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| Why Church is Messy
& What We Can Do About It! As most of you know, two weeks ago, we completed a seventy-nine week journey through the book of Romans! But all good things must come to an end… and when they do, the challenge is always figuring out what comes next. But as I pondered this problem over the past few months, I turned over the page at the end of the book of Romans and there was 1 Corinthians and I said to myself, “that will do just fine.” In a way, you could say that this series actually started back in October 1997 – that was the date we first launched into a series on the Book of John. In the nearly nine years since then, we have made our way in order (like good Presbyterians) through the books of John, Acts, and Romans – with occasional pauses along the way for topical series and Christmas and Easter. In fact, before we begin, let me put in a plug for a three-week series that we will be doing next month in the Second Service beginning May 21 about the Da Vinci Code. This is a novel by Dan Brown that has rested at the top of the bestseller list for many months; a novel that presents many serious and direct challenges to Christianity. The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction, but it purports to reveal the real but unknown, or shall we say ‘suppressed,’ history of Christianity. It contains some truly wild accusations – for example, it claims that Jesus was secretly married to Mary Magdalene and that he fathered children whose descendants eventually became the Kings of France. And that would be perhaps the most positive thing that Dan Brown would have to say about Christ! It is all downhill from there! But chances are if you are a Christian, that a friend or a co-worker will confront you sometime soon about this book or the movie based upon it which will come out on May 19. Why? Because there is a temptation for many to read this book as if it were not fiction at all; but the truth about Christianity finally revealed! Dan Brown himself in interviews seems to leave the impression that HE thinks the book is historically accurate. I have actually had one rather rabidly anti-Christian friend quote this book to me as proof that the Bible isn’t true! Which is exactly why it behooves us to be prepared to answer these questions with the real facts, not the made up ones! Anyway, we’ll be doing that series in about one month from now! In the meantime, we will continue right on into 1 Corinthians! I even did the math. At this rate we can expect to be finished with the rest of the New Testament in just twelve more years – around 2018 – and of course, then we would have to go back and do Matthew, Mark and Luke to complete the cycle! By way of introduction, let me just say that the Book of 1 Corinthians is an extremely relevant book for our Church and our time. The city of Corinth presented many of the same kinds of challenges to the church, that our society presents to us today. It was in many ways a City that exemplified the Sacred Feminine, the goddess worship that Dan Brown speaks about so fondly in The Da Vinci Code. The City was dominated by a massive stone hill something like Stone Mountain in Atlanta, Georgia or Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa… and on the top of that hill, there was a large temple to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Corinth was a goddess-worshipping town! In Paul’s day, this temple to Aphrodite was smaller than it had been before the Romans destroyed the original in 186 B.C: according to the Greek geographer, Strabo, the temple at the top of that hill had held more than a thousand temple prostitutes at one time. And still this general ethical climate prevailed. Corinth was situated at an economic crossroads. The southern part of Greece – the hand-shaped part that stretches down into the Mediterranean Sea – is connected to the northern part of Greece by a tiny isthmus of land right at Corinth. During Roman times sailors would sail their ships into Corinth and then haul them 4 miles overland on rollers across the isthmus instead of sailing them the 250 miles around the southern ‘hand’ of Greece. One Greek King and several Roman Emperors actually attempted to dig a canal across this isthmus – but each time, the project was abandoned because of great expense. It wasn’t until that late 19th Century that the canal was finally finished – so that now the whole of Southern Greece is technically an island – by the space of 22’! But the existence of the temple to Aphrodite and the position of Corinth as a commercial hub, a place where sailors gathered, helped to establish it as a center for the sex trade in Ancient Greece. In fact, in the literature of that time, the Greek word for “Corinthian Girl” came to be used as a slang term for a ‘loose woman.’ Corinth was identified as a place of loose morals! Of course, the commerce in the area and the status of Corinth as a Roman Colony also attracted a wide variety of other people and cultures to the City so that Corinth became a kind of melting-pot, housing Romans and Greeks and Jews and ‘barbarians’ all side by side in one place. Corinth boasted a stadium that held more than 18,000 people, and every two years it played host to the Isthmian Games – a kind of rival to the Olympics. In between, the various venues in town were filled with plays and musical entertainment of many different kinds! As someone has said, Corinth was “at once, the New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas of the Ancient world!” And as is often the case, the Church in Corinth tended to absorb much of the character of its place. The competitiveness of an economy based upon commerce manifested itself in the form of rivalries and divisions within the Church. The loose morals of the City translated themselves, on the one hand, into tremendous sexual temptation for members and leadership alike, and, on the other hand in reaction, a call by some people to complete and permanent abstinence from sex… which is not good for the prospect of having children, by the way! The plethora of musical and entertainment options available in the City might also have been part of what influenced the misuse of spiritual gifts within the Church at Corinth as well - out of a desire to compete with secular amusements. In fact, what becomes obvious throughout the book of 1 Corinthians really is simply this: Church is Messy! In fact, I have been tempted to subtitle the whole series on this Book, “Church is Messy!” And it is! In an ideal world the Church would be a perfect place… a place without division or rivalry or temptation; a place of purity and righteousness and unmixed motives; a place devoid of conflict and consistently encouraging and supportive… and, at its best, the Church has fulfilled and continues to fulfill those ideals. It’s just that – like each of us individually – the church also fails. And it is those failures that Paul deals with extensively in 1 Cor. In fact, in this book Paul deals with some difficult and contentious issues; issues that we still face in the Church even today! I guarantee you that this will be a challenging, thought provoking series because of it! But I thought we should begin our series this morning by looking at the two questions set forth in our title for today: Why Church is Messy and What we can do About it! And in fact, the answer at least to the first question is found in the first three verses of 1 Cor 1. Let’s open our Bibles and read it together: 1 Cor 1:1-3:
Now, knowing what we know about the problems of the Church in Corinth –about the divisions and the moral challenges in its midst – one of the leadership was actually living in an incestuous relationship with his father’s wife – these first few verses seem rather incongruous! How can Paul open this letter saying, “to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy…” when he knows that the people to whom he is writing are neither sanctified nor holy in their personal lives? How can he call the Corinthians Saints, when they seem to be acting a lot more like ‘ain’ts?’ Well, it is in the answer to that question, that we can find the answer to ours! Why is Church Messy? Well, the answer lies in what I have called the MORALITY GAP! The Generation Gap is that often seemingly unbridgeable gap between parents and children. A Credibility Gap is the difference between what someone says and what people believe … and the Morality Gap is the difference between who we are in Christ… and how we actually behave. When Paul addresses the Corinthians in verse 2 saying, “… to those sanctified in Christ Jesus,” he is speaking the truth. The truth is that EVERY Christian has been ‘sanctified,’ we are all made holy positionally in Christ! This is the basic message of the Gospel. This is why Jesus came to earth. As Peter puts in 1 Pet 3:18, “… Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God…” When Jesus called the Apostle Paul on the Damascus Road, he said to Paul, “… I am sending you to (the Gentiles) to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me...” Acts 26:17-18 NIV You will notice that Jesus did NOT say, “those who are sanctified by doing good works…” In fact, He doesn’t’ mention anything there about righteousness or being able to EARN a place in heaven at all. That idea is actually the antithesis, the opposite of the real Gospel. Instead, Jesus says very clearly that these people whose eyes have been opened, who have turned from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God… are sanctified by what? By FAITH in him! When Christ died for our sins – he did it once and for all. He died for all of our sins past, present and future… so if you are truly a believer in Christ, if you have really given your heart over to him, you are sanctified, you are holy in his sight! You are a saint – just as precious to the heart of God as Mother Teresa or the Apostle Paul himself. But here comes the problem – just because Christ died for your sins; and just because they are forgiven; just because you have been sanctified by Faith in Jesus does not mean that you are capable of ongoing personal perfection, at least not in this life… Even Paul struggled in this area! In that famous passage in Rom 7:18-19 he wrote, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing.” NIV This is the Morality Gap: it is the difference between who we are in Christ – righteous, and forgiven; purified and holy, destined for heaven; and who we actually are in practice; imperfect human beings who mess things up pretty regularly by implementing one or another of the seven deadly sins at least one at a time and sometimes all at once! The truth is that Church is Messy because WE are messy and the church is made up of us. Like the Corinthians, we bring the problems of the world around us into the sanctified halls of our own churches. Like the Corinthians we wrestle with pride and the divisions and rivalries that come about when we think too highly of ourselves; like the Corinthians we struggle with sexual sin, with lust and pornography and unfaithfulness, temptations our society holds out to us on every side; and like the Corinthians we sometimes seek the gifts of the Spirit for our own glory and not the glory of God! And every time we do these things, we drag the ugliness of the world into the sanctity of the church. All too often, we are nothing more than pigeons in God’s Cathedral. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Pigeons are beautiful birds in their own way; their bodies are delicately colored in shades of grays and browns; their necks often shine with an oily, almost iridescent rainbow of purples and blues. Great flocks of these birds surround many of the cathedrals of Europe; and from a distance, as they wheel around the bell tower in the evening light, they are the picture of grace and beauty. But if those same birds are given a place to roost in the eaves of the Church or a nearby colonnade, what happens? They sully their nests. They dirty the sidewalks with feathers and feces and old nest material. In fact, the pungent smell of their droppings can be enough to turn even the most determined visitor away from the areas where they live. And whenever we bring the ugliness of the world into the Church, we become spiritual pigeons… still beautiful, positionally in Christ; nice looking even from a distance as we display his grace and glory; but all too often ugly and unattractive up close; and just like those pigeons, when we are like that, we drive people away from the splendor of Christ’s Church because of the stench of our unrighteousness! More than once I have known people who have been attracted to the Church because of the grace and glory of God; only to be turned away by the shortcomings of God’s people. The trouble is Church IS messy… and there are at least two things we should keep in mind in view because of that fact. The first is this: it is a fact of life. As long as the church is made up of imperfect people – messy people -- like you and me; it is unrealistic to expect perfection from the whole… and it is best to accept that reality early on so as not to eventually be destroyed by the inevitable discovery of deficiencies within the Body of Christ. But second; we must never give up. The goal of our lives ought to be to do our very best to CLOSE that morality gap… to bring our lives as closely as possible into line with God’s will. It truly is in that place that we will find Unity and purity and purpose and fulfillment in the Spirit of God. As Jerry Walls has said, “In our age, as in every age, people are longing for happiness, not realizing that what they are looking for is holiness.” It’s true! It is only in the place of holiness that we can find true peace with God! I confess a little impatience with that bumper sticker out there that says, “I’m not perfect, just forgiven.” Christians like that bumper sticker, because it clearly expresses OUR feelings about the Morality Gap. Isn’t it a great thing that God has forgiven us in spite of our sins? But on the other hand, I can also understand why to people OUTSIDE of the family of God it just sounds like a big cop out. Does that mean that if you cut me off on the freeway, God has already forgiven you for it, so you are off the hook? Well, if so, that stinks! Does this mean that since your sins are already forgiven anyway, you don’t even have to try to be good! Well the answer to that question is… OF COURSE NOT! The fact that our sins are forgiven ought to inspire us to ever greater righteousness not the opposite! But still it’s easy to understand why people who read that bumper sticker might think we don’t care about sin – that we’re just hypocrites looking for righteousness in everyone else, while giving ourselves a break. Too often, Christians are like the little girl who said that she liked Santa Claus better than Jesus… and when her mother asked her why, she said, “Because with Santa Claus I only have to be good at Christmas time, but with Jesus I have to be good all year long!” But “being good all year long” is a good thing! And in fact it leads us into the answer to our next question: What can we Do About It? It’s not enough to just sit back and complain about the shortcomings of the Church… you ARE the church and the truth is that all of us are called on a regular basis to help clean-up the mess! How can we do that? Well, let me present just a few ideas: First, ANSWER the CALL! As Paul describes believers in very clear terms right in verse 2, “…to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy! NIV Don’t be satisfied with anything less than real holiness in your life! The Church is made up of the sum of its parts and YOU personally can contribute immeasurably to the purity of the church by being pure yourself. It is so easy to stand back and snipe at other Christians; to accuse the leadership perhaps; or the denomination or the clique that runs that Bible Study on Monday nights… (I’m hoping there isn’t one in our church… if so I’m not talking about you!) But it’s much harder to commit OURSELVES to a righteous life; it’s much harder to determine to be mature, confident, and wise leaders in the power of the Holy Spirit ourselves! But this is God’s call! God is calling YOU (yes you! and you and you) to personal holiness… none of us should presume upon the grace of God; we must seek to serve Him in righteousness and in gratitude for what he has done for us. How? Let me share just a few quick principles for personal holiness: First, No Comparative Morality. Don’t give in to the temptation of saying, “Well, I may not be perfect, but I’m certainly better than that guy over there!” The truth is that if you try hard enough, you will always be able to find someone who is worse than you… at least in your own mind. But the gold standard is not that other guy. God doesn’t call us just to be slightly better than someone else. He calls us to perfection. Don’t say to yourself: “Sure, I’ve got a little problem with lust… but look at David. He was a man after God’s own heart and HE had a big problem with Bathsheba. I’ve never done anything like that! What’s the big deal if I buy an adult magazine now and then?” It IS a big deal! If you start down that road, you will end up in exactly the same place as David did! Comparative Morality is a trap and a crutch. It will never bring about the true holiness in your life that God requires! Second, “No Excuses!” Especially in our day, there is a tendency to blame anyone and everyone else for our sins. I always liked the sign that says, “To Err is Human, to blame it on somebody else is even more human!” But “I was born this way!” is an excuse that simply doesn’t wash. Just because Mike Tyson was born with a little more testosterone than you or me does not make it okay for him to bite someone’s ear off. Anger is a sin – whether you were born with more or less of it does not matter! It is certainly true that each of us will struggle in different areas of our lives because of the way we are; the way that we were born. A person who has a biological tendency toward depression is more likely to be tempted in the area of inaction or despair than someone else; still it is not okay to mope around all day on the couch in front of the TV! Others might struggle more in the area of sexual sin because of the way that they were born…but still this is no excuse. God’s standards of what is right and what is wrong are not affected by your genes – or your circumstances. Don’t blame your sins on your past – no matter how checkered! Paul says that we should forget what is behind and press on toward the goal of pleasing Christ (Phil 3:12). God will give you the power to get on with your life, if you will only turn it over to him and answer the call to Holiness! Third: no Rationalization! Don’t try to justify your sins in the eyes of God – justification is His responsibility alone. This is a problem that often crops up - even within the family of God – in the area of forgiveness! When someone sins against us, it’s easy to try and justify our anger. It’s easy to say, “He deserves to feel a little heat… look at what he did to me! She should know why I’m not speaking to her! She was the one who started it!” I once had a leader in the church tell me that he didn’t have to forgive anyone unless they came to him and begged for it… what a strange twisting of God’s Word. I have also had a friend say to me, “Oh, I’ve forgiven my son for what he did; but still I don’t have to associate with him!” What kind of forgiveness is that? Can you imagine God treating US that way? “Sure, I’ve forgiven their sins, I just don’t want to have a relationship with them” The whole edifice of Christianity would collapse under the weight of that one error! The goal, the end result, of real forgiveness is reconciliation, not estrangement! We must refuse to rationalize our sins. The road to holiness is lit with the bright light of God’s Word – and in order to travel it we must be willing to allow it to reveal – not just other people’s sins – but far more importantly… our own. Which brings us to the fourth way that we can answer God’s Call to Holiness, and that is by Seeking Accountability. If you are struggling with sin in your life – and I don’t care what sin it is, whether it is pride or lust or mean-spiritedness – the very best way you can attack that problem and conquer it once and for all is by seeking an accountability partner – someone that helps hold you accountable to the holiness of God. This isn’t easy! It was Steve Green the singer who once said, “Accountability is unnatural. My tendency is to only let you know enough about me to give you a good impression. I am a recovering hypocrite.” We are ALL recovering hypocrites. We ALL like to color ourselves righteous. We all want to hold out the false front of perfection. We like to show the world a face that says, “I’m a good guy!” But behind that false front, there often lurk the termites of sin. They say that in Australia, there is a kind of termite that can devour an entire house in a matter of months. And the amazing thing is that right up until the very end the house looks pretty much normal; these termites don’t eat the paint or the drywall or the windows or the door knobs– but they chew away at the core structure of the house until nothing is left… and then it only takes any tiny shock – a slammed door or a tap with a car’s front bumper and the whole house collapses in a heap! It the same with us, when we allow sin – any consistent sin -- to creep into our lives. We can put on a good front for a while. We can do the drugs only on the weekend; we can do the porn only in the dark; we can verbally demolish our husbands or wives in private, but plaster on the smile when we are in public; but when we allow sin like that to flourish in the hidden recesses of our lives, it will eat away at the basic structure of righteousness until just a tiny shock causes it all to collapse in a heap! Don’t let it happen to you! James 5:16 says, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” Confession is the beginning of accountability. Now, believe me, I’m not saying that everyone should air their dirty laundry all over the church. I do not advocate the idea of making everyone’s secret sins public – at some point confession can become nothing more than gossip. But I strongly recommend that every one of us should find an accountability partner – someone we truly trust – and that we should confess our sin to that person and ask them to hold us accountable to the righteousness of God. Accountability is one of the best ways – in some cases the ONLY way – that we can begin to live holy lives in the Lord! Don’t settle for Comparative Morality! Don’t make excuses for your sins or rationalize them away. Instead make a commitment to godliness; at all costs confess your sins! Choose accountability! Answer the Call! But there is more: next, Willingly Confront Sin (within the Church!). Sometimes I think that we in the Church carry the command of Jesus in Matt 7:2-5 a little too far. This is where Jesus said, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” And he goes on saying…
It is true that we must always look to our own holiness first! But still I want you to notice that Jesus does NOT say that we should never try to remove the speck from our brother’s eye. He just wants to make sure that we can see clearly first. And in many other New Testament scriptures, God calls us to be willing to call one another to account in the case of sins. Take for example, Matt 18:15. Here Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you.” He doesn’t say “Just ignore it because you are sinful too,” and you are! – he says “show him his fault, just between the two of you… If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.” NIV The truth is that if we are aware of sin within the family of God, it is our duty NOT to sweep it under the rug; not to turn our backs and hope it will go away; but instead to willingly confront it and do whatever it takes to clean up the mess it leaves behind… this is a theme that we will return to later in 1 Corinthians. The welfare of the church is up to us! We are called to be watchmen on the wall! What can we do about the messiness we often find in the Church? We can answer the call to personal holiness; we can willingly confront sin; and finally we can Extend Grace. One sure sign of spiritual maturity is a willingness not just to confront sin – but also to extend the grace of God’s forgiveness wherever there is true repentance. The truth is that there will come a point when someone in this church will sin against you. It may be something as simple as a snub in hallway when you say hello and they brush right on past; it may be something I say in a sermon; or something as obvious as angry words spoken over an issue of contention at a congregational meeting… This sin may be intentional or unintentional – but one sure thing is this. It will hurt! And (listen to me), your willingness to forgive that sin and to extend the Grace of God in the situation is a sure sign of your spiritual maturity. Listen to Heb 12:14-15, great verses!
God calls us both to holiness and grace! His desire is that we HOLD ourselves to the high standard of personal holiness; but that at the same we extend his grace and forgiveness to those who sin against us. So often, we Christians get this backwards! We expect perfection from everyone else but us! We KNOW that we are sinful; and boy those folks out at the church better forgive us … but you can forget about any idea of reciprocal grace! And that’s exactly how bitter roots grow! That kind of bitterness is what creates church gypsies – people who wander from one fellowship to another in search of that perfect church… but they will never find it and (as Pastor Ellis Shaw used to say) if they ever do, then they’d better not join it, because then it won’t be perfect any more! Yes, the Church IS messy – and it’s because of you… and me! It’s messy because of us, all of us. Thank goodness, God loves us in spite of who we are! Thank goodness that he willingly gives us a second… and a third… and a fourth chance. But we must never presume on Gods’ Grace! His call… and our happiness… is found in ongoing, forward looking, personal holiness; not sin. Remember this: no one will ever regret doing the right thing! No one will ever regret holding themselves up to the high standards of God! The question is: How is your alignment today? One evening many years ago, I was here at Church for a Sunday Evening Service. I had a brand new Ford pick-up and I parked it on the street over by the Little Pig’s Restaurant. While I was in church, someone took a left turn right into the front of my brand new truck. When I came out, I found the front end of my truck all smashed in and the left front wheel was pointed at a 45 degree angle toward the curb. I took that truck into the collision repair center and they kept it for several weeks, and when they brought it back it looked pretty good – but they never could quite get the alignment on that truck right. Those two front wheels looked pretty much the same as they always had before, but they just weren’t pointing in quite the same direction… what that meant first of all is that I went through a lot tires. But even worse, as I was going down the road – especially at certain speeds – my two front wheels would start bouncing up and down, struggling with each other really about which direction they wanted to go! Holiness is a lot like that! Anything less than a perfect alignment of your life with the will of God and you will experience the same kind of negative effects that I experienced with my truck – only ten time worse. You’ll wear out a lot of tires! Sin is bad for your health! And you will experience a continual struggle, the struggle that comes when a Christian tries to go off in a different direction from the will of God! “Finally, brothers,” says Paul in 2 Cor 13:11,
“Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in
peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.” NIV |
