"So in Christ,
we who are many form one body,
and each member
belongs to all the others." (Romans 12:5)
Last week we looked at the number one priority for finding purpose
in our lives. ‘The chief end of man is to enjoy God and glorify God for ever.’ That’s Worship. We are people planned for God’s pleasure. Mark 12:30 “You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” (NRSV). The following verse, Mark 12, 31, offers our second purpose. ‘Fellowship’. “You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.”
We were formed
by God to be God’s family. God planned it that way from the start. The whole story of the Bible… Genesis to Revelation…
is a story about God creating and building a loving community. Ephesians 1:5
tells us “God’s unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own
family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ.” (NLT). God’s
family has a name. He calls it ‘Church’. 1 Timothy 3:14-15 (NCV) “I’m writing… so you’ll
know how to live in the family of God. That family is the church...”
Today we’ll be thinking about 4 levels of ‘Fellowship’
that God invites us to experience as ‘Church’; the family of God.
- Membership: choosing to belong
- Friendship: learning to share
- Partnership: playing our part
- Kinship: loving like family
1. Membership:
Choosing to Belong
If I had a dollar
for every time somebody told me, “I can be a Christian without belonging to a church,” I would be a millionaire.
People say, “Well… Jesus… He’s like all right… but that whole authoritarian institution thing…no
way. I don’t need that to worship God!”
Sounds like a
kid going though school telling everybody that when they grow up they are going to play for the N.F.L. Someone asks them,
“What team are you going to play for?” And the kid says, “Teams, teams? Dude, I love the game, but that
whole authoritarian, institution thing, no way, I don’t need a team to play in the NFL.”
Ephesians 2:19 (LB) “You are members of God's very own
family... and you belong
in God's household with every other Christian.” Romans 12:5 (NIV) “In Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” The Church is Christ’s body. A body made up of members
and all the members need the other members for the body to be complete. It is
from that very image that the word ‘member-ship’ came into the English language.
I’m not
saying that every Christian needs to join Beckley Presbyterian Church. (Although if you are interested in finding out about
membership, following our 40 Days campaign we will be holding membership classes during Sunday School time.) What I am saying is that the Bible teaches that one of the evidences that our Christianity is the real
deal is that we gravitate towards and meet together with other believers. Just as every family has their home address, so
God wants us to have a home address.
Membership of
the Church shows the world that in life and in death we belong to God. When we
are baptized, as an infant or as an adult, that baptism is an outward sign that God claims us as His own. When we become members
of a Church it is a sign that we’ve come home.
Becoming a member
of a Church is a first step. Some never get to that step. Some do and then stop there. But there’s a second level of
Fellowship God wants us to seek.
2. Friendship:
Learning to share
I’m going
back to my image of the kid who wanted to play for the NFL without joining a team. What would they say if somebody asked them
what kind of experience they had? “Well I learnt how to throw the ball up in the air and catch it again. And I can run
pretty fast!” “So… you’ve never been tackled, never had
to intercept a pass, never lined up with the others, never had a foul called against you?” Christianity is a team game.
Acts 2:44 tells us of the earliest church that “All
the believers met together constantly and shared everything with each other.” It’s not possible to develop
friendships without meeting together. We can't grow friendships without sharing.
Parents, how often did the words come out of your mouths when the kids were growing up: “You are going to have to learn
to share!”
Proverbs 27:17 says "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." Sharing requires us to be vulnerable enough to
let others get close. We cannot grow in isolation from others. Faith is a contact sport and it is through encountering others
that God knocks off our rough edges and shapes us into vessels God can use to accomplish great things for God’s Kingdom.
That’s why small groups and home meetings are important. We come to the church building and look
at the back of each other’s heads or see how well the members of the choir are at not dozing off in sermons, and we
can walk out of here without experiencing the kind of fellowship that changes us. We can become members of a church without
ever truly experiencing fellowship with those we sit in the pews with week by week.
For the first
few hundred years of Christianity, its period of greatest growth and greatest challenge, there were no church buildings. Nobody
sat in pews. They met in small groups in each other’s homes. They learned how to be a team. Sometimes they tackled each
other and sometimes people cried foul. They may even have thrown yellow flags.
First time I
went to a football game here in America at one
point I turned to my wife Yvonne and said, “Hey. Did you see that? That guy in the stripy shirt just dropped his yellow
handkerchief” And she said, “Yes. That other guy in the stripy shirt on the line just did the same.” And
then they stopped the game!
Paul writing
to the Church that met in each other’s homes in Galatia instructs them how to move forward in fellowship - “Share
each other's troubles and problems.” (Galatians 6:2 (NLT). Isn’t
that what we do when we are in the company of friends? We share. We talk. We laugh. We cry. We take our handkerchief out and
offer it to dry another’s tears. And as we grow in friendship, loneliness becomes a word that starts to sound unfamiliar
to our ears.
The first level
of Fellowship is Membership… choosing to belong
The second level
of Fellowship is Friendship…learning to share. The third level is…
3. Partnership: Playing
our Part
If
you belong to a large family there will be chores to be done. There will be tasks you will be called upon to perform because
you are part of the family. It’s like that with our natural families. It’s like that with our Church families.
1 Corinthians 3:9 (TEV) tells us that “We are partners working together
for God.”
In Ephesians
4:16 Paul enlarges on the image of the Church as a body; “The whole Body is fitted together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow,
so that the whole Body is healthy and growing and full of love.” (NLT)
We all have a part to play in the Body of Christ. There is only so much that can be done alone. God knows that,
and that’s why God calls us to work together. God has big plans for the world He created, purposes that the ‘Lone
Ranger’ cannot accomplish.
Working together is not easy. So we must remember who we are working for. In Matthew chapter 25, verse 40, Jesus
says "Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are the members of My family,
you did it to Me."
Those words were a tremendous influence on that great lady Mother Teresa who, as many of you know, worked with
the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India. She
was once asked, "How do you handle all that death
and disease and suffering on a daily basis?” She
replied, “Every person I bathe, every person
I bandage, I imagine seeing the face of Jesus and I do it for Him.”
The first level
of Fellowship is Membership… choosing to belong. The second level of Fellowship
is Friendship…learning to share. The
third level is Partnership… playing our part. Yet there remains a deep level of fellowship
that is spoken of in the first letter of John. The deepest level is…
4. Kinship: loving
like family
Now if your mind works like mine, as soon as you hear the word ‘kinfolk’ you go into Beverley Hillbillies
mode. I’m thinking Jed Clampett and Jethro Bodine and Possum Pie and the Ce-ment pond and Granny waving her arm saying
‘Y’all kum back now, y’hear!’. That’s not where I’m going with this.
When we are admitted to hospital there are forms to fill in. In case our condition becomes terminal, the administrative
staff ask ‘Who is your next of ______? (KIN).
1 John 3:16 tells us “We know what real love is because Christ gave up His life for us.
And so we also ought to give up our lives for our Christian brothers and sisters.” That’s kinship, loving
like family; giving up our lives for each other.
Because of politics, because of restrictions based upon fundamental beliefs, there are places in today’s
world where it is illegal to convert to Christianity. If you do so you can face
imprisonment, break up of a family, and even martyrdom. Countless numbers of Christians today are in that situation.
They truly teach us what kinship is about. Taking a bullet for a friend. Giving all that another may have all
they need. Surrendering ones hopes so that another can have hope. Whenever our relationship approaches the level where we’d
rather suffer than see another bear that pain, then we are beginning to understand kinship.
It is being prepared to stand with each other for no other reason than we recognize that we are brothers and
sisters in Christ. It is the attitude of walking the extra mile, giving the shirt off our back, looking to others’ needs
as being of greater significance than our own that was so exemplified in the servant lifestyle of Jesus Christ.
“We were
formed for God’s Family.” Being a family is no easy thing. In God’s family, there are different levels of
fellowship for us to reach towards. Let me remind you of what those are:
- Membership: choosing to belong
- Friendship: learning to share
- Partnership: playing our part
- Kinship: loving like family
May God help
us to grow deeper in fellowship with each other, that our love for Him may grow stronger.
And to God’s name be the glory. Amen.
