“When people feel dismissed,” Pastor Yami says, half way through the sermon, “they disconnect.” What destroys love more than disconnection? There is a lot at stake then, we learn, when we are rude to someone. When we are rude, we are actually judging someone, telling them that they are below us, unworthy of our time, attention, or care. Our rudeness communicates the opposite of love and often we may not even know we are doing it.
Our next steps for this week:
How do you value people?
What one thing do you need to start doing to honor people this week? Listen, ask for more time, be quiet?
The reality of life is there is no life apart from relationships. Your relationships might be with stuff, not people, but your life is relating itself to STUFF. So our heart and our goal in this series is to just be at a place where we ask the hard questions, we get into the space of trying to understand what is love really like. Now when you get into scripture, scripture has a lot of stuff to say about love. So we are are looking at some few amazing things that God has said in his word in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 of what love is.
Catch up on earlier Relationship Goals sermons: Week 1 , Week 2
Before tackling the first verse of the most classic Christian wedding reading, in this sermon Ian takes a few minutes to define love and identify the nuances of love as it was written about in the Ancient Greek in which 1 Corinthians was written. He establishes that the love referred to here is not exclusively, or even primarily, romantic love but is agape love, which expresses “the unconditional love of God for his children,” or as Thomas Aquinas wrote, is “to will the good of another.” Knowing this, he then teaches on the expression of kindness and patience inherent in love as well as the lack of envy, boasting, or pride that marks actions of true love. To follow through with living like this today, he teaches, is a counter cultural act. The question, are we really loving
Our next steps for this week:
Read and slowly meditate on each of the five attributes of love in verse 4
As you do that for each one, slowly in turn, apply Tom Wright’s suggestion and think about the following questions:
How do we see this quality in Jesus?
How do I see, or not see, this quality in myself?
How can I change in my life to achieve this quality?
What changes do I need to make to live in a loving and counter cultural way?
Ian heavily referenced Tom Wright (or N.T. Wright) in this sermon. If you’re interested in reading more of N.T. Wright’s Bible Study commentary on 1 Corinthians as we continue in this series, you can find and purchase the commentary here.
Catch up on earlier Relationship Goals sermons: Week 1
13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
As we begin our first series of 2020, Relationship Goals, Pastor Yami introduces us to the core truth of 1 Corinthians 13: love is everything. ANYTHING, no matter how seemingly good, how seemingly holy, how seemingly sacrificial, done without love is empty. But the good news is: Love is where we begin with God. The apostle Paul may sound like he is being harsh, calling our words simply noise; our powers, understanding, faith and knowledge, nothing; our sacrifices and surrenders, nothing more. But he doesn’t mean they are truly nothing, only nothing when they exist outside of God’s intent for them, motivated, fueled, and given by love.
Our next step questions for this week:
What are the things you are doing that are just noise?
In Joshua 5, the topic of H&L week 6, God gives the nation of Israel an important directive for their fresh start… and we spend the whole sermon talking about everyone’s favorite awkward topic: circumcision. As the entire generation of Israelites who God brought out of Egypt had passed away, it was time for God to re-assert his connection with his people. He commands the men of Israel to undergo circumcision before entering the promised land. Why? The ritual was a mark of his everlasting covenant with them.
Through Pastor Yami’s sermon, God uses this Joshua account to teach us about the role of rituals in our lives, about the necessity for waiting, and about how he is able to roll back disgrace and reproach and heal us from our pasts. We can all use a fresh start sometimes, whether in our relationship with God in or work we have been called to do. God’s grace was enough for Israel and it is more than enough for us today.
In the Highs and Lows series, we are going through the book of Joshua. Together, we examine the ever varying seasons of our lives by using the Bible’s story of the Israelites entering the land of God’s promise as a mirror. Reflected in this story we will find moments of celebration, of crisis, of faith, of doubt, of winning, and of losing. Sometimes we will find highs and lows both in the very same moment. A new generation of Israel wrestles with themselves and their leader, Joshua, to trust God and go where he leads them. We, too, wrestle with our own faith (or lack thereof.) No life is devoid of highs; no life is devoid of lows. And no life is devoid of God if we choose to open up our eyes and seek him, no matter where we are on our journey. Welcome to Highs and Lows.
Christianity is a faith that is rooted in tradition. From the Genesis of the Bible we see traditions set in place through covenants and we see covenants continue throughout the Old Testament. In the New Testament, we see Jesus fulfill those traditions (old covenant) and replace them with, you guessed it, new traditions (new covenant.) Traditions of various kinds can be a beautiful remembrance of something as well as a heritage shared with people of the same mind across the world, but traditions can also be burdensome when practised merely for the sake of it.
A couple of weeks ago, when Ian Farrimond preached on Joshua 4 one of the things he touched on was the command that God gave to Israel. God told them to set up the stones they had carried from the Jordan as a remembrance for what God had done, saying that they would see those stones in the future and be reminded that God carried them through the dry land. More importantly, these stones would serve as a reminder to their children, that when they ask their parents of the significance of the stones, they will be able to testify of what the Lord had done. These stones were not just traditional symbols, they were an Ebenezer (stone of help.) The stones in themselves were not special; it was what they symbolized that made them special.
In his sermon, Ian reminded us that “our greatest Ebenezer stone is the cross of Calvary, which we need to keep coming back to daily. As we come back to it, we need to take it with us as we move forward wherever we go.”
What the cross symbolizes for us as a community is the reason why we do all that we do. As we took communion this past Sunday, it was not merely a tradition but a powerful reminder of our greatest Ebenezer. As we pray for one another during the service, we practice living with the reality of the cross in our lives as a community. As we sing the words of the hymns and spiritual songs, we confess that the cross is indeed our greatest Ebenezer. As we hear the sermon, we are pointed to the cross as our Ebenezer. As our children, as well as others, watching what we do ask us “What do these traditions mean to you?”, we can boldly answer them by sharing that the cross brings power in these things that we practice every Sunday.
So why do we do what we do? Because of what God has done for us through Jesus Christ: the gospel has given us life and hope. Everything we do and practice as a church is more than just tradition or religion; we are celebrating and remembering what Christ has done with every practice and every act. Our hope as Flood Church Blantyre is that we will keep coming back to the gospel daily but also take it forward with us into the city, in our work, in our relationships and in all that we do serving and loving the city.
You can listen to this sermon as well as past sermons through our church podcast available on all platforms.
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