And all the kids said, oh man.
And all the parents said, it's the most wonderful time of the
year.
No, you know I love summer and I love being with my kids.
I love being with them and all the extra time that happens.
How many of you like being with your kids?
You like being with your kids?
You like being with your family?
There's something so important to that.
That's a very powerful word.
There's this powerful, very, very powerful word that maybe you
not considered as important.
But you've been moved by the power of it.
You've been moved by the power of what this word means.
It's a relational word and it's a very common word.
And if you ignore this word, it could have detrimental effects
in your relationships.
Every one of us has been deeply impacted for the good and for
the bad by this word and it's the word with.
With.
What do I mean?
It's important that we be with people.
It's important that we be with our family.
It's important that we be with our church family.
It's important that we spend time with the Lord.
We live in an age that's full of information but not necessarily
full of wisdom.
We live in a time where you can connect with almost anyone at
any time.
You agree with me?
You can get to, if you want to get to me, you can email me.
You can Facebook message me.
You can post on my wall.
You can text me.
You can call me.
You can come visit me at the church.
How are you with me?
We have so much access to each other in so many ways.
But making connections that are authentic and deep with someone
in the same room because of the same tools that we have to
make connections sometimes makes connections very difficult.
Have you felt that before?
You go in public and you say hi to somebody and it's more and
more rare for people to respond to you, right?
It was a time when everybody said hi to each other.
Even in our own home sometimes we're all in the same room but
we're not with each other.
Have you ever experienced that?
And I'm not saying that as like some old guy getting older.
I do that.
There are times where somebody is trying to get my attention but
I'm really focused on this thing in my hand.
Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad.
Anybody have that?
And that goes on.
When you think about the people though that have impacted you,
I believe there is a correlation between the amount of time
that they've spent with you and the impact that they had on you.
There is such a thing as quality time but I believe a lot of
times quality time does not come but by a quantity of time.
There has to be time with each other.
When you think about those people that have impacted you,
they spent time with you.
Now over the last two chapters in this book of Hebrews that we
have been studying, Hebrews chapter 9 into chapter 10, there
has been a description of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ sacrificed his own body.
He is both priest and sacrifice, the Bible teaches us, that he
died on the cross and when he died on the cross he was
sacrificing his life.
He was substituting himself on our behalf.
When God poured out his wrath for Jesus, he was paying for our
sin.
He was pouring out his justice, his judgment on Jesus for
our sin so that God could then declare us righteous like the
choir saying today, he can come back with a verdict of not
guilty because Jesus Christ paid the price so that we could be
declared not guilty.
Who is excited about that?
That is an amazing thing, right?
Why though was we know that being given justification, being
declared righteous is a good thing and being free from the guilt
of that is a good thing.
But is that the soul and only part of the reason why Jesus did
that?
Why did God do that?
Why was the sacrifice made?
Why was it needed and what does it mean for us today?
How should we live and how can we live now that the sacrifice has
been made?
And when you put your faith and trust in Jesus for his sacrifice
and you allow his substitute, his payment for your sins to be
put on your account, God takes away his sin, gives you his
righteousness, how though, it's kind of like that famous question,
how shall we then live?
What should we do with that?
Why did God do that?
And I believe that at least in part the concept can be found in
this little word with.
When you get to Hebrews 10, verse 19, you will find it to be
we will read verses 19-25 and study that all the way through
and you will find two sentences.
That's what this whole paragraph is, two sentences.
And there are two terms that are used multiple times that give
us the structure to our text.
If you look in verse 10, you have your Bibles, you have Bibles?
Okay, it's always good to have a Bible.
Chapter 10, verse 19, you see the first word in verse 19.
Everybody say what the first word is in 19.
Having.
Then you go to verse 21 and it says, and what's that?
Having.
And then you have two havings, having this and having that.
And it says with that, verse 22, let us.
Do you see that?
What's the first two words?
Verse 23, you got it?
Verse 24, let us.
Here's this basic structure.
Since you have this and since you have that, because of that
on that basis, let us do this.
Okay, do you get it?
Because you have that, let us do this.
You've been given a million dollars.
Let's go on vacation.
Right?
Do you get it?
Because this has happened, this is how you live.
Who agrees if you get a million dollars, you're going to take a
few weeks off?
Okay.
Kind of the idea.
He says in verse 19, having there for 21 and having verse 22,
let us, verse 23, let us, verse 24, let us.
And what I'm going to show you today from this text is that the
preacher, the author of Hebrews, is making a case for the why, at
least a part of the implication of the why for Christ's sacrifice.
Now I know the ultimate why.
Jesus wanted to glorify his father.
He wanted to make much of his father.
But that's not the only reason.
He's making the case that not only was Jesus wanting to be
obedient to the father, and of course Jesus turned the cross to
make payment for our sins.
And of course Jesus rose from the dead and is sitting, remember
last week?
He's sitting on the right hand of the father.
The whole thing has been done.
Everything that was, if you weren't here last week, the previous
passage talks about how he's sitting on the right hand of the
father.
The sacrifices in the Old Testament kept going and kept going
and kept going and the priests never sat because sin is never
ultimately finally paid for.
But because Jesus made the full and final price for sin and his
sacrifice, he can now sit down because everything that's needed
to be done to pay for my sin is complete.
It's over.
It's been done.
He became a propitiation for our sins and not for our sins only
but for the sin of the whole world.
It's good news.
Why did he do it?
The answer is found in that little word with, through Christ's
sacrifice, here's the point, God has made it possible for us to be
with him.
And not just one day, right now, you can spend time with God.
You can spend time in God's presence.
You can go to God.
And because of Christ's sacrifice, God has made it critical for us
to be with each other.
So based on Jesus' sacrifice, I can go to God.
I can be with him.
And I should have a relationship with people based on that
sacrifice.
These two phrases that begin with having, this word having, point
to what God has done for us and given to us.
And then these three phrases that begin with let us point to
what we ought to, how we ought to live with these new realities in
place.
And so if I were to summarize the sermon today, I would say this,
Christ's sacrifice is so important, not just for the after life but
for the life of disciples now.
If you're a believer, it's important for you now.
If you're an unbeliever, it's important for you now.
You need to understand what I'm about to tell you.
We should respond to his sacrifice.
He's laid out the case for Christ's sacrifice being superior.
We should respond to his sacrifice in these three ways.
We'll find it in those three let us statements.
The first thing we ought, the first way we ought to respond is this.
Let us enter God's presence.
Look at verse 19.
Having therefore brethren, these are people who know Christ's
Savior, having therefore brethren boldness to enter into the
holiest by the blood of Jesus.
Now, when the preacher writes the word therefore, he's
establishing that what he's about to say on what has been said
throughout the book, especially in chapter 10.
In chapter 10 so far, we've understood or we've been taught
that Christ has become the testator or the one who guaranteed
by his death our inheritance through the payment of his blood.
Anybody looking forward to that inheritance?
It can be awesome.
In doing this, he became a sacrifice for sins forever.
He's now seated at the right hand of God in the presence of God.
He intercedes for us, meaning he goes to God on our behalf and
will one day defeat all his enemies.
And it says he'll even make him his footstool.
He has made this new covenant, this new promise, which puts the
Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, down into us as a
down payment of our inheritance.
The Bible talks about an Ephesians that he's the earnest of
our inheritance.
He's a down payment letting us know that more is on the way.
And our sins have been totally forgiven, if you know Christ is
your Savior, by the blood of Jesus.
He now uses the word having to establish what we have now in
Christ.
He says in verse 19, having therefore brethren boldness to
enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus.
The preacher describes the place where God dwells as the holiest.
In the day and time, even when this is written, this is written
before the temple was destroyed in 8070.
And in that temple, there was, we've described this several
times, it was an earthly temple that was kind of modeled after
the earthly tabernacle, this tent that Moses made, God
instructed Moses to make, when they went from Egypt into the
promised land.
And in this place, there was the outer court, there was the
inner court, there was the holy place, that's where all the
priests could be and that's where they did their sacrifices.
Then there was the holy of holies.
How many of you have heard that before in church?
If you haven't, that's fine.
The holy place where the priest could go, the holy of holies is
the place that only one priest could go.
He could only go in once a year and he would go in and sprinkle
the blood of a spotless lamb on the mercy's feet on the Ark of
the Covenant.
No one would think in that culture that it was appropriate
or proper, there was no Jew who would just walk in to the
temple, walk past all the priests and just pull the veil back
and walk into the holy of holies.
That would have been atrocious, that would have been
blasphemous, it would have been shocking.
When you come here today, we may have a door too locked but not
because we are worried about you going into a blasphemous part of
this place, are you with me?
It wouldn't be blaspheming for you to go into a different room
because this is not the temple.
I don't even think this is the sanctuary.
This is where the people who are now the sanctuary meet once a
week.
We don't have a temple.
We are the temple.
Do you get it?
To go into that holy of holies at that time would have been
like, oh, what is he doing?
If you had a kid, it would have never been able to happen.
It wouldn't have happened.
But someone to go in and get into that place, no one has the
boldness to do that.
In fact, according to tradition, we find that even the one who
was allowed to go in once a year, they would tie a rope around
his leg so that if he went in there and he wasn't worthy and
had the presence of God, they would be able to pull him out
without going in.
Do you get it?
But he says, when Jesus died on the cross, something happened.
The veil that separated the holy of holies from the holy place
got torn from top to bottom.
Now we don't worry about the holy of holies because now we can
go to God.
We can get to God ourselves.
We don't need to go through a priest.
In fact, the priesthood is over.
That priesthood is.
There's a new priesthood, the priest after the order of Melchizedek
and there's one person holding that office and his name is Jesus
Christ.
So now we have boldness.
We can go to Jesus, we can go through Jesus and get to God
because of what?
Verse 19.
We enter into the holiness by the blood of Jesus.
God is omnipresent and doesn't dwell in a temple made with hands
anymore.
We are the temple.
First Corinthians 6.19 says, what?
Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which
is in you, which you have of God and you are not your own, for
you are bought with a price.
Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are
the presence of God.
The Jews had no access to the presence of God in their temple.
The earthly temple was a picture of the true temple not made with
hands where God dwells.
Since Jesus' blood cleanses us from sin, we can have boldness and
not fear going into the presence of God.
We don't come into the holy of holies or the presence of God
with fear like they did.
We can be with God.
We are two or more gathered in His name, so am I in the midst of
them, right?
Are you with me?
We can enter together into the presence of God.
Hmm.
Are you guys excited about that?
You can't get to Joe Biden.
You can't get to Donald Trump.
You can't get to Joe Biden.
You want to get to some of those guys, right?
You can't access those.
Are you with me?
You can talk to God right now.
And He pays attention.
And He loves you.
And He knows everything about you.
This is a, are you kidding me?
You can get to God.
Some of you are doing your week without God.
Sometimes I do my week without God.
God, I got my planner and I got my agenda and I got my to-do list
and I got my calendar and I got this.
Some of you guys don't even have to-do lists or calendars.
I mean, you do. You just don't write it down.
You have no idea what you're doing.
We're trying to do things on our own power.
And then when it messes up, then that's when we go to God.
It's a bad plan.
God, what do you want from me?
We can go to God. We can be in the presence of God.
We have an access that they did not have because we've been given an advocate
that they did not have in dwelling them.
This advocate, Jesus also who paid the price
that the blood of bulls and goats could not ultimately pay.
We can go win because of the blood of Jesus.
And so we have boldness to enter.
How do we enter? Verse 20.
Buy a new and living way.
Jesus shed his blood and he died, but what happened?
He rose from the dead and now where is he?
Sitting on the right hand of God. You can go to God.
You can go to God and Jesus is right there.
Enterceeding on your behalf. If you don't even pray the right things,
the Bible says he prays the right things for you.
His body, it says here by a new and living way,
which he has consecrated for us through the veil,
that is to say his flesh.
Now he's making a metaphor, a picture.
The veil was torn. His body was torn.
And now we have access to God because there doesn't have to be a veil anymore.
There don't even have to be a temple anymore.
We can go to God without that.
His sacrificial death opened the veil to the Holy of Holies,
the very presence of God.
We now have access to God through the person and work of Jesus Christ
by his torn body.
Yet our sacrifice for sin, Jesus, did not stay dead.
No, our sacrifice for sin is alive right now.
He's our living sacrifice that intercedes to God on our behalf.
That's what he explained in verse 21.
Here's the second thing that we have.
Not only do we have boldness to enter,
we have a high priest over the house of God.
This is the second having.
We have boldness to enter.
We have the high priest over the house of God.
Not only was he the sacrifice for us, now he's our representative.
We can boldly go into the presence of God because we have an advocate.
We have a mediator.
We have Jesus Christ the righteous who goes to God on our behalf.
So it's on the basis of those two arguments.
Don't you see what you have?
You've got a million dollars.
Go on vacation.
You have boldness to enter.
There's no more veil because the veil was torn.
You now have access to God through the blood of Jesus who isn't dead.
He's alive and he's there by God for you as your mediator and your advocate.
You have a new and living way to get to God.
So let us draw near.
Verse 22.
Let us draw near.
Love ones.
Not only, you know, it's one thing to have like official access, right?
The president of the company may see you now.
You have from 10.05 to 10.10 to give them all of what you want to tell them.
You can have access to somebody without being close to them.
Do you get it?
But he says, let us draw near.
You can not only have access to God in terms of just like straight like, yeah, God help me out.
You can have a relationship with God that's close.
That's intimate.
Now some of you like to be close to God.
That's intimate.
Some of you ladies are shaking your heads but some of you guys are like, I don't want intimate.
But what I mean is, what did God choose to call himself?
Father.
He really can be our father.
He really can be someone who loves you and cares about you and takes care of you.
And he has a relationship with him.
Make sure you get the argument.
You have a new boldness to go into God's presence.
You have a new and living way.
So let us draw near with a true heart.
How's our heart true?
He made it true.
He cleansed it.
What does he say?
He's sprinkled from an evil conscience and our body is washed with pure water.
You're clean.
You're forgiven.
Your sin is gone.
You can go to God.
You can be with God.
He can be with you.
You can have a relationship with God.
I've had people tell me, we talked about the gospel.
We talked about salvation.
We talked about, hey, you died in Christ on the cross for your sins.
You're a believer.
You turn from your sin to him by faith.
You can be forgiven.
I've had people in that moment tell me, but yeah, I just don't know if I'm ready.
There's some things I've got to clean up.
There's some sin I'm doing that I've got to clean up.
And while I think that repentance is necessary for salvation, if you're waiting to be perfect to get saved, you'll never get saved.
You'll never get saved.
It's like saying, I'm too dirty for a bath.
The bath is what's going to clean you up.
Are you with me?
When we get saved, God cleanses us from our sin.
And if any man being in Christ, he is a new man.
He's a new man.
Being in Christ, he is a new creature.
The old is gone and the new has come.
We've been cleansed.
Here he talks about our hearts being sprinkled and our bodies being washed with pure water.
He says here, having our sins sprinkled from an evil conscience.
Every year, the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies, like I said, and sprinkle the blood of a sacrifice on the mercy seat.
Christ's blood has sprinkled our hearts.
It says, on our bodies washed with pure water.
This phrase references all of the ceremonial clendings by the priest.
They were constantly washing themselves in basins of clear water.
This is not here referred to baptism, but to how the Holy Spirit cleanses us.
As referred to in Ephesians 5.25, by the washing of the water by the word.
Christ washes us by his spirit through his word.
This same idea of sprinkling and cleansing is exactly what was predicted that Jesus would do.
In Isaiah 52, which begins that passage that goes right into Isaiah 53, we studied it a few months ago.
It says this, talking about the servant that was to come who is clearly Jesus.
prophesied 700 years before Jesus came.
This is what it says.
Behold, this is God speaking, talking about his servant, the servant being Jesus.
Behold, my servant shall deal prudently.
He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.
As many were astonished at thee.
His visage was so marred more than any man in his form in the sons of men.
Wait a minute, that's two contrasting verses.
Your servant is going to be exalted and extolled and be very high,
but his body, his visage is going to be so marred that he won't even be recognized as a man.
And his form more than the sons of men.
Verse 15, so shall he sprinkle many nations.
How is Jesus so marred that he's unrecognizable?
The crucifixion, the shedding of blood.
And when he died on the cross for our sins, he wasn't just paying for the sins of the Jews.
In this way he sprinkled many nations to the point that the king shut their mouths at him
for that which they had not been told this shall they see, that which they had not heard shall they consider.
The point of Jesus' sacrifice was to cleanse us.
And when we're clean, now we, because of what Jesus did, are acceptable to go into the presence of God.
Now we have boldness to get to God.
Now we have access to get to God.
We're going by a new and living way.
We have a representative.
Let us, brethren, I'm talking to you now, let us, everyone in here who knows Jesus as Christ
and even some of you that don't, let me help you to know Him so that you can draw near.
So that you can have a relationship with God.
So that you can talk to God and he can speak to you through his word.
What an incredible gift we have loved ones.
What an incredible thing.
We can enjoy the presence of God because of our intercessor, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Do you have a place where you can go to meet with God?
It can be anywhere, but I'm saying more for you than for him.
Do you have a place? Do you have a time?
I meet with God at my desk at home most mornings.
I meet with God in my office sometimes.
I met with God with men in this church during the week.
We've come into this room and knelt down and prayed for many of you.
I met with God in my car.
Don't worry, Doug, I keep my eyes open.
My Honda Accord can become the Holy of Holies.
I can be bold to ask for the things that I need to live the way God wants me to.
So can you.
Why?
Because you have an advocate with the Father.
Because His Spirit is in me, washing me from my sin.
Because He shed His blood for my salvation and my sanctification.
Because He wants to draw us near to Himself as sons.
So because of Christ's sacrifice for us, love ones, let's draw near into His presence.
Here's the second way we should respond.
Number two, let's endure without wavering.
Let's endure without wavering.
Here's what He says.
Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering.
For He, if you agree with this phrase, say amen.
For He is faithful, that promised.
The object of our faith that we possess and profess is the Lord Jesus Christ has revealed in the Old and New Testaments.
He is our High Priest to God.
He has made the boldness and the entry into this holiest of all possible.
He is who we profess.
He is faithful to keep us by keeping His promise to us.
And so in return, we ought to endure in our profession, living according to what we say we believe no matter the cost.
It cost Jesus what?
It cost Him His body and His blood.
It cost Him enduring the wrath of God.
And He is faithful.
Our sins, they were many.
His mercy is more.
He can be trusted.
You can trust God.
He made promises and you need to hear this.
It can be good for you, but it also could be bad for you.
God always, always, always, always, always, always keeps His promises.
He always keeps His promise.
God was faithful to us before we ever responded to it or even recognize it.
We love Him because He first loved us.
And you may be here today and you think that Jesus is a joke.
You may think that Jesus is just another religious entity used to control people,
but I want to tell you this.
Whether you believe it or not, your sin has made you God's enemy.
Just like my sin made me God's enemy.
But here's the good news.
God loves His enemies.
But God commended His love towards us in that while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us.
Christ died for you before you believed and while you were a sinner.
And I don't think it's wrong.
I think it's specific to the verses and in the whole of Scripture that God is love.
And I can look at anybody and tell them God loves you.
God loves you.
He demonstrated that by sending His son to die for you.
With such a cost paid so that I can have eternal life and access to the Father,
it would be such a shame for me to deny my Savior.
We should not forsake Him in any way.
He has made a way into the holiest of all, so I should go there.
I should pray.
I should read His word.
I should go to Him for everything and with everything.
Why would I deny the only thing that, the only way that I can be made right with God?
Because of Christ's sacrifice for us, let us enter into God's presence.
Because of Christ's sacrifice for us, let us endure for Him without wavering.
Number three, because of Christ's sacrifice for us, let us encourage Christ's body.
Let us encourage Christ's body.
Look at verse 24.
And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works.
Consider here means to think about our brethren, to figure them into our thinking.
If all you think about is you and yours, you're doing it wrong.
We ought to consider everybody God puts a stewardship of us.
We have a stewardship of all of our relationships.
The word here for provoke is the word parak susmas.
It's where we get the idea of stimulation or provocation.
It can mean encouragement and sharp disagreement.
The idea is to stir up.
The idea is not disconnected from what he was saying.
He is saying let us endure without wavering.
He is saying let us stay true to Jesus.
And I don't know about you but sometimes for me, I get to places in my life where I am tempted not to be faithful to Jesus.
Anybody here like that?
In a moment of sin and temptation, when I am tired, anybody here ever tired?
I can point a few out that I know are tired.
You are trying to recover right now.
In those moments it's easy for us to mess up and not be faithful to each other.
We need each other, brethren.
We need each other.
Let's consider one another to provoke.
Let's endure without wavering.
Let us stay true to Jesus.
That's easy for us to waver from so we need each other.
This is not a time for fence sitting or neutrality.
It's certainly not a time for regression.
It's a time for progression towards love and to good work.
Good works.
Who here needs love?
Yeah.
We do.
If you think you don't, you're in trouble.
You need people in your life and they need you.
Anybody here need encouragement?
We need encouragement.
Anybody here need accountability?
I need it.
We need accountability to be all that God wants God for us to be.
Church, we need each other.
How does that look?
Verse 25, this is so cool.
Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is.
What it doesn't look like, if you're going to endure without wavering,
you're going to need the encouragement of other believers.
What does that look like?
How do we provoke one another to love and good works?
Provoking can be encouragement to do good and it can be,
hey, you need to stop doing the wrong thing.
Okay?
It can be correction.
It can be.
How would your family go if you never corrected your kids?
It wouldn't go well, right?
So you need, how would your family go if you never encouraged your kids?
Right?
So it's basic to human relationships that we need both.
He says let's consider one another to love and to good works.
Let's provoke one another unto love and to good works.
Well, what does that look like?
Well, it definitely doesn't look like this.
We're taking the assembling of ourselves together.
The word assembling here, you people who like Hebrews,
this is just right in there.
The word assembling is the word episynugage.
Episynugage.
What does that sound like?
Synagog.
Are you with me?
It's used two times in Scripture.
It's the act of being gathered together or assembled.
It has definite religious connotations to synagogue.
So here's the preacher who's definitely Jewish,
talking primarily to Jewish believers and says,
don't stop synagoguing.
Right?
Now he's already told them that you don't have to do the ceremonial law anymore.
You don't have to sacrifice anymore.
We know from that book of Acts that they don't have to have the dietary laws they had before.
Right?
But he says don't stop assembling.
That's how some people do life.
You don't do life that way.
You keep coming together.
What do they do in the synagogue?
They sang.
They read Scripture.
They prayed.
They stood up and took the Scripture that was read and made sense of it.
What does that sound like?
That's not like what we do here.
Gather for worship.
Gather for reading of the word.
Gather for fellowship.
The word for church is the word ecclesia,
which literally means assembly.
So this preacher is telling people who used to assemble at the synagogue
to gather for singing, to gather for reading of the word,
to gather for fellowship, or to keep on synagogueing.
He's telling the ecclesia to keep ecclesia-ing.
He tells the assembly don't stop assembling.
And here's why that's so important.
You can't provoke people to love and good works if you don't know each other.
You can't provoke one another to love and good works if you don't have access to each other.
So if you're watching online, we're so grateful that you are.
But if that's all you're ever going to do, now there's some that maybe they have a physical reason,
and man, that's better than nothing.
But the assembly should assemble and should be here because you need encouragement.
We need your encouragement.
You need correction.
We need correcting.
Don't stop assembling as a manner of some is.
But exhorting one another, exhorting means encouraging, teaching, instructing, reminding, influencing.
How often should we do that?
So much the more as you see the days, or the day it says approaching.
The day here is an allusion to the day of the Lord.
Jesus is sitting on his throne, but guess what he's going to do?
At some point he's coming back.
In Matthew chapter 24, Jesus gives what's called the Olivet Discourse.
And it's because he's on the Mount of Olives, and it's not a sermon per se.
It's a conversation that he has with his disciples.
He had been in the temple and he looked at them and said, hey, there's going to come a time where not one stone is going to be left on another.
He said all this is going to happen.
And in 8070, that happened.
Gold melted into the cracks as they were attacked.
And they literally to get the gold in between the cracks of the stones, they literally destroyed.
Every stone was lifted out to get all that.
But Jesus in that time, speaking of, and if you want to read more about this or understand more about this,
I did a series on Wednesday nights about a year ago.
You can go to our website and find the series where I go into detail about this.
But Jesus says that one of the signs of this coming day of the Lord, this thing that's going to happen in the future,
is that our birth pangs, what's called birth pangs,
and anybody that's ever had a child or was related to someone that had a child,
understands how the birthing process happens.
You start having pain.
There's contractions.
And those contractions and that pain, the birth pangs, go from further between each other to closer.
Are you with me?
Who understands that?
You start having them and the closer the child gets to arriving outside of the mother,
it's alive already, but coming, you know, being born, the closer the pain gets in duration.
And also the more intense.
It goes from less intense to more intense.
I believe with all my heart as you read Matthew 24 and you study it and compare Scripture with Scripture,
but that's talking about what's going to happen in the time of the tribulation.
So the birth pangs are going to happen during the tribulation.
And I believe with all my heart that I won't be here for the tribulation.
I think there's a lot of reasons biblically to believe that.
So I'm pretty tribulation on what I believe with the Bible talks about the rapture.
But what's interesting is that the birth pangs that Jesus talks about,
wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, antichrists,
that that's going to happen a lot during the seven-year tribulation.
And what I want you to know is that if you pay attention at all, you're seeing some of that stuff happen right now.
Why am I saying that?
The writer of Hebrews seems to indicate that there's the possibility of seeing the day approaching.
Pay attention.
He says, church, assembly, don't stop assembling.
Don't forsake the synagoguing of yourselves together.
Get together and pray and worship and love each other and provoke each other to love good works.
I don't want to hold this over you as some kind of legalistic.
You should be here Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.
And if you're not, you're in trouble.
We're coming to find you.
I'm making the case that he's making and that is we need each other now more, not less.
And we need encouragement and provoking of each other to love in good works now more, not less.
So much the more as you see the day approaching.
A faithful profession of faith vertically because of the faithful ministry and the promise of God to me should result in me encouraging others in that same way.
Jesus has not only been faithful to me, but he's also made his life available to everyone.
And so how do we be faithful and endure our profession, hold on to our profession of faith without wavering?
Well, one thing is we declare our profession of faith to the lost.
People need to know that the day of the Lord is coming, people need to know that Jesus died on the cross. There's a sacrifice that's been made.
You can have a relationship with God, you can draw near to God.
And if you don't, you're going to spend eternity separated from God.
So to the lost we say, Jesus is the only way, he is the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.
And to the saved I say, do you realize, brethren, what's been done for you?
Because we have boldness to enter.
Because we have a high priest who's an advocate.
Because he's sitting on the right hand of God and he's waiting, expecting one day for his enemies to be made.
His footstool. I need to work out.
Let us draw near. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith. Let's endure without wavering.
And let's gather together to encourage Christ's body.
And as you disciple your children, as you disciple your family, as you lead your family, you need to understand that your priorities will become your kids' priorities.
Your lack of priorities will become your kids' lack of priorities.
Church is not something you do when you're a kid and you grow out of it.
It's something for life. Are you with me?
So as we consider how we prioritize even our kids' activities, we need to consider what they need to be discipled in.
And they're going to need, do you think our kids will need the church in 20 years? 30 years? I believe you will.
So the closer we get to the day of our redemption, the more we should commit ourselves to one another.
The days are not getting easier. Would you bow your heads and close your eyes with me?