"Let Us"

“Let Us”

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor

Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

828.328.6196   corinthtoday.org

 (© 2011 by Robert M. Thompson.  Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures quoted are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, Copyright 2011 by New York International Bible Society.)

Ask not what the church can do for you, but what you can do for others.

“Where there is hope for the future, there is power in the present.”  I don’t know who said that first, but I’m giving credit to David Washco. 

David is a motivational speaker (washcoconsulting.com) who uses his martial arts skills to capture the attention of an audience and push them to reach higher goals.  I know David well enough to know that he’s highly self-motivated to set and achieve personal goals.  He’s faced a lot of adversity in his life, much of it invisible to those who know him casually.  David doesn’t focus his attention on the adversity.  He knows how to start where he is, set achievable but stretching goals, and go for it.

I asked my friend David, “What makes a good motivational speech?”  He said you start with an impactful statement before you lose your audience.  “Where there is hope for the future, there is power in the present.”  David’s acronym is FAB – features, advantages, benefits.  You save the action steps for the end, David says, and you start by giving your audience something to grab on to.

I read Hebrews 10:19-25 as a motivational speech.  It is Winston Churchill’s commencement address:  “Never give up.  Never, never, never give up.”  It is Jimmy Stewart as Mr. Smith in Washington declaring, “I’m going to stay right here and fight for this ‘lost cause’.”

It is William Wallace’s challenge to the sons of Scotland in Braveheart.   Wallace asks, “Will you fight?”  Facing the imposing forces of King Edward Longshanks on the opposite hill, a veteran answers, “No!  We will run.  And we will live.”

Wallace responds, “Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!”

For nine and a half chapters the writer of Hebrews has been setting up his readers for his own motivational speech.  He knows these readers need hope for the future.  As persecution rises against the early Christians, some of them are considering a return to Judaism.  He spends two-thirds of the book insisting that Jesus is better than what they left.  Why go back?

His FAB is in verses 19-21, a review of what he has already said.  “We have confidence,” he says in verse 19.  Confidence is the balance between timidity and arrogance, between fear and presumption.  The confidence of which he speaks is confidence before God.  Using language that would have resonated with his Jewish readers, he says, “The curtain that blocked us from God is no longer a barrier.  By the blood and body of Jesus we have direct access to God.”

Further, he says, “we have a great priest over the house of God.”  Again, this is language that we don’t often use but it was powerful to first century readers.  They knew priests as gatekeepers who could either block or grant spiritual assurance.  The problem was, the priests were flawed.  Besides, even if they granted relief for your guilty conscience once through a sacrifice, you had to go back to them over and over again.  Jesus is better, the author says, because (a) he’s just like you, (b) he is sinless, and (c) he made his sacrifice once for all and sat down.  There’s nothing like having an empathetic, perfect, accomplished advocate on your side.

Talk about features, advantages, and benefits!  Now he’s ready for action.  The final three and a half chapters of Hebrews will be about the way forward.  What do we do with “such a great salvation” (2:3)?  The writer gives three action steps.

Let us draw near

“Let us,” he says, act…do…move.  Linda and I have been leading a marriage class on Friday nights.  Chip Ingram gives principles about healthy marriages, but he also gives action steps.  And each week he tells the group facilitators, “You have to model this.  Show the group what it looks like.”  You don’t say as facilitators,  “You guys set some time aside for communication.”  You say, “Let’s all do this.”

That’s how the writer of Hebrews motivates.  “Let us draw near,” he says.  I’m not going to be the fat sergeant telling you to get in shape.  You will see it modeled in me.  I’ll be like William Wallace charging at the head of the troops.

“Let us draw near to God,” he says in verse 22, “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.”

He’s talking about what we would call our personal commitment to Christ affirmed in public baptism and lived out in a regular life of worship, obedience, and personal devotion. 

I know it’s sometimes difficult to maintain those private disciplines of Bible reading, journaling, confession, thanksgiving and prayer.  I know sometimes they don’t seem to make much difference.  Things don’t dramatically turn around just because we took the time to prioritize a relationship with God.  Sometimes, things even get worse.

But personal or even public times of drawing near to God are not all about visible and immediate results.  They have the same function as regular communication in a marriage.  Couples that come to crisis and fold in the middle of it do so because they never established intimacy in the first place – or perhaps lost it along the way through neglect.  They didn’t know how to touch each other’s souls.

Sadly, the same thing happens to a relationship with God when crises hit those who have not disciplined themselves to draw near to God.  It isn’t their instinct, and they don’t know how to do it.  We build the intimacy with him through regular practice so that whatever comes, our first response will be trust and confidence.

Let us hold on

This is the part of his motivational speech where the writer gives power to the present by declaring hope for the future.

Hope is assaulted almost every day, especially if you read newspapers and listen to CNN or Fox News Channel.  This week alone, we’ve heard gloomy reports out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, three hot spots in the world where our nation has invested a lot of money and shed much blood.  On the economic front, I’m more pessimistic than ever than politicians will have the courage the work together in matching our nation’s revenue and spending over the long term.  Just when it looked like they could begin engaging some meaningful dialogue, people start declaring their presidential ambitions for 2012.  It seems like we keep hearing about more earthquakes and greater potential for nuclear disaster in Japan.

But the bad news is not only national and international.  It’s personal.  The news just kept coming my way this week – job loss, marriage and family crises, cancer.  It’s been a week of bad news – not so much for me personally but for you and those you love.

Bad news immobilizes you.  Setbacks weaken you.  You’re stunned into inertia.  You don’t know how to fix it, so you do nothing – or you busy yourself with trivial tasks because you don’t know what to do and can’t sit still.  How do you find “power for the present”?

The writer of Hebrews says you find power by holding “unswervingly to the hope we profess” (23).  A more literal translation might be helpful.  “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering” (ESV).  Our “confession” is what we say we believe.  These readers had confessed their faith when they were converted and baptized in the name of Christ.  They had claimed to believe in the incarnation (that God entered our world), in salvation (that Christ died for our sins), and in resurrection (that Christ rose again to conquer death).  Once you believe that, hold on to it!

His argument is not, “Hold on to faith because things will get better,” in some vague sense.  It’s not that you’re just going through a down cycle in life and you’re due a better future.

No, he says, “he who promised is faithful.”  Your reason to hold on is the character and consistency and reliability of God.  Even in the worst of times, let him be your anchor.  I’ve been reading the Psalms recently and noticing again how these songs that were preserved – and you have to believe there were many written that were not preserved – they were gathered and passed on to us by the work of the Holy Spirit because the psalmists consistently look up in every circumstances – enemies, illness, betrayal, sin, even triumph and good news. 

You may not understand, but your hope is not in understanding.  You may not be able to fix it, but you aren’t the fixer anyway.  You may not be able to see the end, but you’re not in charge of the end.  He who promised is faithful.

Let us encourage one another

In the New International Version, it looks like there are three more “let us” statements in verses 24-25 – “Let us consider how we may spur one another on,” “let us not give up meeting together,” and “let us encourage one another.”

Actually, there is only one “let us” in the original – the first one.  “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.”  The other two are modifying gerund phrases (if you’re into grammar) – “not neglecting to meet together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another.”

I am astounded by the relevance of this sentence in Hebrews. (Vv. 24-25 are all one sentence in the original).  The church today has borrowed the principles of the world – marketing and competition – as we meet the needs of our “consumers”.

Please hear me out.  I’m not sure we have an option to do otherwise in a society that values freedom of religion.  Any church, large or small, that wants to survive, must meet the needs of people.  And we do so – gladly – because meeting needs is, in part, what the Gospel is all about.  We want to get people in the door so they’ll hear the Good News.  The way we get them in the door is by being welcoming, providing a positive atmosphere, preaching helpful sermons, singing uplifting songs, taking good care of children and youth, providing meaningful opportunities to grow in small groups and serve in ministry teams, even offering different styles of music and times for worship services.  We keep trying to do all of that better, and for what I hope are good motives.

But in doing so, we inadvertently perpetuate the myth from Hell that church is primarily a place to get your needs met.  You know as well as I do, when people think their needs aren’t being met, they stop coming or find a different church. 

I shared with you a couple of weeks ago a quote from C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, where Screwtape, the senior devil, is encouraging the junior tempter to get his human to keep trying different churches.  “The search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic where the Enemy (God) wants him to be a pupil.”  (82)

A member of my Thursday Bible study this past week said people sometimes ask him why he still goes to A.A. meetings 3-4 times a week eight years after his last drink.  His answer: “I go to help those who are just starting their journey toward sobriety.”

That’s what the writer of Hebrews is saying.  “Let us consider how may spur one another on to love and good deeds.”  Being with the body of Christ is not about looking for ways others can help me.  “Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing” (because they didn’t get anything out of it), but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”  Hang in there not because it meets your need but because you impact others. 

To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, ask not what the church can do for you, but what you can do for others.

The Silent Sermon

The Christian faith is not a solo journey.  All of these exhortations in the “motivational speech” are in the plural.  “Let us….”  This is a General urging the troops to lay their lives on the line for the greater good.  This is a football coach telling the team that they have to have each other’s back.

Rusty Isenhour forwarded me a story this week by e-mail that is a fitting conclusion to this sermon.  It’s titled “The Silent Sermon,” and I’m not sure whether Rusty liked the “sermon” part more of the “silent” part more.  But it makes a good point.

A member of a certain church, who previously had been attending services regularly, stopped going.  After a few weeks, the preacher decided to visit him.

It was a chilly evening. The pastor found the man at home alone, sitting before a blazing fire.  Guessing the reason for his preacher's visit, the man welcomed him, led him to a comfortable chair near the fireplace...and waited. 

The preacher made himself at home but said nothing..  In the grave silence, he contemplated the dance of the flames around the burning logs.  After some minutes, the preacher took the fire tongs, carefully picked up a brightly burning ember and placed it to one side of the hearth all alone, then he sat back in his chair, still silent.

The host watched all this in quiet contemplation.  As the one lone ember's flame flickered and diminished, there was a momentary glow and then its fire was no more.  Soon it was cold and dead.

Not a word had been spoken since the initial greeting.  The preacher glanced at his watch and realized it was time to leave.  He slowly stood up, picked up the cold, dead ember and placed it back in the middle of the fire.  Immediately it began to glow, once more with the light and warmth of the burning coals around it.

As the preacher reached the door to leave, his host said with a tear running down his cheek, 'Thank you so much for your visit and especially for the firey sermon. I will be back in church next Sunday.'