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This morning I want to discuss something that has never before been talked about in this church. In fact, I would guess that no one in this town has ever hear a sermon on the topic that we are going to tackle this morning.

And yet, through our discussion of this topic, I believe will better understand how to reach our community. I believe we will better understand how to grow as a church and as individuals, and I believe we’ll better understand the God who created us and loves us like crazy.

The topic that I want to discuss today is Facebook.

For those of you who know what Facebook is, you may wonder why it’s our topic of discussion today.

For those of you who have no idea what Facebook is, let me try to give you a summary:

From it’s own description of itself, Facebook is a website that helps you connect and share with the people in your life. But it is not just any old website. It is now the second most visited website in the world – second only to Google – and will likely become the #1 website within a month or so.

Currently it has over 350 million users. That’s how many people use this website. So what exactly do 350 million people use Facebook for? Well, just to give you an example, let’s say I log into Facebook. The first thing I might do is to update my status. Your status is basically meant to be a brief description of what’s going on in your life at the moment. So for my status I write might write “Dave is preaching a sermon about Facebook.” The when my friends log on to facebook, they will see that I’m preaching a sermon about facebook.

So after I update my status, I can read all the statuses of my friends. I might see that Greg just aced his chemistry exam and my mother-in-law is enjoying her time in Arizona. People can also post pictures or videos on facebook. So I might see a picture of my cousins from down in the states or I could watch a video that that my friend from Australia took of his new baby.

Then there are a whole slough of other features. So I might be reminded that my college buddy’s birthday is tomorrow and I might send a message to Grady asking him if he wants to come over for coffee tonight or I might even play a game of risk online with someone.

And that, in a nutshell, is Facebook. In a matter of minutes, I’ve caught up and re-connected with friends and family from around the world.

Now, my purpose this morning is not to promote or discourage Facebook use. Instead I want to use Facebook as an illustration of an increasingly important spiritual reality.

Consider this: Canada currently has a population of 34 million people – over 14 million of those 34 million people use Facebook. That’s nearly half of our population. Nearly 50% of all of Canada is using Facebook. Clearly Facebook is offering something that people want.

You have to realize that Facebook has only existed since 2004 – that means it has grown from 0 to over 350 million people in just six years. That is incredible! Imagine if the church grew at that rate!

Clearly Facebook has found something that people desperately want. So what is it? What is this draw to facebook that seems to have universal appeal? After all – it’s not just college kids using facebook. It’s moms & dads, Grandmas and Grandpas, uncles and aunts, teenagers. And it’s not a North American thing either. Turkey has 17 million users, Indonesia has 14 million, the Philippines has 8 million, Mexico has 6 million, India has 5 million. What is it about facebook that has world-wide appeal to people of all ages? What is Facebook offering that is drawing millions of new users every week?

Believe it or not – Facebook is offering the same thing that the church is offering. Facebook is offering something that each one of us desperately need. It is offering the very thing that we were created to have. Would you like to know what it is? Facebook is offering community. I’ll explain what I mean in a minute.

But first, think about the word community for a minute. In fact, let’s do a little etymology. (That’s the study of words.)

The root word of “Community” is “commune”. This can be broken down into two parts. The first part is the prefix “com” which means “together” or “with”.  Then the second part, for those of you who have played “UNO” or have ridden a “unicycle”, you know that “une” means “one”. So we have “together” or “with” plus “one”

So community is to be “one with” or “one together”.

When we speak of the people who live around us, we talk about our community – we are one group of people living, working, and playing together with each other. That’s our physical community. We are one with them.

When we celebrate communion, we celebrate the fact that we share in the death and resurrection of Christ – being “one with Christ”. That’s a spiritual community.
Now the reason that Facebook has become so fantastically popular is because it offers us community. It offers us the chance to interact with others that would normally be impossible to connect with on a regular basis. And so it creates a new sort of community. We can be one with literally the rest of the world. And that strikes a  real chord with us humans, because community is the very reason God created us.

God created us to be together with Him. The whole theme of the Bible is that God is with us. We talked about this earlier. To Abraham God says – I am with you. To Joshua – I am with you. To Gideon – I am with you. To the nation of Israel God sends Emmanuel – God with us. Before returning to heaven, Jesus declares “I am with you always.” God wants to be with you. He wants us to share life together with Him. He wants us to have community with Him.

Right from the beginning in Genesis when God created the first man, he declared that it was not good for man to be alone. (In Genesis 2:18; 21-24)

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.”  21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man.
23 “At last!” the man exclaimed.
“This one is bone from my bone,? and flesh from my flesh!? She will be called ‘woman,’?  because she was taken from ‘man.’”
24 This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.

After God created Eve from Adam’s rib, God and Adam and Eve all enjoyed the perfect community, but only for a time. Before long, that perfect community was broken by sin. Remember how Adam & Eve hid from God when He came along looking for them? And then they tried to pass the blame to each other? They were no longer “one with God”. They were separated from him and from each other.

You’ve probably heard the expression that “Everyone is born with a God-shaped hole in their heart.” It’s true, but let me tell you a little bit more about that hole. This hole is the desire for intimacy – the desire to know and be known by another living being. It is the desire for community – to once again be “one with God”. Of course, this hole can only be filled by a personal relationship with God and I should mention that if you’ve never entered into that personal relationship with God, then please see me after the service and I would be happy to talk to you about how you can fix that problem.

You can clearly see this “God-shaped hole” in this generation of kids and young adults today and you can see how they are desperate for community. Their lives are ruled by their cell phone. They can’t bear to miss one call or one text message. The worst thing you could do to a teenager today is take away his cell phone. The second worst thing would be to take away his Facebook. Being in continual contact with their friends gives them a sense of community.

But it’s a shallow community at best. Sure there is constant contact, but it’s hardly intimate. It’s like the small talk you have with the gas pump attendance. It’s communication – but it does nothing to satisfy that deep down inside need to share the real you with someone else.

And the ironic thing is, the very things that people cling to for this shallow community are the very things that are keeping them from authentic community. At youth group this Friday half the kids were playing a game and half the kids were on their cell phones. Instead of playing the game and interacting with each other and sharing their life with each other in that way, their eyes and attention were glued to their cell phones. Ignoring the people that were actually in same room as them, they were lost in their little bubble, texting away on their phones. Their attempts to gain community are actually keeping them from it. Kids spend way more time on Facebook and their cell phones then they do talking with their parents or their siblings, and often even their friends. And in that way,  they become even more starved for authentic community and thus push themselves even farther from it. It’s a vicious cycle.

But what does that have to do with us? Now that we have this information, what do we do with it?

I think this gives us a fantastic look at what the church is going to look like in the near future – what our church needs to look like in order to reach this next generation. This is extremely important because our world is changing faster than we even realize and if we want to be effective, we need to understand our culture.

Many of the things that the church used to do are simply not effective in reaching this generation because things have changed so much so fast.

For example in recent years one of the main tools the church has used has been programs. Programs for kids, programs for young adults, programs for singles, whatever… The problem is that now people are far too busy – the last thing they want is three nights a week of church programs. People want less in their schedule – not more.
Another key tool has been music. You can see that in the popularity of the Hillsong church or the other mega churches where worship is a major production. But today, if people want to listen to that type of music, they’ll just download whatever they like to their iPod and away they go.

We have to stay up to date with our culture so what we can meet them where they are. So knowing that this generation is starving for authentic community gives us a fantastic opportunity to introduce them to Christ and help them restore that authentic community that God create us to have with Him.

But now here’s the hard part – how do we show our physical community that we have the authentic spiritual community that they desperately desire?

Because I’ll be honest with you – they don’t see authentic community in church.
What they see is sitting in a pew for an hour on Sunday morning.
They see more demands of their time and money.
They see frowns at their bad habits.

That’s what they see. No wonder they aren’t flocking to the church. But do you know what would cause them to flock to the church? Let’s take a hint from Facebook – if it can grow from 0 to 350 million by offering a shallow community, what would happen if the church could model authentic community with each other and with our God?

The church would explode! It would be pentecost all over again. Wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t you love to see God totally transform our community?

If you do, then let Him start with you. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that if I want God to transform my community, then He has to transform me first. If I want to be a model of authentic community, then I need to have that authentic community first with my God. I can’t be a Sunday morning Christian. I need to get beyond the small talk in my prayers. I need to have an intimate relationship with my God. When I have that, then I can share that with you. And when we have that, we can share that with our community.

Jesus talks about this in John 17 when He prays for his disciples and for all those who would eventually become his disciples (that includes you and me).

20 “I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. 21 I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.
22 “I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. 23 I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.

Jesus is praying that we experience true community. That we would be one with each other and with God. Just as God intended when He created us. And look what will happen when we do – verse 23.

May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.

When the world sees authentic community among us – then they will know that the “Good News” is true. That God did sent His Son. That there is forgiveness for sins. That God does love every single person. That we can have a real, deep, intimate relationship with our Creator!

So I challenge you to consider your own relationship with Christ, because we have to have authentic community with our God before we’ll have authentic community with our world. First of all, do you have a relationship with God? Have you accepted God’s gift of Salvation? Have you accepted his forgiveness for your sins? If not, that’s step #1.

Step #2, are you growing in your relationship with Him? Are you taking time to get to know Him through His word and through prayer? Are you letting Him transform you into the person He made you to be? Are you seeking out his will for your life and are you obeying Him as He guides you?

There are no magic steps to getting to know God -  no more than there are magic steps to getting to know a friend. It’s just time and effort. Lots of time I wish I could just do A, B, and C, and whammo – I become a super Christian! But it doesn’t work that way. Life is our opportunity to develop and build our personal relationship with our Creator. There are no shortcuts or formulas. Just you desiring to get to know your God.

Do you desire to know your God? Then pray with me this morning…

Genesis 1:1 – “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

We can learn a lot of stuff about God just in the very first verse of the Bible.

First of all, we need to know what the word “create” means? To make out of nothing.

Humans can not create things. We can take something and form it into something else. We can build things, compose things, assemble things, shape things – but we cannot create things.

But God creates stuff. Out of nothing. It’s not even hard for Him. He just says the word and BAM it’s there.

Look at this salt. One little grain of salt has about 12(+17 zeros) atoms in it. God made all those atoms out of nothing. If there are that many atoms in one grain of salt imagine how many atoms are in this salt shaker…. In this church building…. In the entire earth. That’s a lot of atoms that God just made out of nothing.

But God didn’t just make the earth – he made the heavens and the earth. Scientist have found a star that is so huge that you could fit 7 quadrillion earths inside it. If earth was the size of a golf ball, this star would be the height of Mt. Everest – about six miles high. And that’s just one star out of trillions. And God just created all that out of nothing.

That kinda puts things in perspective, doesn’t it. God’s amazingly powerful. Do you think a God like that is capable of taking care of you? Do you think a God like that can handle your problems?

Genesis 18:14 – “Is anything too hard for the LORD?”

Our toughest problems are a cinch to God. A God that creates planets out of nothing is not intimidated by any obstacle.

So can I make a little suggestion? Let God handle your problems. Now, He might not do things the way you want them done, but you can be assured – God can take care of problems. You can give any situation to God and He is well capable of handling it.

Now you might think, “Well, if God is really that powerful and awesome, what makes you think He would ever care about my problems?”

That’s got to be the most amazing thing about God. Even though He can create monster stars out of nothing like that [snap], He cares about you even more than you care about yourself.

He made you. He made all those stars for you. He died on a cross so that you could be with Him. He loves you like crazy – more than you can ever imagine! He doesn’t care how bad you’ve messed up, he doesn’t care what lousy things you’ve done – He is just waiting for you to trust Him with your life so that He can show you what life is really all about.

To me, that is far more mind-boggling than the fact that God can create stars out of nothing. God loves me. He loves you. He doesn’t just tolerate us. He loves us like crazy! That’s amazing!

Now there are some other lessons we can pull from this verse, but for the sake of time, I want to just focus on one more – but before I do, I just have to share this mini-lesson with you. It will only take a minute.

The word create is the root word for creative. Is God creative?!? Think about how He made elephants and giraffes, and beluga whales and ducks and monkeys. Think about how He came up with the idea of taste and then made lemons and peaches and strawberries. Think about how He made those majestic mountains and waterfalls, and beautiful sunsets and flowers and autumn leaves. That’s creativity!

I have to shake my head at people who think heaven will be boring. Some people thing heaven is just a bunch of people sitting on clouds playing harps? The Bible doesn’t say that. In fact, from what I know about God and his creativity, He’s going be blowing my mind with awesomeness every moment of eternity! Every moment will be the most exciting day of our lives. But that’s just a mini-lesson that I had to share with you.

There is just one more lesson from this verse that I want to share with you. That is, it’s all about God. Who created the Heavens and the Earth? God did. Look at the rest of chapter one of Genesis. How often do you see the word “GOD”? It’s in just about every verse – 30 times in 31 verses. Why is that? It’s all about God. Genesis isn’t the story of creation – it’s the story of God.

In fact, the entire Bible is all about God. It’s not about Moses or Elijah or even the Isrealites. It’s the story about God and what He’s done and who He is and how He wants to be with us. That’s why the Bible starts off with “In the beginning God” – and I could add “In the middle God” and “In the end God”.

And it’s not just the stories in the Bible that are all about God – all of history is about God. Even the story of your life is ultimately about God. Now what do I mean by that? How is the story of your life ultimately about God?

Let me ask you a few questions:

• Who create you to the the unique person that you are? – God
• Who has sovereignly controlled every event of your life? – God
• And one day when you die, who will you stand before and give account to? – God

You see, life is not about getting a good job with a steady paycheck.
It’s not about having a big house and long vacations in exotic places.
It’s not about being someone important like a movie star or big time CEO.
Because at the end of your life here on earth – none of that will matter. The only thing that matters then is your relationship with….. GOD! It’s all about God.

I think of a few prestigious people like Princess Diana or Michael Jackson. They had wealth and fame – all the things the world seems to value. But when they died – none of that mattered. All that matters for them now is their relationship with God.

Now I don’t know where each of you stand today. I don’t know what your relationship with God is like, or if you even have one. But I can tell you this – there is a God who created the heavens and the earth. And He loves you like crazy and wants nothing more than to be with you for eternity.

If you have never trusted in Jesus to forgive your sins and you’ve never entered into that relationship with God, can I encourage you to do that today? You don’t need to be perfect – God’ll help you with that later, but for now He just wants you to take the first step.

And for those of you who already have a relationship with Christ, I have this question for you: What have you been doing with your life?

It’s easy to forget that life is all about God. Life is distracting and we lose focus on God and we work to gain that which has no eternal value. My father-in-law has a saying that I’ve come to appreciate. “It won’t matter in a thousand years.” When tractors break or the crops get hailed out – It won’t matter in a thousand years. Think about that – what have you done this week that will matter in a thousand years?

Think about how you’ve spent your money… How much of your money goes towards nice things for you that are here today – gone tomorrow? How much of your money goes towards things that will have eternal impact?

Or how about your time? What percent of your time is spend getting to know God or helping others get to know God? And what percent of your time is just lost?

Maybe think about your skills, talents, and abilities. How do you use them? Do you put your skills and abilities to use for God? Or are they really just wasted?

Don’t think that I’m preaching against buying nice things or going golfing or anything like that – those things are all fine and good. But just keep in mind that you only get one life to live – and only the things that you do for God will last. I can’t speak for you, but I don’t want to waste my life. I want to live my life to the fullest and have the maximum eternal impact that I can. I want to do lots of things that will matter in a thousand years. I want God to use my time, my money, my talents and abilities however He sees fit so that somehow God’s purposes will be accomplished through me.

So I want to leave you with this question: How will you live your life? Will you live it for yourself – filling your life with stuff that simply won’t matter in a thousand years? Or will you live it for your Creator – the God who creates monster stars out of nothing, and who loves you like crazy? The choice is up to you.

Well, this is our final week of looking at Nehemiah. We’ve seen how God led Nehemiah to return to Judah from exile to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. We’ve also seen how Nehemiah faced great opposition, but persevered in spite of it. Now today we are going to look at just two verses to wrap it all up. But I should mention that this isn’t the end of the story of Nehemiah. In fact, we’re not even half-way through. There is lots more to the story and many more things that can be learned, so I would encourage you to read through the rest of Nehemiah.

But for today, we are going to look at two verse in chapter 6, verse 15 & 16:
So on October 2nd the wall was finished—just fifty-two days after we had begun. When our enemies and the surrounding nations heard about it, they were frightened and humiliated. They realized this work had been done with the help of our God.

From these two verses we can draw four principles that we can learn about God’s work. Continue reading »

This is our fourth week of looking at Nehemiah and how he led the people of Jerusalem to rebuild the city walls after 70 years of exile. It’s been very interesting (for me anyway) to read through this story and discover what principles we can apply to our situation here.

And I’m very excited to share with you the next part of the story. It’s my favorite part and I think the lessons that we learn from it are very applicable to everyone here. So let’s jump right into it.

Nehemiah 4:1-3
Sanballat was very angry when he learned that we were rebuilding the wall. He flew into a rage and mocked the Jews, 2 saying in front of his friends and the Samarian army officers, “What does this bunch of poor, feeble Jews think they’re doing? Do they think they can build the wall in a single day by just offering a few sacrifices? Do they actually think they can make something of stones from a rubbish heap—and charred ones at that?”

3 Tobiah the Ammonite, who was standing beside him, remarked, “That stone wall would collapse if even a fox walked along the top of it!”

God put it on Nehemiah’s heart to rebuild the wall, God moved the king as to allow Nehemiah to go back to Jerusalem, and God put everything into place so that the walls of Jerusalem can be rebuilt for the His glory. So what does Satan do? He tries to stop it. Doesn’t Satan work the same way today? When God is doing something, Satan tries to get in the way. And he uses the same tactics back then as he does today too. So we are going to look at three of Satan’s tactics to stop God’s work. The first tactic he employs is discouragement. Continue reading »

For the past two weeks, we’ve been looking a Nehemiah. Just to recap, Nehemiah was the cup-bearer to King Artaxerxes of Persia around 500 BC. He was a Jew who had been living in exile probably all of his life. Other Jews had earlier been allowed to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, but rest of the city was in ruins. When Nehemiah heard about this, God laid it on his heart to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls. He asked the king for permission to go, and through the sovereignty of God, he was allowed.

As we’ve been talking about Nehemiah wanting to build the walls of Jerusalem, we’ve been applying those principles to us wanting to build the church.

Now Nehemiah is in Jerusalem, so let’s read what happens.
Nehemiah 2:11-16
11 So I arrived in Jerusalem. Three days later, 12 I slipped out during the night, taking only a few others with me. I had not told anyone about the plans God had put in my heart for Jerusalem. We took no pack animals with us except the donkey I was riding. 13 After dark I went out through the Valley Gate, past the Jackal’s Well, and over to the Dung Gate to inspect the broken walls and burned gates. 14 Then I went to the Fountain Gate and to the King’s Pool, but my donkey couldn’t get through the rubble. 15 So, though it was still dark, I went up the Kidron Valley instead, inspecting the wall before I turned back and entered again at the Valley Gate.

Nehemiah arrives in Jerusalem, takes three days to rest from his long journey, and then goes out at night with a handful of people to inspect the walls. Continue reading »

When we left Nehemiah last Sunday – he was weeping and mourning and fasting and praying to God because he heard about the terrible state of his countrymen back in Jerusalem. After many years of exile, some of the Jews had returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple, but the city was in ruins, the walls had been torn down and the gates had been burned.

We also talked about our countrymen, right here in our community, living in the ruins so to speak – living lives apart from God. And I trust that God has, and will continue to fill your heart with compassion and concern for the lost in our community, because until we feel the same way God does about our friends and neighbors, (that is with great love and compassion) things aren’t going to change for them. They’re going to stay living in the ruins.

But today as we continue to look at the life of Nehemiah, we’re going to see how he begins to take action. And through that, hopefully we can learn a few principles for us to follow in reaching our community for Christ.

Nehemiah 1:5-11 & 2:1-9

The first thing I want you to notice is the time of year. If you remember from last week, it was late autumn when Nehemiah got the report about the broken walls, but when is it when he talks to the king about going back to Jerusalem? Early spring. What did he do all winter? Continue reading »