Encountering Christ in the Fellowship of the Saints - Dale Heisey | KFW 2017

Gracious God Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name, I just implore You, I beseech You, on behalf of this dear brother who has been a valuable messenger in equipping saints for decades. I pray, Heavenly Father, that once again You would pour out the blessing through him.

Father, I pray for a clear and clean channel that might be used by You for Your glory as we worship together in this place again today. Bless him as he speaks to us about encountering Christ and the fellowship of the saints.

I pray, Heavenly Father, that You would quicken his tongue. May it not be dull in any sense. That You would heal his body that has been afflicted to some degree this past several days, and just use him as a vessel for Your praise and for Your glory. Bless us each one as we listen to this message, as we take it in, as we drink of the fountain. May we worship Thee, O Father, in spirit and in truth during this service. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

God bless you.

It is certainly a great blessing to greet you in Jesus' name this morning, and we welcome all of you here. It has been a very humbling experience for us during this weekend to be together, and I realize that not all of you were here through all the sessions, but the Lord has been working here among us. They say the title is "Messages: Encountering Christ and the Fellowship of the Saints." I just want to call attention to the fact that you have a folder, a program. The beginning of that program, it says KFW, and do you know what the letter F stands for in those three initials?

And then I'd like to do some of that word fellowship, Kingdom Fellowship Weekend. For as much as we appreciate the fellowship we have here, as much as we appreciate the blessing of being together in this way, for as valuable as this is to us to be here for the equipment that God puts into our hearts because we're together here, our goal is this year in Kingdom Fellowship Weekend that we take that F and take it back home. There is where fellowship is truly tried.

There is where fellowship is truly tested. There is where we find out if our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son. It is back home. There is a tremendous amount in my life that I can hide from you on a weekend.

I don't hide it from my brothers and sisters at home.

I don't want to hide it from my brothers and sisters at home.

In fact, we only have fellowship one with another to the extent that we don't hide it.

So, I want to make that point at the very beginning here. What we're experiencing here, hearing here, what God is filling our hearts with here, we must take back home to our local assemblies, and there we must live it.

Now, a good sermon is supposed to have three points in it. Mine does not. I only have one point.

I'm going to try to get this point across. You won't have to listen very long this morning until you'll find out what that point is if you're extremely discerning.

I would not ask you to raise your hand as soon as it dawns on you what this point is, but if you're paying attention, you will get it. And then throughout the rest of the time we're together here, we will try to reinforce it.

But there's only one point this morning: encountering Christ in the fellowship of the saints.

If you would desire to meet Christ today, where would you go to find Him? If you, for twelve years, would have wasted all of your substance for an embarrassing medical problem that did not allow you to mingle with the public, where would you expect to find Christ so that you could reach up and touch the hem of His garment?

Where would you go to find that? How many of you know where we are by now? Did you figure it out yet?

You know where we are, don't you, Brother Joel? You follow me here.

If you would desire to present your smoked child to Christ, where would you go to do that?

If you were burdened with sin and hoped to find cleansing and forgiveness, where would you expect to find Christ? You will not find Him in Simon the Pharisee's house. You can't go in that door and kneel down at someone's feet. He will not be there. But where would you go?

If you would be of little stature, would you climb a sycamore tree in order to be able to see Jesus? Where can Christ be found?

And now I'll make the first point.

Someone told me this morning, "Yeah, we have a little house church." Now, I didn't say it to the dear brother, but I thought it.

There was a time when this Bible was being written that's all they had was house churches.

That is, they had house meetings, and we have meeting houses.

They had house meetings. And yet, as biblical as it is to have house meetings, many of those house meetings do not work. They are of short duration, and people find themselves migrating from house meeting to house meeting. And after a time of disillusionment, they make an interesting decision. They decide to start their own and then invite people to their version, and usually the results are about the same.

And I will tell you why there is difficulty there.

The reason why there is difficulty is because the purpose for which we have done it, the purpose for which we're migrating and checking it out and the moving van goes from place to place - there is nothing wrong with moving - is because I'm trying to find something or I'm trying to get away from something, but it's not our heart's desire and effort. It's not the purpose and, as Brother John said, our passion to be sure that anyone ever runs into us, ever encounters us, ever comes in among us, finds one thing when they get there.

The greatest need that they have is to find Christ in that fellowship of the saints.

And that is where the world should encounter Christ, and that's where I need to encounter Christ because though the lady is burdened with her physical maladies or though there are sins that she cannot take care of in her life, and she brings an alabaster box and brings tears and hair in order to worship Him, in many, many ways, I'm the same way.

In an assembly of God's people, I must find Christ there. I can't make it without it.

And that is where Christ is found. He is encountered in the fellowship of the saints.

Now, we should certainly support that with Scripture. This is not the text this morning, but I'm going to turn to several verses. This is still an introduction, but in Matthew 18, this is Jesus speaking here. I'll read two verses 19 and 20. "Again, I say unto you that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything, that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven, for where two or three are gathered together in My name." Would someone like to finish that verse? "There am I in the midst of them." "There am I."

And so, if someone is looking forward to encountering Christ, that's where He is.

And then the question is, what should be the nature of that fellowship so that He is there in the midst? And anyone who comes would discover that. First Corinthians 14, another text that indicates this again very, very clearly and jumping in the middle of a sentence here if you don't mind me doing that, verse 23, "If therefore the whole church become together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in of those that are unlearned and or unbelievers, will they not say that you are mad? But of all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not or one unlearned. He is convinced of all. He is judged of all, and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest.

And so, falling down in his face, he will worship God and report that God is in you of a truth."

These are powerful words from Scripture and tell you that Christ will be found there. Ephesians chapter 3, these again beautiful words, verses 16 through 21, "That He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with all might by His Spirit and the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now, unto Him that is able to do the exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end."

Amen. The church is the body of Christ. The church is His life, His power, His love, and His healing. The church is the place of His victory, of His forgiveness. His peace, His fullness are found in the church of Jesus Christ. That was Ephesians 3. This is Ephesians 4, verses 11 through 13, "And He gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and to the knowledge of the Son of God onto a perfect man." This is plural. This is corporate.

This is your assembly. This is your fellowship. This is where you are committed unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That's what the congregation is. That's what the church is. That's what the local assembly is.

So, we were preaching there, and someone had this great big, this great big beautiful whiteboard there that you could draw along and write all kinds of notes. And there was an artist in the audience, so I asked him to come up front here and draw a a a rather rapid version there of the Statue of Liberty. And so, that was done, and we and he did a very, very good job doing that. In a few moments that he did, he quickly drew that up there. He's a he's an artist, and just there all of a sudden the Statue of Liberty appeared in front of us.

And so, now I use that illustration to illustrate this verse.

And so, here's this assembly of saints, and here's the edifying of the body of Christ. Here is the one soul ministry to another one. Here is the love flowing. Here is life moving from heart to heart, and something strange is happening. This whole thing is growing as this is happening. This thing is growing, and it's not growing because twenty-five more moving vans moved in the community in the past year. This thing is growing. What is happening?

This image is being perfected, and we have this glorious representation. We have this glorious presence of Christ in the midst, and we grow up to this stature. We grow up to this fullness. We grow up to this representation. We grow up into the point where we are here in this world ministering the way Christ ministered and doing for people what Christ did for people, and this is the local assembly. This is what the church is for.

Now, there is no other place to get this done. There is no other place that meets this need. There is no other place to go to find the image of Him that filleth all things, and His glory fills the house.

And so, these Scriptures find their greatest fulfillment in that local assembly, that local gathering together of God's people, the church of Jesus Christ, wherever that happens to be in the culture, community, in isolation, wherever it is where it finds itself.

And that's why I think the competition between churches is such a foolish thing.

That's why "I am better than you are" is such a terrible attitude.

That's why me needing to stand in the pulpit and condemn other groups who do not do it like we do it seems like such an awful violation of the glory that our Lord is worthy of. It just seems like something terrible is happening.

Why do I need to do that? Because we have the greatest opportunity in all the world to let this stature and fullness in Christ Jesus grow into an image of holiness unto our Lord, a testimony of His presence among us.

And I know we don't all do it the same way. Someone has called my attention this weekend to the tremendous variety of people that are gathered here.

I know that everyone that's here is welcome to be here. You're here because we want you to be here. You're all welcome here.

If each of us would concentrate on this one thing, if anyone in our communities, if anyone of our neighbors, if anyone that's driving on the highway, if anyone who becomes aware that there's a little church over here, if anyone who would drive past would discover that there's a little group of God, there's God's people gathered together, and they would have one of the greatest needs in their life that you have ever found in Matthew, Mark, or Luke, or John, and they would choose to come to your assembly and get out of their vehicle and then come into your meeting house and say, "I hope that here it could happen. I hope that here. I'd be a joy if here," and they don't know what to expect.

If you would think of gathering together with that in mind, we represent the Christ of the gospel in this community where we are.

What kind of a powerful testimony, what kind of word for the Lord, what kind of work and witness would go out from your place?

That would be spread abroad. If you ever need to meet Christ, go over there. You'll find it there.

And I don't have to go to your Father before my heart begins to burn. I don't have to go to your Father before I see great needs in our congregation at home, things we need to improve to so this stature can grow, so men can find this kind of help.

We tend to think of church too often as a gathering in a building, as in this expression, for example, "And just where do you go to church?" That question was asked many, many times since Friday afternoon on this campus.

That's an interesting question, and we understand what you mean when you ask that question.

We tend to think of Sunday school, of which no one in the book of Acts ever thought about. They didn't know that that existed. We might think of bringing a Bible and a hymn book along with us, or maybe there's one in a rack at the church where you go.

We might even think of this, "Well, let's see, whose turn is it to preach on Sunday?" These are things we think about when we think of church, but the church is the embodiment of Christ. As we have fellowship one with another, we have fellowship with Christ. Listen to this very, very well-known verse, "Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me."

Does the gathering of saints where I assemble reflect the person of Jesus Christ? That's the only place to find Him.

And you know, I realize that a person could get on their knees anyplace at all and have an encounter with Jesus by faith. I know the person can find a Bible someplace; they never had one reading a Bible. That has happened in all kinds of interesting ways throughout history.

The prisoner in Vietnam during the war that

had to clean the latrines in the prison camp, he found these papers that were used there, and they were soiled because they were used for there in the toilets.

He saw writing on those papers, and he tried to clean the dirty away so he could read what was on those pages. And he did not know what he was reading, but he was reading pages of a Bible. Someone were tearing pages out of a Bible to use for that, and he started collecting these papers.

And when his week was up, then he was just putting it—there was nothing to clean it anymore, and somebody else could do it. He asked his prison person there if he could keep on doing that for a while longer to get more papers.

A person can find Christ that way,

and many have, but there's something unique about finding saints gathered together, where there's love flowing, where there's deep appreciation, where there's a humble spirit towards one another. There's a beautiful thing happening when someone notices, someone cares, someone asks, someone invites, someone offers a word of hope. A beautiful thing happens, and the needs, no matter how serious they are and how crippling and debilitating they might be, can be brought into this assembly.

And God uses those brothers and sisters there to minister to my heart, to my needs.

And as you hear those words this morning, I wonder if your heart burns. Do you desire that in your life? I would say, is that missing in your life? You might meet with a group of three hundred all alone. You're all alone.

Why are you all alone?

It's a terrible thing to be alone.

You see, the church was birthed by the twin dynamics—two things happening together that brought the church into existence. We have the united prayer of the few chosen ones, the few gathered ones. We have that united prayer, and then into that united prayer meeting, the Holy Spirit descended. I'll just read that for you there in Acts chapter 1, verse 14.

They are in an upper room here, it says in verse 13. These all continue with one accord in prayer and supplication with the womb of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with His brethren.

Chapter 2, verse 1 says that when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting, and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like of fire inside each one of them.

They were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And the church was birthed here, and we have a unique and beautiful result of that recorded in verses 42 through 47. And some of you may not have been here when this passage has several times been read in this assembly, and they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and prayers.

And fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles, and all that believed were together and had all things common, and sold their possessions and goods and part of them to all men as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their bread with gladness and signals of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.

So we have this beautiful word fellowship here in verse 42, and some of you might know Spanish here in this audience. I just thought I would tell you that the difference between the Spanish version of verse 42 here and this that I just read is this: that our Spanish Bible says, "And they all continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and in fellowship one with another." That's in Spanish; it's not in English.

And in breaking of bread and in prayers, fellowship one with another, fellowship with the saints. Fellowship is a distinctly New Testament word. Fellowship is dynamic. Dynamic means that something is happening. There's a function. Something is taking place. When there's fellowship, it's not just that two people are together. It's just not that one is here and one is here. That if there's fellowship, something is going on between those two people. There's an activity. There's action.

That's why I use the word dynamic.

There's power here. There's something that's functioning. Life is flowing.

I will show you a little word picture of this in Mark chapter 5, and some of you might not have Bibles, but if you don't, I'll read it to you. But this lady, I referred to her in the introduction. She had an issue of blood for twelve years. I think it was twelve years.

As it says twelve years in verse 25, but I wanted to read verse 30. And verse 30 comes to us after she already touched Him and she worked her way through that crowd and came up from behind where she said, "If I may touch but His clothes, I shall be whole." This is an amazing thought that she had, and straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And I want you to notice verse 30, and Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that virtue had gone out of Him, turned Him about in the press and said, "Who touched my clothes?"

The disciples thought it was an unusual and a wrong kind of question to ask, but Jesus felt something going out from Him. The Spanish Bible says He felt power going out from Him, and that's fellowship. And so Brother Leonard asked us to stand and shake the hand and wish a blessing, and when we are having true fellowship one with another, something is flowing. Something is happening. Something is happening to my life, and something is happening to your life.

It's not just a static experience. It's not just a social club. It's not just a toast as we snap the edges of the glasses together over the top of the table.

It's not just a cafecito.

It's not a snack. There's fellowship, and that means that something is happening from one person to another person.

That means the cords that are broken can vibrate once more. It means that something that is ruined and depressed and lonely and rejected finds strength anew and courage to try to start over again.

This happens time and again in our services. This happens in ways we know nothing about, but virtue is flowing in the worship service. It's flowing between the aisles after the service. We usually have three church services every Sunday morning in our congregation.

Usually, the people meet out behind. We don't have a foyer in our building. It's just a little tiny room, but there's a little bit of a porch out there, and it rains a lot in Costa Rica, so you have to have a room—a roof—because it's a lot of rain. We get two hundred and twenty inches a year where we live, so the first service is out there, and everyone is so glad to meet each other. It may be a couple of days since we have seen all those people, and they're not very many of us, but we're all glad to be together. And after a period of time, everyone goes inside the building and sits down, and then we have a second service in there, and then when that's over, we get back out there again in a third one.

I don't know how long that one is going to last, but some very, very beautiful things happen in the first service and the third one, and I think sometimes some things happen in the middle service too.

But something is happening between people, and for virtue to flow from us, for power to go out from us, it takes a commitment there.

And if I have some kind of resentment in my heart towards a brother that's there, some kind of jealousy, I feel somehow or another threatened by what he is doing, threatened by his gift, threatened by his contribution. If I feel that in my heart,

no, it will not happen. I will miss the opportunity. I will not even become aware, and not only that, but my very nature, my very spirit being wrong as it is and prideful as it is and selfish as it is, that person would not even dare to sneak up behind and touch the bottom of the garment. We would not feel free to do it, and what matter of person should we be in our assemblies? What kind of church service should we have? How should this local assembly look so that the person with the greatest need that could possibly be stepping into that building this day could feel free? This is what I am facing. This is what happened to me.

I am a mess. I am not fit.

Just like someone said in our service just a few services back, "I am not fit to be a mother. I am an awful wife for my husband. I am a mess. Could somebody please pray for me? Could somebody help me? I am a mess."

If you are not experiencing that in your church, if in your assemblies somebody would not be free to say that, I would like to ask you something: why not?

Because I will assure you, you have that in your church just like we have it in ours. I will assure you, those people are needed up here just like they are needed down there.

That's not all.

I will assure you, I am the one that needs it. I am the needy one. I am the one that has to have a church like that.

So I am trying to help you understand what this means when it says encountering Christ in the fellowship of the church, in the fellowship of the saints.

It's a very, very beautiful concept. Virtue moves from one to another. First John chapter 1, "Yes, 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 of the Word of Life." See, Jesus was here then. He was physically here on the earth. "For the life was manifested that we have seen it and bear witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father has manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.

How you do that? 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." Worship declared, "That God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say 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."

Brother Joel, what is that Greek tense that we have here in the word cleanseth, which means it is continually progressive accents? Oris tense, eris tense? How do you say that in Greek? Eris tense.

I will say this: fellowship is always in eris tense.

That's just the way it is.

Fellowship is continuous action. Fellowship is the transmission of life. Fellowship is a parallel circuit where all are united with Christ. If you are an electrician, you know what I mean.

And when you have a parallel circuit, you can put as many light bulbs, as many, whatever you want to on that circuit as you wish, and each one receives an equal amount of it, and all you are doing is just magnifying the effect of it, and no one loses any of the potency of it. It is a parallel circuit.

We are all united with Christ. It is impossible to have fellowship one with another without having fellowship with Christ at the same time. What is this fellowship whereby we encounter Christ? Let us talk about that just a little bit, this fellowship, and it could be that you have the saints of God in this fellowship union with each other, and at the same time, you might have unconverted people—some neighbor, some stranger, someone who has not understood these things, some needy person who maybe has their fellowship with God broken for who knows whatever reason—and they are observing this dynamic that is going on here.

And you need to think about this as you are leading the singing. You need to think about this as you are choosing the hymn. You need to think about this as you are leading the congregation in prayer. You need to think about this as you are preparing the sermon for the Sunday morning. You need to think about this as you meet with your brother in the aisle after church service.

You need to think about this: that something is happening here, and there is someone here who needs to encounter Christ. Someone here is observing, is desiring to feel, to touch, to understand. What is this fellowship whereby we encounter Christ, whereby the lost and the needy around us can encounter Him, whereby the unlearned and unbelievers may come to know Him?

And again, I want to remind you, as we heard on Friday night, that in this sense, and in a very true sense, this fellowship of which we speak is a strong evangelism power. It is an evangelism tool.

Well, they tell me that this word—and again, Joel, would you help me one more time here?

I do not know if the word is pronounced koinonia or koinonia. Koinonia, that is the Greek word for it. Thank you, brother.

And this word is not really hard to understand, although I have never seen as clear a description or definition of this word in this language as I would like to have learned. But let us talk about the word participation.

It comes very, very close to our English word participation—participating in something, something that we share mutually. It is something we have all received, and it is an identifying factor that brings us into oneness. Now, I will use this illustration: where we live up there in the mountain in Costa Rica, there are just little dairy farms up there. You cannot farm this ground up there. It is too steep, and there is too much rain. No one needs a tractor to plow fields. No one needs a forge harvester to cut grain or chop silage. No such thing exists. All you need is a cow to go out there and eat her own grass, and this is dairy country.

It is not really good for anything else, and so cows are up there and eat grass. All of our neighbors are dairy farmers.

So this one little road winds its way up through these mountains and climbs higher and higher, and that little road unites everyone together. But there is something unique that identifies each one who lives up there: they are dairy farmers, and so it kind of makes an artificial little identification that brings us all together there.

And dairy farming is not easy there. Sometimes it rains too much, and then the grass does not grow, and we do not have any silos or any hay mills. You cannot mail hay when it rains two hundred and twenty inches a year.

The grass must grow for the cows every day.

So we have this united factor that kind of holds us together, but in fellowship, there is something else that is a uniting factor. It is an identifying factor that just brings us all into unity with each other, and that is the fact that we have all participated in Christ. We have all participated in His sufferings. We all have met at that crucial juncture between our will and God's will, and we have met Christ there, and that factor does something to each one of us. And though backgrounds might be different and languages spoken are not the same, culture is vastly different, but this one unifying factor does something to these people that are gathered together in Jesus' name with Christ in the midst.

That does something between them that nothing else could do.

It brings us into oneness. It is the one thing that makes us all alike, and the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. And this was interesting: I do not think they named themselves that. I do not think the people back in Jerusalem said, "Oh, interesting over in Antioch, they have got Christians over there." I believe this name came from the neighbors observing them.

It is the means by which I seek Christ in my brother. I will stop right there.

By which I seek Christ in my brother, my brother. And think of the thoughts that are conjured up, and think of the image that comes to your mind when all of a sudden you think of that one with whom there is a tension and whom there is a breach of fellowship, and there is an avoidance, and sometimes unkind words said.

And you hear that person's name, and someone tries to give a little word of credit for something that that person has done, and they appreciate it so much, and you can already stand that—that someone is speaking well of one with whom your own heart is not at all in agreement. And you find it somehow interesting to try to project some kind of contradictory and balancing word in there that kind of takes some of this prestigium away and reduces this person a little closer to the size that you think he ought to be.

And yet, I just said, "I seek Christ in my brother," and I wonder how we can do that. Hey, would you try to explain to me what is going on in our hearts that this kind of thing takes place time after time, day after day in our local assemblies?

Immediately, there is love and life and peace. There is unity, and there is cohesion. You know the difference between cohesion and adhesion.

When there is cohesion, you do not need to put anything artificial around it to hold it together. You only need to take adhesive tape to tape it together.

Because it is cohesively bound together, the molecules hold together, and there is cohesion in the church. There is cohesion in fellowship. It is something internal.

There is a union of lives, and this beautiful, beautiful word that takes us from the word common to the word communion, to the word communication, to the word community—these are beautiful words which mean we all participated in something similar. The company of the committed, and it means that I am no longer alone. It means that I am accepted and wanted, and though I cannot explain it, I am needed and included for the first time in my life, and I find out that I can do something that I have never been able to do.

In this environment, it is safe for me to allow somebody to love me. It is a terrible, hard thing for many of us to do—allow someone else to love us. This explains the agapes that were in the New Testament, those love meals that they had. It explains the united prayers that there were, the willing offerings that we see here, the meetings, and the being frequently together. It explains it—why they were able to confess things one to another, why there was forgiveness, why there was this gift of restoration in the church and the brotherhood.

Because Christ—excuse me—because what Christ did when He was here, we do now, and what He was in this world for, we are in this world for, and as the Father sent Him, even now He sends us. That is why we are here. Can you imagine your church, your assembly, your local body being in your community where you are in your culture or area—I do not know what you call your place where you live—but you are there because Christ is not there, but you are there—not you individually, you corporately, you in this fellowship of the saints, you in this union with one another, and that is why this is such an important thing in Christ's heart.

That is why the prayer that we prayed back to Christ this morning—the importance of it—it is imperative that we do not do anything—we do not do anything to hinder the image of Christ, the power of Christ, the life of Christ in our assemblies.

Who does not want to be part of a church like that? And it grows, the Bible tells us, Ephesians—a spiritual house, a holy testimony. Now, the many pictures we have of this gathered brotherhood, this gathered body—one of them I have read it to you already this morning.

I will just read it again. You do not need to turn to it, but I read it in Matthew 18. It said in verse 19, "Again I say unto you that if two of you shall agree on earth." That word "agree" is such a beautiful word in our Bibles at home—the acuerdo—and it is a picture in the Greek language of a symphony. The word is—that is what the word is in Greek—it is a symphony, this church. And here, though you do not know anything at all about London Philharmonic Orchestra, though you have never heard of Sir Malcolm Sargent,

you are a symphony, and there is a harmony that is so very, very beautiful. There are triads. There is the great chord coming out from this assembly. There are only two or three or ten or maybe four or five families, but there is a great chord coming out of there. A great chord is interesting—eight tones that cover two octaves.

And you take this chorus of people—two hundred voices—and they sing this one chord. It can lift you out of your seat if you have ever heard that great chord sung by a group of people—symphony. And there is another word in the New Testament that also just gives us a beautiful image. Imagine the people of the world being drawn to this. Imagine your children raising your children up in this church. They turn into—they turn into young adults or youth, and they are drawn to this. They hear this symphony, and they see this tapestry—not a string or a thread, but a woven knitted mural where all the individual strings form this beautiful woven picture—picture of the church.

We have union there. We have something that is strongly uniting it together, knit together in love.

And as we heard last night, may I borrow a beautiful phrase we were hearing last evening: "Fellowship is the shared communion in daily practice." That was already read to us. I would like to read it again from 1 Corinthians 10 just to put this image before us—verses 16 and 17.

And Brother John was certainly right about the fact that there is more than symbolism involved here. There is something that you get if you do it that you miss if you do not.

There is something different that happens to you in the participation that is not taking place with you if you are not there.

There is something—and I guess I am going to not use the word "mystical"—but there is something spiritual that is taking place in your life.

It is not only between you and God. It has a horizontal aspect there with other brothers and sisters. The cup of blessing which we bless is not the communion of the blood of Christ. That is where the word "Eucharist" comes from. The bread which we break is not the communion of the body of Christ, for we being many are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread. That is why there is fellowship—because we are all partakers of it, and we are strengthening fellowship every time we do it.

It is just that knitting is stronger and tighter. That symphony is gloriously repeated. And so, I need to ask a question: Are we experiencing a Christ encounter in our local assemblies?

Do we truly have fellowship one with another?

Do we meet, come face to face, come heart to heart with the virtue and power and holy life of Christ that flows from our brothers into ourselves? Do we experience that in our services?

I was preaching in a state here in the states one time—some distance from here, quite a distance from here, Pennsylvania. Brother called me and said, "Would you have time to visit with my wife and I this afternoon if we would come over there?" And they were living in another state too, but they came to where I was, and then we met there, and he sat there, and the story he told me was something like this: "Yeah, for the last two years of our lives, something serious was wrong, but we did not know what it was."

And his wife is sitting there beside him, and he is trying to find ways to explain this to me. I want you to listen real closely.

He said, "We discovered that for two years we had no fellowship."

I thought, "Brother, may God bless you."

Someone who had enough of Bible understanding to know that there was no fellowship there.

There were meetings, there were church services, there was preaching, there was eating food together without fellowship.

At first, he did not know what was missing. I do not know if we would recognize it if we were living without fellowship or not. Many years ago, a man was dying in his bed. He was dying of cancer. He looked up with his—his flesh was wasting away. He looked up at me and said, "Brother Dale, fellowship is where fellowship is, and fellowship is not where fellowship is not."

I have not forgotten those words.

One time, I heard a person say these words: "Yeah, you can visit with him all day, but you cannot have any fellowship with him." I am using some of these expressions to wake us up to something, to get us to think about something. Are we experiencing fellowship? And would others be able to have fellowship with me? And if they cannot have fellowship with me, then what is wrong? Where is the problem? What is blocking? What is wrong if that virtue does not flow?

If someone cannot come up and touch that hymn, if someone—if that power does not go out to meet a need over here, what is hindering it?

No one has fellowship with pride and selfishness. No life flows there.

"Come and learn of me that I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls."

I do not know if this is appropriate to say at a place like this. The time is rapidly going by.

We have in our congregations at home—we have several congregations we work with and are responsible for, try to provide oversight for.

We have in our congregations at home some congregational positions, some brotherhood agreements that not all of our congregations have.

We have felt in some of our congregations that we would like to represent some things, identify with some things that not everyone in Costa Rica feels, but maybe it is quite as important as we feel that they are. And so, we are not the same in everything.

We have people come to visit us from other countries where their practices and some of their focus is different from our own. I do not ever feel the need to ever say to our congregation, "I have never done it. I do not think I ever will do it. I have never done it until now." I have never needed to say that that direction we will not be going.

I thank You, Lord, that we are not like they are.

We should close the door to those people so that they do not—we just cannot bring any of that in here.

We have never done that.

We have never held up our congregation or our expression or our identification as something that is superior to others. This is just what we have felt the Lord wanted us to do, and the people are glad to do it.

And we try to teach them to be able to appreciate those who maybe see some of these things differently. We do not need to change because they have it that way because we are thankful for what we have, and we are together on it. It has been such a blessing, and we are raising our children together, and the community knows what to expect of us. And we can do that with grace, with blessing, with victory, without putting down anybody else.