Avoiding Free-Wheeling Fellowship

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

So, Jonathan did a good job at introducing us to some of the problems of the fellowship thing and the mess worth making. Mine had a couple of different titles and then I noticed freewheeling is what’s in the book, avoiding freewheeling and then Sean gave me the idea, letting out the clutch of fellowship, kind of like that. My big subject and what I wanted to talk about is for those of us that have been Christians for a while and you can get yourself in a rut with people that you know or especially wives and family members can get into a habit of having fellowship with each other and creating a bunch of rules so that you just know how to get along.

And just getting along is not what we’re supposed to be doing, is it? We’re supposed to be growing in one another. And in those family relationships or marriage relationships, those should be growing and getting bigger and expanding all the time in a much more fluid way, I would say, than the church can because you have additional bonding mechanisms that need to work through. Now all those additional things, of course, add to the problems. So that’s always interesting too.

The big thing is that when you look up fellowship and you find out that the Greek word is used the big nine times in the New Testament. It’s only used once in the Septuagint and it’s really not all that common. But the concept of fellowship is huge that we have a relationship with the people in the body. The most famous verse for fellowship is Acts 2.42, and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and the prayers. First introduction of the word fellowship in the New Testament and it’s brought to you by a Gentile, Luke, who had this concept of fellowship and it’s somewhat out of the, not in the Jewish thinking. When you read about it in like Bible encyclopedias and things like that in the Old Testament, the Jews were kind of a clique but they didn’t want to have fellowship outside of anything they were doing. They were the light, they were the place, they would allow people to come in, but they weren’t really embracing fellowship like it happens in the New Testament anyway.

Now, the first thing I want to talk about is kind of the negative part of it. And if we’re talking about Christian fellowship, the first thing we need to do is be Christians, Okay? So a lot of the fellowship problems you see in churches, especially mega churches that you might be involved with or, you know, big giant places and you start meeting people and all these people seem nice and you get to know them and all this stuff. And then as you get to know them, you realize, I’m not even sure this person’s a Christian. How did they get in this church and how did they do this? And it’s a lot of people that can kind of look like they are.

So there are a few verses that talk about this that don’t trick yourself into being disappointed if unchristian people are not in fellowship. That’s kind of the harshest category you can put them in, but sometimes that is what it is. So a Christian has no general genuine fellowship with an unbeliever. Second Corinthians 6.14 says, Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? Duh, you know, none. Natures of unbelievers are different. They are children of the devil. First John 3, 10 through 12. By this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil.

whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.” Okay? So remember that sometimes in Bible study questions, you’ll hear that, oh, why did, You know, Cain, Murderer, Abel, and all that kind of stuff. Well, if you don’t know the answer, that verse gives you the answer. Because his own deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous, period.

End of discussion, you win the argument. So the idea is you cannot share fellowship with people that aren’t united with you in being a Christian. Now, once you’re a Christian, what kind of fellowship do you gain when you become a Christian? At first, you know, I got saved, I don’t have to go to hell, this is incredible. The guilt’s lifted, Christ died for my sin, you know, all this kind of stuff. And then all of a sudden, the layers of the onion start peeling and you realize, whoa, this is way bigger than I thought it was. This involves lots more than I thought I was gonna get into. So that you are sharing a common spirit and sharing in the divine nature.

Whoa, that sounds a little out there, right? Now I’m going to share a nature with the divine. Well, in 2 Peter 1 and 4, by which he has granted us to his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. Once you’ve stepped away and made that commitment and confessed up, at that point you are now in that divine nature. Now, do you fall and have to confess again? Yes, but as we’ve talked about over and over, it’s a process. And once you do that and you get better at it, you get more conformed, And you are more and more supernaturally involved with God.

And remember my favorite thing is, you know, keep pounding with every time we talk or whatever 1 John 3, 2 says, he will, if you’re a true believer, he is conforming you to his son’s image. That’s it. Whether you want to or not, kicking and screaming, he will conform you if you’re a true believer. So we have a common spirit and we share in the divine nature. fellowship also brings about that we are in the family of God and that family of God only comes about after the new birth. So do we get really reborn or do we get adopted? Yes, our life is like a new life and reborn, you know, reborn again or born again. I like that expression, comes out of John 3.

But really we become adopted sons of God or daughters of God. And the idea of that adoption, you know, is actually kind of cooler than being an actual son. When you have a son out of, you know, if you get married and you have kids, okay, we naturally got together and, boop, out pops this kid, here we have this kid. Then we look at each other and we say, oh, there’s all these kids that aren’t even, don’t have a family. Let’s reach out and adopt that child into our family, even though we had nothing to do with making that kid happen. We’re going to give that kid a secure family. That reaching out is what God did to all of us.

He adopted us into his family. And once we get adopted into that family, we become part of the family of God, which includes all of us. Now, once we do that, what things start to happen to us? says in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The oldest passed away, behold the new has come. So once that happens, and that can be your 13-year-old son, your 5-year-old son, your 37-year-old son, once he becomes a new creature in Christ, all of a sudden a whole different person has been born again into the family of God. And in 1 John 3.9, it says, no one bored of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him.

God’s seed abides in him. And he cannot keep on sinning because he had been born of God. If you’re a Christian and you think you can get away with it, you’re not right. You won’t get away with it. If you’re an unbeliever and think you get away with it, you’re not going to get away with it, but your conscience may not bother you. You may be just hardened, and so you’re just going to keep on sinning. But if you’re a believer and you keep sinning, God will grind you down. He will keep peeling the onion and knocking you down, knocking you down, whittling that away. Now, does that mean you’re going to be perfect? No, that was the whole discussion of 1 John.

That was our last elders teaching thing is going through those books. When it says, you will sin no more, that’s the present active indicative, that’s the practice, not the actual fact. You’re not gonna have sinless perfection. But as you work through those problems and go through that asking forgiveness and stuff like Jonathan pointed out, the Matthew 18 situation, what does it do? It draws us all together. Because if you say, I made that mistake, you need to forgive me, that person’s thinking, Wow, he’s asking forgiveness for that. I could ask for forgiveness for this. Look at that, we’re both in the same spot so we can develop even a stronger fellowship out of those processes.

So I think that’s a huge part of it. So now we’re already fellowship and the family of God comes after the new birth. Now the other thing that happens with you when you actually have coenonia is that you also have fellowship with the Father. Well, yeah, okay, if I’ve got fellowship in the family of God, then obviously I ought to have fellowship with the three persons of the Trinity, and sure enough, that’s where we’re going to go here. We have fellowship with the Father, 1 John 1.3. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.”

So it declares once we believe we have fellowship with God the Father. Okay, that’s good. Then in 1 John 1.6, three verses later, if we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. It gets back to our old thing. Our practice should not be in the truth. And as we work through those things, we get closer and closer. And of course, 1 John 1.9, you know, you get forgiven, you get back on track. Then in 1.7 it says, but if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus’ Son cleanses us from all sin. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.

The best thing that you can do is when you are discipling somebody or you’re working with somebody or you and your wife or your family, everybody’s clicking. I tell the story often, people ask Sean all the time, how do you live all together with all those people and your mother-in-law and all, blah, blah, blah. And he says it’s great when everybody’s walking in the spirit, not too good when one isn’t. And that’s because of exactly this. If we walk in the light, ease in the light, we have fellowship with one another. If one of us gets out of line, tilt. If a couple are out of line, more tilt. Once those things get confessed up, it gets back on track and off you go.

Now does that happen for 30 seconds a day? Does it happen for 30 minutes a day? Does it happen a couple days in a row? All depends. But that’s the work that we have to do. And we’re continually doing that work because we are in the condition we’re in, right? So that gets us fellowship with the Father. The next one is fellowship with the Son. First Corinthians 1.9 said, God is faithful by whom you were called into fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. So we were called into the fellowship of His Son when we are faithful. God is faithful and by whom you were called. Okay? First Corinthians 10.16, the cup of the blessing that we bless is not a participation in the blood of Christ.

The bread that we break is not a participation in the body of Christ, is it not? It is. We are participating in what Christ has done when we have communion, as Jonathan pointed out. So communion keeps drawing that back. And that’s where the supernatural part of this, I like to say it a lot here, I like to make everybody nervous and make them think that I’m some kind of crazy charismatic or something. But here’s the thing. If you’re not charismatic, you’re not a Christian, okay? If you don’t believe that God’s Spirit enables all kinds of things to happen that we have no control over, you’re really not understanding what God’s doing with us.

We can’t make people do stuff. God makes them. And He indwells them with His Spirit and indwells you with His Spirit. So inside of us, God is living and doing things with us that in no way, shape, or form on our own we would do. So he is working in us in that way and changing us to the image of his son. Hebrews 3.14 says, if we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. So as we hold on to Christ, we are carried on to the end. For those of us getting older, it’s interesting, you know. Get some parts repaired. hey, I can go a couple more years now, get this fixed. Pretty soon, you’re the robot man.

But anyway, the idea is that as that goes on, we that are older should be able to help those that haven’t been around as long in understanding these things. That’s part of the freewheeling or letting the clutch out that I kind of want to talk about. It’s a little bit out of the verses that I’m talking about, but it’s a philosophy that I have that I think has served me well in all kinds of different church circumstances. Always find people that want to be discipled. And it’s interesting, if you pray about it, have people that want to be discipled by you, usually you will get people that are a generation or 10 years younger than you asking that.

Sometimes it’ll be a lot younger, and for those of you that got saved early in life and were in youth ministry, it might be a couple grades, but as you get older, you get married, and then all of a sudden you realize, wow, I can really disciple these young men because they want to get married, and I can help them with things that they don’t even know they’re going to run across. So that passing on, that generational passing on, is a huge aspect of fellowship that strengthens your fellowship because out of the mistakes you made, maybe you can help somebody not make those mistakes, or some of the things you did right, help them to do that right also.

So as you go through that process, the whole fellowship thing can be generational. And one of the great things that I see in our school is, and this is something that even Jonathan is thinking about as we think about, okay, we’re going to pop out of this place and we’re going to have to go to a bigger place. How do we keep that intergenerational flow in our school going as we would like to see it in our body? And what I’m talking about is where a kid in the sixth grade on the playground or in the hallway between classes is going to the five-year-old that he sees as a little confused or in distress and helping them along and encouraging him and saying good job or whatever that is, leading them along, discipling them along in the process, showing them that, hey, in a couple years you’re going to be just like me and then you can help the next guy that comes along.

And when that starts to click, it’s amazing how you can watch the kid in the sixth grade helping the kid in the second grade, and then when they help each other, how the little person in the second grade walks away from there going, yeah, I can help little Bobby now, because now I’ve got the answer to that. And that’s life, isn’t it? I mean, wherever you are, whatever process you’re in, you go through it, you learn a little something, you go, okay, I can do that now. I can do that process. But that’s what it’s like. You get that little piece of information and then you can pass it on and do that. So the last one is, if we have fellowship with the Son, we have fellowship with the Father. We also have fellowship with the Spirit. So in 2 Corinthians 13, 14, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Be with you all, okay?

All of us, Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Spirit. Now only if you’re walking in the Spirit can you carry out these things. You know, we don’t want to beat a dead horse, but the fruit of the Spirit is all those things and if you’re walking in the Spirit you have those things and you walk into a mess. If you can stay calm and be the reason one going through those things, you can walk somebody out of a big mess in a spiritual way, being that stronger spiritual brother to those people. And if they are believers and they’re taking advantage of that spirit, it goes really smooth. Now they might be in rebellion and then rejecting that or being mad because they didn’t think of it and all that kind of stuff, but those are all just little indications that they’re really not walking in the spirit.

So does that mean they’re not believers? No, but it means they’re not behaving as if they were believers. That’s why I started with the big negative is people that are just faking it. Sometimes they’re hard to see. I’ve seen people that I’ve known for 10-year periods that were leaders in big churches and stuff just turn away, walk away from the faith and say, I never believed it, period. And they were muckety mucks at certain points. And that happens. But when you really have people that believe it, they can’t get away with that for long. They will break. They will come back to it and make it happen the right way.

So don’t be discouraged when you run across that kind of thing. And always be available for that talk. You all, you know, we’ve heard this before, you know, we kind of started on an interesting foot when we started, but the offer is out there in writing right to this day that we’re ready to meet whenever they want. But so far, we haven’t seen anything. Anyway, so having fellowship with the Spirit, the first one there was 2 Corinthians 13-14. Then in Hebrews 6-4, and I thought this was an interesting first to put in there, fellowship with the Spirit. For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit.”

This is one of the great scare verses for young Christians. And they read at 2 o’clock in the morning and are pretty sure they lost their salvation because they committed some sin at work at 2 o’clock in the afternoon that day. If you just calm down, take a deep breath, and realize what it’s saying here. For it is impossible to restore them again to repentance, those who have once been enlightened. If you have true salvation, it is impossible for you to be stripped away, all right? You have tasted the heavenly gift and shared it in the Holy Spirit, all right? So once that has happened, you’re in the club. You’re part of it.

So that’s a good thing. Now the fellowship, the end results of these things, results in a mutual love. Okay? John 1334, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. Can we do that? Maybe sometimes. Eh, I don’t know, 90%, 80%? Eh, I don’t know. once in a while, poop, we did it, poop. I can tell you at my age, I’m 72 now, and I’ve been a Christian since I was 37, you know, I don’t know. Maybe 50 times you really feel like you’re in sync with it all, but then you realize maybe I’m just looking at this wrong. If I’m thinking that I’ve got to be in sync with everybody in the room, that’s probably not going to happen.

But if I’m in sync with everybody that I know and that knows me, and that doesn’t mean that because we say hi to each other that we really know each other and all that, that’s another myth. When you come to a church and you think, I’m going to be friends with everybody, no you aren’t. You don’t like some of these people. You can love them and not like them. I mean, I understand some of you people don’t have good musical taste and want to listen to Bob Dylan. But you know, the whole idea is though that we supernaturally are bonded together with these things, but the people that really know you, are you then clicking with them on that level?

And I say yes. If you can kind of see what I’m trying to talk about, you are, when you are interchanging with those people on that kind of level, you have that supernatural love with them when you’re talking about those things. Now, we can have glimpses of those when we pray for people, or God just blesses you to come up to somebody and say, you really look lonely. How you doing? You’ve had those kind of experiences. And you go, wow, that was really cool. and the person thanked you that you said that kind of thing. So I think those are kind of special cases. But I think that we worry too much about everybody’s got to love us, and we all got to be one big happy family, and we got to agree on every stupid little thing.

That’s not really love. It’s how do we feel about that person? How would we sacrifice for them if they needed it, or they sacrificed for us, and that kind of thing. So I think sometimes we create a false bar of that mutual love. But the loving one another, it’s a transactional thing that if you love somebody and they don’t love you, that’s not a bad thing. You’ve done your part of it. And most of the time, they may not think that they need what you thought was love to them. They may not think that that’s what they need. And so you go, oh, OK, that’s really not what you wanted, I guess. But I know that that’s what you really need.

Well, sometimes, who are you to know what that person really needs? Because we watch different scenarios with people in different relationships and all these things. And sometimes, it’s weird how people bond up. I mean, you’ve all seen it. How could that guy marry that woman and stay married for 30 years to her? Or how could she stay married to him? Like me, right? And you go, wow, that’s a God thing. Yeah. And we should be happy in that and always looking for those connection points on that kind of thing. So I’m kind of letting you off the hook a little bit, because I don’t think that the loving one another is like something you can translate to every body in a congregation that you’re in.

Now as the group gets smaller, loving one another for people that you do have a relationship with, that you are maybe discipled or known for some years and those kind of things, now you have a different bond. Some of those bonds, some of those people, like for instance in this congregation, a The guy that used to come here no longer comes here. He didn’t like some of the things we did. But he truly, I think in his view of the world loves me. And he has reached out and tried to help in different things. Sometimes I cannot fathom why his help, why he thinks that’s a good idea for me. But I’ve come to know that he’s calling and letting me know about things because he really does want to help in his economy.

And I look at that and I think, wow, he’s an idiot. Doesn’t he see I don’t need that? And yet then when I talk with him, another subject comes up and God then shows me how he arranged it so that I could talk to him about something totally different than he thought while he was calling me to help me, it ended up to be a way that I could help him. And those things happen a lot in life. You get involved and it’s a big mess and all of a sudden out of the big mess comes the solution that nobody thought could happen and you go, wow, I’m glad we didn’t jump into that. And yet when you first started you thought you had it all solved.

So I think you just have to relax, pray about things, be calm. I think thinking the best of people is good. I’m famous for always looking for the pony in the poop. I think that that’s a really good way to live. If there’s a lot of poop, there’s a pony in there somewhere. So look around. So anyway, now we got the spirit. And then fellowship results in mutual love, which is a good thing. True fellowship results in common salvation. I think this is a big one to think about. Jude 1 verse 3. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once delivered, once for all delivered to the saints.

If we are truly in fellowship with the Lord, We have that common salvation and that we all, it was once delivered to us and that we are here to defend that faith. And that can happen together, that can happen alone for you in different situations, but we are on the winning side. And sometimes that does take an eschatological view, you know, that, well, it doesn’t look like we’re winning really right now, things might be getting better over here, but it looks really bad over here, that kind of thing, just contend for the faith and realize we have a common salvation to share with all those people around the world.

Now, being a Christian here in Marysville is a whole lot different than being a Christian in Syria right at the moment. I just heard a news report before I came here today that ISIS, what’s left of ISIS, which is basically not very much from what they were, but they have surrounded a thousand people and are threatening to just wipe them off the face of the earth, just as a last ditch effort to show how, you know, what a righteous bunch of, you know, ungodly people they are. Now, if I’m in that thousand, I’m in a different spot. If I’m a Christian and I’m in that thousand that ISIS wants to kill, then I am standing here telling you about fellowship and all the rest of it.

That guy’s got his, you know, when you’re lined up against the wall and the guns pointed at you to shoot you for your faith, that’s a whole different kind of fellowship than we’re talking about here, isn’t it? And I think there’s a lot of times that you should think about that. What would happen if that were put in front of you? Because it might be, it might not be, but there are people that are in that spot right now today in the world. And we should pray for them and see that. And another part of the supernatural part of our faith, I think God gives special dispensation to people that are in those spots. I think that when you’re being burned alive for being a Christian or crucified or whatever, I think there’s a God supernaturally come down and protect you in ways that we don’t even know about that will give you the strength to do that.

especially those of us that realize, hey, you know, I’ll tell you whatever you want, just quit hurting me. So, and everybody has a breaking point on that kind of thing too. So, true fellowship also results in common faith. So we had common salvation. We also have a common faith together, a shared faith. Titus 1.4 says to Titus, my true child in a common faith, true child in a common faith, grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. The common faith that all of us have is the faith that Christ is the Christ and he was the one delivered up for our sins. He is the way, the truth, and the life. That commonness to us, of that does it, that really makes you understand where we’re at.

One of the things I always like talking about, I had the pleasure of being in a situation where meet missionaries and go to different places and talk to different people that I’d never met before, traveled a lot around the country on business, and I would meet people that, it was arranged that I should have a dinner with them because the guy that arranged it knew that guy was a Christian and knew that I would enjoy being with him. When you go out and you start meeting people cold turkey like that, there is a bond and it usually happens over a meal, as Jonathan said. A meal is one of those things where you’re sitting down eating, whether it’s at Wendy’s or a nice restaurant or at home or a sandwich at the park on a bench, when you meet another true Christian, and they may not be in the same denomination, and all the things that I got a checklist that, can he join our church?

And he’s got his checklist. But we sit down, and there is a point, and when you’re talking to those people, these people are really Christians and you have that bond and it’s a again a supernatural feeling yes but you weigh those feelings with the things that are being said and understand that that bonding it’s incredible how that works some of you like Josh has told me about going to Ukraine that’s where you went and the same thing happened to him he would meet people you know these people and you start talking with him and you realize whoa these are solid people They’re really doing it and what is that back in the 90s, right?

Yeah, and that it just happens over and over the other thing I think that’s cool about that is you might meet somebody That has happened where you meet them 20 years earlier Your best buds your families are doing all kinds of stuff together And then they move away and you don’t see him for 10 years or something and then all of a sudden you meet him at a conference or or They arranged to be in town and you see them and it’s like it was ten years and then this blank spot And then you meet him and within ten minutes. It’s like you hadn’t missed them for 30 seconds You know it’s like they went to the bathroom and came back and you realize oh my goodness This is like crazy how tight that is and they have all these ten years worth of experiences They’re telling you about and how God used them and you’re telling them and and it’s just a joyous thing to see that fellowship of that common faith acted out in that way.

The other thing that happens with fellowship is that it is shared into eternity, alright? This isn’t just a thing for this earth. This is a thing when you get saved and you’re part of the body, this goes on forever. Yeah, I mean like forever. So Ephesians 2, 19 through 22 says, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, But you are fellow citizens with the saints and the members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

We are being built into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Revelation 21, 1 through 4, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, And the sea was no more, And I saw a holy city, A new Jerusalem, Coming down out of heaven from God, Prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband, And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, He will dwell with them and they will be His people. And God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away.

Perfect fellowship. You know, I often sit around and think about what’s gonna be like in heaven, you know, and that kind of thing. And we don’t know. I have no idea. I think it’s going to be so amazing. I mean, David Hocking used to say, the one thing he was sure of, we’re not going to be dumber than we are now. So when we get there, it’s going to be way bigger than we thought it would be, or way more going on. And I think, just being dumb about it, we could probably spend the first million years just going, oh, man, God, you’re really awesome. you know, that kind of thing where you don’t even know what to say. Holy, holy, holy, right?

So anyway, that’s, it goes on into eternity. So the big takeaway here is if you are a Christian, you don’t fall into the category of the unbelievers are different, okay, and you are a believer, it’s a process. And if you’re stuck or you’re down or you don’t think it’s happening for you now, Take a deep breath, pray about it, connect up with somebody, have coffee, do whatever. Things will happen. Opportunities will avail themselves. And don’t go begging people. You can’t, you know, I see you and I know you have to be discipled. So you’re going to meet me at 3.30 on Tuesday and I’m going to straighten you out. It doesn’t work like that.

You want to pray that the right people will come to you or the situation will evolve for you to be with that person the right way. Let God arrange it because it doesn’t work when you’re just, you got to do this. That’s not the way God wants it to happen because if his spirit is in you, his spirit wants you to do the right thing and the person, the other person wants to do the right thing so God will arrange those circumstances. I want to close with an interesting close that I learned reading in a Bible encyclopedia, and I had never thought of it this way, but the guy closed out an article on fellowship with this that the hymn, The Church is One Foundation, has this verse in it that really explains this, I think, in a great way.

So the church has one foundation and it goes, yet she on earth has union, that’s us, the church on earth has union, with God the three in one, Father, Son, Holy Spirit as we saw, and mystic sweet communion, okay? So on earth with God the three in one and mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is one. So it takes care of all of those levels, yet she on earth has union with God the three in one and mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is one. So with Paul and all the saints that came before us, we have that communion with them. We haven’t realized the whole package yet, but one day we will. And the church, this one foundation, is Jesus Christ our Lord.

So let’s pray, huh? Father, we thank you for what you did by giving us your son. And then your spirit and you and making us children of yours by adoption into the family of God and that That fellowship is just it’s Beyond so help us to understand that help us to live that we thank you for all the things that you give us food cures to bad knees just all kinds of things that you do for us. And yet the most important thing is that relationship with you out of that, because all these other things are fleeting and passing away, but help us to understand that relationship in a new and deeper way. So we thank you for all of those things and in Jesus name we pray, amen.