SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Randall Kay.
SPEAKER_00: I, with my family, are regular attenders here at Connect, and they've asked me this week to bring you a message from God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: We're in the midst of a sermon series on metaphors of the church.
SPEAKER_00: We are the church, and scriptures use a number of different words to talk about what the church is all about.
SPEAKER_00: Brenda brought us to understanding that the church is a body.
SPEAKER_00: Last week, Pastor Nate introduced us to church as the family.
SPEAKER_00: In a couple of weeks, we'll be looking at the church as a temple and as the bride of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And today we want to look at the church as the household of God.
SPEAKER_00: If you got your scriptures with you, or you can look up on the screen, I'm going to be reading from Ephesians chapter 2, starting in verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: This has been our theme passage as we have looked at these metaphors of the church.
SPEAKER_00: And reading in the name of our Lord Jesus, the Apostle Paul writes, but now, in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing the law and the commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of two.
SPEAKER_00: So making peace and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
SPEAKER_00: And he came and he preached peace to you who were far off and peace to you who are near.
SPEAKER_00: For through him we have both access to one spirit, in one spirit to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Since then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens and saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.
SPEAKER_00: Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom we have the whole structure being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: In him you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The church, the household of God.
SPEAKER_00: All of us here are part of a household, and they all look a little bit different.
SPEAKER_00: Households can have mom and a dad and siblings.
SPEAKER_00: In some cultures, we continue to add to that household.
SPEAKER_00: We can have grandma and grandpa as well as mom and dad.
SPEAKER_00: We can have children, we can have cousins and grandparents, we can have those who work in the house full-time to maintain the house.
SPEAKER_00: That was true in Jesus' day.
SPEAKER_00: You had from slaves and free, from old to young, all packed into this thing we call the household.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know about you, but the household that I belong to now is unique, to say the least.
SPEAKER_00: God has put together kind of an amazing group of individuals.
SPEAKER_00: I have three son-in-laws.
SPEAKER_00: One I added just about four weeks ago, but I have these three wonderful son-in-laws.
SPEAKER_00: One, DDA, hails from Burkina Faso, Africa.
SPEAKER_00: Freddie Garcia hails from Bolivia, Santa Cruz, Bolivia, South America.
SPEAKER_00: And our newest son-in-law, Nicholas, he's probably gonna get mad at me that I just said Nicholas, but Nick hails from the West Coast of the United States.
SPEAKER_00: And of all three of those, probably the West Coaster from the United States fits less into the Midwest than anybody else.
SPEAKER_00: But a number of years ago, just a couple of weeks before our eldest daughter got married to Freddie, Freddie brought his mom and his brother and a good friend to California to be part of the wedding.
SPEAKER_00: And they were there for Thanksgiving dinner.
SPEAKER_00: And so we had Africa, South America, United States, all represented around that table.
SPEAKER_00: And it hit us that if Didier wanted to ask Mama Dolly, Freddie's mom, a question, he would have to ask his wife Christa, whose common language was French.
SPEAKER_00: Krista would then turn to her eldest sister and ask her the question in English.
SPEAKER_00: Trinity would then turn to her husband to be, Freddie, and ask him the question in Italian, because that's their common language.
SPEAKER_00: And Freddie would have to finally turn to his mom and ask her the question.
SPEAKER_00: And you know that game of telephone, you hope the right message gets all the way around that circle.
SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, um Freddie's mom had to answer the question, and we had to go through not only differences in language, but differences in culture and just what words mean.
SPEAKER_00: I was traveling with my two son-in-laws, DDA from Africa and Freddie from Bolivia, and we were going to a men's retreat, and this was a couple weeks.
SPEAKER_00: I had just met Freddie, and we realized that as we were driving in the car, none of us could speak to one another.
SPEAKER_00: Made for a nice long, quiet five hours.
SPEAKER_00: But finally, what we started to do was to look out the window.
SPEAKER_00: We were driving through the foothills of California, and there were some cows on the side of the road.
SPEAKER_00: And so I pointed out the window and I said, cow.
SPEAKER_00: And they all looked at me and I said, cow.
SPEAKER_00: And Freddie said, Vaca.
SPEAKER_00: I said, okay, I'm learning something now.
SPEAKER_00: Vaca, cow, vodka.
SPEAKER_00: And DDA looked at us, kind of understood, wondering what was going on, and if he finally said, wouf, which is in French, is cow.
SPEAKER_00: And so now I have two extra words for cow.
SPEAKER_00: And then we said, well, let's up the ante a little bit here.
SPEAKER_00: What does a vaca sound like?
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't sound like a cow, at least for us.
SPEAKER_00: And a French cow even sounds more different.
SPEAKER_00: So things get lost in translation translation, and that's what makes up our households.
SPEAKER_00: Households are made up of all sorts of people.
SPEAKER_00: Um have them uh uh been in that household for a long time, some are new little ones that are just uh coming into it, but we have all these people that are involved in the household, sometimes a mix of families involved in this household.
SPEAKER_00: But the purpose of a household, of all the people that are involved in that household, the purpose is uh maintaining the family.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna do what they can, whether they're slave or free, whether it's grandma and grandpa or the youngest sibling, whether it's the servant who uh serves in the kitchen.
SPEAKER_00: They are all working for one main purpose, and that is to maintain the family.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the same for the church today.
SPEAKER_00: We are the household of God.
SPEAKER_00: And you are all part of it.
SPEAKER_00: We are no longer strangers or aliens, the scripture says, but we are the household of God built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We have one purpose, and that is to honor God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it is to maintain the family.
SPEAKER_00: We are, in many regards, a family of families.
SPEAKER_00: We come together, we bring all sorts of backgrounds, all sorts of languages, and we know that we celebrate here food as well.
SPEAKER_00: I think that one line for the church is if we're meeting, we're eating.
SPEAKER_00: And it's true here at Connect.
SPEAKER_00: And we have that wonderful time when everybody brings meals from their home countries, and we uh set out a wonderful spread because we know that uh part of what we do together is to experience the fullness of our cultural differences, languages or food.
SPEAKER_00: The beauty of the household of God, and one of the goals, or multiple of goals, I guess, for us as the household of God is to be a place of belonging, a place of safety, a place that uh provides for provision and intimacy, a place that provides grace and mercy and service and love to one another.
SPEAKER_00: I have a question for you today.
SPEAKER_00: I have a question for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: The question is this how do we maintain the household of God?
SPEAKER_00: How do we keep it going?
SPEAKER_00: How do we move it forward?
SPEAKER_00: How do we allow it to be what God has created it to be?
SPEAKER_00: I think there's three aspects that help us answer that question.
SPEAKER_00: First, is that we need to be built on the right foundation.
SPEAKER_00: The scriptures say that we are built on the teachings of the apostles and the prophets, the New Testament and the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And we are built upon Jesus, who is our cornerstone.
SPEAKER_00: We are the church, not just because we're a group of people who like to get together and who like to sing songs together, which is really kind of weird when you look in history or look at our world today, put it that way, that a group of people we get together on a Sunday morning to stand up and to sing songs.
SPEAKER_00: And I know we do that at rock concerts, but this is anything but a rock concert.
SPEAKER_00: But yet we gather together.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we want to worship the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Second, because we enjoy being together.
SPEAKER_00: We are family, we are friends, we are brothers, sisters in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But we are who we are because of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to read the passage from Ephesians again and just uh point out some uh a focus for us.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to look where it says and talks about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13, starting.
SPEAKER_00: But now in Christ, Jesus, you were once far off, and now you've been brought near, by the blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: For he himself is our peace.
SPEAKER_00: It is he who made us both one.
SPEAKER_00: It is in his flesh that a dividing wall of hostility was knocked down.
SPEAKER_00: It was in him that he created a new person, making one out of two.
SPEAKER_00: It was he that brought peace.
SPEAKER_00: It was he that reconciled us both to God through his body on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it was he who preached peace.
SPEAKER_00: It is through him that we have access by the Spirit to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: We are no longer strangers and aliens, but members of his household.
SPEAKER_00: We are built upon Jesus, the cornerstone, and in him we are all being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: If we see anything, brothers and sisters, it's this: that it's about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We are his kingdom, we are his body, we are his family, we are the dwelling place of the Most High God.
SPEAKER_00: It is about him.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we need to be reminded of that, that it's not about you, it's not about me, but it's about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We come here not to hear Randall, Pastor Nate.
SPEAKER_00: We come here not just to uh sing songs that we like to sing, we come here not just to have a good cup of coffee, we come here not just to even see friends and family that we love, but we come here today, we come here every day because of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It is about him.
SPEAKER_00: So if we want to maintain the household of God to be a healthy place of belonging and caring, of grace and mercy, we need to make sure that we are built upon Jesus, the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: Second of all, we need to have the right head of household.
SPEAKER_00: Every home has somebody who's in charge.
SPEAKER_00: Can't be a dad or a mom.
SPEAKER_00: Remember when you were growing up and you went to mom to ask if you could do something?
SPEAKER_00: And what was mom's response?
SPEAKER_00: Go ask your dad.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, you waited all day for dad to come home, and you went and met dad at the door, and you asked dad your question, and dad's quick response was, go ask your mom.
SPEAKER_00: You want to know we're all just a little crazy?
unknown: You know?
SPEAKER_00: Who do we ask?
SPEAKER_00: Who do we talk to when we have a question, when we need wisdom, when we need insight?
SPEAKER_00: As the church, who do we go to?
SPEAKER_00: Now we may say we go to see one of the pastors, which is a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: They are uh individuals of great wisdom and understanding and knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: God has blessed this church with good leadership.
SPEAKER_00: We can go to our Sunday school teachers, we can go to our friends, our brothers and sisters in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But most importantly, we need to go to God because He is the Father.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew chapter 23, Jesus was talking to the Pharisees and the scribes, and he says, But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers.
SPEAKER_00: And call no man your father on earth, for you have one father who is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Neither being called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: The greatest among you shall be your servant, and whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says we have one Father, the Heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_00: Now, realize that Jesus is not talking about biological family here.
SPEAKER_00: We have a dad.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us have had a dad at home.
SPEAKER_00: We had somebody that we could go to and ask those questions or ask permission of.
SPEAKER_00: But in the church, it's not just our pastors, it's not just our teachers, it's just not our deacons and our elders and those in leadership, but we need to go to the Heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_00: He alone is head of household.
SPEAKER_00: I'm thankful again for our pastoral staff who knows that and understands that and follows that, that they don't live on their own wisdom and insight, but they go to the Father on your behalf, seeking God's wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: How do we maintain a household for God?
SPEAKER_00: We do so by having the right foundation, Jesus, the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: We do it by having the right household, excuse me, the head of household, God the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And as we look at the household of God, we see that it's made up of many uh individuals, many people with different attributes, many activities that keep the household of God alive and moving forward.
SPEAKER_00: All of those are important.
SPEAKER_00: We talked about the body of Christ, where there are different members of the body, the hands, the feet, the eyes, the ears, and that each one of us have an important part in the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And we are not, there's no one here that's more important than anyone else.
SPEAKER_00: And that we need one another if we are to move forward.
SPEAKER_00: There are various activities that we're involved in of the church, whether it's gathering for worship and study, whether it's going out and having a neighborhood party to introduce the neighbors around us to the person of Jesus and to his love.
SPEAKER_00: But in all of those things, we need to have one attitude.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to suggest today that as we move forward as the household of God, that the attitude that we are to have is the attitude that we found in Jesus or find in Jesus as the suffering servant, that his life made possible to us through the filling of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Take, for example, uh Jesus in John chapter 13.
SPEAKER_00: It says that Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from the supper.
SPEAKER_00: And he laid aside his outer garment garments, and taking a towel, he tied it around his waist.
SPEAKER_00: Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, to wipe them with a towel that was wrapped around him.
SPEAKER_00: He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, Lord, would you wash my feet?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered him, What I am doing you do not understand now.
SPEAKER_00: But afterward you will understand.
SPEAKER_00: Peter said to him, You shall never wash my feet.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered, If I do not wash you, you have no part with me.
SPEAKER_00: Simon said, Peter said to him, Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and my head.
SPEAKER_00: John writes a little bit later, when Jesus had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, Do you understand what I have done to you?
SPEAKER_00: You call me teacher and Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And you are right.
SPEAKER_00: For so I am.
SPEAKER_00: Truly.
SPEAKER_00: Truly I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is the messenger greater than the one who sent him.
SPEAKER_00: If you know these things.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are you if you do them.
SPEAKER_00: The example of Jesus for us is not one who lords it over.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't play the almighty head of the household, giving directions to each person, having himself honored, but rather he takes on the form of a servant.
SPEAKER_00: And does one of the most lowly tasks that he could do, and that is to wash the feet, the dirty feet of those disciples.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says to them, as you have seen me do, do also.
SPEAKER_00: And I believe that that's the call for us.
SPEAKER_00: The church, as the household of God, to think not more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, but to think about how Jesus would live, how Jesus would serve.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew chapter twenty, Jesus says this.
SPEAKER_00: But whoever would be great among you must be your servant.
SPEAKER_00: And who would ever be first among you must be your slave.
SPEAKER_00: Even then the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
SPEAKER_00: The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.
SPEAKER_00: And to give his life as a ransom for many.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' purpose for coming was to go to the cross, to die for us.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible tells us that he is our atoning sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: That through his death and his resurrection we are reconciled to God.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to suggest today that by the filling of the Holy Spirit, we learn a way of leaning, of leaning into servanthood as the household of God.
SPEAKER_00: If we want to maintain the health and the vitality of the household of God, of this church, we need to be those people who lean in to service.
SPEAKER_00: Lean in to wrapping the towel around us and bending down and washing the feet of the people in need.
SPEAKER_00: A church that serves its community well, just like Connect does.
SPEAKER_00: A church that does not just sit on the corner and say, look at us.
SPEAKER_00: But it sits in the midst of a neighborhood, in the midst of a community, and say, look at Jesus, who loved us, and because he loved us, we can and do love you.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Jesus has for us as the foundation of the household of God.
SPEAKER_00: Made up of all sorts of different people.
SPEAKER_00: All sorts of different backgrounds, all sorts of different cultures, all sorts of likes and dislikes.
SPEAKER_00: But God has brought us together.
SPEAKER_00: In wrapping things up this morning, I just want you to remind, remember those three things.
SPEAKER_00: Things to take home with us.
SPEAKER_00: That if we want to be the church that Jesus has created us to be, to be that strong, healthy body, to be that loving family, to be that strong household.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that we must build upon the right foundation.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: Remember we need to have the right head of household.
SPEAKER_00: It's God the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And remember that we need to have the right attitude as members of the household, and that is to follow Jesus, the suffering servant, who gave his life on the cross for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: I suggested at the first service that we have this cross that's empty to remind us that Jesus died on the cross for us, but he rose triumphant.
SPEAKER_00: That marks us as followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to maybe see on this side of the church a basin and a towel.
SPEAKER_00: The one we follow, Jesus, the risen Lord, and the task that he has given us to do, and that is to wash the feet of others.
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't be a bad thing.
SPEAKER_00: Not a bad thing at all.
SPEAKER_00: Would you uh join me in prayer?
SPEAKER_00: Holy God.
SPEAKER_00: We come before you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: To confess that we love you.
SPEAKER_00: To confess that we need you.
SPEAKER_00: To confess that the desires of our heart is to love you and to serve you.
SPEAKER_00: We believe and we hold to the truth that you are God and there is no other.
SPEAKER_00: We hold to the truth that we are your body, Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We are your family.
SPEAKER_00: That you are creating us into the household of God.
SPEAKER_00: A temple.
SPEAKER_00: A dwelling place for the Most High.
SPEAKER_00: Making us into the bride of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we are disobedient.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we care more about ourselves than we do about those around us.
SPEAKER_00: But we are thankful today.
SPEAKER_00: That you have told us in your word that if we uh confess our sins you are faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all of our unrighteousness.
SPEAKER_00: So we come to you today recommitting ourselves to you as your children as the redeemed.
SPEAKER_00: Those who want to build upon you, Lord Jesus, our cornerstone.
SPEAKER_00: Those who want to follow you, Heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_00: Those who love their neighbor as themselves.
SPEAKER_00: The meditations of our heart the work of our hands be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, we pray in your name as you commanded and invited us to do it.
SPEAKER_00: May this be true.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.