Peter continues our series looking at Colossians.
All things need to be connected. Look around the room. Screws and bolts and joints to make things hold together. Without them it's a pile of rubbish.
Look at the universe. Held together by a scaffold. A scaffold of forces.
These all emanate from the mass of the black hole at the centre keeping the sun spinning, and in turn us around the sun.
God the most enormous, mind blowing black hole
He keeps the universe spinning.
But we rotate around the sun/Son.
Colossians 2:19
Colossians has been talking about the stuff in our lives, and what we must not add to try and gain our salvation.
What or who holds your life together?
What if we took it away would mean you would fall apart?
Spouse, job, children.
Think of Job, and what happened to him
But, that's not what this verse is about.
Been talking before and after about you individually, but this verse veers off at a tangent to look at how your behaviour changes the church.
Christ is the head of the church, and He holds it all together
1st half verse 19 says we are not connected if we are proud. Doing it in our own strength.
What is standing in the way of us being fully connected?
Our bodies.
Fearfully and wonderfully made.
All of you is there for a reason, even if we don't know what that is, like the appendix.
Without bones and ligaments, we'd be like a little jellyfish on the floor.
Jesus holds his church together.
Joints and ligaments.
Without him it all falls apart.
It becomes a big jellyfish.
1 Corinthians 12:12-31
If we all wanted to be an eye, then we'd be a monster
If we had beautiful flowing hair, but our stomach did not work we'd be malnourished, and the hair would be irrelevant.
Church doesn't feel like it should hold together well.
It holds together as we are all in Christ.
We share salvation, we understand grace.
Not 2 levels of Christianity as neal said last week. We are all sinners saved by grace.
No one job is greater than the other, just because it's more visible.
No rules to come to church. Neal.
We want to be there because of Jesus. He is the connecting factor.
We don't all believe the same stuff
We don't all enjoy one style of worship.
We don't all break our necks to be at the prayer meeting.
But we are all in Christ.
So we are all one.
Ephesians 3:9-12
It grows because God nourishes it.
It grows as we worship together, as we listen to God, as we do what he asks
Try functioning apart from your joints and ligaments. It doesn't work.
Why do we try and function without Christ. As an individual? As a church?
John 1:1-5
Questions for groups.
The questions are in the preach notes.
Below are 2 supplementary and more meaty questions.
Mark Driscoll at the New Frontiers Leaders Conference in 2008 said"If a church becomes an institution it quickly becomes a museum. The remnant just tell the story of when God was there. They are curators, not missionaries."
How do we keep the church from becoming a museum?
Read out Isaiah 40
God holds it all together
He gives the strength to fight another day
Why does He do that?