"The Importance of One Another" - Hebrews 3:12-19

I know everyone falls on different spectrums on this thing, but I do not like going to the doctor.

It's just not one of my favorite things in the world. I figure since I was a

kid, that was probably true.

But it's funny what'll happen when you get sick enough, when you realize how

sick maybe you are, all of a sudden it's like, man, you know who I really need to go see?

The doctor. I'm at the point now, and I know this is not, so don't give me a

speech afterwards. Like, I don't need the advice.

I know it's bad. but when somebody goes like, well, who's your primary care

physician? I'm like, whoever the direct care guy is that day,

because that's the only guy I'm going to see.

All right. I'm not going a whole lot, but I can remember how we were living in Lindell.

We moved back to Tyler and for whatever reason, I got incredibly sick right there at the beginning.

And I would like have 102 degree fever and be freezing cold and sweating.

And it would just kind of come and go and it wouldn't go away.

I kept, you know, you do what every guy does, right? you keep taking Tylenol

and you're like, that'll figure itself out.

And so finally it wouldn't.

And so I go to the direct care, that's my primary care physician,

right? And they think it's this, they think it's that, they can't figure it out.

And I can see all the WebMD experts out there like, oh, you had this and you're dying in three days.

And again, it's fine. The funny part is they never actually figured out what

it was. It just went away.

And so it turns out, keep taking Tylenol. It'll go away.

That's not medical advice. But it's funny what happens when our condition gets

bad enough, what we'll seek out.

I've seen that in my entire life. You can see that even in your kids.

If you've got a stubborn kid, which every kid is stubborn in one way or another,

they will not ask you for help for anything, usually until it gets to a place

where they realize, I got no shot at fixing this. This is officially broken.

There's really a problem here.

And I think that's true of our sin as well.

The most dangerous thing about our sin is oftentimes the condition and what

it looks like and what it feels like.

And you could say the symptoms don't match how dire the situation is.

They don't match how awful sin can be, what sin can actually do to you.

And so we lull ourselves to sleep and thinking, well, you know,

I can just go to church a couple of times, pray a few prayers,

do a few things, and that'll just kind of take care of this sin problem in my life.

But in actuality, you need help, right? You need a physician.

You need a doctor. You need something that if you're not careful and you wait

too long, you'll get to a place where everything is falling apart before that happens.

Now, the Lord is more than happy to let your life fall apart if it means you'll

come to him, but that's not the end goal, right?

The purpose of this warning, this morning in Hebrews 3, 13 through 19,

is that you would heed the warning,

that you would heed God's word so that you wouldn't find yourself in a situation

where I don't have anything else to do, so I'm going to go to the Lord.

The hope is that you would again heed the warning here and go,

you know, maybe I should go before it gets too bad, before this sin in my life takes over.

So this is really part two of last week, but if you weren't here last week,

that's okay. You can still pay attention, I promise.

But last week, we talked a lot about the warning, this hardness of their hearts, unbelief.

And he uses the example, and he'll do it again this week, of the Israelites in the wilderness.

And no matter what they saw, they saw the plagues in Egypt. They saw him part the Red Sea.

They were at the base of Mount Sinai. They saw manna from heaven.

They saw water from a rock. They saw all these incredible things that God did.

And yet none of those experiences softened their heart to who God was.

And it says again, as it will say again this morning, they did not enter God's

rest. For them, they didn't enter the promised land because of their unbelief.

We made the important distinction last week that it wasn't that they sinned that was the issue.

It wasn't their sin that kept them out. It was their unbelief in God that did that.

It says that they did not know his way. And what that really means is not that

they didn't know how God worked or they weren't real sure what God was doing.

That's always going to be true.

When it says they did not know his way, it meant they didn't know God's grace and mercy in their life.

They didn't see that God had been faithful to them and kind to them and merciful

to them in the wilderness.

They saw none of those things. And so their heart was hardened and they did not trust the Lord.

They did not heed his warning. So with that in mind, let me read Hebrews 3,

and I'm going to jump up to verse 12 just to give us a little context from last

week. We'll read through 19.

Hebrews 3, 12 starts this way. 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 or urge one another every day, as long as it is called

today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

For we have come to share in Christ, 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.

For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses?

And with whom was he provoked for 40 years, was it not those who sinned whose

bodies fell in the wilderness?

And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest,

but to those who were disobedient?

So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

I want to do something a little different today. We're going to work backwards

in this passage because I think it'll help me build the case for what I want to do.

And I think there's a logic to this argument that the writer of Hebrews is making.

And so working backwards, he gives us kind of a bit of a recap of last week.

The writer of Hebrews again gives some commentary on Psalm 95 that he quoted last week.

And he asked these questions to draw these Hebrews' minds to a story that they

would know. These are Hebrews.

They know the Exodus story. They know the wilderness story. They know who Moses is.

They know who these people were. They would have been considered their ancestors.

And one of the reasons he's doing this is because he wants them to associate

this warning with the people of God.

We've said this the last couple of weeks, but it's good to be reminded.

This warning is not to an unbelieving world.

This warning is not written to pagans. This warning is not written to places

that don't know who God is.

This warning in Hebrews is written to the church and the warnings that they

received in the wilderness was written to God's chosen people whom he called out of slavery.

That's important because as we get into the warnings, it's so easy when we hear

a warning to go, yeah, you know who needs to hear that?

Those people, right? You know who needs to hear that?

The people that don't know God, the people that don't go to church,

the people that haven't been baptized, the people that haven't gone on mission

trips, the people that aren't as good as I am.

And the writer of Hebrews is going, no, no, I'm writing this to you.

I want you to see that your ancestors failed to enter God's rest,

even when they saw God do incredible things.

And so don't think that you're immune from entering God's rest just because

you've seen God do some things or you've done some things for God.

But he essentially makes the case here, what makes you think that you will enter

God's rest if you fail to trust in Jesus, the greater Moses,

the greater deliverer, the one who never sinned and never failed,

the one who has redeemed those whom he has came to redeem?

If you don't trust in him, what makes you think you're any better than the people in the wilderness?

Again, he ends how he starts. He begins with a warning in chapter three.

He wants them to know, listen, you are holy brothers, but you're still in danger.

There's still some warnings that you need to hear. You're not immune to sin.

You're not immune to falling away because you're from East Texas.

And it's just not as crazy here.

That belief in Jesus is the issue today, just as it was 4,000 years ago in the wilderness?

Do you trust God's promise? Do you believe in him?

Or like the Israelites of the Exodus, do we seek other gods or long for the

past life that we used to live every time God doesn't give us our way?

Every time there's a problem, every time there's a struggle,

do we start going, well, I think there's some other gods in my life that could

really solve this problem.

Or you know when I didn't have these problems? When I was living how I wanted

to live before I came to Christ.

That's the real issue. So again, working backwards, what causes someone to act that way?

What causes us, what caused them to act that way, to not believe God?

Well, he says in verse 13, two big phrases we're really going to zero in on this morning.

Number one, the deceitfulness of sin, the deceitfulness of sin,

that sin is a deceiver, that it's a liar.

The illness is not easily diagnosed because sin hides in our hearts.

It hides beneath the surface.

And oftentimes you can't see the symptoms of sin in your life.

Everybody knows somebody, and maybe you know the person in the mirror well enough

to be honest, to say there's been seasons in your life where you know you were in sin.

You know you were doing things and acting in ways that you were not supposed

to act, and yet you could still go to church and shake hands and lead and do

the things that you feel like God was asking you to do.

You may have even used those things as an excuse, right?

Well, I'm doing this over here, but I'm doing this over here. So they kind of even out.

Again, this is an illness that's not easily diagnosed because it's hard to see it.

Again, you've all been a part of, I'm sure, something where something happens out of nowhere.

Some sin is exposed, something happens, and everyone's going,

man, I can't believe that happened. Can you believe that happened?

They seem like such nice people.

If you listen to a lot of True Time podcasts or you watch anything like that,

we always end up sounding like the neighbors of the mass murderer where you're

like, you seem like a nice guy. I don't know.

All the while, there's things going on that we can't see, and that's what sin does.

We don't have to look far. If you go back to Genesis 3 in your Bible,

look back to Eve in the garden who was pure.

Intelligent, filled with good intentions and faculties, had no original sin

or natural depravity, nothing to put her mind out of order, nothing that would

seem to cause her to do what she does.

A perfect woman without staying upon her heart or her will,

perfect as she came from God's hand, was overcome by Satan, who embodied in

himself the deceitfulness of sin.

She had everything that she could ever want. We've talked about this a lot in

Hebrews and we'll continue to talk about it.

Oftentimes people think, if I could get everything I wanted in my life the way

that I wanted it, then it would be a lot easier for me not to sin.

The problem with that is the Bible calls you a liar if you think that way.

Because when mankind was created and placed in the perfect place with everything they ever needed,

when they walked with God, the deceitfulness of sin still attracted Eve to do

the thing that God asked her not to do.

And if mankind in their perfectness was so readily deceived,

do we think ourselves fallen and inclined to sin that we will not be deceived as well?

That's the first problem with sin. That's the first thing we need to get out of the way.

It says this in 1 John, right? If any man says he does not sin,

he deceives himself and the Lord is not in him.

Because anyone who's close to the Lord is honest and says, no,

no, no, I've got a problem. I've got an issue.

It may not show itself all the time. It may not be evident all the time.

But I know that there are some things in me, some sins in my life that I need

help with every single day.

And the first step to getting overrun by sin is to stop admitting that you have a problem.

To get to a place in your Christian walk where you go, you know,

I think I've just done enough.

I've cleaned myself up enough. I've worked hard enough on these things.

I've fought sin long enough and I just want to coast for a while.

You would do well to remember how God exhorts Cain as he's contemplating killing

his brother in Genesis 4, verse seven.

What does he say to him? If you do well, it won't go well with you.

But if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you.

Its desire is for you. The Hebrew is even more clear on this.

What it's really saying is it wants to devour you. It wants to kill you.

It wants to take up residence in your life and lead you to death.

That is what sin wants to do.

And so if maybe you're in here and you've just kind of been on coast,

you're on cruise control and you're going, I'll handle these sin things later, man.

Listen, God himself speaks to Cain and says, if you think that way, sin will devour you.

You could even go further back than Eve or Adam, Cain and Abel.

Think about Satan himself.

An angel of light, as he's described, living in the kingdom of heaven with the Lord.

Sin deceives angels. Again, do we think we're immune to it?

Quickly, don't miss what the writer of Hebrews is doing. We've talked about

two specific characters in Hebrews to this point.

The writer of Hebrews is trying to make the case to these Hebrews,

it's not that these things are bad, it's that Jesus is better than those things.

And so he uses Moses and angels as an example to say, Jesus never sinned.

And that's what makes him different. But you have sinned.

Maybe the most dangerous thing about the deceitfulness of sin is because it can seem so good.

It can seem like such a good thing.

It's the most common way that you see sin play itself out in the world around us.

You hear people say things like, well, God just made me this way.

This just makes me happy. I like doing it this way.

God wants me to do it this way. I know that God loves me and he wants me to

be happy. He wants me to act this way and do these things.

I'm most comfortable doing these things.

Man, that's exactly how sin works.

James says it this way in chapter one, verses 14 and 15.

He says, but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Again, it's inside of you. You have these desires.

That desire can be as simple as, I just don't like people very much,

so I'm just not going to talk to them.

It can be as evil as, I can do whatever I want with my body, however I choose.

And if that costs the life of somebody else's body, that's their problem.

Both of those things come from within someone. But listen to what he says in verse 15.

Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin,

when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

James uses this language of pregnancy. The desire, when it is conceived, brings forth sin.

The picture he's painting for his listeners is, what's it like when someone gets pregnant?

It's a celebration of life. It's this wonderful thing.

And you have baby showers and you have all these wonderful moments.

People are buying gifts and there's registries and then the baby's born and

everyone comes to visit it or it gets passed around, much to the mother's chagrin.

And there's this celebration that life has been born.

And yet James says, sin is like that.

Except for when sin is born, what is created is not life, but death.

There's all this excitement that sin brings. We have the parties and we celebrate

our sin and we think, man, look how much fun I'm having.

Look how great this is. I knew this wasn't going to go bad for me.

I knew if I just followed my heart. I knew if I just went after the most pleasure

I could find for myself, that God would be fine with it until one day that sin

is birthed and we realize, oh, this is death.

For some people, they'll wait until they stand before God's judgment seat and

realize, oh, this is death.

All those things that I thought about myself, all those desires that I let run wild in my life.

All those times that I said I know better than God does that felt so good have led to death.

Again, this is exactly how God exhorts Cain in Genesis 4-7.

When he says that, Genesis 4-7, Cain does not take God's advice.

Genesis 4-8 reads like this, Cain spoke to Abel his brother,

and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother, and Abel killed him.

Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

Sin leads to death. Do not let the fact that your sin, however small you may

think it is, trick you into believing that it's not a big deal. It will kill you.

And it has the ability to kill you for eternity. And there is nothing more important

than you realizing that your sin is something that you need help with today, whatever the sin is.

Again, using the language of Hebrews, your sin will cause you to never enter

the rest of God, if not dealt with.

If there is no physician, if there is no cure, if you do not seek out Christ,

if he does not save you, if he does not redeem you, if he does not give you

a righteousness that's not your own, your sin will keep you out of the rest

that God offers for eternity.

That's why the Lord's prayer's closing

line is perfect. Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil.

As if to say, God, if I'm tempted too much, I know what I'm capable of.

I know what sin is in my life.

It's not just the world around me that's the problem. It's the sin in me that's the problem.

It's not the things outside of me. They just give me opportunity to do what my sin would have me do.

Well, you know, I wouldn't get so angry if my kids didn't act that way.

It's like, no, you would. You would.

If it wasn't your kids, it'll be the person at work, right? I just wouldn't

struggle with lust at all if people wouldn't dress that way. You would.

I just wouldn't lie so much if people wouldn't lie to me so much. No, you would.

I just wouldn't covet my neighbor's stuff. I wouldn't want what other people

have if I just had more stuff.

No, you would. You would.

Again, don't fall into the hands of the deceiver.

John Owen famously says, be killing sin or sin will be killing you.

Now, what's the antidote? What's the cure?

We know the problem, right? We've seen what the problem produces.

He's used the example from the Exodus story of the Hebrews, and we know that sin is deceitful.

So what do we do? Well, he begins verse 13 with what we do.

Exhort each other daily.

Exhort each other daily. The word is perikaleo in the Greek,

and it's more than exhort because exhort sounds to us like words,

just talking, just words.

The word means much more than that. It means calling someone to one side.

When you see someone struggling with sin, right?

Or even, listen, even if you don't see them struggling with sin,

just know we've all got the same problem.

When you see that, it's not just a word in passing, hey man,

hope you're doing good, praying for you, and walking the other way.

Exhorting is the idea, literally, the picture that's being painted here of grabbing

someone and pulling them to your side and saying, hey, what sin are you struggling with?

What's going on in your life, how can I pray for you? How can I love you?

How can I help you get to where God wants you to go?

It's a pulling to one side to say to someone, look to Christ.

Look to Christ. I don't need to know what your sin is to give you that advice.

I don't need to know what your struggle is. I don't need to know how awful it

is or how benign it seems.

I can pull you aside and say, listen, are you looking to Christ today?

Are you trusting in Christ today?

Are you trusting that he'll forgive you of that sin? Are you trusting that he

is who he says he is and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do?

These commands are all throughout the New Testament. Over 50 times,

we see these one another statements. Let me just give you a few.

1 Corinthians 12, 25, care for one another. Jesus says in John 13, 34, love one another.

James in James 5, 16, pray for one another. 1 Thessalonians 4,

18, comfort one another. Romans 15, 14, admonish one another.

1 Thessalonians 5, 11, edify or encourage one another.

And we'll read later in Hebrews 10, 24, the classic verse of how you need to

be in church ends with, stir up one another to love and good works.

So you need people in your life that will do this. You have to have them.

There's nothing that Satan loves more than a Christian who thinks they're strong enough on their own.

Nothing. That's easy bait.

And you can lie to yourself and convince yourself that you're strong enough, that you don't need it.

Or Satan can lie to you and convince you, hey, if people knew about that sin,

if they knew what you were really thinking, if they knew what you were really

going through, no one would love you. God would let you go.

That's what sin does. It deceives. But before I ask if you're doing this,

let me just ask, are you willing to receive that?

I struggle a lot more with receiving this than I do to giving someone encouragement.

I like to convince myself, like I said, that, man, I know the answers to the questions on the test.

And if I don't know them, I'll go study and I'll go figure them out.

And I'll work really hard and I'll figure out a way to do this on my own.

It's as if we decide that we're greater than all these people in the Bible that

had people next to them, like Moses has Aaron, David has Jonathan,

Paul has Barnabas, but we decide, I think I got it.

I don't think I really need anyone in my corner.

Again, the warning is still true. Sin is crouching at your door and you need someone in your corner.

So the second question, not only are you willing to receive this,

but yes, are you willing to do this? Listen, we're going to baptize two young men this morning.

We've got people that are going to be joining the church. And those are great things.

There's a reason we're having lunch. We want to celebrate those things,

but that's not the end goal of church.

The end goal of our church is not to get people baptized.

The end goal of our church is not to get people to join. The end goal of our

church is to exhort one another all the more as we see the day approaching,

to encourage one another to love and good works,

to exhort one another and pull each other aside at times and say,

are you trusting in Christ?

How can I pray for you? How can I care for you? What can I do for you to help

each other get and run their race well to the end? That's the point of church.

Not one time in the New Testament is a church or any human being called to save anyone. You can't do it.

Paul's not asked to go and save the Gentiles. Peter's not asked to go and save the Jews.

John's not asked in writing Revelation to convince people of salvation.

Salvation belongs to the Lord.

And salvation is his to give out. But what he has given us the responsibility

to do in the Great Commission is to go and make disciples,

go and make disciples, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you and

know that I will be with you until the end. That's the goal of the church.

So we miss the point if we think, well, we got them baptized.

We got them to walk an aisle. We got them to join the church.

We got them involved. They're serving.

We miss the point of what God has called us to do if we think those are the end goals.

And the truth is we like those end goals because they're easy to do and they're easy to count.

Man, it's easy to keep records like that, isn't it? It's easy to tally up salvations and baptisms.

You know what's a lot harder to do? Live with people.

Walk with people. That is so much harder to do.

You know how much easier it would be to have kids if all I had to do was feed them three times a day?

And every time I fed them, I could just be like, check, did my job today, no problem. Right?

Oprah, now I've nailed it. If all I had to do was make sure they had water at

bedtime, check, no problem. Got it. I can do that.

You know what's so hard about having kids? It's every day. It's all day, every day, all the time.

I love my kids. I'm not saying that. I love my kids. Yeah. Yeah.

But it never ends. It never stops. And then you think they're going to grow up and move off.

And now my parents are here and they would tell you, That's not true.

They don't leave off. They come back and work for you.

They have grandkids and you need them around. They never leave.

That's what's hard about kids. And listen, that's what's hard about church.

That's what should be hard about church.

That you and I can be hard to live with. But that's what God's called us to.

Not to make a spiritual checklist and count up how many times we do those things.

That's not the point. That's not the point. None of us will get to heaven.

And God go, all right, let me check how many people got baptized because you

told them to do it. All right, let me check how many people walked an aisle.

All right, let me check. That's not what he's doing.

He's going, were you faithful with the people that I put in your life to love

them well enough to exhort them, to pull them aside and say,

are you trusting Christ today?

Is there a sin in your life that needs to be handled? Is there something going

on in your life that I can help you with.

You may say, man, I just feel so unqualified for that.

I feel so unqualified to exhort other people because of my own life or my own

not knowing the Bible as well as I should or not praying.

Whatever you disqualify yourself with, I would just say, amen to that. Me too.

I always thought that like the more education I got, the more qualified I would

feel. And now I just feel dumber, right?

It's like anything else. The more you read and the more you learn,

the more you realize, I don't know.

Like, it's crazy how sure I was of things 10 years ago.

Theologically, if you'd asked me a theological question, I would just been like,

this is it. This is what it is. They're all wrong. We're right.

And then 10 years later, you're like, I don't know, man, they make some good points. I don't know.

They make some good points. I think maybe nothing's going to eventually qualify

you to exhort one another except for one thing.

And that's that you have been bought by the blood of Christ and you've been

adopted into his family and you have brothers and sisters that you're now accountable to.

That's all that qualifies you.

What qualifies you to exhort someone is they're your brother or they're your

sister. That's all that matters. They don't need you to have a PhD.

They don't need you to be able to show them every single verse in the Bible

that pertains to every single thing that they might have a problem with.

They just need you to love them. They need you to exhort them.

And again, he hasn't asked you to save anyone. You can take that pressure off

yourself. All he's asked you to do is proclaim the words he's already given us.

Romans 1, 16 through 17, a verse you probably know, for I'm not ashamed of the

gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.

What is the power of God unto salvation? You, your words, your acumen,

your ability to turn a phrase, or is it the gospel?

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.

So if you don't know what to say, you don't know what to do,

let me just encourage you, exhort people that way.

Exhort people with the gospel. Exhort people by starting conversations like,

man, can you believe what Christ has accomplished?

You believe what Christ has done? You believe how good Christ has been to us?

You can think of it this way, if an example will help you. Have the exact opposite

conversations that the people were having in the wilderness in the Exodus story,

where all they did was look at what God hadn't done, and they complained about

wanting to go back and be slaves in Egypt again.

They worshiped other gods because they never saw God's goodness.

Listen, if you want to avoid having a hard heart, if you want to avoid the deceitfulness

of sin, there's one way to do that, and that is to fix your eyes on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Because what it does in you is it makes you thankful for every single thing that he's done.

It makes you realize, listen, anything bad that's happened to me,

I deserve it 10 times over,

but Christ has been merciful and gracious, and the gospel has power to do things that you don't.

What is exhorting someone looks like? It looks like that. It looks like the gospel to them.

Listen, if you know John 3.16, you've got some exhorting you can do.

You can exhort people all day long with John 3.16, Romans 3.23, Romans 5.28.

Pick your verse that you learned.

Be reminded that the power does not come from you or your eloquence or again,

your IQ. It comes from God.

And man, more than anything, maybe you need to know people don't need your power.

They don't need your wisdom.

They don't need you. They need God.

They need him. They need to know him and the power of his resurrection. They need that.

And your job is not to convince them of anything. It's just to keep putting

that in front of them and praying, God, you have the power to do this. I don't.

You have the power to release people from the deceitfulness of sin.

You have the power to transplant a stone heart into a soft heart.

You have the power to give people new minds and new flesh, new eyes to see, new ears to hear.

God, you are able to do that.

That is how you exhort someone. That's how you exhort someone.

So again, as we close, these pictures that we're going to see in a few minutes as we baptized, and as,

again, people are going to start joining our church, I just want to remind us,

they're committing themselves to us, but we're committing ourselves to them.

And if these people are going to do these things, it is our responsibility that

God has given us to exhort them and love them well, to not let church get in the way of exhorting,

to not let the fact that, well, they were at church, so they heard the songs

and they heard that guy talk for 40 minutes, so they must be good. They're not. I promise.

Everyone needs somebody. And just ask you, do you have somebody you're exhorting?

Do you have someone that's exhorting you? Maybe what you need to do is just

reach out to someone and say, hey man, listen, I don't have any of my life that's doing this.

Can you do that for me? Can you just kind of keep tabs on me and ask questions and see how I'm doing?

That may be the hardest thing in the world for you to do, to ask someone to help you.

The only way I know to help you do that and convince you that that's needed

is to remind you of the deceitfulness of sin and what it will cost you if you

don't. It'll cost you your life.

Let's pray. Father, thank you again for this morning. Thank you for your word.

Thank you that it's a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.

God, will we heed the warnings in Hebrews this morning? Will we not let sin fester in our lives?

Would we be honest with ourselves about how deceitful sin can be?

Would we not let it be conceived in sin, but would we take seriously the threat that it poses to us.

Pray the end of the Lord's Prayer together this morning as we say,

Lord, lead us not to temptation. Please deliver us from evil.

Will we be confident that you can do that because of the end of the prayer?

For yours is the kingdom and yours is the power.

That you are sovereign over our affairs, but you have given us things to do.

That your control over our lives and over the world and over the universe and

over things seen and unseen is not an excuse to be lazy.

It's not an excuse to take days off, but God, it's encouragement that we can

do what you have called us to do because you will empower us to do it.

We'll be a church that exhorts one another daily as long as it is called today.

That as people come into our fellowship, as you bring people into our lives,

that we wouldn't get lost in the minutia of church work and church busyness

and all the things that come with that.

God, those have their place, but God, nothing is more important than us loving

one another well enough to point each other to Christ daily,

to pray for one another and care for one another and love one another well.

Thank you for these young men that are coming to be baptized this morning for

the picture that we get to see for the work that you've done in their lives.

God, we know that this is a picture not of what they've accomplished for themselves,

but it's a picture that you've done something for them that they couldn't do

for themselves. You've done something for all of us.

The dead people don't bring themselves to life Thank you for this church.

Thank you for the people in the room How would you be with it as we go in the name I pray amen.