Good morning. As we begin, let’s read just a couple of passages out of Hebrews.
Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus,
by a new and living way, which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh,
and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
let us draw near with a sincere heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience,
and our bodies washed with pure water.Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.
And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,
not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some,
but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near.
Another passage in Hebrews 3.
Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God;
but encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today,
lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Lord, we just bless You this morning. We thank You for time together today, to remember You, to come to Your table with the saints, and we just bless You today.
We pray You would grant us just a little open heaven here today, that we might fellowship in Your Word and just see something here that You have for us today. In Jesus’ name.
Well, there was a thought including both of those passages, and it is about encouraging one another—encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing nigh. And that is what we want to talk about: encouraging one another.
First of all, I would like to ask a question. How many here are Christians? How many have been born again?
It is good. If you have not been born again, if you do not know what we are talking about, today is the day you need to grab somebody who raised their hand and talk to them, and find out just what this is we are talking about.
But to those who did raise their hand and are born again, do you know that you really have been born again—that your life is totally changed? It is on a new plane. It is no longer just a man or woman who has been forgiven of their sins, but we are new creatures in Christ.
If we are new creatures in Christ, the Lord has something for us. He has a path. He has a progress of maturing. And I just want to trace a couple of thoughts of that through our New Testament.
What did John say to Nicodemus? And what did Jesus say—what did John report that Jesus said? You must be born again. You must be born again.
And Peter said that he praised the Lord because through Jesus Christ, the Father has caused us to be born again to a living hope.
And Paul said in Romans 8, those who are called according to purpose are to be conformed to the image of His Son—called to sonship. He wants us to be born again. Paul sees we have been born again. Paul says, given that we are born again, we are to come into sonship. God has something for us.
Paul said—we heard this last summer, and we have been hearing it lately—that he considered he was in a race, pressing toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
For me, maybe for others, I have heard lately more and more the Lord’s call for a bride who has made herself ready. He is calling us to be prepared for His return. And those first chapters of Revelation talk all about an overcomer. Even though things are tough, we are called to be an overcomer.
So we see that there is a progress, there is a calling, there is a maturing that the Lord has called us into. But these are days of great pressure upon the Lord’s people. The world is crumbling, and I think we can find it easy to give up and throw in the towel.
But I want to say it: I believe the Lord has a word for us today. Be encouraged. We need to encourage one another while it is still called today.
If you look at that Hebrews 10 passage, there is a little outline—three points, I think, that we can make out of that passage:
The first one is encourage ourselves—Hebrews 10:19-22. The second point is encourage each other—Hebrews 10:23-25. And then finally, encourage each other in assembling—Hebrews 10:25: “not forsaking our own assembling together.”
You know, I do not want to be Dr. Doom, but it is an evil day. It is easy to get discouraged when we see the environment, when we might be tempted to look at ourselves and our own circumstances. Certainly, morally and spiritually, this world is on a downturn. And we hear about it, and we feel it. We feel it in the air.
The kings of this earth have taken their stand against the Lord and against His Anointed. Read Psalm 2. We prayed that back Wednesday night. It came on one of the men who was with us, and we really prayed back Psalm 2.
So I think we need to remember our calling. We need to remember the hour we are in, and we need to provoke ourselves—encourage ourselves.
In encouraging ourselves, I thought we might just look a little bit at what David did. David was one who often found himself in discouraging situations. Let us look a little bit at the principles of David’s life.
Let us read a six-verse passage out of 1 Samuel 30.
Then it happened when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day that the Amalekites had made a raid on the Negev and on Ziklag, and had overthrown Ziklag and burned it with fire.
And they took captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great, without killing anyone, and carried them off and went their way.When David and his men came to the city, behold, it was burned with fire, and their wives and their sons and their daughters had been taken captive.
Then David and the people who were with him lifted their voices and wept until there was no strength in them to weep.Now David’s two wives had been taken captive, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess and Abigail the widow of Nabal the Carmelite.
Moreover, David was greatly distressed because the people spoke of stoning him, for all the people were embittered, each one because of his sons and his daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.
That is a tough passage. David strengthened himself. I think a real possible interpretation of strengthening is that he encouraged himself.
So let us look here for a minute and just look at a few things in the Psalms that were left from David. What did David do? How did he strengthen himself?
David’s wonderful, ongoing dialogue with the Lord, left for us in the Psalms, is really good. If you are discouraged, just read the Psalms.
Remember, David was in a mess—a real mess. How could it be compared to the things we find ourselves in? But he strengthened himself in the Lord.
When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me;
my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah.I acknowledged my sin to Thee,
and my iniquity I did not hide.
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”;
and Thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin. Selah.
David encouraged himself by confessing his sin. We need to keep short accounts with the Lord. We come every Sunday, we remember the Lord—His sacrifice, the blood. We need to remember it every day and just keep short accounts, not letting anything build up in our lives, but confess it and go on.
And we need to believe that the Lord has forgiven us. I think often we think so much of ourselves that we think, “He cannot forgive me.” That is self-centered. He can. He has forgiven you. But confess it and move on. It is a great, great way to strengthen ourselves.
The next thing David did is he worshiped the Lord. Let us look at Psalm 33:1-5.
Sing for joy in the Lord, O ye righteous ones;
praise is becoming to the upright.
Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre;
sing praises to Him with a harp of ten strings.
Sing to Him a new song;
play skillfully with a shout of joy.For the Word of the Lord is upright,
and all His work is done in faithfulness.
He loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of the lovingkindness of the Lord.
So in strengthening ourselves, think about worshiping the Lord—worshiping the Lord daily. Just as we keep short accounts in confessing our sins, worship the Lord.
Worshiping the Lord is a powerful, powerful spiritual tool. It gets our eyes off ourselves; it gets our eyes on the Lord. It honors Him, and it kind of gets things in right perspective.
We are blessed to come together on Sunday, and that Sunday worship, that Sunday remembering, should be an overflow of the dealings we have had during the week.
David strengthened himself in worship. Look at Psalm 31:23-24.
O love the Lord, all ye His godly ones!
The Lord preserves the faithful
and fully recompenses the proud doer.
Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
all you who hope in the Lord.
“Be strong, and let your heart take courage.” He spoke to himself. He reminded himself. He spoke to his soul and said, “Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all ye who hope in the Lord.”
Do not let yourself get down, down, down, down. Remember the Lord.
The final thing that we know David did was pray. These Psalms are really his prayers, are they not? They reflect his communion, his communication, his talking to the Lord.
So we need to be people who pray, who commune and fellowship with the Lord. David acknowledged his sin. He received the Lord’s forgiveness. He was able to break through and worship the Lord. He was able to recognize that he was in a low place and engage his faculties. He spoke to his soul: “Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all ye who hope in the Lord.” And he prayed.
That principle of remembering the Lord and strengthening ourselves carries over into the New Testament. If you remember Paul in 2 Timothy, there is a great passage where he encouraged Timothy and said, “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.”
All these things that we have recorded, that David wrote, were written in the Word of God. They were left for us. We now have the Word of God. So the other thing we do to strengthen ourselves is to be in the Word—to commune with the Lord through His Word, to read it, to think about it, to meditate on it.
I am talking about individual fellowship, but fellowship on the Word too. That is why our Friday-night times are so awesome and powerful—with fellowship in the Word.
For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction,
that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
The things that David went through, the things that were written, were written for our encouragement through the Scriptures, that we might have hope. So if we are down, we need to chew on the Word, to be in the Word, and it provokes us to remember the Lord.
It is not a black-and-white book. There are a couple of principles I want to mention as we read and as we meditate on the Lord. Hebrews 4:12-13: the Word is living and active and sharper than a two-edged sword.
We need the Lord to speak to us through the Word—living and active, and able to divide soul and spirit, to put our soul aside that we might become strong in spirit.
And 2 Corinthians 3:6 says, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” So as we come to the Word, we come for life. We do not come for the letter of the law. The Lord will speak to us. We need to know the Word, but He will certainly speak to us through the Word.
John 5:39-40:
You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life;
and it is these that bear witness of Me;
and you are unwilling to come to Me that you may have life.
The Lord is life. The Lord is the living Word. So as we read the Word and we come to Him, do not let it be a dry thing. Take time and fellowship and commune on it. Let it be a spiritual exercise and not a mental activity.
So anyway, let us summarize. How do we encourage ourselves?
You know, this passage—Hebrews 10:19—talks about entering in by the blood of Jesus. We think about that passage pretty often when we come to the table, but the thought concludes here in Hebrews 10:25: encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing nigh.
We are living at the last of the last days, and times are difficult. We need to encourage one another. I think the closer we get to the end, there is more resistance.
There is just a real warfare over the Lord’s people and His life being expressed. The kind of encouragement I think we need to give each other is to draw one another to the Lord, to point each other to the Lord Himself.
I think to come up with a short-term idea or a way to fix things—or fix each other—is short-term, and ultimately it will break down.
A brother I was close to for so many years has been promoted. He always said this little thing: “No pat answers. No pat answers.” Do not have a formula that we give one another, but we are constrained to bring one another to the Lord.
For a number of years, I worked for a pretty big company here in town. The last ten years I worked for it, it was becoming increasingly difficult. Things were beginning to come apart a bit, and my boss, whom I had for a number of years, always would tell me, “Do not worry. Do not worry about it. We are going to get through this. We always get through this.”
And if anybody has been following the news, we got through it all right. The company is bankrupt, and it was traded as a penny stock until last week. A couple of times a week, I would go out to the Yahoo website and see if there were any news articles or anything.
Well, last week, it went from four cents to three cents to two. For a day, it went to one cent. And what happened the next day? Gone. Just disappeared.
So, “Be encouraged. Everything is going to be okay.” We need to bring the Lord, because honestly, we need to see eternity in view. Everything is going to be okay spiritually, in the heavenlies.
And when we encourage one another, I think there is a real emphasis in this day, even in Christian circles—the prosperity gospel and so forth—to emphasize that things are going to be okay and we are supposed to have this blessed life. And that may be true. God may bless us, but He may not.
Our attention and our affection and our longing is for eternity. It is not for just short-term things. So if we can help each other, that is fine. But let us do it with eternity in view.
This coming alongside, this encouraging, is parakaleō. I think most of us know what that word is. When we come alongside, it is Paraclete.
In John 14, it says, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever”—the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Holy Spirit.
And this is what we need to bring to one another for encouragement: the life of Christ in each one of us. We encourage each other in spirit.
Vine says that parakaleō is “by the side” and “to call”; hence, aid—used for every kind of calling to a person which is meant to produce a particular effect: comfort, exhort, desire.
By calling to one’s side: aid, encouragement, consolation, comfort. So we are called to comfort one another. We need to be careful that we do not neglect one another. We do not see someone stumbling and just ignore them, but by the grace of God, come alongside—not as someone who has the answers, but someone who has the Holy Spirit—to encourage each other.
Encouraging each other is a special gift. I think that is a gift. Maybe it can be a gift; exhorting can be a gift. But I think encouraging cannot be limited to a special few. I think every one of us needs to think, “How can we encourage one another? How can we draw one another along?”
You know, in a long race, how do you encourage each other? You are in the race. We come along as sojourners. We are all in the same race. You just run with each other. Knowing someone is continuing to run is a great encouragement.
A marathon is twenty-six miles, and when you hit the wall—I think a lot of us are close to the wall—with the last six miles, you want to give up. But if I see Glenn beside me and he is saying, “Well, we can keep going,” I mean, there is an encouragement to being together and encouraging each other in the race.
Encourage each other day after day, as long as it is still called today.
And we talked about the Word of God. I think when we encourage each other, it needs to be based on the Bible. It needs to be based on truth. We can find so much mixture in encouragement, but this is a book of complete encouragement. We have to find our encouragement here.
So when we come alongside each other, let us bring the Word of God. The Word is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword. So we bring the life of Christ into the situation.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,
who comforts us in all our affliction,
so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction
with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance,
so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.
Sometimes we think, “Oh, I am going through something. This is terrible. I cannot stand it.” But, you know, the principle we have read in Paul Billheimer’s book is, “Do not waste our sorrows.” Do not waste your sorrows.
Often the dealings of the Lord bring gold into our lives, and we are able, by the grace of God, having been dealt with, to encourage one another in how the Lord has met us. So do not despise the day of small things, and do not despise God’s dealings.
We need to encourage each other with eternity in view. We often think of just the day-to-day, and we definitely need help day by day. But ultimately, we need to see that our training, our trials, our daily dealings are for building us up, for working gold into our lives, for training for eternity.
I think that is a good thing to encourage one another with. This earth is not our home. I think we sang it today. The grave is not our goal.
If we have hoped in Christ in this life only,
we are of all men most to be pitied.
You know, it is our tendency to think, “If we can just get through—if we can get through this week, if we can get through so we can retire, if we can get through something—we are going to be okay.” But we have eternity in view.
If we have hoped in this life, our hope is in eternity. Our hope is in our eternal vocation, and we need to remember, we need to remind each other of that, and encourage each other.
The third point I wanted to share was encouraging each other in assembling. We encourage each other as we gather together.
First of all, I think as we gather together, the Lord is greatly encouraged. And if He is encouraged, if He is lifted up, if He is exalted, how can we not be encouraged?
So we really answer to something in the Lord’s heart. As we gather together, we are doing something that this new life has birthed into us. We are functioning in the way that we have been created spiritually.
When I talk about assembling together, I think we need to get away from thinking that it is just a meeting. It is not just some type of club.
You know, when I was a child, I got Sunday school pins. How many people got Sunday school pins? Well, actually, we got a circle, and then after a while you got a wreath that went around it. Then if you kept on going, you got bars that hung under it. I mean, we had a lot of Sunday school pins.
That was probably all in good faith, trying to encourage people to be together. But instead of meeting, I want to call it “assembled together.” It is way beyond just a meeting. It is ekklesia—the called-out ones assembled together.
If we are in fact born again—everybody here pretty much said they were born again—there is a new spirit, a spirit-life in us, that longs to be together with the saints.
And I believe part of the calling, part of the Word of God, part of His plan for us, is that we be part of a local assembly.
I would just like to paraphrase a couple of thoughts on assembling together. One of them is by C. H. Mackintosh, in a little booklet called The Assembly of God. Many of us have seen that.
He says, “There is an assembly of God on earth. There is an assembly of God on earth. That assembly is gathered by God the Holy Ghost around the Person of God the Son, to worship and fellowship with God the Father. The world knows it not.”
There is an assembly. God has called His people into the assembly. And, you know, I have often thought about how the New Testament is full of the assembly of God.
Mackintosh talked about the progressive revelation of the assembly of God. He says:
Of course, in Matthew it is a little more than intimating: “I will build My church.” In John 17, He says that we all might be one. It is a real strong leading that way.
And I just wonder if the times we are in do not take assembling together—I am not talking about going to church or going to meetings. I really think we need to think another way: assembling together. God has called us.
I wonder if we do not think this is outdated or some kind of emphasis that we have picked up and overemphasized. I do not think so. I really do not think so.
Mackintosh obviously thought assembling was very important. I want to talk about another saint who has gone before, who gives us some thoughts about the importance of assembling. That would be John Wesley.
You know, I think we get tempted to think, “Well, Methodists—you know, Methodists kind of got off, and they got formalized and organized and humanized, and so forth.” But John Wesley really was used of God to bring people back, to bring them back to the true gospel in the church.
Some of his sermons are online, and these thoughts come from a sermon called “The Means of Grace.” He had a series of sermons called The Means of Grace.
He says that Christ had ordained certain outward means for conveying His grace into the souls of men. Their constant practice set this beyond all dispute, for so long as all that believed were together and had all things in common, they continued steadfastly in the teaching of the apostles, and in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.
Further on in that message, he talks about the things that we should avail ourselves of as Christians. He says, “The chief of these means are prayer, whether in secret or with the great congregation; searching the Scriptures, which implies reading, hearing, and meditating thereon; and receiving the Lord’s Supper, eating bread and drinking wine in remembrance of Him.”
“And these we believe to be ordained of God as the ordinary channels of conveying His grace to the souls of men.”
If you are discouraged, if you are down and out, and you are not assembling together in these ways, you are missing a great way that God has given us—a great means of grace.
So as far as assembling, what I hear Wesley saying here is prayer in secret or in the great congregation. He believed there was a place for corporate prayer, for praying together.
Scripture: reading, hearing, or meditation; hearing teaching—teaching on Sunday, Friday-night fellowship times. We are fellowshipping in the Word; we are hearing the Word.
And the Lord’s Supper: remembering the Lord.
So we see that the Lord has given us these things with purpose for our encouragement. These are assembling together: to pray, to receive teaching, and greatest of all, to remember the Lord.
I believe there are tons of reasons for us to forsake the assembling together. And I believe that when we stop meeting together, it is often justified in our hearts.
Often when we are discouraged, when we are down, one of the first things to go is meeting together. We need time to ourselves. We need to protect ourselves. We need to rest. It goes on and on.
And I think it is self-defeating to stay away from the Lord’s people—honestly, one of the worst things we can do.
Can there be anything more encouraging than to be together at the Lord’s table, remembering Him, feeding our spirits, and being strengthened?
If you really feel like you can only come and assemble one time in a week, come to the Lord’s table and be prepared. Do not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Great encouragement comes from being together and encouraging each other in the Lord.
Let me just conclude. “Encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” All the more as you see the day drawing near. More than ever, we need to be together to encourage one another.
We need to encourage each other. Be looking out for one another. Be looking for times to spend time with one another, to encourage one another.
How do we become encouraged? How do we encourage? We need to remember that we are born again, that we are called with purpose, and that that purpose is resisted greatly in this last of the last days.
The enemy and our natural tendencies would like nothing more than to take us away, to discourage us. But we need to stay in the race and not give up.
We need to encourage ourselves. Remember David encouraging himself. We need to encourage one another. Look out for one another; encourage each other. And finally, we need to encourage one another and encourage ourselves by assembling together, not forsaking our assembling together.
So let us pray.
Lord, we thank You for this exhortation to encourage one another. We pray that You would grant us grace not to be discouraged with ourselves, not to be discouraged with one another, but to stay strong in the Lord and encourage ourselves daily, day by day.
Lord, we pray that You would grant us grace to encourage one another, to see how we can encourage each other. And we pray for Your will to be done in our assembling together, to exalt You and to meet You in the assembly.
We just commit this all back to You in Jesus’ name.