Hey everybody. Good morning. Happy Sunday to you. Welcome to The Edge Church online. My name is Steven Van Denend. I’m one of the pastors here. We are so glad to have you joining with us this morning as we continue on in our sermon series that we’re calling, The Blueprint: Spiritual Disciplines For a God-Filled Life.
This is a series where we’ve just been looking together into the practices or our habits modeled for us by Jesus and by people of God throughout the Scriptures that are meant to help lead us into a life that is more filled with God’s presence, God’s power and God’s purpose. Spiritual disciplines aren’t so much rules as they’re meant to be an invitation from God to us. They’re not so much meant to burden us as they are to help us establish a God-oriented rhythm to life that helps us grow in Christ and produce godly fruit in and through us.
This morning, I have the great joy and privilege of sharing with you about one of my most favorite of the spiritual disciplines, and it’s one that I’ve been passionate about for a long time and one that has impacted my life greatly for the past 20 plus years. And that is the spiritual discipline of fellowship or spiritual community.
And so, as we open up God’s Word together, my prayer is that each of you will hear and receive what God has to say to you, that the Spirit of God would encourage you and minister to you and stir your heart for the things of God’s heart and, as always, at the end of every message, I’ll leave you with some questions, some thoughts just for you to journal about, for you to talk about with the people in your home or gathered together in your house church gathering.
And also, for those of you watching who would like to participate in an online community group, we have one that gathers after every Sunday service, and you are invited, and so if that sounds interesting to you, that sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, we welcome you to join us after the service. It’s an opportunity for you to meet some people, to talk about the message and the service, to share with other brothers and sisters in the Lord and grow together. There’ll be information available in the comments section as we draw to a close in our service.
So I just want to pray for us, invite the Lord to speak to us this morning. If you would pray with me:
Father, we just come before you in the name of your son, Jesus. God, thanks for this time. Lord, thank you that you’re here. God, thank you that you’re present. God, thanks for your Word. God, your Word that you said is living and active. God, that your Word that accomplishes its purposes. Father, I pray that as we open your Word together, God, that you would speak to our hearts, that we would have ears to hear from you and hearts to receive of you. God, that you would teach us and Lord that we would listen. So, God, I thank you that for every single person who’s listening and watching right now, God, that you planned that we would be here to today in this moment, in this time, God, to hear this message and, Lord, I pray that you would just minister in every single heart, encourage each person, Lord, by your Spirit today, and, God, help us to grab hold of everything that’s for us. Lord, have your way in our time. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
You know that one of the very first things that God teaches us about us as his creation, about mankind, is that we were created for relationship. We were made for community. In fact, it’s God that says all the way back in the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 2:18, he says that it is not good for man to be alone (NIV, paraphrase). Now, God’s not saying here that it’s never good to have a little alone time for yourself, right? We just talked about that a little bit back in our series about solitude and the benefits of that. We know that Jesus would sometimes go off by himself to a solitary place to be alone with God and to pray and seek the Lord. So, God isn’t saying here that it’s never good for us to be alone, but what God is saying to us is that we were not created for isolation. We weren’t made to walk out this life on our own. We were created to share life with others in the context of community, in relationship with God and with one another. And so, for all of time, all over the world, mankind has clustered together and established communities because the very nature of the creator God of the universe is himself communal.
We worship and we follow a triune God. One God, three persons — God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit — eternally existing together in this loving, harmonious communion, existing together for all of time. And the Bible tells us in Genesis 1:26 that we were created in his image and in his likeness. So, like God, then, we too have been created, not to have some kind of independent, disconnected life, but for this interdependent, communal life with one another in a God-centered, God-honoring, God-exalting community and relationship.
Jesus models this very thing for us in the Gospels. When we open up the Scriptures, we see Jesus walking with and sharing life together with his 12 disciples. These 12 disciples then carried out that same communal life, and the church has been practicing this now for thousands of years. In fact, when we look at the first church in the book of Acts, it tells us this about them in Acts 2:42, it says that they, the church, says:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, (There’s our word.) to the breaking of bread and to prayer (NIV).
As important as it was for them to be committed to God’s Word, as important as it was for them to be committed to prayer, it was equally as important for them to be devoted to fellowship. This word fellowship comes from the Greek word koinonia, and it’s a broad word that depicts this interactive relationship between God and his people who are sharing together in the life of Christ and his mission. Fellowship is less like a potluck in a church basement and more like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. If you haven’t read that book, you haven’t seen that movie, I’d encourage you to do that because that’s a better picture of fellowship than we often tend to think about.
Fellowship is less like a group of people getting together to hang out and relax and watch the Superbowl and more like a team of people on the field who, through their blood, sweat and tears, are huddled together in preparation and actively pressing towards the goal line. Scripture tells us that the church of Jesus Christ devoted themselves to fellowship. That word devoted literally means “to be dedicated unto.” It implies faithfulness and loyalty and consistency. It means to be committed. We, as the people of God, are meant to be committed to one another in godly fellowship in this thing we call the church, the family of God.
Now, I want to take a minute and just stop and let us be honest together just for a minute and admit it, right? Like the church would be an absolutely amazing place if it wasn’t for the people in it. Right? Anybody with me on that? People can be a real challenge, can’t they? If we’re honest, we can say, like, people are awful sometimes, even in the church, right? Like, people can be really selfish. People can be judgmental and short-tempered and unkind and easily offended. People can be obnoxious and irritating and annoying and opinionated and frustrating. Some people will not say anything at all, and others seem to not have any filter at all. You know what I mean? And my guess is that, even as I’m saying this, there may be certain people who are coming into your mind, but I’m actually talking about you too. I’m talking about me too because this is all of us, right?
See, when each of us met Jesus, we all found a God who was perfect. But then we showed up to church one day only to find a whole bunch of imperfect people who are different than us, with messy lives — right? — people with hurts and wounds and struggles and hardships and burdens, people who, from our perspective anyway, don’t always say things the right way, don’t always do things the right way or vote the right way or see the right way — right? — at least not in the way that we want them to, people who let us down, people who fail.
If I had to guess, I would bet that almost every single one of you has been hurt or disappointed or let down or offended by a brother or sister in Christ at one point in time or another. If you haven’t, I’d say just give it time, and you will be, alright? Not one of us is perfect. We all fail. We’re all not going to get it right all the time. I always say to people — even as a pastor, I tell people — “Listen, just give me time, I guarantee I’m going to let you down and fail you in some way and not because I want to, but because I’m not perfect, and neither are you.” And listen to me here: I’m not saying that there isn’t ever a time to remove yourself from fellowship or relationships, because there is. I’m saying what the Scriptures do to us here, that we should treat our fellowship with God’s people as precious and with great devotion.
Now, maybe because of your previous experiences or for other reasons, this idea of fellowship is a real challenge to you, right? And your thought is like, Well, why should I? Right? Like, Why is that so important? Why is that something that I should give myself to? I want to share with you this morning three big reasons for why fellowship and gathering together regularly with the people of God is worth pursuing and committing your time to.
Three G’s I’m going to go with this morning. I’m going Pentecostal, okay? Here they are. The three G’s: Why do we fellowship?
For God
For growth
For the gospel
For God, for growth and for the gospel.
I’ll start with the first one: For God. In Ephesians 2, the apostle Paul’s writing to the church. He’s writing to us to explain to us about who we are as the people of God, and he tells us this in verses 19 through 22, he says:
19 Consequently, you [the church] are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit (NIV).
Paul says, listen, when it comes to the church, when it comes to us and who we are, he says that we’re not strangers or foreigners or people who are far from God, but rather we are members of God’s household. We are sons and daughters of God. We are the family of God, and families are meant to be close, aren’t they? And the centerpiece he tells us of this family, the cornerstone, the tie that is to bind us is Jesus himself. We gather in Jesus and because of him.
We don’t gather under any other name, under any other umbrella or banner or secondary identity and not because of age or race or gender or cultural background, not because of personality or preference, not because we’re married or we’re not or because we have kids or we, don’t, not because of our shared styles or hobbies or causes or any other similarity. It’s not even because maybe we’re lonely and we want some friends to hang out with, and we just happened to live in the neighborhood, right? We just happen to live close by. It’s because of Jesus. Jesus is the tie that binds us together. Jesus is our commonality. He’s the reason we come together. We can be different from one another in every single other way, but if you have Jesus and I have Jesus, then we have every reason to fellowship together. Jesus is more than enough, and not one of any other of our differences ought to be bigger than our commonality in Christ. That is our highest identity.
But notice what else Paul says here to us about this fellowship of God’s people. He says that we together, we are built together to be a temple in the Lord. Now, for the audiences of that day, the implication of this would have been incredible because, for them, the temple was the center of their life and faith. It was the place where the priests, the ministers of the Lord, gathered and worked. It was the place where they would gather to worship and make sacrifices for sin and bring together tithes and offerings. It was the place where all the different feasts and festivals and celebrations took place. So much of their life was spent in and around the temple, and at the center of this temple was the most holy place. It was this sacred and special place where it was the only place, the one place where the actual presence of God dwelled upon the earth.
Now then, what Paul’s saying? Paul’s saying that now this place is us. That we, the church, are this place where the presence of God dwells. Not in a building, but amongst a people joined together in the Lord Jesus. Do you see how incredible this is? For those of you who would say, “Well, why is fellowship, why is the gathering together of God’s people such a big deal?” This is it right here: Because we are the temple of God, the house of God, where the presence of God dwells with us. Can you see then how sacred and holy and special, then, that this time that we share in together really is?
Do you want to know what makes the gatherings of The Edge Church so special? I’ll tell you. It’s just this one thing: God is here. God’s Spirit dwells with us. So if you want to encounter the presence of God himself, then you want to be a part of the fellowship because, as we gather, God meets with us, God ministers to us, God speaks to us, God reminds us of who he is, that he is with us and for us, that he loves us, that he is good and faithful and trustworthy and true. We fellowship for God and being in his presence.
Secondly though, we fellowship for growth. While all of us are saved and come to Jesus individually, the way that we grow up in Jesus is together. In Ephesians 4:16, it says it like this. It says:
From him [speaking about Jesus] the whole body [talking about us], joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work (NIV).
What we’re saying is that “Listen, the way that we grow in Christ is together.” The way that we are built up ultimately is together, which is to say that we need each other. We need each other in order to be and to become everything that God has made us to be, both personally and collectively. And this is really a countercultural idea, isn’t it? I mean, this stands in direct opposition to the individualistic nature of the American culture that says, “I can do this myself,” right? It says, “I don’t need anybody else,” and oftentimes we apply this same kind of thinking to our faith.
In fact, it’s actually fashionable today — and you hear this a lot from people to say things like, “Well, I’m not religious. I’m spiritual,” which is essentially just to say like, “Look it’s me and Jesus, and I don’t need anybody else.” “It’s me and Jesus. I just, I can walk out this life and grow in Christ myself, right? I can overcome the enemy on my own. I don’t really need the church. I don’t need the fellowship of God’s people.” But the reality is that God’s Word says it’s not true.
Remember here that when we come to the Father, the Scripture teaches us that we don’t just come to the Father, but we come to and into the family of God. God created us for community, and it is God’s design that the primary way that we would grow up in him is through our fellowship, through our connectedness to one another in Christ.
Now, that doesn’t mean that that’s just some easy thing to jump into — right? — because the reality is that growing can sometimes be a painful process. Anybody ever go through growing pains growing up? Right? Like we experienced that. If you’ve ever experienced growing pains, it can be really, really painful, but it was part of that process, right? The same is true in the family of God. The same is true as we grow up in Christ. In fact, in Proverbs 27:17, it says it like this, it says:
iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another (NIV),
which is really to say, like, “Listen, sometimes sparks are gonna fly. Sometimes there’s going to be friction. Sometimes there’s going to be conflict because none of us are yet complete, and there’s some rough edges on us that God needs to rough out and smooth over, and it’s going to take other people in our life to help that happen.”
So don’t give up on fellowship because it’s difficult at times, or it hurts. That’s part of the process, and God is at work in it. In fact, the writer of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 10:25, like this, he says, “Listen, do not give up, let us:
not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another — and all the more as you see the Day approaching (NIV).
The writer of Hebrews is saying to us, “Listen, as the return of Christ gets closer, don’t move away from fellowship, lean more into it. Be together more, encourage one another even more. And guess what? We are some 2,000 years closer to the return of Christ than they were at the time of reading this. So this is for us. Fellowship exists to help us grow in our relationship with Jesus and the family of God. It’s how we know and develop our gifts, and it gives us a place to use them. It’s where we can be challenged and encouraged in Jesus and reminded of our identity in him. It’s where we can serve and minister and practice the “one anothers” of Scriptures. It’s where we can be honest and accountable, where we can grow in God’s Word and in his truth, and remain on his mission. It’s how we can help to stay walking in the freedom that Christ gives us in him and not be overcome by the work of the enemy.
Listen, you ultimately cannot really say that you want to grow in Jesus while not actively partaking of and being part of the fellowship of God’s people. We need one another. We were created for it, and fellowship, what God’s Word tells us, is a gift from God for our good and for our growth in Jesus.
Here’s the third reason for why fellowship: For the gospel, for the gospel. Listen, God has a plan to reach the world, and it’s not so much through me as it is through we. Okay? Through us, his church and our fellowship, our relationship with one another. In fact, in John 17, before Jesus ever goes to the cross to pay for sin and purchase our salvation, Jesus himself, his final prayer to his Father is for us, and his prayer is this in John 17. He says:
Father, let them be one as we are one, that they might be brought to complete unity so that the world would know you sent me and loved them, even as you have loved me (NIV, paraphrased).
In other words, Jesus says, “Listen, it’s going to be our unity, our oneness, our love for one another, our fellowship is going to be one of the ways by which the world sees Jesus and knows that they are loved by God.” That’s like amazing. Okay? Like that kind of makes fellowship and gathering together a big deal, doesn’t it? Fellowship is a whole lot more than about you and I not feeling lonely and having some people to hang out on the weekend, right? God’s purpose and God’s intention is that, through us and our fellowship in him, that the world would see the amazing love and grace and truth of Jesus put on display, that they might be saved. Ephesians 3:10–11 says it like this. It says:
10 His intent [talking about God] was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, 11 according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord (NIV).
God’s plan to seek and save the lost is you, church, is us, is the fellowship of believers. We are God’s plan A, and God has no plan B. As the late pastor and theologian Francis Shaeffer once said, “Christian community is the final apologetic for the gospel.” And this is exactly what we ultimately see in Scripture, even as we look at the early church. Remember, in Acts 2:42, how it says they devoted themselves to teaching and prayer and to fellowship to one another, and we see how they then share together and love one another and serve one another. And at the end of that chapter in Acts 2:47, it says:
And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved (NIV).
What we see in this is that the outcome of their fellowship was that people who didn’t know Jesus turned from sin and put their hope and trust in him and joined in the fellowship of his people. And isn’t that what we want to see happen? Don’t we want to see the lost be found and every person on the planet experience the love and grace of God, every person turn from sin and put their faith in Christ and be saved? Isn’t that the desire of our heart too? It certainly is the desire of the heart of God and if it’s true for us, if we’d say that, “Yes, that’s true for me,” then what we ultimately want is the fellowship of God’s people. We want to gather together in Christ. We want to experience Christ and grow together in Christ and put Christ on display with our words and our works and our love for one another because then the world will know that God sent the Son and loves them just as he loved him.
We fellowship for God and his presence. We fellowship for growth in Christ, and we fellowship for the sake of the gospel throughout the world.
I want to just wrap up this morning by leaving you with some questions just for you to think about, to maybe journal about, to talk about in your home or your house church gathering. Three questions for you this morning:
What is your biggest takeaway? As you listen to this message and we talk about fellowship, what is the thing that most resonates in your heart about this message? And why?
What has fellowship meant to you so far in your life? What has it meant for your life thus far? And also, what has been your experience with fellowship or spiritual community so far in your life? Or what has kept you from it?
What is a next step for you to take regarding fellowship and participating in spiritual community? What is a next step for you? Now the reality for some of you might be simply to pray and ask God to give you a heart for fellowship. Maybe because of the ways that you’ve been hurt, the experiences you’ve had, like that’s not something you’re even prepared for, and you just need God to do a work in you, for God to move you in that. Maybe that’s the first place for you is just to start to pray and say, “God, I’m inviting you, Holy Spirit, to do a work in my heart, to minister, to bring healing, that, God, I can even have a desire to engage in fellowship again. “And maybe for others of you, that’s joining one of our house churches. Maybe that’s joining one of our community groups. Maybe that’s even jumping into this community group starting right after this service. For those of you, if you don’t know, we’re actually going to be having a service Easter Sunday. Maybe that’s a great time for you to show up. Be on the lookout for ways to register for that because that’s coming up for you. Maybe it’s just participating in serving in some kind of way. Maybe there’s a gift that you have that you’re meant to give. But what is it? What does it look like? What is God inviting you into as a next for you regarding fellowship?
I want to just pray for us, and then we’re going to wrap up our time together with a closing song. If you go on our website a little bit later, there’ll also be a guide, a fellowship guide for you, just some ideas for some things to think about and some ways to possibly engage in fellowship as you’re thinking about next steps.
So let’s pray:
Father, thanks for this morning. God, thanks for your Word. God, thanks for one another. Lord, thanks for your church. God, so often, Lord, we’re not even aware of the gift of other people in our life, but God, I thank you that created us, Lord, for a community. You created us for fellowship, Lord, that we might know you, God, that we might grow in you, and God that the world might see. God, I pray that, for each of us, Lord, you would teach us, God, what it looks like to live out a life in fellowship, a life connected to the body. Lord, that you would give us a heart for one another, a love for one another. God, that you give us eyes to see one another, the way that you do. God, I pray that as we share in life together, Lord, that as we walk out this life together that the world would see, God, you in us. That Lord people would be drawn to you, pointed to you. That, God, people would come to know you because of our relationship to one another and our love for you. So God, do a work in our hearts, do a work amongst us, Lord; God, that you might be exalted and glorified and lifted up, God, and that all men might come to know you. God, have your way in us, and I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen.
God bless you guys. Go ahead and take a little time to answer these questions, or hold on for just a minute, and we’ll wrap up with our final song.