Our scripture reading for this morning is in Hebrews chapter 10, verses 23 through 25. As we gathered together today, we have lived out parts of these teachings in these verses. However, it is possible to go through the motions of gathering together without having a good heart attitude. As we review the somewhat familiar verses, ask yourself, what is my purpose in being here today? Please follow along as I read Hebrews chapter 10 verses 23 through 25 in the NIV Bible. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing. but let us encourage one another all the more as you see the day approaching. It's just great to come together to see you folks today. It's good to be here. Appreciate the opportunity to preach the Word of God to you. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank You for the opportunity to come now and open Your Word. Lord, with this message, Call us to faithfulness to you and to your word. Remind us of the importance of that. For your honor and glory, we pray. Amen. Out of the pages of early church history records. Written with men. Who only used one name written by men who only used one name in like Eusebius and Irenaeus. in the days of the early church. Their words later compiled in books by men like Philip Schaff and John Fox, and then later incorporated into the writings of faithful men and preachers of the word of God like Chuck Swindoll, John MacArthur, John Whitcomb, and many others. come accounts like this one. I am a Christian. The young man said nothing else as he stood before the Roman governor, his life hanging in the balance. His accusers pressed him again, hoping to trip him up or force him to recant. But once more, he answered with the same short phrase, I am a Christian. It was the middle of the second century during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Christianity was illegal, and believers throughout the Roman Empire faced the threat of imprisonment, torture, and death. Persecution was especially intense in Southern Europe, where Sanctus, a deacon from Vienna, had been arrested and had been brought to trial. The young man was repeatedly told to renounce the faith he professed, but his resolve was undeterred. I am a Christian. No matter what question he was asked, he always gave the same unchanging answer. According to the ancient church historian Eusebius, Sanctus girded himself against his accusers with such firmness that he would not even tell his name, or the nation or city to which he belonged, or whether he was slave or free. but answered in the Roman tongue to all their questions, I am a Christian. When at last it became obvious that he would say nothing else, he was condemned to severe torture and a public death in the amphitheater, a great spectacle. On the day of his execution, he was forced to run the gauntlet, subjected to wild beasts, then fastened to a chair of burning iron. Threw out all of it. His accusers kept trying to break him, convinced that his resistance would crack under the pain of torment. But as Eusebius went on to write, even this they did not hear a word from Sanctus except the confession which he had consistently uttered from the beginning. His dying words told of an undying commitment, his rallying cry remained constant throughout his entire trial. And one more time, as his life passed from him, he cried out, I am a Christian. For Sanctus, his whole identity including his name, his citizenship, and his social status was found only in Jesus Christ. Hence, no better answer could have been given to the question he was asked. He was a Christian, and that designation defined everything about him. Does it you? The same perspective was shared by countless numbers of believers during the early church age. It fueled their witness, strengthened their resolve, and confounded their opponents. When arrested, these courageous believers would confidently respond as Sanctus had, with a succinct assertion of their loyalty, to none but Jesus the Messiah. Following Jesus Christ was the sum of their entire existence. Is it yours? At the moment when life itself was on the line, nothing else mattered besides identifying themselves with Him, Jesus. At the moment when life itself was on the line, these faithful believers named the name Christian. And for them, Christian was much more than just a general religious designation. It defined everything about them, including how they viewed both themselves and the world around them. The early martyrs were crystal clear on what it meant to be a Christian. But ask what it means today? You're likely to get a wide variety of answers even from those who identify themselves with that label. For some, being Christian is primarily cultural and traditional, a nominal title inherited from a previous generation, the net effect of which involves avoiding certain behaviors and occasionally attending church For others, being a Christian, and boy, we've seen it today, being a Christian is like largely political. A quest to defend moral values in the public arena, in the public square, or perhaps to preserve those values by withdrawing from the public square. still more defined Christianity in terms of a past religious experience, a generic belief in Jesus, or a desire to be a good person. Yet all of these fall woefully short of what it truly means to be a Christian from a biblical perspective. with far less than their physical lives on the line, professing Christians of today are far more willing to flex and to compromise on that which is precious to God. To bit by bit sell off and sacrifice what the one whom we call Lord, Jesus Christ sacrificed, died to establish and declare as the living, active, powerful Word of God to be lived out in and through those for whom He died to provide the free gift, the free gift of eternal salvation The word of God about which he declared in these words recorded by Matthew in his gospel in chapter five, verse 18, Jesus said, for truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away. Not the smallest letter. Not the smallest stroke shall pass from the Word of the Law until all is accomplished. And the Word of God will be accomplished in full. Jesus also clearly stated in John 17, verse 17, if you remember that chapter, it records Jesus prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane to his father before his arrest and his death. He said in that verse that the word of God is truth. Your word is truth. In fact, the statement, as I said, it's part of a prayer to the father, a request made on behalf of everyone who would trust in him. He said, sanctify them, those who believe in me, sanctify them in the truth. Set them apart from sin unto righteousness in the truth. Your word is truth. That word today, by many of those who claim to be his followers, is treated as expendable. They see it as expendable. I'm here to tell you all of the Word of God is the truth of God, all of it. And if we set anything, anything aside from God's truth, from biblical truth, His complete sanctifying purpose in us and in His church will not be fully accomplished. The human struggle. The human struggle to consistently and to completely teach and obey the whole truth of God is as old as Christianity. But with every passing day, month, year, decade, and century of church history, the battle for conserving and applying the Bible, biblical truth, has been intensified. The battle is heating up super abundantly in this day against God and His word. But it became especially intense during the late 1800s. A preacher named Charles Haddon Spurgeon, maybe you've heard of him. He devoted the last four years of his life in ministry in an effort to stop the setting aside of biblical truth in the churches of his day. It was happening. what he called the downgrade controversy. Listen to his warning. He said, biblical truth is like the pinnacle of a steep, slippery mountain. One step away and you find yourself on the downgrade. Once a church or an individual believer starts moving down that precipitous incline, momentum takes over, gravity takes over. Recovery is unusual and occurs only, only when Christians get on the upline through spiritual revival. We need a revival in the church of Jesus Christ today. And I believe the circumstances that God has brought to us in times like these is just the stimulus for that revival. Amen. Very few churches in England heeded Spurgeon's warnings and much of Great Britain soon became spiritually dead as it is to this day. There are sparks of revival, don't get me wrong. Some true believers catching fire in Great Britain, in Australia and other countries, pretty much putting our country to shame in some ways. And now here we are, over 100 years later, 21 years into the 21st century, and the struggle to maintain biblical integrity is even more intense. I've personally felt that struggle, and I don't like admitting this, and I think every believer does if they want to be honest. I personally have felt that struggle to pull away from biblical truth in the arena of my own mind, In my own thinking, at times I know I've come dangerously close to rationalizing that perhaps some of the truths that I've learned from God in His Word have become, for various reasons, inconvenient. Maybe going on a list of what some people call non-essential doctrines. Oh, God forbid. There's nothing non-essential. But, and I thank God, in his great faithfulness, in his great grace, in his great mercy, God has stopped me and kept me from slipping on downgrade. But that pull, that tug that I felt, reminded me of something that I was taught as a child with a bucket of water. And maybe you experienced this too when you were a child. My dad showed me how water would not fall out of a bucket, even when it was directly over my head. First time he did it, I freaked. It didn't fall out as long as it was moving in a circular direction. You done this? Kids, go home today, tell one of your parents, probably a father and not a mother, I don't know. Moms could do it, I guess. Nothing wrong with that. You've probably done it yourself. It's called the law of centrifugal force. what's happening. It's the invisible force of gravity that draws a rotating body away from the center of rotation. The word centrifugal comes from two Latin words, centrum, meaning center, and fugere, meaning to flee. The water in my dad's bucket moving as it was was being pulled away from the open end by gravity and wind directly overhead. It didn't fall out, pulled off to the sides and the bottom, but not the center. The water was literally therefore fleeing the center. In much the same way, there is a spiritual pull that can be felt by every believer in Jesus Christ, a spiritual centrifugal force, if you will. The triune God and his complete and perfect word are the center of the church. The body of Christ and every individual member of the body of Christ. This was made very clear in those familiar words which Jesus spoke. Again, found in the book of Matthew. Very familiar Scripture, I'm sure. Chapter 28, verses 18 to 20. Look at them with me if you would, please. I've long since listened for pages when electronic devices just go really quick. Without a click. Or swish. Matthew 28, beginning with verse 18. And Jesus came up and spoke to his disciples saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. So I say, go therefore. and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Spirit, teaching those disciples then to observe all that I commanded you. And look, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." What words. We call it the Great Commission. We don't want it to become the Great Omission. But Satan and his minions would love nothing better than it would become the great omission in our lives. in the lives of the church. We cannot let it happen. It is the great commission. The resurrected Jesus. Jesus, the Lord. The One with all authority, as He said there. He commissioned His disciples. He commissioned them to go and make other disciples by leading them to salvation. To forgiveness of sin found in Him through the truth of the Gospel message. which is about what he did, salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. That is the all-inclusive spiritual center of the church. Every true believer in Jesus, and that is exactly the center from which far too many believers and far too many churches, brothers and sisters, they're fleeing the center. It's tragic. In his booklet, Christ, Our Pattern and Plan, our dear brother who's now with Jesus and the great teacher, Dr. John Wickham, taught us this. He wrote, the Great Commission has three parts, not just one. Three parts, not just one. The first part involving world evangelism. It is indeed essential. But it has been dangerously isolated from the other two parts, which are also essential, namely baptism and indoctrination. Some people really don't like that word indoctrination. It's not a scary word. It's a good word. The kids go to school, hopefully. to be indoctrinated in reading and writing and arithmetic and things they need to get along in life. To be sure, he goes on, without conversions, there would be no baptisms or indoctrination. But it has frequently been forgotten that without New Testament baptism and New Testament indoctrination, there could ultimately be no more conversions. The tremendous significance of the second part of the Great Commission, believers' baptism, Christian baptism, distinctively Christian, is being sadly neglected today by so many called arms of the church. Here is a divinely commanded teaching symbol given to clearly teach and to sustain in the minds of the church and every disciple, the central truth of our triune God. If Satan could get rid of the truth of the triune God, everything else falls apart. Do you know that? That is why the baptism that Jesus commanded is so crucial, as he commanded it. Baptism has no saving value in itself, we know that. But it is, as Dr. Wickham says, nevertheless an important and essential part of the Great Commission. Properly understood, however, it is really the third part of the Great Commission that should overwhelm us. Think about it, that third part. He says, note particularly the words, and I'm thinking the first word, all. but the words, all that I have commanded you. We are not to teach just the things we like best. We are not to teach what our hearers most want to hear. We must teach it and we must preach it all. All, are we? Are we committed to doing that? And are we indeed doing that? And let me also say, are we living it as we teach it to others? In one concise statement, here's what we're hearing from most of the so-called Christian arena today. Even some who claim the title evangelical that certain doctrines are keeping us from accomplishing the great commission of Jesus. Did you hear that? How can that be? How can that be when the central feature of the great commission is biblical doctrine? Jesus and His doctrine. All biblical doctrines, the biblical doctrine of salvation by grace through faith alone in Jesus Christ and nothing or no one else. The biblical doctrine of God who is God in three persons. You find that nowhere else. I wonder why. because our God, the only true God, is the unique God. And no man creating a false religion would ever dream of a triune co-equal God. The biblical doctrine of all those things, the things that we saw on the screen earlier, in the call to worship, and more. Genesis to Revelation, everything that's there. And the teaching, the indoctrination of every disciple in all of what Jesus commanded us, the sanctifying entirety of the Word of God, down to the smallest letter and the smallest stroke, as Jesus said. All of it, His Word. It shall not pass away, but will we teach it all? To be sure, to do God's great commission work in God's way, doing God's work in God's way, it's the only way to do it. Without compromise, it's the only way to do it. That's a titanic challenge. Christianity is and always has been, as Jesus called it, the narrow way. We're not going to win, nor should we seek to win popularity contests. But let me throw this in free, no extra charge, because it's not in front of me right now. I want to say this. Jesus said, if they're going to know that you are truly my disciples, yes, they will know us by what we teach from his word, but they will know us by how we practice it in love toward one another and toward them. How you handle the word of God toward a person who is not of the word of God is absolutely vital. Because they expect us to just go off and rant. We don't have to rant. As Paul, and Barnabas, and Silas, and Timothy, and others would do, they passionately, lovingly, proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. to those who needed to hear it. And throngs and throngs of people came to Christ. I wonder why? Well, God, but the way they shared it. So there's that. Free, no extra charge. So it's always been called the narrow way, and that's what people don't really like. Even Christians sometimes chafe at the narrowness of God and his word. It's good though. Because the truth is, as Peter stated in 1 Peter 2, verse eight, that Jesus and everything about Jesus is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. So don't let yourself become the stone of stumbling and the rock of offense. Jesus has got that covered. And that is exactly why many churches and many Christian organizations and individual believers are fleeing from the God-ordained center of doctrine. Please turn with me to Hebrews, to the passage our brother read earlier. Hebrews chapter 10, verses 23 to 25. There's a firm admonition here that we need to see again and hear again. Verse 23, the writer says, let us hold fast the confession of our hope, the confession of our faith without wavering. For he who promised, this is about Jesus, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. What day? Oh, Jesus is coming back. And if you don't sense that today with the things that are going on in such a rapid uptick in our world today, then you need to wake up to what the Bible teaches. Jesus is coming back to take us home. Are you longing and looking for his appearing? I love brother Mike Wingfield. He's coming to our church this coming weekend. Are you listening for the shout that'll take us out? He loves to say that. We need to be spiritually stimulated by the word, by each other as believers in Jesus Christ to resist the pull away from the center. I found such spiritual stimulation, spiritual provocation a while back in something that Pastor Francis Chan wrote about the folly of compromising our Lord's great commission. He said this. He said, I wonder then why the last thing Jesus told us was to go into the world, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey all that he commanded. You'll notice that he did not add these words, but hey, if that's too much to ask, Tell them just to become Christians, you know, the people who get to go to heaven without having to commit to anything. Because that's the feeling that those who are leaving the God of the Word and the Word of God behind are implanting in the hearts and minds of people. Come to Jesus, that's all you need to do. You don't have to commit to anything or anyone else. Wow. There are today, sadly, too few voices proclaiming such convicting, stimulating words in support of what God has clearly proclaimed in his word. As an under shepherd of the great shepherd, I want to add my voice to the few this morning. Hold fast, hold fast the confession of your hope and your faith in Jesus Christ and in his word. Do not flee the center of God's will. Hold fast to the center. Hold on to the word of God and to the God of the word. God and his word, they are our only firm foundation for his work. And his work definitely can and absolutely must be done His way and no other, amen? He will make it so. Jesus promised, didn't He, at the end of that great commission, look, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age. Please, don't flee the center of God. And if you're going to hold fast to Jesus and his word, you have to know Jesus as your God and as your savior. He died on the cross to pay for your sins. And the Bible says that, of course, all people are sinners and come short of the glory of God. He was raised from the dead. He was raised from the dead to prove that He is God and that His death has been accepted by God the Father as the full payment for all sin. Jesus paid it all, all to Him we owe. So having done that, He turns to you and He invites you to accept Him by turning from your sin and turning instead to Him as your only God and your only Savior. Have you done that? Because if you haven't, the Bible simply says, on the basis of what he did. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. No doubt about it. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the way you challenge us. In times like these, Father, We know that we must stick with you. There is no one else. We must hold fast to your word because only your word is truth. We need you, we need it, we need to understand, we need to live it by the power of your Holy Spirit who indwells us and we need to continue to boldly proclaim that word to others in your loving way. If there's one that is not trusted in Jesus today, may that person be drawn to your son by you, Father. In Jesus' precious name we pray. All God's people said.