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8.1.21 Romans 12:9-21 Pastor Sam Porges · HBCWestminster

• 0:00
  Well, good morning, Highland. It's so good to see you guys again. Glad to have you this morning. If we have never met, my name is Sam. I'm the youth pastor here at the church, and I love being here. I love our church, and I'm glad that God has kept us together over the last year and a half and is leading us to new and better places, a little bit of which we're going to talk about this morning. And so glad that you guys could join us.
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  today. If you've got your Bibles, open them up to Romans chapter 12. We're going to get there in a little bit. But before we do, I want to just thank Highland as a whole for their support of our youth group over.
• 0:37
  I mean, really forever, but really over the last year and especially this summer. This summer has been one of the busiest summers of my life. I have very much enjoyed my summer with the youth group. We've been teaching a series called Ancestors, in which we look at Old Testament characters and what we can learn from their lives, but also how they really point us to Jesus. And my interns and I have been teaching through that series, and it has just been a blast. We've done a number of events this summer that have also been fun.
• 1:07
  our Star Wars event, Nerf Wars, a huge Star Wars themed Nerf battle here back in June. We had an outreach trip a few weeks ago where we took a number of high schoolers downtown and we ministered with a crisis pregnancy center here in the area.
• 1:25
  just help them canvas the neighborhoods with information about their ministry. And so our high schoolers are getting their fill of ministry this summer. And then we just had kickback one week ago. Last Sunday, we left in the afternoon. We got back on Wednesday. We took a record number of students this year, 53 students.
• 1:44
  up to kickback. And that's just really exciting because that means that God is just entrusting us with these students. And so we're doing our absolute best to minister to them and to shepherd their souls. Kickback was so fun. Oh my goodness, it was so fun. We played a number of different games. We stayed up really late, ate our fill of s'mores, and it was an absolute blast. And I feel really tired, but a good kind of tired as the summer comes to a close.
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  And in the midst of all this busyness, my wife and I did get a chance to get away on a vacation. My wife is a teacher, and so the most ideal time for us to take a vacation is the summer. And so in the midst of all the busyness, we got away and we got the chance to go to Disney World. Now, as a California native, I grew up going to and loving Disneyland. But up until three weeks ago, I had never been to Disney World. It was kind of my...
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  one of my bucket list items. So I had the privilege of visiting the most magical place on earth. And let me tell you, it did not.
• 2:52
  disappoint. Personally, I love the immersive nature of the Disney parks and the opportunity to forget about real life for a little bit and escape in a land of stories and magic. And as an adult, I have not lost the childlike wonder of going to Disneyland. I have not become one of those grumpy adults who hates Disneyland. And maybe that'll change one day when I have kids. I don't know. I hope it doesn't. But for now, I still love getting wrapped up in the magic.
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  And while we were at Disneyland, we got to go to Star Wars Land, which blew my mind. It blew me away how meticulously detailed everything was from the life-size Millennium Falcon to Star Wars-themed trash cans to Star Wars-themed manhole covers to the Disney employees all dressed in Star Wars outfits. I mean, everything was themed. Everything was...
• 3:50
  perfect. And as someone who just hosted Nerf Wars, a big Star Wars themed event here, I thought Star Wars Land looked only a little bit better than our event here. And I mean, to be fair, our budget was like $500 and they dropped a billion dollars to make Star Wars Land. So I mean, we're pretty much equal, but I really appreciated it. And I think when I go to Disneyland, the reason that
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  I'm so amazed with the Disney parks is because their customer service experience that they offer to every guest is incredible. Disney aims to ensure that each guest has an immersive and magical experience that is free from any inconvenience. And when inconvenience is encountered, it is considered wrong and it should be fixed immediately. You know, over the course of the last year, many Christians in America have become
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  ecclesiastically displaced due to either shutdowns because of covid or doctrinal compromise on moral issues like sexuality and this has led to this new wave of believers who are church hunting
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  And here at Highland, we have had the privilege of meeting many of these people, and it has been an absolute blessing to get to know some of these great families that have come to Highland. And it's fascinating to hear what they are looking for in a church. Everyone has a hierarchy of criteria by which they evaluate churches. And some of the criteria are non-negotiables, like...
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  biblical teaching, and other criteria are personal preferences like certain musical styles in worship. And no matter what their criteria are, everybody's looking for the perfect fit. As a pastor, it's interesting to be on the other side of that church shopping experience, right? To be the one that's evaluated, to be the one that is judged. Unfortunately,
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  I think that American culture as a whole has pressed into the Disneyland model where church is seen as an institution that offers a service or an experience to its attendees, where customer service has to be flawless, and where everyone who comes through the doors has an immersive experience with God and where the magic is never interrupted by inconvenience. The perspective of many ministers is that their role
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  is one of personality rather than pastor, of celebrity rather than shepherd. Sadly, this has resulted for many in an anemic and underdeveloped ecclesiology. At Highland, however, we believe that the Bible paints a different picture of what church involvement should entail. We do not believe that we are offering a product
• 6:44
  to our people, nor do we believe that Christians should treat the church like a consumer treats a business. We believe that the church is less like a customer service experience and more like a family. There are three words that describe our goal here at Highland, and if you've ever been in our sanctuary, you know that those three words are worship, connect, and thrive.
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  Now, in a few weeks, Pastor Danny is going to preach his annual realignment sermon where he's going to explain more fully our understanding and philosophy of the church. But this morning, I'm going to focus on the second word in that trio, connect. Connect. How does Highland connect? How do we realize that goal? The way that we used to connect with one another.
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  was through Sunday connect groups. And if you'll remember pre-COVID, adults and youth would meet together for prayer, fellowship, and more Bible teaching. But when COVID shut everything down, the limited capacities placed on us by the government caused us to let our connect groups die. And since then, we have not restarted them. However, now that we are more removed from COVID,
• 8:03
  and its effects on society we are overhauling our connect groups and turning them into what we're going to call connect homes this is an incredibly exciting new chapter for highland this morning i'm going to explain how these groups will be formed the family nature that we're going to aim for with these groups and how scripture will guide how they function so
• 8:30
  Form, family, and function. How are these groups formed? What are we doing with these connect groups? How should they be like family and how should they function? So first, let's look at form. You know, scripture describes a number of essentials that the church should practice, such as biblical teaching, corporate worship through song, practice of the ordinances, communion and baptism, exercise of spiritual gifts, prayer.
• 8:57
  evangelism and discipleship amongst others and currently we here at highland feel like we're doing a good job with many of those however we believe that we're missing some of the fellowship aspect of discipleship where believers share life with one another outside of highland's walls we believe that christian community should not be confined to weekly church services but should be built in homes
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  Similarly, discipleship does not only consist of corporate worship and the teaching of Scripture, but should include a communal working out of salvation in non-ecclesiastical settings. I'll say that again. Discipleship does not consist of a Sunday morning sermon and some songs, and then you just go home. Discipleship consists of a communal working out of our salvation in non-ecclesiastical settings or non-church building.
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  settings. This is why we are creating Connect Homes. The focus of these homes will not be Bible teaching or worship because we're already doing those things on Sunday. Rather, the focus will be on fellowship and prayer. We are going to open up eight Connect Homes that are geographically spread out throughout the North Denver metro area that will meet on Sunday, every third Sunday night of every month. So once a month from 5 o'clock to 7 30 p.m.
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  Every home will be elder and trustee led and will include time to hang out. We will take communion together. There will be a potluck dinner. We will pray with one another. And if time permits, we will have a discussion of the sermon from that Sunday. We have opened up church center registrations for every one of our homes. And every church center registration includes the major cross streets where that
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  that are nearest to that home. And so if you desire, you can find the home that is closest to where you live and you can register for that on Church Center. And once you sign up, you will be contacted by the leader of that home who will get you involved in the potlucks that you can contribute to dinner. And so that's what our connect homes are going to kind of look like.
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  Again, we believe that this is family, not a production, not a business. And as we look back over how COVID has killed our Connect groups, we're restarting those with these Connect homes. And so that's kind of the what of Connect homes. 5 to 7.30 on every third Sunday night of the month, we have eight different homes spread throughout. And we hope that in the future, we can open more and more homes as Highland grows and as people get involved in these homes.
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  Now, you may be asking yourself, why not just start up connect groups like we used to? That's a great question. And I think that the answer is that we here at the church are convinced that the primary location for personal connection is not the church building. It's actually our homes. Home is where real life is shared around the dinner table, where the joys and hurts of life are jointly shouldered, and where all that we are before God becomes evident and available.
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  to the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. In other words, home is where family happens. If we want to be fully known and to know others fully, that will not happen on a Sunday morning. And church, it is a mistake to believe that one will experience great spiritual growth by singing a few songs, listening to a sermon, and then going home and not seeing church people for the rest of the week. That is not how we spiritually grow.
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  In fact, if you are listening to this now and you're thinking to yourself, great, connect homes, another thing to do on Sunday nights, I would venture to say that you probably have an experienced church's family. Because people who have experienced church's family get excited about these kinds of ideas. And if you have an experienced church's family, that's totally okay. But we're inviting you through these homes into a bigger way of doing church.
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  All of us pastors, and honestly many of you members, have tasted the sweetness of having the church as your people instead of merely attending a weekly meeting. And we want all Highlanders to experience the same. You know, when I moved to Colorado just over six years ago, I moved a thousand miles away from all of my family members.
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  And to this day, all of my siblings and my parents and my extended family, none of them live out here. And it was really interesting in that time because I was starting my own adventure, right? I had just turned 22. I was starting life on my own. And eventually, though, I got homesick. And I realized that it's not easy to just visit your family who lives a thousand miles all the time.
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  It takes time. It takes money. It's an involved process. And so what happened in that time was the church really did become my inner circle, my tribe, my people, my crew, right? I remember we were, a number of us who moved from California, we're at the gardener's home like every day. I mean, it was four or five days a week, probably.
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  And it was during that time where the church bore my burdens with me and they prayed for me. They helped me to succeed and helped me in my failures. They ministered with me and to me. They opened their homes to me and they saw me without any of my masks on. God revealed to me in that time that involvement with the people of God is so much more rich and fulfilling when it extends beyond
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  Sunday mornings and gets into our homes. And when we here as the pastoral staff think about what the church is, it is never confined to an hour and a half on Sunday mornings that bleeds over into our homes during the week, into the normativity of our lives. And so as we approach this new season of ministry at Highland, I think it's crucial that we approach
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  and begin our Connect Homes with this mindset that church is family. If your understanding of church is the Disney World model, then you will look for and complain about everything that offends your sensibilities. But if your paradigm is familial, then you stay committed despite the church's flaws, quirks, and mistakes. And believe me, there are flaws, quirks, and mistakes. In the church, sometimes there will be weeds in the yard.
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  And things sometimes will not be graphically designed how you want. And the walls will not be painted your color. And we won't sing the songs that you want to sing. And sometimes the worship leader will play the wrong chord or shout out the wrong lyrics. And maybe your theology doesn't align completely with someone else's or with the pastor's. And sometimes the bathroom is going to smell. And that's one I don't really get. Like, you know what people do in there, right?
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  So sometimes the bathroom is going to smell. And sometimes during a somber moment in worship or during communion, a baby will cry or a phone will go off. It is so beautifully imperfect. It's much more like a family than it is like a production. Again, at Disney World, if things are wrong, I expect to be served. But not so with the church.
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  We don't leave when something is inconvenient or isn't to our liking, or at least I hope you don't. If your family functions that way, it's probably very dysfunctional. When churches function that way, they are incredibly dysfunctional. That attitude where I'm just going to leave if I don't like it or if someone is mean to me, that attitude is destructive to your soul and to the unity of the body of Christ. In Romans 12,
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  As Paul describes the life of the church, he gives us instruction as to how the church should function in order to be healthy. And I think that we would do very well to pay attention to his words and to bring his instruction into our connect homes. So let's look at Romans 12 now, verses 9 to 21. This passage has often been called the Ten Commandments of the church. Think about the Ten Commandments.
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  has the ability to govern any state and to make it a healthy state. Well, the 10 commandments of the church here in Romans 12 has the potential to do the same for us. It has a potential to govern us as a people so that we function in a way that glorifies God and that is good for our souls. And so as we read this, I'm going to read it a little bit slower than I normally would.
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  And think about it through the lens of familial responsibility. That this is what Paul is calling us to as the family of God. So, Romans 12, verse 9. I'm going to read it a little bit more slowly. He says,
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  Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice.
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  Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
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  Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. For it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. What a list.
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  I mean, could we come up with any better list of guidelines as to how the church should function amongst one another? So first, Paul begins this section in verse 9 by saying, let love be genuine. Abhor, hate what is evil, and hold fast, cling to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection, right? That's familial. Outdo one another in showing honor.
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  Paul begins by calling us to the greatest commandment. Of all the commandments, the 613 laws, Jesus narrowed it down not to one, but to two. It's not just love God. It's love God and love people. Love is the chief Christian virtue and the standard according to which we will all be judged one day.
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  John's first epistle says that if we claim to love God, but we don't love other Christians, we are lying. We're kidding ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we are to love with genuineness, then we must be ever ready to make sacrifices for one another, to put aside our own interests and to consider the interests of others. We must keep our love sincere, not phony. He says, let love be genuine.
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  don't just pretend actually love people we are to cling he says to what is good and shun everything that is wrong and the only competition we have with one another is not a competition of looks or of possessions or of accolades but of outdoing one or one another in honor by considering ourselves in second place compared to everybody when we look at other people
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  who are in the family of faith, we say, I am second to you. I mean, what better thing could there be for the flourishing of a people than everybody considering themselves second to everybody else? We are to keep our spiritual enthusiasm aflame, he says in verse 11. We are to keep our spiritual enthusiasm aflame and not get bogged down by laziness or by burnout.
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  We are called to rejoice, verse 12 says, in anticipation of God's return, to withstand hard times, and to let our lives be one long prayer. We are commanded, he says in verse 13, to help other Christians in need, and as the message version says, to be inventive in our hospitality. I love that.
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  Let them into your lives. Let them into your space that our culture so often considers ours. It's fenced off, right? But Paul says, no, just open it. Just open it. Let real life be shared with one another. Love each other. Love each other. That is impossible to do if you only come or only listen on a Sunday morning.
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  but aren't really involved in the church any other time. You cannot fulfill this passage if that is your mindset. He continues, verse 14, he says, we should breathe out blessings instead of muttering curses under our breath. We celebrate others and their successes and we share tears with them in their hurts, even if we don't completely understand it. Even if we may not feel a certain way about
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  their or the same way about their misfortune or about an a current event that's happened in our culture that has affected them and hurt them deeply even if we don't completely understand it or share it he says rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep we aim to make our shared but diverse lives a beautiful song to god imagine different notes making up a beautiful chord on a piano
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  All of us have different giftings. We have different backgrounds. We have different perspectives. And yet what unifies us is Jesus. And so when we come together and love one another and submit to one another, it's like a beautiful song being played to God. We should, as he says, seek to get along with one another instead of insisting on our own way because pride is the arch enemy of godly community.
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  We have rarely experienced someone leave our church for a good reason. Most often it's pride that works its way into the cracks of our hearts and just whispers to us over the course of time. And then we believe its whispers and we believe its lies and eventually we turn our backs on the church. He says, live in harmony with one another. Verse 16, do not be haughty, don't be prideful, but associate with the lowly.
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  Befriend nobodies instead of seeking to become somebody. Don't get revenge on one another or don't hit back, but treat everyone with honor. Seek to get along with everyone if you can and never desire to get even with those who have sinned against you. Write the Lord's Prayer. Lord, forgive us as we also forgive other people. Colossians says, bear with one another.
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  We overcome the evil in the world and in our own hearts with good. So I know it was brief, but I think that if we take Romans 12, 9 to 21, if we take his words to heart and we jump into these connect homes with selflessness and love, then I think these homes will be a smashing success. And so...
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  This morning, I hope that you feel inspired at the prospect of joining a Connect Home. And even if you're an online listener who lives in this area, I would implore you to get involved. Jump in. Our goal is to see you flourish as you connect with one another in deep and meaningful ways. We hope that these Connect Homes become a normative part of Highland's DNA as they provide, I think, the intimate community that we need.
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  We also hope that these groups will become hubs of prayer and evangelism where you can feel comfortable inviting unbelieving friends to your connect home. Because not everyone will come to church, but they might come to your potluck dinner at your friend's house. And they might get to meet the church and see the kindness of Jesus. I mean, Jesus promised, if you love one another, all the world will know that you're my disciples if you have love for one another. So we hope that these would become...
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  hubs of prayer and evangelism. We would love to see everyone participate in a Connect Home, whether through leadership, through hosting, opening your home for the group, or simply through involvement with dinner. I think that through this kind of life-on-life discipleship, God has so many blessings in store.
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  for us. And so if you have any questions, feel free to call the church or email me at sporgias at hbcwestminster.com. We'd be happy to answer any of your questions. We honestly cannot fully explain how excited we are for this new season in ministry here at Highland. And so we hope that you would join us both for our blessing and having you, but also for the sake of your spiritual growth and for the glory of God. So it's exciting.
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  Let's pray together. Lord, I do ask that as we enter into this new season of ministry with Connect Homes, I do pray that you would increase within us our love for one another. Increase our desire to show hospitality. Break down our walls where we shove people away and let us taste the goodness of what it means to let other believers in and to let them fully know us.
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  and to know others fully and to pray and to hurt with one another, to rejoice with one another, to overcome evil with good, and to draw near to you in your Holy Spirit. Lord, I pray if there's any who are listening online now who haven't jumped back into church, I pray that they would do it now. As we meet in just a couple of weeks to begin our Connect Homes, bless us. We want you.
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  We want to love each other. We want to testify to the world that there is a greater, bigger way to live life, and that way is your way. We ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen.