Christ the Head

Ephesians 4:14-16

Today we begin the final sermon series for 2011. Rowan has
given me the privilege of choosing the topics and preparing the cell group
notes for this term. After prayer I decided to spend my last term at St. Luke’s
covering some of those lessons which I believe are the most important for St.
Luke’s as a faith-community to grasp. I have titled the series: “A Church after
God’s own heart”, and it is all about how I believe St. Luke’s needs to strive
to become and to remain a church which pleases God. Over the years we have
often, as leaders of St. Luke’s asked the Lord the question: What kind of
church do YOU dream of St. Luke’s being? This series is the heart of the
answers we have received from the Father.

We kick off by laying the most important foundation for any
church. For any church in the world to be the church that God wants it to be
there is only one starting point. That is to submit to Jesus Christ as the Head
of the Church.

Ephesians 4 makes it clear that Jesus Christ is the Head of
His Body the Church. Our role as members of the church is to ensure that we
continue to submit to, respect and obey Jesus Christ in this function! I will
not be preaching a long sermon today because we will also be hearing feed-back
from Mission Madagascar … but I hope to give us all some serious points to
ponder as we go home today.

I will try
to do so by just unpacking what it means to say that Jesus Christ is the Head.

1. He gives the
direction

One of the most obvious things about the head of any body, is
that the head provides the direction! The direction that your head is going is
the direction that your body is going. This is true in any sport … and it’s
even true for just plain walking down the road. Any Christian, and any church,
in order to be pleasing to God, needs to be submitting to the direction of
Jesus Christ. As a church we need to be tuned in to the general principle that
the direction this church moves in is not the direction that I want, or that
Rowan wants, or that the majority of the congregation wants. We have to
understand that this church as a body is not meant to be subject to the will of
any human being. It is meant to be subject to the will of Jesus.

Unfortunately in most churches many members labour under the
illusion that the church as a body is meant to be doing what the members of the
church want! So when the church goes in a direction they don’t like, they vote
with their giving or with their worship attendance to show their disapproval.
But somewhere along the line they forgot to consider that the direction the
church takes is not SUPPOSED to be based on what THEY want … it is supposed
to be based on what JESUS wants!

In the same way, some ministers labour under the illusion
that the church is meant to be going in the direction that they want; and they
might even try to force their direction onto their fellow leaders. This is not
how it is meant to be.

No, the church after God’s own heart always moves in the
direction that Jesus wants! We are
like the Israelites in the desert being led by the pillar of cloud by day and
of fire by night. Where Jesus goes, we go. Where Jesus stops, we stop.

If Christ is the Head of St. Luke’s then St. Luke’s will be a
church that seeks its direction from Jesus and then submits to the direction
Jesus gives.

2. He makes the
decisions

This leadership of the church by Jesus goes beyond just a
general sense of direction … it also extends to specific decisions that we
make. Every individual Christian is meant (as we have seen over the last two
weeks) to be allowing Jesus Christ to live His life through us, and for that to
happen we need to be very carefully making everyday decisions based on what is
pleasing to Jesus.

The church as a body is meant to be doing the same. It is one
thing to have received the general direction from the Lord; for example this
year the general direction the Lord has given us is that we need to focus on
passionately engaging Him in personal relationship and also passionately
engaging with His mission to reach the lost; but once we have heard that He
wants us to focus on mission, we still need to seek Him before we decide which
countries we will visit on mission … or which local areas we need to reach
out to on mission. And whenever the church is in a situation that we need to
make a decision about how to put God’s general direction into specific action,
we need to be making sure that Jesus is actually the One calling the shots.

Yes, its true we will sometimes get it wrong. We may hear the
Lord incorrectly, or in our selfishness and sinfulness, we might not put what
Jesus tells us into practice perfectly. BUT, the Lord is looking at our hearts,
and he wants to see that we are in a position where we truly seek His face for
every decision we make.

3. He nourishes us

One thing we might miss in our initial thinking about Jesus
as the Head is the fact that ancient people, without our sophisticated
knowledge of biology considered that the head was the organ that fed the body.
That makes sense of course because we eat through our heads. So the head is
also the source of nourishment.

A Church after God’s own Heart is one that is seeking God for
spiritual nourishment. A church with Jesus as the Head is a church that allows
Jesus to feed us, and empower us to obey Him. If the physical head of a
person’s body never opens its mouth to eat, the rest of the Body will soon
starve to death. With the church as a Body the danger is not that Jesus will
stop feeding us, it is that we will stop swallowing – if I can use that
analogy. The Lord’s Word is constantly coming from His mouth … but we are not
always receiving that Word or paying attention to it. He is constantly pouring
out the Living Water of His Spirit, but we are not always open to receive His
Spirit!

A Church that allows Jesus to be the Head is a church that is
constantly open to receive from the Lord and is constantly aware that it is
only the Lord who can truly nourish us and give us the strength that we need
for this exciting journey of faith.

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