Community

The sermon was about the importance of community as part of God’s plan for humanity. To begin with, we looked at Hebrews 11:10 that talks about a city whose builder is God. A city is a community and Genesis starts with a garden and the Bible ends with Revelation that mentions a city; all this points to the idea of community. We examined various chapters in Genesis where God created human beings in His own image. This was the first community where God created man and woman to live in the garden of Eden. Since God Himself is a perfect unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and so the community was to reflect this harmony.

The fall destroyed the harmony in the community. We live in a fractured community which God once wiped out by the flood in Noah’s time. We have a marred image of community but through the work of Jesus on the cross, God reconciled communities to Himself so that they can draw from His image and again experience the oneness with Him. God wants to bring us again to the fellowship and the unity that the Trinity always experiences.

None of us can fulfil God’s idea of love and His purpose in our lives until we understand it in the context of community. God’s will can be enjoyed only in community and it is God’s answer to loneliness. When we walk in a community, we experience love. Genesis 5 tells us that Adam fathered a son in his own likeliness/after his image. He himself was created in God’s image which means that parenting is nothing but transferring God’s image. It is a heavy responsibility for broken individuals because we transfer our brokenness to our children. We elect governments that represent our brokenness and then we blame them.