Fellowship

Why did God create us? I wonder how many times has this question been asked. This is a deep question and theologians have been discussing decades. I guess I will put in my two cents' worth.

I believe a single answer covers the entire spectrum of why we were created. His glory. But, there is another one that I want to focus on: Fellowship.

1 Cor. 1:9, "God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord" (NASB). In Greek, the word "fellowship," is "koinonia." It is also translated as "communion." God wants to have an intimate communion, a close fellowship with us.

Do you remember in the garden when Adam and Eve sinned? Who hid themselves? That’s right Adam and Eve. Who went looking for who? Right again! It was God looking for them. After the expulsion from the garden, after the flood, and at the time of the Exodus, God says to the people, "And let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them." Again, who is seeking to dwell with who? It is God seeking man.

Take a look at John 1:1,14 which says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...¹⁴ And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." The word "dwelt" is the Greek "skano-o" and it also means to tabernacle, to tent, to dwell among. Again, it is the Lord who is seeking us, who is dwelling among us. Of course, we see that we are the temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16), and this signifies that the Lord is in us and with us.

This simply tells us that God is a God of fellowship, and that He desires to have people to be with and to love. God is love (1 John 4:8), and the nature of love is to give (John 3:16). God desires that we have an intimate relationship with us through His Son, Jesus.

Do you have that intimacy with Jesus? Do you seek the relationship and fellowship with God that He desires and has manifested throughout history -- especially in the cross?

Ask. Seek. Knock.

Relevant Preaching and Teaching

Many churches make it a point to advertise the fact that they preach and teach a gospel this is relevant. I know that what many are trying to say is that they are not boring like many believe that church can be. As a preacher, I think a lot about relevance. In other words, why should anyone listen to what I have to say? Why should anybody care? Relevance is an interesting word. It could mean more than one thing. It might mean that a sermon is relevant if it feels to the listeners that it will make a significant difference in their lives. Or it might mean that a sermon is relevant if it will make a significant difference in their lives whether they feel it or not.

That second kind of relevance is my goal in preaching the sermons that I share. In other words, I want to say things that are really significant for your life whether you know they are or not. I want to share the words of God that paint a true picture of His glory, character, and sovereignty. My way of doing that is to share the truth of the gospel that has as little of the traditional and religious ways of thinking as possible. In other words, speak a truth that can withstand the scrutiny of those that are traditional or religious in their view of the Gospel.

On any given Sunday you may have people who believe that racism, global warming, abortion, limited health care for children, homelessness, poverty, the war in Iraq, white-collar crime, the global AIDS crisis, rampant teenage pregnancy, the subprime mortgage crisis, and so on and so on, is relevant. These things have nothing to do with the real problem that this world is facing.

I believe that there the most relevant issue in one’s life is whether or not they are “born again”. Jesus says in John 3:3, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Not to see the kingdom of God is to be excluded from the kingdom of God. Jesus said in Matthew 8:11-12 that outside the kingdom is “outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” He called it “eternal punishment” (Matthew 25:46). The alternative to that is to be in the kingdom of God and spend eternity in everlasting joy with the greatest person in the universe (John 18:24).

It would be wrong to think that these other issues are the most important issues in life. They aren’t. They are life-and-death issues. But they are not the most important, because they deal with the relief of suffering during this brief earthly life, not the relief of suffering during the eternity that follows. They only deal with how to maximize well-being now for eighty years or so, but not with how to maximize well-being in the presence of God for eternity. Eternity is much longer than eighty years.

My job as a spokesman for God week after week is to deal in what matters most, and to stay close to the revealed will of God in the Bible (so you can see it for yourselves), and to pray that, by God’s grace, all people will see and feel the magnitude that what God says, is important.

Seeing is Becoming!

It is my belief that what should happen through act of preaching and teaching, is that the lives of the hearers experience change. The life transforming power of God’s word is the means by which all people, no matter what level of faith they have attained, will continue to be changed into Christ likeness. Every message preached should be pointing people toward Christ. It is because of several biblical texts that I believe this to be true. For example, 2 Corinthians 3:18 reads,

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.’

I believe this text teaches us that one of the ways we are changed progressively into the likeness of Christ is by looking at his glory. "We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness." The way to become more and more like the Lord is to fix your gaze on his glory and hold him in view.

It has been said that people are the product of their environment. We are also a product of our habits and desires. We hum the music we listen to. We speak with the accent of our region. We become like our parents even though we sometimes refuse to believe it. We naturally tend to imitate the people we admire most. So it is with God. If we fix our attention on him and hold his glory in our view, we will be changed from one degree of glory to another into his likeness.

In order for us to become Christ like, Christians must set their affections on the God they admire. In this spiritual transaction, seeing is not only believing, seeing is becoming.