Devoted to One Another

One of the greatest blessings and privileges of my life is the family I grew up in. Many of you here in this service, and at this particular point in our church's life, did not know my father, some of you did. My dad was in this church for 50 years, almost 50 years, and was one of the leaders of this church for many, many years. And dad and mom had five kids, four girls and me. One of my sisters is still here, and I'm grateful for that. Jan Wilkerson, some of you may not know, she's my sister. That will make me look better now. I know. Three of our sisters are gone to other parts of the country, but we had a wonderful family to grow with. And dad and mom loved all five of us kids, openly freely demonstrated their love. And by the way, that's not our family on the screen. That's just some picture of somebody that would make us look better too, probably that's not us. Mom and dad were devoted to us in ways that we didn't even know how to appreciate when we were little. Discipline was firm, but it was consistent, it was fair, it was loving. Best of all, we had an example of what it meant to walk with God from our parents. Dad and mom both knew the Lord and loved the Lord and were deeply, deeply committed to him. My mother just celebrated her 85th birthday, and it's been a very touching time for our family. Jan and I, our sisters came back, surprised mom with a birthday party a week ago, and she has just moved into an assisted living facility. And yesterday, Bob and I finished up the very last of her things from the home where they lived. And as I drove away, thinking this will be the last time I'll drive away from this home, just powerful emotions. I'm thinking about sitting by my dad's bedside as he was dying from cancer in that home, and the talks I had with him then, and the special moments with family and my mother there. You know, it's a wonderful thing to be given a family like that. It's a gift from God. And we're still all devoted to each other. The tears flowed freely a week and a half ago when we met to celebrate mom's 85th birthday. And sister from Kansas, two sisters from North Carolina and Jan and I were all there. And it was so wonderful. So wonderful to see each other again, deeply devoted to one another. We keep up with each other. We track one another's lives. We pray for each other. Some of them even face both each other. I haven't gotten there yet. In Romans chapter 12, Paul uses that terminology of the church. Carolyn Ridd the verse, a moment ago. Let's open our Bibles and look at it again. This is going to be the focus of our thoughts this morning. Romans chapter 12 and verse 10. Romans 12 and verse 10. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Now we have gone through the book of Romans, and so in previous messages, the context for this has been very clear, but I just want to lift that one expression this morning and focus on what it means to be devoted to one another. Devoted to one another. We're in a series of messages on one another. And we're looking at those different one another expressions in the New Testament, seeing what they have to teach us about the church and how we should be relating to one another. Here, Paul speaks of the church in relationship of a family. In terms of a family, the church is a family that has a special relationship with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. How does it operate? What does it look like? Well, today, today, we're going to look at how the church functions as a family. Last week, we looked at how it functions as a body. This week, we'll look at how it functions as a family. And the place to start is with the beginning of the family, not the beginning of the church in the book of Acts, but how we get into the family, our entrance into the family. So let's talk about how we get into the family of God, our entrance into the family. The Bible speaks of that in two ways. It speaks of it as far as a new birth and also adoption. When you come into a human family, you come into the human family, one of those two ways. You are either born into that natural family, that family of origin, or you are adopted into the family. When you're born into a family, mom and dad have no choice. You take what you get. When you're adopted into a family, there is a volitional choice to take one into a family to be raised. And obviously, when God gives us what we get, we're pleased with that. I've not been disappointed in any of my children, for sure. But we are either born into a family or adopted into a family, naturally speaking in our human families. But the Bible teaches that both of those take place in our spiritual family. We are both born into the family and we are adopted into the family. You say, how can that be? Well, the reason is Paul uses those family metaphors, word pictures, to help us understand two wonderful truths about being in the family of God. It is true that we are born into that family. Look at these verses which describe that and flesh that out for us. In John chapter 1 and verse 12, Jesus said, or John said, yet to all who did receive him, Christ, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Notice the family terminology. And then he explains, children not born of natural descent, nor of human decision or of a husband's will. In other words, the way that the human family has come into existence is not the kind of birth he's talking about, but born of God. This is a spiritual birth. God is the father and we are born into his family. Jesus explained this to an Old Testament scholar who should have understood some of these things even from his Old Testament, Nicodemus, in John chapter 3. Jesus said to him, verily or very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again, unless they are born again. No one can see God's kingdom unless you go through the new birth. Well, Nicodemus had a question about that. He thought Jesus was talking about being born again a second time physically and he couldn't understand that. And so Jesus answers that objection this way. Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the spirit. Now, given Nicodemus's position as an Old Testament scholar and when Jesus later tells Nicodemus, you should understand these things since you are a teacher in Israel. I think it goes back to the Old Testament. The born of water is spiritual cleansing. It's Ezekiel 36. It's the water that is brought to cleanse people from their sins. A figure of speech used for spiritual cleansing. And the Holy Spirit is the one who does that. So Jesus is talking about spiritual birth, cleansing from our sin. The Holy Spirit regenerating us, giving us new life. And so Jesus goes on to say, you should not be surprised at my saying. You must be born again. Peter says it this way in 1 Peter chapter 1, where you have been born again, not a perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and enduring word of God. So we are born into God's family. At the moment you trust Jesus as your Savior. The moment you receive Him into your heart and life, knowing that you cannot get the heaven on your own, that you are a sinner, that you cannot work your way to heaven, but realizing that Jesus came and died for you to pay for your sin. When you understand that, when you realize that, when you recognize that, and you trust Jesus as your Savior and your only hope of heaven, at that moment you are born into the family of God. The Bible speaks of it as being born again, or the new birth, or regeneration, being given new life. At that moment when you trust Christ, you get new life, and you become a child of God. You are born into His family, you're His child, and you're a part of the family of God. You have a new life now, a spiritual life that has come into existence at the moment you trusted Christ. You've been born spiritually, born again. First time you were born physically. Being born again means to be born spiritually. So that's the way we enter the family of God, but we are also adopted into the family of God. Look at what Paul says in Romans chapter 8, in verse 15, the ESV translates it this way, for you did not receive the Spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, or Papa, Father. So we've received the Spirit of adoption, and because of adoption we are made sons or children again of God. Paul says the same thing in Ephesians chapter 1, in verse 5, when he says, he predestined us, chose us ahead of time for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will. And what does it mean to be adopted into the family of God? The reason Paul uses that metaphor is that introduces a whole other spiritual experience and position that we have in the family of God. Born again means we're born into the family. We have a new birth, we have a new life that starts at that moment, but being adopted means literally that we are placed into the family immediately as adult children who are heirs of everything the family has to offer. You see, adoption in New Testament times was not typically what we think of today, when we think of adoption today, which is a wonderful procedure for welcoming children into your family. Often we think of small children who are adopted. In New Testament times adoption was typically an adult, and you would bring someone into your family to be your heir. Often adoption was practiced by those who had no adult sons, and thus had no heirs, and so they would bring into their family someone who would be a legal heir. If you've ever watched the movie, Ben Hurr, you remember the main character in the story, Judah Ben Hurr, ends up rowing on a slave ship, and the ship is in a battle, and he saves the captain of the ship from death in return and out of gratitude that captain adopts him into his family. And he is released from being a slave, he has made a full legal adult heir of that captain. Now that's the way adoption worked in the New Testament, and that's what Paul means. You're born into the family, but you are also immediately at the moment you receive new life, you are given the position of a fully adult legal heir of God. That means everything that God has becomes yours, all of his blessings and privileges, all of his grace, and all of that becomes yours, and part of that inheritance, according to 1 Peter 1, is the incorruptible inheritance that we receive in heaven, and inheritance that is laid up for us, it's not an inheritance that is given to you by your parents, but laid up for us by God that we receive when we get to heaven. That's our inheritance, we are adopted into the family. So here's the point, we enter the family by being born again, so we are children that need to grow, develop, learn, but at the same time, in position before God, we are fully legal heir at the same time. At the same time, we're growing as children, we also lay claim to the full inheritance of everything God has for us, and can receive that all any time, any moment we can take advantage of everything God has for us, but we have spiritual blessings. What a beautiful wedding of those two thoughts. We are born into the family, we are adopted into the family. That's how you get into the family of God. But what's the expression of that family? What does that family look like? In the New Testament, that family is the church. The church, as a family, the church is what expresses the family. And that's the way God intended it. It's not some other organization, social organization, or even Christian organization. It's not a campus ministry that's the family of God. It's not a mission organization, that's the family of God. Those are wonderful helps to the church and organizations that can come alongside the church. But the Bible says that the church is the family. Who was Paul writing to, a mission agency? No. Who was Paul writing to a campus group? No. He was writing to a church in Rome, and he wrote to other churches. And he says to this church, be devoted to one another in brotherly love. So the church is the expression of this family. It is here that we are brothers and sisters in Christ. And the church is the expression of that. We are to have the kind of love that brothers and sisters do in the family. And I know what some of you are thinking. I know some of you are thinking, man, I don't want that kind of love. Not the kind of my sisters and brothers that have for each other. Well, we're not talking about dysfunctional families here. In the Bible, the family, when it's used as a picture of the church, is a family that's doing well, that's got it together kind of, and is operating in love, and the way God intended it to. And that's to be a picture of the way the church operates. We are a spiritual family. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. We are in the family of God. The term brothers is used some 230 times in the New Testament. The emphasis there reminds us that we are family. We are Christian family. We're vitally related to one another. We share the same family. Share the same family traits. All of us are to become more like our father. And thus share the same family traits. We are a family. We sing that chorus, and we'll sing it at the end of this service to reaffirm this truth from Scripture. A little chorus that Bill gave the wrote back in 1970. The family of God. I'm so glad I'm a part of the family of God. I've been washed in the fountain, cleansed by the blood. Joint airs with Jesus as we travel this sod. For I'm part of the family, the family of God. You may not be as familiar with the two verses that he also wrote. They go like this. You will notice we say brother and sister around here. It's because we're a family. And these folks are so dear. When one has a heartache, we all share the tears. And rejoice in each victory in this family so dear. From the door of an orphanage to the house of the king. No longer an outcast, a new song I sing. From rags under riches, from the weak to the strong. I'm not worthy to be here, but praise God. I belong. It's great to be a part of the family of God. The problem is some of us don't realize it. Some of us don't understand that we have brothers and sisters. We are family. The story was recorded in a small town newspaper in the state of Maine recently. Of two men who worked at the same furniture moving company. Gary and Randy were their names. They would work together every day. Gary would be on one end of the couch. Randy would be on the other end of the couch. They delivered furniture for a major furniture chain to people's homes. And installed the furniture. People would often comment on how much they looked like each other. They just passed it off as a coincidence. Randy started doing some work on his family tree and his family history. He knew that he had been adopted into a family when he was a very young child. But a change in the laws in Maine allowed him to get his birth certificate and start doing research into his family of origin, family of birth. And so he did. And he found out that his parents had died when he was very young. But he also found out that they had another son. About a year older than him. He got the birth date and kind of made a note of it. And thought, you know, I'd love to find out who this brother is. It happened a few days later. Again, they were delivering furniture and somebody commented on how much Gary and Randy looked like each other. And they just kind of laughed and passed it off. And then Randy began to think. Maybe I would ask some questions. So he started asking Gary some questions. And when he got to the question of when is your birth date? And Gary's answer was the very date that he had looked up. The connections began to come together. They began to talk further and compare notes. And they found out they were brothers. Born a year apart, adopted into different families in neighboring towns, growing up in rival schools, never knowing each other, never knowing that they'd come from the same family, amazingly hired by the same company, working together day after day after day and not realizing they were brothers. But the story didn't end there. Once that was published in the local newspaper, a few days later a teary-eyed woman came clutching a birth certificate to that place of business. In which he showed them the birth certificate, lo and behold, she was their sister, five years older than them. And she never knew where her brothers had gone. The family found each other. And they began to relate as family. When we come together as a church, we find our family, our spiritual family. And we certainly need to relate to one another as family to express our love for each other as family. The church is a family. Now what we have seen in the last two weeks, men, is two beautiful pictures of the church. Now let's just compare them for a moment. Two pictures of the church. One is the church is a body. And as a body, we are members of one another as we saw last week, with each believer needing to properly function to be able to do his or her part in the body so that the body functions properly. We are all members of the same body. That's one beautiful picture. And it shows how we all function together in the Lord's work. But in this picture, the church as a family, we are to be devoted to one another. That adds a different touch to the one another as a family. And how we relate to one another. It adds a dimension of warmth and tenderness and concern and loyalty. We are family members. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. So what does that look like? What does it look like? Now that we have entered the family, now that we have found our spiritual family, what is that supposed to look like? Well Paul talks about our devotion to the family. Notice it again in verse 10, he says, be devoted to one another in brotherly love. The word be devoted. That verb literally does refer to the love of a family. It could be translated of parents and children, of even husband and wife, and of brothers and sisters. It means to show love to others or to love tenderly. I still like the way the King James translates this. Be tender or be kindly affectionate one to another. That affection, that love, that tender reaching out to one another as brothers and sisters. That devotion of a close knit family is what Paul is talking about. That's what it means to be devoted to each other, to express kindly and affectionately our love for each other. It means that we reach out to meet each other's needs. It means that we reach out to help one another. And as Paul says later, as Carolyn read in verse 15 of Romans 12, that when one person weeps, we all mourn and weep with them, and when one rejoices, we're plotting and laughing and smiling with them because we feel that same joy or we feel that same pain. It means that we identify with each other. It means that we come to each other side, we help each other. We operate just like a good family does. That's what we're talking about. That's what it means to be devoted to one another. And this is throughout the New Testament. Time after time this principle is addressed in the epistles and the letters written to instruct believers how to live. Just look at a few examples. First Thessalonians chapter four, Paul said to the Thessalonian church, now about your love for one another, we do not need to write to you for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And so he goes on to challenge them. And in fact, you do love all God's family. Notice the family terminology here. You do love all God's family throughout Macedonia. Macedonia is the Roman province where Thessalonica is. Thessalonica is one town, one church, but there are other believers, and you love believers in other places in Macedonia. But he says, yet we urge you, notice the family terminology again, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more. No matter how much we love each other, we can increase, we can grow in that love. We can love each other more and more. And Paul tells the church at Thessalonica to do that, to love each other more and more. Notice what the writer of Hebrews says, and Hebrews 13. He says, keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Here again, love each other like your brothers and sisters because you are. And then he gives two examples of brothers and sisters loving each other and reaching out to meet special needs. He says, first of all, do not forget to show hospitality to strangers for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. That did happen in the Old Testament, Genesis 18, Abraham. And then he gives another example. Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison. And those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. Now, some of those verses have been misunderstood, misused in a sense. Remember the context, verse 1 sets the kind of category for what he is talking about here. And it's that we should love one another as brothers and sisters. And he says, this is a couple of examples how you do that. Welcome strangers. He's not talking about someone who walks up to your door, has got an axe in one hand, a shotgun on the other. He's off the street somewhere. You know, and you're, oh, I'm supposed to welcome him in. He's a stranger. He's not necessarily talking about that. He's not talking about pickup area hitchhiker on the road. He's not necessarily talking about that. In the context, he's talking about brothers and sisters. In the New Testament, strangers were preachers. They can have kind of a bad reputation too, believe me, I know. But at any rate, most of them are not axiomers. Most of these strangers, third John, for instance, were preachers who were traveling around needed hospitality. And so he says, welcome these people into your home. They're your brother. They're their brother. And so you welcome them in. And as a brother, treat them as a brother. You love one another as brothers and sisters. Example number one, bring these strangers, these traveling preachers into your home, like like GAS did in third John. And then the second example is prisoners. Now there's a broader application to all prisoners, no doubt. But in the context, he's talking about brothers and sisters who've been arrested because of their faith in Christ. That's the whole purpose for the letter of Hebrews. Was because there were people who were suffering as believers, and there were other believers who were Jews who were saying, man, I don't want that. So in order to keep from being persecuted, I'm going to kind of distance myself from these Christians. And maybe go back and start attending the synagogue again, maybe go back to the temple, and kind of be an undercover Christian. And the writer of Hebrews is saying, don't you dare do that. You identify with your brothers and sisters who've been thrown into prison, who've been afflicted and persecuted. They're your brothers. You identify with them. So we are to love each other in a family kind of love. Peter says it this way in 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 22. Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply from the heart. You've got love, do it deeply. Do it from the heart. The idea of, go deeper with this. Peter also says in 1 Peter 3 and verse 8, finally all of you be like mine to be sympathetic. Love one another, be compassionate and humble, and in his second epistle. He describes what Christian growth looks like, second Peter 1, verses 5 through 7. Now this is how you grow. And notice his terminology here, for this very reason make every effort to add to your faith that the verb add means literally to furnish out a house. So you put furniture in this room and then this room and this room and this room and you're gradually filling up your home. So think of this in terms of stages. You're growing in these areas. There's a reason for understanding it that way it makes the ending so powerful. Here's how he says you fill out your home. Make every effort to add to your faith goodness. That's the first piece of furniture you move in after you trust Christ to save your goodness. To goodness, knowledge, to knowledge, self-control, to self-control, perseverance. You're getting more rooms filled up now. And to perseverance, godliness. Now notice this. Here's what finishes it out. And to godliness, mutual affection and a mutual affection love. Now the mutual affection is the family term. It's the loving as brothers and sisters. The love is the term for meeting one another's needs, for putting one another first. And when you develop mutual affection you reach out in love for each other and meet each other's needs and put the other person first. And so those two are the capstone of Christian growth. That kind of family love for each other. So we're to be devoted to one another as a family. Kevin Miller, who is one of the editors of Leadership Journal, a journal that I get for Christian leaders, is writing rights articles in there from time to time in editor. He wrote this article. And I'm going to read what he says because I don't want anyone to think he's going to mention a couple of stores and I don't want anyone to take offense at that. So I just want to read what he says. Beautiful story. When I was a kid he says Saturday mornings were short day. Often my dad would say, come on Kevin and I'd hop into the station wagon and we would drive down the street to Hooper Wolfe's hardware store. Hooper Wolfe's had an old wood door painted white except where the paint was worn off near the handle. You walked in and you could hardly move. There were two narrow aisles. The counters were filled with merchandise. Shels were overflowing. Stuff was hanging from the ceiling. You'd think, no way am I going to find anything in here. Some of you relate to those kind of hardware stores. But he goes on, you didn't need to. You didn't need to have to find anything. Because as soon as you walked in, clearance. From walk from behind the counter. And would say, how are you today? My dad would say something like, I want to hang a light out back. Clarence would come out from behind the counter and ask questions, where are you going to hang it? Over the patio. Well then, and he would begin rummaging through shelves until he pulled off just the right light. You want to light like this. And don't use those bolts here. They're good for indoor stuff. But for outdoor, you want something galvanized. Your wall's brick, isn't it? Clarence asked. Even though we were from a small town, Kevin Miller writes, I was impressed to know what, that he knew what our house was made of. Well, to run the conduit through there, you want to masonry drill at least three quarters of an inch. If we don't have one in stock, I can get you one over at Miller's Lumberyard. Then Clarence would pull a flat carpenter's pencil off his ear, get out a little piece of paper and sketch it all out. conduit goes here and make sure you don't mount the light too close to the soft fit. Today, when I have a project on Saturday, I had the Home Depot. Unlike Cooper Wolves, where you had the parallel park on the street, there's an ocean of parking and inside Home Depot is huge. The ceilings are 30 feet high. Home Depot has 40 times the inventory of Cooper Wolves. It all looks great under bright argon lights. There's a guy in an orange apron, a block away. If you're running down, he's likely to say, sorry, I usually work in paints. I'm just covering electrical because someone else called in sick. So you're pretty much on your own. Now here's Kevin Miller's point. A similar thing has happened in the American church. We have programs that are amazing with Disney level quality and technological sophistication. But something's missing. Clarence. We all need a Clarence, someone who knows more than we do, and who will guide us to grow in Christ. Throughout the Bible, he says, this is the primary way the faith has been passed on. Moses, Trains, Joshua, and How to Lead. Eli, Trains, Samuel, and How to Pray. Jesus teaches the apostles. Timothy's grandmother, Lois, trains up her daughter, Eunice, who trains up her son, Timothy. Paul calls Titus, his son, and the faith when it comes to helping people grow spiritually when you're Clarence. Now let me bring this down to where we are as a church. We must develop family-like relationships at Johnson Chapel. You can't do that in a service like this. It's not designed for that. It's not intended for that. This is designed for us to come together corporate, you know, lift our praise to God and focus on him. This service is not the place to do the one or another. There's not some of it happens, and that's great, but that's not the intent of a service like this. I understand some of the difficulties of a church hour size. Believe me, I probably know them better than anyone in this room. I realize you don't even see people in the first service. You feel some sense of distance from people who come in the early service. I realize our attendance on Sunday night is very small, and our attendance on Wednesday is scattered in many different places as people serve in many different ministries. I realize we have children's ministries, student ministries going on at the same time. We have ministries like this. Because we're a larger church, we have a degree of sophistication of being able to do some kingdom work things that smaller churches can't do. But we miss something that a smaller church has. I know, because I've been there for two churches I passed it. For 17 years of my ministry, we're in small churches. When I passed from Indiana, when I first went there, the church was running 60 people. I could speak to everybody by name, ask about their family, both before and after the service. Everybody in the church is wonderful. It's like a family. It really was. Everybody knew everybody else. It was great. Please don't think harshly of me if I tell you that sometimes I dream about that. Literally, a dream about that. I thank God for church's our size because we can do some kingdom things by way of outreach and ministries that smaller churches can't do. And so I'm grateful for that. And I love this place. I love this place. I wouldn't have come back here if I didn't love this place. But in a place like this, you've got to find other ways to do family. You can't do it in a big service like this. And that's why the reason for this series. It's the reason why, with all of my heart, with all of my heart right now, I'm pouring myself into small groups and adult Bible fellowships. Because that is where you develop brother and sister relationships. And so as a church, we have got to break down the business into smaller family-like situations. You don't have a family of 500 people. You know what family reunions are like, don't you? Very surface, aren't they? I mean, they're wonderful, but they're surface. Hey, how you doing? And when you leave, you can't remember half their names. Uncle So-and-So-and-So-Head, how many children? And you're asking on the way home, what grandchild was that that came out and spoke to me? And those are really family reunions, are because they're just too big. They're fun, but they're too big. So, in order to have real family relationships to love as brothers and sisters, we've got to break it down. We've got to break it down into smaller family-like groups. Your adult Bible fellowship will be your family in this church. When we start small groups, your small group will be your family in this church. You say, well, what about everybody else? We come together to serve and to worship, and we can do some things that way that we can't do into little family groups. But we find family relationships in the smaller groups, and we've got to have that. Got to have that. I can't tell you how passionate I am about that. So much I'd like to say here. None of it's in my notes. One of the motivating factors in my leaving here in 2008 was because I was so passionate about that, and I didn't see it happening. And I felt like I'd failed as a leader, and the church needed someone else to lead the church in that way. I guess it's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about it right now. Because when I was away from here, I realized, no, this is where I fit. I'm a shepherd, I'm a preacher, and I'm out of my element if I'm not doing that. But when I came back, I came back with the passion we have got to break this down into family-sized groups. And so that's why we're working as hard as we can to develop and enhance our Bible fellowships, and to begin small groups so that everybody can find a family in this church. Now we'll do everything we can to provide the structure and reach out to people and encourage you to come and to be a part. But you've got to take some initiative too. You've got to want to have a brother-sister relationship. I mean, you can be in a family, my family, five of us, four sisters, and the clown, the guy. Five of us, we could have chosen to distance ourselves from each other. I mean, even a group, you can distance yourself from each other. You've got to make some intentionality, some desire and passion yourself to say, I want to be a brother, a sister to people in this church. And we'll provide ways to do that, and we'll encourage you to do that, and we'll preach what the Bible says about this so that we understand what the Word of God says. But all of us have to take the initiative to say, yes, I will do this. Let's not drag our feet on this. If you're not in a Bible fellowship where if you have no intention of getting into a small group, one of those two things, I challenge you this morning. Please, please be a brother, be a sister. Get into a family-sized group where you can develop family in this church and relate to one another in that kind of love. Our devotion to the family, we must be devoted to one another. We need some clearances. We need clearances. We need people who know enough about us to come out behind the counter and show us how to do things. We'll take a personal interest and know what our home looks like and know what our lives are like. You can't do that in a service like this. We're not supposed to do that here. We can do it. We can do it in a smaller group. They've got to help us to do that. Be devoted to one another. Well, I haven't even gotten to the problems. No family is perfect and ours certainly isn't. We have works. We have problems. We have family issues. Every family does. Sometimes those things keep us. Could I just mention them briefly? Fear and suspicion. Keep us from relating to one another's brothers and sisters. Sometimes it's fear of your background, fear of what people will think, fear of getting too close to people, fear of what they'll discover, fear of what they'll think of me. Sometimes it's because you've been hurt. Sometimes we'll have people come to Johnson Chapel in the safe preacher. John, please just give us some space and some time. We need to heal. And I understand that. And we always encourage people to take their time and not feel rushed. Because sometimes people just need to heal. They've been hurt and fear getting too attached again. Those are understandable things, but those fears must be overcome in order to be a family. First John 418 says, perfect love casts out fear. It is love that casts out fear. There's no fear in love. Perfect love drives that out. So sometimes it's fear, fear and suspicion, fear of rejection, fear of being hurt. Sometimes it's resentment and bitterness that keeps us from relating as brothers and sisters. We've been hurt. We're angry at someone. And because of that we pull away. Oh, that's when we need each other the most. Paul talks about ineffusions for. Be angry. But sin not. Don't let the sun go down on your wrath. And don't let the devil get a foothold. The devil will get a foothold in our lives if we don't deal with anger appropriately. If we let it fester, if we let it go, it will morph. It will transform into a bad creature resentment, bitterness. Sometimes that keeps us from being brothers and sisters. Sometimes it's selfishness. Just we want our own thing. We want to do our own thing. We want our own life. We don't want to be messing up with anybody else. We don't want to mess with anybody else. We just want to be ourselves and do our own thing. A lot of conflict in the family is caused by selfishness. It's true in human families, isn't it? It's also true in the church family. And then isolation, isolation. Hebrews 10 talks about not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. If you isolate from each other, you can't really love each other as brothers and sisters. You can't really be a family. I've not seen this film, so I'm not endorsing it, but I've read about it. The film 127 hours tells the true story, the 27-year-old man named Aaron Ross, and in 2003, he was hiking in the Blue John Canyon in Utah. And he got trapped by a stone that pinned his right arm to one wall of a crevice that he was going through. After surviving for five days on 500 milliliters of water and exhausting all of their options, he fashioned a homemade tourniquet, and with a blunt pocket knife, cut off his arm and stumbled out of the canyon. Now, on one level, the film just becomes another kind of adventure story that has an amazing ending, but really the film more deeply, as I read about it, and it ensures what it means to love one another and to be family. See, in the beginning of the film, Aaron barrels into the canyon, music blaring from his headphones. He arrives there after ignoring phone calls from his mother and his sister, and brushing aside his boss's desire to know where he is, Ross then acts like a completely self-centered loner, incessantly snapping pictures of himself, flirting with girls he meets on the trail. Clearly, he does not need, nor does he want anyone else in his life. But by the end of the film, he's motivated to fight for his life because he remembers his girlfriend, former girlfriend, telling him, you're going to be so lonely, Aaron. At the time, he wanted the loneliness. He wanted to be alone. He didn't want to fool with anybody else. He didn't want anybody else complicating his life. But as he suffered in those five days, he remembered the love of his girlfriend and of his wife. He thought about starting a family, and that provided the motivation for him to pull out that pocket knife, cut off his arm and survive. At the end of the film, or near the end of the film, he's made it out of the canyon. He's on the trail with his severed arm. He sees some other hikers a little way ahead, barely audible at first because he's so weak, he says, help me. And then, bellowing, hoarsely, please help me! The hikers understand as they watch him see him, what happened, and they come to his aid. It's that asking for help that really is the key to understanding that film. Here's someone who wanted to be alone, wanted to go all by himself, didn't want others to complicate his life. Finally realized there comes a point in your life when you're going to cry out, and you're going to need help. The question is, will you have a network of family relationships then? Will you have some brothers and sisters who will recognize how you're hurting, and will reach out to help you? Be devoted to one another, with brotherly love. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for the family of God. Thank you for how some of that naturally happens in our church, with people who've known each other a long time, have formed relationships, have been in each other's homes. They do care about each other, and they do take care of each other as brothers and sisters. But Lord, we realize there are a lot of people that slip through the cracks, a lot of people that get missed. We know Lord some of it is their own doing, and we pray for conviction in their hearts today, to make that next step of connecting, getting closer, getting in a Bible fellowship, committing to be in a small group, to getting to know one another, and love one another. But Lord, we fail as a church sometimes too, in reaching out to each other, in providing those opportunities for developing relationships. I pray that you'd help us to be devoted to one another better, like you told the Thessalonian church, Lord. I know you do this, do it more and more. I hope to take that to heart, in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.