April 20, 2008 Fifth Sunday of Easter (8th Anniversary of NewSong)

Sermon Title: “Building A Church God’s Way”

Series: None

Text: 1 Peter 2:2-10

Dr. Steve Jackson

NewSong Community Church

Delivered on April 20, 2008

 

“…let yourselves be built into a spiritual house…”

1 Peter 2:5

Building A Church

 

Well today is our 8th anniversary as a church and I’m very excited to still be here! :-) I did some research on anniversaries and found out that our 8th anniversary is actually a pretty cool milestone. In Chinese culture the number eight is considered the luckiest number of all. That’s because apparently in both the Mandarin and Cantonese language the number eight sounds similar to the word for “prosperity” or “wealth.” In Chinese communities around the world, having an eight in your phone number, address, bank account or on your car license plate is considered to be very lucky. Everybody wants an eight. How important is it? A few years ago a telephone number containing all eights (8888-8888) sold for $270,723 in Chengdu, China. And the Summer Olympics in Beijing are scheduled to open at precisely at 8:08:08 p.m. on August 8, 2008 (08-08-08). Others consider an 8th anniversary fortuitous because the sign for infinity is an eight turned sideways. Who knows, since we’ve made it this far maybe we’ll last forever!

 

Seriously, since this has been anniversary week for us I’ve been thinking a lot about what we’ve accomplished together, and where we’re headed as a church.

 

We’ve seen many changes since we first began meeting together way back in 2000. We moved across the street from the high school over to here. We’ve seen some great families move away or move on to other churches. We’ve had some new babies born, and we’ve lost some dear members who have gone on ahead of us to heaven. We’ve also had some wonderful new families join us making us a stronger church. And perhaps most importantly, last year we finally seemed to turn the corner as we refined our mission as a local congregation and, I believe, began to assume our unique identity as a church.

 

Looking ahead, there are exciting days before us. We’re about to enlarge our staff. We’re currently advertising to find a Worship Leader and a Director of Children’s Ministry to hopefully take those two aspects of our church to the next level. And last week the Elders authorized me form an exploratory team to look into finally getting our own permanent location. Now that we know who we are, we need to discover where God wants us to be. I really feel God calling us to do make our move – it’s time. God willing, my vision is for us to move into a new facility two years from now on Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010 which is our tenth anniversary as a church. I’ve got a picture up here of what our new church may look like. What do you think? It’s going to take a lot of planning, work and sacrifice by all of us between now and then, but I believe we can do it. Most importantly, I believe God is calling us to do that. Of course if we don’t do what is necessary to build this, we can always rethink our design and budget. I’ve got another picture here of an alternative plan. What do you think?

 

Seriously, as I kept thinking about our church and what lies ahead, and as I read over the lectionary passages for this week I was pleased to see the confluence of our situation and God’s word, as so often happens. Isn’t it great how God does that? One of the things I like most about he lectionary, the list of readings chosen for each Sunday, is whenever I read them over I always find something pertinent to what we’re going through on any given Sunday. My eyes this week were drawn to the passage from 1 Peter. As I read the passage I sensed Peter saying, “If God were building a church, this is what it would look like. And so as I studied the text and I noticed some principles we need to keep in mind as we go forward building NewSong into the church God has called us to be. And so this morning I have a sermon for you with the longest title you’ve ever heard: “Building A Church God’s Way: Lessons for NewSong on its 8th Anniversary.” Let’s look at some of those principles.

 

1. People, not a Building

The first principle Peter gives us has to do with the definition of a church. Biblically speaking, a church is a group of people, not a building. Look at verse 5, “Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house…” The “living stones” in that verse are people just like you and me.

 

Many people today understand the church as a building or a particular denomination. Try this, ask someone what church do you attend and they’ll say “Oh the Baptist Church, or the Methodist out on Hwy. 20. But the word church in the Bible is the Greek word “ecclesia” which means “an assembly,” or “called out ones.” That means the root meaning of “church” has to do with people and not a building. We need to remember that a church isn’t a building, but a body of believers.

 

We especially need to remember this as we move forward with locating property and building a facility of our own. More than one church has had a great body of believers, a great assembly, but then when they start building a building the building itself becomes the focus. The building becomes the “be all- do all.” According to Peter it isn’t about bricks and mortar, it’s about you and me being built into a spiritual house.

 

2. A Church is a “Spiritual House”

And that’s the second principle we need to keep in mind as we move into our ninth year and beyond – Peter calls the kind of church God builds a “spiritual house.”

 

What do I think he means by that? I think he’s talking about the fact that churches tend to lose their focus sometimes. Many churches, especially today, seem to be “majoring in the minors.” They seem to be more interested in being recreation centers offering a variety of sports, lessons and classes. They’re concentrating on building pre-schools and even grade and high schools. They’ve become concert and art show venues – but God didn’t call his church to be any of these things. God called his church into being so that it would be a spiritual house. Jesus called it a “house of prayer” and reserved some of his harshest rebukes for those who tried to turn God’s house into something else.

 

Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s fine if a church wants to offer lots of wonderful activities for their members and the community they are a part of. In fact, I hope that some day we can be a kind of “seven-day-a-week church” at NewSong. But churches should only do these things as a sideline to their primary focus which is to be a “spiritual house” according to the Bible. After all, the church has something to offer that no other institution or agency has to offer – the good news of Jesus Christ. Besides that, other organizations can do a better job at forming basketball and soccer leagues – that’s their focus. Ours is to make disciples of all nations. 

  

3. We’re to offer God ‘Spiritual Sacrifices’

And speaking of our focus, in the next section of verse 5 you’ll find what our focus – our purpose – should be. We are to offer God “Spiritual Sacrifices.” According to Peter we are to a “holy priesthood” whose job is to “offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

 

What is that about? You may not feel like a priest, and what in the world is a spiritual sacrifice?

 

This text reminds us that each and every believer is a priest before God, not just me as the pastor of this church. Together we make up a “holy priesthood.” We are the priesthood of all believers and our job is to offer up “spiritual sacrifices.” Think with me for a moment. What do priests do? Priests offer up sacrifices. In the Old Testament priests offered up sacrifices for themselves and for the people. As priests today we are to offer up sacrifices as well. There are many things that fit under the category of “spiritual sacrifices,” but at NewSong we’ve determined that we have been called to really focus on three of these spiritual sacrifices:

 

a. Love God – The Sacrifice of Praise

The first of these is the sacrifice of praise. Hebrews 13:15 says, “Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.” We’re talking about a sacrifice of praise with the very first clause of our mission statement – Love God. When we express our praise to God in worship we tell him how much we love him and as we do our love for him grows. God desires and deserves the fruit of our lips – which is our praise. Honestly, for some of us this is more of a sacrifice than for others. Some of us grew up in a home or church where we didn’t show much emotion – we just aren’t very demonstrative people. Others of us spend a lot of our time feeling cranky or complaining. And so we neglect this sacrifice of praise. But as a holy priesthood we must remember that God’s praise should continually be upon our lips. We are to continually offer him a sacrifice of praise. That’s why everything starts in worship – you can take away everything else a church does, but you can’t do away with worship, or you don’t have a church. We must remember that at NewSong.

 

 

b. Grow to Be Like Jesus – The Sacrifice of Righteousness

The second spiritual sacrifice we must offer is a sacrifice of righteousness. Psalm 4:5 says, “Offer the sacrifice of righteousness, and put your trust in the Lord.” At NewSong we’re talking about offering the sacrifice of righteousness in the second clause of our mission statement when we say, “Grow to be like Jesus.”

 

Righteousness is doing what is right in the sight of God which is what Jesus was so good at doing. If we want to be like him, that’s what we’re going to do. This is a costly sacrifice because this kind of behavior goes against our grain. Doing what is right many times carries a genuine price tag. The price tag for doing what is right in the sight of God may be the loss of a promotion, a job, or friends, and it may include ridicule, mockery, etc. But the price we pay is well worth paying in order to please God.    

 

c. Share with the World – The Sacrifice of Service

A third spiritual sacrifice we concentrate on here at NewSong is the sacrifice of service. Jesus, in describing his own ministry said, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” Mark 10:45. Jesus’ offering of himself was a one-time, unrepeatable sacrifice that he alone could make. But in so doing he gave us the pattern for our own sacrifice in serving others – and doing it continuously. At NewSong we call this “Share with the world” in our church mission. Like the other two kinds of spiritual sacrifices we focus on, this one costs us something too. It costs us our time and our finances and the sweat of our brow.

 

Our Christian faith is based upon the word that became flesh which means that God is not only concerned with the salvation of human beings, but also the physical needs of people. God loves not only the souls of human beings, but also their bodies. The church that neglects to meet people’s physical needs, concentrating solely on their spiritual needs is not doing all Christ called it to do. At NewSong we believe that faith in Christ automatically assumes that you are going to be out there serving others and sharing what God has given you.

 

Why? Because if we try to horde what God has given and not let it flow through us to others we end up becoming a stagnant pool. In Israel there are two major bodies of water connected by the Jordan River. The surprising thing is that even though these two bodies of water share the same exact water and are connected, they are completely different in nature. In the North, where Jesus grew up and lived there is a beautiful inland lake known as the Sea of Galilee. Around it there are towns and villages in abundance. There are farms and trees; birds nest on its shores and fish abound in its waters. It looks alive; it feels alive; it is alive. The Dead Sea on the other hand as its name implies, has no towns along its coastline. There are no pastures and no trees. No birds nest on its shores and there are no fish in its waters. It looks dead; it feels dead; it is dead. Why? The Sea of Galilee of Galilee is alive because it has an outlet. It passes the water on as swiftly as it receives it. The Dead Sea is stagnant because it has no outlet. It keeps all the water it receives. The water gets highly alkaline and then, with no where to go, evaporates.

 

There is a lesson in there for you and me. As a holy priesthood we must continually offer a sacrifice of service. If not, then that which God has given us will simply evaporate and our church will become like the Dead Sea. In the words of our mission song, we must “share with the world all the gifts he’s given me” and “share with the world, so that everyone believes.”

 

So far I’ve given you three principles from 1 Peter about how I believe God would build a church if he were building one. First he’d have us remember that a church is a people and not a building. Second he’d have us remember a church is supposed to be a spiritual house. Third he’d have us remember that the goal or focus of a church is to offer up spiritual sacrifices: the spiritual sacrifice of praise, of righteousness, and of service.

 

4. Christ must be the Cornerstone

There’s just one more thing in this passage that struck me as a kind of reminder as we move forward from here. And that is the cornerstone that our church was built on and must remain built on, and that is Jesus Christ our cornerstone. Verse 6 of our text says, “See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

 

I read something fascinating last week. Back on September 18, 1793, President George Washington laid the cornerstone for the U. S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. But not a single person witnessing the event lived to see its completion. The capitol took years to complete as it went through many redesigns and modifications with numerous architects. Besides that, as some of you probably know, Washington, D.C. was built on a marsh. That meant that over the years the heavy stone building began to sink. Add that to the numerous alterations and architects, and unfortunately no one knows exactly where the original cornerstone is. They’ve lost the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol! There is a whole other sermon in that, of course, but the point I’m making here is we must never lose our cornerstone.

 

Jesus Christ is the cornerstone and the capstone. He’s the point of it all. He is the church's one foundation. Without the presence of the living Christ, well, what's the point? The whole thing collapses into meaninglessness. Why bother? Without Jesus and his constant demands upon us the walls topple, arches collapse, and this whole temple degenerates into an archaic mumbo-jumbo. Without him, we might as well go ahead and let our landlord here turn this into a restaurant or a boutique. Jesus is the cornerstone of NewSong and must remain so.

 

Some of you were here and may remember that the very first word out of my mouth in the very first sermon I preached at NewSong eight years ago right over there across the street was the word “Jesus,” and it is my plan for it to be the last. If I keel over here one day while I’m preaching somebody run up here and start CPR so I can make sure I get the name of Jesus out one more time. From beginning to end NewSong needs to keep Jesus Christ as its cornerstone.

 

Let’s face it, some churches build on their great music, others on their programming, or their staff. Some even build everything on or around their preacher. But biblically speaking, the cornerstone – the foundation of the church – is supposed to be Jesus.

 

And listen, the end of that verse is important too – did you notice what it says? It says if you keep Jesus as your cornerstone, if you keep on believing in him, you will never be put to shame. Many shameful things have come about in and through the church – and most of them happen in churches where the people have lost the cornerstone.

 

This morning’s message was kind of different, wasn’t it? There’s a sense in which it seems as though it really doesn’t lend itself to an altar call. But there’s another sense in which it does. You see everything that I’ve said this morning about NewSong collectively applies to each one of us individually as well. We are people not a building, we are spiritual beings, we are to offer spiritual sacrifices, and we must individually keep Jesus Christ as our cornerstone. Why? Because whatever is going on in any one of our lives affects us all. You’ve heard it before. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. We are counting on each other to be the church – the kind of church God would build.

 

Let me ask you as I close – can Christ count on you? Can we? Let’s Pray.