Family Chapel

The church is the family of God. We are brothers and sisters who share a bond that is rooted in Christ. So, how are we to relate to one another in this new family that Jesus has brought us into? If we want to thrive as members of this family, we need to be a committed, vulnerable, sacrificial, and intergenerational family.

Church is quite strange. But perhaps, most strange of all, at church, we gather around a book - the Bible. Why is the Bible so central to the church? The Bible is so central because it is God's Word, which makes us wise for salvation, equips us to obey God, reveals who God is, and helps us to defend against sin. As such, the church is called to be a pillar and a buttress for the truth.

Do we actually need to meet in-person for church? With a prolonged season of isolation and the availability of livestreamed services, many might be wondering if gathering together is really that necessary. But at the core, the church is a gathered assembly (the "ekklesia"). While there are many challenges to gathering together in our day and age, we gather together as the church because we are an earthly embassy of Christ's heavenly kingdom. As such, when the church gathers together, we enjoy the blessings of transcendent experience, transformative power, relational intimacy, and missional momentum.

Covid and quarantine has undoubtedly affected our idea and practice of church community. For the first part of our series, we will explore this need of renewal as we confront our own spiritual apathy, consumerism, and passivity when it comes to church life. We will then look to restore the biblical idea of a church community: "A group of Christians who assemble as an earthly embassy of Christ's heavenly kingdom to proclaim the good news and commands of Christ the King, to affirm one another as his citizens through the ordinances, and to display God's own holiness and love through a unified and diverse people in all the world, following the teaching and example of elders."

In our series, we've seen that lament is a gift that enables us to navigate the tension of life in a fallen world. But what does lament actually look like? Lamentations 5 gives us a model of lament to follow. And we see four major steps: turn, complain, trust, and ask. As we engage in these steps of lament, we seek to walk on the path towards renewal.

When life falls apart, we see what we have been putting our hope in all along. Unfortunately, we often place our hope in idols. An idol is something that takes the place of God. It's usually a good thing that we have elevated to be an ultimate thing. Sadly, idols demand everything but fail to deliver anything. Through lament, we can see the hopelessness of our idols. But more importantly, through lament, we receive freedom to place our hope in God.

Chapter 3 is the middle chapter of the book of Lamentations and it continues the lament in a much more personal tone. And in the middle of chapter 3, the author begins to realize the ultimate truth that begins to give him hope in the midst of all the despair, doubt, and chaos. The structure of the book seems to culminate and climax to this point in the middle of chapter 3 as if to remind the reader that all lament is meant to bring you to this point. In the middle of chapter 3, the author understands and realizes the steadfast love of the Lord, his unending mercies, and his great faithfulness. He will not cast off forever. In all our laments, we must eventually come to know these truths. And we have even greater hope knowing because we are in Christ and that he took upon the judgment and wrath that we rightly deserved.

In a surprising twist, it is revealed that God is behind the destruction of Jerusalem. It is the Lord who opposes His own people in their sin. With that, we are confronted with a very difficult conundrum: What do we do when God feels like an enemy? Well, in that situation, there are really only two options: you can either fight or you can surrender. Lamentations calls us to surrender - to turn to the Lord, to honestly confess, and to humbly submit. And in light of the Gospel, we can confidently surrender knowing that God treated His own Son like an enemy so that we who were his actual enemies would now be brought in as his own sons and daughters. We can joyfully surrender our lives to God.

We often think that to be a faithful Christian means that we don't complain or doubt and we put on a smile and just push forward when life falls apart. So, the idea of lamenting can make us feel uncomfortable, and it might even feel unbiblical. But in our pain, God offers us the gift of lament. Lament is a gift because through lament, we gain emotional vocabulary to express our grief, we gain greater clarity to recognize the reality of sin, we are better able to embrace the tension of living in a fallen world, and we receive God's invitation to draw near. Lament will not magically make everything better, but it's the first step towards renewal.

True renewal is tested by community and takes place in community. In Romans 15, Paul gives us a crucial but often forgotten “one another” command when he calls Christians to accept one another. As the world became more polarized and tribal during this pandemic, the Church sorely needs to reconsider this command. This message will address the topics of Christian liberty, a critical heart, and how the Gospel moves us towards one another in love and acceptance.