New Testament fellowship isn’t getting together to eat, or watch television, or play badmitton. It should grow us in joy, power, ministry, vision, encouragement, and discipline.
Genesis 2:8 “It is not good for man to be alone.”
What is fellowship?
See VINES Complete Expository Dictionary
Partnership, Sharing in Common, Communion, Partaking
1 John 1:1-4 , 1 Corinthians 6:17 “He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit.” The goal of evangelism is to bring others into fellowship with Christ and His body. To be saved is to be in the fellowship. Despite all of our differences, we have one thing in common, we are all filthy sinners with nothing to offer God, but dying on the cross He paid for our sins and uses us anyway.
1 John 1:5-10 We can call ourselves Christian, but if we do not desire fellowship, Bible study, worship, discipleship, we are deceived and have not been born again.
What does fellowship look like?
Acts 1:14-15 Praying in upper room after Jesus has ascended. Luke 24:52 says these people spent time worshipping at the temple and praying in the upper room. They then would go out in public to preach the gospel.
Acts 2:1-2 3000 people were saved once as a result of these 120 people praying for ten days in the upper room
Acts 2:46 The 3000 new converts followed this example. The Lord added to their number day by day.
Acts 4:31 Peter and John arrested, get out of jail and then go to small gathering and prayed. The Spirit of God came and gave them power to speak the word with boldness.
Acts 13:2 Church leaders were gathered, worshipping and fasting, the Holy Spirit gave them a mission to reach Barnabas and Paul.
Acts 16:25 “Forced fellowship” Paul and Silas people in a dungeon singing hymns and praying, when the prison was miraculously opened. They chose to turn their crisis into a fellowship of praise.
James 5:16 “Confess your sins to one another” Be open and honest about your sins.
Forgive one another. Colossians 3:13 says, “Forbearing one another and forgiving one another.”
Bear one another’s burdens. Galatians 6:2, “Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
Rebuke sin in one another. Ephesians 5:11 says “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather reprove them or rebuke them.”
Galatians 6:1 says, “If a brother be taken in a fault, restore such a one in love.”
“The neighborhood bar is probably the best counterfeit there is to the fellowship Christ wants to give his church. It’s an imitation dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality, but it is a permissive, accepting and inclusive fellowship. It is also unshockable. It is Democratic. You can tell people’s secrets and they usually don’t tell others or even want to. The bar flourishes, not because most people are alcoholics but because God has put into the human heart the desire to know and be known, to love and be loved, and many seek a counterfeit at the price of a few beers.” - ? Larson
Aristides’ writing on Christianity in the second century wrote these words. He was an observer of Christians, he said. “They obtain from all impurity in the hope of the recompense that is to come in another world. As for their servants or handmaids or children, they persuade them to become Christians by the love they have for them. And when they become so, they call them without distinction brothers. They do not worship strange gods, and they walk in all humility and kindness, and falsehood is not found among them and they love one another. And when they see the stranger, they bring him to their homes and they rejoice over him as over a true brother for they do not call brothers those who are after the flesh but those who are in the Spirit and in God.
And there is among them a man that is poor and needy and if they have not an abundance of necessities, they will fast two or three days that they may supply the needy with his necessary food. And they observe scrupulously the commandment of their Messiah. They live honestly and soberly as the Lord their God commanded them. Every morning and all hours on account of the goodness of God toward them, they praise and laud Him and over their food and their drink they render him thanks.
And if any righteous person of their number passes away from this world, they rejoice and give thanks to God and they follow his body as though he were moving from one place to another. And when a child is born to any of them, they praise God. And if again it chances to die in its infancy, they praise God mightily as for one who has passed through the world without sins. Such is the law of the Christians and such is their conduct.”
From Evidence Not Seen by Darlene Deibler Rose (pg. 69) “That night and every night, we invited everyone to remain while we read a portion of God’s Word and prayed. We were united by a recognition of a mutual need from within for help from One Who is greater than we. We faced a common enemy from without, and if we were to survive we had to function as a unit. The interpersonal barriers of language, race, and color became nonexistent, and an ever-increasing appreciation of one another enabled us to face with courage the common plights of most prisoners of war: suffering, hunger, deprivations of every kind, forced labor, bombings, disease, psychological pressures, death, and lonely graves. People from other barracks often joined us during evening devotions. Throughout those very difficult years that tried our souls, God kept our barracks a calm center in the eye of the military storm that raged around us. There was a sharing, a concern, and a love that was unique. We struggled to preserve family feelings, to discover ways to lift morale, to encourage, comfort, and bear one another’s insupportable burdens. I am convinced the harmony we experienced in Barracks 8 was due to the spiritual shelter beneath which we all hid when there was no other refuge.”
We gather together as a fellowship in Christ, to have fellowship by praising God, teaching one another, rebuking, confessing, and forgiving sin, encouraging each other to grow in our faith, and spending time in prayer showing our reliance on God.
The result of fellowship “That your joy may be full.”
Pray that this group grows together in Christ that we may become more faithful believers, and we may encourage each other through necessary rebukes and positive affirmations. Pray that together we reach those who do not know salvation from sin in Christ, and that those who are simply Christians outwardly but have not been regenerated within become fully devoted followers of Christ. May God receive all the glory from what is accomplished here.
Resources:
EXPLOSIVE FELLOSHIP - John Piper
http://www.desiringgod.org
TRUE FELLOWSHIP – John MacArthur
http://www.gty.org/resourc
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