as we talk about the issue of fellowship tonight. For those of you who have been with us, you

know we’ve been in a series in the Book of Acts, and we have been essentially looking

at the beginning of the Church. It began on the day of Pentecost, subsequent to the Lord’s

death and resurrection. The Spirit of God came. 3,000 people were converted, and the

church was born.

We have found ourselves now in chapter 2 at verse 42, and it introduces us now to the

life of the church. Let me just read a few verses here. Verse 41 ends, that those who

received the preaching of Peter, the gospel, were baptized. That day, there were added

3,000 souls. That is the beginning of the church. Then we find out about how they conducted

their life together. “They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching

and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone kept feeling a sense

of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. And all those

who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their

property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.

Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house,

they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising

God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day

by day those who were being saved.”

What strikes you when you read that is the common, shared life. It’s all bound up in

verse 42 in the word “fellowship.” But even the breaking of bread around the Lord’s

table was an expression of fellowship. Prayer, an expression of fellowship. All of the believers

were together, in verse 44. They even held their possessions in common trust, so that

if anyone had a need, they would gladly sell what they had to give to the one who had the

need. They were daily continuing with one mind, in the temple. Breaking bread, that

is having meals, from house to house. Taking their meals together with gladness, sincerity

of heart. This is a community of people who are committed to one another. That is the

first expression of the life of the church, it’s mutual commitment.

This is magnificently defined for us in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and I would ask you

to turn to it for a moment. Because here we have a metaphoric presentation by the apostle

Paul of this kind of common life. He says, starting in verse 12, “Even as the body

is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many,

are one body,” speaking of the human body, “so also is Christ. For by one Spirit,”

and that happened on the day of Pentecost, “we were all baptized into one body, whether

Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. For

the body is not one member, but many. If the foot says, ‘Because I am not a hand, I am

not a part of the body,’ it is not for this reason any less a part of the body. If the

ear says, ‘Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,’ it is not for this

reason any the less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the

hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But now

God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired. If they were

all one member, where would the body be? Now there are many members, but one body. And

the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’; or again the head to the

feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, it is much truer that the members

of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those members of the body which we deem

less honorable, on those we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become

much more presentable, whereas our more presentable members have no need of it. But God has so

composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which is lacked, so that there

may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.

And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored,

all the members rejoice with it. Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members

of it.”

This is a magnificent metaphor that says we are all sharing one common life under one

head, who is the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the defining character of the church. It is

marked by its unity, by its shared life, its commonality, its community. In a word, it’s

fellowship. Fellowship is critical to the life of the church. Christianity is not a

spectator event that happens on Sunday. It is a common, shared life with other believers.

In the gray dawn of an April day in 1945, in the Nazi camp of Flossenburg, a pastor

by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed. He was executed by special order of Heinrich

Himmler, Hitler’s executioner. He had been arrested two years before, and over that period

of two years, he had been transferred from prison, to prison, to prison. From Tegel,

to Berlin, to Buchenwald, to Schönburg, finally to Flossenburg. And in the moving of Bonhoeffer

from place to place, he lost all contact with the outside world. Everyone that he knew was

severed from him. He lost, according to his own testimony, the most precious possession

he had, and that was fellowship. Fellowship.

Bonhoeffer wrote a book called “Life Together.” I would commend it to your reading, based

on Psalm 1:33. He had written that book years before. He wrote in that book of the richness

of fellowship, which he, during his imprisonment, leading up to his death, lost. This is what

he said. “The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy

and strength to the believer. A physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God.

How inexhaustible are the riches that open up for those who, by God’s will, are privileged

to live in the daily fellowship of life with other Christians.” Further, he wrote, “Let

him who has such a privilege thank God on his knees and declare. It is grace, nothing

but grace, that we are allowed to live in fellowship with Christian brothers.” That’s

the church. That’s the church.

As Christ’s church, we are one wife, in Scripture metaphor, with one husband. We are

one set of branches connected to one vine. We are one flock with one shepherd, one king

with one kingdom, one family with one father, one building with one foundation. But uniquely,

introduced only in the New Testament, the body of Christ is one body with one life source

and one head. It is our unique identity. We are living organisms dependent on each other.

Understanding this basic unity is strategic to living out the principles of fellowship

in the life of the church.

When I was a kid growing up, when I thought of fellowship, I thought of a place they called

fellowship hall. It had a tile floor, and they served stale cookies and red punch. And

people talked about fellowship, and it was pretty superficial. True fellowship is much

deeper than that. True fellowship is spiritual. It is profound. It is essential. It is our

very life, and our Lord’s great high priestly prayer in John 17, He repeatedly prays that

the people who come to Him, the elect, the chosen, those who will be saved throughout

redemptive history will be one, that they will be one. That prayer is answered, because

when any believer is given salvation, he is immediately placed into the union of the body

of Christ, that they may be one is a prayer that is answered. But it should work itself

out in our conduct with each other. We have a shared life. We have a shared eternal life.

We have a shared faith. We have a shared love, shed abroad in our hearts. We have a shared

purpose: the glory of God. We have a shared ministry, the proclamation of the gospel and

the advancement of the kingdom. We possess a shared truth: the revelation of God in Holy

Scripture. We possess a shared power: the Holy Spirit. We are, literally, the temple

of the Holy Spirit collectively and individually.

That is fellowship, and that is what defines the life of the church. And no sooner is the

church born on the day of Pentecost than this unity, this commonality, this one-ness begins

to work itself out. The verb, to fellowship, in the Greek, is koinonos. It’s used eight

times in the New Testament. Seven of those are translated share. That’s what it means.

It means to share, to share. One other time, it is to participate. Second John 11. A common

participation. The noun, fellowship, koinonia, a familiar word, used about 30 times. It carries

the same idea. Sometimes translated sharing, sometimes contributing, sometimes partnership,

sometimes participation. The concept then, is very clear. It is partaking, contributing,

sharing, linking together in common partnership. Common cause. Part of this relational definition

of Christianity is the image of God. God made man in His own image, and God is a relational

being, because God is a Trinity, and God has made us for relationships. That’s part of

His image.

So when we see the church in the Book of Acts, it is intensely relational. It is as I said,

not a spectator event. It is not salvation, and then you’re on your own to wander around

at your own discretion. When you come to salvation in Christ, you are embedded, as it were, into

a union of common life with every other believer.

As true as that is, as purely as it is revealed in Scripture, I have to ask the question:

is that the contemporary, evangelical view of the church? I don’t think so. I think

the contemporary evangelical world has lost this great reality of the life of the church.

Part of it, of course, is because evangelicalism today appeals to people on the basis of what

they want. And so, they start by seeing Christianity as something that gives me what I want. That

doesn’t turn you loose to sacrifice your life for the needs of others. It’s the opposite

of that. It’s narcissistic self-indulgence that is presented so very often.

Back in the 1980s, there was Jewish humanist by the name of Neil Postman, and he wrote

a very interesting book called “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” Some of you may know

about the book. He spoke of the rather epic and tragic loss of serious thinking in Western

civilization. He said, this is back in 1980, that “serious thinking is being replaced

by entertainment. In specific, the mind-crippling power of television.” But at least, at least

TV was, and is, a group experience. And, screens have been getting bigger, and bigger, and

bigger, and bigger so that more people can watch. So, television, for all of its dangers,

is at least a group experience. And that is, at least in a minor sense, a redeeming virtue.

I’m not so worried about huge screen televisions. Neil Postman could never have imagined massive

screen televisions. Neil Postman could hardly have seen that at the same time when screens

were getting bigger, they were paradoxically also getting smaller. And that is really frightening.

That, in fact, is terrifying.

And our society is beginning to see the result of it. The seductive entertainment has gone

from the big screen to the small screen. It’s gone from being a group experience and public

experience to being an intimate, personal, private experience. As small as an iPhone,

and the upcoming Google Glasses, where you put the glasses on, and they are screens for

you to see whatever you want to see. Every person now becomes a creator of his own private

world. It is a secret world. It is a secret world of preferences. It is a secret world

of temptations. It is a secret world of relationships. It is a secret world that has a force and

ubiquity that is unparalleled in human history. Unparalleled.

The small screen is the most selfish necessity ever devised, ever devised. Once, you had

a phone to talk to someone. No more. Technology has put in the hand, and soon, on the ears

and the nose, of everyone, the most constant, incessant, accessible, visual, private world

of self-centered indulgence, temptation, and entertainment ever conceived.

You choose. You choose everything. Choose your entertainment, and no one knows. You

choose your music. You choose your relationships. You become God in your little world. And on

your little screen, you create the world that you want. You are the creator of your own

private universe. And outside your own private cyberspace, and your Facebook friends, is

the outer darkness of whatever and whomever you reject.

Theologian Carl Trueman writes, “The language of friendship is hijacked and cheapened by

the internet social networks.” I don’t know what friendship is anymore. Carl Trueman

says, “The language of Facebook both reflects and encourages childishness. Childishness,”

he writes, “has become something of a textually transmitted disease.” Why does he say childishness?

Because, what is most characteristic of a child is complete self-centeredness. Carl

Trueman says relationships play out in the disembodied world of the web. By the way,

the latest statistics say the average high school students, the average high school student

looks at the small screen nine hours a day. Carl Trueman further says, “Such are human

amoebas, subsisting in a bizarre non-world that involves no risk to themselves, no giving

of themselves to others, no true vulnerability, no commitment, no sacrifice, no real meaning,

and no value.” End quote.

Real fellowship cannot exist in a world of self-created avatars. It requires real persons.

I think this is one of the reasons people don’t get married young like they used to.

They’ve created their own world. They live in it. And you can’t break in. They don’t

need anyone outside their own cyber world. But I want to hasten to say Christianity is

not an individual experience. Christianity is not a private experience. You were not

meant to live by yourself in a world where you can isolate yourself with a massive form

of temptation that you are in complete control of and nobody else knows about. That’s deadly.

The rapid trend is heading to the norm of people creating their own virtual world of

virtual self. And they recreate themselves as wonderfully as they would like themselves

to be, and then project themselves that way. You can upload your self-creation into the

Eden of the internet, the perfect you. Beautiful, indomitable, intelligent, wise, cool, self-actualized

like some technological form of science of mind. You can create a digitized self-projection

of your idyllic design. I tweet, therefore I am.

The culture of this is becoming more isolated, more narcissistic, more self-absorbed, more

individualistic, more morally relative, more entitled. Deadly.

This might be tolerable and maybe understood if it stayed outside the church, but it doesn’t.

The evangelical church has, for decades, been trying to give the culture what it wants,

and people want what they want, and they have created a world in which their own wants dominate.

What do people want? They want privacy. They want convenience. They want low commitment.

They want anonymity. They want unaccountability. And mostly, they want self-promotion and self-actualization.

Church life is falling victim to this seductive self-design. People say, oh, it’s so hard

to find a church. Well, of course. You have created the first church of my personal iTunes.

You’ve created your own music. You have your own playlist. You’ve created your own

messengers. You know who you want to hear. You’ve created your own friends. You don’t

feel comfortable at a church because you might have to, you might run into an enemy. You

might even run into someone who’s disgusting. You might hear a message from a preacher who

doesn’t say what you want to hear. Worst of all, you might have to listen to old hymns