After I've Been To Church Now What?

“AFTER WE’VE BEEN TO CHURCH NOW WHAT?”

Mark 12:28-31

Last week we learned from the Scriptures that the reason we come to church is not to serve God, it is not for us to give to God.  Michael Horton writes “Why should a person go through all the trouble of belonging to a church and showing up each Sunday if God is the passive receiver and we are the active giver?  It’s like being expected to look forward to Christmas when you are always giving but never receiving any gifts.” (Michael Horton Christless Christianity pg. 228)

The Scriptures teach that we come to church not to serve, not to find our ministry; rather we come to church to be served.  Each week we come to the weekly gathering of believers and we are to look forward to Christ serving us through his ministers, through those he has given as gifts to serve the church. Each week as we come to the weekly gathering of believers we should be reminded that it is the Lord who kills us with his Law and gives us life by His grace.  We need to be reminded through the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments that although our guilt was great, our forgiveness is even greater.  It is this frequent reminder of our great forgiveness that helps to motivate us to fulfill the Great Commandment.

Do you remember when Jesus went to have dinner at the house of Simon the Pharisee and this woman came in began to cry and the teardrops ran down her face and poured out on the feet of Jesus.  Then she took her hair and she wiped the Lord’s feet off with her hair and then she began to kiss his feet and then she took a bottle of ointment and she poured the oil on his feet.  Simon thought to himself, if he only knew who this woman was, if he only knew that she was a sinner!  Of course Jesus knew what Simon was thinking and so he told Simon the parable about the two men who both had their debts forgiven, but one man’s debt was ten times larger than the other.  What did Jesus ask Simon?  Of the two who will show the greater love?  Even Simon couldn’t get this question wrong, he said of course the one who had the larger debt forgiven.  Jesus said you’re right!

Then Jesus drove home his point, and it is a point that we need to grasp and meditate on for ourselves.

“Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”” (Luke 7:47-48 ESV)

What was it that drove this lady to love Christ in the extravagant way that she did?  Jesus makes it very clear that it was her comprehension of her great forgiveness of her sin that motivated her great love for Christ.  It was a love that overflowed; it was a love that she couldn’t contain.

To be reminded of our guilt apart from our forgiveness doesn’t motivate us it defeats us.  BUT to be reminded of our guilt and reminded that we have been forgiven because of Christ and our trust in Him, that is what motivates us to love him, to serve him and others in ways that will be a credible witness to the world of Jesus Christ.

The church is the place where God is at work, delivering his Son by His Spirit to us!  The church is not the place we are to work for God!  That is a message that has been lost or obscured in many of our churches.

That is not to say that we are not to serve.  We are to serve; we just have confused who it is that we are to serve.

I have to confess that I am a product of the “go – go” church.  I was brought up in an atmosphere of constant activity.  I was going to say I was a product of the “do – do” church but I didn’t think that would sound right!  Even today it is hard for me to not think in terms of what the church should be doing.

On the pastoral level, it’s easy for a pastor to confuse what his real responsibility is.  According to the example set by the Apostles in the church at Jerusalem the responsibility of the pastor is to give himself to the ministry of prayer and the study of God’s Word so that he can be a proper minister of Christ to be used by Christ to serve the church, the community of believers.  But unfortunately today what has happened?  The pastor in some churches is looked upon as the creative mind that has to either design a program to reach the community or to be constantly on the lookout for the latest program to reach the community.  There is not a shortage of programs available that claim to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Unwittingly what happens especially in smaller churches the pastor’s time and energy is eaten up administrating and trying to staff and fund the latest program and the sheep eventually end up not being properly fed and served.

Let me be clear I’m not against programs per se, but when the church begins to rely upon a program, to trust in programs rather than trusting in Christ in us then we have a problem.

Let me get back to my original question.  If we come to church to be served rather than to serve then who are we to serve and how are we to serve them?

The answer to that question is found in our text in Mark’s Gospel.  Jesus was asked what was the most important commandment of all?  Jesus goes back to the Old Testament book of Deut. And quotes from chapter 6 verses 4 and 5.

The greatest commandment is that we are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, all of our soul, with all of our mind, and with all of our strength.  Again apart from Christ this is impossible for us to do. But Christ has loved the Father in this way.  Now we through Christ living in us we have been given the ability to do just that.  To involve all of our physical and mental makeup to love the Lord our God.

The motivation for loving God is based upon what?  It is based upon our forgiveness.  Jesus said that the one who has been forgiven much will love much.  There has to be a reason why we love God.  How would you answer your neighbor who asks you why you love God?  When your neighbor asks you that question, what he is asking for is your reason, your motivation for loving God. God gets a lot of bad press and the impression the world has of God is not always that favorable and so when you say you love God, when you live a life that demonstrates your love for God your neighbor wants to know why?  What do you know about God that He doesn’t know about God that makes you love Him?  Again how would you answer?

Unfortunately many sincere Christians would respond to their neighbor by saying “Well I love God because He told me to.”  Is that statement true?  Yes, but it is not the best answer to your neighbor’s question.  If you and I answer that way what we fail to realize is that we have just missed a golden opportunity to share the gospel, to share Jesus Christ with them.

The best answer to our neighbor’s question is “I love God with all of my heart, all of my mind, all of my soul, and all of my strength because I violated God’s law, I have sinned grievously against Him and I was guilty before Him and I was going to have to pay for my sin, I was going to have to be judged for my sin.  But you know what God did?  God sent His Son to us. God took on flesh, he became a man, He came to earth as a baby, born of a virgin His name is Jesus.  Jesus did what I couldn’t do.  Jesus perfectly fulfilled the Law of God.  Jesus willingly sacrificed His life on the cross, Jesus took the penalty for my sin, Jesus took the punishment that I deserved.  Jesus died on that cross for my sin, He was buried and after three days He rose again and now He is at the right hand of the Father and He is praying for me, and the Father offers His grace to us through Jesus Christ and for anyone who will come to Christ and recognize their sin against God and repent of that sin and embrace Jesus Christ their sins are taken away and the Spirit of Christ is given to them and they immediately begin to experience eternal life. That’s why I love God!”

If you were to answer your neighbor in that way do you know what you have just done?  You have evangelized your neighbor, you have fulfilled the Great Commission, you have just fulfilled the greatest commandment, you have just loved your neighbor as yourself!

Do you think you could do that?  I know you can do that!  You didn’t even have to memorize a gospel sales pitch, you didn’t have to memorize a road or the latest program!  Yet you effectively evangelized your neighbor!  You have just performed the greatest service you could ever do for your neighbor.

We come to church to be served.  The Lord Jesus serves us each week through the preaching of His Word and through our participation in the sacraments.  Then we are to go back into our neighborhoods, to our places of employment and to our families and serve them.

God’s evangelism program is to serve our neighbors, to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Martin Luther wrote “God does not need your good works your neighbor does.”

What does it mean to love your neighbor?  It simply means that when he has a need and you have the ability to help them, you help them.  If the neighbor’s roof is leaking you help him patch the roof.  If his grass needs cutting and he can’t do it you cut his grass.  If we will pay attention to what is going on around us the opportunities for loving our neighbor will probably be obvious.

If you are like me, if you have spent much time in the church this seems strange.  I will be the first to admit that I struggle with thinking that God’s plan, God’s means seem to be so simple.  Even as I have been thinking about how God wants the church to function it seems like I need to be doing more!  Therein lies the problem.  We are back to the gospel as “doing” something rather than the gospel being about what God has done for us through Jesus Christ.

How will the church grow if we don’t have the latest program? Well what did Jesus say?  Jesus promised that He would build His church.  Jesus didn’t say get the latest program and that would grow the church.  Someone asked me one time how does anyone get saved your church if you don’t have an invitation?  Well the answer is that no one is ever saved by an invitation, or by an altar call, the way people get saved in this church or in any church is by Christ!  Christ and Christ alones saves.

Starting a new church affords us the opportunity to think through a lot of issues.  Obviously one of the things that I and others have thought about is how does Christ want His church to function?

God wants us to come to church to be served, and then go serve our neighbors.

What does this mean for the church?  How does this effect Grace Community Church?  It means that in terms of service, the place of service is out there in the world not in ministries in the church.  Obviously as a new church we are still developing, we are a work in progress.  Right now our focus is primarily on the Sunday morning gathering for worship.  Our vision statement centers around our desire to change our community’s perception of Jesus Christ.  Before we can change that perception out there we need to change it in here.  That is what these messages and hopefully every message will accomplish.  To help all of understand what God has done for us through Christ.  As our resources allow my desire is to expand the Lord’s Day to include other times of teaching and fellowship.  To expand to provide more opportunities for discipleship, to equip you know why you believe what you believe.  Then because you have been well fed and served on the Lord’s Day you return to your jobs and your families and your neighborhoods and you serve them, God serves us first, before we go to serve others.

Does this mean that we as a church will never have Sunday School?  Not necessarily.  If SS is a tool that accomplishes God’s will for the church then we will use it.  Does that mean we won’t have small groups.  Again, if Small Groups can help us accomplish God’s will to bring you to maturity in Christ then we will use them.

Does this mean that we as a church will never have an organized outreach program?  Again not necessarily.  There will be times that because of a special way that we want to reach out to our community we will need the resources of the church to do that and so we will come together to accomplish that goal.

Our program to help children become better readers is an example of an organized outreach of the corporate church into the community. But those things will be the exception to the rule and not the rule.

By the way you as an individual or a family can sometimes do a much better job of loving your neighbor than we as a church can do.  As an example take the Biggest Loser.  That effort was primarily carried out by Jason and Laura, Jackie, Mary and Jania.  Over a twelve week period one family reached out to their neighbors, and loved their neighbors, and served their neighbors.  They reached out and touched 120 people.  Think about that.  One family reaching out obeying the Great Commandment and loving 120 of their neighbors.

We need to have a fundamental shift in our thinking about church.  We need to come to grips with this wonderful reality that each week as we gather together we come to a feast that God himself has prepared for us and serves to us by his ministers.  One day he himself will join us and sit down with us at the banquet table for all of eternity.  We need to understand that we come to church to be serve.  The church is the realm where God serves us each and every week.  Then we leave the banquet table and we go out into our world of work and raising our families and loving our neighbors and sharing Jesus Christ and Him crucified with them in natural ways.

The church is not the place to carry out our programs.  The church is the place where God’s program is carried out.

I believe with every fiber of my being that this is the message that many people desperately need to hear, that they are waiting to hear, they are longing to hear.  People who visit here say this place is unique, this place is special.  I’ve thought a lot about that.  I think what they mean is that we strive to keep God and what he has done for us in Christ  the central focus of what we do.  We want to continue to keep serving God’s feast to hungry souls each and every week.

Do you know someone who needs to hear this message?  Do you know the weary, the worn our, the burned out who down deep inside like I described last week, like me know that something is amiss?  Then tell them there is hope, there is help, there is a place that they are looking for.

For the past couple of weeks the words to a U2 song keep going through my mind. Bono sings over and over “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”  I think a lot of people, a lot of Christians could join Bono and sing along with him “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

We need to tell them.  Where and how they can find it.