FELLOWSHIP
Eric Burr
I could see a connection between the thought that I had in mind and what our brother has brought before us as to not forgetting, in that, in this chapter Paul weaves what he has to say by way of teaching round the history of Israel. Paul knew that history well and he himself had not forgotten it, certainly to the extent that he is able to teach from it – in this epistle and in Galatians and in the Acts and, if it is he that wrote it, in the epistle to the Hebrews. The other point with which I might connect it is that the Supper is directly connected with remembrance and therefore with not forgetting. The Lord must, in His mercy and goodness, have taken account of our natural tendency to forget, and He provided the Supper, He said, “this do in remembrance of me”, Luke 22: 19. That is not, as people have nowadays, a memorial service. Mr. Darby’s note is better in that he says, ‘for a calling of me to mind’, and that is an active thing on our side and the coming together for the Supper is intended to stimulate and help our own weaknesses in relation to the remembrance and the not forgetting of the Lord.
I was struck on Lord’s Day, while we were waiting for a brother to break bread, with how much is involved in two such simple things, a loaf and a cup. How much they teach us, how great the Supper is! The occasion itself is one for remembrance, but it is also a teaching occasion. The Supper itself is a teaching occasion. The verses that I have read bring out that one thing the Supper teaches us about is fellowship – “the communion of the blood … the communion of the body”. The Supper teaches us about fellowship. In this chapter Paul refers twice to our being one loaf and one body and that is something that we must never forget, that every believer who has the Spirit – and that would be normal – is there in that loaf, and in that way we express fellowship with them all, because there is one Spirit and one body. Other believers do not have a different Holy Spirit, there is one Spirit and one body, and the Lord would help us and I am sure the Spirit Himself would help us; and, if I may say so here the Lord is helping us, to keep in our minds the fulness of what He has here in believers. How many He has, what multitudes there are and how great they are. The loaf embraces them all. We cannot conceive what it would be if all believers were able to be at the same occasion for the Supper. They could not all come into one room – there were some three thousand souls at the beginning of the Acts, quite a lot of people, but you could not have the Supper between so many people and you would therefore have to have companies. The occasions in the wilderness when Jesus fed the multitudes help us a bit about that. He said, “Make them sit down in companies by fifties”, Luke 9: 14. I do not make that literal, but use it to illustrate that in spite of the fact that all believers cannot be together, it is possible for them, in the companies in which they are, to represent the whole. It is a very sad thing, and we should feel the sorrow of it, that we do not meet with all believers. There are good grounds for that. If you go back to Mr Darby’s day, some of the elements that hinder believers breaking bread together are set out in what the Lord gave through our beloved brother. For instance, you cannot have the Supper rightly represented where there is what is spoken of as a Minister, or someone ordained to serve. If I may refer to current events, I do not think you could rightly hold the Supper with a woman ministering it, and this hinders our expressing fellowship with other real believers. These things are hindrances, but let us regard them as hindrances, and not regard them as barriers that divide one company from another, because everyone who sets up a barrier thinks he is better than anyone else. Keep that out of your mind. The tendency of division is to make one company, in any circumstance, think they are better than others. Let us be humble ourselves.
I was looking at Mr Darby’s volume 1 recently and he speaks of the way in which a man’s ministry is limited to a place and that the man who carries on ministry in London is not one who can carry it on in Birmingham. The expression of the truth of the body is hindered in that. There are companies that derive their names (I will not say they are exactly called by them) from the believers who initially had the exercise that gave rise to them. All these things hinder the enjoyment of fellowship and to that extent, unless there is the ability in the souls of those present to get beyond those divisions, they hinder the fellowship of all believers. Let us hold that. Let us not shrink from that. We seek to walk together and to break bread in the light of the whole and, as Paul shows in this chapter, in fellowship. We seek to break bread in fellowship. Paul refers to the cup first here and then refers to the loaf, but he attaches communion to them both. Therefore we need to be sensitive because we are not far from the last time we took the Supper and we are not very far from the next time we shall take the Supper, subject to the Father’s timing. We are therefore coloured by fellowship.
One of the things of the most cardinal importance is that, in a company which meets in the light of the Supper, fellowship should not be interrupted (unless, or course, by that last resort, assembly action) when something arises and I make a hindrance of it. What I mean by that is, I cannot say, for instance, that I shall not come to the Supper because so and so will be there. By that I am saying I am not in fellowship. Let us be quite clear about such things. We do things and say things and we put a kind of net curtain over them so that their real outline is not discerned, but if I say, I will not go because so and so will be there, then I am out of fellowship to that extent. Beloved, let us be careful. I cannot also say that Mr or Mrs X will be at so and so and I might have been there, but I shall not go because he or she is there, but I will go and break bread somewhere else. You cannot do it because you will in any case break bread with him or her. The two places are in fellowship together. You cannot escape the reality of fellowship by taking yourself off to some other place. There is a danger that brethren are in principle ignoring what fellowship is when they think that they are maintaining it by going or coming to meetings elsewhere. Beloved, let us have the teaching right about this. Let us understand that if I am in fellowship with so and so, I cannot get out of the expression of that fellowship by going somewhere where he or she is not on that particular occasion. Neither can I say, I shall not go to hear Mr so and so because of x, y and z. There may be good reason – you may be sick or ill, or you may be detained by your work, or you may have to go somewhere else, or you may be hindered – but you cannot use as an excuse for not going to the Supper in a particular place who else will be there, you are in fellowship together. Let us be clear about these things. Let us hold them. We may not like what so and so does, and we may think it is wrong, many issues amongst us present us as individuals with the fact that the only thing we can do about them is to pray. We do not have to write letters, we do not have to think that this meeting can solve the problems of that meeting – just look at the Bible. When there was trouble in Galatia, when Paul thought they were adrift as to the bearing of the truth of the gospel, did he ask the nearest meeting to go and look at it? When John had a word from the Lord about the seven assemblies, did he say that Philadelphia is a meeting which appears to be getting on prosperously; let someone from there go down to Laodecia and “help”, them? No beloved, the Lord has these localities under His own hand. I just repeat that often the only thing that you or I can do, if we are not local in a place where there is a difficulty, is to pray, because in the nature of the dispensation in which we are – when thankfully there are many many believers, and thankfully also there are many with whom we have fellowship – responsibility is local and Philadelphia is not asked to go and sort out Laodecia, Sardis is not asked to go and sort out Thyatira. I do not exclude help but responsibility rests in the place and the Lord’s word there. And beloved, just take note of those seven assemblies – in every assembly, whether as we would say, going on well, or not going on very well, in every one of them, there is an overcomer. Does that overcomer not need your prayers? You may not be able to say, the overcomer in such a place is Mr so and so. Some of us have lived through a decade when things were thought to be resolvable in the hands of Mr so and so, or so and so in the local meeting, but the One who resolves things in local meetings is the Lord and He does it by the Spirit and He would use us under His own hand, but under His hand.
I say these things because there are matters current among us which are surprising. At the fellowship meeting our brother talked about getting down to foundations. The bearing of the scripture in Luke 6 is, “Every one that comes to me, and hears my words” (v 47). That is the foundation on which you will always be secure, that you come to the Lord and you hear His words. It may often require patience. Paul says to one company, ye have need of patience (see Heb 10: 36). How scarce it is! I look in myself and I see how scarce patience is. How easily impatience springs up and every thought in you is tense and you long that you could do something. But the thing that you can do is to wait on the Lord. These things maintain fellowship because they keep us all in contact with the same blessed Person who one day we are going to see, not just administering assemblies, but administering this whole poor world – one Man responsible to God for the whole world and taking it on as a charge given by His God. How great Jesus is, how much we need to depend on Him, how much we need Him more than we practically give expression to! How much the preaching of the gospel should promote among us that Christ is God’s answer to every question and the enjoyment of Christ is the key to the enjoyment of fellowship. That is why if you meet another believer you have a link with them in your common enjoyment of Christ. You may not actually be able to break bread with them, for reasons such as I have referred to, but you find a link with them in their enjoyment of Christ.
Another exercise of mine is what our brother spoke about last week – what John says from the Lord to that assembly, “strengthen the things that remain” (Rev 3: 2). I am more and more carried by the thought that the strength of a company is the bond of every individual with the Lord. It is not in knowledge, it is not in remembrance and memory of what is in print: the strength of a company is the strength of every individual’s link with the Lord Jesus and their ability to enjoy it together. I come back so often to the words my mother used to quote from the Scottish catechism, because she was brought up in the Church of Scotland – ‘the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever’. You could start that now and that would be fellowship, the ability to exchange together thoughts about Christ:
Every view of Him unfolding,
Wakes fresh bursts of joyful praise!
Every circle gathered round Thee
Yields of Christ some beauteous ray. (Hymn 83)
As our brother has referred to and the hymn given out says, how readily we forget. Beloved, let us not forget. Let us remember that when we come to the Supper it is an occasion not only for remembrance of the way that the Lord has cleared everything out of the way, but it helps us to remember the basis on which we have fellowship together and on which we may enjoy fellowship together with everyone who is in fellowship and every locality which is in fellowship.
I have not said anything which is not well known among the brethren, but I just speak of this because I feel concerned about it. One thing and another comes up and you are surprised how far from the fundamentals we sometimes get, but the Lord would recall us. May He do so for His Name’s sake.
LONDON
11 March 2003