Christ Focused Encouragement
Bible Passage:
Hebrews 10:22-25
Pastor:
Pastor Glen
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Sermon Date:
2010-09-18
Why is community important? Why is it important to come together around the Word? A simple illustration reminds us of why God encourages Christian community. I take one pencil. I try to break it. I do break it. Take many pencils united together and it is almost impossible. But it is not pencils that we are concerned about being broken. We are concerned about people. In my ministry I have seen many times people depressed, overcome by addictions, overwhelmed with the guilt of their sin and outright despair over seemingly impossible circumstances. Yet at the same time I have seen fellow Christians support the same people with the promises of God, mutual concern, physical help and spiritual direction. Instead of one person overwhelmed by sin, guilt and fear rather a Christian united with other Christians in the community of the Christian church.
There are many situations where we can receive encouragement to continue on in our life. A coach encourages a football player, a volleyball player or a soccer player. A teacher encourages the child learning the alphabet, math tables or elementary algebra. Encouragement is often the fuel that keeps us going each day through the various challenges of life. Today we turn to the writer of Hebrews to consider an important activity of the Christian church working together as community. The activity is called encouragement-Christ Focused Encouragement.
Our encouragement to our fellow Christians is not just to make a goal in soccer although we may encourage our fellow Christ to do that. Our encouragement is not just to get a good grade on a math test which we may encourage our son or daughter to do. Our encouragement as Christians comes from knowing what the writer writes in the context of Hebrews 10. Jesus is our great High Priest who gave one sacrifice for all of us. Therefore we have the right to enter the presence of God by the blood of Jesus. The need for Christ Focused Encouragement exists because by nature we don’t want to hear God’s Word. We want to go it alone. We want to do our own thing. There are many times in our life where we may sneak away to live on our own personal island and do our own thing.
God’s Word encourages us all to both seek Christ focused encouragement and give Christ focused encouragement. “Let us draw near to God,” the author urges us that such drawing near was never to cease. To draw near to our holy God is the believer’s blood-bought privilege. How you use this privilege shows what value you place on it. When you and I do approach God we want to do so with a sincere heart. God looks beyond persons and positions to the heart.
It is important that Christ’s complaint to the Pharisees in Matthew 15:8 not apply to us: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Rather, let it be his words in Matthew 5:8: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Such hearts come “in full assurance of faith.” Faith that wavers and wanders, that is easily rattled, displays little fullness or certainty. About such faith James 1:6 says, “He who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.” Often this is part of our work of Christ focused encouragement when we share encouragement with our piers, our friends neighbor or children. But we ourselves have to draw near to God in confident faith. How is that possible? Because we know what blessings we have received in Christ. We have “our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience” and “our bodies washed with pure water.” Again we note how the author hints at the contrast between the old and new covenants. The Old Testament high priest in approaching God on the Day of Atonement had to be ceremonially washed and then had to sprinkle animal blood on the Ark of the Covenant (Leviticus 16:4, 14). These rituals symbolized the necessity for cleansing before approaching God. No person could approach a holy God with sins’ guilt still on his conscience.
Focus my dear friends on the marvelous cleansing you have received. It is not symbolic but actual, covering both the inward heart and the outward body. It is cleansing that needs no repeating. “Sprinkled” and “washed” point out lasting effects. Both forms are passive, indicating that this sprinkling and washing are done not by us but to us. Also it’s a cleansing that involved “blood,” and “water.” Clearly Holy Baptism was in the author’s mind. The water, applied outwardly to the body and called “pure” because Baptism cleanses. “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus,” Paul puts it in Galatians 3:26, 27, “for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” God’s children, washed clean from all sin by the blood of Jesus, can knock on heaven’s door anytime and confidently crawl up on the lap of a waiting, loving Father. Need we be urged to “draw near”?
Cleansed hearts lead to open mouths and speaking lives. The author urges, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess.” This is an ongoing activity in our life as Christians. We might have expected him to write “faith,” but he uses “hope” to lift our eyes to the future. From Christ comes not only pardon for sins in the present but glorious hope for the future. Heaven is our sure home, “for he who promised is faithful.” Nothing strengthens our hope for heaven more than the fact of God’s faithfulness. How can the Eternal One lie or change his mind? He promised the eternal crown of glory, and he will place it on our heads. To such a hope we are to hold “unswervingly,” not letting it droop like some banner into the dust but holding it on high for all to see.
“The hope we profess,” the author also said, reminding us that hope is for confession, not concealment. Often confession brings bumps and bruises, sometimes even worse, as the Hebrew Christians had already found out and were again experiencing. But the world’s opposition cannot affect our hope. It may hurt our hold on and hinder our confession of the hope, but it cannot harm the hope itself. God’s faithfulness in fulfilling it is still there. “Hold unswervingly” are words of urging for us too.
No Christian lives on an island or for himself alone. With his attitudes and actions he has an effect on others. “Let us consider how we may spur one another on,” the author urges us to stress continued action. “Consider” means putting our mind on others, carefully noting their needs. As one body in Christ, we need to spur one another on “toward love and good deeds.” The word for love in the Greek is agape, the highest kind of love, which loves the undeserving and unlovable, which perceives and then performs. John points to the perfect example of such love: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). Only from such divine love can our love come. We can believe and hope as individuals, but the practice of love always involves others. It also involves “good deeds.” When love is present, it is exercised in good deeds toward others, and love must be present for those deeds to be pleasing in God’s sight. What a reminder for our age in which the temptation ever lurks, even for the Christian, to consider only “I” and “me” and to be concerned only about “my” and “mine.”
“Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing.” Believers need to gather together to be strengthened and to give strength. Believers go to the gatherings for worship and fellowship not just to gain for themselves but to give to others. Let me once again point out the illustration made by Pastor Mike last Sunday. We look at this brick wall. Let us call this brick Bob Brick. He is part of the Christian community his sinful flesh may at times feel restricted but those other bricks keep him from going to far to the left so that he does not trust God or to far to the right so he does not trust himself alone. Those bricks encourage him when life gets overwhelming that is they remind him of who is faithful.
“Let us encourage one another.” It is the same verb from which is derived the name “Counselor” for the Holy Spirit in John 16:7. Standing alongside and helping one another where needed was far better than giving up meeting with one another. Giving and receiving strength when tempted, urging and being urged when wavering, comforting and being comforted when sorrowing are pluses to be found in gathering around the Word. If the Hebrew Christians needed such urging all the more as they saw the Last Day coming, what about us some 1,900 years closer to that Day? “Consider how we may spur one another on,” the author writes for our benefit too.
Why is community important? Why is it important to come together around the Word? I take one pencil. I try to break it. I do break it. Take many pencils united together and it is almost impossible. But it is not pencils that we are concerned about being broken. We are concerned about people. Let us encourage one another with Christ focused encouragement and all the more as we the Day approaching.
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