INTRO/REVIEW
Week 1 - Community Begins With God
The community of the Triune God is our basis for understanding perfect community.
Godly Community Expresses
1. Joyful Love
2. Humble Unity
3. Mutual Generosity
4. Honesty and Understanding
5. Fruitfulness
Godly love in community is an outward focused love, a love that includes anyone who would receive it.
Week 2 – The Community of God Creates Community
1. God created humans in his image
2. God created humans to be fruitful
In the beginning, God created from his community a community that had seeds of more community.
The Community of God Redeems Community
1. Without God, Natural Community is Selfish Idealism, and Ends in Hostility
2. God Restores Peaceful Community In Jesus
Week 3 – God Plants Community
ABRAHAM AND SARAH – THE BEGINNING OF GOD’S COVENANT COMMUNITY
God Plants Community Through His Covenant
Our Faith, Shown in our Obedience, Receives the Seed God Plants
1. God promised Abraham and Sarah that he would make them a nation and give them a land.
2. Abraham and Sarah obeyed God by leaving their home and going to the land he showed them.
God Blesses the Entire World Through His Covenant Community
Jesus IS the Seed of the Covenant of God’s Community
1. God promised that the entire world would be blessed through Abraham’s family
2. By faith in Jesus, we are Abraham’s family
3. God blesses the entire world through us
Week 4 – God Directs Community
Godly Community Blesses the World Through
1. Prayer and Intercession
2. Generosity and Mercy
3. Proclamation and Justice
Jesus Christ fulfilled everything that God intended for his Covenant Community. The book of John beautifully illustrates the relationship of Jesus with his Father throughout the entire narrative. He establishes his community of love by revealing the glory and love of the Father to his followers, and giving them the Holy Spirit to live among them and allow them to participate in the community of the Godhead that he had joyfully experienced eternally.
John 1:1-18
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.
3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
6 There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’” 16 From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.
Community Begins With God
In the beginning, Jesus existed in the eternal community of the Trinity.
vv1-2- In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
John 17:1-5 - After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
v18 - No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.
Jesus came to earth to reveal God to us. The eternal God became Immanuel, God with us.
What does Jesus reveal to us about God in community?
In Community, Jesus Expresses
1. Joyful Love – John 15:11, Hebrews 12:2b - For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
2. Humble Unity – John 8:54, 10:30, 17:21, 17:11b - protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one.
3. Mutual Generosity – John 17:5b - glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
4. Honesty and Understanding – John 10:15 - the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. John 15:15 - I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
5. Fruitfulness – John 15
Jesus’ love is an outward focused love, a love that includes anyone who would receive it.
v9 - The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
v12 - Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
Jesus Creates Community
v3 - Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
v10 - He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
The first thing Jesus did after his baptism and temptation was call disciples, a community of that he ministered among and through. This community is fruitful, creating more communities through its love.
John 15:1-17
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
It is in Christ that we are able to be fruitful in community. The love in our community comes from him. The love we give to the world comes from him. Through that love, our community grows.
John 15:26-27 - “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.
From the very beginning, Jesus established a community with his indwelling Spirit, the seeds of more community. A Jesus community is filled with the Spirit of God, loving and fruitful.
Jesus Redeems Community
1. Without Jesus, Natural Community is Selfish Idealism, and Ends in Hostility
2. Jesus Restores Peaceful Community
vv4-5 - In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
v11-13 - He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
Jesus IS the Seed of the Covenant of God’s Community
God Plants Community Through His Covenant In Jesus
Our Faith, Shown in our Obedience, Receives the Seed of Jesus
vv16-18 - From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.
v12 – (you probably know this one by heart by now) Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
John 3:16-17 - For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Our Faith, Shown in our Obedience, Receives the Seed of Jesus
John 15:9-17 - 9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
Our faithful obedience to love one another is the evidence that we have received God’s love for us.
Jesus Blesses the Entire World Through His Redeemed Covenant Community
John 17:15-26
15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19 For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.
20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
25 “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26 I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
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Jesus existed eternally with his Father in the beginning.
God created us for community.
Because of God’s love for us, he lived among us in community through Jesus.
Jesus perfectly fulfilled God’s law for his Covenant Community
Jesus’ death and resurrection offers us the covenant of the community of God.
Through faith in Jesus, we participate fully in the eternal covenant community of God.
God intends for us to share this sacrificed life with others.
God living in us through the Holy Spirit gives us the power to reflect God’s love in the world.
“Christian community means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. There is no Christian community that is more than this, and none less than this. Whether it is a brief, single encounter or the daily community of years, Christian community is solely this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together.
(In Three Weeks – Community part 6 – God Models Community)
Jesus Modeled for His Covenant Community
1. Prayer and Intercession
2. Generosity and Mercy
3. Proclamation and Justice
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