Two Points:: Tuesday May 25

We are into week two of our series Questioning the Church and week two of our blogs that will help us to reinforce our understanding and what we are learning about our purpose and God's ultimate design for the church. With that understanding, let's get to the two points for today.


Point 1- Our purpose is bigger than ourselves.

We are called together to a purpose that is higher than ourselves and it is part of God’s plan to redeem the world. I hope you feel the gravity of that. This time that we spend together and live up close and pray and be discipled is not just a good way to spend our years on this planet to pass the time and have fun and have a network of people to cling to…It is instead the plan of a great and providential sovereign God to know his character and proclaim His great redemptive plan to the world. You are part of that plan. The church is that plan.

Feel the gravity of that. When you feel the gravity and begin to understand that, church is less about preference and style and more about theology and purpose. So as we walk through this series and you follow along in community groups and on this blog and talk in your homes I pray that you would understand that you are here for a purpose bigger yourself. I pray that this blows up our understanding of church.


Point 2- Ephesians 2:19-22

This passage adds to the understanding of Jesus as the cornerstone with this notion that our foundation comes from the prophets and apostles, which is essentially scripture. Jesus is the cornerstone (strength and direction) and scripture is the foundation in this metaphor of the church being a building.

I bought some concrete yesterday to set a couple of posts for a clothesline for Jen. The concrete will become very sturdy and strong and hold a lot of weight. But right now, that concrete is a bag of powder and small rocks. Prior to being mixed with water, that concrete will not accomplish its task of securing the post. Those rocks and that powder must get mixed with water in order to become concrete. We are held together and receive our growth from Jesus and the gospel. Verses 21 and 22 are repetitive giving us insight that the church is held together by Jesus, gets it’s growth from Jesus and becomes a holy dwelling place for God through Jesus.

In our task as a church, everything rises from and is built upon Jesus and scripture.

Two Points:: Wednesday May 19

To restate the point of the frequency and content of this blog...Our series on the church will give us a compass for the purpose of our church. Our series Questioning the Church seeks to provide us with a biblical understanding of the church. This blog will reinforce those teachings.

Point 1- “You can be baptized in the church, raised in the church, confirmed in the church, serve in the church, marry in the church, die in the church, and have your funeral in the church, and still wake up in hell if you are merely in the church and not in Christ.” (Mark Driscoll)

Dave used this quote in the sermon last week and it really leads us well into some of the stuff that will talk about this week and it gets to the heart of the foundation of the church.

Scripture uses lots of metaphors and imagery to teach about the church. The principle that is taught by most of them is that Jesus Christ is the essence of what the church is built upon. This is the heart of the message that I will preach this week.

I think that Driscoll here is getting to that point, but he is also getting to a critique on the church and on church people. Church can become the end. Church is supposed to be a means to an end. That end is God. It can become the thing that is worshiped.

Point 2-Acts 2:36-47

In this passage verse 42 is a well known and frequently quoted verse in regard to the activities of a church. It says, "They devoted themselves to..." Dave summed up the passage with four calls for the church.

1. Gospel centered preaching

An Apostle was one who had been with Jesus and been given charge by Jesus to go and preach. A church should have at its core of preaching the gospel and Jesus.

2. Gospel centered, loving relationships
Dave used a phrase on Sunday that was great and I want us to think on it. He said, "The gospel informed how they lived their lives." These people in the church that Acts 2 is talking received their instruction, direction and motivation for their relationships from Jesus and his gospel. The gospel informed how they lived their lives. This is a natural outflow of a church that is on mission.

3. Baptism and the Lord’s supper

These are what are called sacraments or rites of the church. Scripture teaches that churches are to be administering these rites, helping to remind the church of what Jesus did to cleanse and feed the assembly of called out believers.

4. Pursuing relationship with God together (Acts 2:42, Acts 2:46)

Go back and reread those verses. Think deeply on them and understand that our privatized culture has made giving ourselves over to this kind of living very difficult. We are guarded and like to hide. But this early church was not. Ask yourself this question: What relationships do I have that could develop into this kind of relationship? Then pray that God would begin to prepare you and develop you for it.

Two Points::Monday May 17

Today's two points come from the sermon from yesterday. You can listen to it here. We began a new series yesterday called "Questioning the Church" and this is a vital study for us and for Christians in general. We need to learn what scripture says about the church and what God intended the church to be and what God intended the church to do. So we will use this blog to go into detail with some topics that are touched on in the messages. Be sure to check the blog frequently and know that you are encouraged to interact here and connect with a Community Group for face to face interaction.

Point 1- Deuteronomy 4:10 (ESV)
10 how on the day that you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, the LORD said to me, ‘Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so.’

The word that is translated here as gather is translated elsewhere as assemble and it is the Hebrew word for church. The Hebrew church is a gathering or assembling of God' people. But the real information that is here is what follows because it lays out the purpose of the gathering or assembly or church. The author lays out three things as purposes for the church.

1. To teach the word- We gather together as the church for the purpose of being taught the word of God. The Bible is the word of God so the church exists to teach the Bible.
2. To learn to revere God and place Him in proper perspective- Deut 4:10 uses the language "Learn to fear". The is a commonly used phrase in Old Testament and it can be summarized as having a proper view of God and his power, glory, love and other attributes. It means to respect, revere, worship, see properly. The church exists to lead people to a proper view of God.
3. To disciple others- We have the word taught to us and we receive this proper view of God and then we teach it to our children or those who come after us. The church exists to create disciples.

There are so many places in scripture where the purposes of the church are spelled out, none of them are exhaustive. This one is no exception. These are not the only things that a church does, but they are what a church does. Every church should be doing these things, if it does not it is either not a good church or it is simply not a church.

Point 2 The church is more than just doing something spiritual. This is a point that Dave made in the message last night and it is spot on, especially for this current generation.

We live in a culture that rebels against organized religion. Many of the critiques on organized religion are valid and need to be challenged. But the pendulum has swung too far. Instead of reform to the church we have fake replicas of the church. We have three guys meeting at Starbucks and talking about spiritual things replacing the gathering. We have Christians living outside the gathering who have no one who has authority or discipline in their lives. This is not a church and this is not what Go has called His people to.

We have to KNOW that God has brought about this redemptive plan of Jesus and has impacted the world through this plan to reconcile man to Himself and He has created the church to accomplish this task. Living outside of a gathered expression of God's called people (another way to church) is living outside of the plan of God. This is important and heavy stuff that must be said to this generation of people who have been hurt or turned off by particular churches.

Mark Driscoll says this about this idea, "The postmodern world would have an entirely new definition of church, one in which church is understood as a community of Christians and non-Christians who love together without distinction, without leadership, or discipline or doctrine, trying to emulate the character of Jesus without stressing the gospel requirements of repentance of sin and faith in Jesus that enable the life of Jesus to be lived by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Get into and connect honestly with a church THIS WEEK!

Men's Retreat

One of the reasons that North Church began was to attempt to lead men to be men. We believe that many of the problems in the culture in 2010 are present because men are silent, lazy or absent. There is a great task that God has given to men.

God has placed in men an innate drive to explore and create and conquer. Men are drawn to adventure. Men like movies about war. Men like red meat. Men are also arrogant and dumb and seldom ask for help. Men are called to serve their families and their communities and each other.

The men's ministry at North Church is called Band of Brothers (patterned after the HBO mini series). All that Band of Brothers is about is helping men realize their God given task and to war along side each other.

Our Men's Retreat is the big event for the year. We will tent camp at Timbercreek in DeSoto Missouri. It is only an hour from North County so that people can come and go if schedules dictate that.

We will cook over an open flame, use the many free facilities at the resort (check out the website linked above), hang around the fire under the stars late nights and watch some of the new HBO series The Pacific.

Details:
Cost-Free
Food and drink-Bring your own
Sleeping-Bring a tent and sleeping bag/air mattress or share tent space.
Dates-Arrive anytime after 4 on Friday May 21 we will leave the morning of the 23rd.

Email me with any questions rik@northchurchstl.com

Overwhelmed with Sorrow

Recently my mind has been consumed with the deep pain and suffering many dear friends have been experience in these days. As I grieve with them, everything in me want to just fix the situations. As much as I want to have the "right things to say," my greatest desire would be to just make it go away completely. I'm sure they wouldn't complain :).

In all of my love and encouragement to the brokenhearted, my desire it to point them to Jesus. Why? Is that just the good Christian thing to do? How in the world does saying "trust Jesus" offer any hope when the bottom has fallen out of life?

One of the most comforting things to know is that Jesus is intimately acquainted with our pain. Not simply because he is God, but because he has been there. The night before he was going to be crucified he prayed to the Father, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death" (Matt 26:38). Maybe in your pain you have thought this...I just want to die so this will all be over. Jesus was so overwhelmed with sorrow (Isaiah 53:3) that he began to sweat blood. One of our tendencies is to dumb down the agony of the cross and simply say, "He's Jesus, it wasn't that bad for him." This passage clearly tells us that the last thing Jesus wanted to do was die. He didn't want to suffer the agony of the cross. He didn't want to suffer the agony of His Father's wrath poured out for sin. He was "OVERWHELMED WITH SORROW." This moment of his life was the deepest darkest pit he had ever experienced and he wanted to do whatever it took to get out, at least in that moment. He said, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me" (Matt 26:39).

But his conclusion is one that offers us so much hope and purpose in our suffering. "nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will" (v.39). In the deepest, darkest pit of his life, Jesus, the Son of God, turned to the greatest and most sure hope he had...the same hope that we have today. That hope was the loving, sovereign will of His Father. He didn't understand it in that moment. He even wanted to run from it, but he found more joy in walking in the will God had for him than he would have ever found if he could have removed his pain.

We never will that pain would happen in our lives. In fact, we do everything we can to run from the pain. But we learn from Jesus that it's in the deepest pit of the pain where we find a Father whose will is certain and his plan is perfect. Imagine if Jesus would have escaped the pain and ran from the cross...but he didn't. He ran to it.

My prayer is that you would run to your pain. Don't suppress it! Don't hid from it. Run to it! For it is in the deep pits of your life that you find a loving Father who want to bring miraculous salvation to your soul. Don't waist your suffering! Allow it to be the tool God has designed it for...to get you to Him. For it is there you will find rest and hope and yes even JOY that you would have never experienced otherwise. (Ps. 16:8-11)

Ps. 119:50
This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.

Lord help my friends find abundant life (John 10:10) in you knowing and believing the truth of Isaiah 26:3-4

3 You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.
4 Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.