Finding Neighbors

Luke 10:29 NIV

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

Are You Trying To Find Your Neighbor?

The famous “Mr. Rogers”, built a career by singing about being a neighbor.  In a world that is growing more and more packed with people, are we neighbors or billions of individuals walking about on our own?  The most critical concern we have is almost always tied to what we face ourselves or perhaps what those closest to us are facing.  Yet, are we made to be that way?  Are you supposed to be disconnected from the world about you?  The news makes you constantly aware of those who need help, whether it is the story of the woman who is kidnapped or the account of villagers whose homes have been wrecked by earthquakes.  Yet the more you know about the problems of the world, the less you know about the problems of those right next to you.  It may seem presumptuous to ask, but what is your normal response when you realize someone needs help?  How do you react to real problems those near you face?  It is strange perhaps to ask if you love your neighbor because of course you do.  Who doesn’t?  Yet we must give it some thought, this question.  Do we love our neighbors?  Do you?

Famously, a Jewish expert on Old Testament Law approached Christ and asked Him, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Luke 10: 25 NIV)  The Lord flipped the question around and asked the man what the Law said about it.  He answered: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Luke 10:27 NIV)  Jesus affirmed this answer and told the expert on the Law, "Do this and you will live."  (Luke 10:28 NIV)  Then came the most memorable question, “Who is my neighbor?”  It is a good question if I am to love my neighbor as myself.  Who is my neighbor then?  It is fascinating though how Jesus in His own way of giving answers to the questions of skeptics and critics did not actually answer that specific question.  He answered a completely different question with his story of the “Good Samaritan”.

When two Jewish religious leaders ignored the beaten Jewish victim of a mugging as they walked along the road where his broken body stretched out on the side in plain view, it was a Samaritan, one whose nationality made him hated by Jews, who came to the Jewish man’s rescue and took care of him.  Then Jesus when He finished the story asked the teacher of Jewish Law who it was that was the neighbor to the man that was beaten.  It is a subtle but critical shift Jesus made.  He did not give a reply to the question, “Who is the neighbor that must receive love” but told the skeptic through His story who the neighbor is that gives love.  That is a completely different question and answer and the man who asked the question originally was so stunned by the direction Jesus’ story took that He did not even acknowledge or maybe even realize how thoroughly Christ shifted the focus.  We are never to ask who our neighbor is that we are to love but always probe to discover if we are the neighbor who loves.  It is as if Jesus was asked, “Who is the patient?” and He told instead who the doctor was.  Or perhaps He might have been asked whose house was on fire and instead He told who the fireman was.

The first sign Jesus gave to the world that He was the Messiah was turning the water into wine.  He was at a wedding feast with His mother, Joseph, the one chosen by God to act as father to Jesus having passed away by then, and Mary was either told or discovered on her own that the groom had run out of wine for all the guests.  This was one of the most humiliating things that could happen to a young man, a blunder that would most likely be remembered and retold in his village at least the rest of his life.  Mary, recognizing just how traumatizing this would be for the young couple as they started off their new life together, came to her son Jesus and told Him the situation.  Jesus’ reply is almost shocking, given what we know of Him now.  Literally, He responded to her news, “What to you and to me?”  “What does this have to do with us?” (See John 2: 4)

When it comes to being a neighbor or loving as a neighbor, this is the second most important question you must ask yourself.  The first is, “Am I a neighbor who loves?”  The second is, “What does this have to do with me?”  “Is this my problem?”  When Jesus cast this question upon Mary, His mother’s response shows how profoundly she trusted Jesus to do what was right.  Rather than replying to Jesus, she went back to the servants of the groom who may have been panicking at the moment over what to do about the lack of wine, and told them to follow exactly Jesus’ instructions.  "Do whatever he tells you." (John 2:5 NIV)  Mary did not try to argue the immensity of her cause, did not plead with Jesus to help the poor couple not lose faith.  She simply trusted Christ to do what was right.  Does God have the same trust in you to do what is right?  Will you be a loving neighbor?

Many who look at Acts 6 give the chapter the wrong emphasis.  They see it as primarily about the institution of the deacon ministry.  Although that is integral to what is described, it is mostly about how the Christian community considered the “Love your neighbor as yourself” dilemma.  Because of the violent persecution the early Church faced and the way it expanded, there were a vast number of Christian widows who did not have enough money to even buy food.  Many of the widows were left without any family members to help them so the Church began to provide for them. However, as we often see in our world, certain types of people are more loved and valued than others.  In this case it was the Jewish Christian widows who got more help than the non-Jewish Christian widows.  In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. (Acts 6:1 NIV) All the widows needed the Church to get them through the crisis though and so the non-Jewish Christian widows went to the Apostles and pleaded for help.  Rather than declaring that this matter was not their problem, the Apostles and the other leaders in the Church selected seven men to be in charge of making sure that all the Christian widows had enough to eat, whether they were Jewish or not.  This was of course the precise way Jesus responded to the question, “Who is my neighbor?”  “You are the neighbor!”  The Church saw a specific need, widows without food, and they did something practical to meet that need.  They were neighbors who loved.

You have a very important question to ask yourself.  Are you a neighbor who loves?  Depending upon how you answer, a second question comes. “What does that have to do with me”?  It is strange to think that God has entrusted so many people who need a neighbor who loves to you.  The other day I was talking to a teacher who was obviously stressing over a meeting she was going to have with a parent and the principal.  What does a neighbor who loves do in that situation?  You come across someone who has anxiety attacks.  What does a neighbor who loves in that situation do?  There are dishes in the sink and your mom is busy working on dinner.  What does a neighbor who loves do?  A co-worker just got chewed out by her supervisor.  What does a neighbor who loves do?  Someone you know is in the hospital.  What does a neighbor who loves do?  Across the street a young mother has just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.  What does a neighbor who loves do?  Your sister-in-law just started drinking heavily and the family is blaming her for her marriage.  What does a neighbor who loves do?  The question for you and me is never, “Who is my neighbor?”  It always is, “Am I a neighbor who loves?”  How we answer that question clearly has an eternal ramification!  

Snapshot of Life Together

1 John 1:7 NIV

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, purifies us from all sin.

How Well Do You Get Along With Others?

When I was in Seminary, studying to be a pastor, I did not really think much about what made a church a church.  I was well aware of the various models of church that were practiced around the world and I did ponder which church model I would like to join.  There are mega-churches with theatrical productions, charismatic churches, traditional churches with older forms of worship, house churches and cell group churches along with multi-site churches that use videos to present the preaching of the pastor.  Of course ethnicity brings even more diversity to how churches function.  It was not until I was confronted by the deacons of the first church where I was a pastor that I gave serious thought as to what made a church a church.  I had made an announcement that the following Sunday during the morning worship service we were going to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  This was a major alteration in protocol for this church because always before they conducted the Lord’s Supper on Sunday evenings.  The change in scheduling brought great consternation to the deacons and at first I did not grasp just what bothered them so much.  It turned out that the church did not believe casual attenders of the church services should receive the Lord’s Supper with them, only members of the church were to participate.  It thus was convenient that the service on Sunday night was poorly attended and there almost never were visitors or non-members present.  That was for the deacons a perfect time to serve the Lord’s Supper because it saved them the embarrassment or stress of having to refuse to serve non-members.  Being forced to defend my actions in providing the Supper to non-members, I had to come up with a clear and articulate view of what the Church is and how it is to operate.

One critical term we use to describe the life of the church is “fellowship” or to be more precise, the Greek word “koinonia”.  Koinonia is by definition “communion”, “close relationships” or “participation and sharing”.  Fellowship might be defined as “life together”.  It is oneness brought about by a bond that keeps everyone together.  In 1 John 1: 7, the union is the result of our “walk in the light” or to put it another way, being in union with the wishes of God the Father.  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, purifies us from all sin.  The Christian community, or the Church, is put together into a union by staying in step with what the Father wants and by the purifying work of Christ’s blood as it cleanses the people of the church of Sin.  In other words, it is the relation to the Father and the Son that determines the fellowship or union that exists between the people of the church.

Let’s look at a few snapshots of the Church found in the New Testament.  The first is seen in Matthew 4 where is recorded the invitation Jesus offered to two sets of brothers to come follow Him.  "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." (Matthew 4:19 NIV)  This was not a call to salvation but rather a call to adventure, a call to absolute surrender.  Each of the four fishermen faced a critical fork in the road. 
Do I go with Him in union with the Father or do I stay and keep doing as I am with sporadic moments of faith and devotion.  They chose of course to go with Christ wherever He led.  At once they left their nets and followed him. (Matthew 4:20 NIV)  Union with the directing of Christ is what puts Christian people together and really together.

A second snapshot of the Church is seen beautifully in Matthew 14.  The Disciples were sent out by Jesus in a boat to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.  By obeying Christ though, the disciples found themselves in deep peril.  After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. (Matthew 14:23-24 NIV)  This is so typical of what happens with the Church in fellowship.  They face some difficult and perhaps even terrifying event together.  In this case, as the Disciples fretted over the growing storm, Jesus came to them, walking on the water and that frightened them even more.  When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear. (Matthew 14:26 NIV)  Is that not often the case?  In the midst of unity within the Church, sometimes there is a period of collective chaos when God is not trusted and His ways frightening.  But then God gets ahold of one or more in the fellowship and they have real courage and faith.  "Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."  "Come," he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. (Matthew 14:28-29 NIV)  When a Church is in fellowship, God always provides someone in the group with clarity and faith enough to see the way.  This is a miracle, a mighty work of God.

There is one more snapshot of the Church that is almost mesmerizing in its sublime rendering of the Church at its finest and most obtuse.  After James, the brother of John, was arrested by King Herod and executed, Peter also was imprisoned.  The church however quickly went to work.  So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.  (Acts 12:5 NIV)  Amazingly, the Lord intervened in a new way.  He sent an angel to the prison who opened the prison doors and led Peter out of the jail.   Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. "Quick, get up!" he said, and the chains fell off Peter's wrists…Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision.  They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him. (Acts 12:7, 9-10 NIV)

The account turns somewhat humorous when Peter heads off to the home where the group from the church is praying for Peter’s release.  However after hearing knocking on the door, a servant girl named Rhoda came to see who it was.  When she recognized Peter's voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, "Peter is at the door!"  "You're out of your mind," they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, "It must be his angel."  But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. (Acts 12:14-16 NIV)  So here you have a group of believers praying for the release of one of their own but not really believing God would answer their prayers.  How else would you explain the questioning Rhoda’s sanity when she returns to them with the announcement that Peter himself was at the door?

Let us though not miss the main point.  Fellowship is Christian when the group gathers together to pray.  That is what a Christian group has as its most spectacular possession.  It can pray and change the world.  When fellowship gives up on praying, it loses its soul.  Prayer is the most fundamental characteristic of Christian oneness and if it is cut short or eliminated altogether, it is no different than the unity members of a union possess or the board members of a corporation.  Praying together makes a church a church and gives it the supernatural quality that no other group of people in the world possesses.

There are four specific behaviors that mark Christian fellowship and determine its quality.  We shall simply list these without having the time to give each its proper attention.  Whether the fellowship exists in a small group of three or four or in a large body of several thousand, these patterns of relationship are critical to determining whether or not a church has a healthy fellowship.  These are not listed in any sort of order of importance; each can make or break the life together of a church.  In a truly Christian fellowship there is unlimited forgiveness.  Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. (Colossians 3:13 NIV)  The second pattern of relationship is unrelenting encouragement. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. (1 Thessalonians 5:11 NIV)  Along with these two must be a stubborn refusal to judge those in fellowship.  You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat…Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. (Romans 14:10, 13 NIV)  The fourth pattern of relationship in every healthy Christian fellowship is difficult to quantify…perhaps even impossible to measure but it is just as critical as the others in determining whether or not a church lives together in true fellowship.  Each person sees Christ in all the others and with deep reverence for God respects what Christ is doing in them.  …the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:26-27 NIV)

How important is it that you are a part of a Christian fellowship?  Is it important enough that you will help create an environment that can make fellowship flourish?  Are you willing to change your own attitudes about life together so that God can use you to transform the church and make it the “Kingdom of God”?  What sacrifices are you willing to make that Christ can live through you and make His people better because you are a part of their lives?

God Revealed

Isaiah 6:1 NIV

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

What Do You See In God?

The other day I was in a high school class and a couple of the students asked me how old I was.  It was of course somewhat presumptuous on their part but I decided to play around a bit with them so I asked the kids how old they thought I was.  I did not expect them to be as wildly off base as they were since they were fifteen years old but they guessed 42, 44 and 45.  I just smiled and walked away, leaving them without an answer.  The next day the same group asked me again how old I was and this time I told them.  “Sixty.”  The shocked expressions on their faces were the best Christmas gifts ever.  They argued that I did not look that old and once more I smiled and walked away.  How fascinating to learn something new about someone, to discover secrets about that person you might never have guessed.

We often fail to consider the fact that God is a person.  He is not an idea or a premise.   The God spoken of throughout the Bible is not a theological concept but someone specific with actual characteristics that are His.  I have had conversations with different ones who have opinions of how the Lord should be if He really existed as if they are the ones who determine God’s nature and personality.  Either God is or He isn’t and if He is, then we do not decide what He is like any more than biographers can chose the qualities of George Washington or Pocahontas.  It does no good whatsoever to speculate about the characteristics of the Lord; one can only discover them through experience.

There is a rather humorous account found in the Bible that illustrates just how wrong we can be in our speculations about God.  After the Arameans attacked the Israelites and got soundly beaten by them, the counselors to the king of Aram insisted that the reason the Arameans were soundly defeated by the Israeli army was because they had fought in the uplands of Samaria.  The God of the Israelites they speculated was a god of hills.  What they needed was a change in location.  Meanwhile, the officials of the king of Aram advised him, "Their gods are gods of the hills. That is why they were too strong for us. But if we fight them on the plains, surely we will be stronger than they.  Do this: Remove all the kings from their commands and replace them with other officers.  You must also raise an army like the one you lost — horse for horse and chariot for chariot — so we can fight Israel on the plains. Then surely we will be stronger than they." He agreed with them and acted accordingly. (1 Kings 20:23-25 NIV)

When the Arameans were crushed again by the Israelite army, one wonders if the Arameans might have pulled out their canoes to fight on the lake, hoping that God was not a god of lakes.  The Arameans were certainly right to guess that the Israelites had a God who brought victory to His people.  They however were wrong to make determinations about Him without actually knowing Him.  It is like watching movies depicting aliens when no one has ever seen an alien and if they exist have no idea how they look or act.  There is absurdity in the way so many talk about God without having the least bit of experience interacting with Him.  When the patriarch Jacob ran away from his furious brother and exhausted fell asleep he was unprepared for what came next.

He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.  There above it stood the Lord, and he said: "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."  When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it." (Genesis 28:12-16 NIV)  Jacob’s reaction is priceless.  He did not realize God was where he was!

Nearly the entire world is oblivious to God.  Ambulances run to heart attack victims, senators discuss tax plans, shoppers comb the stores for deals, librarians restack books and hardly anyone realizes God is there.  Cynics decide God is cruel, professors think He is a myth and pharmacists believe He is a legend and all the while God is among us with His own specific personality and characteristics waiting for someone to notice Him.  The old pop song, “One of Us”, absurdly wonders what God would be like if He was one of us.  “What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us.  Just a stranger on the bus tryin' to make his way home?”    The idea is that we cannot know what God is really like so we just make up things about Him.  For many, we can read the Bible and take what is said there as one person’s view of Him or maybe even the impressions of lots of people but we cannot really know what He is like because He is an idea or a concept and not an actual person.

When Jesus Christ was born and placed in a cattle trough after He was born, grew up and became a man, everyone who met Him discovered that God had specific, observable characteristics that made Him unique with certain qualities and personality traits.  God did this and behaved like this and reacted this way to these kinds of things.  God was not Fred down the street or the imaginative ideas of Marvel Comics.  He was not Thor, a made up character that could be anything the writers or the movie director wanted him to be.  God was there and He was just as He was seen and heard.  But you may argue that that was then and this is now.  How can we know what God is like now?

The last book in the Bible, the famous book of Revelation, or as the Greek name for it would be translated, “unveiling”, presents us with two specific groups of people.  The first would be those who are either oblivious to God or opposed to Him.  They react to circumstances they face without any sort of relationship to God.  There is no interaction with Him, no attempt at communication with Him.  They fear what is happening, are angry with their circumstances but never reach out to God or try to align themselves with Him.  The book of Revelation describes a typical response of those in this group to the destruction God will bring to the economic structures of the world.  "When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her.  Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: "'Woe! Woe, O great city O Babylon, city of power!  In one hour your doom has come!'  "The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more— (Revelation 18:9-11 NIV)

If you can just not let the nature of the events that are described in this chapter distract you, the point is that no one here looks to God for help or even tries to reach out to Him.  The entire crowd only reacts to the circumstances as if that is all that is there, as if there is no God involved in it.  Yet there is a second group of people described in the book of the Revelation and that is those who are aware of God all the time.  They view Him not as a story or an opinion or a thought but as He is, there, present, with characteristics that are specific and certain.  They do not speculate about God, they interact with Him and the result of being with Him is worship and undiminished love for Him.  Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: "Hallelujah!  For our Lord God Almighty reigns.  Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory.   For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.  Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear." (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.) (Revelation 19:6-8 NIV)

There is a clear and defined line of demarcation between two parts of humanity.  There are those who live without any consciousness of God, who live within the world and see nothing beyond it but the wins and losses of what they do and what they face.  God, the real God Jesus Christ, is beyond their mental scope.  The second group is made up of those who worship Christ, who love Him and yearn for His affections.  Worship is the mechanism through which those who are born-again experience Christ; it is the means by which God becomes known to us.  Like your ears enable hearing and your eyes seeing, worship enables you to be aware of Christ.  You cannot know God without worship.  You can read about Him, think about Him or have conversations discussing Him but you cannot know God without worship. 

A disturbing statement made by the Apostle Paul under the direction of the Holy Spirit is found in the book of Romans.  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  (Romans 1:21 NIV)  Literally, it reads, “Formerly knowing God not as God they neither glorified nor gave thanks…”  In other words, what knowledge these people had of God did not lead to them worshiping Him or thanking Him.  The result of this was that they could not think clearly or understand what they saw.  Without worship, you become irrational and mentally dull.  Worship of Christ is the gateway to seeing and understanding what you see.  Why is worship so critical to the church service?  It enables you to see God as He is and live with your eyes wide open and your mind able to comprehend what you face.  To skip worship or to not try to worship is like taking a pill that shuts down your brain and deadens your ability to comprehend.

When you are born again and have Christ as your Savior, your operating system is completely reworked so that worship of Christ is the way you connect with God and access His gifts.  Peace, joy and wisdom all flow into a heart that worships Christ and without that worship, it all gets blocked.  Practice worship this week.  You might not be very good at it.  You might get quickly bored with it.  But like any habit crucial to your well-being, practice is the only way you will develop it so that your mind will know Christ and understand God as He works in your life.