I wish I could preach live stream in reverse. It would have made it a little bit easier. Sorry, I hope you bear with me. It was March 26, 1995, 13 that day. I was telling somebody that, first, I'd been to two churches. First one left at 11 and I cried, I didn't want to leave. I mean, all my best friends were going with me, I just, I didn't want to leave. 20 years later. Thank you all for the good years here. And I don't know at what point I thought it was going to be easy to preach today, but I have a weird memory about stuff. I mean, I might not remember that you asked me to bring you money or something, but I'm going to remember that I'll remember just little things that stick out of my mind over time. And a lot of those thoughts going through while I was gone, I was by myself, so I had a lot of thinking time. I thought about the years teaching here, sharing a night with Mr. Mills, having a good fellowship. I thought about the fellowship we had with all the men in class and just serving with people and working under two great men and a lot of good memories. Anyway, I appreciate your prayers while I was gone and for your care for my family. And I got an email the other day from, there's eight There's eight faithful people over there in the church now, which is for Europe, that part of Europe, it's rare to see that many in three or four years. So having that many, I mean, 170-something thousand gospel tracts went out in this course of a year. So we're really getting to reap the benefits of the work that was done throughout that year. And it's good just to touch base again with some of the people that I met last time we were there. There's a fellow from London that had come down. He was learning Greek and he wanted to be able to help out in the churches and in the church. And he didn't even know about the church when he got there, but he's a good man, 26 years old. And so he talked to me on Wednesday and Brother Brent came back to preach today and then he'll take Wednesday and then we'll be back. But he emailed me and said church went well Wednesday and already they miss me and they can't wait to see our family. There's a lady in the church that spent six hours cleaning the building, which really didn't need it that bad. But she wanted to make sure it looked perfect for my family when we came. So we're excited about it. We got our passports yesterday. And it was getting pretty tight. And we were, praise the Lord for, actually, I believe Miller's there at the church over in Albany. There's a pastor and his wife. They're Greek. She speaks Greek. She's been a tremendous help to us. She was going to drive down to New York from Albany pick up our passports for us and then get them back to us somehow. She met us down there to help when we went down there first, second time. And she, so she called the other day. I called her on Friday morning. I said, we're kind of really getting close to it here and, you know, getting stuck. So she called. The lady that processed them left for Greece. She went on vacation and just left our passports, knowing what a day we were leaving. And so some guy calls me and says, I have your envelope. Do you want me to mail these to you? That'd be good. Today. Okay. So we got them yesterday, and we were told at the time that we'd have four months and have to go back and do it all again. That's what the Logans had to do. And she said, yeah, that's what I'm doing for them. I opened them up yesterday. It says good through July 9th, 2014. So Lord won't be in Israel by then, but at the very least, we don't have to deal with paperwork again for a while. So I'm gonna take a little break from paperwork for a little bit of a time, but we're looking forward to it. We have a nice place there. I was able to set some things up. Some things were set up for us. pick up in different areas. We've got a lot of different areas of ministry I want to branch out into there. So we're excited about it, and just pray that you keep us all in prayer. I know you will. And we've got tremendous opportunity while we're in Europe. Before we go to Israel, where doors to Muslim countries will kind of be closed forever, we actually have an Iranian man in our church, and God had been working on my heart about Iran for a while, too. So Lord willing, I sent him some papers to go there on the trip in September. to kind of get the gospel out in some covert way. I'm working with my father-in-law who does a lot of work with Muslims and just to try to take advantage of the time we have, where we have it, and get in a place that we can't. But he was telling us, he looks, I don't know if he's watching, but he looks older, but he's actually a little bit younger than me because he spent four and a half years in an Iranian prison for speaking out against some leader. You don't think about the freedoms we have until you hear somebody like that. And it's not the Monroe County Jail. And when he got out, he was deported, went to Afghanistan, worked in the police force there for four years. And then one of the guys he arrested one time for drugs was the son of a mob boss. He said the mob bosses work really tight with the Taliban. And so he had to get out of there because they put a hit on his head and made his way through. He ended up coming to northern Greece, got saved, got baptized a month before we got there. And he's a faithful guy there, too. It's good to see the mix that God's put there. So we're grateful for it. We have a translator who says he's saved, does a great job. And we have enough people to speak English. If you were to differ, we would be warned about that. But we're looking forward to it. There's a lot to do. I'm going to try to ramp up in Greek as much as I can to be able to take advantage of the time we're there. We're there for a short window of time. We don't know how short, but we want to. I told the people, you are my people. We're part of your family. I told Lord Moses, I'm not treating it like you're stepping stone to something else. We're going to be a part of your life. So we're looking forward to it. So if you could continue to keep us in prayer, I know we'd appreciate it. I don't know how many messages I've preached here over the years. I know it's my favorite place in the world to preach. But if you asked me four years ago, what do you think you'd want to preach as your last sermon? It wouldn't have been the one I preached in this morning, but you get so many. So I thought I'd turn each one of them into a point. Preach like a 12-point sermon. Last 12 things I want to say to old fads, right? I mean, hey, tomorrow there's no quarreling, and I'm leaving Wednesday. So I could say a bunch of stuff today and just get that all out of the way. But there's nothing really I could say that So instead, we're going to turn to Hebrews chapter 10. I mean, we have a we have a gathering, a fellowship of believers today, that doesn't mean get your quarreling out today. Right. And it's it's amazing when you see what the Lord does with. I mean, you pray about something. One of the reasons I love preaching here is because I feel I know a good deal about what's going on in the families of old paths, and that kind of helps as the Lord directs you to a passage, just to know what you feel that the Lord might use you to help minister to, and just different things where the body's going through at a time. You go into a different church, you really don't know what's going on, and it's always exciting going there and hearing something that aligns with what you're preaching to know. I mean, I wouldn't step up into a pulpit without knowing that this is something God wants me to preach, but it's always nice to get the confirmation. This morning's family school verse could have been more perfect to to go along with this today, so I pray ministers to you heart and blesses you and I if I Told somebody before church. I can't stand when grown men cry You know I'm trying to bolster myself up a little bit, but so I Asked forgiveness in advance should that happen so let's have a word of prayer Dear Lord, we thank you so much for your goodness, Lord. We thank you for your love. We thank you for your sacrifice that you gave, Lord. Certainly paying the highest price. Everything we can do in return for you is a drop in the bucket for what you shed for us and what you did for us. Lord, we thank you for it. We thank you for this body of believers, Lord, that you've assembled here. Thank You for the part that they've had in my life and Rachel's life and our children's lives. We love You and ask You to bless us now as we look in Your Word. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I promise I'll not do this where I'll have these brief moments of nostalgia burst out in the middle of the message, but I was thinking, I remember, I went to Pastor Kim O'Leary. I'd been doing messages for young men for three years, two years, three years. And I said to Pastor Kim O'Leary that we're in the old building. I was 16. And I said, I want to be trained for the ministry. What can I do? And I'm thinking, you know, counseling visits and hospital visits and then not realizing, no, that's not what a 16-year-old young man is going to start doing and being involved in ministry. It's going to be, he's like, good, I got the perfect thing for you. I'm going to get you a phone. There's people that are going to call about wanting to know about our family church, and you take care of those calls. Oh, I'm 16, the pastor gave me an assignment, I was excited about it. So you're talking to these people, and they're giving you all their problems, and you're thinking. Then you think for a moment, I mean, I only just made me for maybe a few minutes, because then you think. A lot of young preachers want to get into the ministry because they want to preach. Pastoring and ministering does not start when you step up here and end when you stop down from there. It's about people. And here I am getting disgusted with people on the phone. You kind of have to do a little spirit check there and realize, this is what I want to give my life to, to help and minister to people. And Jesus Christ said, I'm not come to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance. Why do I want to be around perfect people? That's not a slam and nobody's perfect, but it's, you know, and I remember that was my first introduction to being a helper to Pastor Kim Lurie, and I know that Pastor Folk would take me with him sometimes, just not necessarily visits, but just times, again, showing me different facets of the ministry as a 16-year-old young man that you get to see, okay, here's problems with people. There's no book you go to outside the Bible where it's going to say chapter, okay, this, okay, we go here. You do this and this is going to happen. You've got to use the Bible. And I was privileged to be able to do my Bible college education by correspondence so I could continue learning under these men. But at the end of the day, the Bible education is fantastic to give you a good foundation from which to grow and to teach from. But you don't get dealing with people in Bible college. You can write a thesis on how to deal with people, and you're not gonna learn how to deal with people from researching and writing. Best research is sitting in somebody's living room. And I've, I don't know if I would say privileged, but it's been a help to get some curveballs thrown at me in the years, and I appreciate those that allowed me to try to catch those and deal with it. But I love people, I really do. I'm a people person. I know that we all have different idiosyncrasies. I have plenty of mine. I think the only person who doesn't is my wife. And every day, that's why I kind of wake up hating myself, thinking, how did she end up with somebody like me? I appreciate you all putting up with me for these years. I really do. But Hebrews chapter 10. A lot of preachers and missionaries will say, you'll hear them say all the time, I got this message from my wife. And there's laughter that follows. This is for real. I got this part from my wife, and she didn't write the whole sermon. It's just this verse, but she called it out to me one morning when we were reading together, and you hear this verse read and spoken of a lot for why you need to be in Churchill all the time. But there's different parts of that verse that we often overlook, which is really, Part that's heavily emphasized in the verse and Hebrews 10 chapter 10 verse 25 The Bible says not forsaken the assembling of ourselves together as a manner of some is the way that Burton versus normally read Or taught would be not forsaken assembling of ourselves together as a manner of some is so much the more as you see the day approaching We're the last days you need to be in church We skip that part just before that but exhorting one another. I I want to preach a message this morning that I would call the missing link in Christianity. Exhortation. Exhorting. People, believe it or not, might not understand really what exhortation is, what exhorting is. It's to encourage. It's to incite to good works. It's not just me exhorting my child when we take special daddy Sometime to work on problems Exhorting is not just for discipline sake but exhorting is to encourage Exhorting is to cheer to advise to incite to good works And I Think this is timely I you know I Hear things sometimes I'm a part of things I do things sometimes and I think we need to be better at exhorting and as a church, as Christians, as people of God in this nation of America. Why do we need exhortation? Why is there a need for exhortation? Step outside the front door. That says so much the more as you see the day approaching. You realize how despicable this world is. How terrible our country is becoming. You almost get to the point where you say, you know what, next time you have that battle about taking one nation under God, if you want to take that part about under God off, we're not so much a nation under God anymore. And that would just be removing God's name from something because we do not submit ourselves as a country under the hand of God. Not like in the days of old. And you think about how drastic this world is changing. How fast-rolling things have become. For instance, the closet. There's no more closet. The closet is if somebody comes out as a Christian. Not so much as coming out as a homosexual. It's not something that people hide within anymore. I don't remember ever hearing about that when I was a boy. In my short span of life, we're at the point where people are proud about it, and if you don't like it, you're a hater, and you don't deserve to be around here. I mean, imagine where you are in a majority, and all of a sudden, just like overnight, you're standing here. Where did everybody go? And lines are drawn, and Christians are in the very, very small minority. So it's not strange to assume, given this fast pace of sin, to where it becomes more where people call who they are and you're condemning them as a person that parents that more than ever you need to be making sure your children are building friends that you know about Christians that they're marrying Christians that you know. It's inconceivable to think that given modern medical technology in 20 years they might marry what they thought was the opposite. And they're going to be in churches. Realize how scary it is that that's where our country is. You need to be making sure that you are. That's why we need to exhort. This is it. This is who we have. What are you going to go build an alliance and pal around with people in the world for? Yes, there's not going to be everything that you want here in this building. But by all means, don't go grabbing some lost person to use as your wingman and forsake what we have here. Why else? Let's look at Romans chapter 10 or Romans chapter 12. It's startling to see how drastic things are changing and. Where we are headed is not a good place. It's not a place that is prepping for revival in a spiritual foundation sort of way. It's a place with a position where we need revival more than ever. But you think about what it was like in the days of Noah. I mean, there's nothing new under the sun. There is an entire city given to that sin. Where somebody who's a righteous soul, a righteous soul was back living amongst that. and willingly giving His daughters up. That tells you that, yeah, that changes mind. That changes perception of what's sin, what's not. Why would you want to live in Sodom? Unfortunately, we're living in a place that's rapidly becoming like Sodom. But we have a refuge. We have each other. Now, just like many, many things with Baptists, The Pentecostals, the Charismatics take the tongues and the Holy Spirit this way. So we run the other side to almost the point of saying there's no Holy Spirit, no Holy Spirit involvement whatsoever. You have people take prayer and all that to this degree, so much so that they dip in the tongues and all that. So we go this way. We pray for our food. That's it, and then we slowly come back. We've done the same thing a lot of times with There used to be an organization not nearly what they had years ago was promise keepers and one of the promises was that they Was a for a man to have another man to help them hold up the truth of God You don't need a man to help you keep your promises to God you need God to help you keep your promises to God But so instead that's the attitude we take we go all this way. We don't need anybody. It's me and God and But I want to pull you back here a little bit more to where the book is. We don't need each other more than we need God, but we sure do need each other. Romans 12, verse 10. Be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love and honor preferring one another. There is a need for exhortation. Men, if you're in the workplace, you know how good it feels to get home with your family at the end of the day. And it becomes more and more difficult. You go out in this world, it's no longer a curiosity or an oddity that you women wear skirts or dresses. Or wear, oh, that's not... No. It's, how could you do this to your daughters? And people scorn. It's like, what happened to you thinking everybody should have liberty of mind and choice? They feel threatened by that. You know you get you get when you have well, we'll get to them jumping ahead, but we need to be kindly affections one to another One to another not you with you and you with you and you pick and choose You don't get to pick and you didn't get to pick and choose your brothers and sisters in your family You don't get to pick and choose your brothers and sisters in Christ But when you are in the body of Christ you now have them as family and you need to treat them without quarreling and Without dispute. There's enough quarreling in the world. Leave it to them. Why is it that we can have fellowship, if you want to call it that, with someone in the world, a lost person, more than we can have with somebody in the church house? We know them better in the church house. More of a reason you should be willing to overlook something. You won't overlook that guy drinking a beer at lunch. Call him a friend, but you won't call the people in the house of God a friend. Be kindly affection one to another in honor. Let's look at another one. Hebrews 3.13. I was telling somebody one time at a funeral, you know, it's easy. I mean, I have running buddies that we get together. That's what we have in common. We get together, we'll run for two hours, talk about that. We'll talk about our lives. We'll talk about this and that. One of them I've been running with on and off for a couple of years, and I only recently found out that he was Third, he's my age and he, just like a couple years before, he was saying, yeah, I was doing two packs of cigarettes a day as a runner. I was like, wow, I didn't even know that. That was such a big part of his life for years. I only just had found out about that. So that we keep our conversations more towards what we find in common. He doesn't tell me everything about his life. I don't tell him everything about my life. I tell him about the Lord. So yeah, it's easy for me to get with Him and have a good time running for two hours. But I'm going to a funeral of a loved one. I'm not leaning on His arm. I want to lean on the arms of the people in this church. Yes, we have problems. Yes, if we didn't have problems, we wouldn't be here. We'd be in heaven. We are on earth. We're living in a body that's cursed in a creation by sin. We're in a state eventually. Things are decaying. Things are getting old. Things are dying. As things get decaying, get old, and get dying, they get cranky. The Bible says that creation groaneth for redemption. And what do we do? We pick fights and quarrels with those who we will be caught up in the clouds with. Well, we'll have all of eternity to get along. I want to fight while the fighting is good. We find somebody, and it's like your dog, a male dog. You find somebody else, you slowly walk around, you look at them, you watch them. When you get together with a new Christian, you're thinking, oh, they got sandals on? No. Well, let's argue about sandals. Or you get together with them, so what do you believe on this? Before you know it, you're digging into stuff you haven't even talked about in the Word of God for 15 years, but you're trying to find something that you could say, oh, yeah, well, we don't see it that way. We can't fellowship. I've been with missionaries that will not fellowship with other missionaries in a place where they're the only Americans around, not just Christians, only Americans, because they look at the communion as being a closed communion versus open communion. Are you kidding me? There's nobody for you to have communion with. Neither one of you have a church. So what's the big deal? They won't drive an hour and a half to see each other because of that. So we find something. We're going to find something to, you know, instead of iron sharpening one another, we're like a fillet knife. We're just going to get in there to find what we can have at odds and just tear it up. Hebrews 3.13, But exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. Why exhortation? Because you can keep somebody else from falling into the deceitfulness of sin. You keep yourself from falling into deceitfulness of sin, because when you exhort somebody... Now, you and I, we're responsible to God for our actions. I'm not saying you get to blame somebody else for what you did wrong. You made a choice, I made a choice to sin. But you can exhort somebody, and the more you exhort them daily, while it is called today, because you don't want... It says, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. They're gonna get, people are gonna be exhorted by somebody. Why can't it be us? Being exhorted according to the word of God and encouraged and cited to do good works. Somebody does something that you don't approve of as far as something in church, not bad, but just you would do it a different way, or you don't like their method, or you don't like this. That's not the time for you to say, well, you're almost getting there. That's not exhorting. Or, well, I appreciate the effort. I mean, I could write a book on how to say nice things without saying nice things. I don't want to say them all, because I might give it away when I've said something in the past. But here's a famous one. You go see a baby born. I might be outing somebody here. I don't know. And you say, you know, a good thing to say, if you can't find anything else good, She looks just like her dad. Something like that, right? That's, you know, a nice way we could say something. You've got to say something, but you can't say, you know, wow, that's one ugly kid. Looks just like the dad, you know. Oh, thank you. I thought so, too. The nose. You have to nose. The nose is where it's, you know, definitely a nose. But we could write books on how to say something nice without saying something nice. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking something from your heart, from a brother or sister in Christ, another brother or sister in Christ, to incite them to good works. Not something where they want to go out and kill themselves. To incite them to good works. To encourage. Let's look at 1 Timothy 4. We are in the latter days. And more than ever, we need to support each other. We need to uplift each other. We need to bolster each other up in the name of Christ. I mean, imagine how God feels looking at us when we quarrel. And we have the story of the moat and the beam in the eye. We will find anything to quarrel about. And did you know that quarreling doesn't always have to take place with our mouth? I can quarrel with somebody without ever telling them a word. You got the brush, you know, slide by, or here's one I like. You could spot this a mile away. Somebody's here, you don't like this person. They're talking to somebody. So you see the person that's got the quarrel with that person in their heart? They're walking like this. Now, you might have done this or you might have seen this, so hopefully I do have the person that does this. You walk in, the person's right there. Because you do not want to stop. You're letting them know without saying a word, I can't stand you. Let me hustle past you. Not like they're going to stop to say, hey, how you doing? Because you know that's not going to happen, but you don't want You're just letting them know, I have anything in the world more important to do than talking to you. You're quarreling. And you get to feel good about that. And they have no idea. It's like the perfect quarrel. You get your flesh feeling so good that you just, as they might say, diss that person. And the person's got no idea that they've got to quarrel against you. 1 Timothy 4, verse 1. Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meat which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth." Now, if you're like me, you've always heard how this is just really a precursor verse for the Roman Catholics. The forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meat, that's what they do with the priest, that's what they do during Lent. But it says, some shall depart from the faith. We've had a lot depart from the faith. There are a lot that have departed from the faith. Is it more clear in any day and age than this about forbidding to marry? You hear people all the time, well, if we can't have marriage, then nobody should have marriage. Or those that have left the church, gone into sin, you don't find many of them getting married. What's the point of marriage? Who cares about marriage? Where is there? I mean, marriage is a church thing. Forget about marriage. You're finding more and more people forbidding to marry because, well, then when we split up in five years, we have to go through that messy paperwork. Let's just be together and forget about marriage. Marriage is a church thing. Forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from meat. I'm in Washington, D.C. walking down the road. You got some big, like a big silver RV type thing with animals all over it. and then cages and animals inside there. And they're there trying to get you to not eat meat. We're more of this day and age than ever of people abstain from meat. Don't eat meat. You realize what it's doing to the poor animals? Let me tell you what God said about those poor animals. For every creature of God is good. And nothing to be refused if received with thanksgiving. It's like if you're not going to take it and thank God for it, then don't eat it. But I'll eat it. So they're trying to give me their paper saying that what they, you know, I say, before I touch it, do you believe it's okay to kill a baby? You mean abortion? No, no. Do you believe it's okay to kill a baby? Well, it's not kill. Keep it. I'll go eat my meat and you can keep doing what you want with abortions. Commanding to abstain from meat, which God made to be consumed, while killing unborn children. And you're finding that with those who have departed from the faith. They care more about animals than they do about humans. Go to 2 Peter chapter 3. Those are people that have departed from the faith. They've given heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. We need to encourage and exhort one another because of them. Why should we let them sit from the outside? And you're talking latter days. God knew what was coming. We've got the latter days here where what I'm saying now, without a doubt, is going to be on somebody's Facebook thing, scorning it by noon tomorrow. That's the latter days we're in. And they're filled with hypocrisy. Those that depart from the faith are filled with hypocrisy. But what do they do? They try to put the hypocrisy on us. You're the reason I left God. Well, if you're so happy, why are you still trying to convince me that you're happy? You come around here and flaunt that you have this freedom. I don't see a lot of freedom. I see you trying to convince yourself that you're happy you left here. Yet, those that depart from the faith, they're giving heed to all this stuff. We need to be exhorting one another so that they can... The Bible says that no evil thing can be spoken of. Well, you told me that about so-and-so in church. How would you feel if you heard that back to you and you knew it's true? Again, they made their own choice and they decide their actions, but why would we want to talk bad about each other to each other? Exhort one another. Dave Hance handled it better than anybody I've ever seen. I made the mistake. I don't know why I didn't learn the first time. I think I did it three times. where I'd be talking to him and all of a sudden I'd say something about somebody. You know what? You're right, let's pray for them right now. Well, I wasn't really thinking we should pray for them. I mean, let's just talk about them instead of pray for them in our closets at home. And I did it three times. And then I learned. I can't, okay, he's somebody I can't go talking to about people because we're gonna go pray for him. Did you hear about the problem so-and-so has? Let's pray for that. It's not a problem you really pray for. It's just something we talk through. and maybe they'll get the vibe and feel it and all that. Let's go to 2 Peter 3 verse 1. The Bible says, This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you, in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance. That's exhorting. Stirn up Your minds that you may be mindful of the words which are spoken before by the holy prophets. How do you exhort? What do you exhort? What do you use and of the commandment of the us the apostles of the Lord and Savior knowing this first additional come in the last days scoffers Walking after their own loss and saying where is the promise of this coming? For since the father saw sleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation For this they willingly are ignorant of that by the Word of God the heavens were of old and earth's that's evolution. I That's people living in this ignorance. They are going to make themselves willfully ignorant. To try to refuse the facts of science that says that there was a Divine Creator. They're going to be willfully ignorant of that. And we're in the latter times where you can't... I mean, that's... I've heard people say now that it's no longer a theory. I don't know when this theory got proved, but it's now science. It's now hard fact. That's the world we're living in. Call up, stir up in each other by ways of remembrance, the pure minds, those things that are written in the Word of God. When things are getting rough, God's coming back soon. The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 4, 18, wherefore comfort one another with these words, that Christ is going to come back. Take that as a way to incite to good works, instead of partaking in this bickering and quarreling one with another. Now let's look at 2 Peter 3.17. We'll go on to the last part. 3.17. This would be like a definition of exhortation. Ye therefore, beloved, a perfect representation. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware, lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in grace. So beware of this, but grow in grace, in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is something that should always be in our exhorting one to another. It's not you, it's not me that's going to make it through. It's to Him be glory both now and forever. Amen. Second and lastly, the hurdles to exhorting. So we have the need for exhortation, the hurdles to exhortation. People will say, you know, use Romans 12, why don't I have the gift of exhortation? No, but those who have, that's a primary gift we've learned before. Those are gifts that somebody has that goes above and beyond. Everybody is an exhorter. Everybody needs to exhort. The Bible says, it doesn't say you exhorters, exhort today while it is today. No, everybody is to exhort. That's the job of brothers and sisters in Christ, to excite to good works one another. Now those who are given the gift of exhortation, you better be above and beyond. I mean, you should be able to pinpoint that person, those people that are given to exhortation. But everybody has to be exhorters. One of the gifts is the giver. Does that mean you don't have to give if you don't have the gift? Of course you give. But some are more given to it than others. Some are more given to exhortation than others. Everybody needs to exhort. Let's look at Ephesians chapter two. One of the hurdles to exhortation is that we just don't like each other. And we don't want to have anything to do with each other. My dad always used to say, we have this scale. You're both here, you put yourself up, you're putting them down. You put them down, you put yourself up. Just law of gravity, that's how it works. And we like that. So we'll talk about people, we'll quarrel about people. we'll have looks of disdain for people. If you really, really, really need to disdain somebody, how about disdain the person that hates you and everything you're about? If you have to, why would you choose to disdain the person that's sitting in this room with you this morning? The one that you come to and sing these great hymns of the faith as brothers and sisters in Christ, and you're thinking, well, I sure sound better than they sound. Think you sound better than Pavarotti. But don't be thinking how much better you sound than these people. Encourage one another. In Ephesians 2, verse 1, And you who have feet quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, where in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit, and now worketh in the children of disobedience. Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy for his great love, wherewith he loved us." Those pronouns put us all together. We are family. We were all lost. We're all saved by the love where it's God loved us. We are together. We need to exhort one another. Yet, we'd be probably more prone to want to pay to be with somebody else than have to be with each other sometimes. Sometimes we will try to... Imagine if your witnessing went like this. I want to tell you about the Lord Jesus Christ. You can go to heaven when you die. Great freedom of having the sin roll off you. It'd be great. Let me tell you one thing, though. I will be your teacher and your disciple for a while. I'm going to use you for a while to help me with what I need to make me a better person. And then four or five years, I'm going to despise you. If you're still okay with that, let's go ahead and get saved. We would never tell somebody that, but we do that. Somebody comes in, they get saved. Praise the Lord. In seven years, you can't stand the sight of them. instead of exhorting them to good works. I read something that Steve Jobs, the owner of Apple, CEO of Apple, and a sinner like everybody else, making choices in his personal life that are not, that are disdained by the Bible. Somebody paid $600,000 to have a two-hour lunch with him. I read that and I said, God, please help me not to be a Christian. What am I going to go sit with some homosexual with for two hours and talk to him about it and pay $600,000 to do that? Yet sometimes we prefer to sit with somebody like that than the people in this very room. Well, the guy's successful. Let me talk to him about business success. Really? His boss died with billions. And according to what he believed, he's in hell. How good was his business success? You're going to make a decision to try to fellowship with the lost world over fellowshipping one with another? That's a detrimental choice. And parents, that's detrimental to your kids. You'd rather spend time with people in the lost world than spend it with somebody in church. And I'm not saying you're not getting together with family and whatnot. I'm saying you like and enjoy being together with somebody that's lost and somebody that's saved. You're showing your kids, hey, this is, again, guess what? I'm going to be having lunch with lost people in Greece for the purpose of bringing them the gospel, talking to them. I'll meet with them on the street for salvation purposes, absolutely, but not just because I happen to like this guy better than I like one of you. Now I would say try an experiment, but the problem with these experiments is somebody's gonna get offended if I were to say, next time you wanna go have coffee with somebody, a lost person, ask the person you despise most in church out for coffee. But guess what happens to everybody that gets asked for coffee next week? All right, we're almost through. If you see, let's go to numbers 23. This is the biggest hurdle, I think, being able to exhort. There was a king who saw some people coming in that he didn't like. They were God's people. And he did not, he despised the sight of them. Could not stand them. So he gets some prophet to come to put a curse on them. Let's read what happened in Numbers 23. Verse 1, And Balaam said unto Balak, Build me here seven altars, and prepare me here seven oxen and seven rams. So he did that. And then verse 3, Balaam said unto Balak, Stand by thy burnt offering, and I will go. Peradventure, the Lord will come to meet me, and whatsoever ye show with me, I will tell thee. And he went to a high place, and God told him not to do that and not to curse him. He comes back. He gives a parable to Balak. And Balak says in verse number 11, What hast thou done to me? I took thee to curse mine enemies. Behold, thou hast blessed them all together. And Balaam answered and said, must I not take heed to speak that which the Lord hath put in my mouth? And here's what we do. Balaam said unto him, come, come. I pray with thee, come with me to another place. From whence thou mayest see them, thou shalt see them but the utmost part of them, the outer parts, and shalt not see them all. And curse me from that. And he does this again with them. We do this with people sometimes. Right now, there's somebody maybe in your mind that you despise, some brother or sister in Christ. And you're quarreling with me in your heart. But you don't understand what they did to me. Let's go look at it from this side. If you look at it from my perspective, don't look at the beautiful front part. Let's look at the uttermost parts. This is the part that you don't get to see. This is the part I see. Let's look at it. Now, now that you've got your eyes on this person, Balaam tries and God tells him what to say and he again blesses his people. So Balaam's like, no, no, no, no, no, come here, come here, come here. And he says in verse 25, neither curse them at all nor bless them. Okay, let's just not, we won't do anything. 27. Come, I pray you. I will bring you into another place. This is how we get sometimes. We start getting fixated in our minds so much on these people that we despise, that we think God will actually curse them for us. Okay, come over here. Come up higher. Stand with me. Look just the way I'm looking. Look at them. I mean, come on. You've got to see. They're bad people. Now don't bless them again. Please don't bless them and don't even curse them. I just want to show you. Why do we have to show people other Christians' faults? And I'm guilty of that. We'll take them aside and say, but just so you understand where I'm coming from. That's how you lead in. Just so you know where I'm coming from. I just want to explain to you what they do. Look, see, you see it? No, no, you gotta, no, you see that, don't you? And they're like, No, and then God just blesses them and says, the camps of Jacob, how beautiful are they? How bountiful are they? What are you doing? You're blessing the person. That's God's people that he was trying to curse. And so we are God's people and you try to get one another to despise on one another. Go to Psalms 133. Believe it or not, I'm trying to grease the skids here so that you all love me when I leave, is really the point of the sermon. But we need to exhort each other. Because we are going to go through hard times. We got family members, lost family members that despise us already. You have work people that despise you. You have neighbors that despise you. Why do you have people in church despising you? You might say, I don't know either. Because we're flesh. It's quarreling. If any man have a quarrel against any. What's the solution? Simple. Do what God does. Forgive. And exhort. Exhort. Exhort. Exhort. Incite to good works. You realize what a powerful church we could be if we exhort each other and incite people to good works. If we encourage them in what they have. You might say, well, they don't have much. Encourage what you see. Say, I appreciate your heart and zeal for God. You can find something good in every single person in this room. If you can't come to me and if I don't even know them, I can tell you something good. You have to look for it. Sometimes. But when you exercise that, you know what? Sometimes you get upset with people. I get upset with people. Then you hear about something. I'll judge people sometimes. Just based on this or that or the other thing. Oh, this person, this one pastor, he has these pyramids all the time. He has these huge, long altar calls. I mean, 30 minutes. And you're thinking, he just wants to get the results. And he's forcing the people down. And I'm thinking, why would he? I mean, he's basically hitting something that he's going to be able to grab somebody to get him down the altar. I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, this is sad. Why is he just basically forcing everybody? At a prayer meeting the next day, he's crying and seeking God. God, please help our people, Lord. I know that they need to make decisions for you, Lord. It tears me up to see them sit in the seats. Lord, do work on their heart. I never want to close an altar without making sure that every single person has dealt with God and made, and I know people like to, and just going on and showing his heart in tears, I was like, Wow. How can I even pray next to this man? What we despise sometimes is sometimes something that God uses the most in somebody. But we despise it because we're selfish, prideful brats. And we're jealous of what they have. Psalm 133. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. What is it like? It's like the precious ointment upon the head. that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard, that went down the scripts of his garments. How to exhort? When you exhort one another, we build a bond of unity in this body. Exhorting brings us together. How good and how pleasant? How pleasant is it? That oil that was poured upon the head, that was preparing Aaron, sanctifying him for worship, sanctifying him for ministry. And the aroma of that came up before God as he saw the high priest prepared to serve him. prepared to offer unto Him. You know what that unity does amongst the brethren? It prepares us to serve God. It prepares us to worship God. You think you're going to come in church and start singing worship service and despising people. It's disgusting to God. That unity, when we come into the body unified, God smells that as He did Aaron who was ready to minister and loves what he smells. Finally, let's go to Hebrews chapter 12. You know, in Philippians, it talks about, and I'll read these verses as you go there, nothing be done through strife. It's hard when you prepare a message like this because this is something we all know. You feel like you're, you know, just maybe beating a dead horse to some degree. But the more we mature as Christians, the more we become immature in some areas. We become more mature in doctrine. We become more mature in ministry. But we neglect the things around us that are closest to us. Each other. We don't exhort one another. We'll get out there to exhort the sinner to come to Christ. But we won't exhort the people in this room that might need it more than anything else. Somebody come up and exhort them. Encourage them. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. We're looking too much on us. The more we look on us, People in the church in Greece, they have problems. Sometimes some big problems. I was preaching through Second Thessalonians and telling them, the problem is when you focus on yourself, you get so consumed with what you are, you forget everybody else around you. And I'm not saying you shouldn't be sad about your problems, but you dwell on them. And you overlook those around you that you can minister to, that God's given you that for a reason to be able to minister to those around you. The same thing with us. We fix on our problems. We fix on how somebody hurt us. you know, 35 years ago. And we don't want to let it go. We want to fixate on it. Instead of encouraging, exhorting. I would love, and I know some of the things that go on. I would love to know that myself and everybody in here, we're exhorters. That we work together to exhort one another. I'm not saying you have to be your best friend. There's gonna be people that you, Are able to feed off each other more than somebody else, but you better be exhorting everybody and not despising any one of us Hebrews chapter 12 and we're through this goes through this is a follow-up to Hebrews 11 Talking about the the great men and women of faith So that wherefore length that pulls all those people together say wherefore seeing we also encompass about was so great a cloud of witnesses Let us lay aside every weight The sin which doth so easily beset us and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Now I'm thankful for those that have gone on before. I'm thankful for those cheering us on to strong finish for the Lord. But you know what? There's somebody that runs a race. When you have somebody before you leave and they tell you, I'm pulling for you. I'll be there for you. That really means something to you. It helps you when you get through The middle part, when you get to the latter times, you get to the latter ends, it's the ones that are actually there cheering you on to help bring you in harder. We are in latter times, we are in the end days, and there are people that hate Christians for the most part. Our society is not one which is enjoying Christianity. And why not to some degree when we bicker with one another all the time? Independent Baptists are good at that. You know, we're independent for a reason because there's gotta be something that you are, that I'm not, and we're gonna, we'll find that bone of contention and just make a, we'll make a meal out of it. Instead of exhorting one another. How about we not wait till we get to heaven to cheer the rest on? How about we cheer each other on right from here? Exhorting. Come together in unity. You see somebody, sometimes you'll see them fall down. You don't see anybody. I told them they shouldn't have done that. Look at that. I was laughing about it. Come on, Cap, you can do it. And I know my wife's just cheering the same thing at home, but she doesn't, you know, I'm feasting on what I had there, because we're temporal beings. We think with our eyes sometimes. We see what's around us. What if you know when you're going through tough times, you can come into church, you're going to be exhorted on every side. What if you know that every single person in this body loves you? You're in this church for a reason. Nobody forced you at gunpoint. You've decided to make this your local church. And if you can't stand people in this local church, you need to get your attitude right. I'm not telling you to leave. I'm saying get your attitude right. Because you will not find another local church where you'll love everybody either. You need to get your heart right with God. Exhort one another. Come together in unity. One day, I love telling lost people this, that every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. I yearn for that day. One day, for eternity, we are going to be around the throne of God just singing, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. Casting our crowns at His feet. You might be doing it right next to the person you've despised for 20 years in this church. Then you won't despise them. But you're gonna look back and realize the years you wasted not being an exhorter, not exhorting to good works. You're gonna realize how you might have helped that person do a little bit more for Jesus Christ. There's people in this church that I look up to as pillars, great pillars. You know what it does to me when one of them says, I'm proud of you, or I think you're doing a good job, or you're doing good. That makes me get really excited. Maybe you're one of those people that people look up to. You could take that opportunity to tell that person that you despise the most. You're doing a good job. I appreciate seeing your heart for God. Keep it up. Not as a way to try to help you overcome, but you just need to do it. Do it and let God deal with the overcoming part. We're commanded to exhort. God wants unity in the church. And the more we do it, the more sweet it becomes to God. The more encouraged and bolstered we feel as we go back out, it feels like you take a fresh shower, a fresh massage, fresh everything all at once and jump back out in this world to deal with it. Exhort. Exhort. Even so much the more as you see the day approaching. Come together and exhort. You don't realize how grateful you are for a body until you're gone here and there. And when you're in churches sometimes, you realize how great of a body we have. And I tell my pastor folk, it's tough. I don't have the Greek alphabet all the way down yet, and I'm not going to, you know, got the marble floors and all that. I'm not going to belt it out in English. So you're trying to do your best to stay just maybe a beat behind them as you try. So I'm mumbling. For three weeks, I'm mumbling songs. I came here Wednesday. I want to belt it out. But imagine you can't come to church and belt it out because I can't believe it. Looking around every place the one we're supposed to be worshiping one day. We're all around him worshiping him Start now exhorting each other unifying each other because we're all my one of my favorite race experience of all time was not even mine We were at the end of bad water 135 mile race to Death Valley Supporting this one runner to finish 125 you think it's hot now 125 degrees And It's during the race, now it's 38 degrees, four in the morning, 44 hours we're on the road. And we're waiting for him to finish. I give him, he's an Israeli guy, I give him an Israeli flag. And he grabbed all of our arms. He was a runner, he was the one that was out there that long. But he knew that without us, he was never gonna get there. Grabbed all of our arms, I got a picture of it still. We all crossed that finish line together. They set up for each finisher. We all crossed that line together. Made me feel proud inside knowing that he felt that we had enough of a part to help him get there. That he wanted us to enjoy that moment with him. Imagine all crossing that finish line of heaven together. The Lord comes back while we're still here. All together in unity. Looking down the line one way, looking down the other knowing I'm here because of him. I made a strong finish because it hurt. What's the glory of crossing by yourself? Look around you. You've got people in this church that love you. You've got people in this church that you despise that are praying for you. I want to go into heaven all together. Thank God. Thank you for him. Thank you for her. Thank you for this. We can do it with each other. We're going to go to heaven if you're saved, no matter what. But I want to do it encouraging one another. I want to do it stronger than I could by myself. That's why God's given us family.