Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text is Hebrews 10:24 and 25. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Hebrews 10:24 and 25: “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works. Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we give you thanks for your scriptures. We give you thanks for your Holy Spirit that indwells us. We pray that spirit would take this word and help us to understand it in ways, Lord God, that will transform us. We do pray that you would bring us to thanksgiving, an increased, enhanced thanksgiving for community even when living in community is difficult for us at times. We pray, Lord God, you would bring us to a thanksgiving for one another in the context of this word today and by your Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name we ask it.

Amen. Please be seated.

In Romans 1 we have the record of those who choose the wrong path. The two paths the scriptures lay out from beginning to end are characterized in Romans 1 as one path being the path of thankfulness and the other path being the path of ingratitude. We know the end of Romans 1, the list of sins that come toward the end of that section of the scriptures including vile sins, sins that are worthy of death, the text tells us, but the beginning of it is important to mention today in a day when we give thanks to God.

In Romans 1 we read that “Although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful.” A lack of thankfulness is the “why” in the road. Thankfulness is the great determiner. Will we be thankful to God in all things or will we be those who do not glorify God and do not give him thanks?

Thanksgiving is a distinctively Christian holiday that calls our mind back to what can be seen as the beginning of all other virtues—a thankful heart, thankful to the Lord God who has provided all things. We believe in a sovereign, omnipotent, powerful God who created all things and sustains them. In his providence, he cares for all things and in his decree he effects whatsoever in his sovereignty. He effects whatsoever he has decreed. Therefore, we’re to give thanks in everything. It is thanklessness that leads to the great sins listed in Romans 1.

So today is a day to remind ourselves that at the heart of the Christian faith is thanksgiving to God. And at the height of our service today, we come to the table that is a table of thanksgiving, a Eucharist, a rejoicing, and a giving God thanks for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today I want to talk about the implications of thanksgiving in terms of Hebrews 10:24 and 25. And what we should say, I guess, is that Hebrews 10:24 and 25 shows us our great need for community. And I want us to focus today on giving thanks for each other—thanks for Christian community. And then thanks specifically for the last of the commands we’re given in these two short verses: the command we’re given to exhort one another, so much the more as we see the day approaching. Thankfulness for exhortation set in the context of thankfulness for community.

When we got up this morning, we babysat for Mike and Lana. Charlotte and Levi and Elijah came home unexpectedly yesterday for Thanksgiving break a few days early and Charity when she got up this morning said it felt like Christmas. You know, Elijah’s home, the little children are there. That feeling. And of course this is the time of year when we move toward a celebration of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it’s so wonderful the way God has provided it in our particular culture—we get there through the holiday of Thanksgiving and in the terms of the church year. The last Sunday that we would normally think of as Thanksgiving Sunday, just before the first Sunday in Advent, which is next year, is also in the modern day frequently celebrated as the day of Christ the King.

The culmination of the church year being a celebration of the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ. The King has a people and we’re to give thanks for our communities and we do that. We’ll all get together with family and friends this Thursday and rejoice for Christian community. And our celebrations for Christmas time of course will involve family and friends as well. And it’s a wonderful time of year to give thanks.

We give thanks today for our community. We saw from this text two weeks ago that one of the things that we give thanks for community for is that in community discussions ideas come forward that will actually move us toward increased productivity in terms of good works and love. And we saw that coming out of the great central section of the book of Hebrews as we draw near. That’s the first command given to us in chapter 10: we draw near to God in worship. But that works its way out in the context of our lives with these specific commands in verses 24 and 25. We’re to consider one another. We’re to stimulate each other. And we’re to exhort one another. We’re to stimulate one another to love and to good works.

And two weeks ago, we said that part of the way we do that is to discuss things. How do we grow as a church? How do we grow as a family? How do we grow as a Christian community? Today most prayer meetings will be meeting. Most of you will be getting together with extensions of the community of RCC in your own prayer meetings and prayer groups. And the elders have asked the leaders of those groups today to lead discussions in the context of everything else you do there in the fellowship. Maybe try to generate a little discussion about some specific items. How do we enhance community? What a great time to be thinking about it. How do we build our understanding of Christian community? How do we enhance the community on the Lord’s day and then into the following week as well?

So we’ve asked you to think about today in the prayer meetings, you know, ways we could enhance discussion and conversation in the context of the agape and those that stay for the meal and those that stay into the afternoon for encouragement and exhortation and community. We need, you know, input. We don’t think that we have all the answers, the leaders of the church. We’re going to exercise leadership and make decisions, but the best of all worlds is to get input from people into those decisions as we move toward what they will be and maybe we find solutions that we have not even thought of before.

A consideration and a discussion of the need to enhance community at Reformation Covenant Church is causing the elders as well to reconsider our priorities for how we spend our money coming into next year. One of the options on the table for us is a courtyard. The Takashi could put together a very nice courtyard for us out here. And while it may seem a little extravagant when we haven’t quite got the debt in the building paid off—we’re at about $40,000—you know, it would. The reason why we’re thinking it maybe should be a higher priority than other tasks such as replacing the windows in the sanctuary perhaps—we don’t know. But one of the reasons we’re thinking that is because of this need to give thanks for community, to enhance community.

There seems to be a general perception that people would like to have more time, leisurely time in the afternoon on Sunday, in the context of the meal and immediately afterwards to discuss, to get together guys with guys, children with other children, to fellowship together and discuss things and to just rejoice together. And so maybe that courtyard is a quite important thing for us as we think about how to enhance community. So we’re trying to stimulate one another to love in the context of community and good works. And one way we’d like that to happen today is in the context of the prayer meetings to have these discussions about ways we might enhance the agape and the time after the agape to provide for increased communication and fellowship.

Today I want to move to the portion of 24 and 25 I didn’t talk about two weeks ago, and that is the third command: that we are also to exhort one another. So we’re to consider each other, think about who we are, stimulating one another. How do we stimulate each other? We can do it by considering who we are and we talk, we discuss things. But then we’re also to exhort one another. And this is a little more difficult.

The consideration and stimulation to good works and stuff, that’s all kind of fun stuff. But exhorting one another can be more difficult. And so, very specifically, while Thanksgiving today is directed toward a thanksgiving for the community here, it’s specifically geared toward being thankful for this exhortation that exists in the context of a functioning and vibrant local manifestation of the body of Jesus Christ.

Exhortation. We’re to consider one another and we’re to exhort one another as well. What is exhortation? Well, first of all, exhortation in a way is a summary of the entire context of what this sermon to the Hebrews is. In chapter 13:22, we read this: “I appeal to you, brethren, bear with the word of exhortation. I have written to you in few words.” As he moves to sum up the entire sermon that he’s delivered to the Hebrews, he refers to it as a word of exhortation.

So if we think of this, what we’ve seen so far in it, there’s been a lot of didactic teaching. There’s been a presentation of the doctrine of Jesus Christ, but there’s been a lot of strong statements about hearing. “Be sure you don’t fail to hear what Jesus says to the community.” And then there’s been some very strong warnings: “What will happen if you don’t listen to Christ? If you don’t attend to what he’s telling us to attend to?”

So this entire sermon is referred to as an exhortation. The word “exhortation” or “to exhort” here means literally to come alongside of or to call alongside of somebody. It’s a combination word that means to call, come beside, and to call. And so it has this idea of calling alongside of someone. And so it can have, and does have, connotations in the New Testament of comfort. It can have connotations of exhortation in urging each other to particular action. It can also be seen as being a strong exhortation to leave off sin and to move toward righteousness as well. And so it’s a word that is kind of a generalized term to speak of the sort of communications that exist in the context of community—to call to one side, to call or summon somebody to a particular action. This is exhortation.

Now it can be distinguished specifically from rebuke. And on the outline today I’ve given you some texts that differentiate it from a rebuke. In Titus 2:15 we read, “Speak these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you.” This is given to a pastor. The pastor has several jobs. He is to speak things, to teach—in other words, he’s to exhort—and he’s also to rebuke when there’s open sin involved, with all authority. So there, exhortation is somewhat different from rebuke.

In 1 Timothy 5:1 we read, “Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father.” So it’s differentiated from rebuke. So exhortation has a lot of connotations. It can have a connotation of being rebuke-like, but it’s separate from it. Rebuke is a stronger form of this exhortation. So, “Don’t rebuke an older man, but exhort him.”

In 2 Timothy 4:2, we read again a pastoral instruction: “Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and teaching.” So again, it’s differentiated from a rebuke.

In 1 Peter 2:11, the New King James version translates this word for exhort by “beg”: “Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.” So here it’s the same word for exhort, but the translators, because of the context, had this emphasis on imploring or beseeching somebody. So exhortation can involve this idea of imploring or beseeching.

And it is added to teaching. It’s not the same as teaching. It’s added to it. In 1 Timothy 6:2, we read that those who have believing masters, let them not despise them because they’re brethren, but rather serve them because those who are benefited are believers and beloved. So he gives them a little instruction about the social relationships within the body of Christ—masters to servants. And then he says this at the end of that verse: “Teach and exhort these things.” So give them didactic instruction. Teach them the knowledge necessary—what God’s word says about master-servant relationships—but don’t leave it off at teaching. A pastor has to move toward exhortation: “This is the path. Walk in it.” That exhortation can be kind of, you know, have an edge to it, that can be kind of rebuke-like. It’s separate from it. It can have this beseeching characteristic and a strong urging to a particular course of action either negative—putting off sin—or positive, in terms of putting on righteousness.

It can be seen as akin to comfort. Comfort is another component of exhortation. In 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17 we read this: “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and our God and Father who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace…” So that’s the setup. “Comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.” Same word as exhort. But here the translators have chosen the word “comfort” because that’s the connotation. We’ve got Jesus who has given us everlasting consolation, good hope by grace. And on the basis of that, then he says exhort—well, sort of exhort, call alongside. But primarily, a better translation, as this one is, “comfort your hearts.” May Christ comfort your hearts.

In 1 Thessalonians 4:17, this is very obvious here. The problem is people who were sad about friends who are Christians dying and he says this: “Then we who are alive at the second coming of Jesus, then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and thus we shall always be with the Lord.” So he’s saying that the ones that you’re feeling sad about missing, you’ll be reunited to them and you’ll know who they were, okay? When at the second coming we will be caught up with them in Christ. So that’s the teaching he’s giving—this mutual recognition of saints in the eschaton. We’re going to see each other and know our friends. We don’t have to mourn the way that the ungodly mourn.

And then he says this instruction, and then he says in verse 18: “Therefore comfort one another with these words.” Now here clearly the word—the same word is exhort—but it wouldn’t be “exhort one another” so much as “comfort each other.” What he’s trying to do is comfort people who are mourning. And he says specifically this exhortation is a component, a strong component in this case, of comfort.

Matthew 5:4: “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be exhorted.” Well, we could translate it that way. It’s the same word. But “Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.” You see, here clearly the connotation of this calling alongside—this exhortation—is a comfort to those that mourn, right? So it can have this component of comfort to it. It has urging to a particular action. It’s kind of what drives home didactic instruction. “This exhortation is to teach and exhort,” Paul told Timothy.

And it really isn’t. If we wanted to strengthen it up a further notch in terms of exhortation, we’d get to a formal rebuke for obvious sin. And it’s kind of differentiated from that. So it has these aspects.

Now, I should say as well that sometimes it’s distinguished from comforting. 1 Thessalonians 2:11 says, “As you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged each of you.” So you know, it’s here it’s distinguished from comforting. And it can be distinguished from rebuking. So it can have an element of comfort to it. It can have an element or focal point of rebuke, or getting, urging people to put off sin and put on righteousness. And so it’s a flexible term that kind of refers to all of these things. So it can be translated legitimately sometimes as “comfort” and yet at other times “comfort” is not the primary aspect of what’s going on here.

As we said, you know, “You know how we exhorted you and we comforted you.” Sometimes we exhorted you, kind of urged you to action to make application of the teaching. Other times we comforted you. So here exhortation doesn’t have the primary focal point of comfort.

Now in Hebrews, in Hebrews 3, we’ve seen the same word “exhortation,” and here it has not a context of comfort really so much as more like rebuke. In verses 12 and following in Hebrews 3, we read: “Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” So now we’re talking about somebody that’s drifting away from the worship service. They’re drifting over Niagara Falls potentially. And so this word is not comfort in its first implication. It almost is a rebuke, sort of a term. “Exhort one another. Don’t go down that route you’re traveling.” In other words.

And here, you know, in the same way from Hebrews 10, the implication, the command to exhort one another is not given to the pastors. I read a lot of pastoral epistles. Pastors have to exhort people. You know, preaching is not preaching if it doesn’t move from teaching to exhortation. That’s all pastoral stuff. But clearly both in Hebrews 3 as well as in Hebrews 10, it’s every member of the congregation who are called to exhort one another, okay? In both cases.

So in Hebrews, this is not a pastoral command. It is a community command. Remember I quoted from that book *Crucial Conversations* a couple of weeks ago. You know, bad companies ignore bad performance and eventually they just fire people or transfer them. Good companies, the leaders see failures of performance, things are slipping, and they come alongside and do something about it. The best companies, these men wrote as their observations, every member of the company is holding every other member of the company accountable. You don’t wait for a boss to come in if something’s being done in an unsafe way on the factory floor. You immediately try to go to the guy and say, “Hey, this is not safe.” If somebody’s slipping in performance, you don’t wait for their boss to get involved. You see it. You have knowledge. In the Bible, you know, observation brings culpability. It brings a responsibility rather. It brings a responsibility. You have a responsibility to witness. If you see somebody slipping, you have an obligation to witness to them that, hey, you need to kind of ratchet it back up a notch.

So in Hebrews, and what I’m making the case for today, we all have a mutual obligation to enter into this exhortation of one another. And that could be close to rebuke. It could have an aspect of comfort to it. It has this idea of driving home instruction. All of these implications are part of exhortation. And it’s the responsibility of every member of this covenant community here to bring exhortation into the life of each other.

We are positively commanded by these texts from Hebrews to exhort each other. It’s a command. It’s not a good idea. It’s not something that’ll make us a better church. And if we didn’t do it, all those things are true. But in its first case here, it says specifically we are commanded to do this. We are commanded to exhort each other.

Now, in Leviticus, you know, the middle of the Pentateuch is the law. You know, our service kind of moves the same way the Pentateuch moves. Genesis: God declares his sovereignty over everything, creates it. Exodus: he frees them from their sin. Leviticus: he gives them law. That’s what Leviticus means—it’s law. Numbers: he brings sanctions to bear upon them if they disobey—blessings and cursings. Deuteronomy: they go into the future. God calls us to worship like Genesis. And at the beginning of the service he frees us from our sins again, or applies that redemption of Christ. He makes us sure of the knowledge of our greater Passover, our greater Exodus, right? And then the law is preached. The living word of God is preached forth. It’s taught and it’s exhorted. And so the law is now going on. And then we’ll move to the blessings and cursings, the sanctions—table, ordeal of jealousy, sort of stuff, which is in Numbers, of course. We move to Numbers over there. And at the end of the service, final exhortation, we move into the future like Deuteronomy.

That’s the flow of the Pentateuch. It’s the flow of our worship service. It’s the flow of history. It’s the flow of what Christ has accomplished. And at the very middle of that in the Pentateuch is Leviticus. And at the very middle and heart of Leviticus is chapter 19, a sermon on the Ten Commandments with 70 specific commandments attached to it. And at the very middle of that text is the commandment that you love one another. Not a New Testament thing: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” That’s the middle of the law, the middle of Torah.

So the heart of the Old Testament as kind of wrapped up, encapsulated in the Pentateuch, is the love of your neighbor. And at the heart of the Christian faith in terms of the law, it’s to glorify God. That’s how Leviticus 19 starts: “Glorifying God by obeying your parents and keeping the Sabbaths that he gives you.” Those are, you know, your people and your time. You’re holy to God. But then you’re loving toward your neighbor. The great commands repeated there. And so the heart of our instruction should always be to love your neighbor as yourself.

But we get that wrong today, you know. Love can be sloppy agape, you know, kinder than and gentler than Jesus. Because in Leviticus, the specific command about how you love your neighbor is this: “You shall surely rebuke your neighbor.” That’s what it says in verse 17 before it gets to 18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” We don’t know how to love our neighbor as ourselves. And so Leviticus gives us some instructions in terms of what it means to love your neighbor. And you love your neighbor by rebuking him.

Now you could go overboard with that, obviously. It’s, you know, we want to be careful here. But clearly God preaches to our weaknesses, and our weaknesses are that our supposed love covers a multitude of sins—not in the other guy, but in our own hearts. In other words, you know, our supposed love doesn’t attend to problems the other person has and talk to them about it. Nor does it overlook them. We harbor them in our hearts and we get grudges and we get sideways with people. That’s not love. In fact, Leviticus says it’s hating your neighbor.

Verse 16 says: “You shall not go about as a talebearer among your people, nor shall you take a stand against the life of your neighbor. I am the Lord your God. You shall not hate your brother in your heart.” We go from the end: “Love your neighbor, rebuke your neighbor, don’t hate your neighbor, don’t go about as a talebearer, and don’t hide up these things in your heart.” If somebody’s doing things that you think are wrong or hurtful to the body of Christ, to the glory of God, whatever it might be, it’s not love to supposedly overlook it by not talking to them and yet harbor it in your heart.

You see what he did? “I’m going to remember it, and I’m going to talk to other people about it.” That’s not love. We are positively commanded to engage one another in the body of Christ. You know, we sang militaristic sort of songs the last couple of weeks: “Onward Christian soldiers.” This is how we are urged to be. “This is the toughest battle of your life.” I think this is harder than standing and being tortured for the faith. In some ways I can say that—I’ve never been tortured for the faith physically. But you know, when you get that thing going, you know, everything’s focused on your confession of Jesus. Here, when you decide how you’re going to treat your neighbor in the context of Christian community, that you think might be doing something wrong, it is the most difficult thing in the world to go to them and talk to them.

You know it is. You know it is, and I know it is. And so it’s very difficult. And because of that difficulty, we have to understand that this is not optional for us. This is absolutely essential to a proper love of our neighbor—to speak to them and not speak to other people about their sins and their shortcomings, whatever it is.

Again, we can find a commandment here in 1 Thessalonians 5:14. “We exhort you, brethren, warn those who are unruly, comfort the faint-hearted, uphold the weak.” And it seems like this is broadening it out to the Thessalonians. All the Thessalonians are commanded. They’re exhorted by Paul to warn those who are unruly, comfort the faint-hearted, uphold the weak. And as we said in Hebrews 3:13, “We’re commanded, exhort one another.” Exhort one another. So it’s a command.

Not only are we commanded to exhort one another, we are commanded to receive exhortations from one another. I would say that, you know, the point of today’s sermon is we’re commanded to be thankful for exhortations. Now we’re to be thankful for all things that God brings into our life, or in the context of all things. But specifically, I think we have an obligation. If we understand exhortations and their use in our life by God, we’ll be thankful for them.

We’re certainly commanded to hear them. In Psalm 141:5, the psalmist says, “Let the righteous strike me. It shall be a kindness. Let him rebuke me. It shall be as excellent oil. Let my head not refuse it. For still my prayer is against the deeds of the wicked.” So the psalmist says that even the most strengthened form of exhortation—rebuke, maybe going beyond exhortation—even rebuke is something we are told we should, with all wisdom, receive and desire to hear from other people.

“Let the righteous strike me. It shall be a kindness. Let him rebuke me. It shall be as excellent oil.” You see, the wise psalmist knows his heart. He knows he needs to hear from the community. He needs to hear from members of the community: exhortation and rebukes. He can’t see his own faults. He can’t see his own shortcomings. He knows that wisdom comes from living in community and from having friends who are honest enough to talk to him about potential shortcomings in his life.

We’re commanded to hear exhortations. We quoted this: Proverbs 3:11 and 12. We saw in Hebrews 12 from last week’s sermon, “My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest his correction. Whom the Lord loved, He corrects.” Now the chastening can come through physical maladies. It can come through hard providences of God. But more often than not, you know, the chastening that comes from human sources—this is what it does in the Proverbs here. The context is the love of the father. In Hebrews, it draws it to the love of God for us. The chastenings that come upon us. The whole sermon to the Hebrews has an element of chastening to it. But it’s God moving them along through chastening from the words of the preacher of the sermon to the Hebrews.

We’re supposed to receive these things and be happy for them.

In Galatians 4:16, we read this: “Have I therefore become your enemy? Because I tell you the truth. They zealously court you, but for no good. Yes, they want to exclude you that you may be zealous for them.” Paul says that, you know, if you want to know who loves you, look at the people who are speaking the truth to you in love. Don’t look at the people who are always complimenting you. There’s warnings about that—plenty in the Proverbs about flattery. And he says, “What, have I become your enemy because I tell you the truth, that you’re messing up in a particular area?”

You see, if we do not gladly hear exhortations and even rebukes from one another when necessary, then we are just, you know, we’re fodder for foolish people to manipulate us through compliments, through smooth words, when really they don’t have our well-being at hand.

The scriptures are quite clear that we’re commanded to speak words of correction and exhortation, beseeching each other, and we’re commanded to hear those sorts of things from one another as well. And in fact, I’d say we’re supposed to be thankful for them.

In Proverbs 9, we read that if you rebuke a wise man, he will love you for it. We’re to be positively receiving it and loving the person for bringing necessary chastisements or corrections to us. “Give instruction to a wise man and he’ll be still wiser. Teach a just man and he will increase in learning.” You want to be wiser, right? You want to increase in wisdom. You want to increase in obedience. Well, the way it happens is not just for people to tell you intellectual truths about the Christian faith, but to exhort you to walk in them and to almost get to rebuking you when you’re not walking in them. That’s how you increase in wisdom.

The wise man is the one who listens to, receives gladly. His thanksgiving doesn’t just extend to the good providences of God. His thanksgiving extends to the members of the community who come to him with difficult words for him to hear. That’s the wise man. He’s thankful for exhortations.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Proverbs 27:5 and 6: “Open rebuke is better than love carefully concealed. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.”

Same thing over and over and over and over and over. We need to hear it over and over and over because it’s hard for us. Somebody comes to us with a problem about something we did or said, or you know, even if they’re not quite sure, or if they are sure, that was wrong—man, it’s the last thing we want to do is receive that exhortation with thanksgiving. And yet, you know, even if it hurts, even if it’s something that’s really quite hurtful for us to hear, it says the faithful are the wounds of a friend. Better to hear those words to bring us increased wisdom than to hear flattery. That’s the enemy speaking in flattery.

Proverbs 15:31 says, “The ear that hears the rebukes of life will abide among the wise.” And then verse 33: “Before honor is humility.” Of course it’s humbling to hear we did something wrong. But that’s what you get to honor. Humility comes first and honor comes second. And so the words of the wise are—we’re going to abide among the wise if we give thanks for the rebukes of life. “Rebukes of life.” The rebukes that bring life to us.

In other words, how can we not be thankful for something that’s going to minister life to us? We sit down at the big turkey dinner and we’re thankful. It ministers life and joy to us. Well, there’s not a lot of joy sometimes when we’re rebuked or exhorted in a strong way by other people. But it’s life-giving. That’s what the Bible says. And if we understand that it’s life-giving, then we’re going to give thanks to those who bring these things to us.

And on the opposite wise, the one who doesn’t give thanks for rebuke, who doesn’t hear rebukes and make correction, he dwells in death. Proverbs 29 tells us, verses 1 and 5: “He who is often rebuked and hardens his neck will suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy. A man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet.” So on the opposite side, if we don’t give thanks and we don’t encourage exhortations in the context of the community, then we’re actually going to find ourselves moving toward death and not life.

There’s an eschatology to the thanksgiving and hearing of rebukes and exhortations. And there’s an eschatology for it. Remember the scriptures are not just a private devotional life thing. It’s true of us individually, but I think it’s also clearly true of us as a corporate community, as a covenant community, as an ekklesia—a group of called out people to rule for Christ in the context of our world. It’s true of us as well. If we do not develop a community aspect of being thankful to hear rebukes from one another, thankful to hear exhortations, if we always prickle when that sort of stuff comes and sort of get resistant to it, well, you know, who wants to talk to somebody that’s going to get mad at you every time you talk to them? You’re not going to do that. And little by little, you know, the light of obedience to Christ and application of the truth will go out here.

I mean, I think it’s that important for the corporate life of the church.

I should have said this at the beginning. I knew with this kind of sermon that probably half of you out there are thinking I’m talking about you specifically. I’m not. You know, I, and I can look at these things and I can think in the last, you know, couple of months of all kinds of situations in the context of a community like this that loves each other and does involve in good healthy discussion. All kinds of things are going on that you could say, “That’s why he’s preaching the sermon.” It’s not. I preached the sermon because I got to this place, you know, we went through the Christology, got to the application, and I thought this was such a significant text that I wanted to make sure we didn’t leave out this last of these three commands: to consider one another, to stimulate each other, but to exhort one another as well. It’s the toughest.

You know, getting you to think about each other more, that’s easy. And getting you to think, “Well, I can stimulate somebody to do some good work.” That’s easy. But for you and I to commit to exhorting one another, bordering on rebuke at times, this is difficult. This is difficult. And so I wanted to, I really wanted to talk about this again. And I think it’s so important for us as a church: you know, what are we going to do? Are we going to be a kind of congregation that encourages exhortation one of another or are we going to be a congregation that moves away from that little by little?

I think in the early days—I know in the early days of this church, and you know, I think for the last 20 years—we have been a community that can talk to each other and exhort and encourage each other. That’s been part of the reason why we have the kind of community life we have here. But it’s, you know, it’s different now. We have to keep doing what’s right.

That’s another thing that’s interesting about the Hebrews text. They’re a congregation in trouble. And yet he doesn’t say, “Start exhorting one another.” He says, “Continue to exhort one another.” They’ve done it right before. He makes that point several times in the sermon. And we’ve done it right before. We’re, I think, doing it right now. But I want to exhort us to continue to do it right, to continue to be thankful for exhortations, that we can engender this kind of conversation with one another.

Let me have some specific suggestions then for what to do when somebody comes to you in an effort to exhort you. What do you do when they come to you and they want to talk to you about potential problems in your life? Well, I think the first thing you want to do is you want to identify this as one of those crucial conversations I talked about two weeks ago. Remember the conversations where all of a sudden you don’t know it, but you’re in the midst of a conversation. It’s important to your wife, your church, your boss, whatever it is. You go in for a casual meeting with your boss and all of a sudden he’s talking about layoffs or whatever it is. He’s talking about your performance. He’s talking about something, and all of a sudden, you know, “Oh, okay, this is not just a little talk back and forth. This is a crucial conversation.”

And what’s likely to happen then, remember we talked about this. You’re liable to become dumbed down and doped up. The brain, the blood leaves your brain. You get to thinking less. The adrenaline pumps into your system. You’re kind of doped up. And if you’re not careful, if you don’t grab a hold of yourself, you’re going to respond improperly. You’re going to fight. You’re going to attack, or you’re going to fly, go into flight. You’re going to withdraw and not say anything, right? Either you’re going to work things out, or you’re either going to take off and run, or you’re going to put your fists up, because that’s where all the blood is.

And what God wants us to do is when we get into one of these conversations, first of all, identify it for what it is. This is an important conversation. This is a conversation at which my body is going to be sending me signals to do things I don’t really want to do. I want to exercise dominion over my body, restore the emphasis to my mind and my heart rather than to my limbs in either flight or fight, okay?

So we want to recognize it for a crucial conversation. That’s an important part of the task. Understand that you want to hear this kind of thing. You want to hear correction about yourself. So the second thing I’d suggest we do is that you thank the person for speaking to you in this way.

I mean, you know, I heard an expression this last week, and I don’t know the context, but you know, “fake it until you make it.” And it sounds bad, right? So we’re just going to pretend until we’re actually like that thing. Well, you know what, I’m kind of, I kind of think the Bible says just that. If you don’t feel thankful at the time, still you should say, “I give you thanks for this.” You take control of your feelings by the speech you articulate. You form yourself in that way. Or you could say, “I’m having a hard time feeling very thankful, but I really am thankful to you for telling me this thing.” It’s a way, not of faking it like you’re going to tell a lie, but it’s a way of saying, “I am going to walk in the way God wants me to walk, whether my feelings make me feel this way or not. I’m going to exercise dominion over my tongue because it will be a conversation of tongues back and forth.”

And you begin the exercise of dominion over your tongue by giving thanks to the other person for speaking to you. You know, they may be all wrong, but you know, in this church, if somebody’s coming to you, you have to understand their motivation is not negative. You’ve got to believe the best about their motivation. They’re trying to help you. Now they may be doing it in a really horrible way, a terrible way, and all that stuff. But if we don’t give each other thanks for these things, we’re going to then just kind of react poorly.

As I say, we’re going to put out the light that exhortation is meant to bring to the community of Christ if we don’t give thanks to one another and if we handle these things improperly.

And here’s something else for you to consider: What you know, based on the Proverbs and Leviticus, you know, if somebody’s talking to us about some shortcoming in our lives, you know, there’s probably other people out there who have seen the same. They may not be. It might have been just something seen by you, but it’s likely there are other people out there too, other people who have not had the guts, or, Leviticus, the love for you that leads them to talk to you about it. You see, we’re much happier with the people that don’t talk to us about our problems, right? We’re much happier about that. But we shouldn’t be. It’s reverse because they’re not loving us.

The Bible says they’re not helping us. We want to do more good works and love. We want to do things better. We want to be effective for the kingdom in our homes, our jobs, our church, our community. And the Bible says the way you get wiser and wiser and better and better is through the interaction of that community. That’s the last thing you want to give thanks for. Somebody says, “I got to talk to you about something I saw in your life.” It’s the last thing you want to do is give thanks for it. But it’s the first thing you should do, because that’s going to encourage the other person as well.

You think they’re feeling good? No. It’s a crucial conversation for them too. And they’re also probably feeling, as much as they’re trying to get themselves under control, the talk to you. They’re probably also feeling dumbed down and doped up. It’s hard to do this kind of thing. It’s hard work. We should encourage each other in this vital work by giving thanks one to the other.

We should avoid flight or fight. We should avoid silence or violence. And the way we move toward working the thing out correctly is through giving thanks. We want to build an atmosphere of hearing exhortations to love and good works in the context of this church.

Three, if you’ve done something wrong, then make a good confession of your sin. And we’ll talk about that in just a minute. We’ll turn to the second page of the outline in just a minute.

Four, if you’re not sure that you’ve done something wrong, tell them you’ll think about it and pray about it and get back to them. You don’t have to resolve it all right then. You don’t have to, you know, if it’s clear that you’ve done something wrong, great. But if you think you might have, tell them you’ll pray about it and think about it. Ask questions. Talk to them. But it doesn’t have to be resolved at that moment. If we try to force everything to resolution in one meeting, that also will probably lead to disaster at certain points of time and a reduction of this activity.

Things not to do when somebody comes to you. Well, you don’t want to flight or fight. You don’t want to just clam up: “Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. Well, that…” and just not enter into dialogue and just escape and say, “Well, I just am not going to have much of a relationship with that person anymore.” That’s flight.

The other thing you don’t want to do is counter-punch. Again, this is a, you know, it’s the tendency. We’re not going to run with our feet. We’re going to take the blood flowing through our arms and we’re going to fight. And of course, we’re not going to do it with fists the way the world does. We’re going to be Christian fighters. We’re going to use the word to do our fighting, right? We’re going to counter-punch.

And you know, everybody here, I can counter-punch every one of you. I know things about every one of you. And I probably know a lot more than most of you know about each other. But even just from the cursory knowledge of one another, we know ways to hit back at each other, right? I know people’s tendencies. I know we all have sinful tendencies. We all know that. And that’s what we tend to do: counter-punch with one of those things. It’s the last thing you should do.

You see, you don’t want to fight. You don’t want to engage in flight. You want to hear the thing out. Give the person thanks. Don’t fight. Don’t fight.

Now it may be that something about the other person is involved with the way in which they’re telling you. You know, as an illustration, if somebody always yells a lot and they come to you and say, “Well, you know, you’re not treating your child very nicely.” You can say, “You know what, you’ve got a big mouth. You’re yelling all the time and it’s really bothering me.” Now, them yelling is getting in the way of good communication. But that is not the time to talk about it. You want to hear the communication, work that thing out, and then at some later date, if it’s necessary, go and talk to them about their particular problems, okay? If you don’t do it, if you fight instead, if you counter-punch, you’ll put a little small wound in the body of the church of Jesus Christ here. You will diminish the tendency we will have to encourage and exhort each other in the faithfulness of God.

Another thing you don’t want to do is get other people involved unless you have to. You know, if you spread the thing, then the problems spread and multiply as well. You want, if possible, to work it out with the two of you. Now if you can’t, then you get other people involved, and that’s certainly biblical and good.

We want to encourage the encouragement of one another here at RCC.

Now I want to look briefly at this list from the Peacemakers, but first I want to point out something. We’re talking about encouraging a community of exhortation. But you know, I’d almost thought that at the beginning of this sermon I should have you all take your shoes off, or at least untie the laces, because the last thing we want to be, and the last thing I’m trying to encourage today, is to encourage a congregation of tight-shoed people who see everything around them as a problem in somebody’s spiritual walk.

You know, we have to have a large degree of grace in overlooking the faults of other people. Ecclesiastes 7 says, “Don’t be overly righteous, nor be overly wise. Why should you destroy yourself?” You know, you certainly want to be righteous. You want to be wise. But you know, you can work at something so much that you’ve gone beyond righteousness and you’ve gone beyond wisdom.

A few verses later, it says this, verse 21: “Do not take to heart everything people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. For many times also your own heart has known that even you have cursed others.” Okay? So you don’t have to go after everything. You know, from your own sinfulness and your own sinful speech, here in this section from Ecclesiastes, that hey, you’ve messed up in speech at various times toward other people. Don’t be tight-shoed about them and what they’re doing right or wrong. Don’t be a busybody. We’re going to see that in a couple of weeks in Hebrews 13 that a big part of sanctification is minding your own business.

So I’m not encouraging us to be a church of busybodies. I’m saying there are certain things that have to be addressed, and when those things that have to be addressed come up, we should go about doing them correctly.

Now on page two of the outline, these materials from Ken Sande and Peacemakers ministry materials. And I think these are good questions to ask yourself over whether what you’re going to exhort somebody to do is an important thing or not. Can it be overlooked, the difficulty you see in the other person? You know, before we look at this, in Matthew 18, if somebody sins against us, we’re supposed to go to them, right? And in Matthew 5, if you’re headed toward the altar and you know that somebody has something against you, you’re supposed to not go to the altar. You’re supposed to go to that person and work it out.

In other words, coming and going, whether somebody has sinned against you or you know that they’ve got something against you, they think you’ve sinned against them. In either case, you have an obligation to work it out. You see, so you’ve got two people, both of whom are Christians here in this church. They both are doubly urged—whether they’ve sinned or the other person has sinned, or at least perceived to have sinned—they should talk to the other person. So there’s like a multiplying effect here to increase communication. One of these two guys is going to get it right. And more often than not, then what it means is that our congregation will be characterized by people who, when matters can’t be overlooked, that conversation, Christian conversation, is then entered into.

So we both have an obligation both ways to bring exhortations to each other. So we want to exhort each other as part of this general stimulation to love and good works. But specifically also in Hebrews we’re exhorting each other not to engage in sinful behavior, sinful neglect of fellowship, et cetera.

All right. So Andy says there’s four questions you can ask to see if a matter should be overlooked. Is the offense seriously dishonoring to God? Has it permanently damaged a relationship? Is it seriously hurting other people? And is it seriously hurting the offender himself? Any one of these questions, if you answer yes, then you ought to go to your brother, encourage, exhort him to leave off sin and to put on righteousness. But these are some questions you might ask yourself: if you see something, on matters you should overlook or not, okay?

So there’s some guidelines. I think good ones from this Peacemakers International materials on whether we should overlook an offense. And then there’s preparation to go if we decide that the matter can’t be overlooked, that we have to engage in this exhortation. That we should give thanks for one to the other. He has these things we could do: Pray for humility and wisdom. And I would say there that part of the wisdom you pray for involves this Hebrews 10:24. You’re to consider each other. Part of preparation for going to someone to exhort and encourage them is a consideration of who they are.

You’ve got, those of you that have children, they’re all different. And you know that you don’t speak to them all the same. They react differently. God has wired them differently. We’re to be those who consider one another, who know a little about one another. And based on that knowledge, wisdom says we should approach them somewhat differently.

Plan your words carefully. Clearly we’re people of the book and of words. Anticipate likely reactions and plan appropriate responses. You know, as much as we exhort each other not to, you know, deny or to shut down or to fight, anticipate that may well happen and be ready for it. Don’t let it surprise you. Just stay calm. Stay on task and stay on task.

Choose the right time and place. You know, you want to administer grace to one another. So choosing the right time and place is an important part of bringing this kind of exhortation and encouragement to each other. Assume the best about the other person till you have the facts to prove otherwise. You know, love believes all things. We’re all members of the body of Christ here. We believe the best about each other.

Listen carefully. You know, we should develop listening skills to hear what the other person is saying. Speak to build each other up. Ask for feedback. Recognize your limitations. At the end of the day, only God can work this stuff out.

If there is confession of sin, these are good guidelines. I encourage you, parents particularly, to take these home and apply these to your children.

The seven A’s of confession. Address everybody involved. You know, if you had a situation happen in your family that other people heard, address them as well. Avoid ifs, buts, and mays. You know, when you’re exhorted to put off particular action and be more righteous, don’t make excuses, right? It’s what we all tend to do. And you know, it’s not just excuses. We usually do what we do because we’re trying to do what’s right, but we fall short.

I learned this in marriage counseling. If I just have couples rehearse why they said to each other what they said, I’m going to have a fight all over again in my office. You see, because we’re saying things, we’re not deliberately sinning, usually, by at the beginning of the argument. So it doesn’t do any good to say, “Well, I didn’t mean it that way, or I was thinking this.” No, no, just say, “Well, at that point, yes, that was sinful conversation by me. I sinned in the way I said it.” Don’t explain it. No ifs, ends, buts, or mays. No excuse-making.

Confess the sin directly. Apologize. This is important. I admit specifically what specifically did you do wrong? Apologize. You know, as much as I try to drill into my children that repentance is not apologizing, repentance includes apologizing. Repentance includes a sorrow for the difficulty you’ve caused the other person. That’s what—how Sande is using apology.

Accept the consequences. Restitution, for instance. Alter your behavior and then ask for forgiveness. Okay, so seven A’s of confession.

And then four promises of forgiveness. And all of these things are part of this Peacemaker material. We have cards in the track rack, little cards with all these materials on them.

The Peacemaker’s Pledge is to glorify God, get the log out of your own eye in preparation for exhorting other people, gently restore the other person, and then finally go and be reconciled—have a commitment to enter into these sorts of activities.

I hope that we are characterized and will continue to be characterized as a church that gives thanks for exhortations, gives thanks in the difficult time when speech comes to us from someone else that is hard and difficult.

The book of Joshua as it moves toward its conclusion—there’s an appendix at the end of it, not quite the end. You know, there’s tribes on the eastern side of the Jordan and most of them on the west. And when the tribes on the east go home, they put this altar up. And the guys on the other side, they know that we’re only supposed to worship at Jerusalem. So they say, “Uh-oh, they’ve apostatized. They’re going to worship at this altar.” They send Phineas, the guy that can kill people with the spear really well. They send an army over to the eastern tribes and they say, “You know, we’re going to kill you if you’re worshiping other gods, because then you’re just like the Canaanites.” Hard speech.

But the people on the east side, they don’t say, “Why you miserable jerk, you should have known we weren’t doing that.” They didn’t take offense over that. In fact, what they said was, “You know what, if we’re there, if that altar is to worship other gods or to worship God at a place other than he said, you should kill us.” That’s what they said. But that’s not the purpose of it. The altar was put there so that our kids might remember that we’re linked to you and you may see it and remember we’re part of you, so that our kids would remember that they’ve got to go to Jerusalem to give their sacrifices.

It was exactly the opposite of what Phineas and the fellas in the west side of the river thought. The altar was actually there to help them remember to go to Jerusalem with their sacrifices, that they’re part of that group.

And then Phineas and the boys, they don’t say, “Well, you’re putting that on. We know you were going to sacrifice theirs. They were going to kill.” No, they said, “Oh, great. Praise God. This is wonderful.” End of story, happy ending. The book of military conquest concludes with a description of honest, forthright, manly speech one to the other, and in which offense is not easily taken, and in which speaking is plain, forward. But they believe each other’s speech when they give it one to the other. It’s a good thing. Nobody’s criticized at the end of Joshua for what happened there—the altar, the builders, the guys who were concerned and came with exhortation, their response, et cetera.

It’s an example to us of how the conquest will be extended into the future. It’ll be extended through godly speech of the covenant community—people that give thanks to God for exhortations, give thanks to each other, who have the honesty to speak honestly and openly about things that probably lots of other people are talking about to each other or talking about in their own hearts. But we want to give thanks for people that are loving enough and committed enough to Christian community to come forward and do that.

Remember the one negative command in this text from Hebrews 10:24 and 25. What is it? “Do not forsake the assembling together.” That doesn’t just mean keep coming to church. It means continue to be part of the covenant community of the consideration, stimulation, and exhortation of each other, because it’s hard. What we want to do is withdraw from community when exhortation comes from us. We don’t want to be thankful for it and we shut down little by little, and we may come and fill a pew, fill a seat at the pew, but we pulled back from community.

The Lord God says that’s the way of death. The way of life is to be thankful and grateful for the community that is honest and loving enough to exhort each other to faithfulness in Christ.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for our Savior. We thank you for Jesus Christ. We thank you for the eternal relationship to you, Lord God, that undergirds our confidence as we hear and give difficult words one to the other. We pray for our church, Lord God, that as we look forward to this time of rejoicing in community, help it be, Lord, Lord God, a renewed commitment to enhance community, to enter into discussions and dialogue, not in a hurtful way, but in a way that is helpful one to the other. And help us, Father, be a people that are thankful for exhortations. In Christ’s name we ask it.

Amen. Amen.