In Search of Company III, Company Problems

Verse 35, when James and John, the sons of Zebedee came to him, they said, teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask. Notice that Jesus right there didn't say, no you don't. Okay, it's not wrong to ask God. What do you want me to do for you, he asked. They replied, let one of us sit at your right hand, at the other at your left, in your glory. I mean, that was a bold request. I mean, that's, you know, we're talking about major league request. Jesus even said, you don't know what you're asking. Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with? We can, they answered, and Jesus said to them, you will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I'm baptized with. That was talking about the way they would die, by the way, their sacrificial death. They gave up their lives as martyrs. But to sit at my right or my left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they've been prepared. And when the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. I looked indignant up in the Greek, anekteko, it means angry, displeased, or ticked off. They were ticked off. And Jesus called them together and said, you know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. On March the 24th, the giant oil tanker, Exxon Valdez, scraped its bottom on a jagged reef just outside the port of Valdez, Alaska, pouring 10 million gallons of oil out into the sea, and then by the tides was carried along the shoreline, covering now some 3,000 square miles. What was termed the Hiroshima of ecological disasters in our country. Why did this happen? The question, of course, has been asked repeatedly over the last three and a half weeks. Was it bad weather that caused this accident? Was it equipment failure, such as a radar or sonar failure? Was it difficult navigating in that part of the port? Dear ones, the answer to all those questions is no. In fact, the worst ecological disaster in American history was completely avoidable. It was human error that caused it. And today, as we continue in our series of companies, in search of company, I want to talk about how we can avoid the disasters that wait to be happening and want to be happening in every one of our companies. I want to talk about how we can avoid those crushing times when the oil tanker of our love hits the reef and spills open its precious cargo into the darkness of the vast sea of relationships. Now, you may not consider yourself an oil tanker. Someone said I'm a love boat, not an oil tanker. That's okay. Whatever. But I want you to see yourself as somebody who has a cargo of love to give. How can you avoid hitting the reefs and being split open so that that cargo doesn't just go wasting away? I might want to say, even if you're not in a company today, and I pray you are, but if you're not, if you're not in a group of some kind, these same principles will apply to your marriage, to some of your friendships, and to every other place where you're working out a relationship together, children, with parents, and so on. Let me address, first of all, the first reef that you want to avoid. It's the reef of superficiality. Superficiality is how we all start our relationships. You meet someone, what's the first kind of thing you say? Hi, I'm so-and-so. Give your name, maybe where you're from. Hey, how long have you been in the North Hills? Well, great. It's been a nice day. Isn't it a nice day today? Yeah, it's a great day today, isn't it? Beautiful. Wow, we've been, spring's really late. Well, how about the penguins? Aren't they doing great? The who? The penguins. How many of you never heard of the penguins until this year, right? But anyhow, you know, you pass information and you give basic little kinds of transmissions to find common points of identity. That's what you're doing. You know someone that they know. You've been to the same school, or you had the same experience at Ross Park, whatever, but safe kinds of things that you translate. These are foundational times. They're necessary times, but too often relationships stay at that plane. Over time, no one takes the risk of opening up a little bit and sharing what's really going on inside of them. No personal feelings are shared or aired out. No hurts, no failures, no frustrations. Everything is okay. Everything is safe. And unfortunately, dear ones, many marriages operate on this level of communication well on into the marriage. Parents and kids oftentimes never get past the point of just saying, hi, how are you? How was school? Okay, see you tomorrow. The marketplace where you work, many relationships never get past it. Oh, well, what about the weather? And what about the sports teams? And that's it. Unfortunately, the same can be said of some of our companies. One author has called this condition of superficiality pseudo-community. It's the illusion of being in relationship when really all you're doing is just kind of, you know, touching base. Pseudo-community means it's not really there. It seems like it, but it's not really there. Dear ones, the results of that are easily verifiable. Listen, every relationship that stays down at that end of fakiness, shallowness, superficiality, listen, in the end, it will die. Now, you may stay an acquaintance. You may still stay married, but the relationship, the very reason you came together, it will die. There's something that's in every one of us that knows that relationships are for challenge, they're for support, they're for intimacy, they're for building. And if we're not there, they will die. I love what happened in John chapter 6 when Jesus gathered a great crowd. You know, Jesus had a way of gathering great crowds and dispersing them in the same breath. In John chapter 6, the crowds have been following him. Let me just read it. You don't need to turn there. He said to them, he turns to this great crowd, the 5,000 that he'd fed and so on, and he said this, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. How many know that drew a crowd? I mean, they ran the other way. Whoo! This guy has gone, what is he talking about? And he explains it over the next several verses. He's talking about communion with him. He's talking about being one with him. Verse 66, 13 verses later, says this, After this, many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him. What did he do? He got past pseudo-community. He left the false crowd-following mentality and pressed on and they said, no thanks. Most of us are too busy just to play church. How many of you are just too busy? You don't come to play church. You have a reason to be involved in a group. You have a purpose to be related to people. I don't know about you, I don't have two, three, four, six discretionary hours a week just to, you know, to come in and have a little safe Bible study, read the Bible and say, oh this is nice, this is good, and walk out the door. How many know it's for reality's sake? It's so that we can grow together to become all that God would have us to be in Christ. I received an interesting letter a week ago. I read it last night. By the way, you know, like all of you would, when I come, when I get up here, I want to believe that I'm saying God's Word to you. Wouldn't you want to do the same thing if it was you? Hello? Alright, and last night I'm praying over this message, and I pick up this letter that had gotten on my desk a week ago, and it found its way near the bottom of some pile. I opened it up, and I was embarrassed. It was a week late, and here's what this woman said in this letter. Something she learned out of two weeks ago in the message. She said, I have been and am part of a company, and can testify that many times I survived because of the fellowship. I was also convicted of my attitude toward the present active company I'm part of. I have not made anything more than surface attempts to be part of the group in the last two years that I've been there, as I've not been willing to give deeply, and I've not been willing to let my needs be known. This withdrawn nature is new to me. I'm not usually like that, but I've approached my group and made a commitment, and told them that I'm willing and want to openly share with them. She says then, in fact, we're having a retreat, April 14th and 15th. Well, I got this letter. I read it last night. I said, Lord, thank you. This woman is saying I've been superficial, and I don't want to be there, and interestingly, I called her last night. She'd gotten back from a retreat. She said it was so wonderful. When I shared really where I'm coming from, she said, you know what happened? This is very common. She said, my whole group opened up. Many times it just takes one person to risk, and that's what it is, risk sharing where they're really at. To say, you know, I'm tired, or I'm hurting, or I'm confused, or I'm hopeful, but I don't know which way to go. And that honesty opens up something that the group desperately needs to survive. When I was a seminary student, imagine this, I had an assignment to be in a small group. I said, you know, I was told it was part of my pastoral preparation. They said, well, you have to experience small group. Oh, okay. So can you imagine 13 pastoral candidates in a group? We're all official pastors here. Professional pastors unite. So we joined together on a Thursday afternoon at two o'clock. This is in Southern California. It's got to be 98 degrees out. Everybody's tired. Everybody's hot. We've been in class all morning, and now we're supposed to be, you know, sharing our lives. Well, for three weeks we met, and that group just was, I mean, it was tombstone city. I mean, we prayed those two hours would pass. About the fourth or fifth week, one pastoral student shared, well, he said, I have to tell you guys. He leaned forward and he said, he said, my wife hates the thought of me going into ministry, and she's going to leave me. I mean, just like that, the whole time, I mean, we all stood up. Wow, this guy's, this guy's life is coming unraveled. And I remember the facilitator. We called him a facilitator of the group. He said, I think Walter's just helped us to get a little deeper in our relationship. Whoa. And the next several weeks, I mean, it was really dynamic. What happened is this group of men got really honest with each other. The dear ones, God wants that for every one of us. I'm not at all advocating that every time we get together, you know, we we have to have something profound. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, though, that lets every one of us resolve to break past the propensity that we have to be superficial. How are you? Okay. Fine. Good. By the way, when you leave today, when you say hello to someone, they're gonna ask you how you are. You're gonna say those words, and they're gonna just taste like mud in your mouth. That happened to me after the first service. Someone asked me how I was doing. I had to think of a new adjective. But you know what I'm talking about. You get in your groups. You get in your companies. You get in your little ministry companies. Be willing to risk a little bit, and to say, this is where I'm really at. You'll be amazed at how that will precipitate profound insight. God has given you one another in those groups to help you through. I'm amazed at how much wisdom the people around me have. I just need to get in touch with them. I just need to open to them. Let me share one other thing about superficiality. I've also discovered that every one of us is battling with something. Now everyone around, you know, I look out here now, there's so many smiles. Well, there were a few minutes ago. There's some nodding. There's many smiles out here. People are happy. But how many of you know that every single person in this room has something that isn't just where you want it to be? How many of you agree with that? Hold them up there just a second, please. Now, just note, folks, that there might be one or two hands that just didn't go up because you don't want to participate. But I virtually, every hand is up. Thank you. Every hand is up. Would you take that as an encouragement that you can be sure that if you have something that needs to be talked about this week, that the next time someone else may have something and it's okay. There's nobody that has it all together, especially not me. When I have my home group, I don't say, well, come on, Scott and Tom, show me all your problems because I don't have any. That's not the way it is. We all have needs. Some of you may be battling with overt addictions and problems in your relationship at work or maybe you have a temper. But some of you may have very subtle little judgment problems. Some of you may have some very, very out of the way, kind of in the closet sort of struggles that you have. You say, if they ever knew that about me, they wouldn't let me back in the group. Oh, yes, they would. In fact, more than you know, people have the same problems. They just are waiting for someone else to have the vulnerability to say so. We need to be the kind of church where people can be real. I said a year ago, the only reason some of our great leaders in the church fell is because they didn't have a group of people they could be real with. We needed to learn from that. Number two, let's avoid the reef of conflict. This is a jagged one, folks. The reef of conflict is a jagged reef. It is inevitable that when you get into a company, it won't be long before you find someone in the company that you don't like. Everyone said, there'll be someone in that group that does something that really bugs you. They come late every time. They never open their Bibles when the leader says open their Bible. They always think they have the answer to everything. They know, you know, they know the day Jesus is coming back. They've got everything down. You know, it's all lined up for them. They talk. I mean, when it's time to share, the leader says, let's each take two minutes and share. They take 25 minutes. You know what I'm talking about. These kinds of things will drive us buggy. And sometimes they literally do upset us to the point where we're angered about it. And conflict, you see, is a very important thing, because once it happens in the group, literally just two people in a group of 12 or 14 can bring the whole group to dead stop. How many of you, as company members, are perceptive enough to know when two people are battling it out? I hope so. Sometimes it's very obvious. Sometimes it's very subtle. You know, they'll come and they'll sit like this. And when the brother they, they don't like starts to share, they go. And they fold up. I mean, it doesn't take a lot of wisdom sometimes. And what happens if we don't address that, the group, the interchange, the exchange that's supposed to go on, the dynamic that you want to be there absolutely stops. And then after a while, you know, how's the group doing? Oh, well, we're okay. No, it's not. It's dying. So what are you going to do about these conflicts? What are you going to do about the, are you going to push him down? Are you going to say, well, I don't, who am I? I can't say anything to him. I mean, he's more mature than I am. Or, he's more imposing. He's a stronger personality. What are you going to do about it? Dear ones, what happens, one of two things. Either, number one, you push it down and you put, you say, I'll repress it, get it out of the way. Or, here's the worst thing, I'll go talk to somebody else. I can talk to Jim about Dave, even if I can't talk to Dave myself. And many groups, many companies have ended up on the reef of broken relationships because somebody decided to start talking. God help us. Murmuring, complaining, and grumbling about people in your company to someone else is never of God. Never of God. Let me commend you to Matthew 18, verse 15, when Jesus said these words. If you have ought against someone, what do you do? You go to them, one-on-one, personally, go to them, one-on-one, personally, go to them, one-on-one, personally, go to them, one-on-one, personally, go to them, one-on-one, personally, go to them, one-on-one, personally, go to them, one-on-one, personally, go to them, one-on-one, personally, go to them, one-on-one, personally, go to them, one-on-one, personally, go to them, one-on-one, personally, go to them, one-on-one, personally, go to them, one-on-one, personally, go to them, and share your struggle. You say, well, I can't possibly do that. I mean, they know more Scripture than I do. They've been in the church seven and a half years. I've only been here one year. Listen, dear ones, to not do that is to be inauthentic. It's to be unreal. It's to allow yourself to stop dead in your tracks in that company. And I know it's a struggle. Listen, I know it takes a lot of courage to go to someone. I would suggest this. Go and say, you know, I really appreciate you. I like you, but this is where I'm having a problem. You may find that it is your problem. Maybe you didn't understand them correctly, and then you can say, well, I'm really sorry. Most of us would be happy if someone came to us rather than hearing about it from somebody else, amen? Boy, it's so destructive. That's why Jesus said, now, if they don't listen to you, and you think that you legitimately have the information correct about their attitude, then go to someone else and say, would you go with me? Because I can't seem to work this out. Marriages desperately need to do this. Sometimes divorces would be averted if husbands and wives could go to each other and talk. Say, this is where I'm having a struggle. I don't know how many times groups have fallen prey to this thing, and I have a name for it. It's a disease. I'm gonna call it RAIDS. It's Relational Authenticity and Integrity Deficiency Syndrome. And RAIDS is a contagious disease. Because once one starts talking, holds back, the rest of the group picks up on that. And once that integrity is eroded, I don't, it rarely ever comes back. Now, I hope, I'm glad you're laughing because it says to me that you're relating to it, but I don't wanna minimize how destructive RAIDS really is, folks. I don't wanna be part of a church. I don't wanna be part of a company that's not real with each other. And again, I'm not talking about wearing all of your emotions out here. I'm saying there's, no, I'm not saying, well, we always just pour our guts out. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, though, let's realize that God's called us to be together, to grow up, to make progress, and if we're not, let's say so. Let's help each other. We can do it, and we can make a giant difference. One more thing about conflict. If you sign on in your company for the purpose of growing, is it possible that the person that you have the greatest conflict is the one God chose to help you grow up? Now, someone said, yeah, but why'd I have to marry him? I mean, that's not a problem here, though. Is it possible, though? I'm serious. Someone said that the sharpest knife is the best to work with, amen? And that person may just get you just this way, and they may just cause you pain when you're around them, but possibly, if God doesn't work out the situation so that they change, maybe God is doing something to have you change. Maybe he wants you to learn agape love. I don't often say some things to promote, but Wednesday night, we had a wonderful gathering here. We talked about love, 1 Corinthians 13, and we saw that Wednesday night. I wanna urge you to come Wednesday nights. If you're not already coming, I wanna urge you to consider. You need the balancing input of expositional teaching and the messages on Sunday. We talked about love is patient. Love is kind. It's not envious or boastful. It's not rude. Dear ones, it's not difficult to love people that you like, but it's a major league challenge to love the ones you don't like, and when you learn love is when you learn to love the ones you don't like. Could it be that God just let that one that you have a conflict with be right there so you could learn love? You say, well, does that mean I just lay down and let them have their own way all the time? No, it means you honestly sort through, and you say, listen, a little conflict is good. Does Jesus ever have any conflicts? Did he? What'd he say to Peter when Peter told him where to get off? When Peter said, you can't do that, Matthew 16, 22. What did Jesus say? We got a problem, Peter. Get behind me, Satan. Church, I wanna say to you, God can use even conflicts to build us up. I wanna challenge you. Before you run off or withdraw or stuff it down or retreat, I want you to say, God, I praise you for this conflict because you're gonna bring love into my life as a result. I'll tell you, it'll change your attitude toward even the people that you don't get along. Number three, the third reef to avoid is the reef of personal ambition. And this is what we saw so clearly here in Mark chapter 10 today. Good old James and John, sons of thunder. They wanted it their way. They wanted Jesus to give them the top spot. By the way, why were the 10 upset with him? They wanted the spot. They wanted to be the ones that sat up there. And I have to say, see, personal ambition, I'm not using. Many people in our church or who are investigating our church who really wanna manipulate the situation so that they become king of the hill. I don't believe we have. But what I find more often than not in groups that have struggles is that people kind of feel that they know best what God wants to do there. If they perceive that the group needs to worship more, that's probably right because they think it. Or if they feel there should be more gifts of the Spirit or there should be more work days or there should be more Bible study, because they think it, they think it should be that way. And in effect, they manipulate the group to their agenda or to their needs or to their perspectives or to their experiences. And I have to say, many times, it's the more perceived to be more mature people. Jesus said, if you're really more mature, if you're really the greatest of all, what will you be? The servant of all. And I am looking, I am praying for people who will come into companies and say, hey, right here, I can serve. I can support this leader. I can provide this gift. I can stand alongside of these in need because those are the kinds of people that God is looking to pour out His Spirit upon and raise up in this congregation. I need to say a word also to those of you who are in companies that are closed off. Do you know that a company can get very introspective? Very introspective. And I want to pray with you that if your company has just basically said, well, it's going to be week 10 or week 12, and I know how many of you find it's difficult to maintain a balance of honesty and reaching out. You get close and then suddenly say, well, here's five new people. Whoa, and it takes a while again. However, however, two things I'll say. Number one, if your group has designed a particular challenge for the next six months, then make it that. Say at six months, we'll reevaluate, then we'll open up again. Make it a closed-ended commitment. Or number two, trust that God will give you the grace to open up a little bit. When He wants to send you someone new, that He's sending that person in there to teach you love. Because you see, love, I love this definition. I wrote it down. What love is for your group is not primarily an emotion, but an aggressive, benevolent, sacrificial, outgoing expression of His good will. An aggressive, benevolent, sacrificial, outgoing expression of His good will. Dear ones, God's called us as a people to grow up in maturity, to carry love into this darkened generation where one in 10 of your peers cares enough to go to church. It will only happen as we learn to spread the care out through all these different companies. By the way, I hope you notice, we put up all the company signs again. These are just some of the ministry, most of the ministries that we have, plus our home group ministries. And new ones are being formed. We want you to connect where you're gonna be supported, loved, and encouraged, and where you're gonna avoid these reefs. And if you should hit them, listen, I pray to God when you hit the reef of superficiality or you hit the reef of personal conflict or personal ambition, that you won't yell abandon ship, but that you'll work alongside of the people in your company to restore the direction God has for you. Dear ones, it is worth it, it is worth it. What God does in us through one another is a great miracle. Next week, I'm going to talk about the rewards of being in a company and what it can mean to your spiritual growth. But together, shall we commit ourselves from this point on to avoid these reefs and to grow together? Shall we do that together? Let's stand, shall we please? Let's stand and pray.