The Discipline of Fellowship

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Transcript:

Hebrews chapter 11. About eight years ago, I bought a turtle. I bought a turtle, and his name was Otis, and he was a tiny little thing.

And I loved Otis, and we made him a big habitat. You know, those glass aquariums were expensive, and I thought, I want him to have plenty of room to move around, so I bought a big Rubbermaid tub, one of those big ones that stretches out along the floor, and they’re made to shove under a bed or something. Big Rubbermaid tub, and filled it up with rocks and water just made him a great habitat.

Bought him turtle food. Bought him fish because they like to eat goldfish. Otis didn’t eat a whole lot.

Otis didn’t eat a whole lot. And Otis didn’t grow a whole lot. Actually, Otis didn’t grow at all.

And he might eat the fish, but a lot of them just died because they were in there so long. And one of them, he just didn’t even try to catch it. It stayed in there so long while he just laid around that I had to go buy fish food, and he kept it as a pet, I guess.

But for the first year of his life, Otis didn’t grow. It felt like I’d done everything right. I couldn’t figure it out, and he got sick.

His eyes got all gunky. I had to give him eye drops. It was pitiful.

He didn’t grow. He didn’t thrive. He was sickly all the time.

He just laid around. I know you’re probably thinking, well, how can you tell? Turtles are slow.

He’s a red-eared slider, and they’re called that because they can just slide off into the water. They can move with surprising speed. He just, he was about dead.

And I had tried everything. I’d taken him to the reptile specialist, and y’all know how I feel about snakes, so that was kind of traumatic, and had done all the research I could do, different foods, different lights, different things that we could do, and nothing worked. Otis, in there swimming around alone, was just about to die.

And finally, one last-ditch effort, I happened to be in Petsmart in Edmund one day, and I thought, I’m going to get another turtle in there. And I put this other turtle in there. These kind of turtles don’t bite, but this one did bite me, so I named it Delilah.

After the mean lady in the Bible. I put Delilah in the tank with Otis, and suddenly the fish that Otis had kept as a pet for months was gone. but Delilah ate and Delilah swam and Delilah did all the turtle things they’re supposed to do and I noticed after a couple of days so did Otis Otis grew Otis started eating Otis started swimming more because suddenly Otis wasn’t swimming alone and I thought nobody told me nothing I read none of the experts I talked to told me that Otis would be lonely and that loneliness that being in there alone all that time would keep Otis from growing and thriving.

I had to find that out on my own. I had to discover that for myself. And the change was remarkable.

Now Otis is huge. Otis grew to be about this big. I’ve still got him in the tank at the house, along with Delilah, who’s about that big.

Otis grew. Otis got healthy. Otis got strong.

Otis grew so much that we were able to tell Otis is actually a girl and tried to rename it a girl name and still I forget and so it’s just Otis. I would never have believed that swimming alone and being alone would be that much of a detriment to Otis’s health and growth and vitality, but I saw it with my own eyes. A turtle that for a year just languished and was about to die as soon as you introduced a second turtle.

And then eventually a third named Gus, who is also a girl. Introducing these two other turtles in the mix, where now there are three of them swimming around in a big tank. Suddenly, they’re all healthy.

And they’re all thriving. And they’re laying eggs, which there’s no baby turtles in the eggs because they’re all girls, but they’re laying eggs and they’re swimming around and they follow your finger and they recognize people and they just, they’re full of life now. Because they’re not alone anymore.

And I know sometimes we as people like our solitude. Sometimes I just want to go and get away where I don’t have to hear anybody else. You know, sometimes we all need our time to decompress and unwind and I just need a moment alone.

But I think we realize instinctively that we are not built to be alone. I mean, God even looked at Adam in the garden and said it wasn’t good that a man should be alone. And so he created a woman to be a helpmate for him.

God looked at all creation and said it was good, but there was this one thing that wasn’t good. It wasn’t good that man should be alone. We realize that we’re not supposed to live our lives in isolation from one another.

Even when we do things to keep others at arm’s length, we know it’s not good for us. We know it’s not healthy. We know it’s not healthy to stay and hide from other people all the time, and I’m just going to be by myself.

We know this instinctively. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t.

. . We we miss people, we get lonely, you may be thinking, not me, give yourself time.

If you’re isolated enough for long enough, you’re going to start to feel it. And I recognized this in my own life. For a period of time after I’d lost one child, I did not want to get out of bed for six months.

And I mean, I went to work, I did my job, I was pastoring at the time, I did what I needed to do, but beyond that, anything I didn’t have to do, I stayed locked away from other people. And it made it worse. It made it worse.

See, we know we are not meant to go through life alone. We know that we are not meant to, that we will not grow, either as people or as Christians, we will not grow, we will not thrive, we will not function the way God designed us to in total isolation from other people. We recognize that that’s a problem.

And yet, when it comes to our spiritual development, we act like sometimes I can keep everybody at arm’s length and it’s okay. I’ve called it for years the Lone Ranger Christian, but I’ve gone back and realized it wasn’t because the Lone Ranger wasn’t the Lone Ranger because he worked alone. He had Tonto.

He was the Lone Ranger because he was the last of his group to not be killed. So I’ve changed in the last week after doing research on this. I now call it the Lone Wolf Christian.

We weren’t made to work that way. We weren’t made to stay separate from each other. A Lone Wolf is an anomaly because that’s not the way God designed the wolf either.

They’re supposed to run in a path. And I remember from years ago, my youth pastor telling us when we’d go someplace where they had swimming like a camp, don’t swim alone. And he sort of adopted that philosophy in telling us how to do the Christian life.

Don’t swim alone. We were not meant to do the Christian life, to live as believers. We were not meant to do this in isolation from one another.

We were meant to do this in a relationship. We were meant to do this through fellowship together. And wouldn’t you know it?

Isn’t it just like God that he always seems to see ahead of where we see? He always seems to be a step or 7,000 steps ahead of us and knows exactly what we need before we even realize it. See, God has not been playing catch up and saying, oh, people are lonely, oh, the Christian life is hard, what am I going to do?

God set up how this is supposed to work. God put something together for us, and it’s called the local church. See, God realized, because he’s the one who designed us, that we needed fellowship.

What does he have to say about this? Turn with me, if you haven’t already, to Hebrews chapter 10. Did I tell you 11 earlier?

I meant to say 10. Hebrews chapter 10, starting in verse 23, he says, Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, for he is faithful that promised. And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as ye see the day approaching.

Now, I’ve heard that verse quoted a lot growing up. Don’t forsake the assembling of yourselves together. Go to church.

That’s the only part of that verse I regularly hear quoted. In other words, go to church. This passage explains why.

And it’s not just go to church, it’s about being part of the church. And the context of this passage explains Why God is saying, here, go to church, be the church. Let me correct a misconception if anyone in the room holds it.

We’re not told to go to church because God needs us here or gathered in one place so he can take attendance. God is not looking at you engaging your Christian life based on, oh, you missed a Sunday, no gold star for you this week. God is not a teacher in heaven taking attendance whether you’ve been here or not.

So coming to church is not to get your attendance award at the end of the term. Coming to church is also not because this is the only place you can worship God. I hear people say all the time, I don’t need to go to church.

I can worship God on the golf course. Well, absolutely you can. You can worship God working in your yard.

You can worship God driving down the road. You can and should worship God, as I talked about last week, regularly, constantly. It should be the lifestyle of submission to God.

Part of that is obeying what he said and being part of the church. But we don’t come to church because this is the only place I can worship God. I’m supposed to worship God throughout the whole week and then come together on Sunday and worship him together with my brothers and sisters.

The reason why we come to church is not because he takes attendance or because this is the only place where we can meet with and worship him. The reason, number one, the reason why we need to be part of the church, the biggest reason for us why we need to be part of the church, other than obedience to God, is the fact that this is the place where we draw encouragement and support and strengthening. This is where we find our fellowship.

This is it. God didn’t set up support groups. God didn’t set up, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with those things, but God didn’t set up clubs for us to draw fellowship as Christians.

God didn’t set up support groups. This is our support group. Regardless of whatever else we do in life and whatever else we do in the community, God puts us together in the local church and tells us don’t forsake the assembling of yourselves together because we need fellowship.

Hear me on this. We were not created to swim alone. We were created for fellowship.

We were created to do this together. And it is dangerous, just like looking at my turtle. It is dangerous and potentially deadly for us to swim alone.

We will not grow spiritually. Can you grow spiritually studying the Bible on your own? Yes, you can.

But we’re not going to grow spiritually and function spiritually the way we’re supposed to. We’re not going to be an optimum performance. We’re not going to be exactly what God wanted us to be as believers without the fellowship that He created us for because fellowship is part of it.

And the reason I included fellowship as one of these disciplines in the study of spiritual disciplines is because it’s something we have to be disciplined about. it’s something that very easily we can walk away from and keep at arm’s length and say you know what that’s messy that’s troublesome that’s hard to do I don’t want to go to that I don’t want to deal with those people to that you have to you’re the pastor I’m just kidding but we all feel that way sometimes don’t we not even just with church anytime we have to get involved in somebody’s life it’s messy and it’s difficult and sometimes it’s easier to think I’m just going to keep the church I’m going to keep my fellow believers I’m going to keep them all at arms and arms Guys, it’s dangerous. Don’t swim alone.

He tells us here that we’re not supposed to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. We’re not supposed to be lax about that. And he outlines all through this passage reasons why that is.

There are things that we’re supposed to do. There are things that are good for our spiritual health. And he ties all of these back into doing them together.

He says in verse 23, let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering. Holding fast means I’m not letting go. I’m not letting go.

It doesn’t mean running away fast. It’s like when they say that fabric is color fast. The colors don’t run. And to say that we hold fast the profession of our faith means I am not letting go. Hold fast the profession of your faith without wavering.

He’s saying here that in our fellowship we’re going to strengthen each other’s commitment to Christ. Because again, he ties all of this back in to not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together. He says hold fast the profession of your faith without wavering. The point there is that together in fellowship, together one another with believers, we are going to strengthen each other’s commitment to Christ. And alone, we’re more likely to walk away when Christianity gets hard.

Now, please hear me on this. Please understand and I’ve said this several times already and probably will say it several times again. I’m not saying that if you don’t go to church, you’re not a Christian.

I’m not saying that if you don’t go to church, you’re a bad Christian. I’m not saying if you miss a Sunday, you’re a wants our faith to be strengthened, and we strengthen each other by swimming together. And it’s just like a fish or a seal or something in shark-infested waters.

Are you going to get eaten because you swim alone? Not necessarily. But if there’s nobody there to help distract the predator and help to defend you, your odds go up significantly.

We’re more likely if we’re alone, if we’ve isolated ourselves, we’re more likely to walk away when things get hard. Okay, I know that from experience. For those six months I kept everybody at arm’s length, those were some of the most spiritually trying times of my life.

And it didn’t get any better until I said, you know what, I’m just going to rip the Band-Aid off and do what I know I’m supposed to do. In fellowship, we strengthen each other. In fellowship, we’ll be encouraged to remember the faithfulness of God.

He says here, because He is faithful, the promise. Why are we able and why are we supposed to hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering? It’s right there in parentheses.

Because God is faithful. Because God has made us promises and he’s faithful. And when we look at the track record of faithfulness that God has, even though we don’t have proof of his promises, even though we haven’t seen his promises fulfilled all of them, we look at his track record of all the promises he’s kept over hundreds and thousands of years and we know that God is faithful.

And when the object of our faith, when the object of our faith is that credible, we can rest assured in the promises that He’s given us. Sometimes we need to come together and be reminded together of the faithfulness of God. We need to come together and remind each other, especially when we’re going through difficult times.

We need to remind each other and hold each other up. This is not the end. This is not insurmountable.

This is not going to destroy you. Look at where God has brought you. I know it’s a little bit outside the context of the local church, but I call my mom about once a day, and a lot of times it’s to complain about something, and Mama has a way, not just my Mama, but all Mamas, I think, have a way of bringing us back to reality and saying, you know, I don’t think you’ve ever said quit whining, but when I’m whining about something that’s going on in my life right now, Mama has a good way of bringing my mind back to, look at how far God has brought you.

God has brought you through much bigger stuff than this. That’s what we’re supposed to do for each other. When my life is falling apart, I should be able to count on my brothers and sisters in Christ to be there to lift me up and say, you know what, God has brought you through bigger things than this.

God has handled bigger problems than this. God can and will get you through this. And not just for me, when your life is falling apart.

You should expect that I’m going to be there, or somebody else in the church is going to be there. And when I say me, I don’t mean me because I’m the pastor, I mean me because I’m a member of this church. We should be there for each other.

lifting each other up, reminding each other, encouraging each other to remember the faithfulness of God because alone we’re more likely to doubt. Why is that? It’s because when we’re in the middle of the problem, the problem is all we can see.

I’ve given this example many times. Standing in the eye of the hurricane and looking out, you see clouds all around you. And it’s going to look like the whole world is a hurricane.

But when you’re outside the hurricane, when you’re standing in an entirely different hemisphere, The hurricane is just a little spot on the radar. Sometimes you need somebody outside the storm who can remind you of the faithfulness of God. And just because you’re surrounded by clouds doesn’t mean the whole world is a wall of dark clouds.

So he says in verse 24, and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works. In our fellowship, we are supposed to challenge each other. We’re supposed to challenge each other to be better, and we’re supposed to challenge each other to work together to demonstrate the love of Christ to others who need it.

And when I say challenge each other, I don’t mean, you’re not doing a very good job. You should be better. I mean, I see the example of what Kathy’s doing.

I want to be better. Not to beat her, but I’m inspired by what she’s doing or by what Greg’s doing or Lavelle. I see what they’re doing.

I see how God is using them. And it makes me want to strive to serve other people more. It makes me want to strive to love people more.

We should be encouraged and challenged by each other’s example. Alone, we’re more likely to grow complacent and inwardly focused. Can I just say it this way?

Alone, we’re more likely to be lazy. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve known I was supposed to do something. I was supposed to go meet a need for somebody.

I was supposed to go do this and didn’t even have anything to do with the church. And I just didn’t do it. And I hate that.

I hate admitting that. And I hate that the video light is still on because I feel like spotlight is shining right on me in my guilt here. I’m not telling you turn it off I’m just that moment of confession right there.

Left to yourself it’s easy to get lazy and yet when we’re together and when we’re serving together and we’re ministering together it says here to provoke each other to provoke each other to get something stirred up but this means in a good context not a fight, not provoking a fight but to provoke each other and to love and to good works we’re going to encourage and challenge each other and inspire each other to do better because left to our left to ourselves alone it’s easier to get lazy and complacent and there were some people in the early churches who thought that they didn’t need each other. Better said there were some in the early churches who thought I don’t need those people. Those people.

See the churches were evenly split in many cases between the Jewish background Christians and the Gentile background Christians and the sides didn’t like each other and it says here For sake not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is. There were some who were already doing this and keeping the church at arm’s length because I don’t need those people down at the church. I’m not going to fellowship with those filthy Gentiles.

I am not going to fellowship with those stuck-up Jews. I don’t want to sit in church with those rich people. You know, if those poor people didn’t come to church, church would be so much better.

There was all kinds of division in the church. People looked at it and said, I don’t need those people. And so they were staying away from church.

And by the way, when I say staying away from church, I don’t mean that they were staying away from the church building on Sunday morning. The early churches met house to house daily. They met in the marketplace.

They met in the town square. They were a part of each other’s lives daily. They were worshiping together.

They were fellowshipping together. And there were people saying, I don’t need to be part of that community of believers because of those people over there. God is saying, no, no, no, no. Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together the way some people are already doing.

You need each other. He says, stick together. They were letting cultural differences and other things get in the way, and he said, no, you need to stick together.

And they were warned that they needed to stick together because difficult times were coming. He said, but exhorting one another, instead of keeping each other at arm’s length, he said, instead, exhort one another, that means encourage, build each other up, strengthen each other, and so much the more as you see the day approaching. He said, because there is trouble on the horizon.

There’s a problem coming, and you need to build each other up, and you need to be there for each other, and you need to get this going now because there’s about to be trouble. And we don’t know for sure what trouble he’s talking about. We know they were constantly beset by trouble.

The Jews who had not accepted Christ hated the Christians. The Romans hated the Christians. The Greeks hated the Christians.

Everybody, the government, everybody. And they were constantly being persecuted and oppressed. On top of that, they had false teachers who would love nothing more than to come in and lead the church astray.

And then you had, as the book of Hebrews is being written, you had them coming to a point of time where the Romans were about to invade Jerusalem within the next couple of years. And they were going to totally destroy the temple. That’s why there’s no temple in Jerusalem today, because in 70 AD, the Romans came in to put down a Jewish rebellion and wiped the thing off the face of the earth.

And when that happened, many Christians were slaughtered and many Christians were scattered. So they were being warned, you are in and you are about to be in a time of serious trouble. As you see the day approaching, as trouble is on your horizon, you need to get it together and you need to get together with each other because it’s the only hope you have to survive this.

Don’t swim alone. We were made for fellowship. Don’t swim alone.

Don’t forsake the assembling of yourselves together. And I think we would look at it and say that we too are on, we have trouble on the horizon, do we not? In our community, we can have trouble on the horizon any moment.

I mean, a big swirling cloud could drop out of the sky and take everything. I mean, it happens all the time. Nationwide, we could be times of great trouble just on the horizon.

Oh, my goodness, I listen to the news, and I just feel like building a big concrete bunker underground and stocking it with food and ammunition and gold and whatever else. We could very easily be in big trouble as a nation, as a community, at any time. We as believers already face difficulty.

I know we don’t feel it as much here in the Bible Belt here in Seminole, Oklahoma. We don’t feel it as much as people do in other places. But reading an interview with one of the officials of the Southern Baptist Convention, Russell Moore, who leads the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission, he was talking this week about somebody approached him and said, well, I just feel out of place, like we’re out of place in the culture now.

And his answer was good. Christians have always been out of place in the culture. This thing where everybody around us is Christian and the government promotes Christianity and all that, that is not normal. That is weird in human history.

And we’re getting more and more back into normal where we’re sort of the outcasts. And, folks, that day is coming where it’s not going to be socially advantageous to be a Christian, where it’s going to cost you some things. I’m not saying here in America it’s going to cost you your life, but it’s definitely going to cost you some things to be a Christian.

We need to get it together. We’ve got trouble on the horizon, and we are going to need each other. And I realize, as I’m saying this, I’m saying this to the people who are here.

You’re already in church. You may be thinking, what am I supposed to do? I’m already here.

We don’t need to just come to church. We need fellowship. Now, a couple things that fellowship is not.

It’s not only attending services. It’s not only attending classes. And it’s not only activities, fellowships, that take place here on the church property.

Fellowship is a relationship. What we’ve got to do is get to know each other. Not just be people who share a pew, but we need to know each other.

We need to be part of each other’s lives. Get to know each other. Get out of our comfort zones.

Build genuine friendships if we don’t already have them. Build genuine friendships in the church. Spend time together.

By the way, this doesn’t count toward that. Just so we’re clear. Spend time together.

Serve together. Fellowship isn’t just, this is important sitting around eating, but it’s not just sitting around eating. Get out and serve together.

Serve the community. Serve other people. Share our imperfections with each other.

In other words, be real. Take off the Sunday mask and be real with each other. Show people who we really are. We need to encourage each other.

We need to hold each other accountable. We need to build each other up. strengthen each other, be part of the church.

If we can walk away from this church easily, if we can one Sunday be here and the next Sunday slip out, guys, we’ve shared a location, but we haven’t shared fellowship. If we can walk in and out of each other’s lives easily, we’ve shared a location, we’ve shared a pew, but we’ve not shared fellowship. You’re designed for fellowship.

God’s plan for how you’re going to be spiritually healthy, for how you’re going to be spiritually mature, how you’re going to be strong enough to withstand the trouble that comes your way in life. God’s plan for how your faith is going to be strengthened on a daily basis is to do it together. We were designed for fellowship.

You were designed for fellowship. You were designed to be part of each other’s lives. We better not swim in it.