Kaleo San Diego Church > Sermons

Community is...

David Fairchild
Sep 20, 2009
Series: Topical

Acts 2:42-47: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

WHY COMMUNITY?

Creation by a Communal God

Our God dwells in community. He is a God unlike any other. He is a God of love because He has loved and been loved within the Trinity. He is a God of glory because He has glorified and been glorified within His community. He is a God of praise because He praises and is praised within the life of His own fellowship. And our God is a God of joy because He is not alone but enjoys the fellowship of Himself within the intra-trinitarian life.

Cornelius Plantinga says this:

Self-giving love is the dynamic currency of the Trinitarian life of God. The persons within God, exalt, commune with, and defer to one another…Each harbors the others at the center of His being. In a constant movement of overture and acceptance each person envelopes and encircles the others. Creation is neither a necessity nor and accident. Instead, given God’s interior life that overflows with regard for others, we might say creation is an act that was fitting for God.

Plantinga is getting at the glorious truth that in creation it made sense that God would make us since He loves to share His love and glory in community. He makes us out of what He already has and not what He needs or lacks.

God says in the Garden: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26).

He’s not speaking to the angels because we’re not made in the image of angles. He’s speaking in the Trinity, and within this community of God He intends to make us in His image. To be made in His image is to be made for fellowship, for community. We aren’t to be individuals by ourselves. Rather, we are made in the “our image” of God after the “our likeness” of God.

In fact, the only thing we’re told is “not good” in the creation account is that man would be alone (Genesis 2:18). The importance of this can’t be overlooked. In our day we picture God creating us to be with Him by ourselves. And though it’s true that God makes us for a personal relationship with Him, that relationship is not a good one if it is alone, otherwise why would God say it isn’t good? He creates man and man has God, but God wants man to be in His image so He declares that He’ll make someone else so that he can have human community.

God wants man to enjoy community with Him and the goodness of community with one another. And in the climax of the creation story, this first community of man and woman are “naked and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25).

The first community was created to replicate. They were to have children and those children were to populate the world in community with one another, enjoying one another and in doing so they were all reflecting the God that made them in His image. They were to live with love and joy towards one another as they trusted their God and His word.

Treason against the Trinity

But something went terribly wrong with the first community. Instead of trusting God’s word, they believed the lie that they could be happier by leaving His protection and venturing out on their own.

But something horrific happened when they made that choice. Instead of being holy and happy, they became miserable and sinful. Instead of finding greater joy, they destroyed it.

The relational bonds of trust that connected them to their God were cut and they began to experience the effects of decay and death. Their willful treason destroyed the freedom and joy God intended for them.

Separation from the life of the Trinity caused shame and guilt. Instead of transparency, they isolated themselves from God by hiding and with one another by trying to cover up their nakedness and shame.

Sin always divides and destroys. Sin is self-absorbed, self-obsessed and self-oriented. God desires that we would be like Him, other-oriented as we donate ourselves to one another.

The first gender war came as a result of sin. The first sibling rivalry came as the result of sin. The first murder was the result of sin. Hiding, fear, shame, guilt, isolation and loneliness are not what God intended for us as His people.

Our impulse to run from one another is the result of sin. Our tendency to hide from one another is a result of sin. Our need to defend and justify ourselves falls into the same pattern as our first parents who blamed God and one another for their sin

In fact, all our relational deaths, all our pains in community are not accidental. They are the results of being born with the same blood as Cain. If we had it our way, we’d still be hiding in the bushes.

But God does not give up His plans for us. He wants us to be in His communal image as we enjoy Him and one another. So He comes to them, calls them out and makes a covering for them. And He promises that He’s going to send someone who will eventually win our fellowship with Him and with each other. God wants us to enjoy what He enjoys. God wants us to experience what we were made for.

God promises to make us His People

Exodus 6:7: “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.”

God commits to make a people for Himself. This is the plan of God, to redeem a “people,” not just individuals. We’re not saved to be isolated individuals who at some point decide to join a church, as if it were some club.

The promise of God was to redeem a people by freeing them from slavery so that they could be a community of His grace. John Stott says this:

The church lies at the very centre of the eternal purposes of God. It is not a divine afterthought. It is not an accident of history. On the contrary, the church is God’s new community. For his purpose, conceived in past eternity, being worked out in history, and to be perfected in a future eternity, is not just to save isolated individuals and so perpetuate our loneliness, but rather to build his church, that is, to call out of the world a people for his own glory.

This church, His people, our community is what Christ died for and it is what we are saved into. The story of the Bible is the story of God fulfilling His promise to be our God as His people.

How do We see Ourselves?

How we view ourselves makes a tremendous difference. If our identity is shaped primarily by American individualism, the idea that I am built to be a person-in-community, is going to sound more and more strange.

For most of us, we see ourselves as a person who is encouraged to go out and find our own identity rather than live out the one we’ve been given by grace.

You see, in asking the question, “Who am I?” I’m tempted to answer that question with a list of things I do, or like, or want to be for myself. Because this is an identity I have to build for myself rather than one I receive by grace, the church becomes filled with people trying to earn their identity and worth. The church becomes a collection of individuals all doing their own thing.

But the key to my identity is defined by my relationship with God. “Who am I?” is answered: I am a child of God, the bride of the Son and the dwelling place of the Spirit as a family member of God’s children. And this is all given to me by God’s grace.

To be truly human is to be a person-in-community. We are to define ourselves in this way and realize that I cannot be who I am without regards to the family into which I’m saved.

The Gospel message is one of reconciliation, unity and our identity as the people of God. This is what the Gospel does. It creates a people.

By being saved by grace, I no longer belong to myself. I belong to God and I belong to my brothers and sisters. I don’t belong to God then at some point choose to belong to others by joining a church. Being in Christ means I am in Christ with others who are in Christ. This is our identity.

This is why Scripture speaks of our loyalties of the new community as greater than the loyalties of biology (Matthew 10:34-37; Mark 3:31-35; Luke 11:27-28). If the church is the body of Christ, then we can’t live as disembodied people. We’re not to be a hand by ourselves planning our own good for the body. We’re to fit into the rest of the body and my usefulness is defined by the Head (Jesus) and the needs of the body.

If we are a family that is bound by blood that is thicker than that of my biology, then I’m not to hold grudges, distance myself, be on my own, or make decisions without regards to my family. I should be thinking at all times in all ways, how does this affect my family? Why? Because I’m no longer my own; I’ve been bought with a price, and that price is Jesus’ blood to make me His people, His family, His body.

WHAT IS COMMUNITY?

When Jesus came to live our life and die our death as God’s promised rescuer and ruler, He did so to save His people from their sin. This is what Matthew 1:21 teaches us.

Jesus came to form His people by saving them from their sin. Their sins of selfishness, pride, greed, jealously, anger, bitterness, self-righteousness, and all forms of idolatry were paid for by the blood of God’s Son so that we could be sons and daughters along with Him.

All of our hiding in the shadows to cover our shame is brought out into the light. It has to be. We can’t have fellowship with one another without our sin being exposed and forgiven by grace. 1 John 1:7 says: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”

John is saying that in stepping out into the light as He is in the light, we can finally have fellowship with one another because the blood of Jesus will cleanse us from our sin.

What our first parents did by hiding in the bushes and trying to cover themselves is undone by Jesus. He is the true sacrifice to cover their nakedness and shame, and this allows us to come out and become His people with one another.

Until God’s grace came you were truly an orphan, alone and abandoned. You were not a people, which means that you were not truly a person. This is what Peter says in 1 Peter 2:10: “Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

No matter what kind of community you think you have without Christ, no matter how much you think you are defined by your race, your nationality, or your family name, God says that you were not a people until you became His people. And you became His people by His mercy.

Once you were a stranger to God and His people. Once you were far off from God and one another. This is what Paul says to the Ephesians:

Ephesians 2:12-16: “remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.”

We have now fellowship with one another because of the cross. We are not reconciled and the hostility that separated us from God and one another is killed because Jesus was killed to make peace through his body on the cross.

Community is Fellowship

The New Testament word for fellowship is the Greek word koinonia. This word carries with it more weight that the English equivalent of “fellowship.” Koinonia is a conjunction of the words “common,” “sharing,” and “participation.”

When we turn to Acts 2 we see that the results of God’s Spirit coming at Pentecost empowers the church to preach the Gospel which then creates a people who “fellowship” with one another.

Man’s idea of community is shown in Genesis 11:4: “Let us make a name for ourselves…” This shows us that at the root of all selfish forms of community is a desire to make a name for ourselves. We want to be God. We want to be in control of our lives without anyone telling us what to do or challenging our decisions. We want to be a law unto ourselves.

God’s judgment was broken communication because of sin and He scattered them. Community is not built on ourselves to make much of ourselves, but is created to make much of God. Genesis 11 is the last time you see all the people of the earth able to understand one another.

The people of the earth decided to make a name for themselves instead of God. God divided their tongues and confused their language so that they no longer were gathered in one accord. They were scattered and confused, unable to speak to one another like they had previously.

When we try to justify ourselves and become our own saviors, the result is racial and social hostility and the destruction of human community. In Acts 2, God came down to create a new people and empower them and show them all His goodness, the first thing that happens is that the barriers of the races came tumbling down.

When Christ was crucified, God tore the dividing curtain in the temple in two from top to bottom to show that we now have access to the holy of holies through Christ. Now, as He fills the church with the Spirit of Christ, the sin division which kept the nations separated is torn as well.

The first sermon was preached in all these different languages to show that when God came down, He reversed the curse and reconnected those who were previously separate.

The Gospel coming in power with the Spirit demotes our nationality and race so that we see ourselves first as Christians, second as our nationality or race. The most important thing about you now is the cross. A brother or sister in Christ from another culture now has more in common with you than someone who does not know Christ in your own culture.

The results are astounding:

Once these people who were divided and separated into a variety of differences now come together each day and night and devote themselves to the learning and rehearsing the Gospel, teaching it to one another, fellowship, breaking bread and praying.

HOW DO WE DO COMMUNITY?

How do you know the Spirit is actively working in you and the Church? You begin to get along with people you normally would not. Your attitude is changed toward your money, your identity, your possessions, and your culture. Do you see your prejudices coming down?

We do this by calling each of you into a messy community life where you “devote” yourself to learning the Gospel in fellowship with one another.

This is not clean and tidy, but messy and disorganized at times. It isn’t a program to be attended, a curriculum to be mastered, but instead a life to be lived as the Gospel comes and regularly breathes new life into our wandering hearts.