Clough Hebrews Lesson 51
Second Exhortation: The problem of the pressure
Third Exhortation: regarding other believers – 10:23-25
…that will train you for exhortation; for those who have the gift of exhortation, which is more of an ability in this area than the average Christian, then this book is indispensable for you and tonight you’ll see some principles of using your gift. Now we’ve had obvious stimulation and training of the gift of pastor-teacher in this congregation but we are in danger of exalting the gift of pastor-teacher to the point of neglecting the other gifts and they are other gifts and these other gifts have to be trained, though not in the same way, they still have to be trained like the gift of pastor-teacher. The gift of exhortation is one of the most important gifts that the Holy Spirit has given the body of Christ because the gift of exhortation has to do with encouragement. And every believers, there’s not one believer existing or whoever has existed or ever will exist who is in no need of encouragement. Encouragement is vitally needed by every believer. Therefore the gift of exhortation is very, very necessary.
And you ought to, if you are not sure of your gift, tonight be examining your heart to see whether you have the gift of exhortation. Some things, some hints or something or guidelines that you can use in discerning the gift is to watch types of situations in to which you are thrown. In other words, as you just kind of go along in the Christian life do you find the Lord leading you into encouragement type situations? Do you find yourself in the company of other believers at times when they most need encouragement? Do you find yourself able, willing and interested in those situations to give encouragement, to give effective encouragement. Have other believers commented at times either to you or to some of your friends as to the effectiveness of your encouragement. These would be some signs that you ought to look for in discerning God’s pattern in your life because if you can pin down at least one gift that you think you have this kind of orients your training, and the gift of exhortation is being used here in Hebrews 10, beginning at verse 19.
Last week, Hebrews 10:19-22, we dealt with the first exhortation. The main verb, verses 19-22 was what? “Let us draw near.” All right, “let us draw near” is the first exhortation that you’ll see in this passage. There are going to be three exhortations before the warning passage. So the first exhortation given here with the main verb, “Let us draw near” has to do with praise and petition, or worship. That means the first exhortation to downtrodden believers is to pray. In other words, it has to do with their relationship with the Lord. Now the other exhortations have to do with other dimensions but the first exhortation, this is significant, the first exhortation that you meet is the exhortation that concerns the believer’s relationship with the Lord. Apart from his relationship with other people, apart from his relationship with the world, the primary starting point for exhortation is the person’s vertical relationship with the Lord.
This means that exhortation doesn’t begin with how are you feeling today? How you are feeling has nothing to do with your spiritual relationship with the Lord. You may feel awful, that has nothing to do with your spiritual relationship. So you ought to, particularly if you’re engaged in exhortation and encouragement, you ought to think of something else besides “how are you feeling today” to open the conversation. Figure out something a little more doctrinal. Now this is in direct contrast, if you’ll notice the methodology, beginning in the first section, verses 19-22, the first exhortation hits an area that modern counseling theories would tell you never to hit. Modern counseling theory always tells you to discuss details, maybe reflect them back to people, but don’t get into such basic issues as what they believe. Don’t discuss religion with the counselees, that kind of approach.
Now here the approach is exactly the opposite to what you learn in most
psychology and counseling classes, and that is you begin with the question of
God because all personal problems, all psychological problems, basically are
spiritual in source and since they are the quickest way to the point is a
straight line and therefore you begin with their relationship with the
Lord. So here he meets discouraged
believers, believers who are depressed and the first exhortation is “Let us
draw near,” and then he goes on to give, with the main verb, two participles,
“having,” one participle in verse 19 is present tense, the other participle in
verse 22 is perfect tense. The first “having” in verse 19 is the mental
attitude of boldness, “having therefore boldness” this is a present participle,
simultaneous, describes a simultaneous condition with the main verb. So as you
are drawing near you ought to have the mental attitude of boldness to come
before God. And this means that the
person has responded, it’s an exhortation to respond to the position of the
work of Jesus Christ which has just been described in 10 chapters. You cannot have boldness to enter the holiest
here if you’re not really convinced of the Lord’s work, otherwise you’re not
going to be too excited about entering into the holiest. This won’t really grab you because basically
at that point in time you’re not believing in the finished work of Christ and
what a great thing it is.
Now the second “having” is in verse 22, “having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.” Now the first part of that, all of it, by the way, the perfect, refers to our position. The first present participle referred to the mental attitude, the second one, the perfect participle refers to our position. This started at a point in time with results that continue. “Having,” this is the mental attitude that accompanies the coming near.
So now we have the position stated as two-fold, involving blood, “the heart sprinkled from an evil conscience,” and water, “our bodies washed with pure water.” And we said that that is developed out of Old Testament symbology and we said that last time that we did not follow the sacramental interpretation; we do not say that that is baptism in verse 22. Does anyone why recall why we reject the sacramental interpretation of verse 22? Here’s a good interpretive problem, let’s reason it through, train yourself how to think through these things so you can work with this, if necessary pick up the Bible and work with it yourself. [someone answers] All right, the first observation that you see is that you can’t literally sprinkle an evil conscience. Now since the word “sprinkle” and “wash” are used together, and if you have the word “sprinkle” and that is metaphorical, and this verb is tied with the verb to wash, then that probably is metaphorical. That’s one approach.
What is another approach that would argue against seeing baptism in verse 22? [someone answers] You’re on the right track, can you state it more completely against the argument this is baptism; you’re right it refers back to a ritual but how do we know that the author hasn’t switched or isn’t introducing baptism at this point? You just need one more thing, what has he done in the past in this epistle? Has he just begun to talk about ritual washing at verse 22? [reply] All right, he’s mentioned it, now you have a complete answer. This is ritual washing because it fits with the context because that’s what he’s been talking about for ten chapters. Every time he’s referred to ceremonial washing it’s always been back to the Levitical washings. There’s no evidence there’s a baptism here at all, even the word baptismos, when it is used here, is plural, “baptisms,” and it’s a Septuagintal translation of “washing” so there’s no baptism in Hebrews. All this thing that looks like it refers to washings.
Now in particular I want to just, before we leave verse 22, point out something about that washing. We talked about, one was blood, that was Moses taking the hyssop and sprinkling the blood over things, making atonement, and the other was water plus ashes. And the blood was used in the Old Testament to deal with what kind of problem, verses the water and the ashes. Can someone distinguish between the two usages? [someone answers] All right, blood dealt with the legal problem of sin and guilt. The water and the ashes dealt with the result of it, death. So the two together give you a complete solution; one solves the sin problem, the guilt problem; the other solves the sentence of death problem, in the past in practice this was dealt with the problem of contamination.
Now this is one of those passages that is very intriguing and what I’m about to do is just sort of lead on from several Old Testament verses to a possibility that this text is pointing at in a deeper sense. You see, we can say, the first one, the sprinkling of the blood deals with sin, we can say okay, I see how that works, that works in the conscience. So we can locate the place where the effect of the blood of Jesus Christ operates and that is in our conscience. It renders our conscience clean. Now why is it necessary to have the conscience clean? What would happen if the conscience wasn’t clean, operationally speaking in the Christian life what happens when the conscience is not clean? [someone answers] All right, you have guilt. What does guilt do in the Christian life? What are some things, results of guilt. [someone answers] All right, let’s enlarge that and just simply say doesn’t guilt lead to unbelief. Not that God can’t, you’re convinced already that God can do something for you but if you have a guilty conscience that God, though He can, will so something for you. So here we have guilt affecting you, not in the intellectual sense of unbelief but in the moral sense of unbelief. You know He’s there, you know God has made promises, but you just can’t really believe that God is happy with you at this moment and that the promises that He has made are effective for you at this moment, in this situation.
All right, that’s fine, that’s conscience and that’s its effect, but what are we going to do about this washing the body business; we said it’s a metaphorical washing, “our bodies washed with pure water,” so it has something to do with our body. If you’ll hold the place and turn back to two passages in the Old Testament; one, Ezekiel 36:25; in Ezekiel 36:25 we have a section that is a forward view of regeneration. This is the New Covenant section of Ezekiel, this is the passage that Nicodemus and Jesus were talking about in John 3. To understand the Nicodemus discourse in John 3 you must understand Ezekiel 36. “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean,” now notice, see the imagery of washing, now when you look at what it is that is washed out, it looks peculiar; I will wash you “from all your filthiness,” all right, we can see that, that fits with the image of washing, but now the next one doesn’t seem to, “and I will wash you from all your idols,” “… I will wash you from all your idols.” Now this cleansing or washing doesn’t seem to fit; how do you clean somebody from their idols? Well, if we go into the New Testament we know that it is that is behind idols; in 1 Corinthians 8-10 what does Paul say is involved when idolatry sets up? You get demonic forces involved. Now the intriguing thing to wonder about is in this “washing from all your idols” whether there is included by way of positional truth, an exclusion of demonic forces positionally from the believer.
This sense seems to be substantiated when we turn to another Old Testament passage talking about the same thing, Zechariah 13:2, again the imagery of cleansing. Remember, we’re working on the body now, the conscience we’ve worked on, we said the conscience was cleansed by that blood, the sprinkling, now the body by the “washing of water.” In Zechariah 13:2 it says, “And it shall come to pass, in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered;” and then simultaneous with that action, “and I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.” Notice again how the idolatry and the unclean spirits is together; they’re together and they will be excluded. This is a prediction of the millennium when the New Covenant comes into full force but it’s also by way of position spoken of as that which is in Christ.
Now in Christ we have perfect 100% justification, judicial cleanliness. That’s the blood. We also have, positionally speaking, we have this potential freedom from all demonic forces. So we’ll say just freedom, freedom from contamination. Just like the Old Testament they had freedom from the bugs and germs and bacteria of death. Now that is a position but it has to be appropriated, just like the judicial forgiveness of sins is there, legally, from the time you receive Christ; nevertheless in experience you appropriate it moment by moment by moment. And it’s the same thing with this that the cleansing includes not just the moral problem of sin but it also includes the result on the sense of this death. That’s not all that’s included but at least this is part of this Old Testament imagery that kind of clings and clusters around these words.
Let’s turn back to Hebrews 10 then. So he says, and notice how he attaches the two, if the person, if the believer is free from sin, he’s taken care of his sin before God, he is also therefore taken care of that which causes death, and in the analogy of the cause/effect relationships we’re dealing with, you take care of the legal problem you take care of those sent to administer the punishment upon sin, those who are the custodians of death, the demonic forces. You’ve also taken care of them if you’ve taken care of the sin problem, so this is a complete cleansing.
Now look at the power of this exhortation; now the exhortation is, in verse 22, “let’s draw near,” understanding your position as totally free from all sin, past, present and future, and totally free of the effects of this sin. Having all these things, by way of position, then he says let’s draw near, if that’s the case let’s draw near. So you see how that first exhortation starts off with a believer’s relationship to God and put in more familiar language, the first exhortation starts with your position in Christ; it is nothing more than an exhortation to appropriate your possessions in Christ. That’s the nature or the heart of the first exhortation. You’ve got this, believer, you don’t have to earn it, you don’t have to crawl on your belly for it, you don’t have to got through a religious ritual to get it, it’s not something out ahead of you like a carrot on a stick, it’s something that you’re holding right in your hand, you’ve got it already, now use it. That’s the nature of the first exhortation. Use what you already in fact have; recognize that you own it, within your control now so use it. These are the things that God has given to us. Perfect tense, “sprinkled;” perfect tense, “washed.” Action happened in the past, results continue down into the present moment.
Now we come to the second exhortation, and as we watch these different levels of exhortation, you think how you might appropriate and use these in working with other people, other believers. All of us are called upon to witness. Some of us have the gift of evangelism, that means that we have a greater capacity to witness. Similarly in this area of exhortation every believer is called upon to exhort or to encourage but it’s also true, as with evangelism, so with exhortation, that some believers are naturally going to have a greater capacity, and those we say are gifted in this area; they have a gift of exhortation. So whether you’re just a regular believer functioning, or whether you have the gift we move now to verse 23.
This is the second, the second verb, second subjunctive, second level of exhortation, “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering (for He is faithful that promised). “Let us hold fast,” the first exhortation dealt with God, the second exhortation deals with the human viewpoint world system, or the kingdom of man. It looks like the three step concept, the first step was to plug into the divine viewpoint framework, get the vertical relationship set up, the second step is block the attack or blunt it and so here the exhortation follows that same pattern. The first thing you do is plug into your resources; the second thing you do is blunt the attack that’s being leveled and waged against you at that point in time, and the particular attack that these people face is an attack to just leave off from bothering with the Jewish Christian community.
These people face at least three pressures, they face the prejudice of non-Christian Hebrews, the non-Christian Hebrews at this point are beginning to look down their nose at the Hebrew Christians. The second prejudice they face is obviously the prejudice of Gentiles. They have Gentiles in the congregation and the Gentiles don’t particularly get along with them so they have these natural culture pressures. It would be easier, from the human point of view for these Hebrew Christians to just say forget it and go back to that to which they are more accustomed, namely their own Judaism, their own non-Christian Jews. It would be very easy for them to do this, and besides, they have a third problem, they have this out on a limb feeling in the sense that this is kind of a new religion. They’re used to the religion of Moses, the religion of Abraham, religion that’s gone on for 20 centuries and now we’re talking about this religion that’s been around for 20 years and I wonder just how solid things are.
All these things conspire to exercise a tremendous pressure on these people to defect back into the ranks of unregenerate Judaism. So faced with that kind of pressure, verse 23 meets it headlong. The second exhortation is: there’s your problem, now you’d better deal with the problem. You’ve plugged into your resource, your position, now we move to the problem. Something else that’s interesting here too, the very fact that the exhortation in verse 23 is even made, after verse 22, shows that verse 23 type action would not have logically, automatically occurred, had even the believers followed verse 22. Had, in fact, the believers grown near to God with a true heart, had in fact that actually occurred, it wouldn’t be immediately obvious to them what to do next. So this tells you something in exhorting and encouraging people. The exhortation and encouragement ought to be directed to their specific problem. And here we have an exhortation directed to a specific problem, it’s not just saying pray to God and read a chapter a day and Satan will stay away. It’s nothing like that, nothing general, it’s something specifically directed toward their problem.
And in this second level, what does it mean to “hold fast the profession of our faith.” In the original read it reads, “let us continue to hold fast,” it’s a present tense, let us keep on holding fast, let this be an abiding principle, “let us continue to hold fast the profession,” and the word means confession out in the open, we would translate it as an unwavering testimony. In other words, they’ve done a good job but this is the second generation since Jesus and their motivation is fading. He’s saying look, you people have managed to stick it out this long, now you’ve done a good job, keep at it. Keep that testimony, that great record that you have back here, the testimony that shows by your life and by your message, keep at it, keep moving, keep it unwavering, don’t waver now.
[someone says something] Yeah, 1 Corinthians
Notice in verse 23 he doesn’t say, after saying verse 22 and the first exhortation, he doesn’t say now stop being depressed. He doesn’t say stop feeling sad. The reason he doesn’t is because verse 23 is describing the cause of their depression. Just saying don’t be depressed or don’t be sad doesn’t solve the problem because you can’t stop being depressed when you’re depressed. There’s no way you can stop being depressed. The only way you can stop being depressed is stop doing what it was that made you depressed. You don’t stop depression, you stop the action causing depression. Any more than I can tell you here, look, your current pulse is thus and such, maybe it reads 70, now would you please increase your pulse to 100. Unless you’re an advanced yogi you will not be able to move your pulse. So how are you going to move, certainly not by trying to move your pulse, you’re going to increase your pulse by doing something physical to cause your heart to speed up. Well, it’s the same thing here, you don’t stop depression by stopping depression, any more than you start your heart being faster by trying to start your heart beating faster. You start your heart beating faster indirectly by doing something to cause it to start beating faster.
And so here, the cause of depression was the threat of guilt, embarrassment and shame in the eyes of the Jewish community. And he said that’s what’s leading to your depression, so instead of sitting there and being depressed about it, here’s your point, here’s what’s causing it. If you chicken out of course you’re going to be depressed because you’re going to be ashamed of yourself. So here he’s saying, “Hold fast the confession.”
[someone says something] They are because they’re both interrelated; counseling… the difference between counseling and exhortation isn’t content, it’s emphasis. [more said] Yeah, because obviously, how can you exhort someone, you’re someone always to do something, do what? Do God’s will. All right, if you’re going to exhort someone to do God’s will you’ve got to know what God’s will is so you’ve got to have discernment in that area. They’re really tied together. I’d say, if you want to be picky about it, counseling would have more to do with the discerning of the will of God because you might conceivable have somebody that’s really wanting to do God’s will and doesn’t need any encouragement to do it, he just wants to know what it is that he’s supposed to do, but the exhortation is a little different kind of a problem. There you’ve got a situation, the person may really know what to do, he just needs a kick in the pants and so exhortation emphasizes the kick. [more said] Yeah, probably you can have them mixed together; it’s so hard to separate, they blend into each other it seems to me.
And here obviously he’s saying this because in verse 22 he’s saying look, here’s your position, do something with it; verse 23, “let us hold fast the public testimony,” is what that means, “let us hold fast the public testimony of our hope.” Now what is the hope? The hope is the return of Jesus Christ. The hope is phase three; the hope is glorification, the end of the whole things. That’s the hope, the hope that Jesus Christ will finish the job he began.
And then he puts in an explanatory cause in verse 23, as another reason and that shows you another principle about exhortation, gives Biblical reasons for your exhortation, since before you opened your mouth, give reason why a person should follow the things that you are saying he should follow, “(for He is faithful that promised.)” Now why is that a good reason? There’s a kind of, I won’t call it a slam in here but in a way he’s putting pressure on the person, in the good sense of the Word. What’s the pressure that’s being applied to these believers by putting that little parenthesis in there in verse 23?
[someone answers] Yeah, in other words he’s saying don’t blame God in all this, God’s faithful. So if we’ve got a problem guess who’s problem it is. This gets off the blame God bit… well, why did God let us have this kind of a thing. You can imagine that this was their attitude in verse 23 and he’s saying huh-un, God is faithful to stick to the promises He made to you, so it’s not God’s fault. Now that is an interesting psychology of exhortation, and those with the gift of exhortation, you’ll find if you just exercise the gift, think through and use it, you’ll find you’re almost automatically doing this, you won’t have to think about it. [more said] It could have been, though I would have thought that would be more of a problem with Gentile converts than Jewish converts, the problem of whether these people were drifting off already into idolatry. It may conceivably have occurred because in the Corinthian congregation it was occurring and they have already gotten themselves involved. Certainly many of them were in areas of intense carnality which would have invited this kind of thing. But I think he’s drawing his imagery out of the Old Testament to link it firmly to this New Covenant theme that he’s been driving home all the time.
Now look at verse 24, here’s the third exhortation, not watch what’s happened in these exhortations; notice how smooth this has been. The first exhortation was development of positional truth, it dealt with a believer’s relationship to God. That’s where the exhortation started; everything starts there for a believer, your assets, what you have in Christ, and no matter how despondent a believer is with whom you speak, he has the same assets that Paul had, that Peter had, that any apostle had. There is not a believer on the face of this earth that doesn’t have as much forgiveness as was directed toward any other great Christian of history. There never is a low class believer. Frances Schaeffer in his latest book, There Are No Little People, that was the title of his book. And that’s basically the theme here, there are no little believers having less forgiveness directed their way than other believers. Every believer has these assets. So if that’s the case, obviously that’s the most powerful place to start.
Now the very fact however, that this man for ten and a half chapters before he began his exhortation tells you what about getting to this first point? He took ten and a half chapters before he began his exhortation. [someone answers] Exactly, they’d forgotten their position. So again here’s where all these gifts shade off one into another. The gift of exhortation you have to at least know enough doctrine so you can fill in gaps and voids and quick memories of the despondent believer so that he will be focusing in on doctrine when you begin your exhortation and it may take time. This man has taken ten and a half chapters to get to this point and he’s only going to spend one and a half in exhortation. Now if that’s true, that’s roughly one to ten as far as time goes. Now if that is any kind of a relationship or an indicator for us, that means for every hour of exhortation about ten hours of teaching are required. You see why teaching is so important. You can’t start exhorting until a person is taught something.
So now the third exhortation in verse 24; you move from the first exhortation, the position of God, the second exhortation, the problem of the pressure, this is human viewpoint, in this case it was the world, the culture, that kind of pressure. He didn’t falsely identify the problem as depression, emotional problems, nervous breakdown, you don’t find that in the vocabulary of the New Testament. Nerves don’t break down, there’s no such thing as a nervous breakdown. The problem is disobedience to the Word leading to these things and so he points out the problem.
Now the third exhortation is the positive side. He’s dealt with God, he’s dealt with his relationship to the world, the human viewpoint problem, now he switches over to what they can do about their problem. This is a positive solution. And this is the third part of all good exhortation. Position in Christ, identify the problem, expose the problem, hey here’s your problem, right here, boom, boom, boom, now here’s what you can do about it, boom, boom, boom. This goes back to what was pointed out, yes, counseling is kind of involved here right now he begins counseling; right now he begins to give them a positive course of action to deal with this problem.
So let’s see in verse 24 and verse 25, the two go together, where is the main verb? He’s counseling a whole body of believer. What’s the main verb? “Let us consider,” all right, where are the other verb forms in verses 24-25. “Let us consider,” present tense, third exhortation, “Let us consider,” it is present tense, let us keep on considering. Where are the other verbs? [someone answers] Okay, “not forsaking,” “but exhorting.” So this is a rough outline, we’ll go into the details but that’s his counsel to this group of despondent, discouraged, depressed group of believers. This is the divine viewpoint way out of their problem; their problem can be solved, there’s no such thing as an insolvable problem. If there was you can throw God’s word into the nearest crash can because God’s Word says there are no insolvable problems; no matter what your problem is in life there is always a divine viewpoint solution, always. And there was a solution here.
So he begins in verse 24, “Let us consider,” continually consider, katanoeo is what this word looks like in the Greek; those of you who are taking Greek, a little tip to remember, when you have a kata prefix on a verb stem it intensifies the verb stem. So you have noeo, what is noeo? [someone answers] All right, to think, it comes from the word for mind, “think,” we intensify it with a kata prefix, it means to think hard. All right, “Think hard about one another. Isn’t that interesting? The third exhortation is to start thinking hard about one another, implying again this would not have naturally come out of the exhortation of verses 22 or verse 23, it had to be added. “Think hard, continually, about one another.”
What does this tell us about the use of the gift of exhortation? That before you open your mouth think and think in particular about the person you’re trying to help and do some detailed thinking about the person you’re trying to help before you just drop your pearls all over the place, make the pearls fit the person. And in order to make your pearls fit the person you have to think hard about this person and that’s what he’s saying, you’ve got to think. And he’s going to say something else down here which is going to confirm this interpretation, that he intended that these believers not just… everybody now to your neighbor on your left and say praise the Lord, and everybody turn… this kind of thing, it wasn’t anything like that. It was to shut up and think about how to do these things, it involved a time span. And just a tip. For some of you who come in here on Wednesday night, it’s all right to come in and not bother with the prayer group but it got so noisy in here I couldn’t even think what was going on back there so we have a sign, I don’t know what we have to do, please shut up; now we can get gross around here if you want, I’ll send some of my karate friends up here and we’ll shut the whole place up. But if people are going to pray they’ve got to be able to concentrate; same principle. But I couldn’t pray back there tonight, no way I could think through… all right.
So the considering is intensively thinking about one another. Now look at the word, it says “to provoke,” but that’s not the way it reads in the original, it reads: “for a provocation,” now the word “provoke” is the last word that you would ever expect to see in the same immediate context with the word “love.” And the author deliberately juxtaposes the two words, “provoke – love”. This is a noun, “consider a way of making a provocation.” Now what is a provocation? Usually what do you think of a provocation? When you provoke somebody… how do you provoke somebody. Think back to normally the way we think of provoking somebody. What’s the best way to provoke somebody? How do you know how to provoke them? You know a weak spot and you know how to provoke. And this is why husbands and wives are the best provokers of one another, because they’ve lived with one another long enough to recognize the weak spots. When you want to get back at them you know just where to stick it. See, provocation.
Okay, now the provocation demands knowledge of the person, that’s why the word “provoke” is here, that’s to add weight to katanoeo, in other words, sit around and think what is this person’s problem and how can I help them; it’s exactly the opposite. He’s using the word “provoke” to pick up a behavior pattern that we’re all familiar with because we all do this to a degree, it’s communicating, but what he’s going to do is turn the same word around 180 degrees and say okay, you know what provocation means and you know how to provoke people. Now I want you to take the same skills, the same sequence of steps that are involved in provoking someone and I want you to reverse it. That’s the counsel given to these discouraged believers. I want you to sit down there and think of these other believers and I want you to think of this person, this person, this person and this person, three different believers, he’s saying.
Okay, here you are, you have these three other believers sitting next to you or they’re your acquaintance in business or something in your association in the community, three are three believers. Now if you were going to provoke these people you’d provoke number one in one way, you’d provoke number two in another way and you’re provoke number three in a third way. Now that means that you know these people, you are treating them, in other words, as individuals. You can’t provoke people without really handling them as individuals, and that’s what it points, “Let us consider each other how to provoke, unto,” however, not irritation, but “unto love and good works.” You see, divine viewpoint counseling has largely to do with this. You have a problem, minus R learned behavior patterns, and what you want to do is try to get a +R learned behavior pattern that is exactly opposite to it. You don’t solve a person’s problem by just eliminating the minus R learned behavior pattern. You solve the problem by simultaneously getting rid of this but also replacing it with this. And so here, what was happening in this group, part of them anyway at least, they were enforcing one another’s depression. They’d get together, oh gee, what happened today, let me tell you my problem, and everybody is piling their crud on top of everybody else, until they got through and instead of having fellowship… they had fellowship all right, when they got through they had a pile of crud fifty feet high. It was the sum total of all their problems.
So what he’s saying is now you know what you’re doing, now just reverse that. And instead of sharing all of your difficulties and depressing one another, do the opposite, spend as much time trying to “provoke unto love and good works” as you do trying to provoke to irritate and depress. Because the idea of the sin nature is if you can depress another believer lower than you are, that makes you feel better.
In Hebrews 10:25, this is the action that accompanies this considering one another, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another,” a negative and a positive. Now this “assembling,” again it’s a noun, it’s not a verb, “not forsaking our assembly,” literally, “not forsaking our assembly.” Now why is this necessary? Well, how can you carry out the exhortation of verse 24 if you never meet with another believer? See, it’s very logical, you can’t exercise your gift as a lone ranger, you’ve got to be around other believers in order to exercise your gift; that’s the whole point of the exhortation to “not forsake our assembly.” That’s why it’s important that believers come together for fellowship. You’re stripped, you’re isolated, apart from other believers. Always remember this verse, this is a memory verse, I think, of the Navigators in the early stage in their program, Hebrews 10:25, it used to be in Campus Crusade too, that this is an absolute sine quo non of exercising your gift.
[someone says something] The word “assembly” here includes the local
church, because in effect if you have a local church congregation, say you have
150 people in the congregation, all right, if you have them meeting in other
little small groups you’re still basically having part of the same
assembly. This would include corporate
worship, however, because the Word of God is the way of encouraging one
another, so it doesn’t exclude the local assembly, but it’s greater than just
the local assembly. For example, some of
you just naturally gravitate to one another in your fellowship and you have
people over to your house and so on, and
it’s just kind of a real informal structure.
And I try to encourage this and keep out of the formal structures
because it’s just fits you naturally more.
And you just gravitate to certain people, you have a group here that get
together, gets together, gets together, it’s the same concept. But if you have someone who trots in here,
for example, at
Now notice a little jibe in here, “as the manner of some is.” So obviously you’ve got a –R learned behavior pattern here he’s dealing with. In other words, some believers have learned, they’ve picked up this habit of avoiding worship. Now in the original first century situation can you think of some reasons that would have helped strengthen this –R learned behavior pattern. Put yourself back in the first century. [someone answers] But this epistle generally is written toward Hebrews, that would be an indicator but be more specific, fit it to these particular people. [more said] All right, any time they identify themselves with a mass of believers that would increase the pressure against them, wouldn’t it? You see now why the second exhortation preceded the third one? Suppose he reversed the exhortation. There’s a wisdom in how these exhortations are given. Suppose you were in the situation and you were exhorting these believers and you say... you start off with verse 22, “Let us draw near,” and so on, great. But instead of hitting verse 23 you skip to verse 24 and then you then tell them, hey, start meeting together. Why is that exhortation out of place if you haven’t dealt with the verse 22 problem? Because what is immobilizing them? What is it that is keeping them from meeting one to another? It’s precisely the problem of the pressure.
So since he knows that he can’t give the positive advice until he rips into the negative he does that first. So verse 12, meaning let’s nuke this thing head-on, we’ve got a testimony before the world, now let’s not let it go and start wavering. We’ve held up the banner of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah this long, and it’s gone on for 30 years so far, if we believe this is written just before 70 AD, it’s gone on this long, don’t waver now. Now having dealt with that problem, now he comes over and he says now, let’s start meeting together. So he’s setting up a pattern that’s going in the exactly opposite direction to the way they’re going.
Now he says, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, … but
exhorting one another,” and this means that they are to exercise exhortation
among themselves, they are not to have to rely on just him. It’s not just the pastor-teacher in this case
who’s doing the exhorting. This is the
job of every believer toward every other believer: encouragement! Now every once in a while we have a situation
come up in the congregation where somebody says, you know, so and so, they’re
doing something and I don’t like it, it bugs me, and all the rest of it, do you
think I should go talk to them? And
obviously yeah, if it’s got to the point where you just can’t let them go, go
talk to them, Matthew 18, but when you go talk to them just don’t go plop on
top of them, think of exhortation, encourage them when you go to them. So if you have a gripe to make to another
believer, gripe about it but sow it with encouragement too, so you don’t turn
them off of Christ. You can correct a
person but you can correct them with encouragement. That’s what this is talking about, encourage
believers. And this is given to every
single believer and this is just as much a command as witnessing. So we can ask ourselves, you usually say now
how many people have you led to Christ in the last week; if you want to try the
same approach, how many people have you encouraged in the last week; same kind
of thing.
“…but exhorting one another,” and now he
says, “so much more, as you see the day approaching.” Now that “day” was 70 AD. Before 70 AD, had you lived then, you would
have taken the Second Advent prophecies of Jesus Christ, the destruction of
How do you separate the elements pertaining
to 70 AD from the elements pertaining to the Second Advent. How would you think? How can we do it and they didn’t. It’s very simple; we live on the other side
of 70 AD. So all we do is subtract off the things that applied to 70 AD and we
come out with the stuff that’s left; there’s the prophecies that have to do
with the Second Advent. But back in
their day they didn’t have that; they conceivably would think of Christ coming
and taking care of
Now what’s the application for us? The application for us is the same thing. Every day we live eats up time; here’s the concept, we have a limited amount of time in history; you have a limited number of days in your life, Psalm 139. You have unlimited time; time is our most precious commodity, and we’re spending it unwisely in many cases. And so exhortation is directed toward efficient use of time, don’t waste the time that you’ve got, you’re blowing it, you’re spending it and this is the kind of thing once you spend it you can’t get it back again. So every day that the sun sets is one more day close to Jesus Christ and one less day to influence history for Him. So the concept is the same, basically, the same sweep except we have to understand their view of “the day” was necessarily different from our view of “the day,” because of their position in history.
Are there any questions on this section. [someone asks something about if there’s any reason to believe that verse 25 is referring to the conflict between Jewish believers and Gentile believers at that time] If it is we have no hint of it in the rest of the epistle. [another question, something about Jay Adam’s book on counseling would be a good reference to read along with this] Yeah, in fact, if you have the gift of exhortation or you’re interested in exhortation, there’s one of his pamphlets, well, there are three of his pamphlets, they’re all very, very good, one in particular. It’s called Christ and Your Problems, it costs about 15 cents and it’s nothing more than about 8 pages in 1 Corinthians 10:13 and it’s a magnificent application of 1 Corinthians 10:13. He goes into the problem of a person saying, you know, I’m at the end of my rope and he asks them which end. [someone else asks something] I don’t know whether the gift of exhortation is specialized in one area or not, I’d imagine, the gift of teaching is. You know, the Scriptures don’t give us that much data, you just kind of have to look around.
Father, we thank You…