True Fellowship

Selected Scriptures

I was raised as a preacher's kid.  In fact, any of you who know me know I'm either the fourth or fifth generation of preachers.  We can't quite remember that far back, but somewhere around the fourth or the fifth generation.

And I was raised in a church.  I had so many quarterlies stacked up on my little shelf and eight zipper Bibles that every time I graduated somebody gave me another zipper Bible with my name in it.

And they used to say that I - in our church, when I grew up, we had little stickers they stuck on your head.  If you were good, you got a gold sticker.  If you were sort of average, you got a red sticker and if you were bad, you got a black sticker.  And I can remember growing up with stickers on my head as a little kid and spending a great portion of my life in the church.

And if you were to ask me out of my own background to define the term fellowship, I'm afraid what I'd come up with might not be Biblical.  Fellowship to me was a linoleum floor in the basement of the church with a shuffleboard court on it, red church punch and stale chocolate chip cookies. 

And they called the place what?  Fellowship Hall, right?  And very little fellowship went on, mostly drinking stale - or drinking red punch and eating stale cookies.  You got the message, anyway. 

But that's not fellowship in the Bible.  Fellowship isn't coffee and doughnuts.  Fellowship is much more than that and I want you to see tonight as we examine the pages of the Word of God just precisely what the Spirit of God delineates to us as the truth about fellowship.

Now to begin with, just a definition, the word fellowship in the Greek is koinonia, a very familiar term to those of us who've been Christians for any length of time.  The word koinonia is a common word in the New Testament.  It is a common word that is translated fellowship.  It is translated communion.  It can be translated partnership.  It could be translated togetherness.  And all of those basically having to do with a commonness, a common partnership.

And fellowship as a concept is vital to the family of God, vital to the body of Christ.  Way back in Genesis 2:8 God said, "It is not good for man to be alone."  God created man to be a fellowshipping preacher.  He created man for a relationship with other men and other women for his fulfillment and, in fact, with God Himself.

So being alone is not the will of God.  "It is not go