Today we continue our sermon series, “40 Days of Community.” In this study, we as a church want to do two things: making our divine fellowship a more loving and Christ-centered assembly and reaching out in God’s love to our community with the help of the Holy Spirit. We want to do this as a Heavenly team because we are better together. The Apostle Paul said, “[So] in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12: 5). Whether we realize it or not, the people sitting next to you, they are connected to you, and we all are parts of the body of Christ called Church. Though we each have different functions in this sacred community, we are all connected in Christ and serve the Lord our God together once again with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

But here is the challenging issue: as spiritual descendants of Adam and Eve, we can be easily disconnected from others in terms of a relationship. Like many of you, I have heard about many broken connections between people who are supposed to love each other. Sadly, we have seen various damaged relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, employers and employees, siblings, friends, and neighbours. The church is not exempted from this injured business. Since we all were and are sinners before God, unfortunately, church hurt occurs in Christian communities. This morning, I want us to explore what destroys relationships and how we can rebuild them.

Before we go further, I want to share a little secret with you. Whether we admit it or not, we all have challenges in our relationships. Do you know that the only people in this world who would agree with everything you said are dead people? It means two things if you are getting along in almost perfect harmony with anyone in your group. The first interpretation is that you are not being honest. The second is that they are all dead! God likes variety. The Lord, our Creator, could have made us all alike. He could have made us all with the same opinions, backgrounds, interests, and personalities, but He didn’t. That is why we need to learn how to get along with one another.

Today, we will look at how we build new relationships or prevent relationships from going bad. According to the Word of God, every relational problem comes down to one of the three negative attitudes. Every problem we have had in a relationship comes as a result of one or more of these three issues. They are the enemies of the community:

Number one is selfishness. A selfish-centred mind destroys relationships. It is the number one cause of conflicts. Almost everything in arguments starts because of our self-centeredness. It can be very easy for us, who have a selfish mindset, to damage relationships quickly. Many of us would agree that we put a lot of time, energy and effort into building intimate relationships with others. Sometimes we may experience that, all of a sudden, those loving connections turn to the hated ones for some reason. Most of the cases, I believe, could happen due to self-centeredness. I am right, and you are wrong. My thought is correct, and your opinion is false. My insight is better than yours. When a thing is mistaken, the fingers are pointed to others if our hearts are self-centered. Some of you have heard me share this parable before. It illustrates the difference between heaven and hell. One day, a person was wondering about those two mysterious places. An angel of the Lord suddenly appeared and invited him to different locations. Firstly, they entered a community hall called hell. There were banquet tables filled with all types of delicious food. However, everybody in that place looked miserable. All people there had unbending arms and were given to use long wooden spoons. It would be impossible to feed themselves. They were starving to death while dropping food on the floor. After that unfortunate experience, the angel took that person to heaven. All the settings in that room were pretty much the same as the previous one. There were tons of tasty food on the tables. All people also had unfolding elbows. They were using long-sized utensils as well during meal fellowship. All of them looked cheerful and well-fed. The person was very surprised and questioned the angel about why the two places differed. The angel answered with a big smile the following statement: “It is simple; here we feed each other. We serve each other.” A selfish heart damages relationships and even destroys relationships, whether related to family, marriage, friendship, or spiritual community.

If selfishness hurts relationships, then selflessness can rebuild them. Selflessness means a little bit less of me and more of you. I am not the whole center of the universe. I am thinking about other people. The Apostle Paul encourages us to imitate Christ’s humility in our Epistle for today. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (Philippians 2:4-5). That is selflessness. Unselfishness brings out the best in others. It builds relationships. Christ also shows the example of selflessness “by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:7). Have we ever wondered how difficult it would be for God to come into the world in human form? The Lord created the whole universe with glory and power, but He came on earth as a baby to serve us as sinners. As the Son of God, Jesus was supposed to be served by the people, but He chose to have a servant mind as the Son of Man. Have we also ever wondered how hard it would be to love some selfish people, including ourselves? With our human nature only, we cannot serve anyone. We need to repent of our self-centred hearts and ask God to provide us with a Christ-servanthood mind.

Friends, we all have authority over some things and/or some people in our own places. Christ wants us, as His disciples, to use that power to serve the people around us with humility. Whether we recognize it or not, if we start acting selfless in a relationship, it may force the other person to change because we are not the same people anymore. They may be influenced by this godly attitude and be transformed into more selfless people. We cannot change the whole unkind world; however, we can together make a loving church or community if we each serve other people with loving and understanding minds like the people in the heavenly banquet did.

Another struggle we may face is related to insecurity. Insecurity or self-doubt destroys relationships. In reality, as socialized human beings, we long to be close to others, but as fragile humans, we also fear being connected with them. We desire a friendly relationship with others but are also afraid of having a more profound association with them. We cannot get close to others because of fear and criticism in various relationships. At the beginning of our friendships, we usually find many good things in them. As time goes by, however, we also discover some things we do not like or do not expect. Under the sun, everybody is all imperfect. We make our own mistakes. One more time, as the spiritual descendants of Adam and Eve, we have been unsecured due to our shortcomings. After disobeying God by eating God’s forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve had self-doubt about themselves, even if they lived in a perfect paradise called the Garden of Eden. They feared their imperfections and “made coverings for themselves” (Genesis 3:7). Like Adam and Eve, we may fear that someone will find out what we are really like. Like them, we may cover up ourselves and pretend to be people we are not. The deeper problem with wearing a mask is the fear of rejection. We have all been criticized at some point. Maybe some of us have been hurt by someone saying: “You are not good enough.” Perhaps some of us have felt rejection or criticism at home, school, work, or even church. I do not know what to say to you about those of your unpleasant memories. One thing I want to express in this matter is that Christ understands our criticism. Remember that the people in His day rejected His divine love and nailed Him to a cross. That is the greatest abandonment. So, Jesus understands how we feel.

Insecurity breaks relationships. What is the antidote to those anxious thoughts of self-doubt? In another Epistle for today, the Apostle John encourages us to pay attention to Christ’s love for us. “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment… There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear…” (1 John 4:16-18). As I stated before, Jesus would be the most criticized person in the Bible. In His day, some religious leaders tried to find out Christ’s wrongdoings and wanted to accuse Him of them. Even though Jesus was entirely innocent of any falsehood, He was sentenced to death on the cross. All of His disciples also abandoned Him. It would be hard for Christ to deal with those unsecured situations. However, I believe that Jesus kept trusting in God’s love and holding on to the Word of God given at His baptism, “This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

I don’t know about you, but it is hard for me to deal with some criticism. I am the kind of person trying to make everybody around me happy. Personally, I want to get along with anyone in the circles I belong to. I also want to impress others by showing how nice I am. While preparing this part of the message, I’ve realized anew that God’s love only makes me secure of what I am. Not all the accomplishments I have made in the past and what I want to do in the coming days would make me sure of who I am. I can get this lesson from the marriage my wife and I have cherished for almost 26 years. When I looked back on those times with Soon Hwa, she would be the most person who had argued with me. My wife would have the same opinion on this. I would be the most person who has primarily debated with her. However, our marriage has not been broken up because of the love between the two of us. Since both of us love each other so much, we have never taken any criticism in negative ways.

Friends, we need to realize how much God loves us. We also need to recognize that God loves us more than we could ever imagine. The moment we begin to realize how much God loves us, we do not need to prove anything to anyone. We do not need to impress other people. If God loves us, it does not matter who told us about what!

Now the third enemy of the community is resentment. Resentment destroys relationships. Whether we like it or not, we will hurt others, and they will hurt us intentionally and unintentionally. Hurting each other in life is an unavoidable fact. The thing in this matter is the next question: What do we do with that hurt? Are we going to allow it to make us better? Or are we going to allow it to make us bitter? We may experience that it is not the significant issues that make us resentful. It can be a lot of small things that have just been accumulated. It is like a snowball. When a snowball is on the top of the mountain, it is very tiny. But as it rolls down to the valley, it grows until it covers us completely. Another image related to this is wearing pairs of coloured glasses. Unless the glasses we wear are removed, we cannot see the actual world. Until then, we can get easily irritated, and those irritations we keep focusing on will turn into resentment.

The antidote to resentment is forgiveness. Forgiveness builds relationships just like resentment tears them down. In our Gospel for today, the author of Matthew adds one more sentence after the Prayer Jesus taught His disciples: “But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:15). This statement describes how important forgiveness is in our prayers. We remember the question the Apostle Peter made to Christ: “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times” (Matthew 18:21). Peter thought that he would become a super disciple if he could put up with whoever had offended him, up to seven times. The number seven implies perfectness in those days. But Jesus said to Peter, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22). Seventy-seven times equals four hundred and ninety times. Can we keep forgiving a person who has made the same mistake repeatedly? The number Jesus mentions in this scripture means more than just that number of frequent forgiving acts. Jesus is highlighting God’s incomprehensible love for each of us. Do we know how often the Lord our Christ has forgiven our sins since birth? A short answer is an infinite number of times. Real forgiveness comes when we realize that we do not deserve it.

Now let me explain what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not making excuses for the people who hurt us. They hurt us, and it was real. Forgiveness is not minimizing the hurt. It hurt. Forgiveness is not justifying it, saying it was no big deal. It was a big deal. Forgiveness is not saying it was not wrong. It was definitely wrong. Again, what is forgiveness? Forgiveness is letting go of the pain and letting go of our right to get even.

Some of us may ask, “What if they do not even acknowledge what they have wronged us? Do I have to forgive them?” One of the Seven Last Words of Christ is the following prayer: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34). We as Christ-disciples need to forgive them whether they admit their wrongdoings or not because forgiveness is not for them but for you and me to follow in His footsteps. It is also for us to heal and grow. Someone says, “The worst prison on this earth is an unforgiving heart. The most miserable people are those who refuse to forgive others.” The only way to heal the pain of resentment is to forgive and leave them up to God’s judgment.

God brought us here this morning because the Lord has good news for us. Here is what God says to each of us today. In Isaiah 43:18,19, the Lord says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now, it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Now some of us may have had some relational disasters in our lives; welcome to the human race. Everybody has had some relational challenges. What are we going to do with them?

God wants all of us to start something totally new in our lives today, and it begins with opening up our lives to Christ and letting Him fill us with His love on a moment-by-moment basis. Jesus also taught this prayer to the disciples, “Freely you have received; freely give” (Matthew 10:8). Forgiveness is the grace of Christ, who has given us free of charge, so Jesus expects us to be like Him and wants us to share it with others freely. Our theme, 40 Days of Community, reminds us of what our church can be – a place of love and fellowship. Let us grow into an unselfish, loving and forgiving community so that we might be better together and serve His church together!

* In this sermon, I have used some materials and thoughts from the speeches Rick Warren prepared for “40 Days of Community.”