Mystery of the Fellowship

Where we left off last week: • We are afraid of being who we are despite knowing that there is nothing to be afraid of to be who God created us to be • Our fear manifests itself in church and alienates people through our fear and into their own fears • We need to put a plan together to look at ourselves honestly and include people in our lives despite our own alienation by our split mindedness This week, we’re going to take that idea, that challenge I left you all off with – that is, the challenge of welcoming people into ourselves despite our own alienation and then study why faith, in particular, the Christian faith, has nothing to do with individual achievement and discipline, but with independent growth within a dependent community. Simply put—Paul is going to tell us why it’s not good enough for us to just believe and grow as individuals and that what is really expected of us is to be stewards of our growth in faith and the growth of others in faith, that we’re in community with. Meaning, yes, I’m responsible for your faith growth, but you all have a responsibility in the growth of each other’s faith. So often times, you find me on Sunday mornings and afternoons questioning the traditional accepted values of the world and of religion we grew up in and quietly subverting those values with what the Bible says in disobedience to the world. I know most Sundays you don’t get it, but don’t worry, it seeps in there. So, if you don’t remember, I challenged you last week to bring people into your life in a community you set up despite your own alienation and this was a serious challenge. I want you to do that in your personal lives. Then, in knowing this and constantly reminding myself of this, I messed up. I managed to do more in terms of alienating than in inviting. I managed to infuriate and alienate, by way of subconscious action, somebody whom I love and cherish and regard highly. Let me tell you, when I found out I did that, I was crushed by my own failure. I was crushed because I should know better—I preached about it. I read it! I’m telling you this story for two reasons: 1. To show you that even your pastor messes up and makes mistakes—I’m human, I can teach you principles, but make sure you follow Jesus, not your pastor; 2. And to show you that when I preach a sermon, I’m not preaching to talk about frivolous things, I’m talking about things that both you and me don’t want to address in our own lives, so God is addressing them through the holy spirit and with a fury of scripture to correct us. You know, so that we can live a small semblance of a redeemed life. With that in mind, let’s go Ephesians 3:1-6. We need to talk about the mystery of community—which is in Christ. For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles— 2 assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3 how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. 4 When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. 6 This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. – Ephesians 3:1-6 Verse 1. Just as a note, Paul is in jail writing this letter from Rome. He is being both figurative and literal here. He is literally a prisoner because he won’t stop preaching about Jesus, the Christ, and the Jews put him in jail for it in Caesarea. Herod 3 didn’t want to deal with it, so he sent the case to Agrippa (a fat Greek guy), who was going to let Paul go, but Paul wouldn’t bribe him. Eventually, Paul played the “I’m a Roman citizen” card and Agrippa shipped him to Rome to be heard by Caesar. Only a Roman can judge a Roman. He is figuratively a prisoner for Christ because he sees himself responsible to preach the good news to the Gentiles. Now this is important and I want you to ask yourself this question: What is there in life that you feel so responsible towards, that you feel like a prisoner? Let me clarify that for you—what is it in your life that God put in your heart to do that you feel so desperately responsible for that it entraps you from doing anything else in life but that which is in your heart? Now that question can go three ways: if you don’t have anything in your heart, you should stop and ask yourself seriously, I’m xyz years old, why don’t I have anything? Is there something wrong with me? The answer is “yes, there’s something wrong with you.” The second way it goes is this: there is something I feel imprisoned about, but I hate it because it feels like my tiger parents put me in this infinite loop, but it’s totally not what I would do if I had a billion dollars. To that, I want to tell you to figure out your mommy and daddy issues and figure out in your fickle heart, whether that is a function of laziness (your parents giving you goals, as opposed to yourself setting the marks) or if you’re just an idiot (if it’s the later, then, you come see me after service, I’ll smack some idiot out of you and make some room for smartness. Third way this goes is simply, accepting you’re a prisoner and feeling so trapped you don’t know what to do so you just cling to the grace and mercy of God and hang on for dear life. That is where Paul is at right now, as he writes this to the church in Ephesus. That’s where we need to be. Verse 2-5. The good thing is that if you’re in the first or second spot as a prisoner, then you’re in luck, because life will make it clearer. That is to say that if we keep living life, with the understanding and knowledge that God has definite plans for you to be imprisoned by something, somebody somehow, in your life, then you will get some type of revelation and it’ll be made a little more clearer—just wait for it. I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to sink into a total depression because you’re almost 30 and without any vision for your life to devote yourself towards. I think I often speak of how I ended up preaching to you today—it wasn’t because I woke up one day and said I like it, I’m going to pursue it. Not at all, if you remember correctly, I came to this church after I graduated college and was asked to help out until they got a real youth pastor. Except they never got a real youth pastor! Lucky for most of you, I came along and then God pressed it into my heart that now all of you were my responsibility. The mystery that God made me prisoner toward is exactly this—to be a prisoner for a bunch of people who are, in their own, self-alienating, but together—one body. Back to the passage; at this point in the passage, Paul is writing to the church saying that there is a “mystery of Christ.” You can write this in your notes: Christ means liberator, it means savior. The mystery Paul stumbles upon is that Jesus, as the liberator, as the savior, didn’t come to save just the Jews, God’s chosen people; he saved all of God’s created people, the rest of the lot not originating on their mother’s side from Israel. Paul now says that he is a prisoner for making people know that they were liberated by the savior—Jesus. I want to apply this in our lives right now about being a prisoner. We are not prisoners to accomplishments or doing things. We are always prisoners to people. Therefore, don’t ever tell me that God had made you obsessive over a type of job or a type of position or a type of lifestyle. That’s absolutely incorrect. God, in all His greatness, imprisons you, and me, to other people that come into what Google calls “circles” so that they can be liberated by Jesus through our imprisonment and our stewardship for them. I could end here and call it a day, but I’m not. Let’s look at verse 6 again: This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. The people in our so-called circles have been invited into the “body.” That’s Christian speak for, “community of Jesus followers.” No matter where we are, or what we do, or how we do it, we are prisoners to people, to people that Jesus saved to make His own. And if we are not imprisoned, thereby doing what is necessary to get them into the “body of Christ” we are not only imprisoned, we’re imprisoned in the wrong place—yeah, we’re confusing ourselves with thinking that we’re somewhere we’re not. Let’s go Ephesians 3:7-13. I’m going to finish this up. 7 Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. 8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, 10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11 This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. 13 So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. Verse 8. Now that I put incredible pressure on you. Well, the Bible did. I want to reiterate something here: your effectiveness to be responsible for other people is not a function of your so-called deemed worthiness. Rather, it is a function of whether or not you can do it or not. For example, you don’t get bad grades in school because you’re less able; you get bad grades in school because you don’t try as hard or work as hard as you need to, in order to get good grades. Paul says God gives grace so long as we try because God gives us His power. Seriously, do you believe that? You need to believe this. It changes your life entirely. I takes you from feeling sorry for yourself and bad for yourself; to feeling assured that you can’t mess up because God gave you the power and God’s power doesn’t mess up. WHAT? Let me get an “Amen” today. Verse 9-10. When we become prisoners to people in our circles of social influence and contact, when we become responsible for them and yielding to their needs, as a prisoner yields his or her power to the people who govern their lives, then you have the ability to bring them into a community called the church. This community called the church, not as an institution, because as an institution is messed up and broken, but as a community of believers, can become agents of change through the “wisdom of God.” Let me make that super simple for you to understand. Church as we know it, a place to worship God, is great and fantastic. But it can be more than that. It was designed for more than that. Church, as a community, our relationships and such was to grow people spiritually to become closer to God so that they understand the love that awaits them. Further, it is to change the way the world and the things of the world operate. If you look at the universal church, that means community of believers have the collective to change the way hunger operates by forcing the hands of governments and businesses to God’s way. This is why we need to become prisoners to other people because of Christ. This is not some utopian pipe dream. This is a reality as written and experienced by the first century church. We have lost the bite that first century church once had. No joke. The atheists and left wing idiots say that religion is dangerous and they don’t know how right they are—the communities (fellowships) make “known the manifold wisdom of God to the rulers and authorities.” I said this before: Constantine became Christian, most likely not because he wanted to. I mean, who denies themselves god-hood to worship a God that they can’t see? He became Christian because the fellowships of believers were changing the geopolitics of the day and age. That is the mystery of community, the reason we need to be prisoners to people and not to things. That is what we are striving to be as a church. Not a church that is interested in self preservation and numbers, but a church changing the community and socioeconomic structure of the circles of influence that it is able to operate in. To do what Jesus came to do so boldly in faith—to set the world free and save it from the hell it is in. Verse 11-12. If you never had a purpose or a reason to do anything, make this your purpose and reason. Make this manifest mystery of community your reality and lose yourself in it. Let’s pray.