We Gather Together

As we saw in Hebrews 10:19-20, we have confidence that Jesus has opened up a new and living way for us to enter the holy place. He did this by His blood, shed on the cross for us. We also see that Jesus is our great High Priest, and is now interceding for us according to the will of the Father.

Because of this, the Scripture gives us three clear and straightforward points of application.

In v. 22, “let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” This only makes sense; since Jesus opened up a new and living way into the holy place, and He did so for us, let’s actually enter in!

In v. 23, “let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” The Lord has given us every reason to keep the faith, and remain steadfast. He is faithful; He keeps every promise.

And in v. 24-25 this morning, “let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking out own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”

Motivate One Another To Love And Good Deeds

Let’s make sure that we understand the basic exhortation, and then we’ll look at a couple of important details.

At its heart, we are told to motivate one another to love and good deeds.

The word “stimulate” is also translated “stir up”, “provoke,” and “spur on.” It’s a fairly strong word, with the sense of provoke or incite. It’s used in the negative sense in Acts 15:39, where Paul and Barnabas had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company.

In Hebrews 10, of course, it’s not being used in a negative sense, but positively, for the good of all concerned.

Strong Evidence of Salvation is Encouraging

Obviously, it’s very encouraging when someone consistently holds to biblical doctrine, shows evidence of ongoing transformation, loves the Lord Jesus, grows in holiness, lives increasingly for the sake of His glory, and lives in repentance and deepening faith.

It’s never the purpose of God that His people would just cave in and take the path of least resistance. We might feel like we’re swimming upstream, but we are swimming toward heaven and glory, and it’s worth the effort.

At the same time, it’s hard to maintain intensity and passion for anything over a lengthy period of time, especially when you are discouraged, worn out, or face constant opposition.

So, knowing that it’s a natural tendency to lose momentum, for any number of reasons, we are encouraged to stir one another up to love and good deeds. One of the reasons that the Church exists is for those of us who lose momentum or hope or energy or passion to be strengthened and given a boost.

If I can put it this way, it’s a joint effort.

The Spirit of God is not ever going to let His people go. He is faithful to keep them and preserve them.

But He also calls us to be brothers and sisters to one another. We seek to spur each other one, trusting that the Spirit of God will bring forth the fruit that He desires from each one.

As with the previous two applications, this is something that every Christian can do, to one degree or another. We can all consider how to stimulate one another to love and good works.

THE DETAILS.

I want to focus on three details that we see in the passage, because they give clarity to what we are to do.

Consider

The first detail I see is the word “consider.”

This word means to give something careful consideration, to think carefully, to ponder.

We are to ponder how to best motivate someone else to love and good deeds.

This only makes sense. People are individuals; one size doesn’t fit all, and one approach is not going to work with everyone, not to the level of detail we are called to here.

Paul’s letter to Titus is just three chapters long. He jumps right in, and urges Titus to take control in the church in Crete, appointing elders, rebuking those who argue and disagree. In the first 10 verses of chapter 2, Paul deals with older men, older women, younger women, younger men, Titus himself, and bondservants. He pours it out in rapid-fire style. In chapter 3 he says point blank, “Reject a divisive man after two warnings, knowing that such a man – or woman – is perverted and sinning, being self-condemned.”

But Paul wrote two letters to Timothy, 10 chapters in all, and in both letters takes time to encourage Timothy. He speaks to Timothy more tenderly than to Titus, calling him a spiritual son, encouraging him to stir up his own gift, and to not give in to a spirit of fear.

Timothy and Titus were different men with different needs, and Paul approaches them differently.

The better we know someone, the better we can motivate them to love and good works.

That being said, we must be careful to motivate, and not to manipulate. The better we know someone, the more easily we might be able to manipulate them, to move them toward doing what we want them to do.

The aim here is not getting someone to follow YOUR dream for their life, but to urge them to remain steadfast in their faith and obedience to the Lord Jesus.

How do we exhort and encourage without manipulation? Don’t use craftiness, trickery, or deception, but rather speak the truth in love.

The question we want to ask is not, “How can I get this person to do what I want?”, but “How can I spur this person on to love and good deeds that glorify God and bless others?”

Unity

The second detail I see is the necessity of unity in the Body.

Where do I see that? In the phrase, “not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some.”

Every Christian needs every Christian. All of us need all of us. The New Testament letters are filled with “one another”: serve one another, forgive one another, bear with one another, be devoted to one another, accept one another, build up one another, and especially, love one another.

Do you see that this is mutual? This isn’t you serving me, or me accepting you. This is you and I serving one another, accepting one another. It’s mutual. It’s shared.

Philippians 2:2

Philippians 2:2 gets at this when Paul writes, “make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.”

Well then, those who forsake the gathering of the Church are really forsaking the one-anothers of the Scripture. By remaining apart they deny themselves being spurred on to love and good deeds, and they are not in a position to spur anyone else one.

Spur On or Just Spurn

Let me put it this way: you can spur others on, or you can spurn them, but you can’t do both.

There are many genuine Christians who live in isolation from the Church. They are living in disobedience to the Scripture spoken here, which is given for their blessing and that of the Church.

Now let me be clear here.

There are those who are involuntarily isolated. Overseas missionaries often have little opportunity for fellowship in a Church. Others face illness, and some have financial situations that require that they work. Let’s not be quick to judge others who are absent.

But let’s also not lose the point of this text. When Christians simply make the choice to forsake the gathering of the Body, they are handicapping their own spiritual lives, and robbing the Body of the exercise of their gifts.

The word forsake implies an obligation and expectation. You can’t abandon something that you haven’t committed yourself to.

When Grace and I were in New York City last year, we walked past a number of street people asleep in doorways. We saw them, took note of them, walked right on past without stopping, and eventually drove out of the city without taking any of them with us.

That doesn’t mean that we abandoned them, because we had no obligation to them. There was no expectation that we had any connection to them.

But if I had dumped Grace in Central Park and driven away, that would have been abandonment. Why? Because she’s my daughter; I’m obligated to her; there is an expectation that I will care for her.

So the very use of the word forsake tells us that Christians are obligated and expected by the Lord to share in in the life of His Body, the Church.

Now wait, you might say, “I never agreed to that obligation.” Yes, that’s right, you didn’t. That’s because it’s not optional, and the Lord didn’t ask for your permission to sign you up. We learned a new word from Grace in the Air Force: voluntold. Evidently, people in the Air Force get voluntold all the time.

Well, those of us in Christ have been voluntold that we are obligated to other believers. If anyone doesn’t like that, I can only suggest that you take it up with the Lord when He returns. But in the meantime, you ought to trust His purpose in creating His Body as He has, and accept the privilege of being part of it.

The End

The third detail I want to highlight is the phrase “all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

This is a reference to the Day of the Lord, which encompasses all of the end-times events: the rapture of the Church, the great tribulation, the Second Coming, the Millennial Kingdom, and final judgment.

We are to motivate one another to love and good deeds because the Day of the Lord is getting closer every day. That puts a sense of urgency to our lives and ministries. It tells us that our mutual ministry to one another is as important in the Church as evangelism is among the lost.

So, we aren’t to motivate others to love and good deeds so that they have a pleasant, satisfying, fulfilled life, but because Jesus is coming back, and that Day is getting closer and closer. This life feels so long, but in light of eternity it’s over before you know it. So we are to encourage those who are losing momentum and energy and passion, as most of us do at various points of our lives.

Second Corinthians 4:16-18

Paul describes the kind of thinking that we are to have:

16 Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. 17 For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, 18 while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16–18)

How is it that we don’t lose heart? How is it that we are reminded to keep our eyes on eternal things?

Much of the time it is because the Holy Spirit used another Christian to remind us of those eternal things. Someone else saw that we were getting a little tired, and they turned to us and said, “What you do has eternal significance. You can glorify God today, and be a blessing to others. You are not forsaken or abandoned; Jesus is praying for you even now; the Holy Spirit is as well, and He is strengthening you for the battle.” They gave us their spiritual arm, helped us catch our breath, and then off we went together.

Bringing it home.

It’s been said that the devil’s greatest trick was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.

I think that the devil’s greatest trick in the Church has been convincing Christians – sometimes with the help of the Church itself – that THEY don’t matter, because they are just one person.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we are ALL just one person. All of us need all of us. You have the opportunity today, and every day, to exhort someone else to love and good deeds. You have the opportunity to receive that gift of strength from a brother or sister. But you have to be around them, as the Lord designed.

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