Hebrews 10:19-25 How to Worship God

Intro

How do you live a life that glorifies God? Answering that question is the heart of every Christian that has ever lived.

We look at verses like Romans 12:1 which says I appeal to you therefore brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship, and we think to ourselves, that’s I want that.

I want a life like that were all of my life glorifies God for who he is! Where all of my life is lived for him!

But here’s the problem. If someone else were to ask us, “I want that life too! How do I live a life that glorifies God?” I think most of us would step back and struggle to find the words to say.

All of us know that we should live a life that glorifies God. But a lack of discipleship has left most of us without a clear road map of how to actually do that.

That is my goal today. I want to give you a clear road map of what it means to worship God with all of your life.

To show you from Hebrews 10:19-25 how to live a life that glorifies God.

Last week we did a deep dive on the first few verses of this section. Those say...

Hebrews 10:19-21 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...

And we said that the big idea from these verses is that Christ saved us so that we would worship God with all our life.

He tore down the barrier of our sin that separated us from God so that we could know God personally and worship him for all that he is.

The big idea of this entire section of Scripture, and the big idea I want you taking from this sermon is this.

Christ saved us to worship God with all our life.

That is the whole point of why God saved you. God saved you to glorify him. To enjoy him. To treasure him. To find all of your life, all of your purpose, and all of your satisfaction in worshiping your Creator.

The question then is how. How do you do that?

Does living a life of worship mean that you’re just supposed to be happy and joyful all the time because that’s just what Christians do?

Does living a life of worship mean that you only do really spiritual things? That all your free time is only used for praying or reading the Bible?

What does it practically look like to worship God with all your life?

Hebrews 10:22-25 gives us a roadmap. These verses tell us three specific ways for how we can live a life that glorifies God.

And each of one of these ways is seen in the three “Let us” commands at the beginning of each verse.

So how do we live a life that worships God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength?

The author says Let us worship God wholeheartedly.

Let Us worship God Steadfastly.

And Let Us Worship God Corporately.

Let’s begin with the first way we worship God with all our life and that is...

I. Let Us Worship God Wholeheartedly

Hebrews 10:22 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.

To draw near to God is to worship him. The word translated draw near carries the idea of entering into God’s presence, entering into his heavenly throne room.

And we know this is exactly what the Author has in mind because in verse 19 he said that we have confidence to enter the holy places, God’s heavenly throne room by the blood of Jesus.

And there are two times in Scripture where we see God’s throne room first hand.

The first is in Isaiah 6. Isaiah says Isaiah 6:1-3 I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”

And John, when he is taken into the throne room in Revelation 4 he sees the same seraphim still praising the Lord saying “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (Rev 4:8).

And John even sees 24 elders who represent Israel and the church. And he sees these elders fall down before the Lord and cast their crowns before the throne saying “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” (Rev. 4:11).

And here is the big idea the Author is trying to say. Let us draw near to God. Enter into that throne room by the blood of Jesus.

Let us see God with that kind of glory. Let us draw near with hearts that say “All praise! All Honor! All Devotion! All Majesty! All glory belong to you!”

That’s why he says let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.

A true heart means a heart that is sincere. A heart that is genuine. One that isn’t duplicitous or superficial.

In other words, God is saying let us draw near with a heart that is wholly devoted to the Lord and committed only to him.

All throughout the Old Testament, this was a persistent problem for the people of God. Both Israel and Judah struggled to love the Lord wholeheartedly, and instead turned to all kinds of sin and idolatry.

And in response God would send his prophets to his people to say to them that their insincere and duplicitous hearts were like the heart of an adulterous wife who ran out on her husband to become a prostitute.

I’ll give you one example from Ezekiel 16:30-34.

Ezekiel 16:30-34 How sick is your heart, declares the Lord God, because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute, 31 building your vaulted chamber at the head of every street, and making your lofty place in every square.

Basically God is saying they wasted no opportunity to worship false gods and give their love to idols through their sin.

They were like a prostitute who set up brothels at every street corner.

Yet you were not like a prostitute, because you scorned payment.

32 Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! 33 Men give gifts to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side with your whorings. 34 So you were different from other women in your whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore, and you gave payment, while no payment was given to you; therefore you were different.

This speaks to the foolishness of all people who refuse to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Because when they give their love to idols by committing sins as acts of worship to false gods, they don’t get anything in return.

You see, sin promises to give you joy. To give you the fullness of life, but it always leaves you wanting. It always leaves you thirsty.

Because our sins don’t pay like we thought they would. Instead, we are the ones that end up paying for our sin because we give up our life to have the sins we think we can’t live without. For the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23).

And so God says a duplicitous heart is a sick heart. Its a heart that cannot experience the fullness of life and the joy of salvation because it is a heart that is still enslaved to its love for sin.

Here’s the principle. If you want to worship God with all of your life, you must draw near to him with your whole heart.

You can’t settle for a half-measure Christianity because there is no half-way to follow Jesus. You either have to be all in or all out.

It’s like Jesus said.

Matthew 6:24 No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

When we try to draw near to God with anything less than a true and genuine heart, with anything less than a heart that says “All my life is yours,” what we are really saying is that God is not worthy of all our worship. He isn’t worthy of all of our devotion and love.

And by definition when we draw near to God with a heart like that, we can’t worship him because God says that true worship requires all of our heart. All of our soul. All of our mind. All of our strength.

The worship God demands is a whole hearted kind of love that flows from an all or nothing kind of heart.

Now does that mean you’ll never sin again and if you do you aren’t really saved and don’t love God? Of course not! Even the Bible says 1 John 1:8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

All of us will struggle with the flesh this side of glory.

What I’m arguing for here is that all of us take a stand to war against the Rich Young Ruler Discipleship our hearts crave.

You remember the story. There is a man that comes to Jesus and says, Jesus, I want to follow you and have eternal life.

And Jesus looks at him and says, “OK. You just need to do one thing. Sell everything you have. Give it to the poor. And follow me.

And what does the Bible say? When he heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great very great possessions.

The Rich Young Ruler wanted a discipleship where he could keep his life and have a little bit of Jesus on the side.

He had a duplicitous heart.

And every single one of us is tempted to follow Jesus just like that. To say, “God, I’ll give up anything to worship you. Just not that.”

If you want to worship God and draw near to him with a true heart, It’ll never happen with a Rich Young Ruler Discipleship. If you want to worship God with all your life, you need a Deny Yourself Discipleship.

Luke 9:23-25 If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?

The Christian life is all about self denial. All about denying the sinful passions of our flesh and the comforts of this world to say God is better.

None of these things, none of our sins compare to his glory.

Here’s what I’m asking. What sin, what dream, what comfort what way of life is keeping you from drawing near to God with a true heart?

Is keeping you from giving God all of your life in worship?

For every single one of us the answer to that question is going to be different. For most of us, there will probably be a couple of things that we can say make it hard to devote all of our life to the Lord.

How do you find these things? The way you find these things is praying to God and saying, “Lord. I want your will to be done in my life.”

And the things that prick your heart and make you wince and think, “I don’t know about that though. I don’t know if that’s something I’m willing to give up.”

Those are the things that we must lay aside, so we can draw near to the Lord with a whole heart.

Let me tell you a one of mine. I don’t want to suffer some disease or accident reaping havoc in my family.

I don’t want Owen, my wife, or me to be here one day and not be here the next. That thought terrifies me.

And that in itself is not a sin. Its not a sin to want your family to be healthy.

But what is a sin is to idolize your family and question God’s goodness if, God forbid, he took them.

But I don’t want to have a duplicitous heart. I want to have the kind of heart that has the full assurance of faith.

The heart that can say I trust God and will live for him no matter what comes my way.

Maybe for you its something different. Maybe its some sin in your life that you just don’t see as that big of a deal or maybe some sin you don’t actually think you can live without.

When we hold on to sins, whether its lust, anger, bitterness, anything that Paul would say is in accordance with the flesh, we need to realize we are just trying to serve two masters.

We are trying to love God, and at the same time love our sin too. But those loves are mutually exclusive. We can’t hang onto our sin and love God.

Sin says God isn’t good. God isn’t holy. God isn’t worthy of all our worship.

And if you’re anything like me, you are hearing this and thinking to yourself, “You know, I really do want that. I want a whole hearted kind of love for God. But I just don’t know if that kind of life is actually possible for me.”

“I think its true for other people. I think other people can have it. But every time I’ve tried to live all of my life for God’s glory, I always stumble. I always fail. I always end up going back to my lukewarm Rich Young Ruler Discipleship.

I have good news for you. This life isn’t impossible for you. And I know that this life is not impossible for you because nothing is impossible with God.

Hebrews 10:22 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.

Both sprinkling clean and washing with pure water point back to the sacrificial system of the Old Testament in general, and the Day of Atonement in Particular.

To make atonement for sins, the Priests would sprinkle the blood of the sacrifices on the altar and the mercy seat.

There were also ceremonial washings that symbolically showed how Israel needed to be washed clean from their sins.

And now because Christ is our Great High Priest, everyone that puts their faith in him and his sinless life, sacrificial death and bodily resurrection, is sprinkled clean with his blood and all of their sins are washed away.

Psalm 51:7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

But here’s what I want you to notice. Look at the tense of the two verbs. Sprinkled clean. Washed with pure water.

They are both past tense. In fact, if you looked at this verse in Greek, both of these verbs are in the perfect tense.

That means that for the Christian both the sprinkling and the washing have already been accomplished. And what’s more, the effect of that cleansing continues on today.

So you could actually translate this verse Let us draw near having had our hearts sprinkled clean and having had our bodies washed with pure water.

What does all that mean? This means that we have been forgiven, and that we have been cleansed and transformed from the inside out.

Remember, the Author has been talking about how Christ is the Great High Priest of the New Covenant.

In chapter 8, he quoted the New Covenant from Jeremiah. Here he alludes to Ezekiel’s prophecy about the New Covenant from Ezekiel 36 where Ezekiel also talked about God sprinkling us and washing us clean.

Ezekiel 36:25-27 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

When God cleansed you from all your sin, he gave you a new heart that loves him.

We said earlier that we must draw near to God with a true heart. A genuine heart. One that loves him and loves him alone. Not one that is split between God and idols.

But what did God say. He cleanses us from all our idols. He gives us new hearts that at our core, love him more than we love our sin.

And God seals us with the Holy Spirit who empowers, or in other words causes us Ezekiel says, to obey him and worship him with all our life.

So if you are a believer, an all your life kind of worship is possible for you because God has given you a new heart in Christ.

Here’s what I want every Christian in our church to know. The greatest asset to living a godly life are the promises of the New Covenant.

We make it so complicated.

Do you want to worship God with all your life and draw near to him with a true heart? Then live out your new desires and stop trying to hold on to your old ones.

That’s what Paul meant when he said put off the old self and put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator (Col. 3:10).

So if you want to worship God wholeheartedly. If you want to worship him in every moment, with every decision, any time temptation raises its head, you need to ask yourself “What do I want most?”

The Christian will always say God’s glory. I want God’s glory.

And then by God’s grace at work in us, meaning the grace of the new heart that he gave us by the Spirit, you draw near him.

You draw heart to God with a whole heart that loves him more than sin and because it has been transformed by Christ to love God and worship him more than anything else.

Christ saved us to worship God with all our life.

So let us worship God wholeheartedly. And second...

II. Let Us Worship God Steadfastly

Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

It’s interesting that the Author says we are to hold fast to the confession of our hope and not the confession of our faith.

He does this to emphasize the motivation for our perseverance.

Perseverance means that we follow Jesus and that we keep on following Jesus.

And what makes us keep on following Jesus is the confession of our hope. The confession that Christ has saved us and that one day we will receive the fullness of that salvation when we are brought into God’s heavenly kingdom.

We live for God’s glory and persevere in Christ by holding fast to our hope.

Let me give you an uncooth example example of what I mean.

Why do people keep buying lottery tickets. Week after week after week, they by ticket after ticket after ticket but they never win.

Why do they keep doing it? Because they have hope. They have hope that the next ticket will be the big one. The one that changes their entire life.

It doesn’t matter how many times they lose the lottery, as long as they have hope that they can win the next one.

Hope keeps them going.

In the same way, our hope keeps us going. Someone that let’s go of Christ and leaves the faith, who commits apostasy, has lost their hope.

But if you have hope, you can keep going no matter what trial or suffering comes your way.

That’s why the Author is encouraging the Hebrews to hold fast to their hope. They are facing trials and persecutions and the Author is telling them, “Don’t lose sight of what’s coming to you.

Keep focused on the hope you have in Christ, so that when you want to give up and call it quits, you can keep going.”

And the Author tells us that we need to hold on to this hope without wavering. Meaning we need to be firm, stable, steadfast. Unshakable. Persevering by always moving forward and not swerving to the right or the left.

Perseverance is the necessary fruit of genuine salvation.

Its not that we are saved by our perseverance. We are saved solely by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Perseverance does not save us, but perseverance is the necessary evidence of true saving faith. That’s why Jesus said...

Matthew 24:13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

So how do we persevere? How do we make sure we will endure to the end? Let me tell you.

Perseverance is more about God’s faithfulness to you, than it is you faithfulness to him.

Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

When we hold fast to Christ, when we hold fast to our hope for salvation, we have faith that God will keep his promise. That God will save us like he said he would.

And that faith is the evidence that God is holding fast to us.

God will not abandon his children or throw them to the wolves. He will keep them by his own grace and power. That is what he promises to us.

Look at how Paul said it in 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

There is no doubt that God will surely keep us by his grace. And as God holds fast to us, He calls us to live all our lives holding fast to him.

To be like the disciples in John 6. When everyone else had turned backs on Christ and no longer walked with him, Jesus turned to the twelve and asked “Do you want to go away as well?”

And hear Simon Peter’s answer.

John 6:68-69 Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.

That is the hope we must hold fast to. Christ has the words of eternal life. The good news of the gospel. Where else can we go?

And because there is salvation in no other name, we must persevere day by day and worship God steadfastly.

So far on our road map for what it looks like to worship God with all our life, we’ve seen that we must worship God with an undivided heart,

that we must persevere in our faith to continue worshiping God day after day,

and finally, if we want to worship God with all our life, Hebrews says...

III. Let Us Worship God Corporately

Hebrews 10:24-25 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.

Here the author gives us a very timely command for how we are to worship God with all of our life. Its not just about us each worshiping God personally, its also about all of us together worshiping God corporately.

He says let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.

Love and good works is basically shorthand for the Christian life. We are called to love God and love others and to show that love in good works both in obeying God and in serving others.

In other words, love and good works means a life of worship.

And we are told to consider how to stir up, exhort, or encourage one another to worship God with all of our life.

And that word translated as consider is important. It doesn’t mean that we should just think about it as something that would be a good idea or nice to do.

It means that we must focus, and think deeply how we can encourage other believers to follow Christ.

True fellowship takes concentrated effort from all of us. True fellowship takes a focused intentionality where every member is thinking “What can I do, to help my brothers or sisters follow Christ more faithfully?”

How can I encourage them? What can I teach them? Is the Lord asking me to rebuke them? Am I praying for them?

Our church is a family. The Bible says we are the family of God. Brothers and sisters of one another.

Do you see other members in this church as family that God calls you to help grow in Christ? Or is everything in this church and in your life focused on you?

This verse teaches us that if we want to worship God and persevere in following him, then we need each other. It’s not optional.

We need to come alongside one another and spur each other on towards Christ. But how can we do that if we don’t meet together?

Hebrews 10:25 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.

The word translated “meet together” is the Greek word ἐπισυναγωγή. And it is the verb form of the word translated in English as “Synagogue.” The place where Jews would gather together to worship God.

So the Author is encouraging these Jewish believers to not neglect meeting together in general. After all in Hebrews 3:13 he said Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today.”

So he does want them to meet in their homes, at lunch, and over coffee to disciple and mutually encourage one another which means we should be too.

But by using the word for Synagogue, there is an implied emphasis on not neglecting the corporate worship gathering of God’s people.

In other words, you need to go to church. You need to gather with God’s people if you are going to truly worship God with all your life.

This has been the pattern for Christians from the very beginning of the church.

Acts 2:42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

In fact, the word "church” in the NT is ἐκκλησια (ekklēsia) which means a gathered congregation or assembly. Specifically a congregation called out from the world to worship God.

So no. A church is not a building. But a church is also not just a group of Christians who never gather together.

A church is the people of God who gather regularly to worship God for saving them in Jesus Christ.

So here’s the principle that Hebrews 10:24-25 teaches. Christians should not and must not neglect gathering together for corporate worship and fellowship.

But now in saying that, I need to do a lot of ground work to apply this passage to us today because we are living in a crazy upside down coronavirus world.

So does this verse mean if you ever miss church anytime for any reason that you are automatically in sin?

Are you allowed to be out of town on a Sunday?

If you have a horrible flu do you need to pop a couple cold pills and head to church and risk everyone else getting sick?

No. This verse is not saying that you can never miss church for any reason. Things happen. Life happens.

In fact, right now we have many people in our church are physically unable to gather with the saints even though they are desperate to.

Some are high risk for the coronavirus. Whether they have asthma, an autoimmune disease, or some other complication, physically coming to church would put their life at risk.

Others might take care of someone who is high risk or be in regular contact with them so coming to church would put that person in danger.

And still other’s might not come because they work in the health industry and are afraid of spreading coronavirus in this church.

Other members might not be able to come because their kids are too young to sit through a whole service and we don’t have Little Metro right now.

Now I can almost immediately hear someone saying “Children’s ministry is not in the Bible. You don’t have to have that to worship God.”

Ok holy person. Practically speaking it would just be difficult. Listen, we’ve tried to bring our one year old son, Owen here. It is impossible to keep a one year old in service.

He wants to run around and babble. And so Jessica herself can’t pay attention during the sermon cause she’s trying to wrangle this kid, and all his babbling also distracts everybody else worshiping God.

So out of love for others, and considering how we can stir them up to love and good works, we don’t have him here during the sermon.

So no. This verse is not saying that it is always a sin to miss church.

But what it is saying is that it is a sin to neglect gathering with other believers to worship God. That word neglect means to forsake or abandon. To leave behind.

Basically, it is a sin to treat church like you can take it or leave it. As if its an optional luxury of the Christian life.

That’s why the Author adds do not neglect to meet together as is the habit of some.

That word "habit” means custom or way of life and it implies that some of the Hebrews had made it their custom to neglect gathering with the saints.

They had become indifferent and apathetic to gathering with God’s people. And now, unsurprisingly because Christians need each other, they were on the verge of apostasy.

Membership

So here’s the application. First, you need to be a part of a church.

You need to join a body of believers that you are committed to so that you can obey God’s word and consider how to stir up one other believers to love and good works.

And this commitment is something more than just attending worship services on Sunday. That’s good. And you have to do that for a while to find a biblical church to join, but at some point to truly meet together, you need to be part of the body.

For us, this looks like church membership. Church membership is how we express our mutual commitment of love for and fellowship with one another.

By not joining a church not only are you missing out on the blessing of being a functioning member of the body, you are also depriving every body, every church, of your spiritual gifts and service to further the Great Commission.

To truly follow Christ, the Bible calls you to join a church.

Go to Church

The second application is that some of you need to get to church.

This is a unique opportunity to preach this because usually, when you preach this sermon, the only people that hear you are already at church. You are preaching to the choir.

But right now, we have many people watching this sermon online.

And as I said earlier. Everyone who is not here right now is not automatically disobeying the Lord.

In fact, with Covid, that line has become really blurry. It is a huge gray area whether you are missing church for legitimate reasons or if you are neglecting the gathering of the saints.

So my goal here is not to bind anyone’s conscience. Not to force anyone or ask anybody to come to church against their will.

But to help give you a way to think through when wisdom says in your particular situation is the right time to come back to church.

My goal here is simply to tell you the principle of God’s Word. That Christians should not and must not neglect gathering together for corporate worship and fellowship.

And to encourage you to pray and ask God whether are you obeying His Word or not. Whether you are neglecting the gathering of the saints, or if your just in a season where its not wise to do so.

The main question you need to ask yourself is “Am I neglecting gathering with God’s people?”

Because if you are neglecting meeting with God’s people, you are saying that your faith is not a priority to you and it doesn’t matter whether or not you worship God with all of your life.

And that’s straight from the text.

You might look at the Hebrews think that they neglected meeting together because they were afraid of persecution.

Of being recognized as a Christian by their association with the church.

But the Author says this was their habit. Neglect is a heart issue. Persecution was just the excuse the Hebrews were using to neglect gathering together.

The heart of their neglect was their indifference to their faith.

Is Covid keeping you from being able to gather with the saints like you really want, or is it just an excuse to neglect your faith and skip church?

Let me help you think through this. Are you going out to Walmart regularly? Are you going to work? Are you going out to eat? Are you going to your kids sporting events, even the ones on Sundays?

Now ask yourself, If you are doing all those things, why aren’t you going to church?

You need the encouragement of other believers to keep following Christ with all your life.

If you remove yourself from that encouragement by neglecting to gather with the saints, you make it impossible to worship God the way he has said to.

And worse, we have a lot of young families in our church. You are setting an example for your children that church is not as much of a priority as going out eat or sports.

Do you want to give your kids the best chance possible to stick with the faith when they are out of your house?

Then you need to disciple them by prioritizing your life like a Christian. Like someone whose greatest ambition is to see God glorified, and stop prioritizing your life like someone of the world who has nothing better to live for.

Are you neglecting gathering with the saints? Using any excuse possible to stay home and not be with God’s people even something as small as “I don’t want to wear a mask.”

Maybe here’s another way to test your heart. Are you content with staying home or do you long to be with God’s people again?

If its the later. You’re not neglecting. You are in a season where you can’t gather because of God’s bitter providence which we can trust he is using for your good and his glory.

If it’s the former, you might be in sin.

Finally, the author closes this passage by encouraging us to meet together all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

The Day is the Day of the Lord. The Day when Christ will return to save his people.

That means everyday that passes makes gathering together all the more important. Why?

In 1 Timothy 4 and 2 Timothy 3, Paul warns Timothy in the last days many will fall away from the faith.

In the NT the last days refer to the time between Christ’s ascension and his second coming. That means every Christian and every Church lives in the last days.

And as we see the Day drawing near, we must be diligent to meet together for mutual encouragement so that we can all worship the Lord steadfastly and wholeheartedly.

Like Paul said, Romans 13:11-12 For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand.

Christians that neglect meeting together cut themselves off from the very means by which Christ feeds, encourages and protects his people.

If you are unaware, we are seeing people all across America fall away from Christ left and right. Professing Christians and churches are getting eaten alive by the false teaching Social Justice and Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality.

My concern for you is that if you neglect gathering with the saints, which is different than not being able to come because of bitter providence, that you are isolating yourself and making yourself and your family an easy target for demonic teaching that will lead you to fall away.

As the Day draws near, it is not the time to grow lax in meeting together. It is time to press in to our fellowship and gather with the saints.

So if the Spirit is convicting you that your heart is neglecting the gathering of the saints, come to church.

Bring your kids. Listen, its fine. They aren’t going to bother me preaching. Just be considerate of others and be quick move if they get loud.

Or maybe if they are way too young, then take turns. Mom you come one week. Dad you come the next. And bring the kids that can.

Do not neglecting meeting together as is the habit of some. This was already a problem in the American Church. Covid just exasperated it.

But if you are convicted that you’ve neglected the church, come and gather with the saints.

Worship God corporately. Be spurred on to worship God with all your life through love and good works and consider how you can encourage other Christians to do the same.

Conclusion

Christ saved us to worship God with all our life.

And Hebrews gives us a road map for exactly how to do that.

We must worship God wholeheartedly.

We must Worship God steadfastly.

And we must worship God corporately.

This is how you worship God with all of your life. The question you must answer is will you commit to this?

Will you commit your life to this deny yourself, all or nothing kind of discipleship?

Will you worship God with all of your life?

Jude 24-25 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.