Thank you guys for being here. The reason why I'm mic'd up and everything is just because we're live for those of us who cannot be here today, particularly Brother Leon asked if we were going to be live streaming our special study through church membership. And so that's what we're going to be doing. I also want to just thank you guys for being here this morning. I'm sure more people are going to be coming in and everything. But let's go ahead and open us up with a word of prayer. Let's go ahead and open this up with a word of prayer. Father God, we come before you. We thank you, Lord, for this day. We thank you, Lord, for bringing us here together. We thank you, Lord, for allowing us to be here to study your word. And Lord, we just thank you so much for the gift of the church. And Lord, I pray, Lord, you would just soften our hearts and expand our knowledge and expand our understanding of what it means to be a church member and what it means to be a local, be part of a local church, Lord. Lord, we are so grateful for the people you've put in our lives, for the fellow Christians that pick us up when we're down, that pray for us. And Lord, we just ask, Lord, that you'll just continue, Lord, to soften our hearts toward one another, help us to grow in our love toward one another. Father, we love you so, so much. And Lord, we just thank you, Lord, for this time. In the mighty name of Jesus, I pray and amen. Amen. Awesome. Well, Let's go ahead and kind of get started. Brother Jesse, there's some papers there. There we go, that article right there. If you can just pass that around really quick. Thank you so much. What that article is, is actually part of, is an article, is a preface to the the book we're actually going through, which is Commit to One Another. And the title of the article is An Important Mark of a Healthy Church, which is a Biblical Understanding of Membership. Membership is biblical, and membership should be rightly understood for what it is, right? And so when we look at what does it mean to be a member—and you guys can read this on your own time, I don't want to take too much time by reading this, it's about five pages is very, it's kind of involved, but he hits on topics like biblical membership means commitment. In one sense, church membership begins when Christ saves us and makes us a member of the Big C Church. But the scriptures also tell us that we need to be part of a local church, right? We need to join a local church. So biblical membership means commitment. There is commitment involved in being a member of a local New Testament church. And there's also a biblical membership means taking responsibility. You know, there's a sense of responsibility between us as members to one another, toward the church, being a part of a church helps us to be held accountable for things we don't follow through in or accountable for how we live for Jesus. And so being a member of a local New Testament church means taking responsibility. And so what it also means, And if you want to just turn to page 14, I'm just kind of reading the headers. Biblical membership means salvation affirmation. And so one of the things that we do here at Pathway when we baptize somebody, that means that we as a church, and this is very important, we as a church are confirming that this person is a Christian, right? You have been saved by the blood of Christ and by your profession of faith, and us being witnesses to your baptism, you are a Christian. That's what we're saying when we, in fact, if someone is not baptized, we say, hey, bring a statement of faith, right? Why? Because we wanna make sure that someone is saved. So biblical membership means salvation affirmation, as well as biblical membership in a church is meaningful. Biblical membership in a church is meaningful. we should feel like there's meaning to us being part of a local New Testament church. There is a meaning to being part of Pathway, right? It's not just like canceling your membership at country clubs or anything like that and then moving it somewhere else. You know, there's just this growing kind of thing that's been going on really for decades is the sense of I can shop around for churches, which if you go through the Bible, especially Acts, You'll see that's not the case. Why? Because there was like one church in every city, right? That's where everyone met. You know, you have the church in Galatia. You had a church in Corinth. Now we have churches on every corner. And the, here's a predominant attitude toward church. If this church makes me mad, if this church upsets me, I'm just going to go to the one down the road. And so what happens is you have people who are not long timer, but they keep going back and they keep going to the next one, to the next one, to the next one. Now, some people do that just simply because of maybe it's a job. They're actually moving from place to place because of employment that happens. But through my experience of being in churches, I've seen people live in the same area for a decade, been part of five churches in that time for one reason or another. And so we need to understand that biblical membership is meaningful. Being part of a local church is meaningful. And you guys matter as part of like Pathway or any other church that any other Christian is part of. They matter. They're part, partner together. And so I would encourage you guys just to read that on your own time because it is an article. It's got some really great stuff. I highlighted several things in it because it was like, it was just, I don't know. It was awesome. Yeah, I highlight several things as I was reading through it and everything. So really, let's go ahead and get started with week one of our series, Commit to One Another. And we're going to be looking at the need of membership, the need of membership. And this is going to be somewhat of interaction between you and me. I'm not going to be up here. This is not the time. I'm not preaching to you guys. This is very much an interaction. And so I want to open up with a question here for us today. Do you think it's important for Christians to be part of local churches? Why or why not? Mm hmm. Yep. Yep. Yep. Those are, that's really good. And that's exactly right. You know, we're, we, we, uh, as local new Testament church, you know, uh, being part of a local church has a lot of value for the Christian. Um, you know, we look at churches in the new Testament going through persecution, particularly we're going to be going through a passage in Hebrews this morning, but the Hebrew church where we're facing something. they have the temptation to leave the faith because of intense persecution. And the writer of Hebrews is encouraging these believers to not abandon the faith, right? Because of the persecution that they're going through. And so really good answers. We get fellowship, we get uplifting, we get encouragement. We get accountability for our lives. We get a break from the world, being together. I don't know about you, but sometimes, especially when working a secular job, when I used to do that, sometimes I would look forward so much to Sunday, to being with my church. The reason why is because it was where I can be. I'm with like-minded believers. This is where I can meet with my people, and this is where I love the notion of small groups, where it's like people in small groups knowing one another, praying for one another, knowing each other intimately in a way that they know what's going on in their lives and stuff like that. So yes, it's very important to be part of a local church because it provides all of those things. And another thing it does is helps us to grow in our knowledge and love of Christ, right? I can think of several times when people in my life, other Christians, have been beneficial to me for building up my faith, for encouraging me when I'm going through seasons of just either doubt or just hardship, suffering. So here's the main idea that we're going to be getting this week. Christians need to be a member of a local church so that through a church's accountability and exhortation, we are protected from sin's deceiving, hardening effects. One of the things about being part of a local church is it does help us to fight against our sin. And it does help us to, as it says here, protect us from sin's deceiving, because sin is deceiving. But here's another thing that we don't think about. Sin. is heart hardening. It hardens our heart. Have you ever seen a Christian engrossed in sin? You talk to them and it's like, they don't even want to hear it. That's sin hardening their hearts. Just that sin deceiving them into thinking something that they're doing is beneficial to them, which obviously is not. Before we start digging into this passage of Scripture which shows us the need for church membership, let's clarify exactly what we mean by church membership. Depending on where you go, church membership could mean one thing or another. There are churches that don't practice church membership at all. So what is church membership exactly? Well, here's how Jonathan Lehman defines church membership in his book, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love. He says here, church membership is a covenant of union between a particular church and a Christian. It's a covenant. You realize we have a church covenant, and that's just not a fancy word that we put in our documents, in our bylaws. We have a church covenant, which means that any Christian that joins our church looks at our church covenant in the same way that God made a covenant with Israel, that I'm agreeing to these terms to join your church. A church covenant, we have that. It's in our documents, in our bylaws, right? I can get you a copy of it. We have a church covenant. So membership is a covenant of union between a particular Christian and a church. A covenant that consists of the church's affirmation of the Christian gospel, of the Christian's gospel confession. The church has promised to give oversight to the Christian. and the Christian's promise to gather with the church and submit to its oversight. And so let's unpack this just for a little bit. Church membership is a covenant. This is a solemn agreement between a Christian and a local church. In this covenant, the church affirms the Christian's profession of faith in Christ. When we say we vote in this member, that's just not us adding someone to the member role. That is you and me affirming that this person is a Christian. That's very important. That's us affirming that this person is a Christian. And so that is by extending the church membership to the individual, the church is saying, as far as we can tell, you're a Christian, and we're putting our seal of approval on your claim to follow Christ. The church promises to oversee the Christian's discipleship. This comes through teaching, preaching, elder oversight, and mutual building up, which all members of the church are engaged in. We see that in Ephesians 4, verses 11-16. The Christian also promises to regularly assemble with and submit to the church. Now, this doesn't mean that we're involved in every decision that you make. I've heard some weird churches where the pastor basically said, hey, why did you sign this mortgage on the house? You should have ran it by the church first. And that gets weird at that point. But what I'm talking about is that when someone joins a church, and if someone asks you about church membership, it's like, this is our covenant. This is what, this is what we expect. And this is informed by the word of God. This is what you're joining. And that's why meaningful membership is so important because people who are joining a church needs to know exactly what it is that they are joining. And so by committing to the church through membership, an individual Christian promises to regularly gather with this church. And we see that in Hebrews chapter 10, right? So do not. forsake the gathering of one another, right? And he gives a reason why. So we can encourage and love one another into the good works, right? So God has told us that we need to meet together and to submit to the authority and teaching. Make no mistake. There is somebody in charge of the church. There is an under shepherd, right? In this case, it's me. There are, in some churches, there's a plurality of elders, right, that help lead the church. They shoulder the burden of ministry together. But ultimately, our authority that we submit to in the church comes from the word of God. It comes and informs us. And so that's what church membership is, just a little four points that we can look at there. And it's important that we understand because that's a big question. It's like, what does it mean to join a church? You might get that question from someone visiting. What does it mean to join Pathway? And now you guys know. And if you guys want a copy of the lesson today, I can get you guys a copy. I have it saved on my computer. So, I mean, it's no problem at all. So before we jump into this passage for this study, Let's reflect just a little bit on the understanding of church membership. So, how does this definition differ from what you've thought or experienced of church membership? I'll go first. So for me, the first church that we were a part of, very much so, it was, hey, you've joined the church, be sure to meet every week. And pretty much there was very little to do in terms of like discipling. And it was very much, sometimes it felt like we all just gathered together on a Sunday to, just to hear the word or sing some songs and everything like that. And I look back on that and I said, that's not what church membership is about. That's not what being part of a church is. It's not just being added to the member role, but it's very much so us being locking arms together for Jesus. That's what it is. We're coming together to serve Christ. We're coming together so we can have one, we can have, We can have accountability. We can have encouragement and all of those things. So, you know, that is something that has stuck out to me as I was studying the series, just the first church I was part of. And of course, you know, I was a young Christian. I didn't know what really church membership was. Me and my wife were faithful to come, faithful to give and everything like that. But very much so, the church was very loosey-goosey on who could be a member. People could just walk up to the altar and say, I want to be a member. And right then and there, the church would vote him in, right? And there was no question on, okay, what's your story? How'd you get saved? No, it's just the, hey, I'm wanna join. And so that's not a healthy thing. That's how people deceive themselves into thinking they're a Christian. It's like, we need to examine them. We need to, Mission Dorado, we did an interview with the pastor and they would ask us a question. What's your salvation story? How'd you come to Christ? And everything like that. It's just so simple questions that we can ask. So does this understanding, and this is for you guys, does this understanding of church membership make it more appealing to you or less? More? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, because everything we looked at, these four points that we looked at when we looked at church membership, it was like, it sounds like you're very much joining something, right? You're being part of something versus just having your name added into like a membership roll call, right? And that is definitely more appealing. Okay, so with this foundation in place, let's turn to Hebrews chapter three. If you would grab your Bibles and we will turn to Hebrews chapter three, The book of Hebrews is a word of exhortation addressed to professing Christians who are in danger of giving up their faith under the relentless pressure of persecution. In Hebrews 3, the author specifically warns his readers not to be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. Sin is deceitful. Sin will harden your heart. It's just the plain truth. And so we're gonna be looking at verses seven through, I believe it's 14. Yep, seven through 14. And so who would like to read Hebrew seven through 14 for us? Chapter three, seven through 14. Beware, brethren, that there be in any of you an evil heart. Thank you. So one of the things that jumps out at us in this passage that Brother Terry just read for us is this. There's a lot of we's in there. The way it runs, it's not like, hey, I'm talking to the individual Christian. No, he's talking to say, hey, we be careful that you, and it implies that they're already in a community. And so he's telling them to take care of us less be any of you in an evil, unbelieving heart leading you away from the living God, but exhort one another every day. What does that mean? It shows us that, hey, those people gathered together. They knew who they were, right? They knew each other. In fact, Even in the book of Acts, we see that the church knew who was part of their church. Some people say, hey, church membership, I don't see in the Bible. You're not going to see the word church membership. But when you read how the church functioned in the first century, you'll see like, hey, we know who our widows are. How do you know who your widows are if they're not part of you? They kept a list of names, a kind of a roll call, if you want to put it that way. But see, here we see the need for church membership. in a very practical way is telling us this. Being a Christian is not a solo act. Being a Christian is not you running solo. Paul rarely ran solo. In fact, when he was alone in his missionary journeys, he would wait for his companions to come in before he actually started doing his regular stuff, right? Community. There's a need for community. And here's one of the biggest needs that we need as Christians. You and me will deceive ourselves into thinking sin is good if we don't have people around us telling us it's bad. Because we will rationalize. We will make up any lie that we can to justify what we do in our lives. Right? A guy watching pornography will say that I need it because my wife had had surgery at this point. She can't be intimate with me. So I need it at this point. So I don't go out there and commit adultery. Well, Jesus said, you've committed adultery already. There are so many ways that we can justify our sin. And if we don't have other believers speaking into our lives, we will fall into sin. We see it over and over again. One of the most important functions as a church is that we hold each other accountable, not over, we don't lord it over each other, but we're like, the way you would hold your kids accountable when you're raising them is exactly how we hold ourselves accountable in a loving manner for the good of somebody else. So after the introductory remark, therefore, as the Holy Spirit says in verse seven through 11, are an extended quotation of Psalms 95, which itself refers back to to earlier incidents recorded in Exodus 17 and then Numbers 14. But let's look back at the passage that we just read. And I love doing this in a Sunday school is this, what is pointing back to something that we just read? What does the Holy Spirit exhort us not to do in seven through eight? Mm-hmm. Do not harden your heart, right? Listen, don't harden your heart. So in Hebrews seven through eight, the Holy Spirit exhorts us not to harden our hearts. That means that we must not rebel against God and his word. Let's not harden our hearts, but rather humbly submit to it, putting our own interests aside, putting our own egos aside, our own rationales aside, and submit to it. Rather than setting ourselves up against him, we must bow before him and allow his word to expose our sin and lead us away from it. We're about to go into that in our sermon, right? The word of God is profitable for rebuke, but right along with rebuke is correction. So allow God's word. He says, don't harden your heart, listen to it. And so, What negative example does the author hold up for us in Exodus 17, one through seven? So if you guys want to turn to the book of Exodus, we're going to look at chapter 17, one through seven. Shouldn't be turning this much. I know it's the second book in the Bible. All right. I'll go ahead and read that for us, but I just want you guys to follow along. So Exodus 17, verses one through seven, it says this, the entire Israelite community left the wilderness of sin, moving from one place to another. According to the Lord's command, they camped at Rephitim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So the people complained to Moses, give us water to drink. Why are you complaining to me? Moses replied to them. Why are you testing the Lord? But the people thirsted therefore water and grumbled against Moses. They said, why did you bring us up from Egypt? to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst. Then Moses cried out to the Lord, what should I do with these people? In a little while, they will stone me. Verse five, the Lord answered Moses, go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you. Take the staff you struck the Nile with in your hand and go. I'm going to stand there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. When you hit the rock, water will come out of it, and the people will drink." Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. He named the place Massah. Meribah, because the Israelites complained and because they tested the Lord saying, is the Lord among us or not? And so what is that negative, what is the negative example? What negative example rather does the author hold up for us in Exodus 17? Yeah. Yep, they're rebelling. And so what does it look like they have in their hearts when we think about what they're complaining about? Sin, right? But the sin of what? So it says it right there. So they're distrustful, they're unbelieving, right? And so we look back at our passage in Hebrews, right? But lest there be less and it's like take care bros lest there be any lest there be in any of you evil, unbelieving hearts." So what was Israel saying? He says here in Israel, he says, is the Lord with us or not? Why did you come? Why did you take us out to the wilderness just to kill us with thirst? God did all these amazing things in Israel, did all of these things that they witnessed. And then as soon as things got tough, what happened? It's like, suddenly there's an unbelieving heart in them of like, are you, did you just take us out here to kill us? Is the Lord with us? There's an unbelieving heart there. In this incident, the people did not trust that God would be faithful to his word and would provide for them. Rather, as Psalm 95 says, they put God to the test and demanded that he give them what they wanted now. Do you guys see that in that passage there? And do you see how that warning is? So one of the things that happens when we, our hearts are hardened with sin is that when we cry out to God or when we pray or in our heart of hearts, we have unbelief there. We have doubting God. We have maybe even an entitlement of like, God, I need this now. Which really does lead us to sin, doesn't it? Lord, I need this now. you're not doing it on my timetable, I'm gonna do it myself. So there's a negative example there. And so what happened to the Israelites who hardened their hearts and disobeyed God? In verses 10 through 11 of Hebrews, it actually gives us what he actually did. And so the thing I actually, I mean, I hope I did, we'll see. So in Hebrews 11, sorry, Hebrews 3, there we go. Hebrews 3 10-11, it says, 40 days, sorry, 40 days. 40 years, therefore I was provoked to anger with the generation and they said, they said, they always go astray in their hearts and they have not known my ways. So I swore in my anger, they will not enter my rest. So one of the things that we see in Hebrews chapter three, verse 10 through 11, it tells us that the Israelites who disobeyed God were punished by God and were forced to die in the wilderness instead of entering into the promised land. That's what we see there. What was the price that they paid for their unbelieving hearts, for their disobedience, for their hardness of hearts? It was this, they would not be allowed to enter in the promised land. They would not be able to enter into the land that God had promised them to do. What does the author tell us to make sure doesn't happen to us in verses 12 through 13? What does the author tell us to basically, hey, make sure this doesn't happen? Mm hmm. Yes, that's exactly he says, take care, brother, that you don't have this heart in you as well, that you don't have this evil, unbelieving heart that's going to lead you into falling away from the living God. But he also tells him this, how do we do that? Exhorting one another every day. How many times has a Christian in your life come right up beside you to exhort you, to encourage you in your faith, right? And so he says, but exhort one another every day, as long as it's called today, that none may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. that you and me won't be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Are you guys seeing the need to be part of a New Testament church now, to be part of a church, to be a member of a church? And so what does this passage tell us to do in order to make sure that we don't fall into it? We just covered that, right? Exhorting one another. And that includes one, being known, making yourself known to one another and knowing one another. Right? Sometimes we get stuck in our own little bubbles, right? Of my life. And occasionally I rub bubbles against somebody in church. That's what it is. Versus the biblical model, which is that we know one another in an intimate way. Intimately, we know one another's struggles. We know one another's hurts. We know what's going on in their lives. We know the struggles that they have in their purity, their walk with God. It's those sort of things that build up a church. Why? Because we know one another. When we look at the description in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 to 47, We see that that's the way the church functioned. They follow the apostle's teaching. They worship together. They prayed together. They ate, they broke bread together. They broke bread in one another's houses. They worship together in the temple. And what happened there? People were joining them. There was something different about this community of Christ followers. So in verse 13, the author warns us not to be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. What does this teach us about sin? Yep. Yep. Yep. And so that's exactly right. So it's like, one, we see it's deceitful. Deceitfulness creeps in. Deceitfulness means that it's not packaged the way that what it actually does, right? That's like when you get an Amazon package and it's empty, right? You get it, there's nothing in it. That's happened to me a couple of times. Like the box is there, the product isn't in it, right? That's what sin is. Sin is an empty Amazon's package. Sin will deceitfully show itself as something of value, as something worth holding onto. And then, eventually you'll find out that it's empty lies. That it's actually destroying my life. That it's actually hurting the people around me. And so he tells us not to be hardened by sin's deceitfulness, tells us that sin is active in a dangerous force. Sin is not passive, sin is active. Sin is active with doing something in your life, in your soul, in your heart, in your mind. There are so many people that I know that struggle with the sin of pornography. And one of the things when they're struggling against it, it's like, man, I see the images in my brain. I see it in my mind. I'm struggling against it. And yet the sin is actively trying to entice me in it, bringing thoughts to my head, bringing images that I once watched in my head. And so it's dangerous, it's active, and it teaches us that sin lies to seek, to entice us, promising things that we will never deliver. It teaches us that sin can harden us. It can lure us into a life of greater and greater sinfulness. One of the things that you're going to see is that sin will always lead us to more sinfulness. You look at the sin of David, started off with adultery and then ended with murder, right? It progressed. It progressed from there. It's like you read through that whole account and you'll see basically the progression of sin. It got worse and worse and worse. And then it went on for a few months after the whole thing was done before Nathan came in to rebuke him. And so, We see that sin lords us in, it'll lead us to greater sinfulness, and it will make us no longer sensitive to God's word, no longer sensitive to God's word, and no longer convicted by the Spirit when we sin. There are some people who fall into sin so bad that they'll do it in the blink of an eye without even batting an eye, without even a second thought. In some, verse 13 teaches that that sin is deadly and a dangerous enemy that is within us. We have that temptation, those sinful desires in our hearts. So do you think that sin is something active, dangerous, and threatening, or merely as something that causes an occasional minor slip up here and there? People have this. It's like, what is sin? Well, depending on the sin, I mean, this can be just a minor slip up. Oh, I lie to my wife occasionally. And people will look at that, oh, that's a minor slip up. No, it's not. That's a sin. God looks at that. The Bible calls liars an abomination. The lying is an abomination. God looks at sin very seriously. And yet you and me can sometimes have categories in our head on the level of sin. It's only as bad as I categorize it, right? And I'm gonna just, you know, we look at this, you know, both men and women look at pornography. Most Christians, young Christians look at pornography and they look at it like it's a minor sin. I'm not actually going out and doing anything, right? It's not hurting anybody. And so, and I keep using that because that's one of the most dangerous sins that's infecting that is really hurting just young Christians right now. And it's so prevalent. I heard a preacher say one time on a podcast, he said, every Christian has a brothel in their pocket now. And so again, it's dangerous. Regarding this second question, the basic idea is the passage is teaching about sin should stir us to actively oppose sin. Have you ever thought about that? Your sin that you're attracted to, do you actively oppose it? And I'm talking about, do you actually go to war with it? Is it intentional that you go to war with your sin and watch against it and make serious efforts to help others overcome sin? That brings us back to the need of church membership. That brings us back to the need of someone, hey, you can join our church. You should join a local New Testament church. If you know a Christian that's not part of a church, you should encourage them to join a church. Maybe it's not this one. Maybe it's another one that they're going to. You say, hey, you should take the step. commit and be part of that community. And so one of the things we see here is like, again, it goes back to the fact that we're supposed to help others to do and how are we supposed to help others fight their sin if we don't know them and if they're not part of us. Now, sometimes we can help people in their sin if they're not part of our church. They maybe come in for a while. They open us about it and we can encourage them, counsel them, pray for them about what's going on. But encouraging them to be part of that community, it's so important. And so rather than being passive and resting in a false sense of security from sin, we must help others overcome sin and help others to overcome sin because sin is constantly trying to deceive us. So why do we seek help from others, fellow church members, fellow believers to pour into our lives, to pray for us, to keep us accountable for our sin? Because sin is actively always trying to deceive us in different packages, in different things like that, in different situations. You might be doing really good about fighting your sin and this certain situation comes up where it goes like, you know what? You need a comfort food. You guys know what comfort food is? Comfort food is something that you eat when you don't feel the greatest, right? Maybe it's emotionally, maybe you had a hard day. Everyone has a comfort food, right? I do, right? Sin is a comfort food. When you fall, I want you guys to notice this. Look back on your pattern of when you fell into a sin you were actively fighting against. And when you broke that kind of that streak of fighting against it, usually it happened because something happened in your life. Maybe it was a situation. Maybe it was a disappointment. And then sin comes in. It's like, I can help you with this anxiety. I can help you with what you're going with. I can comfort you, right? I can help you. And that's what it does. So it's constantly trying to deceive us. As John Owens famously put it, you must always be killing sin or it will be killing you. And that's true. There are Christians who I believe they're saved and born again, who are actively struggling against sin. It might be falling into their temptations and it's actively killing them. Maybe it's not gonna kill their salvation, but it's killing their souls. Have you ever tried to pray to God after committing a sin? It's hard. You feel that disconnect. And it's only when you come before the Lord in confession that it does help, and then you feel that connection again. It should be emphasized that one of the author's main points is that we are not to engage in this effort alone. We are to exhort one another so that we wouldn't be hardened by sin's deceitfulness, because sin lies to us when we need others to help unmask those lies. How many times have you ever had a conversation with a Christian that says, I think I need to leave my wife because she's just not the person that God has for me? I've heard Christians say that. I've heard Christians say that. I need to leave my wife because, or I need to leave my husband because that's not the man that God has wanted me to marry. And so I need to divorce him to find the guy that God wants me to marry. That's a lie. And then if they're not part of a community that's gonna hold them accountable, it's like, no, that's a lie. That's not truth. They're gonna do it. Again, they're gonna find every avenue that they can to do that. And so, sorry, how should this passage teaching How should this passage's teaching about the nature of sin shape our lives as Christians, right? Someone who is not a member of a church is especially susceptible to being hardened by sin's deceitfulness because they are not accountable to anybody. When there's no accountability, sin wins. When there's no one pouring into your life, sin wins. When there's no one knowing what you're going through that can pray for you, that you can go to in your times of temptation, sin wins. And so fellow church members are under the authority of the same church. They committed to each other to watch over each other's lives. And if a church member begins to cherish their sin more than Jesus, the whole church is called to pursue that individual, even to the point of exclusion from membership if he or she does not repent. And so one of the things that we see here is that that's what Paul says to do in 1 Corinthians. He said, hey, this person is sleeping with his father's wife. You're tolerating this. And you think you're being tolerating and that makes you somehow more spiritual, but it doesn't. He tells him to exclude them from the church for a while. In fact, in 2 Corinthians, he goes back to that person and says he should be brought back into it. Why? Because he's repented. And then Jesus says in Matthew 18, he talks about how we are to confront others with sin. He talks about that. Here's the thing, it's not fun. It's not popular. But we do it because we care about their soul. We care about their walk. We care about them. Would you let your kids shoot up heroin? No, you would have something to say about that. Sin is worse than that. Sin will erode people's lives. And sin is so destructive. Question 11, how do we know that we share in Christ? What effect should that have on how we live as a Christian? We know that we share in Christ if we persevere to the end, verse 14. Thus, perseverance in the faith and faithful living is one of the great markers of being a true believer. And that doesn't mean perfection. That doesn't mean that we're not going to ever fall into a sin that entices us. But what it does mean is the fact that you and me are not going to wallow in it, stay in it, choose to stay in it. You and me are going to fight against it. You and me are going to enlist others to hold us accountable into it. to lovingly pray for us. And that's what that means when we are a mark of a true believer. In fact, Paul says, I do the things that I don't want to do and the things I do want to do, I don't do. But what does Paul do? He continues on in the faith. He doesn't let that stop him. He repents. He confesses. He fights against it. He moves on. He continues to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not a call for perfection, but this is a call to faithfulness and enduring toward the end. And so And so, faithful livings, this would encourage us to constantly renew our efforts to fight sin, strengthen faith, renew our love for the Lord, and to seek help and be helped by other believers. Seek to help other believers, seek to be helped by other believers. And that happens in the context of a local New Testament church. Those Christians in the first century, who did they have to go to if they did not go to their fellow believers in their church? They had nobody. Oftentimes, especially Hebrews who profess Jesus, a lot of times, some of them were, hey, you're not allowed to worship in this temple anymore. Their families would be like, hey, you're not part of this family anymore. A lot of the times, that church became their family. Isn't that the truth for many Christians and churches today? No family or no relations to their family, and the church is their only family. We still have that kind of context today. And so we should seek to help one another and to be helped by one another. It should remind us that we are running a marathon, not a sprint, and that we need to constantly depend on God's grace in order to maintain faithfulness to Christ throughout our lives. In the light of this passage, how would you respond to someone who said, I don't need a church. I can grow as a Christian just fine by coming to church whenever I want to. and wherever I want to. We draw on question 10 for this, and we need to further consider the definition of membership when we answer this question, because we meet a lot of people like that. I don't need to be part of a church. I can worship God wherever. I'll just come when I want to. I'll come when I have the time to. And so if church membership involves the church affirming a Christian's profession, every Christian should desire that affirmation. Submitting ourselves to the church's examination should only help us to more clearly see the work that God has been doing in our lives. The church promises to oversee one's discipleship means that the church is committing to do the individual spiritual good. Not just me, myself, and I are trying to further my spiritual growth, but the whole church is striving to build the person up together in Christ, right? That's what it is. So when we say, I don't need a church, like, yes, you do. Why? Because you're more susceptible to the hardness of sin. You need other people around you. You need other people to look at your life and say, brother, that is not a good thing that you're in. How you treat your wife is not good. How you treat your kids is not good. How you treat your finances is not good. Or to older women, to younger women in the church, what you're in right now is not a good thing for Jesus. You're not honoring Christ. Jesus doesn't want you to be in that sin. And so the church promises to gather together with the church and submit to the oversight. It's also spiritually beneficial. Gathering weekly with others can give them a chance to stir us up. to love and good works. We see that in Hebrews 10 24-25. Hearing scripture, read and preach, singing and praying together, and the other activities of corporate worship strengthen our faith and they steer our souls. And submitting to the church's oversight helps us to grow in humility, One of the very things a Lone Ranger Christian lacks the most. When we look at the need for church membership, there is so much benefit to church membership, but there's also just so much need for us as people to be part of a church. That's the need for church membership, guys. And that's why it's the first lesson on here, because that's the first, that's the most common thing that we ever hear from people who refuse to join a church is like, I don't need to join this church. I don't need to be part of this community, but yes, you do. You do just come into church. Every time you feel like it or wherever you want. that's not gonna breed something. Even if you go to a church, like I've known people that will go to three churches a Sunday, they'll go to their different services and everything. Can I say that's like, they're in church, but they're not part of a church and they're missing on the actual helpfulness of being part of a church, meeting together. And here's the thing, because those people don't know you intimately. Those people don't see what's going on in your life. Those people don't feel like they have, they can't speak into your life. Those people, they just don't know you. And something we see over and over and again in the description of the early church is that they knew one another, they met together, and they were part of the church together. The Bible describes every member of a church as, right? The Bible describes every member of a church as an essential part. Everyone plays their part. You guys are essential to the body of the church. And so that is our first lesson going into commit to one another, really just kind of expounding on what church membership is and also the need for church membership by explaining the benefits of church membership. And so next week, we're gonna be looking at the mandate for church membership. The mandate for church membership. Is church membership biblical? Do I have to? And that's really kind of the million dollar question that a lot of people have. We'll be looking at that next week. We're gonna go ahead and go to the Lord in prayer. And that way we can set up for services here. Brother Eddie, can you, And also, as we gear up for our services, we're going to be handing out another piece of paper. It's a Bible in a year for 2025. Me and Beth are going through it. And I want to invite you guys to join with us in reading the Bible cover to cover in a year with us. The word of God is something that we all need. And if we're going to grow in our love for Jesus, then we need to be in his word. And so, and as you guys read through the Old Testament, I guys want you to do this. I want you guys to try to find Jesus in the Old Testament when you're reading the Old Testament passages. It's amazing when you see Jesus in every Old Testament book, it really is. All right, so Brother Eddie, can you lead us, can you close us out in prayer, sir? Forgive us for where we are