Small Group Discussion Questions and Resource List at the End of the Notes

I submitted my life to Jesus because I didn’t want to go to Hell and I was convinced that without turning to Jesus I would.

Since that time I’ve discovered motivations that proceed from love and the prospect of joy.

One of the great motivators in my life is the parable of the Talents: Jesus told the story of a rich man who plans a long journey.  He leaves his property in the care of his three servants.  He gives each of them a number of “Talents”—portions of his property to invest it in some way so that when he returns, it will have grown in value.  That’s it.  They can do with it as they please as long as it grows.  He said he would be back, but he didn’t say when.

As Matthew reports the parable, “Now after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them.”

When he discovers that two of them did well and increased the value of their talents, the master was lavish in his praise and rewards them with responsibility for cities!  But the servant who refused to invest his master’s talent is called “wicked and slothful” by the master.  At least he could have put it in the bank and gotten back his 2.2%.  The master casts him into outer darkness, a place of “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  See Matthew 25:13ff.

I’m motivated by the lavish reward the master gives and I’m motivated by the fact that he could return at any time.

What does the investment of talents look like for you and for me? 

And maybe I should ask the question differently: What does the investment of talents look like for US?  For us as a church.

Jesus evaluates churches—that’s what Revelation 2-3 is about.  Jesus tells John to write down his evaluation of seven churches in the region that today we would call Turkey.  Are they fruitful, enduring in faith and proclaiming the gospel or are they bad water—good for neither bathing or drinking?  If the former, if they are enduring in what he’s called them to do, he promises a place with him in heaven.  If not, if they bear no fruit, he says in one case that he, “will spit you out of my mouth.”

The question before us today is: How can we be more fruitful as a church and as individuals through God’s gift to us of fellowship?

Acts 2:42

The list is not exhaustive, but it does contain four essentials for the life of the church.

• “The apostles teaching”—basically what Jesus taught them: that he is God come in the flesh to redeem a fallen humanity and restore relationship with him, that he is the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament.

• “The breaking of bread”—what we call the Lord’s supper—taking a meal together that reminds us of our participation in Jesus’ death—his death as a substitute for the one we deserve.

• “The prayers”—together the prayed to God for his name to be hallowed, for his kingdom to be followed, for his will to be done.

• “the fellowship”

1. The WHAT of fellowship?

• It’s a simple Greek word which means to participate or to share something with others.

• This participation is unique to Christians.  Person to person with the Holy Spirit inhabiting each and so defining and directing the relationship.  The Holy Spirit, you and me.

• And since the Spirit created us and knows us better than any human being, our interchange of fellowship is deeper and more profound than any other human relationship.  Deeper than parent-child.  More profound than husband-wife.

• Fellowship is, “...a sharing with our fellow-believers the things that God has made known to us about himself, in hope that we may thus help them to know him better and so enrich their fellowship with him. ...Fellowship is, secondly, a seeking to share what God has make known of himself to others, as a means to finding strength, refreshment, and instruction for one’s own soul.” —J.I. Packer “Fellowship,” in God’s Words (Downers Grove, Ill.:IVP, 1981) p. 194.

• Such participation can be broad.  It can involve caring for one another’s physical needs, but the world does that, too.  Fellowship includes practical care, but it is more than that.  It can include sharing a meal together or showing hospitality.  Fellowship includes hospitality, but it is more than that.  In Acts 2:42, Luke distinguishes fellowship from praying together and hearing teaching together and sharing the Lord’s supper together.  So he must have had something unique in mind.

• Fellowship is about sharing the life that Jesus gives us—sharing it with each other.  And that life is more than talking about the content of the Bible.  It’s about how what we know of the Bible—what we know about what Jesus taught and did—how that applies to our lives—to our circumstances, to the questions we face, the challenges we face, the temptations we face. 

• You can apply this to your fellowship group:

• That might start with a discussion of a sermon and how we can each benefit from it.

• It might start with a person’s life situation and how the Word of God applies to it.

2. The HOW of Fellowship

a. Fellowship requires conversation.  At it’s core fellowship involves talking about our lives.

b. Second.  Fellowship requires you to volunteer information about yourself.  It’s voluntary.  You have to want it.  You have to see value in it.

c. Third.  Fellowship requires self-disclosure.  People don’t know our thoughts and they often don’t know our actions.

• I don’t know about you, but I have no problem sharing with others my successes, my joys, my improvements, and the problems that others have brought upon me.  I have no problem sharing with people how I’ve been wronged.

• Where I have a problem participating in fellowship is those things I’ve done that I’m ashamed of.  Or a decision that I’m committed to making and I don’t want challenged.

• When is it wise to confess our sins to another Christian?

• When my conscience is bothered even after I have confessed my sin to God.

• When my practice of sin forms a pattern and is increasing in seriousness.

• When I need wisdom for how to repent.

• When my sin has a serious impact on others.

d. Fourth.  Fellowship requires the Bible.  It’s about how God’s Word affects our life circumstances.  It’s not about giving legal advice or medical advice or dietary advice or financial advice—as helpful as those things may be when coming from a qualified source—it’s about how God speaks to how we think and how we act.  God must define the problem and God must define the solution.

e. Fifth.  Fellowship should include prayer.  Our ultimate source of help is the Lord, and he invites us to pray for one another regarding our life challenges.  And our prayers must be defined by the Bible as well.

• James 1:5 “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God…”

• Even if we don’t have the wisdom to give good counsel, we can always pray for God to give wisdom.

f. Sixth.  Fellowship must be built on a gospel foundation.

• 1 John 1:7 “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of his Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”

• The gospel tells me that nothing another person says about me can be worse that what my sins say about me before God—for they required the sacrifice of God’s only Son to forgive me.

• And nothing about me can be better than the fact that in love God sent Son to die in my place.

• If I’m secure in the love of God, I can live an open life before my brothers and sisters.  If I’m aware of Gospel grace, I can admit my faults and take steps to change.

g. Seventh.  Fellowship requires humility. 

• Humility says I won’t speak to things that I’m not qualified to address. 

• Humility remembers that I’m a sinner too, in just as much need of God’s grace as the person who is sharing some mess in their lives.

3. The WHY of fellowship

• This takes us back to where we began this sermon, but before we go there, let me set some cultural context.

• The “Promise Keepers” men’s conferences in the 1990s placed a high value on “accountability.”  Every man was encouraged to be in an accountability relationship with at least one other man to whom he could give an account for his life.  Accountability was based on the premise that we need help as men to keep our promises and we can’t handle our failures alone.

• When you study the principle of accountability in the Bible, the stakes are far higher than being embarrassed before a group of peers.
• Rom 14:12 “So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.”

• Heb 4:13 “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”

• Fellowship is a means of being fruitful for Jesus.  It’s a means of preparing for the day of his accounting.  So if you call a small group you are in an “accountability group” make sure you have the right accountability in mind. 

• I’ve been concerned—for myself and for others—that we not treat our fellowship groups as some form of Roman Catholic penance where we look for absolution from the group and leave feeling better about ourselves b/c we admitted to something shameful.

• Fellowship isn’t a matter of law.  There is no command in Scripture to confess every sin you are aware of to another Christian.  If that were the case, I’d need a fellowship group just to hear my confessions.  We’d have to devote every meeting just to me. 

• Fellowship instead is a matter of wisdom.  I know that because I am prone to self-deception and because God has arranged his church so that we need each other, I need to get Bible wisdom for my life from other people who believe in Jesus.

• My concern for myself and for us as a church is that we are prone to be self-sufficient and we are prone to self-deception—to believe that we can live our Christian lives as isolated individuals and only admit our need when our sins become public or overwhelming.

• But that’s not how God arranged his church.  That’s not his way for us to live together.  And it’s no way to be ready for that great day of evaluation and accountability.

Questions for Discussion

1. How does John’s definition of fellowship differ from how you have defined the practice?
2. How did John connect fellowship to the Lord’s evaluation of our works on the Last Day?
3. Brainstorm as a group: ask everyone to come up with a question that would be a good fellowship starter.  It doesn’t have to be real or current.
4. How do we tend to get our practice of fellowship wrong?
5. What is the hardest “How” in developing relationships that involve fellowship?  How would you like to improve?

Resources

JI Packer’s chapter entitled “Fellowship” is excellent.  You can find it in God’s Words (Downers Grove, Ill.:IVP, 1981)

John Loftness, “Fellowship Rediscovered” In Why Small Groups, which is available for free by download.
http://www.sovereigngracestore.com/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=B3150-03-60CJ Mahaney,

Tim Lane and Paul Tripp.  Relationships: A Mess Worth Making.  (Greensboro: New Growth Press, 2008).
http://www.wtsbooks.com/product-exec/product_id/4888/nm/Relationships%3A+A+Mess+Worth+Making+(Paperback)

Jerry Bridges, True Fellowship (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1985).