How are we doing, everybody?
We made it through Christmas.
Most of us did.
Looks like some folks might not have made it.
But it's so good to see you all.
My name is Josh Teague.
I'm an elder here at the church.
This morning, uh Russ Masterson has his morning off, so hopefully he's resting in, sleeping in.
And so you're stuck with me.
You know where the doors are if it gets that bad.
But this morning I felt it'd be useful for us to return and look at one of our core values as a church.
I want to unpack it a little bit and encourage all of us in pursuing it and praying for it collectively as a church.
We don't talk about our core values all that much week over week.
We certainly fold them into our sermons and so forth.
But they are grace, worship, growth, community, and mission.
And if you're new here, welcome.
That's what we care about.
I love this beautiful statement of ours on community, which is what we'll be talking about this morning.
We're talking about a core value of community.
What does it mean for us as a church here at Redeemer?
This is our core value.
It says this we are made in the image of the triune God and are therefore created out of community and for community.
We are called to rich relationships characterized by compassion and humility.
I don't know who wrote that.
I think it's on our website, it's been on our website since day one, but I love it.
I thought it was great.
Now let's just consider the season that many of us are ramping down from, right?
From Thanksgiving to Christmas, you know, we've been likely in countless community settings.
And here I am with the nerve to tell you to keep going that you're not done yet.
We've spent extra time with our family, uh, maybe our community groups, maybe we've attended some holiday parties, maybe a couple of them.
We've certainly had a fair share of church services.
Um we have just been deeply immersed in community this whole season, right?
For some, this can be strictly energizing.
Community can be.
For others, maybe not so much, certainly not for everybody.
And of course, it's probably foolish to dive into the topic of biblical community and to say something meaningful in only 20 minutes, but I think it's worth a shot.
And so here we go.
So a quick survey raise your hand if you've truly never been hurt by a community of people.
Anyone just never it's just only been just beautiful scenes everywhere you go.
Right?
Right.
So there, we have something in common, right?
Not a single one of us raised our hands.
More often than not, community and communities, simply put, they can stink, right?
Like we open ourselves up in joining communities, we open ourselves up to awkwardness, in some cases, misunderstanding, rejection, and on and on and on, right?
Sometimes communities can make you even feel more isolated than you meant to.
It's kind of having the complete opposite intended effect, right?
It's weird.
So I think it's just worth us acknowledging that, that we all have something in common here, and that we're all in this together.
And this is this is a reality.
Communities can be a dangerous, vulnerable thing to be a part of.
So just for a brief moment, let's think about some common communities.
I listed a few already.
We had our family communities, church communities, small groups, these are all church communities, work groups, um, maybe community service organizations, you know, maybe the gym.
The gym's got its own special community and unique culture there.
Your online communities, and of course, the dreaded HOA, right?
Your neighborhood HOA.
This is perhaps the most dreadful creation of all mankind.
And, you know, I've I'm sorry if any of you participate on your HOA board and I'm you're offended by this, I'm sorry, but you probably should just repent.
And, you know, maybe do so before you take communion, of course.
Uh work that out.
I'm joking, of course, but HOAs are pretty easy to pick on, right?
This is a community.
We're kind of living in close chords with one another.
We're gonna have issues, but boy do we ever overcorrect with the HOA.
Uh for a for a handful of years, Lauren, my wife and I, we lived in a neighborhood with ever exacting HOA demands.
Today, we don't live in such a neighborhood, and you can maybe see why.
But life under this particular regime of HOA basically amounted to a uh like impossibly high demands and a trust no one mentality, right?
Defenses were up.
Checking your mailbox day to day was like an impossible, it was like a show of strength.
If you could check your mailbox without receiving a letter, that was a big deal.
Um but it was funny because what there was aspects of it that were funny, particularly the coercion tactics that the HOA board used to draw people to their annual meeting, to get quorum, as they would always say.
Uh for example, one year they promoted their annual meeting by announcing the raffle of an Amazon Kindle if and only if attendance was met at a certain number.
So, low turnout, no chance you're getting that right, you know, no chance you're getting that Kindle.
That coveted Amazon Kindle, my goodness.
Um the monthly newsletter attended shortly thereafter, after the meeting, and uh my brother and I would always exchange pictures pictures of this newsletter because they were just so passive aggressive in their approach.
Um they had a very front page, very passive-aggressive rebuke of the entire neighborhood.
And it read something like this: this is a summary.
Much to our sadness and surprise, we were unable to hold a raffle and give away the Amazon Kindle due to low attendance at our annual meeting.
Oh my goodness.
Everybody got punished, particularly the people that attended the meeting, those poor people.
It was really sick stuff.
Uh, this is a community driven by performance, by shame, and you know, by fear with those letters.
Now, other times, communities are motivated by other types of passion.
And of course, we've all seen this happen, we've all seen this happen at scale with online communities, online social networks.
Now, of course, networks don't really count as community in like the formal historical sense, but we confuse them in our digital age.
Okay, so a short version of a long story.
For a brief period of time, my face was visible to every Gmail user on the planet as part of a as part of a promotion for the newly released Gmail video chat feature.
It's about 12 years ago.
I was working at Google at the time.
Um, and around the corner, some folks needed somebody to pose for a picture, and I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll I'll be an M, I'm an idiot.
Um and so what happens when you logged into Gmail as part of this promotion, you ended up seeing my face.
I had no idea this was gonna happen.
My face was used on a login page for the promo announcement, and perhaps some of you saw this.
I think we've got a picture of it.
Yeah, there I am.
That's me posing, uh, and that was not intended, I didn't think that was gonna happen.
Uh and then when you logged into your email, you saw me there, a postage stamped version of myself.
And uh I won't and I won't go into all the backstory, but uh, we actually I will say this.
We were new in Seattle at the time.
Lauren was off making friends with new moms and so forth, and one of them logged into her Gmail one day and saw me, and she like reached out to Lauren.
Is Josh trying to video chat with me?
Like, no, I'm really not.
I just it's just a picture.
Uh so effectively you'd have my face just staring at you as you did your email, as you did your work.
There was an X icon, you good luck finding it in that mess, but um most people missed the X icon entirely.
And so overnight, someone took this frustration to Reddit.
And Reddit, as many of you may know, is a wonderful community of people.
Very positive things happen there.
And um they somebody took this frustration, took this picture of me and said, I hate this guy.
So this is the this happened, I didn't know this, this all happened overnight.
Uh this community had been galvanized by the presence of my face, and it was trouble because I woke up to an inbox flooded, my personal inbox was flooded with email from all over the world of people saying, effectively, uh, I hate you.
Um you're an idiot, and I hate you in your face and everything you stand for.
I'm not kidding, like they they really took to it.
Um an online community in this case read it, they had done some clever digging and they were galvanized, right?
They uncovered my name, where I live, my wife's blog.
But the attacks, like I got literally words attacks came at me because I wrote openly on my website, just a few sentences really, about how my faith in Jesus and my career calling, how they intersect.
Um I was really this is like doxing before doxing was even a thing.
Uh so this was a community united in a very specific hatred, united in anonymity.
And it was a really interesting moment.
You know, and perhaps they were hurt themselves.
Perhaps there was a community of Christians that they had been touched by, and perhaps they had been hurt, I don't know.
So, even though this was largely an anonymous attack, an attack on me personally, I felt it pretty deeply that day.
Of course, I'm then reaching out to the communities I know that will support me and love me and pray for me, and that was going on, and I got that, of course.
But it definitely wanted me to avoid other communities altogether.
I wanted to put a bag over my head and just pretend like this never happened.
It was a very odd moment.
And of course, it can be ten times worse when it happens, when you get the attacks and rejection from people that that know you and that you know, like it can be even worse.
But despite the danger of communities being driven by performance, shame, fear, anonymity, the Bible exhorts and commands us to seek it out, right?
Thankfully, scripture is honest with us about what that means.
Because in addition to uh vignettes where community is grinding in scripture, where people are in strife and there's backstabbing, and we certainly saw this with Jesus, we'll get to that.
There's also pictures of perfect community, of holy community, and what is it meant to be like, right?
As I read a few passages here from the New Testament, I want, I think we'll probably pick up on some themes.
I'm gonna kind of go through these one at a time pretty quickly, but just kind of listen for themes and we'll see what we'll pick up on.
So we'll start in 1 Peter 3:8.
All of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.
And we'll go to 1 Corinthians, this is Paul.
I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no division among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.
Do you think there was disagreement in the church?
Oh, you bet there was.
And that's what Paul's getting after.
He's saying, no, unity, hold unity high.
Ephesians 4, 2 through 6.
This is Paul again.
With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call.
One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all.
There's so many beautiful layers to that.
Uh lastly, Romans 12, 16.
Live in harmony with one another.
Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.
Never be wise in your own sight.
Just pick up on some themes there, y'all.
I did.
I saw unity, humility, tenderness, gentleness, love, patience, and others.
Now, if you're a bit more of a Bible learner, you're kind of thinking about these themes, they might sound a little familiar.
You might pick up on the fact that many of these are also referenced in Galatians 5 as fruit of the spirit, right?
I think this is intentional.
But what strikes me is that oftentimes we, or at least me, myself, I look to the fruit of the spirit as entirely individualistic in its nature, right?
We think, okay, the fruits are for me, and I'm changing, and that's exciting, but I'm keeping going internally.
I see some change, and the fruits are for me and how I interact with others, and that's the interface by which you know fruit is expressed.
That's great.
We go inward.
And to a large extent, I don't think it's wrong to do that.
You know, that's fine.
That can be actually uh you can see miracles happening in that sense in your own life.
But then you look to how Peter and Paul use the fruit, it's for a collective community good, right?
It's less about us as individuals, and more so in how we relate to uh relate and love in a collective sense, a communal sense.
And I can't help but think that Peter and Paul are hearkening back perhaps, you know, to the profound teaching of Jesus when he says in John, you know, by this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another, right?
That's the marker.
So is your primary community marked by love?
How about your church?
How about this church?
Are we marked by love?
Or is your primary community marked by disunity, destruction?
This is something that we ought and should be praying for.
We can be praying for this.
God break our hearts for believers and unbelievers alike.
Let that be the by the let that sorry, let that be the mark by which others know and find you by this collective love.
People hurt, sin hurts.
But you heal, Lord.
Help me forgive as you do.
Bind us in unity.
Help us see this community as you see it.
And ultimately, let this community be a fruitful expression of your spirit.
I don't know if you guys saw this, but it's kind of cool.
Uh a few weeks ago, um, Marietta was named by GoFundMe as the most generous city in the nation.
GoFundMe is this website, if you don't know, it's where you can set up, you know, set up ways to uh collect donations for a particular cause or somebody's in the hospital or sick.
And you can raise money for certain individuals.
Uh they looked across to all the cities in the nation, and Marietta was number one.
That's pretty cool.
That's something that that's a that's a unique expression of some fruit happening here in Marietta, and that's that's that's something we can be thankful for.
That's fruit expressed in a unity sense, right?
So here's the big idea we get out of the New Testament, or a big idea we get out of the New Testament, which is this the fruit of the Spirit is simultaneously for us as distinct individuals, but also for us as community.
In Genesis 1, 1, we get strong hints of community.
Now, think back to the statement, our church statement we made at the beginning, that we are born out of community, made for community.
This is what I'm gonna get to there.
Genesis 1 hints of this.
Now, before we get there, a core belief for many Christians is that of the Trinity, right?
The Trinity is comprised of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
These are three distinct beings with singular God form.
It's a mystery, but it's amazing.
So in that, we see there's always been community, even before any of us showed up, even before there was man and women, like there was community.
And so that at the highest level is something that we should look at.
So in Genesis 1.1, you know the verse, in the beginning God created, right?
Now the word God here is translated from the Hebrew word Elohim.
And Elohim is unlike the word Jehovah, which is the more common word in the Old Testament, Yahweh in the Old Testament for God.
Elohim instead has a plural form to it.
It implies more than one, community.
And we see this plurality again in verse 26, let us make man in our image.
So there's something here.
Now, is it irrefutable proof of the Trinity, um, of community ahead of creation?
On its own, we don't know, probably not.
Who knows?
Uh, but every word of scripture is God breathed, right?
2 Timothy.
Every word of scripture is God breathed.
And so, even in the case this text isn't trying to tell us something about the Trinity, we do know from Jesus that there's this idea of the Father, God the Father, Him the Son, and the Spirit to come.
So we do know there's community built baked into that.
So with the image of our Creator stamped into us, us being made in his image, community is also stamped into us.
So the first thing we do is just acknowledge that, right?
That's what we're doing this morning.
And then out of receiving of that gift, we then serve, right?
And love.
I like this take on this morning's scripture.
I'll read it.
This is from David Mathis of Desiring God, which is a wonderful resource.
Um, he says this we're prone to think of our conduct in the world in largely individualistic terms, especially us Americans, by the way.
Largely individualistic terms.
Yet here, in charging believers to let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, Paul doesn't accent individual behaviors, but focuses on the collective harmony of the community.
Gospel conduct means the church standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents.
So it's talked about opponents and trouble.
What's that up?
What is that all about?
This is not just a people problem, this is a spiritual battle.
The enemy's best weapon is to cause disunity among believers, right?
That's what the enemy's after, and it's what sin will draw us to if we're not fervent and seeking unity and repenting of disunity.
It's interesting also, if you think about the garden story, Satan himself doesn't show up in the garden story until Adam and Eve are together in unity, right?
So watch for that.
When we are together, especially united under Jesus' blood, there will be attacks.
But that's also a moment to love and support each other.
So in your groups, talk about what the open-handed issues are.
You know, the things that you're not willing to go to the mat for.
Whether or not the shingles on your home are not perfectly straight, uh, is probably an open-handed issue, HOA people.
Um, you know, and that's also why we support both, you know, uh covenantal baptism and child dedication.
That's an open-handed issue for us as a church, and we're gonna support both of them.
Instead, lean into the closed-handed issues, the things, the blood of Jesus that unites us.
That is a mark of a community, unlike any community you'll be a part of outside of this church.
It's that.
There's something miraculous and something extremely holy about that.
Lean into the foundation of values, who Jesus is, seek out who Jesus is.
Remember that by meeting together in small groups and dinner groups and this morning, in light of his blood, that you're participating in worship.
This is a worshipful act, just to sit here in the presence of each other in the acknowledgement that Christ died for us.
This is worship, just being present with each other.
Even when you have nothing to say or at that's worship.
Remember also that when you experience hurt in a community, and scripture tells us you will experience hurt in community, consider who Jesus surrounded himself with, and how even he was ultimately uh betrayed and abandoned and rejected by those close to him.
And find hope in that.
And that in his humility, Jesus understands what you're going through.
We worship an amazing God, you guys, a humble God, a humble and yet powerful, all-knowing God.
It's amazing.
To end, we'll look at Colossians 3.
The Apostle Paul here, like Jesus, he holds love above all else.
And when you think of love, think of Christ's love, okay?
That's the model, not just how we love Christ's love.
Bear with each other and forgive one another.
If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you.
And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
We'll pray.
God, thank you for this morning, Lord.
Thank you that you have bound us this morning together in light of your son, in light of the sacrifice your son made for us on the cross.
Thank you for the blood.
Thank you, God, for um this church, this community.
Thank you for allowing my family to be part of it.
And Lord, we ask that our worship to you this morning be beautiful.
And we thank you.
Jesus' name.
Amen.