Means of Grace: Fellowship

Our church. So we're gonna look this morning at Hebrews chapter three. If you will turn there in your worship folder or up on the screen, we're gonna read this aloud together from Hebrews chapter three verses 12 through 13, and as is our custom, let the people of God read the word of God together.

Take care, brothers and sisters, that there will not be in any one of you an evil unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another every day as long as it is called today so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. — Hebrews 3:12-13

Let's pray together. Lord, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.

I want you to think about these words: radical, epic, revolutionary, transformative, life changing, extreme, ultimate, awesome, on the edge, explosive. I mean, you could add to that list a whole other set of modifiers that have become ironically part of the ordinary conversation of the church over the last few years. Most of us have heard expressions like that so often that they've become sort of rote.

I was a youth pastor in the nineties where this was especially our language. If you grew up going to youth group in the nineties at all, you had extreme Bible studies and ultimate discipleship plans and awesome youth Bibles. All that was property of youth ministry at the time. And we might, although we may be a little jaded by the ads, we all need to take things to a whole other level too, right?

By contrast, ordinary is maybe one of the loneliest words right now in the English vocabulary. I mean, who wants a bumper sticker on the back of their car that says, "My kid is an ordinary student at Bubbling Brook Elementary School"? Like, nobody has that. Nobody wants an ordinary job with ordinary friends and lives in an ordinary house and has an ordinary life. We don't want ordinary. We want extraordinary.

And I sense in a lot of ways the church has gotten kind of tired of that. We've become a little bit cynical about it—like, not everything can be extreme and radical and awesome all the time. And I can't. And you can't. So ordinary—we need to think about that word because ordinary doesn't mean mediocre. It doesn't mean that it's foolish.

Artists and athletes and architects, there are a lot of people in different hobbies and trades who can testify to the value of small things done over and over again in a way that over time produces excellence. Ordinary is not a bad word. We're doing a short sermon series during the month of January on the ordinary means of grace—those practices that are given to us by God that when applied in our lives over and over again in ordinary ways connect us to these deep and profound gospel truths. These really matter. This is our longing. This is my passion. This is our passion as a church that Christ would be formed in you. That you would more and more look like, smell like, be conformed to the image of Jesus. That you would become more and more Christlike in your life.

Last week, we looked at the first of those, which is corporate worship together—the very ordinary, regular act of coming together with God's people in worship. This week, we're gonna look at fellowship with other believers. And I can't think of a more boring, ordinary word in the Bible, especially in the modern church, than fellowship, right? It just doesn't move us, that word.

But to help us get at the idea of what biblical fellowship is supposed to look like, I wanna swap out the name for that and I wanna call it this morning spiritual friendship. Spiritual friendship is something that your soul needs in order to flourish.

You know, friendship is a big theme of Scripture. The Bible tells us:

A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity. — Proverbs 17:17

Jesus in his earthly ministry broke all kinds of rabbinical tradition when coming to his disciples. He said:

I no longer call you servants because a servant doesn't know his master's business, but I have called you friends. — John 15:15

That was absolutely unheard of and really bizarre behavior for a rabbi in the first century—that Jesus would call us friends. This is why we sing that song, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." That is a relationship of closeness and intimacy that Christ is describing for his disciples, and all spiritual friendship really follows in the footsteps of Jesus's friendship. It follows that pathway.

Paul wrote letters in the early church that said:

The friends greet you.

Our churches should never really stop talking about friendship. The first century Christian growth of the early church was marked by an explosion of spiritual friendship that went across the Roman Empire.

It was like a bomb that detonated, but instead of being a destructive one, it was a life-giving one. Over and over, aftershocks of this. But of course, spiritual friendship is really different from our TV show friends. It's different from a lot of our modern views of friendship.

That's why what I'm gonna call the kind of friendship people are looking for are "buddies" or your BFF, your bestie. You're looking for someone who is "samesy, samesy"—has all the same common interests and background and hobbies, maybe you're in the same stage of life. But that is not what I'm talking about. Spiritual friendship is of a different source. It has different resources and it has a different goal.

Here's my outline for this morning: really three words—within, without, with. So it's the enemy within, the thing you can't go without or shouldn't go without, and it's the practice of with.

Let me jump in first, like I did last week, and do the thing I'm not supposed to do: give you my application at the beginning of the sermon. It's my hope, my desire that in applying this message, you would make a commitment this year to pursue spiritual friendship every week with others in the body of Christ. That you would prioritize that, protect that, pursue that. Give energy to that as a main thing that you need.

The Enemy Within

Let's talk about the enemy within. Did you listen to the warnings of this passage? Did you hear this? It reads like a bad doctor's report, and I think we may not have heard how dire the diagnosis is in this passage.

Every one of you, every one of us, all of us have a sinful, unbelieving heart that has this tendency to turn away from the living God and toward being hardened by sin's deceitfulness.

Now, I know that you don't believe that, and the reason I can say that confidently is that I don't believe that. I don't believe that's true of me. That I have a sinful, unbelieving heart that has tendencies to turn away from the living God and be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. No. I am very self-trusting. I believe I got this. I believe I have this inclination to believe that I'm self-sufficient, that I'm good on my own and I don't need anybody. All under control.

I think that's what everyone of us believes. That is hardwired into American life, and especially—can I just be so bold as to say—this congregation. There are a lot of very accomplished, very successful, and super independent people in this church, and you're led by the chief of one, right? Maybe I'm just talking about me more, but I think that this is really us. We're slow to ask for help. We're slow to reveal areas we're struggling. We're slow to reveal to other people that we need others. And it's because deep down there's this self-sufficiency.

Let me give an illustration of what this is like and why this is so dangerous. Let's pretend you're driving a car on a country road late at night, driving this back road—curvy, really dark, no street lights anywhere. On your right side is a ditch and some trees and houses. On your left side is the yellow line and other cars coming at you.

Now, this car's wheels are out of alignment. It pulls. You have to concentrate and work against the pull to stay in the lane. If the alignment is pulling left, you have to concentrate to keep it from going over the yellow line. You have to pull against that and be very aware of the car. If it pulls right, what's the danger? What are you gonna drive into if you're not paying attention? The ditch. You're gonna drive off into the ditch.

And so you're driving this back country road by yourself, and this is your heart. All of us have tendencies; all of our hearts are pulling one way or the other. We have these self-destructive tendencies where we are either going to hurt ourselves—drive off into the ditch because we're not paying attention, we're self-trusting—or drive into another lane and potentially hurt another person.

That's your heart. That's my heart. That's what we are like. We are a car out of alignment, and we have these tendencies—self-destructive tendencies, other-destructive tendencies. Each of us has an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God and is hardened by sin's deceitfulness.

And what's more scary than that is you say on top of that, no, it's good. I got this. I got this. Last week, I said the problem is, one of our problems is that we don't think we're sick. Today, I want to say this—I want to add this—we think we can trust ourselves. You think the one person you never question so often is self. I got this. I'm good.

There's a songwriter named Gordon Mote who's rewritten just one line of the song "Amazing Grace." Now, I'm gonna see if you can spot it. This is how his version goes:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost and now am found, was blind and I still am.

And I'm like, amen. That is true. Was blind and I still am. I have blind spots, things I can't see about myself.

You have a real problem. You have this deadly cocktail that you're sipping on: hardness of heart, deceitfulness of sin, turning away from the living God, and a little mixer of "I got this." That's a deadly, deadly cocktail. I can't think of a worse combo. It's an enemy within that is super dangerous. And of course, the gospel is the answer to these things. The gospel—God intervenes with sinners. Thank goodness. I would drive off into the ditch all the time. I would drive into the other lane and hurt people all the time.

Listen to how one long dead pastor named Thomas Goodwin puts it in his book, The Heart of Christ. He says this:

Though Christ is now in glory, do not let that discourage you, for he has the heart of a husband toward you. Being betrothed to you forever in faithfulness and loving kindness, take this as one incentive to obedience: that if he retained the same heart of mercy toward you which he had here on earth, then to answer his love, endeavor to have that same heart toward him on earth that you hope to have in heaven.

He's saying this is the heart of God. This is the very heart of Christ towards sinners. It is always merciful. God doesn't run out of compassion for you. He doesn't say, "Stop it. I'm just so tired of your reckless driving." God is full of mercy and compassion and forgiveness. Amen?

That's the heart of God toward us. And yet, this realization—I once was blind and I still am—you know, that should inform the way we look at our discipleship. A discipleship that needs to be embodied with other bodies, with spiritual friends, with others who can speak in. This is the thing that you shouldn't go without. Christian growth is much more than me and my Bible, me and my favorite podcasts, me and my favorite Christian authors. It's me with other believers.

The Mutuality of Christian Community

I've read and studied this passage before, but it wasn't till I was preaching on this that I noticed something I'd never seen in this passage before: the mutuality of this passage. Now I want to see if you can hear what I did not hear. Listen again to how this passage goes:

Take care, brothers and sisters, that there will not be in any one of you an evil unbelieving heart, but encourage each other as the ones it's called today.

It doesn't say "take care of brothers and sisters that you don't have an evil unbelieving heart." It says, "Take care, brothers and sisters, there will not be in any one of you an evil unbelieving heart." Do you get it? You hear what I'm hearing in this passage?

What I missed over and over again is this isn't just a warning to me to watch myself. This is a warning to me and you to care for one another. This is a call for us to have some sense of mutual responsibility for one another.

You know, for years I lived as if friendship was an icing on the cake. It was an extra thing. You know, that's for other people. It's an option. Superman don't need Robin. Batman needs Robin. Superman don't need Robin. Right, I'm good. I got this.

And yet God has woken me up to the deep need I have for spiritual friends. And God has provided these people in my life. But I need people who come alongside me and challenge me and encourage me and speak in and show me that the people who are very much about Christ and his exaltation in my life as well as their life. People who are committed to fulfilling all the "one another" commands of scripture.

Have you listened? Have you gone back? It was a great study. I guarantee that you'll get a lot out of this if you go back and just open up your New Testament and do a word search for all the times it says "one another," and you read all the one-anothering passages in the New Testament.

Here's just a sample of them:

Love one another. That's repeated 16 times in the New Testament. Be devoted to one another. Honor one another. Live in harmony with one another. Build one another up. Be like-minded with one another. Accept one another. Admonish one another. Greet one another.

Care for one another. Serve one another. Bear one another's burdens. Forgive one another. Be patient with one another. You can go on and on. I mean, there are hundreds of admonitions in the New Testament—all these "one another" passages—that you can't do by yourself. You can't fulfill any of those alone.

I heard pastor Ray Ortlin years ago talk about spiritual friendship and he put it this way. It really stirred me. He said, "The greatest sin—maybe the greatest sin in the evangelical church in America—is the sin of unexpressed love." I was like, really? We're not demonstrative and careful to express love for one another. He says it's such a big problem. He pointed to Romans 12:10:

Outdo one another in showing love. — Romans 12:10

He said, "That's the only competition where everybody wins."

You know, when pastors in generations past would preach on spiritual friendship, do you know what passage we would all go to? First Samuel 23—David and Jonathan. David and Jonathan. It's a story of deep and profound friendship between these two men. Two men who really had no reason to be friends. They were rival families to the throne of Israel.

And you know what's sad about this? When we preach on this passage now or people discuss it now, people are always asking what else was going on there. Was there some kind of homosexual attraction in that relationship? There's nothing of that in the passage, but it's just that we're in a culture now where we can't imagine non-erotic same-sex friendship being deep and profound. That's not a commentary on the Bible, that's a commentary on us. We've lost the value of deep, powerful, spiritual friendship.

David and Jonathan had zero reason to be friends. But in First Samuel 23 it says this:

Now David saw that Saul the king had come out to seek his life when David was in the wilderness of Ziph at Horesh and Jonathan, who is Saul's son, went out and went to David at Horesh and encouraged him in God. He strengthened his heart in God. — 1 Samuel 23

I wonder how many of the Psalms were inspired by that friendship, where a lot of the content was even drawn from this—the way that God relates to us as a friend. Encourage one another. This is one of the great purposes of spiritual friendship. We need those friends. We need to become those kind of friends.

The Mark of True Spiritual Friendship

Now here's test number one: If you have spiritual friends or you have a BFF—and I'm very convinced the modern church confuses the two—spiritual friends talk to each other and strengthen one another in God. They talk about their relationship with God. They confess sin to one another. They talk about what they're learning from God. If you have friendships where all you talk about is the greatest restaurant you went to recently, that's not spiritual friendship. That's a bestie.

Encouragement—that's a part that everyone wants, isn't it? I mean, anybody here not want encouragement? I'm kind of done. I've had plenty. No? Nobody? I don't see any hands. I don't think we're filled up on this one. I mean, who doesn't want to be encouraged?

But there's another side to spiritual friendship that we may not be as excited about: it's the confrontation, it's challenge, it's speaking the truth in love. You know, another word for encourage in this passage, which you can look up when you get home, is warning or exhortation. That's a different kind of encouragement, isn't it? That's the kind maybe we don't like.

So let me use another car analogy. Remember the car with the alignment issue? Let's pretend that this car is a driver's ed car. Now what does a driver's ed car have that a normal car doesn't have? An extra brake pedal. Right? On the passenger side. So the driver's got the gas and the brake, but in that car also the passenger has a brake. Why? So when you're driving in driver's ed, that instructor can stop very fast if needed. This is what spiritual friendship looks like on the other side—exhortation, warning. Someone else has a brake in your life. Someone else can slow things down. That's when they ask you questions and you're like, "I don't want you to ask that question." Anybody have those kind of questions? You're like, what? I don't want that question right now because it makes me have to think about my heart. It makes me have to reflect on myself.

Who will pray for you? Who will speak up? Does anybody here like a backseat driver? No one enjoys a backseat driver.

This is a vital part of Christian discipleship, of Christian friendship, spiritual friendship that separates it from a bestie or a BFF. On the positive side it's encouragement, on the negative side it's confrontation, it's challenge, it's speaking the truth in love, it's the brake pedal. Do you hear how different that is? People show up here at church all the time looking for a best friend, a BFF, a buddy relationship that's based on sameness—same hobbies, same stage of life, same history. But we confuse buddies with spiritual friends. Scott McKnight puts it this way: real Christian friendship is a fellowship of difference. Difference, like different kinds of people. People you may have nothing in common with.

My experience of spiritual friendship is with others where I'm saying, like, how are we friends? This works but I don't know how this works. We're really different.

In season five of The Simpsons, there's an episode called "Homer Loves Flanders." Flanders is Homer's annoying neighbor, the one who's almost too good to be true, who says "hi-diddly-ho" and "okily-dokily." Well, in this episode, everything's flipped upside down and the town turns against Flanders. Toward the end, they all end up in church together. Reverend Lovejoy's sermon that Sunday is about what's wrong with Ned. Ned comes into service after it started. Everybody turns around and glares at him. He makes his way to the only open seat, which is beside Homer. As they're going through service, Homer's mouth breathing and driving Ned crazy, and he finally just flips out and yells at Homer and shames him in front of everybody. Now all the ire of the entire congregation is directed at Ned.

But this is when Homer stands up and intervenes. He says: "How dare you talk about Ned Flanders like that? He's a wonderful, kind, caring man. Maybe even more so than me. There have been times when I lost patience with him, even lashed out at him, but this man has turned every cheek on his body. If everyone here were like Ned Flanders, there'd be no need for heaven. We'd already be there."

Reverend Lovejoy says, "I think we all know Ned had a heartfelt apology this morning. We were wrong to doubt him." And Marge says, "That was very nice you did, homie."

Ned stands up and says, "Thank you, thank you so much Homer, you are a true friend."

Now that's why The Simpsons gets you—you laugh at it and then suddenly there's a hitch in the feels. But there's something right about that. As silly as that example is, it's a fellowship of difference. That's test number two. How do you know whether you have spiritual friendship versus buddies? Does the other person ever speak up? Do you ever speak in? Do you ever confront one another? Do you ever challenge each other? Do you ever risk the relationship or risk not being liked for a moment? Isn't that our biggest fear? "Oh, they're not gonna like me right now." That's BFF, that's buddies, that's not spiritual friendship.

The proverb says this:

A wound of a friend is better than the kisses of an enemy. — Proverbs

The wounds of a friend are better than the kisses of an enemy. That's hard for us to get our heads around. To have friendship where we move toward one another in a way that actually feels wounding because we're challenging, because we're speaking in—that's really foreign to American style buddy relationships, but that's spiritual friendship.

Addressing Disillusionment

Let me speak to one thing before I go on. I know that one big barrier that's going up all over the place—invisible shields are flashing right now. To this sermon is disillusionment. This sense of like, "Hey, I've tried this. I've wanted this. I've hoped for this in church before, but I've been burned." And I just want to speak to that and say, I really understand that. I really understand that.

I wonder though if disillusionment is not part of the process for us. It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian, who wrote this:

Innumerable times, a Christian community has broken down because it has sprung from a wish dream, but God speedily shatters those dreams.

And Bonhoeffer, he knew disappointment with the church on an epic scale. But he writes this: just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great sense of disillusion with others, with Christians in general, and if we're fortunate, with ourselves.

Disillusionment, he argues, is not an end of Christian community but rather the beginning point. This is actually where you start. You can only know Christ in relationship with one another when our dreams have been shattered about getting everything I want fulfilled. And we see that there are broken sinners all around us. I mean, what's worse, they have to see us the same way. Like the first century Christians, all of us are going to utterly fail to live up to all of our desires and our ideals for this Christian life. We're gonna fail over and over again. But isn't our faith built on a man on a cross? And if that's the case, failure is not an end. It's not a sign that it's all gone wrong, time to leave this church and find another one. Instead, it's a beginning. We find resurrection when we walk through death. And there's something about walking through that disillusionment. If you can stay with it, that's the beginning point for something real to happen.

So the enemy within, the thing you can't go without, and finally, the practice of with. Now, my biggest fear in preaching this sermon this morning is that I'm just raising all these expectations and desires. You're like, finally, the pastor is guaranteeing friendship. This is what I've always wanted to hear. And CTK is gonna deliver on this. That's like Miss Piggy saying, "It's a me party." Right? A party for myself. But this is a dangerous sermon and we need to hear this last point: the practice of with.

The Practice of With

Let me just remind you of these things. You probably all know this. Church is not a place where all our friendship desires are fulfilled. Church is a place where we learn how to do spiritual friendship. Church is not a place where we're guaranteed a bestie. Church is a place where we learn to practice the motions of spiritual friendship. This is practice. I'm talking practice. This is practice, y'all.

Do you know one of the greatest words in the New Testament? One of the greatest words is "with." Over and over, we read "with." Jesus comes as Emmanuel—God with us. The Spirit is given as a permanent possession to Christians. You have a permanent witness from God, and he calls us as a church to practice with, to practice the with of one anothering, to practice the with of encouragement, to practice the with of hitting the brake.

This is why, incidentally, we do groups at CTK. We want everybody to be part of some kind of group where you can practice with. You could practice the motions of spiritual friendship, to practice one anothering, to practice encouraging, to practice hitting the brake. We've got youth group. We have Reformed University Fellowship for university students, RUF. We have community groups, men's groups, sojourners, women's Bible reading. But the sad news is, and I've just gotta give this disclaimer: all of them are filled with hypocritical sinners. There's room for more. We're glad to have you join us. You're very welcome to come. These groups are like the practice facility. You know how major league teams have the main place that they play and then they have the practice facility? These groups are set up just to be practice facilities where we're learning to put on the motions of spiritual friendship.

Spiritual friendship is regular. It's encouraging. It's bold. It's humble. It's tearful. Even at times abrasive. But it means also trusting in God's sovereignty in your relationships. It means not going to community group looking for sameness. Look, I'm happy if you find a bestie in our church. That's fine. That's just not what we're about. Our vision statement is not written that way. We're intentionally trying to be a church that crosses boundaries, a fellowship of difference.

So I want you to be humming the words to Crosby, Stills, and Nash's song. They sing this: "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." I want you to look around at the people that God has put in your church, put in your community, and love the ones you're with. Practice trusting God that he's sovereign even of your relationships. A fellowship of difference.

So here's my application: every person at CTK would make a commitment to pursue spiritual friendship every week this year with others in the body of Christ. Now I'm saying every week, but this passage says we need to encourage each other every day. So if you're like, "We have lunch every six weeks," that's probably not cutting it. But putting yourself in a position where you carve out space in your schedule, you prioritize, you protect, you pursue spiritual friendship with one another.

The Trampoline Principle

Closing, let me just say this one thing. Everybody's probably been on a trampoline, right? You know how a trampoline works? The energy you put into the trampoline is the energy that you get out of it. So if you jump really high and you come down and it springs you back up about the same height—that's how the trampoline works, and that's how most of the means of grace actually work.

You put energy into worship. You show up here on time. You show up here with a heart ready to worship. You've prayed about it in the car coming here—"Lord, meet me this morning. Help me to worship you." You put the energy into that, and you're going to get that out of it. You put that into Bible reading, you put that into personal prayer. The energy that you put in is the energy you get out.

Not the same though with spiritual friendship. Spiritual friendship is like being on a trampoline with another person. If you time it right on a trampoline with another person, you're going up and down, right? If you time it right, one of you can hit the trampoline in such a way that all of the energy you put down goes to that other person and they go way high. I cannot do that, but I'm made to be the person at the bottom, you can tell.

So the energy that you put in with two people on a trampoline doesn't always come back to you. And this is what spiritual friendship is like. Sometimes you're putting all the energy in and it seems like other people are flying high and you're like, "What about me?" Other times, other people are putting a lot of energy in and you may be in a place where you're like, "I've put a lot of energy into relationships in this church and I just don't feel like I'm going anywhere."

Here's my call to you: keep jumping. I know it's your desire like "I gotta get off this trampoline. I'm tired of this," but here's my call to us: will we keep jumping together? God promises that he meets his people in the context of relationships with one another.

See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you have a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But as long as it's called today, every day, encourage each other so you won't be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. — Hebrews 3:12-13

Lord, we confess to you how much we need faith to even believe this message, to be encouraged to overcome our disillusionment. Lord, we pray that you would meet us as a church. We pray that you would renew us. Lord, we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.