Side by Side Fellowship
Side by Side for the Gospel • Sermon • Submitted
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· 3 viewsBig Idea: Keep the gospel at the center of your fellowship with other believers.
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We are working through the book of Philippians under the theme of “Side by Side for the Gospel”… and each week, we are going to examine a key word… a key theme... that is essential to standing side by side for the faith of the gospel.
The Title of today’s sermon is “Side by Side Fellowship”…
Fellowship - it’s a word that is right in our name as a church, “Oak Hill FELLOWSHIP Church”… but it’s a word we often take for granted…
I often get a lot of questions about our name… “Oak Hill Fellowship Church.”
Most people are usually trying to figure out where the “Oak Hill” part comes from… especially when they look around our property and don’t see any oak trees...
It was even more of a question when we met at the BOTTOM of a paved hill on State Street in Quarryville...
So I’ve had to explain many times that we originally met on Oak Bottom road, and the name comes from Isaiah 61:3 where God is stating his desire to transform his people… and the vision he has for them is that they will be called “oaks of righteousness, the planting of our Lord that he may be glorified.”
God wants a people who are set apart for him… who grow strong in his righteousness… and who point others to his glory.
So once I explain that verse, people are usually satisfied about the origin of our name…
But it’s interesting: people rarely want to know more about that word “Fellowship.”
It’s just a word that we sort of take for granted… we ASSUME we know what it means… but do we really?
If you listen to how many Christians use the word… you might get the sense that "fellowship” means “chatting” or “talking.”
You might think that coffee or lemonade are required in order for true fellowship to occur (coffee never HURTS fellowship… I will say THAT!)
You might think fellowship means having any old thing in common… you like the same sports team or hobbies… you make the same school choice… you are the same age or gender… maybe even you just happen to share the same SPACE and you are considered to be “fellowshipping.”
But what really is BIBLICAL… CHRISTIAN... “fellowship?”
I want to give you an equation that describes the heart of fellowship:
Fellowship = Relationship + Mission
Or maybe we could demonstrate it this way: <triangle: you, me, Jesus (in relationship)... and that relationship is pointed toward knowing and proclaiming the gospel to all nations>
Fellowship is sharing in a relationship with one another and with Christ, partnering together in the mission of Christ to make disciples of Christ.
And this idea of “Fellowship” is really at the heart of the whole book of Philippians and our goal for studying it:
Series Goal: To partner together in the pursuit of knowing and proclaiming Jesus.
If we are going PARTNER TOGETHER… if we are going to stand “side by side”… then we need to make sure that what we call “fellowship”... is actually fellowship.
We can’t spend a ton of time or energy other purposes or pursuits…
We need to pursue the heart of TRUE FELLOWSHIP... and the Philippian church is a GREAT EXAMPLE for us in that...
Today Paul is going to express his GRATITUDE for their fellowship with him… and he’s going to pray that their fellowship might produce even more fruit for the sake of gospel multiplication and the glory of Christ.
Today we are going to learn what it looks like to:
Big Idea: Keep the gospel at the center of your fellowship with other believers.
Big Idea: Keep the gospel at the center of your fellowship with other believers.
Your Bibles are open to Philippians 1.
Last week we studied verses 1-2 where Paul greets the Philippian church, calling himself and Timothy SERVANTS…
He’s writing from Rome, he is imprisoned there for preaching the gospel… likely chained to a Roman guard....
Iif you look at our graphic for this series, that’s one reason for the chains at the top… we need to remember that Paul is literally imprisoned for the gospel… he’s a servant… a type of SLAVE of Jesus Christ.
But I also like how that image of a chain represents his connection… his partnership with the SAINTS)...
As he opens the letter, he calls the believers who will read this, “SAINTS”… those who have been “set apart” by grace through faith in Jesus Christ… people who shine as bright lights in a dark world (that’s where the stars in our graphic come from…
We need to remember that we are set apart to display the beauty and brilliance of the gospel in our lives.
So Paul is writing to these set apart ones who (SPECIFICALLY) live in the city of Philippi, which is in Macedonia or what we would call today, Northern Greece.
Understand… this is a letter from a real person… to a real church… in a real situation in history...
But we believe that God USED PAUL… and he USED those people’s situation… to inspire the timeless words of scripture so that we would have them preached to us today and they could change our lives.
God has a word for us here today through this letter to the Philippian church… the same Spirit who inspired Paul is interpreting and applying these truths to our hearts.
So let’s read together Paul’s prayer of Thanksgiving for the Philippian church… let’s eavesdrop on their relationship in order to learn something about our own church.
Read Philippians 1:3-11
WHAT A PRAYER! WHAT A RELATIONSHIP THEY HAD!
They are an example to us to keep the gospel at the center of your fellowship with other believers.
Today we want to see
3 Signs the Gospel is at the Center of our Fellowship:
3 Signs the Gospel is at the Center of our Fellowship:
The first is this:
1) We celebrate the gospel work that brought us together (v. 3-5)
1) We celebrate the gospel work that brought us together (v. 3-5)
Paul writes, “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.” (Philippians 1:3–5, ESV)
Explain: Paul is CELEBRATING the gospel work that brought them together.
He’s like, “Every time I pray for you… every time I think about you… I’m just FLOODED with gratitude. Remembering you brings GREAT JOY to my heart.”
I can relate to him so often… there are so many times when I think about this church… or I think about our global partners, and I’m just like, “YES!!! I just LOVE those people!!! And my heart is overwhelmed.”
But I want you to notice this little word that Paul uses here that causes me to pause… it’s going to keep coming up: the word is “all.”
“I thank my God in ALL my remembrance of you.
“ALWAYS in EVERY PRAYER of mine for you ALL.”
And as I think about this, I’m like, “Really, Paul?!?! All… every… always… ALL???”
Call me negative, but I don’t know if there’s ANYONE that I can think about that I can say I’m ALWAYS feeling joyful and thankful for them (except for MAYBE Katy)...
It can be so easy in the church… or in any relationship… to get annoyed. To focus on faults. To get busy with critiques. To focus on what divides us, rather than what unites us.
But Paul is able to say he is ALWAYS thankful for this church.
Look down at the text again in v. 5: What makes him thankful for them? What is he remembering that produces this unwavering joy and gratitude? It’s their PARTNERSHIP in the GOSPEL from the first day until now.
That word for Partnership is “koinonia”… it’s the word we translate fellowship in other parts of the Bible.
It’s having something in common… it’s relationship around a shared value or purpose.
And the thing that the CHURCH has in common is “the gospel”… that’s our shared experience… our shared identity... our shared purpose… and really, nothing else matters beyond that.
The gospel is the reason why Paul is able to ALWAYS be thankful for these people…
Because think about what the gospel is:
The gospel is the good news… that Jesus is Savior and Lord…
That while all of us were dead in our sin… we were slaves to our various passions and pleasures… we were marked out by what divides us so that we hated others and were hated by others...
While we were in that condition, the Son of God took on human flesh. JESUS lived the perfect life of love and obedience that none of us could live.
And that Jesus SACRIFICED that perfect life by dying on a cross… it was the death we ALL deserve to die (in our place, paying for our sin)…
and he rose again defeating Satan, sin and death…
and he’s coming again to establish his kingdom…
The gospel is the good news that whoever turns from their sin and trusts in him can have their sins forgiven and their relationship to God restored!
If you don’t believe that gospel, you need to put your faith in it today, because that’s the only way you can have fellowship with God and fellowship with his people.
So Paul, as he remembers the Philippian church in his prayer, he’s thinking, “These are people whom God has forgiven. These are people upon whom God has POURED OUT HIS LOVE in Jesus Christ… God looks upon them with joy and love, and I can too!”
The gospel is the thing that makes us “the church.”
We aren’t in relationship because we all like the same music… or we all wear the same style of clothes… or because we are looking for a group of friends...
We are in relationship because we have all been redeemed by the blood of the lamb!
When you are together with the God’s people, don’t settle for MERELY talking about about the weather or work or hobbies or your Fantasy Football draft...
You can do that for a short time… but get to the point where you are celebrating the GOSPEL!
Celebrate the thing that we ALL have in common!
This is what keeps the church from having cliques, by the way. Cliques develop around common life stage or interest… FELLOWSHIP develops around treasuring the gospel together.
We are in relationship because we share the common experience of being blind and dead in our sin… and of Jesus opening our eyes to believe in him.
Not only that, but we are in relationship because we want to help each other KNOW JESUS more…
And we are in relationship because we have a PASSION to proclaim that truth of the gospel to those who don’t know him in our community and world!
THAT is what brought thankfulness and joy to Paul’s heart as he thought about the Philippian church…
This wasn’t abstract for him… Paul had seen the gospel take over their lives.
Remember.... he was there when many of them came to faith in Jesus.
(You hopefully read about that in the reading plan this week.)
Paul had seen God do a mighty work in their lives to bring them into relationship with Christ and with one another.
And even after he left, he kept tracking with their progress… their church maintained a gospel witness in Philippi after he left...
They kept investing in his own ministry by financially supporting him when he went to plant a church in Thessalonica...
And then when he went to plant a church in Corinth...
And even recently, they sent Epaphroditus with a generous gift… and not just a gift… but Epaphroditus was such an encouragement to Paul as we’ll see in chapter 2...
This was a relationship that revolved around gospel work from beginning to end.
From the first day they believed… to the moment Paul was writing this letter: knowing and proclaiming the GOSPEL was at the center of their relationship.
and to Paul, THAT was worth celebrating... OFTEN.
THAT’S why he can say, “I thank God in all my remembrance of you… always… in EVERY prayer of mine... making my prayer with joy.”
So how do we do that? One of our goals for the Fall is that we would grow in holding fast to the gospel through consistent Gospel Community.
There’s a reason why we use that name, even though it’s a mouthful... “Gospel Community.”
We COULD call them Small Groups… we COULD call them LIFE GROUPS or HOME GROUPS or CELL GROUPS… those names aren’t necessarily wrong...
But we call them Gospel Communities because we want to remember that the thing that brings us together is the gospel.
That’s the reason we are pursuing fellowship with one another.
And so become a part of a Gospel Community… and then look for ways to celebrate the gospel work that brought you together.
In all of our Gospel Community meetings, with “Spirit led, scripture-fed, worship-based” prayer… use those times to THANK God for his work of salvation in each of your lives.
Get to know each other’s stories of how God saved you… get to know the stories of how God brought you to Oak Hill… and THANK GOD for those stories!
Share with each other how the truth of Jesus is changing your heart even today… Celebrate the victories together…
But there’s another way to celebrate the gospel right in this text… We actually can see a pattern of HOW to do this emerge from Paul’s example here.
I included some examples of this pattern in your sermon notes that you can go look up later.
But another one of our GCC pastors, Norm Millar, pointed this out to us at the Stand Firm Conference: He said, "As I read [Paul’s] letters, only one time do I find Paul thanking someone directly.... Instead I see the following pattern: He thanks GOD for them, and then tells them what he thanked God for in them." [Stand Firm Conference, 2019]
Think about that… it’s simple, but it’s a paradigm shift for most of us: Paul’s pattern wasn’t to go around saying thank you to people. “Thanks for your support… thanks for your time spent in ministry… thank you for the words you said today.”
That wouldn’t necessarily be WRONG, but it wasn’t his pattern.
Instead, he did something that I would suggest is even more meaningful… he thanked GOD for them… always very specifically… always with a clear reason for thanksgiving…
And then he TOLD them what he thanked God for in them.
He gives the credit where credit is due, and he simultaneously encourages the other person with the truth: I SEE GOD AT WORK IN YOU!
Apply: Immediate application - take time to thank God for someone in our church fellowship right now. If you don’t know anyone, maybe thank God for someone you met or who greeted you warmly. Maybe thank God for your spouse and his work in their life. Later, tell them (text, write a note, face to face) about what you thanked God for in them.
It’s so good to REMEMBER… to CELEBRATE the Gospel work that brought us together.
But Paul’s focus wasn’t JUST on the gospel work that they accomplished in the past… he recognized that the gospel needed to stay central in the present and in the future.
Look at verses 6-7 [read]
The second sign that the gospel is central to our fellowship is this:
2) We invest in gospel multiplication together. (v. 6-7)
2) We invest in gospel multiplication together. (v. 6-7)
Explain: Verse 6 is an EXTREMELY popular verse… and an extremely popular verse to take out of context.
Someone goes to buy a house and it gets stalled: “He who began a good work will be faithful to complete it...”
Someone is waiting for a husband to come along… and their love journey is “rocky...” so someone says, “He who began a good work will be faithful to complete it!”
But vote with me… thumbs up or thumbs down… is that what Paul is talking about?
NO! … So what IS the good work he’s talking about?
It’s the good work of their PARTNERSHIP… their FELLOWSHIP that was focused on gospel multiplication.
GOD brought them into relationship THROUGH the gospel… he set them on common mission to MULTIPLY that gospel… and GOD will FINISH that work that he started.
Understand: enduring gospel fellowship is a work of GOD in a church… God cares about that more than we do…
And he will see us through the challenges that come until the gospel task is finished.
Paul knows that God will do this work because he’s done it in the past. The Philippian church and Paul faced MANY challenges together.
He says, “It is right for me to feel this way about you (joyful about your partnership in the gospel) because you are ALL [there’s that word again]… because you ALL are partakers with me of grace.”
That word “partakers” comes from that same root word for “fellowship” or “partnership.”
You all “fellowship with me… share with me… PARTICIPATE with me...” in the grace of God.
That participation in God’s grace takes on a few different forms… and all of them are related to the multiplication of the gospel:
First, they were partakers with him in grace “in his imprisonment.”
Paul was in prison for proclaiming the good news of Jesus.
And so they sent one of their own.... Epaphroditus... to care for Paul… and they sent a financial gift with him…
So even when others looked at Paul and said, “What a failure… he just keeps landing himself in jail...” the Philippian church hung with them because they knew that things were more than what they seemed when God’s grace was involved
Second, they were partakers with him in grace in the defense of the gospel...
I believe this means that when false teachers showed up in their church, Paul could trust that they would hold the line.
They wouldn’t let people distort the glorious gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ.
Third, they were partakers with him in grace in the confirmation of the gospel.
I believe that this is their confirmation of the gospel in witnessing it to the outside world.
Their lives and their message confirmed that the grace of God is powerful. They were WITNESSES confirming his grace in word and deed.
And because of that, the gospel work that Paul started in Philippi didn’t stop when he left town… they kept multiplying the gospel in their own town even as they partnered with him globally.
In every way… globally, locally… the Philippian church has leveraged their relationships and resources for the sake of gospel multiplication.
So often, this is what our definition of fellowship can lack.
Illustration: We think of fellowship like a tailgating party outside of a football stadium… when biblical fellowship is more like the teams of players on the field.
Think about it… what happens at a tailgating party? People who love the game of football come together, cook some food, and talk ABOUT the players who are in the game.
They eat and drink and share their opinions about how this player should do things better… and how that coach should lead the team… they talk about the old players of the past who made awesome plays...
And then they go home, and they have some sense of shared experience… but it’s pretty superficial...
Compare that to the football team who is in the stadium playing on the field...
They warm up together… they practice hard together… they run plays together to create the very statistics that the tailgate guys can only TALK about…
They share DEEPLY in the victories and losses together...
And a DEEP bond is formed between them.
Gospel-Centered fellowship is about being a team on the field… not about being tailgate fans in the parking lot.
Apply: If we keep the gospel central, then we will work together to proclaim that gospel to others!
We won’t MERELY sit around talking ABOUT the gospel… we will work to see that gospel ADVANCE in our own community and to the ends of the world.
That happens on a global scale:
We partner with the Great Commission Collective to support church planting efforts around the world… that’s one of our family values: Strategic Church Planting.
I had the opportunity just this week to help partner churches think through how to apply the truth of the gospel to some very challenging circumstances in their ministries.
We support the GCC and other churches financially… like the Recamans in Pontevedra, Spain… we are striving side by side for the gospel with them relationally and financially...
We sent a group of people to support the gospel work in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia just earlier this year.
But for our global partnerships to remain healthy, we must have the same mindset here in our own community.
We need to defend the purity of gospel when false teaching would rear it’s ugly head in our church…
Which means we need to equip people in sound doctrine.
We need to challenge people when they express a wrong understanding of grace.
We need to confirm the gospel through our witness here in Southern Lancaster County.
We need to see each other as PARTNERS in courageous evangelism.
Listen: if you are working to proclaim the gospel to someone (maybe you are studying the Bible with an unbeliever, or having some neighbors over for dinner to build a relationship for the sake of the gospel)…
Don’t do that alone!
At the VERY LEAST, get your Gospel Community praying for you… labor in prayer for one another!
And the beyond that, maybe invite someone else from your Gospel Community to join in on that study WITH YOU.
Throw a game night where you invite some believers and some unbelievers...
Go serve someone together… a lot of times we hear about needs in our community and we are able to send groups of people together to meet those needs...
If you want to be on that short list to get involved in that kind of stuff, let me or one of the other elders know…
Talk to Melissa Mohler about AROMA’S Care Connect ministry… talk to Mike Boos… he sometimes has construction projects for people to do.
Partner TOGETHER in your confirmation… your witness of the gospel…
The Philippian church partnered with Paul in making the gospel known in their own location… and to the ends of the Roman world...
But in order for them to continue to be an active gospel-centered fellowship with a meanigful witness… they needed to continue growing in their personal application of the gospel.
[Read v. 8-11]
3 Signs the Gospel is at the center of our fellowship:
We celebrate the gospel work that brought us together.
We invest in gospel multiplication together.
Finally this:
3) We yearn for gospel growth in one another (v. 8-11)
3) We yearn for gospel growth in one another (v. 8-11)
Explain: Notice… this is a very heartfelt, emotional prayer…
He said in v. 3, “I thank my God for you...
In v. 4, “I make my prayer with JOY”
V. 7 - “I FEEL this way about you… I HOLD You in my heart…
And now in v. 8 - “I YEARN FOR YOU ALL WITH THE AFFECTION of Christ Jesus...”
Really knowing Jesus… and grasping the work he does in our lives to bring us together and to put us on mission… stirs our affections for one another.
Where our view of the gospel is deficient, our affections will be deficient.
It will be hard to “feel the love” when we can’t see the love of Christ at work in the people around us.
But when we learn to see it… and celebrate it… we will LONG for CONTINUAL gospel growth together.
So out of this yearning, Paul prays for two specific areas of growth
Growing in love
Think about the perfect love that we experience from Jesus Christ… it’s captured well in 1 Cor. 13 -
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:4–7, ESV)
Based on that standard, do you have any growing to do in your love for other believers?
Notice the way Paul words this: “that your love may abound more and more.”
It’s not that the Philippian failed to love… they had SOME MEASURE of love…
but we will see later in the letter that there are some disagreements going on ...
There was some selfish ambition in their hearts.
And their love needed to GROW.
Until our love matches the PERFECT love of our Savior, we always have room to grow.
And so Paul prays for ABOUNDING love… it was necessary for their side-by-side fellowship. Next, Paul prays that they would…
Growing in knowledge and discernment
To have knowledge and discernment is to have Jesus. It’s to keep him at the center. It’s to measure everything by him.
HE is the source of all knowledge… HE is the EMBODIMENT of all Wisdom.
He is the standard of excellence… the pure and blameless Lamb of God whose blood makes all others pure and blameless.
HE is the righteous one who produces the FRUIT of righteousness in his people by the power of his Holy Spirit.
When we know Jesus… when HIS GOSPEL is at the center of our fellowship… then we will measure everything up next to him.
He’ll be like the laser level that brings everything into alignment.
If something is reflects his character, we approve of it.
If something does not, we run from it.
And we will begin to bear the fruit of his righteousness… his work in our hearts will produce righteous living in our actions.
We need to YEARN for that kind of growth in one another.
We need to PRAY for one another CONSTANTLY that we would grow in the knowledge and discernment that the gospel brings into our lives.
We need to remind one another of the gospel that RESCUED US from sin and FREED us to live for Jesus...
This is why we NEED other believers in our lives! Because we pursue gospel growth TOGETHER.
And when we do, God is glorified. He’s praised by us. And he’s praised by people who see the change Jesus produces IN us.
That’s the ultimate aim of our fellowship...
Not that we would have friends...
Not that we would feel good that people like us.
But so that God would be praised and glorified.
Apply: Does God receive glory from the relationships in your life?
Are they helping you grow to look more and more like Jesus?
Let’s be that for each other. Let’s keep the gospel center of Oak Hill FELLOWSHIP Church.
Let’s pray.