Radiance: A Very Different Church

January 13, 2012 Justin Hibbard

Prefer listening to this message? Click here for the audio version

Church has evolved quite a bit from the first century that it’s hard to read about these churches in its proper context. Today, we have churches at every corner. It seems rather fitting in our consumer-driven society. What flavor do you like? How much Calvinism would you like with your cup of tea? How high would you like your hierarchical church? Do you like greater denomination accountability or less? What type of polity sandwich would you like? How hot do you prefer your corporate worship – the mild organ or the flaming electric guitar? Oh, the choices we have!

On one hand, choices are good. As a friend of mine says, “It takes all types of churches to reach all types of people.” On the other hand, choices can limit us. They can limit us because what we look for in a church are people who are just like us. They believe the same things (or close enough to it), they act the same, they look the same as us, perhaps they are in the same economic class. We go where we’re most comfortable. That doesn’t stretch us very much, and as a result, we’ve become very bad at working out our differences.

In the first century, because accepting Christ often meant being ostracized from one’s family, finding people who were also believers was everything. They didn’t have an extensive library on how to live the Christian life, lessons on theology, or sermon podcasts. Forget the notion of “Bedside Baptist” or “Mattress Methodist.” For them, church was their community, their kinship, and their family.

There weren’t churches on every corner; generally there was just one for every major city or so. The church had a challenge. People brought their baggage – their sinful habits, their heresies, their personal problems, their emotional tendencies, their cultural differences to the group. In 1 Corinthians, we get a hint of just how screwed up that can be. The church had to balance the seeker sensitive and the mature. It had to take stands on theology, and it didn’t even have a canon of Scripture. Imagine the difficulty they had in working out their differences. They couldn’t just leave. They didn’t have anywhere to go.

Over the years, I’ve seen people leave a church and go to another one for a variety of reasons. Most of us have done the same. But can I be honest with you from a leadership standpoint? One of the most frustrating things is when someone leaves over an issue without trying to help fix the problem. I could understand it if people said, “I brought this issue up to the leadership months ago and nothing seems to have been resolved, and I’ve done everything I could.” But many times the individuals do not say anything, let the situation brew, and finally they just leave. “This is what the problem is, and by the way, we’re outta here.”

Could you imagine having a home with a leaky roof and saying, “Okay family, we’re leaving this house!” No, of course not. You have too much invested. Unless you’ve got oodles of money, you’re going to have to sell the home (after you make the necessary repairs) and buy a new one. You don’t just leave. You do what you can to fix what’s broken.

Churches are not perfect and never will be. Period. That is such a critical point to understand. We all have issues because the church body is made up of people with issues. We all bring our baggage to the table. Nobody is perfect – not the Sunday School teacher, not the Elder, not the Pastor. We have quirky personalities and odd habits, not to mention our wide spectrum of beliefs. The key is to commit ourselves to a ministry of love and grace. Church isn’t just a place to be entertained and be ministered to, it is a place where we minister, and we ought to expect the changing power of the Holy Spirit to work in both our lives and those within our church community.

Radiance: Lampstands

January 11, 2012 Justin Hibbard

Prefer listening to this message? Click here for the audio version

Begin by Reading: Revelation 1:9-20

Throughout the book of Revelation, John draws comparisons between the Temple in Jerusalem and the heavenly Temple. One treasure, which adorned the Holy Place in the earthly Temple, where the priest ministered, was the golden seven-branch menorah. The High Priest’s job, as the Lord dictates in Leviticus 24, is that he is to tend to those lamps constantly, so that they continually burn. Welcome to your first day of being a High Priest, Aaron. Your job is to make sure those lights don’t ever go out. Sounds rather pedestrian doesn’t it?

There’s a reason for this. The light from the menorah represents the eternal presence of God, and the Lord wanted to make sure that Israel knew that as long as they adhered to His commandments, He was always with them.

In Revelation, we receive a similar yet much more profound image. John sees not just one lampstand but seven lampstands. Assuming that the imagery is the same, he doesn’t see one seven branch menorah, he sees seven of them – a total of forty-nine branches.

This imagery is important. It is connecting the Old Testament Temple – a physical building for gathering with the New Testament Church – a body of believers indwelled by the Holy Spirit. The voice in Revelation 1 explains that each lampstand represents a church. Each church is complete in the sense that it contains a lampstand. In other words it’s not like certain branches are burning and certain ones might be extinguished; each church has a lampstand that they’re responsible to keep aflame. However, each church participates in a much larger arena made up of other churches.

Who does John see standing among them? He sees Jesus – our High Priest! He’s not just standing among one lampstand; He’s manning all seven. What’s His role? He keeps them burning just like Aaron did.

This imagery reiterates to us the type of partnership churches have with the Lord. He gives us our place and He is the source for our light. However, we have a responsibility to remain in Him, and follow in obedience.

I also like the imagery of the seven branch menorah for another reason. The lampstand was always referred to as a collective piece though it had many lights. When Aaron was instructed to keep the lampstand burning, the Lord wasn’t just talking about one branch. He was referring to all seven. In the same way, as we looked at the other day, each of us has a personal responsibility to radiate the glory of God. The result is that the entire lampstand will radiate the glory of God.

Radiance: Radiance

January 9, 2012 Justin Hibbard

Prefer listening to this message? Click here for the audio version

Begin by Reading: 2 Corinthians 3:7-18

I remember as a kid I had a glow-in-the-dark nightlight. Every night, just before bedtime, I would take that small light and hold it up to a lamp. I’d give it about thirty seconds, and the nightlight would radiate in the dark for at least a few hours.

That’s radiance.

The idea of radiance is that it emits energy because of exposure to another, stronger source of energy. Of course, it has good connotations as well as bad ones. For example, the brave Japanese workers were exposed to lethal amounts of radiation when they tried to save the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The truth is we’re all radiating from some influence. Our exposure to friends, families, jobs, the world in general will have some effect on our lives. Hang around a cynic long enough, and you’re bound to at least pick up a tenor of cynicism. Hang around someone with an outgoing and engaging personality, and suddenly you’ll find yourself more encouraging and uplifted.

Hang around Jesus long enough, and you’ll become like Him.

That’s the idea behind biblical radiance, and we find it all throughout Scripture. In Exodus 34, Moses’ skin literally radiated from spending time with God on Mount Sinai, as he received the stone tablets.

Did you catch what Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 3, as he compares Moses’ experience with ours? Here’s a brief and much less elegant summary: If we dwell on the Lord’s glory; we will radiate because we are experiencing something even more glorious and unguarded than what Moses did. Do you ever get jealous of Moses’ encounter with God? Paul is assuring us that Moses is the one that would be jealous.

I’m beginning this discussion about church – not with the corporate body but with individual responsibility. We often think of church as an organization, but while that is true, biblically speaking, it is a body made up of individual Christians. Organizations are only as competent as the people that run them. Our church, which is invested in the body, is only as godly, spiritually strong, God-seeking, purpose driven, [insert more adjectives as necessary], as the individuals that participate in our church.

In other words, everything we decide that church should or shouldn’t be begins with us. If we’re not willing to personally do something or give something up, then we should end the discussion and the endeavor for a more radiant church right here. But if you want a radiant church, start with yourself. Get in that prayer closet. Start dwelling in the Glory of God.