The Company You Keep I

By the way, you've probably noticed that the North Way Notes are the shortened version now, they're going to remain that way, but that means you need to get the supplement, it's called the North Way News, a monthly registry of different things that are happening in the calendar. Scott, these are where? Information Center, I think there's some at the ushers' tables, is that right, Frank? Yeah. And back in the gym. You'll need this to fill out what's not in your bulletin or you'll miss a lot of different things. So this is how we're going to do it going forward, to kind of save paper and make things a little simpler. All right, let's read together, and we're going to read the entire 13th chapter of the book of 1 Corinthians this morning. If you have an NIV, you're welcome to read out loud with me. If you have a living Bible, don't try it, it'll be confusing. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, I thought I might do this, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Part of my problem when I read this is, this is a goal for my life, I don't quite live here yet. Should we read on? Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails, but where there are prophecies they will cease, where there are tongues they will be stilled, where there is knowledge it will pass away, for we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes the imperfect disappears. When I was a child I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, when I became a man I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection is in a mirror, then we shall see face to face, now I know in part then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love. Well it's a new year and we're beginning a brand new series of messages today. I celebrate the fact that the Christian faith is one of new beginnings, don't you? That God doesn't just give you a second chance but he gives you a third and a fifth and a tenth. I mean just how many of you are glad he just keeps giving you new opportunities to try to get it right? For people like me that's encouraging. But all of last month we were looking in God's word at messages that were designed to help us experience personal victory, messages that had to do with how you could make progress, you can overcome we call it. We talked about ways in which we could overcome apathy and adversity and insignificance and inertia was our message of last week and insecurity and so we were looking very much at how you and God related to moving your life forward. But there's another side of the Christian life that's very important and if we don't keep it in balance we quickly lose the growth momentum of our lives and that's the horizontal dimension and how we relate to one another greatly affects how we grow in God. Now the most well-known symbol of the Christian faith is what? The cross. And we all know the cross stands for the atonement of Christ, the death of Christ for our sin, the suffering place where God bore on his own son the sin of the world. But the cross is another symbol that I think is very helpful for us if we'll just consider it. I did a little overhead because the cross symbolizes the need to have, let's drop the screen down just a bit please, the relationship to God, the vertical thing that we're talking about all last month, needs to be kept in balance with the horizontal, the relationship to others. If those two things are not carried in balance then you will soon become anemic in your faith. You will soon struggle and begin to wonder why you're not growing and move ahead. I will tell you categorically that you cannot keep growing in your relationship to God if you are not growing with others. You were born into a body, that body is necessary to sustain you in your walk. Most people that I've observed in the ditches of the Christian life and in 21 years of ministry I've observed a lot of them. Most people are there, disillusioned, disappointed, discouraged, defeated because they pulled away from other believers. You say, yeah, but Jay, they got hurt by other believers and then they just moved back. But see, the thing is we're always going to have those disappointments with people but God says to us, be connected to the body of Christ. There's a security there. And so we're going to be looking over the next weeks at the community in which God has placed us, the company that we keep. Your personal experience with God can be powerful and dramatic but if you don't have the body you will not be able to continue on. Chuck Colson in his book, The Body, which I recommend to you if you haven't read it, says this. Membership in a confessing body or church is fundamental to the faithful Christian life. Failure to do so defies the explicit warning not to forsake our assembling together. That's in Hebrews chapter 10. His understanding of this prompted Martin Luther to say, apart from the church, salvation is impossible. Not that the church provides salvation, God does, but because the saved one cannot fulfill what it means to be a Christian apart from the church, membership becomes the indispensable mark of salvation. So community is essential for our growth in Christ. Now in today's message I want to talk about what I believe is the most important ingredient in the community life that we're going to be looking at over the next eight weeks. The bond of community, the glue, if you will, of community, that which holds us together. And I found it interesting how many of us would put this particular quality on the top of our New Year's God please help me list. You know what that is, don't you? I gave up making New Year's resolutions, so I called them my New Year's God please help me, and I put this one on the top of it, and it's interesting, in my Friday morning small group of men, of the 13 men present, 11 men put this particular quality as the number one priority of their life in 1996, and I think that's a commendable thing. I just, in fact, I'll encourage you, look on the sheet, see the number one priority on the top, are you looking at it on the top, it says, let love be your greatest aim, circle the word greatest. It's the highest priority of our lives. It should be number one in our lives. It's life's supreme value. It's the bond of community and folks, it's also the bond of eternity. Look at the next verse, in this life we have three lasting qualities, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love. Why is love the greatest? Well because when you get to heaven, faith will no longer be necessary because you'll see God face to face, and every doubt will be eliminated, and you'll completely implicitly trust God. When you get to heaven, you won't need hope anymore because in heaven, every hope has been fulfilled. Someone can say amen, that's pretty good news, and no more blizzards on Sunday morning. But when you get to heaven, you won't need faith or hope, but heaven will be a place where the entire environment is saturated in a tangible sense of love. Why? Because God is love. That's why it's the greatest of all the qualities that we should pursue together. God is love. Love is to be our priority. We really must learn to love. In community, if you don't learn to love, you've missed the whole point. Folks, we're not here to achieve some great things, we're here to learn to love. Let me give you five reasons why we must love. Number one, without love, all that I say is ineffective. As the cliche goes, talk is, actually, I'm finding it quite expensive as I look at my phone bill, but the cliche is, talk is cheap. Words without love are empty. How many of you have found that people can make vain and idle promises but are very empty behind because there's not love there? And it hurts. We tend to be so impressed with people who can speak well, orators, charismatic kind of people. We call them now in the 90s, we call them good communicators. As if something unique is in their life that really gives them a higher quality of life that we wish we had. But folks, words without love, the Bible says, are at best noisy bells or crashing cymbals. It's just a lot of noise. It's a cacophony. I like that word. What is a cacophony? Well, it's a dissonant sound emanating forth from a lot of different directions. It just doesn't bring peace to the soul. See, the early church had a hang-up with eloquence. When someone could come up and wow someone with their speech, the church said, ooh, they must be important. Paul's saying, look, you got it wrong. That's not the priority. The priority is love. People will say to me time and time, Pastor, my husband and I, we're just not communicating. And I often ask the question, well, are you speaking in your home? Are you speaking in love? Because love, words that are spoken in love are always received. Words that are spoken without love are often resented. So number one, all that I say is ineffective. Number two, without love, all that I know is incomplete. Listen, you might have a Phi Beta Kappa, an IQ of 165, and so many degrees after your name that they call you Dr. Fahrenheit. Knowledge puffs up. Without love, all that you know is incomplete. You can be a walking Bible encyclopedia. You can split theological hair 16 ways. You can unscrew the unscrutable and solve the mysteries of life and even have your prophetic charts all mapped out. But if all you know is stuff and you don't have love, look what it says, frightening words, a circle of them, I am nothing. Can I share with you that this was really difficult for me because we are an accomplished congregation of sorts. We have lots of knowledge here. We have lots of people here who know the Bible very well. I've got some degrees. Not enough for this morning, but I have degrees. And it startled me when I read, I am nothing without love. People want to know one thing in community. Before they care about how much you know, they want to know how much you care. And once they're sure that you care, then they respond to what you know. We're headed into an informational age, an explosion it's being called, that we're at your fingertips probably in three to five years. On a Sunday morning, if you don't want to come in and hear Pastor Jay or someone else, all you do is just push a couple buttons on your little computer box on your TV set. It won't take all these weird programs and all this computer language. You'll just pull some numbers on buttons and you'll be able to watch any preacher in America that you want to watch who's on television. And by that time there'll be a lot more. Any music group you want, you can create your own service. You'll be able to have as much information and as much sensory stimulation as you could possibly want. But you see, without love, it's nothing. I have a niece who's a very bright gal. She went to UVA in Charlottesville, University of Virginia, and then took her master's degree out at Stanford. And she came home for her Christmas break. We went to Rochester, New York the day after Christmas to visit with her. And I said, Ann Scott, tell me about Stanford. Do you like it? And she hesitated for a moment. I think she was wrestling with whether or not to be honest. And she finally said, well, you know what, I find it really difficult and I don't really like it. I said, you mean the academics? She said, no, the academics aren't that bad. She said, but all we do is go to class and then everyone just breaks up and they never meet anyplace else. And she said this. She said, there's no coming back. And this was from someone who I would not categorize as a particularly spiritually plugged in person. She said she missed the idea of just being with people. Here she is in this, you know, this ivory tower of academic knowledge, but she couldn't find community. I can know all things, but without love, I'm nothing. Alvin Toffler knew this 10 years ago when he wrote the book Future Shock. He said, the world's going to become more and more high tech, but at the same time it needs to become high touch because people need that sense of community. Thirdly, all that I, if I don't have love, all that I believe is insufficient. You know, we may think that the bond of community is doctrine, what we believe. And doctrine to be sure is important, but it's not what finally in the end holds communities of believers together. Because if it were, what would be the strongest bond in churches in America today? The ones with the strictest doctrine. And what do you normally find about the churches with the strictest doctrine? They have the biggest wars, don't they? I mean, because people just get their noses bent out of shape about a doctrine and they go, you see, it isn't doctrine in the end that binds us. It's not the what's of our belief. It's that we have love flowing between us. Fourth, if I don't have love, all that I give is insignificant. You see, you've got to give for the right reasons. Your motive is the key. If you're giving to gain recognition or get your name on a plaque or to gain prestige, if that's why you're giving. If you're giving to control others, like some adults give to their adult children so that they can kind of keep their adult kids sort of, have you ever encountered folks that are going through that? If you're giving because you're responding to pressure or to guilt, then folks, look what it says. If you don't have love, you gain nothing. The Bible says you can give everything away. You can give away rings and cars and houses and properties and assets. In fact, some of you have done that already. You know what it's called? Divorce settlement. And you really gained nothing. There has to be love. Love has to be the motivation of why we give. I sometimes encounter parents who feel guilty about their absence from their kids. And so they try to compensate by giving their kids all kinds of stuff, $150 or $70 tennis shoes that pump up six different ways and kids can get seven inches taller and, you know, lights go on when they go out at night and all that kind of stuff. And they're great. But you know what? It doesn't compensate. You gain nothing unless there's love. And fifth, without love, all that I accomplish is inadequate. I mean, you can rack up an impressive list. You can be in who's who. You can have plaques and awards and statues and certificates in your office. But if you don't have love, look what it says. It's of no value whatever. In community, listen, relationships are always more important than accomplishments. Let me say that again. In community, relationships are always more important than accomplishments. So let's summarize. Bottom of the page, the only thing that counts. Circle only thing. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Let me summarize it this way. In community, you could have the eloquence of an orator, the knowledge of a genius, the faith of a miracle worker, the generosity of a philanthropist, and the dedication of a martyr. But without love, you are a zero, nothing. And I want to say again, if that doesn't penetrate into our defense system, may God help us. Because folks, I am and you are prone to think that if we do all those things, if we say and know and believe and give and accomplish that somehow that's what really counts and it's not. That's why love needs to be in the top of your Lord help me list for 1996. See, in a short period of time, relatively speaking, we're all going to stand before Almighty God and he's going to have us give an account of our lives. He's not going to ask us, hey, what's in your bank account there? He's not going to ask us, what were your SAT scores in your grades in college? Thank God. I mean, he's not going to ask us how many awards did you get from the Chamber of Commerce and how many achievements did you rack up? What was your golf score handicap? Sorry, I had to throw that in. I mean, those are all okay. God is not against any of those things. In fact, God has allowed all things for us to enjoy. But if they interfere with our highest priority, then we need to look and see what needs to change. The Lord is going to ask us one question that day. He's going to say this, did you love me? And did you love others? Because Jesus said that's the greatest commandment, that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. Friends, can you see yourself at that moment saying, Lord, I loved you with all that I was, and I love my neighbor as myself. Now, if that's our final exam, how do we prepare for it? Well, you've got to begin by knowing what real love is. How do you define it? That may sound easy, but you know what? It's not. I mean, we say, we use the word love in America a whole lot, don't we? We love our wives. We love America. We love pizza. We certainly love the Steelers. You know, we love this and love that. There's love songs. There's romance novels. There's all kinds of movies about love. And so I started to look in and just do a little research. What does love define? What does it mean? So I took my World Book Encyclopedia. It's a little bit older, but I pulled it off the shelf, looked at it on the definition of love, and guess what? There's no article. It says love, colon, C, sex and emotion. I turned to emotion. I already knew about sex. And in the article on emotion, love is only used one time and no definition given. You see, and by the way, love is not an emotion. Love isn't something you just feel once in a while. Oh, I feel love. I just feel love when I come there. I just, well, love can cause emotion, but love is not an emotion. It is not the same thing. Why? Because God commands us to love, and you cannot command an emotion. Now, you can't say to someone, feel good. No, be happy. Yes, Daddy, I'll be happy. No, you can't do that. You can command love. Why? Because love ultimately is a choice, as we'll see in just a moment. So I didn't find any help there in my definition. I turned back to the sex article. Three pages, it was fairly interesting. Five sentences and three pages on love, but still no definition. And I thought, you know, this is typically American. We know more about sex than we knew about real love. Real love, you see, isn't physical in that sense. It's not sentimental. It's not selfishness. It's not thinly veiled sweetness. It's not saying you will when you won't, folks. One person a few years ago coined a phrase which I like. When your love is phony, it's simply sloppy agape. You've probably heard that before. It just means you don't really get it. It's not the way God ordained. Real love, as we say, is a choice. It's a choice. Go ahead and flip your page over. It's a choice. We choose to love. I mean, love isn't something that just happens to us. We hear these little phrases, well, I was just going, and I fell in love. You know, like, ka-ching, I fell in a ditch. I mean, love just went over me. I just couldn't do anything about it. I was just this passive spectator. I fell in love. Help, I've fallen in love and I can't get up. I mean, that's not the way it is. Love doesn't happen to you. Love is choosing to act in the best interests of another. That's love. And in fact, you really love more when you don't feel like loving, when you don't feel like acting. Like when it's three in the morning and, you know, baby Jennifer is wailing in her crib. Her crib. Honey, did you see how the baby's doing? Oh, honey, I don't feel like it. How many have been there before? Someone has to get up. Someone has to demonstrate love. Love is a choice. Love is a choice. Love is being patient with your spouse when he or she's grumpy, even when you want to whack them once. Don't look over at your spouse right now, okay? Let's not get anything going here. Love is a choice and love is also an action. It's an action. It's something that you do. It's not just what you feel or say. I mean, love is what, it's more than talk. It's more than smiles and sweetness. Love is revealed in what we do. It's like the guy who said to his girlfriend, hey, I love you. I'll do anything for you. I'll even die for you. And she turns to him and says, you know, you're always saying that, but you never do it. Love is giving people what they need, not just what they deserve. That's true love. Let me summarize this. I'll just quickly touch these four points because basically they're going to become messages in and of themselves as we move forward. How do you know love in the community of believers? Well, first of all, real love serves. Look at Galatians 5.13, would you? Serve one another in love. Genuine love shows itself in service. It's always helping someone else out. Now this seems to be the exact opposite of our culture because in our culture, what you see more often than not is self-service. You know, what does self-service imply? I'll take care of me. I'll take care of my need. You take care of your need. You don't bother me. I won't bother you and I'll just get it done. I am able, I am sufficient. I don't want to come help you. Folks, the fact is we love to be served. If you're really honest, there's not one of us here that doesn't like for someone to wait on us, to take care of us, to meet our needs, to bring our food, pump our gas, take care of this and do that. But you know, the real truth is that's not why we're here. And it may be a shock, but God did not plop you down in North Way Christian Community so that 2,000 people could serve you. God plopped you down here so you could learn how to participate in the life of the body by giving your gifts of service to others. And you know what? He's put these unique little abilities in all of you that if you'll express them and quit just letting them be dormant, you'll get fulfillment out of it. I mean, musicians step up here and play, but they don't play because they want to somehow just get high between God and themselves. They want you to enter in and to be blessed with their gifts. Likewise, you know, perhaps I have a gift in teaching. I don't want to hear myself speak. I don't need to do that. I want to edify and encourage you and whatever your gift might be. We did a survey a few years ago. 30% of you have a gift of helps. Many of you have a wonderful gift of working with your hands. And we discerned that that wasn't so you could, you know, build nice things for yourself and make a lot of money. It was also so that you could come and create, remember, an environment for ministry where the spirit of God can move. And folks, we need to be serving each other. And praise God, in this church, there are hundreds of opportunities to serve. Hundreds of them. Look what Jesus said, As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this, all men will know that you're my disciples if you love one another. Let me ask you a question. How did Jesus show that he loved them? Before the cross? He served them. And how did he serve them? You remember the image? He knelt down, the Bible says, and he washed their feet. Remember that? He took the towel. And I've said before, and it's worth reiterating, that act of washing those dirty feet in that culture was reserved for the lowest of the low. I mean, the slaves or the lowest rank of servants. Those were the ones who washed this filthy dirt off the feet of people who traveled back then. When Jesus Christ did that, you saw the reaction in John 13. The disciples said, don't do that. What was Jesus saying in that? He was saying, whoever you are, whatever you do unto another in my name, no matter how menial, whether it's throwing salt out on the sidewalk or cleaning up in the bathroom after people leave or going to a home and just sitting there being available to comfort someone who's afflicted, whatever it is, that's giving love. And I see it, God says, and I honor it. That's love. The Lord looked to Peter and said, do you love me? Do you love me? Peter said, well, yes, of course I love you, Lord. Then he said, feed my sheep. You see, if you love God, you'll do something. It's like that old bumper sticker that many of you have seen, the one that says, tithe if you love Jesus, any fool can honk. Have you seen that one? Why? Because it's easy to say, oh, I love Jesus, I love Jesus, I love Jesus, and all that. Folks, we can sing it and say it, but we need to learn to demonstrate it. You may not know, but every other week, a small group, half a dozen, eight people, gather, they crank up that old white truck, they have to go out and put a wire to it to get the engine oil to heat up, and then they try to push it and start it so they can drive it down to the strip district and fill it up with produce and perishables and pick up some other things and drive it all the way back here and fill up our kitchen so that 100 or so people can come and get food from our food bank after they've cleaned it and sorted it all out and set it up nicely and make it a nice experience for people who need food. They're serving. As we start this new year, I wanna ask you, are you serving? Are you showing your love somewhere? Where are you serving? Please, find a place to serve. And may I say, it doesn't need to be dramatic. It just needs to be consistent. A place of love. I mean, right now today, 30 or 40 teachers are serving our children while we sit here and receive the word and worship together. Second, real love sustains. Real love holds on and never quits. It's committed. Listen, real love is loyal to the core. The love of God believes in lost causes because God can do a miracle even on those that we give up on. If you've been here any length of time these last weeks, you've heard testimonies from several people who the world may have given up on long ago, people whose lives were full of pain and disappointment and failure and abuse, but God never gave up on them and because some other believers came along, they didn't give up on them either and now today, these people are growing in a sense of their worth in God's eyes and their purpose in God's plan and destiny. Dear ones, God tells us that he never fails us. He never gives up. Love always sustains its relationship with others. Love is a choice and the choice to give up is yours. People say, well, I just don't feel like I really love her anymore. Well, wait a minute. Love isn't a feeling and love isn't something that you can, is out of your control. You can choose to love. You know what I found? How many of you have found this? When you choose to love, the feelings aren't far behind. It's a fact. It's a fact. People say to me from time to time, you know, I love this church. It's a great church and then I ask them the question, have you gone to Pastor Scott's seminar at First Base about membership, the membership class? Well, no, because you know, I kind of believe in sort of the universal church. Then I say, well, you know what? I appreciate the fact that you like North Way, but you don't really love this church because if you loved it, you'd be committed to it. You'd make a commitment to it. What you really love is the feeling that you get when you attend here. Real love sustains. It's committed for the long haul. Whatever it costs in time or resource, and dear ones, note this very well. Our commitment is revealed by what two indicators? Our calendar and our checkbook, our time and our money. You can tell me you're committed, but if I never see you and I never receive anything from you, then whoever you are, at any level, on your family, whatever, you're not really committed. God makes it pretty easy. Look at those two categories for yourself and you'll see what you're really committed to. Third thing, real love sacrifices. Pastor Dave's gonna teach about this next week, so I'll just mention one thing about it. And I think he's gonna take a much broader view and get into relationships, but I wanna say this. You can always give without loving, but you cannot love without giving. And I mean giving sacrificially, giving of yourself, giving to a greater purpose, giving to another person. Look at Ephesians 5 too. Live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself for us as a sweet offering and sacrifice to God. Jesus gave himself as a sacrifice. You know, I have to say, I was touched by the sacrifices of so many in this recent expression that God led us through last weekend. So many stories, I brought illustrations, but I'm not gonna read them. I would rather have you hear a person who had an experience themself of having God challenge them with doing something sacrificial, something that they really, in and of themselves, didn't want to do, but God got their attention and they responded and they obeyed. And I want you to welcome, so put your hands down so you can give a warm, I mean, your stuff off your, on your hands so you can give a warm North Way welcome to a good friend of mine and a wonderful member of our church, Mr. Don Timmion. Let's welcome him as he comes. We're gonna, bless you. Thank you. Okay. I would just like to share with you what God has done in my life over the last week. I'll give you a little bit of background. First, Vicki and I moved to Pittsburgh in January of 1992 from the Midwest. And we basically grew up in a Lutheran church and for the last 20 years have attended a Baptist church in the Midwest area. And when we first walked into North Way and experienced the worship service, it was obvious that it was a very stretching experience for us. Matter of fact, it pushed us to the very outer limits. And I'm sure a lot of you sitting out there have probably felt the same way. But for the first year, we got plugged into the church. We got involved in the home group ministries and really enjoyed the worship service and Pastor Jay's preaching. But over a period of time, probably the last couple of years, I started sensing a tugging and a nudging from the Holy Spirit that I really needed to start to learn how to worship God. And even though I was well-founded in the word, I never really truly had learned to really truly worship him. And so that's one of the things that I'm really thankful for as far as North Way is how I've been able to be taught and exposed to how to really truly worship God. Which brings us to the event of last Monday. Vicki and I had been out of town for two Sundays visiting family for the holidays. And we got back Sunday afternoon. And once we got settled, I wanted to call Jack Lightbody and wish him a happy new year. And so I called and Charlie answered, Katie's father, and said, well, Jack and Katie are at the church. And I didn't really think much about that because Jack's always at the church. But anyway, when Jack got back, he called me and said, man, he says, I wish I would have known that you and Vicki were back because Pastor Jay has went to the prayer chapel and is not gonna leave the chapel until he raises $200,000. And I go, wow, I hope he has good luck. And so anyway, we ended our conversation and I turned around to Vicki and said, Pastor Jay has went into the prayer chapel to raise 200,000. I think he's turned into Oral Roberts. And hopefully he'll get out. But, and then we talked about the financial need that the church had. And Vicki and I both felt that we had fulfilled our obligation to opening our doors, actually had given more than what we had committed and just felt that it was not our issue. And that if all the other people would have followed through, it was their concern, not ours. But yet at that point in time, I felt a tugging from the Holy Spirit, but I suppressed it and we went on and we spent the evening together. And we went to bed and I really had a hard time going to sleep that night. I just, I was restless. And finally I went to sleep, but at three o'clock I got a wake up call. And in the past, whenever I woke up at three o'clock, I just blamed it on a restless night. But over the last couple of years, I've learned that many