Genesis 7:13, Jonah 1:7-8, 10, Acts 2:41-47
“The Importance of Ship-Mates”
We continue our series of sermons today on “The Voyage” … the
voyage to deeper waters in the Christian faith.
And we are using seafaring metaphors to think about how we are to grow
in our faith and how we are to navigate this journey in life.
As
we began a couple of weeks ago, we talked about what it means to call Jesus the
Captain of our ship. The Christian
journey begins when you make the decision to get on board Jesus’ ship and to
make him the Lord of your life. We also learned
that in the Bible one of the metaphors for the Church was that of “a
Ship”. It is the idea that the Church is
to be the Ark of God’s salvation for people in the world today.
The
second week we talked about the storms that come in the midst of life. And we talked about how we can survive those
storms and what God’s role is in all this.
Today, we
turn our attention to “The Importance of Ship-Mates” … the importance of
“fellowship” and the importance of having people that we can share this journey
of life with. Today’s sermon is not a
complicated sermon. It is just basic
stuff that you need to know if you are going to successfully navigate this
journey of life.
And one
of the things that we need to know is that God did not intend for our voyage in
life to be made in “a kayak” … a one person boat. Instead, God’s plan is that we journey
together on a larger ship, where we can help one another along the
journey. We need other people if we are
going to successfully make it to the far side of the sea. So today, we want to take a look at the
function of Christian friendships … how to develop them … what they’re like …
and what they do in our lives.
Let’s
begin by recognizing that we are creatures that need companionship. From the very beginning, we read that God
created Adam and after creating the man, God placed him in the midst of
paradise. But then God said, “It is not good for man to be alone, so I
will make for him a helper as his companion.”
We often
talk about that in terms of marriage, but it’s not just about marriage … it’s
about life. We need “helpers” and we
need “companions”. And these two roles
are what we want to talk about today. We need people who will be our “friends
& companions” in Christ and we need people who will “help” us along the
journey, to become the people that God wants us to be.
Now I
know, and I’m sure you know of people who say, “I don’t need anybody. I don’t
need the Church. Me and Jesus are like this and that’s all I need. I can worship God just fine on the golf
course.” I don’t play a lot of golf,
yet I have heard people calling upon the name of God on the golf course. Of course, it didn’t appear to me that they were
worshipping at those times. But the
truth is, we need others who will help us along this journey in life and we are
also in need of helping others along the journey.
You and I
need the Church. The Church, after all,
was God’s idea. It wasn’t my idea. This
whole organization and the way we seek to do ministry together … it was God’s
idea. And if you read the New Testament,
we see that it presupposes that we are going to be connected with other
Christians as we travel on this journey.
Jesus said, “Where two or more are
gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” Now of course, Jesus is with us no matter
what, but something happens when two or three gather in his name.
In the
New Testament, there are more than 30 “one another” passages, which have to
deal with how we are to treat one another.
Jesus told us: to forgive one another; to serve one another; and to love
one another. The Apostle Paul told us:
to bear one another’s burdens; and to teach and admonish one another. And there
are a whole host of others. This all presupposes
that we are living out the Christian journey with other Christians. We need other people and other people need us
if we are going to successfully navigate this voyage of life.
During
this series, we have been looking at 3 sailors in the Bible. We’ve looked at Noah, Jonah, and Simon
Peter. And we see that they all needed
other people, as well. Noah had his wife,
his sons, and their wives. There is no way that Noah is building that
As Jonah
tries to flee from God by boarding a ship headed in the opposite direction, God
brings a storm to try to get Jonah’s attention.
And you remember that it took the other sailors to wake Jonah up to the
fact that he had done something wrong.
When Jonah finally admits what he had done, the sailors asked him, “What should we do?” And Jonah says, “Throw me overboard.” Now,
you don’t need a lot of the kind of friends who will throw you overboard, but
Jonah needed some friends to throw him overboard. He needed some friends to help him come to
his senses and to turn back to God and these sailors helped him do that. They confronted him and asked the hard
questions.
Simon
Peter is out on the
So,
let’s talk about how we develop these life-enriching relationships. First of all, it requires an intentional
decision that this is important. We have
to value the idea of having friends. And
it is easy for us not to do that. I know
people who are basically hermits.
They’ve decided that it just takes too much effort and time to try to
build friendships with other people.
I have
known couples who have become so busy with their children. I mean, every night
there are meetings at the school; or for soccer; or dance; and baseball; then
football … and sometimes they are even on top of one another. And then, there is work! And there is just no time for friends.
Many of
us have lots of acquaintances, but no real friends. I confess that this often happens to
pastors. There have been times in my
life, when even though I shake the hands of 300 people on Sunday morning and I
greet most everyone who comes to church, I have at times, felt terribly
lonely. Saying “hello” and greeting someone at the beginning and the end of a
worship service is not developing significant, life-enriching relationships.
I don’t
know if this is true for women, but often when men are going through a tough
time and you ask them, “Who are your
friends that you’re talking to about this?
Who are the guys that are praying for you?” Most men will say, “I don’t have any friends like that.” Most men don’t have other guys that they can
be real with … that they can confide in and who are praying for them.
Let me
ask you this question: If at 3 AM in the morning, the wheels begin to come off
your life, who are you going to call?
Who would you call to come sit with you, to care for you, and to pray
with you? As pastors, we try to be
available to be with to you or at least talk with you when you need someone,
but we can’t possibly be there for everyone all the time. What I hope for you, is that you have
friends, who are companions in this journey that you could call. If you can’t think of who you would call at 3
AM in the morning, I want you to begin to recognize that you need to cultivate
those kinds of relationships.
As a
follow up that first question, let me ask: On whose list are you? Who would call you at 3 AM in the
morning? Is there anyone who knows that
they could call you at any time in the middle of the night and you would actually
come over and be there for them?
Because, if they don’t, you need to let them know that.
We all
need these kinds of relationships to see us through this journey of life. And in order to develop these kinds of
friendships we have to make an intentional decision to do so. We have to decide that this is important
enough to make the time in our lives to develop it.
Here at
our church, we are striving to create as many opportunities as we can for you
to get connected with other Christians.
We have small groups and classes, and if there’s not one that fits your
needs or interest, then we’ll help you to develop one. We try to provide opportunities throughout
the year for you to get to know one another.
And ultimately, we want these groups to help you grow in your faith. But you have to decide that this is a
priority and that you need to develop these kinds of relationships.
Well,
once you decide that this is a priority and you will actually take the time to
develop those kinds of relationships, how do we go about doing this? I’ve already given you one clue. You begin by getting involved in existing
small groups. And again, if there’s not
one that fits your need, then we’ll help to get one started. But as the cliché goes, “The only way to have
a friend is to (what?) be a friend.” If
you want to have life-enriching relationships, you have to give life-enrichment
to other people.
For
instance, if you get into a group and you do all the talking and everyone else
does all the listening, you’re not likely to develop life-enriching
relationships. Others are going to say, “I don’t want to be around them, because I
get tired of hearing them talk all the time!” If you do all the taking and other people do
all the giving, you’re not going to develop life-enriching relationships.
If you
are serious about developing life-enriching relationships, then you have to
start thinking about how you can bless others.
How can you minister to them? How
can you come along side of them during a difficult time? How can you help them on their journey? As you do this, you will find that others
begin to reciprocate. If they don’t
reciprocate, then they’re just acquaintances.
This is how we develop friendships.
It requires “a risk” and it requires “a sacrifice”.
You say, “I don’t have time to make a meal for that
person when they come home from the hospital.” But you do it anyway, because you want to
invest in that relationship. You say, “I don’t have time to go visit them when
they’re sick.” But you do it anyway,
because this is what meaningful life is about.
It’s about ministering to one another and building those kinds of
relationships.
Some of
you may say, “I already have lots of
those kinds of relationships, but they’re outside of the church.” It’s okay
to have relationships outside of the church.
I hope that you have lots of friendships outside of the church, so that
you can be “salt and light” to them. But
you need to recognize, that if most of your friendships are outside of the
Christian faith, you are going to find that a lot of those folks are drawing
you in a way that is different than your faith would draw you. The answers they give to your problems and the
things that they want you to do in your spare time will be different. And you will find it increasingly difficult
to keep walking the path of Christ, if you don’t also have Christian friends
who are encouraging you in your faith.
We need a network of Christian friends who are encouraging us to follow
the way of Christ. This is how it works
in walking the Christian journey. We
can’t do it alone.
But you
need to recognize, that when you start to try to develop these Christian
relationships. Let’s say, you sign up
for a Bible Study, or you decide to attend a Sunday School Class, or one of the
other groups we have in the church. After
that first meeting, you’re probably going to go home and say, “I don’t think I like those people. That one man was really irritating. That woman’s voice just grated on my
nerves. And I don’t think I have
anything in common with those people.”
This is
what typically happens when you start to get together with other people. We decide that we won’t go back, because we
don’t think we share anything in common with the other people. Well, it is important to share things in
common, but here’s what I have found. As
you stick with it … and sometimes, they are a motley, odd group of people, but
after a while, they start to grow on you.
And pretty soon, you find that that person who was most irritating to
begin with, becomes the person God uses to shape your life the most.
This got
to me thinking about the story of a ship that set sail from the
I noticed
that some of you were singing along.
Most of us grew up watching that show.
They only made 3 years of the show, but it has been running for 43
years. It took 15 years for them to get
off the island. In 1978, they made a
movie where they finally did get rescued from the island. But by that time, they were so connected to
one another, that they all decided to go back.
And that’s where they have been living ever since.
But what
I love about Gilligan’s
And in
every small group, you’re going to find that there’s somebody who is a natural
born “Skipper”. There’s going to be
somebody who likes to take charge and be the leader. And there’s “the hapless first mate”, who you
wonder how he has made it this far in life.
But after a while, you begin to see that almost all the time, he is the
one who brings salvation for the rest of the group. There’s “the homecoming queen” from high
school. And there’s “the MaryAnn” who
loves to make the cookies and take care of everybody else. You have a couple of people in the group who
have a lot more money than everybody else.
And you’ve got some “geeky, left-brain guy”, who likes to work on
computers, who doesn’t quite get the whole spiritual thing. So, you have to help him out a lot.
But
here’s what happens. As on Gilligan’s
Remember
that the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12 that all of us have been given
certain gifts by God’s Holy Spirit. We
have life’s experiences, we have innate abilities, and then the Holy Spirit
gives us certain gifts. And we bring all
of this together to help each other. He
described the Church as “the Body of Christ”.
He said that somebody is “an eye” … somebody else is “a nose” … others
are “hands, arms, feet” and all of those parts are meant to work together to make
the body function.
We all
have gifts that differ. And sometimes
our differences irritate each other. But
remember what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:18, “God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he
wanted them to be.” The reality is
that there is only one other person that doesn’t get on your nerves. Who is that?
You. Everybody else is going to
get on your nerves somewhere along the way.
There are going to be those who are going to hurt your feelings. There are going to be those who are going to
cause you pain. This is part of
life. And if you don’t want to deal with
that, you will never have friends.
In Colossians
3:12-14, Paul gives us guidance for how we are to get along with one
another. And I think this is really
important. He says: “As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with
compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a
complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven
you, so you also must forgive. Above
all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect
harmony.”
Paul has
to tell us to put up with each other, because we do get on each other’s
nerves. He tells us to forgive one
another, because we’re going to hurt each other. Jesus taught the same thing. You remember what Jesus told the Disciples
when they asked him, “How often should we
forgive each other?” He said, “Seventy times seven.” As often as you need to, you keep forgiving.
Here’s
one thing I am certain of. There are
people in this very room today, who used to be your friend. But you’ve distanced yourself from them,
because somewhere along the way they hurt you or disappointed you. Maybe God’s word for you today, is that you
need to be able to forgive them … because we all hurt each other. Or maybe there is somebody that you have hurt
and you need to ask forgiveness from them.
Forgiveness, patience, and understanding are all part of what it takes
to have the kind of relationships that we are talking about today.
The last
thing that I want us to be clear about, is that not only are Christian
relationships important for sustaining us and caring for us at 3 AM in the
morning when the wheels are coming off.
But other people are important for helping us to grow in Christ and for
becoming what God wants us to be.
Some
people think that the Christian life begins and ends with accepting Jesus
Christ as our Savior. But that’s not the
end and sum of our Christian lives. The goal
of the Christian life is not just our “salvation”, but also our
“sanctification”. It is that we become like Jesus, transformed
from the inside out.
As we
talked about a couple weeks ago, most of us begin the Christian journey as
“passengers”. We approach Christianity
and the Church asking, “What’s in it for me?”
At this point, we are just receiving and taking, and not giving anything
back. And it’s okay to begin at that
point. We all do. But at some point, after you receive God’s
salvation, you are meant to follow Jesus as the Captain of your ship. And to follow Jesus as the Captain of our
ship means that you become part of “the Crew”.
It is to say, “Jesus, how can I
serve you? What can I give to you to
further your Kingdom? Lord, do with me
whatever you will.” No longer is it
about “what do I get out of it?” It’s
about, “What can I do to serve the Lord?”
It’s all hands on deck every week when we become part of the Crew.
And yet, becoming
part of the Crew is not the end of the journey either. We are meant to grow and mature even
further. And that means that we seek to
become “leaders and mentors”. The goal
is, that you are living your life in such a way, that you are helping others
along the journey. This is why the
Apostle Paul could write to the churches, “Follow
my example as I follow Christ.”
The goal
of the Christian life is “sanctification”.
It is to grow perfect in Christian love.
It is to in every way and in every situation, to think and do what would
please the Lord. It is to love people
sacrificially all the time. It is think
not of yourself first, but always the good of others. It is to live in such a way that others see
Christ in you. This is the goal of the
Christian life. It is to continually
seek to grow in Christ, until we become as Christ was in the world. But this only happens with the help of other
people. It only happens when we are
committed to relationships with others who are seeking to work out their
salvation together.
This is
how it was designed to be from the very inception of the church. From our Scripture reading in Acts, we see
how on the Day of Pentecost 3000 people came to Christ. But listen to how the
people of this church grew in their faith and became sanctified. It is found in Acts 2:41-47.
“So those
who welcomed Peter’s message were baptized, and that day about three thousand
persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and
fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers…All who believed were
together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and
goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they
spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their
food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all
the people. And the Lord added to their
numbers daily those who were being saved.”
Did you
catch that? “They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and preaching” …
“they broke bread together” … “they prayed together” … “they spent much time
together, both in the temple and in each other’s homes”. This was the rhythm of the
We need
to come here for worship, where we celebrate, encourage and inspire you … where
we try to teach you and offer the sacraments.
But we are also meant to connect with other Christians outside of
worship, where we are helping one another grow.
We need to cultivate relationships with other Christians who can be our
companions and our helpers along life’s journey. We need this.
One
Sunday morning, I watched as a man entered the sanctuary that had recently lost
his wife. I knew that it probably took
all he could muster up to come to church that Sunday morning. And when he walked in, another couple noticed
him. They saw the look on his face and
realized how difficult is was for him to sit there without his wife by his
side. So, they got up from their place
and went over to where he was and sat down next to him.
After the
service, I watched as they put their arms around him and said, “We love you and we’re here for you.” That Sunday, what that man desperately needed
was not my sermon, but for somebody to wrap their arms around him and say, “I care about you.”
There are
people sitting around you today, who perhaps, it was all they could do to make
here. And they might need to know that
somebody cares about them. So, I’m going
to ask you to stand and to take the hands of those around you. Let’s not have anyone here today left
alone. Make sure that everyone has a
hand.
I’d like
for you to turn to the persons whose hands you are holding and ask them to tell
you their names again. Now, I would like
for you to bow your heads and close your eyes and I’m going to invite you to
pray a prayer that will bring a blessing into the life of those persons next to
you.
Prayer
For the person on your right,
“Lord, you know this person’s needs.
Please bless the person whose hand I am holding. Encourage them and strengthen them. Be at work in their life. I lift them up to you.” And then gently squeeze their hand to let
them know that you prayed for them. And
then pray for the person on your left.
Lord, you know the needs of all
those in this room today. And sometimes it
is difficult for us to do something as simple as to reach out our hands to one
another. But Lord, make us a church,
that when people walk in the doors, they sense the love of other people. They sense that we care about them and have a
calling to want to be companions with them.
Help us to draw strength from each other during the difficult times and
to guide and encourage one another. Help
us to grow together in your likeness.
Bind us together, Holy Spirit, as the Body of Christ. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.