We Are Family

This was my message for June 7. It's an example of a "balance" message. What I mean by that is that "church as family" isn't represented in any of the major series of the year. (Namely, the series of Wholeness earlier this year, the series "He Still Moves Stones" starting Easter Sunday and the fall anchor series, "The Team", which is about ministry. (Then of course a Christmas series, "Three Little Words: God with Us.") Three seasons of the year--January, May/June and September are good times to balance out what the major series don't cover.

The day became themed as "That 70s Sunday" in some of music (Matt Cooper rewrote the lyrics to "Your Love is Liftin' Me Higher" and we ended with the classic Sisters Sledge "We are Family" playing as people left.

We are Family

Ephesians 3:14-19

I have good news and I have bad news.

I know that’s an over-used opening, but, hey, it’s true.

Actually I’m a big fan of “good-news, bad-news” jokes. Here’s one:

Bad news: a guy falls out of an airplane at a thousand feet in the air. Good news: he had a parachute on. Bad news: the parachute didn’t open. Good news: there was a huge haystack on the ground right where he was heading. Bad news: there was a pitchfork lying in the middle of the haystack, tines up. Good news: he missed the haystack.

Well, I have good news and bad news about the church. The good news is that it’s like a family. The bad news is, is that it’s like a family!

When Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus, he emphasized again and again that the church is a family—the forever family of God. For example, we read in Ephesians 2:19-20:

19Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

Members of God’s household—“the family of God” like the old Gaither song puts it. Good news!

The family idea is just under the surface all throughout this letter. Same thing in Paul’s first letter to Timothy. In 1 Timothy 3:16, Paul calls the church “God’s household” and says that he wrote Timothy so we’d need to learn how to conduct ourselves as members of that household. Hmm…that implies that there are upsides and downsides of being God’s household—that we don’t automatically enjoy or appreciate or even behave right as members of God’s household. Yep, good news and bad news—the church really is like a family! All the good things that are part of the family, and sometimes the trying things as well.

But I’d still rather have the church than not! Go back to Ephesians, to 3:14-16 and read these words about the family of God. Here Paul writes:

14For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Let’s look at this passage, and the idea of the church as God’s family, using the letters FAMILY as our outline:

F: the church is the Father’s family.

In Greek, the word for Father is Patera; the word for family is patria. So he’s using a play on words here: The patria (the family) gets its name from the Patera (the Father). The Father is the source of the family. God the Father is the source, the head and the beginning of the church family.

Look again: in Ephesians 3:15, he writes, about God’s “whole family in heaven and on earth.” God’s family is here on earth, and it’s also in heaven. That’s neat! They are the ones who have gone on ahead of us, from those Old Testament believers like Abraham to people like Peter and Paul as well as people that you know and love who are already in the presence of God. What holds us together as a family more than anything else is God’s love. We have a Father who loves us, and who puts His love in us. This is the starting place of the church as God’s family. The F in family stands for the Father as the source of the family.

A: we have a family attitude

Now look at Ephesians 3:16-71a:

16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
The love that holds us together also comes to live in us through the Spirit. Christ dwells in our hearts through faith.

In these words, Paul paints a simple word picture. The Father has a huge bank of riches. On earth, riches can be gold or silver or gems or good old cash. The Father’s riches are love and joy and peace of mind and forgiveness and acceptance. He transfers some of His glorious riches over to us to strengthen us. Now we have a store of love and joy and peace, transferred from God’s account into our account, and we can draw on that and share it with one another.

How we treat one another is the measure of the reality of our faith, and the depth of our connection to the Father. In Colossians 3, one of my favorite passages about the Jesus-following lifestyle, Paul wrote a kind of “church family constitution.” Here he‘s painfully realistic about the fact that church family life can be difficult (“the bad news”) and tells us how we have to guard it. Here’s the passage, vs. 5-14—let’s read it slowly, and let it speak with power in our lives:

5Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
12Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

The F stand for the Father; the A for the loving family attitude.

M-there is a meal which unites us

Families who eat together, who take time to come and break bread together, are far more likely to be loving and enduring. Jesus knew this a long time ago, and created the Lord’s Supper as the place and time where the family would come together. Let’s pause right now and come to the table set for us by Jesus.

[LORD’S SUPPER HERE]

F stands for the Father’s family; A for the family attitude of love; M for the meal. What does the I in family stand for?

I-the family of God inspires me to look up.

Go back to Ephesians 3, and look again at vs. 17b-18:

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ…
In vs. 14, Paul said that this family is in heaven and on earth. The family comes from the Father. This family is the creation of His love, purchased by the blood of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit.

This family connects me to eternity. That means I’m a brother of King David and of the apostle Paul, and that Ruth the Moabite is my sister as well as Mary the mother of Jesus. Our common Father is the Lord God of the universe. And it’s the love of Christ that inspires me and lifts me up. I am part of the work of the Almighty God of the Universe. This is where the action is!
Look at those words again. Rooted in God’s love, Paul prays that we’ll be able to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ…

Listen! The love of Christ is wide enough to reach the whole world.

The love of Christ is long enough to stretch from eternity to eternity.
The love of Christ is high enough to raise lost sinners to heavenly places.
The love of Christ is deep enough to reach and rescue people in the pit of rebellion and to break the grip of Satan.

The family of God inspires the best in me, and reminds me of the Father’s love. This family makes me look up in gratitude to God, to look to my brother and sister in Jesus in appreciation and to look my life, asking the question, what more can I do for these family members of mine as we walk the Jesus journey?

F stands for the Father; the church is His family. A stands for the attitude we must cultivate as children of God. M is for the meal where we gather. I is for the way this family inspires the best in us.

L: the family of God is bound together by love.

So much of this passage is about love: God’s love for us, our love for God, and the love we share with one another. Three times in these short verses, Paul mentions love: “rooted and established in love” (vs. 17), the love of Christ (vs. 18) and the prayer that we may know this love (vs. 19). Hey, isn’t it clear: you can no more have a church family without love than you can have life without a heartbeat!

F stands for the Father; the church is His family. A stands for the attitude we must cultivate as children of God. M is for the meal where we gather. I is for the way this family inspires the best in us. L is for the love that binds us together.

Finally,

Y-the family of God makes me yearn for the fullness of God in my life, and in the whole family of God.

Finally, in Ephesians 3:19 we read,

19…and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Filled with love…to the measure of the fullness of God. The heart of God is that each of us would be filled with His loving presence in such a way that we would be heaven’s family on earth.
But it doesn’t come easy! How do we become more fully that family of God on earth? How does this yearning become reality? Let me suggest a few simple steps (I didn’t say easy, I said simple):

1. Get the focus right: God’s glory

“It’s not about you.” This is hard but essential. The church is about God and His glory. The church is about the crucified Lord. The church isn’t about how I feel. It isn’t about, “Hey that sister looked at me cross-eyed!” The family is about the Father. That leads to…

2. Get the pride out: serve one another

The way we really “activate” the church family experience is by serving one another. “Love one another”—Jesus’ command in John 15:12 comes alive as we serve one another. Galatians 5:13 commands us to “serve one another in love.”

We do that when we look to one another and say, “What can I do, really do, to bless that brother or sister in the family? To encourage them? To build them up? To meet a need? And also, what can I refrain from doing that would discourage them? Tear them down? Frustrate them?”

Finally,

3. Get your game on: pray for one another

Paul understood this. Think again of Ephesians 3:14:

14For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

This passage started as Paul recounts who and what he prays for. There’s a reason.

You will pray for the people who matter to you. That’s why I pray for you all, daily. As a matter of fact, that’s how I’d like to end today’s message. There’s a mic up here which you can use, and I’m asking that two or three of you would step up to joyfully pray for this church family—that we might know the full extent of God’s love and presence, and that our hearts would be united in faith and in love for one another. Family of God, let’s pray!