Shalom Aleichem...
Reflections is a weekly Christian Teaching Ministry. Each week we will talk about the Bible and lessons we can put to use in our daily life. We will try to, on a weekly basis, provide to you stories, thoughts, and just easy ways to live your life on a straight path.
THIS WEEK'S TEACHING....November 16, 2020
We continue this week in our teaching series on God and His Love for us....What is the Church??
For those of you who have attended my classes, we, many times refer to what the church really is. In the Bible “church” is by definition either all of the disciples of Jesus Christ or a specific group of believers. In 1 Timothy chapter 5, The Apostle Paul describes the church as people dedicated to doing whatever it takes to reach out and help othersWe continue in our series Hope Found Here, and this month our focus is on Hope in the Church.
Many people associate the word “church” with a building. Often something old, draughty, with uncomfortable wooden pews and a smell of damp.
I have spoken to people in Honolulu who have seen our building and did not know it was actually a church.
In fact, a number of people thought our building was just part of Kahala Mall and used for storage or something.
Some people think that church is a place where strange people go on a Sunday.
I won’t pursue that line of thought further other than saying our building is a place we come to on Sunday.
We get up, get dressed, drive through the traffic, come in sit down, stand up, sing, sit, stand, sing, sit, pray, stand, sing, sit, listen, stand, sing, drop a few coins in a the basket, pray, have a snack, and go home.
Sunday after Sunday, we can do everything on auto-pilot, and maybe we have lost sight of the fact that our church is more than just a building; we, the people, are the church.
In the Bible there are several specific terms used to define what “church” actually is...
Ekklesia which means an assembly of called-out people.
Kuriakos – People who belong to the Lord.
The local church - “the church in Jerusalem” or “the church that meets at their house”
Universal Church – e.g. “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”
The “Body of Christ” – Romans 12 describes how “in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others”.
“Body of Christ” is commonly understood and used to refer to both the local and universal body of believers.
Nowhere in the Bible is “church” defined as a physical structure or the leadership/staff of an organization.
In the Bible “church” is by definition either all of the disciples of Jesus Christ or a specific group of believers.
The words our English bibles translate as “church” are in the original language plurals, and “church” always applies to people, not a place.
For example in the Book of Acts, where the Church began and spread, the personal and plural nature of the word “church” is clear.
In Acts 12:5 when Peter was in prison it says, “the church was earnestly praying to God for him”
In Acts 14:27 when Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch it says “they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.”
In Acts 15:3 Paul and Barnabas and some other believers were going to travel from Antioch to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders there and “the church sent them on their way”
When they arrived in Jerusalem Acts 15:4 records “they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders”
Buildings don’t pray, gather, send or welcome. Nor was it only the Ministers and pastors and staff praying, gathering and welcoming, it was every person, the whole church was involved.
In 1 Timothy chapter 5, The Apostle Paul describes the church as people dedicated to doing whatever it takes to reach out and help others.
Paul says we have a responsibility, as the church, to serve and help others.
Caring for each other as well as those outside of the church is the quickest way to see Jesus change lives.
God gives each of us skills, abilities and opportunities to serve Him and each other.
In Timothy’s church, for example, the women ran a widows ministry (1 Timothy 5:16), and elders directed church affairs while others were devoted just to teaching and preaching (1 Timothy 5:17).
In the Bible, church is always a reference to people, not a place. The church is the body of believers that live out the Gospel in their words and actions.
The church is at its best when people inside the building take Jesus’ message outside the building and serve those they meet.
Sadly not every church in the world today follows the biblical definition of church.
Many modern churches would be barely recognizable to Jesus’ disciples and the leaders of the early church.
There are churches that have characteristics or perceptions which do not correspond to any of the terms used to define “church” in the Bible.
Church is now commonly defined as the specific place where Christians go rather than the people themselves.
Church is a place people only go to for special events like Christmas & Easter, or for a wedding, or funeral, or Christening or baby dedication. Over the years there have been a number of people from outside the church who have requested a dedication service for their children, not because they wanted to be part of church, but because they wanted to be able to show the dedication certificate to the local Christian school when they applied for a place for their child.
There are people who see “the church” as an outdated Institution.
There are others who treat church like a social club, a place to visit for friendship or fun without commitment or obligation.
Some perceive the church to be like a business, a company that will have to close its doors if it does not earn enough money.
Then there are churches that fall short of what God expects them to be.
There are churches where an easy message is preached, something that has more resemblance to a motivational talk than the message of the Gospel.
Sin is never mentioned. Hell is never heard of. Commitment to God, sacrificial discipleship, all are non-existent.
People attend with minimal expectations, no requirements, no intention of ever trying to fulfill the Great Commission and actually share the gospel with others.
There are churches where the services are designed to be an hour or less, after all who would want to spend more than an hour a week worshipping or learning about the one who was willing to die so that people could be saved from their sins.
I mean there are only 168 hours in the week, does God really expect people to give up more than an hour of the time He has given them to develop a deeper relationship with Him?
Yes, in fact one of the ten commandments that God gave us says we should have a day set apart for Him, Exodus 20 verses 8-11 says, “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.”
John Calvin the French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva during the Reformation taught that Jesus Christ fulfilled the Sabbath.
Calvin also emphasized because we as Christians are buried with Christ in baptism and raised from the dead to the glory of God the Father (Romans 6:4), what God requires from each of us is not only one day each week, God “requires the whole course of our lives, until being completely dead to ourselves, we are filled with the life of God.”
God deserves to have some part of every day devoted to Him. In devotion, prayer, thanksgiving, etc.
Setting apart time to spend with God is important. Making time to worship God, making time to hear the word, taking communion, to participate in public prayer, to meet together as the Church is important.
Church is not somewhere Christians go, but something Christians are.
Folks, you and I are the church!!!
Christ Centered Community Church may exist as a building, but we are the church, wherever and whenever we as followers of Christ meet together for worship, teaching and discipleship, we are the church.
During His earthly ministry, Jesus invested His time in personal discipleship and service to those in need. We are His Church when we are following His example of discipleship and compassion. We, as the church, are the hands and feet of Jesus wherever we live, wherever we work, wherever we are.
Our dependence is on Christ and one another, not on a building.
Read Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Go and make disciples. This is a command from Jesus to you and I. Jesus did not say go sit in a building and wait for the unsaved to wander in.
We, as the embodiment of church, are commanded to go OUT after the “lost”. The "lost" may not be able to, or even want to, discover the Love of Christ so it is our responsibility to bring this to them.
Jesus demonstrated His love before telling people who He is, we as His church, should also be seeking to serve the local community in love.
God has called us to serve Him. We have a God given responsibility to lead other people to Christ.
Serving Christ as His church requires us to give our lives fully to Him. Love is at the core of our faith. God loves us so much that He was willing to send His Son to die for us. God loves us and we are to love Him.
We express our love for God by serving Him and by serving others.
Galatians 6:10 says “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”
This is one of the tests of us being the Church comes in what others think of our actions, our witness when we are not within the 4 walls of C4.
Pastor and author Craig Groeschel expressed it this way “We don’t go to church, we are the church and we exist for the world”.
So, the question I need to ask is are we as the church, as a group of God’s people, showing love to the local community? Are we making an impact in this community? Are we demonstrating to our neighbors, our friends, our family, what it really means to be the church? I believe there is a strong core group of us at C4 that truly share our love for Jesus with the community. We see it in our Food Pantry, our Outreach to shelters, our Hospice Volunteer Team, the Missions in Japan, the Philippines and India, the teachings we provide and much more. However I know that these are a minority of our total population.
Be honest with yourself, when people look at your life during the rest of the week, would anyone know you are part of the church of Jesus?
The final thought is this:
Being The Church is more than coming here once a week and sitting on cushioned seats, singing and listening to a sermon on Saturday or Sunday. This also means that just watching our live-stream is not enough.
We will never change the world by going to church, we will only change the world by being the church.
May each of us choose to show the world the true meaning of being a disciple of Jesus and part of His church. I love you all:)
DID YOU EVER WONDER???
I have shared this story before but it bears repeating occasionally....
An old Grandfather, whose grandson came to him with anger at a schoolmate who had done him an injustice, said, "Let me tell you a story. I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times."
He continued, "It is as if there are two wolves inside me; one is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way."
"But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit."
The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eye and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?"
The Grandfather solemnly said, "The one I feed."
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE...A TEACHING
We continue this week with our look at the religions of the world....Hinduism: Today
We’ve already seen that Hinduism displays tremendous variety even in India. India’s place at the forefront of twenty-first-century globalization and modernization has impacted religious practice, as well. Rural life mostly has gone on as it has for centuries, despite the introduction of radio and television, but in cities, a burgeoning middle class is being changed by the secularizing influences of Westernization. India, a nuclear power, is noted for its progress in science and technology. It’s also the world’s largest democracy, and the political aspirations of its people sometimes clash with Hindu values.
This clash is most evident today in the social and economic aspirations of the Dalits (Untouchables). For centuries given the lowest jobs, they achieved legal rights at India’s independence from Great Britain in 1947. Mahatma Gandhi called them harijan, “children of God,” and India’s constitution outlawed the caste system, but just as 1960s Civil Rights laws didn’t eliminate racial prejudice in the U.S., discrimination against Dalits has continued. India has a form of affirmative action that has guaranteed a percentage of university admissions and government jobs to each caste, and there are Dalits who have earned PhDs, but they are still denied entry into many hotels and restaurants (the upper castes believe their presence would bring defilement).
For devout Hindus, the Dalits are born into their state due to karma from a previous life—to seek improvement is to only make things worse next time around. Some Dalits have protested against Hinduism entirely by formally and publicly converting to Christianity or, more recently, Buddhism. The caste issue is still challenging traditional Hindu beliefs, and change is slow. Cross-caste marriages are slowly being accepted among the educated, urban population, but in rural areas they can still result in so-called honor killings.
As Indians have migrated to many parts of the world over the centuries, this diversity of religious expression has increased even more. While Indians in East Africa, Guyana, and Bali live fairly traditional lives and have seen little change in religious practices, those who have migrated to the U.K., the U.S., and Canada face cultural pressures of many types. Lifestyles are busier, with less time for communal worship. Public education is a secularizing influence on children. The cost of land in large cities makes the construction of temples difficult, and travel distances may be prohibitive. Even so, Hindus in the West continue to practice their faith. The second largest Divali (an important Hindu holiday) celebration in the world is held in Leicester, England—ironically, the birthplace of William Carey, the first English missionary to India.
One adaptation immigrant Indians have made is in building multipurpose temples that service a broad spectrum of the Hindu community. The largest Hindu temple in the U.S., in Maple Grove, Minnesota, has seven distinct sections so that devotees of different gods can worship in the same facility. Many former church buildings have been turned into Hindu temples after Christian congregations disband, merge, or move to the suburbs. Through a variety of means, diaspora Hindus find ways to practice their faith.
Most Hindus make no effort to proselytize. Generally they see karma as universal; if a person is born into a Muslim or Christian family, that is their dharma and that’s what they should remain this time around. Other religions are, for them, just a few more of the three-thousand-plus castes. Because Hinduism itself has such variety, encompassing polytheism, monism, and even a form of monotheism, it easily adopts other faiths; Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Jain, and Buddhist minorities have lived in India for centuries.
But there have been exceptions. Not long ago a Hindu Nationalist party won a majority of seats in India’s Parliament. Their platform, in simplified terms: “India is for Hindus only. Convert or leave.” The government turned a blind eye as Hindu mobs torched mosques and churches, beating, raping, and killing Muslims and Christians. An international outcry was heard after Graham Staines, an Australian Christian missionary who cared for lepers, was burned alive along with his young sons. Most Hindus were as outraged as everyone else by the violence; the Hindu Nationalist party eventually was voted out of office. Some tensions remain, and there are still occasional outbreaks, but persecution of non-Hindus has subsided in recent years.
A few forms of Hinduism do seek to propagate the faith and encourage conversions. The Vedanta Society, teaching a highly philosophical and monistic form of Hinduism, has sent missionaries to the West since the nineteenth century and has centers in most large North American and European cities. Better known because of their street witnessing and public singing and chanting are followers of Hare Krishna. There have been devotees of Krishna ever since the Bhagavad Gita was written, but this group gained prominence in recent decades and began to send missionaries to the West. Hare Krishna groups outside India today are composed primarily of converts and have very few ethnic Indians.
Hindu belief (if not organized Hinduism) has spread even more widely in the West through Transcendental Meditation and New Age religions. TM claims to be nonreligious, but its practices are based on a yogic form of Hinduism. Yoga, now a popular form of stress relief and exercise, comes from a Sanskrit word meaning “yoke” and in Hinduism is used to yoke or join the practitioner with Brahman. (We’ll discuss New Age religions in a later teaching.)
It’s been said that while Islam has won more converts in the West, Hinduism has had a far greater influence on how we think and has, therefore, impacted more people. One clear example is the 40 percent of Americans who now believe in reincarnation. This would have been unthinkable as recently as the 1970s. Hinduism may seem to be “over there” in India, but it has become a truly global religion.
HAVE A SAFE AND BLESSED WEEK:)
Ho'omaikaʻi ka Pua iā kākou