PURPOSE AND PASSION SERIES #5
18 March 2018
I. Introduction
-- turn
in Bibles to Acts 2:42-47
Acts 2:42-47 New
International Version (NIV)
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship,
to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the
many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were
together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to
give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in
the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad
and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.
And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
-- “Pachomius
was an Egyptian soldier won to Christ by the kindness of Christians in Thebes
-- After his release from the military around A.D. 315, he was baptized.” -- Serious
about his new faith and determined to grow, Pachomius became religious hermit
and began to live a solitary life of self-denial
-- as
such, his life became one of solitude, silence, and severity -- but, after
time, Pachomius began to question the true value of living such an isolated
life -- he began asking piercing questions that arose through his spiritual
studies:
-- “How
can you learn to love if no one else is around?
-- How can
you learn humility living alone?
-- How
can you learn kindness or gentleness or goodness in isolation?
-- How
can you learn patience unless someone puts yours to the test?”
-- he
came to the conclusion that developing spiritual fruit requires being around
other people -- ordinary, ornery people -- "To save souls," he said,
"you must bring them together."
-- “So
Pachomius began an ascetic koinonia, where holiness was developed not in
isolation but in community -- Instead of each person seeking God in his own
way, with the dangers of idleness and eccentricity, Pachomius established a
common life based on worship, work, and discipline.”
-- “Pachomius,
while largely forgotten in church history, points out to us that as attractive
as solitary sanctification may seem, it is life amid people, busyness, and
interruptions that develop many of the qualities God requires.”1
-- for
the last several weeks, we’ve been going over a series called, “Purpose and
Passion” -- renewing our passion for Christ by discovering and living out the
purposes for which the church exists
-- as you
remember, this series is based on Rick Warren's book, “The Purpose-Driven
Life,” where he identifies five purposes for us as Christians and for churches
that he gleaned two passages in the book of Matthew where Jesus is speaking to
His disciples
Mt 22:37-39 -- 1. Love the Lord w/all your heart - worship
2. Love your neighbor as yourself - ministry
Mt 28:18-20 -- 3. Go & make disciples - evangelism
4. Baptize disciples -fellowship -
identification w/body of Christ
5. Teach them to obey - discipleship
-- so far in this series we have looked at
worship, ministry, and last week, we looked at the “Why of Evangelism” -- this
week, we’re going to be looking at the next purpose, fellowship -- specifically
looking at how the early church modeled the concept of fellowship in a vibrant
and living Christian community
-- fellowship is a word that we all know,
but that we usually misuse -- when you hear the word, “fellowship,” in most church settings,
you’ll find it is attached to a gathering of people -- usually to a meal, such
as a covered dish dinner after church
--
sometimes, you’ll hear “fellowship” used to talk about people sharing
conversation with each other in informal settings
-- and,
while these can be forms of fellowship, they fall far short of what the word
truly means and how Christ intended us to experience fellowship in His church
II. The Loss of Community
-- when we look at this picture of the
early Christian church here in the Book of Acts, it seems very foreign to us --
almost unrecognizable -- because this description of fellowship lived out in a
church community is so different from what we find today
-- where the early church focused on
living and doing life together, our modern churches only gather and come
together once or twice a week for established services -- we then separate and
go our own way -- making it through the rest of the week on our own -- until we
come back together on the next Sunday
-- it has caused us to see church as an
event, rather than a community -- as something we do -- someplace we go --
rather than who we are
-- this lack of identity and community we
see in the early church -- this lack of centering our lives on our Christian families
-- has caused us to experience dramatic declines that we've never seen before
in the history of the church
-- all major mainline denominations have
been losing members over the past two or three decades -- and we are seeing
more and more people who identify themselves as "unchurched"
Christians or as simply “spiritual,” without any church affiliation
--
in a survey by the Barna Research Group, they found that 10 million self-proclaimed,
born-again Christians in America have not been to a worship service in a church
building in the last six months, apart from Christmas or Easter.
-- just as a note, Barna defines
"born-again" as those who say they have made a personal commitment to
Jesus Christ that is still important today, and believe they will "go to
heaven because they have confessed their sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as
their Savior." -- a definition that probably most of us agree with
-- now, what this means is that for these people,
spiritual life has nothing to do with church -- they are seeking relationship
with Jesus apart from a church setting
-- for thousands of years, the church has been the
center of religious and spiritual life -- but now many people are living out an
individualized spirituality outside traditional churches -- trying to find
success in a virtual monasticism similar to that tried and found wanting by Pachomius
-- even though they are surrounded by the world, they are trying to live out
their Christian lives in virtual isolation, with no support from other believers
-- why has this happened? -- I think it’s because
we’ve lost our way as churches -- we’ve forgotten our reason for being -- our
purpose here on earth -- we’ve lost the sense of community -- the need to do
life together that caused the early church to thrive and grow -- and because
we’ve lost it, we haven’t been able to demonstrate it or give it to others --
we haven’t been helping others see how they need other believers to truly grow
and mature in their faith
III. Fellowship
-- so, let’s talk about what fellowship
should be
-- fellowship, as the New Testament
defines it, is not coming together for social activities -- it is not coming
together to have a covered dish dinner -- it is not the church getting together
to take a trip to amusement parks or other such trips
-- no, fellowship is much more than that
-- fellowship is community -- it is a group of believers -- a group of people
who have accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior -- who come together on a
regular basis to do life together
-- this means they worship together --
pray together -- learn together -- support and encourage each other in the work
of Christ
-- they are there for each other in the
good times and the bad -- they know each other in an intimate way because they
are one in Christ and one with each other
--
this act of coming together as a corporate body of believers defines fellowship
-- as James Packer points out, the Greek word for fellowship -- Koinonia -- comes from a root meaning, “common or shared” -- So
fellowship means common participation in something, either by giving what you
have to the other person or receiving what he or she has -- Giving and receiving
is the essence of fellowship
-- in true biblical fellowship, we
gather together to give praise to God -- to offer prayers to God -- to give
ourselves to the building up of the church -- and we receive from others knowledge,
comfort, support, and encouragement
-- I heard a message from Dr. Dobson
one time that I think speaks to the heart of fellowship -- one day his two
young children were arguing and fighting with each other as children do -- Dr.
Dobson said he had had enough of their fight so he called them over to him --
he led them to the window and told them to look outside -- he said,
"outside of this window is a hard world -- it is a world that will tear
you apart if you let it -- the only way you can survive in this world is if you
have someone you can trust who will always be there to support you
-- as brother and sister, you are
called to be there to support each other so that when you go out into the
world, you won't be destroyed -- you are not called to destroy each other
before you get out there"
-- this story reminds us that
there’s a reason we call our church buildings, “sanctuaries” -- they are sanctuaries
from the world where believers can come together in love and trust and support
and encourage each other in our Christian walks
-- fellowship has an internal focus
-- it is when a church -- speaking of a local body of believers -- gathers together
and focuses on worshiping God together and on supporting one another so they
can go back out into the world renewed and revived
-- in Rom 1:11-12, Paul wrote, "I
long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you
strong-- that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's
faith." -- and in 2 Thes 5:11 he wrote, "Therefore encourage one
another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing" -- Paul
understood the value of fellowship
--
as Tim Stafford pointed out in an article in Christianity Today -- "People need people -- God's
people need God's people in order to know God -- Life in Christ is a corporate
affair -- All God's promises were made to God's people—plural -- All the New
Testament epistles address Christians in churches -- The Bible simply does not
know of the existence of an individual, isolated Christian"
-- I want to leave you with one more
picture of true Biblical fellowship -- remember the movie Forrest Gump? -- when
Forrest was in Vietnam and was out on patrol with his buddy Bubba, they were
trying to sleep in the jungle in the middle of a thunderstorm -- all they had
to lie in was mud -- Bubba slid over to Forrest and said, "Forrest, put
your back up against my back and you lean on me and I'll lean on you and we
won't have to sleep in the mud"
-- fellowship keeps a Christian out of the
mud
IV. Closing
-- “Author Bunmi Laditan wrote a powerful
essay a few years back called "I Miss the Village." -- In it she says
that she goes throughout her everyday tasks in her "four-walled house
while the world buzzes around me busy and fast." -- She talks of raising
her child in her home, but missing something she calls "the village I
never had."
-- she wrote what it would feel like to
live in a village -- to be in community with others:
-- “You'd know me and I'd know you -- I'd
know your children, and you'd know mine -- Not just on a surface level -- favorite
foods, games and such -- but real, true knowledge of the soul that flickers
behind their eyes -- I'd trust them in your arms just as much as I'd trust them
in mine -- They'd respect you and heed your "no."
-- "I miss that village of mothers
that I've never had -- The one we traded for homes that...feel miles apart from
each other -- The one we traded for locked front doors, blinking devices and
afternoons alone on the floor playing one on-one with our little ones.
-- “What gives me hope is that as I look
at you from across the park with your own child in tow playing in her own
corner of the sandbox, I can tell from your curious glance and shy smile that
you miss it, too.”
-- reflecting on this essay, Dustin Willis
and Brandon Clements commented that even though she wrote this essay with
mothers in mind, “she makes a poignant point about the disconnectedness that
many people feel deep down -- Throughout history our ways of living have
adapted and changed -- and there seems to be a growing realization that maybe
some of those changes aren't for the best -- that maybe in our overvalue of
isolation and entertainment -- we've actually missed out on something essential
and worthwhile -- deep relationships with others.”2
-- that’s what fellowship is all about --
living out deep relationships with others in Christian community
-- the Bible makes it clear -- we need
each other -- Christianity only works in community -- it can only be realized
in relationship -- and it’s experienced through intentional fellowship
-- living and doing life together is the
heart of what it means to be in fellowship with others -- it is what we see in
the early church -- it is the example Jesus gave us with the relationship He
had with His disciples -- it is something we need
-- that’s why it’s so important for us to
emphasize true Christian fellowship in our church communities -- that’s why
it’s so important for us to bring new believers into a church community
-- there’s a reason why the Great
Commission begins with evangelism and has as its next step as fellowship --
baptizing new believers -- bringing them into a vibrant church community where
they can learn how to do this Christian life -- this is the heart of what
fellowship means
-- you have so much to offer this world --
this church has what others have been looking for -- now, it’s time for you to
go and tell others about it -- it’s time for you to share the good news of
Christ -- to lead others into a relationship with Jesus -- and to bring them
into fellowship with you here in this place
-- go and do that this week
-- let’s pray
-------------------------
1 Marshall Shelley, "Developing spiritual fruit requires
being around people—ordinary, ornery people," Leadership journal
(Spring 1993)
2 Dustin Willis
and Brandon Clements, The Simplest Way to Change the World, Moody Publishers
(February, 2017), pages 55-56
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