A Tree or A Forest (1 John 1: 1-4)
Pastor Linus Lau
I want you to think about something that you probably do everyday. When you shake hands with somebody in greeting, which hand do you use? The right hand, right? Men carry their weapons in the right hand, and when a man extends his empty right hand to take the hand of another person, it prevents him from holding his sword or club. It means he is coming in peace. When two people shake hands, it means neither person wants to be enemy, but both are seeking friendship and fellowship.
Everyday, by a simple gesture, we express the universal need for friendship and fellowship. No man is an island. God did not create man to be alone. After God created Adam, He said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” So, God created Eve to be Adam’s companion. Then He told them to populate the earth, to create a community for fellowship – with God and with one another.
Unfortunately, sin entered the world through Adam and corrupted this perfect community. Instead of love and peace, we have hatred and war. Instead of fellowship, we have isolation. Instead of friendship, we have enmity. Man has become an island. We live in a world full of people, but low on connection. We’ve learnt to build up walls between us, content to live within our own shells. We are taught to mind our own business, not to get involved.
We are living today not only in a digitized world, but also a dehumanized world. It is an automated society where your name has lost its importance, but you’d better remember your zip code, your area code, your social security number, user name, and password; where now when you call a number you no longer get a live voice, but you get a recording. Soon, even voice communication will become obsolete. Through the Internet and email, you can avoid all personal contact.
A paper by six researchers published in the American University reported that the Internet is actually bad for some people’s psychological well-being. They found that the more time the subjects spent at their keyboards, the more depressed and lonely they were at the end of the experiment. There is no replacement for the personal touch. There has never been a greater need for fellowship in the history of mankind than there is right now. And I’m here to tell you that you can find real fellowship only in a New Testament church. Because the key to real fellowship is our relationship with Jesus Christ.
The Key To Fellowship
We all know how fickle and fleeting human relationship is. Your best friend today can become your enemy tomorrow. Husband and wife, that most intimate of relationships, can become strangers by decree. Families split up because of financial problems. But “Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). He is the unchanging Word of life, the eternal God that entered the history of man, to reveal to us the reality of God. John is saying that many of us are eyewitnesses. We saw Him, heard Him, and touched Him. He is real. He is not a fictional character like Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse. If we had CNN, on tonight’s eyewitness news you could watch Jesus turn water into wine, or walk the waters and calm the storm. But since we didn’t have TV in our time, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13).
What is this eternal life? Is it something far away in the future? Something that doesn’t begin until we die? Is that why some of you don’t know what to do with your time? That you have to do meaningless things just to ‘kill time’? If you don’t know what to do with yourself for an hour, what will you do with immortality? ‘Eternal’ does not mean only what is future, but also unending life that exists now and continues into life without end. So, we need to learn how to live this eternal life, NOW. And John says that we must begin our eternal life in restored fellowship.
The Who To Fellowship
There is a blessing that comes from having a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ that is summed up in that word fellowship. First of all, there is a horizontal blessing: “That which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us” (v.3a). One of the most beautiful words in the New Testament is that word “fellowship.”
Now it is a word that is used a lot by both Christian and non-Christian alike, but it is often misused and misunderstood. For example, whenever we talk about fellowship, we automatically think of a social activity. It seems like even in the church, fellowship is always linked with “food and fun.” We associate fellowship with a place. What does every church call the place where people gather for meals and dining? The Fellowship Hall. But, fellowship is more than just a place!
The word fellowship is the Greek word koinonia, which means “to share in common.” What do we share in common that allows us to enjoy fellowship with one another? Well, very simply, it is Jesus. You see, when you accept Jesus into your heart, you are born again into the family of God. When I accept Jesus into my heart, I am born again into the family of God, and therefore as part of His family we can enjoy fellowship with one another.
One of the wonderful things of being a Christian is that a Christian life never has to be a lonely life. As a matter of fact, the picture of the church in the New Testament is always one of a life that is lived in relationship to others. It is described as a body that has many members; as a vine that has many branches; as a temple that has many stones; and as a family that has many children. God has no “only” child.
Did you know that you have been saved specifically to have fellowship with other Christians? I want to tell you one of the greatest tragedies in the church today is that we have too many “lone ranger” Christians. They are all over the place. All they ever do is come to the worship service, but they never ever get to know anybody; they never ever get rooted into the life of the church. They really enjoy neither friendship nor fellowship because you really can’t get that in a worship service, and when they leave you feel like saying, “Who was that masked man?” You don’t know them and they don’t know you, even though they’ve been coming for years. So sad because, as we will see in a moment, that is part of the joy of the Christian life, relating to one another and having others relate to us as the family of God.
During World War II the Japanese conducted experiments to find the most effective type of punishment to get information from prisoners. They found that solitary confinement was by far and away the most effective type of punishment. After a few days of solitary confinement, practically everybody would break down and tell everything that they knew. That is why we need fellowship. Because without it, we become easy prey for temptation, easy prey for discouragement, easy prey for the attacks of the world and the attacks of the devil.
I remember the story of a pastor who once visited a very difficult man who always said he was a Christian, but he never saw the need to go to church, and that it was not necessary to go to church to be a Christian. The pastor didn’t argue with him, but simply leaned forward, took a pair of tongs, and reaching into the heart of a fire that was burning in the fireplace; picked out a glowing coal and set it down all by itself. As the two men watched it in silence, the heat and the light grew dimmer and cooler until finally that glowing ember had turned black and cold. The preacher put his hand on the shoulder of that man and just made one statement before he left. “Whether your heart is hot or cold, depends upon whether or not you’ll get into the fire with the other embers.”
But there is also a vertical blessing: “and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (v.3b). This fellowship is not only with one another, but it is also with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. The Bible says we can have no fellowship with God without Jesus Christ. The Bible says we cannot know God without Jesus Christ. The Bible says we cannot worship God unless we worship Jesus Christ, and our fellowship is with Him.
It goes without saying that you cannot have fellowship with someone unless you have a relationship with someone. You cannot have fellowship with someone you do not know. You cannot have fellowship with God without a relationship to God. But you cannot have a relationship with God unless you have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul said in 1 Cor. 1:9, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
To sum it all up, fellowship has both a vertical and a horizontal dimension. Vertically we are to fellowship with the Father; horizontally we are to fellowship with the family. Now you cannot have fellowship with the family if you do not have a relationship with the Father, because that is what makes you a part of the family.
But you cannot have fellowship with the Father if you do not have a relationship with the Son. Therefore, if you want to have fellowship with the family, you must have a relationship with the Son, which in turn gives you a relationship to the Father, which then puts you in fellowship with the Father, so you can then have fellowship with the family. The point is, it all goes back to a relationship with Jesus Christ. He is both the key to fellowship and ultimately the who of fellowship.
The Why To Fellowship
“And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.” (v.4) The word full literally means “to be filled completely full.” John said, “I want you to have total joy; joy that is totally full, not one-fourth full, not one-half full, but fully full!”
Walk through an airport sometime, or down a city street, and look at the faces of people and see how little joy there is. Our generation has more entertainments, more amusements, more places to go to, more stuff to read, more things to do than ever before in history; yet joy is at an all-time low. Do you know why? Ps. 16:11 says, “In Your presence is fullness of joy.” If you want joy you need fellowship, and you need the right kind of fellowship. You need fellowship with the Savior and fellowship with the saints.
There is little joy in lone ranger Christianity. If you are determined never ever to really get involved in this church, or any church; never to get involved in smaller groups where you can build relationships and then have fellowship and friendship, you will never know the fullness of joy in your Christian life that God intended for you to know. Because fellowship brings enrichment. There is so much we can learn from one another, and so much we can pass on to one another.
Fellowship brings encouragement. Eccl. 4:9-10 says, “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.” But fellowship also brings enjoyment. Some of you may have heard the old saying that pleasures shared are pleasures doubled, just as sorrows shared are sorrows halved. It is more fun to laugh when others laugh with you, and it is easier to cry when others cry with you.
Reader’s Digest years ago had an article entitled “What Good is a Tree?” That article explained that when the roots of trees touch, there is a substance that is released that reduces the competition between the trees. It is a fungus that helps link roots of different trees, even of dissimilar species. A whole forest can therefore be linked together.
If one tree has access to water, another has access to nutrients, and a third has access to sunlight, those trees will have the means to share with one another and support one another. Well, we all have the same root. We are rooted to Jesus Christ. But we need to branch out and touch one another, fellowship with one another, spend time with one another, relate to one another, get to know one another, and encourage one another, so that we may have the complete joy of eternal life, NOW.
Are you a tree apart or are you a part of the forest?