Howard Rutledge, a United States air force pilot, was shot down over North Vietnam during the early stages of the Vietnamese War. He spent several miserable, terrible years in the hands of the Vietnamese before being released when the war ended. He shares a testimony of something God taught him in that terrible place that really relates to where we are this morning.
"During those longer periods of enforced reflection, it became so much easier to separate the important from the trivial, the worthwhile from the waste. For example, in the past, I usually worked or played hard on Sundays and had no time for church. For years my wife, Phyllis, had encouraged me to join the family at church. She never nagged or scolded. She just kept hoping and praying, but I was too busy, too preoccupied to spend one or two short hours a week thinking about the really important things.
Now the sights and sounds and smells of death were all around me. My hunger for spiritual food soon outdid my hunger for a steak. Now I wanted to know about that part of me that will never die. Now I wanted to talk about God and Christ and the church, but in heartbreak [POW's gave their prison camp] solitary confinement, there was no pastor, no Sunday school teacher, no Bible, no hymn book and particularly no community of believers to guide and sustain me. I had completely neglected the spiritual dimension of my life. It took prison to show me how empty life is without God." [[1]]
It took a prison for Howard Rutledge to learn how he had missed out on one of God's purposes for his life. It is the second purpose that we are going to talk about today as we continue our series on forty days of purpose. Last week, I told you that the first purpose for which you were created was to know God and to love God. The Bible calls that worship, because you were planned for God's pleasure.
Today, we are going to look at the second purpose which is - you are formed for God's family. Our text is I Timothy 3:14-15 and here is what we read, "I am writing…so you will know how to live in the family of God. That family is the church…" (I Timothy 3:14-15, NCV) This one book in the Bible, was written so that we would know how to live in the family of God. God from the beginning of time wanted a family - that is why we are here. He wanted children.
You were born into your physical family so that you might be born again into God's spiritual family. That has always been His plan and purpose for you. Ephesians 1:5 says, "His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ." (Ephesians 1:5, NLT)
You won't read this in the newspaper. You won't hear it on Larry King. Hollywood will never make a movie about it. Even as I am speaking to you, God is right now building a family for Himself that is going to last, not just here on Earth, but for ever and ever in eternity. It is an eternal family, because you were made to last forever.
Once you understand God's first purpose for your life, which is worship - that is getting to know and love God. God wants you to begin to learn and practice the second purpose He has for your life and it is found in I Peter 2:17. "Love your spiritual family!" (I Peter 2:17, MSG) One of the reasons why the church is so important is because it is in the church that you learn to love your spiritual family. This second purpose is called fellowship. God's first purpose for my life is worship. God's second purpose for my life is fellowship. Just like the word worship is misunderstood, so is the word fellowship. Fellowship is more than having a Coke, chewing the fat or going to a ball game together. Fellowship is loving God's family.
The Bible says in I John 4:21, "The person who loves God must also love other believers." (I John 4:21, GW) When you put all of this together, this is what we learn. The church is a family. It is not a building. It is not an organization. It is not a club. Church is not a place you go to. Church is a family that you belong to. God has a purpose for you to get involved with His family. In fact, there are actually 4 levels of fellowship and God wants every one of His children to go to the deepest level. How are we to relate to God's family?
I. God Wants Me To Link With His Family
The first level is what we call - membership. It is when you choose to belong to a local body of believers as a part of God's family. That is the most basic level of fellowship. You find a church family and you choose to get connected to that family.
The Bible says, "…You are members of God's very own family… and you belong in God's household with every other Christian." (Ephesians 2:19, LB) The Christian life is not just a matter of believing. It is a matter of belonging. You have to choose to belong to God's family.
Your relationship to God is personal, but God never intended it to be private. It makes no sense for a true Christian not to want to belong to a church and be involved in a church. That would be like saying, "I want to be a football player, but I don't want to be a part of any team." It would be like saying, "I want to be a tuba player, but I don't want to be a part of an orchestra." I want to quote that verse again, "You belong in God's household with every other Christian." (Ephesians 2:19, LB)
Have you ever thought of where we get the term "membership"? We get it right out of the Bible. Romans 12:5 says, "In Christ we who are many form one Body, and each member belongs to all the others." (Romans 12:5, NIV) Do you realize that membership is a Bible word? It was originally a Christian word?
In all of my ministry, I have never met a growing, glowing Christian who did not get linked to a church, who did not join a church and not just get his name on a church roll, but get actively involved in the life and hear me the fellowship of that church.
The Christian life is more than just commitment to Christ. It is commitment to other Christians. In fact, being a part of a local church is so important, God even gave us a symbol of the fact that we belong together. It is a picture called, "baptism." Baptism is the picture that we belong together in the body of Christ. I Corinthians 12:13 says, "This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized. Each of us is now a part of His resurrection Body." (I Corinthians 12:13, MSG) When you are baptized, it is your way of saying publicly, "I am a part of a group of believers and I am excited to belong to the family of God."
That is why membership is so important. You become a Christian by committing yourself to Christ, but you become a church member by committing yourself to the church. The first decision brings salvation. The second decision brings fellowship, but there is a deeper level of fellowship that God wants us to go to.
II. God Wants Me To Learn From His Family
The second level is when you move from fellowship to friendship and you begin to learn from God's family. It specifically means - learning to share with God's family. Acts 2:44 says this about the early church, "All the believers met together constantly and shared everything with each other." (Acts 2:44, LB)
There are two things that stand out there. You cannot develop friendships without meeting together and you can't develop friendships without sharing. I want to say this to you again and again and again. Life is all about relationships and the most valuable relationship in life is a relationship that involves true friendship. There is not a greater place to be a friend or find a friend than in the church and there is not a better way to develop friendships than through fellowship with other believers.
There is a very strange command in I Peter 4:9, "Open you homes to each other." (I Peter 4:9, NCV) Now why does God say that? Why does God want us to share our homes with fellow believers? You really can't fellowship in a crowd. You can only fellowship in a small group. Fellowship only takes place in a small group.
The early church for 300 years met in homes. As you can imagine, most homes were small, so most churches were nothing more than small groups. That is one of the reasons why I keep saying to you - get into a small group because it is a biblical principle. Let me stop and ask you a question. How many of you right now are involved in a forty days of purpose small group? Can I see your hands? I am going to be very frank and honest with the rest of you. You can not fulfill God's second purpose for your life totally and completely unless you get involved in a small group.
One of the things you get to share in a small group are your problems. The Bible says, "Share each other's troubles and problems." (Galatians 6:2, NLT) Somebody once said that when you share a joy it is doubled and when you share problem, it is cut in half. That is one of the greatest advantages of being in a small group.
You will never go to this second level of fellowship until you get into a small group where you can bear one another's burdens, share one another's problems, weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice, and encourage those who need encouraging.
The body of Christ is just like your body, a collection of small cells and the life of the physical body is contained in those cells. That is also true about the body of Christ. The real life of the body of Christ is contained in those small cells called small groups and every Christian needs to be involved in a small group. Our small groups are meeting right now at 9:30am on our main campus. On Easter Sunday we will be having small groups for different age groups at 9:30am and 11:00am. You need to be involved in one in order to go to the second level of fellowship.
III. God Wants Me To Labor With His Family
Now we move from fellowship and friendship to partnership. If you think about it all partnership is - is doing your part. The church is not a spiritual spa where you come and sit and soak and enjoy the music and the message and then go home. The church is a family where every member of the family has family responsibilities. When God saves you, He saves you to serve. Every member of the family is to divide up the chores and to do their part.
I Corinthians 3:9 says, "We are partners working together for God." (I Corinthians 3:9a, TEV)
To put it another way, the church is not just a family, though it is a family. It is a team. In the Greek language, in which the New Testament was originally written, the word "fellowship" can also be translated "partnership." Success of any team is always dependant upon every member of the team doing their part to help the team be the greatest team it can be.
I am here to tell you today the greatest team ever assembled in the history of the world is the church. What we do is going to last forever. Not only are you to be a part of God's church, you are to be a partner in God's church. The church is like a puzzle and every member is a unique part of that puzzle and has a place where he is to fit in to that puzzle.
Ephesians 4:16 says, "The whole Body is fitted together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole Body is healthy and growing and full of love." (Ephesians 4:16, NLT)
Let me just stop and ask you a question right now. If you are a "part" of Cross Pointe, are you a partner in Cross Pointe? If you are a member of God's family, are you doing your share of the chores that the family must do for the work to get done? This is when you go to the third level of fellowship.
When you become a true partner in the work and you can say whether it is helping park a car, helping greet someone as they walk in to the church or changing a dirty diaper - this is my part as a partner in the family of God. God wants you to go to one last deeper level.
IV. God Wants Me To Love His Family
The deepest level of fellowship is loving believers like family. The Bible says in Acts 2:42,
"…They were like family to each other." (Acts 2:42a , CEV)
Romans 12:10 says, "Be devoted to each other like a loving family." (Romans 12:10, GW) This is the deepest level of fellowship - when you love a fellow believer in Jesus Christ, not only just like your own family, but because they are your own family.
This is what life is all about - loving God and learning to love each other. If you miss this, you have missed the real purpose of your life. Life is not about accomplishments. It is about relationships. If you ever get a chance to die on a deathbed, you'll find out just how important relationships are, because when you are lying on that deathbed, your stocks, bonds, bank accounts, property, diamonds and jewels won't mean anything to you, but your relationships will mean everything to you.
That is why those first two purposes are so vitally important - loving God, which is worship and loving God's family, which is fellowship. In fact, fellowship is so important that Jesus said,
"Your strong love for each other will prove to the world that you are My disciples." (John 13:35, LB)
I don't know what God is going to do through Cross Pointe in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years if He tarries, but I will tell you this - I want Cross Pointe not to be known for its size or its sermons or its singing or even its strategy. I want it to be known for its love for one another. I want people to say about Cross Pointe, "Yes, I know that church. That's the church where they really love each other."
That raises a question. How do you know if you are in God's family? Three verses give the answer." Anyone who does not love other Christians does not belong to God." (I John 3:10,NLT)
"Those who do not love their brothers and sisters, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they've never seen." (I John 4:20, NCV)
"But if we love our Christian brothers and sisters, it proves that we have passed from death to eternal life." (I John 3:14, NLT)
There is the proof that you are a part of God's family - that you truly love the family of God.
Ask yourself these questions.
Which of these levels of fellowship are you currently in? Some of you have never even yet chosen to belong to God's family. You've never gotten into membership. Some of you need to come to our discovery class and begin the process of being a real member of this church. Some of you need to be baptized, as your way of saying you have become a part of God's family.
Some of you need to get into a small group and go to that second level of friendship and really building spiritual relationships that will last for eternity.
Some of you need to go to that third level of partnership. Find your niche. Find a place you can use the gifts God has given you. Do your part. Make a contribution.
Then some of you need to move to the deepest level, where you are truly learning to express your love to the believers in this family, by standing with them in their time of need and sharing with them when they hurt.
That is God's second purpose for all of us - fellowship that we might be drawn closer to Him and closer to one another as the song you are about to hear so beautifully puts it.
Now, we close with one last question you must ask yourself, "Am I a part of the family of God?" You see, not everybody is a part of the family of God. Everybody is created by God, but not everybody is a child of God. There is one condition that you have to meet to become a part of God's family and without this, you will not be able to fulfill either of God's first two purposes in your life and this is the condition, "You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:26, NLT) Today, I am going to help many of you to become a part of God's forever family.
[1] Cited by Gordon Macdonald, Ordering Your Private World, pp. 125-126 (added)