1 John chapter 1 and in verse 1 it says, "...that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, the word of life. For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us, that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, And the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanseth us from all sin. 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. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." We will be looking in 1 John 1, where we read the scripture reading here just a little while ago. So 1 John chapter 1, if you'll just find that and hold your place there. I want to point out here a word that kind of makes a frequent appearance here in these short 10 verses. Several times, I think it's four times we see it in these 10 verses, and it's really two times in one verse and one time in two other verses. And you'll see it the first time there in verse 3. It says, "...that which we have seen and heard and declare we unto you that ye also may have fellowship with us." And then it says, "...and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ." In verse 6, it says, "...if we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth." And then in verse seven, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and with the blood of Jesus Christ and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son cleanseth us from all sin. And so that word that you heard repeated there four times was the word fellowship. It's an interesting word. It's a special word that we use from the word of God and we use concerning our ministry and our work as Christians I'm going to switch microphones here since I forgot to do that. And so the word that we want to just kind of focus in on here this morning is that word fellowship. And I'm just going to ask you in your mind right now, in your inner monologue, kind of answer the question, what does it mean to have fellowship as Christians? What does fellowship mean to you? I think sometimes, Our idea of what fellowship is, is not quite what the Bible describes it to be. I think sometimes we have maybe too low of a view of what fellowship really is. But fellowship is an important part of the church and an important part of what God designed into the church. God wants the church to have fellowship. God wants the church, has designed for the church to be a place where we have fellowship. And what that fellowship is, important to us and important to how the church functions and operates. We do this also, and I'm not gonna say that this isn't a way that we use the word, because we absolutely do, but we often call an event, like our Sunday evening, after church, we call those a Sunday evening fellowship, and it almost makes it seem like that fellowship is an event. We're having a fellowship together, And so we've got this event on the calendar and it's a time where we're going to get together. And what does that mean for us here at Providence Baptist Church? It means that we're going to get together and we're going to have some food and some refreshments and maybe more than that. And we're going to have some conversations and maybe we're going to play some games. Maybe we're going to have some discussions, whatever it may be. We're going to sit together. We're going to enjoy some time in one another's company. And so sometimes I think that because of the way we tend to use the word fellowship, we tend to think, oh, a fellowship is an event. It's a thing that we do. But rather the Bible kind of describes it more as something that we have and something that takes place between us. It's not something that is scheduled on the calendar. And it's not just fellowships at different times during the year, during the month or during the week. But fellowship is something that we are supposed to have between us all the time. Fellowship includes some social events and fellowship does kind of include the friendship and the camaraderie that we have between ourselves as Christians, as believers, as members of the same church body and church family. But it is more than that. It is deeper than that. It is more significant than that. And it is built on something that is stronger and deeper than just friendship. It's built on something that is deeper than just the common interest or common activity that often human relationships are based in. The Bible does have much to say about friendship and our social interactions and our social relationships. And those are important, and I don't wanna make less of those, but I don't wanna conflate the two. I think that we can have friendships that are not necessarily a fellowship, and I think that we can have friendships that are within a spirit of fellowship, absolutely. And those would be the better kinds of friendships that we could have, is the friendships that are based first in Christian fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ, The impact of a good friendship is evident in the Word of God. The impact of a bad friendship or companionship is evident also in the Word of God. We could point to many different places. I think there's a couple of good obvious ones. We know that Daniel and his three friends, the three Hebrew children is how they're referred to commonly, but Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, or Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, along with Daniel, these four young men, just older teenagers taken far away from their homes and from the security of their families and from the environment that they knew were taken away to a foreign place and put in a difficult situation. And because these young men had strong companionship and I would dare say good fellowship between them, they were able to stand for what was right and what was true in a combative and oppositional environment. And that's a good thing. And good companions are going to benefit us. Good friendships are going to benefit us. Strong fellowship is going to benefit us. We also see examples of bad friendships and bad companionships along the way in the Word of God too. And there'd be more than a few examples that we could look at. One in particular that stands out to me just from where I've been reading more recently in my own Bible reading was the friendship of Amnon and Jonadab. And Amnon had a crush on his half-sister and Jonadab helped him to scheme and commit a terrible, terrible act against her. And the Bible says very clearly that Amnon had a friend whose name was Jonadab who helped him to conspire to do this horrible and wicked thing against his own sister. Good friendships, bad friendships have a deep impact on us. The Bible says that those who walk with wise men are going to be wise, but a companion of fools is going to be destroyed. And it's talking very much about the people we choose to spend our time with, the people we choose to have friendship with and companionship with, and the people that we choose to truly have a fellowship with in our lives. It's going to have a deep impact on us. It's wise for Christians, I believe it's wise for Christians for us to form our strongest non-family relationships, our strongest friendships and companionships with other believers. The Bible says that we're not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. I think the most obvious application of that is in a permanent covenant relationship like marriage. But I think that it's a broader principle and I think it's a wise principle for us to be careful in yoking ourselves together with unbelievers in close and important ways really throughout our lives. Because our friendships and our close relationships are going to have a deep impact on the direction of our lives. So I believe it's wise for Christians to form our closest friendships with other believers, because the Bible says that, in Proverbs 27, 17, it says that, as iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. And a good, strong friendship, a good, strong relationship built on Christian fellowship is going to be beneficial to both parties. A good friendship is going to be one that helps and gives support for doing right and challenges us to do better and holds us accountable and calls us out when we start to stray and doesn't just let us go off and leave the faith or abandon our principles without without pushing back against that. Whereas friendships out in the world that don't value spiritual things and don't value Christian principles and don't value a godly character, they're not going to try to hold us accountable for things that are right and true and biblical. And so it's important for us to form our most important friendships with other believers. And I dare even say inside of our own churches, when we can, that's good for us. It would be wrong to say that friendship has nothing to do with it, social aspect has nothing to do with what fellowship is, but fellowship is more than that. Again, I would say that friendship is usually formed over a common interest or over a common trait, a common background, something like that. And friendships can sometimes be formed pretty easily. They can be laid aside pretty easily also because they're based on things that are very temporal. and less important, but fellowship has a deeper meaning that it's based on something that is deeper, something that is stronger, something that is more enduring than a common interest. Something that's more enduring than a common background or a friend in common. A lot of friendships are kind of formed because you're the friend of my friends, so we're going to be friends. And if something changes in there, sometimes it shifts and alters the dynamic and friendships can be laid aside in a way that true Christian fellowship is more enduring. more difficult to sever, more difficult to lay aside. I told the story here a few weeks ago about my friend, and I say that he's a friend and he's a man that I have Christian fellowship with, and I haven't talked to him in years at this point. And I know that if he walked in the door this morning after I realized who he was, we would pick right back up where we left off because our friendship was not based on anything we had in common. He's a doctor. I'm not a doctor. He's one of the smartest people I've ever met and understands things that I couldn't even begin to wrap my brain around. He's from a different part of the world than I'm from. He's had all these different experiences and our friendship, our relationship was never based on really anything we had in common. You know, what he calls football involves kicking a round ball around a field, you know, into a goal. That's not what we call football here in Texas. You know, we have a very different view about a lot of things, but we do have in common is Jesus Christ and our Christian faith. And we developed a friendship out of, like precious faith in Jesus Christ, out of a fellowship that was there first. and he wouldn't be the only one in my life, and he wouldn't be, and I know that nearly all of you could point to some relationship you have in your life that is very similar where you don't really have anything in common that would have necessarily led to an ordinary friendship, but you had faith in Jesus Christ in common, and you had fellowship in Jesus Christ in common that eventually led to a friendly and a social relationship. And though those things may change or alter or shift over time, what never changes is the like precious faith in Jesus Christ. which is to be the foundation of our Christian fellowship. And that's what it tells us right here in verse three. It says that we, that which we have seen and heard declare unto you that you may also have fellowship with us. Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And so he was setting the premise that if you're going to have fellowship with us, it means that you have faith in Jesus Christ the way that we have faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the tie that binds. Like precious faith that it talks about in 2 Peter 1, where Peter says, Every other circumstance of life may be different. Every other trait, every other quality of life may be different. Every other aspect of life may be different, but there is that like precious faith in Jesus Christ that forms the foundation of our Christian fellowship. Believers from all nations and cultures and ethnicities, experiences, backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, all of that, whatever the metric may be, can have instantaneous fellowship in their common faith in Jesus Christ. And in their shared faith, in common, not common, but in the sense of ordinary, but in the similar, the shared faith that they have in Jesus Christ. We become friends, in the church we become friends, but friendship is not what the relationships in the church are built on. My friends are here in the church, and I thank God for that. Friendships are built in the church, but our relationship is not built on friendship, it's built on Christian fellowship, Christian fellowship. And we'll talk a little bit about what, define that a little bit more here as we go forward, but friendships, unfortunately, can be altered fairly easily, but fellowship cannot. Friendship is typically built on temporal things, but fellowship is spiritual. We all have friends, people that we have some degree of friendship with out in the world, just people that we interact with on some kind of regular basis. And some of us work with people out in the world in different areas. a common interest, a common expertise, and a common position in our work, and things that we understand, that we know about. We have friendship with them, but what we have in common with them is not spiritual, it's something temporal. You know, I go and I walk out in the world, and I'm one of those unfortunate people who grew up and has been a lifelong Dallas Cowboys fan. And everywhere we go, you see someone wearing it. I saw a guy at a basketball game that I was at the other day, and he was wearing a Dallas Cowboys hat. And I just said, hey, man, I'm a Cowboys fan, too. Sorry. It's been a tough one. And I didn't even get his name. But we commiserated for a second on being Disappointed Dallas Cowboys fans. And that's how insignificant the basis of a friendship or a friendly encounter can be sometimes. Christian fellowship is so much more important than that. And what we have in the church is to be Christian fellowship. Events like what we call a fellowship, just to come back to that for a second, events that we label a time of fellowship can absolutely promote fellowship. I'm not saying both ways, just because we call something a fellowship doesn't necessarily mean that there is a fellowship taking place, that there is Christian fellowship taking place. Should be, can be, doesn't mean that it absolutely will happen just because we put that label on it. And just because we don't call something a fellowship doesn't mean that fellowship isn't happening. because so much of what we do as Christians has an element of Christian fellowship involved in it, ingrained in it. And so we don't have to call an event, we don't have to call a meeting time, a fellowship in order for us to have fellowship. We should have fellowship every time we come together with God's people. or we'll come together here for our Sunday morning, our main Sunday morning service and thank God for that. And we're going to fellowship here even though we're not calling it the fellowship and we're calling it the church service, the worship service or whatever we want to call it. Fellowship can take place here because it should because we're gathered together because of our like precious faith in Jesus Christ this morning. And that's what fellowship is based in. Fellowship is the communion and the unity that is found between believers because of our shared faith in Jesus Christ. The Bible talks about fellowship, and when it refers to fellowship, it speaks here of a partnership. It says there in verse 6, But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And so that fellowship with Christ, that fellowship in Christ and with Christ leads to fellowship with one with another. And that fellowship is more than, again, just a friendship or a social relationship, but it is a partnership together with other believers. makes it very clear here that our fellowship is based in truth, walking in the light and adhering to the truth of the Word of God and the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We have fellowship because we are born again, we're all members of the family of God. And we have fellowship because we're all part of the same body of Christ as members of the church when we're members of the church. We have fellowship because we believe the same things. And we believe the Word of God, and we believe the Bible is the Word of God, and we believe that the Word of God is the authority for all matters of faith and practice, both in the church and outside of the church, in our homes and in our personal lives. And we're all in agreement that the Bible is the authority by which we should live our lives. The instruction book for how we ought to live a life that pleases God, and how we ought to have a home and a family that pleases God, and how we ought to have a church that that serves and honors God in all that we do. We have fellowship because Christ is our head. And He is that every one of us, every Christian is to submit to Christ as His or her head, as the Lord of our lives, individually. That I submit to Him as the Lord of my life, while you submit to Christ as the Lord of your life, in every area of life, that everything you do, you do all to the glory of God. And then when we come together as a church corporately, and we all have that attitude individually, and we come together as a church corporately, then Christ is not just the head of me in particular, or you in particular, He's now the head of all of us as we work together. Fellowship is a partnership together, a partnership that is based in our faith in Jesus Christ and our belief in his word and our adherence, our obedience, our submission to his leadership in everything that we do. Membership in the church is one of the ways that we have fellowship and then we express that fellowship with one another. Remember, as a member of the church, you've confessed your, you've professed your faith in Jesus Christ, and you've confirmed your agreement and adherence to the doctrinal teaching and the practices of the church, and you've You're showing your support for the ministry of the church and the work that the church is called to do and the priorities of the church and the leadership that God has put in place in the church. You're showing all of those things, agreement with all of those things. And it is a fundamental level of fellowship that is available to us. We have a partnership in the work of the gospel that the priority of the church, it says right there on that banner back there, and you can read it later on, the priority of the church is to take the gospel to all the world. And that everything that we do is to, in some way, shape, or form, directly, indirectly, instantaneously, or over the long haul, to get the gospel farther than it has gone. And then we're going to join together as a church and participate together as a church to affect that cause. That when we give into the offering plates, we understand that in some way, shape or form, that is going to go to advance the gospel, whether that's here locally in Georgetown by keeping the bills paid at the church, whether that's going to go to missionaries, whether that's going to go to ministries that are reaching out to veterans or reaching out to people who've been hit by natural disasters in Florida, in Georgia, in North and South Carolina. Whatever it may be, we're investing in the work of the gospel going forward. We come and volunteer some time, or we teach a class in the church, or we help in some ministry of the church. We're understanding that all of that is contributing to the effort of getting the gospel out. And it's a partnership in that work. And we're unified as a church by the mission of the church. We all have an understanding that our fellowship together is a partnership in that work. We're joined together not just to have a community of like-minded believers. Thank God for that. But there is a purpose for unifying together as like-minded believers. to do the work that God has called us to do. We have fellowship, even a different kind, but we fellowship and we partner together with like-minded missionaries and ministries that are doing the same things that we feel called to do. We talked about missions here last week and being supportive of our missionaries who are willing to go out over the wall. We talked about being a rope holder and go out over the wall and be the one that goes into the unfamiliar territory and be the one who goes off into the place of danger. We partner with them because we're like-minded with them and they're going to go to a place that we can't be. I mean, you realize that if you left to go be a missionary in Argentina, or if you left to go be a missionary in South Africa or someplace like that, you realize that you could no longer be here in Central Texas being a missionary here for them, right? You can no longer be here and be witnessing to your neighbors and your coworkers here because you would be there. witnessing to your neighbors and your co-workers and whatever else may be over there, right? And so what we do when we partner together with ministries and missionaries that do these things, we're joining together in a spirit of fellowship with them because we have the same mission, we have the same purpose. Those missionaries that we support through prayer and through encouragement and through finances even, those missionaries that we partner with, we partner with them in a spirit of fellowship, realizing that they are doing what we would be doing if we were in the place where they were going to. And they, in turn, count on us to do what they would do if they were staying here in the United States. We help them get to the country they're going to to preach the same gospel we're preaching here in Georgetown, Texas, which may be in a different language. And so fellowship, Christian fellowship is more than friendship. It's more than just social relationships. but it is a partnership together. We are joined together and partnering together for bigger reasons and for a higher purpose and a greater calling that God has put on us as a church. Fellowship is that partnership and the outgrowth of that also is that it entails a level of participation That it's not just saying, well, I'm partnering together with this and I'm here for it, but it also means I'm going to do my part. It's a level of participation also. It takes this concept of partnership and it personalizes it even more because it calls on each one of us to contribute our part to the partnership, to the body, to the work. I realized if I want to have fellowship in any relationship, it means that I'm partnering together, and then I'm not going to be the dead weight in that partnership. And we've all worked with somebody who's getting paid just as much as we're getting paid, but they're not pulling their weight, right? And that's frustrating. because either work isn't getting done, or the team isn't as effective, or other people are having to pick up slack for the other person. And so there's an understanding in this idea of fellowship. When God calls us to Christian fellowship, it is, yes, join in mutual faith in Jesus Christ and common beliefs and a like-mindedness of doctrine and practice and purpose of the church. And then when you partner together, get in there and help and be a part of the work that's happening there also. God knits our hearts together. And when God knits our hearts together in this spirit of fellowship, it is not simply by spending time together or by just spending time in conversation. per se, I think that's part of it. But sometimes we stop there, and what often really fosters the spirit of fellowship and unity in the church is spending time working together. This may be more true for men than ladies, but that's certainly how most male friendships are formed, is not by just sitting down and having deep and emotional conversations, but by going and doing things together going in and helping a guy work on his car, or do a home repair project, or going out and shooting a gun at something for a few hours. That's how guys relate to each other very often. And I think in the church, that's very often the case also, is the people that we really learn to count on are the people that we serve with and that serve with us while we where we accomplish the purpose of the church. A church with strong fellowship is a church that serves one another and serves with one another while they serve others in their community. And serving together is what really fosters the fellowship in a church. The Bible tells us in a few different places and kind of makes a comparison in a few different places of the church being like a body. of human physical body and points to the fact that every member in the church is like a part of the body and one that has a role and has a purpose and has an impact on the function of the body. And when every member of the body is in obedience and submission to the head, Jesus Christ, the body is able to work very, very effectively and very, very, very with great coordination and dexterity. And what the Bible teaches us in these passages like Romans 12 and like 1 Corinthians chapter 12 is that every part of the body has a role, has a purpose, has a function. What the Bible calls in Romans 12, a gift to contribute something that the body needs that you can bring to the service and the function of the body. And when you are there contributing your gift, then the body has everything, has what it needs. The Bible says we all have a gift to contribute, but it's a spiritual gift. It's not a natural gift, it's a spiritual gift. It is something that the Lord develops in us as we walk with the Lord. As we walk in the Spirit, the Lord reveals it and develops it and helps us to employ it and puts us in a place where we can use that gift for His glory and for the good of others. And it's a spiritual gift. I've noted many times in certain people, I've been surprised. I've been very often surprised in my own life and in my observation of others what their spiritual gifts happen to be and how evident it is when they are walking in the Spirit because their spiritual gift is so opposite from what their natural gifts are and what their natural tendencies are. And when they're walking in the Spirit, they are expressing their spiritual gifts, and it's something that is so different from the way they are otherwise. And sometimes what our spiritual gifts are, are things that are refined and empowered, natural gifts that are refined and empowered by the Holy Spirit. And absolutely, the Lord takes what we, some ability or talent that we may have and He polishes it and He sanctifies it for His use. But in many cases also, it's the opposite of that. And God does something transformative in our lives and it's something that is completely foreign to our natural tendencies. But it's a spiritual gift and for it to be effective and for it to be expressed properly, it must be expressed spiritually. when we contribute those gifts, when we're walking in the Spirit, when we're in fellowship with the Lord and in fellowship with one another, like it says there in verse 7, we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, then we're not only able to, but we're willing to and desirous to contribute our spiritual gifts to the function and the ministry of the body. We have cooperation in the ministry The work of the ministry is every member's responsibility to some degree. Your gifts and your callings and the opportunities the Lord gives you are things that allow for you to participate to whatever level that the Lord allows you to participate. We all have some responsibility for the work of the ministry, the advancement of the gospel, the training of disciples, the carrying forward of what God has called us to do. And again, I would say that fellowship is built when we serve together. You know, we were out there, the nine that were able to go, and I know not everybody was able to go and we didn't, we almost had too many helpers out there, but the nine that were able to go on Monday night and pass out those gospel packets, there was a great spirit of fellowship while we did that. We had a great time serving with one another while we served the veterans of our community. And it was born out of a common goal. We've got 700 of these packets to hand out. Let's get it done. And let's pray that the Lord would bless and use these to reach someone with the gospel, to encourage somebody who's going through a hard time and let us be a blessing and do a ministry for These who have served our country, there's a great spirit of fellowship in that. There was a great spirit of fellowship. Some who were able to come up during the week and help to assemble the packets. And there was a great spirit of fellowship while we kind of just went around the tables and went around the tables and went around the tables. And we were encouraging one another, investing in one another, and conversing about different things. When we serve together, that fellowship is fostered and developed. When we have fellowship in the church, when the Bible says that fellowship, it doesn't just mean have an event on the calendar once a month for everybody to eat some good food together or something like that. And we're going to keep doing that. Please don't worry. We're going to keep doing that. But that doesn't mean, again, that doesn't mean that's the only time we have fellowship. And that doesn't mean that we absolutely have fellowship just because we're doing that. Fellowship is so much deeper than that. It is working together and serving together and participating together and partnering together for the true purpose of why God has built us together as a church. Close with a question, another question to think about, I had you think about a question at the beginning, I'll have you think about a question here at the end. Do you have fellowship in the church? And if you do, thank God for it and pray that God will help that fellowship and that partnership to grow stronger with the church. But if you don't, I'd ask you to consider why and to pray and to ask why that is. and what needs to change in order to remedy that lack of fellowship in your life. And so with that, I'd have for you to join with me for prayer. And here we'll go to just a time of response for just a moment if you would have heads bowed for a time of prayer here at the end. And just in a spirit of prayerfulness for a few moments before we close the service, if you would just consider that question, do I have fellowship in the church? And if I don't, why is that? And let's take some time to consider that and pray about that this morning. And the piano is going to play for a few moments. And as it does, if there's a decision that you need to make, a response you need to make in your heart, take this time to do that. And if you have some questions about any step of faith or anything this morning, please don't leave before you've Come and ask me or talk to somebody about it. We want to help you take whatever step of faith that is, whether it's salvation or answering some questions about something else that's going on in your life. Let us help you hear this warning. But let's take these next few moments and respond in our hearts to the Lord.