This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. (upbeat music) - Welcome back to Hebrews chapter 10. This is day four of our look through this chapter. We're going to look at verses 24 to 31 today. We started yesterday talking about how you travel on this new way that God has provided. And we talked about the fact that you and I need to draw near. We draw near to God, we draw near to his presence. That you and I need to hold fast. We hold fast to the hope that he's given to us. And now we hear a third thing, meaning in verse 24. You and I need to spur one another on. Verses 24 and 25 say this. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another. And all the more as you see the day approaching. This word spur on, sometimes it's translated provoke. It's a strong word. Now in a negative context, it means to irritate. But the Bible's saying here, you can be a positive irritation in somebody else's life. You know the old story of the oyster. When an irritation of a grain of sand comes into the oyster, it can make a pearl. And you should have those kinds of irritations, provoking, spur one another on. Love needs to be provoked. Now love is not provoked, it doesn't get angry. The Bible tells us, verse Corinthians 13, but actually it does provoke. It does in some sense spur people on, encourage people on. The idea of a spur against the side of an animal, of a horse, it's not a pleasant moment sometimes, but it gets you into action. And the truth of the matter is, left to myself, I don't always do the right thing. I need other believers around me encouraging me to do the right thing. So these verses talk about three people provokers. Three inspirations towards love and good deeds. Three spurring ons that we do. What are they? You meet together, you encourage one another, and you do it all with a sense of urgency. First, you meet together. That's how you encourage other believers. You know one of the most important things that happens when we get together for church? We get together for church. There's something about being together. One translation of this says, don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together. It comes with some assembly required. We're to assemble ourselves together. Without that assembly, we're just a bunch of disjointed pieces. But with that assembly, with meeting together, we become the living, ministering body of Christ in this world. And in the moment when I'm irritated, when I'm provoked, when I'm spurred, to look above the selfishness I might have gotten caught up in, or the weariness I might have gotten caught up in, to think, how could I love somebody today? My first emotion may not be positive. Oh, why did I come today? But when I act on that, when I start to do what Jesus has given me to do, all of a sudden, hope is restored. Love is restored. Faith has restored in my life. That's the value of meeting together. When one person is up, the other person is down, and they can encourage the other person. And then the next week, it's reversed. That's why we need to meet together. We need to meet together, and we need to, number two, encourage each other. Encourage each other. I love Barnabas in the New Testament. God was able to use Barnabas in a mighty way in the early church, as the gospel was spread to the whole known world. Now, what was his talent, his main talent? Preacher, teacher, administrator, evangelist, prophet? No, his main talent, his main gift was encourager. He was called Barnabas the encourager, a word that means encourager. Encouragers use their words to build up, and he built up people like the apostle Paul to see what God could do in their lives. We all need encouragers. Let me just give you some practical advice about this when it comes to encouragement. What do you do when you feel discouraged? What do you do when you feel neglected like no one's encouraging you? Let me encourage you. When you feel discouraged, when you feel like no one's encouraging you, make the choice to encourage somebody else. When we're neglected, when we're overlooked, when we're ignored, what's our natural reaction? Well, it's one of two reactions, depending on your personality. Either you tend to naturally withdraw, you disconnect from people in the situation, hey, nobody cares for me, I'm not going to care for them, or you tend to push, you push to be noticed. Hey, no one's going to ignore me, but then that pride doesn't get you much encouragement. Let me tell you a real power choice you can make in your life. When you're discouraged, one of the powerful things you can do is to realize, I'm not the only one feeling discouraged today. If I'm feeling discouraged, there's probably somebody else feeling discouraged out there, and so you look for somebody else to encourage. I'm just saying, write one note, one text. Take one, five minutes, or even one minute, to encourage somebody else. You won't believe the difference it'll make in your life and in their life. Look for someone, look for someone maybe who many wouldn't take the time to encourage. We all love to encourage popular people 'cause it builds us up. How about encouraging an unnoticed person? Now, we're told here to encourage each other, so obviously we need to be encouraged to encourage, so that's what I'm doing right now. I'm encouraging you to encourage based on this verse. I want to encourage you to outburst of love and good deeds this week, and one of the ways you can do that is encourage somebody else even when you're feeling discouraged. You meet together, you encourage one another, and the third thing you do is you do this with a sense of urgency. Do it all the more as you see the day, it's the capital D in most translations drawing near. This is the day of Christ. This is the day when Jesus returns. This is the day when the books are closed on this world. Now, urgent for a lot of us seems worrisome. I'll get ulcers, we think, if I feel urgent all the time, but let me tell you, urgency is not worry. Urgency, the idea of this word is the desire for determined action. Urgency means I'm going to do something. I'm going to do something. Urgency does not worry, it acts. It does something. What do we need to do? Here's how to do it. Let's do it now. Urgency acts, it does something. If you're standing at a busy street and you see a small boy running toward traffic, you would have an urgency to act, to reach out your hand and catch that boy before that child got out into traffic. That you wouldn't worry about it, you would just act on it because you'd know that something needed to be done. Now, these scriptures tell us, remember that we don't have as long as we think we have sometimes. The day of Christ is coming, so we need to encourage each other now. If you have it in your mind to encourage somebody, do it now. Don't wait till tomorrow or next week or next year. Do it now. Do it now. You might think, well, I wanted to write this huge card, I wanted to do this big thing, I wanted to buy him this great big gift. You could do that later, but give him some encouragement today. These verses we've just looked at together of relationships in our lives as believers. If we're to walk the way that God has for us, we have to do it in relationship with other believers. God has made us to live in relationship with each other in the body of Christ. And without the body of Christ, you're not going to be able to live out the way, the life that God has given for you. Let me say it this way. There are growth steps in your life that you will never accomplish on your own. You need relationships. There are changes in your life that you will never make on your own. You need relationships. There's encouragement in your life that you'll never find on your own. You need relationships. There are sins in your life that you'll never defeat on your own. You need relationships. There is truth from God in your life that you will never discover on your own. You need relationships, and there are great things, great things that God wants to do through your life that you'll never do on your own. You need relationships. You and I, we cannot love the way that God means for us to love on our own. We need relationships to spur us on. We can't do the good deeds, encourage each other to love and good deeds. We can't do the good deeds that God means for us to do on our own. We need relationships to spur us on. Now, after all this encouragement, what great encouragement, immediately the writer of Hebrews goes into another warning. Let me read it for you. Beginning down in verse 26, if we deliberately keep on sinning after we receive the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who's trampled the Son of God underfoot, who is treated as an unholy thing, the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, who has insulted the spirit of grace? For we know him who said, it is mine to avenge, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Now, I read these verses and you think, wow, that's discouraging. I mean, he just talked to us about encouraging each other as the day is approaching, and immediately he goes into this dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. What in the world is going on here? We think that all encouragement has to be positive, sentimental words. And we're reminded here that sometimes encouragement can be a hard truth. Now, I don't like that kind of encouragement. You don't like that kind of encouragement. I don't like to encourage in that kind of way. But the scripture encourages in that kind of way. And we need to point each other to these kinds of words. It's encouraging to realize that it's a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God in judgment. Why is that encouraging? Because it reminds me of where I need to be. It tells me what to stay away from. I need to be encouraged to stay away from those things that are dreadful in life. I need to be encouraged so that I will fall towards, I will run towards those things that are good in my life. It's a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God in judgment, but it is a wonderful thing to be held by the hands of the living God in salvation. And if I don't trust in Christ, this is what these verses are saying. If I don't trust in Christ, the only thing I have is to be judged based on what I've done, based on the law. And that is a dreadful thing. He's once again coming to those who think they need to go back to the law somehow, trust in the law. And he's saying, no, I encourage you to not only realize for yourself, but to teach everyone else. It's a place only of vengeance, only of judgment, if you're trusting just you standing before God. But when you stand before God held by the hands of Jesus, it's a place of grace and mercy. Now that's encouragement. That's encouragement. And I want you to think, let's think together as we close today in prayer about the difference that you can make in somebody else's life, as you encourage to live a life of faith and hope and love. Father, I pray for myself. I pray for each of us right now. Would you put into our minds someone we could encourage? Would you bring across our path someday, somebody we could encourage? Help us to realize that that encouragement doesn't have to be how other people encourage. You've given us a special way of encouraging. So let us do it like we would. Let your word come into other people's lives through us. Let faith, hope, and love come into other people's lives through us, we pray. Work that miracle through your spirit. Give us someone to encourage today. In your name, we pray, Jesus. Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to look together at the value of remembering your faith.