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ON FRIDAY night, John, Philip and
I were discussing fellowship. Philip knows a bloke who
is desperate for belonging, yet doesn’t know how to
belong in any sense of the word.
THE
SENSE OF ISOLATION
When you think about it, that’s true to some
extent of every one of us. Some of us belong more easily
than others, but we all struggle.
Humans need fellowship, yet we are disastrously
bad at actually making it happen.
That is something that guaranteed the growth
of the church in those earliest days. People found there
what they had been seeking everywhere else.
During the week someone I work with did something
rather nice for me. It was an act which said, “You are
important to me, and I value you.”
I was thinking about it on my way home. It can
be really hard even to do something which carries that
kind of message, let alone talk about it. All kinds
of cautions and conflicts arise, all kinds of fears
of rejection or of “going overboard”. Isn’t it hard
for all of us to translate our real feelings into accurate
communication?
If a dog likes what you have done, all he can
think of is licking your face. “You nice... I lick!”
That’s how dogs think.
But a human rarely licks another human. We puzzle
over our options, we rarely express what is in us. Our
minds comprehend the bitter truth. What we say and do
— how we symbolise what is in our hearts — is never
the same as what is in there. It is always filtered,
it is always a guarded comment about ourselves. There
is an intense loneliness in being human, because I always
know that the only thing I really know is me, and everything
else in the entire universe is not me.
A famous, successful Australian businessman once
said that, when he stops and thinks about himself, it
seems that there is a vast, black emptiness in the centre
of his being.
But, to answer that black emptiness, God provided
a fullness at the core of all existence, the fullness
of Jesus Christ the Lord.
And one of the basic and often–neglected truths
of the gospel is that that fullness is expressed and
echoed through the fellowship of believers.
We are the Body of Christ. We are Christ to each
other. And our task is to unlearn the bad habits of
the days of our rebellion against God and to overcome
the personal limitations in-born differently into each
of us. Our task is to be a fellowship and to have fellowship
with such intensity of love and of holy purpose that
the darkness is driven away by the light of Christ shining
through us.
At my mother’s 80th birthday a few years ago,
my father read something he had written, a response
to my mother. They had not had a good relationship.
There were many times when Stephen and I thought they
were about to split up. Yet it was a loving tribute,
an account of how he had felt on first getting to know
my mother and of the life they had tried to create together.
What struck me was the passion my parents had
for community in those early days.
Perhaps they hadn’t used that word. I didn’t
know that they were so consciously seeking community.
Though, when I look back, it all makes perfect sense.
But, because they were not seeking it through
Christ, it didn‘t happen, not even between them. There
were some good gatherings. There were many fascinating
people. There were occasions of what we might now describe
as “good sharing”. Yet something always failed.
Jesus said,
If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself,
take up his cross daily and follow me.
The key to real fellowship,
the secret of true community, is death to self and commitment
to Christ above all.
Psalm 133 says,
PS
133:1 How good and pleasant it is
when
brothers live together in unity!
PS 133:2
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running
down on the beard,
running down on
Aaron’s beard,
down
upon the collar of his robes.
PS 133:3
It is as if the dew of Hermon
were
falling on Mount Zion.
For there the LORD
bestows his blessing,
even
life forevermore.
The image is of God’s
people united so closely that the anointing oil poured
onto the High Priest flows down on the people themselves,
a high priestly people at one with their spiritual head.
The image is of believers,
united closely around Jesus the Lord, around Jesus,
the spiritual Head. The image is of the oil of the Holy
Spirit pouring down from Christ our Head onto us, his
people.
It is around Jesus that
we find true fellowship and true community.
And that’s what Luke describes here in Acts.
He says,
They devoted
themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship,
to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
The central statement
for us to consider today is,
They devoted
themselves to... the fellowship
These were believers,
people who had jumped in ‘boots and all’ as followers
of Jesus. After they were baptised to symbolise that
decision, they devoted themselves to learning from the
Apostles and they devoted themselves to the fellowship.
THE MEANING OF FELLOWSHIP
“Fellowship” is a grossly misunderstood word. We Baptists
often use it to describe a congregation which, because
it is not fully independent and self–supporting, has
not yet been admitted as a church to the State’s Union
of Baptist Churches. This leads to silly situations
such as what happens here, where Calvary Indonesian
Fellowship is about double our size, yet it is a fellowship,
whereas we are not really self–supporting but, once
a church, always a church.
“Fellowship” is a word often used to describe when people
of similar interests get together for a social event.
It was common once for people of socialist leanings
to get together for a few glasses of wine and think
they had had good fellowship because no one got punched.
The other way that church
people often use the word is when they talk about a
social night at the church, or a fellowship lunch. It’s
social — even if it’s not socialist — and no one gets
punched, but no one gets punch, either, at least not
if it has any trace of alcohol in it!
In some churches the idea of fellowship could get you
thinking that the good news that Peter preached at Pentecost
was not about a Saviour who died and rose again, but
about a good cheap brand of instant coffee and a new
brand of plain biscuit!
Luke wanted to make sure that no one had any excuses,
so he spelled out what fellowship meant to the church
in that time.
He writes,
44 All the believers were together and had everything
in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they
gave to anyone as he had need.
Fellowship was a very
deliberate, planned thing for the early Christians.
They had to plan and work towards being together.
That was always one of the key things. The writer of
Hebrews warned the believers not to
give up gathering together.
There were no labour laws giving people the option of
Sunday off work. In fact, Greek or Roman slaves rarely
had a real day off. To get to church, they had to leave
during the night when they were off duty, attend a pre-dawn
service, and be back in time for their morning duties.
In other places, they met for tea and continued until
around midnight before heading back home to bed.
They
devoted themselves to... the fellowship
One of John F Kennedy’s famous statements was, "Ask
not, ‘What America can do for me?’ ask, ‘What can I
do for America?’”
A great need of Christianity
world–wide is for people to ask less frequently, “What
can the Church do for me?” These early Christians were
already saying, “Jesus has done so much for me; what
can I do in and through the church for him?”
Fellowship becomes far
more exciting when it is real.
When I went to Beth
Shan Mission in 1971, I was underwhelmed by a lot of
it. The facilities were in urgent need of an upgrade
and some of the speakers were not at all my cup of tea.
But one thing very much impressed me, and that was the
earnestness of the prayers. Led by Mr Craik, who was
a deacon here, we learnt something of the fellowship
of prayer. And people truly loved meeting together to
pray in the services. It was not droning or drawn out.
It was pithy and urgent and exciting.
CREATING THE FELLOWSHIP WE
NEED
John Lennon said, “The love you give is equal to the
love you get.” In other words, “Don't expect love unless
you are willing to give love.”
And don’t expect fellowship
unless you are willing to give fellowship to others.
But there’s another part to the passage:
44 All the believers... had
everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and
goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
Some commentators have
seen the roots of communism here. Yet it is divine communism,
quite unlike the bleak parody we saw in the Soviet bloc.
No one was under any commandment to share: they just
did it. They loved because they had been loved and they
shared out of a sense of being loved.
I would never suggest that we just give without counting
the cost. I have known several people who were good
givers to worthy causes. I knew them because I met them
when they were out of money and needed help. There is
something wrong if that happens too frequently!
At the other end of
the spectrum, we’ve all met people who were chronically
poor givers, people who think heads means I win and
tails means you lose. They suffer from “mefirstism.”
These early Christians were others–first in their thinking.
Once again, it’s giving, not getting. The more they
gave, the more their fellowship grew.
A FREEING FELLOWSHIP
In some Pentecostal circles, they teach that the more
you give the more you will get; so, if you are in a
financial crisis, increase your giving and God will
bless you financially. They forget that we give because
God gave first. We are returning some of his bounty.
But there is a truth in it, that giving frees you and
me from bondage to money and property. Often, once the
bondage is broken, the things which tripped us up and
brought our finances into danger fade with the bondage.
These early Christians
were able to have deep fellowship because they had broken
the bondage of money. What they owned became a resource
for the good of the group, not a false reassurance of
security in old age.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
What would happen to us if we started to act more like
the early Christians did? We have people among us who
struggle financially. What would it do if we were to
give a little more to help them with the burdens they
face?
Remember what I said before, that Jesus said,
If anyone
would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his
cross daily and follow me.
The key to real fellowship,
the secret of true community, is death to self and commitment
to Christ above all.
True self-giving means dying to self. Paradoxically,
we can’t give time or money, we can’t give the secrets
of our own hearts, until we are ready to die to self,
because who I am and what I have must no longer be my
own, but the property of the fellowship.
There’s a Christian community in Evanston, Illinois,
in the US. The members have deliberately chosen to live
in fellowship. It is called the Reba Place Fellowship
One day a man came to the fellowship’s Sunday
service and asked to see the pastor. One of the elders
took him into a counselling room and asked him what
he needed.
The visitor told about how he needed food and
money to travel home to another city.
The elder said, “Well, we’ll certainly help you.
But, before I get you anything, can I just explain something
to you?”
The visitor said that was OK.
So the elder started:
“First, I want you to know that God loves you
and has a wonderful plan for your life...”
The elder went through the gospel message with
the visitor. He explained how sin cuts us off from God
and severs us from enjoying God’s love and goodness.
He explained that the wages of sin is death, but the
gift of God is eternal life. He told how Jesus died
on the cross, the just one for all us unjust people.
He showed how Jesus’ death pays the price and sets us
free, if only we will believe.
Then he asked the visitor, “Are you ready to
receive Jesus as your Lord and Saviour from today on?”
“No, thanks,” said the man. “If you can just
give me some help, I’ll be off.”
The elder went and got some money for the visitor.
“It’s a pity, you know,” he said. “If you had
been willing to surrender to Jesus, everything I have
would have been at your disposal as one of this community.
But, as you have chosen not to follow Jesus, all we
can give you is a little cash to help you on your way.
God bless you as you go.”
Next Sunday, the man was back...
True fellowship builds churches, because you
can’t find that kind of belonging in too many other
places.
Let’s take fellowship seriously. Let’s start
giving more of ourselves to each other. And God will
do wonderful things and prosper us all as we obey him
— not enrich us, but pour out blessings because we have
given ourselves.
Let’s do it!
AMEN!
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