CYPRESSWOOD CHURCH OF CHRIST

September 7, 2008

25424 Aldine-Westfield, Spring, TX. 77373

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ENJOY OUR FELLOWSHIP MEAL TODAY!

REDEMPTIVE FELLOWSHIP IN FIVE ACTS

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13).

When our ancestors chose to split the Bible into two parts, Old and New Testaments, and decided that we should just look at the New, it has caused us to view a variety of ideas from a limited perspective. One idea that has been limited is our view of God. We have come to see God in a deistic way, that is, that He is out there but does nothing much for us today because He has left us His word, especially the New Testament, and that is all we need.

We also have developed an unhealthy view of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This is a difficult concept for all of us and has been debated for centuries. Words used in attempting to define God are Deity, Trinity, and Godhead, none of which are found in scripture. Some have rejected the words and others the concept because it is not found in the Bible. In one song book I saw, under the song Holy, Holy, Holy, in the last line had blessed Trinity. Someone had crossed that out and wrote in unity. Another concept that I heard in school to illustrate the Trinity was to draw a big circle for God, a little circle for Jesus, and a dot for the Holy Spirit. In a song called Glorify Your Name, which is a song directed to the Trinity, the third line is “Spirit, we love You, we worship and adore you, Glorify Your Name in all the earth.” After singing that one Sunday, I was asked if we should “worship” the Holy Spirit? If He is God, why not? Attitudes and teachings like these have led some to question our orthodoxy to scripture (1).

The Bible has been given to us as a whole and we should read it that way. Doing this will help us understand what God wants, especially in fellowship, and would move us beyond the emphasis on baptism and the organization of the church, and would enhance our understanding of worship.

We begin at the beginning. In act one in the pristine and good found in the Garden creation, we see “the Lord God as he was walking in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8). This is an indication of the fellowship God had with His creation and especially with Adam and Eve. This fellowship was the desire of God with humankind. Of course, in context, Adam and Eve had sinned and that fellowship would be broken. Our purpose however is to see that what God desired was fellowship, like the holy fellowship He has in the Trinity or among the Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (2).

From this point on, fellowship would become redemptive in its purpose. God has always intended to be among His people and it is seen in a number of ways. Act two sees how some of this is developed. At times it is represented by messengers such as angels. When we come to the days of Moses, however, we see God entering into the midst of His people. God delivered the Jews from Egyptian bondage through the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the pillars of cloud and fire, and the providing of food in the desert.

It is at Mt. Sinai that we see the desire of God in redemptive fellowship. In Exodus 19, God came to the Jews and announced that they would be His people. We see God coming in a cloud with thunder and lightning. His purpose was to show them, and us, that He would be among them as His people Israel. He would go ahead of them and lead them to the Promised Land.

An illustration of fellowship that we see here is found in Exodus 24. There Yahweh invited Moses, Aaron and his sons, and the seventy elders up the mountain where they sit in the presence of God and eat. Twice it says that they saw God but they were not harmed. This is a foretaste of God’s ultimate intention, a return to the Garden fellowship, now redemptive in its purpose.

Ultimately, it would be the Tabernacle in the wilderness in which God would be among His people. He would be seen in their midst because the Tabernacle with the Ark of the Covenant would be in the middle of the people. There Moses would enter into it to meet as the representative of the people with God, because God’s glory filled the Tabernacle when God came in the cloud (see Exodus 40:34-38).

While would could debate whether God really needed a temple in Jerusalem, David had the desire to build one and Solomon completed it. When this was done, again God came into the Temple in dramatic form, indicating that He was among His people, His glory being present. There was a warning that as long as they were faithful to Him, then Yahweh’s glory would remain; otherwise He would remove His glory from their presence (see 1 Kings 8).

Act two highlights God’s desire to be in fellowship with His people yet there are limitations due to sin. But this is the story of progression toward redemption. If God made this effort to be with His people in a cloud, how far was He willing to go to restore fellowship with His creation?

Act three reveals this. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1, 14). God now comes into humankind as a man, in humility, to show us who God is (see Philippians 2:5-11; John 14:9). He takes up His abode among us, the idea of the word dwelling. He came to live among us. God the Son enters into a sin filled world to reveal the redemptive activity of God. It is through the Son that redemption would be accomplished at the cross. The emphasis on the death and resurrection of Jesus is the most important teaching of scripture. Without it we would have no concept of God’s purpose in creation and fellowship.

This coming isn’t always for the present but for the future. For Jesus becomes the new Moses who will lead us out of bondage to sin, through the wilderness of life, to our Promise Land of the new heavens and earth. He came to be in fellowship and to show what fellowship is for followers of God.

Act four begins the idea of fellowship among God and those who choose to follow Him; His people. It is also fellowship among His people. The divisions that we see then and now, race, nationality, economic status, are all broken down through the cross. Jew and Gentile are united as one in Christ. There is an added dimension to this, God among His people. For Jesus said that He would send another Comforter, One who would focus us on Jesus (see John 14-16). This would be the Holy Spirit.

This is where we read of the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, that is, that the Spirit has come to live among God’s people. This applies both to the church (1 Corinthians 3:16-17) and individually (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Both temple and sacrificial language are used in this. We are told that the Holy Spirit is a guarantee of our inheritance (Ephesians 1:13-14), that we are to be filled with the Spirit (Romans 8: Galatians 5), and that He will lead us. God in redemptive fellowship with His people. We live holy lives in Christ because of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

We can grieve the Spirit, and I think we have when we have chosen to say that He is not among us. We have developed an unhealthy fear that God might actually do something beyond our human reasoning, and since that takes control away from us, we just cannot abide by it. So we have chosen to say the Spirit only dwells with us in His word. But God has not left us alone. Yes, we have His word but we also have His personal help (see Romans 8:26-27). What we need to keep in mind is that fellowship with God is in view here.

This fellowship extends beyond us. The Hebrew writer emphasized this when he said that we “have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:22-24). We live in the now and the not yet, that is, we live here in time and we also fellowship those beyond us. When our friend, Curtis Harrison died recently, Yevette made a comment in passing that I thought profound and truthful. She said that Curtis and her mom are now talking with each other as they wait for the rest of us to come. This is what I see the Hebrew writer explaining.

John Mark Hicks uses that idea with communion. Having lost a wife, son and father, he often sees our time around the Table fellowship as a time of meeting with God and with those who have gone on to the heavenly city (3). This expands our ideas of fellowship beyond an altar to eating and drinking in the presence of God in Christ. Recall again Exodus 24 as a prelude to this.

In the final act, God comes in the new heavens and earth, an earth redeemed just as we are (see Romans 8:18-25). We come to the Promised Land, Eden, the Garden, and in redemptive fellowship, to walk with God in the cool of the day. “There is no temple; there is no sanctuary. The whole earth is the dwelling-place of God. This is the fulfillment of the divine intent in redemption. The whole earth has become his sanctuary” (4). It is not just a restoration of the earth but the glorification and transformation from mortality to immortality (see 1 Corinthians 15:35-58). The journey of fellowship has been consummated in a new journey of communion with God in His very presence.

What a great story! This must be seen in its whole as we understand God and His purpose in redeeming us in Christ. That then is expressed in our trust in the work of Jesus and our willingness to be in fellowship with Him, however imperfectly for now, as we look forward to the ultimate fellowship in the new earth.

George B. Mearns

(1) Some see us as deists and that from reading what we have said about God for over one hundred years. Thankfully we are developing a better understanding of the Godhead. Those views have also led some to see such things as prayer as merely a command to be obeyed but do not expect God to do anything to answer that prayer; a fatalistic point of view. The most predominant view is that the Holy Spirit dwells or lives in us through the word only. There are any number of reasons for this including a fear of Pentecostalism and the fear that if the Holy Spirit is active, then scripture isn’t complete.

(2) Any number of illustrations have been used to try to explain the Trinity, though none are sufficient. However, the concept, even to our limited minds can be seen in a number of areas. Like all illustrations, there is limitations beyond which it brakes down. The best illustration of the Trinity is probably a triangle with three equal sides, each representing one Being of the Godhead and the center God in total.

(3) see http://johnmarkhicks.wordpress.com under Assembly, Presence, and Comfort for the Grieving (Theological Hermeneutics Applied).

(4) see http://johnmarkhicks.wordpress.com under Theological Hermeneutics VI -- Divine Presence and Assembly (Redemptive-Historical Example). Thoughts for my article in part come from John Mark.