Together, As It Should Be!

Let's take our Bibles and let's turn to Hebrews chapter 10. Of course, I'll be preaching on a familiar passage, but I think it's important that we be reminded of some truth, especially on this day. Hebrews 10. Let's begin reading in verse 19. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries anyone who has set aside the law of moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses how much more worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the son of god and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace.

For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. But recall the former days when after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated.

For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plunderings of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence which has a great reward for you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised For, yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay, but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

Let's pray. father once more we look into your word we ask that you would teach us there are eager hearts here today teach each one as you see fit father help us to understand the necessity of being together and help us lord to fulfill all that that requires and to rejoice in all that we have so father we pray give us joy as we look into your word help us to understand how precious this time together is and we'll thank you in jesus name amen amen isn't it great to be together again one thing this pandemic has done is to make us realize how much we miss one another the day we anticipated has finally arrived and we are almost giddy with excitement it's almost like a wedding the day has arrived and everyone is excited and happy and bubbling with joy and you get to marry and spend the rest of your life with the one that you love but what are you thinking four and a half years later after that day what's going through your mind then there's more to marriage than happiness and excitement and bubbly joy and so it is with us there's more to our gathering than this these warm wonderful feelings that we're experiencing right now as we've been able to greet one another and see one another and rejoice in each other's presence. Like marriage, our gatherings serve a greater purpose than just those warm feelings Like marriage we have to ask what is the purpose of our coming together when the excitement that we have today isn there What then Well, in our text today, you find three commandments in these verses that we've read, verses 19 through 39. You find three commandments, three exhortations to believers in verses 22 through 25.

The first is verse 22. Let us draw near with a true heart. The second, verse 23, let us hold fast the confession of our hope. And then the third, verse 24, let us consider how to stir one another up. Now the writer of this letter is a Hebrew Christian, and he's one with a pastor's heart. He is concerned for other Jewish believers in Jesus. those Jewish believers were on the brink of abandoning their faith in Jesus and going back to the old system the old testament system because of the persecution that they faced because of their faith he says it's useless to abandon Jesus and go back to the old system because Jesus is superior to the old way and he is now the only way to come to God verses 19 through 21.

And then he says, it's dangerous to abandon Jesus when things get tough, because then you fall into the hands of an angry God. Verses 29 through 31 and 36 through 39. Now, we live in a similar culture. We live in a culture in which we face the same danger. We too are in danger of abandoning our faith in Jesus when things get tough. We're in danger of abandoning the faith because of the seductive, glittering, sumptuous temptations that surround us every day.

Such is the context of our verses this morning. Now we're going to concentrate on the third exhortation found in verses 24 and 25. In light of the superiority of Jesus, heed the first two exhortations. Draw near, hold fast. But in light of the danger that's posed by being drawn away, heed the third exhortation What does he tell us Let look at verses 24 and 25 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

You need to spur one another on to love and good deeds. All right? So we have an obligation. to keep each other out of danger, to keep each other from being drawn away. Now, in our present circumstances, we can be drawn away just because we haven't seen each other, just because we haven't been together. In our circumstances, we can be drawn away through the, as I said, the glittering, sumptuous temptations that are all around us.

And so we need one another to spur one another on to love and good do good deeds. We do that, he says, by notice, by spurring one another, spurring or stirring, stirring one another up towards love and good deeds. You know, that word originally meant to irritate. Now, he's not telling us to be irritating to one another. but the idea is when something is there it motivates you to do something right if you've got a a splinter in your eye it motivates you to get that out you're not going to leave it alone all right um when your wife asks you for the 25th time to to work on the dryer right you say i gotta do this well the idea here is to stir one up to motivate one another to be each other's lives to the point where we can actually motivate one another, not irritate, but be something that will stir you up, that will move you to action.

What's the first thing he says? You should motivate one another to love, the kind of self-sacrificing love that Jesus showed at Calvary. Love for one another that sacrifices time and energy and resources, looking for others' interests above your own, like Jesus. We need to love like Jesus. He's the exemplar of the kind of love that we're talking about.

One danger, I believe, of the pandemic that we've been living is we've gotten used to living for ourselves. We're now very used to living for ourselves. And I'm going to attest to that personally, right? It's nice knowing where I'm going to be every night. I'm going to be at home, right? And I've been at home through most of this.

I've been working at home, and it's nice, right? and it's not as sacrificial as it was before. And the danger is we love living for ourselves. That's just our weakness. It's the weakness of the flesh. And abandoning Jesus can become a possibility as we live for self. Now, how do we stir one another towards love? how do we stir one another towards loving and that's something i had to think about well at the very least it's expressing love for one another all right when we're together no matter what the setting here at church in our flocks whenever we've come together for a particular purpose whenever we've done that we need to find time to express love for one another that may mean talking to one another, getting out of your comfort zone, taking time and effort to talk to the one who's more shy, the one who's kind of on the fringes, the people that are outside your comfortable circle of friends.

When we gather on Sunday, it's too easy just to clump with our friends that we're comfortable with. We know them, you know, but the other folks that we don't know as well that may be a little bit different than us. You want to spur one another on or stir one another on towards love. Start talking to the people outside of your comfort zone. Just take the time to do that.

All right. Just little things like that. Praying together. We do this at our flock meetings. We pray together. You want to love one another.

You'll love the people that you pray with. Making the time and effort to follow up with folks. If you've talked to them at one of the meetings and they say yeah i really struggling at home um and then the next week you see him you say hey how that going What are you doing about that Can I help you with that Right And so And so we need to stir one another on towards love loving one another You know, that's why I chose as our call to worship what Jesus said in First John, chapter 13.

By this, all men will know you're my disciples. Not if you're not, if you believe, have certain political beliefs. not if you are walking a straight line which we still need to do but they're going to know we're his disciples if we love one another we need to be stirring one another towards loving each other all right now again please please listen to me very carefully i'm not rebuking you right now all right i'm not rebuking you i'm just saying this is why we meet We meet to stir one another on towards greater love for one another and greater love for those outside of our Christian community. It occurs to me that one way that will keep us from abandoning Jesus is to love like Jesus, is to love like Jesus.

And so one of the purposes is that we stir one another on to greater love. That's why we get together. That's why we meet. You should motivate, stir one another to good deeds, good works. Jesus redeemed us for that purpose. The New Testament is replete with all kinds of exhortations that says you were saved for this particular purpose.

Hey, anybody know how, have any of you noticed how Sharon Green signs off on all the emails she sends you? Have you noticed it? If you haven't, you're not reading them. saved to serve right that's why god saved us he saved us to serve he saved us to live good lives we aren't saved by good works but we're saved for good works we're saved in order to do things and in ephesians 2 10 we read for we are god's workmanship created in christ jesus to do good works which god prepared in advance for us to do we've been that's why he saved us that's why he redeemed us so we be people of good works and so when we assemble when we together whenever we together we to encourage one another towards good works towards doing the very thing that god saved us for so you sitting in flock and you know i just i'm thinking about my flock okay i'm thinking about my flock and let's say levi says it's wrestling season and levi says you know a bunch of my guys on my wrestling team.

They come from broken homes. They don't know what it's like to have people love them. I'm really concerned about them. And someone else in the flock says, well, why don't we do something about that? What can we do? Can we have them over?

Can we have a team dinner? Can we do something in order to show them what Christian love is like? That's what we do. We talk to one another. We come up with suggestions. We encourage one another.

Let's do this. You know, we've had the privilege of being a part of the ministry of New Path, right? We've been encouraged to be in those good works. How do we do that? We talk about what's going on. We read about what's going on.

We move each other. We motivate each other to do good works, to do those things that God expects us to do, but we're not gonna do them on our own. Do you realize it takes all of us together encouraging one another? Listen, you know what? I know that if everything was up to me, this church would come to a dead stand still. There's no doubt about it.

But God has given us a gifted congregation where people can think of different ways. I'm an inside the box kind of a guy. I'm so much in the box. The walls are so high. I can't even see. Okay.

I'm an in the box kind of guy. A lot of you are out of the box kind of thinkers. And that's how we motivate people to good works we think we get creative but we don't share those ideas unless we're together so here's another thing we need to remember do you know what will keep us from abandoning jesus working like jesus working like him serving others we have to get away from the spectator sport that church life has become and listen the spectator sport of church life has gotten exponentially bigger since we all been on, all the churches have been on streaming, right?

We're a lot of spectators when we just sit and come to church and don't do anything and watch another bunch of people do all the work. But now we've really become spectators now. And it has to be clear to us It has to be clear to us that we cannot a church cannot be a spectator sport everyone a participant everyone a team member how do we escape though that spectator sport mentality how do we how do we stir one another on to love and good works he says by not neglecting to meet together, but instead of neglecting, but encouraging one another.

As opposed to neglecting, we encourage. That is to say, our meeting together must involve encouraging one another. So you see, in order to walk the road to glory, we have to walk together. We have to walk together. We need to meet together regularly so we can motivate, so we can stir one another on and encourage one another. You know what's not mentioned in this passage?

Preaching. It's not mentioned here, is it? He doesn't say, don't neglect the meeting together so you can hear preaching. Now, I'm not saying that preaching is not important. Please don't hear me say that. But too often what we've done is we've made church all about preaching and teaching.

And all of our meetings are oriented towards preaching and teaching and learning and getting more knowledge. And you have to have more knowledge. Please don't misunderstand me. But it has to go beyond that. It has to go beyond that. We are obligated to encourage one another along the path to glory.

Listening to sermons is just not enough. It's important. It's foundational. It's necessary. But it's not all there is. we need to grasp this we have a purpose in our gathering it's not because and our purpose is not so we so just merely we get something out of the worship service of course we should but that's not just the only purpose it's not just to hear a sermon its purpose is to encourage one another to obey jesus faithfully it's fulfilling the great commission of producing faithful disciples to Jesus.

As we meet, let's be encouraging one another on to greater and more faithful obedience to Jesus. You know what? I would suggest this to you. Every week, every week, don't just ask yourself this. What did I learn today? Ask yourself this.

How did I encourage somebody today? At the end of every week, ask yourself, that question. How did I encourage someone this week? Now he says, he goes on, it's not just important to stir one another to love and good deeds, but he says, do not neglect meeting together. Now like a good pastor, the writer observes his congregation and he recognizes the fact that you can get into the habit of neglect, the habit of neglect.

It's too easy to fall into bad habits. I remember a young guy one time who had just gotten married, right? And now on his own, he started missing church. And you know what happened? It started to get habitual. It started to like, I just don't want to go today.

And it started to become more of a habit. And he was not fulfilling his obligation to the local church. And he was certainly starting out as a poor spiritual leader for his new wife. And I can speak to you with authority about that because that guy was me. It was right before I started seminary. Can you believe it?

Yeah. That's how sin can get a hold of us. And, you know, the Lord had to really wake me up, right? What are you doing? What are you doing? You're not supposed to get in the habit of neglecting that.

And habit can happen. It happens. one week another week pretty soon it's a habit as a believer you have to start godly habits that is starting to do things normally it just becomes a normal routine of life when beck and i were first married i can still remember every saturday morning i would sit down with the checkbook and write out the checks for the bills that week and i remember the first check i would write would be the one to church. Now, I'm just telling you that because it just became a habit.

I didn't think about it. It just, I just would sit down and start writing the checks for our bills and for church every Saturday morning. I would do that. And then I would go to the bank. And I remember when, when, uh, we had two little boys, I would take them with me and that became a habit and write out the bills, gather up the boys, drive around this one route so they could see the big trucks buy them a candy bar at the gas station every Saturday Although I tried to get the chocolate off their faces so I wouldn get in trouble But again they weren in the habit of keeping clean at that point Nevertheless there was this Saturday routine that we would go through And the writer is telling us, don't get in the habit of neglecting.

Be in the habit of going. Start developing that habit of coming to church. Now, you don't start developing habits just to have habits. Why should you do that? you develop that habit because of the danger of sin that's one reason look back at chapter 3 again we read it once already this morning look back in hebrews chapter 3 verse 12 take care brothers lest there be any of you in any of you an evil unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God, but exhort one another every day as long as it's called today that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Sin is so deceitful that it hardens our hearts and pretty soon we don't see straight and we need one another. Why should we get in the habit of meeting together? Because of the power of sin. it deceives us and hardens our hearts I was in a conversation just the other day with some elders from another church they said we need to confront this elder he's doing these things and he just doesn't see the problem and we've got to communicate to him this problem and he says that's not the issue and I remember saying to them look guys if you're seeing something but he's not you're seeing something that he needs to see it's quite possibly he's being deceived by the or he's being hardened by sin's deceitfulness he can't see straight he needs someone to say no this is true this is the fact you've deceived yourself we have to we have to meet together and develop that habit just because of the power of of sin you develop those habits out of affection affection now what's affection when i say affection i'm not talking merely emotion i talking about something that goes beyond that you develop affection is a deep allegiance to something Okay So you develop the habit of getting up early in the morning to work out even though on one day or three days that week you don feel like it Your affection goes deeper than your feeling.

I'm committed to this because I'm committed to health. I'm, I have this great allegiance to health. All right. You do it. You develop that habit because of your allegiance. And so it is.

We have to ask ourselves, do we have the affection we should for our Redeemer Lord? Do we have that affection? Will you develop the habit of meeting together with other believers of the congregation out of affection for the Lord Jesus Christ and what he has done? Are we going to be honest with one another here? Some days you don't feel like you love Jesus very much.

Isn't that right? I'm assuming you're saying something. I just can't hear you. Yeah, there are many days. But what do we do? Why do we obey him?

Because he has my loyalty. Because I know down deep in my heart, he's the best that's ever happened. He is my Lord. He is my master. And out of my affection for him, I will develop that habit. And so develop the godly habit of being with God's people on a regular basis.

Some of you might ask, but do I have to come to every meeting? You know what? That's like asking, that's like in premarital counseling. If I'm with a couple and the prospective groom says, do I have to spend every day of the week with my wife? What would you say to that? You're asking the wrong question.

So when you say, do I have to be at every meeting? I'm saying to you, you're asking the wrong question. The question you ought to be asking is, am I encouraging others enough? Am I being encouraged and strengthened enough? That's the question you need to ask. Now look, do you have to be at every meeting?

No, no, but that's not the question. The question is, have I been able to encourage people and stir them to love and good deeds with only an hour and 15 to an hour and a half a week? Is that enough? If it is, great. Great. All right But I think we all need to be thinking can I obey this command of motivating one another with Sunday morning only attendance I think that's a question we have to ask.

Can you fulfill this obligation in a meaningful way with that? Can you encouraged and be encouraged? Well, listen, let me let me say to you when we get to do it again and maybe it'll be sooner than we expect. I'm not sure. But when we get to eat together again, those are great times of fellowship. Those are great times of encouraging one another.

When we meet together as flocks, they help us to do these things effectively. Now, of course, we need to recognize that God may providentially keep you from that. You may have an unbelieving husband that makes it difficult for you to come. Maybe there's sickness. Maybe you have a job that's going to cut into some of those times regardless ask yourself the question am i able to fulfill this obligation well all right what do i need to do to fulfill it well lastly why do we need to do this he says and all the more as you see the day approaching the day drawing near the great day of judgment is closer every day and we all want to give a good account of ourselves to jesus don't we and the way we're going to be able to give a good account is that we're together and encouraging one another to love and good deeds when i preach this is always in the back of my mind i want to preach and minister the word of god so that you will be mature wise and be able to give a good account of yourself when you stand before jesus that should be the goal of all of us we want to encourage one another so each one of us can give a good account of ourselves as the when we when we're standing before jesus as you see the day approach don't give this up because the day is coming you'll be ready for that day as you encourage and as you are encouraged to love like jesus and to work like jesus ultimately ultimately we do it out of our love for the lord jesus christ again notice what he says in verses 19 through 21 therefore brothers since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of jesus by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh and since we have a great high priest over the house of god all jesus is all of that for us and we need to do it out of our love for him So, consider one another this morning.

We're all rightfully excited about today. We're all rightfully excited about today. But we have to shoulder the purpose of our gathering. We have to say, not only is there excitement, there's purpose. There's purpose. And we have a responsibility.

Why? Because we want to love our Lord. We want His name to be exalted because we love our brothers and sisters and want to see them stand firm in the world in which we live now we want them to do well now and we want them to do well on the day when they stand before Jesus and we need to do it because we are weak and we need this ministry so I want to encourage all of you be participants and be excited every week I hope we're this excited every week But if we're not, we still have more than just being excited.

We will always have more. And that to encourage one another towards love and good deeds Let pray Father thank you again that we can be together Help us even this day to encourage one another to love as we love one another as we encourage and look each other in the eyes and tell others how much they mean to us. We pray, Father, that you would be kind to us and help us to shoulder this responsibility.

Lord, help us not to see this as a burden, but as a ministry that will help others. That, Father, we might know the satisfaction of standing behind someone and moving them on to greater maturity and faithfulness. Help us to know the joy of that. Father, help us, even those of us who are shy and those of us who are naturally inwardly focused, help us to step out of our comfort zone. help us father in order that we can be the kind of people you would have us to be and we'll thank you in jesus name amen