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.

Hebrews 10:23-25

In a comment he made to my post last Saturday called “Getting Started”,  Little Monk mentioned the verses above and then went on with this paragraph:

NOW… this SENTENCE came as a bit of a shock to me, to be honest. I mean, how many hundreds of times do we hear the words, “not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some…” in terms of: faithful church attendance, dressing up, tithing, Bible reading, prayer… etc. Almost always in the context of Worship and Church infrastructure? When is the last time you heard it quoted in light of the fact that its author made that an admonition with a SPECIFIC PURPOSE? The “encouraging one another”? The “consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds”?

What an observation!  He is so correct, and I would imagine that most of us have been in the same place, having heard this used to remind us to be in church on Sunday… or maybe we have quoted part of it for that purpose.  Of course when we take the entire sentence as a whole there is a much deeper meaning, a meaning that is entirely consistent with the theme of the whole book of Hebrews.

Hebrews, as has been pointed out here when I posted my class notes in “Sunday Class Notes” last year, is all about the need for all of us to have perseverance, to hang on to our faith in times of trial and to keep on doing God’s work right up to our last day.  It is so easy to see this theme and then take 10:23-25 t in an abstract way, but it isn’t abstract at all, for you see, to persevere is to serve.  To hold fast to the faith is to put your faith into action, and to put your faith into action is to reach out to the lost.

Therefore: in reaching out to the lost, we must encourage one another not just to ‘hang in there’ but to go out to the lost with the Good News.

Here’s what I think may be a great illustration…

Recently in a sermon, I asked for a show of hands of all of those present who were willing to reach out to those around them “right now”. Some hands went up.  Then I told them that the first ones to reach out to were those in the room who had not raised their hands.  Yes, of course we would reach out to them!  They are our younger brothers and sisters in Christ who need the guidance of their older ‘siblings’ who can teach, instruct and train them (we call this making disciples) so that the younger ones can be empowered to reach out themselves, for when the people of God reach out into the larger community, the work of the Kingdom is done on the earth. In order for this Kingdom work to be done, we need to encourage each other to do the work.