All right, we've been studying, we were studying the letters to the churches in Revelation. And we will eventually be getting back into Ephesians. But this morning, because of Partnership Sunday, I want you to take your Bibles and turn to Hebrews chapter 10 with me. Hebrews 10. And this morning, I want to talk about the church as it relates to virtue.
The church as it relates to virtue. And I think it's an important subject. Probably one of my favorite texts on the church is the text that we will look at, and we'll get into the text itself a little bit. But I want to give you two different metaphors for the church this morning as it relates to virtue. I don't know if you like to study sort of odd things that are in our world or not.
But if any of you have ever seen this, but you may have studied and looked at the Svalbard global seed vault. But it's a fascinating thing if you read about it and learn about it. Back in 2008, Norway was sort of the beginner of it, and they're the owners of it. But Svalbard, as you can see on the global map up there, is way up in the Arctic. It's about as far north as you can possibly get.
And they built, as you can see in the model, a vault that goes back 150 meters into the ground with multiple compartments and so forth. And the intent was that nations would partner with them to preserve the seeds that we have in the variety of plants and foliage and crops in our world in case of some cataclysmic disaster, in case of a change in climate, in case of a nuclear war, in case of any kind of thing, that if we all end up in sort of Mad Max and Thunderdome, that we actually then can still grow something and we're not walking around like the Book of Eli shooting rabbits and all that kind of stuff. that we can actually have a civilization. And so they partnered and they did this kind of thing to preserve. And so they have this unique climate set.
And I wanted to read to you a couple of things that I read on the internet that were summaries of it, because the way they're worded has kind of an application, in my view, for how I see this as a metaphor for the church and virtue. The seed vault's the ultimate insurance policy for the world's food supply, securing millions of seeds representing every important crop variety available in the world today. I think there's 1.2 million variety in this vault. and offering options for future generations to overcome the challenges of climate change and population growth. Another summary read this way, the vault's purpose is to protect the genetic diversity of humanity's food crops from threats like nuclear war, climate change, and plant disease.
The seeds could be used to breed new varieties that are better adapted to these challenges.
Now, listen. I think when you go to work I think the people at your work need love. I think they need it. I think they need you to be the kind of person who can naturally be loving. That is the kind of person who would actually have to work to not be loving.
I think they need the kind of person Who is hopeful? The kind of person who would actually have to work. To not be. A person of hope. I think they not need someone.
who can believe. And they need to see what it looks like. to be a person of faith.
Someone who actually would have to work to not believe and trust the promises of God.
So the question is: if the world is the way it is, where in the world would you be able, in real space and time, to preserve those virtues. And the answer is The church. This is the place. For the apocalypse, the moral apocalypse. The existential apocalypse, the bankruptcy of relationship that goes on in our world, this is the place where those seeds of virtue are preserved.
But there's a second metaphor, because they're not just preserved. It's not just a seed vault in that sense, but it's also like a greenhouse. where you have glass and you can control the temperature within. And you got these greenhouses. My old hometown, a little town of 1,000 people in upstate New York, has this huge greenhouse where they ship plants all over the country from.
The weather gets cold in upstate New York in the winter, and yet they're able, in the midst of the winter months, to still keep the temperature within the climate controls of these glass enclosures exactly what they need for the plants to thrive. But it's glass enclosed for two reasons. One is it lets the sunlight in, and then the glass, instead of it just rebounding away, the glass sort of keeps it echoing within that greenhouse. And it allows the plants then to grow and to begin to take root so that they have a stability that they can be shipped off and then planted in fertile soil. Virtue is like that, it's not just preserved in the church, but it actually is like a hothouse.
It's God's divine hothouse for it to grow. Right? Because it's here that you rub me wrong.
Sorry, Jerry, I don't mean to point you out. But you rub me wrong, and then you and I get to set the gospel down in between us, and we get to figure out what love looks like. It's here that I face disappointment in my life, and I get to bring it to you, and you get to speak things into my life that remind me about hope in Christ and in the gospel that's not fleeting. It's here that when my faith feels doubtful and it feels like it's stumbling, we get to open the word, we get to come back and re-anchor ourselves in the context of this gathering, in the context of the regularity of this gathering, to be able to say there's something greater that we get to live for. And we get to lift our eyes up above the horizon of a fallen world and look into the skies of faith and begin to trust God in a greater way.
So the church is in that way a greenhouse, as it were. It's a bit of a seed vault, if we use that metaphor, to preserve and to grow the virtues. Of the faith. And that is one of the reasons, it's not the only reason, but it is one of the reasons why the church. As God's institution is so crucial and so Essential.
And It is also a reason why when I feel in my spirit the impulse to run away from that. I have to ask myself why I am walking out of God's ordained greenhouse. What is it right now? That I am saying, I have a different way. You said this would be the way for me to do these things, but I've got a better way.
In my experience, is that when I have struggled with God's way, and I have at various points in my life, I have found. that my way is never better than his way. And so what I'd like you to do is look with me at Hebrews chapter 10. I'm going to give you one quote. From a book called Rediscover Church by Colin Hanson and Jonathan Lehman.
But I love the quote, so I'm going to read it to you, and then we're going to look together at this text. They write, sometimes people like to say, and I hear this a lot. Um A church is a people, not a place. Mm-hmm. You are the church.
Okay. It's slightly more accurate to say that a church is a people. assembled in a place. That's an important qualification. It's an important qualification because we are the church called to our local context.
We are the church in this place and space, in this time, in this situation. Goes on. Regularly assembling or gathering makes a church a church. This doesn't mean a church stops being a church when the people aren't gathered any more than a soccer team stops being a team when the members are not playing. The point is, regularly gathering together is necessary for a church to be a church, just like a team has to gather to play in order to be a team.
If you never played a soccer game with your team, but you said, I'm a part of this team, we might wonder what in the world the team meant. The nature of being part of a team is that you gather together for a particular function to a particular end in a particular location. That's part of the nature of what it means to be a part of a team. And so it is with the church. We gather in a particular place for a particular end as a particular people.
Now, to that end, Look with me in Hebrews 10. We're going to look in verse 19 through 25, but what I want you to just get a little contextualized so we can land properly is that this is a. like a transition text, and and it's an important transition text, in the letter to the Hebrews. And there's kind of two transitions.
So in Hebrews, just to summarize, Right, Hebrews is all about A body of Jewish people Who The author has been giving a picture, a theological portrait of Jesus, saying, Jesus is greater than the traditional religion of your past. And it's an invitation. It's like an extended evangelistic sermon to say, come follow him. Look. He's greater than the angels.
Look, he's greater than Moses, the greatest of the prophets. Look, he's greater than the high priest. Look, he is the great high priest after the order of Melchizedek. And he puts these colors up here and a portrait to set in front of them and to say, look at the vision of Christ and how beautiful he is. Don't you want to follow him?
But he knows that there are voices, like all of us, that pull us back to the thing we're trying to leave.
So five times along the way, he says Don't go. Don't go. There's death if you leave. You'll show you didn't believe at all. You'll show you followed him with mixed motives.
You'll show that you followed him out of social pressure. You'll show that you thought he was a novelty and an innovation. You'll show that you didn't understand who he was.
So don't leave.
So I write chapter 2. You get this warning, chapter 2, verse 1 through 4. Chapter 3. Kind of segueing into the beginning of chapter 4, you get another warning. Chapter 6, famously, verse 4 through 8, you get another warning.
Chapter 10, verse 26 through 31, you get another warning. And then chapter 12, you get another warning.
Now, As he gives these warnings, he's continuing this portrait. And he kind of comes back to it, warns him, then comes back to painting the portrait, warns him, comes back to painting the portrait.
Now in the last three chapters of Hebrews. Though they weren't written as chapters at the time. We have the last three chapters. It's as though he pauses with them and says, You see that portrait that we painted? You see it?
Let me tell you. what that's supposed to do for you. And it's supposed to do three things for you. Chapter 11. It's Supposed to Make You a Person of Faith.
Chapter 12, It's Supposed to Make You a Person of Hope. Chapter 13, it's supposed to make you a person of love. The text that we're going to look at is the introduction, so to speak, to chapters. And so, We're going to think about the virtues of the church that are rooted in the gospel as we begin, because he's going to make a transition from painting this picture of Jesus, how he's a great high priest, how he brings this wonderful gospel, how his covenant is greater than the old covenant, his priesthood's greater than the Old Testament priesthoods, how the sanctuary in which he sanctifies you is a heavenly, greater sanctuary than the earthly tabernacle. On and on and on and on and on.
His sacrifice is a greater sacrifice. And he uses all these priestly elements to point to the reality that he's the great one that you ought to be following and pursuing and you ought to be looking to for your salvation so that you could have the virtues of faith, hope, and love working in your life.
So Where would those virtues work themselves out? In his transition, he tells them.
Okay. And it's as though he sets down the community to say, the community is the place where you'll pursue him best and where the fruits of what a genuine, God-honoring gospel life actually will look best. It'll be fueled best, the greenhouse that helps it to grow.
So, with that in mind, he's just finished talking about Christ's sacrifice and its singularity and its wonder and how it is superior to the sacrifices of the Old Testament. And we pick up verse 19. Therefore, brothers Since, so in light of all we've said, in light of the picture that's painted. He's going to give two things. The virtuous church are rooted in the gospel regarding two I'll put them both up here for you.
You'll see them because they both follow the word sense. Therefore, in light of this, since, number one, we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh.
So first Since we have this gospel, and since you don't have to come and assess and go, man, okay, am I a perfect person? Have I done more good than I've done bad? Where am I on the moral equation? How are things working out here on the scales for me? You don't have to do that.
Instead, a new and living way has been purchased for you, right?
So immediately your mind goes to Jesus saying in John 14:6, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. But the language here. is interesting. The language has to do with it's opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh. What does that even mean?
How is his flesh a curtain, and what's happening? And there's a symbolism that's moving here, right?
So in the Old Testament Tabernacle, right? To go from the holy place to the Holy of Holies, they'd go through a curtain.
Well, they'd go through a curtain, really, even to get into the holy place. But to go to that place, the Day of Atonement, where the high priest would go one time a year, they would go through a curtain.
Now, famously, when Jesus dies, we read in Luke chapter 23, verse 44 and 45: it was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun's light failed, and the curtain of the temple. was Torn in two. What was it that caused the curtain of the temple to be torn in two?
Well It's obvious it was the rending. The tearing, and this is what the author of Hebrews is trying to get us to understand, of his flesh.
So the tearing of his flesh ends up Yielding the tearing of the temple, which then symbolizes the fact that he has, through his flesh, broken down any barrier that would keep you and I in a law-filled context where we have to sort of soupnazi our way into his presence. Where we have to make sure everything is cleaned up, that everything is exactly as it should be.
Now, it doesn't mean, as you'll see a little later on, that we're not trying to be reflective in our lives. We have communion, we celebrate the Eucharist here. You come down. One of the great things you ought to do during that time is be reflective about your life and ask yourself questions about the sin in your heart and confess those things to the Lord. But understand: if you come and you somehow, you know, something slipped your mind and you didn't confess that to the Lord, and then you go back and take communion, you're not drinking judgment on yourself.
I remember growing up in church, and sometimes it felt like that. You better make sure everything's confessed, or else, man, you'll drink judgment on yourself. Oh, okay, well, I'm cleaning my own. Going back over everything I've done, letting my life flash before my eyes once a month. trying to make sure I had everything confessed up.
Here's news for you. The gospel is for sinners. Like The gospel is for forgetful sinners. The gospel is for wayward sinners. Like, you don't come down because you've already gotten holy down the aisle.
You come down because you're a sinner.
Now, anytime you come to worship, it's a good thing. To say, am I walking in clean, pure fellowship with the Lord? Is there resentment here that I have toward the Lord? Is there frustration I have? Or are there things that are clogging up and sort of polluting my fellowship with the Lord because I'm harboring sin in my life?
That's a good thing to do. I just want you to understand that what we celebrate is that we didn't make the way. That's that's a I say it again. You didn't say amen. And I just said that you don't have to work for your salvation, and he gave you an eternal gift so that you'll spend eternal bliss with him and with each other.
And all of the things in this life that are making your life fall apart actually don't amount to a hille bean.
So we're going to try it again, and we're going to see if you have a pulse.
Okay? He made a new and living way so you don't have to make your own way. Oh.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Lord.
Okay, that's very discouraged.
Now I'm encouraged.
Okay. Secondly, you have a great high priest. A great priest that intercedes for us. Look at it. And since we have a great priest...
over the house. of God. Come together and they make this way in which the virtues of the gospel now can be realized in our heart. Up until now, in Hebrews, he's made quite a bit about Jesus being a high priest. Hebrews 3:1.
Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus. The apostle and high priest of our confession, Hebrews 4:14. Since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. Let us hold fast our confession.
So. Verses 19 through 21. Are just establishing the fact that the gospel is paving the way for something. What is it paving the way for? We're going to read 22 through 25.
We're going to start at 25, come back to 22 through 24, and then come back to 25.
So watch. Let us Let us, let us, that's in Greek a subjunctive verb. It's a way of saying this is what you should do. Think of the word should in English when you if somebody ever says that's a subjunctive verb. Should, it's what you ought to do.
So we're in the moral oughts. Let us What's first? Draw near. We'll come back to that with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Second, Let us.
Hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for you promised us faithful. Third, Let us. Consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, and then we get a Participle. Not neglecting to meet together. It is telling us How We obtain The three virtues that have been mentioned.
of faith Hopefully and love. It's telling us how they are developed. In what context? What is the hothouse for the development of Christian virtue? 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.
So the virtues of life are realized in the church. in the church.
So what I want to do is take each verse, 22, 23, 24, just pick them apart a little bit, not a ton, but a little bit, and it will kind of wrap us up. These virtues, if you just want to see, right? You got the virtue, the verse, and then they prefigure a chapter coming up.
So, this is a preview, it's not unusual. The book of Hebrews actually does this repeatedly, about four times. There are little previews, and then he talks about it.
So he'll preview something. He previews angels and Jesus in regard to angels in chapter 1, verse 4, and then he talks about it the rest of chapter 1. He'll preview the issue of the high priest and Jesus in a priestly role in chapter 2, around verse 17, 18, 19. And he does that, and then he kicks into that later on. And here he previews where he's going to go in faith, hope, and love, and then he explains it, explicate, pulls it out, shows us a bunch about all three of those sequentially in chapter 11, 12, and 13.
The virtues In The church.
Now, we're going to talk about each of these, but I want to say one other thing about this. I want you to I want to give you a a metaphor to just kind of put in your mind. Um Imagine that you, in a metaphor, symbolically are like a boulder in a stream. You're like a boulder in a stream. Um as a boulder in a stream.
Depending upon the seasons, the waters can run docile and placid. Or they can run with kind of a almost a torment of sorts. They can be intense. Force. coming against you.
As a boulder in a stream. The stream being life in a fallen world. You need boulders upstream. You need boulders who can tell you. and can shout down to you.
What's coming? You need boulders upstream that you can look at it. And you can see how they handle cancer. how they handle the death of their spouse. how they handle the loss of a job.
how they handle. a relationship torn apart. how they handle their children walking away from the faith. How they handle the dissolution of a marriage. You need boulders upstream you can look at.
Who can take those waters on in Christian virtue?
So that you can learn. A course in applied theology. through their life. And then you need boulders who are here with you. who you can talk about what you're seeing.
who you can talk about what you're learning. who can say, no, that's probably not the best perspective. Who can say, I see it from this angle over here in the stream, and you only see it from this angle in the stream, and you need a more rounded-out perspective. You need people running parallel, so to speak, or implanted parallel in the stream. And then you need people downstream.
That you can see you know what's coming? I saw, I've lived. Get ready. And you need to be able to tell them: this is how virtue gets passed on, this is what discipleship is about. Discipleship is not, our cohort discipleship is not about the annual curricular subjects that you would read, evangelical convictions in there, and just spend all your time nosing a book.
It is about learning some of those things, but it's about looking at each other and learning how in the world are you handling the fact that right now you have asked us three times to pray about this situation and nothing has changed. Is your faith falling apart or are you okay? Maybe you've asked the group for two years to pray, for eight years to pray about something in particular and it's not changing. Are you doing okay? How are you processing life together, working together and learning from one another what we can learn in living in the space of both comfort and discomfort in those contexts?
So you're a boulder in a stream. You got to have boulders upstream, you got to have boulders around, you got to have boulders downstream. That's what it means to be in the church. And you're constantly being formed by the force of the water. Constantly?
being worn against in ways. And you can resist it. You get angry about it and get frustrated about it. But anything worth learning in life is almost always learned in some level of suffering and tension and difficulty.
So let's think about these three. Verse 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. What characterizes a person who's ready to draw near? You're told, let us do what?
Draw near. Okay. How you do that? What would it even mean to draw near? We're going to have our men's retreat.
Here's a big plug. If you haven't signed up, you're probably not a Christian.
Now, I'm only kidding. Don't take that seriously. But sign up, and then I'll think you are. But we have our men's retreat. We got a guy named Dennis Keating coming.
And he's going to talk to us. And I asked him specifically to talk about something. And I asked him out of some ministry he said to me in my life, that's why I want him to talk about this theme with you men, about what it means to drink deeper of God.
So we're going to think a little bit together on our men's retreat with an older man who has spent a lot of years in ministry learning through his own hardship. of what it means to drink deeply. That's similar to the idea of drawing near.
So just as a little primer, what would it mean? How would you even be the kind of person that could draw near?
Well, he gives us actually three things. We'll just kind of put them up here, up on the screen. He gives us first. This idea that you got to have a true heart. You see that in the text?
He says, let us draw near. Let us draw near. With A true heart.
Well, a true heart has two things, two ways it cuts. On the one hand, you could use the word sincere, that speaks of intentionality. Mm-hmm. You're genuine. In your heart.
You're not a hypocrite.
So you won't be able to draw near to the Lord if you're a hypocrite. Fair enough. But Just wanting it And having authenticity doesn't guarantee nearness either. Because you could authentically drive your chariot over a cliff. You could, with a good heart, take the whole family over the cliff.
So it's not just intention, but it's also accuracy. It's also direction. It's also direction. So to have a true heart is both a kind of characteristic in one sense, a flavor of it, a sincerity, an authenticity, a genuineness, but it's also quantifiable. It's also, are you actually right?
Are you actually headed in the right direction?
So the first thing to draw near is you've got to know where you're going. And you got to have a sincerity because God knows hypocrisy. And if you have ever read your Bible, if you've ever read the Gospels at all, you know that Jesus doesn't do well with hypocrisy. It's the one thing that just... Riles and Again and again.
True heart. Secondly, a faith-filled conviction. Look at the text. He says, a true heart in full assurance.
Okay. Full full confidence, if you will. It's actually, it's used four times, the word there, assurance, used four times in the New Testament. One of them is about interesting the conviction of the Holy Spirit in your life. that you have a kind of Uh sense about you.
that this is how you ought to be.
So you have a full assurance, a convicted faith. Filled sense about what it means that your best information. Your best relational context Your best place to find comfort is with God and not with anything else. and not with anyone else. but it is with him and him alone.
Third, A cleansed life. Look at the text. With our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Well, in the gospel, this is what happened to you. The washing of regeneration we read in Titus 3.5. It's probably playing on some Old Testament texts here where the priest would have washings and libations, for example, before he'd go in on the Day of Atonement. But the idea is that you are one who has been cleansed of your sin. You're one who says, My only way that I can possibly access.
Comfort, perseverance. Virtue in my life is by running to him. and him alone and I'm going to do that because he is the right. One. I'm going to guard myself from things that might get me off, almost like Christian and Pilgrim's Progress, where I could get swayed by alternative voices and views, and I could get swayed by my own fearful propensities or proclivities to pull away from him.
Instead, I'm going to keep pressing forward with a true heart, a faithful conviction, and a cleansed life. I want to talk about hope, but I do want to remind you of this, that faith grows in the church. Why? Because as we set that out to draw near to God, what happens?
Well, what happens is what we're doing right now. What's happening is what's happening with this book in our children's ministry. We get The best information upon the most important topics because we anchor ourselves to a text of Scripture and we look at it in its context and we say we're confident that this is the best information we could possibly have. In other words, the word becomes a guide to us. Secondly, We gather together and we sing.
We read scripture and we pray. Together and individually, in orienting our hearts to a vision of His glory, His worth, and His majesty in worship. Because we believe that as we see and envision the great North Star, so to speak, we then get our compass realigned. Third, we march our bodies down here at the time of communion in the Eucharist, or we stand and sit here as we open this baptistery and people come down the steps and they're baptized, commencing their walk with the Lord before us all, and we receive them into fellowship because the ordinances of the church witness to the gospel, and together we say, yeah, that's really good, and we could easily get our eyes off that thing. We've got to get ourselves back on it.
Word, worship, and the witness of the gospel is why we do it in this context. It's constantly bringing us back to the center again and again. Verse 23. Let us, secondly, hold fast the confession. of our hope Without wavering.
A clines is the Greek word for wavering. Literally, it's the only time it's used in the New Testament. But here's what it literally means. You pull it apart. A is called alpha-privative.
It's like the word, if we say important or unimportant, it negates it. It's the little prefix that negates in Greek.
So, a clines. It's the idea of something not being able to be bent. It's not able to be bent. It's something that is resolved. It's something that doesn't sway.
It's something that doesn't move in that way. It has a rootedness. has a healthy rigidity. Not an excessive rigidity, but a healthy rigidity. Why?
Well, it's rigid in hope because there's a truckload of stuff competing for your hope. Addiction is all over because it's competing for hope. Like at the end of it, why is he or she immersed in pornography? Because she's hopeless. Because he's hopeless.
Why that substance? They're hopeless. Why work? Because they think their hope is there. Why in absolutely spending money like a wild Banshee?
Because they think that that actually is what brings them some sense. In which they have a way of finding comfort in this world. It just helps me. Just give me a break. It's why actually most people outside of this building this morning.
If they were being honest, they would pat you on the head and they would say, I'm so glad. I love you, Joe, and I'm just so glad that this religion thing is working for you. It's just wonderful that it's really working for you in your life. Because there's a little coping mechanism for Joe to get through life in the hardship. And he gets with this little band of delusional, phantasmic brothers and sisters who all believe the same lie.
And then we all get patted on the head by the world because it's so good. You could be out there selling drugs, couldn't you, Nadine? But it's good news for you. You're not robbing a liquor store because you go to church. They don't know.
They don't know. They don't know that In the darkest moments of your life, it's the gospel that rescues you internally. They don't know that. We need to know it. They need to know it.
It's why they're swapping out coping mechanisms. Like Oprah swaps out shoes. Boom, boom, boom, boom.
Next, next, next, next, next. They don't know what they don't know. They'll only be able to see it through you. This is the hothouse where hope grows. Not wavering.
Okay. To not waver in it means you don't give into doubt. You'll have doubts, but you don't yield to them. It means that you don't give in to sin. You will sin, but you keep fighting, you keep fighting, you keep fighting.
It means you don't yield to pressure, you'll feel pressure. It means that you don't give in to swaying your vision. You stay zeroed in and you stay focused. The text here says, Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promises faithful. I read John Owen, I think it is.
It says something like, Why is it that a confession wavers? Why is a confession waiver? Because a confessor wavers. Because a confessor wavers. What does that mean?
Well, it means that if you're only focused upon the X's and O's of the content of what you confess, you're missing the fact that what actually will cause your faith to be upended is not contrary propositions, but it is a set of things that assault you personally. It's a set of things that you're not prepared for in your life to deal with by way of difficulty and danger. That thwart you, and all of a sudden, now you'll start to reframe your confession because you, as the confessor, are getting reframed. Right.
So here's a little side note about ethics, and then we'll move on to the final point. The side note is this. There's all different kinds of theories of ethics. in philosophy. You could be a varied form of a utilitarian, where basically you look and say what's in the best interest of the most number of people, and then we will form our strategy of what we will do based upon whatever works for the most number of people.
You could be an egoist. Which is sort of a micro-utilitarian. You don't look at everybody else and don't do the math to see what works in the best interest of everyone. You look and say, what's in my best interest? And whatever's in my best interest, that's what I'll do.
You could be what's called a deontologist. That's somebody who looks and says, I do it because it's a duty to do it. And so I kind of, in a stoic fashion, I need to just simply do my duty.
Now, there's probably in various ways context for some of those. I'm not sure the egoist there's much of a context for. A very periodic occasion on a utilitarian, very periodic. But certainly deontology has its own. Place in which sometimes we just need to do things.
But the prince of all ethical theories. From my vantage point, without question, is what's called virtue theory. And that's why I wanted to talk to you about this. Because you always will do and always will act out of who you are.
So if all we focus on is what's being done, we've missed the fact that genuine act comes from a real person. And so if you are filled with faith, guess what you will have? Faith. If you are a faithful person, you will then act with faith, and it will be hard for you not to. Could you imagine being the kind of person that is so characterized by love, as we began, that you just simply can't help but love.
You just don't know what to do outside of love. It's unnatural for you to not love. It's unnatural for you.
So, virtue theory doesn't focus on what you ought to do, it focuses on who you are that does. And you move from there then out.
So, what we want to do is be the kind of people who say, what kind of people in Lifeline community are we becoming? Because if we become the right kind of people, your neighbors will be reached. If you become the right kind of people, then this community will know. If we become the right kind of people, people outside of this community, your family will know. it will become apparent.
So we move to the final virtue. Number uh verse 24. And let us, thirdly, Consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.
So let's think about it. Let's consider it. To stir Up. One another.
So, to do that, we got to think about this word: paroxysmas. It's a Greek word. If you have a paroxysm What does that even mean? It's not a word we use every day. You don't go, oh, get over your paroxysm.
Well, you could tell somebody in a way that. Here's what paroxysm is. It can be used a couple of ways, but one of them is a violent, sort of like emotional outburst. or attack. You're having this like you just went emotionally off the rail, and you were right here talking about life.
Yeah. It's on berserk.
Alright. You like Anger on Inside Out or Ben Stiller on Mystery Men. Mr. Furious, you just lose that. You have a paroxysm.
Another medical use of paroxysm is when you have a violent physical episode. When I had to have like four inches of my small intestine resected, I know you wanted to know that, and I just wanted you to be aware of it. But I had to have that happen once.
Well, when that happened, I had a paroxysm. like major league. Like feeling like I was giving birth to, I don't know, septuplets.
something like that, right? It was just horrible, right? Horrible. And it was a paroxysm. Why do I say that word?
Because here's the irony. Let us consider how to paroxysmas each other. The only other use of this in your New Testament Is when Paul and Barnabas divide, and it says they had a paroxysmos. among them. They couldn't agree.
Now, Barnabas didn't walk away hating Paul. Paul didn't walk away hating Barnabas. They realized they needed to run, listen, parallel missions. But don't misunderstand, they couldn't arrive at an agreement. That's why they separate us.
There was a sharp. disagreement.
So some people sort of play this down like we like let us Consider how to stir. up one almost like we you know, it's like we're stirring coffee and it's just, you know, you just gotta help somebody be a little bit better version of themselves and mm. The NIV gets it better. The NIV uses the word spur. Spur.
So that if somebody came by with a set of spurs on, and said, George, I'd like you to move from your seat. It would not Be a wonderful thing for George. in the moment. But if George were going over a cliff, I think he would like somebody to spur him. to stay on land.
rather than fall into the sea. I think he would like that. I think you'd like them to do whatever it took. to keep him. And we get a picture of love here.
But it says consider how.
So I wanted to consider how with you. And I'm just going to bang these out real fast. Consider how. Here's the first thing: you've got to be situational. You have to consider how you have to be situated.
You have to understand more than just this moment. You have to understand the person's story. You have to understand what's at stake. You have to understand how grave the circumstances are, or they're not. You could overspur, so to speak.
You can make a bigger deal out of something than it is. You could underspur. You could not see how serious it is. You got to get the situation. Secondly, it does need to be personal.
To love somebody is not generic. You don't love people. You love A specific person. I have three daughters. Three daughters.
They have parallels because they grew up in our home. But they are different. They have certain things that look like their mother, and certain things that. tragically look like me. And along that path, There are different things each of them have that look like their mother and different things each of them have that look like me and some are the same.
Now what does that mean? It translates into the idea that if I want the same ends I may have to love them in particularly different ways to see different things emerge in their lives. It's personal. And that's the same for each of you. Same for each of you.
There's no counseling encounter. There's no peer encounter that is the same. That's the same. It's all different. It's all different.
You can't say, oh, I dealt with this before. I know exactly how to. No, you don't. Because that person is a different person. and you need to know them.
You need to be purposeful. You need to be purposeful. Read a great little piece the other day, a leadership piece that was kind of dovetailing about family life, but it was also about leadership. And it was the idea about what he called garbage time. We always have this time where we like strategize, right?
Like, you know, you're going on vacation. And you plan these things. We're going to go to the museum, the Smithsonian. And when you say that to your junior high kid, like, do you think they're excited? What junior high kid has ever said, I can't wait to go to the Museum of Natural History?
None, but you're gonna go anyway. And they're going to smile and put on a headset and wish they were listening to something else than this person. This is how it goes, right? But you'll go do that. That's fine.
You're going to go to look at this. Historical monument. You're going to plan to go shopping over here together this day. You're gonna plan this day at the beach and you're gonna map it all out, right? And the point that God was making is that what you end up finding is that the most significant times of your influence in life are not in any of those.
It's in your conversation in the car on the way. Um it's while your order is taking too long at the restaurant. It's when something didn't work out how you wanted it to work out. It's when you spontaneously did this over this and you got caught in the rain and built a memory. It's garbage time.
is the idea. It's garbage time. So here's my encouragement to you, is be purposeful even in garbage time. with each other. Have conversations that lead somewhere.
Have moments that are crucial. How do you do that as a church? How do you do that as a church? Let me give you a practical way you don't do it as a church. You don't do it as a church by gathering Sunday morning, connecting in the foyer, and talking about meaningless nonsense.
You can do that anytime you want. You're friends with each other, and that's great. And I have friends I talk about meaningless nonsense with. That's fine. Yeah.
You do it because you come to this gathering and you're strategic. and you redeem garbage time. You redeem the foyer. You walk out, you see people you don't know, and you ask them about their life. and you learn about them.
You know somebody is discouraged right now, and so you pull them aside and you put your arm around them and you pray with them. You didn't plan for it. You didn't map it out. You didn't send them a memo that we're going to meet over in the corner for prayer. You just spontaneously saw it.
and seized garbage time. To engage. Try to do the unfamiliar when you are here Sunday morning, church. Try to do the unfamiliar. Try to do the uncomfortable.
If you're used to getting up and going out as soon as it's done and walking out to your car, hang out for a while until you're so uncomfortable you can hardly stand it. Just do it. It's good for your soul. And you're you're just like, you don't want to talk to anybody this morning. Talk to a bunch of people, yak it up.
You don't like strangers. Find the strangest looking person you got here.
Okay. Let me look around. Uh Okay, so find that person, and then you go and you engage them, all right? And you go after it with them. But that's how you do it.
Finally, number four, biblical. Biblical. You'll remove anger and gossip. From your life. You remove enablement from your life.
And you seek to love.
Well, he says here, and let us consider how to stir one another, to love and good works. And I love this quote by John Owen, these duties are put in the correct order by the Apostle, for love is the spring and foundation of all acceptable good deeds. Love and good deeds. Remember, you have to be a particular kind of person. If you're going to do particular kinds.
of things. And then we come to that final verse, verse 25. Not neglecting. to meet together. The word is episynagogue.
The synagogue. The Regular Gathering and Assembly Not forgetting, not neglecting, not ignoring. Perpetually the meeting together, as is the habit of some, so apparently it had become a problem. But instead, what do we do? Just come and sit, and bodies in a seat?
No, we encourage. One another.
Need encouragement? I do. You do? These are your boulders. In the stream.
encouraging one another. And then he says, And all the more as you see the day drawing near. I've quoted a bunch of times for you, but I'll quote it again. That famous line by Luther, two days on my calendar, he said, today and that day. And by that day, he meant the day of Christ's return.
And his point was, I'm going to live faithfully in the present and light of that day. I'm going to be a boulder in the stream now of faith, hope, and love in light of that day. I'm going to interact with you in light of that day. I'm going to lean into this hothouse, greenhouse, global seed vault of virtue for that day.
So that's what the church is about. The church is God's choice to do it. We might have chosen something different. We might. You might have chosen a YouTube platform.
Mike. You might have chosen a radio station. Maybe. You you might have chosen a correspondence course of some kind. You might have chosen some virtual aspect.
But God didn't. God chose a relational context. of life on life. around the gospel. With walls around it to say, when you want to go, don't lean back in.
Virtue is happening in you. Virtue is happening. Father, I pray that you would guide and direct us. You'd help us to be a church of virtue. Where you Reign supreme, Lord Jesus, where your glory is seen clearly.
where your word is spoken truly. Where you are exalted above all, and we witness regularly to the truth of your gospel. And we pray that you'd help us to this end. To be your people in this place for this season. In Jesus' name.
Amen.
