Hebrews 10:24–25
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It's that time of year, the heat, the humidity, the fireworks. It makes you want to be near the water. One thing that our family loves to do is go to the beach. Now, I know that there are some people that just hate the sand. They hate the heat, and they hate the sweat, and they just hate all of it. But for some reason, us as a family, we love it. So believe it or not, there is a sunscreen with a triple-digit SPF.
One of my favorite things to do at the beach is to wade out past the waves where they end the break. And you're just far enough out to where, you know, you're in the water deep enough to where your feet starts to leave the sand underneath you and you can float. When you get out there in the water, in the ocean, about that far, you can feel that on the top, the top of the water is warm, but you can feel underneath that the water is cool on the bottom, on your feet.
And you've probably felt this, even if you haven't necessarily put words to it, but the water is never still. There's always a current running along the shore. It's slow, and most of the time, you don't even notice it. And that's exactly the danger. It doesn't pull hard enough for you to worry. It simply carries you just an inch and an inch at a time while you're at rest. And when you finally lift your head to find your umbrella or the people that you came with, you realize you're way down the shoreline.
You never felt yourself moving, but you're a long ways from where you started. This is how drift happens. Almost no one wakes up and decides that today is the day that they want to pull away from Christ and his people. And that raises the question underneath our verses this evening. How far can you drift before you notice you've moved? Our two verses for this evening is Hebrews chapter 10, verses 24 and 25.
They're on the front of your bulletin. And they read, And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. The letter to the Hebrews has an unnamed author. near the end of hebrews the writer calls this letter a word of exhortation he's writing to christians under pressure they were tempted to drift from christ back towards the old covenant and by chapter 10 he has spent nine chapters showing them that jesus is the better and final high priest whose single sacrifice accomplished what the old system could only point towards And our two verses sit at the turn from what Christ has done for us to what we must therefore do.
So here's the main idea that I want you to hold on to this evening. The Christ who opened the way to God also gave us a people to help us keep walking towards the day. Let me repeat that. The Christ who opened the way to God also gave us a people to help us keep walking towards the day. I'm going to give you two questions we're going to look at that will help frame what we're talking about this evening.
The first question, what does Christ call us to do for one another? So that's going to focus mainly on verse 24. Question number two, why is the gathering with one another so necessary? Focusing on verse 25. So the first question. What does Christ call us to do for one another? Now notice the two words the writer gives us in verse 24.
He tells us to consider one another. And then he tells us to stir up one another. So let's start with that word consider. It only appears twice in Hebrews. And the first time that you see this is in Hebrews 3, 1, where we're told to consider Jesus the apostle and high priest of our confession. Then here in Hebrews 10, 24, the writer uses that same word and tells us to consider one another.
That means more than just noticing someone. It's more than just a passing glance. The idea here is to fix your attention on something. To study it, to give it careful thought. So earlier the writer says, fix your attention on Christ. Now he says, turn and give careful attention to the believer beside you.
There's something important about the Christian life here. The Christian life includes considering others and helping them persevere. You may ask the question to someone, what would actually help my brother or sister hold on this week? What would make them love God and love others? When's the last time you've been that intentional about your thinking?
The writer tells us to consider one another because our natural inclination is to consider ourselves. One commentator said that only intentional planned consideration reverses the inward current of the heart. We are naturally quick to notice what we need. What has disappointed us? What has made our week difficult? Hebrews is telling us to deliberately turn our attention towards the person next to you.
Now listen to that second phrase, stir up. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. It's a sharp word here. The same word is used in Acts 15 for the sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas. Their provocation was so severe that the two men separated from one another. They left on two separate boats. So normally this word carries a negative edge.
It's the idea of provoking, agitating, stirring something up. The writer, I think, reaches for that edge on purpose. The reality is that you are already being provoked every day. The world provokes you towards envy. The world provokes you towards fear. You're provoked towards lust and resentment, self-pity.
The world is constantly stirring something in you. And Hebrews says the church should stir something in you too, but in the opposite direction. We are to provoke one another towards love and good works. The church should be a place where believers are spiritually roused out of coldness, out of passivity, out of selfishness, out of the fears that we hold on to.
And it takes the body of Christ to do those things. Sometimes that means encouragement. Sometimes it means a warning. Sometimes it means looking at your brother and saying, I haven't seen you in a while. How are you really doing? Sometimes it means saying, you seem discouraged. Or brother, I'm concerned about the direction you are heading. Or simply, keep going.
Don't quit. This is the kind of love Hebrews is describing. So let me ask you a practical question. Do you allow anyone to speak into your life like that? Do you have any ordinary rhythms in your life where another Christian can actually stir you towards Christ-likeness? Hebrews is telling us that we need relationships that are capable of stirring us.
This is part of God's design for the church. The congregation is one of God's appointed instruments of perseverance. We're all doing this together. Perseverance is something that the body does together in the church. So I want to encourage you in this, this evening. That you don't have to carry that weight alone. Now everything in verse 24 here assumes that there's someone next to you.
The considering. The stirring. None of that happens with you isolated at home. And that leads directly into verse 25. Our second question, why is the gathering with one another so necessary? Verse 25, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
Now notice what the writer does not tell us here. He never tells us exactly why some of these people had stopped gathering together. maybe they were fearful of something, maybe they were tired, maybe some type of disappointment had set deep into their heart, maybe it was just the ordinary life had simply become crowded with other things. We don't actually know why they stopped coming, But the writer does tell us that their absence had become a habit, as is the habit of some.
So a pattern formed. Somewhere along the way, they had become comfortable being away from the gathered people of God. The comfort becomes a practice. The practice becomes a habit. And the habit becomes a current, and inch by inch, you're carried down shore. And for a while, you don't even feel yourself moving. Hebrews is full of warnings like this.
In chapter 2, we must pay much closer attention lest we drift away. In chapter 3, exhort one another every day that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. In chapter 5, you have become dull of hearing. So drifting, hardening, dullness. Do you hear how slow all of those words are? This is part of the danger.
What he's warning us here. Apostasy rarely kicks down the front door. it often seeps in through the unguarded back door of ordinary neglect I grew up in the south and where I grew up there was pretty much a church on every corner and everybody had a church just right down the road that they went to and many of you have family members like this They claim the name of Christ, but they have grown completely comfortable away from the church.
And these people don't hate Jesus. Sometimes ordinary priorities simply crowd out the means of grace. Work, our sports, travel ball, family schedules, a calendar full of good things, right? And listen, these may be genuinely good things.
We should be very careful when the ordinary priorities of life slowly train us to live comfortably away from the gathered people of God. a coal doesn't have to be thrown across the room to go cold. It only has to be raked a little to the side and left there. For a while, it still has heat. It still may glow. But a coal laid by itself begins to cool.
David Clarkston, an English Puritan, said, live coals laid apart will quickly die. But while they are together, they keep the heat in one another. This is the danger Hebrews is warning us about. You may never have sat down and decided, I'm finished with this whole church thing. You just kept finding somewhere else to be. And an inch at a time, the gathering meant less to you.
You became more comfortable away. And somewhere along the way, you stop noticing how far you moved. So what's the answer here? What encouragement do you have for me today? I'm going to have you look at verse 19. So I want you to turn back to verse 19. When a Christian grows comfortable away from the assembly, something has gone wrong theologically upstream.
The writer of Hebrews treats the desertion of the assembly as a deadly, serious thing. And we need to understand why. So before we even get to verse 25 here, the writer spent these verses here from 19 down lifting our eyes to a torn curtain in an open way in a great high priest. So when a person slowly disappears from the people of God, the real core heart issue is that Christ's priestly work has been overshadowed or forgotten.
You cannot read verse 25 apart from verses 19 through 21. Since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near, let us hold fast to the confession of our hope, and let us consider how to stir up one another towards love and good works. The cure for neglect here is a recovered vision of the high priest, Jesus Christ.
Now, let me be clear. Hebrews is not teaching that Christ truly saves someone and then somehow loses someone. That's not what he's teaching here. Christ keeps his people. But that does not make this warning here hypothetical. God uses warnings like this as the one here by which he, the means by which he preserves his people.
The true believer hears the voice of the shepherd in the warning and is called to endure. And when someone finally and decisively abandons Christ, that apostasy reveals that their profession of faith was never truly real. No one in this room is perfect. We all need to hear what the writer of Hebrews is telling us. This is for every Christian.
The afflicted saint needs the gathered church. Afflicted saints come weary, and the church sings truth over them. They come ashamed. And the gospel is preached to them. They come fearful, and saints speak courage to them. They come tempted to leave, and others call them to endure. If this is you, if you feel cold, if you are dull to the things of God, then I don't want you to miss this.
Don't miss the kindness buried in the severity of Hebrews here. He sounds the alarm so that the one who is drifting will turn back. And if you can hear that alarm, if you can hear that alarm, that is evidence that the shepherd is still in pursuit. Christ is merciful to give you a people who know that you have drifted down shore.
I'm thankful that we have a church that sings. And we sing loud. We need that encouragement. That is what the church is for. Sometimes you cannot sing yourself into courage alone. You need the congregation to carry the song for you. If you are in one of those seasons right now, do not wait to feel strong enough to gather with the body.
You come weak, you come empty, come with nothing to offer but your presence. And you let the body do for you what you cannot do for yourself. The writer gives one final pressure behind all of this. Do it all the more as you see the day drawing near. The day is the day of the Lord, the day of Christ's return. A day that brings both judgment on his enemies and salvation to his own.
The world that presses on you now. Its shame, its cost of wearing Christ's name, let me tell you, all of it is temporary. The closer we are to the day, the more we need the gathered church's warnings. The more we need the gathered church's comforts. It's prayers, it's songs, it's exhortations. And let it be known, when the gathered church, when the church gathers here on earth, it rehearses for the final gathering in heaven.
So how far can you drift before you notice you've moved? If you're noticing right now, that noticing in itself is a mercy. So turn around. And you're not going to swim back to earn your welcome. The welcome was secured long before you ever drifted. Everything needed to bring you home has already been done through the blood of Christ.
Let's pray. Father, we thank you that the blood of Jesus has opened the way into your presence. We thank you that Christ is our great priest. Keep us from drifting. Father, we ask that you would teach us to consider one another, to stir one another up to love and good works and to encourage one another as the day draws near.
Father, we ask that you would help strengthen the weary. Wake up those people who are drifting. Give comfort to those who are weak. And make our church a means of perseverance. We ask this in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.