Enjoy Jesus Through His People

Two weekends ago, my wife and I were in Boise, Idaho, visiting with our longtime friends Andrew and Sara. We hadn’t spent extended time like this with them in years. They love Jesus; they are ministering to college students on the campus of Boise State. Andrew is a pastor-elder at a wonderful church there in Boise.

And over the course of the weekend, after a very long, hard winter in Minnesota, my wife and I got to experience how fellow believers in Jesus, who have the Holy Spirit, can be such amazing instruments of God in refreshing our souls.

It brought to life for me how Paul talks several times about fellow Christians refreshing the souls of each other:

[I pray] that by God’s will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company. (Romans 15:32)

I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have made up for your absence, for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. (1 Corinthians 16:17–18)

Besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all. (2 Corinthians 7:13)

I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you. . . . I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ. (Philemon 7, 20)

This language of “refreshment” is the same Jesus uses when he says in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest [refreshment].” Which I take to mean that one of the ways that Jesus refreshes (gives rest to) our souls in him is through fellow believers who are also in him.

My question for us this morning is this: How significant is this “refreshing”? Are fellow believers icing on the cake of Christianity? Or might “fellowship” be one of the essential ingredients in a healthy, thriving Christian life? I think it’s the latter, and I want to help convince you of that in these few minutes that you might be more vigilant and experience more joy.

God’s Matrix of Grace

I’m coming here at the end of your series on spiritual disciplines, and I get the joy of celebrating what may be the most often overlooked major category of God’s “means of grace” for the Christian life.

“Means of grace” is the way Protestants have long talked about spiritual disciplines (until the last couple generations). And we often think of Bible habits and prayer habits as spiritual disciplines, but my experience has been that we often overlook what powerful and precious means of grace we are to each other in Christ — that is, people as God’s means of grace.

In Acts 2:42, in this great honeymoon moment after Pentecost and before the persecutions begin, Luke gives us this little window into the ordinary, unspectacular everyday habits in which the early church engaged and through which God was pleased to do the extraordinary and spectacular:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching [word] and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Perhaps my favorite quote outside the Bible on these “means of grace” (and their importance) is from J.C. Ryle (1816–1900):

The “means of grace” are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in Church, wherein one hears the Word taught and participates in the Lord’s Supper. I lay it down as a simple matter of fact that no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make much progress in sanctification. I can find no record of any eminent saint who ever neglected them. They are appointed channels through which the Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul and strengthens the work which He has begun in the inward man. . . . Our God is a God who works by means, and He will never bless the soul of that man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them. (Holiness, 26)

My way of summarizing these means, which are God’s matrix of grace for the survival and thriving of our souls, is in three parts:

• Hear God’s voice (in his word).
  
• Have his ear (in prayer).
  
• Belong to his body (in covenant fellowship).
  

What Is Fellowship?

The Greek word koinonia means the commonality — the common thing, what we have in common, what we share. In the world, a fellowship involves some mission with every fellow having skin in the game. In the church, our fellowship begins with God himself: God, his Son, his cross, his grace are our commonalities. That’s what we share in. We share in Jesus, which is so much more significant than sharing the same college, colors, mascot, and fight song.

Here’s a question for you: Does your heart thrill more to see someone at the mall or in an airport wearing a cross or the name of Jesus, or to see someone wearing the name of your college football team?

God himself in Christ is who we have in common in this fellowship called the church. The tie that binds our hearts is Jesus and his blood. We are sinners, saved by the grace of Jesus Christ. How imponderable would it be for us to not love each other (far more than fellow football fans!).

Christian fellowship is not watching a game together as much as huddling together on the field to run the next play. The fellowship of the saints and the thickness of communal life is often implicit in the New Testament, but we’ll see a few texts that make it explicit. (Well did Tolkien call the mission to Mount Doom a fellowship of the Ring.)

We live in different times socially than they did two thousand years ago. They lived much more communally. Relationships were naturally far thicker. It was taken for granted that fellow humans were vital for life and spiritual life — vital for survival, health, thriving, and flourishing. The New Testament letters were written to churches (fellowships) to receive and practice together.

But today we live in times of “expressive individualism.” Our social fabric is quickly thinning, as Robert Putnam famously observed 25 years ago in the book Bowling Alone. The texture of modern life is making fellowship harder, not easier. And our technology typically works against it.

But considering fellowship as a means of God’s grace means that life, health, and persistence in Christian faith are a community project. Our hearts harden and our faith fails as we distance ourselves from the fellowship of Christ’s people. But when we lean in, God makes us means of his grace to each other in the covenant fellowship of the local church.

Four Calls to Christian Fellowship

I have one brief main text for us to focus on this morning, and through it we will draw in a couple others. This is Hebrews 10:23–25:

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope [in Jesus] without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And [not only hold fast yourself but also] let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Verse 23 is for context and footing. Regarding context, the writer of Hebrews is exhorting his readers to hold fast to Jesus and not waver, drift, or fall away to other things.

“Christian fellowship is not watching a game together as much as huddling together on the field to run the next play.”

Regarding the footing, the point is that God is faithful. He’s the decisive Actor. He’s the backstop. We pursue our call, leaning on him as the one who is faithful. And the link is Hebrews 10:24–25. So, how is it that God holds us in Jesus, keeps us in the faith? Hebrews says, in part: through each other.

So, to that end, I’d like to draw out four charges for you related to the often-overlooked means of grace in fellowship.

1. Get to know particular people in this room.

The first part of verse 24 says, “Let us consider . . . one another to . . .” There is actually no how in the original. Literally, it says, “Let us consider one another.” The object and focus of our consideration is each other — our fellows in Christ.

To consider (katanoeō) means to contemplate, notice, ponder, or think hard. In other words, get to know people. Say hi; ask for their name, work, address, and testimony. Get curious about each other, as humans and Christians. Learn people’s strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes. Cultivate friendships, especially in this room.

This is first a call to seek relationships and community. Pursue uncomfortably thick relationships and inconvenient community. Then, we are called to a deep considerateness (not a shallow considerateness). Get to know each other as family in Christ.

2. Learn to push those people well.

Hebrews 10:24 says we should “stir up one another to love and good works.” Stir up means to provoke, but this is a provoking to love and good deeds (not anger and hatred). So, knowing your brother or sister, provoke him or her to love and good deeds.

We should be pushing each other toward love. John 13:34–35 says,

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

Love one another in two senses. First, in love for your brother, provoke him to love and deeds that help others. We provoke the heart and the hands, but the heart first and most importantly.

Second, from that, the fellowship as a whole becomes the recipient and catalyst of love and good deeds.

In learning to push each other and open ourselves up to being pushed, we will be countercultural today. Instead of just informing, we are also seeking counsel. We offer counsel and ask for counsel. Christian fellowship is a two-way street.

3. Major on the magic of words.

The first part of Hebrews 10:25 says, “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.”

There are two parts here, the negative and the positive: first, not neglecting; and second, encouraging (parakaleō). It also mentions the assembly (meeting together), but we’ll come back to that.

How do we not neglect meeting together? Just showing up can be the real battle sometimes, especially when church life is not based on family of origin or living in the same neighborhood or having the same job or participating in the same hobbies but having the same Jesus, the same Spirit, and the same God and Father.

If we don’t show up, if we neglect the fellowship, we can’t cultivate regularity of relationship and get to know each other and push each other as individuals and not just general humanity.

And then we use helping words for their joy and everlasting good in Christ in the ups and downs of life. Christian fellowship is word-centered fellowship. I say “helping words” (speaking grace!) because that word for encouraging in Hebrews 10:25 is the same one for “exhorting” in the sister passage, Hebrews 3:12–13:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort [parakaleō] one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Helping words

Five quick observations on Hebrews 3:12–13:

First, the stakes. He says people can “fall away from the living God.” Eternity is at stake. This is not icing on the cake; this is essential for Christian life and health.

Second, the word today is a call for regular vigilance and attentiveness — both daily and weekly.

Third, we are our brothers’ keepers. The many watch out for any so that none may perish. Take action against the incrementalism of unbelief.

Fourth, and mainly, observe the power of our words in Christian persistence. We “exhort” to treat an “evil, unbelieving heart.” Preempt hardening. Put grace into the heart through the ear. Oh, the centrality of words in fellowship and Christianity! We don’t coerce behavior from the outside; we aim to change hearts on the inside. How? Through the Holy Spirit, yes. And what does the Spirit work with? Words. If you want the Spirit of God involved, get the word of God involved.

Fifth, be God’s voice to your brother, and hear God’s voice in your brother’s. Our words to each other are so important in church life:

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. (Ephesians 4:29)

In fellowship, we receive grace and give grace. Fellowship, as an irreplaceable means of grace in the Christian life, offers us two priceless joys: receiving God’s grace through the helping words of others and giving his grace to others through our own helping words.

The assembly

What about “the assembly” (meeting together)? Here’s a word about corporate worship. Like no other single habit, corporate worship combines all three essential principles of God’s ongoing supply of grace for the Christian life: God’s word, prayer, and fellowship. You were made for Sunday mornings. And also Monday to Saturday. But God made you to consciously focus on him in an assembly of fellow worshipers, and enjoy his majesty and grace and power on display in his Son by the power of his Spirit.

So, in corporate worship, like no other time,

• We hear from God in the pastor’s call to worship, in the reading of Scripture, in the faithful preaching of the gospel, in the words of institution at the table, and in the commission to be lights and his witnesses in the world.
  
• We respond to God in prayer, in confession, in singing, in thanksgiving, in recitation, in petitions, and in receiving the elements in faith.
  
• And in corporate worship, we do it all together as fellows in Christ.
  

Before and after the gathering, we flood each other with helping words in the context of spiritual conversation.

What kind of questions might we ask each other in those precious moments of brief conversation before and after the service?

• How can I pray for you?
  
• Has God been teaching you anything in particular this week?
  
• How did the sermon land on you this morning?
  
• How do you see God at work in our church right now?
  

Push past small talk to spiritual conversation about the soul, the Spirit, and Christ’s grace.

4. Hold even faster as you get older.

This is the last part of Hebrews 10:25: “and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

“All the more” means increasing, not decreasing. As the end draws near, let it be all the more. As you age, let it be all the more. There’s no “all the less” in the Christian life; it’s all the more.

And this gets harder as you age. We can experience the “friendship dip” of middle age. My charge to myself and to my peers and older is this: Don’t let it go. Don’t let it slip. Thick, deep Christian fellowship doesn’t just happen overnight. You’ll awake one day to realize you don’t have it, and it will take not days and weeks but months and years to rebuild it. Hold onto it; it’s precious!

End of the Means

Let’s end with this: I spoke at the beginning of fellowship being an essential means of God’s grace. What is the end of these means? Means have an end. What’s the end of our engaging in God’s means? Whether we’re talking God’s word, or prayer, or fellowship, I close with two texts that get right to the heart of the end of the means:

This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:3)

Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. (Philippians 3:7–8)

Knowing and enjoying Jesus is the end, the goal. And as J.I. Packer said, “The more strongly one desires an end, the more carefully and diligently one will use the means to it” (Honouring the People of God, 274).

You were made to know and enjoy Jesus. And here’s the surprise for many Christians: You need fellow Christians to know and enjoy Jesus more. We expect Bible. We expect prayer. Most of us don’t expect fellow Christians. Which is why it’s so vital that we not neglect meeting together as is the habit of some, but use the magic of helping words to energize each other — and all the more as the Day approaches.