Following Jesus Together

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Years ago, before I had the chickens, I had turtles. Now, I didn’t raise them for eggs. I’m not even sure how that would.

. . So it was a different motivation, but I had turtles.

And I started out with one turtle that was given to me as a gift, and he just didn’t do real well. I found out after several years he was a female. By then, I’d already called her Otis for so long that Otis stayed the name.

So this turtle just didn’t do real well. And I tried everything I could do. I tried all kinds of food.

I tried all kinds of enclosures. I thought maybe he needs she, but he at the time, maybe he needs more room. And I couldn’t afford one of those massive tanks.

So I went out and got the biggest Rubbermaid tub they sold at Walmart at the time and filled it with gravel and water, made a really nice enclosure. I even bought goldfish for it to chase and eat. And it just was weak and sickly.

And eventually, I realized there’s one thing I hadn’t tried, and I got another turtle and put it in there. And suddenly, Otis began to eat. Otis began to get bigger.

Otis began to get stronger. I ended up getting a third turtle. And suddenly, they all were thriving.

All of them did so amazingly well. that I thought I might have to even find a bigger tank because they may run out of room in this thing. And I had all three of those turtles together in their tank until a mishap on Easter Sunday many years ago, thank you, led to them escaping somehow.

And I had one left and said, well, this is not going to be good for her. And so I set her loose in a local pond to be with other turtles. But I learned from that that they would not thrive if they were on their own.

that has been a lesson that has stuck with me ever since because it’s a picture of us as believers in our christian walk we we may survive we may limp along but we are not created to be solo creatures and we’re not going to thrive if we try to do the christian life by ourselves we’ve been in a series for the last several weeks on spiritual disciplines things that that we have to do on purpose because they’re not going to happen by accident things we have to do on purpose that are going to aid in our spiritual growth things that god has given us to do that the holy spirit uses in our lives to help us to to grow spiritually to be more like jesus to be who god has created us to be. And this morning we come to the discipline of fellowship and what it means for us to have fellowship with one another, why that’s important, why we have to follow Jesus together.

And so this morning we’re going to be in Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10, and starting in verse 19, if you’ll turn there with me. And once you find it, if you’ll stand with me as we read together from God’s Word.

And if you don’t have a Bible or can’t find Hebrews 10, that’s all right, it’ll be on the screen for you as well. But we’re starting in verse 19 and we’re going to go through verse 25 this morning. So here’s what the writer of Hebrews says about our relationship with Jesus and how it’s much stronger when we do it together with a community of believers.

Starting in verse 19, therefore, brethren, since 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. You may be seated. As believers, we have a goal. We have a goal set before us.

We have something that we’re working toward. And our goal as believers is to draw near to Jesus Christ, not just to grow in the relationship in the sense that we feel closer to Him, but actually to grow to be more like Him. We can’t make that happen.

That’s the work of the Holy Spirit. But we can certainly get on board with what the Holy Spirit’s doing and stay out of His way. And so our goal is to see this spiritual growth where not only is our walk with Him closer, but we’re closer to being like Him.

And I start there because that’s where this passage starts. This passage is often taught, and I’ve been guilty of this myself, This passage is often taught as though it’s all about fellowship. That’s not quite right.

It does talk about fellowship. That’s why we’re looking at it this morning in our discussion of the discipline of fellowship. But really, the focus of the passage is not fellowship.

The focus of the passage is Jesus. The focus of the passage is drawing near to Jesus. And that’s our starting point.

When we understand that, we begin to understand the importance of fellowship. Because if we just treat this as though it’s all about fellowship, then fellowship becomes the goal. And fellowship is a wonderful thing. Fellowship is something that we want to encourage.

A biblical understanding of fellowship is something that we want to encourage, but not just for its own sake. Not just so that we say, you know what? I’m part of a really awesome group of people, and I’m so glad I get to know them.

Those things are true, and we ought to pursue relationships together. But the end goal of those relationships is to strengthen our relationship with Jesus Christ. And the text describes it. It starts from this starting point of understanding who Jesus is and the goal being our walk with Him.

And it describes the kind of confidence that we have in Him as a high priest. This is where the writer of Hebrews starts. He calls Him our great high priest over the house of God. He’s the one that’s given us access to the Father.

He’s the one that we turn to. It’s not even the fellowship. It’s not the fellowship that makes us right with God.

It’s this great high priest, Jesus Christ, who has given us access to the Father. And the reason the writer of Hebrews uses that great high priest imagery is because in the Old Testament, you did have to go through a human priest. You did have to go through somebody who was going to go and make the sacrifices on your behalf. You had to go through somebody who was going to go between you and the Lord sort of as an intermediary, as a mediator, someone who could approach the Lord on your behalf.

For us under the new covenant, it’s Jesus Christ. And so he talks about the confidence that we can have in Jesus as our high priest. We go back to verse 19. He begins to explain to us why that is, that we can come with confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus. Because Jesus shed his blood on the cross as the one and only acceptable payment for our sins.

we have this access that we can now enter into the holy place, as he says. That means we have access to God. In the Old Testament, God was said to dwell in the holy of holies.

It was the innermost part of the temple. Before that, it was the innermost part of the tabernacle that was separated from the people. It was separated by a giant heavy veil.

And before that, only the high priest could go in. And only at certain times, and only for certain reasons. normal people like us did not have direct access to God and the high priest would go in and would sprinkle blood on behalf of the people of Israel and the writer of Hebrews is saying that Jesus has gone and made an offering in his blood so that now we have direct access to the father we can come right on in to the holy place and then verse 20 talks about his death talks about his flesh By his death in the flesh, he tore the temple veil to inaugurate a new way of life for us.

That’s the language that’s used here by verse 20. I’ve already talked about that veil, that heavy curtain that separated the holy place from the people. And the gospel writers tell us that when Jesus died, that curtain that separated man from God was torn in two, which was no easy task in and of itself.

That thing was thick and it was heavy, but it was torn fully in two and it was torn from top to bottom. It was the work of God tearing that veil in two and giving us access to the Father because Jesus had paid for it in the flesh by His death. And because of that, it’s inaugurated a whole new way of life for us.

It’s inaugurated a way of life where we walk with God. He’s with us. We can talk to Him at any time.

We can rely on this indwelling of the Holy Spirit where God is literally with us at all times. That’s something God’s people had never known before Jesus Christ came. What the writer of Hebrews is saying, we have this incredible access to God.

We have this incredible opportunity of walking with God in this closeness. And as a result, it’s because of what Jesus Christ did. And our confidence is not in the fact that we can earn it, not in the fact that we can deserve it, not even in the fact that we can maintain it.

Our confidence is in Jesus Christ to provide it. And on that basis, verse 22 tells us, draw near. Let us draw near.

You have a relationship with God. You can be close with God. So he says in verse 22, let’s draw near.

Let’s do it. Let’s be close to God. And he tells us to draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.

Our faith is fully assured that when we draw near to God, He’s there ready to be found because He’s already made Himself available to us through the cross. And so we can come with a pure heart that seeks to know God. As believers, we can draw closer to Him because of Jesus Christ. Having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

This is a picture of us being changed and cleansed and transformed inside and out. The old way of living can die and we can walk with the Lord. But it starts on the inside.

Jesus has changed us. If you’ve trusted Christ as your Savior, if you’ve been born again, He’s changed your heart from the inside out. He’s cleaned you up from the inside out.

Your conscience has been washed clean because of the sacrifice that Jesus has made. And then that radiates out into our outward behavior. And he says, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.

We have this hope in knowing that Jesus Christ died for us. That means our sins have been paid for, they’ve been forgiven. That means we have a relationship with God that we could never have had on our own.

That means we have the hope of being with Him someday. We expect to walk in His goodness and in His glory. We have all this hope not only for right now, but for the future as well.

And he says, let’s hold on to that without wavering. Now, all of that is possible because of what verse 23 tells us, that he who promised is faithful. Again, we cannot overemphasize that, that our relationship with God, all of these things that we have depend not on our own goodness, or we’d have never gotten them in the first place.

They depend on Jesus Christ being faithful to do what he’s promised to do. He’s been faithful in every way to go and fulfill the Father’s will for our salvation. He went to the cross even knowing what it was going to cost Him.

He went to the cross and He did that for us. He’s proven in every way that He’s faithful. And so the promises of what’s to come in the future we can look forward to with confidence because He who promised is faithful.

And this is important so that we understand that fellowship, as good as it is, is not the goal, but it is an important means toward a goal. because after verse 23, the next two verses show us that Christian fellowship reinforces our walk with Jesus. So he starts out with all of this about our walk with Jesus and the confidence that we can have in Jesus, the ability to draw near. And all of that is so important, and yet it’s also so difficult to do.

We sit in here on Sunday mornings, and if you’re a believer, you know these things are true. And we hear them preached, we sing about them, we think on them as we’re here. We know they’re true and we walk out of here resolved that I’m going to live that way.

And then we get outside these doors and for the next six days the world beats us around. And sometimes it’s hard to hold on to that confidence. Sometimes it’s hard to walk in that assurance.

And that is precisely why God calls us to have fellowship with one another. Because our Christian fellowship reinforces our walk with Jesus. the church is not important because God takes attendance.

I don’t think you’re going to have a report card at the end of all this that says, well, you missed this many Sundays, so you get a suburb of heaven. I don’t think that’s how that works. God’s not taking attendance, keeping.

. . God knows whether you were here or not, but that’s not why this is important.

The church is not important so we can come together and show how good we are. Unfortunately, I think that’s what the world thinks our motivation is in coming here. The church is important precisely because our Christian fellowship reinforces our walk with Jesus.

We strengthen each other here. And I don’t just mean here in this building. I mean in this body of believers.

We strengthen one another here to go out and serve Him better there. That’s what our fellowship is supposed to do. If we do it right, then us walking with Jesus will encourage others in their walk with Jesus.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen some churches, I’ve been part of some churches, where the fellowship is a little bit toxic and doesn’t help that goal. But as we talk about it, it helps us prevent those kinds of things from flaring up. I think it’s important before we get into verses 24 and 25 to pause for a minute and make sure we understand what fellowship is. If you’re like me, when you hear the word fellowship, where does your mind go?

Food, potluck, in the fellowship hall, right? I don’t want to trivialize that because it is important. There’s something where the relationship is built and strengthened when we sit down and eat together.

That’s important. I’m not knocking that. But that’s not all fellowship is.

If you look at the Greek word that is used all throughout the New Testament for fellowship, It’s a word that means a close association or a partnership that’s based around common values or goals. That we have something in common and so we work together and we are together. Now this can happen out in the world.

I’ve had fellowship with people that I was not part of the same church with. Because we are in that season in our country where we’re between political conventions. I thought about this in terms of fellowship.

there was a time in my life where before I had five children and a larger church to to care for I had a lot more time to be more heavily politically involved than I have time to be now there was a period of about 15 years where I I did not miss county conventions and state conventions and precinct meetings and working campaigns and managing campaigns and when you watch those conventions on the tv you get the sense everybody’s on the same page and maybe they are about a about a candidate. But if you’ve ever been part of one of those conventions, you know everybody’s not on the same page about all the little issues they deal with. Think about it this way.

There are two main parties in our country. Are there just two sets of political opinions? No.

So you go to the county, I’ve never been to a national convention, but you go to a county convention, you go to a state convention, what you’re going to find is there are different groups of people with different ideologies pushing different agendas. But because you’re all part of the same party, everybody doesn’t wear badges and say, well, sometimes they do. They’re not clearly marked by what ideology is sponsoring them.

But over time, being part of the county conventions and precinct meetings and all this, I would notice this guy over here, he and I are voting the same way a lot. And we’re making the same argument a lot and we’re rallying to the same cause a lot. And it starts with, you know, your hand is going up at the same time a lot.

You start to gravitate toward people that you realize you share some things in common with. And eventually you start to purposely work together. And over the course of about 15 years, I got linked up with a group of people that we had very similar political ideologies within the party.

Of course, it helped that all of us were Christians and most of us were Southern Baptists, so we had that in common as well. And we were generally working toward the same. .

. we formed a little group and we’d meet together monthly and we’d have dinner together and we’d pray together and we’d strategize together. And it went beyond that as we became friends who cared about each other and were together and were working toward a common goal. One of those men sold me my first house.

There’s one of the ladies that would meet with me and help me with my kids as we’d go to stuff at the Capitol for Rose Day or things like that. We got to be close. It was a fellowship because it was a partnership based on common goals and values.

We can have fellowship with people for any number of reasons, but the closest fellowship we ought to have is in the church. I can’t think of a more important common cause instead of common goals that we could have than standing for the Word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that enables us not just to be people who sit next to each other on the same pew week after week. That’s not really fellowship.

That’s a good basis for building fellowship, but it has to go deeper than that. For us to work together, for us to get to know each other, for us to build relationships that further the cause, of the gospel. You may say, well, how do I build fellowship in the church?

I feel like my fellowship with individual people within the church grows, not as we just see each other on Sunday mornings, but as we work together in ministries, as we do stuff together, as we travel together, as we spend time together. It’s a partnership where we care about each other, and we’re working together to accomplish the same thing. That’s fellowship.

And this fellowship is something we desperately need if we’re going to walk with Jesus. Because just like in the political realm, where I would have felt like I’m the one guy out here yelling these things at my TV, and it would have felt very lonely if I hadn’t linked up with that group of people. You and I have the opportunity to be a light for Jesus Christ in a world that is often hostile toward the things of Jesus Christ. And if we’re out there trying to do it on our own, we may feel like we’re the only ones.

And it may encourage us to keep it to ourselves. But we are strengthened by what we do together. We’re strengthened by knowing we have partners in this pursuit.

We support one another when the Christian life is challenging. And that’s why verse 25 says, encourage one another. That’s part of our role, not forsaking the assembling.

We are encouraging one another by being together. When the world gets challenging, we’re there to encourage, to support, to help one another, to navigate those difficult periods, to navigate those difficult questions, to stand together through the hurts and challenges. In verse 25, when he says to encourage one another, he’s using a word that in Greek is often used to describe the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

If you’ve ever heard the Holy Spirit referred to as a paraclete, I know preachers will sometimes emphasize that. He’s using the verb form of that when he tells us to encourage. So the things that the Holy Spirit does for us perfectly, we have the opportunity imperfectly to do those for one another.

And he calls us to do that. We can’t do that if we don’t have fellowship with one another. We make each other stronger and more effective in our service.

That’s why he says let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds. I think it’s the King James that says provoke one another. I like that word provoke.

If you’ve ever raised more than one child, you know what that provoke word looks like. Nobody, nobody can spur somebody onto action like a sibling. Nobody can cause a reaction like a sibling.

I’ve seen it just this week. Lord have mercy, everybody’s tired because of VBS. And there’s been a lot of provocation.

We can provoke one another to love and good works. We can be there to encourage one another to say, you know what, I’ve got an idea about what you could do here. We provoke one another all the time, hopefully in good ways, but there are some of you that I see you do ministry and I think, I need to step it up because I wish I was as good at that as he is.

And it’s not a jealousy thing, but it’s just seeing what’s done and seeing how God is using others, it encourages me. It provokes me to say, you know what, I need to do better here. And so we have this opportunity to support one another when the Christian life is challenging.

We have this opportunity to make one another better, but we have to be together to do it. We’re not going to encourage one another if we’re not connected to each other. That’s why he starts verse 25 by saying, not forsaking our own assembling together as the habit of some is.

Even in the earliest days of Christianity, there were people saying, I don’t need to be part of the church. I can be a Christian without being a part of the church? Yeah, absolutely.

You can be saved and not be a member of a local church. But let me tell you this in as loving a way as I know how. You cannot be obedient to what God has designed for you to be.

You cannot be obedient to God’s design for you as a Christian and isolate yourself from other Christians. It’s just not possible. We have to be together to encourage one another, to challenge one another, to strengthen one another.

It takes that relationship to be able to do it. And I recognize I’m saying this to a group of people who are gathered here. All right.

So please don’t think I’m trying to browbeat you and say you should be involved. You’re here. Now, the Lord may be speaking to you and saying you need to go deeper in the fellowship.

That’s because the bottom line is I don’t know what you’re doing fellowship-wise. I may see you at some things. I may not see you at other things.

But I also know we have Bible study groups and life groups and things that I never see them meet. People connected to one another. And it may look like you’re just here on Sunday mornings, but you may be on the phone with fellow believers at this church every day.

Y’all may be praying together, maybe sending cards to each other. Y’all may be doing stuff that I don’t even know about. My point is just to tell you, we need each other.

If you think, well, I don’t have anything to offer, I want you to know this church needs you. You need this church, and this church needs you. That’s why they were told, and we’re told by extension, not to forsake our own assembling together, as the habit of some is.

And we have to discipline ourselves to engage with people who encourage our pursuit of Jesus. It’s a discipline because it’s one of those things that doesn’t always happen by accident. There are many things, many good pursuits during our day that we will get busy with other things and let fall by the wayside.

I am guilty of that. I have a calendar. I have a reminders list and a to-do list, and I have a flow chart that shows me when to look at each of those to try to keep up with all the stuff I’m supposed to do.

And it’s still so very easy to let things fall by the wayside. Fellowship is one of those things. Sometimes it happens by accident, but more often than not, we have to make ourselves be involved in it just because we’re so busy.

We have to make ourselves reach out to one another. We have to make ourselves get involved in that ministry and work with that group of people. It takes discipline.

And there should be a sense of urgency about our need to do it together. That’s why he says, all the more as you see the day approaching. The writer of Hebrews was talking about difficult times ahead.

And I know theologians want to debate about what specific times he’s talking about. I don’t know. That’s really not in the purview of what I’m here to talk about this morning.

He was talking about difficult times ahead. And for you and for me, there are difficult times ahead. I don’t know what that means for you.

I don’t know what it means for me. But we’re just assured that in this world, we will have trouble. So much the more as we see that day approaching.

We need to not forsake our assembling together. We need to recognize that we need each other so that we can challenge each other, so that we can encourage each other, so that we can make each other better. Fellowship is so important because it’s one of the tools that God has given us to make sure that our walk with Jesus remains strong.

For just a moment, as we come to a close and as our musicians come forward, I want to talk to those who may not have that relationship with Jesus yet. The fellowship of the church, being part of the church, doesn’t get us that relationship with the Lord. We can have that relationship with the Lord.

We can have our sins forgiven. We can have the promise of eternal life. We can have all of that for one very simple reason.

That Jesus Christ saw us in our sin that separated us from God. And He loved us enough to shed His blood and die on the cross to pay for our sins in full. And then three days later, He rose again to prove it.

And now all that’s left for us is to believe that we’ve sinned against God and need a Savior. believe that Jesus died and rose again to be that Savior, and ask God’s forgiveness on the basis of what Jesus did.