How To Connect With Your Neighbour
Jordan Day · Tidal Church Moncton · March 17, 2024 · The Domino Effect series
Jordan Day centres on Genesis 1:26 and 2:18, showing that we are made in the image of a Trinitarian God and designed for community. He encourages a weekly hour-long conversation with a friend and one shared meal each day.
More from Jordan Day · The The Domino Effect series
Topics: Relationships, Mission & Outreach, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:54] Morning. How many of you today had an important conversation? Raise your hand if you had an important conversation today, or maybe this week, this week you had an important conversation or interaction with someone, or maybe this month you had an important conversation. Well, I can think of some important conversations that I've had in the past year. I know something big in my life that happened was I got married, so I got married in July. Yeah, you can clap for that. My wife is here somewhere. And so I got married in July. And for those of you who are married, and even if you're not, I'm pretty sure you can assume that you have some important conversations in the process of getting married.
[1:42] So what if I told you that on my wedding day when I was supposed to say my vows to my wife, I texted her? I just texted her my vows. What if I told you that when I proposed to my wife, instead of getting down on one knee and having a face-to-face conversation, I texted her? What if, when I was asking my best man to be my best man, instead of going to his dorm room and shaking his hand and asking him to be my best man, I just texted him? Some of you would say that would be impersonal. I would maybe not even be in touch with my emotions, but a lot of us can think of important conversations that we've had in this past month or this past week or this past year, even crucial moments in our lives where we need to interact with one another, and maybe some of us have texted each other.
[2:42] I think a lot of us can agree that when you text things to people, things can get misinterpreted, things can get misunderstood, right? Like, you can't really explain emotion over text unless you're like really good at using emojis, which I'm not. So you can't really understand the emotion behind the text all the time. So that's why it's important when we have these crucial, vital conversations in our relationships with others, I think it's important that we have them in person. And I'm sure lots of us would agree with that, right? We should have them in person. And we clap at that because, like, in the day and age that we're in right now, we are so used to just, like, being on our phone and having access to that and being able to think up a question or an answer to those conversations that we're in.
[3:41] And it doesn't actually require much risk. In-person conversations require risk, but with risk usually comes value and it comes with reward, right? We know the saying, like, risk and reward. And that's so true in in-person conversations, right? Because you can say something wrong. I'm sure lots of us have had conversations with the girl or the guy that we like and you're really nervous and you're shaking and you don't really know what to say. And sometimes you can say something wrong. I know if you ask me to describe how I proposed to Jess, I wouldn't be able to tell you. I got down on one knee and I just, like, blacked out. But the words came out and we're married now, so we're all good.
[4:27] But there's risk to in-person conversations, right? But there's also value to them. The author of the book that we're going over, The Common Rule, right? We're in this Domino Effect series and we're going over habits. And he actually says that as you have conversations with people face-to-face, whether you like it or not, some of you comes out in what you say, and actually they receive that and vice versa. So it goes back and forth. You give what you have in the conversation and they receive it and they give to you what they have. And all of a sudden you're creating this connection.
[5:14] When we don't have those in-person conversations, sometimes that connection can be lost because it's just generic. It's just words on a page, right? Imagine if you came to church today, and instead of me preaching the sermon and us going through what God has to say to you, we just put words on the screen. Many of you would walk away from this place very disappointed with what you were coming to expect. You wouldn't get the personal message that God has for you because it would just be words on a screen. Instead, hopefully there's a messenger that God is speaking into your life and He's speaking into mine also.
[6:01] But it's that personal connection of face-to-face interaction. So the reality is that important conversations are had in person. They should be had in person. If we even think about meals, let's think about meals for a second. Usually when there's big celebrations, we have meals. I keep going back to my wedding, but I mean, like, I'm pretty young. I don't have a whole lot of life experience. So my wedding is like much of my content. So my wedding, we had a meal, right? It's a celebration. We get together, we gather around the table, right? The table is our sense of community. The author of The Common Rule, he even says it's the center of gravity for us because we always gravitate back to the table to eat because I don't know about you, but I like to eat.
[6:51] So, like, I always come back to the table, maybe more than just for three meals a day. It's four or five or six. But we always come back to the table to eat. And usually for celebrations, we eat food. If you think about your anniversary, if you're married or you're dating and you think about your anniversary, what do you usually do on your anniversary? You have a nice meal together or you go out to eat, or maybe you even go on a trip and guess what? You go out to eat on the trip. Maybe it's a graduation and you're graduating from university or you're graduating from high school and maybe you have a graduation supper, or maybe you have a graduation party. I had a graduation party when I graduated from high school and we had a barbecue, right?
[7:39] We always gravitate around meals in life's biggest moments. And I think that's really a part of how we were created. So let's look at the graph that we have for this series. There's a graphic and we see that in order to love God and to love our neighbor, there's some habits that we can actually embrace and we can resist. So if you're tracking along with me, the top corner where it says "embrace" and "love neighbor" is where we're at today. Jeremy has kind of depicted, what do we need to resist in order to love God and to love our neighbor? Well, maybe I'm a little bit nicer than Jeremy, so I'm gonna talk about what we need to embrace in order to love our neighbor.
[8:29] So in Genesis chapter 1, verse 26, it says, "Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock, and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground. I think this is important as we go back to the biblical text. We don't just wanna, we don't just wanna have these habits. We wanna have biblical habits. We wanna have habits that make us function in the way that God has created us to live, right? So we need to make sure that they're biblical habits. So in Genesis chapter 1, in verse 26, is the way God has created us. He said, then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness."
[9:23] So why do we need each other? I think that's the question that we kind of are gonna evaluate this morning. We've gone over kind of the habits of what we're gonna try to tackle this week, maybe as a church. Hopefully we can take these habits and we can integrate them into our life. But why do we need each other? God has designed us to rely on His creation. If you're a note writer, before we, before we really dig into the habits, I want us to have a biblical basis so that we know why we need each other, because we're trying to embrace habits in order to love our neighbour, right?
[10:10] So why do we need each other? Well, the first thing is God has designed us to rely on His creation. So again, if we go back to the table, we eat, I eat food. I love food. Yes, I love food. And the reality is that we're not self-sustaining creatures. We eat food and we need each other and we need lots of different things. And we need water, and we need, usually, we need a place to stay, right? A roof over our head is an ideal thing that we want to obtain as human beings. There's needs that we have. And the reality is that God has actually designed us to rely on the creation that He has provided for us. And let's take fasting for an example.
[10:56] Jeremy talked about fasting last week and how that's a practice we can integrate into our lives. Well, fasting is amazing, but eventually your fast has to end, right? Barring a miracle from God, if you don't eat for a year, like you're not gonna survive. Because we're not self-sustaining creatures. We need things. And the reality is that just as much as we need food and we need water, and we need God, right? We're relying on God. Well, God has designed us to rely on His creation too. So we're actually relying on each other. We are in desperate need of community. After Genesis chapter 1, verse 26, and in verse 28, it said, "God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.'" Right? That's people. We need each other.
[11:49] "Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth. And every tree that has fruit with seed in it, they will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground, everything that has the breath of life in it, I give every green plant for food." And it was so. God gave us His creation to take it and to subdue it, but also because we need it. We rely on it. We are not self-sustaining. It is God's creation and God Himself that sustains us.
[12:34] So since it's God's creation that sustains us, it is really God that sustains us, the be-all and all of us being sustained as human beings is the Creator of the world. So as we know that, let's go into the habits that we want to integrate into our lives this week. Well, the weekly habit that we have, if we wanna go back to the weekly habit, it is a one hour conversation with a friend once a week, a one hour conversation with a friend. Some of you know that I was an intern here this summer, and then I was brought on full time. But during that process, Jess, my wife, was at school at Kingswood University.
[13:20] So one thing that I had to do was I had to drive from Sussex to Moncton for work. And it was a bit of a drive. It was about 45 minutes. And I really wanted to find something to do on this drive. So I started listening to podcasts and those were good. And I've always listened to music and that's fine, but I wanted to find something to do. Well, I started calling friends on my drive, and I just talked to them. And one of my friends, his name is Thomas, who's the best man at my wedding. We were roommates in university. We lived down the hall from each other for a while. And then we became roommates. We played sports together. We went to McDonald's a few too many times together. We did everything together. We were inseparable at university, and we were best friends.
[14:05] And he's the best man in my wedding. And then over the course of this past year, he moved back home to Newfoundland and I moved back home to Moncton and we're both working in churches currently. And it became increasingly hard to have face-to-face conversation if he's in Newfoundland. And I am in Moncton. So what I started to do was I started to call Thomas on my way home from work, and all of a sudden we started to have these conversations again that we had when we were in person. And it was very, very valuable to our friendship and our relationship. And I didn't wanna be, we kind of made it clear to each other. We didn't want to be these friends that just shifted apart just because we weren't in the same geographical location to each other, right?
[14:54] So we started to call each other and we would have hour-long conversations. Sometimes they would be like very serious conversations, like stuff we were dealing with at work or what it was like to work in a church, how awesome it was, how much of a challenge it was. And in all of these different things that we were experiencing life together as friends should. And then sometimes we would just argue with each other on hockey and have different kind of unimportant conversations. If you're a hockey fan in this room, Thomas is an Edmonton Oilers fan. I know, and I am a Pittsburgh Penguins fan. So we would debate who is better, a guy named Connor McDavid and a guy named Sidney Crosby. And we debated from 2:00 AM to 5:00 AM in our dorm room one time about this debate.
[15:43] And some of you who don't know hockey are like, "Why is he telling me this?" But it's because not every conversation that we have is vitally important to our life or our relationship. But it is important when we have those conversations to continuously and regularly have conversations and interaction with each other. Because the more and more that we do it, the more that I give him and the more that he gives me, and the more our friendship grows. And that's why a one hour conversation with a friend is so vitally important, and I would encourage you to have it in person if you can. But if you can't, then call, call someone. Call them, talk to them, have an interaction with them. And the daily habit that we want to kind of discover is to have one meal with others.
[16:31] One thing that my family did, growing up was we would always have supper together. That was almost like a rule. It was almost like an unspoken rule. It was just kind of like a habit. Oh, what a habit that we got into. And we would have supper together. Lunch could be on the go. Lunch could be at school, it could be at work, it could be just like a sandwich that you grab. It would be whatever, but, but supper was when the whole family came together and stopped what we were doing and sat around the table and we would have supper together. And I think we underestimate how important it is to have a meal with others during the day. When I was reading the book, The Common Rule, he said, usually I would kind of skip breakfast or grab breakfast on the go.
[17:22] And I was like, "Ooh, you might be talking to me here." And then he was like, "Yeah." And I would just kind of like breeze by lunch. I would work through lunch, and then work would get so busy that I would just have supper at work. And then I would work after supper, and then I would go home. And he said, all of a sudden, by the end of the day, I found that I had eaten all my meals alone and I had worked the rest of the day. Sometimes we can get so caught up in the busyness of our lives that we can forget to put in the good healthy habits that God has really designed us to live in. We are called to eat together, right? Like if we look at situations in Jesus' life, if we look at the Bible and then we look at Jesus' life, we always wanna relate those and see when they line up and see how Jesus actually lived out the calm and biblical themes that we are called to live out, right?
[18:18] If we look at Jesus' last time with His disciples, He had the Last Supper and they experienced communion together, and they broke bread. And they had these very, very vitally important conversations. Conversations that we remember. And we even quote in our Christian faith today. So really, if you just wanna accomplish two birds with one stone, you just have a meal with others, and you have it last an hour and you have a conversation with them, and then bang, if you're a multitasker. But so we see Jesus set the example for us, right? It is important. His 12 disciples, the people that He was closest to, He took time to sit and to eat. Let me tell you, Jesus was a few days off from dying on the cross for the entire world.
[19:06] And He took time to sit and eat with the people closest to 'em. Just because you have a little bit of paperwork to do doesn't mean you don't have time to sit and eat with your family. Like that's the reality of it. Jesus has set the example for us because the second point that I want us to kind of focus on is we are actually created in the image of community. We're created in the image of community. We are designed to live with each other. We're designed to live in community. Therefore, we should be living in community with one another. It's not just something that is set up here and then we're left with, like, we should actually therefore be going and doing it.
[19:59] I heard someone preach just last night. Oftentimes we get convicted at church on Sunday, and then we reason ourselves out of that conviction for the rest of the week. I wanna encourage us this morning, you, when you go out into your life, don't reason yourself out of putting these habits into practice. It's something really, really valuable that I heard yesterday. Don't reason yourself out of the conviction that God is stirring in your heart right now. So we should be living in community with one another because it's actually how we are designed. We're created in the image of community. If we go back to Genesis, chapter 1, verse 26, I want us to focus on that first line.
[20:46] It says, "Let us make mankind in our image." I don't know if it's about you, but before I was preparing for this message, I always was like, "Yes, God made us in His image. God the Father made us in His image." But the reality is it says, "Let us make mankind in our image." Those are plural. So what does He mean by that? If you're not familiar with the Christian faith, and maybe you're new here. Well, we actually believe that our God is a Trinity. Our God is three in one. And I know that's a really, really hard concept to understand. Some describe it as an egg. I mean, it does not encapsulate it at all.
[21:31] And it doesn't actually give a super accurate representation of it because it's more than that. But there's the shell, there's the yolk, and there's the white, right? But they're all one egg. Well, there's the Holy Spirit. There's the Son, Jesus Christ, and there is the Father, God the Father, and they are three Gods in one. They're three beings, but they're one God. And maybe that's super hard to understand. And you're like, "What? We just got sidetracked from being in community with one another to explaining the theology of the Trinity." Well, the reality is, like, it's the truth, but we don't actually completely need to understand it all. Because if we understood all of how God functioned and why He makes the decisions that He does, then we wouldn't be relying on God.
[22:17] We wouldn't have faith in God, right? Some truth in our faith, in our relationship with God is the fact that we actually don't know it all. Some of it is unknown, and some of it is really, really difficult to understand. Well, the reality is the Trinity is very, very difficult to understand. But it says in the Bible, it says, "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." So it says in the Bible, there's three different beings in one. So let's go back for one moment and it says, "Let us make mankind in our image." Well, let me tell you, we are made in the image of community.
[23:04] We're made in the image of three beings in one. One God has created us, but three beings, and we are created in that image. It doesn't say, "Let me make mankind in my image," it says, "Let us make mankind in our image." So the reality is that we are made in the image of a God that is in community with one another. And I think that's so unreal to me to think that we are actually made in the image of community. If we recall the creation story, always after each day of creation, God said it was good. He made light, and it was good. He made the seas and the earth, and it was good.
[23:50] He made the moon and the stars, and it was good. He made mankind. And He actually said that, you are very good. But there's one thing that God actually clearly said is not good. And in Genesis 2, He actually says that it is not good for man to be alone. The one thing in all of the creation story, in all of the amazing things that God is doing, He could be so encapsulated with His power and His creation and creating the whole world in the universe and you and, and there, their image. But He said one thing is not good. It is not good for mankind to be alone. So when we think of these habits of having a one hour conversation with a friend and having one meal with others, let us remember as we go out of this place that it is not good for us to be alone.
[24:48] And we are actually made in the image of community. Therefore, we should be living a life of community. It says in Proverbs 27:17, it says, as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. Just as we are giving of ourselves in these relationships and we are receiving of the other person, we are actually sharpening each other. Hopefully as Christians, when we interact with other Christians, we are actually building each other up, making each other better. We are having holy friendships that actually encourage each other to be more like Christ.
[25:38] And maybe the relationship that God is calling you to have, that God is calling you to steward, that God is calling you to have a conversation with maybe that relationship is with someone who doesn't know Christ. Well, there's lots of biblical examples of going out into the world and sharing the good news that Jesus has given us. It says, go into the world and be the salt and the light of the earth. The Great Commission says, go into the world and share the good news, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, right? There's so many examples that Jesus gives us to be in community with one another. God has strictly designed us to do this.
[26:24] We see throughout the whole biblical narrative from Genesis to Revelation that we are designed to be together. I think about Covid. I'm sorry I said it, but like I think about Covid, like that was not a fun time. I think most of us can agree with that. Yes, I agree. As a social person, as a guy who's a little bit outgoing, if you haven't been able to tell, like, I don't like not being around people. And even as an introvert, if you're an introvert, like eventually at some point, like you have to be around people. And maybe for you that's those just few close relationships that you have.
[27:11] Or maybe if you're an extrovert, you need to be in a crowd of a hundred people and talk to them all in a span of five minutes. And that's great, but that's how God has designed you to be. And God has designed us to be in community, but I think God is calling us to even something a little bit deeper. Communion is defined as the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level. Many of us know communion as the breaking of bread and drinking of the cup represents the body and the blood of Christ, which is broken for you. And that's incredible.
[27:56] But communion is also just like a word that means this, right? That act represents what communion means, right? Because we are growing closer to God on a spiritual level by understanding and reminding ourselves what He did for us. But the reality is that we should really be in communion with one another, that we should be sharing and exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings on a mental and on a spiritual level with one another. This community that we've created in this room is not one to be taken for granted really.
[28:46] I think about when I was, and I've talked about this, when I was five years old, and I walked through the front doors of this church as a new kid that was just adopted and growing up in the church and seeing many of your faces invest in me because you believed in community. You believed that those kids in the jungle or in Center Stage or in Kids' World mattered and they deserve to know who Jesus was. So you invested your time, or you invested your time in youth, and you said, yeah, I'm gonna volunteer in that because community is important, and that's a space where I should be involved in my local church. So I'm gonna invest in youth. And just so you know, you might have spoken into that little Jordan Day who needed it in that moment?
[29:33] Maybe it was a smack in the back of the head, and maybe that's what I needed in that moment. And maybe you spoke into my calling at a various point when I was just walking around the atrium with my family, and now I go to Kingswood University and I get to come back and continuously see our community evolve as we grow, as we see multiple cultures come together and under the name of Jesus Christ and say, this is the community that I belong to more than anything else. And I'm gonna be a part of this because I believe not only in community, but I believe in communion with one another to build each other up.
[30:20] And me personally, I have a lot of you to thank in this room because you invested in that and you invested in me. And let me tell you, there's so many other stories that have the potential of being impacted in such a real way because of our investment in one another. And I know we're just talking about habits, but the reality is that habits become a part of who we are. The author says that in the book, they become a part of who we are. And when you start to put in and to practice these habits, God will bear fruit from that, not only for you, but for others.
[31:09] The funny thing about community and communion is it not only impacts you, but it impacts the other person that you are taking this habit with. Not only are you having our conversation with the friend, but the friend that you're having that conversation with is also being impacted by that because they are experiencing the habit. When I had the conversation with Thomas after work, after our work days, it was not only me that was receiving the good outta that relationship, it was also Thomas. Hopefully, as we draw closer to communion as a church, we will both be impacted, both sides because the reality is that communion isn't accomplished by unintentional time with people.
[32:02] Communion is actually accomplished in intentional community with others. And let us be challenged by that as we go out this week, as we try to integrate these habits. Let me tell you that it not only will bear fruit for you, but it will bear fruit for other people in this room and other people that should be in this room, because that's how we're designed to live. We're designed to live in communion. And the reality is that communion just needs to be a habit. It needs to be a habit. And the practical ways that we can practice communion as a habit is a one hour conversation with a friend.
[32:50] Can we commit to that this week? Just try to have a one hour conversation with a friend. And the daily habit would be to have one meal with others. Don't skip out on your family, don't skip out on your friends. If you have a roommate, maybe have a meal with your roommate. But the reality is that this is the way that we are designed to live. We're designed to live with others. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for who You are. We thank You for how You designed us to be, for the community that You have built around us.
[33:36] And I pray that as we go out into this place, as we go out into our workplace, into our homes, into our families, that we would be able to put these habits into practice. And that might be easy for some of us, and that's amazing. And it might be really hard for others. And I just pray for them specifically that they would know that we have places even in this church where they can practice those habits. God, would You just reveal to them where they need to be and in what communities they need to be? God, we just pray that they would be encouraged to be a part of the communion that You are building in this place.
[34:28] Maybe it's the mom and she needs to be encouraged to go to more for moms. Maybe it's a youth and they really need to be encouraged to go to youth. Maybe they're young adults, and they need to be encouraged to go to young adults. Or maybe it's someone and they really just need a small group, and they need to be encouraged to be in a small group, and they just, they're just waiting on that step. Would You just take that step with them and encourage them as they go, as I guarantee you, that they will find communion and community with others in those places. Help them to take initiative. Help us as a church to take initiative in these habits, to live holy lives for You in the way that You have designed us to live.
[35:14] And we just pray this in Your powerful name. Amen.