Gift of Fellowship

We all agree that really the only thing we have in common in this flock is Jesus. Oh, have Brother Andrew with us, praise God. Keep coming, will you? We agree that the only power in this world that's able to hold together, gather together in the first place and hold together, a mixture of people as diverse as we are, has to be Jesus.

He has broken down the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Greek. In Him, there is neither slave nor free, male nor female. We are one in Him.

And yet, whenever you look closely at any assembly of believers, including this one, you almost always find that there is something else, in addition to Jesus, that seems to be there, that they have in common, and that seems to hold them together. For instance, if we all hold the same political view, or if we all are in the same income bracket, or if we're all from Kentucky, like Helen Morrow, or if we're all crazy about growing tomatoes. See, then we have Jesus, but we also have this other thing that helps to cement the bond.

And somebody says, well, no problem here, because we don't have any of those things. I mean, look how different we are. Look at how many things we all the time disagree on.

And yet there is one thing, in addition to Jesus, that we, in this flock, have in common. This is not only an assembly of followers of Jesus, which it is, but this is also an assembly of staunch individualists. Back in the early part of the century, when I was 14 years old, I was working on a farm.

You can always tell whether they're with you or not. I was working on this farm, and they had this potato grater. They dump the potatoes on this grater, and they come rolling down the conveyor.

And our job is to pick out the rotten potatoes, or the ones that looked like they were starting to rot, or whatever was wrong, and get them off. And as they were coming down the conveyor, the little potatoes would go through the gap, you know, between the rollers, go down the little slot, middle-sized potatoes would go down the middle-sized slot, and then the big potatoes would go down the big slot, and then at the end, all the funny-looking potatoes. You know, they didn't fit anywhere at all.

You know what the conclusion of this is? We're like those potatoes. We're coming down the conveyor, we just don't fit anywhere, and here we end up in this dirty old bushel basket for all the misfits. Now, it's not so much that we were rejected everywhere we went.

That might have happened once or twice. But most of the time, it's that we simply couldn't fit in. We were too individualistic about so many things.

We just couldn't seem to fit. And finally, here we are in this bushel basket marked The Open Church. You know, where even individualists are welcome.

But our problem is, how do you mix this radical individualism, which really characterizes most of us here, with fellowship? Many of us are such individualists that we really don't consider fellowship that big a thing. You know, the main thing is my personal relationship with God. And nobody can knock that.

But we're beginning to discover, as God is dealing with us, that our personal relationship with God isn't going to go anywhere at all apart from fellowship. There's no such thing as having fellowship with God without also having fellowship with brothers and sisters. From 1 Corinthians 1, 9, God is faithful.

By whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Now, to be called into the fellowship of His Son is not just to be called into fellowship with Jesus, which it is, indeed, fellowship with Jesus, but also fellowship with those who have become one with Him. And this fellowship is a tremendous gift.

It's the beginning of heaven itself. 1 John 1, 2. The life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testified to it, and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the Father, and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you may have fellowship with us.

And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing this, that our joy may be complete. We're proclaiming Jesus to you so you can have fellowship with us, He says.

And our fellowship is with the Father and the Son, and our joy will be complete when you're in this thing, too. Now, what we individualists need to learn is that fellowship with God and with each other is heaven. Amen.

And that lack of fellowship or the absence of fellowship is hell. Now, fellowship isn't just being in a room together. People can be in a room together and find each other absolutely detestable.

And they just can't take it. It starts play. It's in our book room.

No exit. It's a perfect example. I mean, people can be in a room together and it is hell.

Can't stand each other. Fellowship is not just having a common viewpoint. People can share a common view about taxes or nuclear arms or Christian doctrine and still be total strangers.

Fellowship is not just spending a lot of time with each other. We can spend 24 hours a day for 10 years with each other and still not have fellowship. Consider how many couples who have been married 20, 30, 40 years.

They've raised their children. They ate at the same table. They slept in the same bed.

Yet they've never been able to tear down the wall. Fellowship is a gift from God. It's the thing Jesus restored to the human race by His death and resurrection.

By the death and resurrection of Jesus, by this victory, the door is opened once again into fellowship, the paradise of fellowship, when He invites us to His table and gives us His body to eat and His blood to drink. He's inviting us into fellowship. But we have to respond to this invitation.

We have to go through this door. When we go through the door which He opened for us, it's like walking into another world, even though we're still here. A world that's bathed in holy light where nothing is hidden.

There's no shame. There's no fear. Just perfect peace.

The true shalom. And the act of receiving this fellowship, of going through this door, is very simple. It's called walking in the light.

Verse John again. This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaimed to you that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth.

But if we walk in the light, if He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus' Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have fellowship with one another while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth. What does it mean to walk in darkness? To walk in darkness is to be going through this world with a mask over our hearts.

Some kind of pretense. Some kind of screen that conceals who we really are. We individualists particularly love that mask.

Very, very careful about that. You know, conformists are more likely to keep their cars shiny and their clothes just right, whether they're wearing jeans or tweeds. We might let our cars get a little dirty sometimes and we may look kind of funny the way we dress sometimes.

But don't you mess with this mask I put over my heart because this is my protection. By means of this, I conceal from you who I am. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus' Son cleanses us from all sin.

To walk in the light is simply to uncover our hearts to God and to open our hearts to each other. When we do this, we have fellowship with each other and we have fellowship with God because the blood of Jesus' Son cleanses us from all sin. So how do we uncover our hearts before God? Obviously the only thing we ever try to hide from God, ridiculous as that may even sound, is sin.

You know, the attitude, that lazy streak, the weird fantasies, the covetousness which lies beneath so much of what we do and think, and then we take this artificial grass like they use on football fields or whatever it is and just roll it up over all the mess and pretend our heart is a garden, everything's so nice. To uncover the heart before God is to rip off this pretense that we have, this phony grass and admit the cesspools that are there. Lord God, help me to confess it to Him.

Where we've been, what we've been trying to do, how we're all messed up and we don't know what's going on, how we're afraid, or the bigotry that lingers in our minds. You know, the hard attitudes we have toward people who are close to us and far away, the indifference by which we walk through the world and don't even see the people who are, like John was reading, hungry and strangers and naked, near and far. It goes on in that passage to say, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The way into life with God is simply to open up and confess sin. When we do this, He doesn't say, uh-huh, go to hell! And gives us the power to change as we never were able to change before.

God help us today to admit what's there. Lord God, I'm having a hard time. I'm loaded with all this junk.

All these attitudes that I can't, I try and I try. I don't want to be like this. Help me! And He will.

But fellowship, walking in the light, is not only having a heart that's uncovered before God, but it's also having a heart that's open to brothers and sisters. How are we going to have fellowship if we're not willing and able to run the risk of opening up to each other? You know, to come down off the pedestal, to take off the mask, and to admit to each other how we're hurting, what we're afraid of, what we need prayer for. If there's any place in all the world where it ought to be safe to open our hearts to other human beings, to accept each other, and honor each other, and care about each other, and be at peace, it's in the body of Christ.

Lord God, how we need this. God, help us to come out of the darkness of pretense into the light of an open heart. God is not asking us to give up our freedom, which he gave us in the first place, nor is he asking us to stifle our thoughts, or our convictions, and compromise them.

No. All he's asking us to do is to give up our self-centered individualism, our guarded aloofness, and join his fellowship today. He invites to his table all who want to come be part of him, to partake of the miracle of his death, to eat his flesh and drink his blood, that we might become broken bread and poured out wine for that world out there.

And that's what he invites us. Are we willing to uncover our hearts to him, and to open our hearts to each other? This is the message we have heard from him, and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie, and do not live according to the truth.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. Now before we go to prayer, let's begin with a time of silence and then get into some prayer.