We've been spending our time in Luke's Gospel in our series called "Kingdom Come." And we're supposed to turn the page to Luke 9 today. And as I was working my way through Luke 9, there was a combination of I felt like there was a roadblock in trying to figure out where I was supposed to go with the sermon in Luke 9, but also just this nagging sense that I didn't think we were done with Luke 8. Specifically, I didn't think we were done with the woman who Jesus healed after 12 years of suffering.
Now for those of you who weren't here last week, last week we were finishing up Luke 8, and there's the episode where Jesus is on the path. He gets back in Galilee. The crowds are crushing in around Him. And a man comes up and says, "My daughter is sick. She's dying. Can You come help?" And so they set off. And while He's going, a woman makes her way through the crowd and she touches the hem of Jesus' garment. And she's immediately healed. But Luke gives us more details about who that woman is. He says— he doesn't tell us her name, doesn't tell us where she's from. He kind of defines her by a sickness that she's been suffering. And for 12 years, Luke says in 8:43, she'd had a discharge of blood. And though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone.
And I couldn't escape the reality that we touched on it last week, the nature of what that woman's sickness meant. Leviticus would have described and would have commanded that this woman separate herself from everyone in the community. In the Old Testament, in Jesus' day, Leviticus said that when a woman was menstruating, she had to be separated from the community. And anyone who came into contact with her was then declared unclean. Her husband would be declared unclean. Any clothes she wore, the bed she, she laid on, the house that she lived in, they all had to be cleansed. So for this woman, the implication is for 12 years she has been unclean. What does unclean mean? It means for 12 years she has been prohibited from stepping foot into the synagogue, into her version of the local church, to worship. For 12 years, the synagogue has said you aren't allowed to come worship God with God's people. And more than that, because she's perpetually bleeding, she's perpetually unclean, she's prohibited from coming into contact with anyone. And so for 12 years, she hasn't been able to marry. She hasn't been able to experience relationships or friendships. She hasn't been able to be a part of community.
Now part of what Luke is showing us there is this glimpse that she reaches out and she touches Jesus and he stops, "Power's gone out of me," right? And he says, "Your faith has made you well." Part of what Luke is showing us is this foretaste of what the good news of Jesus does. She touches Jesus and she's made well. Made clean. Jesus takes away her uncleanliness. Ultimately, Luke is going to show us he does that at the cross. He's going to take all of our uncleanliness, all of our sin, all of our rebellion, all of our brokenness on himself so he can make us clean. But for this woman, she gets the first foretaste of what the gospel does. Now, for the first time in over a decade, she can enter back into community.
And I think we need to sit there and settle there for a second. Luke has really two volumes to one work. You have the Gospel of Luke and then you have the book of Acts. And so if we fast forward this morning to Acts chapter 2, I think we see a bigger picture of what this woman is first starting to experience. That's where I want to spend our time this morning, in Acts chapter 2.
We read this. It probably has a little tag in my Bible that says, "The fellowship of the believers." So the church is in its infancy and this is what Luke describes. Hear God's holy and authoritative Word. Luke 2:42, "And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles." And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as they had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day. Those who were being saved.
6 · The pastor connects the woman's individual healing to the corporate fellowship of Acts 2, asserting that the gospel removes barriers and brings believers into full community
Luke 8 is a woman getting just a glimpse of that. Acts 2 is a whole swath of people who are getting a greater taste of it. What we do as we gather is meant to be an ongoing taste of the way The Gospel, coming into contact with Jesus, touching the hem of Jesus, if you will, is meant to bring us into community. To wipe away all the barriers that keep us from relationships, real relationships with other people, and allow us to experience fullness of spiritual life.
7 · The pastor defines koinonia (fellowship) as sharing a common life, and asserts that individual union with Christ necessarily produces communal implications
What I want us to see this morning is that our individual fellowship with Christ calls us into community with one another. The way we fellowship with Jesus, the way we're united with Jesus has implications for us as a body. Now fellowship comes from that Greek word koinonia. It gets translated as fellowship or partnership or participation. It literally has this idea that when you fellowship with someone, you're sharing your life with them. One commentator says, "The idea of fellowship connotates this image of sharing a common life with God's people."
8 · The pastor contrasts the woman's legal exclusion with the gospel's reversal, establishing that believers' common life in Christ is the source of their relationships with one another
So it's the exact opposite of what the woman in Luke 8 was experiencing. She was completely cut off from a common life with God's people. The law said she was prohibited from experiencing any relationships. But Jesus, as the perfection of the law, has come and reversed that. The biblical notion of community means that for those who are in Christ, we are called to a common life together. Now, the first thing we see in Acts is that we share that common life together in Jesus. We share a common life in Christ, and so our relationship with God is the source of our relationship with each other.
9 · The pastor uses the 2015 Royals playoff run as a cultural analogy for fellowship — a city united by a common passion and shared experience
You look around right now around Kansas City and everybody's wearing blue, right? Like, we even gave in. Like, we're from Minnesota and in my heart of hearts I'm a Twins fan and Hannah just said, "We gotta get Case a Royals shirt." Okay, and so we went and we got him a Royals shirt and so he's wearing blue like the rest of Kansas City. And so there's this sense where Kansas City is enjoying a notion of fellowship right now, right? I was joking with one of the guys, one of the dads at Kasey's soccer game. I would love to see the study that shows how much money is lost in just sheer decrease in productivity during the month of October as the Royals continue winning. Because if it's an afternoon game, ain't nobody working anywhere in the city. And if it's an evening game, you know, all morning all anyone's doing is sitting there around the water cooler talking about the game. I can't believe he sent him. I can't believe Cain went all the way from— you know, that's the kind of conversations. There's this fellowship.
10 · The pastor contrasts superficial cultural fellowship with the deep spiritual fellowship believers share through union with Christ
But that's not the kind of fellowship believers have. That's just like the tip of the iceberg. We have something that goes so much deeper than a common sports team that once every 25 or 30 years makes a run and reignites our passions. We share in Christ, and because we share in Christ, we're able to share together.
11 · The pastor unpacks union with Christ as the theological foundation for fellowship — believers are called into fellowship with Christ first, which makes them participants in His life, righteousness, and acceptance before the Father
Now, the uniqueness and power of believers living in communion with each other is only possible because of the uniqueness and the power of our union and our communion first with Jesus. 1 Corinthians 1:9 says, God is faithful. By whom you were called, called specifically into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. If we apply our definition of fellowship, this sharing of a common life, it brings this stunning sense of richness to what Paul is talking about. You have been called to share, to have a fellowship, to live a common life in Christ Jesus our Lord. And so all the benefits of Christ belong to us because we belong to Christ. We have a union with Him, this objective participation. We are in Christ, Paul likes to say. You belong to Him. You are a part of Him. You've been, I think it's helpful to think of, joined to Jesus. That's what happens when you get saved. You are joined to Jesus. You find participation with Him in His life and His approval before the Father. So because you're in Jesus, the reason why this lady all of a sudden gets to be clean— she gets healed because she touches Jesus, but it's this foretaste of the fact that as we get saved, we all come into contact with Jesus through faith, just like the woman in Luke 8. And for all of us, all of our uncleanness is gone. The reason the law has this whole stipulation that you can't come to worship if you're unclean isn't because in the Old Testament God just doesn't want people hanging out together in worship. It's because God is holy. And His people to come to worship Him have to be holy. And this woman can't come and worship. She can't gather with her neighbors and praise the Lord and hear teaching and hear the Scriptures read because she's not clean. Well, the reason why we get to sit here this morning isn't because you showered in the right way this morning. It's because we come in the name of Jesus. We come in Christ, and so the Father is happy to pour out grace upon grace in this room. The Father is happily disposed to pour out His Spirit upon us as His worshiping people because as He looks around this room, you know what He sees? He sees Jesus. That's a beautiful thing. That's a powerful thing. You've been joined to Jesus.
12 · The pastor clarifies that church membership is fundamentally about being members of Christ, not merely members of a local congregation, and that believers are spiritually essential parts of Him
That's a big part of what it means to be in the body of Christ. First and foremost, it's not that you're members of a church, it's that you're members of Christ, right? That's why being a part of the body of Christ is a big deal. Not because you're a part of Providence per se, but to be a member is to be a member of Jesus. We don't simply belong to Jesus though, as if he owns it, as if he owns us. We're actually made participants in Him. We are spiritually an essential part of Him. Now there's a whole sermon series we could preach just on that notion. We gotta leave that there on the cutting table.
13 · The pastor argues that communion with Christ — personal, affectionate knowing of Jesus — is the true goal, not community as an end in itself, and that the depth of our fellowship with God determines the depth of our fellowship with each other
That's the blessing of our union. It brings us into fellowship with the Lord. And for the bleeding woman, she's been cut off from that. No synagogue and no temple and no ability to gather with people corporately. There's this real sense of truncated communion in her life. In Christ, the temple is done away with though, and so we don't any longer go to encounter God's presence in the temple. Instead, we go to encounter God's presence in a person. We read from John 1 at the close of worship and song, right? That the Word became flesh. And what did it do? It dwelt among us. That word dwelt is the same Greek word that gets used to translate the word tabernacle in the Old Testament. Jesus has tabernacled among us. When we go to encounter God, we go to encounter Jesus. Communion with Christ is that aspect of our fellowship with God. When we commune with Christ, it means you're coming to God and as you commune, it's that part of your relationship where your soul is warmed, where your affections are stirred. Communion's about knowing Jesus. In the most personal and the most life-changing ways. It's the difference between a man knowing that a woman is his wife— we have a document that says we're husband and wife— and a man loving his wife and embracing his wife and longing to spend time with her. Now here's what else that means. It also means that community is not an end in and of itself. One of the tragic parts about the woman's story in Luke 8 is that she is cut off from community. But the best news that comes to her isn't the fact that she gets to reenter into community, is it? The best news is that she touches Jesus, she gets healed, he knows she's done it, he stops and says, "Who touched me?" And she comes trembling, Luke says. What's he gonna do? Your faith has made you well. He accepts her. Community is not the end goal. Communion with Jesus is. Good friend CJ Mahaney writes, the depth of our personal relationship with God determines the degree of fellowship possible with each other. And so in order to know true fellowship, one must maintain a passionate relationship with and experience of God.
14 · The pastor establishes that the fellowship of Acts 2 is fundamentally spiritual — enabled by the Spirit at Pentecost, undoing Babel's scattering, and uniting diverse people in a universal spiritual bond that transcends language and background
That's helpful for reminding us that's ultimately what we're striving for. Not a perpetual World Series run fellowship type relationship, but a holding to Jesus. And it also shows us that sharing a common life, this notion of community and fellowship that the woman in Luke 8 has been completely cut off from, that sharing of a common life happens spiritually. It happens for the body spiritually. Acts 2, as we fast forward and see what this woman is now starting to get the foretaste of and what's going to come to fulfillment when Jesus ascends into heaven and the Spirit falls, right, is that these people from all these different walks of life are now sharing and living together in Jesus. They're spiritually tied to each other. Pentecost is this description of all these Jewish people and God-fearers from all over the place coming back to Jerusalem for this festival. And they're all going to go home to different jobs and different places speaking different languages. That's half the miracle of Pentecost is these people don't even speak the same language. And yet when the Spirit falls, they can all understand what Peter's preaching. And that's all of a sudden this realization, this is something special happening here. It's this undoing of the curse of the Tower of Babel, the scattering of people in all these different languages. And suddenly now Peter, because of Jesus, they can understand and they can hear. And so these people from all these diverse backgrounds are being brought together and they're sharing in this universal spiritual fellowship. And immediately in Acts 2, they start to sense it's not just that we were gathered together to hear Peter preach, and now we've got Jesus, and now we just go back. No, we need to continue sharing together spiritually.
15 · The pastor connects the woman's newfound acceptance with the early church's devotion to the apostles' teaching, showing that spiritual fellowship involves gathering to hear Christ's teaching passed down by the apostles
The woman in Luke 8 gets this immediate foretaste of it. Her exclusion is finally over. Her faith has healed her. It's made her clean. For the first time in a decade, the crowd isn't going to recoil from her. The bleeding stopped. She's acceptable. We see this a little bit, I think, when we hear about in Acts 2, they're devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching. So essentially, they're devoting themselves to the apostles regurgitating for them everything that Jesus has taught them.
16 · The pastor uses the vine and branches metaphor to argue that believers must continuously abide in Christ, not episodically — just as the woman had to reach out in faith, we must continually cling to Jesus for spiritual sustenance
Right. And so certainly one of the things they're learning is this notion that Jesus has told them The fact that Jesus is the vine and they are all the branches, right? Jesus is the vine. You come for sustenance through Jesus. And we're all the branches. To remain healthy, you have to abide in Jesus. You've got to draw sustenance from Jesus, not just every once in a while. You don't just come and plug into Jesus. This isn't an outlet. This is organic. This is— you have to be connected. You have to be continuously sucking life out of Jesus. It's this ongoing picture of the woman, right? Reaching out in faith and touching the hem. And the power goes out. And Jesus says, it's not enough that you come do that once at the beginning of your faith journey, once a year, once a month, once a week when the church gathers. You have to come and reach out and touch Jesus. You have to, by faith, cling to the vine, and that's how you're sustained, and that's how you grow.
17 · The pastor argues that Acts 2 shows believers not just individually connected to Jesus but corporately — they attend temple together, break bread in homes together, and grip Jesus together, arms around one another
Verse 46 of Acts 2, though, captures the overlap between their devotion to hearing God's word and their commitment to being a spiritual community. He says, "And day by day, they attended the temple together, and they were breaking bread in their homes, and they received their food with glad and generous hearts." They don't just know they're all connected to the same vine, right? It's not this idea, "Hey, we're all connected to the same vine, part of the same body." They're expressing that reality every single day and how they live their lives. We are connected to Jesus. No, no, no. We're connected to Jesus together. We're going to temple together, and then we're going to each other's homes and breaking bread and discussing God's word together. We're living life. We're gripping Jesus together. I think that's where it can be helpful. We have this idea of Christ and the vine. It's this personal individual clinging to the vine. But a better image is that our arms are around each other and together with our arms around each other, we are clinging to the vine.
18 · The pastor argues that the gospel reverses the competitive individualism of Luke 8's crowd — the church is a community pressing each other toward Jesus, celebrating fellowship corporately in baptism and the Lord's Supper, which are spiritual necessities, not optional luxuries
It's like the reversal of Luke 8, right? In Luke 8, the crowd is pressing in around Jesus. Everyone selfishly wanting a piece of Him. And the woman has to like elbow her way through the crowd. Every person she elbows is being made unclean, just to reach out and grab him. Well, that's all now reversed in the Gospel. The church is a different kind of crowd, a different kind of crush. We're not pushing each other out of the way to get exclusive access to Jesus. We're pushing each other together, crushing each other towards the vine, pressing each other into Jesus. That's how the Gospel remakes our understanding of community. Paul argues our spiritual fellowship is this kind of communion. It's something we receive and we see and we display in the Lord's Supper and in baptism. In 1 Corinthians 10:16, he says, the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation, a koinonia, a sharing of a common life in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation, a sharing of a common life, a koinonia in the body of Christ? And then in 1 Corinthians 12:13, for in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. That's why you do baptism as a church, because it's a means of grace you celebrate corporately as God's people. You participate, you fellowship. We share the common life of baptism together. One person professing their faith in Christ to the gathered body, the gathered body expressing affirmation of their faith in Christ, welcoming them. Come on, crush into the vine with us. We come to the table as a church, as the body of believers. Individually taking the elements with one another to remind each other, to minister to one another, to come as a body and feast on Jesus and the grace He provides. J.I. Packer writes this: We should not think of our fellowship with other Christians as a spiritual luxury, an optional addition to the exercises of private devotion. I think that's the way a lot of Western American Christians think about it. It's kind of like a, that's a good addition. It's an à la carte menu. And if you want to grab that off the menu, that's okay. No, no, Packer says, we shouldn't think of it as a spiritual luxury. It's not an optional addition. We should recognize rather that such fellowship is a spiritual necessity. For God has made us in such a way that our fellowship with himself is fed by our fellowship with fellow Christians and requires to be so fed constantly for its own deepening and enrichment.
19 · The pastor applies the Luke 8 narrative pastorally, warning against Christians who touch Jesus for salvation but then live in self-imposed isolation from the church, forfeiting the blessing of community the woman desperately longed for
It's a tragic thing that I think many Christians are content to come to Jesus, to experience salvation in Christ, and then almost intentionally resign themselves to go living as if they're the woman in Luke 8 prior to touching Jesus. I don't need the church. I don't need the body. I don't need people around me. I don't need community. I don't need care. I don't need to serve and utilize my gifts for the common good. I'm just going to touch the hem and leave. If that woman 12 years cut off from relationships, could share her story with us, we would realize the enormity of the blessing we leave behind.
20 · The pastor highlights the intentionality of the word 'devoted' in Acts 2, emphasizing that fellowship is not accidental but requires passion and commitment
It's not, it's never a mistake, the language the Bible uses, right? But sometimes it's really important to look at how intentional they're using language. Luke very intentionally describes the early church as saying, They are devoted to these things together. They are devoted to feasting on the Word. They are devoted to prayer. And they are devoted to fellowship, to life together in community. They are devoted to this. It's a passion and a commitment.
21 · The pastor issues a direct charge that fellowship is a fight requiring pursuit, cultivation, prioritization, sacrifice, and intentionality — believers will not drift into it
I don't think it's wrong to say it's a fight. Community in some ways is a fight and a battle. You're not going to drift into fellowship. Won't happen. Life is too busy. You're not going to kind of slump or slough into it. You're not going to wander into it. Fellowship has to be pursued. It has to be cultivated. It has to be prioritized. You have to say there are other things on my schedule that are good things, But sometimes this has to win out in my schedule. Community, if we're devoted to it, takes sacrifice and it takes intentionality.
22 · The pastor shares a personal story of reluctantly attending care group when exhausted, discovering that even in mundane gatherings, the Spirit met him and encouraged him, proving that devotion and sacrifice in community yields spiritual fruit
I actually just shared this on Thursday night with our care group. A couple weeks ago we were having care group and we weren't able to line up childcare. And so Hannah and I were having the discussion like, who should go, who should stay? I'll just confess with you, there's a big part of my heart, I was tired and I was wiped out and I just kind of wanted to be like, why don't you go to care group and I'll get the kids in bed and then I can just watch Thursday Night Football. That was what was going on in my heart, I'll be honest. And we had the discussion, it was good, and she said, you know, you're going to be gone at the pastor's conference and so you're going to miss the men's meeting. I think it would be good if you probably went. Prioritize you going. Okay, you're right. And the drive over there though, I'm just thinking, man, I'm tired. This is not what I want to be doing. And yet Hannah, through the accountability she gave me, helped me recognize you need to go. And if you're going to be devoted to the people in this care group, it means sometimes you're going to need to go even when it's the last thing you want to do. And you know what happened? It wasn't like the world's greatest care group. It wasn't like the heavens opened up and like Derek was sharing and he was like glowing. It was like, whoa, man, could you imagine if I had missed that? You know, it was a pretty mundane care group. And yet by the end of it, it was so obvious. That even in the mundaneness of our meeting together, the Spirit had been there. And I walked away, and in several ways I was encouraged. Even in some tricky conversations we'd had to have in the midst of the meeting, I was encouraged, and I walked away sensing God's Spirit met me as I met with God's people. Well, who would have thought? When God promises you gather with his people, his Spirit will be there. It actually happens! But I had to be devoted, and I had to prioritize, and I had to sacrifice. And I'm not saying that to say, "Woohoo, Matthew!" My heart didn't want to. My wife gave me a kick in the pants and said, "You need to go."
23 · The pastor applies the principle of mutual dependence, asserting that believers need each other for spiritual health and must engage the Word together for encouragement, sharpening, and application
We need each other for our spiritual health. Biblical fellowship has undeniably spiritual dimensions. We need communion and intimacy with each other. We need to come to the Word together and sit under it together and devour it together and process it and discuss it and marvel at it and be sharpened and be encouraged by it and apply it together.
24 · The pastor argues from 1 Peter 2 that acceptable spiritual worship requires corporate gathering — believers are built together as a spiritual house, and churchless Christianity is a foundation without the structure God intends
Peter paints this beautiful picture in 1 Peter 2:4. As you come to him, so as you're coming to Jesus to commune with him, as you come to him, Jesus, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. As you come to Jesus, the stone, you yourselves as a community, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Part of what Peter is saying there is, you want to offer acceptable spiritual sacrifices to God? You don't get to do it in the me and Jesus alone version. It happens as you come together and are built up into a spiritual house. As you're built up into this spiritual house, the church, the temple, there in the temple, the body of God's people gathered together in the Spirit, there you can offer spiritual sacrifices pleasing to God. That's a helpful thought. My good friend, Rick Amash has a great saying. He says, churchless Christianity is a basement without a house. Churchless Christianity is a foundation. Jesus is there, but there's no house. You've got the foundation and you haven't done anything with it. That's a helpful thought.
25 · The pastor applies the necessity of spiritual fellowship to the church's mission of making disciples, arguing that maturing and multiplying disciples requires devotion to community
Spiritual fellowship is essential if we're going to be devoted to discipleship as we want to be as a body. We talk about the fact that we are a church on mission to make disciples. We want to make disciples. So we want to mature disciples, see them grow into Christlikeness, and we want to multiply disciples, see those who aren't disciples made into disciples so they can mature with us. Being devoted to discipleship means we have to be devoted to community and to spiritual fellowship.
26 · The pastor uses two analogies — fellowship as digestion (processing the Word together) and fellowship as embers (the Spirit blowing on our gathered hearts to reignite spiritual fire) — to illustrate the empowering nature of community
You think of it like this: if avoiding preaching and teaching of the Word is like going on a hunger strike, then avoiding spiritual fellowship, if we're practicing real spiritual fellowship, is like going on a digestion strike. That's what the church in Acts is doing. They're hearing the Word in the temple, and then they're gathering to process it and digest it. And to apply it, to go from being hearers to doers. It's really helpful for us. Together, fellowship empowers us. It helps us to take the Spirit as we gather in community and to blow on the embers of our hearts. You got a fire going, right, and it starts to go low and You blow, blow on the embers, and all of a sudden the fire stirs again. That's part of what fellowship is meant to do. You pile all those embers together because they're going to be hotter together. The one coal by itself is going to go out. You pile them together, and then in piling them together, the Spirit is there and the Spirit blows and the fire reignites. That's what our community is meant to do. 1 John 1:3 says, "What we have seen and heard we declare to you, so that we together may share in a common life, and that life which we share with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. If we claim to be sharing in His life while we walk in the dark, our words and our lives are a lie." But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, then we share together a common life, and we are being cleansed from every sin by the blood of Jesus his Son.
27 · The pastor signals the final structural movement of the sermon, from spiritual fellowship to relational fellowship
Final point this morning: sharing in a common life is sharing in a common life in Christ, it's sharing in a common life spiritually, and it's sharing in a common life relationally.
28 · The pastor establishes from Acts 2 that the church is fundamentally a relational people, living life together in community — the opposite of the woman's isolation in Luke 8
Acts 2, they are living life in community. It's the total opposite of what the woman's experiencing in Luke 8. What we see lived out immediately with the birth of the church is the realization we are joined together to be a relational people. They're living life together.
29 · The pastor shares a care group story where demographic diversity initially seemed like a relational obstacle, but the group realized that holding Christ in common is more significant than demographic homogeneity
We had a moment actually just to draw another analogy from our care group. We were sitting there and just kind of the recognition like, hey, why are we doing this? And Derek was leading us well and just asking, why are we coming together? And there was this really good moment where we just kind of recognized, you know, we're a little bit of an eclectic group. We've got some of the oldest folks in the church in our group. We've got newly marrieds in our group. We don't have like one demographic that defines our group. We're not together because we're this single demographic and that's why we're gathered together in community. And on the face of it, that can look like it's going to be a relational challenge. It's going to be an inhibition to us, it's going to inhibit us from actually pursuing relationships. But there was this really sweet moment where, as we're sitting there with Paul and Vera and Sadie and Obadiah, and we're talking about it, we just said, you know, we have an opportunity in our group to show that the gospel is bigger than our demographics. The gospel is more significant for us relationally The fact that we hold Christ in common matters more than the fact that we all don't want to come together and talk about football, or we're all not reading the same book. But we have Jesus together. And there was this really sweet moment where Sadie kind of perked up and just said, I think it's really cool, and I think it's really awesome, and I'm excited about our group and what we can get as a group.
30 · The pastor argues that demographic diversity in the church is not a liability but a gift, mirroring the Spirit-wrought diversity of Acts 2, and that such diversity requires loyalty and effort to sustain
And that's so true for us. I don't want our church to be demographically homogenous. Everybody has the same kind of job. Everybody went to the same school. Everybody is the exact same person. They all do the exact same thing on Monday night. It's okay that we have diversity. It's more than okay. It's really, really good. You know what Acts 2 was? A bunch of crazy Spirit-wrought diversity, a bunch of people who would have never been hanging out together except the Holy Spirit fell on their Pentecost celebration and sucked them together. And in Jesus, they now have community. Chesterton says, "We are all in the same boat in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty." That's helpful. It's helpful and I think it drives home community takes effort.
31 · The pastor commends care groups for eating meals together as a relational practice that builds community and bears fruit, encouraging the congregation to prioritize this kind of intentional fellowship
One of the things I love as I'm talking to our care group leaders is care group after care group, the Luffman group has been doing this for a long time, they're consistently coming together and eating a meal and springboarding into their time together. But now our other care groups are starting to pull in and saying, Hey, at least once a month, we're either going to go into each other's homes and eat, or we're going to eat on the front end of a meeting. There's that real sense of we want to not just meet together to check it off the list. We want to build relationally. We want to break bread around the table together. That's a beautiful thing that will bear relational fruit.
32 · The pastor exposits Romans 12:5 to show that believers are members of one another in Christ, which requires active engagement in using spiritual gifts for the common good
In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul speaks about the way we are called to hang together relationally. In Romans 12:5, he says, "So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another." And then Paul immediately makes application for how the church lives that out. A body practicing fellowship is one where the members are actively engaged in using their gifts so they can share this common life together.
33 · The pastor argues that isolation from the body was unthinkable in the early church because they were a suffering people who needed each other, and Western Christians deceive themselves by assuming they don't need the body because their hardships are less visible
Paul goes even further though when he says to be a Christian means to be part of a loving community. It's nonsensical for Paul to imagine the early church that someone would participate in corporate worship and then ignore or disparage participating with the body. And part of that is because the early church is a suffering church. You go and ask Pharisees, do they have any notion in Pakistan that you're going to come to know Jesus and you're going to worship and then you're going to want nothing to know with the rest of the body? No, because life is hard as a Christian in Pakistan. You need the body. You need the body of Christ. And we fool ourselves into thinking we don't need it here because the hardships just aren't quite as obvious.
34 · The pastor links the devotion language of Acts 2 to Paul's commands in Romans 12, showing that relational devotion is the outworking of spiritual fellowship
So we're called to be devoted to one another, Paul says in Romans 12. Does that sound familiar from Acts 2? You're called to be devoted to one another, to honor one another, to share with God's people, to rejoice and mourn together. That's really, really helpful.
35 · The pastor steps out of the expositional flow to address the congregation pastorally, acknowledging that community is messy because the church is composed of recovering sinners
Now, having said all that, I want to recognize part of what makes community tricky is that it can get really messy. Community isn't easy. It doesn't just happen. And when you get a bunch of diverse people in the same room, there's bound to be bumps in the road. In fact, the very nature of the church, right, is it's a bunch of people who are recovering sinners. And so by the very nature of community, if it's community with a bunch of recovering sinners, things are going to be hard. Things are going to be tricky. It's bound to happen.
36 · The pastor asserts that the defining mark of the New Testament church is a love significant enough to overcome relational difficulties and persevere in community
But the Bible says, Scripture says that one of the things that defines the New Testament church in their community is that there is this love that is able to overcome all of the road bumps, all of the speed bumps, all of the difficulties. And this love isn't just this superficial thing, it's this significant thing. And so the New Testament church is able to persevere in community.
37 · The pastor corrects romanticized notions of Acts 2 by pointing to Galatians and 1 Corinthians, showing that even the New Testament church experienced relational mess and conflict
We can have this idea of Acts 2 and it's like, man, I wish we were just at Acts 2, perpetual kumbaya sort of thing, right? Well, keep reading your New Testament, man, because you're going to come to Galatians. And Paul doesn't say a lot of flowery things at the start of the letter of Galatians. "Who has bewitched you?" You read the letter to the church in Corinth. Man, talk about a messy community. When they come to celebrate the Lord's Supper, they can't share the bread appropriately. Community gets messy.
38 · The pastor pastorally prepares the congregation for inevitable relational failures in the church — offense, disappointment, sin — acknowledging that even leaders will fail
Dave had a great point last week during announcements. He just said, you know, in community you're gonna get offended. Hopefully it's unintentionally. And that happens. More than that, people will let you down. In a community of recovering sinners, you're probably even going to be sinned against. Eventually. That's what happens when reforming sinners start to hang out with each other. And as your elders, if we haven't already, I'm sure we've let some of you down at some point. There is a day coming, not because we have bad care group leaders, I think we have great care group leaders, but there's a day coming when your care group leader will drop the ball, right? There is a day coming when your husband or wife, if you're married, is going to screw up, is going to sin against you, or there's just going to be miscommunication.
39 · The pastor applies the marriage analogy to church community, calling believers to persevere and recommit when relational failures occur rather than give up
But it doesn't mean you give up on the marriage. It means you redevote yourself and you recommit yourself. I want us to have that sense of perseverance in community.
40 · The pastor argues that relational failures are gospel opportunities — occasions to extend grace, humble ourselves, pursue forgiveness, and display the depth of Christ's love
Now, I say that not to emphasize that we should just accept things as the way they are, Not that at all. When we fail others or we sin against others, those are opportunities ripe for the gospel. It will happen. It probably happened last week. It will probably happen this week. But it's an opportunity to extend grace. It's an opportunity to humble ourselves and to pursue forgiveness, to ask. How can I grow? I don't think I understand. How did I wrong you? Can you explain it to me? And I think it's there in the midst of those failures and relational missteps. It's there because we're not going to be a perfect community. That doesn't happen until the end of the story when Jesus comes back. It's there that we get to display the actual depth of our love for each other.
41 · The pastor asserts that Jesus expected trouble in community, not trouble-free existence, and that relational difficulties are opportunities to display the depth of Christ's love
When Jesus calls us into community, calls us to be this loving fellowship, he's not imagining trouble-free existence. In this world you will have trouble, he says, and some of that trouble is going to happen when you're gathered with the rest of the people in Christ. But as those hard things happen, it's an opportunity for us to show how deep the love of Christ goes.
42 · The pastor illustrates gospel-powered reconciliation with the story of Paul and Mark's broken missionary partnership being restored by the end of Paul's life
The great example is Paul and Mark, right? Paul and Mark, they're initially partners in missions work. These are missionary partners. And there's this rupture that happens relationally. This rupture happens and there's a lack of reconciliation and Paul wants nothing to do with Mark and I don't know if it's vice versa, but the relationship's broken. But at the end of his life, what does Paul say? That Mark has been a great encouragement. Somewhere along the line, there's been a restoration of relationship, and that's what the gospel can do.
43 · The pastor calls believers to pursue deep, gospel-powered love that hopes for relational restoration, illustrated by a woman who waited 15-20 years for her husband's restoration, and grounded in the eschatological promise that Christ will make all relationships right
The gospel offers us, in the context of the community, to hope and to believe that even as there's missteps and relational difficulties, in our commonality in Jesus, we can extend grace. And we can extend forgiveness, and we can overlook a wrong. I know of a woman who, previous church I attended, who was divorced from her husband. She divorced him for very biblical reasons, but she never remarried. This is like 15, 20 years later, and the pastor just talked about The incredible reason she didn't remarry was because for 15, 20 years, even though she had biblical grounds to remarry because of the reason that they had gotten divorced, she was holding out hope that the gospel could restore her husband and restore her marriage. That's incredible. I want us to pursue that kind of depth of love and fellowship with each other. Maybe it's a Paul and Mark, and it's gonna happen, and then we're gonna celebrate the encouragement we have with one another. Maybe it's that woman and it's still waiting. But what the gospel promises us is that when Jesus comes back, everything will be restored and every relationship will be made right. And that's a sweet, sweet promise.
44 · The pastor reads John 13:33-35, grounding the sermon's call to love in Christ's new commandment to love one another as He has loved us — the mark that identifies His disciples
John 13:33, "Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, where I am going you cannot come. 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, and by this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
45 · The pastor closes in prayer, asking God to increase the congregation's desire for fellowship, deepen their love, fortify their faith through relational difficulties, and fix their hope on the day when Christ returns and makes all relationships right
Would you bow your heads? Father, you display your great love for us in your Son Jesus. You show us the great love that you have for people who are rebels, Lord, for people who don't love you as they should have. Lord, the great news of the gospel, the great display of love for us is that while we were still sinners, you sent Jesus to die for us. That is the very definition of love. Father, we want to be a body, a community that pursues fellowship. We want to be a body that pursues communion with your Son Jesus, with you, the triune God, together. So Lord, I ask that through your word and through your Spirit, you would increase our desire for community and fellowship. And Lord, I pray that in Jesus you would pour out exactly what you promised to do, that you would pour out grace upon grace. Clothe our community in the gospel. Deepen and increase our love. And Lord, I pray that you would fortify our faith, that even in relational difficulties, even when relationships go through hard patches, we would see and believe that there is a day coming when your Son Jesus returns, when every relationship will be made right. Lord, we hope in that day. We live for that day. Come, Lord Jesus. In your name we pray. Amen.
46 · The pastor issues the call to worship, transitioning from preaching to corporate praise
Stand and worship.