Acts 2:42
Please turn in your copy of God’s
holy scriptures to the book of Acts to chapter two. Our scripture reading is Acts
chapter two, verse 42. The last couple of weeks and
for the next two weeks, including today, we have been considering
the five areas of ministry that we believe are dear to God’s
heart and should be dear to our hearts. And these are the five
areas of ministry that if we consider our church, is doing
well, then we’re thriving. Sometimes we say we want our
engine to fire on all eight cylinders. Well, think of our church as
a Volvo. They have five cylinders, and
they make weird engines. And so we have five areas, and
we want to do all five of those well. And so we consider today
the subject of community, or as the New Testament puts it,
fellowship. A couple weeks ago, we looked
at worship. Why is it important to worship? Last week, discipleship. Why must we make disciples? If
you were in the elective Sunday school class today, we heard
from Ligonier Ministries and Mark Dever about a church’s discipleship
program. So it’s good to reinforce and
hear things from several different perspectives. Today, we’ll look
at community or fellowship. Next week, mercy. And then finally,
stewardship. Let us hear from God’s word together
as we read from Acts chapter two. beginning at verse 42 or
only verse 42. This speaks of the early church
and it says they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and
to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and prayers. Amen. This is God’s holy word.
Pray with me. Our gracious God, we thank you
that you give us a glimpse of what life in the church ought
to be like. We thank you for the picture
from Revelation and how it shows us the end goal, that your desire
is to be with your people forever and ever. And we thank you for
your mercy that in Jesus Christ, you did not leave us in our sin.
You did not leave us alienated from you. You did not leave us
outside the garden, but you plan to make that garden new again.
And you plan through Jesus to put us again in that garden where
we might be with you forever. What a wonderful grace that is,
that we do not have to be wanderers. We do not have to be alone. We
do not have to be apart from you. And we thank you by your
grace that until that day comes when you make all things new,
that you have given us the church as a deposit, as a down payment,
as a guarantee of what we will enjoy forever in your presence. So help us now to see it, Help
us to believe it and help us the next week and even the rest
of our lives to live out of this wonder of your grace and your
glory. And we pray this in Jesus name,
amen. Here’s a question for you. What
does your dream church look like? If you were to sit down at a
table and design your dream church, what would it look like? Now,
I’m not talking about the building. I’m not talking about what type
of people would you hope to attract. And in a real way, I’m not talking
about the features and the functions or maybe a gone by by era that
you remember well. But what are the what are the
biblical features of the church that you would put down on paper
and say this is a dream church? This is the church I would love
to be a part of. Well, many people go to Acts
chapter two, verse 42, and they say, there is the dream church.
I want to be a New Testament church. I want to be a church
like back in the days of the Acts of Apostles. And those would
be good things. Those would be good desires.
But the Bible gives us, in a sense, what a dream church looks like.
And Acts chapter 2 verse 42 does help us. Other passages of scripture
do as well. Our study of worship and discipleship
and next week mercy and the week to come stewardship, those will
certainly help us as well. But what are the things that
the Bible would tell us ought to be a part of our plan if we
were to dream about the church we would like to be a part of? The Bible says in the book of
Genesis, God himself says it is not good for man to be alone. Now, he spoke those words in
the context of marriage. He spoke those words in the context
of Adam being alone and not having a helper suitable. And so God
created Eve in order to give him a helpmate, a helpmate, a
companion, someone to serve his purposes on earth alongside. And God also, in the same sense,
says to the Christian, it is not good for the Christian to
be alone. And so he created his church
as a place where we might fellowship. And so today, as we consider
the subject of fellowship, as maybe you pencil in the side
of your margins, what your dream church would look like, you would
want to have fellowship as a major component. You’d want to have
some sense of community as a major point on your dream list for
your church. And why is that? It’s because
God has made us for fellowship. He has not made or designed us
to be alone. And without other people, without
companions, without church, without friendships, without workmates,
we are restless until we find some sort of community. The church,
my brothers and sisters, is at its best when it worships, when
it has a discipleship ministry. Yes, as we’ll see in the weeks
to come, when it is merciful and it’s good, are good stewards,
but it is at its best when fellowship is sweet. You see, fellowship
is a vital aspect of the church now. And as we read in chapter
21 of revelation, it’s a vital and central aspect and feature
of the church. Triumphant, the church gathered
before the throne of God forever in heaven. So a couple of things
about fellowship. First, a definition. What is
fellowship? Is fellowship about fried chicken? I mean, we’re in the South, right?
And what does a church do? They eat fried chicken. They
eat potato salad. They eat green beans. They eat
pecan pie. Is fellowship about that? Is fellowship having tea together?
Is fellowship having a men’s gathering or a women’s group
or a youth group? Well, in some sense, no. But in another sense, yes. Let me explain. We have downtown
a cooperative, a cooperative grocery store. A group of people
said we want these certain foods available to us. And so we’ll
pull our money and resources together in order to open a store
where we can provide these things for ourselves. You own a portion
of it. Your interest is in it because
you want a common thing that others want. We’re seeing Co-ops
pop up in all sorts of ways. There are electricity co-ops.
There are water co-ops. There are co-operatives that
achieve certain goals for a certain group of people. And so, by definition,
fellowship is a partnership. It’s a cooperative, it’s a co-op. We read in chapter two of Acts,
verse 42, the disciples devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching. There’s discipleship. To fellowship,
there’s our topic for today. To the breaking of bread, which
is most likely communion, and to prayers. By definition, fellowship is
partnering together. It’s holding things in common
together. We speak of having communion
service. We commune together. We have
a shared life together. I mean, after all, the church
is the New Covenant community. It’s the gathering of God’s people
in the name of Christ together. We’re together. We are in cooperation
for worship. We are in cooperation for discipleship. We are in cooperation for prayer
together, for struggling through life together. We have a community
that we can lean on, we can rely on, we can partner together for
life. Now, we have to understand that
fellowship first starts with God himself. We know that God
is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that God in
this mysterious Trinity fellowships together with the Son and the
Holy Spirit. And there’s fellowship together
in the Trinity, but God, for his own glory and for his redemptive
purposes, to show his majesty on earth, said, we will make
a people for ourselves, and our delight will be in them, and
their delight will be in us. And so when fellowship first
starts with the Trinity in some mysterious way, we see it manifested
in the life of the church together. If God desires fellowship within
himself, we must desire fellowship within ourselves and not only
fellowship with God, but fellowship with one another. And so what
is our common relationship? What is the common denominator
in our fellowship? It is Jesus. We fellowship with
God through Jesus and we fellowship with one another through the
Lord Jesus Christ. Now, do we have fried chicken
from time to time? Of course we do. Do we have teas
and get togethers and youth groups and and and young at heart and
all the rest? Of course we do. But the reason
that we gather The reason that there may be a meal or there
may be a cup of tea or a glass of water or a cup of coffee is
because we are cooperating together in Jesus for the sake of the
glory of God and for the gospel of God. So what is? Fellowship,
it’s our partnership together in Christ Jesus. That is the
central aspect of our fellowship. Now, we may have other groups
that we belong to. We may have women’s clubs and
sewing clubs. We may have bicycling clubs or
running clubs. We may be in the Lions Club.
We may be in a Civitans Club. We may be in a professional guild
of some sort. And you see, those are cooperatives
that, yes, involve fellowship and maybe even fried chicken.
But they are for a certain goal and purpose. And friends, that
is what the Church of Jesus Christ is. We gather together and we
partner together in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. So
there’s a definition. What about a description? What
does fellowship look like? And again, is it fried chicken?
Is it a tea party? Is it a youth group? Is it a
senior’s trip? Is it a trip to the Holy Land
or some hike together with a youth fellowship? Is it those things?
Well, again, look at Acts chapter two, verse 42. It says they,
the early church, devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and
to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and prayers. You see, they were together for
a purpose. If you look up in the sky and
you see, as we’ll probably see in the weeks to come with spring
coming and migratory birds moving in mass, You’ll remember from
your science studies that birds travel together in what we call
synergism. They don’t travel alone, but
they travel together. And they fly in a V formation,
and that formation allows their collective energy to serve their
flight more efficiently. more effectively, their safety
in numbers. They flock together, they fly
together, they move together, and they migrate together. You
see, God has built something in these birds where they know
that they are better served with others. And he’s done that for
us in the church. Fellowship is defined as us partnering
together, but what does it look like? How would we describe it?
Well, let me describe it to you in a way from the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul, in his letter
to the Romans, says to the Romans, I wanted to come see you. I wanted
to come preach to you, but I’ve been detained. I couldn’t come.
But then he goes on to say, and the reason I wanted to come to
you is I wanted to be with you. And when I am with you, I want
to teach you something. He’s a pastor. He’s a teacher.
He wants to be with them and teach them something. But he
says, I’m also coming to be mutually encouraged by you. You see, there’s
back and forth, there’s give and there’s take. Paul not only
wants to come and give something to them, the gospel and doctrine,
but he wants to receive something for himself. And that is mutual
encouragement in the church and in the growth of grace and life
together. Now, what does that look like
in our local church? We can give examples from the apostle Paul,
we can give examples from church history, but what about us? What
does that look like? I want to tell you all just a
sweet little vignette about life in our church a couple of months
ago. Our brother, Gene Parks, wife passed away in November.
And very soon after that, maybe even the following Monday, we
had our men’s lunch. And on that day, just a few days
after our brother had said goodbye to his wife and his family had
all left town, he comes to men’s lunch. And that was after he
had been taken to a doctor’s appointment by one of the brothers
in the church. And that day, our topic, can’t remember what
it was, friendship, was very well displayed by the
love the brothers had for Gene. Did we eat lunch together? Oh,
absolutely. Did we read a book together?
We had been reading for nearly a year. We sure did. But our
brothers gathered together for those other things, ministered
to him in a very special way. There was mutual encouragement.
but our brother was greatly encouraged when he needed it most. And I’m
sure that many of you could speak of times in the life of the church
where the fellowship, where the partnership was something extra
special for you. Now we read in verse 42 of Acts
chapter two, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to
fellowship and to prayers. And we think sometimes as we
read on down about how all came upon every soul, there were signs
and wonders, the apostles were doing amazing things and the
church grew by thousands. And we think that’s exactly what
we want to be as a church. We wanna grow by the thousands.
We want to have the all and the signs and wonders. But it’s good
for us to be reminded that sometimes the extraordinary things in the
scripture aren’t for us to say, that’s what God is gonna do for
us. You know, for very often God
does ordinary things for ordinary people in just plain ordinary
ways. We don’t see fire come down from
heaven and lick up the altars of the bells. No, we have to
put up with pagan culture around us. We don’t see a rainbow from
the sky after living nearly a year in a large boat that we spent
100 years building. That was for Noah’s time. No,
we don’t see those extraordinary things, but we must look for
God working in extraordinary ways in one another’s lives as
we worship together, as we pray together, as we sing together,
as we study the word together, as we suffer together, as we
visit shut-ins together, as we visit the surgery when one is
sick together. So what does discipleship look
like for us? Well, it’s simply being together
And maybe there’s fried chicken or a hike or a cup of tea involved,
but it’s simply being together so that we can know God and help
one another through life. That is what makes us distinct
from the Lions Club or the Civitans Club or the Scout Troop or the
Beta Club in your school or whatever. affiliations you may have out
in the world. What makes our fellowship distinct,
what makes this New Testament specific word, koinonia, special
for Christians is that we gather together in partnership to know
God and to serve or help one another. Remember that Jesus
promises whether where two or three are gathered in his name,
There his presence is. Oh, and yes, wouldn’t it be fun
to be together with thousands of people? Wouldn’t it be fun
to be together where there’s excitement and hype? But I guarantee
you this. If God is at work in our midst,
if he’s at work in the gatherings of twos and threes and eights
and tens and 12s and 24s and 24s and hundreds, if he’s There, it is special and it is
glorious and it is wondrous. And so there we have a description
of fellowship. Well, third thing that we want
to consider, not just the definition, not only a description, got a
third D for you, and that’s duty. It is our duty to fellowship. You know, we live in a self-sufficient
culture. We live in a culture and a society
where we are relationally challenged. Isn’t that the politically correct
way to put it? We stink at relationships. How’s
that? We’re not good at nurturing and
maintaining and seeking relationships. We like to be self-sufficient.
We like to be individualistic. And we find ourselves in the
church. We can go a month by and not see a face. We can absent
ourselves from the fellowship. And we remember what the writer
of Hebrews said to us in chapter 10, as we studied in the months
past, do not forsake the assembling together. As some of you are
in the habit of doing, but let us all the more as we see the
day approaching, Encourage one another to be together in the
Lord for fellowship, for partnership, for cooperation, to know God
better, to serve one another well. You see, it is our duty.
Our Westminster Confession of Faith has an entire chapter,
which the Confession Sunday School class I’m sure looked at in weeks
past. It’s called the Communion of Saints. And in that chapter,
it says basically this. God has gifted each and every
one of us with gifts and graces. And our duty is to share those
gifts and graces with one another. And largely that whole chapter
of the confession comes right out of Acts chapter 2. The disciples,
the early church, they gathered together, or it says they were
devoted to the teaching, to the fellowship, and the breaking
of bread and prayers. And so it is our duty scripturally
that when the elders call us together, we come. When the elders
gather the church, the church ought to gather for partnership,
for fellowship, in knowing God and in serving one another. Will
it involve fried chicken? I hope so. Will it involve a
cup of tea? May it be so. But you see, the
fundamental connection is that we know God together. and we
serve one another together. The tea and the fried chicken
and the youth hikes and whatever else, those are secondary. They’re
to help foster that knowledge of God and service to one another. But it is our duty to give of
one another of our gifts and our graces. We ask when someone
stands before the church and makes their vows of membership,
they stand here, you sit there, we ask them seven questions.
But we always ask you a question. Will you, family of God, give
to these new members of your time and of your talents and
of your resources and of your knowledge of Almighty God so
that they will be well served by this church? And then I ask,
do you? And you say, we do. And so we
commit to one another in membership with vows to serve one another,
for there to be reciprocation of gifts and graces. We’re a
cooperative. Our desire is to be together,
to know God, and to serve each other well. Does there happen
to be fried chicken? Absolutely. A cup of tea, for
sure. But the main goal is knowing God and helping one another through
life. It is our duty. You see, we cannot
be self-sufficient. In fact, we will fall flat on
our faces. We need one another. And that’s why every week we
have several opportunities for ministry. Primarily, we want
to be a church that worships God. We want to keep the Lord’s
day. We want to worship together as we are now. But we create
other opportunities where around the word of God and around the
knowledge of God, the people of God can come, yes, to grow
and learn, but also to know each other and to know each other’s
needs and to serve one another well. It’s good for us to be
hospitable as a church and hospitable as families. Think about the
commitment that people in the Bible had to one another. I mean,
we said just a few moments ago that this is a self-sufficient
generation. We don’t need each other. We’re
fine by ourselves. Thank you. We’re relationally challenged.
We’re absent often from fellowship. Well, that’s not the case in
the scriptures when we see faithfulness and commitment. Do you remember
Ruth? After famine, they left Bethlehem, they went to a foreign
land. Ruth’s husband died, the other gal’s husband died. And they said to the mother,
Naomi, you go back to Bethlehem, we’re going with you. And one
said, no, I think I’ll go my way. But Ruth said, wherever
you go, I will go with you. And that’s the attitude we ought
to have towards one another. When one of us passes through
the waters of hardship, I will go with you. When one of us suffers,
we suffer alongside. When one of us has hardships,
we go with. Oh, yes, we are fellowshiping
together in wonderful times of worship and prayer and praise
and Bible study. But we get to suffer together
in fellowship. And what a blessing that is to
know that we have we have friends, we have fellow Christians in
the trenches with us. Now let me just say by way of
negative example, we get sad sometimes when somebody leaves
our fellowship. When somebody leaves the church,
we often say it’s like divorce. And it really is because we have
lived together, dwelled together, served together, cried together,
bled together, and then all of a sudden we just say, I’m done
here. And we walk out the door without
explanation. We walk out the door without goodbyes. We walk
out the door without even giving the chance at reconciliation.
And what does that do? The Bible says it breaks fellowship. And you know how that works in
your homes. You know how that works in the
workplace. And we understand why it goes that way out in the
world. But in the church, we ought to
be committed to one another, where we can work things out
in faithfulness and in gospel honesty. So what do we think
about fellowship? It’s definition, it’s description,
it’s our duty. We should be a church that is
devoted, yes, to worship, absolutely to discipleship, as we’ll see
in the weeks to come, to mercy and stewardship, but we need
to be devoted to one another and to God in fellowship. You see, the church is at its
best. It’s humming, it’s firing on
all cylinders when we fellowship well. Now, sometimes we have
reasons for not being in fellowship. We have reasons for being absent,
and we understand that there are good reasons. I mean, sometimes
our schedules are busy. Our work takes us to other geographical
locations. Our health doesn’t allow it.
We don’t feel good. But let me encourage you to think
this way about fellowship. It is so absolutely necessary
that we should go to great lengths to fellowship with each other.
And so let me, on the one hand, encourage you that when the elders
call the church together, if you’re able, be here. But let’s think about those who
cannot be here. And how can we take the presence
of God and the fellowship of the church to them? On a given
Sunday, we may have eight or 10 folks who are homebound. Do
they get a phone call? Do they get a visit? Do they
get a hello? How are you? We missed you. For
if we believe fellowship is so important that we ought not to
skip it. How then should we think about
those who are because of infirmity or some other reason unable to
be here? Remember brothers and sisters
that our God says it is not good for man to be alone. So let us as a church in fellowship,
march to Zion together. Let us pray. Our gracious God,
we thank you for this word and we pray that it would encourage
us We do pray that it would exhort us and challenge us to think,
to think hard about fellowship and to think hard about being
together with the people of God for meaningful learning and meaningful
service. And we pray that our fellowship
with one another would deepen as we grow in the grace and knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we ask and pray this in his
name. Amen.