Good Works Are Stirred Up by Your Communion With Saints On Earth

Hebrews 10 and the Call to Love and Good Works

Please turn your Bible to Hebrews chapter 10. That can be found on page 1007 of the Pew Bible in front of you. Here in Hebrews chapter 10, the author of Hebrews is encouraging people towards love and good works.

Now, if you remember, in the past few weeks, what we have covered is our union with Christ. We've covered our legal union with Christ, that His righteousness is imputed to us, our spiritual union with Christ, that we are transformed into being more holy by Him, and then how that is brought about by the Holy Spirit.

So that's what we've done the past three weeks. Now that has implications for our union and communion, not just with Christ, not just with the Spirit and the Father, like we talked about last week, but also with one another.

And that is also a motivation for good work, that God has not just placed us by ourselves connected to Christ, but with each other connected to one another to build each other up. Let us read Hebrews chapter 10, beginning in verse 19.

These are the words of the Lord. Please stand if you have that. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, all the more as you see the day drawing near.

Amen.

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We ask that you would guide us this day by it. We pray that you would help us to understand your truth, things that we may not have heard before.

Pray that you would help us to recognize our position in Jesus Christ and what that means for our position with one another. We pray that you would encourage us to follow the command here toward love and good works, to encourage one another toward love and good works, and to even be encouraged toward love and good works.

In Jesus' name, amen. So as I've mentioned before, many people feel discouraged in the Christian life. They feel that they don't have enough encouragement to do the things that they have been called to do by God.

And a lot of that comes from not understanding the things that God has given us to equip us for the task He has called us to. Will someone be encouraged toward good works as much as they ought, if they don't know the truth from Ephesians 2, that God has prepared works beforehand for us?

Or will they be encouraged sufficiently as they ought if they don't know that we are a new creation in Jesus Christ created for good works? Will they know this if they don't realize, will they be sufficiently encouraged if they don't realize that the Holy Spirit is working in us to affect that bond with Him, and that that will bear fruit so long as we do not quench the Spirit?

Well, the same is true when it comes to the body of believers. If you understand your equipment for good works as coming from God, but apart from all the means that God has given, including brothers and sisters, us not being united just to Him as the head, but to each other as a body, will you be sufficiently encouraged toward good works?

I would say that you would not be, and that you will experience some lack in your Christian life apart from understanding this means that God uses to equip us. Now, if you think of a body, a body is not just a head and then some other body part.

It's not just a head and a hand. It's a head and all the other parts of the body combined. The hand would be weak if it were connected to the head, but not connected to the rest of the body. Now, certainly, Christ is all-powerful.

He has all power in Him. He grants us all power, but He has chosen the means through which He does that, and His means is not separate from, not distinct from, not without the rest of the body working to encourage, to build up one another in love and good works.

So today, I want us to see what that union and communion consists of, and then how that ought to encourage you toward good works. But very simply, just considering this verse here, verse 24, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.

Just considering the context for a moment. In verse 19, He said, therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus. Okay, so He's talking about the confidence with which we come to God, and He speaks to that confidence a little more in here of talking about the full assurance of faith.

Says, what should we do? We should hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering. We need to hold fast since we have confidence. And then, He explains in verse 26 afterward, for if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.

There's a great danger if we were to fall away, but having confidence, we should hold the confession of our faith without wavering. And so, how are we supposed to do that? In part, by encouraging one another and being encouraged by one another in love and good works.

Defining Love and Good Works

Well, first of all, what are love and good works? Very simply, love is that right attitude toward God. Remember, we've defined good works as sincere obedience. It is that inward sincerity of heart towards God.

That is what that love is. Now, we know that the commandments of God are not fulfilled just in the first table, that are the first four commandments that are about love of God, but also in the last six, which are about our love towards our neighbor.

So that love is not just to God, but to all of His people as well. So that is love, that inward sincerity. And then the good works being here in this verse, outward. A lot of times when the Bible talks about good works, it is talking about inward things as well.

Here, it's distinguishing them, speaking of love and good works, the inward and outer parts distinctly. We see this earlier in Hebrews, Hebrews 6, 10, it said, "'For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work "'and the love that you have shown for His name "'in serving the saints as you still do.'".

Talks about work and love there. And then he says that we should stir one another up. What does it mean to stir one another up? Literally, it says provoke. This is what it even says in some translations.

If you imagine how someone might provoke you to an evil deed, tempting you to the point where you're at the last bits of your self-control. You know, the standard example everyone always gives is someone cutting you off on the highway.

I don't know, there are other things that upset me more than that. But you can imagine, whatever it is that pushes your buttons, someone does that and they provoke you so that you just feel like you cannot help it but to sin.

Now, you can because you have the Spirit. But you feel that you just have, you're on the last bits of your self-control. Imagine that, but in a godly way. People provoking you to good work so that you just can't help it but to do good works.

And this has been an important theme throughout Hebrews to encourage one another. Hebrews 3 .13 says, therefore, as long as it is called the day, that we should exhort one another. Yeah, exhort one another as long as it is called the day, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

We should be exhorting one another daily. We should be encouraging one another daily. And then what it says here at the very beginning of this verse, let us consider how to stir one another up to good works.

We should be considering it. It should be a matter that is before us that we are meditating on, that it's not just an afterthought. We ought to consider how to stir one another up to love and good works.

Now, when you think about your time and the word and all the considerations of the things of God and the considerations that you have in your life and your own obedience and things like that, how often are you considering how to stir one another up in love and good works?

If you look around at the sisters and brothers and you think, well, when was the last time I thought about how to stir up that brother or that sister to love and good works? This is one of the things that we are to be considering.

Paul, well, I believe this is written by Paul. I'm gonna probably say that a few times. The author of Hebrews said earlier in verse 3 -1, in chapter three, verse one, "'Consider Jesus the apostle "'and high priest of our confession.'".

Okay, so he gave a command to consider before. We all understand that. We really need to be considering Jesus. We need to be thinking a lot about him. We need to be meditating on him. Consider Jesus the apostle and high priest of our confession.

But how many of us think about this with the same duty when he uses the same word, telling us to consider how we ought to stir one another up to love and good works? It requires some kind of similar consideration.

Our meditations on Jesus Christ should not be meditations on him as a head without a body. Should be on him along with his body. We should consider not just him, but his whole body, and not just the good we may do for him, but the good we may do for the whole body.

So we ought to consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, but we ought to also consider how to stir one another up to love and good works. Okay, now in the bulletin here, I've entitled the sermon, good works are stirred up by your communion with saints on earth.

Now, this passage right here does not use the word saints. However, this is a word that Hebrews uses later on in chapter 13 in verse 24. It says, greet all your leaders and all the saints. Some people think of saints as just dead believers.

No, saints includes those living ones. It literally means holy ones. Okay, holy ones. All those who have been saved by Jesus Christ have been made holy because he has imputed to them his righteousness, and more on top of that, he has transformed them, and they are being transformed to become more and more holy.

Okay, so it is not something that is, it is not, when we call people saints, we call them holy ones. It's not by means of perfection, but by incoation. Okay, incoation means having begun, having begun the process, having started the process.

Not by perfection, but by incoation. So, if you think about the nature of this passage, stirring one another up to good works, you might think, boy, how can these brothers stir me up to good works with all the sin that exists?

Like, these aren't that holy. Well, think about it. If you are in a world of complete darkness, and there is just a little bit of light, even if it were just a birthday candle's worth of light, that would be of immense help, even though it is not perfectly bright.

That's how you ought to be thinking about your need to be around the saints. Okay, don't just look at the flaws and say, oh, this is not going to be an encouragement to me because of all the flaws. No, we are in a world of complete darkness, and even some measure of light is better than no light at all.

Union and Communion in Christ and His Body

Now, this union is established in Jesus Christ. Okay, so this, because we are in him, and if we are all in him, then we are necessarily in each other as well. Okay, we are connected with each other with this preposition the scripture uses in.

John 17, 22 to 23 in Jesus' high priestly prayer. This is really an important part of the prayer. He's praying for the unity of the body. He says, the glory that you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.

I in them and you in me, that they may be perfectly one, that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you love me. So Christ has prayed in his high priestly prayer that we being in him would also be connected to each other.

This is a union that's established in Jesus Christ perfectly, him as our head. And, you know, we spoke last week also about how the spirit affects that union, that he is the bond that makes it so that we are in the vine.

And so the spirit, he is also the bond that joins us together. Now, it is also the case that we are connected to the father. Once again, this was explained last week, but consider the context here where it is talked about God's faithfulness.

It said in verse 23, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. Okay, how does God's faithfulness affect things here? His faithfulness in part has to do with the unity of the body.

You see something very similar in 1 Corinthians 1. It says in 1 Corinthians 1, God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son. You know, fellowship meaning partnership or communion.

Right, these are all, these are the same word. Communion of the body. It is a work that God has done and he has granted us confession. Confession, that word meaning saying the same thing. Right, we all say the same thing.

We all believe the same thing. This is, yeah, this is, our confession is one way of speaking of our unity. When we speak of fellowship, we're speaking of unity. Maybe you think of fellowship in terms of unity, but you don't think of confession in terms of unity.

The word in Greek just literally means saying the same thing. Okay, so it is a word that also talks about our unity, our confession. So hold fast to the confession because this is a work of God. This is a work that God is doing and it is something that he encourages us in, yeah, that he encourages us in completely.

Consider, yeah, consider how many people do not think of this as this union in Jesus Christ, but they imagine it divorced from the body, right? They think, okay, I'm connected to Jesus Christ, the head.

That's something that's happening by the spirit. That is a work of God, but my connection to the rest of the body is more natural. This is what leads people to divorce one from the other. They said, you know, I'm spending time with God alone.

I don't need to be part of a church, et cetera, et cetera. Right, this is a very common thing that people explain because they're divorcing these. They imagine that I can be in Christ without having to be in the body, right?

Or maybe they wouldn't say it that way. Maybe they would say they are in the body, but the reality is they're thinking very differently about their connection to Jesus Christ, the head, and their connection to the rest of the body.

The one is happening supernaturally. There wouldn't be, you know, they're not looking at any kind of outward signs to see whether or not it's being maintained. Rather, it's just something that, you know, it's just kind of a giving because the Holy Spirit is doing it.

And yet the body, well, that's not as needed because that's just something that happens naturally. Well, the reality is the body kind of is the sign of whether or not, what your level of connection, what the health of your union with Jesus Christ, you're abiding in the vine because when you are abiding in him, you are united with one another as well.

It is something that ought to be, yeah, that ought to be held together. These are not things that happen apart. Okay, so that's the union that we have with one another. Now, communion with one another refers to those things shared.

Okay, union is the bond, communion is the things shared. Now, what are the things shared? Well, there are several kinds of things shared. There are those things shared perfectly, those things shared approximately, and those things shared charitably.

I'll go through each of those. So those things shared perfectly, consider Ephesians 4, 4 through 5. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. Okay, that is something that everyone who is in Jesus Christ shares.

They have the same spirit, they have the same Lord, they have the same Father. There is one baptism that unites us all together. All that is shared perfectly. And this is spoken of, so those blessings of salvation that are shared perfectly are often spoken of as communion because they are shared.

Consider 1 Corinthians 10, verse six, or verse 16. It says, the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?

Okay, participation, fellowship, communion. Once again, same word. It gets translated into English differently sometimes, but if you look up older translations of 1 Corinthians 10, it will say in that first communion.

This is why we call the Lord's Supper communion. It's because older translations call it communion. So I can read that again, replacing the word fellowship with communion, or participation with communion.

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not communion in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not communion in the body of Christ? Okay, it's something that joins us together because it is that one thing that we share.

The Christ blood, we share that. Okay, it's not that you have some of his blood over here and I have different, his blood over here. We all share this one blood together, and that is represented in the ceremony of the Lord's Supper.

Okay, so there are those things that are shared perfectly. Now there are also those things that are shared approximately, and that is that we are all approximating Jesus Christ, being conformed to him, and the degree to which we are conformed to him, the more we get to enjoy that union together because we have a greater communion.

Okay, so for example, our doctrine, right? The more and more that we believe what the Bible says, the more and more we will be united with one another because we will not have different wrong beliefs, but we will have one true belief.

So the more you spend time in God's word, the more you are connected with one another. You know, I know very practically for me, those that I have the most fellowship with, are those who are the deepest in God's word, and that's not me playing favorites.

That is because the reality is that the more someone is approximating Jesus Christ, the more capacity there is to enjoy that union and communion, more capacity there is to have fellowship. Now, this is also the case societally, not just with doctrine, but societally.

There is an approximation of how much, of how close we are to one another in the degree to which we are spending time with the body, right, as opposed to, for example, one who is spending time with the world and the practices of the world, et cetera.

Okay, so that's another thing that we can, the more we approximate Jesus Christ, the more we are conformed into his image and the way that we fellowship with one another, the more we will experience that union and communion.

Now, this is also something that is, there's a communion that is shared charitably. Okay, so first was perfectly, right, all in common, approximately that we have more and more as we join one another, and then as we approximate Jesus Christ, as we conform to his image, and then charitably, this is those things that are given to us individually and are truly ours, but ought to be used for the good of the body.

Okay, so God has blessed some people with some things and other people with other things. The easiest way to think about this is material blessings. All right, if you've been given material blessings, those are truly yours, and yet God has instructed us that they ought to be used for the good of the body.

That doesn't always mean dispossessing yourself of all things, you know, it doesn't always mean sell all your possessions and give them to the poor. A lot of people misunderstand that as being a command to everyone.

You imagine that if your arm is very strong, it should work for the good of the rest of the body. I use, you know, my arm to put on my shoes, et cetera. It would, if it were to dispossess itself of that strength, the foot would not be able to use it as well anymore, right?

It is something that ought to be kept in many circumstances, but used for the good of the body. So there's a lot of wisdom that goes into, well, how do I use those things that God has given me? How do I make sure that I am dispossessing myself of anything that I ought to dispossess myself of and give it, how I hang onto it and use it, et cetera?

We'll talk about that more in a subsequent message, but this also applies not just to material goods, but also to spiritual gifts and graces, right? Those gifts and graces that God has given that we would share with one another by encouraging one another, whatever knowledge we have in God's word, that we would share that with one another.

These are things that he has not given. He's not equipped us all equally to be able to study and understand God's word. He's not equipped us all equally to have the time to pray, but those who have more time to pray, they ought to spend more time in prayer.

You see that in 1 Timothy 5, that the widows ought to be dedicating themselves to prayer, the idea being that they have more time to pray, right? So as you have more capacity for spiritual giving as well, that ought to be done, and that applies directly here in this passage about stirring one another up to love and good works.

You have a particular capacity to do that, and you must make use of your capacity to do that. Okay, so perfectly, approximately, and charitably. And those all work together for the good of the body. We should enjoy our meeting, our fellowship with one another, because it is such a blessing.

Psalm 16 .3 says, as for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight. Romans 12 .5, so we the many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. If we are all one body, we ought to enjoy being one body.

We ought to think of ourselves as one body. We ought to encourage one another as one body. Okay, now having considered our union, having considered our communion, let's also consider practically and concretely how that comes about.

So far, we've talked about these things mostly abstractly. Concretely, that is lived out primarily in the local church. People have different counts of the one another commands. I think the most common one is 59.

There are 59 one another commands in Scripture. Many of them cannot be lived out in any sort of meaningful way apart from the local church. Some very simple examples. Bible tells pastors to take care of the sheep.

Bible tells people to obey their leaders. If you don't have particular leaders, and you're just kind of wandering around, and you're not part of a church, how are you supposed to obey the command to obey your leaders, right?

That is something that you could only do just as you feel like, oh, well, now this person's my leader, now this person's my leader, and you get to move the goalpost, change the terms of obedience just as you will, right?

Or who is the pastor supposed to pray for? Just those who happen to show up that day, right? No, he has a particular body he's praying for, and their absence does not mean that he ought not pray for them anymore.

Rather, there's an identity that establishes who it is in the body that you have, in the global body that you have particular duties to. So in some sense, we have a communion with all the saints, but that is to be lived out in particular as Christ is instituted in the local church, that that is where it is concretely, where it is most concretely lived out.

Now, there are a lot of hindrances to the communion of the local body. One of them is false brothers, right? There are many false brothers that enter the body. They appear to be true brothers, but they're not, and so they're not adding to the fellowship, they're moving from it.

This is why we should care about church discipline and membership, to make sure that there is a purity to Christ's church that facilitates having a union.

And communion, all right?

This is also why we should care about simply discipline among one another, because it is not just false brothers, but it's even immature brothers that can detract from the communion that we could otherwise have.

So we should be eager to rebuke as necessary, to correct, to go through the process Matthew 18 gives us. If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault. If he doesn't listen to you, bring one or two others.

If he doesn't listen to them, take it before the church. If he doesn't listen to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and tax collector, as it explains. So there's a need for purity in the church in order to have union and communion.

A lot of people imagine that the way you have the best kind of union is to not have anything that would outwardly look like division, that would outwardly look like any kind of hostility. And so, well, rather than studying doctrine like I mentioned, in order that we might more approximate Christ, they would rather just hold doctrine very loosely, so that we're not, we don't end up being divided, because doctrine divides.

Yes, it divides, but what you're doing is you're trading a deep unity for a superficial unity. And the same is true when it comes to addressing sin in the body. You might have some kind of superficial peace by not addressing sin in the body, but you're doing it at the expense of a much deeper peace, a much deeper union that you can have with the body.

And so that is why it is something that ought to be pursued, that purity within the body, removing the leaven in order that we might have a, yeah, have an enjoyable, yeah, experience of one another in the Lord.

Okay, there are also non-moral or amoral hindrances to our unity, so this would be things like, for example, a very simple one is distance. You know, imagine the distance you live apart. I don't know how it will work in heaven or how we'll be given easy access to one another, such that this wouldn't be a hindrance to our unity.

But here in this world, we live apart in ways that it takes a lot of time, some time in some cases, to get with one another. This is why God has in his wisdom made it so that our primary assemblies are local gatherings and not something that would emphasize the global church above that, so that we wouldn't be able to enjoy some kind of practical fellowship.

It might be your well-being, you know, whether or not you're sick and you're able to attend, right? There might be your, all kinds of, there are all kinds of factors, you know, prior commitments, et cetera, things like that.

There are all kinds of factors. Now, some of those can become moral hindrances, right? The degree to which you make commitments that end up attracting from your fellowship with believers is the degree to which you have morally worked against the communion that we ought to have.

But many of these things are, yeah, are, they're not necessarily moral. They could be moral in as much as you willingly go about them, right? If you, you know, I know land is very cheap outside this area.

You know, if you say, I'm going to go way out to Morgan Hill and buy a home there, and I'm not gonna give any consideration about what that's going to do to my unity with the other brothers and sisters here, and I'm planning on still being part of this church and not joining a church down there, that's not a very thoughtful way of going about it, right?

That is a, that's a way that says, you know, my own comfort is more important than my unity with the body, the communion that we share with one another. You ought to be, you ought to be thinking about how to, how to facilitate that union as much as, as much as you can.

And this is, this is God's wisdom. You know, in Judges 5 .16, this is in the song between, the song of Deborah and Barak, where they have defeated Jabin, the king of the Canaanites, and they defeated Sisera, his commander.

Says, on a couple of times, it says, among the clans of Reuben, there were searchings of heart. Among the clans of Reuben, there were, among the clans of Reuben, there were searchings of heart.

Why?

Because Reuben was part of the Transjordan tribes. It's on the other side of Jordan, it couldn't come and help its brothers, right? Reuben was not able to help, and so they're, they're sitting there searching their heart, you know, where have I been?

That I haven't been able to be part of this victory, I haven't gotten to enjoy the fight, I haven't gotten to enjoy victory in the Lord, and been with my brothers to hold them up, to encourage them to the, to the good things that God has called them to.

Okay, that's the same thing. There will be searchings of your heart if you, if you, either willingly or unwillingly, are not with brothers, but let it not be willingly.

Okay.

The Body Strengthening Itself in Love

So, with all that, loving good works happen by a self-strengthening. The body is a self-strengthening body. It says in Ephesians 4, 16, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint which is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself in love.

So on one hand, God is building us up, he is faithful, he is accomplishing it. We're united in Christ, the Spirit is, is establishing that union, but God has also chosen the means that the body build itself up as well.

And so not only are we a divinely strengthened body, we are also a self-strengthened body in addition to that, because God has chosen to work through us. So it's still God's work, but he's working through us to build one another up.

It makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Now, there are several dimensions to the way that the body would strengthen itself, to the way that you would encourage one another to love and good works.

Let's go through a few of those. One is internal versus external, right? We're talking about love, that is the internal sincerity, good works, that's the outward obedience. So you can address people's hearts.

You should not just address outwardly what they're doing and say, hey, you should do this thing, but you should also be caring about their heart. You know, there's a very popular book on parenting called Shepherding a Child's Heart that one of the main things it gets at is this issue where a lot of parents are just trying to correct the child's outward actions, and they are not shepherding the child's heart.

They're encouraging to good works, but not to love and good works, like this passage talks about. But you ought to be encouraging one another to love and good works. And then a lot of times, people will be very comfortable addressing the inner workings of someone, but then not comfortable actually calling them to outward action because that feels like too much.

You can't really, you can speak abstractly about feelings that they should feel, but if you were to ever suggest outward things, that would be a little too invasive. No, both of these are here, love and good works, internal and external.

Now, also, you can think about this in the dimension of negative and positive. So this is not just positively toward good works as being only thought of in a positive way, but also negatively against evil works, right?

You should encourage people and warn them about any kind of evil thing. You should point out evil. You should warn them against things that might lead them into temptation, and you should encourage them positively about those things that are good.

And you can also break this down by time, past, present, and future. So if someone has done some evil in the past, you can speak to them so that they have the right kind of conviction about it. Someone is doing something evil in the present, you should call them to repentance.

Someone might do something evil in the future, you should warn them about that sin. Someone who's done something good in the past, you can encourage them about what God has done. You can say like Paul, you know, I thank God for you.

I thank God for what he has done through you. In the present, you can bear one another's burdens and encourage them in whatever trial and whatever good work, and then as it pertains to the future, you can encourage future actions and say what they ought to be doing in the future.

Now, you can also do this in the dimension of as an inferior or as a superior. What I mean by that, speaking of positions of authority, right, the way I address you all with love and good works is going to be different than the way you might address me since I'm your pastor, right?

Or a husband to his wife is going to be different than a wife to her husband or a child to a parent, different than a parent to a child. If you are in a position of authority, there is a, yeah, there's more reason to speak with confidence and to not speak in a way that is unconfident.

There's a special responsibility on you to know what you are saying so that you would be able to speak confidently with that position, even if that authority is just the implied authority of age, there's a special responsibility on you that you speak in a way that takes advantage of what God has given you in the age so that you might encourage people with that advantage.

And if you are one who is in a lower position, either you're younger or you're in a position of submission, et cetera, there ought to be more humility in the way you approach it. That doesn't mean avoiding it altogether.