#4.

God Commands Us to Enjoy Fellowship

Hebrews 10:2325 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; 24 and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, 25 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. Something that fellowship has in common with all the other means of grace in God's Word is that we are commanded to attend to them in our lives, and the fact that our Lord commands us to enjoy fellowship gives us the strongest possible motivation to do so. As with all His commandments to us, our obedience brings about our highest good, so we should be quick to do as we are told. Let's take a look at this passage of Scripture for a few moments and see if we can understand the rationale behind the command, because this must be helpful to us in our obedience. The writer has stated that we have confidence to enter God's presence thanks to the blood of Christ - a new and living way that Jesus has opened for us. He adds that we have Jesus as our great priest (if we are Christians). Then he tells us four things we should do since these things are true: We should draw near to God with assurance, having clean consciences and cleansed bodies - in other words we are clean inside and out as God looks at us - clean in heart and clean in deed. We should be bold in proclaiming Christ as our way to God and our only hope of heaven We should consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds We should not give up meeting together, as is the habit of some, but should encourage one another as we see God's purposes being fulfilled. This is an interesting list. Would we have chosen these four imperatives for our Christian lives, given that we have a new and living way of access to God and Jesus as our great priest? Clearly there is a lot that can be said on this passage but for our purposes, take another look at the last two bullet points above. In each of them, we see an expectation that true believers will experience true fellowship as they come together. Can you see it? We are to stimulate each other to love and good deeds. We are called to love and to do the deeds God prepared beforehand for us to do but here we are told that we should stimulate one another to live like this. Second, we are to be an encouragement to one another. This can mean to comfort, to console, or to exhort and strengthen - how critical this is when we are trying to live for the Lord in a hostile world! The first challenge to us here is whether this is what we do when we are together. Do we confess our problems and seek to draw alongside one another in comfort and support offered in love? Do we stimulate one another to show the love of Christ and to do the good deeds that we are gifted to do? Remember what we have seen fellowship is and you will

quickly see how this activity truly fits that Biblical pattern, and how miserably short of it our typical practice falls. But now for a statement of the blindingly obvious. Nevertheless, the readers of this letter needed to hear it and so do we. If we seldom meet with our brothers and sisters, how will we stimulate them to love and good deeds? How will we encourage them to stand firm? How will we experience fellowship? In the writer's day and in our own, it is so easy to get into a habit of not meeting together. We skip first the prayer meeting, then the Bible study, then the evening service and then we come less than weekly even to the morning service. Perhaps we don't notice that we have begun to wither spiritually or, if we do, we may not understand why. But fellowship is a means of grace and without it we will not grow in grace - we can only grow weaker and weaker in our spiritual lives. Second, also obviously, it's no good to be in the same room as our brothers and sisters if we never talk with them on spiritual issues (not doctrinal debates, now, but rather seeking to minister Christ to one another where we are in our walk with the Him). Since we are not getting fellowship in this scenario either, this is also a way to shrivel up on the vine, spiritually speaking. The Lord knows we need this fellowship, so here in this passage He commands us to engage in it, and through the pages of this blog we would remind you of your Lord's command, based on His desire for your good and for your blessing. Let's not be slow to obey Him in this!

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