160 - The Importance of Assembling Together [B]

Hebrews Lesson 160    May 21, 2009 

^NKJ Psalm 119:11 Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You!

We are in Hebrews 10 and we are coming to the end of the teaching section. As I've stated, there are 5 basic sections in Hebrews going back to the outline we haven't looked at in a long time. The 4^th section began with chapter 7:1 and extends down through 10:39, the end of chapter 10. This is really the centerpiece of the book of Hebrews, this whole epistle. If it's the center that means that that which the writer is writing to communicate is conveyed most heavily and most directly in this section. As we come to the end of the teaching section in chapter 10, he comes to a conclusion. That's why he has a "therefore" in verse 19.

^NKJ Hebrews 10:19 Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus,

That "therefore" brings us to the conclusion of the teaching section in the centerpiece of Hebrews. What this is going to tell us is that everything has sort of built to these three commands that you find in verses 19 through 25. 

This is going to be followed by a warning section which many people think is one of the most difficult warning passages of those in Hebrews. Then we get into the fifth section beginning in chapter 11 through the end of the epistle. That has two exhortation sections with it. 

Now last time we sort of hit the last 6 verses here, 7 verses, and did sort of a flyover. Tonight I want to get into a little more detail and to address some of the specifics that we find in this particular section.

So he begins with this conclusion.

^NKJ Hebrews 10:19 Therefore, brethren

He uses an adverbial participle of cause here, a present active participle of echo meaning to have or to hold or to have something as your possession. As an adverbial participle it's going to modify a main verb; but the main verbs don't come until verse 22, verse 23, and verse 24. There are three main verbs. This is one long sentence from 19 through 25. 

As I teach pastors on exegesis what you look for to get the main idea are the main clauses, the independent clause or clauses in a sentence. That tells you what the writer is talking about. Even if you have a long sentence (and there are a lot of additional ideas that are piled onto that one main idea), it's important to keep your eye on the ball and remember that everything else just feeds to and points to those main finite verbs. Those main finite verbs are the ones that are translated as a first person imperative. 

For those of you who like to learn about these things, that's called a cohortative. It's a first person imperative. In English we just have a second person imperative: "You do this." There's also a third person imperative. That is the idea: "Let them do" or "Let him do something." It's usually translated with that idea of "let." That to me always seemed kind of wimpy. It should be: "He must do this" or "He should do that." When you have a first person imperative, it's: "We should do this" or "We must do this." I really like the "must" because it makes it stronger. It seems have more of the imperatival idea than "let us" because that seems to communicate a little less strength and power to the imperative. It is a strong imperative here. 

So the participle in verse 19 is adverbial which means it modifies those three verbs in 22, 23, 24. Let us draw near, or we must or we should draw near, we must or we should hold fast, or we must or we should consider or think about one another. Those are the three main verbs in the three main clauses in this lengthy sentence. 

So he starts off with this adverbial participle of cause and it's going to have two objects to it because it's not stated even though it is in your English. In verse 21 you will have the word "having" in italics in verse 21.

^NKJ Hebrews 10:21 and having a High Priest over the house of God,

But he's just going to emphasize that these two reasons that underlie the three commands. He restates these reasons and they summarize everything he's said in chapter 7, chapter 8, chapter 9, and so far in chapter 10 which focuses on the complete and finished work of Christ on the cross which fulfills all the typology and all the symbolism and all the sacrifices that they had observed in the Old Testament. As he said again and again and again, those were repeated.  The high priest had to go through those sacrifices even for his own sin. They were insufficient, incomplete; but the death once and for all (which is a word repeated many times in this section) death of Christ on the cross, satisfied the Father and solved the sin problem completely for all time. 

So he comes to a conclusion because of that. Here's how I've synthesized or summarized these 7 verses.

Therefore brethren, because we have boldness to enter the holiest (that is into the presence of God in the heavenly temple) by the death of Jesus by a new and living way which He set apart for us through the veil that is His flesh; we must draw near, we must hold fast and we must think carefully about rousing one another to love and good works.

That's what he's saying and it all flows out of – now that we understand what Jesus did on the cross and all the dimensions of it. It's taken us a year to go through chapter 9 and chapter 10 dealing with all of that and see the complexity of what God accomplished on the cross through the death of Christ and the complexity of the sin problem. Now there is an imperative that flows out of that for believers in terms of their spiritual life and specifically for these Jewish believers who are about ready to abandon Christianity and go back to Judaism. This is his point. This is the focal point of why this letter to the Hebrews is written is to tell them that they need to draw near to God in fellowship, in daily fellowship, walking with Him and holding fast to the truth of God's Word and not giving up on doctrine, not thinking that well, doctrine really doesn't work. They have to think carefully about how to encourage each other because we're all in a spiritual battle. We're not isolated. We're not out there as individual soldiers with no interrelationship and no support team. That's the background for understanding this.

He says in verse 19:

^NKJ Hebrews 10:19 Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus,

^NKJ Hebrews 10:20 by a new and living way which He consecrated for us,

Or as I translated it earlier, "which He set apart for us by virtue of His death." That's the Greek word hagiosmos related to holiness, sanctification. All of those words indicate being set apart by God. 

…as the first fruits of His resurrection as well.

through the veil, that is, His flesh,

^NKJ Hebrews 10:21 and having a High Priest over the house of God,

Now what does the "house of God" mean? Your first blush response to that might be well, house of God – he's talking about Church Age believers, so we're talking about the body of Christ. Some people think that; but it's not talking about the body of Christ here. Actually the phrase "house of God" is used 4 times in the New Testament. It's used in this passage, and it's used three times in the gospels: in Matthew 12:4, Mark 2:26 and Luke 6:4. In each of those other 3 uses, it clearly refers to the Temple. It refers to the Temple in Jerusalem because it was still standing at that time. It's still standing at the time the writer of Hebrews is writing. 

But in the context of chapters 9 and 10, we haven't been talking about the earthly temple. We've been talking about how the furniture in the Tabernacle reflects the furniture in the heavenly temple which is the dwelling place of God in heaven and that it is Jesus Christ as the High Priest who entered into the presence of God in the heavenly temple and by virtue of His death He has been able to enter into the heavenly temple. So this is talking about His function as High Priest at the right hand of God the Father in the heavenly temple. This is not over the body of Christ or the church or the local church or anything like that. It is that He has now opened up a way into the very presence of God in the heavenly temple.

Then we come to verse 22, which brings us to the first of these three present active subjunctive verbs. There are three of them: let us draw near, let us hold fast and let us consider.

^NKJ Hebrews 10:22 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.

Now this first verb is from the verb proserchomai which in its more prosaic use (It's more common use) simply means to come to someplace. Erchomai is the Greek verb for coming, and pros has that idea of to or toward someplace. So it simply means to come someplace or to go someplace. But it is often used in the New Testament with the idea of closeness or fellowship or worship. Some of the places where it's used with a little more of that idea are Matthew 8:2, 9:20, 26:7. Acts 7:31 and 8:29 have a little more of that idea of closeness or fellowship or worship.

Frequently in the gospels it's used to speak of somebody coming to ask Jesus something. It has the idea of a teaching situation or a learning situation. Some of the places where it's used like that are in Matthew 8:5, 19, 9:14, 28, 13:10, 36; 15:30, 20:20. Matthew uses this verb a lot. It is a long list in a concordance of all the uses there. There are many, many more. I just selected those few as representative.

Paul uses the word one time in all of his epistles. He doesn't use it but once. There he uses it in a sort of an unusual sense. The main idea is something comes to something. So he uses it to talk about someone's words must conform to truth, to doctrine. That's the idea of "must come to the truth." So he uses it in a little bit of an idiomatic way in one verse in the pastorals. 

But the writer of Hebrews uses the word 7 times. 

This is one of those words that people would key in on and say, "See, this isn't typical of Paul. Paul only uses this word one time and yet the writer of Hebrews uses it 7 times. So this would indicate that Paul was not the author of Hebrews because you have different vocabulary in Hebrews than you do in the Pauline epistles." 

So this would be one example that they might use to argue for their particular case. Of course nobody knows who wrote the book of Hebrews other than God and seminary students who study too late at night and stress out and have a little break with reality. That happened one time a few years before I started seminary. Some student called Dr. Walvoord up about 3 o'clock in the morning saying that he had finally discovered who wrote the book of Hebrews. He had the next semester off for rest and recovery.

Now when we look at the grammar of this word, it's important to understand it because a subjunctive mood verb is a verb that usually emphasizes probability. And yet it is often used as an idiomatic way of expressing an imperative in the first person. This is called a hortatory use of the subjunctive.  Hortatory is from the same word as exhort. It has that idea of expressing a first person command. So it would be translated we should do this, we must do this. The author sees himself as part of the group that needs to do this. He's not saying you need to do this. He's saying we all need to do this. There is a danger that threatens every one of us – the writer himself included - to fall away from the fulfillment of these commands. 

But these commands are essential for any soldier fighting in a unit in a battle in order to be able to successfully fulfill the mission – to use a military analogy. If you're in sports, it's a team playing operation and there's an emphasis on the teamwork that must be developed by the members of the team in order to win the game. The body of Christ as we'll see is not made up of a bunch of individuals who are doing their own thing. 

We have a problem in this country because of our national psyche one might say. We have an emphasis on individualism.  Rugged individualism is at the heart of Americanism. But rugged individualism is not at the heart of the spiritual life. Only you can live your spiritual life. You do not live your spiritual life in isolation from other members of the body of Christ. 

So the first person plural emphasizes this teamwork which will come to a head in the third command when he says that we are to give serious reflection to how to stimulate or stir up love and good works among other believers. So this is a very important term. Well, when we start off here we read:

^NKJ Hebrews 10:22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

The idea here is very similar to one we've already seen him state in this epistle that we find back in Hebrews 4:14-16. These verses (at least 4:16) are verses that are familiar to you. 

There we read:

^NKJ Hebrews 4:14 Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens,

The word there for "seeing" is used sort of idiomatically for knowing: because we know that we have a great High Priest. Notice the emphasis on Jesus' role as High Priest.

Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

See that's that same imperatival use of the subjunctive mood.  

let us hold fast

or, we should or we must hold fast….

our confession.

^NKJ Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Then in verse 16:

^NKJ Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

That is the same idea that we have in verse 22: Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith. Let us draw near to God, not to one another here. It is drawing near to God. That's the same idea of Hebrews 4:16.

^NKJ Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly

Or we should or we must come boldly. That's the idea again that we have from verse 19.

^NKJ Hebrews 10:19 Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus,

We have this confidence because of the death of Christ and what He did for us. So we are challenged and commanded to come boldly to God's throne that...

^NKJ Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Verse 14 reiterates the same point. He's going to state in the second command to hold fast the confession of our hope. But verse 14 uses a little different word for it. 

^NKJ Hebrews 4:14 Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession

It's the Greek word krateo. Again, it's the present active subjunctive. It means to be strong, to take possession of something, to hold something, to grasp it or to seize it. It is a synonym for the expression that's used in verse 23 – in our passage. 

^NKJ Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

But the word we have is katecho, not krateo. So it's a different word, but they have the same idea of grabbing onto something and holding on to it for all you're worth and for no reason whatsoever are you going to give it up. No matter what the pressure is, no matter what the circumstances you face, not matter how overwhelmed you may be with negative emotions of defeat or impossibility of the task or the fact that you're under pressure or persecution. We are never to give up what we believe and what we are holding on to. That's the idea, as we'll see in the concept of confession. All of this is predicated upon Jesus Christ's work on the cross. The idea that we have in the context is not just justification in Hebrews 4. He's assuming that. The idea is that this is related to the ongoing fellowship of the believer after salvation. We are not to hold on to doctrine; we're not to give it up. 

We are not to think, "Doctrine doesn't work so I'm going to go try some other system. I'm going to watch Dr. Phil and see if I can figure out how to solve my problems that way. If that doesn't work I'll watch Oprah and see if I can figure out how to live my life that way. If that doesn't work I'll go down to the local bar and figure out if I can solve it that way"

Whatever the solution may be we have to understand that it only comes from the Word of God and part of the Christian life is built upon persistence or perseverance. That's hanging in there and trusting God even when things may appear to us to be hopeless. 

The point is that we understand that Jesus Christ has provided us with a complete salvation. This is stated in Hebrews 7:25 where the writer stated:

^NKJ Hebrews 7:25 Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those

That's the same word that we have here, proserchomai. 

who come to God. through Him,

It's a word indicating intimate fellowship in Hebrews. 

since He always lives

That is Jesus Christ. 

to make intercession for them

That word that's translated uttermost there is the Greek word pantelos, which sort of has the idea of the allness. It's emphasizing the completedness of what Christ did on the cross – sort of the 'tetelestaiedness' of everything Christ did. We've seen that even in our context here in Hebrews 10 that Jesus Christ after He had completed the payment for the completion or the maturity of the body of Christ for the maturity of believers sat down at the right hand of the Father.  So these verses emphasize a post-salvation spiritual life and the importance of fellowship and drawing near to God. 

Hebrews 10:22 emphasizes that fellowship. But there's something that is associated. It's not just sort of a feel good thing like: "I'm going to go to church and they're going to play some wonderful choruses. The music is going to stir me, and the song leader is going to tell some touching stories and I'm going to start to weep a little bit. Then I'll be close to God because that's what signifies it."

A lot of people think that. They think that the emotion is necessary and that indicates that they must be having a spiritual experience. Now sometimes when we are really impacted by God's Word, emotion accompanies that. I'm not saying that's wrong; but it's wrong to put it in the driver's seat. It stays in the back seat, not up in the front seat. The emotion can be very much a part of our spiritual life; but it doesn't drive it. 

The problem that you get in a lot of the contemporary ideas on worship is that they try to keep manufacturing this same emotive state because that's how they define being close to God. Whereas what we've seen again and again, being close to God in the Scripture is primarily judicial. Now that doesn't sound like it's always that warm and fuzzy to define it as a judicial issue. But the problem that we've had with God is a judicial problem. It's not an emotional problem. So God has separated us from Him because of sin; and Christ's death on the cross solved that problem. Sins are cancelled. That is such a wonderful thing that the issue of sin just isn't a problem. That is grace! That is what grace is all about is that God did it all; and we don't have to do anything in order to add to that. Jesus Christ cancelled out the problem of sin on the cross. We still sin, but we're always going to sin because we still have a sin nature. 

The regeneration doesn't cancel the sin nature. There are a lot of people who teach that today. The problem with teaching that is every time you sin after that you're saved is, you run around wondering if you're really saved or if you lost your salvation (if you're an Arminian). But the Bible says that God has dealt with the sin problem and we're born again. We're new creatures in Christ. We're babies, and babies do all kinds of nasty little things and have to be bathed and washed and cleaned up after for a long time before they start to get any level of maturity to be able to take care of themselves. 

Unfortunately if people aren't taught the Word of God so that they can grow up, then they're going to run around in spiritual diapers for most of their lives. The only way to control them is through a lot of legalism. 

So the passage talks about the importance of that fellowship. We're to draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.

Now it's very interesting how we should understand this particular phraseology. The preposition that's used here is the Greek preposition meta which means something that's in the midst of something or among something. It's a preposition that indicates close association. In this case it's the idea of giving the circumstances that accompany the action. So we don't draw near on the basis of emotion or feeling good. We draw near in association with the reality that we have a heart that is conformed to the judicial demands of God and that we have been cleansed from the judicial guilt of sin. That's his point, because that has already happened. 

What we've discovered in this passage is that the participles that are used here are in the perfect tense. Perfect tense always emphasizes completed action.  The verb is in the present tense.

^NKJ Hebrews 10:22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith,

Let us now draw near because something has already happened and has been completed. That's the idea of the two participles here. It's because we have this full assurance of faith and because:

having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

…because that talks about what happened at salvation. So now that you have this judicial cleansing and sin isn't the issue anymore, now you can have fellowship with God. So that's the focus of the command.

So he says:

^NKJ Hebrews 10:22 let us draw near with

...or in association with.

a true heart in full assurance of faith,

The word that's translated true is the Greek word alethinos, which means something that conforms to reality, conforms to truth. It's something that's in conformity to the truth of God's Word – that no one can have fellowship with a perfect righteous God unless they are also perfectly righteous. So our heart which is a term for our inner being, everything that we are spiritually—it's just a sum total word that summarizes everything that it's at the core of our being—has to be in conformity to God's demands of righteousness. 

So he says we draw near. We could even say on the basis of or because this has happened,

Then we have to say, "How do we get that true heart?"

Do we go out and sort of gin up our own morality and we have to clean up our lives and stop doing all kinds of sins that are in our lives? That's such a popular message in so many churches is that before you can have a relationship with God; you have to repent from your sins. You have to turn from your sins. It's all about repentance and remorse. That's not the biblical message of grace at all. The way we know we have a true heart is because of these participles that are given in the second part of the verse. So I'm going to skip there before we come back. 

These two participles are "sprinkled". Sprinkled is the verb. It's from the Greek word rhantizo meaning simply to sprinkle and because it doesn't have an article with it, it's an adverb. So it modifies that command to draw near. It has the idea because it's a perfect tense.  It's an adverbial participle of cause.

Let us draw near with a true heart because we have already had our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.

That happened at salvation. I have talked about the fact that sprinkling the blood on the articles of furniture in the Tabernacle was what Aaron did when he initially set the furniture in the Tabernacle apart. Then he splattered the blood on the people. Everything got splattered with blood to show that it was all positionally set apart for the service of God. That didn't happen again. That only happened once at the beginning. That's tantamount to what happens to us at the instant of salvation. Because Christ's death is applied to us, we are positionally forgiven and positionally cleansed when we are justified. And it's not on the basis of any good that we've done. It's not on the basis of any morality that we have. 

It's totally on the basis of the fact that it is Jesus Christ's righteousness that the Father looks at and says, "You have a relationship with Me because of Him and His character. It never will be on the basis of you and your character."

If you ever get a hold of that, that will change your whole understanding of salvation, the Christian life and you'll quit trying to impress God and start realizing that we live our lives in gratitude to what He has done because we could never do that on our own. But most Christians out there never come to grips with that. They're are trying so hard to please God and they're trying so hard to repent of their sins that they get all wrapped up in guilt and failure.  Every time they turn around they do something that shocks or surprises them, they think that God hates them again, they've lost their salvation or they weren't ever saved. They can't ever relax and enjoy the Christian life and enjoy life. 

So we have these two perfect participles here that are adverbs of cause that tell us that because we had our hearts sprinkled and because we had our bodies washed (Notice the combination of hearts and bodies is the totality of man.)

When it says:

our bodies washed

That's not talking about baptism. It's talking about the fact that the whole man, material and immaterial, is cleansed by what Christ did on the cross when we believed in Him. That's the idea going back to the first phrase:

^NKJ Hebrews 10:22 let us draw near with a true heart

That refers to the seat and center of human life, the very core of our being. 

in full assurance of faith,

Now before we go on let me retranslate this for you. What the writer is saying is:

Because we have confidence to enter (back in verse 19) and because we have a great High Priest (back in verse 21) we must draw near already sprinkled clean and washed with pure water. 

It's because we understand who we are in Christ that we can have fellowship with God and that's the key to living the Christian life; it is that walk with God. When we fail we confess our sin. That's experiential forgiveness. Then we can move forward.

So the writer says:

^NKJ Hebrews 10:22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith,

This a Greek work plerophoria which indicates perfect certitude. We're 100% sure. We're confident. It's not arrogance that we know we're going to go to heaven. It's confidence because we know the Truth. So we have a full conviction. It's a state of complete and total certainty. We're convinced of the truth that we have access to God. So because we have that and the idea of full assurance of faith… Faith is the source. Faith is used here not the act of believing, but it is viewed as what we believe. Faith can mean the act of believing. 

"I need to have more faith."

In other words, we're saying we need to trust God. But sometimes we use faith as a term referring to a body of beliefs. We may talk about different denominations or sects as that faith. What is your faith? Are you an Episcopalian? Are you a Presbyterian? Are you a Methodist? What is your faith? What is the doctrine, the body of beliefs that you have?

Another word that we'll see in this same passage in the next verse (verse 23), the word confession, is another word that means that same thing. We often talk of doctrinal statements or doctrinal beliefs of denominations as their confession. Instead of saying a doctrinal statement, churches used to have confessions of faith. It meant the same thing. That was the idea there. 

So the full assurance of faith is the confidence that we have from the doctrine that we believe. That's why he has labored from chapter 7, 8, 9 and 10 to make sure we understand all that Christ did. Once we see all of that and see all the dimensions of it, then we can have true confidence and we can relax because we know that nothing can happen. We can't do anything to lose our salvation. We can't do anything to jeopardize that relationship with God. Jesus Christ did everything at the cross and He's provided everything for us in the spiritual life so that we can face anything that we have in life on the basis of what He provides. So we have that absolute confidence.

So going back to our understanding of salvation, we have the three senses of salvation. 

1. Phase 1 which is justification.
2. Phase 2 which is the spiritual life.
3. Phase 3 which is glorification.

We've talked about these and we've seen these on Sunday morning recently. At the cross we talk about being saved from the penalty of sin. So we were saved. We talk about the spiritual life in the sense of "being saved" from the power of sin. And in a future tense sense as you will be saved. What this passage is talking about in terms of having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water is this occurred at phase 1. It is also called positional sanctification. We are positionally set apart in Christ. 

Now when we are living our Christian life and we grow that's called experiential sanctification. When we are face-to-face with the Lord, that's referred to as completed sanctification. But we are positionally set apart in phase 1. So that is what's being talked about here, what's pictured in the sprinkling of the blood on the articles of furniture and on the people and on the covenant in Exodus 24:6, 8 and Exodus 29:16, 20, 21 – positional sanctification.

This is also parallel to the idea of washing which is what occurred as we've seen when Aaron was first dedicated, consecrated, set apart as the High Priest.  He was washed fully. That's the Greek verb louo, which has the idea of taking a bath as opposed to just washing your hands or washing your feet.

Then in verse 23 we get to the second command: "let us hold fast". The first command is "let us draw near" or we should draw near or we must draw near.  Now it's we must hold fast. We can't give it up. This is vital; this is important. This is critical. You can't give up what you believe no matter what happens. 

See that was the situation in the first century. These Jews that he's writing to were under pressure from the authorities in Judea and from their friends to give up their belief that Jesus was the Messiah and to give up their Christianity and go back into Pharisaism and Judaism. So that would mean giving up what they believed about Jesus. So the belief system of Christianity is referred to here by the phrase "confession of our hope." It's the word confession used as an admission of what you believe. So the command there is, "Let us hold fast without wavering." 

"Let us hold fast" is the command again. It's a present active subjunctive indicating a first person plural command. We must hold on to this confession of our hope. Hope drives us to the future. Remember, from the very beginning of Hebrews 1, I pointed out that the focal point of Hebrews is on what Christ did in the past and its impact on us in the present; but it drives us toward what He's preparing us for in the future - to reign as priests and kings. That's the focal point of these warnings that if we give up, if we fade out, if we don't persist – what we jeopardize is our future position, future rewards to rule and reign with Jesus Christ. 

If we can't make it through boot camp, we'll never make it to the Super Bowl. I don't know how that's going to communicate to some people; but that's the idea. If you can't make it through the beginning stages in the training procedure, then you're never going to be able to compete for the main prizes because you haven't prepared yourself. You've given up. You've faded out. It doesn't mean you'll lose your salvation. You'll still be in heaven. You'll still have some rewards, some presents there. But it's not what it could have or should have been. 

So he challenges them:

^NKJ Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

This is the Greek word aklines meaning steady, unwavering. You're not going to falter. You're not going to fade out or wimp out. You're not going to give up just because things get a little rugged sometime – and things might get real rugged for us in this country as Christians. The tide has turned in this country and the thrust of the leadership in this nation is against Bible believing Christians. There are many people who think they are Bible believing Christians, and they don't even have a clue because they are so mired in legalism and liberalism. 

If you want to see a real mess, you just figure out a system of thinking that is characterized by legalism and liberalism. What you get is a self-righteous intolerant person who preaches tolerance. But that's the kind of culture that we have developed. The liberal leftist in this country just wants everybody to say everything is okay. That's what they want. 

Right now we have a President whose very election is sort of personified or pictured as: we've gotten rid of the parents and we've elected a new parent who isn't going to tell us that anything's wrong. And he's not going to discipline us, and he's going to bring all the cookies and candy that he can and cakes and ice cream into the house so we can have all we want. We're going to print all the money we want and we're going to bail everybody out because this new parent read Dr. Spock. He's now going to apply the principles of Dr. Spock's child-raising to government. 

"We're not going to let anybody suffer any consequences for stupid decisions or irresponsible decisions." 

If they're operating on irrational thinking like the State of California has for the last 40 or 50 years and spend money on all these ridiculous social programs like money just grows on trees and there's no accountability. The Federal Government is going to bail them out. Mark my words. We're going to see the Federal Government come in and bail out California and bail out New York. And they're going to print more and more money. We're going to end up with a dollar that's not worth anything. It's not worth much now anyway. But it's really not going to be worth anything in another 3 or 4 years when we end up having to pay for all of this. The result of this is there's going to be more and more problems.

But when you get fallen man who is frantically searching for meaning and happiness in life, so much so that they think that this little Ida fossil this 25 million year old monkey is something to do with the missing link. If your  head is so darkened and you're so irrational and foolish the Bible says that you can believe that and anybody who comes along like me and says you are foolish and stupid and idiotic for doing it, all their anger, all their bitterness,  all their hatred that's been held down is going to come pouring out on somebody like me. They're just going to squash us. Everybody who believes that they're wrong - because that's the last thing they want to hear is that they're wrong. 

It was interesting this week; actually it came out last week. The American Psychiatric Association or Psychological Association (I can't remember which one it is; but it's the national body of psycho-crazies) finally admitted that after 20 years of intense study and research that they can't find a shred of evidence to indicate that a person's sexual behavior is influenced by material causation. That means there is no gay gene. You'd be amazed how many people think there's something to that gay gene thing. There was one study done in the early 90's that was later proved to be flawed. The results could not be duplicated by anybody else. It said that this might be – notice that word might. Always circle that. If you read the articles on Ida – the missing link. But they even published a book. I went into Costco yesterday and looked at the book table. Wednesday they announced this find. They were ready. They had published books and articles. Everything was ready to go. This was an orchestrated effort to overpower everybody in America with the brilliance of evolution on this anniversary of Darwin's birth. We're going to prove Darwin was right. The next day they had stacks of these books on Ida. Doesn't it just bless your heart? They are just all wrong.

^NKJ Romans 1:22 Professing to be wise, they became fools,

They're suppressing. Look how much money and energy and effort has been put into proving their position because if there's no God, there are no absolutes. If there are no absolutes, there's no morality. If there's no morality, then you can't tell me that anything I'm doing is wrong. That means that parents can't be parents and I don't need to have a president that can tell me it's wrong. We can have a whole culture of permissibility and we're all going to do whatever we want to do. It's all going to work out. We can print all the money we want to and do of all the projects we want to do to save the planet. We can legalize everything we want to legalize. 

But every now and then, somebody runs into something called a terrorist and a little reality has to enter in. 

It's interesting how at least the President seems to have to back up a pace or two on several of his campaign promises as he got into office and realized that there were some actual bad people out there that might want to do us harm. 

Every now and then these fantasy worldviews that the carnal mind comes up with to get away from God run into the hard reality of that rock wall of reality. When that happens the Christians are going to get blamed. Christians got blamed in Rome. Christians have been blamed by all kinds of people down through the ages and Christians will get blamed again. Just like these Christian Jews who were under persecution from their unsaved Jewish brethren in the 1^st century and were under the pressure to give up Christianity, we're going to go through the same kind of thing. 

So that command is very much pointed toward us. We must hold onto the confession of our hope. Notice, it's hope. This is the only thing that gives hope to us. No matter how dark the days may get, no matter how difficult the challenges may be, no matter how defeated it may seem that we are; there is always hope. There is confident expectation because we know that God is in charge. So we hold onto that without wavering.

^NKJ Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

Notice how he drives our focal point to God. He is faithful: the character of God, the essence of God. He is always going to do the same thing the same way every time. He is always true to His Word. He is never going to fail us. He is always on our side. It doesn't matter how dark the days may come. It doesn't matter how weak the dollar gets. It doesn't matter how empty our 401K's become. God is faithful and He will always take care of us. So we need to get our eyes off of all the problems that are going on in the world around us politically and economically and put our focus on the one place that we have certainty. That's the Word of God and on God Himself. He is the one who is faithful. 

Then we come to the third command, which is in verse 24.

^NKJ Hebrews 10:24 And let us consider

"Let us" should be translated we should or we must.

one another in order to stir up love and good works,

Now all we'll have time for this evening is just to get into the exegesis a little bit, understand what he is saying; and then we'll have to come back next time and unravel some of the implications of this because they are extremely important for understanding the role of the body of Christ. All those other believers that are fallen sinners that we associate with that are also believers that they do have a role to play in our spiritual lives. 

So he starts off:

^NKJ Hebrews 10:24 And let us consider

This is the Greek verb katanoeo. Now nous is the Greek word for mind. Noeo is the Greek verb for thinking. Katanoeo emphasizes or stresses the main idea of the verb to think. So it has the idea of thinking carefully about something, considering it. Not just saying. Consider for us sometimes has the idea of "Well, I'll consider that." 

Kind of like when President Obama was running for office last year, and people would make certain suggestions about not raising taxes. He would say, "Well, we'll consider that." 

That's a nice way of saying we're not going to do that. But we'll make it sound like we are. This isn't what it means to consider. It means to think about something, to think deeply, to think profoundly, to contemplate, to even brainstorm something in this context. What we're to think about - we are all to think about this –not meaning that all of us get together in one big holy huddle and think about it. But groups of believers are to think about things.

Let us carefully reflect on something. Let us carefully think through something. Let us give careful thought to a course of action. Let us consider. Let us carefully think. Or better translated, we must carefully think through how to stir up love and good works in one another. 

"Wait a minute. I thought the spiritual life was all about me going to Bible class and studying the Word so that I could grow spiritually and that was all there was to it." 

No, that is a means to an end. Unfortunately when you think that the spiritual life is about you taking in doctrine so you can grow spiritually; you have succumbed to a worldly idea coming out of the American culture. It's not all about you. It's all about serving God. But before we can serve God, we have to rethink. We have to have our thought life, our mentality, overhauled so we're no longer trying to do things the way the devil does things, the way the world does things. We're going to do the things the way God does things. So we have to have training. We have to go through a form of boot camp called local church and teaching. But that's not what it's all about. It doesn't end with going to church, filling up your Bible notebooks with all kinds of doctrines, going home, learning a lot of terms and being able to talk the vernacular. 

^NKJ Hebrews 10:24 And let us consider one another in order to stir up

Or stimulate…

love and good works,

…in others. It involves other people. 

"That gets kind of nasty because other people are just dirty rotten carnal sinners too, just like me. I'd rather sit at home and listen to the tape recorder all the time. The Christian life is really easy when it's just me and my MP3 player." 

Maybe we can have a song – Me and My IPOD. That's all you need – you and your IPOD and God. 

But what that does is that creates an isolated Christian. When you carry that to its logical extent what you have is a whole bunch of isolated Christians. You have one here and one here and one here; but there's no connection. In philosophy they call that atomism. Everything is broken down into different parts, but there's no whole. That's not what the Bible talks about. Again and again, in 1 Corinthians, in Romans, in Ephesians Paul says we are members of one another. There's no atomism in the Christian life. We are members of one another. There is an organic unity in the body of Christ from believer to believer. We're not just a bunch of individual heroes out there leading the charge against Satan without having a relationship to other believers. It's a team action. 

Now you get into some cultures, everything is teamwork. There's nothing individual. You go to some tribes in Africa, some other cultures like that, and everything is about the collective whole. They can't think. It's very hard for them to think or operate as an individual without thinking how it affects everybody else. In America, we're just the opposite. We're so individual-oriented that we have a hard time sometimes thinking about the organic unity of a team. 

See both of those extremes are wrong when you're talking about the body of Christ. It's not just this corporate unity; but neither is it individual isolationism. It is about learning the Bible, living your spiritual life. But that's only a means to the end; and the end has to do with serving the body of Christ. 

Now if you don't go to church anywhere – and a church can be 5 people in a house somewhere. 

Somebody asked me the question last time: "Are you telling me that if all I'm able to do because I can't find a local church; all I'm able to do is sit and listen to my live stream that I need to quit doing that and go to some local church?" No, I'm not saying that. I'll tell you more about what I'm saying next time, but I'm not saying that. But neither am I saying that if you have an option to be involved in a local church that you should make it an either or. You can do both. 

There are all kinds of great stories about people who have gotten involved in local churches. They get all of their feeding and their spiritual growth and their teaching from listening to me or one of the other doctrinal pastors where they can get fed, and then they go out and they get involved with some group of believers and God opens up all kinds of doors and ministry for them. It's just remarkable how God can use somebody in that kind of a situation. It starts with understanding this command that we're to consider one another. We're to think about each other and how we can stimulate one another to love and good deeds.

I'm just going to close with one little anecdote before I get on to some more significant things in the exegesis here. One of the things that I've seen happen several times is what happens when a group of people go on the mission field for a short term missions project. You take a group of high school kids or college kids or 20-somthings over to Kiev or to Africa or Mexico on a real mission's trip where they're actually talking to people, teaching Bible classes.  You know there are a lot of churches and church groups who have mission's trips and they go hammer some nails or they go on a tourist trip to Spain or Africa and they hear somebody preach somewhere and that's the extent of it. But when you go on a real short term missions trip where you're actually going and teaching kids in a summer camp or you're teaching veterans in a veteran's home or you're teaching kids with cancer in a cancer ward and you come back and all of a sudden it changes the way you look at what we're doing in America. 

We have such a truncated view of church.  We just go to church on Sunday morning and then we go on Sunday night. That's sort of the extent of it. Then, I've got to work and I've got to raise my kids and all these other things that we have going on. 

I remember when I first went over to Mogilev in Belarus. A number of people had gone over there right after the wall came down. The wall came down in '92 so this was in January of '94. When they went in they had all kinds of doors that were open. Now we don't have as many opportunities here. But they had all kinds of open doors where they were invited to come into an English class in a school (elementary, junior high or high school) and teach whatever they wanted to because they had never heard a native English speaker. So they would go in and teach them Bible stories. There was an orphanage and a hospital for children. A lot of these kids the cloud from Chernobyl had come up over this area of Belarus. There were a lot of children who had horrible health problems. 

I remember going out with Phyllis Myers several times in the two weeks I was there to teach these kids. Just Good News Clubs and different things like that.  About 7 or 8 years ago Dan Inghram took 3 or 4 people from Preston City and went over and went over to help work a camp that Myers was running over in Kiev. 

All 4 of them camp back and said, "This was great. How can we do here the kinds of things we did there? "

The problem was that the four people that went – Dan lived in Washington DC. One of the ladies lived up in Boston. Two months later or about a month later one of the college age boys that went his family moved to Missouri. So they couldn't coalesce in an action plan. But they came back and what are they trying to do? They are trying to stimulate one another to love.

"What can we do?"

They were excited. That's what that word stimulate means. It's the Greek word from which we get our word paroxysm. It has that idea of really stimulating. You see this with some people. 

They get an idea and they say, "Okay. What can we do?" 

They get together and they huddle up and they think what are some ideas that we can come up with to develop some kind of outreach or ministry on our own? 

This isn't something that's lead by the deacons of West Houston Bible Church, or by me,  or any…

It's just people saying, "What can I do to go out and find some area of ministry where I can get involved teaching the Bible or going to a hospital and visiting with people who are there who have nobody there and giving them the gospel, leaving a tract, praying with them, just coming up with ideas – not necessarily for trying to get people to come to church but to develop ministry in peoples' lives – applying the Word beyond just coming to church, filling up your doctrinal notebook and then going home and going about your life. 

We'll come back and talk about more ideas next time. Let's close in prayer. 

Illustrations