specific images. And so the church, the people who have placed their faith in Jesus are a family. We would know that across human history, the closest human relationships we have are with our family. It is with our parents or with our children or with our siblings. We know that that is supposed to be a tight-knit group of people that share all of life's ups and downs. And regardless of situation or relational strife, it is hard to get disconnected from your family so much so that it would be a saying we have all heard at some point our life that blood runs thicker than water because we recognize there is a uniqueness to familial relationships. And that is one of the descriptors that is supposed to be present with the people of God that we have been adopted into God's family which not only connects us to him, but it also is supposed to be this interwoven aspect of our lives with other believers who call themselves followers of Jesus. That is one of the primary metaphors for the people of God. And the second is like a human body. And so once again, it is implicit in that description that there is a dependency and an interconnectedness with that. And so even you get different scriptures, if you can think about first Corinthians where Paul even talks about like, hey, an ear can't say they're part of a body or an eye can't be by itself. And in the same way, we would know that, you know, if you just had a spleen out there on its own, it would kind of cease to be a spleen. It's only part of the body when it is connected into the body. And those are powerful metaphors that we should think seriously on, in evaluate our own life, are we operating in a way that brings us closer to the reality God has created us for, or if we distance ourselves from relationships with people. Which I would say by and large, as you do talk to people, that everybody has that desire for that interconnected relationship. People want to find their people. And one of the things I would just say is that God wants to provide that for us through his church. I love how Psalm 68, 6 says it. It says God places the lonely into families. Now if it is, I would say a hard reality to live out. Because if I could speak from experience, in all of my human relationships I've had, there have been moments of strife. But it hasn't devalued or changed my need to be known and the desire to know people. So I want to look at one New Testament passage that gives us a picture of how an interconnected community should look and act. And it's in Romans chapter 12. Now I had to limit myself this morning because there are a lot of New Testament passages about our relationships to each other. And I would encourage you, as you spend time in the word of God, to think about how often it directs us to grow and move closer to people when often we want to pull away. So Romans chapter 12, starting in verse three, we're gonna read this passage together. This is what the Apostle Paul said. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members and the members do not all have the same function. So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them if prophecy and proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness, let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor, do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. That's our image that I want just burned into our brains this morning, individuals connected to each other like a human body. And it'll show itself in how we act this out and how we live it out, because I would say that we do build a life that matters by living this out. One of the things I just found fascinating as we collectively moved through the COVID era, and I was just, I kind of personally reflected on my own life and you read the news stories and you see the kind of larger impact on our country. One of the things that just kind of occurred to me, you know, about six months into all the chaos that was happening is that for so many people, their source of connectedness to other people was their place of work. And so for myself, I even felt that even within the church, there were some weeks we didn't have in-person services and I'm very much extroverted. I need that energy from other people. So I was feeling it, but there was a lot of other things that were occurring just within our community here at Park Springs. You know, we have home groups that meet throughout the week and they were hopping on Zoom and checking in with everybody like making sure like, hey, do you have toilet paper? There's extra toilet paper here. There was a lot of toilet paper talk that took place, out of all of the seasons of my life was the only time that was a point of conversation with people. But we would check in with each other weekly and I know I had some friends. We would meet up and go walk around the park because everything else was closed down. And then eventually we did start meeting back together and there were some people that would pop in and out 'cause they just wanted to be around other people. But by the time it got to about 2022 and it began to kind of study some of the trends, one of the things that happened throughout COVID that should be very telling to all of us that is essentially across the entire nation, there was one group of people that reported as good or better mental health out of the entire nation and there was people who went to church. Because there is this reality that we just read about in Romans 12 that there is a way this community is supposed to work and we're all going to be successful at that in varying degrees. But we know the thing that we are aiming for that we are supposed to have these close relationships. That we have read through the teachings of Jesus and it has things like bear one another's burdens, love one another, be patient with one another, confess your sins to one another. We know all these aspects of this is how I'm supposed to live out my pursuit of Jesus, that I'm supposed to do it with those around me. And so that's what it's supposed to look like. It's like to be connected to a body. We're supposed to evaluate how God has wired us and then see how that connects to others. And then we can all live out verse nine and following where it says to let love be genuine. Love one another with brotherly affection. Be patient, be consistent, contribute to each other's needs and seek to show hospitality. And I think that's something that every single person wants. And so we should ask ourselves is why is that not as present in our lives? And so I'd say there is a difference in living out biblical community than just attending church. It's not less than that, but it is more than that. And so I'm very aware of the reality that you could be within these four walls and still feel very alone. But I would say if you find yourself thinking that you want that, that that is a desire. You have a longing for deep friendships, close connections, but if you're not sure how to go about it, I would just say welcome to church. You do belong here. And I would also say that if you have been a part of this specific community for an amount of time and you feel established here and you have those relationships, you have that circle that's going to check on you and that you're going to do activities with and you do feel like you belong somewhere, be an extension of that to others. I hope if you are a member here that you do, glance around the room and look for faces that you don't know, that you do walk across during our time of greeting and shake somebody's hand, that you do set aside a week per month and ask somebody you don't know yet to lunch. We want people to belong here. 'Cause I would say this, if you are new here or looking to grow deeper in relationships, we gather every Sunday morning. Stay after, show up early. During the school year, we're going to gather on Wednesday nights. We're going to have classes and groups you can belong to. We have home groups that meet throughout the week. We have opportunities of service that would put you in close connection to others and to grow in those relationships as you serve alongside each other weekly. But one of the things I want to point out, if you are looking to maybe go a little bit deeper with people at church, I'll say this as a truism. The relationships will not be easy, but they are available. Let me say that again. The relationships will not be easy, but they are available. Just because we bring the idea of friendship into the household of God, it doesn't make us not people. And people are messy, and relationships are messy, and there will be ups and downs and hurts and slights that happen even within our body here. And so it will have the same relational struggles that you will find outside of these walls, but I would just say this, the relationships are available. We have people here that do want to grow with you, that want to bear your burdens, that want to check in on your needs, that want to be your friend because of what Jesus has done for us. And so there's a couple of ways you can go about that. An excellent way to get more connected with people is to serve in the church. You know, every single week we have a variety of opportunities, and it does just kind of give you that opportunity to rub shoulders with somebody else that maybe you haven't encountered yet, and a little bit more space to talk about your lives and get to know one another than just sitting within the service and hearing the Sunday sermon. So I would encourage you, if that's something, a desire in your heart to grow in relationships, you can begin to serve along others. And like I said, and not too long, we'll be kicking off Wednesday nights and there will be opportunities to gather throughout the week, and that's another opportunity to build relationships, or you could sign up for one of our home groups and those meet weekly, and you can begin to have people in your life that love you because of Jesus. And so I would say that you have to put some intentionality into growing your relationships as well, which is one of the reasons we had the little video at the beginning, I would just commend my good friends, Noah and Lindsey, that when they entered our church, they did so with a lot of intentionality, and I remember it specifically, because the Sunday they attended, there was three things you could sign up for and they signed up for all three things. And now they've become good friends. I wanna finish this morning with a quote from C.H. Spurgeon that I thought just illustrated the point we wanted to get across well. He said it like this, friendship seems as necessary an element of a comfortable existence in this world as fire or water or even air itself. A man may drag along a miserable existence in proud solitary dignity, but his life is scarce life. It is nothing but an existence, the tree of life being stripped of the leaves of hope and the fruits of joy. He who would be happy here must have friends, and he who would be happy hereafter must, above all things, find a friend in the world to come, in the person of God, the father of his people. A life that matters is marked by deep, meaningful relationships for others, and our word for that is community. Would you pray with me? Father in heaven, I am so grateful that you adopt us into your family. That you place the lonely in the families. Now that you cared about us in such a way that you wanted to provide us with brothers and sisters to walk alongside of us, that God, that we were not made to go through this life alone. God, I thank you for your church and specifically this church. God, where we can come with our baggage, our faults, our strengths, just the whole range of the human experience, God, but we can do it together. It's a place we can belong. It's a place where we can be our friends. It's a place where we can grow. It's a place where we can fight and forgive and press in and be patient and have long suffering with one another, God, knowing that we're flawed human beings, but because of Jesus Christ, we can be reconciled to one another. God, I pray that you would just, you would help us live that out. God, I think we all know it intellectually and we might desire it internally, God, but it's going to take actions, it's gonna take intentionality. God, so help us grow as your family here in Southeast Arlington. (gentle music) God, pray that that feeling would just permeate all that we do, that we care for people because you've cared for us. So be with us this morning Lord. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. (gentle music)