The Inescapable Need for Concerned, Caring, and Intrusive Christian Community

Paul Simon—if you guys are big Paul Simon fans—once sang a song, and the lyrics—I'm not going to sing them, just so you know—were, "I am a rock, I am an island, I touch no one and no one touches me." If you think about that song, if you've heard it before, the power of that song, the force of those lyrics really is in the way they present an unnatural reality, right?

The idea of being isolated or cut off or removing yourself from others so that they don't touch you and you don't touch them feels so terrifying and terrible. And yet I would argue in many ways that's how we approach Christian community together—that we have this idea, this understanding that I've got a walk with Christ and I've got a relationship with Christ, and it's my job to maintain that relationship and pursue that relationship and live out that relationship. And you've got your relationship with Christ, and it's your responsibility to pursue Christ and to live out that relationship and to have that relationship. And should we bump heads or should we encounter one another in the midst of this journey, so be it. But in the end, it's me and my relationship with Christ, and it's you and your relationship with Christ.

I am a rock, you are an island. We touch no one and no one touches us. And I would argue that nothing could be farther from the biblical expectation. Nothing could be farther from the biblical truth that we are called to as brothers and sisters in Christ. Even using that term, "brothers and sisters in Christ," implies some sense of deep relationship that is meant to bind us together, to bring us together, and to hold us together.

And so this morning, we're taking a step out of the Sermon on the Mount. If you've been with us for a few weeks, we've been going through the Sermon on the Mount, and we're taking a step out for a moment to consider this passage from Hebrews and to think deeply, hopefully, about the necessity for Christian community—and not just any Christian community.

I want to say at the outset, I hate titling sermons. I have a friend who makes fun of me because I have the dumbest titles for sermons because, silly me, my title is typically my text. But for this one, I felt it necessary to title this sermon. And if you notice in the bulletin, it's titled "The Inescapable Need for Concerned, Caring, and Intrusive Christian Fellowship."

And that's really what we need. We need caring, concerned, and deeply intrusive Christian fellowship and Christian community, because I believe that's what the Bible continually calls us to. And really, if you think about this in terms of or in relationship to the Sermon on the Mount, this isn't so much a deviation as much as it is kind of like a lateral move. Because one of the things that Christ is clearly doing in the Sermon on the Mount and through the Sermon on the Mount is forming this new community around himself.

And so we're just a little bit further down the line from Matthew 5 through 7, understanding how that community that Christ is forming around himself is meant to behave and meant to interact with one another. And so that's what we're going to give our attention to this morning. And we're going to come into Hebrews here in chapter 3, kind of like in the middle of the book. And anytime you kind of drop yourself down into a new book, you have to orient yourself first, know your surroundings, lest you do things like wildly take things out of context, which is something we don't want to do here.

And so when we think about the Book of Hebrews—the Book of Hebrews identifies itself, and maybe calling it the book is right, but the Letter of Hebrews, the Sermon of Hebrews identifies itself in chapter 13 as a word of exhortation. It is a pastorally written word of exhortation to a people who are deeply distressed and people who are suffering under great persecution, and are in danger of turning from Christ back to an Old Covenant cultic form of worship in order to alleviate the persecution that they're experiencing. They're kind of looking at their situation, and the weight of pursuing Christ has become so great that the answer they're coming to or the answer they're contemplating is, "Well, let's just go back to the way things were. And this will alleviate the persecution; this will alleviate the difficulty that we have."

But the writer of Hebrews understands the great danger in doing that, because the great danger in turning from Christ is not that you have other options to turn to, but the great danger in turning from Christ is that all you have to turn to is judgment. All that there is outside of Christ is death.

And so the author writes this word of exhortation by putting forward, mainly by putting forward, the superiority of Christ over and against the Old Covenant system. In fact, showing how Christ in his life, in his ministry, in his sacrificial work, and in the new covenant that he inaugurates, not only fulfills but exceeds that of the Old Covenant, such that the Old Covenant is described as obsolete. And as he does this, as he displays the superiority of Christ, throughout the letter there's this constant refrain for the people to hold fast to Christ, to hold fast to their confidence and their confession of Christ, to hold fast to the gospel of Jesus Christ—the gospel that was declared among them, the gospel that they put their faith in, and the gospel that they placed their trust in. In fact, as we look at our passage this morning, it's actually bracketed by this call to hold fast in verse 6 and in verse 14. The author calls on the people to whom he is writing to hold fast to their confession, hold fast to their confidence in Christ.

And so what we want to focus on this morning is that text in the middle there, the text between this bracketed call to hold fast, and see, hopefully, how it unpacks for us the reality of what Christian community is meant to look like and how Christian community is meant to function among us as believers in Jesus.

Christ as the Faithful Son Over God's House

So as we come to verse 7, verse 7 really begins in verse 6. If you look at the first word of verse 7, it says, "Therefore." And every time we see a "therefore," what do we say? What is the "therefore" there for?

Now, I want you to understand something very clearly. I paid a lot of money to learn that both at Bible college and in seminary. In fact, Tim might back me up here: the one thing they teach you in seminary is to know what the "therefore" is there for. The rest of it is just coloring books! And so I got a huge bill to learn that, and you just got that for free. So keep that in mind, please. But the "therefore" means that the author's drawing out a conclusion, an inference from what was said beforehand. So in order to understand where he's moving us and where he's taking us, we have to have a little bit of an understanding of where we've come from.

And so if we back up just to verses 5 through 6 real quick and read those, it says this: "Now Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son."

Now, what the author is doing here is he's in the midst of a comparison between Moses—a deeply revered figure in the Old Covenant, and for good reason—and Jesus. In fact, we talked about how his point is the superiority of Christ, and so a means by which he unpacks that superiority throughout the book is through comparison, right? And so here it's a comparison between Moses, the pinnacle figure of the Old Testament, and Jesus. And what the author says is that Moses certainly was faithful, very faithful to God, but as a servant in the house, whereas Jesus is faithful—unbelievably and abundantly faithful to God—but he's faithful as a son over God's house.

So Christ has this place of superiority because he's not a servant in the house, but he's a son over the house. And so the natural question comes: well, what is this house over which Christ is faithful as the Son of God? And we don't have to wonder, because the author tells us who this house is, and he says rather emphatically, "And we are his house."

So this comparison of Moses and Jesus over the house and in the house—we are the house. We are the house of God. I love how the author does this because again, to kind of label Hebrews an epistle is a little bit of a misnomer, because it's not really an epistle as we think about a letter in the ancient world. It really is a sermon. It's this impassioned plea, which is a mix of exposition and exhortation to the people. And so there's this way in which the author oftentimes includes himself in this exhortation. He says, "We are God's house, brothers and sisters. We are the ones over whom Christ is abundantly faithful." And that's reason for great rejoicing, especially among a people who are deeply distressed and suffering under the weight of persecution, for this pastorally minded author to say, "We are the house of God, and Christ is the faithful Son over us."

But that word of encouragement, that declaration that he just made that we are the house of God, is quickly and immediately followed by this sincere word of contingency. Look at verse 6 again: "And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope."

And that "if" is really the crux here. As we think about the situation of this letter, of this sermon, that "if" is the crux because they are considering turning from Christ. They've made a confession that Christ is the Messiah, that Christ is who he has been declared to be by the power of his resurrection—he is the Son of God. And this confession and this confidence, which originally empowered them, has now become a weight around their neck that's bringing persecution on. And they're thinking, "If we just turn from this confession, if we just turn from this confidence, we can alleviate a lot of our troubles and a lot of our persecution."

And what the author says is, if you let go of your confidence, if you turn from that confession, then what? You are no longer his house. This holding fast that the author says here, and he says other places in the letter, is presented as a necessity. Yeah, it's presented as a requirement; it's presented as an unshakable reality that you must hold fast to your confession of Christ Jesus as Messiah.

In fact, what the author is saying, if we think about 6 and 7 together, is Christ has been abundantly faithful over you, and so how should you respond? You should respond in faithfulness to Christ. Christ has been abundantly faithful over you, and you are to respond to that reality—the reality of Christ's faithfulness over you—with faithfulness in return.

The Present-Tense Warning of Psalm 95

This is where he's driving this conversation, that's where he's driving this discussion: that the conclusion of Christ's faithfulness over the house of God, which is his people, is that his people should respond, indeed must respond, in faithfulness to him. In order to make this conclusion rather clear, the author turns to Psalm 95 as a means of present-tense exhortation to the people. Look with me at 7 through 11 again real quick. It says:

"Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, 'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, "They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways." As I swore in my wrath, "They shall not enter my rest."'"

The author is pulling from the Psalms, Psalm 95, and he's bringing it forward to the people to present it to them as a means of present-tense warning and exhortation. Now, what's interesting, at least I think here, is the way he introduces this quotation. He introduces this quotation by removing any distance between the people and the text, right? So think about this. This is from our perspective deep in the past, right? And the Psalms, even for these people, are ancient texts that are in the past. But the author of Hebrews, as he's bringing the Psalm to bear on the people, removes any distance between themselves and the text and brings it into the present tense by saying, "Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says..."

Now, this might seem like semantics, but he doesn't say, "as the Spirit said," or "as the Spirit once testified," but he takes Psalm 95 and he brings it into the midst of their life and their situation and says, "Listen to how the Spirit is testifying to you even in this day." Psalm 95 is a present-tense exhortation to the people. The Spirit is speaking now through the text. Now, this shouldn't seem unusual for us, especially given the fact that it's Hebrews, because where does Hebrews begin? Hebrews begins with this declaration that God speaks. A long time ago he spoke through prophets; now he is speaking through His Son. And if we move forward just one chapter into chapter 4, we have this wonderful passage where he says what? "The word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing as far as division of soul and spirit, of joint and marrow, able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart." So the author of Hebrews has this comprehensive understanding of the Word of God as a present-tense, living, active, speaking word. And it is speaking to these people now in this moment.

Well, the exhortation of Psalm 95, however, is rooted in the past, right? In particular in a past event that we see recorded in Exodus chapter 17. In Exodus chapter 17, there's this incident where the generation that was brought up out of Egypt by the mighty and miraculous works of God—the things that they saw, the plagues that they witnessed, the seas being split open, coming through on dry land—start to grumble and complain because they don't have water. And what we find both in Exodus and in Psalm 95 is that that grumbling and complaining is actually a symptom of a greater problem. That grumbling and that complaining is a symptom of unbelief.

That's exactly what the Psalmist says, or the Spirit says through the Psalm. Look at what he says: "Your fathers, they saw my works for forty years." They saw what I did. God says, "They saw my faithfulness. As they stood on the edge of the sea with the army of Pharaoh pursuing down on them, and it appears that they have no way out, I split the sea and brought them through on dry land. When they had no food, I made it rain bread. When they cried for meat, I made it rain quail. They saw my works and my provision." And yet how do they respond? In grumbling and complaining, which is a deep symptom of unbelief.

And in fact, if we trace the unfortunate path of this particular generation, this wilderness-wandering generation, it is one that is consistently marked by unbelief. They respond to the great faithfulness of God toward them with faithlessness. And what we see from Psalm 95 and the exhortation of the Spirit is that that faithlessness that they respond to God with ends in judgment. Verse 11: "As I swore in my wrath, 'They shall not enter my rest.'"

So the author of Hebrews is looking at a people who have experienced the great faithfulness of Jesus Christ in salvation as they put their faith and their trust in him, and now are considering letting go of that confidence, letting go of that confession. What does he say to them? He says, "Look at the past. Hear the exhortation of God's word. Do not respond to the faithfulness of God with faithlessness, because in so doing you open yourself up to eternal judgment. Christ has been abundantly faithful. He is faithful over you as a Son. So do not respond to his faithfulness with faithlessness, because in so doing you risk judgment."

I think it's fair to say, and I don't think I'm out of line in saying, that the Spirit still speaks today—that as much as the word of God was living and active to the people to whom the author of Hebrews is writing, so it is living and active to us as well. And I don't think I'm out of line in saying that just as Christ was faithful over the brothers and sisters to whom this letter was written, he is faithful over us as well.

And so the exhortation of the Spirit to us is also: do not respond to the faithfulness of God in faithlessness. Do not respond to the faithfulness of God and the mighty works of God in our life. And believe me, if we gave opportunity, I think, in this room for each of us to expound the ways in which God's been at work in our lives and the ways that we've seen it in our lives, it would take the whole week to unpack that. Don't respond to the mighty works of faithfulness of God in your own life with faithlessness. Hear the word of Christ. Hear the word of the Spirit. Do not harden your hearts as in the day of rebellion. Do not respond in faithlessness to the faithfulness of Christ Jesus. That, brothers and sisters, is a present-tense exhortation to us as well.

Because while the reality of our situation might not be exactly like that of the brothers and sisters to whom this letter was written—some of them losing their property, some of them losing their homes, some of them losing life for the sake of pursuing Christ—there are ways in which we are daily brought to places of decision of whether we will be faithful or we will be faithless, whether we will trust in Christ to meet our needs or we will trust in ourselves. The truth of the matter is that prosperity and wealth can be just as great a temptation as poverty and persecution can.

And we don't live in a poor place. I don't know if you know this—whether or not you're poor is a different thing, but we don't live in a poor place. We are surrounded by wealth, ensconced in it. And wealth and prosperity can be just as equal a temptation to be faithless as poverty and persecution can be. And so the exhortation to us from the Spirit is: be faithful.

The Mutual Responsibility of the Body

Now here's the great thing about being faithful, at least from a biblical point of view, maybe not our shared point of view. And that's what I'm hoping to kind of augment this morning. But here's the great thing about faithfulness, or the call to faithfulness from a biblical point of view: and that is that it is not an exclusively solitary call. It's not an exclusively individual activity.

See, we often think about it that way. Like I said earlier, we're often like a bunch of Paul Simons running around, which would actually, in some respect, be kind of cool—he's quite the musician. But we all kind of run around thinking we've got our own thing to do, our own people to worry about, our own homes to worry about, so we're just going to keep it self-contained here, right? And even more so not just from a Western perspective, but from like a Montana perspective, right? It'd be fun, I think, to go outside and maybe count all the "Don't Tread on Me" license plates that are outside as you pay the government for the right to have a "Don't Tread on Me" license plate—we can get into that later!

But we have this thought and we have this mentality about ourselves: individual, pull myself up by my own bootstraps, make my own way, carve my own path, do my own thing, and "I touch no one and no one touches me, and you don't tell me what to do and I don't tell you what to do." And so in that respect, we leave each other alone and we make our way and everything works. Well, that's a horrible, unbiblical perspective. I said this in the first service and I stand by it: I also think it's a cowardly perspective. I think it's deeply weak, kind of cloaked in this idea of strength and power: "I'll take care of myself. Who dost thou think you are?"

The biblical perspective, the biblical idea, the biblical reality is that we deeply need each other. And this call to faithfulness is not this individual, primarily individual call for you to be faithful, and you to be faithful, and you to be faithful. It is a call to the community: be faithful. And that's fleshed out in the commands that he gives here in the text. So if we look at 12 and 13, he gives two commands. Read those with me, 12 and 13:

"Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."

That first command there in my text says, "Take care." Maybe if you have an NIV or something else it says something different, but literally—I mean literally—it says, "Watch out, look out, see to it." These are different ways that it's translated in the New Testament. See to it that there's not in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God.

I like football a lot. I enjoy it. I played football. I like watching my son play football. And one of the things they tell you in football is you've got to have your head on a swivel, right? You've got to have your head up and you've got to be looking, because you know what happens if your head's down? You get clocked! Like, you get destroyed.

I saw—this is just an aside, you can just do with this as you please—I saw this thing on the internet, and it was this person who posted a hit in football, and he's like, "We've got to get rid of this, this is awful." And what it was is a quarterback threw an interception, right? So you've got a defender back here by the quarterback. Guy makes an interception, he starts running. What does the quarterback naturally do? Quarterback naturally goes to make a tackle. Defensive guy just comes and just clocks him. Now, I played defense, so I was like, "That's amazing! That's beautiful, right?" But somebody's like, "We can't have that, that's a cheap shot." But everybody else, like all the comments, are like, "Got to have your head on a swivel. Got to have your head on a swivel, because you've got to be aware of that."

But the problem is when we put our head down and we look down, we don't see what's around us. And this is how many of us live our Christian life: we have our head down, we're reading our Bible, maybe we're praying, I don't know, but we have our head down and it's not up, and it's not looking around, and it's not alert to those who are around us. So so long as my heart's not evil and unbelieving, that's great, but I don't care about your heart. But the command here is: see to it, to the community, that there's not in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart.

Now, when you think about an evil, unbelieving heart, right? That's a synonym for a hard heart, right? Go back to Psalm 95. Don't let there be a hard heart. What is a hard heart? A hard heart is an evil, unbelieving heart, right? Again, we see that lived out in that wilderness-wandering generation who, when they stand on the edge of the Promised Land and God says, "Go in and take that which is yours," they say, "No, we're not going to do this." And God goes, "These people despise me. They refuse to believe in me, and they truly are an evil generation."

And so the command here is to have your head up, to be alert, to be watching, to be looking, to see to it that there's not in anyone among us an evil, unbelieving, hard heart that leads us away from the living God. Because the danger in being led away from the living God is there is no other place to go but death. He is the living, life-giving God, and there is life in no one else. And so, in light of this call to respond to the faithfulness of Christ in faithfulness, the author says to the people, "Don't do this alone. Have your head up, have your eyes open, and watch out."

Not only are they to watch out, but what else are they supposed to do? The author says: encourage, exhort, or comfort—those are various translations for that word—one another every day. So not only do we have our head up on a swivel making sure there's not in any of us an evil, unbelieving heart, we are actively seeking to encourage, exhort, and comfort one another every day as long as it is called "today." So what? So that none of us, none of our hearts, might be led away or hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

And I think it's in that little phrase, "the deceitfulness of sin," that we see the necessity, the deep necessity, for daily encouragement and exhortation. Because when we think about a hard heart or a heart becoming hardened, I would argue that it's very rarely like a catastrophic event, right? I would argue it's very rarely that people just all of a sudden wake up one day: "You know what? I'm done with this whole Jesus stuff. I'm done with it, I don't believe it anymore, I don't want it anymore, I'm through with it." It's not that.

More often than not, what it is is the deceitfulness of sin that's given root and given opportunity, that continues to work itself deeper and deeper and deeper into a heart, so eventually that heart hardens more and more and more and more to the reality of who Christ is, to the truth of the gospel, to the hope of the gospel, so that one day the work is done and the individual turns from Christ. And the author is saying the way that you work against that incremental change or that incremental invasion or intrusion of sin into the hearts of individuals is to exhort and encourage and comfort one another daily. How often? As long as it is called "today."

Now, what's brilliant about that is he's not just making like a cute little play on words, right? Like early in the first service I said, "What's today called?" and most people said, "Today," and then Andrew Kimmel said, "Sunday," and I was like, "Well, you just ruined the whole illustration!" But he's making this connection to earlier, if we go back just earlier where he quotes the Holy Spirit: "Today, if you hear his voice..." Encourage one another as long as it's called "today." The idea is for a call to continual, consistent exhortation, encouragement, and comfort being given out among the body to ensure that none of us are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin and then have an evil, unbelieving heart leading us to fall away from the living God.

And these commands, these expectations, are laid squarely at the feet of the community as a whole.

One of the things I love about Hebrews, and one of the reasons I think people think it's written by Paul, is that he does use athletic imagery—which Paul likes to use. So later on in Hebrews he's going to say, "Run with endurance the race that is set before you, fixing your eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith." And so that idea of running a race—we hear that, right? And when you think about running a race or entering a race, why do you run a race? Why do you enter a race? My hope is that you enter a race either to win or to do your individual best. If you are entering a race for some other reason than that, why? Just stay home, eat donuts, hang out! But if you enter a race, you are doing it because you either want to win or you want to do your individual best. And so oftentimes when we think about that in the Christian life, and we think about running a race or the Christian life described as a race, we interpret it, we filter it through that ideology: "So I'm in a race and I want to do my individual best. I want to win. I want to get to the end of the course. Now, I might be running with other people in the race, and they might be there and I might know them and they might be around me, but ultimately my desire is to get to the end. My desire is to do my individual best. I hope you don't fall, I hope you don't stumble, I hope you don't fail to finish, but in the end, if you don't, that's on you—because you were told, just like I was told, to run the race with endurance. So if you didn't run with endurance, that's your fault, not my fault."

And yet the picture that I think Hebrews paints is not of individuals running all in the same direction, but brothers and sisters locked in arms together, running forward with the intention that if any of our brothers or sisters fall, we stop and we pick that individual up. Because the race is not won if we don't all win together. The race is not a success if we don't all reach glory together.

And I wonder, as we look around the room and you look in this room, I wonder if that's your thought. And this might seem overly emotional, so forgive me if it is, but when you look around this room, is it your desire to see every single person in here in glory with you? Or are you just concerned that you make it, and maybe your wife and maybe your kids?

Paul says in Galatians, he says, "You who are spiritual, restore such a one. If any brother is caught in trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one." Like when you look around this room, do you earnestly and honestly desire that you will see every single face here in glory, such to the extent that if you did not see them, could you shed a tear? You would say, "There's no tears." I think there's tears in heaven—Eric Clapton said there were.

The idea that's presented before us is that we are responsible for one another. It's so cool! Like, Darren didn't build this community, Tim didn't build this community, John didn't build this community, he didn't bring these people together, he didn't bring you into this room, they didn't bring you into this room. Who did? Christ. Christ is building this community. Christ is putting us together. And Christ is looking at us and saying, "You now are responsible for each other—to watch out for one another, to exhort, encourage, and comfort one another, so that none of you, not a single one of you, to the best of your own ability as a community empowered by the Holy Spirit, should fail to reach glory."

Cultivating Intrusive Christian Community

This is what we're called to. This is the Spirit speaking to us now. So then the question comes: how in God's green earth do you cultivate this kind of community? Because it's fun to talk about—maybe it's not, maybe you're terrified of the idea of it—but how do we cultivate it? What does it look like?

Well, might I suggest that the title was done really well: we need to care for one another, and we need to be concerned about one another. I think that's where it starts, is we need to care for each other and we need to be concerned for one another. We need to care to the extent that we're watching over one another, that we're looking after one another. You know, in our neighborhood, we moved there and it's taking a long time to get to know our neighbors. And now we've got a neighbor on our right that I know really well, we've got neighbors on our left that I know really well. And there's something so great about knowing the people that are around you in your neighborhood, because you know that there's opportunity for them to help out when you need help.

So like the other day, my Jeep wouldn't start, and I didn't have any jumper cables because they were in the back of Asher's car, which was at Heritage. So I texted my buddy who works at Billion, who's my next-door neighbor, and I said, "Hey man, do you have that jump pack that you have?" He's like, "Yeah, it's here with me at work." And I was like, "Well, that's not doing me any good." And he's like, "But I got jumper cables in my garage, and my garage is unlocked. And you go in the side door and turn to the left and there's a cabinet, and get the cables out of the cabinet." And it's just like that idea that he's there at Billion and I can reach him, and he's concerned about his next-door neighbor and helping me.

Do we have that level of concern for everyone in this room, and those in the first service as well? Are we concerned about each other, about the state of our souls, about the nature of our relationship with Christ Jesus, about where we are in our walk and the progress of our sanctification? Do we care enough to be concerned about one another? Do we have our heads up and our eyes open, aware to who's doing what and how they're doing it, and paying attention to these differences in attitude and facial expression, whatever it might be, to step into somebody's life and say, "Are you okay? How can I pray for you? How can I encourage you? How can I help you?"

And that leads to the last point, right? This requires that we are intrusive, which again, nobody likes that. Nobody wants to open up their lives to be intrusive, right? Or let people intrude in their lives. Megan mentioned it this morning with the whole meal train thing. Part of the problem is sometimes people aren't willing to say, "I need help. I am a rock, I'm an island, I'm a Montanan, I'm strong, I'm bow-legged, I need no one's help." And really, honestly, that's just a cover for being weak as all get out. Because the strongest thing is to say to people, "I need you." This is a beautiful thing about this call to faithfulness: I don't have to do it alone. I've got you to help me be faithful, to help me pursue Christ, to help me grow in my sanctification and my understanding of who Christ Jesus is. And you have me, and we have each other.

So let's be concerned about one another, let's care desperately about one another to the extent that we're willing to step into each other's lives. Now, I'm not asking for people to start coming up here and like kind of listing out all your struggles, your sins, and your hardships, right? I don't think that's necessarily what we need to do, but we do want to create spaces and opportunities where this kind of community can flourish. And I think—I think we as a church do a pretty darn good job of trying to create spaces where that kind of community can flourish, where that kind of knowledge about other people can happen. The question is whether or not you're taking advantage of it.

So we have men's and women's Bible studies Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which is a great place and a great opportunity to come meet other people—men to come meet other men, women to come meet other women—to start to forge relationships outside of this big group setting. But this is important. This is huge, right? We need to see these faces. We need to see each other. We need to be encouraged by one another's faith. That's important; this is very, very important. Hebrews 10: "Don't forsake the coming together, as some are in the habit of doing." But if this is all we're getting of one another, and this is the amount that we're willing to invest in one another, this is falling woefully short of what we need to do.

And so we provide Bible studies, opportunity to get to know other people. We have home groups. They were called life groups earlier—that's like my number one campaign, is to get that name like cemented in everybody's mind. But we have home groups, and home groups for us—something we don't talk about enough and probably need to talk about more—the aim and the goal of home groups is that it is a place where this larger body can size down, can slow down, and can really get to know one another. And yes, it's uncomfortable; yes, it's difficult. It's hard to figure out. The home group that we were a part of, we had—what was it, eight adults and 6,460 kids? And you think that makes life easy? You're insane! Like it was sitting there trying to get to talk to one another, encourage one another, to pray for one another, and it's just like a constant tornado just moving in your path everywhere you go. But it's necessary! And for those little kids, what do we want those little kids to see? What better than those little kids, as they're being like just crazy people running around, to think, "Why are we here? Oh, we're here because Mom and Dad value this community, and they value this relationship that they have with these people." And then it gets like inculcated in them that this is an important thing. It's an important thing for believers to come together and to spend time together and pray with one another and love one another and speak truth into one another's lives.

And so we create these opportunities where we can try to have this kind of community, because it's unbelievably important—dare we say, it's necessary. You are called to faithfulness. I am called to faithfulness. Christ has been faithful; you must be faithful. But praise God, you don't have to do it alone! You have brothers and sisters that Christ, by His grace and his mercy, has surrounded you by, who can help you grow and mature and remain faithful even in the midst of the most difficult circumstances and situations that we might encounter in our life.

I think it's wonderful that the author ends this section where he began: "For we have come to share in Christ." Again, this wonderful declaration, this truth that he speaks over these people who are in such turmoil, such persecution, such difficulty. He says, "We have come to share in Christ," but then he follows it again: "if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end." As it is said, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."

Brothers and sisters, we have come to share in Christ. We are his and he is ours, if we hold fast our confidence firm to the end. So therefore, do not harden your hearts. Be faithful. Labor for the faithfulness of one another. Live out community as Christ is calling us to live community, for his glory and for our eternal good.

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