Well, it is good to be back. I know as this summer season is coming to a close, some of us are going to start doing some things again that we have done in previous years. Right? Some people, even as early as this week, are going back to school. Some of us are clinging to a few more weeks of the summertime schedule, but there might be some parents in the room that are actually looking forward to their kids going back to school. This helter-skelter thing of the summer, we're done with it. Anybody ready to get back to temperatures that are lower with less humidity than we've been experiencing? Anybody else without air conditioning, there. And one of the things that we said in announcements is this week we're back to Fellowship Groups, and that's an exciting thing. At least these people are excited about their Fellowship Group. But what I want us to consider is not just getting back to Fellowship Groups, but it's getting back to fellowship. What does it really mean to fellowship with one another? That's the question. Our text is going to give us a lot more to think about. So, I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Hebrews, chapter 10, and we're going to look at just two verses, verses 24 and 25 of Hebrews 10. But we are going to see there is a lot God wants us to learn from even these two short verses. So, once you've had the chance to find Hebrews 10 in your Bible, you can stand and read with us, or you can just stand and listen as I read these two verses. So please do stand up, and we're going to pay attention to Hebrews 10:24-25 together. So, this is the public reading of Scripture, and it says,

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.

That's the reading of God's Word. You can have your seat. And if you were with us last week, we kind of looked at this one passage in Acts, chapter 2, verse 42, which is describing this first church in Jerusalem. That after Jesus ascended into heaven, and there's just a small group of his disciples, the Holy Spirit comes upon them, and the Word is preached, and thousands of people respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ and become followers of Jesus. And now there is this church, and the way that they were described is that they were devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching, that they really wanted to hear what the Word had to say. And if you were with us last week, we looked at this and we saw that God wants us to be doers of the Word and not hearers only. That we could even be hearing it and thinking about it, but if when we leave, we forget what we've heard, if no change occurs, if it doesn't affect us, then it could be quite possible we're deceiving ourselves, that we're not really where we think we are.

So, they were devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching, but then that's one of the things that was characterizing that people were devoting themselves to. That this church was known by, and God wants our church to be known by this, as well. But what are we even talking about? I know this last week I got together with my Fellowship Group, and we had a potluck in the park. Have you ever done something like that where everybody brings a food item and you're going down the line and it's like, oh, that looks good and that's awesome. Get some more of that on my plate, and the kids are playing and people are chatting and we're enjoying time together and the men are doing what men do, playing croquet. Just saying, it's a very manly game. And there's someone who you know they're coaching this junior high boys’ basketball team or whatever it is that's practicing at this basketball park next to us. And as he's leaving the practice, he's pulling his wagon with all of his supplies, and he looks at us. He's like, you guys are with the church, right? Yes, yes, we are. He's like, I see you guys fellowshipping out here. It's like, yeah, well, we are. But is that all that it is? It's like we just get together and we enjoy time together in the park. Well, let's look at what this has to say in verse 24, it says, "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.” It says, "let us.”

This is something that God wants everyone who's a part of his church, who's following him, this is something that each and every one of us needs to consider. There's a real problem in the church in America that wasn't the case at the church in Jerusalem in the early days. In the church in America, it's very common for a lot of us to be just very passive at church. There's not something that we're actually doing. We're just kind of receiving the results of things that other people are doing. Right? This 80/20 dynamic where 20% of the people at any given church are the ones who are really doing something, but most of us we just kind of come, we observe, we leave. No, this is something that God is calling all of us to do. It's not something that can be done by just a few people. It says, "let us.” And what are we supposed to do? Each and every one of us? Let us consider. Now, this word in the Greek is interesting. We're going to get into a number of different Greek words because it's actually a word that was used in our passage last week. Go with me if you can just put your finger in Hebrews 10. Turn one book to the right, if you can do that in your Bible, where you got the book of James. And last week we looked at James, chapter 1 verses 22 to 25, which say, "But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man.”

And do you remember last week when we talked about this man who looks intently at his face in the mirror. It's not just a quick glance. It's actually a sustained effort. You could actually translate the man who considers his natural face. Same Greek word here in James 1:22 that we're seeing here. That there's going to be a what? What we're supposed to do is we are supposed to engage our minds. We're supposed to get our minds activated, and activated in a very specific direction. And it says, "Let us consider.” We're going to have to think and activate our minds on how to stir up one another to love and good deeds. See, last week we said there's a consideration when we're hearing the word preached. Each of us needs to really consider what is God saying to me about myself. Who is he showing me that I am? What does he want to change in me? What does he want me to do with what he's saying? And that needs to lead to an action plan. And it's like, okay, this is what God wants me to do, and I need to actually consider that to where I'm going to go do it, but here we're going to see that that's actually not all that God wants us to consider. He wants us to consider other people.

So, let's get this down as point number one, if you're taking notes: “Engage your mind on the growth of others.” Engage your mind on the growth of others. See, there's this phrase here. This phrase that says one another. Let us consider how to stir up. Who are we stirring up? We're stirring up one another. It's this Greek word allelon, which sounds like “all alone,” but it's actually quite the opposite of how it sounds to us in English, it's “together,” it's “one another.” We use two English words to translate this one Greek word, which means it's the other Christians, it's the other people that are a part of the church. It's not necessarily everybody in the world. It's more specific. It's a group of people that we're connected to through Jesus Christ.

Now, this is hard for us because we live in a very individualistic culture where it's mostly about me and my family and what I'm going to do. But the Bible is teaching us a different way to think, that we're not supposed to think in the singular. We're supposed to think more in the plural than we commonly do here in America. Now, this term "one another" in the Greek is used two different times in our passage, but this is a common way that the Bible teaches us to think. This word is used over a hundred times in the New Testament.

Go with me to the book of Romans. Some of you remember when we spent four years going through the book of Romans together. It felt epic like that. It felt like, wow, this is awesome. We had to take this amount of time to study everything that this book has to say. Romans, chapter 12, and you could see that this phrase it's used in connection with not just other people that you know, but particularly the people that are a part of the church, the body of Christ. And you see in verse 4 of Romans 12, it says, "For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function. So, we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.” You see that phrase there, “members of one another”? That there is the way that God wants us to think is that we are connected to one another in the body of Christ, just like our body parts are connected to one another. That is the way that God wants to teach us to think, and that actually informs our choices and our actions. Look at verse 10. It says, "Love” who? “One another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor.” Just like I would want to love a physical brother like I would have, well, actually, now God's putting people that are spiritual brothers and sisters in that same category. That God wants me to love those people. He wants me us to outdo one another in showing honor. That I'm not just coming and I'm focused on me. I'm focused on my one anothers, and that's something that God is telling us we need to consider these other people. We're not just considering ourselves; we're considering them.

You know, in the context of a Fellowship Group here at the church, you know it can be kind of natural and common for us to think, well, how are the other people treating me? How are people loving me? What are they doing for me? And some people, they can be going to a group focused on, well, what am I going to receive? What am I going to get from other people. It seems like in this passage, God is teaching us, I need to think, what am I going to give? How am I going to be a benefit to someone else? It's not just about me. It's about us in the plural. If you want to love your group more, go to your group focused on other people and not yourself. You will enjoy it way more than if you just focus on you. And so, there's going to have to be this consideration, like this is a habit that God wants you to get into. That like the way I operate regularly, repeatedly in my life is I am considering how I can help this other person. What can I do that would be of a spiritual benefit to them? Okay, so I mean, if we're going to do that, we would have to actually get specific. We don't want this to be general and vague and hypothetical.

So, who are your one another's? Let's think about that for a moment. Who specifically would God want me to be considering? What would that look like for you to do that? Now, sometimes when people think about the church, or they think about the body of Christ, sometimes people think that's referring to the church universally, like all the people that are Christians all over the world. That's the church, and there's a sense in which that's true. Like, hey, there's going to be a giant, big old assembly in the end of all the people that God has saved throughout all of human history from all parts of the world, and we're going to get together and we're going to worship Jesus, and it is going to be epic. Amen, amen. Right? But a lot of times when it talks about this, it's talking about people that we would actually come in contact with, right? Like just like hey, and in my physical body, there is a connection between my body parts. Right, like some of the things like love one another, outdo one another, and showing honor. There are like all of these different commands about how we're supposed to treat one another. And as I've studied those, it's like a lot of those I can't do that with someone in Japan. I can't do that with someone in Africa right now. Like I would be able to do those with people that I would actually come in contact with, people that I would actually be in the same place. And so, a lot of times it's like, well, here's the church in this city, and here's the church in this city, and Paul's writing to a church in Rome that he hasn't even visited yet, but it's like here's the church that's in Rome, the group, the subset of the entire group of believers that's more specific to a specific time and a specific place.

So, I mean, look around the room. We’ve got a group of people here. Do you know the names of everyone here in the room at this service, have you met everybody yet? I'm not asking you to go meet everybody after this service or to some of us working on people's names. There's work? It takes some effort for us. Like, oh, I might need to write that down. I might need to see that a few times. But that's where even in the early church, like we've got okay. So, a hundred and so people are following Jesus after he rises from the grave, and then we've got this epic time where three thousand people, or thereabouts, start following Jesus. So, that's three thousand one hundred people. That's a bigger church than our church, and our church feels pretty big sometimes. It feels like this is just one of three services that we're having this weekend. Not to mention the kids and the high schoolers and the junior highs. Lots of souls, almost maybe a little bit less than two thousand people showing up at a weekend the last few weeks here at Compass HP. So, like, wow, this is already a big church, and the way that it describes this church is it didn't stay at thirty-one hundred people. It's like day by day people are getting saved, and then there are things that happen that it's like more than ever people were getting saved. Well, if it ever was three thousand, and this is more than ever, it's like whoa, this three thousand-person day wasn't the only day like that. So, it's like, man, the numbers are ballooning to where like wow, could this have ended up being 678, 10,000 people that are a part of this church in the city of Jerusalem. But then you know what? It also describes, not just the times where they're gathering in the temple, this huge area that they could all congregate together, but it talks about them getting into people's homes. Talks about like the big church becoming small. We're not fitting ten thousand souls into a first-century domicile in the city of Jerusalem.

It was like, oh, the big church got small, and they were devoted to one another, and so that's one of the reasons why we would like say, hey, we should get into smaller groups. Like, hey, I, I don't have the opportunity to know everybody as well as I would like to when the number of people is a lot of people, but what if we got into a smaller group? Well, at least I could commit to loving these people. Now, I mean, like Fellowship Groups here at the church are not meant to be exclusive. Are you in my fellowship group? No? Well, then I'm not going to talk to you. Right? Like, okay, all right, you could talk to your group or something like that, right? It's not saying, hey, you can only have a spiritually beneficial relationship with people in your group, but the thought is, is like, hey, if I'm going to be just so general and unspecific, it's like, yeah, I fellowship with this whole room of people. Guess how much fellowship is probably going to end up happening? Not a whole lot. We need to get more specific and say, hey, at least these people, I'm going to commit to loving.

So, you can actually see on the back of your handout, if you look at the questions. I believe it's question number two is like, write down some names. Like who would you think of if God wants us to do this to one another? Who is that for you? And maybe it's like oh I don't need to list off every name of everybody in my group, but could you think of maybe a specific person, maybe a couple of specific people? You say, okay, whatever. I know we're not all the way there. What do I need to do with these people? But who to? Like, what do what do I need to do? And who am I going to do it with? Who are the one anothers in my mind?

God doesn't want us to be the kind of people where it's like, hey, I go to church, but nobody knows me. I don't know anybody. That's not the way it was designed. And there's going to be people that I need to commit myself. I'm going to consider these people. I'm going to consider something about them. And what am I supposed to consider? Go back with me to Hebrews chapter 10, it says, "And let us consider.” Okay, so it's all of us. Consider. We're going to engage our mind. And what are we considering? How to something specific that we're going to do? Not just that we should do, but how am I actually going to do this? How is it going to happen? And what am I? What is this? How to stir up one another to love and good works. Now, this phrase "stir up,” I'm at the disadvantage because most of the sermons that I've heard preached on this passage, I heard them preached in the state of Texas, right? Particularly the city of San Antonio, where if you're trying to use an analogy of this Greek term “to stir up,” there's a low-hanging fruit of the spur, right? In San Antonio, the basketball team is the Spurs. You’ve got people wearing cowboy boots, and they have this sharp object where it's like if you're riding a horse and you want the horse to really go for it, you could actually spur on the horse by putting your heel into the skin, and it's actually like poking the horse a little bit and the horse is like, I got the memo, I'm going to run faster. I mean to us in California it's like that's inhumane treatment. It's been going on for a while. The horses are okay but that was kind of the way I heard this, like you’ve got to give people a swift kick of love. And I'm like, we all just got deputized to be ninjas, and we're just kicking each other here at church. We're just poking each other.

Now, this word it means “sharp,” right? Like it could be used in a negative type of way of like someone who gets really angry and they get really sharp. But here it's being used in a positive way, and I know for sure that it means “sharp” because when it talks about Paul, and he would go around with some other people that he was serving the Lord with, and Paul and Barnabas get to this moment where there's this disagreement about this one guy that went with him, and Paul's like he ditched us last time. Let's not take him. And Barnabas is like, no, we should give him another chance. And Paul and Barnabas disagree on this so strongly, it says “There was a sharp disagreement between the two of them,” to where they actually kind of start doing ministry separately rather than together, because it came to a point. It came to a head. Like that's the way we need to learn. Like, if I'm considering, it's like there would be something that I could do that could bring something to a point, right? That could actually incite or produce some kind of action that I would be the cause of, that would have a certain effect in my one another's life. That there would be something that I'm going to do or say that would produce a result, and what is that result that I'm trying to produce? It says to “stir up” one another to a happy American life, where we're all healthy and our kids work out and things go the way that we want. Is that what it says we're supposed to stir up one another to? No, it says something more specific than that. It says love and good works.” I think a problem that we have is that some of us we think, hey, that potluck in the park, that's the end goal, and I think God wants to teach us to think no, that's actually a means to the end goal.

I've heard Pastor Bobby say many times we don't want to just be a church that's friendly. We actually want to be friends at this church. Amen, right? And I know as I look around, many of you have become friends with people. You enjoy spending time with one another, but it's not like hey, we just want to hang out and have good, clean Christian fun and enjoy life together as we wait for Jesus to come back. I want to think that you've become friends with here at the church. Like let's play that out. Let's play the tape ahead. Let's say that I get to be friends with those people for years, for months, for a long period of time. At the end of that period of time, what would be the result of that friendship? Would it just be that they enjoyed your company while you guys were spending time together, or would it be that they would actually grow spiritually because they were friends with you? What kind of a friend are you? What kind of fellowship? It's got to be more than us just enjoying each other's company. There is a goal that we are trying to stir one another up to, and it says it here, “to love and good works.”

I mean, when I see this, I'm like, oh, okay. Studying Mark, I remember when someone came to Jesus and posed to him the question, "What's the first and greatest commandment?” Let's look at Mark, chapter 12, verses 29 to 31 here on the screen. It says, " Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” See, in our fellowship, it's not just about having fun and enjoying each other's company. It's about making disciples. It's about teaching one another to observe everything that Christ commanded. And if we're going to do that, it's almost like you could roll all of that up under these commands that Jesus gives. Hey, I want you to love God more than anything else with everything of who you are. That's the first thing. That's the most important thing. If you're not loving God with everything that you are, you’ve got nothing. And if you're not loving other people as yourself, and then he says in Hebrews 10, love and good works. I'm thinking about another place that that phrase is used, Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 10, where it says, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for” what? For “good works.”

Now, good works they don't save us. We're not saved as a result of the good things we do. We're saved by faith in Jesus and what he did for us that we could not do for him. But once we are created as this new creation and saved by faith in Jesus, well, now are there works that he has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them? We need to stir each other up to those things. Does God want us sharing the gospel with other people so they could find a new life in Jesus? Is that one of the good works that God would want us to do, or what about making disciples as we're learning to obey the commands of Jesus, which are awesome, which are not a burden, that are actually leading us down the path of blessing, the path of joy in our life? As I'm learning how to do these things, doesn't God want me to do the good work of passing on what I know to other people that the love that God has given me, that I wouldn't be the cul-de-sac kind of Christian where it's ending with me, but I would be the intersection kind of Christian where then that's getting dispersed to more and more people. Yeah, that's what we're trying to stir each other up to. We're trying to stir each other up to grow spiritually, to actually do what God wants us to do. Or each week when we hear the word preached, it's like, oh, well, there's a specific thing that I could stir up my one another's to respond to each and every text of Scripture.

As I read Daniel, I could stir up my one another's to actually respond to what we're reading in the book of Daniel. I think we’ve got to really think this through, right? Because if God is saying this is what he wants us to do, I wonder if some of us were like, hey, I go to my group regularly. I'm always there. I'm always ready to say something. But like, what about the consideration? Like, if I actually thought through, hey, this is something I could do to be a benefit to this other person. How am I going to help other people do this? Well, it gets specific, and I think from last week we just got to realize, hey, if I'm going to stir up people to these things, I need to be doing them myself. Hypocrisy is helpful to no one. If I'm saying to other people, "Do as I say, but not as I do,” that would actually discourage them from loving good works. That would actually point them in the opposite direction that God wants me to do. But look at what he says, right? So, he says we're supposed to “stir up one another to love and good works,” and then it says, “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some.” So, it's kind of like there's more information he wants to give us, and some of it's negative, like “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some,” and then some of it's positive, right? “But encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” That, like, hey, if we're going to stir up one another, the thing we need to avoid, the thing we need to be careful about, the thing we need to not do, is neglect to meet together.

Now, when you hear the word “neglect,” maybe you think, "Oh, there was an item on my to-do list that I neglected. I didn't get it done today. That's okay. I'll just put it on my to-do list for tomorrow. Not a big deal. Or it's like, hey, I wasn't right on time for my haircut appointment. I neglected it. Not that big of a deal at all. All the barbers are saying, no, it is a very big deal to do this, but it's interesting. Like a lot of people, when we think about fellowship, it's like fellowship is the easiest thing to reschedule in our lives. It's like, hey, if I had a family gathering, I would make it. I would show up if I had an appointment for work. But oh, that's just fellowship. I could neglect that. I got busy, you know, all these schedules or these sports and all this, and I got all these things going on. And sometimes maybe we just need to look ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves the question, who's making your schedule? It's you. You're making the choices as to what you're going to prioritize. You're the one making the choices on what you're going to actually do with your time and do with your days.
It says, “not neglecting,” but when I got into this this Greek word. It's like we're going to see this a few other times in Mark 15:34 when it's talking about Jesus on the cross, and it's like “Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabokhtani, my God, my God, why have you neglected me?” This same Greek word, why have you “forsaken” me? Or Paul when he's talking about another person that was kind of on a ministry team going around with him, but ended up being a guy who has fallen in love with the world and bounced and didn't want to be a part of it. He's like Demas. This guy, he has forsaken me. He has abandoned me. See, I mean, I think one of the big problems that you and I might have is we think of fellowship as an event. When God wants us to learn that fellowship is people, that like this abandoning, this neglect, it's not like oh, sorry, it slipped my mind. It's like I had a responsibility to a person. I mean, I don't know if you who are parents in the room, if you have school-age children, if you're taking them to school, dropping them off, picking them up, do you have a God-given healthy fear of forgetting to pick them up? I've got that fear. I'm afraid every day for that. That, oh man, I would not show up, and my child would be waiting, and the office is calling. Are you coming? Are you going to come get your child? And maybe that fear I have it in my life about my own kids, because there was a day when I was forgotten to be picked up, you know. I'm like in high school, so it's not like some tragedy or anything like that. And I've got like a basketball practice in the parking lot at the school after school, and we're there, and it's like everybody else is getting picked up into practice. And oh, are your parents coming? Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure they're coming, right? I'm sure they're coming. You’re going to be all right? Oh yeah, I'll just shoot hoops until my parents get here, and then here I am shooting hoops alone, and I'm looking, and there's no Bruce, there's no Roberta. They've forgotten about me, and there are no cell phones back in those days, and all the buildings are locked up. There's no payphone to call them. And so that's the day I became a man. I said I'm going to get myself home from school, two and a half miles to my house, and I said I'm going to take my basketball and I'm just going to go on a run and go home. And I made it. I'm alive. And there, there's been forgiveness. There's been repentance. There are no hard feelings between me and my folks, but I remember walking in the door. Oh hey, oh hey, did you forget about me? Did you forget about me? Like fellowship is about people, people that need you, people that you have a responsibility towards, and it says here, “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some,” not neglecting to meet together. Now, as is the habit of some, where yeah, there are some people that are like, hey I'm willing to put off getting together with other people at the church. And it's interesting because when I I've heard this passage preached, it's kind of almost like well this is the proof text why you can't be one of those Christians that says oh yeah I'm a Christian I love Jesus I just don't go to church because it says it right here that you can't forsake the assembling together, but what kind of assembling together are we talking about, right? Because it doesn't say the assembling together where you all hear a sermon preached. Like not assembling is on the negative side.

Well, the corresponding positive side is the one where I'm actually encouraging one another, not just with a little chit chat before and after a service, but where we're actually interacting with other people. So, this isn't necessarily talking about a meeting like this where all the chairs are faced in one direction and we're all trying to pay attention to what this says together. This is talking about the kind of meeting where the chairs are turned inward in a circle, or this is talking about the kind of meeting where maybe two chairs are face to face because we're getting lunch together, or we're getting coffee together, or we're spending time where we are interacting with one another. And it says, "Don't forsake the assembling together, not neglecting to meet together.” This Greek word “synagogue” means to come together, but in the Greek, there's actually another word where it's not just like the synagogueing the meeting together, it's like our meeting together of us. It's personal. It's possessive to us. It's our meeting. And I was thinking, like, okay, well, is this just talking about like the introverts that are like, give me my own room and my own space without other people and my Netflix and my snacks, and I'm good. I'm good for years. I could stay there. I'm not a people person. I don't think it's actually talking about that. It's not saying, oh, you're antisocial. You don't get together with people. It's like you just don't get together with your people, with your one anothers, because people they're assembling all over the place, right? They're assembling based on their family. There are family get-togethers where regularly we're spending time together. People are assembling based on their interests. You like Spiderman, I like Spiderman. Let's go assemble in a theater, and we're all watching a film together, right? You’ve got some people who still like the angels assembling together, but then even within that assembly, there's a sub-assembly way up in the bleachers of people waving their T-shirts and saying, sell the team and everything like that. We're going to assemble with people that want to talk about business or stocks like we want to talk about business success.

But what about our own assembly where we're going to be assembling together to encourage one another? You see, we've got fellowship with one another. We've got that word Koinonia means a sharing, and it's not just hey, we share the same interests, or oh, we're of the same age, or our kids are at the same stage in their development. It's not like oh, you like this, I like this, or hey, you have the same sense of humor as I do, so we get along. No, it's like completely different in the body of Christ. Like our fellowship that we have with one another is because we share something in common, and it's Jesus. And in the church, it's not that there's Jew or Gentile. It's not that there's slave or free. It's not that it's male or female, or it's about this, or it's about that. We're all one in Jesus is the thought about fellowship that God wants us to have. They're like, hey, these other people? Just like you don't get to choose your family, you don't get to choose your church family either. There's going to be people that God puts you right besides, where it's like, hey, apart from Jesus, we would never be friends. We would never be assembling together. But now, because we share Jesus together, this person's my brother. This person's my sister. We're united. We share Jesus together. I think that a lot of people, though, they're not thinking of it that way. I mean, with great fellowship comes great responsibility. A lot of people are thinking about their responsibility to their one anothers in the church, like the gig economy that we have. Like I'm doing Uber or DoorDash or dog walking or something like that, where it's like, hey, there's going to be an opportunity for something, and I could look at it on my phone, and I could reject it. Am I up for that? Is that convenient for me right now? We're not thinking these are people that I have a responsibility to. I'm actually connected to them like we are in a body together.

I mean, have you ever had the unfortunate circumstance of a body part of yours pulling away from your body. I was playing basketball not too long ago, with some of the high schoolers, some of the college students here at the church. Some of you might say I was making a mistake by doing that, because it happened. I went up for a rebound and I came down, and as happens in the game of basketball, someone's foot found its way under my foot. I landed on their foot, and there was this rolling of my ankle. Right, who's rolled an ankle here in the room? Okay, you guys know. You guys know RICE. You guys know Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. You know how to recover from this. And so, I thought, oh, I just rolled my ankle. I just sprained it and walk it off like a man does. But then, two weeks later, it's still giving me grief, and I go in and there's an X-ray, and what the doctor is telling me is that when my one part of the body, one bone in my foot was trying to pull away from the other part of the body, that was connected, there was a ligament there, a tendon there that was connected, and it got stretched, and it didn't break. The tendon didn't break, but you know what it did is it broke a piece of my bone off of my foot. It's called an avulsion fracture. I had no idea about such things. I was learning new information. And it's like, okay, well, what we need to do is we need to put your foot in this boot and praise the Lord for boots because I was thinking I was going to have to get a cast, and people are going to sign it, and I'm like, that's awkward, right? And then someone after the last service comes up to me and shows me their cast that everybody signed, and he's like, "Were you going to say my name?” And I'm like, "Bro, I'm so sorry,” right? Like it's not that awkward. But the point is about this boot, it's going to keep my body together. It's going to keep that one body part from pulling away like it had been, so that my body can heal.

And there are a lot of people that are saying, "Hey, I'm a part of the Church of Jesus Christ, but I'm pulling away. I'm pulling away from other people. I'm not pressing into other people. I'm leaving my fellow body parts. I'm leaving them hanging, right? So, let's get that down for point number two: “Don't leave your other body parts hanging, because they need you.” They need you. Like we are not designed to function in the church alone. Take a body part that's struggling and put it away from the rest of my body. How is it going to go for that body part? Poorly. It's going to go badly. That body part is not going to heal. It is going to get worse. It is going to start to stink. It is not going to survive. So, if we're going to do this, like we can't neglect that. There are people that we cannot abandon. People that God wants to matter to you, to where they would actually show up on your calendar, that they would show up in your mind, that there would be a consideration of those people. And so, I mean, man, okay, if I'm supposed to stir these people up to love and good deeds, and I'm going to have to think that through. Well, you know what I'm going to need to do is I'm going to need to spend time with these people. I'm going to need to get in the same place at the same time. We're going to have to have some good old-fashioned face-to-face interaction, where it's like, well, how? Okay, so let me think about this. How are they doing at loving the Lord with all their heart, with all their soul, with all their might? Maybe I don't know that. Maybe I would have to actually get into the room and I would have like, hey, loving the Lord. Like how's that going for you? Maybe even just asking them a question where they can tell I care about them. Maybe that would stir them up that now it's on their mind. It wasn't just on my mind by asking a question. Now they are thinking about their love for the Lord. And I could sit back and I could think like, okay, well if God wants this person to love him with all of their heart. Like, do I ever hear my friend talking about the Lord? Does he ever bring up the Lord? Maybe I mean, yeah, we’ve got the formal times where there's you know a discussion that's on the on the agenda, and we're talking about the things that we love. We don't need a formal time to talk about those things. What's in our heart ends up coming up out of our mouth. If I, hey, what are you thinking about the Lord these days? What's precious to you about him? What are you really enjoying about him as you interact with one another?

We're going to have to show people we care about them by actually kind of wondering like, hey, how is this person at doing, at loving their wife, loving their kids? How are they doing in evangelism? How are they doing in all of these different things? And you know we're going to do we're going to have to get together to find out. Sometimes I don't really know exactly how I can stir someone up until I actually come to an understanding of how it's actually going. If I want to help them move forward and make progress, I’ve probably got to start by figuring out where are they right now. How can I help them take the next step of obedience if I don't know where they're at all? I'm going to have to consider. I'm going to have to get time with them. We have to get out our calendars and say when are we doing lunch? When are we doing coffee? When are we spending time together? I know some people, It's like I don't know how your group goes, but a lot of groups it's like we start at 6:30, you know, and then it's like kids ministry is going to come knock on our room by like a little after 8 o'clock if we don't come pick up our kids. And so, I know in my group we don't really start talking about the questions in the sermon maybe until 7 o'clock. And I don't know if your group's the same, but maybe some people start thinking, well, then the meeting doesn't really start till 7. But what about the people? The people, if they're there at 6:30, the people are what I'm there for, and yeah, we're going to have a good time talking about the sermon and stirring each other's up to be doers of the Word. But like the fellowship's got to start before that, and he says, "But encouraging one another,” right? We’ve got to get together, and the purpose of that getting together is not just shared input of content from the Word. It's actually to encourage one another, and I don't know what comes to your mind when you hear “encouraging,” but I know there was a time in my life where I thought “encouraging” is just saying positive things about other people, like "Oh, you're so great,” and then the other person saying, "No, you're so great,” and we both drive home and we're thinking, "What an encouraging time that was at the fellowship group this week.

And this word in the Greek it's Parakaleo, and it's kind of this mashup word where “kaleo” means “to call,” and “para” means “alongside”. It means we're going to “call alongside one another,” like we need to help each other, we need to ride together because we need help. Because you're tempted by sin, and I'm tempted by sin, and we don't want to keep giving in to our sin. We want to love the Lord, and we want to hate evil, and we want to do what the Lord tells us to do. And so, we need to encourage one another. We need to stir each other up to actually obey the Lord. And that isn't just saying nice things about each other, like yeah, we should totally say positive things about each other.

But can I take you to a few places? Let's go to the Gospel of Mark. This same word Parakaleo, or you know, kind of different forms of it that are used in the Greek. If you go to Mark, I was thinking we've been studying Mark for a minute now here at the church, and I wonder if some of us have missed some of the places where this word shows up. Go with me to chapter 1 of Mark, and verse 40, where it says, "And a leper,” a person with leprosy, “came to him,” came to Jesus, and encouraging him, and kneeling said to him, "If you will, you can make me clean.” Did it translate it encouraging at that point in your Bible? What did it say? Imploring him. Oh, that gives me a little bit more of a flavor of this Greek word. Go with me over to chapter 5. You remember this kind of creepy story about this guy who's possessed by a legion of demons, and he's out in the tombs, and nobody can bind him, and you know these demons come into contact with Jesus, and these demons are actually afraid of Jesus, you know, and and it says in verse 9, “And Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion, for we are many.’” Which I'm just like, yeah, that's kind of creepy, right? But Jesus is not afraid. And look, it says he, this guy who's saying, "My name is Legion, for we are many,” he begged Jesus earnestly not to send them out of the country. You know what that same word is? Parakaleo. He encouraged Jesus. He begged Jesus, and then look at what it says after that. It says in verse 12, “And they begged him.” So, now it's clear we’v got more than one demon. We’ve got a whole legion of demons in this guy, and they begged him, saying, "Send us to the pigs and let us enter them. So he gave permission, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs. And the herd, numbering two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.” Like these thousands of demons are begging Jesus is the way it's translated here, right? And then, like all the people who are there in this region, they see this go on this mass suicide of ham and bacon lost in the sea right like and they are getting freaked out. And it says in verse 17, “And they began” to Parakaleo Jesus, “they began to beg Jesus to depart.” Like, they are afraid of him. And then in verse 18, this man that had been possessed with demons encouraged him that he might be with him, begged him that he might be with him. This keeps going on and on.

Right in the next story, we’ve got this guy Jairus in verse 22. “Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him,” seeing Jesus, “he fell at his feet and” parakeloed him, “implored him earnestly, saying, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” Are you starting to get the sense of this? This isn't just like we have these niceties, these pleasantries that we're oh, hope you're doing well, be blessed, right? Like, if we're going to encourage each other, we're going to have to plead with each other. There's going to have to be some begging. We're going to have to look each other in the eye and say, please, I'm begging you. I'm begging you. Love the Lord more than anything. Hey, bro. I can see that maybe this other thing in your life, it seems like you're talking about that all the time. You're thinking about that all the time. It seems like that has become the thing that is driving all of your choices. It seems like that has captured so much of your affection. Hey, bro, is Jesus still first? Are you still loving Jesus so much more than you love this other thing? Please don't let this other thing become more important to you in your heart than Jesus is. Please love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Hey, bro, you're talking to me about this temptation that you face, like we all face many different types of temptation. Man, bro, I want to plead with you. Don't give in to that temptation. Hey, what if the next time that you were feeling tempted by that, what if instead of giving in to that, you called me, and we could talk about it right then, or you send me a text so that I could reach out to you as soon as I possibly could, and I could plead with you, I could beg you, I could implore you earnestly, hey, remember that sin is, that temptation is lying to you, my friend, sister in Christ. That temptation is trying to deceive you. It will not go well for you. You will feel the guilt. You will feel the shame, and you don't have to do it because of Christ. Because he gives you freedom from sin. You have power now to say no to sin, not in yourself but in him. Use that power.

Remember how good it's going to be to obey the Lord. Remember how there's no letdown from obeying Jesus. How his commands are the best way. Don't forget that. Don't forget how much he loves you. How much he cares about you. Do you see the type of encouragement? Are we getting that flavor? That if we're going to really do this, we're going to have to plead with one another. It's going to be so much more than just chit chat about our week at the park. It's going to be so much more than even just well, here was my answer for question number four on the handouts. It's going to have to get personal. It's going to have to get where I'm coming alongside my brother. I'm coming alongside my sister, and I'm saying, "Let's do this together. I want to beg you. I want to plead with you. Please, let's do this with one another.” And then sometimes it's like, hey, as we actually spend time with one another as we're getting together, same time, same place type of stuff. Over time, I start to get to know people, and over time, maybe I see, hey, praise the Lord! Look at what he's doing in your life, bro! Like, look at how he's helping you do this. But then maybe sometimes there are other times where I'm like, hey, bro, I'm kind of noticing this thing in your life, I'm noticing how you talk. I'm noticing your attitude about this. I'm noticing that maybe this thing that God wants you to do seems kind of absent in the way that you're operating. Well, then that's an opportunity for us to stir them up, for us to come alongside them and help them. Now this isn't like come above them and look down on them type of thing, right? Like it's not a hey I'm really noticing how you haven't achieved my level of spirituality. So, let's talk about that. When can we schedule a time for a discussion on the matter? No, it's like hey, I'm not above anyone else. I'm right there on the same level, and I, bro, I remember how I had to learn this. I remember how God had to convict me about that, and he had to change my mind. I remember when I was thinking wrong about this and let me appeal to you. Oh, it's so much better. I'm so thankful for the way that God taught me. Let me share that with you. Let's talk about that. I would love to help you with that.

Go with me to Ephesians, chapter 4. Ephesians, chapter 4 is another place where Paul uses this analogy of a body. In Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 15, it says, we don't want to be children. God's goal for you, God's goal for everybody who's a part of his church is that we wouldn't stay baby Christians. That's not the goal. The goal is growth. The goal is maturity. We actually want to mature to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. We want to be living like Jesus lived and operating the way that he did. And we don't want to get sucked into our emotions and be tossed to and fro. We don't want to just be caught up in every Instagram fad of theology and church that wafts through the social media. No, rather, verse 15, speaking the truth in love. See, when we're speaking the truth, the truth has a point to it, right? The Word of God is living and active. It's sharper than any two-edged sword, right? So, if I'm speaking the truth, if I'm saying what this book says to people, I'm saying something with a point. I don't have to add my own aggression. I don't have to add, you know, being upset with people or getting in their face. I can speak the truth in love, where people can tell I'm sharing this with you because I care about you, and sometimes the truth pokes at us. Sometimes the truth actually stings a little bit when we hear it. We don't really always want to acknowledge that what the Bible says about us is true, but if I've got a friend, if I've got someone who's my one another, who cares about me, and is like, hey, this is what the Word has to say, and I've seen this in your life, and I think God would want you to consider this. Would you please? Could we do that together? I'd love to come alongside you and help you.

We’ve got to be speaking the truth in love, and it's speaking the truth in love when we're actually encouraging one another, when we're actually stirring one another up, speaking the truth in love, that's how we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. See, it's like there's this godly tension that the bodies like fit together, and we're all joined together. And it's like, man, I'm pulling on you, and I'm encouraging you, and you're pulling on me, and we're both kind of pulling on each other, and we're saying, let's go in the right direction. That's how the body was designed to work, where we're in each other's lives, we're knowing each other, and we're speaking the truth in love. And when we're doing that, we're going to see growth. And that's not just the job of one body part and one part of the body. That's actually the job of every part of the body. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good deeds.

Now go back with me to Hebrews 10, because there's one more thing that we need to see. It says, “encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” So, let's get this down for point number three.: “Plead with your one another's more and more while you can.” There needs to be a pleading. There needs to be an encouraging. We need to come alongside one another. Like I want to help you, and I need to let other people come alongside me, acknowledging, hey, I can't do this on my own either. God has designed the body for me to be a benefit to it, and for it to be a benefit to me. Plead with your one anothers, and it says this more and more. We need to get back to fellowship. And some of us, if we're hearing this, I wonder if some of us this whole concept of how God wants us to operate in his church might be kind of new for us. Like I've never really operated that way. People didn't share this passage with me at another church. I haven't really thought through this before. Well, will you allow me to stir you up to love and good deeds to operating the way in Jesus' church that he would want you to operate? But as I'm looking around the room, I see many friends. Many friends, where it's like, no, I know that you operate this way. You've been one another to me. You've spoken truth to me. You've encouraged me. You've come alongside me. I see you doing that with other people. But when you're doing this, sometimes you can get weary. Sometimes you can think, okay, I did that really well last year. Maybe this year I'll take it easier. No, he's not saying do it less and less. Do it more. All the more as you see the day drawing near. If you're someone that you've already been doing this, let me encourage you. How are you going to do this even better in the days ahead than you've done it in the past?

We have a fresh new season where we're starting up groups where we're going to be meeting. How are you going to be more encouraging? How is God going to use you more effectively to stir up your one another's to love and good deeds than he ever has before? You might need to get more meetings on your calendar. You might have to get more times where you're thinking and you're praying about your one anothers. You might have to open up the book and say what it says more than you have in the past. That is what God wants us to do. We need to plead with each other, and we need to keep growing and getting better and better at doing that all the more as you see the day drawing near, the day when Jesus is going to return, when he's going to judge in the book of Hebrews that this is written in. There are so many warnings. Like we should actually be concerned that people could know the good news, they could know that Jesus is coming back, they could know what could be theirs but then fail to actually reach it. You know where a lot of those people are operating? They're operating unknown in churches because they're not really one another. No one's actually in their life enough that we could see, hey, what you're saying and how you're living aren't matching up. And I want to help you. I want to come alongside you because I care about you.

The day is drawing near, and some people, in the end, they're not going to reach that day. And if they're here at this church, far be it from us that we would just let them go there without saying, hey, we want to come alongside that person, we want to help that person. But it's also a sense in which, like, we're coming alongside each other because we need help, because we've got temptations, right? We've got things are not really going the right way. I have desires to do the wrong thing, and actually serving Jesus when everybody else in the world seems so opposed to him, it's actually kind of challenging. It's not the easiest thing to do when we're being mocked and ridiculed and persecuted, and we're not popular, and it's like I want to go the way that God wants me to go, but everybody else in my company wants to go this other way. Everybody else in my neighborhood wants to go this other way, and it's tough. And we need to encourage each other. But then there's going to be a day, a day when we're with the Lamb, and we're at the wedding feast, and we're celebrating with him, and all of the enemies are going to be judged. They're going to be like a footstool for his feet.

And you know these bodies that give us so much trouble in the here and now. Guess what's going to happen? We're going to get new ones, upgrade, right? Like an eternal upgrade, ones that don't get tired and there's no sickness and there's no temptation. Sin will not appeal to us anymore. Jesus Christ will finish the work that he has begun in each one of the people. He's going to bring us home to be with him. Amen. Well, we won't need to encourage each other then. We'll already be doing what's right all the time. We'll never be tempted to do what's wrong. I won't have to stir you up. You won't have to stir me up because the Lord will have finished the work, and we're with him.

So, this is something that's available for a limited time. It's like now's the time that we can do it. Now's the time when we need to get to work and be thinking about other people, not just ourselves. Hey, the day's coming. The day's coming when that work will be done. But we need to get after it until that day does come. And I just want to say that, like, hey, we're so thankful that you're here in the room. But where we really want to see you is there on that day, in the presence of Jesus. Like, we want to be the kind of friends that are going to speak the truth in love and consider how to stir one another up to where it's like, man, we're going to keep believing in Jesus all the way to the end. We're going to keep serving Jesus all the way to the end, where we get to that day where we are with him, and it is going to be glorious. But for now, we need to get back to fellowship, not just to an event on the calendar, but to a way of operating in the Church of Jesus Christ, where it's like I have one another's, I have people. I don't think about myself as it's just me. I think about us. I think about my one another's. I think about myself as a part of a body, a part of a group of people that share. Fellowship with each other because Jesus has saved our souls, and I want I want to stir you up to think that way. I want to help you to think that way. I want you to be a part of a smaller group where you could actually experience this. I want everybody who is a part of a group to not just show up, and we go through the motions. I want us to really be thinking about each other like God does. So, would you join me in praying that God would help us be the type of church that he wants us to be? Let's ask God for help.

Father. I am so thankful, Lord, for your goodness and your grace. God, that you have loved us and you have loved us so thoroughly and completely, God, that we could be made new through your Son Jesus Christ, but God, it's so clear through what you say that it's not just about us and you; it's about the other people. It's not just about me; it's about us, Lord. It's about the one another's, God, that you have placed us. Now that we are in Christ, we are now in his body. We are now in the church, and God, You've given us a responsibility to our fellow members, our fellow body parts, our fellow Christians, and God, we want to be honest that some of us we've had a habit of neglecting that. God, maybe even we've been showing up, but we haven't been really showing up to consider our one anothers to stir them up that we would actually be able to do something that would produce a result of love and good works in their life. So, God, let us not forsake, let us not abandon the meeting together anymore. But God, let us encourage one another, and all the more, God. And we want to be there on that day, God. I want to see my friends in this room, there, God, in your presence, the place we long to be, and God, we know that if we are just living in sin, God, if we give up our hope, if we renounce our confession, God, that Lord, there is a great fear that some would fail to reach it. And there is a great joy that we could reach it, and we could reach it together by your grace. And so, God, let us do what you're telling us to do. Let us be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving ourselves. And so, God, make us the church that you want us to be, so that you would get the glory, God, so that that people, even all around us, could see that we're your disciples because we really love each other, and do that for the glory of your name. We pray, and all God's people said, Amen.