This morning we continue with the theme that
occupied us for a number of months in
the fall.
We are taking some key words from the
New Testament and seeking to expound their meaning
and their application to us in this day
and age.
And this morning the word that we are
going to look at is the word, the
familiar word, fellowship.
We read from 1 John chapter 1 because
it provides one of the many chapters in
the New Testament which serve as a very
magnificent background against which to understand the meaning
of this term.
May the Lord help us then as we
come to look it straight in the face
and to try to see what it has
to say to us.
It's a word that is so familiar, a
word that we use over and over and
over again.
And yet I wonder whether we are using
it always in a truly Christian sense.
It has been said that one of the
main problems of our day and age lies
in the growing prevalence of what some people
have called proximity without community.
Now that's a special bit of lingo.
But what it means is this.
Sometimes you have groups gathering as in a
church like this for worship, for religious purposes.
Their proximity to one another is rather close.
We sit together in the same pew maybe.
We are together under the one roof.
Yet we may be living in worlds that
are poles apart and may know nothing of
any deep agreement one with the other, even
when we do know one another.
Or it may happen in a sports arena
where people are even squeezed together because of
the numbers that gather.
But as Francis Bacon says in one of
his essays, a crowd is not company.
And though somebody may be actually stepping on
your toe, you may be as far from
that person as east is from west.
Proximity without community.
Herded together physically, but as a matter of
fact we are as far apart from one
another as far can be.
In consequence, one of the most heart-rending,
perhaps the most heart-rending, heart-rending phenomenon
of our age is the sense of isolation
and loneliness that abounds in the world today.
It doesn't always mean that people are physically
separated from others.
A lonely person is not necessarily in a
desert.
Loneliness can be experienced in the heart of
a crowd.
You may be crushed in the crowd and
yet there is something still heavier crushing your
spirit.
And that is a sense of terrifying isolation.
You're cut away from everyone.
And so there are multitudes, myriads of people
in our world this morning who feel that
they are severed from the mainland of humanity
and they're like little islands dotted in the
ocean and they have no contact with people.
This loneliness is crushing.
Now God never meant this kind of thing
for his creatures.
This is where we want to start.
God never meant that kind of thing for
his creatures.
It is sin that has brought that into
human experience.
This was never God's intention.
The divine purpose is the exact opposite of
this.
And despite the fact that many of God's
people miss the deep most experience of it,
it is all wrapped up in this very
common biblical New Testament term, fellowship.
God meant us to know fellowship with himself
and fellowship with his people and to know
something of care and compassion that is itself
a bridge that brings us into the lives
of other people.
Now fellowship therefore is nothing new.
It's not something discovered by modern man.
It's not an item.
It's not something suggested by some doctor or
other as an ingredient in therapeutic treatment.
It's not something that man has recently discovered.
It's older than the book of Genesis.
In fact, it is as old as the
triune God.
The Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit enjoyed koinonia, communion, fellowship together before the
universe ever existed.
When we come to the New Testament, we
find that it is said of the early
church right at its beginning, right at its
inception.
When the multitudes were brought to Christ in
the day of Pentecost, we read they devoted
themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the
fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to
prayer.
I propose then to try with you briefly
this morning to look this word in the
eye and see what really does it mean.
Is it possible for us to experience it?
I propose to ask and try to answer
two or three questions as time permits.
First, what is Christian fellowship?
Now some of you may be thinking, well
surely you could miss that out and start
somewhere a little down the line so that
we don't waste time on that.
Now I suggest to you that that's precisely
what we can't do because we have such
hazy notions of what Christian fellowship really is,
of what koinonia in the New Testament sense
is.
And so we've got really to start here.
And it may be expedient to speak, to
try and describe it negatively as well as
positively because we sometimes speak of things as,
or speak of experiences as constituting fellowship when
it means something altogether less than the New
Testament means by that word.
Negatively then, what fellowship is not?
First of all, fellowship is not to be
confused with mere socializing.
Dr. James Packer brings this out very clearly,
very forcefully in one of his books.
There are so many people who say that
they've been socializing.
Maybe they've been members of a football team
and they've been away on tour and they
say, oh we had great fellowship together.
They may not have been Christian at all
but they say that they fellowship together.
There are members of a political party that
have been out canvassing for new members and
they've had a great time together and they
say we've had great fellowship.
Or there may be members of the pro
-life group who've been doing something similar and
waging warfare against something they believe to be
wholly alien and ungodly.
And they say we had great fellowship.
We had opposition but we had fellowship.
Now that kind of comradeship experienced in sport,
in politics, in anything else, in social action,
is something altogether inferior and different in kind
from Christian fellowship.
Koinonia, what the Bible speaks of as fellowship,
is something which is in a different league
altogether from this mere kind of comradeship in
politics, in social action, what have you.
Even the kind of comradeship that people have
around a cup of coffee after maybe a
service such as this or whatever, unless of
course they're really Christian.
Secondly, fellowship is not even to be confused
with theologizing.
Theologizing, by theologizing I mean the study of
the Godhead.
Now let's make no mistake about it, if
we are to have fellowship with God the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, then
we shall have to study what is revealed
about God, and in that sense we shall
have to study God, to know Him.
But it is possible to be involved in
theology and to theologize about God without having
any fellowship with God at all.
A famous renowned German theologian of an earlier
age put it like this, there are two
kinds of people, he said, that come to
the theological seminary, he said college, that was
his language, to the theological college.
Some come to sit over the Word and
over the Almighty to dissect both God and
His Word.
Others come to sit under the Word and
under God to be disciplined and transformed and
redeemed and sanctified and commissioned and empowered by
God through His Word.
The mere fact that we are involved with
theology does not mean to say that we
have any fellowship with God in and of
itself.
Fellowship is not synonymous either with the set
of liturgical exercises.
I can't pursue this, but one could bring
forward a number of things and we would
have to say now that is not fellowship.
We may have our liturgy, we have a
kind of liturgy here if you like.
We come in and we start with prayer,
call to worship, prayer, hymn, usually the reading
of scripture and so forth.
You cannot equate fellowship with these things.
We may go through them, we may take
part in them verbally, physically, we may even
kneel to prayer, we may even be prostrate
on our faces on the ground and yet
never know anything of fellowship.
Fellowship is not synonymous with any liturgical mode
or practice.
But let's move to the positive.
Positively what fellowship actually is.
Now the New Testament evidence I believe is
overwhelming and I don't think that any scholar
contemporary or otherwise will really deny this.
Fellowship, kynonia, is a distinctively Christian experience.
And however religious you may be, unless you
are a Christian, you do not know this.
This is the line that divides really.
The Christian knows kynonia.
Now he may know it very imperfectly and
he may have much to learn and there
are deeper experiences that await him.
But if a person is a believer, he
has tasted kynonia.
Fellowship.
Fellowship is a distinctively Christian experience.
It is something which is only possible to
those who have been reconciled to God through
the blood of his Son and regenerated by
the blessed Holy Spirit to newness of life
in Christ Jesus.
Fellowship is always in Christ or in the
gospel, never outside of Christ, never outside of
the gospel.
Fellowship is circumscribed by the tenets of divine
truth revealed and by the work of the
Spirit of God wrought within our hearts.
Unless we have received the truth and experienced
the Spirit of God regenerating us, fellowship is
only of theoretical significance to us.
Fellowship is only possible to Christian people.
Fellowship is intrinsically the experience of sharing.
Now many people use this word instead of
fellowship and perhaps there are advantages to that.
At least it brings out the heart of
it all.
The key word used in the New Testament
to describe fellowship is kynos, meaning common.
This underlies the noun kynonia, which is the
Greek and the Greek word translated fellowship.
Kynonos, meaning partner, and kynonia, meaning to share.
Now all these things come together.
Partnership, we're sharing in work, sharing what we
have with other people and other people sharing
with us, we're receiving and giving all of
us together.
Christians share first of all in a common
inheritance.
We have fellowship with the Father, and with
the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Now every Christian, this is true of every
Christian, every Christian enters into this inheritance.
He shares something with the Father, with the
Son, and with the Holy Spirit.
This is the objective aspect of fellowship, a
sharing in God.
God is my portion, says the psalmist.
And the Christian says that.
God is my portion.
God is my lot.
God is mine.
My God.
You notice how the Bible speaks of the
God of Abraham.
Did Abraham possess God?
Well of course no man can possess God
exclusively, but Abraham did possess God.
He put the arms of faith around him
and he said, my God, the God of
Jacob, the God of Isaac, the God of
David, the God of Saul, the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The first thing is this, in fellowship, we
possess God.
God gives Himself to us as we give
ourselves to Him, and we begin to share
things with the Almighty God, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit.
That's fellowship.
And so it is of course that Jude
speaks of a common salvation, and Paul speaks
of a common faith, probably faith with a
capital F, meaning the faith, the Christian faith.
Not our trust in God, but the faith
itself.
We share in this.
Are you a believer?
Then you've received the faith.
Are you a believer?
Then you share in God.
Now this is very precious, but it starts
there, you see.
And this is why we have a line
of demarcation between mere socializing and Christian fellowship.
It is first of all a sharing in
God.
Do you know God?
Jesus said, this is eternal life.
It is to know the Father, and Jesus
Christ whom He sent.
And knowing means, biblically, sharing.
Adam knew Eve.
There was intimacy between them.
To know God is to have spiritual intimacy.
Christians also share a common subjective experience.
Not only do we share in God, but
we have a common experience.
It may not be exactly the same in
every life, but it'll be basically the same.
Consciously or not, all Christians have shared, as
Peter puts it, in the divine nature, having
escaped the corruption which is in the world
through lust.
All believers share, and this word is used,
have fellowship in, share in, have koinonia in
the divine nature.
Or if you want to put it differently,
we share the Holy Spirit.
No man belongs to Jesus Christ, says Paul
in Romans 8, unless the Spirit of God
is in him, the Spirit of Christ is
in him.
Or if you want to put it in
John's terms, every Christian has eternal life.
He that believeth on the Son hath eternal
life.
And therefore, the fellowship is the fellowship in
life eternal.
Here and now upon earth.
You see, this raises it from mere socializing
with my fellow politician or my fellow educationist
or my fellow whatever.
This elevates it, this lifts it up.
It is a fellowship in eternal life here
upon earth.
It is sharing in God, and inwardly something
is happening.
One has been regenerated, and the Spirit of
God has come in, and we have a
kinship and a sharing of spiritual things on
the level of the Spirit.
It will be evident that such fellowship is
tripartite.
I like to think of it in terms
of a triangle.
I don't know whether this is proper language
or not.
I've never seen it in print.
But in real Christian fellowship, there are always
three sides, as there are three sides to
a triangle.
And you have that in 1 John chapter
1.
First of all, we, says John, we have
fellowship with the Father and with His Son.
Now there is the we.
All those of us who are believers, who
are together at any given moment, there is
the we.
That's one side of the triangle.
Then there is the Father and the Son.
That is another side of the triangle.
And then there is every other believer.
The church militant and the church triumphant.
The church in heaven and the church on
earth.
And when you're in this circle of fellowship,
you always have a link with other Christians
that are together in the we.
With the Father and the Son and the
Holy Spirit in the glory.
And with the church of yesterday and of
every other yesterday.
And the church militant of today.
We have fellowship together.
We belong to the whole.
Let me read John's words.
We proclaim to you what you have, what
we have seen and heard, so that you
also may have fellowship with us.
And our fellowship is with the Father and
with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Fellowship, then, is the very opposite of unqualified
individualism.
It stands over against the experience of isolation,
which we mentioned earlier on.
It involves a togetherness as participants in something.
And not simply as participants, but as sharers
with others of what we have participated.
As we shall see in a moment.
It creates a bonding experience.
It binds us together.
Because we live together and belong together on
a deeper level than the mere physical.
Secondly, how does one enter the sphere and
experience of such fellowship?
How does it begin?
Now, I'm going to be brief, because I
have one other thing, at least, beyond this
that I want to say.
But even though I'm going to be brief,
I hope I can be very clear.
Fellowship is a privilege which is implicit in
the call of God to become a Christian.
Fellowship is something that is offered when the
gospel is proclaimed.
Fellowship is part of the good news.
It's not something extra to the good news.
It's part of it.
Now, this is something that the 20th century
has forgotten or minimized.
God is faithful, says Paul, to the Corinthians.
Now, they were not a very happy lot.
Morally and otherwise, they were quarreling among themselves.
And some of them were living immoral lives.
And there were many other things, though they
had lots of gifts and lots of potential.
Nevertheless, it wasn't a very noble church, to
take as an example.
But now, says Paul, God is faithful, even
in your case.
He doesn't say that.
I'm saying that.
I think he meant that.
God is faithful, by whom you were called
into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ
our Lord.
By whom you were called into the fellowship.
All of you, he says, when you heard
the gospel call, heard as an intrinsic element
in that call, the summons into fellowship.
Now, you haven't come, many of you, he
says, you're still split.
You're still sundered.
The one from the other.
There are divisions among you.
Some say, I'm of Paul.
Others, I'm of Apollos.
Or others, I'm of Cephas.
And some, I'm of Jesus.
And you're dividing up.
But listen, he says, this was the call.
It was implicit in the call.
No one is called to God in Christ,
who is not also called into fellowship with
all others in Christ.
Now, this is very important.
I don't know how these very exclusive groups
are going to manage in the glory.
You see, you cannot have God as your
father without having his children as your brothers
and your sisters.
You can't have it.
But many people try.
And they want God as their father, and
all the privileges of the fatherhood of God,
and the saviorhood of Christ, and the ministry
of the Holy Spirit.
But they build walls between them and other
Christians.
You just can't have it.
It's sin to do that.
It's moving against the Word of God.
It is disobedience to the Word.
It is dishonoring the Spirit.
It's all contrary to the purpose.
Having been called, now we're fighting against that
to which we've been called.
The capacity for fellowship is inherent in the
action whereby God receives sinners and saves them.
Whenever God receives a sinner, in so receiving
a sinner to himself, something happens.
God does something which is the basis of
fellowship and gives individuals the capacity for fellowship.
I can only throw out a few illustrations
this morning.
For example, justification.
It gives a righteous basis for our acceptance
with God, and therefore the basis of fellowship
with God.
Because in justification, God accounts us righteous in
his Son.
And that means when we come to God,
we don't have to come cringing.
We may come with awe.
We should, if we know anything about God.
And if we remember the pit from whence
we are hewn, we shall come humbly.
But we may come boldly to the throne
of grace, says the New Testament, because the
basis is laid.
We are justified by grace.
The blood of Jesus takes our sins away.
The righteousness of Jesus is imputed to us.
We come clothed in Christ, and we are
accepted in the Beloved One.
And it's all in justification.
Justification sets the ground for fellowship, for intimacy
with God.
And so the Bible even tells us to
draw near to God.
Oh Bulba, sorry, that's a Welsh saying.
I shouldn't say that.
Uh, we really don't know what the Bible
teaches us.
It bids us to come near to God,
right close up.
Jesus breathed on his disciples.
Have you ever felt the breath of God
on you?
The ground of it is laid in your
justification.
Adoption introduces us into the sphere of fellowship,
giving us the rights to come, not just
to come, but to come as children.
Now this is wonderful.
To come as children to our own Father,
who has chosen us.
I don't know why he chose me.
It's all the mystery of his infinite love.
But he chose us.
Brother and sister, this is the imponderable of
imponderables.
God chose a sinner like me.
God chose sinners like you.
He chose us to be his children, and
he's brought us in.
And this adoptive work of God is placing
us within the circle where intimacy with him
is possible, where sharing is possible.
Regeneration imparts the new nature.
The indwelling Holy Spirit within every believer encourages
and enables us to enter into fellowship, and
should be discouraging us from doing those things
that mar fellowship.
Now a personal confession of faith in Christ
is ipso facto.
A confession that we come not only to
belong to Christ, but to all that are
his.
We enter the family.
We move into the household.
We join the community.
This is why you see in the New
Testament there is no such a phenomenon as
a Christian who doesn't belong to a Christian
congregation.
It is incongruous, because we do belong, and
we cannot deny the fact we ought to
acknowledge it by taking our place with the
fellowship of God's people.
Now that brings me then to a very
serious question.
Why is it so apparently rare?
I can well hear someone say, if that
is what fellowship is, then I haven't seen
very much of it.
Why is it so rare?
The answer in a nutshell is that it
costs to develop fellowship according to the New
Testament.
And many true Christians are content to live
a life that is manifestly below standard, unworthy
of the name we bear, of the experience
which is ours already.
Whilst many nominal Christians have yet to learn
that there is such a thing.
As Jesus, the ascended Lord, refers to when
he writes to the church of the Laodiceans,
and he says, if any man hear my
voice and open the door, I will come
in, and it's J.B. Phillips who says,
and we'll dine with him.
We'll dine together.
Now fellowship with God and his people needs
to be recognized as essential, and not as
the optional extra some people seem to take
it to be.
We need to recognize that having been called
into Christ, and called to repent of our
sins, called to be the Lord's, this is
involved in the calling.
And it's part of our business to get
on with the job.
It is we who are responsible for the
lack of it.
Piety that is short of this is suspect
in Scripture.
Fellowship in terms of spiritual sharing with God
and sharing with his people is everywhere the
norm in Scripture.
Paul seeks to involve all kinds of people
in his work, and the word he uses,
in one form or another, is the word
fellowship.
He thanks the Philippians for their partnership in
the gospel.
And the word he uses is the word
for fellowship.
Now you might think that the Philippians have
been out evangelizing with Paul, but they hadn't.
Or you might think that the Philippians were
with him on some particular missionary journeys.
Well they were not, save when he was
in Philippi.
But the point is they were thinking of
him, and they were praying for him, and
every now and again they were sending a
gift to support him.
And you see they were thus fellowshipping with
him.
They were sharing their gifts with him, as
he had shared the gospel with them.
And in sharing the gospel, sharing his life.
You cannot share the gospel with anyone without
sharing your life with people.
Paul urges the Galatians, let him who is
taught, share all his good things with him
who taught him.
What he's saying is this.
Somebody's come and taught you the gospel.
Well now you've got something to give to
that person.
Give what you can.
Whatever you've got, be a sharer.
Have communion.
Let there be this two-way experience of
giving and of receiving.
I suppose that the example par excellence that
I can think of is Paul's writing to
the Romans in chapter one, when the great
apostle Paul is writing his letter to the
Christians in Rome.
And you know the strength of mind and
spirit that is reflected in the epistle to
the Romans.
Here is this gigantic man of God writing
to Christians in Rome, and he says, oh
he says, I've been longing to visit you.
And he says, I've been longing to visit
you in order to impart to you something
that I may have fruit in you as
I've had elsewhere.
But also, he says, that you may be
of profit to me.
Well let's get that.
See this is fellowship.
There is no one too high, there is
no one too lofty, there is no one
who's gone on so far ahead in the
Christian life that he cannot benefit from the
least of the saints.
And so we are called upon to fellowship.
To share.
Let's move on.
Fellowship with God and his people needs to
be practiced and cultivated with the greatest care
in all our spiritual exercises.
We ought regularly to ask the question, am
I really fellowshiping with God and his people?
Now let's start here.
I think this is where it does start.
It should start at the family altar.
I will not embarrass you.
I will not ask how many of you
have family altars where parents pray with their
children.
I hope that every parent has one in
the home, and every head of a household
knows something about this.
But the point I'm getting at is this.
God expects us to share here.
And he expects the kids, when they come
of age, to be able to do something
and to impart something into the fellowship.
And the parents, not they, they don't have
everything to give.
Of course, of course, naturally, by dint of
experience and calling and what not, it is
they who are going to teach their children.
But in the family, the whole family is
to learn to give and take, give and
take.
And if our children don't learn to give
and take in the family and at the
throne of grace, my friends, they will never
give and take in the world.
They'll always be wanting.
Oh, I would urge, I would urge every
family here in Knox this morning to take
this seriously, to know fellowship with children and
fellowship with our spouses in our homes.
If parents and children began to do this
together, it would soon be reflected in the
statistics relating to divorce and child delinquency.
I'll not say any more, but God expects
it of his people.
The Old Testament is full of it.
And the New Testament takes over the legacy
from the Old Testament.
We should learn to make all our services
to be occasions of fellowship.
Now, I don't know how many people who
come to Knox or go to another church
really think why the order of service is
as it is.
You may say, oh, we've all got into
a rut and somebody started it 2,000,
3,000, 4,000 years ago.
Sometimes we think before Adam.
And we've got into a rut and there's
no meaning, there's no rhyme or reason to
it at all.
Oh, wait a moment.
Our fathers were not as dumb.
I'm speaking generally now because there are differences
between churches, but the principle is this.
First of all, we gather here on the
Lord's day.
And it is a precious thing if there
can be silence and waiting in the presence
of God for two or three minutes before
the service begins.
I used to take part in conventions with
a dear senior friend.
I was telling Don McLeod about him the
other day.
He was a leader with the brethren in
England.
At one stage, he and I preached a
lot together.
I was the young Timothy and he was
the father.
And we used to preach in conventions, in
tents, in cities.
And the dear old man, whenever we came
to start, he would say to the people
three minutes before the hour, now, brothers and
sisters, he would say, in three minutes from
now, we're going to focus all our thoughts
and hearts upon Almighty God, Father, Son, and
His Holy Spirit.
Are you ready?
Now, we would say, let's get ready.
Let's think about Him.
Let's prepare for it, that we may have
fellowship with Him.
You see, my friend, you cannot just rush
and dash into the high court of the
King of Kings with your eyes half shut
after the night before.
You can't do it.
You've got to prepare.
The call to worship represents the summons of
God our Father to His people and some
promise of His.
And in prayer, we respond and we say,
well, my Lord, this is what You've called
us to.
Here we are.
We always come and we have to acknowledge
our faults and our sins and our unworthiness.
And this is not because we can't say
anything else in our prayers.
This is not because we can't think of
anything else to pray at that point.
This is because it is necessary.
I find it is absolutely necessary when I
come into the presence of a holy God
to acknowledge that I'm a sinner.
And sin has entered my mind and my
thoughts and my heart.
And so you see, this is where the
fellowship begins.
He speaks, we respond.
And then we'll stand perhaps to praise Him
as He has spoken.
Not only in the early words of the
call to worship, but in all that we
have known in the gospel.
And we'll stand to praise and we'll worship
Him in the great words of some of
the hymns that we have.
And the music will accompany us and will
enable us to be giving to God and
acknowledging who He is and what He's done
together.
And we'll listen to His word again, at
least in the morning hour.
I don't know where the announcements come in.
I think they ought to be somewhere else
actually, but that's beside the point now.
But then there must come prayer again, the
response you see.
Make your known all your needs.
Come as children.
Draw near and bear the needs of others.
Bring your fellow Christians with you.
Bring the needy with you.
Bring the world with you.
Bring with you whom God has laid upon
your heart.
In every service such as this, there should
be fellowship.
There should be sharing expressed.
One, in the hearing and receiving of the
word of God.
Two, in submission to the word and will
of God.
See, we hear it.
Now we respond by submitting to it.
Believing it, receiving it, submitting to it.
There should be fellowship expressed in the acknowledgement
of what God says is wrong.
God puts His finger on a raw spot.
We have fellowship with God when we say
the word confess means say the same as
God says.
If God says to you, that's wrong.
To confess your sin is to say the
same as God is saying.
To acknowledge the truth of what God is
saying to you.
This is fellowship.
And so we could go on.
Having thus fellowshiped in worship, however, we must
then proceed to fellowship with God and with
His people in service.
And every day's service should be nothing less
than this, a walking with God.
Enoch walked with God.
Truly, says John, our fellowship is with the
Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.
We are not sent out into the world
as messenger boys, leaving the one who has
sent us behind somewhere in the sanctuary of
Knox or somewhere else.
We are asked to go out with God.
This is fellowship.
The maintenance of this kind of fellowship with
God and His people is costly, and I'm
going to end now.
It will prove costly in terms of time.
It will require us to change our priorities
probably many times over before we get to
the right place.
It will be costly to self-interest.
See, to share anything with anyone else, when
somebody else comes close to my life, my
wife and my children, for example, that's the
nearest link.
Now, to share life together means self-interest
is going to suffer.
If there's going to be fellowship, then there's
got to be give and take.
Its maintenance and promotion will leave us less
time to gratify our own purely selfish desires.
We must not allow selfish desires to separate
us from those to whom we should be
drawing so close.
It will be costly in one other sense.
It will be costly in that it requires
open, openness, or to use a Johannine phrase.
Now, the phrase in John means more than
this.
I'm fully aware of that, but it includes
this, I believe.
Walking in the light, living openly.
There are some people whose lives, they're always
trying to hide something, and whenever you talk
to them, you always know that they're hedging,
and they're hiding something, and you never know
when you got them, or when they said
something.
They've never said everything.
They're never living in the light.
They're never open.
There's always something to hide.
Now, this is very difficult for some people,
because you see, you cannot have fellowship, which
means sharing with others as well as with
God.
You cannot have fellowship without limiting your own.
If fellowship means sharing, then there comes a
limit to my own right to my own
privacy, and I have to share.
You can't have fellowship with a closed mouth,
or a closed heart, or a closed hand.
There's got to be a giving as well
as a receiving, and I can't expect others
to give unless I am prepared to give,
and it's in the giving and the receiving
on both sides that we have fellowship.
Let John say, God is light, in him
is no darkness at all.
If we claim to have fellowship with him,
yet walk in darkness, we lie and do
not live by the truth.
But if we walk in the light as
he is in the light, we have fellowship
one with another, and the blood of Jesus
his Son keeps on purifying us from all
sins.
This, brothers and sisters, is fellowship.
Are we building walls between us and other
people, or are we building bridges?
Are we drawing nearer to God and nearer
to his people, or are we allowing things
to separate us?
Fellowship, fellowship.
They continued in the apostles' teaching and fellowship.
Do we?
Have we begun?
If not, the gospel calls us today, and
it calls us not only to Christ, the
only Savior who can pardon our sins and
transform our lives, but it calls us to
be with him and with all those who
are likewise with him.
It calls us into fellowship, and in this
fellowship you will never need to be lonely.
You may be lonely, but you never need
to be lonely.
Lo, I am with you always, and the
way to my Father's throne is always open,
and my Father will always hear his children,
says Jesus.
And God has his people and his witnesses
everywhere.
Brothers and sisters, may the Spirit of God
and the Word of God quicken in us
an understanding and an acceptance of what fellowship
means, that we may experience it more and
more to the glory of his name and
to the extension of his kingdom.
Let us pray.
Lord, we acknowledge our failures and our sins
before you again.
Those failures in us that come to light
as we meditate upon your truth, and we
would at the conclusion of the service, as
we did at its beginning, say the same
things as you were saying about these issues
in our lives, that we may have fellowship
with you and be one with you and
share your view of things.
We pray likewise, O Lord, that should there
be between us and one another anything that
is disturbing and harming this fellowship, that you
will enable us to tear down the hedges
and enable us to be open and honest,
seeking only your glory and not our own
defense.
Help us in all things to honor you
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.