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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim, Pastor
Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank You for the reminders we've already had about how blessed we are to be given unto Your Son, Jesus Christ, given to each other. That You have given us Your Son so that with Him You will freely give us all that we need.
As You work all things together for the good of those who love You, who are called according to Your purpose. That we have absolute confidence that we are right with You because of Your Son. And that nothing can separate us from Your love, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
That this is the confidence of all Your saints. Father, I pray that You would help us today to glorify Your name, to rejoice in Your truth. As we read this passage of Scripture together, I pray that You would nourish us, that You would work Your will in us.
I pray that there would be, by Your grace, by the ministry of Your Spirit, that there would be a warm amen in our lives concerning the truth that we find here in Your Word. Give us direction. Strengthen us according to Your will.
Guide us according to Your truth. We pray for these graces looking to Your Son, Jesus Christ, the One with whom You are well pleased. Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Acts. The book of Acts chapter 15.
We will begin reading in verse 30 here in a moment. Acts 15, beginning in verse 30. As we think about where we are at in the book of Acts, we recognize that things look a whole lot different now than they did at the very beginning.
Luke is writing to his patron, Theophilus, setting out an orderly account of the things that he has heard, that he may be all the more confident in the things that he has been taught. He began with the Gospel showcasing the life of Jesus Christ in a sequential order, showing his patron and all that Luke would write for, including us, who Jesus is and what He accomplished.
How He brought about exactly what the Father desired of Him. And now here in the book of Acts, we are not looking merely upon the acts of the apostles, but truly the acts of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.
The fact that Jesus Christ is at the right hand of the Father, that He has sent forth His Holy Spirit, that He reigns in power, and He is impacting the world through His believers, through His saints, that that point is made again and again throughout this book.
What began as a very small group in Jerusalem is now many groups scattered throughout the known Roman Empire. And it's not just Jews who are recognizing in Jesus of Nazareth their Messiah, but Gentiles coming to faith in Jesus of Nazareth, recognizing Him to be their Savior as well.
As this church expands and as it is changing, controversy arises. Yes, there's persecution from without, but there's controversy from within. What does it mean to truly be saved? What does it mean to have Jesus Christ as the one who has died on the cross for you and forgiven you of your sins and reconciled you to God?
Do you have to be a Jew first? Do you need to be circumcised? Do you need to keep the law of Moses? I mean, Jesus of Nazareth indeed is the one who has fulfilled all of these prophecies, so how can you believe upon Him and have Him be your Savior if you don't adopt everything that's there in the first place in the Old Testament?
These questions were of primary concern in Acts 15. But they had a counsel and clarification was given as the apostles met and reflected upon what God had already done through Christ, even preaching from the Old Testament prophets and saying, salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.
You can be a Christian and turn to God and be saved, and you don't have to keep the law of Moses, and you don't have to be circumcised. And with that clarity comes an exhortation from the Jerusalem council to the Gentiles who are turning to God in faith that they would bear with their Jewish brethren, that they would keep themselves away from everything associated with the idle industry of the ancient Roman Empire.
Things like sexual immorality, eating meat with its blood from animals that have been strangled and so forth. So, in affirmation of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the free grace of God comes also the admonition to love one another and humbly bear with one another.
This letter was sent out by the apostles and elders by the hand of Paul and Barnabas, Judas and Silas, and they take this word back to Antioch where the controversy really first blew up, and they bring the word back to Antioch to encourage the brethren there about the unified word of the apostles, the unified word of the church in recognition of what God had already declared clearly in the scriptures concerning the gospel.
That leads us to verse 30 of Acts 15. I invite you, if you are able, to stand with me as we read God's holy word. This is the word of the Lord through His servant Luke by His Holy Spirit. So, when they were sent off, they came to Antioch, and when they had gathered the multitude together, they delivered the letter.
When they had read it, they rejoiced over its encouragement. Now Judas and Silas, themselves being prophets, also exhorted and strengthened the brethren with many words, and after they had stayed there for a time, they were sent back with greetings from the brethren to the apostles.
However, it seemed good to Silas to remain there. Paul and Barnabas also remained in Antioch teaching and preaching the word of the Lord with many others also. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
You may be seated. Acts 15, verse 30 to 16, verse 5, if you read it over and over again, three short little stories, somewhat different from each other in their focus, and yet the word strengthened pops up every time.
The church stayed together, and they listened to the preaching of the word and the teaching of the word and rejoiced in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they were strengthened. Paul and Barnabas couldn't decide on whether to bring John Marker to leave them behind, so they had to go their separate ways, and they went out and did missionary journeys in separate directions, and yet the church was still strengthened in the Lord.
Paul ended up back in Lystra where he had been stoned and left for dead, and there he found a disciple by the name of Timothy, and he brought him alongside and brought him with him on his missionary journeys as a kind of spiritual father to Timothy, and as they went, they preached, and the church was strengthened.
Luke is telling Theophilus, how did this happen? How is it that the gospel was preached throughout the whole known world and has turned the world upside down? How is it that Christianity has spread so far and has such a profound impact in our world today?
Luke is explaining how that happened. Look, the Christians, they got together, and they stayed together, and they stuck around with each other, and they put their focus upon Jesus Christ, and they were strengthened, and look, they didn't always get along, and they had to go separate ways, but in so doing, they did so for Christ, and more people were strengthened that way, and look, disciples were being made and brought along into new areas, and look, the church was strengthened that way as well.
I'm thankful for passages like these where it appears to be nothing more than Luke's travel log, an interesting tidbit in how things went for the Apostle Paul, but this is instructive to us. It is a practical, real-life example of the priorities that Jesus Christ set down for His saints.
A question is often asked by sincere Christians who love Jesus, and they want to know what makes for a strong church. What is the direction of a strong church? What is a healthy church, if you prefer the term healthy, but the term in our passage keeps on being strengthened, so we'll go with that one.
What makes for a strong church? What is the direction of a strong church? And the answer to that has been quite varied, not just in our day, but throughout church history, but just given in our day, the answers are widely disparate.
Maybe a healthy or a strong church is one that meets the felt needs of the people, so let's do a survey. Maybe it's one that generates good reviews, so let's have a good PR department. Maybe it's producing strong personalities that can impact business.
Maybe it has to be a church that is ever-expanding, never grows smaller, always gets bigger. Nickels and noses always going up on the chart. That's a strong church. Maybe it's about creating community.
People feel that they are part of a community. Now we have a strong, healthy church. Maybe it's fighting social injustices, and if a church doesn't fight social injustice, then it's not a strong church, a genuine church.
Maybe a strong and healthy church is one that is deeply, deeply doctrinal, who know what the perichoresis of the ontological trinity is, because I don't. Maybe it's a church that is very focused on global missions, and they have the flags of all the nations in their auditorium.
Maybe it's one that has a systematic evangelistic approach, and they've got the city mapped, and they've got the program, and people go out, and they do evangelism systematically. People think that perhaps a strong church is one that is apparently diverse, according to somebody's definition of diversity.
Maybe it has to be family integrated, otherwise it's not a strong church. Maybe it has to be traditional. If it's traditional, well, then that is what makes for a strong church and a healthy church. Maybe it has to be confessional, sacramental, patriotic.
We don't have to guess. We don't have to guess. It is neither so specific, truncated, limited. A strong church is directed by Christ, unto Christ, for Christ. He said, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
He did not promise to build a personality-driven organization. He did not promise to build a non-profit organization, a non-governmental organization. He did not promise to build a political action committee.
He did not promise group therapy. He did not promise a lot of things. He builds his church by his spirit, through the preaching of his gospel, and he transforms the world. Strengthening the church, as we see in Acts, in our passage, strengthening the church includes staying, a kind of staying.
It includes separating, but a particular kind of separating. And in all things, it includes submitting. Submitting not to some foreign standard, but submitting to Jesus Christ as our King. And it's important that we observe this, because we tend to prioritize the self.
We tend to prioritize the self, rather than our Savior, when it comes to church. They're sinful natures. We tend to prioritize the self. We use the self and our experiences as the interpretive lens through which we evaluate church.
But we have to prioritize the Savior. So let's talk about why we stay for Christ, in verses 30 -35. The emphasis really is on staying. Notice that they came back to Antioch. Paul and Barnabas had been there for a while, just to remind ourselves, the last verse of Acts 14.
Remember that Paul and Barnabas had come home from their missionary journey, where they had gone through Cyprus and through Galatia, and then they reversed course and came back through, strengthening the churches, and then they came back to Antioch.
And notice verse 28 of Acts 14, so they stayed there a long time with the disciples. They were staying there. They were putting in the weeks, they were putting in the years with the disciples there in Antioch, but then something disrupted their staying.
The controversy. Men came down from Jerusalem saying, hey, all these Gentiles need to be circumcised, and they have to keep the law of Moses if they're going to be saved. Or you could read it, they may be saved now, but in order to stay saved and to be welcomed and accepted into the church genuinely, then they need to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses.
Well, that's why Paul and Barnabas left. We've got to go up to Jerusalem. We have got to get this settled, get this clarified. Read more about that in the book of Galatians. But when we come to this passage, we see they've come back to Antioch, but notice what they do when they get back to Antioch.
They gather the multitude together. They get together. They deliver the letter. They read it to everyone. And then there's rejoicing. There's encouragement. Judas and Silas, they start preaching. They start prophesying.
And then Paul and Barnabas stay there. Silas stays there. He doesn't go back to Jerusalem. And what are they doing? Verse 35, they remain in Antioch teaching and preaching the word of the Lord with many others also.
So it wasn't just Paul and Barnabas and Silas. Many others also were there, and they were preaching, and they were teaching, and they were gathering, and they were remaining. This is telling us something.
It's not just an observation that Christians get together, but it's a statement on why Christians gather and get together and stay together. There's a purpose for it. There's a reason for it. There's a good to it.
There's an objective to it. And the good that's being accomplished here is being associated with preaching, teaching, prophesying, sharing of the word, reading of the letter. We need to acknowledge this.
The reason why, I think, we need to emphasize that it is not a selfish thing. It is not a immature thing. It is not a sinful thing for Christians to gather and stick with it and to stay with it and to be together often.
Sometimes, perhaps for good reasons, but not good explanations, statements are often made about Christians about how all they do is just hang out in their churches. They're not enough out there. They need to go and go do there, go do this, and they're not out there doing.
They need to be out there doing. Our Lord loves it when we gather. Our Lord is pleased when we gather, when we gather for Him, when we gather for the reasons He's given to us. It's a good thing. It's not a bad thing that we gather and we spend time together and we seek to encourage one another and exhort one another in the truth of Jesus Christ.
That's a good thing. That's a beautiful thing. It's something that even the Apostle Paul, I mean, we see his journeys, we see him going to the far-flung places and risking his lives, but how often do we pay attention to these little passages where we see and he stayed there a long time.
That's part of the story too. All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth, Jesus Christ says. He says, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and lo, I am with you even to the end of the age.
And we hear the word go, and it's a good word, and we're going to talk about that in the next passage about why there's going and why there's separation among the saints. However, making disciples and teaching people requires a lot of gathering.
It requires a lot of staying. It requires a lot of stick-to-itiveness. And that's what's going on here in our passage. They're staying there for a long time. It's interesting, this term, look at verse 35, you see that Paul and Barnabas also remained in Antioch.
Now, that's the same word we've already looked at back at the beginning of chapter 14. Chapter 14, verse 3, where at Iconium, Paul and Barnabas stayed there a long time speaking boldly in the Lord. He was bearing witness to the word of His grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.
So, this word remaining in the Greek, we get our English word and we get our diatribe from it. And you know what a diatribe is. It's somebody who has one subject and won't get off it. And they're going to talk about it six ways from Sunday, repeating themselves and thinking that they're not repeating themselves because they've got to get this across to you.
They've got their one subject. They've got their one area of thought. And they're going to walk over that over and over and over again until all the dust is turned to hard-packed bedrock. And that's the idea of the word.
The idea of the Greek word is I'm going to stay in this spot and so occupy this spot that you're not going to see footprints anymore because it's all going to be hard-packed down. You're just going to know someone was here a long time and everything is just solid.
That's what they're doing. And while they're remaining there, they're coming back and forth. They're teaching material. They're talking about themes. They're preaching the Word again and again and again and again.
Having similar conversations with people again and again and again. There's a repetitiveness to it. From a pastoral perspective, from a shepherd's perspective, there's a lot about shepherding that is just plain repetitive and boring.
All of it good. And there's joy in it. But there's a lot of repetitiveness and Jesus knew what he meant when he told Peter, feed my sheep. So there is something good happening in the repetitive gathering of the saints and it's the work of the Word.
The letter is composed by the apostles and the elders with the whole church. They compose it. They write it all out. Since we have it in Acts, we know it's inspired scripture. Here it is, a God-breathed letter to Antioch.
You know about the letter to the Corinthians. You know about the letter to the Thessalonians. This is the letter to the Antiochians. It's really short. It's shorter than Jude. It's shorter than 3 John.
It's shorter than 2 John. But here it is. This is the letter to the church in Antioch. And it is read to them and they rejoice in its truth. They have heard the word of the Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit from the apostles of Jesus Christ who bring a word and they say this, we're going to clarify something here.
We never sent anybody to tell you that you have to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses in order to be saved. In other words, the way that we're saved is by Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. His person, His work.
The gospel that Paul and Barnabas were preaching in your midst and encouraging you with for so long, it's true. That's the actual message. That's the good news of the kingdom. So stick with it. And this causes a great deal of encouragement and joy.
And notice that Judas and Silas themselves being prophets also exhorted and strengthened the brethren with many words. Now, we're not told how many. We're not told how long they preached. We're not told about the way of their gathering.
But we know enough, don't we, from Acts chapter 2 that this was the custom of the church from its earliest days to gather and to be about the teaching and the preaching of the apostles, the doctrine of the apostles.
And they were gathering often to think about what it is that Jesus Christ had declared and revealed to His apostles. Now, prophets and apostles. We've already talked about those. They are the foundation of the church.
But Christ is the cornerstone. And whether we find apostles or prophets either Old or New Testament prophets, it doesn't matter what they are, if they're prophets and apostles, they are aligned to Jesus Christ who is the cornerstone.
So that what He said, they're saying. And He said that you search the scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life, but it is these that testify of Me. And so the prophets all proclaimed Christ and the apostles all proclaimed Christ and they were the foundation for the church.
And the foundation is being laid here in the book of Acts. That's what we're seeing. And we praise God that the foundation has been laid. We have a good foundation. It's been laid. And ever since the foundation was laid, Christ has continued to build His church.
And He's doing a fantastic job, I would say. A fantastic job of building His church all over the world with all kinds of people who keep on gathering together around the Word of God. I can't get away from the story of my friend Mitch Tillman, missionary to Mongolia, how he and his group had gone deep, deep into the Gobi Desert, into villages that no one had ever gone before.
And they found there the traditional worship of the Buddhism, the superstitions in their tribe. And they preached the Gospel there. And they gave them the Word of God in their own language. And they told them to believe upon Jesus Christ.
And some of them did. And they said, now you have to meet together and read this Word together regularly. This is how churches do. This is how Christians do. And you know, they didn't get back out to the deep Gobi Desert for five years.
Couldn't get back out there. Too hard, too difficult, too dangerous. They went back after five years, went back to the same yurt, and there they were, gathered together, reading the Word. That's what Christians do.
It's not unique to an American culture. It's not unique to a European culture. It's what Christians do according to the Word of God. We gather together around the Word to encourage one another so that we may have joy in this Word.
There's rejoicing. There's encouragement. There's strengthening. That's the result. That's the result. We're exhorted. The idea is that we are so rejoicing that we're cheerful all the way to our greeting of one another.
We're encouraged. We're comforted all the way to our souls. We're so comforted. And that we are strengthened. And the idea of being strengthened is not simply established, but even more so established.
Sometimes there's complaints about the established church. But the established church isn't a church that has a campus, a budget, and 50 years behind it. An established church is a church that is grounded and keeps on being grounded in Jesus Christ.
That's an established church. And so the people in gathering, they were helped, and they were edified, they were encouraged, they were stabilized, they were educated, and they were motivated a lot. Again and again and again.
Over and over. And that's why we stay for Christ. Why we stay. Why we gather. Why we keep on with it. Because we want to speak the Word of God into each other's lives. The actual scriptures, and in the light of Jesus Christ, encourage one another, and share reasons for joy with one another.
And we want to see one another grow up into the full measure of maturity who is Christ Himself. The priority of the Word is the priority of preaching. And I'm using that term very broadly. That priority is throughout the scriptures.
Consider that the very first thing God did after creating man in His own image, and breathing His breath of life into man, the very first thing He did with man was to speak to him. The image of God was made for the Word of God.
That we would bring glory to God. This is of the most essential essentials, is that we would have the Word of God. Deuteronomy 8, verse 3, Moses is retelling the story to the second generation. How is it that you're in the wilderness, and how is it that we're in the situation?
And what's coming up as we head off into the Promised Land? He's retelling them the story. So in Deuteronomy 8, verse 3, Moses says to Israel, he says, so God, He humbled you. He allowed you to hunger.
God allowed them to be hungry? I thought He was a good God. Oh, He is. That's why He let them be hungry. He allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna that you did not know, nor did your fathers know.
Why? Purpose statement. That He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone. But man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Not just Jews. Not just Israelites. Not just saints.
There is no life outside of the Word of God. There is no life outside of Jesus Christ. If you are cut off from God, cut off from the Word of God, and you're made in the image of God, then you're living in a life of death.
A way of death. Isaiah 8 .20 says, To the law and to the testimony, if they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no light in them. So we need the Word of God. We need the scriptures.
We need, as those made in the image of God, to be filled up with the Word of God. We need it more than our most necessary food. We should crave it like infants crave milk. God made this the priority. You know, in the architecture of a Baptist church, there is something in the DNA of the emergence of Baptists in church history where they just made the Word central.
Because, I mean, they were getting killed all the time because they didn't agree with certain confessions, and they didn't do the sacraments in a certain way, and so they were getting drowned and killed all the time.
So as Baptists were coming along, they just kept on keeping the Word of God central. And in many other traditions where the Word of God is central, you walk into one of their gathering places, one of their church houses where the family gathers regularly, and you're going to find a pulpit smack dab in the middle, sometimes elevated.
Why don't we do it the way the synagogues do it? Why don't we just all sit around the edge of a room? Well, cultures are different. Some places don't do that. But why is the pulpit center? You walk into some other churches, you're going to have the pulpit off to the side.
And the place for the sacraments is dead center, the place where you go and take the wafer and the cup and the baptismal sprinkle center is right there in the middle. What are they saying? Our centrality is around the elements, around the communion, around the sacraments, around the ordinances.
Why do we have a pulpit center up here? Because of a conviction that the Word of God is central, that the preaching of the Word, the teaching of the Word is central, not only central in our worship practices, but of course, therefore, central in our lives, our lives as Christians.
When we think about the gifts that Christ gives to the church from Ephesians 4, He gives those who teach, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. He gives those to the church for our good.
When we think about the qualification for elders, the difference between elders and deacons, not a whole lot, the main one is what? Elders are those who are apt to teach. So they're the shepherds and the overseers in the church as the under-shepherds of Jesus Christ, who's the true head of the church.
How are we to think about music in the church? Think about that. Colossians 3. Colossians 3, verse 16, and discussing music. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
The American evangelical church scene has been dominated by the wisdom of Rick Warren. You can only minister to so many people based on your music. Because he knows what it takes. But what is music according to the Scriptures?
What if our way of interpreting strong church or a strengthened church wasn't based upon our experiences and our self-opinions, but what if it was about how Christ views it? What do you do when you sing psalms?
What do you do when you sing hymns? What do you do when you sing spiritual songs? Yes, you praise the Lord. Yes, you rejoice in the gospel. But notice you're also teaching and admonishing one another.
You ever sing for the person right in front of you? More often we're concerned, oh, I'm going to stumble the brother or sister in front of me. They hear me singing. Hey, go for quality, but the main point is encourage those around you.
Sing psalms, hymns, spiritual songs to admonish and exhort and encourage one another. Some people say, well, I could never disciple others. I could never teach others the ways of the Lord. I'm just not skilled enough.
If you can sing, if you can sing the hymns, if you can sing the psalms, then you can make disciples. You can share the Word of God, the truths of God with each other around you and exhort them and encourage them and thereby live in obedience to Christ.
That's why we gather. We don't gather for the music. The music is to glorify Christ and to let the Word of Christ dwell among us richly. We also don't gather for miracles. We don't gather for miracles.
1 Corinthians 14 .26, Paul asks, How is it then, brethren, whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.
Let all things be done for edification. And in that entire chapter, what is he against? The chaos that comes from everybody trying to be a superstar Christian with amazing spiritual gifts. The point, time and again, is edification.
How are you serving one another? How are you loving each other? How are you encouraging each other in Jesus Christ? How are you speaking to one another? That's the concern. That's why we stay for Christ.
It's a very clear plan that Jesus has for building His church. And involved in building His church is that we would look like Him. That we would be built up, as we've been studying in Sunday school, be built up into the full stature of maturity.
Who is Jesus Christ Himself? And how do we do that? Let's turn in our Bibles to 2 Corinthians 3. 2 Corinthians 3. And we begin reading in verse 12. Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech, unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away.
Moses, in his ministry to Israel, met with God personally in the tabernacle of meeting and he came out with his face all aglow with the glory of God. And the children of Israel being confronted with such a mediator even as Moses, who was lowly, could not bear the glory of God glowing off of his face.
He had to put a veil over it so that they would not be scared and run away. It was like the same thing that happened to them when they were at Mount Sinai, when the mountain was aflame and the smoke was roaring off the top and the voice of God was coming down the mountain and the people said to Moses, you go up.
We don't want to have anything to do with it. And they ran away. It was like Mount Sinai in the face of Moses and they said, we can't look at it. And he put a veil over his face. So they could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away.
What's passing away? The Old Covenant's passing away. Verse 14,. But their minds were blinded. For until this day, the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament. In the reading of the Old Covenant, of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ.
Do you hear this? If you read the Old Testament with the veil down so that you're not seeing the glory of the face of Jesus Christ, you're reading in a blinded way. But, nevertheless, when one turns to the Lord, verse 16, the veil is taken away.
Praise God. Praise God that now we read the veil is off and we see the glory of Jesus Christ. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. We all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord throughout all the Scriptures, including the Old Testament, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
So here's what the Spirit of the Lord is doing. He is bringing the light of Jesus Christ from the Scriptures to you and showing it to you and is transforming you from glory to glory as you grow up into looking more and more like Christ all the time.
So that as we look at Christ in this word, we begin to look like Christ in this world. That is the promise of the grace of the New Covenant. It's Christ being written upon us and us being the letter of the Holy Spirit.
That's why we gather. That's why we gather. Hebrews chapter 10, we have the classic passage where we often turn to when we think about people who don't come to church or don't go to church. Talk about, well, I love Jesus, but they never go to church.
And sometimes the reason given has to do something with their own personal experiences. And yet, where is the part of the conversation in which we're saying, I'm going, I'm gathering, and I'm staying, and I'm coming together with the saints because of who Jesus Christ is and because of how I want to minister to others.
That needs to be in our vocabulary. That needs to be in our thinking. That needs to be a part of the way that we understand what it means to live as the people of Christ. Hebrews 10, verse 19, Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus.
See, there's the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant has been brought into the New Covenant in a satisfying, fulfilling way. And there's still a Holy of Holies, and everybody in Christ is in there. There's still blood that was offered, and it's the blood of Jesus.
Verse 20, By a new and living way, which he consecrated for us through the veil, that is his flesh, Jesus Christ, fully God, and still fully man, in his flesh as our high priest has brought us all the way to God, not part of the way, not to the boundary of the tabernacle, not to the holy place of the tabernacle, but into the Holy of Holies, to the very throne room of God.
Verse 21,. And having a 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.
This is how we are gathering, brethren, together. Verse 23,. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. Let's hold fast to the gospel and let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good words.
Let's think about each other, not in terms of, I wonder if so-and-so is going to affirm me today. You know, so-and-so, they didn't even acknowledge me last week. I'm going to sit back and watch and see if they even notice me today.
I'm going to share my personal concern with someone and I'm going to see whether or not they fully affirm me in my difficulties, in my perspective on it. What are we doing? Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more, as you see the day approaching.
Christ is the one who directs us. What's a strong church? What's a strong church? How do people get strengthened? What are strong Christians? They are those who are being exhorted and taught and rejoicing in the preaching of the Word of Jesus Christ.
And why we stay for Christ is not simply a matter of, I know it's good for me. It's a good discipline to have. I just don't feel as good when I don't go. Hey, start there if you have to. But what's the call?
That we would look at one another and say, how may I serve you? How may I encourage you? How may I share something with you about how much I think of Jesus Christ and how I think of Him as my everyday, every way Savior, and I'm going to pray that He is that way for you in all things.
Tell me more about what you're going through. I want to be for you. I want to share a Scripture passage that I have been meditating on and thinking about. I think it will encourage you, and I'm going to sing for you that you will be encouraged.
When our attention is so rearranged for the blessing and good of each other, seeking to strengthen one another, what are we doing other than exemplifying Christ and loving one another even as He has loved us, as He laid down His life for us so we lay down our lives for one another, and that will make for a strong church.
Let's pray. Father, we thank You for the time that You've given us in Your Word. I pray that it has been a blessing to us. I pray that we can rejoice in what we've considered today, the different passages that we've read together.
I pray that You would help us have wisdom, that we would consider each other with love, consider each other with care, that You would give us the wisdom to know how to minister to each other in just the way that would please You.
We pray these things for Christ's sake. Amen.
