Hebrews 10:24
"And let us consider one another to provoke (or to prod, to stir up) unto love and good works:"
You see, the beauty of the true Christian community is that we should not be attacking each other. Nor anyone else of a different persuasion or belief or faith system. Nor are we to be smiling and laughing over some fellow Christian’s misfortune. But, rather, we should be constantly encouraging one another, because you don’t get a word of encouragement from the world or its corrupt religious systems, as they are all indifferent to God. I mean not a word. And yet we’re all human. I don’t have to have my feathers stroked three, four times a day; but once in a while it sure helps to have someone say, "Bill, you have blessed my life." Of course, we’re human and we appreciate that. It encourages us the keep the faith to continue on. And thereby stand in the faith and resistance to the evil one and those subject to him through religion.
Even in our everyday contacts with fellow believers, we should be encouraging one another – not attacking and pulling each other down or tearing each other apart. Though we're to provoke or prod one another,ie...we're to encourage one another to love each other as well as to practice good things of God. Now I think maybe I shared it, but a lot of times people, especially when they get older and they’re no longer able to do the fast-paced work of when they were young, will say, "Well, Bill what can I do? There’s nothing I can do so far as works are concerned." God does not requires the works of religion as the world understands work, What He desires is our helping and aiding all toward faith in Christ.
Well, I had a gentleman come up me; and he liked to work with wood and that was his hobby. Well, he had started making beautiful wood walking canes, and he said, "You know what I do with these? Just as fast as I can make them, I take them out to people in nursing homes who need a cane. And it just thrills them that now they’ve got a beautiful, handmade cane." Well, who would ever think of something like that as good works? Well, God does! God looks at that and that’s a good work. That’s something that is bringing some happiness, some joy to people in a particular need. So don’t ever say, "Well there’s nothing I can do." You’d be surprised how many places there are that God can use whatever you’re capable of doing. For its Him that through His Grace gives us all a ministry of some sort. When it is Him directing it.
All right, verse 25 – a verse that is often taken totally out of context. And it’s stretched to the limit, but we’re just going to take it for what it says, that now as fellow believers, members in Christ's Body, we're in the business of encouraging one another. We are to increase our love for one another because of Who has loved us first. What is the Gift given us? The Holy Spirit, the greatest of all gifts and with Him comes the other spiritual gifts for they all operate through Him to us to the outward world around us. He produces the fruit as He wills or as we grow in the knowledge of Christ, His character and nature becomes ours also. Then we bring in the self-sacrificial Love of God in this manor thereby God gets the glory due Him through Christ in us, just as He did through Jesus, as He wills or in the same manor as.
Hebrews 10:25a
"Not to forsaking the assembling of ourselves together,…"
Now when you get into the Greek, this assembling of ourselves is a lot stronger than here in the English. What it really means is. "Assembling together with our own kind." Birds of a feather do what? They flock together. But too many times Christians don’t. And I have people constantly telling me that where they’re attending church that things are said and done that just simply don’t fit with their own belief system. And what am I going to tell them? "Get out of there! They’re not your own kind. Find a place where they are." And this is exactly what it means, that you are to assemble yourselves together with like-minded believers.
Don’t try to compromise your own belief system in order to get along with a group that is contrary to what you feel the Word declares. Now again, we’re in a time, in an age, when most of us think that if your church isn’t 6,000 members and if you haven’t a 200-voice choir and a big orchestra down front, you’re just not with it. Well, I’ve got news for you. That is not the New Testament-Covenant Church at all. Truth is God has condemned all forms of religion through the death of Christ and to become entangled with such is damnable, as it is enmity to God. Now it has come to that, and we certainly aren’t going to tell people to lock their doors. But that is not the concept of believers coming together in the early church and I don’t think it’s going to end up that way.
I think, it’ll come back to where you have true believers meeting in rather small groups. I was reading a secular magazine the other night, and I could just gather between the lines that our days of freedom and liberty as true Christians are numbered. I mean that. Our days are numbered. And if the Lord doesn’t come, even those of us that are a little bit gray haired, we’re probably going to see some tough times. And that’s why I think we should pray earnestly that the Lord will come – and with those kinds of situations like in China, remember, after the Communists took over China. The Church went underground, and by that we simply mean, that they met secretly in their apartment complexes. They have ‘house churches.’ And so when missionaries went back into China after the doors kind of opened up, they were just astounded at how many true believers were throughout China simply because they had survived with small ‘house churches.’ And we’d better get prepared; it may come back to that.
So rather than just try to find something that’s the biggest church going and the most exciting and the most entertaining; it’s far more profitable spiritually to gather with maybe a smaller group that are truly feeding on the Word of God. Those who have through Christ become Christocentric again. In fact, as I look at this verse, I have to think, what did the Lord Himself say back in the Gospels? "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I’m in the midst of them." And so let’s always keep that in mind.
Hebrews 10:25a
"Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together,…"
We do need Christian fellowship. Of course, as long as we’re able to assembly with fellow believers, those who are Christ-like even if it’s in a smaller environment, don’t ever forsake that.
Hebrews 10:25b
"…as the manner of some is; but exhorting (or encouraging) one another,: (this is probably written in the early 60’s AD and Paul says) and so much the more, as you see the day approaching."
Well, what day is he talking about? The Lord’s coming! I've always emphasize that especially lately, you want to remember that the whole concept up until just before Paul is martyred is that the Lord would be coming in short order. They had no idea that it would be 2,000 plus years! That never entered their minds. They were expecting the Lord to come almost any moment. Even in Paul’s lifetime. When you know this we can see and understand the language of James, Peter, John and Jude as this was on their minds as they wrote their epistles to the scattered Hebrew believers in the Messiah.
So here’s another indication of that. Don’t forsake yourselves meeting together, Paul says; especially as we draw near to the Lord’s return. Well, if it was apropos in 61 or 62 AD, how much more today? You know, I’ve always gone back to the cartoon of the old caveman who had written across his cave, ‘The end is near.’ But the second picture he had added what? ‘er’ See? Today the end is nearer than it was yesterday. Today this verse is more appropriate. It’s 2,000 plus years closer than when Paul wrote it. And so as we see the day approaching, encourage one another that the Lord is coming! Don’t be caught asleep. Don’t be caught unprepared. By all means don't be trapped in the worlds false gospels, as being many ways to God and religious forms. Remember God is a personal God not a religious God as religion opposes God in all its many ways and forms.
In fact, 1 John chapter 3 comes to mind. See now, all these things I don’t prepare for. I wish I could but I just can’t, as I don’t know exactly how the Holy Spirit is going to lead as we teach. Here you’ll see John’s concept of the Lord’s coming is the same as Paul’s. It could happen anytime even back there in the early first century, in the late 60’s AD. For Jerusalem and Israel as a nation it did as God judged them for their refusing the Messiah and note He waited until Paul and Peter were taken out of the way. For during this time the sun was blackened out and the moon was as blood because the smoke from the ruins of the city was so thick. This happened in 70 AD.
1John 3:1
"Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not."
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