Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 2, 2017 | The 3 Greatest Habits - Joining With The People Of God

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April 2, 2017 | The 3 Greatest Habits - Joining With The People Of God · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible or a cell phone, open to Hebrews chapter 10, 19 to 25.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I want to read to you.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter 10, 19 through 25.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh not too far from the right hand end of your Bible.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just about three millimeters.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And um so anyway, these uh these are great verses, and these are gonna be our text for the morning.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 10, 19 to 20 through 25.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, brothers or sisters and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is his body.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience, and having our bodies washed with pure water.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Our Father, we thank you for your word.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for speaking to us here, giving us these invitations, these promises, these great words.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: We ask it this morning.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: As we study your word, you may keep your promise of blessing us as we worship together, as we study together, as we take the Lord's table together in Jesus' name.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: So this month, uh I've been asking a question which many of us have asked or we wouldn't be in church at all, which is how do we experience God?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: How do we get to know him?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: How do we get to share in his joy?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: How do we get to rest in his favor?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: How do we receive gifts of his grace?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we've learned that God has his regular channels, the means of grace, those well-worn pathways, David Mathis calls them, along which he is so often pleased to pass and pour out his goodness on those waiting expectantly.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of weeks ago, we found a biblical illustration of this in the 2 Kings 5 story of a Syrian general named Naaman, the commander-in-chief of those armies, who had contracted leprosy and eventually came to be healed at the door of Elisha, a prophet in northern Israel, who through a messenger told him he should go dunk himself seven times in the river Jordan, and he would be healed.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And Naaman thought that was ridiculous.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: He said, We've got better rivers in Damascus, and they do, they're cleaner than the Brown River Jordan.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: But his devoted followers, his troops, said, Please do it, it won't hurt anything, and who knows, you might hit the jackpot.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: So he did.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: He went down to the Jordan River and he was healed.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Which was for us a picture that you and I should get in the channel of God's blessing.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: That the Jordan River, which flows from Mount Hermon, could be called the river of God.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that God sins flows or channels of his grace even now.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can get in those channels or if we can get by those roads or thoroughfares, then we will receive God's favor.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: We looked then at a story from the New Testament.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: At a down and outer, a guy that nobody liked, uh man named Zacchaeus, a short guy who had who was stealing money from his own people, the Jews.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: His problem was guilt and loneliness.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he he had decided he would do anything to get out of it, and he had heard that the Lord Jesus was going to pass that way, that he was coming to Jericho, and so in order to see Jesus and to hear Jesus, he climbed up a sycamore tree just so he could hear and see him.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened is that being there allowed him not just to hear and see Jesus, but to even speak back to Jesus.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a life-changing occurrence for him.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the lesson we gathered from that was that you and I should put ourselves in the path of grace.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or as John Piper put it in his book, Why I Don't Desire God, How to Fight for Joy, fight to walk in the paths, or God has promised his blessings.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: What are those paths, we ask?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we concluded that based on theology and on what the great saints down to the years have said, and on some hints from the Bible, that there are three main channels of God's grace: his voice, his ear, and his body.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: That is the word, where we hear God's voice most clearly, prayer, where God bends his ear and listens to us as we speak to him, and fellowship, which is God's body, the church.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: We notice that on the first day of the founding of the church, they started continually devoting themselves to these things, the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so we concluded, we derive from this, that the three single greatest habits in the Christian life are listening to God's voice, speaking in God's ear, and meeting with God's people.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Two weeks ago, on our first Sunday, we talked about listening to God's voice.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: We mentioned that it's kind of a tragedy in some ways that when we hear the words listening to God's voice, many of us now, we don't even think of the word of God.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we have gotten to the place, some of us, where we value words from God outside the Word of God more than we do his clear, inspired words there.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: One of the applications we made is I challenged you to join me in reading through the New Testament, joining the young adults who'd started that program at the beginning of this month, part way through last month, actually.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So a number of you committed to doing that with me, reading one chapter a day, Monday through Saturday, taking Sunday off.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And um, if you've done that with me, and how many of you are reading through the New Testament with me?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you need one of these sheets, there's some out, I think, in the lobby, you can uh email me and I'll send you a photocopy of one, or you can get one from our secretary.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: The first 12 chapters of John are now behind us as of yesterday.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: I estimate if you haven't gone there and you want to join us, that's about 10,000 words, give or take a few.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And at 300 words a minute, which is the average reading rate of the American adult, that'll take you about 40 minutes.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: But you'll have to keep your finger moving.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're like me, you stop every once in a while going, how in the world could KU have lost that game?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So uh that was two weeks ago, and then last week, speaking in God's ear, which is prayer, speaking in God's ear.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: I closed the service by mentioning that I had come across a song recently that I absolutely loved and was listening to the words of, which illustrated my point.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: The song was, I know a place where we can go to lay the troubles down, eating your soul.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: I know a place where mercy flows.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're going down to the river, down to the river, down to the river to pray.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've been embarrassed because ever since I finished that sermon last week, I've been inundated with people who said, Really?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: You've just hearing this song?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're the very last one to the party, Jim.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've been listening to this for years, or you know, something like that.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, my point was that anytime you go down to pray, you're going down to the river where God's blessing flows.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Even though you're distracted, even though you're halting, even though you stumble when you pray and your mind wanders, yet just the very act of you speaking in God's ear places you in the thoroughfare, in the path where Jesus walks, where you receive God's favor, he loves to bless people who care enough about him to listen to him and talk to him.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And as Doug said in the announcements this morning, it just blows our minds, doesn't it, that I have the ear of God.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Not only do I listen to him, but he actually listens to me.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Which brings us to the third of the three greatest habits: hearing God's ear, speaking and uh hearing God's voice, speaking in God's ear.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: This morning, joining God's people.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, next week is Palm Sunday, and I'm going to talk about how Palm Sunday and these three greatest habits merge, how they fit together very nicely.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: So the third is joining God's people.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because listen, there's an element of worship and Christianity.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is what Donald Whitney the Baptist says in what I think is the best book on the spiritual disciplines, spiritual disciplines of the Christian life.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: He says there's an element of worship and Christianity that cannot be experienced in private worship or by watching worship.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know how you have friends who say, Well, I don't go to church anymore, I just watch it on computer, or I watch my favorite preacher on TV.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he's talking about here.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Listen, there are some graces and blessings that God gives only in meeting together with other believers.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or Mathis again, in habits of grace.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: We were made for more than private devotions.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: As nice as it can be to tuck ourselves away in some nook and cranny, all by our lonesome, and read the scriptures and pray.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is not the pinnacle of our Christian lives.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: We were made to worship Jesus together among the multitude, swallowed up in the magnificent mass of the redeemed.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons that I know he's right is that four weeks ago at the end of Route 66, we opened up the book of Revelation.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know immediately what I'm about to say, that when you open the book of Revelation and you enter into a glimpse, when the fogs of this world roll away and you enter into a glimpse of the bliss of heaven, you what you do not see is individual Christians sitting in their easy chairs reading the Bible or even on their knees in their closet of prayer.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: What you see is you and I being immersed in a huge, huge throng from every nation and tribe and people and language, millions upon millions of angels and hundreds of millions of fellow believers worshiping and praising God in corporate worship together.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: As Revelation 7 puts it, verses 9 and 10.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: After this I looked, and there was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: They were robed in white with palm branches in their hands.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they cried out in a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine that one day.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: So let me stop for a moment because if you're imagining it and you're a little like me, some of you may have a little bit of a touch of enoclophobia, which is a fear of crowds.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe like me, you have a touch of claustrophobia, which is a fear of being in tight places.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: You tell me that all of a sudden I'm going to be shoulder to shoulder trying to grab for a breath among a hundred million shouting worship.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds to me like the other place.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, sorry.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it's, and by the way, uh, well, here's my point.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that you and I can trust God enough to do one of two things, to either remove that phobia or else to somehow give us enough private space so that we can worship Him with the others, other hundreds of millions without being anxiety ridden.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it'll be a little bit like have you ever been at a ball game, you know, when you thought you were gonna lose and you won and it was really huge and it was so exciting, and there you were, and everybody was jumping up and down in that ecstasy.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or have you ever been at an outdoor, say, music concert, you know, and you're shoulder to shoulder, even if you've got claustrophobia like me somehow, the ecstasy of that moment just overrides everything else.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And my point is this that I think that the church, the worship of the church is the best foretaste now, the foretaste of what's going to happen in the future.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not that the future is going to be an unending church service.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Lord.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Not that that's gonna happen, but this is a picture of what really is important to God, and that is corporate worship.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: People worshiping together.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: No rugged individualism, friends, in the Christian faith in the future.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: You just don't see it.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, Mathis goes on to say, suggest that of these three, the greatest of these is corporate worship.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: He says it's the single most important means of grace, because like no other means, corporate worship combines all three principles of God's ongoing grace, his word, prayer, and fellowship.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's simply saying that what we do when we gather together here for church, or to witness a baptism, or to take the Lord's table or Sunday school or a small group, or whenever you gather together with God's people, then what you are doing is gathering together in a place where oftentimes there is prayer and there is the word and there is the worship of God.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, he suggests this is the greatest of the three greatest habits.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, so let me clarify, because I know that fellowship is really rather there's a wide yawn going on in many of your minds, and so I want to take you to the tack to the text that we read earlier and show you how fellowship in the Bible is not what we often think about, which is generally cups of coffee and chatting about last week, okay?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And where we invite people to fun and fellowship.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And all we mean by that is getting together in the same room and uh, you know, eating a little food and uh and chatting.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's different than that.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's go back to Hebrews chapter 10, 19 to 25.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: I want to show you how all three of these great habits are right here.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, prayer.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: In Hebrews 10, 19 to 22, the anonymous author said, you and I should draw near to speak in God's ear.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, brothers, he starts, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus, etc., etc., let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's speaking here about prayer, about being bold to go and bend the ear of God.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's prayer.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then he gets to the second one, which is the word.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Here he's talking about the word of God and the promises in the word, about hearing God's voice and holding tight to or gripping those promises.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: But at the climax of the passage, he moves to fellowship.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Meet with God's people, he says, and encourage them.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Verses 24 and 25.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's think of ways, he says, to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Not neglect the meeting together as some do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know still in many of you there may be this lingering thought, well, why are you making such a big deal out of something we've heard about all of our Christian lives?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think part of it is that as I study fellowship in the New Testament, it's so much more than coffee and donuts.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I've come up with four metaphors for what fellowship or koinania is in God's mind.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, fellowship is a fraternity started by God Jesus and the apostles.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: In 1 John 1:3, the beloved disciple invites us.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I want you to have fellowship along with us, meaning himself and the other disciples, the 12.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: The picture is that before the foundation of the world, fellowship went on amidst the members of the Holy Trinity.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then that fellowship was extended by Jesus to the 12.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And now they are inviting you and I.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone who comes to Jesus by faith and becomes a Christ follower in their life has entered the fellowship fraternity.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: I say fraternity because it's sort of a male thing, but it becomes clear in the New Testament that it's a sorority.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you are in a frat or a sorority?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Were any anybody here?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody I've ever talked to who is in one loved it.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe I haven't talked to you, but it's just this cool club where you had friends and you got to know people and so forth.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And in the New Testament, that's the way fellowship is described.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: That there is sort of a this club, this fraternity slash sorority, started by God Jesus and the apostles.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what you're coming to when you come to church or small group.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, fellowship is a band of brothers on a life or death mission to save the world.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you saw Band of Brothers, that movie?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or you see, it was a story about a group of World War II soldiers who made their way across Europe and faced all of these difficulties in their life and death mission.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: See, fellowship is not so much like coffee and donuts as it is like the landing on D-Day at Normandy.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because you and I have landed, here we are with Jesus our captain, and we're on foreign soil.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: The world and the flesh and the devil are arrayed against us, and we're a band of brothers gathering together here like soldiers on this life or death mission to save the world.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Tolkien, J.R.R.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Tolkien, I think was brilliant to entitle the first book of his trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because there was a band of nine of them, very different people, each of them, but they gathered together to commit themselves, sort of a company of the committed, to try to save the world by taking in the ring of power right into the heart of darkness and throwing it into the mountain of doom.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what fellowship is.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a band of brothers and sisters on a life or death mission to save the world.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Not only is what we do here, are we a fraternity and a band of brothers, but we're also a mission partnership.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: The picture on the screen is a picture of about 20 of our high schoolers who last July are standing on a sidewalk, terrified.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm there in the back, scared as any of them.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's Derek Rowe on the front leading us in prayer because we're about to go to two downtown parks in Manhattan and engage people in conversation about Jesus Christ.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in Philippians chapter 1, that's the way Paul defines fellowship when he says, I pray with joy for you all because of your partnership, fellowship, koinanea, in the gospel from the first day until now.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: You are all partners with me in grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and establishment of the gospel, in the advance of the gospel.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, you and I are on a mission team as we gather together, on a mission team to take the gospel, to advance the gospel to a lost and dying world.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not only are we a fraternity and a band of brothers and a missions team, but finally we're a family of equals, inspiring and exhorting and serving each other.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Back to Hebrews 10, 25.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: So clearly, we're a group that motivates one another to acts of love and good works.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Who don't, we don't neglect the meeting together, but we want to encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: In the last service, a woman as I was walked over between the services, in the last service, a woman over in the other auditorium had brought her daughter into the service.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, at this precise point in the sermon, her daughter turned to her and said, I know all of this already.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so I asked, which you're gonna find out it was very interesting, because at that point I asked this question, so what?
• 21:59
  unknown: So
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why is this practical?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Why does this touch my life?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, have any of you had a daughter or a son who said to you, Why do I have to go to church?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I have to go to youth group?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I have to go to Sunday school?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: I never learned anything there.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: I already know it all.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the girl sat up straight because I had just addressed her.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: When I was growing up, my father was actually a Bible college professor.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And my parents both took very seriously the idea of parenting.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so they taught us all 12 of us children to read before we went to kindergarten.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And by first grade, we'd each had to learn a hundred verses and the books of the Bible in order, etc.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you for sure, almost word for word, what they said.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: When any of us ever came home from church or youth group, whatever, and said, Why do I have to go?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't learn anything.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: I know it all already.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: My father, who was not blessed with the milk of human compassion, would have said, and I almost quote, so what difference does that make?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: My mother would take me aside later, and she would say something like this: she'd say, Honey, you understand, um your father and I have taken the responsibility of teaching you.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: We think it's our job to educate you spiritually.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so we don't expect necessarily that you'll ever come home from church or youth group or Sunday school or even Christian school.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: We generally went to public school, but all of us went at least for a few years to Christian school.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or come home from Christian school raving about some new thing you'd learned.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: We don't expect that.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if that ever happens, you know, that'll be nice.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, that's our job.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so you don't go there to get, you go there to give because there are other children not as fortunate as you, and you go there to encourage them.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then my mother would always end with a line about what if everybody did this.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so she would say something like this: she'd say, and if if all the kids stayed home who knew the Bible, what would that leave us with?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say a lot of a lot of fun, actually.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: We'd have a lot of, no.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: So though, but but you understand the point.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: So when we raised our four children, I mean, we're not only having family devotions, we're sending them over to care prayer vowel, we're doing all of this stuff.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you, I was blessed with about the same amount of the milk of human mercy as my father was.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so if any of my children ever came and said, why do I have to go to youth group?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I have to go to Sunday school?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I have to do the I'd have said, compassionately, what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And Melody, I'm sure, would nicely take them aside later and say, darling, listen, you're not there to get, you're there to give.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: A fellowship is not about evaluating how much you get out of it every time.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not about hearing a great and wonderful sermon every week or songs that you especially liked or some new thought that came to you.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's not the point of fellowship at all.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, that cuts directly against the grain today, especially if you watch TV and you've seen the man who is the most interesting man in the world.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is what he's labeled, of course.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the man who uh who always uh ends up with saying, stay thirsty, my friends.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: The stay thirsty man is the playboy who sells Dos Equus Mexican beer.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he is the most interesting man in the world, we are meant to believe, because he loves traveling in the world, he loves beautiful women, and he loves dos Equus Mexican beer.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: But doesn't it strike you for a moment that if the most interesting person in the world is a person who loves adventure and who loves beer and who loves beautiful women, that nearly every male between the ages of 16 and 25 qualifies as the most interesting man in the world?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, which makes it rather commonplace, rather ordinary, and not rare.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, what's rare, what's really interesting, is someone who goes against the grain, who walks against the culture, who stands up against the wind, who lives his life not to gratify his own sensual pleasures, but who lives his life to give rather than to get.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the famous story goes that she went up to a Highland village and went into a Highland cottage and met an older woman there, and they had a wonderful conversation for a while, and the woman, of course, was touched and overwhelmed by the fact that the great Queen Victoria would come and sit and just chat with her.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: As Queen Victoria got up to leave, she turned to the woman and said, Listen, I would really like to do something for you.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the woman said, No, thank you.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Your Majesty, I have all that I need.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: No, said Queen Victoria, I mean I really, really would like to do something for you.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the woman said, Well, Your Majesty, just you're coming to talk to me.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is more than I deserve and all that I need.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then she caught herself and she said, But there is something that I would like.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the Queen said, What is it?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, I would like to know that I will see you one day on the shores of heaven.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And Queen Victoria's famous reply was, You will, because of the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems to me that that's the essence of biblical Christianity, that a humble cottage woman and the most powerful monarch in the world are on equal footing, equal ground at the foot of the cross.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that either one of them can inspire or encourage or exhort the other, knowing that we're all a fraternity, we're all a band of brothers, that we're all siblings in a sense, in the family of God, meant to encourage and inspire and exhort each other.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, in the minutes remaining, I'm almost done here.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of the grace gifts that come to those who put themselves in the fellowship channel?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: When you come to church or small group, when you take the Lord's table or attend a baptism, what are some of the promised gifts that come down to you as you stand in the Jordan River?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I started listing them, and they're way too many, but I boiled it down to four, four that have meaning to me.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the first one is spiritual thaw.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: That one thing that happens to you when you come to church sometimes is spiritual thaw.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Any of you ever felt frozen, you know, on a Saturday or even on a Sunday morning.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Have you heard that famous joke?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know some of you have told me this joke.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can stop.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Don't I want to hear it again because it's too personal.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: About the guy who's in bed on Sunday morning, you know, and his mother's saying you gotta get out of bed and go to church.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't want to, I don't feel like it.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: No, you've got to get out of bed.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, I just don't feel spiritual so much.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: He says you have to.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're the preacher.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, but but you know, like him, like all of us, all of us have these times where we, you know, by the close of the week we go, wow, I didn't live the way I wished I'd live, didn't, didn't, you know, didn't pray the way I wished.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm kind of cold, I feel kind of dead, I didn't read the word this week or whatever.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and then you have a decision to make.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: You want to stay home, but sometimes you know how you pull yourself out and you decide I'm gonna go there anyway.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the universal declaration by everyone who does that is it something thawed in them that morning?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: That you unfroze that somehow through the worship or message or something, God touched you and he rewarded you for coming even when you didn't feel like it?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you simply experienced what Martin Luther did when he said, At home, in my own house, there's no warmth or vigor in me.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: But in the church, when the multitude is gathered together, a fire is kindled in my heart and it breaks its way through.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever felt that?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: I love what Dwight Moody once said.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I've been filled with the spirit, but I leak.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you know it happens, you know, you leave church and you're just so filled with the spirit and you're so pumped up, and then Monday some of it leaks out, and Tuesday there's more oil in the driveway, and Wednesday, and you know, by the end of the week, it's all leaked out.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's why you come back.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, growth.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like what Tim Keller said, he said sometimes sanctification when you come to church, it happens on the spot, unquote.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: On the spot.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean by that?
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically what Paul meant in 2 Corinthians 3.18 when he said, we all with unveiled face in worship, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to the other.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Spiritual growth happens sort of from one day, it sort of happens in spurts, doesn't it?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's not perfectly gradual.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, even as you're sitting there, you can't really point to what it was that the pastor said or the song or whatever else, but sometimes the spirit just jumps you and you grow.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the blessings that come from God.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Third, joy.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: This idea that the joy of others infects you, and your joy is doubled by being with others.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's joy.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And fourth, spiritual thaw, growth, joy, and finally courage.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when you come to fellowship, come to group, come to small group, whatever it is, you leave and you go, okay, I will.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'll hang on in my marriage a little longer.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'll try to be my, you know, with at the job.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'll try to forgive that person a little longer.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'll try to get along with myself, you know.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is you have the courage to continue.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: You have something happened.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: You were encouraged by God as you were present there.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that encouragement, that courage comes from the encouragement of other people, which is Hebrews 10, 25.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an illustration to close.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most gracious Christian leaders I've ever met is Larry Crabb.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Larry Crab's the kind of guy that if you if you were standing on an elevator with him, which is the first time I met him, you know he's the most humble and gracious, and he'd chat with you.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Larry Crabbe, if you don't know, is a Christian psychologist, a Christian counselor who's written dozens of books that have deeply affected tens of thousands of people around the world.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: His book, Effective Biblical Counseling, is famous.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: His book, Inside Out.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote a book called Encouragement, Encouragement, The Art of Caring, a few years ago, in which he told a story that I'd never heard.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: The story was about himself.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: He said that when he was young, he had a speech impediment.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he said that he grew up with this speech impediment and tried his best to hide it from his classmates.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: When he was a senior in high school, he was the student body president of his high school.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he said they were all having one of those big assemblies in the gymnasium, and all of a sudden the principal one day called on him to come up and give an announcement.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: He was not prepared, he was not ready for it, it wasn't a big deal.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: But when he got up there behind the mic and saw all those classmates looking at him, he said his speech impediment suddenly reared itself and he started stuttering, and he couldn't even make it through a simple announcement.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he hung his head and red with shame, he stumbled back to his seat there in the bleachers.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Hung his head and he said, I vowed to myself I would never speak in public again.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: A few years later, he was at church.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he was he was called on, it was a Sunday evening, I think, he was called on to pray.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: A minor thing for someone who goes to church, but for him, somehow, as he stood up, all he could get through was dear Lord.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he started stuttering so badly he couldn't get any further.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he sat down mortified.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of that service, as the pastor was closing in prayer, it suddenly struck him that the last place in the world he wanted to be after the service was over was standing in the auditorium with all of those people looking at him, feeling sorry for him, patting him on the back.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so he started skedaddling back down the aisle.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: An elder in the back happened to see him and caught him right after he had left out the back door.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: That elder put his arm around me, Larry said.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he hugged me and he said, Listen, Larry, if you ever speak up for the glory of God, I'm behind you 100%.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: And Larry traces the beginning of his worldwide Christian ministry to that word of encouragement, to that moment when somebody came to his life into his life and lived out fellowship, Hebrews chapter 10, verse 25, in a way that gave him encouragement and courage to stand up and speak out for God.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what the Lord's looking for from you and from me.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Fellowship is more, infinitely more than coffee and donuts.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: We are, dear friends, a band of brothers.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're a fraternity, we're a mission partnership.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're a family of equals meant to encourage each other.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, as we approach your table, we're counting on you to fulfill your promise, to bless us as we break the bread, as we drink the cup.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: The bread, a symbol of your broken body.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: The cup, a symbol of your blood.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, as we recall and thank you for your death on the cross in this moment, would you give us each the sense that in that moment we're receiving grace from the throne of God in Jesus' name.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.