Old Testament Foundations for New Testament Worship: Message 3

Intro:

Well today we reach the conclusion of our time together here in Acts 2:42. I hope that you have found some benefit and some encouragement in our time together as we have considered these elements of worship that the early church devoted themselves to, these elements that became foundational and definitional to who they were as a body of believers as they worshiped together and then as these things worked their way out into their lives.

Now as we come back to this text one last time this morning We are going to take a closer look at the last two elements that we see these early believers devoted themselves too, the fellowship and prayers. I would also like to do a little bit of wrapping this whole thing up as well as we close.

Again, my hope is that as we have spent this time working through, in particular, the OT foundations for these elements that God has prescribed for our worship of Him that we would be encouraged to press on in our own devotion to them as the means of rightly gathering together.

This is one of the central concerns of the entire narrative of scripture, one of the central expectations that has always been placed on the people of God is that they come before Him in worship rightly. In this God is pleased and His name is glorified in the earth. It is no small thing that we do when we gather, and as such there is a dread seriousness that ought to attend our efforts to ensure that we are approaching God in the ways and in all of the ways that He has called us to do.

Like I have said for two weeks now, there is no fundamental shift from the worship in the OT to the worship in the New. Some of the elements have been transformed as we saw in the Lord’s Supper, and we as the living temple of God are no longer required to gather for worship in one specific place, as the Jews of the OT were under the administration of the Old Covenant. We know that God is working to build up communities of faith, His Body, these temples made of living stones all across the world, this is the privilege of gathering together in the name of Christ. But, as we gather we are to gather and be committed to gathering and doing all that the word of God calls us to in our worship.

And so we press on and consider these last two elements that we see here in this verse.

But before we do that lets take a moment to pray.

PRAY:

Now again our verse is Acts 2:42

Acts 2:42 ESV

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Now lets take up first the principle of fellowship. If you were here last week you might remember that I said that the word for fellowship is KOINONIA and it means to have a close association, relationship, or communion with another.

In other words you don't share koinonia with the cashier at Walmart or at least you probably don't. You don't share this fellowship with those who you only know on a casual basis.

This word speaks of those with whom you share a deep fellowship a relationship forged as we will see here in the striving together to worship the Lord rightly and to live your life faithfully before Him.

This is the fellowship of the faith.

Now you may remember that I mentioned as well last week that it could well be that in this verse the breaking of bread and prayers help to explain what Luke means when he says they were devoted to the fellowship. In other words you could read it as they were devoted to fellowship through the breaking of bread and prayers. That there is a way in which the regular breaking of bread together and participating in prayers together formed the core of their fellowship or their close association in the faith.

First though we need to see as has been our aim over the past two messages that this devotion to fellowship is not a new idea that develops in the NT, that we see in the OT this same principle that God intends for those who gather to worship Him to gather before Him in fellowship with one another.

And now more specifically I want us to see that even in the OT that there is likely a special prominence given to the fellowship in the local assembly, that even as these people had to gather to worship in one central place, the tabernacle and the temple that there still was a special significance given to the local assembly of the faithful.

Again, that what we see set in place to guide and guard the fellowship of the believers in Israel was primarily ordered around the local fellowship.

Now, this is important because as I said in my first message one of the things that has been a challenge to me and that I think can be challenging for anyone in a church is to truly press into and develop this local fellowship this fellowship in the faith.

Two Ditches

There are two ditches that I think folks can fall into when it comes to this pursuit of fellowship in the local body.

The most prevalent I believe would have to be those who do indeed find fellowship in their local body but that fellowship isn't really defined by much that would be unique to a fellowship grounded in a shared faith. Many churches shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to this by seeking to gather people together in small groups and such around shared interests. Now I can see how this approach might appeal to the pragmatic but rarely ever does it result in a fellowship driven by a shared experience of worshipping together and living out the faith together. These are people who might be tempted to leave church a few min early or miss it all together because they have a game to go to or they want to hit the golf course early and they planned that outing at the “fellowship” time in their last small group gathering.

Again, this is not the type of fellowship that we are taking about. Now, its not that you can’t have shared interests outside of the core elements of the faith but the question is does a shared communion in these elements form the foundation of your fellowship or does some other factor play a greater role in your shared experience of fellowship.

Now there is another ditch and this is likely a little less prevalent but still one that I think is possible to fall into. There are those who may be committed to going to a certain type of church either because they have grown up in that type of church or hopefully because they are convinced that that type of church or gathering of believers most faithfully adheres to biblical doctrine and practice. However, as we will see this morning relationships are hard and sometimes we can be in a church gathering that ticks many or all of the right boxes but we can find it incredibly difficult to find this fellowship that we are talking about and yet we may be able to find closer fellowship with believers outside of the local assembly.

I say this gently but I do believe that it is important, if your closest bonds of Christian fellowship exist outside of your local assembly then I would also assert that this is problematic. It is within the local gathered assembly where we are to foster our deepest bonds of Christian fellowship.

Now is it possible to see this in the OT, is there really any way to say that there was an expectation in OT Israel that there would be close bonds of fellowship that developed in the local gathering of the saints?

I will admit that this is the most difficult of these elements to establish but I think that one of the main reasons for this is that the nature of the word then made it so that this didn't need to be spelled out as clearly. In a world without cars, tv, radio, and the internet the local gathering was all that you had, I guess you could walk a town over, maybe, but there were certainly limits on how far one could travel and so the brute realities of life meant that you would have had to develop this fellowship locally.

Discipline

However, there are some clues to this and one of the key clues is actually one of the elements of fellowship that we are going to consider this morning and that is discipline.

That’s right, it is in the discipline of ancient Israel as also in the discipline of the church that I think we can make a case for this local nature to the fellowship of the believers.

One of the elements that we see developed in the law of Israel is that discipline is carried out first by those closest to the individual that was being disciplined. We see for example in Deuteronomy 13 that when a person was guilty of enticing someone to serve other God’s that it was the members of that persons own family who were to lay their hand first to the stones to stone the individual. We also see in Deuteronomy 21 that law breaker was to be taken before the Elders of his town at the gates.

There seems to be a principle that is developed in the law of God that these matters of discipline are to be handled locally and by those with the closest association to the wrong doers.

Now, obviously, Israel didn't do a great job at following these things but never the less we see that local discipline was an expectation and that this local discipline was intended to actually maintain the shared fellowship of faith within Israel. When local discipline wasn't carried out and whole towns and cities were overcome with lawlessness then the nation as a whole was to step in and wipe these towns out. You didn't want things to get there.

Jesus even highlights this nature of discipline when he says in Matthew 5:23-24

Matthew 5:23–24 ESV

So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

This is the true nature of discipline throughout all of scripture, its aim is to maintain the fellowship of the faithful by seeking to maintain holy lives in the fellowship through reconciliation.

Now when we come to the instructions on discipline in the local assembly in the NT we find exactly the same thing, we find ourselves commanded to seek reconciliation and to keep our accounts short and to look out for the good of our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

Most people don't like to talk about church discipline. All too often church discipline is thought of as only in terms of its worst outcome, the disfellowshipping or excommunication of an individual who has participated in the fellowship. However, the general day to day function of discipline in the life of the church is the process through which believers are expected to hold one another accountable to living lives reflective of the commands of scripture and the faith that we share in Jesus Christ.

The Bible asks “what fellowship has light with darkness” any sort of darkness and sort of sin no matter how big or small has the capacity to disrupt fellowship and so we are to pursue Church discipline as the means of repentance and reconciliation with the aim or restoring fellowship.

Matthew 18 is the primary passage where we are given our instructions on ho to handle church discipline and it starts in verse 15 with:

English Standard Version Chapter 18

15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

In our church in Unalaska we seek to set the expectation early for those who come and especially for those who make the commitment to covenant together as believers in our local body that this part of church discipline ought to be a normal and regular occurrence. That you ought to have the expectation that when you seek this fellowship to which the Bible has commended us that you should expect that one of the primary ways that loves is expressed is through others being willing to take the risk of coming and talking to you about any sort of problematic behavior they may witness in your life.

Please note here in this text that when it says “if your brother sins against you” its not saying that the only time you talk to your brother (or sister for that matter) is if they specifically commit some grievous sin against you specifically that is so big that you have to go talk to them.

No, if you are a member of a fellowship and you witness any sort of sinful behavior in the life of a fellow member that sin is a sin against Christ, against the fellowship, and against you and you are bound by the command of scripture to approach your brother about it.

Now this is to be done in gentleness, with respect and humility, we are to be always at the process of taking first the logs out of our own eyes and not simply looking around us with a critical eye seeking to observe what is wrong with everyone else but never asking what is wrong with us. No this is behavior that torpedoes any effort at seeing this type of church discipline work out in the life of the gathered assembly. We must do these things in love and in humility be willing and open to having people do this or us as well.

The end of these conversations ideally, the gaining of a brother, that is the maintaining of the fellowship of the faithful. When church discipline is done rightly its end is the maintenance of this fellowship that we are talking about this morning, this close communion of the faithful.

Now we know there is more in this text, we find that there will be times when the other person doesn't want to listen to us. We are then to involve a few others from the local fellowship. Again we see the centrality of the local assembly.

Now this is important. This doesn't mean you go and grab a couple of your best friends and share your side of things with them and then go and dog pile the other person. No this means you seek to find some mature believers who are in good fellowship who can listen with objectivity and impartiality and who you believe the other person might even be in a better position to receive correction from and then you explain the situation to them and if they believe that there is warrant for pursuing the reconciliation then you come with them. Remember the aim isn't that you are proven right it is that the other person be reconciled and that the fellowship is maintained.

Then we find that if all else fails this matter is to be taken before the church. Again always with the aim of the restoration of the wayward brother or sister.

Now I am under no sort of naive notion that this is an easy task, not at all! This is likely the most under used and neglected matter of church life described to us in the Bible specifically because it is so difficult and has the potential to go so horribly wrong. You should never find it easy to approach a person in this manner, this is hard stuff.

Though we have been saved by the grace of God we all have yet within us what the Apostle Paul described as a body of flesh that we have to mortify because it has a general disposition toward sin and which while it is possible to overcome this inclination by the power of the Spirit at work in our lives yet it is also possible for genuine blood bought believers to get all tangled up in sin. It is also possible for those who have never truly come to faith in christ to, for a time exhibit the life of a professor of the faith but then to fall into sin without the power of the spirit at work to deliver them.

All of this makes this passage an incredibly difficult passage to live out and most people just tend to avoid it all together.

But please note that one of the most amazing promises of scripture is provided here for just this case:

English Standard Version Chapter 18

20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

Do you realize that this is a promise specifically relating to the discipline of the church? When you gather, even as two, in that initial confrontation in the name of christ that His body might be purified, held faithful, and grow in fellowship through the process of church discipline He promises that He will be with us in a unique way, He will be there among you as you seek to exercise this discipline that is aimed at maintaining this fellowship that we see in Acts 2.

Now we have been a little long at this point but I believe that it is a point of paramount importance because it shows us how central the local gathered assembly is in the life of the Body of Christ. What is described here is a process that only really works within the local fellowship. This is not a process that works well with your friend from another church, now I would say that you should still be willing to approach that individual if you see them in sin as well but the primary avenue for our seeking to be held accountable ourselves and for our seeking to hold others accountable is within the fellowship of the local assembly and God has so outlined this process, I mean notice the specificity and the clarity with which He describes this process, because it is of paramount importance to the life of the church.

Now there are more points that we could make about the essential nature of the local church fellowship but we need to move on to the final element that these early believers devoted themselves too. The devotion to prayer.

Prayer

Recall that we have made the case that the devotion to fellowship is defined by the commitment to breaking bread together and to the prayers. And so we need to consider the role that prayer has in the fellowship of the body.

Briefly stated I would make the case that we ought to be often at the task of praying together and that we ought to be remembering in our own personal prayers, of first priority, the members of the local body.

We see early on in the book of Acts that the early church was a church that prayed together. We see this develop first around the natural rhythms that were already established in temple worship. In Acts 3:1 we read:

Acts 3:1 ESV

Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour.

The Jews observed regular times of prayer and so the early church also seems to have continued observing these regular times of prayer together and why should they not with all that Christ had taught them about the privilege and power of prayer now that they were citizens of His kingdom and sons and daughters of the King.

We also see in Acts 6 that the leadership of the church, the apostles, which would then have been handed off to local elders were to be devoted specifically to prayer and the ministry of the word. So much importance was placed on this that they implemented the office of the deacon to carry out other necessary church tasks so that those responsible for the leading and teaching of this fledgling flock could be solely devoted to these two primary tasks.

In addition to devoting ourselves to praying together we ought also to be devoted to remembering each other in our prayers.

Paul talks often about laboring for his churches in his prayers.

Paul talks about Epaphras and his love and devotion for the church at Colosse in Colossians 4:12

Colossians 4:12 ESV

Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.

Can your prayers for those gathered here in this assembly be described the same way? Are you struggling on behalf of one another in your prayers?

You can hopefully see how it is that this would deepen and enhance fellowship. A deep rich fellowship is required for the vulnerability necessary to share you deepest and most personal needs with the assembly of the faithful and in turn laboring for your fellow believers in the gathered assembly in your prayers will deepen your love and care for them. In this way the fellowship of the local assembly turns on and can be graded on this metric, what is the prayer life of the local assembly and its members?

Now please now that I am not saying that we shouldn't also pray for others outside of the local assembly. The Bible says that we ought to be often at the privileged task of coming before God in prayer and there is ample time to bring family, friends, missionaries, and many other cares and concerns before the Lord but I would maintain that one of the best ways to seek to establish and develop and deepen the fellowship the the local assembly is this, to be devoted to praying with and to laboring on the behalf of one another in prayer!

Closing

So now as we close I want to be honest, this stuff is hard stuff. As we have seen this morning the gathered assembly is made up of people and people are quite often hard to deal with. I get it, I am not even naturally that much of a people person and so I can relate to finding these aspects of fellowship that we have discussed this morning at times incredibly difficult.

The first step though is simply committing yourself to being this kind of person and seeking to establish these things in your own life.

Story about Roger

Discipline even at that level is not fun and enjoyable but what took place that day has only served to deepen my relationship with Roger, to deepen the share fellowship of the faith that we enjoy.

I know that what we have seen this morning does not always turn out the way that we would want it to. This ought to first drive us deeper in prayer for those who have hurt us laboring as Epaphras is said to have done over even individuals that we find incredible difficult to strive to share fellowship with.

There are no easy answers but we do have that amazing promise that God will be in our midst as we seek to establish and maintain this fellowship of the saints!

And so as we close I would commend you to the further study of worship in the word of God. These central elements that we have considered over the last few weeks are just that, they are central but they are not all that we have been called to do and privileged to do in the worship of our Lord. Seek to study these things diligently that you might be devoted to the task and that you might do all that is commanded to do in worship that God might be honored and glorified as He builds us together into that temple made with living stones where He is worshiped aright in the world.