Last week we began an exploration of key factors that should be present in a Christian fellowship - these key factors are validators of the authenticity of the fellowship as much as and indeed more than the sign ourside on the lawn.
Riversdale Christian Fellowship on a sign does not make us into a Christian fellowship.
Last week the Prime Minister of New Zealand - Helen Clark found herself embroiled in controversy because she had signed a painting that she had not painted.
In fact she had signed six paintings that she hadn’t painted.
There was an uproar over it because if a painting carries an artists name then the painting should rightfully reflect the work of the artist.
It’s the same with a church - if we have the name of Jesus on our sign then our fellowship should reflect the character of Jesus - His character should flow out of us.
This week I would like to raise other Qualities that we can exhibit to justify the signature Jesus on the canvas of our fellowship.
RO 1:8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world.
There is something distinctive about the faith of the Romans that makes them identifiable and distinctively Christian.
There faith is so distinctive that it is being reported all over the world.
That is pretty distinctive. There were other Christian groups around but Paul singles the Romans out as being well known for their faith - I suspect that he is suggesting that their faith is outstanding even among other christian churches.
There are in fact four things I would like to mention in relation to this that we need in our relationships with one another that produce good fellowship with one another.
I want to use the numonic F.A.I.T.H
The first point is actually the point I made last week so I do not want to dwell on it overly.
Fear of the Lord. By fear of the Lord I mean a healthy respect for God. The ability to hold in tension awe for God and familiarity with God. At Jesus’ death the curtain leading into the temple tore in two as a powerful symbol that we no longer require a mediator to go before God. But as we saw last week in romans chapter 1 verse 18 and following it is possible still to come under the wrath of God - it is only our dwelling in God’s grace that protects us from the very real possibility of Hell. So we need to hold in tension the fact that God is both Abba to us and to step outside his grace is a fearful thing - Fear of the Lord is the beginning of understanding.
Getting this right is a helpful platform for fellowship. Because in this place all pride - arrogance and self elevation fall away. We are as someone once put it - simply one beggar showing the other beggars where the food is.
The second point is the atmosphere of Grace - RO 1:1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God-- 2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3 regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 5 Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.
Paul in all his letters maintains an attitude of Grace everything he says comes back to this one point we know the forgiveness and grace of God in our lives and we practice that grace towards each other.
We are in fact bathed in grace.
We are a people who are bathed in god’s forgiveness and love.
That kind of attitude needs to be extended to each other.
God not only asks it of us he insists on it.
In the parable of the unforgiving servant God makes the necessity of it clear.
Grace here is not only a gift it is also a command!
2TI 3:1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God-- 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.
Here the need to be a fellowship full of Grace is spelt out very clearly.
We need to understand very clearly how this grace works we are not to be simplistic fools but mature Christians.
I will use an absurd example to illustrate my point. If someone offended us through a particular weekness - say they stole a great deal of money from us. If they repented and asked for forgiveness of course we would be required to forgive them and restore fellowship with them - but that is not to say we would not practise some care with them so that we would not put them in a position of temptation in relation to their former weekness which in this case was honesty.
Grace is such an important quality - you can actually smell it in a fellowship it is a sweet fragrance
As paul says in 1 corinthians chapter 13
Love always forgives John Sloat
Nearly a century ago, a famous English preacher described in vivid detail the practice of one particular lord of the manor. Every year on Christmas day, this lord gave all the poor people who were his subjects a generous basket of food. Every person brought a basket with him and the lord’s custom was to fill the basket completely. Each time they came, year after year, the baskets got bigger and bigger, until the lord wondered how they could stagger away under the weight of all that food on the way home. But no matter how large the basket was, he filled it every time. They came because they knew about his wealth and because they trusted in his free-flowing generosity.
Tom Gibson says:- In 1994 I was jogging and fell down the stairs of an underpass leading to East Coast Park (in Singapore). I tripped at the top and fell headfirst down the stairs, cracking my forehead on the side of one of the concrete steps as I came down. I was knocked unconsious and fell to the bottom.
When I regained conciousness there were three types of people who came to me:
(i) Those who saw all the blood and ran by saying ’eeeee!’
(ii) A newspaper reporter came to see if someone had pushed me etc..
(iii) A man who genuinely had compassion, helped to bandage me up and call ambulance.
In the same way, when we fall or trip up in our Christian lives there will be those who want to run past and not get involved and those who will report all kinds of gossip concerning our fall. In Scripture we are urged to be the third type, the one who bears the other’s burden!
David Simmonds - Sermon Central
Why would God go to all the trouble to endure our bad choices and our flagrant sinning in order to have relationship with us? Hear the story of the lost son from the modern setting as told by Philip Yancey in his book What’s so Amazing about Grace.
Yancey tells the story of a prodigal daughter who grows up in Traverse City, Michigan. Disgusted with her old fashioned parents who overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, the length of her skirts, she runs away. She ends up in Detroit where she meets a man who drives the biggest car she’s ever seen. The man with the big car – she calls him "Boss" – recognizes that since she’s underage, men would pay premium for her. So she goes to work for him. Things are good for a while. Life is good. But she gets sick for a few days, and it amazes her how quickly the boss turns mean. Before she knows it, she’s out on the street without a penny to her name. She still turns a couple of tricks a night, and all the money goes to support her drug habit.
One night while sleeping on the metal grates of the city, she began to feel less like a woman of the world and more like a little girl. She begins to whimper. "God, why did I leave. My dog back home eats better than I do now." She knows that more than anything in the world, she wants to go home. Three straight calls home get three straight connections with the answering machine. Finally she leaves a message. "Mom, dad, its me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, and it’ll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you’re not there, I’ll understand." During the seven hour bus ride, she’s preparing a speech for her father. And when the bus comes to a stop in the Traverse City station, the driver announces the fifteen-minute stop. Fifteen minutes to decide her life.
She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. But not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepares her for what she sees. There in the bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of forty brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and a great-grandmother to boot. They’re all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise-makers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads – Welcome Home!
Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She stares out through the tears quivering in her eyes and begins her memorized speech. He interrupts her. "Hush, child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. We’ll be late. A big party is waiting for you at home."
Grace needs to pervade all that we do.
Another thing that can deepen our fellowship and help our relationship. Is I
I am responsible for the relationships in this church and if all of us take that responsibility seriously we do well.
Listen how Paul takes on a deep personal concern for his fellow believers in Rome.
RO 1:8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. 9 God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you 10 in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.
Everything about Paul is focussed on the needs of his fellow believers and on his god.
If every one of us did this wow how much deeper would our relationships be.
The I stands for personal resposibility which we take towards each other and towards God.
Forthly - Thankfulness. Let’s go back to that passage - RO 1:8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, Paul is thankful for his fellow believers - he writes none of them off - where there are faults he is on his knees before God on their behalf.
Finally H - Holy Spirit.
Romans chapter one Paul points out how we have been saved by faith in a God who has rescued us from a fate that is worse than death:-
Verse 16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."
So moving on from that we move from our sinful state to our rescuer.
When we understand what we have been rescued from which is really the result of our sins we realise the character of our rescuer.
Jesus by His character is the complete opposite of ourselves.
Paul says of him verse 1 RO 1:1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God-- 2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3 regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 5 Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace
Jesus character is the complete opposite of ours - perfect and Holy -
So we find in our fellowship not only gratitude at being rescued from our sins but we also have a deep sense of gratitude and love for our rescuer Jesus Christ.
As our relationships meet on the level of humility at being rescued from our sinful selves and a sense of gratitude and awe for our rescuer Jesus Christ and we talk that way. Then you relate at a very different level to any other kind of relationship that you will find anywhere else.
There is a third factor that we can consider to be a unique part of Christian fellowship - Paul touches on it in verse 11.
RO 1:11 I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong-- 12 that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.
Here Paul refers to the imparting of some spiritual gift - to make the person strong that they may be mutually encouraged by each others faith.
The Holy spirit does that - and I often think that we underestimate the importance of the Holy Spirit in our interpersonal relationships.
In Galations chapter 5 we are informed about the fruits of the Spirit which really need to be well in place before we consider the gifts of the Spirit.
The gifts of the Spirit as listed are
GAL 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
The spirit of God is so different to the fallen human spirit that they are easily distinguishable.
Fear of the Lord - A healthy understanding of the wrath of God and the Love of God
Atmosphere of grace - As we both receive and scatter grace both from God and from and too each other the climate of Grace will grow in our church.
I - realising that I am responsible to God for my responses and that my responses can change me and affect those around me.
Thanksgiving - a climate of gratitude towards God and each other deepens fellowship.
Holy Spirit - Galations chapter 5 provides a helpful spiritual checklist as to whether I am
manifesting the character of God in my live.
