BE The Church While We Wait

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Shepherds Church Podcast. My name is Kendall, and I am so blessed to be bringing you this final message in our

Be the Church series. Now, every week in this series, we've been talking about what it means for us to be the church.

While the church is not physically gathered because of all of this coronavirus thing that is going on, we have been highlighting that the very essence of the church is that we are a gathered people, and that doesn't mean a building.

It doesn't mean a time slot on a particular day of the week, and it's not just an event or a concert, but it is the gathering of the people of God.

And if you want a definition for the word church, the most basic way that I could define it for you is that the church is the gathering of God's people.

So whenever, however, and by whatever means the church is able to gather and to meet, it is our goal that we should want to be there.

So in this coronavirus season, although we cannot gather physically, we are gathering together as a body of believers online, and we're doing that in a participatory manner.

We're not live -streaming television services into your home. We're not live -streaming just music and preaching.

We are doing gatherings where all of us can be the church together, where we can participate together, and where we can live out what the

Bible talks about when it talks about church together. So that's what we're doing. Now, in week one of this series, we talked about the character of our gatherings.

We talked about that we gather in unity around the gospel, in unity in the way that we treat one another, in unity concerning the mission that God has called us to.

In week two, we learned that we gather together out of love for one another, and that causes us to serve one another and be devoted to one another.

And then last week, we learned that the real power behind our gatherings is found in the triune God. We exist as God the

Father's people, ransomed and won back by Jesus Christ, our true and perfect older brother, and that we are infused by the power of the

Holy Spirit to be a people on mission, with real power and real equipping by the

Spirit of God. That is what we learned so far. And last week in particular, we learned seven truths about the

Holy Spirit and how he brings power into the church, not through ecstatic and hyperbolic means, but through the ordinary means of grace.

He creates and animates the church. He seals the church until Christ returns. He guides the church in the ways that she should go.

He teaches the church the truth that he wants us to believe. He sanctifies the church so that he can present us spotless to Jesus Christ when he returns.

He equips the church for mission to the nation so that every tribe, tongue, and nation will hear the gospel and then

Jesus will return. And then he endows the church with gifts so that we can build one another up and care for one another until he returns.

So what we saw at 100 ,000 foot level last week is that God has purchased the church, the gathering, with the blood of Jesus Christ, under the direct power and authority of the

Holy Spirit. He is now shaping her and preparing her for heaven.

He is using her missionally to win every lost soul that God has predestined for election, and he is building up and establishing every believer in the body by leading, guiding, directing, and empowering them to love and serve one another.

All of this is to be done until Jesus Christ returns. And as we gaze at that picture that has been developing in the series of what the

Triune God is doing, I just want us to marvel for a moment. I want us to see that every single member of the

Triune God is involved in the church and preparing for our future home with the

Father, Son, and Spirit. So as we close out this series today, I just want us to take what we've learned over the last three weeks and then answer the question, the final question, how can we be the church while we wait for Jesus to return?

How can we be the church? What are we supposed to believe? What are we supposed to do as we wait for Jesus Christ to return?

And to answer that question, I want us to turn to Hebrews 10, 23 through 25.

This is gonna be our only text for this evening, so turn with me as we read it and we study it and we dive into it together.

It's Hebrews 10, 23 through 25, and here is what it says. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as we see the day drawing near.

So now the structure of Hebrews is really important for us understanding this. This passage is a fascinating section right here in Hebrews 10, because the entire book of Hebrews has essentially been making the argument and building up to this point from chapters one through seven that Christ is utterly supreme.

He's supreme over the Old Testament revelation. He's supreme over the law. He's supreme over the angels and over the priesthood and even over Moses.

His atoning work on the cross is supreme over the sacrificial system that was present in the

Old Testament. He is now our new great high priest who is mediating a new covenant between us and the

Father. And that takes us from Hebrews one through seven all the way up to Hebrews eight, where Jesus is the one who enacts the new covenant between us and God.

And what we see is that he inaugurates this new covenant both as supreme high priest who is able to do this and also as the final and perfect sacrifice as the lamb of God for the people.

He's the one who cleanses our sin and he's the one who represents us before the Father in this dual mediatorial work of Jesus as high priest.

Now that takes us up to chapter 10. Of Hebrews, where the book begins to shift now into practical elements.

Hebrews one through nine has been talking about what Jesus does and how Jesus is supreme over everything that has come before him.

How all of human history has been leading to and culminating in Christ. That's what Hebrews one through nine is doing.

Hebrews 10 is now talking about the practicals. In light of all of that, in light of everything that Jesus has done, all of his work to make us into a redeemed people of grace, this is what you're supposed to do about it.

And he says this. In light of all of that, let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering for he who is promised is faithful.

And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

Now, when he says the day drawing near, he's talking about the day of Christ. He's talking about the day when

Jesus Christ returns. And essentially, he has given us three things that we are supposed to be doing as we await for Jesus to return.

Three things. The first, as the church, this is not a message to the individual here.

This is a message on what we are supposed to be doing collectively together until Jesus Christ returns.

Number one, we are to hold fast to the gospel. Number two, we are to stimulate one another towards gospel living.

And number three, we are not to forsake the gathering of the church.

So let's jump right in on these three points as we close out this series together.

The first point is, as we await Jesus's return, we are to hold fast to the gospel.

The text says, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

As the gathered people of God, we hold fast to a confession, and we have a communal story, a gospel narrative that binds us together, and we are supposed to hold dearly to that identity, to that gospel, to that confession, because it is central to our identity.

Just like every single nation on earth has a story of their beginnings, America has one, other countries have one, we have a story of our beginning.

We have a narrative that binds us together as a nation. The Bible calls us a people, a holy nation.

We have a narrative that binds us together and gives us citizen identity. And what

Hebrews makes clear, and what all of the rest of the New Testament makes clear is that our story, the story of our people, the people of God, is a communal story, a corporate story.

And essentially, this is what the Bible unpacks about us. From all eternity, we, the people of God, existed in the mind of God.

He knew us individually and corporately by name, even before naming things was even a thing.

Before Adam named the first animal, God already knew our names. He knew what we were gonna look like.

He knew which sperm was gonna attach itself to which egg. He knew our personalities. He knew our foibles.

He knew all of the ways that he was gonna bring us into a worldwide community of people.

And as space and time burst into existence, what was already eternally known in the mind of God began playing out exactly as God had planned with perfect accuracy.

And this is different from every other story of every other nation on planet

Earth. You see, every other nation was formed in response to something else.

America was formed in response to the oppression that we were feeling from the British government. Every other nation,

Rome was formed in response to Carthage, Greek was formed in response to Persia.

Every single empire, every single nation has a responsatory beginning.

They responded to their circumstances and that is how they began. Not so for the people of God. We were created, not as a response, but we were proactively and eternally known by God.

So when we get to human history, none of it is a surprise to God.

All of it is being used by God for his purposes. He already knew it. So when we look at the fall of man, that was not a deviation from God's plan.

It was part of it. When we look at the rising up of Abraham in the Mesopotamian region, or the exodus of Israel from Egypt, or when we look at the giving of the law, or the tabernacle in the temple, the sacrifices, the priest, the conquest of Canaan, or the installment of the kings, or the fact that the kingdom was soon divided.

When we look at the ministry of the prophets, or the downfall of Israel and Judah, when we look at the exile and the return from the exile, when we look at the silent years between the

Old and the New Testament, all of the entire Old Testament, where it seemed like God was abandoning his people, all of it was happening according to his plan because he eternally foreknew all of it before time and space even began.

Which means that God is using every moment of human history to accomplish his purposes, and his purposes have continued to move forward, not as a reaction to circumstances, but as a proactive approach to human history.

God was not playing cosmological chess, he was executing a perfect vision. Now, that's just the

Old Testament story. God knew about it, he planned for it, and when we get to the pages of the

New Testament, we start to see the picture, even a little bit more clearly, that God had always planned to send his one and only son to recapture it.

You see, the story of God's glory was to allow human beings to fail, to allow the world to fall into sin so that he could send his one and only son.

He did not send his son as a reaction to our sin, he always planned it. From the foundation of the world,

Jesus already knew that he was gonna be a sacrifice for sin, and in the fullness of time he came.

He came as the true and the better Adam who resisted temptation perfectly, where his ancestor did not.

He was the true son of Eve who was going to crush the serpent's head, he was the perfect child and seed of Abraham who was gonna bless the world by gathering a worldwide global family called the church.

He is the fulfillment of the law, perfectly obeying every single one of its demands. He is the true priest who represents us before God.

He's the true tabernacle, this place where man and God can meet together in safety, that's

Jesus. He's the true king, he's better than David, he's better than all of David's sons who's going to bring about God's perfect kingdom.

He's the true prophet who's gonna bring the message of healing back to the people of God, and what we see is that everything that was lost in the

Old Testament was purposefully found by Jesus Christ, the author of our faith, the first fruits of this new creation people.

He is both the cornerstone and the centerpiece of the entire church. He is the bridegroom and we are the bride.

He is the head and we are the body. What we are seeing is that all across human history, God has woven every bit of it together as a part of his plan and his redemptive story and centered all of it on Jesus Christ.

The gospel narrative that the Bible is working out across all scripture is that God intends to gather a worldwide global redeemed people of grace through the mediatorial work of Jesus Christ.

He would come and crush the serpent and take back control of the earth. He would ransom his people out of slavery to sin and transfer them into the kingdom of God.

He would ascend to heaven at the right hand of God to rule over his gathered people.

And he would send his spirit to not only bring in new members, but to equip and raise up and cause other people inside the church to be mature and to grow in the grace of Christ so that over the last 2000 years, what we are seeing, if you look at all of human history and how

God has been working, King Jesus has gloriously ruled over his church by the ministry of the

Holy Spirit, gathering, assembling, and amassing a church over the last 2000 years that he is one day going to call home to surround his heavenly throne with praise.

He is going to welcome Christians from every tribe, tongue, and nation. He's going to welcome

Jews from the Old Testament and he's going to welcome Gentiles from the

New Testament into his heavenly kingdom to be his citizens. And we are going to live together as a community of people for all of eternity.

That is our story in a nutshell. And at the center of it is

Jesus Christ, who is the one that, that's the one that we cling to. Jesus is what we hold fast to.

We cling to God's eternal plan, the Satan -destroying, soul -saving, Jesus -centric, spirit -empowered, global redeemed human gathering plan that God has been working out through all of human history and he will continue to work out until he is finished.

And the gates of hell are not gonna thwart that plan that God has set in motion. And we can have confidence in that plan because the text tells us here in Hebrews that Jesus Christ is faithful.

This is not an educated guess and this is not like playing the lottery. This is not like getting the weather on TV.

It might happen, it might not. This is not someone's opinion. This is not waiting on the next end of the world prophecy to see if it comes true.

This story has, is, and will continue to work itself out with perfect clarity until the end of time because it's his story and he is faithful.

So that is the first thing as Christians we are supposed to do while we await Jesus's return.

We are to wait as people who cling to a confession. We are to be people who hold fast to a story.

We're to be a story people, a confessional people and a gospel -centered people who hold onto the narrative with everything that we have.

Now, before we continue, I just wanna look at this word hold fast here. See, the word hold fast in the text comes from a word that means to hold onto something for dear life.

So in the context of this passage, we are to hold onto that story, that narrative, that gospel that has bound you and I together as a church.

We are to hold onto that for dear life. Let me give you an example. Imagine that you were caught in the middle of a hurricane.

Your only hope is to reach out and strain to grab onto something that is solid or else you'd be blown away.

You need to grab onto something that's immovable, something that's gonna keep you from being blown down by the winds that are assaulting you.

And listen, you're not gonna have any hope at all if you reach out and the only thing that you grab is a handful of grass. You're gonna have no hope if you wrap your arms around the trunk of a small tree.

You're gonna have no peace even in a telephone pole because it could soon be toppled over.

No, if you're stuck in the elements like this, in this kind of furious storm, then the only hope you have is to grab hold of something that is anchored to a rock, something that is cemented into place, something that the wind is never gonna move.

And when you find that, you cling to it. You hold onto it for dear life.

You hold fast to it. You hold on in such a way that's gonna cause muscular pain for weeks to come.

But in that moment, you don't care about any of that. All you do is cling. Well, in the same way, beloved,

God has given you his truth and his gospel as an anchor for our soul. We don't live in a calm and safe world.

We live in a place where the gales of hell are gonna blow on us with all of their might and they're gonna look to uproot the people of God.

This world, our flesh and the devil are our greatest adversaries and they are blowing.

And our only safety is not pretending like the storm does not exist, but it's clinging to the gospel.

Our only hope is not trying to go on about our lives as if there is nothing happening.

Our hope is in being rooted to, anchored to, clinging to the gospel. That's our only hope.

And as we wait through the midnight hours, while the winds whip and do their best, we wait, we cling, and we hold on, knowing that Jesus Christ is going to return and calm the storm.

He's the one who's gonna come and call us out of a world that is tossed about like a wayward ship and he's gonna call us out into the calm waters of eternity where we will never sink, where we will never be moved, and where we will never be assaulted again.

We cling to his word right now, knowing that soon he is going to come and he's going to calm the storms and he is going to call us home.

So as the people of God, the first thing that we do as we wait, as we wait clinging to the gospel, that really is our only anchor.

The second thing that we do that the text tells us that we are to be doing as the church while we wait is we are to stimulate one another.

The author of this passage tells us, let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.

Now, there's two words here that I want you and I to take notice of.

The first word is consider and the second word is stimulate. We have to understand what those two words mean because we cannot really understand and know how to live out this passage if we do not understand what these two words mean.

To consider in the Greek is katanoeo, katanoeo, which means to give mental energy and focus to something.

It means to think about it and to ponder it and to consider the solution. This word does not connote idle mindedness or mere acceptance.

It communicates that number one, there's an identifiable problem that needs to be solved and number two, the only way to go about solving that is by giving considerable mental energy to it.

So when the text of Hebrews says number two, let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, it is assuming that there's a problem that is keeping us from love and good deeds and we need to consider it so that we can stimulate one another to do it.

Now, what do you think the problem is that this word is alluding to or this text is alluding to?

What is keeping us from love and good deeds? Well, I think in the context of this passage, it's rather obvious.

While the people await the return of Christ, they're likely to drift away from showing love and doing good deeds to one another because of the problems that are happening in their lives.

See, this passage was written when the church was being persecuted. So when problems were mounting and when

Jesus's return seemed to be taking a little bit longer than they had expected and when the world looked more sinister and more powerful than they had ever imagined and their flesh was failing and when

Satan was attacking them on every side and when the gale force winds of hell were raising up to do their worst, instead of love and good deeds, they were prone to sin and so are we.

When problems in life come up, we're apt to worry and despair, to experience paranoia and discouragement, infighting and bickering, bitterness and unforgiveness and a whole lot of negative creaturely emotions.

When the winds are roaring against us, which the Lord promised was going to happen until the moment that he returned, but when that occurs, men and women of faith all throughout history have been more likely to faint and become discouraged than to love and do good works.

We're more like the disciples than we would ever dare to imagine. Just like Peter, in a moment of brilliance, we say, you're the

Christ, the son of God and we feel proud of ourselves when we make those kind of confessions, but in the very next moment, we're filled with confusion and attempting to rebuke the

Lord. Like Peter, we get out of the boat with emboldened faith only to sink at the first sight of resistance.

We're all the willing to watch out and pray when Jesus is popular. But when the crowd surround him to crucify him, we turn on him and we're found sleeping.

You see, pain and struggle does something to us that the writer here is alluding to. He's calling each of us not to allow pain to cause drift in our lives, not to allow our idle thoughts to overtake us, not to allow impatience to cause us even for a moment to be discouraged or disappointed.

And notice what it says. We are not to use our mental powers of reflection to just stimulate ourselves.

We are not called in this passage to stimulate ourselves to love and good works. We are called to use them to stimulate one another.

So what we're seeing here is that pain causes the group, the church to lose hope and our job as individual members is to care for one another.

To stimulate one another. It's like a pair of soldiers on the wall of a castle. We are at our best when we are looking out for one another.

You can imagine this castle that has on three sides some of the greatest and most well -focused soldiers scanning the horizon.

No enemy is ever gonna come near the castle gates when those soldiers are on the wall. That those three sides are an impenetrable fortress, but yet, if you can imagine on the fourth side, you have a group of soldiers who are fast asleep.

Maybe they've taken for granted that the other three sides are so safe. Now, want the enemy identify that side as the best place where they're going to attack on that weakened edge?

In the same way, the church can flourish on three sides of it, but won't the enemy come and attack the people of God if we have a weakened side?

You see, here's kind of the point. If we adopt the American ideal that this is my life, my faith,

I'm gonna do me, you go do you, then if we adopt that sort of lifestyle, the church is going to be vulnerable to attack.

It's when a single sheep wanders away from the flock that they are attacked by the wolf. It's when a single stray dolphin wanders away from the pod that it's attacked by the killer whale.

So what do we think is gonna happen to us as Christians if we're all just swimming about doing our own thing, refusing to herd together, refusing to stimulate one another, primarily focused upon our life, our goals, our motives, and our ambitions, and yet we come together once a week, and we really don't know one another, but we just come together and take communion together and sing together, but yet really it's our life, it's our faith, it's our decision to go to church.

When we think that way, we are vulnerable to attack. You see, implicit in this verse is the teaching that we are to wait for Christ together.

We are to consider together how to stimulate one another, not ourselves, we are to consider the fact of how can we care deliberately and intentionally for one another so that we can inspire one another and stimulate one another to good deeds, and that requires us to be together.

Right here in the text is the biblical teaching that we are not responsible for ourselves.

Now, we are culpable for our actions, absolutely, but we are to worry about one another and not ourselves.

Our job is to care for others and not just to care for ourselves. Our job is to notice when other people, when their love grows cold and we are to consider with every fiber of our being, how can we help them become heated up again for Christ?

Our job is to look out for our brothers and sisters and to encourage them towards godliness and righteousness and to stop worrying so much about ourselves.

The text is essentially saying, others are gonna worry about you, you're gonna have a whole church who's worried about you, you need to be focused on them.

You see, the biblical vision of what it means to be the church is to be a community of people who are invested in one another, who are committed to one another, who have ceased being individuals and have started assimilating into the group or into the whole.

People who are more concerned with loving, caring, and ministering to others than taking care of themselves.

And when we do that, we become impenetrable. We become strong.

When we throw away this godless notion of American individualism, instead of taking care of ourselves and looking out for number one, and we start actually caring about the group, and start actively trying to know the members of the group and love the members of the group and participate in the lives of the members of the group, then and only then do we become the kind of people who wait well for the return of Christ.

Then we become the kind of people that no matter what the storm does, no matter what this life throws at us, no matter what the world tries to do to us, no matter what fiery arrows of Satan are shot at us, no matter how weak any one individual member of our group feels at any given moment, all of that, we would be united together and together we would stand and we would be immovable.

The church fails when it devolves into individualism. This is the same thing that's true for a herd of animals.

A herd of animals is only as strong as its weakest members. That's why they herd together. That's why they go together.

That's why they don't leave their weak behind. The church ought to be the same thing. We ought to be a people who are herded together for the good of each other, never leaving people behind.

That's why the word church actually means assembly and not a group of individuals. That's why we're even called sheep in the

Bible because we're supposed to be a herd. That's why we're called bride because we are collectively attached to Jesus Christ.

Jesus doesn't have a harem of a bunch of different brides. Jesus has one bride and we are all collectively a part of it.

We're a group. This is why we're called a body because while there are many members of a body, we're all united together.

You don't have rogue fingers and thumbs that are going off and doing their own thing. You have a body that is working together for the good of the body.

You see, there is no biblical precedent whatsoever for American individualism. There's no church in all of her glory as a collection of disparate parts who simply attend a weekend gathering.

There is a gathered people of God who look out for one another and who consider how to minister to one another and that is what the church is.

That word consider teaches us that it is our duty as the people of God, as the redeemed gathering, to actively put energy and effort into the love and care of others.

This applies generally to the whole church, but practically it applies to the local body of believers that you call home.

That word guarantees that we're gonna be active in each other's lives, considering how to motivate one another to live like Christ until he returns.

And of course, we're not gonna be able to do this perfectly. But if we are all committed to each other, then we're going to do it better.

Think about it this way. If you are unknown to a group of people, then you have no one but yourself to look out for you.

You have no one but yourself to love you. You have no one but yourself to care for you.

And when that happens, and when you fall, you are much more likely to overlook your error. You are much more likely to explain away your sins.

You are much more likely to justify your lack of love or to allow yourself to remain in spiritual immaturity because by yourself and on your own, the default mode of your heart is to gravitate towards comfort and self -justification.

If you are unknown, if you are not connected, if you are not participating, then you have only one person looking out for you and that person is the most unreliable person in your life and that person is you.

It's actually better for us to be known. It's better for us to be vulnerable.

It is better for us to have other people in our lives looking at us and loving us.

Now, don't get me wrong. Being known is hard. Being known is vulnerable.

Being known grinds our sense of self -preservation and exposes our character flaws and it brings our sin out to the light and it demonstrates all of the ways that we fall short and it's painful to our sinful psyches and egos.

But when we do it, when we really embrace community and vulnerability and we forget about preserving our sense of safety, when we let others in, and instead of one set of eyes looking at us that's really not objective at all, but when we let the herd look at us, caring for us, seeking the best for us, then it really will be for our good and it will be for the good of the entire church.

And again, while that is hard for us, it is actually the very best thing for us. It is what we need. And it's a feature of community in life that helps us wait well as a church who eagerly longs for Jesus to return.

Now, I mentioned that we must understand two words in this verse and if we wanna understand the verse at all, we need to understand the two words, considering and stimulating.

And we've devoted the lion's share of our energy so far to the word consider and I think that it's a very good reason for us to do that and I'm glad that we were able to consider that, but I do wanna briefly mention what this word stimulate actually means because I want you to know the nature of your ministry in the lives of others.

Okay, great, we've proven now, we've proven that individualism doesn't work, that individualism is not biblical, that we are to be known and vulnerable within the community.

I think we've demonstrated that from the text, but then what do we do?

How do we care? How do we show love and support to someone else? How are we to be active in their lives?

That's where this word stimulate comes in. This word stimulate, parasouksmos, means rousing someone else to activity.

It means passionate action in another person's life that would cause them to go in a different direction.

Parasouksmos, you could use of a lieutenant who's shaking a sleeping soldier so that they will stand guard on their post.

It could be used of a friend who passionately pleased with his brother or sister to not put themself in a compromising situation with another person.

It could be used of a Christian brother or sister who confronts a fellow believer with their sin and without shaming or guilting, urges them to repent and to follow the

Lord. Now, I wanna be very clear right here, this is not meddling, this is not nosiness, this is not busybodying type of behavior, the

Bible expressly condemns that. This is not combative, shaming, guilting or competitive, this is out of love.

This is Christ -like love for others. This is loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and loving our neighbor as ourself.

This is caring so deeply for the group that we are willing to enter into the lives of others and walk with them towards Christ and motivate them towards Christ and help them and point them and pick them up when they fall down as we walk towards Christ.

Now, let's be honest, sometimes we are going to stumble and as Americans, let's just be honest about it, our preferred method of dealing with our fall is to stand up, look around and pretend that we never fell down.

It's to look around to see if anyone else noticed and while everyone else around us is also right along with us pretending that nothing happened.

That's the kind of game that we wanna play when we sin. I don't know if you've ever tripped and fallen in middle school, the first thing you do is look around to see if anyone noticed and if that person is a kind person in America, then they will pretend like you did not just fall down.

If they're a mean person, they will shame you and they will guilt you, but if they're at least a kind American person, they will pretend like you didn't fall so that they can try to preserve your ego.

But neither one of those are actually good. Everyone knows that you fell if you were known.

You can hide and then no one knows, but if you're actually known in the community, then everyone knows that you fell and instead of pretending to preserve your ego, they're the very first ones to scoop you up.

They're not gonna point you to your fall, they're gonna point you to Christ and his cross and they're gonna embrace you as you decide to walk in that direction.

So that's what it means. For us to consider how to stimulate one another is to be in each other's lives and to look at each other's lives and to be there when each other falls so that we can stimulate one another and encourage one another and point each other to the gospel of Jesus Christ as we walk together as people who are known by each other and known by God.

That's the second point that we learn in our text today. The final point that this text elucidates for us is that if we want to be the church, then we cannot forsake the gathering.

The text tells us, let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

So as we cling to the gospel, like a man hanging on to a metal pole during a hurricane, and as we stimulate one another to gospel living as people who are invested in each other's lives and lovingly pointing each other to Christ, we cannot forsake the gathering.

We cannot forsake the gathering of the church. What does the author mean here?

Well, the author of this passage is writing to a church that was being highly, highly persecuted.

At the time this book was written, men and women were being thrown into jail for their faith. They were being beaten for loving

Jesus and even killed for believing that he was the Messiah. So as you can assume, the church actually was moving underground.

Instead of meeting in large assemblies in public, they were gathering together in houses. They were meeting weekly on the

Lord's day wherever it was safe to meet so that they could cling to the gospel together and be reminded of its truth together and stimulate one another to love and good works together.

And what the writer of Hebrews is basically admonishing these people to do is to not stop gathering.

Sure, they're not able to gather out in public. Sure, they're not able to gather in large crowds, but don't stop meeting together in one another's homes.

Don't let the problems that you're facing force you to forsake the gathering. He is very subtly and directly reminding them all at the same time that their entire identity is tied to the fact that they are a gathered people of God.

So they must gather if they're gonna be encouraged. They must gather if they're gonna cling to the gospel.

They must gather if they're gonna be stimulated to love and good works. And they must gather if they're gonna wait faithfully on the return of Christ.

Even if the gathering becomes dangerous and it causes them to lose their sense of safety, they are not to forsake the gathering.

Now today, we certainly don't face anything like these Christians were facing, but we do forsake the gathering.

Today, we forsake the gathering when we don't feel like going. Today, we forsake the gathering when we've had a long week at work and we just wanna sleep in.

Today, we forsake the gathering when our priorities cause the church to be squeezed out of our life, but other things still get in.

Today, we forsake the gathering because it slips our minds and we forgot to actually go. Today, we forsake the gathering for countless myriad of reasons.

And trust me, we've mentioned this. While there are legitimate reasons to not be present when the people of God gather, there are many illegitimate reasons that violate the heart of this text and that cause us to prioritize other things above the gathering of the people of God.

And I think the fundamental reason at the heart of all of those is that we have forgotten who we are.

We've treated the church as if it's an optional spiritual activity in our week. It's not.

It's who we belong to. In the same way that I cannot disassociate myself from being a

Caucasian male, I cannot, as a Christian, disassociate myself from the church.

And to forsake that gathering is to forsake my own Christian identity. We have forgotten that we are not in charge of our lives, but that we are slaves of Christ, that He is our

Lord, that His word is our guide. And obedience to Him, while it does not save anyone, it demonstrates whether or not and how and to what degree we actually love

Him. We have forgotten that we are not a collection of individuals with ideas, opinions, and preferences, but instead a body who is connected to Christ.

We have forgotten that that body is meant to have unity. How can you have unity if you're not even present?

Unity in the gospel, unity in the way that we treat one another, unity of mission.

That's what we learn in week one. We can't have any of those things if we forsake the gathering, we just can't.

When we forsake the gathering, we forget the call of God to love one another. And in that love to serve one another, and in that service, we are to be dedicated to one another.

That's what we learn in week two. And we can't have any of that if we forsake the gathering. We can't have any of that if we hold back and refuse to be known.

We can't have any of that if our physical bodies or in this season of coronavirus, if we're not gathering together in the means by which the church gathers.

We cannot really love one another and serve one another and be devoted to one another if we're not there.

When we forsake the gathering, we forget that God the Father has ransomed us out of the kingdom of Satan and out of the kingdom of darkness, and he's made us citizens of his brand new kingdom here on earth right now and in the kingdom that's gonna be in heaven for all of eternity.

And he expects us as citizens to be active. When we forsake the gathering, we forget that God the

Son has purchased us and made us his slaves so that we would joyfully, humbly, and lovingly do his bidding.

He says in John 14, 15, if you love me, you will obey my commands. Well, isn't it a command to gather?

And when we purposefully avoid the gathering, aren't we being disobedient? Aren't we demonstrating that there's a part of our heart that really is not that in love with him?

Aren't we demonstrating that there's something that demands more of our affection and attention than the thing that he died for?

And listen, I don't ask these questions to shame or to guilt anyone. Please don't hear it that way.

I'm just asking that we would consider, this text says that we would consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.

I'm asking these questions to cause you to consider and to stimulate us towards viewing the church in the way that Jesus views the church.

This isn't about just the shepherd's church. It's not about the church that you call home. If you're not a part of the shepherd's church and you're listening to this, this is about the church and we are to be active in it.

We're to make it a priority in our life. I'm asking these questions so that we would consider it in that light because as we learned last week, when we forsake the gathering, we forget that it is the spirit of God who created us to be a gathering.

He animates us to be a gathering. He leads, guides, and teaches us as a gathering. It's the spirit of God who illuminates truth when we gather.

It is the spirit of God who empowers us for mission as we scatter. It's the spirit of God who causes the preaching of the gospel to be written on our hearts as we gather.

It's the spirit of God who equips every single member who gathers to love and serve one another when we gather.

Gathering is essential to what it means to be a Christian. And as we've learned this week, it is that God -created,

Christ -purchased, spirit -empowered church that's to hold fast to the gospel together until Christ returns to call us home.

It's this triune -centric gathering of people who are to stimulate one another towards Christ as we wait for him to return.

And it is us, the people of God, together, who are to participate in the gathering, never forsaking it until Jesus calls us home.

This is why the author of Hebrews, after everything that he has said in chapters one through nine, says this.

Let us, the people of God, hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.

For he who promised is faithful. And let us consider, let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.

All the more as you see the day drawing near. So now as we, the

Shepherd's Church, await the return of Christ together, it is my prayer that we would be the church, that we would be the church in unity, that we would be the church in love, that we would be the church in the spirit, and that together we would hold fast to the gospel, that we would be involved in one another's lives and that we would stimulate one another to Christ.

And that we would never, as long as we're a church, forsake the gathering as we eagerly await our

Lord's return. And that we would be one Lord together. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for this series.

And Lord, you know that I am not usually fond of topical series.

I would much rather preach through a single book of the Bible and go verse by verse, because I just think your word has unique power when it's preached that way.

But Lord, I do thank you for this series where we could examine four fundamental characteristics of who the church is, that we are the church in unity, in love, in spirit, and we're the church even as we wait.

Lord, I pray that this series would have been helpful. Lord, I pray that this series would be encouraging.

Lord, I pray that this series will even be challenging. Lord, I do pray that the words of your scripture would jostle us.

They would cause us not to forsake the thing that you died for. That we would love the gathering of your people.

That we would prioritize the gathering of your people. That we wouldn't make excuses to miss the gathering of your people, but we would do everything and anything that we can to be present and participating when your people gather.

And Lord, as we do that, I pray that we would gather well and that we would wait for your return well. That we would cling to your gospel for hope.

That we would be involved in each other's lives and stimulating one another to live like Christ and to love

Christ and to wait for Christ. And Lord, I pray that as long as you deem necessary for this church to gather and to meet, that we would do it with faith and hope and love in Christ.