Introduction
Faith is Jesus Christ compels the Christian into action. The Christian will move toward God and will hold on to the confession of his hope, as we learned last week. Today we will consider the third Gospel action in this passage.
God's people are instruments in God's hands in the preservation of his people. In other words, God uses his own people, motivated by the Gospel, as a means to preserve his people to the end. A third way of saying it is that one of the instruments that God uses to cause Christians to live by faith till death is the ministry of other Christians in their lives. Therefore, there is a sense in which we are responsible for each other's eternal destiny.
This passage shows in which sense this is the case. The Gospel compels us into action and one of those actions is thinking of ways to provoke our brothers and sisters to love and good works.
I want to break this passage down into 6 parts:
üThe Main Task: To Think, 24a
ü The Purpose of the Main Task: To Stir Up, 24b
ü The Goal of the Main Task: Love and Good Works, 24c
ü The Manner in Which the Main Task Is Accomplished: Not Forsaking and Exhorting, 25a.
ü The Encouragement for the Performing of the Main Task: The Day Is Approaching, 25b.
ü The Danger of Failing in the Main Task: No more Sacrifice for sins, 26-31
I. The Main Task: To Think, 24a
A. The Gospel compels us to consider others, to think about them.
B. The word translated consider also means notice, observe carefully, look at, contemplate, pay attention.
C. When we look at how it is used in the NT, we see that it gives the idea of careful, thought out, and thorough consideration.
Mt. 7:3 – And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?
Acts 27:39 – When it was day, they did not recognize the land; but they observeda bay with a beach, onto which they planned to run the ship if possible.
Heb. 3:1 – Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus…
D. What is the purpose of this consideration? What are the things that we are considering about our brothers and sisters? Ways in which we can stir them up.
II. The Purpose of the Main Task: To Stir Up, 24b
A. The Holy Spirit uses here a word that usually has a negative connotation.
1. In most places the word translated stir up means provoke or irritate.
2. Here though it has a positive connotation, it still carries the idea of creating pent up energy that always one to act.
B. Siblings often spend considerable time thinking of ways to irritate each other in order to provoke each other to do something that might get the other in trouble.
C. We are to demonstrate the same tenacity, hard work, and joy in considering ways that we can be used by God in each others' lives to cause them to love God and others more and to serve God and others more.
D. That is really the goal of this great task of considering one another: love and good works.
III. The Goal of the Main Task: Love and Good Works, 24c
A. What is this love that we are to provoke each other unto?
1. It is a self-giving love that find its paradigm in the cross.
1Jn. 4:10 – In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
2. This love is defined by Paul in 1 Cor. 13:4-8b.
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
3. It is a love that, according to Jesus, results in obedience.
Jn. 14:15 – If you love Me, keep My commandments.
4. Though the passage is not explicit about the object of this love, Jesus's statement about the primacy of love for God and love for others must govern this love.
a. It is mind-boggling and counter-intuitive that when Paul was faced with the same question concerning the summary of the law, he said that it is loving your neighbor that captures the essence of the law.
Gal. 5:14 – For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
b. How can it be? Where is God in this summary? We love God by loving one another.
1 Jn. 4:20-21 – If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.
B. Not only are we to be thinking and implementing ways to provoke each other unto love for God and others, but also unto good works.
1. The good or beautiful works we are exhorted to stir up in each other is nothing more than obedience to God's royal law of liberty, as James puts it.
2. Our Confession of Faith says that "these good works, done in obedience to God's commandments, are the fruit and evidences of a true and lively faith…" 6:2
C. So, the Gospel compels us into action and one of these Gospel actions is considering how we can stir each other up unto love and service for God and others. How do we do that?
IV. The Manner in Which the Main Task Is Accomplished: Not Forsaking and Exhorting, 25a.
A. The Holy Spirit gives us these two phrases that modify or explain how we consider each other.
B. Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together (abandon, desert – used of Demas in 2 Tim. 4:10).
1. This is not any get together of Christians.
a. It is specifically the times when the people of God are gathered together to worship, pray, and study God's Word.
b. The word translated assembling is evpisunagwgh,, whish is used for religious gatherings of God's people, not limited only to the main worship service of the church.
c. You cannot stir up love and good works in one another if you forsake times when we are assembled together.
d. Some in the Hebrew church had already forsaken their corporate worship (as is the manner of some).
1) These meetings were potentially dangerous depending on the local magistrate's attitude toward applying the illicit religions law.
2) In addition, there was a certain societal stigma that went along with being associated with the Christian gatherings.
3) Notice that it doesn't say that these forsaking brothers had denied the faith.
a) Yet, they did take a major step in that direction.
b) It is very significant that the strongest warning concerning what happens when a Christian denies Christ follows the exhortation not to forsake being with each other in the church.
2. What ways that one can forsake the assembling of ourselves?
a. The most obvious way is by not being at the place and time when the church is gathered.
1) This is not the occasional sickness that keeps one from being with the church, but the deliberate neglect to attend.
2) It is having the attitude that attending the stated gatherings of the church is a matter of convenience.
3) This includes the idea that convenience governs church attendance.
b. In addition to the obvious not being physically present when the church gathers, there are other, more subtle ways to forsake the assembling of ourselves:
1) Coming to church with a critical attitude;
2) Coming unprepared (sleeping through it);
3) Unwillingness to give yourself to the work of worship;
4) Coming not believing that you are going to be blessed by being in church;
5) Coming with a selfish attitude, seeking only what you can get out of it and how you can be served by it (notice that you are to think of others, and let others think of you).
3. So, on the negative side, we don't forsake being with the gathered church.
C. On the positive side, we exhort.
1. This is continual exhorting, perhaps better expressed as exhorting as a manner of life.
2. The word exhorting has a begging connotation to it.
a. In Rom. 12: 1, it is translated as beseech.
b. In Phil 4:2, it is translated as implore.
3. It has an earnestness to it.
4. It is heart-felt and heart-deep as opposed to a superficial concern with one another.
5. What is it that we are to exhort one another to do?
a. Smack dab in the middle of this passage is the exhortation for us to hold fast to the confession of our hope.
b. We saw last week that the confession of our hope is that Jesus is Lord.
c. When you look at that in the context of the whole letter to the Hebrews, you see that that confession governs the entire book: Jesus is Lord.
d. So what are we supposed to exhort each other to do? We are to exhort each other to hold fast to the only confession that brings hope, the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord!
6. How does it look like?
a. This exhortation is not always in the form of Jesus Christ is Lord, though we need to encourage each other with these very words.
b. More often than not, the exhortation to hold on to the confession of your hope will come in the form of serving one another.
c. And a great way to figure out how to serve one another is to look at the one another passages in the NT. Let's look at a sample of them.
1) Rom. 12:10, 16; 13:8; 14:13, 19; 15:7, 14
2) Gal. 5:13; 6:2
3) Eph. 4:2, 25, 32; 5:19, 21
V. The Encouragement for the Performing of the Main Task: The Day Is Approaching, 25b.
A. This is the day of reckoning, a day when the Lord Jesus will judge.
B. But from our perspective, and from the perspective of the letter to the Hebrews, this is not a declaration of the imminence of Christ's second coming, that is, it is not proof that Christ can come at any minute and you better pay attention or you will miss it.
C. Rather, this is a reference to when we meet with the Lord at death, 9:27.
1. Every second we live, we are closer to dying and the exhorting of one another takes a deeper, more powerful meaning we consider that it is a means that God appointed for us to be preserved until that day.
2. Wouldn't you be a little more diligent if the eternal sate of your brothers and sisters in Christ depended on your exhorting them?
3. Well, in a very real sense, it does!
VI. The Danger of Failing in the Main Task: No more Sacrifice for sins, 26-31
A. The danger of not holding fast to our confession that Jesus is Lord, and therefore the danger of not exhorting each other is that if we abandon Jesus, there is nothing left, except a fearful expectation of standing on the judgment day on our own, 27.
B. If disregarding Moses got you killed, denying Christ and rejecting the grace of God dispensed by his Spirit is going to bring much worse consequences, 28-30.
C. Don't be caught without Jesus, 31!
Conclusion
So, the Gospel compels us into action. Christ living in us and through us by his Spirit causes us to live Gospel-filled lives. As we do that we are going to think of ways in which we can stir up each other and propel them to love and good works by being with each other when the church is gathered and by exhorting one another to hold on to the confession of our hope: Jesus Christ is Lord!
http://olympiabp.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-third-gospel-action-heb-1019-31.html
Put the internet to work for you.
| |
| Recommended for you |
