Playing Nice Together 4.3.11

As we continue on in our study together of Developing a Healthy Church Family by Following the One Another Commands, we arrive this week on the topic that I’ve labeled, “Playing Nice Together”.

I think that it’s more than just a topic to discuss with our children. Last week, I talked about the way my kids can argue about toys, and I’m sure we’ve all seen kids argue about toys. However, we’ve also seen adults argue about things too.

Family members who argue about what they’re going to get from mom or dad’s estate. Coworkers who argue about who gets which client to work with. Families who argue about who gets to operate the remote control. Husbands and wives who argue so much that they end up getting divorced. And the list can go on and on.

As we work on moving from the Serving Together to Playing Nice Together, I think there is a significant change in the depth of the commitment of these commands.

One of my college students wrote this week about a missions trip that he went on several years ago to the Dominican Republic as a young college student. Somehow, he went through the whole process of being accepted to go on the trip and even was one of the leaders of the trip. However…it was near the end of the two week trip that he realized his need to become a Christian and accepted Christ.

WHAT? You mean that someone can go on a missions trip and not even be a believer in Christ? Sadly, I’ve seen and heard of several times that this has happened. Maybe you know people like that too. As we talked about serving Jesus…even some of the more intense types of service…like washing one another’s filthy feet can be done by people who don’t know or love Jesus.

Think about all of the people who went down to Mississippi and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. Sure, many were Christ-followers, but thousands of those who went down to serve in the heat and in the bugs and in poor conditions overall were people from other religious backgrounds and even atheists. They were willing to serve based on the commonality of all people and the huge devastation that had happened.

Globally, the same thing happened a year ago in Haiti and is happening right now in Japan as people and organizations and countries from all parts of the earth are working at helping the country after the incredible devastation that they’ve recently experienced.

But as we move into this new section of our one another commands, there is a significant change as we move from externally motivated/externally evaluated actions to internally motivated/internally-evaluated actions. It’s a huge difference! It’s the difference between wearing your seatbelt because you’re afraid of getting a ticket and wearing it because you think it keeps you safe. It’s the difference between working hard when your boss is watching and working hard all the time because it’s the right thing to do.

Here are today’s commands that we’re going to look at:

Playing Nice Together

·    Being kind and compassionate to one another                           Ephesians 4:32

·    Living in harmony with one another                                              Romans 12:16

·    Be at peace with one another                                                            Mark 9:50

This first passage in Ephesians has the Apostle Paul talking about a variety of issues. The paragraph starts back in verse 25 where Paul begins a list of attitudes and actions that Christians need to quit doing and the flip side of the coin with attitudes and actions that believers NEED to do.

Let’s pick it up in verse 29 as it starts this thought pattern:

Ephesians 4:29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.  30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.  31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.  32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Paul tells us that we need to watch our mouths as we talk to one another. We need to only speak words that build others up instead of words that tear each other down. The focus here is that we give grace to people as we interact with them. I believe this covers so many different aspects of our speech…what we say, how we say it, what our intention is, etc…. Sure, we may disagree about things here in the church, but how do we express our differences of opinion to one another (and NOT to others)?

We’ve seen throughout these one another commands that a common theme is the fact that we’re doing these things because of what Christ has done for us and through the power of the Holy Spirit. Likewise in this passage, Paul clearly reminds us that our disobedience to these issues grieves God’s Holy Spirit and that’s NOT a good thing to make God upset!

In verse 31, Paul gives us a list of six sins that we need to avoid: bitterness, wrath (rage), anger, clamor (brawling), slander, and malice. Now remember, this book of Ephesians is written directly to a church and it was originally read aloud in the congregation. Evidently, these six negative emotions and actions were being practiced by the believers of the church in Ephesus!

As I look at this list, it sounds more like the kids I work with at school or some of the unbelieving co-workers I’ve had over the years! I’ve seen people in churches get worked up and even seen people get to the place of their bitter hearts moving towards anger and then moving on to rage! I’ve known people who had malice or bad thoughts in their hearts and then moved to slandering others in the congregation…because they didn’t like the new church building, the new pastor, the new deacon, the new hymnal, the new color of paint or carpet, the new music, the new family, the new believer, etc….

However, Paul doesn’t stop with just giving a list of things to NOT do, he then gives our list of one another commands to think about today. We’ll talk about two of these commands today and then look at the third one in a few weeks.

The first one is “be kind to one another”. It is really hard to be kind to someone when you don’t have the right heart attitude. We can do actions that help someone else, but do those actions with impure motives.

As we talked last week about taking a meal to someone or helping them out when they have a struggle, I was thinking there’s a big difference between taking someone a meal made up of macaroni and cheese and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or taking them something really nice like Angus burgers or steaks and potatoes! One of them feels like you’re fulfilling an obligation, and one of them shows you really care!

Most of the time, serving one another has the focus of responding to a need and helping someone. Being kind to them has much more of a proactive connotation of reaching out and doing something for someone before they ask or before there is a real identifiable need. Being kind is more like working hard to come up with a way to help someone else before being asked…just because.

It’s sending a card to someone…not because it’s their birthday, anniversary, Mother’s Day, Grandparent’s day, or any other special day…it’s just because you’re being kind to them.

Be “tender-hearted” to one another carries the image of a mother with a young baby. It’s that mother holding, rocking, feeding, and taking care of all of the needs that her baby has. In the same way, we as believers are to have soft hearts towards other followers of Jesus. We are to look out for their best interests at all times.

I know, it’s a little funny, but I have little boys at home, and as cute and nice as babies are, they can also take a lot of work! Babies make messes in their diapers, messes around the house as they start to crawl or walk, messes when they eat, messes when they play, pretty much…they make messes much of the time. Yet, moms continue to love their babies and have a soft spot in their hearts for these little ones.

In the same way, we need to have soft hearts that are willing to endure all of the messes that others make as we continue to develop a healthy church family.

The second section that we’re going to look at was also written by Paul and it is another one of these lists of instructions where he gives several different statements and in the middle of it is another one of our commands that we’re looking at.

Rom. 12:14   Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.  17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.  18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Paul tells us that we need to bless people who persecute us. On Friday, one of my students got angry with another student. They were in adjoining time out rooms and one kid was kicking the walls and just irritating the other guy. In the process, the kid I was sitting with started cursing and screaming and kicking the wall. It went on for quite a while until we had enough staff to move one of the guys to another part of the building. It was NOT fun to see and hear these two guys go after one another on opposite sides of a wall!

I think that for many people responding to people who curse at them with blessings is not their first response! In fact, whether we say it out loud or keep our thoughts in our own heads and hearts, many of us would rather respond the same way.

The second part of this passage talks about our emotions and how we respond with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are to genuinely feel with them as they go through the joys and sorrows of their lives! Think through all of the events a person may go through…whether it’s physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, social, etc…. We each experience times where life is tough and we are crying about the events that are going on around us. Hopefully, each of us also has those times in life where we’re joyful and are laughing about the great things going on! Paul reminds us that if Chris is struggling with something in her life, I need to have such a relationship with her that I hurt as well. If Kelly has something that she is really celebrating, I should join her in being excited about that as well. This is one of those areas that is “harder to fake”. Most people know if we are really weeping with them or just pretending.

Then, we get to the core one another command…live in harmony with one another! There are a couple of key phrases here…the first one is to “live in”. For a church family to be healthy, the members must live together. Sometimes people can say, I have a great relationship with my brother…I haven’t seen or talked to him in five or ten years. It’s that “out of sight-out of mind” perspective.

We cannot do the same thing in God’s family! If we’re going to follow the second phrase of being in harmony with one another, we also have to make sure that we have the heart attitude that says I purposefully choose to get along with and I choose to enjoy getting along with my brothers and sisters in Christ. That means that we live in harmony here at church before, during and after the service. We live in harmony before, during, and after the quarterly business meeting. We choose to live in harmony throughout the week as we see each other around town. We live in harmony as we rejoice and weep with each other. And the list could go on and on in each and every area of our life!

Paul continues to give a couple more key points about how to live harmoniously together: we should not think more of ourselves by being haughty/proud or thinking of ourselves as being too wise. We shouldn’t pay back evil when others do bad things to us. The opposite perspectives are that we need to hang out with people who are in a more lowly position in life than we are and that we should choose to always do the honorable thing for everyone who is involved!

The last phrase here ties us into the third command that we’ll look at today…here Paul tells us that we need to do everything possible to live at peace with everyone!

Over in the Gospel of Mark, we pick up a story about Jesus and the disciples:

Mark 9:33   And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” 34 But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.  35 And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” 36 And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them,  37 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”

….50 Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

The Lord’s disciples were walking along the road talking with each other about who was the best disciple…with Jesus somewhere in the mix, they still had the audacity to argue about who was most important!

WOW! Can you imagine people at Goodfield Baptist arguing about who was the best? Arguing about who has the best idea for the kind of music we should use on Sundays. Arguing about where to sit on Sundays. Arguing about who is going to be on which boards or hold which positions in the church. Arguing about what needs to be done in order to get the church heading back in a growing direction. Nope…must be fiction! That would never happen around here…or would it?

Jesus Himself is saying, “Hey guys…live at peace with each other! None of you are more important or better than the next one of the twelve.” In fact, if you want to be great in God’s eyes, you need to be a servant and you need to not be striving for an important position at all! You need to be as important and as threatening as a little child who was barely worth anything in the Jewish and Roman societies.

Jesus enters into a longer discourse on the importance of doing the right thing and the need to avoid hell, and then, He comes back to the original topic of the guys arguing among themselves by reminding them that they needed to live at peace with one another.

I realize I haven’t been here very long in the overall length of this church’s history, yet, I think these are some areas we may need to really think about more as a congregation. As I’ve talked with both former and current attenders, there seems to be a general feeling that coming to church has been a struggle at various times for almost everybody. Instead of people feeling like they can’t wait for Sunday so they can get together with all of their friends, it’s more like they can’t wait for church to get done on Sunday so they can get on with life.

I haven’t gotten the sense that being kind and tenderhearted or living in harmony and peace toward the rest of the congregation have been characteristics that people would use to describe our church. In my discussions with people, there are still wounds about somebody saying or doing something unkind or even just different…3, 5, 15 or even more years ago. There’s the overarching atmosphere that if I do something different or if I do what I feel like God is calling me to do that I have to watch my back in case someone will complain about it and make phone calls about it and all of the sudden, there will be issues.

The result of this is that people look for places to worship and participate where they feel welcomed and they feel like they are valued. Or, they quit coming all together because they feel like it’s safer to stay home and deal with God later than it is to come to church and deal with His people now.

A few weeks ago, we took some time to go around and share some of the happy times of serving together here at Goodfield Baptist Church. If somehow, we were able to mask peoples’ identities and let people share the hurt that has occurred here and the hidden reasons why people have checked out other churches or have considered leaving, I think we would have many more people sharing these issues.

As we continue to work at developing a healthy church family, I think this section of “Playing Nice Together” is one of the areas that we need to do some self-reflection on. I think that we need to look deep and ask ourselves how do we transform our thoughts from looking out for myself and my own needs and think through ways we can reach out and play in nicer ways with others in the church.

If you have questions about how you can do this better, please let me know! I’d love to talk with you more about it. If you need to talk to someone about how you’ve treated them “un-kindly” or “un-compassionately” or “un-harmoniously”, you should feel free even during our final song to go to them and ask them to forgive you now or to even set up a time where you can talk about it in more detail later in the week!

Let’s pray.