The Purpose of Gathering

Application Questions

1. Read Hebrews 10:19-26 together. What stands out to you the most after this second reading?
2. How is it possible for Christians to draw near to God? How is it different now than it was back in the Old Covenant?
3. What does it mean for Jesus to be our "great priest"?
4. What does it mean to have "full assurance of faith?" Why are we commanded to have this when we draw near to God?
5. What makes it difficult to come to church? How have you observed this in your own life, or the life of your family?
6. Why does the Bible urge us to make a habit of coming to church every Sunday?
7. Verse 24 tells us that we must "consider how to stir up [agitate] one another love and good works." How have other Christians done this for you in the past? How have other Christians encouraged you in your walk with Christ?
8. What is one way you want to grow in your own ministry of "considering" (see verses 24-25)?

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I want you to imagine with me for a moment that you are back in the year 900 B.C. You have just arrived in Jerusalem to visit the new temple that King Solomon has just built. As you enter the outer court, you are instantly struck by the beauty and grandeur of the temple—the impressive scale of the stone edifice, the incredible intricacy of the gold ornamentation. And while you are standing there, soaking in all the beauty, you feel a nudge behind you and you are snapped back to reality. There is a line of Jews behind you who are there for the same reason as you—and it's not to enjoy the beautiful sights of the new temple. As you dash forward to rejoin your family, you artfully maneuver around the various animal droppings that have begun to accumulate in the line. There are animals everywhere. In keeping with the Levitical Law, Your parents have brought the family’s best lamb to offer as a sacrifice to atone for the sins of your family.

As you wind your way through the line in the temple’s outer courts, you are overcome by a new sensation—not one of awe and wonder, but fear and dread. Your nostrils are overwhelmed by the unmistakable metallic odor of blood and burning flesh. But worse even then the smell are the horrific sounds that begin to assault your senses—the panicked squeals, bleating, and lowing coming from the animals being offered for sacrifice up ahead. And as you inch ahead, closer and closer, the smells, sounds, and sights reach a fever pitch. This temple, for all it’s elegance and splendor, is not a place of life, but of death. After your sacrifice has been offered, and your family exits the temple, one member smaller than before, you are left with a sinking feeling in your stomach and one terrifying thought in your head—this won’t be the last time. Sooner or later, we’ll be back.

I think we often forget just how gruesome the sacrificial system of the Old Testament was. It’s staggering to consider how many animals would have been slaughtered, just in the course of one day, to atone for the sins of the people. The Jews, in keeping with the Law, would bring their animals and grain offerings before the priests as a payment for their sins. This would happen in the outer courts daily. But there an even more important place within the temple—the “holy of holies,” where God’s presence dwelt. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, Israel’s high priest, bearing the names of the twelve tribes of Israel on his shoulder pads, and 12 stones on his chest, entered this Most Holy Place to offer a sacrifice of blood for the guilt of the people and himself.

This all sounds very strange to our modern ears, but the reason it likely sounds strange is because we are prone to forget just how horrific is our sin, and how holy is our God. God is holy, meaning that he is transcendent, or over, all he has made. He is morally perfect in all that he is, and all that he does. But holiness also represents God’s separation from all that is impure, and defiled, and unholy. And, if we’re paying attention, we can begin to understand the dilemma this creates for us. If God is unflinching in his moral perfection, and is unable to be in the presence of anything unholy, this means that he is unable to be in our presence. Why? Because we are unholy! There is no part of us—body, soul, and mind—that has not borne sin’s corruption. Even our best attempts at virtue are marred by our fallen nature. And in this unholy state we are unable to draw near to this holy God.

There are many thematic ways to understand the great story of the Bible—central themes that weave throughout all 66 books. One of these Biblical themes is the story of God’s presence. Adam and Eve were created in God’s image and designed for communion with him. One consequence of their garden rebellion was death, but another was removal from God’s holy, loving presence. The rest of the Bible story, and indeed the human story, is a restoration of God’s presence with man. In the Old Covenant inaugurated through Moses, God’s made his presence known among his people, but nothing like in the garden. No longer could God’s people see and enjoy God face to face. Because of sins’ ruinous effects, God’s presence was mediated through a man, the high priest. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest would not enter God’s presence with confidence. He himself was a sinner and knew that if he entered the presence of God in the wrong way, he could be struck dead in his unholiness.

And yet, in his great mercy, though we could not draw near to God, God drew near to us through Jesus Christ, his son. Jesus, the Son—true God of true God—entered humanity and dwelt among us. I love this beautiful line from John 1:14—”And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” But that was not the only thing Jesus did.

The writer of Hebrews (the author of the text we’ll be in this morning) tells us that Jesus came not only to show us what God is like, but to be the sacrificial lamb that atone for all of our sins and credit his holy, righteous life to our account. In other words, Jesus came so that we could draw near to God, and not just on our own, but together, as the gathered body of Christ.

This morning, we’re going to be in Hebrews 10:19-26, page 1007 in the pew Bible.

The author of Hebrews (a sermon in letter form), like a good preacher, moves from exegesis to application—the word “therefore” being our clue. In light of who Jesus is and what he accomplished on our behalf (as detailed in chapters 1-9), we are to respond in 2 directions:

1. Up: Because of Jesus blood which cleanses/washes/and purifies us from sin and brings us into righteous standing before God, we have unfettered, direct access to God—we can draw near to him.
2. Out: Before he ascended, Jesus created the church—the ‘big-C’ church of believers everywhere for all of time, experienced within local, ‘little-c’ churches of believers who gather together for weekly corporate worship. It is in these Sunday gatherings, as ordinary as they may seem, that a miracle occurs—God makes his dwelling among us, and offers us his help and persevering grace through his people.

And these two directions, up and out, lead the writer of Hebrews to offer us two applications, which are the two points of the message this morning *(reference QBC Kids Challenge discrepancy):

1. Look Up: Draw Near to God
2. Look Out: Hold Fast Together

Read Hebrews 10:19-26:”19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 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.”

Let’s consider together these two directions, and two directions from Hebrews 10:19-26.

1. Look Up: Draw Near to God

19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

How can sinners like us draw near to a Holy God? In verses 19-20, we are told of two objective things which have given us access to God’s presence:

1. 19: By the blood of Jesus: The ceremonial offerings and washings prescribed by the old law were all external in nature—they had no ability to transform the inner person, and this is precisely the point. These repeated external practices served as a reminder of sin’s corrupting influence, and the need for a true inner renewal. And this is exactly what the blood of Jesus accomplished. Look again at verse 21—we are told that our hearts have been sprinkled clean from an evil conscience. And our bodies have been washed with pure This is the new and living water that Ezekiel prophesied in Ezekiel 26:
   1. 25: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses”
   2. 27: , “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”
   3. The Bible wants us to see a connection between the ceremonial washings of the Old Covenant and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit in the New Covenant.
   4. Listen to what Jesus said in Acts 1:5 “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
   5. The blood of animals and the water cleanses of the old covenant could clean you up externally, but it is only the blood of Jesus and the baptism of the Holy Spirit that can purify your internally and make you fit to draw near to God.
2. 21: Since we have a great priest over the house of God…: Jesus died so that we would be purified by his blood and cleansed by the Holy Spirit, but Jesus now lives to make intercession for us. The wages of sin is still death. But here’s the difference—when we sin as Christians, we have an advocate before the Father—the Lord Jesus Christ. He pleads for us on behalf of his righteous record, not ours. God looks at the righteousness of Christ, and credits it to our account, as if we had never sinned.

So, verses 19-21 remind us of the two objective things Christ has done to grant us entrance into God’s presence, but Verse 22 informs us of the two subjective things that we must bring as we draw near to God:

1: A true heart: What does it mean to draw near to God with a true heart? The Greek for true can also be translated as “sincere.” Contrast this with the way the author of Hebrews describes the internal state of the wilderness generation in chapter 3: hardened, always going astray, with evil, unbelieving hearts. The Old Covenant was incapable of producing the internal transformation that only Jesus’ blood could accomplish. Though Christ has swung open wide the doors of heaven for all who have faith in him, we should never approach the perfectly righteous and holy God casually.

We live in a day constantly flooded with news, knowledge, and novelty, where everything feels urgent and important, until nothing feels urgent and important. How many of us approach God in this way? But a true and sincere heart, the one that God desires of us, is a heart that is fully set on him—with no hidden sins or agendas. A heart that desires God for God’s sake.

2: A full assurance of faith: And not only does God want us to draw near to him with a true and sincere heart, but also with a full assurance of faith.

There is a lot of confusion that Christians have with this concept of “assurance of faith”. If you’re in this room and you’ve been a Christian for longer than 5 minutes I’m certain that at some point, you have struggled with this question—how can I know that I’m a Christian? And this can be a wise question to ask of ourselves, just like Paul does in 2 Corinthians 13:5—”Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.” We fall into confusion, not because we are asking the wrong question—”Am I in the faith?”—but because we are trying to answer the question with the wrong criteria. What’s the criteria most of us use to answer that question? “How close do I feel to God right now?”

But the criteria the Bible provides is not, “how do I feel,” but “what do I believe?” The question is, Do I fully believe that Jesus is who he says is? Am I fully convinced that he has accomplished all that was necessary for my salvation? And, maybe most pointedly, am I fully certain that God loves me?

Do you want to know what I think might be the most audacious passage in all of the Bible? Listen to what Jesus says in John 17:22-23 during his high priestly prayer.

While praying to the Father for the unity of the Christians who would come after his ascension, Jesus prays, “let these believers become perfectly one, even as you and I are one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you have loved me.”

Did you catch that? You have loved them even as you have loved me. God loves you like he loves Jesus. Would Jesus go into God’s presence, uncertain how he would be received? Unsure whether he would be met with love or condemnation? As unbelievable and impossible as this might seem to you right now, Christian, God wants you to draw near to him with the same assurance that Jesus can draw near to him.

Psalm 16:11 “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Through the shed blood and mediating work of Jesus, you, right now, can experience the fullness of joy found in God’s presence. 1) Look up and Draw Near to God.

2. Look Out: Let Us Hold Fast Together

23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 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.

How can we hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering?

First, because “he who promised is faithful.”

• 1 Corinthians 1:8 “[Jesus] will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
• Philippians 1:6 “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
• Romans 8:30 “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”
• Finally, Hebrews 12:2 tells us that we should always be “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.”

Second, through the regular, rhythm of Sunday morning church attendance

Isn’t it remarkable how seemingly ordinary this commandment is? That in a letter that contains more warnings than any other in the New Testament—warnings not to neglect so great a salvation, and the dangers of an evil, unbelieving heart—that this is one of the prescriptions? “Go to church?” And yet, there is a reason why the author of Hebrews is calling this church to not neglect meeting together, because there were some that were.

What does it mean to “meet together?”

First, let’s define our terms. What does the author of Hebrews mean by “meeting together?” Is he referring to Christians meeting together in general? In any number, at any time, in any place? If we look at the Greek, the word for “meeting together” is episynagogue. What does that sound like? Synagogue. The place of central worship for the Jews when they would assemble together on the Sabbath for corporate worship. For the Jews, the day of corporate assembly or “synagoguing” was on Saturday, but for Christians, in keeping with Jesus’ resurrection, Sunday became the day of corporate worship. This word, episynagogue, then, refers to the assembling of the local church for worship every Sunday.

This is a helpful clarification because there is a lot of confusion among Christians, even in our circles, surrounding Sunday morning church attendance. Maybe you have asked this question before, ”How important is it that I come to church every Sunday? Does the Bible actually command this? Isn’t it enough if I meet together with some Christian friends each week for coffee? Or if I listen to Christian podcasts and online sermons that feed my soul?”

As wonderful as these extracurricular Christian activities are, they are never meant to take the place of the regular Sunday morning gathering. The church being addressed in the book of Hebrews was largely made up of Jewish converts who would have understood this intuitively as the OT law had always commanded a day to be set aside for corporate assembly:

• Lev. 23:2-3 “Speak to the Israelites and tell them: These are my appointed times, the times of the Lord that you will proclaim as sacred assemblies. Work may be done for six days, but on the seventh day there is to be a Sabbath of complete rest, a sacred assembly.
• And, lest we think this was another piece of Old Covenant law to be done away with, we see that the early church assembled together to devote themselves to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer—not an impromptu dinner date with some Christian friends, but the collective body of Christ gathering together for formal worship. It is these activities that we do together that make the church the church.
• Let me remind you of our first point; Jesus’ enables us to draw near to God. This “drawing near” is not something meant to be exclusively enjoyed on our own, but is a sacred call that we are invited into together.
• Eph 2:21-22: “In [Christ], the [church], being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

When we meet every Sunday, we are drawn together into a special experience of God’s presence and help. What a gift! And yet, the reality is that there were some in the early church that we regularly neglecting Sunday morning worship. And this isn’t just a first-century problem.There are many of us in the 21st-century church that neglect weekly church attendance.

So, why do some Christians neglect the assembling?

There are countless reasons why Christians might neglect the regular gathering, but the writer of Hebrews puts his finger on one central culprit:

We have made it a habit to not gather regularly: I love how blunt the Bible can be. There can be many deep and dark reasons why a Christian might neglect Sunday morning—but most simply, the reason why many of us fail to regularly assemble with the church on Sundays is because we have not made it a habit to do so.

Almost all of us live in a state of perpetual overwhelm with our work, our family commitments, and all of the other chores that accompany a typical life, let alone time for hobbies and rest. And so, what happens when you wake exhausted on Sunday morning after running yourself ragged for the past 6 days? You want to stay in bed, sleep in, and maybe try and catch the church live stream if you feel up for it. And what happens when you do this often enough? You form a habit of staying home, and you find that each week it becomes just that much harder to pull yourself out of bed, get the kids fed and dressed and out the door for church.

And a scary thing happens when you neglect a means of grace often enough, and you live in a spiritually malnourished state for long enough: it slowly begins to feel like your new normal. You become like the person who is chronically dehydrated and becomes accustomed to the perpetual headaches, or the person with an untreated foot injury who becomes content with his constant limp. Brother and sister, If you make a habit of neglecting the gathering for long enough, you will find that your soul will become increasingly deadened to spiritual realities. Jesus, sin, and the hope of heaven will begin to take on almost an air of unreality as you strain to recall what once felt so important.

But Hebrews clues us in to an even more sobering reason why we must not neglect the regular assembling, and the clue is found again in our greek work, episynagogue. The only other uses of this Greek word in the New Testament are eschatological—having to do with the final gathering of all believers at the second coming of Jesus. The author of Hebrews’ point is this: the evidence that we will be gathered together on that final day is that we regularly gather with God’s people now, and ”all the more,” verse 25 tells us, “as you see the Day (capital-D) drawing near.”

Habits are a part of God’s good design. And like anything else, habits can be turned toward destructive ends when used unwisely. When you do the same thing, at the same time, for the same rewards, for long enough, it becomes a habit—an activity that no longer requires the same amount of motivation and willpower to accomplish. Hopefully, you have the habit of brushing your teeth every day. You probably do it around the same time, in the same location, and you’ve been doing it for a while. The reward is that you feel less gross and people won’t want to run away from you. This is good! But habits can also be destructive. When you make it your habit to to dish yourself up a big bowl of ice cream and plop on the couch every night at 8pm, it will become increasingly difficult to do anything else.

If you are struggling right now to make a habit of regularly assembling with God’s people on Sundays, can I encourage you? The wonderful thing about habits is that habits can be changed! If you don’t believe me, I’ll bet that you can recall some moment, maybe not even that long ago, when you made a change to your health, your schedule, or your routine that created a new virtuous cycle in your life. I’m also certain it was difficult at first, and took a while to get going, but you kept pushing because you knew that the reward on the other side of all the effort was more valuable than whatever was sacrificed. Friend, what is that reward of regular church attendance? If your reward is gaining the approval of others and cultivating a certain image for yourself and your family, it won’t work. But if the reward you are looking for is the experience of God’s loving nearness with his people, and a weekly receiving of grace through the preached word, the Lord’s supper, and the communion of the saints to help you persevere in the faith, this is what will last.

If you hear all of this and you are still discouraged, convinced that you or your family are too far gone to form this new habit, can I ask you a question? Do you think that God is invested in helping you form the habit of meeting regularly with his people? Or to ask it another way, do you think that God is invested in helping you persevere in the faith? “For he who promised is faithful.”

The Purpose of our Gathering

So, we’ve established that the Sunday gathering is a means of grace God uses to draw us near to Him, and that failing to gather is associated with falling away from the faith. But now, as we close, I want us to consider what it is that God intends for us to do when we gather.

If you’ve been through our membership class anytime within the last 5 years, you’ll remember how often at our church we stress the weightiness of church membership. When you become a member of QBC, or any local church, you are being called into the office of “church member,” and with the office comes responsibilities. As a member of QBC, you have come into a special covenant with the other members of our church. When you joined the church, you stood up on this stage and declared your commitment to the members of this church, to:

1. To devote yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ and submit to the authority of the Scriptures
2. To regularly participate in the life of the church
3. To strive for unity in the church
4. and “to exhort yourself and the other members of our church to put off the sinful nature and put on Godliness for the glory of God.”

And we declared the same commitment to you. One of the ways God keeps us in the faith is through the regular exhortation of the saints. And what is the one time set aside each week where all the saints are gathered? Sunday mornings! We show up on Sunday mornings to fulfill our duty to one another.

And what is this duty? We are, verse 24 says, to “stir up”, or literally, “agitate” one another to love and good works.

We are to be like the agitator in a washing machine—that central post that spins the water to make the pieces of clothing collide with each other to remove the dirt and stains from each piece of clothing. Sounds a bit violent! And yet, there is a metaphor here for us. We should be striving for the depth of relationships with one another that gives us the relational equity to sometimes gently, and sometimes firmly, point out the dirt and stains of sin that we see in each other’s lives. And, not just call each other away from something bad, but to something good: “love and good works—” the visible fruit of true saving faith.

This is going to sound really obvious, but how can we expect to do this when we are only assembling with the saints once, maybe twice a month, if that? And, as wonderful as small groups, and youth groups, and coffee with Christian friends might be, they are no replacement for the gathered Sunday assembly of the church—the central place where God has promised his presence and his help.

We are to stir up or “agitate” one another to love and good works, but there’s a small qualifier we skipped over. The writer of Hebrews says, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.”

We are to consider—to give thought to, plan, scheme, come prepared—to stir up one another to love and good works. What does this look like practically? Here are a few ideas that popped into my head as I was preparing this sermon. Some of these will be more obvious than others:

1. Read your Bible and pray every day. We come to church to be filled spiritually, yes, but we also come to pour ourselves out. As much as it depends on you, commit yourself to filling your mind, your heart, and your mouth with God’s Word, ready to share with others.
2. Use the prayer guide in our membership directory throughout the week, and on a Sunday morning, find someone you prayed for that week, and let them know that you prayed for them.
3. Before your Saturday dinner, pray alone or with your family for the Lord to prepare your hearts to gather with God’s people at church the next morning. Go around the dinner table and ask each other who from the church God has put on your hearts that week, and what words of encouragement you could share with them at church in the morning.
4. Go to bed at a good time on Saturday night. You hopefully try to get a good night sleep before you go to work or school during the week. Shouldn’t we be even more motivated to do the same in preparation for our spiritual work?
5. Make Sunday Morning church attendance an essential and joyful rhythm in your home:
   1. Essential: As much as it depends on you, accounting for sickness, and other emergencies that are out of your control, make Sunday morning an unmoving anchor in your family’s calendar. Illustration of the jar filled with sand and then rocks—let Sunday morning be a rock that’s placed in first.
   2. Joyful: Speak and act as if you are really excited to go to church in the morning. This is especially important if you have kids in your home. Be the first one out of bed on Sunday mornings, and wake up with plenty of time to get everyone ready. Play some worship music in the background as your kids eat their reheated pancakes, be happy, gentle, and patient as you get everyone out the door.
6. Get to church early, and stay late: Some of the best conversations I’ve had as a church member and now a pastor have happened before and after the Sunday service. Don’t buy into the lie that the only kinds of interactions that can happen on Sunday mornings are shallow ones. If you can, come early, and stay late, ready to encourage and be encouraged as the Spirit leads.
7. If you can, don’t just tell a person at church that you’ll pray for them later, but pray for them right then. It might feel uncomfortable to do if you’ve never done it before, but how blessed will that person be when, right then in that moment of prayer, Jesus intercedes and takes this person’s need and your request before the Father for his mercy and help in their time of need! Plus, if we all commit do doing this, it won’t feel so awkward, right?
8. Keep your Sunday afternoons open for fellowship, if possible. Set up your crockpot before you leave, leave a couple extra chairs out around the table Make it easy for hospitality to happen on the Lord’s day.
9. Just come to church. Even if you’re late, even if you’re sad, even if you didn’t read your Bible and pray the week before, even if you feel like you have nothing to give. Come. Your very presence, in spite of how you feel, is itself an incredible source of encouragement to the other saints in our church.

How blessed would Quinault Baptist Church be if each of us did the work did this work of “considering” before we gathered every Sunday! What kind of revival could the Lord bring about in our midst if we made it our aim to come prepared to every service with specific encouragement to share with other members?

I recognize that in a sermon like this, so many of us will be prone to feelings of shame and discouragement for how far we might fall short in our Sunday attendance and spiritual readiness. As I was writing down those 9 tips for consideration, I was struck by how often I fall short in my duty to you all as a fellow member of this church.

But friend, if you leave this sermon with nothing else, remember that Jesus is a sympathetic high priest. He knows your weaknesses. He doesn’t motivate you with guilt, but with the promise of reward. He has accomplished all that was necessary for your salvation. He is interceding for you right now before the Father, and he invites you now to draw near to Him. And the weekly fellowship he invites you into here at Quinault is a means of grace to help all of us enjoy his presence together, and make it to the end. And by his grace, we will.