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Hebrews chapter 10 and verse
19. Word of God says, having therefore,
brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,
by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through
the veil, that is to say, his flesh. And having an high priest
over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart,
in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an
evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us
hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, for He
is faithful that promised. and let us consider one another
to provoke and to love and to good works, not forsaking the
assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but
exhorting one another, and so much the more, as ye see the
day approaching. This is an incredibly rich passage,
and there's no way we'll be able to cover all the details that
are in it, but I hope, by God's grace, to be able to draw out
a few truths that will encourage us as we attempt to serve the
Lord. Let us go before the Lord in
prayer. Father, I come before you. You know that I do not have
the strength that I need to preach. I don't have the wisdom that
I need to put a message together. I don't have the ability to deliver
a message. And above all, I have no power
to convict hearts. If someone is here that does
not know you, I cannot, with my words and my ability, Father,
penetrate their heart. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.
I cannot convict a believer that they need to change in some particular
area. I can't even encourage them.
Only you can do that. And yet your Word has the power,
when it is preached, to do all of those things. And I pray that
your power would be present today. I pray that I would say that
which you would have me to say, and may you be glorified in all
that follows. In Christ's precious name I pray. Amen. Please be
seated. No matter how many times I have
the opportunity to preach or to teach, and no matter how much
time I've spent in preparation, I always feel nervous. It really
is, when you stop and think about it, a fearsome thing to stand
behind a pulpit and speak in the name of God to His people. It's a fearsome thing to stand
in front of people at all, but to stand in front of people and
say, this is what God has to say to you, now that's rather
fearsome indeed. It is especially fearsome when
I know, as I do this morning, that I am very far from having
mastered the truths that I am about to speak on. Not that there's
any truth in scripture that you ever get to the point where I've
mastered it and, man, I am telling you, I've got this thing down.
But when it's something that you feel like, I have a, I struggle
in this area, And there are many that are here today that exemplify
what I'm about to preach on far better than I do myself. In fact,
the church as a whole, and I want to make this point before I get
into it, and the reason why I'm making it will be clear as we
get into the message, but this is not a message of, this is
something that West Side Baptist Church does terrible at, and
here's how you can do better. That's not the point at all.
In fact, this church is an example in some ways even to other churches
of the principles that we'll be covering, and for that I'm
thankful. Yet I'm nonetheless convinced that the truths in
this passage that have convicted me are truths that all of us
need all of the time, no matter what stage of our Christian walk
that we're at. They're not the sort of truths
that one can master and then move on from, but the sort of
truths that take a lifetime to be mastered by. No matter how
well we as a church do at these things, we will always need to
hear them again, because we will always have room for growing
in them. In fact, these seven verses are
a perfect summary of what it means to live as a Christian
in a fallen world. They form in the Greek text only
one sentence. Verse 19-25 in the Greek text of the book of
Hebrews is a single sentence. The number of sentences in an
English translation will vary. The King James makes it two sentences,
others usually more. But the writer structured these
verses in Greek as one long sentence. All of these things fit together.
It's one run-on, in English, it'd be a run-on sentence, but
in Greek, it is perfectly constructed. It's bad grammar in English to
have very long sentences, which is why translations usually split
them up. In Greek, it's perfectly acceptable,
and indeed, it's considered a mark of high style. In many ways,
these verses, this one long sentence is the Christian life in a nutshell,
from how we enter into it to the very end, the goal, the whole
thing, it's all here in this sentence. Beginning with a reminder
of the work of Christ on behalf of believers, they move on to
three powerful exhortations that sum up what believers are to
do in response. And the first verse says, having
therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by
the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath
consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh. Having therefore brethren, this
therefore refers back to all that has come before in the book
of Hebrews. This is a key transition in the book, both summing up
the teaching that has already been given and offering a condensed
version of the exhortations that are about to follow. It's not
as though there's been no exhortation, no calls to action in the book
of Hebrews up to this point, but the majority, particularly
from the end of chapter 4 here through this section of chapter
10, is a very doctrinally rich teaching section. And so the
therefore refers back to this teaching that is already been
given and it's summing up having therefore these things, and it's
about to sum up the things that have been covered. Boldness to
enter in to the holiest by the blood of Jesus. The atoning work
of Christ has given us, every believer, boldness, access into
the presence of God. We do not need to fear condemnation,
because Christ has borne our condemnation for us. His blood
has cleansed our sin once and for all, and we no longer need
to fear, as did believers in the time of the Old Testament,
to enter into the presence of God Himself. It goes on to say,
by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through
the veil, that is to say, his flesh. And the grammar here is
a little bit tricky, and there are several opinions about exactly
how everything, every part of this sentence sits together.
And since this is a sermon and not a lecture, I'm going to spare
you all the details of Greek prepositions and whatnot that
would go together to argue for each of the different opinions,
and I'll just give you the conclusion If those details are what floats
your boat, you can come talk to me later. The beginning of
the passage states that we have access to the part we already
covered. We have access into the holiest by means of the blood
of Jesus. So verse 19, boldness to enter
into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. So the blood of Jesus
is the means by which we enter into the holiest. If we're sprinkled
with the blood of Christ, if our sins have been covered by
his blood, that is how we have access to the Father. And the
second part of this glorious summary of Christ's work on our
behalf is parallel to that first section. It is saying that we
have a new and living way through the veil by means of His flesh. And in other words, the phrase,
that is to say His flesh, is not giving us a definition of
veil. That's what it looks like on the surface, but if you think
about what that would mean, if that's what it was saying, Christ's
incarnation would then be an obstacle keeping us out from
the Holy of Holies, and that is very far from the case. In
fact, if that's what it was saying, it wouldn't be Scripture, because
it would contradict other Scriptures. It is rather an explanation of
the means by which this new and living way through the veil has
been forged. And these two first sections
of the sentence together sum up the work of Christ on earth.
To paraphrase a songwriter, the blood of Jesus poured out on
the cross was the greatest gift that God could have given us,
that he died for us. And yet before he gave his life,
he lived for us. As another song said, Jesus was
indeed born to die. But we must not forget that he
was also born to live. Jesus not only paid the penalty
for the things we have done that we should not have done, but
he also fulfilled on our behalf all of the good and righteous
demands of the law that we have failed to fulfill. And yet he
goes on to say in having a high priest over the house of God.
Yet the work of Christ on behalf of believers wasn't finished
when he ascended into heaven. The perfect incarnate life of
Christ and his atoning death are accomplished facts never
to be repeated. Yet there is another side of
Christ's work, a side that is going on even now. Our high priest
didn't just accomplish everything that was needed to give us access
to the Father and then leave it up to us after that. He is
also ever interceding on our behalf before the throne, something
that's pointed out previously in the book of Hebrews and is
being summed up here. As Romans 8.34 reminds us, Christ is even
now at the right hand of God, making intercession for every
believer. His atoning work is done, but
His high priestly intercessory work on behalf of believers is
going on right now. These are glorious realities.
They ought truly to bring joy to the heart of every one of
God's children. Yet in this long sentence, these
glorious realities are not the focus, not the main point. Instead,
they're summing up all the teaching that has come in the last several
chapters of the book of Hebrews in order to lay a foundation
for the three commands that follow. Because Christ died and lived
for us, because he is even now making intercession on our behalf,
we are to respond by living the life that these exhortations
summarize. And the first of these exhortations
is this, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance
of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and
our bodies washed with pure water." The first exhortation is to draw
near, to enter into the holiest. Though the writer includes himself
in this exhortation, and that's something that's characteristic
of the book of Hebrews, almost always the writer says, let us
do this. Having therefore this, and he
identifies himself, let's do this, let's do this, but that
shouldn't disguise the reality that each of these is still a
command. Grammatically, it would be an imperative. That's the
form of a verb that's used for a direct command, and that's
what is going on here. These are orders. They're not
suggestions. They are not optional. We are
commanded to draw near to the Father. It is the only proper
response to the access that Christ has won on our behalf. While
the primary way in which we draw near to God is in prayer, this
exhortation is not limited to prayer alone. As one commentator
put it, this continual approach to God includes, but is not specifically
limited to prayer. It includes every aspect of the
listeners drawing near to God, both individual and corporate.
There's so much power and beauty in every clause, every word of
this passage, that there could be an entire series of messages
could be preached from it. It's impossible for us to cover
every detail, so we're going to have to just leave some of
those details uncovered if we're ever going to be done this morning.
He goes on to say, "...having our hearts sprinkled from an
evil conscience." Believers, through the blood of Christ…
So he gives the first exhortation, and then he flashes back to,
these things are true about the people to whom he's writing.
Let us draw near, because these… So here's the foundation of what
Christ has done, and let's draw near to the Father. because we're
partakers of that which Christ has done. So he's drawing a connection
back to the foundation, back to the foundation he's already
laid, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. Believers,
through the blood of Christ, have been made partakers of the
new covenant. We have not been simply given a new set of rules.
We have been given, through the sacrifice of Christ, the new
hearts that are spoken about in the book of Ezekiel. We've
had the law written on our hearts as is spoken about in the book
of Jeremiah. The phrase, having our hearts
sprinkled, is a direct reference back when the first covenant,
the covenant, the old covenant of the law that Moses set up
with the children of Israel, he sprinkled the children of
Israel with blood and that established that covenant and that established
that relationship in which they were brought into this relationship
with the law. And yet this new covenant, the
new covenant relationship with God where we're made new creatures
and we're born again into the people of God, We're sprinkled
not with the blood of bulls and of goats, but with the blood
of Christ himself in the holiest. Our hearts are changed and we
are made partakers of Christ, indeed brought into union with
Christ. The point that is being made
here is that those to whom this exhortation to draw near is being
given are those who have been born again, sanctified by the
blood of Jesus, believing in Jesus Christ had made them right
with God and their sins no longer separated them from the Father. And so the first exhortation,
let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith,
having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies
washed with pure water. Yet not only had they had their
hearts cleansed by the blood of Christ, they have publicly
identified, these to whom he is writing, had publicly identified
with Christ by the washing of their bodies in baptism. Baptism
has nothing to do with conversion. Getting baptized in this or any
other church will not cleanse the smallest stain from your
heart. Yet that does not make baptism
optional or not important. Salvation is by grace alone through
faith alone. Baptism is the primary means
by which belief in Christ is professed to the world at large,
the means by which believers publicly identify with those
that are Christ. We draw near and for assurance
because we have been made partakers of the new covenant that gives
us this access, and we have, through baptism, publicly professed
this faith. Our individual walk with God
is an absolutely foundational aspect of our response to Christ's
work on our behalf. So we've got this summary, we've
got three exhortations, and the first exhortation is related
to our individual walk with God, and that is absolutely foundational.
If the access you have been given to God to come before him in
prayer and in worship, both individually and corporately, does not thrill
your soul, you need to seriously consider whether or not you are
a believer at all. Yet as wonderful as is the access
that we have been given, our personal walk with God is not
the extent of what it means to live as a Christian in this fallen
world. This exhortation is not the end
of the sentence. If we are to properly respond
to the work of Christ on our behalf, it is not enough simply
to have a really great walk with God in secret. We must make a
public profession of that faith, not only at the beginning of
our Christian walk, not only by being baptized or identifying
with Christ in that way, but also on a daily basis. And so
this is a transition that leads us into the second exhortation.
Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering,
for He is faithful that promised." This exhortation was necessary
for those to whom this epistle was written because they lived
in a world, even as we do, in which they constantly face the
temptation to waver in their public profession of belief in
the promises of God, their decision to publicly identify with Jesus
and His people. It's not enough for us to have
our own little walk with God. Christ died to pay the price
for our sins, but He also set us an example, as 1 Peter 2.21
teaches, so that we may follow in His steps. Just as Jesus trusted
the faithfulness of His Father even unto death, so we are to
trust the promises of God, confident that He will be faithful unto
the end, knowing that nothing can separate us from the love
of God. God's faithfulness to us demands
that we remain faithful to our profession of him, no matter
what it may cost us. While each of these three exhortations
is essential to the believer's response to the work of Christ,
it is the third exhortation that is the most often forgotten in
American Christianity today. I know that it is certainly the
one that has been the most often forgotten in my own life. We
all know that prayer, access to the Father, is essential to
the Christian life. We understand that holding fast
to our public profession is not optional. Our prayer life may
not be what we want it to be. We may not be as bold in our
witness as we wish that we were, yet we have this understanding
and we know that these aren't optional. We may want to grow
in these areas, but we know that they're areas in which growth
is required. Yet many believers in the present
day seem to think that they can cut the third section of this
golden summary of the Christian life off without losing much
at all. They could not be more wrong. The passage goes on to say, and
let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good
works. It's often been said that there
are two dimensions to the Christian life, vertical, our personal
walk with God, and horizontal, the way that we interact with
others. To a certain extent that is true, and it has a true idea,
but the Christian life cannot be summed up in two dimensions
alone. The Christian life is not a two-fold chord consisting
only of communion with the Father and profession before the world.
There is a third strand, a vital strand, a strand that sometimes
will be the only thing that will keep the other two from fraying
away altogether, and that strand is Christian community. A cord
with two strands may seem as sturdy as one with three, until
those cords are tested with any weight at all, and then the difference
is shown. As fathers of Jesus, we are certainly
called to draw near to God and to hold fast before the world,
but we are not called to do so alone. Indeed, we are not capable
of doing so alone. We are called to constantly be
considering the needs of our fellow believers so that we may
provoke them, we may stir them up to love and to good works.
We normally think of provocation as a bad thing, and it usually
is. We are provoked by many things. Drivers can be provoked to anger
when they're cut off in traffic, and you can provoke other drivers
to anger when you cut them off in traffic. Parents can be provoked
to impatience when their two-year-old experiments with how many times
they can repeat the same request in five minutes flat while you're
doing something else. And most of the emotions and
actions we're provoked to in our everyday lives are bad ones.
And that is exactly the point. We live in a world in which we
are constantly being provoked to anger, frustration, anxiety,
worry, despair, nervousness, you name it. The gamut of emotions
we're not supposed to have, we're constantly being provoked to
have those emotions. the extent of actions we're not
supposed to do, you are constantly being provoked and constantly
provoking others to do those actions that you're not supposed
to do and they're not supposed to do. We don't have to seek
out negative provocations and we don't have to give attention
to ourselves to provoke others in a negative way. Giving and
receiving negative provocations comes naturally. But if we, on
the contrary, are to provoke one another to greater love and
to good works, stir one another up to produce the fruits of salvation
in our everyday lives, we are going to have to do so intentionally. It will not happen by accident. It certainly won't happen if
we, as the writer goes on to say, begin to forsake the assembly
of the saints altogether. not forsaking the assembling
of ourselves together as the manner of some is. It's sometimes
tempting to look back on the early church as though it were
a golden age in which everything which we now struggle with ran
smoothly. We can be tempted to bemoan our fate in living in
such a uniquely perverse generation, a generation whose challenges
are so new that many claim that Scripture is no longer sufficient
to meet them. Such is far from the case. They
faced back then the same root temptations and struggles that
we face today. They were professing believers
known to those to whom this epistle was first written who had given
up altogether on the institutional church and were doing their own
spiritual thing. That isn't a new idea. It goes
back to the beginning and it's always been a bad one. We don't
know the details of exactly why they had done this, but the following
reasons are among the most likely, certainly the most common reasons
why so many throughout church history and in the present day
have followed their example. The believers to whom the book
of Hebrews were written were evidently going through a difficult
time. They had been through a difficult time in the past, and it seems
like they had difficult times even when the epistle came to
them. Perhaps some of them thought that the cost of publicly assembling
with the social outcasts that the early Christians were was
simply too high. We don't know exactly what price
their commitment to Christ was requiring of them. It doesn't
seem like they were in danger of being put to death, but professing
Christ certainly hadn't made their lives easier. According
to other references in the book of Hebrews, we know that for
at least some of them, their identification with other believers
had led to financial suffering and social reproach. Some perhaps
were simply unwilling to continue to pay the price, and so they
stopped coming. Perhaps due to some false idea
or other, perhaps one of the false ideas addressed in this
very letter, they decided they no longer needed the community
of faith. Their own personal spiritual walk was sufficient,
and they were so far beyond the others in the Christian community
that they had no need of them at all. Perhaps it wasn't a doctrinal
issue at all. They were just tired of putting
up with the other members of the church and wanted to worship
God in the privacy of their own home, withdrawing from divinely
ordained community into an environment where they could remain in control,
where no one would provoke them to anything they didn't want
to be provoked to. Perhaps they had simply allowed other priorities
to take precedence over their commitment to the public assembly.
As one commentator points out, even in the early second century,
there's a document from the early second century talking about
the church at Rome, and when the church was being persecuted,
it was simple preoccupation with the affairs of this life that
was the most common reason for the forsaking of the assembly.
And that remains the most common reason to the present day. Before
we go on, I want to be quite clear on one point. You aren't
forsaking the assembly every time that you miss church. This
isn't talking about staying home because you or your children
are sick. It isn't addressing those who have to miss services
due to mandatory work shifts that you have no control over.
The some in this passage, whose custom was to forsake the assembly,
were not unavoidably detained, wishing they could be present.
They deliberately chose, for whatever reason, whether it was
some difficulty or struggle, whether it was indifference,
whether it was simply apathy and other priorities taking over,
they deliberately chose to do something other than assemble.
Now, it'd be easy to go off on a tangent about how important
it is to come to church, but that would be counterproductive,
and for a couple of reasons. First of all, you all are here
in church, so I don't need to give you a lecture about why
you need to come to church, because you're already here. But there's
a bigger—but maybe sometimes you'll be tempted to not come
to church, and that might help you. There's a bigger problem,
and that is that this little portion of a verse doesn't stand
by itself. This condemnation of those who
forsake the assembly doesn't stand by itself. It isn't even
one of the main verbs in this sentence. The reason why forsaking
the assembly was so bad wasn't primarily because they needed
the assembly so badly, because they needed to show up so badly,
though they did, that's true, but that's not the point that's
being made here. but rather because assembling
was absolutely necessary if they were to consider one another
to provoke unto love and good works. And the fact that this
is the point is made clear by what he goes on to say. So he
says, and let us consider one another to provoke unto love
and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together
but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the
day approaching. We can get the idea that the
flip side of forsaking the assembly is being faithful to show up
for church services, being there every time the door is open.
Now showing up is good. I'm glad you're all here. Preaching
to an empty room is neither easy nor fun. I would have quit by
now. And before I go on, I want to
emphasize that I would not for one second wish to devalue the
importance for the Christian life of hearing the Word of God
preached. I would not for one second want to devalue the significance
of corporate worship. In fact, that corporate worship
and that listening to the Word of God as it is proclaimed is
an essential part of the first exhortation, Let Us Draw Near,
because that isn't just talking about your personal worship of
God, but also about the corporate worship of God. And so I'm not
saying that, you know, it's no big deal if you show up to church
or don't show up to church. That's not the point at all.
Yet at the same time, as we celebrate the indispensable value of preaching,
the indispensable value of corporate worship, we also must be clear
that the purpose of assembling is something that reaches far
beyond anything that is on this order of service. Obedience to
this third command is not exhausted by receiving the exhortation
of others, any more than hearing someone else draw near to God
exhaust the first command, or watching someone else hold fast
their profession of hope exhaust the second command. Each of these
commands is something that each of us must do. None of them can
be done for us. As believers, we have just as
much an obligation to watch out for the spiritual health of each
other as we do to draw near to God for ourselves. One-anothering, in the context
of the local assembly, is just as essential to your response
to the work of Christ on your behalf as is your public profession
of Him at your place of work, as is your personal walk into
privacy of your own home. Perhaps this point could be summed
up in this way, community is not optional. Community is not
optional. The work of Christ on the behalf
of believers demands a threefold response. We cannot drop one
strand from this threefold summary of the Christian life and expect
to stay faithful in the long haul, expect to hear a well done
at the end of our lives. Different believers, of course,
will struggle with different areas. Some will struggle more
with their personal spiritual walk than will others or will
struggle in a different way. Some will face more temptations
to compromise their profession, their public profession than
most do. Yet I am convinced that it is
this third command that is the most neglected by American Christians
that is most often treated as optional. Before I go on, I want
to repeat once again that this message is in no way intended
as a rebuke from someone who has this community thing all
figured out, because the Lord knows that I surely don't and
most of you do too. It is something that I struggle
with as much or more as anyone here, yet that doesn't make it
any less essential to the Christian life. Community is not optional. Yet as important as community
is, community for the sake of community won't get you anywhere.
If a rope isn't tied onto something sturdy, it doesn't matter how
many strands it may have, it won't support a blessed thing.
That is why this golden summary of the Christian life doesn't
start with what we do, but rather with what Christ has done. Your
sins have never been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ.
His righteous life does not count for you, and you do not have
a highest priest interceding for you. If you have never been
born again, it doesn't matter how flowery your prayers may
be, they're not coming near to the Father. Doesn't matter what
you say to the world or how much persecution you receive from
it, your profession is still an empty one. It doesn't matter
how much attention you give to community, you are still nothing
more than a pretender. And when the last day approaches,
you will be left forever outside the people of God. I do not say
these things with joy. I say them with sorrow of heart
because I know that in a congregation this size, it is almost certain
that there are at least some here who have never truly been
born again. Some who have never placed all
their faith and confidence in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. You could be a quote good person
or a nice person, but being nice in the eyes of the world will
not put you right with a God whose standard of righteousness
is the perfection of Jesus Christ himself. You could know how to
say the right words when people ask you about your walk with
God, but saying nice sounding words isn't a substitute for
genuine repentance of sin and true faith in the work of God's
dear Son, Jesus Christ. You could even be a member of
West Side Baptist Church, but your membership won't save you
from God's wrath if the blood of Jesus Christ has never covered
your sins. There's always a danger in warnings
like this. Satan loves nothing more than
to render true believers useless by putting them on a perpetual
treadmill of fear and doubt. And even though I tremble at
the thought of troubling a true believer, I tremble even more
before the reality that there are some in this room this morning
who desperately need to question the state of their soul and are
even now being convinced by the adversary to ignore these warnings.
And for your sake, I dare not remain silent. Flee to Christ
before it is too late. Acknowledge your wretched state
before God and admit to Him and to the world that He would be
most just if He would damn you to hell forever. That is true
of every one of us. Confess your sin. Confess your
inability to do anything to save yourself. Confess that there
is no hope found anywhere but in Jesus Christ alone. believe
that Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross exactly what he
promised to accomplish, and believe that on the third day, he really
rose just as he said. Come to him in faith, believing
that he will receive you, and he will. He has never turned
anyone away, and he will not turn you away. No matter what
you may have done in the past, no matter what you may be involved
in, right now, his arms are open to all who will, as Christ began
to preach so many years ago in Galilee, repent and believe the
gospel. Yet though there may be some
here today who do not know the Lord, who have never been made
a partaker of the precious work of Christ on the behalf of His
people, I trust that for the great majority, it is that very
precious salvation that is brought to you here today. The truths
about the work of Christ, that this golden summary are truths
about what He has done for you, what He has accomplished for
you. His blood covers your sins. His righteous life is counted
to your account. His interceding prayers have
your name attached to them. If you're a believer here today,
you have been given promises that are so precious that they
boggle the mind, that we cannot comprehend how high and how deep
and how broad is the love of Christ. The work of Christ on
your behalf demands a response, and the response that it demands
is threefold. It demands that you draw near
to God the Father in prayer and worship. Christ did not bear
the wrath of God on your behalf, shedding His blood to pave a
way through the veil that separated sinful humanity from the presence
of God so you could live your life with fewer worries. He opened
up a new and living way of access so that all who are in Him can
use that way boldly and without ceasing, day in and day out. The most wonderful thing that
God could ever do for any of His creatures is to give them
access to His presence. And if you are a believer, He
has done exactly that. We do not need to tremble or
doubt when we come before the Father, for we do not come in
our own name, but in the name of His dear Son, Jesus Christ. He has covered our sins with
His own blood. He has come in the flesh and
fulfilled the righteous deeds we should have done. And He is
even now in the throne room, interceding on our behalf with
the Father. We have access to the Father,
and it is unthinkable that we do not make use of that access. Yet coming near to the Father
in prayer is not the only response demanded by the work of Christ
on our behalf. It is not enough to worship in
private. We must also profess our Savior publicly, and we must
hold fast to this profession, no matter how we are tempted
to waver. I don't know what will tempt you to waver in your public
profession of Christ. It could be that being a believer
of any kind is simply not very popular at the place where you
work, and you could be tempted to keep silent rather than publicly
identify with Christ. It could be a specific teaching
of Scripture, perhaps even the simple reality that God created
men and women different, that causes your family members to
roll their eyes in disgust because you're one of those people. And
you're tempted to profess Christ just a little bit less firmly
in order to escape their mockery. Your temptation to deny your
profession of Christ could be so subtle that no one around
you but you even realizes what is at stake. And you may never
even get the opportunity to explain the reason why you won't falsify
that shipment is because you're a believer. You may be fired
before you get the chance. And yet you still know that what
you're being asked to do or say is in direct contradiction to
the profession that you have made of our Lord and Savior.
Denying Jesus Christ is not only for those who say, I deny Jesus
Christ. He can be denied in our actions
just as much as he can by our words. You need to remember that
our declaration of identity with Christ is our declaration of
hope in the reality of His promises. It really comes down to this.
Do we or do we not believe that He will be faithful to fulfill
the promises upon which we have placed our hope? We do not need
to worry about the promises. The one that is promised will
be faithful. The one whose promises we hope
in will be faithful to fulfill his promises. Publicly professing
by both word and deed our confidence in his promises is not optional
for those who claim to be the recipients of those promises. It is vital for believers to
make use of the access to the Father that Christ has won for
us. It is essential that we publicly
profess our belief in His promises in both word and action. These
responses to the work of Christ on our behalf are not optional.
I can't imagine anyone who professed the name of Christ claiming that
they were optional. I thank God for that. Yet this beautiful
sentence is not over. There is a third non-optional
response to the work of Christ on our behalf that is demanded
from every believer just as much as the other two. And that is
that we stay concerned for one another, constantly considering
how to provoke each other to love and to good works, never
intentionally forsaking the assembly, but rather exhorting each other,
encouraging one another to live faithful lives. Community, particularly
the kind of community that God calls believers to in the context
of the local church, can be both difficult and messy. It is easy
to provoke each other to frustration or to jealousy or to anger. That
comes naturally to every son of Adam and every daughter of
Eve. Provoking one another to love and good works isn't going
to happen by accident, which is why the command is to consider,
to set our minds to the task of mutual encouragement, exhortation,
and edification. I would love to give you a list
of the things you could do that are guaranteed to produce love
and good works in every believer you come in contact with, but
there simply isn't any list like that. A checklist, no matter
how long, misses the point altogether. Checklists never produce community. considering setting our mind
on the needs of our fellow believers does. Of course, this isn't going
to happen at all if you forsake the assembly altogether for something
else, but it is also not guaranteed to happen just because you show
up. There is more to being a member
of a local church, of a local Christian community, than listening
to the sermons, putting something in the offering plate, and casting
your vote at the church business meeting. Becoming a member of
a church is about far more than getting your name in the directory.
It is about becoming part of a body that has many members,
a body for whose health you are directly, as a fellow member,
responsible for. Like every area of the Christian
life, living a community, living a life of concern for one another,
comes easier to some than it does to others. We don't all
pray the same prayers. We don't all face the same temptations
to waver. And we don't all minister to
the needs of the body in exactly the same way. The point is that
we're not all to be going around asking each other the same list
of canned questions about how your walk with the Lord is. Not
that it's bad to ask questions, but it's not like I'm trying
to give you a list of questions. If you're going to be a faithful
member of the church, you need to ask five people this week five
questions each. That's not the point. but that
all of us are to be constantly considering how we can contribute
to each other's spiritual health, how we can stir one another up
to love and to good works, because if your heart is in considering
how you can encourage each other, the Lord will give to your mind
things that you could do to encourage, and the Holy Spirit will lead
you in conversation to think of how you might be able to stir
someone up and might see an area in which someone else is weak
or see an area in which someone else has made progress and give
them encouragement and say, I'm thankful that I'm seeing you
on Wednesday night Bible study now, and you didn't used to come,
and I'm so happy that you're coming every week. It could be
very positive. It could be you're starting to
miss service a lot, what's going on, and maybe you find out that
it's something that they couldn't avoid, and you can help them
with that situation. It could be that they need some
help of a very practical kind in order to get here. It could
be some other area of their profession. It could be you work with a believer,
and you notice that their stand for Christ is slipping a little
bit, and you speak to them about it, and you encourage them. Just
as the way that each of us will demonstrate our concern for each
other will look different, so the things that keep us from
showing concern will look different as well. Some perhaps are too
busy with their own agenda to take the time to consider the
needs of others. Some might be very concerned
with the needs that other peoples have, that other people have,
but their solutions rarely involve love and good works. It's more
like gossip and complaining. Perhaps you feel as though you've
done your duty to the community simply by showing up at the service.
Perhaps you're afraid to get involved in the lives of others
because they might point out areas where you yourself need
to make some changes, and if you open yourself up and you're
vulnerable and you live in community with the body, then they might
say, you need to change, and it might be something that you're
not willing to change. This call to community, this
call to consider one another, isn't a call only for those who
enjoy being social, and boy do I thank the Lord for that. It's
something that goes far deeper than simply enjoying conversation
with your fellow believers. This isn't a matter of what your
personality is like, but where your heart is at. It is something
that goes far deeper than simply enjoying conversation. What it
really boils down to is whether or not we are willing to love
our fellow members enough to always seek to help them grow
in conformity to Christ, even when they don't feel like growing
and we don't feel like helping. The bottom line is love, not
personality. True community, the community
that we are called to in this passage, is never easy, but it
is also never optional. Are you committed to this kind
of community? Does the way in which you interact
with your fellow believers demonstrate that commitment? I'm going to
go before the Lord in prayer, and after I do, there's going
to be an opportunity to respond to the Lord if He has spoken
to you. Father, I come before You. I thank You for this opportunity
to have preached Your Word. I pray, Father, Lord, that your
Holy Spirit would be present. I pray that you would convict
those who do not know you of their need for you. I pray, Father,
Lord, that you would convict believers of areas in which they
need to grow in their response to what you have done for them.
I pray, Father, you would convict me of the areas in which I need
to grow. Help me to worship you. Help
all of us to worship you in these moments. In Christ's precious
name I pray, amen.
Community Is Not Optional
| Sermon ID | 61216022549682 |
| Duration | 42:51 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Hebrews 10:19-21 |
| Language | English |
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