On Your Mark, Get Set...Grow! Part 2-Part B

To fail to participate in the life of a local church is to disregard a direct command of scripture.

Now some of you may be saying, now wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Skip, God is everywhere. And if God is everywhere, can't I meet with God anywhere?

Answer, of course you can. But did you know that there is a special place, a special building where God uniquely meets with his people? Today here in Connect with Skip Weekend Edition, Skip Heitzig continues our series, Church Who Needs It, reminding us that fellowship is an important part of a believer's life. You know, a pastor once said of his parish that they eat to meet and they meet to eat.

And for some churches that may be the definition of fellowship, but what is the biblical definition of fellowship and what role should it play in the growth of a Christian? Skip will explore these questions in today's teaching. But before we get started today, here's what we have for you this month in the Connect with Skip Resource Center. Listen to what Sean McDowell said about the book Tactics. This is the book I've been waiting for.

I enthusiastically recommend Tactics. Here's Skip Heitzig to comment on how Jesus spoke out for truth. We might think that Jesus never raised his voice, that he would never call anybody out. However, there was a side of Jesus that was contentious. The Jesus that took tables in the temple and overturned them and took out a whip and drove people out of the temple.

Yeah, that Jesus. Get equipped to defend the gospel and guard against false teachings with Fight for the House, a six-message series through the book of Jude with Skip Heitzig. This teaching series on CD is our thanks when you give to keep this Bible teaching ministry on the air. And when you give $35 or more today, we'll also send you a book by Gregory Kochel called Tactics. Your game plan for communicating the truth about Christianity with confidence and grace.

To give, visit connectwithskip.com or call 800-922-1888. Acts chapter 2 is where we're camping out again for this message, On Your Mark, Get Set, Grow, Part 2. So open your Bibles there and as we do, we'll join Skip Heitzig for the start of today's study. In a world that is becoming increasingly hostile, isolating, and alienating toward Christians, and I don't know if you've seen the news lately, but I see it in a palpable form where the demarcation between Christian and non-Christian is very marked and the hostility is going up. In such a world, Christian fellowship is the antidote. It's the antidote. And this is the reason I believe the church will never be outdated.

Ever, ever, ever. It will always be needful as long as it stays biblical. Now if it doesn't stay biblical and it becomes just another social club like thousands of other institutions out there, it will become irrelevant.

But if it's true to the apostles doctrine and true fellowship, it will never be outdated. Because in our culture, where people move a lot, we're very mobile. In our society that is very technological, it is producing a whole lot of very lonely, isolated individuals. And God's solution is to place them in families. Psalm 68, God sets the solitary in families. And in the Christian family, there's growth and acceptance and forgiveness and love and accountability. And worldly institutions will not provide that.

And computers will not provide that. Now something that is going to sound very obvious, but it needs to be stated. Fellowship is not the kind of activity you can do alone. You're saying, skip, you have a keen eye for the obvious. But it needs to be stated. You can't say, I'm going to go alone and have fellowship.

No you're not. Yeah with God, but not with anybody else but yourself. And unless you're schizophrenic, you're not going to have other people with you. And it can't be done by a podcast or watching television or a computer, as great as those things are.

You can't download fellowship 6.0 or acceptance 3.2. It requires human beings, proximity, flesh and blood, life and life. There's a Jewish proverb, an ancient one, that says a friendless man is like a left hand bereft of the right hand. And I would say that an isolated Christian is like a left hand bereft of the right hand. You know the scripture, Proverbs 18, a man who isolates himself seeks his own desire.

He rages against all wise judgment. I was reading an account of Adolf Hitler who was a very isolated man. It was by a friend of his, if he had a friend named Albert Speer, who said, I was Adolf Hitler's closest friend if it can even be said that he had a friend.

That would have been me, said Speer. But he said, Adolf Hitler repelled friends, repelled intimacy, would not allow closeness, and he was a hollow and an empty man. And I think there is a connection between isolation and oppression at any level. The more isolated a person becomes, the more oppressive that individual in a family or in a culture will become.

Here's my point. You need a family. We all need a family. We need other people to share the life of Jesus with.

If we want to grow, it will take that. Donald Joy, you may have heard of that author's name. He's a relationship guru, a believer, and he wrote a terrific book, several of them. He believes that every one of us needs support from four different people groups, four different people groups.

And he illustrates it by a trampoline. You have four sides of a trampoline. You need a group of people on all four sides because you bounce up and down in life, lose direction, don't know where you're going. You need support, four groups of people. Number one, you need close family. Those are parents or spouse or children. Number two, you need relatives, uncles, grandparents, etc. Third, you need friends, and he calls these lifelong collection of friends who are still active in your life. And number four, associates, people you work with, go to the gym with, go to church with.

These four groups represent a support system. So the question he asked, and I asked all of us this morning, is how many people can you count that are holding your trampoline? Research shows that a healthy system has at least 12 or more holding your trampoline, at least 12 or more, and most of them know each other. Says Joy, a neurotic system, a neurotic system has between 10 and 12 people, and less than a third of them know each other.

A psychotic system has between four and five. Now you might think, well, don't need anybody else. I'm married, have my spouse, I have my children, that's all that I need.

You are so wrong. In fact, I'll say this way as a pastor, with a little experience, some of the loneliest people I've ever met are married people who are in the same house, who sleep in the same bed, but they feel very alone. A few years ago on a Sunday morning, instead of saying get up and say hi to somebody before the message, I said, stand up and hug the person next to you. Well, I got a note in the agape box that Sunday. Dear Skip, my husband did as you suggested and hugged the person next to him.

That would be her. We sleep in the same bed, but until this morning we've had no physical contact for three months. Three months. Now I will guarantee you that had that couple had authentic Christian fellowship and this kind of a support system, where there's people in close proximity who know them and can read the body language, etc., that scenario would be much less likely to ever happen. Third question is how is it done? How is fellowship done? Are there any clues in the text on how fellowship is to be structured?

Well, there are. Verse 44, now all who believed were together and had all things in common. They sold their possessions and goods and divided them among all as anyone had need. Look at verse 46, so continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house. How is it done was a two-fold structure in the large group, the temple, and in the small group from house to house. When it says the temple, it means Solomon's porch, the court of the gentiles with 35 acres of a stone courtyard where people could gather, sing, disciple, teach, discuss, and the early church could have thousands of people gathering in Solomon's porch periodically. It was more for formal meetings, public prayer, instruction, inspiration, and then house to house.

That's informal. That's communication and interaction where the principles taught in the temple could be worked out in the home. In the first structure, the temple, that says the preacher, the apostle, has something important to say. The home conveys this message. You have something important to say.

You have something important to share. The first structure, the temple, conveys the message God is most high. The home conveys the message God is most nigh.

He's close. He's intimate, and that's where relationship has worked out. The temple, public gathering, house to house, more intimate. Now let me just give a plug for a moment to home fellowships and why I believe in them. There's nothing like the four walls of a home better than a restaurant, better than a coffee shop, because in the four walls of a home, that's where the family dwells. That's where business is done. In a home, you have more freedom to emote, to be real, to be prayed for. There's no distraction of a waiter or waitress or a barista.

You have a warmth and intimacy that is conveyed in a home like nowhere else. Okay, there's two unmistakable facts I don't want you to miss here. The church in Jerusalem was large. It was a large group of people because they had to meet in the temple courts.

Many scholars believe that the church was growing so fast in Jerusalem that at this time there was upwards of 25,000 people, much bigger than this fellowship, 25,000 people in that church in Jerusalem. That's fact number one. Fact number two, they all had koinonia.

They got their personal needs met. Now, how is that possible? How is it possible to be so large of a church and yet experience intimacy in the koinonia? Only if you break up the temple gathering in house-to-house gatherings. It's the only way it can be done. You can't achieve it in the temple. You can achieve it from house to house. Now, with that said, I just need to get this out because I have heard for years at different places here and many other places that I visited people saying, well, I've got to leave and find a smaller church where I know everyone.

Now, let me just say something about that. If you do find a church where you know everyone, you better pray hard that that new church never grows. Just start praying right now, God, please don't let anybody else come ever. You can see why because if it starts growing and you go from 20 to 30 to 100 to 200 to 400 to 600, you're not going to know everybody. In fact, it doesn't matter if there's 200 people or 20,000 people. You can't personally intimately connect with 200 people any more than you can do it with 20,000 people.

You can only in your life have a meaningful collection of people around you holding your trampoline, holding you accountable, and expressing intimate connection. And the early church was large and they were able to do that as well. Fourth, and finally we conclude with this, when does it happen? Is there any indication in the text of time or frequency of their fellowship?

Well, look at verse 46. So, continuing daily. I got to tell you, that word jumped off the page at me this week. They continued daily. Now, I understand the context was such where there was persecution, life was hard, and they needed to get through life by being connected often with one another in that setting. But, here's the principle. Frequently is a whole lot better than infrequently. Consistently is a whole lot better than doing it inconsistently. Being regular, meeting with each other, is a whole lot better and healthier than irregularly meeting together. In fact, as the book of Acts continues, we see a pattern develop in Acts 20 verse 7, on the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread.

So, their pattern was they started meeting on Sundays because that represented the resurrection rather than the Saturday Sabbath, and it became the regular pattern as well as meeting in homes throughout the week. All of that to say, to fail to participate in the life of a local church is to disregard a direct command of Scripture. Now, some of you may be saying, no, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Skip, God is everywhere, and if God is everywhere, can't I meet with God anywhere? Answer, of course you can.

Of course you can. You can be in a parking lot in your car alone, and God is there. But, did you know that there is a special place, a special building, where God uniquely meets with his people?

Want to know what that is? Turn with me, and we'll close here in Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2 tells us about this special place God meets with his people. Ephesians 2 verse 19. Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitly or fitted together grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Now, here Paul views the church collectively as the temple.

It's a picture he uses a lot in his writings. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Here's what I want you to understand.

He's speaking corporately, not individually. And I hear people apply this a lot to, well, I am the temple of the Holy Spirit. When Paul uses that, he's not saying individually you're the temple, individually you're the temple, so you got a bunch of little independent temples running around out there. But as we gather together, God uniquely meets with his people and works with his people and dwells among his people so that the visible assembly of believers is the temple of God on the earth.

That's the idea here. We gather, and when we gather, we constitute the temple of God in a very unique way where God is moving. Jesus illustrated the principle when he spoke about church discipline in Matthew 18, saying, wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am in their midst. So we gather with a goal.

We gather with a goal. Hebrews 10, 24 through 25, one of the most famous passages tells us, let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the day approaching. When we meet each other before the teaching or after the teaching or we meet in small groups during the week, you stimulate me and I stimulate you to love and good works. I grow because of it.

We grow because of it. Somebody said that every Christian is like a battery. When we join with other believers, we corporately increase the church's output. I like that.

I think that's a good analogy. So I want you to take a test in your own heart. Those first two characteristics, apostles, doctrine, and fellowship, how devoted are you to the first? I know a bunch of you and I know that you are. The thing I want you to ask yourself today is, are you devoting yourself constantly to fellowship?

Are you a spectator here? Do you float in and float out, or are you pressing in to have authentic fellowship? When you get around other people, does your guard go up?

Do the walls go up? You want to protect yourself? You want to stay safe, say the right things, never let anybody really know who you are.

You will live your life rattling around in that castle without any satisfaction of being loved for who you are by anyone else. There's a pastor who visited a man, rarely attended church, and they were sitting before a fire. The pastor said, friend, I don't see you at church on the Lord's day. You only come when it's convenient. I wish you'd come more often.

In fact, I wish you'd come all the time. And just then the pastor reached the tongs in the fire and removed the coals, isolating them from one another, and as they watched, those coals burned out and died. And the pastor pointed to that fire and said, friend, that's what's happening to you. When you isolate yourself, you die.

The fire goes out. So we need each other. Granted, we needle each other, but we need each other. It can be messy. And frankly, a lot of people just don't want the mess.

I'll tell you what a lot of people want. They want nice, clean, well-mannered, modest people to hang around with and nobody else. In fact, I've been approached by people saying, I notice there's some people who come here who aren't well-mannered and who aren't modest and they're pretty messy. And pastor, you need to say something about that. Well, I want you to know I have been saying something about that. In fact, this week I've been talking to God about that. But I want you to know what I've been talking to God about.

My personal prayer this week has been this. God, send us more messy people. More messy people. Send us the drug addicted, the prostitutes, the people that are cast out by society.

They don't know what to do with them and they can't fix them. But within the confines of Christian fellowship, we can love them to wholeness. It's not easy. But God, send us more messy people. Christian fellowship can help and restore. So do hurting people come to your church to find help and healing? If not, why not?

And what can you do to help change that? The world needs what the church has. Let's make sure we're ready and available to share it with them. And with that thought, we're going to conclude our study.

But before we leave you today, here's another reminder of that great offer we have for you this month at connectwithskip.com. Here's what Norm Geisler said about the book Tactics. There is no better book to equip Christians to think clearly. Here's Skip Heitzig on the need to engage in active spiritual warfare. You'll never fight God's battles from a sofa.

You'll never contend for what really matters by just cruising in your lazy boy all day. You're going to have to decide to get up as part of the house and join the fight. Become a contender for biblical truth with Fight for the House, a six-message series through the book of Jude with Skip Heitzig. This teaching series on CD equips you to get in the ring to defend the gospel and guard against false teachings.

And it's our thanks when you give to connect more people to the truth of God's Word. And when you give $35 or more today, we'll also send you the book Tactics by Gregory Kochel to help you speak the truth about Christianity with confidence and grace. Call 800-922-1888 to give, or visit connectwithskip.com. Now, if you'd like to order a copy of our teaching today, On Your Mark, Get Set, Grow, Part 2, it's available on CD for just $4, plus shipping.

You can call us at 1-800-922-1888, or just visit connectwithskip.com. And join us next time as we continue to explore what the Church is supposed to be about in our series Church Who Needs It, right here in Connect with Skip, Weekend Edition, a presentation of Connection Communications. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His Word. Make a connection, a connection, a connection. Connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.