Foundations (12/12/22-12/13/22)

My notes seem rather scatter-shot this morning, but I shall attempt to gather them into some sort of order.  I will begin with this, from the JFB.  “Faith was the solid foundation; charity the cement which held together the superstructure of practice.”  This, of course, refers to that news brought back by Timothy, news we should observe that would seem to have but echoed what Paul was already hearing in regard to this young flock of believers.  I don’t know as we have a clear sense of the course of events.  Perhaps those reports he spoke of earlier had come to him at Corinth after he had sent Timothy along, or perhaps they allude to this same report.  I incline to continue seeing them as separate testimonies  But by one path or many, news had come, and that news was quite positive.  Faith and love continued strong in them.  And these, as Calvin points out, are the sum of piety.  If we will but aim at these two aspects of godly character, we shall not go far wrong.  I don’t know as I could go as far as Calvin and say we shall not err, but we shall certainly be trending in the right direction.

Calvin goes on to observe that any of the myriad other disciplines we may find advised are no more than tortures, leading not to greater piety but only greater misery.  Faith and love.  Trust God, love your brother and sister in Christ.  Is that such an ask?  And yet, we do find it challenging, don’t we?  We are hardly alone.  The Apostles, even when Jesus yet remained present among them, had the same issues.  “Increase our faith!” (Lk 17:5).  But this is no more than humble self-assessment.  Matthew Henry writes, “The best of men have something wanting in their faith.”  This jumps us straight to the end of our passage, but the connection is here.  It was certainly no denigration of their condition to suggest that there was that in their faith which wanted completing.

But we have need to consider what is meant by faith in this instance.  I have explored that at some length in my earlier notes, and don’t particularly wish to regurgitate the material here.  Suffice to say that in this context of Paul’s desire to see it completed, faith has more to do with understanding than with any more spiritualized view of the term.  Faith is believing, to be sure, and believing, we had best recognize, requires understanding of just what it is that is believed.  Faith, in short, is instructed.  As I wrote before, “We cannot properly trust in God if we do not properly understand His being, His essence.”  That’s what Paul is after here.  His time with them had been short.  He had been careful to lay out the fundamentals, to paint in broad brush strokes the main themes and doctrines of faith, but time had not permitted fleshing out the details.  This was already causing some issues for the church, as they had the big idea, but not the framework to properly defend it or adhere to it in true earnest.  This is where we see the issues arising with concern as to those who died, and concern as to the second coming perhaps having already come and gone.  General concepts are there, but understanding needs informing.

There were ideas that needed correcting among them, and Paul will get to that shortly.  But first, good shepherd that he is, he will commend that which is praiseworthy.  The JFB notes what a good pattern this sets for us as we would minister to others.  I could add that it’s a pretty good pattern for parenting, as well.  First, make it known that you recognize the good, recognize progress, praise what is praiseworthy.  Encourage it.  This is not flattery.  This is parenting.  Who does not wish to know that his good efforts have been seen as good?  Who will long continue in the struggle to mature and do good if his best efforts go wholly unnoticed?  So, Paul begins in the right place.  You guys are doing great!  I’m so proud of you.  You didn’t get scared off when they came after me.  You didn’t get discouraged when I couldn’t come back.  You haven’t fallen to bickering among yourselves, but maintain that loving community spirit which is so much at the core of this body ministry.  Well done!  Now, let me give you some things to work on, next steps, if you will.  And perhaps we can correct a few misconceptions, as well.  I know.  You have done your best with the information you had, and it saddens me that I could not prepare you more fully, but perhaps, God willing, the time will yet come when I can return and teach in greater depth.  For now, though, this will have to do.   But you see, he has already established that they are well and truly on the right course and running well.  This is just training, then, further input to encourage and improve.  There is no hint of rebuke to be found.  There is none of that urgency of concern that we find in other letters, where churches were quickly going astray.  No.  This was a church in good shape.  But the fact remains, that however far we come, there’s always further to go.  However well we’ve matured, there remain those things that need addressing.

In their case, the situation was simple enough.  Paul, who would gladly have taken a year or more to see this church established, well taught in matters of doctrine, and well settled in their practice, had had but a few months with them.  To be sure, he had laid out the fundamental matters of faith.  They understood the significance of Christ having died for their sins.  They got the necessity of resurrection.  They certainly learned of the hope of eternity living with God, of His final day of judgment, and so on.  They learned of fellowship, of baptism, of love for one’s brothers and even one’s enemies.  But much of it had been only in sketch.  There had been no time to explore the details.  Consider, just as a simplest example, the difference between reading this epistle through and taking the time to truly study it.  Consider the difference between doing so with minimal tools, just considering matters of syntax and historical context and the like, and doing so with the benefit of input from other who have done likewise.  The first takes perhaps an hour, maybe two.  The second takes longer, but can still be measured in months, and those months add value to the material in that they add to our understanding of it.  The third takes longer yet.  There may be things that need correcting from those earlier steps, things we thought we understood but which, upon further, better informed consideration, really aren’t supported by the text.  There may be new insights, expanding the scope of what is being said and how it applies in our own day.

This is what Paul is at, when he says he would complete their faith.  They didn’t need to believe harder.  They didn’t need to find all manner of exercises to do so as to strengthen faith.  They needed teaching.  That is all.  They were doing fine but they could do better.  They were clearly doing well with such as they had been taught, but when they came to holes in their understanding, while they did their best to properly understand what should go there, sometimes they used the wrong data.  How Paul longed to return to them, fill in those pictures he had only been able to outline, ensure that those holes were addressed.  Yes, as the JFB observes, and as we know from even the most surface readings of his two letters to this church, there were things in need of correction, and he will turn to that just a few verses ahead, in the next chapter.  He will do so more fully in his second letter, because the need was more clearly seen, and the risk of error more clearly evident.  But before he gets to correction, he will take time to commend that which is praiseworthy.

That commentary observes that he sets us a good pattern to follow in ministry.  There will be time for correction, but if that is the first thing we attend to, we will succeed only in discouraging those we would thus correct.  Indeed, it is likely we will find our hands so full dealing with those matters of correction, and the likely response to such attempts at correction, that we shall entirely neglect to make any note whatsoever of their successes.  I have but to look back at yesterday’s time in the office.  The day started well enough.  I had found an aspect of our job that I could make useful progress on, and was doing so.  But by midday, fires were burning and I must attend to them, and it seemed no sooner did I begin attending to putting the flames out on one front, but news came of fresh outbreaks on another front.  Any hint of success was retreating further and further with each passing hour, or so it seemed.  There is only so far I can take such example as pursuing my point, but this is how we find ourselves, I think, when we seek to correct as our first order of business.  And we are surprised as we see any hope of success fading in the distance, as hackles are raised, tempers flare, and no amount of effort at presenting things with godly calm appear to have any impact on damping things down.

So, here’s news for us.  Try starting with appreciation of such things as can properly be appreciated.  You’ve been doing great with this part.  I am so pleased with what you’ve been doing on this front.  Look at you!  You give us such cause for joy as we consider how you are progressing.  It’s not hard at all to see our Lord’s own example in this, is it?  We have those letters to the seven churches in Revelation.  And don’t they follow this very form?  You’re doing great with this.  I’m so proud of your response to that.  But…  I have this against you.  Here’s the bit you could stand to improve.  Is there rebuke in there?  Sure.  But there is also praise.  Thus the discipline is able to be received as comforting.  Yes, you’ve a ways to go, and here’s a good next step for you, but look at what you’ve got right!

It’s an example I use often, but there was that season of snow the last year we lived on the Cape.  Seemed every day a fresh foot blanketed the driveway, and that driveway was long.  And the worst would be way out at the end, where the snowplows had passed.  Nothing for it but to get going, but after an hour or so of shoveling, you look towards the end of that driveway, and honestly, it doesn’t look all that much closer.  And this is the seventh time this week, and you’re kind of in that mindset of, “How long, O, Lord?”  You’re perhaps not entirely convinced your body can take this abuse again.  I mean, it was just yesterday we were in pretty much this same point with pretty much the same amount to move, and frankly, the snow walls to either side are just growing higher.  But something moved me to turn around and look back to the house.  Now, there came a fresh perspective.  Look how far you’ve come.  Look how well you’ve done.  See how the Lord has carried you forward.  And suddenly, turning back to the front, it doesn’t seem so far away after all.  Why that’s nothing compared to what I’ve already dealt with.  Let’s go!  Fresh energy, fresh wind, if you will.  And for no other reason than the encouragement of reviewing what’s already been achieved.

There’s that old Christian song.  I don’t know how popular it was outside Charismatic circles, but it was simple enough.  “Look what the Lord has done!”  Of course, given the setting, much in there was about healing this, obtaining that, miracles and provision, that sort of thing.  But take a simpler view, and the thing is utterly valid.  He has brought you this far.  He has done so much in renewing you.  Don’t shrink back.  Don’t get despondent.  There’s no call for that.  Look what the Lord has done already!  Be encouraged.  Not complacent, encouraged.  Now, with that fresh strength, here’s where He’s gone to work as a next thing.  Join Him in that work.  That’s what’s happening here.  That’s our model for ministry.  That’s our model, I should think, for parenting or for any other setting in which we may have cause to be providing leadership of some sort.  If you manage a workforce, you’ll get much farther much faster by encouraging good habits, commending a job well done, and only then offering considerate, kindly correction or direction than you will by being the critic.

I recall something from one of my early managerial roles.  It was time for reviews of those who worked for me, and honestly, with the most of them, I was happy enough.  But if I’m honest, I also wanted to be liked.  My reviews tended to show that.  Lots of high grades, some of them perhaps a bit higher than was truly deserved.  My boss took one look and had me aside for a bit of training.  The simple point:  Always leave room for improvement.  Giving folks perfect grades across the board leaves no space for further effort.  If I’m already perfected, why bother working harder at anything?  I can just coast from here.  Now, I would have to say at the time that seemed rather poor advice, although I had to accept it as my duty.  If they really were doing excellent work, why shouldn’t they know of it?  But honestly, a four out of five is not much removed from five out of five, and, delivered correctly may give us reason to expand the scale, maybe supply a new peak of six or seven, because the encouragement of the four has pushed this one to truly excel.

And we need to keep this perspective about us.  It’s not a question of berating the errant fool.  It’s a question of training up this brother in the way he should go.  If you’ve been browbeating your children into adherence to your standards, perhaps you may succeed for the brief season they are with you.  Fear can do much to bring about compliance.  But only so long as the cause of fear remains.  Let them be free of your grip, let them discover a world beyond your borders, and how long do you suppose that adherence to your standards is going to last?  You haven’t trained them.  You’ve subjugated them.  You have obtained for yourself the obedience of a slave, and not a trusted slave, either, but one that must be closely supervised in every activity lest he slack.  You may have succeeded in carving out a bit of peace in your immediate environment, but you’ve done nothing to raise a child, to form a disciple.

Let us learn from the example set before us by these makers of disciples.  Let us give room to be trained in like fashion by our own Lord and Savior, and by such mentors as He may set in our lives from season to season.  Is there discomfort?  Yes, well, growth is often uncomfortable.  It is often made more so by our rebelliousness and resistance to training.  But the training is needful.  I pray that we can find such mentors as have learned this lesson and can encourage us even as they correct.  I pray that we can be trained by those lessons to likewise encourage others as we serve to correct them.

We shall have need, as well, to recall our place in this work.  And this, too, is there for us to observe in our passage.  Look how Paul addresses this.  Their success is not cause for him to preen.  He’s not there saying, See?  See how great a teacher I am?  Indeed, this is one of the rare epistles where he doesn’t feel the need to mention his office whatsoever.  He’s just a brother talking with brothers.  And as he observes their faith and love continuing in his absence, where does this take him?  It takes him to thanking God.  For if there has been success in his ministry, it is not because of his stature as a teacher, it’s not because of his towering intellect or his oratory skills.  It is quite simply because God has seen fit to work through him.  Calvin observes, “The ministry of a man is inferior to the efficacy of the Spirit.”  This, he notes, in no way detracts from that ministry, but it does give cause to recall with humility how ministry succeeds.

I should say it also gives us something of a warning.  Beware that minister how is busily calling attention to himself and his successes!  Something’s not right in that.  It is well and good to acknowledge those successes that may come – better still should the congregation acknowledge them unbidden.  But these behaviors belong to the one who would establish a cult of personality rather than a church of God.  God has become the means to an end for such a one.  He may not do so consciously.  He may have every intention of ministering faithfully, but insecurity, or whatever other underlying issue has led to making it all about the minister rather than all about God.

This isn’t reserved to ministers, obviously.  Any one of us can fall into the habit in regard to our own efforts.  When our testimony becomes more about what we have done than what God has done, something’s gone off.  That doesn’t require that we abase ourselves with some false humility, refusing any praises that might come our way.  If that were the case, how would we find Paul here praising his young disciples for their progress?  He’d be setting them up for failure, wouldn’t he?  But he isn’t doing so.  He’s strengthening.  Praise where praise is due.  Praise accepted where it is given.  But ever and always with clear understanding and a heart of thanksgiving.

Paul’s response is telling.  We can’t thank God enough for you!  We rejoice before God on your account.  Now, there are several takes on what he means by that last.  But I do think the overall message is reasonably seen to be that God gets the credit, not Paul.  He doesn’t dismiss his role as terribly unworthy, and if God has managed to somehow make something of this sodden mess, well, good.  He doesn’t dismiss their progress as being nothing of themselves but wholly of Christ, even if this is true.  Nor does he expect them to receive this honoring and insist on dismissing it out of hand.  Oh, no!  We don’t deserve this.  All glory to God, brother!  You know, as often as not, that is just pride playing games with us, not humility expressed.  A simple thank you, or I’m so glad you can see progress in us, would probably do.  Or, maybe, Oh, thank God!  I’ve been working on that.  There are myriad ways to deal with it that don’t steal glory from God and don’t make a hypocritical showing of humility to mask pride.

But in Paul’s case, here’s the message, and it serves to continue the encouragement he is offering.  I thank God.  I rejoice before God.  Why, because my ministry is validated?  No.  That’s a comfort, certainly, and energy for renewed effort, but no.  He rejoices because God is at work.  In you.  Your progress is evidence of God’s workmanship.  The Gospel is going forth in power.  “The ministry of the man is inferior to the efficacy of the Spirit.”

In my first-pass notes, I turned to the image of musician and instrument.  It takes both, you know.  The most skilled of musicians cannot hope to bring forth beautiful music from a malformed or broken instrument.  Nor can that instrument play itself.  It cannot devise the tune.  It cannot supply the emotion.  I have often used this imagery, I think.  But I’ll set it here again.  We, however great, however small, are instruments in the hands of holy God.  He is the most skillful of musicians, and He plays the beautiful song of the Gospel.  We, as His instruments can see to maintaining the craftsmanship that went into our shaping.  You will see already that the analogy is failing.  What instrument was ever capable of maintaining itself?  Bet we are instruments of flesh and blood, given intelligence and will.  We can either set ourselves to be instruments well-fashioned and maintained such that when He comes to play, He can play us to fullest effect; or we can let dust and rust and rot set in.  Perhaps the strings have gone weak, or the wood lost somewhat of its resonance.  Perhaps our pads are growing a bit leaky.  Whatever it is, we are no longer the fine instrument we were fashioned to be, and when He comes to play, though He is the most skillful of musicians, we have become all but unplayable.

I recall the dawning light when I went from my first, poorly crafted and poorly maintained tenor to one that had been made well.  How I had fought to play that old horn.  But it leaked like a sieve, couldn’t hold tuning from one fingering to the next, and eventually, even the nut that held the neck tight to the body failed, and one might find he had to chase the mouthpiece down to even give it a go.  Came this new horn, new to me anyway, but in fact older than me by quite some age, it was like night and day.  Oh!  This is easy!  I don’t need to come near to passing out to get enough wind through to produce the notes.  I don’t have to battle to find things in tune in the upper register or the lower.  I can relax a bit, and play through this one.  I found much the same when I eventually replaced my old student alto.  Huh.  Those low notes aren’t as hard to hit as I thought.  Now, I have to say, every horn has its quirks.  A pad here and there may stick when wet, or a spring tend to pop of you’re not careful.  There may be spots where certain fingerings just aren’t going to work on this one though they’ve always worked with every other one.  But the lessons are simple.  Craftsmanship matters.  A well-made instrument will play much more happily than one that must be fought into submission.  I could observe as well that a well maintained instrument will serve much more reliably than that one which gets poor care.

All of this to say, we have our role in this work, and much of our role, whether preacher, teacher, or average member of the congregation, is to seek as best we may to have our instruments in good, playable condition, ready and waiting for that moment when our Master Musician chooses to play us.  We take no credit for the melody, though we can take some appropriate pride in our contribution to the effect.  It remains the Musician who plays, the Musician who brings out that effect in full.

It is this, I think, which Paul is feeling.  I have not been a broken instrument, hindering God (as if that were really possible) from doing as He would.  I have been used of Him, and I have kept myself in such state that He could do so readily.  And so, He has played His music to full effect through me, and I can look with joy upon the result.  Look what the Lord has done! 

You know, Paul needed encouragement every bit as much as they did, and this was it.  It hasn’t been in vain.  You aren’t just banging your head against the wall with these people.  They don’t have their come to Jesus moment and then just slip back to their old ways.  Things are changing in them.  God is changing things.  And where He makes the change, the change sticks.  How can we thank You enough!  Here he is in his own moment in the driveway, to go back to my other example.  He doesn’t have only the hard road ahead to contemplate.  He has the joyous accomplishment along the road already travelled.  Thus far He has brought me.  Thus far He has used me.  To take the drumbeat of our pastor’s Monday notes:  Be encouraged.

Fellowship (12/14/22)

I am using the head of “Fellowship” to gather together some relatively disparate thoughts.  Perhaps as I progress, the connective tissue will become evident.  Let’s start back at the beginning of the passage, with the news that has come.  That news is of steadfastness on their part.  They are steadfast as to their faith.  They are steadfast, as well, as to their love, both for the brethren in that place (and those passing through), and for Paul and his companions.  This news, as we see, brought great comfort to Paul.  It rejuvenated him.  We see it in the brief notice of this reunion in Acts.  Timothy and Silas had come, and Paul was now ready to charge forward with ministering the Gospel, speaking first to the Jews of their Messiah, and, when they wouldn’t have it, going to the Gentiles to inform them of their inclusion in the reception of God’s grace.

The wording in that passage can leave us thinking it’s simply that these two were now available to help with income to support the team while Paul got away from tentmaking for awhile.  But this letter gives us a more complete picture of what had transpired.  Paul was tired when he got to town.  Pretty much the whole tour of Macedonia had proved stressful, and not particularly good for his health.  To be sure, he’d seen some marvelous successes there, and those he writes to are one of those successes.  But there had, in so many ways, been nothing but trouble.  Then came Athens, and while it wasn’t a total bust, it didn’t seem like there was much to show for his efforts there, either.  Now he’s in Corinth, and it’s not looking to be any more receptive.  There’s got to come a point, I should think, where you start asking yourself, “What’s the point?”  God, why have You got me doing this?  It produces nothing.  I don’t know as he was that far down in his thinking, but you can certainly find plentiful cause for him to feel a bit discouraged.  Even meeting Aquila and Prisca, while comforting after its fashion, had only piled on more dark news.  Why were they there, after all, except that Nero was persecuting Jews in Rome.  Oh, good.  Here’s another source of trouble for us.  That’s what we needed.

But into that hard spot comes this news from Timothy.  The church is thriving.  He may have been forced to depart more quickly than he had wished, but they were doing well.  They were facing persecutions still, as could only be expected, but they were standing fast.  They were supporting one another, and opening their homes to others who came through that port.  In short, they were proving to be the community of faith they should be.  They were functioning as a body.  This is what reinvigorated Paul.  This is what charged him with new energy to get going with planting the church in Corinth.  It’s not all a waste of time.  I’m not laboring in vain.  This is not such stony soil as defies any seed to take root.  There is purpose once more, and purpose gives us energy.

Do we not find this to be so even with the more mundane labors of life?  It’s difficult to put much into a task that seems mere drudgery.  It’s easy to throw up our hands and find something else to do when our current tasks seem pointless.  But when there is significance in the work, when we can see progress, and recognize the good that is coming from what we do, then we can give it more of our effort, and do so more cheerfully.

I could take a few examples from work life.  There have been those assignments, those projects across the years where the schedules, as presented, were clearly fabrications and wish-casting, having absolutely no basis in reality.  There have been projects where, to the degree one could truly assess what they were working on, you weren’t entirely sure how successful you ought to wish it to be.  But there have been others where the schedule, while aggressive, was attainable, close enough to make it a challenge somewhat akin, perhaps, to beating your best golf score.  And there were rewards for hitting that goal.  There was clear benefit to seeing it completed.  The project itself was of value as to what it was creating, the personal rewards would prove significant should we pull it off, and it lent a certain energy to the team.  And guess what?  That project hit its goals.  There was energy, joy even, amongst the group as we pursued our duties.  Now, I can’t say the fiduciary aspect applies, but the general principles do, in the case of Paul, or in the case of ministry more generally.  The end-product is of enormous benefit.  And the task, while daunting, is not beyond us.  It’s not pointless to keep trying.  Things are happening.

Many will look at the present state of the church and conclude that, at least should we continue on the course we have followed these many years, it’s pointless.  The church has made herself powerless, a weekly campout for the faithful, and nothing more.  Well, that may be the case for certain congregations.  But it may also be that they are simply holding fast to the course their Lord has set them.  Here is the task we are given.  It is not flashy.  It doesn’t have the wow factor of these prophecy videos, or the flash of the word of faith types.  It’s just the quiet work of proclaiming God’s truth, according to God’s instructions, in God’s time to those whom God sets before us to hear.  It’s the unlovely labor of discipling.  You know, raising children is not exactly a stunning extravaganza sort of task, but it is so very needful.  Discipling is no different.  It’s not about flashy show, and displays of supernatural gifting.  It’s about implanting the truth, establishing it, watering it, shaping faith around it, in accordance with the guidebook we have in Scripture. 

Is the church to be evangelical?  Of course.  But that doesn’t mean we’re all out on the street corners week by week haranguing passers by with news that, “The end is near!”  It is.  Nearer every day.  And to be sure, there are myriad folks who pass us by on any given day who have need of hearing the Gospel.  And some small portion of them, should they hear it, might even receive it to benefit.  But that’s only the start.  There remains the discipling to follow after, and that may well take a lifetime.  So, let me ask you.  Those who serve in children’s ministry, are they not serving in an evangelical effort?  They are planting seeds, nurturing growth where it can be found, weeding these little gardens alongside the parents.  It’s not glamorous.  You won’t see video reports of revival breaking out in the grade 2 classroom – at least, it seems rather unlikely.  But where the gospel is taking hold, guess what?  There’s been a revival.

It’s not in vain.  It has been said, and said often, I expect, that the church, however much it may appear to wane in this age or that, never grows smaller.  It cannot.  For each and every member, from the earliest days to the last of days, remains a member for eternity.  We are talking, of course, of the church invisible, the fellowship of the elect.  There are, as is also often observed, plenty in the pews, even steadfastly present week upon week, who are not in fact in the fellowship of the elect.  We pray they might yet come to be, but as to now, no.  And don’t suppose you can look about you and identify them.  Oh yes, that guy.  Always knew there something a bit off with that one.  Oh, her.  Just here hunting for a husband, I expect.  Far better we should ask with earnest inquiry, “Is it me, Lord?”  Of course, the fact that we care to ask might already be taken as some evidence that it is not.  But then, we must consider who first asked that very thing, and perhaps our comfort level drops just a bit.

But back to our passage.  Paul’s efforts had not been in vain.  Continuing with this mission was not in vain.  I commented before how much I liked the TLB translation on this point, and I will include it again here.  “We can bear anything as long as we know you remain strong in Him.”  That’s the energy Paul has gained.  That’s the vibe he’s talking about.  Whatever weariness had beset him has fled.  Joy and confidence are restored.  I can imagine that, while so much of his prayer life was clearly focused on those to whom he had ministered, and on the ongoing work of ministry, there had been time to add a request for some sort of consolation, some form of comfort from his Lord.  And here it was.  Look, Paul!  Your children are living transformed lives, even in your absence!  The orchards you planted for Me are bearing fruit.  Your children up there in Macedonia are not merely living lives that have turned from sin themselves, but are even preaching and reaching out in their own right.  The Gospel is spreading, and not just through the three of you, but through those plantings you have made along the way.

You know, there are all these pyramid-scheme businesses that pop up, and they all have something of a similar pitch, right?  You sign up two salesmen, and gain a portion from every sale they make.  They each sign up two more, and likewise gain from their hires, and you gain from their gain.  And so on, and so on.  Why, just imagine how rich you can become.  Mind you, the likelihood that this is ever going to pan out as a source of riches are miniscule, but the enticement works, because the math works, at least on paper.  There’s just a few too many ifs involved, that are presented more as certainties.  But in the presentation of the Gospel, it’s somewhat the same, at least in terms of spread.  You told two friends, and they told two friends, and those friends told two friends, and so on.  Well, you see how rapidly the increase can come, in this case, as to reach.

Your friends have access to friends you don’t know.  We each move in different circles, have contact with different folks.  We each have opportunities that others won’t.  And so, God sets in motion this plan whereby each of us may serve to increase the kingdom.  And it may not look like much as we consider our personal impact.  But we can’t see the ripples going out from our efforts.  We don’t know our reach.  We don’t always know, even, when we’re ministering with significance to some individual.  I recall R. C. Sproul commenting on some of the conversations he would have with folks at conventions and the like.  They would bring up something he had said which, to him, had been little more than an aside, but it had hit and stuck.  A life had been changed.  Well, there’s a two-edged sword, if ever there was one!  How careful we should be as to what we speak.  We don’t know which bit is going to be held onto, and God forbid, it should be the acerbic barb, or the flippant remark.  But how many I have known over the years who could trace at least a portion of their current steadfastness back to something heard from that man.  For me, it was mention of how he could not listen to even an hour of Christian talk radio without hearing one ancient heresy or another being promoted.  Boy, that set off alarms.  I don’t even know what they are!  How could I detect them.  It set me, at least in part, on this now longstanding effort to come to sound understanding.  Somebody else will have to take the measure of how well I’ve done at it.  I don’t doubt but that I’ve managed to rehearse a few heresies myself along the way, though I pray God that He has seen fit to correct me if that is so.

But back to the message.  Jesus saves!  The kingdom grows.  It cannot shrink, for its every member is eternal, and its every member, dear ones, is held in God’s own hands.  This is our encouragement.  We’ll hear it from Paul much later in his ministry.  “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Ro 8:31).  We have already died, and now live to Christ, in Christ.  What have we to fear, who revere Him Who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell (Lk 12:5)?  And He loves us.  He has called us His own.  So, we have this call now upon us, the call to walk worthy of what has already been done for us.  This call is for total commitment to our Lord.  He is our Lord, after all.  There’s a reason the Apostles tended to speak of themselves as bondservants of Christ.  It expressed that total commitment.  And, as Ironside writes, “Total commitment is what Paul wanted to see in his converts.”

The great good news for him, the source of his encouragement, is that the report coming back with Timothy was that indeed, total commitment is what he had seen during his visit.  Oh, the joy!  You can’t miss it in his writing, and being as it’s Paul, we can be sure it wasn’t flattery.  This is akin to those bursts of doxology that pepper his letters when he has given expression to some deep matter of doctrine.  How can we possibly thank God enough for you?  You can’t imagine the rejoicing with which we rejoice before God on account of you.  The relief is palpable.  Words fail me.  But still, I shall rejoice, and I shall continue rejoicing, even as I continue praying.

Matthew Henry draws a lesson from this for us.  He writes, “When we are most cheerful we should be most thankful.”  This, he suggests, is what it means to rejoice before God.  Well, certainly rejoicing comes far more readily when we are cheerful.  It is quite another thing to rejoice amidst trials, and yet, we have that set before us as well.  It’s not a call to act like a loony, and pretend the trials are as nothing.  No.  But there is still cause to rejoice, in that God has found you worthy, sufficiently progressed in your development to face these trials and withstand them.  We can, then, rejoice in the evidence of growth.

Others, I think maybe Calvin, suggest that the ‘before our God’ part has more to do with earnestness and transparency.  But I might take it in yet another direction and suggest that in rejoicing before our God, Paul is making clear where the credit is due.  If you are standing fast, it is because He is at work among you.  If there has been some return on my ministry, it is because He is working through me.  As I said in the prior section, I have been a well-maintained instrument, and He has played skillfully, as He ever does.

But we are under the head of “Fellowship”, and what has this to do with that?  Well, there is a fellowship here, and such as transcends geographic separation.  He may have had to part from their presence, but he has by no means ceased to be their minister.  This is interesting.  We may have to write it off as something unique to these earliest days of the church, an Apostolic privilege of sorts.  But I think back to my term as elder, and learning that, at least within our denomination, there is the promise made that the departing pastor will not minister to the flock he has departed.  That is now the duty of another, and he must not interfere.  Here, I see something different in the model set before us.  Ministry connections, it seems, are presented as life-long.  For there to be interference, there would need to be some competition for affections.  And I do understand how having the recently departed pastor of long standing still holding court with some would render it difficult for the new guy to settle in.  But it ought properly to be a place for teamwork rather than competitive sport.  Of course, pastors, like the rest of us, are drawn from fallen stock, and remain possessed of their human foibles.  So, there is perhaps wisdom in enforcing a more rigid separation.

But that separation does not, must not preclude earnest fellowship and honest care one for another.  There is still a place for prayer.  Paul did not let time or distance reduce his thoughts and prayerful pleas on behalf of those he had known along the way.  Nor had they ceased to have regard for him.  And their victories, while he was no longer directly part of them, remained his victories as well.  One can see how it would be that for any minister, there would be this sense that life is worth living, and the trials of ministry worth facing, when those preached to are in fact walking closely with God.  Here is your pastor’s encouragement.  It’s all well and good that we are preparing a financial gift for him, the season being what it is.  But far greater reward for him, and for those who have preceded him in ministering to this body, if in fact we are not merely warming the pews and nodding to the sermon, but actively, daily, purposefully walking closely with God.

Fellowship.  There, it is in the shared responsibility, if you will.  Those who have had some role in bringing you to faith or training you up in faith have some reward in seeing your success.  They have some continued interest in your progress.  And you, in turn, as you progress, must surely recognize the debt you owe them for their aid.  It may be that we don’t think of those past associations all that often.  We do tend to be preoccupied with those currently around us, at least I do.  But here’s a call not to forget.  Here’s a call not to cut off utterly from memory or from affection, those who have been dear to us along the way.

If the Church does not diminish in any age, I should think we must conclude that fellowship does not either.  Those who are no longer in our immediate circle remain in our circle nonetheless.  Dennis, from the Cape, though I have no idea what has become of him through the years, remains a dear mentor, and one I am glad to have known.  So, too, Chris, and many others from that period.  There are many back at CCF who, though I have pretty much no contact with them anymore, remain absolutely dear to my heart, and that certainly includes Pastor Raffoul.  These were dear companions, close family for that season.  I had my reasons, I like to think, for making the break perhaps more rigidly than some might.  It was a pain-reduction matter for me.  This was family, and I was leaving home.  Well, now I’m among a new family, and I should be just as wrenched should the time come that I found it necessary to depart from them.  I feel it when those who have been close move on for one reason or another.  Mostly, it’s been those who depart due to relocation, but there have been a few others whose departures were, to my thinking at least, rather less justified.  But so be it.  The point is, there was a rending of family, a parting of fellowship, and that always causes a certain degree of pain, doesn’t it?

Our daughter recently moved away to Colorado, and while we didn’t see all that much of her while she was more local, there’s something about that geographical divide that hits.  I am, I must say, exceeding proud of her for what she is trying to do.  Oh, there’s plenty I wish she might do differently, but still, for where she’s at, this is marvelously brave and marvelously pursued.  Yet, when she suddenly appeared on our doorstep during Thanksgiving weekend, it was deep joy.  It’s family.  It’s fellowship.  There are things we share which unite us.  Would that it were more to do with faith, but we take what we can get and pray for the rest.  And we minister as best we can in the place where we find ourselves.

I think I shall close out this study with a bit of a caution.  Observe Paul’s example yet again.  He has not allowed distance to prevent communication.  He may not be able to be there in person, but he would have news, and now he has had news.  We are in an age where distance really doesn’t present any particular challenge for communication, other than minding the time changes.  But we are at great risk of substituting easy communication for the challenges of true community.  Oh, look, we’re socializing!  See?  We text, we tweet, or whatever methods may apply.   I have my circle of friends, even if they are scattered across the globe, and I shall never meet a one of them in person.  And we convince ourselves that this is an acceptable approach to life.  It’s not.

Community was never meant to be global.  It cannot be.  The care and concern I may have for those facing whatever battles or disasters in this or that corner of the world are ephemeral at best.  Sadly, they often serve as nothing more than an opportunity for a little burnishing of our image.  Oh, look how much I care!  See?  I sent money to this cause, I posted a picture with this or that mark of support.  I’ve incorporated their plight in my email signature.  I’m doing absolutely nothing of any value, but don’t I look virtuous?  And we are not immune from that in the church.  We click our tongues and say our prayers for our embattled brethren around the world, and I don’t say that it’s not in earnest, but it’s easy stuff.  It’s something we can do without any real involvement of self.  Oh, yes, I’m supposed to pray for so and so today.  Right.  God, help so and so.  There.  I can check that one off.  Or we might put some money in the offering plate to support this or that mission, just so no one’s asking us to go.  And I am not, by any means, suggesting that everybody should.  There are those who should, and God calls them to it, and equips them for it.  There are others whose gifts lie elsewhere, who are called elsewhere, and that’s where they should be laboring in the fields.

My point is simply this:  Community can’t be had at distance.  It used to be pretty straightforward.  Your community consisted of your neighbors, those whose house you could walk to, or at least reach by short horse-ride.  When need arose, you could be there for them, and they, for you.  I think back to my youth in Connecticut, in a town so small it had no real traffic light.  But everybody knew everybody, more or less, at least amongst the older families.  And when the fire alarm rang in the night, every able-bodied man was there at the fire station to go to the aid of whoever’s place was on fire.  When there was trouble, there was community to help face it.  Was it perfect?  Hardly.  But it’s a far cry from what I see around me today.  I have many living around me who I could not give name to.  Some I could, most I couldn’t.  Even those I make it a point to greet when I see them as we are out walking, if I’m honest, I probably don’t know by name.  I may know their dog’s name.  But theirs?  Nope.  Sorry.

We have, in large part, lost all sense of community.  Some of it is down to our increased capacity for travel.  We work far from home.  In my case, I’m working halfway cross country from home, and shall most likely never meet any of these folks face to face.  Most of them, I rarely even see on video.  I have, really, nothing to do with them.  If I look at our church, we have people coming from honestly ridiculous distances to be with us.  This one comes up from Burlington, that one down from Hollis, or points further north.  But if you’re coming a half-hour to an hour to be here, to what degree can you really be community?  To what degree can you really participate in any meaningful fellowship?  I have enough trouble with it living across town.  To be sure, there are other things that I allow to get in the way, but distance is part of it.  We are scattered about.  We don’t, in general, gather house to house during the week.  There was a time when I would not be shy about going over and knocking on this one’s door, or that one’s.  But it became clear that such things were not really appreciated.  They were an imposition.  Oh.  Sorry to bother you, then.  Sorry to be part of your life.  We have got to get over that!  We are supposed to be part of one another’s lives.  We are family and more.  We are one body.  Is the arm really going to take offense at a hello from the leg?

Look.  There are always going to be those we are more comfortable associating with than others.  There will always be those we would just as soon avoid.  And who knows?  Maybe I’m such a one for many.  But we have to try.  We have to make connection, establish real community.  It may consist in small networks within the whole, and that’s okay.  Kind of goes back to that pyramid scheme business.  If I’m connected with some subset of folks, and they’re each connected with their varied subsets, then there is at least hope that all are connected.  It’s when we allow the ease of technological substitutes to display the organically real that we suffer.  Let us not reject technology wholesale, for that would be an error, I think.  But lest us keep perspective, and stick to the model we were given.  Here is your local church.  Here is where you have been planted.  Grow.  Contribute.  Be fruitful here, now.

Father, it’s been something of a meander this morning, but thank You.  Thank You for this body of believers in which You have set me.  I pray You would break off those matters of pride and privacy that prevent me from partaking more fully of the fellowship that is there for me.  Show me how to be more active, and more proactive in being a useful, functioning member of this body in its current configuration.  In short, show me how to walk worthy in this present state of things, and, I might pray, show me the fruit of my labors, if indeed there is any.  I could use some encouragement, I think.  But I know my trust in You is strong, and my love for You undiminished.  I am Yours.  I can think of nothing better.