God Loves Children

It was just about this time of year 22 years ago.  We had just moved to Bedford to start what would eventually become Cornerstone and I had to fly to Colorado to attend what was called “Church Planters Boot Camp”, an intensive week long training session that included men and women from around North America.

And part of the process was each church planter was assigned a coach who would work with them through the week and would provide additional coaching as needed.  My coach was a man named Jim Griffith, who had two things going for him, he had planted 5 churches up to that point and more importantly he looked like Tim Taylor who was riding high with “Home Improvement” at the time.

Because of my experience with Jim as a coach we had the opportunity to bring him to the district a few of years later to talk to church planters and re-planters.  I remember that because it happened during the Ice Storm of 1998 and it was a crazy drive to the conference and because of two things that Jim told us at that conference.  

The first thing Jim told us was “There are three ways to measure a person’s commitment to the vision, money, money and money.”  As a matter of fact, Jim said that when someone told you how committed they were to what you were trying to accomplish you had to quote the phrase from the movie Jerry Maguire, “Show me the money”. 

Not everybody will agree with that.

The second thing he taught us has proved invaluable through the years, he said “The person who will decide to come to your church the first time will be the wife, those who will decide to come back will be the children.”

Now I know that is a generalization and that all generalizations are wrong but bear with me.

He went on to say that if we were asked to meet with a family that we should go as a couple.  He said that the two guys could talk about anything, sports, hunting it really didn’t matter.  But the women would talk about the new church.

And we would do that, I would talk to the husband and Angela would talk to the wife and it would work.  I can imagine the conversation after words, she would say “Well, honey what did you think?”  and he would say “He’s an idiot, doesn’t know anything about sports or hunting and he’s a Habs fan.”  And she’d say “Angela told me what their church is like and it sounds amazing, I think we should go this Sunday.”  And they would.

And the second part of the equation was equally true.  We have discovered that life is too short to fight with kids about whether or not they wanted to go to church.

When you and I were growing up, kids were expected to be seen and not heard, to a certain degree.  We certainly didn’t have an opinion on things like where we would go to church.

But life has changed and the reality is that children often make those choices, or at least have a voice in the decision making process.

 And we have embraced Jim’s advice. 

From the beginning Cornerstone has tried to offer a top notch kids program, and it has cost us time and it has cost us money and it has meant that we have to constantly recruit the very best volunteer base that we can.  That was true when we had to find eight out of the sixty who called Cornerstone their church home and it is equally true today when we have to find eighty out of the four hundred who call Cornerstone their church home.

And so for the first twelve years of our existence Angela headed up our children’s ministry, you seeing a theme here? She also played piano and led worship and led our women’s ministry for the majority of those years.  A well trained monkey could have done my job, but without Angela there would have been no Cornerstone. 

For the past 8 years Marilyn has led the children’s ministry team.  And our children’s ministry is still a major priority at Cornerstone, in time, effort, money and volunteer commitment.

And the passage that was read this morning explains it even more than Jim Griffith’s words do.

We are in the closing chapter of the story of Jesus’s ministry.  He is making his last journey to Jerusalem.  A journey that will ultimately end with him nailed to a cross. 

And as he makes his way to Jerusalem he continues to teach and impact the lives of the those around him.  And we pick up the story in Mark 10:13  One day some parents brought their children to Jesus so he could touch and bless them. But the disciples scolded the parents for bothering him.

We’ve all seen the paintings and pictures and there are a couple of problems with those.  The first is where did the Swedish kids come from?  Seriously.  The second problem with the picture is the age of the kids, you see the word that all three of the gospel accounts used for children actually refers to infants.

So this was kind of the equivalent of having your baby dedicated. And we don’t know why these parents wanted Jesus to bless their children.  Perhaps they had witnessed some of Jesus’ miracles.  Maybe they had seen Jesus heal the sick and figured that an ounce of prevention would be worth a pound of cure.  Kind of like having your children vaccinated. 

Or maybe they truly saw Jesus as God’s son and were looking for a spiritual touch from him, or maybe they were dedicating their children to him.

Or maybe they just wanted their children to be touched by someone famous.  The reason people let politicians kiss their babies.  

We don’t know the reasons, but we know that the disciples weren’t having anything to do with it and the bible tells us they scolded the parents for bothering Jesus. 

And I know the guys get a lot of grief over this, but let’s cut them some slack.  Everyone is a little tense heading to Jerusalem.  Jesus knows that the end is close and while the 12 may not have known the details they knew that something big was up.

And with the pressure of time they probably saw this as one more interruption that they didn’t need. 

I would suspect that if the parents had of been bringing sick kids to Jesus there wouldn’t have been a problem. Sometimes we are quick to elevate the physical needs of our children above the spiritual needs.  I have more people ask me to pray for their kids’ physical needs then I have people ask me to pray for their kids’ spiritual needs.  Just saying.    

Let’s keep reading in the story.  Mark 10:14  When Jesus saw what was happening, he was angry with his disciples. He said to them, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them!”

It’s not often that we see Jesus getting angry, other translations say that he was greatly displeased or indignant but you get the picture, he wasn’t a happy camper.  And he told the disciple to do two things here.  1) to let the children come and 2) to not to do anything to stop them.  

So what do we learn from the story?  Why do we need to go out of our way to insure that the children will come to Jesus?

The first thing is we need to realize that It is Important for our Children and the Children of Others 

As Christian parents we have the primary responsibly for introducing our kids to Jesus.  It’s not Deborah’s job in the nursery, or Marilyn’s Job in Cornerstone Kids, or Stefan’s job in Consumed.  It’s your job. 

And maybe you think that it’s best to allow them to make that decision without you, or to wait until they are older. 

Seriously?  We don’t let our kids decide if they will go to the dentist, or when they will go to school or to the Doctor.

It was Frank Sonnenberg who wrote “If you don't pass your values on to your kids, someone else will.”

And Lenin said “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”

You have the primary responsibility to introduce your children to God, but we want to be here to help and to help with the journey.  And we need your help, not just with your children but with the children of others.

It’s easy to be passionate about what our kids are being taught but our responsibility has to go beyond just our kids.

Sometimes we have parents who will be willing to serve in Nursery, Children’s Church, Junior Church, Ignite or Consumed, that’s our youth ministry, as long as their children are part of the program.  But it can’t just be about your kids, there are other children as well who need to hear the story.  Other kids who need to come to Jesus.

And it takes special people to reach them.   You understand that not everybody at Cornerstone can teach children.  There is a process, and that is why we don’t advertise that we need volunteers.  Because we aren’t looking for warm bodies we are looking for ministry partners.

Before someone is asked to teach we discuss your possibility as a staff, then a personal invitation is extended, there is an interview, there are references to be checked and training that has to happen.  Police forms are filled out and checked.  Why? Because this is important.

We were in a church on vacation once and part way through the service the pastor announced that so and so was going to take the children out to children’s church.  A half a dozen kids got up to go out but so and so wasn’t there.  And so the pastor says “Is there anyone who can take the children out?” 

And nobody responded.  Now we knew the pastor so Angela volunteered and the children were sent off with a lady who had been in that church six times in her life.   That will never happen under my watch at Cornerstone.

But the question is still; why is it so important?  Because Jesus said  “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them!”

It’s Important for the Church’s Future

The church is always one generation away from extinction.  We attend churches while we are on vacation.  And more times than not they are small churches, because I remember pastoring a small church and how encouraging it was to have visitors. 

Just as an aside, do you visit churches while you are on vacation?  Or do you take a vacation from God as well?    Seriously there are all kinds of churches out there and most of the people who go to them don’t bite.  Or at least don’t bite strangers. 

There is a message about the importance or lack of importance of corporate worship that you are teaching your children.  That was an aside.

But all of those small churches were lacking one thing, children.  Oh there might have been one or two but primarily they were churches full of old people, and we’ve been back to visit some of those churches only to discover them closed.

And they weren’t always like that, if you look around the churches, which I sometimes do, you’ll see classrooms and toys and posters that remind you of a different time.  But that was then, and they didn’t reach out to families with children and what holds true for local churches holds true for denominations and for the church as a whole.

Our city is full of empty churches that were once full of families and children. 

If we don’t reach the next generation, there will be no future for the church.  Throughout the book of Acts in the record of the early church it talks about whole households coming to faith.  And in Paul’s letters he addresses both parents and children.

Why was reaching children important to the early church?  Because they understood that Jesus said  “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them!”

But It’s not just the future of the church,

It’s Important for Our Children’s Future 

If we believe what we say we believe about there being a heaven to be gained and a hell to be shunned then reaching children should have an eternal importance.

We are not just teaching your kids bible stories and morals; we are leading them toward a relationship with Jesus.  Why because we think it important that they go to heaven and not go to hell. And it should be important to you as well.

When you see the teens who are baptized at Cornerstone, they are often teens who have been brought up at Cornerstone, brought up being taught and led toward that relationship.

Jesus said in John 14:6  Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” 

I understand that Church isn’t the only thing in your family’s life, and I understand that church activities aren’t the only activities that you have your kids involved in. 

But listen carefully, their eternity won’t be determined by how high they can jump in basketball, how fast they can skate in hockey, how many flips they can do in cheer or how goods their marks are in school.  Their eternity will be determined by whether or not they know Jesus.  And while you can’t make that decision for them you can do everything in your power to make sure they have every opportunity to make that decision for themselves. 

Remember what the bible tells us in Proverbs 22:6  Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it.

They will need to make their own decision, but we are responsible for directing them unto the right path to start with.  Why?  Because Jesus said  “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them!”

But it’s not just because for the church’s future or the future of our children.  L

Psalm 112:1-2  Praise the LORD! How joyful are those who fear the LORD and delight in obeying his commands.  Their children will be successful everywhere; an entire generation of godly people will be blessed.

It’s Important for our Children’s Children’s Future    You understand that the values that we pass on to our children, they will pass on to their children.

The Prophet Hosea was speaking of how the people of Israel had rejected God and the consequences of that decision for the next generations when he wrote Hosea 8:7  “They have planted the wind and will harvest the whirlwind.”

We are reaping the seeds that were sown a generation ago.  For two thousand years church was a priority in the lives of Christian families.  It was what they did on Sunday.  They worshipped together as a family.

Earlier I spoke about those churches in the city and around our country that used to be full, many of them were built for the children of the baby boom, but at some point church became less and less important for the boomers and because of that it became even less important for gen x and y and the millennials. 

In a moment of introspection, what values are you passing on to your kids about the value of church attendance?

Has church become the thing you do with your family when there is nothing else to do?  There are no games, no practice, no chores, no family visits, no camping?

And maybe you are thinking, “but Denn, if church takes priority over sports and other activities it will teach my kids to resent the church.”

Really?  What will it teach your kids when sports and other activities take a priority over church?

We have parents at Cornerstone who take their kids to cheer or hockey or soccer on Sunday and still get them to church, they might be wearing their uniforms and might be a little sweaty, but that’s ok, they’re here. And kudos to those parents.

  

It was Aristotle who wrote,  “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.”

And it’s because we hold the future of our grand-kids in our hands that Jesus said  “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them!”

If I was to ask you “Who was responsible for more people coming to Christ, Billy Graham or Edward Kimball?”  What would your answer be? 

Most of us are very familiar with Billy Graham and have never heard the name of Edward Kimball, so it seems the answer would be an easy one.  Edward Kimball was a Sunday School teacher and one of his students who he introduced to Jesus was a boy named Dwight L.  Moody. 

Yes, that Dwight L. Moody, the man who went on to become one of the most influential evangelists of the 1800’s.  And one of Moody’s converts was a man named Wilbur Chapman, who would also go on to become a preacher. 

In the late 1800s a professional ball player by the name of Billy Sunday committed his life to Christ, Sunday would eventually leave Baseball and become an assistant to Wilbur Chapman, who mentored the former baseball player and through that process Sunday became the Billy Graham of his day, or more correctly Billy Graham became the Billy Sunday of his day. 

At one of the meetings where Billy Sunday was preaching a man named Mordecai Ham turned his life over to Christ. 

You kind of see the pattern here right?   Yep, Ham also became an evangelist and it was during one of his meetings in Charlotte North Carolina that a young man named Billy Graham committed his life to Christ. 

Yep that Billy Graham, the man who is reported to have preached to more people than anyone in history including the Apostle Paul.

So, I’ll ask you again, “Who was responsible for more people coming to Christ, Billy Graham or Edward Kimball?”  The evangelist or the Sunday School Teacher?

And it is because of that that Jesus said  “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them!”

And maybe you are sitting there thinking “Denn, you are making us feel guilty.” 

Perfect, I love it when a plan comes together.  I don’t often play the guilt card, but this is of eternal consequence. 

Ed Stetzer, is a Baptist preacher with two master degrees and two earned doctorates, he has planted numerous churches, lectured around the world, I’ve heard him in Orlando and Sussex, and written 15 books on church health and church planting and is the executive director of Lifeway Research. And after years of research and study Stetzer has come to the conclusion that  “Too many churches love their traditions more than their children.” 

And so the question is: What do we love more than the children of Cornerstone?

And when you are thinking of your answer remember the words of Jesus who said  “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them!”

God Loves Lost People

If you’ve been around Cornerstone long enough you have probably heard our mission statement or perhaps you’ve read it on our website.  Late in the last century when Angela and I were dreaming about what this church would look like we were told that an important part of that process was to develop a mission statement and so we did. 

22 years ago when people asked us what we were about we could tell them with conviction “Cornerstone Wesleyan Church exists to reach pre-Christians through dynamic worship and relevant preaching, bringing them to a life expanding relationship with Jesus Christ and guiding them into a practical holiness as evidenced through the fruit of the Spirit.” 

And sometimes when we would parrot off our mission statement we would have other Christians question it.  “Why do you call them Pre-Christians?  You’re just being mushy, it should be the lost or sinners” or “Why don’t you talk about them getting saved?  What’s with the Life expanding relationship stuff?”  “You’re just pandering to them with your relevant messages and dynamic worship; we didn’t come to entertain the world”

So early on we learned to defend our vision, we refer to folks as pre-Christians because we believe that we are going to reach people who aren’t Christ followers yet but that they will become Christ followers, thus they are not non-Christians they are simply pre-Christians. 

We talk about Life Expanding because we believe that when you come into that relationship with Christ it not only gives you the promise of eternal life in heaven when you die but it gives you a better life, an abundant life, a changed life, an expanded life here on earth.

And the relevant preaching and dynamic worship is just part of the plan, if we expect folks to connect with Cornerstone then we are going to have to take the first step.  That when they hear the messages they don’t leave saying “So what?”  

Instead the messages will be relevant to where they are in their lives right now and they can apply it to their lives where they are today.  And dynamic worship, why not?  People ought to enjoy church.  Most of us don’t listen to 500 year old music played on an organ the other six days of the week so why would we do it on Sunday?

And that dream started during my time in Australia, I read a book by Robert Kriegel called “If It Ain’t Broke Break it”  it is primarily a business book challenging people to think outside the box.  Then I picked up a book by George Barna called “User Friendly Churches” that highlighted a number of new churches that were making a major difference in how they did “Church” 

And then it all came together in a week long seminar I attended in Brisbane in the winter of 1992, it was actually summer in Brisbane, but that just gets confusing.  Bill Hybels and a team from Willow Creek Community Church spent a week presenting a conference entitled “Building a Church for the Unchurched”, during the conference he referenced a book written by Lee Strobels called “Inside the mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary” and I was smitten. To have a church that was intentional in their purpose, intriguing. 

For the first ten years of my ministry the thought had been “If they are serious about getting saved they’ll come to church the way we’ve always done church.” They’ll sing our songs, they will learn our language and they will adopt our customs and in the end if they stick with it long enough they will meet our God. 

But what if we sang music that at least the style was familiar to those outside the church?  What if we made sure that we didn’t use words that unchurched people were unfamiliar with?  What if we used videos of things they were familiar with? 

What if we took the time to explain things like communion?  And that was the dream that this church was based on, that we would endeavour to reach the pre-churched, the de-churched and the un-churched.

After all we are told in John 3:16 “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.  And that thought is reiterated in Romans 5:8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.  So if God loved pre-Christians enough to give his Son and Jesus loved pre-Christians enough to give his life I would think that we should be willing to give up our traditions and preferences for them, if that’s what it takes.

And so 22 years later our mission remains the same, although sometimes we shorten it down to say “Cornerstone exists to reach pre-Christians” or most times I will simply say “Cornerstone is here to help depopulate hell.”  And I believe that, I believe that there are people today in our church and in our community who will go to heaven because of who we are and what we do and that wouldn’t have been the case if there had been no Cornerstone.

But sometimes I still have pastors or believers from more traditional churches accuse us of pandering to people, or watering down the gospel and dumbing down the message.  Oh well. I am reminded of the story told about D.L. Moody, apparently someone asked Moody how he reached the lost.  When he told them they informed him they didn’t agree with his methods so Moody asked “How do you do it?” to which they replied “I don’t.”  Moody answered “I like my way better.”

Our story begins in  Luke 15:1-3 Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them! So Jesus told them this story:

Two thousand years ago it was the same as it is today.  Religion was sometime seen as a closed club, you came to God on the terms of established religion, you learned their language, you sang their songs and you understood their rules, both the written rules and the unwritten rules. 

And Jesus began to shake that up, instead of expecting those who needed God to take all the steps Jesus made it easier for them.  He taught in fields and market places, in people’s homes and with simple stories that people could understand.  And the religious establishment got a little cranky because they were feeling threatened.

 So Jesus did what Jesus so often did, he told them a story.   It wasn’t a theological dissertation, it wasn’t a sermon filled it religious terms and words, it was just a story. 

When we lived in Australia, it is a beautiful country filled with wonderful people who are far from God, and I discovered that in most social settings if people asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was a pastor it became a very different conversation, they shut right down.  So often when someone asked what I did I would tell them “I’m a story teller” and that would often move them in a direction where we could talk. 

But back to the message, this chapter is one of the most loved chapters in the Bible; it contains the story of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. Or as he is often referred to “The Prodigal Son.” 

There are times that people will talk about these as three separate parables but the reality is that there is only one parable, there are simply three parts to that parable.   It is like a montage, three pictures in a single frame, brought together by a single overriding theme, it would appear that Jesus was defining three types of lost. 

So let’s start at the beginning, Jesus looks at the religious leaders, don’t know if he was sad, frustrated or angry that they didn’t get it but he begins his parable by telling them.  Luke 15:4 “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it?  

In the first instance The Sheep Was Lost Through Its Own Carelessness The story would be familiar to anyone who had ever tended sheep because they really weren’t the brightest of animals.  Most of what I read this week about sheep would imply that they aren’t the sharpest knife in the animal drawer.   If I wasn’t so sensitive and careful with my words I’d probably say that The Sheep was lost through its own stupidity.  But I won’t go there.

A sheep is driven by its appetites and the immediate, it has no long term plans or desires, its main concern is simply to find food for right now.  And so with its head down the wayward sheep eats and wanders and wanders and eats until it has wandered far from the safety of the flock.

Its wandering is not a conscious act, it doesn’t begin the day by saying “I think I will wander off and get eaten by a wolf today.”  Instead it is simply satisfying its base needs, oblivious to the bigger picture.

And there are folks like that today, perhaps some right here in this service.  They are not far from God because that was their plan; they just didn’t have a plan.  Their world is consumed with the immediate, earning a living, feeding their appetites, simply making it through life. 

And some of those appetites and desires move them further and further from God, but it is carelessness and a lack of knowledge.  That’s where I was when I was 19. 

A few years ago I was talking to another pastor and the question came up about making church relevant to people who are far from God.  And I commented that the relevancy of the church never crossed my mind before I chose to follow Christ.  I didn’t deliberately not go to church; it was just something that never crossed my mind to do.

I didn’t go to church, I didn’t attend meetings at the Lions Club and I wasn’t a Shriner simply because they weren’t a part of my life.  I never stopped to think about the eternal, or about creation or about God. 

I was lost and like the sheep who had wandered away wasn’t even aware that I was lost.  But that didn’t make me any less lost.  And it wasn’t until a friend confronted me about my lostness that I even gave it any thought. 

And I would venture that the vast majority of the folks in our community who don’t attend church just don’t think about it.  And so for them we need to present both the church and the kingdom in such a way that they actually stop and consider what we have to offer. 

And in most cases that will happen when people who already follow Christ talk to their pre-Christian friends and family members about the difference that Jesus and Cornerstone has made in their lives.  It’s really that simple, no big plan just an acknowledgement that there is something else out there.  

The second picture that Jesus draws is in Luke 15:8 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it?   If the sheep was lost through its own carelessness The Coin Was Lost Through Its Someone Else’s Carelessness.  Culturally there is a lot going on in this story.  With the sheep the shepherd had lost one in a hundred, but here the woman loses one of the ten silver coins that she has, not one percent of the total but 10 percent of the total.  And the commentators say that the coins may have represented a couple of different things to the woman. 

For some it was her household savings, her rainy day fund, money set aside for a specific purpose and that makes sense.  Maybe she was counting it wondering how much longer it would take her to have what she needed or maybe she had what she needed and now was taking it out to spend it on whatever it was that she had saved it for. 

At least one commentator offers a more romantic spin and claims in that time and culture the mark of a married woman was a head-dress made of ten silver coins linked together by a silver chain. And if that was the case and if it was one of these coins that was lost, she would have searched for it like you would search for your lost wedding band. 

But it was not the coin’s fault that it had been lost, it hadn’t jumped out of the woman’s hand, she dropped it or she misplaced it but it was her fault not the coin’s.  But the coin had certain characteristics that allowed it to be pre-disposed to being lost.  It was heavy and so it fell, it was round so it rolled and it was inanimate so it just lay there hidden. 

And there are people in our community today who are far from God because of the actions of other people.  Parents who had no use for the church, I hear that from time to time, adults who from the time there were children heard nothing but criticism of the church and God, they were shaped from childhood to be lost. 

Or maybe it was an incident where they were hurt or disappointed by a church or a believer; I’ve heard those stories as well. Or maybe today it is a result of the constant negative press the church seems to get in the national media.  A few years ago we did the window wash thing at the Esso across the street.  One Saturday in February we washed peoples windows and topped up their windshield washer fluids and gave them a magnet with information about the church on them.  And this one guy when he found out I was from church started yelling about priests and little boys and televangelists and churches stealing people’s money.  And then he jumped in truck and drove away.  Wow. 

And for those people we need to prove ourselves, and we do that through our actions and through our authenticity.  We not only say we care and can be trusted we prove it through our actions and the actions of those who call themselves Christ Followers.   But remember even those that are lost because of the carelessness of others, are still lost and they still need to be found.

And that brings us to the third picture in the frame and probably the most familiar one, everyone knows the term the Prodigal Son, even people who have never set foot inside a church.  Little side lesson here, often we think that Prodigal is a description of someone who knew God and wandered away.  Prodigal was actually a description of the life style that he was living and had nothing to do with his past life style or his future life style. 

And so Jesus continues with his lesson  Luke 15:11-13 To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons. The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now before you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons. “A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living.” 

The Son Was Lost Through His Deliberate Actions  This is what sets this story apart from the other two, it wasn’t carelessness that resulted in his being lost, it was a conscious thought and action, he deliberately walked away from his father and his father’s home.  Have you seen the progression? One sheep out of a hundred, one coin out of ten, but here it is one son out of two.  We’ve gone from a loss of 1% to 10% to 50%.  From a relatively insignificant loss to one of incredible significance, the loss of a son.

It wasn’t his carelessness that led the boy into his wilderness, he knew exactly what he was doing.  And it wasn’t someone else’s fault, as far as we can tell the boy had a good home and a loving family.  And he decided to walk away from his home and his family.  This was a conscious decision that he made, nobody else made it for him.

And there are people out there today who have consciously decided to not follow Jesus or they were part of the family and decided that they didn’t want to be part of the family any more.

But regardless of why the son was lost the reality is that he was lost.  He no longer had any of the privileges of being part of that family, he no longer slept under their roof no longer shared their meals.

I think it is interesting that the shepherd went looking for the sheep, and the woman swept her house in order to find the coin but the father simply waited for his son to return.  Because there wasn’t anything else he could do. 

Once the boy had decided to go there were only two options that remained 1) Let him go 2) Take away his free will.  And as effective as shackles and a small room in the barn would have been it was outside the scope of the father’s love.  As much as the father loved his child he wasn’t about to take away his free will.  Sound familiar?

In January I will have been in pastoral ministry for 36 years, and I have owned cats for 42 years and I have discovered that pastoring people is like owning cats. If they get out, you can’t run and catch them.  You ever try to catch a cat? 

Not going to happen not until it wants to be caught.  Oh you do the right things you call for the cat, and you rattle the treat bag but they come home when they want to come home. All you can do is be prepared when they come back to let them back in.

And I have discovered that when someone decides to leave the church or worse turn their back on their faith there’s not a lot you or me or God can do to prevent that from happening, shy of locking them in a small room in chains and that goes back to the free will issue again.  

And so we call them and rattle the treat bag but we need to be prepared when they come home.  In the story we read this Luke 15:20 “So he (the lost son) returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.”

Sometimes we are better at tracking down lost sheep and lost coins then we are at welcoming home lost sons and daughters.  Just saying.

 But all three stories ended the same way listen again to the words of Jesus.

Luke 15:6 When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbours, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’

Luke 15:9 And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbours and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.’

Luke 15:22-24 “But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began.

And then Jesus ties it all together with a bow when he said  Luke 15:10 “In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents.”

Are we serious about our mission, about God’s mission?  About reaching pre-Christians?  It cost God his son, it cost Jesus his life and be assured it will cost you something.

There are those in this group today because others were willing to pay that something, the cost of this building, stepping outside their comfort zone to talk to you about God and Cornerstone or in giving up their preferences in order to have a church that you would feel comfortable in. 

But it doesn’t stop with those who are here.  Our communities are filled with lost people who need God and our purpose is to help de-populate hell.

And it is because we believe that that we ask so much from you.

Why we ask you to give more and serve more, because reaching lost people is a responsibility we all share. 

As more people come home to Cornerstone there will be a need for more volunteers to provide for more ministries and you might be thinking but I don’t want to miss Sunday morning worship.  Do you think our other volunteers want to miss the service?

Plus, we have the great opportunity to work in one service and worship in the other one.  And we have folks who do just that.

Sometimes when someone is asked to serve in ministry, whether it be greeting, hosting our coffee time or ministering to our children they will say “I’ve already done my time.”  Which might be the appropriate response if you are talking about prison but not if you’re talking about ministry.   

The only question that remains is: Do we love lost people enough to pay the price?

1 Corinthians 3:16

The city of Corinth was rife with temples, the temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, stood atop the Acrocorinth, which means the Acropolis of Corinth, but you probably knew that. Acropolis is simply a fancy word for high ground. And so Aphrodite’s temple held an honoured place high above the city. 

And before you get all mushy and romantic about the idea of there being a goddess of love, historians tell us that the temple was supported by the proceeds of “Priestesses” who were in reality prostitutes and not necessarily by choice, the majority of them were slaves.   

And that wasn’t something that only happened 2000 years ago.  The Wesleyan Church was founded in the fight against human trafficking 175 years ago and that fight is still going on.  If you would like information about the Anti Human Trafficking movement in this area you can talk to Amanda Windsor or Pastor Deborah. 

And while Aphrodite may have been the primary deity of Corinth she certainly wasn’t the only one and while her temple may have held the highest place it certainly wasn’t the only temple in the city. 

Scholars tell us that there was also a temple for Poseidon, god of the sea as well as temples for Apollo, Hermes, Venus-Fortuna, Isis, and just to make sure no one felt left out there was a temple dedicated to "All The Gods" (Pantheon). 

The city of Corinth was rife with temples.

Here we are winding down our 3:16 series, we began back in June with John 3:16 and since then we have been in 1 Timothy, Joshua, Daniel, Colossians, Revelation, Philippians, Ephesians, Acts and James.  This morning we are looking at 1 Corinthians 3:16 where we read 1 Corinthians 3:16  Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? 

1 Corinthians is part of Paul’s letters to the early church, in this case it is to the church in the city of Corinth, which was a city in Greece, which was rife with temples. 

And so as Paul looks for an illustration to use to describe the church he settles on the word “Temple”.  After all there were temples everywhere and everyone, even the most disinterested knew what temples were for.  They were where various gods dwelt or were worshipped, even if you were in doubt of the existence of that particular god you couldn’t ignore their temple.

The temple that was missing of course was the Christian temple.  At this point in church history there were no church buildings, the early believers met in the synagogue sometimes, and in the public square and in homes. 

And perhaps that was a matter that was being discussed, “How come we don’t have a temple to worship in?”

And in the New Testament letters the early believers are told that God dwelt in three places.  1 Corinthians 6:19-20  Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself,  for God bought you with a high price. So you must honour God with your body. 

So the first thing that the early Christians are told is We Are the Temple of God  And in this case Paul is referring to the individual Christians.  This is often taught when the church is preaching about the evils of cigarettes and whiskey and wild, wild women.  

You have to be careful with what you are putting into and doing with your body, because it is the temple of the Holy Spirit.   

That’s good preaching, if you bring it up when you talk about other areas of physical health, like weight and exercise you go from preaching to meddling. 

And Paul was serious about this, verses 19 and 20 don’t stand by themselves, because in order to really put it in context you need to include verse 18 as well. Because you all know that a verse out of context is a pretext.   So let’s try that. 

1 Corinthians 6:18-20  Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.  Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself,  for God bought you with a high price. So you must honour God with your body.  How’s that for meddling in 2016.  That’s not Denn or Cornerstone that is the Bible, the word of God.

Within the biblical framework, sexual activity outside of marriage is considered sexual sin. And Paul, writing the words of God, condemns it.  We’ll come back to this later.

But when someone has committed their lives to God and are following Jesus, they are a temple of God.

And let’s keep going in the temple theme.  In Paul’s second letter to this church we read,  2 Corinthians 6:16  . . . For we are the temple of the living God. As God said: “I will live in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

So here Paul is reminding the believers that not only are we the temple but We Are the Temple of God.  In this case he’s not talking about the individual believer he’s talking about the local church. 

When God’s people come together, He is in their midst.  In the book of Matthew Jesus was telling his apostles how they needed to settle disagreements between believers, obviously believers disagreed on things even two thousand years ago, who would have thought?  And Jesus finishes with these words.

Matthew 18:20  For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.”  And while this isn’t specifically with the context of the local church, the principle is there, wherever God’s people gather, He is present, in his temple the church.

And you often hear people say, the church isn’t the building.  And they are right.  What we worship in here, isn’t the church, it is the church building.  The building where the church meets.  God’s presence is in those who gather here. 

And that’s why it really frustrating when you hear people who profess to be believers say they don’t need the church, that they can worship God by themselves. 

God created the church and ordained the church as his instrument of change.  And God’s word tells us that is where believers would find God and meet with Him.

The bible actually calls the church the “Bride of Christ”, and when some says “I love Jesus but I don’t have much use for the church” I wonder how that makes Jesus feel? 

That would be like you telling someone “I really like you, but I don’t have much use for your bride.”  Really?  If someone told me that, we wouldn’t be hanging around together any more.  

So whenever believers come together they are the temple of God.

Back to this week’s 3:16.  1 Corinthians 3:16  Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you?  If we add to that 1 Peter 2:5  And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God.

We discover, that not only are we the temple of God as individual believers and not only are we the temple of God as a local church but here we are told We Are the Temple of God You see you will find God’s presence in The Church, not just Cornerstone but the entire church.

There are groups that think they are it, and boy are they going to be surprised when they get to heaven and meet their neighbours.  I have always felt and taught that the Church is much broader than simply our local church or even our particular denomination.

We are all part of the family, granted some seem like those weird cousins we’re not sure what to do with, but they’re still kin. 

So, we, as Christians, are personally the temple of God, we, as a local church are the temple of God.  And we, the church universal are the temple of God.  Cool.  But how does that play into the next verse?  1 Corinthians 3:17  God will destroy anyone who destroys this temple. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.  

That is a pretty dire warning.  God will destroy anyone who destroys his temple.  That’s not just; God will scold anyone who destroys his temple. 

Or God will chastise anyone who destroys his temple.  Paul is very clear “God will destroy anyone who destroys his temple.” 

Kind of like the sign that says “Danger, Do not touch.  Not only will this kill you it will hurt the whole time you are dying.”  No question about what it means.

But there is a question here?  Which temple is Paul talking about? 

It can’t be the individual Christian.  Paul will later go on to write in Philippians 1:20-24  For I fully expect and hope that I will never be ashamed, but that I will continue to be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past. And I trust that my life will bring honour to Christ, whether I live or die.  For to me, living means living for Christ, and dying is even better.  But if I live, I can do more fruitful work for Christ. So I really don’t know which is better.  I’m torn between two desires: I long to go and be with Christ, which would be far better for me.  But for your sakes, it is better that I continue to live.

Paul seems convinced that he couldn’t be destroyed.  And way back in the gospels Peter was told by Christ. Matthew 16:18  Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.  If the powers of hell can’ conquer the church it doesn’t sound like it can be destroyed by earthly powers, although they’ve tried.

So it would appear that two of the three can’t be destroyed.  So it leaves the local church as the one that is susceptible to that damage.  And we all know of local churches that no longer exist, their bones are scattered across the ecclesiastical waste lands.  And some of those were natural deaths.  But some were homicides. 

But how could it happen, how could a local church be destroyed?  The two letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthian church detailed some of dangers that the Corinthian church faced, and I would suspect that Cornerstone and other churches today face the same dangers.

2 Corinthians 11:13-15  These people are false apostles. They are deceitful workers who disguise themselves as apostles of Christ.  But I am not surprised! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.  So it is no wonder that his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. In the end they will get the punishment their wicked deeds deserve.

Throughout his writings Paul was warning the church of The Danger of False Teachings  there were a number of heresies that were prevalent in the early church.  

And we aren’t talking about the stuff that churches argue about now, the version of the bible you use, whether hymns or modern songs are more holy, whether your theology is reformed or Armenian.  About whether the church ought to be seeker sensitive, purpose driven or missional. 

These were heresies that denied the fact that Christ was God, or that faith and grace were enough to get you into heaven.  There were the Gnostics who claimed to have special knowledge that the rest of the church didn’t have.  And their big thing was that Jesus wasn’t actually divine, and that his resurrection was spiritual, not physical.   

Every once in a while someone trots out some of the Gnostics writings in an attempt to discredit the church.  Novels like the Da Vinci Code are based on some of the old Gnostic writings.  Just remember, they are filed under “F” in the library for “Fiction.”

And you still have the folks who suddenly have a new revelation, new knowledge or a different twist on theology that hadn’t been figure out or revealed for the first two thousand years of church history.

And then there was Asceticism, that taught that all temporal things were evil, food, drink, sex or comfort of any kind.

 

And that in order to be holy you denied yourself any pleasure and sometimes inflicted pain and suffering on yourself. 

They denied the theology of God’s grace and taught that you had to earn your way into heaven by denying yourself. 

Where the Gnostic argued that Jesus was really just a good man, the Ascetics would deny the incarnation of Christ, after all if all material things were evil how could Christ have been 100% man along with being 100% God?

The opposite side of that was Antinomianism, and it taught that there was no connection at all between the body and the soul.  These teachers taught that you could do whatever you wanted with your body and it wouldn’t affect your eternity.  In other words you could live like hell and still go to heaven.  There were no moral consequence for sinful behavior.

It really was an eat drink and be merry type group, there was no sin to be avoided because those activities didn’t have any connections to our soul’s destiny.

It was probably to this group that Paul addressed in Romans 6:1-2  Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace?  Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?

And we still see these heresies being taught and believed today in various forms.  And Paul was convinced that this type of teaching could destroy the local church.  Especially one as young as the Corinthian church. 

Anyone who starts a church knows that it attracts all kinds of people who believe all kinds of things and who think that the baby church will be a great place to share those teachings. Which is one of the reasons from the beginning one of the core values of Cornerstone stated: Cornerstone Wesleyan Church is committed to the Wesleyan Church as a denomination and to its doctrine and polity.  And when people would take me out for coffee to tell me that God had shown them what we should believe and how we should act, I could trot out Core Value # 4.

But it wasn’t just false teachings that Paul was concerned about in the church, 1 Corinthians 1:10-11  I appeal to you, dear brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, to live in harmony with each other. Let there be no divisions in the church. Rather, be of one mind, united in thought and purpose.  For some members of Chloe’s household have told me about your quarrels, my dear brothers and sisters.

The next thing that Paul warned them about was The Danger of Disunity  In this case it wasn’t false teachers who were the problem, it was good godly men who inadvertently became the catalyst for disunity.

There were some in the church who aligned themselves with Paul, and some with Peter and some with a preacher by the name of Apollos.  We don’t know if it was their personalities that attracted people or their preaching styles.  But instead of people being committed to Christ and the local church they were committed to personalities. 

And so Paul instructs the church to get their eyes back on Jesus, back on the Gospel and back on the reason they existed. 

It’s obvious that Paul saw disunity as a destructive force in the church.

Do you remember one of the false teachings that I mentioned earlier, Antinomianism?

The teaching that all things were permissible for the believer because there was this disconnect between the physical and the spiritual?  It had obviously gained a hold in the church because Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11  Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God.  Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Paul really needs to learn to be more forthright and stop beating around the bush.   Again I didn’t think this up, it’s not a Cornerstone thing or a Wesleyan thing, it is a God thing.

The next thing that Paul identifies is The Danger of Accepting Sinful Behaviour   And it wasn’t just that list, if you read through the two letters to the Corinthians you discover Paul addressing a number of issues that were regarded as wrong. 

It wasn’t that the church was a horrible church, it was that church was filled with people and it was a young church that was filled with baby Christians who were struggling to find their way. 

But Paul didn’t excuse their behaviour because of that, he addressed it, because he knew it was important for them as Christians to know how to behave.  Regardless of what you might be told there is a certain behaviour that the bible expects from those who call themselves Christians. 

And Paul states, fairly clearly,  that there would be no place in God’s kingdom for those who continued in their sinful behaviour.  

And he addressed it for the church, because he knew that unless the church dealt with that behaviour within that it was destined to die.  Oh it might continue as a institution but not as the body and bride of Christ.

And when people trotted out the “do not judge me” line Paul addressed it in 1 Corinthians 5:9-12  When I wrote to you before, I told you not to associate with people who indulge in sexual sin.  But I wasn’t talking about unbelievers who indulge in sexual sin, or are greedy, or cheat people, or worship idols. You would have to leave this world to avoid people like that.  I meant that you are not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer yet indulges in sexual sin, or is greedy, or worships idols, or is abusive, or is a drunkard, or cheats people. Don’t even eat with such people.  It isn’t my responsibility to judge outsiders, but it certainly is your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning.

Ouch, that’s gotta hurt.  The problem is that today it seems to have gotten reversed and the church spends all it’s time judging the behaviour of the world and ignoring the behaviour of Christians.

But ultimately the reason why we need to beware of false teachings and disunity and sinful behaviour in the church all goes back to this week’s 3:16

1 Corinthians 3:16  Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? 

The church is God’s plan for reaching and changing the world.  And I truly believe the words of Bill Hybels who said “The local church is the hope of the world.”