Acts 2:42
Over the last many weeks, maybe
since early May, we have taken a break from our regular preaching
through a book of the Bible. We will pick that up later in
the summer, Lord willing, in the book of Luke and then in
the book of Acts. Luke wrote both books together.
So I’m going to make preparations for that. But we are studying
right now the means of grace, the means by which God communicates
his grace to us. We started out with the ministry
of the word. We’ve made our way through the
sacraments of the Lord’s supper and baptism. We spoke last of
prayer and today we land on the subject of fellowship. We land
on the subject of fellowship the day we have a congregational
meal, the day we receive a new member, but also the day we come
together for the Lord’s supper. And so it’s a rich, I think,
piece of uh, teaching along with a lot of imagery to go with it
in the life of the church today. Next week, we will consider suffering
as a means of grace. And so today we land in the book
of Acts chapter two, verse 42. Let us hear God’s word together.
This is speaking of the early church and it says, and they
devoted themselves to the apostles, teaching and fellowship to the
breaking of bread and the prayers. Pray with me. Lord, we recognize
that you are the Lord of heaven and earth, but also that you
are the Lord of the church. And we submit ourselves to you
today as your people who are under command under your authority.
And we pray that you would speak to us. With great authority that
your word would show us who we are and how we ought to live
in light of the gospel of Christ, and especially in light of who
we are as your church, your people called out of the world, set
apart for holiness to live in a way that is pleasing in your
sight. We need your help. We need your grace and we need
your strength. So give us eyes that see and ears that hear and
hearts that understand all these things in order that we might
live in a way that pleases you. We ask it in the name of Christ,
our great savior. And it’s in his name we pray.
Amen. I was surprised on, I think Friday
morning, it was to open the newspaper. and to read the results of the
National Spelling Bee. Now, normally the results of
the National Spelling Bee don’t excite me. I never was a good
speller. I was usually seated about halfway
through Spelling Bees in grade school. My children don’t do
Spelling Bees, so it’s really not of all that much interest
to me, except in this case, the winner of the National Spelling
Bee this year won by spelling the word koinonia. Koinonia is
a Greek word and it means fellowship. It’s the word we find in Acts
chapter two, verse 42, when it says, and they devoted themselves
to the apostles teaching and fellowship. They devoted themselves
to the apostles teaching and koinonia. Koinonia is a wonderful
New Testament Greek word that is unique in that language only
to the Christian faith. It is my understanding it is
not used elsewhere in other ways in the Greek language. And so
in the language of the New Testament, we have this special word that
is rich with theology. It means literally common or
partnership or community or participation. And in some context, it means
communion, as in the Lord’s Supper, communing together. It’s a word
that gives special recognition to the church of the living God
as the society of the saints. I want us to think about fellowship
or koinonia in three special ways today. The first way we
want to think of koinonia or fellowship is under the heading
of partnership. One of the ways we can translate
or understand this word fellowship or koinonia is partnership. Now
we understand, we remember well in our Bibles that Jesus says,
where two or more are gathered in my name, there I will be with
them also. And much of the time we think
of fellowship as something that happens down the hall in the
room that we call the fellowship hall. And here in the South,
here in the Southern American church, we generally associate
fellowship with fried chicken. We usually associate it with
barbecue or a game of horseshoes or church league softball. And
yes, there is some sort of social aspect to the life of the church. But I want you to understand
that fellowship is way more than that. It is way more than the
people of God gathering around a plate of fried chicken or barbecue
or, or aunt mods or Susie’s banana pudding or whatever, as special
as that is. I mean, we don’t want to downplay
the fried chicken, do we? or the barbecue or the ham or
the banana pudding. Many a church meal has been a
delight to us. But we want to understand that
fellowship or under this heading partnership is a much deeper
word than we have allowed it to become. We need to take back
this word fellowship in a sense. We need to take it back and remember
or even learn for the first time how deep and great a word fellowship
or koinonia or here partnership is. Brothers and sisters, I want
to remind you that we are the church. We are those called out
of the world from ungodliness, called out of darkness and into
the Lord’s marvelous light. And we are called out of the
world and gathered into God’s covenant community. here at First
ARP Church in Burlington on Saddle Club Road. We are called into
the church that we call the Associate Reform Presbyterian Church. And
we are called as we just spoke of in our creed this morning,
we are called to be part of the Catholic church, the little C
Catholic church, the universal church is what that word means.
We are called to identify with those who call on the name of
Jesus Christ around the world together with the saints who
have gone before us into the heavenly places and who surround
the throne of God and his glorious presence. And there is, yes,
something social about the church. But we need to remember that
our fellowship is really more than that. And it falls into
the redemptive realm. It’s a deeper realm. And so our
partnership is in the great things of the church. We fellowship
or we partner in worship. We fellowship in the preaching
of the word of God, the gospel. We fellowship in upholding the
scripture as the true and living word of God, the only rule of
faith and practice. We fellowship or partner in the
advance of the gospel through evangelism and missions. We partner or fellowship together
most deeply in prayer. We do that here on Sunday nights
in our evening service in the fellowship hall. Some of you
have recently partnered in the gospel. With our brother Ed,
who in July will be heading down to Mexico to serve in the music
camp there with Ellen Barnett, who was with us several weeks
back. This is something he’s done for many summers. And we
partner with him to send him for the sake of the gospel there.
Some of you also have partnered with our brother, our friend,
our student from Elon, Isaac Sasser. He raised funds and is
receiving support from many of you in prayer and all the rest
to be in South Africa for the summer with campus outreach.
He’s been there about two weeks and we’ve heard reports that
things are going well, they’re safe and they’re healthy, and
they’ve made inroads in meeting with those interested in the
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We’ve partnered with him. We
partner with the Goodmans. We partner with other missionaries
that we support so that they can do the work that God has
called them to do. I want us to think about partnership
in this way, maybe compared with other realms or spheres that
we find ourselves in. If you live in a home with other
people, you may eat together. You may travel together, you
may watch TV together, you may do all kinds of things that those
who live in a home do together. And those are sweet and wonderful
things. Maybe you do various activities
with friends, you travel together, you’re in bridge club, you’re
in a dance club, you’re in a social or civic organization, and you
eat together, you raise money together, you do good together
in the community. And while the home And these
other human organizations are wonderful things. The church,
my dear friends, is special. We are bound together in Christ,
in a partnership, in a fellowship that helps us serve the King
of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Now, I want to ask you a rather
serious question. Think about your level of partnership
in the life of the church. How often do you come? How often
do you participate? And how often are you blessed
by the work of the church as you partner together with others? How important are the church
people to you, the work of the church? It’s an interesting question. And so we think of this subject
of fellowship under the heading of partnership, but a second
heading I want us to consider is responsibility. Friends, it
is a responsibility for us to be in partnership or to be in
fellowship with others. What a wonderful way to illustrate
it. And what we did just a few moments ago with our brother
Jim, who joined us, he joined us in membership in the life
of the church. And we asked these wonderful
seven questions that are from our form of government, from
our denomination. There’s a fifth question that
we asked. Do you promise with the Lord’s help to be faithful
in the performance of your Christian duties, both in private life
and in the work of the church? There is a real sense where when
you join the church, you’re covenanting with the people and you’re saying,
I will serve you and you will serve me. It’s a responsibility
because we are bound together in covenant before God and before
one another in Christ Jesus to give and to take to give and
to receive, to serve and to be served. It’s a responsibility
for us as Christians who have been bought with the precious
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, who’ve been brought from darkness
into light, who’ve been brought from death to life, who’ve been
made new creations in Christ Jesus. And as the scriptures
teach us, we are not our own. The book of Ephesians, Paul tells
us that we are the workmanship of God. And he has saved us to
do good works that have been prepared for us to do before
the world began. And so dear brothers and sisters,
our partnership in the life of the church is a responsibility. It is a reciprocal relationship
one to another. Some of you are out in the work
world where you work in a place where you You’re told there are
certain deliverables, right? There are certain deliverables
that will show that a contract has been met. These are things
that must be done in order for the agreement to be reached.
And so what are some of the deliverables that are our responsibility as
Christians in the life of the church? Well, we should pray
together. We should edify one another.
We should encourage one another. We should admonish one another. We should listen to one another.
We should care for one another. We should meet one another’s
needs. We should love one another. Think about all the biblical
commands that you’ve heard in the Bible of your obligation
to other Christians. I’ve just listed a handful of
them. But big in the language of the New Testament is the little
phrase, one another. And friends, you can’t do any
one another ring unless you are around one another. It is a responsibility
for us as the people of God, as a covenant community to serve
and to be served. Some years ago, Maybe 15, 16,
17 years ago, my wife and I were in school. I was in seminary.
She was teaching school. We were making it on a shoestring
budget as I made my way through seminary. And one day driving
home, my senior year of seminary, my transmission went out. I noticed
leaving Charlotte, driving up to the Lake Norman area where
we lived, that my car was riding up the interstate in second gear.
It wouldn’t go into third and overdrive. And when I got to
my parking space of the apartment where we lived, it just quit. I couldn’t back out. And so when
I finally called a repairman to come take it away, he said,
well, you can probably drive it here. You’re gonna have to
put it in neutral and roll it down the hill and it’ll probably go forward
and that’ll save you 90 bucks. So that’s what I did. And I went
to prayer meeting that night at church and I told one of my
elders what had taken place. And I was not a person who wanted
to ask for help. And do you know that night? Within
30 minutes of prayer meeting we’re over with, a man in the
church quietly said, the boy needs a transmission. He’s got
a year of school left. We’re gonna make sure he gets
one. And I never had to think about it. And it was really,
really hard for me. I wanted to work. I wanted to
earn the money. I wanted to do it. And one of the elders came
to me and he said, sometimes you need to let the church be
the church and serve you. And so dear brothers and sisters,
let me encourage you of your responsibility to look for needs
and meet them sometimes you are the one in need and you need
to receive those gifts from those in the church who are responsible
fellowshippers or partners in the gospel and you need to be
served. That leads us well to our third
heading. It’s a partnership. It’s a responsibility. But in light of our study of
the means of grace, I want to ensure you that fellowship is
a means of grace. That is our third heading. It
is a means of grace. How does God in his wisdom and
his good sovereign plan, how does he intend to refresh his
saints? to strengthen his saints, to
give them accountability, to edify his saints and other such
spiritual blessings. He means to do it in many ways
through the word, through the sacraments, through prayer, but
he means to do it through fellowship. We need one another. We need
partnership. We need each other’s gifts of
grace. Missionaries can’t go without
gospel partners. The sick and suffering can’t
make it through hardship without one another’s and partnership.
And on and on we could go example after example. We can’t go it
alone. We are not made to go it alone. We need this means of grace called
fellowship. We need relationships. We need
the giving and the receiving, the serving and the being served.
You know, we live in a society that is very much individualistic. We have about obliterated the
God given institution of the family. And we’re pretty near
obliterating the God given institution of the church. You see, people
are living as if they need no home and as if they need no church. I can go it alone. And so we’ve
turned our backs on the home and we’ve turned our backs on
the church and we are living individualistic lives, serving
me, serving I, serving personal pleasures. And as the people
of God, we need to affirm the church. It is the place where
the people of God gather to serve and to be served and a bunch
of other things. We need to affirm the family
and even include those who have no family in our families. And
what a wonderful gift of grace that would be. You remember when
Jesus met a Pharisee and the Pharisee was trying to trick
him and he wanted to know what the sum of the commandments are.
And Jesus asked him, would you tell me? And he said, it’s to
love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.
And then Jesus said, what’s the rest? You shall love your neighbor
as yourself. And so, dear brothers and sisters,
let me ask you this. Are you feeling impoverished?
Are you feeling impoverished because you are not serving and
being served? And maybe one of the ways that
you’re being impoverished is you’re just not here. You’re
not here in the house of God with the people of God serving
and being served as often as is possible. I don’t know about
you, but on a Sunday like today, I will go home tired. I’ll have
been to Sunday school. I’ll have been to worship and
I will have eaten a meal and I’ll go home tired. but it’ll
be what I call a good tired. Now I’ve got to go to Greensboro
by three o’clock and preach for an installation service and help
the Presbyterian install another pastor. And then I’ve got to
come back this evening and I guarantee you tonight I will be exhausted,
but it will have been a sweet day to been in the house of the
Lord. Well, two houses of the Lord.
to be with God’s people and to do these partnerships, these
responsibilities of fellowship, of loving God and loving neighbor,
of giving and receiving and seeing. So let me ask you, if you’re
feeling a bit impoverished, give the fellowship of the church
a try. Be with the people of God, receive from the people
of God and serve the people of God. I want to end by reminding
you of a great truth. We’ve spoken of fellowship in
this horizontal plane, one to another, friend to friend, family
to family, church member to church member. But I want you to understand
it is not possible to have Christian fellowship in the life of the
church unless there is fellowship between us and God himself. There’s a vertical relationship
that is extremely important. And that relationship between
ourselves individually and as a church with God is only possible
by faith in Jesus Christ. It is only possible by being
reconciled to God through Christ Jesus. For you remember in the
Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, they had sweet fellowship with
God, but Satan came and tempted them. You can be gods unto yourselves.
You can rule your own life. God doesn’t want you to be happy,
so eat. And they ate, and they lost communion
with God. They fell into sin. They were
booted out of the garden, the flaming swords protecting them
from that tree of life guarded the way. But God came looking
for them. And he said to Adam and Eve as
he walked in the garden that day, where are you? Well, we’re
hiding. Why are you hiding? Well, it’s
because we’re naked. We’re ashamed. Who told you that
you were naked? Well, their eyes had been opened to right and
wrong and to good and evil because they failed to trust the Lord.
And so the rest of the story of the Bible is God restoring
that fellowship, that partnership that was lost. And so, dear brothers
and sisters, we can’t have sweet fellowship together unless we
have sweet fellowship with the Father through the Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ. So let me ask you to think really
hard today. How is your fellowship? How is
your fellowship with God? And how is your fellowship with
God’s people? Pray with me. Our Lord and God, we thank you
for this blessing of fellowship that is ours. with you through
Christ, but with your people through the church. Give us grace
to live well together, to serve well together, to bear our responsibilities
and to make the name of Christ known through how we live as
your people. We ask for your help and grace
in the name of Christ. Amen.