Encounter - Encountering God Through Fellowship

You can open your Bibles to Acts, chapter 2, and we're going to be again one more time in Acts 2.42-47.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

We're in the middle of a series where we're talking about what the early church devoted themselves to in order to encounter the presence of God.

And all of us should have a desire to encounter God in ever-increasing ways, and this is what the early church did.

They practiced these things and the grace of God was made available to them so that they could encounter God in special ways.

Last week, pastor Kelly did a great job.

If you remember the hand that he used as an illustration, let's put that back up on the screen and you can see it.

So how are we supposed to interact with the Word of God?

We're supposed to hear it, read it, study it, memorize it and meditate on it.

And if we do those things, guess what?

God meets us.

He encounters us as we study the Scriptures and all of the other aspects of relating to God through the Scriptures.

Today I have the privilege of taking the next message on the grace encounter of God that we get, and it's called Encountering God Through Fellowship.

Encountering God Through Fellowship.

So let's look at Acts, chapter 2, verses 42-47.

Acts 2:42–47

And they devoted themselves to the apostles, teaching and the fellowship.

If you write in your Bible, if you want to underline that or circle it, star it, or you can make a note on your tablet or phone, whatever you're using 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 any 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 of the people, and the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved.

Let's pray together.

In the name of Jesus.

I thank you for your word.

That is absolutely true.

And, father, I pray that you would cause us today to have the capacity to be able to receive your word and that it would go deep into our hearts, that you would prepare our hearts even now to be good soil that the word of God can be planted in.

And then, holy Spirit, would you water this word and cause it to grow and produce the harvest that you desire in our own lives, but also to the benefit of those around us.

Father, I pray that you would open our eyes so that we might see clearly the things that are hindering us from walking and right fellowship and relationship with you and with others.

Open our ears to hear clearly your truth that will make us free and we give you glory for it in Jesus' name, amen.

So anyone who knows me really well knows that I'm not a huge fan of sci-fi or fantasy movies.

Okay, so when I mentioned this in another service and I asked how many of them were fans of sci-fi or fantasy, I'd say 75 to 80 percent of the hands went up.

So I guess I'll try that again.

So how many of you in this room are fans of fantasy or sci-fi type movies?

Okay, a little less, a little less.

So I don't know if that's just because you're feeling bad for me, so you're like wanting to help me to feel some, you know, some connection or something.

That's great.

I did have a strange thought this week, though.

I thought what if there was an actual zombie apocalypse?

And again, I'm not kidding, like I actually had this thought what if there was an actual zombie.

Now, again, I want to make it clear for those of us watching online or for our first time guests I do not believe in zombies.

Okay, yeah, I heard all the gasps in the room.

I don't believe in zombies.

I do believe in demons and other things, but we won't get into that today.

Just send a message for another time, okay?

So if there were a zombie apocalypse and I thought about if they were to interact with our society, how strange would it be for them, how different would they experience it, how different would their experience be from their own experience?

And then I kind of had another picture, if you can imagine.

They show up here on earth and they see a bunch of people dressed in pajamas walking around with a strange glow on their face from their tablets and their phones and their iPads and all of the different things that they're looking into.

And then they would hear us talking in code like OMG, lol, r-o-f-l, a-s-e-r-e emoji meme.

You know, I mean they did all of those things and the question that I had is would it really be that much different?

And, by the way, when I say all those things, I'm talking about the grandmas and the grandpas in the room, because you know all of you have done something like that before.

Maybe not the pajamas and Walmart, but you've walked around talking to your phone or to your iPad.

By the way, I would recommend that, if you do talk to your phone and before you send that text, proofread it.

Okay, I don't know what autocorrect is doing, but in my world, satan tries to get into my autocorrect from time to time, so make sure you read that text a couple of times before you send it.

So, anyway, long story short, kind of a silly intro to what I'm going to talk about today, but maybe it wouldn't be that strange for them, right?

My point is that, in some ways, technology helps us to remain connected, right?

Like, how many friends do you have on Facebook or I don't know what they call the Instagrammers and the?

It's not tweet anymore, so the X, whatever.

How many people do you have that are part of your circle of people that you would call friends or connection points or whatever the case is?

And then the second question is are you receiving everything that you need from a community standpoint, from those engagements, from those connection points?

Have you noticed how difficult it is in our world today to have a conversation with people.

Am I the only one Like you just start talking about something and within three to four minutes or less, you find that you don't have anything else to say and the other person's looking around like how can I get out of this?

Their eyes are glassing over.

You know you're talking to young people and I love young people, but they're so the attention span has gotten so diminished, right, that it's like, unless you do something completely crazy, they're not even listening to you any longer.

It's it's sometimes the things that we consider convenience and improvements and technological advance advancements are actually, in some ways, diminishing the things that we really need in our lives.

We actually need FaceTime, and I'm not talking about over screen, I'm talking about face to face.

We need to be able to have conversations where we speak about truth with each other, where we hold each other accountable, where we share the joys of life and the sorrows of life.

All of those things are very hard to communicate through an emoji, right, and so that's what I really want to focus on here today how can we make sure that we are living our lives in such a way that our relationships are real, and with God, first of all, and then with each other in such a way that the world around us recognizes there's something different about those people and I want it.

I want whatever it is that they have.

So in order to do that, let's go back in time together.

I do believe in time travel.

That's a joke.

That's a joke.

I don't believe in time travel unless you're Jesus or Moses or Elijah, okay, but I don't believe in time travel.

But if we could, metaphorically, just for a minute, let's imagine back to the day that Adam was created.

So God, the Father, god the Son, god, the Spirit decide that they're going to make a person, they're gonna make a man, and so they form him out of the dust of the ground, and then it says that they breathe into his nostrils the breath of life and he became a living creature.

Imagine what it must have been for Adam when he first opened his eyes, was able to recognize what was going on around him.

Relationship with God was normal.

It was his first experience.

It was so close that he could literally reach out and touch and hear and experience who God is in such a powerful, practical, personal way.

That's the way that God created him to be in relationship.

That's why he created mankind.

It's not like God was sitting around heaven bored and so he came up with a project, right?

No, in fact.

If you go back a little further, you know that the Father, the Son and the Spirit, the Trinity, were involved in creation and they said to themselves let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

God decided to do that, and so he started with man.

He started with Adam and he breathed into him life and he became alive and he began to walk and talk with God and experience relationship with him.

God gave him tasks, he gave him one rule, which we'll talk about later.

We maybe won't even talk about the one rule, right, but he encountered God in such a it was so natural, so normal.

You see, we were made by God to relate to God and to relate like God.

We were made to relate to God and to relate like God.

That's how he made us, that's how it created us and that's we have to know that.

That's part of the DNA, the spiritual DNA, whatever you want to call it.

The fingerprints of God are on us in this way.

He's put it in us, he's programmed us in the right way to be able to relate to him and to relate to each other.

And if you read on in the creation story, it says and we know that the first, not good of creation was declared by God when he said it is not good that the man should be alone.

I will make a helper for him it is not good that man should be alone.

Now, a lot of the men in this room missed a huge opportunity in that moment to say a word that might help you for the rest of your life, or at least for the next week.

What would you say to the, to the saying of God it's not good that man should be alone.

All right, thank you, just trying to help you out.

Just want to remind you also February 14th is Valentine's Day.

That's coming soon, all right.

So Adam and Eve came together.

God brought them together, ordained marriage and he began to.

They began to experience life the way that God intended for it to be experienced, so they had proper relationship with each other and they had proper relationship with God.

In fact, it says that God walked and talked with them in the cool of the day, and again, I would just love to be able to somehow be.

You know something in creation that could have just been there to observe what was going on, to experience this great connection point between God and the creation that he had made.

This is the kind of relationship that God intends for his children to have with him and with each other.

Again, this is his design, this is his order First of all, vertical fellowship with God, like this, that is right and pure and holy, and then horizontal relationship and fellowship with others.

That is a part of God, those that are part of God's creation.

God intends for us to have that.

Can you imagine, can you think of any kind of icon, any kind of visual, any kind of image that you could get in your head that would remind you of the vertical nature and the horizontal nature of fellowship?

How about the cross of Jesus Christ, in which he made a way, with his father, for us to be made right with God and to be made right with each other?

That's powerful.

These words are true, but how many of you know that we have opposition?

We have opposition, yes or no?

Yes, absolutely we have opposition, and we know that.

That Satan comes to steal, to kill and to destroy.

We're gonna get back to the story in just a minute, but I want to tell you that the early church was devoted to the fellowship.

That's what it's talking about in this passage.

The word fellowship Kelly kind of gave a precursor on this.

It's called Koinonia.

That's the Greek word for fellowship, koinonia, and it means it's the close association between people, emphasizing what is common between them fellowship, participation, common sharing in, contribution, partnership with and the outcome of such close relationships.

That's a powerful word.

It includes a lot of different things and there are a lot of English words and a lot of scriptures in the New Testament that use the word Koinonia and in English tries its best to try to describe what it means.

And so we're gonna, by God's grace, we're going to really be defining this and laying it out for each of us today so that we can understand what God has intended and how to walk in this kind of relationship.

But before we continue to bask in this good news, let's go back to our story again and talk about the fact that in the garden, lucifer Satan came and he worked hard to try to undo anything that God had done.

Remember, satan is not a creator.

All that he can do is attempt to pervert or twist or lie or scheme and try to get us to doubt God, to try to get us to move away from God's intent or his purpose.

That's all that he can do.

And so he did that with this first family, with Adam and with Eve.

Right, and you can go around and play the blame game.

They did right, because after they sinned and they realized that they had sinned and God showed up, what did Adam say?

Whose fault was it?

It's the woman you gave me.

Now I know that none of the men in this room have ever said to God or anybody else it's that woman you gave me.

And I know none of the women in the room have said about their men that it's that man that you gave me.

But maybe we haven't used those words.

But do we sometimes express things that are similar to that?

Right, the blame game is Satan's best weapon and humanity does it better than anybody else.

Well, anything else right.

We are good at blaming everybody else for things that we're involved with, with sin that we are involved with.

So in the garden, you see, the Satan hates anything that God does.

He hates his divine order, and so he attacks God's divine order to bring chaos and division among between God and the people of God, between people and people, between God and people and between people and people.

You flip the page again to the next story, the next page, and guess what happens?

Adam and Eve's children, their two sons, cain and Abel.

Cain is jealous of Abel's relationship, his vertical relationship and fellowship with God.

And so what does he do?

He strikes him and he kills him, kills him.

The first murder ever committed in this planet happened between Adam and Eve's sons.

And on and on the story goes.

You see, sin and I used that word sin is the biggest hindrance to encountering God through fellowship.

Sin is the biggest hindrance to encountering God through fellowship.

We can't get away from it.

I wish that I could find some other way to say it that would tickle your ears or that you would feel good about, but I have to be honest.

We have to start with the bad news first.

I've chosen to do that.

I've loaded heavy the beginning of this message with all of the bad news and we will get to the good news, I promise you.

But we must understand and remember the state of which we find ourselves, outside of relationship, proper relationship, with God.

You see, our own personal sin is often rooted in pride and selfishness.

It's whatever is best for me, whatever I can gain, whatever I can get, whatever I want, I, I, I.

It's pride and selfishness.

James, chapter four, verses one through three, describes this very powerfully.

He says what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you and you would think he's talking to heathen people, he's talking to the church.

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

Is it not this?

That your passions are at war within you.

You desire and do not have, so you murder, you covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

You do not have because you do not ask.

You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your own passions.

This is a problem.

Sin is a problem.

It's a problem in our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationship with other people.

Sin is the issue that we must deal with.

Things are not going to get better on their own.

They're just not going to just change somehow magically, mystically.

I wish that they would, but they won't.

We have to deal with the root cause.

How many of you love pulling weeds?

I love weed eating weeds.

Here's a problem with weed eating weeds they come back and when they come back, they bring their friends with them Before long, your garden is no longer a garden of fruits and vegetables, it's a garden of weeds.

Now, they're beautiful when they flower, and all of those things, right.

But in order to eliminate that problem, in order to cause that which is good and great and precious and all of those things to thrive and flourish the way that they need to, what must we do?

We must get our hands in the soil and we must pull things out, those weeds out by the roots.

By the roots.

It has always seemed crazy to me.

Maybe I'm the only one to see how easy it seems for the people of God, christians, to be more interested in strife and division than they are in walking in right relationship with God and with each other man.

I wish I didn't have to say this, but it is true.

The way that we talk about politics amongst each other is like if the world sees that and judges the church based on the way we discuss politics and we could go to any number of things that you could list it's somewhat embarrassing, to be honest.

Strife and division, gossip, of course we wouldn't call it gossip, we'd call it prayer requests, right, would you pray for so and so?

They've really gone off the deep end.

I think it's cocaine this time.

Come on Slander, anger.

And here's when I'm saying these words, here's the thing.

We can all think of other people that do all these things.

We can think of them, we can list them, we can name them, we can blame them.

It's the woman you gave me.

It's the boss you gave me.

It's the children you gave me.

It's the president you gave me.

It's the, whatever it is that you gave me Unforgiveness, bitterness.

It's so much easier to live in that world.

In some ways, my friends, marriages hang in the balance.

This is not a game.

Lives that are intended to be lived in a certain way for God's glory, for His kingdom, are being wrecked by Satan's schemes and our fleshest desire to be a part of that.

Relationships are continually being destroyed.

If somebody says something you don't like, I'll just block them, delete them, expose them, copy and paste them.

How about reaching out to them in private message and saying hey, would you have time to talk?

I'd just have some things.

I'd like to run past you and see what you think.

Is it possible that what we see, the division and strife that we see in the body of Christ, is an indication of a deeper problem.

Is it possible that there's something at the core, that's at the root of this?

Is there something that we're missing, that we're not seeing that clearly, that we need to, that we need the Lord to open our eyes to so that we can see it, so it can change?

I say yes, I think so.

Does our relationship with others reflect the state of our relationship with God?

Sometimes the problems that we have out here are an indication of a problem that we have right here.

Because when things are right, right here and we understand the mercy of God, the grace of God that's been poured out on me that I don't deserve, and the sin that I've committed and the fact that he forgave me and gave me another chance, gives me a lot of grace for this right here, a lot of mercy for this right here, a lot of love to be shared out here.

But if this isn't right, then why should I have any ambition or drive or desire to make this right right here?

But most of the time, we don't recognize it.

We don't recognize that this is a problem because we're so, you know, just so enthralled with this problem.

Those people, them, they.

James Boyce writes, not James Boyd.

By the way, james Boyce writes If you find yourself out of fellowship with God, you will begin to find yourself out of fellowship with other Christians.

It's a direct result.

It will come.

You will say I don't really like to be with other Christians.

I don't like to be with other Christians very much.

They're all hypocrites.

I'm sure that many of us unfortunately have family and friends who say things like that about church.

It's just a bunch of hypocrites.

And of course they're right.

Hypocrisy has always been found in the church.

It's always been found in the church in different levels, in different degrees, because we're all sinners in need of a savior and His mercies have to be new every morning.

Can you imagine if all of us walked around completely sanctified, completely holy, completely pure?

I mean, I can't imagine what the conversations would be like.

But we're all in process, right?

We're all being changed.

We're all being made into His image and into His likeness, as the Holy Spirit works in us to sanctify us.

Here's the problem with those who blame hypocrisy for their reason to get out of church, to leave it behind, to say it's no longer relevant.

I don't need the church, I just need Jesus.

A lack of fellowship actually reveals more about a person's own distancing from God than the state of the church.

I have hardly ever in my life experienced somebody getting fed up with the church and leaving the church behind because of their relationship with Jesus and their relationship with Jesus growing as time goes on.

In fact, the majority of the time.

From my own experience, and I'm sure maybe you I love the fact.

If you could think of an exception, let me know, that'd be great.

But for the majority of the time, people who walk away from fellowshiping with other believers end up worse off than what they were before, and it's because God intends for us to walk in proper fellowship and relationship with Him and with others who are children of His.

I once talked to a man who had been to many, many churches all over the world and has experienced that every one of those churches he experienced hypocrisy, he was disappointed, he was hurt.

In fact, if anybody could qualify for church hurt, this guy could qualify.

But you know the thing that was most amazing to me in conversation with this guy he still loved the church, he prayed for the church.

He did everything that he possibly could in every scenario that he was put in, to bring about a peaceable change, transformation and resolution.

This man's name is Jesus If anybody deserves to use the phrase I've been hurt by church is Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and yet he still loves the church.

The church is his bride that the Father has been preparing for him from the beginning of time, and we will be made one day into that spotless, perfect, pure, blameless bride and we will be with him forever and ever and ever, and that is good news.

One of the things about church hurt and many of the people that I've talked to and I'm not trying to downplay the fact I have experienced in my life if I stood here and told you the stories of times that I have been personally hurt by life happenings within a church setting, we'd be here a very long time, longer than the three hours we're going to spend together right now.

He said three hours, but I'm here to tell you guys there is something so something so sinister about the way that Satan works so hard to try to break people away from what they actually need to thrive To thrive.

A lot of times, when people say that they leave the church because they're hurt by church, it's because somebody had the guts to speak to them and say to them hey, I'm concerned about this aspect of your life.

Have you prayed about that?

Have you thought about it?

Have you went to the Lord about it?

Are you concerned about it?

Something bad is going to happen if this doesn't change in your life.

You see, satan does anything he can and our flesh loves it when we can blame everybody else and then we can disconnect.

But a disconnected Christian is a disobedient and unfruitful Christian.

And, by the way, I'm not just trying to, we're not promoting this is not a church growth drive or a.

You know, you must stay at Trinity Drive.

That's not what I'm trying to say here.

I'm trying to help us to understand the importance of being devoted to fellowship.

We need each other.

We need each other.

God has created us with this capacity for fellowship, but sin has distorted our ability to enjoy it without conflict.

How many times have you read a text or a message from somebody and you have misinterpreted their motivation or you've added to it a certain tone that was never intended to be read or understood in the reading of the text?

Right, I have decided.

A few years ago, I decided, after having a knock down, drag out, fight with one of my children on text messaging that I was not going to play that game anymore.

If I had an issue that I needed to talk through, I was going to either meet with them individually or I'm going to call them.

And again, please don't mishear me.

Technology is great.

It's a great gift and tool that we can use for the building of the kingdom of God, but please don't settle disagreements over text.

How's that working for you?

It's not Even the sins that many of us view as personal have a corporate impact.

They affect the body as a whole.

Your personal, our personal, individual sins affect the church and they must be addressed in order to have proper fellowship with God and with others.

We're a part of a body.

One part of the body suffers or is sick or is dealing with something, but rest of the body is affected by that as well.

Right, let's flip the page and get to some good news.

Jesus has made a way for our fellowship with God and each other to be restored.

Jesus took our place so that we might be made right with God.

Aren't you glad for this?

Second Corinthians 521, for our sake?

Who's sake?

For our sake?

He made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Jesus made a way for this relationship to be made right with God.

Come on, it's the truth.

You and I couldn't do it.

We couldn't do it.

We couldn't make it right, but Jesus did.

There's a response required of us, isn't there?

If we repent and believe on Jesus, god will forgive us and cleanse us.

He will.

There's no might or maybe, or hopefully, or if I say the right things in the right order or do the right things in a certain way.

No, god is quick to forgive.

He's slow to anger.

He loves being merciful and gracious and kind.

John 1, verses 5-9,.

John 1:5–9

We read these verses as spoken to unbelievers, but these words are also very applicable to the church, to our relationship with God and with each other.

It starts in verse 5.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.

If we say we have fellowship with him, which fellowship is that?

This one right here.

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

But if we walk in the light, if we're in proper relationship with God.

This way, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with what One another.

This way we have fellowship with one another.

And the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us If we confess our sins.

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Did you see the sunrise this morning?

I was in my shower and above my shower I have one of those narrow windows and all of a sudden, purple and red and orange and pink and yellow light saturation started beaming through that window.

Can I be honest with you?

I started repenting.

I started making sure I was right with God, because I literally was thinking, jesus, are you coming back right now?

Because that was the way the sky looked to me.

It looked that spectacular, that splendid the Son of God, the King of Righteousness, coming back.

Maybe it was a religious of me to feel like my first thought was to repent, but I'm so thankful that his faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us.

And the last thing about Jesus in this aspect is Jesus is praying for us to walk in unity with God and with each other.

How do I know that?

Because it's written down for us in John, chapter 17.

John 17 · chapter mention

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that's us, that they may all be what One, just as you, father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me the glory that you have given me I have given to them.

That they may be one, even as we are one, I in them and you in me.

That they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them, even as you loved me.

That sounds like a God who just really doesn't want to be involved with humanity.

He's kind of asleep somewhere in the distance.

The cry of Jesus' heart is that we would be one, as the Father, the Son and the Spirit are one.

Come on, this is good stuff.

This is important.

This is important.

It's interesting to me that in Genesis, chapter 2, when God brought Adam and Eve together and instituted marriage, it says that the two became what One flesh unity, covenant, relationships, marriage.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

I'm so glad I'm a part of the family of God.

There's all these old songs that have been rolling through my head.

Found us together, lord, you know.

There's all of these songs that are so powerful from the past.

Maybe we should write some new ones about us being together, fellowshiping.

Fellowship involves the regular interaction of repentant believers who have a desire to provide for the spiritual and material well-being of others.

I want to tell you right now I know that we're talking about change that needs to happen in our hearts but I want to brag on you because in all of my 40-something years of being in the Lord and being a part of church life, I've never experienced a more generous, caring, genuine church than this church.

The reason that I can say that is because there are times when I show up in hospitals and people's homes and funeral homes in many different places, where you've been there first and you've been there to love on, to honor, to cherish, to provide food and shelter, whatever is needed for whoever needs it.

That should be our normal rhythm of life, rhythm of grace.

That should be an example.

One of the things that's amazing to me is that the world should be beaten our doors down, not so that they can beat us up because they want to get in, because they're not experiencing any of the fruit that we get to experience.

We're too worried about what so-and-so thinks about us, or on and on.

The Word of God was the early church's motivation for fellowship and remember.

These four devotions that are found in this passage are the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers.

The apostles' teaching was a motivation for fellowship, which is partially expressed through the Lord's Supper and through prayer.

Fellowship is the fruit of receiving the apostles' teaching.

Let's look at how the early church adopted the apostles' teaching.

How do we know what the apostles' teachings were?

Because, thank God, god gave Paul the apostle the ability to write a huge portion of the New Testament, and so we can read with our own eyes and understand the things that this early church was being taught.

So the first thing that they that caused them to understand the value of fellowship from the Word of God, they shared in a common identity in Christ.

First Corinthians 1-9 says God is faithful.

By whom you were called into the what?

The fellowship, the coinonia of his Son, jesus Christ, our Lord.

I'm going to even know none of us would need to be here this morning if it wasn't for Jesus.

We are here together, we are friends and we are a family because of Jesus Christ Right.

Secondly, they shared in a common relationship with the Holy Spirit.

In 2nd Corinthians 13-14,.

The grace of the Lord, jesus Christ, and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, the fellowship, coinonia of the Holy Spirit, be with you all, father, son and Spirit, all three a part of their relationship to this relationship and then also this relationship.

They shared also in a common heavenly Father to whom they prayed.

Remember Jesus's words that we should pray to our heavenly Father in the name of Jesus.

They also shared in a common partnership.

In the gospel they were on mission together Philippians 1-5, because of your partnership another English word for the word coinonia in the gospel, from the first day until now, they also shared out of their abundance to meet the needs of others.

They had common beliefs and common possessions, and I know we might pause here for just a minute and then say to ourselves yeah, but they had it way easier than we do.

They didn't have all the distractions, they didn't have all of the technology, they hadn't been through all of the wars and rumors of wars, they didn't have two political parties that were complete odds with each other.

They didn't have all of these different things that we have to deal with.

Are we being serious right now?

So here's what we had.

We had 120 people who were shell shocked as they're staring up into heaven.

As Jesus ascends into heaven, the angel has to tell them he's coming back.

But now remember, he told you to go to Jerusalem.

They go to Jerusalem.

They're waiting in the upper room for the promise of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit comes down in power and might.

Every single one of them is filled with the Holy Spirit and they begin to speak with other languages that were not their native languages.

They spill out into the streets where there are people from every nation, no one to man, every tribe, every language, different culture, different race, different socioeconomic levels, different political persuasions, different financial situations.

All of these people that were just in Jerusalem for these feasts.

And what did they hear?

They heard the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time in their own languages, because the power of the Holy Spirit that had filled these 120 powerful people at this point in time, as they spoke with these new languages, god caused them to go across the vast sea of people and for them to hear the gospel for the first time in their own language.

And then Peter gets up.

This is mysterious to me.

How did this work?

But Peter gets up and he preaches a message, a gospel message, to everybody, and before he can finish they stop him.

I don't get any ideas this morning.

Okay, I can see some of you All right, that's enough.

But they stopped him and they said what must we do to be saved?

Peter, of course, tells them to respond by repenting, putting their faith in Jesus that they would receive the same Holy Spirit.

So you have, in one day, 3,000 people added to a church of 120.

Different cultures, different climates, different languages, all of the things that I said before.

How do you think that's going to work?

It would be like this if next week, 7,000 refugees were dropped at our front door and they came to church next Sunday From all over the world, from anywhere that you can imagine, every tribe, every language, how would we handle that?

Would it be peaceful?

How many of us would be running to the children's ministry to make sure that their kids were not going to be in the same room as our kids?

How many of us would be concerned if they sat in our seats, because we all know we have our seats right.

We don't have our name on them like they used to do in the olden days, but we have our seats.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Think about how much energy and focus they must have put into devoting themselves to these four simple things.

One of the things that transformed the entire world from that moment in time moving forward, was the fact that they figured it out.

Not perfectly, not entirely.

We see throughout the book of Acts and several of Paul's letters.

You see corrections and things that needed to change and people getting riled up.

We see all of the stuff that we deal with still.

Somehow, by God's grace and a commitment to each other, to this and to this, this church became a beacon of light to the world around it.

No-transcript you can't obey, we can't obey the one another's scripture without proper fellowship.

The Bible is filled with all kinds of commands that tell us what we must do.

We must be devoted to one another.

We must love one another, admonish one another, serve one another and love, bear with one another, forgive one another, encourage one another, honor one another, protect one another, care for one another, bear one another's burdens, be kind and compassionate, submit to one another, build one another up.

How can we do that?

Hiding sitting on our couch, staring at the back of somebody's head for two hours on a Sunday morning?

How can we do these things unless we engage in fellowship?

You know, as I read this list of one another's, I want God to manifest himself to me in all of these ways.

I want him to be kind to me, I want him to encourage me, I want him to love me, I want him to accept me, I want him to care for me.

I want him to bear my burdens.

I want him to be kind and compassionate toward me.

I want him to all of these things.

And yet he's saying I am all of those things to you.

Now I want you to take what you've been given and I want you to give it away, just like this Give it away Kindness that you've received from Jesus, give it to somebody else.

The good news is, as we finish, god encounters us when we prioritize proper fellowship with him and with other people.

Just a couple of verses and there are so many I just can't, for the sake of time, hit all of them.

But Matthew 1820, for where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.

God encounters us when we fellowship with others, with other believers.

He encounters us, he promises us that he will be there with us.

That's powerful.

Psalm 133, verses one through three, one of the most poignant and beautiful statements in all of the scripture.

When it comes to really focusing down to what this is about, it says Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell in unity.

It is like the precious oil on the head running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron running down on the collar of his robe.

It's like the dew of Herman which falls on the mountains of Zion or there.

And that's when it says there.

It's not talking about Mount Herman or all of the descriptions of places or even people.

You know what it's talking about.

In a place of unity, there the Lord has commanded the blessing life forever more.

There's a place of commanding, there is a place of commanded blessing where brethren in unity dwell.

And that, my friends, is what God intends for us and expects from us.

Let's pray, father.

God, thank you so much for allowing me to speak these words this morning.

I ask, lord, that you would do the work in my heart that needs to be done, for the change that needs to occur.

Help me to be much more, much more eager to not only be in good relationship and fellowship with you, but to really be a part of the kingdom of God and the body of Christ and the fellowship of believers.

Help me, lord, pray for those who are not yet a part of the body of Christ, that may be either here this morning or listening to this online.

I pray that today would be their day where they would recognize their need for a Savior and, just like those 3,000 people on the day of Pentecost, that they would turn away from their old way of living, that they would recognize that their life without you is nothing there's no hope, no life, no future.

I pray, father, that they would now, even in this moment, that they would just say words of a prayer to you, that they would acknowledge their need for you and that they would believe that Jesus Christ did what he said, that he did.

And, lord, would you save them?

Would you save those who are not saved?

Also, I pray, lord, for those who have been hurt in many different aspects of church life.

I pray, lord, that there would be a time of healing and restoration and, lord, that we would recognize that we're not going to always get those things from other people.

It's not like, even when we forgive others, lord God, we can't control how they respond.

But we know, lord God, that when we're walking in this life the way that you walk toward us, that good things happen, that your purpose is done and that you give people chances for change, even in the way that we act and react around them.

We declare to you, lord, we need your help and we ask you for it In the precious and mighty name of Jesus.

Amen.