Turn to Hebrews chapter 10 as we continue on the theme of fellowship.
Last week, together, we talked about our fellowship with God, which leads naturally to this week's installment of our fellowship with one another and how powerful and beautiful and wonderful it is. Hebrews chapter 10. Now, when you look at the book of Hebrews, of course, I have preached through the book, took us about four and a half years, I think, but when you look at the book of Hebrews, we're seeing a message that's going to something of a mixed multitude. The scholars note that it's highly likely that you have a mixture of genuine Christians along with a lot of people of Jewish descent that are not yet true believers. They're looking at, they're embracing somewhat Christ as the Savior, Messiah, but they also want to hang on to the old Jewish religion. After all, it had been around for generations and generations and generations. And these Jewish folks had a hard time just turning their back on grandpa's religion and great-grandpa's religion and great-great-great-great grandpa's religion.
You could go on and on. So the writer is writing to talk about pulling yourself away from everything else and putting yourself wholly to faith in Jesus Christ and Christ alone as your Savior. And in the mixture of that, challenging them to stay faithful to the fellowship that they have in Christ and not pull away and apostatize, if you will, back to the old covenant. Apostasy means you have come toward Christ. In a sense, you've embraced something of Christ, but then you turn away and turn back. So all of that is in play, but the main thrust of this section of scripture is how they must stay faithful to Christ and stay faithful to the fellowship of the believers of the local church. Don't miss that. There's a lot here. You could preach it as two separate things, faithfulness to Christ and the fellowship of the church, but they always go together. We're gonna unpack that today, and this will be a two-part, I'm sure. All right, Hebrews chapter 10, verses 1 through 25.
We'll just kind of blitz through here right quick, all right? Hebrews 10, chapter 1, It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore when he comes into the world, he says, Then I said, Behold, I have come in the scroll of the book it is written of me to do your will, O God. After saying above sacrifices and offerings and Hobart offerings and sacrifices for sins you've not desired, nor have you taken pleasure then which are offered according to law.
Then he said, Behold, I have come to do your will. He takes away the first order, the old Jewish system of religion, to establish the sacrifice. Verse 10, By this will, that's God's will, God's initiative, we have been, past tense, sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But he, that's Jesus, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time forward until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet. For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws upon their heart, and on their mind I will write them. Then he says then, And their sins and their lawless needs I will remember no more.
Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there's no longer any offering for sin. Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way, which he inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, his flesh, and since we have a great high priest, that's Jesus again, over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider, here we have the fellowship element that naturally flows out of all God's done for us in Christ. Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Roman numeral one, the founding principles of our fellowship. The founding principles of our fellowship. Now subpoint A, our fellowship is the creation of God's son. The fellowship we have is something God's son, the Lord Jesus Christ, created. 2 Corinthians 5 17, Therefore, if any men be in Christ, he's a new creation, something God created.
The old things have passed away, whatever it is in the old, it's passed away. Behold, a new type of thing has begun, a new creation. Now, 1 John 3 1 says, See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called the children of God, and such we are, for this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know him. So here we are, God's son has done something to us, in us, through us, and by doing this in us and to us, he's made us no longer fit in the world, but he's made us to fit in a new group, a new body. A new fellowship, we could say, into his church, his local church.
Now, no one else could make this work. It all begins with us becoming right with God. It all begins with us becoming the true, forgiven, cleansed, pardoned, and now made righteous children of God.
And that's something our works could not do. Look, if you will, at chapter 10 verses 1 and 2 again. Our law for the law there in verse 1 of chapter 10, it is only a shadow, it never had any substance to it, the law could never do anything substantially for you.
It was only a shadow of the good things to come. Everything in the Old Testament economy, all the sacrificial system pointed to someone else to come, and that someone else, of course, is Jesus. It's not the very form of things. It can never, by the same sacrifices which they, the priests of Israel, offer year by year, make perfect those who draw near. In other words, you can use all your best energies and do everything you can, go to your Jewish priest and observe every type of sacrifice and system of ritual that they possibly have. Bring bullocks and goats and turtledoves and pigeons and lambs and whatever else, do it perfectly, and it can never give you a right standing before God. Your work, even if you go through the priest, can never get this done. Verse 2, he continues, otherwise, if they did bring you to that completed end, making you a righteous son before God, otherwise, will they not have ceased to be offered? If they worked, why do you have to go back and go back and go back and offer and offer and offer? Because the worshippers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had a consciousness of sins. So our works never work.
They can't do it. The whole Catholic system of religion is built upon the premise that you must have the sacrifice of the mass regularly and often. Go to the priest, take the wafer, take the juice, wine, and when you drink the wine, that's actually Jesus' blood being shed for you again. When you eat the wafer, it's literally the body of Christ that died for you again. So you kind of get yourself re-saved every week, which this text specifically and explicitly says is wrong. It's a great control mechanism, but it's poor religion.
It's silly superstition is what it is. But then he goes on in verses 9 through 21, we'll look at those quickly again, and he says, Christ's work on our behalf does work. Our works to save ourselves never works, but Christ's work for us does work. Look at verse 9. He said, Behold, I have come to do your will.
He takes away the first, the old Jewish religious system and any other religious system in order to establish the second. That's religion in and by and through Jesus Christ alone. Verse 10, by this will, God's will through Christ for us, our benefit, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body, Jesus Christ once for all. Every priest daily stands ministering and offering time and time the same sacrifices. We can never take away sin. But he, verse 12, offered one sacrifice for sins for all time. He sat down at the right hand of God. And we can go on and on.
I've already read it just a moment ago. So Christ did this all for the children on our behalf. And all who are the recipients of Christ's work should be faithful in fellowship. So first of all, the fellowship that's created was created because God's done something unique in all of us. So we no longer fit in any other collectivity like we fit in God's church, in the fellowship of God's true, healthy, spiritually sound local churches.
All right? Now, so our fellowship is the creation of God's Son. Subpoint B, everyone should belong to and be active in this fellowship because of what God's done. Brothers and sisters, this thing of having a church and getting people to join and getting people to keep coming is God's work, not ours. It's God's work. Now, we participate with God in it, but we can't perform it.
We can't establish it. You can't put on enough stuff in the power of your flesh and ingenuity and craftiness and creativity to keep the people together. And once you start down that road, and most congregations, to an extent at least, are on that road looking for humanly devised elements to keep people interested. If Jesus doesn't keep you interested, I'm not interested in you being a member. I'm interested in you.
I care about you. I want you to know Christ. I'll love you and witness to you, but only Christ can cause you to have a heart for what a true, biblically, spiritually healthy church is.
It's his creation. And B, as I said in my outline, everyone should belong to and be active in the fellowship. Now, we're given three exhortations toward the end of this text. And these three exhortations are exhortations he's telling us to live out. In other words, don't go back.
Don't move away. Stay strong in these three things. These three things Christ has earned for you, if you will, provided for you.
Three things Christ has put in you, formed in you, if you will. To flesh out these three exhortations, you might call them grace gifts imparted by Christ. Because of the work of Christ, these three virtues, our grace gifts, are our possession, but we must make them our profession. We must live them out.
These things are our profession, but we must make them our practice. The first exhortation concerns faith. The second exhortation concerns hope. And the third exhortation concerns love. Faith, hope, love.
Three pillars of our uniqueness that causes us to want to be together. I mean, I want to be around people who have the same faith that Christ has given me. I want to be around the people who have the same hope that I have after coming to know Christ. I want to be around the people that have the same kind of agape God-installed love in their hearts that God's installed in me. It just is a natural thing.
It's kind of like a magnet in steel. That's what brings us together as a local congregation. Now, the first one of these exhortations concerns faith, and that's in verse 22. Would you look at that? So he says, instead of drifting away, instead of flirting with apostasy, instead of going back and trying to add the old Jewish religion and law system, sacrificial system, to Jesus. Don't do that.
Stay where you are. Verse 22, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith. In other words, faith that we are fully accepted, we are fully made righteous through the provision of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. Look back up at verse 19. Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus.
Now, he's using the old terminology of the old Jewish religion. The holy place is the place only the priests could enter, and he could only enter after certain washings and cleansings and provisions of sprinkled blood. But he says, now, not only can the priest come boldly if he knows Jesus Christ, if you know Christ, all of us can come into the holiness of God. A confident access into God's presence through the provision which is Jesus Christ. So Jesus' way to God is a way we need to be fully assured of. Look at verse 20 in our text. It's a new and living way which he inaugurated for us through the veil that is his flesh.
All kinds of symbolism here. The Holy of Holies had a veil in front of it. It was like, what, seven inches thick, and only the great high priest could go through that veil once a year into the Holy of Holies and administer the atoning blood of a sacrificial goat. But he says, now, all of us go into the presence of God beyond the veil because Jesus was the veil that parted, if you will, and let us in. We go through the veil of Jesus Christ. So he is, verse 20, the veil we go in through, and he is the new and living way that is not the old and dead approach to God.
Be careful of those in professing Christendom who are actually teaching an old and dead religious work system. Because in Jesus Christ, we did come to God through a new and living way. That means it's always active, always real, always available, always able to produce what we need it to produce. Always able to provide us, first of all, confident entrance into the presence of God. And secondly, continual access into the presence of God.
Did you hear that? Jesus Christ, based on his work, his merit, his pleasing work before the Heavenly Father, gives to the children a confident assurance we're God's and we can go into God's presence, and a continual assurance that we can go into God's presence. That's what he means by this is a new and living approach to knowing God. So walk in that faith, glory in that faith. You say, well, pastor, if I'm exhorted to have a full assurance of faith, I don't have all the assurance of faith I need to have. You know where you get the assurance of faith? The Word of God.
Faith comes by hearing and hearing the word about Christ, Romans chapter 10 tells us. You need to hear it preached. That's why it's so very important, dads, that you put your family into strong, thorough, biblical preaching.
You need to read the Bible for yourselves also, of course. Bible studies are important. Preaching the Word is foundational. But it all comes through the Word of God. So we as individual Christians are called out of this world into the fellowship of those who have a confident and continual acceptance into the presence of God.
That's the flow of this context. We see and we know this by faith. Something happened in me. I can't humanly, logically, rationally explain it. It's metaphysical in a very real way. Something happened in me whereby I found a restful confidence in the Son of God, Jesus Christ, in his death, burial and resurrection on my behalf. And I'm drawn to other people who have that same faith.
It's the creation of God. So Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8 and 9 tell us about how this faith is gifted to us through Christ. For by grace, grace is a favor you didn't deserve.
God decided, I'm going to favor you and do something good for you you don't deserve. For by grace you have been saved, past tense, through faith. Christ alone saves, but grace, or rather faith is the conduit, if you will.
It's the channel to Christ. For by grace you've been saved through faith, and that, the faith not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. I'm convinced that in the flowing context of biblical truth, that verse can only mean that the very faith you have is something that was won by Christ, created by Christ, and placed in you by the person of the Holy Spirit, fulfilling the will of God the Father and God the Son to save you and secure you forever. So faith, full assurance of faith, that's an exhortation, that's a pillar, that's a foundation stone of what binds us together.
We're all people of faith in Jesus Christ. Secondly, hope. The second pillar of our foundation, the second exhortation, he says this down in verse 23, And let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.
Now these, of course, are interconnected and reciprocal, if you will. That's faith and hope. We hope in the above facts we've been talking about. We hope we rest, we are confident, if you will, in the finished work of Christ. We hope in Christ that he is the continual and living way to God.
And you know, one of my phrases I say a long time is, Lord, I'm a sinner. If Christ is not sufficient, I'm sunk. That's my hope. He's my hope. He's my hope when I'm doing good. He's my hope when I'm doing okay.
He's my hope when I've failed miserably. Because I'm not looking at me. I don't need a mirror. I need a telescope.
The Holy Spirit provided a telescope that lets me see Jesus. That's who I'm hoping in. We have hope. We do not have despair. Holding fast there to this hope means not wavering, not leaning away. And Romans 5, 5 reminds us we have a hope that does not disappoint.
Praise his name. You know, there's people all over the world. I know this will shock some of you. But there are people who hope today in Donald Trump. It's worse than that. There are people whose hope was Kamala Harris.
The cackling hyena. I say that purposefully because the Bible says a lot of very sarcastic and cutting things for people who willfully are involved in vile and vulgar wickednesses. And she definitely is. People hoping all kinds of things. But all of those hopes will disappoint.
Just give it a little time. I voted for Donald Trump. I had no choice. But he's not my hope. He's not my treasure. He's not my joy. He's not my champion. He might be Cyrus the Persian.
A wicked man who did good for the people of God. He might be that. I hope he is.
He seems to be. But these things are not our hope. We do not have a hope that disappoints. We have a hope that cannot disappoint us. Jesus Christ.
Oh, hallelujah. So Christ's work on our behalf and his work by the Spirit in our hearts produces this confident hope. See, this is the creation of God.
That was my main point coming out. God creates this faith. He places it in us. He creates a hope and puts it in us.
You don't know how it got there. You were just living your life, sitting in the preaching of the Word, studying the Bible, fellowshiping with the Christians, and one day faith and hope arose in your heart. This is the creation of God. Then he puts us together. Because once you really have a Christ wrought faith and a Christ wrought hope, you just want to be around people that have it. And I'll say more about this in a moment, but that's one of the great challenges with modern evangelicalism is that we packed our churches with people who are not truly converted. We packed our churches with people who raised their hand when they were seven years old in Vacation Bible School. And God may indeed save some children in Vacation Bible School, but there's a whole lot of them that have raised their hand and were mimicked to prayer, and they're not changed.
Just like there's many adults who walk down to the front of buildings and go through some sort of a system. And that's not all evil, but you can't tell people that's all there is to salvation when the Bible says nothing about it. We need to look for the evidence of real faith. We need to take time. Our children are too imported. Amen?
Our children are too imported to rush them through a five-minute thing and say, it's done, you're saved. Their eternal souls are more valuable than that, and God's glory is more valuable than that. So our churches are packed today. In my Pastoral Training Institute classes this time, we are bearing down on the essential duty and work of pastoring a church that has a regenerate church membership. Men, women, boys or girls who truly have this new faith, who truly have this hope.
It's not just intellectually some sort of a sin in their mind, but their hearts have been apprehended, and they're different. It's a confident hope, and it's uniquely ours. It's another unique pillar of our fellowship. Hope connects and builds, of course, off of faith, and those with this faith and this hope belong together.
That's what the text is implying and teaching here. And then the third exhortation, the third pillar of our unique fellowship, verse 24, is love. They let us consider how to stimulate one another to love. He said, have a full assurance of faith, be strong in your hope, and keep on in your love, the unique love you have.
That's interesting. When he gives us this Christian virtue of love here, he adds some action to it. Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love, and there you go, good deeds. By the way, this has to imply fellowship. You cannot know and walk in Christian love and not be in the fellowship of believers.
It's impossible. Romans 5-5 tells us, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has given to us. We are awash in God's love.
It's just washed over our souls. We're swimming in God's love. The idea that the love of God is poured out, Romans 5-5, means it's copiously diffused through every molecule of our being, that, oh, this God loves me. Christ loves me. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit has pledged the totality of the Godhead to love me and keep me forever.
I'm awash. I'm undone by the love of God. And when that's true, you want to be around other people who cherish that love, who know that love, who value that love above all else. We feel deeply this love of God extended to us through the work of the Son of God in the person of the Holy Spirit. God drenches our hearts and wholly subdues us by this love.
As one songwriter said a few years ago, all those who have eyes and all those who have ears, it is only He who can reduce me to tears out of this love He has for us. So by the work of Christ on our behalf, we are the recipients of God's love. Because of the work of Christ in our hearts, we've become the reservoirs of God's love. This love collects in us.
It builds up in us. It rejoices our soul, but there's another dimension here. Not only are we the recipients of this love and the reservoirs of this love, we're to be the tributaries of this love. In other words, get in your fellowship and love one another. We're to love all mankind. And when you get saved, you think, well, who am I supposed to love? Now that God's changed me, the love of God, you're supposed to love everybody. But you don't love everybody like you love your spouse.
You don't love everybody like you love your own children. The Bible teaches there's a special responsibility and duty there. And for Christians, there's a special covenant and duty and responsibility to loving other Christians, i.e. particularly your local church family. He says in Hebrews, let me do 1 John 4.11, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
It's just common sense. If he loved us and that love has apprehended us and grabbed us and controls us and consumes us, then we will naturally strive to love one another in God's church. He uses the word in Hebrews 10.24 to consider how to stimulate one another to love in good works.
Now, next time we get together, I'm gonna complete this and we'll talk about more practical workings of this. But suffice it to say for now that in 10.24, we have the direct command to fellowship and the specific defining of our fellowship. The direct command, let us consider how to stimulate one another to love in good works. And then the specific defining is stimulate, consider, and good deeds. And we'll talk about what does it mean to be considering one another? What does it mean to stimulate one another?
And what does it mean to consider and to stimulate one another unto good deeds? By the way, that's gonna take some time. That's gonna take some time. If you're going to consider how to stimulate your brothers and sisters in Christ unto love in good deeds, that's gonna take some time.
Secondly, you're gonna have to evaluate, now just who am I gonna do that with? Because if that's gonna take some time, I can't consider, study on, and stimulate 800 people in my church family. There's not enough of me to do that. But there's an Old and New Testament principle called small groups. And that gets it down to seven, eight, 12, 15 or so.
Hey, I can do that. Isn't God's Word good? Yes, we love all people in a general way and we love the whole church family in a general way, but there's specific subgroups that we have a specific duty to fellowship with and to minister to. I just wanna challenge you in love, when you get to Jesus one day and you give an account, as the Bible says, for the deeds done in the flesh, I think you might say your pastor well organized you to live out these truths.
Did you take advantage? Of the structure, the biblical structures given to you by your pastors to live out the duties I commanded you in the Word of God. You won't be able to say, well it was just overwhelming, there's 800 people, you know, just can't do it.
No, time out. Did your elders not organize you into small groups so everybody could get on this and not be worn out and exhausted? Now I'm gonna end just mentioning the kind of fellowship that you need to be looking for. There's no perfect churches, there are no perfect fellowships, and if you were to find the perfect church and you were to join them, then you would ruin it.
So would I. And far too often, when we try to preach this so that it gets kind of in your bone marrow and you kind of sense it, you think on fellowships, and I remember this as a brand new Christian when I was visiting churches and getting to know some congregations and churches and I would think, I don't feel that commonality of faith here, I don't feel that commonality of hope in Christ, and I sure don't feel that commonality of agape, God-wrought, spirit-wrought, love in my heart with these people. And the truth was, there's a reason why I didn't feel it because a whole lot of them didn't have it. As a brand new believer with no Christian background, I would ask myself all the time, have these people experienced what I've experienced? 40, 50, 60, 70% of them scarcely even came to church. So it makes it real hard for people to take the biblical text and really grasp it when they're in congregations where the majority of people in the congregation are probably not God's children. They're cultural Baptists. They're cultural evangelicals. They've gone through a few motions.
They haven't experienced the radical work of the Spirit of God birthing faith, hope, and love inside of them. That's just the truth. I can't make it any other way. And don't pat ourselves on the back. God's let us make a lot of a territory up over these 44 years together as pastor and people, but we're not perfect.
We haven't arrived, but there's a difference between being on track and rounding the bases versus never getting out of the dugout. So if you're looking for a fellowship to bind yourself with and in, here are seven aspects, seven things to look for. Number one, make sure they're Bible saturated. Now that's a little different, what I'm emphasizing, a little different than just using the Bible a lot. A lot of people use the Bible a lot and they use it wrongly.
What I mean is they have a thorough biblical theology. That means the Bible's great overall message and point is what they function under. And I'm gonna give you the entire purpose of the Bible in three points.
Are you ready? This is a biblical theology class for the next 60 seconds. If you don't know the broad truth of the Bible where to function under, here it is. The priority of God's glory, the preeminence of God's son, and the centrality of the local church.
If you get that right, everything else comes under that. It's all about God's glory. God is most glorified through the work of his son and the premier work of his son, which is the son's building of his church. If I was gonna join a church, I'd sit down with the elders very respectfully and very humbly, the Bible requires that, holding them in high esteem and I'd say, sir, are you and the elders here wholly committed to the glory of God, the preeminence of God's son and the centrality of the church for the purposes and glories of God for time and even eternity? I'd want them to say, well, absolutely.
That's what I'd want to hear. Number two, spirit empowered. They must wholly, radically throw themselves on the spirit of God using the word of God to change men and women, boys and girls to build the church of God. We're not gonna look at gimmicks and craftiness and creativity and nonsense and worldly amusements.
One of our nearby congregations, I won't call it a church, had a service a while back and they began the service with the old rock song, Highway to Hell. What blasphemous nonsense. When you do all that kind of nonsense to keep people coming, here's what you're saying. We do not believe in the Holy Spirit.
We gotta amuse people by the flesh because we do not believe the spirit of God is powerful enough to use the word of God to build God's church. So I would want to hear from those elders, yes, we're not perfect, but we are really striving to be spirit empowered. I see some of the family back there, but I'm so thankful for brother Jackie Shelton, the dear, dear brother. He's in heaven.
Jackie Shelton sent me down as a young man. He'll never know. Well, he might know in heaven right now, but he'll never know when he sent me down as a young pastor.
He explained to me, Jeff, and he'd say, I'm not there. You'll never be there, but strive to see the spirit do the work, not man. It changed my ministry.
I just never got over it. And I've just built on it for these years. Spirit empowerment. Number three, preaching the word based, that whatever else the church does well, it is striving to preach the word of God. Local church centered expositional preaching. Exposition should be the mainstay of the pulpit. It shouldn't be the only thing. There is a thing called expositional idolatry where sometimes you need to take a break.
I'm doing that now and address some things to help the body. It's an expositional usage of a text, but just going through books of the Bible and saying you can never, never, never, never do anything different is not right, but it should be the mainstay. By joining a church, I'd want to talk to that elder body and say, are you committed strongly to expositional preaching? Verse by verse, chapter by chapter through books of the Bible as the mainstay of the pulpit. Number four, world missions in passion. I would want to know, elders, is mission something you do or is missions the reason you exist? Listen to me, everything we do at Grace Life Church is so that we might reproduce it around the world. And if it's thoroughly biblical, it's always cross-cultural. Did you hear that? Man, in my early days of doing mission work, all of these missiologists had taught us when you go to India when you go to Africa, you got to be like them, you got to think like them, you got to eat like them.
No, you don't. I'm not one of them. But if you go, and I found this out over, if you go and if you preach to them the Word of God and the Spirit of God, they'll love you. Missions is not one of our ministries. Missions is the reason we must exist. I would talk to those elders and say, is that where you're headed?
No. Number five, every member of ministry, you never achieved that fully, but are you striving as a church to function in structure so that the body is doing the work of ministry, which glorifies God? Look, you're the proof of the pulpit. If you're not living at ministry, then the Spirit of God is not doing much in your lives. And while we never arrive, there's a difference between having a Sunday event and belonging to a church, which has a Sunday service.
The body life through small groups is foundational. I would talk to those elders and say, do you have a thoroughly biblical plan that increasingly grows so that the body of Christ is ministering to one another as the New Testament describes so that God is seen in their lives and in their ministry? Number six, home life discipleship. Are you committed that your people will take the truths and the doctrines of your future and you're trying to teach them to take that home and let's be real at home? Not a church at home. There's only one church, but the truths of God's word alive in our home life. And then number seven, biblical church discipline. You never arrived there.
You're never perfect. But I would ask those elders, are you committed that when somebody is radically and openly in rebellion and you've tried to help them and they refuse to even try, will you keep God's church pure and clean by dismissing those people according to the teaching of the New Testament? Now listen, it's very, very, very rare to find churches who've gotten very far in probably most of these. But you may find a young pastor out there with some elders who said, we're gonna do our best. You know what you do? You throw your everything with them and say, I'm for you. I'm for you.
Give them your best support, best help, and best encouragement. Or you can stay here at Grace Life Church and join the club. You know, Manley Beasley was a godly, godly man that was really kind of like Vance Hadner.
He was just too good for his time, to be honest. And Manley Beasley used to say all the time, a lot of people join churches because they say, well, they need me. He said, that's wrong. You need to find out what God's doing and get in on it. Think about it. You need to find out what God's doing and get in on it. I mean, I'm so glad and so happy that God has grown us and let us come to the point where we have dozens and dozens and dozens of church plants around the world and what, 24, 28 guys in our pastors training institute. A number of them in the next few years should be going out.
We're getting ready probably the next year to put one or two out there. Two, I know for sure. So that we can take what we are and reproduce it in a recently biblical. Because the only way you can have real fellowship is to have the creation of Christ placed in you by the Spirit. Your faith, hope, and love. And then get with other people who have that same faith, that same hope, and that same love.
And by the way, it's a little crude but I use the statement it's worse than cocaine once you taste it. Once you taste that kind of fellowship, it's like, oh my goodness. I can't go back to traditional, cultural, Baptist evangelicalism. I've got to have that fellowship again. In God's Word Good, you can't find this stuff anywhere right there in that book. That's the only place you can find stuff like this.
