The Only Family that Will Last Forever · Part 2

0:31 1 Corinthians 12, 25 to 27. The members, notice how many times this word member comes up in the Bible. The members must have the same care for each other. That means I gotta care about you, you gotta care about me. We have to care about each other. If we are in the family of God, if we are in the body of Christ called Saddleback or whatever, there are lots of good churches, just choose one. I'm not saying just this church, I'm just saying just choose a place I said, that's gonna be my family. The members must have the same care for each other. If one member is hurt or suffers, then all suffer together. And if one member is honored, all the others rejoice. In other words, you get a raise, you get promoted, the whole church should celebrate with you. You get the dreaded word cancer, the whole church should support you when you're going through those protocols.

1:26 You are the body of Christ and each one of you is a necessary part of it. There's no unnecessary part. People say, well I'm not very necessary in my church. Oh how wrong you are. If I don't use my gifts, you get hurt. If you don't use your gifts, I get hurt. So does everybody else. We all have a different role to play. Now let me pause here and review what I've said about what is the church. First I said, it's God's family that's in heaven and on earth. Some's in heaven, some's on earth. I said, it's composed of saved and baptized believers. Okay, if you're not saved, you're not baptized, you're not a part of the church. Okay, number three, they're committed to Jesus and each other. We commit to him and we commit to each other. But then there's one other fourth part, write this down.

2:21 And these are people who are preparing for heaven or Christ's return. Preparing for heaven or Christ's return. That's what the church is doing. So either Jesus comes back before I die or he doesn't come back before I die and I go to heaven first. Either way, I'm preparing for eternity with him. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 23 is an important verse. It says this. you are the church of God's children. Okay, remember, it's the family of God. You are the church of God's children whose names are registered in heaven. You ought to be grateful for that because you have come to God himself and you have come to Jesus. Now, notice this. Your names are registered in heaven. You know, I've met a few of these Hollywood types and done some Bible studies for producers and stuff like that up in Hollywood.

3:19 And the big deal in Hollywood is to get on the A-list. Because if you're on the A-list, you get invited to all the A-list parties. You don't want to be on the B-list or the C-list or like some of us, the Z-list. Okay? Because you really want to be, because the A-list are the best parties after the Oscars and stuff like that. Well, let me tell you something. There's something better than being on the A-list. It's being on God's register of names in heaven. Hello? Oh, that is a big deal, okay? That is a very exclusive list. Not everybody's gonna be on that list. Only those who've been saved and baptized and joined a part of God's family. Only God's family is gonna be in heaven, but that's a very exclusive list. Most important invitation list you wanna be a part of.

4:12 How do I get on that list? Well, that verse said, get to know, you've come to know God and you've come to know Jesus. You come to God and you come to Jesus. Now, there are 67 different metaphors in the Bible. The metaphors are names of the church. What I want to do in the last few minutes here is talk to you about five of them and show you the benefits. What are the benefits of belonging? So the Bible calls the church many different things, but let's just look at five. Would you write these down? The first metaphor is the most well-known one, which is the church is a family. Okay. It's a family. And there are many, many implications for that. But the one thing I want to focus on is that as in a healthy family, you learn who you are. So write this down. Number one, in God's family, I learn my true identity. That's the first benefit of actually being a member of a local church. In God's family, I learned my true identity.

5:13 Have you ever thought about why people wear brands? You know, it'll say Ralph Lauren or Ruka or Vans or Tommy Hilfiger or whatever. Why do people wear brands? To identify, to feel like they belong to something. They like, they think that this is a cool brand. If I wear this brand, then I'm cool. And so we identify with brands because it helps us identify. But in reality, your primary identity doesn't come from what you wear. Your primary identity comes from relationships. I am a son. I am a brother. I am a husband. I am a father. I am a grandfather. I am a friend. I am a mentor. I am a pastor. I am a coworker.

6:04 These are all relationships in my life that define who Rick Warren is. It's not how I look. It's not how little or much money I've got. It's what are my relationships. You're defined by relationships. Now, if my connections are bad or my connections are broken, then my identity suffers. If I just got fired, or I just got divorced, or my spouse dies, if something changes in my relationships, it causes me to pause and go, who am I? Who am I? Because your primary identity comes from your relationships. Now, I know what some of you think. Rick, that's terrible news for me because my family was dysfunctional. my family was broken, or maybe my family was non-existent.

7:01 Well, I got good news for you. The next verse on your outline, Ephesians 2.19, you are a member of, there's that word member, you are a member of God's very own family, and you belong in God's household with every other Christian. This is your family. You belong here, you fit here. Now, actually, hear me out on this. Your spiritual family is far more important even than your physical family. God used your physical family to bring you into the world so you could become a part of his spiritual family. You should be grateful that your physical family got together, whatever the circumstances are. It doesn't matter. God wanted you alive because he wanted you to be a part of his spiritual family. Why is my spiritual family, the church, more important than my physical family?

7:54 because your physical family doesn't last. People die, people grow old, people move away, people divorce, there's all kinds of different things. It doesn't last. But God's family is gonna last forever and ever and ever. Our relationship, I have people in my family I never met, great-grandparents and other relatives that I've never met. My dad was number 18 of 20 kids.

8:21 Yeah, can you imagine that? I'd have to rent a Superdome if I had a family reunion. I've never met most of those relatives. But if they know the Lord, they're in God's family, we're gonna be in heaven together. And your spiritual family is gonna be permanent. It's going on for thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years. God used your physical family to get you into the world. You ought to be grateful for that. But his real goal is to get you into his spiritual family. You're a member of God's very only family. And the world uses superficial identifiers. You have brown hair, you weigh such and such, your height is this, you're Asian or you're Caucasian or you're African American or you're educated or you're rich or you're whatever. Those are all superficial identifiers for you.

9:17 And people today, when they don't know their identity in Christ, they look for identity in something else, like a political party. Well, I'm a this, or I'm a that. And they find their identity in the team that they root for, or they find their identity in the celebrity that they identify with, or they find their identity in the political person they think is going to be the savior of the world. But none of that It matters, it's superficial. What matters most is your spiritual identity. Look on the screen, Hebrews 2.11. Jesus and the people he makes holy all belong to the same family. That's a connection. You're in the family of God. That's why he isn't ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters.

10:11 Now you may have had some relatives you were ashamed of. But God, Jesus says, I'm not ashamed of you. I'm your brother. I'm your elder brother in the family of God. By belonging to Christ, you discover your true identity. Now, you know, I used to work up in inner city LA as a youth pastor many, many years ago. And gangs would get gang tattoos so they could identify who they belong to, okay? What's the tattoo of a Christian? baptism baptism says i'm in i'm in i'm not ashamed to say to the world uh jesus christ is my savior and my lord now that's the first metaphor it's family let's go quickly to these others second metaphor the bible says the church is a temple it's a temple it's like a building erected to hold the presence of God.

11:08 And God says his presence wants to be in you. You're a temple and together we form the temple of God. Look here on the screen. First Corinthians 3.16 says this. Don't you realize that all of you together, together are the temple of God and his spirit lives in you. I'm not the temple of God just by myself. You're not the temple of God just by yourself. Together, we are the temple of God. That's a metaphor for God's family, for God's church. And like a strong structure of a building, we each hold each other up. Okay, this is an important thing. We each hold each other up. You know, I remember when we were building all these buildings on the Lake Forest campus and how fascinating it was that it took thousands and thousands and thousands of parts to erect a building.

12:05 But the most important thing in a building is that the parts have to fit together. If they don't fit together, the parts are worthless. A beam that is a quarter of an inch too short is worthless. A pipe that is a foot too long is worthless. The parts have to fit together or they lose their meaning and purpose. and to be strong and to be stable, everything has to connect. And that's what the metaphor of the church as a temple is all about. Also, I noticed when I would walk around in some of these buildings that were being built before they were erected, is that there was a lot of spare stuff laying around on the ground. There were parts and wood and tools and all kinds of things that were not used. And what I noticed about that is that a piece of pipe could be laying on the ground.

13:04 It could be in the building. Okay, it could be in the building, but it was not a part of the building. You understand what I'm saying? Just laying on the ground. It's in the building, but it's not a part of the building. Some of you are in the church. You come every week to service, but you're not a part of it because you're not connected yet. You haven't made the commitment of membership. You're in it. You're in it, but you're not a part of it because you're not connected to anybody yet.

13:36 Many times. Why did God use this metaphor of a building to illustrate the church? Because in a building, the connected parts hold each other together. And there are gonna be many times in your life when you need other people to hold you together. you're going to need other people in your life to hold you together as the pastor of this church there have been many many times over 40 years i needed the members of this church to hold me together because i'm just a person like you and i needed people to hold me together when things are falling apart in my life. If you don't have that, you're lacking what the church offers. So write this down. Number two, in God's temple, I'm supported by others. Like a strong structure of a building, we hold each other up. This is what the whole book of Ephesians teaches. Chapter two, in God's temple, I'm supported by others. Ephesians chapter two says this, verse 21 and 22.

14:50 In Christ, the whole building is joined together and it rises to become a holy temple to the Lord. He's talking about the church. And in him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling place in which God lives by his spirit, by his spirit. Here's the point. In a building, a disconnected frame has no support and has no stability, and it's going to collapse on its own. And if you're not connected, there will be times in your life when you collapse because you have no stability and you have no support. You're just out there on your own. You weren't meant to go through life all by yourself. You weren't meant to go through it all on your own. You need physical and spiritual and emotional and mental support.

15:44 You need to belong. A few years back, I got, because of my grandkids, got involved in Legos. It had been a long time since I'd played with Legos. But we turned my entire garage into Legoland. And we were building, you know, Fantasy World and Cowboys and Indians and Star Wars and Jurassic Park and on and on and on. You know what I discovered about Legos?

16:14 Legos are created for connection. they have no purpose if they're not connected when you connect them you can really build some cool stuff but if they're not connected to anything else they're just a pile of plastic they get in the way and you step on them it hurts your barefoot anybody ever stepped on a leg god bless you is there another god bless you i see you thousands of you have stepped on legos thank you god bless you but when you connect them you can create something cool here's what the bible says romans chapter 1 verse 12 i want us to help each other with the faith that we have okay your faith will help me and my faith will help you that's why we have church Hey, thanks so much for being with us today and listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. I hope that you were just as blessed as I was from today's broadcast.

17:14 Right now, here's Pastor Rick with a special message. You know, when I started Saddleback Church over 40 years ago with just a handful of people in our living room, I also began writing a simple devotional just for the people in our church to help them start each day with hope. and with truth and with peace that comes from Jesus Christ. Well, you know, that little devotional grew and grew and grew. And today, Daily Hope is one of the largest email devotions in the whole world. And each day, people all around the globe are reconnecting with God's promises and finding fresh strength in his word to face whatever comes their way. And here's the best part. It's absolutely free, okay? We don't have any charge for this. Every day you'll get a quick devotional read and a podcast that you can listen to on the go. Now, you know, in a world that's more distracted and uncertain than ever, I want to help you start your day centered on what never changes.

18:19 And what never changes is a God's love, his unconditional love for you and his promises to you. You know, if you'll just spend just a few minutes a day in the morning with the Lord, it can bring so much more clarity, more purpose, more peace to everything that happens in your day. Particularly, psychologists have said that what you do with the first five minutes of your day pretty much sets the tone. So friend, you were never meant to go through life alone. I want to personally invite you to just sign up for the Daily Hope devotional. Do it today. I think it's going to bring fresh...