[11/01/20]
I have saved this topic for last, as concerns the community worship of the church, but not because it is of least importance. It is important, and it is a matter of community worship. That latter may be a point of some debate, and questionable in the course of normal church activities, but the intent, I think, remains valid.
Let me start with a revisit of the Trinity, not in depth, but in one particular, which was brought back to mind in discussions last week. God being perfect and lacking nothing in Himself must have fellowship in Himself, and that necessity is satisfied in the three Persons we find in the Triune Godhead. I could as readily say that this concerns love in its experience and expression. God must have love, and the opportunity to love within Himself. Yes, He expresses His unchanging love towards us, but we are not Himself. If this was the sole expression given to His love, He would in that wise be dependent upon us as an outside object upon which to exercise His love. But that is not the case. He is, in His Triune nature, able to express that love within Himself. The Father loves the Son, and the Son, the Father. The Father loves the Spirit, and the Spirit, the Father. So, too, Son and Spirit share mutual expression and experience of love. This experience of mutual love lies at the heart of fellowship, so that we can see the Persons of the Trinity enjoy fellowship within the Godhead.
It is that reality which declares to me the necessity for fellowship in mankind generally, a thing even the most inwardly focused of men must acknowledge is very much the case. We need fellowship. The worst punishment we can inflict, this side of death, is isolation, a complete removal from all social contact. Think how devastating was the threat of the ban in Israel. I grant you, that had as much to do with the capacity to make a living as with socialization, but it remained firmly connected to the socialization aspect, the aspect of fellowship. One could not enjoy the fellowship of fellow believers, because one had been effectively cut off from their number.
The same would apply to those upon whom the Church had pronounced an anathema. To be excommunicated was, at the height of the power of the Church in Rome, a most devastating thing, able to bring kings to heel. It was akin to being cast out alone into the wilderness, with none to aid, none to stand guard over your sleep, or to have your back in battle. You were alone and without friend to aid. We hear Scripture’s advice against such a life. “If one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three is not quickly torn apart” (Ecc 4:12). Nowhere, perhaps, is this more true than in the place of worship, the place of spiritual battle.
This gives me cause to ask, do you ever consider that your time of worship is in fact a place of spiritual battle? We wonder, I think, why everything seems to conspire against getting to Church on time, or why we find our minds wandering so readily during prayer and preaching. We are given a moment or two in which to pray in silent confession, and honestly, how often do we find ourselves thinking about most anything but what might need confessing? We begin with every earnest intention of remaining glued to the sermon’s message, but find in short order we are thinking of what might be done with the afternoon, or plans for next week, or groceries, or really, just about anything that might distract us from God’s Word. This is not some personal failing, although the failing is personal. This is the effect of battle, and we have forgotten the conflict. We suppose ourselves in a safehouse, and in some wise we are. But not so safe as that the assault of the enemy of our souls abates, lets up, and says, “Guess we’ll have to wait ‘til they come outside again.”
This warfare that is our daily experience, though we tend to lose sight of that fact, is a prime reason why we have a particular need for fellowship. But I’m going to say that it’s a secondary reason, as significant as it is to our health. In the interest of maintaining some sort of flow here, I’ll continue to explore it just a bit. We live, if I might borrow the Psalmist’s words, in Meshech, among the tents of Kedar, surrounded by those who are for war, however much we pursue peace (Ps 120:5-7). They hate peace, at least peace on God’s terms. They are at peace with the devil and with sin, and are stirred to violent anger when sin is exposed as sin, as it must be when the people of God stand up.
This is our reality. We are encamped in enemy territory. We sense it in that we are, as it were, a remnant. And we sense it more, perhaps, in this season than in years past, as America drifts into a perilous, post-Christian, post-modern, virulent atheism. The Church is seen as evil, insomuch as it does not proclaim a tolerance for sin, and even an extoling of the virtues of sin. Bars and brothels are not so despised and denounced as chapels and churches. I might even grant that in some cases, the Church has brought this on herself by failing to be the Church of Christ, but that really isn’t the issue. It's the excuse to start. But it’s quite clear that what is happening right now has nothing to do with hidden past sins, but everything to do with seeking that all mention of righteousness be removed.
Now, the truth is it has ever been thus. The Church has always been a remnant, minority representation amongst humanity. It has always been a foreign embassy in hostile territory. We have had the luxury of forgetting that over the decades when society was still largely shaped by a shared, Christian history, but those days would seem to be largely exhausted. And this has come, in part, because the Church has forgotten that she is at war. Her people have forgotten, have neglected to build one another up, to stand as a cord of three strands, and now find themselves surprised as things unravel.
Let me jump foot-first into the present now. Look at what is happening. Everywhere we find government setting restrictions upon the gathering of the Church. Everywhere, even beyond the walls of the Church, we find government acting in ways that suppress opportunities to fellowship. We read of states setting strict limits on family gatherings for Thanksgiving. Well, it is, after all, a religious holiday at root, however little religion plays into it in the present age. To Whom are we to give thanks? It’s not the governor, certainly. And this is coming with the threat of police intervention, the violation of personal property and personal liberty in pursuit of some ostensible public interest. But this is just the most recent tightening of the screws. We are mandated to walk about with faces hidden, cutting off one of the chief expressions of our fellow humanity.
I could relate an incident from our brief excursion to Newport this summer. We walked a beautiful path along the coast; nothing but salt air and birds and life around, and every face that walked by was carefully hidden away behind their masks; the only thing left visible the eyes that looked reproachfully upon the few that dared to walk free. They might express anger. They might express fear. They assuredly did not express fellowship. I can recall clearly the absolute delight of finding one face – one face out of the dozens of walkers – that was still visible, and visibly smiling. After months of this constraint upon fellowship, how utterly thrilling to see a happy stranger! How uplifting. It was almost enough to bring one to tears for what has been lost to this year’s panic.
Now, if this is the case in society in general, how much more in the life of the Church? We need one another. We need to know we are not alone, for I am quite sure that for many of us, the weekly experience at work, to the degree we experience that anymore, is one of spiritual isolation. That may be more pronounced for most, as we work from home, but it was the case already wasn’t it? To what degree have you ever been able to share your faith at work? Oh, I can think of a few periods of shared time with fellow believers. I can also recall pretty clearly that there was perhaps one, occasionally two who could be numbered. We live in a place where faith is not to be shared at work. This is not, after all, what we are paid for. Yet, we might observe, we are free and clear to discuss all manner of other topics on company time without issue. If I may, your constant denunciations of the President, or your support for various militant actions of social justice are free and clear, are they not? Nobody will bring you down to HR for discussing BLM, unless, perhaps, you are so bold as to denounce it as the socialist front it is. But bring up Christ? Oh dear. You might offend your Hindu co-worker, or cause strife with your Muslim co-worker. Heaven forfend we speak of Truth in the land of tolerance.
We need our fellowship one with another all the more because we are daily pressed upon by the society of the unbelieving. However much we may seek to be at peace with our fellow man, the fact remains that their proclivities, and their utter disregard for God press upon us, a depressing weight of, if nothing else, sorrow for their inevitable future if they do not repent and come to Christ. We can be as tender hearted as you please, as gentle in our efforts to suggest a path that leads to Life, and the response will be rejection, reviling, ridicule, or worse. Even if we are too shy of our Lord to make such efforts in any particularly vocal way, the weight remains. The exertion of remaining holy in so unholy an atmosphere remains. The pressure to join in is constant, and the need to resist draining.
Why do you suppose it is that Scripture insists we must avoid the temptation to skip out? “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near” (Heb 10:23-25). You know, I have heard those who are actually rather pleased with the ostensible necessity of virtual worship. I don’t even have to leave home anymore! I don’t have to actually interact with you people! I can just sit back here in my jammies, tune in or tune out as the mood hits, and nobody’s the wiser. Nor is anybody stimulated, my boy, neither you nor your brethren. Where is that concern for building up one another? Where is edification? I dare say, if a wandering mind is an issue for us at Church, it’s only amplified a thousand-fold by the isolated experience of virtual worship. I will grant that it’s better than nothing, but not by much; not when there is any least opportunity to return to real and visceral fellowship, even if it must be in the fetters of facemasks in this season.
You will forgive, I hope, the intrusion of political thought into this discussion, and I will say that it is sad that even matters of public health have devolved to being opportunities for political posturing to the point that any sort of trust in any sort of evidence has become nigh to impossible to establish. Woe is us, for we dwell amongst a people beset by insanity, seeking whom they may devour. And we wonder at the cause? It ain’t the man in power, and it ain’t the one seeking power. It’s a spiritual battle, fought against powers and principalities in higher places than the halls of government. And it is fought not with weapons, nor even with ballots, but with prayer and supplication unto God on behalf of those powerbrokers, that God might be pleased to grant us such governance as promotes the peace and welfare of His Church, His people. But if not that, let it be done according to His Good and Perfect will, and may we be found building one another up, encouraging one another to love and good works, even if it must be done in spite of it all.
[11/03/20]
If I may return to more significant matters; man was made in the image of God. In the image of God He created him, male and female He created him. We have observed previously and will now observe again the first negative comment God had to make about His work in creation. “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him” (Ge 2:18). And we may as well continue to see this suitable helper brought into being. “So the LORD God caused a deep sleep t fall upon the man, and he slept; the He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh at that place. And the LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. And the man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Ge 2:21-23).
What has happened here? Man, who was made in the image of God, was incomplete in his individual condition. Fellowship was lacking in man, and God, in whom perfect fellowship is known most thoroughly, recognized the issue and arranged the solution. Now, let me just say, once more, that this was not God discovering a flaw in His plan that required Him to readjust His thinking. This was God pursuing the perfect plan He had from the start. Note that He takes time getting to this act. He has left time for the man to meet every creature by its type, and to give name to them all before He comes to the time when He creates this helpmate for Adam.
I observe this as well, which is why I’m dwelling somewhat long on the passage. The fellowship that God creates for Adam is deeply modeled on the fellowship experience by the Trinity. He does not bring some other creature, a dog or a cat, say, to provide fellowship. As much as we may love such creatures, they can’t supply that need. They are not suitable. They may comfort. They may even offer some protection. But they cannot share that deep, intimate fellowship that is needful to one made in God’s image. It takes ‘bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh’.
Now, God being Spirit, we cannot suppose this models His nature or His fellowship exactly. But the fellowship of the Trinity hinges on a shared, unitary essence. The fellowship of husband and wife in marriage hinges on a similarly shared, functionally unitary essence. “They shall become one flesh” (Ge 2:24). It’s not that neither has an independent thought, or that they have no distinctions of interest and pursuit. It’s that in all they do, their shared existence together is at the fore. Mutual care and concern shape the relationship and shape the actions undertaken by each one in the relationship.
Let us extend this to the body of the Church. Here the numbers are greater, obviously, and as such, the maintaining of any semblance of unity is that much more difficult. And yet, it is to exactly that that our Lord calls us. “There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Go and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:4-6). Such a rich passage! He proceeds to note how each member of this one body is given a particular grace, a particular gift. For some, that gift was particularly potent: making of them apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, and so on, but all toward the one purpose of the one body, that it might be built up and equipped for the work of service (Eph 4:11-12). Note the end: “Until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ” (Eph 4:13).
This is the powerful fruit of fellowship. We build one another up. We encourage one another to excel in doing good. We are strengthened by the love we know one for another. We experience in foretaste that glorious fellowship which shall in due course be ours in the new heavens and the new earth. This is no call to orgy, or any other such nonsensical, cheap pursuit. It is shared faith in one God. It is true, familial, familiar care and concern for one another. It is recognition that this body, in its several members, is well served by each of its several members, and each of those several members, from the least to the greatest, from the most powerful to the seemingly least significant, is worthy of our cherishing, for all these members belong to the one body of the bride of Christ.
Fellowship in the Church, then, is in fact an act of worship, insomuch as it seeks to honor God by reflecting His essential character. He is Fellowship as He is Love as He is Justice as He is any other characteristic we see Him assign to Himself. We, as His children, His sons, are intended to take upon ourselves those same characteristics we see in Him, to emulate Him as we are able, to demonstrate His immeasurable worth by our best efforts to establish His ways as our own. As we share real fellowship, real sharing of ourselves one with another, with humility and transparency, we demonstrate God in us.
Do you see the humility of God in His display of fellowship? I do. The Son, while intent on completing His purpose, ever turned the attention of His hearers upon the Father. He expresses His heart to the Father. He seeks time apart to speak with the Father, and to be recharged by the Father. He makes certain of times of quality fellowship in the Godhead, but ever with an eye not to calling attention to Himself, but turning everyone’s attention on heaven. The Holy Spirit, in like fashion, does not come to show off. He gives gifts, yes, but according to the Father’s will and at the Son’s behest. He is not looking to bribe His way into top billing in our esteem. Rather, His every act is undertaken to maintain our focus on the Son, as the Son in turn continues to direct us to the Father. And where’s the Father in all this? “This is My beloved Son. Listen to Him” (Mk 9:7)! He is busy giving all authority over into the hand of His Son, Who in the meantime is observing that all who are His, all whom the Father has graciously given Him, are in His Father’s hand, where none can snatch them away (Jn 10:29). “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:30).
And here’s the marvelous, stunning reality of the Church in all her fellowship. This Jesus, this God Who in Himself knows perfect fellowship, prays for His people, “that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me. And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one” (Jn 17:21-22). JUST as. Not in similar fashion, not in near approximation, but exactly as. This is a sharing of intimate, transparent relationship such as transcends even the best of marriages. This is beyond the one flesh relationship, and becomes a one spirit relationship. This is what the Church is designed to be.
We come together in shared worship of our one, shared God. We worship Him by singing His praises, by proclaiming His excellent qualities. We worship Him by giving serious heed to His Word, as by it, He shapes our lives to reflect Him more purely. We worship Him by giving of the first and best fruits of our labors, whatever those labors; that He may turn them to His good purpose. We worship Him by seeking to good ourselves, and by seeking to stir up our fellow believers to doing good in turn. We worship Him by obeying His commandment, not as a requirement demanded, but as a necessary, inevitable expression of His indwelling presence within us. We worship Him by sharing our lives one with the other, by making not only our strengths known to our brothers in Christ, but also our weaknesses. We worship Him by building one another up in holy faith, by seeking our mutual maturity, by sharing such as we have that we all may have benefit one from the other, and all may together, attain to the fulness of the image of Christ as God Himself wills and works in us that it might be so.
Truly, we may just discover that fellowship is the highest form of worship, for it most thoroughly reflects the habit of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He spent His time here in fellowship with His own. Yes, He took those times to be alone with the Father, but He shared Himself with His disciples, that they might in due course mature, and through them, Abraham might indeed come to have many children by faith.
I have to say, in closing this topic, that this was not initially something I would have said demanded any great deal of attention. Yes, yes, we have our fellowship, but it has always felt rather like the people of the church trying to hang onto some last vestige of societal behavior. But then, look at those early expressions of the Lord’s Supper. These were times to come together, to be built up in shared faith, in shared experience, in mutual caring love for one another. When they devolved to something less, they brought the participants under severest rebuke. “For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep” (1Co 11:30). It’s not because they failed to examine themselves before partaking. It’s because they had taken this most significant act of shared fellowship in faith and made of it a self-aggrandizing display, a competition for pleasures. They were destroying fellowship, and fellowship is of central concern to our Lord because it is central to His being. This, as they say, changes everything. This, as it seems I have commented under many different heads in this examination of community worship, must rightly result in a complete revolution in our pursuit of worshiping God, and in our perception of those around us in the place of worship.
Do you recall the old song? “Bind us together,
LORD, bind us together with cords that cannot be broken. Bind us
together, Lord, bind us together; bind us together with love.”
This is what happens as we come together to celebrate our God, to
petition our God, to set ourselves once more to the task of knowing
Him more and reflecting Him better. This is the call to true
fellowship; that we might indeed be bound together, a cord of three
strands and more, not easily torn apart, and even, through the power
of our indwelling God, able to stand against all the forces of the
devil, such that the gates of hell shall not prevail (Mt
16:18). Jesus is building His Church. He has taken to
Himself His bride, each and every one whom the Father has given Him,
and He has lost not a one. He gathers us into the fold of which He
Himself is the Good Shepherd. But He gathers us that we might grow,
that we might guard, that we might know that fellowship amongst
ourselves that He knows in heaven. Call it training for the future.
Call it discipline for the flesh. Call it a foretaste of heaven, for
that is surely what it ought to be.
