Let’s Consider (Hebrews 10:24-25)

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Hi, good morning, and go ahead and grab your Bibles. Turn to Hebrews chapter 10 if you’re using one of the black pew Bibles on page 973, back in 2016 Jackie and I were at a family ministry conference, and there was a special concert one night with the Christian artist Mark Schultz, and he told a story behind the song. Right the behind the song, story of something that he had written. And this story was a devastating one. It was about a family a friend of theirs, who had lost a child after just three days. The family and the church were obviously devastated, and the Sunday after that family, that couple, came to church and sat in their normal spot. The difference was that when everybody else stood and sang the worship songs, they couldn’t stand. They couldn’t sing. And he went on to say that what they realized that the act of faith for that couple that morning was just showing up, was just being there that morning. And he said, someone behind them put their hand on their shoulder, and the person behind them put their hand on their shoulder, and eventually the entire congregation had their hands out stretched towards this couple as they sing the truth of God’s word. Just a domino effect. One man leaned over and told him, I know you can’t sing, but I’m going to sing for you. Mark’s reflection on this was how great it is to be surrounded by a community, by a cloud of witnesses that says we’re going to sing when you can’t we’re going to lift our hands up for you when you can’t. And that’s the community that Scripture is talking about all over when we carry one another’s burdens. That is what true community looks like. And when I hear this story, I cannot help but think of the people who missed out that Sunday, who weren’t there to experience what happened in that moment, both for that couple and for everybody that was there that morning, not able to share in that community and carry the burdens of someone else. They could not encourage them, and then they could not be encouraged by their faith, for showing up by their faith for the rest of the congregation. So last week, we saw the foundation for community, starting in Genesis two. Today we’re going to look at Hebrews 10. And before we dive into the verses 24 and 25 which is we’re going to be mainly, I want to read 19 through 25 which gives us the gospel motivation for community. Why does verses 24 and 25 even matter? We need to go back and read there first. And here’s the question as we go through this pastor today that I want you to be asking a couple questions. One, ask yourself, am I placing a priority on community over isolation? Just generally in life. And then take it a step further for the church. Am I placing a priority on the church community over isolation, or even over other communities that you’re a part of? So be thinking about those as we go through Hebrews 10. Let’s look starting in verse 19, Therefore, brothers and sisters. Since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way open for us through the curtain that is his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience, and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together summer in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another. And all the more as you see the day approaching so when it says in verse 19, therefore the writer is referring to everything that has just happened in chapter 10. And what we read there in chapter 10 is that Jesus is the once and for all. Sacrifice for our sins, our forgiveness comes through his blood, which changes everything. It changes how we approach God, our relationship with Him. It changes the way that we relate to one another as well. This is not just some relationship we add on to the book club that we do or our Pickleball league or the community band or the softball team that we’re a part of. This is a community of those who are blood bought brothers and sisters in Christ, unlike any community we’ve ever been a part of, unlike any community we ever will be a part of. Da Carson says it better than I could. So let me read what he says. He says what binds us together is not common education, common race. Common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything of the sort. Christians come together not because they form a natural collocation, but because they have been saved by Jesus Christ and owe him a common allegiance. In the light of this common allegiance, in light of the fact that they have all been loved by Jesus Himself. They commit themselves to doing what he says and he commands them to love one another. In this light, they are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’s sake. Jesus sacrificed everything so that we could sit here together as the family of God, as brothers and sisters in Christ, without him, it is not possible, and that community is open to all who acknowledge that Jesus Christ is who he said he is, that He is God, that He gave His life for us. We believe in what he has done, all the things we get now we see here in 19 through 25 all the things that are true of us as those in the family of God. It’s an invitation into a deeper life with Jesus. But it’s really important to see this. It is not something we do individually. Three times. It says, Let us, let us draw near, let us hold unswervingly and let us consider. The expectation of Scripture is that the Christian life is lived in community, not in isolation. That leads us to verses 24 and 20 and 25 where we’re going to sit for a little while. We’re going to consider the call of community, the practice of community, and finally, the challenge of community. So first, let’s consider the call in verses 24 and 25 we find out a lot about the importance of community. And here’s the first truth, I need you and you need me. Okay, that’s the church. I need you and you need me. We are called to spur one another on toward love and good deeds. And man, that sounds really nice. It’s like that whole like sharp we sharpen right one another, like iron sharpens iron, we sharpen one another. Both of these things, spurring on and sharpening are not pleasant things. Okay, so we like to have these verses displayed in certain places, really pretty. But the idea here is the spurring or the provoking means this is going to cause some discomfort and displeasure. This is not going to be fun. How do I know that well, because we’re talking about spurring one another on, and I don’t know about you, but I think horses don’t like this, because when they get spurred, what happens they get moving. So they’re going to feel a little bit of discomfort, a little bit of displeasure in the moment, but the rider needs to get them going in the right direction, and this is important for us, because if we are going to make community a priority, we also have to have realistic expectations. And one of the top expectations to have when you enter into community like this is Get ready to be uncomfortable. Get ready to be uncomfortable. You should have that as an expectation, because you’re messy and I’m messy, and so if we all get together, it’s just to be a mess of a group of people. So there’s going to be some uncomfortable moments. And if you leave a church, if you leave a community, if you pull away every time you’re uncomfortable, which might look like being called out for sin, which might be called to a higher standard of living, somebody says something difficult where you need to die to yourself, if every time that happens and you’re uncomfortable, you leave, you will never actually find community, or you at least won’t be a part of a community that’s worth being a part of. Because the only way we are stimulated to grow, the only way that we’re provoked is by people doing that in our life. Because how many times do we lie to ourselves and say, I’ll just I’ll just do better tomorrow? When do we really do better when we have a group of people who are helping us along? Just look at your life, whether it was a team when you’re a kid, whether it’s in the work world, whatever it might be, you need these people spurring you on. It is not purposeless discomfort. It is not purposeless pain that leads us to love and good deeds. It’s not purposeless that’s what it does. It leads us to love and good deeds. It’s meant to get us to go in the direction of Jesus. So like spurs, get a horse moving in the direction the rider wants to go. The spurring on toward love and good deeds gets us following Jesus, living the Christian life after him.
So I can do that for you, and you can do that for me, and we desperately need each other. The second thing we see is a reminder that we must meet. Together regularly. It was not only normal to meet. At this time that this book is written, it was essential to the Christian life to be together. Hebrews was written in large part as a response to the persecution that the early church was going through. Their tendency to maybe drift away, to pull away from the community, because of the persecution they were feeling. Because meeting as Christians at this time, which is very common around the world at this point, still, is that if I meet with these other Christians, if we’re gathering together, people are going to start to take notice of us, and that could lead to really bad things in my life, like suffering and imprisonment and death, and so getting together was difficult. The easier thing to do is to isolate, to pull back and not put your neck on the line. But the writer of Hebrew says, don’t give up meeting together. Other translations say, Don’t neglect meeting together. This was an intentional withdrawing. It doesn’t mean they were kept from meeting. That’s different. You might be kept from meeting for a time. This was intentionally withdrawing from the congregation, withdrawing from the community. And so my prayer is that all of us see this gathering our brothers and sisters, the ministries of this church as essential to your Christian life, not as a burden, not as something that makes you look a certain way, and not as a checklist, but because Jesus Christ died for this, He died for this, and we need each other. So here’s my question, based off of this idea of not neglecting meeting together, if the church community, and I’m talking not just Sunday, but all of church life, if church community is not a priority now, when it’s relatively easy to be a Christian and to show up, what happens if persecution does come? What if it actually does cost us to enter this building. What do we do when things get hard? Because if it’s not a priority now, what’s going to magically happen to make it a priority? Then it will be a priority, then, because it’s a priority now. So we need to think through this, not just Sunday mornings, but all of our church community, all of the church life, because it’s way more than just Sunday but usually it starts here, of course. And so some of you are here this morning. You need to take things a step beyond just showing up. Even on Sunday mornings, like you’re here, you walk in, you listen, you take in, and then you leave. So maybe your step this morning is to spur someone on, is to encourage, is to find a way to get plugged into the life of this community the rest of the week, get to know some names and faces and be a part of what God is doing here at Cityview. And then lastly, in this passage, what do you see? How long do we need to meet for? How long should we do this, until Jesus returns, which means we just keep doing it until he does. We don’t know when that’s going to happen, but that’s what it’s talking about here. We do this all the more as you see the day approaching. So we keep spurring one another on, we keep encouraging each other, we keep meeting regularly until the very thing we are waiting for happens and Jesus returns to take us home. So what is clear from this passage is the importance of community. If Christian maturity and growth took place just from gaining knowledge, then I would say, yes, stay home. Find your favorite preacher online, study the Bible, grab some really good books, and you’ll be fine. But what we see here is Christian maturity, Christian growth, takes place only when all of that stuff gets worked out here with each other and gets worked out in the world. And that is the practice of community. So that’s what we’re going to look at next. So we’re going to kind of pull a bunch of different things together, from the New Testament, from Hebrews, from some other passages, and we’re going to see what does it mean to actually practice the community that we’re talking about. Okay, how are we going to practice this? Because we practice to get ready for the real thing. One day, you and I are going to stand before Jesus unhindered in these relationships with each other. So why would we wait till then? Let’s practice the community now, right? So when we get there, we just keep going with what we’ve always we’ve always done. So how do we practice that now? So let’s consider the practice. That’s the second point there, if you’re following along in your notes. So here at Cityview, we have five values that we talk about in community groups specifically, but these are values that are for really any community that you’re a part of whether it’s in the church or even outside the church. And so I want to walk through these five values, and I want to connect them again to what’s happening here. But I also want you to see how these connect to the things you will do out in the world when we leave this building, when we leave this these brothers and sisters to go on throughout our week, because all of these things should impact all of. Our relationships. We talked about that last week, that the foundation is that everybody’s hard wired for relationships and community. So how can we live out community here and out there? Because what we do in here will directly impact our communities and our relationships out there. Okay, that’s how it works. So these values are not pulled out of thin air. As I mentioned, we’re going to take they’re going to be in Hebrews 10. They’re going to be in a lot of the dozens of other one another passages in Scripture which you’re probably familiar with. Dozens of them talk about how we are to live in community together. And so you’ll also see that each value in your notes there starts off with the word open. Open is a very important, significant word for community, because we think about the difference between the contrast between open, being open and being closed, well, we need openness for community. Being closed means we’re going to be closed off to anybody provoking us right, spurring us on or encouragement or change. We need to be open. And so when we enter into these communities, this is the first thing when you say, I need to be open in these areas. So let’s kind of run through these five to practice community. First, open Bibles. First open Bibles. Listen to what Colossians three tells us. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly, as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns and songs from the spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. So this is where we find out how we love God. This is where we find out how we love each other, how we spur one another on, where we find encouragement. This is what makes us different, from your gym, from your fantasy football league, from your dinners with old college roommates, it’s the fact that we take this out and we open it and we say, What does God have for us? An open Bible takes us to passages like Titus two, that tell us that Jesus Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for Himself, what a people for His very own and what are they eager to do? Eager to do? What is good love and good deeds? Jesus makes it clear that our open Bibles should lead us to be doers of the word and not hearers only. So everywhere you go in this church on a Sunday, whether you go down to kids city, whether you go to youth group, whether you are in the middle of the week at community group or journey group, or in our explore hours on Sunday morning, you are going to see open Bibles, whether they’re these or your open Bible apps, the Bible’s open, because we have nothing to say outside of what God’s word has. And so while this is obvious for the church, right, you expected this one, I hope, right, while this is an expectation for the church, does this have any impact on what we do out there when we leave this place? And it certainly does, because the more we’re in this book together here, the more it seeps into all of our life and then leaves us as we go, and we’re like that sponge that’s squeezed out. And people just say, there’s something different about the words that they say, the things that they do, because the word is in us. So this doesn’t mean that your next pickleball League, you’re gonna open the Bible in the middle of the court and say, This is it, guys. But what it does mean is that you will play differently. You will respond to situations differently, and when somebody shares something, you’re gonna be able to respond because you’ve been in this book, you’re listening, you’re hearing, and you’re speaking God’s words to them. So here’s the challenge here, every community you are a part of should look different because you are there, because this is coming through you. So every community should look different because God’s word is there, because you are there. And we need this to live out our next value, the second one. Open mouth. And some of you’re like, oh, boy, I should not open my mouth. Yes, baby, we need to be discerning and how we speak. Because, yes, we need to speak gospel truth to each other. But a lot of times we also stick our foot in our mouth, correct? I mean, come on, really, do we stick our foot in our mouths. Thank you. I’ve been around some of you. I know this. We need to speak gospel truths to each other. It’s true. We have to open our mouths. Some of you don’t talk a lot, but you’re thinking, you’re processing, then all of a sudden, you say some amazing, encouraging truth to somebody that needs to hear it. But we need open mouths. We need to speak these gospel truths to each other. Ephesians makes this clear that in order to grow and become more Christ like we, must speak the truth in love,
in love to one another. And so the Holy Spirit is prompting you this morning, even to spur someone on, to encourage them through His word and. Then please do it. Don’t leave that for another time. It’s given to you in that moment to go to that person, to give them a call, to text them and encourage them with the gospel truth they need to hear. Now, how does it work itself out in other communities, maybe not the church? What about the workplace? Kids, teens? What about school? What is your mouth known for? What are the words that you use? Are they words that build others up for their benefit? We see in Ephesians, chapter four. Listen to Proverbs. 1821, the tongue has the power of life and death. The tongue has the power of life and death. What are our mouths known for in the communities that we’re a part of, words that bring death or words that bring life? If we’re in this book, I can tell you we’re going to speak a lot of words of life. So let’s be in this book. Let’s open our mouths. Third thing, let’s open our hearts. When we open our hearts, we make ourselves vulnerable and we pursue each other. What does this look like in community? It means confessing sin, which we just had this week in our community group, somebody confessed sin, living out James 516 to confess to one another, because this is the safest place in the world to confess sin. It should be because we have the blood of Jesus and speaking these truths over someone who confesses their sins, we forgive one another. Ephesians 432, we look out for others interests, rather than our own. Philippians, two four, we love one another. John 1334, through 35 and we carry one another, another’s burdens. Galatians, six, two, that’s what an open heart looks like. Open our hearts also means we have to listen often before we open our mouths. Living out. James 122, to be quick to listen and slow to speak, but eventually we speak. First. Thessalonians five, nine through 11, brings all this together for us again, as we look at Jesus, For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him, therefore, encourage one another and build each other up just as in fact you are doing. May this be said of Cityview, may this be said of Cityview, encourage one another, build each other up just as in fact you are doing. So hopefully this is something that is true of us in other communities and other relationships, because if we are filled with God’s word, if we know how to speak gospel truths and our hearts are open, we are going to be the sorts of people that when we’re out in the work where, when we’re in school, when we’re with our friends in our neighborhoods, they will see our hearts and notice something different and want to and be drawn to conversations with us. Because you can speak hard truths to people when they know your heart, right? If you know your mom or your dad loves you and they speak a hard truth to you, you’re going to hear it differently than the stranger on the street, the person that you just met, because you know that they love you, and so when they know our hearts, they’re going to listen to us. They will not listen to your stuff online. They’re not going to listen to you just being negative all the time. What are they? Time. What are they going to listen to gospel truths and your heart that cares for them, not that you win an argument, not so that you can be defensive, but because you love them and you care for them, and they see your heart and they will listen. So Open Hearts impacts here, and it impacts our relationships out there fourth open schedules. And here’s where the spurring on that like discomfort and unpleasantness is probably going to be there for some of us. Because if the writer of Hebrews was writing to us today, and he said, Do not neglect meeting together, somewhere in the habit of doing the issue behind the neglect of meeting would not be persecution. It would be busyness and priority for the American church. That’s just what it would be. Almost two weeks ago now, some of us were at the gospel coalition conference down in Indianapolis, and at one of the breakouts, one of the panelists said something was so profound, I wrote it down, and it’s specifically for parents. And so I want parents to hear this, but I want to tease it out too and look at it for all of us, because this panel got a question. And here’s the question. It was about discipleship, family, worship and stuff. Someone asked, How can busy families fit in? Discipleship, family, worship and church community. And so first, I hope you heard that asking the question in this way says something about our culture. How can we fit in what should be the most important thing in our lives? How can we fit in discipleship, family, worship and church community? And here was the answer the panelists. Said. He said, When you sign up to be a parent, you sign up for a full life, but you do not sign up for a chaotic life. I want you to think about that. We sign up for a full life if you’re a parent, you know this, but you do not sign up for a chaotic life. If your life, your calendar, is so chaotic, you cannot worship as a family, you can’t gather and be intentional in discipleship. You can’t make it to community events for your church, then something needs to change. And it’s not the church stuff, it’s everything else, because if you’re trying to fit it in, it will not fit in. So we need to take this seriously, and if we tease this out more, so that more of us are involved in just families with kids, we have to think about the fact there are a lot of things outside of our control that will keep us from community. You’re sick, we don’t want you here, stay home, get better, but that’s outside your control. You’ve got weddings that we just heard about. You just have a baby. Like there’s all sorts of things that are outside of your control that will keep you from this community. So then, if you sit there and think, Alright, all these different things are going to take away this many times of the year, and then I’m going to willfully neglect the other times for these things. How much are you actually gathering with the community? I don’t know. It’s an important question that we all need to ask. The point is, there are things that will be outside of our control that will keep us from the gathering, and we don’t want to neglect meeting together, that willful neglect of meeting as community, so we will miss out, but let’s make sure it’s from those things that are outside of our control. One common thing that I’ve heard is that lack of tenants is just for a season, but if you sit there and you think about it, do you know what you’re saying and communicating when you say that? You’re saying for this season, this thing is more important than what Jesus Christ gave His life for, blood, bought brothers and sisters, worshiping the God of the universe, our Lord and our Savior, and saying for this season, it’s just too much. What are we communicating to not only the church, but to the world when we say that? So some questions to consider for all of us today, some of you maybe fall into some of these categories. Do you think through how your travel schedule impact the church community? Do you think through your Saturday nights to make sure you get to bed early and prepare your hearts for worship on Sunday, we should live differently on Saturdays to be ready for Sunday. Do you put church community groups, youth group, prayer meetings, etc, on your calendar and say no to other things that conflict with it, or schedule around the church community. Or do you try and fit the church in? Like these are really hard questions we have to ask, because we cannot get in the habit of fitting church community in. And so I hesitate to share this because I don’t want to come across as boastful, but I’m going to take the risk, I guess, because I think it’s important shepherding moment, and this is especially for families. The decisions you make for one kid is the decision you’re probably going to make for all your kids. So if your life is chaotic with one kid because you’re over scheduled, what’s going to happen with two and three and four? We have to have these conversations and say this is what’s most important. If we can’t do this first, then everything else has to go. So we need to make different decisions earlier on, and I’ll just share it for us. It was baseball, travel, sports. So CJ missed, is missing his game. Currently, he missed his semi final game last Sunday. Why? Because the game is at 10 o’clock on a Sunday after a morning. And I go to the coach every year and I say, I have the same conversation with him. This is what’s most important to us. So he will not be at games from this time to this time on Sundays. And every year, I say, if you don’t want us on the team, we will back out so somebody else can come and play. And every year he says, We want him. We want your family a part of our team. And so we keep doing it. And our team, we thank the Lord for them that they they are okay with that, because they don’t have to be all right. But for us, the reason I share that is for this. This for you to hear this. Have you ever had the conversation with the coach, with the director, with the teacher, with whoever it is, and said, this is a priority for us. This is what we’re doing.
And they may say, then you can’t be a part of this team, and you’re going to have a really good opportunity with your child to talk through how it costs, and then sometimes the Lord is going to bless it. And I don’t know what it’s going to be for your family, but I do know I will never regret my son being here on Sundays. He won’t either. And so my point in saying that again, it’s not to say this is what we did, because I know some of you were like, Well, you’re the pastor. You have to. You know it’s your job? No, this is our Church. This is our family. Whether I’m in full time vocational ministry or I’m not, this is the decision we would make, because we love this community. We love the body that Jesus gave us, and so when people do see us miss church for whatever reason, one of the questions lastly, what it’s like to miss church? I said it’s like, it’s missing out of that family reunion, like every Sunday with all the weird people that are there, myself included, right? Like, but I miss it. I mean, have you ever gone a couple Sundays because you were sick and you got to church like, it feels like forever. I need this community. We need to have some hard conversations and prioritize things, because this matters. I told you, it might spur you on this morning. So let me encourage you, because I’m also called to do that in this passage right here’s the encouragement. You’re here today. So this is a priority for you today, and I hope next week it’s a priority too. I hope if there’s any sort of conviction, I hope it’s not condemnation, because I want you to know we’re we’re for you, we’re on your team. We want your family here, because we know how important it is for you, how important is for a church, because we need each other, right? So we want this every single week, but I hope the spirit is convicting you to maybe say there needs to be a change in our life today and again, maybe it’s not Sunday morning, maybe it’s community group. Maybe it’s getting to the prayer meetings on Sunday nights. I don’t know what it is for you, but you and the Lord need to spend time together to figure that out. Finally, let’s keep moving open doors. This is last one. When I talk about this with community groups, I say we need to have an open front door and open back door. Okay, the front door. We need to be willing to bring others into our community, right yet, namely our community groups. But any community we’re a part of, we need to have an open door for them. So Romans 15 seven says it this way, accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you in order to bring praise to God. Other translations say, welcome one another. Okay, so we need to have that open front door. I will say this as somebody, as the person who leads the community groups here, one of the let me be careful. I always say this. Something that makes me really mad is when people say we cannot have so and so in our community group, or we can’t have this type of person in our community group because it’s uncomfortable. And I’ve had these conversations, that says a whole lot more about your maturity than it does theirs, because we’ve all been bought by the blood of Jesus. None of us is perfect. And then please think about this. At one point, you were the new person in the group, and somebody welcomed you in, and you were a mess, and they were a mess, and you were a messed together trying to faithfully follow and pursue Jesus. We are called to spur one another on, to encourage one another. So if you don’t want other people in your group, you might be missing out on a person who can encourage and spur you on, and then they miss out on you doing that for them. We have to think more community than we think individually in a series like this. We have to start thinking this way, because what we decide impacts other Christians. It impacts other people who are not in the church. Yet. We also need to have open back doors letting people leave. And I hope this isn’t leaving because they’re upset with community groups. I’m talking about leaving so they can go multiply out and start a new group. Multiply out and start a new group. If somebody walks in the door tomorrow and they want to be in a community group, I’m not going to ask them to lead that group, because they’re new to the church, right? We need members, people who’ve been a part of our groups, to do that and to say, I want to welcome people into community. And I will say this for a very good reason. We are low on community group leaders. We cannot start groups, and we have people who want groups because we don’t have the leaders for them. We need to send people out. We need to be willing to go to start this community, because they need to be encouraged. They need to be spurred on, and they need you to help them do that. So all of this bringing this all together. Here’s the big idea, we need each other, so prioritize community. We need each other. We do. So prioritize community. So the last thing I want to do is just consider the challenge. Just a few things for us to consider. If you’re here this morning, you’re still checking out Cityview, you’re trying to figure out this whole thing about who Jesus is and what this Christianity thing is, then I hope you’re drawn to this community. It is messy, but it is beautiful. It is messy, and it will continue to be messy, and we’re going to continue to see beautiful things, and that’s just the Christian life. So we want to welcome you into that. We want to welcome you into that community. So keep showing up here on. Sundays, regardless of who you are, regularly make some changes so that that can happen. But that should only be the start, right? So look for other ways, another challenge, other ways to engage in community. The most obvious ones are, come on June 1 to the junior group meeting to hear more details about journey group. These are high cost, high reward groups. Get into a community group if you’re not and when already ask me, you can go to our website. You can fill out the community group interest form. We’d love to know that you want to be a part of these groups. What do you need to be a part of a community group here at Cityview? Step one, show up on Sundays. Step two, go to community group. It’s very easy, because at our community groups, what do we do? Sermon discussion. So we open God’s Word, we read the passage, and we talk about what God was saying to us through His Word. So that’s all you have to do, is be here on Sundays, go to community group, and you get to talk through that. We get to live out James 122 and be doers of the word together. Now I say sign up for community groups. And you just heard me say, we don’t have enough leaders. So for some of you, that next step is to consider multiplying out from your group and being a leader of a new group so that we can offer the community that others need to them. Lastly, I want to encourage you to come to the pursuing the heart workshop, as Brandon already gave you a good explanation of what that is, so I’m not going to go into those details, but if you want, but if you want to pursue have those open hearts, those open mouths, then I would encourage you to be there on Saturday for this important workshop. It will greatly impact your relationships inside and outside the church. And I want to come back to the story that we started with today as we close. Mark Schultz said that when we gather for community, when we are there for someone else, like this family, this couple part of us realizes consciously or not, that one day We will be sitting in that pew.
One day, we will experience loss, we’ll have a tragedy, we’ll have a season that tests our faith. We’ll have something that happens that is bigger than us. So all of us are going to sit there and we’re going to be that couple, and what do we want? What do we need in that moment is not more head knowledge is not isolation. What we need is a hand on the shoulder. We need an encouraging word in our ears. We need the love of the community surrounding us, because I will point you to Jesus, and you will point me to Jesus, and we will grow, and we will mature in the faith, because we need each other. So prioritize community. Let’s pray.
Lord. Remind us again what it cost Jesus to bring us together as brothers and sisters in Christ and Lord, not just here, not just in this place at Cityview, but our brothers and sisters around the world that the work you did on the cross is big enough to save all of us. So Lord, let that be the motivation for why we gather together. Because we need to hear this truth over and over again, that we are loved by you, that we can be changed by you, and you have given us community to help be a part of that change. So help us to spur one another on toward love and good deeds, to encourage one another, and to do that with hearts full not of judgment, but hearts full of love, the overflow of thanksgiving for what you have done for us and who you are. We thank you for this community. We love you and we pray this in Jesus name.